The Once and Future King

Link: Wikipedia here, The Once and Future King, by T H White, 1958, Collins publishing, and here, for the Wikipedia on Lancelot

Entry: While reading Canto V, I was really interested in the pairs of lovers who had succumbed to their lusty desires. I was especially interested in the mention of Lancelot (and Guinevere), particularly because I have recently read The Once and Future King and had a background with them. The parallels between Lancelot and Guinevere and Francesca and Paolo made me think about  what Dante could have been hinting at with this allusion, and what T H White could have thinking about when he wrote The Once and Future King. In The Once and Future King, which was obviously published long after the Comedy, focused on Lancelot's betrayal of not only himself and his sacred vow as a knight, but he also betrayed his best friend and king, Arthur. Lancelot's tale clearly existed before the Comedy, and the original version that Dantes used was based on the prose text Le Chevalier de la Charrette, by Chrétien de Troyes, where Lancelot was King Arthur's most powerful and trusted knight.

Obviously, Arthur and Lancelot were very close, and trusted each other with everything, so when Lancelot betrays Arthur by falling in love with, and sleeping with his wife, the queen, it was the worst thing Lancelot could have done. This betrayal of self, duty, and mind is paralleled in Canto V, when Francesca tells Dante that she, like Guinevere, had been married. She had been married to Paolo's brother, to whom their adultery would mean the ultimate betrayal. I imagine this is how Arthur must have felt, because he and Lancelot were practically brothers anyway. 

The reference to Lancelot and Guinevere in Canto V made me wonder if T H White had used the Inferno as a reference while writing The Once and Future King because in the book, White mentions that their affair was the cause of Arthur's ultimate downfall. It would be interesting if White used Francesca's story as a background for Lancelot and Guinevere's storyline in The Once and Future King. It's interesting that there was a twelfth century poem (written in the 1170s) about Lancelot and Guinevere, then the Inferno mentions them as a reflection of Francesca and Paolo, then in 1485, Sir Thomas Mallory wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, which became the basis of White's The Once and Future King. I have not read Mallory's work, but it would be an interesting study to see how the tale of Lancelot morphed over time, and if it was changed at all by Dante's inclusion of it in Canto V. I'd have to go back and re-read it, but I think White used the Comedy and Francesca and Paolo's demise to influence the way he crafted Lancelot and Guinevere's story. 

The Second Circle: Love Songs of Francesco Landini Anonymous 4, is a reproduction of a set of sung poems written by Francesco Landini in the 14th century.  When Francesco wrote them they were written in the "new style of poetry" that Dante is attributed with creating.  The set of poems is named after the second circle of hell, and focuses on lust and desire. The songs themselves while inspired by Dante's Carnal Sinners, are about all forms of dramatic love.

Looking at the lyrics in fact it would appear that the main requirement for the source material is to be all encompassing and therefore the sin of lust, because of the distraction from God and the willingness to sin and  go against God's love in favor of a human.

For example

 "Nella mi’ vita

Nella mi’ vita sento men venire

el cor po’ che da te degio partire.

Dolente parto po’ che vuol fortuna

che mi constringe pur che così sia.

Ma dove ch’i’ sarò con forç’ alcuna,

donna, non potra’ far ch’i’ tuo non sia;

Però che prima può l’anima mia

ch’abandonarti chol corpo morire.

Nella mi’ vita . . ." 

which better translators than I have translated into 

"In my life I feel my heart

failing, because I must part with you.

I go sadly, for Fortune wills it,

she constrains me, and it must be so.

But wherever I may be with any strength,

lady, I must always be yours.

For before my soul could

abandon you, my body must die.

In my life . . ."

to listen click here

Personally I can't help but wonder if the author was inspired by the similarities in name between himself and Francesca of hell.  Seems likely.  I always liked Emily Dickinson for that reason.

La porte de l'Enfer.

La porte de l'Enfer (The gates of Hell) is a monumental sculpture by frenchman Auguste Rodin. It is 6m in height, 4m in width and 1m in depth. It was commissioned in 1880 and Rodin worked on it until his death in 1917.

This work depicts a variety of figures from the Old Testament and from Dante's time, but the inspiration for it was obviously Dante's Inferno. We can also detect other sources such as Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and Balzac's La Comédie Humaine (which is a play on the unofficial title of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso).
Some interesting figures are the Thinker or the Poet, which most people believe represents Dante as well as Rodin, both looking down at their work. Another notable presence is that of Paolo and Francesca, in the figure most commonly known as the Kiss.

One thing I find very interesting is that Rodin was commissioned to create this door for a new museum the governmental authority on art and culture was building, but the authority left all the artistic decisions to the sculptor. The fact that he decides to make his door a graphical representation of the Gates of Hell is not a coincidence, as Rodin apparently was not a fan of the government's control of artists. On top of that, Rodin preferred that his statues and other sculptures be displayed outdoors in gardens instead of inside palaces, homes or museums.

Frankly, who wouldn't think "Dante" when they think "Futurama?"

Yes, I am here admitting that I have watched “Futurama.” Though it is not the epitome of high-brow entertainment, or what you might think would be associated with a class in 14^th century literature, here we are, and here is “Futurama,” Season 1, Episode 9 – “Hell is Other Robots.”

It fascinates me, first of all, that Dante’s work has made its way so far into popular culture that references to it have become entirely commonplace, so much so that they could get right by us if we’re not looking for them. For example, in a bizarre cult-hit cartoon from the 90’s, there is an episode completely dedicated to “Robot Hell” and the punishments associated with the different levels, an ironic play on Dante’s work.

At the beginning of the episode, Bender, the main robot if you will, falls into sinful habits of drinking, smoking, and taking prostitutes. As a result, he is sentenced to “robot hell,” where he’s doomed by the Robot Devil to fry for eternity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTqKI04yG2A&feature=related

Though through the aid of his friends Bender escapes hell by the end of the episode, it ends on a satirical note when he commits to neither striving to be virtuous or evil, an ambivalence which is considered in the Catholic Church to be as sinful as, well, being sinful.

Though the episode is clearly meant to be a satire on the entire concept of hell, the basic tenants of Dante’s work can still be found here: for different sins there are different levels of punishment.

Dante’s Song Sung

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_q3QlIQvA4

As a person who spends most of my time singing, I wanted to begin my search with references to Dante’s Inferno in music.  After sifting through a few ‘amateurly’ constructed tracks, I found one that, for all intents and purposes, is well recorded and quite clearly inspired by the poem.  This sixteen-and-a-half minute song is titled ‘Dante’s Inferno’ by the metal band Iced Earth (see link above).  Though I cannot say this is music I would listen to outside of the realm of this class, the song has very clear references to the Comedy and features musical styles that some might conclude are representative of the emotions throughout the pilgrim’s journey.

The song begins calm and melodically, effecting a dreamlike sensation, as it describes the pilgrim’s initial decent into inferno.  The lyrics state things like “Virgil at my side my guide and master” or “Slowly now the days departing / The darkened air releases me” which take direct terms and themes from the text, such as the pilgrim’s relationship with Vergil and the notion of darkness.  The latter continues to be reference throughout the entirety of the piece, but it particularly enhances this ‘introduction’ (of sorts) and emphasizes the lack of clarity present in the beginning of the Comedy.  However, this segment is also very slow, which significantly contrasts what is about to come (both in the Comedy as well as the song).  The most significant piece in this beginning is the line ‘I’m not free’.  The notion of choice and freedom is incredibly significant for the pilgrim and his journey through Hell, and this song makes a powerful statement by bluntly illuminating this lack of freedom.  It is after this lyric that the song significantly picks up and begins to spiral into confusion.

As the song picks up and the music gets more chaotic, the song makes a direct textual reference to the poem: ‘Abandon all hope who enters here’.  This line is repeated twice and is a direct reference to the writing above the gates of Hell.  After a few more verses, in which Charon and Minos are referenced, the song takes an erratic instrumental interlude to denote the chaos that the pilgrim initial experiences through the Underworld and the jarring passage to a new world, of sorts.  After this interlude, the pace slows again through the third circle of Hell.  The song does continue through the circles of Hell to Lucifer, featuring many shifts in style and tempo to accommodate the shifting perspective of the pilgrim as he experiences so many new emotions.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to analyze anything beyond the third circle as that is as far as we have read; however, I do have a few comments on the significance of such a song overall.

It would only seem natural that a piece as influential as the Divine Comedy would have inspired some musical artists.  What is particularly interesting about this particular interpretation is that it does not really make vague allusions to the text; it is fairly upfront about every reference it makes to the text.  It is meant to be a retelling of the text, in a sense, which is perfectly in accordance with the tradition of epic poetry: it is meant to be retold.  This song features the dynamic range of emotion and lyrics that are similar to those represented within the actual text.  It is almost as if the band is functioning as Vergil and taking the listener through their own interpretation of Hell.  Though the song itself doesn’t necessarily have the quality of repeat listenability, it is definitely worth a listen to get a feel for the true scope of Dante’s influence.

Mickey's Inferno (L'inferno di Topolino)

       After starting to read and really study the Inferno, I began to recall a comic strip that I had seen a few years ago while I was at Walt Disney World back home in Florida. During this visit I discovered something very interesting about a modern day Dante reference. What I found was a comic strip about Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters in their own adventure through Hell. Though the book was in Italian and behind a display case in a shop, it still caught my eye and especially caught my interest.

       To me this was a little bit odd. Disney, a usually very family friendly company, was supporting the use of its characters in a comic book that was based on a book that talks about Hell and the suffering of so many people. In the book the authors Dwight Decker  and David Gerstein create a little more of a family friendly description of Hell and the suffering of people than Dante did in his version.

      To keep similarities common between the actual Inferno and the comic version, the comic dialogues and story are actually written in terza rima (an intertwining three line scheme that Dante created himself) and cantos. The comic originally came out in the Italian language and was released in Italy in 1949. Strangely enough, the issue number of the comic when it was released was #666 which is merely coincidental. The comic was not released in the United States (in English) until 2006.

       In the comic, Mickey Mouse is depicted as Dante. His guide, Virgil, is actually the Disney character Goofy. Minnie Mouse is Beatrice and a cast of characters that are in Hell include the infamous Big Bad Wolf and Peg Leg Pete.

       One of my favorite things about the comic strip other than it contains Disney characters, is the illustrations. The pictures depict cartoon images of Hell and the scenery that Dante depicts so vividly in his masterpiece. The fact that it is a comic and contains such everyday characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck also gives off the feeling as the whole grim outlook of Hell is a little bit dampened as one cannot help but smile as they think of Mickey Mouse fainting from grief or becoming extremely scared because of wildlife.

       In the link following this, there are screenshots of the comic book in its full page form. Sadly, the English version is not available online but it can be ordered if anyone finds this that interesting. Also, the book was published in Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, and German.

Click here to view the scans of the pages from the comic.

Dante's Inferno Animated

I came across this animated film as I was searching for Dante related things. Dante's Inferno Animated is a film directed by Boris Acosta, supposedly for grown up kids to allow them to better learn Dante's works.
It is a 2D film and has over 50 original color illustrations combined to form animation clips. Dino Di Durante created the images with Avetik Balain and Riccardo Pratesi.
Interestingly the film is recited in Italian but you can also find the narrated English version.
10 % of the earnings from the film will go charity to promote the study and reading of The Divine Comedy.

The film is 38 minutes long and describes Dante's journey through the nine circles of hell and exit into Purgatorio.
This is a link to the trailer for the film but they do say that this is old and it does not represent the most up to date version of what the film will look like, and the English version of the trailer will be up in October of 2012
http://www.dantesinfernoanimated.com/trailer-dantesinfernoanimated.html

This is a link to the home website where you can find more information about the project.
http://www.dantesinfernoanimated.com/dantesinfernoanimated.html

This seems like an interesting project that they have undertaken and I especially like the fact that they recite it in Italian and follow Dante's words throughout the story and provide English subtitles so you can get both the experience of listening to the original words as well as read the translation in English.
Also the fact that this project was announced in the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 as a work in progress and that now it is coming out just goes to show how influential Dante's work has been to our world as well as demonstrating that there are still people out there that want to make sure this story is available to as many people as possible. I couldn't find a full version of the film but I look forward to when it is available to everyone.

The Tenth Circle

The Tenth Circle is a 2006 novel by Jodi Picoult that focuses primarily on date rape, father/daughter relationships, adultery, and adolescence. It also is heavily influenced by Dante’s Inferno. The story takes place in Maine, where the protagonist, Trixie, accuses her ex boyfriend of date rape. Most of the town believes she is lying, and the fall out from the accusation is worsened when the ex-boyfriend is found dead in an apparent suicide. The story unfolds several layers that are deep as the allegory to Hell – exploring Trixie’s personal struggles, her father’s failed attempts to shelter her, and gradually revealing the truth. The aftermath of the tragedy, the effect on those in the community, as well as the main character’s relationships with her family and friends, are explored.

            There are many allusions to Inferno. The protagonist is a high school student called Trixie Stone – Trixie is a nick name, her full name is Beatrice, and it is stated in the text that she was named for Dante’s love and guide in Dante’s Inferno. Her mother is a professor at the local college, where she teaches a course on Dante, focusing primarily on Inferno.  The conception of Hell is paralleled in each character’s personal conflict, delving deeper into their characters and revealing each person’s individual sins and struggles. The novel frequently references the sins mentioned in Dante’s conception of hell, primarily adultery and violence.

            Each chapter of the novel is accompanied with a short comic, a continuing story that parallels the events in the novel. Daniel Stone, Trixie’s father and a comic book artist employed by Marvel, creates the comics as a form of therapy as he deals with the aftermath of his daughter being date raped. The comic story subsequently parallels the events that are happening in their lives. The comic follows the story of a man whose daughter is kidnapped by a monstrous creature, an allusion to Satan and dragged into Hell. The man follows her and meets his guide, Virgil, who guides him as he fights all the demons that accompany each level of Hell. The comic concludes with a confrontation with Satan himself, as the man battles his inner demons and fights for his daughter’s freedom. Each level is the same as the ones defined by Dante, though in many cases it is simplified. The title refers to the various circles of Hell – however, as elaborated by the novel, there is an additional circle of hell -betrayal of someone you’re close to – on a different level of treachery described in Inferno.  It is instead described as one where you see someone you love struggling, and you choose to look the other way. This theme is heavily explored throughout the novel, reflected in Trixie’s personal battles.

            This was one of my favorite books in high school, and inspired me to learn more about Dante and Inferno because I was highly interested in the background that inspired the story. Aside from the allusions to Inferno, it is a compelling read, well written, and deeply touching. 

The Puppet Comedy: Inferno

Link: This link leads to a video clip of a scene in the eight circle from Dante’s Inferno, 2007.

After reading the first five cantos of the Inferno, I had a strong desire to see how Dante’s journey through hell could be envisioned if interpreted from a modern context. And so, in search of this new interpretation, I began my own little journey.  A few key strokes and mouse clicks later, my journey was soon at an end. Unlike Dante, I could not say that I made it through hell and reached enlightenment, but the end result of my journey’s search was quite productive as for I found exactly what I was searching for.  In my search, I came across an interesting comedy movie made in 2007 titled Dante’s Inferno that successfully redefines this great classic. The movie cleverly uses paper puppetry and biting satire to adapt the story to a modern audience.

                The first few minutes of the movie could have well been the last few minutes, if my curiosity did not buffer my limited patience. My first hasty opinion of the movie was that it was poor, tasteless, and low budget comedic  attempt to say something new about what already been said more elegantly in the Inferno by Dante. The puppetry and tongue-in-cheek humor really threw me off at first because the grittiness usually associated with subject of Hell caused me to expect something more serious. For instance, there is hilarious and almost slapstick scene where Dante and Virgil are chased through an airport in one of circles of Hell by one of the demons of hell represented as a TSA agent. And there is another comical scene where Dante and Virgil are leisurely ice skating on the icy landscape of Hell’s inner circle, which is frozen over by  the cold gusts of wind from Satan's flapping wings.  Although the Inferno is part of a large work called the Divine Comedy, it was not written by Dante to be an actual comedy that inspires jolly emotions.

 Nevertheless, the more that I watched the movie, the more I loved it and the more connections I made. With the funny antics aside, the movie does a great job in tying elements in the Inferno with modern-day people and events and in the process serving a commentary on the culture and politics of our present-day society in the same way that the original version was a commentary on medieval society. For example, the movie criticizes the despicableness of the obesity epidemic in America by placing an obese version of the Statue of Liberty on to of a landscape overflowing with greasy American fast food in the third circle of Gluttony.  The movie also takes a jab at the fraud and counter-productiveness in American political system by placing Washington D.C. in the eighth and condemning the politicians to sin of flattery. There are many more creative and sometimes weird modern references in the movie, but in order to avoid spoiling the movie, it is best to see them for oneself.

Dante and Eliot

In choosing to take this class and study Dante’s Divine Comedy, I hoped that I could gain some historical, literary, and social access to other works that have come after Dante. T.S. Eliot is, by far, my favorite poet and I still remember the first time I read “The Wasteland”. Right before my senior year of high school, I went on a camping trip with a few friends and we decided that our goal for the night was to try to read “The Wasteland” and get as much out of it as we could. None of us had been formally introduced to the poem in a class so it all seemed really dense and heavy in references for us. I remember how many of Eliot’s notes explained how his lines were in reference to this classic work by Dante. Coming into this class, I’ve thought a lot about how re-reading “The Wasteland” will be after finishing Inferno.

While waiting to finish Inferno, I’ve found others who have taken an interest in Dante and Eliot as well. There are multitude of articles on the connection between Dante’s Inferno and Eliot’s famous poem. Eliot provided his own notes to go along with his dense and allusive work, providing clear, indisputable references to Dante.

In some articles, the focus was on parsing out the individual references. A commonly found reference to Dante comes from Eliot’s first book “The Burial of the Dead” where he echoes Dante’s line “death had undone so many” (Eliot, line 63; Dante, Canto III, line 57). Another reference comes in the very next line comes from Eliot’s mention of the “Sighs, short and infrequent” (line 64) which relates to the sighs mentioned in Canto IV of Inferno that come from the unbaptized men in Limbo (line 26).

In others, articles focus on the social context of the two writers. Dante wrote during a time in history where he felt that society was not living up to the moral and Christian standards that he believed in. The Divine Comedy was really his chance to talk about all of these different people in society and give his opinion as to their place in the eternal world. Eliot, on the other hand, was facing post-World War II Europe, which he compares to Dante’s hellish world. He was responding to the moral crisis of how to analyze death and destruction on such a large scale and what to do after. It’s interesting to see how each author responds to society during troubled times. I think what is most interesting is to see that each chooses to look to the past, seeing if older wisdom holds true during these great changes in their world. I think Dante would be pleased to know that, in a way, he is being looked to for advice in a more modern time.

Hopefully I will have more to say about the connection between Eliot and Dante as we finish the Inferno, but for now I will just leave you with a passage from “The Wasteland” that draws heavily on Dante:

“Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.”

(Eliot, lines 60-65).

Articles:

Allusions to Dante's Inferno in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

http://suite101.com/article/allusions-to-dantes-inferno-in-ts-eliots-the-waste-land-a293658

Dante's Influence on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland"

http://eawrap.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/dantes-influence-on-t-s-eliots-the-wasteland/ 

Canto XXII and The Waste Land as Modern Infernos

http://www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/01/0116CantoXXII.htm

"Recording" Mental Imagery

Rather than investigate, I have chosen to create! I am taking a digital art class this semester, and one of the things I have been experimenting with is making collages. Since I remember being very struck by the beginning of Canto 1, I decided to try to represent the dark wood in which Dante finds himself. Since I only have a few classes worth of experience, my skills are not by any means impressive; but I did my best to “paint” the picture that I had in my head while reading lines like the following:

“I cannot really say how I entered there, so full of sleep was I at the point when I abandoned the true way” (1.10-12).

“Then was the fear a little quieted that in the lake of my heart had lasted through the night” (1.19-20).

“It [the leopard] did not depart from before my face but rather so impeded my way” (1.34-35).

“The time was the beginning of morning, and the sun was mounting up with those stars” (1.37-38).

“He [the lion] seemed to be coming against me with his head high (1.46-47).

“That restless beast [the she-wolf]… was driving me back to where the sun is silent” (1.58-60).

“Why do you not climb the delightful mountain that is origin and cause of all joy (1.77-78).

            On the left side is the mountain that Dante so desperately wishes to reach. God, Mary, Lucia, and Beatrice appear so as to “explain” the chain of command that leads Virgil (also represented on this half of the collage) to Dante. I chose to place a heart in the lake because, although I remain unsure as to why Dante refers to his heart as a lake, I found the “imagery” (lines 19-20) to be quite unique.

            On the right side is the dark wood that Dante finds himself in at the beginning of the first Canto. The sleepwalker is Dante, and I chose to portray him in this way because it seems to be the way in which he himself feels he has arrived there. When he abandoned the true path, he was not conscious of his direction. This is also not the last time that “sleep” vocabulary is used – Dante often finds himself being “taken” by sleep, or waking up to “find” himself in a new place.

             Dante describes the wood as dark and bitter, and for this reason the image background is (nearly) black. (I also wanted the contrast between this place and the “joyous” mountain to be very extreme). I have represented the three beasts that Dante encounters, and my intention was to portray them as blocking his way to the mountain of “Paradise.”

            The sun has the “X” over its mouth, because Dante often mentions the “silence” of the sun, or of the light (as opposed to simply saying “it is dark”). I very much enjoy this language. I have also painted little stars, because although the wood is dark, Dante tells us that the morning is beginning, and that the stars are visible.

            I love the way that Dante Alighieri writes: the mental images that his words evoke for me are so clear. For this reason, I thought it would be a fun and interesting challenge to try to transfer what I see in my mind (when I read) to a digital image! :)

The Danteum

I was looking around for Dante related stuff on the internet, and I found some abandoned architectural plans for a building called the Danteum. The Danteum, whose blueprint can be viewed in an animated form here, was mainly designed by Giuseppe Terragni in 1938. Terragni was an Italian architect who helped pioneer the Italian modernist movement, which makes it somewhat ironic that he was asked to design a monument for the ultimate medieval work of literature: Dante's Divine Comedy. However, the year being 1938, it was Mussolini's Fascist government commissioning the work, so Terragni didn't have much of a choice.

One of Mussolini's main goals, nationalistically speaking, was to put Italy back on the map as a country of great power and nobility, worthy of the world's respect and the Third Reich's partnership. In order to accomplish this, Mussolini dug back into Italy's history for the majesty of Rome, and the literary masterpiece that is Dante's Divine Comedy. The Danteum was supposed to stand as a testament of Italian greatness, but sadly the building never progressed beyond the stage of blueprints.

As Terragni and his collaborators imagined it, the Danteum would have been a building that architecturally incorporated Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. As this wonderful site shows and describes, the building was largely non-functional, but in passing through the various rooms you would have been recreating Dante's journey, from the Dark Woods all the way to the Hall of Paradise. The Hall of Paradise was actually suspended above the Purgatory Room, which is awesome because it literally gives those in Purgatory a glimpse of Heaven/hope while everyone in Hell was relegated to a dark, nearly lightless room.

I think it's pretty sad that this building never was built, given that the Divine Comedy really IS a testament to Italy's talent...or maybe I just want to walk through the Inferno. Whatever the case, one would hope that someday the Fascist stigma will fade away and someone will resurrect the potential beauty of the Danteum.

Dante's Influence in Paul Auster's "Invisible"

The Invisible Dante in Paul Auster's Invisible

Included in this post is a link to an article about Invisible, a recent novel by Paul Auster, one of my favorite writers. The article investigates the structural and thematic ties to the Divine Comedies, exploring both overt references to the comedies throughout the novel, and more subtle parallelisms. Invisible tells the story of a young man who experiences his own moral crisis after witnessing an acquaintance commit a gruesome murder, and his subsequent search for redemption. Within the first sentence of the novel, we see a reference to Dante. This occurs when the protagonists is introduced to a man named Rudolf Born, and converses with him about his namesake, Bertran de Born, a 13^th century poet who appears in the Inferno.

            Within these overt references to the Comedy, there exist more subtle references and similarieties. One interesting mention is how Invisible mimics Dante’s infatuation with the number three. Dante believed three to be a holy number, because of the Christian trinity. He wrote the Divine Comedy in three parts, he had the pilgrim encounter three beasts at the beginning of Inferno, and each of the comedies has 33 cantos. Likewise, Auster wrote  Invisible in three parts, and as the article points out, the novel references the number three many more times than coincidence would have it. The article goes on to point out various other thematic similarities between Invisible and Dante’s comedies, and it made me think about one of my favorite novels in a different way. Auster shares Dante's obsession for having every detail imbued with meaning, and with each new reading more of these meanings emerge.

Dante's Inferno in hardcore and technical metal

Dante's Comedy has been a magnet for Outsider culture since it was written. The connection is a natural one. The brutal elegance of Inferno's fitting punishments have staying power in the minds of readers with the constitution to appreciate them. And to those so aesthetically inclined, there is a macabre beauty to the poetry that goes beyond a simple lasting impression. The discordant, tortured imagery of individual scenes in The Inferno compliment the order of Dante's well-organized cosmology. The chaos of tortured souls fill the circles of Inferno which are as organized, defined, and bordered as the Cantos that form them. It is the harmony of chaos and order that draws the Outsider to Dante's macabre aesthetic.

The Outsider also sympathizes both with Dante's quest for meaning and the futile desire without hope of the damned for peace. Dante presents himself as the ultimate outsider, a rebel poet. He is an initially directionless and alone, being guided through an unfamiliar, unsettling landscape witnessing and criticizing the sins of man in a divine quest for understanding. This narrative is constant in the art of Outsiders, who reject the simple social conventions of what life is supposed to be, and see themselves as tortured by apparent meaningless despite existing in a natural world with such apparent order. Again, the juxtaposed aesthetic of harmony and chaos.

In music, this aesthetic expresses itself best in the self-consciously post-structural genres of hardcore and technical metal. The initially jarring roughness of the vocals in this style of music is complimented by a methodical, ordered instrumentation that aims to rival the precision of a symphony. The appeal of the music is found in the harmony of order and chaos, as well as the raw, visual emotion that usually expresses itself as simultaneous anger and pity at the state of the world.

Many bands borrow directly from Dante, while countless more explore similar themes of human decency, suffering, and the feeling of purposelessness.

(I should note that lots of the bands I'm going to post below I don't personally enjoy, though I can appreciate them each in their own way.)

Transmetal - El Infierno de Dante

AFI - Midnight Sun(featuring a chorus taken from the gates of Inferno,
"Beyond and to all time I stand"

Ancient - At the Infernal Portal (Canto III)

Iced Earth - Dante's Inferno
(An epic, highly narrative song. Reading along the lyrics while listening recommended)

Sepultura - Fighting On(from the concept album Dante XXI, designed to mirror Dante's journey through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso)

Discipline - Canto IV

An Artist's New Take on The Divine Comedy

Link:
This is a link to Frank's blog about his illustrations of The Divine Comedy.
http://dutchinferno.tumblr.com/ 

This is a link to Gustave Doré's illustrations of The Divine Comedy.
http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html


Even though The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri was written about 700 years ago, this famous epic poem is, today, still the inspiration of many artists, including Frank Wolfs, a former student of Professor Stocchi-Perucchio.  Frank has been drawing all his life and now, after studying Inferno and the first half of Purgatorio, he has decided to illustrate each canto in Inferno.  He was inspired to illustrate Inferno because there are many interesting images in this book of the comedy.  

Frank began this project in January 2012 with his painting The Faceless.  The Faceless, illustrating Canto 3, depicts those spirits who cannot go to Heaven or Hell after they die because they served neither the Devil nor God during their earthly lives.  As a punishment, these spirits are condemned to live outside the gates of Hell.  In Canto 3, Dante tells the reader that he recognizes some of the spirits, but he never names them.  Since, these spirits are not named, Frank decided to depict the spirits without faces.  His inspiration for how to draw the faces was the cover art of Karmacode, a cd by the Italian band Lacuna Coil.

There is one interesting difference between Frank's illustrations of the spirits in Hell and many other illustrations of The Divine Comedy.  Most pictures depict the spirits in Hell as people with flesh, like a living person (click on the second link above to see Gustave Doré's illustrations of The Divine Comedy).  However, Frank decided to portray the sinners in Hell as skeletons.  He chose to depict the sinners this way because it is different and it stands out.  This portrayal is something that no one else has done.

So far, Frank has only finished two painting based on The Divine Comedy.  There was a five month gap in between the painting of the first and the second painting, but now Frank is working on his third painting for Canto 28.  His sketches for this painting can be found by clicking the first link at the top of this article.

Allusions to "Purgatorio" in the film Se7en

           Se7en, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, is a thrilling crime film that came out in 1995. It follows the police work of two homicide detectives, Detectives Sommerset and Mills as they track down a deranged serial killer who chooses victims who are guilty of committing one of the seven deadly sins. The incorporation of the seven deadly sins creates an allusion to the seven terraces of Dante’s “Purgatorio”. The victims in Se7en are murdered in fashions that have similarities to the punishments received by the souls in “Purgatorio.”

            In “Purgatorio,” those found guilty of gluttony are forced to starve while being surrounded by all sorts of delicious looking fruits, quite a tantalizing experience. In Se7en, quite the opposite punishment is forced upon the victim found guilty of gluttony. The victim, an excessively obese man, is held captive and forced to eat an extraordinary quantity of food; so large a quantity of food that his stomach lining begins to fracture. At this point, the murderer repeatedly kicks the man in his side until he expires.

            Those souls found guilty of greed in “Purgatorio” were forced to lie face down on the ground. The murderer in Se7en selected a lawyer as his victim who he felt was guilty of greed. As his punishment, Kevin Spacey removes a section of the lawyer’s abdomen and leaves him to die on the floor of his luxurious apartment complex.

            The slothful, in “Purgatorio” are forced to run constantly. The punishment of the slothful victim in Se7en is quite opposite in nature, much like the victim found guilty of gluttony. The murderer in Se7en straps a man to a bed and leaves him there for over a year to rot away. He is kept alive via an i.v. drip. When the detectives discover the victim, he appears to be deceased and in the process of decomposing. This is not the case. He is still very much alive; and be warned, if you have not seen the movie, this scene is incredibly startling… just a heads up.

            Those souls found to be guilty of envy were forced to have their eyes sewn shut in “Purgatorio.” The murderer in Se7en decides to take some liberties with the nature of this punishment and completely removes the head of a woman who he found to be envious.

            Souls who were exiled to the terrace of wrath/anger were forced to walk through a thick, choking smoke. I cannot go into much detail regarding the victim found guilty of wrath/anger and his/her punishment in Se7en as it will spoil the ending of the movie.

            As their punishment, large, heavy stones were placed upon the backs of the souls found to be prideful in “Purgatorio.” In Se7en, the victim found guilty of pride, a beautiful but incredibly vain young woman has her nose cut off. This causes her to fall into a severe depression and as a result, she overdoses on prescription drugs.

            In “Purgatorio” the lustful are punished by being placed into a fiery wind. The punishment of the lustful victim in Se7en is arguably the most graphic and violent murder in the movie. I will not be going into details about it here. Be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted.

            Throughout the film, Morgan Freeman’s character reads up on the Divine Comedy and recognizes it as the model that Kevin Spacey is replicating in his murders. Brad Pitt is a bit less convinced and refuses to acknowledge the storyline of the Divine Comedy as a piece of relevant information in the murder cases. At one point he refers to Dante as “Fuckin’ Dante, poetry-writing faggot! Piece of shit, mother-fucker.” Needless to say he has a harder time embracing the literature…

           Below is a link to the scene involving sloth.

Sloth