On Friday November 2 Notre Dame becomes the perfect stage for “Dante Now!”, a unique event which gathers Notre Dame students, faculty, and other members of the Notre Dame community who love the Italian language, the poet Dante, and his immortal poem, the Divine Comedy.
Simultaneous public readings of famous passages from the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise will be performed at multiple locations around the Notre Dame campus. The event will culminate with a choral reading of Saint Bernard’s famous “Prayer to the Virgin” from the last canto of Paradise at The Grotto at 3pm, followed by an illustrated public lecture, “’What’s Wrong with this Picture?’: Reading Dante Reading Hell,” to be held in the Department of Special Collections of the Hesburgh Library at 3:30pm.
Program:
2pm – Readings from Dante’s Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise in multiple locations:
1. Beneath “Touchdown Jesus,” by the Father Hesburgh and Father Ned Joyce Sculpture
2. Clarke Memorial Fountain (“Stonehenge”)
3. Stairs of the Main Building
4. The Rock
5. Stairs of Bond Hall, School of Architecture
6. Sesquicentennial Common (between the Law School, the Fitzpatrick Hall of Engineering, and DeBartolo Hall)
7. At the Knute Rockne statue, North Tunnel of the Stadium
8. Shaheen Mestrovic Memorial (west side of O’Shaughnessy Hall)
9. Hammes Bookstore, by the Mary and Elizabeth sculpture (“The Visitation”)
3pm – Choral reading of Dante’s “ Prayer to the Virgin”, at the Grotto
3:30pm - Illustrated public lecture: " 'What’s Wrong with this Picture?’ Reading Dante Reading Hell"
Speakers: Theodore Cachey (Notre Dame); Christian Moevs (Notre Dame); Justin Steinberg (University of Chicago), Special Colelctions in the Hesburgh Library
4:45pm – Reception, Special Collections in the Hesburgh Library
All are welcome to participate, either as performers or as spectators. Please contact Anne Leone, aleone@nd.edu, at your earliest convenience for more information, or if you would like to participate in readings.
Co-sponsored by The William & Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies and Italian Studies at Notre Dame.
Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.