I decided to ask Michael to create a category wherein I might ruminate about literature I love, like Dante's Comedy and T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The idea arose because I had been reading Prufrock and thinking about it. Making notes in the text simply makes a messy text eventually and God knows I have enough of those. One of the interesting things about Prufrock is that it contains both Dante and Eliot; the first thing that greets you in the poem is the Italian epigraph from Dante's Comedy (Hell). The epigraph provides the context for thinking about the perspective of the speaker in the poem: i. e. Prufrock, who presumably is also in "hell," in his case isolated, alienated, alone and suffering or enduring what Eliot would call a dissociated sensibility. In other words there is a split between his emotional life in the poem and his intellectual life. Intellectually he believes the universe is essentially meaningless; emotionally he desires a satisfying love relationship, so to speak. He thinks love is not real, an illusion; emotionally he desires love.
Since my writings are not an essay, but are "notes," the organization can be, will be a bit abrupt. Thus, that epigraph. The speaker, Guido da Montefeltro, is literally in Hell, talking to someone who can never return to the world of light, he thinks. Thus he thinks he can tell his story without fear of having his infamous story known in the world. Dante the character does not disabuse Guido of that idea. The key category for Guido is that he was a counsellor of fraud (in the eighth circle of Hell, the next to the last circle.). He counseled others on how to achieve one's desires (power in the world) by cheating, and apparently he was quite good at it. "Make agreements with your enemies, and then do not keep them. Be treacherous!" That kind of unrepented evil sounds rather heavy for a character like Prufrock, who seems more like a prissy little bank teller than a counselor to kings or presidents. However the world of the past in literature always impinges on the world of the present, as you may notice when you read Eliot's poetry. We can't help but see what was (assuming our teachers bother to let us study it anymore) in relation to what now is.
The crucial element about Guido, for the moment, is that he gave bad advice, evil advice (to a Pope!). Prufrock, we will see, also, in a sense, gives bad advice, evil advice, but to himself, after a fashion, and that is the primary action at the beginning of the poem that determines the unfolding action in the poem: "Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' / Let us go and make our visit." [I love this poem! And I love Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, etc. I miss doing preparations for class, and I miss class discussions, but not the rest of it. Ha!]. Prufrock refuses to face the "overwhelming question," and that has consequences throughout the rest of the poem, as I suggested earlier.
Okay. One reason for writing like this is that while I see (sense) in the poem a unified action (beginning, middle, end), I certainly do not understand a great deal in the poem, but the fun is always in thinking about it.
First, a translation of the epigraph: "If I (Guido) thought that my reply were to one who could ever return to the world, this flame would shake no more; but since, if what I hear is true, none ever did return alive from this depth, I answer you without fear of infamy." Guido is speaking to Dante who, of course, will return alive to the world. Truth is an important idea in both works, as is the image of the tongue of flame that Guido is bound in, so that he can speak only through the wavering tip.
And, before I pause for a while, here is the first section of the poem, for the meaning is always found in the text, which in this case is essentially a dramatic monologue:
Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table; / Let us go through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question... / Oh, do not ask, What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.
Wonderful! And already the past ( the world of Michelangelo) impinges on the present world of the dirty streets.