“I had first come into contact with the work of Dante Alighieri as a high school student in Canada. A senior’s English class had the Inferno included as part of their curriculum, and I was eager to read the masterwork, as some minor prior contact with the text had intrigued me greatly. I was not dissuaded by the inscription I saw above the vestibule:’“Abandon every hope, all ye who enter’! My interest in the fine arts guided my curiosity, and in time I was thrilled to discover the wealth of artists who had, in previous centuries, endeavoured to give a visual expression to that poet’s massive descriptive and symbolic structure.” […] Read more here.
Junji Ito’s Horror Manga Uzumaki (1998-1999)
“Uzumaki is the story of Kirie Goshima, a young girl living in a coastal town that is slowly falling into the grip of a ‘spiral curse.’ The townsfolk, to varying degrees, become obsessed and subsequently infected by spirals.
“Ito-san’s spirals operate with similar symbolic significance to the circles of hell, namely, they are partly allegorical, as well as literal, of the spirals and endless cycles of human behavior…as in Dante’s hell all things become literal, he is physically twisted to reflect his psychological reality. Each person in Uzumaki is trapped in their own sin.
“Junji Ito understands, as Dante did, that even positive emotions like love have a place in hell when they are taken to extremes. Like a spiral itself, the story circles whilst drawing ever closer to a central point…like Dante, Junji Ito doesn’t flinch from showing us the full expanse and architecture of the hell he has created, and we see the very “nadir” or low-point of the spiral, and what that represents.” [. . .] –Joseph Sale, The English Cantos, April 8, 2020 (retrieved October 27, 2021)
Zao, Liberate Te Ex Inferis (1999)
“Zao refer to the Divine Comedy on their 1999 album Liberate Te Ex Inferis, covering the first five circles of the Inferno.” —Wikipedia
Cocytus – Wild Arms 2
In the video game Wild Arms 2, there is a gang of bandits called Cocytus, the members of which are named Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca.
Learn more about Media.Vision’s 1999 video game Wild Arms 2 here.
Theme Park World – Halloween World
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Theme Park World, Bullfrog Productions’ 1999 construction and management simulation game. Upon selecting Halloween World, the Adviser references the inscription upon the gates of hell.
Learn more from Theme Park World‘s Wikipedia page here.