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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Mommy’s Inferno, from Scary Mommy

May 12, 2022 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

scary-mommys-inferno

“In his poem Inferno, Dante travels through nine separate circles of human suffering on his journey towards spiritual salvation. Now I’m no major Italian poet, nor am I on a quest to save my soul, allegorically or spiritually. In fact, I haven’t even read Inferno, which is part of the epic poem the Divine Comedy, since the first time I trudged through (parts of) it in college, but I am a Mommy of three little kids. I have learned that motherhood is both divine and, often, a comedy….and yes, there is suffering. Hoo-boy is there suffering. I think, had Dante been a Mommy, his Nine Circles of Hell may have looked a bit different…but no less dreadful.

[. . .]

“Dante had to figuratively travel through hell and back before enjoying the peace that came at the end of his journey. I guess that’s the point of Mommy’s Inferno….that the inescapable moments of suffering we endure as mommies makes us stronger, better equipped to handle the challenges that come next, and more ready to enjoy the light of the good days that always follow the darkest nights of motherhood.

“So don’t ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter’ motherhood; for, though the hours and days of motherhood be long, the years are short…or so I hear.”   –Sarah Harris, “Mommy’s Inferno,” Scary Mommy (published May 21, 2010; updated December 2, 2020)

Read the nine circles of Scary Mommy’s Inferno here.

Categories: Digital Media, Written Word
Tagged with: 2010, 2020, Abandon All Hope, Blogs, Circles of Hell, Hell, Inferno, Moms, Motherhood, Parenting, Suffering

Higher Self Yoga: Consciousness in the Divine Comedy

December 30, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

spiritual-painting-of-two-dante-characters-floating-in-front-of-large-yellow-circle-with-many-faces

“[. . .] 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

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: Beatrice, Circles of Hell, Cosmos, Energy, Guides, Heaven, Journeys, Mountains, Neuroscience, Paradiso, Psychology, Self-Help, Spirituality, Suffering, Transformation, Wisdom, Yoga

Inferno, Romeo Castellucci (2008)

November 21, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

white-sea-of-cloth-descends-upon-the-audience-performance-experiment

[. . .] “Romeo Castellucci attempts to ‘hurl down The Divine Comedy on the earth of a stage’. He offers the spectator, in three stages and at three venues of the Festival, a crossing, the experience of a Divine Comedy.

“Inferno is a monument of pain. The artist must pay. In a dark wood in which he is immediately plunged, he doubts, he fears, he suffers. But what sin is the artist guilty of? If he is thus lost, it is because he does not know the answer to this question. Alone on the large stage, or on the contrary, walled in by the crowd and confronted with the world’s hubbub, the man that Romeo Castellucci puts on stage fully suffers, bewildered from this experience of loss of self. Everything here aggresses him, the violence of the images, the fall of his own body into matter, the animals and spectres. The visual dynamic of this show possesses the consistency of this stupor, sometimes this dread, that seizes the man when he is reduced to his paltriness, defenceless faced with the elements that overwhelm him. But this fragility is a resource, however, because it is the condition of a paradoxical gentleness. Romeo Castellucci shows each spectator that at the bottom of his own fears there is a secret space, marked by melancholy, in which he hangs on to life, to ‘the incredible nostalgia of his own life.'” [. . .]    —Festival D’Avignon, 2008

Watch segments of the show here.

Relatedly, see our post on Romeo Castellucci’s earlier 2002 commendation here.

This theatrical piece will be discussed by scholar Sara Fontana in her contribution to the forthcoming volume Dante Alive.

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 2008, Adaptations, Animals, Architecture, Costumes, Dark Wood, Dogs, Festivals, France, Journeys, Live Performances, Paris, Performance Art, Suffering, Theatre, Translations

Hexperos, “Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life” (2020)

November 14, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

hexperos-midway-upon-the-journey-of-our-life-album-cover

Hexperos’ 2020 release, “Midway Upon the Journey of Our Life” draws inspiration from Canto I of the Inferno.

“‘Midway upon the journey of our life, we could found ourselves within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.’ Never there was a sentence more apt to describe the disturbance we all feel at some point of our lives, when we feel lost, empty and we don’t know if the road that we have chosen, the journey of life undertaken, is actually the right one for us.

“The songs are stories of life, of sharing as well as in the Divine Comedy. As a matter of fact, who is in pain, often makes new encounters, shares their stories, through sharing and listening to the experiences of others we grow, we find a light in the darkness.” [. . .]    — Alessandra Santovito, Hexperos

Listen to the song here.

Learn more about Hexperos on their website, here.

Album art by Nicolás Menay

Categories: Music
Tagged with: 2020, Album Art, Albums, Dark Wood, Emotions, Illustrations, Italy, Journeys, Music, Musical Instruments, Nel Mezzo del Cammin, Selva oscura, Songs, Suffering, Voice

Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity (2021)

July 19, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“In The Way of Integrity, Beck presents a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, and with it, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering. Much of what plagues us—people pleasing, staying in stale relationships, negative habits—all point to what happens when we are out of touch with what truly makes us feel whole.

“Inspired by The Divine Comedy, Beck uses Dante’s classic hero’s journey as a framework to break down the process of attaining personal integrity into small, manageable steps. She shows how to read our internal signals that lead us towards our true path, and to recognize what we actually yearn for versus what our culture sells us.

“With techniques tested on hundreds of her clients, Beck brings her expertise as a social scientist, life coach and human being to help readers to uncover what integrity looks like in their own lives. She takes us on a spiritual adventure that not only will change the direction of our lives, but bring us to a place of genuine happiness.”   —marthabeck.com

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2021, America, Healing, Inspiration, Journeys, Non-Fiction, Self-Help, Spirituality, Suffering, United States

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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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