“sit down girl! i think i love you! / no get up, girl! show me what you can do!”

[larryhammer]

Have His Carcase has one of the classic opening paragraphs of literature:

The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth. After being acquitted of murdering her lover, and, indeed, in consequence of that acquittal, Harriet Vane found all three specifics abundantly at her disposal; and although Lord Peter Wimsey, with a touching faith in tradition, persisted day in and day out in presenting the bosom for her approval, she showed no inclination to recline upon it.

That’s up there with Pride and Prejudice.

---L.

Subject quote from ABC, Jackson 5.

Comments

[graydon]

Sayers could write.

[larryhammer]

Indeed -- very well. She was even a competent, if not inspired, poet.

(I did read her entire translation of Dante in part because it was the one readily available to me at the time. I found Paradise a bit of a slog and understood that many people did, and was about to give up when things got somewhat more lively and interesting, enough so that I persevered to the end. Which was, yes, transcendent enough to almost be worth the slog. Only afterward did I find out that the point where it got easier was where Sayers stopped, with the rest being completed after her death by Barbara Reynolds. I immediately tracked down Reynolds' other Penguin Classics translation, and her version of Orlando Furioso is the best I've found. I wish she'd translated more.)

[puddleshark]

Yes, it is.

Have His Carcase remains one of the my all-time favourites.

[graydon]

Someone who wrote murder mysteries to pay for her avocation of theology having trouble being creative with Paradise seems to me only to be expected.

(Poetry is hard.)

[sovay]

That’s up there with Pride and Prejudice.

It's honestly pretty Austenian in itself.

[sovay]

Only afterward did I find out that the point where it got easier was where Sayers stopped, with the rest being completed after her death by Barbara Reynolds.

Ow.

(The only poems of Sayers' I have ever read were the two in The Quorum (1920), of which "Veronica" has one real H.D.-like couplet and I got nothing on "Prayer to the Holy Ghost Against Triviality.")

[larryhammer]

(Quite hard.)

[larryhammer]

It is.

[larryhammer]

And mine.

[larryhammer]

It was one of those moments that contributed to my finally understanding the difference between a competent and an inspired poet.