Okay, so, first of things, yes, Dante’s whole SITUATION-DEAL with Beatrice was probably as much literary device as it was genuine affection, which I am fully in the capableness of getting; I am not so adrift from historical context that I’ve forgotten about courtly love tropes and am like, worried for the sake of this dead Florentine’s right to privacy, so go ahead and delete that email, Alighierians; this is strictly for the purposes of fun.
Maybe the idea of a gentleman who beheld your visage but the twice writing a series of time-alteringly famous books where you are forced to guide him through Heaven and gaze beatifically on his bed a’nights is just exactly what gets you going, though. What this post presupposes, though, is: what if it wasn’t awesome?
oh hi
fancy running into you here
beatrice, was it?
oh
hello
sorry, i didn’t see you there, ladies
was so busy reading my book here
hello, beverly
oh, Beatrice, you say?
I forgot
I meet so many women and learn their names on a daily basis, you know
hard to remember all of them
hmm
what’s that?
oh, sorry, i didn’t even notice you there
i was just admiring this dog, i didn’t even know it was yours
while i am here
would you like a book of poetry i have just published about you?
obviously your maidenly virtue would prevent you from taking it
so there’s no way you can say ‘no’ that i will believe is sincere
so i’ll just leave it here for you on this bench and assume you took it
oh, interesting, you have a new dog with you today
…I want to say Byerly?
lol im so bad at names and have not written yours all over the walls of my villa, so its going to take me a few more tries, Becca
hi i’m so sorry to bother you
it’s me
Dante Alighieri
from life?
from being alive?
we met that one time when you were eight and then I saw you again briefly nine years later and then you died after you married someone else?
idk if you remember me
anyhow
my plan was sort of just to follow you around for eternity, heaven-wise
i hope that’s cool with you?
are these your friends?
cool cool
have you read my poems yet
hey
funny seeing you here!
with all your friends
surrounding you
hey if you’re not doing anything after you die do you want to guide me through Paradise??
if you are free then
what are you looking at
is it the beatific vision
do you see me in it
am i in the beatific vision
is it us, holding hands
keep gazing up adoringly if yes
haha, excellent
your majesty is such that I dare not gaze directly upon you
you will have to lead me around Heaven while I look at your feet
that seems less convenient for both of us
madam, I climbed all the way through Hell and Purgatory just to have a chance to avert my eyes in your presence
i have dreamed of not looking directly at you for these past nine years
all right, then
step into the chariot and let’s begin
I DARE NOT
i will trot humbly behind
but then I have to slow down for you
I KNEW YOU WOULD UNDERSTAND
no
i can’t “go outside” with you
this is my time for looking at a portrait of Beatrice
not “going outside” time
you’re welcome to stay if you promise to be quiet and bring your own picture of Beatrice to gaze at
but i’m not going anywhere
GROSS
look at these condemned lovers, EMBRACING
when i get to heaven i’m not going to do ANY of that with my girlfriend
she’s just going to show me a series of increasingly perfect wheels until i pass out
BEATRICE
YOU’RE DEAD AND IN HEAVEN SO I KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR ALL OF MY PRAYERS
BEATRICE HOW ARE YOU
I MEAN
I KNOW YOU’RE IN HEAVEN SO YOU’RE “GOOD” BUT HOW ARE YOU SPECIFICALLY RIGHT NOW
DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT ALIVE PEOPLE
ALIVE PEOPLE WHO ARE WEARING THEIR RED JUMPSUITS AND ARE ALSO CURRENTLY EXILED FROM FLORENCE
WHOSE NAMES RHYME WITH “MANTE”
BEATRICE I CAN’T WAIT TO LOOK AT WHEELS OF PERFECTION WITH YOU
[Images via]
Tags: artwork, beatrice, dante, fancy meeting you here
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Oh hi. That silly barista made my drink wrong,would you like it? Double vanilla extra foam with cinnamon,that’s what you like, right? I mean, I don’t know obviously. But if that is what you order every day at 8:30, then isn’t my having this messed up order just a happy coinkydink.
A+, would gnash my teeth at the memory of men who think they’re witty saying “coinkydink” again.
“GROSS
look at these condemned lovers, EMBRACING
when i get to heaven i’m not going to do ANY of that with my girlfriend
she’s just going to show me a series of increasingly perfect wheels until i pass out”
D Y I N G
(hey beatrice i’m dead now girl what’s up)
I know the answer is that they’re all just working off that same bust of him[1] but why do half these artists insist on making Dante look like Vincent Gallo, it’s not a sympathetic look
[1]which I guess Vincent Gallo went back in time and posed for
That jumpsuit also seems to include his… shoes? Dante is wearing footie pajamas, you guys.
My smile would be a lot like a cough after seeing that.
He looks just like Napoleon in that one!
Is that one where the caption is just “f” a joke I’m not getting?
Maybe when I die Beatrice will explain it to me in heaven.
no it was an error
Am I laughing or hyperventilating?
I can’t help but think he adds, “M’lady” at the end of these encounters.
this red hood/bonnet thing is the fedora of 13th century Florence.
Dante, the original Marty Stu.
I like how Beatrice’s outfit varies somewhat drastically from painting to painting, but not Dante. Nope, he always gets the red Spanish Inquisition frock and silly hat.
Years from now, the poets will sing of the great loves of our age. The woman will be wearing a variety of things, but the man will always be wearing a fedora. (or trilby, but people in the future will have never seen either so they will look the same.)
Most people don’t know the difference between the two nowadays, so this seems an entirely likely scenario.
And in all of those paintings said poet will be ever so euphoric, I assume.
Guys, let’s write a program that automatically replaces the fedora in dudebro pictures with Dante’s red hat. IT’LL BE AMAZING.
To be fair, I’d legit be looking at those dogs rather than Beatrice.
Am I the only one having Dr Horrible flashbacks?
“what a crazy random happenstance!”
one of Stephen Fry’s more entertaining criticisms of the concept of Heaven is that -the people you’d like to see there would not by any means necessarily be excited to see you.- prime example.
only vaguely related, the concept that you would spend -.75 to 110 years being a human and then literally forever being a ghost is deeply creepy to me, especially since the human part was apparently the only important part. if I were writing an Abrahamic Paradise, I’d definitely have the long-dead calcify into indifferent monster-things, completely devoid of anything we’d recognize as humanity.
i think you just created abrahamic hell
Not sure whether you care, but the Christian understanding of heaven has always included the resurrection of the body.
I’m vaguely aware of the notion of a bodily resurrection, but it’s not the way things are generally conceptualized. I think most American believers, at least, assume they get instant ghost status as soon as they die, and maybe imagine they’ll be bodily resurrected at the last trump or whatever
man is theology absurd
Oh hey. Beatrice. Beatrice, right? Yeah, it’s me, Dante. Oh, no I’m not dead yet. Still alive. Still a successful poet. Still basically inventing the Italian language. Yeah, I was just hanging out with my friend Virgil. You might know him? Virgil the Poet? Roman guy. Wrote the Aeneid. Yeah, we’re buddies. No, no, I wouldn’t really call him a mentor so much as a peer, and…
Say, hypothetical here, but can dead people still bone up here in Heaven?
I remember learning that in Catholic heaven there is no sex, but in Muslim heaven there is, and thinking that was a bad PR move on the Ecclesiastical council’s part.
Just SUPER EXCITED about retaking corporeal form to get you to write some good press on us instead of being a silver dart that constantly explores space. This is great, and I really enjoy how your obsession with me means I don’t get to work on my comet orbit math for a couple months. Thanks.
Somewhat related: I always thought that Dante’s assumption that Virgil would be willing to guide him around was ass-y.
I would be bountifully fortunate to get like Shel Silverstein to guide me around hell
Shel: I wrote a book full of travelogue playboy cartoons
Me: man that was good stuff
Shel: but NO, The Giving Tree, man
Me: sorry man.
TO BE FAIR TO THE FAKE & THE DEAD, it’s Beatrice who tags Virgil in for her. Basically picks him out of the first poet lineup she sees, all “eh, you over there, you do the hell bits, you’ll be okay at it, you talk almost as good as me. Almost.”
OK so in photo #7 which one is supposed to be Beatrice? Is it the one who’s all slutty leaning over and looking at Dante? Or the one with the flower? And if it’s the latter then who is the lady in pink who looks like she wants to bone Dante?
the one in the middle! the one in blue is her maidservant, the one in red is her friend who is glaring at him like “STOP LOOKING AT BEATRICE” because it’s about a time when Beatrice snubbed him because she had heard RUMORS that he was IMMORAL
OK she may have heard rumors that he was immoral and it looks like she wants to get in on some of that immorality, frankly.
Seriously, Rosa, there is a lot of what would-be-cleavage-if-that-dress-had-a-neckline going on there.
Yeah, Beatrice is totally the one muttering through clenched teeth, “Just keep walking, guys, don’t let him see we noticed him, OH MY GOD STOP IT ROSA* YOU’RE EMBARRASSING ME.”
*because clearly Lady in Pink is named Rosa in this story.
My partner has a copy of that painting hanging on his living room wall; he inherited it from his grandparents.
I’m sort of glad I don’t live there anymore because I’m super creeped out by it. To him, it’s a precious reminder of his grandfolks. To me…it’s NOPE.
New life goals: have friends as tight as the Beatrice-friend-maidservant squad.
“gaze beatifically on his bed a’nights” to be totes fair it’s more like “gaze flammably at his bed a’nights, eating his heart daintily off the tip of an angel’s sword”
classicists & cultural historians always leave out the lightly seared heart carpaccio, idk what that’s about
And men’s hearts are fucking delicious.
I’ve found that if you don’t prepare them right, they have a tendency to come out bitter. It’s important to brine them overnight to prevent this.
She is str8 up about to call the police in #7
its going to take me a few more tries, Becca
Nice to know that the brilliant and always effective flirtation tactic of repeatedly pretending to forget a woman’s name has been passed down so lovingly from bro to bro through the centuries.
Oh gee, is this a flirtation tactic? I am pretty sure that I have had that done to me and I NEVER KNEW!! Such a waste of elaborate stratagems!
Forgive my ignorance but why exactly is Dante dressed like such an asshat? Maybe if he didn’t look like a literal used tampon he’d have had a chance.
he should be so lucky as to be a used tampon
Ahahah, thank you for this. I’m writing an essay on the Henry Holiday version with the view that Dante was y’know slightly over attached to the idea of Beatrice so this was a nice on topic distraction 😀
oh hey
hey
you forgot something
you forgot
your smile
Were I to smile, then you would be
like Semele when she was turned to ashes,
because, as you have seen, my loveliness
which, even as we climb the steps of this
eternal palace, blazes with more brightness
were it not tempered here, would be so brilliant
that, as it flashed, your mortal faculty
would seem a branch a lightning bolt has cracked
(actual Beatrice quote on why she’s not smiling.)
Beatrice: I sneezed on the beat & the beat got sicker
omg, *I’m* ready to follow her around in eternal adoration, just for that.
Oh no, is pretending to forget people’s names a thing that bros do when they hit on people? Because I am really bad at names and now I’m going to have to add “mistaken for a flirting bro” to the list of potential embarrassments that can happen when I ask for the name of someone I’ve already met. I am never leaving the house again.
When it happened to me, the guy did it about ten times, and it was really obvious that he was using “I forgot your name again” as a way of starting a conversation when he couldn’t think of anything else to say. I’d remind him of my name and he’d just kind of stand there and grin. It was irritating mostly because he’d always seem proud of it. I forget people’s names too, but I just throw a “sorry” in there and try to look mildly contrite and people don’t seem to mind. I’ve had other people forget my name and doesn’t bother me in the least.
Tl;dr: Don’t worry, the difference between Bad With Names and Awkward Flirting Gambit is pretty clear.
I’m glad to hear it–thanks for the reassurance. Also, ouch. You’d think some kind of self-preservation mechanism would kick in before he reached double digits.
And now I’m thinking about Hannibal again. Let’s use Dante symbolism about the sight of a woman being nourishing because that’s so subtle. And then let’s transfer that to the show because we’re even more subtle.
Brilliant!
BUT WAIT!
So, is Red Tights Man in picture nr 6 in this here post actually Dante? http://the-toast.net/2014/11/06/women-rejecting-m…
The man at the table has stolen his hat.
This one would not fall into the Casually Running Into category, though
In that one where he’s leaning on the bridge I just heard
“How YOU doin'”
in my head.
So the dog in the Byerly picture is the Toast puppy, right, it’s not just me? That’s the same dog? Surely her real name is Carmella, Eternal Vampire Hound of Cuteness.
have you read my poems yet?
1) I’m so glad you put that Wes Anderson quote in there because
2) omg Dante is totally a Wes Anderson “hero”
i already loved you, and then you put a reference to my favourite Owen Wilson Royal T quote in there. A+, Ortberg, A+
I finally created an account to say exactly this!
wait, which one? I didn’t mean to!
“Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is: maybe he didn’t?” [shrugs, smiles]
don’t squash my dream, Mallory!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeKjKWXWZOE
What I didn’t realize when I first saw this movie is how much Cash’s purple prose is an imitation of Blood Meridian, and now I can only picture McCarthy as Eli Cash.
I appreciate the number of handmaidens/bffs/chaperones who are giving Dante the stinkeye in these paintings.
Those angel-friends are not even pretending to be okay with him. I love it.
Mostly. #3 is NO MOTHER HE IS NOT CUTE HE IS A FUCKING MENACE.
Much later in life Dante wrote a little-known work entirely exposing and condemning the practice of “Friend-Zoning.”
I’m so in love with all of this.