Peter,
It's been awhile since you brought up the subject so I may be missing a
finer point but I think you were stating a case for an early influence
of Dante on Eliot. I don't really have that feeling. I believe it was
Pound who really but TSE onto Dante and so that really wouldn't be
happening until 1915. I can see an influence from about 1920 on but I
think you meant even earlier. You ended up rewording the subject line
to include the words "Frequency of Dante references" just after I
started to to do the same, that is I looked up Christopher Ricks' notes
on Dante in "Inventions of the March Hare (if a TSE line could
conceivably be connected to anyone else Ricks would annotate it.) I only
got half-way though and then the weather turned spring-like so the topic
will be dead before I get indoors to finish the research. Anyway, I
answer now only half sure. The Dante that I've seen so far are in
epigraghs and echoes. I just can't see where you see something strong.
Regards,
Rick Parker
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