Civil War Archives - Dante Today

Nuruddin Farah, Links (2004)

March 17, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Nuruddin Farah’s ninth novel in English, Links, makes a mainly para-textual use of Dante’s Commedia, implicitly validating its canonical status both within Italian literary tradition and world literature as a whole. The epigraphs chosen for each part of the book come from Dante’s Inferno, except the first three exergues…

“Through the references to Dante’s Commedia, Jeebleh’s journey is configured from the beginning as a descent to hell, represented by the city of Mogadishu during the civil war.” [. . .] –Simone Brioni, Lorenzo Mari, Postcolonial Dante: Reading the Commedia in Mogadishu, 2019

Access Links by Nuruddin Farah here.

Contributed by Simone Brioni (Ph.D., Stony Brook University)

Garane Garane, Il Latte è Buono (2005)

February 28, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Ho studiato nelle scuole della lingua di Dante…Grazie Dea Italia! Sarò finalmente lontano da questi somari, da questi brutti ceffi, selvaggi, che adorano i cammelli…” –Garane Garane, Il Latte è Buono, 2005

“Gashan’s (the protagonist’s) identification with Dante is central in the novel, which can be seen as an inverted journey from the Heaven of the uncritical enjoyment of Italian culture in Somalia to the Hell of European and American discrimination and Somali Civil War. Garane’s Il Latte è Buono can be defined as a Bildungsroman since the character becomes increasingly aware of the psychological influence of Italian colonialism on his education when he reaches and lives in Italy. To some extent, Dante’s role within his Bildung is once again to serve as a meta-literary guide for the main character, recalling Virgil’s role as Dante’s mentor in the Commedia.” –Simone Brioni, Lorenzo Mari, Postcolonial Dante: Reading the Commedia in Mogadishu, 2019

Access Il Latte è Buono by Garane Garane here.

Contributed by Simone Brioni (Ph.D., Stony Brook University)

Guy Raffa, “Longfellow’s Great Liberators: Abraham Lincoln and Dante Alighieri” (2016)

January 23, 2017 By Professor Arielle Saiber

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“Living with Dante’s vision of the afterlife also gave Longfellow some perspective on the war. On May 8, 1862, soon after translating Paradiso, he reflected, ‘Of the civil war I say only this. It is not a revolution, but a Catalinian conspiracy. It is Slavery against Freedom; the north against the southern pestilence.’ The reality of this moral disease hit home when he visited a local jeweler’s shop. There he saw ‘a slave’s collar of iron, with an iron tongue as large as a spoon, to go into the mouth.’ ‘Every drop of blood in me quivered,’ he wrote, ‘the world forgets what Slavery really is!’ ”

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Guy Raffa, Not Even Past, January 18, 2016

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