“Beauty awakens the soul to act. Dante Alighieri is one of many works Petra Greule-Bstock creates based on inspiration from a famous quotation. On Greule-Bstock’s blog, she provides background information about herself and her artwork: “I love to paint with natural pigments mixed and prepared like a meal, it’s like working in a color kitchen. Also I use oil pastels, Chinese ink, well let’s say just all I can find in my studio. I love the sensation of feeling lost in colors, materials and forms. Since I was able to keep a paint brush in my hands for the first time, painting was, still is and always will be necessary for me. It’s impossible living without. I was born in the south of Germany and lived there until 2000 before moving to France/Burgundy. Since 2011 I have my studio in Barcelona. Mostly I live with the feeling: I’m not going through the world but the world is going straight through me. The world, the daily life, people, surrounding, colors, smells, views, buildings, plants… all is impressing me, touching me, forming me. Painting is the way of how the “footprints” of all the impressions entering into my body, into my soul, my brain, my senses can communicate with those who are watching the result. With my paintings I’m offering a sight into the mirror of my emotional universe and it is like a dairy of subconsciousness, left footprints, dreams, . . .” —Petra Greule-Bstock
YelworC: Trinity and Icolation
German band yelworC‘s recent work finds its roots in the Divine Comedy. Trinity (2004) and Icolation (2007) were inspired by Dante’s Inferno and Purgatory, respectively, and a third CD, tentatively titled “Any Heaven?” is to follow.
Karl Marx, “Das Kapital” (1867)
Ending his preface to the first edition of Das Kapital, Marx states the following:
“I welcome every opinion based on scientific criticism. As to the prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now, as ever, my maxim is that of the great Florentine: ‘Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dire le genti.'” –Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowkes, ed. David Fernbach, Fowkes, and Ernest Mandel (New York: Penguin Classics, 1976), p. 93.
As the editors note, Marx actually altered Dante’s words for his own purposes. The original line, Purgatorio V 13, is as follows: “Vien dietro a me, a lasica dir le genti.”
Fritz Lang, “Metropolis” (1927)
“At about 80-90 minutes into the film, the Seven Deadly Sins with Death are presented as statues in a church. Death is playing a bone as if it were a flute, and the statues of the Seven Deadly Sins come to life.” –Ian Eternick
Contributed by Ian Eternick (Luther College, ’11)
Radio Inferno
“In 1993, German artist Andreas Ammer teamed up with members of Einsturzende Neubauten and legendary DJ John Peel to produce a radio play of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The result was Radio Inferno, with music by Einsturzende’s F.M. Einheit, and starring Blixa Bargeld as Dante, Phil Minton as Virgil, and John Peel as “The Radio” (the narrator). Caspar Brotzmann played guitar, and the work includes guest appearance from Bootsy Collins and many others.” —WFMU, February 18, 2007
Contributed by Jenny Davidson
