Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Valley of the Painted Stones Murals in Sicily, Silvio Benedetto (1992)

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valley-of-painted-stones-mural

“La Valle Delle Pietre Dipinte, or the Valley of Painted Stones (also known as the Park of the Divine Comedy), is a series of 110 painted marble slabs that depict events and people from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Artist and sculptor Silvio Benedetto began this endeavor in 1992. Benedetto, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1938, moved to Italy in 1964 and completed other well-known works there, such as the murals for Cinque Terre National Park. He has been called the ‘last of the great mural artists.’

“La Valle delle Pietre Dipinte is located in Campobello di Licata, Sicily. The park is a physical experience as well as an artistic one. Visitors walk through it, going from Hell to Purgatory to Paradise. The journey begins with a downward path into Hell, which features such recognized figures as La Lupa, Beatrice, Francesca and Paolo, and Ulysses. The viewer goes up from Hell to Purgatory, finally ascending the hill to Paradise, where a mural of the Virgin Mary can be seen. The last mural of the series says, ‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle’ or ‘And then we went out to see the stars.'”    –Contributor Abigail Williams

See also a collection of photographs of the murals at the Valley of Painted Stones here.

For more information about Campobello di Licata and the Valley of Painted Stones, click here.

Contributed by Abigail Williams (University of Arkansas, ’22)

Macrodosing Podcast’s “Hell” Episode

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macrodosing-coverThe “Hell” episode of the podcast Macrodosing features Dante’s Inferno, hypothesizing which circles of Hell contemporary figures would find themselves in. Contributor Jack Switzer notes, “The podcast episode featured lengthy discussion of Dante’s Inferno and the structure of the Dante’s version of Hell, and the impact that the Inferno had on current views of Hell. The podcast’s hosts also placed contemporary figures in the respective circles of Hell. For the discussion, the hosts first briefly described each circle and then assigned modern day celebrities. Some notable celebrity examples included Jeff Bezos for the sin of avarice and Napoleon in the eighth circle of seducers and panderers.”

“When he wrote that, I don’t think he knew that eight-hundred years from now, that would be people’s idea of what Hell was, That’s what the majority of people in this country, they don’t get it from cartoons or pop culture, but even those derive themselves from what Dante wrote about Hell, just kinda like, yeah he was a scholar, but he was also just a hundred percent speculating on what Hell looked like. The one thing that I respect the hell out of Dante for doing is in the Inferno—he just put his enemies and his contemporaries that he thought were trash poets compared to him—he just put them in Hell. He was like, ‘I’m gonna write a book about hell just so I can roast my biggest enemies and I love the pettiness.” [. . .]    –PFT Commenter, Macrodosing, April 6, 2021

Watch or listen to the podcast episode here. Discussion of Dante’s Inferno begins at the timestamp, 1:10:09.

Contributed by Jack Switzer (University of Arkansas ’22)

Catherine Cho, Inferno (2020)

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inferno-a-memoir-of-motherhood-and-madness“How could any sane woman kill her kids? A better question, and the one explored in Catherine Cho’s captivating first book, Inferno, would inquire about the factors (biological, cultural and environmental) that make some women vulnerable to episodes of acute, severe mental illness in the period after they become mothers.

“Cho’s title refers to the perceived hell in which the author finds herself a couple of months after her son is born, a hell that the reader quickly learns is the inpatient unit of a mental hospital. The book begins just as Cho is starting to recover from psychosis, struggling to remember who she is: “I write the words I can call myself. I am a daughter. A sister. A wife. Those words come easily. I can remember them. I stare at the page. And then I write MOTHER. The word looks strange. Next to the others, it stands separate.

“Inferno is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it’s also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. We still don’t like to talk about postpartum mental illness, or the fact that, when a mother becomes ill and doesn’t have a support system or access to mental health care, the emotional damage to both her and her children can reverberate across generations.” [. . .]    –Kim Brooks, The New York Times, August 4 2020

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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