“Periodicals: The most frigid and judgmental part of the library. If you even think of talking or breathing above a whisper, you will be violently shushed (and maybe shanked).” –Caroline Brown, North by Northwestern, February 22, 2016
posted on September 5, 2020 by
The Pineapple Gin Smash by Naren Young of Dante
“Smashes are super refreshing, and thus perfect for summer drinkin’; the key is to use ingredients that are in-season for maximum fresh flavor. When Naren Young of Dante recently came by the MUNCHIES garden, he had the bright idea to combine juicy hunks of just-cut pineapple with pineapple sage leaves plucked from the plant. Add a dash of pineapple vinegar, too, to go all Inception on it. Factor in the spirits of choice—gin and green Chartreuse—and the result is a drink that’s sweet, tart, fruity, potent, and certainly pineapple-y.” –Munchies Staff, Vice, August 25, 2016
Learn more about the New York City bar Dante here.
posted on August 13, 2020 by
Per le rime: Beatrice risponde a Dante by Enrico Bernard
“Una nuova forma di saggio sperimentale presentato come monologo lirico-drammatico sul più grande rapporto d’amore della letteratura mondiale. Fu vero amore? Oppure Dante si prese qualche licenza poetica e qualche libertà espressiva? Un divertente cavalcata al femminile nei canti del Paradiso che vengono smontati e ridefiniti dalla protagonista stessa, Beatrice, che finalmente fa sentire la sua non più flebile, ma dura e contestatrice voce.” –Enrico Bernard, Amazon, December 1, 2016
posted on May 30, 2020 by
Ocean Vuong, “Seventh Circle of Earth” (2016)
“I wrote ‘Seventh Circle of Earth’ [from Vuong’s 2016 collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds] shortly after hearing the news of two gay men being murdered by immolation in Dallas, TX. I originally wrote the poem in tercets, echoing Dante’s terza rima format. In the Inferno, the stanzas work as a network of rooms the speaker moves through as he descends through the circles of hell. In ‘Seventh Circle of Earth,’ however, this grouping felt off, even fraudulent, to me. A persona poem at its core, it takes on the voice of one of the men speaking to his partner. And in the midst of that fraught position, a poem in tercets, or, in other words, a ‘traditional’ poem, felt like a diluted, forced recasting of a horrific event. I ultimately abandoned the poem.
“It was not until three years later, while reading a critical work on violence and scholarship, did I see, more clearly, the footnotes on the bottom of the page. I found myself slipping right to the notes as I progressed, reading them first. They possessed, in that reading, an urgency that began to stitch itself into a fabric of broken utterances fused together by parataxis. It was, in a way, found poetry. That gave me the idea to re-work ‘Seventh Circle of Earth’ into a piece written entirely in the footnote. This time, the vast and utter emptiness one confronts on the page felt more faithful to the violent erasure of the two murdered men. It felt right to begin the poem with its own vanishing.” [. . .] — Ocean Vuong on “Seventh Circle of Earth” for Poetry School
Read the rest of Vuong’s comments and the poem at poetryschool.com.
Contributed by Su Ertekin-Taner (The Bolles School ’22)
posted on February 1, 2020 by
“The Seven Circles of Dishwashing Hell”
“I don’t want to be dramatic or anything, but sometimes, even the most mundane of chores becomes epic to me. Dante Alighieri may have been writing about Hell in his Inferno, but it seems just like dishwashing to me.
Every night after dinner, it goes something like this:
Limbo – Some people think dinner is over. Some people just finally sat down to eat 30 seconds ago. No one is actively clearing the table, but some dishes are in the sink.
[. . .]
Gluttony – So I ate the brownies and ice cream. And it became like the mud Virgil (Dante’s guide in the underworld, you’ll recall) fed to the three mouths of Cerberus.
[. . .]
Violence – A river of blood (how my hands feel right now) is where Dante finds those who are violent to their neighbor. Gnarled thorny trees (how my hands feel) are those who are violent to themselves. The great plain of burning sand (does anyone have any Bag Balm? I think the skin on my hands needs revitalizing!) is what awaits those who are violent toward God.
[. . .]
The absolute center of hell – Like Lucifer, half submerged in the ice lake, one last thing remains in the sink: the soggy, stubborn end of an onion, carelessly tossed in the there and causing a slow drain. I pluck it out and head literally to the TV room, but metaphorically into the River of Lethe, or forgetfulness. Otherwise, why would I do this again tomorrow night?” –Beth McConnell, A Madison Mom, September 10, 2016
posted on January 27, 2020 by
Bikini Shopping and the Seven (Hundred) Circles of Hell
“For every advance that women have made in the past eight decades, there has been a commensurate annual knockback in the guise of that supposedly carefree and liberating item, the bikini. Compare Thirties swimwear with today’s. Admittedly, the old kind took days to dry – probably never completely reaching peak aridity during an average British summer – while today’s versions wick away moisture in seconds. But is that such a big gain, when Modern Bikini makes such bullying demands on body and mind?” —The New Indian Express, June 18, 2016
posted on January 16, 2020 by
Le interviste impossibili: Umberto Eco incontra Beatrice
“Qui puoi ascoltare ‘l’intervista impossibile’ che Umberto Eco realizzò con Beatrice, la ‘donna di Dante.’
[. . .]
In questo dialogo, il filosofo italiano è il primo a offrire a Beatrice la possibilità di esprimere le proprie opinioni e i propri sentimenti. La vostra immagine di Dante Alighieri ne uscirà certamente alterata.
Beatrice discute con Eco in un ottimo italiano, ma utilizza spesso (siamo infatti, almeno dal suo punto di vista, nella Firenze del XIII secolo) espressioni e forme che non appartengono all’italiano standard di oggi.” –Italiana Lingua e Cultura, YouTube, June 29, 2016
posted on December 30, 2019 by
“Rings of Fire: With 9 Circles, Dante’s Inferno Meets Real-Life U.S. War Crimes in Iraq”
“This taut, 100-minute production of 9 Circles — a framing of Dante’s Inferno with a young U.S. war criminal at its center — has a way of implicating its audience in the action. The play, by Jesuit priest Bill Cain, is loosely based on the horrifying, real-life story of Army private Steven Dale Green, a young soldier from Midland, Texas, who was convicted in 2009 of playing a key role in the murder of an Iraqi family and the serial rape of a 14-year-old girl.” –Brendan Kiley, The Seattle Times, June 3, 2016
posted on October 31, 2019 by
Real Places on Earth That Lead to the Gates of Hell
“Hell on Earth: A concept that has fascinated many for millennia, an attempt to place divine punishment on the same plane of existence humans live in. [. . .] Religions across the world speak of portals that connect the living with the dead and the terrible creatures that guard this fiery pit. Where are these gates to Hell?
[. . .]
“Along the road of Lake Averno in Italy, we find one of the oldest roads that lead to the underworld. Over two thousand years ago, Grotto della Sibilla was once a Roman military tunnel connecting Lake Averno to Lake Lucrino. Here, Aeneas with Sibyl at his side embarked on a journey into Hades.“ —Eduardo Limón, Cultura Colectiva, August 2, 2016
posted on October 27, 2019 by
“Visions of Hell: Dark Souls cultural heritage”
“It’s hard to place a finger on the most recognizable reference to Gustave Doré’s incredible illustrations in the Dark Souls series. The artist, who in a short 50 year life span produced over 100,000 pieces, and illustrated many of the great works of world literature, haunts many a crooked corner of Lordran, Drangleic, and Lothric. Flicking through his illustrations for Dante Alighieri’s great masterwork The Divine Comedy (1320), it is impossible not to be reminded of the landscapes and demons of Dark Souls. On top of a sheer rock wall we see a clutch of figures, huddled like the Deacons of the Dark. In a shallow pool lie piles of corpses, twisted into an inseparable mess, like the horrible sights that await in the drained ruins of New Londo. The great king Nimrod chained, now a giant and no longer a man, echoes the lost ruler of Drangleic. It is no surprise that it is the first book of The Divine Comedy, Inferno, depicting Dante’s journey through hell, that brings us these images. Doré’s bleak, stony, and understated depictions of Satan’s kingdom so strongly contrasted with decades of medieval hellfire that had gone before. They are powerfully mythic images, ones that have been reached for again and again by artists in search of the power of the dark.
“Though iconic now, the success of Inferno was never assured. Many of Doré’s supporters called it too ambitious and too expensive a project, and so, in 1861, driven by his passion for the source material he funded its publication himself. His risk paid off, and the volume and its subsequent sister volumes Purgatorio and Paradiso, depicting purgatory and Heaven respectively, became his most notable works. A critic at the time of its publication wrote that the illustrations were so powerful that both Dante and Doré must have been ‘communicating by occult and solemn conversations the secret of this Hell plowed by their souls, traveled, explored by them in every sense.’ This plumbing of the depths of despair in search of beauty is the true thematic link between these illustrations and Dark Souls art. Like the monsters of Kuniyoshi, in Doré we don’t just see the aesthetic roots of Dark Souls, we see its themes—the concepts of loss, despair, and the allure of the occult sketched out in chiaroscuro black-and-white.” [. . .] –Gareth Damian Martin, Kill Screen, May 11, 2016.
