Selected Essays by T. S. Eliot

Author:T. S. Eliot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2015-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Per me si va nella città dolente;

per me si va nell’ eterno dolore;

per me si va tra la perduta gente.

Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore;

fecemi la divina Potestae,

la somma Sapienza e il primo Amore.

II. THE “PURGATORIO”

AND THE “PARADISO”

For the science or art of writing verse, one has learned from the Inferno that the greatest poetry can be written with the greatest economy of words, and with the greatest austerity in the use of metaphor, simile, verbal beauty, and elegance. When I affirm that more can be learned about how to write poetry from Dante than from any English poet, I do not at all mean that Dante’s way is the only right way, or that Dante is thereby greater than Shakespeare or, indeed, any other English poet. I put my meaning into other words by saying that Dante can do less harm to any one trying to learn to write verse than can Shakespeare. Most great English poets are inimitable in a way in which Dante was not. If you try to imitate Shakespeare you will certainly produce a series of stilted, forced, and violent distortions of language. The language of each great English poet is his own language; the language of Dante is the perfection of a common language. In a sense, it is more pedestrian than that of Dryden or Pope. If you follow Dante without talent, you will at worst be pedestrian and flat; if you follow Shakespeare or Pope without talent, you will make an utter fool of yourself.

But if one has learned this much from the Inferno, there are other things to be learnt from the two successive divisions of the poem. From the Purgatorio one learns that a straightforward philosophical statement can be great poetry; from the Paradiso, that more and more rarefied and remote states of beatitude can be the material for great poetry. And gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation. And a further wisdom is reached when we see clearly that this indicates the equality of the two men.

On the one hand, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso belong, in the way of understanding, together. It is apparently easier to accept damnation as poetic material than purgation or beatitude; less is involved that is strange to the modern mind. I insist that the full meaning of the Inferno can only be extracted after appreciation of the two later parts, yet it has sufficient meaning in and by itself for the first few readings. Indeed, the Purgatorio is, I think, the most difficult of the three parts. It cannot be enjoyed by itself like the Inferno, nor can it be enjoyed merely as a sequel to the Inferno; it requires appreciation of the Paradiso as well; which means that its first reading is arduous and apparently unremunerative. Only when we have read straight through to the end of the Paradiso, and re-read the Inferno, does the Purgatorio begin to yield its beauty.

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