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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Nabil Boutros, Liberty (2013)

April 28, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

visual-poetry-nabil-boutros-liberty-if-desire

“The words that Virgil speaks to Cato (De Monarchia II, V, 15) mark both the origin and the end of the quest undertaken by Dante, at the end of the quest undertaken by Dante, at the end of which he poses a clear antithesis between ‘servitude’ and ‘liberty’: ‘Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom’ (Paradiso, Canto XXXI, 85).

[. . .] In this process of discernment through which freedom is achieved, man is supported by will, i.e. ‘the power that wills’ (Purgatorio, Canto XXI, 105), and aided by reason, i.e. ‘the power that counsels’ (Purgatorio, Canto XVIII, 62).”

Retrieved from The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

Learn more about the Cairo-born artist Nabil Boutros on the artist’s website.

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture, Written Word
Tagged with: 2013, Africa, Art Books, Cairo, Cato, Desire, Egypt, Freedom, Liberty, Paradiso, Prose, Purgatorio, Virgil

Sails of Charon by Scorpions

April 25, 2022 By Hannah Raisner, FSU '25

screenshot-of-scorpions-album-cover

“In Dante’s poem, Charon escorts the author and his guide, Virgil, across the river to the realm of the damned. The Scorpions make reference to a “blind man” in this cut from 1977’s ‘Taken By Force.’ This is in reference to the lost souls who did not have a coin for Charon, so they must blindly wander the banks of Styx for hundreds of years.”  – Katy Irizary, Loudwire, August 15, 2018

Read the full Loudwire article here.

Categories: Music, Performing Arts, Written Word
Tagged with: Charon, Journalism, Loudwire, River Styx, Rock Music, Virgil

Berenice Josephine Bickle, film stills (2013)

April 22, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

shadowy-rags-hanging-in-front-of-red-background

“For the artist, the Divine Comedy represents a ‘theological’ allegory, where the literal level becomes a ‘beautiful lie’ conceived in order to convey a hidden truth. The historical characters that appear in Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso are realistically determined and they provide a figural interpretation of history. From this starting point, the artist feels justified in introducing the viewer to her own reading of the Divine Comedy, in which she investigates histories mirroring Dante’s Inferno from the perspective of contemporary Africa. The work is composed of two opposite video screens, splitting the audience’s point of view between them, as the perception of two narratives occurs simultaneously. The central focus is a looped conversation between Beatrice and Virgil, where the feminine and masculine voices are superimposed by Dante’s presence, a poetical presence that weaves the two narratives together. While Beatrice’s character is dressed in Maputo clothes, surrounded by curious artifacts that together combine to make a coloured plot based on the dynamics of presence/absence and life/death, Virgil becomes a guide to one of the cities of Zimbabwe. No longer a storyteller of the epic on Trojan Wars, the Virgil constructed by the artist narrates the wars of colonial and postcolonial Africa, where the archival footage of Zimbabwe’s liberation war becomes the base for the narrative.”

From The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Simon Njami.

For more on the Zimbabwean artist Berry Bickle, see Wikipedia.

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2013, Africa, Allegory, Art, Art Books, Beatrice, Colonialism, Guides, History, Inferno, Videos, Virgil, Zimbabwe

Garane Garane, Il Latte è Buono (2005)

February 28, 2022 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

garane-garane-author-of-il-latte-e-buono

“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)

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2005, 2019, Africa, America, Books, Civil War, Colonialism, Education, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Italy, Journeys, Literature, Novels, Somalia, Travel, Virgil

700th Anniversary Exhibit at Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2022)

November 14, 2021 By Sephora Affa, FSU '24

woodprint-by-klaus-wrage-berlin-museum-dante-woodprint-exhibit-see-also-ebba-holm

“To mark the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri (1265–321) the Kupferstichkabinett is showing selections from two woodcut series from the 1920s.

“The series are by the Danish artist Ebba Holm and the German Klaus Wrage. Both deal in multifaceted ways with Dante’s literary magnum opus The Divine Comedy – and thereby with his virtual journey through Hell, up the Purgatorial mountain and on to Paradise.

“Not only will additional works by Odilon Redon, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Willy Jaeckel be on display, but also coloured computer drawings by Berlin artist Andreas Siekmann (born in 1961) from his 94-part complex Die Exklusive – Zur Politik des ausgeschlossenen Vierten (The Exclusive – On the Politics of the Excluded Fourth) (2002–2011). In several series from Die Exklusive Siekmann depicts particularly contemporary journeys to Hell undertaken by Dante and his guide, the poet Virgil.” [. . .]    —Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The exhibition will be open from February 12, 2022 to May 8, 2022.

See also: the Kupferstichkabinett gallery webpage, linked here.

See our posts on Klaus Wrage here.

Categories: Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2022, 700th anniversary, Art, Berlin, Drawings, Journeys, Virgil, Visual Art

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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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