Dantes Purgatorio SC

Description

True to Dante's plainspoken, politically acerbic, and humorous original, PURGATORIO is a biting vision of the next level of the afterlife, where souls with the opportunity for redemption endeavor to wash away their sins. An adaptation in word and image, the poem as interpreted by Birk and Sanders wryly incorporates urban speech and references to contemporary events and people, resulting in an authentic version with a postmodern twist. Birk's vivid illustrations are based on the works of Gustave Dore, whose nineteenth-century engravings remain the best-known illustrations of the COMMEDIA. With a nuanced line and assiduous attention to detail, Birk casts his classical figures in a contemporary urban milieu of shopping centers, fast-food joints, and street scenes. PURGATORIO is set primarily in a surreal San Francisco Bay Area, whose hills and vistas oblige an unconventional model of ascent toward perfection.