“Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona”: Dante’s Hardest Line About Love
Lucy Bamboo · October 23, 2026Francesca’s most famous line, glossed word by word, with the two incompatible readings translators have to choose between.
Longfellow
Lucy Bamboo · October 23, 2026“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle”: The Last Line of the Inferno
Lucy Bamboo · October 23, 2026The last line of the Inferno, the two letters that carry it, and the rhyme Dante engineers three cantos in advance to land on the same word three times.
Stars: Why Dante Ends Every Canticle with the Same Word
Lucy Bamboo · July 22, 2026
Dante doesn’t do anything by accident. This principle—sacred to anyone who has spent time in the Commedia—becomes almost painfully obvious. Just look at what happens at the end of each canticle. Inferno closes with “stelle.” Purgatorio ends with “stelle.” Paradiso concludes with “stelle.” Three canticles. One final word. Repeated three times. The endings deserve quotation: … Read more
Longfellow’s Notes Are a Hidden Treasure: The Best Free English-Language Dante Commentary
Lucy Bamboo · July 17, 2026
Most people know that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translated Dante. Far fewer realize that his notes are arguably more valuable than the translation itself—and they’re completely free. I discovered this by accident. While hunting for a modern Dante edition, I stumbled onto Project Gutenberg. There I found Longfellow’s 1867 Divine Comedy with full scholarly apparatus. What … Read more
Why Every English Translation of Dante’s Inferno Reads Like a Different Poem
Lucy Bamboo · July 17, 2026
I own thirteen English translations of Dante’s Inferno. Thirteen. Some sit gathering dust on my shelf. Others I’ve marked up so heavily they barely close. But here’s the strange thing: if I hand you Longfellow’s version and then Ciardi’s, you’d think they translated different poems entirely. The opening canto reads like a funeral dirge in … Read more
From Longfellow to Mary Jo Bang: 150 Years of Translating the Inferno Into American English
Lucy Bamboo · July 9, 2026
Translations · 1800 words · Updated with expanded scholarship America’s Strange Obsession With Translating Dante Here is a paradox worth sitting with: the United States has produced more significant English translations of Dante’s Inferno than Britain, Australia, and Canada combined — despite having no medieval Catholic heritage, no Romance language in its founding culture, and … Read more