[3] Then comes a moment when suddenly I can't handle the language anymore, like I can't read one more translation of The Divine Comedy, and suddenly I realize it's in my eyes all the time, that I have a vision of Hell, I have even more necessary kind of a way of getting out of Hell, kind of a springboard in my thinking, closing my eyes and thinking what I'm seeing [...] and also purgation, that I can go through the stages of purging the self, of trying to become pure, free of these ghastly visions, and then there is something that's as close to Heaven as I would hope to aspire to, which I call "existence is song."

[5] The Dante Quartet was originally painted on IMAX and Cinemascope 70mm and 35mm film; however, it has since been rephotographed onto 35mm and 16mm formats,[1] in which it is now most commonly screened.

I’ve called the last part existence is song quoting Rilke,[notes 1] because I don’t want to presume upon the after-life and call it “Heaven.”[6]Bart Testa praised the "radical daring" of Brakhage's filmmaking, and wrote that The Dante Quartet "condenses into eight visionary minutes what unfolded as great epic.

"[7] Adrian Danks, writing for Senses of Cinema, described the film as offering "an obscure, off-centre and idiosyncratic perspective that is difficult to conceive – at least initially – as anything other than a glorious celebration of the experiential and material possibilities of film stock and projected light.

"[8] In 2023, IndieWire ranked the film one of the 100 best films of the 1980s, with critic Samantha Bergeson writing, "That its production required a longer dedication of time and effort from Brakhage than shooting Apocalypse Now in croc-infested waters required from Francis Ford Coppola or dragging a boat over a mountain for Fitzcarraldo did from Werner Herzog only adds to the sense of beholding an artist's magnum opus.