Harriet Vane writes a poem
 

I'm currently rereading Dorothy L Sayers's Gaudy Night, and although I've read it many times before, I was struck and touched by this passage today (Chapter XI):

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She [Harriet] held on her knee the looseleaf notebook that contained her notes upon the Shrewsbury; but her heart was not in that sordid inquiry. A detatched pentameter, echoing out of nowhere, was beating in her ears -- seven marching feet -- a pentameter and a half: --

To that still center where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis --

Had she made it or remembered it? It sounded familiar, but in her heart she knew certainly that it was her own, and seemed familiar only because it was inevitable and right.

She opened the notebook at another page and wrote the words down. She felt like the man in the Punch story: "Nice little barf-room, Liza -- what shall we do with it?" Blank verse? . . . No . . . it was part of the octave of a sonnet . . . it had the feel of a sonnet. But what a rhyme-sound! Curled? furled? . . . she fumbled over rhyme and meter, like an unpracticed musician fingering the keys of a disused instrument.

Then, with many false starts and blank feet, returning and filling and erasing painfully as she went, she began to write again, knowing with a deep inner certainty that somehow, after long and bitter wandering, she was once more in her own place.

Here, then, at home . . .

the center, the middle sea, the heart of the labyrinth . . .

Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,
Stay we our steps -- course -- flight -- hands folded and wings furled.

Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled,
To that still center where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Yes; there was something there, though the meter halted monotonously, lacking a free stress-shift, and the chime "dizzying-spinning" was unsatisfactory. The lines swayed and lurched in her clumsy hands, uncontrollable. Still, such as it was, she had an octave.

And there it seemed to end. She had reached the full close, and had nothing more to say. She could find no turn for the sestet to take, no epigram, no change of mood. She put down a tentative line or two and crossed them out. If the right twist would not come of itself, it was useless to manufacture it. She had her image -- the world sleeping like a great top on its everlasting spindle -- and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it someday. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper -- and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further.

Lovely, thanks for posting it. I am sure I read it many years ago, but I had not recalled it.

Susan

Her translations of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio into proper terza rima are still worth reading. The Paradiso was unfinished at her death. We should perhaps not be surprised at that passage in Gaudy Night.

Clive

Fantastic. Unexpected, for me. The close, or whatever you put last, blew me away. Was "seek" your language, interpretation ? This old-fashioned idea of men being only self-satisfied with their own comfort of having a woman is so wrong I frankly don't know how to address it. Except to say, that we are living in another century? Most of my friends are in their late 40s to early 50s and are single, by choice or otherwise. It really reminds me of the opening to Howl.

James, everything under my introductory sentence is pure Dorothy Sayers -- who did, as it happens, live in another century (Gaudy Night was published in the late 1930s and is set, if I remember correctly around 1932 or so). I don't think the final metaphor is about men only seeking love or doing it in a self-satisfied way, more about the peaceful relief of finally attaining a driving desire. At any rate, Sayers had no qualms about using the universal "man/men/he" and so we might equally read that "women" or "humans" seek for love. Your single friends may not be partnered but I'm willing to bet that each of them passionately loves something.

Clive, no, not surprised -- her Dante is magnificent (I've read it twice) and in fact she published one or two small volumes of poetry even before she started writing fiction. But I was struck with recognition today as I read this account of the writing process. The reminder that forcing a poem that isn't ready is just "mere verse-making" is a helpful one to me.

Oh, my comments on that simply relate to something that I've been working on. Not particular, I think, to her work. As I mentioned, I very much enjoyed your post, and her writing, and thanks for introducing her to me. It was an unexpected pleasure. I will certainly dig into this more. Cheers.

Ah, I see :)

Which "Howl" do you mean, by the way? The Ginsberg poem or something else? (Wiki's disambiguation page also gives me two movies and eight songs.)

Christine, how fascinating! We poets are lucky and honored that someone as skilled at prose as poetry has "broken down" with such specificity and insight the process of writing a certain "fictional" poem. Sayers must have had a blast writing this--I imagine it felt like pure indulgence.

Thanks for posting this, Christine. Not every novelist has the chops to pick up her poet character's pen. I have a hazy memory of P.D. James writing a credible Adam Dalgliesh sonnet in one book.

Ginsberg. I'm, semi-surprised you didn't identify that right off. The view of men is archaic, there, at the end of your original post. Everything comes late, especially to new formalists. Reinventing the wheel. Unfortunately, on the whole, the difference between formal poetry and fv has little to do with meter.