This is a scanned page spread from my reference copy of the Inferno. Its filthy and dusty and covered in coffee stains. Its got patina. I love it.

Project Dante

Canto IX

I frosted white in growing fright 1
As sat we there in absent light
My guide beside me troubled seemed
While I beside him lost in dream 4
'Does anyone from Limbo come,'
I asked him then in halting tongue
'As deep as We from Lion's Gate
And so down through this Land of Hate?' 8
And answered me and tale he telled
Of journey to the deeps of Hell
That he had made when new born shade
To Judas Ring, a soul to save 12
'My worthy guide!' I gladly cried
'My road is blessed with you beside!'
And then I choked in sudden fear
As saw I Furies standing clear 16
And screamed they down from highest peak
As cowered I in muck and reek.
'If you would live then shade your eyes
Or always here as boulder lie 20
For Gorgon with her deadly gaze
Will petrify!' My Guide then raves.
And all my knowledge, all my knowing
Couldn't stop blind terror growing 24
And all the things that I believed
Right then weren't worth the fog I breath.
And having nothing left but hearing
Heard I sounds most horrid nearing 28
Then facing fast this coming storm
That sounded like a demon swarm
As spirits screamed in mewling fright
And ever louder grew the blight. 30
My guide then he releases me
And raise myself so I can see
I saw there Angel crossing fast
All shining like a lightning blast 34
His blessed feet not touching water
And all around He demons slaughtered.
Breaks he down the cities door's
His face wrapped up in other chores 38
He barely seemed to notice us
As hung we low with heads like thus
So stands he wide and belows loud
'O You Cast Out, O Hated Crowd! 40
Why do you Fallen listen not
When Betters tell you what is what?
Why do you rail against the fates
That told you to unlock that gate?' 44
My bind could hardly take the strain
As entered we the Land of Pain
At every point I cast my gaze
I see ten thousand burning graves 48
And tortured moans and piteous wails
Sailed past me as we walk this trail. 50
'Who can all these people be?'
I asked in awe at what I see. 52
My master said with steely breath
'Those heretics who dared mock death
They looked at world and thought they saw
A kingdom made without God's Law 56
And so they fry as heretics
In burning graves beyond the styx.' 58
So walking on he gestures right
As toil we through torment and fright. 60

Project Dante

Canto IX

I frosted white in growing fright
As sat we in the absent light
My guide beside me troubled seemed
While I was lost in nightmare dream
'Does anyone from Limbo come,'
I asked him there in halting tongue
'So deep as we from Heaven shunned?'

Its right about here that things go pear shaped. Canto IX is turning out to be a little more complex to work out. Its another one thats laced with a lot of names from classical mythology.

Working through it, hope to have it done in a couple of days.

A gallery of the SuperPerformance GT40 can be found here, the roadtest here.

Lego Hell.

Project Dante

Canto VIII

I say, going that long before 1
We reached the distant tower's floor
Our eyes were drawn towards the top
Where fires flashed like burning dots 4
And answer came from distant spire
As flickered there returning fire
Then cross the water comes a boat
That moved as fast as speeding bolt 8
And at its helm one spitting man
Who bears us down as if to ram
And cries he in his dreadful shout
'Now you are caught, O soul without!' 12
But Virgil stands in helmsman's way
And listened I to hear him say
'O Phleg-Yas do not torment your mind
His passing has been blessed you'll find 16
With you and we in binded truce
So ferry us cross muddy sluice.'
Enraged he was the demon red
As one who'd lost on sucker's bet 20
Then Virgil leads me on the boat
As lower then the ferry floats
But Phleg-Yas turns the skiff around
And pointed prow to distant ground 24
A hundred leagues and more did pass
Beneath the speeding demon craft
Then saw I thing before obscene
That rose from mire inbetween 28
A shade there formed of face I'd known
Com-patriot of distant home
Stares at me as I all shivver
Stands O'Reilly (dreadful sinner!) 32
Screams 'Who are you before your time
That floats across this world of slime?'
I answered him 'O slave of sin
You're looking great, so very thin 36
And I may come and I may go
But after all you'll never know.'*
And then I pulled my trusty glock
And had him in the crosshairs locked 40
I shot the fiend in his fiend head
Then spat into the river red
And then my guide, he then rejoiced
As singing raised he up his voice 44
And called he to the heaven's there
With words that burned in blackest air
'This my friend is right, is proper
These foul souls have come a cropper 48
Damned by God, by world forgotten
Curse their souls with curses rotten.'
I to him, 'I'd see him suffer!'
'Underneath this river smothered.' 52
He to me 'You'll get your wish
His torture here provides us bliss!
Our bliss, our bliss, the very joy!
To know his soul is devil toyed.' 56
Layed he then his palms together
Asking God for hell forever.
Continued on to distant gate
Where Phleg-Yas left us to our fate 60
And spikes arose like tongues of flame
Where devils lived and demons reigned.
So stood we there upon the brink
My mind so cowed I could not think 64
And up upon the rampart wall
A thousand devils made the call
'Who is this who without death
Can journey through the land of dread.' 68
My master made a secret sign
That devils knew from former time
Supressed they then their great disdain
These angels who from Heaven rained.** 72
But angel gate would open not
Our path ahead it seemed was blocked
But Virgil turns to me and says
'Now One descends through Lion's Gate.' 76
Who has been charged to clear our way
Till welcome here we must now pray
So knealth we there, with out escape
In fear I wept with mouth agape 80
As parley not the lords of rot
And jeered they from the rampart top.


* you'll never know refers to the punishment ascribed to all sinners that they should know the past and the future but not the present. They could remember and look forward to nothing but pain.

** angels rained regers to the fallen, the angels who aligned with Satan in the Great Rebellion. See Milton, Paradise Lost.

The sketches I talked about earlier.

Fecking (Feck)

An Irish expletive. It has all the benefits of 'fuck' but without the extreme sexual overtone. It can in fact mean nearly anything (including intercourse.)

Example: adjective
I kicked that fecking cat right in its fecking hole, fecking noise it made.

Example: adjective
I was in with the wife last night, fecking whore kept changing the fecking channel on the fecking fecking television. I was going fecking mad.

Example: noun
Come here t'me now yee little feck.

As you can see 'feck' is a hugely useful word. In far parts of the globe where the word 'fuck' may get you beheaded or brutally sodomized or somesuch, 'feck' will cause you no such trouble. In the lexicon of profanity 'feck' is a clear marker of a particular culture and a very particular place. If there be a better everyday expletive than 'feck' I've yet to hear it.

The word was used so prolifically that it almost died out as it was replaced by harder and harsher words in the awful eighties and 'cool' 90's.

I'm working on some sketches from one of the later Canto's. It deals with a charactar called FARINATA which refers supposedly to an Italian Aristocrat.

Blogger is acting up again, I'll post the sketches later.

Project Dante

Canto VII

'Pape Satan, Demon Leader!' 1
Plutus screams O fearful reader
There shook I from demons cries
The gentle sage, my noble guide 4
He taps me on the arm and says
'Stay true upon this troubled day
This monster has no power here
So follow we, the way is shear.' 8
Then turned he to the demon there
And silenced him with stinging glare
'Upon your spite let your-self feed
While down we go on journey deep.' 12
So demon drops like wind starved sail
As walked we on to Devil's Dale 14
And found ourselves by purple shore
Where universe of ills are stored 16
And all around us spirits rolled
Great weights that bound their living souls 18
And all of them before me ranged
Would walk about till bumped then change
To turn and push this useless rock
The other way till again was knocked 22
'Why do you waste?', ''Why do you squander?'
They cry in pain as round they wander
'Who are these souls that toil below?'
I asked my guide with voice set low 26
He answered me with sideways look
And then his head he slowly shook
'These souls to left and those to right
Were squint of mind in former life' 30
'Do I know these?' I quickly asked
As looking I with spite on mass
He looked at me and answered thus
'They're all the same that sin has brushed 34
Those misers who endured the fall
Their faces lost beyond recall
They swapped their souls for worthless gold
Now spend their days in toil and scold 38
Ill giving and ill keeping cost
These sinners in this land of sobs
Away with we, no pity here!'
He scolded as he led me clear 42
'O dullard, o paltroon, how dumb can you be
Why Fortune is goddess of destiny's tree
When God the Almighty the heavens He made
He set Fortune among us to circumstance trade 46
Now all that are born stand on destiny's path
Where your fate she lies wait like a rake in the grass.'
Why then Virgil looks up to check he the time
And says he abruptly 'Now onward we climb.' 50
And so we then toiled to the far distant shore
That filled and spilled from a foaming course
Together by these shadowed waves
That terminate this pathway strange 54
Beside the waters known as Styx
Its surface slimed with spirits slicked
And all of those, against they railed
Their fellows with their arms they flailed 58
And tore each other with their teeth
As legs and hands and heads they beat
'Why here resides,' my guide then says
'Those drawn to rage at every breath 62
And others who did sullen sigh
When air was bright and sun was high.' 64
And so then Virgil gestured on
And skirted me this slimy pond
And as we left by wails were chased
From mire to far towers base 68