Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
In 2017, Toronto artist Nurgul Jones released the blackgaze album Upper and Lower Hell어퍼와 로어 지옥. Through soft, atmospheric industrial sounds, each track creates a dreamscape that might send the listener on a journey from “Circle 1: Limbo아지태” all the way to”Circle 9: The Traitorous배 교자.” A circle of Dante’s Inferno takes a titular spotlight on each one of the nine tracks.
Listen to and download the album on bandcamp here.
In Mike Twohy’s 2003 comic That’s Life Virgil shows Dante a part of Hell where the damned must push “carts with stuck wheels” for eternity.
View the comic here.
“The second-largest island in Greece, not far from Athens, Evia has (as I write this) been on fire for a week. It is – or was – a natural paradise of forests, mountains, and clear streams, popular with the tourists who prop up the country’s shaky economy.
“Sadly, it takes something special, something unusual, to stand out from the nonstop evidence of the damage done by global heating. If the Evia fire ferry video seems extraordinary, it’s not only because of what it shows but because of how it shows it – because of its strangeness.
“At first, the video is simply disorienting. It takes a while – it took me a while – to figure out what I was seeing.
“Perhaps what makes the film clip so scary is also a matter of timing. The Greek fire video surfaced around the time of the release of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That document states definitively: We are on the brink of too late. Unless we dramatically reduce our emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels, our world will soon become ‘a hell’.
“The ferry video is a vision of hell. It’s as if Dante filmed the Inferno on his iPhone.” [. . .] –Francine Prose, The Guardian, August 10, 2021 (retrieved November 27, 2021)
“Three long-term convicts turned actors who appeared in the Taviani brothers’ prison-set Caesar Must Die Shakespearian film drama are to get out of jail for three hours to recite Dante’s Inferno at a Rome university symposium Thursday marking the 700th anniversary of the Supreme Poet’s death.
“Filippo, Giovanni and Francesco, serving lengthy terms for criminal association in the mafia wing of Rebibbia Prison, will be special guests at the event organized by the pontifical Dante commission.
“The three men said they hoped the three hours would be long enough for them to ‘see the stars again’ like Dante does when he emerges from the pit of Hell.” –ANSA, November 23, 2021
“It’s fitting that IKEA stores are organised in a series of winding circles with no easy escape. It’s not unlike the circles of hell that the protagonist of Dante’s Inferno must wander before heading on to Purgatory and then Heaven.
But unlike the soul in Dante’s epic poem, you never get to Heaven. What awaits you once you’ve managed to locate and then purchase your Tuffing and Malfors is yet another circle of hell. This one is in your own home and the instrument of torture is an Allen key.” –Kasey Edwards, The Sydney Morning Herald, July 15, 2019
