Dorothy L Sayers in Quadrant
 

My article (essay?) on the Lord Peter Wimsey novels is in the NovemberQuadrant. I am able to dismiss the commonly held views that she was a snob and a racist. She was intellectually snobbish (with a first class degree from So mervile) and a greater lover of Europe though I don't think either she or Lord Peter ever went to the United States. Sphereans ought to love her.

I could allow people who don't want to buy Quadrant to see the article, if that s allowed. Come Jayne, what do you say?

I loved her translation of Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio (and most of Paradiso) for Penguin in my teens. She did it in terza rima:

Through me the road to the city of desolation
Through me the road to sorrows diuturnal,
Through me the road among the lost creation

Justice moved my great maker; God Eternal
Wrought me: the power, and the unsearchably
High wisdom, and the primal love supernal.

Nothing ere I was made was made to be
Save things eterne, and I eterne abide;
Lay down all hope, you that go in by me.

These words of sombre colour, I descried
Writ on the lintel of a gateway; “Sir,
This sentence is right hard for me,” I cried.

Madwoman!

Yes. It's good isn't it. And most underrated.

Geoffrey Bickersteth also put the whole thing into terza rima, without using the word eterne. It used to be findable for about $5.00 with the Italian on the facing page. As I recall, he was a Jesuit who made it his life's work.
Terza rima: the way to go. I feel certain Dante would agree.

Cheers,
John

Terza rima is perfect for a walking poem.
It gets you down the page,
and down, or up, the next level.

See Frost's "Acquainted with The Night
for terza rima writ small.

I hope Jayne will let this through!