Thought-provoking essays on Dante’s Comedy, written by Dorothy Sayers, for whom Dante became a ruling passion relatively late in life. Few lay readers today possess the theological substrate necessary to offer such a richly specific perspective, particularly on the Paradiso, which continues to resist easy reading beyond its early cantos. The neglected place-markers scattered across the multiple translations of the Comedy in the library stand as evidence of persistent distraction.
Sayers’s fascination, prompted by reading Charles Williams’s The Figure of Beatrice, led ultimately to her translation of all three canticles of the Comedy—an act of literary criticism as complete as it is ambitious. Her translation remains lively and accessible, free from the archaisms that often burden earlier English versions of Dante’s Italian.
The essays across both volumes (a third remains unread) are inevitably uneven, but for readers of the Comedy they offer a rich and stimulating engagement. They join a small and vital library of works that offer fresh perspectives on Dante’s magnificently curious medieval treasure.
Oh gosh, I am on the verge of buying DLS’s Divine Comedy translations and it looks like I might have to get her essays too arrgghhhh!
Maybe not quite essential, but you will not be disappointed.