Dante is one of those poets, Eliot once said, that one only grows up to at the end of one’s life. In Eliot’s work, growing up to (learning from) his Italian master has three primary dimensions. The first is psychological, and it has to do with a perception, in reading, of feelings and ideas as unified. The second is aesthetic, and it has to do with poetry, with understanding how to achieve such unification in art. And the third is moral, and it has to do with social and spiritual unification through the cultivation of humility.

• Jewel Spears Brooker(Eckerd College)