DANTE

New York City is renowned for its simple street system with a numbered grid making for easy access to quintessentially American cultural and artistic hotspots. However, every now and then these pragmatically situated street take unexpectedly turns and become triangles. These triangles make perfect homes for parks and statues alike. Broadway, Columbus Ave, and 63rd Street create the borders to Dante Park, where an elegant statue of Dante resides.

The statue of Dante Alighieri stands upon a stone podium larger than himself. He holds a book, probably one of his own works, wears a leafy crown on his head and intense look on his face. “DANTE” clearly protrudes out front of the podium, surrounded by similarly dark branches and leaves. Dante Park is situated across the street from Lincoln Center, a block south of a Mormon Temple, and a few blocks north of Trump International Hotel. The park itself is very quiet, despite being surrounded by traffic on each of its sides. People sit in public chairs. Some are looking at the artifact; most are just taking a rest from a busy day.

Dante’s large stature is symbolic of his impressive effect on the American religious and educated mind. High schoolers and college students across the country are, at some point, assigned the task of analyzing his Divine Comedy. His Epic trilogy tells the fictional story of his journey through hell, limbo, and heaven. The horrifically graphic details in Inferno are akin to the common American belief of a hellish afterlife. While the Catholic Church does not necessarily endorse his depictions, it is a common assumption that hell looks the way he describes (among both Catholic and many Protestants). Seeing Dante depicted with almost a scorn reminded me of when I first read Inferno in high school. I grew up Catholic, and as the stereotype goes I felt guilty almost all the time. Inferno, despite my teacher’s insistence that it wasn’t approved as doctrine, was scary at times. Dante’s depiction of hell is reminiscent of Jarena Lee’s vision: “There appeared, sitting in one corner of the room, Satan, in the form of a monstrous dog, and in a rage, as if in pursuit, his tongue protruding from his mouth to a great length, and his eyes looked like two balls of fire” (Lee 168). This illustration exemplifies a common view of the afterlife among Christian Americans and is what Dante’s poem elicits.

The location of Dante struck me as a unification point of differing ideals in America. On one side, there is Lincoln Center, an internationally renowned center for the arts. On another, there is a Mormon Temple, a place where those of a distinctly American religion go to worship. And on the last, there is a Starbucks, a symbol of American consumption. Connecting these three separate yet related establishments is Dante, an Italian poet from the Late Middle Ages. We see here that texts, specifically those regarding religion, are what connect these seemingly disparate pieces of American culture as one of many cohesive American communities.