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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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“The Seven Circles of Dishwashing Hell”

February 1, 2020 By lsanchez

“I don’t want to be dramatic or anything, but sometimes, even the most mundane of chores becomes epic to me. Dante Alighieri may have been writing about Hell in his Inferno, but it seems just like dishwashing to me.

Every night after dinner, it goes something like this:

Limbo – Some people think dinner is over. Some people just finally sat down to eat 30 seconds ago. No one is actively clearing the table, but some dishes are in the sink.

[. . .]

Gluttony – So I ate the brownies and ice cream. And it became like the mud Virgil (Dante’s guide in the underworld, you’ll recall) fed to the three mouths of Cerberus.

[. . .]

Violence – A river of blood (how my hands feel right now) is where Dante finds those who are violent to their neighbor. Gnarled thorny trees (how my hands feel) are those who are violent to themselves. The great plain of burning sand (does anyone have any Bag Balm? I think the skin on my hands needs revitalizing!) is what awaits those who are violent toward God.

[. . .]

The absolute center of hell – Like Lucifer, half submerged in the ice lake, one last thing remains in the sink: the soggy, stubborn end of an onion, carelessly tossed in the there and causing a slow drain. I pluck it out and head literally to the TV room, but metaphorically into the River of Lethe, or forgetfulness. Otherwise, why would I do this again tomorrow night?”    –Beth McConnell, A Madison Mom, September 10, 2016

Categories: Digital Media, Written Word
Tagged with: 2016, Blogs, Cerberus, Circles of Hell, Gluttony, Hell, Inferno, Limbo, Lucifer, Violence, Virgil

“L’Aquila, il ‘Girone dei golosi’ torna nel centro storico”

December 17, 2019 By lsanchez

“Un’altra attività torna nel centro storico dell’Aquila. Sabato 25 agosto, alle 19, in via dell’Arcivescovado 25, riaprirà al pubblico, in una veste inedita e accattivante, la caffetteria ristorante il “Girone dei golosi”. Il locale e i relativi arredi sono stati progettati e realizzati interamente da artisti abruzzesi.

[. . .]

Il Girone dei golosi si presenta come un caffè artistico, con la presenza di quattro quadri appositamente realizzati dall’artista Srek (Stefano Cencioni), ispirati al Girone dei Golosi, nel Sesto canto dell’Inferno di Dante dove i dannati, sommersi dalla fanghiglia, vengono graffiati da Cerbero, mostro a tre teste.”    — L’Aquila, Abruzzo News, August 23, 2018

Categories: Dining & Leisure
Tagged with: 2018, Cerberus, Circles of Hell, Gluttony, Inferno, Italy, L'Aquila, Restaurants

The Seven Deadly Social Networks

July 10, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

“Lust, of course, is Tinder. That’s easy. In Dante’s Inferno, a source of much seven-deadly-sin apocrypha, lustful souls are blown around forever like they’re stuck in a hurricane. Today they would be condemned to a similar cyclone—to swipe right forever but never get a match.

“Gluttony is Instagram. We hear sometimes of Tantalus, stuck in a pool below branches laden with fruit. His punishment was that the fruit always pulled away from his grasp, and the water always receded when he tried to drink. So it is with Instagram: The most tantalizing morsels pass in front of our eyes, and we can eat none of them.

“On to Greed. According to Dante, the greedy and avaricious are condemned to joust with each other using enormous heavy boulders, forever. What’s more, they are rendered unrecognizable—each soul appears as the blandest, dullest version of itself. Does that sound like LinkedIn or what? Mandelbaum’s translation put it particularly well:

… I saw multitudes
to every side of me; their howls were loud
while, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push.
They struck against each other; at that point,
each turned around and, wheeling back those weights,
cried out: “Hi, I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

“Sloth was Zynga once, per Hoffman, but Zynga is no more. Now sloth is Netflix. I know that’s not a social network, but, eh.

“Wrath, according to Dante, was a twin sin to sullenness. He wrote that they both came from the same essential error: Wrath is rage expressed, sullenness is rage unexpressed. And he condemned both the sullen and the wrathful to the Fifth Circle—where, in a foul marsh, the wrathful attacked each other unendingly, without ever winning; while the sullen sat beneath the murk and stewed and scowled and acted aloof. Rarely has there been a better description of Twitter.

“Envy makes people so desirous of what they don’t have that they become blind to what they have. That’s Pinterest. I don’t have a joke about it.

“And what about pride, the weightiest sin? Hoffman said it was Facebook, but I’m not so sure. Pride is sometimes considered the sin from which all others flow: the belief that one is essentially better than all one’s neighbors. It is, I imagine, something like telling everyone else they’re bad at what they do and then saying “ping me.” Pride is Medium.

“If Facebook doesn’t represent pride, then, what is it? Some theologians recognized two other sins beyond the original seven. The first was Vanity or Vainglory—an unrestrained belief in one’s own attractiveness, and a love of boasting. That’s Facebook.

“But the second of the new sins was Acedia, a word we have now largely lost but whose meaning survives somewhat in melancholy. It is the failure to do one’s work and take interest in the world—a cousin to boredom, exhaustion, and listlessness. It is the Hamlet Feeling. It is the feeling of Tumblr, it is the feeling of Deep YouTube—it is the feeling of the afternoon Internet.” […]    –Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, May 9, 2016

Categories: Consumer Goods, Written Word
Tagged with: Circles of Hell, Facebook, Gluttony, Hell, Inferno, Instagram, Internet, Lust, Sins, Social Media, Technology, Tumblr

The 9 Layers of Thanksgiving Hell

July 9, 2019 By Gabriel Siwady '19

–Rae, Peas and Cougars, November 22, 2011

Categories: Dining & Leisure, Written Word
Tagged with: 2011, Anger, Avarice, Circles of Hell, Food, Fraud, Gluttony, Hell, Heresy, Inferno, Layers of Hell, Limbo, Lust, November, Thanksgiving, Treachery, Violence

Refund High School (2018)

January 1, 2019 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Refund-High-School-DanteThe fantasy webcomic Refund High School by South Korean artist LICO features an infernal spirit named Dante (see image). Here is the synopsis of the comic, provided on the site webtoons.com: “Do you want a refund on your life? Start earning karma at The Refund High School to reincarnate as an ideal version of yourself.”

Contributor Savannah Mikus notes, “The students take a field trip to hell, specifically in Chapter 53 they visit “Glutton’s Hell” where the spirits have an insatiable hunger.”

Contributed by Savannah Mikus (Florida State University BA ’20, MA ’22)

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2018, Gluttony, Hell, Manga, South Korea, Spirits, Supernatural

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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