Today I was reading an introduction by Randy Malamud to T.S
Eliot’s The Waste Land. Malamud explains that the prominent literary allusions
in The Waste Land come from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dante. He goes on to
quote Eliot as having said in one of his critical essays on Shakespeare and
Dante that “gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater
extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper
degrees of degradation and exaltation.” And thus, Eliot concludes that
Shakespeare provided the greatest width of the human condition while Dante
provided the greatest altitude and depth.
I cannot refute or support Eliot's claim
as I am not familiar enough with either Shakespeare or Dante at this point, but
I am engaged in the question as to whether it is more important to understand
the width of the human condition or its height. First, what is the human
life/condition? And then, can one understand without experiencing? My
understanding has come from experiencing; and while I have experienced the
depth of some parts of my humanity, I have (of course) only surfaced or never
even touched others. While I lack knowledge and growth of all that I do not
understand to be part of my humanity, my identity has been formed from the (nonphysical)
places through which I’ve felt most intensely what it means to be human. Therefore, because I’ve reached the depth of my human life
as the source of my (albeit unrounded) identity, I will confidently conclude
that the depth of the human condition is more important than its width.
