Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“…The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw, smell…” –Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human, 1948
Contributed by Camila Aguilar (University of Texas at Austin, ’25)
“Per celebrare i 700 anni dalla morte di Dante Alighieri anche Tokyo promuove numerosi eventi culturali.
“In occasione di Dante, Terzine from the World, per esempio, eventi poi da tutto il mondo declameranno versi della Divina Commedia con appuntamenti settimanali a partire da lunedì 29 marzo, seguibili dal sito della Casa della poesia di Como: sarà possibile ascoltare Dante in giapponese con Mariko Sumikura e Taeko Uemura, responsabili della Japanese Universal Poetry Association.
“È poi la stessa Ambasciata d’Italia in Giappone a comunicare, in accordo con gli Istituti Italiani di cultura di Tokyo e Osaka, il Consolato Generale a Osaka ed Enit, di aver messo in calendario, per tutto il 2021, oltre venticinque tra iniziative ed eventi dedicati alla figura di Dante Alighieri.
“‘Per celebrare in Giappone la figura del padre della lingua italiana abbiamo inteso mettere a sistema il meglio della nostra offerta culturale con la fitta rete di scuole, università e media giapponesi, certi di raggiungere il grande pubblico locale’, ha spiegato Giorgio Starace, Ambasciatore d’Italia a Tokyo.” [. . .] —Affari Italiani, March 13, 2021 (retrieved October 27, 2021)
“Uzumaki is the story of Kirie Goshima, a young girl living in a coastal town that is slowly falling into the grip of a ‘spiral curse.’ The townsfolk, to varying degrees, become obsessed and subsequently infected by spirals.
“Ito-san’s spirals operate with similar symbolic significance to the circles of hell, namely, they are partly allegorical, as well as literal, of the spirals and endless cycles of human behavior…as in Dante’s hell all things become literal, he is physically twisted to reflect his psychological reality. Each person in Uzumaki is trapped in their own sin.
“Junji Ito understands, as Dante did, that even positive emotions like love have a place in hell when they are taken to extremes. Like a spiral itself, the story circles whilst drawing ever closer to a central point…like Dante, Junji Ito doesn’t flinch from showing us the full expanse and architecture of the hell he has created, and we see the very “nadir” or low-point of the spiral, and what that represents.” [. . .] –Joseph Sale, The English Cantos, April 8, 2020 (retrieved October 27, 2021)
how the night came is a soundscape creator and instrumental music artist based in Japan. In fall 2019 how the night came released three albums based on each of the three canticles of Dante’s Commedia: Dante’s Inferno (September 7, 2019), Dante’s Purgatory (October 12, 2019), and Dante’s Paradise (October 27, 2019). Each of these (especially Inferno and Purgatory) are grounded in close interpretation of and serious reflection on the poem, as evidenced by the descriptions given in the liner notes.
Of particular interest is how the night came’s sonic interpretation of Dante’s Purgatory. The description explains, “Since the setting of Purgatory is an earthquake prone mountain covered with walls of rock, massive boulders, stone steps, white marble carvings, the prideful being punished by bearing the weight of heavy rocks, stone effigies, and pavements, I wanted to incorporate stone into my composition.” Some of the album’s sounds are created using acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, keyboard, stones, chopsticks, and silence. Of the theme “BEATRICE,” which marks the arrival of Beatrice in Purgatorio 30 (15:57-16:30 in the album’s single track), the artist writes:
“BEATRICE is 33 seconds of silence. Her demolition of Dante is a staggering moment of world literature. Here, we read a medieval male poet attacking himself through the voice of a female. Initially, Beatrice turns to the angels to lambaste Dante, and when she finally addresses him… it is extremely painful for us to hear. I tried several musical themes for this moment, but they all failed miserably. I then recalled the scene in Taxi Driver when Travis (Robert De Niro) makes a humiliating phone call to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) – Martin Scorcese has the camera turn away, as if to spare us seeing another human being suffer the pain of rejection. And thus silence – in this case, the musical equivalent of pulling the camera away – finally offered itself as the most fitting means for communicating Dante’s sense of loss, guilt, shame and inadequacy.
“(Perhaps this silence can also be heard as an expression of the absence of Virgil, who left Dante at the end of Canto 27).
“The silence is broken by the return of the Earthly Paradise theme, but this time it is quantized, the newly punctuated rhythms signifying the beginning of the strict realignment of Dante’s soul.” —how the night came’s WordPress site (accessed May 18, 2021)
Listen on YouTube, bandcamp, or Soundcloud.
“Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, Shastry takes readers on a journey through modern Asia’s eight circles of hell where we encounter urban cowboys and cowgirls fleeing rural areas to live in increasingly uninhabitable cities, disadvantaged teenage girls unable to meet their aspirations due to social strictures, internal mutiny, messy geopolitics from the rise of China, and a political and business class whose interests are in conflict with a majority of the population. Shastry challenges conventional thinking about Asia’s place in the world and the book is essential reading for those with an interest in the continent’s future.” –From the book description, Amazon
