Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“I’m not sure at what point I said ‘I’d love to be swaddled in an adult baby blanket’ loud enough for the ad-targeting demon in my iPhone to hear me, but like Virgil leading me through the nine rings of Amazon hell, I was ultimately guided down to adult baby blanket Paradiso. Now that I own this organic cotton muslin gauzy piece of heaven, I need to pass on its cozy ways.” –Marissa Rosenblum, Refinery29, April 8, 2021
Contributed by Kate McKee (Bowdoin, ’22)
Pia de’ Tolomei speaking with Dante and Virgil in Purg. 5
“This is a tweet from Federico Corradini, illustrator, on his new children’s adaptation of Purgatorio in the series Dante per bambini e per genitori curiosi, illustrated for Silvia Baroncelli, author. The first book in the series, Inferno, was published earlier this year. The series is for sale on Amazon (I imagine Paradiso is forthcoming!).” –Kate McKee (Bowdoin, ’22)
The music video for Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” has drawn many comparisons to Dante’s Inferno for its depiction of the singer’s descent to hell (and eventual lap dance of Satan). Here are a few quotes from media outlets:
“2021 is here, purgatory is (almost) over, and Lil Nas X is our Dante.” –Halle Keifer for Vulture
“Artists have been imagining trips to hell for hundreds of years without anyone raising too much fuss, but then Dante wasn’t a gay black pop star. Also, as far as anyone knows, Dante didn’t promote the Divine Comedy by selling a limited-edition sneaker made with human blood, which is the approach Lil Nas X has been taking with ‘Montero.’ On Friday, news broke that Lil Nas X and MSCHF had collaborated on ‘Satan Shoes,’ a limited release of modified Nike Air Maxes decorated with pentagrams and a reference to Luke 10:18 (‘And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.’) They’re only making 666 individually numbered pairs of shoes, and each one is made with a drop of real human blood. Not surprisingly, Nike wants everyone to know they had nothing to do with any of this.” –Matthew Dessem in Slate
“In the ‘Montero’ video, Lil Nas X journeys from Garden of Eden to Dante’s inferno by sliding down a stripper pole (truly, twigs is correct in calling it iconic) [. . .].” –Meagan Fredette for W Magazine
Watch the video on YouTube (accessed April 14, 2021)
As part of the Dante Society of America’s Canto per Canto series, Arielle Saiber (founder of Dante Today) speaks with Dennis Looney (author of, among other notable works, Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy) on the 24th canto of Inferno, the first of two cantos on theft in the Malebolge.
Watch or listen to the video of “Inferno 24: Steal this Poem” here.
Canto per Canto: Conversations with Dante in Our Time is a collaborative initiative between New York University’s Department of Italian Studies and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, and the Dante Society of America. The aim is to produce podcast conversations about all 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy, to be completed within the seventh centenary of Dante’s death in 2021.
“Naples continues to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri, the Father of the Italian language, in its own unique way. After creating Dante figurines for Christmas cribs, the southern Italian city is now devoting an out-sized Easter tradition to the Supreme Poet, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Master chocolatiers at the historic Gay-Odin factory in Naples have created a two-metre high Easter egg decorated with a portrait of Dante along with some verses from The Divine Comedy. The mediaeval poet and philosopher is portrayed on the enormous egg – which boasts 300 kilos of chocolate – in his traditional red robes and laurel wreath, based on the fresco in the Duomo in Florence.” [. . .] —WantedInRome, March 21, 2021.
“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people.” —QuickMeme.
Commemorating the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, Toronto Salutes Dante features more than thirty Canada-based guests who read Dante’s Inferno in various languages, several for the first time. In addition to ten different Italian dialects, there are represented American Sign Language, Anishinaabemowin, Arabic, Bulgarian, English, Farsi, French, German, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Québécois, Russian, Sanskrit, Slovak, Spanish, Stoney Nakoda, Swedish, Thai, and Ukrainian. In 15-minute clips, well-known personalities of Canadian public and cultural life, professors, and students at the University of Toronto, and members of the Italo-Canadian community share their voices and fresh memories of the most important Italian author in world literature. Listen to Dante’s Inferno as you have never heard it before on the Department of Italian Studies’ YouTube channel from March 25th to June 2021.
From an original idea of Elisa Brilli, George Ferzoco, and Nicholas Terpstra, and thanks to the invaluable work of Alice Martignoni and Nattapol Ruangsri (Research Assistants). Sponsored by the Department of Italian Studies, the Emilio Goggio Chair in Italian Studies at the University of Toronto, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Toronto, and Villa Charities. —University of Toronto
“Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people.” -Dante Aligiheri
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“Scenes From the Mountain.” Composed by Zachary Cheng (DeMatha, ’21)
Performed by the DeMatha Wind Ensemble, April 2021.
Contributed by Homer L. Twigg IV, Dept. of Theology, DeMatha Catholic High School, Maryland
Contributed by Lorenzo Hess and Lucas di Cerbo (Bowdoin College, ’23)
