Nice analysis. I would add that the poem is also a study in the pains of excessive self-consciousness and indecision, something Eliot felt acutely on a personal and generational level (the kind of spirit that led to the "Do I dare?" refrain in another of his works). To that end, the use of Purgatorio is particularly interesting - it is an indeterminate place, where people are not yet fully one thing nor the other.
In Canto 18, exactly at the midpoint of the Mountain of Purgatory, Dante is at the terrace of the slothful. Mostly he's trying to learn how to love correctly, and temper the emotions with a spirit of divine love guided by reason, but the slothful (who in a sense could not be bothered to be one thing nor another) run past him without stopping, so all he hears are fragments of what they are saying - a form paralleled in much of The Waste Land, which is full of fragmentary voices.
One could equally argue that the form is a literary attempt to convey the fragmented media world of the city (imagine what taking a trolley past advertisements while the radio played seemed like when it was new) that also influenced cubism and the experimental tone poems of the time. Jon Corelis mentions the effect of cinema on literature, which is similar - On the third page of The Great Gatsby, published just three years after this, Fitzgerald likens his emotional state to a flower opening up in sped-up film.
I like the Purgatory thing, though.
Also of note: What kind of barely known poet publishes notes to his poem, attempting to recapitulate what they say as most of world culture? He and Pound were so very apocalyptic.
To your question at the end, the notes are a part of the poem. They're (pretty sophisticated) self awareness, and I also think he's having a bit of fun sometimes. I remember in an essay of his own, I forget which, Eliot does say it was very important to him that, if someone like himself recognised the homage to a part of the Commedia, he should know it was intentional and that Eliot made the reference with meaning. ie. that there was another one like him, so affected by Dante, or whoever, out there; I'm paraphrasing from memory.
But there are also notes which seem like he's messing about; the note to line 99 which is just, "I don't know where this is from," or his including the description of the hermit-thrush song straight from an encyclopaedia entry, those seem like a bit of joking to me.
Nice analysis. I would add that the poem is also a study in the pains of excessive self-consciousness and indecision, something Eliot felt acutely on a personal and generational level (the kind of spirit that led to the "Do I dare?" refrain in another of his works). To that end, the use of Purgatorio is particularly interesting - it is an indeterminate place, where people are not yet fully one thing nor the other.
In Canto 18, exactly at the midpoint of the Mountain of Purgatory, Dante is at the terrace of the slothful. Mostly he's trying to learn how to love correctly, and temper the emotions with a spirit of divine love guided by reason, but the slothful (who in a sense could not be bothered to be one thing nor another) run past him without stopping, so all he hears are fragments of what they are saying - a form paralleled in much of The Waste Land, which is full of fragmentary voices.
One could equally argue that the form is a literary attempt to convey the fragmented media world of the city (imagine what taking a trolley past advertisements while the radio played seemed like when it was new) that also influenced cubism and the experimental tone poems of the time. Jon Corelis mentions the effect of cinema on literature, which is similar - On the third page of The Great Gatsby, published just three years after this, Fitzgerald likens his emotional state to a flower opening up in sped-up film.
I like the Purgatory thing, though.
Also of note: What kind of barely known poet publishes notes to his poem, attempting to recapitulate what they say as most of world culture? He and Pound were so very apocalyptic.
To your question at the end, the notes are a part of the poem. They're (pretty sophisticated) self awareness, and I also think he's having a bit of fun sometimes. I remember in an essay of his own, I forget which, Eliot does say it was very important to him that, if someone like himself recognised the homage to a part of the Commedia, he should know it was intentional and that Eliot made the reference with meaning. ie. that there was another one like him, so affected by Dante, or whoever, out there; I'm paraphrasing from memory.
But there are also notes which seem like he's messing about; the note to line 99 which is just, "I don't know where this is from," or his including the description of the hermit-thrush song straight from an encyclopaedia entry, those seem like a bit of joking to me.