D.L. Sayers - to Muriel St Clare Byrne

[badylarka]

6 March 1935                 Bodleian Library
                                       Oxford

Dear Muriel -
   Just to say - 1) that Aristotle was a huge success! - Great fun - [...]
   But - my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything - and he is - THE

Comments

[badylarka]

Б. Рейнолдс комментирует:

These are lines from the octave of the sonnet which Harriet Vane composes in Gaudy Night, chapter 11. D.L.S. had forgotten that she had written them. By the time of this letter she was already working on chapter 17.

Рейнолдс, вероятно, ошибается. Вот как Сэйерс описывает сочинение октавы в главе 11 (Гарриет работает в Бодлеяне):

A detached pentameter, echoing out of nowhere, was beating in her ears - seven marching feet - a pentameter and a half: -

To that still centre 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 note-book at another page and wrote the words down. [...] Blank verse? ... No ... it was part of the octave of a sonnet ... it had the feel of a sonnet.

Очевидно, эта сцена автобиографична и описывает тот же опыт, что и письмо. По-видимому, идея с сонетом пришла Сэйерс в голову, когда она уже работала над главой 17 - в Бодлеяне же? - и ей пришлось вернуться к главе 11 и добавить эту сцену.