Dante/ Author photos
Dear readers! A month has gone by since the appearance of the story of the bells, and I have been running around like a demented person. For much of May, I was in Florence researching an article about Dante mania. I think it will be a longish article so I’m not going to go into it all here. But probably the highlight was on May 16, when I and my dear friend Marilena Ruscica (who is just finishing a dissertation in Stanford Slavic about Dante and Mandelstam) participated in a Dante marathon. That afternoon, the entire Divine Comedy is read in public spaces: Inferno on the outskirts of the city, Purgatorio closer to the historic center, and Paradiso on a straightaway ending at the Duomo. Marilena and I were lucky enough to get Inferno XXXIII, in which Count Ugolino may or may not eat his own children. We also got to say horrible things about people from the nearby cities of Pisa and Genoa:
Here you can see Marilena and me in our Inferno 33 jerseys, just before the reading, in the Chiostro dello Scalzo:
In addition to the skulls and crossbones at the bases of all the pillars, the cloister was remarkable for its beautiful frescoes by Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio, one of which represents Dante in the audience of the Sermon on the Mount. I don’t know if you can tell from such a small picture, but Il Sommo Poeta looks pretty grouchy, as usual:
The following week in Pisa, I interviewed the forensic anthropologist Francesco Mallegni who, together with a team of experts, recently reconstructed Dante’s head and established that he didn’t really look like that. Virtual modeling techniques have shown that the real Dante was "less severe" than we thought, more "worn out," "human," "perplexed," "less pointy":
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| Dante cenotaph, Santa Croce Stefano Ricci (1830) |
Reconstructed Dante head Mallegni, et al. (2007) |
Fascinated as one is by the work of Mallegni (the same forensic mastermind who exhumed Count Ugolino in 2002, proving that the real-life count didn’t have enough teeth to eat his own children), I nonetheless admit that, here at My Life and Thoughts, we were kind of attached to the severe, pointy Dante—that long-suffering poet who solved the problem of the time of writing only by being exiled from Florence for most of his creative life, which he spent writing a poem so long that it "made [him] lean for many years" (Par. XXV)… I guess it comes back to the question of the author photograph: which is the face of the true A-list writer?
Tags: author photos, clothes, comparative literature, poetry
May 31st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Did Benigni’s Tutto Dante make it into your calendario delle manifestazioni?
June 1st, 2009 at 9:32 am
Even after getting the Mallegni makeover, Dante’s face still doesn’t really say: “I just wrote a really entertaining book that you might like to pay $14 for.”…
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 pm
sorry, can i add a few others’ thoughts? a link to my mandelstam paper:
reconfigurations.blogspot.com/2008/11/james-stotts-notes-on-osip-mandelstam.html
and a poem by paul otremba:
I don’t think they’ll find the new weaving
anywhere finer than truth.
—Osip Mandelstam
I’ve tried to sift a truth finer than salt
from my mouth. It matters: I get up
or I do not. The books can wait, leaves
burn themselves these days, and the day
begins or it does not. Now wingless,
a wasp masquerading as the sun crawls—
a harmless razor—across the backlit
curtain. No city trembles on the verge
of the sea. No stupid bird threatens
to dissolve me if I forget my species
in the official questionnaire. I could
put my ten bureaucrats to their task.
The dusting and polishing. There’s a point,
a mirror for me to enumerate my teeth.
Beyond these walls, there’s only the snowed-in
field, an egg just opened but empty.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
Dearest Elif,
So nice to stalk you on your web site. I, too, prefer the Dante whose mouth looks like a painfully contorted coat hangar.
As to your which is the face of a true A list writer query, allow me, representative of the fiction for short people faction, to submit the following:
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/06/fug_girls_book_club_lauren_con.html?imw=Y&f=most-viewed-24h5
This paragon of A-list-ness has a piggy bank slot of a mouth that is much more like the “new and improved” reconstructed Dante. So I think that settles it. . . long-suffering is sooo 674 years ago.
sincerely,
Lauren
July 10th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Elif –
How nice that you’re back at your blog! I remember meditating over the Inferno at Seminary in 1963, circling closer to where I just knew I would end up.
There was a fascinating piece in the Globe and Mail on Saturday by Sarah Dunant, writing of her love of being lonely in Florence leading to writing three novels about the lost history of women. Here’s the link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/the-heart-and-the-history/article1198646/
I hope you keep blogging away and can’t wait for the Dante piece.
July 31st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I wonder why Mallegni dressed Dante in maroon, as opposed to the tomato red we’re so used to seeing in paintings. The red body sock and matching coat is a particular favorite:
http://www.museocasadidante.it/images/site/dante/dante_2.jpg
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 am
thank you all for the super-interesting and kind comments, and apologies for the delayed replies!
dear georgia, you raise a fascinating question. i am guessing tomato red is for the autumn dante, while maroon is for winter—but in either case, red body sock is an amazing look. perhaps we should try to bring it back for a new season in sf? hm? hm?
dear michael, thank you for the very interesting link—i was immediately captured by the subhead (pitting “standard history” vs “its fascinating underbelly”), and am now wondering how many other standard academic disciplines have fascinating underbellies that could generate a novel, or three…
dear lauren, what an amazing observation about the identical mouths… do you think ms. conrad might consider donating her body to the forensic sciences, in order to establish whether there is a genetic link?? (ps my second book—the one about fascinating underbellies—is totally gonna have candy on the front and a full-page head shot on the back.)
dear lmberbe, you are absolutely right. to me, his expression says more, “i just built a very reliable chair you might pay $30 to sit in.”
dear james, thank you for the beautiful poem! and dear lk, alas, i didn’t make it to see benigni… although georgia, the body-sock expert, did. if i remember right, she said that in english he was playing it too much for laughs… i guess he really wants to convey that he wrote a really entertaining book we might like to pay €16 for…)