Rosa Celeste: Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradiso Canto 31, where Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean
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.
The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. Divided into three parts: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven), it is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature[1] and one of the greatest works of world literature.[2] The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it had developed in the Catholic Church by the 14th century. It helped to establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language.[3]
Literature
Medieval
Dante is depicted (bottom, centre) in Andrea di Bonaiuto's 1365 fresco Church Militant and Triumphant in the Santa Maria Novella church, Florence
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.
The title of Honoré de Balzac's work La Comédie humaine (the "Human Comedy," 1815–1848) is usually considered a conscious adaptation of Dante's.[8]
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]
Twentieth century
In E. M. Forster's novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), the character of Gino Carella, upon first introducing himself, quotes the first lines of Inferno[13] (the novel includes several references to Dante's La Vita Nuova as well).[14]
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]
Sandro Botticelli made the most famous set of illustrations during the Renaissance for a manuscript of the Divine Comedy commissioned by Lorenzo Pierfrancesco de' Medici; Botticelli also designed a series of illustrations for the 1481 edition of the poem.[45]
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]
William Blake planned and executed several watercolour illustrations to the Divine Comedy, including The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides. Though he did not finish the series before his death in 1827, they offer a powerful visual interpretation of the poem.[49]
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]
The Danteum is an unbuilt monument designed by the Italian modernist architect Giuseppe Terragni in 1938 at the behest of Benito Mussolini's fascist dictatorship.[63]
Performing arts
Dance
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]
Opera
Sergei Rachmaninoff with members of the premiere cast of his opera Francesca da Rimini in 1906
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.
Gaetano Donizetti's 1837 opera Pia de' Tolomei centers around the life of the titular Pia de' Tolomei as mentioned in Purgatorio Canto XIII.
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.[66]
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.[67]
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.
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"[66] 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.[66]
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).[68] Liszt also composed a Dante Sonata (started 1837, completed 1849).[69]
Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky's 1876 Francesca da Rimini (subtitled "Symphonic Fantasy After Dante") is a symphonic poem based on an episode in the fifth canto of the Inferno.[70]
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[71] 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.[72]
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".[73]
Popular music
Italian progressive rock band Metamorfosi has released two concept albums based on the Divine Comedy, Inferno (in 1972) and Paradiso (2004).[citation needed]
On his 1992 album Façanhas, Brazilian musician Arrigo Barnabé set the first 48 lines of the Inferno (translated to Portuguese by the famous poet Augusto de Campos) to music.[citation needed]
F. M. Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten and Andreas Ammer collaborated on an experimental recording called Radio Inferno, a 1993 radio play adaptation of the Comedy.[citation needed]
Mexican death metal band Transmetal released El Infierno de Dante in 1993. The English version, Dante's Inferno, was released in 1994.[citation needed]
Metal band Iced Earth's album Burnt Offerings (1995) contains the epic 16 minute song "Dante's Inferno".
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.[74]
Austrian gothic metal band Dreams of Sanity's 1997 debut album Komödia is partially based on The Divine Comedy.[citation needed]
Zao refer to the Divine Comedy on their 1999 album Liberate Te Ex Inferis, covering the first five circles of the Inferno.
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.[75]
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.[76][77]
Punk singer Mike Watt's third solo album, The Secondman's Middle Stand (2004), is a concept album that derives its structure from The Divine Comedy.[citation needed]
Australian goth-electro band the Tenth Stage has a self-titled track (2006) that describes the singer's descent past the nine stages of Dante's poem to a 10th stage of Hell.[citation needed]
Professor Fate's album Inferno (2007) was inspired by the Comedy.[citation needed]
The Finnish progressive rock magazine Colossus and Musea Records produced three multi-disc boxsets dedicated to each of the canticas of the Divine Comedy – Inferno (2008), Purgatorio (2009) and Paradiso (2010) – with the participation of several bands such as Yesterdays, Little Tragedies, Nathan Mahl and Phideaux.[citation needed]
British rapper and saxophonist Soweto Kinch's 2013 album The Legend of Mike Smith is based on the Inferno, and includes songs named for the nine circles of hell.[citation needed]
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.[80]
Irish Singer-Songwriter Hozier's 2023 EP, Eat Your Young, and the following album Unreal Unearth features songs inspired by discrete circles present in the Inferno.
Inferno Revisited, a modernised interpretation of Dante written by Peter Howell, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 April 1983.[81]
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.[82]
The 1924 silent filmDante's Inferno, directed by Henry Otto, features the 1911 film, L'Inferno; the section on the inferno is reduced to a ten-minute segment.[84]
The 1935 motion pictureDante's Inferno, directed by Harry Lachman, written by Philip Klein and starring Spencer Tracy, is about a fairground attraction based on Inferno. The film features a 10-minute fantasy sequence visualizing Dante's Inferno.
The 1975 Pier Paolo Pasolini film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is set in four segments inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy: the Anteinferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and the Circle of Blood.[85]
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.[88] 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.[89]
The motion pictureSe7en (1995) stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as two detectives who investigate a series of ritualistic murders inspired by the seven deadly sins. The film makes many references to Dante's Divine Comedy.[90]
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.[91]
Jean-Luc Godard's 2004 film Notre musique is structured in three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise respectively, alluding to the Divine Comedy.[92]
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.[93][94]
The 2014 film As Above, So Below directed by John Erick Dowdle, is based on Dante Alighieri's Inferno. It is presented as found footage of a documentary crew's experience exploring the Catacombs of Paris and draws inspiration of the nine layers of Hell.
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.[95]
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."[96]
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.[97]
The 4th season (2005) of the BBC drama series Messiah: The Harrowing focuses on a serial killer who takes inspiration from Inferno to punish his or her victims.[citation needed]
In the tenth season (2014–2015) of Criminal Minds, the case in the second episode, "Burn", written by Janine Sherman Barrois, tracks the actions of a serial killer whose crimes are inspired by the punishment in each circle of Hell.[citation needed]
The Good Place (2016–2020) follows an analogous pattern in its main plot, with its characters ascending from hell, through struggles on earth, and into paradise over the course of the show.[citation needed]
Graphic media
Animations, comics and graphic novels
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.[99]
DC/Vertigo Comics' Kid Eternity's premier appearance in Hit Comics #25, (published by Quality Comics in December 1942), tells the story of Kid and his companion Jerry Sullivan's travels to a Dante-inspired Hell to free one of Kid's partners. The structure of the comic also draws features from Dante's Inferno.[citation needed]
In the 1946 Looney Tunes short Book Revue, the Big Bad Wolf slips and falls into a copy of Dante's Inferno.
Mickey's Inferno is a comic book adaptation from 1949 featuring Disney characters including Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck. Written by Guido Martina and drawn by Angelo Bioletto, it was published by the then-Italian Disney comic book licensee Mondadori in the monthly Topolino from October to March 1950. An English-language version appeared in the aptly numbered Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #666 (March 2006).[citation needed]
Manga series Saint Seiya's "Hades Inferno" arc (1986), has many characters and structures of Hell based on the circles of Dante, where they're called the Nine Prisons.[citation needed]
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.[104] 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.[105]
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.[106]
The 1997 anime Revolutionary Girl Utena has a second ending theme song titled "Virtual Star Embryology" that has a stanza that lists the Spheres of Heaven from the third and final part of the Divine Comedy. It lists from the First Sphere: The Moon to the Ninth Sphere: The Primum Mobile.[citation needed]
The main antagonists of the mangaFullmetal Alchemist (2001–2010) and animeFullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009–2010) are seven homunculi, each named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins with the exception of Father. There were originally eight, but Greed defected due to his avarice. In addition, Lust is killed when Mustang incinerates her beyond her ability to regenerate using flame alchemy, a direct reference to Purgatorio.[citation needed]
In the 2004 Japanese gothic horror visual novel Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, the main character is guided through the nine circles of Hell towards the end of the game.[citation needed]
The Japanese murder mystery visual novel and anime series Umineko no Naku Koro ni (Umineko When they Cry) debuted in August 2007. It contains several elements from the Divine Comedy, including two characters named Beatrice (as the Golden Witch), Virgilia (as the Endless Witch) and the Stakes (Seven Deadly Sins).[citation needed]
The anime adaptation has an ending theme entitled La Divina Tragedia ~Makyoku~, named after the title La Divina Comedia. "Makyoku" is the opposite of "Shinkyoku", Divine Comedy's Japanese title.[citation needed]
In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Buck says, "Abandon all hope, ye who enters there".
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.[107]
The short animation, Dante's Hell Animated (2014), featuring Eric Roberts as Dante, is based on Dino di Durante's original paintings of Dante's Inferno.[citation needed]
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.[108]
IDW Publishing's Godzilla in Hell miniseries (2015) has Godzilla finding himself in Hell after accidentally destroying the planet in a battle with SpaceGodzilla and rampaging his way through the levels of Hell to find a way out. After destroying the "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" sign with his atomic breath, he battles demons and manifestations of familiar monsters representing various sins. He finally turns a monster-part version of the Mount of Purgatory into a battlefield between the forces of Heaven and Hell that want to recruit him into their ranks.[citation needed]
In the manga series Black Clover (since 2015), there is a villain named Dante Zogratis.
The 2017 anime series Sin Nanatsu no Taizai (Seven Mortal Sins) incorporates elements from the Divine Comedy, including Cocytus in episode 1, the inscription on the gates in episode 9, and a reenactment of Dante's journey to the lowest level of Hell.[citation needed]
In the 2017 Disney/Pixar film Coco, there is a Xolo dog named Dante.
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.[99]
Final Fantasy IV (from 1991) features four Elemental Lords named Rubicante, Scarmiglione, Barbariccia, and Cagnazzo, after members of the Malebranche. A mid-game boss, Calcabrina, also has the name of a Malebranche demon. Also, there exists a superboss in the DS version named Geryon.[citation needed]
In Wild Arms 2 from 1999, there is a gang called Cocytus, whose members are named Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca.[citation needed]
In the game series Devil May Cry (2001), the protagonist's name is Dante, his brother is Vergil, and Dante's partner-in-crime's name is Trish, a derivative of the name Beatrice. It uses the nine circles in its world structure, the seven deadly sins as enemy names in the third game, and parts of Lake Cocytus (Caina, Antenora and Judecca) as names of enemies in the fifth game.[citation needed]
In Persona 3 FES (released in Japan on April 19, 2007) areas are called Malebolge, Cocytus, Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, Judecca, and Empyrean.[citation needed]
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.[110]
Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic is a direct-to-DVDanimated film released on February 9, 2010. The film is also a spin-off from Dante's Inferno.[citation needed]
The 2012 game Resident Evil: Revelations references Dante's Inferno extensively. A bioterrorist organization, "Il Veltro", believes society has degraded into a living version of the nine circles. Verses of the poem are provided at the start of each level, while a number of enemies in the game are named after the Malebranche also featured in the poem. The music in the final chapter has a choir eerily singing lines from Inferno, and the final boss actually quotes it before entering his chamber. [citation needed]
Released on Steam in September 2020, the plot of Ultrakill revolves around machines descending through Hell in order to take blood from the souls of the damned. The different layers are named after those seen in Inferno and many feature punishments similar to those seen in the poem. The game takes significant liberties with the material of Inferno, and some layers bear little or no resemblance to how Dante describes them. For example, Greed, has an Ancient Egyptian style in the game and is where Sisyphus was being punished in, who Dante never directly mentioned.[citation needed]
Korean game studio Project Moon's 2023 game Limbus Company features a variety of characters based on classical literary figures and characters. Among these characters is Dante, the manager and main playable character of the game, and Vergilius, Dante's guide. The game also refers to its individual chapters as "Canto."[citation needed]
Card games
The trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh! released a series of cards known as "Burning Abyss" starting in 2014. All cards in the series are based on the eighth circle of Hell and the Malebranche, including Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice.[citation needed]
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.[111]
The tabletop role-playing gameDungeons & Dragons named some levels of the Nine Hells after locations in Dante's Inferno.[112] The game borrowed the name "malebranche" for one diabolical race, although the original write-up mistranslated that word as "evil horn".[113]
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.[111]
Acheron Games published Inferno, a tabletop role-playing game heavily inspired by the depiction of hell as found in the Divine Comedy.[114]
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!".[115]
Notes
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^All Chaucer references in David Wallace, "Dante in English," in Jacoff, Rachel (1993). The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge University Press. pp. 237–258. ISBN 978-0-521-42742-5.
^Benson, Larry D. (1987). The Riverside Chaucer. Houghton Mifflin. pp. 1058. ISBN 0-395-29031-7.
^All Milton references in David Wallace, "Dante in English," in Jacoff, Rachel (1993). The Cambridge Companion to Dante. Cambridge University Press. pp. 237–58. ISBN 0-521-42742-8. 241–244.
^Robb, Graham. Balzac: A Life. New York: Norton, 1996. P. 330.
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External links
700 Years of Dante's Divine Comedy in Art – documented image collection on The Public Domain Review
DivineComedy.digital – a website cataloging 700 years of the Divine Comedy