UNIT-1 T. S. ELIOT : RELIGIOUS POEMS Structure 1.0 Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 ‘A Song for Simeon’ 1.3 ‘Marina’ 1.4 Let us sum up 1.5 Review Questions 1.6 A Select Bibliography 1.0 Objectives The present unit aims at acquainting you with some of T.S. Eliot’s poems written after his confirmation into the Anglo-Catholic Church of England in 1927. With this end in view, this unit takes up a close reading of two of his ‘Ariel Poems’ and focuses on some traits of his religious poetry. 1.1 Introduction Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on 26th September, 1888 at St. Louis, Missouri, an industrial city in the center of the U.S.A. He was the seventh and youngest child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns. He enjoyed a long life span of more than seventy-five years. His period of active literary production extended over a period of forty-five years. Eliot’s Calvinist (Puritan Christian) ancestors on father’s side had migrated in 1667 from East Coker in Somersetshire, England to settle in a colony of New England on the eastern coast of North America. His grandfather, W.G. Eliot, moved in 1834 from Boston to St. Louis where he established the first Unitarian Church. His deep academic interest led him to found Washington University there. He left behind him a number of religious writings. Eliot’s mother was an enthusiastic social worker as well as a writer of caliber. His family background shaped his poetic sensibility and contributed a lot to his development as a writer, especially as a religious poet. Eliot completed his school education in 1905 from St. Louis day school where he was considered a brilliant student. He won a gold medal for Latin in 1900. At school, his favourite writers were Shelley, Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Canon Doyle, R.L. Stevenson, Swinburne and D.G. Rossetti. He graduated from Harvard University where he spent four years in the study of philosophy. He was profoundly influenced there by two of his teachers—Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. Round the year 1908, he read Arthur Symon’s book The Symbolist Movement in Literature which stimulated his interest in the poetry of the French symbolists, specially Laforgue. It was from his reading of some of the works of Baudelaire there that he learnt how to reconcile in literature the real and imaginary worlds. Soon after getting his M.A. degree in 1910, Eliot went to France and spent a year at the Sorbonne University 1 to study French literature and philosophy. In 1911, from Paris Eliot went to Bavaria, Germany, where he came into contact with important German writers and read their works. On his return to Harvard later in the year he studied Sanskrit, Pali and Indian philosophy. He read the Bhagvad Gita with deep interest. He keenly learnt about Buddhism the influence of which remained with him for many years. In the concluding section of The Waste Land can be noticed the hovering shadows of Indian spiritual thought on Eliot’s poetic sensibility In 1914, Eliot undertook another trip to Germany to continue his philosophical studies there but with the outbreak of the first World War, he had to leave Germany for England where he did low- paid works as a teacher and a bank clerk while writing reviews of startling originality. His meeting with Ezra Pound in London in 1914, and his introduction through him to the lively literary circles of the London of the time, and finally his marriage to an English girl, Vivienne Haigh, in July 1915, strengthened his decision to make England his home. Around this time, his poems began to appear, first in magazines and journals, and later in small volumes. The first collection of his poems entitled Prufrock and Other Observations was published in 1917, and The Sacred Wood, a book of essays, in 1920, but it was with the publication of The Waste Land, in 1922, that Eliot came to be recognized as a leading light of English poetry in the period after the first World War. Eliot became the editor of The Criterion in 1923 and in 1925 he joined the new publishing firm, Faber and Faber, of which he soon became the director and worked in that capacity till the end of his life. Eliot’s poetical career has been divided into five phases: (a) Poetry: (i) The first Period (1905-09): The poems of this period, published in various school and college magazines, are immature and mere school-boy exercises. (ii) The Second Period: Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917. The most significant poems of this phase are: 1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 2. Portrait of a Lady 3. The Prelude 4. Rhapsody on a Windy Night 5. The Boston Evening Transcript 6. Mr. Apollinax (iii) The Third Period (1918-1925): The most important poems of this period are: 1. Gerontion 2. Burbank with a Baedekar 3. Sweeney Erect 4. A Cooking Egg 5. Sweeny among the Nightingales 2 6. The Waste Land 7. The Hollow Men (iv) The Fourth Period (1925-1935): It is called the period of Eliot’s Christian poetry. The most important poems of this period are: 1. Ash Wednesday 2. Journey of the Magi 3. Animula 4. Marina 5. Choruses from “The Rock” 6. Coriolan 7. A number of minor and unfinished poems (v) The Fifth Period: The most important poems of this period are: 1. Burnt Norton 1936 2. East Coker 1940 3. The Dry Salvages 1941 4. Little Gidding, 1942 (b) Drama: Eliot revived English poetic dramas. His poetic dramas are: 1. The Rock, a pageant Play, 1934 2. Murder in the Cathedral, 1935 3. The Family Reunion, 1939 4. The Cocktail Party, 1950 5. The Confidential Clerk, 1954 6. The Elder Statesman, 1959 (c) Prose: Eliot’s prose was published in the form of articles and essays in the various journals and periodicals of the day. Some of the highly admired essays are: 1. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 1933 2. The idea of a Christian Society, 1939 3. Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, 1948 4. Selected Essays, Third Edition, 1951 5. On Poetry and Poets, 1957 6. To Criticise the Critic, 1965 3 7. Tradition and Individual Talent 8. Poetry and Drama 9. The Function of Criticism 10. The English Metaphysical Poets 11. The Frontier of Criticism, etc. The present unit deals with two religious poems of T. S. Eliot A Song for Simeon and Marina. Eliot’s poem Journey of the Magi, A Song for Simeon, Animula and Marina, which were published between 1927 and 1930, came to be grouped together and known as “Ariel Poems”. All these poems meditate on Eliot’s spiritual growth. They are suffused with the poet’s deepening involvement with Christian mysticism. These poems turn on the experience of a rebirth as well as the death of the old self. The new birth, however, is not apprehended in all clarity but is accompanied by pain, doubt and confusion. A Song for Simeon is based upon the ‘Nunc dimittis’ which follows the second lesson in the order of evening prayer. The prayer is taken from Chapter 2 of Luke, where it was revealed to Simeon ‘that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ’. The prophetic mood of Simeon in the Bible story enables him to prophesy the ministry and suffering of Christ and the grief of Mary. By virtue of his pious old age, the biblical Simeon is an appealing figure. Marina sets the stage for a recognition scene, an extremely wished for moment of recovery of a lost loved one. It is taken to embody a doubting hesitation between appearance and reality. This certainty in doubt is the key motif of Marina. The child in the poem is the ‘supreme created being’, a link between spirit and matter. 1.2 A Song For Simeon A Song for Simeon, published in 1928, is the second of the four “Ariel Poems”. It first appeared in a series of Christmas booklets from Faber. Simeon, a biblical character, is an old and devout Jew of Jerusalem who is waiting for the incarnation because he has been told by the Holy Ghost that he is not to die until he has seen Christ, who would be the redeemer. He has been led to the temple where child Jesus had been taken by his parents. Taking the child Jesus in his arms, Simeon said: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation…” Eliot’s A Song for Simeon, like the other ‘Ariel Poems’ is built on the event of a new birth, which is of momentous significance felt both by the immediate onlookers as well as all others who would come in time. However, in the poem, for Simeon there is no sense of triumph or ‘rejoicing with great joy’. On the contrary, to Simeon there comes the knowledge of the suffering. But to Mary, mother of Christ, he prophesied suffering: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Eliot, according to Robin Griffith Jones, “wrote A Song for Simeon, not of Simeon. The poem can be read as a song for Simeon to sing, or as a song to be sung for Simeon. Two possibilities are left open: we may imagine ourselves to be hearing either Simeon’s prophetic voice, or the voice of a poet singing on Simeon’s behalf or in his honour from a later age and with viewpoint and insights denied to Simeon himself.” As the poem opens with the prayer addressed to Lord, we can see that it is Simeon’s own voice and words that we hear in the poem.