T. S. ELIOT AND DANTE

T. S. ELIOT AND DANTE

T. S. Eliot and Dante DOMINIC MANGANIELLO Associate Professor of English Literature University of Ottawa, Canada Palgrave Macmillan

Dominic Manganiello 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 All rights reserved. For infonnation, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York. NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1989 ISBN 978-1-349-20261-4 ISBN 978-1-349-20259-1 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20259-1 Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. Includes index. 1. Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965- Knowledge--Uterature. 2. Dante A1ighieri, 1265-1321- InfIuence---Eliot. 3. English poetry-italian influences. I. Title. PS3509. L43Z72 1989 821'.912 88-15871 ISBN 978-0-312-02104-7

alia dolce memoria di mio padre, ai miei cari Angelina, Francesco Giuseppe, Lucia Carla, Miriam Elisa, e Sofia Cristina

Contents Acknowledgements ix 1 Dante according to Eliot 1 (i) The Modem Element in Dante 1 (ii) Dante, the Touchstone Poet 5 (iii) Eliot's Dante and his Critics 11 2 Death by Water and Dante's Ulysses 17 (i) Prufrock's Love Song 18 (ii) Phlebas Redivivus1 25 (iii) Old Men Ought to be Explorers 31 (iv) Marina: Memory and the Art of Sea-Change 35 3 The Poetics of the Desert 40 (i) The Desert in the City 40 (ii) Voices Crying in the Wilderness 53 (iii) The Cactus Land 59 (iv) The Garden in the Desert 65 (v) The Word in the Desert 75 4 Eliot's Book of Memory 84 (i) Memory and Desire 84 (ii) MaUer and Memory, or the Soul's Progress 92 (iii) Memoria sui/memoria Dei 98 (iv) Memory and the Word 115 vii

viii Contents 5 The Aesthetics and Politics of Order 124 (i) Style and Order 124 (ii) The Ethics and Politics of Order 132 (iii) Church and State: Murder in the Cathedral 137 6 Eliot's Dante and the Moderns 147 (i) Little Gidding: Eliot and Yeats's Ghost 147 (ii) Little Gidding Revisited: Heaney and Joyce's Ghost 155 (iii) 'The True Dantescan Voice' 162 Notes 166 Index 206

Acknowledgements One who writes a book on T. S. Eliot and Dante cannot help but record his indebtedness to a number of scholarly works that have dealt with various aspects of the subject; namely, the seminal essay by Mario Praz, and the unpublished doctoral dissertations by Audrey T. Rodgers, James S. Torrens, Donald George Sheehan, and Kristin Rae Woolever. Books by Philip R. Headings, Lyndall Gordon, A. D. Moody, Edward Lobb, Eloise Hay, and Ronald Bush have also been helpful. Other acknowledgements appear in the notes. In a more personal way, I wish to express my thanks to David L. Jeffrey, Camille R. La Bossiere, and George Thomson, my colleagues at the University of Ottawa, for helpful discussion of my manuscript and for valuable suggestions; to Ronald Bush for some practical suggestions; to Mrs Valerie Eliot for kindly responding to a query, and for allowing me to consult the Clark Lectures and the Turnbull Lectures; to Seamus Heaney for an interesting conversation at his station in Cambridge, Massachusetts; to John Spencer Hill, Joseph Ronsley, Donald Theall, and the late Richard Ellmann for their kind encouragement and support of this project at various stages; to Reed Way Dasenbrock, Irene Makaryk, and Carla de Petris for the gift of articles; to the staffs at Harvard's Houghton Library, at the Biblioteca Marucelliana and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence; to Dorothy Thomson and Frank Di Trolio of the University of Ottawa Library; and to the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Ottawa for a grant which made a research trip to Florence possible. And, not least, there is the debt of gratitude to my wife, Angelina, and to my children, Francesco Giuseppe, Lucia Carla, Miriam Elisa, and Sofia Cristina. Only they know how much they have meant. With joy I dedicate this book to them, and to the sweet memory of my father. The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: ix

x Acknowledgements Mrs Valerie Eliot and Faber and Faber Ltd, for the extracts from early drafts of 'Ode', 'Mr Eliot's Sunday Morning Service', 'Little Gidding', 'The Rock', 'Morning at the Window' and Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, Valerie Eliot 1989; the extracts from The Clark Lectures and the Turnbull Lectures Valerie Eliot 1989; and the extracts from uncollected writings Valerie Eliot 1989; Faber and Faber Ltd, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux Inc., for the extracts from The Elder Statesman, To Criticise the Critic, On Poetry and Poets and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley by T. S. Eliot; Faber and Faber Ltd. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., for the extracts from Collected Poems 1909-1962, Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, Selected Essays, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, The Idea of a Christian Society, After Strange Gods, Essays Ancient and Modern, For Lancelot Andrewes by T. S. Eliot, and the extracts from The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript by T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot; Faber and Faber Ltd, and Harvard University Press, for the extracts from The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism by T. S. Eliot; Methuen and Co., for the extracts from The Sacred Wood by T. S. Eliot.