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)
“In his new book, Depths of Dante, Colorado Springs author Kevin Cady invites readers to explore one man’s journey into the darkest regions of the human condition.
“The book follows Dante Trakas on his journey to an unimaginable world. What begins as a search for a lost ship, the Cursed Nomad, turns into a down-the-rabbit-hole adventure where Dante explores not only the furthest reaches of himself but of humankind.
“Trakas descends into the world of eternal punishment, where he explores the furthest reaches of himself, pushed by the devil’s deceitful questions. While in hell, Trakas encounters a wall of bodies, grotesque-looking beasts that defy imagination and psychological warfare on the journey to the devil’s castle.” [. . .] –William Dagendesh, North Springs Edition, October 19, 2021 (retrieved March 27, 2022)
Depths of Dante was originally published on October 13, 2021.
American author and essayist Susan Sontag cites Dante and his Divine Comedy in a number of her essays. In her famous “Notes on ‘Camp’,” the Divine Comedy is referenced as part of “the pantheon of high culture: truth, beauty, and seriousness” (1966, 286). In “Against Interpretation,” Sontag states: “Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels. Now it is not” (1966, 13).
Sontag published “Notes on ‘Camp'” in 1964, but the essay was republished, along with “Against Interpretation,” in her 1966 collection Against Interpretation.
See our other post featuring the work of Sontag here.
“Ho studiato nelle scuole della lingua di Dante…Grazie Dea Italia! Sarò finalmente lontano da questi somari, da questi brutti ceffi, selvaggi, che adorano i cammelli…” –Garane Garane, Il Latte è Buono, 2005
“Gashan’s (the protagonist’s) identification with Dante is central in the novel, which can be seen as an inverted journey from the Heaven of the uncritical enjoyment of Italian culture in Somalia to the Hell of European and American discrimination and Somali Civil War. Garane’s Il Latte è Buono can be defined as a Bildungsroman since the character becomes increasingly aware of the psychological influence of Italian colonialism on his education when he reaches and lives in Italy. To some extent, Dante’s role within his Bildung is once again to serve as a meta-literary guide for the main character, recalling Virgil’s role as Dante’s mentor in the Commedia.” –Simone Brioni, Lorenzo Mari, Postcolonial Dante: Reading the Commedia in Mogadishu, 2019
Access Il Latte è Buono by Garane Garane here.
Contributed by Simone Brioni (Ph.D., Stony Brook University)
“Raúl Zurita Canessa (b.1950) is a prominent Chilean poet whose work Purgatory is the first of three works based on the poetry of Dante (the other two being Anteparadise [1982], and The New Life [1994]). The late poet C.D. Wright provided the foreword to this English translation from Spanish published by the University of California Press. Wright wrote, ‘Purgatorio is arguably the seminal literary text of Chile’s 9/11/1973, the date of the U.S.-backed military coup led by Augusto Pinochet which overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. With his first published collection, the young Chilean poet began his Dantean trilogy, his long, arduous pilgrimage toward earthly redemption.'” –Contributor Devin Shepherd
Contributed by Devin Shepherd (University of Arkansas, ’22)
