Announcement!
After 2 years of devotedly publishing poetry and prose online, we are developing our first print book, a modern redux of Dante’s Inferno. If you don’t know the story, Dante’s Divine Comedy starts with a mid-life crisis. From there, the poet descends through 9 layers of hell then out the other side through 7 layers of purgatory before finally arriving in heaven where a woman he had a crush on gives him a tour. And then he wakes up. And all the frauds looked like you! And all the fornicators looked like you! And all the murderers looked like–wait… what are you all doing lurking in my bedroom?
Lots of people imagine what their private hell would be; or daydream about consigning their colleagues to such a place. So why do it?
Just for that reason: because it’s relatable and accessible. And fun.
Why Dante?
Why write a redux of Dante? When you take on such a project, you’re saying two things: (1) This poem from the year 1300 is still relevant to readers today. (2) Okay but it could be a widdle bit more relevant.
Some of the outdated parts of Dante are obvious. A lot of us don’t believe in the Christian Hell anymore, or in any hell. But some are not so obvious. Dante’s world was obsessed with the Latin classics. In this one scene where Dante is fanboying over meeting Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan (plus Virgil whom he has already met) the average 1300s reader would expect to be as familiar with all five as the modern reader is with Shakespeare and Dickens.
But we can’t expect that anymore. And reading a poem with footnotes is like talking through an interpreter. Too much is lost. So… What to do?
The Dante Project
Well let’s start with what is still relevant about Dante. Thing one is his ability to craft universally relatable scenarios. When he describes the circle of Lust as a never-ending hurricane, you can imagine today’s readers saying: “Bruh. That’s a whole-ass mood.”
Thing two is his passion for gossip. When people talk about the Divina Commedia, they tend to emphasize the “Divine” half. You can understand why. The grand set-pieces Dante develops are impressive as hell (see what I did there). But it’s the “Comedy” half that is the most important. Because you know what’s even more impressive than all that scenery? Wading through the literal bowels of literal hell to trade news with some guy you recognize from that thing that one time.
I’m not judging. Quite the opposite. It shows incredible commitment to the worth of the human project that, even in the midst of such grandeur, Dante focuses on what’s important: connecting with old friends. It reminds me of the famous line from Yehuda Amichai:
“You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it,
left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.”
Dante the Petty Bitch
Thing three (I saved my favorite for last) is Dante’s passion for settling old scores. Reading through the Commedia leaves you in no doubt as to how Dante feels about:
-The Popes (especially the ones who moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon)
-The Prophet Muhammad
-The Greeks
-Some guy named Bocca degli Abbati (Dante hhhhhates this guy)
-And of course the great betrayers, Judas, Brutus, Cassius, and lastly Satan himself.
It’s easy to read Dante’s stuff and laugh over how much he loved having a joke at the expense of his political rivals, his personal enemies and frenemies, and so on. I mean. It was over 700 years ago that Dante’s story took place. We’re used to thinking of people from the past as being marble statues.
But what must it have been like to write at the time? Dante spoke Tuscan, not Italian; so the only people even capable of reading his book would have been his neighbors, i.e. the friends/relatives/neighbors of the people he was writing about. Imagine those awkward confrontations in town for years after…
Behold!
So with that long but hopefully diverting preamble, we bring you this homage to the works of Dante. A group of 11 writers dug deep to give you what we believe Dante would sound like if he were writing today in the United States. Or Spain. Or Nigeria (it’s a diverse group we’ve gathered).
In the spirit of Dante, we’ve drawn on our own experiences: people we’ve loved and lost; people we’ve hated and lost; scores we’ve wanted to settle in print for years.
The pages you’ll read will be wet with our tears; and it’ll be hard at times to tell whether the tears fell in joy or sorrow or, what’s more likely, a bit of both.
An illustration depicting the various layers of hell, with Satan in an icy lake at the bottom. Drawn, apparently, by Sandro frigging Botticelli. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.