Dorothy L. Sayers on Dante’s Divine Comedy

We now begin to see the necessity for all the notes and explanations with which editors feel obliged to encumber the pages of Dante. To the fourteenth-century Italian, the personages of the Comedy were familiar. To identify them, and to appreciate the positions they occupy in the Three Kingdoms of the After-world, was to combine an understanding of the allegorical significance with the excitement of a chronique scandaleuse and the intellectual entertainment of solving one of the more enigmatical varieties of crossword puzzle. For us it is different. We do not know these people; nor indeed are we today quite so familiar with our classical authors, or even with our Bible, as a medieval poet might reasonably expect his public to be. Let us suppose that an Englishman were to write a contemporary Divine Comedy on Dante’s model, and that in it, mixed up with a number of scriptural and mythological characters, we were to find, assigned to various circles of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, according to the religious and political convictions of the author, the following assortment of people — some referred to by their full names, some by Christian name or surname alone, and some indicated only by a witty or allusive phrase: Chamberlain ("him of the orchid"), Chamberlain ("him of the umbrella"), [Stewart Houston] Chamberlain, "Brides-in-the-Bath" Smith, "Galloper" Smith, Horatio Bottomley, Horatio [Lord Nelson], Fox [Charles or George to be inferred from the context], the Man who picked up the Bomb in Jermyn Street, Oscar Wilde, Oscar Slater, Oscar Browning, Spencer, Spenser, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Castlerosse, Lawrence [of Arabia], [D. H.] Lawrence, "Butcher" Heydrich, W. G. Grace, Grace Darling, the Captain of the Jarvis Bay, the Sisters of Haworth, the Woodcutter of Hawarden, the Ladies of Llangollen, the Lady with the Lamp, the Lady-with-the-Lampshade-made-of-Human-Skin, Titus Oates, Captain Oates, Quisling, the Owner of "Hermit", the French Bluebeard, Bacon, Roger Bacon, Roger Fry, the Claimant, the Bishop of Zanzibar, Clarence Hatry, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Brown and Kennedy, the Dean of St Patrick’s, the Dean of St Paul’s, Dean Farrar, Fred Archer, Mrs Dyer, Lord George Sanger, Lord George Gordon, General Gordon, Ouida, William Joyce, James Joyce, "the Officer in the Tower", Peter the Painter, Jenkins "of the Ear", Dick Sheppard, Jack Sheppard, and "the Widow at Windsor". Let us further suppose that the writer holds strong views on Trade Unionism, the constitution of UNO, the "theology of crisis", Freudian psychology, Einsteinian astronomy, and the art of Mr Jacob Epstein. Let us then suppose that the book is to be read, six hundred years hence, by an intelligent Portuguese with no particular knowledge of English social history. Would he not require a few notes, in order to savour the full pungency of the poet’s pronouncements and thoroughly understand his attitude to the cosmic set-up?

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   Editorial note: this text was transcribed in April 2003 by Richard M. Leveridge from the introduction to Volume 1 Inferno of the Penguin Classics translation by Dorothy L. Sayers of Dante's La Divina Commedia.

Version 2003-05-01.
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