News

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

March 22, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

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)

Francine Prose, “If Dante had filmed the Inferno on his iPhone, it would look like this” (August 10, 2021)

November 27, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

“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)

“Dante Today” in France’s Le Monde

October 31, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

“Il existe un lien insolite entre le nom du groupe de musique électronique Nine Circles, le film Behemoth, du réalisateur chinois Zhao Liang (2015), et l’univers terrifiant du jeu vidéo Resident Evil : Revelations. Une convergence souterraine, qui remonte à un poème du XIV^e siècle : La Divine Comédie, à laquelle Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) a consacré les deux dernières décennies de sa vie. Tous trois puisent leurs références dans cette œuvre qui expose, en trois cantiques que sont Enfer, Purgatoire et Paradis, une traversée de l’au-delà dont la colossale influence est documentée par l’étonnant projet Dante Today.

“Depuis 2006, ce site tenu par des spécialistes américains archive toutes les références à Dante dans la culture populaire contemporaine. Ghana, Chili, Irak, Vietnam, Islande : les mentions, qui se comptent en milliers, dessinent une cartographie planétaire de l’aura du poète florentin. Comme si, sept siècles après sa mort, le 14 septembre 1321, toute représentation de l’au-delà demeurait inévitablement aimantée par la puissance d’évocation de ses 14 233 hendécasyllabes. [. . .] –Youness Bousenna, Le Monde, October 3, 2021

“Dante in Giappone, da Go Nagai alla Commedia in giapponese: tutti gli eventi”

October 31, 2021 By Harrison Betz, FSU '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)

“America in the Eighth Circle”

April 19, 2021 By Laura Chatellier, FSU '23

“Such a world, naturally, produced every manner of sin imaginable, and all these sins are carefully chronicled in Dante’s descent into the Inferno. The nine circles of the infernal city are, as Dorothy Sayers reminds us, Dante’s picture of human society in decay; the further Dante and Virgil descend, the more radically corrupt and degraded the society becomes. The pilgrims pass relatively quickly through first seven circles of hell. All the sins of appetite and violence are contained in the first half of the cantica. Then the travelers reach the Great Barrier, and here the poem slows down. Dante and Virgil plunge into the abyss of the eighth circle, which houses the fraudulent. Alas, the various sins punished here read like a cross-section of our ruling classes in Washington, New York, and Hollywood: we meet pimps and seducers, flatterers, hypocrites, and thieves, bribe-taking officials, false counsellors, and sowers of discord. They come at long last to the tenth and final ditch of the eighth circle. Here we find the liars—those who perpetrate the purest form of fraud, the one that unites all the others. Their stench is overwhelming.” [. . .] –Ben Reinhard, Crisis Magazine, September 21, 2020.

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