- A South African Convivio with Dante
- A cura di Sonia Fanucchi, Anita Virga
Dimitri Tsafendas Meets Dante, Friend and Witness of Our Time
- Martina Di Florio
- © 2021 Author(s) |
- CC BY 4.0
- DOI: 10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.11
Chariklia Martalas's “Eating John Vorster" brings to light the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd, “the architect of Apartheid,” by Dimitri Tsafendas. As an act of social responsibility, the author presents the intergenerational trauma of Apartheid to a transnational community of readers. This article, drawing on an interview with Martalas, argues that her reading of Dante’s Inferno rewrites a traumatic South African memory as well as transforms the reader into a responsible witness and messenger. Martalas establishes an ideal friendship with Dante and, while powerfully reactivating and rewriting his vivid imagery, unveils a contemporary tragedy. Her creative text addresses the reader’s consciousness and questions the interconnection among language, values, and actions.
- Keywords:
- Apartheid,
- messenger,
- reader,
- responsibility,
- trauma,
Trinity College Hartford, United States
- Caruth, Cathy. 1995. “Introduction.” In Trauma. Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 3–11. Baltimora: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Dousemetzis, Harris. 2019. The Man Who Killed Apartheid. The life of Dimitri Tsafendas. Johannesburg: Jacana Media.
- Patterson, David. 2021. “The Literary Response to the Holocaust and the Transformation of the Reader into a Messenger.” Humanities 10 (3), 97: 1-10 DOI: 10.3390/h10030097
- Rosenblatt, Louise M. 1969. “Towards a Transactional Theory of Literature.” Journal of Reading Behavior 1 (1): 31–49, <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1080/10862969609546838>
- Theodoropoulos, Christos. 1993. “The Involvement of the Greek Community in South Africa in the Formulation of the Foreign Policy of Greece.” In Diasporas in World Politics. The Greeks in Comparative Perspective, edited by Dimitri C. Constas and Athanassio
Informazioni sul capitolo
Titolo del capitolo
Dimitri Tsafendas Meets Dante, Friend and Witness of Our Time
Autori
Martina Di Florio
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.11
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2021
Copyright
© 2021 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Informazioni bibliografiche
Titolo del libro
A South African Convivio with Dante
Sottotitolo del libro
Born Frees’ Interpretations of the Commedia
Curatori
Sonia Fanucchi, Anita Virga
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
212
Anno di pubblicazione
2021
Copyright
© 2021 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-457-1
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-458-8
Collana
Studi e saggi
ISSN della collana
2704-6478
e-ISSN della collana
2704-5919