T. S. Eliot once wrote something similar---that both good and evil people were more alive than those who were morally indifferent to both. I think he got that idea from the early cantos of Dante's Inferno.
Dante's inferno is one of my favorites, partially because referencing it lends a veneer of respectability and is quite hoity-toity, but also, in seriousness, partially because it's enduring nature and musings on morality remain relevant. What's the T.S. Elliott connection, did he refer to the inferno a lot? I'm not as familiar with him as I should be haha
Dante was profoundly influential in Eliot's work. The first period of his career---from Prufrock through the Hollow Men (and most significantly in The Waste Land---was dominated by The Infeno. When Eliot became a Christian, in 1927, his subsequent poems, including the early plays, seem to be dependent on the Purgatorio. But the Four Quartets are definitely an effect of his reading of the Paradisio. Just as major Europen poets (including Milton) had often organized their literary careers according to the pattern established by Vergil's three major works, Eliot seemed to followed the three parts of The Divine Comedy in establishing a kind of spiritual organization for his poems. And I do not believe this was merely random circumstance: Prufrock, his first published poem, begins with an epitaph from Inferno. Little Gidding, the last of his major poems, contains a spiritual vision akin to the Paradisio. I doubt that Eliot ever wrote a poem spontaneously, and every choice was part of an overall plan. (If you have a chance, you should look into Valerie Eliot's publication of The Waste Land transcript---which is the original drafts of the poem, much longer than it was when finally published, and full of Eliot's and Pound's notations. The poem, before Pound mangled it, was much different and much more elaborate than the bare skeleton that was left over. When Pound, in 1970 or so, reviewed the original pages with Mrs. Eliot prior to the publication of her transcript of them, he is said to have begun weeping and asked, "Why oh why didn't he {Eliot] restore the cancelled lines?" I think Pound realized, at the end, that the greatness of The Waste Land would have been far greater had it been published intact.
Sorry to have been so verbose. I love talking about Eliot.
T. S. Eliot once wrote
T. S. Eliot once wrote something similar---that both good and evil people were more alive than those who were morally indifferent to both. I think he got that idea from the early cantos of Dante's Inferno.
Starward
Dante's inferno is one of my
Dante's inferno is one of my favorites, partially because referencing it lends a veneer of respectability and is quite hoity-toity, but also, in seriousness, partially because it's enduring nature and musings on morality remain relevant. What's the T.S. Elliott connection, did he refer to the inferno a lot? I'm not as familiar with him as I should be haha
Dante was profoundly
Dante was profoundly influential in Eliot's work. The first period of his career---from Prufrock through the Hollow Men (and most significantly in The Waste Land---was dominated by The Infeno. When Eliot became a Christian, in 1927, his subsequent poems, including the early plays, seem to be dependent on the Purgatorio. But the Four Quartets are definitely an effect of his reading of the Paradisio. Just as major Europen poets (including Milton) had often organized their literary careers according to the pattern established by Vergil's three major works, Eliot seemed to followed the three parts of The Divine Comedy in establishing a kind of spiritual organization for his poems. And I do not believe this was merely random circumstance: Prufrock, his first published poem, begins with an epitaph from Inferno. Little Gidding, the last of his major poems, contains a spiritual vision akin to the Paradisio. I doubt that Eliot ever wrote a poem spontaneously, and every choice was part of an overall plan. (If you have a chance, you should look into Valerie Eliot's publication of The Waste Land transcript---which is the original drafts of the poem, much longer than it was when finally published, and full of Eliot's and Pound's notations. The poem, before Pound mangled it, was much different and much more elaborate than the bare skeleton that was left over. When Pound, in 1970 or so, reviewed the original pages with Mrs. Eliot prior to the publication of her transcript of them, he is said to have begun weeping and asked, "Why oh why didn't he {Eliot] restore the cancelled lines?" I think Pound realized, at the end, that the greatness of The Waste Land would have been far greater had it been published intact.
Sorry to have been so verbose. I love talking about Eliot.
Starward