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From: Nancy Gish On the line you quote, it clearly draws on Dante, as all the notes of all scholars have noted for decades, but it also evokes the dead of the War and Eliot's own reactions to it--as is so intense in the material Rickard sent. And it is also a response to the London life of his own experience. These are also not my own new notes, just what has been pointed to by others, but the letter to the Nation is fascinating. ============================================================= Interesting. In what way is it fascinating? When I first visited London in the late 60s, having finished an MA on TWL, and preparing material for my doctorate at the British Meuseum, I visited the places referenced in TWL. I was very surprised (naively so perhaps) to discover the Royal Stock Exchange (of course no longer being used in the late 60s) right at the centre of the City. All the streets radiate from it. It was the magnate of the economy of the British Empire, very much a symbol of the deadening economic forces that it housed. I have always wondered a bit, why Eliot didn't use such a potent symbol of the syndrome he was exploring. Maybe he did and I just missed it. P.