Few emotions are more memorable or more consequential than regret. A breakup, a death or any traumatic event evokes intense emotions that seem impossible to erase from memory. The memory of an unfortunate event plays on an infinite loop in the minds of those affected, constantly reminding them of past problems and making them wish to escape their emotions. In his 1917 poem, “La Figlia che Piange,” translated from Italian as “The Weeping Girl,” TS Eliot explores the relationship between a traumatic, regrettable event and the speaker's idealized memory of it. The speaker describes a beautiful woman standing on a staircase posing as a model for a classic work of art. The speaker describes a man who leaves the woman for another, leaving her completely crushed. However, as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that the woman does not exist in reality, but in the memory of the speaker. In an attempt to cope with the emotions of regret that he associates with the event, he attempts, like an artist, to modify his memory to adapt it to a classical ideal. The creation and interpretation of memory, he discovers, is like the creation of a work of art. The title of the poem is an allusion to a classical work of art which sets the tone for the artistic interpretation of the poem. According to the poet, “La Figlia che Piange” is the name of a statue in a museum in northern Italy that he looked for on the recommendation of a friend, but was unable to find. He had never seen the statue, but was inspired by his friend's description. This story establishes a superficial interpretation of the poem in which the speaker contemplates memories that are not his own and attempts to imagine himself inside them. With this in mind, the first stanza describes the middle of the speaker's paper...the point of view shifts once again. This time the speaker, now in the present tense, speaks on a historical time scale about the events of the first two stanzas. He no longer participates, but contemplates the emotions aroused by the memory of the young girl. The speaker remembers how the memory of the girl “forced [his] imagination” (18) for “several days and hours” (19) and wonders how things would have turned out if they had not broken up – “How They Should Have Been Together”. ! » (21). From this point of view, the speaker is able to reflect on his emotions about the event. Without feeling the traumatic emotions of regret, the speaker wonders, would he have had the opportunity to write about it? Only in the idealized world of his memory was the speaker able to see art in its traumatic situation. Without this experience, he comments, “I would have had to lose a gesture and a pose” (22).