Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“The Fractal Consciousness of Dante’s Divine Comedy”, Essay by Mark Vernon (2021)

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“Dante Alighieri was early in recognizing that our age has a problem. He was the first writer to use the word moderno, in Italian, and the difficulty he spotted with the modern mind is its limited capacity to relate to the whole of reality, particularly the spiritual aspects. This might sound surprising, given that his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, is often described as one of the most brilliant creations of the medieval imagination. It is taken to be a genius expression of a discarded worldview, not the modern one, from an era in which everything was taken to be connected to the supreme reality called God. But Dante was born in a time of troubling transition. He realized that this cosmic vision was being challenged, and he didn’t seek to reject it or restore it, but to remake it.

“This brings us to the heart of why Dante still matters today. He stresses ways of knowing about life based on experiencing and undergoing, as opposed to studying or inspecting. They bring an understanding that isn’t about accumulating information and sorting data but trusting feeling and following insights.

“The vision is tremendous and simple and is a gloriously articulated reflection on everyday human consciousness. We are aware and can be aware of being aware. And this is Dante’s message for now: in a way, all we have to do to rediscover the essence of our intelligence, and the capacity to relate to the whole of reality – particularly in its spiritual aspects – is turn towards our felt experience, and examine what we find. There is presence and freedom, intention and imagination, truth in stories and transformations of time. To grow in this sense is to get better at being alive.”[. . .]    –Mark Vernon, Aeon, July 20, 2021 (retrieved April 11, 2022)

Read the full text of psychotherapist and writer Mark Vernon’s essay here.

See our other post relating to Mark Vernon and his work here.

Dante was wrong. There are in fact 10 circles of hell. Article, IFA Magazine (2022)

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On March 10, 2022, British-owned IFA Magazine posted an article titled “Dante was wrong. There are in fact 10 circles of hell.” The authors state:

“The tenth is occupied by former Government housing ministers and is named Ineptitude.

“If you’re into psychological self-flagellation, have a read. If you’re not, all you need to know is that, in the final three months of last year, a lot less houses were built than in the preceding quarter and the same quarter of 2020. In short, the housebuilding omnishambles continues apace.” [. . .]    —IFA Magazine, March 10, 2022 (retrieved March 22, 2022)

 

Vision Magazine’s, “Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy“

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vision-magazine-on-dante“The Comedy demonstrates the significant influence of Greek philosophy. Dante didn’t read Greek; it seems his philosophical grounding came from religious convent schools founded by Dominican or Franciscan monks. Scholars suggest that the Dominicans would have instilled in their pupil the methodology of Thomas Aquinas’s magnum opus, Summa Theologica. They would likewise have grounded him in the writings of Aristotle and the church Fathers. The logic of Aristotle, which had been out of vogue for centuries, regained popularity in the decades preceding Dante’s birth, giving rise to Christian rationalism. Thus, even though the Bible is by far the most dominant source for the Comedy, in Dante’s hands Scripture became materia poetica, reshaped through an Aristotelian moral system.

“In terms of the idea of the human soul, for example, Dante ‘follows the dominant Western tradition,’ namely ‘that each human soul is created by God, destined for union with a particular human body, and infused by God into the embryo before birth’ (The Cambridge Companion to Dante. This Western tradition owes much not only to Aristotle’s ideas but to his mentor Plato’s concept of the eternal soul, denying only its preexistence. Yet Dante was not a dualist in the Cartesian or Neoplatonic sense. According to Dante scholar Robin Kirkpatrick, ‘his very conception of a human soul denies that he could be. For Dante—as for Aristotle—the soul, or (in Italian) anima, is neither more nor less than the animating form of the body.'” [. . .]    –Daniel Tompsett and Donald Winchester, Vision Magazine, 2013.

Marica Mentier, “The History of Happiness,” The Science of Emotions

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“[Marica] Mentier recounts how she encountered Dante’s Commedia in college and cites the famous valedictory by Virgil in Purg. 27: ‘Take henceforth your pleasure as your guide.’ She continues, ‘Over the course of his journey, he has acquired the wisdom to know where true happiness lies, and now his heart will unerringly guide him there.’ (p.17)” –Contributor Alan R. Perry

Contributed by Alan R. Perry (Gettysburg College)

“Hypnosis”

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“I stumbled upon this image, titled ‘Hypnosis’, while looking through a fashion editorial earlier this week. The shot features model Jourdan Dunn dressed in Iris Van Herpen. It was lensed by Nick Knight and styled by Edward Enninful. The image will be included in British Vogue’s current November issue [2019].

“The shot immediately reminds me of Dante’s entrance into earthly Paradise (in particular, it reminds me of Amos Nattini’s rendition of the scene). The similarity between the colors used, compositions of the frames, and the depictions of Beatrice is, to me, undeniable.”    –Contributor Wade Pryor

Contributed by Wade Pryor, Harvard ’20

Matelda, too!

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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