The name of the book is:
The book was written by Laura Lemay and Rafe Colburn.
Well it is my website. I wish to maintain a certain flavour; a certain look and feel; a certain type of content. I primarily want this website to reflect my own interests. I can understand that this may seem arrogant of me. However, if you feel that something very different would be in order, there is nothing to stop you learning some HTML and creating your own website.
I started reading a very fine book by Laura Lemay and Rafe Colburn. I say: "I started reading... ". I found everything I needed to create this website in the first four chapters of their book. I feel pretty competent having read the first four chapters. If I had read the whole book, I imagine I would feel like a God!
The name of the book is:
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The fragment of Italian poetry, which is quoted at the start of T.S.Eliot's poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, is taken from Canto 27 of Dante's Inferno (which can also be found on the Internet in an English Translation) should you wish to view the whole text of this epic poem.
In Canto 27 of the Inferno, Dante Meets Guido De Montefeltro. Dante asks Guido who he is and what he is doing in Hell. Before Guido answers Dante's question he gives the following speech:
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
In this speech, which is also the speech that precedes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Guido effectively tells Dante: "If I thought you could ever go back to the world above I would never answer your question. However, since no-one who comes to these depths ever goes back to the world above, if everything I have heard is true, without any fear of shame or infamy I will answer you."
Guido then goes on to tell Dante that the reason he is in Hell is that he was tricked by Pope Boniface into helping him win a battle through treachery. Guido had spent most of his life planning campaigns and winning battles through treachery and deceit. However, at a certain point in his life he had decided to think about his salvation and he had repented his sins and become a Franciscan Monk. As he told Dante: "It would have worked too" had he not been tricked by the Pope into one more campaign. The Pope told Guido that, since he was the Pope, he could absolve Guido of his sins. Consequently, having received absolution Guido told the Pope how he might go about defeating his enemies through fraud. Guido then goes on to tell Dante how, at the hour of his death, St Francis had come to carry him off to heaven only to be stopped by a devil who said: "Halt there! This man belongs to me! You cannot be absolved for a sin that you are about to commit. By helping the Pope, you have damned yourself. Haha! You did not think I was a logician did you?"
It should perhaps be pointed out that, since Guido was being punished in the Circle of Fraud, Dante felt he himself could be fraudulent with Guido, that he could do unto Guido as Guido had done unto others. Guido had assumed that Dante would never be able to go back to earth and tell Guido's story. Dante, did not bother to inform Guido that, with Virgil and Beatrice's guidance and help, he would indeed go back to earth. Since Canto 27 of Dante's Inferno exists, it is plain that he also told Guido's story.
There are a couple more points to mention: The first is that the literal translation of: "Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse." is not "I would not answer you" but "This flame would shake no more". This is merely a more poetic way of saying the same thing. Guido's punishment is that he is wrapped in flame, and burning for all eternity. Every time he speaks his flame shakes. "Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse." implies merely that he would keep is mouth shut and that his flame would therefore be still.
A more interesting question, from the point of view of T.S.Eliot's poem, is why he quotes these particular lines at the start of his poem. My own guess is that he thinks that J. Alfred Prufrocks mean and cowardly life is every bit as shameful as the story Guido tells Dante. Sometimes there is something of the author in his art. Does this mean that T.S. Eliot was ashamed of his own erotic passions or, more accurately, of his inability to live them out? I don't know. Apart from this one poem I know nothing about T.S. Eliot. Indeed, I only became aware of this one poem, when I discovered a rather pathetic teacher in a T.V. Drama series called GBH reciting certain lines of it again and again, especially: "That was not what I meant at all. That was not it at all!"
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