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
Lucy Bamboo · July 16, 2026
I spent an entire weekend last fall comparing twelve different English translations of nine Italian lines. Nine lines — the Gate of Hell inscription from Dante’s Inferno, Canto III. By Sunday night my desk had disappeared under paperbacks, and the nine lines had become twelve different gates. Each translator made choices that altered Hell’s entrance. … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 11, 2026
I have read Dante’s Canto V perhaps forty times. Each time, I weep. Not because I don’t understand it—I do—but because understanding it feels impossible. This is the paradox of the Francesca da Rimini episode. It moves us most when we’re uncertain what we should feel. The text itself doesn’t change. But the translation does. … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · June 23, 2026
Most readers remember “Abandon all hope” — the last line of the inscription on Hell’s gate in Canto III. Few stop on the line that precedes it, the one that is, in some ways, the most philosophically and theologically dense of the nine: Dinanzi a me non fur cose create se non etterne, e io … Read more
