No. 46: Dante’s Inferno from Dominick’s Deli “Is it just us, or are the places that make a solid old Italian sandwich getting fewer and farther between? Because a really good sub is a science, and superior makers consider not just the flavor combination, but also the meat-to-bread ratio and how the thing holds up when you eat it–you don’t want your toppings making your bread soggy before you finish, and you don’t want your stuffing to slip out of the sides of your stack. Dominick’s Cafe, an old Upper East Side joint that’s been sating the neighborhood with hot heroes and prepared Italian foods for a couple of decades, nails this. Consider the Dante’s Inferno: Dominick’s cuts a slit in a chewy Italian loaf and then tightly and thickly layers in hot sopressata, pepperoni, prosciutto, smoked meat, and peppery jalapeño cheese. Hot pickled peppers, tomato slices, and a little vinegary house salad add the crowning touch before its wrapped in white deli paper and passed your way. Each bite brings perfect harmony among all ingredients, and the roll stays in tact until your final bite.” [. . .] –Laura Shunk, Village Voice, August 22, 2013.
Dominick’s Deli’s Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Inferno Food Truck (Green Bay WI)
Charles Sykes, “The Agony of the Anti-Anti-Trumpers” (2020)
“They are destined to be forgotten. ‘The world will let no fame of theirs endure,’ Virgil explains. ‘Let us not talk of them, but look and pass.’ Dante describes the vast horde who chase after the elusive banner that “raced on so quick that any respite seemed unsuited to it.” Behind the banner, he writes, ‘trailed so long a file/ of people—I should never have believed/ that death could have unmade so many souls.’
“This, of course, got me thinking about the anti-anti-Trumpers and their season of agita.
“A cry went up this week from the precinct of the anti-anti-Trumpers suggesting that the selection of Kamala Harris was the moment for their decisive break into formal indecisiveness. As much as they loathed Donald Trump, they insisted, there was no way that they could support a Biden-Harris ticket.
“But the choice of Harris wasn’t really a tipping point, because the anti-antis were never going to support a viable opponent to Trump. The essence of anti-anti-Trumpism is the full recognition of the awfulness of Trump and all of his works, but a firm resolve not to actually do anything to confront them.” [. . .] —Charles Sykes, The Bulwark, August 14, 2020
Matt Kish’s Inferno Illustrations (2020)
“I have always been fascinated by the crude and vulgar spectacle of Inferno. Perhaps some of what follows is more personal than validated by scholarship, but despite his clear devotion to Christianity and deep and abiding belief in dogma, Dante seems to relish in his bizarre portrayal of the torments of Hell. I think I remember the poem was originally written in low, or street, Italian rather than formal language, because Dante wanted the tone to match the content and for the work to be something everyone could read. My experience growing up with comic books in particular was that they too were a kind of low, vulgar entertainment. Designed to titillate and provoke, but in no way were they deemed serious or valid art. There was a sort of dirty appeal to the comics I saw on the shelf in the grocery store, especially the pulpy black and white horror comic magazines like Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. For my approach to Inferno, I wanted to borrow heavily from this lurid, brightly colored, sickly appealing visual style as well as the connotations of what comics seemed to be to my young mind. So this is mirrored in my painting style, which is very bright and graphic and employs linework over tone and value (essentially, I paint like one should draw, I don’t paint like one should paint) as well as in my collaging bits of text and image from comics into the illustrations.” —Matt Kish (personal email communication, September 28, 2020)
You can check out the full series and Kish’s other works on his website.
“Sending Trump to Hell,” by Ariel Dorfman
“My name, sir, is Dante Alighieri. Among the innumerable dead that inhabit these shores, I have been chosen to speak to you because an expert on the afterlife was needed to describe what awaits your soul when it passes, as all souls must, into this land of shadows. I was chosen, whether as an honor or not, to imagine your fate once you wind your way toward us.
“Having accepted this task, I was tempted, sir, as I watched your every act in that life before death, to make this easier for myself and simply conjure up the circles of Hell I had already described in my terza rima. I would then have guided you down my cascade of verses, step by step, into the depths of darkness I had designed for others.
“Were you not the selfish embodiment of so many sins I dealt with in my Commedia? Lust and adultery, yes! Gluttony, yes; greed and avarice, oh yes; wrath and fury, certainly; violence, fraud, and usury, yes again! Divisiveness and treachery, even heresy — you who did not believe in God and yet used the Bible as a prop — yes, one more time!” –Ariel Dorfman, “Sending Trump to Hell,” Nation of Change (October 22, 2020)
Contributed by Justin Meckes
Justin Meckes, Inferno (2020)
“Inferno is a novella, a portion of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, in prose rather than the original verse. Inferno finds our protagonist enduring the very same tormenting journey through the rings of hell but in an expanded format.
“The work is retold in its original period, but it has been infused with somewhat less overt references to today’s politics. Thus, this Inferno will maintain a universal appeal and be made available in a Russian Flag edition.
“[. . .] Within this version, multiple Trump associates (e.g., Paul Manafort, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, etc.) make appearances in the place of their Florentine counterparts.”
Read a short excerpt here.
Robert King on CBS’s Evil (2019)
In an interview about the CBS series Evil (2019), showrunner Robert King made reference to the show’s resonance with Dante’s Inferno:
“Having the potential of 60 evil friends opens the show up to the possibility of a string of guest stars. This also gives the writers a good opportunity to go into the wide variety of types evil the Kings want to examine in society. ‘Some may be in the White House. Some may be in ICE. There are elements of evil all around so it’s a great world to explore. Dante had so much fun putting people in hell,’ Robert King extrapolated tongue-in-cheek.” –Heather Taylor, “Exploring the Roots of Evil, a New Series on CBS,” Script Magazine (October 28, 2019)
See also the appearance of Doré’s Inferno illustrations in S01E07, posted here.
Sherman Irby’s Inferno
“Hell’s never sounded as suave and soulful as it does on Sherman Irby’s Inferno by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) with Wynton Marsalis. Irby, the lead alto saxophonist for the JLCO, cleverly interprets Dante Alighieri’s epic poem from The Divine Comedy to create a sweeping work that takes listeners on a lyrically swinging tour of the underworld’s nine circles.
“The epic composition, recorded live in 2012, lets the JLCO’s all-star improvisers give life to the colorful denizens of hell and casts the late, legendary baritone saxophonist Joe Temperley as the voice of Dante. Irby’s Inferno both stands alone as an irresistible musical narrative and sheds new light on Dante’s classic; this unique exploration of the epic poem captures its timeless quality and ingeniously places it in conversation with the jazz canon.” —wyntonmarsalis.org
You can download the album or access it through various streaming services here.
Recorded May 19, 2012.
Released January 17, 2020.
Sherman Irby discussed his work on Inferno, his circuitous path to Dante (starting with a Divine Comedy anime!), and his plans to set all three canticles to music at the webinar “African American Interpretations of Dante’s Divine Comedy” (Oct 4, 2020).
Frank Bruni, “From Trump, No Respect for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or the Rules”
Photo by Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia Commons)
“‘The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,’ Trump told supporters at a rally in Wisconsin last month. He has repeatedly made versions of that claim, at one point exhorting North Carolinians to monitor polling sites and ‘watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing’ by Democrats, who will work to lift Biden to victory by ‘doing very bad things.’
“And it’s a perfect example of Trump’s tendency to assign his own motives and methods to others. He worries that they’ll cheat because he has always cheated — on his taxes, on his wives, in his business dealings, in his philanthropy. He imagines them cheating because he actually is cheating.
[. . .]
“But Trump’s cheating is its own virus, infecting everyone around him. Trump’s cheating is its own ecosystem. Abandon all scruple, ye who enter here.” — Frank Bruni, “From Trump, No Respect for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or the Rules,” New York Times (September 19, 2020)
Contributed by Dan Christian
Elizabeth Coggeshall, “Bad Apples and Sour Trees”
“Among the Times photographs, there is an image of a Black protester in Atlanta, cutting through the smoke, his open palms raised. He cries out, a vox clamantis in deserto, in righteous rage against the injustice that killed George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black Americans. His defiant approach is a picture of the words Virgil uses to describe his charge at the entrance to Purgatory: ‘He goes seeking freedom, which is so precious, as one knows who gives up his life for its sake.’
“The freedoms demanded by this protester — economic, legal, political, bodily — are material ones. He seeks liberation from ‘the policies that ensnare‘ Black Americans in an unjust system. These freedoms are substantially different than the immaterial freedom sought by the pilgrim in his journey up the mountain. The freedom Dante’s pilgrim seeks, like that which we seek to restore to our civic institutions, is a moral one: the freedom of moral integrity, which comes from the alignment of one’s actions with one’s principles.” —Dante Today co-editor Elizabeth Coggeshall, “Bad Apples and Sour Trees: Dante on Systemic Injustice, Rage, and Reform,” The Sundial (September 15, 2020)
