Reading Dante in 2021

We're about halfway through this reading project. We've been reading La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy.  Dante died 700 years ago, in 1321. 

I recently walked very quickly through the distilled collection of paintings at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The main galleries are shaped like a huge H, and that reminds me of a book by Hélène Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, where she writes about the letter "H" as the basic building block of a ladder. At the museum, the center of that middle rung of the H that connects the two long galleries of Western paintings, there stands a large and beautiful statue of Buddha. Is there a hidden joke here? The Buddha stands at what would be the hinge of the "Enlightenment" between the classic past of the West, and the roar of its future. 

After walking through a range of sculptures by Rodin, the Buddha greets everyone as soon as the walk through the front doors. A guard stands near the Buddha, and guides members to one desk of the left and single or group ticket buyers to another desk on the right. That's how the art pilgrimage begins.

On the bottom floor you can find a very large collection of the oldest artwork in the building. It all comes from Asia, and from many different countries. 

My own mini-pilgrimage through the history of Western paintings began in a room with work created around the time Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, and in the century after Dante's time. The oldest Western painting in the collection shows iconic images covering the life of Christ. 

The collection proceeds through a range of explorations to make painting more elaborate and detailed, then more realistic, then baroque, then impressionistic, and it ends again with abstract art, and even a few geometric images from the Russian painters who were heavily influenced by mysticism. At the very end of the last gallery, there is a very large and colorful canvas by Sam Francis.

Here's the link to CJ Fearnley's page, Reading Dante in 2021. It's full of rich resources. You can skim the surface or dive deep. Your choice!

This reading project has inspired me to revive this long dormant blog. At the beginning, I had the intention of exploring the connections between poetry, plays, politics and prophecy. That intention seems more important now than ever.