Love's torment: Pain and sexual pleasure in Dante Alighieri and T. S. Eliot

Sexual pleasure, for the male writer, has been accompanied by pain for centuries. Italian poet Dante Alighieri presents a paradoxical treatment of lust by exploring pain and pleasure in Canto XXVI of "Purgatory" in The Divine Comedy. Over four hundred years later, Dante's sexual ideology would evolve into misanthropy and misogyny in T. S. Eliot's poetry. The poetry's aggression towards women begins with "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock," escalates in "La Figlia che Piange" and "Gerontion," and reaches a violent pinnacle of misanthropy in "Sweeney Erect." Although T. S. Eliot attempted to emulate Dante's passion, his contorted visionary work chose the language of renounced, rather than consummated, sexual desire. Eliot's poetry seeks to mimic Dante's philosophy on love and pain expressed in Canto XXVI of "Purgatory," but all that emanates is a sense of pity, loss, and disgust.