Josef Kalleya & Dante: Volume 3

A Child’s Tormented Soul in Paradise

Josef Kalleya and Dante: A Child’s Tormented Soul in Paradise Vol. III is the third and final installment in Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci’s comparative series on the work of the Maltese artist Josef Kalleya and the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

The series, a study of a corpus of Kalleya’s works previously unknown and undeciphered, reflects Dante’s three-part poem, itself sculpted upon the divine significance of the number three in Christian theology. Three realms, three books, terza rima, three languages, three virtues, three examinations. The significance and repetition of the number is infused within the entire text, itself an ocean of trinity symbolism. Dante’s vertiginous repetitions have been a consistent feature in Schembri Bonaci’s three volumes, establishing a rhythmic structure that set the tempo for the spiritual expedition: Dante’s iambic tercets, Kalleya’s incessant visual cycles, and Schembri Bonaci’s rhythmic repetitive reference to their words and images.