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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (1948)

April 16, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

osamu-dazai-grayscale-pensive-author-portraitno-longer-human-bookcover

“…The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw, smell…” –Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human, 1948

Contributed by Camila Aguilar (University of Texas at Austin, ’25)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1948, Books, Gates of Hell, Hell, Inferno, Japan, Journeys, Literature, Monsters, Novels

Final Chapter of Adam Buenosayres: “A Journey to the Dark City Cacodelphia” (1948)

November 12, 2020 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

the-final-chapter-adam-buenosayres“A modernist urban novel in the tradition of James Joyce, Adam Buenosayres is a tour-de-force that does for Buenos Aires what Carlos Fuentes did for Mexico City or José Lezama Lima did for Havana – chronicles a city teeming with life in all its clever and crass, rude and intelligent forms. Employing a range of literary styles and a variety of voices, Leopoldo Marechal parodies and celebrates Argentina’s most brilliant literary and artistic generation, the martinfierristas of the 1920s, among them Jorge Luis Borges. First published in 1948 during the polarizing reign of Juan Perón, the novel was hailed by Julio Cortázar as an extraordinary event in twentieth-century Argentine literature. Set over the course of three break-neck days, Adam Buenosayres follows the protagonist through an apparent metaphysical awakening, a battle for his soul fought by angels and demons, and a descent through a place resembling a comic version of Dante’s hell. Presenting both a breathtaking translation and thorough explanatory notes, Norman Cheadle captures the limitless language of Marechal’s original and guides the reader along an unmatched journey through the culture of Buenos Aires. This first-ever English translation brings to light Marechal’s masterwork with an introduction outlining the novel’s importance in various contexts – Argentine, Latin American, and world literature – and with notes illuminating its literary, cultural, and historical references. A salient feature of the Argentine canon, Adam Buenosayres is both a path-breaking novel and a key text for understanding Argentina’s cultural and political history.” [. . .]    –Amazon, April 1, 2014.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1948, 2014, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Hell, Literary Criticism, Literature, Metaphysics, Novels, Politics

Langston Hughes, “Harlem’s Bitter Laughter” (October 2, 1948)

June 2, 2020 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“Harlem, the world’s largest urban Negro community, can sometimes laugh at the dog-gonest things. But its laughter is often a bitter laughter — the kind of laughter that, I imagine, reverberates through Dante’s hell when the devil suddenly slips on his own hot pavements and burns his sitter-downer.”   –Langston Hughes, “Harlem’s Bitter Laughter” (October 2, 1948), cited in Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture (1942-62), ed. Christopher C. De Santis (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 113-114

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1948, African American, America, Devil, Harlem, Hell, Laughter, Politics, Race

Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)

August 14, 2014 By Gretchen Williams '14

The Seven Storey Mountain is Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s 1948 best-selling autobiography. The title refers to Dante’s Purgatory. The book made the National Review’s list of the best 100 non-fiction books of the 20th Century.

Seven Storey Mountain

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1948, Autobiography, Purgatory

“(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” by Stan Jones, 1948

December 22, 2008 By Professor Arielle Saiber

ghost-riders-in-the-sky-by-stan-jones-1948“In the song, a cowboy sees a bunch of dead cowboys chasing a herd of infernal cattle across the sky. One of them warns him that he must change his ways or he will join them in this endless chase. This is reminiscent of the opportunists at the vestibule of Hell, being forced to endlessly chase after a banner.”    –John Ferriss

See lyrics at Ingeb 

Contributed by John Ferriss (Bowdoin, ’08)

Categories: Music
Tagged with: 1948, Country

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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