Christian Romanticism: T. S. Eliot's Response to Percy Shelley By ...

To embark upon this route, one must acknowledge that one’s past actions were sinful, and that one seeks to be absolved from them. This is to willingly accept the fires of purgation, and to rejoice in them, as Arnaut Daniel does in Dante’s Purgatorio, knowing that they offer the chance of entry into Paradise, as opposed to remaining in Hell, suffering as a result of never seeking deliverance from one’s past deeds.⁸ This view of past sin is expressed in Dante’s vision of Purgatory, as the sinner simultaneously admits past mistakes and rejoices in the refining flames that will ready him for the ascent into paradise:

Did Eliot feel in the autumn of 1932 that he had ‘follies’ to renounce? Certainly, his marriage was a source of great pain to both parties, and his poetic career was at an impasse. Something clearly had to give in Eliot’s life. His past had failed to provide him with the stability and happiness that he had sought. If this was to be found in the future, did it follow that he must break with his past self? Furthermore, if this was the case in his personal life, was this process of separation also one that would be enacted within Eliot’s poetry, evident in his casting off of previous influences and attachments?

Confronting the Romantics: The Norton Lectures

In the series of eight lectures, Eliot carried out a systematic process of poetic renunciation that had begun before his religious conversion but gained new impetus as a result of it.