Inferno Fever: ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’
The very first lines of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot are inspired by Dante’s “Inferno”. It is these first lines that are called the epigraph. In “Inferno, the lines are translated as:
If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without