The Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for artists, musicians, and authors since its appearance in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Works are included here if they have been described by scholars as relating substantially in their structure or content to the Divine Comedy.
Rosa Celeste: Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradiso Canto 31, where Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean
In 1373, a little more than half a century after Dante's death, the Florentine authorities softened their attitude to him and decided to establish a department for the study of the Divine Comedy. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was appointed to head the department in October 1373, and he sponsored its organization. In January 1374, Boccaccio wrote and delivered a series of lectures on the Comedy. In addition, Boccaccio is included in the work Origine, vita e costumi di Dante Alighieri, where his treatise Trattatello in laude di Dante provides a biography of Dante.[4]
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) translated, adapted, and explicitly referred to Dante's work.[5]
"A Complaynt to His Lady," an early short poem, is written in terza rima, the rhyme scheme Dante invented for the Comedy.
Anelida and Arcite ends with a "compleynt" by Anelida, the lover jilted by Arcite; the compleynt begins with the phrase "So thirleth with the poynt of remembraunce" and ends with "Hath thirled with the poynt of remembraunce," copied from Purgatory 12.32, "la punctura di la rimembranza."
The House of Fame, a dream vision in three books in which the narrator is guided through the heavens by an otherworldly guide, has been described as a parody of the Comedy. The narrator echoes Inferno 2.32 in the poem (2.588–592).
The Monk's Tale from The Canterbury Tales describes (in greater and more emphatic detail) the plight of Count Ugolino (Inferno, cantos 32 and 33), referring explicitly to Dante's original text in 7.2459–2462.
The beginning of the last stanza of Troilus and Criseyde (5.1863-65) is modelled on Paradiso 12.28–30.[6]
Early Modern
John Milton finds various uses for Dante, whose work he knew well:[7]
Milton refers to Dante's insistence on the separation of worldly and religious power in Of Reformation, where he cites Inferno 19.115–117.
Beatrice's condemnation of corrupt and neglectful preachers, Paradiso 29.107–109 ("so that the wretched sheep, in ignorance, / return from pasture, having fed on wind") is translated and adapted in Lycidas 125–126, "The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed, / But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw," when Milton condemns corrupt clergy.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who translated the Divine Comedy into English, wrote a poem titled "Mezzo Cammin" ("Halfway," 1845), alluding to the first line of the Comedy,[9] and a sonnet sequence (of six sonnets) under the title "Divina Commedia" (1867); these were published as flyleaves to his translation.[10]
Karl Marx uses a paraphrase of Purgatory (V, 13) to conclude the preface to the first edition of Das Kapital (1867), as a kind of motto: "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti" ("follow your own road, and let the people talk").[11]
Lesya Ukrainka's poem "The Forgotten Shadow" (1898) is a feminist reinterpretation of Dante and Beatrice. The forgotten shadow in the poem is Gemma Donati, Alighieri's wife.[12]
In Jorge Luis Borges's 1945 short story The Aleph, the protagonist mourns the recent death of Beatriz Viterbo, whom he loved, at the beginning and meets his cousin Carlos Argentino Daneri.
Turkish poetCahit Sıtkı Tarancı's famous poem "Otuz Beş Yaş" (lit. "Thirty Five Years") is beginning with the verses which contains a citation of Inferno: "Yaş otuz beş! Yolun yarısı eder / Dante gibi ortasındayız ömrün" ("Age thirty five! It is half of way / We are in the middle of life like Dante") won the Best Turkish Poem Prize in 1946.[18]
Primo Levi cites Dante's Divine Comedy in the chapter called "Canto of Ulysses" in his novel Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man) (1947), published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz, and in other parts of this book; the fires of Hell are compared to the "real threat of the fires of the crematorium."[19]
Malcolm Lowry paralleled Dante's descent into hell with Geoffrey Firmin's descent into alcoholism in his epic novel Under the Volcano (1947). In contrast to the original, Lowry's character explicitly refuses grace and "chooses hell," though Firmin does have a Dr. Vigil as a guide (and his brother, Hugh Firmin, quotes the Comedy from memory in ch. 6).[20]
The seventh and last chapter from Leopoldo Marechal's first novel, Adam Buenosayres (1948), is a parody of the Inferno, entitled "Journey To The Dark City Of Cacodelphia", wherein the titular character meets several of his literary contemporaries (including his guide).[21]
Poet Derek Walcott, in 1949, published Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos, which he later acknowledged as influenced by Dante.[16]
Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote extensively about Dante,[16][22] included two short texts in his Dreamtigers (El Hacedor, 1960): "Paradiso, XXXI, 108" and "Inferno, I, 32," which paraphrase and comment on Dante's lines.[23][24]
African-American author LeRoi Jones, in 1965, published the novel The System of Dante's Hell, in which a young African-American man lives nomadically in the Southern United States, struggling with segregation and racism. The book correlates the man's experience with Dante's Inferno, and includes a diagram of the fictional hell described by Dante.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel The First Circle (1968) takes its title from the Inferno. Set in a special Gulag for scientists, it parallels Dante's First Circle (Limbo) where virtuous philosophers of antiquity are separated from God and humanity but not punished in any other way.[25]
James Merrill published his Divine Comedies, a collection of poetry, in 1976; a selection in that volume, "The Book of Ephraim", consists "of conversations held, via the Ouija board, with dead friends and spirits in 'another world.'"[26]
Authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a modern sequel to the Inferno, Inferno (1976), in which a science fiction author dies during a fan convention and finds himself in Hell, where Benito Mussolini functions as his guide. They wrote a subsequent sequel to their own work, Escape from Hell (2009).[27][28]
Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills (1985) uses Dante's Inferno as a model for the trek made by two young black poets who spend the days before Christmas doing odd jobs in an affluent African American community. The young men soon discover the price paid by the inhabitants of Linden Hills for pursuing the American dream.[29]
Mark E. Rogers used the structure of Dante's hell in his 1998 comedic novelSamurai Cat Goes to Hell (the last in the Samurai Cat series), and includes the trope of a gate to hell with an "abandon hope" inscription.[31]
Twenty-first century
Irish poet Seamus Heaney published a poem, "A Dream of Solstice", on the front page of the Irish Times (18 January 2000) that begins with a translation of Paradiso 33.58–61 as "Like somebody who sees things when he's dreaming / And after the dream lives with the aftermath / Of what he felt, no other trace remaining, / So I live now".[32][33]
Nick Tosches's In The Hand of Dante (2002) weaves a contemporary tale about the finding of an original manuscript of the Divine Comedy with an imagined account of Dante's years composing the work.[34]
Inferno by Peter Weiss (written in 1964, published in 2003) is a play inspired by the Comedy, the first part of a planned trilogy.[35]
The Dante Club is a 2003 novel by Matthew Pearl that tells the story of various American poets translating The Divine Comedy in post-civil warBoston, who must also investigate murders being committed based on the punishments in the text, due to their desire to protect Dante's reputation and the fact that only they have the necessary expertise to understand the murderer's motivations.[34]
Óscar Esquivias in his trilogy of novels Inquietud en el Paraíso (2005), La ciudad del Gran Rey (2006) and Viene la noche (2007) shows his personal vision of Dante's Divine Comedy.[36]
In the novel The Tenth Circle (2006) by Jodi Picoult, the main character's comic strip, The Tenth Circle, is based on the Inferno.[37]
Dante himself is a character in The Master of Verona (2007), a novel by David Blixt that combines the people of Dante's time with the characters of Shakespeare's Italian plays.[38]
Dale E. Basye's book series Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (began in 2008) features a modified version of the nine circles of hell.
S.A. Alenthony's novel The Infernova (2009) is a parody of the Inferno as seen from an atheist's perspective, with Mark Twain acting as the guide.[39]
Laura Elizabeth Woollett's 2014 novel The Wood of Suicides is named after the second ring of the seventh circle of hell.
Adam Roberts' Purgatory Mount is a 2021 science fiction novel that features a huge mountain on a distant planet resembling Dante's Mount Purgatory.[41]
Auguste Rodin's sculptural group The Gates of Hell draws heavily on the Inferno. The component sculpture, Paolo and Francesca, represents Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, whom Dante meets in Canto 5.[42] The version of this sculpture known as The Kiss shows the book that Paolo and Francesca were reading. Other component sculptures include Ugolino and his children (Canto 33) and The Shades, who originally pointed to the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate" ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here") from Canto 3.[42] Sculptures of Grief and Despair cannot be assigned to particular sections of the Inferno, but are in keeping with the overall theme. The famous component sculpture The Thinker, near the top of the gate, and also produced as an independent work, may represent Dante himself.[42]
Timothy Schmalz created a series of 100 sculptures, one for each canto, on the 700th anniversary of the date of Dante’s death.[43]
Stradanus prepared a series of illustrations of Inferno.[46]
A commentary by La Comedia di Dante Alighieri con la nova esposizione written by Alessandro Vellutello and printed in 1544 by Francesco Marcolini, was illustrated with 87 engravings, possibly by Giovanni Britto.[47]
John Flaxman's set of one hundred and eleven illustrations were influential across Europe on artists such as Goya and Ingres, because of their radically minimalist style.[48]
Gustave Doré made the most famous illustrations in the 19th century; the plates were drawn in 1857, and published in 1860 with Henry Francis Cary's translation.[50]
The Palacio Barolo in Buenos Aires, completed in 1923, was designed in accordance with the cosmology of Dante's Divine Comedy, motivated by Italian architect Mario Palanti's admiration for Dante.[62]
Edward Watson and Sarah Lamb as Dante and Beatrice in "Paradiso", the final section of The Dante Project, 2021In 2021, the Royal Opera House put on The Dante Project, choreographed by Wayne McGregor to new music composed and conducted by Thomas Adès, with set and costumes by Tacita Dean. It was danced by The Royal Ballet, led by its principal dancer Edward Watson as Dante, in his final appearance after 20 years working with and interpreting McGregor. The music was performed live by an orchestra of 75 musicians. Sarah Crompton called the work "bold, beautiful, emotional and utterly engaging".[64] The dance is in three sections. "Inferno" shows Dante's journey to hell, guided by Virgil, in "remarkably free and inventive"[64] choreography, "rich in feeling".[64] "Purgatorio" shows Dante meeting two incarnations of his young self, and three of the woman he loves, Beatrice. Watson dances with the living Beatrice (Francesca Hayward) "in lovely, poetic flow",[64] and then with the heavenly Beatrice (Sarah Lamb) "all unfolding limbs and ethereal gestures".[64] "Paradiso" has Dante in heaven with the dancers skittering about the stage all in white, in what Crompton calls a mood "of abstracted joy, deep but dazzling".[64]
In Claudio Monteverdi's 1607 opera L'Orfeo, the title character is bombarded with the famous line Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate[65] as he attempts to enter the underworld.
Numerous mainly 19th century operas treat the story of Francesca da Rimini, many of them including those by Pellico (1818), Strepponi (1823), Carlini, Mercadante, Quilici, Generali, Staffa, Manna, Fournier, Tamburini, Borgatta, Morlacchi, Papparlardo, Nordal, Maglioni, Bellini, DeVasinis, Meiners (1841), Cannetti, Brancaccio, Rolland, Ruggieri, Pinelli, Franchini, Meiners (again, this time in 1860), Gilson, Sescewich, Boullard, Marcarini, Moscuzza, Goetz, Cagnoni, Thomas, Impallomeni, Gilson, Nápravník, Rachmaninov (in 1906), Leoni, Zandonai (1914, based on the 1901 play by Gabriele D'Annunzio), and Henried (in 1920) all having that same title.[67]
Benjamin Godard's Dante et Béatrice from 1890 depicts Dante not as a famous poet, but as a young man implicated in political and love intrigues in his quest for Beatrice.[68]
Lucia Ronchetti's 2021 opera Inferno is based on the Inferno section of The Divine Comedy. Its libretto consists mostly of Dante's original writing as compiled by the composer.[71]
Classical music
The first of three themes in Liszt's Dante Symphony for the Gates of Hell. It begins in D minor and ends ambiguously on G♯, a tritone higher.
By 1995, the Divine Comedy had been set to music over 120 times; Gioacchino Rossini created two such settings. Only 8 of the settings are of the complete Commedia, "the most famous"[67] being Liszt's symphony; others have composed music for some of Dante's characters, while yet others have set passages of the Commedia to music.[67]
Franz Liszt's Symphony to Dante's Divina Commedia (completed 1856) has two movements: "Inferno" and "Purgatorio." A concluding "Magnificat" is included at the end of the "Purgatorio" movement and replaces the planned third movement, which was to be called "Paradiso" (Liszt was dissuaded by Richard Wagner from his original plan).[72] Liszt also composed a Dante Sonata (started 1837, completed 1849).[73]
The text of the short prayer from the opening lines of Canto 33 of Paradiso was set to music for a cappella women's voices by Giuseppe Verdi. Composed between 1886 and 1888, "Laudi alla Vergine Maria" (Praises to the Virgin Mary), the third movement of his Four Sacred Pieces[75] was one of the last pieces written before his death.
Henry Barraud's cantata for five voices and 15 instruments, La divine comédie, based on Dante's text, was composed in 1972.[76]
Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's 2008 film opera in five parts La Commedia incorporates texts from Vondel and the Old Testament, in addition to The Divine Comedy. The five parts are "The City of Dis, or The Ship of Fools", "Racconto dall'Inferno", "Lucifer", "The Garden of Delights", and "Luce Etterna".[77]
Popular music
The song "Canto IV (Limbo)" from Progressive music group Discipline's 1997 album Unfolded Like Staircase describes the sorrow of those souls who never knew a deity.[78]
Tangerine Dream has released albums setting all the three parts of The Divine Comedy to music: Inferno is a recording of a live performance at the St Marien zu Bernau Cathedral in 2001, and Purgatorio and Paradiso are studio albums from 2004 and 2006 respectively.[79]
German Dark Electro band yelworC has made two albums of a trilogy based on the three canticas of the Divine Comedy, Trinity, released in 2004 from material partially composed in the 90s, and Icolation, released in 2007.[80][81]
American singer-songwriter Ethel Cain's debut album Preacher's Daughter (2022) contains the song "Ptolomaea", named after one of the four concentric rings of the Ninth Circle of Hell, as depicted in the Inferno.[84]
Irish Musician Hozier's third studio album Unreal Unearth (2023) is inspired by Inferno. Each song signifies Dante's journey through one of the nine circles of Hell and his ascent on the other side.[85]
Radio
Inferno Revisited, a modernised interpretation of Dante written by Peter Howell, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 April 1983.[86]
Between March and April 2014, the BBC adapted The Divine Comedy for Radio 4, starring Blake Ritson and John Hurt playing younger and older versions of Dante.[87]
Krzysztof Kieślowski planned to create a new trilogy inspired by Dante's The Divine Comedy after finishing The Three Colors Trilogy (1993–1994). This intention, however, was abandoned after his death in 1996 until Tom Tykwer decided to shoot the film Heaven in 2002, using Kieslowski's original screenplay.[93] In 2005, Bosnian director Danis Tanović directed Hell (French) based on Kieslowski's screenplay sketches. The screenplay was completed by Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Kieslowski's screenwriter.[94]
Ridley Scott's 2001 film Hannibal has Hannibal Lecter as a medievalist lecturing on Dante's Divine Comedy, and to some extent echoing the work in his murderous methods.[96]
Jean-Luc Godard's 2004 film Notre musique is structured in three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise respectively, alluding to the Divine Comedy.[97]
The film Dante's Inferno (2007) is based on Sandow Birk's contemporary drawings of the Divine Comedy. The film accurately retells the original story, but with the addition of more recent residents of Hell such as Adolf Hitler and Boss Tweed.[98][99]
The 2015 Chinese documentary Behemoth (Chinese: 悲兮魔兽; pinyin: bēixī móshòu), directed by Zhao Liang, is loosely based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and is about the environmental, sociological, and public health effects of coal-mining in China and Inner Mongolia.[100]
The 2016 mystery thriller Inferno makes many references to The Divine Comedy and to the Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli including hiding a word puzzle in a version of the painting Map of Hell with the levels of Hell rearranged. There's a clue in an email that refers to a passage from Paradiso and the virus that serves as the catalyst for the film's plot is named "Inferno."[101]
The 2018 film The House That Jack Built features Matt Dillon as protagonist Jack, a serial killer who believes that his murders are a piece of art, similar to the Divine Comedy. Jack encounters Virgil, or Virg, as he calls him, as a hallucination portrayed by Bruno Ganz, (well known from his role as Adolf Hitler in 2004's Downfall). Jack carries on a commentary with Virgil throughout the film sometimes expressing his desire of becoming an architect despite being an engineer. Jack ends up wearing Dante Alighieri's red robe while unsuccessfully attempting to escape Inferno after rejecting Virg's advice to follow him into Purgatorio, the only safe way of reaching the destination of Paradiso.[102]
Dave Sim's Cerebus in Hell satirically utilizes Gustave Doré's engravings for the Divine Comedy, such as this one of Dante and Virgil in the Inferno, as backgrounds.[104]
Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic series, running from January 1989 to March 1996, features a heavily Dante-inspired Hell, including the Wood of Suicides, the Malebolge, and the City of Dis; Lucifer is imprisoned in Hell.[109]Mike Carey's spin-off series Lucifer, also from DC/Vertigo Comics, was based on characters from The Sandman. It features aspects of a Dante-inspired Hell and Heaven, particularly the Primum Mobile and the Nine Sections.[110]
In the 1996 Spanish comic El infierno, part of the Superlópez series, the titular character travels to Hell to prevent a demonic contract from being fulfilled. The search reveals a structure identical to the one in the Divine Comedy. Dante is also namedropped many times in the album.[111]
Dante's Inferno: The Graphic Novel (2012) by Joseph Lanzara utilizes Gustave Doré's 1857 illustrations of the Divine Comedy in the form of a comic book inspired by the poem.[112]
The Cartoon Network's debut miniseries, Over the Garden Wall (November 2014), corresponds to the structure of the Inferno; it stars a lost poet guided by a woman named Beatrice.[113]
Dave Sim's sequel series to his comic Cerebus, Cerebus in Hell? (2017) satirically utilizes Gustave Doré's engravings for the Divine Comedy as backgrounds and plot devices.[104]
Dante's Inferno is a series of six comic books based on the same video game. Published by WildStorm from December 2009 through May 2010, the series was written by Christos Gage with art by Diego Latorre.[116]
The game Ultrakill is partially inspired by Dante's Inferno, with the games setting being a Hell divided into distinct layers like in the Divine Comedy. Though some layers are mirrored, like Lust and Greed, there are some that have shared aspects and original aspects, such as violence, and others that are not, such as Heresy, which does not share names or themes with Dante's version of Hell.
Tabletop role-playing games
Several aspects of the Divine Comedy could have influenced many tabletop role-playing games: visiting ordered parallel worlds on a planar crawl, a gamified progression by trials and levels towards salvation, or using deciphered symbolism to acquire knowledge that gives more power to characters.[117]
The Planescape setting, in particular, borrows many elements from the book (some wholesale, some piecemeal), and much of the expanded cosmology, with dimensions for the dead based on alignment and most dimensions having many separate layers, are inspired by those seen in the Inferno. The planecrawling gameplay of Planescape and early setting of D&D could be heavily inspired by the structured travel of Dante through the layers of the planes of the Divine Comedy.[117]
Acheron Games published Inferno, a tabletop role-playing game heavily inspired by the depiction of hell as found in the Divine Comedy.[120]
Web Originals
One of the food items listed in SCP-261's experiment log is a package of nine distinct circular, concentric biscuits labeled "Dante's", and the tagline on the packaging reads "Tastes like hell!".[121]
Wisniewski, Mary (2007-11-04). "'Master' class; Chicago actor gives readers a delightful romp through the backstory of Romeo & Juliet". Chicago Sun-Times. p.B9.
Fugelso, Karl (2011). "Tom Phillips' Dante". In Richard Utz; Elizabeth Emery (eds.). Cahier Calin: Makers of the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of William Calin. Studies in Medievalism. Kalamazoo, Michigan: not stated. pp.62–64.
Roglieri, Maria Ann (1995). "From "le rime aspre e chiocce to la dolce sinfonia di Paradiso": Musical Settings of Dante's "Commedia"". Dante Studies (113): 175–208. JSTOR40166513.
Maria Ann Roglieri Dante and Music: Musical Adaptations of the Commedia 2001 "Benjamin Godard's Dante et Beatrice, like Carrer's opera, is a fantasy. Godard's work also features a full-blown romance between Dante and Beatrice but includes a slightly more coherent and comprehensive treatment of Dante's text"
Welle, John P. (2004). "Early Cinima, Dante's Inferno of 1911, and the Origins of Italian Film Culture". In Iannucci, Amilcare A. (ed.). Dante, Cinema, and Television. University of Toronto Press. pp.36, 38–40. ISBN0-8020-8827-9.
Workman, Chris; Howarth, Troy (2016). Tome of terror horror films of the silent era (1895-1929. Baltimore: Midnight Marquee Press. p.275. ISBN978-1-936168-68-2. OCLC1083765034.
Prisco, Francesco (April 27, 2007). "Go Nagai, il padre di Goldrake: "Devilman? E' figlio del Lucifero di Dante""[Go Nagai, the father of Goldrake: "Devilman? The son of Dante's Lucifer"]. Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian). [https:w.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Tempo%20libero%20e%20Cultura/2007/04/intervista-nagai-prisco.shtml0Cultura/2007/04/intervista-nagai-prisco.shtml Archived] from the original on April 18, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2017.{{cite web}}: Check |archive-url= value (help)
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