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According to Bartleby.com, Kennedy's remark may have been inspired by the passage from Dante Alighieri's La Comedia Divina "Inferno," canto 3, lines 35–42 (1972) passage as translated by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth: "by those disbodied wretches who were loth when living, to be either blamed or praised. Fear to lose beauty caused the heavens to expel these caitiffs; nor, lest to the damned they theng ave cause to boast, receives them the deep hell." A more modern-sounding translation from the foregoing Dante's Inferno passage was translated 1971 by Mark Musa thus: "They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels ... undecided in neutrality. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them for fear the wicked there might glory over them. (en) |