The role of intertextual relations in cultural Tradition

The aim of the present paper is to analyse intertextual relations based on activation of textual codes in the famous chain of works by Virgil (The Aeneid 1990), Dante (The Divine Comedy) that continues through romanticists and up to the modernist literature (T. S. Eliot The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, Four Quartets) taking T.S. Eliot`s essays on literature as the basis for our analysis. Homer`s Odyssey and Iliad serve as a hypertext for these works in which each author develops in his own way the thematic codes from the works of his predecessors thus affirming the continuity of a single cultural tradition -“from Homer and within it...”.


INTRODUCTION
In his essays on literature T.S.Eliot outlines European cultural space within which intertextual relations take place.The great poets of Greece and Rome, as well as prophets of Israel, are ances-tors of Europe, rather than Europeans in the mediaeval and modern sense, writes T.S.Eliot in the essay "Goethe as the Sage" (211) in the essay "What is a Classic?" (70) He treats European literature as a whole, the several members of which cannot flourish, if the same blood-stream does not circulate throughout the whole body.The blood-stream of European literature is Latin and Greek -not as two systems of circulation, but one, for it is through Rome that our parentage in Greece must be traced and each literature has its greatness, not in isolation, but because of its place in a larger pattern, a pattern set in Rome (What is a Classic?,70).
This brings us to the question of a classic and the role of Roman culture in the development of Western civilization.According to T.S.Eliot, a classic can only occur when a civilization is mature, when a language and a literature are mature; and it must be the work of a mature mind.To these T.S.Eliot adds maturity of manners, of language and perfection of the common style.When a work of literature has an equal significance in relation to a number of foreign literatures, we may say that it has also universality (What is a Classic?, 59, 67).
1932, 14) A new work must at the same time conform and fit in while being individual, which is a test of its value.
The fact of "fitting in" indicates to a separate world of the text within a cultural system that has crea-ted its own world and has life, which though somewhat different from real life, is felt as "more real" by the people who share the same cultural tradition.The world in which we live is often perceived as disordered, lacking in system and condition-consequence relations, is structured in art and literature, reason and explanation for our being are searched for on the grounds of similar events which came to be known as archetypes or certain patterns of behaviour and situations.For European cul-tural tradition these archetypes are based on two main codes -Roman-Greek mythology and the Bible which have structured European consciousness and art for many centuries and at the same time set patterns for behaviour as well as moral and ethical values.As a result, we see the repetition of events in a different form as a reflection of everlasting rotation of matter in the ever changing and yet complied to some order reality.
Homer`s Odyssey could be a hypertext (according to Gerard Genette 1980, hypertextuality is the relation between a text and a preceding 'hypotext' -a text or genre on which it is based but which it trans-forms, modifies, elaborates or extends) for James Joyce's Ulysses through centuries and many inter-mediate works or start a famous chain of works by Virgil (The Aeneid 1990) and Dante (The Divine Comedy) that continues through romanticists and up to the modernist literature (T. S. Eliot The Waste Land, Ash-Wednesday, Four Quartets) in which each author continues to develop in his own way the thematic codes from the works of his predecessors thus affirming the continuity of a single cultural tradition.These codes are based on the mysteries of antiquity and Christianity that served the function of bringing human life in accordance with the laws of the universe.Eliot called it a "mythic method", "…simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." Virgil, whom T.S.Eliot called the most universal of all poets, was the author whose works can be viewed in a broad intertextual context.The Aeneid is widely considered Virgil's best work and one of the most important poems in the history of western literature.The myth about Aeneas was mentioned in The Iliad (XX, 300-307) and tells how Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite and the handsome Trojan shepherd Anchises with whom the goddess of beauty had fallen in love, was destined to found a new Troy and rule its descendants.
The epic poem consists of 12 books in hexameter that is divided into two sections based on the poetry of Homer; the first six books were viewed as The Odyssey while the latter six were modelled upon The Iliad.Almost all episodes of The Aeneid are selected by their resemblance to the Homeric ones, but they are shown in a completely new way.It is this development of one literature, or one civilization, in relation to another, which gives a peculiar significance to the subject of Virgil`s epic (What is a Classic?61).T.S.Eliot writes that no poet has ever shown a finer sense of proportion than Virgil, in the uses he made of Greek and of earlier Latin poetry.It is this development of one literature, or one civilization, in relation to another, which gives a peculiar significance to the subject of Virgil`s epic (What is a Classic?, 61).As Gasparov (1979, 29) states, Homeric reminiscences are everywhere and Vergilius was proud of them.He thought that it was easier to steal a club from Hercules than a verse from Homer.However an entirely different perception of life is behind these pictures.The enclosed and settled world of Homer is converted into infinitely moving apart world of a superpower.Space was expanded: gods became distant from people, and the connection of events became incomprehensible for them.Time expanded: if Odysseus gets in Hades prediction only about his own nearest lot, then Aeneas obtained prophecy about the remotest future of his unknown descendants.And last, but not least, the spiritual world of man was enlarged: the glory of wars became only an external manifestation and Mebuke 53 confirmation of the will of fate, and all abilities of a hero are activated to understand it and to conform to it.But the main difference of the Aeneid from Homer`s poems is the theme of renunciation from the past and revival for the future.Though in the Aeneid the passions were shown in their noble and elevated form, they still required renunciation.Aeneas has a constant epithet of "pious"; the word that means "devoted to gods, ancestors, friends", everything, which connects man with the past.
Here it means "devoted to gods and fate", everything connected with the future.Aeneas follows his fate with persistent background melancholy: O thrice and four times blest, whose lot it was to meet death before their fathers' eyes beneath the lofty walls of Troy! (1,(94)(95).…unwillingly, queen, I parted from your shores, he told Dido (VI, 460); this verse represents a repetition of Gaius Valerius Catullus (66, 39): Unwillingly, your majesty, I departed from your head, unwillingly: …, -a lock of hair from the crown of Berenice's head tells Berenice, before becoming a constellation; and we hear the implication in both cases: the way to heaven is difficult.
The utmost renunciation from the past for the sake of future is given in book VI of the Aeneid, the descent into and return from the Underworld.At the beginning Aeneas`s experiences pass in front of his eyes -the shadow of Deiphobus reminds him about his native land, the shadow of Dido --about love; in the middle he learns about the eternal -rotation of soul, purifying itself from bodily passions; in the end future opens in front of him -a long line of Roman heroes from the earliest kings until August and Marcellus.Here, at the climax of the poem Anchises says the key verses, the famous formula of the historical mission of Rome (VI, 847-853): 1. "Others, I doubt not, shall with softer mould beat out the breathing bronze, coax 2. from the marble features to life, plead cases with greater eloquence and 3. with a pointer trace heaven's motions and predict the risings of the stars: 4. you, Roman, be sure to rule the world (be these your arts), to crown peace 5. with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud." There is no national egocentrism here.The Romans are chosen people as they are capable of suppor-ting peaceful unity of all other nations.The authority of Rome over the world is not the right, but a burden that requires sacrifices, and, first of all, renunciation from fraught with discordance pas-sions (VI, 832): Steel not your hearts, my sons, to such wicked war nor vent violent valour on the vitals of your land.-addresses Anchises the shadows of Caesar and Pompei.Will the Romans stand this moral examination?
The second half of the poem describes the war for Latium.Until now Aeneas renounced from himself in the name of fate -now he must kill others in its name.This is when he fails to preserve estrangement from human passions and observe the precept: to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud.At least two times he forgets about everything and begins to kill without selection as a homeric hero did -to war for the sake of war, not for the sake of peace.The first time -revenging for the death of young Pallas (book X); the second time, and this is significant, in the last lines of the poem, at the end of the combat with Turnus, the killer of Pallant.Turnus recognizes himself to be defeated and requests mercy in the name of his father (and you have your Anchises!), -but Aeneas notes the belt of Pallas on him and strikes him with his sword.There are no unimportant details in Virgil`s poems: on the plates of Pallant`s belt were depicted Danaides and Aegyptiads, the prototype of all mythological fratricides (X, 496-499).(According to Greek mythology, Danaus with his fifty daughters fled in fear of his twin brother Aegyptus, but the fifty sons of Aegyptos followed them to Argos and forced Danaus to give them his daughters in marriage.At their father's behest they murdered their husbands at their wedding night.The only one who spared her husband was Hyper-mnestra.In Hades, the girls were condemned eternally to pour water in a vessel with holes in its bottom).
Virgil leaves his best hero at the worst moment: the glory to fate is sung, the glory to man is silenced.But is Fate worth glory?Is the revival worth death?The answer of Virgil is:"Yes".He was the man, who survived the end of the old world and wrote IV eclogue: he believed in future.He believed that by joining his will with fate man becomes similar to Jupiter himself, who at the decisive moment renounces from any action: "fate will find its way" (X, 113) (Gasparov 1979) The works of Virgil almost from the moment of their publication influenced the development of Latin poetry.They became standard texts in school curricula with which all educated Romans were familiar.Poets, such as Ovid, Silius Italicus often refer intertextually to his works to generate meaning in their own poetry.Partially as a result of so-called "messianic" Fourth Eclogue --widely interpreted at the time to have predicted the birth of Jesus Christ the Aeneid remained the central Latin literary text of the middle Ages and retained its status up to the time of Modernity.In the essay Virgil and the Christian World (1951,(121)(122)(123)(124)(125)(126)(127)(128)(129)(130)(131) T. S. Eliot speculates about the importance of Virgil`s works for European cultural tradition.Though, he thinks it to be a misunderstanding that in the fourth Eclogue was predicted the birth of Jesus Christ.The element which in his opinion gives Virgil a unique place, at the end of the pre-Christian and at the beginning of the Christian world is that Virgil looks both ways, he makes a liaison between the old world and the new, and of his pecu-liar position we may take the fourth Eclogue as a symbol.The chief characteristics of Virgil which make him sympathetic to the Christian mind are the key words of his works such as "labor, pietas, and fatum".Christianity established the principle that action and contemplation, labor and prayer, are both essential to the life of the complete man.The second word "pietas" suggests devout church-going.In another sense, it is always preceded by the adjective "filial", meaning correct behaviour toward a parent.For Virgil it implies an attitude towards the individual, towards the family, towards the region, and towards the imperial destiny of Rome.And finally Aeneas is "pious" also in his respect towards the gods, and in his punctilious observance of rites and offerings.It is an attitude towards all these things in their unity that forms an attitude towards life.At the same time, Aeneas is the prototype of a Christian hero, as he is a man with a mission; and the mission is everything as upon him the future of the Western World depends.The concept of destiny implies that the world and the course of human history have meaning.For Virgil and for his contemporary readers, this destiny means the Imperium Romanum.This in itself, as Virgil saw it, was a worthy justification of history (What is a Classic?67-69).
T.S.Eliot considers that …of all the great poets of Greece and Rome, … it is to Virgil that we owe the most for our standard of the classic: which, … is not the same thing as pretending that he is the greatest, or the one to whom we are in every way the most indebted -it is of a particular debt ….His comprehensiveness, is due to the unique position in our history of the Roman Empire and the Latin language: a position which may be said to conform to the destiny.This sense of destiny comes to consciousness in the Aeneid.Aeneas is a `man in fate`, a man fulfilling his destiny, by surrendering his will to a higher power behind the gods who thwart or direct him.But he is the symbol of Rome; and, as Aeneas is to Rome, so is ancient Rome to Europe.Thus Virgil acquires the centrality of the unique classic; he is at the centre of European civilization, in a position which no other poet can share or usurp.The Roman Empire and the Latin language were not any empire and any lan-guage, but an empire and a language with a unique destiny in relation to ourselves; and the poet in whom that Empire and that language came to consciousness and expression is a poet of unique destiny.If Vigil is thus the consciousness of Rome and the supreme voice of her language, he must have significance for us which cannot be expressed wholly in terms of literary appreciation and criticism.… The value of Virgil to us, in literary terms, is in providing us with a criterion.… In short, without the constant application of the classical measure, which we owe to Virgil more than to any other one poet, we tend to become provincial.(What is a Classic?67-69) One of the greatest appreciations of Vergil`s achievements in literature is expressed in The Devine Comedy.Repeating many themes from The Aeneid, it describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso).Because of its serious purpose and range, the Comedy, as previously did Virgil`s works, soon became a cornerstone in the evolution of Italian as an established literary language and influenced the development of literary language as such for as Eliot writes in "What is a Classic (p.60) … in the Divine Comedy, if anywhere, we find the classic in a modern European language.The Comedy was a foundational work of literature for the Christian world that systemized the world perception based on astronomy, mathematics, and the Ptolemy`s system of the world and asserted a certain code of moral, ethical and esthetical values.The word "comedy", in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered uni-verse, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influ-enced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.
Continuity of a literary tradition has never been more obviously expressed than when Dante made Virgil his guide to Hell and the greater part of Purgatory in The Divine Comedy developing the same theme as the Aeneid --renunciation from the past and revival for the future.In the Aeneid, as well as in The Devine Comedy, the protagonists go down to the Underworld for revelation about their fate.For Aeneas it was inseparable from the lot and destiny of his country and its historical mission.For Dante it was a revelation about the lot and destiny of man who strives to understand the meaning of existence, that is also inseparable from the destiny of his country.
The journey to Underworld was an important part of Initiation Mysteries.In the book Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity (Steiner 1902, 22-27) Dr. Rudolf Steiner describes the way of a person who tries to look behind the veneer of material reality and reaches the stage when he begins to doubt the absolute validity of his senses and to feel the existence of another, spiritual world.He reaches a stage when a soul shows to him life as death.Then he is not in the world, he is in the underworld, and makes his journey through Hell.Man either perishes in it, or reemerges completely transformed.Then a new world is born for him from spiritual fire.The same experience was desc-ribed by Plato in Phaedo and by Pythagoreans.Mysteries showed that God, eternal universal har-mony, are in the soul of man.Socrates mentioned that the strive to wisdom is common to death as in both cases bodily things lose their significance.The essence of soul is in truth that is not transient.That is why cognition is resurrection of God.Socrates considers a soul before it accepted wisdom to be a "wise wife", a maternal principle which gives birth to God Son -Logos.In the process of cognition man unites with Logos.Above Logos is only God, below it is the transient world.
Man has a mission to join this chain.
As we saw, at the end of the Aeneid Aeneas failed to rise above human passions and thus accomp-lish his way to human perfection.Dante conceived his Comedy as a poem about human perfection that can be reached.Strayed, having "lost all trace of the straight path", "deep in a darkened forest", which symbolizes the state of man until he reaches the state of reason, and at the same time the state of youthful sins of any man, Dante finds help from Virgil, who symbolizes human reason and strive for perfection.Dante begins his poem not with "I" but "we": Halfway in the journey we are living.The darkness and light take shape within each self.
In the Underworld the poet sees diverse states of soul after death, in accordance with the requital, determined by the Lord.So ethical laws are laws of nature, and natural laws are ethical laws.As T.S.Eliot writes in his essay on Dante (1929, 250): Hell is not a place but a state; man is damned or blessed in the creatures of his imagination as well as in men who have actually lived; and that Hell, though a state, is a state which can only be thought of, and perhaps only experienced, by the projection of sensory images; and that the resurrection of the body has perhaps a deeper meaning than we understand.In the introduction to the Inferno by Charles Franco we read: The demons issue from the black hole of the human heart, from the centre where ice has formed in men`s love for one another and for God.Satan is the absolute essence of hell.He is completely mechanical, but instead of being a source of energy, he devours human lives.He embodies the worst sin, which is betrayal.
In his letter to Can Grande della Scala, Dante states that the subject of his work is man as he is subject to the reward or punishment of Justice in the exercise of his free will with its merits and demerits.The examples, ranging from the fall of Lucifer to the destruction of Troy, are set out in twelve tercets that begin respectively with U U U U, O O O O, and M M M M. The pattern spells out the Italian word for "man" who, the poet implies, is synonymous with pride.In Canto XXIII the poet sees the word OMO shaped in the features of the starved gluttons: "The sockets of their eyes seemed gemless rings: Those who read OMO in the face of man Would plainly there have recognized the M. (Purgatory XXIII, 31-33) " Charles Franco mentions that the commonplace observation is that OMO ("man") is written with the eyes, brows, nose, and cheekbones of the face as a pictogram of the essential nature of the per-son as the OMO DEI ("man is of God").The lesson remains changeless: in order to know God, we must first know ourselves (Franco 2006).
Three definitions of man operate in the Divine Comedy: the Aristotelian view of man as a rational animal, which explains how those in hell have allowed the beast in them to prevail; the Platonic app-roach to man as embodied spirit, which explains how those in purgatory struggle to let their souls direct their lives; and the psalmist claim that man is a little less than the angels.Of the three definitions, the middle one contains the balance between extremes, for it emphasizes the transcen-dental aspirations which Purgatory describes.Christian gnosis, according to Clement of Alexandria, involves "a perfecting of man as man."In The Purgatory divine and human art are brought together, for the human being is God's greatest work in nature and man's artistry is an imitation of the divine.
The pilgrim spends three nights at Mount Purgatory.Lucia, one of the trinity of ladies (with Beatrice and Virgin) comes to lift the pilgrim from his spiritual sleep higher and leave him at the gate of pur-gatory.The Christian concept of time is placed in the center of The Devine Comedy: all its action up to the appearance of Beatrice reflects how Dante understood the way of atonement designed by the Lord for humanity after the fall of man.According to this concept, which Dante shares with Virgil, the Lord selected Roman people to conduct humanity to justice, in which it reached perfection during the emperor Augustus.At that time, when for the first time after the fall of man peace and justice reigned on the Earth, the Lord wished to be embodied and sent to people His beloved Son.As the Romans under Augustus led humanity to justice, so Vergil at the peak of Purgatory leads Dante to finding internal justice and, saying goodbye, addresses the poet as the emperor at coronation: No more expect my word, or sign.Your will is free, straight and whole, and not to follow its direction would be sin: wherefore I crown and mitre you (king and bishop) over yourself.i.e.Dante has now arrived at a condition, or the purpose for the rest of his journey, which is that of the blessed: for political and ecclesiastical organizations are only required because of the imperfections of human will.(Eliot 1932, 261) "… the place which Dante assigned to Virgil in the future life, and the role of guide and teacher as far as the barrier which Virgil was not allowed to pass, was not capable of passing, is an exact statement of Virgil`s relation to the Christian world.We find the world of Virgil, compared to the world of Homer, to approximate to a Christian world, in the choice, order and relationship of its values.(Eliot T.S. 1979, 130) .

.. it was his function to lead Dante towards a vision he could never himself enjoy, led Europe towards the Christian culture which he could never know; and who, speaking his final words in the new Italian speech, said in farewell:
Son, the temporal fire and the eternal, hast thou seen, and art come to a place where I, of myself, discern no further."From "What is a Classic?" (70)(71) Like Aeneas, the poet gets prophecy not only about his own lot and exile, but also about the destiny of his country that the poet balances in turn with the past and future summaries of events.
At the climax of Purgatory Dante achieves his initiation into the vision of God in Christ who is symbolized in the earthly paradise by the griffin, a mythological animal that has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion -the eagle representing the divine nature and the lion, the human nature of the God-man.As the pilgrim gazes into the eyes of Beatrice he sees the dual nature of the animal reflected there: Exactly like the sunlight in a mirror, The twofold animal gleamed in her eyes, Now beaming with one nature, now the other.(Purgatory XXXI,(118)(119)(120)(121)(122)(123)(124)(125)(126) Now the poet is ready for the final voyage, sailing towards Paradise Regained, forgotten but desired destination of a soul caused by a call from God.

Now was the hour when voyagers at sea Pine to turn home and their hearts soften, This first day out, for friends they bid good-by; (Purgatory VIII, 1-6)
At noon on Easter Wednesday Dante mounts with Beatrice straight up into the world of light.They travel through the nine spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Fixed Stars, Primum Mobile, and to the Empyrean.There Beatrice is replaced by St. Bernard de Clairvaux, who shows the poet the saints and angels, who enjoy the state of the highest bliss: direct contemp-lation of God.(It was thought that on the way to God human mind passes three stages, conducted by three different forms of light: the light of Natural Reason, the light of God`s Grace and the light of Glory.This role is played by three guides of Dante in The Divine Comedy) (Dante 1555;Franco 2006, Introduction to the Paradiso).Dante the pilgrim rises to the heights of mystic revelation.His experience is so personal, that no words can express it: I have been to that heaven where his light Beams brightest and seen things that none, returning, Has the knowledge or the power to repeat, Because as it draws near to its desire, Our intellect sinks down to such a depth That memory cannot trace its way back there.(Paradise I,(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9) Life is displayed in a form of a book: "the universal pattern of the knot" that makes the whole cohere in one and from which the universe evolves.It is a sacred text, the book of nature in which we are to read the Word of God that the Lord revealed in the book of the Gospels.
Within its depths I saw gathered together, Bound by love into a single volume, Leaves that lie scattered through the universe.(Paradise XXXIII,(85)(86)(87) In the highest heaven, the Empyrean the soles form a rose.It is divided vertically and equally bet--ween the Old and New Testaments with the upper rows on one half lined with souls who believed in Christ to come and on the other half those who believed in Christ when he came.The Holy cha-racters of both Testaments form its petals.The Primum Mobile forms the innermost ring.The pil-grimage is now guided by the divine attraction of Paradise, the reorientation that took place in the poet`s consciousness.The point that now attracts the pilgrim is the source of Love and Light.This threefold way to God according to Bonaventure begins with the physical world, then enters into the soul itself, and finally goes beyond it to attain the vision of the Trinity.These three ways conform to the triadic existence of things: matter, creative intelligence, and eternal art; and to the triple substance of Christ, who is the ladder to God: the corporeal, spiritual, and divine.Lastly, the threefold way embodies the very nature of the person: body, spirit, and mind so that the whole being mounts up to God. (Franco Ch As the climax is the last face to face meeting with the Incarnate Son, the true image of God, the "OMO" that comes in three circles of Light of "one dimension and three different colours" representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -the Three in One.The God-man in the centre embodies divine Light that shines from within the features and through the eyes as the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
The same theme of trying to find one`s real self can be found in many great works of literature; everywhere man strives to overcome his lower nature and unreasonable existence to become a higher nature, the image of God.The nature of the wisdom gained by descends to the Underworld is simple: to structure reality and to explain the nature of evil in the world.Remembering that man is a microcosm, the image of macrocosm and the image of God, one may try to analyze oneself.Surp-risingly, this "esoteric" knowledge has never been hidden from man.Living according to God`s laws, or the laws of nature, or the laws that least harm man and his neighbours not only gives one satisfaction, but also raises man above all other living creatures.Man, as a social being, has his responsibilities towards his society and country.His occupation also poses responsibilities upon him.Such are the simple conclusions of descending to Hell.However, this is the knowledge each man has to gain by himself.
Returning to the themes of the poets of the past is recognition of their greatness, acceptance of the archetypal value of their works and the feeling of belonging to the same cultural tradition which each writer or poet feels the need to continue.
In the English language literature the themes treated by Virgil and Dante were continued by Romanticists.Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1840.Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scien-tific rationalization of nature.The peak of Romantic period was associated with liberalism and radicalism, in the long term its effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant.The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe-especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Re-volution laid the background from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Mebuke 57 Enlightenment emer-ged.Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the starting point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist.Coleridge was not alone in believing that there were natural laws governing these matters which the imagination, at least of a good creative artist, would freely and unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone to do so.The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of "creation from nothingness", is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin (Millen, 2010;Macfarlane, 2007).This idea is often called "romantic originality."Widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature.However this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone.Romantics were distrustful of the world of men, and tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy.Romantic art addressed its audiences directly and personally with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist.So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves".According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable year-ning for unattainable goals.(Berlin, 1990: 92) In philosophy and the history of ideas, Romanticism was seen by Isaiah Berlin as disrupting for over a century the classic Western traditions of rationality and the very idea of moral absolutes and agreed values, leading "to something like the melting away of the very notion of objective truth", and hence not only to nationalism, but also fascism and totalitarianism, with a gradual recovery coming only after the catharsis of World War II.For the Romantics, Berlin says: in the realm of ethics, politics, aesthetics it was the authenticity and sincerity of the pursuit of inner goals that mattered; this applied equally to individuals and groups -states, nations, movements.This is most evident in the aesthetics of romanticism, where the notion of eternal models, a Platonic vision of ideal beauty, which the artist seeks to convey, however imperfectly, on canvas or in sound, is replaced by a passionate belief in spiritual freedom, individual creativity.The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely the means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the selfexpression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some 'external' voice -church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste -is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative.(Berlin, 1990: 57-58).
An earlier definition of Romanticizm comes from Charles Baudelaire: Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.In literature, Roman-ticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and "pure" nature.In English literature, the group of poets now consi-dered the key figures of the Romantic movement includes William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake and John Clare.The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, with many of the finest poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, is often held to mark the start of the movement.
Dante was first introduced into English Romantic culture by artists and connoisseurs .The two complete translations of the Divine Comedy, respectively by Henry Boyd and Henry Francis Cary, are partly responsible for the successful literary reception of the source text.
Antonella Braida writes in her book Dante and the Romantics (Antonella Braida, 2004) that the discussion of the influence of Dante on the Romanticists is connected with intertextuality.First introduced by Kris-teva in her critical studies of Bakhtin, the term has only slowly challenged Harold Bloom's defi-nition of the anxiety of influence in English studies (Bakhtin, 1981;Bloom, 1973).Shelley's and Keats's Dantean intertextuality in The Triumph of Life, Laon and Cythna and the Hyperion poems reveals a structural significance that implies a decision-making process (Shelley's and Keats's Dantean 1970).Furthermore, their writing is strictly bound up with their reading of Dante.Their approach evokes De Quincey's suggestive use of the palimpsest as a symbol of Romantic critical practice; in Suspiria de Profundis (De Quincey' 1989, 141), he envisages future readers' ability to recover all the different layers of writing superimposed on ancient vellum and parchment.In Reading, Writing and Romanticism Lucy Newlyn foregrounds De Quincey's palimpsest as a suggestive representation of a crucial issue of Romantic hermeneutics, namely, how the past can properly be read and understood from outside itself' and 'what value can be ascribed to works of art, under the changing conditions of successive generations of readers.(Newlyn, 2001:300) De Quincey's potential description of intertextuality thus recuperates some aspects of Bloom's psycho-analytic reading of intertextuality but opens his definition to take into account the Romantics' perception of readers' collaboration in the construction of genres.Keats's and Shelley's echoes and allusions to Dante are significantly inscribed within this process of genre negotiation with readers.Lucy Newlyn defines the difference between echo and allusion as the result of varying degrees of consciousness in an author's reference to the predecessor (Newlyn, 1986: viii-ix).
When starting from definition, the question of meaning, of the hermeneutics of intertextuality remains a crucial one.Why did Keats, Shelley and Blake introduce Dante into their works?Genette inscribes intertextuality in the broader issue of genre.In Palimpsestes: La litterature au second degre he formulates the notion of 'hypertextuality'.This involves, 'any relationship uniting a text B (hypertext) to an earlier text A (hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary' (Genette 1982:108).Genette is here introducing a distinction between works that depend for signification on the hypotexts, such as parodies, and those that rely 'on the notion of the imitation of generic models rather than specific hypotexts'.For this second type of texts he uses the definition of 'architextuality'.Genette's studies have the advantage of providing hermeneutics in the study of intertextuality: the relationship with the 'hypotext' and 'architext' is explained as an author's inscri-ption of his/her work within accepted systems of meaning, genres being the most prominent among these.
Keats's and Shelley's use of Dante will therefore be inscribed within their search for means of legitimising the epic nature of their long unfinished narrative poems The Triumph of Life, Laon and Cythna and the Hyperion poems.Critical readings of the Divine Comedy as medieval epic belonging to a 'genre unto itself' explain their use of the poem as 'architext' side by side with Milton's Paradise Lost.Excluding theological dimension, they activate those codes from Dante`s poetry, which best serve the purpose of creating a certain image or mood.The intertextual practice consists in what has been described as 'holding conversation with other poets through the medium of their own poetry' as a part of constant aspiration to self-examination (Keats's and Shelley 1970).
The poet, who tried to follow Dante`s way in his quest using the Comedy as a hypertext was argu-ably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century Thomas Stearns Eliot.Dante`s influence on Eliot` works can be constantly felt.He appreciated Dante as one of the most universal poets and considered the Devine Comedy to be the classic in a modern European language that represents an ideal example of a balanced system of emotions (What is a Classic?, 60).The same theme of going down to Hell, purification from sins and errors and revival for new life unites Eliot`s poems The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday and the Four Quartets with The Devine Comedy (Eliot 2006).At the entrance to Hell Virgil tells to the terrified Dante: We are come to the place where I told thee thou shouldst see the woeful people who have lost the good of the intellect.Eliot and Dante both apparently believed that if a way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.The worst is real as the hollow men have lost the proper functioning of the mind __ «il ben dell'intelletto».The proper object of the mind or rational soul is truth.Aristotle, St. Thomas and Dante taught that truth is the good of the intellect.Or as Wykeham states: There is no satisfactory account of truth or ethics without Theism.Which is to say, nothing can be asserted to be coherently or comprehensively true or good if there is not an external, objective center of value, and obligation.Dante`s vision is of a world that is, in some sense, always going to Hell, but which always has in it the possibility for individuals to go the other way.We approach truth, goodness, and well-being one by one; this is a perennial view of the 'pilgrim's progress'.The "perennial philosophy" is the idea that the Good is indeed something objective, and that reason is the organ whereby it is apprehended, to use C. S. Lewis's words, writes Michael D. Aeschliman in the lecture The Heirs of Canto III of Dante`s Inferno.
The Waste Land (Lewis, 1922) is a multivocal poetic sequence interweaving images and allusions around the theme of the barrenness of the modern world and the disillusionment of the post-war generation.According to Gardner, the main theme of the poem is imperfection of human life (Gardner 1991).Myths about dying and resurrecting gods connected with the change of seasons and solar myths at the same time reflect human life with periodical changes of chaos and order.Barrenness, which expresses one of the universal laws of human existence according to Joseph Campbell and Ungar (2004), embraces all aspects of life of man and nature and is a part of universal natural cycle of birth -deathresurrection connected in mythology with the image of dying and resurrecting God.Departure of a protagonist from the earthly world, obtaining means for restoration of order and return to the world have formed the imagery of the poem.
The Devine Comedy is one of the sources that constitute the hypertext of the poem.The lines from Dante state the resemblance between the Medieval Hell and modern life.The vision of people hurrying to work across London Bridge to the City resembles a line of souls of the miserable at the gate of Hell which in its turn is connected with the motive of death during life.The bridge is an image of transition from one world to another.The scene reminds of the third and the fourth cantos of "Hell": Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
The theme of the Hell fire, which was so vividly depicted by Dante, is treated at a more philoso-phical level by Eliot.The repetition of the word "Burning burning burning Mebuke 59 burning" at the end of The Fire Sermon is associated with the inner fire which burns a sole in the fire of its own passions, desires and sins.The purifying fire is a sign of hope for humanity, the beginning of spiritual pilgri-mage.
The beginning of the poem: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, … points to the beginning of universal rotation with April as the first month of a Zodiacal circle charac-terized by barrenness of land or its death according to James George Frazer 1923, but is at the same time, the sign of its future revival.
The search for the Holy Grail or spiritual light is the main purpose of the protagonist that implies existence of the wasteland caused by draught, war, death of a hero or finding one`s self in "the darkened forest".The Holy Grail symbolizes the spiritual light that will help to transform chaos into cosmos and at the same time connects ancient vegetation myths about Attis, Adonis, Osiris and Upanishad with Christianity as the symbol of strive in all religious mysteries.J.L.Weston 1997, considers that the Grail legend transferred knowledge about man, the Devine source of his existence and spiritual union between man and God.The search of the Grail is connected with spiritual ascend, purification and penitence that are so important for understanding T.S.Eliot`s poems.The Chapel Perilous is the place of initiation of protagonist into spiritual sources of life; after his trial the first signs of rain appear.The theme of praying for rain and water as the source that generates life of nature is also connected with the myths about fertility and the Holy Grail with its light as spiritual equivalent of water that generate the revival of life.
If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think (V What the Thunder Said) The vision of the Good and of God is not only desperately needed, but is found when it is sought.It provides the only water that can satisfy «la sete naturale» of which Dante so often speaks, the terrib-le thirst that Eliot depicts in his Waste Land.
Examples of intertextuality are abundant.It is as T.S.Eliot stated himself: "From Homer and within it …".
The Waste Land suggests the possibility of salvaging a self by reconstituting culture out of its scattered parts.Different imagies from various cultural traditions serve this purpose.These parts are shown as quotations in different languages at the end of the poem that according to N.Frye 1963, can be regarded as a personification of the Tower of Babel.The final words "Datta, dayadhvam, damyata" (Give, sympathise, control) summarize the wisdom of all these multivocal religious teachings.Ash Wednesday is the first long poem written by Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism.This poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.The title of this six-part poem refers to the beginning of Lent, the most intense season of penitence and self-denial in the Christian year, the beginning of asceticism on the way to God.In a form of an interior monologue a penitent narrates his progress praying for guidance when mounting the turning stairs toward salvation.He refers to himself as lowly, saying 'Lord I am not worthy/ but speak the word only.'After the Hell of despair of "darkened forest" of The Waste Land and hollow life without faith, the soul of the poet needed guidance and he chose Dante on this way.Unlike Heaven and Hell which presuppose a definite fate, Purgatory implies a possibility of self-development and self-perfection.The allusions in the poem are to Dante`s the Devine Comedy, the Bible and the Book of Prayers.A cross of ash on the forehead of the penitent is not only a sign of humbleness, it reminds of the mortal lot of man after his fall.Penitence is a personal purgatory and fire and ash are its symbols.Ash Wednesday starts with the motive of despair:

Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope
The despair is strengthened by the image of an aged eagle: I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) In the essay Dante (1929, 267) T.S.Eliot speaks about the image of the eagle as of one of the most vivid and meaningful of Dante`s images.It is mentioned in the Bible in Psalm 103 where the eagle symbolizes finding faith and God`s grace that give eternal life; in the Book of Isaiah (40:31) the eagle symbolizes the power of faith.In Ash Wednesday the image of the eagle stands for the inner transformation, acquiring of faith and inner strength by the protagonist.It is also closely connected with the image of wings -the symbol of spiritual ascend.At the beginning of the poem they were not able to fly (But merely vans to beat the air, no longer wings to fly).
Heavenly ladies play a key role in turning the protagonists to Vita Nuova both in Dante`s and Eliot`s poems.
" Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained In the hollow round of my skull.And God said Shall these bones live?shall these Bones live?" The three leopards remind of the three beasts in the first canto of Inferno where they represent an allegory of lust.
Transformation of sensual love into spiritual is important for both The Devine Comedy and Ash Wednesday.
The image of "the dry bones" under a juniper-tree at the beginning and end of the poem serve as a frame to the image of the Lady in a white gown, "Lady of silence", "the single Rose", "blessed sis-ter" -the image of mystical transformation of soul and return to life.Her traditional symbol is the rose.Brunetto Latini and where he even tried to imitate Dante`s "terza rima" in the English langua-ge.T.S.Eliot also saw his mission as a poet in perfecting and enriching his language (To purify the dialect of the tribe/ And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight" ("The great poets of the past all contributed to the development of their languages").(What Dante Means to Me (1950) However, the meeting reminds T.S.Eliot of the frailty of the Earthly fame.
Eliot`s destination is "the still point of the turning world", "… surrounded/By a grace of sense" (Burnt Norton II).In Dante`s Paradiso Canto XXII "the still point" is also in the centre of the Universe, the point from which the world evolves.In the poem this evolution is represented in the form of a dance -as the rhythm, energy that coming from the still pointt gives motion to the whole world, (Ushakova 2005, 146)  The Word in the desert Is most attacked by voices of temptation, The crying shadow in the funeral dance, The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The same gradation of dance is in The Devine Comedy ---from the whirlwind carrying sinners in Hell to the dance of the blissful and rotation of celestrial spheres in Paradise.In both cases dance is a universal image symbolizing full existence with its innate order.(Ushakova 2005, 146-147).
The still point in The Devine Comedy is the Empyrean, the tenth circle of Paradise and the dwelling of God, angels and the blessed souls that is also the source of light.Dante treats God as an absolute unity that embraces all aspects of life and creates the world by emanating love and light.It is the Empyrean, the tenth circle of Paradise and the dwelling of God, angels and the blessed souls that is also the source of light.Light is inherent of the element of Fire."A white light still and moving" in Burnt Norton emanated from the still point represents the destination of a man who seeks truth.
The transfer to New Life (La Vita Nuova) comes through purification by making "the choice of pyre or pyre", from destruction to revival.It is connected with the theme of love."Pyre" and a "shirt of flame" are personifications of the flame of passion that Eliot contrasts with the flame of pure love, "... beyond desire," (Little Gidding I).
The purifying fire of love brings man closer to God and reconciles him with himself.This is the state which may be called "terrestrial Paradise".Dante wrote that the purpose of his poem was to remove those living in this life from a state of misery, and lead them into a state of happiness (Michael D. Aeschliman).In "Four Quartets" this state is symbolized by children playing in the rose garden.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Childhood itself may be viewed as the Paradise lost, the state of happiness, innocence and full pro-tection which we try to regain.At the same time, "theirs is the kingdom of Heaven".The bird is a guide between this world and the eternity the poet tries to regain.The bird and "the unheard music hidden" (Burnt Norton I) are mystical symbols that bring the poet to a pool: ..filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, (Burnt Norton I) Lotos rising from water of sunlight shows arriving at the destination of the poet`s journey.It is the symbol of sunlight, the source of life, immortality, purity, spirituality, the tree of life and the Lady.It is comparable with the rose in European cultural tradition.
The rose in the third part of Little Gidding is also a symbol of one`s love to one`s country and its history (History may be servitude, History may be freedom.)At the same time it is the symbol of Mary, a symbol of transformed Eve.Transformed nature, saving man from the curse, serves the main purpose of the poem -a possibility of man`s transformation by getting closer to God and the Sacred Spirit that created this world to be perfect.It is the image of the Love that is in the centre of the world, its still point that makes the world go round (the Love that moves the sun and the other stars).
However, achievement of aspirations may turn into the feeling of vanity of everything you do after realizing the futility of all attempts, a doubtful value of acquisitions and even questioning if the ascend was worth all the trouble (Garlic and sapphires in the mud).The taste of achievement is saddened by misunderstanding, envy or folly of the others, when "fools' approval stings, and honour stains" and at every time of our recollection of the past we must return to "refining fire" of Purga-tory.And the only thing that can clear us from the fire of old passions is a new fire of purgation, the guiding force behind it is Love that balances the extremes.
"The only wisdom we can hope to acquire/ Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless".And the only gift to man that can be "half understood" is Incarnation, the glimpse of God in His sacrifice to man, the incarnated Logos to whom we may listen and in whom "the past and future/Are conquered, and reconciled" "and the rest/Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action".The Paradise of T.S.Eliot is not the Paradise of Dante with its enlightenment and spiritual ascend to the heights of comprehension of universal laws.It is the insight into life itself, return to the "hell" of life but at a different level of understanding, at the level of terrestrial wisdom and forgiveness.Going down to Hell, through purging fire and up to the Paradise are not just the stages of initiation which happens once and brings results for the rest of life.For Eliot it is a permanent process which man has to go through at every turning point of his life.It is quite a new perception of old mysteries when a mystery of going through three kingdoms is realized as an act through which each man has to pass several times in his life at each of its crucial points.The understanding obtained by a long way of search for God and Truth through renunciation and penitence."In my beginning is my end.In my end is my beginning" with the final conclusion: "Our peace in His will"

CONCLUSION
In the context of the viewed above works, we may consider an initial message of descending to Underworld, as an archetypal text which circulates and develops in many significant works of lite-rature and art.The wisdom acquired by descend into Hell or the mystery of initiation is essentially the same.It is based on the foundations and universal laws that are similar for all religions and serve the needs of any character that seeks the truth.Intertextual relations among texts may be seen as a dialogue among them.(Bakhtin, 1965) This demonstrates the dialogical nature of conscious-ness as such.In order to work consciousness needs consciousness, a textanother text, culture -another culture (Lotman 1981,10).Umberto Eco calls it "an open text" --an essentially complex in its meaning message, which requires a free, creative answer to it.(Eco 1989, 10) According to Iury Lotman, culture, as a whole, may be treated as a text, which is decomposed into a hierarchy "of texts within the text" that form a complex interlacing (the word "text" implies interlacing by etymology) (Lotman 1981, 18) and function as an archive or encyclopaedia of references, genres, background knowledge, and symbolic meaning through which we recognize meaning in what we view, read or interpret.The generative meaning-making process is foundational for culture.It allows us to see culture as a constant process of meaning-creation.

Conflicts of interest
Author has not declared any conflict of interest . Introduction to the Paradiso).Three visions of Christ occur in the journey through Paradise: the cross seen in Mars (Paradise XIV, 103-105), the triumph of the risen Lord in Canto XXIII, 28-33.The smiling face of Beatrice pre-pares Dante for the last vision; she tells him: Open your eyes and look at what I am, For you have seen such things that you are able Now to withstand the vision of my smile!(Paradise XXIII, 46-48) It was through Beatrice, the poet`s anima, that Dante found God.
Virgil tells Dante what took place in his sleep: Mebuke 55 the distorted image of man in Hell as well as the causes of his corruption, Dante starts his way up the steep slopes of Purgatory clearing his soul from the seven sins.As the pilgrim climbs he grows lighter and his path easier, for he is dra-wing away from the pull of gravity of the Satanic centre of the earth.The goal of the climb is reunion with Beatrice.Her appearance represents the culmination of the entire journey, moreover, the poet emphasizes the analogy between the arrival of Beatrice, and the advent of Christ.Beatrice symbolizes the purified essence of the poet`s sole, a feminine aspect (or anima according to Carl Gustav Jung) of man`s soul in which God resides as the image in imitation to whom man was created.Seeing this image in oneself is the first step to wisdom and regaining Paradise according to ancient mysteries.The face of Beatrice is the face of OMO DEI, the image of God.In her the colours of faith, hope, and love come alive.
So I may speed him on his way above.'(PurgatoryIX,52-57)"RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONWaking up was spiritual and not only bodily.Having seen "A crown of olive over her white veil, A woman appeared to me; beneath her green Mantle she wore a robe of flaming red.(Purgatory XXX, 22-33) "

The spiritual ascend of the protagonist begins after he realizes the depth of his fall
It describes return to God and approximation to knowing His ways: "Our peace in His will" -represents a direct citation of Dante.The end of spiritual pilgrimage of the protagonist shows him at a different level of understanding (Although I do not hope to turn again).
guides the rotation of spheres and involves the movement of all matter in a cosmic whirl.In East Coker the rotation around the still point is shown as a cyclical character of terrestrial life, one manifestation of a mortal lot of everything alive.Dancing around a bonfire has always been connected with ritual dances: