Skip to main content

Archive of the Limited Edition of Dante's Inferno: Canto XXXI/2 / Phillips, Tom., 1983

 Item
Identifier: CC-55252-9999012

  • Staff Only
  • Please navigate to collection organization to place requests.

Scope and Contents

XXXI/2 Over a huge gap in time Dante foresees the now frighteningly realised possibility of monstrous power allied to intelligence. Nature he observes is sensible to have made its most powerful and hugest creatures without the guile to make use of their destructive potential. Here the dreaming boy (an innocent echo of the boy in Canto XXVII/1) sees looming up in his future a brutal force whose actions could be malignly controlled by artificial intelligence. The microchip which here stands for the monster's face and brain was one of the first ever illustrated (in the Scientific American which I subscribed to in the sixties). Reason, Faith and Hope are eclipsed and Culture is destroyed as vultures fly ahead to feed off the open book. The rest of the collage is from fragments of the Boy's Own Paper. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates

  • Creation: 1983

Creator

Extent

0 See container summary (5 prints (silkscreen) in clamshell box (museum board, paper covered, lithograph)) ; prints 42 x 32 cm, in box 44 x 35 x 8 cm

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Physical Location

1904 shelf Phillips Dante Inferno Archive box 12

Custodial History

The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, on loan from Ruth and Marvin A. Sackner and the Sackner Family Partnership.

General

Published: London, England : Talfourd Press. Nationality of creator: British. General: Added by: BARB; updated by: MARVIN.

Repository Details

Part of the The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry Repository

Contact:
125 W. Washington St.
Main Library
Iowa City Iowa 52242 United States
319-335-5921