Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild , and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!” –David Guterson, Epigraph to Snow Falling on Cedars, September 1994
Check out Snow Falling on Cedars on Amazon here.
Contributed by Daniel Christian.
“Dante (ダンテ, Dante) is the central antagonist of the Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 anime series, first introduced in Episode 32. She is a heartless elderly woman and a formidable alchemist herself. Posing as the master and the benefactor of the Homunculi, Dante is responsible for setting in motion the events of the series and the challenges its protagonists must face along the way, and orchestrates her agenda within the shadows of the Amestrian government and military.
[. . .]
She may be named after the Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, famous for writing the Divine Comedy, a three-part poem with the first chapter, Inferno, taking place in the Nine Circles of Hell. In fact in the Italian dub of the episode title ‘Dante of the Deep Forest’ was translated to ‘Dante Della Selva Oscura’ (lit. ‘Dante of Dark Forest’ [sic]), a reference to the beginning of Alighieri’s poem.” —Fullmetal Alchemist Wiki, February 24, 2020
Learn more about the Fullmetal Alchemist series here.
Contributed by Andrea Beauvais (Luther College)
Originally posted January 26, 2010. Post updated September 4, 2020.
“The Eyelid spins a rich and rewarding political fantasy out of this anxiety over the colonization of dreams and the subconscious by corporate power. As it begins the narrator is introduced to the dreamland of Onirica by an erudite and romantic ambassador named Chevauchet who plays the role of Virgil to the narrator’s Dante, leading him through ‘the dark wood of nocturnal imaginings’ while explaining the meaning and revolutionary role that dreams play in the global economy.” –Alex Good, The Star, April 9, 2020
Check out The Eyelid on Amazon.
“Selva Oscura is a music documentary that explores the creative process during the making of a music video for the song ‘Stolidi Pensieri.’ It also references the opening of Dante’s Inferno and translates to ‘The Dark Forest.’ It’s symbolic of a journey to unknown destinations, which is also our story, as we accidentally created a living project that never had a predetermined outcome and led us in a direction where we were all free to experiment within our disciplines.” –John Welsh, Vimeo, September 8, 2017
“Allowing for translation, those are the immortal opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Here, some seven centuries later, are some of Lynn Darling’s opening lines from her new memoir, Out of the Woods: ‘The summer my only child left home for college, I moved from an apartment in New York City, to live alone in a small house at the end of a dirt road in the woods of central Vermont.'” —Maureen Corrigan, Connecticut Public Radio, January 9, 2014
Learn more about Lynn Darling’s 2014 book Out of the Woods here.
Out of the Woods can be found on Amazon.
