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Dimitri Tsafendas Meets Dante, Friend and Witness of Our Time

  • Martina Di Florio

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,
+ Show More

Martina Di Florio

Trinity College Hartford, United States

  1. Caruth, Cathy. 1995. “Introduction.” In Trauma. Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, 3–11. Baltimora: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
  2. Dousemetzis, Harris. 2019. The Man Who Killed Apartheid. The life of Dimitri Tsafendas. Johannesburg: Jacana Media.
  3. 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
  4. 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>
  5. 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
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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Pages: 169-177
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2021 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2021 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Dimitri Tsafendas Meets Dante, Friend and Witness of Our Time

Authors

Martina Di Florio

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.11

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

A South African Convivio with Dante

Book Subtitle

Born Frees’ Interpretations of the Commedia

Editors

Sonia Fanucchi, Anita Virga

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

212

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

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

Series Title

Studi e saggi

Series ISSN

2704-6478

Series E-ISSN

2704-5919

174

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