As I’ve been sick at home with Bronchitis, I decided to do some research into other forms of adaptations of Dante and his Divine Comedy, and came across the Danteum. As you’ll see in the many links I’ll have pasted below, the Danteum was Giuseppe Terragni’s proposal to Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, to build a monument in honor of the Poet in time for the upcoming Esposition of 1942 in Rome.
The WordPress article states “As the Divine Comedy includes references to numerology and geometry, the poem could be seen as a written allegory of the physical structure of the afterlife,” and as we spoke about the importance of numbers briefly in class, I found this interesting. Terragni used the numbers and geometry he found in the poems to draw up plans for the monument, as his own interpretation of the Poet’s intent. He chose to request that it be placed between the graffiti of the modern buildings, and the ruins of the Colosseum, as if it bridges the gap between the two societies; timeless in nature. However, the Danteum was never built, because the ensuing war stopped the construction plans, and they were never restarted.
It is also noted that Michelangelo and Botticelli painted their own depictions of the poet and the comedy. I found it interesting how the influence of Dante went beyond word-based depiction, to architecture and other art forms, and now movies like Tom Hanks in Inferno.
**Below are a couple of links, and a video, to look at if you want to see Terragni’s plans and other interesting facts**
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danteum
https://paperarch.wordpress.com/the-danteum-of-giuseppe-terragni/
https://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781878271822