63. Cf. Inferno III, 55-57:

                                  si lunga tratta
di gente, ch'io non averei creduto
che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta.
[Eliot's note]

Dante, just outside the gate of hell, has seen "the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise." In his essay on Baudelaire, Eliot argued that in a sense it was better to be posetively evil than to be neither good nor evil. (NA)

reference topics

Dante, Inferno III
back to "The Waste Land"