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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Purgatory Poetry Collection, Raúl Zurita Canessa (1979)

November 10, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

purgatory-raul-zurita-cover

“Raúl Zurita Canessa (b.1950) is a prominent Chilean poet whose work Purgatory is the first of three works based on the poetry of Dante (the other two being Anteparadise [1982], and The New Life [1994]). The late poet C.D. Wright provided the foreword to this English translation from Spanish published by the University of California Press. Wright wrote, ‘Purgatorio is arguably the seminal literary text of Chile’s 9/11/1973, the date of the U.S.-backed military coup led by Augusto Pinochet which overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. With his first published collection, the young Chilean poet began his Dantean trilogy, his long, arduous pilgrimage toward earthly redemption.'”     –Contributor Devin Shepherd

Contributed by Devin Shepherd (University of Arkansas, ’22)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1979, Chile, Chilean Poetry, Latin America, Literature, Military, Poetry, Purgatory, Spanish, Trilogies, Violence, Vita Nuova

Daniel Berrigan, The Discipline of the Mountain: Dante’s Purgatorio in a Nuclear World (1979)

February 24, 2021 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“In The Discipline of the Mountain Daniel Berrigan offers ‘ways of imagining our plight’ through the poetic vision of Dante’s Purgatorio. There can be found ‘a faithful vision, an alternative, a truthful image of God, of ourselves, of history.’ Berrigan employs free, poetic adaptation of the original–its themes, moods, discourses, encounters–with a prose commentary relating the text to political-moral issues of the present day. With its themes of lust and hatred, religious strife and ecclesiastical corruption, military power and oppression, the Purgatorio is an apt allegory of modern society. Thirteenth-century kings and princes shade into twentieth-century colonels and shahs and juntas.”   —Description from Wipf and Stock Publishers

In a review published in the magazine Sojourners, Lionel Basney writes, “Berrigan writes that he went to the Purgatorio in search of “ways of imagining our plight.” Looking for new vision in an old work is a familiar activity; but when it means reforging that work to make a new vision, it becomes complicated for both writer and reader. Unlike translation, an ‘imitation’ does not replace the original text. Instead it offers a new work through which the old text is still visible; to read it is to read two texts. Its author writes in the confidence, or hope, that the vision of the older text is still valid, assuming that for his readers as for himself the vision’s fundamental values remain true and compelling.

“But are we close enough to Dante to make this complicated process work? That depends on what we need from him. Berrigan needs terms in which to grasp the barrenness and violence of a way of life that constantly threatens war. Wanting Christian terms for this, terms powerful to Christian consciences, he naturally turns to Dante as the great poet of the Christian vision. And certainly Dante’s world was no less violent than ours.”   –Lionel Basney, “Berrigan’s Reawakening of Vision” (Review), Sojourners, August 1980

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 1979, Adaptations, Author, Authors, Books, Christianity, Corruption, Illustrated Books, Nuclear War, Politics, Purgatorio, Spirituality

Bootleg of Joy Division’s 1979 Concert, “Dante’s Inferno”

September 15, 2006 By Professor Arielle Saiber

bootleg-of-joy-divisions-1979-concert-dantes-inferno

Winter Gardens, Bournemouth, November 2 1979

See more information at JoyDiv.

Categories: Music
Tagged with: 1979, Bournemouth, England, Inferno, Rock, United Kingdom

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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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