Line #6 Trivia/TheDivineComedy


1	!![[Literature/TheDivineComedy The epic poem]]
2	* AccidentallyCorrectWriting: A bizarre and somewhat disputed example, but near the end of Inferno Dante and Virgil meet the giant Nimrod, who says the "words": ''Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi''. The poem has Virgil say this is just gibberish, as part of Nimrod's punishment for making the Tower Of Babel (which led to people speaking different languages) is being able to only speak a language no one understands. The historian László Szörényi has noted that the phrase sounds oddly similar to the Old Hungarian: ''Rabhel maj, amék szabi állni''. This translates to roughly "It's a jail that forces you to stay here", which actually makes some sense in context (whether meant as a threat to Dante and Virgil or Nimrod lamenting his own imprisonment in Hell). If it ''is'' just a coincidence, it's a pretty weird one.
3	* AdaptationOverdosed: The ''Comedy'' has been adapted hundreds of times (although most of the adaptations focus on the ''Inferno''), including at least twenty-four films, four operas, video games for the Platform/Commodore64 and Platform/Xbox360, and even a few comic book issues during certain runs of the ''ComicBook/DisneyMouseAndDuckComics'' and the ''ComicBook/XMen''.
4	* AllStarCast: BBC Radio did a dramatisation which featured Blake Ritson as Dante, Creator/JohnHurt as an older Dante, and Creator/DavidWarner as Virgil.
5	* BannedInChina:
6	** [[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1886/10/31/103990300.pdf Back in 1886]], the ''Comedy'' was forbidden in Turkey since it cast "ridicule and contempt upon different existing religion."
7	** An advisor to the United Nations advocated that the ''Comedy'', the foundation of the Italian language, be banned from Italian schools for its depiction of Muslims and homosexuals, according to [[http://www.italymagazine.com/italy/dante/call-dante-s-racist-divine-comedy-be-banned this article]]. Obviously, it didn't take.
8	* BeamMeUpScotty:
9	** Dante referred to the poem simply as his "comedy." The title ''The Divine Comedy'' was not adopted until later.
10	** Most people quote the poem's most famous line as "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." It's actually (depending on the translation) "Abandon '''all''' hope, '''ye''' who enter here" — "all" modifies "hope," not "ye" (''Lasciate '''ogni''' speranza, voi ch'intrate'').
11	** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' said that Dante said something along the lines of "The hottest place in hell was reserved for good men who let evil happen." While no specific place in hell is said to be the hottest (though there's plenty of EvilIsBurningHot), the Undecided aren't even allowed in hell -- they remain along the shores of the Styx, chasing an elusive banner.
12	** ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' fans are famous for their "four barons of hell" theory about the Evas' design. The most commonly cited source of this is the ''Inferno''. There are no four barons of hell.
13	* DatedHistory: In what is [[ValuesDissonance for modern audiences one of the most controversial issues]] of the Inferno, Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali (who was responsible for the split between Sunni and Shiite Islam) are shown in the Eighth circle of Hell for promoting Schism. This was based on the assumption of Medieval European Christians that Islam was a heretical offshoot of Christianity founded in part by an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism Arian]] heretic named [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahira Bahira/Sergius the monk]] rather than as a distinct Abrahamic religion as it is understood today.
14	* DevelopmentHell: In 2006, producer Boris Acosta began an ambitious task of adapting ''The Divine Comedy'' into various mediums, including a live-action film trilogy, which was first announced back in August 2008. An all-star team was assembled, with Dante scholar Dino Di Durante writing the scripts, Armand Mastroianni as director, Chuck Shuman as the cinematographer and Aldo De Tata as composer. Creator/AndyGarcia, Creator/AdrienBrody and Creator/JimCaviezel were all considered to portray Dante, with Creator/AlPacino in the running for Virgil. The trilogy was set to be released between 2009 and 2012. However, during pre-production of the first film, ''Inferno'', Acosta realized that its proposed $55 million budget was too expensive and decided to produce lower-budgeted films to help fund the live-action films, as well as an animated film trilogy. He has since produced and/or directed documentaries about ''The Divine Comedy'', a short film based on ''Inferno'', as well as a 9-season television series. The live-action films are still in development as of 2022.
15	* DiedDuringProduction: Dante Alighieri is supposed to have died with the location of the final portions of ''Paradiso'' unknown. His ghost is said to have appeared to his son letting him know where the manuscript was. In a strangely related example, Creator/DorothyLSayers died before completing her translation of ''The Divine Comedy''; it was finished by Barbara Reynolds.
16	* ExtremelyLengthyCreation: The poem took over twelve years for Dante to compose, leaving him only a year on Earth left after writing an adventure set "midway through the journey of our life."
17	* FromEntertainmentToEducation: Originally meant to present an allegory on man's journey to God, the ''Comedy'' has universally been adopted as a teaching tool throughout Italian schools.
18	* HalfRememberedHomage: Despite being one of the only characters mentioned in all three canticles, Ulysses is based entirely on the brief allusions to him in the work of Creator/{{Virgil}} without ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' as a reference. In fact, Dante had never read ''The Odyssey'' in his whole life because that work was lost to Europe until a century after the ''Comedy'' was written.
19	* LifeImitatesArt: 671 years after his death, Dante descended underground into a fiery Inferno with some assistance from Geryon. That is, [[https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/08/science/robot-named-dante-to-explore-inferno-of-antarctic-volcano.html a robot named after the medieval poet was sent into an Antarctic volcano in a homage to the poem]].
20	* PosthumousCredit: Boris Acosta's 2020 film ''Dante's Hell'' came out after the deaths of Creator/JeffConaway (who voiced the English Circles introduction), Creator/VittorioGassman (who voiced the Italian recitations for Dante) and Arnoldo Foà (who voiced the Italian recitation for Ulysses in the eighth circle).
21	* ReferencedBy: The comic book ''ComicBook/XMen'', alongside guest star ComicBook/DoctorStrange, once visited a hell modeled after the one in "Inferno", with the implication that [[Franchise/MarvelUniverse Earth-616]]'s version of Dante had really been to such a place.
22	* ScienceMarchesOn:
23	** In Purgatorio, we learn that the island of Purgatory is the only piece of land in antipodes (a.k.a. the Southern Hemisphere), surrounded by a huge ocean that covers one full hemisphere. To his credit, Dante always remembers that the sun would be to the north in the antipodes. (And remarkably enough, he describes a constellation of four bright stars that sounds suspiciously like the Southern Cross; [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting he couldn't possibly have seen it, or even spoken to anyone who had]]. Critics generally think it's a metaphor for the Four Cardinal Virtues (fortitude, temperance, justice, and prudence) illuminating the life of the penitent sinner.)
24	** Paradiso features a geocentric universe... sort of.
25	** Averted in one noteworthy case: Inferno and Purgatorio clearly features a round Earth (proving that the idea that people once believed, especially during the Middle Ages, that the Earth was flat is completely wrong. The fact that the Earth is round is quite obvious to the senses and easily proven through basic geometry known since Antiquity).
26	* WordOfDante: The {{Trope Namer\|s}} is both the author of this work and the effect the work has had on people's perceptions of {{Hell}}. Despite the fact that the epic poem is not Biblical canon, and was never intended to be, a lot of what people think of when they imagine Hell comes from here. Most notably, the ideas of there being CirclesOfHell.
27	* WordOfGod: Some of Dante's thoughts and commentary on his work have survived the centuries, including [[http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/cangrande.english.html one letter]] where he makes it clear that the ''Comedy'' serves as an {{Allegory}} for the relationship between freedom and salvation, among other ideas.
28	-->''"The subject of the whole work, taken only from a literal standpoint, is simply the status of the soul after death, taken simply. The movement of the whole work turns from it and around it. If the work is taken allegorically, however, the subject is man, either gaining or losing merit through his freedom of will, subject to the justice of being rewarded or punished."''
29	* WriteWhoYouKnow: Dante populates the spirit world with his friends and enemies, alongside mythical and historical characters.
30	* Despite being TheProtagonist and the author, Dante's name is mentioned only once in the entire ''Comedy'' and it takes 64 cantos to get there (out of 100).
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32	!![[Music/TheDivineComedy The band]]
33	* CreatorBacklash: There was a point where the Divine Comedy didn't play "Songs of Love" live because Hannon was sick of the association with ''Series/FatherTed''. "National Express" also saw a period of this.
34	* CreatorKiller: Although it wasn't a commercial failure, "National Express" did damage to Hannon's image among critics that his career never fully recovered from, because the perceived class snobbery of its lyrics (especially the bit about the hostess with "the arse [...] the size of a small country") finally gave people who'd always hated him for his upper-class background some ammunition.
35	* OldShame: Hannon was so unhappy with the group's first release ''Fanfare for the Comic Muse'' that he spent a long time pretending it didn't exist.
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Context Trivia / TheDivineComedy