Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

“San Valentino, cade un taboo: Dante e Beatrice si baciano”

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“Dopo oltre 700 anni dalla nascita del loro amore, Dante e Beatrice cederanno alla tentazione e si lasceranno travolgere dalla passione facendo cadere tutti i taboo del dolce stilnovo. Un bacio, vero, per festeggiare tutti gli innamorati e promuovere la cultura. E per farlo hanno scelto il week end di San Valentino e due location d’eccezione: le grotte dell’Angelo di Pertosa (SA), le uniche in Europa a essere attraversate da un fiume navigabile, e la Certosa di San Lorenzo Padula (SA), complesso monastico tra i più grandi del vecchio continente, entrambe nominate patrimonio dell’Umanità dall’UNESCO, dove da anni vanno in scena i celebri spettacoli L’Inferno e Il Purgatorio di Dante.

“‘E’ un omaggio a tutti gli innamorati attraverso una coppia simbolo della letteratura italiana – dichiara Domenico Maria Corrado, regista e ideatore degli spettacoli –  Un’iniziativa per certi versi provocatoria, ma che in realtà vuole rendere più accattivante la cultura celebrando l’amore. Dai tempi di Dante ad oggi molte cose sono mutate e quindi anche la cultura deve sperimentare nuove strade.'” [. . .]    —Italia Chiama Italia.It, February 7, 2013 (retrieved April 8, 2022)

Commedia-Inspired Renaissance Paintings?

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This review was written in reference to Martin Kemp’s examinations of John Took’s Dante. For more analysis, read the full article here.

“Kemp’s idea is to set up a paragone, comparing, on the one hand, Dante’s scientific and metaphorical/theological understanding of light and sight in the Divine Comedy (1308–21), especially in Paradiso, to, on the other, renderings of divine light in Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting. He opens with a scholarly survey of late medieval natural science accounts of optics and of light (noting in particular the widely accepted theories of the late 10th-/early 11th-century mathematician Ibn al-Haytham, known as Alhazan), before laying out what he understands of Dante’s knowledge of, and interest in, this topic, which he terms the poet’s ‘dazzle’—the failure of sight when confronted with the splendore (blinding light) of Empyrean Heaven.

[. . .] “Kemp makes periodic disclaimers throughout the book that it is impossible to cite documented or obvious connections between Dante’s light and works of art (except for illuminated or illustrated editions of the Commedia) but, to avoid cutting the ground from under his own feet, he makes a Roger-Fry swerve: the viewer will need a special sensitivity to see the ‘Dantesque’ as Kemp does. ‘The more general and less discernible diaspora [of Dante’s divine light] is something that can be sensed as a common factor as we pass from one scheme of decoration to another. This is not a matter of firm historical demonstration so much as the deployment of visual and poetic instinct.’ Kemp is insistent, pounding away with Maslow’s hammer throughout, that it is Dante’s divine light that appears in all the works he cites. It must be said that, in the paragone he proposes, it is not a question of attributable sources that is the problem; it is the category failure of comparing poetry with painting, apples with pears. Ultimately, Dante himself says that the only possible answer to ‘Who does divine light best?’ has to be God Himself, lux eterna.”     –Donald Lee, The Art Newspaper, July 2, 2021

See our posts on John Took here and Martin Kemp here.

Higher Self Yoga: Consciousness in the Divine Comedy

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“[. . .] As an example, consider this scene at the bottom of the mountain of Purgatory.  These souls have figured out how to get out of hell and have crossed the river to this mountainous island. The journey up the mountain (toward increasing freedom from destructive patterns and closer to higher consciousness) waits for them.

“What do they do?  They turn away from the mountain, hang out on the shoreline, and stare out at the water waiting for entertainers to arrive:  TV channel surfing, 14th Century style.  Fortunately, Dante himself is being guided to start to climb the mountain because there is much more waiting for him if he ascends. He does so, and at the very top he meets Beatrice, his Higher Self, who then guides him into higher states of consciousness in paradise.” [. . .]    –Dr. Richard Schaub Ph.D., Higher Self Yoga, July 8, 2020

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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