Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“Dante wrote about the nine circles of hell; but I discovered the 10th – school supplies shopping. I admit, I used to enjoy it. After all, the limitless possibilities of a blank sheet of wide-ruled notebook paper are boundless. But, there is a downside to the scavenger hunt to find plastic folders with prongs, binders by the inch, and a pencil bag for the 72 mechanical pencils on the list.” — Lara Patangan, Mercy Matters, August 13, 2014
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“Dante’s Purgatorio“
Written by Patrick Baliani
Directed by Joseph McGrath
See also the performance by The Fountain School at Dalhousie University, 2018
“Within the video game The Binding of Isaac, Satan is located in the 9th level of the game; Hell is described as ‘cold’ if the player dies on this level (both mirroring Inferno).” –Anonymous Contributor
The Binding of Isaac, Rebirth is a 2014 video game published by Nicalis, an American publisher based out of Santa Ana, California.
You can check out more from Nicalis on their website, and you can buy The Binding of Isaac on Steam and on Humble.
“Gates of Hell” is an album released on July 31, 2014 by Sam Coffey and the Iron Lungs. The band hails from Toronto, Canada, and are a self-described “6 piece rock n’ roll band from hell.” — cited from Bandcamp.com
The album features 10 songs:
Watch the music video for the song “Gates of Hell” below:
Learn more about Sam Coffey and the Iron Lungs on their website, and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Soundcloud.
“I think Harold Bloom was right when he wrote that Dante was not a Christian poet. It is something else. That said, The Divine Comedy doesn’t end in Lucifer’s maw at the bottom of hell; the journey continues, out on a sea, onto a beach, up a mountain, and out into the heavens. The division of hell into circles, zones, and specific places for specific sins can seem like a bureaucratic perversion of sorts, order baring its teeth in the most twisted manner, but hell must also be understood in relation to its opposite, heaven and all that is good, whose image is light that knows no limits, but floats unhindered and limitless over everything. The good is open and devoid of difference, evil confined and closed upon itself. What makes Dante difficult to grasp is that this is a system humans find themselves in, it is inflicted on them from outside. Both the limiting darkness and the inverse limitless light are steadfast and constant, one marking our connection to the animal and mute biology, the other our entryway to the divine, while man himself arises from something else, his individuality, which is peculiar to each.” — Karl Ove Knausgaard, “Letter from Österlen,” The Paris Review (December 1, 2014), 199-208
“Circle/Hour Five: Wrath
“I cross the river Styx with weakening legs, fusing vertebrae and congealing spinal fluid from this damn ball. I don’t know why I thought it would be easy. If I were really sullen about my experience, perhaps I would find myself horribly immersed under the black water of the Styx for all eternity. I guess I am not all that sullen. Instead, my wrathful side takes out my anger on my rundown. I’ll teach you to mess with me, Soundbite On A Boring Topic. You’ll pay for my pain.
“A total of ten people have now kicked the ball.” — Jeremy Markovich, “My Exercise Ball Experience as Dante’s Inferno: A Biblical Parable About a Non-Standard Option for Office Seating,” Comedy Corner on Medium.com (September 9, 2014)
“There’s been a string of killings, from a drowning, to strangulation, to a hit and run. There seems to be no connection – except all the victims are fathers with sons the same age, and the killings are following the sins laid out in Dante’s Circle of Hell. Apparently, the UnSub has some serious daddy issues.” — CBS
During the episode, the killer hallucinates a voice repeatedly crying to him, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Among scheming serial killer Paul Spector’s books in his clandestine
hotel room is THE INFERNO. His 16-year-old minion, Katie Benedetto,
reads out the first few verses in a beautiful Italian. Paul then
attacks Katie, and in the following episode, she breaks into his hotel
room and leaves a not-so-nice message in lipstick on the bathroom
mirror. –Adam Glynn (Bowdoin College ’17)
In both the book and the movie Gone Girl the main character, Amy, says about marriage: “Marriage is compromise and hard work, and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”
For the 2012 book by Gillian Flynn, see the Gone Girl page on Flynn’s website.
For the 2014 film directed by David Fincher, see the film’s official website.
Contributed by Autumn Friesen (University of Texas ’16)
