- A South African Convivio with Dante
- Edited by 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
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
Metadata License
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
Metadata License
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