This is from one of the most highly regarded """"english"""" poems of the 20th century

>this is from one of the most highly regarded """"english"""" poems of the 20th century
Why the FUCK is this allowed?

...

It's this fancy new technique you might've heard of, it's called "showing off"

I've ne'er heard of this supposed poem, what manner of gobbledygook is that?

Or, you know...making use of the two main languages of classical learning. Anyone seriously writing back then would have at least been fluent in latin.

Yeah, look, I like Latin too and I'm pretty good at it, that doesn't mean it has a point at all. It was pretentious in 1922 and it's pretentious now. It's the more old-fashioned, more accepted equivalent of putting some Japanese text on a picture because you think it makes you look more exotic or whatever.

English, hihihi... You mean us-of-a english or just plain brit-english? Brits somehow still have a hold of their language, Americans on other hand, lost it completely. Just read about flak one of their sports commentators went through after he moaned about a Japanese baseball player needing translator on field. That's after playing in their league for ten (10) years. Furthermore teams are required (!) to have at least one Spanish translator in the team at all time. I mean, it's given to me that if I want work in Italy or Germany, that I will need to learn their language, heck same goes for all Balkan countries as well. In America, they just accept different languages as they come, even going out of the way to learn theirs.

that's a lot of malarkey on your part

whoa, is this a DFW parody? It's damn good if it is

Eliot wanted to spare the plebs, so he put the first words of his poem in Latin and Greek knowing that they would give up at that point. It's one of the easier parts of the poem desu.
Of course it has a purpose and has some of the themes of the rest of the poem in it.