Lucy Bamboo

Lucy Bamboo has been reading the Divine Comedy for fifteen years — first in translation, then stubbornly in Medieval Tuscan with a dictionary and far too many footnotes. Reading Dante is her scene-by-scene walk through the poem: the original Italian, seven centuries of scholarly argument presented as argument rather than answer, and the human questions sitting underneath the theology.

The Exile Foretold — Inferno, Canto 10

· October 10, 2026
The Exile Foretold Inferno 10

Farinata has not moved while Cavalcante rose and fell beside him, and now he picks up the quarrel exactly where it broke off: the art of returning from exile, he tells Dante, is one the pilgrim will soon learn the weight of; then, after a sigh and a defence of the day he saved Florence, … Read more

Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti — Inferno, Canto 10

· October 10, 2026
Cavalcante de Cavalcanti Inferno 10

Halfway through Dante’s quarrel with Farinata, a second shade rises from the same open tomb, visible only to the chin, looks past the pilgrim for someone who is not there, and asks in tears where his son is; the son is Guido Cavalcanti, Dante’s closest friend in youth and a poet in his own right, … Read more

Farinata degli Uberti — Inferno, Canto 10

· October 10, 2026
Farinata degli Uberti Inferno 10

Inside the walls of Dis the travellers take a narrow path between the rampart and the open tombs, and Dante, who has been holding a question since the circle of the gluttons, gets his answer before he can ask it: a voice comes out of a burning sarcophagus, places him by his Florentine accent, and … Read more

Inside Dis: The Burning Tombs — Inferno, Canto 9

· October 10, 2026
Inside Dis: The Burning Tombs Inferno 9

The gate that needed a heavenly messenger to open it now stands wide, and the two travellers walk through without a fight; what is waiting inside the walls of Dis is not a battle but a cemetery — a great plain scored with open stone coffins, laid out like the Roman burial fields at Arles … Read more

The One Who Crossed the Styx Dry-Shod — Inferno, Canto 9

· October 10, 2026
The One Who Crossed the Styx Dry-Shod Inferno 9

After a canto of stalled threats — a Virgil who cannot open the gate, three Furies calling for Medusa, and a warning to the reader to look under the veil — the rescue finally arrives, and it arrives as weather: a crash of sound over the marsh, both banks shaking, a simile of wind tearing … Read more

The Furies on the Tower — Inferno, Canto 9

· October 10, 2026
The Furies on the Tower Inferno 9

Virgil has just been shut out of a city by devils, and the first thing this canto notices is a colour — cowardice painted on the pilgrim’s face from outside, and then a new colour on Virgil’s, pushed back in faster than it arrived — after which the guide stands listening for a rescue he … Read more

The Gate That Would Not Open — Inferno, Canto 8

· October 10, 2026
The Gate That Would Not Open Inferno 8

Phlegyas’ boat rounds the last bend of the marsh and puts them out under iron walls, inside which Dante can already make out red domes glowing like metal taken from a forge; on the battlements more than a thousand angels rained down from heaven demand to know who this is who walks the kingdom of … Read more

Filippo Argenti in the Mud — Inferno, Canto 8

· October 10, 2026
Filippo Argenti in the Mud Inferno 8

Half-way across the stagnant water, with Phlegyas’ boat still moving, a soul caked in mud stands up out of the marsh and challenges the living passenger — and instead of the courteous interview Dante has given every other shade so far, he returns insult for question, curses the soul, refuses to name him, watches him … Read more

Phlegyas and the Swift Boat — Inferno, Canto 8

· October 10, 2026
Phlegyas and the Swift Boat Inferno 8

A canto that begins by going backwards — the narrator says «Io dico, seguitando» and rewinds behind the end of the previous canto to a moment when two small flames were being set on the tower’s summit and a third was answering from a distance the eye could barely hold — establishes before anything at … Read more

The Styx and the Gurgled Hymn — Inferno, Canto 7

· October 10, 2026
The Styx and the Gurgled Hymn Inferno 7

Virgil looks up at stars Dante cannot see, announces that the night is turning and that lingering is forbidden, and takes his pupil across the fourth circle to a boiling spring that has cut its own channel down into the dark; they follow the water, which is «buia assai più che persa» (103), until it … Read more