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CRITICAL COMPANION TO T. S. Eliot

i-x_Eliot-fm.indd i 9/5/07 11:34:07 AM i-x_Eliot-fm.indd ii 9/5/07 11:34:08 AM CRITICAL COMPANION TO T. S. Eliot

A Literary Reference to His Life and Work

RUSSELL ELLIOTT MURPHY

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Copyright © 2007 by Russell Elliott Murphy

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murphy, Russell E. (Russell Elliott) Critical companion to T. S. Eliot: a literary reference to his life and work / Russell Elliott Murphy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-6183-9 (acid-free paper) 1. Eliot T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888–1965—Encyclopedias. 2. Poets, American—20th century—Biography—Encyclopedias. I. Title. PS3509.L43Z7887 2007 821′.912—dc22—[B] 2006034076

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Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix Part I: Biography 1 Part II: Works A to Z 31 Part III: Related People, Places, and Topics 495 Part IV: Appendices 575 1. T. S. Eliot Chronology 577 2. Significant Publications by T. S. Eliot 583 3. Selected Bibliography of Secondary Sources 585

Index 590

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ven in the age of Google, one cannot approach indeed, there is any purpose to what we in literary Ean exhaustive treatment of a poet as erudite studies do, it is to influence and inspire each other and well-read as T. S. Eliot without virtually con- in the same ways that we have been influenced stant recourse to one of the several works of stellar and inspired in the classroom and the . So, scholarship that the poet’s achievement has gener- then, if at any point I seem to be echoing the ated. In particular, I must single out Grover Smith’s thoughts or feelings of others who have “said it remarkable T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study much better,” I can honestly say that I was in no in Sources and Meanings, a classic of its kind. Peter way mindful of the borrowing either at the time of Ackroyd’s T. S. Eliot: A Life is a veritable font of my writing or subsequently, and I must therefore data and anecdote detailing the poet’s day-to-day be left to hope that others will be satisfied with the experiences and was another welcome source of flattery supplied by my unconscious imitation, if bibliographical as well as biographical information, not tribute. as was Christopher Rick’s T. S. Eliot: Inventions of Still, let it be known that the major influences the March Hare, Poems 1909–1917, a truly indis- on my own understanding of Eliot, whatever that pensable reference for anyone interested in the may mean, are most certainly Cleanth Brooks, Eliz- poet’s early career. Finally, there is Jewel Spears abeth Drew, Helen Gardner, F. O. Matthiessen, and Brooker’s recent and valuable T. S. Eliot: The Con- Hugh Kenner . . . always Hugh Kenner. temporary Reviews to be noted as well. I would also like to take this opportunity to I have been reading, studying, reading about, thank Jerry Weist and Dana Hawkes of Eastern writing about, and teaching the poetry and criti- Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the present cism of T. S. Eliot for going on four decades now. owners of the Eliots’ one-time summer home there, It is impossible for me, by now, to distinguish for graciously allowing us to photograph its exterior neatly and honestly among my own most original and interior. thoughts and feelings regarding Eliot’s work and I will close by acknowledging that all transla- significance and those thoughts and feelings that tions of Dante are mine, as is the translation of took shape in me thanks only to my exposure to Hadrian’s “Animula” and anything else that may the ideas of other teachers, scholars, and critics. If, have required translating.

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his book is not a shortcut to an apprecia- scholarship and authentic interpretation. This vol- Ttion and understanding of the writing of T. ume hopes to add to the impressive and extensive S. Eliot for the simple reason that there can be no quantity of scholarship and criticism that Eliot’s life shortcut to the inner workings of such a complex and work have inspired virtually from the begin- literary achievement as his. Rather, this book is ning of his literary career with the publication of as comprehensive a guide to Eliot as has yet been Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. published. To discuss Eliot’s work requires the recogni- That is no small claim, nor is this a small book. tion of genuine limitations. Although students all Eliot is one of the more difficult poets of the 20th too often imagine that the way to come to grips century, perhaps of all time. Doc Ock, a charac- with the “meaning” of a particular Eliot poem is to ter in the movie Spider-Man 2, put it well. Dur- decode the meaning of every single line, such an ing a conversation with young Peter Parker, attempt often provides just the illusion of clarifica- Spider-Man, when the good has not yet tion at the expense of admitting complexity. Any morphed into a supervillain and is still only just so-called meaning in a line of Eliot’s can often be Dr. Otto Octavius, he relates how his future wife, refuted by the next line. And then there are all the a student when they met in college, various allusions to deal with as well—to mythol- learned science for his sake and how he in turn ogy and to literature, to the Bible and to other reli- attempted to learn literature for hers. His future gious texts, to operatic pieces, to ragtime music, wife had been much more successful at mastering and to much more. Many an academic career has his field of study than he had been at mastering been made and unmade in the effort to explain hers. “She was studying T. S. Eliot,” he explains Eliot’s allusions, many of which are not even in to Parker, “and, compared to science, Eliot is very English. complicated.” The is, Eliot’s style of poetry, very much That admission of Dr. Octavius’s is a fact: Eliot unintelligible at times, is often intentionally that is very complicated, and there is no easy way to way. The poet of “The Love Song of J. Alfred understand his work. Nonetheless, this book is Prufrock” and , “” and designed to assist the student in doing so. While “,” to cite but a few of the titles the entries in this volume on Eliot’s poetry, verse for which he is best known, was never one to drama, and literary and social criticism recognize make his readers’ lives easier. So, then, it would and address the complexity of Eliot’s thought and be both unfair to the poet and unwise for his technique, they are written with an aim toward readers to expect any teacher or book to make trying to defuse rather than compound that com- Eliot’s poetry so readily accessible that no ques- plexity, although never at the expense of sound tions remain.

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The commentaries in this book recognize and major influences and developments in Eliot’s life in respect Eliot’s complexity by seeking constantly to narrative fashion. Part II offers extensive treatment interpret and to contextualize, but they also aim to of Eliot’s individual poems, plays, and major works provide readers with as much detailed background of prose. Entries on all these works are arranged in and peripheral information as can be gathered, all alphabetical order. Part III provides detailed entries in the hopes that readers can then judge those on individuals, places, and works by others that interpretations for themselves, in good Eliot fash- helped shape the poet’s interests and writing. Part ion. They may even be inspired to come up with IV contains a chronology and an extensive bibliog- interpretations of their own. raphy of works by and about Eliot. To indicate a cross-reference, any name or How to Use This Book term that appears as an entry in Part III is printed This book is divided into four principal sections. on first appearance in an entry in SMALL CAPITAL Part I provides a biographical essay that lays out the LETTERS.

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Biography

001-030_Eliot-p1.indd 1 9/5/07 11:50:09 AM 001-030_Eliot-p1.indd 2 9/5/07 11:50:09 AM Biography 3 T. S. Eliot as the fabled Gateway to the West. Growing up in that vibrantly active community along the fabled (Thomas Stearns Eliot) Mississippi River would remain an experience that (1888–1965) would shape Eliot’s poetry and acute sense of place well into his advancing years. “,” The rule that great artists do not generally lead composed during the height of World War II in the interesting lives certainly applies in the case of summer of 1940, begins with its famous image of a Thomas Stearns Eliot, the American-born 20th- river that is unmistakably the Mississippi, a “strong century English poet, critic, and verse dramatist. brown god.” Nonetheless, his life has garnered intense critical Eliot, however, was a scion of a family with scrutiny, if by his life one means not just its actions close ties to the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant estab- and events but his tastes and interests and values lishment of another water city—staid, old as well. The man who virtually invented the idea and environs, a harbor city with a self-confidently of separating the poet from the poem and the life progressive culture capable of laying credible if not and times from the work has been subjected to somewhat self-congratulatory claim at that time to more analysis and interpretation of the relation- being the Hub of the Universe. The Massachusetts ship among the life and the work and the times family’s founder, Andrew Eliot, emigrated from the than any other literary figure of the 20th cen- English village of in the 17th century, tury, perhaps of all time. The reason for this kind settling in Beverly, Massachusetts, where he served of scrutiny is obvious: Few other poets have left as town clerk. He is reputed as well to have served behind a body of work whose meanings continue as a juror during the notorious Salem witch trials. to be inscrutable, and yet the interest these works T. S. Eliot’s paternal grandfather, WILLIAM hold for readers continues to be contagious. Who GREENLEAF ELIOT, was a Harvard Divinity School the person T. S. Eliot was remains not so much a graduate and a disciple of William Ellery Chan- puzzle as a challenge, precisely because his poetry ning, one of the founding forces behind Ameri- can simultaneously bedazzle and befuddle readers. can UNITARIANISM. As a young man, William Eliot It is not odd, then, that critics and scholars, who had “lit out for the territories” (as another literary are themselves nothing more than glorified readers, native son of Missouri, Mark Twain, later famously persist to this day in trying to untangle from the phrased America’s then-obsessive fascination with facts of the reasonably normal life that Eliot led the going west). William, whom his grandson Thomas nuanced minutiae of some particular biographical would grow up to resemble, settled in St. Louis in detail that will finally cast an unfailingly clear light 1834. There, in keeping with Unitarianism’s call to on an image or an illusion or symbol whose very civic duty and with the fulfillment of social obliga- attraction as poetry, meanwhile, seems to lie in its tions inherently required by the privilege accorded adamant resistance to any sort of unerring interpre- to his class, William devoted himself to philan- tation, as the poet himself well knew. thropic endeavors among his other service to the community. He founded the Unitarian church EARLY LIFE in St. Louis, the first west of the Mississippi, and T. S. Eliot was born on September 23, 1888, in helped found WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY. ST. LOUIS, Missouri, the seventh and last child of William’s son Henry, the poet’s father, would and . be of a more worldly and practical bent. Despite an Although the Eliots were a reasonably prosperous early business failure, Henry eventually ended up family who could trace their original New president of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, roots back to the earliest days of the Massachu- a position whose success would enable the family setts Bay Colony, the St. Louis of the time still had to lead a comfortable middle-class life. That mate- some of the rough-and-tumble spirit of a frontier rial success nevertheless did not translate into the town and river city from its own original heyday family’s abandoning their once-fashionable Locust

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Eliot’s ancestral home of East Coker, shown as it is today. Eliot first visited East Coker in August 1937, and the town would later be the locale for the Quartet of the same name. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

Street address long after urban sprawl had brought not frail, was not of particularly robust health and the area into some decay and other equally pros- would suffer throughout his life from a congenital perous families had moved out into the burgeoning double hernia, was protected and doted on. There suburbs. So, then, just as that powerful sense of was also the early influence of his Irish nurse, devotion to a city to whose civic and moral well- Annie Dunne, who took him to Roman Catholic being grandfather William had devoted so much Mass with her in both St. Louis and GLOUCESTER, of his life would have its own salutary effect on the Massachusetts, where the Eliots summered begin- future poet, father Henry’s remaining city-bound ning in 1893. Eliot would later recall that he had would expose Eliot the boy to the somewhat grit- conversations with her about the existence of God tier aspects of the American urban experience at when he was only six. a time when it was undergoing rapid and uncon- Foremost among these early influences was his trolled transformations on virtually every front, mother, Charlotte, a former schoolteacher and from the social and political to the economic and another transplanted New Englander, whose own technological. family also had close ties to Harvard Divinity School It was the women in the young Eliot’s early life, and Boston society. A cultured, genteel woman, however, who would have the most profound effect upon her to Henry she devoted herself to upon the developing literary genius. Eliot was not raising a family and to church and civic work. She only the last child born to Henry and Charlotte, was also particularly devout in her religious prac- but a late child as well, coming when his parents tices, honoring the Madonna and Child Jesus and were already in their 40s and his six older siblings St. Francis despite or perhaps because of the human- were already well out of their childhood years. Fur- ist bent of her Unitarian background. Her other thermore, five of these six elder children were girls, interests included the austere Italian Renaissance and Eliot, a precociously bright child who, while moral reformer Savonarola, about whom she wrote

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a book-length poem. Indeed, young Eliot’s literary and moral interests must have flourished under the especially protective eyes of his highly accomplished and loving mother, whom the poet’s brother, Henry, Jr., said Eliot, among all her children, most resem- bled both physically and in character. Later, when her son Tom began to show such promise as a poet during his undergraduate years at Harvard, Charlotte would write to say that she hoped that her son would achieve the literary rec- ognition that she herself, as a young woman, had hoped to achieve in her own life but that had evaded her as a consequence of her wifely and maternal duties. Under Charlotte’s ever-watchful eye, the somewhat frail Eliot was nevertheless allowed to have a normal boyhood, during which he enjoyed both the comforts of a securely middle-class life and the freedoms of a city neighborhood. In 1896, Henry Sr. was prosperous enough for T. S. Eliot, between three and five years of age in 1892 or the family to build a substantial summer home on 1893 (Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University) Eastern Point at Gloucester. Although Charlotte

Eliot with his mother in 1895, while vacationing in Gloucester, Massachusetts (Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University)

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Advocate staff, 1910. A young Eliot is seated third from left in the front row. Between 1907 and 1910, Eliot published a total of 14 poems in the Advocate. (Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University)

prohibited him from engaging in overly strenuous poet who would become a British subject in 1928. physical activities because of hernias, Eliot became At 18, Eliot was a midwesterner or southerner, a very avid coastal sailor, sometimes venturing as far depending on one’s view of St. Louis’s regional north up the New England seaboard as Canada. identity, whose family had been from New England He was educated at Smith in St. Louis and who would himself move there. He was also a until his 16th year. There he published several sto- socially privileged individual raised in the middle ries in the Smith Academy Record inspired by visits of the social stew that is any American inner city to the native village exhibits at the St. Louis World to this day, as psychically at home on the banks Fair in 1904. In 1905, he left home to spend his of a great, rolling, mythic river as along the rocky last year of secondary education as a student at shores of an immense and equally fabled ocean. Is Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. There it any wonder, then, that Eliot very likely would he began the last phase of his preparation for his feel at home everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere matriculating as an undergraduate at HARVARD and that his earliest literary influences were neither College beginning in 1906. American nor English but European? Eliot found his first and most profound literary THE POET TAKES SHAPE influences not in America or even in England, but Already visible in Eliot’s roots are the seeds of the in two continental European venues, contempo- identity issues that would make Eliot an American rary and late medieval Florence, Italy. The

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story of Eliot’s exposure to the French symbolists is vations, he would admit to feeling “more grateful” almost legendary among students of the poet; his to Laforgue than any other poetic influence that he exposure to the Italian poet DANTE ALIGHIERI is could think of at that time. hardly less well known. But neither influence could What Laforgue gave Eliot, it is generally agreed, have come about were it not for Eliot’s exposure to was the ability to manufacture poetic emotions by a cosmopolitan undergraduate education at HAR- means of the mask. In Laforgue’s case, the world- VARD, an institution of higher learning that, despite weary, elegant sophisticate who could also act the its venerability, has always taken pride in its being a double and play the pathetic fool to his own pas- progressive force in American education. sions may have been in keeping with the facts of his When the young Tom Eliot went to Harvard in life as a consumptive dandy. Eliot learned from that the fall of 1906, he had been preceded not only by sort of self-modeling, nevertheless, that to write his brother Henry, Jr., but also by a number of Eliot poetry was as much to adopt a tone and a style as ancestors. Indeed, a distant cousin, Charles Wil- it was to express oneself. By the time he completed liam Eliot, was the university’s then-seated presi- his undergraduate studies and a master’s program dent. Nevertheless, so thoroughly midwestern was in at Harvard in 1910, he had the future poet, despite the summers in Gloucester already learned to cast the “I” of the poem in what- and the year at the Milton Academy, that fellow ever droll or pathetic role might serve the purposes students characterized his speech with a racial slur, not of biography but of art. calling it a “nigger drawl.” In essence, not yet out of his 22nd year, Eliot For all that people who would meet Eliot seemed to know instinctively that craft is more throughout his adult life would comment on his critical to the poet and the poem than content— shyness, Eliot was both a successful student and, indeed, that craft is content, if by craft is meant more important, classmate. He was active in all the the ability to cast words into verses with such a various social clubs that then constituted the core multiplicity of frequently contradictory moods of the undergraduate experience, forming many and tones and meanings that a personality totally lifelong friendships, most notably with the fellow independent of the poet emerges. That abstracting future poet and critic CONRAD AIKEN, whom he from experience, rather than composing out of it, joined in 1909 on the board of Harvard’s under- changed, no doubt, as Eliot matured and began to graduate literary magazine, the Advocate. acquire a center to his values and beliefs. Eliot’s literary aspirations, however, had already For now, however, while he was still an impres- been given an incalculable boost from a source sionable young person just learning the skills that that so changed his life that he would be express- would become the basis for his trade in life, the ing his “great indebtedness” to the source of that mastering of the craft of poetry occupied most of inspiration years later. In December 1908, while his attention. He was learning it primarily from looking through the offerings available in the Har- the symbolist poets, whose view of the world might vard Union library, Eliot stumbled upon ARTHUR seem, on the surface, to be so alien to his own—a SYMONS’s critical study The SYMBOLIST MOVE- person raised in relative ease and luxury in the MENT IN LITERATURE, and through that work he stable surroundings of a long-established family and was introduced to the French symbolist poet JULES the cultural and religious traditions associated with LAFORGUE. Whatever the exact shape that Eliot’s his New England Puritan heritage—as to defy any affinity for the tragic young French poet and his resemblances. self-deprecatingly seriocomic verse took, there was enough of an affinity that by the following spring THE TRAVELING STUDENT Eliot had acquired a three-volume set of Laforgue’s Eliot spent the summer following his June 1910 complete works, although he could barely translate graduation from Harvard with his family in Glouces- the French. In an August 1917 letter to an admirer ter, convincing them to allow him to travel to of his own first volume, Prufrock and Other Obser- that fall, and he left for Europe in October, shortly

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after his 22nd birthday. In addition to Paris’s repu- expatriates, among them Ernest Hemingway and F. tation among the English and Anglo-Americans as Scott Fitzgerald, would soon frequent. a city where moral, religious, and intellectual stric- Despite bouts of loneliness and homesickness tures were under far less restraint, it had also long brought on by his characteristic shyness, it was a been something of a finishing school for young Brit- wonderful year for Eliot, just the sort of release and ish and American people of so-called breeding and relief from the humdrum of the familiar and the prospects. There Eliot took classes in French litera- routine that a young person of Eliot’s deceptively ture at the Sorbonne and honed his philosophical restless nature needed at this critical juncture in his skills by attending lectures at the Collège de France passage from youth into adulthood. He used Paris conducted by the renowned French idealist phi- as a home base from which he might visit other losopher HENRI BERGSON. European locales. In April, he traveled for the first During the 11 months that Eliot spent in Paris, time to the city that would become his future home, however, equally significant events were occurring , where he wrote the poem “Interlude in on other fronts in his life and interests. For one London.” In July, he traveled to Munich and then thing, he turned his hand to perfecting the poems south into northern Italy. His lovely lyric “La figlia in the symbolist style that he had penned during his che piange” would be the fruit of that excursion. undergraduate days, most notably “Rhapsody on a By the time his close friend from Harvard, Con- Windy Night” and the “.” Far more signifi- rad Aiken, visited him in Paris in the summer of cant by any standard of measurement, he composed 1911, however, Eliot was expressing a determina- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and worked tion to return to Harvard to enroll in the graduate on “Portrait of a Lady,” a poem that he had begun program there in . By September, he had in early 1910 but would not complete until after sailed back to America, where he again joined his his return to America in November 1911. He also family on Eastern Point in Gloucester. When the struck up a friendship with a young Frenchman, fall semester began at Harvard, he was enrolled Jean Verdenal, who shared his interest in contem- in the university’s graduate school to study for his porary French poetry. Verdenal’s subsequent death doctorate in philosophy. in World War I, in which he served as a medical officer, caused Eliot enough grief that he would GRADUATE YEARS later dedicate his first published volume of poetry, For the next three years, Eliot studied philosophy 1917’s Prufrock and Other Observations, to this at Harvard. He took classes in Hindu philosophy, friend of his youth and fellow poetry enthusiast. Sanskrit, and Indian philology. In 1912, he also Beyond his academic studies, Eliot also had a met and fell in love with , with whom private tutor in French. In addition, he took up he would resume a subdued romantic relationship smoking strong French cigarettes, a vice that he several decades later when his first marriage began continued for many years afterward and that no to fall apart. doubt contributed to the emphysema that he Eliot was very successful as a doctoral candi- developed later in life. He also toyed with the idea date and flourished amid the rigors of academic of remaining in Paris, where he would become a life. In June 1913, he purchased a copy of F. H. poet writing verse in French, not English. Youth- BRADLEY’s Appearance and Reality, the work that ful binges of wish-fulfillment aside, the Paris of the would become the subject of his doctoral disserta- time offered him cultural delights, from opera and tion. That fall semester, he took a course in various ballet to the high-kicking dancers at the Moulin types of scientific methods under JOSIAH ROYCE. Rouge and the decadent nightlife of the so aptly The paper he produced for that course, on assess- named Montparnasse, the student and artist quar- ing primitive rituals, would conclude that any sci- ter that, little more than a decade later, would entific validity is flawed by virtue of the fact that achieve enduring fame in American letters as the the observer’s observations are distorted by his own lengendary Left Bank that the equally legendary experiences. Tenets such as these, questioning the

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human ability to access any experience that might married. Thus began a marriage that was not so be said to approximate an objective reality, would much troubled or stormy or passionate as odd. By ultimately form the foundation for much of Eliot’s all accounts, as a domestic pair, they both seemed modernist thinking, which relied on tradition as to be self-indulgent hypochondriacs, who were, a hedge against the moral and intellectual pitfalls nevertheless, often genuinely ill with one malady awaiting any sort of personal myopia. or another. They both seemed, too, to be fairly By October 1913, Eliot had proved to be both ignorant with regard to maintaining healthy sexual adept enough at and devoted enough to his gradu- relations, though not necessarily virginal. Vivien is ate studies in philosophy to be appointed presi- said to have suffered from neurasthenia, or what dent of the University Philosophical Club. By would today be called a nervous disorder, that March 1914, impressed by a visiting professor made her very high strung and her behavior erratic. from England, BERTRAND RUSSELL, Eliot obtained Furthermore, she had a persistent problem with a prestigious appointment by Harvard to a Shel- extremely irregular menstrual cycles, creating prob- don Travelling Fellowship in Philosophy, which he lems both with her personal hygiene and with the planned to spend at Merton College, Oxford, for couple’s capacity to have a normal sex life, if any the 1914–15 academic year. There he would study at all. Despite this, there are reasons to believe Aristotle under the tutelage of Harold Joachim, that during the first years of her marriage to Eliot, one of Bradley’s disciples. Although Eliot could Vivien carried on an affair with Bertrand Russell, hardly have known it at the time, once he set sail for England that summer of 1914, except for a brief visit the following summer, he would not return to America again for another 17 years. THE OXFORD YEAR Two events conspired to make Eliot become the English rather than the American poet that he would eventually enter literary as. The first, and far more significant, was the outbreak of hos- tilities in Europe that would eventually be known as the Great War, or World War I. Eliot had no sooner arrived in England in July 1914 to take up his Oxford studies that fall than he departed for a summer class in Marburg, Germany, where he was when war between Russia and Germany broke out on August 1. The summer seminar was cancelled, although it was another two weeks before Eliot was permitted to leave Germany and return to England, where he began his course of study at Oxford on October 6. He would return to America the follow- ing July to summer with his family at Gloucester. Otherwise, Eliot essentially maintained his resi- dence in England from that moment on. The other event that effectively sealed Eliot’s fate occured on April 24, 1915, when he met Vivien Haigh-Wood, the attractive and certainly Vivien Haigh-Wood Eliot in 1921, about six years into eccentric daughter of the landscape and portrait her marriage with Eliot (Courtesy of Houghton Library, painter Charles Haigh-Wood. On June 26, they Harvard University)

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marriage and Vivien’s slow but inevitable decline into what can only be described as madness, nei- ther can there be any doubt that Eliot continued to suffer a great deal from feelings of personal guilt and anguish over the tragic travesty their marriage turned out to be almost from the first. DENIZEN OF LITERARY LONDON The summer of 1914 through spring of 1915 wit- nessed another significant development for Eliot, one that would also have enduring effects, although in this case reasonably salutary ones, on the blos- soming poet’s life and work. Through the kind offices of his Harvard undergraduate friend, Conrad Aiken, Eliot would meet another visiting American poet, , in London on September 22, thus beginning one of American and English let- ters’ most celebrated and productive literary and personal friendships. Their relationship extended well into the 1950s, by which time Pound, tried by U.S. authorities for his activities on behalf of Fas- cist Italy, an enemy power, during World War II, had been declared incurably insane and was com- Eliot in 1933, in formal wear before presenting a visiting mitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, lecture in New York (Courtesy of Houghton Library, D.C. But their relationship had in fact culminated Harvard University) in the earlier collaborative effort that would pro- duce, in 1922, the final version of Eliot’s early mod- ernist masterpiece The Waste Land. the mentor whose charm and brilliance had drawn Eliot had already been introduced to Pound’s Eliot to study in England in the first place. work by another Harvard undergraduate back in The marriage was one of a virtually steady 1909 when Eliot was first experimenting in his though never dramatic decline, more painful for own new kind of poetry based on his exposure to their friends, perhaps, than for themselves, although the French symbolists. Pound, at that time, was it would not effectively dissolve until the fall of still translating the works of the 13th-century 1932 when Eliot left for America to take up a year- French Provençal poets known collectively as the long visiting professorship at Harvard. From that Troubadours, whose love lyrics were apparently point on, although Vivien would refuse to admit not Eliot’s cup of tea. Whatever his reasons may it, they were estranged. Shortly after his return to have been, Eliot did not agree with the assessment, England, in September 1933, Eliot filed for a formal made then, that he would find Pound’s work to be separation, although Vivien continued to harrass “up your street.” him and their mutual acquaintances as if they were By the time of their meeting five or more years still husband and wife. By the summer of 1938, she later, however, Pound, by then under the influence would be committed by her family to a private men- of a recent acquaintanceship with the Chinese tal hospital, where she died of a heart attack at the ideogram, had become a self-styled imagist poet comparatively youthful age of 58 in 1947. While no far more in keeping with his own time and with one, not even future biographers, would hold Eliot the stylistic and thematic revolution then taking personally responsible for the dissolution of the place in poetry writing. Employing concrete images

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along with the freer poetic style categorized under poets, Dame Edith, Sir Osbert, and Sir Sacherverell the general heading VERS LIBRE, or free verse, the SITWELL and VIRGINIA WOOLF and her husband elder poet, Pound, was also making a name for Leonard Woolf. These were the people at the cen- himself as an editor and promoter of this new kind ter of the famous Bloomsbury Group, whose Hog- of poetry emerging on both sides of the Atlantic. It arth Press would publish the early work of many of was in this later role that he took Eliot under his the new young writers, including Eliot and other literary wing. Pound used his considerable influ- future literary luminaries such as Aldous Huxley ence to do everything that he could to ensure that and Wyndham Lewis. the work of the younger man, whom he famously In the meantime, Eliot continued to publish described to Harriet Monroe, then the editor of in outlets such as Poetry and Others. By the end Poetry magazine, as a poet who had “made himself of 1915, he would see the “Preludes” and “Rhap- modern all of his own,” was published and was sody on a Windy Night” published in Lewis’s Blast; afforded the recognition that it deserved. By early “Portrait of a Lady” in Others; and “The Boston October, Pound had sent Eliot’s “The Love Song of Evening Transcript,” “Aunt Helen,” and “Cousin J. Alfred Prufrock” to Monroe at Poetry, for which Nancy” published in Poetry. At the end of that Pound was the European editor. The poem, Eliot’s year, Pound included him in his Catholic Anthology, first major success, would appear in that review the sealing Eliot’s reputation as a rising star among the next June. new voices then emerging in English and American Under the auspices of such literary acquain- poetry. In the meantime, too, he finally completed tances as Aiken and Pound, along with the social his Harvard doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge circles that Eliot shared as a result of his marriage and the Objects of Experience in the Philosophy to Vivien and of the mentorship of Russell, who of F. H. Bradley.” Eliot booked passage for travel had since returned to England, Eliot found him- to America in early April 1916 so that he might self being quickly ushered into the sorts of liter- defend his dissertation and thus complete his grad- ary, academic, and journalistic environments that uate program with a viva, or oral defense. When would serve him well as he began to cultivate a the departure date was delayed as a result of the burgeoning career in London as a poet and critic war, however, he had to cancel these plans. of some modest note. In time, and particularly by Although Harvard accepted his without virtue of his attendance at such venues as Lady any defense, it would not be until 1947 that Eliot OTTOLINE MORRELL’s literary salon for upper-crust actually received his doctoral degree in a special young British bohemians at her estate at Garsing- ceremony at Harvard in Cambridge. He would ton, he would come to know the sister-and-brother eventually publish the dissertation under the short- ened and less academic-sounding title Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley in 1964. LEADING TWO LIVES For their living, the young married couple relied on the income that Eliot earned teaching Latin at Highgate Junior School. Throughout 1916, Eliot was also publishing articles and reviews in the New Statesman and the Monist and was offering courses and lectures on modern French and English litera- ture. In September, he told his brother, Henry, that Eliot in 1947, shortly after receiving his honorary “Prufrock” might very well have been his “swan doctorate from Harvard (Courtesy of Houghton Library, song,” and by the end of the year, he suggested that Harvard University) he was ready to give up on teaching as well. It is

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no surprise, then, that by mid-March of 1917, he month earlier, Eliot had begun to review for the began to work for Lloyds Bank, taking a position prestigious Little Review, and with the publication in the colonial and foreign department that would of the first volume of his poetry, Eliot found his maintain him financially for the next seven years. influence further expanded when he was appointed By the end of the succeeding year, brother Henry assistant poetry editor for the equally significant would report that young Tom had become finan- periodical the EGOIST. cially independent and no longer required support Pound was never far from the scene, simultane- from his family. ously promoting Eliot’s interests and keeping him For all its apparent stops and starts, Eliot’s engaged in poetry writing, especially at a time when accomplishments to date were appreciable. After Eliot felt that his talents and sources of inspira- a mere three years in England, and in view of how tion had become so diminished and unlikely to much he, like everyone else, had had to make do recover that he was willing to try writing poetry because of the circumstances created on all sides in French. The poems he wrote during this time by the war, he had become a figure of note in the include “Dans le restaurant,” from which a criti- small but influential circles in which he moved. For cal portion of The Waste Land would eventually better or worse, he had been widely published, net- emerge. Pound had already sought, back in Sep- worked, and accepted by the literary establishment tember 1916, to secure lawyer JOHN QUINN in New of a foreign capital that also happened to be one of York as a patron for Eliot, whom Pound wished to the world’s most dynamic cities. He was about to characterize as a struggling, young poet. Through- issue a complete volume of poetry that, to this day, out 1917 and 1918, Pound also kept Eliot’s flagging is regarded as a remarkable poetic achievement, creative juices flowing by encouraging him to work and he had landed himself a job that most others in a mutual experimentation with the so-called would regard as a career, all the while marrying quatrains originally developed by the 19th-century and fulfilling as well the rigorous requirements of a French poet Théophile Gautier. Eliot’s efforts with graduate degree in philosophy. these four-line stanzas with their four-beat lines It seemed, however, that Eliot was marking him- would result in such curiously opaque poems as self out for a literary career rather than the aca- “The Hippopotamus” and “Sweeney among the demic one for which he had been preparing himself Nightingales,” among others, while Pound ended since entering Harvard as a freshman in 1906. At up using the quatrain form to great effect in the the very least, it was clear that he could no longer first few parts of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, published maintain a private life as a man of letters of increas- in 1919. ing influence and respect while trying to serve the Theirs was a mutually beneficial relationship. In demands of a career as a teacher of high school lan- January 1918, Knopf in New York published Ezra guage and literature. He did not abandon teaching Pound: His Metric and Poetry, Eliot’s introduction entirely just yet, presenting a three-year program in to Pound’s latest work. Pound was careful to inform modern English literature and then, in September Quinn that he did not want Eliot’s name to be too 1917, taking on the additional teaching burden of much associated with his own as a critical voice a six-month series of weekly lectures on Victorian since it might impede Eliot’s progress and promise literature. His employment at Lloyds and his liter- as a poet in his own right, so the pamphlet-length ary endeavors, however, began to occupy more and book was published anonymously. more of his time and attention. The United States had entered the war against Despite his failing confidence in his poetic gifts, Germany on April 6, 1917, and by late 1918, doubts that would assail him periodically through- Eliot was beginning to chafe at being a reasonably out his life, Eliot achieved further literary success able-bodied young man while both his native and and recognition once his first volume of poetry, adopted countries were at war. Several efforts to find Prufrock and Other Observations, was brought out an opportunity for service, first with the U.S. Navy by the Egoist Limited Press in June 1917. Only a and then with the U.S. Army, met with all sorts of

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bureaucratic entanglements, however. These efforts while continuing this increasingly productive life all came to an end, more or less, when an armistice of his as a poet and critic. In 1919, for example, was declared on November 11, 1918, but not before although he was sent on excursions into outlying Eliot had taken a leave of absence from Lloyds in areas by Lloyds for weeks at a time, he still found order to report for duty. Pound, working behind time to take a walking tour of southern France with the scenes as usual, informed Quinn that he had, Ezra Pound in August. The following August, he with characteristic cheek, visited the U.S. embassy would finally meet Joyce, in Paris, before embark- in London to ask that they not allow Eliot, whom ing on a bicycle tour of northern France in the he characterized as one of the few living Americans company of Wyndham Lewis. Although Vivien capable of advancing civilization, to risk his life in a traveled in his social circles, she was conspicuously conflict meant presumably to preserve it. absent from many of these extended vacations. In the meantime, Pound had also prepared for Eliot’s father had died in January 1919. In June publication by Knopf a volume containing Eliot’s 1921, he and Vivien would be visited for several work to date. It would appear in February 1920 months by his mother, Henry, and an elder sister, as Poems 1920, and it included his first genuinely Marian. He would complain to his mother in late original work since “Prufrock,” the poem “Geron- December 1920 that his successes at finding more tion.” The Woolfs’ Hogarth Press would release a and more publishing outlets for his essays were similar volume, Poems, in May 1919. preventing him from achieving other, more cre- At the same time, Eliot’s own editing and ative aims. reviewing responsibilities were keeping him busy Nonetheless, he and Harvard classmate SCO- even as they followed their own vagaries. He was FIELD THAYER, in July of 1921, decided to approach offered the assistant editorship of the Athenaeum Lady ROTHERMERE, the estranged wife of a newspa- per magnate and one of England’s wealthiest men, in March but declined it, a certain sign that these to interest her in a new international review that literary successes were beginning to become a dif- would combine Thayer’s the DIAL in New York with ferent kind of burden, but a burden no less. By another journal that Eliot would edit from London. September 1919, however, he accepted a welcome Lady Rothermere ultimately would accede to their invitation to write lead articles for the extremely plans but decided to limit her financial support to influential Times Literary Supplement. Then the Ego- a review located in London. The result, the CRI- ist, of which he had been assistant editor and which TERION, edited by Eliot, would, for the next decade had been publishing excerpts from JAMES JOYCE’s and a half or more, be one of the most significant modernist triumph, the novel Ulysses, ceased pub- European outlets in English for new young writers lication in December of that same year, but not and thinkers. Indeed, its first number, published in before publishing one of Eliot’s most influential lit- October 1922, would introduce the world to Eliot’s erary essays, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” own modernist masterwork, The Waste Land. in installments in its two final issues. With so much activity on so many fronts, 1920 THE POET OF THE WASTE LAND proved to be a particularly busy and pivotal year, Since as early as September 1920, Eliot had been as might be expected. In addition to the Knopf vol- sharing with various intimates, his mother among ume, the Ovid Press published yet another collec- them, his hopes to find the time to work on a tion of his poetry, Ara Vos Prec, in February, and the long poem, “something which I thought better or Methuen Press would release his first collection of more important.” The Waste Land, the poem that critical prose, , that November. It resulted, has not only been universally acclaimed as would include, among other noteworthy early work, great poetry but is likely to be one of the enduring “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “Hamlet and cultural documents of the 20th century. His Problems,” and “The Metaphysical Poets.” Contrary to a story that has come to gain near Eliot was keeping busy with both work and lei- legendary status among literature students, the sure activities as well, maintaining a busy social life poet of The Waste Land was not confined to an

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insane asylum in Switzerland at the time that he In any event, when Eliot rejoined Vivien in Paris composed the poem. Neither Eliot nor Vivien were in January 1922, Pound reported to Quinn that ever in excellent health, and they seemed to feed Eliot had in his suitcase “a damn good poem (19 off each other throughout their various bouts of pages),” one that he, Pound, hoped Thayer would headaches, flu, stress, and sundry other discom- soon be publishing in The Dial. From Pound’s other forts, most of them, no doubt, far more real than comments, it appears that it must have been during imagined. In March 1921, by which time Eliot pre- that same period of time, which ran barely more sumably had begun work on his long poem, Vivien than a week (Eliot arrived in Paris of January 2 collapsed and had to be hospitalized. She was back and had left by the 12th in order to resume his home with him in April and then went to the sea- post at Lloyds), that Pound edited Eliot’s composi- side for further rest and recuperation in May. tion. These editorial changes, virtually all of them The subsequent summer of 1921, during which wholesale excisions, resulted in the version of The Eliot continued working on his long poem, was, Waste Land that was finally published simultane- however, also a particularly oppressively hot and ously in Eliot’s Criterion in London and Thayer’s dry summer—one that took a toll on the poet’s Dial in New York in October 1922 and then pub- nerves, if not his health. In late September, he lished in book form, with its equally famous notes, visited a physician, who recommended a prolonged by Boni & Liveright in New York that December. period of total rest. By mid-October, following the Pound, working again behind the scenes, con- doctor’s advice, Eliot had checked into a hotel in vinced Quinn to arrange for Eliot to receive from Margate, where Vivien joined him. The idea was The Dial a prize of $2000. Subsequently, as a token that he would remain there a month and then of esteem for this generosity, Eliot remanded to travel to a cottage near Monte Carlo lent him by Quinn the original Waste Land manuscript, which Lady Rothermere, where he would spend another included Pound’s and Vivien’s suggested revisions, two months relaxing and recuperating. most of which Eliot had incorporated into the fin- All the latest rage for treating stress among his ished poem. That literary treasure would effectively London circle, however, including Lady Ottoline disappear from the public consciousness until Octo- and Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, was to check ber 25, 1968, when the New York Public Library into a clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland, run by a Dr. revealed that the manuscript had been sold to their Vittoz. On their recommendation and with Vivi- Berg Collection in April 1958 by Quinn’s niece, en’s consent, Eliot checked into Dr. Vittoz’s clinic Mary (Mrs. Thomas F. Conroy). Eliot had passed sometime in late November. Vivien, who had trav- away by then, on January 4, 1965, but his widow, eled with him as far as to Paris, meanwhile checked Valerie, to the delight of Eliot scholars everywhere, into a sanatorium there. Inasmuch as Lloyds, to would publish these original drafts of The Waste justify Eliot’s three-month leave of absence, had Land in both facsimile and transcript in a superbly written “nervous breakdown” on the documenta- scholarly book-length edition in the spring of 1971. tion approving his leave, the misconception has The poem’s initial publication back in 1922 been perpetuated that Eliot did indeed suffer a ner- proved to be a publishing event of the first order, vous breakdown in 1921 and, while institutional- confirming Pound’s conviction, on first seeing the ized for treatment for it, composed The Waste Land. completed manuscript, that Eliot’s work ought to The fact was, however, that he had been working “make the rest of us shut up shop.” Though not all diligently enough on that poem, originally titled the reviewers—and there would be many over the “He Do the Police in Different Voices,” to show a next year or more—agreed with what they took to working draft to Pound when he and Vivien visited be the poetry’s dispirited pessimism, none failed to him in Paris before Eliot continued on to Lausanne. regard Eliot’s as a literary achievement of the first Dr. Vittoz’s unique treatment, which focused on order. Had he never written another word, The reducing in his patients a corrosive self-absorption, Waste Land would have secured Eliot’s place in the proved to be very beneficial to Eliot. history of English literature for all time—a remark-

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able accomplishment for a 30-year-old man who all Pound’s doing and has become as much a part had arrived in London only eight years earlier as a of the poem’s celebrity as the extensive use of allu- young graduate student in philosophy who just hap- sions and the notes. pened to have seriously dabbled, as an undergradu- ate, in poetry writing. Along with The Sacred Wood SUCCESSES AND CREATIVE INERTIA and, now, his editorship of a bold, new review, the If 1922 concluded with Eliot as the foremost spokes- Criterion, by the close of 1922 Eliot found himself person for the spirit of that postwar generation that to be, perhaps even more than Joyce or Pound, would very shortly be called by Gertrude Stein the the central figure in the modernist movement, cer- Lost Generation, he would spend much of the rest tainly the most publicly acknowledged among them of the 1920s becoming the Lost Leader. Proclaimed as such. the poet who had given voice to the “disillusion- That same year closed out another phase in the ment of a generation” by 1930 and the publication poet’s life on a less illustrious but no less emphatic of the collection Ash-Wednesday, he had made what note. Convinced that Eliot’s perennial mental dis- to some might seem to be a complete turnaround, tress was partly the result of his economic worries, casting his poetic and, apparently, personal fate not Pound, in March 1922, had revived a subscription, with echoing the chaos and disorder of his age, called “Bel Esprit,” to raise Eliot an additional £300 which The Waste Land had seemed to do so power- per year (the idea was that 30 individuals would fully, but with orthodox political, literary, and reli- contribute £10 annually). Somehow, perhaps gious traditions. Such a reading as this of the shift because of the notoriety that had come to him with that would take place in Eliot’s ideology during the the publication of The Waste Land, the Liverpool next eight years, however, presupposes that The Post published a story that £800 had come to Eliot Waste Land was indeed an expression of disillu- as a result of Pound’s scheme, but that Eliot had sionment, a charge or encomium, depending on subsequently reneged on a promise to leave his post one’s point of view, that Eliot always assiduously with Lloyds, one of the terms of the subscription. denied. For him, the poem was a bit of “rhyth- Eliot was forced to write a letter to the editor of mical grumbling,” “a grouse against the world,” the Post, insisting that he had received no such one that finally expressed his generation’s “illu- sum and demanding that the Post retract the story, sion of being disillusioned.” The road from the which they subsequently did. relative triumph of late 1922 to his re-creation Although it occurred in this relatively undra- of self whose culmination was sealed with Ash- matic way and might not seem to have been so Wednesday, however, while not a straight one, momentous an event at the time, by the end of was nevertheless neither an unpredictable one 1922, Eliot not only had become firmly established nor an unlikely one. as one of the shining literary lights of his generation 1923 opened with the financial and marital but had openly declared his independence from stress that seemed by now to have become a way the patronizing protectiveness of Ezra Pound. Still, of life for the poet. He was able, nevertheless, to when it was published in book form, Eliot dedi- put away the money that the Dial’s and other prizes cated The Waste Land to Pound, his longtime liter- resulting from The Waste Land had earned him as ary mentor and sponsor, borrowing a phrase from a slush fund and hedge against the day when he Dante to honor him as “il miglior fabbro”—the bet- might leave Lloyds. To accomplish that goal, he ter craftsman. And rightly so. With the exceptions cast about for a position in publishing, preferably of all the celebrated literary allusions, whose inclu- as the editor of a major periodical, but then he sion as a literary device was Eliot’s idea as well, the ended up withdrawing his name from consideration words and the sentiments and the great complexity to be the editor of the Nation, as if plagued with of theme of The Waste Land were all Eliot’s. The uncertainties about which route he should take. At final structure of The Waste Land, however, with its the same time and with the same sort of somewhat economy of statement and its fragmented tone, was characteristic confusion of motives and aims, he

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expressed to Quinn his regret at having taken upon tudes on Eliot’s part in order for him to achieve a himself the task of editing . creative and spiritual self-renewal. For all was not This seemingly contradictory behavior, how- lost. For one thing, “” remains ever, makes more sense when the simple necessity a perfected enough piece of work to have a place of earning a sufficient living without overtaxing his in the Eliot canon; additionally, he had finally tried delicate nervous system is factored in. Along with his hand at writing for the stage, an interest that Vivien’s health problems, which were increasing would consume more and more of his energies and and would eventually take on serious mental over- talents as time passed. Salvaged, too, from among tones, Eliot had simply stretched his meager physi- those parts of the drama that never found a more cal, emotional, and mental constitutional resources permanent place in it was the poetry that would much too thin. In the process, he was reaching become 1925’s “The Hollow Men.” hither and thither for a panacea, if not in fact virtu- Eliot’s resilience as a creative force never ceases ally flailing about in his quest for one. to amaze. Whenever it seemed to him that he had Indeed, as if manifesting these conflicts, his own completely exhausted all his creative energies, he personal behavior began to become rather suspect. would invariably exceed himself, as he did in the During the course of the ensuing months, con- case of “The Hollow Men.” With that poem, he sumed by the very sort of deflation of spirits that provided yet another startlingly original metaphori- might be expected of someone who had expended cal reference point for the Western world’s spiritual such creative energy successfully composing The and moral malaise following the war. Waste Land, Eliot took to wearing a very pale green At the same time but far behind the scenes, face powder in public. Virginia Woolf even reported Eliot was beginning to be drawn toward the ortho- seeing him wearing red lipstick, and among mutual dox Christianity that had always appeared to be the friends, the poet Siegfried Sassoon took to calling unspoken text that his devotion to tradition both him “the undertaker.” inspired and, paradoxically, from which it sprang. Nevertheless, he managed to publish 10 articles In that same year, 1923, he began to drink more between April and December 1923 and began to heavily, at least to the extent of embarrassing himself conceptualize his next major creative effort, the among his social circle, but happenstance introduced never-completed verse drama “Sweeney Ago- him as well to William Force Stead, an American nistes.” The way this intensely modernist, nearly poet who had also been ordained an Anglican priest. absurdist drama more or less celebrates futility Stead later remembered Eliot at the time as being a and despair as a way of life should seem fitting man for whom a carefree enjoyment of life was an in context, given the overall tenor of frustration impossibility. Their meeting, nevertheless, apparently and disappointment that seemed to be dominat- enabled Eliot to start to channel his lifelong flirtation ing the poet’s personal and professional life at this with spirituality into a life-altering conversion to an time. Still, it would be wrong to read Eliot’s biogra- orthodox Christianity some four years hence. phy into Sweeney’s lugubrious disdain for anything The net result was that at the very same time but raw sex expressed in cannibalistic terms—as that Eliot’s personal life and poetic vision both if the natural universe were not just inhospitable seemed to have hit a similarly impossible nadir, he but abhorrent. What Eliot and Sweeney seemed to began a process of recovery that, by its conclusion, share, rather, was a disdain for hopefulness. not only restored some semblance of stability to his That Eliot abandoned the work in 1924, despite life but also radically altered his poetic vision, yet its containing some of his best and most original his relatively enigmatic technique and poetic style modernist verse, seemed to be the only logical would be kept intact. Accomplishing such a feat conclusion available. Whether the poet intended was probably not intentional on Eliot’s part, but it or not, from this vantage point the drama can that he did manage to do so makes a careful con- be viewed as a necessary emptying and bottoming sideration of the relationship between the life and out of all kinds of older themes, tones, and atti- the work an extremely trying task.

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The temptation would be to see a before-and- October 1925, launched the New Criterion instead, after differentiation in Eliot’s output during this thus combining the two approaches in a single period, and yet in most ways, the poetry does not review. Within the space of a year, then, Eliot had itself betray change so much as maturation. This managed finally to set his personal house, if not in maturation process did not result in Eliot’s “get- order, then on the road to something resembling ting religion,” as his detractors both then and now a permanent arrangement, at least on the profes- often assert, so much as in his finding a foundation sional front. Virtually from the time of his arrival that could both sustain his creative endeavors and in London in July 1914, Eliot had been making do satisfy his personal needs. In the abstract, such a by improvising a life and a career as circumstances transformation could take any number of shapes for allowed and conditions warranted. Now he had a a creative intellect. In Eliot’s case, the foundation clear course of action, all of it set on the literary that he found happened to be an orthodox Christi- front, and a career in business as well—it, too, liter- anity and his adherence to its doctrines. ary in nature. Still, such a transformation, as must be further Not that this new stability and respectability expected, does not happen overnight. In Eliot’s case did not come at a price. He alienated the Woolfs again, there were changes taking place on a num- by luring Herbert Read away from their Hogarth ber of fronts, each inexorably leading toward the Press, and he himself left their literary stable when momentous change that would take place with his Faber & Gwyer published his most recent collec- formal conversion in June 1927. Vivien’s increasing tion, Poems 1909–1925, in December 1925. This ill health had, by 1925, begun to convince Eliot latest volume of his poetry would include the new that the amount of time he was having to devote sequence “The Hollow Men.” to his post with Lloyds was keeping him from giving While his professional life was taking these her and their marriage the attention that they both turns, no matter how tenuously, for the better, his deserved and required. An option was the consid- intellectual life was turning more and more toward eration of a salary from Lady Rothermere. Failing the sort of conservative thought that had seemed that, Geoffrey Faber, who in 1923 had gone into a to be an unfailing attraction to him all along. That joint publishing arrangement with the firm Gwyer, same year, JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY had more or a scientific publisher, had launched Faber & Gwyer less accused Eliot, in a piece in the review Adel- as a general publishing house in 1925. In need of phi, of leading a double life by seeking an ordered someone to act as literary adviser to the new firm, universe in the midst of his disorderly creative life. Faber interviewed Eliot and was so impressed with Intentionally or not, Eliot seemed to second Murry’s both his literary and financial acumen that Faber assessment of him by now turning his critical atten- invited him to join the firm both as poetry editor tion to the French religious Jacques and as a member of the board of directors, posts Maritain. In keeping with the equally conserva- that Eliot would occupy for the remainder of his tive, reactionary French thinker Charles Maurras, working life. He began to work for Faber in the whose Action Française had attracted Eliot as far autumn of 1925 on a five-year contract. Although back as his student days in Paris in 1910–11, Mari- his salary was less than he had been earning at tain was leading an intellectual movement harking Lloyds, Eliot had the added guarantee of having a back to the ordered Europe embodied in the ortho- publisher for his own work as well, an incalculable dox theology of Thomas Aquinas and in the Cath- boon for any writer. olic values expressed in Dante’s poetry, particularly In the meantime, Eliot had been thinking of the . In addition, after launching launching a second periodical that would supple- the New Criterion in January 1926, a review that ment the Criterion’s parochial literary interests itself was proposing a “mind of Europe,” Eliot spent by being more international in flavor and scope. January, February, and March presenting the Clark With Lady Rothermere’s blessing and the added Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, which were sponsorship of Faber & Gwyer, however, Eliot, in intended to be, in their focus on the metaphysical

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poets of the 17th century, the first part of a never- in a local expression of those essential values that completed trilogy to be titled “The Disintegration constitute Christian doctrine. Anglo-Catholicism, of the Intellect.” with its allegiance to the old at the expense of its Clearly, Eliot, a raging radical when it came to allegiance to the papacy in Rome, fulfilled for Eliot poetic stylizing, was becoming more and more of all these various needs and requirements. an archconservative in his social, political, and reli- On June 29, 1927, Eliot was baptized by Stead gious thinking. Visiting with family in Rome later into the Church of England at Church that same year, Eliot fell to his knees in front of in the Cotswold. The next day, Thomas Banks Michelangelo’s Pietà. Strong, bishop of Oxford, confirmed Eliot in that faith in the bishop’s private chapel. In November, CONVERSION AND NEW HORIZONS the transformation, though most of the changes A process of conversion is never as sudden as it had already taken place, was completed when Eliot might ever seem to have been in hindsight, but this became a British citizen. unmistakable entrenchment of Eliot’s in more and more conservative ways of thinking and believing POETRY VS. PROSE finally became concretized when, early in 1927, The Criterion now operating as a monthly and Eliot Eliot asked Stead for his assistance in becoming providing his considerable expertise to Faber & confirmed in the Church of England. For a vari- Gwyer (the firm would not become Faber & Faber ety of reasons, it makes sense that Eliot would until 1929), Eliot the poet was fast becoming more embrace so-called High Church Anglicanism, or and more Eliot the essayist and editor, particularly Anglo-CATHOLICISM, rather than the more popular as his poetry continued to be meager in output British practice of what was more typically called throughout the extended dry spell following his Episcopalianism or, at its far opposite extreme, the publication of The Waste Land. The Criterion’s May rigid dogmatism and foreign influences of Roman 1927 cover had announced what the English-speak- Catholicism. In later prose works such as The Idea ing literary world already knew—that the maga- of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes towards the zine was “edited by T. S. Eliot.” Lady Rothermere’s Definition of Culture (1949), Eliot would articulate finally withdrawing her financial support from the in general terms what must then have been the Criterion late in 1927 only made it that much more far more intuitive, personal, and inchoate motiva- Eliot’s exclusive editorial domain, since it would tions driving his decisions. Nevertheless, even as now be housed entirely with Faber, although the he acted on formalizing his conversion in utmost magazine was forced to return to a quarterly publi- secrecy, his choice of faith and communion, cation schedule as a result. once made public, was an understandable choice His poetry, in contrast, moved ahead, like his to those around him. If he was to be true to his marriage to Vivien, by fits and starts. Working on own intellectual convictions, he could not have his literary material “at the office” now, he shared done anything less than seek what he regarded as with her less and less of that essential part of his life the most ancient, most sacramental, and highest and of their relationship, and they were spending expression of the Christian faith that forms the less and less time together in any event as she took indisputable basis for the culture and civilization of extended holidays and treatments in sanatoriums in modern Europe. deference to her deteriorating physical well-being, On the other hand, while that choice might have which seemed to be manifesting itself in episodes otherwise compelled Eliot to embrace in Roman of increasing mental derangement as well. The edi- Catholicism a pre-Reformation expression of that torship of the Criterion might have been a deter- faith, his selection of such a transnational com- rent to his poetry writing in ways other than time munion would nonetheless have countermanded constraints as well. Being free to publish his own Eliot’s own belief in and need for community, and poetry in its pages how and when he pleased might community for him ultimately had to find itself have undermined the necessary self-discipline that

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sustained creative endeavors demand. The poet’s Developments in Eliot’s personal life were other- necessary isolation through long periods of osten- wise invariably taking his writing intellectually and sible inactivity might seem like self-indulgence, but spiritually into areas where his increasing interest in great art emerges out of great quiet or great turmoil, and commitment to the dimensions of faith and of never out of the tedium of carrying on day-to-day the continuing need for ongoing spiritual traditions business. in the modern world could find expression. By that Since The Waste Land, Eliot had completed poem pivotal year, 1927, in his preface to the prose vol- sequences—“The Hollow Men” was an outstanding ume For Lancelot Andrewes, a 17th-century Angli- example, and “Ash-Wednesday,” “Coriolan,” and can divine, Eliot had famously declared himself a the Ariel poems were just over the horizon—but classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an even those works, for all their apparent power and Anglo-Catholic in religion, all of these positions creative verve when viewed with the benefit of hind- quite anathema to the social and cultural agenda sight, were created more in the spirit of the inspired of modernist radicalism that his poetry seemed till pastiche than as fully conceptualized executions to now to have been advancing. For all intents and begin with. In 1926, he had tried his hand again purposes, as the decade drew to a close, it would at the long poem by translating the French poet have been fair to conclude that Eliot had taken it St.-John Perse’s Anabase, but that effort did not upon himself to rest on the poetic laurels that he proceed smoothly and, by early 1927, had stalled had already acquired and relegate his reputation entirely. subsequently to that of a minor poet, at least inas- The dry spell was dispersed somewhat, however, much as regular publication was concerned. when later that year Geoffrey Faber asked him Then, in the spring of 1930, Faber & Faber to write a poem for promotional purposes. Each released a thin volume of poetry by him titled “Ash- Christmas from 1927 through 1931, Eliot would Wednesday.” Like many of Eliot’s other works from publish a poem appropriate to the season as part the period following the publication of The Waste of a series of illustrated pamphlets with holiday Land in late 1922 and the notoriety that it had themes, to be released by Fabers as corporate greet- brought, the first three parts of “Ash-Wednesday” ing cards, called the Ariel series. Eliot published had already been published as separately titled five poems in the series’ initial phase. (Faber would poems in the years preceding the completed poem’s revise the series in the 1950s, and Eliot would publication that spring. As in the case of “The Hol- provide “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees” in low Men,” there is no reason to conclude that Eliot 1954.) The last of these original five contributions had not necessarily been conceiving of these three was later incorporated into “Coriolan” as “Trium- separately published poems to begin with as pieces phal March.” The first four, meanwhile, includ- in a larger whole. ing “” (1927), “A Song for In any event, Part II of the completed poem, Simeon” (1928), “Animula” (1929), and “Marina” “Ash-Wednesday,” first appeared as “Salutation” (1930), were published under the collective head- in 1927, Part I as “Perch’ io non spero” in 1928, ing by which they have since become known, the and Part III as “Al som de l’escalina” in 1929, all in Ariel Poems, in Collected Poems, 1909–1935. Nev- the Criterion. Each of those three earlier titles gives ertheless, these considerable poetic achievements insight into Eliot’s intentions by identifying a par- did not see widespread publication until 1936, and ticular literary source and figure. In the first case, even then, “Coriolan,” like “Sweeney Agonistes,” the source was Dante’s La vita nuova, in which he would be included among work that was “unfin- celebrates both the beginning of his love for Bea- ished.” Unless one was following the Criterion or trice and the introduction of the great theme of was a devotee of limited editions, as the 1920s love into his poetry. That said, something of Eliot’s came to a close, it would have appeared that Eliot plan for the larger work was seen as well in the fact had not published poetry of any significance since that the other two sections of the poem that were 1925 and “The Hollow Men.” also first published as separate pieces, “Perch’ io

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non spero” (Part I) and “Al som de l’escalina” (Part Criticism, allowing Eliot to summarize the drift III), hark back, through Dante, to two other poets of his critical thinking over the past decade and for whom Love was the theme—Guido Cavalcanti more. The terms of his employment at Harvard and Arnaut Daniel, each of whom was closely con- meanwhile gave him enough free time to lecture at nected with Dante in the troubadour or love poetry various other venues, including University of Cali- tradition that had originated in southern France fornia, in Los Angeles, in December and Yale in and northwestern Italy in the 12th century. That New Haven, Connecticut, in February. In January, tradition had also been an early field of study for he revisited the subject of the 1926 Clark Lectures Eliot’s dear friend and fellow poet, Ezra Pound. by presenting the Turnbull Lectures on the topic Eliot’s poetry might thus be seen as taking a turn of “The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry” at Johns toward the severe passion of devotion and love; Hopkins in Baltimore, and in April, he was invited however, the Eliots’ marriage was, by now, all to give the Page-Barbour Lectures at the University but ended. There might nevertheless be parallels of Virginia in Charlottesville. In keeping with the between the religious agonies of the poetry and the terms of that lectureship, his remarks there were turmoil of an authentic love relationship that was later collected and, in February 1934, published by now dissolving into chaos and recrimination. Poetry Faber & Faber under the title After Strange Gods: A and the life were never more than tenuously related Primer of Modern Heresy. in Eliot’s case, yet to deny that they are related In his preface to For Lancelot Andrewes in 1928, would be as foolhardy as to argue that they are Eliot had promised to write three more books in nothing but that. Inasmuch as both the poetry of which he would address contemporary issues, includ- “Ash-Wednesday” and the dissolution of Eliot and ing what he identified as the topic of heresy as it was Vivien’s 15-year marriage bespeak love’s pain and manifested in our time. After Strange Gods, no doubt, love’s worth, “Ash-Wednesday” is a personal poem, was that book or at least the best shot at it that Eliot but it is unmistakably poetry, not . could manage on a topic that was very likely to raise hackles no matter how adroitly he might try to shape A PARTING OF WAYS the argument. He never lived down, nor should he By the early 1930s, Vivien’s increasingly strange ever live down, the apparently anti-Semitic com- behavior and fits of jealousy had almost completely ment on “free-thinking Jews” that he made in the estranged her from her and Eliot’s mutual circle Barbour lectures, and he never allowed After Strange of friends. A break was inevitable, but that break Gods to be reissued after its initial publication. was not finalized until Eliot seized an opportunity It can be assumed that that was his way of dis- to force an extended physical separation between avowing the entire venture, but, like many another himself and her in the form of a lectureship back literary artist and public figure, Eliot was wont from in America. On September 17, 1932, Eliot set sail time to time to exclude from his canon, both poetic from England to assume for the coming academic and critical, work that he later thought was flawed year the professorship at his or pretentious in some manner or other, offering no alma mater, Harvard University, in Cambridge, further clarification than that. He never permitted Massachusetts. The extended absence that this the Clark Lectures to be published, for example, position would require would also enable him to and he would later publish only the choruses from make real a separation from his disastrously failed the 1933 verse drama, The Rock. marriage to Vivien. Eliot had last been to America Eventually, the physical and emotional distance in 1915. In addition to providing him with another from Vivien would enable Eliot, as he had intended, opportunity to renew family ties and youthful to undertake the appropriate legal action required acquaintanceships, the fruits of his labors at Har- to dissolve his marital union with her. Possibly as vard would also bring in a princely salary. early as February or March 1933, Eliot was asking The lecture series would subsequently be issued his solicitors back in England to prepare a deed of under the title The Use of Poetry and the Use of separation from her, although it appears that Vivien

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Eliot visited this English country home with Emily Hale in the summer of 1934. The visit was one of the inspirations behind “,” a poem whose composition led to the . (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

was not formally made aware of his intentions until can bishop of Chichester, had turned to a young July, after his return from America. While in Cam- man named E. MARTIN BROWNE to reinvigorate bridge, he had also renewed his acquaintanceship the longstanding relationship between drama and with Emily Hale, his sweetheart from his Harvard religion in the English church, appointing him graduate school years. Surely, no more than is fair the diocesan director of religious drama. Browne should be read into this. The Eliots’ marriage had and Eliot had first met at Bishop Bell’s episcopal been foundering in one way or another almost from palace in December 1930, during which weekend its inception. Still, the poet who would shortly be visit Eliot had read from his then just-published writing of doors not opened and paths not taken sequence “Ash-Wednesday.” must have been startled from time to time by the By the time of Eliot’s return to England in the painful contrasts between memory and desire as he summer of 1933, Browne, an actor by training, was revisited an America and friends that he had not writing the scenario for a pageant play to aid a known or seen in 18 years or more. church building fund for the new London suburbs then springing up. Browne was working from a sto- THE POET AS DRAMATIST ryline that was based on historical episodes, them- Back in England, developments were in the works selves suggested by the Reverend R. Webb-Odell. that would soon permit Eliot to intersect his long- Renewing their previous acquaintanceship, Browne standing dramatic talents and interests with his turned to Eliot’s talents as a poet for the writing of religious impulses. In 1930, George Bell, the Angli- the choruses and dialogue. The resulting pageant

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play, The Rock, related the building of a church As a locale, Burnt Norton, the title setting for in London to the long history of struggle that the the first of the quartets, was little more than an church had undergone in England from earliest otherwise obscure English country house that had Christian times, its story culminating in the dif- burned to the ground in the 18th century. For ficulties that the modern church was encountering the poet, it might have other significances, for it in the face of new, secular notions of the nation- was located in Gloucestershire, the ’s state and of the increasing pressures that a rampant ancestral region in western England. Even more consumerism and materialism were forcing upon an significant, however, it was a locale that Eliot had all too willing populace. visited with Hale in the summer of 1934. Those Obviously, these were themes right up Eliot’s facts aside, nevertheless, the poetry of “Burnt Nor- alley. Eliot worked on the text well into the spring ton”—indeed, its opening lines—finds its source in of the pageant’s performance, which was at Sadler’s lines that had been discarded from the just-com- Wells Theatre in London from May 28 to June 9, pleted . While Eliot was 1934. Financially, the production was a great suc- working busily on the composition of the play in cess, drawing some 1,500 in paid attendance. Far early 1935, Browne convinced Eliot to eliminate more significant in the history of English letters, the passage “Time past and time present / . . . both however, was the fact that Eliot, whose work had perhaps present in time future.” These lines would always betrayed a bent toward the performative, reappear several years later as the famous opening had caught the theatrical bug. passage to “Burnt Norton,” when it was first pub- Though not entirely pleased with The Rock, lished in Collected Poems in April 1936. from which he later published only the choruses, Given “Burnt Norton”’s connection with Mur- he moved almost instantly into another theatrical der in the Cathedral, it is reasonable to assume, venture, Murder in the Cathedral. That celebrated particularly since the collection brought together verse drama would first be performed in the Chapter Eliot’s poetry up to 1935, that the poem was itself House of Canterbury Cathedral the evening of June composed and completed in 1935. In any event, 19, 1935, before an opening night audience of 700 that would have seemed to be an end to it. Indeed, as a part of the Canterbury Festival. The idea for early in 1936, Eliot began work on a new play, one the drama was originally proposed to him, after the that he hoped audiences would accept as a contem- success achieved by The Rock, by Bishop Bell while porary drama. Despite Browne’s guiding hand, the Eliot was again staying as a weekend guest at Bell’s result, , was no doubt too top- episcopal palace. After Browne and Eliot’s success- heavy with literary flourishes to fulfill Eliot’s wishes ful collaboration on The Rock, it seemed inevitable for it to succeed as popular theatre, but it was a that, when Bell suggested to Eliot that he prepare further step in what was becoming a new career an original work for that next year’s Canterbury for him—writing for the legitimate stage. Eliot was Festival, Eliot should again turn to Browne for his reported to have personally regarded The Family expertise with staging and directing. Thus began a Reunion as a melancholy play and a more pessimis- collaborative effort between Browne and Eliot that tic work than any other he had written to date. No would continue for nearly another quarter century. one is likely ever to be disappointed by this assess- As is often the case when one’s creative juices ment. Nevertheless, at about the same time that are set flowing in entirely new directions, old fonts Eliot was composing the lugubrious verses and less- of inspiration are renewed as well. In Eliot’s case, than-uplifting plot of The Family Reunion, based as his effort at composing the poetry of Murder on the it was on Aeschylus’s bloody trilogy, the Oresteia, Cathedral combined with his renewed relationship the poet was also putting the finishing touches to with Emily Hale, who had begun to visit him in the whimsical collection Old Possum’s Book of Prac- England on a fairly regular basis each summer to tical , which Faber would release in 1939. provide him with a launching point for his ultimate There had always been a streak of frivolous poetic masterwork, Four Quartets. abandonment both in Eliot’s choice of themes

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and in his poetic style. Prufrock, the character, is minister Neville Chamberlain’s acceding to Ger- as silly as he is somber and intentionally so. The man demands in September 1938 by yielding the quatrain poems, “The Hippopotamus” and “Swee- Sudetenland in order to appease Hitler’s territorial ney Erect” being just two of the more outstand- ambitions. The Idea of a Christian Society, published ing examples among them, meanwhile, are for the in September 1939, laments the passing of the kind most part exercises in the fabulously absurd, and of world that Eliot was at the same time espousing The Waste Land is as comical in its assessments of and that East Coker had come to embody for him. as it is serious and tragic. Then, too, It was a world not free from agony—no human there are the Bolo poems, those suppressed and condition is—but united nevertheless in a common salacious exercises in the scatological and sexually moral and ethical foundation based on Christian obscene that one might expect of an undergraduate values, not necessarily as those values are expressed humor magazine. They in fact were begun back in in doctrine, but as a way of life, the way that Hin- Eliot’s own undergraduate days, but their private duism and Buddhism are ways of life as much as circulation continued among his friends well into they are systems of belief. his adulthood. As war again enveloped Europe, that world, So, then, for all its apparently radical departure, those values, and the way of life that that ancestral Practical Cats, with its harking back to some of the village represented for Eliot and that he had spent other feline-inspired nonsense verse of “Five-Finger a creative and critical lifetime arguing to preserve Exercises” from the early 1930s, was not as much of must have seemed suddenly to be more in jeopardy an aberration for Eliot as it might otherwise seem. than they ever had been before. He would then Eliot might very well have needed these episodes of model the new poem that emerged, “East Coker,” comic relief while composing his new verse drama. on the five-part structure of “Burnt Norton,” whose At the very least, writing The Family Reunion was a own structure might have been modeled loosely on slow and painstaking task for him. A first draft was the five-part structure of The Waste Land. “East not completed until possibly as late as November Coker” was completed in draft form by February 1937. At Browne’s urging, the play went through 1940 and first published in the Easter 1940 issue of several more drafts and the usual revisions in the New English Weekly. After the Criterion folded rehearsal before opening at London’s Westminster in 1939, it was this socially conservative newspa- Theatre on March 21, 1939, to a disappointing five-week run. per, with which Eliot had begun an active editorial In August 1937, in the meantime, Eliot had vis- association in 1934, that would now be a publish- ited the Gloucestershire village of East Coker, even ing outlet for his articles and poetry during the taking photographs of such sites as St. Michael’s, next decade. When Faber & Faber published “East the village church in this Eliot ancestral home Coker” in pamphlet form in September of the same (and in which Eliot’s ashes would eventually be year, it sold 12,000 copies, a remarkable commen- interred in a memorial in a rear corner near the side tary on both Eliot’s renown as well as the poem’s entrance). By the late fall of 1939, compelled per- capacity to embrace and express qualities that the haps by the outbreak of a new war among France, reading public must have come to regard as quint- England, and Germany following the Nazi invasion essentially English. and subsequent occupation of Poland in September While he was composing “East Coker,” the fur- of that year, Eliot began work on “East Coker.” ther idea occurred to Eliot that he might compose four poems, of which “Burnt Norton” and “East THE FOUR QUARTETS Coker” would be the first two. These four “quar- Eliot had already addressed his concerns regard- tets,” as he then called each individual poem, using a ing the deterioration of moral initiatives on the musical analogy as he had done from his earliest days part of the Christian, Western democracies in The as a poet, would be organized around the themes of Idea of a Christian Society, a prose work that he the four elements and the four seasons. He set about had composed largely in response to British prime composing the third, “The Dry Salvages,” which had

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been titled originally simply “Dry Salvages,” during its attendant fear not just for one’s life but for the the rest of 1940, sending off a complete first draft life of the people and nation permeate the lines and to his friend and confidante John Hayward on New imagery of “” and might account for Year’s Day, 1941. The finished poem, which recalls Eliot’s dissatisfaction with the first draft, completed his youthful summers on Massachusetts’s Cape Ann in July 1941. He would not take up the poem again and pays homage, through the sea, to the element until August 1942, completing a final version on of water, would be first published in the New English September 19, after it had undergone five distinct Weekly in February 1941. drafts. “Little Gidding” was published in the New All that remained now was for Eliot to complete English Weekly in October 1942, and the completed the sequence with a fourth quartet, which he placed sequence, Four Quartets, came out in book form in in Little Gidding, the site of a long-defunct religious October of the following year. community to whose remnant chapel Eliot had By this time, Eliot, who, like many other affluent made a personal pilgrimage back in May 1936. As Londoners, had taken up wartime residence in the he now began, in early 1941, to write the poetry of relative safety of the countryside, was nevertheless “Little Gidding,” the quartet whose element would working from Tuesdays to Fridays in his office at be , however, London and surrounding English Faber on Russell Square, where he also maintained cities were undergoing merciless air raids that were a flat. He did his own part in assisting the war effort being carried on since the previous September on a by taking up fire-watching duties on the roof of virtually nightly basis by the German Luftwaffe, or the offices. When the building was hit by a “flying air force. On May 10, 1941, for just one egregious bomb” in June 1943, although his town flat was example, 3,000 Londoners died as the result of one rendered useless, he continued his duties as a fire- of these Nazi bombing raids. The destruction and watcher on a curtailed schedule.

Eliot had an office and small apartment in this building on Russell Square. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

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All during the war, Eliot kept up a busy lec- travel there again in April 1947, this time because ture schedule as well. In 1942, he had made an Henry was dying. Eliot did not return to England attempt to write a short book on culture, a sub- until June, after receiving an honorary degree from ject perpetually dear to his heart but an ambitiously Harvard. optimistic topic nevertheless in view of the times. Not all was well with him, however. He was begin- He abandoned this effort after writing only a few ning to fall ill easily, a prefiguration of the emphy- chapters, but in 1944, he would publish in three sema to come, and his dear friend Ezra Pound, for his consecutive issues of The New English Weekly what wartime activities in Fascist Italy, first was charged he later called “a preliminary sketch” of the topic with treason by the U.S. government and eventually under the title “Notes towards a Definition of Cul- was committed to St. Elizabeths, a mental hospital ture.” Those preliminary notes were subsequently outside Washington, D.C. There Eliot visited him perfected into a longer paper, “Cultural Forces in as frequently as he could and worked quietly behind the Human Order,” and published in a 1945 vol- the scenes to gain Pound’s release. In the intervening ume, Prospect for Christendom. They finally appeared time, Vivien passed away on January 22, 1947, in the as Notes towards the Definition of Culture in a book- sanatorium where she had been sequestered since length edition first published in November 1948. By the late 1930s. Eliot was grief-stricken, as much by now, Eliot was also able to incorporate into the text the loss of a person whose life had been inextricably a revised version of a paper first published in The interwoven with his own as by his remembrance of New English Review in October 1945, along with the the tragic farce their life together had eventually text of three radio broadcasts which he had made, become. Nor had Eliot made a graceful exit from in German, to the German people in 1946. Aside that travesty, instead stealing away like a thief in the from several subsequent collections of previously night by traveling to America in 1932. published essays, this was Eliot’s last major prose This collision of remorse with guilt might work, a measured but, for him, passionate testament account for the theme of his next and most suc- to his belief in continuity and human initiative. cessful theatrical piece, . The end of the war had also revived London’s famous the- FAME AND HONORS atrical life, and Eliot benefited from this renewed Such productivity from Eliot in the realm of prose interest in live theatre. A new production of The criticism and social commentary was hardly surpris- Family Reunion, which had experienced a disap- ing, but his personal and creative lives were flourish- pointing five-week run when it first premiered in ing as well. With the end of World War II in August London in 1939, was successfully mounted at the 1945 and the subsequent and gradual lifting of the Mercury Theatre in October 1946. Both that play austerity measures that had accompanied it in Brit- and Murder in the Cathedral were selected for per- ain, Eliot was able to think about moving back to formances for the inaugural season of the Edin- London. He eventually took up residence, in 1946, burgh Festival in 1947. with his old friend Hayward, who by now had been Eliot was encouraged by these successes to confined to a wheelchair by muscular dystrophy, in begin to think in terms of another project for the a spacious flat that permitted Eliot, for the first time stage, and by July 1948 he sent a draft of the in a long time, the twin benefits of privacy and rou- first three acts of this new play, which he origi- tine as well as companionship. He would live there nally titled “One-Eyed Reilly,” to Martin Browne. with Hayward for the next 11 years. A production of the play that finally resulted, In the same year, Eliot was also able to make the The Cocktail Party, a social comedy in verse, was first of what would become more and more regular mounted during the last week of August 1949 at visits back to America, where he could renew again the Edinburgh Festival, where it was a great popu- friendships cut off by the war, including with Emily lar success. Unable to secure a theatre in London’s Hale, and visit with family, particularly his brother, West End for its commercial premier, however, Henry, who was by now seriously ill. Eliot would the producer Henry Sherek decided to premiere it

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on New York’s Broadway instead. There it opened on January 21, 1950, in the Henry Miller Theatre. Eliot had been awarded the Nobel Prize in litera- ture on December 10, 1948, in Stockholm, Sweden, an honor that had no doubt enhanced his worldwide celebrity. However, Eliot was trepidatious over the kind of reception The Cocktail Party’s very British storyline might receive in New York. He was pleas- antly surprised when the New York production of his latest verse drama became a spectacular success both critically and commercially, as it would do sub- sequently in London later that same year. With its tale of a marriage gone ridiculously askew as a result of the lamentable self-centeredness of both the hus- band and the wife, Eliot finally proved to both him- self and his public that he could write a play in verse with broad popular appeal. Indeed, it was largely because of The Cocktail Party that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine on March 6. He had more than “come home”; he had stolen the show. Eliot kept the creative juices flowing this time around by almost instantly turning his hand to another new play. The first two scenes of that play, , were drafted by as early as Eliot in 1952, by which time he had become an May 1951, not long after The Cocktail Party had influential and iconic figure, known worldwide as closed in London. Eliot’s plans were to premiere the author of The Waste Land, a Nobel laureate, and the new play at the Edinburgh Festival in the sum- a celebrity playwright (Courtesy of Houghton Library, mer of 1952, but he did not complete the play until Harvard University) February 1953, thus delaying its Edinburgh Festival debut until the following August, where it, too, was well received. The play opened at London’s Lyric come to embody an entire cultural age, modern- Theatre on September 16, 1953, where it contin- ism, while something in his scholar’s demeanor and ued to experience great popular success. banker’s reserve encouraged the contrary notion By the early 1950s, Eliot went from being a cel- that poetry was not for everyone, especially if it ebrated author in literary and academic circles, was Eliot’s. The so-called Pope of Russell Square, who could find himself a speaking venue or visiting Eliot had made being famous a social responsibility lectureship on either side of the Atlantic merely by and had become a reasonably wealthy man of let- virtue of saying that he would be visiting the area, ters, generous to friends and younger writers. He to a celebrity on the world stage, mobbed by theater had not yet achieved, however, what often comes fans and devotees of pop culture alike. His prim most easily in life to those who seek it, and that was and proper figure (Virginia Woolf was said to have some species of domestic bliss. once commented on his “four-piece” suit), digni- The by-now annual trips back to America, facili- fied and diffident and perhaps a bit too much to tated somewhat by international air travel, enabled type, filled the pages of the daily press and weekly him to lecture at Harvard and Princeton and in New news magazines as much as not. The Waste Land York City, and they also gave him ever more frequent was never far from the scene for this man who, to opportunities to visit with his two living sisters, with the vast majority of English-speaking people, had Hale, and with the novelist Djuna Barnes in the

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Boston area. Eventually, he would even make a tri- and the presiding priest, the wedding was attended umphant return to St. Louis, speaking at Washing- only by Eliot’s solicitor and the bride’s parents. By ton University, the institution that his grandfather April, the newlyweds had moved to Kensington, had helped found, and later lecturing at St. Olaf’s and Eliot was reporting to friends that he was the College in Minnesota before thousands of enthralled luckiest man alive, one completely undeserving of undergraduates and faculty. In the autumn of 1954, such happiness. Faber & Faber published what would be his last Before his marriage, Eliot had already drafted, poem, “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees,” as a early in 1956, the first two acts of his next play, part of the revived Ariel series. , tentatively entitled “The Rest His health, which had never been especially good, Cure.” It would be his last dramatic work and also was now even worse, but he never failed to recover his final major creative endeavor. He would not fully from his persistent colds and other forms of ill get down to the serious business of revising those health, and neither Eliot’s career as a writer nor his first two acts, as well as completing the third act, life were hardly likely to come to an end any time until the autumn of 1957, after his marriage to Val- soon. Nevertheless, he was often described at this erie. That genuinely dramatic change in the state of time, the mid-1950s, as looking cadaverous. his personal affairs is generally thought to account for the play’s understated but nevertheless enthu- THE AGED EAGLE siastic celebration of the benefits of connubial love. Photographs of Eliot from March and September Indeed, his last published poem, “To My Wife,” 1958 show, however, a markedly different man provided his dedication to the play when it was pub- from the cadaverous elder poet. In one such photo, lished in book form. He was reported to have told a he is pictured arriving on the campus of the Uni- versity of Rome, where he received an honorary degree. Students crying “Viva Eliot!” had lined the route of his entrance onto the campus, and in the photo, it is a decidedly jovial Eliot who greets their cheers. In another photo, though he looks a bit somber as the camera catches him dapper in eve- ning clothes as he arrives for the opening night of The Elder Statesman at the Cambridge Theatre in London, he nevertheless appears for all the world to be in robust health although he was by now in his 70th year. The startling contrast with the man who had often been described as looking as if he were at death’s door a mere three or four years earlier could all be attributed to the person who is seen by his side in both photos—Valerie Fletcher, who on Jan- uary 10, 1957, had become the second Mrs. Eliot. At 30, she was nearly 40 years his junior at the time of their marriage and had been Eliot’s personal sec- retary at Faber for the preceding eight years. The ceremony was carried on amid great secrecy at 6:15 A.M. in the very church, Eliot would learn later that same day, that his youthful idol, the French symbolist poet Jules Laforgue, had been married Eliot and Valerie Fletcher in January 1957, newly many decades before. Aside from the happy couple married (Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University)

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friend, the British editor and critic Cyril Connolly, way. In late May 1958, he was awarded the Dante that, with that poem, he felt that he had finally Gold Medal at the Italian Institute in London on written a poem about love and happiness. behalf of the comune of Florence, Dante’s native Though he had completed a first draft of The city. It was a fitting tribute to a man who had made Elder Statesman by the end of 1957, the London pro- the works of the early 14th-century Italian poet duction of the play, again under the direction of his an integral component of Anglo-American culture longtime theatrical collaborator, E. Martin Browne, during much of the first half of the 20th century. did not open until late September 1958 after pre- The Eliots spent the last years of the poet’s life miering at the Edinburgh Festival on August 24. enjoying the company of family and friends while It was neither a critical nor a commercial success. taking frequent vacations south for his more and Generally, the reaction was that the play reflected more persistent lung infections. The friends even outdated theatrical conventions that would have of his adulthood were beginning to pass on, such been more in keeping with the playwriting typical as Father Eric Cheetham, with whom he had lived of Eliot’s youth. after his separation from Vivien, and Geoffrey The irony was, despite his being castigated for Faber, who had given him an opportunity to turn being behind the times, by now Eliot had perfected a his attention fully to literature. Ezra Pound, in the format for the stage in keeping with his own theories meantime, had finally, in April 1958, been released of verse drama. With The Elder Statesman, Eliot had from confinement in St. Elizabeths Hospital, and finally tamed the somewhat high-flown histrionics by 1959 had settled in Italy. Eliot continued their and literary complexities of Murder in the Cathedral friendship by frequent correspondence, commiser- and The Family Reunion. Meanwhile, the somewhat ating with this friend of his youth on the problems listless verse of The Cocktail Party and The Confiden- attendant on aging. tial Clerk had, in The Elder Statesman, found just the Eliot contemplated a new play in 1962 but never right balance of rhythmic continuity expected of the commenced work on it, turning his attention instead poetic line without sacrificing a naturalness of tone. to preparing the dissertation for publication. The couple kept up a busy travel agenda as well. They THE LAST YEARS spent seven weeks in late 1961 in America where Eliot was by now a 70-year-old man who had at he made a series of public appearances, the fees last achieved a real measure of domestic bliss and from which enabled them to take an extended holi- a career of public honors and authentic adulation. day in Barbados following Christmas. They returned He was not so much ready to rest on his laurels as to England in March 1962. By the end of that year, compelled to, both by a desire to enjoy what time he however, he collapsed as a result of a particularly had left and by increasing ill health that had finally noxious episode of London’s famous “smog,” and he been diagnosed as emphysema. Even that condition was hospitalized under continuous oxygen for the brought with it a certain boon, for he was now under next five weeks. It was a setback from which the 74- doctor’s orders to take the clear sea air, leading him year-old poet never fully recovered. and Valerie to take extended holidays at Brighton Much of 1963 found Eliot in and out of hospitals and on the French Riviera and in Bermuda. as his lungs and heart continued to deteriorate so He continued to keep himself busy at the writ- that by September of that year, when the American ing and publishing end as well, although he pri- poet Allen Tate visited him in London, Tate later marily issued compilations of hitherto uncollected reported that Eliot was so weakened with illness prose works in On Poetry and Poets in 1956 and that he was barely able to get around even with To Criticize the Critic, not published until after the the help of two canes, and he could not find the poet’s death in 1965. In 1964, he at last saw the strength to wave goodbye to Tate. In November publication of his 1916 Harvard doctoral disserta- of that year, nevertheless, Eliot and Valerie made tion, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of what would be his last visit to America, where they F. H. Bradley. Honors also continued to come his stayed in New York and he reminisced about his

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The memorial to T. S. Eliot in St. Michael’s Church in East Coker, the Eliots’ ancestral home. At his request, the poet’s ashes are also interred here. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

Missouri childhood. From there, the Eliots left for FURTHER READING Nassau, returning to England in April 1964. Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: A Life. New York: Simon In October, he collapsed at home and was hos- and Schuster, 1984. pitalized in a deep coma and with a paralysis on Chiari, Joseph. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir. London: Enithar- his left side. Though his team of five doctors did mon Press, 1982. not imagine that he would survive the night, he Eliot, Valerie, ed. The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Vol. 1, recovered enough to be allowed to return to his 1898–1922. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanov- and Valerie’s home. Shortly after Christmas 1964, ich, 1988. he again lapsed into a coma, but this time his heart Giroux, Robert. “A Personal Memoir.” Sewanee Review began to fail. Eliot died on January 4, 1965. The [Eliot issue] 74 (1966): 331–338. poet’s last utterance was his wife’s name. Gordon, Lyndall. Eliot’s Early Years. New York: Oxford, According to his wishes, his ashes were interred, 1977. in April, in St. Michael’s, the East Coker village ———. Eliot’s New Life. New York: Farrar, 1988. church of his ancestors, where a memorial inside the Sencourt, Robert. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir. Edited rear entrance continues to honor an adopted son. by Donald Adamson. New York: Dodd, Mead, On the second anniversary of his death, amid great 1971. ceremony, a memorial plaque was also installed in Seymour-Jones, Carole. Painted Shadows: The Life of his honor in Westminster Abbey, where England Vivienne Eliot. London: Constable & Robinson, crowns her monarchs and honors her greatest poets. 2001.

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Works A to Z

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 31 9/5/07 2:35:37 PM 031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 32 9/5/07 2:35:37 PM After Strange Gods 33 After Strange Gods (1934) his thought had been taking since at least the time of “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” published On September 17, 1932, T. S. Eliot set sail from in 1919 while he was still relatively young and not England to assume for the coming academic year the as widely known. On the other hand, After Strange Charles Eliot Norton professorship at Harvard Uni- Gods exposes what appear to be serious religious, versity in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His extended ethnic, and professional prejudices whose awful- absence would also enable him to make final his ness may have been overblown in their reception, separation from what had become his disastrously but that nevertheless delivered a serious and last- failed marriage to his first wife, Vivien. He had last ing blow to the image of the tolerant and humane gone “home” to America in 1915. The fruits of his figure that Eliot had been cutting in literary and labors there now at his old alma mater, Harvard, critical circles much of his professional life to then. in addition to a princely salary, would be the pub- Since the Virginia lectures were not as tightly lished lectures issued in 1933 as The Use of Poetry organized as the Norton Lectures at Harvard, and the Use of Criticism. The visiting professorship which followed a carefully structured chronological would provide him as well with enough free time to development through the eight presentations, each lecture at various other venues, including the Uni- with its own particular topic, the result is that After versity of California, Los Angeles, in December and Strange Gods is laid out rather like a long conversa- Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, in February. In tion on a single topic—modern heresy. It is treated January, meanwhile, he would deliver the Turnbull here in a like manner for which its nuances can be Lectures at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. that much more easily accounted. Dealing with the varieties of metaphysical poetry, SYNOPSIS these lectures would be a somewhat revised version of the Clark Lectures, which he had presented at Introduction and Controversy Trinity College, Cambridge, from January through Perhaps it was the result of the headiness of being March 1926. back in his native land for the first time in many In April, he was invited to give the Page-Barbour years and after many major changes in his own life Lectures at the University of Virginia in Charlot- and on the contemporary scene. At least, a sort tesville, and it is these addresses that, in keeping of patrician American esprit de corps had appar- with the terms of that lectureship, were later col- ently rubbed off on Eliot once he found himself lected and, in February 1934, published by Faber & in the environs of the old Tidewater—and slave- Faber under the title After Strange Gods: A Primer holding—aristocracy that had been antebellum of Modern Heresy. In the preface to For Lancelot Virginia, home of the Confederate capital at Rich- Andrewes (1928), Eliot had promised to write three mond. Whatever the motivation may have been, more books in which he would address contempo- Eliot, born and raised in ST. LOUIS, Missouri, his rary issues, including what he identified as heresy family’s long New England heritage notwithstand- as it is manifested in our time. After Strange Gods, ing, introduced himself to his Virginian audience as no doubt, is that book, or at least the best that “a New Englander,” as if to imply that there was no Eliot could manage on a topic that was very likely one but a conspiracy of Yankees and Rebels around to raise hackles, no matter how adroitly he might to hear his remarks. It would be easily forgivable if shape the argument. it had ended there, but Eliot went on in his prelimi- In any event, the resulting presentation is an odd nary remarks to suggest certain prejudicial attitudes collation, to say the least. On the one hand, despite that would haunt him the rest of his professional its loosely discursive structure and tone, being life and that have continued to dog his reputation essentially the transcriptions of his actual lectures, long after his death. it contains some of Eliot’s most summaries He would later claim that he was not well at to date of the intellectual and moral direction that the time. There should be no doubt, for example,

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that the emotional and pending financial strains the recent immigrants from southern and central of a legal separation from Vivien had taken their Europe, who were likely to be Jewish or Roman toll on his physical health—as they had, however, Catholic? Or his saying that tradition represents by most accounts for virtually all of their marriage. “the blood kinship” of a people? Or his stressing the He would also later forbid republication of the lec- importance of maintaining the homogeneity of the tures, as if that repudiation might absolve him of population, particularly with regard to preventing it his errors in judgment rather than appearing to be from “becom[ing] adulterate”? Or, finally and most an admission of guilt. deplorably, his emphasizing the need for that unity The equally tragic thing is that, in the lectures, of tradition to be backgrounded particularly by a Eliot says much that is still of great value in his common religion, to the end that “reasons of race effort to differentiate between a literature that and religion combine to make any large number of advances the possibilities of human belief and one free-thinking Jews undesirable” on the American that, while ostensibly celebrating spirituality, actu- intellectual and cultural scene? ally may be deadening its opportunity for renewal in At that time, it was common to hear blatant succeeding generations. Perhaps, too, Eliot’s lapses bigotry being expressed in such notions of blood in judgment were the result of the talent for mim- and race and “undesirables,” and people of particu- icry and empathy that had rendered him capable lar beliefs and ethnicities were effectively margin- of being such an accomplished imitator of point of alized if not entirely excluded from their share in view in his poetry whereby he could take on the the life of a nation. (Indeed, such attitudes toward personality, or so it seemed, of whatever character- “outsiders” formed the very basis for the pernicious ization he might hope to be achieving. Similarly, it thinking behind the policies of Nazi Germany that appears that once Eliot was among the sort of old- led to the mass extermination of Jews and others school Southern gentlemen whom he regarded as deemed to be “undesirable” in the gas chambers comprising his Virginia audience, he suddenly took of their concentration camps during World War on all the values and, with them, the prejudices of II.) That Eliot was expressing these same attitudes, that mentality. underscored by the same relativistic evaluations of The trouble was that the “us” whom he addressed a person’s worth, in 1933, when the Nazis under were those white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants whose the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler were just ancestors had founded America and, therefore, then coming to power in Germany, is far more than seemed to have bestowed on their descendants unfortunate; it is tragic. Eliot’s overall poetic vision, a special claim to its authentic character, a self- if anything, espoused the cause of multiculturalism anointed cultural elite of whom Eliot and his and racial and ethnic tolerance. DANTE ALIGHIERI’s audience were card-carrying members, while the Catholicism and the Upanishad’s Hinduism, to “them” was anyone else. Although the experience name but two value systems that would have been of these others also formed an undeniable part foreign to his own background and heritage, inform of the American experience, Eliot seemed to be a great deal of his poetry to that time and would declaring outright that their experience was not of continue to do so. the right pedigree to warrant the same respect and For some, it may not ever be possible to sal- claims to authenticity as his and his Southern white vage Eliot’s reputation as a person, let alone as a audience’s. Otherwise, how can one explain Eliot’s humane man of letters, from the charges of xeno- speaking of the Civil War as a national catastrophe phobia and especially ANTI-SEMITISM to which this instead of as the tragic consequence of the South’s display of religious and ethnic prejudice in the clinging to the institution of human slavery? Or his opening pages of After Strange Gods had exposed asserting that “a native culture,” meaning white and him. Context, nevertheless, is a consideration that Protestant, has more hope of being reestablished in itself, as a liberating social and intel- Virginia than in New York because Virginia has lectual force, always encourages. Perhaps what at been “less invaded by foreign races,” meaning all first blush sounds brutal in Eliot’s introduction to

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his topic, which is tradition and the deleterious tative example of those “foreign races” who have effects on a culture when longstanding traditions their own traditions and whose ways of thinking are are abandoned in the name of a free-wheeling and not constrained by Anglo-American culture and uncritical inclusiveness, may at least be reduced to its traditions, at least in Eliot’s view. There is no nothing more than an overactive and embarrass- easy way to make this sound any less prejudiced ingly inconsiderate defensiveness on his part. than it most assuredly is on Eliot’s part. Still, in Since this is a matter that has always engaged his own misguided way (which seems to have been and will continue to engage the practical viabil- the product of an effort on his part to establish an ity of any human culture in its encounters with instant rapport with his audience, whom he appar- the new and the different, Eliot’s thoughts on the ently took to be wholly “American” in nature) and subject, particularly because they are so adamant despite his unquestionably awful choice of words in the position that he assumes, are nevertheless such as foreign, race, blood, adulterate, and undesir- worth an objective attention and analysis, lest the able, Eliot is trying to focus on how any people with reader fall prey to the same sort of attack on the their own traditional cultures and ways of thinking man rather than a reading of his work, in which can negatively affect the culture and the ways of Eliot seems to be indulging. The question must be, thinking of another people whom they then join Is Eliot opposed to foreign persons or to foreign and among whom they interact, particularly if the ideas? If the former is the case, then certainly his host culture to begin with is not itself coherent. own ideas are prejudiced to begin with, since they are predicated on judgments that have nothing Orthodoxy and Heresy as Metaphors to do with thinking itself. If, however, the latter It is worth noting once more that it seems to be for- is the case, then the question is what precisely eign ideas, not the people themselves, against which Eliot finds so pernicious about foreign ideas that Eliot cautions his own Anglo-American compeers, he thinks that a culture is required to defend itself not because of his positive or negative evaluation of against them. those other peoples’ own unique value and worth From this perspective, the term free-thinking, as differing cultures and ethnicities but because he while it is not clear why Eliot applied it to Jews is fearful that there is a crisis among the traditions in particular, takes on an entirely different mean- of the Anglo-American culture that his own people ing, or at least potential for meaning. There is the represent. possibility that Eliot has here succumbed to the Unfortunately, had Eliot gotten right to the typical but nevertheless historically reprehensible point, it would have been readily apparent that the practice of his time of identifying the Jews as a peo- focus of his analysis was the current state of Anglo- ple who, in their understandable efforts to preserve American culture, which he considered dismal, not their own cultural, religious, and ethnic traditions the influence of outside cultures on it. Instead, by after centuries of ostracization and marginaliza- trying to emphasize at the outset that the Christian, tion throughout Europe and subsequently in the Anglo character and culture of America were being New World as well, resisted the encroachments on transformed from the inside out even as he speaks those traditions of any alien culture within which by the presence and interaction of other immigrant they found themselves. While such an explanation populations, he sounds as if he is about to propose may not—and is certainly not intended to—rescue a program of protectionism and of bullheaded and Eliot’s remark from the insensitivity and prejudice bigoted “nativist” ideology. that it portends, it does illuminate the gist of Eliot’s Nothing could be further from the truth, and overall point, which otherwise is overshadowed by that, once more, is tragic. The essay that ensues the bigotry that imbues it. severely criticizes what Eliot sees as a serious flaw That he singled the Jews out for his particular in the ways of thinking that are becoming more and invective does not mean that he is singling them more prevalent in the dominant Anglo-American out for being Jewish per se but for being a represen- culture, and he criticizes that culture solely in terms

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of itself and its own shortcomings, as he sees them. mental” than that other old standby, classicism ver- This he had been doing for virtually all of his poetic sus , which are normally reserved for and critical career, in both his poetry and his essays, literary and other artistic discussions. And lest his The Waste Land providing the most outstanding listeners and readers miss the point that he is trying example to date. Furthermore, he identifies what to establish as many categorical reference points as he takes to be these errors, these “heresies,” as possible, he then goes one step further by provid- he half-facetiously pronounces them, not because ing two other popular markers for defining extrem- he fears the encroachments of other cultures and ist positions, drawing this time from the realms of ways of thinking on the Anglo-American cul- political and social activities, namely, conservatism ture—from his Unitarian background to his lib- versus liberalism. eral Harvard education, he was raised and trained What this should tell the reader first of all is according to the most progressive ideals of his time that Eliot is not doing anything remarkably differ- of intellectual, religious, and racial tolerance—but ent from his previous position papers here (he had because he fears that his own culture is on the long since famously announced himself as a “clas- verge of imploding for lack of any coherent view of sicist, royalist, and Anglo-Catholic,” which suggest what its core values may be or of how they may be classicism, conservatism, and orthodoxy), and sec- expressed and applied in public discourse, primar- ond, that the real focus of his diatribe is internecine ily literature. warfare of the Culture Wars variety, not an attack This is why, once Eliot is past the execrable on foreign influences polluting Anglo-American racist and bigoted overtones of his first few pages, culture. Even in this more closely defined arena, which are meant mainly for the consumption of however, Eliot is not out to change the world that his largely Southern, white audience, he gets down he knows in one fell stroke, merely to analyze it to business by mixing his metaphors among the with an eye toward pointing out the pernicious religious, the literary, and the political. Specifically, deficiencies of the opposing camp of romantic, lib- Eliot sets the reader up with one set of anticipa- eral heretics. tions both by the quasi-religious implications of the He will get to his definition of heresy in this book’s title (especially his subtitle, “A Primer on regard shortly, but he begins by pointing out what Modern Heresy”) and by his emphasizing, early on, he finds to be “objectionable” about the heretic’s the importance of a common religious background agenda. To appreciate his objection, it is necessary in fostering a people’s tradition. (Incidentally, to to understand that the opposing camp, as opposed define what he means by a people, Eliot uses Hegel’s to Eliot’s camp, which supports the maintenance definition, “the same people living in the same and continuance of tradition, is always proposing place,” which has the capacity for transcending reform and renewal of existing cultural, legal, and ethnicities.) political institutions—in a word, change. Often This emphasis on a common religious back- that may, however, become change for change’s ground in the case of the Anglo-American experi- sake, and that is what Eliot not only objects to but ence, Protestant Christianity, makes the motivation fears. As he puts it, “[It] is not novelty or original- behind his opening comments about foreign races ity in themselves, but their glorification for their and the Jews that much more suspect. But it own sake.” That, from Eliot’s point of view, is mor- becomes apparent that Eliot is using the religious ally, spiritually, and intellectually sloppy behavior, connotations of the title as much, if not more, in for it is uncritical behavior, and as he sees it, a metaphorical ways. For despite all these religious community, a tradition, can neither advance nor markers at the outset, in order to emphasize that he survive without undergoing an unending process of does not intend to make the present series of lec- self-criticism and self-evaluation. tures “theological” in nature, Eliot points out how When it comes, then, to the life of a tradition, he is using orthodoxy and heresy as his descriptors which is, for Eliot, the cultural life of a people, because those two dichotomies are “more funda- those forces that are arrayed on the side of continu-

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ity and of the furtherance of communal as opposed poetry nor those fields of human endeavor with to individual values are those that Eliot defends, for which it was seen by too many at present to be in all the reasons already stated. However, Eliot, after an uneasy competition. implying that the relationship among these terms If nothing else, Eliot’s critical literature on these of his that are arrayed along the positive side of matters went a long way for some, particularly the equation—that is, classicism, conservatism, and those who might be interested, in admitting that orthodoxy—makes them somewhat interchangeable, there might be a pressing need to clear the air a bit, then offers a further qualification that establishes even if there was the added possibility that Eliot why he now believes that casting the controversy in might be doing as much more for his own benefit terms of a conflict between orthodoxy and heresy, than for the benefit of his readers and fellow crit- despite all the subsequent overtones of matters of ics and poets. His now casting the problem in the belief that those two words may contain, is far more terms of a cultural and social crisis of the first order descriptive of the conflict’s essential character. suggests either that he was abandoning that former To this time, Eliot had been generating a body effort toward clarity somewhat or ratcheting up the of other critical commentary on the distinctions stakes, as it were. In fact, however, the critical between poetry and belief that was among his most attention that he had paid to the entire matter impressive work to date, most notably in the 1927 may simply have enabled him to see the conflict essay “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca.” between poetry and belief and the consequences He had been doing this as his own poetry had been of its resolution as more crucial matters than could drifting more and more into that gray area where be adequately treated with in wholly literary con- the distinctions between the life and beliefs of the texts. Anyone has the right to modify his or her poet, on the one hand, and the allusions to religious own previous points of view as experience and fur- belief and to its ritual in the poetry, on the other ther thought on the matters require, but Eliot is hand, were beginning to blur in confusing ways. unlikely to have changed his view so radically as to The poetry of “Ash-Wednesday” and of the Ariel reverse it completely on the matter of the separa- Poems comes most immediately to mind, but even tion between the poet and the poem and between less ostensibly “Christian” poetry—“Gerontion” and poetry and belief. Instead, the nuances of his argu- “The Hollow Men,” for further examples—seems to ment must be approached with the same care as he be founded on an attempt to find a means of poeti- takes in shaping them, and those nuances revolve cally assessing the lack of any viable basis for faith in around his wishing to speak now as if the conflict the modern world. As a consequence, Eliot’s com- were indeed a matter, foremost, of conflicting belief ments on poetry and belief were proving helpful systems, identified as the orthodox and the hereti- because they were clarifications of what he saw as cal. It is necessary to keep in mind, however, that the differences between the one and the other. for all the quasi-religious significances thus implied, The Page-Barbour Lectures, for a particularly as the argument continues, Eliot is always and only outstanding example, had come hard on the heels ever speaking metaphorically. of his eighth and final Norton lecture at Har- First to his qualification, then. He decides that vard, which he had delivered on March 31, 1933. the fallback position of likening the conflict to one Throughout that series, which had commenced between classicism and romanticism no longer suf- the previous November, he had been attempting to fices for him. These conflicting categories had been define exactly how poetry was neither philosophy occupying his own critical attention from at least nor belief nor religion and to prove that critical as early as 1923 in the essay “The Function of attempts from the likes of the early 19th-century Criticism,” but he now sees that such distinctions, English romantic poet and in their applicability to contemporary literature, the mid-19th-century English poet and critic MAT- are chiefly “temporary and political” in nature. He THEW ARNOLD to make poetry serve the function of regards those two terms as defining qualities that other systems of thought were a benefit to neither have meaning, in other words, only according to the

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prevailing tastes of the moment, and particularly as thought has no basis for continuance other than those tastes are defined by popular opinion—the in the life of the poet and in the whims of public press, perhaps—rather than necessarily by working opinion and taste, to which poets are as susceptible artists and critics. Furthermore, those terms are not as all the rest of humanity. as exact as he would wish them to be, just as conser- It is a vicious circle, and Eliot sometimes seems vative and liberal shift and change meaning though to be arguing in circles in order to expose its per- maintain the semblance of an opposition. niciousness. Ignore tradition, he argues, and one Eliot, in other words, uses those most danger- falls prey to the fashionable; fall prey to the fash- ously loaded terms—orthodoxy and heresy—for ionable, and one ignores tradition. But how does the very reason that they imply the most serious the responsible artist discern the difference, one kind of opposition, one between transcendent may well ask. Eliot responds, “Only by maintain- beliefs rather than between mere opinions or even ing orthodoxy,” and that makes him sound like a popularly acceptable ideas. Still, that does not proselytizing preacher or, worse, the bigoted racist mean that Eliot is attempting to erase any dis- of his opening remarks. tinctions between poetry and belief, only that he His is a lose-lose situation, taking a stand that sees the matter at hand to be of the same order appeals only to the rabid, who neither understand of importance as what might be called ultimate him nor the wholly secular value of the cause that values, as distinct from “temporary and political” he is advancing, which is not religion but coherent values. Indeed, to defend that sort of literature moral values. (Bearing in mind that, in Eliot’s view, and those kinds of writers that Eliot believes are even advances coherent capable of fashioning the literature of his time into moral values of a religious nature, although they one that can effectively express ultimate values can will not be espoused in any church, unless it is for be said to be the sole aim of After Strange Gods, in the sake of proving how worthy of condemnation spite of all the apparent and ill-considered stress on they are.) These none-too-subtle but nevertheless the secular and racial with which the essay opens. not easily grasped refinements on Eliot’s part are Eliot’s aim has never been to see a particular belief lost to most, it is certain to say, but so is much or race flourish so much as to “purify the dialect of poetry and, perhaps, a great deal of religion. the tribe,” as he will eventually phrase the poet/ In the long run, the one thing that Eliot may critic’s struggle—and humanity is his tribe. have successfully accomplished on the topic of any- His definition of heresy may also suffice in pro- thing even only vaguely resembling or approaching viding insight into where he wishes to take his argu- the dual topic of poetry (or literature) and belief ment; he defines the word not as falsehoods but as (or religion or theology), all of which designations “attractive half .” Here again the emphasis is may themselves be regarded as relatively inter- not on the truth prevailing so much as on error not changeable terms inasmuch as a popular lexicon is being perpetuated, and error is not defined doctrin- concerned, is to demonstrate that it is impossible ally but in terms of “the absence of any moral or so much as to touch on the topic without sound- social sense.” That is to say, Eliot is not censoring ing as if one were either advancing the cause of ideas but rather encouraging their more responsible one species of belief at the expense of all others or dissemination. The danger in his own time does purposefully denying that there is—indeed, must not threaten correct thinking (which cannot be be—an inviolable separation between poetry and properly defined or defended in a modern demo- belief, which, for most, amounts to the same thing. cratic state in any case), he fears, but the correct Nevertheless, in a later essay, “Religion and Litera- expression of thought. And thought devoid of any ture,” which slightly broadens the arena but not the reference to tradition and to the orthodoxies that it topic, Eliot makes the critical observation that it is favors is dangerous, not because the tradition and not as if people hold religious opinions and read lit- its orthodoxies are sacrosanct and beyond chal- erature in two separate compartments of the mind. lenge and criticism themselves, but because such His aim is to make both contemporary writers and

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contemporary readers mindful of the inseparable His most successful work to that time, his novel sensibilities of each reader as a truth that, all the Ulysses, was, at the moment that Eliot was speaking, evidence suggests, was never previously questioned banned for its perceived pornographic content from and perhaps was not even articulated. importation into the United States. Furthermore, Words shape human behavior in the same way although Joyce had been reared and educated in the but to different ends. Eliot’s effort to do as much— Roman Catholic traditions of his Irish forebears, by that is, to discuss poetry and belief in the same his young adulthood he had publicly rejected those breath, not as different ways of expressing the same traditions in his first, largely autobiographical novel, thing but as two of the essential operations of the A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. human intellect acting in concert—is to be com- Eliot would have been well aware of all this, so mended because he brought the discussion to the his selection of Joyce as a model of orthodoxy in table at a time when, in the face of the increasing literature is his way of making the nonreligious, secularization of public life, it most needed to be nonpriggish nature of his distinction immediately granted a hearing, if not find an advocate. apparent. “We are not concerned with the authors’ beliefs,” Eliot explains, having just quoted a passage Down to Cases from Joyce’s The Dead, a that concludes As After Strange Gods continues, its linking of the collection of short stories Dubliners, “but with tradition with orthodoxy, and of orthodoxy with orthodoxy of sensibility and with the sense of tra- responsible thinking as opposed to right or wrong dition.” Joyce had done little more than to place thinking, begins to become clarified as Eliot’s way his protagonist’s suffering in the broader context of urging restraint on an unbridled individuality of all human suffering in order to win this seal among contemporary writers that can often turn of approval, further suggesting that Eliot had little into a moral eccentricity for its own sake. Respon- concern for a fellow author’s doctrinal beliefs in sible thinking, on the other hand, requires the poet order to declare him or her orthodox. to be mindful of the power of his words and, so, of Exactly how Eliot regards responsible literary the need to keep the constraints of tradition oper- endeavor, however, is exposed through the author ating so that that power is continually grounded whom he selects as a representative heretic, the in a common, communal good. Indeed, “[w]hat contemporary English novelist D. H. LAWRENCE. is disastrous,” in Eliot’s view, “is that the writer Lawrence is exposed to the harsh light of Eliot’s should deliberately give rein to his ‘individuality’, critical scrutiny in this context of orthodoxy ver- . . . and that his readers should cherish [him] . . . sus heresy, leading Eliot to condemn him in terms not in spite of his deviations from the inherited that to this day may sound too unforgiving unless wisdom of the race, but because of them.” In Eliot’s the importance of his central thesis also be kept view, there is a powerful tendency in the conditions in view. Lawrence’s deserved celebrity as a novel- of the modern world, where every idea is valued ist continues to be based on his daring treatment and none is sacred, for the “writer of genius to con- of human sexuality as a spiritual release from the ceive of himself as a Messiah,” one who will save us pressures of modern social and bureaucratic institu- from our disbelief. tions in their coldly impersonal attempts to make Once Eliot gets down to cases, the reader gets individuals conform to predetermined patterns the most clear idea of the particular spin he puts on of behavior. That would seem to be a thematic his two terms, orthodoxy and heresy. As an example agenda right up the alley of the poet of The Waste of an artist who is orthodox, Eliot uses the Irish Land with its condemnation of the modern, urban novelist JAMES JOYCE, a choice that sends a clear deathtrap. Nonetheless, despite this apparent simi- signal that Eliot cannot possibly intend the term larity of interests and of themes, Lawrence is casti- in some priggishly doctrinal manner. Joyce was, for gated by Eliot as a writer whose work reflects, for one thing, notoriously daring in terms of extend- the very reason of Lawrence’s emphasis on singu- ing the limits of taste and propriety in literature. lar solutions to communal dilemmas, that telltale

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absence of moral or social sense because his vision friends.” The Irish poet W. B. YEATS is similarly is not based on any preexisting system of human chastised for having created in his visionary poetry, values. One need not pay homage to those values with its emphases on Irish myth and occult lore, or even adhere to them, so much as acknowledge a world that is not one of “real Good and Evil, of their presence as shaping forces. holiness or sin,” and Eliot concludes by declaring It may seem contradictory to take this atti- Yeats a poet who, in his maturity, has not achieved tude toward an author whose works many at the a genuine philosophy but has “at least discarded . . . time thought were attempts to liberate individuals the trifling and eccentric.” Nor will Eliot allow that from the deadening effects of the modern indus- the Victorian English poet Gerard Manley Hop- trial world. However, from Eliot’s point of view, kins, who was by vocation a Roman Catholic priest Lawrence’s ostensibly beneficial effort was devoid and whose poetry had only fairly recently come of any grounding in responsible thinking, which into the public ken, was any more successful at pro- is thinking that would take into account not the ducing a poetry of any genuinely moral or spiritual capacity of human willfulness to defy conventions substance, seeing its achievements as more verbal but the dynamics of human social organizations to in nature than religious. All these examples, Eliot accommodate the nonconforming. Lawrence, by insists, exhibit the crippling effects that not having proposing radically eccentric solutions to a univer- been nurtured in a “living and central tradition” sal crisis in maintaining the integrity and dignity can have on the poet. He saves his most seething of individual identity in a world where the pres- indictment, however, for those of his contempo- sure to conform was virtually overwhelming rather raries who have fallen under the spell of what he than helping others cope, only accentuates people’s calls a “diabolic influence.” sense of alienation and isolation from each other and from their community. And so, as cruel as A Bang of a Whimper Eliot’s judgment that Lawrence is “heretical” may Once Eliot has begun his third and final lecture, sound on the surface, it is actually a relatively mea- however, it quickly becomes clear that the refer- sured and, according to Eliot’s principles, wholly ence to the diabolical was meant more as a teaser critical conclusion that Eliot reaches. to whet his audience’s appetite for this last install- Eliot goes on to say that Lawrence’s “vision is ment. At any rate, his topic turns out to be not spiritual, but spiritually sick.” Undeniably, Eliot writers whom he imagines to be susceptible to dia- could have said it better by avoiding a clever turn bolical influences so much as those who engage of phrase in order to take the matter down to the freely in what he regards as blasphemy. Yet even immediate issues at hand. Still, Eliot is merely on this topic Eliot proves to be very much a child of maintaining that Lawrence has taken off all on his his time. He gladly admits, in so many words, that own, and that sort of behavior will not clarify the even blasphemy nowadays is not what it used to matter of the moral crisis at hand but only further be because his is not so passionate an age of faith, confuse it. if it is one at all, as to find individuals who may Lawrence is not alone, of course, in undergoing be injured by outrageous verbal assaults upon the this kind of a critical lambasting from Eliot. Eliot sacred. “Where blasphemy might once have been is afraid that with the sort of moral blandness that a sign of spiritual corruption,” he argues, now it is has entered the literary universe in modern times thought of as an indication of a spiritual liveliness, come characterizations of humanity that “tend to so that contemporary writers, particularly novel- become less and less real” and “more and more ists, feel more and more free if not in fact culturally vaporous.” His good friend, the American poet obliged to “impose upon their readers their own EZRA POUND, is castigated for attempting a modern personal view of life.” It is in expressing that per- equivalent of Dante’s Hell that fails because “it sonal view—the result, in his view, of “the aggran- is a Hell for the other people, the people we read disement and exploitation of personality”—that about in the newspapers, not for oneself and one’s the writer, and his readers, succumb to a view of

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creation devoid of any overriding social or moral exposed in the choruses from The Rock, a pageant order, let alone a spiritual center. play produced to raise funds to build new churches Eliot uses the example of the late 19th-century in London’s flourishing suburbs—Eliot offers the English novelist Thomas Hardy, whose novels por- bulwark of tradition. Even there he proposes cau- trayed characters who were the victims of indiffer- tion, however. By itself, he concludes, tradition ently random events and defects of character and is “not enough”: “it must be perpetually criticised personality, as an author who presents conflicts and brought up to date under the supervision of that are joined and resolved in a universe where what I call orthodoxy.” What he calls orthodoxy any notion of the struggle between good and evil is is not a slavish devotion to Christian doctrine at completely absent. For Eliot, that struggle, like the the expense of all others but clear thinking, whole- idea of original sin, is very real, perhaps the most some feeling, and an abiding respect for the shaping real component of the human spiritual landscape; power of words and ideas, all in keeping with the therefore, it cannot easily be left out of moral equa- so-called core values of the culture and the com- tions without doing irreparable damage to the ways munity—which together constitute the tradition, in which entire generations of human individuals for lack of a better word. It is, after all, communal see themselves interacting both with each other culture that produces the individual artist and that and with the world at large. the individual artist then addresses and reshapes in D. H. Lawrence is once more brought to the the literary work. stocks as one whose utter irresponsibility in this It is undeniable that Eliot himself finds in the regard makes him, for Eliot, an outstanding exam- Christian tradition those checks on his own pride- ple of the writer who is guided only by what Eliot ful human tendency to bask in the glow of his own calls the “Inner Light.” For a poet and thinker who Inner Light, and it is the same tradition that would has increasingly devoted his literary career to the have been shared by many if not most in his audi- defense of what he calls tradition and orthodoxy, ence at the University of Virginia in April 1933. there is no worse light for a “wandering humanity” It is clear, nevertheless, that he does not recom- than that one, “the most untrustworthy and deceit- mend that culture and its traditions for everyone, ful [of] guides.” although he does demand that contemporary writ- ers recognize, particularly as they share their per- CRITICAL COMMENTARY sonal beliefs with others by whatever medium, that In a nutshell, self-deception is an easy and wel- good and that evil exist and operate in our world. come trap, and Eliot sees an adherence to tradition No doubt Eliot’s opinions, because of their con- and orthodoxy—the so-called inherited wisdom of servative cast, were not widely acceptable in arenas the race—as any person’s only hedge against falling where the most progressive thinking was welcomed. under its spell. This is where Eliot’s abiding respect Yet Eliot’s thinking, in its effort to address the for a writer of genius such as he regards Lawrence inevitable crisis of values and belief that was shat- to be comes so powerfully into play. Even such a tering individual lives in the modern world, can be master of words is liable, in deceiving himself by quite easily regarded as no less progressive, even if the feeble glow of the Inner Light, to deceive his it was not necessarily mainstream. Anyone who has readers as well. ever been asked to take the negative in a debate According to Eliot’s formulation, the danger of is familiar with the phenomenon. Everything that heresy is not that it is false but that it is composed of he or she may say appears to be nothing more than attractive half-truths. The times, too, can succumb disagreement, when in fact it is the very kind of to a blind reliance on the Inner Light; certainly contradistinction that is required if resolution is Eliot fears that his age has. To combat the age’s ever to be reached. At a certain point in his pro- tendency to fall into a self-congratulatory smug- fessional life, Eliot apparently made an agreement ness regarding the correctness of its ways of think- with himself that, for the sake of those causes to ing and believing—a smugness that he soon after which he felt a personal commitment, he would

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happily be disagreeable, and nowhere is this more released by Eliot’s publisher Faber & Faber in 1965, apparent than in After Strange Gods. brought together pieces from as far back in his Eliot’s intentions for the ideas expressed in After career as 1917, but if they shared any particular Strange Gods might best be summed up by the epi- feature, it was that they provided more commen- graph on the title page, a verse from the fourth- tary than was typical for Eliot on figures and topics century B.C. Greek playwright Sophocles’s tragedy connected with American literature, an area that Oedipus the King. The king of Thebes, Oedipus has did not often occupy his critical attention. Among set out to discover the killer of his predecessor in them was the essay “American Literature and the order to free the city from a deadly curse. Unbe- American Language,” which had originally been knownst to him, however, is the fact that he is the presented as a lecture at Washington University in killer that he seeks. The words that Eliot selected ST. LOUIS on June 9, 1953. for his are spoken to Oedipus by Teire- sias, a blind soothsayer whom he has consulted in SYNOPSIS an attempt to learn the killer’s identity. Oedipus Eliot’s choice of topic that evening may have been and Teiresias argue over precisely who the killer of made by his hosts, but whatever the case, it was the old king, Laius, may be. Teiresias knows that certainly fortuitous. Not only is St. Louis located Oedipus is the killer, while Oedipus, except for in the American heartland on a waterway, the Mis- Teiresias’s renown for never being mistaken in a sissippi River, that carries the mythic pulse of the prophecy, has no way of knowing that he is himself nation and its people, but the city was Eliot’s birth- absolutely wrong. Loosely translated, Teiresias’s place, where his family made their home well into parting shot at Oedipus, and Eliot’s epigraph, is his own young manhood. Furthermore, the poet’s “You think me a fool, but your parents thought me grandfather, , had been wise.” instrumental in the founding of Washington Uni- The point that Eliot is aiming to drive home versity, the venue for the evening’s lecture. Every- to his audience by his choice of just such an epi- thing about the event strained at the American graph is pretty clear: He has cast himself in the role experience that had shaped Eliot’s character and of a prophet trying to tell his readers something destiny, so it comes as no surprise that his lecture that they desperately need to hear, something that should focus on American literature and the idea preceding generations would have given him no of an American language, especially since Eliot had argument about. However, like Teiresias, Eliot is become a British subject back in 1927 and had also telling his contemporary readers that he is no been living in England virtually continuously since fool, so he hardly expects them to believe him or 1914. By now, he owed the literature of his native to trust the purity of his own motives as he goes land more than a nodding acquaintanceship, and about introducing his thesis that there is much that the time for a payback to the culture and nation is wrongheaded in the thinking among his fellow that had given his early life and values all their poets and other writers of the time. impetus had come. In fact, Eliot begins his remarks by reminiscing about his St. Louis upbringing and the devotion to duty and service that were instilled in him through “American Literature and the the model of the esteem in which his grandfather American Language” (1953) was held. “I am very well satisfied with having been born in St. Louis,” he concludes these reminis- During the year before his death early in Janu- cences, “rather than in Boston, or New York, or ary of 1965, Eliot was busily working on prepar- London.” ing a number of previously published essays and Eliot then ruminates on the literature and lan- public lectures for publication in a single volume. guage that the American experience has produced, This volume, To Criticize the Critic, posthumously confessing that the differences between the Brit-

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ish and American versions of English as a com- the case with American literature up to the time mon language are negligible. Still, he imagines just preceding Eliot’s generation. Since then, such that the influence of the one on the other, that a claim can be made with that much more author- is, of the American on the British, is much more ity and conviction, and it would be a false modesty powerful, partly as a result of the influx of Ameri- on Eliot’s part to deny it. cans into England as a result of World War II, as During the past 40 years, he proposes, the world forces massed in England for the eventual invasion has witnessed a “sudden mutation of form and con- at Normandy. As for American literature, Eliot is tent” in literature, not to repudiate the past, but to happy to say that the American experience has led “have enlarged our conception of the past.” The to a national literature, to the end that “I believe revolution that Eliot is speaking of is modernism, that we are now justified in speaking of what has naturally, a literary movement in which his own never, I think, been found before, two in poetry and criticism played an extremely significant the same language.” However, he does not identify role recognized virtually worldwide. He is there- literature that is distinctively American as that of fore justified in concluding that “the pioneers of the New England writers of the postcolonial period, 20th century poetry were more conspicuously the such as and James Fenimore Americans than the English, both in number and Cooper, because that literary experience, although in quality.” it is most commonly associated with America in The suggestion is that the junior literature has general, “remains representative of New England, overtaken its senior, except that when Eliot comes rather than of America.” to describe his own experience with the burgeoning Eliot instead selects , Walt literary impulses that would result in modernism, Whitman, and Mark Twain as identifiably Ameri- he is forced to confess that none of his earliest can. His major criteria for making that selection influences were either English or American. Eliot are not related to the authors’ influence, however. first started to write poetry seriously during his final Eliot notes that Poe, for example, had no really year as a Harvard undergraduate in 1909. Looking discernible influence on later American poets, and back more than 40 years later, he can now observe Whitman’s influence on modernism Eliot finds to that both British and American literature looked be exaggerated. Instead, Eliot consigns the three pretty bleak to a young, aspiring poet like himself to this select list because they have “enjoyed the during those early years of the 20th century. In greatest reputation abroad.” That would indeed fact, he confesses, “I cannot think of a single living imply that they represent a more distinctive sen- poet, in either England or America, then at the sibility, one that can, nevertheless, be associated height of his , whose work was capable of by outsiders with a whole people, not just a region. pointing the way to a young poet conscious of the The other characteristic is that they all exhibit, to desire for a new idiom.” varying degrees, a “strong local flavour combined It is virtually axiomatic by now that T. S. Eliot with unconscious universality.” Those features, of was foremost among those young poets who were course, are more readily apparent in Whitman and seeking a new idiom, and yet all that he remem- in Twain than in Poe, and Eliot readily admits as bered having was “the assurance that there was much. Still, Eliot’s essential point is that those same something to be learned from the French poets of qualities are not necessarily limited to what may the Symbolist Movement.” Aside from them, he be discovered by a wholly superficial examination. finds the “starting-point of modern poetry” located The last standard that makes for the identification in the imagist movement taking place in Lon- of any national literature is that it is one that can don in 1910. Whether or not the name derived enable a young writer to “be aware of several gener- from Pound or the young English poet and critic ations of writers behind him in his own country and T. E. Hulme, Eliot credits Amy Lowell for hav- language,” several of whom are “generally acknowl- ing brought to the movement the renown it subse- edged to be great.” That would certainly have been quently achieved in America.

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Therefore, although young American poets of poses originally. “The Hollow Men,” for example, Eliot’s time ventured to foreign sources for their emerges somewhat from “Doris’s Dream Songs,” lyr- inspiration, Eliot feels secure in asserting, as he ics composed with “Sweeney Agonistes” in mind. brings his essay to an end, that while only Poe and Entire sections of “Ash-Wednesday” also first saw Whitman can be singled out as American poets wor- the light of day as independently published lyrics. thy of an international reputation in the 19th cen- Eliot was not being nonproductive by any means. tury, the first half of the 20th century, thanks to the Nevertheless, his poetic aims were not clearly modernist movement, has found “assembled a body focused, and his poetic vision was adrift on a sea of American poetry which has made a total impres- of possibilities that offered many prospects but no sion in England and in Europe.” His point is inescap- clearly charted course or safe havens. Eliot needed able: During the 20th century, American literature the anchorage of a project that was fully conceived has come into its own as a global cultural force to and virtually executed to begin with. A translation be reckoned with and accounted for. It is too early of Perse’s complexly original Anabase filled the bill. to tell whether there is an American literary tradi- Along with Eliot’s recognizing the Perse poem’s tion distinct from an English one, but Eliot imagines intrinsic value as great poetry, an assessment sec- that trying to define such a distinction would prove onded by contemporaries such as the Italian mod- to be fruitless in any case. “The difference,” he con- ernist poet Giuseppe Ungaretti and the German cludes, “will remain undefined, but it will remain.” poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the And because there are differences, “English and benefit of Anabase for Eliot seems mainly to be that American poetry can help each other, and contrib- it provided him with an extended and focused cre- ute towards the endless renovation of both.” ative project when he was apparently unable, at the time, to come up with one on his own. SYNOPSIS Anabasis (1930) Perse first published his Anabase in La Nouvelle Revue Française in 1924; it was published in book Eliot undertook a translation of French poet St.- form later that year. The word anabasis—Perse John Perse’s book-length poem Anabase in the late gives the word’s Greek spelling a French spin— 1920s, while he was struggling to conceptualize a comes from the classical Greek and means a move- poetic project of his own that might be a worthy ment from a coastline to the interior or a march successor to The Waste Land. Some of these efforts, up country. Historically, the term is generally asso- though they would be preserved as unfinished ciated with Xenophon’s book of the same name. works in the pages of Collected Poems 1909–1935, Xenophon, a fourth-century B.C. Athenian who was were nevertheless stillborn. These include the verse eventually exiled to Sparta, recounts in his Anabasis drama “Sweeney Agonistes,” begun in 1923 and the Spartan march from Greece to Persia and back abandoned in 1925, and the long poem “Coriolan,” again from 401 to 399 B.C. to aid Cyrus in his effort of which only two parts, “Triumphal March” and to seize the Persian throne. The 20th-century poem “Difficulties of a Statesman,” ever saw publication, by St.-John Perse, the pseudonym of French dip- in the first case as one of Eliot’s contributions to lomat Alexis Saint-Léger Léger (1887–1975), has Faber & Faber’s annual Ariel series. nothing to do, however, with Xenophon’s Anaba- Otherwise, Eliot did complete “The Hollow Men” sis and is instead a typically symbolical modernist in 1925 and “Ash-Wednesday” in 1930, hardly mea- piece that recounts the exploits of an improbable ger achievements by any standard. Even they, how- king and his kingdom. ever, seem to have been works conceived after the Eliot, who had to master a reading knowledge fact from thematic and stylistic directions discerned of French for his graduate studies at Harvard from in his previously published, individual pieces that 1911 to 1915 and had even tried to compose a were themselves ostensibly composed for other pur- handful of poems in French in 1917, began to

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work on his translation of Perse’s Anabase in the sion or a companion idea in the notoriously puz- latter part of 1926. He shared the fruits of these zling image of “Tartar horsemen shak[ing] their labors with Perse shortly later, in early 1927. spears” that closes Eliot’s “The Wind Sprang Up Apparently, Perse-Léger, a diplomat by profession, at Four O’Clock.” The only problem, however, is had a good command of English to begin with and that the Eliot poem was first published in 1924, assisted Eliot with the translation. Perse’s initial several years before he undertook his translation of reaction to Eliot’s work, however, was sufficiently Anabase. On the other hand, the Perse poem was negative that it took Eliot another three years first published in 1924, so Eliot could have read it to complete and publish his translation, Anabasis, as early as that, but such a conjecture is admittedly in 1930. Eliot would revisit that translation 19 a stretch. years later when he published a second edition in Commentators do see the influence of Perse’s 1949, incorporating further corrections suggested poem’s oriental effects in some of the colorations by Perse, whose English, according to Eliot, had that Eliot works into his own “Journey of the Magi,” improved sufficiently during the intervening years a poem that he composed while he was working on for him to find new cause for improving Eliot’s his translation of Perse, but this similarity might be original work. coincidental. The Magi, after all, are embedded in Anabasis is significant in terms of Eliot’s career Christian tradition as three wise men or kings from as a poet for the shaping influence it may have the East, so why should Eliot not have employed had on Eliot’s own poetry writing. Whether Eliot’s oriental touches without any influence from Perse? poetry writing benefited from the experience of On balance, it appears that the Perse poem translating a complex work by a fellow modern- does not figure outstandingly in any of Eliot’s ist and, in 1960, fellow Nobel laureate (Eliot had poetry contemporary with his translating work. been thus honored in 1948) is wholly a matter of Naturally, influences and benefits need not be conjecture, of course. Nevertheless, to see one’s manifested in open or easily observable ways. It work through characteristic elements in the work is far more possible that, more than any particular of another author often provides a perspective thing, Eliot’s work with Perse’s poetry may have from which new visions may emerge. That, at helped clarify for Eliot the challenges that the least, seems to have been the case with the effect long poem itself posed. that translating Perse had on Eliot. Eliot was, at the time of the initial translation, CRITICAL COMMENTARY not quite as much the poet of the erudite allusion Eliot had composed The Waste Land in an inten- as he had been for the first decade and more of his tionally episodic fashion, as is now well known, poetic career, but that does not mean that he had and it was only his friend EZRA POUND’s exten- totally eschewed making them, and others’ influ- sive editing of the Eliot original that gave that ence could still creep into his work unbeknown and text the tightness, and obscurity, of organization therefore unacknowledged. “Ash-Wednesday,” for for which it subsequently became celebrated. That example, owes much of its potential for meaning also means, however, that Eliot himself had never to direct and largely acknowledged allusions to independently conceptualized and then executed DANTE ALIGHIERI and to Guido Cavalcanti, as well a modernist long poem himself. Surely, “The Hol- as to the liturgy of the Catholic Mass and devo- low Men” and “Ash-Wednesday” were successful tions. That poem was not published until 1930. efforts in that direction, although, as mentioned The distinction among the direct borrowing, the earlier, it is reasonable to assume that they were subtle allusion, and the accidental resemblance is not thusly conceptualized to begin with but may often a difficult one to discern nevertheless. have been derived from material already formu- There is in Perse, for example, a particularly lated for other purposes. idiosyncratic image, “. . . the mind shakes its tumult One might well ask why the long poem would of spears,” that may or may not find either an allu- have been such an obsession for Eliot in any case.

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The matter is that whether the choice was inad- the arrangement of an argument.” Although Eliot vertent or not, with the publication of The Waste was still five years away from composing “Burnt Land in 1922, Eliot had set himself up as a poet Norton,” whose own “arrangement of images” capable of achieving a sustained and extended continues to make for a challenging read, he was poetic work, never an easy task in any age and a already the author of numerous other works whose particularly daunting one in modern times, with liberties with commonplace order were by then their apparent lack of community and coherence. nearly legendary. Literary history does not record many significant Eliot then comments on how Perse manages extended poetic achievements. Dante’s Divine a poem that is composed as much in prose as in Comedy stands out, among other reasons, because poetry, and this observation allows him to note it is such a rare achievement. Having accomplished that what often constitutes poetry, even when it as much himself with The Waste Land, Eliot was may appear to adhere to those features commonly virtually condemned to repeating the performance, associated with prose, is, again, a “logic of imag- or at least he appeared to think so. What he has to ery” whose “system of stresses and pauses” make say regarding the long poem, then, in his preface not for prose, the surface details of the arrange- to the first edition of Anabasis, is of more impor- ment of words on the page to the contrary, but for tance to understanding and appreciating Eliot’s poetry. This insistence by Eliot on the idea that own present and future development as a poet than poetry follows, and is supported by, a logic all its examining the actual translation of Perse can ever own, whose sense can be found in the relationship be. Eliot’s preface, as short as it is, is packed with among its images and in the stresses and pauses of significant insights that can be divided into two their arrangement as words on the page, makes not categories of interest: the method of the long poem for a defense of modernism but for a new definition required in the modernist era and the distinction of what constitutes the poetic as distinguished from between poetry and what might be called poetic the prosaic. prose, the latter being a key component in any Eliot had had an immeasurable effect on chang- extended poetic work. ing the definition of what constitutes the nature of In the preface, then, after establishing that poetry. He had done so by mixing the traditional Perse’s poem has no relation to Xenophon’s mem- modes—lyrical, narrative, and dramatic—often oir other than that they both are using the word within a single poem and by casting, as well, regu- anabasis in its literal sense, Eliot notes that the lar metrical lines and even uniform stanzaic length Perse poem is a “series of images of migration, to the wind, so that a line of verse could be any of conquest of vast spaces in Asiatic waste, of length, and the next line any other length, ad infi- destruction and foundation of cities and civiliza- nitum. Now, Eliot reaches toward an even broader tions of any races or epochs of the ancient East.” definition of the poetic in these remarks regarding That said, Eliot, who admits that it took him six his estimation of what Perse has accomplished as a readings of the poem to feel comfortable that he versifier. If Eliot is right, being poetic will no longer had a grasp on it, announces that any obscurity in be “sounding” poetic. Rather, it is seeing the world the poem is “due to the suppression of ‘links in the with a poetic sensibility that transmutes experience chain,’ of explanatory and connecting matter, and into the most expedient phrasing, without any con- not to incoherence, or to the love of cryptogram.” cern for whether or not that particular way of put- Those very words, as any frequent reader of The ting it should sound, to the common ear, or look, to Waste Land or even “The Love Song of J. Alfred the common eye, poetic or not. Anyone willing to Prufrock” would know, can as easily be applied to review the expansive ease and freedom with which an Eliot poem as to Perse’s Anabase. “There is a Eliot, within a few years, conducted in “Burnt Nor- logic of the imagination as well as a logic of con- ton” that commerce between the strange and the cepts,” Eliot goes on to assert, and it is a logic that familiar, the new and the old, that poetry typi- “requires just as much ‘fundamental brainwork’ as fied in the modernist epoch, will recognize in this

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assessment of his of Perse’s achievement a blue- most approximated the vigor of the vernacular, print for Eliot’s own. and so it is they who garner the laurel. The two French symbolists were Eliot’s own near contem- poraries, under whose beneficial influence he was still greatly laboring at the time. “Andrew Marvell” (1921) Eliot is admitting Marvell into this illustrious company not as their equal but as a different mea- Eliot twice alludes to the 17th-century English sure of the same impulse, which is wit. Where Mar- poet Andrew Marvell’s most rightly famous work, vell falls short is that his influences are, like John “To His Coy Mistress,” in works of his own that Milton’s, not English but Latin. Where Marvell is have become equally famous—“The Love Song of redeemed nevertheless, and Milton virtually never J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land. Readers will be, in Eliot’s eyes, is that Marvell, once more, should, then, be particularly interested in whatever writes a poetry that evidences wit. Indeed, Marvell, Eliot, the literary scholar, had to say about this as an educated and cultured man, was less caught English neoclassicist who followed closely but not up in the factionalism that the equally cultured too particularly in the footsteps of another of Eliot’s and educated to which Milton became committed, favorite 17th-century poets, JOHN DONNE. and as a result, Marvell was, in Eliot’s view, “more Unfortunately, in the essay “Andrew Marvell,” a man of the century than a Puritan,” one who Eliot pays much more attention to an analysis of spoke “more clearly and unequivocally with the Marvell’s technique than to a consideration of his voice of the literary age than Milton.” It is primar- vision or view of life. Still, even in that regard, the ily wit, which Eliot defines as “a tough reasonable- Marvell who emerges from Eliot’s critical pen has a ness beneath the slight lyric grace,” that ultimately predilection for wit and magniloquence that is mir- both separates and distinguishes Marvell from his rored in Eliot’s own tendencies in that same direc- fellow “Puritan” poet, Milton, who was otherwise as tion, at least during the early phase of his literary Latinate or “magniloquent”—high-talking—in his career. lexicon. Later, Eliot identifies wit as an “alliance of levity SYNOPSIS and seriousness (by which the seriousness is inten- Marvell, Eliot points out in opening, represents sified),” and he once more associates it with the more the attitude of a civilization, of “a traditional “dandysme of Baudelaire and Laforgue,” reenforcing habit of life,” while a Donne or CHARLES BAUDE- his earlier assertion that Marvell’s poetry, with its LAIRE or JULES LAFORGUE is more likely to be “the admixture of the profound and the ridiculous, holds inventor of an attitude, a system of feeling or of an affinity for Eliot. Indeed, by this time in his own morals.” There is a motivation behind Eliot’s citing poetic career he had already been experimenting the names of Marvell’s near contemporary Donne with the deadly serious high jinx of his quatrain and two 19th-century French symbolist poets in poems, such as “Sweeney among the Nightingales” the same breath while trying to characterize the and “The Hippopotamus.” The danger, as Eliot sort of poet, and poetry, Marvell represents. That knew, is that cleverness can often seem to border motive, however, has more to do with Eliot than on the absurd, and any element of a more serious with Marvell. For all the so-called wit that Eliot intent can get lost in the shuffle. That is where will shortly be attributing to Marvell, in other wit—true wit—comes into play and, indeed, such essays, particularly his essay, also from 1921, “The a view of wit may define it well. To be witty, in Metaphysical Poets,” Eliot makes it clear that this sort of high-stakes emotional and intellectual it is poets of Donne’s ilk who advance the dual game, is to overstate and undercut simultaneously cause of thought and of feeling. The metaphysical so that the reader gets the joke (which is often poets, of whom Donne remains the most outstand- nothing more than copping an attitude or tone) ing example, did so by writing in a language that without missing the point.

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In Eliot’s view, “Coy Mistress,” with its lover’s to believe, nevertheless, that Eliot was himself plaint cast in the conflicting tones of a musing upon attempting to revive it and make it current again philosophical profundities and so-called country at the very time that he was praising Marvell for matters—“Had we but world enough and time / This having shown the way. coyness, lady, were no crime”—shows a wit that, for Eliot, illustrates poet ’s definition of the imagination as that skill to hold (1929) “in the balance or reconcilement of opposing or “Animula” discordant qualities.” This is very high praise. The The title of “Animula,” the third of Eliot’s poems ultimate point, however, for Eliot seems to be that in the Ariel series, means “little soul” in Latin. The “this wit which pervades the poetry of Marvell is term is used by DANTE in his great religious epic, more . . . refined than anything that succeeded it,” the Divine Comedy, specifically to Canto XVI of explaining why, perhaps, as a budding poet, Eliot the Purgatorio, as well as by the first-century B.C. had to come upon it by turning to an alien poetry in Roman emperor Hadrian. a foreign tongue—the French symbolists. Rather than the stark contrasts the first two Wit, Eliot makes an effort to clarify, is not eru- poems in the series provide, here the reader finds dition, though he was conscious, no doubt, of how what appears to be a sharp departure from that tech- often his own cleverness has been confused with nique. This departure will, however, by the close of his flaunting his knowledge. Rather, wit involves the poem, have come full circle so as to form a con- “a recognition, implicit in the expression of every tinuation of the presentation made throughout the experience, of other kinds of experience which are series regarding the human encounter with miracle possible.” It is a quality more and more absent from and mystery, faith and doubt. Instead of devoting poetry since Marvell’s time, Eliot contends, and the poem to a dramatic monologue spoken by a he laments that absence, certainly in the present personage closely associated with the Gospel narra- day. Nowadays, he feels, there is either “occasion- tives of the Nativity, Eliot writes “Animula” in the ally good irony, or satire, which lack wit’s internal third person, making for a more expository than lyr- equilibrium,” or there are “serious poets who are ical presentation. In it he focuses, instead of on the afraid of acquiring wit, lest they lose intensity.” concrete elements of a human experience such as CRITICAL COMMENTARY the magi’s journey or Simeon’s encounter with the Christ child, on an elaborate trope for the nature of To find and to maintain a balance between levity the human soul, comparing it to a little child. and seriousness is assuredly no easy task, as a poet Granted, the commonplace associations of of Eliot’s character, caliber, and interest in ambi- Christmas, as a holy day, with an infant’s birth guity of intent could no doubt readily attest. The and, as a holiday, with the joys of childhood do not poet who seeks to portray such wit runs the risk of make this particular choice of topics on Eliot’s part being dismissed by those who are troubled by an any less an appropriate one. That said, the further intensity of expression as much as by those who associations with the Roman emperor Hadrian that are put off by any attempt at levity in the midst Eliot’s choice of title also calls up are themselves of serious considerations. That Marvell had such rather suspect. Whether or not it originated with a talent naturally commends his contribution to Hadrian, the trope that compares the human soul the tradition by that much more, since, in Eliot’s to a little child has been credited to him, being view, he still presents to the contemporary poet taken from his self-composed epitaph: a model of how such a precarious balance may be not only achieved but maintained. “By what- Animula, vagula, blandula ever name we call it,” Eliot comments, speaking of Hospes comesque corporis, that talent, “it is something precious and needed Quae nunc abibis in loca? and apparently extinct.” There is good reason Pallidula, rigida, nudula.

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[Fickle, winsome little soul, SYNOPSIS body’s guest, its boon companion, Clearly, if the reader follows Eliot’s breadcrumbs to what places will you now be gone, through Hadrian and back up to Pater, “Animula” little, pale, blunt, and shorn?] may seem to be a poem whose tone and theme is The wit of the epitaph is self-evident: When more in keeping with the well-crafted but coldly death takes the body, what is there left for the abstracted skepticisms of his earlier quatrain poems soul to do or to be—if, that is, there is a soul. At such as “The Hippopotamus” or “Mr. Eliot’s Sun- the opposite extreme, Hadrian’s epitaph is only a day Morning Service.” Surely every arrow in the very clever way of framing one of the great impon- present poem thus far seems to be pointing toward derables, whether or not there is life after death. its being an expression of the bookish and sophisti- And that particular imponderable no doubt is of no cated faith of a man of the world, more in keeping little significance to anyone pondering the further with the magus than with Simeon. significance of Christ’s coming into the world to At this juncture, however, Eliot trundles Dante save souls, as Eliot may be doing in his poem. into his text to clarify the matter, if not save the In any event, through the title’s allusion to day. (After all, this is a Christmas poem.) The Hadrian, who died a bitter recluse after the death poem’s opening line, which, like the opening line of his young, homosexual lover, Eliot may be, as of “Journey of the Magi,” is provided in quotation he did in “Journey of the Magi” and “A Song for marks, is virtually a direct translation from the Ital- Simeon,” using a historical personage to give more ian of the following passage from Dante’s Purgato- specific focus to the theme of the poem. Hadrian’s rio, Canto XVI, lines 85–90: own formulation of such a persistent question is, after all, a pagan one from very nearly the time of Esce di mano a lui che la vagheggia the historical epoch during which the birth and prima che sia, a guisa di fanciulla death of Christ had come to betoken for others a che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia, new and refreshing answer to that same persistent l’anima semplicetta che sa nulla, question. Furthermore, Hadrian’s is a famous pagan salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore, formulation to boot, and one that had had gained volontier torna a ciò che la trastulla. a new following among English-speaking readers in [Out of the hand of Him who from the first the decade of Eliot’s birth. longs for her comes one who, in the guise Indeed, in the celebrated Victorian novel Marius of a young girl that crying and laughing thirsts, the Epicurean—which was published in 1885 and Is the simple soul who knows nothing otherwise set in the late second century B.C., and with which save that, moving from her joyful Maker, Eliot would have been familiar—Walter Pater uses she fitfully turns to whatever she spies.] Hadrian’s epitaph for both the title of and the epi- graph to the chapter in which Marius’s dear friend, With that for the set-up, the rest of Eliot’s the poet Flavian, dies. Musing on Hadrian’s ano- poetry follows smoothly in a flood of accumulat- dyne for our ignorance regarding the fate of the ing details that add to but do not alter Dante’s soul after death, Marius finds little consolation in it: master image yet that allow Eliot to paint his “Even that wistful suspense of judgment expressed own particularized picture of the human soul in by the dying Hadrian, regarding further stages of a scenery suitable to our own time, showing her being still possible for the soul in some dim jour- “taking pleasure / In the fragrant brilliance of the ney hence, seemed wholly untenable, and, with it, Christmas tree” or curled up “in the window seat / almost all that remained of the religion of his child- Behind the Encyclopedia Brittanica,” the endear- hood.” That conclusion may very well suit Marius; ing realities of a child who is a child but, like the an Epicurean is a person who does not believe in soul, does not know it. So doing, Eliot portrays a the immortality of the soul in any case. But whether Christian image of the typical human soul as a no it suits Eliot as well is another question. less fickle creature than Hadrian’s, but as one that

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has nevertheless issued “from the hand of God,” God has made it free. But freedom, free will, has a confidence that Hadrian, like Pater’s far more its price, so, as “Animula” continues, the simple contemporaneous Marius, does not share. That soul that issues from the hand of God eventu- distinction is all the difference, and it is the one ally and, without the benefits of any spiritual con- that Eliot is clearly out to explore and to develop straints and guidance from outside itself, inevitably further. In “Animula,” then, Eliot is still continu- must confuse itself with goals and objects not its ing to contrast the mindset of the old dispensation own, becoming little by little something quite dif- with the new, exactly as he had done in “Journey ferent and hardly recognizable, until “Issues from of the Magi” and “.” A further the hand of time the simple soul / Irresolute and consideration of the precise context in Dante in selfish, misshapen, lame. . . .” This can be and, in which the trope of the soul as a capricious child Eliot’s view, is any one of us, so in the last stanza, appears, however, shows that Eliot is exploiting though he makes it seem by the interposition of that contrast far more critically in “Animula” than proper names—Guiterrez, Boudin, Floret—that he had hitherto done in the earlier two poems in he has specific individuals in mind, Eliot is really the series. using a variety of names and interests to suggest that there all of us are in need of prayer so that we CRITICAL COMMENTARY may find the way back to that joyful Creator God In Canto XVI, as Dante guided by Virgil moves from whom we issued. among the wrathful concealed amidst a thick, Unlike “Journey of the Magi,” which ends with black smoke, he encounters Marco, who identi- the speaker thinking that he “should be glad of fies himself only as a Lombard and then explains another death,” Eliot, speaking now on behalf of all to Dante that the faults that lead to the suffering of us, closes “Animula” with his own prayer, itself a he has witnessed are not inherent in creation but variation upon the closing words of the Hail Mary, are the result of our misguided human nature. To substituting, however, “birth” for “death”: “Pray for make his point, Marco describes the soul as a little us now and at the hour of our birth.” That is one’s child. Like that child, without guidance and direc- literal birth, of course, but it is also the moment of tion, and free to do as it pleases, Marco explains, one’s rebirth, the hour, to cite a verse from “Amaz- the soul can quickly and easily become lost in plea- ing Grace,” that one first believes. Eliot is not push- sures, distractions, and catastrophes all of its own ing religion here, however, even though he may be desiring and making. For Marco, then, the neces- pushing faith. It is not so much what one believes in sary guidance is the moral and spiritual authority of as that one believes in something greater than the the church; otherwise, Marco tells Dante, “Ben puoi self and, more difficult, greater than the world itself veder che la mala condotta / è la cagion che ‘l mondo ha as well. fatto reo, / e non natura che ‘n voi sia corrotta” [You well can see that misdirection / is the cause which made the world go wrong / and not that there is in you a natural corruption] (103–105). Ariel Poems (1936) Dante had a bone to pick with the level of moral and spiritual guidance that the seated pope, Boni- Each Christmas from 1927 through 1931, T. S. face VIII, was providing the flock, so Marco’s point Eliot published a poem appropriate to the season as is to condemn the church for failing in its mission part of a series of illustrated pamphlets with holi- to provide the proper guidance that the individual day themes. Intended as corporate greeting cards, soul needs. Though Eliot would be unlikely to take they were released by the London publishing house as anticlerical a position as Dante’s, Eliot’s point Faber & Faber. Eliot had begun a professional rela- must be taken in the essential spirit of Dante’s, tionship with this firm, then known as Faber & and that is that the unbridled spirit cannot find its Gwyer, as poetry editor in 1925 and would even- own way back to God for the simple reason that tually become a director. While not necessarily

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instrumental in instituting the series, he certainly do point, in varying degrees, toward the desire of lent it a certain panache. the spirit to be free of the constraints of time, the In any case, Eliot published five poems in all in this flesh, and the world. That is what “Animula” is initial phase of the series. (Faber revised the series in all about. The problem is that such freedom is no the 1950s, and Eliot, in 1954, provided “The Cultiva- freedom at all. It is, rather, confusion and bewilder- tion of Christmas Trees.”) The last of these original ment, boredom and botherment and madness. five contributions would be incorporated into “Cori- That can be said of much of Eliot’s poetry going olan” as “Triumphal March.” The first four, “Journey back as far, no doubt, as the excessive wittiness of the Magi” (1927), “A Song for Simeon” (1928), that otherwise characterized the quatrains, “The “Animula” (1929), and “Marina” (1930), were pub- Hippopotamus,” “A Cooking Egg,” and “Whispers lished as the “Ariel Poems,” the collective heading by of Immortality” being chief among them in this which they have since become known, in Complete regard. Captains of industry and financiers have Poems, 1909–1935. See the individual entries on the always been as likely to fall under Eliot’s witheringly above poems (for more information). witty scrutiny as self-righteous clerics and pedantic Despite these particulars of the poems’ publica- scholars, however. The entire matter of our human tion, they are not minor pieces. Eliot continued to capacity for cultivating an attachment to transitory give them their due prominence as a work set apart things—the flesh, wealth, power, glory, nations, in Complete Poems, and they seem, as a group, to fame, the fruits of the intellect, the humility of partake of other elements, especially images and holy orders—at the expense of a complete spiritual themes, in keeping with other poetry that Eliot was self-contentment forms as well a large part of the working on at the same time, specifically “Ash- thematic interests revealed in the complexities of Wednesday” and a translation from the French of The Waste Land. St.-John Perse’s book-length poem, Anabase. Eliot More to the point, the Ariel poems were emerg- seemed to have more than a casual interest either ing at the same time that, in his personal life, Eliot in their composition or in the place that he saw was undergoing a spiritual conversion that would them occupying in his canon. eventually result in his embracing the religious tra- The name Ariel brings to mind the capricious ditions embodied in the Church of England. His sprite whose unbridled willfulness contrasts with the poetry, meanwhile, that seemed by 1925 to have stodgy earthiness of the no less willful Caliban in leveled off deep in the pits of a despair given voice Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which they represent in “The Hollow Men” and the abandoned verse the opposing extremes of human nature, the spirit drama “Sweeney Agonistes,” had begun to take on a and the flesh. While it would be tempting to imag- tentative turn toward spiritual affirmation, however ine some particular significance to Eliot’s giving the querulous and masked it may have been, in another four poems this overall title, then, the real story is a series of poems that would eventually become his great deal less suggestive of any subtle literary intent next major work, the 1930 “Ash-Wednesday.” on Eliot’s part. That real story, as Eliot would tell In the Ariel Poems, Eliot found a poetic means to it some years later, is that Faber had used the Ariel be himself and to be a poet—to speak out of his own designation for their annual holiday series, but after experience, but not about it. This apparent empha- they had discontinued it, “[n]obody else seemed to sis on the personal would become more and more want the title afterward, so,” according to the poet, Eliot’s mode as his poetry writing, as opposed to his “I kept it for myself simply to designate four of my turn toward verse drama, continued. But the only poems which appeared in this way.” danger for the interested reader will be to imagine As is not unusual in the case of the potential for that Eliot’s is now a poetry of faith or of belief, or, meaning found in Eliot’s use of literary allusions, worse yet, expressions of personal faith and belief, however, even those relatively inadvertent ones, rather than a poetry about faith and about belief. as this one is, have something of the serendipitous Those differences are but two prepositions apart, of about them. The four poems in question certainly and about, but the first case implies that primacy has

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been accorded the poet’s personal impulse, whereas would do well to keep in mind at all times Eliot’s the second gives primacy to the poetry as an expres- admonishment from the closing pages of his essay sion of permanent human thoughts and feelings, on Shakespeare and Seneca: “Poetry is not a sub- precisely as Eliot does in his criticism and precisely, stitute for philosophy or theology or religion; . . . too, as he consistently insists ought to be done. it has its own function. But as this function is not In his 1927 essay “Shakespeare and the Stoicism intellectual but emotional, it cannot be defined of Seneca,” whose ideas emerge from the same adequately in intellectual terms.” That is why, in period that would produce the poetry of the Ariel the final analysis, the Ariel poems are just that: poems and of “Ash-Wednesday,” poetry that seems poetry. Beyond a doubt, read that way, they speak to have a distinctly religious if not even orthodox to any and all experiences that are human. Christian bias, Eliot addresses the issue of poetry and belief. “All great poetry gives the illusion of FURTHER READING a view of life,” he writes; that is not because the Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: poet is a thinker but because the poet reflects in his McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. poetry the thinking of his time. Speaking primarily Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in of Dante as opposed to Shakespeare, he proposes Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of that Dante’s poetry benefits in comparison from Chicago Press, 1974. having the more orderly thought of St. Thomas Timmerman, John H. T. S. Eliot’s Ariel Poems: The Aquinas behind it, “but that was just his [Dante’s] Poetics of Recovery. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell Uni- luck.” He concludes, “I doubt whether belief proper versity Press, 1994. enters into the activity of great poet, qua [i.e., as] poet. That is, Dante, qua poet, did not believe or disbelieve the Thomist cosmology or theory of the soul: he merely made use of it. . . .” “Arnold and Pater” (1930) For all the subtleties of Eliot’s argument here, this is not a subtle distinction that he is making, Originally published in an independently edited but rather it is all the difference in the world when collection entitled The Eighteen-Eighties and subse- it comes to measuring the distance between the life quently included by Eliot among his Selected Essays, and the work. Eliot, too, as a poet, does not believe 1917–1932, in this essay Eliot comments on the or disbelieve the mysteries that form the bases of significance and influence of two of the major criti- Christian doctrine: He merely makes use of them. cal voices in English literature in the latter half of As Eliot puts it best, perhaps, of all in another of the 19th century, (1822–88) his essays, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” and Walter Pater (1839–94). The essay, however, in the greatest poetry writing there must be a sepa- is neither an introduction to nor an appreciation ration between the “man who suffers and the mind of these two Victorian literary luminaries so much which creates.” The person—be it Dante, Shake- as an indictment of the consequences of Arnold’s speare, or Eliot—may be many things and have as and Pater’s shaping influence on the contemporary different a set of beliefs on Monday than on Friday, thought of Eliot’s own time. As such, their influ- but the creative mind, the poet, is one single thing, ence may, in Eliot’s view, be more fairly character- whoever he or she may be, with one single purpose, ized as early manifestations of certain social and and that is to make of the stuff of life not biography cultural trends, rather than as the instigators of or philosophy or religion or even belief, which are these same trends. Those trends can be summa- for others to make, but poetry. rized in a single word: humanism. The reader determined to make the most and to get the most out of Eliot’s poetry, especially in SYNOPSIS the quasi-religious phase that it entered follow- Eliot’s continuing drift toward a more and more ing the publication of “The Hollow Men” in 1925, conservative stance with regard to the religious,

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specifically Christian, foundations of European cul- tem of thought. He is “at his best,” in fact, when ture produced a great deal of critical dueling on his he is offering an apologetics for literature. This is part throughout the 1920s. His essays “The Human- “a needed attitude,” yet unfortunately it is on that ism of Irving Babbitt” and “Second Thoughts on very front that “literature, or Culture, tended with Humanism” from 1927 and 1928, respectively, go Arnold to usurp the place of Religion.” as far as he would ever dare, however, in condemn- Arnold, in his efforts to preserve, for its cultural ing secular humanism as a self-anointed substitute viability, the more primal impulse that religion for religion while it was simultaneously and para- was otherwise viewed as possessing and nurtur- doxically degrading the religious impulse as a nec- ing, comes close to setting poetry up in religion’s essary feature of a human community. In “Arnold place, and, in Eliot’s view, that does a service to and Pater,” rather than his Harvard mentor Irving neither and in facts distorts and defeats the sepa- Babbitt, it is Arnold, as a 19th-century spokesper- rate purposes of each. Arnold’s actual aim was to son for the burgeoning modernist, humanist move- recapture the cultural value of creative endeavors, ment, who takes the heat. particularly literature and the criticism of litera- Arnold, in fact, seldom fared well in Eliot’s hands ture, from the encroachments of a rational skepti- as a critic and thinker until near the end of Eliot’s cism on the one hand and a sloppy impressionism life and career as a critic himself. Then he was more on the other hand. liable to forgive anyone and anything except, per- A certain measure of positivistic secularism was haps, his own younger self. Till that point, Arnold already taking root as well, turning the organiza- was treated very much like a misguided high priest tions of state into mechanistic systems divorced and icon of the enemy camp. Often, that is a case from moral valuations. While Arnold had been that Arnold deserves to have lodged against him inculcated in those materialists views, he did even- because he indeed was a child of his own age tually became passionately opposed to the increas- and thus of intellectual modernism’s first, faltering ingly rationalistic tendencies of the thinking of stages, when it was not sure what of the past ought his times, while managing to maintain his own to be consigned to the rubbish pile of history and intellectual integrity and credentials. As a result what ought to be preserved at all costs. Not surpris- of Arnold’s bias against the wholly rationalistic, ingly, religion, with its overtones of outworn super- however, there is much in his cultural criticism stitions, headed the secularists’ hit list for things to that commends itself to a spiritual bias instead. be discarded, and that done the sooner, the better. Eliot understandably attacks Arnold on those very Eliot begins the essay by noting that, while his grounds: that in Arnold’s effort to establish a new, topic, in keeping with the theme of the volume, less mechanistic foundation for assessing artistic is essentially Pater, whose most influential work, endeavors, he reduced religion to the sum of its Marius the Epicurean, was published in 1885, he aesthetic components as well, thus giving human- wishes to trace the influence of Arnold on Pater. As ism a leg up on spiritual considerations to which it a critic who expresses a “kindred point of view” to had formerly been subsidiary at best. Pater’s, Arnold has not only experienced a revival Pater went Arnold one better. If Arnold gave a of interest in recent time, according to Eliot, but new cultural legitimacy to humanism by coordinating enjoys a reputation that now exceeds that of other its more sociopolitical attitudes with the high moral 19th-century notables, including Pater. Such an aims of serious literature, Pater took the whole field encomium does not mean that Eliot has noth- of endeavor, religious pursuits as well, off into the ing but unqualified praise for Arnold, however. realm of aestheticism, where a thing mattered not Although his style gave “English expository and because it was true or false necessarily, but because critical prose a restraint and urbanity it needed,” it made its appeal to our sense of beauty. Religion Eliot argues from the outset that Arnold’s thought and religious art are important, in Pater’s estimation, does not stand close analysis and that his influence not for their intrinsic value but because they fulfill lies more in his rhetoric than in any organized sys- humans’ need for beauty in their lives, and beauty

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alone. Here Eliot sees in Pater a misguided enthu- At the close of his essay, Eliot imagines that, in siasm for preserving the religious impulse akin to response to the increasing scientism of their times, Arnold’s enthusiasm for literary beauty. Arnold and Pater, among others and each in his own way, became a part of the faltering confusions CRITICAL COMMENTARY that resulted from the Victorian effort to retrench Eliot had already addressed a similar problem in “A religion by allying it with art to enhance the social Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry,” published in 1928, and cultural “usefulness” of both. The result was an when an Eliot alter ego in that essay had debated injustice to both religion and art, however. “Reli- the idea that the ritual of the Catholic Mass can be gion became morals, religion became art, religion justified on the basis of its aesthetic effects alone. became science or philosophy,” but religion was no In “Arnold and Pater,” Eliot makes his personal longer just itself. Nothing, in Eliot’s view, has ever opinion on that question abundantly clear: It can- been itself, or remained the same, since then. Quot- not be. For Eliot, religion serves a single impulse, ing Pater on the early 19th-century English roman- the religious impulse, which is itself inspired by the tic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Eliot concludes individual’s awareness that there is some purpose his treatment of these two Victorian cultural critics to existence that cannot be satisfied or explained on the sentiment that their “discontent, languor, by purely social means. and homelessness . . . ring all through our modern If from one point of view Arnold’s theory of literature.” It is an interesting way to honor and art and of religion are harmonious, it is to satisfy castigate Arnold and Pater at the same time. Theirs a social, not a spiritual agenda, the net result of is, as Eliot would have it, an object lesson in noble which “is to affirm that the emotions of Christian- goals fulfilled by narrow and short-sighted means, ity can and must be preserved without the belief.” thereby short-changing the very aspects of the cul- As a consequence, Arnold’s campaign to defend ture that they had hoped to serve and preserve. both religion and literature in the same breath in the face of an increasing scientific positivism that would reduce all human endeavor to the use- ful had the effect, realized more fully in Pater, of “Ash-Wednesday” (1930) “divorc[ing] Religion from thought,” thereby giving impetus instead to those who, in Eliot’s own time, There is perhaps no poem of T. S. Eliot’s that is would divorce it from the life of the culture and the as deceptively complex as “Ash-Wednesday.” Like lives of the people. This “degradation of philoso- many of Eliot’s other works from the period fol- phy and religion” was, Eliot contends, subsequently lowing the publication of The Waste Land in late continued by Pater, who had less of Arnold’s reli- 1922 and the renown that it brought him, the first gious rigor but an “equally virulent” devotion to three parts of the poem that posterity would come culture. to know as “Ash-Wednesday” (in keeping with As a result, Arnold’s humanism, which at least Eliot’s own practice, the hyphen is retained here) grants a place for religion as a foundation of cul- were published as separately titled poems in the ture, gives way to Pater’s aestheticism, in which the years preceding the complete poem’s publication benefit of religion is solely to inspire art, which is in a volume of its own in the spring of 1930. As in itself the higher goal and true benefit. “The theory the case of “The Hollow Men,” there is no reason of art for art’s sake,” of which Pater was an initial to conclude that Eliot was not conceiving of the proponent, “is still valid,” Eliot admits, but only “in three separately published poems to begin with as so far as it can be taken as an exhortation to the pieces in a larger whole, just as there is no reason to artist to stick to his job.” It is not valid when it can conclude that he was. be taken, as Pater would have it, as the enshrine- By now, he had a sufficient reputation as a major ment of art at the expense of the substance of the poetic voice, not to mention his publishing outlets religion that had inspired it. as editor of the Criterion and as poetry editor for

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Faber & Faber, to publish works in progress easily, poet’s intentions, making the poem surely some- without having to think of them or introduce them thing of a first for the self-made modernist Eliot, as such, rather than as single, coherent pieces, as who hitherto had seemed to regard obscurity of was the case with The Waste Land. In any event, intention as an obligation. Part II of the completed poem, “Ash-Wednesday,” In addition to the links to the troubadours, would first appear as “Salutation” in 1927, Part I these signposts include the hardly obscure Chris- as “Perch’ io non spero” in 1928, and Part III as tian liturgical observance identified without fanfare “Al som de l’escalina” in 1929. Each of those three or embellishment in the sequence title, “Ash- titles gives some insight into Eliot’s intentions by Wednesday;” the use of lines from devotional identifying, through a direct allusion, a particular prayers and rituals of the Catholic Mass; and the literary source and figure for each. poetry’s haunting but no less obscure overtones of, if not outright allusions to, passages from Scripture BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS and from a major religious poet, Dante. A Map of Allusions Several commentators have also identified in In the first case, “Salutation,” Eliot appears to be the poem’s stress on exercising severe self-abnega- alluding to DANTE ALIGHIERI’s La vita nuova, a tion to achieve spiritual salvation the influences of poem in which he celebrates both the beginning the 16th-century Spanish Christian mystic St. John of his love for Beatrice and, with his love for her, of the Cross, whose program of fleshy austerity had the introduction of the great theme of love into already played a significant role in Eliot’s epigraph his poetry as well. It is a theme that cannot be to “Sweeney Agonistes.” John’s particular empha- taken too lightly in the hands of a poet like Dante, sis, in his Dark Night of the Soul, on a complete who, for all the unique reputation that he holds as emptying of self through a denial of personal will a man of letters now, in his own time would have and a renunciation of worldly pleasures for the sake been seen to be in the tradition of the school of of receiving God into one’s soul may play a role in love poets known as the troubadours. For them, the excessive purgative processes that the poetry love for a lady was both akin to and a deliciously of “Ash-Wednesday” proposes, particularly in Part mind- and spirit-opening rival to one’s love for the II, in which the speaker is reduced to bones. How- divine. That said, something of Eliot’s plans for the ever, there is more of a disciplining of the senses larger work that may then have been taking shape than a denial of them in Eliot’s approach, making can be seen in the fact that the other two sections the eroticism of Dante’s approach to expressing the of the poem that were also published as separate spiritual in poetry seem to be the more prevalent pieces, “Perch’io non spero” (Part I) and “Al som model. de l’escalina” (Part III), hark back to two other Yet, despite this untypical effort on Eliot’s part troubadour poets, Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut not to cloud his general intentions, the poetry of Daniel, both of whom are also closely connected “Ash-Wednesday” is often more troublesome for with Dante. readers than the far more difficult, convoluted, and In his typical fashion, Eliot provides his readers obscure poetry of The Waste Land, say, because with literary cultural markers as parts of a clear “Ash-Wednesday” seems to demand a reading road map toward his intended meaning, just as based on belief, not poetry. many other outstanding features of the eventu- Matters of Belief ally published complete work, too, virtually plead The poetry of “Ash-Wednesday,” for all the con- with the reader to accept that finished poem as the straints of its religious overtones, is as open to true bill of goods that it pretends to be. Indeed, as interpretation as any other of Eliot’s poetry. Still, testaments to its own directness in its attempt at the suspicion persists that “Ash-Wednesday” is unabashed clarity, the completed poem sequence, quite different from anything that had come from “Ash-Wednesday,” despite its difficulties, offers his pen before. That, too, should not prove to be the attentive reader a plethora of signposts for the the case, however.

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Many contemporary followers of Eliot’s poetry that needs especially to be addressed inasmuch as had regarded him as a forceful voice of dissidence his poetry is concerned. in his critiquing of the cultural and social status Readers have long been used to hearing poets quo of the postwar world. Hearing of his religious lament a lost love or bare the innermost parts of conversion to the established Church of England, themselves in their longing for beauty or human in which he had been first baptized and then brotherhood or liberty or countless other common confirmed in June 1927, these readers had then enough themes, but let a poet speak about events come to regard him as a turncoat and a lost leader. or feelings that give even a hint of the religious, Those passions were of their own time and have as opposed to the spiritual, that is to say, and the passed, of course. Still, there are many readers to level of both intellectual tolerance and aesthetic this day who, finding something companionable in patience among readers drops dramatically. The the iconoclastic and despairing cynic of the earli- believer already familiar with the religious tenets est Eliot, are prepared only to be let down when and devotions being expressed misses the value of the poet takes what seems to be his sudden turn their poetic function and wonders instead what the toward a verse that is centered on longstanding fuss is all about; the nonbeliever, meanwhile, imag- traditions that are religious in nature. The cause ines himself or herself wrongly being excluded from for that disappointment may be laid at the door of the experience of the poetry by virtue of its being the discomforts caused not so much by the religious channeled through religious experiences for which content and context per se as by encountering in that reader most likely has no personal reference the poem what appears to be the revelation of an points. Either way, it is as if the poet has violated intensely intimate and private spiritual experience. some unspoken rule of what topics and approaches The more “religious” such poetry seems to be, the constitute proper modes for poetic discourse. more commonly it provokes discomfort. Whether the reader is a profound believer who The key to this observation, however, is the resents the presumptions of the religious poet or is distinction between the spiritual and the religious. someone who feels that religion, particularly of a The poetry of The Waste Land, for example, is highly developed doctrinal and devotional nature, highly spiritually charged. By that poem’s closing, ought to be kept out of the bounds of serious cre- as the reader hears the injunctions from the Upani- ative literature altogether, both of these problems shads in “What the Thunder Said,” there can be no can be solved if one thinks first of the poetry. Then, doubt that the thrust of the poetry has been moved if thoughts turn to the religious context at all, it is wholly into spiritual realms—but not the realm of done not with an eye toward some sort of doctrinal what is normally perceived of as religion or the classifications but toward what permanent human religious. The same can be said for “The Hollow impulses the religious context allows the poet to Men,” whose poetry is contrived to express what explore and express. For the religious impulse, nur- ultimately can be regarded as nothing more than a tured or ignored, fostered or rejected, is surely a spiritual paralysis in that poem’s collective speak- far more common, dare we say universal one than ers—but a spiritual paralysis is not a religious crisis. romantic love or dreams of glory and conquest have The same exception cannot be made for “Ash- ever been. Wednesday,” however, whose entire focus seems to At the very least, it would make sense that a require the reader to acquire a particular religious poet whose career had been devoted up to this bias in order to decipher the poetic moment. The point to commenting on major social and cultural majority of readers generally resent such a require- issues, as Eliot’s had, would eventually find himself ment, even if they happen to be strongly religious addressing the matter of belief—both its personal or perhaps even share the very belief system that is and its socially and culturally structured dimen- ostensibly being expounded. Since much of the rest sions—in his poetry, and as poetry. (Eliot himself of Eliot’s poetry from his conversion on is nomi- commented, rather sagely, that belief in poetry nally religious in nature, such is a critical problem ought be read as leading one not to believe but

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instead to feel like what it is to be a person who est may at this time seem to have taken a decided believes—experiences that are universes apart.) turn in that direction) as long as it be, at the very Not that Eliot’s poetry is ever simple, but it is least, salutary to the spirit. always poetry, not religion or psychology or phi- “Sweeney Agonistes” had been Eliot’s last word losophy or even autobiography, for that matter. on the philosophic mind that could live even Regarded as poetry, “Ash-Wednesday” not only remotely successfully alone, at a psychological dis- expresses a considerable and welcome advance in tance from the rest of humankind. That is why Eliot’s poetic vision as it had been shaping itself Sweeney had failed himself, and the play, too, was from the time of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- a failure in the sense that Eliot never completed it. frock” to “The Hollow Men,” but represents the He had been exploring this possibility at least from coming together as well of his experimentation the time of “Prufrock,” always with an eye toward with simplification. He had begun to experiment assessing its shortcomings while nonetheless rec- with a more direct poetic style as far back as some ommending the cynicism of its benefits at least as of the poetry in part V of The Waste Land, “What a coping mechanism in the impersonal urban land- the Thunder Said.” Then, as now, he eschewed scape that the modern world seemed to be bent on the aesthetically obscure for the sake of the spiri- becoming. Is it any wonder, then, that the puta- tually clairvoyant. This effort toward a measured tive hero/speaker of The Waste Land can finally simplicity and directness is in keeping with and only confess to a private revelation and achieve may have inspired the turn toward a more clearly a Hemingwayesque separate peace (although Eliot pronounced thematic intent as well. Often poets beat Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms to can express their most profound thoughts and feel- that jump by at least seven years), or that, for all ings only after they have found the simplest and the rest of humanity, both “Sweeney Agonistes” most direct ways to express themselves. and “The Hollow Men” end with the characters all In the fifth and final section of Little Gidding, waiting for what otherwise is the only hope of such the last part of the Four Quartets (1943)—the hollow men, death? last major poetry he wrote—Eliot speaks of what In “The Hollow Men,” however, Eliot had played he apparently regards to be the characteristics of that vein out, a conclusion implicit both in the spiri- a perfectly balanced poetic style. He describes it tual overtones that that poem’s poetry assumes, as as one wherein “every word is at home” and there if groping for a key that the hollow men themselves is “[a]n easy commerce of the old and the new,” cannot even begin to imagine, and, of course, in the with common words that are exact but not vulgar, further attempt at a turning that “Ash-Wednesday” formal language that is “precise but not pedantic,” blatantly announces. The turning is into a poem, to the end that the “complete consort danc[es] and a poetry, that is, rather than a lament for the together.” Students of Eliot know that this is a failure of vision, an expression of acceptance and description of the style that he had been utiliz- communion with what vision there is that is avail- ing all along in composing the poetry of the four able not just to the poet but to any mere mortal. If long poems that had become, finally, the Four the poetry of “Ash-Wednesday” is in fact founded Quartets. However, it was with “Ash-Wednesday” on Eliot’s own recent process of conversion, it is that this sweet, new style of his had first come per- in this manner—turning his own personal spiritual fectly and completely into its own, because he had agon, or struggle, into a richly poetic but nonetheless finally clarified for himself a focus to his art that general commentary on the literature and culture had until then eluded him. That focus, on the sur- of any individual’s personal spiritual struggle—that face, may seem to be a sharp turn toward religious Eliot succeeds in transforming biography into poetry, themes, whereas in fact it is a turn toward a faith exactly as he argues, in the 1919 essay “Tradition in a communal rather than a personal foundation and the Individual Talent,” that poets do. to individual salvation. That salvation need not In a later (1932) essay on the 17th-century be eternal (although, again, Eliot’s private inter- English playwright John Ford, Eliot is heard to

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observe that “a dramatic poet cannot create char- glory of God and of the individual soul’s eternal acters of the greatest intensity of life unless his place with him in paradise. personages . . . are somehow dramatizing, in no It is in this spirit of self-abnegation and denial obvious form, an action or struggle for harmony in of the world, the flesh, and the devil, despite its the soul of the poet.” Imagining that the speaker temptations, that Eliot’s poem will proceed, but so, of “Ash-Wednesday” is no more the poet than for that matter, did The Waste Land. In that earlier Prufrock or the hollow men were and is instead work, however, Eliot felt free to make temptation a characterization invented by Eliot for the sake obvious by casting it in sexual garb; thus he can of giving the poetry purpose and direction, then depict the seductiveness of behavior that is both it would seem that the operative words there in self-serving and self-centered in the flawed sexual Eliot’s observation are “in no obvious form.” Eliot adventurism of Lil’s friend and Albert, or the typist had always been the dramatic, or at least dramatiz- and the rental clerk, or the three game Thames- ing, poet. The strange, almost ritualistic action of daughters, or Sweeney and Mrs. Porter’s daughter, “Ash-Wednesday,” as much as its religiosity may or the Archduke Rudolph and Marie, or Tristan seem to point obviously toward events in Eliot’s and Iseult, or Elizabeth and Leicester. Sex serves as own life, far more likely only dramatizes, for the an emblem of the unbridled desire that binds us to sake of universalizing, not the process of Eliot’s this world at the expense of any focus on our hope personal conversion experience but the results of for the other. its effects upon his poetic outlook. But for that same reason, using sex is taking “Ash-Wednesday” should be seen as a reflection a pretty cheap shot at making a rather profound not of Eliot’s beliefs but of his vision of the world point and nowhere near as effective as the theme and of the individual’s place in it. That harmony of love itself, as the troubadours well knew. Temp- of soul, or balance, is what all great art and art- tations that call the individual soul to sins of the ists seek to achieve and to exemplify. Eliot, who flesh are as relatively easy to overcome as they are until now had been the great poet of chaos and of poetically to depict, after all, compared with temp- disjunction and the fragmented, is trying to effect tations that ask of the soul nothing more than that a new goal for his poetry, balance. Approaching it pay the world its due through the individual’s “Ash-Wednesday” in this way, the reader can sort nurturing a love of created things. Resisting those out the biographical from the poetical and thereby temptations, however, the soul can run the risk of come to see how much the poem is not any break denying the fact that creation is a spiritual gift of from but a continuance of issues and themes that God as well, a place in which the soul can come to Eliot had been essaying in his poetry all along. know God through his creation. These are all far The Religious Observance more complicated patterns of discovery and resolu- In the Christian religious calendar, Ash Wednes- tion, it should be clear, than sexual desire can ever day is the first day of Lent, the 40 days of fast properly delineate, requiring a poetry that does not and abstinence preceding Easter. On Ash Wednes- cheapen and yet cannot bewilder either. day, Catholic Christians, for example, receive It is this precarious tightrope act, balancing ashes in the sign of the cross on their forehead as a the demands of the flesh, and of love, with the reminder of the repentance and penitence that will demands of the spirit, and of love, that Eliot hopes be required of them as they prepare to celebrate to exemplify in the poetry of “Ash-Wednesday.” the spiritual fullness of Christ’s coming resurrection He is aware of the paradoxes in the lonely, because from the grave and his triumph over death. The isolated, search for spiritual balance and worldly reception of ashes is also a way, however, for them contentment. These must have a single focus, for to signal their recognition, through their faith in the man a woman, and this woman must be both Christ, that the world and all its worth, including the objective and the mere emblem of the objec- the flesh, is but dross, ash, in comparison to the tive, the focal point and the pale reflection of the

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focal point. The objective is love. As much as these have wanted the line to serve his purposes of allow- are relationships harder to portray, they are zones ing the speaker thus to express an apparent lack of of reference in which it is difficult to make the true confidence in having the ability to change himself, objective and point clear, and that is that one seeks without his, Eliot’s, sacrificing the richer meaning union not with the beloved but with love. For as of the line in the context of the original Italian Eliot himself would soon write in his first completed when its source is brought to bear. verse drama, Murder in the Cathedral, the worst sin Cavalcanti wrote the ballatetta in question when is to do the right thing for the wrong reason. he was in exile from his native Florence, a state of affairs brought about by the actions of his good SYNOPSIS friend and fellow poet Dante Alighieri. Without Part I going into the details of Florence’s fractured civic The famous opening four lines of part I of “Ash- life and factional strife during this period, Dante’s Wednesday,” in keeping with the poem’s theme party, the Guelfs, of whom Cavalcanti was a mem- of representing in poetic terms the human yearn- ber, was in power in the year 1300. So fractious ing for union with a love that is divine, combines were the festering rivalries, however, that the party soon itself split into two rival factions of its own, two celebrated love poems by two celebrated love the Blacks and the Whites, to the latter of which poets, as well as, by association, a third. To the both Dante and Guido belonged. To keep the uninitiated reader, the lines may express perfectly peace, Dante was ultimately forced to exile Cav- the sudden realization of the speaker that he has alcanti. The ballatetta is a love poem Cavalcanti come to the end of a lifeline and must, if he wishes wrote to lament that he can never return to the to go on, change his ways or at least his values. It Tuscany where his beloved lives. It is one of literary can be referred to as a “veiled couplet” because the history’s bitter ironies that Guido’s despair proved first four lines, two of which are truncated, can eas- to be unfounded. He was in fact allowed to return ily be seen to be reducible in fact to two: “Because I to Florence because he had contracted in his exile do not hope to turn again . . . / Desiring this man’s a fatal case of malaria, from which he succumbed in gifts and that man’s scope.” The speaker seems to August of that same year. be expressing a desire to reform his life by renounc- There is a subtext to Dante’s querulous relation- ing his former ways, but only because he has no ship with Guido that is carried on by implication other choice—“I do not hope.” While that desire into the second of the literary allusions with which is appropriate to the religious observance that the Eliot opens “Ash-Wednesday.” That one is virtually title has announced as the poem’s topic, each half a direct quote from ’s Sonnet of the equated impulse as stated owes its source to 29: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.” a poem of attachment, not detachment. This may seem to be a rather circuitous route for The first half is a cleverly altered translation by Eliot in a poem that is supposed to convey a direct- Eliot of the first line and traditional title of a balla- ness of treatment, to go from an early 14th-century tetta, or short ballad, by the Italian troubadour, and Italian poet to a late 16th-century English poet back Dante’s best friend, Guido Cavalcanti. In the origi- to a second early 14th-century Italian poet to make nal Italian, the line reads, “Perch’io non spero di an elliptical point. But Eliot never misses the much tornar giammai,” and would translate into English more salient point that meaning in poetry is most as “Because I do not hope ever to return.” There often layered, even when it is not intended that way. is, of course, a considerable difference between The more the poet manages the layering himself, the turning, as in the sense of altering direction, and more those layers of meaning matter. returning, which has to do with coming back to a So, then, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, ostensibly place one has left. Eliot surely knew his Italian well addressed to a beloved unknown to history but enough to know that the Italian girare, not tornare, alleged to be a young man, is, like Guido’s brave is the English equivalent of “to turn.” He must lament, another expression of hopelessness on

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the part of a speaker who also “all alone beweep[s In the worldliness that he still suffers from even his] outcast state,” but who is as well so displeased in hell, Cavalcante wonders why his son Guido with himself and what he has become that he is not accompanying Dante, since as a parent he finds himself recklessly envying all others around imagines that his son ought to be as worthy of such him: “Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, / a distinguished honor as Dante is. When Dante Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, / tells him that Guido is not along because he, like Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, . . .” his father, was not a believer in an Eternal Creator, Surely, juxtaposing Guido and Shakespeare’s sen- Dante’s use of the past tense makes Cavalcante timents the way that Eliot does allows him very think that Guido must be dead. Considering that in quickly to set a tone for “Ash-Wednesday” as a April 1300 Guido was but months away from exile poem of self-abnegation if not self-degradation. and death as a result of Dante’s actions, one must However, there is a subtext involving Dante wonder what ghosts Dante was exorcising those 20 upon which Eliot may also be playing. Dante may or more years later as he penned this scene, one in well have suffered a grievous and possibly profes- which it is suggested that Guido is as great a poet sional guilt for having been instrumental in bring- as Dante and in which, too, Guido’s death a short ing about the death of Cavalcanti. The notion of time later is rather dramatically adumbrated. “desiring this man’s art” suggests an artist who Perhaps such a reading would be a bit too melo- recognizes a superior talent in the other. When dramatic for some tastes, but this is poetry, after the one and the other are creative artists, such as all, and there are such things as the little murders, fellow poets, a recognition of that kind can often of self and of others, of dreams and of plans and lead to tragedy. In its broadest conceptualization, of hopes, that every human being commits with Dante’s Divine Comedy is his “Ash-Wednesday,” regularity along life’s way, or so must it surely seem a poem not only designed to take place at the very to the Dantes and Shakespeares and Eliots of the end of the Lenten season during Easter weekend world. The common element binding all the his- but one in which the poet confesses to his sinful- torical and literary details in the opening lines of ness and his desire for repentance and salvation. “Ash-Wednesday” is the restless spirit of factitious- These echoes back to both Dante and Shakespeare ness and competition, ambition and envy, and the resonate, enabling Eliot to open “Ash-Wednesday” poet seems to ask the eternal question of a mortal on a theme suitable to the liturgical solemnity of humanity: Where is there an end to it, and when, the occasion: guilt. the ceaseless wailing of the disconsolate chimera? Although Dante wrote his masterpiece nearly Thus, as melodramatic as it may seem, knowing 20 years after his own exile from Florence in 1302, Eliot’s propensity for the subtlest of insinuation, he sets the events of the poem in April 1300 so that these opening lines of “Ash-Wednesday” can be its action will coincide with the Easter of his own seen as the speaker’s effort no longer to hide from or 35th year. So, then, Guido, who was exiled in June run from or excuse away those buried corpses of past or July and was dead by August 1300, would have sins and secret betrayals that also haunt the speaker still been alive and living in Florence at the time of The Waste Land in part I, “The Burial of the the action of the poem is supposedly unfolding. As Dead.” That “awful daring of a moment’s surren- a result, Dante’s fellow and doomed poet Guido der” from “What the Thunder Said” may also come Cavalcanti does not appear in Dante’s Divine Com- to mind here. However they be interpreted, each edy. He is noticeably referred to, nevertheless, in individual’s little, self-remembered acts of spiteful- a particularly telling episode in the Inferno, the ness and envy, betrayal and deceit that can never first part of the Divine Comedy, when, in canto X, be recalled but are never forgotten haunt those two, Dante encounters Guido’s father, Cavalcante dei bare lines: “Because I do not hope to turn again. . . / Cavalcanti, in Circle Six. There the heretics, those Desiring this man’s gifts and that man’s scope.” who denied the immortality of the soul, are being No wonder Eliot’s speaker, whatever the impli- punished. cations of the intricate web that the opening allu-

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sions have spun, does not hope to turn again. He require engaging the will, which is not openness to has no desire to turn back to whatever he had to God’s will but attention to his own. The speaker this time been, and he says quite clearly and boldly, prays to “forget / These matters . . . I too much dis- “I no longer strive to strive toward such things.” So, cuss,” that the judgment may “not be too heavy,” then, on this , since he cannot turn that he may learn “to care and not to care,” to “sit back, he begins to make at last a forward motion still.” That is the most difficult of spiritual tasks: to into purgation and renewal, for there is no end to relinquish even the passion for salvation, since it it, not as long as one is alive. “Why should the agéd is impatience, and impatience is no less an unwill- eagle stretch his wings,” except that he must— ingness to yield and let be. And so, appropriately especially if he has any hopes to move past the past enough, part I of “Ash-Wednesday” ends not with and on to whatever vague promise of redemption poetry but with prayer. If Eliot’s last previous major the future may hold. And so this traveler, this pil- poem, “The Hollow Men,” ended with a refrain grim, fares forward. Nor are past triumphs spared. taken from the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer to God They, too, come under a withering scrutiny, for admitting that his, not the world’s, is the king- once the world and all its empty promises is seen dom and the power and the glory, then it is a sig- for the sham that it is, it can never be seen again nificant indication of how humbled the speaker of as anything real, although that world and life do go “Ash-Wednesday” is in comparison that his prayer on. “The infirm glory of the positive hour” is no less is from the Hail Mary, the prayer addressed to the a pain to be reckoned with than the pains of shame Virgin Mary as the human mediator and advocate or guilt. between God and his children. “Pray for us sinners The remainder of part I continues in this same now and at the hour of our death / Pray for us now vein of an emptying, a conscious process voiding and at the hour of our death,” he repeats, throwing the spirit of worldliness and vanity that is required himself as he does so, like any and every other sin- if the individual is to be made open and ready for ner, on the mercy of the court of heaven itself. the acceptance of grace. This is a purgative process, after all, so for all the apparent resignation and Part II despair of the tone, the speaker vacates his ties to In keeping with this movement toward the femi- the world with a methodical precision mirroring nine and maternal in the speaker’s seeking for suc- his determination to yield everything ultimately for cor, solace, and surrender—or, in a single thought, the paradoxical sake of everything—the world for peace—the next part of the poem openly addresses eternity. The speaker suffers no delusions, how- her: “Lady.” The supposition, based on Eliot’s origi- ever: He can prepare himself, but he can make nal title for part II, “Salutation,” when it was first nothing happen. He knows that he shall not know published as a separate poem in 1927, is that Eliot “the one veritable transitory power,” which is that is here echoing that passage from Dante’s La vita moment of grace—that he shall not drink, that nuova (The New Life) in which he recounts the place is only ever place, that he must renounce in moment that Beatrice first greeted him. Such a order to accept. And so, surrendering the egotisti- supposition, however, requires that the layering of cal will, the self-centered vision, he nevertheless this transitional device be given its full due. can rejoice just in “having to construct something Dante is thought to have begun to compose La / Upon which to rejoice,” which is what life still vita nuova in 1293, although there is no precise dat- remains to him. ing of how long he was engaged in writing it. La vita Even that self-emptying can run too close a track nuova is a series of love lyrics framed by a continuing to self-obsession, and as part I draws to a close, its chronological narrative of Dante’s various encoun- energies at self-expression virtually winding down ters with Beatrice and their effect on his growth as to a murmur (but not the hollow men’s whimper a person who is consumed by a single passion, love. at least), he comes to see that he must renounce In keeping with the poetry of the troubadours that even the spirit of renunciation, for that will still celebrated the traditions of courtly love that had

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originated in , a region of France adjacent especially in La vita nuova, is his poignantly beauti- to Italy’s northwestern borders, in the late 12th ful commentary on the power of love to transform century, such poetry requires that the beloved be the individual not just in terms of his devotion to worshiped from afar. Indeed, the less she knows of the female object of his love, but especially in terms the lover’s ardor, the greater the salutary effects of of his interaction with the entire world around him. the love on the lover’s spirit, although the greater So much, indeed, did Dante invent the discourse too must be the lover’s pain caused by his secret of love’s transformative powers that his language beloved’s unintended whims and slights. in this regard may seem commonplace nowadays. To say that it is an ennobling and pure love is Eliot is sensitive enough to the lingering freshness putting it mildly. It is surely earthly love ennobled of the original implications of Dante’s imagery and and purified, as much as is imaginable, into a simu- language as a means to exemplify the growth of the lacrum of desire for union with the unattainable, individual spirit that he reinvigorates that initial which is the divine. spiritual impulse of Dante’s in his own poetry in While there is no doubt that there really was a part II of “Ash-Wednesday.” Beatrice Portinari whom Dante knew as a young In La vita nuova, the speaker, whom the reader man and in whom he may have had a romantic has every reason to believe is in fact Dante, tells of interest, there may be some doubt that she was in how he first saw and fell in love with Beatrice when fact a person whom the poet Dante loved in this both he and she were but nine years old. The true extremely rarefied way. Dante was a poet, after turning point comes, however, some nine years later all, and the testimony in La vita nuova of his love (Dante being always keen to note the numerologi- for Beatrice may be controlled more by the con- cal coincidences of the timing), when she actually ventions of the literary tradition in which Dante greets him. This is the celebrated “salutation” to was writing than by biographical fact. (Like a good which Eliot apparently is making reference. Dante investigative reporter, a poet will stop at nothing reports how, it being the first time that her words to get a great poem for his readers.) Nevertheless, were addressed directly to him, he became drunk that such a love had a profound effect on the poet with their sweetness and, having retired to his own is testified to by both La vita nuova and, more par- room to think about her, fell asleep. Sleeping, he ticularly, La commedia divina, wherein it is Beatrice had a vision in which a figure, who later turns out in the spirit, she having since passed away, who to be his master, Love, brings the sleeping Beatrice guides Dante, by virtue of his lifelong devotion to in his arms to Dante. She is naked, although her love and by virtue of God’s will and grace, to the body is covered lightly with a crimson cloth. In one point where he might witness paradise. of his hands, Love holds a burning object, which he Surely, the psychology of this kind of love says is Dante’s heart, and then feeds it to the lady. literature is all that matters finally, for it is the For all the eroticism of the imagery, the meaning is spiritual essence of the record that remains in the clear and wholly pure: Love permits the self to be poetry, rather than the veracity of its details, that consumed in selflessness by virtue of a complete itself is capable of inspiring others. Furthermore, devotion to another. More, it is by that very awak- it seems to be the psychology of a self-denying ening of the person to love through a selfless devo- love that attracts Eliot to this particular aspect of tion to another that the soul is prepared for its own Dante’s life and work at this particular juncture in awakening to a selfless love for God. “Ash-Wednesday.” In the 11th chapter, Dante gives the most adroit Dante’s foremost contribution to the literature expression to the transformation that her greeting of the spirit or inner person was not so much that exercised on his own animal nature, rendering him, he extended the language of romantic love; a num- in a word, human. He writes: ber of equally notable Provençal poets had already done that before him, most important among them I say that when she appeared from any side, Arnaut Daniel. What Dante adds to that literature, out of hope for that wondrous greeting no one

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remained my enemy, in fact a flame of charity the bamboo tree.” The hollow men, too, could see seized me, which made me pardon anyone who the “multifoliate rose” only as a distant star from may have offended me, and whoever then may the pit of their hollow valley, “the broken jaw of have asked me about anything, my response their lost kingdoms,” harking back to an image would have been only, “Love,” my features of bones again. How refreshingly life-giving it is, draped in humility. then, to encounter this different poetic landscape In summary, Dante concludes, “[C]hi avesse voluto in “Ash-Wednesday,” where even though he has conoscere Amore, fare lo potea mirando lo tremare de li been reduced to nothing but, literally, a bare-bones occhi miei [Who would know Love, could behold it reality, the speaker finds that the rose and the gar- tremble in my eyes].” den are near enough in spirit to be one’s song. Despite the liberties that Eliot, for the sake of Thus, rather than in “The Hollow Men”’s place of originality, takes with Dante’s rendering of the broken stone and bone, in “Ash-Wednesday” these moment when love for others seizes the human bones—the self reduced by love to nearly noth- soul and re-creates out of its animal nature the ing—may rest restored to life “[u]nder a tree in the divine image that it is capable of assuming, Dante’s cool of the day, with the blessing of the sand,” and La vita nuova is clearly there when Eliot’s speaker that is better than nothing. calls upon his own “Lady” to observe as part II of As Part II ends, the idea is further expressed “Ash-Wednesday” opens. Just as Love fed Dante’s that, if nothing else, “[w]e have our inheritance,” a heart to Beatrice, three white leopards devour vast part of which, surely, is the continuing poetry every consumable part of Eliot’s speaker, down to of that love whose history has been recorded by his bones. This is Eliot’s way of representing and Ezekiel, by Dante, by St. John of the Cross, and expressing the same reductive and yet restorative now by Eliot. While it may be a love that is far effect of divine love, which reduces the person to greater than any love mere flesh may know, it is the least possible remnant of his own being, thereby one that can be experienced by creatures of mere enabling him to find new life. flesh and blood and bone. Here the speaker echoes the question the Lord Part III asks in 1 Kings 19 of Ezekiel, who also had sat If it is Dante who continues as the speaker’s guide down under a juniper tree in his flight from Jezebel through his purgatorial ritual of “Ash-Wednesday,” and requested that he might die: “Shall these bones exactly as Virgil had guided Dante, then Eliot is live?” And like Ezekiel, the speaker will find that free to use the concept of Dante’s Purgatorio as the they can live and more, a far cry from The Waste scaffolding, or rather staircase, on which to con- Land’s “rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their struct the rising movement that must now succeed bones” but got nothing in return for the experi- the annihilation and reconstitution of self that has ence. This process of abandoning the self to the just taken place in Part II. The idea is that death of corrosive powers that inhabit the corruptible flesh self is alone not itself the sufficient action. One is leaves the speaker “[t]hus devoted, concentrated then left either like Sweeney, the embittered husk in purpose,” so that now, like his lady who “hon- of his former self, or like the hollow men, about ours the Virgin in meditation,” the bones might do whose hope for fulfillment there is no question or more than live; they might sing. Their song is not doubt, since there will be none. The speaker’s self Ezekiel’s, however, for Eliot’s speaker is the child and its attachments and animosities, jealousies and of a new dispensation. Instead of prophesy, there envy, all having been extinguished by the flame is the Christian fulfillment of “the Rose / . . . the of love, there must now be, if not resurrection or Garden / Where all loves end.” rebirth, at least the creation of a spiritual life for In “Sweeney Agonistes,” Sweeney could neither this new self to take up. imagine nor promise any earthly paradise where This process of renewal or regeneration will be, he and Doris could be in love and at peace “under in part III, represented appropriately enough by the

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speaker’s mounting steps “al som de l’escalina”—to cessful closing to the arduous journey that crossing the top of the stairs. When it was first published the waste land from start to finish had been for separately in 1929, part III was entitled just that: the speaker. Now, some eight years later in “Ash- “Al som de l’escalina.” The phrase comes from Wednesday,” Eliot alludes directly to the closing of remarks made to Dante in canto 26 of the Purgato- canto 26, this time, however, to cite the words that rio by the Provençal poet Arnaut Daniel, the great- Dante had first had Arnaut speak to him before est of the French troubadours, who were Dante’s that canto’s end (some of which Eliot had cited in precursors in the poetry of courtly love. Indeed, his footnote to line 428 of The Waste Land). that moment from Dante had already provided Upon Guinizzelli’s calling Dante’s attention to Eliot with a fitting note among the various “frag- him, the figure in the purgatorial flames freely iden- ments . . . shored against my ruins” at the conclu- tifies himself as Arnaut. He is one “who sings and sion of The Waste Land, so it is especially intriguing goes weeping,” he tells Dante, for he is spending that Eliot should feel obliged to revisit it here, at this part of his time in eternity regarding past fol- another critical juncture in a poem that seems to lies but looking forward with joy to that day when, be putting the vision of The Waste Land, with its purged of these remnants of his worldly sinfulness, painful and painstaking search for a private mode he shall be joined at last with God. Arnaut sends of salvation, entirely behind him now. Dante on his way with a plea common enough In the passage in question from the Purgato- among Catholic Christians, that they should pray rio, Dante, still guided by Virgil, has continued to for the souls in Purgatory, telling him in his own ascend the purgatorial mountain at whose base native Provençal: he had found himself on leaving the Inferno, or “Ara vos prec, per aquella valor hell. Dante encounters a fellow Italian poet, Guido que vos guida al som d’escalina, Guinizzelli, whom he finds suffering in the purga- sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.” tive or refining, as opposed to infernal or damning, [Now I pray you, by that valor fires, where he is being cleansed of the sin of a bes- which guides you to the topmost step, tial carnality. When Guinizzelli inquires why Dante think at times of my own dolor.] is apparently an admirer of his, Dante tells him that he admires him for his “sweet verses” that will Just as Dante’s rhyme contrasts his own courage be treasured “as long as modern usage endures.” to change himself for the better while he still lives Guinizzelli declines the compliment, however, and with Arnaut’s grief and sorrow for a life ill spent, points out to Dante another poet suffering in the so too does Arnaut’s arrested movement in the fire same fires for sins of carnality. He tells Dante that of his purgation—“Then he hid himself in the fire this poet, Arnaut Daniel, was “was a better crafts- that cleanses them”—contrast with Dante’s for- man [il miglior fabbro] in the mother tongue.” ward movement as he now continues onward up Since Arnaut Daniel was also a poet whom the stairs cut into the purgatorial mountain toward Eliot’s good friend and erstwhile mentor Ezra the summit, where both the vista of paradise and Pound, in the earliest phases of his own career as his beloved Beatrice await him. both a language scholar and poet, had studied and As the speaker of “Ash-Wednesday” now begins, translated, Eliot had put himself in the position of in part III, his own purgatorial ascent out of Ezekiel’s Guinizzelli in his dedication to The Waste Land by valley of dry bones, the reader is asked to be mind- complimenting Pound as il miglior fabbro, and Eliot ful of the contrast between Arnaut and Dante’s then returned to the same section of the Purgatorio condition. (In “Little Gidding,” Eliot describes the one last time in line 428 of The Waste Land. The choice between a worldly and a heavenly desire as line reads: “Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina [Then one of being “saved from fire by fire.”) Since it is a he hid himself in the fire that cleanses them],” and spiral staircase that the speaker seems to be ascend- with this line Dante ends canto 26. Eliot uses it, ing, each turn brings a different vista on a journey among others, in The Waste Land to signal the suc- that, fraught with danger though it may be, is nev-

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ertheless upward. Although the speaker’s direction visions like Dante’s had ushered in, the previous is upward, at the first turning of the second stair, darkness and threats of defeat are dispelled. the speaker, rather like Arnaut, who remains as Filled with a “strength beyond hope and mindful of his past follies as he is of the eternal despair,” the speaker, thus inspired and refreshed, reward that awaits him once he has been cleansed climbs the third step, intoning the words, “Lord, I of the last traces of his worldly attachments, finds am not worthy.” In the Catholic Mass, these words his thoughts turning downward toward past mis- are the opening of the communion rite on which takes and frustrations. This hesitancy is character- the Liturgy of the Eucharist draws to a close. As ized as the “devil of the stairs” with his “deceitful the priest raises the sacramental host, which in face of hope and of despair.” The soul, like the the Anglican rite would represent the body and bones, would awake and sing, but memory is a dis- blood of the Christ, the faithful, who are about traction that can derail the entire undertaking. to take communion, kneel to say some variation Still faring forward, the speaker comes to the of the following prayer: “Lord, I am not worthy to second turn, where the prospect is now, if possible, receive you. Speak but the word and my soul shall worse than the prospect of vacillation that had just be healed.” This prayer is taken virtually verbatim assaulted him. Here there are no faces, only dark- from the words of the Roman centurion whose story ness, and beneath him suddenly yawns the pit of is recounted in both Matthew 8:5–13 and Luke a pure, black despair (shades of St. John of the 7:2–10. Recognizing Christ’s divinity and miracu- Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul). Portrayed as an lous powers to heal the sick and dying, the centu- old man’s “drivelling” mouth or the “toothed gullet rion comes to beg Jesus to heal one of his servants of an agèd shark,” it is characterized in images of but does not want to presume upon Jesus’ time or a consuming force that would feed on and devour scruples (as a Jew, it would have been unclean for the speaker’s flagging hope much more cleanly than Jesus to enter a Roman’s home). So, instead, the the three leopards of part II had reduced his fleshy centurion tells Jesus: “Lord, I am unworthy that self to bone. This despair, instead, is capable of you should come under my roof. Speak but the swallowing him whole and leaving not a trace. word and my servant shall be healed.” Jesus found There is, however, a reward in persevering, for this man’s faith in him to be so remarkable that, in as the speaker arrives at the first turning of the Luke’s account, he called it to the attention of the third stair, clearly a step up, the vista suddenly multitude gathered around him. opens on blossoms and a pasture scene vested with It has become commonly accepted that faith a wealth of inviting colors—blue and green, lilac alone is what is required to achieve salvation, for it and brown—and there is the music of a flute. Even is out of faith that all gifts flow. Part III ends with the architectural detail through which this vista is the speaker, who till now has been struggling as if witnessed—a “slotted window bellied like the fig’s in private for the conversion of his life away from fruit”—calls up the image of a pregnant woman sin and guilt and a turning toward God, making the about to give birth, in keeping with the processes same declaration of faith in the power of God to of a spiritual rebirth which the speaker is undergo- heal his soul: “but speak the word only.” ing. In the midst of this more than hopeful scene is the lady, both emblem of the attraction through Part IV the flesh to perfect otherness that draws the soul “Ash-Wednesday,” however, is not prayer; it out of an obsession with self and toward God and is poetry, though it may be poetry about prayer. the type of Mary, the perfect mother and second Those are vast distinctions, nevertheless, and in Eve in and through whom humanity experienced a parts IV and V, the two parts of the poem that second birth. Her back is turned to him, and she is were not published until the poem was released not yet in Mary’s colors (that will come in part IV), as a completed piece, the poetry brings together but in the light that she brings, as if into a painting the personal and literary history with the history of from the Renaissance whose own brilliance poetic the soul, the three divergent but complementary

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pillars of experience on which the entire poem has torial ascent, he should find awaiting him there, been constructed. By doing so, Eliot justifies not as part IV opens, the lady’s ultimate manifestation his vision—few poets have ever felt the need to in the Virgin herself. To reiterate, Eliot’s speaker defend what they see or how they see it—but his has no Beatrice of his own, only the abstract lady technique for accomplishing such an intensely reli- (although Eliot did dedicate the poem to Vivien, gious vision in what remains nevertheless a poem. his first wife, from whom he was by then virtually Throughout the poem, Eliot has been employing a estranged). The Virgin will not speak, although technique that seems to run the risk of erasing the she does bend her head and make a sign to him, boundary between poetry and belief, whereas his is admitting his presence and, so, acknowledging his really a poem about the poetry of belief. Those, too, request. It is a request that is rather bluntly stated: are vast distinctions. “Redeem the time.” Part IV is virtually a hymn of praise to the lady, If Eliot’s speaker has already declared himself with whom by now the Virgin Mary has merged unworthy, it is not of salvation (that would be a completely. There are her colors now, white and presumptuous usurpation of God’s judgment) but, blue, just as the hawthorne of part III had signaled as a modern man, of the sort of vision Dante had the coming of May, her month. The significance been capable of having in an earlier age and time. of this emphasis in the poem on the cult of the Eliot explains this more fully in his essay “Dante,” Blessed Mother in both Roman Catholicism and published in 1929 during the period when he was the High Church Anglicanism to which Eliot was completing his work on “Ash-Wednesday.” In this drawn cannot be overemphasized. It is precisely essay, Eliot comments on how Dante’s La vita nuova Dante’s devotion to his lady as the embodiment mixes what Eliot calls biography and allegory. He of otherness and therefore of pure love that links cautions, however, that it is a “mixture according to her, in the person of Beatrice, to the Virgin in his a recipe not available to the modern mind,” which Commedia. It is the Virgin Mary, after all, who, he then defines as the minds of readers capable with a mother’s love for a desperate child, inter- only of reading “confessions.” That is because ours cedes on behalf of the lost Dante as the Comme- is an age that thinks in terms of “facts as they are” dia opens, thus sending Beatrice to Dante’s aid, and of “personalities,” he writes. He continues: “It although Beatrice herself first must appeal to Vir- is difficult to conceive of an age . . . when human gil, as embodied reason, to guide Dante during beings cared somewhat about the salvation of the the earliest parts of his journey toward spiritual ‘soul,’ but not about each other as ‘personalities.’ ” renewal and rebirth. Dante, Eliot contends, was the product of just such If thus far in Eliot’s own considerably abbrevi- an age, and this accounts for a marked difference in ated version of the same conversion process, Dante how he combined personal experience, such as the has been his Virgil, then Eliot’s Lady has to be encounters with Beatrice as he relates them in La not Beatrice but the stylized lady of the courtly vita nuova, with the very stuff of his poetry. love tradition on whom Dante’s adoration of Bea- For Eliot, a poet like Dante “had experiences trice is itself based. By the same token, Dante finds which seemed to him of some importance . . . [not] Beatrice waiting to guide him on the remainder because they had happened to him and because of his journey when he reaches the topmost stair he, Dante Alighieri, was an important person . . . ; at the end of the Purgatorio, and it is thus by vir- but important in themselves; and therefore they tue of her guidance, not reason’s, that he will be seemed to him to have some philosophical and able finally to witness, as much as any mortal is impersonal value.” The astute reader may quickly capable, paradise itself, where the blessed have observe that this premise could be applied to a gathered about the throne of God centered within poet like Eliot himself as well, at least if the posi- the multifoliate rose. It stands to reason that now tion on impersonality in poetry that he had staked that Eliot’s speaker has completed his own purga- out some 10 years before in the essay “Tradition

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and the Individual Talent” was more than one Queen of Heaven, “Salve, Regina” or “Hail, Holy to which he was simply paying critical lip service. Queen.” “And after this our exile,” in the prayer, Still speaking of Dante, Eliot concludes that for alludes to humanity’s exile from the rewards of par- such a poet, the stuff of both actual or personal adise following the Fall in the Garden of Eden. It is experience and of intellectual and imaginative a fall from which, in Christian terms, Christ’s death experience, which he identifies as thought and on the cross redeems humankind, and that Good dream, become modified into a third kind, which Friday event begins the close of the Lenten season is neither: “If you have that sense of intellectual that the observance of Ash Wednesday opens, all of and spiritual realities that Dante had,” its “form it culminating in the Resurrection on Easter Sun- of expression,” as Eliot puts it, “cannot be classed day. No doubt, Eliot chooses those words from that either as ‘truth’ or ‘.’ ” prayer to end this part of “Ash-Wednesday” for that It is with such an openness to the range of pos- reason alone, but the words also connote what Eliot sible experiences that “Ash-Wednesday” has thus sees as the modern world’s exile from the ancient far organized into its poetry that the reader can rhyme and high dream that a poet of Dante’s time appreciate the speaker of the Eliot poem when he could both know and convey so well. The prayer speaks of “restoring / With a new verse the ancient continues, “show unto us the blessed fruit of thy rhyme”—that is, a poetry of experience that is both womb, Jesus,” though the poem does not. intellectual and spiritual in the range of realities The yew, a tree traditionally grown in grave- with which it deals. The silent sister cannot speak yards, has branches that both overhang and are because people of Eliot’s time cannot “hear” her. nourished by all the past generations buried there. They have, he explains elsewhere in his “Dante” Like the voices of older poetry and a more vital essay, the capacity only to dream what he calls the belief in belief, such an ancient tree can offer a low dream. He contrasts that with what he calls the thousand whispers as the wind rustles its leaves, “ ‘pageantry’ ” of the high dream of which poets and but to be able to hear those whispers is not in and readers to at least the time of Dante were capable. of itself sufficient. One must also be able to deci- Surely it is some vestige of that older kind of poetic pher them, and be able to do that in his or her own imagination to which Eliot is either alluding or terms, the terms of timeless vision. attempting to revive when, in part IV, the speaker Part V continues by speaking of the “unread vision in the higher dream / While jewelled unicorns draw by How otherwise can the fifth part of “Ash-Wednes- the gilded hearse.” What the speaker both misses day” begin than with its great and ominous condi- and muses on is the “ancient” capacity of poetry, tional clause: “If the lost word is lost . . .”? What as the 17th-century English poet and cavalier Sir may sound like paradox or circular reasoning or Philip Sidney once put it, to take our brass world even nonsense makes perfect sense in the double and give us back a golden one in return. meaning of “this our exile” that the closing of part Till now, the speaker has been reaching upward IV has just established. toward the highest expression of the high dream, Here, all are exiled from being in the perpetual the human aspiration toward an understanding of presence of the Word, none more than another. In the nature of the divine, of eternity. Child of the a poem that has had for its focus virtually from the modern world that he is, however, he knows that outset two poets for whom exile became both a real- he can hope only to be able to approximate the ity and a poetic theme, Guido Cavalcanti and Dante vision that once had seemed to flow as freely and himself, the theme of humanity’s heavenly exile res- easily as music from the poets’ lips. So, then, he onates as both a poetic theme and a spiritual real- proposes, “redeem the dream / The token of the ity. Dante and Cavalcanti, however, were, in Eliot’s word unheard, unspoken.” view, not as much exiled in that other sense. Theirs The words with which part IV end come from was an age nearer to heaven because it was more in the prayer to Mary in her manifestation as the tune with the imaginative necessity of such an idea.

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They were far closer in their capacity for vision, if for those moderns who stand tepidly always only not in time as well, to a belief system and culture “at the gate” of understanding, the gate into the that supported and encouraged a poetry of faith in imagination’s ancient and still green garden, aware the supernal, whereby the use of metaphor to reach of the traditions, but “[w]ho will not go away and beyond the mere mundane without abandoning its cannot pray.” accoutrements was recognized as a proper domain The modern world is one in which “there is not for poetry, perhaps even its only proper domain. enough silence,” the speaker had earlier reflected, From the time of Plato onward, poetry had been one too, for all the pride it takes in its having “lit recognized as the most unique human endeavor for up the night,” that “walks in [a spiritual] darkness / giving utterance to the otherwise unutterable, and Both in the day time and in the night time.” Its fail- voice to the soul’s great silence. So, then, echoing ure, however, has to be a failure as much if not more Lancelot Andrewes, the 17th-century English cler- of its poets as of itself. It must be they who, having gyman and prose stylist, the speaker acknowledges somehow lost the capacity not only to dream the that the Word is always within the world and, high dream but to express it effectively and suitably though unspoken and unheard, remains a focus, a in verse, have been instrumental in leaving their presence, a “centre” that the “unstilled world still brothers and sisters in darkness despite, or because whirled / About.” of, all of our technological advances. When the speaker asks, however, where the word Thus, echoing both Christ’s rebuke and the will be found, he knows one thing emphatically phrase with which Dante reputedly began a public and with a certainty that is far more desperate than letter to his fellow Florentines following his exile, reassuring, that it will be “[n]ot [be] here”—not be the speaker seems to take the brunt of the fail- ure on himself, but leaves open the possibility that found, in other words, in his own time and place, the failure of a poetry that is capable of finding where there is “[n]o time to rejoice for those who the means of expressing belief must ultimately be walk among noise and deny the voice.” The speak- a failure of the culture itself: “O my people, what er’s, in simple terms, is not a time or age for poetry have I done unto you.” It is a double-edged ques- or the high dream. Rather this is the world of The tion: What have I done to you? What have I done Waste Land again, the landscape where the best are to deserve your reproach? The desert may be in “hollow men” who have some knowledge of what the garden, but there must also be a garden in the they have lost but no will to find where it might yet desert. “Ash-Wednesday” is still Eliot’s poetry of be, content to moan in their collective misery, too drouth, as the critic Edmund Wilson titled a review spiritually inept to see, literally, their way out of their of The Waste Land. It is, as ashes suggest, a poetry hollow valley except as if from a great distance. of waste, but the question must be: What has been In this cultural context, the “veiled sister” wasted, and who has wasted it? For all the bitter- becomes a trope for all that is mysterious and thus ness of the closing image of a mouth “spitting a draws humanity out of the mere mundane with the tedium of its attractions, distractions, and demands. withered apple-seed,” there is a hint of the garden She is most certainly Mary, the most human of still remaining, the fruit of the trees remaining on portals to the mystery of the Incarnation, but she their branches yet. is also the Lady, the ideal of love and otherness Part VI that frees the spirit from its prison of self, and she Eliot seems always to have had a talent for doing is most certainly the Lady Poetry, long regarded as nothing easily, at least as far as the comfort levels the highest and most rigorous of . of his readers might be concerned, but he always The Lady is like Prufrock’s mermaids, who will would argue that one does things as well as one not sing to him. The modern world recognizes but is able and as much as one’s epoch requires and does not know her, not in the same imaginative enables, nothing less, nothing more. The question ways that that old world did, so, she will not pray “Ash-Wednesday” poses in Part V, as if the poetry

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has been heading toward just that consideration, is the unspeakable. He frees his speaker to achieve an important and a valid one: Is it still possible to the same sort of personal revelation regarding faith write a poetry of belief, of the effects of the action of that the speaker at the end of The Waste Land also faith on an individual? Homer did. Virgil did. Dante achieved. did. It is fair, then, for Eliot to ponder whether the To do so, however, Eliot had to realize that, modern world can or cannot, and if it can, what even for the poet, the task is to set one’s own house it might look like. If from the time of Plato the in order—to see the beam in his own eye, as it Western imagination had held poetry in the highest were—if he ever hopes to come to peace with him- esteem for giving utterance to the otherwise unut- self and achieve a meaningful way to address the terable aspirations of the human spirit in its yearn- same doubts and struggles with faith that may well ing for contemplation of and union with the divine, be afflicting everyone else. It is an old solution to why should this same esteem and skill seem to be what may be a new problem: When a problem can- denied the imagination in the modern world? not be solved, shift the focus. The only difference By the end of part V, the opening lines of “Ash- between Eliot’s and the poetry of belief of the past Wednesday,” with their strong hints of a literary may be that he, through his speaker, feels compelled rivalry—“desiring this man’s art and that man’s to analyze the problem of writing about believing scope”—take on a new range of meaning, too. The rather than facing head-on the larger problem of contemporary speaker seems to be all too painfully writing belief itself. Again, his speaker resolves that conscious, as the poem continues, that his is a lesser problem in part VI finally by addressing the issue age than most, not for a lack of religiosity necessar- of belief in and of itself, but only after having mud- ily but for a lack of a poetics of sufficient clarity and died those waters in the preceding five parts by vision with which to express the experiences of his struggling with the devil of the stairs, which was as time. Thus, the speaker’s every echo of their visions much an aesthetic, cultural, and literary historical and expression expresses an overarching envy for problem as a spiritual and personal one. the past poets whom he also seeks to emulate. So, then, the “Because I do not hope to turn By pondering this contemporary state of affairs . . .” of part I has become, by part VI, “Although I aloud in his own poetry, however, the speaker also do not hope to turn . . . ,” which expresses at the runs the risk of seeming to endorse, or at least lend very least that such an event may not yet prove his own efforts to identifying, the very lack that one to be the case but is not an entire impossibility. is ostensibly hoping to remedy. However, instead of There is also the suggestion, since these words now writing a poetry that merely laments the absence of come immediately after the cultural critique of part a serious poetry of belief in his time, Eliot chose to V, that, along with turning himself away from the write just such a poetry himself in part VI of “Ash- ways of the world toward the repentance that the Wednesday.” He very likely could not have gotten Lenten season will require of him in keeping with away with writing the sort of poetry that he writes its spiritual austerity, the speaker does not hope in the concluding part of the poem, however, had to turn the tide of the spiritual emptiness that he he not, to this point in the rest of the poem, run imagines to be assaulting the present moment in the gamut of a poetry that muses about faith as a which he lives. Resigned to the fact that he can topic for poetry as much as, or even more than, it manage only his own affairs, he throws himself on may express it, and muses as well about what sorts the mercy of the court, as it were, to plead not his of conditions not just of self but of one’s culture age’s but his own case in resigned self-abnegation. permit the proper expression of belief in poetry. This, too, is in keeping with the great, tried-and- Indeed, because of the kind of double-think and true spiritual poetry of the past, particularly Dante’s. double-speak that Eliot had exercised in his ear- Dante may include an encyclopedic account of the liest poetry and had been exercising thus far in figures and events of his time, indeed, of much “Ash-Wednesday,” he is able, in part VI, to do of , in his accounting of his own

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spiritual trial as it is told in the Commedia, but its more recent poem of Eliot’s dealing with one who greatness as a work of art lies in the intensity of the was lost but now is found.) In The Waste Land, personal and intimate tone he strikes by making however, the spirituality was couched in the terms himself the focus of his own dramatic struggle, just of an Eastern religious tradition, the Upanishads, as he had done in his La vita nuova. The Commedia whereas here the tradition in which the spiritual is not a treatise on the difficulties of writing reli- quest is rendered is wholly Christian and by and gious poetry; it is a poem on the difficulties atten- large Catholic in nature, in keeping, possibly, with dant upon seeking personal salvation. the poet’s own reversion to his own orthodox roots Self-conscious modernist that he is, Eliot’s in the years during which he was composing the speaker has till now felt more obliged to establish various parts of “Ash-Wednesday” as apparently his literary credentials than to present the drama separate poems. of his quest for redemption in poetic form. But The interjection of the parenthetical “Bless me perhaps having done so for the first five parts of the father” into the second stanza, with its “dream- poem, he is now prepared, in the sixth, to do freely crossed twilight” reminiscent of another interven- what he has imagined till now no child of his age ing poem, “The Hollow Men,” calls immediately to can do: Use poetry to empty his heart of its longing mind for a Catholic the formulaic prayer of greet- for salvation. It is a typical Eliot “turning,” stealing ing and submission by which the penitent sinner that key term from his own present poetic lexicon, begins his confession to a priest, which may also to go quickly from the place that one is not to the call to mind Arnaut Daniel’s farewell greeting to place that one wants to be, the kind of paradox Dante “Ara vos prec” (“Now I pray you”). Eliot’s he played on as, after “Ash-Wednesday,” he wrote speaker, having survived the purgatorial passage more and more poetry in a decidedly religious vein, that has brought him to this shore and having tran- culminating in the great artistic achievement of his scended the allure of “[t]he empty forms between own Paradiso, “Little Gidding,” in 1942. the ivory gates,” which are, in Greek mythology, That poetry is still more than a decade away, the gates through which false dreams come, is however, and in 1930 and “Ash-Wednesday,” the ready to stand in the “tension between dying and speaker calls up words and images that do not look birth.” There dreams cross, seeking to know the forward but hark back instead to the critical turn- dream that is true. (As Eliot had written of Dante, ing point in The Waste Land, “Death by Water,” the high dream is neither “truth” nor “fiction” but where the drowned Phoenician sailor, Phlebas, rather an intensely personal admixture of both— “[f]orgot . . . the profit and the loss.” It is between primarily of experience with its greatest possible those same two extremes of worldliness that “Ash- significance.) Wednesday”’s speaker wavers. They provide an All that the speaker can ask by this point is some appropriate reference to the pursuits of worldly blessing on his own vision, that it may not prove to gain and glory that plague the spiritual seeker “[i]n be wrong: “Suffer us not to mock ourselves with this brief transit,” an image that puns on both the falsehood”—the greatest danger being to accept shortness of a human life and the demands of com- what Eliot will call in After Strange Gods “attrac- merce and other material enterprises. tive half-truths.” Those need not be only doctrinal For the next few stanzas, images from earlier matters. Indeed, if the poetry has revealed anything moments in the sequence—the lilac, the window, to this point, it is how intricately the spiritual, with the rock, the yew-tree, the garden—are intermin- its questions of belief, resignation, and acceptance, gled with yet more sea imagery and the movement is combined with other considerations—the social, of sails, the flight of birds, all of it calling more the historical, the cultural, the aesthetic, the pub- and more to mind not only Phlebas but the sea- lic, the private. So virtually inextricably are these shore and sailing imagery near the conclusion of strands of thought and feeling, allusion and mem- The Waste Land’s fifth part, “What the Thunder ory, hopefulness and despair, that constitute the Said.” (They also call to mind “Marina,” another, individual existence intertwined in the poem, in

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fact, that to try to isolate any one of those ele- seeking, or at least verbally flirting with, through- ments from a consideration of the speaker’s state of out the entire poem. mind and spirit leaves the poetry flat and, at times, Then, from the Anima Christi, comes the closing almost pointless, little more than a series of rhyth- plea to Christ that introduces the final two lines: mic musings that seem to go nowhere. “Suffer me not to be separated” (“. . . from you,” The poetry points instead in one direction, and is how the Anima Christi concludes this sentence). that is toward completion and resolution. Its final To this plea the speaker appends the response of moments are taken up, as they should be, with a the faithful, “And let my cry come unto Thee.” On consideration not of all of the details again but of that note, “Ash-Wednesday,” itself a cry, a plea, a what the religious call “final things.” Those can be critique, and a lament, comes to an end. nothing less than a consideration, by the speaker, not of his relationship with past literary figures or CRITICAL COMMENTARY contemporary culture and society but with his cre- So much of “Ash-Wednesday” is self-reflective as ator, God, who, for a Christian, would be embodied poetry that much of the preceding part-by-part in his Savior, Christ. It is absolutely fitting then commentary on the poem has been itself a run- that the poem ends in total humility as the speaker ning critical analysis of the poet’s apparent intent. recites a key passage from the Anima Chisti (Spirit The poem, it seems, enunciates a stinging cultural of Christ). Attributed to St. Ignatius de Loyola, the critique while exposing nevertheless the speaker’s 16th-century Spanish priest who founded the Jesu- apparently genuine spiritual struggle as it undergoes its, these sentiments from this early 14th-century its own step-by-step development. “Ash-Wednes- prayer crown the conclusion to “Ash-Wednesday” day” thus becomes such an intensely compounded very much as the “shantih” of the Upanishads poetic, intellectual, and emotional experience that crowns the conclusion of The Waste Land. it would be invaluable for any reader to take final Similar again to The Waste Land and almost stock of the rich variety of options for meaning that like a symphonic musical composition, as “Ash- the poem seems to be making available. Wednesday” rolls to a close, the speaker continues As with any Eliot poem, there is the almost to reiterate past themes, particularly from part I immediate temptation to read it autobiographically. with its plea to “[t]each us to care and not to care.” A reader discovering that Eliot had undergone a Echoing Dante one last time, this time in the words profound spiritual conversion experience from of Piccarda di Donati from canto V of the Paradiso 1926 through 1927, the years when he started com- (suggesting that the speaker has made it, by poem’s posing the individual pieces that would eventually end, at least that far past the Purgatorio passages emerge in 1930 as “Ash-Wednesday,” might be all recounted in part III), the speaker abandons false- too ready to assume that the conversion experience hood and fixes his mind on a single truth: “Our is precisely what the poem is all about. From the peace in His will.” preceding synopsis, however, the reader will under- The poetry continues to summarize the quest, stand that such a conclusion could not be further the spiritual ordeal, that has taken place to this from the truth. But, then, what is the truth? point. In quick order of short bursts of poetic verses, Even to begin to approach a satisfactory answer there follow snapshot references to a place of rocks to that question, it would be wise to begin by taking (a familiar enough spiritual terrain throughout to heart that signal from Eliot himself regarding the Eliot’s poetry, always calling to mind, ultimately, distinction between the personal and the poetical the spirit of desolation figured in Christ’s 40 days in whereby “truth” and “fiction” often meet and change the wilderness), the female figure that is identified places, first in that crucible that is the poet’s mind as both sister and mother and that has consistently and then, more important, in the part of that process represented the saving grace of an engagement with that finally becomes fixed and cast as the poem. otherness, and finally the sea, age-old emblem of The distance from the so-called truth that is auto- the rebirth and renewal that the speaker has been biography to the so-called fiction that is poetry is an

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immense one once the reader regards the steps that by the ghost of Virgil at the command of God—to it takes for the one, raw experience, to become the lay bare a fairly true record of his own personal other, polished verse. So, then, although Eliot’s, like encounter with the shortcomings of his age. The any other poet’s, biography can provide the reader Irish novelist JAMES JOYCE (1881–1941), Eliot’s con- with a cue, it hardly ever provides even so much as temporary, delved into the most fascinating aspects the trace of a satisfactory clue. It is, after all, by the of an individual’s moral and spiritual growth by intensification of personal experience—that “larger thinly veiling an autobiography of his coming of age than life” quality expected of products of the imagi- as a young poet in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young nation—that the poet makes the successful transfor- Man. In every case, however, including Eliot’s, the mation of such experience into great art so that the critical and scholarly interest aroused is, as it ought personal experience that had apparently inspired the to be, invested in the execution of the work, not art seldom seems to measure up to expectations and the life that inspired it. virtually never provides more than the most funda- Such works virtually always entail three stages mentally “useful” insight. Unfortunately, in art, the of dramatic development, or, in the case of mystics useful is seldom the purposeful. such as John of the Cross, steps in the spiritual For genuine clues into the possible “mean- life, on which these literary works are often uncon- ing” of any work of literature, it would be wiser sciously modeled—the awakening, the purgative, to turn to other cues, such as those that are pro- and the unitive. The duration of each phase need vided by poetic and other conventions and tradi- not be equal, but all three are always present and tions. Here, incidentally, Eliot typically proves to generally in that order. In the first, the initiate be generously unstinting, so much so as to make quite literally awakens to the perilous state of his readers occasionally question the poet’s motives, soul or the sorry state of his life, which is pretty perhaps rightly. Based on those kinds of cues, much the same thing. Any sensitive reader can see “Ash-Wednesday” falls conveniently into a genre this process taking place throughout most of parts of literary composition that is relatively common, I and II of “Ash-Wednesday,” where the speaker being what might be called the spiritual biography. gives his life an unflinchingly realistic evaluation Even here it is necessary to distinguish between the and finds it wanting. Here he comes to recognize idea of personal experience and the idea of spiri- tual experience. The emphasis in the term spiritual his shortcomings and failings, which are by and biography is on the spiritual, denoting that sensitiv- large self-centeredness, so that by the end of part ity to the inchoate to which mere biography gives II, he has been reduced to little more than the rem- order and coherence but not necessarily any factual nant of his former self—bones picked cleaned by basis. “Ash-Wednesday,” in that regard, makes far these remorseless leopards of self-analysis. more sense as the spiritual biography of a carefully Needless to say, the next phase, the purga- designed and delineated speaker, totally unrelated tive, has already begun once the speaker has to the “real” T. S. Eliot. been reduced to far less than even the figurative The same may not always be said of other shadow of his former self. Memory, regret, doubt, examples of the genre, especially since there is no and despair all persist, however, as in part III, the prescribed way of executing such a biography, nor speaker ascends from those lingering elements of should there be one. The English romantic poet the self he no longer wishes to be toward the per- (1770–1850), for example, son that he fears he may, through a lack of cour- relied heavily on autobiography in his long poem age and perseverance, fail to become. Rendered The Prelude, which traces the progress of his moral appropriately as the mounting of a circular stair- and spiritual growth, while Dante Alighieri con- case, this ascension is toward union not so much cocted, in The Divine Comedy, the most outra- with the creator/godhead, although that is the geously outlandish fiction—that finding he had lost ideal goal, as with the fulfilled self, who will have his own moral and spiritual way, he was rescued emerged successfully from the purgative process

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should the speaker overcome his former failings define the general problem of belief in the mod- and shortcomings. ern world—surely a worthy theme—by simultane- For Eliot, this last phase, the unitive, is never ously commenting on the problem, partly through quite achieved. The speaker instead divides him- his literary allusions, while illustrating the problem self, according to his interests, into three distinct through his speaker’s confusion and consternation parts, as it were. It is critical for him to resolve each with what appear to be his own personal spiritual part if he is to achieve the completion that the uni- concerns. Though not necessarily working at cross- tive phase requires, but no one of the three zones of purposes, this strategy, however, may finally have interest is capable of being treated in coordination only deflected the reader’s attention from either with the other. Therefore, it can be demonstrated theme. In a normal narrative or dramatic context, that the literary historical analysis implicit in part one can move such a dual agenda forward fairly IV, the reflections on the distractions of the mod- easily, either by means of clearly plotted antago- ern world addressed in Part V, and the personal nistic elements or conflicting characterizations. In submission to God’s will and the mercies of Christ the context of what sounds to be a lyric poem, of Part VI each forms a part of the speaker’s needs however, with a single and single-minded speaker, for achieving a satisfactory spiritual resolution. the alternating aims of Eliot’s project do not always Only the last of the three, however, is traditionally lend themselves well to a well-defined clarity of thought of as within the spiritual action normally purpose. That lack of clarity of purpose may have required of the supplicant. very well been Eliot’s purpose, however. If he is It is this addition on Eliot’s part not of super- claiming that his is not an age easily given to the fluous requirements so much as of his excessively expression of the religious sentiment, he can hardly objectifying what must remain, nevertheless, an write a poem that will express that sentiment as if it essentially private spiritual process that makes the were some ancient clarion call. poem peculiarly modern while it ironically illus- Still, the poem works if the speaker is accepted trates the very sort of fragmenting of focus that as a fictive projection, no more real as a personality modernism entails and that the poetry decries. Read than, say, Prufrock or the hollow men or Geron- as an Ash Wednesday exercise, that is, as a peniten- tion. For then it is far easier to come to terms tial entry into a state of mind and spirit suitable for with this doubling effect whereby the poem and the Lenten season, with its overtones of mourning the poetry are both the working out of formal and and death and requirements for abstinence and self- thematic problems and an expression of the spirit denial, the poetry no doubt goes over the top and of belief. Despite all the turn toward an orthodox, may be even regarded as a dismal failure. mainstream Christianity that his personal life had It is important to reiterate at this juncture, how- taken at this time, Eliot, forever the craftsman and ever, the earlier observation that “Ash-Wednes- poetic theorizer, might have been, at this point in day” is not prayer, nor is it poetry about the need his literary career, merely exploring in the various for prayer or to pray. Instead, it is poetry about parts of “Ash-Wednesday” the limits of and limi- what conditions are most conducive to the human tations on religious expression in verse for wholly capacity for prayer, and it finds those conditions aesthetic and technical purposes. If so, the poetry lacking in the contemporary scene that the speaker shows him to be capable of forging out of his past inhabits. Regarded in that manner, “Ash-Wednes- technical triumphs, where he combined allusion day” is a resounding success, though one that the with original statement, an effectively new and dis- reader cannot easily share in, since it requires an tinct poetic voice. aesthetics of failure to achieve its aim. The poet It is a voice that served Eliot even better as he succeeds by demonstrating that such poetry can no went on, throughout the rest of the 1930s, to turn longer succeed. his attention more and more directly to the theme “Let my cry come unto Thee” is a plea, not that had occupied his attention throughout most a poetic resolution. It is as if Eliot has chosen to of his poetical and critical career to this time:

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the crisis of order in the modern world. That crisis The three poems provide the speaker with a would take on new dimensions for Eliot as he now female blood relation for a focus. All three fur- began to see in it the manifestation of a far deeper ther suggest that the female relation in question and far more pervasive spiritual crisis. Thanks to is unmarried, thus hinting at the end of the family the labor of producing “Ash-Wednesday,” he devel- line, and all three offer the reader as a conse- oped a poetic tool, sharp and pliant and capable of quence a glimpse into a world of genteel rituals accomplishing this more formidable task as before and assumptions, one that seems to be on the him loomed the disastrous economic, political, and brink of extinction but is blissfully unaware of military conflagrations of the 1930s and 1940s. the fact. Furthermore, while these three short poems may seem on the surface to have all the FURTHER READING earmarks of other Eliot poems from this period, Hinchliffe, Arnold P. The Waste Land and Ash during which he was still under the considerable Wednesday: An Introduction to the Variety of Criti- influence of the French symbolists, notably JULES cism. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press LAFORGUE, it is more likely that these three are International, 1987. among those early poems in which, consciously Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: or not, Eliot was struggling to find his own voice McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. and poetic territory, a world that he and he alone Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. London: would know best. Macmillan, 1989. SYNOPSIS Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of The speaker’s maiden aunt, Miss Helen Slingsby, Chicago Press, 1974. who had lived in a small but fashionable house in the “right” part of town with her four servants, Unger, Leonard. T. S. Eliot: Moments and Patterns. Min- died, and her life had apparently been so thor- neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. oughly proper that not only did both heaven and her end of the street, appropriately proper extremes, fall silent as a consequence of her passing, but the undertaker knew enough to wipe his feet on enter- “Aunt Helen” (1915) ing her house, even though its mistress had now gone to her proper reward. Not so her servants, Shades of Cousin Harriet from “The Boston Evening however. That not necessarily unruly but neverthe- Transcript” must surely haunt this equally short less wholly human lot quickly took advantage of poem, “Aunt Helen,” which not only followed their defunct mistress’s absence. The footman not the other immediately in Eliot’s Complete Poems only dared to commit such an affrontery as to sit on but was published in company with it and “Cousin the dining room table but went as far as to dawdle Nancy” in Poetry magazine in October 1915 and one of the maids on his knees as he did so—some- then collected along with the other two in Eliot’s thing that the young lady in question would never first volume, Prufrock and Other Observations, in have allowed “while her mistress lived.” 1917. Taken as a sequence of sorts, the three poems The humor of the situation, such as it is, is together form a singular excursion on Eliot’s part transparent, summed up in the old adage, “While into the somewhat stately and stale environment the cat’s away, the mice will play.” In this case, of the Eliot family’s antecedents, however, there is no chance of the cat’s ever com- particularly if “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- ing back, and it is that development that gives the frock” be excluded from the list, which, in view of Eliot poem a more tragically ironic twist. While the its own social ambiance, also gives the impression poem may have all the forthright and somewhat of being set among the tediously stifling rituals of predictable bawdiness of an extended limerick, it polite society. also remarks in a slightly slanted way on the chang-

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ing of the guard in Boston and in polite American for the challenges that it posed to those experienc- culture in general. ing it at its fringe. These were poems from those ear- Aunt Helen, who had no children, left much lier Harvard years and his subsequent student year her legacy to her four dogs, the reader is led to in Paris from 1910 to 1911. He had also exploited believe, suggesting that hers and her kind are no that outsider’s view of polite society from an insid- longer making much of a serious effort at perpetu- er’s perspective to powerful effect in other early ating their cherished social values in any case. Fur- poetry such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- thermore, as the behavior of the footman and the frock” and “Portrait of a Lady.” They, again, show second housemaid suggests, new people, it is plain something of Eliot’s uncanny ability to recognize a to see, are moving in, if not yet into her neighbor- rich poetic resource in the tragicomic constraints hood, then at least into the remnants of her orderly imposed by polite society, an ability he owed to and proper world. Not only that, but these new the influences of such equally foreign viewpoints people, because they are a bit more in touch with and sensibilities as Baudelaire’s and Laforgue’s. their more healthy animal natures, will no doubt Nevertheless, the manner in which Eliot ultimately propagate. From that promised premise, it is a short addresses the particular quality of that social order step for the reader to the theme of “Cousin Nancy,” is purely his own in poems like “The Boston Evening who, it will turn out, is the end of the (old) line. Transcript,” “Cousin Nancy,” and “Aunt Helen,” a point that he seems to underscore intentionally CRITICAL COMMENTARY by making his subjects not merely social acquain- In a Paris Review interview in 1959, Eliot, looking tances, as in the case of “Prufrock” and “Portrait,” back the nearly 50 years to when, as an under- but the speaker’s kin. graduate at Harvard in 1910 and 1911, he had That said, “Aunt Helen” itself is also one of the first discovered the work of Laforgue and the much few Eliot poems that does not challenge the reader more renowned CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, would com- to imagine continually that the poem is changing ment on how he had learned from each of them an form or direction or theme from one line to the appreciation for the poetic resources that he had next. Rather, it drives in a straight and perhaps too there in his own American idiom and in the experi- obviously satirical a line from start to finish, much ences of life in a modern, industrial metropolis. At as the slightly darker but no less readily accessible the time, Eliot had likely been in the process of dis- “Cousin Nancy” does. covering his own unique background. The descen- If any two words were often to be heard in con- dant of an old and illustrious New England family, junction when it came to describing the denizens of he nevertheless had had the advantage of being the capital city of Massachusetts at the beginning of born and raised in the same traditions and with the the 20th century, it is that they were “proper Bosto- same sense of social rank and privilege but entirely nians.” This phrase was meant to apply, of course, elsewhere, namely, ST. LOUIS, Missouri. This literal not to the vast and varied immigrant population of distancing from the world of Boston society that Irish, Italians, Jews, and other largely southern and Eliot had come to know in any event from boyhood central European ethnicities who then inhabited trips with his family and from his student years one of the major U.S. urban centers of the day, but at Milton Academy and then at Harvard might to the so-called Brahmin, the descendants of the have given him the advantage of a psychological old Anglo-Saxon stock that had originally settled distance as well. He could view the commonplace the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th century. values and realities of this exclusive social class, of With their fabled Puritan rigorousness and Yankee which he was a part but not a member, and see the ingenuity, they had virtually been the vanguard of anomalies and contradictions that an insider would American idealism and progressive thinking from not notice at all. the first days of the republic to the time in which In poems such as “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” Eliot was writing, but they also set the standards and “Preludes,” he had already explored urban life for taste and good judgment in their little corner

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 75 9/5/07 2:35:43 PM 76 “Baudelaire” of the world, which, from their point of view, “Baudelaire” (1930) was the world. Members of this class of Bosto- nians were proper, then, not simply because they Precisely when Eliot became familiar enough with behaved correctly or because they knew how to the poetry of the French symbolist poet CHARLES behave correctly, but because they made a point BAUDELAIRE, the unchallenged “bad boy” of 19th- of behaving correctly. And to behave correctly century European literature, for Baudelaire to have was, when it came to judging anyone else, to had an influence on Eliot’s own work is difficult behave like them. to say with any precision. This 1930 essay pro- By Eliot’s time, this legendary insistence on vides some critical insight into Eliot’s high regard having just the right measure of self-respect to for the French poet at the very moment when his know exactly how to comport not only one’s per- own work and thought were beginning to undergo son but one’s life in both public and private had serious readjustments. Eliot had become more and become something of a running comic tagline for more firmly convinced of and devoted to Christian the rest of humanity, no doubt, but it remained beliefs just as the 1920s and the heady optimism no less a point of pride among proper Bostonians. fostered by his generation’s faith in an aesthetic This same inherited and by now largely intuited revolution that would save the modern world from respect for order and dignity could, however, also itself, were drawing to a close. impose crippling constraints on the very kinds of individuality that the Bay State still takes an equal BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS pride in fostering. Surely one of the points of Eliot’s It was the French symbolists, Baudelaire chief “Prufrock” is to depict a victim of such constraints among them, who virtually invented the modern in a poem whose title character and speaker finds urban nightmare as a topic for serious poetry. In it “impossible to say just what I mean” because he their response to that topic, one unique to our feels that he must only ever behave and converse time, they created a whole new tone for poetry that “just so.” combined, in the place of the sentimentalities of “Aunt Helen” does not take the matter that far a romantic overkill, the understatement of bitter- in its sending up the cherished values and lifestyles ness and resignation into an oddly celebratory aes- of a typical “proper Bostonian,” but that is not thetic. With it, they reflected and reflected on the Eliot’s aim here. Rather, here his aim appears to new, gas-lighted urban landscapes revealed only at be to have fun with the vagaries of human nature night among an often sordid squalor in which was and with the toll that time and tide take on all bred that brutalization of the spirit and a collec- human institutions, including Boston’s code of tive despair that were only just then beginning to absolute propriety. One should not be tempted to assault the human psyche. make more of a poem than the poet makes himself. Surely, then, there is more of Baudelaire than of Surely, Eliot does not go out of his way to suggest that other major French symbolist influence upon that “Aunt Helen” or its two companion pieces, Eliot, the dandified and plaintively witty JULES “The Boston Evening Transcript” and “Cousin LAFORGUE, in those youthful, urban nocturnes of Nancy,” are major efforts. Still, they record, how- Eliot’s, of which “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” ever lightly, the changing of the guard for the old and “Preludes” are the most outstanding and Anglo-American culture that sired Eliot. Readers memorable examples. Nevertheless, it is difficult who notice this will be less surprised or puzzled by to establish that Baudelaire in particular was one the cultural holding action in which Eliot seems to of Eliot’s guiding poetic spirits as early as the time spend the better part of his own middle age during of the composition of “Rhapsody” during 1910 and the 1930s and 1940s in works such as After Strange 1911. The French poet was not among the symbol- Gods, The Idea of a Christian Society, and Notes ists originally included in ARTHUR SYMONS’s THE towards the Definition of Culture. SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE, that famous

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introduction to the work and vision of the French tinued to pay his poetic respects to Baudelaire more symbolists. It was this book, which Eliot read as than any other recent poet, and less only than he a Harvard undergraduate in 1908 that had first honored Dante and Shakespeare. As late as the introduced him to these recent trends in French 1950 essay on Dante, Eliot singled Baudelaire out as poetry. (Symons eventually included Baudelaire in an example of another kind of influence, different his groundbreaking study, but it was not until the from that of Laforgue, whose effects were felt in his revised edition of 1919.) youth, or even of Dante, who had had a continu- That Eliot read Baudelaire fairly early on is ing influence as a lifelong master. There Eliot calls nevertheless indisputable. The French poet’s work Baudelaire a poet from whom one can learn “some is included in a list of books that Eliot’s mother, one thing.” Eliot goes on to tell his audience that Charlotte, in a 1920 letter to him, indicated were from Baudelaire he had learned that “the more sor- to be moved from their ST. LOUIS home. Eliot had did aspects of the modern metropolis . . . the sort of not been in residence in the United States since material that I had, the sort of experience . . . in an March 1914, except for a brief visit in the sum- industrial city in America, could be the material for mer of 1915, and that visit was to the Eliot fami- poetry.” ly’s summer home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The Baudelaire volume had to have been acquired SYNOPSIS well before Eliot’s departure for England in 1914, In this much earlier essay now under consider- then, perhaps even while Eliot was first in Paris in ation, composed during the same period as his first 1910–11. extended essay on Dante of 1929, Eliot starts by There is no doubt, however, that Baudelaire’s commenting on the tendency to identify Baude- dark and forbidding urban vision, expounded in laire as a “fragmentary” Dante, explaining himself the volume Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), by observing that “many people who enjoy Dante which contained a poetry infested with images of enjoy Baudelaire.” sexual license, physical decay, and self-loathing, Although for his own part Eliot makes it clear helped dramatically shape Eliot’s early poetic vision that he would prefer to think of Baudelaire as a as it matured. Eliot famously alluded to Baude- “more limited” version of the equally great and far laire’s preface to Les fleurs du mal in one of the most more recent German poet Goethe, Baudelaire is apocalyptic of urban moments in The Waste Land, given his own due by Eliot ultimately for his having toward the end of the “Burial of the Dead,” with a unique sense of his age and for having engaged which the poem opens. Amid allusions to DANTE “the real problem of good and evil,” particularly as ALIGHIERI’s Inferno, another hellish landscape, a it was manifested in the “ennui of modern life.” To crowd of zombified urbanites crosses over London be sure, it is his “sense of his age” that, Eliot thinks, Bridge, and Eliot calls to his reader’s mind Baude- particularly sets Baudelaire aside. Eliot had already laire’s vision of the city beset with an all-consuming made a similar point regarding what he calls “the boredom. great poet” in his 1927 essay “Shakespeare and the Indeed, in his 1950 essay “What Dante Means Stoicism of Seneca,” in which he argued that such to Me,” Eliot wrote that all of Baudelaire’s influence a poet, “in writing himself, writes his time.” While on him could be summed up in those two lines of it may not be exactly the same sentiment, in the the latter’s poetry, when he describes the city as if it 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” were a seething anthill. These lines of Baudelaire’s Eliot was careful to stress the importance of the Eliot paraphrases more than translates as he, at that poet’s having an awareness of his or her own time point in The Waste Land, describes London as the well enough to know its place in history. Indeed, “Unreal City.” By this time, of course, Eliot had at that time Eliot had been bold enough to declare already developed his own reputation as a daring that “historical sense . . . nearly indispensable” to innovator in both form and theme. Long after Eliot anyone who would wish to continue to write poetry had outgrown the influences of Laforgue, he con- past his 25th year.

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These emphases on a historical consciousness It is for the very reason that Baudelaire’s age is that both shapes and perceives the poet’s time one that produced not great wisdom but what has were a reflection of a major concern on the part of become by now, in Eliot’s view, “outmoded non- Eliot, whose own poetry often seemed to be trying sense” that Baudelaire’s poetry is of value to the to bridge the vast temporal and cultural divides present. His poetry reveals what becomes of poetic between one people and another, and one epoch vision when the age that produces it has a distorted and another. An acute historical consciousness sense of proportion and perception. definitely singled out for Eliot the great poets, those Though Eliot does not openly identify this “out- who, more than their own experience, objectified moded nonsense” that affected Baudelaire or its the experience of being alive in their particular his- sources, it seems that he is alluding to the secular- torical moment. These would include Homer and ism and scientific positivism of Baudelaire’s time, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare. For Eliot to include the effects of which on the sensibilities of a per- Baudelaire in this company, is to do him a great ceiving mechanism as fine-tuned as a great poet’s honor. These kinds of poets, after all, help mold were to compel Baudelaire to foster in his poetry, what is for Eliot that all-important cultural tradi- despite the sophistication of his age, a “theological tion by continually adding to it even when they innocence.” By “discovering Christianity for him- seem most to be flying in the face of it, and there is self” rather than for reasons of fashion or social or no reason to assume that Eliot did not, therefore, political causes, Baudelaire is a case in point of the imagine that he might himself be thought of by poet in a time of disbelief. Eliot’s, it must be admit- later generations as one worthy to be included in ted, is not an especially radical take on Baudelaire their ranks. and his poetry’s significance as a cultural landmark, It is critical to observe, however, that by this but Eliot does take it a step further removed from point, Eliot had ceased to regard traditions of Baudelaire’s continuing reputation as an atheist if Western literature as if they were little more than not Satanist. Eliot takes care to qualify his position, a constantly improving or at least self-correcting however; lest one get the wrong idea, he argues mechanism, always altering but somehow remain- that Baudelaire’s “business was not to practise ing essentially the same. With a certain measure Christianity, but . . . to assert its necessity.” of cultural relativism that can easily pass for a Eliot is not then implying, all of a sudden, that moral absolutism, Eliot had increasingly come to he necessarily regards Baudelaire as a Christian recognize that not all historical epochs are equally poet or his poetry as particularly religious, so much as fertile pools for spawning great poetry—Dante’s as that the crisis of faith that defines much of the compared with Shakespeare’s, for example— experience of Christian Europe in the 19th century, although this is not the same as weighing poets’ following hard the period of social and political relative merits. Instead, it is as if, in this and like revolution that had characterized the 18th, finds its essays, Eliot tentatively tested ideas on the rela- spokesman in Baudelaire’s chaotically moral vision tionship between the tradition and belief. He gave that resulted from such evaluative chaos. That such ideas their fullest hearing in 1933 with the Baudelaire, to hear the phrase now, had “a sense of lectures collectively titled After Strange Gods; he his age” means for Eliot that the confusion among then effectively dropped them. the moral, spiritual, and secular value systems of In his 1930 essay on Baudelaire, Eliot is most Baudelaire’s time is, in Eliot’s view, carried without assuredly beginning to address in his prose criticism modification directly into the moral and spiritual what he takes to be the present conflict between confusion expressed in Baudelaire’s poetry. order and chaos, a conflict that his poetry had been While admitting that just as it was once fash- reflecting and, perhaps, addressing as well all along. ionable to treat Baudelaire as a Satanist, it is now If Eliot speaks approvingly of Baudelaire for having fashionable to present him as a Catholic Christian, that sense of his age, the reader should not imagine Eliot nevertheless stresses that that, once more, is that it is because Eliot admires Baudelaire’s values. not his point. Rather, what he wishes to demon-

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strate is that Baudelaire is caught between rejec- indeed be “a bungler compared to Dante,” but as tion and acceptance, not necessarily of Christian Eliot duly notes as well in an earlier comparison doctrine, but of one of the principles on which of his of Dante with Shakespeare, the poet must that doctrine is based. That principle finds expres- work with the material that the age into which sion in the Christian belief that humans have a he was born provides him, and that, good or bad, capacity for suffering. An ameliorative age, which is just the luck of the draw. It is what a poet like imagines that social engineering can eradicate the Baudelaire then does with that material, almost in pains of individual existence, denies that capacity spite of himself, that enables him, if he is successful for suffering any cultural validity. Thus, Baudelaire at merging the personal and the public in his art, could find, neither in himself nor in his age, the to become the poet of his age. Baudelaire, in Eliot’s power by which to transcend such suffering, and as eyes, demonstrates that “it is better, in a paradoxi- a result he creates a poetry that seems to celebrate cal way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we if not wallow in it. In Eliot’s estimation, Baudelaire exist.” becomes the religious victim which his age, with its rejection of religious solutions to human dilem- CRITICAL COMMENTARY mas, deserves. Whereas another, more religious age Eliot’s may seem to an odd way to come to Baude- would have sanctioned Baudelaire’s suffering and laire’s defense, but only if the essay is thought of made it its own (witness Dante), Baudelaire’s own as a defense. If it is seen instead as a prescrip- age must only endure it since it has fostered it by tion for what a person of conscience must do in a removing those overt religious sanctions for human conscienceless world, then it suggests that making suffering. moral choices in poetry is a requirement of great In that way, Baudelaire’s poetry “created a mode poetry, no matter what those moral choices may of release and expression for other men” of his own be. Paradoxically, those kinds of choices, blind and time, so Eliot sees Baudelaire’s primary concern inchoate though they may be, keep the moral con- as one that involves itself “not with black masses, science alive and prepare the way for a new age demons, and romantic blasphemy, but with the in which moral choices may be not only required real problem of good and evil” (“moral Good and but evaluated. Eliot, no doubt, is talking about Evil,” Eliot will call it for emphasis a few pages the climate of his own time when he talks about later). Rather than expressing either a Christian the climate of Baudelaire’s. Whether or not moral or a Satanist impulse, then, Baudelaire’s poetry choices continued in Eliot’s time to be as desper- expresses the more or less religious impulse, con- ate for the person of conscience depends to a great fused and conflicting, that emerges among indi- extent on how much the moral daring of a poet viduals caught up in a contemporary bureaucratic like Baudelaire may have opened the imagination setting, “a world of electoral reform, plebiscites, to strategies for dealing, in a godless public world, sex reforms, and dress reforms”—a world, in other with the demands that individuals nevertheless pri- words, very much like Eliot’s own, the world of the vately make on the divine as an implied presence modern. in human affairs and as an implied portion of each In such a world, Baudelaire discovers that one person’s being. still is free to make great moral choices, even if they Eliot had by the time of his writing “Baude- may be those that other, more theologically coher- laire” already moved well past the spiritual bleak- ent epochs—Dante’s, for example—may, with its ness expressed in poems like “Gerontion” and “The devotion to the orthodoxy of doctrine, very well Hollow Men,” as well as in such longer works as have condemned. Eliot sees Baudelaire coming to The Waste Land and “Sweeney Agonistes,” to the recognize that “damnation itself is an immediate vague promise of spiritual contentment and accep- form or salvation,” since it is “salvation from the tance found in “Marina” and in some parts of ennui of modern life, because it at least gives some “Ash-Wednesday.” Otherwise, he was still trying significance to living.” So, then, Baudelaire may to discover what a person, and poet, of conscience

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and conviction can do in a world inhabited more Far into his own advanced years, as late in fact and more “by decent godless people,” and while he as a Paris Review interview in 1959, Eliot would be clearly rejects Baudelaire’s solution to seek salva- looking back nearly 50 years earlier when, during tion in damnation, he can at least applaud its effi- his final semesters as an undergraduate at Harvard cacy, even if he does not endorse its application. in 1910 and 1911, he had discovered the French The distance between poetry and belief becomes, symbolists. Singling out Laforgue and the much for Eliot, shorter the more one focuses on the belief more renowned CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, Eliot would and not the poetry. In Baudelaire’s case, he is say- comment on how he had learned from each of ing that there is no way to separate the two to them the poetic resources that he had there in his begin with, since Baudelaire had no belief system to own American idiom and the experiences of life in fall back on besides the one that his own day-to-day a modern, industrial metropolis. experience in a modern metropolis itself provided Those topics, assuredly, may seem to constitute him with. As Eliot has outlined it here, the case of the very substance of a poem like “The Boston Eve- Baudelaire proves that such spiritually thin gruel, ning Transcript,” but in fact it, like the far more for a person of passionate conviction, can result in deservedly famous early masterpiece “The Love a poetic feast that may not be to everyone’s taste Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” comes much more but is to everyone’s advantage. directly out of Eliot’s own unique background. The descendant of an old and illustrious New England family, he nevertheless had the advantage of hav- ing been born and raised in the same traditions and “Ben Jonson” (1919) with the same sense of social rank and privilege but entirely elsewhere, namely, ST. LOUIS, Missouri. See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. The effect of this literal distancing from his roots was that it gave him a psychological distance as well from the commonplace values and realities of a class of society of which he was a part but not a Boston Evening Transcript, member. “ It is a rich poetic resource, and Eliot may surely The” (1915) owe something of his ability to recognize his out- sider’s view of things from an insider’s perspective, This short, satirical piece is one of three poems a view he exploits to such powerful effect in poems on Boston—or, more properly, the Boston social such as “Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” to the elite—that Eliot first published in Poetry magazine influences of such equally foreign viewpoints and in October 1915 and subsequently collected in sensibilities as Baudelaire’s and Laforgue’s. The his first volume, Prufrock and Other Observations, manner in which he ultimately addresses the Boston in 1917. While “The Boston Evening Transcript,” social order in the poem “The Boston Evening Tran- along with its companion pieces, “Aunt Helen” script,” however, must finally be seen as pure Eliot. and “Cousin Nancy,” may seem on the surface to have all the earmarks of other Eliot poems from SYNOPSIS this period, during which he was still under the The opening two verses quickly put the reader in considerable influence of the French symbolists, an incongruous landscape in which people read- notably JULES LAFORGUE, it is more likely that these ing the Transcript, which would have at that time are among those early poems in which, consciously been the daily newspaper of choice among Bos- or not, Eliot was struggling to find his own voice ton’s affluent ruling class, such as it was, appear to and poetic territory, by which one means, quite be swaying in the wind “like a field of ripe corn.” simply, that world that he and he alone would While the juxtaposition of a crowd of urbanites know best. reading a newspaper with a rural scene of ripened

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corn blowing in the wind may not be anywhere the terrified and terrifying sonambulist who walks near as startling as the evening sky and aether- the city streets of “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” ized patient of “Prufrock” fame, it is nevertheless composed in March 1911, or even the spectral not quite expected. It surprises not so much for its speaker of “Morning at the Window,” another shock value, as does the “Prufrock” simile, as for poem composed in September 1914, much closer its being a non sequitur that works on many levels. in time to the composition of “The Boston Evening The gritty image of printed pages with grimy black Transcript.” ink is contrasted with the yellows and greens of the The latter speaker seems almost vampirish in his corn stalks; the late evening gloom of a big city is ability to see into the “damp souls of housemaids” contrasted with a sun-brightened farm field; the for no apparently worthy or worthwhile purpose. hectic pace of an industrial city in the Northeast is The speaker of “The Boston Evening Transcript” is contrasted with the bucolic simplicity of the Great instead a self-confessedly weary gentleman, tired, Plains farm belt. Maybe its all those nordic blonde it may seem, of more than just the day’s tedium. heads of hair that one would be as likely to find in Still, he remains kind and sociable enough to take Boston as in Iowa that make the speaker digress so, the time to bring the Boston Evening Transcript in but whatever it may be, the reader is not going to to his Cousin Harriet, for whom the arrival of the be quite himself or herself again for the remainder evening paper on her doorstep appears to be a part of the short poem. of the ritual of living in Boston, which at that time Stanza two begins just as ordinarily as the still took pride in referring to itself without any truncated first stanza, but this time there are no special blushes as the Hub of the Universe. Eliot, as surprises until the end of the fourth line and the the poet, is tipping his hat to such presumptions as reference to La Rochefoucauld (or simply Roche- well-off city dwellers make without offending their foucauld in less recent printings). Who, one may sensibilities, as a Baudelaire or Laforgue might have well wonder, is he, and what is he doing here on done, but nevertheless he does not commend their a residential street in Boston? The first question myopic provincialisms either. is relatively easy to answer. François, duc de La In summary, “The Boston Evening Transcript” Rochefoucauld (1613–80) is renowned to this day may be a short poem, but it is not light verse. For all for a volume of maxims that express the fruits of a its undercut matter-of-factness, there is an uncom- lifetime spent cultivating the melancholic nature fortable quality to the speaker’s weariness, a sug- that permitted him to dispense his bits of worldly gestion that something more is at stake here than wisdom with an eloquently practical cynicism. For the fate of the speaker and his cousin. In this poem Eliot’s speaker, then, to describe his end-of-the- may be some of the first seeds of that despairing day weariness as if he were bidding a long goodbye vision of contemporary urban life that sees not its to someone of La Rochefoucauld’s dour pessimism seamy side, as “Rhapsody” and the “Preludes” had standing at the end not merely of the street but done, or its painful isolation, as “The Love Song of of time itself makes the speaker’s weariness sound J. Alfred Prufrock” had accomplished, so much as exceptionally wearisome. its sickness of soul to the core. These are sociable people, after all. The speaker and the readers of the CRITICAL COMMENTARY Boston Evening Transcript and Cousin Harriet, one “The Boston Evening Transcript” is somewhat and all, are the sort of people who might inhabit a tongue in cheek, of course, although droll is a bet- novel or tale by Henry James—relatively decent, ter description, since the idea that one is being ordinary people whom the poet, if not the speaker, amusingly odd, as everything about the speaker and presents at the edge of a disaster that they do not his attitudes most certainly is, is peculiarly French see coming. It will entail the loss not of their little in nature. Here Eliot’s speaker is hardly of the same daily rituals, but of a vital community, and Eliot ilk, for example, as other Eliot urban types, such as shortly became in writing The Waste Land, the poet

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who will remain most noted for having recorded wise indulge their typical homegrown habits, as if that demise. what they are passing through is not a living pres- ent but a fossilized and catalogued past that, like Baedeker’s guides, presents photo opportunities at best, such as one might find in a . Then “Burbank with a Baedeker, again, it is not as if , of all cities, is still in a Bleistein with a Cigar” (1920) state of pristine innocence and glory. She has fallen on hard times if she must now rely on the kindness Everyone knows what a cigar is, but it is less likely of strangers, tourists, for her livelihood. The reader that anyone other than scholars or travelers nowa- need not wait until poem’s end and the posing of days would know what a Baedeker is. In Eliot’s the question of who “clipped the lion’s wings / . . . day, however, and particularly when he was writ- flea’d his rump and pared his claws” to learn that ing the poem in question, Kurt Baedeker’s travel the glory days of the Venetian Republic, personified guides were regarded as indispensable to anyone in the purloined Byzantine lions of St. Mark’s, have who really wanted to see the sights. Covering any long since passed. Indeed, though Venice is a far number of popular venues in Europe where curious cry from the naval power that she once was, Eliot travelers were likely to congregate and updated in shows the old city-state still meretriciously trad- annual editions, these guides offered in painstaking ing on the decaying remnants of that long-faded detail not merely descriptions but literally step-by- prominence and power to draw those same gaping step directions to the sightseer, rather like today’s tourists to her waterways. earphones that modern often provide. The Epigraph Baedeker is still in business, and in print, in a In any case, that the attractions of Venice have by now global economy where publications to help travel- become more reputation than reality is established by ers, and traveling, have become a large and highly Eliot in the pastiche of the epigraph, combining views competitive business. As a publishing concept, of Venice or things Venetian, as it were, from some nevertheless, Baedeker became and in some ways six different sources, all unattributed and each pre- remains synonymous with treating certain histori- sented successively without pause as if they were just cal places as if they were pictures on a wall, hung so much flotsam in some sinuous canal wending its there for the passing enjoyment of sightseers, or, way through an old Venetian neighborhood. Indeed, worse, pictures on a museum wall, hung there to be the various allusions sweep past the mind’s eye exactly aesthetically admired but not otherwise engaged, as the passing sights might be arranged in a rapidly making the past a kind of mental furnishings in a succeeding order on the pages of a Baedeker or seen hotel lobby rather than a living part of the present. from the windows of a passing bus. This may well be Eliot’s point. “A Game of Chess,” Each allusion, taken individually, has its own the second part of The Waste Land, depicts a mid- particular significances, precisely as those objects dle-class couple whose apartment is decorated with viewed on a whirlwind tour are each worthy of a images from out of the past, and he calls them highly particularized attention that none of them “withered stumps of time” because the couple and will ever get from the experience-hungry tourist. their lives are no longer in any way connected to “Burbank” is one of the so-called quatrain poems the significance of that past. that Eliot was composing at the time, having been encouraged to do so by his good friend, the fellow SYNOPSIS American poet EZRA POUND. It is fitting, then, that In the title “Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein the series of allusions in Eliot’s epigraph opens with with a Cigar,” Eliot not only tells the reader that a refrain from a poem by Théophile Gautier, the the poem will be peopled by tourists but that these mid-19th French poet from whom Pound and Eliot particular tourists are here only to gape and other- borrowed the quatrain formula to begin with. With

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their four-beat lines and four-line stanzas rhyming but largely decay. It is, after all, a city that floats on on the second and fourth lines, these quatrains a mirror of water, always shimmering, never quite lend themselves to the sort of verbal musicality and what it appears to be. Thanks in large part to the clever wordplay that might make even the most cynical 15th-century political treatise The Prince, serious material sound lighthearted or frivolous. by Niccolò Machiavelli, as well as to the fact that Eliot composed seven such poems between 1917 any major metropolis built on a series of swampy and 1919. While there is no precise dating avail- islands is liable to haunt the human imagination able for “Burbank,” which was not published until as a place of illusory and ephemeral beauty, Venice 1920 in Ara Vos Prec, Eliot’s second collection, the had long been synonymous with vanity, deception, poem definitely comes out of the same experimen- betrayal, and, again, decay. The treatment that tations with the quatrain form that produced “The Shakespeare’s brave but gullible Othello gets at the Hippopotamus” and “Sweeney Erect,” to name just hands of the villainous Venetian Iago illustrates two other outstanding examples. vividly the iconic place as a city of lies and liars that The next snippet in Eliot’s epigraph is the saint’s Venice had assumed in the European imagination. motto from a painting by Andrea Mantegna of the The Poem martyrdom of St. Sebastian that is now in a Vene- tian collection. The Latin motto tells the viewer “Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar,” that nothing except the divine endures, all else as the epigraph makes clear, simply continues the being smoke (a theme that Eliot will develop much longstanding English-language literary tradition further in “The Fire Sermon,” part III of The Waste of corrupt Venice, but from the point of view of Land). Then come fragments from a work by the Americans, who have their own problems with the 19th-century American novelist Henry James, The gaudy and ephemeral. Very shortly, in poems like Aspern Papers; a masque by the English Elizabethan “Gerontion” and especially The Waste Land, as well playwright John Marston; a dramatic monologue as in prose pieces, most notably “Tradition and the by the 19th-century English poet Robert Brown- Individual Talent” and his review of Irish novelist’s ing; and Othello by William Shakespeare—Othello JAMES JOYCE’s masterpiece Ulysses, titled “Ulysses, being, along with The Merchant of Venice, the clas- Order and Myth,” Eliot, a European-American, sic literary example of utilizing Venice as - would apparently deplore the diminishment of the in for a sort of Renaissance Whore of Babylon. importance in which the achievements of Europe’s That echo of Othello also hints at a line from The past were being held and regarded. To his genera- Merchant of Venice, however, which also deals with tion, it must have seemed that a Europe that mere the issue of prejudice and has a Venetian setting if decades before had set herself up as the glory of not theme. civilization and crown of the ages was fast becom- Therein lies a potential allusion to the dangers of ing caught up in the getting and spending of a fre- ANTI-SEMITISM, for while the play portrays Shylock netic commercial materialism, not to mention the as a merciless Jewish moneylender, he is also given awful destructiveness of World War I. What better the opportunity to make his celebrated defense of venue to depict this contradictory conflict between religious and racial tolerance in his “Has not a Jew past realities and present bewilderments than Ven- hands” speech. If so, this oblique reference to the ice, the city dedicated to Venus and to the license essential injustice of anti-Semitism found in the of the Carnival, where nothing is as it seems and epigraph is a cautionary to which Bleistein, who everyone is seeking only one thing—personal satis- is portrayed as a highly acquisitive Jewish person faction, often at another’s expense? from Chicago, will subsequently play a disarmingly However, “Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein redundant foil. with a Cigar” is a work from Eliot’s quatrain phase, The idea of the epigraph ultimately is to portray when he seemed to be as uncertain about the direc- Venice as a sort of scab on the human conscious- tion that his poetry should take, or was taking, as ness, a venue of delights, dangers, and derring-do, he was unclear about whether the catastrophe that

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had become contemporary Western culture was a pean aristocrats to deal with. They seem to regard catastrophe of worldwide and historical proportions all commerce among cultures as an effort to be or simply a not very entertaining turn on a music- engaged in solely for the purpose of selling or buy- hall stage. As a result, the poem is more clever than ing in the skin trade. At the very least, Burbank has cautionary, and in a way that is as often offensive as apparently fallen under the spell of these decadent it is difficult, occasionally, to make heads or tails of. Europeans who are living in the relatively dilap- Like the crowd of no-goods in “Sweeney among the idated midst of their past splendors and present Nightingales,” the poet introduces into “Burbank” intrigues. He has fallen into the princess’s clutches a madcap crew that, in addition to Burbank and as the poem begins, although she is coupled with Bleistein, includes a Venetian princess, Volupine, Klein by poem’s end. whose name is connotative both of voluptuousness While Bleistein finds more pleasure in a good and a fox (volpe in Italian), and another European cigar than in a liaison with a titled European cour- aristocrat, Sir Ferdinand Klein. tesan, he too has been charmed, in this case by Just who they are supposed to be is not as impor- European art, at least inasmuch as it might fetch tant as what they represent. One of the Habsburgs, him a handsome resale value on the home market the last rulers of Austria-Hungary, had toyed with back in the States. Perhaps he is there to acquire the idea of renouncing his title and becoming a things rather than adventures and social diseases, commoner named Sir Ferdinand Berg; Sir Fer- like his compatriot Burbank. That cigar and ethnic dinand, either way, represents an aristocracy in name, however, make him this poem’s Sweeney, decline. (“Klein” means little in German.) The prin- who knows the value of a dollar and nothing else. cess, meanwhile, is apparently of very old Vene- But Eliot feels free to portray Bleistein in another, tian stock, since she is “phthisic,” or asthmatic, harsher light than one that is distinctive merely of perhaps from generations of breathing in the city’s the acquisitive crassness that the cigar suggests and notoriously miasmal air. Added to the mix of those that, in his own fleshpot manner, Burbank shares. who had known better days are the Greek demi- Eliot also wishes to make it abundantly clear that god Hercules and the 18th-century landscape artist Bleistein is Jewish: “Chicago Semite Viennese.” Canaletto, renowned for his highly detailed vistas Virtually as a caricaturist might, Eliot further of Venice, particularly the Grand Canal. portrays Bleistein with “lusterless protrusive” eyes The puzzle is in figuring out just how all these and as “protozoic slime.” Lower indeed than the various elements of characterization described rats that lurk under the pilings that hold the Vene- through an over-the-top vocabulary while they are tian Rialto up is, in the speaker’s view, the “jew . . . pursuing low-life shenanigans interact in formulat- underneath the lot”—which may mean that the ing some order of thematic stability, but it becomes Jew is beneath everyone else or behind every busi- no puzzle at all once the reader realizes that the ness deal in the auction houses where Canalettos one thing that the persons of the drama, such as and other masterpieces of Venetian art may occa- it is, all have in common is that they have fallen sionally be sold. Whatever else Eliot may be get- under the hallucinatory spell of Venice itself. Look ting at here—there may be, for example, another too long from a rocking gondola into the lapping, oblique reference to Shakespeare’s Shylock in the garbage-strewn waters of the canals and one can phrase “[o]n the Rialto once”—it is difficult to become dizzy, disoriented, and deceived. Trash account for the awful savagery with which Eliot becomes treasure. In its own manner, the poetry identifies and then depicts Bleistein’s ethnicity. It mimics these effects. is not as if any other characters in the poem fare Surely, the American tourists Burbank and any better, however, whatever their ethnicity may Bleistein are presented in abbreviated slapstick be. When last seen, after all, Burbank, a surname vignettes that abruptly contrast with totems of the that may bring to mind Luther Burbank, the world- rich cultural inheritance of the Mediterranean peo- renowned agronomist who introduced more than ples, but then there are these contemporary Euro- 800 new strains of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and

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grasses that helped initiate a revolution in agricul- ponderantly the theme of a present that is squan- ture and food production (but for whom the city of dering the riches of the past, among those riches Burbank, California, is not named), is meditating Eliot has clearly placed Judaism, and among the on time’s ruins and the seven Noahid laws—the squanderers he has put Bleistein. That is stereotyp- Jewish laws from God’s covenant with Noah to ing, to be sure, but it is not necessarily anti-Semi- which even non-Jews are expected to adhere. tism. Indeed, in view of its profound expression of belief in the divine covenant on which Judaism is CRITICAL COMMENTARY founded, it may in fact be pro-Semitic. Luther Burbank, a personage with whom Eliot would certainly have been familiar, would only later—in 1926—become a celebrated freethinker, denying publicly the existence of any divinity or “Burnt Norton” (1936) the soul’s immortality in response to the famous Scopes trial of 1925, when a high school teacher See FOUR QUARTETS. was put on trial for teaching Darwinism. But Eliot wrote his poem in 1919 at best. Perhaps this Bur- bank of Eliot’s is his poem’s token white Anglo- Saxon Protestant, or WASP, like himself. If so, “Byron” (1937) he hangs suspended between, on the one hand, the evidence that Venice and St. Sebastian’s motto For those who know the name and its associations, offer—nothing lasts forever—and the possibility, Byron conjures up an era, a world, a universe of on the other hand, that there are nevertheless eter- everything that is dashingly wild and reckless and nal laws by which humans are supposed to guide daring—in a word, romantic. George Gordon, their behavior. If there are such laws, not even the (1786–1822), the early 19th-century Jewish Bleistein, hanging out with so many amoral Scotch-English poet and adventurer, was the most nominative Christians, seems to be heeding them celebrated figure of the romantic era, not only in nowadays. In the final analysis, and as the over- the British Isles but on the European Continent as the-top richness of the epigraph seems to suggest, well. Handsome and swashbuckling and as cheeky Eliot seems to have tried to outdo himself with this as privilege and early fame might make a man, he quatrain, and it is a welcome conclusion that it may was also a great champion of liberty and freedom, have been the last of them. in keeping with the best part of the spirit of the age As an attempt to render poetically a veritable that spawned him and of which he became, in the pagan carnival of excesses, “Burbank with a Baede- view of posterity, the primary exemplar. ker, Bleistein with a Cigar” rivals “Sweeney Erect” Eliot himself, in a 1954 essay on another great and “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” and as literary figure of the same era, the German poet such it can be regarded as a minor sort of poetic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), gives achievement. However, those latter two quatrain Byron the credit that is his due: “In Byron we have poems, in their caricature of the Irish-Catholic a poet who was the poet of an Age, and for that hooligan Sweeney, also appear to step over the line Age the poet of all Europe.” It is high praise, identi- of racial and religious bigotry. Perhaps one cannot fying as Byron’s alone a perhaps unequaled accom- expose bigotry without depicting it, as, for example, plishment in literary history. Yet in this much “Gerontion,” which also contains a blatantly anti- earlier essay of Eliot’s, from 1937, one which was Semitic sentiment, may be doing, inasmuch as it included in a collection of essays, From Anne to Vic- has for its speaker a person other than the poet. It toria, edited by Bonamy Dubrée, and subsequently is difficult, nevertheless, not to read Eliot’s personal reprinted in the 1956 collection of Eliot’s prose, values into the bigotries exposed in “Burbank” and On Poetry and Poets, Eliot has nothing but the the Sweeney poems. For a poem that carries pre- most searingly negative criticism to offer regarding

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Byron’s achievements and contribution as a poet. with being a dilletante and a charlatan—categories The difference is, however, that in the first case, considerably lower than even that of being a lowly Eliot is acknowledging Byron’s indisputable place amateur. Actually, however, Eliot is praising Byron in history, whereas in the second, he is assessing for accomplishing as much: “He was an actor who Byron’s legacy as a poet. devoted immense trouble to becoming a role that he adopted; his superficiality was something that SYNOPSIS he created for himself.” By the time of Eliot’s first writing, Byron, who had It is, one must admit, an interesting thesis— been the undisputed titan of contemporary English that Byron is the poet of shallowness. Anyone who verse throughout most of the 19th century and knows Byron’s poetry and his poetic voice well who appeared likely to continue to hold an equally would not be quick to argue with the idea that unassailable place for centuries to come, had fallen Byron had raised being superficial to the level of into neglect among both scholars and readers of an art. In essence, Byron’s poetry, whatever its poetry. A great part of the cause for this neglect, no ostensible topic, is about none other than Byron, doubt, was the simple fact that someone who was “every inch the touring tragedian.” It aims always so fashionable in his own time would be far more “to keep us interested in the story-teller himself, likely to fall out of fashion once the tenor of the and through this interest to interest us more in the times had changed—as they did radically as a result story,” to the extent that “the attraction of the per- of such catastrophic events as World War I. In sonality is powerful.” the face of such a vast and tragic debacle for what until then had been the much-vaunted primacy of CRITICAL COMMENTARY European civilization, there seemed no longer to Keeping in mind as well that Eliot was one of the be a place in the cultural landscape for a man like foremost proponents of impersonality in poetry, the Byron, a posturing sensualist and satirist and an cult of personality that Byron helped engender in old-style aristocrat to boot, full of high sentence literary matters could not have pleased Eliot too but a bit obtuse. much either. The end result, in Byron’s case, is Although Eliot does not necessarily ignore a poetry that is all show and no substance, since that cause as the reason for Byron’s decline, he its value is contingent on the reader’s knowledge does slight it, however, for the much more criti- of the poet’s personality, rather than any inherent cally astute observation that Byron was more a merit of its own. “We have come to expect poetry self-aggrandizing showman than poet—if to define to be something very concentrated, very distilled; poet one takes a cue from a later essay by Eliot, but if Byron had distilled his verse, there would “The Three Voices of Poetry,” originally presented have been nothing whatever left.” in 1953. There Eliot defined the first voice—what The conclusion to Eliot’s praiseful condemna- most would call the lyric voice, although Eliot tion of Byron in this, his one-note treatment of claims to dislike the term—as that one wherein the an otherwise eminent romantic, comes toward the poet engages in the constant struggle to craft the middle of his essay. Byron, who poeticizes like “an nuances of experience into words. That struggle accomplished foreigner writing English,” “added never formed any part of Byron’s agenda, in Eliot’s nothing to the language, . . . discovered nothing in view. Rather, Byron has “been admired for what are the sounds, . . . developed nothing in the meaning, his most ambitious attempts to sound poetic,” Eliot of individual words.” He was, in other words, not says in his effort to account for the elder poet’s cur- a poet. rent neglect, and those attempts, on examination, As an inventor of a public self in whom an entire have turned out “to be fake: nothing more than epoch invested its meaning, “Byron made a voca- sonorous affirmations of the commonplace with no tion out of what for most of us is an irregular weak- depth of significance.” That is a very serious, almost ness”—total self-absorption. It is hardly praise, but, killing criticism. Eliot has virtually charged Byron if read rightly, it is not criticism, either. The creative

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impulse can take many forms and pursue many out- also happen to be his—on others who do not share lets. Byron’s were indisputably creative ventures, those values and beliefs, and that very well may but, for Eliot at least, they were not poetry—cer- be the case. However, it is as likely, and there- tainly not great poetry. As the living memory of fore more likely, given Eliot’s own background as a the personality and celebrity fades and only the broadminded idealist, that he does not mean any- so-called poetry remains, it stands to reason that thing like that. Byron’s greatness as a poet would decline too, as, Rather than proposing a worldwide theocracy by the time of Eliot’s writing, it apparently had. All founded on Christian principles, Eliot may be pro- that Eliot is attempting to do is to discern how and posing a foundation for international order that why that decline can, by now, be witnessed as the is based on a system of ideals that have a more inevitable by-product of Byron’s meteoric fame to long-range and enduring scope. The failure of the begin with. Having been built on and of air, that so-called secular democracies may eventually be fame collapsed as easily and quickly. that they are founded on nothing more substantial finally than the shifting sands of majority opinions and journalism. In contrast, what Eliot will shortly be calling a Christian society, in the 1939 work “Catholicism and The Idea of a Christian Society, would not require the universal adherence to a particular doctrine International Order” (1933) so much as the general adherence to a universal doctrine. That, after all, is precisely what catholic At first glance, particularly in our postmodernist means. Religious belief, even if it is not univer- environment of a widespread tolerance for multi- sally practiced and adhered to among a populace, culturalism and diversity on all fronts, Eliot’s title gives shape, cohesion, and direction to a commu- for this essay might raise both eyebrows and hack- nity, whether that be at the local, the regional, the les. Originally delivered as an address before the national, or the international level. And it is this Anglo-Catholic Summer School of Sociology at shape, cohesion, and direction that constitute order Oxford in 1933 and subsequently printed in Chris- and tradition, Eliot’s cherished cultural safeguards. tendom, the article, which was ultimately collected, “All one’s views and theories, of course, have in 1936, in Eliot’s Essays Ancient and Modern, some ultimate relation to the kind of man one is,” seems to be advocating what nowadays approaches Eliot observes, and he continues, “But only the the unspeakable—a religious foundation to inter- Catholic, in practice, is under the manifest obliga- national order. The volume, meanwhile, was a tion to find out what sort of man he is—because somewhat altered reprinting of an earlier collec- he is under the obligation to improve that man tion, For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Order and according to definite ideals and standards.” The Style, from which he now omitted several older matter is not that people of other faiths are not pieces and added several later ones, including the under the same requirements, but that a people essay now at hand, and which itself had expressed without any faith at all are not. Eliot’s disappointment with the spiritual state of Eliot had been attracted to Catholic political the modern world. ideologies and movements such as Charles Maur- ras’s Action française as early as the student year SYNOPSIS that he spent in Paris as a young man in 1910 and The essay’s tone is extremely polemical, but Eliot is 1911. While he would later repudiate Maurras’s not necessarily proselytizing. True, Eliot says that overzealousness that led him to collaborate with “a Christian world-order, the Christian world-order, the Nazis during the German occupation of much is ultimately the only one which, from any point of of France during World War II, it is not political view, will work.” That may sound like Eliot is pro- action that Eliot is calling for even at this juncture. posing the imposition of values and beliefs—which Rather it is a question of the attitude by which

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societies operate: “A really satisfactory working culture to the European experience, which is indis- philosophy of social action, as distinct from devices putably Christian in its historical development. In for getting ourselves out of a hole at the moment, 1933, however, Eliot sounds like the most rabid of requires not merely science but wisdom.” That said, Christian partisans and religious imperialists. The he can iterate what is the central premise of the difference may be that in 1933 another worldwide entire debate: “I believe that the Catholic Church, conflict was already looming, whereas by 1948 it with its inheritance from Israel and from Greece, is had already taken its awful toll. Eliot may be for- still, as it always has been, the great repository of given, then, for taking such a radical position when wisdom.” the aim, even if not fully articulated as such, is to In the final analysis, however, it is a matter of offer a solution that, among other things, might whether the individual is regarded and treated as avoid such another terrible human conflict. Eliot’s a social integer to be manipulated and, so, possibly is perceptive enough to recognize that even the exploited by varying species of systems engineers ostensible unity of culture that a union of belief may and bureaucratic regulations, or, instead, as a spiri- bring about is not any guarantee against human tual being whose social needs must be addressed conflict, particularly between nations and peoples. always in that larger context. In earlier essays Nevertheless, the issue for him is whether or not from the late 1920s on the dangers of a too secu- any other human solution can work so well as to lar humanism, Eliot had noted that such ideas are justify the complete abandonment of a common posited on a view of the human as something little faith’s being at least a solution, and one that serves a more than a very cunning animal. Rather, such great number of social and individual needs as well. vital foundational principles to the political and “Our duty,” Eliot contends, assuming, apparently, social order as the “conception of individual liberty, that societies must first and foremost be practical in for instance, must be based upon the unique impor- their deliberations, “with regard to all purely secular tance of every single soul, the knowledge that every attempts to set the world right, is to welcome them man is ultimately responsible for his own salvation for what they are worth.” For Eliot, speaking as both or damnation, and the consequent obligation of a person of faith and a citizen, these attempts are society to allow every individual the opportunity to not worth ignoring each individual as a spiritual develop his full humanity.” being with an eternal soul and the need, primarily, Lest Eliot’s attitudes be painted with too broad to perfect that. One can argue, of course, that there a brush, there is no doubt that his aim is finally are other means of addressing that need than the “the conversion of the whole world” to Catho- conversion of the world to a Catholic Christianity; lic Christian belief. He questions the efficacy of but Eliot’s point is otherwise well taken. secular world bodies and governments such as A reliance upon the secular, the rational, the the League of Nations portends, with its corollary scientific, as the solution to and panacea for every assumption that all religious approaches are differ- social, economic, and political ill results only in an ent but equal. “The only positive unification of the endless parade of new but terribly similar panaceas world,” he asserts, “is religious unification,” and as each new plan fails. For, like all things human, that would mean under the ecclesiastical hierar- our purely secular solutions are imperfect and chy, finally, of Catholic Christianity. His further bound to failure. An increasing commerce among argument that “cultural unity in religion” is not nations, for example, seems to make merely for “cultural uniformity” is not the palliative that he increasing conflict, so that some “are beginning to must hope it to be. suspect that internationalism can be the enemy of Here, again, Eliot’s views would be not so much international amity.” Without a religious focus, a modified as ameliorated and refined as the years spiritual bias, furthermore, these tribulations take passed, so that by 1948 and the publication of his on more significance than they in fact have. When Notes towards the Definition of Culture, he would the world seems to be everything, nothing can suf- limit his insistence on a wholly Christian basis to fice for too long as a satisfactory world, and reform

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becomes an endless process of tinkering with mat- Eliot at the time, the summer of 1933, had been ters that cannot be perfected. going through a lengthy retrenchment—although In contrast, those who have an eye on eternity are perhaps it was really only a clarification—of his con- saved from distraction and, so, can keep a sense of servative religious and spiritual views that had not proportion, for “the Catholic cannot commit himself yet either topped or bottomed out, depending on his utterly and absolutely to any one form of temporal detractors’ points of view. He had been acknowl- order.” That resilience is a hedge against tomorrow edged publicly since his 1927 conversion to Anglo- that is also a hedge against yesterday and today. Catholicism as a Lost Leader of reformist ideas and Thus, the Catholic “may suitably give up his life for a lost sheep as well, if the forces of a liberalizing sec- temporal causes, but never his sense of values.” ularism were to have their way and their say. There As Eliot pursues his line of reasoning, his conclu- had always been a hardy traditionalist bent to Eliot’s sion becomes more and more inevitable, even if not intellectual, cultural, and even personal style, how- necessarily universally welcomed or acceptable. His ever, despite the radical innovativeness of his way particular brand of belief may not appeal, but his with a poem. Indeed, when the chips were down, he description of the problem is less difficult to resist. was always liable to come down on the side of what For who can gainsay the fact that the modern world he called orthodoxy—right teaching and, if the is in as much trouble as the world has ever been, and truth be known, right thinking, certainly inasmuch yet modern thinkers claim that all those nagging as he was concerned. Classicism—an adherence to issues that have plagued humanity for ages have the traditions of an inherited, absolutist body of been resolved in the rushing tide of intellectual and thought and feeling—and Catholicism embodied spiritual reform. Still, Eliot is hopeful. “There are, these ways of thinking and behaving. Romanticism surely, ways of reorganizing the mechanisms of this and a secular humanism, with their appeal to sub- world, which in bringing about a greater degree of jective authority and relativistic moralities, were, if justice and peace on that plane will also facilitate not the enemy, then at least a present danger. the development of the Christian life and the salva- Shortly, Eliot would be going as far as he pos- tion of souls.” This is what Eliot will call the “middle sibly could in condemning what he regarded as the way”—the ability to be in the world but not of it: freewheeling liberalism of the contemporary social to participate in the day to day but not succumb to and cultural scene. In 1934, he would castigate the allure that it is everything. “The attitude of the its adherents one and all in After Strange Gods: A Catholic towards any form of organization, national Primer of Modern Heresy, wherein he defined her- or international,” Eliot concludes, can and should esy not as falsehoods but as attractive half-truths, be “a way of mediation,” as has just been described, a state of affairs that makes them all that much “but never, in those matters which permanently dangerous, in his view. One can disprove a lie, but matter, a way of compromise.” half-truths have a way of morphing into something else just as one has mustered his logic and is ready CRITICAL COMMENTARY to go in for the kill. It would be wise to recall that Eliot’s remarks were Readers, particularly those most inclined to find initially presented as those of a man of faith speak- these views of his unsympathetic, are liable to do ing to other people of the same belief system. The him a great disservice, however, if he and his views fervor and concern with which he expounds his are looked on as nothing more than the narrow- opinions and stakes out the grounds of his convic- minded, perhaps even seriously bigoted ravings of tions commend them to attention for that very rea- a proto-Evangelical fundamentalist. Eliot had a son. Sectarian interests and factors aside, however, highly trained mind, a scrupulously fine-honed sen- it is important to cut through these more parochial sibility, and a fair-minded conscientiousness. While aspects of the issue, not to dismiss or ignore them he could, in the thick of it, be contentious, his so much as to appreciate the importance of Eliot’s arguments were always carefully thought out. On central premise. balance, “Catholicism and International Order,”

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for all the fascist overtones of its title, is nowhere begun to cast his social and spiritual lot with more near as outrageous a proposition as it may appear at traditional and orthodox ways of thinking. Still, it first glance. That humanity now inhabits a planet was a combination of fortuitous events that con- on which international order is of a paramount trived not so much to put him in the center of this concern is the indisputable premise behind his particular controversy as to give him the opportu- every thought and utterance. Horrific conflicts can nity to execute a complete verse drama, even if the no longer be confined to regions or nations or even circumstances of its actual composition forced him continents, nor can the effects of economic and very quickly to disown all but the choruses. social forces and pressures for good or for ill. Virtually from the start of his literary career, Eliot contends that the policies that organize Eliot had had an interest in and a decided talent those measures that govern the processes of what for dramatization. Whether under the tutelage by was fast becoming a global community even in example of the poetic masks employed by one of Eliot’s time need to be founded on something more his earliest known influences, the French symbolist substantial than the vagaries of popular opinion poet JULES LAFORGUE, or whether that influence manipulated by mass media and of the latest fads itself was enabled by Eliot’s own instincts toward in the “most advanced thinking.” He proposes that making up characters who would then speak their that “something more substantial” be the tenets of plight rather than necessarily his own, as in “The Catholicism. For Eliot, that doctrine is founded on Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot had, by more than 4,000 years of human tradition, not to the time of the 1922 publication of his first truly mention a scripture that the faithful regard as the major work, The Waste Land, perfected a style of revealed Word of God. writing poetry that was almost totally dependent for its effectiveness on the copious employment of modulating voices that could then be contrasted The Rock with each other to achieve at least the semblance Choruses from of meaning, rather like a chorus from an ancient (1934) Greek drama. By the mid-1920s, with a poem sequence such as “The Hollow Men,” which is in No other poetry of Eliot’s is as unabashedly reli- parts a choral chant spoken by a collective “we,” gious in both tone and substance as the choruses and with “Sweeney Agonistes,” which is an attempt from the pageant play The Rock, and with good at a verse drama, though left unfinished, Eliot’s reason. The play was intended to call attention to chief mode of composition was by and large dra- the plans of the diocese of London to build 45 new matic, albeit confined for the most part to poems suburban churches wherever there were notable that may otherwise appear to be lyrical, such as increases in the local population. It had come as a “Journey of the Magi” and “Song for Simeon,” but surprise to many that the plan encountered opposi- that are, in fact, dramatic monologues. tion from among those who felt that there were This tendency culminated in many readers’ find- already enough churches, thus exposing an increas- ing it impossible not to imagine that the first-per- ing spirit of secularism and materialism in the sort son speaker of the short lyrics that compose 1930’s of society that England and the modern industrial “Ash-Wednesday” could be the poet, so much had world in general were becoming. they become used to Eliot’s tendency to dramatize the speaker in his poetry. And indeed, Eliot had BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS perhaps found a way to separate successfully the It would make sense that Eliot, one of the original experiences of his own person from the creative “great lights” of the modernist movement with its processes required for the purposes of composition. radical reorganization of literature, would for that This was the very kind of separation, as he had have been aligned with such “forward” and secular famously proposed in his 1919 essay, “Tradition ways of thinking. However, he had more and more and the Individual Talent,” that enabled the per-

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fecting of both the poetic talent and the poetic Browne and Eliot first met at Bishop Bell’s epis- product. copal palace in December 1930, during a weekend However, Eliot’s increasing interest in and visit in which Eliot read from his just-published commitment to the dimensions of faith and of the “Ash-Wednesday,” a poem sequence with a decid- continuing need for ongoing spiritual traditions in edly religious bent. Aside from it and the unfin- the modern world were becoming both more pro- ished “Coriolan,” whose poetry, in “Triumphal nounced in his prose writing and more public, too. March” and “Difficulties of a Statesman,” was more In an essay as early as 1923, “The Function of Criti- in keeping with Eliot’s social and political concerns, cism,” Eliot had entered the socioliterary fracas of Eliot felt that he was marking time with his poetry the time by coming out in support of Catholicism writing and was once again convinced, as he had and classicism against the forces of secularism and been at a number of other key junctures in his romanticism. As both his celebrity and notoriety career, that he had “exhausted [his] meager poetic spread, his critical positions on social issues became gifts.” more and more the grist for interest among other Browne, an actor by training, had, in the mean- opinion makers, many of whom did not share his time, turned his own directing abilities toward re- apparent conservativism and orthodoxy when it creating from the 14,000 lines of the York mystery came to religion, and he began to respond to their cycle, a 14th-century pageant play depicting the criticism with an unabashed vigor. Using the edi- Bible from the Creation to the Last Judgment, a torship of the Criterion and his position with Faber manageable production that is still used in perfor- mances to this day. Browne then agreed to write the & Faber as a publishing forum for these only some- scenario for a pageant play to aid the Anglican dio- what extraliterary considerations, by 1928, in his cese of London’s church-building fund. Although preface to the prose volume For Lancelot Andrewes, he was himself working from a story line that was a 17th-century Anglican divine, Eliot felt free to based on historical episodes suggested by another declare himself openly a classicist in literature, a individual, the Reverend R. Webb-Odell, Browne royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in reli- turned to Eliot for the writing of the choruses and gion. All of these positions were anathema to the the dialogue. The resulting pageant play, The Rock, social and cultural agenda of modernist radical- was performed at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London ism that his poetry seemed till now to have been from May 28 to June 9, 1934. It related the building advancing. of a church in London to the church’s long his- In the meantime, another development was tory of struggle in England from earliest Christian taking place that would soon intersect with Eliot’s times, culminating in the present difficulties that dramatic talents and religious interests, to the ben- the modern church was encountering. Along with efit of 20th-century drama. Eliot had converted to threats from new, secular notions of the nation- Anglo-Catholicism in June of 1927. In 1930, mean- state represented by fascism and communism, there while, the Most Reverend George Bell, the Angli- were increasing pressures toward consumerism and can bishop of Chichester, turned to a young man materialism that a capitalist economy were forcing named E. MARTIN BROWNE (1900–80) to reinvigo- on an all-too-willing populace. rate the longstanding relationship between drama Eliot was still working on the texts well into the and religion in the English church, appointing him spring of the play’s performance schedule, and it to be the diocesan director of religious drama. In was reported that he was none too pleased at the the late Middle Ages, this relationship had been rehearsals, the cast being composed of amateurs a part of the bedrock for keeping the laity in close drawn from area parishes. He had to be aware, and touch with the divine mysteries on which the concerned, too, that those friends from his avant- Christian faith was founded. Bishop Bell’s inten- garde days would likely be troubled by this lower- tion was to make drama a tool for the church in the ing of his creative sights, let alone his making his 20th century as well. turn to orthodox religious values a public occasion.

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Financially, the production was a great success, ostensible theme, as opposed to meaning, was vir- drawing some 1,500 in paid attendance. For the tually impossible to discern. While he would not drama, in addition to the choruses, Eliot had to necessarily abandon the obscurities that a height- provide dialogue for what amounted to a com- ened erudition and density of verse line had made pany of stock characters, in many cases merely his stock in trade, that movement of his toward a identified by their roles and functions (the Pluto- clearer thematic agenda was perfectly understand- crat, the Agitator, the Unemployed, the Major) able, for his poetic vision had changed radically as but even when identified by name (Ethelbert the well, in keeping with his evolving social, political, foreman, Mrs. Ethelbert, Mrs. Poulridge, Mil- and religious views. licent) mainly there to mouth conflicting ideas Still, those changes may ultimately have been and values. While that may have given Eliot an only in matters of emphasis, for his primary con- opportunity, in fleshing out the roles and cho- cerns continued to focus, as they had from the ruses with words, to give voice to his own long- beginning, on the dilemmas of the individual awash standing opinions regarding the deadening effects in the bewildering chaotic sea of modernist relativ- of the modern urban environment, it also cast ism, whereby, since every intellectual and spiritual those ideas and opinions more in the tone of approach was regarded as a valuable and viable preaching and sermonizing rather than in the alternative to some other, none was. So Eliot must sort of presentation and demonstration required have relished the chance to take off the kid gloves by the most rigorous standards of poetry, sharply and say what he really meant to say to an audi- diminishing any serious literary pretensions for ence who was prepared to hear it. The context of the resulting finished work. the choruses would not only have permitted him In addition, his work was the result of a com- to address the root causes of spiritual distress that mission rather than of original intent on his part, he had been analyzing in his poetry at least from forced as he was to work within a preconceived the time of The Waste Land but to address what structure. After the pageant play’s initial publica- he regarded as the solution to that distress as well, tion as a complete work by Faber & Faber in 1934, that being a life based on some species of spiritual Eliot demanded that his contribution—which belief. in essence amounted to the text—no longer be The Rock of the title, then, is variously identi- brought out in print with the exception of the cho- fied as Christ—as the hymn puts it, “the Church’s ruses. Beginning with Collected Poems, 1909–1935, one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord”—or as the readers will find only “Choruses from The Rock” apostle Simon, to whom Jesus declared, “Upon this among Eliot’s collected work, making it impossible rock I will build my Church,” henceforth enabling for all but serious scholars to access the original the faithful to identify him as Peter, which means text. It is with respect to that limitation and that “rock.” In either case, or in any other that the wish on the poet’s part that the following discus- human imagination might come up with in the fer- sion confines itself to the 10 numbered choruses tile energy with which it devises spiritual and reli- that Eliot saw fit to bequeath to posterity as a por- gious metaphors, the reader can see that The Rock tion of his own chosen canon. is definite enough to have a readily identifiable meaning for devotees of Christian doctrine, yet it SYNOPSIS does not necessarily transgress the belief system of Eliot may very well have welcomed, even rel- anyone else who may, whatever his or her faith or ished the opportunity to flex his polemical muscle lack of faith, at least agree with the general prem- afforded him by the commission to flesh out the ise that humans, and human society, cannot be scenario for The Rock with words of his own choos- sustained by the vanities of worldly pursuits alone. ing. Since the mid-1920s, Eliot had been mov- Eliot’s poetry in the choruses makes this essential ing further and further away from a poetry whose and central point.

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Part I listlessly over the modern city’s bridges on their The first chorus begins with a general condem- way to work as clerks and typists in the modern nation of the modern world’s love affair with its city’s countless bureaus and offices, is here reduced technological and scientific achievements, through to its most bare and direct immediacy. which humanity has come to know more but under- No one who has ever stood shoulder to shoul- stand less, with the result that the 20 centuries since der with his or her modern urban compatriots in the inception of Christianity have brought people a subway train or on an intracity bus in the early “farther from God and nearer to the Dust.” Then morning hours or late at night can miss the poetry’s the focus sharpens, and the immediate locale and point: Life, which has always been ceaseless labor, circumstances are brought to mind for the audi- may by now have become pointless labor as well. ence. It is London, the “timekept City,” a reminder, For what point is there to labor that serves only perhaps, that the entire world now keeps the hour the passing moment and the body’s incessant desire by Greenwich mean time, but the tenor of the to be satiated with food and creature comforts at times there in London now, according to the cho- the expense of the soul’s unspoken needs? And rus, is that there are “too many churches, / And unspoken they shall be, for both the individual and too few chop-houses.” This focus is clearly asking the community at large, without the services of the the audience at least to accede to the proposition church. that “man does not live by bread alone,” which If Eliot, as some critics of this poetry claim, has one would find an abundance of, along with cuts reduced the former power and rich complexity of of roast meat, potatoes, and sundry other edibles, his poetry in order to fit it more easily into the in any good chop-house. The danger, of course, is requirements of a broad audience and broadly pub- that it is always easier to yield to the needs of the lic theme and purpose, he has nevertheless, inas- body, the flesh, than those of the spirit, and this is a much as he has not so much a message as a vision, riskier proposition, oddly enough, the more prosper- found a new métier for its expression. These words ous a community becomes. That there is no place in are not intended for a literary audience, but for such well-fed, well-ensconced lives for the church any audience. The ideas were always intended in to expand its interests, which are their souls, is the that manner as well. Whether Eliot is, as a con- great danger when the countryside is “only fit for sequence, doing more here in this new theatrical picnics,” the churches only for “important wed- venue by doing less or whether he is simply doing dings.” Everything fits now into its social purpose, less, he is getting out the word as he sees and hears rather than its spiritual one. it, fulfilling the function of the poet who, as he says Into this kind of vacuity, where lives are led in his essay “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Sen- only for the pleasures of the moment (and even eca,” in writing as himself writes his age. domestic bliss can become a vacuous experience in Part I ends with Workmen chanting that they this scheme of things), The Rock appears, intoning shall build this needed church brick by brick. There the collective wisdom of the ages. Life is “ceaseless are then heard, antiphonally, the voices of the labor”; all things change; there is a “perpetual strug- Unemployed, of whom there would at that time be gle” between good and evil in which all humans many worldwide in the midst of the Great Depres- take part; the desert, age-old symbol of emptiness sion that had commenced with the collapse of the and aridity of thought and feeling, is “not remote U.S. stock market in October 1929, their voices in the southern tropics” but rather “squeezed in lamenting the fact that they have no share in the the tube-train next to you, / . . . in the heart of creature comforts and chop-houses that many oth- your brother.” The subtle, allusive, and fragmen- ers enjoy. These voices make the point that the tary means by which Eliot had expressed these very building creates jobs, after all. Eliot ends the first same ideas in The Waste Land and other earlier chorus with the Workmen welcoming from among urban poetry, with its crowd of hollow men passing the Unemployed more hands with which to “build

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the meaning”: “A Church for all / And a job for There is, too, the heightened rhetoric of prophecy, each.” calling on the attention of those of his contem- Part II poraries “who turn from GOD / To the grandeur of [their] mind and the glory of [their] action.” By the opening of the second chorus, Eliot has Those are dangerous distractions in any age but made his thesis perfectly clear: The church serves particularly pernicious ones for the children of the the needs of the community and the individual in modern age, who witness one dazzling human tech- more than just spiritual ways, although since the nological or scientific triumph after another but fail spiritual is the church’s focus, it is not as likely to see how temporary these triumphs, like all other to let its commitment to either the community human triumphs before them, are. or the individual waver out of a commitment to other concerns, such as the profit motive or rank Parts IV & V popularity. (It would do well to recall the central The next two choruses, calling up biblical ana- metaphor: The church is, after all, The Rock.) logues, stress how it must always be through strug- This point—“There is no life that is not in com- gle—“the sword in one hand and the trowel in the munity, / And no community not lived in praise of other,” “therefore some must labour, and others GOD”—will sustain the rest of the poetry as the must hold spears”—that the temple can be built work continues, and as it continues, too, it takes and rebuilt. It must be endlessly reconstructed for on a decidedly sectarian point of view from time the purposes of human habitation in the House to time. of God, which is also the world, and thus a fallen It would be not only foolish for Eliot to devi- venue where the faithful “are encompassed with ate from the immediate parochial concerns of the snakes and dogs.” pageant play at hand, but out of keeping with his Part VI own commitment to the local immediacies of the In the sixth chorus, Eliot reminds the audience that cause that he is promoting. Therefore, he openly Christians, too, have known what it is to be perse- refers not only to belief in Christ Jesus and in the cuted for their faith, that indeed “Faith has [not Body of Christ incarnate, overt references that he yet] conquered the world.” The rhetorical thrust would not to this point have made in his poetry, here is an exhortation not to imagine that the but to the British race as well (keeping in mind battle is won. For that reason, more churches are that at this time, “race” was used in a far looser and needed. He iterates the reasons why “men [should] broader sense, encompassing ethnicities as well). love the Church,” and these reasons all come down Part III to one thing: The church is always there to remind The third chorus takes up the contrapuntal chant the faithful that here good and evil wage war, so again, this in quasi-biblical terms, as a lament is that there must always be saints and martyrs. Both raised for all those who are enamored not of God’s realistically and metaphorically speaking, then, “if work but of their own and of the passing accom- blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps / We must plishments and attributes of their own day and first build the steps.” time. “Decent godless people,” Eliot calls the vast It is, of course, difficult to get the full effect lot of humanity, for whom “[t]heir only monument and urgency of the dramatic energy of Eliot’s pre- [will be] the asphalt road / And a thousand lost sentation without the actual dramatic action that golf balls.” must have transpired in the interval between each From time to time, Eliot achieves in these lines chorus. Yet, as the rhetorical argument carried on the brilliantly acerbic wit that had characterized in quasi-biblical terms in each succeeding cho- the quatrain poems of 1917 and 1918, although rus moves the audience forward, the conclusion in those there was no foundation of faith against becomes more and more inevitable: If a commu- which such caustic wit could be measured or nity abandons the church, it abandons not only through which it could find constructive purpose. God but its own best instincts for the self-sacrifice

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and self-denial without which a community cannot of community, but not the spiritual and hardly the grow and change. religious. These kinds of activities, and not the Part VII “mourn[ing] in a private chamber,” cut individuals off, oddly enough, from the very sort of community Just as the second chorus poetically summarizes British history, the seventh chorus recapitulates that they imagine they should be serving. Rather, it what is called Providential History, the passage is through service to what Eliot calls “the joyful com- of human belief from the moment of Creation munion of saints” that the individual fulfills service in Genesis through all the varieties of religious to both self and other and, through them, to God. experience that make up the history and culture The Rock becomes an edifice here built of stone, of human beliefs, culminating in the coming of “the soul of man . . . joined to the soul of stone,” Christ, “the light of the Word.” Now Eliot sees just as out of music and the “slimy mud of words” a difference, however: “Men have left GOD not emerge “the perfect order of speech, and the beauty for other gods, . . . but for no god; and this has of incantation.” These are the gifts that are to be never happened before.” Instead, money, power, brought to the service of God, since they mimic life, or race rule the roost now, so that when the creation itself, wherein and whereby both body and worst has occurred, “[w]hen the Church is no lon- spirit serve and are served. As a result, the Temple ger regarded, not even opposed,” the new trinity is built, a “visible reminder of Invisible Light.” becomes “Usury, Lust and Power.” Part X Part VIII The 10th and final chorus brings to bear the idea The eighth chorus recalls the Babylonian captivity, expressed by The Rock: Human lot is ceaseless toil. the first great diaspora of God’s chosen people, the Though the temple, the Word made manifest that Jews, and the tragic travesty of destructive waste had begun as the Word of The Rock in the open- that was World War I. Eliot finds himself allowing ing choruses, has now been built; there can never for his own contemporaries’ timorous rapaciousness be enough of the Visible Church here, where “the as they cling to what little any mortal has. “Our great snake lies ever half awake.” The snake calls age is an age of moderate virtue / And of moder- up the image of Satan as the serpent who polluted ate vice,” and it is hard to take up the burdens paradise, of course, but not without human com- that true faith requires. “Yet nothing is impossible, plicity. So the snake is anything that clings to what nothing, / To men of faith and conviction.” It may is at bottom “the pit of the world,” where there lies be praising with faint damning, to invert the com- the temptation to quit or to forget or to rest too mon saying, but it is encouragement nonetheless, soon from toil. and the pageant play, if it must expose, exposes The chorus praises the efforts of what Eliot, in ultimately to inspirit and inspire, otherwise it fails a slightly earlier poem, “Animula,” taking his cue in its aim to gain support for the church. from DANTE ALIGHIERI, called the “simple soul.” Part IX The soul must rest, but not rest on its laurels; it In the ninth chorus, Eliot paints what on the sur- must take comfort in such service to the light as face seems to be a flattering picture of these same it can manage, but not be blinded by it. Neverthe- contemporaries as they go about their daily lives, less, after a hymn of several stanzas in praise of that “proudnecked, like thoroughbreds ready for races.” light that is “[t]oo bright for mortal vision,” the The idea that they are “proudnecked” implies that chorus and the entire sequence draw to a close on they are stiff-necked—set in their ways and reluc- a note reminiscent of the tone in which The Waste tant either to hear God’s word or to keep his ways. Land had opened. There the speaker comments on It is an ironic picture, of course, showing them in how the spirit would rather remain cocooned in love with their animal nature, with the corruptible winter’s “forgetful sleep” than awaken with the rest flesh, “busy in the market, the forum”—pursuing all of the natural universe to the call to life of spring in sorts of personal and economic and political aspects April, “the cruelest month.”

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Using the idea that the soul is like a child, Eliot may by now seem to be a clichéd reaction to the rounds out the choruses by suggesting that there is boredom and meaningless rote found in the mod- a rhythm to our soulfulness, too, a drowsiness that ern urban experience was at the time of its com- must be periodically rekindled, which, too, is a part position a scathing indictment both of that sort of the divine plan. “Therefore we thank Thee for of poetry and of the culture that could produce our little light, that is dappled with shadow,” the it. On the one hand, it suggested that there was poet concludes, and for the “darkness that reminds little more that poetry could say that might enliven us of light.” or ennoble typical human experience, that it had all been reduced to a charade lacking direction CRITICAL COMMENTARY or purpose with nothing remaining for the serious In the long tradition of religious discourse and poet to do except to lament in ways now witty, now inspirational poetry, there is nothing that Eliot says dour, the pains and pangs of going on nevertheless. in “Choruses from The Rock” that is startlingly new On the other hand, such poetry suggested that a or puzzling. Given that Eliot was writing for a pre- more vibrant and engaged cultural environment, in determined and well-defined context, purpose, and which individuals were involved in something more audience and that the writing was to appeal to than wholly material acquisition and consumption, the most common religious imagination and to the satisfying nothing more than the most primal sorts constraints of strict doctrine, it would be surprising of appetites, would enable more meaningful poetic if he had gone out of his way to break new ground expression. in the area of devotional verse and religious com- It is interesting to note, then, how Eliot utilizes mentary. Nevertheless, what is startling in these the same metaphorical reference points but to an pages is how well Eliot succeeded in bringing the extremely different end in the closing of The Rock. typical and commonplace to bear in a choral poetry In “The Hollow Men,” the whimper comes, the meant for wide public consumption in a live, the- reader is led to imagine, because the “Shadow” falls atrical setting, without ostensibly sacrificing the between all human motives and desires and ideals complex vision of the modern urban, intellectual, and their fulfillment in action. In the last chorus and spiritual dilemmas that he had been develop- from The Rock, by sharp contrast, the shadow and ing throughout his own poetic efforts to date. In the darkness are, rather than halfheartedly cursed some ways, composing these verse passages for The in a resignation to the futility of all human action, Rock may have allowed him to advance and clarify praised in measured terms for what such contra- that vision for his own purposes as a poet who, it is rieties and vicissitudes may reveal of the light. worth recalling, had thought that he had reached Again, it is not that Eliot has come upon a new way another creative dead-end. of configuring one of the major dilemmas regard- For the sake of a convincing comparison, one ing human intellectual and spiritual limitations; might turn to the poem “The Hollow Men,” which indeed, his “solution” is as old as metaphors of light Eliot had composed nearly a decade earlier. (It was and darkness. The point is that he has found it pos- published in 1925, and several of its sections were sible to introduce these more traditional modes of discarded verse from the verse play “Sweeney Ago- accounting for our shortcomings into his poetry. nistes,” which Eliot had been working on as early as The reader has a right to wonder, then, whether 1923.) That poem, which ends with the celebrated Eliot has committed the cardinal sin of the serious pessimistic negativism of the notion of the world artist that, it is reasonable to assume, he still took ending “[n]ot with a bang but a whimper,” not himself to be—to modify either his mode of expres- only summarizes the arch modernism of the verse sion or his point of view for the sake of appeasing technique that Eliot had been perfecting to that the tastes or opinions of his audience. The fact is time but strikes the note of withering despair that that the poetry found in “Choruses from The Rock” many had come to hear as the dominant char- employs the old standbys of both consolation and acteristic of his and other modernist verse. What exhortation typical of what can be called religious

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verse, but at the same time, more significantly, it ence now, however, is not that humans have some- does not abandon in the least those critiques of how been miraculously transformed but that there human behavior that Eliot regarded as unique to is nothing to counterbalance this new sophistica- his time and place. tion and its fatuous reliance on the day-to-day for It is where Eliot identifies the problem rather order, purpose, and succor—nothing, Eliot says in than proposes the solution that the voice and the The Rock, other than the capacity for faith and the vision that are distinctively Eliot’s burst through the institutionalized means for expressing that faith, poetry with the intense energy of their own light, both of which resources exist now. and that perhaps is why Eliot, though he had every To Eliot, however, that very resource, which reason not to regard the characterizations and story ought now more than ever to be embraced for the line associated with the original scenario as his own very reason that humans seem to have reached the in any way, was not about to orphan the choruses, end of the line in terms of a sort of post-Edenic into whose every line the poet of The Waste Land innocence, is being abandoned in favor of the very breathes life. The idea that the pursuit of happi- sophistication that would require such recourse ness defined by satisfying one’s animal appetites is to the tried and true dictates of tradition. The a blind pursuit and empty quest is an old one, but impasse, expressed best among Eliot’s works in the to that idea Eliot and other modernists, following unfinished verse drama, “Sweeney Agonistes,” is the lead of their 19th-century precursors, foremost that the more sensitive individuals know that they among them, in Eliot’s case, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE cannot ever return to a lost Eden but have no and JULES LAFORGUE, add a peculiarly modern twist: idea where to turn instead. In “Coriolan,” Eliot had the idea that some deep part of each human crea- already amply illustrated that the public will not ture knows this. have much of either heroes or heads of states in a The modern individual knows that a life lived world controlled by “aethereal rumors”—a phrase without purpose is “waste and void”—as the sev- from The Waste Land that seems simultaneously to enth of The Rock’s choruses warns—because, in invoke and to dismiss as insidiously ridiculous the the surfeit of creature comforts that modern com- rapid dissemination of information and opinions by merce provides, what individual can deny that such the press and the newer media of radio and film. comforts are not enough, and never can be? It is Coming full circle, the reader perhaps can see there in each individual’s unconscious, unspoken now, in the relative enthusiasm with which Eliot possession of that knowledge, its weight on the seized what must then have seemed to many an soul, that Eliot finds the dead souls who inhabit the opportunity to commit professional suicide in dead modern city, not in the essentially self-evi- public by writing the book for a religious pageant dent emptiness of their pursuit of temporal money play, an opportunity instead for him to strike out and power and glory, pleasure, pride, and fame. For more boldly into areas both of poetic technique Eliot, that knowledge shows in the lack of enthu- and poetic theme that his poetry had been already siasm with which his fellow humans now pursue taking him. Furthermore, this turn toward a more those goals. transparent and readable verse was not necessar- It is as if humanity, at least in the so-called ily compelled by any particularly fervent religiosity industrialized democracies of the West with their on Eliot’s part, although he certainly was express- increasing reliance on the secular institutions of the ing what must have constituted his own religious state and social sciences to manage human affairs, convictions, but by a virtually overpowering sense have reached a level of sophistication hitherto of social commitment. Only that sort of a com- unknown in human cultures. Modern individuals mitment would account for the similar movement know and experience things that their ancestors toward powerfully opinionated social commentary never could have, so the modern ends up imagin- that Eliot was by now engaging in on other fronts, ing that he or she must somehow be exempt from particularly in After Strange Gods with its appeal all the tragic failings of the past. The real differ- for orthodoxy in ways of thinking for the sake not

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of stifling modernist thought but of clarifying its become more and more crude and “less capable of essential conflicts and potential solutions. expressing complicated, subtle, and surprising emo- As poetry, “Choruses from The Rock” will per- tions.” Readers of Eliot’s own verse, not to men- haps always occupy a marginal place in the poet’s tion those acquainted with his critical comments achievement, although that remains to be seen. As on a phenomenon he termed the “dissociation an adventureous release of hitherto pent-up but no of sensibility,” would know that this is a serious less focused sentiments, these choruses set the tone concern of his. In essays as late as “The Social and direction for much of the rest of Eliot’s serious Function of Poetry” in 1945, Eliot continued to literary undertakings, not the least among them his comment on how the vitality of the language as first complete and successful verse drama, Murder in a means for expressing ordinary emotions is con- the Cathedral, and his masterpiece, Four Quartets. tingent on poets keeping their poetic language supple and fresh. Any stultification of the latter can only result in a further diminishment of the former. Consequently, to commend Marlowe as a “Christopher Marlowe” dramatic poet who extended the range of poetic (1918) discourse as an effectively expressive vehicle is no small recommendation. Eliot begins this early essay on the English Elizabe- Eliot devotes much of the rest of the essay to sty- than playwright Christopher Marlowe, whom most listic analyses of Marlowe’s “rhetoric,” as Eliot here count second only to Shakespeare as the great- calls it. (In a later essay on Elizabethan translations est tragedian of the English stage, by enumerating of the classical Roman playwright Seneca into Eng- Marlowe’s strengths and shortcomings. As is typi- lish, he calls it “Elizabethan bombast.”) Marlowe, cal of Eliot at this stage in his subsidiary career as he demonstrates, is what he calls a “synthetic poet,” a critic, he was wont to make daringly different one who, like Eliot himself, takes images and often judgments and assessments in order to cut as wide whole lines from other poets and makes them into a swath as he could through contemporary liter- something wholly his own. At his best, Eliot con- ary criticism so that he might leave as indelible a cludes, Marlowe wrote a verse “always hesitating on mark as possible. Making a very loud splash can the edge of caricature at the right moment.” This, be a wise policy for a young person to pursue, but too, may remind readers of Eliot’s own capacity, it can often be, for the subject at hand, an unfair particularly in his earliest triumphs, to write a poetry one, as Eliot himself would confess a great many perpetually hovering at the edge of self-parody. It is, years later, in “To Criticize the Critic.” In the effort he argues in these reflections on Marlowe, a style to sound right, one must make all previous assess- ments sound wrong and wrongheaded. of poetry that hovers at the edge of greatness, too. Therefore, Marlowe is neither the father of Eng- All great art is the result of distillation, after all; the lish tragedy nor the creator of English blank verse whole must somehow be reduced to something that nor Shakespeare’s foremost guide and teacher, as is far less than itself, but still bear a readily recogniz- the 19th-century English poet Charles Algernon able resemblance. That is what caricature does. Swinburne would have it. What Eliot grants Mar- Eliot finishes this brief appreciation of Marlowe lowe instead is that he introduced “several new by musing on what he might have achieved with tones into blank verse,” thus enabling it to move such a unique gift had he not died so tragically away from the rhythms of rhymed verse that had young. “Marlowe’s verse,” he concludes, “might thus far dominated English prosody. have moved . . . toward this intense and serious That in and of itself is no small accomplish- and indubitably great poetry, which . . . attains its ment. As Eliot points out, after the “Chinese Wall effect by something not unlike caricature.” Here of Milton,” blank, or unrhymed, verse in English Eliot’s appreciation of a fellow poet can be seen became the language’s more and more standard to hover itself on the edge of a general critical poetic line. In the process, however, it has also precept. Eliot seems to be saying that poetry—or

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at least a certain kind of poetry—must hold up a he embraced it, a welcome opportunity to shift slightly distorted mirror, in whose images we see careers. Already formally credentialed as an aca- not the perfect image of ourselves but the edges of demic, with an M.A. in English literature and an all our most salient moral features. but completed Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard, Eliot’s own characters—Prufrock, Sweeney, Eliot started to haunt the halls of academe. All the Gerontion, and the hollow men—are that same biographical evidence confirms that, by the mid- sort of caricatures of the typical enlivened by lan- 20s, Eliot was well on his way toward becoming a guage, so that the reader’s attention is drawn to full-time literary scholar, as opposed to the highly those moral features that stand out that much more credible reviewer and critic that he had been since clearly; in the process, the full likeness is created at least 1917. for the moral imagination. He was not abandoning poetry writing alto- gether, but along with the editorship of the Crite- rion in 1922 and his appointment as poetry editor and a board member with the publishing house Clark Lectures, The (1926) Faber & Gwyer in 1925, Eliot took on more ambi- tious critical and scholarly projects. Specifically, Commencing on January 26, 1926, and conclud- he was intending to produce three highly scholarly ing on March 9, 1926, Eliot presented a series of works of criticism: The School of Donne, Elizabethan eight lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge. For Drama, and The Sons of Ben. According to Eliot’s the lecture series, which was named in honor of preface to the never-published School of Donne, Trinity College Fellow William George Clark, who “the three together will constitute a criticism of had endowed the lectureship in 1868, Eliot gave the English Renaissance.” Neither did the other an overview titled “The Metaphysical Poetry of two ever see the light of day. Perhaps as a result of the 17th Century, with special reference to Donne, his own shifting intellectual, creative, and spiritual Crashaw and Cowley.” interests, including most notably his conversion to By this time in his career as both poet and critic, Anglo-Catholicism in June 1927, the intended vol- Eliot had fallen afoul of a self-doubt brought on ume on Elizabethan drama remained little more by an overwhelming, though not unearned, celeb- than a series of perceptive but otherwise disjointed rity. The publication of The Waste Land in the fall essays on various dramatists published sporadically of 1922 had transformed him from an innovative between 1918 and 1934. young poet admired by fellow avant-garde writers The most accomplished of these—“Four Eliz- into an iconic public figure who seemed to embody abethan Dramatists,” “Seneca in Elizabethan and express the very spirit of modernism then Translation,” and “Shakespeare and the Stoicism sweeping through the arts. This celebrity seemed of Seneca”—would all be collected in his Selected to have vanquished his creative sensibilities. Com- Essays in 1932, but a volume of criticism specifi- pelled to imagine that he must now produce new cally devoted to the Elizabethan dramatists would work equally as earth-shattering, he was reduced to itself wait until 1956 to see publication as Essays on regarding his talent for poetry writing as exhausted. Elizabethan Drama. Even then, in a brief headnote, Although “The Hollow Men,” his next major cre- Eliot admits that the book is more an extended ative work, was published in 1925, it was, for all its selection of his much earlier criticism than a coher- originality, a pastiche of leftover poetry from the ent study. The Sons of Ben, which was to focus on abortive verse drama “Sweeney Agonistes,” which the early 17th-century English playwright Ben Jon- Eliot had no sooner begun in 1923 than he aban- son and trace “the development of humanism, its doned by 1924. relation to Anglican thought, and the emergence However, Eliot appeared to be resigned to the of Hobbes and Hyde,” apparently never got any entire state of affairs, which gave him what must further than its conceptualization, lost somewhere have been, in view of the industry with which on the road from For Lancelot Andrewes, from 1928,

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to The Uses of Poetry and the Uses of Criticism, pub- simply be “an accidental relationship between his lished in 1933, and After Strange Gods: A Primer of mind and our own.” In any event, he has no doubt Modern Heresy, in 1934. that “The age of Donne, and the age of Marvell, That Eliot should revise and revisit plans and are sympathetic to us, and it demands a consider- concepts is within the prerogatives of any thinker able effort of dissociation to decide to what degree and author, of course, as well as being subject to we are deflected toward him by local or temporary the unforeseen and serendipitous. The School of bias.” Eliot concludes that “Compared with these Donne is another matter, however. Eliot already men, almost every 19th-century English poet is in had addressed the English metaphysical poets, some way limited or deformed.” JOHN DONNE the most prominent and accom- Eliot would modify this unbridled enthusiasm for plished among them, in his celebrated 1921 review Donne’s modernism somewhat by the time of his of Herbert J. C. Grierson’s Metaphysical Lyrics and 1926 essay on the 17th-century English divine, and Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to Butler. Donne’s contemporary, Sir Lancelot Andrewes, In that review, Eliot had commended the English whose literary style closely resembles Donne’s but metaphysical poets for writing with a vigorous whose ideology represents for Eliot those older, less expression of both thought and feeling that could morally chaotic values and traditions, largely medi- “devour experience,” whereas in subsequent times eval and Christian, that more and more frequently an increasing “dissociation of sensibility” had made would become the focus of Eliot’s critical atten- English poetry less and less expressive of raw expe- tion and intellectual energy. That is not to say, rience and more and more somberly reflective com- however, that despite those increasing ideological mentaries on it. differences, Eliot is ever any the less a devotee of Indeed, in a June 1923 Athenaeum review of a what Donne’s work represents for poetry alone and volume of Donne’s love poetry, Eliot asserted that its continuing vitality and validity. Donne’s “interest for the present age, is his fidel- As Eliot prepared the Clark Lectures in late ity to emotion as he finds it.” Furthermore, Eliot 1925, then, John Donne’s would be the pivotal wrote, “it is because he has this honesty, because age and the pivotal poetic style between those he is so often expressing his genuine whole of tan- two other major influences on Eliot, the poetry gled feelings, that Donne is, like the early Italians, of DANTE ALIGHIERI and the poetry of the French like Heine, like Baudelaire, a poet of the world’s symbolists, Baudelaire among them, but particu- literature.” The astute reader may find, neverthe- larly JULES LAFORGUE. If the lectures had a the- less, a subtext there; if Eliot makes it no secret sis, it was that there had been a disintegration of that he is drawn to Donne, it is equally well known the intellect following the Renaissance and the that he is also drawn to DANTE—an outstandingly advent of what would eventually become modern- overstated example of an “early Italian” poet—as ist thinking. The work of such late medieval poets well as to the 19th-century French symbolists such as Dante represented that seamless union of mind as CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. So, then, his identifying and body, spirit and intellect, and the social and Donne with these other two periods in the devel- the religious in literature that had been lost to the opment of European poetry has a more than casual modern world except in the metaphysical poetry of motivation behind it. Simply put, Eliot is suggest- the “school of Donne” and later, in the 19th cen- ing in this review that, with “his recognition of tury, among the symbolists. the complexity of feeling and its rapid alterations The topic of the relationship between thought, and antitheses,” Donne, like those others, is a poet or philosophy, in general and thought as it is writing within a sensibility that can by now be best expressed in poetry was never far from Eliot’s mind, characterized by a single word: modernist. particularly as he matured as a critic. Eventually, “There are two ways in which we may find a poet distinguishing among poetry, belief, and philoso- to be modern,” Eliot continues, and he is forced to phy became a continuing effort in his criticism. speculate that one of those ways is that there may As early as 1920, in an earlier essay titled simply

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“Dante” published in The Sacred Wood, Eliot com- inconclusive. Yet, unlike Donne, he makes the mented on the balance that must be maintained choice consciously and willingly. between a respect for philosophy as philosophy and As might be expected, despite Eliot’s lack of poetry as poetry, but he was vehemently opposed formal academic affiliations, the lectures were well to any notion that the twain should never meet. attended. It was more than the illustrious venue, He writes: however. After all, Eliot was by now one of the most celebrated men of letters in the English-speaking Without doubt, the effort of the philosopher world, a contemporary poet of the first order whose proper, the man who is trying to deal with ideas critical pronouncements, in such essays as “Tradition in themselves, and the effort of the poet, who and the Individual Talent” (1919), “Hamlet and His may be trying to realize ideas, cannot be carried Problems” (1919), and “The Metaphysical Poets,” on at the same time. But this is not to deny had helped create a corollary critical movement and that poetry can be in some sense philosophic. methodology, impersonal and formal in nature, that The poet can deal with philosophic ideas, would later be known as the New Criticism. not as matter for argument, but as matter for Among those in attendance for the first lecture inspection. . . . [P]oetry can be penetrated by a were Sir James Frazer, whose celebrated work on philosophic idea. . . . If we divorced poetry and cultural anthropology, The Golden Bough, figured philosophy altogether, we should bring a seri- prominently in Eliot’s notes to The Waste Land, and ous impeachment, not only against Dante, but the Edwardian poet A. E. Housman, whose own against most of Dante’s contemporaries. slightly askew vision of the so-called Eternal Veri- It is, again, a matter of balance and intention. These ties somewhat prefigured Eliot’s own cast of mind older poets, the English metaphysicals among them, as a poet. On hand as well were intellectual and seemed to know that instinctively. In any event, literary lights of the day from among the faculty, their poetry manifested that respect. including the Elizabethan scholar E. M. W. Til- In the Clark Lectures, Eliot summarizes the lyard, the psychological critic I. A. Richards, and modernist affinities with, and differences from, the modernist critic F. R. Leavis. that earlier poetics in a passage in which he com- The eight lectures produced a 184-page type- pares his own viewpoint with that of the critic script, the original of which was kept at Cambridge; and scholar Mario Praz. Praz had observed that, a copy was later resposited at Harvard. Eliot con- with Donne, the initiating impulse of a poem is tinually revised the manuscript, shared it with broken suddenly “by an anticlimax of ratiocina- fellow scholars and critics such as Herbert Read tion.” The mind, in other words, is forced to defer and Praz for their suggested revisions, and even to the primacy of sensation, yet it also interrupts announced its pending publication in the preface that primacy (a modernist sort of conflation of the to For Lancelot Andrewes in early 1928. As other experiential and the commentative). Eliot agrees: projects commanded his attention and his intel- “I would suggest that one of the reasons why we lectual development continued, however, Eliot find Donne so sympathetic is that we [the modern- must have grown increasingly estranged from and ists] also, provided with no philosophy which can embarrassed by the position he had taken. In any assign a serious and dignified place to the original case, Eliot later called the lectures “pretentious and impulse, take refuge in the anticlimax of ratiocina- immature” and forbade the publication or even the tion; only, with us, the contrast is more conscious citing of them or of their subsequent reincarnation and complete.” The statement provides one of as the Turnbull Lectures presented at Johns Hop- Eliot’s most pithy summations of the dilemma of kins in January 1934. The all-inclusive summary modernism and the complexities of its stylistics. pronouncement certainly became less and less Unable to remain satisfied with half-truths, as it Eliot’s method of operating as his views and opin- were, Eliot can content himself only with wallow- ions matured, and in later years he often apologized ing in the paradoxical, the contradictory, and the for his youthful critical bravado (although it is for

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those more daring pronouncements that he will codifies its culture’s beliefs and language, assum- understandably be most remembered as a critic and ing that they are ready to be thus crystallized and scholar). codified. In that category, Eliot could easily include The Clark Lectures and the somewhat revised Virgil’s Aeneid, which also happens to be a clas- Turnbull Lectures were finally published in a schol- sic according to the criteria of age and venerabil- arly edition prepared by Emory professor and Eliot ity, but he also includes DANTE ALIGHIERI’s Divine scholar Ronald Schuchard in 1993. Comedy, a comparatively “modern” work, which set a permanent seal on modern Italian as well as on the medieval worldview. “Classics and the Man SYNOPSIS “The Classics and the Man of Letters” is about nei- of Letters, The” (1942) ther classicism as a literary movement nor the liter- ary products of the classical age of Greece and of Eliot may seem to be a writer who has frequently Rome nor even a classic in any purely literary sense; visited the topic of the classics—works of litera- it is more particularly about the way education forms ture that are associated in the public mind with a writer or, in Eliot’s words, a man of letters. the old and venerable but that may also be dull The essay was originally the presidential address and tedious. Surely, from the time of his earliest presented before the Classical Association at poetry, he displayed an erudition that often made Cambridge, England, on April 15, 1942, and others regard his as a poetry “written for a small Eliot presents his credentials in a self-deprecating and exclusive audience,” as Eliot later complained manner, as will become more and more the case in the essay “The Classics and the Man of Letters.” as his celebrity and reputation begin to precede True, too, he was involved in the classicism- him into virtually any venue. In this instance, versus-romanticism debate of the 1920s. In another he keeps his profile low. Although he may have essay, 1961’s “To Criticize the Critic,” he lays at one time been a high school Latin teacher, he the blame for his interest and partisanship on his makes no pretense that he shall be making his old Harvard mentor, Irving Babbitt, as well as case for the importance of Latin and Greek based on his youthful dalliance with the politics of the on his experience as a scholar or educator, basing French conservative thinker and activist Charles his interest in the topic rather on his being a man Maurras and on the English literary critic, T. E. of letters. Well into the essay, he also makes it Hulme. In that debate, which Eliot pursued into clear that his concern is not “with the teaching the mid-1930s, he famously and passionately took of literature, but with teaching only in relation to the side of the classicists, or those devoted to those who are going to write it,” hence the two tradition, order, and some species of form. His sides of his title. traditional conservatism identified Eliot with the Even there, however, he does not want to give Greek and Latin classics, although the issue of the wrong impression. He freely admits that if liter- the debate was not necessarily what kind of texts ature were merely a succession of writers of genius, one enjoyed reading. then readers would not be inclined to believe of Finally, during the 1940s and early 1950s, Eliot any one writer that “he would have been a greater wrote several essays whose ostensible purpose was writer, or an inferior writer, if he had had a differ- to define classic as a generic term. “What Is a Clas- ent kind of education.” That is why Eliot chooses to sic?” (1945) and “Virgil and the Christian World” focus his attention not on writers of genius but on (1951) come most immediately to mind as critical “men of letters,” thereby including “men of the sec- pieces in which Eliot sees a classic not necessarily ond or third, or lower ranks as well as the greatest.” as a work from the ancient or classical world so The continuity of a literature is a critical constitu- much as as a work of literature that crystallizes and ent of its greatness, and it is precisely these lesser

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writers, rather than those occasional geniuses, that whether the importance that he can assign to a account for that continuity. solid grounding in the classics ought “to be taken Eliot also does not want to give the impres- account of in our educational planning.” As Eliot sion that there is a prescribed degree or quality of sees it, “the truly literary mind is likely to develop grounding in the classics that might be required slowly” and “needs a more comprehensive and var- of a writer. Using WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and John ied diet.” Getting right to the point, Eliot proposes Milton for his opposing models, he argues convinc- that the imaginative writer, whose skill involves a ingly that, of Shakespeare, it can be said that “never species of communication wherein “precision is of has a man turned so little knowledge to such great utmost importance,” “must know the various pur- account.” In the case of Milton, as with Dante, it poses for which language has been used; and that can be said that “never has a poet possessed of such involves some knowledge of the subjects for the great learning so completely justified the acquisi- communication of which men have used language tion of it.” in the past”—in a word, the classics. Eliot stresses that his aim throughout has not been CRITICAL COMMENTARY to propose a course of study for the literary genius The crux of the matter, as Eliot sees it, is to deter- so much as one in which such minds might not mine “what is likely to happen, to our language only flourish but also find among their peers other and our literature, when the connection between individuals who are qualified, by virtue of their edu- the classics and our own literature is broken.” This cation, to appreciate the learning that the produc- topic will occupy Eliot’s attention throughout most tion of great literature both requires and evinces. At of the 1940s and had already, under the slightly dif- the very least, Eliot insists that along with a proper ferent guise of tradition in his defenses of classicism grounding in the sciences and mathematics and at and conservatism in general, been calling his criti- minimum one foreign language, “the maintenance of cal attention from as far back as the early 1920s. It classical education is essential to the maintenance of is his fear that the self-congratulatory shallowness the continuity of English literature.” of the times, coupled with an increasing rage for Eliot will end his address with an appeal to novelty that is being fostered by the commercial those who feel that literature serves the purposes interests of popular culture, may conspire to cut of a nation by doing more than merely produc- off the general culture from its own vital roots in ing good poetry and novels. It is the expression the past. of the living link between a people and all of In After Strange Gods in 1934 and in The Idea their past, but particularly with their inheritance of a Christian Society in 1939, Eliot had sounded of the traditions that their ancestors have drawn this same kind of warning with regard particularly on and elected to preserve. Eliot’s appeal, he says, to the social deterioration of any vital concern is to those who “believe that a new unity can only for England’s agricultural and Christian roots. grow on the old roots: the Christian Faith, and By the late 1940s, in his Notes towards the Defin- the classical languages which Europeans inherit in tion of Culture, Eliot would focus this same con- common.” Considering again that Christian Euro- servative attention on all those other elements peans were, at the moment that those words of that constitute what is meant by culture. In “The Eliot’s were being spoken, at each others’ throats Classics and the Man of Letters,” in 1942, as in the third year of a war that would last another a second major European war within a 20-year three years, his sentiments are as courageously period rages, that shift of Eliot’s attention to the hopeful as they are optimistically naive. Still, he broader significations of a people’s culture begins imagines the “need of a cultural unification in to take shape. diversity of Europe,” and he is right in assuming Having linked the vitality of a national litera- that that unification can emerge only out of the ture with the maintenance of its ties with its own commonalities found in Europe’s shared Christian classical roots, the question, for Eliot, becomes and classical heritage.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 103 9/5/07 2:35:46 PM 104 Cocktail Party, The Cocktail Party, The (1949) crowed that he had made up for the mistake of badly adapting Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy in The After the end of World War II in August 1945 and Family Reunion, and had confounded the critics to the subsequent and gradual lifting of the auster- boot by loosely basing The Cocktail Party on Eurip- ity measures that had accompanied it in Britain, ides’ Alcestis. Not only had no one noticed the indebtedness The Family Reunion, which had experienced a dis- until Eliot made this information public, but once appointing five-week run when it first premiered it was revealed, no one had any great difficulty in in London in 1939, was successfully revived at both seeing and appreciating the connection. That London’s Mercury Theatre in October 1946. Then Eliot had successfully concealed the adaptation was both that play and Murder in the Cathedral were a coup for a poet who had won considerable celeb- selected for performances for the inaugural season rity over the years for borrowing liberally from clas- of the Edinburgh Festival in 1947. sical sources. Presumably, however, had Eliot never Whether or not that renewed commercial suc- revealed the connection himself, some Eliot scholar cess and public recognition of his playwriting abili- or another would have ferreted it out in good time, ties were the impetus, Eliot began to think in terms so obvious a connection is it once it is called to the of another project for the stage. By July 1948, he attention of anyone familiar with both texts. sent a draft of the first three acts of the play, which The Euripides text, like Eliot’s, is basically a love he had originally intended to title “One-Eyed story, not in the passionate, Hollywood sense of the Reilly,” to his longtime theatrical collaborator, the term, but with regard to love as a social and spir- actor and stage director E. MARTIN BROWNE. itual phenomenon that can enable and enhance A production of The Cocktail Party was finally human individuality but also distort and demean mounted at the Edinburgh Festival during the it. Euripides tells the tale of Admetus, the king of last week of August 1949, where it was a popular Thessaly, who receives a special boon from the god success. Unable to secure a theatre in London’s Apollo. Admetus’s allotted time has almost come to West End for its commercial premier, however, an end, but Apollo arranges for Admetus to avoid the producer Henry Sherek decided to premier it his fated death—if he can find someone else to die on New York’s Broadway instead, where it opened in his place. The notion that anyone would be will- on January 21, 1950, in the Henry Miller Theatre. ing to die in the place of another lies at the heart Although his recent Nobel Prize had enhanced of most definitions of ideal human virtue. Further- his worldwide celebrity, Eliot felt trepidation over more, for Eliot, that sort of action—the extinc- reception that The Cocktail Party’s very British tion of personal interests if not the self proper for story line might receive in the United States. He the sake of the best interest of others—is the very was pleasantly surprised when the New York pro- essence of the ethic that he had been proposing duction of this verse drama became a great com- explicitly in poem after poem. mercial success, as it would do in London later Since 1922, at least, in The Waste Land’s famous that year as well. Eliot had finally proved to both closing injunctions, borrowed from the Upani- himself and his public that he could write a popu- shads—to give, to sympathize, and to maintain lar play. Indeed, largely because of The Cocktail self-control—Eliot had been espousing the notion, Party, he was featured on the cover of Time maga- now practical, now traditionally Judeo-Christian, zine on March 6. that freedom lay in self-surrender, and self-surren- der came through a focused endeavor on getting BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS out of the prison of self and selfishness. Indeed, Still the erudite classicist and master of the liter- considerations of this order form a constant theme ary allusion, in a 1950 lecture titled “Poetry and in Eliot. From the 1909–11 composition of his first Drama” that was subsequently collected in On important work, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- Poetry and Poets, Eliot fairly and understandably frock,” onward, and certainly in such later works as

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“Gerontion” (1919) and “The Hollow Men” (1925), first his own parents and then his friends in search the living dead had been portrayed in Eliot’s poetry of a willing substitute, no one is willing to die in his as those who, caught up in and by their own nar- stead until Admetus’s wife, Alcestis, happily con- row-minded moral and spiritual constraints, cannot sents to do so, both out of her love for him and so imagine a way out of the nightmarish isolation in that their children will not be left fatherless. This which they blunder blindly. Worse are other Eliot only compounds the irony, of course, revealing characters like Sweeney in “Sweeney Agonistes” another of the few truths that can be relied on to (1925) or Harry when he is first encountered in hold at any time and in any place: Death is a taker, The Family Reunion (1939), who, while conscious not a giver. Admetus permits Alcestis to make her of their isolation from the balm of otherness, suffer sacrifice on his behalf, but now he finds himself nonetheless the agony of being incapable of break- cast into an immense grief because his beloved wife ing out of the prison that a crippling if not paralyz- has been taken from him by death. ing attachment to self-centeredness can make of Into this tragic scene, in which Admetus’s human individuality. entire household is in a state of profound mourn- That same liberating ethical emphasis on self- ing, comes Hercules, the great mythic hero, on his abnegation and self-denial in Eliot became only way to complete one of the 12 labors that he has that much more central to his work when he began been assigned as a penance for having slaughtered to base his personal life on an orthodox Christian his own children in a fit of madness. All that Her- belief system. Then the concepts that freedom is cules seeks from Admetus is a place to rest before found in surrender, nobility in humility, and peace he continues his journey. It does not take Hercules in acceptance became foremost in his thought. long to discern, however, that the entire house- These concepts form the basis for the code of con- hold is in mourning. Hercules graciously offers to duct implicitly exemplified in the course of action seek other accommodations, lest he might disturb that Thomas à Becket pursues in 1935’s Murder the grieving household, but Admetus, in keeping in the Cathedral and that Eliot himself espouses in with the powerful social injunction to be hospi- the four extended poetic works, composed between table under virtually any circumstances, insists 1935 and 1942, that became the Four Quartets. that he stay. He leads Hercules to believe that There they are explicit thematic elements repeated the deceased is a female servant rather than his at critical junctures so that the listener or reader own beloved Alcestis. So that the mourning will cannot possibly miss them, even if he or she does not make Hercules feel uncomfortable, he has the not grasp their central significance for Eliot. hero put up in rooms far from the central area of The idea of self-sacrifice therefore perme- the palace, where Hercules may feel free to do as ates Eliot’s poetic vision, which finds a significant he pleases. parallel in a work like Euripides’ Alcestis. There, And that is precisely what the unsuspecting hero however, the focus is the melodramatic suspense does. In keeping with his larger-than-life nature, created by Admetus’s situation, in keeping with a and because Admetus has made it clear to him that theatrical piece whose foremost purpose is to gain his visit will not disprupt the household or be an and retain the attention of an audience. In Eurip- imposition on their hospitality, Hercules eats and ides’ able hands, the story of Admetus illustrates drinks to his heart’s content, which is considerable. these same propositions in ways that are instantly The more wine he consumes, the more raucous and grasped because his dilemma, by virtue of its being ribald his spirits become, until, intentionally or not, so very far-fetched, makes its point clearly: Where invited or not, he behaves in a manner that cannot death is, there must be a loss. help but disturb some of the grieving servants. The irony of Admetus’s situation, cannot be eas- Caring no matter for Admetus’s having hesitated ily missed; surely it is not lost on Euripides. Even if to violate the laws of hospitality at such a tragically it turns out not to be Admetus, someone must still inopportune time, one of the servants finally has die. As it turns out, although Admetus approaches the cheek, and the courage, to call this inexcusable

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behavior to Hercules’ attention. Hercules protests, Illustrated in every aspect of the Euripides text, as well he might. Was it not only a female ser- but most effectively in the manner in which cir- vant who had died? By no means, this bold ser- cumstances eventually compel Admetus and Her- vant assures him; it is in fact Alcestis, Admetus’s cules to treat each other, is a principle of human beloved wife, for whom they are mourning. behavior, exemplifying in vivid terms exactly how Shamed by this stunning revelation, although a consideration for the needs and feelings of others his inappropriately rowdy behavior was through should dominate the individual’s every move. It is no fault of his own, Hercules now becomes that this principle of behavior that guides Eliot’s hand as much more determined to repay Admetus’s over- he limns the interaction of characters and events whelming hospitality. Virtually on the instant, that make up his own comic drama, The Cocktail Hercules comes up with a plan worthy of such a Party, based, he would reveal only later, on the hero. He will wait by Alcestis’s tomb, and when Euripides play. Death comes to claim his latest victim, Hercules will wrestle her away from Death’s clutches and SYNOPSIS bring her back, alive, to her grieving husband, Act 1 who was too considerate in the midst of his own Unlike The Family Reunion, which is top-heavy sorrow to turn a guest away from his door. As with plot and portentous meaning but little help- might be suspected, Hercules has no difficulty ful exposition except for Eliot’s confusing use of whatsoever in executing his plan, and he brings Aeschylus, The Cocktail Party is very much char- Alcestis, saved from the grave itself, back to her acter driven, with a plot that is no more difficult to husband. Although Admetus first believes that it follow than the setting, a casual social event, sug- is all a trick, he very soon has no great difficulty in gests. Complexities will come, but they will be the accepting the fact that the wife who had happily natural result of the tangles that intimate human and willingly sacrificed her life for his has been relationships both create and require, rather than miraculously restored to him. the result of the manipulation of characters and Such a wonderful story, with its blend of the motivations for the sake of a preconceived theme. myth and the fairy tale, lends itself to many pow- With this latest theatrical outing, Eliot appears to erful themes, not the least of which is the awful be willing to let the story tell itself. power that our consciousness of death plays in As act 1 opens, it is early evening, and the cock- human affairs, not to mention the terrible emo- tional and psychological price that it exacts from tail party of the play’s title is in session in the draw- each individual as he or she attempts to negoti- ing room of the London flat of the hosts, Edward ate the ethical minefield that this awareness lays and Lavinia Chamberlayne. While the guests, in out before each choice that is made. That said, it particular Julia Shuttlethwaite and Alexander Mac- for all the elaborate machinery of gods and heroes Colgie Gibbs, known simply as Alex, seem to be that Euripides manipulates, at its heart Alcestis tells tipsy enough to be absentmindedly loquacious, it the most simple story of all—a love story. It does comes as a bit of a surprise that there do not seem to not stop, however, merely with a moving exposé be many people on hand for what would be expected of the depths of romantic love that one individual to be well-attended, if not crowded, affair. may hold for another and of what such love is In addition to Julia and Alex, Edward’s other capable of achieving. It deals, too, with the love guests include only Peter Quilpe and Celia Cople- relation between parents and a child, a person and stone, as well as someone identified only as the his friends, and masters and servants. Finally, and Unidentified Guest. From the light banter that fills perhaps most important, it essays the love that the the opening scene, it is easy to identify the charac- stranger must show for his neighbor, since that is ters as an otherwise nondescript band of contempo- certainly the lesson to be gained from the story of rary Londoners—youngish, relatively well-bred and Admetus and Hercules. well-heeled urban professionals—although Alex

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and Julia seem to have more years and worldly had initially left, the Unidentified Guest had not. experience behind them than the others. Edward’s tolerance of this awkward social gaffe— Furthermore, and still more odd, the hostess, after all, Edward does not know the man at all— Lavinia, is absent. Edward has been explaining that underscores his willingness to be considerate of she was called away suddenly to attend to a sick others at the expense of his own feelings, as does aunt; later it will be revealed that that is a fabrica- his putting up with the frequent intrusions of his tion and that Lavinia has in fact left Edward. He “departed” guests. had tried to cancel the cocktail party by calling the His running interview with the Unidentified various guests, and those in attendance this eve- Guest, carried on amid the already noted interrup- ning were the people on Lavinia’s guest list whom tions, suggests another possible motive, however, he had been unable to reach—as well as the myste- and that is that Edward does not care enough to rious Unidentified Guest. mind. There follows in that interview the exposi- This information in hand, it is clear how Edward tion needed to see but not necessarily understand is a sort of Admetus, acting the part of the welcom- Edward’s situation: that Lavinia has inexplicably ing if not distracted host despite his own personal left him for parts unknown, with nothing more dilemma. In that case, Lavinia is a sort of Alcestis than a note to confirm her intentions; that he tried inasmuch as she is the absent though not necessar- to cancel the party that she had already arranged; ily mourned wife. It would be premature, however, that he has no idea whatsoever who the Unidenti- to begin to imagine who on stage might be fulfilling fied Guest is; that that makes it all that much more the role of Hercules. Nor is it possible to antici- interesting and mysterious when Edward and the pate such one-to-one correlations too hastily or too guest, in the midst of all the other shenanigans, precisely. have a serious, quasi-psychological chat about what In the way that a casual gathering of this kind Lavinia’s precipitous departure might mean. usually breaks up, all the other guests eventually Edward claims that he has shared such intimate depart in short order, and Edward is left with the details with the mysterious stranger just to get it Unidentified Guest. The party that never really off his chest. Bit by bit, however, it becomes clear ever got started is now over, although as the scene that the guest knows both Edward and Lavinia well continues, Eliot will milk some light comedy out enough to start analyzing the situation, almost as if of virtually everyone’s returning for the rest of the he were a marriage counselor. He tells Edward that evening for one reason or another, in a sort of Edward will begin to enjoy being independent and revolving-door skit worthy of a French farce. that life without Lavinia will enable him to find out Julia and Peter will return, for example, because “[w]hat you really are. What you really feel. / What Julia invariably “misplaces” something that she you really are among people.” Ultimately, however, always ends up having on her person. Peter, mean- Edward insists that he wants Lavinia back: “I must while, thinks that he has a romantic interest in find out who she is, to find out who I am.” Celia, with whom he has been having frequent social At that point, the Unidentified Guest makes a engagements, and returns to seek out Edward’s shocking promise. He will bring Lavinia back—on advice on the matter surreptitiously. Finally Alex the condition that Edward cannot question her as to shows up, resolved that Edward should not dine where she has been. Equally as shocking is Edward’s alone that night. Alex, for some comic relief again, relatively nonplussed response to the guest’s sur- prepares Edward an at-home “feast” out of noth- prise revelation. At the most, he is left puzzling over ing—plus a half-dozen eggs. whether his present desire for her return is his own Such “turns,” as they are called, make for imagi- impulse or a result of the guest’s suggestion. native stagecraft and good theater. Ultimately they At this juncture, Julia makes one of her sev- serve as a running comedic backdrop to the cen- eral reentrances on her apparently perpetual hunt tral action of the drama, which is that Edward is for her glasses, allowing the guest to make an exit tolerating the fact that when all the other guests while singing a suggestive drinking song, “One-Eyed

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Riley.” Julia concludes that the departing stranger is admits that his strange guest has persuaded him a “dreadful man” and cannot imagine how Edward to want Lavinia back. When Celia expresses the could have come to know him, but then again, Julia opinion that such a decision may have been arrived seems a bit too scattered to be making judgments at only to avoid unpleasantness, Edward makes it worth hearing. clear that, whatever his motives may be with regard When, a little later, Peter has his heart to heart to wanting to be reunited with Lavinia, the affair is with Edward regarding Celia, it is Edward who over between himself and Celia. comes through sounding as clinically hard-nosed She had already suggested that Edward may sim- about relationships as the Unidentified Guest had ply be suffering a mental breakdown and may need been: “I congratulate you / On a timely escape,” he to visit “a very great doctor,” whose name, coinci- tells Peter when the latter confesses that Celia may dentally, happens to be Reilly. Now, however, Celia have lost interest in him. (Later the audience will is quite genuinely hurt. She tells Edward that her learn that Celia and Edward had themselves been time with him has been a dream, but in the light lovers.) When they are interrupted by a phone of his present confession, their parting is a more call, Edward deflects the caller, suggesting that the preferable reality. He counterattacks by bringing person at the other end of the line may be the Peter’s romantic interest in her to her attention, very person about whom he and Peter are cur- as if to suggest that she may have been two-timing rently speaking. If it is, however, the very idea of it him, Edward, all along. escapes Peter, who extracts from Edward a promise As the tensions between them mount, Edward that he, being “so disinterested,” will talk to Celia makes the strange revelation that it is in fact Celia, on his, Peter’s, behalf. Sure enough, the first scene not Lavinia, whom he loves, and yet it is for that ends with Edward, alone on stage now, picking up very reason that he now is choosing to return to the phone once more and dialing Celia’s number. Lavinia, as if what counts for freedom is not to From his end of the conversation, it is clear that love but to choose. Edward further reveals that he she has just stepped out. can now see himself for what he has become, “a It is hardly a surprise, then, as scene 2 opens, middle-aged man / Beginning to know what it is to find Edward answering the doorbell. It is Celia, to feel old.” He admits to Celia that while he does anxious to know if he is alone. As they parry ver- not imagine that he will be happy with Lavinia, he bally about whether it is wise for Celia to come to no longer expects happiness in any case. The self his house all by herself, it becomes apparent that that wills, he concludes, eventually must come to the two of them have been having an affair. While terms, as he apparently has, with another self, “the Celia sees Lavinia’s absence to their advantage, obstinate, the tougher self.” Painfully and some- however, Edward, perhaps as a result of his inter- what self-pityingly, he further admits to Celia that, view with the Unidentified Guest, is less enthu- although for some that other self may be a kind of siastic and far more circumspect than she. The guardian, Edward has by now come to the bitter interruption of a call from Alex, along with Julia’s realization that for him the other self is instead reappearance at his door for the third time that “the dull, the implacable, / The indomitable spirit evening, do not help matters any either. To thwart of mediocrity.” arousing any suspicion on Julia’s part, Celia easily Seeing a man whom she has loved so down on covers her presence there alone with Edward as himself, Celia is both hurt and angered enough to motivated by the same meddlesome kindness and tell him that she now pictures him as if he were concern for Edward’s comfort and well-being as the reduced to little more than an insect—not what he others are showing him, what with Lavinia’s being is but what is left of what she took him to be. away tending to her “sick aunt.” Before they can resolve this new tangle in their Once Julia, who fails to convince Edward to unraveling relationship, however, they are inter- come out for dinner, leaves, he and Celia have rupted by a phone call from Julia, who is still hunt- a chance to continue their conversation. Edward ing for her lost spectacles. This time they are at

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Edward’s, and Celia, who had made plans to meet Edward to have with Celia on his, Peter’s, behalf. Julia for dinner in order to get her out of the apart- In the meantime, Peter announces that, thanks to ment earlier, now offers to bring her spectacles to Alex, he will be going to California, and in the her. But Celia does not depart until she and Edward course of such pleasantries, Celia announces that drink a toast to “the Guardians”—those tokens of she, too, will be “going away.” the self that can hold its ground, as Edward had Before Peter can find out anything more about described them only moments earlier. The second her plans, they are interrupted by Lavinia, who scene ends with Celia musing only half-ironically has let herself in with her own key, a marked dif- that perhaps Julia is her guardian, and then leaves ference from the others, of course, who have been to bring the older woman her glasses. gaining entry into the apartment and Edward’s life Scene 3 takes place the late afternoon of the only by his “letting them in.” Lavinia is pleased to next day. Edward answers the door to find the see Edward’s guests, since they are her acquain- Unidentified Guest of the evening before. He is tances as well, but it does not take long to establish going to bring Lavinia “back from the dead”—a that she had nothing to do with inviting them to figure of speech (and allusion to Euripides) that drop by and that it was all Julia and Alex’s doing. Edward finds distasteful. Still, as the Unidentified Lavinia is pleased, too, to hear of their various plans Guest explains it, “we die to each other daily.” to go off in search of their futures. Celia seizes the Truer words have never been spoken, particularly in opportunity to insist to Lavinia that, for herself, this play thus far, where the characterizations have she “want[s] you and Edward to be happy,” though changed with as much frequency and yet as natural “not as in the past.” Whether or not that is Celia’s a logic, too, as the wind. The Unidentified Guest particular meaning, her sentiment underscores the counsels Edward that, without forgetting anything Unidentified Guest’s advising Edward to think of about her and their relationship, Edward must meet relationships as encounters that are continuously re- Lavinia now as if he were meeting a total stranger— creating the individuals who are engaged in them. again because, in terms of the dynamics of human Julia’s arrival interrupts the proceedings, and psychology and personal interactions, that is how Alex’s will again mere moments later. By now the individuals do renew their greetings to each other, guest list of the frustrated cocktail party of the eve- whether the fact is acknowledged or not. ning before has been reconvened, with the excep- Having brought Edward up to speed, as it were, tion that the previous evening’s missing hostess, the guest departs by the back door, enigmatically Lavinia, has replaced the Unidentified Guest. They telling Edward that he must prepare to meet fur- have no sooner gathered, however, than they begin ther visitors. When Edward questions his meaning, to go their separate ways again, as if their meetings the guest explains that by visitors he means, “Who- are reflective of the repetitive beats in of ever comes. The strangers.” Everyone and anyone, human social interactions. Peter leaves to fetch a that is to say. taxi for himself, Alex, and Julia, and in the interval Sure enough, the Guest is no sooner gone than Celia departs. Once Peter returns to announce that Celia shows up at Edward’s door, telling him that he has a taxi, the other three depart as well. Lavinia she had been invited to drop over by a telegram and Edward, wife and husband, are left alone at last sent to Julia by Lavinia. Puzzled enough by that, with each other in their flat. and by the further assurance that Julia is on her In keeping perhaps with the instructions that way to his apartment as well, Edward is next sur- the Unidentified Guest had given him, Edward lets prised to find Peter at his door with pretty much Lavinia do the talking. For her part, she is appro- the same explanation. Lavinia has invited him by a priately vague about where she has been and what telegram sent to Alex, who, like Julia, is also on the she has done for the past 32 hours. Furthermore, way over to Edward’s. she claims that she had simply forgotten about the Peter finds a moment to ask Edward privately party, whether Edward will believe or forgive her to forget about the conversation that he had asked or not. But then she gets personal and ugly: “Since

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I’ve been away,” she tells Edward, “I see that I’ve approach. Lavinia’s return and Edward’s relatively taken you much too seriously.” Now, she tells him, blasé acceptance of it have set in motion events she can see “how absurd you are.” that will force change on him unless he seeks ways By now, however, the almost constantly cruel to effect it himself. frankness with which people react to Edward, par- Act 2 ticularly when they have known him intimately, Through the introduction of a thoroughly modern as have Celia and Lavinia, is clarifying itself. He character whose sole task it is to sort out inter- and deserves it, almost welcomes it. Beneath Edward’s intrapersonal tangles and complications, act 2 will facade of the gracious host is a nearly absent and sort out the complex of events and tangled personal perhaps even extinct personality. As Lavinia tells relationships that all of act 1 has laid out before him, people may have thought that he has always the audience. They now meet Sir Henry Harcourt- been considerate and unselfish, but it “was only Reilly, who, although he may sound like a religious passivity.” As she sees it, he only ever has wanted figure half the time and a stage magician the other “to be bolstered, enouraged,” and when he asks to half, is in fact a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. what purpose, she tells him that it is so he might “think well of [him]self.” The audience, and the rest of the players, have The scene is hardly a cheerful reunion, but the already met him as the Unidentified Guest of act 1. fact that Edward more or less takes her apparent This comes as a surprise for some, chiefly Edward, verbal abuse, even when she tells him that she has as the second act unfolds, but it mainly adds a nec- no idea why she came back to him, suggests that essary element of suspense to the drama. her criticisms may indeed be true and are, at the If the enigmatic Reilly was among the guests very least, to the point. It is as if Edward needs at the curtailed cocktail party with which the some sort of emotional shock therapy to jump-start play opened, how he came to be there must give his heart, thereby enabling his capacity to interact the audience as much pause as it will shortly give with others in authentically giving terms. Edward. Was Reilly, for example, invited by Lavinia He tells Lavinia that he has suffered enough to size up Edward’s condition while he could still be humiliation in seeing himself as others see him to caught unawares? Or had Celia something to do have changed, but Lavinia will not buy that. He with Reilly’s being there? She, after all, had recom- must undergo a more radical change, she insists, mended him to Edward by name the night of the back to a time “when you were real—for you must party. Or is this all Alex and Julia’s doing? Their have been real / At some time or other.” When he dithering, fluttery, scatterbrained ways seem to be confesses that there once may have been a door, but intended to conceal a clarity of motive and pur- that he cannot escape his prison, a hell that “is one- pose, something that none of the rest of the charac- self, / Hell is alone,” Lavinia, like Celia earlier, rec- ters seem capable of having. ommends that he may be on the verge of a nervous When the act opens, it is several weeks after breakdown and should get professional medical help. the events of the opening act, and Reilly is organiz- It is advice that he takes only under great protest ing his morning sessions. Apparently there shall be and suspicion, but as scene 3 and the first act draw some overlap among the patients with whom he to a close, the final blow to whatever ego Edward will be consulting, for he is being careful to have may have left comes when Lavinia shares with him them organized just so, so that they cannot possibly the news that Celia is going to California with Peter. encounter one another. Left in the clutches, such as they are, of Lavinia, Alex makes a brief appearance to assure him whom he now characterizes as “the angel of destruc- that the first patient, who is obviously Edward, is tion,” Edward is left to wonder if he must “become anxious finally to see Reilly, since Edward’s main after all what you would make of me.” Between objective is to see a doctor, but not a doctor who what he is and what others would make of him is may have been recommended by his wife. Alex a vast gap that Edward must close but is afraid to departs and Edward arrives. He instantly recognizes

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Reilly as his Unidentified Guest of several weeks has had a lover, too—Peter Quilpe. Although as a earlier and, reasonably enough, becomes as quickly couple Edward and Lavinia appear to have fallen convinced that he has fallen into a trap set by into the old trap of being no good to or for each his wife nevertheless, since the guests had all been other, Reilly convinces them that they are in fact selected from Lavinia’s list. Reilly assures Edward “exceptionally well-suited to each other”; to wit, that while he has been seeing Lavinia as well, she Edward is a “man who finds himself incapable of had nothing to do with his, Reilly’s, being at the loving,” whereas Lavinia is a “woman who finds cocktail party. Furthermore, Reilly observes, if any that no man can love her.” or all of this had been a trap, there is nothing that Neither is too pleased by Reilly’s bleak diagnosis, Edward can do about it now. but Reilly assures them that “the best of a bad job” Edward buys into the inescapable reality of his is all that any of us make of life, with the exception situation well enough to open up to Reilly. Accord- of the saints. Somehow, Reilly succeeds in convinc- ing to Edward’s self-diagnosis, he is suffering a ner- ing them to be willing to lower their sights but not vous breakdown because he has “ceased to believe their expectations. Expecting less, they may in fact in [his] own personality,” so that by now he has obtain more; at the very least, they will cease to become “obsessed by the thought of [his] own insig- bring ruin on the others around them as a result of nificance.” The more he talks, however, the more their own ruinous relationship. apparent it becomes that Edward is really trying to Edward and Lavinia head off together, hardly escape from what he sees as Lavinia’s clutches. He enthusiastically but a great deal less than reluc- thinks of her as someone who has “made the world tantly, and then Julia arrives. There is yet another a place I cannot live in / Except on her terms,” so patient that she and, presumably, Alex will have that now he is experiencing the most horrible pain Reilly see. With his parting blessing to the Cham- that he ever has, “the death of the spirit.” berlaynes and his cryptic exhortation to them to The melodrama of this self-diagnosis is dimin- “work out your salvation with diligence” still ringing ished somewhat, however, when more practical in the audience’s ears, Reilly is beginning to seem considerations are brought to bear. It turns out that less like a physician and more like the high priest of another, if not the real, cause of Edward’s present a cult for which Alex and Julia are missionaries. desperation is that he has been living at his club The identity of this new “patient” comes as for the past several days, but that time is running something of a surprise, for it is none other than out on the number of days that he can avail himself Celia Copplestone, the young woman who had of those accommodations. Short of moving into a been Edward’s lover and was last heard of going hotel, he seems to have been motivated to seek off to California in Peter Quilpe’s company. Some- Reilly’s help merely so that he can be committed to what like the Chamberlaynes, she feels that there a sanatorium, which will effectively make the choice is something wrong in her life, something missing. for him by putting him out of Lavinia’s reach. Unlike them, she would rather think that that indi- Reilly trumps Edward’s self-serving plan, how- cates a lack in herself rather than with the world ever, by now calling in “another patient / Whose itself. Indeed, for her, the latter possibility would be situation is much the same as your own.” This a much more terrible and frightening one. patient turns out to be Lavinia, of course. After She identifies this lack in herself with a strong both get over the initial shock and, in Edward’s sense of solitude, of being incapable of not feeling case, mild outrage at this turn of events, Reilly alone, which is something that she has always felt. lays out his diagnosis. In his view, they have both It is in her being able to make this admission that been trying to impose their own diagnosis on him she unintentionally identifies how radically differ- because they are both self-deceivers. ent her “disorder” is from the others’. For Edward, In the process of Reilly’s making his own diagno- the solitude that is the natural state of human sis clear, which is that they are a failure as a couple existence is hell, rendering him incapable of love. and, so, are “ill” together, it is revealed that Lavinia For Celia, it is an intuited reality. “[I]t isn’t that I

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want to be alone, / But that everyone’s alone,” she the Guardians, act 2 ends with Reilly, Julia, and explains to Reilly. Alex ostensibly drinking toasts to Lavinia and Worse, she suffers from a sense of sin, not in the Edward and to Celia, toasts that themselves sound usual way of having done something immoral, she more like charms or spells, maybe even prayers. says, but in feeling that there is something that she One last note is struck before the act is over, and ought to atone for. In summary, where Edward is that regards Peter Quilpe, who, aside from the rev- the self who is imprisoned by a selfish vanity, Celia elation of his relationship with Lavinia, has been speaks in Dantean terms of feeling like “a child / conspicuously absent from the unfolding drama of Lost in a forest, wanting to go home,” an image act 2. The threesome cannot yet raise words on his that distinctly echoes the opening of the Italian behalf because, as Reilly explains it to the other poet’s Divine Comedy. There DANTE ALIGHIERI, as two, Peter’s life “has not yet come to where the the protagonist in his own poetic narrative, finds words are valid.” himself lost in a “dark woods.” Act 3 Her condition is curable, Reilly tells her, but Aside from disposing of Peter Quilpe’s fate, which her treatment must be her own choice. By that, will wind up being closely entangled in a surprising he is being much more literal than she could ever way with Celia’s, act 3 is more or less anticlimatic. imagine, however. It will, in fact, be her choice and It is two years later and the Chamberlaynes are none other’s. For most, Reilly explains to her, there busily putting the last few details of the last social is at best the pleasant life with another, knowing event of the season together. It is to be another they will never understand each other or be under- cocktail party, and it is readily apparent that the stood. While such an idea may bring Edward and Chamberlaynes’ marriage has much improved. Lavinia’s situation to mind for the audience, any There are still rough edges that come through as such idea of a relationship leaves Celia cold. She they chat with each other during the remaining cannot see how she can make a life for herself with quiet time before the festivities begin, but they are anybody else. of the sort to be expected in the give and take Reilly convinces her that that kind of a life is a between any two people sharing a life and interests. choice, too, but it is a way that only faith can find. For the most part, then, Lavinia and Edward are “Neither way is better,” he tells Celia. “Both ways more than cordial with each other; indeed, they are are necessary.” Nor is either way any lonelier than courteous and considerate, quite friendly in fact. the other, though those who choose the first way There being nothing left to do to get ready, can forget their loneliness, he says. Edward suggests that Lavinia seize the opportu- Celia elects to choose the latter, lonely, solitary nity to stretch out, which is precisely the cue that course, the way of faith and isolation, and Reilly is needed, of course, for a handful of unexpected promises that he will make arrangements to help guests—four, to be precise—to start to show up in her achieve her goal. As Celia departs, Reilly again quick succession to great comic and, ultimately, offers what is his apparently patent salutation—“Go soberingly poignant effect. in peace, daughter. / Work out your salvation with Julia is the first to appear, and she has brought diligence.” This time, however, it sounds genuine along Alex, who has just returned from one of his rather than quasi-religious in tone. frequent junkets to faraway places. In this case, Julia returns, and she is not surprised to learn it is the fictional country of Kinkanja, where the from Reilly that Celia has chosen to choose, as it monkey-worshiping natives have been in conflict were, although Julia is equally sure that Celia will with the Christianized, monkey-eating natives, to suffer for her choice to follow the path of isolation. the final result that an insurrection has broken out. As for Lavinia and Edward, Julia feels that they at Some of the Christian natives who had been eating least now have someplace from which to start. monkeys, thereby outraging the monkey worship- Alex reappears. Echoing the end of the second ers, have been persuaded to renounce their new- scene of act 1, in which Celia and Edward toasted fangled ways so that they are now eating Christians

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instead. As for the Europeans caught up among the and sacrifice. His real conclusion—“I understand victims of this violence, they are suffering worse nothing”—strongly suggests that the young man fates than being eaten. Alex is just about to tell of who at the end of act 2 had been described as just such a horrible death when, suddenly, Peter someone who was not yet ready to understand is Quilpe arrives, interrupting Alex’s story. now capable of opening himself to the same sort Peter is bubbling over with excitement and of examination of motive and purpose to which all enthusiasm for his new position in the American the other individuals in the play had been or had film industry, which has permitted him to return to need of being exposed. There is for Peter, in other his native England to scout out a suitably decayed words, hope that he may now be able to begin to English country house that can then be reproduced work out his own salvation, as Reilly had put it ear- in Hollywood for a film that he has personally lier to Lavinia and Edward as a couple and to Celia scripted. As he goes about parading his success and as a solitary soul. That, however, is for the future dropping names, he expects them all to become as for Peter. For now, there is only the necessary ini- wrapped up as he is in the importance of his activi- tiating insight on Peter’s part that “I’ve only been ties. Although they do not recognize the names interested in myself”—an insight true at virtually he drops or quite grasp the scope of his film proj- every level of meaning. ect, out of politeness the rest try to share in his The play ends with its three pivotal charac- enthusiasm. ters—Edward, Reilly, and Julia—being given a con- These proceedings are interrupted by the sudden text for philosophical comment in the wake of this arrival of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, ostensibly at news not just of Celia’s death but of how she had the invitation of Julia. After the disruption caused chosen the way of her living and dying. Reilly had by Reilly’s arrival has subsided, Peter resumes the earlier emphasized that it is not what the choice is tale of his successes, and he suggests that he now is that matters but that the individual recognizes the in a position where he might be able to help Celia, choices and then chooses. In that light, it was for who had always wanted to get into films herself. He Celia a choice “to choose the way of life / To lead inquires if any of them might know how he would to death,” since it is where each life leads in any be able to contact her. event. Julia seconds the notion. “Everyone makes At this point, with Julia’s encouragement, Alex, a choice, of one kind or another, / And then must sadly, resumes the story that Peter’s arrival had take the consequences.” interrupted. Alex had just been about to tell them Edward gets the opportunity to summarize what that among those European Christians killed in the he thinks they—and, perhaps, the play—mean. If native uprising in Kinkanja was none other than “every moment is a fresh beginning,” he reflects, their own Celia Copplestone, who had gone there then “life is only keeping on.” To which Reilly adds, as the member of a very austere nursing order. “It is your appointed burden” to accept the obli- Refusing to abandon her native patients in a small, gation to keep on. Besides, as Reilly now assures Christian village, she was captured by the rampag- Lavinia, this time their party will be a success. ing insurrectionists. “It would seem that she must Peter, sobered by the news of Celia’s death, has have been crucified / Very near an ant-hill,” Alex already exited, and now Alex, Julia, and Reilly reports of her horrible fate, after having already depart as well. Edward and Lavinia are left to commented that there had been no more than themselves, sharing a few last domestic moments traces left of her body. before the doorbell rings and the cocktail party can, Peter is most affected by such a shockingly tragic at last, begin. account, for it exposes to him, rightly or wrongly, the vanity of his own pursuits and successes over CRITICAL COMMENTARY the last few years. “I suppose I didn’t know her, / Eliot’s later acknowledgement of his indebtedness I didn’t understand her,” he realizes for himself, to Euripides’ Alcestis aside, while it would be dif- apparently feeling petty in the face of such suffering ficult to deny that The Cocktail Party, well into

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the second act, is Edward Chamberlayne’s, or at True understanding, particularly once the win- the very most Edward and Lavinia’s story, by play’s dow of self-perception, as in Dante, opens, is, in end Eliot has managed to make all the other play- other words, pretty much a lose-lose situation. ers equally significant and important characters in Most individuals, in happy ignorance, go through the unfolding drama. In fact, it would seem to be life inhabiting one of those voids or the other—the Eliot’s intention that their respective fates are seen botch that others make of defining each one of to matter just as much by the time the final curtain us, or the botch that each one makes of it all by falls. Such a surprising turn of events occurs when himself. The trouble is that all those personal inter- Celia turns up at Reilly’s office, not as a foil to actions—friendships, , romances, selfless or in contrast with Edward and Lavinia’s situation service, professional duties, acts of kindness and but as a necessary complement to it. The unex- concern—take place within one or the other or pected intrusion of Celia’s personal identity crisis, both of those voids. These activities constitute the as it were, thus comes to form what emerges by social roles that enable individuals to imagine that play’s end as the very core of Eliot’s primary theme: they are being defined and are defining themselves When it comes to being confused about who, or in concrete terms rather than by the standards of what, or why we are, we are all on the same page, transitory whims and vague impressions. But such and it is heavily blotted with a variety of scenarios, activities are still only all functions, not the sub- none of which ever seems to suffice for very long. stance of one’s being. And it is easy, a poet like Celia is shown to be as much in need of assis- Eliot knows, eventually to mistake the role for the tance as Edward and Lavinia, perhaps more. Mere person, and the person for the self. moments before that revelation, meanwhile, the Sorting through the confusions in the hopes audience had learned that Lavinia is in need of assis- of arriving at an authentic selfhood is a delicately tance as much as Edward. Eliot is not out simply to balanced and potentially dangerous game for any exploit these quick-order reversals in order to sur- individual, especially one involved in a couple rela- prise his audience for greater dramatic or even comic tionship, to be sure, but it generally works. It works, effect, however. Rather, his whole aim is to establish at least, as long as no one breaks the rules by admit- a commonality among his characters, one that he ting that he or she does not really know the other views as a commonality among all individuals. person in the couple at all—or does not even know People are most remarkable not in those spec- his or her own self, the one who is doing the know- tacular differences by which they seem to call ing. Or, worst of all, that he or she likes neither. attention, or to have attention called, to them- Such is the rule that has been broken by Edward selves, but in the similarity that all individuals bear and Lavinia as Eliot’s play opens. Perhaps they have to one another. Each person shares the same cease- simply grown tired of each other. Perhaps they were less quest to understand himself and his place in never all that compatible to begin with. Whatever the scheme of things, a vast moral and spiritual and led to their estrangement, they each have turned ethical vista. Individuals for the most part under- the root cause or causes inward enough to see only take that quest in terms of how others see them, a failing in themselves as individuals, a failing that but even then there are a few who sooner or later they cannot easily gloss over or leave to time and become aware that one is seldom if ever seen for chance to rectify. In that way, the fissure between the person that one truly is or, at best, thinks him- them opened another fissure, as it were, in the self to be. However, no one can really ever know social universe that they quite comfortably had pre- that much about himself either without the ben- viously inhabited, requiring readjustments in inter- efit of how others see him. It can all become very personal and intrapersonal relationships all around confusing, particularly the more one tries to gain until things could all be comfortable and at ease clarity and insight, and that seems to be what The with each other all over again. Cocktail Party is all about—gaining clarity in the Even if an Edward and a Lavinia can somehow midst of chaos and confusion. be reconciled, however, how can Celia go about

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reconciling her idea of herself with her true self, nificance of Heracleitus’s maxim on the instant, an entity that she can never possibly know? All, but if one were to present them with its social cor- then, that Celia’s situation later illustrates is that ollary—that each of us never encounters the same the individual does not really ever know herself any person twice—it would take a great deal of further better than others do. example and explanation to prove that that idea is Based on the premise that it will tenuously as much of a truism as the Heracleitean original. explore the tenuous nature of human relationships, In any case, it is on such an idea that Eliot the plot of The Cocktail Party may, as a result, be founds the social dynamics that constitute the somewhat flawed dramatically. The play never interactions that form the basis of the plot for The seems quite able to resolve whether it will confront Cocktail Party. Eliot builds his plot on the premise the immense question of what constitutes individual that nobody, including the cherished ego identity identity in spiritual terms, in psychological terms, or that most individuals cling to, is the same person merely in interpersonal and social terms. Still, it from one moment to the next, let alone for week leaves no doubt in the audience’s mind that that is after week, year after year. In a psychological or the theme that it is tackling, and that is the play’s spiritual crisis, thrown back on oneself, the honest triumph. For there is no denying as well that as a individual would have to admit that he can find no theme, it is a major, perhaps even the only genuine one there. At least that is how Eliot would have it. theme to which drama is uniquely qualified as an art For the playwright who believes this state of form to address itself, and Eliot put himself at great affairs to be an inescapable though hardly obvi- risk by trying to “explain” in a few hours of theater ous truth, the critical question must be how to go what reams of philosophical, religious, and psycho- about representing such a truth on the stage. As logical discourse often fail to reveal satisfactorily. a start, Eliot began with a character who is nei- Worse even than questioning how individual ther powerfully engaging nor particularly engaged identity can possibly constitute and maintain itself but who may at first seem to be that way simply within the maelstrom of the social dynamics that because no one and nothing has ever come along the typical individual encounters on a virtually to challenge his lack of any real passion for living. nonstop basis is the further and far more philosoph- It comes to be more and more clear as the action ical problem of whether there is any consistency of progresses that what had passed in Edward Cham- personality from one moment to the next, except berlayne as a consideration for others and their as individuals continue an unspoken agreement to comfort at his own expense as the play opens is treat each other, for the most part, as if constant really nothing more or less than a lack of any genu- change is not a part of the dynamics of all continu- ine consideration for anyone or anything, himself ing relationships. Eliot’s play vividly confronts this included. Consciously or unconsciously (very likely practical reality as well. The rapid-fire comings and the latter), Chamberlayne is a man who has always goings of the players in the first act, for example, taken the easy way out, letting the proprieties of for all their potentially comic effect, mainly in fact polite society conceal a sincere lack of attachment mimic the rhythms of those larger social patterns in to other people or to ideas. In essence, he can smile which individuals cross each other’s paths repeat- and yet be absolutely no one, and a no one he had edly never quite as the same people but always try- been able to remain until a crisis in his marriage ing to behave and interact as if they are. required him to be somebody real, and he found no The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heracleitus, personality there. to whose wisdom Eliot had already had recourse in In a sense, in creating a character like Edward his epigraphs for “Burnt Norton,” is famous for say- Chamberlayne, Eliot exposes the inner workings ing that a person cannot put his hand in the same of a character like Euripides’ Admetus, as if to see river twice—a beautifully vivid and simple way of what could possibly make such a counterproduc- illustrating the fact that change is the only constant tive self-centeredness tick. While the idea of a man in the physical universe. Most people grasp the sig- who has the gall to ask someone else to die in his

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place may make for a great classic myth or timeless In the first act, however, while no one in the fairy tale, the fact remains that it also portends an audience is yet aware of which way the story may almost pathological psychological makeup, some- be going, Eliot does not miss opportunity to let one who has become so used to thinking only of them in on Edward’s awful secret, a secret kept himself that he has, for all intents and purposes, even from himself: that he is one of the hollow ceased to exist as a social reality. men. Eliot does this by making frequent allusions, Not that Eliot needed to consult Euripides to not in this case to great works of literature from conceive of the self-imprisoned and, so, socially the past, but to his own previous and, by now, cel- immobilized individual. Eliot had been essaying just ebrated poetic inventions, so that his own take on such a type consistently from the time of his own Edward’s character cannot fail to make an impres- earliest characterizations. J. Alfred Prufrock may be sion. As might be imagined, these allusions are foremost among them, but they do not stop there. to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and to Eliot created a parade of ineffectual personalities “The Hollow Men,” and they occur with remark- wallowing in their inability to affect anything or able frequency and clarity in the opening act while anyone: the tiredness of Gerontion; the vacuously Edward’s “condition,” so to speak, is being clari- meaningless musings of the hollow men, lost in the fied for him through his interaction with the other desert valley of their own spiritual lassitude, lacking characters. the will or ability to make a commitment of self to No sooner has Reilly, in the guise of the Uniden- anyone or anything; and the ironic vanities of the tified Guest, gotten into the details of Edward’s magus remembering his approach to glory in “Jour- problems with Lavinia (which, it should always be ney of the Magi.” Indeed, in the modern period, the remembered, are Edward’s problems with himself type had become almost exclusively Eliot’s trade- and with matters of self-esteem and self-percep- mark character, so adept had Eliot always been tion), than he, Reilly, is using analogies to Edward’s at capturing the very essence of the essence-less, being a “subject . . . stretched on the table, / . . . those walking dead inhabiting the modern urban a piece of furniture in a repair shop,” to “masked landscape who, going through their paces, occupy actors,” and to playing the fool. All of these analo- time and space but otherwise have ceased to make gies call up associations with similar imagery from a difference to or for themselves or others. Eliot “Prufrock,” such as its famous opening image of the did not invent the type but merely had become etherized patient on the operating table, the mask famously able to identify him. For a playwright, that one prepares to “meet the faces that you meet,” the problem remains, nevertheless, how exactly to and Prufrock’s thinking of himself as the Shake- depict rather than merely present or comment on pearean fool. Later, indeed, in their long exchange such a type, who, in Eliot’s view, is far more com- in the third scene, Lavinia, too, will accuse Edward mon than we may care to imagine. of being fully capable of carrying on by conning In a nutshell, how does one make an Edward a suitable role: “[Y]ou’ll . . . find yourself another Chamberlayne come to see who and what an little part to play, / With another face.” Edward Chamberlayne is—a man devoid of love Celia, in the scene in which she “sees” Edward but married, of attachments yet surrounded by for the first time as the weak and ineffectual person friends, of passion yet with a mistress? Eliot cen- he has apparently always been, says that he has not ters his story around the notion of such a person’s a voice now but makes “only the noise of an insect, undergoing a therapeutic process, whereby his / Dry, endless, meaningless, inhuman,” calling to flawed viewed of things has to be exposed so that mind the “dried voices . . . quiet and meaningless” he may be “cured.” Solving that medical problem, of “The Hollow Men,” as well as the withered and as it were, for Edward Chamberlayne gives the dessicated imagery that appears throughout Eliot’s entire drama its motive to expose the problem as most celebrated work, The Waste Land. Other mem- universal, which is precisely what it is and precisely orable images from that Eliot poem also find their what is accomplished by play’s end. way into The Cocktail Party. When, for example,

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Lavinia accuses Edward of being fully capable of of each other except through the intervention of adapting to change in order to fit each new situa- the likes of Alex, Julia, and Reilly. tion, he counters that bickering like this is at least Each of the four “troubled” characters—Edward, preferable to “passing the evening . . . listening Lavinia, Celia, and Peter—who undergo a radi- to the gramophone.” His alluding to such typical cal transformation in the course of the play had to avoidance strategies is reminiscent of the behav- undergo a radical transformation or die. Not physi- ior of the uncommunicative couple in “A Game of cally (that would have been a blessing), but spiritu- Chess,” the second part of The Waste Land, or of the ally. Whether or not they understood that, Julia, promiscuous typist following her act of perfunctory Alex, and Reilly did. Determining what those three sex in “The Fire Sermon,” the third part. consequently represent, as if they must necessarily In summary, having been one among the hand- represent anything, is not as much of a problem as ful of outstanding poets writing in English who had it may appear at first glance. Much of the charm of personally shaped, in his poetry, much of what his the play, in fact, can be measured against how these audience would take to be the very nature of the three characters develop from their first appear- modern sensibility, Eliot is free now to reference ances to their last. that sensibility quickly and easily in The Cocktail The Cocktail Party must first be a social, a Party by having the characters echo his own poetry domestic comedy, after all, filled with the sorts of sparingly but to great effect. Thus, all of Edward’s waggish understatement, petulant insult, and witty shortcomings as a person can be exposed in terms repartee that any play in such a genre would have already familiar to the audience, since their sen- to deliver. But it is also a comedy by T. S. Eliot, sibilities have already been formed by the poems who can, as has already been witnessed, trundle of Eliot’s to which he is alluding. Too, it saves the in analyses full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse, drama from the turgidness that might have resulted because any audience would expect something had Eliot, say, felt compelled to draw on the tech- more serious and profound even in a comedy when nical lingo of clinical psychologists instead. the playwright is the famously obscure poet of The Once Edward’s condition has thus been described Waste Land. Eliot works the likelihood of these and defined in this readily accessible manner for the expectations to his advantage first, as noted above, audience, it is then fairly easy for Eliot to widen the by making generous use of allusions to his own circle of the debilitated until it includes most of earlier, darker poetry. However, he also alludes the play’s small cast of characters. For Eliot’s real to hints half understood—the reference to the aim, once more, is to show that the debility is not Guardians, for example, bringing to mind perhaps uniquely Edward’s condition but the human condi- his use of the Eumenides from Aeschylus in The tion. All are afflicted by an inability to love or to be Family Reunion. loved, at least in Eliot’s view, and coming to terms For all that they seem to be at the center of with one’s life and identity is, for him, ultimately things by play’s end, Eliot uses Reilly, Alex, and coming to terms with the paradox that human rela- Julia because they are actually peripheral characters tionships are simultaneously too shallow for words whose enigmatic presence casts a cloak of mystery and yet too important to be taken for granted. Rely around the proceedings. First there is the introduc- on others too much, and the self is lost. Rely on the tion of Reilly as the enigmatic yet knowledgeable self, and the necessity for self-sacrifice as a prerequi- Unidentified Guest. Then, once he is reintroduced site for personal salvation is lost. as Reilly, a physician of some sort, Julia and Alex are It is in that manner that Edward’s “case” natu- insinuated into his sphere of reference, thus giving rally leads to Lavinia’s; that Lavinia and Edward’s them an aura of mystery that makes them appear situation naturally leads to Celia’s “case”; and that to be nothing like what they had appeared to be at Celia’s “cure,” as it were, her martyrdom, leads first. Finally by making them act as if they are mem- Peter to becoming aware that he has a “case”—all bers of some cult or secret society or, even more of these events occurring more or less independent mysterious, perhaps even supernatural presences or

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 117 9/5/07 2:35:48 PM 118 Confidential Clerk, The influences, Eliot manages to keep the social drama Confidential Clerk, The (1953) sprightly, if nothing else, by increasingly suggesting that there is more going on than meets the eye, an Eliot had the first two scenes of The Confidential old theatrical trick aimed at keeping the audience Clerk drafted as early as May 1951 when The Cock- engaged but off guard. tail Party was just opening for London audiences. By play’s end, nonetheless, it is not all that dif- His plans were to premiere the new play at the ficult to see these somewhat surreptitious instiga- Edinburgh Festival the summer of 1952, but he tors, each one, for exactly what they are—Reilly would not complete the play until February 1953, as a caring and highly skilled counselor and Alex thus delaying its Edinburgh Festival debut until the and Julia as two individuals who have some years following August; it was very well received. The of experience behind them. When it comes to the play opened at London’s Lyric Theatre on Sep- crises that Edward, Lavinia, Celia, and Peter are tember 16, 1953, where it continued to experience facing or soon will be, Alex and Julia, through great popular success. the offices of their physician friend Reilly, easily Although Eliot viewed it as his most profound assume, in secret, their labor of a detached been- play, its success may be attributed to its somewhat there, done-that interference on behalf of the oth- light and breezy manner, almost as if Eliot allowed ers. The “spells” that they intone with the doctor the characters greater verbal space in which to are nothing more or less than hopeful blessings and express themselves and expose their relationships, wishes of good cheer for the success of their kindly more as if they are real people following the pre- interferences. rogatives of their own impulses to interact rather For in the final analysis, it should be clear, the than being mere persons of the drama fulfilling pre- theme of The Cocktail Party, with its own conno- conceived patterns of behavior in keeping not with tations of conviviality and good cheer, as well as their own but with the playwright’s purpose and of hair let down and inhibitions scuttled, is the motives. This is no less an illusion, of course, but theme that had begun to obsess Eliot virtually from it is an illusion that permits a more natural flow the time of “Ash-Wednesday” and “Marina.” It is to the action, so that the effect is one of life itself the great theme of love and of its healing power transpiring, rather than that of a play that is unfold- to make graceful the stumbling human effort to ing. Furthermore, for his story this time, Eliot’s lack understand and to be understood. It is the theme of daring pays off. Hints of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s of having confidence in love’s power to heal and Pericles, a play that had earlier influenced Eliot’s make whole. “Marina,” can be found in Eliot’s play’s use of such timeless theatrical standbys as mistaken identi- FURTHER READING ties and surprise recognitions in order to keep the Browne, E. Martin. The Making of T. S. Eliot’s Plays. drama rolling. Otherwise, among his works The Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Confidential Clerk makes the least use of the clas- Donnelly, Mabel C. “The Failure of Act III of Eliot’s sical and literary allusiveness (and, some might say, The Cocktail Party.” CLA Journal 21 (1977): pretentiousness) for which Eliot had long since 58–61. become duly celebrated if not notorious. Donoghue, Denis. The Third Voice. Modern British and At the risk of implying that there was no oppor- American Verse Drama. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton tunity for originality in Eliot’s longtime practice University Press, 1959. of structuring meaning from copious reference to Jones, D. E. The Plays of T. S. Eliot. London: Routledge past authors and literary masterpieces, the dra- and Kegan Paul, 1960. matic consequences of such borrowings tended to Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in make the plays too literary for audience taste. In Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of the case of his two earlier, completed contempo- Chicago Press, 1974. rary dramas, The Family Reunion and The Cocktail

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Party, for example, he had gone as far as to adapt wife, Lady Elizabeth, who is just now returning from his story line from classic plays in the Greek reper- the Continent, where she has voluntarily under- toire, Aeschylus’s trilogy, the Orestia, and Eurip- gone outpatient psychiatric counseling. ides’ Alcestis, respectively. The Cocktail Party, whose Sir Claude wants to maintain control over allusion to Euripides was not discovered until Eliot exactly how and what and in what order Lady Eliz- himself revealed it after the fact, was a great stage abeth will learn of his new confidential clerk. It success, realizing some 734 performances in London seems that she can be rather meddlesome, though and New York. Incorporating the machinery and scatterbrained, so the news of Colby’s hiring must thematic baggage from Aeschylus into a drawing- be broken to her in a calculating way, since she had room drama, however, made the stagecraft in The had no part in it whatsoever. There is a subtext to Family Reunion, a far less successful production, so these maneuverings as well, however: Sir Claude is cumbersome that even Eliot himself made fun of it apparently hopeful that if he and Eggerson proceed years later in his essay “The Music of Drama.” just so in bringing Colby to her attention, she may Whether or not Eliot had thereby learned his come to accept the young man as the child that she lesson, The Confidential Clerk nevertheless owns the had “mislaid” years before, having lost track of the distinction of being a wholly original work virtually child’s whereabouts because of his father’s death. devoid of anything but the most conventional the- There is also the suggestion that Colby does have atrical antecedents or models. That does not make a parent-child relationship close to home—but it an inherently better or more effective work by rather than to Lady Elizabeth, it may very well be any means, but it does make the drama more self- to Sir Claude. referential. Rather than being encouraged to find Colby returns from his mission to the City, parallels with previous theatrical pieces, the audi- and Sir Claude excuses himself, giving Colby an ence is required to do little more than to accept the opportunity to express certain misgivings to Egger- fictional universe created by the play wholly on its son about finally meeting Lady Elizabeth. Another own terms, and when it comes to establishing the character in the drama, B. Kaghan, whose opinion verisimilitude necessary for action on the stage to Eggerson dismisses out of hand, has nevertheless succeed as drama, that is requirement enough. “alarmed” Colby about what to expect from Lady Elizabeth. Eggerson assures Colby that once her SYNOPSIS ladyship sees how cultured Colby is and musical, Act 1 she will take to him a great deal better than she The first act, which opens in the business room, or has ever taken to the highly likable but, in Lady office, of the highly successful financier Sir Claude Elizabeth’s view, “undistinguished” Mr. Kaghan. Mulhammer’s London home, establishes both the Colby is not particularly reassured, but then tone and the story of the play and introduces all of Kaghan himself arrives on the scene, in the com- the characters with the exception of Mrs. Guzzard. pany of his fiancée, Lucasta Angel. Lucasta, Sir Claude’s confidential clerk, or personal secre- it seems, has just lost her position, and she has tary, of more than 30 years’ standing, introduced dropped by to get some cash from Sir Claude to simply as Eggerson, is in the process of retiring, and tide her over until she finds a new job. Eggerson Sir Claude has hired a young man, Colby Simpkins, informs her that he no longer has the authority to replace him. As the action begins, Colby, as he to offer her an advance and that she will have to will be called, has been sent on business for Sir speak to Sir Claude himself in that regard. She and Claude into the City, permitting Eggerson and Sir Colby are apparently meeting for the first time, and Claude to go over certain critical details regard- he is both shocked and fascinated by her brazen ing Colby. Colby, it turns out, has not trained as a forwardness and a certain cheeky familiarity that private secretary but is in fact a failed musician, an she maintains toward Sir Claude and the members organist. Eggerson remains on hand this particular of his household. For example, she refers to Lady morning to go to the airport to pick up Sir Claude’s Elizabeth as “Lizzie.”

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After Kaghan and Miss Angel depart, Colby staff, Lady Elizabeth is instead instantly convinced admits to Eggerson that Lucasta “did make my that he is the very young man that she has person- head spin.” Eggerson again assures Colby that he ally interviewed and proposed to Sir Claude to be has nothing to be worried about. Lucasta’s father, hired as Eggerson’s replacement. Since her colossal Eggerson explains, was a friend of Sir Claude’s, and misconception plays right into Sir Claude’s plans, he treats her as if he were himself her father. Colby neither he nor Eggerson say anything to dissuade can conclude only that he has “never met any- her from this misguided conviction. one like Miss Angel,” suggesting that there is as As it turns out, her ladyship has a penchant for much of attraction as of repulsion in his response arcane lore and the occult, so she starts to admire to her. The discussion about Lucasta enables Colby Colby’s aura and commenting on the auspicious to inquire further into what he might expect Lady numerological significance of the number of letters Elizabeth to be like. She, Eggerson tells him, is in his name. She concludes by bringing to bear her much more unusual even than Lucasta. Indeed, knowledge of the spiritual benefits of color symbol- Lady Elizabeth is a regular grande dame, which is ism to recommend the precise shade of yellow that what Sir Claude admires about her, but she is very they should paint the apartment that Sir Claude is absent-minded as well, especially as a traveler. having redecorated for Colby’s use. She concludes Sir Claude now reappears to remind Eggerson by inviting Colby to tea the very next day, and then that it is time that he head off to fetch her lady- she takes her leave. Once Eggerson and Sir Claude ship at the airport. These proceedings are inter- have had an opportunity to discuss her ladyship’s rupted by the unexpected arrival of Lady Elizabeth changed condition, such as it is, Eggerson takes herself, who not only had rearranged her entire his leave, and Sir Claude and Colby have a private return itinerary but made it to her own door unas- moment now in which to clear the air in the wake sisted by anyone, including the kindly and highly of these recent changes in their plans for introduc- competent Eggerson. Although her ladyship has a ing him into the household. reputation for being entirely helpless as a tourist, All in all, Sir Claude is pleased. “[S]he’s taken she explains to a startled Sir Claude and Eggerson a fancy to you / And so she lays claim to you,” he how she not only managed to get herself home explains to Colby, and that fits their plan that she all on her own but had changed all her other accept him as her lost child. Colby protests that travel plans as well, including her choice of clin- despite its being such an apparently positive devel- ics, and has evidently been quite improved by the opment, he feels as if it would be “building [his] life selection. upon a deception” for Lady Elizabeth to accept him The real problem is that the best-laid plans of as her son. Sir Claude does not agree. If she accepts the apple cart that Sir Claude and Eggerson had Colby as the kind of man her son might have grown carefully arranged in order to expose Lady Elizabeth up to be, then “it wouldn’t surprise me if she came to Colby’s existence in small, measured doses has to believe / That you really are her son, instead of now also been completely upset by Lady Elizabeth’s being mine.” sudden and unexpected arrival. Once she has had This revelation now made to the audience, the opportunity to notice Colby’s presence, think- Colby persists in expressing a reluctance to see any ing out loud that “[h]is face is familiar,” Sir Claude of them having to “live in a world of make-believe,” and Eggerson begin a nervous explanation of who such as Lady Elizabeth, in her own eccentric way, Colby is and why and how he has come to be there. always has done. In view of Sir Claude’s revela- They need not be anxious, however, about how tion regarding Colby’s true identity, Colby’s protest well she may take the news, for despite her apparent takes on a particularly poignant significance. Again “cure” her ladyship’s absent-mindedness continues Sir Claude disagrees. “If you haven’t the strength unabated, at least as far a this young man is con- to impose your own terms / Upon life, you must cerned. Rather than being surprised or befuddled accept the terms it offers you,” he tells Colby, giv- by Colby’s presence as a member of the household ing the drama its thematic focus.

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As a child, Colby had been sent to Canada dur- entertaining Lucasta, who dropped by unexpect- ing the war to live with his aunt; he and Sir Claude edly, by playing pieces for her on the piano. It barely know each other. Now Colby is in the pro- is one that Sir Claude has seen fit to provide to cess of becoming Sir Claude’s son, but it is being accommodate the frustrated musician that Colby done in a manner that is making Colby feel that has by now become. Naturally, Lucasta, who con- he is becoming a “different person,” rather than fesses to knowing very little about music, thinks the organist that he had been hoping all his life that Colby’s playing is heavenly, whereas he to be—until, that is, he realized that he was not demurs, although he admits that he very likely talented enough. Sir Claude understands, using his plays better now since he has determined that he own experience to illustrate to Colby what he had will never be a musician. meant about accepting life on its terms, not one’s Lucasta and Colby then talk of their first meet- own. Sir Claude had not started out life with plans ing, and Colby is bold enough to suggest that to be a financier either. “I wanted to be a potter,” Lucasta may have been trying to make an impres- he tells an astounded Colby. The life he has instead, sion on him during that earlier encounter at Sir although it is not in that sense real, has become real Claude’s. She does not deny it, and he tells her that enough. “It begins as a kind of make-believe / And her pushiness is the result of a defensiveness that the make-believing makes it real.” Such are the she need not maintain. For her part, she had found compromises with life that he had spoken of earlier him insecure as well, as a result of his failed voca- and that he is now asking Colby to make. tion. Now, however, she can see that “it’s only the The saints and men of genius may be able to outer world that you’ve lost: / You’ve still got your unite the two worlds—the world where real inter- inner world,” and that world is his secret garden, ests lay and are satisfied and the world where com- a world that is more real. Colby does not agree, promises must be made—but others “have at best to for in such a garden, he tells her, he is alone, and live / In two worlds—each a kind of make-believe.” that is not real. “Eggerson’s garden,” he says of the “That’s you and me,” Sir Claude concludes by way flower garden to which his predecessor is now able of further explanation to Colby. Though Sir Claude to devote himself in his retirement, “is more real can collect and appreciate pottery as if he were a than mine.” potter, he will never be one, just as Colby has the The more the young couple chat, the more they heart and ear of a great organist but not the talent share details of their private lives, until they get to succeed as one. to a matter about which Colby tells Lucasta he is Colby accepts Sir Claude’s analysis of their not free to be forthcoming, and that regards his respective situations; he asks only that his new parentage. Suddenly, the boldly forthright Lucasta position in Sir Claude’s household not “be, in any is back. She can talk freely about her parentage, way, a make-believe.” As the first act ends, Sir she proclaims, and then she blurts out that, con- Claude assures Colby that that will not be the case. trary to what she takes to be the common belief Rather, they “must simply wait to learn / What new that she is Sir Claude’s mistress, she is in fact Sir conditions life will impose on us.” Claude’s illegitimate daughter. She continues by Act 2 describing her mother as a drunken and abusive The second act, though it runs virtually the same parent who, despite an allowance from Sir Claude, length as act 1, involves little more than a series still plied the trade that had apparently resulted in of important revelations and reversals that will set her pregnancy. the action up for resolution in act 3. The entire act When Colby expresses shock over Lucasta’s takes place in the sitting room of the apartment revelations, the audience understands that it is that Sir Claude, with Lady Elizabeth’s guidance, because he has been led to believe that he is Sir has had entirely redecorated for Colby’s use. Claude’s son. The sudden idea that Lucasta may be It is several weeks after the events of the open- his sister completely discombobulates Colby. How- ing act. As this next act opens, Colby has been ever, his shocked response leads Lucasta to imagine

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that he is ashamed to know someone of such dis- she may have fallen victim to the delusion that reputable breeding. Colby is her son, he cannot in fact be hers because Before Colby can explain his reaction by reveal- “Colby is my son.” He apologizes for having kept ing the information about his own relationship with this information from her these many years. His Sir Claude, information that Colby has pledged to explanation is that, after having confessed to Lady keep hidden, Kaghan arrives on the scene. With Elizabeth that he is Lucasta’s father, he was afraid his usual volubility, Kaghan takes over the conver- that should he have confessed to yet another ille- sation, turning the attention on himself under the gitimate child, Lady Elizabeth might have begun to guise of complimenting Colby’s character. Kaghan think that there would be no end to it. Sir Claude tells Colby that he sees his new friend as a self-suf- further explains how Mrs. Guzzard had kept Colby ficient person who is not obsessed with respectabil- and cared for him when his mother, who was Mrs. ity, since he was born to it, whereas Kaghan never Guzzard’s sister, had died. knew his own parents, having been adopted as an Lady Elizabeth remains adamant, however, in infant. insisting that Colby is her son. She argues that this Parentage has become a topic on everyone’s same Mrs. Guzzard, left with Lady Elizabeth’s child mind to one extent or another when, just as and with no way to contact the parents, had then Kaghan and Lucasta are about to leave for dinner, deceived Sir Claude by palming Colby off on him Lady Elizabeth arrives on the scene equally unex- as his own, since Sir Claude, for reasons of his own, pectedly. She is there ostensibly to see how Colby’s would not have been surprised by her claim to have apartment has turned out, but it becomes quickly a child of his in her safekeeping. apparent that her real interest is in Colby, whom Whatever the case of Colby’s parentage may be, she continues to find eerily familiar. things are so confused and entangled by now that Once Lucasta and Kaghan have gone, Lady Eliz- there seems to be no way to settle the matter. The abeth begins to interrogate Colby about his parent- unassuming but ever attentive Colby has been lis- age. He informs her that he never knew either his tening to this debate about his parentage and puta- mother, who died when he was born, or his father; tive identity with mixed feelings. He feels numb, he that his birth was illegitimate; and that he was tells them, because what difference would it make raised by a widowed aunt, a Mrs. Guzzard of Ted- now in any case, since he had never known either dington. The more Lady Elizabeth hears, the more of them as a parent when it would have mattered. she becomes convinced that this Mrs. Guzzard was Whose son he is, is “merely a fact,” and by now it is a the very person with whom her first husband had dead fact out of which “[n]othing living can spring.” left their own infant son. That first husband’s sub- While Lady Elizabeth proposes that she and Sir sequent death in Africa had prevented her from Claude can both accept Colby as the child that ever being able to verify the infant’s whereabouts, they never had, Colby concludes that he can live because of her notorious absent-mindedness. Sir with a fact or with a fiction, but not with a mix- Claude arrives, and Lady Elizabeth shares with him ture of both. “I want to know whose son I am,” he her “discovery” that Colby is this long-lost child. concludes. Both Sir Claude and Lady Elizabeth are Although Sir Claude had been hoping that his wife forced to agree, and as act 2 draws to a close, it is would eventually accept Colby into the household further agreed that only by consulting Mrs. Guzzard as if he were her lost infant, he had not expected it herself can they accede to poor Colby’s wishes and to become such a literal reality for her. settle the matter of his parentage once and for all. The enthusiasm with which Lady Elizabeth now Act 3 embraces Colby as her flesh and blood forces Sir The third act, like the first, takes place in the busi- Claude to see the damage that his innocent plan ness room of Sir Claude’s London home. It is sev- has done. He now determines to save the day by eral days later, and Sir Claude is busy arranging the revealing his own hand, gently explaining to Lady seating under the watchful eyes of Lady Elizabeth. Elizabeth that, while it is understandable how He wants to make certain that Mrs. Guzzard, who

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is expected to arrive shortly, will not be intimidated promises Lucasta that she regards the younger by the setting so that the “investigation” can pro- woman as a stepdaughter and will happily accept B. ceed without any hitches. Kaghan as her son-in-law. Eggerson suggests that In the midst of their chatter, Sir Claude reveals Lucasta and Kaghan should wait downstairs till to Lady Elizabeth how he had always wanted to be Mrs. Guzzard’s visit has ended so that the couple a potter rather than a wealthy financier. Rather can be properly welcomed into the family. than laughing at such an unlikely ambition, as he Colby now arrives on the scene, however, had feared she might, she wonders instead why they enabling Lucasta to offer her apologies to him per- had not shared such personal details until now. sonally, as well as to acknowledge that since they The chat turns into a heart-to-heart in which each appear to be brother and sister, they will have to get admits to having imagined him- or herself quite to know each other in a different way as time passes. differently from the person the other has come to Lucasta steps out, only to step back in shortly to perceive. Now, as Sir Claude and Lady Elizabeth explain that Mrs. Guzzard has arrived but that there wait to discover exactly whose child Colby is, air is no one to show her up. They settle on B. to per- that had never seemed to be clouded between the form that service, and, at last, the interrogation is set two of them before has nevertheless been cleared. to begin. Sir Claude had already determined to let Lady Elizabeth, whose nimble confusions of details Eggerson conduct it, so as not to force any issues. in the first place had necessitated this meeting with Under Eggerson’s delicate questioning, Mrs. Guz- Mrs. Guzzard, now is able to resolve that “it doesn’t zard is very gracious, if a bit stiff, in her responses, matter what Mrs. Guzzard tells us, / If it satisfies particularly after Eggerson explains the confusions Colby.” No matter what, Lady Elizabeth concludes, caused by Lady Elizabeth’s suddenly revived, and Colby “shall be our son.” revised, memory of events. Yes, Mrs. Guzzard clari- Eggerson arrives, and they fill him in on the pur- fies, there was a child. Yes, he was very well con- pose of the interview that is to take place shortly. nected. Yes, his support suddenly ceased. All goes Like Sir Claude, Eggerson is not convinced that swimmingly as Mrs. Guzzard’s answers seem to this Mrs. Guzzard could ever had had any dealings strengthen Lady Elizabeth’s case, but then, under- with Lady Elizabeth. He offers an alternative read- standably, Mrs. Guzzard takes umbrage at the sug- ing to Lady Elizabeth’s scenario: There could have gestion that she may have deceived Sir Claude by been two babies at Mrs. Guzzard’s. Obviously, this daring to pass off Lady Elizabeth’s child as the son explanation does not go over any better than any of of Sir Claude and Mrs. Guzzard’s sister. the others, perhaps even less so. Eggerson suggests that everyone’s feelings can Matters now sufficiently confused, there is little be spared if Mrs. Guzzard explained what eventu- more to do than to wait for Mrs. Guzzard. But ally became of the child. She explains that once the the situation is further complicated when Lucasta payments stopped, they allowed some neighbors to shows up unexpectedly, hoping to speak to Colby. adopt the child—a family called Kaghan. The more In the process of her revealing that she will be mar- Mrs. Guzzard reveals, the more it appears that the rying Mr. Kaghan, as everyone had been expecting, child whom she had cared for and who Lady Eliza- she also reveals to them her now dampened inter- beth is convinced is her own, rather than being est in Colby, and that added revelation requires Sir Colby, is in fact none other than B. Kaghan. Claude to explain to her that Colby is her brother, Though details must still be verified, Colby goes at least as far as he knows. Her plans to marry out to fetch Lucasta and Kaghan, who is then ques- Kaghan now confirmed, Lucasta has it out briefly tioned about his adoptive parents. He is, indeed, with Lady Elizabeth, who Lucasta has always felt the abandoned child whom Mrs. Guzzard had thinks Kaghan to be too common for her tastes. On allowed her neighbors the Kaghans to adopt when, this day of reckoning and rectifying, her ladyship, unbeknownst to her, Tony, the boy’s father, had her self-perception as a liberal person shaken by died and, as a result, the payments for his care Lucasta’s accusation of a prejudice against Kaghan, had stopped coming. And this is the very child of

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whom Lady Elizabeth had lost track. Lady Eliza- case, the world might have honored him all the beth is not as pleased with this outcome as she more for making the lesser choice. might have been had the more refined and cultured Colby, however, sees his own spiritual kinship Colby turned out to be her mislaid child. Never- as lying instead with his putative biological father, theless, she accepts the fact that the, in her view, Mrs. Guzzard’s long-deceased husband. For Colby vulgar Barnabas Kaghan is her son, to whom she can understand his love of music not as an ambition will henceforth be Aunt Elizabeth instead of Lady but as a natural vocation, and as a result he plans Elizabeth and shortly will be mother-in-law as well. to leave Sir Claude’s employ to become a church And now Mrs. Guzzard, almost as if the entire organist, since achieving great public success as a inquiry were her idea to begin with, turns her atten- musician no longer forms a part of his goal. tion to Colby, to ask if he too is pleased with the Sir Claude virtually begs Colby to reconsider results, considering that it was his true parentage these new plans, but Colby insists on follow- that had been meant to be uncovered originally. ing through with them. Now that they have both Colby answers in his typically elaborate and overly been enabled to abandon their ambitions and their considered way, coming to the conclusion that, if illusions about each other and about themselves, he truly could choose—had “his wish”—then since Colby explains, it would be wrong to perpetuate he never knew his real mother in any case, he the charade, even one as innocent and well-moti- would prefer to have a “dead obscure man” for a vated as their own. “All that’s left is love,” Colby father rather than Sir Claude. explains, and love requires that they let each other And then, to Colby’s utter surprise, and Sir be. Frustrated, Sir Claude turns to Eggerson to dis- Claude’s considerable consternation, Mrs. Guzzard suade Colby from his new plans, but Eggerson only announces that Colby shall have his wish. Colby, reenforces them by not only proposing that Colby she explains, is her own child by her now long- might apply for the position of organist that has just deceased husband, who had been, like Colby, a become available at the Eggersons’ parish church frustrated musician. Sir Claude is outraged that and offering him a room in their home, but by there is a deception of some order in this latest going on to suggest that he sees a call to the minis- revelation, but Mrs. Guzzard convinces him that it try in Colby’s future. was his own presumptions, not anything that she The play ends with Sir Claude’s being forced to had ever particularly told him, that had convinced accept his fate. As Mrs. Guzzard explains it as she him years ago that Colby was his child by Mrs. prepares to take her leave, her services no longer Guzzard’s sister, who died before she gave birth to being required, she and Sir Claude had each had her and Sir Claude’s child. Whatever the truth may their expectations—their wish—fulfilled 25 years be, Colby embraces the idea that his father is a man before. Sir Claude got a chance to fulfill a sense he never did and never can know. “I must believe of obligation to a son he would otherwise never you,” he proclaims to Mrs. Guzzard. “This gives me acknowledge, and she would obtain help in rais- freedom.” ing her child. “[B]ut,” she concludes, “we failed to On that note, Sir Claude, without conceding observe . . . / That there was a time-limit clause in that it is the truth, yields as well to Mrs. Guzzard’s the contract.” More bewildered than broken, Sir version of the circumstances surrounding Colby’s Claude is left to ponder if he might ever again see birth. Sir Claude makes the mistake of thinking, Colby, who has departed with Mrs. Guzzard, his however, that nothing else has changed with regard “Aunt” Sarah, to call her a taxi. to his and Colby’s relationship, one that had from Both Lucasta and Kaghan, his daughter and early on in the play seemed to be marked by a spiri- future son-in-law, as well as his wife’s son, are tual kinship typical of a father and son. That bond there to comfort and reassure him, however. The between them had been the common experience younger man explains to Sir Claude that “we all of a scotched ambition requiring each of them to made the same mistake” by wanting Colby to be settle for second-best career, though in Sir Claude’s something he was not—Sir Claude’s son and con-

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fidential clerk, and then Lady Elizabeth’s “son” as a reader who had followed Eliot’s career all along well. Lady Elizabeth, who says a mouthful when she would not be at all surprised coming upon The admits that “[o]ne does make mistakes,” promises Confidential Clerk for the first time and would feel that she will try to do better in the future. And Eliot’s unmistakable mark and talent for limning for his own part, Sir Claude, although he happily the personal and social consequences of human accepts Kaghan and Lucasta’s protestations of love fallibility in every line and phrase. There is a genu- and affection, ends the drama by asking Eggerson if ine progressive development to be found in Eliot’s he “really believe[s] her,” apparently meaning the playwriting, a development that parallels develop- now departed Mrs. Guzzard. The curtain falls on ments in his poetry writing. Eggerson nodding, “Yes.” At the more obvious level, there are Eliot the playwright’s persistent to-and-fro adjustments that CRITICAL COMMENTARY he made from one play to another in perfecting Although Eliot sticks to tried and true theatrical what he regarded as the requirements for an effec- conventions to make The Confidential Clerk the tive and yet unobstrusive dramatic verse. In that most conventional of his plays to date, that does regard, one could follow, for example, the develop- not mean that the poet who staked his earliest rep- ment from his placing too heavy an emphasis on utation on being inscrutably ambiguous is not up to the poetically histrionic, as he feared that he had many of his own old tricks. Amid the plethora of done with Murder in the Cathedral, to his evidenc- stock characters, mistaken recognitions, and rev- ing too keen a regard for the prosaic, a flaw that he elations and reversals galore, the same artist who, would later identify in the spare verse line that he in The Waste Land, had made disillusionment a incorporated into The Cocktail Party. There is also bona fide virtue and who had then proposed, in the a no less significant but perhaps far less obvious Four Quartets, that life is ceaseless exploration with development from those early works like Murder skills and tools at hand that are always inadequate in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion that relied and forever deteriorating has hardly lost his edge, heavily and demonstrably for their dramatic quality his intellectual passion, or his cleverness. He tells on the ritual of classical drama, filled as they were the story of a young man who is content to discover with choral interludes and the like and on a high at last that by being no one at all, he is left free to seriousness of tone and theme. What then followed be himself. Admittedly, however, as much is not were more contemporary works, beginning some- readily available at first glance. what with The Cocktail Party and then continu- At first glance, rather, The Confidential Clerk ing most assuredly with The Confidential Clerk, in signals a marked change in Eliot’s interests and which both the verse and the plots, despite certain techniques not merely as a dramatist, but as a poet. complications of motive intended to keep up dra- A reader who, having just read Eliot’s first effort matic suspense and audience interest, are hardly at a verse drama, the unsettlingly modernist but distinguishable from the light fare associated with never completed “Sweeney Agonistes,” then turns drawing-room dramas and comedies depicting the to The Confidential Clerk must be left wondering peccadilloes of the well-to-do. how any writer could have managed to convert the It is not clear whether this particular progress creative energies of his writing talent so much and is a forward one or merely the result of Eliot’s set- so entirely as to have crossed the divide from the ting his theatrical sights on achieving a popular suc- one play to the other, so much would the two plays, cess rather than literary masterpieces on a par with if read back to back, seem to be products of an the rigid critical standards of modernism, standards entirely different writer if not literary epochs. that he himself had had a great deal of influence in Such a startling contrast of range and interests establishing and setting. What is clear is that, by the cannot easily be found in any other writer with time of The Confidential Clerk, Eliot’s playwriting a reputation for innovative genius comparable to had become a great deal more accessible. Acces- the one that Eliot had deservedly achieved. Yet sibility had been his constant goal virtually from

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the time of his poetic contributions to the pageant for that matter, account for these plays’ general play The Rock in 1933, so, if nothing else, The Con- popularity, beginning with The Cocktail Party. Eliot, fidential Clerk should be recognized for the personal nevertheless, fulfilled his own aim as poet more professional triumph that it represents for Eliot. than as social commentator or moral arbiter by let- Arguably, there is the critical problem that, ting audiences hear the poetry of everyday speech in achieving this level of accessibility in his stage and hear how their everyday speech could be both productions, one of the 20th century’s most justi- the stuff of great drama and, more to the point, of fiably complex and profound poets may have com- great poetry. It will be left for subsequent genera- promised, if not his considerable talents, then at tions to determine whether or not Eliot succeeded least the necessary complexities of his consider- in his effort to achieve on the stage something that able poetic vision for the sake of reaching a wider was authentic and honest and that was of our time and more varied audience. On the other hand, it as well. That he did achieve, in The Confidential should go without saying that the pursuit of popu- Clerk, a verse drama that was uniquely his own larity for popularity’s sake did not form any part of and yet entirely successful as popular theater is a Eliot’s intention. The poet of The Confidential Clerk comment, if nothing else, on Eliot’s thoroughly dis- is the same man who, in 1934 in his Charles Eliot ciplined professionalism as a literary artist. Norton lectureship at Harvard University, from So, then, the travails of Sir Claude and Lady which emerged his critical work The Use of Poetry Elizabeth, Colby and Mrs. Guzzard, even Lucasta and the Use of Criticism, had pronounced the stage and Kaghan and Eggerson, are far more real and far to be the most suitable medium for poetry in the more common than they may at first appear, and 20th century. yet once they are recognized for what they are, they Eliot had held in subsequent remarks found are the same travails that have haunted the pages scattered throughout his late masterpiece, the Four of Eliot’s verse from the outset. For one thing, Eliot Quartets, that the primary function of the poet is has always been one drawn toward the theatrics to keep the language solvent, as it were, and it is of human interaction. His youthful attraction to this man who had, in a manner of speaking, put JULES LAFORGUE, whose poetry introduced him to his money where his mouth was in a verse drama the possibilities of a self-deprecating self-dramati- of the caliber of The Confidential Clerk. By running zation, resulted in J. Alfred Prufrock, a character the risk of a public failure in a capricious and vola- who could agonize over having to “prepare a face tile medium, the legitimate theater, for the sake of to meet the faces that you meet.” This idea that extending the possibilities of the common language individuals, consciously or not, wear masks that in his time, Eliot was also extending poetry’s ability conceal the unknown but real personality carries to address common human needs for order and for all the way into The Cocktail Party, in which the a sense of purpose in everyday experience. protagonist, Edward Chamberlayne, is forced to However one views it, there is an unavoidable confront the vacuous relationships that he has been irony in finding one of the most obscure of the early maintaining throughout his adult life with others, modernists, for which literary tactic he was often his wife, Lavinia, in particular. excoriated for being an elitist, ending his poetic In the same way, but in more subtle or, at the career by attempting to make poetic discourse tan- very least, less obvious terms, all of the major char- tamount to common speech and capable of address- acters in The Confidential Clerk wear a mask as well. ing what he viewed to be the pressing psychological The rub is that they do so quite consciously in order and spiritual issues of ordinary, contemporary life. to achieve their relatively innocent and well-mean- That these issues may appear to some to have been ing ends. Sir Claude, for example, pretends not to presented by Eliot, in his later verse dramas, in be Colby’s father, and Colby is forced to pretend ways more closeted or more exclusively reflective not to be Sir Claude’s son. Mrs. Guzzard has lived of the difficulties facing the upper middle class than a life pretending to be Colby’s aunt, meanwhile. is typical does not diminish their importance or, It is Eliot’s way of dramatizing, nevertheless, the

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psychological and certainly spiritual fact that no ing moment by moment. Colby was content to be one is who he or she appears to be for the simple Sir Claude’s son and confidential clerk, so it cannot reason that identity is a social construct, not a true be that he is embracing a better life by accepting state of being. That may sound far too complicated the fact, at play’s end, that he is the son of Harold than it should, except that theatrical conventions, Guzzard instead and, like him, an otherwise unsuc- themselves based on play-acting and make-believe, cessful musician. Indeed, what Colby is embracing is thrive on concealing and then revealing this sort of not necessarily even a more authentic life so much truth, enabling Eliot to exploit the commonplaces as a life that he is suddenly free to choose. Eliot of the medium in order to insinuate what would is too great a poet to lie to or cheat his audience. otherwise be the complexities of the particular In the hands of any other playwright, the standard theme of appearance versus reality. denouement would have made Colby’s choice of life It is a simple task, then, for Eliot to make the- the dramatic resolution, whereas Eliot makes it clear atrics his gambit. Kaghan, for example, has a habit that it is not so much what one chooses as that one of entering a scene saying, “Enter B. Kaghan.” By embraces the freedom to choose that counts. doing so, Eliot has fun with his audience but also is It is by this device, and through the eccentric demonstrably representing a “fact” that will indeed vehicle of Lady Elizabeth’s interest in the occult, become clear to everyone by play’s end—that the that Eliot is able to bring the spiritual aspects of his man who has been B. Kaghan for the better part theme to bear as well. By the time of his writing The of his life has in fact been playing a role, since he Confidential Clerk, Eliot has learned that the spiri- is really the son of Lady Elizabeth and her long- tual and religious can be introduced perhaps more deceased first husband, Tony. The particular irony, effectively by his not referencing, in keeping with of course, is that that person who B. Kaghan turns his personal belief system, its more orthodox Chris- out “really” to be is no more real than the person tian manifestations, as he had done, as a matter of who he is not. Again, these are Eliot’s ways of using necessity, in Murder in the Cathedral and, in less the old standbys of dramatic plot devices to expose specific but no less traditional terms, in the episode the absurdities that can result when too much faith of Celia’s sacrifice and martyrdom in The Cocktail is placed in the social construct that is personal Party. Rather, in The Confidential Clerk the voice identity. for spiritual matters is given to Lady Elizabeth, with Similarly, athough not much of it is made by her far from orthodox interest in numerology, spiri- the other characters, there is something rather tualism, and other manifestations of the so-called comically touching, but also a little cruel, in the occult. Since Eliot astutely attunes the audience fact that the class-conscious Lady Elizabeth, who to expect to hear from her the most outrageous becomes convinced that Colby must be her biologi- sorts of spiritual theories and opinions, Eliot is able cal child, discovers that B. Kaghan, whom she has to slip almost imperceptibly into her dialogue the previously found to be vulgarly “undistinguished,” most perceptive of the spiritual observations made is actually her child. Eliot is out to convince his in the play. During her interview with Colby in act audience of far more than the old nature versus 2, she comments on how she believes in reincarna- nurture conundrum. He seems to argue that a tion, but that behind it all, ultimately there “isn’t rose by any other name might not in fact smell as just heredity, / But something unique . . . straight sweet, so much are we conditioned to respond to from God.” the appearance—what a thing is “named”—rather Ultimately, as Eliot has seen it virtually from than to the reality—what a thing is. the time of The Waste Land, the root causes of all As Sir Claude successfully convinced Colby early human distress are spiritual in nature. We are here on in the play, one must accept life on its terms, so all parentless, inasmuch as, like the child of “Anim- that a rose is a rose is a rose is not the answer either. ula,” we have been “orphaned into life.” Too, as Life’s terms, the play proposes, are never quite the prayer to the Blessed Mother to which Eliot that clear either, and they are capable of chang- alludes in “Ash-Wednesday” reminds the faithful,

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as those poor children of Eve, we are all exiles from to choose his parentage, he chooses the parentage paradise suffering here on Earth. Finally, we are all that most conforms with the person that he has the sons and daughters of the same earthly father, become. In his end is his beginning, to quote the Adam, whom Eliot identifies as the “ruined mil- paradox around which Eliot constructed the poetry lionaire” in the Four Quartets, whose primal mis- of “East Coker.” take cost us our birthright. Colby’s choice, however, leaves a noticeable In that way, and in that same kind of spiritual loose end. Colby and Sir Claude are kindred spir- context but now without its Judeo-Christian points its. So much is true, leaving Sir Claude to puzzle of reference, The Confidential Clerk compels us to why Colby cannot then accept the possibility that regard our “parentage,” as well as the alienation Sir Claude is in fact Colby’s biological father. The from that primal source, as the conditions for our point is that in the vast and most generous scheme “making do” in the world. Eliot’s audience, after all, of things we are all kindred spirits, and that is what is composed of the same Lucastas and Colbys and Eliot seems to want his audience to see. Sir Claude B. Kaghans who inhabit the play, all of them lost and Colby are kindred spirits not because they are children born out of that spiritual wedlock that, father and son but because they are brothers, in like the animula or little soul, binds the soul of each the sense that all men are brothers. As Colby puts directly to his or her creator, seeking in some way it, once all the confusions are sorted out (as if they to make atonement to or connection with a parent ever will be), what is left is love, and that ought to that, here, none can ever truly know in any case. be more than more than enough. Eggerson seems In the absence of that peace, each individual to agree when he accedes to Sir Claude’s ques- has an inner place, be it Colby’s secret garden or tioning whether or not he “really believe[s] her.” the prison cell of self that an Edward Chamber- Still obsessing about the truths and falsehoods of layne inhabits, or the monkish cell of those rarer Colby’s parentage, Sir Claude no doubt means Mrs. creatures, the Celias and Thomas à Beckets of the Guzzard by “her,” but there is a good possibility world. They, too, like the garden in “Burnt Nor- that Eggerson hears him meaning to mean Lucasta, ton,” have been standard poetic motifs for Eliot who has just offered Sir Claude her love. Love is for a long time. It is also the abode of Prufrock, right under Sir Claude’s nose in the daughter he from which human voices wake the anguished self has failed to acknowledge fully while he frets over seeking, in pointless reverie, moments of distracted the son who rejects his acknowledgment. None of peace. It is the prison whose locking door haunts us is perfect, Eliot seems to be concluding, but love the speaker of The Waste Land in the closing is no judge of character or motive. moments of “What the Thunder Said,” compelling him to sympathize. It is, as mentioned, the garden in the opening of “Burnt Norton” from which the taunt of children’s laughter issues. It is the paradise “Conversation Galante” that Adam lost and the prison that self-centered- (1916) ness makes to protect the individual from being consumed by a world of otherness that makes con- Though it was not published until September 1916 stant demands that he or she conform to ceaseless in the same issue of Poetry magazine that also con- social needs and constraints. tained “La Figlia che Piange,” “Mr. Apollinax,” and In The Confidential Clerk, then, Colby finds his “Morning at the Window,” “Conversation Galante” freedom in coming to terms with—indeed, by hap- was written in November 1909. Indeed, the version pily and consciously accepting—the paradox that that has come down, which was also included in each individual is a self-created social construct in Eliot’s first collection, Prufrock and Other Obser- a world that is not the same from one minute to the vations, published in 1917, is virtually unchanged next, let alone eternal. He has a rare opportunity, from the original undergraduate version except for one that most of us can never experience. Free the title, which was originally “Short Romance.”

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This poem, then, is vintage Eliot from the year connect. She is prepared to be offended, but he gal- when he first fell most powerfully under the influ- lantly confesses that he meant his own inanity, not ence of the French symbolist dandy and wit JULES hers, by that remark. LAFORGUE. In fact, while it is a loose adaptation, Manfully, he gives it one more shot. He lets out “Conversation” is nevertheless borrowed virtually all the stops, praising her coolness to high heaven. intact from Laforgue’s “Autre Complainte de Lord She is the “eternal humorist,” a strange way to com- Pierrot” (“Another Complaint of Lord Pierrot”). pliment a singularly humorless individual whose The Laforgue original is more purely speculative, every whim, nevertheless, takes his turns of phrase while Eliot’s imitation sounds as if it is, as the final to “twist” them to her own “indifferent and imperi- title suggests, the record of an actual conversa- ous” ends, defeating his “mad poetics.” Expectedly, tion. Both Laforgue and Eliot play on the moder- although the speaker seemed not to have antici- ately humorous and self-deprecating idea that it pated it, she now reverses course and wonders if is impossible for a gentleman to please a woman they now should be “so serious.” because such men—galantes—are too self-effacing More than expressing the idea that the speaker to begin with. cannot win when it comes to trying to convince his lady of his own rather coolly detached ardor, SYNOPSIS no matter what guise or guile he adapts, the poem In each of the three stanzas, Eliot’s speaker tries to reconstructs the entire idea of the love poem into engage a young lady in what he apparently regards something strange, even if not necessarily rich. as meaningful conversation. That, of course, may be his mistake to begin with—and some of the CRITICAL COMMENTARY source of the humor. It is not that he is being comi- The notion that the lover must walk through fire cal or humorous in attempting a conversation with to gain the beloved’s attention is hardly a new her but that his idea of a meaningful conversation, one, but previous to Eliot’s model, Laforgue, it rather lame to begin with, is set up for failure. was made to seem to be worth the effort. What He starts off by trying to be extremely witty, Laforgue did—and the youthful Eliot mimed per- even clever. The moon is not simply a “sentimental fectly—was to make the lover an insipid fool, will- friend;” it is “Prester John’s [‘fantastical’] balloon,” ing to play the clown if it meant that the lady in a wild enough notion given that Prester John was a question would at least pay attention to his inani- quasi-legendary 12th-century Christian king in the ties with her own icy detachment. Modern love Far East about whom much was heard but nothing becomes not a verbal tryst that ends in an embrace ever learned—a fantastic creature, in other words, but a fencing match in which the opponent, the who likely would not have known a balloon had he beloved, is hardly willing to spend the energy to ever seen one. That is to no real point, of course, respond. That she does so at all, even if it is dis- since the speaker’s aim is to be fantastically charm- paragingly and always only to her own advantage, ing and witty himself, and his next, trite com- seems to be for the Laforgue-Eliot speaker more parison—of the moon to a battered lantern—fails than victory enough. He has been chastised and equally. In any event, her response is to charge him humiliated, but at least he has had some moments with digressing. of the lady’s undivided attention. For his next gambit, he tries to be romantically It is perfectly understandable why Eliot not only sentimental in the old, more tried and true ways. eventually published this early effort but also kept He calls to her attention someone, real or imag- it among his complete poems throughout his long ined, playing an “exquisite nocturne” on a piano, and illustrious career as a poet. The unblinking all for their delight, although his wit gets the better precision with which Eliot, at age 21, adopted the of him—one of the dangers of being too clever— tone and style of his literary mentor and idol, who and he remarks on how the music mirrors their was himself only 27 when he died of tuberculosis in own “vacuity,” which seems to be their inability to 1887, the year before Eliot was born, bespeaks the

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profound literary and perhaps even spiritual kin- time, there can be no doubt that some details of ship that he must have felt for Laforgue and would the poem, as with much of Eliot’s poetry through- comment on many years later. out his poetic career, may have had their origins More than that, however, it reveals how astute in personal circumstances and issues. By the same Eliot’s ear was even this early in the game. He was token, imagining that a poetry as densely com- capable of translating more than a concept to the pacted as this poem’s might be little more than page from the Laforgue original—an entire state an exercise in thinly disguised autobiography begs of mind if not being. A new kind of character had the question. If Eliot were aiming only toward entered the literary universe, and the young T. S. autobiography, it is reasonable to assume that he Eliot was enough a child of his time and a poet would have done so in terms much more direct of genius not only to recognize that but to have than those of “A Cooking Egg.” the courage to emulate it unabashedly in his own By this time in his life, Eliot was employed by the poetry. venerable banking and insurance firm, Lloyds of Finally, inasmuch as his genius was his own, as it London. His college days were behind him, but he ought to be, Eliot was able as well to take what he was still, by virtue of his activities as a literary jour- learned from Laforgue to the level of great poetry nalist, always in touch with the leading academ- in his own first masterwork, “The Love Song of ics and intellectuals of the day. Eliot was already J. Alfred Prufrock.” The reader who can hear the enjoying a modest but significant reputation as one clownish self-deprecation with which the gallant of the new, young poetic talents in English who in “Conversation” approaches the woman, just so were then emerging on both sides of the Atlantic. that she will take the time to dismiss his nonsense, There is much to recommend “A Cooking Egg” catches the first hints of a Prufrock who doubts, as a poem largely inspired by Eliot’s own personal by the time he steps onto the stage less than two experiences. Nevertheless, Eliot himself would years later, in July 1911, that the woman will listen argue, in a famous essay published several years to him at all. Within the space of a few years, Eliot before “A Cooking Egg” was composed, “Tradi- would take the bathos that Laforgue did so well tion and the Individual Talent,” that any benefit a and raise it to nearly tragic proportions in the self- reader might obtain by correlating a poet’s life with revelatory confession of a man, Prufrock, to whom his poetry is patently spurious and therefore decep- no one will listen because he has given up all hope tively misleading. For example, it would be impos- of ever being heard. sible for any reader to determine what particular “fact” is behind each apparently factual detail that the poet had in mind, let alone decide on its signifi- cance. So it would seem that more purpose for and “Cooking Egg, A” (1919) meaning of “A Cooking Egg” stand to be revealed if Pipit remains as anonymous as the poet would The earliest criticism of “A Cooking Egg,” one have her be. Whether she is, as has been variously of the seven mockingly serious (as opposed to argued, a spinster aunt or child-care giver or even a mock-serious) quatrain poems that Eliot com- friend remembered from the poet’s own childhood, posed between 1917 and 1919, focused primarily the reader is called on to focus his or her atten- on trying to discover the identity of Pipit, the tion on the immediate present in which the poem erstwhile companion whom the speaker identifies is being composed and the speaker is speaking, a in the second line of the poem. Eliot composed present in which both the speaker and Pipit have “A Cooking Egg,” according to most estimates, grown, if not both up, then certainly at least older. sometime during 1919. In light of the overt refer- ences in the text to academic, literary, and bank- SYNOPSIS ing interests, all of which would all have been That “A Cooking Egg” is a poem reflecting on matters occupying Eliot’s attention around that the passage of the individual from innocence into

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experience, a common enough literary mode and of Oxford and An Invitation to the Dance, may serve theme, is supported by the epigraph. Though it as details, their titles, too, suggest reminiscences of is, in typical Eliot fashion, both unattributed and youthful pursuits and rites of passage—debutante untranslated, the lines, in the original French, are balls and finishing school cotillions, as well as college from the Testament of François Villon, the roguish days. In contrast with those anticipations, however, 14th-century Parisian vagabond and poet. Loosely the books may, like the old likenesses, be merely translated, the epigraph reads, “By the 30th year there to betoken milestones that have passed. (Eliot, of my life, / I have drunk up all my shame.” Eliot for example, had had a visiting fellowship at Oxford’s would have turned 30 in September 1918 and may Merton College in 1915.) himself have been feeling the last, fleeting flickers The scene set, the reader is encouraged by this of his own only somewhat carefree youth. focus on Pipit, who is the subject of the speaker’s While he had led a relatively sheltered life as attention, to conclude that, whoever she may have the last child of a comfortably upper-middle-class been, she has by now been changed by the passage couple and gone to the best schools, he had also of time, as has the speaker. The fact that she is been away from home at school for the better part knitting, a relatively sedate activity more associ- of his life since his teen years. Under those circum- ated with a sober adulthood than with the exu- stances, he could still have sown some wild oats berant activities of childhood and youth, adds to without becoming an utter wastrel, and there is the impression that, now that their youth has just no doubt that Eliot, like any young person, may passed, she and the speaker have already entered have sown his share. In Villon’s case, his admis- into the mood of a more somber maturity both with sion, as much in keeping with his reputation in his- the world and with each other. tory as a delightful rogue, is straightforward enough That note of seriousness soon seems to be inval- to be quickly understood: After the excesses of a idated, however, as a new stanza, following a series profligate youth, there is little left for Villon to be of periods to indicate a section break, begins. Now embarrassed about, although he may have some a note of an almost bitter and certainly self-dep- regret that those headier times have passed. recating irony, in which images of the speaker’s The accepted meaning of the title of the Eliot present situation are invoked, enters the poem and poem also supports this notion that it will be an will continue to stanza six. A sort of litany of vain unabashed looking back, a taking stock of what the renunciation, quasi-religious in tone, follows, and passing years have cost the individual and of what the personal tone of the poem’s opening two stan- recompense, if any, experience has returned for zas, with their strong hint that a measure of shared that cost. A cooking egg is an egg that has passed intimacy had been developed among the speaker, its prime but has not yet gone bad. It can still be Pipit, and the reader, now rapidly declines into an used in cooking, but one would not think of using it extended exercise in befuddlement. The reader in the preparation of a separate dish, in an omelet, encounters relatively obscure or startling allusions for example. and rhymes that forsake advancing meaning for the The poem opens with Pipit and the speaker keep- sake only of a cleverness that seems to be purpose- ing each other company in some manner or another, fully empty of meaning. but not particularly intimately. They are in the same Of course, that may be the “meaning.” As already room, but she is “some distance” from where he is sit- mentioned, “A Cooking Egg” is one of the quatrain ting. The references to daguerrotypes, an early form poems composed between 1917 and 1919. In them, of portrait photography, and silhouettes, another although the form was derived from the popular method of executing likenesses, primarily of the very mid-19th century French poet Théophile Gautier, young, in earlier times, betoken the inexorable pas- Eliot contrived to use a poetic tone that was still sage of time as do any souvenirs of those “olden days” highly influenced by the later French symbolist that most humans cherish because they are now poet JULES LAFORGUE, a tone intended to bewilder gone. Whatever other purpose the two books, Views the reader with its mixture of cold-hearted wit and

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plaintive sentimentality. As with “The Hippopota- Mond, Lucretia Borgia, Madame Blavatsky, and mus” and “,” which among Piccarda de Donati. Of them, Lucretia Borgia is Eliot’s quatrain poems most resemble “A Cooking probably the most notable if not notorious, being Egg,” in this period of Eliot’s own development as the murderous sister of the equally unsavory 16th- a poet, the wit is there not to undermine or ridi- century Italian wheeler-dealer Cesare Borgia. He cule the sentiment so much as to make it valid and was the individual to whom Niccolò Machiavelli acceptable. addressed his famously cynical treatise on the This is the somewhat tried and true technique maintenance of secular power, The Prince. Of that of “laughing lest one cries” that Laforgue himself same ilk would be Sir Alfred Mond, an industrial- essayed well enough, too. More so, however, in ist and political force in then-contemporary Eng- this instance, the opposing duality of Eliot’s tone land whose father, originally trained as a chemist, and approach makes for a tension that enables the had amassed a fortune by discovering a process for sentiment to seem less excessive by further allow- extracting nickel. Coriolanus, meanwhile, is a leg- ing the speaker to establish and exercise a capacity endarily ne’er-do-well hero from the days of Rome for cynicism at the same time that he is exposing of the fourth century B.C. A patrician—a descen- his heart and its vulnerabilities. To rhyme Sidney, dant of one of the city’s founding families—Cori- the surname of the 16th-century swashbuckling olanus, after having saved Rome from a foreign English courtier and love poet, Sir Philip Sidney, enemy, tried to use his newly won authority and a with kidney, for example, is a nearly unforgivable grain shortage to undermine the power of the com- travesty of tone and mood unless the reader rec- mon people, or plebians. His efforts were thwarted, ognizes that the deprecating, and self-deprecating, and as a result, he went over to the side of the attitude that the speaker has now adopted toward enemies whom he had earlier vanquished and, with all notions of worldly success is used to enhance the them, made war on his own native city. validity of the tenderness with which the speaker is Thus far, Eliot’s speaker, playfully imagining recollecting those earlier days and times of his with what his “eternal reward” will be for having given Pipit. The loss of the objects of that sentiment has up the world that Pipit represents, has been cyni- meaning and impact only in comparison with what cally aligning himself with individuals of wealth and has replaced those objects. If the relative inno- social rank who made their mark wielding temporal cence of his past youth is embodied for him in Pipit power, in several cases cruelly or ineptly. The addi- and their relationship together, then what replaces tion of Madame Blavatsky, another contemporary both her and his youth is the speaker’s present cir- figure, may seem to take the list in an entirely dif- cumstances, and the tone that he sets implies that ferent direction. She was the founder and guiding he does not find in those a fair exchange for what light of the Theosophical Society, which focused he has lost. on advancing the cause of occult spiritual lore and Instead, now he finds himself, if not bored by ritual. An acquaintance of W. B. YEATS and EZRA these present circumstances, then at least uncon- POUND, Madame Blavatsky’s presence in this litany vinced that they are worth his and Pipit’s lost may seem to break the mold of an emphasis on youth, let alone their childhood innocence. While worldly pursuits inasmuch as her concerns were the figures to whom Eliot alludes in stanzas three otherworldly. The same may be said for the pres- through six may seem to be all over the cultural ence of Piccarda de Donati, who appears in canto and historical map, they actually have a few fea- III of DANTE ALIGHIERI’s Paradiso, the third, last, tures in common. As is usual with Eliot’s allusions, and heavenly section of the Divine Comedy. On finding that core of commonalities often reveals as balance, however, Blavatsky was not much dif- well a common core of derivable meaning (or at ferent from those other wheeler-dealers already least implication). named; she simply wielded her influence among The reader encounters, along with the afore- those who were more spiritually inclined. Piccarda, mentioned Sir Philip Sidney, Coriolanus, Sir Alfred too, though she led a holy life and was content with

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her fate, has nevertheless been relegated, by Dante, it suggests, as opposed to the speaker’s cynical dis- to the lowest of orders of the blessed in heaven for gruntlement, a quiet acceptance of whatever the having neglected her vows as a nun. succeeding years may bring. That such lukewarm spiritual guides like her The ghost of Villon, whose most famous line and Madam Blavatsky will conduct our speaker in is, “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” reappears heaven suggests that he, too, shall not get very one last time in the final stanza through veiled far past the heavenly gates. It is also Piccarda, allusion wherein the adult world and all its empty by the way, who speaks the words that Eliot will promises, and their fulfillment, are buried beneath cite later in his criticism as the best example of deep Alpine snows—that is to say, pretty deeply. Dante’s greatness as a poet: “His [God’s] will is our In place of the stolen sweets of yesteryear, a hun- peace”—further suggesting, as a maxim, how much gry multitude—shades of those who are waiting the speaker, by instead seeking only such worldly for something to believe in—now eat their lonely models as these to guide his spiritual success, is lost breakfasts or afternoon teas of “buttered scones to begin with. and crumpets” in franchise restaurants, which is In every case, then, the figures alluded to by what A.B.C.’s were in London at that time. That Eliot’s speaker remind the reader of an adult world reference to the A.B.C.’s should remind the reader, where worth in honor, rank, wealth, power, influ- as it certainly must the speaker, of its more familiar ence, and glory are measured, even in Heaven use as a shorthand for grammar school, where chil- apparently, by degrees of self-aggrandizement and dren learn the alphabet, thus calling to mind those self-promotion. If Eliot’s speaker expects, in this lost days and hours of the comparative innocence tongue-in-cheek catalog, to find that a group such of childhood that the speaker had spent in Pipit’s as this one will be welcome company in Heaven, more active and formative company. It is a note then at least the poet is making it clear that such of sufficiently poignant, even if somewhat heavy- a heaven, rather than the one that Piccarda de handed, irony on which the poem ends. Donati finds on the lower rungs of Dante’s Para- diso, would be more like a hell—that is, more like CRITICAL COMMENTARY Dante’s Inferno instead. The conclusion of “A Cooking Egg” vividly echoes No wonder that the speaker can suddenly shift the epigraph from Villon: By a certain point in both focus and time, returning to some moment life, even shame abandons the individual to his in the past when he and Pipit, two children then, own devices. Eliot’s speaker’s device in “A Cook- it appears, had hidden behind a screen to share a ing Egg” is not to let the past go but not to kid sweet. There is the hint here that there might also or deceive himself into pretending that it has not have been a forbidden fruit to share as well, the gone in any case, leaving nothing, not even Pipit as sweets, that is, of sexual play—but that is really she had been, in its place. She too, like the speaker, beside the point. It still would have been innocent, has changed and continues to do so, unto death. so it serves now as a painful reminder of how much The “cooking egg” of the title may take on another one gives up in order to grow up. meaning, ultimately being just that—an egg that is From the vantage point of these empty adult vis- slowly cooking and thereby having all its freshness tas and prospects, there is for company only “red- boiled or fried away as it changes into something eyed scavengers,” dissipated drunkards like Villon, else that is surely something less than what it was who haunt the edges of their lost hopes and dreams initially. and dwell only in disillusionment—“where are the The idea that the years bring with them not wis- eagles and the trumpets,” the vaunted rewards and dom but regret, not glory but boredom and shame, honors of adulthood. Meanwhile, Pipit’s own quiet is not unique to Eliot, of course. However, he is one activity, knitting, that was described in the first of the few poets who will continue to develop this stanza, the speaker finds enviable in comparison theme and to render it poetically well into his own and, for most, unattainable as well, inasmuch as later years in such masterworks as “Burnt Norton”

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and “Little Gidding.” In those poems, parts of the ing both “Triumphal March” and “Difficulties of a Four Quartets, images of roads not taken and of Statesman” separate billing under the present col- knowledge and effort that have not flowered con- lective title, “Coriolan,” in the 1935 edition of his tinue to assault the poet/speaker as he struggles Collected Poems, including them there along with to make sense and order out of the maelstrom of “Sweeney Agonistes” as “Unfinished Poems.” human experience that is both past and present. From that vantage point, although no one would BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS have been capable of recognizing it at the time, “A In the closing section of The Waste Land, “What Cooking Egg” achieves a position of some impor- the Thunder Said,” Eliot had already had re- tance in mapping the future course of Eliot’s work. course to using the legendary Roman traitor Caius Even if the quatrains as a group seem to have been Marcius, who had once been honored by the Ro- more of a creative holding action on the poet’s part mans with the epithet Coriolanus for his bravery until some more important work came along, their in battle against the Corioli, as a model of the self- technical virtuosities provided him with a way and destructiveness of pride. In a passage that is in- a means to keep busy and practiced until a poetry tended to illustrate the concept of dayadhvam, or on the order of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- to sympathize, from the Upanishads, Eliot’s speaker frock” might inspire him again—as it shortly would calls to mind a “broken Coriolanus” whom “aethe- in poems like “Gerontion” and The Waste Land. real rumors” revive. Since the real Coriolanus did not survive the disgrace of his betrayal, for the sake of class pride, of all that he held sacred, Eliot even then was apparently alluding to any public “Coriolan” (1935) figure whose failing career had been resurrected by the right application of press agentry. “Aethe- “Triumphal March” was first published in Faber real rumors,” after all, seems to be a reasonably & Faber’s Ariel series in October 1931, yet it has clever circumlocution for gossip and innuendo little in common with the other four poems in spread by such relatively modern means of elec- the same series that had preceded it—“Journey tronic communication as the telephone and radio. of the Magi,” “Song for Simeon,” “Animula,” and Whatever the case may have been in The Waste “Marina.” Each of those four is much more sub- Land, Eliot clearly uses the Roman patrician to tly poetic than “Triumphal March” in both tone make political commentary in the never-completed and style, making for a radically jarring contrast “Coriolan.” The example of Coriolanus remains that Eliot seemed to endorse when he gathered the one revealing both the great virtues and incred- four of them together under the collective heading ible snobbery of the Roman patrician class, of an Ariel Poems in the 1935 edition of Collected Poems, inherited nobility in general, and by extension, of to the exclusion of “Triumphal March.” Instead, any and all artificial distinctions and social barri- by 1932 Eliot was combining “Triumphal March” ers among humanity. The question of character, with a second poem, “Difficulties of a Statesman,” in both its sociopsychological consequences and which, too, had been published independently in in its isolation in ennobling or degrading actions, the 1931–32 edition of Commerce. The two poems had formed the bedrock for much of Eliot’s poetry were the first two parts of a projected four-part from the time of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- poem inspired, Eliot would claim, by Beethoven’s frock” onward. Coriolanus therefore is a fitting case “Coriolan Overture.” The project eventually lan- in point for the sequence at hand, another two guished, a victim of Eliot’s year abroad in America poems whose purpose is to explore the catastro- lecturing in 1932 and 1933, while he sought to phe that selfhood entails whenever it is elevated separate himself once and for all from his increas- to untenable heights by either the mob or personal ingly unhappy marriage to his first wife, Vivien. vainglory. At this moment in both European his- He acknowledged those earlier intentions by giv- tory and the history of the poet, however, there

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were other issues that may have been equally as to arouse public interest in a plan of the diocese of responsible for bringing Coriolanus to the forefront London to construct 45 new churches in the grow- of Eliot’s creative interests, even if he would even- ing suburbs of Middlesex. Within a few more years, tually abandon the project entirely. Eliot, in his first completed verse drama, Murder in The Contemporary Background the Cathedral, depicted an instance of the conflict between character and power that was much closer During the time that Eliot was casting about for to home, the deadly struggle that Thomas à Becket another suitable topic for a long poem, which he waged with King Henry II in the 12th century. The intended “Coriolan” to be, the Western democra- question of what a person of moral character and cies were undergoing increasing political crises out spiritual conviction was to do in the face of the of which aristocrats and quasi-aristocratic types— short-term interests of political necessity was not a so-called strongmen—were beginning to emerge as parochial one, by any means. autocratic rulers. Meanwhile, the world had sunk into the throes of the Great Depression, an eco- The Story of Coriolanus nomic catastrophe that was making formerly stable Certainly it seems that for now Eliot, seeking to Western societies, still tottering in the aftermath make his art more of a public forum, had found of an expensive world war, increasingly unstable for these purposes a fit subject by turning his and ripe for the political picking by demagoguery. attention once more, but this time far more ambi- Dictator Benito Mussolini’s rise to power on a wave tiously, to Coriolanus. It is for what the strengths of conservative, or Fascist, social reform in Italy in and weaknesses of his character might teach oth- the early 1920s was only the beginning of a trend ers, after all, that the Roman historian Plutarch that would see other strongmen take over fledgling uses him for a subject, and it is from Plutarch postwar European democracies, most notably Adolf that any subsequent author draws his informa- Hitler in Germany, by the early 1930s. How much tion. Although this legendary figure celebrated in these immediate sociopolitical concerns underlie Plutarch’s Lives is also the title character of one Eliot’s “Coriolan” is none too difficult to gauge. of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s tragedies, it is clear At this time, Eliot’s prose criticism was turn- from the uses to which Eliot puts Coriolanus that ing more and more to direct commentary on the he sees him as a paradoxical model of the states- public scene in long essays such as “Thoughts after man rather than as any tragic, literary hero. At Lambeth,” an extensive criticism of the current the very least, Eliot sees in him an opportunity state of the Church of England, and After Strange for both character study and for a social analy- Gods—tellingly subtitled “A Primer of Modern sis of the nature of a powerful public personality Heresy”—that had been presented as a series of who both shapes and is shaped by the prevailing lectures in 1933 and then published in book form values of his day. In summary, Coriolanus is not in 1934. By the decade’s end, he would publish the intended to be regarded as a literary allusion but social and moral criticism contained in The Idea of as a quasi-historical phenomenon. a Christian Society. Most obvious of all, there were to be found in There was an increasing emphasis on ostensibly the story of Coriolanus parallels with Eliot’s own public commentary in his poetry as well. “Geron- time, in which working-class unrest had led to the tion” in 1919 may seem to have opened the door to violent overthrow of the Russian czar in 1917 and a certain historical immediacy in Eliot’s poetry fol- to labor violence in England, the United States, lowing the disaster of World War I, but one had to and other industrialized powers. Caius Marcius read between the lines to find it in that poem. Now lived in the fifth century B.C. at the moment in the immediacy was very much the point of some of Roman history when the plebeians, or common citi- his poetry. In addition to “Coriolan,” Eliot, in 1934, zens, revolted against the high-handed economic would also turn his hand to fleshing out the choruses and social abuses of the patrician hierarchy. These and dialogue for a pageant play, The Rock, intended patricians, descendants of Rome’s founding fathers,

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as their name suggests, jealously guarded their right and his own people. His family eventually prevailed to all positions of power and wealth in the still fledg- upon his patrician heritage enough to encourage ling city-state, while the plebeians, as they perceived him to try to fashion a equitable peace between the realities of their social status, did all the work. Rome and the Volsci, whereupon leaders among In what was probably one of the most signifi- his former Volscian allies conspired to murder him cant early labor strikes in human history, one day in fear of the power that he had become capable of they quit pretty much en masse, until the patricians wielding in both camps. had the sense to propose a compromise whereby Whether Eliot used Plutarch or Shakespeare the plebeians would gain some measure of political for his source, he very likely knew both well, and representation and power through the institution- Shakespeare’s own source is Plutarch in any case. alization of the tribunes as the guardians of the In history and legend, Coriolanus becomes the plebeians’ public interests. model of the individual who is noble by nature, By and large, the patricians, who retained their virtuous and self-sacrificing in all the ways that original authority through the consulships and his culture defines those values, yet who falls were hardly any less still the ruling class in all prey, nevertheless, to his own petty motives and other respects, went along with this reform—with prejudices, themselves the products of his pride of the legendary exception of Marcius. As a patrician place and rank. Had he not thought the plebeian who had already made an impressive name for Romans to be inferior human beings who were not himself through acts of bravery and self-sacrifice entitled to the same sympathy and respect that on the battlefield, Marcius, according to Plutarch, he accorded members of his own class, he may felt that despite this political accommodation with have been a powerful unifying force in the Rome the plebeians, it was up to the patricians “to prove of his day. Instead, he ended up serving neither that they were superior to them, not so much in himself nor his people, so that the great good that power and riches, as in merit and worth.” Marcius he could have otherwise accomplished became felt that he and his fellow patricians did not sim- polluted by and eventually completely lost in the ply deserve their privilege but were entitled to it tragic diminishment of his own natural goodness by virtue of their being inherently better than the and greatness. plebeians. There is, however, a far deeper tragedy here, and Although the chronology varies, Marcius went that is the one that Eliot will ultimately explore. on to obtain even greater renown in battle by virtu- For Coriolanus’s tragedy, as Eliot must well have ally single-handedly seizing the town of Corioli, a known, also exposed a tragic flaw in the social stronghold of the Volsci, a central Italian people order that had produced him. Eliot—the child of a who at that time were making war on the Romans. democratic culture and, far more important in his For his valor, he was awarded the name Coriola- own eyes, a convinced Christian who compassion- nus. As Coriolanus, he became an honored and ately embraced the idea of the essential equality of respected leader among the Romans, but because all humans in their creator’s eyes—clearly knew of his earlier politics he was more favored among that he had in this otherwise relatively neglected the patricians than the plebeians, whom he contin- classical model a perfect example of the public ued to make no secret of despising. servants of his own day, men of rank and privilege, When, however, he used a grain shortage to too, who had apparently become neglectful of the attempt to force the plebeians to surrender the rank-and-file citizens whom they equally appar- power that they had gained through the tribunate, ently “served.” And yet there was the contingent he inspired a popular revolt that drove him not irony that it was these common citizens who cre- only from power but into banishment and ulti- ated the hero worship that might make a present- mately into an alliance against Rome with his for- day Coriolan too great for his own good, to which mer enemies, the Volsci. As a Volscian general, he the emergence of figures like Mussolini and Hitler was successful in waging war against his native city was bearing testimony.

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SYNOPSIS less. But this shall not result in the Second Com- “Triumphal March” ing, not today at least, for the “natural wakeful life” The Roman tradition of a triumphal march honor- of the ordinary person with his sausages and stools ing a conquering hero upon his return with all his (an easy pun there) is “a perceiving,” where each is booty and captives is both the central metaphor engaged in seeing what he wants to see. Although and the central reality around which Eliot con- elements of the Passion continue to linger unseen, structs the first part of “Coriolan.” The trappings of “hidden,” in the garden world that lingers at the power and glory, not to mention military prowess, edge of consciousness—“the dove’s wing . . . the turtle’s breast . . . the palmtree at noon”—and in do not change much from one generation to the the sacrifice that will shortly take place on a Roman next, so that even in an age of modern mechanized cross, the speaker, be he or she an ancient Roman warfare, Eliot can slip in the totems and details that or a contemporary Londoner, remains rooted in the would have been as common to a parade in Roman pageant of the present. times as to a parade in his own time, without giving There, even the reference to Easter, which the impression of being anachronistic in the least. completes the implicit liturgical allusions begun by Eliot was also writing during a historical period Palm Sunday, becomes instead an opportunity to still marked by the public awareness of and pride relate a humorous anecdote about young Cyril’s in Britain as a worldwide empire, for which the mistaking the communion bell, calling the faith- standard of excellence would invariably be the ful to partake of the body and blood of the Risen example of Imperial Rome. (That does, however, Savior, for the bell of a street vendor selling crum- result in a slight anachronism, inasmuch as Corio- pets. That the speaker does not even think of it as lanus comes from the time of the early days of the bell but “a bell” suggests how little connection the Roman Republic, a good five centuries before these beliefs, which have become the elements of the imperial mentality sprang into being with the empty ritual, bear to the lives of ordinary people accession to undisputed power of Caesar Augus- any longer, at least when the rituals are compet- tus.) Thus, the stone and bronze and steel, horses’ ing for attention with affairs of state or Junior’s heels and eagles, oak leaves, trumpets, and flags are unabashed exuberance for breakfast rather than for as emblematic of ancient Rome, for the most part, the bread and wine that is the mystical sacrifice of as of an England on whose flag the sun never sets. the Mass. In the modern impersonal state, as in the The equally famous Roman mob is interchangeable ancient impersonal state, where all power becomes with contemporary Londoners with their stools and embodied in a single man on whom the mob dotes, their sausages, enjoying the day’s festivities all paid the profane has become the sacred, the secular the for out of the public coffers to the greater glory of spiritual, so that in the midst of plenty the mob the state. Eliot’s speaker takes the part of one of starves, fed sliced bread instead of the bread of life. the mob, adopting a tone of breathless excitement Eliot can make impressive the litany of arma- to both mirror the pageantry and, perhaps, mimic ments that is recited by the speaker with detailed the excitement of young Cyril, the child whom they accuracy and breathless ease—“What a time that have apparently taken to see the parade. took!”—taken straight out of German field marshal There lurks in Eliot behind this façade of worldly Erich Ludendorff’s only recently published account vainglory the long shadow of another “triumphal of the weapons that Germany was forced to dispose march,” Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusa- of as a result of the Treaty of Versailles that formally lem on Palm Sunday. The impatient “Is he com- ended World War I. For ordinary folk, meanwhile, ing?” of the speaker, waiting to catch a glimpse of it is thrift that will, as usual, win the day: “Don’t the star of the show, has for an ironic counterpoint throw away that sausage, / It’ll come in handy.” For the implication that if Christ were to return in a like an army, a mob, too, marches on its stomach. Second Coming, all this pomp and circumstance When a request for light comes, it is not one would be rendered useless, if not totally meaning- to expel their ignorance but a match to light a

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cigarette, and “Triumphal March,” a poem that der of the text—is frequently cut short by other, suggests that glory that comes not from God is a more pressing matters than our mere mortality. sham, ends with Eliot making an inverted epigraph There are, after all, the important people with of a direct quote, in the original French, from the their ranks and titles and honors; there is the need tail end of a journalist’s account of all the impor- to organize, or at least appear to. In the midst of tant people who had attended some otherwise for- these “crises of state,” meanwhile, the young Cyril gettable public event. Translated, it reads, “And of “Triumphal March” has himself come of age suf- did the soldiers make the hurtle? They did make ficiently to join such illustrious ranks and delibera- it.” It is a sentiment no less nonsensical than all the tions, albeit as a lonely telephone operator in the rest of the show. ministry. But one must begin somewhere. Throughout a reading of “Triumphal March,” so Ever so smoothly, just as Eliot does in the first effective is Eliot’s use of voice, with its effusive and section of “Coriolan,” the speaker becomes not perhaps even infectious enthusiasm for the scene some officious modern bureaucrat but someone of unfolding before the speaker’s incredulous eyes, Roman times. The change of both venue and his- that it is possible to forget that behind all the glit- torical period might easily be missed if the reader so ter of pomp and circumstance is the celebration of much as blinks. This is Eliot’s way of emphasizing death and destruction. There cannot be a triumph, that when it comes to statescraft and the incred- particularly a military one, without someone else’s ibly overblown importance it assigns to itself—and defeat, and defeats, like victories, are never pur- that journalists and the general populace assign to chased by anything less than bloodshed. So, too, it as well—there is generally not much difference Christ’s residual presence in the poem—just whose between one period and another. “temple” is it anyhow?—as the victim whose blood Here, nevertheless, are suddenly Coriolanus’s sacrifice was meant to redeem humanity from their Volscian allies and other efforts toward “perpet- own bloody nature underscores the ultimate moral ual peace.” (Recall that the massive destructive- failure that is success defined in this manner—as a ness of World War I was somewhat justified, after consequence of conquest. the fact, as the “war to end wars,” which it did not.) So, too, onto the scene again, as that per- “Difficulties of a Statesman” sistently nagging but otherwise only residual pres- The passage from “Triumphal March” to “Difficul- ence, comes Christ and his fate in the Crucifixion. ties of a Statesman” is made smooth by the focus on The reference to “guards [who] shake dice,” as the what triumph costs. Romans were reputed to have done at the foot of The ambivalent play on crying as the second Christ’s cross, effectively reminds the reader, if he section of “Coriolan” opens pulls the reader in two or she recognizes the allusion, of another level of opposing directions: Is this a tone of distress or, the catastrophe that humans find the prospect of coming hard upon the excited tone maintained perpetual peace to be. Human societies advance more or less throughout “Triumphal March,” one not through harmony but through conflict, after of continued excitement? The answer may be pro- all, and to drive this point home, the next line calls vided in the next line, which introduces the old to mind the great poet of Roman, and all future, standby of wisdom literature: “All flesh is grass.” imperialism, Virgil, “O Mantuan,” with his ances- The idea is one of those neatly packaged truisms tor worship that, in the Aenied, raised Augustus to that adhere on both a literal and figurative level: the status of a god destined by the gods to rule the Flesh is like grass, which rises only to be mowed known world. down; flesh is grass, inasmuch as that is what one But the speaker quakes nevertheless, reiterat- will find growing in any graveyard. Either way, this ing the constant plea: “What shall I cry?” In the sentiment, which is apparently what the speaker is torchlight, with its visual and verbal echo from the wanting to cry—especially inasmuch as the ques- “torchlight red on sweaty faces” in opening lines tion is repeated periodically throughout the remain- of “What the Thunder Said,” the fifth and final

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part of Eliot’s The Waste Land, comes as well, as W. H. Auden once called “human unsuccess.” That Eliot will phrase it more than a decade later in is no lesson at all, which is not to say that the poem “Dry Salvages,” the “hint half guessed, the gift half ought to provide one but that the speaker deserves understood” of God’s Incarnation in the person of one. Of course, there is a double meaning to be found Jesus. But it is only perceived as the true solution in that parting shot, a resolution that is both the one to worldly conflict by the speaker, who begins to that is imposed by others and also one that can be sound more and more like the speaker of “Geron- discovered by the speaker for himself and to his own tion” as his resolve crumbles more and more in the credit. Whereas on the one hand these apparent face of crises that will neither stay still nor identify cries for the statesman’s resignation betoken nothing themselves: “I a tired head among these heads.” less than the shame of ignominious defeat and utter Whether this is Coriolanus urged on by his rejection of himself as a person, there is an ironic mother and wife to forge a peace between the Rome counterpoint contained in the chant. The idea of he loves and the Volscians he serves, or a modern resignation, after all, also has within it the notion of statesman trying to mollify his constituents, his a stoical acceptance of things as they are, as in the supporters, his detractors, and his enemies all in sentence, “He resigned himself to his fate.” one fell swoop, he does not know what to cry in a Surely a poet of Eliot’s continuing modernist world without focus or purpose, only meaningless subtleties and sensibilities would have intended actions repeating themselves ceaselessly through- just such a double entendre in the closing line of out human history, giving the illusion of greatness “Difficulties of a Statesman.” The cry points both within the only apparent constant, itself the specter ways: on the one hand, toward the surrender of of catastrophe and conflict. Gone from this second self-defeat, on the other hand, toward the wisdom part of “Coriolan” is at least the self-congratulatory of self-fulfillment. Indeed, at that extreme, in which tone of “Triumphal March,” where there is safety the speaker comes to see his way out of the whirl- in being a spectator to history. Here there is only pool of measuring his self-worth by the standards of the fear that one may be wrong, that one may not an impersonal and unforgiving world, is to be found be up to the task, and that everyone else may know the same peace that surpasses understanding that that already, a reality that the poem’s ending line the speaker of The Waste Land apparently achieves, seems to confirm: “Resign Resign Resign.” or at least has been rendered capable of achieving This demeaning echo of the quite different end- by the experience of his quest for meaning (which ing of The Waste Land, which would have been is not the same as finding meaning). Eliot’s best-known poem to date by far, is both unmistakable and telling here. There the thrice CRITICAL COMMENTARY repeated, two-syllable closing word calls the protag- There is a good possibility that Eliot, despite his onist to an inner peace: “Shantih Shantih Shantih,” collecting “Coriolan” among his unfinished poems, which the poet himself translates for his readers, in may have nevertheless regarded it as a completed his notes, as the “Peace which passeth understand- dramatic action as it now stands. There is, for sure, ing.” Here, at the end of “Coriolan,” the initial a reversal from the opening with its powerfully reaction to the thrice-repeated command to resign evocative emphasis on the vanities of worldly suc- is quite different, if not absolutely at the opposite cess—can a triumphal march be anything less?—to extreme, in its implications. There is only the clear the conclusion where the shame of defeat masks, for implication, in the call, of failure and defeat, fulfill- the worldly, the birth of wisdom for those who are ing the image of “a broken Coriolanus” who is him- capable of seeing how vain and fickle worldly suc- self distinct from the conquering and triumphant cess can be. In terms of those same Roman parallels hero of “Coriolan”’s first part. that Eliot draws with the poem’s modern moment But surely Eliot has not brought his reader all this through the overarching allusion to Coriolanus, the way merely to suggest that worldly pursuits come to reader is allowed to see the mob in action, eating their end in worldly betrayal and in what the poet out of the hero’s hand one day, hanging on his every

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word and gesture—living vicariously the life of the Cyril comes in. Is it any wonder that he grows up nation through his wholeness and well-being—yet to be a civil servant? The ironic poignancies of that then castigating and betraying him, banishing him somewhat ambiguous designation barely conceal if not actually butchering him the next. the fact that Coriolanus was a civil servant, too, That same fickleness not only of fortune but inasmuch as he was a slave to the needs and the of human opinion and evaluations is underscored whims of the body politic, the mob, and the world, with the simultaneous parallels that the poem also which is as likely to raise one to undreamed-of draws to the road Christ traveled from the triumph glory and honor one day as to break one’s back and of Palm Sunday to the degradation and death on will and spirit on a cross the next. the cross of Good Friday. On that score, keeping That Eliot keeps the Christian elements of his in mind that “Triumphal March” was the last of poem and the Christian solution to this dilemma Eliot’s contributions to his publishing house Faber well in the background, more as hints, intonations, & Faber’s first series of annual Christmas poems, and insinuations than as open points of reference the Ariel series, the idea of resignation on which that are there for the reader to miss or to discover, the completed “Coriolan” ends echoes profoundly comments both on his tremendously skilled disci- the words “Thy will be done” with which Jesus sur- pline as a poet and on the poem’s power to dem- renders himself to his mission in the midst of his onstrate rather than to tell. Concealed within the agony in the Garden of Gethsemene. poetry, but not in any manner that should make Indeed, if there is a keynote to “Coriolan,” it it difficult to find, is what Eliot regards as the key is agony, making it particularly intriguing that the to human salvation. But that key, despite Eliot’s other unfinished poem with which “Coriolan” is occasional detractors in that regard, is not that all paired in “Sweeney Agonistes.” Agony implies humanity should accept the orthodox fundamen- struggle and conflict, just as triumph implies the tals of Christian doctrine that he himself embraced overcoming of struggle and conflict, but the tri- as the way, the truth, and the light. Rather it is that umphal march that the Eliot poem portrays offers one should forgo one’s worldliness and the attach- a false resolution to the agony of conflict, since it ment to power, fame, and glory at the expense of depends on the defeat of another. the comfort and welfare of others that such an The poem’s coming full circle by its end supports addiction requires, since such an attachment is as the notion that Eliot is out to expose the futility of likely to poison those others as to betray the one imagining that there is any way for humanity to get whom it has exalted. The betrayal that “Coriolan” off the wheel of success and failure, the profit and exemplifies is the betrayal neither of the hero nor the loss, triumph and defeat—that is a wheel of its of the mob. It is the betrayal that action with- own making. Just as “Sweeney Agonistes” exposes out reference to eternity subjects all humanity to the futility of attempting to find redemption from throughout human history. fear and boredom in empty and superficial sexual The Irish modernist novelist JAMES JOYCE in his relationships, “Coriolan” shows that the road to masterpiece, Ulysses, a work with which Eliot was worldly success is paved with the very stones that quite familiar and for which he had great admira- the crowd will finally hurtle at the hero, a “broken tion, called history a “nightmare from which we are Coriolanus.” trying to awaken.” T. S. Eliot’s “Coriolan” is merely There is a suspicion that Coriolanus acts more an episode in that nightmare. as a sort of poetic red herring for that very rea- son. Thanks to Plutarch and Shakespeare, he had become a hallmark for a certain kind of human failing—the proud and noble man whose motives “Cousin Nancy” (1915) become polluted by his own human weaknesses and pettiness. But then the reader may fail to see him- If shades of Cousin Harriet of “The BOSTON EVE- self mirrored on the page, and that is where young NING TRANSCRIPT” fame haunt another equally

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short poem of Eliot’s from the same time period, is not of someone in touch with nature and with “Aunt Helen,” then Aunt Helen’s ghost surely must those natural processes of a nurturing new life that be somewhere lurking on the rolling hills of eastern pastures and dairy cows portend, but of mindlessly Massachusetts across which Cousin Nancy rides to arrogant forces that are beating that nature and the hounds in this third piece in Eliot’s meager but those processes down to suit purposes that are not witty trilogy on the demise of the so-called proper even very productive in and of themselves. Bostonian. “Cousin Nancy,” along with the other If Cousin Nancy were nothing more than a two poems, was first published in Poetry magazine great horsewoman—if she were nothing more than in October 1915 and later collected in Eliot’s first an emblem of an old-world landed gentry in the volume, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. midst of a New England that had given birth, some- what, to notions regarding human liberty and the SYNOPSIS rights of man, as democratic principles were then All three of Eliot’s Boston poems, to give them a called—she could be forgiven somewhat, perhaps, category, provide the speaker with a female blood for clinging to these aristocratic ways of hers on relation for a focus, if not topic. All three suggest America’s egalitarian soil. But the problem is that that the female relation in question is unmarried, Nancy is not even true to her class. She smokes, thus hinting that the family line is coming to an she dances “all the modern dances,” and there can end. And all three offer the reader as a conse- be no doubt that they must be scandalous, at least quence a glimpse into a world of genteel rituals for the likes of the Boston-Evening-Transcript–read- and assumptions that seems to be on the brink of ing Cousin Harriet and Aunt Helen. Even if, since an extinction of which it is blissfully unaware. The Nancy is one of their own, her aunts “were not source of its lack of perspicacity is the last laugh, quite sure how they felt about it,” “they knew that however, for in Eliot’s view, it is its very notion it was modern”—as if that not so much forgives as that it is simply too good for this world in any case. explains everything. Thus, “The Boston Evening Transcript” finds its The poem ends with the notion that the ideas delight in poking gentle fun at how set in their ways from earlier in the 19th century—like those of these proper Bostonians, a potentially dying breed, , who gave the first shape have become. Meanwhile, “Aunt Helen,” which to an American philosophy of life based on self- tells of a Brahmin household that literally goes to reliance, and Matthew Arnold, who warned hell upon the death of its elderly spinster mistress, against the dumbing down of culture—can be a finds its only slightly tasteless humor in suggesting bulwark against the catastrophe that Nancy’s aim- that a more sexually active people will inherit such less energy betokens. But that notion is offered maiden aunts’ fashionable addresses if they are not only for its mocking contrast with the real state more careful. of affairs. Nothing is unalterable, let alone the so- The theme of “Cousin Nancy” turns out to be called “laws” another, earlier generation may have that this formerly ruling class of proper Bostonians proposed. is more or less about to see the end of the (old) line The last line of the poem is taken verbatim from anyhow, especially if the thoroughly modern Nancy a poem by another 19th-century writer, the poet Ellicott has her way. The reader’s first image of her and novelist George Meredith, titled “Lucifer in is of a larger-than-life colossus who very quickly Starlight.” becomes a behemoth crushing everything in her path. Rather than mastering the nature through CRITICAL COMMENTARY which she strides and rides, she dominates and In a Paris Review interview in 1959, Eliot told how, breaks it. Yet these are “barren” hills, suggesting as a Harvard undergraduate in 1909 and 1910, he that nothing fruitful will come from her or from had first discovered the work of the French sym- them any longer. If she rides “to hounds / Over bolists JULES LAFORGUE and CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, the cow-pasture,” the image that comes to mind from whom he had learned to hear and see the

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poetic resources that he had in his own American commercial, economic, political, and intellectual idiom and in the experiences of life in a modern, life of the capital city of Massachusetts at the turn industrial metropolis. While the three short “Bos- of the last century, it was “proper Bostonians.” ton” poems may seem in their satirical bent to have These so-called Boston Brahmins, with an allu- all the earmarks of other Eliot poems from this sion to the highest social caste among the Hindus, period, during which he was still under the con- were so named because their reputation for being siderable influence of the symbolists, however, in highly cultured and educated and otherwise well these poems Eliot can be heard to be finding his heeled was matched only by their reputation for own voice and poetic territory. being socially exclusive. Their chief claim to fame The world of Boston high society was just then and to social rank was that they were the descen- beginning to show the cracks that increasing waves dants of the English families who had originally of immigrants and the encroachments of a mod- settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 17th ern urban culture were creating in its comfortable century and then had, with their fabled Puritan rig- view of the universe, and it is a world that Eliot orousness and Yankee ingenuity, virtually become would know better than any other. As a descen- the vanguard of American idealism and progressive dant of old New England Yankee stock who had thinking from the first days of the Republic to the nevertheless been born and raised in the Midwest- time in which Eliot was writing. They were also, of ern city of ST. LOUIS, Missouri, Eliot very likely course, quite wealthy and very well placed. (Rank, enjoyed during his boyhood visits and later years as as they say, has its privileges, as Eliot himself would a young man at Harvard in Cambridge, just across have been well aware.) the Charles River from Boston’s exclusive Beacon These Brahmins, at least of the Boston vari- Hill district, a unique perspective on the old fam- ety, were also quite proper, not simply because ily stomping grounds that were so much a part of they behaved correctly or because they knew both American history and of the Republic’s origi- how to behave correctly, but because they made nal Anglo-American culture. With the perspective a point of behaving correctly. By Eliot’s time, of an outside insider, Eliot could understand the this legendary insistence on having just the right prerogative of Boston’s social elites but also judge measure of self-respect to know exactly how to their shortcomings. comport not only one’s person but one’s life in He had already explored Northeastern Amer- both the public and private spheres had become ican urban life as the challenge it was to those something of a running comic tagline, however, experiencing it at its fringes in “Rhapsody on a as both Boston and America underwent the rapid Windy Night” and “Preludes,” poems from his ear- social and economic change being brought about lier Harvard years and his student year in Paris by ever-increasing immigration and industrializa- from 1910 to 1911. He would also exploit to power- tion. The idea that it was somewhat comic to punc- ful effect that outsider’s view of polite society from ture the pomposity of impossibly dignified Boston an insider’s perspective in other early poetry, such old-school stuffed shirt was one with which Eliot as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Por- seemed determined to have his own fun. trait of a Lady.” Nevertheless, the manner in which There is, however, a great deal more going on in he addresses the particular quality of that world in “Cousin Nancy” than social satire of the so-called poems like “The Boston Evening Transcript,” “Aunt horsey set, although to accept as much would Helen,” and “ Cousin Nancy” is pure and unadul- require the reader to be aware that Eliot is not terated Eliot, a point that he seems to underscore some working-class poet releasing the spleen of his intentionally by making his subjects the speaker’s outraged social conscience by exposing the genetic kin, not merely his social acquaintances. shortcomings of the ruling class as they ride over If any phrase was often to be heard in conjunc- the backs of the common folk, whose labor supports tion with the old Anglo-Saxon stock who in Eliot’s their leisure-class lifestyles, and so forth. That is youth still inhabited and dominated the social, one possible, though narrow, reading of the poem,

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what with its barren hills and cow pasture subdued And then, in early 1927, Geoffrey Faber, who by Nancy’s self-indulgent excesses, perhaps. had, in 1925, already rescued Eliot from a life as Such a reading, however, would not acknowl- a banker by giving him a position as editor and edge that for Eliot, the Aunt Helens and Cousin board member with the London publishing house Nancys of the world are not caricatures of capital- Faber & Gwyer, came up with the idea for a series ists prigs but his very own people. Their failings and of annual Christmas poems that might be used to failures represent not the sorry comings and goings promote the firm’s venture into literary publishing. of “them,” the Establishment enemy that is falling This was the famous Ariel series, named in honor to ruin under the weight of its own good fortune, of Shakespeare’s airy sprite from his mature com- but representatives of the class and ethnicity of edy The Tempest. As a result, each Christmas from people who formed at the time that he was writing 1927 through 1931, T. S. Eliot published a poem the bedrock of whatever culture the Anglo-Ameri- appropriate to the season as part of this series of can experience had introduced into the world. illustrated pamphlets with holiday themes. Good, bad, or indifferent, Eliot saw that culture as Intended as corporate greeting cards for Faber, one in a state of decline. In poems such as “Cousin Eliot published five poems in all in this initial Nancy,” “The Boston Evening Transcript,” and phase of the Ariel series. The last of these five “Aunt Helen,” as much as in more ambitious works would be incorporated into “Coriolan” as “Trium- such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and phal March.” The first four, “Journey of the Magi” The Waste Land, Eliot is recording the stultification (1927), “A Song for Simeon” (1928), “Animula” of his people’s traditions under the pressure of their (1929), and “Marina” (1930), were published own social stagnation and of the outside forces con- under the collective heading by which they have stituting the radical transformation in moral values since become known, the Ariel Poems in Collected and class structure brought about by that cultural Poems, 1909–1935. Faber & Faber reinstituted the shockwave known as modernism. series in the early 1950s, and this time Eliot’s single contribution, and his last independently published poem, would be “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees,” which was released in a limited “Cultivation of Christmas edition in 1954. Trees, The” (1954) SYNOPSIS Following the great critical success of The Waste One cannot help but imagine the effect of Eliot’s Land in 1922, Eliot’s career as a poet was hardly revisiting in his seventh decade, when thoughts of moribund, but it was not flourishing either. He final things were nearer at hand, a publishing proj- seemed to be constantly seeking for a fitting project ect that had been initiated back in his youth. Then that would be a suitable successor to The Waste so much have must have seemed to be still before Land, but the net result was that he seemed to be him that he could not have failed, these decades scattering his energies instead into piecemeal efforts. later, to have conflicting feelings and thoughts and He abandoned his verse play “Sweeney Ago- doubts on sundry items, the fate of one’s individual nistes” in 1925. Published that same year, “The soul hardly the least among them. Hollow Men,” as powerfully effective as its poetry Each of the present poem’s four stanzas builds, was, was cobbled together out of individual pieces, almost like a single sentence and certainly like some apparently discarded from the aborted verse a single thought, toward an ending that is itself, drama. A translation from the French of St.-John appropriately enough, about endings and begin- Perse’s book-length poem Anabase gave him a nings. The poem moves as well from the outside in, worthwhile project beginning in 1926, but he was taking the reader from the general to the particu- stymied by Perse’s disgruntlement with the quality lar, from the public to the personal, and from the of the translation. secular to the spiritual, exactly as the Christmas

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season is an invitation to come in from the cold who has been deprived of an attachment to such a and the darkness outside. simple joy, “wonders at the Christmas Tree: / Let As do at least two of the five earlier Ariel poems, him continue in the spirit of wonder.” There is, the “Journey of the Magi” and “Song of Simeon,” “The third stanza continues, a purpose to that prayer: Cultivation of Christmas Trees” also deals in direct “So that the reverence and the gaiety / May not be terms with the holiday season. Now, however, forgotten in later experience.” Eliot addresses the season with more specific atten- Otherwise, later experience may bring in its tion to its popular devotions and rituals than ever train only boredom and fatigue, an awareness of before. To hear from one of the three magi details death and failure. The reference to St. Lucy at this of a journey that he took once without being aware juncture recalls the third-century Christian virgin- of its full significance, or to witness Simeon bear martyr whom the soldiers sent to arrest her could witness to a mystery whose fulfillment he can never not move and whom their fire could not burn. fully grasp—these are Christmas poems, perhaps, This steadfastness of faith, the poem urges, is the but only in a profoundly theological sense. How- proper posture of piety, whereby by “the eightieth ever, in its contemporary observation, Christmas Christmas / . . . meaning whichever is the last,” for many, but most of all for those who participate the accumulation of such a devotion to absolute in its festivities out of a sense of devotion to its mystery may be “concentrated into a great joy / religious meaning, is a season not of heavy theol- Which shall also be a great fear.” The difference ogy but of cheer and good will, a season meant to is that this is not a worldly fear or fear of worldly express the genial warmth and joy that Christ’s things, hence the allusion to St. Lucy. In her belief coming into the world is meant to inspire. system, the punishment that all the might of Rome It is this aspect of Christmas that Eliot addresses may have meted out is not even the sting of a gnat now, looking back from the vantage point of his compared with the promises of an eternal God. 66 years at the time of the poem’s composition. But there is as well a source for a fear far greater It appears to be the Christmases of his own child- than that that any Roman emperor and all his hood that are brought to mind for both himself armies could ever instill, a fear akin to that which and his readers. It is, after all, to the eternal child came “upon every soul” when Christ first came of the soul that the Christian mystery of God’s into the world. It is a fear for the fate of one’s incarnation as a human infant is meant to appeal. immortal soul. Eliot had already touched on this somewhat in two The beginning—the infant birth—“shall remind of the earlier Ariel poems as well. One of those us of the end,” says Eliot, and that is the dreadful two, “Animula,” is constructed on the metaphor, martyrdom of Christ’s death on the cross, just as found in DANTE ALIGHIERI that the individual soul “the first coming” will remind us “of the second is like a joyous but wayward child sent forth from its maker-father. The other, “Marina,” tells of the coming.” Joy and fear are somewhat, then, the miraculous reunion of a lost child with her despair- same emotion, just as birth brings death and death ing father. rebirth. In “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees,” how- ever, the speaker is an elderly man recalling a pri- CRITICAL COMMENTARY mal innocence by recapturing his own childhood On the surface, “The Cultivation of Christmas moments anticipating Christmas morning. What Trees” may seem like a lightweight effort, com- child who has ever experienced such an unbear- ing from one of the most celebrated and complex able anticipation can ever forget the breathless gid- English-language poets of the 20th century, T. diness of that morning’s coming, Eliot seems to S. Eliot. Yet with his equally characteristic tal- be suggesting, and he thereby urges the reader to ent for wry understatement, the poem in ques- contemplate in comparison the meaning behind tion may in fact turn out to be exactly what it the practice. “The child,” unlike the jaded adult is: Eliot’s last comments, in poetry, on the most

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 144 9/5/07 2:35:51 PM “Dante” 145 profound of mysteries—the mystery of life itself “Dante” (1929) and its purpose. Christmas betokens the fact that the same mys- Eliot’s first essay devoted completely to the great tery that brings majesty and the child’s wonder late-medieval Italian poet DANTE ALIGHIERI is a also brings the world and the soul to judgment treatise on the literary accomplishment that his and to their just deserts. With the Baby Jesus also masterpiece, La divina commedia (The Divine Com- comes Christ the Tiger, he who comes, in “Geron- edy), constitutes, but it also contains Eliot’s key tion,” with the spring. “Us he devours,” that poem observations on the nature of poetry and of that famously warns. But for the devoted Christian, it is equally elusive creature, the poet. Eliot was always a far better thing to be devoured by Christ than to painstakingly careful in his attempts to distin- be devoured by the distractions and empty prom- guish poetry from all other fields of human literary ises of the world and of life. endeavor with which it is often confused. The list Joy brings fear, but the fear brings joy. With would include history and journalism certainly, the “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees,” Eliot has chronicling arts, but more detrimental to any true simplified, perhaps even domesticated, the great appreciation of poetry, in Eliot’s view, would be divide between the promise of eternal life and the the frequent associations that are made between terror that that promise must entail for anyone poetry and philosophy and poetry and autobiog- who takes it seriously. That divide, the ultimate raphy. As his own poetry would later take a turn paradox at the heart of virtually any faith system, toward more and more ostensibly religious themes, had sustained much of Eliot’s finest poetry from at he would also take pains to distinguish poetry from least the time of The Waste Land, with its notion theology and other kinds of statements typically of being suspended between memory and desire, associated with belief. winter and spring, hope and despair. In this last Eliot’s aim was never to foster a contempla- independently published poem, Eliot heals the rift tion of the poetic act divorced from the individu- by accepting its necessity. The child’s joy is the als who executed it and the times in which they adult’s fear for the same reason, so the prayer is lived. Eliot would be the last to deny the principle that the child’s joy, which “having been must ever that he asserts in his 1919 essay on Ben Jonson be,” may continue in the adult as well, since it is that the “creation of a work of art . . . consists in his to begin with. the process of transfusion of the personality, or, In the face of the imponderable, the soul must in a deeper sense, the life of the author” into the both recall its origins and remember its end. For personality expressed on the page, or that such the Christian, they are one and the same, so the characterizations must be seen as essentially dra- poet, the speaker, “cultivates Christmas trees” by matizing “an action or struggle for harmony in the keeping them forever fresh and ever green in his soul of the poet,” a point he later made, in 1932, in memory. There, both mystery and wonder, in the an essay on another 17th-century English drama- midst of the growing fear that is life, may be permit- tist, John Ford. ted to flourish, a constant reminder, like Lucy’s, of But none of this admission of the obvious—that how meager the world is, in both its glory and its the experience of the poet becomes transformed power, in comparison with the possible significance into poetry—precludes his most famous formula- of that infant’s birth in Bethlehem. tion of the proper balance with which to regard the relationship between the life of the poet, includ- ing his religious and philosophical beliefs, and the poet’s work. That formulation is the one he makes “Cyril Tourneur” (1930) in his landmark 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in which he argues for a separa- See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. tion, as he puts it, “between the man who suffers

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and the mind which creates.” Those two catego- German and Norman French, might ever seem to ries present a critical distinction for Eliot, since be. While there may be a temptation in these times when one recognizes the distinction between day- to rail against Eliot’s apparent Eurocentric parochi- to-day experience and the transformative processes alism by presenting Italian as a “universal” tongue, of the creative intellect, one can also recognize in his point is not lost, and its continuing value is the poem those features that constitute poetry qua much better appreciated if he is seen to be speak- poetry, as he would call it—poetry as itself and not ing in relative terms himself. Eliot’s point is that, as philosophy or autobiography or any other species by writing in a language so near to Latin, Dante is of human discourse. writing within a much more stable and long-lived To illustrate this distinction and the critical dif- literary tradition that permits him to be inventive ferentiations that it requires, Eliot often turns for without sacrificing clarity. examples to the work and accepted reputations of Arguably, Eliot is correct in asserting that the the great poets, Dante and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE centuries-old legacy of Latinate literatures and cul- being foremost among them. Dante, however, holds ture as a unifying language base in Dante’s time a special place in Eliot’s heart as a poet, for reasons gave him simultaneously more constraints on what that he announces in this essay, his first full-length he could say but a freedom to say it as he pleased, treatment of a poet who had influenced his work so that the distance between Dante’s vocabulary from its earliest days. and Dante’s meaning is a much shorter one than the distance, even for a native speaker, between SYNOPSIS what a character in Shakespeare might actually say Part I and what those words might mean. On balance, it The essay contains one of Eliot’s more memorable, would not take much to convince someone with and surely more quotable, observations regarding a fundamental knowledge of Italian that Dante’s the tenuous relationship between poetry and mean- Italian, as old as it is, is Italian, whereas it is often ing, when he writes that genuine poetry “can com- difficult to convince individuals very adept in Eng- municate before it is understood.” Eliot makes this lish that Shakespeare’s far more recent English is observation early in the first section of his essay, English. one that is ostensiby devoted to the Inferno, the Eliot, however, has another reason for singling first part of Dante’s poem, and he is understandably out the great accessibility afforded the reader by careful to qualify his meaning. Dante’s poetry, and that is its allegorical qual- To say that Dante is easy to read, a point on ity, whereby the thought or idea is expressed with which Eliot also insists, has not to do with the extreme care to its dramatic, its figurative, its visual complexities of Dante as a source of informative manifestation. Here again it is difficult to gainsay meaning. Eliot is willing to admit that there are Eliot, who proposes that Dante’s imagination was lines of verse in Dante that require a paragraph chiefly a visual one and that to have visions, or of elucidation and a page of notes. But the issue even a vision, can create mental habits that cut to of content is not the matter of Eliot’s point or, by the chase, as it were. “Dante’s attempt is to make extension, the matter of what he calls “genuine us see what he saw,” Eliot notes, so he can employ a poetry.” It is rather the matter of a certain univer- simple language and allegory to present his vision. sality of language to which Eliot calls his readers’ In the remainder of this first section of his essay, attention as he attempts to explain what he means Eliot provides numerous examples of this feature of by “easy to read.” Dante’s poetry, which Eliot reckons to be foremost By universality, Eliot first notes that Dante, in rendering that poetry capable of communicating though he is using the vulgate, is writing in Italian, before being understood. These examples include a language closer to the lingua franca of scholar- the celebrated episode in which Dante meets, in ship that had emerged in medieval Latin than, say, Circle Two among the lustful, the doomed lovers Shakespeare’s English, an idiosyncratic hybrid of Paolo and Francesca, whose unembellished story

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moves him to tears, and of Brunetto Latini suf- sions of religious faith in poetry, since here the cat- fering among the sodomites on the burning plain egorical distinction between poetry as statement and in Round Three of Circle Seven, a sinner whose poetry as meaning is much more difficult to draw dignity is nevertheless maintained in Dante’s image and to assert. Eliot is himself mindful of this different of him as one who, in a noble competition, “seemed level of difficulty, so he calls a comparison of Dante the one who wins and not the one who loses.” to Shakespeare to bear again in order to clarify the Ultimately, however, for Eliot the best example range and scope of Dante’s particular kind of vision. of the visual power of Dante’s poetry combined The task before Dante in the Inferno was the with the simplicity of his language comes in the task that any poet faces, and that is to render episode in Circle Eight, in which Homer’s Ulysses, experience in some sort of equivalent terms. The suffering there for having led his men and himself closer one comes to giving the reader a sense of the to perdition by virtue of false counsel, tells of his real through language, the greater the poet. Fair reckless sailing past the Gates of Hercules into the enough, but the problem is that the real can cover treacherous and uncharted zones of the Atlantic. a wide range of experiences, not all of them easily In particular, the 19th-century English poet Alfred rendered in concrete, sensory terms. There is, for Tennyson had famously and fairly recently used the example, the philosophical, just as there are states same passage from Dante as the dramatic moment of blessedness. In Dante’s capacity for rendering around which to construct his own dramatic mono- those kinds of experiences as great poetry, which is logue “Ulysses.” That leaves Eliot free to discuss what Eliot sees Dante doing in the Purgatorio and the comparative merits of either treatment, allow- the Paradiso, respectively, Dante does not outstrip ing him to make a convincing case that Dante’s, Shakespeare so much as accomplish something in the vivid spareness of Ulysses’ narrative, not entirely different, so that each writer stakes his own only has more vigor and verisimilitude as an act claim to a particular kind of greatness. of language but keeps readers more mindful of the While Shakespeare can bring to bear “a greater “further depths” illustrated allegorically by Ulysses’ extent and variety of human life,” Dante offers transgression. readers “deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.” These, too, are well within Parts II and III the range of human experience, even if more rare, Eliot begins the second part of his essay on Dante, and they require a great poet, too, who is, for Eliot, in which he will deal with the Purgatorio and the Dante. This, however, requires readers to grasp in Paradiso, the second and third canticle, respec- Dante “the whole from idea to image,” especially tively, of Dante’s three-part poem, by reiterating as they approach those more and more rare, and his primary observation—that Dante consistently rarefied, philosophical and theological conditions demonstrates how “the greatest poetry can be writ- exhibited among Dante’s encounters in purgatory ten with the greatest economy of words.” For Eliot, and in heaven. Dante employs an equal austerity in his use of all For Dante’s poetry, the question of belief—of sorts of literary and rhetorical devices by which the belief system that underlies it—may suddenly poets are traditionally tempted to show off their seem to be paramount, but as he did in his 1927 wares and their talents, often at the expense not essay “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca,” just of clarity but of the reader’s ability to compre- Eliot labors to separate the poetry, and the poet, hend and appreciate the essentially poetical effect from those same beliefs, lest the one become totally of the work at hand. subsumed in the other and Dante, instead of great Beginning a consideration of what there is to be poetry, become second-rate religion. Thus, Eliot learned about poetry from a painstaking attentive- first asserts that, while the reader “cannot afford to ness to Dante’s technical achievements in these ignore” these expressions of belief in Dante, readers latter two sections of the Divine Comedy, Eliot are not themselves “called upon to believe them.” encroaches on the more tenuous grounds of expres- Rather, like anything else in the poetic experience

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that results, Dante’s beliefs come down to being, much great poetry deals with the human experi- for each reader, “a matter of knowledge and igno- ences covered by the general topic of belief. Witness rance, not of belief or scepticism,” so that, as far as Dante’s Divine Comedy, for just one outstanding any appreciation of Dante’s poetry is concerned, it example. Eliot’s consistent point, however, is that should not matter whether the reader is a Catholic it is their poetic qualities, not their philosophic or or an atheist. religious ones, that make such works great poems, And then Eliot takes the argument a step fur- although he does not deny that it is often difficult ther: “Furthermore, we can make a distinction if not well nigh impossible to divide the one from between what Dante believes as a poet and what he the other. believed as a man.” While Eliot doubts that such Still, he tries to lay a constant emphasis on how great poetry could have been composed by Dante effectively those values associated with belief are without some measure of personal conviction, “his communicated to the reader as a part of the total private belief becomes a different thing in becom- poetic experience, not whether they are adequately ing poetry.” Eliot, who often goes to great lengths imparted as beliefs and beliefs alone. That is why to try to explain this key difference, perhaps does he can insist that genuine poetry can communicate his most effective job of it when he once more before it is understood, since the aim of poetry is compares Shakespeare’s greater scope with Dante’s to communicate the totality of the experience, not greater depth. merely impart information. Eliot’s focus is on clar- The challenge facing Dante as poet, particularly ity, economy, and vividness, and his point is that after the palpably real experiences of the Inferno are Dante can achieve this even when his subject mat- left far behind, is to “make us apprehend sensuously ter does not lend itself well to those three criteria, the various states and stages of blessedness,” so that which is the case when he is dealing with philoso- Dante “has to educate our senses as he goes along.” phy and religious beliefs. That, once more, is a poetic, not a philosophic or Eliot attributes this skill in Dante to his age’s theological process, and it is precisely in his ful- still having the capacity for vision and for a belief in filling that requirement where Eliot sees Dante’s the validity, as experience, of poetic vision. Seeing enduring greatness as a poet, pure and simple, lie. visions, Eliot had argued earlier in the essay, had In establishing this distinction, Eliot is also once been “a significant, interesting, and disciplined laying the critical groundwork in his own time to kind of dreaming.” As he approaches the end of enable others to differentiate between his poetry the second part of the essay, he goes even further. and whatever species of belief that it may be found Dante’s capacity for vision, he says, “belongs to the to be expressing, and this is, of course, entirely his world of what I call the high dream, and the modern prerogative. Beginning as early as 1927, with the world seems capable only of the low dream.” publication of “Journey of the Magi,” which, for Herein lies Eliot’s ultimate distinction between lack of any better designation, could be called a works of the poetic imagination that communicate Christmas poem, Eliot’s compositions had begun and those lesser experiences that require under- to take a noticeable turn toward the religious, standing. For his examples in this case, however, although it could easily be argued that such themes Eliot turns, in the third and final part of his essay, were there as early as Prufrock, with its allusions to to the masterpiece of Dante’s comparative youth, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Lazarus, not to men- La vita nuova, or The New Life, that delightful mix- tion an epigraph from Dante’s Inferno. ture of prose narrative, lyric poetry, and literary This attention to matters associated with belief criticism that recounts the events of Dante’s erot- in Eliot’s poetry does not abate in the 1930s; ically Platonic love affair with his lady, Beatrice indeed, if anything, it increases. It would be short- Polinari. sighted, however, to dismiss as solely self-motivated La vita nuova presents a strange mixing of Eliot’s continuing critical commentary on poetry “actual experience . . . and intellectual and imagi- and belief. For one very real and compelling reason, native experience,” of the autobiographical with

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the conventions of troubadour love poetry, and the the world. Norton himself would be a later Ameri- combining of the inspired if not impassioned imagi- can translator of the Divine Comedy. This distin- nativeness of vision and allegory with the formu- guished history at Harvard of emphasizing the study laic requirements of art. Though La vita nuova is of more contemporary developments in literature a lesser, and less mature, work than the Comedy, and language, and of Dante in particular, no doubt Eliot believes a modern reader can acquire from it rubbed off on the young Eliot. Dante’s “sense of intellectual and spiritual realities” In any event, he would use a passage from enough to realize that his vision poetry “cannot be Dante’s Inferno as an epigraph to “The Love Song of classed either as ‘truth’ or ‘fiction.’ ” The modern J. Alfred Prufrock” in the earliest years of his career mind cannot easily grasp that there are categories, as a serious poet, and while other early influences indeed, whole realms of experience between those such as the French symbolist poet JULES LAFORGUE two extremes. Dante’s age could, and that freed and the English metaphysical poets of the 17th Dante’s intellect for the creation of a poetry that century would gradually fall by the wayside as the was neither philosophy nor religion nor autobiog- maturing poet developed a more and more distinct raphy but could nevertheless make convincingly voice and style of his own, he would continue to authentic use of all three. allude to and model his poetry after the great Ital- CRITICAL COMMENTARY ian master all the way up to 1942, the time of his own most mature masterpiece, “Little Gidding,” There is no real way of determining what drew Eliot the fourth and final part of Four Quartets. Indeed, to Dante in the first place. It may have come from in the long essay on Dante, Eliot would observe his mother Charlotte, who had an un-Protestant that, unlike most other poems, which one inevita- devotion to the Virgin Mary and was interested bly outgrows, Dante’s masterpiece “is one of those enough in Italy of the early Renaissance to have which one can only just hope to grow up to at the written a book-length poem on the 13th-century end of life.” Eliot claims to regard the final stanza of Italian religious fanatic Savonarola. Eliot would the Paradiso as the “highest point that poetry ever himself admit many years after the fact that his has reached or ever can reach.” Italian was mainly self-taught, primarily for the pur- For all these reasons, it is vital for any student pose of reading Dante. It is highly likely that Eliot’s of Eliot’s poetry to come to the fullest appreciation exposure to Dante during his undergraduate years of Eliot’s estimation of Dante possible in order to at Harvard was of the first order, for Harvard took great pride in having led the way in introducing the appreciate the depths of the elder poet’s influence study of modern languages into the university cur- on Eliot. The problem is that influence is itself very riculum in America. likely inestimable. At Harvard, less than a century earlier than Eliot’s arrival on the campus in 1906, George Tick- nor had started a trend away from the prevailing academic emphasis on teaching as literature only “Death of Saint Narcissus, the Greek and Latin classics when, in 1818, he became Harvard’s first professor of modern lan- The” (1920) guages. In that position he was succeeded, in 1835, by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who A poet’s wishes should be respected. In the case of would publish the first translation of Dante by “The Death of Saint Narcissus,” Eliot’s wishes were an American. In 1881, he also would help found, very clear. Although the poem had been accepted along with the poet and Har- for publication in Harriet Monroe’s Poetry in 1915, vard art history professor (and a distant cousin of apparently in the same issue that would first intro- Eliot’s) Charles Eliot Norton, the Dante Society of duce the reading public to Eliot through his “The America, the second-oldest such organization in Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot elected to

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withdraw “Saint Narcissus” from consideration at Hyacinth, a young man, because of his great physi- the last minute. cal beauty), comes within the lines of the passage Since the text of the poem had already been type- borrowed from “Saint Narcissus.” Good poetry does set, a galley proof has fortunately been preserved. not come easily, and Eliot was always one not to let Why Eliot changed his mind is a matter for spec- a good line, or three or four or more, go. ulation. Perhaps he had come to view the somewhat autoerotic nature of the poem’s primary conceit as a source for future embarrassment. Narcissus, after all, is not a saint in any religious sense of the word “Dialogue on Dramatic but rather a figure out of Greek mythology who Poetry, A” (1928) becomes so enamored of his own image reflected in a pool that he dies gazing on it. There are also One has to read far into Eliot’s 1928 essay “A Dia- homoerotic impulses expressed in the poem’s phal- logue on Dramatic Poetry”—indeed, nearly to the lic imagery in which Narcissus merges, at poem’s end—to come to a concise statement of its subject, end, with Saints Stephen and Sebastian, who were “the possibility of poetic drama.” Elsewhere in this both slain by arrows and became favorite subjects long and necessarily discombulated essay—it is pre- for Renaissance male nude paintings. With its fur- sented as a rambling conversation on drama among ther hints at masturbation, hermaphrodism, and individuals identified only as A, B, C, D, E, and gender blending, the poem is indeed a case study F—the point is also made, “[W]hat great poetry is in what, in keeping with the middle-class moral- not dramatic?” That had certainly been the case ity of Eliot’s day, would have been regarded as the with his own poetry virtually from the beginnings psychopathology of human sexuality, a fit subject of his poetic career. With works like “The Love for physicians, perhaps, and the emerging field of Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” psychiatry, but hardly a fitting topic for poetry. first conceived in 1910 and 1911, and continuing On the other hand, Eliot’s second thoughts through other notable works such as “Gerontion” in could have been the result of purely technical con- 1919 and “The Hollow Men” in 1925, it is easy to siderations. Even a very young poet is mindful of see how Eliot frequently conceived of poetry in dra- posterity. Eliot may simply have come to see the matic terms—that is, with a made-up character or poem as not a worthy enough effort to enter his characters doing the speaking, rather than the poet. official canon, which is exactly what formal publi- Nor does that list include Eliot’s most famous cation would have accomplished. Most significant, however, and the reason that work of all to that time, 1922’s The Waste Land, “The Death of Saint Narcissus” cannot simply be with its variety of voices both ancient and modern, ignored, Eliot appropriated the imagery of the first all allowed to speak for themselves and without seven lines of the poem, beginning with the com- comment from the author, in good dramatic fash- mand to the reader to “[c]ome under the shadow ion. In fact, some time before this essay, which was of this gray rock,” for incorporation virtually whole- published as an introduction to John Dryden’s Of sale into lines 26–30 of The Waste Land, beginning Dramatick Poesie, Eliot had, in 1923, already tried with the parenthetical injunction, “(Come in under his own hand at composing a poetic drama, “Swee- the shadow of this red rock).” That that passage ney Agonistes.” Though he would abandon that from The Waste Land, which has its own none too effort in 1925, it is equally intriguing how much of subtle sexual subtext, finds its source in an earlier Eliot’s literary criticism from this period focuses not poem of Eliot’s that is rich in sexual suggestiveness on poetry but on poetic dramatists. and erotic detail may point readers in a particu- While Eliot remains most renowned as a poet lar direction, particularly since the “Hyacinth girl,” whose critical theory and commentary are most another gender-bending image with homoerotic related to issues of thought and belief in contem- implications (the god Apollo had fallen in love with porary literature, it is worth noting that he was

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writing on poetic drama as early as 1919, in the not too far removed from the central crisis. Eliot is essay “ ‘Rhetoric’ and Poetic Drama.” When the taking a jab here at the so-called humanists of his two lengthy essays “Shakespeare and the Stoicism time, thinkers who, following in the footsteps of of Seneca” and “Seneca in Elizabethan Transla- such 19th-century English literary critics as MAT- tion” and quite a few related, shorter pieces on THEW ARNOLD and Walter Pater, were seeking to individual dramatists are also factored in, the essays resurrect literature and the humanities in general on drama and dramatists far outnumber essays on from the bane of the useless by proposing for those poetry and poets in Eliot’s celebrated 1932 prose more aesthetic kinds of human endeavors a moral collection, Selected Essays. Indeed, one of his most function that had previously been the sole preserve celebrated critical formulations, the objective cor- of the religious. In Eliot’s view, such an accom- relative, comes from an essay on Shakespeare’s modation did no service to literature or religion. By Hamlet, “.” the same token, however, no one would deny that All this background information emphasizes drama seems to thrive in cultures where a common how much Eliot always showed an interest in the body of belief flourishes. dramatic nature of poetry and in the possibilities In summary, without a real devotion to faith, of poetic drama in the modern world. They are not without a faithfulness among a people, drama of mutually exclusive interests by any means, and yet any sort is impossible—except as an entertainment. Eliot would not hit his own stride as a dramatic Serious drama must assume that serious matters are poet until midcareer, and then only after a series at stake, and those matters are ultimately expressed of fits and starts, including the abortive “Sweeney in terms of faith and addressed by religion. So then, Agonistes” project and the chance occasion that B, who apparently sees little of either real religious involved him, in 1933, in composing choruses and faith or meaningful literature in the contemporary dialogue for a religious pageant play, The Rock. scene around him, can assert, by way of a rhetorical question, “What is the purpose of theatre [in our SYNOPSIS own time] except to amuse?” A survey of the misgivings expressed in “A Dia- E, and C and D, will have none of B’s cynicism, logue on Dramatic Poetry” may suggest why Eliot however, although they do not have much better was simultaneously reluctant to compose a play of notions of the purposes of drama with which to his own and yet almost obsessed by the creative answer B’s objection except to argue that perhaps possibilities offered by the form. By its very nature, the drama is not “merely a matter of established an essay of this sort is an exercise in testing ideas morals,” which it then must otherwise uphold or and balancing opinions without appearing to give deride. As E would have it, there is the question either or any side a privileged position. By the same of the drama as a matter of form instead. He uses token, no writer can take several sides in an argu- the Russian ballet, which is certainly good theatre, ment without revealing somewhere along the way as his model: “Here seemed to be everything that which position he favors. we wanted in drama, except the poetry.” As such, The drift of Eliot’s multifaceted “dialogue” on it “did not teach any ‘lesson,’ but it had form.” E the possibility of poetic drama “in our time” sorts argues that form is what distinguishes prose drama itself out, ultimately, into two diametrically opposed from verse drama. It may seem that the argument, attitudes toward the purposes of drama, neither such as it is, is getting somewhere. The reader of which appears to be satisfactory. At the first should note, nevertheless, that at bottom the extreme, articulated early on in Eliot’s presenta- dynamics of the argument appear to be doing noth- tion, is the idea that the only purpose that drama— ing more than opposing one kind of moral aridity or even literature in general—serves any longer is with another: Drama as amusement versus drama as a public amusement. “Our literature is a substi- as form. This dilemma comes to a head shortly tute for religion,” says B, “and so is our religion”—a when E and B start discussing the High Mass of little too dry and witty, perhaps, but nonetheless Catholic Christian devotion as representative

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of “the perfect and ideal drama,” although it too can achieve this effectiveness by being presented remains one otherwise devoid of any devotional in such a way that some members of the audience or liturgical significance for the equally ideal audi- will recognize themselves on the stage and thereby ence, which is described as one capable of enjoy- share the depths of the protagonist’s inner turmoil. ing such an intensely religious event only as sheer The further idea is that the only means for accom- spectacle. B rightly insists that that attitude is con- plishing such a potent connection between the fusing the “Art of the Mass” with its purpose. For drama and the audience is through poetry, since the believer, he further insists, the Art of the Mass it alone can enable the sort of intensification of is made manifest only when its religious import is thought and emotion that great drama requires. poorly conveyed, and then that art is something “[T]he modern world is chaotic, and . . . its that distracts rather than draws one’s admiration. lack of social and moral conventions makes the A Mass that can be viewed as great drama, in other task of the dramatic poet difficult,” Eliot proposes words, fails in its true dramatic function, which is toward the conclusion of “A Dialogue on Dramatic to engage the audience in the profound mysteries Poetry,” but so was the Elizabethan and Jacobean that the ritual can merely portray. period, he can insist as well. While it may be true This association between the real nature and that “there is no precedent for a nation having two purpose of the drama of the Mass and the nature great periods of drama,” Eliot imagines that “the and purpose of drama itself permits some clar- craving for poetic drama is permanent in human ity through the intentional smokescreen of his nature.” The question is how to get it. Dryden, ambivalent “dialogue.” The aesthetic difference, whose own speculation on poetic drama is the B points out, is between someone for whom the cause for Eliot’s, is called to bear witness. Dryden Mass, or drama, is mere spectacle—something to thought his an inferior age as well, yet the old be watched—and someone who is a participant in verities of stagecraft worked for him. Appealing to the drama—something in which to be engaged. the unities of place and time, Eliot sees a need for concentration: “A continuous hour and a half of CRITICAL COMMENTARY intense interest is what we need.” The gist of Eliot’s argument throughout the essay is As might have been expected, such a free-rang- that the entire issue of drama as amusement versus ing free-for-all ends without having really come to drama as form must be not resolved so much as any genuine conclusions, but it has raised a number transcended. If the one or the other of those two of serious questions and considerations. “The Uni- possibilities is, to paraphrase “The Hollow Men,” ties do make for intensity,” Eliot admits, “as does gesture without meaning, Eliot now offers a posi- verse rhythm.” From that point on, the rest is all tive contrast in a third approach. This involves speculation. the notion that drama, by engaging the audience Eliot and the Anglo-Irish poet W. B. YEATS and making them participants in what the ancient would both try their hand several times at compos- Greeks called its agon, or struggle, can provide for ing verse dramas, in English, for a contemporary the possibility of a poetic drama that can succeed audience, although only Eliot would try continu- even with a modern audience. ously to succeed on the popular stage. With The How that may be achieved is explained by Eliot Cocktail Party in January 1951, he would achieve in another of his commentaries on poetic drama, the goal that he had apparently set for himself: this from the last of the Charles Eliot Norton Lec- a verse drama that was a popular and commer- tures of 1932 and 1933, subsequently published as cial success. But whether he had thus advanced The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. There, the cause of poetic drama in the modern world, or remarking on an unnamed verse drama of his that merely cashed in on his reputation as a literary lion is generally taken to be “Sweeney Agonistes,” Eliot remains to be seen. imagines that drama is the only means of effec- The form of the drama, one of Eliot’s mouth- tively addressing a modern audience and that it pieces had proposed earlier in the pages of “A Dia-

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logue on Dramatic Poetry,” must “vary from age have told a friend, the British editor and critic Cyril to age in accordance with religious assumptions of Connolly, that, with that poem, he felt that he had the age.” An age without order and stability in finally written a poem about love and happiness. By public places might require the counterbalance of the end of 1957, he had a completed draft of the the sort of rigid form on the stage that only poetry play, which he had originally intended to call The can provide, D concludes, but that does not resolve Rest Cure. When he learned, however, that that the more critical matter of what that poetic form title had already been used, he elected to call his should be. And that may be the rub. Eliot’s hope verse drama The Elder Statesman instead. was that the popular theater might again take on The London production of the play, again under a poetic form in his time, but his own experiences the direction of his longtime theatrical collabora- with the example of the Elizabethan stage ought to tor E. MARTIN BROWNE, opened in the Cambridge have told him that that is a proposition of fits and Theatre in late September 1958. It was neither a starts. Aside from his own efforts, the drama of our critical nor commercial success. Generally, the reac- time written in English remains largely drama writ- tion was that the play reflected outdated theatrical ten in prose. conventions that would have been more in keeping with the playwrighting typical of Eliot’s youth. At the very least, the story displays with a straightfor- ward simplicity the conventions of older drawing “Dry Salvages, The” (1941) room dramas that were more the rage when Eliot had first started writing for the stage in the 1930s. See FOUR QUARTETS. The irony is that, despite his being castigated for being behind the times, by now Eliot had perfected a format for the stage in keeping with his own theories of verse drama. With The Elder Statesman, “East Coker” (1940) Eliot tamed the high-flown histrionics and literary complexities of Murder in the Cathedral and The See FOUR QUARTETS. Family Reunion, while the somewhat listless verse of The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk found just the right balance of the rhythmic continuity Elder Statesman, The (1958) expected of the poetic line, but without sacrificing a naturalness of tone. The play’s theme, meanwhile, if it were to be Eliot had drafted the first two acts of this, his last dramatic work and, so, too, his last major creative hastily summarized, could be called the redemp- endeavor, early in 1956. However, he would not tive power of love. It is ironic as well that, for all its revise those first two acts, as well as complete the commonplaces, The Elder Statesman may be Eliot’s third act, until the autumn of 1957, thus capping most successful commentary on the age-old conflict a literary career of nearly a half-century in length. between individual choice and social responsibility. The fact that his marriage to Valerie Fletcher inter- Reduced to a question, the play asks when a per- vened between the time he first conceived the play son is obligated to confess that he has committed and the time that he could take up his pen again crimes, even if the entire legal system as developed in earnest to complete it is generally thought to through the ages would not necessarily find him account for the play’s understated but nevertheless guilty of any wrongdoing. While it was not neces- enthusiastic celebration of the benefits of connu- sary for Eliot to bring the question of original sin to bial love. Indeed, his last published poem, “To My his audience’s attention, The Elder Statesman com- Wife,” provided his dedication to the play when ments on the role of goodness in a fallen universe it was published in book form. He is reported to and concludes that it can be achieved.

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SYNOPSIS a politician and subsequently as the chairman of Act 1 major companies. He is not used to being alone, As the first act opens, Monica Claverton-Ferry and Monica explains, nor does he want to find himself Charles Hemington are having a conversation in at the mercy of strangers, no matter how profes- the drawing room of Monica’s father, Lord Claver- sional the staff at Badgley may be. Her third reason, ton’s, London home. It is time for tea, and Charles however, is the most telling of all. Although he is disappointed that he will not have Monica all is only 60, his lordship has already suffered one to himself. She will be leaving on Monday to pro- stroke. According to his physician, Monica tells Charles, Lord Claverton does not have much lon- vide her father, who has recently retired, with her ger to live, although he has not himself been told companionship during an extended stay at Badgley as much. Court, an exclusive rest home in the countryside. Their discussion is now halted by Lord Claver- Charles had hoped to have Monica’s undivided ton’s arriving for tea. He has his engagement book attention for the entire afternoon, but they spent and cynically broods over the fact that, though he it shopping instead. He has something that he is does not miss the frantic pace of the public life desperate to tell Monica. They have not had the that he has now left forever behind him, the empty privacy that he would have liked at a luncheon pages of his engagement book remind him of the engagement earlier that day, and now he has just emptiness of the sort of life that he now has before learned that Monica’s father will be joining them him. Despite Monica’s loving admonition that that for tea. Charles sees no reason for staying, since he kind of a life is just what the doctor has ordered for feels that what he has to say to her is private, and him, Lord Claverton protests: “I’ve not the slight- now those plans have been dashed entirely. est longing for the life I’ve left— / Only fear of the She convinces him to tell her nevertheless. He emptiness before me.” Though he never gives the tells her that it is not just that he is in love with least hint that he suspects that he may be dying, her, something that he has apparently shared with Claverton reveals himself as a man with no zest for her before, but that he believes that she loves him life, only the restless capacity to endure it. For him as well. She confesses that she does. Her admission it has become “waiting, simply waiting, / With no catches him somewhat by surprise, and he hap- desire to act, yet a loathing of inaction.” In his own pily confesses that his asserting that she loves him eyes, having stepped off the public stage while still has been a blind gambit on his part. The two now reasonably active, he has become the ghost of his engage in a more profoundly intimate dialogue that own former greatness, as both it and he fade quietly is virtually a love duet, so transformed have they into a past that no longer exists in a present that both been by their mutual protestations of love. has nothing attractive about it except for a dull Now, “[i]n our private world,” Monica happily pro- sameness. claims, “the meanings are different.” That scene is Lambert then announces that an unexpected quickly interrupted and its mood of a magical pri- guest has arrived. He is a “foreign person,” Lambert vacy broken, however, by the entrance of Lambert, observes, but one who speaks English quite well. the butler, with preparations for tea. The gentleman, Lambert goes on to report, feels Lord Claverton not yet having arrived, Charles certain that Lord Claverton will agree to see him, presses his advantage, insisting that Monica should once he reads the note that the gentleman has explain to him why, rather than marry him, she written on his calling card. When Claverton reads must go off with her father to keep him company the note, he does agree to see his visitor privately in during his convalescence. the drawing room. Once the guest, a Señor Gomez, She levelheadedly provides Charles with several is announced, Lambert, Monica, and Charles take good reasons. Lord Claverton has just retired amid their leave, leaving him alone with Claverton. some fanfare from a long life in the public eye as a Claverton queries Gomez as to whether or not person of great prominence and authority, first as he is a friend of a Mr. Culverwell, which is appar-

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ently the gist of the note that Gomez had written to manner in which he lays out his case, he makes gain access to Lord Claverton. As it then turns out, it clear that he continues to hold the respectable however, although it takes Claverton some time to Lord Claverton responsible for the shambles his realize it, Señor Gomez is not a friend of this Cul- own life had become. Despite his material success, verwell, a man whom Claverton had befriended in Culverwell points out, he has been an exile from his youth. Rather, Gomez is Culverwell. his home and the life that he could have had these The details of their complicated story emerge as many years, thanks in large part to Ferry’s “assis- soon as Dick Ferry—for that was Lord Claverton’s tance” in helping him leave England for good. Such name before he added to his the name of Claverton, help, Culverwell now asserts, was provided for no which belongs to his wife’s more influential fam- other reason than to get him out of the way. ily—recognizes Frederico Gomez for his old Oxford There is yet another twist in their complicated buddy, Fred Culverwell. Though the brighter of relationship, one that Culverwell now reveals. As the two, Culverwell was also the poorer, so they it turns out, he is the only witness to a hit-and-run had curried each other’s friendship for self-serving accident that Ferry had one night when they were motives. Culverwell made social connections that driving back to Oxford together. “You never lifted he could not have otherwise through his friendship your foot from the accelerator” after hitting an old with the wealthy Ferry, and Ferry was flattered to man, Culverwell charges, and he further impugns have the friendship of someone as bright as Culver- Ferry’s motives for not stopping by reminding him well. The upshot of this strange alliance of theirs, that it would then have implicated some young nevertheless, was that Culverwell could not keep women whom they had just been visiting. up the pace of both his studies and the social life of Lord Claverton attempts to hold his ground. a wealthy young rake like Ferry. Culverwell ended He does not deny the charges but insists that the up ruining his prospects by leaving Oxford and entire matter is not as awful as Culverwell makes it being forced to take a “miserable clerkship” while sound. Besides, who would believe it after all these still being saddled nevertheless with the expensive years? Culverwell is not impressed, however. It is tastes that he had acquired during the time of his not a matter of his word against Lord Claverton’s friendship with Ferry. Culverwell now holds Lord so much as what the story can do to besmirch not Claverton responsible not only for all that, but for Lord Claverton’s name but his peace of mind. In the further fact that Culverwell, to maintain his fact, Culverwell’s plan is much more insidious than expensive lifestyle, ended up committing forgery, mere blackmail. He assures Claverton that he will for which he was subsequently imprisoned. not go to the press with the story, nor does he want Dick Ferry/Lord Claverton protests that he can- money. “[Y]our secret’s safe with me,” he confides not imagine that Culverwell/Gomez truly believes to Claverton, although “I might give it to a few that all his distress was the result of his having friends, in confidence.” The rub is, Culverwell tells fallen under Ferry’s influence. At the very least, Claverton with a barely concealed glee, “you’d Lord Claverton points out, he had helped by com- never know to whom I’d told it.” ing to Culverwell’s assistance after his release from When Claverton realizes that, rightly or wrongly prison, enabling him to leave England. Indeed, and with or without justification, this is payday, he that was how Culverwell had finally managed to presses Culverwell to tell him what he wants. “I’m make an entirely new life for himself as Frederico a lonely man, Dick, with a craving for affection,” Gomez in the fictional South American country of Culverwell tells Lord Claverton. “All I want is as San Marco, so that by now, 35 years later, he has much of your company, / So long as I stay here, as become a happily married man and a great finan- I can get.” And then Culverwell adds menacingly: cial success. “And the more I get, the longer I may stay.” Culverwell/Gomez will have none of Dick Fer- Claverton charges Culverwell with having given ry’s attempts to expiate his own guilt. Although him only his “envy, spite and hatred” in return Gomez is almost pathologically cool-headed in the for the friendship that he had offered him those

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many years before, but nothing will change the fact son, another ghost from Claverton’s past. She later that Culverwell has apparently decided to make took the stage name Maisie Montjoy, and it was tormenting Lord Claverton his hobby for as long under that name and by virtue of that sort of sug- as it gives him pleasure and satisfaction. “[W]e can gestive reputation that she and Claverton had had begin just where we left off,” Culverwell ominously a youthful fling, after which she filed a breach of assures him as he makes his exit, and act 1 ends promise suit against him. Though she eventually with Monica returning to find her father, an ailing settled the suit out of court on the advice of her man who desperately needs his rest, worn out and attorney so as not to scuttle the young Dick Ferry’s anxious and brooding following his interview with burgeoning political aspirations, Maisie genuinely “Señor Gomez.” loved Claverton and appears to continue to do so. Act 2 Indeed, although her friends had warned her The curtain rises on the second act to find Lord about Claverton, identifying him as a man who Claverton and the Monica enjoying the morning was “hollow,” she assures him now that he was worth the trouble. She resembles Gomez somewhat sunshine on a terrace at Badgley Court, the conva- in her present behavior and earlier unpleasant asso- lescent home, several days later. Monica is scolding ciations with the young Dick Ferry. Unlike Gomez, her father for not taking this opportunity to relax, however, although Maisie can also accuse Claver- since that is the whole purpose of his sojourn there. ton of “shabby behaviour,” she does not seem to He complains with the common complaint of the seek vindication, nor does their meeting here many self-driven person that he cannot let himself relax. years later seem to be anything more than the result “What is this self inside us, this silent observer, / of pure chance. Severe and speechless critic . . .?” he wonders. None of that means, of course, that her presence Matters are not helped when Mrs. Piggot, the at this “rest” home may not yet turn out to be a cause director of the facility, arrives on the scene. She of further irritation and embarrassment to him. She tends to be very talkative, so that all her efforts reads his old love letters every night, she tells him. to make as important a “guest” as Lord Claverton While she claims that she would never do anything feel comfortable and at ease succeed only in mak- with them publicly, despite the great fame in life that ing him more restlessly irritated. This time how- Claverton has subsequently achieved, she does offer ever, Monica shares his discomfort and sympathizes “to bring the photostats tomorrow morning, / And with him. Perhaps it is indeed impossible for any read them to you.” Lord Claverton clearly does not person as prominent as her father had been ever need this added excitement, and Mrs. Piggot unwit- to find rest. Once Mrs. Piggot has had her say, tingly now comes to his rescue, politely driving Mrs. Monica convinces her father that he should try to Carghill off so that their famous guest can take the rest nonetheless while she goes off to explore the rest that he has come to Badgley Court to get. How- grounds. “If you spy any guest who seems to be ever, Mrs. Piggot then keeps him occupied with one stalking you / Put your newspaper over your face,” of her rambling monologues, which is cut short by she tells him, so that he will appear to be pretend- Monica’s reentry into the scene. ing to be asleep. Not knowing the half of it, Monica is pleased to That is precisely what Lord Claverton does, yet have saved her father, who appears to be as ruffled the strategy fails miserably when the first person as ever, from Mrs. Piggot’s onslaught. That relief to come along and take the chair beside him on is extremely short-lived, inasmuch as Monica is the terrace interrupts his feigned rest by apologiz- herself the bearer of bad tidings. Monica’s brother ing for doing so. Clearly irritated by an intrusion and Lord Claverton’s ne’er-do-well son, Michael, over which he has no control, Lord Claverton has shown up for a visit, and Monica must tell her reluctantly enters into a conversation with his new father that she is afraid that “something unpleasant neighbor, Mrs. John Carghill, who, it turns out, has happened.” Michael himself appears. After a had been in an earlier incarnation Maisie Batter- great deal of extemporizing and deflecting of blame

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and responsibility, Michael admits that, as a result Gomez happily agrees to the request on one condi- of running up a heavy gambling debt, he has lost tion: “That you tell me all about Dick when you the position that his father’s influence had obtained knew him.” Patting her trusty despatch case, Mrs. for him. His solution, and why he has come to his Carghill agrees. “Secret for secret, Señor Gomez,” she father, is to go abroad where he might lead a life free crows, sealing their somewhat suspect pact. of the burden of being Lord Claverton’s son and, so, Monica, who has been watching all this tran- held to a higher standard than most people. spire, now steps in. Her father needs his rest, she Lord Claverton endures his son’s cheekiness, insists both to him and to those present. The other taking Michael’s insults and insinuations as well three leave, making various plans to meet again, as he earlier took Gomez’s. In essence, like Gomez, and Monica is once again alone with her father, as Michael accuses Lord Claverton of being respon- she had been when the second act first opened. “I sible for making a wreck out of his, Michael’s, life want you to escape from them,” she tells him, not simply to satisfy his own vanity and lust for emi- making it clear just whom she may mean by “those nence and authority. Claverton tries to convince awful people.” Michael that running away—becoming a “fugitive “What I want to escape from / Is myself, is the from reality”—will not solve his problems. “When past,” he tells her, realizing as quickly that he had you reach your goal,” Claverton tells the younger just finished giving his son, Michael, strong advice man, “[y]ou will find your past failures waiting to the contrary. Resolving that it is not too late there to greet you.” Monica, who had stepped away not to “try to escape from his own past failures,” at to let father and son talk, returns to the scene and the end of act 2 Lord Claverton hopes that there tries to soothe the bruised feelings and egos on is time for him to help his son, Michael, learn that either side of the divide. same lesson. Still, as the curtain falls, Lord Claver- Her efforts at being a peacemaker, however, ton must ask, “[H]ave I still time? / . . . Is it too late are thwarted by Mrs. Carghill’s arrival back on for me, Monica?” the scene. She has brought a despatch case that is Act 3 apparently filled with all those photostats of Dick The third and final act opens on late afternoon of Ferry’s old love letters to her. Whatever her plans the following day. Charles is visiting with Monica had been, they are put on hold because she is so on the terrace at Badgley Court. Having observed taken with happening on Lord Claverton’s two Gomez and Mrs. Carghill the previous day, Monica children. Indeed she makes much of Michael, who, has sent for Charles out of a concern that these two she insists, is the very image of Lord Claverton strangers are blackmailing her father. when he was that age and he and Maisie had just In the meantime, Lord Claverton enters the met and, apparently, been lovers. scene unobserved by them and, overhearing Mon- But then she, too, is interrupted when Gomez ica expressing her fears to Charles, then feels free to shows up on the scene exuding his snake’s charms address the matter with them openly. In response from every pore. He has “persuaded” his doctor that to Monica’s earlier expression to Charles of her he is in need of a rest cure, too, he explains, and now puzzlement over how anyone could possibly find here he is at Badgley Court. Because he is introduced anything worthy of blackmail in the life of a man not only as Señor Gomez of San Marco but also as a as virtuous as her father, Lord Claverton observes college chum of Claverton’s from their Oxford days, that all of us have our shortcomings. A person may Gomez and Carghill hit it off famously, particularly in never have broken the law but could have secrets view of their mutual acquaintance with Lord Claver- leaving him vulnerable nevertheless to the likes of ton in his youth. Now that he, too, shall be a guest at Gomez and Mrs. Carghill. Badgley, Mrs. Carghill extracts a promise from Señor Lord Claverton’s real mistake, he now realizes, Gomez: He will permit her to question him about the was not trusting enough in Monica’s love to reveal Dick Ferry that he knew back in their Oxford days. his “secrets” to her. He confesses to having lived

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his life “trying to forget myself. / . . . to identify the other person. That neither of them seems now myself with the part I had chosen to play.” Now, to be capable of forgiving him, he thinks of as their he hopes, Monica loves him enough to come to problem and as an opportunity for him to repent of know him for “the broken-down actor” he really those youthful indiscretions. For, Claverton asks is. He admits that Gomez and Mrs, Carghill may Charles, who does not have things in their past very well be blackmailing him, but it is only in a that may be neither crimes nor sins but for which manner of speaking. “If people merely blackmail nevertheless he or she may feel quite ashamed? you to get your company, / I’m afraid the law can’t Having had the chance to confess his secrets to touch them.” someone whom he loves, Monica, Lord Claverton True enough, Charles agrees, but why not then feels that he is now well on his way toward exorcis- just leave Badgley Court, he asks Lord Claverton, ing these ancient ghosts, as it were, and it may seem since it is his being there, exposed, that makes that the moral dilemma in which Lord Claverton him susceptible to their torment. Claverton then has unexpectedly found himself has nearly resolved explains that leaving would be no escape at all. itself. But then a new and equally unexpected wrin- “[T]hey are not real,” he says of Señor Gomez and kle arises. Mrs. Carghill shows up, followed almost Mrs. Carghill. “They are merely . . . / Spectres from immediately by Gomez in the company of Claver- my past.” Since the two of them, Gomez and Mrs. ton’s son, Michael. The long and the short of it Carghill, as real as they may be otherwise, are noth- is that, at the instigation of Mrs. Carghill, Gomez ing more than the moral debts that anyone may has offered Michael a “position,” though one that incur as the result of a life lived in a moral universe, is otherwise undefined, back in San Marco. The Lord Claverton feels that only by accepting the financial and social well-being that will result from “debts” that they impose on him, rather than try- this largesse on Gomez’s part, it is argued, will solve ing to escape them, can he overcome whatever all the younger man’s present problems back in power they may be hoping to wield over him and England. his peace of mind. Since these are the very problems, it should be That said, it is also easy for Lord Claverton to recalled, for which Lord Claverton had shown little reveal his sin in each case to Charles and to Mon- sympathy only the day before, Gomez’s actions are ica. Culverwell, he explains, had let his admiration clearly capable of driving a wedge between Michael and envy for Dick Ferry tempt him into a lifestyle and whatever relationship he may still have with that he could ill afford, but Claverton can see now his father. Claverton appeals to Michael’s good that it was his own youthful vices that had tempted sense to persuade him not to commit himself to Culverwell. As for the hit-and-run accident, it was such an extravagant venture without knowing all discovered later that the elderly man whom he had the details, for Michael seems to be determined run over had already died of natural causes, but to take Gomez up on his offer. Even Claverton’s that does not alter the fact that, in the heat of the finally resorting to revealing Gomez’s real identity moment, Dick Ferry did not stop and someone else as his old “friend” Fred Culverwell to Michael has was later accused of causing the old man’s death little effect. Apparently having anticipated Claver- until an autopsy proved otherwise. ton’s determination to stop him, Gomez has already In Maisie Montjoy’s case, meanwhile, Lord Cla- made this admission to Michael himself. verton admits that he succumbed to a powerful Monica tries her best to dissuade Michael as well. physical attraction for her, leading him to woo her “[Y]ou can’t abandon your family / And your very far beyond the scope of what would have been rea- self—it’s a kind of suicide,” she protests. Charles, sonable, and without any regard for the fact that Michael’s future brother-in-law, tries his powers of she, apparently, was genuinely in love with him. persuasion, too. “Can you really feel confidence,” he There his failing was much more serious—“. . .we asks Michael, in someone who is using him “to grat- should respect love always when we meet it,” he ify . . . / His lifelong grievance against your father?” explains—but hardly, again, intended to do ill to Though they each make a case, it is to no avail.

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Even Monica’s last-ditch appeal to her brother to counters by assuring them that “I feel at peace now. remember their childhood, although they were / . . . the peace that ensues upon contrition.” More, never very close, fails to do anything more than having rectified what he could of his relation with to get Michael to agree that he will always be fond Monica and Michael by admitting to his earlier of her, too. Gomez and Mrs. Carghill, intention- vanities and mistakes, he feels as well that “I’ve ally perhaps, act equally obtuse with regard to the only just now had the illumination / Of know- momentousness of Michael’s decision. He will be ing what love is,” which would be thinking of the leaving for San Marco almost instantly and should other’s welfare, and not of his own. Having been be able to visit England again within a mere five rejected by Michael, Lord Claverton can now also years, Gomez assures them all, and there is always reject that part of himself that has been wholly airmail, even if it is a bit slow. self-serving, a role that he had played all his life, Mrs. Carghill, who earlier made it clear that and winds up feeling “freed from this self that pre- she regards Michael as the son that she and Dick tends to be someone.” Instead, “in becoming no Ferry would have had if they had married, suggests one, I begin to live,” echoing young Colby’s resolve that all Michael ever really needed was someone at the end of The Confidential Clerk, Eliot’s earlier to understand him. On that score, Lord Claverton verse drama. finds it difficult to disagree. “I see now clearly / That resolve achieved, Lord Claverton excuses The many many mistakes I have made / My whole himself, taking his leave of the two lovers. “It’s as life through,” he admits, as the last vestiges of his if he had passed through some door unseen by us,” previously comfortable life appear to be caving in Charles says once he has gone. Monica is even more on him. Still, his fear that he might not have time puzzled by his leaving, but Charles finally assures to rectify his life, a fear that he had expressed at her that it was so they could be alone together. the end of act 2, is now being ironically realized. They once more revel in the love that they had Though he cannot save Michael either from him- just confessed to each other when the play began. self or from the clutches of those who would get Now they realize that they have become “a new to his father through him, this series of crises has person / Who is you and me together,” as Monica enabled Lord Claverton to save himself. puts it. Understanding her love for Charles enables Once Michael and Gomez and then Mrs. her to understand the true nature of love itself Carghill have departed, Monica tries to reassure and, perhaps, the sentiments her father has just him that “it’s not you and me he [Michael] rejects, expressed before taking his ominous leave of them. / But himself.” Such words reassure him somewhat, “Oh Father, Father!” she exclaims, thrilled with but Lord Claverton seems suddenly to be mind- her newfound understanding. “I could speak to ful of his own mortality and of the ill health that you now.” forced his retirement and this retreat to Badgley Charles offers to go fetch Lord Claverton for Court in the first place. In the first act Monica her, but she now knows that he has passed away. had intimated to Charles that her father did not “He is close at hand, / Though he has gone too have much longer to live, although he was not far to return to us,” she says. Becoming no one, aware of it. All during this confrontation with “he has become himself.” Charles sees a blessing in Michael, however, Lord Claverton has been imply- Lord Claverton’s parting convictions. Monica does, ing that he will not be around long enough to see too. “Fixed in the certainty of love unchanging,” Michael’s return to England. It will be for Monica which is what her father’s deathbed conversion has and Charles, Claverton now suggests, to see to it convinced her of, Monica can say to Charles that “I that Michael does not feel estranged when and if feel utterly secure / In you.” he does return. Her resolve prepares her to go to her father, who Monica is alarmed by these hints, whereas waits under the beech tree under which he had been Charles continues to insist that what Lord Cla- standing before his entrance earlier in act 3. “I feel verton must do is leave Badgley Court. Claverton drawn to that spot,” he had then answered Monica’s

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query about his fascination with the tree. Now and his legacy. So, then, in the man who becomes, as henceforth she will feel be drawn to it, too. Claverton does by play’s end, free by virtue of his having at last found the courage to become nothing CRITICAL COMMENTARY and a nobody, can be seen Colby Simpkins from The Elder Statesman deals with many of the themes The Confidential Clerk. That young man is content that had preoccupied Eliot virtually from the start when his own paternity drama ends in his discov- of his literary career. In Lord Claverton’s final ering that he is nothing other than what he has determination to tear off the mask and stand before always imagined himself to be. his beloved daughter as the “broken-down actor” These questions of public identity versus self- that he has come to see himself as is reminiscent identity are further combined throughout Eliot’s of J. Alfred Prufrock and Edward Chamberlayne of work with the notion that it is only through self- The Cocktail Party. Both of them, too, have to vary- abnegation, surrender, and extinction of individual ing degrees become so caught up in the mask that will, as in the case of the speaker of The Waste they have virtually ceased to exist except as social Land, say, or of Celia Copplestone, another charac- constructs. By the same token, and in virtually the ter from The Cocktail Party, that a person can find same context, there is echoed in Gomez’s confid- a peace “costing nothing less than everything,” as ing to Claverton that a failure is “the man who in Eliot puts it in “Little Gidding.” Lord Claverton is the morning / Has to make up his face before he forced by the resurfacing of some of the unsavory looks in the mirror”—the turn of phrase, also from circumstances whereby he had achieved his public “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” about the notoriety to give up the very public personality that pressing social need of having to keep up pretenses he had himself forced the great world to make up by “prepar[ing] a face to meet the faces that you for him. Ironically, that surrendering of a false self meet.” allows him to see how much that “personage” is In the idea of a great man coming to terms indeed nothing more or less than that—a made-up toward the end of his life with earlier vanities and thing, and far less real than the modest creature youthful lapses in judgment, meanwhile, is Becket that he, as a human being, is and can finally accept of Murder in the Cathedral. Lord Harry Monchesney himself as being. of The Family Reunion is there as well, however, There are minor themes of Eliot’s found in this inasmuch as he, like Lord Claverton, despite their aspect of The Elder Statesman as well. His putting difference in age and experience, are both men down the crassness of material gain and success for haunted by a past that is nowhere near as terrible or its sake alone—the “profit and loss” method toward horrible as conscience would make it out to be. The measuring the worth of a motive or achievement— theme, too, of reconciliation, both with oneself and is Eliot’s way of clarifying what ultimately distin- between parent and child and husband and wife, is guishes Claverton from his tormentors. Unlike his brought to bear in the pages of The Elder Statesman final vision of life’s purpose, which is that it must as much as it had been previously in all Eliot’s plays, find its focus in love, Gomez and Mrs. Carghill commencing with The Family Reunion. share a vision that cannot exceed a worldly view of There is also self-discovery, another key theme things. That Culverwell/Gomez and Mrs. Carghill, of Eliot’s in The Elder Statesman. If, as is hinted self-evidently negative characters, revel in a world at about midway through the play, Claverton has of power and wealth and manipulation of others, spent much of his adult life as a “hollow man,” lost tells the audience that Eliot wishes to condemn in a house of admiring mirrors of self-deception, in such a shallow approach toward life and toward the last act he climbs the winding stairs of his own assessing the value of each person that one encoun- “Ash-Wednesday,” as he comes to see through his ters along life’s way. That shallow view of the world public confession the valley of dried bones that he and of life is the same one that Lord Claverton had has, in his life as a public man, left behind him as served all his life, too, and it is one that attracts

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Michael as well. Lord Claverton, however, during than momentous and nowhere near sentimentally his final days, comes to see for the sham that they tragic, Eliot comments in this, his final creative are the worldly successes and honors for which he accomplishment, on the constant interplay of futil- had sacrificed his peace, his personal honor, and, ity and hopefulness that never cease to character- ultimately, his life, and it is through that insight ize the frustrations that permeate ordinary life, no that Eliot depicts dramatically his protagonist’s matter how much the world measures success. final spiritual redemption. Claverton, like Scrooge, the ne’er-do-well pro- Charles Hemington, an attorney who has the tagonist of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, same political aspirations that had seduced the another recent version of the morality play, must young Dick Ferry, may be headed toward the same face being visited by ghosts of his past. In Claver- road to spiritual ruin, yet Eliot presents him sym- ton’s case, however, they appear just when he has pathetically, if not heroically, as he comes to Cla- been led to imagine that he has succeeded in life verton’s defense in the final actions of the play. and thus might be able at last to put his precious Eliot may be suggesting, however, through the public life behind him and relax and enjoy some love story of Charles and Monica, that this young rest. Further complicating the matter is that, in his man will not turn out the way that the young torments, he is not presented as, nor does he appear Ferry and Culverwell did for the very reason that to be, the sort of man who has any particular interest Charles has been blessed to know, through the in making amends of any kind. The world, by hon- benefit of Monica’s love for him and his for her, oring him, has made him smug and self-satisfied, a what neither of the other two did until, as in smugness and self-satisfaction that he can ill afford. Claverton’s case, it was nearly too late, and that At first, that is to say, he does not seem to suffer any is true love. serious anguish in the face of Culverwell/Gomez’s Ultimately, the theme of The Elder Statesman accusation, only befuddlement that his old pal Fred is indeed love, and the play is Eliot’s most com- should have harbored and nurtured a grudge for so plete commentary on that greatest of all literary long. The same can be said for Claverton’s initial and religious themes. This theme, meanwhile, is reaction to Mrs. Carghill’s bearing, albeit with some played out in relatively unsentimental terms in the subdued malice by now, an unextinguished flame play, although The Elder Statesman in many ways for him from their long-ago fling. partakes of the oldest stage tradition in English It is only after Claverton’s son, Michael, begins literature, the morality play. These medieval Eng- to get his own messy affairs caught up in the mix lish morality plays, as the name of the genre sug- of events, which are unfolding with an inevitabil- gests, offered clear-cut dilemmas in which goodness ity beyond Claverton’s control, that he begins to see and decency triumphed and evil behavior was duly the desperation in his situation, and in seeing that chastised and punished. Lord Claverton, a man sees much more—that with or without malice, he whom the world has honored, facing death must made mistakes, and they have seriously hurt and confront all of his mistakes and sins of his past. continue to hurt other people. The real turning point These include the normal quota of failed relation- for Claverton may not have come in the play until he ships and the bruised egos of vindictive victims, overheard Monica, his beloved and faithful daugh- but these shortcomings hardly rank with the great ter, expressing her concern for him to Charles, but sins of an older tragic literature, such as Oedipus the Claverton has by then been made ready to make King and, in more modern times, Hamlet. And that amends. That does not mean, however, yielding is Eliot’s point—Lord Claverton’s sins are no differ- to his accusers. Rather it means acceding to the ent from most people’s. In the final analysis, who demands of love. does not fail to fulfill the expectations that others Lord Claverton comes to see that it is better, have of him? Indeed, who does not fail—period? By for everyone’s sake, to bear the consequences of making Lord Claverton’s last days something less thoughtless or careless actions than to try to evade

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or escape those consequences. And he sees this of us to decide whether or not Lord Claverton was because he sees that Monica, more than a loyal really “guilty,” and if he was, then what exactly he daughter, loves him—not as her father, and not as was guilty of doing. The reader or audience member Lord Claverton, hardly, but as a fellow and trou- who approaches the potential “meaning” or “theme” bled creature who needs her care and attention. of The Elder Statesman with that caveat in mind will, She gives to him an unconditional love, and that no doubt, profit from the drama a great deal more is something that he, for all his public service, has (as would anyone who approaches any text with failed ever to give anyone. that sort of broad-minded imaginativeness). There is, however, still time for Claverton to That is to say, at one end of the spectrum of reverse the course that his life has taken, and it is likely interpretations of the meaning of The Elder that notion that enables Eliot to bring his ultimate Statesman is the enlightening tale of a man whom theme to bear. This theme makes The Elder States- the world, or at least his sizable corner of it, has man a tale of original sin and the power of and honored and who behaves as if he deserves the capacity for redemption. When Lord Claverton, honors that have been accorded him. When, how- having overheard Charles and Monica’s concerns ever, the house of cards of this public personality for him, gets his opportunity to reveal to them begins to collapse, as all such fabrications even- those “guilty secrets” that Monica cannot imagine tually must, the man who is revealed, though he her father has, he is able to clarify how broad a is not necessarily ennobled by the exposure, is at range of moral and ethical failures can be covered least liberated enough from the burden of his own under this heading.“There are many things not shortcomings, which are only human, to die a more crimes,” Claverton remarks, listing a litany of the peaceful death, which is only human, too. Dick sort of offenses that may not even be thought of as Ferry has been released from the prison of being sins—failures, aberrations, surrenders, impulses— Lord Claverton, a prison that is no less one for hav- “[m]oments we regret in the very next moment.” ing been of his own making. “The awful daring of a moment’s surrender,” the At the opposite extreme of the same spectrum, poet of The Waste Land had described the phe- though hardly opposed to it, is a worldly and vain nomenon as being more than 35 years earlier, any man who has to one degree or another abused and unforgivable act that “an age of prudence can never exploited others but is given the opportunity to retract.” And as Lord Claverton goes on to explain atone before he dies. Thus, he is allowed to revisit to Charles, what human being does not know such his past and review his ill-gotten emotional gains a moment, sooner or later. That emphasis is being so that he might make some sort of moral restitu- made more for the audience’s sake by the play- tion on this side of the grave to those whom he wright, of course, than for Charles’s sake by Lord had injured, the more the fault that he had not Claverton. There is a problem, nevertheless: Who intended them any serious harm. decides what is unforgivable? In either case, and any in between, Eliot clearly In a summarization made in 1933 during his refuses to oversentimentalize or overdramatize the Charles Eliot Norton lectureship at Harvard and situation that he presents on stage and hardly ever subsequently published in The Use of Poetry and the does he cast it in purely spiritual terms. This feat, Use of Criticism, Eliot, commenting on an earlier which he had not always accomplished in earlier attempt of his at verse a drama that could only be dramatic efforts, enables each member of the audi- “Sweeney Agonistes,” noted how drama works best ence to find his or her own acceptable level of when one of the characters on the stage and certain meaning and purpose. It is as if Eliot has found, individuals among the audience can both perceive in Claverton’s story, an objective correlative for and appreciate the most profound implications of the theme that it is never too late or impossible the dramatic action. In this manner, Eliot makes to awaken to moral responsibility to oneself and his “morality play” modern by leaving it up to each others. It is an objective correlative because Eliot

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develops that theme fully and expansively without His Problems,” “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of preaching to his audience. Seneca,” and “Four Elizabethan Dramatists”—had The point is that all interpretations of and been published earlier in a small volume titled Eliz- responses to how that thematic objective correla- abethan Essays. The essays dealing with the gener- tive plays itself out on the stage and in the mind ally more obscure dramatists—that is, all of them of the audience or reader will come out on the with the exception of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and same moral side. The play recognizes that error is Jonson—are, because of those essays’ extensive a human trait, but so is the capacity for forgive- attention to details of character, plot, and verse, ness and understanding, not just when it is directed of far more interest to the specialist than to the toward the actions of others but, as vital, when general reader. such forgiveness and understanding are directed at one’s own actions. In the final analysis, The Elder SYNOPSIS Statesman makes those two terms, forgiveness and In 1956, toward the end of a literary career that understanding, virtually synonymous. It certainly had spanned nearly a half-century, Eliot issued makes them complementary. in a new edition a compilation of these origi- nal essays on Elizabethan drama and dramatists. Titled simply Essays on Elizabethan Drama, this new collection omitted several of those pieces Essays on Elizabethan Drama listed earlier. As he explained in his preface, the celebrated essay on Hamlet’s “problems” as (1956) well as the longer essay on Shakespeare and the essay titled “Four Elizabethan Dramatists,” whose Beginning in 1918 with the publication of an essay subtitle he now labeled “somewhat pretentious,” on Christopher Marlowe and continuing until 1934, struck him, upon reconsideration, as embarrass- when he published an essay on John Marston, Eliot ingly callow and impudent. Eliot is well within was frequently busy with critical analyses of Eliza- his rights as the author to dismiss out of hand one bethan drama and dramatists. In addition to the of the most influential critical documents of the two just named, these included, in chronological 20th century, meaning his essay on Hamlet. By order, essays on Ben Jonson (1919), Philip Mass- this time, he had achieved all the respect that a inger (1920), Thomas Middleton (1927), Cyril man of letters might ever hope to, and modesty is Tourneur (1930), Thomas Heywood (1931), and never unbecoming. John Ford (1932). In addition there were two essays In any event, the net result was that, in this on WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, including, from 1919, new collection, he limited the selection by leading “Hamlet and His Problems,” which introduced the off, as a sort of introduction, with the extended idea of the objective correlative, and “Shakespeare essay on the mid-16th-century English translations and the Stoicism of Seneca” (1927). Rounding out of Seneca, “Seneca in Elizabethan Translation.” the list were “Seneca in Elizabethan Translation,” That choice makes perfect sense because it is uni- also from 1927, and “Four Elizabethan Dramatists” versally agreed that these 10 translations, printed (from 1924 and incorrectly identified in the table for the most part between 1559 and 1567, gave of contents for Selected Essays as “The Elizabethan impetus to the subsequent flowering, in the 1580s Dramatists”). The last named was intriguingly sub- and 1590s, of those original dramas in English that titled “Preface to an Unwritten Book.” are now synonymous with the Elizabethan period. All these essays, which had been published in The rest of the volume, meanwhile, would collect a variety of sources, including the Egoist and The the essays on all the other dramatists exclusive of Times Literary Supplement, were collected in Selected Shakespeare. Those, he explained, again on a mod- Essays, 1917–1932, although three—“Hamlet and est note, are worth the rereading, if for no other

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reason than that they contain many good quota- “Four Elizabethan Dramatists” (1924) tions—by which Eliot meant from the playwrights, The “four Elizabethan dramatists” whom Eliot not himself. had in mind were John Webster (1580–1625), Not to take issue with him, the fact nevertheless the author of The Duchess of Malfi; George Chap- remains that from this vantage point, his observa- man (1559–1634), renowned for his translation tions on these various dramatists are of more value of Homer; Thomas Middleton (1580–1627), who and interest when his aim is directed toward ascer- penned Women Beware Women; and Cyril Tour- taining how and where each particular dramatist neur (1575–1626), who wrote The Atheist’s Trag- succeeded, or failed to succeed, in marking out his edy. Believing that “the theatre [in England] has own theatrical territory. It is insights such as those reached a point at which a revolution in princi- that permit the reader to see an embryonic theory ples should take place,” Eliot intended his never- of drama, or at least of dramatic writing, develop- completed study, to which his essay was to be a ing, one that Eliot might perfect in future years in preface, to scrutinize these four dramatists as practice. if Elizabethan drama had been precisely what it Since the essay on the Senecan translations and was not—“a drama formed within a conventional the essay on Marlowe are dealt with at length else- scheme.” Eliot takes this tack because Elizabethan where in this volume, they are not addressed here. drama’s “weakness . . . is not its defects of realism, Furthermore, in keeping with the spirit of a like- but its attempt at realism; not its conventions, but mindedness that made Eliot regather them here to its lack of conventions.” Or, as he asserts a little the exclusion of other, better-known pieces, these later: “What is fundamentally objectionable is that remaining essays will be treated as a coherent unit in Elizabethan drama there has been no firm prin- touching on a handful of core critical issues, rather ciple of what is to be postulated as a convention than as the apparently disparate pieces they were and what is not.” otherwise intended to be. Here we may be per- Although Eliot never got past proposing such mitted to take our cue from Eliot himself. For all an approach in “Four Elizabethan Dramatists” (and that he claims now to feel that his original subtitle ended up never writing at length on Webster or to “Four Elizabethan Dramatists”—“Preface to an Chapman either), it is with that exact approach in Unwritten Book”—was pretentious, this 1956 vol- mind now, one that seeks to discern conventions as ume, Essays on Elizabethan Drama, can comfortably if there were any, that the following consideration be regarded as that “unwritten book.” That said, of each of the essays on the various dramatists that it would do well to begin this present examination Eliot did, in the end, deal with—that is to say, Jon- with that essay, which, although Eliot omitted it son, Heywood, Tourneur, Middleton, Massinger, from this later collection as well, still provides some and Ford—will take place. Indeed, by beginning clues to his larger intentions. with Eliot’s essay on Jonson, the earliest of the lot What seems to have so attracted Eliot to the aside from his essay on Marlowe, the reader will Elizabethan stage in the first place, and certainly be well on the way toward understanding the sub- what he found once he had situated his interests stance of Eliot’s stance toward Elizabethan drama there, was a national theater in the earliest stages as a playwriting workshop in progress. of its own development, yet one that produced nonetheless in very short order—less than three “Ben Jonson” (1919) decades—a body of work and a corps of literary Of all the various dramatists that the epoch pro- figures that have come to a place of unquestioned duced, three stand out in literary history as being prominence on the world stage. What worked for worthy of exceptional merit and attention, and the Elizabethans and what can still be seen to work, they are Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson (1574– as well as what failed then or no longer pleases now, 1637). Of the three, Jonson presents the most prob- all provide vividly accessible lessons in stagecraft lems as a genuinely great dramatist for the simple and dramatic verse not easily come by otherwise. reason that he produced no outstandingly great

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tragedy. Indeed, while his Volpone and The Alche- about a different kind of poetry, dramatic poetry, mist are easily among the most perfect comedies where the poet must take on many parts to be ever penned in any language, anyone aside from successful. adept scholars of the period would be hard-pressed In another, much later essay, “The Three Voices to name a single one of his tragedies. of Poetry,” Eliot will identify dramatic poetry as the Eliot’s point is well taken. If the translations of third voice. But in order to modulate that third Seneca into English gave Elizabethan drama its two voice successfully, Eliot makes clear, one must most salient fearures—the so-called blood trage- have a distinct command of the first, or lyric, voice. dies, or revenge tragedies, and a delight in high Were Eliot making this same distinction in this language, or bombast—then it would seem that the essay on Jonson, then Eliot would be saying that very spirit and challenge of this first age of English Jonson, eschewing his own lyric voice, tries in his drama would be tragedy. Yet one of the English tragedies to sound like the other tragic poets of language’s finest dramatic poets, Jonson, failed at his time and so ends up not sounding like any- that challenge. It is that literary paradox—Jonson’s thing other than stale conventions. With satire, failure as a tragic poet—that Eliot proposes to however, perhaps because he felt more comfortable essay, and his take on how that occurred is espe- with his own voice in that medium, Jonson is able cially telling. to project not learning and high art but genuine Eliot does not hesitate to observe the critical characters. In Eliot’s view, that is what carries the commonplace that “the weight of [Jonson’s] pedan- day for any dramatic composition. The idea is for tic learning . . . burdened his two tragic failures,” the dramatist to be present as a personality in tone but he feels there was something more at stake. and in style, but not in person or in opinion; other- wise the drama fails. Jonson’s Catiline fails, Eliot argues, “not because it is too laboured and conscious, but because it is “Thomas Middleton” (1927) not conscious enough.” As he explains, Jonson’s At the opposite extreme from Jonson, whose pecu- failure comes about because he was “not alert to liar learning stands out so prominently in his work his own idiom” but rather attempts to conform as to mar it with the error of his personality, is his idiom “not to the conventions of antiquity, Thomas Middleton. “Of all the Elizabethan dra- which he had exquisitely under control, but to matists,” Eliot notes, “Middleton seems the most the conventions of tragico-historical drama of his impersonal,” and yet Eliot makes this impersonality time.” In summary, it is not Jonson’s erudition that of Middleton’s not so much a flaw as a distraction. sinks his Catiline, in Eliot’s view, but Jonson’s fail- “His greatness is not that of a peculiar personality, ure to form that erudition to his own needs. Eliot but of a great artist or artisan,” yet one who was writes of Jonson’s shortcoming in this regard: “The “merely a name, a voice, . . . [with] no point of creation of a work of art, . . . of a character in a view, . . . neither sentimental nor cynical.” Though drama, consists in the transfusion of the personal- his is the “name which associates six or seven great ity, or, in a deeper sense, the life of the author into plays,” it is as if, for Eliot, Middleton fails neverthe- the character.” less because that soul of the shaping artist, the cre- That is not only a mouthful, but in this essay, ative genius, is not reflected anywhere in his plays. which succeeds Eliot’s earlier and more notable “He has no message,” Eliot says of him finally, “he essay from 1919, “Tradition and the Individual Tal- is merely a great recorder” of other men’s thoughts ent,” with its famous formulation of the impersonal and feelings. theory of poetry, Eliot may seem to be going against “Thomas Heywood” (1931) the grain of that latter essay’s plea for a “separation In Eliot’s hands, Heywood (1575–1641), author between the man who suffers and the mind which of A Woman Killed with Kindness, is visited with a creates.” Another way of reading Eliot’s reserva- similar fate. Heywood’s drama manifests a “sensi- tions here, however, is to realize that he is speaking bility [which] is merely that of ordinary people in

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ordinary life,” thereby reflecting an equally pedes- “John Ford” (1932) trian intellect. “Behind the motions of [Heywood’s] The various essays being as widely spaced as they personages, the shadows of the human world, there are, having been published over the span of a is no moral synthesis,” Eliot complains, “no vision, decade and more, it is interesting to see Eliot’s final none of the artist’s power to give undefinable unity.” two essays in the collection, commentaries on Ford These are shortcomings found in the drama, true, and John Marston, follow the same pattern that has but again Eliot seems to imply that that is because been developing thus far. Among the citations of of a defect in the personality of the artist, which the lengthy passages and details of plot and character, dramatic artist can only make manifest in his art. there are the same telling generalizations regard- ing the relationship between the character of the “Philip Massinger” (1920) drama and the character of the author. About John The same defect of being a less than original thinker Ford, best known as the author of the Maid’s Trag- or personality behind the drama detracts as well edy, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, and The Changeling, from Massinger (1583–1640), whose characters Eliot once again is heard complaining that Ford’s manifest “inherit[ed] . . . traditions of conduct,” verse lacks any genuine substance and is, instead, without Massinger’s “either criticizing or informing “the result of the stock expressions of feeling accu- them from his own experience.” As a result, Mass- mulated by the greater men.” The ultimate effect inger, whose most noteworthy work is The Roman is that such drama lacks purpose as well, making it Actor, rendered the conventions of Elizabethan “tend towards mere sensationalism.” morality “ridiculous” because, as a man of great lit- Echoing in this 1932 essay the comment on the erary talent but “a paltry imagination,” he could not personality of the verse dramatist that he had made fit into those conventions the actions and beliefs of in his 1919 essay on Jonson, Eliot comes ever more “passionate, complete human characters.” emphatically to the point: “[A] dramatic poet can- “Cyril Tourneur” (1930) not create characters of the greatest intensity of life In this process of assessing the characterizations unless his personages, in their reciprocal actions and, so, the whole worth of dramatic poets based and behaviour in their story, are somehow drama- on what depth of character the poet himself seems tizing, in no obvious form, an action or struggle for to have possessed, inasmuch as that can be dis- harmony in the soul of the poet.” And then Eliot cerned in his plots and themes, it is Cyril Tourneur goes one step further, proposing that, in Shake- who, paradoxically, fares best. It is paradoxical speare, the dramatic poet is perfectly realized for because he is best known now for the depravities the very reason, once more, that his poetry is “to be depicted in his masterpiece, The Revenger’s Trag- united by one significant, consistent, and develop- edy. That play, says Eliot, expresses “an intense and ing personality.” unique and horrible vision of life,” one in which “John Marston” (1934) “characters [are] practising the grossest vices.” For In this, the last of the lot, a 1934 essay on Marston all that horror, however, the work is a credit to the (1576–1634), who is renowned for his The Malcon- playwright who, like “a highly sensitive adolescent tent, the thread of this motif regarding personality with a gift for words,” charges the play with a per- and drama is picked up again and repeated. From sonality that forms the center of this vision of life. Marston’s verse, Eliot observes, readers “get the In that manner, the characters “seem merely to be impression of having to do with a personality which spectres projected from the poet’s inner world of is at least unusual and difficult to catalogue.” With nightmare, some horror beyond words.” This very Marston’s work, Eliot notes, “[w]e are aware . . . “loathing and horror of life itself” is a triumph, that we have to do with a positive, powerful, and Eliot declares, for the very reason that it is a part unique personality.” Ultimately, however, whether of life and, far more important, because it is so it be Marston or any other playwright, the creator’s perfectly realized. mark is on his creation.

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In the earlier essay on Jonson, Eliot had noted If so, the territory that he was clearly staking that the “small worlds” that artists create differ out for himself to begin with was the Elizabethan from our real world not only in magnitude; “they period, along with the 17th century, where he was differ in kind also.” For Eliot, it is the personality also “publishing,” as the saying goes. There he of the dramatic poet that determines the quality already had produced notable work on such poets of that kind of difference. The distinction between and essayists as JOHN DONNE, Lancelot Andrewes, what is occurring on the stage and what is being Andrew Marvell, and John Dryden, including the worked out in the soul of the poet creates not just 1921 essay “The Metaphysical Poets,” in which he a small world of its own kind but, Eliot adds in this had introduced the notion of the dissociation of essay on Marston, “a kind of doubleness” as well, sensibility. All that said, and while recognizing the rather as if the play presents symbols of a dream or positive and productive direction that his career a nightmare that have their own reality and mean- as a poet and verse dramatist continued to take in ing but that depend for their dramatic indepen- spite of his own misgivings, there is still much of dence and impact nevertheless on the authenticity value for the general reader to find in the body of of the poet’s engagement with his own angels and work that Eliot produced on the Elizabethan dra- demons. Eliot concludes that what he discovers in matists. For if there is, in hindsight, any particular Marston is representative of a “deep discontent and program behind his interest in Elizabethan drama, rebelliousness so frequent among the Elizabethan it seems to have been an evolving one, particularly dramatists.” Eliot adds, “[Marston] is, like some of as he became more and more engaged with writing the greatest of them, occupied in saying something verse for the stage, first with the abortive “Sweeney else than appears in the literal actions and charac- Agonistes,” begun in 1923, and ultimately with the ters whom he manipulates.” success of Murder in the Cathedral in 1935. Embedded among his specific commentaries CRITICAL COMMENTARY on these Elizabethan dramatists and their work, By the time Eliot was composing the majority of commentaries that would otherwise be of specific the essays, between 1924 and 1931, he had had a interest only to the specialist and student, are the change of heart. His earlier criticism had been writ- gems of critical insights into the creative process. ten in the spirit of a practicing poet exploring his Eliot’s working out of the principles that make art through the practice of others. Following the for a coherent literary craftsmanship constitute publication of The Waste Land in 1922, however, the heart of the criticism for which Eliot remains Eliot had begun to doubt his ability to continue rightly renowned to this day. Further embedded writing significant poetry, and, in the meantime, within those insights is an abstract of Eliot’s view of his editorship of his own international review, the the relation among personality, poetry, and moral Criterion, and his work as poetry editor with Faber order that makes for effective stage drama, a field & Gwyer (later Faber & Faber), were giving him of endeavor in which Eliot would himself become more and more opportunity for his literary obser- more and more engaged as the years passed. vations to make a mark as a literary scholarship Indeed, time after time, in this workshop of and criticism in their own right. There is reason to Elizabethan drama, one finds Eliot either calling imagine, although Eliot was continuing to publish for a more discernible presence of the personal- significant poetry, including “The Hollow Men” in ity of the author in his work or faulting the work 1925 and “Ash-Wednesday” in 1930, that he was when that presence is felt, and yet the personal- now perceiving himself as that generalist called “a ity proves to be inadequate to the requirements of man of letters,” one whose renown as a significant great drama. Those requirements seem to be, fur- literary voice and whose recognized critical acu- thermore, that the action that is being worked out men, erudition, and authority, not to mention con- on the stage must be significantly worthwhile to nections, would permit him to carve out a new deserve the audience’s attention and yet must also career as a high-ranking literary journalist. be the equivalent of a struggle, an agon, of some

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sort within the poet that is itself genuine and not tastes were already tending toward Seneca’s bom- merely made up for the sake of producing a drama. bast and blood, as the work of these native-tongue As in the case of Marston, there must be in the playwrights reflects. drama “the sense of something behind, more real In the final analysis, of course, it does not matter than any of his personages and their action.” In whether Eliot’s assessments and other arguments other words, without that sense that there is some- were right or wrong or even, for that matter, origi- thing at stake for the poet in his drama, the sense nal. Their importance now is to be found in what that there is something at stake on the stage will they can tell us of Eliot’s way of thinking with not manifest itself. Nor can the poet falsify his own regard to both producing and interpreting drama personal engagement with the stuff of the drama, and dramatic verse at about the same time that he not if it must find its source in his very soul. was beginning to embark more and more frequently One must be prepared, nevertheless, to take on that course of action. Eliot summarized what everything that Eliot says here in the sizable col- lessons he learned in 1953 in his essay “The Three lection of his earlier work on the Elizabethans with Voices of Poetry.” There, as an example of great several grains of salt. For one thing, his assessments poetry that is not good dramatic verse, Eliot speaks of the relative merits of this assortment of play- of “the minor Elizabethan dramatists” (although wrights who are, with the exception of Marlowe the example he winds up having in mind is none and Jonson, comparatively minor are extremely other than Christopher Marlowe and his Tambur- subjective, and so is his individual assessment of laine). In their plays, Eliot says, these “passages of the depths of each’s poet’s soul as a personality. great poetry . . . are in both respects out of place,” Then again, he is not speaking about the “real” for they are “fine enough to preserve the play for Marston or the “real” Ford or Tourneur or even ever as literature,” yet they are so inappropriate Shakespeare so much as of the impression of a rul- otherwise “as to prevent the play from being a dra- ing personality that the words and actions of any matic masterpiece.” one particular drama creates. His argument, then, Eliot’s concern is how a dramatist may write a that a vapid presentation must find its source in poetry that is not merely poetry but is live language a superficial personality, while chicken and egg in “in which characters may be said to live,” even its mixing of causalities is more descriptive than though the audience knows that it is all made up. prescriptive even if Eliot makes it sound more like To illustrate his meaning, Eliot recalls composing the latter than the former. Surely, if one text does the choral sections of his first theatrical success, not engage attention and interest as powerfully as Murder in the Cathedral. The chorus is composed another, the cause must lie somewhere, and a fail- of the women of Canterbury, and as Eliot explains ure of personality on the part of the poet is as likely the task of applying, in this instance, what he calls a place as any to find it. the third voice, which is the poet speaking as char- There are problems with Eliot’s assessment, acters to other characters, he notes how he “had too, that the Elizabethans offer a fruitful venue for to make some effort to identify myself with these study. As he sees it, their entire dramatic move- women, instead of merely identifying them with ment was wrongheaded to begin with, based as it myself.” was on attempts to mimic the extravagances of For it to be great dramatic poetry, the women of ancient Roman tragedy, which were themselves Canterbury, to explain Eliot’s example, must not extravagant attempts to mimic the tragedies of the sound like poets but like women of Canterbury. classical Greek stage. For one thing, this explana- And yet—and here is where the poet’s personal- tion does not make any attempt to account for the ity, though nullified, sustains both the drama and set of cultural, literary, and liguistic circumstances, the verse—this dialogue, so clearly not the poet’s, not to mention history, that accounts for a group of must nonetheless be seen and heard “somehow [to individuals’ undertaking a project to translate 10 of be] dramatizing, in no obvious form, an action or Seneca’s tragedies into English. At the very least, struggle for harmony in the soul of the poet,” to

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quote again the key portion of that passage from tion of Pound, published anonymously, was issued “John Ford.” as a book-length pamphlet by Alfred A. Knopf in Essays on Elizabethan Drama is a unique col- New York on November 12. lection among Eliot’s prose. It entails an almost purely literary venture on style and technique and SYNOPSIS the principles of composition and creative impulses The title of the piece now under consideraton, “Ezra that give poetic vision dramatic form. Nowhere in Pound: His Metric and His Poetry,” was suggested it is there polemic on the current state of contem- by Pound himself, and the short book was issued in porary culture and the deplorable shambles that the conjunction with Knopf’s publication of Lustra, a sociopolitical scene has become. When read and volume of Pound’s poetry. It was Pound’s idea, too, reviewed in conjunction with “The Three Voices that the critical appreciation be published anony- of Poetry,” which it, as a collected volume, suc- mously so that it would not appear that Pound ceeded by some three years, Essays on Elizabethan and Eliot were little more than a mutual admira- Drama allows readers to hear the closing remarks tion society advancing the cause of each other’s that Eliot makes in “Three Voices” with some poetry for self-aggrandizing motives. It was Pound, genuine insight into their full import. There Eliot after all, who had gotten Eliot’s “The Love Song of reports, remembering perhaps his similar comments J. Alfred Prufrock” published in Harriet Monroe’s in “Ben Jonson,” how much “the work of a great Poetry magazine in 1915, who had secured him an dramatists . . . constitutes a world.” He is refer- influential position as assistant editor of the Ego- ring specifically to Shakespeare in this case, but he ist, and who had been instrumental as well in the elaborates: “Each character speaks for himself, but Egoist Press’s issuing Eliot’s first collection, Pru- no other poet could have found those words for frock and Other Observations, in 1917. While no him to speak.” one would ever seriously doubt that Pound was Therefore, if readers look for Shakespeare, they engaged in these activities on Eliot’s behalf for any “will find him only in the characters that he cre- reason other than what he expressed in his famous ated.” This is, as Eliot has pointed out in innu- statement to Monroe that Eliot “had made himself merable instances previously, a reciprocal event, modern all on his own,” it is not difficult to under- inasmuch as those are the characters that no one stand Pound’s reluctance to have it appear that the but Shakespeare could have created in the first two poets were “scratching each other’s back,” as place. In that way, the quality and depth of any the saying goes. And that would have been how it dramatic composition is a reflection, a projection, would have appeared—like a payoff—had Knopf’s of the quality and depth of the personality of the critical estimation of Pound’s work been published dramatist who engendered it. the same year under Eliot’s name. Such matters of critical integrity aside, from this vantage point it is invaluable to have available to us Eliot’s evaluation of Pound’s importance as a poet “Ezra Pound: His Metric from a time when they were both just coming into their own on the global literary scene. Such a liv- and Poetry” (1917) ing record could not possibly have been re-created after the fact, no matter how thoroughgoing one Eliot included two critical pieces from very early may ever attempt to make such “reminiscences” in his career as a poet and critic in his final collec- out to be. tion of prose criticism, To Criticize the Critic—“Ezra The Eliot study, as one might suspect, is by and Pound: His Metric and Poetry” and “Reflections on large an overview of Pound’s career as a poet to Vers Libre.” Both of them were published in 1917. date. A generous helping of selected, illustrative The essay on VERS LIBRE, or free verse, came out in passages from among Pound’s poetry is mixed with the New Statesman on March 3, while the apprecia- selected comments, both negative and positive,

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that the poetry has inspired in various newspaper It is this totality of the poetic experience that and other kinds of reviews, all held together by Pound’s new poetics is achieving, and to that list of a chronological running commentary containing accomplishments can be added the image. “Radi- Eliot’s own thoughts on Pound’s contribution’s ant nodes,” Pound himself would call images, by worth and significance. Pound was always one to which he meant highly concentrated visual, aural, thrive on, indeed, relish, literary controversy, so and conceptual experiences, emphasizing again the Eliot must style much of his commentary in a con- spirit of a nothing-wasted economy to the verse line, tentiously defensive vein, whereby he is as much so that what is spare is not by any means also bare, introducing Pound to a larger reading public as but rather lean and tough and to the point. Poets making his notoriety as a somewhat iconoclastic may have always spoken in terms of the image, but “modernist” known, if not a cause for quiet cel- while they certainly would have always created and ebration. No doubt Pound deserved the mantle used them, it is Pound who made the poet’s primary of champion of the new and liberating that Eliot craft the crafting of images, giving rise, indeed, to bestowed upon him. the imagist movement in poetry. At a certain point After the briefest survey of Pound’s poetic career it started to become overdone—the American poet to date, Eliot gets into the first source of major Amy Lowell would begin composing entire poems controversy: Pound’s identification in the mind of composed of little more than one stunning visual the reading public as the instigator of vers libre or image after another, until the whole effect of an free verse. Not so much in Pound’s defense—that intensified economy was lost. At the time that Eliot would imply that the charges had substance—as in was writing, however, the movement still had a an effort to clarify the term, Eliot astutely observes great deal of creative vigor attached to it. that “any verse is called ‘free’ by people whose Eliot does not want Pound to appear to be noth- ears are not accustomed to it.” That said, Eliot ing more than a technical innovator, however, who emphasizes as well that one can experiment only is constantly moving on into new territories sim- when one has become, like Pound, “a poet who ply by virtue of their being new, so he defends has worked tirelessly with rigid forms and different Pound against the charge that he introduced into systems of metrics.” the contemporary British literary scene futurism, More than any of those arguments, however, a movement that amounted to little more than Eliot points to what the free verse movement has the celebration of the new for the sake of its new- achieved for contemporary verse in general. The ness. Rather, Eliot portrays Pound as a poet who is new poetics that Pound has championed, Eliot constantly maturing, echoing in that defense the argues, has liberated the verse line from precon- language and ideas that he, Eliot, would have been ceived constraints, so that it has become “impos- using at roughly the same time in his 1919 essay sible to write like Shelley, leaving blanks for the “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” In that adjectives, or like Swinburne, whose adjectives are essay, Eliot argues that no one can be a poet past practically blanks.” In these remarks is found that his 25th year without having developed what he lifelong emphasis of Eliot’s on a verse that reflects calls “the historical sense.” natural speech rhythms and what Eliot calls a com- In this present essay on Pound, the young Eliot mon language. Similarly, his work in free verse has (he would have been entering his 30th year in also enabled Pound to find a new music in the 1917) seems to write a virtual gloss on the pre- poetic line, a musicality that does not, however, cept of the historical scene when he says of Pound, leave the poetry “destitute of meaning.” Instead, in explaining the constant transformations in his Pound’s verse has “always a definite emotion interest and verse style, that “[a]ny poet, if he is to behind it,” expressing both “a visual beauty and survive as a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year, must beauty of sound,” to the end that “[t]he freedom of alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will Pound’s verse is rather a state of tension between have different emotions to express.” Eliot closes his free and strict.” appreciation of Pound’s achievements to date by

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observing that “Mr. Pound has moved again,” this Statesman, go into production on the London stage. time into the first versions of the poems that would As its title suggests (an earlier choice of title, The become the Cantos, Pound’s epic of history that, Rest Cure, had been as apt), the story focuses on a from 1920 onward, occupied virtually all of his cre- man preparing to exit the scene after many decades ative attention. “If the reader fails to like them,” as a celebrated public servant. One should not look Eliot comments in his closing remark, “he has prob- for too many other resemblances between Eliot and ably omitted some step in his progress.” Lord Claverton, that play’s dying protagonist, but it is hard not to suspect that there may indeed be CRITICAL COMMENTARY others lying just beneath the surface details. During the last year of his life, Eliot had been busily Then, in 1964, Eliot prepared his 1915 Harvard preparing what would be a final compilation of his doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge and the Objects work, and that compilation, To Criticize the Critic, of Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley,” was published posthumously in 1965, the year of for publication by Faber & Faber under the title his death. (He passed away during the first week in Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. January.) While any such compilation always has Bradley. The two 1917 essays seem to fall into the something in the nature of a retrospective about it, same category of endeavor, as he revisits, whether it is intriguing nevertheless that Eliot would reach in response to “many requests” or not, his own dis- as far back as to 1917 and the very beginnings of tant and youthful past with an eye not toward revis- his career as a literary critic by including the intro- ing its accomplishments but rather toward savoring duction to Pound’s poetry and the essay on vers the rich headiness of its achievements. Those were libre in the mix. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, in a short the days, not just for both Eliot and his friend, men- note introducing the final collection, commented tor, and free verse compatriot, Ezra Pound, but for that he had included the two items from 1917 “in the modernist era itself. Any reader wanting a good response to many requests,” but their inclusion also introduction to the early Pound or even just to this seems to be a further indication that he was more exciting phase of English-language literary history, and more engaging himself in projects partly for in which Pound figured so prominently that for their retrospective value but partly with an eye, many it is synonymous with his name, would be too, toward directing the exact nature and content well served studying this essay of Eliot’s. of the literary legacy that he would leave behind. “To Criticize the Critic,” for example, the volume’s title essay, despite its pretenses to being an over- view of the kinds and nature of literary criticism, “Eyes That Last I Saw is nothing more or less than Eliot’s own lengthy summation of his considerable contribution to the in Dreams” (1924) history of 20th-century literary criticism in English. Nor is that the only example. See MINOR POEMS. By the late 1950s, Eliot had been in chronic ill health for quite some time. While it would not be fair to say that he was anticipating his passing, it would be foolish not to think that frequent bouts Family Reunion, The (1939) of ill health were making him more and more con- tinually mindful of his mortality. By the time that Eliot began work on The Family Reunion in early he was preparing what would be the last collection 1936, shortly after completing “Burnt Norton,” the of his prose, he had been looking back and taking poem that would eventually become the first of stock for the past half-decade and more, in keep- the Four Quartets. He is reported to have regarded ing with a person advancing into his 70s. The year The Family Reunion as a melancholy play and a 1959 had seen his latest verse drama, The Elder more pessimistic work than any other that he had

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written to date. Most readers would agree with ment of the tragedy of Agamemnon, the leader this assessment. At the very least, the writing was of the Greek forces in the Trojan War, who was slow and painstaking, a first draft not being com- slain upon his victorious return from the war at his pleted until possibly as late as November 1937. doorstep by his unfaithful wife, Clytemnestra, and At the suggestion of the stage director E. MARTIN her lover, Aegisthus, and of the subsequent actions BROWNE, to whom Eliot then read the play, it went of the dead king’s son, Orestes, takes to avenge his through several more drafts and the usual revisions father’s murder. in rehearsal before opening at London’s Westmin- Any reasonably well-educated member of Eliot’s ster Theatre on March 21, 1939, to a disappointing or subsequent college-educated generations would five-week run. have been exposed to Aeschylus in the sophomore year of his or her undergraduate career, if not in THE CLASSICAL BACKGROUND high school. Eliot would most certainly have known Eliot’s concept for The Family Reunion is not this. The question rather is what Eliot would have entirely original, since the play, in keeping with expected his readers to make of the allusions to Eliot’s practice of making use of past literary and Aeschylus, for they are what one must focus on, mythical sources that had long been a hallmark after all is said and done. The allusions to Aeschy- of his poetic style and technique, harks back to lus must lend themselves somewhat to a deeper a classical tragedy, the fourth-century B.C. Greek appreciation of what Eliot is himself imagining that playwright Aeschylus’s great trilogy, the Ores- he is about as he composes the various works, each teia, on whose third and concluding drama, The successively building on the other, in which those Eumenides, the Eliot play is loosely based. More allusions occur. to the point and far more intriguing, the Aeschy- In the case of “Sweeney among the Nightin- lus trilogy provides to one degree or another the gales,” the epigraph, quoted in the original Greek, backdrop for two other significant works of Eliot’s, reads in translation, “I am struck with a fatal blow of which one is the abandoned earlier attempt within.” These are the words spoken by Agamem- at an original verse drama, “Sweeney Agonistes.” non as Clytemnestra and Aegisthus together strike The other is “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” the fatal blow after having lured Agamemnon into one of the quatrain poems from 1917–18, during his palace. This is the key dramatic action of the that period of somewhat daring experimentation first play in the Aeschylan cycle, the Agamemnon. on Eliot’s part that had followed the early suc- Without going too deeply into all the other intrica- cesses of the poetry that would eventually make cies of Eliot’s very complicated poem, the reader up his first volume, Prufrock and Other Observa- familiar with the motives for the two lovers’ slay- tions (1917). ing Agamemnon at the moment of his triumph is When any poet, let alone one with such a cel- reminded of the vagaries both of human nature and ebrated predilection for intertextual layerings as of fortune or fate. Eliot, consistently alludes to a particular work in a Agamemnon had 10 years earlier sacrificed his relatively coherent thematic manner, the attentive and Clytemnestra’s daughter Iphigenia in order for reader is obliged to take notice. Such is the case the Greek fleet to set sail from the port at Aulis with regard to Eliot’s persistent turning to Aeschy- to accomplish the victory that he was now hoping lus’s retelling of the story surrounding the hero to celebrate. The only problem was that he had Orestes, from whose name the title of the trilogy never told Clytemnestra of his plans to kill their is taken. Clearly, Eliot sees some key significances daughter in order to placate the goddess Artemis. in the tragic tale of the House of Atreus, of which For his own part, meanwhile, Aegisthus is taking Orestes was, at least in literary terms, the last of vengeance on Agamemnon not for anything that the line. Nor is it an exercise in Eliot’s own equally Agamemnon had done to him, but for the actions celebrated obscurity and often opaque wit when of Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, who had mur- Eliot calls to his reader’s mind Aeschylus’s treat- dered Aegisthus’s two brothers in order to get even

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with their father, Thyestes, Atreus’s brother, who his father’s killer, has now become, having killed had committed adultery with Atreus’s wife. Most his own mother. On that note Aeschylus’s Libation readers familiar with this bloody history of murder, Bearers ends, and if Eliot’s uses such a bleak and slaughter, and betrayal would glean from Eliot’s awful note to any purpose by having it introduce allusion to it in “Sweeney among the Nightingales” “Sweeney Agonistes,” it is because that unfinished the notion that, whether it be history, myth, or the verse drama of his own has within it many powerful tawdry pages of a contemporary scandal sheet in hints, shared by the lugubriously lewd Sweeney in a which such tales are encountered, “human kind / cryptically morbid language, of unspeakable crimes Cannot bear very much reality.” (That is how Eliot and unspoken guilt. will phrase the dilemma in a much later poem, By the time that Eliot composed The Family “Burnt Norton.”) And human beings cannot bear Reunion, then, it seems that he was ready to let it because, perhaps, reality itself is not very kind, out all the stops with regard to this interest in the nor is humanity. Aeschylan Oresteia cycle. The poetry of The Family Be that as it may, the same reader will later Reunion, a stage play, is meant primarily to be per- encounter Eliot utilizing Aeschylus again when formed, so unlike in the printed text of “Sweeney Eliot cites in his epigraph to “Sweeney Agonistes” among the Nightingales” or the text of “Sweeney words spoken by Orestes in the second play in the Agonistes,” Eliot does not provide an epigraph to Aeschylan cycle, the Choephoroi or Libation Bear- the text. Any reader familiar with Aeschylus, how- ers. By the time of the action of this sequel to the ever, will not miss the point that this is another Agamemnon, 10 years have passed since Agamem- work alluding to the great Greek dramatist’s mas- non’s murder, and his son, Orestes, who was absent terpiece when he or she spies, at the bottom, the from home at the time of his father’s fatal home- list of persons in the drama, The Eumenides. The coming, returns under an assumed name to his reader who, once more, is familiar with Aeschylus’s father’s palace in Argos, where Clytemnestra and Oresteian trilogy would instantly recognize these Aegisthus continue to rule. By a ruse, Orestes gains characters, whose name in Greek literally means access to the royal couple, whereupon he reveals his the “good spirits.” Not only are they the benevolent true identity and slays them both, thereby taking creatures into whom the terrifying Furies are even- vengeance for his father’s murder at their hands. tually transformed, but The Eumenides is the title of Although Orestes had acted as much under the the third and last play in the Aeschylan cycle. orders of the god Apollo as through any initiative That reader will also suddenly become aware of his own, there is, however, a fly in the oint- that, whether or not Eliot was intending this effect ment of justice’s now having been achieved. For from his first use of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon way in the process of killing his father’s killers, as a back in 1917, by 1936 and the beginning of his good son must, he had also killed his own mother, work on The Family Reunion, an orderly pattern has Clytemnestra, as a good son must not. This brings emerged in his use of the Greek tragedians recast- the reader to the moment that Eliot selects for the ing of the mythic tale of the fall of the House of epigraph from the Choephori that provides one of Atreus, of which Orestes was the last living male the two epigraphs to “Sweeney Agonistes”: “You heir. Furthermore, and more important, that pat- don’t see them, you don’t—but I see them: they are tern tells the interested reader much about Eliot’s hunting me down, I must move on.” thematic intentions for his own loose adaptation The “they” who are now pursuing Orestes are of the myth in The Family Reunion. There is a the Furies or Harpies, horrible beasts that are half progress to the sequence of Eliot’s allusions to the woman, half vulture, whose task it is from time Aeschylus trilogy that coincides with Aeschylus’s immemorial to harry the parricide or parent- own development of the story of Agamemnon’s killer, which is what Orestes, for all that he has murder, the equally deadly consequences for his obeyed the command of the gods and the require- killers, and, finally, the expiation of the guilt for ments of human culture in taking vengeance on those killings. To wit, in the same order as these

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three key actions unfold in Aeschylus, the epigraph is signaling to the astute members of the audience to “Sweeney among the Nightingales” alludes to that an allusion to Aeschylus underlies the play the moment that Agamemnon is struck down, the and that the agon or struggle is entering its final one to “Sweeney Agonistes” to the moment that phase as the play begins. So, then, the resolution of Orestes becomes aware of the Furies that will now the consequent moral conflict modeled in Aeschy- hound him for the blood guilt of having slain a lus is coming one’s way, although, as in The Waste parent, and the appearance of the Eumenides in Land, one must first traverse the desert of doubt The Family Reunion that apparently will conclude and despair that the play will now portray. the mythic cycle of guilt with an act of expiation and atonement, symbolized in the third part of the SYNOPSIS Aeschylus trilogy, The Eumenides. The Persons of the Drama For it is in that final chapter of the saga that The Monchenseys, a family of landed British aris- Orestes, pursued by the Furies, ventures to Delphi, tocrats, are headed by Amy, the widowed Lady the site of the oracle sacred to Apollo, in the hopes Monchensey and Harry’s mother. Her three younger that Apollo, the god who had ordered him to avenge sisters—Ivy, Violet, and Agatha—and two of her Agamemnon’s death, will champion his, Orestes’, deceased husband’s brothers—Gerald and Charles cause and send the harrying Furies away. It does Piper—are on hand as well. Even when they not turn out to be all that easy or simple, however. speak as individuals, these latter five peripheral The Furies turn out to be as adamant about their personalities serve mainly in the role of the cho- rights and privileges as Apollo is about his own. rus common to ancient Greek theater whereby Ultimately, however, through the intervention of background information and, more important, the goddess Athena, a trial is held in Athens, and a running though not necessarily reliable com- Orestes is acquitted by a jury not of the gods but of mentary on what the audience is meant to make his peers, 10 fellow mortals (although Athena must of the action can easily be introduced into the break a tie vote). In recompense for their centuries proceedings. of service to a more primitive humanity and their In addition, Agatha, as the unnamed leader of devotion to the idea of an eye-for-an-eye justice, the chorus, plays a somewhat vedic or priestly role. the Furies, meanwhile, are invited to become the Her short, occasional comments throughout the Eumenides, honorary citizens of Athens whose task play, made almost as asides, provide a cryptic paral- it will be to serve the cause of human justice by vir- lel to the vacuity of the chorus’s generally wrong- tue of their intuitive knowledge and appreciation of headed conclusions. Through her, Eliot is able the darker side of human nature. to suggest for the audience’s benefit that there is It is made clear in the first scene that Eliot more going on than meets either the eye or the ear, intends his own play, The Family Reunion, to be although her brief bursts of wisdom do not seem his way of resolving the conflicts for both the indi- to register at all with the other characters, who all vidual and the community that result when motive too often seem to be on hand primarily to provide and action are so tightly interwoven that their sep- comic relief through their lack of perception or arate springs may be easily confused one for the sympathy. other. Lord Harry Monchensey, the protagonist Mary, the daughter of a deceased cousin of and Orestes’ stand-in, has barely made his entrance Amy’s, is another character who is equally prob- when he intones virtually verbatim the words that lematic. At first she seems to be uncomfortable to Aeschylus’s Orestes speaks at the end of the Cho- be there in the household at all, and in her distant ephoroi (as Eliot had cited them in his epigraph to relationship to the other, older characters, she may “Sweeney Agonistes”): “Can’t you see them? You be intended to provide an emotional focus for the don’t see them, but I see them, / And they see me.” audience’s own bewilderment as it is thrust whole- With this line, and by casting characters called sale into the midst of goings on about which, in The Eumenides into the drama as it unfolds, Eliot good theatrical fashion, it knows absolutely noth-

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ing. Later in the play, however, in her role as Har- family circle from being complete during all that ry’s childhood friend, it becomes clear that she is time. Agatha is asked to explain herself, and she there to function as the audience’s friend as well. does so by imagining that, although Harry left as a Her easy intimacy with the protagonist will enable boy, it is as a man that he will be returning. Harry, her to draw out information about his mental con- Agatha elaborates, “will have to face him,” the boy dition, even if his “explanations” ultimately leave that he had been, and she fears that “it will not be her as bewildered as Sweeney’s do Doris in “Swee- a very jolly corner” when “[t]he hidden is revealed, ney Agonistes.” and the spectres show themselves.” Along with the already mentioned and ever- To appreciate Agatha’s point, the audience important Eumenides, whose role in the play will be need not recognize Eliot’s none-too-hidden allu- to facilitate the completion of the dramatic action, sion to the Henry James’s ghost tale of the same two family retainers round out the characters. They name, “The Jolly Corner,” in which a man, return- are Denman, a parlor maid, and Downing, Harry’s ing to his old family home after many years abroad, man Friday. There are also the family physician, Dr. confronts the ghost of the man that he would have Warburton, and a policeman, Sergeant Winchell. been had he never left. Harry is coming back, a dif- Finally, there is the protagonist and focus of all the ferent person, to a home that Amy has purposely action, Amy’s adult son Harry, Lord Monchensey. “kept as it was when he left.” Whatever her motives may have been for doing as much, an added emo- Part I tional burden that Harry will very likely bear is that The first act or part of the play is divided into three only the year before—no one is quite sure of the scenes. As the action begins, Amy is in the drawing exact timing—Harry lost his wife when she appar- room of her country home somewhere in the north ently fell overboard from an ocean liner at sea. No of England, accompanied by her sisters and broth- one admits to having had any real acquaintance ers-in-law and by Mary. Tea has just ended this with this absent, nameless wife. In fact, Amy insists afternoon in late March, and as might be expected, that Harry’s wife, by her own design, would “never as the curtain rises on scene 1, the topic has turned . . . have been one of the family” in any case, and to how dreadful the weather is, it seeming more Amy then insists that no one bring up the topic like winter than early spring. Such banter sets the further. Rather, everyone is under orders to behave tone for the rest of the drama. These are wealthy precisely “[a]s if nothing had happened in the last people, well-established in their lives and lifestyles, eight years.” and they are also thoroughly familiar, at ease, and The others are sharing their various misgivings comfortable with each other. about and support for just such a plan of action Mary is addressed only to give a rather curt when Harry, to everyone’s surprise, makes his response, and she makes her exit. Apparently, it entrance. While his assembled family express their troubles her that she is approaching 30 and is not appropriate joy at his arrival, however, Harry is yet married. This information suggests that Harry, behaving rather strangely and furtively, as if he too, is still quite young. In the chat that follows has something to hide and as if, too, they should Mary’s departure from the scene, it is established share his anxiety about being spied on. He chal- that this day is Amy’s birthday, and to celebrate lenges them with his own incredulity. “Can’t you the occasion, everyone will gather at Wishwood, see them?” he asks, echoing Aeschylus’s Orestes her country estate. Yet to arrive on the scene are when he first sees the Furies. “You don’t see them,” Amy’s three sons—Arthur, John, and Harry. It is he goes on, in response to their understandable the first time in eight years that they have all been puzzlement, “but I see them, / And they see me.” together. When Agatha observes that it will be Amy forces the conversation back to more “rather painful” for Harry to come back to Wish- conventional topics, although Harry continues to wood after having been gone for eight years, it be distracted, if not distraught. Why, he wants to becomes clear that Harry’s absence has kept the know, has nothing changed at Wishwood, when

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everything obviously has changed for him. And Agatha feels as uncomfortable with that plan of then he dismisses them all somewhat cruelly for action as with calling in Dr. Warburton, but rather being incapable of understanding him, even than objecting, she leaves the others to their busi- should he try to explain. They, he insists, would ness. Downing is summoned and provides infor- want to know about events, not what has actually mation about Harry’s wife on the ill-fated voyage. transpired, saying cryptically but pointedly: “. . . He informs them that she was drinking a great [P]eople to whom nothing has ever happened / deal and not quite able to handle it. Downing also Cannot understand the unimportance of events.” reports that Harry was depressed on the voyage, While they try to decipher that first emotional but that it was “[v]ery uncommon that I saw him in blast, Harry strikes them with another, telling them high spirits.” He reports as well that Harry seemed that they are living their lives asleep and so have anxious about his wife’s welfare, particularly if she no way of knowing what it might be like to awaken ever came too near the railings, and that they were to a nightmare, as he apparently has. always together on the voyage. Having seen Harry When Agatha then presses him for details, looking quietly over the railings for nearly a half even should those details exhaust their capacity to hour the night that she was lost, Downing is con- understand his dilemma, Harry’s horrible truth—or vinced that nothing could have been amiss at least at least the demon of despair that he feels is pursu- at that point in the evening. ing him—emerges: He confesses to having pushed Despite these reassurances, the servant’s testi- his wife overboard. Contrary to the reports that mony leaves the others no more certain of what the they have heard, her death was not the result of truth might be than they had been before they ques- an accident at sea. Rather, and far more horribly, tioned him, and the first scene closes with the group she was the victim of murder, a murder that Harry musing in choral fashion on the conflicting desire committed. to know the full story and yet avoid the scandal As might be expected, Harry’s mother and uncles in which that knowledge might result. Ultimately, and aunts all take this startling revelation with vary- they fall into relying on each other and the comfort- ing degrees of confusion and denial. They would able reality that they have known all their lives. rather think that he is mad or overly tired from “We must insist that the world is what we have his journey than that he is a killer. Only Agatha always taken it to be,” they conclude, and the scene seems to be able to accept his confession as genuine, ends with Amy reappearing to suggest that they all although she confesses that what Harry has told go and get dressed for dinner. “I hope Harry will feel them holds only “a fragment of the explanation.” better,” she says, “[a]fter his rest upstairs.” Her sympathy comforts him enough that he takes Agatha, who had returned to the drawing room his mother’s advice, which is that he most needs a with Amy at the close of the first scene, remains hot bath. on stage as that scene closes. When the curtain Once he has exited the scene, however, the oth- rises on Scene 2, Agatha is alone in the drawing ers start to speculate as to whether or not Harry did room as Mary enters. There follows a conversation in fact kill his wife—if so, what his motives might between the two of them that reveals much about have been, and if not, why he might be imagin- Amy’s role as an overly protective if not domineer- ing that he did. Following Violet’s suggestion that ing mother. “What Cousin Amy wants, she usu- Harry must see a doctor, Gerald proposes inviting ally gets,” Mary observes, and as she sees it, what the family physician, Dr. Warburton, over so that Amy had wanted was for Mary to have married he might examine Harry. Amy takes it on herself to Harry. Harry must have been similarly aware that go off to call the doctor and make all the necessary his mother would have disapproved of his marrying arrangements. otherwise, for it turns out that he had invited only Amy now gone from the scene, Charles, mean- Agatha to his wedding. So, then, Agatha is the while, proposes that they interview Downing, Har- only member of the family who ever met Harry’s ill- ry’s servant, who has been with him for 10 years. fated bride. Agatha takes the opportunity to cau-

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tion Mary that, whatever else she does, she must Scene 3 opens with Harry and Mary still on not act too hastily or rashly now. She offers Mary stage in the drawing room, accompanied now by her help but without specifics, and after further his aunts Ivy and Violet and by both his uncles. admonishing the younger woman that the two of The typical small talk ensues, and Mary uses it as them are “only watchers and waiters . . . [which is] a cover to excuse herself so that she might dress not the easiest role,” Agatha departs to change for for dinner. dinner. Amy enters accompanied by Dr. Warburton, Mary is left musing out loud about the burden who had been sent for out of a concern for Harry’s of waiting when Harry enters the room. They mental well-being. She is perturbed that her other reminisce about their childhood at Wishwood, two sons, John and Arthur, have not yet arrived. In and Harry wonders if Mary had ever been happy the meantime, the doctor engages Harry in conver- as a child, unlike himself, who fears that there sation. Warburton tries to keep the chatter light, may be for him, in this return to roots from which but Harry interjects with his typical note of pes- he had hoped to escape, the sad truth that his simistic gloom that life holds little hope or pleasure will be “all one life, with no escape.” He talks for the child that he was who has now matured of having tried to recapture that time when he into a guilt-ridden adult. Warburton shares with might have fancied himself, even as a child, the Harry his sense of disappointment in what life has master of his own destiny. All manner of escape to offer but insists that we must take what nature has proved fruitless for him, however, and he and time deals us. “We’re all of us ill in one way or tells Mary that “[y]ou do not know what hope another,” he remarks consolingly, using the exam- is, until you have lost it”—as he apparently has. ple of a patient of his, a murderer, who was never “You attach yourself to loathing, / As others do more anxious to live despite his having an incur- to loving,” she scolds him; and he continues to able cancer. Harry cuts that consolation short as speak like a haunted, driven man, finding himself well, nevertheless, saying: “. . . [C]ancer, now, / always at that point and in that place from which That is something real.” Dr. Warburton, whether he keeps striving to ecape. he is intentionally trying to draw Harry out or not, Over time, this nameless, formless malcontent happily leaves such a discouraging topic, and he, has become embodied for him in the Furies, “the Amy, and Harry go in to dinner. sleepless hunters / That will not let me sleep,” The others remain behind momentarily to give and he no sooner names them than they suddenly voice to their own fears that something nameless appear, as the Eumenides, in the window open- and terrible has happened or is about to happen ing, much like the ghost of Hamlet’s father in the or be revealed. Each wishes for a more familiar bedroom scene with Gertrude or, closer to home, crisis, a less formless terror. As they go into din- like the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in ner, Mary passes through on her way to dinner. another of Henry James’s psychological ghost sto- Finally, Agatha arrives on the scene to speak what ries, The Turn of the Screw. Harry faces them boldly sounds like half a prayer and half a curse that the knot may be unknotted, the crossed uncrossed, the and bravely enough, but it is up to Mary to remain crooked made straight. The suggestion is that her coolheaded and insist that there is no one there, cryptic utterances conceal some real information and she tells him to close the drapes. Harry would that she has at her disposal, and part I ends as like to enlist Mary’s aid but realizes that she, like Agatha becomes the last to depart so that she may all the rest, is incapable of seeing the specters and, prepare herself to share in the reunion dinner and so, “of no use to me.” When Harry rushes forward Amy’s birthday party. to open the drapes again, however, the window embrasure is now empty. Understandably bothered Part II and bewildered by his behavior, Mary can do little Scene 1 opens with Harry and Dr. Warburton in more than cry out his name as the second scene conversation. Harry is being both evasive and defen- comes to an abrupt end. sive, as if he suspects that the doctor is on hand

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because of the others’ concern for his own precari- Agatha seems to be ready to stand up for him, ous state of mind. Harry presses for information although she advises him not to become one of the about his missing father, but when Dr. Warburton “impatient spectators of malice or stupidity.” But finally has an opportunity to speak for himself, it then, as if endorsing his harshly judgmental atti- is to warn Harry that Amy’s heart is liable to give tude, news comes that Arthur, Amy’s other missing out at the slightest shock to her system. Such awful son, will not be arriving either. Drunk and speeding, news about his mother’s health seems to have little Arthur has smashed his car and, in addition to a siz- effect on Harry, however. He continues to press for able fine, has had his license revoked for a year. information about his father, Amy’s deceased hus- The first scene ends with the chorus echoing band, and the only thing that finally succeeds in the endless futility the individual feels in the face of distracting him from that single-minded endeavor life’s catastrophes, be they major or minor, whether is Denman’s entering to announce that Sergeant in England or in Argos, the site of Aeschylus’s Winchell has arrived and wishes to see Harry on an ancient family tragedy. urgent matter. In scene 2, Harry and Agatha share the stage, Harry begins to talk irrationally again, as if he and she finally has an opportunity to confront is convinced that Winchell has shown up to arrest directly the cause and the nature of his appar- him for murdering his wife. “Do you know or don’t ently ceaseless gloom. Agatha, like Harry, has been you? / I’m not afraid of you,” he taunts the police- expressing a continuing obsession regarding the man, who pays Harry no mind, however, since relationship of the past with the future. (Eliot had Sergeant Winchell is simply there to report that completed “Burnt Norton,” with its famous, initial John, one of Amy’s missing sons, has been injured consideration regarding time present and time past in an automobile accident. His injuries are serious both being contained in time future, in 1935, the enough to indispose him for the rest of the eve- year before he began work on The Family Reunion.) ning but are otherwise minor. Amy, accompanied Now she shows Harry a glaring flaw in his obses- by her sisters and brothers-in-law, now arrives on sion with the interaction between the past and the scene, but when she insists that she must go the future. “[A] present is [what is] missing” from into town to see how John is, Dr. Warburton for- his calculations, she tells him, yet that is precisely bids it. what is “needed to connect them.” Harry confesses Warburton and Winchell depart together, and that it is because he first has to learn exactly what Harry cruelly takes up the idea that John’s con- “they”—the ghostly presences of the Eumenides— cussion cannot result in much more harm than a mean. He had hoped to learn as much by returning “brief vacation from the kind of consciousness / to Wishwood, but their presence even here has That John enjoys.” When his apparent callousness frustrated that hope. is challenged by his mother and aunts, with the As much said, he turns to Agatha for informa- exception of Agatha, Harry happily admits that he tion about his father. Clearly Harry is beginning may not be putting it well, but that, like John, most to associate the presence of the Eumenides with people do not “understand what it is to be awake,” his father. Agatha complies but provides the sort reiterating a theme that was introduced early in of generic description that Harry does not want. part I. Harry goes on to define being awake as “liv- Pressed, she finally admits that Amy and his father’s ing on several planes at once.” was not a happy marriage—that, in fact, “I found Apparently having by now taken Warburton’s him thinking / How to get rid of your mother.” caution about his mother’s health to heart, Harry The reason that Harry suspects himself of having convinces Amy to let him take her to her room to murdered his own wife has suddenly emerged. As nap. When he returns, Harry continues his assault Agatha puts it, theirs is “not a story of detection, on what he takes to be the others’ oblivious state / Of crime and punishment, but of sin and expia- of being. “What you call the normal / Is really the tion.” Then she becomes even more explicit, telling unreal and the unimportant,” he insists. Harry: “It is possible / You are the consciousness of

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your unhappy family”—thus fulfilling Harry’s Ores- hear Agatha encouraging Harry to flee Wishwood. teian, and somewhat Christic, role in which the son Agatha and Amy’s husband had had an affair; suffers for the sins of his parents. indeed, it is highly likely that that affair was at Whatever its meaning for Harry, this exchange the root of his desire to “do away with” Amy. with Agatha turns out to be just what the doc- Although that particular aspect of the matter is tor ordered. Suddenly, Harry “feel[s] happy for a not raised, Amy wastes no time in exposing the moment, as if I had come home.” Nor has this bitter irony: “Thirty-five years ago / You took my new feeling of contentment and fulfillment dissi- husband from me. Now you take my son.” Agatha pated by the time the scene draws to a close. Harry gives kind for kind. Amy, she insists, at least has can understand now that he has “been wounded had the pleasures of family life, whereas Agatha in a war of phantoms,” and he can bid farewell to had taught for years at a woman’s college. “that awful privacy / Of the insane mind.” The Mary’s entrance interrupts their battle of recrim- obvious suggestion here, although it is never stated inations and self-excuses. She is puzzled by Harry’s any more forcefully in the remainder of the play, abrupt decision to leave Wishwood, seeing that he is that Harry did not in fact murder his wife but has barely arrived back after a long absence. Hav- is projecting the tragic failings of his parents’ mar- ing seen his behavior in that earlier scene when the riage onto himself through his own wife’s tragic specters appeared, she is also understandably fearful accidental death. The chain of the past and its for his general welfare. Agatha assures Mary that it bewildering chaotic history, which ultimately has will only be in leaving Wishwood that Harry will everything and nothing to do with him, has been escape any danger to his life, that, instead, he will broken, and as the Eumenides appear one last time, now be out there “in the neutral territory / Between their beneficent purpose prevails. Harry welcomes two worlds.” Amy can only continue to rage against them, knowing now that they are both real and her double loss, first of a husband, now of her eldest outside of him, meant to lead him beyond the tor- son. She sees herself abandoned by all of them ment of his begetting. now, “[a]n old woman alone in a damned house.” As Agatha pronounces this to be the beginnings Harry reappears, dressed not for the reunion dinner of his new life, “a long journey,” Harry knows that toward which things have been tending all evening his true happiness will come not in returning to but rather for departure. In their typically foggy- Wishwood, but in leaving it behind, an action that headed ways, his elders get his plans all wrong, Agatha is encouraging just as Amy enters the room. imagining that Harry is so changed because he is Not privy to the expiation that just has transpired heading off to be a missionary. Harry does his best in the room, she can only hear Agatha telling Harry to set them straight, but again, it is as if they are to leave. When Harry assures Amy that he will be from two different worlds speaking entirely differ- doing just that, “not to run away, but to pursue,” ent languages. The gap is not one of generations, it confuses and irritates her that much more, and however; in her sagaciousness, Agatha is able to Harry can hardly explain his meaning. Rather, with understand him as well as the much younger Mary. an ill-concealed zeal and glee, Harry announces As soon as Harry is gone, Amy asks to be taken that he does not know where he shall go or what to another room, where she might lie down. Left to he shall do, but that he “has just recovered sanity,” their own devices, the others all find themselves as and as the scene ends, he goes off, proclaiming that befuddled and put out by Harry’s behavior as Amy he “must follow the bright angels,” an apparent ref- had been, except for Charles. He begins to imagine erence to the freedom from an inherited guilt that that he might begin to understand “if one were the Eumenides have all along been representing. awake,” a continuing metaphorical reference point Scene 3 commences with Amy and Agatha in the drama. left alone on the stage to confront each other. Suddenly, Downing is back. His Lordship has Amy has an awful truth to reveal, revealing along left behind his cigarette-case. In his no-nonsense with it the reason that she was so disturbed to way, Downing explains to the others what he

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thinks has really happened to Harry. “[M]ost of us art. With The Family Reunion, Eliot wrote his first . . . live according to circumstance,” he describes it, completely original play, one in which he was hop- but for people like Harry, “there’s something inside ing to express in a verse drama the rhythms of a them / That accounts for what happens to them.” natural, contemporary speech, not to mention its And then Downing makes a startling revelation. moral and spiritual nuances. When Agatha awkwardly tries to prepare him for As with most literary ventures in Eliot’s long the possibility of the Eumenides’ appearing from professional career, however, the assertion that time to time, Downing reveals that he has already The Family Reunion was his first completely origi- been seeing them for quite some time. “You soon nal play requires some slight qualification. For one get used to them,” he says rather blandly. thing, his 1925 verse drama “Sweeney Agonistes,” Downing leaves, and with him Harry. Now, in to which, it will be seen, The Family Reunion bears a line that echoes Agamemnon’s death cry from some remarkable similarities, remains perhaps one within the palace at Argos as Clytemnestra and of the most original of Eliot’s dramatic composi- Aegisthus strike their fatal blows, Amy cries out tions. Despite its being included in the Collected to Mary and Agatha from offstage: “The clock Poems, however, it was a work that Eliot never has stopped in the dark.” She has died. Although, completed and essentially abandoned. unlike with Orestes, his mother’s death is not by By the same token, the highly successful 1935 Harry’s hand, it seems clear that his sudden depar- stage production, Murder in the Cathedral, although ture has resulted in the shock to her weak heart based on a celebrated historical incident, was cer- against which Dr. Warburton had cautioned Harry. tainly an original composition on Eliot’s part, but The Chorus of inept elders is left to try to make the idea for that drama had been proposed to him sense of how so many small things can add up to by George Bell, the Anglican Bishop of Chiches- such a poignantly tragic account and can only con- ter, the summer before while Eliot was staying at clude, “We have lost our way in the dark.” Bell’s palace. At that time, Eliot was just coming The others all exit, however, leaving Mary and off the success of The Rock, a pageant play that had Agatha on the stage alone as the drama comes to a been performed before 1,500 spectators at Sadler’s close. They set a birthday cake, its candles lighted, Wells Theatre in London between May 28 and down on a table in the center of the darkened June 9, 1934. The Rock, meanwhile, had been his stage, and they circle the table, blowing out candles first real venture into live theater. Eliot neverthe- as they go, reciting a richer but equally mysteri- less had done little more than write the text for it ous litany to explain the significance of what has in keeping with Browne’s scenario, itself based on just transpired. As Agatha puts it in her and the historical episodes suggested by yet another indi- play’s final speech, what has just been witnessed is vidual, the Reverend R. Webb-Odell, and it was another chapter in the “pilgrimage of expiation,” with these considerable constraints in mind that one that will continue until “the curse be ended.” Eliot wrote the choruses and dialogue. With that closing, Eliot makes it clear that Harry’s Although he would rely on Browne’s expertise story, like Aeschylus’s Orestes’ story before him, is with acting, directing, and stagecraft in general everyone’s story. But one must be awake enough to for The Family Reunion, just as he had done with know it. Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion enjoys the distinction of being a verse drama whose con- CRITICAL COMMENTARY ception and execution were wholly Eliot’s idea to There is little doubt that, in his first major attempt begin with. By presuming not only to write a highly at a contemporary verse drama, Eliot intentionally competent drawing room melodrama, in keep- let out all the stops in an attempt to create a work ing with the stage traditions of his own time, but both worthy of his reputation and celebrity as an to model its core tragedy on the most celebrated important poetic talent and voice, as well as signifi- classical treatment of one of the greatest of the cant enough to rank high in the annals of dramatic Greek myths, Aeschylus’s trilogy detailing the final

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tragedy of the House of Atreus, Eliot was setting the novelist Henry James. Even then it appears himself up with dual challenges of the first order. that Eliot went one better by throwing in a dose Though Aeschylus is given his due, the story of The of crime drama for good measure. Whether Eliot Family Reunion is now all Eliot’s. Indeed, it would succeeded on all those counts or on none of them be as grossly unfair to Aeschylus as it would be to will be left to subsequent ages to decide. No one Eliot to suggest that Eliot is merely creating a mod- can deny, however, that The Family Reunion was an ern paraphrase of Aeschylus’s tragic story, since ambitious undertaking. at its heart such a story was no more original with Although the initial London production was Aeschylus than it was with Eliot. hardly a success, the work continues to be per- There are indisputably universal elements at formed, and commercial success, while hardly a work in any plot that pretends to depict the moral criterion to be lightly dismissed in the realm of the and social conflicts, not to mention the violence, performing arts, does not necessarily ensure immor- brought about by the dissolution of individual and tality in any case. What can safely be said with familial trust caused by circumstances that seem regard to The Family Reunion is that it enhances to be beyond any one person’s control. Still, as and illuminates other themes and issues with poetic in the case of Aeschylus’s Orestes or Eliot’s Lord composition with which Eliot had been struggling Harry Monchensey, the drama that ensues when to this time, and therefore it stands as an important the isolated individual feels the full weight of catas- milestone in his literary career. That is a claim to trophe descending on his head draws everyone’s fame and significance for the play that, considering attention. For whenever any conflict that is uni- the range and impact of Eliot’s career, will stand versal—and this one certainly is—can be embodied any work well. in the agony of a single individual, great literature Still, it may be difficult to see in the very British, invaribly emerges. upper-crust lives depicted in The Family Reunion Without at all disregarding Aeschylus’s previ- any of the old Eliot, with his focus on the squalid ous treatment of the theme of guilt and expiation, dimensions of human experience in the midst of then, Eliot’s own treatment must itself be regarded the individual’s struggle to realize his own higher in detail and on its own terms and merits if one is spiritual and moral gifts. Is there really all that to appreciate fully Eliot’s particular application of much pathos, after all, in the closing image of the a theme as profound and far-reaching as the one protagonist heading off in his chauffeured car, ciga- that Aeschylus first explored and exploited. There rette case in hand, to meet his moral destiny? While is, after all, a major difference to be noted in Eliot’s the problem there may be found in Eliot’s trying to approach, one powerfully announced in his title’s stay too close to his original source—Orestes was emphasis not on a tragic breakup but on a reunion. of royal birth, after all—the question of why Eliot Eliot’s, after all, is a family that somehow is being then deviates so freely and widely from Aeschylus reunited, whereas Aeschylus’s House of Atreus is otherwise is left hanging. depicted as it begins its tailspin into the last throes Furthermore, Eliot had never been one to fear of complete disintegration. On that score alone, risking crossing class barriers. The play between for all that Eliot claimed that he conceived of the upper- and middle- or even lower-class lives in The play as a melancholy and pessimistic work, he is Waste Land provides as convenient an example already well ahead of the game even as his take on of this as not, the more to give Eliot’s vision of Aeschylus’s classic story begins. the modern world its universal appeal. It may, of To the challenge posed by his begging for course, be the point that as much as The Family comparison with Aeschylus’s classic masterpiece, Reunion seems to bait the argument by artificially however, Eliot found it necessary to add another employing the myth’s basic terms, in fact Eliot’s challenge by also trying to conceive a successful aim is to befuddle his audience’s judgment by pre- psychological horror tale, or at least ghost story, senting them with what they expect to hear and much in the manner of the master of the form, see—a melodrama with a classical theme reflecting

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the sorts of conflicts generally encountered by the drama provided by blood and guts and action. In denizens of the leisure classes—while in fact the The Family Reunion, although Eliot may not bring to play reveals moral and spiritual dilemmas for the bear any of an Aeschylus’s or a Shakespeare’s love individual that are universal and all too typical in for unadulterated theatricality and high drama, he their applicability. is just as much interested in telling a story that can Harry, stripped of his rank and title, wealth and appeal to a variety of tastes and concerns, all for privilege, is otherwise an ordinary and reasonably the sake of box office. It is only when the Eliot play young person who has no idea of where he is, where is regarded primarily from the point of view of the he has come from, or where he is going to. If by most profound possibilities of its thematic pursuits play’s end he seems to think that he does know that its true value as a work by Eliot can be most those things, even if that knowledgeability is left fully appreciated. cryptically vague for both the other characters on Without making him a mere mouthpiece, in the stage and the audience, it is nevertheless a other words, it is best to see Harry, like Swee- credit to Eliot’s stagecraft that he at least provides ney in “Sweeney Agonistes” or the anonymous that much ostensible resolution to the awful moral but never querulous speaker of The Waste Land, and spiritual dilemma with which Harry is first as the individual in the play who speaks for the shown struggling, particularly since there is clearly poet/playwright. When Harry is heard that way, much more going on onstage than Harry’s finding he speaks a compendium of themes and ideas his way. that had been engaging Eliot’s critical and cre- In a famous passage from late in The Use of ative intellect virtually from the time of “The Poetry and the Use of Criticism, which Eliot had Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” although with developed from a series of lectures delivered at increasing emphasis and clarity following Eliot’s Harvard in 1932 and 1933, only a few years before religious conversion experience in the late 1920s. he commenced work on The Family Reunion, he To sum up these concerns and considerations in a commented on his intentions for an earlier verse phrase of Eliot’s own making, used in both Murder drama, left uncompleted, that clearly must be in the Cathedral and “Burnt Norton,” “human kind “Sweeney Agonistes.” There Eliot proposed that cannot bear very much reality.” In Murder in the what he had attempted to do was to provide in that Cathedral, composed around the same time as The play a central character who was in possession of a Family Reunion, the same thought is repeated vir- deeper understanding than his fellow characters. tually verbatim by Thomas à Becket, that work’s That same deeper understanding would be in pos- protagonist and, more important, 12th-century session of some but assuredly not all of the mem- saint. On the basis of such a pedigree, it is reason- bers of the audience as well. able to assume that they are not intended by Eliot In fact, Eliot felt that intentionally maintaining as idle words or thought. Rather, they seem to multilevel meanings was both the special appeal express in ominous terms the unavoidable com- and the peculiar challenge of writing for the stage monplace that most of us go through life half as opposed to a reading public. As he saw it then, awake if not totally asleep. the playwright was obliged to represent in the In The Family Reunion, Harry gives the same performance the same range of appeal to under- idea utterance one more time, although this time standing as one might expect to find in a typical it is without the burnishment of a philosophical audience, so that none was left out but neither was pseudo-statement: “I tell you,” he tells his assem- the theme intentionally diminished or “dumbed bled relatives barely moments after he makes his down,” as it were. Such an idea is hardly a new one. first appearance on the stage, “life would be unen- One of the most persistent arguments for WILLIAM durable / If you were wide awake.” Harry can say SHAKESPEARE’s enduring appeal is that he can be this because he knows whereof he speaks. He has profoundly intellectual, even spiritually provoca- awakened and cannot endure it. The theme of The tive, while not in the least bit stinting on the melo- Family Reunion, indeed, will be how one can come

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to be not only wide awake but able to endure that is merely to admit that there is something more to heightened sense of and engagement with the real. life than its daily grind. Eliot requires those in the audience who hear Then there is someone like Harry Monchensey, the clarion of this theme to come first to an under- who is painfully aware of reality’s most profound standing of what it might mean to be wide awake. depths. He is there to discover for the audience Nor would it be wise to assume that he can define how far and for how long the consequences of the that only negatively, by what it is not, in the con- most trivial choice can haunt a person with regret. stant tendency of Ivy, Violet, Charles, and Gerald, He reveals that there is no language in which to to miss the forest not so much for trees as for the share such perceptions, nor a forum of polite soci- briars and the brambles, caught up as they are in ety in which to do it. And yet his heightened moral assigning to the sphere of common duties much if not ultimately spiritual awareness accompanies more importance than those tasks can ever bear. In him wherever he may be, whatever he may be sketchy but no less accurate terms, the idea is that doing, until, haunted so by the constant presence in a typically advanced, so-called modern urban of a reality most cannot even bear to think of, he, culture, the vast majority lives their lives on the too, begins to imagine that he must be mad and front page of the newspaper and from popular film surely is cursed. to popular film, from one political cliché to another, Eliot represents the agon of this heightened always imagining that the way they think and the awareness through the Eumenides because they values they cherish are everyone else’s opinions neatly provide what he called elsewhere, in his and values. They imagine as much without even 1919 essay “Hamlet and His Problems,” an objec- knowing that they are only imagining it. tive correlative for what must otherwise remain the In The Waste Land, these were those who com- invisible and nameless. They also make good the- posed the crowd of the living dead flowing over ater. Indeed, Harry’s reaction to the Eumenides London Bridge. They are Eliot’s hollow men as is Eliot’s way of signaling to his audience that the well, whose heads are filled with straw, and his situation is not as dire as Harry makes it out to be. fickle crowd in “Triumphal March” who salute the These are the beneficent spirits, and not the awful banners that fly this way and that and make every Furies that harried Orestes until he was allowed to latest hero the Savior. It is not a pretty picture of prove that he was, though not innocent, relatively humanity, but Eliot is functioning in the role here guiltless. in any case not of the social reformer but of the Eliot takes a page from Aeschylus but rewrites artist depicting the world in which he lives and it by establishing a rich dramatic irony. By virtue of the people who inhabit it as he sees it, much as Eliot’s having introduced the presences that haunt Aeschylus and myriad other poets and dramatists Harry as the Eumenides rather than the Furies, the and storytellers had done before him for their time audience knows that the spirits are good even if and in its terms. Harry, in his understandable fear and confusion and For his time and in its terms, in The Family guilt, nevertheless treats them as if they are there Reunion Eliot portrays the crowd who sleep more to torment him like vengeful and spiteful hounds or less through the likes of Ivy, Violet, Charles, and of hell. By Eliot’s play’s end, it is the hero, not the Gerald—the “most of us” as their type are gener- spirits, who have been transformed, as it should be. ally called. But then there are others, like Amy, Eliot’s theme, after all, is that the malevolence that Agatha, Mary, and even Downing, and perhaps drives most people into acts of selfish desperation is Warburton, who are or have to some degree awak- not “out there,” as Aeschylus would have it, but “in ened to the fact that the world, one’s life, and one’s here”—within the individual heart. interactions in it are more than the sum of stock Whether because of an overprotective mother, quotes and cricket scores, the latest news and the who may have been protecting what was hers hottest gossip. In summary, there must be instead, because she had already lost it, or a more deli- Eliot proposes, those who can bear reality even if it cate moral nature, or unresolved conflicts with his

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father, Harry is uncomfortable being Harry—with has taken off for parts unknown, his father is long accepting himself for who he is. His life has there- since deceased, and his mother passes away almost fore been one long string of unsuccessful relation- at the exact moment that folks should have finally ships, capped for him in the inexplicable drowning been settling down to celebrate her birthday. None of his “painted shadow” of a wife, for whose loss he of this may seem positive on the surface, but those blames himself. No wonder he sees the Eumenides who cannot bear very much reality cannot do so as tormenters, as if they or anyone else has any because they only ever see the surface. control over how he may feel. When the turn- From another point of view, the prodigal has around comes for Harry, it is not as the result of returned, and although the fatted calf may not have any startlingly dramatic resolution or revelation, been prepared, he who was lost has been found, but out of his own conviction that he now “under- who was dead has been restored to life. Eliot uses stands” himself and his life. the most powerful spiritual symbol that the human Agatha, whose mysteriousness, too, diminishes lexicon can provide, that of an awakening, to dem- the more her motives for it emerge, really offers onstrate in wholly contemporary terms the operation Harry only the equivalent of gossip of what his father of mystery in human affairs. Harry, without changing may have been like. The audience later learns that at all, has by play’s end become an entirely new man, her almost morbid concern for Harry is motivated content and, for the first time in his life, capable of by the fact that she was his father’s lover, but Harry fully living. Just as not everyone in the play will have never learns this. What he learns instead, at the end witnessed let alone appreciated that transformation of his obsessive quest to find out how the past shapes on Harry’s part, not everyone in the audience will the future, is that there is neither a meaningful past have either, but none of that makes the transforma- nor a meaningful future without a constant engage- tion any less real—and that is the crux of The Family ment with the present. Suddenly, he is able to let Reunion’s most provocative keynote. his obsessions go, accept the Eumenides as a part of his mental landscape, and, in a word, live—though that must mean leaving Wishwood and Amy and all the rest of it behind. “La Figlia Che Piange” (1917) In “Burnt Norton,” which has many themes, images, and concepts in common with The Fam- One of Eliot’s most graceful lyrics and, arguably, ily Reunion, Eliot’s speaker puzzles out the tenu- one of his most original poems, “La Figlia Che ous relationship among the past, the present, and Piange” (literally, “the daughter who is crying”) the future. In eternity, that speaker muses, all was composed in 1911 in Cambridge, Massachu- time must be present, but then that would mean setts, after Eliot’s return from a year spent abroad that time is unredeemable, occurring endlessly all in Paris following his obtaining a master’s degree at once. Those may be speculations worthy of the in English literature from Harvard in June 1910. poet and the metaphysician, but what The Family The poem did not see publication, however, until it Reunion demonstrates is that they have no place in was included in Eliot’s first book-length collection, the living of day-to-day lives. What counts there Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. and then is acceptance, as Harry learns. He has been running from chimeras. Now he is prepared SYNOPSIS to pursue them because they, like time, are mani- It may not be fair to say that love poetry by T. S. festations of the forces that do not exist, yet can Eliot is conspicuous in its absence, inasmuch as it be more powerfully shaping of the individual than is not very likely that anyone struggling to come to those things that do. grips with the body of Eliot’s work has ever particu- The Family Reunion ends with the family dis- larly noticed what is absent from it. Still, what love solved. Arthur is in trouble with the law, John is poetry there is of Eliot’s is a poetry that reminds apparently in a temporarily comatose state, Harry one of love the way a summer storm reminds one of

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a spring shower. There may be many connections, the person that is writing it—it is nevertheless one but they are not immediately apparent. that Eliot hardly if ever adhered to. In fact, aside from some touching but other- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” provides wise not memorable lines of verse, rather than a an outstanding example of how Eliot can manipu- poem, that he wrote to his second wife, Valerie, late his readers by manipulating his speaker, much relatively late in his life, there is no outstandingly in the same way that a ventriloquist succeeds by obvious love poetry in the entire Eliot canon—with making his audience focus their attention on the the possible exception of the poem “La Figlia Che dummy rather than on the ventriloquist. Even if Piange.” It is only a possible exception because, in the reader regards that poem as a frustrated love typical Eliot fashion, the story of the genesis of the song in its confused, and confusing, attempt to jus- poem is far more complicated by the twists and tify why the women in Prufrock’s world do not pay turns of irony than it ought to be. While that story any attention to him, the poem nevertheless clearly does make the complexities of the poetry sort them- identifies itself as the “love song” of J. Alfred Pru- selves out rather quickly, however, if told first, that frock, not of the poet T. S. Eliot. It is quite easy, same story also automatically prejudices an objec- then, even mandatory, not to classify “Prufrock” as tive reading of the poem, which is something other love poetry, despite the poem’s title and Prufrock’s than its source material, no matter how revealingly obsessive concern with what women think of him. helpful that material may appear to be. It would That may not seem to be case with a poem like serve the reader well to approach this poem, as one “Portrait of a Lady,” for another example. In this should any poem, first in terms solely of the infor- poem, the first-person speaker is not given a specific mation that is right there on the page. identity, and therefore the reader may feel permitted, On the surface, “La Figlia Che Piange” does indeed encouraged, to follow the long-established seem out of place among Eliot’s poetry, sounding convention that such a first-person speaker must be as it does in its opening stanza like traditional love the poet. That again is only ostensibly the case, how- poetry. As it continues, however, it becomes, like ever, for as one reads the poem, it gradually becomes so many Eliot poems from this period (the poem apparent that love is not the feeling that compels was first composed in November 1911), more and either the overly loquacious lady or the grudgingly more an exercise in modes of expression rather reticent (to her, that is) speaker. Once the reader than an exercise in the expression of a particular witnesses that the test of the poetry is found in the theme or emotion, in this case, love. dramatic imbalances between the speaker of “Por- That is not very surprising. What may appear to trait” and his subject, the lady, whether or not the be love poetry, when penned by Eliot, almost invari- speaker is the poet or the poetry is love poetry, both ably does not reflect the usual expressions of senti- become irrelevant considerations. ment and emotion commonly associated with love Language is the cue, of course. What “Prufrock” in any event, so it is not remarkable that he does and “Portrait” lack finally is, quite simply, the lan- not sustain that tone much past the first stanza in guage of love. With a poem like “La Figlia Che “La Figlia.” Rather, the reader must be prepared for Piange,” however, the matter may be quite differ- being surprised and befuddled about just who the ent, even if only at first glance. In this poem, a lover is. Particularly in the case of the poems that somewhat romantic scene is set immediately, and Eliot wrote during the decade preceding the pub- the speaker appears to be addressing his beloved lication of The Waste Land in 1922, a reader must in a typically adoring fashion befitting a lover: first understand that Eliot’s “love” poetry cannot in “. . . weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.” This fact be called love poetry inasmuch as the poet may language is redolent of what W. B. YEATS, in a not himself necessarily be the speaker and there- poem composed at nearly the same time, “Adam’s fore cannot possibly be the lover. If that sounds like Curse,” would call the “old high way of love.” It is a too constrictive a definition of love poetry—that it language that finds ways to cherish the beloved and must be a genuine expression of love on the part of preserve the emotion.

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Then, the next stanza of Eliot’s poem begins as leave-taking accounts for the maiden’s tears. Is it, if the speaker is not addressing his beloved at all, for example, even a lover who has left, when the but rather imagining how “I would have had him translation of the title—“the daughter who is cry- leave her.” This “him” could be no one other than ing”— clearly implies that it must be a parent who the beloved’s real lover, who is apparently not the has departed? In which case, of course, the speaker speaker, although he may have been the projected would be regarding the daughter’s grief, and the speaker of the first stanza nevertheless. The idea father’s last sight of his daughter before his death that the speaker had extended himself emotionally (which would also justify the epigraph, since it, too, into the attitude of the subject’s lover, usurping that deals with a parent-child relationship rather than person’s devotional prerogatives, is a bit shocking one between two romantic lovers). perhaps but leaves the emotions of the first stanza Identity becomes a very real issue when we con- intact. So far, so good. What began as a poem of sider that Venus is a daughter as well, Jupiter’s, and love or at least devotion addressed to “the daughter that she, as a mother, may be crying for the fate that who is crying,” which is how Eliot’s title translates she knows her son Aeneas will eventually face as from the Italian, has in short order become a specu- he embraces his destiny to found the Italian settle- lative musing on someone else’s relationship with ment from which Rome will emerge in a far distant the beloved in question, and that is, in good Eliot future. For he will suffer great personal loss in the fashion, puzzling, to say the least. The reader has process of making a new homeland for his refugee to shift gears rapidly from savoring a lover’s passion Trojan followers and be forced as well to give up to confronting a situation in which the speaker is the love of his life, the Carthaginian queen, Dido. in fact merely describing the beloved as he would Just who, then, is leaving/loving whom and grieving imagine a lover would desire her to look. over or lamenting the absent beloved may seem to The Epigraph be a circular exercise in frustration, but it also has Thus far the unattributed epigraph has purpose- the potential of being a positive poetic exercise, at fully not been admitted into the mix. It would be the same time, in the universalization of grief and appropriate to introduce it now. In Latin and from love. That possibility, once introduced, seems to be Virgil’s great epic of Roman imperialism, the Aeneid, borne out in the third and final stanza. It is autumn, it reads, “How shall I remember you, maiden?” It and the speaker remarks on how this mystery girl— sounds like an innocent enough request, unless the for mystery she must seem—and his image of her, reader further recognizes that the words are spoken “[h]er hair over her arms and her arms full of flow- by Aeneas as he confronts his own mother, Venus, ers,” obsesses his imagination as he wonders how who has appeared to him in the guise of a young they—father and daughter, mother and son, lover woman. There is frothy subtext here, what with a and beloved—“should have been together!” This son being duped into coming on to his own mother. wondering obsesses the speaker so much, indeed, Is the reader to think that Aeneas is the third- that the mystery haunts him night and day. person lover of the weeping maiden, the “him” who had been introduced in stanza two, and why has CRITICAL COMMENTARY the reason that she is crying, or Italian, for that Surely, there are conclusions that a reader can feel matter, not yet been introduced into the text, let encouraged to draw from “La Figlia Che Piange”: alone addressed? that the poem exposes the thinking of a jealous The reader desiring to find out these answers rival, unable or unwilling to reveal his own affec- would only be further confused by the remainder tion for the beloved, or that the speaker is looking of stanza two, which has language more connota- at an image of two lovers perhaps, or of a woman tive of a violent sundering: “. . . the soul leaves engrossed in the protocol of grief, and wonders the body torn and bruised, / . . . mind . . . the body whose loss may have been the wellspring of such it has used.” Though these are presented as simi- painful mourning. Nor are these two possible read- les, the idea is that something more than a lover’s ings mutually exclusive.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 186 9/5/07 2:35:57 PM Four Quartets 187 As mentioned earlier, there is a story about “Four Elizabethan the genesis of this poem, and it is one of the few times, perhaps, that a story about an Eliot Dramatists” (1924) poem’s origins may shed some useful light on such an intriguingly puzzling text. The story goes that See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. while Eliot had been staying in Paris in 1911, he made a tour of northern Italy and was told by a friend that he simply had to visit a particular museum to view a stele or bas relief there called Four Quartets (1943) “La Figlia Che Piange.” Eliot subsequently visited the museum but was never able to locate and, so, At the end of October 1943, in the midst of the ter- view the piece of statuary, apparently a work of rible violence, destruction, and slaughter of World funereal art depicting either a literal or figura- War II, Faber & Faber, Eliot’s publisher since the tive mourner with flowers in her arms. From that mid-1920s, released Four Quartets. A relatively slim episode, the unseen carving of a grieving daughter volume of poetry, it nevertheless brought together became the stylized scene depicted in the open- between its covers a single, coherent poetic work ing stanza of the finished poem, and the epigraph that would prove to be the final fruits of a lifetime from the Aeneid becomes Eliot’s acknowledge- of creative endeavor on Eliot’s part as a poet. It was ment that though he now will never know this a singular publishing event, for the Four Quartets grieving young woman, he wishes that he may came to be regarded almost from the first as one of have been allowed to remember her. the great literary masterpieces of a very rich literary Whether read with this anecdote in mind century. or read with an eye toward only what the text By then Eliot’s worldwide reputation as a poet itself might reveal, “La Figlia Che Piange” is an was substantial enough to warrant such critical admittedly touching poem, rare for Eliot. He had accolades, of course. Such is the achievement of learned from JULES LAFORGUE to use sentiment the poem in question, nonetheless, that the mod- like a verbal stiletto that cuts both ways. This ernist literary canon would have had to have found poem instead is almost old-fashioned in the man- a place for it even if Eliot had been a relative ner in which it measures out the ways in which unknown at the time. A survey of the four indi- we move and are moved by each other’s emo- vidual poems that would eventually compose this tions. The poem reminds us that art, like grief, is mature poetic achievement of Eliot’s, furthermore, a testament to love, and it suggests as well how also exposes much about the manner in which Eliot much, even at this very early stage in his literary conceived of the relationship among poetry writ- development, when Eliot seemed to be for the ing, the poem, and the personal experiences that most part far more given over to cleverness, wit, provide a framework for the former two. and erudition than to any other kind of poetic expression, he already had a powerful capacity A GENERAL OVERVIEW for striking chords of sentiment that were both The Four Quartets’ individual quartets, in the order profound and sublime, although he would not be of their composition as well as their placement in ready to plumb these depths fully in his poetry for the sequence, are “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” many years yet to come. “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding.” Read as if they were conceived and composed as the consecutive and interactive elements in a precon- ceived sequence to begin with, they will not disap- Five-Finger Exercises (1933) point any reader. Little by little, particularly as each quartet is read and reread in combination with the See MINOR POEMS. incremental experience in mind as well of having

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read and reread the other three, any careful reader war that ended in Charles’s arrest shortly thereaf- will gradually come to notice features either that ter and his eventual execution and in, as well, the all four of the quartets share or that are contrasted decade-long dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell under significantly with one to another. the title Protector of the Nation. Of the original Each of the four quartets has for its title and community, only the chapel remains today, and it as its primary subject matter an actual place that was to this spot that the poet came in May 1936. bears some degree of association with the poet. In addition to the prevailing ones just noted, Burnt Norton is an otherwise obscure English there are other similarities and associations embed- country house that burned to the ground in the ded in each of four locations. Most of the locales 17th century. It is located in Gloucestershire, the have associations with the 17th century, for exam- Eliot family’s ancestral region in western England, ple, and thus reflect various aspects of that especially but more significantly, it is a locale that he vis- significant moment in English history when many ited with an old love from his youth, Emily Hale, were resettling in the overseas colonies as a result who frequently spent summers with her relatives of religious and political turmoil at home. Also, the and Eliot in England during the mid-1930s while locales engage the poet’s personal life not in any sin- Eliot was separated from his first wife, Vivien. Simi- gle way but in a variety of categories: family, nation, larly, East Coker is the name of the quaint country friendships, beliefs, and so forth. This overlapping of village from which Eliot’s ancestor Andrew Eliot relationships permeates the four quartets in a vari- emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay colony in the ety of other, equally interesting ways. mid-17th century. Each quartet is unique to a season, for exam- The Dry Salvages, meanwhile, are three rocks ple. “Burnt Norton,” with its sunlight and rustling that provided sailors with a natural nautical marker leaves and rose gardens, bespeaks the summer. off the eastern tip of Cape Ann in Massachusetts. “East Coker,” with its hint of late-night harvest There the poet’s family spent their summers in a spa- rituals and talk of late November, speaks the fall. cious seaside home in Gloucester, where the young The stormy sea that measures time in “The Dry Eliot became an avid and able sailor in the waters off Salvages” recalls New England’s wintry weather. Cape Ann and up the New England coast to Can- “Little Gidding” talks of “sempiternal spring,” har- ada. Furthermore, it was in this region of England’s kening to the weather that signals the movement colonies that Eliot’s family originally flourished for from winter into spring, and then talks of May, that several hundred years until his grandfather, WIL- month that marks the heart of the spring in both LIAM GREENLEAF ELIOT, resettled his young family England and New England. in the 1830s in ST. LOUIS, then at the very edge As another outstanding organizing principle, of the American frontier. The poet’s birthplace in each of the quartets also contains references and 1888, this Mississippi River city would also, through allusions that, without ignoring the other three its associations with that virtually mythic American altogether, typify a particular one of the four ele- waterway, figure in “The Dry Salvages.” ments: air (“Burnt Norton”), earth (“East Coker”), Little Gidding, finally, is an equally obscure but water (“The Dry Salvages”), and fire (“Little Gid- far more noteworthy place back in England. It has ding”). Furthermore, that each quartet contains more general but no less intimate connections with exactly five sections suggests the fifth, integrating the poet’s life. A well-born young Londoner who element, the so-called quintessence that partakes had been ordained an Anglican deacon, Nicholas of and harmoniously combines the individualized Ferrar, founded a religious community there with characteristics of each of the other four. his family in the early part of the 17th century. It As with any Eliot poem, the complexities of those was to this same settlement that King Charles I fled biographical, geographic, seasonal, and elemen- seeking overnight refuge following the repeated tal associations are further intermingled with the defeat of his forces by Parliamentary troops in the kinds of discourse and imagery and thematic issues religious and political civil war of 1642 to 1649, a that each quartet accordingly employs. The tone

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of “Burnt Norton” is philosophical, for instance, modulations in content and in meaning as each of betokening its associations with air. “East Coker” Eliot’s verbal quartets progresses. uses archaisms that hark back to a late Elizabe- What has not been touched on thus far any- than English. “The Dry Salvages” mimics the roll- where in this introduction is the poetry’s rich- ing rhythms of the sea, while “Little Gidding,” the est feature, and that is its disarmingly simple and most openly religious in theme of the four, in a key straightforward treatment of themes that humans passage echoes DANTE ALIGHIERI’s great religious have apparently always regarded as the most pro- pilgrimage, the Divine Comedy. found. They are those so-called great impondera- This notion of combining a wide variety of dis- bles regarding the nature of time, love, God, and parate poetic resources in order to make harmoni- individual life, the last of which also embodies the ous the final product reflects what is perhaps the themes of death and of the nature and notion of most obvious of Eliot’s organizing principles, and eternity as an abode for the spirit. that is the poetry’s self-evident analogy to music. Eliot had early on used references to musical forms THE PUBLICATION HISTORY in his titles—“The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- A work as intricately organized both from part to frock,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” “Preludes.” part and within parts as the Four Quartets is would There also has always been at least an analogous presumably have been equally as meticulously con- and often a direct relationship between poetry and ceptualized to begin with. Nothing could be further music in Western literary culture. Surely, then, by from the truth, however. Whatever particular expe- calling these poems quartets, Eliot’s recognition of riences had inspired Eliot to revisit in a poem those a return to the practice in his own right should moments that he had spent at Burnt Norton with not have been unexpected, even if it was not until Emily Hale in the summer of 1934, the poetry of the completed sequence was published that the “Burnt Norton”—in fact, its opening lines—finds idea that they were quartets at all was made public its source in lines that had been discarded from knowledge. Eliot’s verse drama Murder in the Cathedral. Eliot Earlier, however, the association was with spe- was working busily on Murder in the Cathedral in cific forms of musical expression—love songs, rhap- early 1935 in close collaboration with the actor sodies, preludes—whereas now, with the allusion and director E. MARTIN BROWNE, with whom he to a quartet, the association is with a particular had developed the poetry for The Rock, Eliot’s first form of musical performance. The quartet, that is, venture into verse drama. As Eliot’s next theatri- describes music composed to be performed by four cal venture, the Becket play, was preparing to go distinct instruments, rather than a particular musi- into production, it was Browne’s task to bring to cal piece. The hint is that this is a poetry that bear his knowledge and experience of the stage to is performative rather than communicative; it will prevent Eliot from including dialogue that, while it show the reader through form rather than tell the might have its histrionic elements, did not advance reader through statement. the action on stage, a critical component for hold- The reader will find, then, that, in the quar- ing the audience’s attention during any dramatic tets, Eliot analogizes the musical, in other words, performance. not by implying that the poetry will incorporate a Among those passages that Browne convinced particular musicality of tone and mood, but by sug- Eliot to eliminate was one in act 1, when the First gesting that there will be both subtle and, occasion- Tempter tries to encourage Becket to avoid renew- ally, pronounced variations in the quality of the ing his old conflict with the king. Instead this sounds produced and in how they interact. Sounds Tempter urges Becket to renew with King Henry in poetry, however, are words and phrases and lev- the terms of their original friendship when they els of discourse and shifts in diction and literary were both far more interested in youthful carousing style, not mere musical notes. The reader ought to than in going head to head over issues of church be prepared for a compounding of fluctuations and and state. At that point in the drama, the Second

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Priest intervenes with comments on “[t]ime past war among France, England, and Germany follow- and time present / . . . both perhaps [being] pres- ing the Nazi invasion and subsequent occupation ent in time future.” While their allusion to Becket of Poland in September of that year, Eliot began and the king’s youthful friendship is germane, these work on “East Coker.” A world and the values lines were cut nevertheless—only to reappear sev- and way of life that it represented and that he eral years later as the famous opening passage to had spent a creative and critical lifetime arguing to “Burnt Norton,” which would be published in Col- preserve seemed suddenly to be more in jeopardy lected Poems, 1909–1935. than it ever had been before. He modeled the new Other lines and echoes from Murder also occur poem on the five-part structure of “Burnt Norton,” in “Burnt Norton.” When Thomas first appears on its own structure modeled loosely, perhaps, on the stage, for example, he speaks of there being a pat- five-part structure of The Waste Land. tern to action and suffering, “that the wheel may “East Coker” was completed in draft form by turn and still / Be forever still.” That passage is February 1940 and first published in the Easter reminiscent of “the still point of the turning world,” 1940 issue of the New English Weekly, a socially a metaphorical marker that takes on more and conservative newspaper with which Eliot had more significance as “Burnt Norton” and the rest of begun an active editorial association in 1934, pub- Four Quartets continue. The Third Tempter, too, lishing articles and poetry in it for the next decade. will speak of how “time past is time forgotten,” and, When Faber published the poem in pamphlet form far more noteworthy, Thomas, within moments of in September of the same year, it would sell 12,000 his death, will utter the line that later becomes one copies, a remarkable commentary on both Eliot’s of the most frequently quoted from Four Quartets, renown and the poem’s capacity to embrace some- let alone “Burnt Norton” itself, toward the close thing that the reading public must have come to of the first section: “Human kind cannot bear very regard as quintessentially English. much reality.” It was while he was composing “East Coker” Still, as literary history would have it, it is that the further idea occurred to Eliot that he directly from that discarded speech of the Second might compose four quartets, of which “Burnt Nor- Priest that the poem “Burnt Norton” sprang, and ton” and “East Coker” would comprise the first two it may have been for no other reason than that parts, that would be organized around the themes Eliot regarded the discarded verse as too valuable of the four elements and the four seasons. He com- a turn of phrase and idea to never see the light of posed “The Dry Salvages,” originally titled simply day. (Lengthy parts of the never completed “Swee- “Dry Salvages,” during the rest of 1940, sending ney Agonistes,” for example, would eventually find off a complete first draft to his friend and confi- their way into “The Hollow Men.”) Whatever the dante John Hayward on New Year’s Day 1941. The case may have been, while “Burnt Norton” would finished poem was published in the New English not be published until it appeared in Collected Weekly in February 1941. Poems in April 1938, it is reasonable to assume All that remained now was for Eliot to complete that, particularly in view of its inclusion in a collec- the fourth quartet, which would be placed in Little tion bringing together Eliot’s poetry up to 1935, the Gidding, the site of Ferrar’s community to whose poem was composed and completed in 1935. In any remnant chapel Eliot had made a personal pilgrim- event, that seemed to be an end to it. age in May 1936. Thus far, world events had begun In August 1937, Eliot visited the Gloucester- not so much to overwhelm as to preempt the focus shire village of East Coker, taking photographs of Eliot’s own poetic conceptions, however. He had of such sites as St. Michael’s, the village church wound up composing “The Dry Salvages,” which in this Eliot ancestral home (and in which Eliot’s was to deal with the element of water, while Eng- ashes would eventually be interred in a memorial land was fighting for its life to keep open the vital in a rear corner near the side entrance). By the late sea lanes between the United States and the British fall of 1939, compelled perhaps by the outbreak of Isles, where critical shipping carrying war materiel

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A recent photograph of the East Coker village church that Eliot photographed when he first visited his ancestral village in August 1937. His ashes are now interred there. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

and other strategic supplies was the constant target although a first draft of the poem was completed of deadly attacks by German U-boats, or subma- in July 1941, Eliot was not satisfied with it. He rines. Now, as he began, in early 1941, to write would not take up the poem again until August the poetry of “Little Gidding,” the quartet whose 1942, completing a final version on September 19 element would be fire, London and surrounding after it had undergone five drafts. “Little Gidding” English cities had been undergoing merciless aerial was published in the New English Weekly in Octo- bombardments virtually on a nightly basis by the ber 1942, and the now completed sequence, Four German Luftwaffe, or air force, since the previous Quartets, came out in book form in October of the September. The Nazi air “blitz” or Battle of Britain, following year. The war was still raging, and Lon- as it subsequently became known, involved heavy don was still the target of German air attacks. bombing and extensive destruction throughout the heart of London, frequently igniting turbulent fires APPROACHES TO READING THE POETRY that would rage throughout the night. On May 10, In the spirit that forewarned is forearmed, any 1941, for just one egregious example, 3,000 Lon- approach to the Four Quartets should encourage doners died as a result of these Nazi air raids. the reader to be prepared for a difficult read, but The destruction and its attendant fear not just not an impossible one. Eliot was never a poet of the for one’s life but for the life of one’s people and accessible, but there is reason to believe that one nation permeate the lines and imagery of “Little should also hold suspect poetry that is too acces- Gidding” and may account as well for the fact that, sible, certainly at least when it appears that the

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poet intended it to be that way to begin with. A be any better equipped for deciphering the poetry, remark like that is hardly intended as an argument as it were, than one who had no such familiarity. for obscurity and obfuscation in poetry. Rather it is However, the richness of allusion in Eliot’s sort of a reminder that, by its very nature, poetry confronts poetry fosters the misconception that readers with- human issues and conditions that do not generally out this knowledge are necessarily excluded. lend themselves to easy modes of representation, There was a point in Eliot’s poetic career, when exposition, or explication. he was composing the notoriously obscure quatrain Eliot himself has been known to comment on poems of the like of “Sweeney among the Nightin- the troubling increase in the levels of difficulty that gales,” when he may even have gone out of his way confront the casual reader of the best contemporary to foster such misconceptions. The case is quite the poetry, and like it or not, that would be the sort opposite with the poetry of the Four Quartets. It has of modernist poetry that Eliot himself composed. its fair share of historical, literary, and biographi- Nonetheless, he pleads for readers to understand cal reference points, to be sure, but the separation the circumstances of modern life that compel such between the poetry and the poet’s sources, when- complexity in the art of poetry, and he goes as far as ever he brings them to bear, is so narrow that it is to contend that readers, when they encounter par- doubtful that gaining or missing the allusion will ticularly difficult poetry, should take heart that the contribute in any serious way to gaining or missing poet in question should find it possible to write at the meaning. For example, Eliot’s use of the words all. When all is said and done, Eliot’s observations of the 14th-century English mystic Julian of Nor- are a comment on the stressfully chaotic nature of wich is a good case in point. These words of hers, the times, not on the finer points of styling poetry. most significantly “sin is behovely” and “all will As regards the poetry of the Four Quartets, for be well,” come into play twice over in the closing all its apparently intentional obscurities, a style of sections of “Little Gidding,” and they help Eliot writing for which Eliot, the poet of such modernist bring the thematic thrust of the entire sequence classics as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to a satisfactory resolution. Yet any readers totally and The Waste Land, had become understandably ignorant of the literary source and historical con- renowned, the obscurities of the Four Quartets qua text of those verses would not get so much less out poetry (a distinction that Eliot was often wont to of them that the lines would not achieve very much make) are as well a comment on the stressfully cha- the same effect and thematic ends for the benefit of otic nature of the times, during which a common those otherwise ignorant readers. body of cultural reference points was becoming A similar case is Eliot’s image in “Little Gidding” more and more difficult to find even amid a cul- IV of the “intolerable shirt of flame” that he tells his ture as coherent and self-contained as England’s. readers is “devised” by love. Commentators identify That particular reality, more than anything else, it as a classical allusion to an episode in the life accounts for the Four Quartet’s particular difficul- of the mythic Greek hero Herakles. For attempt- ties, which are not, however, as multifaceted as ing to rape Herakles’ wife, Deianira, the centaur the difficulties to be found in much if not most Nessus was slain by Herakles, but not before the of Eliot’s previous poetry. In approaching Eliot’s dying Nessus convinced Deianira that the blood previous poetry, up to and including a poem as late from his wound, if smeared on a garment, would as “Ash-Wednesday,” which had been published act as a love potion on whoever wore the garment. n 1930, a mere five years before Eliot composed Later, when Deianira was afraid that she was losing “Burnt Norton,” a reader not armed with a cogent Herakles to another woman, she followed Nessus’s survey of the various sources that Eliot had called advice, but he had tricked her, perhaps in order on for his network of allusions would likely feel to gain a posthumous revenge on the hero. The unprepared for engaging the poetry. It is not to say blood-stained garment did not act as a love potion that a reader familiarized with each and every allu- when the unwitting Herakles put it on, but instead sion in these earlier poems of Eliot’s would in fact as a poison that caused Herakles such unbearable

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agony that he was able to escape the pain only by tions from section to section within each of the lighting his own funeral pyre and then ascending to four poems constituting the complete sequence or, Olympus in the consuming flames. for that matter, from one poem to the next. There The reader who accepts this rendering of Eliot’s are, however, certain cues and motifs that act as image may be no nearer an understanding of his markers from one segment of the text to another— exact meaning, however, than the reader who is the elements, the seasons, the significance of the familiar instead with the story of another flesh- varying locales—but these are all in the nature of burning garment, this one from Euripides’ Medea. macrostructures, as it were, and not likely to be of In that Greek tragedy, in vengeance for her betrayal much assistance or comfort as one moves from line by the hero and her husband, Jason, Medea sends to line and stanza to stanza. a poisoned garment as a wedding gift to Jason’s How, then, one should read the poetry of the betrothed, a Corinthian princess. The moment that Four Quartets remains a problem even for the reader it touches her skin, it burns her flesh off, and the who approaches it as a self-contained poem. Indeed, king, her father, who then rushes to her rescue, suf- neither will hoping to find a coherency in the poet- fers a similar fate the moment that he touches her. ry’s analogous musical structure, though it may Readers totally unaware of either possible source carry the moment from time to time, carry the day. would still see meaning in the image if they were at Music can be harmony, but harmony alone does not least aware that it appears to allude to a moment make for the sort of explicit statement that one has from the London blitz. The notion behind the image every right to expect of a poem as opposed to a work is that of a Nazi dive-bomber firing its machine guns of pure music. There is, however, a consistent link- as it dives. Such a fusillade might very well devise ing device from one line, one section, and one part figurative “shirt[s] of flame” for those poor human of the Four Quartets to another, and it is a concen- targets in the London streets below. Further, a trated and concentrating sensibility. Whether that reader armed with nothing more than a literary sensibility is Eliot’s or is a fictive projection (most mind might catch in the idea of a “shirt of flame” likely it is some rich mixture of the two, inasmuch an apt metaphysical conceit à la those 16th-cen- as no writer can be wholly himself or someone else), tury English poets such as JOHN DONNE whom Eliot this speaker’s inquisitive and sensitively ruminative was greatly influenced by in earlier phases of his nature makes the various parts of the poem, for all career. In this last but hardly final case, the human that they may seem from time to time to be sharply flesh itself, rife as it is with the heat of desire and at odds with themselves, flow one into another. passion that is manifested in the blood coursing The total effect is not hypnotic. Hardly. But the through one’s veins and arteries, is an “intolerable more one reads and, particularly, rereads the poetry, shirt of flame” enough for those who are subjected the voice of the speaker as he struggles toward an to the vagaries of human desire to give the passage understanding of what can rightly be called nothing both an equal richness and credence. less than the experience of life itself becomes a reas- The point is that readers do not need a score- surance both that this struggle toward understand- card to keep track of Eliot’s network of allusions in ing is worth the effort and that it can result not so Four Quartets as much as they need to do—or feel much in victory as in peace. they need to do—with, say, The Waste Land, and In summary, Four Quartets must be read again that is for the simple reason that the Four Quartets and again in order for the poem finally to become does not rely on the intentional development of an experience of truth and of beauty—old terms, such a network for the sake of implying meaning but no less germane even nowadays. Eliot’s is a to any significant degree. Nevertheless, the Four poetry of our time. It is a rare treat and distinct Quartets is neither easy poetry nor structured so as honor to live so near the origins of a work that to make its purpose and meaning obvious at any will no doubt be read and studied for centuries one point. Nor is the direction that the poetry is hereafter. And if Four Quartets is worth the future’s taking always completely self-evident in its transi- attention, it is certainly well worth ours.

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SYNOPSIS merely idle reflection again, until, it seems, at least “Burnt Norton” some conclusion is reached. This is that “[w]hat might have been and what has been / Point to one The extremely abstract nature of the poetry that end, which is always present,” bringing the entire opens “Burnt Norton,” the first in order of com- exercise back full circle to “time present,” where it position and placement of Eliot’s Four Quartets, no had, a mere 10 lines earlier, begun. doubt is as likely to put even the most stalwart A merry chase it has been, nevertheless, but readers off as much as the confusions regarding even that resolution, such as it is, is only momen- voice and setting put readers off The Waste Land tary. In a poetry that has thus far been nothing but before they have barely gotten started. In the case abstractions, the sudden introduction of concrete of The Waste Land, however, even amid doubts as details, even if they seem to have only a figura- to who is speaking and what is being spoken about tive reality, enter the reader’s consciousness with and why he or she is speaking about it, there is the very sort of thud that “footfalls echo[ing]” still the semblance of the concrete realities of the down a passage not taken toward a door “never months and the seasons, dried tubers and Hofgar- opened / Into the rose-garden” call up with this tens and sleds, cousins and archdukes, to make a sudden intrusion into the verse of the distractive reader imagine that something is occurring some- and actual. The reader’s senses, however, are being where to someone, even if none of it is very clear. flooded not with sensations but with their memory, Part I and then the reader is rudely reminded that even By sharp contrast, the opening stanza of “Burnt these are just words, in any case, echoing in the Norton,” which runs nearly as long as its counter- mind, suggesting that these sensory realities are, part in The Waste Land and even bears a resem- in the final analysis, no more real or substantial blance to it in its arrangement on the page, is than the earlier abstract musings about the nature striking for its dearth of concrete reference points, of time. Why disturb the dust one finds “on a bowl so that the reader is left to ponder nothing more of rose-leaves,” the speaker then asks, suggesting or less than the import of the words themselves, in good Eliot fashion again, that he does not know rather than to which external realities they refer or the answer. Yet why, too, gather rose leaves up the particular nature of the speaker that they call in a bowl except to preserve them as souvenirs of to mind. Nor should readers imagine that that is an event associated with them, an event that one not the very effect that Eliot is hoping to achieve. not only does not want to forget but also wishes to The poem begins with what by now has become its commemorate as well? famous reflection on the relationship among the This querulous examination of the interface past, the present, and the future, replete with a among time and the passage of time and memory is “perhaps,” typical of Eliot, that undercuts with a followed now by an equally puzzling mix of the likely further vagueness the vagueness of these musings. with the unlikely, the possible with the impossible, Just then, this relatively metaphysical bit of the ponderable with the imponderable. The reader reflecting on whether the future is a component is invited to follow “other echoes” into the very of the past, the past and present components of rose garden that had just been introduced as one the future, is ratcheted up a notch into a realm of that has never been entered, although it may be, thought that seems to be far more spiritual if not on reflection, that it has never before been entered theological in nature. Terms redolent of redemp- by that particular door at the end of that particular tion and eternity enter the picture, but if it is hard passage. This strange push-and-pull of the poetry to resist the possibility that these matters may be thus far, which asserts a reality only to undermine far more critical than the tone of mere musings its validity, calls to mind Lewis Carroll’s classic, has initially implied, then the tone then drifts back Alice in Wonderland. With its vibrating between the the other way. Philosophically vague words such literal and the figurative, the abstract and the con- as abstraction and speculation now weave a spell of crete, such a poetic technique has been Eliot’s way

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of representing the kind of reality between dream each other as to be barely perceptible. Rather than and waking that he has explored so frequently in lamenting the disjunctions, it is as if he is celebrat- earlier poetry that it has virtually become a hall- ing their essential associations in the hope that they mark of his unique style of versifying. From the all must point in a single direction nevertheless. human voices that wake Prufrock only to drown Therefore, for all practical purposes, all distinc- him in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to tions become imperceptible, until, in this rose gar- the shadow that falls between the motive and the den that may or may not be real, there is music in action in “The Hollow Men,” Eliot’s has always the rustling shrubbery and sunlight may appear to been the poetry of altered states of consciousness be water in a pool that a passing cloud can then that have been altered not by external agents but suddenly “empty.” The bird that calls, the hidden by internal turmoil and confusions. children who laugh, are both there and not there as That is, in fact, the most peculiarly modern- well, echoing the past as memory and the present as ist feature of his verse, its focus on disruptions to a remembrance of itself in its passing. All that one interior states of being, and these disjunctions are is left knowing, and certainly all that the speaker no less prominent in “Burnt Norton.” Here Eliot, knows, is that one was there, and then one was not instead of presenting them at their extremes of dif- there. He calls it “our first world,” a state of being ference, presents them at those junctures where the or mind or spirit (or all three) that may be child- distinction between the one and the other—the past hood or innocence or the Garden of Eden (or all and the present, for example, or the present and three) that point to something, collectively, that all the future, memory and experience—are so near to of us have forgotten yet can suddenly remember.

A shaded lane at Burnt Norton. Eliot and Emily Hale may have made their way along this path in the summer of 1934 when they visited the manor grounds. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

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In the same way, the children could be sym- that was completely destroyed by fire centuries ear- bolic of a blissfully ignorant innocence. They could lier. Invariably, he has been made mindful of a be, like any children, the speaker’s recollection of structure, a great house as they say, that is no lon- those first human associations that everyone has ger there, of pools in which water no longer lies, of before processes of maturation occur. They could sounds among the hedges and shrubs that resemble be specimens from the childhood of a human race what they cannot be. now grown jaded with an excess of history and It is the ponderous weight of all this present real- progress. Or they could be Adam and Eve, for that ity—of how more has passed than there ever, at any matter. For the reader somewhat familiar with par- one moment, can be—that brings these doleful mus- ticular details from Eliot’s biography, the children ings, half philosophical, half spiritual, toward a pur- could even be more youthful manifestations of pose that even the speaker cannot discern but that Eliot and Emily Hale. She was an early love with the presence of a bird, in its own perpetual comings whom he took up again in the 1930s after his mar- and goings, can nevertheless articulate: “human riage to his first wife, Vivien, had dissolved, first kind / Cannot bear very much reality.” Nothing emotionally and then socially, in the earlier part conclusive comes out of all this; nothing should. It of that decade. Shortly before the poem’s compo- is, after all, only the beginning of a poem sequence sition, Eliot, it is known, had visited the ruined that will not only involve the next half-decade and English country home that is the site of the poem, more of Eliot’s creative life, but that will, as the Four in company with Hale, while she was vacationing Quartets, become his greatest masterpiece. in England, apparently to be with him. Clearly, any Beginnings are, of course, important, although one of these explanations, and many another, is as often their significance cannot be known until, likely to be the answer that might resolve all these ironically, they are recognized in terms of what- various possibilities, and these resolutions are as ever they began comes itself into being. In the case varied as the questions that readers might provide. of “Burnt Norton,” this beginning sets a tone and The real point is that the poem, like all good demarcates the ensuing poem’s thematic bound- poems, and the poet, like all good poets, may raise . With regard to tone, the poet who made but never answers these sorts of questions regard- his early reputation by displaying a rich talent for ing source and meaning, since they raise a myriad liberally mixing levels and kinds of discourse makes of questions of their own within the text. These it clear that he has not changed his legendary questions may be categorized under the general approach one iota in this later poetry, although he topic heading, “What Is Reality?,” and they seem has toned down his earlier flamboyance and auda- constantly to point the reader in the general direc- ciousness considerably. tion of coming to recognize that reality is of no There is as a result a rich variety of poetic voices fixed shape or meaning—at least not for very long. and concerns expressed in this opening section, “What might have been, and what has been,” are although the range of difference and contrasts all too often not very distinguishable from each among them might not have been executed so other in the blur of memory in which, from the much in an effort to affront and confuse his reader, point of view of the present, the past is always as Eliot had seemed to be wont to do earlier, as in contemplated. Seen another way, the present is a an effort to represent honestly the confusion that forever haunted by a never-ceasing past. experience, “reality,” is. Indeed, despite his con- The poem’s locale, Burnt Norton, supports this stantly appearing to be frustrating each new line somewhat spectral reading of Eliot’s intentionally of reasoning or exposition as it occurs, in “Burnt enigmatic opening. The speaker is puzzled by the Norton” Eliot seems to be far more interested in presence of the past in a present that is perpetually and intent on getting his point across, although the merging flawlessly with the future partly, at least, wary reader should always be on guard whenever because he is himself standing in the unkempt ruins Eliot’s intentions appear to be so transparent as to of the formal gardens of an English country manor be self-evident.

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This empty pool, referred to in “Burnt Norton” I, is on the lower of two terraces at Burnt Norton, the English country manor that provided the inspiration for the quartet of that name. Eliot visited the grounds on a walking tour of the area with Emily Hale in 1934; the house itself was destroyed by fire in the mid-18th century. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

There can be no denying that this opening pas- these or any other thematic considerations to be sage, then, appears to enunciate a number of the be-all and end-all of either the poet’s aim for themes straightforwardly if not emphatically. The the poetic text or the reader’s reward for having passage of time and its effects assuredly is one of read it will severely diminish the experience of the Eliot’s themes. Place and its associations with indi- Four Quartets as poetry. It is particularly important, vidual identity and growth surely comprise another. then, for the reader to remember that Eliot is not The ramifications of thinking too closely on the only a poet first and foremost but a poet who, in event, as WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s Hamlet so nicely virtually all of his critical writings, stresses poetry puts it, whereby the overintellectualization and as its own species of human communication, one analysis of experience become emotionally and whose primary consideration is hardly ever a purely morally paralyzing, may very well be a third major thematic one. theme for the ensuing poem, especially if this first In the 1942 essay, “The Music of Poetry,” section is regarded as an indicator. It can be said, which came relatively late in the period involving too, that as one continues to read through “Burnt his composition of the Four Quartets, he seems to Norton” and then on through the remaining three express what he had in mind when he struck, as poems of Four Quartets, these thematic expecta- he had often done in the past, a musical analogy to tions will not go unrewarded or unfulfilled. identify the quality and nature of the poetry that By the same token, however, this is poetry, he was then writing. In that essay, though he con- not expository or persuasive prose, and expecting fesses to having little technical musical expertise,

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he recommends that poets should think of those in which patterns of thought and feeling and lan- properties that poetry and music have in common, guage themselves create meaning. These poems, and he identifies them as “the sense of rhythm beginning with “Burnt Norton,” are indeed, after and the sense of structure.” Lest associations be all, four quartets. It may not always be easy to made from the musical to the dramatic stage, an remember this metaphorically structural reference area to which he was devoting more and more of point that Eliot provides as one becomes caught his own creative energies and attention, Eliot fur- up instead in the web of reference and insinua- ther recommends that poets begin to think more tion that the poetry as statement alone inspires. in terms of the concert hall than the opera stage Nonetheless, it would be a serious disservice both for their musical models, a likely allusion to his to the poetry and to the reading experience to intentions for the Quartets, which were then in forget the musical analogy altogether. Not that the final stages of completion. Indeed, he con- Eliot allows the musicality both of the poetry and cludes, “There are possibilities of transitions in a of patterns of human experience that emerge from poem comparable to the different movements of a the poetry to be too easily forgotten. If music, like symphony or a quartet.” poetry, is patterns of structure and rhythm, so What these later remarks on the music of poetry are the activities of nature and of humans. These ought powerfully to encourage the reader both to are often called mythic patterns because, in their imagine and to keep in mind is that, beyond and cyclical repetitions and renewals, they become the perhaps more significant than the substance of larger and larger patterns by which the human statement in “Burnt Norton,” the first of the Quar- imagination both organizes life itself and renders tets, is its musical quality. That would be meant it meaningful. in those very broad categories of structure and of If the first section of “Burnt Norton” has estab- rhythms, exactly as Eliot has just described, nor are lished these basic themes and structural principles they difficult to discern. as being those by which Eliot likely composed the Granted, those to-and-fro rhythms of the philo- poetry, then it is by those same themes and struc- sophical and spiritual and personal musings with tural principles that the poetry can, as it now con- which “Burnt Norton” begins are significant. They tinues, most profitably be regarded. are significant, surely, for the interactions of the Part II somewhat conflicting ideas that the poetry is Accepting the poetry foremost as musical in expressing, but that should not be regarded as what both form and movement, there should be less of Eliot might have meant by the musical substance a shock to the reader’s expectations for a rea- of either the poetry or the poetic effect of those sonable transition when the second section of same verses. Rather, and especially if Eliot is taken the poem commences with a highly lyrical turn at his word, their substance is found in the way in announced by the startling image of “[g]arlic and which the vagaries of those reflections conduct the sapphires in the mud.” It is extremely doubtful reader’s responsiveness this way and that, mimick- that any reader’s knowing that this is a direct ing the so-called wind of thought—those verses’ allusion, albeit translated, from a poem by the musical quality, in other words, as Eliot would 19th-century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé later define it. This notion of thought as a wind is would assist that reader in knowing any better another one of those double-edged metaphorical what the image, for all its richness, might mean. swords that appealed to Eliot’s modernist love of Nor would it be of much further help to know irony and paradox. Thought is a wind in the way that Mallarmé was one of the French SYMBOLIST that it can inspire and reinvigorate; thought is a poets who had such a considerable influence on wind in the way that, for all its apparent substance Eliot when he was first starting out as a poet dur- and force, it is still finally just so much empty air. ing his Harvard student days. To the litany of themes already set forth, Rather, as might be suspected, the image is best then, yet another might be added: the manner considered in terms of itself and of the apparent

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import of the lyrical passage that it now introduces. disruption, indeed, requires it in order for the pat- Once more the reader ought to discover that it tern to emerge, whereas what the soul or the mind is not sources and meanings but patterns—those most desires is that there be some constant within musiclike formulations of structure and rhythms— the eternal present toward which all time and all and their interweaving that are at issue. In isolation possibilities point. from any possible associations with outside sources, Shortly Eliot will give that constant both a name this opening image seems foremost to recommend and a habitation; he will call it “the still point of the a contrast between that which is vital and organic turning world.” But first there are other reminders and nourishing, namely, garlic, and that which is of ceaselessly forming and reforming patterns and wholly inanimate and mineral and of little practical patterning that both measure out and disrupt the use, sapphires. singular reality that makes up experience. As this Those first recognitions of contrasts, whatever lyric passage that opens the second section of the they may be for each particular reader, can call up poem continues, the reader is told that the blood only further ones, of course, all of them develop- flows beneath “inveterate scars,” meaning ageless ing from the traditional associations that garlic and scars, just as flesh has been ceaselessly torn and sapphire may call up: things of intrinsic value ver- healed and torn again. There are other patterns sus those of extrinsic value, things that are subject “figured in the drift of stars” and in “the figured to decay and corruption versus those that do not leaf.” Yet another ceaseless pattern, the pattern alter except over vast spaces of time, things that of pursuit—“the boarhound and the boar,” the are cheap because they are numerous versus those hunter and the hunted—follows. These patterns that are valued because they are rare, things that may be “reconciled among the stars,” but the stars are commonplace and ordinary versus those that are cast into ceaselessly unfolding patterns of their are precious because they are spectacularly extraor- own. Reality seems to be nothing more, as a conse- dinary, things that are underrated and undervalued quence, than patterns within patterns within pat- versus those that are overrated and overvalued. terns. Change one’s point of view and the pattern The list could go on, as each new series of associa- changes accordingly, but the pattern of those pat- tive contrasts calls up another. There are similari- terns is itself unaltered. ties, too, of course, the most startling perhaps that, In such a view of things, there cannot be any- lodged in a medium as thick and obscuring as mud, thing that is constant and yet still changing, a one could easily be mistaken for the other. The Great Pattern, as it were, complete and yet fluid, in hard sheen of a peeled clove of garlic, after all, flux. This one thing Eliot makes the desideratum, could easily match in both size and visual texture the grail that the speaker seeks, and, as already the cold sparkle of a sapphire when the eye catches observed, he calls it the still point. There, he tells sight of either and both are mixed in a substance as the reader now, “the dance is,” for it is that point thick as mud. Indeed, the entire imagistic assem- where all patterns converge and merge. This dance blage, in this light, provides an apt metaphor for is “neither arrest nor movement,” nor is it fair to the confusions of sense and outward things that “call it fixity.” It is not a movement up or down, sensory experience all too frequently is liable to be from or toward, and while it is a place one can be, it for the individual. is not located in time or in space. What, then, does the image tell the reader, if it The more he speaks of this “place,” the more is not what the first section of “Burnt Norton” has it emerges as a state not of mind but of being. Its already taken pains to demonstrate in its confu- source can be traced in Eliot’s thought to his early sions among past, present, and future, experiences studies of the British idealist philosopher F. H. and the memory of them, and that is that it is all BRADLEY and his concept of immediate experience, too easy to confuse a thing not just for its opposite, which Eliot discussed at some length in his Harvard but for something that is in sharp contrast if not doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge and the Objects even strong conflict with it. Pattern itself implies of Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley.”

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The poetry supports this assumption by intro- way, in this case the famous London tube. Eliot ducing a term, Erhebung, that is drawn directly was not the first poet to use the subway as a type from the early 19th-century German philosopher for the vacuity if not hellish inevitabilities of mod- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose ideas influ- ern urban life. The contemporary American poet enced Bradley. Erhebung and immediate experi- Hart Crane, in his attempt at a modernist epic, ence, with their insinuations of an elevation and The Bridge, depicts in one of the last sections of authenticating of the ordinary, would both contain that work, “The Tunnel,” the dark side of city life within themselves the ideas that Eliot is seeking to through a descent into the sordid and filthy world concretize in his still point, which is both within deep underground in the dark reaches of the New and outside ordinary experience. The fact remains, York subway system. Indeed, as the editor of the however, that this is poetry, not philosophy or any Criterion, Eliot would publish Crane’s “The Tun- other kind of expository presentation. So, then, this nel” in that literary journal in the late 1920s. Not to “completion of . . . partial ecstasy” and “resolution say that, in terms of offering a hellish vision of con- of . . . partial horror” cannot ever be adequately temporary life in a major Western metropolis, Eliot expressed except through an accumulation of himself had not led the way, at least for English-lan- detail that is as lyrical as spiritual, as philosophical guage readers, with his image of the walking dead as literary, and as sensible as paradoxical, since all traversing London Bridge in “Burial of the Dead,” are patterns that poetry alone can reconcile into a the opening section of The Waste Land. Images such semblance, itself “still and still moving,” of what as these from the early Eliot inspired the response the still point is. from Crane that eventually became, in The Bridge, Ultimately the idea is expressed in the religious his positive vision of the modern city. terminology of heaven and damnation, but which- In “Burnt Norton,” Eliot takes his reader into a ever way the poetry and, with it, the poet’s atten- crowded subway car carrying its weary urban dwell- tion turns, the words can never quite do anything ers leading lives in which they are “[d]istracted more than point to it in the perpetual image of from distraction by distraction.” Like the “hollow the rose garden. “To be conscious is not to be in men” of Eliot’s 1925 poem of the same name, these time,” demarcates one edge of the dilemma, yet crowds of humanity with their “time-ridden faces” “[o]nly through time is time conquered,” and that find themselves in an infernal twilight zone, nei- idea demarcates the other. Stretched across these ther here nor there, caught in a “[t]ime before extremes, human experience becomes something and a time after” (“suspended between memory that “flesh cannot endure” except as it translates and desire” is how Eliot had expressed the same the purity of wholeness into those ceaselessly inter- idea in opening lines of The Waste Land). What weaving and interwoven patterns and pretends, as these modern urban travelers are missing is any it must, to see all meaning and movement begin engaging present or engagement with it. That is and end there. why they seem dead, and their environ seems like For all their problematic qualities, and they are hell—because for all intents and purposes they are considerable, the first two sections of “Burnt Nor- dead to and within the living moment of immediate ton” provide the reader with the bright possibil- experience, “the still point” of part two of “Burnt ity of a common center to experience whereby all Norton.” Here, too, Eliot suggests, come false resolutions experience is rendered inherently meaningful. But to life’s dilemma. The movement is movement for that is in the rose garden. only the most trivial and transient of purposes, just Part III as there are others who move not at all but to as The third part of this first quartet is in a different little purpose. Meanwhile, “the world moves / . . . venue and a different key. The “place of disaffec- on its metalled ways” rapidly toward nowhere, and tion” is the very icon of the vacuity and despair certainly not toward the rose garden, but carrying associated with modern urban life: It is the sub- the vast quantity of modern urban humanity along

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nevertheless, mindless passengers staring vacantly parts I and II had barely been able to entertain, let ahead on their way toward nowhere. (An exposure alone sustain. The problem with all of Eliot’s poetry to Eliot may very likely have inspired the Beatles is that processes of clarification can often lead to 1960s anthem, “Nowhere Man.”) oversimplification, if not in practice, then at least Part IV in appearance. This problem is peculiarly exacer- bated in the Four Quartets for the very reason that As the poem continues, Eliot continues to follow Eliot is trying to write a less complex and convo- somewhat the five-part structural model of The luted poetry than had come to be expected of him; Waste Land, whose part IV, “Death by Water,” is at the same time, he is dealing with such extremely the shortest of that poem’s five sections and seems knotty problems regarding time and life and death on the surface to be an opaque lyrical interlude but that generally must always resolve themselves, if at proves to be instead a passage that summarizes all all, only in the hair-splitting ambiguities of paradox that has come before it. Similarly, the fourth sec- and double-think. Another way of putting it is that tion of “Burnt Norton” is equally short and, on the the kind of poetry that he is attempting to produce surface, puzzlingly opaque; yet it, too, makes a sum- in “Burnt Norton” is not entertaining poetry, but it mary point that accounts for all the musings that is worthwhile poetry. have come before it in the present text. That, however, is the very point why and where The day is buried; a black cloud conceals the the musical analogy proves to be so valuable to his sun. The speaker ponders whether it is then that purposes. In addition to its analogous uses, after the sunflower will “turn to us.” In the absence of all, it should be clear by now how Eliot is using any other light, the poet seems to be asking, “Are this musical analogy as a structural model as well. we light enough for this dark world?” The reader Specifically, music, like thought, advances largely quickly gathers that it is death—the thought of through the principle of point and counterpoint. death and of its reality—that is catching up with In other words, its harmonies, too, are based on speaker: Will the “[c]hill / Fingers of the yew be the resolution of opposites or of terms in conflict, curled / Down on us?” The yew tree grows by tradi- exactly as the paradoxical in thought processes tion in English country churchyards, its tendrils fed operates. by the corpses of the faithful buried there, lost now If nowhere else in the sequence that is the Four permanently to time before and after and present, Quartets, the fifth and final section of “Burnt Nor- at least on this plane of existence. It is, indeed, a ton” operates on this very principle of musical anal- chilling thought. ogy and on the structural similarities among music, And yet, even in our absence or freedom from thought, and language or poetry by addressing their time, there still must be “the light . . . / At the still perplexities directly and openly. “Words move, point of the turning world,” or the hope for it. With music moves,” the speaker, who had just identified the individual’s engaging consciousness, or without the dangers of mistaking movement for meaning- it, the music goes on, and Eliot uses the kingfisher, ful action, tells his reader. But movement, though a traditional image for the Christ, to stress that, it may be a characteristic of life in the dynamic of while that may not be the way of the world, which its processes, is not a feature of the perfection that tracks its own fixed—“metalled”—ways, it is the the speaker seems to be seeking, for “that which is way of the eternity that contains all things and out living / Can only die.” Life is the burden, but it may of which the rose garden, like the lotos and the not be the way. The problem is a serious one. If rose, the sunflower and the yew tree, blooms. there is perfection, it must be an accessible reality, Part V but anything accessed within the confines of lived The fourth part having clarified what is at stake in experience, even something as abstract as music, no uncertain terms, the fifth part is able to reassert can and must be constantly transmuted merely in with an earned confidence the tenuous and queru- order to exist and, so, is itself subject to decay and lous sentiments regarding time and eternity that its own demise or at least termination, and neither

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of those ends can be regarded as having achieved love is “[t]imeless and undesiring,” and the reader the goal of perfection or of the still point. should recall as well how crucial those traits are That, surely, is why Eliot suddenly introduces too to the speaker’s ideal experience, seeing that the image of the Chinese jar. It is both still and, in he has been obsessed by time’s passage and worldly its three-dimensional beauties and luster, still mov- distractions. ing; yet, being a reasonably constant thing, it is not Love, indeed, seems to be a far more apt trope subject like words or like music to change and pass for what the speaker is truly seeking than any Chi- away before it has barely been contemplated. For nese jar may ever be. In mind of love, he hears once any reader familiar with ’s celebrated more the laughter of the children in the foliage, ode, his Grecian urn should be seen to be reappear- a laughter that is lost in the rose garden but is, ing in Eliot’s jar, inasmuch as both poets seek to like Wordsworth’s blessed shore in his “Ode on find a moving experience in a fixed object. Intimations of Immortality,” never more than the In neither case is the poet’s supposition true, of next split second in perception away. Concluding course, inasmuch as both objects, as objects, are “Burnt Norton,” one might almost go as far as to as equally liable to ruin and decay as any other. say that love is precisely what the speaker of “Burnt But since such an otherwise solid object changes a Norton” has been, or should have been, seeking all great deal less rapidly relative to words or music (in along. He still has a long way to go, however—vir- Keats’s case, it was the song of a nightingale that tually to the end of the Four Quartets, in the closing “fled,” whereas the urn, though it is silent, does passages of “Little Gidding”—before he shall dis- speak), the urn/jar’s capacity to sustain the illusion cover that for himself. of changelessness is certainly a satisfactory resolu- For now, he can only lament “the waste sad tion for the speaker since that is all that he is really time / Stretching before and after.” Time past and after—a way of bodying forth something as insub- time future both end in the present, be it what it stantial as the truth. Surely, if nothing else, the may, and as “Burnt Norton” closes, the speaker has Chinese jar, as object, is far more substantial than come no more than full circle, or so it appears. And words that “strain, / Crack and sometimes break,” yet, full circle may itself be progress, as the poet and “slip, slide, perish, / Decay with imprecision.” of “Ash-Wednesday” knows. In that signal work Worse, they “[w]ill not stay still,” whereas, like it of his, published in 1930, Eliot’s speaker ascends or not, the Chinese jar will, so it suits the speaker’s a spiral staircase, so that although he comes upon purpose. a window opening on a vista that he has already What ultimately suits the speaker’s purpose, seen, it is nevertheless being viewed from the van- however, is the theme of love. It will become more tage point of a higher plane. and more, as the poetry proceeds, the theme of the In the same way, “Burnt Norton” may appear Four Quartets, superseding and eventually subsum- to be doing, and to have accomplished, nothing ing the great philosophical and theological themes more than to be circling the same imponderables of time and eternity with which the Four Quartets, of time and space and one’s relationship to those by virtue of “Burnt Norton,” opens. Being brought intractable coordinates, but that is only if we judge to bear at the very close of “Burnt Norton,” this the poetic presentation by the standards of proposi- great theme gets from the speaker what may appear tion and conclusion. That is to say, if the poetry to be only a passing, perhaps even merely a begrudg- of “Burnt Norton” is viewed as a prose argument, ing or perfunctory nod: “Love is itself unmoving,” which it resembles, by the poem’s closing Eliot does he says, and the reader should recall how important not seem to have extended the terms of the the- stillness is for this speaker, caught up like all the matic engagement, only reiterated it—and that rest of humanity in the frenetic pace and distract- several times over. ing demands of life itself, let alone those demands If the poetic statement of “Burnt Norton” is as they are compounded by the social and cultural judged by a musical paradigm, on the other hand, pressures of so-called civilization. Furthermore, one in which a motif is not merely advanced but

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enlarged upon by repeated variations on it, then The locale for the next poem in the sequence “Burnt Norton” is far more than repeated stabs in that together make up the Four Quartets, “East the dark at those ultimate mysteries connoted by Coker,” shares some of the same characteristics time and eternity. It is rather a progressive enlarge- with Burnt Norton. A small village in Gloucester- ment of the imaginative means by which those shire in the southwest of England, East Coker is a mysteries can be expressed and visualized from the pleasant enough place that would otherwise be no point of view of the experiences of a single individ- more noteworthy than dozens of similarly pleas- ual, in this case, the poem’s speaker. In that way, ant and picturesque venues throughout the English too, “Burnt Norton” weds music, poetry, and, in countryside had it not, too, achieved great liter- the truest sense of the word’s meaning, philosophy, ary fame as the focus of the second of Eliot’s Four thereby setting a tone for the remainder of the Four Quartets. Unlike Burnt Norton, however, a locale Quartets to follow. For philosophy is the love of that has specific but still only casual associations wisdom, and it is wisdom that the speaker of “Burnt with the poet’s life, East Coker, by sharp contrast, Norton” is seeking. has general but nevertheless indelible connections with Eliot personally. It was from this village that “East Coker” Andrew Eliot, the founder of the American branch As has already been established, Eliot uses several of the poet’s family, left for one of England’s New other overarching organizational principles in the World colonies, specifically Massachusetts, in the Four Quartets, in addition to the primary ones of mid-16th century. East Coker, in other words, is the poetry’s musical parallels. The most prominent the Eliots’ ancestral home. among these other principles guiding the poetry’s Part I composition, structure, and themes is a distinguish- “In my beginning is my end,” the speaker intones ing emphasis on each of the four elements—air, as “East Coker” opens, words that take on a fuller earth, water, and fire—accomplished by identifying meaning in the light of the village’s particular sig- each of the four poems with one of the four. Also, nificance for the poet. These words, reversed, are each of the quartets is set in, if not ruled by, a par- the motto of Mary Stuart. As Mary, Queen of Scots ticular, actual locale that has some associations for was one of the many villains/victims in the religious the poet, either of a biographical nature or of an intimate personal nature. For example, as much as “Burnt Norton” may seem to reflect the element of earth, what with how much the poetry emphasizes those moments the speaker longs to spend free from longing in the rose garden, it is a critical commonplace that the poetry of “Burnt Norton,” with its obsessive inter- est in philosophical abstractions and metaphysical speculations regarding time and experience, in fact focuses on the element of air in the sense that that is what such deep and often fruitless or point- less thought is composed of—airy nothings. As a locale, meanwhile, aside from what is known of Eliot’s visit there with Emily Hale very near the time that he composed the poetry of “Burnt Nor- ton,” Burnt Norton is not specifically noteworthy otherwise. Indeed, its sole claim to any enduring A country lane just outside the village of East Coker, the fame is the fact that it figures notably in one of Eliots’ ancestral home and the locale for the quartet of Eliot’s major works. the same name (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

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turmoil that tore the English people apart after ued to plague England well into the 17th century. Henry VIII severed all ties with the authority of the Andrew Eliot would have been of a different reli- Roman Catholic papacy in 1533. A Catholic rival gious party from the Roman Catholicism that had to Henry’s daughter Elizabeth, Mary devised the been practiced by Mary, numbering himself by his motto during her imprisonment in 1568. She was time no doubt among the dissenters from the so- executed for treason in 1587. called established church headed by the king. It Beyond this connection to late 16th- and 17th- is generally assumed, nevertheless, that it was for century English religious, social, and political religious reasons that Andrew Eliot left East Coker, history, the words of the motto have several signifi- permitting his distant heir, the poet T. S. Eliot, to cances of their own for Eliot’s immediate purposes. be born in St. Louis, Missouri. “In my beginning is For one thing, once it has been introduced into the my end,” indeed. From here the poet started, in a poetry, the idea continues to serve as a frequent manner of speaking. To here the poet returns, also philosophical refrain throughout the remainder of in a manner of speaking. Every beginning is an end, the sequence. If nothing else, it provides a handy as he will soon note, every end a beginning. means of picturesquely summing up of all those This opening section of “East Coker” also philosophical musings regarding time, memory, and clearly represents the element of earth, the “sig- mortality that permeated the verse of “Burnt Nor- nificant soil,” as the poet calls it, out of which all ton.” Regarded strictly in terms of itself, the motto living things spring and to which they return. If provides its own anchor for verse that all too often “Burnt Norton,” then, had concerned itself with seems to be on the verge of slipping away into the conceptual time, time as a philosophical construct vagueness of reflection. of mind, “East Coker” concerns itself with gen- The idea that one’s death is contained in erational time. Time here is the means of measur- one’s birth, one’s goals in one’s aspirations, is not ing and calculating the production of the harvest a uniquely new one, of course. Similar ideas are and the births, marriages, and deaths of those who embraced in the image of eternity as a circle or plant and reap the harvest, and who are eventually ring, or as a snake devouring itself. The idea par- planted in countless country churchyards, recall- takes of paradox as well, in keeping with a concep- ing the far reach of the chill fingers of the yew tual strategy already introduced in “Burnt Norton,” tree of the fourth section of “Burnt Norton.” This whereby every thought and feeling brought to bear is the human universe of birth, copulation, and seems to be accompanied by its own necessary and death, the be-all and end-all of Sweeney in “Swee- contradictory opposite. Certainly there is the same ney Agonistes,” Eliot’s aborted verse drama. There effect in the thought that one’s end can be found in Eliot makes those processes seem tedious, but it is one’s beginning. For “end” has an easily discernible from their cyclic rituals of renewal that the poet/ double meaning. It can be one’s end in the sense of speaker’s own flesh, like all flesh, springs. The new a termination point, but it can also suggest one’s emerges from out of the detritus of the past and aim or goal. As the poet had already warned his then returns to it. readers at the conclusion of “Burnt Norton,” words As the speaker strolls a lane in this country vil- decay with imprecision. It should be no wonder lage where he is himself rooted and his roots are that “East Coker,” by opening with a brain-teasing planted in the surrounding earth, itself compounded paradox, begins with a vivid reminder of just how of all that and all those who came before him, he true that can be. Words provoke meaning more imagines a summer midnight in an open field, pipes often than they provide it, it seems. and a drum and a bonfire, and his ancestors danc- Finally, there is irony if not bitter paradox, ing. The archaic-sounding English into which the too, in the fact that the religious strife associated passage suddenly breaks is more than Eliot’s way with Mary, from whose “tattered arras” the motto of marking the moment as one belonging to that is taken, was just another, earlier chapter in the time when Andrew Eliot or his forbears would have religious contention and persecution that contin- been there. The words come from a 16th-century

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work by another Eliot ancestor, Sir Thomas Elyot’s manner in which each section of each poem is laid Book of the Governour, and in the passage that Eliot out and constructed follow a common pattern, but has selected, Elyot compares the dance to matri- in a way that is, of course, unique to each poem. mony, matrimony to a dance, in which man and This Chinese-box approach is, in essence, cubed so woman are joined for the propagation of further that the musical connotations of such a structuring life. Reading this passage, the reader may be made principle take on a virtually prismatic effect, ele- mindful of the still point from “Burnt Norton,” the ments from one poem not merely resembling but point where the dance is. This present dance, how- reflecting and refracting coordinate sections from ever, keeps time with the passing seasons and their the other three. The result is that, although poetry, requirements, the “time of milking and of harvest / like music, is a linear art, the Quartets act on each The time of the coupling of man and woman / And other as if they were a simultaneous whole. “In my that of beasts.” Such a vision is both provocative beginning is my end.” and compelling, echoing as it does both the power The lyric passage of section two of “East Coker” of desire and the requirements of a biological neces- introduces, as its earlier counterpart in “Burnt Nor- sity that drives all nature. It is interesting that the ton” had, the theme from the point of view of its speaker only observes this scene and comments on most poetic coordinates, assuming that poetic here it and that he seems to have little desire to join it or means, in the popular sense, less keyed in to reality. find his own place in it. And yet he neither can nor In that sense of the term, the next 17 lines begin- will deny that it is from out of that dance that his ning with the words, “What is the late November own flesh emerges, from which further emerges the doing,” are nonetheless hardly watered down in questioning and isolated consciousness that domi- their substance or beauty, so that a reader fresh out nates “Burnt Norton.” of the more prosaic passages of the first section of Then the dawn comes, with the “heat and “East Coker” would hardly imagine that these 17 silence” of a new day. If that portends a move- lines, as beautiful as they are, are merely a setup ment back toward those places and moments of on the poet’s part. But a setup they nevertheless disaffection, where one is distracted from distrac- indeed are, though to what purpose, or end, the tion by distraction, still, there is new knowledge in reader is left to ponder. So, then, in those first 17 the clear implication that the lives of the speaker’s lines of the second section of “East Coker” the ancestors were ultimately no different. After such poet/speaker muses in rather expansively poetical midnight revelries, there must always come the glar- terms on how all things move toward “that destruc- ingly dull business of the workaday world, whose tive fire / Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.” own demands, like nature’s, are unrelenting. The The poetic passage is appropriate, too, coming hard point is that now the speaker knows that that dance on the heels of the first sections long meditation of nature and its forces, though shrouded and exer- on all those preceding generations that have gone cised in the darkness of its own ongoing mysteries, under earth’s lid, as the old saw goes. underlies the urban landscape’s zero day, for “I am No sooner is the passage ended, however, than here / Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.” the poet, inasmuch as he may be regarded as the Part II speaker, steps out of character to comment, nega- An evolving structural method for the sequence tively, on the poetic passage that has just transpired. is also hinted at in the motto. This becomes read- “That was a way of putting it,” he tells his reader, ily apparent as the second section of “East Coker” and then he criticizes its “worn-out poetical fash- opens with a lyrical passage, in keeping with the way ion” in no uncertain terms, calling it “periphrastic,” in which the second section of “Burnt Norton” had that is to say, wordy and circumlocutory. Such is opened. Just as each of the four poems that com- the poetic style, in fact, that had been all the rage pose the Four Quartets as a sequence play variations and was on its way out when the early 19th-century on each particular theme that will then be given a English poet William Wordsworth had criticized it different twist in the succeeding poems, so will the nearly a century and a half earlier. Wordsworth,

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however, had criticized it in a prose preface to his which, deceiving, could no longer harm.” The idea collection Lyrical Ballads, not in a poem and cer- is, to be sure, an apt one, although it may give the tainly not immediately after tricking his reader into lie to the very premise that it is trying to establish: accepting it as his own idea of poetry and then that there is no utterance, no “wisdom,” that is turning on it and betraying the reader’s trust by human that is not, in time, dismissed as folly by dismissing it all as just so much been-there done- those who succeed the utterer. All things pass, but that rubbish. none as fast as human wisdom, unless it be life’s Setup it is, then, but why step out of the perfor- joys. “The houses are all gone under the sea. // The mance by revealing it as a performance? If all things dancers are all gone under the hill.” change, if they come only to go, and if it is ordained Part III that there is nothing that is made that will last for- The parallels between the structure of “East Coker” ever, it is a part of the poet’s performance and of his and that of the preceding quartet, “Burnt Norton,” trust with his readers to remind them, even if that continue in the third section of “East Coker.” In reminder appears to be offered rudely, that among “Burnt Norton,” the speaker had turned from a the items on that finite but nevertheless lengthy list contemplation of the individual’s aspirations for of things that do not last is poetry, including most the ideal represented for him in the rose garden assuredly all its passing styles, including the poet’s and in the stillness of a Chinese jar to a consider- own. The poet who had told his readers in the clos- ation of the frenetic and distracting pace of life for ing fifth section from “Burnt Norton” that words modern city dwellers caught in those collectively decay with imprecision now has told them that empty and meaningless moments as they rush to poetic fashions not only change but also become and fro on a subway. outmoded. In “East Coker,” similarly, the speaker turns Eliot is not saying anything new here either by from his contemplation of the ravages of time on telling his readers that even the highest form of all individuals and on their joys and griefs alike to human verbal communication, poetry, can become a consideration of how those same natural forces outworn, nor must the reader imagine that Eliot ravage as well all the trappings of earthly power is trying to startle. Nevertheless, while Eliot may and glory, defeating the goals of the mighty and not be the first poet to have opined regarding the powerful and self-important just as surely as those limitations of word and the fading stylishness of of the meek and the humble. There, in the same any poem, seldom has a poet said this about words dark vacancy, are to be found “captains, merchant and about a poem that he is himself writing, in that bankers, eminent men of letters,” and even the very poem that he is writing. By thus compounding generous and the distinguished among them “all go this otherwise commonplace point, Eliot makes his into the dark.” point: that there is no getting away from the decay Though the imagery is Dantesque, these worldly of all human endeavor, even in the fabled realms of individuals are not portrayed as bad people in and enduring artistry. Yet that is not itself the point, of of themselves, any more than the highly successful course. “The poetry,” the reader nearly just as soon and worldly Lord Claverton in Eliot’s last important learns, “does not matter.” Nor should it. Rather work, the verse drama The Elder Statesman, will be it is that “intolerable wrestle / With words and portrayed as a bad man, only an oblivious one. meanings” that matters, engaging not only the These are, however, individuals whom the world poet but every other thinking, feeling human being honors and admires, setting them aside, as if in as well—the effort to understand, to come to an some vague hope that not everyone and everything understanding, to make sense. succumbs to the all-consuming nothingness that is No wonder, then, that the speaker does not time past. The speaker’s point is that in the hustle want to “hear / Of the wisdom of old men, but and bustle of the moment, when what is important rather their folly,” because after all has been said to us comes near to seeming to have the same and done, “[w]e are only undeceived / Of that importance to the vast and impersonal universe, it

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is easy to be distracted and to forget the awful and movement—with the paradoxical center of “East persistent truth that no one and nothing survives Coker”—the darkness that, for the soul, is light. If it very long. is in paradox, not agedness, that wisdom comes, the The image introduced now is not one of passen- speaker now repeats a litany of paradoxical moral gers on a subway but of an audience in a darkened and spiritual postures taken almost verbatim from theatre: “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark- St. John of the Cross’s The Ascent of Mt. Carmel. ness come upon you / Which shall be the darkness The negative way that he espouses there has much of God.” As ominous a view of life as such a plea of practical wisdom about it, once the advice is implies, it is hardly unrealistic, for the stage set, all read in the spirit of ironic truths. If one wants to indeed is being “rolled away.” And then, suddenly, have everything, desire nothing. If one wishes to the image is one of being again on “an underground achieve everything, achieve nothing. Once the idea train, in the tube,” a stop between stations, and is grasped, it is difficult to fail to get the point—and behind every face there is a “mental emptiness” equally as difficult, however, to put it into practice: that leaves “only the growing terror of nothing to The less one wants, the more one gets. think about.” In the hands of Eliot’s speaker, meanwhile, this The metaphors are sure and accurate, illustrating same kind of advice may overwhelm the reader the emptiness that intrudes when life’s planned dis- already somewhat overwhelmed by the onslaught tractions—the next scene in the play, the next stop of paradox and contradictory juxtapositions and on the way—suddenly does not come about exactly apparent non sequiturs that frequently character- as expected and, freed momentarily from distraction, ize his poetry, certainly the poetry of Four Quartets, one is left alone in an ultimate darkness without any and without a doubt this particular passage. But inner support or resources to call on. There one can the speaker softens the psychic blow somewhat by only wait, without the three cardinal virtues of faith, dragging the reader into the text and making him a hope, and charity, since they, too, are all contained knowledgeable accomplice in the quest for resolu- in the waiting. This is what the philosopher might tion, even if that resolution is rendered as puzzles. call the existential void when there is nothing left to Addressing the reader directly, the speaker sud- prop up the unattended self. But rather than wallow- denly says: “You say I am repeating / Something ing in such despair, Eliot’s speaker instead accepts I have said before. . . . / Shall I say it again?” The the void by embracing its very essence as being itself reader is, of course, saying absolutely nothing but a spiritual state—by embracing, that is, the very is brought nonetheless into the text and onto the nothingness that one fears. page by such boldness of direct address. The “you” In mystical practice this process is called the via who then is schooled in the ways of dispossession negativa, or negative way. Eliot borrows the idea is made that much more intimately connected to wholesale from St. John of the Cross, the 16th-cen- the reader through the speaker’s free use of such an tury Spanish Catholic mystic from whose works on informal mode of address in the midst of an other- spiritual discipline Eliot had already taken half of wise intensely formal and dislocating presentation. the epigraph that introduces “Sweeney Agonistes.” It is another work that darkly explores the edges Part IV of the hardly bearable. Now, however, in “East The direct exposure to the paradoxical way of Coker,” recognizing the paradox that, for us poor thinking that the via negativa requires makes the benighted humans, enlightenment comes from deflections that come in the fourth section sound embracing the darkness that swallows us all in any particularly reasonable. The “wounded surgeon” case, the speaker discovers freedom in surrender, is an apt oxymoron, in the physician-heal-thyself and fulfillment in denial. Thus, “the darkness shall school of moral insight. Everything, of course, con- be light, and the stillness the dancing.” tains its opposite and, so, calls it up. “Compassion” At this juncture the poetry weds the paradoxi- is “sharp,” “health” is “disease.” “To be restored, cal center of “Burnt Norton”—the stillness that is our sickness must grow worse.” All these things that

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sound impossible from the physical point of view will do periodically throughout the Quartets, is not of a strictly material universe are, of course, pro- a distractive or coy device but an integral thematic foundly true from a spiritual point of view focused and structural component of the total work and its on eternity. From that angle, the death of the body effect. If a single note is being struck throughout, is indeed the birth of the soul, and darkness here is after all, it is that from virtually any vantage point, light there, whereas light here is a source of dark- there is an immense measure of futility in all human ness there, and so forth. action. While the reader may hope through hints As in “Burnt Norton” and in the original model, only half-given thus far that that futility will even- The Waste Land, the fourth section is the shortest, tually resolve itself into a more expansively hopeful in gathering and summarizing in stark metaphori- vision of a life spent on Earth, it makes perfect cal terms all that has come before it thus far and sense nonetheless that the poet will not exempt his thereby preparing the reader for the poem’s resolu- own particular kind of activity, the composition of tion. If also in “Burnt Norton,” however, the fourth poetry, from that pervasive sense of the futility of section appears to invoke God the Father in the still action. point of the turning world, the fourth part of “East The poet himself, then, more than any speaker Coker” clearly invokes God the Son in the image or even poet/speaker, seems to be addressing his of the “bloody flesh” that is “our only food,” and readers directly again as the fifth section of “East it concludes by recalling the Eucharistic feast: “. . . Coker” commences, and he addresses them not as [I]n spite of that, we call this Friday good.” readers but as if they are old friends with whom he The notion that the day that the Christ was cru- has shared many moments in the past. Since the cified is called Good Friday because of the benefit poet in question just happens to be T. S. Eliot, cer- that Christians believe Christ’s sacrifice brought to tainly one of the most celebrated English-language all humanity caps the entire movement toward the poets of his generation, he and his readers would paradoxical with Christianity’s ultimate paradoxi- indeed have, as it were, developed a special rela- cal resolution—aside, perhaps, from the felix culpa tionship with each other over the quarter century of Adam’s sin that precipitated humanity’s fallen and more that he has been publishing. They have state to begin with. In keeping with the idea that shared with him, too, the “[t]wenty years largely all things not merely contain but are their own wasted” between the end of World War I on opposite, Adam is portrayed as “the ruined mil- November 11, 1918, and the outbreak of World lionaire” whose error of eating the forbidden fruit War II on September 1, 1939, with the Nazi inva- that then led to his expulsion from the Garden of sion of Poland. Eden ended up with his ironically and paradoxically He had already, at the end of “Burnt Norton,” “endow[ing]” this hospital/hospice called Earth, lamented the sad wasted years stretching before where all are born only to die. and after. Now, as he comes to the conclusion of Part V “East Coker,” he can perhaps better explain why If St. John of the Cross provides much of the text someone who imagines that all human action is for the third section of “East Coker,” then there futile should lament the waste of time. Paradoxi- are the ghosts of such English metaphysical poets cally, it may be because he had not thought that he as John Donne and Andrew Marvell haunting the was wasting it—might have thought, instead, that fourth section, with its extravagant conceits, or he was achieving things, just like those captains metaphorical comparisons. In the fifth and final of industry, whereas in fact he was only “marking section of “East Coker,” Eliot acknowledges these time.” For time spent in idle pursuits is the ultimate debts by having his speaker muse on the difficulties wasteland, the poet of The Waste Land has con- of achieving effective creation. vincingly just now told his readers in “East Coker.” It cannot be overemphasized that the poet’s “[A]ll go into the dark,” he had intoned at the stepping not so much out of character as out of opening of the third section, and he would not say role by commenting on the poetic process, as he as much if he did not mean it.

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Words, too, go into the dark, one generation’s late to seek a newer world,” that they should not way of putting it becomes the next’s outmoded “rust unburnished,” and that they should “strive to fashion, and what holds true for a generation holds seek, to find, and not to yield.” true for individuals as well. So, then, it is neither After the morose mood of much of the rest of unfair nor inaccurate to say that each poem is a “East Coker,” Eliot appears to echo these senti- “raid on the inarticulate / With shabby equipment ments in the quartet’s close as he speaks of spend- always deteriorating,” and one learns “only to get ing “a lifetime burning in every moment,” of the the better of words / For the thing . . . / One is no kind “when here and now cease to matter,” for longer disposed to say.” The man, too, who had paid “[o]ld men,” he concludes, “ought to be explor- homage to his biological ancestry in “East Coker” ers” who must be “still and still moving.” Instead only to admit that they are all buried now pays of his fellow mariners, as in the case of Tennyson’s equal homage to some of his literary ancestors as Ulysses, Eliot’s speaker/poet has all those “undisci- well—St. John of the Cross, Marvell, Donne—only plined squads of emotions” to deal with. But dealt to admit that he cannot “hope / To emulate” them, with they must be, particularly since one has no for there is nothing more for each next generation other choice, unless it is to vegetate in the dead of writers than “the fight to recover what has been world of a lifetime of meaningless repetition as is lost / And found and lost again and again.” Other- embodied in and by the subway travelers. To be wise, “[t]he rest is not our business.” still and still moving, for all its apparent paradox, Perhaps because its focus has been on things is not so difficult a task to accomplish, however, past, “East Coker” has not been a very pleasant although it may require more than a typical mea- experience. Its poetry seems to be largely the poetry sure of self-discipline. As a practical sentiment, it of lamentation, complaint, and regret, all of those is perhaps best expressed in a Latin tag that Eliot’s emotions that reflecting upon the past can inspire. friend from his youth, the American poet EZRA “East Coker” draws to a close on a somewhat hope- POUND, adopted as his personal motto in his own ful note, however. The poet who had dismissed the advanced years: Tace et face. Loosely translated, it wisdom of old men as folly (he would himself be exhorts one to shut up and get to work. entering only his early 50s as he was writing “East Coker”) imagines a different fate for himself and his “The Dry Salvages” generation by borrowing a page from Alfred Lord The significance of the name “The Dry Salvages” Tennyson’s great poem “Ulysses.” is conveniently glossed by Eliot with an introduc- The Tennyson poem presents the hero of Hom- tory parenthetical immediately following the title er’s Odyssey, who has been back home on his native of the third of his Four Quartets. Therein he tells island of Ithaka for a long enough time that his spirit the curious reader that the poem’s namesake, the has become restless to return to the open sea with Dry Salvages, is a “small group of rocks,” three in its promise of high adventure and knowledge of fact, off the northeastern coast of Cape Ann, Mas- new lands and peoples. Tennyson may himself have sachusetts. The name is presumably a corruption borrowed a page from DANTE’s characterization of of the French les trois sauvages, or “three savages,” Ulysses, in the Inferno, as a leader whose passion for and, as he goes on to explain, “salvages” should be knowledge brought catastrophe on himself and his pronounced so as to rhyme with “assuages.” As an fellow mariners, a passage that Eliot himself alluded added piece of information, Eliot concludes by not- to in the earliest versions of The Waste Land. As ing that a groaner is a whistling buoy. problematically negative as that possible allusion to One of the least forthcoming of poets of the Dante may make his characterization, Tennyson’s 20th century, Eliot seems to be going out of his Ulysses is cited most often as an example of that way here to frustrate the ambitions and steal the never-say-die mentality that was thought to typify thunder of any scholars or instructors who may be the sensibilities of Victorian England, particularly bent on revealing these relatively obscure bits of as he exhorts his fellow mariners that it is “not too information themselves to the interested reader or

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student of the poem for the sake of showing off a the winter gaslight,” as if Eliot is recalling his own mastery of geographical trivia. Trivia it may be, but boyhood spent in the 1890s in his birthplace, one for Eliot, the Dry Salvages would resound with as of America’s most celebrated river cities, St. Louis, much personal significance as those equally obscure Missouri, situated on the banks of America’s most place names, Burnt Norton and East Coker, had. It celebrated river, the Mississippi. would be unfair, then, to think that Eliot is inten- To know further, then, that the Dry Salvages tionally trying to obfuscate or mislead by identify- also have a powerful association with the poet’s ing the Dry Salvages so carefully, especially when childhood, opens a door on the poet/speaker’s past, he had not gone to anywhere near the trouble of exactly as the first two parts of the Four Quartets, identifying the no less obscure Burnt Norton or “Burnt Norton” and “East Coker,” also did, each East Coker. It is as if he wants to be certain that in its own way. The Dry Salvages are somewhat there will be no mistaking the particular Dry Sal- off the farthest tip of Cape Ann, at Rockport, itself vages that he has in mind. within easy sailing or driving distance of Gloucester’s Part I Eastern Point, where the Eliots, after vacationing All the more reason, then, that, as the poetic text in rented accommodations for many seasons, built begins, Eliot may catch the reader by surprise nev- themselves a lavish summer home in 1896, when the ertheless by going on about a river after having just poet was only seven going on eight. As a boy, then, alluded in painstaking detail in his headnote to a spending summers sailing off New England’s Atlan- maritime location. For it does seem as if one has tic shore, Eliot would come to know the rhythms of missed a beat when Eliot, having taken such care the sea by sailing from Cape Ann, coming to know with the headnote, then seems to preempt him- in the process the Dry Salvages and other landmarks self by beginning the poem that follows with the and sea signs, the buoys and beacons put out to thought that, although he does “not know much guide the mariner, exactly as he would have come to about gods,” the speaker is inclined to “think that know the river traffic that formed a daily backdrop river / Is a strong brown god.” What is the wind to the life of the city in which he was raised. up to, one might well ask, echoing the high-strung “The river is within us, the sea is all about us,” and befuddled lady of “A Game of Chess,” the sec- he can honestly observe, keeping all those many ond part of Eliot’s The Waste Land. And in that metaphorical reference points, in which the river poem’s almost equally Alice in Wonderland terms, is time, the sea eternity, intact while not in any one might very well answer, in good Eliot fashion, way diminishing the import that the statement has everything and nothing. for his own personal history. As a boy he became There are, after all, obvious associations between intimately acquainted with both the river and the a river and the sea, and that is that they both have sea—how they can serve us and even appear to be to do with water and with the cycles of nature. tamed, and then in an instant turn our human uni- Whereby the sea is constantly replenished by riv- verse over on its head. In the river and the sea—but ers flowing down into it, those same rivers are fed particularly the sea—Eliot finds the perfect repre- by inland rainfalls, which are themselves seawater sentation of what he had struggled so hard to find evaporated by the sun and then condensed back in the first two quartets: a reality that is not our into rain in the upper atmosphere. Every schoolboy reality but that is no less real. In that way, the poet and schoolgirl learns of this cycle in general science can keep it in metaphorical perspective yet not pre- back somewhere in grammar school, as Eliot him- tend to know it in any actual way, thus making the self would have in his own boyhood. sea in “The Dry Salvages,” whose element, after all, So, then, it is just as curious and, finally, enlight- is water, the perfect emblem of that elusive eter- ening that the river that Eliot speaks of is spoken of nity where time past, time present, and time future in terms of the “nursery bedroom” and in the Whit- meet, mingle, and become indistinguishable. manesque details such as “dooryard,” “grapes on The sea keeps its own time, and while the indi- the autumn table,” and the circle of light cast “in vidual can know its surface of currents and hazards,

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no one can ever know its depths or be completely on experience, even if it is still somewhat con- comfortable on or near or with it. From out of its strained by what an individual can know. So as depth it “tosses up our losses.” The “torn seine, / Eliot launches into the lyric passage that forms the The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar” each tells second part of “The Dry Salvages,” it is more of a story, but it is only the fragment left of a whole an extended dirge, a melancholy sea shanty, and that can never be known. The sea has its “many the commentary that just as invariably follows in voices,” none of which are human voices, though this instance is less a criticism and far more of an there may be attempts to humanize them in their endorsement of the insights that the poetry has “howl” and “yelp” and “whine,” or in the groaners gained. This may come as a welcome change from and ringing bell buoys warning the mariner. the degrading view of the poetic impulse that the As its massive swells lift and ring those bells, speaker of “Burnt Norton” and “East Coker” may here is indeed, too, a “time not our time,” a time have indulged in almost a bit too liberally, as if “[o]lder than the time of chronometers, older / even the poet doubted the efficacy of poetry, but Than time counted by anxious worried women.” the antidote presented here in “The Dry Salvages” This that Eliot describes is the sea as sea people exacts its own price from the reader by painting know her, a reality that both dwarfs and, by its per- what is, on balance, no more rosy a picture of aggre- sistent presence, validates our own, nearer than the gate human experience. dark interstellar spaces of “East Coker” but no less The speaker’s “Where is there an end to it,” simultaneously both alien and familiar. It is time with its echoes of Elijah’s “How long, O Lord, how “[b]etween midnight and dawn, when the past is long,” begins the second section with some of the all deception.” It is time “that is and was from the most witheringly bleak poetry that Eliot, who can beginning,” preserved in its own liquid constant, seem to be intimately acquainted with the dark side forever closed to human understanding, but pres- of human experience, ever penned. That there is ent with us, “[c]lang[ing] / The bell.” here no old-style punning—as if, for example, he is Part II really just being cute, as he might have been back As the second part of “The Dry Salvages” opens, in his youth, by really only asking where something the reader has been put by the first part of the poem as vast as the sea might end—is made quite clear into an entirely different frame of reference from the instantly. Images of “soundless wailing,” “silent one that city dwellers know on a daily basis. Based, withering,” “drifting wreckage,” follow in quick too, on the patterns that have been emerging in the succession, ending on the note of a “calamitous overall poem in “Burnt Norton” and “East Coker,” annunciation,” which itself puts the reader in mind the reader has become used to expecting the second simultaneously of the life and passion of the Christ; section to be a lyrical turn, one that seems to distill the suffering of his mother Mary, whose heart the quality of meaning of the first but that then would be pierced by grief like a sword; and the last may be followed itself by an almost prosaic com- word that is spoken of all mere mortals—that he mentary that undercuts both the lyrical passage and or she has died. In answer to his own question, the its insights and that laments the limits of poetry, speaker observes that “[t]here is no end, but addi- indeed, of speech itself. One should have noticed tion,” until one is ready for what is, in the end, the by now as well, however, that what is actually being only choice: “renunciation.” challenged in such commentaries is the value that Shortly, in the third part, the speaker will be experience has for an ego-constructed self. Put sim- speaking of the Hindu warrior hero Arjuna and ply, experience from a limited point of view, which the advice that Krishna gives him as he prepares is what the experience of any one human being is, is for battle. In the passage, Eliot may better clarify of very limited value. what precisely he means by so unabashedly bold a Because it is so inherently unknowable, how- directive. For now, however, the poetry continues ever, the sea ironically enough offers the poet, and with a resigned but not bitter litany of acceptance the reader, the opportunity of far less limited focus expressed in what is essentially a modified sestina,

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wherein six six-line stanzas rhyme not on six end it passes ends with one’s missing the meaning alto- words that are randomly mixed, the standard pat- gether, while “approach to the meaning restores tern for a sestina, but on a fixed pattern of six clos- the experience,” but “beyond any meaning / We ing rhymes: -ailing, -owers, -tionless, -age, -able, can assign to happiness.” and -nation. The idea is less complicated than it might appear Again, the reader should not be cloyed. Eliot at first glance: Experience remembered is colored introduces this complex rhyme scheme not to show by one’s idea of what a particular experience ought off his skills as a poet, but to reaffirm the musi- to be, and so never can be, in the recollecting of cal idea, expressed throughout the Four Quar- what it actually, singularly was. “For our own past,” tets, that it is only through measured pattern that as the speaker explains it, “is covered by the cur- worthwhile meaning comes. From the beginning, rents of action,” and these are, as it were, in Burnt Norton, the poet has spoken of patterns. that are made up by each individual out of a pas- Now he begins to create them himself out of the tiche of the experiences of others—“but the agony formless chaos of the sea’s mindless movement and abides.” ceaseless moment. The “drifting boat with a slow The speaker concludes the second part of “The leakage,” “fisherman sailing / . . . where the fog Dry Salvages,” then, with a rehearsal of the open- cowers,” “forever bailing,” and “the withering of ing stanza and its reflections on the great inland withered flowers” are all literal tokens of a universe river and on the sea off Cape Ann that the speaker/ of decay and defeat, as well as figurative emblems poet had known as a boy. Here is “the ragged rock of life’s vicissitudes, its ups and its downs, swells in the restless water,” the Dry Salvages. “Waves and dips, all toward a single end. From one point wash over it, fogs conceal it,” but like Shelley’s of view it is death, the God to whom our bones stars when the daytime sky is blue, the rocks are pray, for they are only mortal, condemned to the still there, “always a seamark / To lay a course by.” fate of the material universe. From another point of In other words, one must have more than mem- view, however, at that extreme, there is “[o]nly the ories colored by what one has overheard and read hardly, barely prayable / Prayer of the one Annun- and otherwise acquired, the memories of others; ciation.” The initial capital letter tells the reader one must have something permanent and fixed that by now, the end of the sestina, the possibilities that is one’s own, both to lay one’s course by and of what that calamitous annunciation upon which to measure one’s progress. In one of his sonnets, the movement opened may turn one way, and one Shakespeare calls love an “ever fixéd mark.” The way only: Toward the Annunciation that is the speaker of the Four Quartets, who had earlier Incarnation. observed, at the closing of “Burnt Norton,” that The sestina ended, its pattern concluded, the “[l]ove is itself unmoving,” may well be headed speaker’s commentary on the poetry commences. toward the same conclusion, but he has not arrived Having just completed a pattern in a sequence, he there yet. muses that, “as one becomes older” (as he just has) Part III “the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a If life is only a passage on not only uncharted but mere sequence”—that is, a progress from beginning unmarked seas, then it is going nowhere, and no to end. For when and if it is looked at that way, as one has ever been anywhere but lost on the same if life were a narrative with a beginning, a middle, featureless surface of unconsidered experience. and an end, it becomes “a means of disowning the “I sometimes wonder if that is not what Krishna past,” as if to be only in a perpetual present is meant,” the speaker observes, picking up the thread one’s persistent goal. Clearly, the poet, in musing of the second section as the third section of “The about time, now has come to realize that such a lin- Dry Salvages” begins. The speaker sounds as if he ear view of time leaves life devoid of any acquired has been caught in the act of observing out loud. meaning. Rather, passing along life’s way without Wonders, that is, if all ways lead the same way, the developing any regard for discerning its meaning as way up the way down, forward back, echoing one of

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the Herakleitean fragments that provide the Four on the field of battle, asked on what he should Quartets with its epigraphs. think so that he might triumph. “Think on me,” Is it all the same thing at the same time, he pon- Krishna had admonished him, for the teaching is ders, so that one’s sense of before and after, success that one becomes one with “whatever sphere of and failure, progress and decline, are all illusions being / The mind of a man may be intent [on] / At determined by nothing more real than merely one’s the time death.’ ” Should Arjuna think on Krishna point of view? And if so, what is the point of view as he fares forward, then he need not worry how that will save one from being pinned and wrig- he fare, or whether, in battle, he shall fare well gling forever on the wheel? What, or where, is that or fare ill, because in life or in death he will be still point of the turning world? For if the speaker one with Krishna, who is with the One. So, then, knows anything, he knows that “time is no healer; the speaker who, at the end of the second part of the patient is no longer here.” Or, as he put it “The Dry Salvages,” had admonished that each only moments before in the poem, approach to the of us must have “a seamark / To lay a course by” meaning will not restore it in any way that can be now is able to extend the metaphor for the ben- “assign[ed] to happiness.” For that, one must have efit of all “voyagers” through eternity: “Not fare the meaning to begin with, or at least have it, like well, / But fare forward, voyagers,” for that is the those sea rocks, in sight. direction in which time carries us whether we will In each of the two preceding quartets, the third or no. part has eventually taken the reader down into Part IV the subway, emblem of a modern urban emptiness Any readers of the Four Quartets, even ones gen- and sameness as the fixed world of human busi- erally familiar with the intentional vagaries of lit- ness moves on its self-defined and -limited “met- erary modernism and somewhat comfortable with alled way.” Now the subway train, which may be the forward thematic movement of the Four Quar- any train, becomes instead a type of one’s passage tets thus far, may nevertheless have their heads through time and space, the inevitable continuum spinning by the time they begin the fourth section that contains us all, or at least seems to. As the of “The Dry Salvages,” which opens with what train moves, the passengers change, minutely in can be nothing other than the speaker addressing truth, but literally nevertheless, so that: “You are Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. From one point not the same people who left that station / Or who of view, this should come as no surprise at all. Not will arrive at any terminus.” only had there just earlier been a direct reference That, again, is not a mystical insight but a literal to the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel truth, yet, shifting the mode of transportation to a informed Mary that Jesus had been miraculously sea vessel now, the speaker knows that each pas- formed in her womb, but the poetry had already senger thinks that he will arrive when he gets there, previously alluded to him and to the father. whereas the speaker knows that every instant is an Eliot would have had good reason to think arrival, a new beginning and a new end. Thus, he that his readers would be aware of the veiled allu- can assert with considerable confidence that none sion to the first person of the Christian trinity, of the passengers would think of how “ ‘the past is God the Father, in the fourth part of “Burnt Nor- finished’ / Or ‘the future is before us.’ ” Yet that is ton.” Then there was the far less veiled allusion equally as true even as each of us travels, ostensibly to Christ, the second person of the Trinity, in standing still, on nothing more or less than the the reference to Good Friday in part four of “East Earth. Therefore, he can urge all to think, “ ‘Fare Coker.” Logic would suggest that the Holy Spirit, forward . . . ,’ ” since that is the direction all of us the Third Person, would appear here in “The Dry take, into the future, whether one goes there or Salvages,” the third quartet. However, the Holy not, knows it or not. Spirit will in fact be invoked in the dove of “Little Thus comes, as advice to all of us, the words Gidding,” the fourth quartet, whose sign and ele- spoken to Arjuna by Lord Krishna, when Arjuna, ment, fire, is more in keeping with the idea of

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the Holy Spirit, often typified as well as a flaming divergent one from what most would hold with tongue. regard to the importance of nature and nurture The Virgin Mary, meanwhile, among whose in shaping an individual’s values. Suffice it to say other denominations in Christian liturgical rites that, for Eliot at least, those values and beliefs, and prayers is the Blessed Mother and the Mother when they inform any work of literature, do so not of God, is appropriate to “The Dry Salvages,” whose in order to indoctrinate or proselytize the prospec- sign and element is water. Water more than any tive reader but because they form a part of the other of the four elements betokens the feminine author’s actual life experience. So when the Four and the maternal, particularly inasmuch as its fluid Quartets are described as “Christian,” that should state suggests the amniotic sac, filled with water, be regarded not as a doctrinal or sectarian denomi- in which the human fetus develops in the womb. nator so much as as a cultural marker, exactly as Even more so, a woman’s menstrual cycles coor- one might describe the work of another as Muslim dinate with the cycles of the moon, exactly as do or Hindu or Buddhist. By the same token, however, the ocean tides. That Eliot wants readers to think since religions and values entail systems of beliefs, of Mary specifically in keeping with the tradition those beliefs will emerge as well not in their capac- of her maternal role is further underscored in his ity to attempt to sway others to embrace them but referring to her, shortly, as “Figlia del tuo figlio,” in the manner in which they provide a foundation which translates, from the Italian, as “daughter on which the poetry, as poetry, finds its own coor- of your son.” The apparent paradox accounts for dinates for valid expression. Mary’s human nature while honoring her, again, as When, for example, “The Dry Salvages,” as the Mother of God. a poem, speaks at the end of the second section Granted, then, all signs point toward Mary’s of “[t]he bitter apple and the bite in the apple,” putatively none-too-sudden appearance here in the since the locale is clearly once more the river with fourth part of “The Dry Salvages.” Yet this appear- which “The Dry Salvages” opened, a reader who is ance may and perhaps should come as a surprise if something of a literalist might think of the actual not shock in the immediate context of the poetry, debris floating on the water. Another reader, how- coming as it does hard on the heels of the preced- ever, might think of Huck Finn and Jim from Mark ing references not to Christian but to Hindu beliefs Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn, which is also set through Krishna and Arjuna. Should there be such on the Mississippi and which, at one point, has a disconnect for the reader, however, it can be Huck and Jim vowing never again to steal and eat rectified in several ways, all of which will further bitter persimmons (“the bitter apple”) and stick illuminate the poet’s apparent intentions not only instead only to stealing and eating watermelons. for the passage in question but for the entire Four The reader versed in the Judeo-Christian culture Quartets. While it may not be readily apparent, out of which the poetry emerges, meanwhile, can- the Four Quartets have been continually tending not fail to think of the apple that Eve fed to Adam toward a Judeo-Christian resolution in keeping and that led to humankind’s expulsion from the with the foundational religious values and the tra- Garden, our lost paradise that the rose garden of ditional belief system not just of the poet but, more “Burnt Norton” seems to urge upon the reader’s important, of the culture that formed him. consciousness. This is not the place to enter into a lengthy dis- Even if the Lady who is Mary has, then, for cussion of works of Eliot’s as early as “Tradition and all the reasons already noted, a rightful place in the Individual Talent” (1919) and as late as Notes these proceedings as “The Dry Salvages” continues, towards the Definition of Culture (1948), to name her sudden appearance nevertheless right after the but two, in order to emphasize the importance and reader has been served a heap of Eastern thinking the nuances that Eliot places on the relationship cannot but seem out of place or, worse, contrived, between the individual and his or her unique cul- except for one critical detail regarding Eliot’s lady: ture, nor is his position on these matters a radically The manifestation of the Lady that he has in mind

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is unique to this maritime region and its legendary associations with the sea, but even more particu- larly to the town of Gloucester, where the Eliots made their summer home. Anyone who has ever read ’s 1897 novel Captains Courageous about the Por- tuguese-American fishermen who fish the stormy waters of the North Atlantic Outer Bank, or seen the 1937 classic Hollywood film version of same or the 2000 film The Perfect Storm with George Clooney, knows the treacherous relationship that the sea shares with the fisherman of Gloucester, for whom it is both preserver, providing them with a livelihood, and destroyer, taking their lives from them. (It has been reported that as many as 10,000 Gloucestermen have perished at sea since the time that the first Europeans settled there in the 17th century.) As a boy, Eliot would no doubt have heard tales of storms at sea and of lost fishing vessels and drowned men, for many of whom the Dry Salvages would have been their last sight of the seamarks off the Cape Ann headlands as they fared forward into the Outer Banks fishing grounds for what would turn out to be their last voyage. Many of these fishermen, particularly from among those same Portuguese immigrants who later settled there among the original English settlers, Our Lady of Good Voyages Roman Catholic Church in may have been parishioners of a Roman Catholic Gloucester, Massachusetts. Some scholars regard the church that stands to this day on a hill in the town church as likely candidate for the “Lady, whose shrine of Gloucester overlooking the inner harbor, its tall stands on the promontory” of “The Dry Salvages” IV. façade looming over the harbor waters below and (Courtesy of Russell Murphy) the many fishing boats moored there. For someone viewing the town from across that same harbor, the church structure is on a prominent enough prom- ontory to rival the tall clock tower of the town hall, or, if not, some other very much like it, a shrine the only other outstanding landmark. This church, dedicated to those whose lives are on the sea, and Our Lady of Good Voyage, to whom it is dedicated, so whose deaths may be there, too. is not only Gloucester’s fisherman’s parish but the It was the poet/speaker’s recollection of the church to which Eliot would have accompanied his literal Dry Salvages as a sea mark at the end of Catholic nurse, a young Irish woman named Annie the second section that led him to muse, at the Dunne, for Sunday Mass during the family’s sum- opening of the third, on what Krishna’s words to mer sojourns there. It is not known that the poet Arjuna may have meant. The possibility that this had this church in mind when he has the speaker lady of the fourth section, whose shrine is on a address the Lady whose “shrine is on the promon- promontory, has very real associations with the tory,” asking her to her to “[p]ray for all those who Dry Salvages and the surrounding waters consider- are in ships,” but neither would it be unreasonable ably shortens the poetic distance among the three: to assume that Eliot was thinking of this church Krishna, the Lady, and the Dry Salvages.

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Recalling that in each quartet the fourth section moves into its fifth and final section, the reader is the shortest and that this section is no exception, may by now have noticed that yet another pattern the reader finds quickly that the section consists has emerged to give the sequence its developing of the speaker’s own prayer, directed to Mary, for form and character. For just as the speaker has those on ships, for their wives and their children, commented periodically on the topic throughout and for all those who have already perished and the quartets, pattern itself must always be present thus can no longer hear “the sound of the sea bell’s but is not always apparent. / Perpetual angelus.” The reader may now note, too, The fifth section opens, then, with a catalogu- that the poetry has come full circle from the open- ing of all the various ways in which humans try ing of the second section of “The Dry Salvages” to to finesse the future by fathoming its shape, “all this closing of the fourth section. Just as the man- these . . . usual / Pastimes and drugs.” It should made sounds of the sea and their companions, the rapidly become apparent that, just as “Burnt Nor- sea yelp and the sea wail, inspired the poetry of the ton,” with its emphasis on perceiving the here and second section, its auditory imagery had flowed out now, deals with time that is the poet/speaker’s of the first and then into the musings of the third, present and “East Coker” with its harking back concluding with the seamark by which one might to the Eliot family’s English roots had dealt with set one’s figurative course for one’s literal life. And time that was the poet/speaker’s past, “The Dry it was from that metaphorical reference point that Salvages” with its emphasis on uncertainty deals the further musings on Krishna and Arjuna had with time that is the future, represented in all the emerged, with their injunction to fix one’s sight on, various imagery drawn from the vast expanses of or course by, the mind and spirit’s most permanent the unknown and unplumbed sea that is itself a features, rather than the transitory matters of time type both of time and of eternity, that is, of the and tide, which are themselves as much subject to timeless. There are more local reasons why the change as we are. future should be so much on the speaker’s mind. So, then, as one is further urged to consider that Inasmuch as the topic is the uncertain prospect of one is faring not well (or ill) but forward, it should faring forward into uncharted seas, there is indeed follow that the appeal to the Blessed Mother of the sort of uncertainty and “distress of nations and Christian belief fulfills and completes the circle perplexity” by which “[m]en’s curiosity searches of meaningful action organized around the still past and future” in the warfare that was at that point that, simultaneously, the Dry Salvages, the very moment being waged in Europe and in Asia as bell buoy, Krishna, and the divinity of Christ all, Eliot wrote his poetry. to obviously varying degrees, represent. The sig- “The Dry Salvages” was composed during 1940 nificant difference, from the point of view of the and completed in early 1941, while the Battle of the speaker, is whether the individual comes upon this North Atlantic was being waged. This naval effort revelation in life, as the speaker and Arjuna each to keep the vital supply lines open between North in his own way is doing, or in death, as happens to America and Britain would continue throughout the drowned men, who cannot hear the sea bell’s the nearly six years, from September 1, 1939, to angelus tolling the passage of time, which, with an May 1945, that hostilities between Germany and irony all its own, passes in any case. England persisted, but it was particularly virulent at the time that Eliot was composing this quartet, Part V whose motif is the sea. At the height of the sea The focus from the beginning of the Four Quartets, conflict, in May 1941, German submarines were with its opening meditation on time past, time pres- sinking 300,000 tons of allied shipping, or in the ent, and time future in “Burnt Norton,” has been vicinity of 10 or more seagoing supply vessels, the individual’s intellectual and spiritual quest for weekly. In plain terms, death and destruction at what does not pass, characterized repeatedly in the sea were likely more numerous at the time of Eliot’s poem as the still point. As “The Dry Salvages” writing than at any other time in human history,

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and as Eliot had raised in the fourth section of thought and action” can make the individual con- “The Dry Salvages” his prayer to Mary for those in scious of as “[t]he only hope, or else despair,” that peril on the sea, the immediacy of these concerns, last phrase borrowed from “Little Gidding.” and a general uncertainty about the future, could The idea does not exclude those who are not of not have been far from his mind at any time. the Christian faith, however, since the speaker has The point is, one would have to imagine that the defined Incarnation not in any theological sense same state of mind on the poet’s part would hold but as the intersection of the timeless with time. true as well for his composition of the fifth and final In that context, Incarnation becomes the human section of the poem, the ultimate irony being, of condition, just as Christ is the ultimate human, the course, that these same concerns for those in peril spirit made flesh, the flesh made spirit, “the impos- on the sea would be there to obsess the speaker, sible union,” again, “[o]f spheres of existence.” It is or anyone else, for that matter, even if there were the Christian ideal, surely, but if the Christian tenet no war then being waged at sea—would be there if is true, it is that condition into which all humans, there were no sea except for the sea of time. The as spiritual beings existing in eternity, or the time- future is forever an uncertainty, after all, except for less, are admitted at the moment of conception, or those who “apprehend / The point of intersection the intersection with time. of the timeless / With time,” but that, the reader is That Eliot wishes to universalize in a temporal told, is “an occupation for that saint.” and secular sense such a complexly profound spiri- Whatever that all may mean, the reader will tual mystery is further manifested in his using not have to wait for Little Gidding, whose theme is eter- any Christian saint but the great hero of the Hindu nity, or the eternal, to find out. For now, and “[f]or faith, Arjuna, and the primary avatar of Brahma, most of us,” there is only the sidelong glimpse of Lord Krishna, as the exemplar in the presentation such moments, a “hint half guessed, . . . gift half that concluded with the speaker’s introducing the understood” caught in “only the unattended / notion of Incarnation as the key to salvation from Moment, the moment [both] in and out of time.” time. For Krishna himself, as well as his injunction The speaker calls that very magic moment, in to Arjuna to think always on him, that is, on the which an “impossible union / Of spheres of exis- eternal, confirms in no less spiritually adept terms tence” is actualized and “the past and the future / the primacy of Incarnation as an article of Hindu Are conquered, and reconciled,” Incarnation. belief. “For most of us,” then, “this is the aim,” not That that concept resonates with the central to achieve Incarnation, for that is the given, the mystery of Christianity is something that the reader gift, but to apprehend it as the ultimate truth of the has already been prepared for by the poet’s ear- human condition. lier introduction into “The Dry Salvages” of Mary However, as “The Dry Salvages” concludes, the and the associated miracle of the Annunciation, speaker has made it clear that to achieve such an but as profound as those mysteries are in and for apprehension here in this world is “an occupation Christian beliefs, Eliot is not suggesting that this for the saint,” not for the “most of us.” If to appre- hint, this gift, is wholly sectarian in nature, a mat- hend such a truth here must be our aim, it is none- ter of doctrinal assertion rather than experience. theless an aim “[n]ever here to be realised” by most, Otherwise his poetry at this point, toward which who otherwise remain “only undefeated / Because he has been laboring throughout the composition we have gone on trying.” The speaker, who has of the sequence of the poetry that will eventually been wise enough to cast his own putative fate with become the Four Quartets, will ring hollow for any- the “most of us” rather than with the saints, lest one who is not a Christian or, equally a challenge, he alienate his reader, ends by expressing the hope unacquainted with Christian beliefs. No doubt, the that he may at least be himself buried “[n]ot too Incarnation of Jesus Christ is precisely what the far from the yew-tree,” that is, in hallowed ground speaker has in mind when he calls Incarnation the but an otherwise common grave, where he too may hint and gift that “prayer, observance, discipline, nourish, like his East Coker ancestors and all else

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who have come before him—Arjuna among them, Those associations are merely fortuitous, how- no doubt—the “life of significant soil.” ever, for Little Gidding, like Burnt Norton, East Coker, and the Dry Salvages, is another locale “Little Gidding” chosen because of its personal associations for the Though Four Quartets appears to be driving toward poet. While it may never be known exactly why expressing or defining a state of contentment, it he visited that particular historical site, because no seems to have a hard time getting there, as, per- one, not even he, could then have known that the haps, it ought to. The poetry has made it clear that, last of his four quartets would eventually emerge ultimately, contentment can come only through from the experience, Eliot came to this spot in May belief, which is itself not always forthcoming or 1936. Five years later and in an entirely different when it is easily obtainable. If nothing else, then, world, Eliot was busily at work on “Little Gidding,” the poetry can be admired, even if grudgingly, the poem. for what appears to be an unstinting honesty and The German air war against England was then integrity of purpose. One might well ask, never- at what would subsequently be regarded as its peak, theless, echoing the speaker of another ostensibly although no one could have known that at the bleak Eliot poem, when, if not whether, the dead time, either. Indeed, England at that time, May tree of such an all-encompassing existential despair 1941, was not doing well in the conflict. Her French will give shelter, even if that be only from itself. Indeed, if readers of the Four Quartets wish to possess that biblical pearl of great value that costs nothing less than everything, perhaps it is Eliot’s intention to put his readers through the wringer before they find it. Nothing worthwhile comes eas- ily, after all, especially wisdom. These readers have just heard the closing words of “The Dry Salvages,” which tell them that the best they will have for all their trying is the knowledge that they tried, and if they are really fortunate, they will thus be able, like the poet, at least to lie at last in a marked grave on dry land, unlike all those others for whom a watery grave was the final resting place. It would make perfect sense, then, that the reader, like the speaker, would be ready to take refuge in an isolated and ancient chapel in the Eng- lish countryside. The chapel at Little Gidding is the sole remaining structure once used by a religious community which Nicholas Ferrar founded there in 1626. Gidding is one of the oldest place names in Huntingdonshire, where the settlement is located, and is derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root as giddy, which means to be carried away by music or dance or to be possessed by God. It might seem that the poet chose this chapel for those associations The chapel at Little Gidding. Eliot would visit the site in alone, so much do they relate to overall themes in May 1936 and commemorate its significance to both his the Four Quartets, with its emphasis on music and personal history and English history in “Little Gidding” dance and patterns and structures, as well as on I, the poem that closes the Four Quartets. (Courtesy of theological and spiritual considerations. Russel Murphy)

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ally had fallen in June 1940, and Hitler would not assistance to him and allegiance to his cause, the take the pressure off the English by recklessly open- Ferrar community was disbanded by force. ing a second front with his invasion of Russia until Part I June 1941. The United States did not enter the war “The Dry Salvages” closes with a reminder of the until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the current “distress of nations and perplexity,” so it following December. The spring of 1941 must then is appropriate that “Little Gidding” opens with have seemed like England’s darkest hour to many, some serious stress on the persistence of calamity Eliot among them. In any case, as he began work on the last part of the Four Quartets, he turned, for in human affairs. (The “calamitous annunciation” some reason, to the experience of that personal pil- could be only the daily news.) grimage that he had made five years earlier to Little Eliot’s line, “If you came at night like a broken Gidding, whose historical associations are with king,” from the first part of “Little Gidding” is a another dark hour in English history—the 17th- direct allusion to King Charles’s arrival at Little century civil war that had culminated, in January Gidding in the dead of night during his flight in an 1649, with the execution of King Charles I. attempt to elude capture by Parliamentary troops. During the long, complicated, and chaotic But seeking refuge from despair at the foot of the course of that distant war, which began in Septem- cross, as it were, is not a measure that Eliot would ber 1642, Charles at one point had taken refuge at limit only to fleeing kings, except as each person is Little Gidding. He had already had personal con- the desperate master of his soul and king of his own tact twice before with the religious farm community meager kingdom of self. there that Ferrar, son of a wealthy and influential And that is why our speaker has come there London merchant, had established as a household now. So much, after all, has been the constant of prayer with his extended family. The first time, theme of the Quartets. Where, indeed, is there an in the early 1630s, involved Charles’s interest in end to it, is the question that any reader must ask. a gospel concordance in Ferrar’s possession. The And that is why the speaker now, as “Little Gid- second time, Charles actually visited the commu- ding” opens, the turbulent seas of “The Dry Sal- nity. This was in March 1642, within months of vages” behind him, takes such pains to emphasize, the outbreak of civil war. By that time, Ferrar had recollecting the springlike day in midwinter that he already been dead some four years or more, a vic- himself had visited this quietly historic and power- tim of malaria. fully spiritual site, that “[t]here are other places,” It is Charles’s second visit, when he arrived no doubt, equally well associated with distress and alone the night of May 2, 1646, that is particularly perplexity, confusion and frustration and exaspera- significant. At any rate, it is the visit to which Eliot tion. This one at Little Gidding, however, is for directly alludes in the first section of “Little Gid- the speaker the most convenient and meaningful, ding.” After continuous military setbacks, Charles’s because it is “the nearest, in place and time, / Now cause had been all but defeated by the Parliamen- and in England.” tary forces, and he was in the process of eluding It is here, too, that the same speaker who had capture when he arrived that May evening at Lit- just concluded “The Dry Salvages” by imagin- tle Gidding. Indeed, John Ferrar, Nicholas’s elder ing that, for the “most of us,” there is only the brother and his hand-picked successor as leader thought that we tried, now seems to be convinced of the community, was so anxious that pursuing that “apprehend[ing] / The point of intersection troops would search the community compound that of the timeless / With time” may not be possible he removed the desperate king to a private home in only for saints. The complete renunciation need the nearby village of Coppingford. Such measures not be synonymous with utter resignation. Just as were all to no avail, however. The king, who left “the time of death is every moment,” the principle the following morning, was captured several days on which Krishna’s admonition to Arjuna had been later, on May 5, and as a result of their suspected based, so is the moment of the one Annunciation

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and complete renunciation every and any moment the poetic vision expressed in “The Dry Salvages” as well, and a matter not of chance but of choice. appears to carry over directly into “Little Gidding.” Thus, one is not here, in this case at Little Gidding, Furthermore, this same immediacy and consecu- to “[i]nstruct . . . , or inform curiosity / Or carry tiveness resonates among the poetry in each suc- report,” but rather “to kneel / Where prayer has ceeding section of “Little Gidding” as well, so that been valid.” the relationship among its five parts is somewhat Now that the speaker has recognized what con- easier to discern than with, say, “Burnt Norton,” stitutes faith, he is ready to act on it. For the very where the relationship between each of its five reason that “what the dead had no speech for, parts and the next is not always apparent. when living,” they can, by their example, now com- As this second section opens, then, the reader, municate through the beliefs that their lives mod- like the speaker, must continue to follow the path eled, beliefs “tongued with fire beyond the language that Charles had taken those centuries before. For of the living,” the speaker is ready himself, at last, him, Little Gidding was not the end of the road; to be still and still moving, ready to listen. What he before him lay the humiliation of arrest and execu- “hears,” for the language of the dead is the model tion—complete defeat. Like him, then, the speaker set by their behavior, is that prayer is action, too, and reader are, in the second section of “Little Gid- particularly when all else has failed either to please ding,” cast out of the peacefulness of the chapel at or to fulfill. Rather than waiting for the unattended midnight, without the benefit of any warning, into moment, which may never come or, coming, may that world of destruction and death that armed be missed, the speaker opens himself up at Little conflict betokens, a world that is never far from Gidding, a space where “prayer has been valid,” to hand even when there is apparent peace. this “intersection of the timeless moment” that is As the poet has been stressing thus far through- “England and nowhere. Never and always.” out the successive poems of the Quartets, nature Part II is never hospitable, nor is life ever not a struggle. The transition from the first section of “Little Gid- When there is great public calamity, it may make ding” to the next will seem abrupt only for the such moments seem especially catastrophic, but the reader who has not yet grasped the core thematic human catastrophe is never either greater or lesser idea of the Four Quartets, which is being brought in the aggregate, only easier at times to ignore. Still, to fulfillment in this closing quartet. That idea is to “[i]t would always be the same,” for it always only find the complete conjunction of the personal, the ever is just that—the same. Now, however, is not a historical, and the particular with the timeless and time for either the poet or his speaker to ignore the eternal. persistence of that truth. Remember, too, that, although as many as five The ash that falls “on an old man’s sleeve” as years separate the composition of “Burnt Norton,” the second section begins is clearly the soot and begun sometime in the late summer of 1934, and dust in the air from London’s nightly fires in the “East Coker,” not begun until the fall of 1939, present moment as the city endures the constant Eliot’s composition of “The Dry Salvages” began German air attacks. Where there was a house and almost immediately on the completion of “East the lives lived in it, there now is nothing. “This,” Coker,” and that same pace of creative energy car- the speaker tells us, like a bell tolling the final hour, ried over into the poet’s work on “Little Gidding.” “is the death of air.” The litany of doom and terror The writing of “Little Gidding” did not go eas- continues as in each succeeding stanza the speaker ily by any means. Indeed, although Eliot began to makes the reader painfully mindful of the tragedies work on “Little Gidding” in early 1941, he would unfolding all around him. Existence collapses into revise it extensively and not complete a final ver- its absence, which is death. There are the dead at sion until September 1942 some 20 months later. sea washed up on sandy shores and the dead in the Still, the relative haste of composition of successive mud of the water-filled craters the bombs have left portions of the emerging Four Quartets meant that in their wake. “This is the death of earth.” There

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are the bombed-out churches, their ruins still smol- In a 1950 essay, “What Dante Means to Me,” dering, the foundation drenched and flooded with which was first delivered as an address to the Ital- water, gone both “sanctuary and choir. / This is the ian Institute in London on July 4 of that year, Eliot death of water and fire.” commented on his intentions for the passage and The world and all its glory having been thus its place of honor in “Little Gidding,” calling it “the reduced to its elemental baseness, which is dead, nearest equivalent to a canto of the Inferno or the inert matter, the speaker suddenly finds himself on Purgatorio [the first and second parts of the three- a foot patrol searching for smoldering fires through part Comedy], in style as well as content, that I the ruined and deserted city streets after the bomb- could achieve.” By doing so, Eliot went on to say, ing has ended but still during “the uncertain hours he hoped “to present to the mind of the reader a before the morning.” The succeeding 71 lines of parallel between the Inferno and the Purgatorio, poetry, from line 78 to line 149, both in the three- which Dante visited, and a hallucinated scene after line stanza pattern and in the general tone of dark an air-raid.” To give this working tribute to Dante despair, are demonstrably in the style of one of the even more verisimilitude, Eliot found a way to great pilgrims of eternity, the early Renaissance Flo- approximate Dante’s terza rima (tri-rhymed) rhyme rentine poet DANTE ALIGHIERI. On the basis of his scheme by alternating multisyllabic and monosyl- rightfully celebrated masterpiece, The Divine Com- labic endings without the benefit of rhymes. edy, Dante holds an unassailable place as one of the According to Eliot, the key concept is that the premier poets of world literature on the topic of the scene that now transpires is hallucinatory, and it is relationship between the individual and eternity. taking place on “a dead patrol” following an air raid Far more to the point, however, Eliot had in those darkest hours just before the dawn. In that alluded tellingly and generously to Dante in major hellish setting after the enemy warplanes, their mis- poems of his own from virtually the beginning of sion completed, “[h]ad passed below the horizon of his poetry writing. It would not be fair to say that [their] homing,” the speaker encounters a stranger Dante has been conspicuously absent thus far from and sees “in the brown baked features . . . a familiar the verse of the Four Quartets since its poetry is not compound ghost.” as copiously allusive as Eliot’s poetry was apt to be Since the speaker had first “caught the look of well into the middle of his career, in a poem such as some dead master” in the specter’s features, the “Ash-Wednesday,” published in 1930, for example. reader is allowed to imagine a number of likely By the same token, Dante’s sudden appearance in candidates for the honor of being this “dead mas- the pages of a poetry even as idiosyncratic as the ter.” There is first and foremost, of course, Dante poetry of the Four Quartets comes as no surprise. himself. Not only is the entire passage indebted to In fact, there is a certain inevitability that Dante’s him both stylistically and conceptually after all, but ideas, technique, or style, if not all three, would be readers of the Inferno might see in certain details reflected at some point in this poem by as assiduous of the stranger echoes of Brunetto Latini, Dante’s a student of Dante’s as Eliot has been throughout. own former teacher, whom the poet encounters in A reader does not have to be aware of the Dan- the third round of the seventh circle of hell where tean influence on the “Little Gidding” passage in Latini’s features have been baked by the fiery rain question in order to appreciate it, however. On falling on burning plain where the sodomists are its own, it is perhaps the most sustained and com- punished. pelling poetic passage that Eliot ever composed, A complete reading of the passage, however, moving forward at a breathtaking pace and with a brings several other candidates to mind. Any ref- narrative coherence that satisfies the reader’s every erence to Dante, for example, cannot help but expectation, and then some. The reader mindful of call up the Roman poet Virgil, to whom Dante the passage’s fully intentional debt to Dante, how- himself claimed a great debt and who had initially ever, cannot help but gain that much more insight appeared to Dante, in the Inferno, as a “shade” or and enjoyment from the experience of reading it. ghost before then guiding Dante through hell and

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purgatory. The tone of the passage, meanwhile, is the tribe.” In that capacity, Eliot’s introduction of also reminiscent of the scene in act 1 of Hamlet in this figure into the poetry allows him again to muse which Hamlet, alone, encounters his father’s ghost, on the limits of language in general and of poetry which then speaks to him, so another viable candi- and art in particular, as Eliot’s speaker has done date for the dead master is WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. several times before in the course of the Quartets. Toward the end of Eliot’s passage, for yet another Once more, through this device, the reader is example, there is a reference to “that refining fire,” asked to consider how, like all things, even the which could call to mind the scene toward the end words of the poet are dated material, “[f]or last of the Purgatorio in which Dante encounters Arnaut year’s words belong to last year’s language / And Daniel, the Provençal poet to whom Eliot, in his next year’s words await another voice.” All things dedication to The Waste Land, had earlier favor- pass, the poetry has frequently iterated, includ- ably compared his own poetic mentor and close ing poetry, and that paradox—that the means by friend, the American poet EZRA POUND, another which humanity muses on and communicates its candidate. That reference, however, is quickly fol- feelings regarding life’s imperfections is itself imper- lowed by the idea that, in that refining fire, one fect—haunts the pages of human history as much “must move in measure, like a dancer.” While such as it does the pages of the Four Quartets. an image is not unique to the Anglo-Irish poet This entire passage, finally, is more than just W. B. YEATS, a friend and near contemporary of a commentary on the temporal quality of poetry Eliot’s and Pound’s, Yeats ends one of his major and the language of poetry, however. Earlier, in poems, “Among School Children,” which itself uses “East Coker,” Eliot’s speaker had disparaged the as its central metaphor the notion of masters and idea that there is any wisdom that comes from students, with a celebrated image of a dancer: “O age. Indeed, the futility of all human wisdom has body swayed to music, o brightening glance, / How become an underlying theme of the poetry, as can we tell the dancer from the dance?” So Yeats the speaker seeks to come to grips with the dis- is a likely candidate as well, particularly in view of tinction between what can be known and what the fact that he had passed away fairly recently, in should be known. January 1939. Is it any wonder, then, that the most critical JAMES JOYCE, the Irish modern novelist whose information that this familiar ghost has to impart to last masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, Eliot had pub- the speaker should regard “the gifts that are reserved lished in his capacity as an editor for Faber & Faber, for age / To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort”? is another possible candidate, inasmuch as he, too, Nor should readers miss the ironic tone here, lest had recently passed away, in 1941. Here, however, they suspect that the entire tenor of the poetry thus the connection would not be a purely literary one far, with its persistently expressed lack of faith in so much as an iconic moment for Eliot. Eliot was human endeavor, is about to be turned on its head. just approaching his mid-50s while composing “Lit- For the point, at least on the part of this ghost, is tle Gidding,” and Joyce was only in his early 60s at that there are no gifts reserved for age. Instead, the time of his death. Surely, with the war on the the spectral figure speaks of a deadening of the one hand and the calendar on the other, Eliot must senses, the “conscious impotence of rage at human have been becoming more and more conscious that folly,” shame and embarrassment over one’s errors, both his generation and his epoch were passing. and the slow realization that praise was flattery and Others, meanwhile, have nominated the 17th- worldly honors ignominy. century English poet John Milton for the role. It is a veritable litany of self-revelation and expo- Whoever this dead master might be, and keeping sure that, as a theme, Eliot would essay far more in mind as well that he is a “compound ghost,” the fulsomely in 1959 in the character of Lord Cla- ultimate point is that he is clearly a kindred spirit, verton, the protagonist of Eliot’s last verse drama one who, like Eliot, had spent his life as a poet and major work, The Elder Statesman. For now, engaged in the same effort to “purify the dialect of however, the ghost’s awful revelation succeeds in

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bringing the speaker back from the brink of a per- are important, too, is to recognize that they are sonal despair. Unfortunately, it succeeds in doing “[o]f little importance / Though never indifferent,” as much only by universalizing that despair. By this as the speaker observes. What history is and is not point in the last of the quartets, it appears that the can never be deciphered, but its passage is undeni- poet is saying that all humanity and human enter- ably self-evident, and within its confines, we come prise is doomed to futility and vanity. As gloomy and we go. “See, now they vanish, / The faces and as that assessment may seem, it is only the same as places,” but only to “become renewed, transfigured, the assessment of every other great religious, philo- in another pattern.” sophical, and spiritual system in human history. The poetry now borrows from Julian of Nor- Poets do not rightly achieve their renown for wich, a 14th-century English mystic. Dame Julian saying anything new, however, or for saying any- received her inner locutions or “shewings,” as they thing that any reasonably thoughtful, feeling person were called, in 1373, though she did not compose should not already know by the time that he or she them into a book until 15 years later. Her Thir- has reached some measure of advanced adulthood. teenth Revelation came in response to her puz- Rather, we expect poets to share the common expe- zlement regarding the purpose of evil in a world rience in uncommon ways, so that simple truths created by divine goodness. She is told, “Sin is emerge renewed and refreshed, or else to share behovely, but all shall be well, and all manner of uncommon experiences in common ways, so that thing shall be well.” It is from this revelation that the rare experience of a singular individual becomes Eliot quotes quite liberally both here and at the end accessible to all. Surely, Eliot has been doing just of “Little Gidding.” that throughout the Quartets, so that a man visiting Despite her 14th-century origins, Julian is yet an English country home or riding the subway or another figure in the poem from the century and watching for fires after an air raid or kneeling in an a half between Henry’s break with Rome and ancient chapel or pondering the flotsam on a river is Charles’s hanging. During that time, a whole people, not only the same man but the same as every other the English, the poet’s people, became embroiled in person if he or she, too, were followed through the and disintegrated into the very sort of religious and rich varieties of experience that the typical indi- political infighting and suppression that very likely vidual may undergo in a lifetime. resulted in Eliot’s own ancestor’s leaving her shores. Part III Most assuredly, those conflicts resulted in the death The dark night of the soul of the second section of Charles, so it may not be at all coincidental that ended, Eliot’s speaker takes deserved time out in medieval English mystics, of whom Julian remains the third section, as he moves again into a reflective an outstanding example, were very much in vogue mode to ponder the distinction among attachment, during the 17th century, perhaps because of their detachment, and the dangerous middle—indiffer- connectedness to an England where faith was a ence, which is dangerous because it can be mis- communal constant rather than a source of divisive- taken for the ideal, which is detachment. If nothing ness. Even so, Julian serves Eliot’s larger purpose, else, the speaker has been learning—learning that emphasizing that every age is an age of conflict for while there may be patterns, they are endlessly the simple reason that life is conflict. repeating, even in the individual’s life, let alone the Julian, then, was a countrywoman whose life it life of the nation, or people, or species. was to remain cloistered in but not of the world Even in the midst of war and the distress of (she did not take religious orders, for example). nations, one must be still and still moving, commit- She was, as a result, free, much like Eliot’s speaker ted but not attached to the nation and its fate, and from time to time is, to meditate on first and last certainly not indifferent, imagining that not to care things—on humanity and eternity and God. On for temporal affairs is the way of the saint. Rather, the basis of such a contemplative life, she had been it is a narrow, straitened path that one must tread. led to conclude that “[s]in is behovely,” that is, To see that the ways and the things of this world that it is morally necessary. For reasons that we

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mere mortals will never understand, surely not in The dove that is descending is a Stukker dive this life, sin is said to serve a purpose, yet, never- bomber, one of Germany’s most feared war machines, theless, “[a]ll shall be well, and / All manner of whose screaming descent put fear into the hearts thing shall be well.” of even the most battle-hardened troops, let alone It is what Eliot’s speaker makes of this in his own civilian populations, and yet that dove is as well, in circumstances that should most matter to readers of keeping with the mystery of divine will revealed to the Four Quartets, of course, particularly now that Julian, the Holy Spirit. If the disparity seems outra- it is nearing its conclusion. And what he makes of geously derisive, even blasphemous, comparing the it is that, indeed, all “are touched by a common third person of the Christian Trinity to a warplane, genius,” and all in the end suffer the same fate. Just then the reader has forgotten the import of Julian of as the “familiar compound ghost” had reminded Norwich’s inner locution that “[s]in is behovely,” the speaker that last year’s speech is for last year’s echoing the timeless religious conviction that even deeds, so are last year’s factions for the beating of evil must serve God’s purpose, albeit in ways that last year’s drum. Now, instead: we poor human creatures, limited by time, intellect, and the distractions of circumstance, can never These men, and those who opposed them hope to understand. And those whom they opposed Perhaps Eliot’s rendering of the same idea is that Accept the constitution of silence something as awful as a Nazi fighter bomber strafing And are folded in a single party. a London street before releasing its so-called pay- The poet/speaker, who at the conclusion of load can drive people to God by convincing them, “The Dry Salvages” suggests that the best that through the furious suffering forced by its “flame most of us can hope for is to have tried, can now, of incandescent fire,” that if there can be such evil as the third section of “Little Gidding” comes to an and violence, then there must be a God. Or per- end, raise that apparent cop-out to the level of the haps it is the notion that such destruction, though only heroic action that is available—to carry one’s wrought by humankind and, so, seemingly unnec- cause to the grave, like that broken king, Charles essary because it is willful, is really no different I, not because the cause was right and true (no from all the other species of violence and destruc- wholly human cause ever can be) but because it is tion that nature herself can work. The indisputable a motive for action, and action is better than inac- fact, nevertheless, is that such violence, whether tion, just as detachment is better than indifference. it be natural or manmade, reminds the individual A commitment to action, even though that action in vivid and dramatic ways that there is only “one may be futile and vain, is better than no commit- discharge from sin and error,” and it is death. Oth- erwise, in recognition of free will, the speaker, as ment at all, and, furthermore, it forever remains as any of us do, reserves for himself the right to pick “[w]hat they had to leave us—a symbol.” It is, in his poison, as it were, although the one means the fact, all, in the end, they had to leave us. life of the spirit, the other its death. He calls it “the Part IV choice of pyre or pyre— / To be redeemed from fire With the same beauty and power as the poetry of by fire.” the Dantean scene from the second part of “Little While all this may sound theologically complex, Gidding,” the poem’s fourth part, which in each of it really is not, building as it does instead on other the preceding quartets has been the shortest sec- religious paradoxes. One can burn with desire or tion, providing a lyrical interlude that both sum- burn in the fires of hell, or one can burn in the marizes the poem to that point and gives entry into cleansing purgatorial fires, and that can be done the concluding fifth section, brings us to the piv- here, in this life, as much as there, in that other, otal moment of terror and glory, fear and freedom, eternal life. The difference is that here we have the whose conflicting tensions have guided the entire will to make the choice, whereas there the choice sequence to this point. has been made for us. So, then, the “dove descend-

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ing breaks the air,” even if it is a dive bomber com- Nick Carraway, suggests to the novel’s title charac- ing down on us, guns blazing, dropping its bomb ter, the romantic tough guy, Jay Gatsby, “You can’t with pinpoint precision, by forcing the choice upon repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” Gatsby the individual, enabling him or her indeed to make retorts, and he goes on with a typical American the choice to be “redeemed from fire by fire.” incredulity in the face of “can’t” by insisting, “Why, If the premise that has just now been promul- of course you can!” gated in the first stanza of the fourth part of “Little The burden of the past, and even questions of Gidding” is valid, it leads invariably to the query, what that burden may be in terms of the present, “Who then devised the torment?” And it is fol- haunts the Four Quartets as well. Throughout the lowed by the equally incredible answer: “Love.” As Four Quartets, the speaker has been undergoing much is incredible, again, only if it is taken in its a learning experience, teaching his soul to be still immediate and temporal context, however. Julian, in a physical universe that is unceasingly moving, for example, was finally freed to compose her rev- ceaselessly changing, yet persistently fixed as pres- elations when, pondering why she had been made ent in memory. In the earliest parts of the extended privy to her revelations, she was told that if she sequence, the speaker seems to think that the past would “learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing,” can be recovered or at least restored to meaning. then she should know that “Love was the Mean- That moment in the rose garden, for example, ing.” So, too, if Eliot’s poem’s unspoken assump- becomes a lost moment that the speaker hopes to tion is true and there is a God, then all things are discover again by turning the right corner or open- devised by love, for some purpose or meaning that ing the right door. However, as the Four Quartets we cannot ever fully understand or comprehend. continues, the speaker seems to become more and Sin is behovely for the same reason, and thus more conscious that, although time present and it is indeed the occupation of the saint to con- time past may be present in time future, as “Burnt template the eternally present intersection of the Norton” famously opens, time past is otherwise lost. timeless with time. Even in the midst of such utter This changing idea regarding the recoverability destructiveness, after all, nothing has truly changed of the past reaches its final reversal in the idea, except in the human universe of vainglorious illu- expressed in “The Dry Salvages,” that we must fare sions. From the point of view of eternity, that is to forward, for at every moment, even when we are say, the physical realm has simply rearranged its ostensibly standing still, faring forward is what we molecules a bit, as it is perpetually doing with or are doing in any case. In that insight, nevertheless, without the assistance of human agency. But from the speaker does not find consolation; rather, he the point of view of the individual human spirit, it finds the vague hope that since only the saint can is quite another matter. From that point of view, grasp the mystery at the heart of the moment of everything has changed for good or for ill forever Incarnation in which the timeless intersects with as the result of the collusion of one’s own will with time, he, the speaker, is left, like the rest of us, to at the moral equation that those molecules spell out least live out his appointed time in trying. In his try- for each sentient mortal being. “Love,” although ing to do just that, however, what is never clarified few may be prepared to embrace such knowledge, is how one should conduct a life of “just trying.” most surely “is the unfamiliar name,” and surely is, Only in “Little Gidding” does that clarity comes. as Shakespeare says, the ever fixéd mark that the The speaker recognizes in a figure like the doomed poet/speaker has all along been seeking. King Charles a symbol of how we all are doomed but must yet act on our convictions to the last bit- Part V ter moment, satisfied not that we have tried but In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel of the that we have succeeded by trying. For no life is a 1920s, The Great Gatsby, which shares a great deal success, despite what the eulogists and journalists with The Waste Land as a criticism of contemporary say, since all lives end in death. Yet it is love itself life, there is a scene in which Fitzgerald’s narrator, that brings us to this realization and recognition,

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not to humiliate us or frustrate our efforts, but to there is still a need to recognize sequences, as one free us from their perturbation. Experience, when thing follows another. Language, then, the means rightly viewed, leads us to freedom from its impor- by which poetry is recorded in memory, relies on tance, but commits us to the importance of seeking sequencing, without which there is no pattern an active correctness in all we do. or progress: “every phrase / And sentence that is Such a clarity achieved, at last the poet is ready right (where every word is at home / . . . dancing to conclude his poem, and the speaker his pon- together) / . . . is an end and a beginning, / Every dering. Schooled in all manner of thought and poem an epitaph.” feeling, the speaker is prepared now to relinquish As with language, so with action. All action it in exchange for acceptance. If the speaker has leads the same way and follows the same pattern, grown in anything throughout the course of the recapitulating itself generation after generation just quartets, it has been in awareness. He has changed as the poetry recapitulates its own past moments: from someone who had to ponder the relationship “to the block [Charles in “Little Gidding” III], to among time, the passage of time, and memory to the fire [“Little Gidding” IV], down the sea’s throat someone who can appreciate living in an eternal [“The Dry Salvages” IV].” Each generation ends, present—the only kind of time anyone has—with thinking its actions cataclysmic and decisive. Yet a constant awareness of the past and its continu- from those endings, the next generation picks up ing presentness. More, he has become aware that its own beginning, which was the same as for the tragedy and failure have a place in life and serve a generations that have preceded it. Then that new purpose. He has grown, in other words, in under- generation reaches what it imagines to be its own standing by coming to understand that it is itself cataclysmic ending, which was their ancestors’, too, limited but that the individual can extend those so that we do, indeed, “die with the dying” and “are limits virtually infinitely. born with the dead.” The danger of a doctrinal faith, particularly from All moments, then, are from the point of view the point of view of the outsider, is that it encour- of eternity, the same moment, even if each indi- ages the assumption that once one has acquired the vidual, from his or her own point of view, lives a doctrine, one has acquired understanding as well, moment that appears to be unique and particular. whereas in fact nothing can be further from the That is, again, the configuration that the timeless truth. The doctrine is there as discipline and prayer shares with time. From one end of the telescope, and observance, but understanding can come only the “moment of the rose . . . and of the yew-tree / through the experience of the dove descending, in Are of equal duration,” whereas from the point of whatever form the dove may take, since all forms view of natural processes, they are nothing of the are, like all patterns, the same form. sort. From the other end of the telescope, in the So, then, as the fifth and final part of “Little meantime, is the individual’s end: “[o]n a winter’s Gidding,” also the final section of the Four Quar- afternoon, in a secluded chapel / History is now tets, opens, the reader is reminded of ends and of and England.” There is no essential difference, ulti- beginnings. The speaker is ready now to accept mately, but for the individual, it is all the difference what may seem to be a commonplace bit of practi- in the world. cal wisdom, but one that he has come to on his own As the fifth part of “Little Gidding” draws to a through the continuing effort at prayer, observance, close, it need only reiterate what the poetry has and discipline that the poetry of the Four Quartets been persistent about. Though there may be no has thus far represented. He has come to under- gifts reserved for age, the speaker asserts his will, stand the circular nature of experience, its way as he does in the closing of “East Coker,” by pro- of repeating itself in patterns, the patterns them- claiming that old men ought to be explorers, faring selves permitting the repetitiveness of experience forward as we all must, whether we will or not. “We to emerge into consciousness, so that words such as shall not cease from exploration,” the speaker now ends and beginnings become meaningless, although vows with more certainty and purpose than he had

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when these spiritual and temporal explorations of spective, what is only a chimera and what is the his began. By doing so, by insisting on continuing fragile petal can be virtually indistinguishable, just to grow in awareness and in understanding all the as, in some manner of truth and meaning that is days of our lives, we will able to “arrive from where far more than merely metaphorical or figurative, we started / And know the place for the first time.” time and the timeless must, from the proper per- The past, that is to say, cannot be re-created, spective, be virtually indistinguishable one from but it can be made peace with and organized into the other as well. significant patterns, both for a people and for indi- For the poet of the Four Quartets, that point is viduals, and out of those renewing patterns a viable real, and there, as the poetry ends, those previous relationship with the present in its own continuous images are recollected into one extended image, passage into the past can emerge. For the past is all where “tongues of flame are in-folded / Into the still there, the poetry asserts as well, returning to crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are its own past now back in the early pages of “Burnt one.” That fire is wartime London burning; that Norton,” where the Four Quartets began. Looking fire is the sunlight catching the petals of a rose just back now, the reader can discern that the end was so in the rose garden; that fire is the point where concealed in those opening ruminations on time in terror and beauty meet in the risen and crowned its flight, to be revealed now in “Little Gidding”’s Christ in glory; that fire is Dante’s multifoliate rose, ending, where is heard again the children’s laugh- the image that he makes of the souls of the blesséd ter in the apple tree. Back in “Burnt Norton” I, that gathered about the throne of God, as they appear laughter was “[n]ot known, because not looked to Dante from the great distance from which he for.” But once sought, once looked for, as it has is permitted to witness the phenomenon and with been through all the intervening pages of poetry, which he ends his Divine Comedy. Finally, along that childhood laughter is seen to be “[q]uick now, with all its other potentials for meaning, that is here, now, always.” the still point, and as Four Quartet ends, the poet For if there is an eternity, then nothing is ever permits himself to assert that the still point is more lost. To achieve such insight is indeed to achieve than merely a metaphysical concept. It is, rather, a a “condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not real state of being. It is, at least, a basis for vision less than everything),” exactly what one would pay enough for the 20th century. for a pearl of wisdom of such great value. In the closing lines of “Little Gidding,” the place of such CRITICAL COMMENTARY an honor is reserved for Julian, as the poetry not Any general summary of the significance of the only echoes her visions once more in the confident Four Quartets as a poetic statement ought to begin promise that “all shall be well” but echoes itself, by taking a page from the poet of the Four Quartets: too. Having entered the realm of human experi- In its end is its beginning, and the reader returning ence by virtue of its having been written, the poetry there to the poem’s beginning will know it again of the Four Quartets, too, becomes a part of what for the first time. Put no less straightforwardly but we know, whether we know it or not. less colorfully, the complexities and befuddling Earlier, “East Coker” IV contrasted the images puzzlements with which the poem opens are, on “the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars” with any subsequent reading, far less onerous, even if “frigid purgatorial fires,” and “The Dry Salvages” not necessarily a great deal clearer. That should I offered a pair of similar images as it told readers ultimately come as no surprise, however. A poem that the “salt is on the briar rose, / The fog is in the that aims to tackle life’s greatest mystery, the place fir trees.” Smoke and briar and fog, fire and roses, of the divine in human affairs, is not likely ever connote the ambiguous aspects of reality, wherein to read like a narrative romp. Yet the poem’s own what seems solid can be a vaporous web, and what mysteries, like life’s, are often matters of perception seems beautiful can be ensconced in thorn and rather than fact and, once uncovered, prove to be pain. From the proper distance and the right per- no mysteries at all.

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The two epigraphs that Eliot provided for the its insights, which are, in the final analysis and Four Quartets are a case in point. They are both coming full circle, the same insights. taken from Heracleitus, the pre-Socratic Greek phi- A danger is that approaching Eliot’s work this losopher whose thought has come down to us only way may make it appear to be very clever, but little in fragments. The two fragments that Eliot cites, more. As with any element in an Eliot poem, how- when translated from the Greek, read as follows: ever, the reader must be ready at all times to sepa- “The word is common to everyone, but each man rate the appearance of such mere cleverness from a thinks that the word is his own” and “The way up more meaningful possibility—that the poem has a far is the way down.” For all their seeming ambiguity, deeper richness, one of intent and of purpose. Clev- those two epigraphs, taken together and appreci- erness, on the one hand, is James Joyce’s multilingual ated for their insight, explain just about everything pun in calling his final novel Finnegans Wake, and it that anyone needs to know in order to grasp the has deservedly been well recorded in critical circles, central message of the Four Quartets. Once one whereby Finnegan is a play on both an Irish surname has reached the end of the Four Quartets, one can and the words fine—“the end” in Latin—and again. return to those epigraphs and, as it were, know Combined in that way, the play on words is connota- them for the first time as just that: explanations tive of beginnings and endings, too, particularly in in a nutshell of what all of the poetry of the Four the context of a wake with all its connotative ambi- Quartets is getting at. guities. A richness of meaning, on the other hand, is In terms of the first epigraph, it is hard to deny Eliot’s making even his epigraphs serve the purpose of that human experience, for all its apparently end- mind-opening exercises in the extension of language less variety, is a relatively common experience for into thought and of thought into paradox. Structure everyone. Everyone imagines that his or her point can be a means of extending meaning as well. of view, nevertheless, is not only a unique one but The intricate interweaving of levels of discourse is generally the only valid one, particularly when it and modes of thought with depths of feeling and comes into conflict with someone else’s. In terms both personal and public history can often, like the of the second, no matter from what point vari- musical structures the poetry is meant to mimic, ous courses of inquiry begin, assuming that they all overlap in the Four Quartets in ways whereby the arrive at the only satisfactory conclusion, it will beginning of one motif or train of thought is lost be pretty much the same conclusion. The thrill, momentarily or is completely blurred by another as always, is in the chase, not the capture. And is just ending, giving the endless impression that the there any prey more elusive than the meaning, the poetry is nothing but a series of false starts followed purpose, of life itself? by dead ends. In fact, however, it is these persis- Heracleitus’s are practical insights once their tent over- and undertones of rhythms of thought essential wisdom is grasped, and they are the same and feeling that, on subsequent rereadings, give the insights at which the speaker of the Four Quar- poetry an overarching coherence. Modulated like tets finally arrives. However, Eliot’s speaker had pitches between major and minor keys, the poetry’s to earn his way to those conclusions, not simply playing back and forth between reflections on time, accept them on the basis of the word of another. history, and eternity, all against a backdrop of sym- To imagine that Heracleitus is correct without test- bols drawn from a basic and unadorned natural ing his premises in experience would be to miss his landscape, gradually take on an internal harmony, whole point, which is that experience—not logic or particularly when they are presented within the doctrine or even belief, especially when that belief narrative framework of the poet’s own cataloguing is based only on someone else’s testimony—alone of significant places. matters. And that is why any reader must first As its pace slackens and quickens, with a pur- experience a poem as rich as the Four Quartets posiveness that continuously grows in confidence before feeling secure enough to begin to try not so as the poem progresses through each of the suc- much to understand as to grasp, like Heracleitus’s, ceeding quartets, those feelings and thoughts that

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were first expressed with a hesitant philosophical of good practical wisdom based on commonplace certainty begin to take on themselves the sem- observations. blance not of abstract speculations but of practi- The problem, as Eliot himself was aware at least cal conclusions drawn from a relatively long life’s since the 1920s and his essays on Shakespeare and reflections on real experience. The resulting assur- Dante, is that poetry is neither philosophy nor ance with which the great imponderables are not so belief, although it may seem to emerge from both much resolved as they are successfully categorized in no certain way and to no certain purpose. The becomes infectious, and the reader should com- result, especially in Eliot’s later poetry, beginning plete the poem not convinced but confirmed, for by with “Ash-Wednesday,” is often a critical confu- virtue of all these varied techniques, the poetry has sion whereby, depending on the individual com- managed the unmanageable but always imaginable mentator’s biases, Eliot is either praised or blamed, possibilities that the very idea of eternity holds out and his poetry is either commended or excoriated, to us poor creatures of time. As a result, Four Quar- according to the degree to which it appears to be tets itself succeeds in making coherent the normally advancing some species of religious faith. incoherent and giving powerfully memorable shape The British essayist and novelist George Orwell, to the vague but necessary dream that there is, in whose classic political satire Animal Farm would the words of W. B. Yeats, a purpose set before the later be published by Faber & Faber on the basis of mind, the profane perfection of mankind. Eliot’s editorial recommendation, provides a case What is holiness, the poem asks again and again in point when he reviewed “The Dry Salvages” for in a wide variety of ways, if it is only for the holy? Poetry in its October–November issue for 1942. Eliot’s speaker works this inquiry out, for the most Orwell makes it clear from the start that his monu- part, against the backdrop of a Christian belief sys- mental dissatisfaction with all three of the quar- tem, inasmuch as the inquiry is conducted in reli- tets that had appeared thus far was the “result of gious terms. Religion may seem to dominate the something lacking in myself.” Still, he concludes poetry from time to time, but as much could be said that Eliot’s poetic powers have diminished in pro- of a number of other human preoccupations—the portion to how much the poetry reveals Eliot’s getting and spending of wealth, the exercise of own Anglo-Catholic faith, which is one for which power, the passage of time, the longing for peace Orwell clearly has little respect. According to and contentment, the fear of death, and the knowl- Orwell, Eliot’s “later poems express a melancholy edge of its inevitability. All these various strands or faith and the earlier ones a glowing despair,” and motifs or themes or topics, depending on whether Orwell, though he may or may not endorse the the poetry is characterized with a weaving, a musi- despair, dislikes the faith so much so that, for him, cal, a poetic, or a prose metaphor, accumulate as the poems themselves fail. Accordingly, taking his the poetry is developed, so that to isolate only one cue from Eliot’s speaker’s comment on “the intol- strand or motif or theme or topic is not to diminish erable wrestle / With words and meaning,” Orwell the experience of the poetry of the Four Quartets so concludes, “I should imagine that the struggle much as to demolish it. with meanings would have loomed smaller, and What is holiness, if it is only for the holy? The the poetry would have seemed to matter more, if answer that the poetry offers is that if there is holi- [Eliot] could have found his way to some creed ness, it cannot be confined to a particular experi- which did not start off by forcing one to believe ence or moment or way of life or culture or belief the incredible.” system. It must be, too, a state of being that is Without taking issue with Orwell’s patronizing recognizable and achievable, in which one can dismissal of the typically unprovable dynamics at function in perfectly ordinary ways among perfectly the core of any belief system, the reader should ordinary people and things, as well as extraordinary note that Orwell is judging the poetry on the basis ones. What passes for religion in Eliot, in other of what he knows of the poet’s personal faith, words, is often its own species, like Heracleitus’s, rather than on the basis of the poetry itself. That is

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a critical distinction, and one that cannot be easily Smith, Grover, T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in overlooked or forgiven for the simple reason that Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of it is distortions such as these, not the poetry, that Chicago Press, 1974. make of poetry bad philosophy and even poorer religion. The Four Quartets is neither, and that is why it is great poetry. “Francis Herbert Bradley” FURTHER READING (1926) Alldritt, Keith. Eliot’s Four Quartets: Poetry as Cham- ber Music. Totowa, N.J.: Woburn Press, 1978. What the French symbolist poet JULES LAFORGUE Bergonzi, Bernard, ed. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: A was to the young T. S. Eliot as a poet, the En- Casebook. New York: Macmillan, 1969. glish idealist philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley Bergsten, Staffan. Time and Eternity. A Study in the (1846–1924) was to the development of Eliot’s Structure and Symbolism of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quar- critical intellect, and perhaps of his poetry writing tets. Stockholm, Sweden: Uppsala, 1960. as well. Eliot came to Laforgue earlier, in 1908, Blissett, William. “The Argument of T. S. Eliot’s Four while still a Harvard undergraduate and did not Quartets.” University of Toronto Quarterly 15 (Janu- become a serious student of Bradley’s thought until ary 1946): 115–26. Clubb, Merrel D., Jr. “The Heraclitean Element in after he had begun his graduate studies toward the Eliot’s Four Quartets.” Philological Quarterly 40 doctorate at that same institution in 1911. Even (January 1961): 19–33. then, he would not purchase his personal copy of Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. Bradley’s major work, Appearance and Reality, until New York: Scribner’s, 1949. June 1913, although it is likely that he had first Ellis, Steve. The English Eliot: Design, Language, and gained his acquaintance with Bradleyan idealism Landscape in Four Quartets. London: Routledge, while attending the lectures of the French idealist 1991. philosopher Henri Bergson in Paris in 1910. What- Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot. New York: Dut- ever the case may be, Eliot ended up making Brad- ton, 1950. ley the focus of his Harvard doctoral dissertation, ———. The Composition of Four Quartets. London: “Knowledge and the Objects of Experience in the Faber, 1978. Philosophy of F. H. Bradley,” which he completed Hargrove, Nancy. Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of in the spring of 1915. T. S. Eliot. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, This essay of Eliot’s is an introduction that he 1978. prepared for the republication, in 1926, of Brad- Hay, Eloise Knapp. T. S. Eliot’s Negative Way. Cam- ley’s Ethical Studies, which had originally been bridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. published in 1876 and which Bradley himself had Ho, Cynthia Olson. “Savage Gods and Salvaged Time: refused to reprint throughout the remainder of his Eliot’s Dry Salvages.” Yeats Eliot Review 12, no. 1 life. Although Eliot’s dissertation on Bradley was (Summer 1993): 16–23. not issued in book form until 1964, under the title Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. Bradley, Eliot would later collect this introduc- Lobb, Edward, ed. Words in Time: New Essays on Eliot’s tory essay to Bradley’s Ethical Studies in his Selected Four Quartets. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Essays, 1917–1932. Press, 1993. Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. London: SYNOPSIS Macmillan, 1989. Eliot begins the essay by questioning the sincerity Matthiessen, F. O., and C. L. Barber. The Achievement of of Bradley’s fabled diffidence of tone in his prose, T. S. Eliot. Oxford: , 1958. a modesty that many took to be an unscrupulous

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pose to gain an intellectual advantage over his that Eliot is aiming merely to compare Arnold’s opponents as well as his readers. Since the same style—and style of thinking—with Bradley’s. sort of ironic-seeming self-deprecation is a notable For the next few pages, a variety of representa- aspect of Eliot’s own prose style, Eliot’s conclusion tive passages from each is offered for the reader’s that Bradley’s was not a pose is worthy of atten- discernment. But then Eliot observes that there tion: “[I]f this had been a pose it would never have is a substantial difference between the two, that worn so well as it has.” Those same terms could be Bradley’s prose arsenal in the intellectual battles applied to Eliot; any attitude that is long sustained that he waged had behind it “a heavier force and seems to be a genuine one. a greater precision” than Arnold’s. Eliot continues, As Eliot continues, it becomes of further inter- somewhat ominously: “Exactly what Bradley fought est that, although it is reasonable to assume that it for and exactly what he fought against have not must have been the content of Bradley’s thought been quite understood.” that had attracted Eliot to him in the first place, Eliot gives the impression that what Bradley had it is Bradley’s style that becomes the primary focus fought against, successfully, was 19th-century utili- of Eliot’s attention. It is, indeed, Bradley’s “great tarianism, the prepragmatic philosophy that pro- gift of style,” Eliot claims, that allows Bradley to posed a mechanistic basis for organizing all human continue to exert an influence on contemporary institutions and giving them purpose. Arnold had thought. This style reflects a “purity and concen- attacked this unimaginative view of human indus- tration of feeling,” one that “wholly and directly” try as well in his own major work, Culture and reveals Bradley’s “intense addiction to an intellec- Anarchy, but as Eliot sees it, it was Bradley’s think- tual passion.” ing, not Arnold’s prose, that “replaced a philosophy The direction in which Eliot is leading his argu- [utilitarianism] which was crude and raw and pro- ment with this high praise then becomes clear: vincial by one which was, in comparison, catholic, “The nearest resemblance in style [to Bradley] . . . civilized, and universal.” is Matthew Arnold.” This mention of Arnold, one This may seem to be putting Arnold and Brad- of England’s leading cultural critics during the lat- ley in the same camp, but then comes the coup ter half of the 19th century, calls to mind Eliot’s de grâce. Although Arnold and Bradley may distaste for Arnold’s ideas. It would be another four have shared a distaste for utilitarianism, Bradley years until the publication, in 1930, of Eliot’s essay “wished only to determine how much of morality “Arnold and Pater,” but in it he pointedly blames could be founded securely without entering into Arnold for laying the foundation for the virulently the religious questions at all”—the point being that antireligious stance of 20th-century humanism Arnold did enter into religious questions and did by virtue of his confused thinking with regard to so happily and readily. In Culture and Anarchy, for linking the cross-purposes of art and of religion. example, Arnold had equated “the will of God” This secular humanism itself, in the meantime, will with “our best self.” From Eliot’s point of view, this come in for a direct assault from Eliot in his 1927 best self of Arnold’s “looks very much like Matthew essay “The Humanism of Irving Babbitt.” There Arnold slightly disguised.” For Eliot, ever fearful of he severely criticizes his former Harvard mentor’s the prerogatives that the modern world permits of attempt to offer humanism as a substitute for reli- individuality and personality, that is an excessive gion for 20th-century intellectuals. danger—allowing opinion to pass for thought. Therefore, while Arnold is introduced inno- cently enough into Eliot’s discussion of Bradley’s CRITICAL COMMENTARY style, the reader who is wary of where Arnold’s Eliot raises in his essay on Bradley what has been presence in the text may be leading it will not be for him a crucial issue in his own critical writing surprised when the essay turns out to be another from as early as “Tradition and the Individual Tal- foray against the self-centered assurances of the ent” in 1919 and certainly from the time of “The humanist position. Admittedly, it may seem at first Function of Criticism” in 1923. In the latter essay,

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its title echoing Arnold’s own “The Function of they cannot and should not be confused with each Criticism at the Present Time,” Eliot had ridiculed other. Eliot wishes to make that one thing clear: the humanist ideal that the individual can con- that Bradley, perfect philosopher that he was, did duct his or her behavior properly and to the bene- not transgress the intellectual barrier where the fit of others with nothing more than a self-guided, one can easily be confused for the other and where self-generated morality. In that instance, Eliot both—morality and religion—are equally dimin- had held up for ridicule the contemporary English ished in the conflicting intellectual and spiritual social critic J. MIDDLETON MURRY’s ideas, putting turmoil that can thus result. them under the heading of the “Inner Voice.” In their place, Eliot proposed instead a social order, and personal conduct, founded on longstanding cultural traditions. “From Poe to Valéry” (1961) In “Francis Herbert Bradley,” it is Arnold’s notion of conducting oneself according to the per- “From Poe to Valéry” is from among the essays sonal moral dictates of the “best self” that comes gathered in Eliot’s last collection of prose, To Criti- under attack. Even then, it is not mainly in terms cize the Critic, which was published posthumously of itself that Eliot takes that notion to task, but as it by Faber & Faber in 1965. The essay was originally has subsequently evolved, in Eliot’s view, and is now presented as a lecture at the Library of Congress being manifested in Babbitt’s concept of the “inner in Washington, D.C., on November 19, 1948, and check” (shades there of Murry’s inner voice). that choice of venue may have had more influence Eliot stands instead by Bradley’s side as a thinker on the content of the presentation than not. Poe whose own system of ethics sought not to supplant is an American poet, after all. Although Eliot had the religious impulse or the necessity of religion. published, anonymously, a pamphlet on another For “to attempt to erect a complete theory of eth- American poet, EZRA POUND, as early as 1917, ics without a religion is none the less to adopt he was not generally wont to spend much criti- some particular attitude towards religion.” Bradley cal ink on American poets or literature. So, then, keeps the two events separate. Speaking in tones an essay apparently devoted to the 19th-century that imply that he is speaking wholly for himself, poet, short-story writer, and erstwhile critic Edgar not Bradley, Eliot makes it clear that he regards Allan Poe must seem on the surface to be a singular the religious impulse, or the necessity for it, as honor for Poe. Nothing could be further from the something other than a more elaborate species of truth, however. ethics or morality. He writes, “The distinction is not between a ‘private self’ and a ‘public self’ or a SYNOPSIS ‘higher self,’ it is between the individual as himself Eliot makes it clear to begin with that he is not and no more, a mere numbered atom, and the indi- “attempt[ing] a judicial estimate” of Poe, whose vidual in communion with God.” work, he says, appears to be “slipshod,” “puer- Eliot is asserting that a thinker such as Bradley ile,” and “haphazard,” although it also evinces a scrupulously avoids encroaching at all on the pre- “unique shape and impressive size.” What Eliot rogatives of the possibilities imposed by the spiri- finds puzzling about Poe is not his unique impor- tual circumstances of our being, but yet he can deal tance as a literary figure but the incredible influ- with the social realities with a respect for those ence that his work has exerted in comparison with constraints in mind. Bradley does not, in other its quality. However, it is not American poetry that words, usurp an authority that a proper regard for concerns Eliot or that has benefited, but French the limits of philosophy cannot possibly permit. poetry—and that is what is most puzzling. Indeed, “Morality and religion are not the same thing, but if anyone in particular had reaped the benefits that they cannot beyond a certain point be treated sepa- the influence of Edgar Allan Poe had on the devel- rately” Eliot writes. Equally true for Eliot is that opment of French poetry in the latter half of the

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19th century, it would be none other than the danger lies in its capacity to divorce aesthetic pur- Harvard undergraduate student and future poet suits from the world of action and typical moral Thomas Stearns Eliot, who discovered the French responsibilities. It is from that movement’s earliest symbolists, among them JULES LAFORGUE and Sté- manifestations as English romanticism that Poe phane Mallarmé, in ARTHUR SYMONS’s landmark derived his models and influences. The entire tra- critical study, The SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERA- dition, as Eliot would characterize it, moves away TURE, during the fall semester of his third year at from an older poetic impulse, in which “the atten- Harvard in 1908. tion of the listener is directed upon the subject It is not because of Poe’s intrinsic value or signifi- matter,” to one wherein the subject, “instead of cance as a literary figure or even as an American that being the purpose of the poem,” becomes instead he has come to occupy Eliot’s attention at all now nothing more than “a necessary means for the so much as because Poe is the one who started it realization of the poem.” That is to say, the “how” all—Eliot’s own career as a poet included, one might of poetry writing, its attention to style, becomes hazard to say—entirely in spite of himself. In fact, more important than the “what,” its subject. How- Eliot’s real interest, as the title of this essay suggests, ever, what Eliot fears is that, while too intense an is not in Poe but in the French symbolists who were attention to subject does not in and of itself make inspired by him. Mallarmé and CHARLES BAUDELAIRE for poetry, a “complete unconsciousness of any- are chief among them, but there is also a French poet thing but style would mean that poetry had van- who is not a symbolist at all but a modernist contem- ished.” That is where Eliot finds Poe’s influence porary of Eliot’s, Paul Valéry. “These three French on French poetry troublesome. Such a pure poetry poets,” Eliot tells his readers, “represent the begin- would become nothing more than sounds pleas- ning, the middle and the end of a particular tradition ingly arranged. There is another point of view in poetry,” and he sees it as an ironic travesty of the that would argue instead that la poésie pure would whole idea of literary influences that that tradition, in fact produce a more beneficial result, a pure for them, finds its root in an American who was as poetry divorced from anything but the self-con- competent and no doubt as notorious but otherwise scious attention to craft. as dangerously lackluster as Poe. Here, in Eliot’s view, contemporary poetry read- It may be best to pick up at the end of the road ers would find Valéry’s agenda. How Valéry fits that the French took “from Poe to Valéry,” as it into the picture, however, requires a recognition were, in order to realize how Eliot has come to of how Poe’s theories of poetry writing became, see the circuitous route that Poe’s influence took among the French, its practice instead. In the pro- through French poetry ending, in the modernist cess, Eliot reveals more about the future of poetry epoch, in Valéry’s pernicious brand of what Eliot than he does about its past. calls la poésie pure, or pure poetry. In the parlance For a glimpse into that future, the interested of 19th-century English literary history, pure poetry reader must return to Eliot’s examination of how generally comes down to readers as a poetry writ- Poe seemed to propose a poetry that was produced ten in the so-called Parnassan or “art for art’s sake” rather in the same way that one produces a precise school of poetry. Poets the likes of Algernon Swin- effect rather than a particular statement. Poe, Eliot burne and the young W. B. YEATS would be exam- admits, had, “to an exceptional degree,” an ear for ples of these in the English tradition. Such poetry poetry as an incantatory art—that is, one devoted aims toward achieving a beauty of expression above purely to the sound of words. “But, in his choice all else, often at the expense of sense or practical of the word that has the right sound, Poe is by no considerations, and always at the expense of the means careful that it should also have the right sorts of worldly concerns that trouble all the rest of sense.” It is here that the French, encountering him humanity on a day-to-day basis. as an undisciplined genius of vision, but unable Pure poetry makes, in a manner of speaking, to see his faults as a poet as readily as someone a religion of art, and, as a literary movement, its familiar with the resources of English might have,

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went off on a track from which poetry might never Add to that, as Eliot does, Valéry’s “extreme recover. These same French poets have subse- skepticism,” and the net result is a poetry that does quently exerted an even greater influence on world not even exist as an art for art’s sake experience, poetry than Poe, in English, ever could have, as since Eliot regards Valéry as “much too skeptical Eliot must be extremely well aware, being himself to believe even in art.” In summary, Valéry writes a product of that powerful French influence on his poems to write poems, and that is, in Eliot’s view, generation of English-language poets. an extremely isolated and self-centered experience. Poe, Eliot imagines, had a powerful intellect, This kind of intense self-consciousness on the part but it never obtained its maturity. Absent from it of the poet, whereby the poem is its writing, not its is that “which gives dignity to the mature man: a effect, let alone anything even approaching a pur- consistent view of life.” The combination of the pose, forces the art to turn inward on itself, mimick- two in Poe’s poetry—word choice determined ing to an alarming degree the cold and calculating more by sound than by sense, and an apparently way that Poe himself claims to have written “The demented vision that is really more the result of Raven” in his famous essay “The Philosophy of adolescent excesses than of a carefully managed Composition.” In Valéry, the “penetration of the philosophy of life—proved fatally fruitful in trans- poetic by the introspective critical activity is carried lation, at least for the French. With so many young to the limit . . . at which the latter begins to destroy French poets, beginning with Mallarmé, fascinated the former,” and Eliot sees that entire process as by Poe’s vision but, because of a language bar- having found its seeds in the French take on Poe. rier, unschooled in its essential incoherence, what emerged in France in the later half of the 19th CRITICAL COMMENTARY century was symbolism, an entirely new kind of As is often the case whenever outsiders, even if they poetry enabling a way of conceptualizing an idio- are otherwise devoted readers of poetry, encoun- syncratic engagement of language and sensibility ter a literary argument or disagreement, the issues with the brutal realities and sterile conformities of raised in this essay may seem to be just so much the tediously dull urban world that was also begin- quibbling over whether “themes” and “meanings” ning to take shape in Europe at the time. Instead or stylistic virtuosities should win the day. Eliot of a poetry of engagement, however, the result has more in mind than that, however. While Eliot has been a poetic force that has self-consciously would never lay claim to knowing what poetry’s divorced itself from the culture and society that purpose is for a culture, he would never be one to are producing it and that have need of its amelio- deny that it must serve one. rative effects. In countless critical pieces he had argued consis- Eliot cites Baudelaire on Poe: In keeping with tently for making clear distinctions between poetry the lessons to be learned from Poe, Baudelaire and belief and between poetry and philosophy, so writes, poetry “should have nothing in view but much so, indeed, that it is one of the enduring hall- itself. A poem does not say something, it is some- marks of his critical canon. But to divorce poetry thing.” Eliot’s thesis is that such an attitude, in from poetry—for Eliot, that would be going a step its coldest form, has come to roost in contem- too far. As he says, and it bears repeating, such a porary French poetry in Valéry. For Eliot insists movement away from sense and into pure sound that from Valéry, a poet infected by the theory has, in Valéry, “gone as far as it can go.” Eliot that has emerged from Poe’s influence but not ends his essay expressing an opinion that seems to affected at all by the influence itself, has come harbor a hope. “[T]his advance of self-conscious- a poetry in which the subject matter of a poem ness, the extreme awareness of and concern for is not less important (that would still admit it a language which we find in Valéry, is something place); rather, subject matter has “a different kind which must ultimately break down, owing to an of importance: it is important as means: the end is increasing strain against which the human mind the poem.” and nerves will rebel.”

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 234 9/5/07 2:36:04 PM “Frontiers of Criticism, The” 235 “Frontiers of Criticism, cal processes largely on the basis of proposing a psychology of reader response. Another major The” (1956) change to which Eliot calls attention is that there are increasing numbers of professional literary crit- First presented as the Gideon Seymour Lecture at ics, the result of universities embracing their exper- the University of Minnesota in 1956 and subse- tise as an integral part of the teaching and study of quently collected in On Poetry and Poets, this essay literature. A further result, as Eliot sees it, is that takes up where “The Function of Criticism” had “serious criticism now is being written for a differ- left off some 33 years earlier. While it is not to say ent, a more limited though not necessarily a smaller that Eliot had not produced much interesting and public than was that of the 19th century.” It is that influential commentary on literature during the observation that enables Eliot to open his essay to intervening years, most notably The Use of Poetry a consideration of his main topic, which, as the and the Use of Criticism in 1934, the fact remains title announces it, is the “frontiers of criticism,” or, that those other works of his dealt mainly with rather, its proper limits. individual authors or the social and moral ramifica- In 1923, Eliot had observed that, unlike creative tions of certain trends in literature. endeavors, criticism is not autotelic; that is, it is not self-justified or self-fulfilling. Quite the contrary, it SYNOPSIS could be asserted as an axiomatic truth that liter- A pointed analysis on the state and purpose of ary criticism exists only because literature exists. literary criticism at the present time as a field of The danger these 33 years later, as Eliot sees it, is endeavor in and of itself was long overdue from that literature itself may be in danger of becoming one of the founding voices of 20th-century literary a secondary pursuit to the much larger interests thought. Eliot calls attention to this situation him- represented by and invested in the academic indus- self by commencing his address by somewhat self- try now created by the criticism of literature, to deprecatingly harking back to his 1923 essay “The the end that the messenger becomes more impor- Function of Criticism.” He happily admits that by tant than the message, and the message than the now he can no longer remember what all the fuss event to which it relates. Nor is Eliot out simply to was about in his attack on J. MIDDLETON MURRY protect his own primary turf as a poet and a play- and other critics of that ilk, whom he had char- wright. As he had already argued in 1942 in “The acterized as devotees of what he called “the Inner Social Function of Poetry,” a culture that loses the Voice.” He saw them as individuals whose unwill- habit of poetic discourse as an end in itself loses its ingness to accept external standards of literary taste attachment to emotion and feeling. and propriety could only corrupt contemporary This increasing emphasis on the processes of criti- critical intelligence, which, in Eliot’s view, required cism poses a threat to creative processes unless they, objectified measures of quality, not an enthusiastic the critical processes, be kept in constant check. So, responsiveness to what the critic found pleasing on then, Eliot is able to pose the dilemma as a ques- personal grounds and for no other reason. From the tion: “When is criticism not literary criticism but vantage point of a public address being made more something else?” As he sees it, the danger comes than three decades later, Eliot could say that he down to altering reader expectations of what a work may have been engaged then in no more than the of literature can accomplish and of what engaging it old debate regarding authority versus individual can achieve for the reader. Placed alongside what he judgment. calls the “workshop criticism” of the practicing poet, He freely admits, too, that much has changed such as himself, who in his earlier critical efforts in the field since 1923, not the least event among commented mainly on what he had learned from them I. A. RICHARDS’s publication in 1925 of The and appreciated in the work of other poets and dra- Principles of Literary Criticism. In that landmark matists, the criticism that merges with or emerges work, Richards had attempted to systematize criti- from the sort of scholarship that the universities

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encourage is by far the more influential. The trouble something new has happened, something that can- is that, as influential as it has become, it encourages not be wholly explained by anything that went before.” what he says “may be characterized as the criticism Indeed, Eliot goes as far as to plead that that “is what of explanation by origins.” we mean by ‘creation.’ ” As examples of this notion that a text is For all his particular biases and preferences, Eliot explained once its origins have been exposed by remains a pragmatist at heart. Early in the essay, the scholar critic, he cites two outstanding exam- for example, he had credited Coleridge with making ples. In the first case, it is John Livington Lowes’s an irrevocable alteration in the direction of English now legendary source study, The Road to Xanadu, literary criticism by bringing philosophy and psychol- which makes a convincing case that images and ogy to bear on aesthetics. “Were he alive now,” Eliot phrases from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s reading observes, Coleridge might instead “take the same found their way into his poems “Kubla Khan” and interest in the social sciences and in the study of lan- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. While commend- guage and semantics.” A point so well made ought ing Lowes’s impeccable and impressive scholarship, to be well taken as well. Circumstances and human Eliot implicitly questions, nevertheless, both its knowledge, its extent and its interests, alter, and as value and its validity as literary criticism by point- it does, so do all the fields of human endeavor. ing out that despite Lowes’s extensive investigation While he will not, then, give these new critical into the literary sources for Coleridge’s imagery, methodologies, with their fascination with sources, how that material became great poetry “remains as their own due, he insists that “to understand a poem much of a mystery as ever.” . . . we should endeavour to grasp what the poetry The other work that Eliot cites as an example is aiming to be”—that is, the critical focus should of the criticism of explanation by source is a work be on not what the poetry was made out of but of the imagination rather than of criticism, JAMES what it has been made into. When he argues, then, JOYCE’s virtually unreadable last novel, Finnegans using lines from Shakespeare and from Shelley for Wake. That a reading experience as densely cryptic his examples, that he can understand some poetry and obscure as Joyce’s “novel” becomes the sort without the benefit of explanation, he is not being of literary achievement that other scholar critics, coy but emphasizing, as he has done many previous emulating Lowes, then go on to crave and encour- times in his critical career, that nothing else can age, suggests that the tail is beginning to wag the suffice for an actual experience of the poetry itself, dog. The creative artist begins to provide the sorts as poetry. “I see nothing to be explained,” he points of texts that are approved by the prevailing criti- out with regard to the lines in question, “nothing, cal method, in this case, one that seeks to identify that is, that would help me to understand it better obscure or cleverly concealed sources rather than and therefore enjoy it more.” to engage the text head on for its purely literary Criticism, he concludes, when it is truly literary value and qualities. criticism, is an explanation that leads to the sort As might be suspected, Eliot does not deny that of understanding that enhances one’s enjoyment of the notes that he provided for The Waste Land (notes the poem. Any criticism presented as literary criti- that he claims were the result of decisions regarding cism that does not enlarge one’s understanding for the printing of the poem in book form) have gone the sake of enjoyment may still be legitimate, Eliot a long way toward making source studies suffice as is willing to concede, but it is not literary criticism. literary criticism. The result is that such criticism Rather, it is “a contribution to psychology, or sociol- leads to the error among readers “of mistaking expla- ogy, or logic, or pedagogy, or some other pursuit . . . nation for understanding,” so that, in his estimation, to be judged by specialists, not by men of letters.” ultimately “a good many readers” nowadays desire that “poetry should be explained in terms of some- CRITICAL COMMENTARY thing else.” In contrast, Eliot holds, as he virtually Eliot delivered these remarks in the heart of the always has, that “When the poem has been made, enemy camp, inasmuch as that metaphor is appro-

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priate here. He is on a major American university individual texts and authors or as a platform for campus, after all. Many in the audience would have mounting assaults on contemporary social and been drawn there by Eliot’s well-deserved celeb- cultural issues. As such, the three essays, taken rity alone, but doubtless the most attentive among separately or regarded as a whole, map the develop- his audience are literature professors and graduate ment of Eliot’s ideas regarding the benefit of criti- students convinced that source studies and deep cism to literary production and, more important, to readings are not only a present prerogative but the reader receptivity to literary values. In the process, wave of the future for literary studies and, by exten- of course, Eliot also defines what he takes to be a sion, literary criticism. correct critical method. Eliot, however, was never Still, Eliot asserts, when he draws his remarks to wont to compartmentalize the purely literary from a close, that “to understand a poem” is the same as other social and even political concerns, so the “to enjoy it for the right reasons.” He adds that “to unwary reader of “The Function of Criticism” may enjoy a poem under a misunderstanding as to what quickly wonder what is going on. it is, is to enjoy what is merely a projection of our own mind.” For Eliot, that is the worst thing that SYNOPSIS one can do. He is calling for a firsthand engage- After a measured and carefully considered open- ment not with the poet’s life or beliefs or his or her ing, in which Eliot takes pains to define the critical sources, nor with the reader’s life or beliefs, but process as it is distinguished from the creative, he with the poem itself. suddenly launches into several pages of splenetic There must be, finally, a balance between raillery against the critic J. MIDDLETON MURRY, considerations of understanding and enjoyment whom he presents as the exemplar of the enemy in the best literary criticism. Emphasize issues of camp. If it were a battle in the present culture wars, understanding at the expense of enjoyment, and Murry and his ilk would be stylized as liberals; Eliot, the result can be mere explanation to no other in keeping with the epithets of his time, calls them purpose. Overemphasize enjoyment, however, and Whigs. These critics adhere to the free-wheeling there is a danger that the criticism can become principles of the spirit of romanticism, with its any- too subjective and impressionistic. What matters is thing-goes mentality, and are therefore opposed to that Eliot has delivered on the promise of his title, its perceived nemesis, classicism, and that move- delineating what he takes to be the frontiers, the ment’s religious manifestation, Catholicism, with proper limits, of literary criticism. In doing so, he their interest in preserving the status quo for the also reasserts his lifelong insistence on regarding sake of protecting traditional values and models of the poem as poetry, not in terms of something else, behavior and social propriety. such as philosophy or religion or biography. In 1923, when the essay was written, it was still some five to 10 years before Eliot’s famous decla- ration that he was a Catholic, a classicist, and a royalist in faith, taste, and politics. At virtually any “Function of Criticism, time in modern history, those are all conservative postures to assume. Yet already here is Eliot, in the The” (1923) shadow of his radical modernist iconoclasm that had just the year before produced The Waste Land, Originally published in Eliot’s own literary review, attacking those who listen to the “Inner Voice” of the Criterion, and later collected in Selected Essays romanticism and moral disorder, whom he carica- in 1932, “The Function of Criticism,” along with tures as marching under the intellectual banner “The Frontiers of Criticism” (1956) and “To Criti- of “Muddle Through,” and he is doing so with the cize the Critic” (1961), provides a cogent com- same restrained passion that he will bring to bear mentary on what Eliot sees to be the purpose of some 10 years and life-altering religious experi- literary criticism, as opposed to its application to ences later in After Strange Gods (1934). That later

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work would embarrass even Eliot for being perhaps carefully considered poetic and aesthetic standards too partisan in finding fault with those who did not of both a technical and a thematic nature in the agree with his own aesthetic and moral positions, act of selecting and discarding the materials that which he himself perceived as traditionalist and eventually constitute the poem. Conversely, Eliot conservative. proposes, the opposite must be true as well. “If so Fortunately, in this earlier essay, Eliot makes it large a part of creation is really criticism,” it follows clear in logical rather than merely rhetorical terms that “a large part of what is called ‘critical writing’ why he believes that the sloppiness of thought and [is] really creative.” feeling associated with romanticism—that love Its creativity, however, is necessarily derived from affair with the Inner Voice—does not lend itself an intense interaction with the creative work with to criticism, and such clarity of intent continues which it is engaged, and that enagement cannot to form a great part of the essay’s value as a criti- take place unless a critic has a “very highly devel- cal document. “Those who obey the inner voice.” oped sense of fact.” This respect for the externals Eliot contends, returning to his original topic, the of the creative process, as it were, cannot possibly function of criticism, “will not be interested in the accompany an attitude toward creative endeavors attempt to find any common principles for the pur- that makes of them inviolable utterances inspired suit of criticism. Why have principles,” he asks, not by tradition or technical virtuosities but by only partially tongue in cheek, “when one has the attending on the amorphous guidance provided by inner voice?” an inner voice and a muddle-through approach. Earlier in the essay, to establish the basic princi- Comparison and analysis rather than respond- ple that criticism, in a literary context, entails “the ing with how one feels are the critic’s “chief tools,” elucidation of works of art and the correction of Eliot says, but one then has to know what to com- tastes,” Eliot had referred to the 19th-century Eng- pare and what to analyze. There processes of inter- lish poet and critic MATTHEW ARNOLD. In 1851, pretation come into play, but they must be guided in the landmark essay “The Function of Criticism facts, as he calls them, that are then put into the at the Present Time,” a title Eliot’s title no doubt reader’s possession. The result may seem “arid, intentionally echoes, Arnold had hoped to give technical, and limited,” Eliot readily admits, but English literary criticism a more authentic intel- it is, in his view, the only kind of criticism that lectual pedigree, and he argued for basing criticism can lay true claim to being such—in his defini- on principles drawn from observing an alternating tion, the elucidation of texts and the correction of cultural dynamic that required periods of objective tastes. Such a criticism, he admits, may make read- critical analysis as much as periods of unbridled ers more interested in reading critical texts rather creative effort. than the primary sources, the poems and novels Now Eliot dares to modify Arnold’s original posi- and plays. Still, Eliot asserts that facts cannot cor- tion in order to establish why he feels that those rupt taste, although opinion can. who rely on the inner voice of intuitive reactions to both the creative impulse and the critical response CRITICAL COMMENTARY cannot possibly produce either an adequate critical Overall, and from the vantage point of nearly a literature or critical method. Arnold, Eliot claims, century of further refinements in critical theory missed the point by separating the creative and the later, Eliot may seem to be doing little more than critical into two complementary but nevertheless arguing in favor of carefully balanced, informed different faculties. The creative writer, in Eliot’s readings of a text, even when such a reading may view, is equally as engaged in a critical as a cre- seem to be cold and detached. His definition of ative process as he or she composes, particularly criticism contrasted the impassioned gushings of if the writer is one who, like the classicists Eliot a literary impressionism that had dominated what defends, does not rely on the “Inner Voice” but passed for literary criticism for much of the 19th on the guidance of long-standing traditions and century, against which Arnold had proposed his

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own analyses of the cultural dynamics represented him such an interesting thinker. Whether one by the creative and critical impulses. agrees with his positions or not, he enlarges on To read Eliot’s position in that way, however, them, refining and extending them into all corners misses the pointed attack on some contemporary of his individual interests, the spiritual and moral critical strategies that he had felt free enough to as well as aesthetic and critical, without ever alter- disparage with an intellectual vigor in the earlier ing his essential belief in conforming oneself to the pages of his essay. Eliot had begun with a favorable overriding and underlying social and cultural struc- allusion to his earlier, celebrated essay “Tradition tures and strictures out of which human values and the Individual Talent,” implying that the pres- emerge. As the decades continued, ideas on the ent essay would elaborate on principles first enun- value of order and tradition only vaguely expressed ciated there. In “The Function of Criticism,” too, in an essay such as “The Function of Criticism” after everything is said and done, Eliot is ultimately became more and more integral elements in his asserting the primacy of tradition over individual poetry and criticism and eventually plays. tastes and practices, of objective judgment over sub- jective responses, and of the whole over the part. This abhorrence of his for the notion that the self is the final arbiter of all values and valid judg- “Gerontion” (1920) ments eventually led him to embrace ultimate tra- dition in the Catholic Christian foundation of the Composed in May and June 1919 while Eliot was Anglo-American culture that bred him. Ironically coming out of his quatrain phase and Europe had enough, this same foundation, with its emphasis on just emerged from World War I, “Gerontion” signals the sacrosanct relationship between each soul and a new direction in Eliot’s poetry, and yet, as is often its creator, had also bred the profound respect for the case, the poetry partakes of much of the style and the individual as the court of last resort in matters tone of earlier Eliot efforts as well. It makes perfect of aesthetic, moral, ethical, and spritual judgments sense. A missile’s trajectory is not perfectly known of which Eliot himself seemed to be more and more until it hits target, and the trajectory of “Gerontion” mistrustful the more his own creative and critical would not become clear until Eliot produced The instincts and talents matured. Waste Land some three years later. In essence, Eliot casts his vote in favor of a criti- The more sober and serious view of reality that cal methodology that relies on judging a work’s rela- that poem addresses, for all its superficial absurdi- tive merits in terms of generally accepted standards ties, marks a genuine turning point for Eliot from of taste and technical virtuosity rather than on the the mocking seriousness of such poems as “The basis of one’s individual taste and opinions. Never Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Sweeney an intellectual purist, Eliot realizes that that may among the Nightingales” toward the ultimate som- often mean finding great merit in a work that flies berness of Four Quartets, his final achievement as in the face of current practices, and minimal merit a poet. As is the case with any Eliot poem from in one that does little more than repeat past perfor- any point in his long career, however, the best mances. But that is not what is at issue here. Rather approach to “Gerontion” is to clear up its general it is that both works have been judged in relatively complexities rather than try to make each line and objectified terms, not according to the vagaries of image and allusion align with one another in an the critic’s personal fancies, however “tasteful” they otherwise absolutely coherent manner. Generally, a may appear to be. In the same way, Eliot will gradu- tactic like the latter only leads to further confusion ally ally himself with belief systems and political or rampant myopia. ideologies that mitigate personal preferences for the sake of enduring foundational values. SYNOPSIS It is this seamless nature of Eliot’s intellectual Somewhat like an ancient Greek or Roman com- approach to contemporary concerns that makes edy or tragedy in which the characters, for all

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their naturalistic and individualized detail, were A reading such as this diminishes the power of intended to be taken as stereotypes, little more the poetry, perhaps, transforming it from a soul- than dressed-up caricatures of human traits and searching specimen of contemplative verse into a foibles, Eliot’s speaker in this poem is both himself mere morality play, a dramatized lecture if not a and the embodiment of his type—an old man and quasi-political and social cartoon, but that never- the old man, worn out and alternately comic and theless is the direction in which Eliot’s poetry and tragic in his pathetic bewilderment now that time his social criticism were tending as the 1920s, a and custom have passed him by. Gerontion, after postwar decade, were just beginning. Before the all, means “little old man” in Greek. Ultimately, decade was out, Eliot had converted to the Angli- however, in the richness of the details that then can Church, had become a British subject, and, assault the reader’s sensibilities, the poem seems after allegedly expressing the disillusionment of a to be encouraging the reader to imagine that there generation in The Waste Land, had turned, accord- is in the complicated tale that Gerontion tells an ing to his own testimony, Catholic, classicist, and extended metaphor emerging through its words royalist in his spiritual, literary, and sociopolitical and images. leanings. The speaker can be located in space, for exam- What is being suggested thus far is that “Geron- ple; he seems to be a resident of a northwestern tion,” although composed in 1919 and first pub- European city, somewhere in Belgium or England. lished in 1920, can now be viewed with the benefit Yet there are country images as well, and he cannot of hindsight as marking the end of one period in be easily located in time. The speaker refers to hav- Eliot’s poetry and the beginning of another. The ing fought at the “hot gates,” which suggests Ther- complex ambivalence of the poem’s intentions mopylae, which means “hot gates” in Greek. At that for theme and purpose, for example, underscore site the vastly outnumbered Spartans heroically lost an increasing ambivalence of purpose and aim in a battle to the Persians in 480 B.C., long before there Eliot’s poetry writing in general to this point. even was a London or an Antwerp or a Brussels. Shortly he would write, in The Waste Land, a Rather than the life of any flesh-and-blood poetry that provides the reader with no apparently speaker whom the language reveals, then, the sustained structural, verbal, or dramatic clues or reader may be led to suspect, quite rightly, perhaps, other markers to suggest an overriding purpose. that the speaker only appears to be a person, the With “Gerontion,” the abandonment of standard action only appears to be realistic in its detail, and generic and tonal clues that had only been hinted there may in fact be a symbolic drama shaping itself at and toyed with in Eliot’s earlier poetic efforts was in which, instead of a characterization, it is ideas already beginning to take its toll on the reader’s or ideals that are being portrayed as if they were comfort and perhaps even patience. themselves characters in a dramatic monologue, in The poetry that Eliot had been writing to this this case Gerontion’s, as he tells the tale of a tired point had at least allowed the reader to choose his old man that is really the story of a worn-out cul- or her own point of reference. The relationship ture. The option of that kind of a reading becomes between the evening sky and the patient etherized even more alluring a signpost to follow when it is upon a table or between the yellow fog and a cat in discovered that Eliot was composing the poem just “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” for example, before he began to conceive of The Waste Land and while not immediately transparent, is nevertheless had even at one point conceived of “Gerontion” as suggestively appropriate. That is to say, the reader a sort of prelude to that longer, equally dark work. may not land on the exact meaning that the poet All those hints that these unfolding actions, like intended by such tropes, if there were any, but the the speaker, may be symbolic rather than specific, reader is nevertheless encouraged to imagine that fall away to reveal a way of dramatization, it is there is a meaning being intended. possible, of a Europe that has fallen into a cultural In “Gerontion,” by sharp contrast, Eliot is begin- decline and a moral morass. ning to write a poetry where elements sharing even

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the same verse line, let alone the same stanza, seem Gerontion’s state is literally a state of mind, the to have an arbitrary if not capricious association at mind of Europe, as Eliot would call it, but also best, and that one known only to the poet. Like the minds of the myriad individuals making up the The Waste Land, “Gerontion” remains stubbornly modern world. His tiredness and despair mirror itself as a poem, a closeted, secretive text that the a culture that had reached a dead end and had reader must enter on its terms, nor are those terms become both morally and literally bankrupt as a in any way spelled out except as there seems to be result of World War I, a conflict that would have something serious at stake, as much for the reader only lately ended (the armistice effectively closing as for Gerontion. Too, in “Gerontion” the meta- hostilities had been signed on November 11, 1918). phorical distance between objects of thought and So, then, Gerontion may only “stiffen in a rented the thoughts themselves is too wide a gap to be eas- house” of its “jew . . . owner,” a combination that, ily plumbed. The rapid transitions assault the reader: in addition to its blatant anti-Semitism, reflects the for example, from the epigraph, unattributed as notion that Gerontion has mortgaged his inheri- usual, but which comes from Shakespeare, to images tance. The same concept—that Europe had in suggestive of pirates or buccaneers fighting with cut- effect whored itself—will later be reflected in the lasses in a swamp, to references to such relatively image of someone named Hakagawa, another “non- modern commercial cities as Antwerp, Brussels, and European” person of apparently Japanese heritage, London, to, as the first stanza closes, images that bowing among the Titians. The implication is that are connotative of subsistence living in an agrarian Europe is no longer a vibrant culture; it is a vacated culture. It is virtually impossible for a reader to gain house that has become a tourist attraction. any clear understanding of where or who or what is Not much earlier, Eliot’s quatrain poem “Bur- being portrayed or presented. bank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar” The epigraph is from Measure for Measure, one had already echoed the same theme, an odd one of Shakespeare’s so-called problem plays that delve to be promoted by a man who was himself not a into the enigma of human nature as it confronts European but the heir of twice transplanted New matters of fairness and justice. The verses that Eliot England Yankees. His commenting on the state chooses to cite primarily emphasize that neither/ of contemporary Europe is a presumptuousness on nor, either/or sweep of possibilities that Gerontion’s Eliot’s part, however, only if it is thought of as the words, more rhetorical than informative in nature, theme of a native culture being exploited by oth- portend as well. Indeed, Prufrock’s ominous “Here ers. The point is, rather, that Europe has exploited is no great matter” comes frequently to mind as and has squandered its ancient inheritance all on Gerontion’s words begin their murmuring like the its own. wind in empty spaces. In the same manner, the Christian tradition that The opening stanza, nevertheless, so vigorously had been virtually synonymous with European tra- establishes an atmosphere filled with regret and dition since the decline of the Roman Empire some resignation that this mood and tone dominate the 1,500 and more years earlier had devolved only remainder of the poem. It is this consistency of into something to be “eaten . . . divided . . . drunk mood and tone that Eliot seems to be relying on / Among whispers.” The living Christ, meanwhile, as Gerontion continues his mottled and muddled who was originally an innocent baby, now lurks at tale, or is it a confession? To decide that, the reader the edges of consciousness, a tiger liable to take his would do well to approach Gerontion, the charac- divine vengeance for the transgressions and luke- terization not the poem, as if he were indeed a liv- warm faith of his putatively faithful adherents. The ing, breathing person who happens to have a name godhead who, on the cross, had pleaded with his that embodies his present nature—“an old man in father to forgive his persecutors because of their a dry month.” What has brought him to this state ignorance cannot as easily forgive them now, some consequently becomes the basis for all that he goes 2,000 years later, for “[a]fter such knowledge, what on to tell the reader/listener. forgiveness?” Only ignorance is forgivable; Europe

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and Europeans ought to have known better, or, at But there is another feature clouding the speak- least, had been, during the better part of the late er’s own features, as it were. Gerontion, as the 18th and 19th centuries, pressuring others around speaker tells the reader in the very first line, is a the globe with their economic, military, and cul- little old man, which is what the word means in tural swaggering as if they did. Greek. So, then, a common misunderstanding that Despairing of even the hope of salvation, Geron- may occur among readers is that, rather than being tion’s is indeed “a dull head among windy spaces,” descriptive, the title is the speaker’s name. Such his thoughts the “thoughts of a dry brain in a dry an error is forgivable inasmuch as a reader without season.” Past and present coexist in memory, but Greek simply could not be expected to know any without order or purpose or direction, they col- better. The question whether or not the poet, T. lide meaninglessly with each other, bits and pieces, S. Eliot, is relying on his readers’ possible confu- names both vague and familiar, foreign and com- sion in this regard, however, must nevertheless be mon. There are lines that echo the rhetorical style addressed. of the 17th-century poets and dramatists whom Understood for what it means, in Greek, the Eliot would praise in essays such as “The Meta- thrust of the title seems to be encouraging the reader physical Poets,” hints of better days, fears of worse to imagine that he or she will be encountering a type, illnesses. not a person, a substantial distinction. The poem Wherever the poetry goes, it takes the reader itself, however, very likely because it makes use of nowhere because Gerontion has reached the end of a first-person and, so, apparently dramatized pre- the line, his line, his rope. He has run out of things sentation, spins the semblance of a characterization to do or to say or to think. He hangs suspended rather than an allegorical depiction out of the ensu- from nothing over the void of his own making. All ing monologue. Between the one and the other is, it he can say with certainty is that he has trapped must be reiterated, all the difference in the world. If, himself, spun his own web of self-deceit and self- on the one hand, the poem depicts, then the poet is betrayal around him. He knows that “History has telling the reader something and has made the read- many cunning passages” and can be a labyrinth in er’s judgments for him or her. If, on the other hand, which even its designer may become lost, bewil- the poem is a dramatic monologue, then the poet is dered, and ultimately defeated. So, although he presenting someone by creating a personality, as it lives, he is as if dead, a motif that Eliot would soon were, for readers to judge all on their own, according develop to an even greater effectiveness in “The to their own standards and values. Hollow Men.” It would be correct to suspect that, with “Geron- tion,” Eliot may be providing his readers with yet CRITICAL COMMENTARY another encounter with Eliot the trickster poet— The most outstanding feature of “Gerontion” is “Old Possum,” as his friend EZRA POUND had that there is absolutely nothing positive about it. dubbed him—whom they would have already come Not even its Christic elements offer the possibility to know quite well in such earlier, equally puz- of redemption, of a second chance. The reader is zling works as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- situated as if at the center of a void where frag- frock,” “The Hippopotamus,” “Sweeney among ments of meaning, sucked dry of substance, drift the Nightingales,” and “Whispers of Immortality,” by on a sterile wind. Nature’s inexorable processes poems that could as likely be taken as frivolously continue; the spider and the weevil and the gull and cleverly silly as ominously and overbearingly proceed with it. The stars continue their motion. serious. So there may very well be some measure But for Gerontion, time, history, life, and hope all of intentionality on Eliot’s part in the way in which stand still and, so, fall into decay. In this, he is not the title of “Gerontion” has the capacity to mislead alone. His house—whether that be his mind or his readers into mistaking a generic description for a lineage or his present rented address—and all its specific speaker, or vice versa. But what end those tenants are the lost, the self-damned. intentions serve, this poet will never reveal.

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Even more troublesome is the fact that whereas would judge any other person for the values that with those earlier poems the mixed signals had he is expressing, since those values are based on allowed Eliot to play with both his reader and his personal choices, and to judge him as well for the material, the tone and subject matter of “Geron- moral posture that they seem to have compelled tion” instead betray a seriousness of intention that him to assume. does not abate in the least as the poem continues. This entire dilemma is, of course, one that can- If there are serious considerations in Gerontion, not and probably should not be resolved. In typical with its consistently somber tone and overt refer- Eliot fashion, the either/or of the speaker’s true ences to Christ and matters of sin and salvation, nature and, so, of his and the poem’s purpose has then the reader must also ponder why Eliot would to be simultaneously maintained, satisfying the undercut them by resorting to his patented trick- temptation to hear in Gerontion’s revelations both ster’s wit and an erudite cleverness, as he had been the particular and the general, the literal and the wont to do in so many earlier poems. Resolving figurative, the personal and the polemical, the indi- the question of whether “Gerontion” is a character vidual and the historical. It has been suggested that study or an extended metaphor for the characteris- the “wilderness of mirrors,” for example, is meant tics of agedness is, then, a critical matter. as an allusion to the palace of Versailles where, in No Eliot poem, when a potential ambiguity rears the Hall of Mirrors, the victorious allies, primarily its head, should be treated as if the ambiguity is France, England, and the United States, imposed unintentional. There is also, however, the further an impossible peace on the vanquished Germans problem, just noted, that the ambiguity that the as they, the allies, dictated the terms of 1919’s reader instantly encounters in “Gerontion” as to Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I. whether the poem is an allegory on aging or the Too, treaties have cunning passages—that is why dramatization of a particular person’s expressed hammering them out requires such great diplo- values is not an ambiguity that extends to inten- matic skill. If all of the foregoing is even remotely tion. There again it seems to be clear that Eliot, the case, however, it still would not make even or, at least, the speaker of “Gerontion,” has some- the Treaty of Versailles and its being negotiated in thing very important to impart. That importance is an ornate hall adorned with mirrors anything less nevertheless jeopardized somewhat by the reader’s than another metaphorical action for Eliot, who inability to sort out easily the speaker’s dual nature, crafts in “Gerontion” the virtually impossible—a whereby he is presented, apparently, as both his poem whose poetry mirrors the very state of mind, type and himself. spirit, being, and culture that the poet is attempt- If the former is the case, then our speaker is not ing to expose. Where Eliot succeeds is that he does a person at all, after all, but a personage, a spokes- not tell his view of things but rather demonstrates man for a certain attitude and quality of being, it through his speaker, making them seem to be in this case, an old man’s. Left vague and surely one and the same. unanswered in this scenario is how the reader His close friend and fellow poet EZRA POUND should judge the speaker’s opinions and conclu- would call postwar Europe “an old bitch gone in sions. If, however, the reader, out of a measure the teeth” in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, a poem com- of ignorance, adopts the convention of making posed at virtually the same time that Eliot was Gerontion the speaker’s personal name rather than composing “Gerontion.” Eliot makes Europe an old a categorical identity, then, while the speaker is no man in a dry month who has reached the end of the less an old man “in a dry month, / Being read to by road and found it to be smack dab in the center, a boy, waiting for rain,” he is as well relating the not of chaos (there there would at least be drama, details of a personal biography in the observations action, catastrophe, and tragedy), but of entropy that follow rather than, for example, metaphors or and ennui—in a word, boredom. The next stop for symbolic actions. In that case, readers are permit- this poet would be and could be nothing other than ted, indeed invited, to judge Gerontion as they The Waste Land.

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FURTHER READING between them and that there could be no third. By Brooker, Jewel Spears. “The Structure of Eliot’s this point in his own illustrious career as a man of ‘Gerontion’: An Analysis Based on Bradley’s Doc- letters of international renown, Eliot was now pre- trine of the Systematic Nature of Truth.” ELH 46, pared to changed his mind on that count. no. 2 (1979): 314–340. He promises in his opening remarks to take two Donoghue, Dennis. “On ‘Gerontion.’ ” The Southern separate tacks in his address, significantly subti- Review 21 (1985): 934–946. tled “A Discourse in Praise of Wisdom.” One is to Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. account for the characteristics that “Great Euro- New York: Scribner’s, 1949. peans,” of whom Goethe is one, have in common. Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: The other is to account as well for the process McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. whereby one becomes reconciled to great authors Mankowitz, Wolf. “Notes on ‘Gerontion.’ ” In T. S . to whom he may originally not have been sympa- Eliot: A Study of His Writings by Several Hands, thetic and may perhaps even have been antipa- edited by B. Rajan, 129–138. New York: Haskell thetic. The implication here is that Goethe is one House, 1964. of them, which is not to say that Eliot denies ever Matthiessen, F. O., and C. L. Barber. The Achievement having a certain affinity for the great German poet, of T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, novelist, dramatist, naturalist, and thinker, as the 1958. essay will amply prove. Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in SYNOPSIS Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Eliot begins his essay by remarking that he has had the facsimile of a drawing of Goethe in old age dis- played on the mantelpiece in his London office for some 15 years. This is Eliot’s none too oblique way “Goethe as the Sage” (1955) not only of confessing to a long-standing, albeit late-to-develop admiration for the elder poet, but There are few artists in any medium who are known also of alluding to the wartime bombing of Lon- and instantly recognized in the world of literature don, then barely little more than a decade past, by a single name, and Goethe, though perhaps not a destructive reign of terror that had been car- quite as well known to English-speaking readers ried out by Germany, the same nation that was as he ought to be, is undoubtedly one of them. now awarding Eliot this literary prize and whose Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is as cultural inheritance Goethe otherwise so proudly renowned as the youthful author of The Sorrows of represents. Eliot comments on how his cherished Young Werther (1774), a work that so electrified his picture of Goethe was once “violently dislodged” generation that young men were committing sui- from its otherwise serene perch, the result of one cide in emulation of its , as he is for of the “incidents of that disturbed time.” Though authoring his mature masterpiece, the epical poetic he does not himself say precisely how that dislodge- drama Faust (1808; 1832), completed the year ment occurred, Eliot’s office and a small apartment of his death. Such a towering literary figure had that he used in Faber & Faber’s offices on Russell somehow escaped the full critical attention of the Square were struck by a German buzz bomb in eclectic tastes of Eliot until this rather late essay, 1944, inflicting enough damage that the accommo- written on the occasion of his accepting the Han- dations were rendered useless for a time. seatic Goethe Prize for 1954, which was awarded It is not remarkable that, in an essay whose pro- to him at Hamburg University in May 1955. In fessed theme will be to identify the nature of the fact, there had been a time when Eliot had been greatness of European culture, Eliot has pointedly bold enough to declare that DANTE ALIGHIERI and begun on a note that calls up that same culture’s WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE divided the world of poetry great and enduring capacity for tragically destruc-

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tive failures as well. Once he gets down, then, to tage. Europe is Greek and Roman and Jewish, Eliot the business of publicly reevaluating the devel- explains, identifying, of course, the Christian foun- opment of his attitude toward Goethe, Eliot has dation that has undergirded European civilization already made it clear that he is speaking as a Euro- since at least the fourth century A.D. Only poets pean to fellow Europeans, not as a transplanted steeped in that amalgamated culture can truly lay Anglo-American addressing a postwar German claim to being representative of a civilization that audience. He wants it to be known that he has per- is authentically European, and neither Homer nor sonally shared the consequences of Europe’s recent Virgil nor any other classical poet can realize that past, as much as he wishes to celebrate the glories critical requirement. of its cultural history. Eliot explains how the poet must furthermore When he gets down to cases, it is to explain be of Europe. The 19th-century American poet how he had earlier lumped Goethe together with Edgar Allan Poe, for example, had a great influence the other poets of his time, primarily those of the on contemporary French poetry, but that does not late 18th and early 19th century and mainly the necessarily make his poetry itself European. Simi- English romantics, who he imagines would have larly, the English romantic poet George Gordon been “greater poets if they held a different view Lord Byron may very well have been the poet of his of life.” Goethe, he now can see, was not of their age, no small claim to fame, and is certainly a Euro- camp at all, however. Rather than having set his pean, yet neither can he be counted among the face against whatever the prevailing views may great Europeans because, like Poe, the verdict is have been, which is what the English romantics still out on his qualities as a poet. Eliot wants poets were guilty of doing, in Eliot’s estimation, Goethe’s whose “qualifications are undisputed.” recalcitrant view of life was the unavoidable result Once more, then, he settles on Dante, Shake- of the temper of the times that had nurtured him. speare, and Goethe. Each of them, not in any There is a yet more pressing reason for Eliot’s singularly outstanding work, as in the case of Cer- eventual reconciliation with Goethe, and that is vantes’s Don Quixote, for example, but throughout Eliot’s fear that, in ignoring some particular fig- a lifetime of literary achievement, have, for one ure, he may “otherwise have neglected some oppor- thing, helped “to explain European man to him- tunity of self-development.” Throughout the rest self.” There must be more than that, however, for of the essay, nevertheless, Eliot does not speak of it can be argued that others have done that equally any benefits that he derived for himself as a poet well, Cervantes again coming to mind. What Eliot from his revaluation of Goethe. Of course, it is finds to be unique characteristics shared by Dante, perfectly possible that his coming to terms with his Shakespeare, and Goethe is that their effort was so earlier antipathy to Goethe did contribute to Eliot’s singularly sustained and coherent throughout as to self-development precisely because it has enabled constitute a cultural whole in and of itself as a body him to undertake the present task of defining the of work. characteristics that constitute a great European. To Abundance, amplitude, and unity are the terms accomplish this, he combines his consideration of that Eliot now goes on to apply to distinguish the Goethe with that of two other European authors, unique achievement of each of these three. He neither of whom should come as a surprise: Dante summarizes them when he says, “[W]hat each of and Shakespeare. them gives us is Life itself, the World seen from the First, however, Eliot explains why he must particular point of view of a particular European exclude from any sort of similar consideration the age and a particular man in that age.” All three great writers of Europe’s classical past, the Greek authors both define and are defined by their age. poet Homer and Roman poet Virgil each being As Eliot puts it, “[W]e take these men as represen- the most likely candidates from among them. The tative, only to find them unrepresentative.” What European experience, Eliot explains, is an amalgam, he is saying is that we now know their time by their not the product of any single ancient cultural heri- work, even if their time knew itself in other terms.

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CRITICAL COMMENTARY becomes grist for the mills of thought and systems Eliot sees Goethe as being of his age as much as of thought. Dante and Shakespeare were of theirs. And so they This is not to say that there may not be actual are of their time and place and language as well. But expressions of what passes for belief or a philosoph- now Eliot comes upon what he regards as a more ical posture in poetry. Beliefs certainly are openly critical—perhaps the most critical—question, and stated in Dante and quite often in Shakespeare and that is whether there is in their work another kind to a large degree in Goethe. Those expressions of of quality, one that “transcends place and time, and belief, however, are not themselves the source of is capable of arousing a direct response as of man to the wisdom that the great poet conveys. Rather, man, in readers of any place and any time.” It does the wisdom of poetry is embedded in and cannot not take much reflection to see how important that easily be separated from what the poet may in fact consideration is, even if such a consideration baits believe, or may believe he believes. the entire matter of what then makes these particu- Whether Eliot is correct or not, his is a way of lar authors great Europeans. Eliot calls that tran- describing how a reader can be moved and shaped scendent quality wisdom, for the very reason that by ideas expressed on the basis of a belief system he does not want it to be confused with philosophy that no longer exists or that has long since been or belief. historically discredited, such as Virgil’s, for exam- Readers familiar with Eliot’s critical writings ple, or that, if still active, springs from the value would know that in the late 1920s, in essays such as systems of otherwise alien cultures. In summary, “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca” (1927) wisdom, rather than transcending personal belief, and “Dante” (1929), and continuing on into a work is an entirely different category of insight into and such as After Strange Gods, published in 1934, Eliot evaluation of human behavior and experience. So, had tussled with the knotty problem of poetry and then, Eliot can happily conclude, as much for him- belief, arguing consistently that they were totally self as for his listeners, that “[w]hether the ‘philos- disparate although not mutually exclusive realms ophy’ or the religious faith of Dante or Shakespeare of human knowing. Here, in the closing pages of or Goethe is acceptable to us or not . . , there is the “Goethe as the Sage: A Discourse in Praise of Wis- wisdom that we can all accept.” dom,” he comes as close as he ever will to resolving the disparity. The kind of wisdom of which he is now speaking, Eliot says, is “an essential element in making the poetry, and it is necessary to apprehend “Hamlet and His it as poetry in order to profit by it as wisdom.” Problems” (1919) That is a critical distinction; it makes it clear that Eliot does not think of poetry as being what is popu- Eliot first published the essay “Hamlet and His larly called “wisdom literature,” that is, a somewhat Problems” in Athenaeum on September 26, 1919, prettified or more palatable species of philosophy and subsequently the piece was collected in The and belief. Rather, the poetry is informed by and is Sacred Wood in 1920. thus a product, and not merely the expression, of the wisdom that gives the poet the inspiration that SYNOPSIS itself inspirits the poetry. Still, it is in the poetry In the essay, Eliot was ostensibly reviewing two that the poet’s wisdom and the reader’s experience recent books on WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s play, one of it meet, not in any external system of thought or by an American scholar, Elmer Edgar Stoll, the belief. The reader, as it were, puts himself or herself other by an English scholar, J. M. Robertson. He “in the position of a believer” in values that are singled both of them out for praise because, in their not expressed in the poetry as belief but are rather treatment of Hamlet, he felt that they had shifted felt, or intuited, as wisdom. Similarly, the poetry their critical attention away from the more typical is the wisdom while the poetry lasts; after that, it focus on Hamlet’s character and instead toward

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the play itself. Maintaining that same shift in focus the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in his own commentary, Eliot, in the course of his in Hamlet.” review, deliberates on what he sees to be Hamlet’s failure as drama, and in the course of that part of CRITICAL COMMENTARY his discussion he coins the term objective correlative, The core idea that Eliot is expressing in “Hamlet one of the two critical phrases for which he became and His Problems” seems indisputable once grasped. perhaps as much renowned as he did for his poetry Essentially, all that he is saying is that a work of art (the other would be dissociation of sensibility). affects the perceiver in many ways and on many The coinage came about as Eliot was attempt- levels—emotionally, sensuously, morally, ethically, ing to define the precise nature of what is lacking socially, aesthetically, viscerally. The list goes on. from Hamlet that makes it, in his view, less suc- The point is that the work of art succeeds best cessful as poetic drama than it could have been. that combines the right elements into an “objec- Essentially, the play, Eliot suggests, is filled with tive correlative” to elicit the broadest range of “stuff” that Shakespeare as both playwright and responses that the artist is aiming to provoke in the poet was unable to “drag to light, contemplate, or perceiver. According to the implications of Eliot’s manipulate into art.” This, according to Eliot, is a theory, it can be argued that Shakespeare could failing not necessarily in the material itself but in have gotten more clarity out of the various com- Shakespeare’s handling of it. ponents of a drama that has always impressed even Readers of Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual its most ardent admirers with its murkiness had he, Talent” (1919), for example, a piece virtually con- Shakespeare, succeeded in finding and then cast- temporaneous with his essay on Hamlet, will already ing just the right objective correlative to exemplify know how important for Eliot were matters of craft the emotional and moral complexities of Hamlet’s and technique, those dispassionate structures and dilemma. For example, Hamlet’s preexisting hatred linguistic strategies whereby the poet transforms of Claudius is justified by the Ghost’s revelation experience, be it real or invented and imaginary, that Claudius is a murderer and putative adulterer, into the work of art. As Eliot would have it, this but so does the fact that Hamlet despises Claudius transformative process overrides any other con- to begin with cloud the single-minded motivation siderations. Indeed, for him, craft and technique required of Hamlet to seek the vengeance to which should be the foremost constituents of the poetic the Ghost exhorts him. process if poetry is ultimately to be accepted as an There is much that is subjective in Eliot’s evalu- impersonal act of communicating the complexities ation, of course, and Eliot himself wisely avoids of reality. suggesting any concrete ways in which Shakespeare Having defined Hamlet’s “problems” as a failure might have improved the play. The point is that on Shakespeare’s part to manage his poetic mate- Eliot takes the opportunity to pontificate on find- rial as effectively as he could have, Eliot then offers ing a serious flaw in one of the world’s greatest what, in his view, ought to have been the solution tragic plays, and he not only gets away with it but to these problems, had Shakespeare only employed enhances his own reputation and credentials as a it. It is in that context that Eliot introduces the critical intellect in the process. The real issue is phrase “objective correlative” into his argument. not whether Eliot is correct in his assessment of For an emotion to be “immediately evoked” in a Hamlet or whether the objective correlative, albeit work of literature, Eliot contends, there must be an original coinage, is a wholly original formula- “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” tion on Eliot’s part. Rather, the focus should be on that constitute “that particular emotion,” such that how influential the term has become as a critical when that formulation is presented, it will result for commonplace, bespeaking the authority that Eliot the reader or viewer in a sensory experience evok- acquired early on in his career as a critic. ing the desired emotion. “The artistic ‘inevitability’ There appear, as with virtually all Eliot’s ideas, lies in this complete adequacy of the external to to be subtleties that are either not sufficiently

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explicated or too facilely glossed over in his expla- the poetry appears to be attempting to provoke in nation of the aesthetic phenomenon that Eliot the reader—disgust, curiosity, sympathy, caution. speaks of when he defines the objective correla- That yellow fog, then, in keeping with Eliot’s own tive; but it is easy to get the general idea, since definition, can be said to function as an objec- ultimately the point is well taken if regarded solely tive correlative, triggering the sought-for emotional as a creative rule of thumb. In terms of the poetic response in the reader by presenting rather than arts, Eliot is arguing that an emotion cannot merely stating all of these tonal colorations. The fog is, be named but must be demonstrated, represented, as Eliot would say, an external detail adequate evoked, by something that is itself not the emo- to the emotions, inevitably leading to them; in tion but that in the proper context and at the right other words, it is an objective correlative for those moment will nevertheless bring to mind in the emotions. reader the specific emotion that the poet desires to elicit. To achieve this, of course, the poet must be quite conscious of the effect or effects that he or she is hoping to achieve, so, in essays such as “Tra- “Hippopotamus, The” (1919) dition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot will argue for the impersonality both of artistic process and Composed in 1917 during a period of reasonable of the artist, by which he would mean that poetry creativity following the publication of Eliot’s first is not self-expression but the precise expression of volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, emotions unique to the work itself. that same year, “The Hippopotamus” can easily be The yellow fog in Eliot’s poem “The Love Song regarded as light verse after a single reading. of J. Alfred Prufrock” may provide as good an example as any of the objective correlative in oper- SYNOPSIS ation as an impersonal process of the creative mind Despite its reputation as light verse—in the sense aiming to achieve not self-expression but a specific of the witty and satirical—the obvious religious ref- effect. The mental image of such a fog undoubtedly erences and overtones of the poetry of “The Hip- colors the reader’s response not only to the scene popotamus,” for just one example, ought to put that the poem is setting but to the tone and mood the reader instantly on guard. At this time Eliot that it thus evokes, creating an atmosphere of the was still producing a poetry that was liable to mix lurid and the sickly that both works against and the ridiculous with the sublime in doses and at complements the characterization both of Prufrock a pace sufficient to deflect his reader’s attention and of his life and social milieu that is emerging from one to the other in so swiftly and bewilder- through the poetry. Furthermore, the yellow fog ingly detached a manner that it becomes well nigh is rendered finally in the aspect of a feral animal, impossible for even the most attentive reader to reminding the reader, perhaps, of details from the separate mockery from cleverness and playfulness opening stanza, where the evening sky is personi- from a somewhat slanted but nevertheless genuine fied in a surprising and disturbing way as an ether- sincerity of thematic intention. ized patient and where the tawdry and lurid are To call the poetry of “The Hippopotamus” satiri- suggested by references to sleazy hotels and low- cal would stretch the definition as much as to call it class dining establishments. contemplative. It is, rather, provocative, and it pro- This accumulation of details that are unsettling vokes the reader into thought and into feeling in in their potential for revealing a seamy sordidness good French symbolist fashion. The question must just underlying and certainly thereby enveloping be, nevertheless, whether the payoff is worth the Prufrock’s otherwise stately but stale world, both in effort that the reader must expend to achieve it. its physical realities and in its psychological impact So, then, “The Hippopotamus” moves from its on him, is embodied in the yellow fog, which strikes legitimately ponderous title to an epigraph citing just the right note to summarize the emotions that an equally ponderous passage from a letter of St.

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Ignatius warning against those whose faith in the Church,” which, as the saying goes, is in the world authority of the church, like the Laodiceans, is but not of it, is what in fact is weighted down, and lukewarm and lackadaisical (an epigraph other- weighed down, by the ponderousness of its dogma wise unidentified, in typical Eliot fashion). It nev- and doctrine and admonitions on same. ertheless can only be said tongue in cheek, of The result, as Eliot plays the figurative off course, that the poem’s title is as ponderous as against the literal, is that religion, which should Ignatius’s weighty words, since the former names a lighten the freight of humans’ mortal condition, is large, heavy animal. But is it only tongue in cheek instead made burdensome and has become mired in fact? Indeed, it would be remiss on the reader’s in a miasmal mist, in other words, swamp water, part not to ask what a hippopotamus could have another sharp contrast to the buoyant river wherein to do with Ignatius’s admonition, which is itself the hippo abides. Meanwhile, the hippo, having by quite ponderous but in an entirely different con- poem’s end won heaven by virtue of staying true to text and sense, being ponderous in content but his kind and to his nature, enjoys a blissful release not bulk. from the burden of his earthly bulk/baggage, one In summary, Eliot plays with possibilities as to which the true church, fixated on and fixed here exactly what his poem’s ponderous subject may be. below, will never realize. In its literal but somewhat whimsical sense, by vir- The contrasts multiply. The hippo has accepted tue of a contrast with the comical nature of the its limits; it will never taste the mango. And the bulk of the hippo, the poem’s subject is weighty, hippo, even if its love song is not lovely, loves. As but then, in the poem’s epigraph, he relates that comic an image as Eliot may call to mind in some- concept to a topic, religion, that is ponderous in thing as awkward and as bulky as a hippopotamus another literal sense of the word—intellectually being raised into heaven on gossamer clouds, the heavy and dull. (Weighty matters never bring joy, fact remains that, in its natural goodness, the hippo whereas weighty objects may.) is not lost in the miasmal mists of a smug self-righ- Before even attempting to deal with that point teousness and, so, may indeed know heaven sooner. of contrast and potential confusion, however, it would be helpful, perhaps, to ponder the inevitable CRITICAL COMMENTARY implication of the lightness of the verse—the typi- Eliot himself thought of “The Hippopotamus” as a cal hippopotamus is a heavy object, after all. If the less than serious poem, although he included it in reader wonders whether Eliot would be capable of a volume published by Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth devising such an elaborately delightful verbal as Press, Poems, in 1919 and again in the 1920 collec- well as conceptual pun—light verse about a heavy tions Ara Vos Prec and Poems, published in England thing—that same reader would need only consider and the United States, respectively. At this same as well that it is light verse about a weighty topic, point in his development, Eliot was still primarily in religion, as well. his so-called Laforguean phase, in which, as might Perhaps, then, it is the reader whose supposi- be found in the poetry of the French symbolist poet tions are being made light of. Some suggestion that JULES LAFORGUE, an apparently casual and light- this is indeed Eliot’s very intention is found in the hearted if not silly tone and style are often used fact that the hippopotamus means “river horse” in to mask a far more serious if not insidious intent Greek. The name came about because the ponder- (keeping in mind that insidious implies trickery). ous and awkward bulk of the hippo, a terrestrial or Eliot’s adroit mixture of elements such as the earthbound beast, is so buoyed by the river water strictly formal rhyme scheme and stanzaic pattern that it often finds itself far more at home in it than of the quatrain typical of more traditional poetry on land. Likewise, its mass, in this light verse treat- along with his employment of the dispassionate ment of Eliot’s, is quite literally highlighted because qualities that an artificially elevated vocabulary can it is naturally lightened by the hippo’s natural incli- create to enhance the coldness of the ironic tone, a nation to find a local buoyancy, whereas the “True trick learned from the symbolists, further distances

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the poetic statement from the poet. This distanc- ate that there is much method to the madness that ing was a key aspect of the poetic theory that Eliot “The Hippopotamus” purveys and even more of would announce in such essays as “Tradition and truth, of a sort, to the poem’s whimsy. After all, the Individual Talent” at virtually the same time thematically Eliot is doing no more (albeit doing that the quatrains were being conceived. It is no it so very elaborately) than contrasting that smug wonder, then, that the poems from this period and self-righteousness of those who think that salva- in this style, but especially those known collectively tion is found in the rote observance of ritual and as the quatrains, while unique achievements, are rule, with the natural goodness of the hippo, who, not easily categorized. It is worth reiterating that innocent of any motive other than its animal sur- foremost among these quatrains as a poem that vival, knows how to keep a buoyant spirit in bal- belies its apparent intent is “The Hippopotamus.” ance despite its cumbersome bulk and, as a result, Although there may quite frequently be an can maintain itself in a vital and harmonious rela- ironic edge bordering on the comic in many an tionship with all the rest of creation. That is not Eliot poem from this time period, on the surface very much, but still more than enough, to ask of “The Hippopotamus” reads like an exercise in a any creature. whimsy offering hints of the sort of rhythmically It is the very absurdity of the comparison—a nonsensical poetry yet to come from Eliot’s pen hippopotamus with the true church—that makes years later in, say, Old Possum’s Book of Practical these genuine contrasts valid observations as well Cats. Because, however, “The Hippopotamus” is and, thus, worthy of the reader’s consideration, but also one of the quatrain poems composed over a without the added pressure of being preached to or span of several years in loose conjunction with a lectured at. These same contrasts, as they play off number of other similarly structured poems, includ- each other, become less and less casual seeming. ing “Whispers of Immortality,” “Burbank with a Indeed, the more the reader realizes that while Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar,” and “Sweeney Eliot’s hippo may have a bit of the burlesque about among the Nightingales,” it has a far more honored it, rather like one of the ballet-performing hippos place in the Eliot canon than it otherwise might as in Disney’s Fantasia, his critique of the so-called a stand-alone item. Nevertheless, Eliot was appar- true church, although it may not be universally ently so casually involved with his work with the applicable to all believers and all religions, is not quatrains, a form that he and his close friend, the far off target in exposing the sorts of hypocrisy and American poet EZRA POUND, borrowed from the moral blind spots that too rigorous a devotion to mid-19th century French poet Théophile Gautier, the word of the law at the expense of the spirit of that the precise dating of some of the related pieces the law can often lead to and result in. There may is impossible to determine. “The Hippopotamus,” even be something of the UNITARIANISM of Eliot’s meanwhile, also is noteworthy inasmuch as it ancestors and his own boyhood in the theology shares a title and central metaphor with Gautier’s developed in “The Hippopotamus,” inasmuch as own “L’Hippopotame,” although the resemblances the poem privileges the natural and evenhanded otherwise end there. goodness of the godhead and of creation at the With their four-beat lines and four-line stanzas expense of a rigorously exclusive system of faith, rhyming on the second and fourth lines, the so- whereby adherents are saved and all others and all called quatrains lent themselves to the very sort of else lost. verbal musicality and clever wordplay that might In conclusion, “The Hippopotamus” may not make even the most serious material sound light- have been, in Eliot’s view, a serious poem, but it hearted or frivolous. (“The Hippopotamus” is an tackles a serious theme and gives it both the scope exception, rhyming on the first and third as well as and the treatment that it deserves. “Judge not lest the second and fourth lines.) ye be judged,” the Gospels intone. “The Hippo- All that said, a reader must have a mind and a potamus” precludes judgment by castigating its self- wit as nimble and ready as Eliot’s own to appreci- centered terms.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 250 9/5/07 2:36:06 PM “Hollow Men, The” 251 “Hollow Men, The” (1925) the autumn of 1923, as the major work that would provide a suitable successor to The Waste Land. Containing perhaps one of Eliot’s most often Eliot abandoned the verse play entirely in 1925, quoted lines, “The Hollow Men” nevertheless has although excerpts were published in the Criterion a varied enough publication history to suggest that in October 1926 and again in January 1927, and Eliot virtually stumbled on this celebrated achieve- he would include it among his unfinished poems in ment of his. The third part of “The Hollow Men,” Collected Poems, 1909–1935. More to the current for example, was originally published in a sequence point, he reportedly viewed the poem sequence collectively called “Doris’s Dream Songs” in the that would eventually emerge as “The Hollow Chapbook in the autumn of 1924. Then entitled Men” as poems related in their own originality of “This Is the Dead Land,” it was included with two tone and theme to “Sweeney Agonistes.” Indeed, it other poems, “Eyes That Last I Saw in Tears” and is far more likely that much of “The Hollow Men” “The Wind Sprang Up at Four O’Clock,” which is composed of tangential material that Eliot had were themselves later reprinted as minor poems in been working up for inclusion in the verse play and the same volume, Collected Poems, 1909–1935, as that he did not wish to discard wholesale once he “Sweeney Agonistes.” had put the larger project aside. For now, then, it Eliot’s lifelong habit of recycling images and would be profitable to explore the patchwork publi- lines and, in some cases, whole sections of poetry cation history of the various individual poems that can be a source of continuing temptation and con- would eventually emerge as “The Hollow Men,” fusion. “The Wind Sprang Up at Four O’Clock,” for that history strongly suggests just how tentative for example, itself incorporates parts of “Song for were Eliot’s overall intentions for a work that has Opherian,” first published in 1921 and never sub- by now come to be regarded as a major statement sequently collected by Eliot. There is also the curi- in his canon. ous fact that part IV of The Waste Land is lifted That it may have been far more a pastiche than virtually verbatim from “Dans le restaurant,” a a coherently executed piece would not dimin- poem published in 1918. (It is only virtually ver- ish the impact of the poetry’s final arrangement batim because the 1918 version is in French.) The into a completed piece. It would, however, enable danger would be in assigning too much significance a more accurate assessment of the true critical to Eliot’s intentions in cannibalizing earlier poems worth and purpose of the verbal assemblage with for the sake of later ones. Surely the parts must fit, which readers have ultimately to deal by allow- but there must also be in his motivation the artist’s ing them to appreciate how much “meaning” is a powerful inclination not to let a good line fade into thing that emerges from creative processes rather obscurity for lack of a permanent abode in his or than something that that the creative intellect her canon. Too, Eliot had a developing but never- imposes on those processes to begin with. In sum- theless consistently coherent vision throughout his mary, it is rather as if Eliot composed the poetry poetic career that lines from one piece might serve to discover its meaning instead of pursuing the quite suitably in another really is no surprise at all. opposite tack. Whether these three poems were “dream songs” If, then, part III of “The Hollow Men” is a poem to Doris or about Doris, who had played a minor apparently discarded from an earlier work that was role in “Sweeney Erect” and was Sweeney’s love itself left unfinished, the other parts also had ear- interest, loosely defined, in “Sweeney Agonistes,” lier independent incarnations before they found a is impossible to determine. Nonetheless, that con- final home in Eliot’s corpus as sections of “The nection between the poetry of “The Hollow Men” Hollow Men.” Parts II and IV were subsequently and of “Sweeney Agonistes” may provide insights published in the Criterion in January 1925, and into the former work’s theme. then the first three parts were published indepen- It appears that Eliot regarded the abortive verse dently in the Dial in March, although part I had play “Sweeney Agonistes,” which he had begun in already appeared separately. Part V, however, was

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not published until the poem came out in Poems, that way. So, then, as good a place as any to begin a 1909–1925, once more indicating that Eliot was consideration of the poem itself is with the title and tinkering with the sequence up to the last minute. its possible sources and meanings, as limited as the latter may seem. SYNOPSIS The Title A General Overview Eliot later claimed, in a January 1935 letter, that When the poem is regarded as a single, coherent the title for the poem came about by combining the piece, which is what the sequence has rightly come title of a romance by William Morris, The Hollow to be regarded as by now, whatever paths its com- Land, with the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, position may have taken, the title seems to say “The Broken Men,” but Eliot was also notorious for it all: “The Hollow Men.” Certainly the first five parts are linked, inextricably it must seem, by the intentionally tossing red herrings into the path of recurring motif of “death’s other Kingdom,” vari- source-hunting literary scholars. ously called “death’s dream kingdom” and “death’s There is in the epigraph to “The Hollow Men,” twilight kingdom.” That this domain is a state of nevertheless, an overt allusion to ’s mind is a conclusion encouraged if not confirmed celebrated 1899 novella, . by the other linking element, incorporated into There is also a covert but nonetheless equally obvi- the title, that is the singular voice compounded of ous allusion to the same Conrad tale in the poem’s the collective “we” who are “the hollow men / . . . title. When in the text of the poem the speakers the stuffed men.” Except in part II, where an “I” repeatedly talk of themselves as the hollow men, speaks instead, these pathetic souls bare the shame the stuffed men, their heads filled with straw, among of their empty, meaningless lives, only to disappear the various images—or, in Eliot’s phrase, objective entirely, after the nursery rhyme opening, into the correlatives—that such a conceptual description third-person litany that forms part V, which itself may bring to mind for the reader are, no doubt, the peters out like an old record disk winding to a stop corporate nonentities who are often portrayed as on the final word, whimper. inhabiting the modern world’s bureaucracies, from It is not a happy scene, but perhaps that is what boardroom and committee room to classroom and makes it one of the few of Eliot’s poems need- church. Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, was among ing little in the way of a broad rendering of its the first European authors to identify that new meaning, so abruptly obvious is that general tone breed of humanity, the so-called Organization Man, and meaning. It is as if all of a sudden all wit and who came into his own in the late 19th and early irony had ceased to exist in creation—and this in 20th centuries and who is thought of as all surface a poem coming from Eliot, who had written the with nothing of any substance or fiber beneath or book on wit and irony in modernist literature. Can within—the hollow man. life really be all that bad, one is tempted to ask, but In any event, this type is described in exactly it is not about life itself that the poetry is speaking that manner by Conrad in Heart of Darkness. When but about the lives that creatures like the hollow Marlow, the story’s protagonist, recounts his jour- men lead—the kind of lives they lead both because ney up the Congo into “the heart of darkness,” they are hollow men and that make them hollow he tells of encountering the manager of the Cen- men. This particular poem of Eliot’s will pay the tral Station of a colonial trading company. This reader off smartly and will open doors of opportu- manager is portrayed as a company man whose nity for discovery into much of Eliot’s later poetry, only managerial skill seems to be that “he inspired if the reader keeps that one premise in mind: that uneasiness,” in Marlow’s words, making him con- the poem is not a commentary on life, but a com- clude that “[p]erhaps there was nothing within mentary, presented in their own words and voices, him.” Shortly thereafter, among the various lackeys as it were, on hollow men—that is to say, on the vying for position and advantage, Marlow meets choices and values that make individuals become a company agent “with a forked little beard and a

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hooked nose,” a man who is so transparently oily Nothing can be further from the truth. The two that Marlow, no slouch when it comes to taking the sentences come from two entirely different sources true measure of a man, sees through him instantly. that are separated by several centuries and a wealth Marlow then describes this unctuous agent as a of background detail. The source for the first part “papier-mâché Mephistopheles,” in other words, as of the epigraph is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. To be a devil that is all surface without any substance or sure, the words, “Mistah Kurtz—he dead,” come in depth, a man whose values and character run no Conrad’s text within less than a page of the passage deeper than the slick façade that one encounters to from Conrad that EZRA POUND had convinced Eliot begin with—like the manager, this agent represents to discard as his original epigraph to The Waste another empty, hollow man. Land. It almost seems as if Eliot refused to let go of This similarity does not necessarily mean that his desire to allude to that passage from the Conrad the Eliot poem and the Conrad story share the same novella in which the dying Kurtz, the mysterious theme or point of view with regard to it, although, idealistic trader turned moral monster whom Mar- like Eliot, Conrad, too, wrote fictions that were low is hired to rescue, is heard to utter the words, multilayered in their potentials for meanings, which “The horror, the horror!” Whatever the case, Eliot were as capable of contradicting as enhancing each found a place for a near allusion to it here in the other. Suffice it to say that neither Conrad nor Eliot epigraph to his poem published some three years is out in either work simply to present a superficial later. In fact, the words from the epigraph to “The putdown of Organization Men. Nevertheless, there Hollow Men” are spoken to Conrad’s narrator, is a definite commonality in the mutual mistrust Marlow, within moments of the time that Kurtz for individuals who are hollow at the core, that is, had had his final say about the horror, and they are committed to nothing but their own self-interest. spoken by a native retainer bringing Marlow the The reader must keep in mind as well that the pos- news that Kurtz, the legendary social reformer and sibility that Eliot’s title is an allusion to the Conrad light of Western civilization, has at last succumbed work is further and dramatically underscored by to the jungle fever that had, along with his moral the fact that the first of Eliot’s two unattributed blindness, driven him mad. allusions in his epigraph comes from the Conrad The second part of Eliot’s epigraph, meanwhile, tale as well. although it comes from an entirely different con- text, this one historical rather than literary, per- The Epigraphs haps also points to an individual whose misguided Eliot cleverly splices together two entirely sepa- idealism proved to be his undoing. “A penny for the rate allusions to make the epigraph to “The Hol- Old Guy” finds it origins in a centuries-old English low Man” seem to be two consecutive sentences. celebration, variously called Guy Fawkes Day, Bon- “Mistah Kurtz—he dead. / A penny for the Old fire Night, and, in New England until the late 18th Guy.” The curtness of the English sounds to be century, Pope Day. The festivities, such as they are, pidgin or at least not standard, as if the same find their origin in the discovery and suppression, hurried speaker utters the entire two sentences. on November 5, 1605, of the infamous Gunpowder For another thing, since it is not an uncommon Plot, a conspiracy among a band of English Roman practice to talk of putting coins on the eyes of Catholics to blow up Parliament and, with it, King the dead or a coin in the dead man’s pocket for James I in order to foment an uprising of Catholics, the sake of the ferryman who will be taking him who were then suffering under increasingly severe over the mythical river into the land of the dead, and restrictive laws at the hands of a Protestant it sounds reasonable that these words might come establishment. out of a context in which someone, after abruptly The conspiracy was discovered and foiled with announcing that a man named Kurtz has just the arrest of one Guy Fawkes virtually in the act of passed away, could then go on to ask for a coin for lighting the fuse that would then have ignited 36 one of those ritual purposes. barrels of gunpowder that had been secreted in a

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cellar under the House of Lords. Fawkes and all the than a vacuous mumble and paper thin. The reader other conspirators were appropriately punished for would be wrong not to recognize how those very their treasonous act, in most cases by imprisonment effects are a good part of the poem that Eliot is aim- or execution. The story goes that when word spread ing to achieve here, as well as of whatever meaning through London that a plot to assassinate the king may be assigned to it. These speakers are self-con- had been foiled, the relieved citizenry lit bonfires fessedly barely alive, and the narrow band of modu- in thanksgiving, and the event has been repeated lation through which the poetry moves bears out on the anniversary date ever since, with bonfires that essential quality much more dramatically than and firework displays throughout England. Effigies any words ever could. of Fawkes and frequently the pope, the head of the Furthermore, for the first time ever, perhaps, Roman Catholic Church, are burnt on these bon- Eliot seems to be going out of his way to eschew fires. It is another common practice for children the richly allusional qualities of much of his earlier to prepare a dummy of Fawkes, which they call poetry. Although the wide variety of literary and “the Guy” and which they then carry through the other allusions in an Eliot poem to this time was as streets, begging passersby for “a penny for the Guy.” often liable to mislead as to enlighten the reader who What they do with the coins they collect is their is desperate for direction, there was nevertheless the business, but the dummy is eventually thrown onto illusion that some sort of direction toward meaning one of the bonfires. was being provided. While “The Hollow Men,” too, Eliot’s calling Guy Fawkes to mind just after has its literary allusions, they are more debatable and calling Conrad’s Kurtz to mind points the reader far less ostensible. Some would argue that Eliot, who in a single-minded direction, it must be admitted, had faced some charges of literary plagiarism over giving a certain sociopolitical cast to the poem to the pastiche of past poets that the final, published come, one that the poetry itself may not necessarily version of The Waste Land turned out to be after support. Fawkes, both in life and most definitely in Pound removed most of Eliot’s original material, was death as a papier-mâché effigy, is another candidate being cautious. However, there is as likely a the- for being, like Kurtz, a “hollow man”—someone matic motivation behind even this relative absence whose core humanity was a superficial sham and of obvious allusions from an Eliot poem. who was directed just as powerfully by the abstract Hollow men, it would stand to reason, are not coldness of a cause, misguided or not, rather than the sorts who would have absorbed much of the by a primal sympathy for the simple welfare of other world around them, particularly its store of cultural mortal creatures like himself. Surely, it is in that values and moral issues that is comprised by litera- profound regard that Eliot’s choice of epigraphical ture, religion, and history. Indeed, the poetry of the material seems to serve the far more spiritual tone poem is so much a reflection of the emptiness of and attitude of the poetry that follows. the lives of its collective speakers that readers who The Text do not known all of the background information about “The Hollow Men” might, for all the poetry’s The poetry of “The Hollow Men” is a challenge to apparent complexity, have a great deal less diffi- many readers inasmuch as little is concrete in the culty getting their proper bearings, provided that way of an apparent setting or context onto which they trust to the simple rule that what a text says to latch. Even the speaker of “Gerontion” in his should not be too far afield from what it means mewling musings sets a vivid scene by mentioning (even when the text in question is one composed the condition of his house, the weather outside, by T. S. Eliot). and how he is being “read to by a boy.” The hollow men of this poem are, in keeping Part I perhaps with the thinness of their existence, little For example, a reader without this background, more than a tone, and a monotonous one at that, having just encountered the poem’s title, “The as well as an atttitude that is itself barely more Hollow Men,” then would read the epigraph as a

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single, consecutive passage of speech, spoken as if ited individuals similar to those in the crowd flow- in dialect, relating that someone has died and that ing over London Bridge at the end of “The Burial the person relaying that tragic news is for some of the Dead,” the first section of The Waste Land. reason asking for a token memorial to “Mistah Eliot ends part I of “The Hollow Men,” however, by Kurtz.” The reader, armed only with interpretive strongly suggesting that these hollow men, though skills, would have a great deal less difficulty getting living, also might as well be wandering through into the poem that follows. Such a reader would DANTE ALIGHERI’s Inferno. Ultimately, however, it very likely imagine, beginning to read the text of makes little difference whether the reader imag- the poem “The Hollow Men,” that what is being ines that the hollow men are literally or figuratively read is the sort of vacuous, pitifully pitiless, evasive dead, for that is the very point: For them, the dif- response to the initial plea for sympathy that the ference is a negligible one. epigraph seems to be making if it is construed as The poem does seem to partake of certain a single statement, however pathetic a form that themes and interests and images that were occu- response seems to be taking. Heard in this context, pying Eliot’s attention at the same time that he the hollow men’s “dried voices,” their conspira- was composing the poetry of “Sweeney Agonistes.” torial whispers that are “quiet and meaningless,” For example, some of the most strikingly unset- their “[p]aralysed force, [and] gesture without tling lines given to Sweeney in that fragmentary motion”—all these details connotative of a dead- play deal with how much existence is itself a living ness of feeling, along with the excruciatingly beg- death, as when Sweeney tells Doris, “Death is life ging and self-deprecating tone in which the words and life is death,” and the formulation does not are being spoken, would seem appropriate to souls sound at all facile. For Sweeney, it would be better who could not muster the energy, let alone the if it were. For the hollow men, on the other hand, it humanity, to respond to the epigraph’s apparent is as if it never were anything but. plea for some meager measure of grief for a fellow So, then, if Eliot was striving in this post–Waste mortal’s tragic fate. Land poetry to contrive a verse that sounded wholly Nor would such a reading by such a reader be original, the hints of the landscape of Dante’s hell very far from wrong. For if now, to this rendering of that come to mind in the last stanza of part I of the characteristics that the hollow men exhibit be “The Hollow Men” suggest either that he was not added all the aforementioned information regarding striving too hard or that he knew a good echo when the poem’s connections with “Sweeney Agonistes,” he heard it. Whoever those “who have crossed / the title’s allusion to Conrad, and the epigraphs’ With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom” may additional allusions to the sorry cases of Kurtz and be according to Eliot’s intentions, the image brings of Guy Fawkes, any reader would see these hollow to mind Dante entering the portals of hell where men for exactly what they are—and that is exactly he witnesses the first of the sinners undergoing the as they see themselves: as hollow men, individuals pains of eternal damnation, the opportunists. They without pity or energy or feeling for themselves are the individuals who, when in the world, neither or for others. The oxymoronic “hollow men / . . . denied nor embraced evil any more than good, so stuffed men” can make sense in no other context that heaven does not want them and hell will not but that. Though there is nothing within them of take them. As a result, they are kept outside the substance, they are crammed to the gills with the boundaries of hell proper and blown both this way detritus of their vain and empty worldliness. What- and that on a vast and indifferent wind, in keeping ever they have pursued, it has been dust blown on with the purposeless processes of a dispassionate the wind to the narrow, tinny sound of “rats’ feet and heartless vacillation that was their course of over broken glass.” action in life. In essence, they who were not alive Eliot doubtless imagines such men to be among in life are not permitted to experience even the the living who form the listless, faceless crowds that fullness of the death of the soul that is the fate of all one sees daily in any modern urban setting, dispir- the other sinners condemned to hell. These are the

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hollow men, who have spent their lives in what the to great advantage in The Waste Land, but it serves poem will later call the “twilight kingdom” of nei- him no less well here. Still other lines in part III, ther/nor and who will not be remembered as “lost / meanwhile, may remind the reader of “Rhapsody Violent souls,” only as what they in fact are—hol- on a Windy Night” or “The Preludes”: “Waking low men, stuffed with only the empty whims of the alone / At the hour when we are / Trembling with passing moment. tenderness.” And then the old stiletto twist of the Part II bitter irony that this tenderness comes too late, for there is nothing and no one there to kiss, only bro- The second part of the poem opens with the com- ken stone to which to pray. pelling idea that such a person will not meet anoth- That dreamy, twilight kingdom of death that er’s eyes even in his dreams, so much is he caught the speakers’ intellect haunts but fears may be a up in gathering the nothingness of his own isolated being. At best, like the fictional Kurtz and the his- real locale or only a semblance of horrors that run torical Fawkes, the hollow men live and die lives too deep and dark for words, let alone images, to committed to the vague abstractions of social and portray. In a word, the hollow men are those who political causes rather than to the flesh-and-blood have led wasted, empty lives by squandering their realities that call individuals to a passionate engage- love and attachment on transitory things, wherever ment with the world and their fellow humans. they may be found and whatever they may be, and So, then, in this “death’s dream kingdom,” it is who have, additionally, come to realize as much perhaps beneficent that these eyes do not appear but to no avail. Their fate is recognition without to trouble the hollow men’s selfish dreams, and, in reform, reckoning without recompense. They are, keeping with the experience of living that they kept in a word, lost, and in part IV that recognition is at arm’s length, everything about them is composed realized as the vista of ceaseless hopelessness that it of broken objects or distant sounds, carried off on necessarily entails. a ceaseless wind echoing the emptiness of abstract Part IV thought. Having kept both life and the living at a The poetry now picks up the imagery from parts distance, the better to keep from feeling, perhaps, I, II, and III in a sweeping crescendo of dashed one would of necessity ask not to be any nearer opportunities. The eyes one earlier dared not meet to life and the living in death, and instead would become “eyes [that] are not here” at all; the stars hope to go about in whatever guise will continue are “dying stars”; the landscape is a “hollow val- to keep others at bay—a rat, a crow, a scarecrow, ley”; death’s varying kingdoms have become “our “[b]ehaving as the wind behaves.” The way the lost kingdoms.” Speechless, the hollow men “grope wind behaves is never to be still, so as always to together” as if they are blind, avoiding any contact avoid “that final meeting”—which is, for a hol- even among one another. Here, “on this beach of low man, any meeting with another or with other- the tumid river” (an image that calls up once more ness—since that would involve the untidiness of Dante’s opportunists, who only ever get as far as interpersonal entanglements. the hither side of the Acheron, being denied access Part III into hell proper as they are), though sightless, they Out of their bitter selfishness is bred the arid desert seem at least able to imagine Dante’s multifoliate of personality without context, life to no purpose, rose. It is his emblem and image of the blessed in so part III depicts the desert of emotional sterility paradise who, rather than gathered in the faceless, that such an existence becomes, their lives spent speechless crowd of hollow men, are gathered at nurturing nothing, fructifying nothing, producing the far end of eternity around the throne of God. nothing. Theirs is “the dead land . . . [the] cactus As part IV ends, it seems that the “hope only / Of land,” a place of “stone images,” where rituals are [these] empty men” is that somewhere there is the performed by “a dead man’s hand.” Eliot had, of peace and contentment of salvation, but it is not course, already used this stone-and-desert imagery there for them. Instead, in keeping with their char-

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acter, it remains for them a distant and impossible ited solely by Celts who would have seemed, to the prospect that teases them into self-pity but not, invading Romans, to be barbarians at best, savages apparently, the capacity for shame. at worst. “And this also . . . has been one of the Part V dark places of the earth,” Marlow observes, break- ing the anonymous narrator’s private reverie, which “The Hollow Men” ends on what is perhaps the had been focused on the light of civilization that most quoted line in 20th-century English-language had over the centuries flowed down the Thames verse. The entire section is a dirgelike rendering out into a benighted world. Marlow may begin by of the hollow men’s inability to change. They are invoking the experiences of the ancient Romans caught on the wheel of their own making, cease- in Britain, but it becomes clear that he is speaking lessly circling their own moral and spiritual inepti- about all humanity when he hastens to add, playing tude as, in a parody of a children’s nursery rhyme, on those metaphors of light and of darkness, that they go round and round the “prickly pear,” head- “we live in the flicker.” ing nowhere. Half-formed lines from the Lord’s The Conrad tale makes the same point that the Prayer punctuate the page. Like an old phonograph reader hears in the closing litany of Eliot’s “The record whose needle is stuck, or like the monoto- Hollow Men,” when, amidst echoes of the Lord’s nously circling game, their praying, like their faith, Prayer, the hollow men—or is it the poet himself progresses nowhere. now?—remind the reader/listener that between all The explanation for their state of near-sus- human impulses and their fulfillment, all human pended animation—“[p]aralysed force” is how it aspirations and their achievements, “falls the was described earlier—is embodied in the Shadow Shadow.” Conrad’s profound critique of the limits that falls between the hollow men’s every impulse of human endeavor are there in Eliot’s vision of and its execution: the idea and the reality, the misguided desire and ambition, limitations in the motion and act, conception and creation, and persistent failure that humans experience by trying so forth. The reader is compelled to regard that to match aspiration to achievement. All experi- Shadow as whatever may turn a person from com- ence, in this imperfect universe, can be perceived pletion, from fulfillment, from contentment, but it as a litany of failures. Eliot does Conrad one bet- must be a darkness that is self-generated as well, ter, however, by pointing out that the hollow men, the shapings of an inner failing rather than any- having experienced such failures, succumb to them, thing external and uncontrollable. taking the easy way out of making life choices. In That Shadow is also reminiscent of the Conrad place of the heroic ambiguities of Marlow’s struggle novella from which the concept of the hollow men to come to grips with the short flickers of light that seems to have been partly spawned. Marlow, as we do catch here, Eliot’s hollow men do not have noted, is Conrad’s narrator in Heart of Darkness, the courage or the passion even to curse the dark- but Conrad’s framed narrative technique is more ness. Rather, they accept their self-willed fate, their complicated and ambiguous than that. Readers first pitiful tale ending, like the poem, “[n]ot with a meet an anonymous narrator who sets the scene. bang but a whimper.” He and a group of friends, among them Marlow, are on a cruising yawl at dusk in the lower reaches CRITICAL COMMENTARY of the Thames, waiting for the tide to go out. This Following the publication of The Waste Land in late anonymous narrator then tells how, in the twilight 1922, Eliot engaged in a period of experimentation stillness, Marlow tells the story of his harrowing that was as much a groping for new ways of express- journey up the primordial river to “rescue” Kurtz. ing his insistent vision of a contemporary human Marlow begins his story of Kurtz by imagining scene in crisis if not chaos. The products of this what the mouth of the Thames must have seemed effort were largely either stillborn (the unfinished like to the ancient Romans who first encountered “Sweeney Agonistes” providing the most outstand- it some 2,000 years earlier when Britain was inhab- ing example) or otherwise piecemeal, lacking the

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ambitious focus that the critical success and notori- as early as the more superficially ludicrous of the ety of The Waste Land seemed to require. This cre- quatrains. “The Hippopotamus” and “Mr. Eliot’s ative dry spell, such as it was, would end with the Sunday Morning Service” come instantly to mind as publication of “The Hollow Men” in 1925. Intrigu- works that, for all their ostensible irreverence, bite ingly enough, it is a poetry of apathy. Indeed, the impatiently at the bit of spiritual shallowness. The hollow men seem to make the case against their question is what to replace it with. Surely anyone pervasive apathy so well that readers may con- so bold as to provide an epigraph from Dante for clude that, short of paraphrase, their poetic vehicle his most accomplished early success as a poet is not does not require very much in the way of further concealing the fact that there is a spiritual dimen- elucidation. sion to his work, although it does seem that in these While that would be a fair conclusion, it would early efforts, that dimension is openly introduced by not be an adequate or, perhaps, accurate one either. and large. Thus, it may be dismissed or otherwise By the same line of reasoning, for example, a reader exploited more for effect than for substance. Not so could conclude that “The Hollow Men” is another with “The Hollow Men,” and that is so much the of Eliot’s many fine psychological studies masquer- case that the presence of the spiritual, if not indeed ading as dramatic monologues and doubling as the religious, in the poem may not impress readers poems. The poem in that case would be exposing as powerfully as it ought to. The hollow men are a state of mind more than particularly expatiating presented in such a manner as to elicit not so much on a specific theme woven into its subtle network sympathy or even impatience from the reader as of allusion, symbolic imagery, and self-revelatory judgment if not outright condemnation, and it is for statement. their spiritual rather than their social or moral short- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” comes comings that they elicit this response. The evidence most immediately to mind as the forebear of Eliot’s suggests that this sort of a response is precisely what poems in this manner, followed by the masterwork Eliot is seeking, and in doing so he has finally begun “Gerontion,” which may strike the reader as a com- to free his poetry from the pervasive ambiguity and panion piece to “The Hollow Men.” By this reckon- irony that had dominated it from the beginning. ing, just as “Prufrock” examines the inner workings The evidence in question comes from three sources: of the mind of a personality painfully incapable of the epigraphs; “Sweeney Agonistes,” which shared asserting his existence in any social setting, and an equal place in Eliot’s interests at the time that he “Gerontion” gathers into a poem the idle musings of was preparing the sequence that became “The Hol- a man lost in his own past—each of them perturbed low Men”; and, of course, Dante. into “speaking his mind” because he is incapable of Once the poetry of “The Hollow Men” has been taking any more decisive or definitive action—so adequately considered for the sake of discovering does “The Hollow Men” present its readers with the apparent drift of its thematic implications, the the verbal equivalent of nonentities who recognize particular appropriateness of Eliot’s choice of epi- the meaningless choices that they have made but graphs becomes clear. For Kurtz and Guy Fawkes, are content to live with them for the lack of any in their devotion to a cause at the expense of all lingering initiative to do otherwise. else, each represents the type of individual who ful- As reasonable as that may sound, however, it fills the requirements subsequently implied by the is very likely far from the truth of Eliot’s aim for hollow men’s half-hearted heartlessness. On the the poem. Beginning with The Waste Land, with its surface, granted, that may hardly seem to be the gropings toward a resolution that had something case. Kurtz and Fawkes, it has just been said, had more enduringly permanent about it than the mere causes to which they were apparently committed, requirements of social realignments, Eliot’s poetry but the reader should recall that the hollow men seemed to be taking on a more and more decidedly are stuffed men. That is to say, having a cause does spiritual if not religious slant. Readers sensitive to not automatically ennoble one, especially if the that trend may have detected it in his poetry from cause in question was an empty one to begin with.

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Kurtz’s objective was to enlighten the native convey to the audience. What Sweeney reveals is population, whom he took to be tragically benighted. that a life lived without reference to otherness—to It is that very status of his as a “true believer,” to someone or something other than the self—is worse use a phrase coined by the 20th-century philoso- than hell; it is a death. That death of spirit in the pher Eric Hoffer, that makes Kurtz far more rep- midst, life is, of course, the same inner bleakness rehensible than his fellow white traders, who, for that afflicts the hollow men, who, like Sweeney, do all their own hypocrisy, do not imagine that they not know if they are living or dead since there is are in Africa for any other purpose than to exploit so little distinction in their impoverished behavior the land and its people for personal gain. From toward others between the one state of being and that angle, Kurtz’s going mad with the power that the other. he gradually assumes among the native people is, Finally, to support the idea that the crisis of the rather than a dramatic conclusion, merely a tan- hollow men is a crisis of soul rather than one of gential result of his putting more stock in his ideals mind or attitude, there is Eliot’s cautious blending than in his common humanity. of Dante’s vision into his own, so that the ideas and Fawkes comes through as a similarly misguided the feelings he is trying to convey are what prevail, idealist whose ideals were contradicted by his suggesting their great importance. Till now, Eliot actions. In the name of his own religious faith, a had used the literary allusion almost as an embel- doctrine founded on the principles of love for and lishment, so loudly did its presence among his own forgiveness of others, especially one’s enemies, he original lines of verse announce itself, as if he were contrived to be the trigger man, as it were, in a more interested in presenting the allusion than in plot to kill scores of people in a violent explosion combining it into his own essential vision. While his and throw an entire nation and people into chaos ability to make the allusion an authentic enhance- just so that his side might prevail. Fortunately, the ment rather than a pronounced embellishment of plot failed under the weight of its own ineptitude, his own poetic aims would not be fully realized, allowing the enemies whom Fawkes had hoped to perhaps, until the publication of “Ash-Wednesday” vanquish once and for all instead to profit from his in 1930, in the use of Dante in “The Hollow Men,” catastrophe and overwhelm the cause of a Catholic Eliot is already making something new out of the restoration in England for centuries to come, per- old, rather than merely laying one atop the other. haps even permanently. (James II was a Catholic Someone mindful of Eliot’s relatively obvious king, but not for very long.) allusions to Dante in the last stanza of part I and Therefore, Eliot can intone “Mistah Kurtz—he in the second and third stanzas of part IV would dead. A penny for the Old Guy” in a memorial surely appreciate their effectiveness in advancing of pity for these two model hollow men who set the cause of Eliot’s own poetic agenda. These allu- the standard of “[p]aralysed force, gesture without sions provide the inescapable clue that these hollow motion” that so many others would follow in the men are “lost souls” similar in their spiritual failings 20th century. to Dante’s opportunists. In Eliot’s case, however, Such a reading may lead to the erroneous con- such individuals are further removed from even the clusion, however, that the type is limited to the passions of remorse, a spiritual luxury allowed the sphere of public personalities engaged in public damned by Dante. Unlike their semblances in the action, such as Kurtz and Fawkes were. That is Inferno, Eliot’s hollow men are able to witness the where the poem’s known connections to the frag- beatific vision of the blessed in paradise and thereby mentary verse drama “Sweeney Agonistes” serve feel in real terms the vastness of the distance that their purpose by extending the range of human separates them personally from blessedness. That experience that is susceptible to a hollowness of the capacity for recognizing their immense short- spirit. In that play, Eliot made it clear in a 1934 lec- comings nevertheless has no ameliorative effect on ture at Harvard University, Sweeney is the spokes- their behavior is Eliot’s way of emphasizing how man for the point of view that Eliot wished to pathetic their lives are.

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A reader who does not recognize these allu- frock and like the characters who people The Waste sions to Dante, however, and the spiritual short- Land and even perhaps the speaker of “Gerontion,” comings of the hollow men that are thus mapped are not special cases at all. Their lives, their world, out by them should nevertheless get the idea of like so many others’ typically end with a whimper those images of a listless crowd gathered on the rather than a bang, unless there is something else shore of a tumid river and gazing up at a distant to a life, and to the world and its purpose or pur- star described as a multifoliate rose. Such a reader poses. Discovering that something else, and its pos- would be no less likely to imagine that there is sible shape and direction, would become more and an immense distance separating the lives that the more the underlying principle that guided Eliot’s hollow men live from the possibilities of redemp- poetry virtually from this point on. tion and salvation that are arrayed before them. For either reader, Eliot has effectively managed to FURTHER READING portray an inner state of being in a manner that Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. does not distort his own apparent intentions, or New York: Scribner’s, 1949. the reader’s attention, for the sake of displaying his Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: wide-ranging literary erudition. The effective com- McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. munication of feeling and idea takes precedence, Smith, Grover, T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in in “The Hollow Men,” over the peculiarities of Sources and Meanings. 2d ed. Chicago: University technique and method. This may very well be a first for Eliot. Eliot of Chicago Press, 1974. finally seems to feel that he has something to say, Strothmann, Friedrich W., and Lawrence V. Ryan. something to share with his readers. That is not to “Hope for T. S. Eliot’s ‘Empty Men.’ ” PMLA 73 say that he had not had as much to say before, only (1958): 426–432. that now the importance of its being said seems to supersede the manner in which it gets said. The poet has triumphed over the wit. This final obser- vation, if accepted, ought to permit the reader not “Humanism of Irving to fall prey to the last fatal error in reading great literature—to imagine that, unless the portrait Babbitt, The” (1928) and painted is flattering, it is about someone else and “Second Thoughts on not oneself. When Pound composed for his long and con- Humanism” (1929) tinuing work, The Cantos, a section that was intended by him to do for the moral failings of The first of these two essays was published in The the modern world what Dante’s Inferno had done Forum in July 1928, producing even from among for similar failings in his own, Eliot is said to have “sympathetic friends,” according to Eliot’s own tes- criticized the work that Pound thereby produced, timony, a reaction that compelled him to reprint observing that his friend had “created a Hell for the original essay along with his “second thoughts” other people, not for us and our friends.” It is an the following year. Anyone who knew how Eliot astute observation with great general applicability, manages an argument, however, would hardly have and certainly with applicability to Eliot’s “The Hol- expected a retraction. By the late 1920s, Eliot was low Men.” For it would be wrongheaded to imagine all but a sworn enemy of the secular humanism that that his hollow men are other people and not “us had invaded virtually every quarter of intellectual and our friends.” Perhaps Eliot’s Sweeney is a spe- and political life in Europe by the beginning of the cial case, and perhaps that is why, after the unfin- 20th century and that was beginning to manifest ished “Sweeney Agonistes,” Eliot never essayed its primarily materialist, naturalist bias in spiritual that personage again. But the hollow men, like Pru- realms as the young century progressed.

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SYNOPSIS ligious, inasmuch as it has no use for religion and Babbitt and Humanism hopes to provide an alternative to it, “is purely In “Second Thoughts,” Eliot characterized the destructive, for it has never found anything to conflict as follows: “My previous note has been replace what it destroyed.” interpreted . . . as an ‘attack’ on humanism from a According to Eliot, Babbitt imagines that the narrow sectarian point of view. It was not intended outer restraints on individual behavior that reli- to be an attack.” What Eliot had attempted to do gion provides can be supplied instead by the indi- in “The Humanism of Irving Babbitt,” it appears, vidual’s inner restraints on himself—what Eliot was critique Babbitt’s defense of humanism not on demeaningly calls, in “The Function of Criti- religious grounds—that “narrow sectarian point cism,” an “inner voice.” Eliot claims that Babbitt of view”—but on the grounds of Babbitt’s propos- is willfully distorting the nature of the control ing it as a solution to contemporary spiritual ills, that religion imposes on individuals, since “the a solution that, in Eliot’s view, simply could not very idea of the religion is the inner control.” Its deliver the goods. Babbitt, an American social critic controls, he argues, are not like those of political and academic, had been something of a mentor to organizations, however, because, with religion, the younger T. S. Eliot during his undergraduate “the appeal [is] not to a man’s behaviour but years at Harvard, where Babbitt was on the faculty. to his soul.” So, then, Eliot asserts: “If a religion Despite these later intellectual disagreements, he cannot touch a man’s self . . . then it has failed in its professed task.” and Eliot remained good friends, corresponding with Eliot concludes “The Humanism of Irving Bab- each other throughout the remainder of the “Dear bit” as he began it, proposing that his sole aim is to Master”’s life, as Eliot addressed those missives. clarify where the tendencies in Babbitt’s argument Eliot continued to have a bone to pick with Bab- will lead, and that is invariably to “the conclusion bitt and his fellow American humanists, however. that the humanistic point of view is auxiliary to and Specifically, early in the first essay, Eliot ably sum- dependent on the religious point of view.” Whether marizes what he takes to be Babbitt’s characteriza- Eliot is right or not, that is a long way from regard- tion of humanism in religious terms: “Mr. Babbitt ing humanism as an alternative to religion, if not a makes it very clear . . . that he is unable to take substitute for it. According to Eliot, should human- the religious view—that is to say that he cannot ism pursue the agenda that Babbitt proposes for accept any dogma or revelation; and that human- it of eventually supplanting religion, which in the ism is the alternative to religion.” If that charac- case of England would mean Christianity, then it terization is accurate, then Eliot feels justified in will have succeeded only in cutting off the tree questioning whether humanism can therefore be from the branch that it, humanism, occupies. regarded as a substitute for religion as well, and, if it can be, whether it is “durable beyond one or two Humanism and “Heresy” generations.” In “Second Thoughts,” Eliot defends himself against While Eliot is not simply baiting the argument, the charge—although misunderstanding may be he makes it clear that he regards humanism as an a fairer characterization—that he had attacked attitude that can flourish only because of a long humanism on sectarian grounds. He summarizes tradition of religious belief in human cultures. “The what he finds legitimate in the protest of his critics religious habits of the race are still very strong, in as follows: “[I]f I succeed in proving that humanism all places, at all times, and for all people,” whereas is insufficient without religion, what is left for those there is no universal tradition such as humanism; who cannot believe?” Eliot will not deny that that rather, it is “merely the state of mind of a few is a just reservation, but he will not retreat from his persons in a few places at a few times.” If, then, central position: Humanism, which admits that it humanism “always flourishes most when religion was once allied with religion, now believes that it has been strong,” then a humanism that is antire- can “afford to ignore positive religion.”

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Turning from Babbitt’s formulations of human- the enemy with what he regards as an appropriate ism to Norman Foerster’s American Criticism to sobriquet. make his case, Eliot further reduces the humanist To call humanism heresy is a powerful indict- position by arguing that its appeal as a surrogate ment of one of the most potent intellectual and religion not only is limited to intellectuals but also political forces of his time. Although such an indict- bears, in effect, “the imprint of the academic man ment partakes of humanism’s own quasi-religious of letters.” In other words, American-style human- aura, it is for that very reason an indictment that, ism is more a literary experience than a religious Eliot must be aware, is as liable to backfire as not. experience and is therefore further limited in that Still, he presses his point. In the hands of defend- respect. “The trouble is that, for a modern human- ers and promulgators like Babbitt and Foerster, ist, literature thus becomes itself merely a means of “[h]umanism becomes something else, something approach to something else.” more dangerous, because much more seductive to the best minds.” That is because, perhaps, unlike CRITICAL COMMENTARY another modern intellectual stance materialist Many attribute Eliot’s increasing antipathy to sec- in nature, behaviorism, which reduces all human ularism to his conversion, in June 1927, to the action to predictable conditioned responses, relatively orthodox folds of Anglo-Catholicism. humanism partakes of its foundations in the spiri- However, for all that his earlier poetry seemed tual in order to undermine those very foundations. to embrace the startlingly new, Eliot had been It is in an older spirit of humanism, with its defending the primacy of tradition in his prose original dependence on religious foundationalism criticism from as early as 1919, with his essay “Tra- in mind, that Eliot frames his most cogent criti- dition and the Individual Talent,” and he had lam- cism of the secularist posture that humanism is now basted the “muddle through” crowd, as he called assuming and that he is roundly condemning: “If them, with their reliance on a subjective “inner you remove from the word ‘human’ all that the voice” in 1923 in “The Function of Criticism.” Not belief in the supernatural has given to man, you long after composing these two essays in response can view him finally as no more than an extremely to Babbitt, Eliot suggested and then insisted that clever, adaptable, and mischievous little animal.” poetry must be treated as something other than Rather than a refutation, these words coming from second-rate theology and philosophy. Here, early Eliot’s pen sound much more like a thought worthy in his own version of the culture wars, Eliot is of being seriously pondered. already identifying secular humanism as the source of the dilemma whereby literature assumes more and more moral authority at the expense of tra- ditional centers of moral judgments and values. “Hysteria” (1917) Although Eliot had praised Foerster for his bril- liance, Eliot finally declares that “Mr. Foerster is Composed in November 1915, this short prose what I call a Heretic: that is, a person who seizes poem would not see print until 1917 when it was upon a truth and pushes it to the point at which it collected along with Eliot’s other significant work becomes a falsehood.” to date in his first published volume, Prufrock and The dark shadow of Eliot’s most notoriously Other Observations. Written in the manner of JULES polemical work, 1934’s After Strange Gods: A LAFORGUE, the French symbolist wit and self-dep- Primer of Modern Heresy, is beginning to be cast at recating dandy under whose considerable influence this time in Eliot’s career as a critic. In his preface Eliot had been writing poetry from as early as 1909, to For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order, the poem is an exercise in the outrageous, but its in 1928, he promises that a future project will be aim can be seen as a noble one if the reader keeps entitled Principles of Modern Heresy, but already in in mind that Eliot’s virtually constant poetic agenda “Second Thoughts on Humanism,” Eliot is tagging at this time was to extend the range and possibilities

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of poetic discourse by keeping his own readers per- setting or even contemplating in private, particu- petually off balance. One of the most convenient larly when the level of discourse of the entire poem ways for Eliot to achieve this aim, as he had learned further suggests that the ambiance is one of polite from Laforgue, was to don the mask of the sophisti- company. cate who views everything both about himself and So, then, with a sudden twist of the knife reminis- about his social milieu just a little askew. For that is cent of a dark poem such as “Rhapsody on a Windy the very aim of the Laforguean manner, to defy the Night,” the speaker catches the reader entirely off- reader’s normal expectations of what poetry is and guard when he begins to propose that he might save is not required to do, and of the means by which it the afternoon if he might only find a way to stop accomplishes those expectations. It is in the spirit those breasts from shaking, and the poem then con- of this defiance that the poet then is able to reas- cludes with his confessing that he turned his atten- sert control over the medium and reeducate the tion to the accomplishment of that very end “with reader as to its capabilities and purposes. careful subtlety,” whatever that might mean. There are, after all, only so many ways in which to put an SYNOPSIS effective stop to someone’s hysterical laughter, and “Hysteria” certainly accomplishes those goals. The none of them is particularly attractive. title suggests that what is about to follow may as likely be a definition-by-representation of hysteria as CRITICAL COMMENTARY much a poem treating that human emotional state The point of the entire poetic exercise in “Hyste- as its topic and theme. In good Laforguean fashion, ria” seems to be that the speaker’s verbal demeanor the presentation that follows successfully exploits throughout has implied that the reader knows both possibilities by simultaneously commenting on exactly what the speaker means and exactly how and demonstrating the signs and effects of hysteria. and why it should be so unsettling to find oneself If the reader takes the speaker’s side and accepts suddenly keeping company with someone who has unquestioningly that the woman in question has broken out in uncontrollable laughter. fallen into a fit of ungovernable hysterical laugh- One telling detail, however, the motive for the ter, then the poem becomes a way of evoking that hysterical laughter, has been entirely omitted from laughter. With the speaker, the reader becomes the speaker’s report, leaving it conspicuous in its immersed in the experience as the subject gets car- absence by poem’s end. Was it at something that ried away with laughing. The reader hears the short the speaker said or did, or is the laughter at his gasps between each next outburst but otherwise expense in some other, more embarrassing way? At sees into the woman’s throat and down into the the very least, it appears to have been totally unex- musculature of her chest, from which the laugh- pected and, most important, not shared, justifying ter is emanating. The effects of the laughter are somewhat the speaker’s reversion, as a last resort, to further manifested by the reaction of the elderly the cryptic and sinister. The reader is left to wonder waiter, whose solicitations strongly suggest that he not only what the speaker went on to do to stop the is afraid that the boisterousness of her prolonged laughter—images of his strangling her on the spot outburst will disturb the other guests in the din- arise—but also what were the source and nature of ing room. As the details of the woman’s relation- the hysteria that the poem’s title identifies. ship with and to the speaker become more clear, For example, hysteria, which is generally defined the nearly morbid attention to the physical details as a state of violent mental agitation, had been of the spectacle that she is apparently making of thought of in all its various forms and manifes- herself begin to hover near the embarrassingly inti- tations for many centuries as a peculiarly female mate and familiar, perhaps too close for comfort. disorder brought about by uterine disturbances The reader is asked suddenly to focus on “the shak- (the word hysteria has its root in the Greek hus- ing of her breasts,” hardly a physical feature that tera, or womb). Eliot, through his speaker, may be one should feel at ease with staring at in a public merely playing on those old prejudices and medi-

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cal misconceptions, whereby human females were reader who regards these otherwise minor achieve- thought of as flighty and mercurial creatures whose ments of Eliot’s as the bedrock on which he was then emotional outbursts could be neither trusted nor able to build the fragmented edifice of mixed motives publicly tolerated. However, he may be exposing and confused aims that is his early masterpiece, The male hysteria—in this case, excessive and uncon- Waste Land, can forgive Eliot the verbal excesses in trollable fears manifested in both the speaker and which these same Laforguean pieces relish. On the the waiter—about female behavior. It is impossible other hand, the less kind or patient reader may find to say, and no doubt there are those, too, who distracting if not insufferable an overriding satirical would read the poem as a commentary on a real note that dominates these poems yet never quite episode that Eliot may have had with his first wife, clarifies its target or, when and if it does, provides Vivien, whom he had married but months before the reader with neither a necessary alternative point the poem’s composition and whose nervous disor- of view nor a sufficient reason to care. ders brought about by uterine problems were, it is While a poem as brief as “Hysteria” arguably safe to say, virtually legendary among their circle deserves little more attention than has already of friends. been granted it as an exercise on Eliot’s part in the This technique of both alienating the reader rich ambiguities of both topic and theme that can and making the reader the accomplice to an inside be teased from the most trivial kind of experience joke is used to great effect in “Mr. Apollinax,” for through the careful manipulation of background example, which emerges from essentially the same information, detail, and, above all, voice, “Hyste- period and out of the same spirit of reckless aban- ria” provides interested readers with an invitation donment of all formal and thematic constraints. In into the most secret of places, the artist’s workshop. that poem, the title subject is suspected of being a It is in minor works such as this one, in which celebrity whom the poet wishes otherwise to remain nothing of any great significance or importance is anonymous. (Literary commentators have subse- at stake, that technical virtuosities are often most quently identified the celebrity as the English ana- exposed and therefore most available for special lytical philosopher and Cambridge fellow Bertrand care and attention. Russell, who visited Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1914 while Eliot was engaged in his graduate stud- ies in philosophy at Harvard.) But who the speaker Idea of a Christian Society, The or his subject actually is is not the point; it is what he makes of himself and of his subject. So, then, (1939) this Mr. Apollinax is shown by a sympathetic but otherwise anonymous speaker to be the absolute In his preface, Eliot succinctly summarizes his aim master of his stuffy social environment. By being and his hopes for this work, itself the published too much of a mind and too jovial a manner to result of three lectures that he had delivered at be fitted into any easy and convenient categories, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in March 1939 Mr. Apollinax has both the first and the last laugh at the invitation of the Boutwood Foundation. As if without ever seeking either. to deflect the growing public suspicion that Eliot’s The unbridled poetic energy with which Eliot religious interests were merely personal concerns mingles levity and erudition with a ponderous seri- if not obsessive, the result of this high priest of ousness and droll cynicism owes as much to these modernism’s having “gotten religion” in the mid- earlier, experimental poems, slight as they are, as to 1920s, in the preface he makes it clear from the such more significant earlier poems as “The Love outset that his thoughts on the subject of the social Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Surely Eliot’s uncanny consequences of a more and more secularized and ability to manipulate and modulate tone and voice relativistic culture “can only be of use if taken as an within a poem, often from one line to the next, was individual contribution to a discussion which must further honed in these lesser workshop poems. The occupy many minds for a long time to come.”

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SYNOPSIS a traditionally Muslim or Buddhist people, Eliot’s Chapter One idea of the kind of society to be founded there in Even at the time of his writing the essay in ques- England on religious principles would have varied tion, Eliot must have been mindful of the sorts accordingly. This is not a point to belabor, per- of misunderstandings to which his intentions have haps, but it is one to keep in mind. Nowadays as subsequently been subjected. In the same spirit of much as in Eliot’s time, the tendency is to view a attempting to objectify his position, which can eas- proper state or society as one that does not favor a ily be confused for a personal and religious one, particular religion more than any other. The result Eliot goes out of his way now as well to establish too often, however, is to forgo any religious basis to at the outset the overriding cultural importance social structure and social interaction whatsoever. Eliot does not fail to comment on how much of clarifying the terms of the debate. His presenta- the current practice of separating matters of state tion is not intended as a defense of Christianity. and the church, be it an established church or not, Rather it is an argument for undergirding the social all too often revolve around the question, “What structure of the contemporary English nation with church?” He feels that such questions rather should a moral and ethical value system that is itself more revolve around the question, “What state?” It is by enduring than the expedient solutions generally frequently proposing the problem in those kinds offered in the short-term give and take of political of terms that Eliot keeps his reader mindful that discourse because such discourse, in a democracy, Eliot is interested in the just operation of the social is forced to cater to the whims and opinions of the system, not in promoting Christian values in and of moment and of special interest groups. themselves for their own sake. In his nuanced approach to his announced topic, Opposed, then, to Eliot’s Christian society is, Eliot proposes for the English a “Christian” society in his view, England’s present, secularized society, in the same way, for example, in which an Iranian which he calls a neutral society. The danger of a or East Indian or Japanese thinker, on the basis of neutral society ought to be self-evident: There is no equally long-standing cultural traditions and his- continuity or consistency to the moral and ethical torical realities, might propose a Muslim or Hindu judgments that it must inevitably make and then or Buddhist model of moral and ethical organiza- foist off on the citizenry. His primary interest, he tion for his or her respective society. Nor are these claims, is to bring about such a change in social nuances of Eliot’s all that subtle. After taking such attitudes “as could bring about anything worthy to pains to explain these aims in his preface, Eliot be called a Christian Society,” for he fears that the begins the first chapter of his essay proper by defin- other option is that the so-called Western democ- ing what he means by a Christian society, doing so racies, as secularized or religiously neutralized as by establishing what he does not mean. they have become, may eventually each become, Throughout, it should be kept in mind that the like Germany and Russia, a pagan society, wherein opposite of a Christian society is not a non-Chris- the state has preempted all the moral prerogatives tian society. That latter supposition would make normally left to the church but without even the Eliot’s entire treatment of the topic nothing less pretense of any consistent principles for making than a sectarian broadside, promoting a particular moral judgments. religious view at the expense of all and any oth- So, then, Eliot sees England at a moral and ers. Indeed, rather than promoting Christianity in ethical crossroad. Without being an alarmist, Eliot particular, Eliot is promoting the idea that a society paints the current alternatives in dire enough must be promulgated on commonly accepted and terms. “[T]he choice before us,” he states quite practiced religious principles, so he proposes that emphatically, “is between the formation of a new they be Christian because Christianity has been Christian culture, and the acceptance of a pagan the basis of belief among the English people for at one.” Toward the end of his first chapter, he will least 1,300 years. If, for example, the English were reiterate the current crisis in the same terms, for

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what is at stake, he believes, is “a way of life for a icy or practice, however, Eliot manages here, inten- people.” At present, rather than being a Christian tionally or not, to give his readers a sharply focused society that defines itself in terms of its own values picture of the ways in which he is expecting this and tradition, England’s is a society as materialistic Christian state to be Christian. Thus, the leader- as its fascist and communist rivals. However, worse ship of the Christian state need not themselves be than the others whose value structures are at least chosen on the basis of the depths of their Christi- self-defining, the English “are in danger of finding anity; instead, their leadership must be “confined,” ourselves with nothing to stand for except a dis- as he puts it, within a Christian framework so that like of everything maintained by Germany and/or “they must never attempt to defend their actions Russia.” Such an attitude, with no positive basis of on un-Christian principles.” They would receive its own, fosters uncritical habits of mind and spirit, what he calls “a Christian education,” by which in Eliot’s view. “[G]ood prose cannot be written he means one that would have trained them “to by a people without convictions,” Eliot warns, nor be able to think in Christian categories.” While can such a society “thrive and continue its creative there can be no doubt, then, that Eliot has specific activity in the arts of civilization.” precepts of moral behavior in mind, accomplish- The only corrective to these problems, as Eliot ing his idea of a Christian society would require sees it, is for England to discover its spiritual roots a leadership that follows, like the citizenry who by becoming a Christian society, yet he is afraid will compose the other two elements necessary to that recent trends instead will make Christians in maintaining such a society, a “traditional code of England’s present society a tolerated minority, in behaviour” founded on those Christian principles. keeping with the modern neutral state’s habit of These same practices, pursued among the Chris- tolerance in the name of neutrality. But there lies tian community and the community of Christians, the danger. “[I]n the modern world,” Eliot warns, should be so conducted as to make the religious “it may turn that the most tolerable thing for Chris- and social life of the nation form “a natural whole” tians is to be tolerated.” Still, he insists, a “Chris- wherein “behaving as Christians should not impose tian society only becomes acceptable after you have an intolerable strain.” The ultimate problem here, considered the alternatives.” Eliot contends, is that the parish unit, the bedrock on which the community of Christians may flour- Chapter Two ish, has become stultified in England’s agricultural In his second chapter, having addressed the need past. Nowadays, “modern material organization,” for discussing what the nature of contemporary by which he would means the machinery of trade society ought to be, Eliot is free to discuss how a and commerce as well as the machinery of the Christian society should be organized and operate. bureaucratic state, “has produced a world for which The need for one, in his view, is pressing, for he [those more traditional] Christian social forms are imagines that, unless the idea of crafting a posi- imperfectly adapted.” tive Christian society is embraced, present trends To resolve this dilemma, Eliot observes, some indicate either a sharp decline in English society in have proposed a return to the simpler social organi- general or the emergence of a completely secular- zations of agrarian times, while others wish to adapt ized society. That necessary Christian society can- Christian principles to present conditions. Eliot, not look to earlier versions as models. Instead, it however, sees neither solution as adequate or long must have three components, which Eliot identifies lasting. Rather, he feels that there must be a com- as the Christian state, the Christian community, plete reorganization of society along Christian lines, and the community of Christians. to the exclusion of the profit motive as a social ideal He begins by giving a functional description of and to the exclusion, as well, of the exploitation of the Christian state that is limited mainly to the human labor for the benefit of the few. scope and nature of its leadership. Perhaps because This is, of course, a very daring proposal, and he focuses on matters of personnel rather than pol- with it Eliot brings his reader as close as is pos-

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sible to a full appreciation of what Eliot means by function. Furthermore, a divorce between the inter- Christian in political and economic terms, which is ests of religion and of arts and education in general that it should entail the social eradication of eco- encourages the political leadership to regard igno- nomic iniquities and inequality. At present, rather, rance of developments in those fields as a virtue. “a great deal of the machinery of modern life,” Eliot “Accordingly,” Eliot concludes, “the more serious contends, “is merely a sanction for un-Christian authors have a limited, and even provincial audi- aims,” making the maintenance of any Christian ence, and the more popular write for an illiterate society nearly impossible. So, then, it is only by and uncritical mob.” That he regards such a state virtue of a genuine “Christian organisation of soci- of affairs to be the result of the lack of a uniformity ety,” Eliot believes, that “the natural end of man,” of culture is a topic that he had already addressed which he identifies as “virtue and well-being in in the controversial After Strange Gods in 1934. community,” be acknowledged “for all”—not only Now, it appears, he is better able, or at least Christians, but peoples of other beliefs and persua- more careful, to clarify what he sees to be the sions in the community, too. importance of a society’s having a common center, Since there is a religious foundation to the new not of belief, but of accepted principles of human society that Eliot is proposing, such a society also behavior and standards of judgment from which would foster “the supernatural end—beatitude— the intellectual and aesthetic life of the community for those who have the eyes to see it.” In that may radiate a coherent point of view. For the Eng- kind of a Christian community, the community of lish, he finds that common center in Christianity Christians will be “the consciously and thoughtfully because then individuals, while not being obliged practising Christians, especially those of intellec- to act in concert, can nevertheless appeal to endur- tual and spiritual superiority.” While not limited ing principles in making judgments and decisions strictly to the religious, the community of Chris- that affect the well-being of the entire community. tians would, by virtue of their conscious commit- Eliot establishes as well, however, that this com- ment to practicing and formulating the faith, be munity of Christians is not the same as, say, the distinct from the Christian community, which is early 19th-century idea of the clerisy proposed all those members of the general public professing by the English poet and thinker Samuel Taylor a belief in Christianity’s moral, ethical, and spiri- Coleridge. Coleridge had a fairly well-defined body tual principles. Eliot takes pains again, however, of thinkers and practitioners in the arts, in religion, to make it clear that, although this spiritual and and in education in mind, whereas, in keeping with intellectual cadre forming the community of Chris- the more amorphous structures of the contempo- tians is guided in all its behavior by an adherence to rary world, Eliot makes it clear that, on all fronts, Christian principles, it need not be, particularly in his community of Christians must be, of necessity, the area of education, composed entirely of Chris- “a body of indefinite outline.” tians so much as of individuals who, without any His Christian society itself is nevertheless now personal belief in Christian theology, nevertheless successfully outlined, and Eliot will conclude his can adhere to and inculcate its essential vision of second chapter by observing that a Christian state, humanity and human behavior. as a consequence, need not have an organized It is when Eliot discusses the place of artists church, so long as the state respect Christian prin- and the arts—of what most would call culture—in ciples. That goal will be accomplished, of course, such a society that he digresses, admittedly, into as long as there is also within the Christian society a discussion of the isolation of that branch of the that Eliot has envisioned a Christian community in intelligentsia from the mainstream of community which those principles are observed in their every- life. He also comments on the pressure of the profit day lives by the common citizens. A community of motive, meanwhile, to cheapen the quality of liter- Christians, meanwhile, is also necessary in order for ary production intended for public consumption, them to bring to bear their intellectual and spiri- thus separating the arts from their authentic social tual expertise constantly to make the adjustments

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between principles and practice that any dynamic For now, he admits that too much emphasis on society requires. The community of Christians must the national character of the church might under- achieve this function without either compromising mine Christianity’s professedly universal character, the former or constraining the latter. but so might any attempt to pretend that there is Chapter Three universality in a system of belief that everywhere reflects the local culture undermine the uniquely As he begins his third chapter, Eliot notes that he English character of the Christianity practiced by will except the United States and the Dominions the people of England. Such dangers caused by the from the discussion to follow, inasmuch as it will opposing demands of blood and of creed can, in concern itself with the fact that his idea of a Chris- Eliot’s view, only compound themselves, especially tian society, as just developed, “can only be realised when religious and social cohesion is needed most when the great majority of the sheep belong to the critically for the life of the nation. A Christianity same fold.” If earlier he implied that components too identified with a people can become submerged of his community of Christians need not even be in their prejudices and passions. Conversely, by Christian so much as they adhere to Christian prin- becoming a “kind of society of Christian societies,” ciples, nonetheless a pluralistic approach to belief any one people’s—say, the English’s—can dilute among the citizenry would not advance the idea the essentially Christian character of the nation’s of a Christian society. So, then, the church should religious life. have a relationship to those three elements previ- The idea of maintaining a national church in ously outlined: the Christian state, the Christian the context of a universal church can result in “the community, and the community of Christians. idea of a supernatural League of Nations,” Eliot For that reason, he admits that the sort of inclu- jokes, referring to the then-contemporary equiva- sive society that has evolved in the United States lent of the present-day United Nations. It proved might necessitate the maintenance of what he calls to represent nothing in its attempt to represent a neutral state there, and he wisely limits his discus- everything. In keeping with the spirit of pragmatic sion of this last aspect of a Christian society—unity compromise between extremes for which Anglican- of belief—to England, where the Church of Eng- ism has long been noted, however, Eliot proposes land, or Anglican Church, fulfills that requirement. as a solution to these various dilemmas a middle There again Eliot is careful to point out that the way, whereby, in a “dual allegiance, to the State issue is not one of a theological purity or even sta- and to the Church, to one’s countrymen and to bility. This particular church is tied to the histori- one’s fellow-Christians everywhere, . . . the latter cal processes of the Christianization of England by would always have primacy.” A check of that order virtue of the Church’s traditions, organization, and would create tensions, he concedes, but such ten- relation to what he calls the religious-social life of sions would be a way to distinguish a Christian the English people. from a pagan society, since the former would be This adherence to a national church, one that obligated to adhere to the conscience of an inter- is of a particular people and a particular place, national community, Christians everywhere. requires a balancing act between the temporal and the spiritual, however. For one thing, Christians Chapter Four everywhere, despite sectarian conflicts, regard In his fourth and final chapter, Eliot addresses the Christianity as a universal church. What is true in form of political organization that his Christian principle, of course, is all too often not the case in state ought to embrace, concluding that to specify practice. Eliot will address the resulting paradox of a particular one would be a serious error. Forms of a universal church that must nevertheless express government and social organizations are all tempo- the social values of a wide variety of particular peo- rary and subject to frequent change, whereas the ples in a later work, Notes towards the Definition of Christian principles on which the state is founded Culture (1948). find their appeal in their enduring and universal

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applicability. To argue, then, that England’s present of 1934’s After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern form of government is ideally suited to a Christian Heresy. That latter work’s reception as a conserva- state or that a fascist or communist state never can tive and reactionary tract in certain quarters, how- be a Christian state as well is to confuse purposes ever, had no doubt caused Eliot some private pain, and to confuse methods with ends. enough at least for him to take the public step of Eliot emphasizes again that by professing to be forbidding any future publication of that controver- a Christian, the individual is not called to piety so sial work. much as to respecting a communal sensibility that Eliot’s purpose here is to emphasize that, rather is Christian in both nature and dogma. The bond than hoping to see one’s own point of view prevail, would be that the citizens hold the Christian faith, the far more important matter is the maintenance not that they practice or observe it to some particu- of a healthy public debate on the issues that he larly prescribed degree or extent. Based on these raises, regarding them and their resolution, as he same principles, Eliot envisions, too, a national life does, as the most critical of concerns for the cul- more in conformity with nature. A shift of that ture in general. Contemporary history and current order would put the present-day adulation of all affairs have certainly borne Eliot out. Were he alive that is mechanized, urbanized, and commercialized today, he would see a society in which debates back into its proper perspective, he imagines, and regarding the place of God and of issues of belief in enable a culture like England’s, as out of touch with public life and morality, and in fields as ostensibly its own roots in nature and the natural order as it diverse as medical ethics, public education, and has become, to see “in some of the societies upon biotechnology, occupy the headlines. which we look down as primitive or backward, the Having been himself bloodied for taking a con- operation of a social-religious-complex which we sistently traditionalist stand for a social and spiri- should emulate upon a higher plane.” tual conservatism in matters literary since the time of his 1923 essay “The Function of Criticism,” Eliot CRITICAL COMMENTARY proceeds, in this present and extended essay, to It is a virtually universal assumption on the part make it clear that his interest is not in preserving of critics and readers, given Eliot’s profound and or defending “spiritual institutions in their sepa- publicly professed conversion to a high form of rated aspect.” By now he would be fully aware that Anglicanism in the late 1920s, that, in the essay, even the appearance of assuming such an orthodox Eliot must be defending or at least proposing a the- posture will be perceived only as being narrowly ocracy for the English people based on a devotion sectarian and, hence, not only divisive but a bar to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Forearmed with to encouraging that all-important ongoing discus- this prejudice, no reader is capable of appreciating sion. Indeed, Eliot’s aim is not, and likely never the nuances of Eliot’s actual presentation, whether has been, to proselytize or evangelize; instead, it that reader is out to defend Eliot or to attack him. has always been to analyze and critique what he There would have been little secret that in con- takes to be a foundational crisis within the spiritual ceptualizing what he calls a “Christian society,” life of the culture and community. It is all that Eliot would of necessity be addressing as well the much more imperative, then, that he does not give spiritually deadening processes of the seculariza- the impression that he is being sectarian or, worse, tion of public life and private mores that had been a Christian apologist. Thus, Eliot does not wish taking place among the Western democracies in to address spiritual concerns for their own sake. Europe and North America since the mid-19th Rather, and from his point of view more important, century. This issue had involved Eliot’s attention his concern will be to offer his readers a “direction more and more since at least the time of “Geron- of religious thought which must inevitably proceed tion” in 1919. In terms of his prose criticism, his to a criticism of political and economic systems.” developing thoughts on the cultural crisis ushered Eliot is emphatic that his real topic is the con- in by modernism had culminated in the polemics temporary political scene, not religion. This crucial

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distinction reflects economic and political devel- restore to a Germany defeated in war the blood opments taking place at the time of his writing. brotherhood associated with the old Teutonic Since the end of World War I, two new economic knights. and political systems had emerged on the European While neither tampered with the institutions of continent, and in terms of both their viability and organized religion, as the Soviets had not hesitated their aggressive style of self-promotion they were to do, neither hesitated to admit that they were posing serious threats to the continuing economic effectively making a religion of the state that would and political stability of Europe’s so-called Chris- compete with the church for the unquestioning tian democracies, such as England and France. One devotion of its citizenry—and compete successfully. such development had occurred in Russia. The suc- By replacing the mystery of faith with the mysteries cess, in October 1917, of the Bolshevik revolution of race and national identity, and by delivering the there not only brought down the socialist govern- goods as well, the fascist ideology was remaking the ment that had replaced the czarist monarchy in the face of Western Europe as dramatically as commu- preceding spring but instituted a communist state nism was remaking Eastern Europe. Without this that effectively outlawed organized religious insti- understanding, a reader cannot possibly appreciate tutions and most civil liberties, including the right the stand that Eliot is about to take as he postulates of private ownership. the “idea of a Christian society.” That development on the left of the political Eliot had already addressed some of these geopo- spectrum was matched by equally ominous develop- litical concerns in “Coriolan” in the early 1930s in a ments on the right, however, that may have taken never-completed poem sequence that compared the longer to crystallize but that were to prove no less bread-and-circus demagogueries of ancient Rome indicative of the radical changes taking place in the with the only somewhat more subtle, similar tactics age-old traditions of Christian Europe. An empha- of the modern bureaucratic state. Now, speaking sis in those traditions on individual initiative and mere months after English prime minister Neville worth had come to form the basis of Europe’s Chris- Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement, in Septem- tian democracies. As a result, social, economic, and ber 1938, of Germany’s expansionist aims in Central legislative accommodations between the nobility Europe, and within six months, too, of war breaking and commoners had been evolving over the past out in Europe as a result of Germany’s invasion of several centuries. Now all that appeared to be about Poland on September 1, 1939, Eliot had an oppor- to change. Surely the leftist, Marxist challenge to tunity to play on his audience’s immediate rather traditional models of state and economic structures than merely academic concerns. He would have was to be expected, but a far more serious chal- been aware that his British audience was mindful lenge was emerging as well. The Marxist model had of both the long- and short-term implications of the nowhere near the appeal of the alternative to the threat to Western democracies posed by the suc- Christian democratic state that fascism would offer cessful political, economic, and military advances the more prosperous societies of Western Europe. of both Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, their Fascism placed all its faith in the efficiency of a competing models for a modern, secular state not- secular state founded on a hierarchy of party affili- withstanding. It is important for readers to keep all ation as opposed to religious discipline and devo- of these considerations and developments in mind tions. At the top of this hierarchical state, based as they regard Eliot’s “idea of a Christian society,” on a sort of ancestor worship, was a strongman who for there can be no doubt that Eliot had them in represented the ancient, pagan traditions of the mind himself. It is in considerations of this order, as tribe or nation. In the case of Italy, Benito Musso- his essay draws to a close, that Eliot’s aim becomes lini’s appeal to Italians was based on his associat- unmistakably clear. Whatever else he may be calling ing himself with a revival of the power and glory his fellow English to, he is calling them to a spiritual of Imperial Rome. Adolf Hitler eventually proved renewal that ought to recapture the traditional val- even more monstrously effective in his efforts to ues that had shaped the nation to begin with. That

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he defines that renewal in Christian terms reflects Eliot had argued throughout his essay that, a cultural bias far more than it does any religious without a conscious and public adherence to one. Note, for example, his frequent emphasis not Christian principles in the life and practices of the on piety and orthodoxy so much as on a consistent state and community in England, the state and the foundation to the nation’s moral and ethical life. community both are guided by nothing more than In the case of the English, that foundation happens the expedient good of the profit motive in all its to be Christian, in Eliot’s view. Also note that he various guises, so that even peace among nations sees that foundation threatened on several fronts. becomes nothing less than a means to maintaining At home there are the pressures of the relative business as usual, as the Munich Accord attested. prosperity that industrialization has brought about, While Eliot’s call for instituting a Christian society including an increasing materialism and a removal in England is far more long-range and ambitious in of the population from England’s rural roots. From scope than those events might suggest, despite how abroad, meanwhile, are competing political and momentous they themselves were, the conjunction economic systems whose appeal to secularization of his appeal with the impending failure of those and social collectivity offers attractively modern- very ideals that all of Western Europe professed to sounding alternatives to religion as the lifeblood of be following makes his closing remarks particularly a people. propitious and poignant. Finally, there is the overriding threat of another The failure of the Western, Christian democra- world war, and the First World War from 1914 cies, in particular England and France, to dissipate to 1918 had already found the vitality of Europe’s the international tensions that would eventually Christian values wanting. In their renewal, even result in an armed conflict in any event is, if Eliot if only among the English, Eliot hoped to find an is correct, not a failure of Christianity but a fail- ameliorative to the looming crisis. ure of their leadership on all fronts—the spiritual, In his closing paragraph, then, Eliot cites the educational, and cultural as well as the economic events of September 1938 as an occurrence that had and political—to behave consistently in a manner forced one to doubt “the validity of civilisation.” He in keeping with Christian principles, not because is referring to the famous Munich accord, whereby those principles are inherently more correct or the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain better than other religious principles but because had appeased Nazi Germany’s expansionist goals by they are the religious principles on which European ceding the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part civilization is founded. In that way, too, Eliot can of Czechoslovakia, to the Nazis. While having the assert convincingly that, inasmuch as Nazi Ger- short-term benefit of preventing an armed conflict, many and Communist Russia are guided by their that self-serving action on the part of the British own respective species of post-Christian principles (war with Germany would break out within a year that describe and define their every action and in any case, on September 1, 1939, with Germany’s policy as states, their so-called pagan societies must invasion of Poland) would lead Eliot to ponder appear to many to represent the way of an inevi- whether English civilization had “any beliefs more tably secularized future. At the very least, in their essential than a belief in compound interest and diplomatic and public relations successes, those the maintenance of dividends.” two modern nation states have become contending What would become known to history as World models for social, political, and economic systems War II broke out mere days before Eliot’s essay that have it all over the hollow-at-the-core sem- went to press on September 6, 1939. As if to verify blance of a Christian society that England, at the his fears, that awful event signaled not only the fail- time of Eliot’s writing, had come to be. ure of civilization, as any war does, but the failure Not even Eliot could have imagined, however, of a Christian civilization to make its principles a how catastrophically England would soon be learn- viable part of the lives of the nations that ostensibly ing that not even a neutral society can remain so adhered to its principles. for very long. As he would have it, a people without

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belief are not spared the necessity of acting any Dryden, however, as Eliot sees it. Because Dryden more than any other. is so adept at “the transformation of the ridiculous into poetry,” his poetry is reproached for being too prosaic, not sublime enough. To such a reproach, Eliot counters that it “rests upon a confusion “John Dryden” (1922) between the emotions considered to be poetic . . . and the result of personal emotion in poetry.” In his 1921 essay “The Metaphysical Poets,” Eliot Eliot clarifies the problem a few pages later: observed, much to his subsequent and enduring “The point is that the depreciation or neglect of reputation as a critic, that after the 17th century, Dryden is not due to the fact that his work is not a “dissociation of sensibility” had set in in English poetry, but to a prejudice that the material, the poetry, and this dissociation between the expres- feelings, out of which he built is not poetic.” This sion of thought and of feeling is one “from which is an interesting critical formulation on Eliot’s part, we have never recovered.” This notion of Eliot’s not quite equal to his formulation of the objec- lays the dissociation at the doorstep of two vastly tive correlative or the dissociation of sensibility, but different 17th-century poets, John Milton and John an intriguing notion nonetheless. Eliot has drawn Dryden. a distinction between the emotion that readers demand of poetry, called by Eliot the “poetic,” and SYNOPSIS the emotion that actually is expressed in a poem as “Each of these men performed certain poetic a reflection of the thoughts and feelings that the functions so magnificently well,” Eliot wrote of poet brings to bear on the working material of a Dryden and Milton in 1921, “that the magnitude poem. Such a distinction is not, in Eliot’s view, a of the effect concealed the absence of others.” quibble but a critical issue of the first order. No wonder, then, that in this essay of Eliot’s on In the former case, wherein readers dictate Dryden, published the next year in the Times Lit- what constitutes the “poetic,” the development of erary Supplement and subsequently collected with poetry runs the constant risk of becoming stulti- “Andrew Marvell” and “The Metaphysical Poets” fied by public tastes and preconceived standards of in the 1924 Hogarth Press volume Homage to John what poetry should “sound like.” In the latter case, Dryden, he should begin by praising Dryden as “the what constitutes emotion in poetry is permitted to ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of develop in keeping with poets’ needs to express the 18th century,” a statement qualified somewhat themselves in their own terms, limited only by their by Eliot’s earlier guarded estimation of Milton material, rather than in keeping with potentially and Dryden’s accomplishment in the essay on the outworn tastes and conventions. As a result, Eliot metaphysical poets. In this later essay, Eliot takes can argue that “Dryden is distinguished principally the opportunity to clarify what it was that Dryden by his poetic ability . . . his ability to make the small did “so magnificently well.” into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the triv- Though asserting that “Dryden was much more ial into the magnificent.” In summary, Eliot writes, than a satirist,” Eliot fears that Dryden’s overall “We prize him, as we do Mallarmé, for what he reputation has been overshadowed by those whom made of his material.” he so brilliantly satirized in poems such as “Mac- Flecknoe” and “Absalom and Achitophel” that CRITICAL COMMENTARY his victims—fellow poets Shadwell and Settle and Eliot concludes his essay by faulting Dryden some- political manipulators Shaftesbury and Bucking- what on the same grounds that he rightly praises ham—are remembered more than he, thanks to his him. The 19th-century American novelist Herman literary efforts at immortalizing them. And that is Melville was both wise and wry to observe that what distinguishes Dryden’s poetry: “[H]e makes he was writing his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, about his object great.” Even that works as a drawback for a whale because one cannot write a great novel

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about a flea. By the same token, although Dryden’s His career, meanwhile, spans a period of atypical choice of material may not inhibit his poetic abil- aesthetic and ideological stability in culture and ity, Eliot does see it as a check on his capacity to thought, an age that had no sooner begun than achieve the sort of all-encompassing vision that is it not so much ended as disappeared entirely in expected of a poet who not merely is great but is the emotional turmoil of romanticism and the a poet of vision as well. Eliot will always invariably subsequent intellectual conflicts of the 19th and use that standard as the single standard by which 20th centuries. Although Eliot does not push the the greatest of poets must be judged—a whole and point in his assessment of Johnson’s place in Eng- consistent vision of life. For Eliot, Dryden lacked lish literary history, an assessment that was initially that. presented as the Ballard Matthews Lectures at Uni- Ultimately, then, Dryden, in Eliot’s book, does versity College, North , in 1944 and then not fail, but he does fall short on this crucial score. collected by Eliot in On Poetry and Poets in 1956, “Dryden lacked . . . a large and unique view of for Eliot, Johnson and his age represent a norm of life; he lacked insight, he lacked profundity,” Eliot civility and good judgment toward which Eliot, in writes. Ironically, in Dryden’s case as Eliot has cast his own social criticism, seems to be trying to direct it, less is more. That he is, in Eliot’s view, a great his contemporaries. poet despite these serious shortcomings proclaims how great a poet Eliot took him to be. SYNOPSIS Eliot begins his two-part lecture by accounting for the current “indifference” to Johnson’s liter- ary criticism, attributing that indifference to two “John Ford” (1932) fundamental causes. The first is that Johnson as poet was not the initiator of any literary move- See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. ment; therefore, his criticism does not itself pro- vide a window into the thinking behind particular innovations and alterations in poetic production. As much if not more to the point is that many of “John Marston” (1934) the poets included in his Lives of the Poets are them- selves no longer well known. An interesting notion See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. there: The critic depends for his own survival as an arbiter of tastes on the durability of the works to which he devotes his critical attention. That established, nevertheless, Eliot makes it clear that to approach Johnson, one must approach him in “Johnson as Critic and Poet” accordance with the critical sensibilities that his (1944) own time enabled him to have. As Eliot aptly puts it, “we must not be narrow in accusing him of nar- If this rather lengthy appreciation of the 18th-cen- rowness or prejudiced in accusing him of preju- tury English critic and poet Samuel Johnson (1709– dice.” What those sensibilities were becomes Eliot’s 84) has a single theme, it is to verify Johnson’s task to reconstruct throughout the remainder of his importance in an age that can no longer conceive presentation. of his work in terms of its continuing significance. To begin with, Eliot imagines that for an 18th- Best known for his Dictionary of the English Lan- century poet and critic like Johnson, “the values guage (1755) and Lives of the Most Eminent English of language and literature were more closely allied Poets (1777), Johnson was an astute marketer as than they seem to the writers and to the reading well, freeing himself from the need for patronage public of to-day.” For both the writing and reading that had constrained English writers to that time. public of Johnson’s time, coming as it did on nearly

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two centuries of development beginning with the good or bad, according to his sympathy with, or great epoch of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama antipathy from, the author’s point of view. ushered in by the likes of Christopher Marlowe and For an especially egregious example, in 1942 the William Shakespeare, there had been a virtually English satirist and social critic George Orwell had continuous progress and refinement that resulted written an extremely negative response to Eliot’s in “a confidence in the rightness and permanence “Dry Salvages,” the third part of his Four Quartets, of the style which had been achieved,” and yet arguing that it is bad poetry because it is based modern readers regard as a blemish this very confi- on a belief in God, which, in Orwell’s view, is an dence that Johnson places in his critical judgments. absurd belief. The problem for a critic of Johnson’s time, none- theless—if a problem it indeed was—is that an age CRITICAL COMMENTARY just having arrived at its own maturity could not Behind Eliot’s effort neither to justify nor to excuse possibly have perceived of any need for renewal or Johnson and his age so much as to appreciate them conceived of any alternative to its own standards for what they are, there is a nostalgia on Eliot’s and style. part for the sort of coherent order that he sees his The age, in fact, assumed that enduring stan- own times sorely lacking. “[T]he conditions under dards had long since been established by an ardu- which literature is judged simply and naturally as ous process of literary development to that time. literature and not another thing” require “a soci- As a result, for Johnson the past was already ety which believes in itself, a society in which the archaic, and the future was fixed in the present. differences of religious and political views are not The function of the critic and of criticism becomes, extreme,” Eliot writes. rather than one of assessing relative quality and Eliot wrote the essay in 1944, and Europe was resources, a modest corrective to tastes that are in the midst of a second major war in a period of already in place and unlikely to be challenged or three decades. In the late 1930s, Eliot had made questioned. In summary, Eliot argues, “the notion a case, in The Idea of a Christian Society, not for a of the language as perpetually in change is not theocracy but for a social order at least organized one which had impressed itself upon the age of around a central system of thought, belief, and Johnson,” so the only lapse for which he can be action. By the late 1940s, he was pleading, in Notes censured as both poet and critic are lapses from his towards the Definition of Culture, for a return to a own standards of taste. cultural cohesion on which postwar Europe could While that may have been the impediment that reorient itself toward its more enduring and foun- the age imposed upon Johnson, it also conferred dational traditions. Little wonder, then, that in the on him certain freedoms that are not enjoyed in midst of such conflict and doubt, Eliot found in contemporary times. Since Johnson could proceed the orderly assurances of Johnson’s time no cause at all times with a priori judgments regarding the to feel superior but rather cause for a sort of wist- proper language and topics of verse, he “did not ful envy. Eliot had begun his essay by imagining confuse his judgment of what an author was saying, that Johnson’s literary influence “merely await[s] a with his judgment about the way in which he said generation which has not yet been born to receive it.” By way of an almost painfully sharp contrast, it.” By this point in his life, Eliot may be hoping Eliot paints a portrait of what it is like to be a critic that his own generation would experience such a in his own time: good fortune. The standard of edification has been fractured In keeping with the so-called Age of Reason into a variety of prejudices: with no common that Johnson’s era came to entail, the norm that opinion as to what poetry ought to teach, the Johnson’s criticism maintains is one by which ideas critic is not necessarily liberated from moral of standards and traditions and permanence are so judgment, but will frequently declare a poem much the given that they are not even thought of

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in those terms. In summary, Johnson had the luxury time has moved too far into judging a work of lit- of imagining that he was applying, in his criticism, erature for the particular kinds of thought and of criteria that would hold for all time. It is that con- feeling that it promotes. He was too astute a man fidence that gives Johnson’s pronouncements the and critic, however, not to be aware that much of air of a haughty inevitability that makes them seem his own criticism in the 1920s and especially the distasteful to modern ears, which are more used to early 1930s fostered the authenticity of just such contention than deliberation in critical discourse. a critical temperament, his After Strange Gods: A It is this self-assured critical posture of Johnson’s, Primer on Modern Heresy providing a particularly nevertheless, that enables Eliot to defend Johnson outstanding example. in his criticism from the foremost charge against him in Eliot’s own time, and that is that he lacked an ear for the musicality of poetry, paying atten- tion only to how well it expressed ideas. As Eliot “Journey of the Magi” (1927) will eventually establish, Johnson lacks not an ear but “an historical sense which was not yet due to This poem, the first of Eliot’s contributions to the appear.” Unable to imagine the sorts of innovations Ariel series, is, along with “A Song for Simeon,” that would shortly be coming into vogue, John- certainly far easier to place within the immedi- son, in his confidence, had a sharpened sensibility ate context of the Christmas season that inspires to “verbal beauty of another kind”—the beauty of it than his later contributions might seem to be. established meaning against which productions in Eliot’s title would quickly make anyone with even verse were to be measured. the most general and secular awareness of the pop- Eliot aims to show that his own contemporaries ular associations connected with Christmas mindful have been rendered incapable of appreciating the of the three wise men, or magi. Celebrated in song depths of Johnson’s critical assessments. “[E]asily and image, they constitute an integral part of the seduced by the music of the exhilaratingly mean- lore of the Christmas story to this day. The three ingless,” his contemporaries, Eliot argues, think magi, history would have it, were pagan priests little of verse that expresses “intelligence and wis- from the East, most likely adepts in astrology from dom set forth in pedestrian measures,” yet that is the environs of Persia, who, on the basis of their the choice toward which an age like Johnson’s was observations of the stars, traveled westward, guided inclined. “[N]o work comparable to The Lives of by the so-called Star of Bethlehem, to the “place the Poets could be written to-day,” Eliot is loath to where Jesus lay.” Tradition would further have it admit, but that “should not lead us . . . to elevate that they had become convinced by the astrologi- Johnson to a pinnacle, and lament the decline of cal charts that they had cast that a great king was civility which makes such criticism impossible.” Fair about to be born, one whose birth, life, and death enough, but Eliot goes on to make the equally, per- would usher in a new age. haps more valid point: “[N]or should it . . . tempt In his poem, Eliot focuses on the trials of the us to treat these essays merely as a curiosity of no magi’s journey to the stable in Bethlehem and on bearing upon our actual problems.” the hope that they placed in the miraculous birth Those “actual problems” are problems, after all, that they had traveled so far to witness, as well as and they include a literary landscape where there on the effect that witnessing such an event had are no commonly accepted criteria with which subsequently had on them. Rather than telling to weed out the worthwhile from the worthless their story, however, Eliot, in keeping with his use (where, indeed, such terminology is itself anath- of the dramatic mask that goes back as far at least ema) and to ask of literature that it help organize as to characterizations such as J. Alfred Prufrock, thought and feeling, not that it promote particular imagines himself to be one of the magi many years kinds of thought and of feeling. By way of a sharp later, telling his story apparently to a scribe so that contrast, it is Eliot’s fear that the criticism of his there will be preserved a written record of it. It is

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a clever literary device, one that such prominent the form more of a poetic than a purely dramatic 19th-century poets as Alfred Tennyson and Robert exercise. Prufrock might sound as if he is speaking Browning had already used to great advantage. By his thoughts and feelings, for example, but they pretending to be great literary or historical figures are freely combined with purely literary elements, such as the Greek hero Ulysses or the Renaissance and the entire mix is then mangled into the frag- painter Andrea del Sarto in dramatic monologues mentary by his emotional ups and downs so that that sought to reveal the psychology of character any resemblance to recorded speech is purposefully as much as the ruminations of theme, they were blurred if not obliterated. able to explore a wider range of human experience than any lyric poet can typically undergo in a life- SYNOPSIS time and yet still use that most powerful rhetorical In the Ariel poems in general and in “Journey of device, the authority of the first-person singular the Magi” in particular, Eliot exceeds the models voice, the “I” of firsthand experience and eyewit- of those two other masters of the form and accom- ness accounts. Utilizing the opportunities for mod- plishes a poetry closer in its perfection as a dra- ulating voice and poetic mask through the medium matic monologue to the considerable achievements of these dramatic monologues to which those two of Robert Browning. He does so in the powerful poets had thereby reintroduced literary audiences, sense of audience that he creates. The reader is Eliot’s contemporary poet and good friend, the fel- made witness—only an auditory one, it is true, but low American expatriate EZRA POUND, had earlier a real one nevertheless—to one of the magi as he, done something similar to what Eliot does with the ruminating here, reflecting there, now regretting, magi with another biblical character in “The Bal- now rejoicing, bears witness to the events of that lad of the Goodly Fere” (1909). In that poem, the momentous journey, all for the sake of the invisible imagined speaker, Simon the Zealot, is permitted and silent scribe. to “come to life,” as it were, to give a first-person Note, for example, that although no specific account of Christ’s Crucifixion. passage of time since the journey has taken place is In every case, the aim of the poet using this form mentioned, it is not difficult to catch in the speak- is to make the tired but true sound refreshingly er’s tone the sense that quite some time has passed new by giving it the characteristics of living speech since that eventful winter’s night when they came caught as if in the act of being spoken. In Pound’s upon the scene in Bethlehem. This is not a man poem, for example, despite the artificial note struck still caught up in the excitement, confusions, and by the pronounced rhythm and rhyme scheme exhaustion of the moment, nor is he someone who required of the traditional ballad form, Simon has just recently returned home from an arduous speaks in something of a Cockney accent, making trip who is sharing both his thoughts on what it was him sound like a contemporary working-class bloke like and his relief that it is now over. Rather there is rather than a high-toned Christian preacher. a weariness concealed in his account, a measure of The dramatic monologue was hardly a new helpless disappointment akin somewhat, perhaps, device in Eliot’s poetic repertoire, of course. He to the overall fatigue that invades the musings of had already expanded that form’s potential in such the old man/speaker of “Gerontion.” works as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” And yet there is a tone of self-importance as “Gerontion,” and “The Hollow Men,” to name well, a sort of “I was there, let me tell you” puffery, several outstanding examples, not to mention as if Eliot wishes to leave the impression, which is The Waste Land, in which he set new and perhaps always aesthetically more effective than any direct permanent standards for the manipulation of per- treatment of setting or subject matter, that this is sona and voice as a mode of poetic discourse. But an I-knew-him-when sort of summation that the somewhat like Tennyson, whose dramatic mono- speaker is making, coming long after the baby he logues can strike readers as elaborate contrivances sought on that long ago journey had matured into for all their poetic power, Eliot tended to make not the king that they had imagined that they would

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find but the sacrificial victim whose birth, life, and the religious imagination that will emerge from death had nevertheless redeemed and transformed Christianity. The light of the world comes at the human history in ways that no one, not even these darkest time of the year. The king of the world fabled wise men, could ever have anticipated. The is born amid conditions associated with the most dramatic monologue is the perfect instrument for abject poverty. The fire of God’s love comes at creating ironic tensions between what the fictional a time of bitter cold. Eliot allows the speaker’s speaker thinks he is saying and what the poet wants remembrances to reflect these sharp contrasts, as his own readers to hear. Surely, Eliot’s magus is, he thinks of the summery life that he had left these many years later, less impressed with the behind to make the journey, with its “summer pal- event and more full of himself than someone who aces on slopes” and “silken girls bringing sherbet,” had come that close to miracle has any right to be, whereas all about them now, instead, is a barren and to a great measure, that is the effect that Eliot winter landscape, inhabited by uncouth ruffians, is aiming to achieve. an inhospitable and alien environment that seems Even now, child of the old dispensation that he to mock them with the nagging feeling that the self-confessedly is, Eliot’s speaker can only muse perilous journey that they have undertaken is little on the event with a vague appreciation for but more than “all folly.” even vaguer understanding of the changes that Having painted such a bleak scene of doubt and that birth have subsequently wrought upon him desperation, the speaker thus manages to surprise and his world. The magus begins his recollection the reader all the more with the sudden burst of by recalling the coldness of the journey, and to give vitality with which the second stanza opens. As that recollection its antique quality as if it comes if it is resplendent of the hope for new life that is not just from an earlier time but from another age, itself embodied in Christ, the speaker reports that Eliot quotes virtually verbatim (and even uses quo- they reached “at dawn . . . a temperate valley, / . . . tation marks as if to underscore this point) the smelling of vegetation.” This scene provides what 300-year-old words of the 17th-century English Eliot would call an objective correlative for the cleric Sir Lancelot Andrewes, a contemporary and spark of a rebirth, allowing Eliot to share with his fellow word stylist of the metaphysical poet JOHN contemporary readers a glimpse of the potential DONNE. In the passage from the Andrewes sermon contained in this particular birth that his speaker that Eliot employs to set the scene and tone for could not even begin to imagine, the Earth’s res- his own speaker’s account, Andrewes comments urrection into grace that Christ’s own birth fore- on the Nativity and on how awful it was for Joseph shadows for the human spirit. However, as if to and Mary to undertake the journey to Bethle- emphasize that the journey from this miraculous hem. “A cold coming they had of it at this time of moment to the final redemption of humankind is the year, just the worst time of the year to take a a far longer and more arduous journey than any journey, and specially a long journey in,” he com- that the magi may ever have undertaken, as well as mences. The only real alteration that Eliot makes one more fraught with the defects of human folly in Andrewes’s original prose, indeed, is to change than theirs, the dark of winter encroaches again in a third-person plural verb, they, to the first person a flood of foreshadowing images and blots out that plural, we, in keeping with the fiction that his own refreshing scene with which the second stanza had poem is a first-person telling of the episode. opened in its momentary flash of new life and, with For those who might recognize Eliot’s original it, hope. source, it is as if the presence of the holy family If the sought-for birth truly were daybreak for has infiltrated the text to begin with, lurking in a new epoch of humanity, then upon that still- the corners of the reader’s own experience of the fragile hope, at this moment nothing more than a poem as it continues. This is, after all, a poem newborn infant, the darkness of this world drops focusing on the paradoxical contrasts that the again, as W. B. YEATS would put it, in the image birth of Christ and his life’s mission will force on of “three trees on the low sky.” They cast the long

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shadow of Christ’s death on a cross, a thief cruci- through it, human history. The speaker seems to fied to each side, backward over the pastoral valley know, or at the very least intuit, that his age and of his birth, thus hardly permitting the speaker, or his kind, and all the wisdom of his world, is coming the reader, so much as a moment’s respite from to an end and that this birth is the signal of their the fact that heaven has not yet arrived on Earth, death. “[W]ere we led all that way for / Birth or only its king. While it is clear that the speaker Death?” he wonders, entertaining the paradox of could not recognize the special significance of this the contradictions that such a blessing portends. and other details that follow the description of Such a birth brings with it renewal, but renewal the pleasant valley setting, these images of the requires the removal of all those things that are coming catastrophe of Christ’s Crucifixion muddy now to be replaced. His is “the old dispensation,” the scene and darken even the relatively ignorant a world that for the speaker still exists but that for speaker’s mood and tone. Eliot is also still employ- Eliot and his readers is by now something even less ing the dramatic irony that he had used earlier; than a relic—all that which was born too soon and the poem is addressed to a contemporary Christian died too early. audience, after all, one that would definitely get The speaker confesses that his long-ago experi- the message that the first Christmas will end in the ence has forever unsettled his life; he is “no longer Passion of the Christ. at ease here” in his familiar surroundings, but to In the poem, at least, the darkness does not what purpose he neither puzzles out nor supposes. lift. Employing techniques similar to contemporary Like Eliot’s hollow men, he appears to have seen films, in which a juxtaposed image comments on a the light but is unable either to recognize its source scene but is not otherwise related to it in content, or to follow it, so he shall die in the wilderness that, Eliot now allows a horse to careen across the land- for Eliot, is a world without a coherent belief in scape, suggesting a natural universe out of control a singular creation that serves a singular purpose. and hovering on the edge of chaos, and then there For all his wisdom, the speaker’s tragedy is to have is a tavern and men playing dice for silver, bringing come that close to mystery and majesty without to mind the boisterous, drunken Roman soldiers having grasped its significance for him and him who would later gamble for Christ’s garments at alone, a state of affairs whose continuing implica- the foot of the cross, and Judas, too, who betrayed tions could not have been lost on a contemporary him for 30 pieces of silver. The speaker continues reader, Eliot among them. his memoir, totally unaware of the tragedy that he Christ said to Nicodemus that to be saved he is seeing foretold, and concludes, pedantically, that must be reborn, and Eliot closes the poem by seem- they finally arrived at their destination, “[f]inding ing to play on this cryptic injunction. “I should the place . . . (you may say) satisfactory.” be glad of another death,” the speaker says in an ironic twist on the notion of a spiritual rebirth, CRITICAL COMMENTARY as if for him sharing the common lot of the grave The understatement at first astounds and then ren- would have been a better fate than to have been ders itself perfectly understandable. For all of their fated to glimpse those many years before in that acquaintance with mystery, its human dimensions, desert birth the unsettling truth that his age was Eliot offers the suggestion that the magi could not coming to an end along with all else that he and possibly have understood the profundities of the his hold dear—as if, for him, to gain some inkling unfolding mystery that they were there to witness that there is something better and greater can be in its initial manifestation. But then Eliot has his worse than to know nothing at all. Eliot’s speaker speaker surprise the reader by expressing at least seems to share the plea of the speaker in MATTHEW the inkling of some awareness that, even when ARNOLD’s “Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse” counted among miraculous things, this was no (1854), who begs the harbingers of a new age that ordinary birth and that something far more than he, the speaker, knows he will not live to see to merely extraordinary had entered the world and, “leave our desert to its peace.”

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The allusion to Othello’s closing speech in BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS Shakespeare’s great tragedy that comes when Eliot’s Eliot had begun his graduate studies in philosophy speaker commands the scribe to “set down / This” at Harvard at the beginning of the autumn semes- has been often noted, but what Eliot has to say ter in 1911, following his return from a year spent of that moment in the play Othello may cast some abroad, largely in Paris, where he had attended further light on what the reader ought to make of lectures given by the French philosopher Henri the speaker of the Eliot poem. When, just before Bergson at the Collège de France. Bergson’s idea stabbing himself to death, Othello defends himself that human experience of reality is, at the con- by recalling the services that he has done Venice scious level, largely a perceptual event—that is, and makes a similar command, “Set you down this,” an appearance rather than any direct and immedi- to the Venetians who stand about him, thunder- ate engagement with the unfolding interaction of struck at the terrible deeds of death and violence objects in time and in space—no doubt had a cer- that they have just witnessed, Eliot, in his essay tain appeal to the budding idealist that Eliot was at “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca,” which the time. It was not until June 1913, however, that was also published in 1927, writes that Othello “in he would purchase his own copy of a book by the making this speech is cheering himself up . . . [by] English idealist philosopher F. H. BRADLEY. Titled dramatizing himself rather than his environment.” Appearance and Reality, this compendium of Brad- In the same manner, Eliot’s magus sees this unfold- ley’s thought on the nature of knowledge and the ing drama, whose initial moment he was privileged degrees by which experience might itself be known to witness, only in terms of its effects on him—the and defined would not only become, as Bradley’s sort of self-centeredness that the Christian ethic central work, the center of Eliot’s doctoral disser- encourages humanity to abhor. As Eliot would sum- tation on Bradleyan thought but one of the most marize this defect later in his poem “The Dry Sal- influential works on Eliot’s own thought and, very vages,” one might say of the speaker of “Journey of likely, further development as a poet. the Magi” that he “had the experience but missed In any event, if Eliot bought his copy of Bradley the meaning.” in June 1913, by September 1913, Eliot, now a bud- ding Bradleyan idealist, was enrolled at Harvard in a graduate course offered by JOSIAH ROYCE, another one of the leading idealist thinkers of his time. The Knowledge and Experience course was an exploration of the problems posed by in the Philosophy processes of description and interpretation. Put sim- ply, the course was intended to demonstrate that, of F. H. Bradley (1964) for an individual, experience can never be known firsthand, since it can be consciously engaged only In 1962, encouraged somewhat by an increasing after its having been filtered through sensory and critical interest in the influence on Eliot of Brad- then thought processes. These “problems” with the leyan thought, with its complementary emphases on description and interpretation of objective experi- the relativity of all human knowing and on experi- ence not only are in keeping with the focus of Brad- ence as an absolute condition, Eliot undertook the ley’s work, as shall be seen shortly, but are as well preparation of his long-completed Harvard doc- the same sorts of problems that confront the poet as toral dissertation, “Knowledge and the Objects of well as the student of literature. There is no doubt Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley,” for that Eliot would have been well aware of that fact. publication. Faber & Faber, the London publishing For the course in question, Eliot wrote a paper house with which Eliot had been associated since on the limits of scientific observation. His conclu- 1925, published the dissertation in 1964 under the sion was that since the observer becomes a part of somewhat shortened title Knowledge and Experience the process of observing, a purely scientific objectiv- in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. ity is unobtainable. Eliot further elected to devote

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his dissertation to the question of the relationship demic philosophizing came to end, I find myself between knowledge and the objects of experience in unable to think in the terminology of this essay. Bradley’s philosophy. Although Eliot developed his Indeed, I do not pretend to understand it.” None- own ideas on the topic under Royce’s mentorship, he theless, the affinities between Bradleyan thought, would complete the dissertation while on a traveling or at least Eliot’s take on it, and certain hallmarks fellowship from Harvard to study Aristotle under the of Eliot’s poetry are too remarkable to be casually tutorship of Harold Joachim, a disciple of Bradley’s, dismissed. at Merton College, Oxford, beginning in the fall of While it is indisputably impossible within the 1914. (Bradley was himself a member of the college scope and purpose of this present critical overview at the time, although Eliot never met him.) ever to do justice to the subtle complexities of When Eliot’s year at Oxford ended the follow- Eliot’s treatise on a topic as erudite as knowledge ing autumn, he had not yet completed the disserta- and the objects of experience in Bradley’s philoso- tion, but, as he would explain many years later, “I phy, it is nevertheless possible to give readers some did not . . . abandon immediately the intention of glimpse into the matters with which Eliot the doc- fulfilling the conditions for the doctor’s degree.” toral candidate was dealing, as those matters touch Although to support himself he had taken a posi- on his poetry. A passage that comes readily to hand tion as a junior master teaching Latin at Highgate may serve a further purpose by casting some light Junior School, he explained: “Harvard had made on how Bradley’s philosophy, or at least Eliot’s ren- it possible for me to go to Oxford for a year; and dering of it, goes hand in hand with Eliot’s theory this return at least I owed to Harvard,” by which of poetry as well, at least inasmuch as that theory he meant finishing his doctoral dissertation. Eliot is realized in his critical and poetic practices. The submitted the completed dissertation to Harvard passage referred to occurs several pages into his first in April 1916. He had made plans to deliver the chapter, entitled “On Our Knowledge of Immedi- dissertation personally and then remain in America ate Experience.” In this passage, which runs for long enough to take his viva, or oral defense, the several pages, Eliot discourses on feelings as objects final step in a doctoral program. of experience, an interesting enough concept, par- He was somewhat reluctant, however, to give up ticularly since few individuals are accustomed to for very long the literary life that he was quickly estab- thinking of feelings as objects at all. lishing in London, largely as a result of his acquain- First, however, a primer on Bradley’s concept of tanceship with BERTRAND RUSSELL and Leonard and immediate experience, which was the most critical VIRGINIA WOOLF, not to mention EZRA POUND. He component of his idealist philosophy. For example, had married as well. As the case may be, war condi- according to Eliot, Bradley used the terms experience tions forced Eliot’s hand. The ship on which he had and feeling interchangeably. Most of us are con- booked passage for his second trip back home in ditioned to think of experience as a multifaceted little more than six months did not sail as scheduled, event, largely physical or sensational in nature, of and Eliot had to dispatch the dissertation to Harvard which feeling—aside from any tactile referent—is by post. Although Eliot was duly informed in June only a single and not very coherent component. If, that the philosophy department had accepted his however, feeling is taken to mean the whole con- dissertation without hesitation, Eliot would never struct of an experience in an instant of time that is take the viva and so never did complete his Harvard real but otherwise immeasurable and unknowable, doctorate, although that institution would eventu- then there is there some sense of what immediate ally award one of its most famous living alumni an experience might mean. honorary doctorate in 1947. In its actual or ideal state, an experience is so complete and total as to be entirely unknowable SYNOPSIS to the person—a “finite center” in Bradley’s par- In his preface to the 1964 Faber edition of his work, lance—who is undergoing the experience, yet, of Eliot confesses that “[f]orty-six years after my aca- course, it remains entirely effective on that person

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as an experience. As Eliot expresses it, “we cannot Bradley’s thought, might easily imagine that Brad- know experience directly as an object,” but “we can ley’s ideas shaped Eliot’s poetry all along. Again, yet arrive at it by inference, and even conclude that that is impossible to say, for the very reason that, it is the starting point of our knowing, since it is if Bradley’s thoughts are capable of touching even only in immediate experience that knowledge and remotely on the real nature of experience, then it is its object are one.” Once, however, one attempts to impossible not to conclude from them that feeling divorce the knowledge of an experience from the cannot be dissociated so neatly from experience, experience in order to know it, that cohesion is lost even of an intellectual kind, as to enable one to and the experience, as well as one’s knowing it, is track the consequences of the one upon the other fragmented into what is ordinary experience. in any way that can be assigned to happiness, to There are the three components of Eliot’s paraphrase another bit of Eliot poetry. approach to Bradley—experience, knowledge, and All that said, however, it is equally interest- object. In Bradley, they are indistinguishably com- ing nevertheless to find in Eliot’s dissertation on bined in that state or zone of existence that he Bradley’s thought words and concepts that can be calls immediate experience and manifested, for the applied to Eliot’s practice of poetry. For Eliot, as for person or finite center, as feeling. To paraphrase Bradley, feelings are the mediator between immedi- how Eliot will express it later in his poetry, we can ate experience and one’s ordinary experience of know only that we have been there, but not when objects in action. “We find our feelings . . . on the or where, and certainly never why. one side to be of the same nature as immediate It is intriguing, nevertheless, that, by this defini- experience, and on the other to present no radical tion of experience as unknowable but experienced, difference from other objects.” Their capacity to poetry, particularly those artfully crafted verbal be of one and of the other extreme of experience mélanges of Eliot’s sort, becomes the less that is enables Eliot to find in feelings the ideal tool for more. There is in such poetry a verbal approxi- both expressing and giving significance to experi- mation of immediate experience, but only for the ence. “There is no reason, so long as the one feeling reader who can see, through the surface confusions lasts and pervades consciousness, why I should cut of almost any Eliot poem, a genuine attempt on off part of the total content and call it the object, his part to use language, tone, and image to mimic reserving the rest to myself under the name of feel- the essentially impermeable quality of experience ing.” At the moment of the unattended experience, without sacrificing the bits and pieces of sensations that is to say, there is no separation between the and associations by which it can be consciously object and the feeling that it inspires or, vice versa, known and acknowledged, although never com- between the feeling and the objects that it draws to pletely understood. its attention. It is apparent, then, that there are definite Much more interesting, however, is what Eliot, enough affinities between Bradley’s philosophy and by then already the poet of such painful slices of Eliot’s poetry to establish a clear relationship or social drama as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- range of influences between the one and the other. frock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” says in the next How those influences actually worked themselves sentence: “It is only in social behaviour, in the con- out, however, must remain, always, in the realm of flict and readjustment of finite centres, that feelings chicken-and-egg arguments. Eliot may have found and things are torn apart.” Given a universe, that is expressed in the logical terms of Bradley’s philo- to say, in which there were only a single perceiving sophical discourse certain predispositions toward subject and a single object to be perceived, there his own unarticulated perceptions of experience would still be a disconnect between the percep- that he was already expressing in poetry rather tion and the actual experience of perceiving. But than philosophy. A reader, however, coming upon in a social universe of myriad finite subjects and an these essentials of Bradley’s philosophy, once made infinity of objects, including other finite subjects, familiar with Eliot’s early and intense interest in there can be no way for a single experience to

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be isolated from the rest, let alone for immediate the young poet and philosopher’s grasp of reality experience to be recognized as anything more than hospitable ground in which such a skeptical ide- an intellectual construct. And for Eliot, because for alism might take virtually instantaneous root and Bradley, it is decidedly not that. Rather, it is experi- abundantly flourish. ence itself. In Bradley, as in Eliot’s poetry, the usual distinc- Eliot concludes that there is a “continuous tran- tions between subject and object, appearance and sition by which feeling becomes object and object reality, idea and meaning, are erased, not because becomes feeling.” The context of his remarks does they do not exist, but because they are artificial not require it, but Eliot could have gone on at this distinctions, categories, that facilitate thinking juncture to say that it is that sort of sliding scale, about the nature of reality but do not actually rep- wherein a perception moves off from its immedi- resent it. The distinction, too, between perception acy further and further into the category of words and apprehension is erased, since to perceive is to by which feelings and objects are made fixed and apprehend. The difficulty comes in trying to make permanently identified, that makes for both the those apprehended perceptions consciously know- problems and the strengths of poetic discourse, able, a feat that generally can be accomplished only especially as it is manipulated by him. Put simply, by translating them into words, which are cognate naming a thing diminishes it, and this is as true of to an experience but never the experience itself. It feelings as of objects. Poetic discourse, however, is this effort at using words to make conscious the by not being as constrained by rules of syntax and unconscious that accounts for the common illu- associational logic, can enlarge the experience of a sion that verbal formulation is in the end what feeling or object, thereby allowing words to approx- constitutes thought, even constitutes understand- imate Bradleyan immediate experience. ing and meaning, rather than the recognition that such formulations can only be the result of the CRITICAL COMMENTARY diminishment of actual experience and are never To appreciate the full extent of Bradley’s influence its enlargement. on Eliot, the reader must remember that, by June This can be easily demonstrated. Describe any- 1913, many of Eliot’s early masterworks, on which thing, even a simple object. It will not take long to a great deal of his critical reputation would depend realize that no amount of detail can possibly do jus- until the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, tice to the thing that one is attempting to describe. had already been written, even if not yet published. Now try applying that same principle to describ- These would include “The Love Song of J. Alfred ing an event—falling in love, for example—that Prufrock,” “Portrait of a Lady,” “Preludes,” and is taking place over an extended period of time “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”—hardly an incon- and involves a wider and wider variety of objects, siderable achievement. It would hardly be accurate, places, and people. then, to assign to the influence of Bradley qualities Here can be found a likely source for Eliot’s that are of the very essence of Eliot’s poetic tech- affinity with Bradleyan thought. Because the sug- nique, particularly that uniquely opaque style and gestive is not as self-limiting as the explicit, the vision of his that, for many, would become virtually suggestive word is more revealing than the clini- synonymous with . cally precise word, and yet suggestion requires a Bradleyan thought, nevertheless, focused on new measure and new levels of precision. Here also experience as perceivable but otherwise unknow- the modernist idea of the primacy of the image able, because the very effort to describe or to comes to mind. The image is more than a clever know it is itself a part of the experience that one is combining of words; it is a way of seeing some- attempting to know or describe. It is in the subtle thing’s essential quality so exactly that a few choice elegance of that view of experience as a describ- words may suffice to present—“re-present”—that able event that Bradley, even if he did not have an something. Whether or not the words do equal initial influence in shaping Eliot’s mind, found in the object or the experience, however, must be left

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to sheer hopefulness and conjecture on both the dissertation would also know that he had been poet’s and the reader’s part. But as much is equally schooled to think of feelings with objects, thereby true of any other verbalization of experience. adding a provocative twist to these occasions. For the Bradleyan, however, that kind of ambigu- Rather than imagining that the objective correla- ity is not a cause for frustration, for the excitement tive attaches real events and real objects to things of the intellectual chase is to contrive ways by which that are otherwise not real except for the perceiver, experience, within these constraints, can neverthe- that is, feelings, Eliot would regard feelings as more less be further known and further defined. Feeling real than the objects and events used to broadcast gains primacy over thought as a result, since feeling them, particularly inasmuch as, in keeping with his is more immediate than thought. Yet thought can way of thinking through Bradley, they are them- serve its purpose as well, shaping feelings into the selves objects. contours of language where they can be expressed Any apparent complexities and confusions here and explored, even if only inadequately. This is, of can be dispelled by realizing that such terms as real course, Prufrock’s world, where it is impossible to and ideal have different meanings from their ordi- say just what one means. In Bradleyan thinking, nary usages for a man like Eliot, who is thinking in then, just as the usual distinctions between subject terms of the interface of the mind with experience, and object blur, so do the distinctions between the which is itself being defined in a specialized sense as idea and its meaning. The idea is the meaning, for something on which the mind can reflect but not which its various expressions are always something immediately perceive. Put more simply, a choice of less than the idea, or its meaning, itself. word or tone of voice or attitude of language can As much established regarding Eliot’s views of be as much an objective correlative from the point feelings and the objects of feeling as they are intel- of view of such a mind and a poet as an object or lectually dealt with in his dissertation, the further event. This would certainly explain how the osten- one explores Eliot’s treatment of Bradley, the more sible opacity of an Eliot poem or even a line of his insights it may provide into the relationship among verse can quickly dissipate once that poem or line is Eliot’s intellectual interests, his critical theory, and construed as the outer reflection of an inner condi- his poetry writing. If, on the basis of his exposure tion, itself otherwise impossible to represent or see. to Bradleyan thought, for example, Eliot equates Objects, for Eliot, need not have mass and bulk; feelings not only with the very nature of experi- in fact, the more significant they are, the less likely ence but with those objects that constitute it, then it is that they will. When he seeks in his study Eliot’s particular formulation of the “objective cor- of Bradley to distinguish between the words real relative,” that famous critical turn of phrase of his and ideal, there is much more at stake than philo- first introduced in his essay “Hamlet and His Prob- sophic hair-splitting. To put it succinctly, whereas lems,” may take on an entirely different cast of the typical reader would see the poet using “real” thought as well. or concrete things to represent things that most Generally, an objective correlative can be do not think of existing at all, that is, feelings, regarded as the outward manifestation of inward because they are not substantial, it is their very things. The yellow fog of “The Love Song of J. lack of substantiality that would make them all the Alfred Prufrock” broadcasts, for the reader, the more real for this philosopher/poet. The difficulty, murkiness of Prufrock’s social environment and indeed, comes for the poet in trying to express the social standing—his feeling that, as an insider, he immediate experience of feeling in the most pre- is an outsider. The madman’s shaking a dead gera- cise terms possible, while being aware that mere nium in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” gives the objects or events, as objects and events, are far less reader another vivid image—and objective correla- substantial things from the point of view of their tive—for the seething turmoil of disconnects that significance to the perceiving mind. afflict the madman’s mind and his sense of propor- The yellow fog, for example, is capable of giving tion, let alone reality. Readers familiar with Eliot’s voice to only a single aspect of Prufrock’s complex

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inner feelings, after all; in a like manner, the dead It is interesting, therefore, that Eliot finds himself geranium, ultimately, says very little by saying too in disagreement with Bradley on this very point— much. In his dissertation, then, Eliot can say that Bradley’s contention that the idea is a symbol. For if “an idea is not a symbol,” although it might serve the idea is merely a marker for the essential reality, present purposes better to say that “an idea is not or immediate experience, then it merely represents its symbol.” So, then, he continues, “an idea as it, rather than being an actual manifestation of it. contrasted with reality, is something which cannot This disagreement, once the philosophical niceties be grasped—for it can only be described in terms are accounted for, can perhaps be laid to rest as a of that reality—in which case you have the reality distinction between Eliot the philosophy student and not the idea.” and Eliot the practicing poet. In Four Quartets, Eliot would speak of having the “We have found,” Eliot observes in an effort experience but missing the meaning; here, nearly a to summarize the premise on which the rest of his quarter century earlier, is a forecast of what this dissertation will depend, “that reality is in a sense means. Simply, if a thing cannot be described in dependent upon thought, upon a relative point of terms of itself, the same is infinitely more true of view, for its existence.” Idea, in other words, is what we call an idea. Yet the idea is the very kernel everything, but to the perceiving mind, it emerges of meaning around which and from which the per- from reality, rather than being the source of that ceived reality of things emerges. For all its appar- reality. Ideas enter the picture, therefore, not as ently intensified objectivity, poetry, in these terms, symbols of reality but as its very substance. “For ulti- becomes the expression of a second-best or lesser mately the world is completely real or completely reality, since it cannot possibly express the primary ideal, and ideality and reality turn out to be the reality that the idea itself embodies. Yet, too, of same . . . itself at another stage of development.” all human discourse, when done well, it is poetic Eliot’s insistence on the primacy of the idea, discourse that comes closest to achieving just that itself contingent on feeling, out of which what we end, where reality and the ideas that inform it meet call the real emerges is, in a literal manner of speak- in feelings. ing, the very nature of poetry, particularly a poetry To grasp this concept totally, however, a reader of the kind that Eliot composes. In it the images would have to be extremely aware that idea and drawn from the so-called reality associated with opinion are not interchangeable terms, that, rather, experience are subjugated to the necessity of the the idea is in fact reality. Whereas in the common prevailing idea that is seeking expression, often at parlance an idea is everything contrary to the real the expense of what may typically seem to be good or, as it is also characterized, to the concrete, in the sense or at the very least traditional definitions of parlance of Bradleyan philosophy, an idea is of the meaning. It is vital to think of idea in a Bradleyan very essence of reality (which is why his is called an sense, however, not as a substitute terms for theme idealist philosophy). As it were, the idea is the mean- or concept. If the Bradleyan idea is meaning, then ing at the core of experience, but one that remains all else must be made coordinate to it, even the incapable otherwise of expression for the very reason normal rules of syntax and logic. This practice of that its meaning is manifested only in terms of itself poetry writing virtually turns the poem inside out or, in Bradleyan terms, of immediate experience. so that what the poet is saying at any one time is Thus, Eliot will ultimately go as far as to take a verbal sketch of what is meant, rather than its issue with his mentor Bradley on the very matter of expression. the relationship between an idea and its meaning. Eliot’s famous opacities, his virtually intentional His taking issue with Bradley is not at all unusual. obscurities, the surprising turns and contradictory Eliot’s is a doctoral dissertation, after all; he is try- tones, the fragmentary verses and barely concealed ing to demonstrate not simply that he understands allusions—all of these devices and techniques of his Bradley but that he has evaluated the logical valid- point in one direction, and that is back into these ity of Bradley’s position. musings of his mind on the exact constituents not

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of reality but of experience itself. For Eliot, poetry is delineates an England, and English language, that the ultimate expression of the knowledge of experi- is starting to mark a unique place as a European ence, which is itself an elusive reality contained in culture, freeing itself of the spiritual influences of ideas that are the same as feelings. Whether his papist Rome and the linguistic and cultural influ- attraction to and studies in Bradley instigated these ences of Norman France. notions on the nature of ideas or merely provided Ultimately, however, it is the times that make Eliot with a vehicle with which to give them a the man, and Eliot sees Andrewes as a beneficiary voice of their own is impossible to determine. That of the intellectually and spiritually powerful fer- his poetry would continue to evince these founda- ment of his times. “Intellect and sensibility were in tions in Bradleyan idealism is equally impossible to harmony; and hence arise the particular character- deny, as any review of his published Harvard dis- istics of [Andrewes’] style.” In comparison with our sertation will readily attest. own time, which has “a vocabulary for everything and exact ideas about nothing,” a prose stylist of Andrewes’s intellect and sensibility, feeding off the vitality of the moral and spiritual debates of his “Lancelot Andrewes” (1926) time, take “a word and derive the world from it” (an echo there, perhaps, of the line regarding the Although the present essay is not one filled with the Christ Child that Eliot, in “Gerontion” in 1919, sort of “quotable quotes” for which Eliot was still had borrowed from Andrewes: “the word within renowned at this point in his literary career, this the world, unable to speak a word”). short piece, “Lancelot Andrewes,” an appreciation It is in comparison not with the modern instant of the 17th-century Anglo-Catholic divine, never- that is the early 20th century, however, but with theless occupies a significant place in the poet-crit- John Donne, Andrewes’s contemporary and near ic’s canon because of its subject’s many associations rival as an outrageously inventive prose stylist, that with Eliot’s other intellectual interests at the time. Eliot truly makes Andrewes shine and takes read- For one thing, Andrewes, in his sermons, was to ers into the heart of his thesis. “Of the two men,” the development of modern English prose what his whose sermons are often so similar in their vigor fellow divine, the poet JOHN DONNE, was to English of tone and style and imaginative illustrativeness poetry. In keeping with the same metaphysical tra- as to be nearly indistinguishable, “Andrewes is the dition of a strong, natural language and powerfully more mediaeval,” Eliot intones, and this is because extravagant metaphors that characterized Donne’s Andrewes “is the more pure, and . . . his bond was poetry, Andrewes’s sermons wasted little in get- with the Church, with tradition.” The cornerstones ting emphatically to the point; as a stylist alone, of Andrewes’s sense and sensibility were theology, Andrewes earns the same sort of laurels that Eliot the liturgy, and prayer, while Donne, influenced, accorded Donne in “The Metaphysical Poets.” Eliot suspects, by his own earlier Jesuit training, is “the more modern . . . [and] much less the mystic SYNOPSIS . . . much less traditional.” Rather, Donne is “pri- Eliot begins the essay at hand by singling Andrewes marily interested in man.” out as “the first great preacher of the English Cath- olic Church.” This, of course, is meant in contradis- CRITICAL COMMENTARY tinction to the Roman Catholic Church, to which Eliot’s equating, through Andrewes, the traditional the English faithful had adhered until the reign of with the church and the liturgy, while equating Henry VIII a century or more before Andrewes’s the modern, through Donne, a poet whose sen- time. If Eliot’s qualification—“English Catholic”— sibility Eliot otherwise greatly admires, with the makes his praise of Andrewes’s skills as a preacher human seems to be a rather unfortunate bifurca- seem somewhat guarded, as if Eliot would rather tion—unless one realizes how, in more contempo- err on the side of historical cautiousness, it also rary terms even than his own, Eliot is not inveighing

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against Donne as a spokesman for a common more or less declared his independence from any humanity but as a purveyor of what subsequently notion that he wished to represent the interests came to be known as secular humanism. To accept of free thinking and radicalism that were other- this line of reasoning, however, the reader must be wise typical of mainstream modernism. This “sud- prepared to acknowledge Eliot’s sense of an inextri- den shift” did not really come as a surprise to cable interrelatedness between thought and feeling most. The poet of The Waste Land, that modernist in cultures. This interrelatedness the poets both text that in 1922 had come virtually to embody mirror and help create, in the process having much the chaotic turmoil and fear typifying the pres- more of an effect on our capacity to think and to ent, had by 1927 become a convert to Anglican- feel than is ever recognized in living memory. ism and a British subject. In the same preface, he In his far more celebrated essay from 1921, “The announced three future works, including one to Metaphysical Poes,” in which Eliot coined the be titled The Principles of Modern Heresy. One of phrase dissociation of sensibility, he had originally the principal architects of modernism as a liter- singled out the English metaphysical poets, among ary phenomenon was essentially declaring war on whom Donne was the foremost practitioner, as a modernism as a way of thinking and behaving, and generation of poets capable of devouring experi- by 1934 he would follow through on his promise ence in a language that balanced the most forceful with After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Her- thoughts with the most highly charged passions. esy, a veritable conservative manifesto in which Thereupon followed, however, in Eliot’s view, that he disowns most of his fellow modernist poets and dissociation of sensibilities from which English their beliefs. poetry had never recovered, so that the harmoni- “Lancelot Andrewes,” coming as it does from a ous expression of thought and feeling in a single more quiescent, earlier moment in the shaping of work has never subsequently been achieved with these developing retrenchments for Eliot in liter- such remarkable clarity. ary, social, and historical matters, provides insights Andrewes, though a prose stylist, can be placed that, outside this broader context, might other- in that school of Donne. In fact, Eliot offers wise be missed entirely. That is not to say that, Andrewes even more accolades than Donne in the for the most part, “Lancelot Andrewes” is not, as essay at hand, and that is due to another series was stressed at the outset, primarily an appreciation of associations that “Lancelot Andrewes” has for of the 17th-century divine and prose stylist of the Eliot’s continuing development as a social critic. essay’s title. That Eliot does not make much of a Beginning with an essay such as “The Function distinction between the one and the other suggests of Criticism” in 1923, Eliot’s literary criticism, how inextricably language and belief (attitudes of which had always evinced a measure of cultural belief, that is to say, rather than their content) are conservatism, began to take on more and more bound together in this poet’s critical imagination. decidedly sociopolitical overtones that had, mean- In “Lancelot Andrewes,” as a consequence, while, a more and more orthodox religious bent the attentive reader will hear Eliot first coherently to them. In short, Eliot began to espouse what he drawing the lines of battle along which he will would proclaim to be his self-styled characteristics wage his own lifelong campaign in what has come as a “classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and to be known as the culture wars. Eliot makes it anglo-catholic in religion,” formulations that he clear that he is staking his claim with and on those would officially declare in his preface to a 1928 who uphold the most rigid orthodoxy on all fronts. volume of essays to which “Lancelot Andrewes” And yet, in a suitably contradictory fashion, Eliot’s provides the title piece. first hero in this war, Andrewes, is a man whose For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and motivating impulse, as an “English Catholic”—a Order would be published in 1928 by Faber & Protestant—is to stand, with his sovereign, in open Gwyer, the London publishing house with whom defiance of the prevailing orthodoxy of his time, Eliot had been employed since 1925, and in it he Roman Catholicism.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 286 9/5/07 2:36:10 PM “Literature of Politics, The” 287 Landscapes (1934) very quickly, and none too subtly, changes his topic from the literature of politics in general to the “lit- erature of Conservatism,” an entirely different but See MINOR POEMS. hardly unrelated topic. As much established, he appeals to the bibli- ography to be found in Lord Hugh Cecil’s 1912 volume Conservatism to identify England’s most “Literature of Politics, The” prominent conservative writers, among whom (1955) Cecil places the 17th-century philosopher Henry St. John Bolingbroke, the 18th-century political First presented on April 19, 1955, as a lecture at a philosopher Edmund Burke, the romantic-era poet literary luncheon organized by the London Conser- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the 19th-century vative Union, “The Literature of Politics” was later politician and erstwhile novelist Benjamin Dis- collected in Eliot’s last collection of prose, To Criti- raeli. Only Coleridge, Eliot notes, is a writer of his cize the Critic, which was published posthumously own ilk, that is, a poet, whereas the other three by Faber & Faber in 1965. developed their political from varying degrees of practical experience. Using Lord Cecil’s SYNOPSIS list as a benchmark, then, Eliot proposes that it is Eliot’s title suggests that he will devote the weight unlikely that common principles can be found that of his expertise to a topic that had fairly monopo- might link the four as exemplars of skills that may lized public interest as a matter of serious concern be necessary to produce a “literature of politics.” for virtually all of the 20th century and that contin- Rather, Eliot suggests that if the four offer a ues to show no signs of abating in the 21st. While range of degrees of skill and experience between it may seem that a poet who had written so widely the literary and the political intellect, it would and for so long on the topics of poetry and belief itself suggest that such a literature can emerge as and of poetry and philosophy, not to mention of much from men of action as from men of thought society and culture in general, would have an abid- and reflection, and that insight enables Eliot to ing interest in political issues as well, as much is formulate his central thesis: If by virtue of its lit- simply not the case. This is not to say that Eliot erary heroes, English conservatism can be said would not have had the same interest in politics as to have set a single, common standard for itself any reasonably well-informed and responsible citi- through the centuries, then that standard requires zen of one of the Western democracies. However, that it foster a spirit of practical flexibility that is political writing, either his own or by others, was itself imbued with a consistent body of principles. not his forte, nor did he ever make any attempt to In this regard, Eliot reiterates a point that he had claim that it was, including in this lecture on that stressed more forcefully and at greater length in very topic. his 1948 prose treatise, Notes towards the Definition Indeed, it seems that Eliot was the guest lecturer of Culture, and that is to plead for a harmonious largely because of the literary associations that his interaction in affairs of state between the so-called name could conjure, above all his considerable intelligentsia, or the clerisy—men of the mind, as celebrity, as well as for his decades-old credentials Coleridge called them—and those men of action as a major conservative thinker. At the very least, who are more commonly thought to be at home in his opening remarks, Eliot does nothing to dispel in the political arena. Eliot envisions “dangers for that distinct impression, thereby confirming it. “I society” when those opposing but complementary am merely a man of letters,” he confesses, one who functions become too divided and compartmental- has “never taken any part in politics other than that ized to the point that “men of one profession can of a voter . . . and that of a reader.” Furthermore, in no longer understand the mind and temperament an apparent deference to his audience’s interest, he of men of another.”

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The long history of the literature of English asserts, and that domain, he concludes, is the conservatism powerfully suggests that that need proper domain for the literature of politics. There not be the case, so that men of one cast of mind, the thinking and the writing can be focused, in the writers, can codify the behavior of men of Eliot’s view, on the most authentic political con- another, those so-called men of action. “To know siderations: “What is Man? What are his limita- what to surrender, and what to hold firm,” Eliot tions? What is his misery and what his greatness? writes, “and indeed to recognize the situation of and What, finally, his destiny?” That sounds much critical choice when it arises, is an art requiring . . . more like the poet of the Four Quartets, however, resources of experience, wisdom and insight.” That than the conservative spokesperson, and that may is what the political writer can bring to the table in very well be his point: that ultimately the literature the midst of deliberations that often leave too little of politics is poetry. time for proper reflection before action must ensue. So, then, there must be “no complete separation of function between men of thought and men of action,” but the writer may often be swallowed up “Little Gidding” (1942) in such a maelstrom of short-term decisions and solutions. That there should be no complete sepa- See FOUR QUARTETS. ration between one function and the other does not mean that the writer, the man of thought, should not be wary of erasing the distinction himself in his own life and work. Eliot holds up the example of the archconserva- “Love Song of J. Alfred tive French political thinker and activist Charles Prufrock, The” (1915) Maurras (1868–1952), a major voice for the reac- tionary monarchist principles of the Catholic No poet in memory has ever had quite so spectacu- Action Français. During his own youthful sojourn lar a debut as the young T. S. Eliot when his poem in France in 1910–11, Eliot had been attracted to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was first the militantly traditionalist biases of the Action published in Poetry magazine in 1915, thanks in française movement, and some believe that his large part to the good offices of another relatively eventual move to classicism, royalism, and Catholi- young American poet, EZRA POUND. As with any cism found its roots there, although a fertile soil other event of great moment in its particular field, was also required to begin with. These many years hindsight may give an unfair advantage. Certainly later, Eliot holds Maurras up as an example of what the great world did not come to a standstill to a writer ought not to do in the political sphere. witness let alone pay homage to the event of the If, Eliot muses, Maurras had “confined himself to poem’s publication. Nevertheless, for those who literature, and to the literature of political theory, were avid supporters of the revolution in the arts and had never attempted to found a political party, then taking place, the publication of “Prufrock” a movement . . . then those of his ideas which were signaled a turning point in the art of writing Ameri- sound and strong might have spread more widely, can poetry from which there would henceforth be and penetrated more deeply, and affected more no turning back. While it would be wrong to give sensibly the contemporary mind.” either Eliot or his poem too much of the credit for Eliot ends by proposing an entirely different tack creating a revolution in the art of poetry writing, for the writer when it comes to politics. Borrowing the fact remains that readers of today do have the a term from an Oxford theology professor, Eliot advantage of hindsight, so they come to “Prufrock” refers to what he calls the “pre-political area.” It as a poem whose reputation precedes it—a remark- is the domain where the questions and issues are able feat considering that the work of literature not practical but ethical, even theological, Eliot in question is not some ancient text by Homer or

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Aeschylus, or even a venerable classic from the manent human impulse. To give that permanent time of DANTE ALIGHIERI or WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, human impulse a body, Eliot would argue, is the but was first composed less than a century ago, function of poetry. Prufrock is just such a body. when its creator was barely 23. However, the poem strikes readers as being as BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS fresh and new today as it was when Pound first How so young and comparatively isolated a poet encountered it, because, among its many other came to write one of the most famous poems of features, “Prufrock” remains a classic example of the early 20th century, itself one of the most pro- literary modernism, a work from that period in ductive periods of literary accomplishments and literary history that prided itself on its capacity advances in English since the time of Shakespeare, for never repeating the same act twice. “Make it remains something of a mystery. It is not atypical new,” Pound’s poetic rule of thumb became the for a perfectly ordinary combination of experiences rallying cry for an age of virtually ceaseless explora- and opportunities to have an extraordinary result. tion, innovation, and experimentation in both the In the case of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- themes and the methods of poetry writing, and it frock,” the primary shaping events seem to have casts some light on the quality of Eliot’s achieve- been an unusually refined sensibility matched with ment that Pound would famously remark that, with a high, and highly educated, intelligence and an “Prufrock,” Eliot had made himself modern all on extremely dry wit. Eliot would later argue that one his own. may never be certain what combination of perfectly From the title itself to the ominously cryptic everyday activities can nevertheless be altered, in ending, in which an anonymous “we” drowns in the creative mind, into art, or into what he termed sea of human voices, the poetry of “The Love Song art emotions. of J. Alfred Prufrock” continues to challenge read- Since Eliot wrote the poem after having spent ers’ expectations both of what constitutes poetry some time in BOSTON, Massachusetts, and environs and what constitutes meaning. Does this “we,” for as a student, first at Milton Academy and later at example, truly drown in a sea of human voices, or Harvard College, it is easy to associate the poem’s does it drown in some other sort of sea because social milieu, as redolent of a drawing-room society those voices have awakened it, and if so, from as it is, with that New England city, renowned to what, and what, then, is that other sea? And why this day for being a socially upright and closed com- the editorial “we,” anyhow, when it is clear that munity. (Although it may be that reference, in the Prufrock has been speaking till that moment of opening stanza, to oyster shells that brings a seaside and for himself? But has he been? The poem opens, town like Boston to mind.) We know, for example, after all, with that invitation to “you and I,” a defi- that while Eliot was not himself a proper Bostonian, nite “we” again, no doubt, but not one that can be having been born to an old New England family but easily identified. Rather, the further the poem pro- in the comparative wilds of ST. LOUIS, Missouri, the ceeds, the more it seems as if Prufrock is speaking Eliots were a prominent, upper-middle-class fam- to no one but himself, since one of the points that ily. So Eliot knew a world of morning coats and of he continually stresses is that no one will listen to afternoon teas and polite conversation about the him in any case, no matter what he says or does. arts and all the other finer things in life, including Those are just a few of the problems that the well-behaved if not even aloof young women. poem poses for readers to this day, and yet its Eliot’s would have been a world, in other words, enduring reputation as a masterwork of 20th-cen- where matters of manners and decorum took pre- tury literature serves as a reminder that the work cedence over more common human impulses, such endures not because of its critical reputation, which as sexual desire, perhaps, not to mention some- is considerable, or because of its difficulties, which thing as simple as the longing for the natural ease are equally so, but because of its great beauty as a of human interaction without the constraints of work expressing what Eliot would later call a per- social proprieties. The young Eliot would himself

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tion. The frenetic literary life of the French capital In conceptualizing “Prufrock,” in other words, would also provide the incentive, the catalyst for Eliot is able to play on his special knowledge as the experimentation and change. We are encouraged insider to use the techniques of an outside culture, to think of literary modernism as a time in which the French, to criticize the inside culture. literature, but particularly poetry, renewed itself. A part of the great irony of the poem is that its But despite the innovative work of Eliot’s Ameri- speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock, is also an insider whose can precursors such as Walt Whitman and Emily crisis is created by the fact that he feels like an out- Dickinson, poetry had first renewed itself not in sider within his own small if not in fact tight social America or even Britain but in France during the circle, an individual burdened with an immense latter half of the 19th century. social discomfort and riddled with both a fear of Eliot was already quite familiar with the work of failure and a reluctance to upset the apple cart of French poets Arthur Rimbaud, CHARLES BAUDE- his own sense of alienation. This doubling effect, LAIRE, and Jules Laforgue, thanks again in large part precarious though it may be, is used to immense to Symons’s landmark study in English on these advantage by Eliot throughout the poem, which so French symbolist poets. Their new kind of poetry, perfectly matches topic and technique, for exam- for the French, focused on the city and on the plight ple, that it seems more a poetic exercise than a of the intellect, the will, and the spirit of modern poetic statement, putting the reader continuously city-dwellers, young, sophisticated, and well-edu- on guard but off his or her game, as it were. cated but nevertheless overwhelmed by impersonal public and social demands in conflict with personal SYNOPSIS confusions and general chaos—individuals awash The Title and Epigraph in a sea of contending private emotions and desires So pervasive are Eliot’s techniques and reputation in a world of bureaucrats and paradox. Uniquely by now that readers nowadays fail to realize how and together, these French poets, far more than startling it might have been to an English-language either their English or American counterparts, had reader of the time to come across a serious poem by fashioned a poetic tool that, without sacrificing any an American poet with a title as silly-sounding as poet’s first concerns, which are for language and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and an epi- uncensored self-expression, could comment never- graph in a foreign language, its source unidentified, theless on a culture gone awry. Whatever else may yet one that turns out to be from the pages of the have drawn the young Eliot to the composition first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Inferno— of poetry in the first place, he found his mentors that is, from the depths of hell itself. This literary in these poets, Laforgue primarily, who seemed, classic would hardly have been an unknown com- for all their foreignness otherwise, to share his eye modity in academic circles, but given its Italianate, for finding the famished soul in the midst of life’s papist leanings, it would hardly have been thought increasingly materialist feast. of as mainstream, popular literature. For Eliot to Is it any wonder, then, that Eliot dishes up, in cite it without any other species of textual citation “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem that was therefore either a daring or a thoughtless act— is like nothing that had ever come before it in Eng- unless the very act of leaving his readers in the dark lish? It is as if the freedom that he was experienc- as to the epigraph’s source served the purposes of ing in Paris combined with the liberating spirit of the direction and the purpose of the original poetry the times, inasmuch as poetic expression was con- to come. cerned, and the result was a poem that expressed a To appreciate any Eliot poem, at least from the yearning for freedom and liberation in the language early periods of his career, readers need to under- and settings of all the traditional social and cultural stand Eliot’s most transparent literary technique, constraints to which Eliot, scion of an old, estab- and that is his ability to mix up the most serious lished, and prominent New England family, had with the most frivolous elements without either become accustomed. warning or much indication as to which is which.

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For now, however, it is important to observe in that a man named Guido da Montefeltro, who is being particular mixing of the absurd (Prufrock’s name), punished in the Eighth Circle of the Inferno, or with the ominous (an epigraph from a poem about pretty deep down in hell, for having given false hall) that only someone who knew intimately the counsel. These sinners are among the fraudulent in life and lifestyle that was about to be portrayed in Dante’s scheme of things infernal, and for having the poem could so thoroughly and simultaneously abused the gift of human speech to deceive and, both echo and betray that world’s values. so, abused the good faith of others, these particular This dilemma is established as early as the poem’s sinners, Guido among them, are imprisoned forever title and epigraph. Readers regarding the title of the in tongues of fire, emblematic of speech, which poem for the first time undoubtedly come up against is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Encountering and rec- a series of expectations that are no sooner set in ognizing him, Dante wants to hear Guido’s story motion than dashed. Whatever the idea of a love of how he came to be here among those damned song may be in the most general terms, no one is eternally to hell, whereupon Guido, cautious about likely to be thrilled at hearing that it is the love song besmirching whatever good name he might still of a man named J. Alfred Prufrock. Indeed, such a have among the living, tells Dante, “If I were to name reads more like something found on a calling believe that I was speaking to anyone who would card than in the title of an composition as intimate ever return to the world, this flame would cease as a love song. Lovers, after all, do not refer to each to stir any further, but since no one ever returned other by their legal or formal names, unless it is out alive from these depths, if what I hear is true, then of some species of skewed affection, nor is a man without fear of infamy I respond to you.” who goes by a moniker as presumptuous as J. Alfred, Before jumping to conclusions, the reader should with its profound hints of stuffed-shirtedness, likely be warned that this is a highly textured passage in to give the automatic impression that he should be its original context alone. A quick take on the epi- either the subject or the originator of a love song. graph, once it has been deciphered, could lead the Whatever readers may make of all these trou- unwary reader to conclude that the poetry to come bling matters (even if it is only at that unconscious, that the epigraph is ostensibly introducing should subliminal level where Eliot the critic will later say be read in the context of someone who imagines the poem does its real work on us), they have been himself to be in hell, or at least a hellish situation. thrown off guard and invariably puzzled as to what Such a conclusion, while it may have possibilities, sort of a love song they should be prepared to find would be hasty nevertheless. For one thing, the as the poem begins. A comic turn or parody? Pre- passage for Dante’s purposes alone is full of dra- tentious nonsense? matic ironies—the speaker, Guido da Montefeltro, Yet, before the poem begins, that strange—in is a liar, after all, surrounded in hell by other liars, the sense that it is literally foreign—epigraph inter- not to mention the fact that hell’s master, Satan, venes. To learn that it is a passage from Dante’s is called the father of lies. Yet with incredulity, Inferno works against the apparent air of a frivolity Guido imagines that what he has heard is “true.” that has been established by the poem’s contradic- Who is he kidding—himself or Dante? For another tory title. The epigraph also poses a puzzle until its thing, Guido has figured wrong in Dante’s case. source is identified and its words are translated from Ironically, the person to whom Guido then pro- Italian into English, and this should be taken as the ceeds, without fear of infamy, to tell the tale of poet’s (not the speaker, a crucial distinction as far as his treachery turns out, in the fiction Dante has the dramatic monologue is concerned) warning to created, to be not only someone who will return to the reader to be wary. All is not as it seems. the world of the living but who is also a poet who Once translated, the epigraph may seem enlight- will then write, in the Divine Comedy, an account ening, but even that is only at first glance. Spe- of all that he has seen and heard, including, of cifically, the words are spoken to Dante, who has course, this confession of Guido’s that has been made himself the protagonist of his own poem, by given in the strictest confidence.

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Once put into such a complex context of the regarded as an alias for Eliot, which is an absurd compounded ironies of the deceiver deceived, the proposition). The second most critical require- Eliot epigraph from Dante obscures rather than ment—that there is an audience within the poem clarifies the coming poetry’s tone or meaning, who is also clearly identified—is paid an ironic lip unless, that is, the reader puts the significance of service by Eliot. the epigraph into the broadest possible context. In With Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” an exam- that zone of reference, the reader is encouraged to ple of a well-constructed dramatic monologue, a recognize two primary principles of human com- single reading will readily reveal that the speaker munication: that to be able to understand some- is the duke of Ferrara and that the audience is an one, one must know the language that the other is otherwise unidentified emissary from a count who speaking, either literally (Dante’s Italian) or virtu- is apparently trying to arrange a marriage between ally (class defines language as well, after all), and his daughter and the duke. With “The Love Song that one speaks most freely when, like poor Guido of J. Alfred Prufrock,” however, Eliot only appears da Montefeltro, he feels that he is in the pres- to honor this second requirement of the dramatic ence of a kindred spirit, another damned soul like monologue as well, inasmuch as, in the first stanza, himself. he has his speaker, Prufrock, invite an anonymous The title and the epigraph to “Prufrock” both “you” to accompany him on a speculative visit have prepared the reader for anticipating a struggle involving an “overwhelming question of insidious with meaning that will require rethinking inter- intent”—but that seems to be the end of it. pretive processes of suspicion as well as discovery, As already noted, some take the “you” being because they have also prepared the reader to keep addressed to be the reader. In keeping with the an open mind. In that sense, the opening verses, requirements of the dramatic monologue, however, with their invitation to accompany the speaker the “you” is supposed to be someone to whom Pru- on some not yet defined act of discovery, seem frock is actually speaking in a dramatic context, quite appropriate, and therefore it is not unusual so how can “you” be the reader, one might well for commentators to imagine that the “you” who ask. Other critical speculation has gone as far as is being addressed is the reader, which would be all to suggest that that personage is none other than well and good except that the poem is a dramatic Jean Verdenal, the young Frenchman to whom the monologue. volume (but not the poem) was subsequently dedi- The Dramatic Monologue cated and who had died in combat during World Eliot carefully constructs the poem to keep all of War I at Gallipoli. Others yet have speculated that its elements working at arm’s length both from the “you” is Prufrock’s alter ego, the person he him, the poet, and from its readers by using for the would like to be but feels incapable of ever becom- poem’s ostensible form the dramatic monologue. ing. The only valid conclusion seems to be the con- As a literary genre, the dramatic monologue had clusion that the text itself inspires, and that is that already been put to great and effective use by the the “you” can be anyone and therefore is very likely English poet Robert Browning within decades of the no one—certainly no one in particular. Unlike time that Eliot was writing. Eliot’s is only “ostensi- in the example taken from Browning’s poem, in bly” a dramatic monologue, however, because Eliot which all the duke’s remarks are addressed to and, takes liberties and plays games even with the rela- so, governed by his relationship with the count’s tively uncomplicated rules governing the structure emissary, turning readers of the poem into eaves- of the dramatic monologue. Such a poem should droppers, a further problem is that this “you” intro- have a speaker who is clearly identified as someone duced early in “Prufrock” virtually disappears as an other than the poet; here, the Eliot poem fulfills effective presence from the scene, or at least from the requirement (as the use of the first-person pro- Prufrock’s ken of reference, so that ultimately he noun “I” implies, unless J. Alfred Prufrock is to be or she barely even exists any longer as any sort of

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controlling factor in the direction that Prufrock’s ers not only listen to but struggle to understand a musings take. man who is telling them that he is so insignificant There is one final requirement for the dramatic in his own social circles as to be hardly noticeable, monologue. In keeping with the idea of its being and it is in this very tension, the gap between what dramatic poetry, the dramatic monologue is sup- the reader is being told and who is telling it so that posed to sound like speech in the act of being the language of the poem seems both to separate uttered. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the from and to create reality, that “Prufrock” both abrupt shifts and unexpected turns in Prufrock’s finds and defines its distinctively modernist quali- monologue knows that, for all the beauty of the ties. So, then, the critical principle that has been language as it rolls off the tongue, while it may be a established thus far, and by which a reading of the model of speech’s natural rhythms, it is not in any poem will now proceed, can be stated as follows: way a consecutively coherent commentary. Indeed, To understand “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- it goes out of its way to insist that it is no use to frock,” the reader must understand the speaker, J. regard it in terms of the logic of a natural language Alfred Prufrock—not what he is saying so much as that we have ever heard or encountered before. why he is saying it—and from that angle the poem Those are the more rudimentary elements of the can be most profitably approached. dramatic monologue. When it comes to the real Prufrock’s dilemma is not that he is trapped but issue of presenting a speaker whose predicament that he thinks that he knows that he is trapped, and both engages the reader’s attention and keeps the it is that awful knowledge on his part, be it right or reader’s interest, however, Eliot again breaks all the wrong, that then controls the confused thoughts rules, such as they are. Instead of an engaging char- and feelings that emerge through his monologue. acterization, Prufrock comes through as an unsym- This dilemma is what called an episte- pathetic character whose main claim to fame, and mological one—an intellectual problem, in which to his making demands on our attention and inter- there are conflicts in dealing both what is known est, is that he is seeking sympathy or lamenting his and how it has come to be known. If readers cannot ability to obtain it. There we have the doubling easily make sense out of what Prufrock is saying, it effect again. One half of the equation—Prufrock is is because he cannot make sense of it himself. unlikable—cancels the other—Prufrock wants to As has already been pointed out, Eliot magnifies be liked—leaving readers with the withering sense this kind of a dilemma, for both Prufrock and the of a universal naught that seems to have Prufrock reader, by casting the poem as a dramatic mono- in its vague and paradoxically vacant grip. logue. Someone besides Prufrock—that vague and mysterious “you”—has been fixed in the reader’s The Text mind as a key to the solution to Prufrock’s problem, The charm of a poem like “The Love Song of J. yet the identity of “you” is never clearly established, Alfred Prufrock” is found in its radically altering itself an ironic twist whose effects are impossible to the traditional focus of poetic composition away calculate. And yet, too, that “come hither” open- from theme, what the poet “means,” and toward ing—“Let us go, then, . . .”—allows the poem to gesture, what the speaker is meaning to say, and sound rather like a traditional love song, and maybe why. In the truest sense of the word charm, by that is its purpose. There cannot be a love song, after which is meant the fascination that the poetry con- all, without someone or something to love. Aside tinues to hold over readers, from the novice to the from the fact that Prufrock’s particular brand of love most expert and sophisticated, “Prufrock” is charm- song will quickly prove to be more a lament for his ing. But Prufrock himself is not. That that speaker incapacity or lack of opportunity to love, that open- is imaginary makes for a reading experience that is ing pitch of his to go to where the evening is spread as rich and strange as Prufrock is, as a personage, out against the sky sounds appealing, even alluring boring and bland. Indeed, a large part of Eliot’s enough—until it leads the reader right into the sur- achievement in the poem is that he makes his read- prise of the disjunctive image that then comes. The

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invitation does not set the scene of a pleasant sum- The notorious yellow fog that encircles the mer night but of a patient who has been etherized house in stanza three suddenly makes perfect sense and is lying on a table, ready for surgery. if the reader sees it as an emblem of how trapped So many shocks to the reader’s sensibilities in Prufrock is (a device that Eliot would later call an such quick order cannot be easily overcome, and objective correlative). The yellow fog is, no doubt, as any reader of the poem knows, there is no get- a typical urban blight of the times caused by the ting back on track from that point on. The reader burning of coal with a high sulfur content. But moves more and more deeply into bewilderment the yellow fog in its lurid haziness is also a detail and confusion as the first stanza continues with a that comes in startling juxtaposition to the draw- sort of relentless onslaught of data that promise ing room scenes that Prufrock has otherwise been much but deliver nothing, so that by its conclusion, evoking. Seen that way, the yellow fog calls to mind any notions of whether this is a love song or ques- again that doubleness, those outside in, inside out tions as to whom the speaker is addressing have dislocations and combinations that drive the poem been forsaken, not for lack of interest but because forward. They both mimic and illustrate Prufrock’s they seem to be irrelevant. own sense of being trapped within a body, within Something of real significance has been accom- his formal clothing, within the formal settings, and plished nevertheless; the reader knows that he or within the closed society in which he lives and she is not here to be educated but to listen—as which, like the fog, envelops him. Dante must listen to Guido da Montefeltro. As What provides him his point of reference also the reader listens, he or she will begin to hear what reminds him of how limited his horizons are, so that needs to be heard, and that, rather than the reader’s the evening sky can be figuratively interrupted by assumptions and suspicions, is what will bring him its resemblance to a recumbent and nearly lifeless or her, finally, to an understanding of who Prufrock body, and the fog can, catlike, both circumscribe is—or, rather who he thinks he is, that being, ironi- and constrain Prufrock’s connections to a world cally, a man to whom no one has ever listened and beyond his narrowly defined social environment. to whom no one has ever paid any real attention. The fog, then, represents the hopelessness of a lim- So, then, the women coming and going while they ited vision, a vision limited by fixed ways of think- talk of the great Renaissance Italian artist Michel- ing and feeling, so that the more he might squirm or angelo—or is he the handsome young immigrant might conspire to escape the enclosed social space gardener?—are women whose main fault is that within which he feels himself trapped, “pinned and they are not talking about, let alone to, our hero, wriggling” under both imagined and real evaluative J. Alfred Prufrock. He does not tell his putative gazes, the more he becomes exposed. listener as much, of course, for the simple fact that Eventually, Prufrock clearly becomes someone he is not aware of a listener. who thinks of himself only as he imagines others Here Eliot utilizes the dramatic monologue to its think of him. Is he getting thin? Is his hair getting best advantage, allowing for dramatic irony whereby thin? Does his tie look all right? This corrosive Eliot enables his readers to see things that Prufrock self-consciousness would be bearable, the reader/ cannot see about himself but that he nevertheless listener is led to imagine, except that Prufrock reveals as he continues his love song, which turns wishes not so much to break out as to connect out to be, rather than a dramatic monologue, a with and affect this social order that circum- monologue about himself. In that manner, the reader scribes and dictates his behavior, embodied for can imagine that everything that Prufrock is saying, him in the behavior of women who seem to judge including his observations of both the landscapes him but otherwise ignore him. He has noticed the and the people around him, is true, but only from hair on their arms, a rather animal and somewhat his point of view and only inasmuch as it reveals his sexual if not erotic detail, but he cannot imagine state of mind, a state of mind that revolves primarily, any one of them deigning to speak to him even if perhaps even exclusively around himself. he were to claim that he was Lazarus risen from

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the dead and capable of telling them the most proved to be) incapable of being changed. So too, startling truths. the man who, little more than a voice, begins by Lazarus is a figure from the Gospels, the man disgorging all his pent-up frustrations and confu- whom Jesus raised from the dead, and Prufrock sions on everyone and no one, thereby disburden- also thinks of himself in other biblical terms—as ing himself of what amounts to nothing more than John the Baptist, whose head was brought in on petty complaints and frivolous dislikes, winds up a platter at the behest of Salome after she danced being drowned by or in, of all things, human voices. the dance of the seven veils for Herod Antipas—as well as in literary terms, for example, as the speaker CRITICAL COMMENTARY of Andrew Marvell’s 17th-century love poem, “To It is easy to get so lost in the work as to lose sight His Coy Mistress.” The biblical and literary allu- of the worker, the maker, the poet who gives us sions, besides giving the reader insights into the the poem. For its point must finally be Eliot’s, not fact that Prufrock is widely read, suggest further Prufrock’s, since Prufrock’s point cannot be Eliot’s. how paralyzed Prufrock’s imagination has become, What then is Eliot’s point? for he uses the allusions only to further excoriate Prufrock knows, or appears to think that he and castigate himself. He is, by his own admission, knows, that he does not have the strength neces- not Hamlet, only some officious fool. Even were he sary to force the moment to the sort of crisis that Lazarus, he imagines, one of the women would put will free him, and he thinks that he knows why he him in his place, so he comes by starts and stops to does not have that strength—that he is a lesser, try to recognize and accept that place for what it is, not a greater man. Even that, however, is a sort of to admit that he is not the star of the show, but a self-congratulatory self-dramatization on Prufrock’s lesser character, taking up space, willing to be used, part, for his vision, like anyone’s, is limited by what to be ignored, and not to be missed. he has seen and by what he can see. In that sense, The man who cannot decide whether to dis- Eliot the poet has succeeded in making his char- turb the universe or eat a peach, who sees either acterization of Prufrock seem to be as real as the action of equal duration and importance, is not rest of us, and that is an incredible achievement likely to stay fixed on any one thought or con- in and of itself. The poet, however, is not limited clusion for very long, however. The poetry’s con- by his vision, since he contains it and has created stant vacillation between the ridiculous and the Prufrock for the sake of seeing what is real but must sublime, the high minded and high sounding and otherwise remain invisible. the vulgar and the lowlife, a vacillation that the To divide the creation from its creator, Eliot attentive reader experiences from the poem’s title would argue from early in his literary critical career, onward, follows through all the way to the end is a necessary action if the reader is to benefit from of the poem. Prufrock, inflating and deflating his the creation, and this rule is especially true in Eliot’s ego and expectations in virtually every other line, case in general and in the case of “The Love Song cannot finally arrive at any satisfactory conclusion of J. Alfred Prufrock” in particular. The temptation without betraying the very real qualities of social to identify the poet with the poem is a powerful and emotional—and imaginative—paralysis that one. Eliot certainly understood that, and a poem Eliot has created with the poetry. on the order of Prufrock begs the question. In many Toward the end of his monologue, whose dra- respects Eliot’s life, or at least his background, matic quality is that it is not dramatic at all, Pru- appears to be duplicated or at least reflected in frock is left imagining mermaids who do not like the poem, and these resemblances, casual though him, parting his hair behind, dressing more casually they may be, appear to extend well beyond mat- so that he can walk along the seashore—anything ters of social class and ethnic and regional associa- but taking his own present circumstances in hand tions. Eliot, too, was often described by friends and for what they are and accepting them, particularly acquaintances alike as diffident, stiff, and formal to if they prove to be (as they apparently already have a fault and more aware of proper manners and of

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keeping one’s distance socially than could easily be time and place and class, but all of us. Nor it is regarded as typical even for someone of an upper- merely playing with words or coining a coy phrase middle-class background. Just how much the poet’s to talk of a poetic imagination. The oppositions personality, let alone personal detail, is reflected in and startling juxtapositions and unsettling disloca- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is open to tions and disjunctions that the poetry of “Prufrock” endless speculation, of course. creates throughout serve a purpose that is neither That it would be fair to regard Prufrock as journalistic (making the poem autobiography, for Eliot’s alter ego would be risky critical business at example) or psychological (making the poem a case best, nevertheless. For just one outstanding dis- study) but rather aesthetic in nature. That is to say, crepancy, Eliot was a very young man when he they are intended not to inform or to persuade but composed “Prufrock,” while it seems obvious from to engage the reader in the processes of creation those elements of self-description that emerge from and thereby force the reader to make sense not of Prufrock’s monologue and from his tone of world- the social or personal or psychological but of the weariness that Prufrock is approaching if not in fact delicate balances among perception, experience, in his early middle age. and language that form, for the most part, what Any poet writes out of what he knows, but that is generally called reality. That may seem to be is the end of it. Readers tend to think of the cre- an immense, almost impossible task for the poet ative mind as one that is endlessly inventing; in to take upon himself, let alone credit to a work common parlance, we speak of someone as having of literature, but that is what Eliot the poet is out “a wild imagination,” as if those two words form a to achieve and that is what certainly makes this necessary conjunction. Most of the time, however, particular poem one of the earliest masterworks the imagination functions not to invent but to of literary modernism, as Ezra Pound so astutely transmute what is already there in the experience observed it to be. of the artist into something that, as art, becomes If Eliot is correct and poetry deals with per- a part of universal experience, still recognized as manent human impulses, “Prufrock’s” is a basic, coming from the artist’s general experience but no perhaps even essential human conflict between the more his or hers otherwise than it is mine or yours. desire to be noticed, which makes one dependent Surely that was the case with Eliot, according to his on what other people think, and the desire to be critical pronouncements from as early as the time self-defining and self-directed, which requires one of the 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual not to care what people think. Most manage to Talent.” It stands to reason that his character Pru- separate the requirements of maintaining group frock would move among well-heeled individuals dynamics from the sense of one’s own self-worth, in the formal settings of the drawing-room culture but Prufrock appears to be incapable of resolving that flourished among the venerable old families the conflict, and so his dilemma is created. That of America at the end of the 19th century, not does not make “Prufrock” the poem nothing more because that was a special culture, although it may than a psychological study, however. Prufrock the appear so to a typical reader of today, but because person is not even a characterization; rather, he is that was the world that the young Eliot knew. a verbal construct, a creature made up of words, as But to conclude, then, that there is some sort of Hamlet once said, and thus far less substantial than autobiographical connection between Eliot and the even a phantom of smoke and air. speaker of his poem would be to miss the point that Without diminishing the more or less full-bod- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is, after all, ied individual who nevertheless emerges from the a poem, intended not to record the poet’s life but words, their tone and color and mood, it is not dif- to explore the poet’s observations. Those obser- ficult to imagine that, rather than any truly living vations, if truly regarded as the products of the being, Prufrock represents, embodies, the mascu- poetic imagination, must inevitably involve not line principle, self-centered and vain, awash in a only people unique to Prufrock’s—and Eliot’s— sea of feminine reserve that is itself closeted and

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yet somehow inviting, certainly alluring. Whether exposes his readers to the very sorts of lessons that Prufrock is a man obsessed by women or by their only great art can teach—enduring lessons in the apparent lack of interest in him, or he is a per- human heart. What, however, distinguishes Eliot’s son dissatisfied with his station in life or with the treatment of those tried and true lessons that have life that fate has dealt with, or he is an individual been grist for the literary mill since time imme- uncertain of his sexual identity or simply a lonely morial is that Eliot, taking a page from his men- person craving only a sympathetic ear, his impor- tor Laforgue, requires his readers to engage their tance as a literary creation rests on what his condi- heads, their minds, rather than their own hearts in tion reveals of the human condition. Prufrock is deciphering the depths of mixed hopes and despair, that not-untypical human creature at odds with frustration and encouragement, that, though only both himself and his social and physical environ- the heart can truly plumb them, nevertheless all ment who is struggling nevertheless to find an too often fall on deaf ears, exactly as Prufrock is accommodating reality or even just an accommo- certain that his complaints, his lament, may do. dating point of view whereby he might be at peace Thus, while Prufrock the speaker may sound sen- with himself and at ease in the world. timental or seem to sentimentalize his condition The reader who can see in Prufrock, for all the from time to time, “Prufrock” the poem, by sending apparent idiosyncrasies of class and the times that such a variety of mixed verbal and social signals he might display, not the hero, as he tells us he to readers as have been enumerated here, neither is not, but still the agon, suffering the social and sounds sentimental nor sentimentalizes Prufrock’s moral ills of the ordinary man, can find in him as condition or his social milieu. well the uniquely modernist nature of Eliot’s par- Although this desentimentalized approach ticular creation, a poem that focuses, for all the may often strike the unprepared reader as sound- startling breaks with the past that his new kind ing instead cold or dispassionate, it is nevertheless of poetry might require and result in, the typical in keeping with the modernism that Eliot, with life led by a typical person in the real world, where poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- nature is only a reflection of inner turmoils and the frock,” helped usher in as a literary movement that, unspoken tells more than words ever can. What- ironically enough, saved overt expressions of sen- ever else they may hope to find there, readers are timentality as a literary mode by removing from ultimately drawn to Eliot, to the poem, for what them their patina of a romantic excessiveness. It Prufrock’s plight may tell them of their own inner bears repeating that Eliot accomplishes that feat by conflicts and turmoils, and of their own incessant deflecting his readers’ attention from the poet to effort to find the words to express those truly shap- his speaker, putting all the sentiment, such as it is, ing forces. Primarily his is the desire to be accepted into the mouth of a figure as unromantic and, dare not for what but for who he is, but he appears weak we say, insignificant as Prufrock, thereby deperson- and indecisive because he knows that he is unable alizing those very sentiments. This methodology is to reconcile that dilemma himself. Only others can, in keeping with the poetics that Eliot would shortly so he winds up imagining that his only hope is to delineate in his essay “Tradition and the Individual get away from everyone else. At the poem’s end, Talent,” and the curious reader would do well to Prufrock may be thinking of committing suicide by consult the entry on that essay. drowning himself, but it is the sound of the voices The novice reader, daunted by the appar- of other humans, creatures like himself, that awak- ent complexities of the poetry, would do well also ens him from his self-centered reverie. There are to approach “Prufrock” not as thematic poetry worse awakenings than his. intended to state some specific meaning or to No one likes to be a specimen, his nerves dis- expose an otherwise abstract truth, but as a charac- played for all the world to see, and Prufrock knows ter study whose carefully contrived and manipulated that. But Eliot, by having made his creation a speci- nuances reveal not simply the nature of the speaker men of what it is to be alive and to be human, but the social coordinates of the world in which he

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resides. A person who has to “prepare a face” for his popular appeal, jam-packed with insights from him encounters with others in his social environment into the nature and purpose of the performative and who ineffectually imagines escaping from it is, arts, as well as providing an intriguing defense for after all, uncomfortable not just with all those other cultural diversity. people but with being inside his own skin, from which there is no escape. It is through this careful BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS examination and exposure of a single human being With her saucy petulance and coquettish inno- that Eliot introduces not some preconceived the- cence, Lloyd was a fit topic for such a dual-pur- matic considerations or universal truths to his read- pose treatment. Primarily a comic artist who had ers so much as the means humans devise to cope as become a living legend, she was an early species social beings. Such means become a constant theme of the genuine superstar. Known as the Queen of in Eliot, albeit a necessarily unstated one. the Music Hall, Lloyd was affectionately referred to by her working-class fans as “Our Marie,” and her FURTHER READING death was mourned by tens of thousands when she Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. passed away on October 7, 1922, after a career that New York: Scribner’s, 1949. had spanned more than three decades and earned Everett, Barbara. “In Search of Prufrock.” Critical her fame throughout the English-speaking world. Quarterly 16 (1974): 101–121. It was virtually during the same period, begin- Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot. New York: Dut- ning roughly in 1850, that music hall, as it is called, ton, 1950. had also been coming into its own as a uniquely Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: English form of popular entertainment. The typical McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. Music Hall venue perfected the song-and-dance and Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. London: comedy performances traditionally provided to keep Macmillan, 1989. people dining and drinking at their favorite tavern Matthiessen, F. O., and C. L. Barber. The Achievement or pub, turning those acts into large-scale, polished, of T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, and lucrative stage productions called variety shows. 1958. Ricks, Christopher, ed. Inventions of the March Hare: SYNOPSIS Poems 1909–1917, by T. S. Eliot. New York: Har- Eliot’s first most salient point in his appreciation court, 1997. is that Lloyd knew and connected with her work- Sigg, Eric. The American T. S. Eliot: A Study of the ing-class audience. Her comic turns managed to Early Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University express these people in a way with which they could Press, 1989. identify. Although it may seem so to the casual Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in observer, that is no small thing—to see one’s very Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of nature expressed on the stage. Indeed, Eliot goes Chicago Press, 1974. on to say that Lloyd raised this ability to empathize Unger, Leonard. T. S. Eliot: Moments and Patterns. Min- and reach across the stage lights “to a kind of art,” neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. and for that reason “her death is itself a significant moment in English history.” Eliot can make such a statement, as bold as it is generous, because he is afraid that the lower classes “Marie Lloyd” (1923) to whose lives Lloyd’s immense talents gave expres- sion will soon, as a result of her loss, go the way of Though it is the briefest essay among all the Selected the other English classes, the middle class and aris- Essays, running barely more than three pages, tocracy among them, for whom there is no longer Eliot’s 1923 appreciation of the English music-hall any expressive figure on the public scene. “The lower performer Marie Lloyd (1870–1922) is, despite its class still exists; but perhaps it will not exist for long.

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In the music-hall comedians they find the expression Eliot puts it—as for its freely borrowing from the and dignity of their own lives,” Eliot observes. Soon, poetry of the past. Furthermore, he was a great fan however, Eliot fears, they too will become homog- of popular mystery novels, even planning at one enized by the standardization of popular entertain- point to call Murder in the Cathedral more brazenly ment that movies, recordings, and cheap means of The Archbishop’s Murder Case—and he carried on personal transportation are bringing about, so that a modest but continuing correspondence with the everything and everyone will be the same. zany film comedian Groucho Marx, a signed photo Eliot then makes a telling observation regard- of whom hung on Eliot’s office wall in later years. ing the arts in general: “The working man who So Eliot’s revealing himself as a connoisseur went to the music-hall and saw Marie Lloyd . . . and devotee of such an ostensibly lower-class form was engaged in that collaboration of the audience of popular entertainment as music hall would not with the artist which is necessary in all art and have come as a surprise to most. The fact remains, most obviously in dramatic art.” His point is that however, that the journalistic touches of his com- that necessary collaboration disappears when there ments conceal, only barely, critical gems. Toward is no longer a link between art and the lives that the end of his essay on Lloyd, Eliot had reflected on individuals lead and that will be the inevitable con- a recent study that comments on how the native clusion to a civilization in which popular entertain- people of Melanesia are dying out—literally “dying ment does not so much erase class distinctions as from pure boredom”—because of the likeness of transcend them. common experience that an outside “Civilization” is imposing on them. The loss of empathetic enter- CRITICAL COMMENTARY tainers such as Lloyd, coupled with the increas- By serving such a profitable need, English music ing imposition of mass-media entertainment, leads hall would have been, by Eliot’s time, the equiva- Eliot to ponder the possibility that “the population lent of television, so widespread were its commer- of the entire civilized world rapidly follows the fate cial successes and influences on popular culture. of the Melanesians.” It is interesting, to say the One outstanding consequence was that its stars, least, that in his just-published The Waste Land Lloyd chief among them, enjoyed the same kind of Eliot took his lead from the French symbolist poet celebrity as a television or film star would nowadays CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, the first great voice of the and suffered the same degree of intense and some- urban apocalypse, in identifying boredom as the times harsh and unforgiving public scrutiny. great bane of the modern urban landscape. With the added advantage of being an outsider Without that necessary collaboration between to English culture, Eliot was an astute enough the artist and his audience, the life of a civilization observer of popular culture, however, to see how is lost, Eliot claims, and yet his own poetry was those new media such as the radio, recordings, and prominent among that contemporary verse that the cinema would eventually supplant the popular- seemed to exclude the reader intentionally. The ity of music-hall entertainment, and it is with this point, it seems, is clear. Civilization has already prospect in mind that Eliot both commemorates died, and modernism is its funeral. This would and laments Lloyd’s passing. He envisions a more become a constant refrain in Eliot’s prose criticism and more homogenized and lackluster popular cul- and poetry throughout the rest of the 1920s and ture as a result of the appeal of mass entertainment, well into the 1930s. and Eliot had already proved through his poetry that he knew whereof he spoke. The Waste Land, whose initial publication in Eliot’s Criterion in October 1922 virtually coincided with Lloyd’s pass- “Marina” (1930) ing, is as much a new kind of poetry for its snatches from, and in the rhythms of, the ragtime music of Although the first three poems that Eliot composed its day—“O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag,” as for Faber’s Ariel poems series were occasional

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pieces written months if not years apart, these same The grief-stricken king, meanwhile, names their three poems nevertheless constitute the consecu- daughter Marina, in recognition of the unique cir- tive development of a common theme, with con- cumstances of her birth at sea. flicts between birth and death, old ways and new, Pericles subsequently leaves the infant Marina pagan and Christian beliefs, and the flesh and the in the care of a royal couple whom he had benefited spirit, all these conflicts measuring themselves out earlier, thus allowing him to take care of affairs at in a steadily forward progress toward some defi- home. Marina grows into a young woman of great nite resolution. In other words, the Ariel poems to grace, beauty, and talent, so much so, indeed, that this point were more a poetic sequence than mere the queen resolves to have her killed since her chronological gathering. Then “Marina” broke the splendid nature makes the queen’s daughter’s own pattern. What does this last poem in the series have qualities pale in comparison. Before the killer can to do even with the Christmas theme, let alone accomplish his task, however, Marina is taken cap- all those other theological and spiritual ponderings tive by pirates and sold into slavery in a neighboring in which the first three had clearly engaged? As kingdom, where her native graces and great beauty usual, however, Eliot’s subtle mind circumvents the and kindness again make her so beloved that the doubts of even the most diehard literary skeptics, king of that land even thinks of marrying her. not to play coy with his own cleverness, but to sur- In the meantime, Pericles, his own affairs in prise them into meaning, which is always the best order, goes to fetch his daughter, the only token way to come upon revelations of any significant that he now has left of the wife who died so tragi- import. cally. The evil queen, led to believe that Marina Still, on the surface, for all its touching human had been murdered as she had commanded, tells qualities, the matter of “Marina” does seem to Pericles only that his daughter is dead, news that be miles away from the other three poems in the succeeds finally in breaking him. Distracted by an sequence. True, as in “Journey of the Magi” and inconsolable despair, he withdraws into himself, till “A Song for Simeon,” Eliot is again composing in none can reach him. As the sad ship bearing him the spirit of the dramatic monologue, whereby the back to Tyre passes by the kingdom where Marina speaker of the poem is Pericles, king of Tyre and now resides, the king there, hearing of Pericles’ the protagonist in the Shakespeare play of the same profound depression, thinks that perhaps the sweet name. Pericles’ story is an interesting and touching Marina, whose kindness and compassion have one, and Eliot is relying on his readers’ fairly close made her such a treasure to all who have come to acquaintance with the play for his own poem to know her, may be able to save him, if anyone can. operate successfully. He brings her to Pericles’ ship, where she meets Eliot held Shakespeare’s Pericles, lesser known with him in private. Imagining that if his despair is though it may be, in high esteem. In an address, the result of such great hardship and disappoint- “Shakespeare as Poet and Dramatist,” given at ment, then hearing a tale of similar hardships suf- Edinburgh University in 1937, he had been quoted fered by another may cure him, Marina tells him as saying that “the finest of all the ‘recognition her own sad story of how she was the daughter of scenes’ ” comes in act V, scene i, of Pericles. It is this a mother who died giving birth and of a father who recognition scene that Eliot attempts to replicate to had entrusted her to people who sought only to his own poetic and thematic ends in “Marina,” but give her deadly injury. When, the more they talk, like most such scenes, the entire Shakespeare play she tells him that her name is Marina and a king’s leads to it. daughter, Pericles is dumbfounded, for it was a name According to Shakespeare’s story, Pericles’ wife, that no one but his own daughter had ever been Thaisa, apparently dies giving birth to their female given. Fearful that the gods are doing this only to child in the midst of a terrible storm at sea. The torment him further, Pericles nevertheless presses crew prevails upon Pericles to bury Thaisa’s body her for more details, until it is clear to him that at sea immediately, lest further disaster befall them. there can be no mistaking it: The daughter that he

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had thought was now lost to him forever, just as her was to fear that some incensed god was setting him mother had been at Marina’s birth, was now stand- up for mockery. Then to hear that that this myste- ing there before him, as great a beauty as ever her rious young woman’s name is Marina deranges his mother had been, miraculously restored to him. sense of a discernible reality still further, so much The play ends with Thaisa being restored to so that, doubting her true nature or purpose, he Pericles as well, for she had not died but fallen asks her: “But are you flesh and blood? / Have you into a deep swoon and had spent the intervening a working pulse? and are no fairy?” years as a vestal in the temple of Diana. But Eliot Eliot takes care, too, to locate his Pericles in is right in saying that nothing in the play equals the that twilight kingdom where the hollow men reside, recognition scene when Pericles, withdrawn from in the state between waking and sleep where the all human company and virtually from life itself, is epigraph from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure brought back to himself by the sudden realization places the speaker of “Gerontion” as well, in the that he is speaking to the daughter that till then he zone between “ ‘is and seem’ ” that, in “Animula,” thought had been given up to death. “[c]onfounds the actual and the fanciful.” Sus- pended between all possibilities, it is love, Marina’s, SYNOPSIS that will bring Pericles to the single possibility that Eliot brings this recognition scene from Pericles to the truth he seeks is the truth he sees, bringing him the attention of his readers in the poem “Marina.” ultimately to the one reality that is real, and it is The reader first encounters an epigraph from Sene- the one right there before his eyes. While he may ca’s Hercules Furens, in which that great hero, hav- be bewildered by the maddening possibility that ing been driven into a mad fury by the goddess this may be his daughter, she is driven only by the Juno, has first just awakened, not knowing where thought that she is doing a kindness to another he is. (The Latin translates, “What place this, individual who, despite his high earthly station, has what region, what quarter of the world?”) Once he suffered in life as much as she, an orphaned slave comes fully to his senses, he will learn the horrible and outcast, has, so she makes him listen. truth that, in the throes of his madness, he slaugh- Eliot’s making his speaker Pericles ask his own tered his children. uncertain questions mimics these aspects of Peri- For the reader as aware of the significance of cles’ querulousness in Shakespeare’s recognition the allusion to Seneca as of the allusion to Shake- scene. To admit confusion is to identify it as such, speare’s Pericles, the contrast is startling and and “images return” because Pericles is willing to undoubtedly intended: One hero awakens from persist in pursuing their meaning. In the process, madness to discover all his children lost, another to it is all that which connotes death for Pericles that discover a lost child restored. If Eliot is up to any- ultimately, rather than she, “become unsubstantial thing, he is using the lingering memory of Hercules’ . . . / [b]y this grace dissolved.” Those things that tragic loss—in the Eliot poem, Pericles begins his he has named as death are emblems of the rapa- monologue with a virtual translation of the epi- ciousness of this-worldly pursuits, the getting and graph—to underscore how much more remarkably the taking of things. Pericles turns from them, for joyful Pericles’ miraculous reunion is in the vast in the absence of his daughter, the world and all its scheme of things. Simply put, a person is far more vanity no longer bring him joy in any case, other- likely to lose a beloved than to regain one. wise he would not have been rendered so desultory As Eliot’s Pericles continues his monologue, by the news of her death. Freed from such short- Eliot plays on the same idea as Shakespeare had sightedness, the myopia of the here-and-now, bit in the original recognition scene, allowing dream, by bit, Eliot’s Pericles finds what is there become reality, and nightmare to merge. The reader should just that—what is there, his daughter, and that recall that when, in the Shakespeare play, Pericles willingness on his part to see the world for what it first began to have an inkling that he was in the is rather than for what he would make it becomes, presence of his “dead” daughter, his initial reaction in his case, his deliverance from the pain of an

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unbearable existence bereft of love. Love has found it belongs to the Ariel series remains the nagging him willing to be found, no small miracle for a man question. Perhaps by now, however, the answer to beset by cares, distractions, and grief. that question may be entirely obvious, especially, As the poem continues, Pericles begins to hear “Marina”’s linkage with the earlier “Animula.” children’s laughter, an image that Eliot is fond of At the very least, it would be reasonable to using to mimic the presence of absent joys, and imagine now that it is not that Eliot had run out of Pericles’s memory enlarges to encompass other Christmas themes and so began to rummage among realities, figured as a ship, a skiff, perhaps, derelict Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays for subjects that now, that the speaker (here Eliot, an avid ama- might be suitable to the season. Even then, one teur sailor well into his young adulthood, may be would be hard-pressed not to make a connection intruding bits of himself into his speaker’s recol- between a father rediscovering a daughter whom lections) comes upon and realizes had once been he thought to be irrevocably lost with “Animula,” his own, a thing “[m]ade . . . unknowing,” as any with its use of the Hadrian/Dante trope that the person forges links between himself and as well human soul is like a little female child in its rela- as between himself and things. These forgotten tionship to God the Father. Seen in that light, the contacts, all the created things, that make a life powerful sentiments of the recognition scene from unique, although they may have been joined “half Pericles provide a dramatic equivalent for Eliot to conscious, unknown, my own” then, suddenly act exploit in his own poem, an equivalent to that as powerful reminders now. (“Familiar compound sought-for moment in which the Dantean simple ghosts” is what the poet will ultimately call them.) soul recaptures its own bearings and recognizes its As the familiar becomes ever more familiar, from being in that same joyful creator who had initially out of these kinds of recognitions dim and faint sent her, the soul, forth from his hand. Eliot manages to illustrate, in Pericles’ coming to Indeed, should the reader recognize in the Peri- himself as he comes to his daughter, the soul itself, cles/Marina reunion a fair reflection of the same the animula, awakening, enlivening, and renewing miraculous instant of the soul’s return to its place itself in its quest for life. For that which lives, for with God, then one can go a step further, although “the hope, the new ships.” perhaps to a lower plane of reference as well, to see As the poem closes, and as Pericles apparently the father-daughter connection as an equally effec- is only repeating the bewildered questioning of the tive poetic and dramatic way for Eliot to manifest opening verses, in fact the repetition of “what” that symbolically as well the body-spirit connection that had earlier echoed the tragic bewilderment of Sene- Hadrian coyly plays upon in his famous epitaph. ca’s Hercules now takes on the vigor of new enthu- What more powerful reunion, or reintegration of siasms for what his eyes behold, all sights colored being, can there possibly be for the individual in by the new man he has become, so the repeated the theocentric universe that Eliot seems to have “what” signals not questions now but exclamations posited, after all, than that the father/body embrace of great joy and excited interjections. So, too, the the daughter/soul? Thereby only can the former “woodthrush calling through the fog” is just that, be awakened from its numbingly lethargic resigna- exactly as the recognition closes, as it must, upon tion—that state of body, mind, and spirit typical of the same natural acceptance that this, too, Marina the hollow men, of “Gerontion”’s speaker, of the alive, is what life has to offer: “My daughter,” not magus, and of Simeon. dead, but alive. Not there, but here. In poem after poem, virtually from the time of “Gerontion,” Eliot has proposed that the freight of CRITICAL COMMENTARY worldly cares has cast an overwhelmingly immense Indisputably, “Marina” is a beautiful poem, as fully spiritual and moral lethargy upon the individual realized and executed as any in the Eliot canon, in the modern world, who then, Pericles-like, is perhaps one of Eliot’s few genuine love poems thus sunken into that same pool of pointless self- to boot. But how, for all its undeniable lusters, pity and vacuous longings, nervous needlings, that

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spawn the crowd of the living dead that Eliot’s his quasi-autobiographical poem, La vita nuova readers find flowing over London Bridge at the end (The New Life). That love’s power to transform the of “Burial of the Dead,” the opening section of The world and all those who people it is also the heart Waste Land. In “Marina,” Eliot proposes that love is of the Christmas story is not coincidental, but it is the answer. It would seem too, then, that whether not necessary for a reader to accept it as a corollary or not he conceived of them in that way to begin in order to appreciate the conclusions of “Marina,” with, Eliot’s four Ariel poems as they are gathered which are the conclusions of the Ariel poems. in his Collected Poems are a sequence, and a singu- lar one at that, marking the same sort of spiritual commentary that he would attempt to execute at virtually the same time in those units of poetry that “Metaphysical Poets, The” would eventually become “Ash-Wednesday.” (1921) In the Christian calendar, after all, Christmas is the season of Advent. It is the time of Christ’s There are a handful of indisputable influences on coming into the world, but it is also symbolically Eliot’s early and most formative period as a poet, and literally the time of Christ coming to each indi- influences that are corroborated by the poet’s own vidual soul as well. The notion of communion, of testimony in contemporaneous letters and subse- the joining together in one spirit of all things, is the quent essays on literature and literary works. Fore- conclusion to which Eliot carefully and gracefully most among those influences was French symbolist moves the poetry that constitute these four Ariel poet JULES LAFORGUE, from whom Eliot had learned poems, culminating in the reunion of Pericles and that poetry could be produced out of common emo- Marina that becomes a type for the communion of tions and yet uncommon uses of language and tone. the body and soul in the one spirit of Christ. A close second would undoubtedly be the world- Eliot is composing poetry, not Christian apolo- renowned Italian Renaissance poet DANTE ALIGH- getics, however. He may be, on examination, writ- IERI, whose influences on Eliot’s work and poetic ing out of the faith tradition of his own people vision would grow greater with each passing year. and ancestors, but he is not pretending to justify A third influence would necessarily come from those traditions. For that he has prose essays. In among poets writing in Eliot’s own native tongue, his poetry, and in particular in the Ariel poems, English. There, however, he chose not from among he is attempting to demonstrate through language his own most immediate precursors, such as Ten- the wide range of the strategies whereby individ- nyson or Browning, or even his own near contem- uals escape the natural conclusions of their own poraries, such as W. B. YEATS or ARTHUR SYMONS, immortal longings all the way to the point where and certainly not from among American poets, but they embrace those same conclusions with joy and rather from among poets and minor dramatists of thanksgiving. It is in part a tribute to Eliot’s not the early 17th century, the group of English writers wanting to color this fascinating exploration of a working in a style and tradition that has subse- universal human phenomenon with the trappings quently been identified as metaphysical poetry. of any particular doctrinal assent that he selects, The word metaphysical is far more likely to be for “Marina,” a far more vital demonstration, not found in philosophical than literary contexts. some particular Gospel figure, of whom there would Metaphysics is the branch of philosophical inquiry be many, but a wholly fictional characterization of and discourse that deals with issues that are, quite that emotion in action on an entirely earthly but literally, beyond the physical (meta- being a Greek no less impressively enlightening plane. prefix for “beyond”). Those issues are, by and large, Love’s power to transform the individual, and focused on philosophical questions that are specu- with him or her the created universe, is the theme lative in nature—discussions of things that cannot of “Ash-Wednesday” as well, owing its place there be weighed or measured or even proved to exist to DANTE ALIGHIERI once more, this time through yet that have acquired great importance among

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human cultures. Metaphysics, then, concerns itself Eliot singles out what is generally termed the meta- with the idea of the divine, of divinity, and of the physical conceit or concept, which he defines as “the makeup of what is called reality. elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of That said, it may be fair to suspect that poetry a figure of speech to the farthest stage to which that is metaphysical concerns itself with those kinds ingenuity can carry it.” of issues and concerns as well. The difficulty is that Eliot knows whereof he speaks. He himself was a it both does and does not do that. Thus, the ques- poet who could famously compare the evening sky tion of what metaphysical poetry does in fact do is to a patient lying etherized upon an operating room what occupies Eliot’s attention in his essay to the table without skipping a beat, so Eliot’s admiration point that he formulates out of his considerations for this capacity of the mind—or wit, as the meta- a key critical concept that he calls the dissociation physicals themselves would have termed it—to dis- of sensibilities. cover the unlikeliest of comparisons and then make them poetically viable should come as no surprise SYNOPSIS to the reader. Eliot’s essay on the English metaphysical poets was Eliot would never deny that, while it is this fea- originally published in the Times Literary Supple- ture of metaphysical poetry, the far-fetched conceit, ment as a review of a just-published selection of that had enabled its practitioners to keep one foot their poetry by the scholar Herbert J. C. Grierson in the world of the pursuits of the flesh, the other in titled Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seven- the trials of the spirit, such a poetic technique is not teenth Century: Donne to Butler. In a fashion similar everyone’s cup of tea. The 18th-century English critic to the way in which Eliot launched into his famous Samuel Johnson, for example, found their excesses criticism of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in “Hamlet and deplorable and later famously disparaged metaphysi- His Problems” by using an opportunity to review cal poetic practices in his accusation that in this sort several new works of criticism on the play as a of poetry “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by springboard to impart his own ideas, Eliot com- violence together.” Eliot will not attempt to dispute mends Grierson’s efforts but devotes the major- Johnson’s judgment, though it is clear that he does ity of his commentary otherwise to expressing his not agree with it. (Nor should that be any surprise views on the unique contribution that metaphysical either. Eliot’s own poetic tastes and techniques had poetry makes to English poetry writing in general already found fertile ground in the vagaries of the and on its continuing value as a literary movement French symbolists, who would let no mere disparity or school. Indeed, as if to underscore his oppo- bar an otherwise apt poetic comparison.) sition to his own observation that metaphysical Rather, Eliot finds that this kind of “telescop- poetry has long been a term of either abuse or dis- ing of images and multiplied associations” is “one missive derision, Eliot begins by asserting that it is of the sources of the vitality” of the language to both “extremely difficult” to define the exact sort be found in metaphysical poetry, and then he of poetry that the term denominates and equally goes as far as to propose that “a degree of het- hard to identify its practitioners. erogeneity of material compelled into unity by After pointing out how such matters could as the operation of the poet’s mind is omnipresent well be categorized under other schools and move- in poetry.” What that means, by and large, is ments, he quickly settles on a group of poets that he that these poets make combining the disparate regards as metaphysical poets. These include John the heart of their writing. It is on that count Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Abra- that Eliot makes his own compelling case for ham Henry Cowley, Richard Crashaw, Andrew the felicities of metaphysical poetry, so much so Marvell, and Bishop King, all of them poets, as well that he will eventually conclude by mourning its as the dramatists Thomas Middleton, John Web- subsequent exile from the mainstream of English ster, and Cyril Tourneur. poetic practice. It is this matter of the vitality of As to their most characteristic stylistic trait, one language that the metaphysical poets achieved that makes them all worthy of the title metaphysical, that most concerns Eliot, and it is that concern

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that will lead him, in the remainder of this short anodyne for poor poetry, to “look into our hearts essay, not only to lament the loss of that vitality and write,” alone provide the necessary corrective. from subsequent English poetry but to formulate Instead, Eliot offers examples from the near-con- one of his own key critical concepts, the dissocia- temporary French symbolists as poets who have, tion of sensibility. like Donne and other earlier English poets of his The “Dissociation of Sensibility” ilk, “the same essential quality of transmuting ideas Eliot argues that these poets used a language that into sensations, of transforming an observation into was “as a rule pure and simple,” even if they then a state of mind.” To achieve as much, Eliot con- structured it into sentences that were “sometimes far cludes, a poet must look “into a good deal more from simple.” Nevertheless, for Eliot, this is “not a than the heart.” He continues: “One must look vice; it is a fidelity to thought and feeling,” one that into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and brings about a variety of thought and feeling as well the digestive tracts.” as of the music of language. On that score—that CRITICAL COMMENTARY metaphysical poetry harmonized these two extremes of poetic expression, thought and feeling, gram- The point of this essay is not a matter of whether mar and musicality —Eliot then goes on to ponder Eliot’s assessment of the comparative value of the whether, rather than something quaint, such poetry techniques of the English metaphysical poets and did not provide “something permanently valuable, the state of contemporary English versification was which . . . ought not to have disappeared.” right or wrong. By and large, Eliot is using these For disappear it did, in Eliot’s view, as the influ- earlier poets, whom the Grierson book is more or ence of John Milton and John Dryden gained less resurrecting, to stake out his own claim in an ascendancy, for in their separate hands, “while the ageless literary debate regarding representation language became more refined, the feeling became versus commentary. Should poets show, or should more crude.” By way of a sharp contrast, Eliot saw they tell? Clearly, there can be no easy resolution the metaphysical poets, who balanced thought and to such a debate. feeling, as “men who incorporated their erudition Eliot would be the first to admit, as he would in into their sensibility,” becoming thereby poets who subsequent essays, that a young poet, such as he can “feel their thought as immediately as the odour was at the time he wrote the review at hand, will of a rose.” Subsequent English poetry has lost that most likely condemn those literary practices that immediacy, Eliot contends, so that by the time of he regards to be detrimental to his own develop- Tennyson and Browning, Eliot’s Victorian precur- ment as a poet. Whatever Eliot’s judgments in his sors, a sentimental age had set in, in which feeling review of Grierson’s book on the English metaphys- had been given primacy over, rather than balance ical poets may ultimately reveal, they are reflections with, thought. Rather than, like these “metaphysi- more of Eliot’s standards for poetry writing than cal” poets, trying to find “the verbal equivalents of standards for poetry writing in general. That for states of mind and feeling” and then turning said, they should serve as a caution to any reader them into poetry, these more recent poets address approaching an Eliot poem, particularly from this their interests and, in Eliot’s view, then “merely period, since he makes it clear that he falls on the meditate on them poetically.” That is not at all side of representation as opposed to commentary the same thing, nor is the result anywhere near as and reflection in poetry writing. powerful and moving as poetic statement. In addition to its having enabled Eliot to stake While, then, the metaphysical poets of the out his own literary ground by offering, as it were, 17th century “possessed a mechanism of sensibil- a literary manifesto for the times, replete with ity which could devour any kind of experience,” a memorable critical byword in the coinage dis- Eliot imagines that subsequently a “dissociation of sociation of sensibility, as Eliot’s own prominence sensibility set in, from which we have never recov- as a man of letters increased, this review should ered.” Nor will the common injunction, and typical finally be credited with having done far more,

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over time, than Grierson’s scholarly effort could auditory imagination.” It is as if experience were ever have achieved in bringing English meta- words as sounds, and only words as sounds. The physical poetry and its 17th-century practitioners result is not pernicious, but it is “bad in relation back to some measure of respectability and prom- to the historical life of the language as a whole.” inence. For that reason alone, this short essay, And that is the danger of Milton’s poetry. Eliot along with “Tradition and the Individual Talent” fears that its great prominence on other grounds, and “Hamlet and His Problems,” has found an the profundity of his theme of Christian redemp- enduring place not only in the Eliot canon but tion not least among them, may have fostered a among the major critical documents in English of tendency in the development of English poetry to the 20th century. cut poetic language off from its roots in sensory experience and in the language as it is spoken rather than thought. “Milton II” “Milton I” (1936) and Eliot takes up essentially the same cudgel in “Mil- “Milton II” (1947) ton II” somewhat more than a decade later, but he applies it with less vigor and rigor. In general terms, Though not originally intended that way, Eliot’s Eliot’s ways of thinking through those sociocultural two essays, “Milton I” and “Milton II,” are com- questions that influenced and were influenced by panion pieces. “Milton I” was originally published literary matters had become less strident. Through- as Eliot’s contribution to a collection by the Eng- out the early 1940s, in essays that would eventually lish Association titled Essays and Studies, which become his Notes towards the Definition of Culture was published in 1936. “Milton II” was the Hen- published in 1948, Eliot was becoming more and rietta Hertz Lecture delivered before the British more concerned with trying to discern the delicate Academy and then at New York’s Frick Museum interplay of developments among a people’s beliefs, in 1947. Both essays were subsequently collected in their language, and their culture. On Poetry and Poets in 1957. Still, Milton does not fare well, but he does fare better. In a 1944 essay, “What Is a Classic?,” Milton’s SYNOPSIS had already been declared not to be “a classic style” “Milton I” but rather the “style of a language still in forma- In his initial essay on Milton, when Eliot finally tion . . . whose masters were . . . Latin and to a lesser gets down to cases, it is to complain that “[a]t degree Greek.” Despite those apparent shortcomings, no point is the visual imagination conspicuous in Eliot is prepared now to concede, in this 1947 essay, Milton’s poetry.” For all Eliot’s apparent coldness that “Milton did much to develop the language,” and that the basis for his judgment lies in the fact of that is much more of an encomium that Eliot had Milton’s eventual physical blindness, Eliot makes been willing to give Milton in 1936. Then, one should an effort to emphasize how much his is a critical recall, Eliot wrote that Milton had “done damage to and not a personal judgment. For Eliot, Milton’s the English language”—quite a different story. experience was too much entirely from books, his By 1947 and “Milton II,” Eliot had become imagination almost wholly aural, so that the blind- much more generous in his assessment of Milton’s ness only exacerbated but did not in itself contrib- place in English literature and the development of ute to Milton’s writing a poetry virtually devoid of the English language. Still, Eliot puts himself in the contact with experience as a sensory phenomenon. posture of qualifying and defending his previous To render the experience of reality in its complex position rather than radically modifying it. After interrelatedness is “no part of the intention” of preliminaries, Eliot gets down to the bone of con- Milton’s verse, which renders instead, of “actual tention on which he had ended “Milton I”: “. . . speech or thought,” a rhetoric whose sole aim “is the charge that he is an unwholesome influence.” determined by the musical significance, by the This charge, by the way, Eliot regards as a “positive

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objection,” and he goes on to point on how and poetry.” Coming from its own far remove, Milton’s why it is such. poetry “was only a hindrance” to that search. Using Shakespeare as a complementary exam- Still, at Eliot’s own remove, there is what he sees ple, Eliot observes that “Milton made a great epic to be “the danger of a servitude to colloquial speech impossible for succeeding generations,” just as and to current jargon.” As a check on a possible “Shakespeare made a great poetic drama impos- drift too far in that direction, whereby poetry and sible.” That, he says, is an inevitable situation, inas- prose run the further risk of becoming indistin- much as “[f]or a long time after an epic poet like guishable, there will always be the model of Milton Milton, of a dramatic poet like Shakespeare, noth- as a versifier, at which task he was “the greatest ing can be done.” That said, Eliot goes on to con- master in our language of freedom within form.” sider, despite these constraints, wherein Milton’s CRITICAL COMMENTARY greatness as a poet lies and, from that, to attempt to adduce how he might best influence poets to It is clear that these two essays on Milton were not come. The problem with Milton was that his style originally meant as companion pieces for the simple was too eccentric and idiosyncratic to be what Eliot reason that “Milton II” is a readjustment, though calls a “classic style,” which is any that can set a not a recantation, of the particularly harsh view tone of poetic speaking that others may profitably that Eliot had taken in “Milton I,” which he con- emulate. Instead of this “elevation of a common cludes by saying that Milton had “done damage to style” to the level of great poetry, Milton’s is virtu- the English language from which it has not wholly recovered.” Indeed, as late as 1961, in the lecture ally a language of its own, “a perpetual sequence “To Criticize the Critic,” as it was subsequently of original acts of lawlessness,” creating a “poetry titled in a 1965 collection of the same name, Eliot at the farthest possible remove from prose.” Thus, emphatically denies that “Milton II” was intended the distinctive “greatness” of Milton’s verse is found as any sort of recantation at all and was, rather, in the fact that he is “probably the greatest of all a further “development [of “Milton I”] in view of eccentrics.” Indeed, it is in this very “remoteness of the fact that there was no longer any likelihood of Milton’s verse from ordinary speech” that his great- [Milton’s] being imitated.” ness lies. But, while even minor poets can learn from Eliot was not afraid to call a spade a spade when a DANTE ALIGHIERI or Geoffrey Chaucer, Milton’s expressing, on the basis of taste and other evalua- very uniqueness of idiom creates the ironic situation tive measures, his assessment of the relative merits that “we must perhaps wait for a great poet before of other writers, but especially poets, both ancient we find one who can profit from the study of Mil- and modern. In the case of Milton, the celebrated ton.” This should not be regarded as damning with author of the Christian epic Paradise Lost, itself faint praise on Eliot’s part; it is his taking that very regarded as one of the greatest singular literary feature of Milton’s versification that he had earlier achievements in the language, Eliot takes issue vir- found to be problematic and turning it instead into tually entirely on literary grounds. That tack makes an unparalleled challenge to future poets. his original negative assessment seem to be more Dryden and William Wordsworth, Eliot con- onerous than critical, since here Eliot appears to be cludes, had, in their various ways, done English flying in the face of a long-established tradition of poetic idiom a great service by wresting it away Milton’s accepted worth. from a diction that had “ceased to have a rela- Still, by founding his judgment on grounds of tion to contemporary speech,” but now Eliot no quality rather than ideological agreement or other longer regards it as a disservice that Milton, at an matters of amicability, Eliot manages to make his extremely opposite extreme, “when he violates the dismissal not so much of Milton’s importance as English language . . . is imitating nobody, and is of his benefit to the future development of the inimitable.” Nevertheless, Eliot says that he and his language as a literary tool even more damning. kind sought a verse style that “should have the vir- Indeed, he makes Milton’s unassailable importance tues of prose . . . before aspiring to the elevation of in English letters the very crux of the problem.

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Eliot’s friend and fellow poet EZRA POUND perhaps of scholars, and yet they cannot, like the French put it best when he called Milton the Chinese Wall verses that he composed during an earlier “dry” of English poetry, clearly implying that a poet of his period, be happily or easily excluded, since there in genius and intensity ruins the language by setting a the author’s own selection of what he hoped would standard that dwarfs the competition by virtue of be preserved of his work they forever sit. the sheer bulk of his achievement. Eliot’s own issue with Milton is more far-reach- PUBLICATION HISTORY ing and long-ranging and therefore complex, how- The poems in question have both a varied publica- ever. He cites the poetry both of Milton and of tion history and no particular or readily notice- his near contemporary John Dryden as the primary able commonalities, at least as a total grouping, exemplars of that famous “dissociation of sensibil- accounting for Eliot’s gathering them together in ity” that Eliot sees entering English thought and such blandly nondescript terms, condemning them feeling in the 17th century. Because of this shift in for all time as minor poems. the poetry’s capacity to render a vivid relationship The first two, “Eyes That Last I Saw in Tears” between what one thinks and what one feels, the and “The Wind Sprang Up at Four O’Clock,” first language also loses that elasticity, so the range of appeared in the autumn of 1924 in the Chapbook, thought and feeling that the culture is capable of along with “This Is the Dead Land,” under the gen- processing in its private and public activities is duly eral heading “Doris’s Dream Song.” “The Wind,” straitened as well. meanwhile, had earlier appeared in somewhat dif- It is not so much a matter of whether or not ferent form as “Song to the Opherian,” under the Eliot is right. Nevertheless, if Eliot is right, then pseudonym “Gus Krutzsch,” in Wyndham Lewis’s Milton’s perniciousness extends beyond the realm Tyro in 1922. “Eyes” shares some affinities with of purely literary considerations. Milton, in sum- “Song” as well. More significantly, the third named mary, needed to be, and needs to be, assessed in the of these so-called “dream songs” ended up as part III far more realistic, less idolatrous, and more even- of one of Eliot’s most celebrated poems, “The Hol- handed manner that Eliot has been modeling. For low Men,” making the first two even more notable it will be only as the result of a measured evaluation for having been rejected for inclusion in that much of the sources of Milton’s greatness and uniqueness more substantial sequence. “Doris,” meanwhile, that his influence can become salutary rather than clearly harks back to “Sweeney Erect” as well as pernicious and restrictive. laterally, as it were, to “Sweeney Agonistes,” the failed verse drama that Eliot was also working on by 1924. “Eyes” and “The Wind” share, then, the singular distinction of having been twice deemed Minor Poems (1936) unworthy of inclusion in more major undertakings. Such a tangled pedigree for both no doubt In Collected Poems, 1909–1935, Eliot included a betrays mixed or confused intentions on Eliot’s modest sheaf of poems that he chose to identify col- part, and that ambiguity of purpose seems to infect lectively as minor poems. Whatever else may have “Five-Finger Exercises” as well. First published in prompted him to identify them thus, he clearly did the Criterion in January 1933, while Eliot was lec- not want them to survive only in the obscurity of turing in America, they appear to be related by the the attention of scholars, or why include them in his fact that the five parts share, in their respective permanent corpus? By the same token, making them titles, the tag “Lines to . . . ,” but on that coyly and an official part of his corpus, even if only marginally mock pretentious note—“Lines to a Duck in the so, requires them to find some secure place in the Park”!—all resemblances apparently end. Eliot canon that must otherwise be wholly specula- Finally, “Landscapes” may seem, too, at first tive. Eliot’s aim for including them at all, in other glance to be an organized whole, but it is one whose words, must forever elude even the most scrupulous symmetry, upon consideration, is more a matter of

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afterthought than intentional construction. Of the the point of view of 1935 at least, the year the col- five, “New Hampshire,” “Virginia,” and “Cape Ann” lection was assembled, of looking back toward a all have a common heritage, inasmuch as they were poetry and tone that Eliot was no longer composing composed in 1932, during which time Eliot was or composing in. This category would include “Eyes back in the United States for the first time in more That Last I Saw in Tears” and “The Wind Sprang than 15 years. He visited in New Hampshire with Up at Four O’Clock,” emerging as they do from the his brother, Henry; very likely paid at least a visit period and poetic vision that produced the lugubri- to, and certainly would have been frequently put in ous poetry of “The Hollow Men,” to cite just one mind of, Massachusetts’s Cape Ann, where his fam- spectacular example. ily had had a summer home on Gloucester’s Eastern This category would also include several of Point; and spent some time in Virginia, where he the poems gathered under the general heading delivered a series of lectures at the university there “Landscapes,” specifically, “Usk” and “Rannoch, that would eventually emerge as After Strange Gods: by Glencoe,” as well as “Lines to an Old Man.” A Primer of Modern Heresies. So it makes a cer- Despite their being among the latest composed, tain sort of logically discernible sense to group these these latter three poems all intimate a violence, three poems together, although how precisely each be it physical or emotional or perhaps even spiri- is a landscape is not readily apparent, each seeming tual, that has been done or is about to be done, to be more an impressionistic response to one’s pres- and hint unrelentingly, too, at betrayals and dis- ence at the site in question than a description of it. comforting possibilities, the tragic consequences Nor does any of that sort of musing explain the of nameless acts as well as of inaction. Even in far less impressionistic and more verbally depictive their sentiment there is something vaguely threat- “Usk” and “Rannoch, by Glencoe,” which inter- ening—threatening because vague. The eyes vene between the second and third of the Ameri- “hold us in derision.” “The Wind” offers a “face can “landscapes.” Those two poems were composed that sweats with tears,” and it ends with an image in 1934 and have for their locales areas in Wales of barbarian horsemen who “shake their spears.” and Scotland instead. Indeed, by calling up images “Usk,” meanwhile, speaks of stealth and a lance, of ancient strife (there was a massacre involving and “Rannoch, by Glencoe” of “broken steel” and the MacDonalds by Glencoe in 1692) and sites pride that has “snapped,” whereas the “tiger in enchanted by spells, ancient magic, and profound the tiger-pit” of “Lines for an Old Man,” whom belief, the two seem to have more in common with commentators presume to be the French symbol- each other than with the other three. ist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, may remind one of Finally, there is “Lines for an Old Man,” also “Christ the tiger” of “Gerontion” fame or of the from 1934, whose title makes it seem as if it has three white leopards and the singing bones of part gone astray from “Five-Finger Exercises,” yet which II of “Ash-Wednesday.” The point is, no matter shares none of those poems’ apparent whimsy. how the imagery in these five poems may strike the reader, they seem to be artfully intended not SYNOPSIS to sit well. “Five-Finger Exercises,” with the gay Once Eliot’s principles and practices of composition abandon of their language, rhythms, and conceits, are established, it may be possible to view these so- offer a startling contrast, meanwhile, or do they? called minor poems in a context that, while it may Beneath the surface of their nearly nonsensical not quite reveal Eliot’s intentions for including and whimsy is a cruelly evocative violence as well. grouping them as he did, nevertheless should allow “Lines to a Persian Cat,” with its echo of Keats’s one to benefit from what the selection and arrange- nightingale ode in its allusions to “songsters of ment tells of what Eliot has done, can do, and will the air” and “the dull brain,” leaves unspoken be doing. but clearly implied what it is that cats are liable In the first category are those poems that, if they to do to birds, and that it is nothing pretty. This have anything in common, it is an aspect, from poem’s other echoes, parodic though they may

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be, of Eliot’s own earlier musings in a line like, light verse with serious poetry, thus fostering the “When will the broken chair give ease,” are ampli- sort of undue demands that market forces make fied in the next poem in the sequence, “Lines to on the efforts of poets like Eliot, less popular and a Yorkshire Terrier,” with its ludicrous image of a less understood, to improve and maintain the art small dog cowering in a landscape worthy of The of poetry writing. “How unpleasant to meet Mr. Waste Land. A field is “cramped and brown,” a tree Eliot,” indeed, when the reading public has poets “cramped and dry,” under a “black sky,” and the like Hogdson to flock to. poem ends with its own species of graveyard humor Thus far, then, the minor poems provide a com- by further parodying Shakespeare’s touching lines pendium of styles and of issues that had engaged on what becomes of golden lads and golden lasses. Eliot’s energies and interests for quite some time. In Eliot’s world, even undertakers “come to dust.” “Landscapes,” at their best, were for Eliot the way of The whole idea of a five-finger exercise, of his future. No other poetry that he had written thus course, comes from the frequent but tedious prac- far comes near them, with the possible exception of tice that keeps the concert pianist’s fingers perfectly “Marina,” another poem in which the details in the nimble. These poems, Eliot is suggesting, are his physical environment around the speaker become way of keeping on top of his form, but if so, it is a objective correlatives for his transformative vision. form that he had virtually abandoned with the qua- Very soon, however, in the poems “Burnt Norton,” trains, wherein the absurdly comical and the deadly “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gid- sinister mingled with such abandon that readers to ding,” each of them inspired by and infused with the this day are perpetually flummoxed in trying to dis- influences of a particular locale, a landscape, Eliot cern Eliot’s intentions. A few years hence, in 1939, would compose his masterwork, the Four Quartets. he finally would purge himself for good, or perhaps Eliot had always been something of a landscape merely outgrow, his need to be ludicrous from time poet, but not in conventional ways. Although there to time. He then published the delightful collection was little of the bucolic in his poems, what else are Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, wherein words “Morning at the Window,” “Preludes,” and “Rhap- make sense for no more than a moment at a time. sody on Windy Night” than urban landscapes, for For now, however, the “Five-Finger Exercises” which Eliot had an unerring eye? Some of the most less look forward to Old Possum’s Book than they powerful moments in “Prufrock” come when the hark back to the quatrains of 1917–18. “Lines to a speaker is describing the urban setting where Pru- Duck in the Park” may bring to mind “The Hippo- frock’s story unfolds, nor would anyone doubt that potamus” in the manner in which both evoke reli- many of the most memorable lines in The Waste Land gious mysteries—“Bread and Wine”—in the most occur when Eliot describes the banks of the Thames unsuspecting way, and then Eliot ends with an River after a nighttime’s fruitless carousings. To see atrocious pun on Andrew Marvell’s famous chas- inner landscapes in outside details, to capture the tisement of his coy mistress’s chastity. very essence of otherwise inchoate feelings and mem- Exercises IV and V end the erstwhile sequence ories in the way that the sunlight fills an empty pool, by forming an equally coy pairing, one apparently to catch in the songs of birds or laughter of children in honor of fellow contemporary poet Ralph Hodg- the aching longing for peace and understanding and son, the other—surely the most famous of the exer- contentment—it is toward a poetry of this kind and cises—self-deprecatingly painting a self-portrait, or away from the bitter abstractions of “Eyes That Last at least a sketch, of Eliot’s perceived public persona. I Saw in Tears” or “The Wind Sprang Up at Four Even here, however, there is a subtext. Hodgson, O’Clock” that Eliot is moving. Away, too, from the though a personal friend of Eliot’s, was one of the empty cleverness of “Five-Finger Exercises.” leading practitioners among the Old School poets of his time, the Georgians. By making everyone CRITICAL COMMENTARY “want to meet him,” there is the implication that, Although they were never intended as a unified intentionally or not, such poetry panders to pub- whole, the 13 brief poems included as “minor lic taste. These poets permit the public to equate poems” have some common features when they are

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viewed collectively. It is not from the point of view forth—might make perfect sense when viewed after of theme or even of style, but of the lessons that the fact, there is often no compelling logical reason the poems offer regarding Eliot’s scattered aims and why one part should precede or succeed another. efforts as a poet during the relative dry period fol- This is not to say that Eliot did not compose lowing the publication of The Waste Land in 1922. with some particular order of detail in mind, but Seen as compositions that are not so much failed as that order is never immediately apparent and often displaced, these minor poems can then be separated may appear to have been intentionally obscured. into three different categories. They are either a part of With an older kind of poetry, on the other hand, the purging of the existential despair that had perme- such as William Wordsworth’s “Line Composed a ated Eliot’s poetry writing more and more, culminat- Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” or John Keats’s ing in The Waste Land, or a taming of the opposing, “Ode to a Nightingale,” for all the difficulty that frivolous side of his nature as a poet, his sort of manic there may be in deriving meaning from statement, depressiveness. Best of all, they may be a tentative but these poems follow a logical ordering of details and sure reaching into new zones of interest and expression events from which the poet and his reader are led wherein abstract qualities of thought and feeling could to a certain series of observations and conclusions be profitably invested in the immediacy of lived expe- that build, logically again, upon each other. rience, as will shortly occur to great effect in “Burnt By sharp contrast, there is nothing particularly Norton,” the beginning of his mature masterpiece, the compelling about the ordering of details in Eliot’s Four Quartets. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” for example, The representation in minor poems of a variety or, except for its counting out the hours, his “Rhap- of not otherwise noteworthy efforts that go back as sody on a Windy Night,” or even one of the qua- early as 1922 and that are as recent as 1934 says trains, such as “Sweeney among the Nightngales.” much regarding the difficulties that Eliot was hav- The Waste Land is also notorious for its unceasing ing with achieving a sustained compositional effort parade of apparent non sequiturs, wherein often at this time while, paradoxically, pointing toward one line of verse does not logically succeed another, his eventually successful resolution of these same let alone whole stanzas or complete parts, in either conflicts. What they share most notably is that they thought or feeling or tone, let alone “meaning.” are all unmistakably Eliot, utilizing little in the way As for tone itself, Eliot had become equally notori- of allusion unless it be to comic effect—the allu- ous for mixing them without warning. A line could sion to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the “Basker- sound deadly serious in its opening, yet be wholly ville Hound” of “Lines to Ralph Hogdson Esqre.,” whimsical if not frivolous by its termination, and for example, or the opaque allusion in “The Wind vice versa. This constant undercutting of overstate- Sprang Up at Four O’Clock” to “Tartar horsemen,” ments surely, then, is another hallmark of Eliot’s unless it be an allusion to another of “death’s other poetry up to, and including, The Waste Land. kingdom,” Tartarus. Such a method not only of composition but of These poems are each, too, outstanding exam- presentation allowed Eliot, particularly as he moved ples of a technique that he utilized consistently into his mid-career following the publication of The throughout his career. One of the most notable Waste Land, to compose poems—by which would features all along of Eliot’s poetic technique that here be meant the sequencing of short lyrics into made it so markedly different from the kinds of loosely related wholes—in a piecemeal fashion, so poetry that had preceded it and that, as a result, piecemeal, in fact, that he may not have been com- made it “modern,” is that he seldom if ever wrote posing the longer sequences at all but rather per- poems that had discernible beginnings, middles, haps discovering or inventing these sequences, as it and ends. While his sequencing of the various were, upon the completion of individual pieces that parts and patterns that typically make for form in may have had no more in common to begin with poetry—alliterative series, image clusters, juxtapo- than a like-minded tone or reflection of his own sition of verses, stanzas, and stanza breaks, and so state of mind as it arranged impressions into poetry,

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poetry into poems. What had in the earlier phases his bearings better, as well as to exorcise the no of his career been something of a strength, even longer compelling demons of past performances going as far as to give Eliot’s poetry that hallmark that would prevent him from “moving on.” of a distinctive obscurity of intention that quickly By way of summary, success may have come too came to embody modernism, however, may have easily for Eliot. Surely, after the incredible success become, following the success of The Waste Land of The Waste Land, which made his name virtu- and the attendant celebrity of this technique, a seri- ally synonymous with literary modernism, he may ous weakness, preventing him from seeing a project have became fearful that he would be remembered through to a conclusion for the simple reason that only as a clever plagiarist who knew how to weave there may not have been a project to begin with. other poets’ lines into complex pastisches. And yet This is hardly demeaning to Eliot’s skills as a the next major poem, a work as ambitious as The creative artist, only a description of them, and it is Waste Land, eluded him throughout the 1920s and a way, too, of further introducing these so-called well into the 1930s. He became, as it were, a poet minor poems of his. Eliot was always one to put the weaving complex pastisches out of his own shorter piece of one poem inside another, or find a home poems, achieving such works as “The Hollow Men” for a discarded passage in a new package. Examples not quite by chance, perhaps, but neither by sheer abound, but here are two especially egregious ones. dint of a preconceived effort either. One of the most critical passages in The Waste Not to make anything more out of them than the Land, “Death by Water,” is virtually a direct trans- poet himself did, the fact remains that the “minor lation from the French of his own poem, “Dans le poems” provide a pivotal representation of where restaurant,” composed some four years earlier. The Eliot had been and of where he was hoping to go. entire Four Quartets, meanwhile, seems to have In them, readers can hear the last of Eliot, the saga- sprung from his desire to find a home for lines ciously bitter wit and moralist, and the first of Eliot, discarded from Murder in the Cathedral. He would the child of the Earth, listening for the sounds of a eventually find a place for them in the opening more permanent meaning in the wind and the sea passage of what would subsequently become “Burnt and in bird calls and children’s laughter. Norton,” the first of the quartets. From as early as 1921 or 1922, then, to 1935, when he compiled the poetry, including these minor poems, included in Collected Poems 1909– “Morning at the Window” 1935, Eliot seem to have been incapable of com- (1916) pleting a coherent piece of work organized from start to finish. “Sweeney Agonistes” and “Corio- First composed in September 1914, although it was lan” are self-admittedly preserved as “unfinished.” not initially published until September 1916 in the Other poetry from this same period was individually same issue of Poetry magazine that contained “Con- commissioned—the Ariel poems, for example—or versation Galante,” “Morning at the Window” is poems were cobbled together from poetry displaced vintage early Eliot. However, unlike “Conversa- from other works or individually composed and tion,” along with which it was subsequently col- then sequenced. This latter mode of “composition,” lected in 1917 in Eliot’s first volume, Prufrock and such as it is, resulted in two of the best-known Other Observations, “Morning” is not written in the works in the Eliot canon, nevertheless: “The Hol- mordantly witty style of the French symbolist poet low Men” (1925) and “Ash-Wednesday” (1930). JULES LAFORGUE, under whose considerable influ- But this kind of haphazard creative activity also ence Eliot composed throughout most of the first meant that there would be a lot of loose ends that decade of his poetic career, from 1909 to 1919. had nevertheless served some order of worthwhile Rather, with its relatively oblique view of urban purpose. The “minor” poems found no particularly life in a crowded, modern metropolis, “Morning” impressive home, but they enabled the poet to get partakes far more of the tone and style of another

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powerful early influence on the poet, the fellow but much other dirt and mold and mildew, perhaps, or far more renowned French symbolist poet CHARLES perhaps like wildflowers ready for the plucking. BAUDELAIRE, whose bitter city landscapes invari- The reader, aware of this choice or not, is forced ably lacked the saving grace of a self-deprecating to wonder what the speaker makes of these some- Laforguean wit. what sorry spectacles, since his description of them as if they are refuse colors the reader’s own response. SYNOPSIS But the speaker does not otherwise tell the reader If anything, the tone of “Morning” is one of self- what he, the speaker, thinks or feels about the degradation on the speaker’s part, as he seems to sight of such souls, only that he is “aware” of them. confess to an intense but nevertheless ambiguous Never has the word aware carried such an ominous interest in the presumably young working-class foreboding, however, as if it is what the speaker is women who prepare the morning breakfasts in not telling that really matters. That technique is the basements of the houses of the wealthy who itself a large part of the methodology that Eliot had inhabit the speaker’s world. Indeed, the reader is been developing under the tutelage of his French set up in fairly typical Eliot fashion by a title that symbolist models. In good Eliot fashion, no matter suggests anything but the morally and physically what the reader may end up thinking and feeling, murky scene that ensues. The idea of a “morning at the speaker has the reserve of suggestive silence the window” will no doubt call up any number and into which to withdraw his own moral engagement variety of images in a reader’s mind, but few con- with the events or sights that somehow neverthe- temporary readers of the poem would have been less inspire his words. prepared for the dark and threatening scenario that In any case, in the second, final stanza, the gradually develops. It is, of course, the ambiguity of reader is left to struggle with and make sense of both motive and expectation on the speaker’s part the implications of the series of images that ensue that makes this short poem peculiarly Eliot rather and that become less and less pleasant and more than the product of a poet like Baudelaire. and more ominous as they do. It becomes amply After the initial auditory effect of the sounds clear that the speaker’s vantage point is above the of “rattling breakfast plates,” a touch in keeping social fracas that he is witnessing, a superior pos- with whatever pleasant associations the poem’s ture that was only suggested in the first stanza by title may have called up, the poetry rapidly sinks the speaker’s supercilious and detached tone. The into a series of images that smack of the squalid housemaids’ “twisted faces,” hardly a complimen- if not the sordid. These are “basement kitchens,” tary description, are tossed up to him by the “brown a not uncommon phenomenon, to be sure, in the waves of fog” emanating from the “bottom of the brownstone mansions occupied by the wealthy, street,” the level of existence that they are com- wherein the service personnel and facilities such as pelled to traverse. The impression is given that the the laundry, kitchen, and furnace would have been speaker may be glancing down at them from the housed below street level, but from them eventually relative comfort and security of a front parlor, that emerge “the damp souls of housemaids.” (Perhaps he is gazing at them with all the rapt attention of a this occurs at first only in the speaker’s imagina- biologist studying the behavior of a lower order of tion, since he will shortly be seen to be observing being, who are compelled to breathe in the foul air the street from a perch well above street level.) from which he, at his higher station, is immune. That the housemaids’ souls are “damp” suggests, of Thus, when that “aimless smile” is sent his way, course, the heat and sweat in which they labor, fix- perhaps, by a passer-by with “muddy skirts,” it can ing the food, cleaning the dishes, washing the laun- easily vanish “along the levels of the roof” only dry, and so forth. Still, it is an odd way to describe if the speaker himself raises his eyes from such a a soul, and these creatures are seen to be not only chance encounter to make it clear to her, should inhabiting the “trampled edges of the street” but she catch his downward, clinical gaze, that she “[s]prouting despondently at area gates,” like so should not think that she is where his interests

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lie. If, that is to say, he now must look up to the Harriet, who seems to be as dead to externals roofline across the way, it is in order to look away, as he is, the evening paper. Empty ritual though because he does not want to appear to have been it may be, it at least connects and, so, provides touched by anything as human as an aimless smile continuity. There is no connection, however, in coming from one of these poor creatures, who can “Morning at the Window” among the speaker, only then remain in his eyes the curious specimens the morning, the brown fog, and the housemaid’s that they seem to him to be. aimless smile except that they all happen to be present on the same surreal canvas. When those CRITICAL COMMENTARY details part, they vanish into the empty space The poem presents a critique of a whole culture above the meaningless city. that is undergoing a serious disconnect, repre- This vision of the modern city and, with it, its sented by Eliot from the perspective not of himself multifaceted human community at a critical cross- but of an intellect that has been corroded into an roads whose twists and breakneck turns it might yet unfeeling hardness by the wearing down of what not survive would be ultimately most fully essayed might be called, for lack of a better term, the moral in The Waste Land in 1922. Eliot’s more pointed sentiment. Not only would it be as wrongheaded to criticism of the coming catastrophe and its causes, imagine that the anonymous speaker of “Morning however, would eventually emerge only in the con- at the Window” is Eliot as to imagine that Prufrock troversial prose of After Strange Gods, a work wherein or the speaker of “Portrait of a Lady” is, but it would he attempts to tackle headfirst the agony of a culture also be as unlikely an angle from which to approach that has lost its way amidst the absence of a literature the poem as any that could be adopted. Eliot’s that might help it find it again. For many reasons, interest in giving a fictive slant to the lyric mode, After Strange Gods, which may seem preachy and whereby he might dramatize not himself person- even bigoted to some, is not for every intellectual ally but a particular kind of person, is most notable palate. It harbors some severely narrow class hatreds in this poem. Though written several years after, that Eliot was usually able to keep under wraps. “Morning at the Window” seems to take up where But this somewhat bitter analysis of traditions that his “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and the “Pre- are giving way to “new thinking” merely for the sake ludes,” those other early bleak urban excursions, of change should be read with the spirit of the poet had left off, right down to the twisted faces. (There of “Morning at the Window,” this son of the Anglo- are four instances of twisting in “Rhapsody.”) American experience, in mind. Seeing Eliot’s as an What he may be after in this kind of poetry, so experience that is, after all, as valid and unique a different because of its unsettling darkness from the human experience as is any other, then some of the poetry of the dandified wit and eloquent bravado in apparent prejudices and biases that that later Eliot which he also excelled at this time, is the exposé, prose text seems to revel in will be revealed for the through a type characterizing its values, of a culture bitter social analysis that they are intended to be. on the brink of a serious breakdown—but keeping One must describe the crime in order to indict that fact a secret even from itself. There is no hope the culprit, but in order to describe the crime, one left in the world that “Morning at the Window” may also run the risk of appearing to endorse the portrays because there is no belief, only dead eyes motives that compel it. Eliot’s ultimate aim is to staring in fixed abandoned at an urban landscape admit that here we are all victims, and an early that contains no meaning for the possessor of those poem such as “Morning at the Window” illustrates eyes, his speaker. that fact in vivid terms to the reader who can see As a point of contrast, at least the speaker in the speaker as much as hear him. What that reader “The Boston Evening Transcript,” another erstwhile will then see is a person more to be pitied than urban poem from the same general period and the pitiable humanity that he thinks he sees flood- locale, presumably Boston, finds some perverse ing the streets of his city, for he has come to the pleasure in the empty ritual of bringing his Cousin point where he fails to see himself in the crowd.

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Isolated by wealth and class and privilege from the One of the first features of the poem is its title, rest of humanity, the speaker of the poem is tragic which is simultaneously familiar and put-offish, yet because he has come to regard his isolation as an in neither case to the achievement of any demon- earned benefit rather than as a self-inflicted curse. strable “poetic” result. Of course, to be unpoetic in His tragedy is compounded because he fails to have the very process of writing poetry was one of the the slightest inkling that it is transpiring. primary aims of the modernist movement in litera- ture, and Eliot’s own poetry had from the first been received as a leading example in this regard. To begin with, the Mr. Apollinax of the title is “Mr. Apollinax” (1916) an immediate problem for the reader who wishes to encounter some reference or tag that is immediately First published in Poetry magazine in September familiar and recognizable in a poem’s title. Even 1916 and subsequently collected in Eliot’s first vol- J. Alfred Prufrock, the title character and speaker ume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, in from what would have been, at the time that Eliot 1917, this delightful but otherwise minor poem of was composing “Mr. Apollinax,” his most celebrated Eliot’s emerges from that period between the bold work to date, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” experimentation with form and theme of his ear- is introduced to the reader as someone who has liest poetry and the more advanced sobriety and at least a popular genre, the love song, connected maturity that would characterize his poetic output to his name. Instead, there stands Mr. Apollinax, during much of the 1920s, beginning with the pub- hardly a common-sounding name, but neverthe- lication of “Gerontion” in 1919. less naked and bare, with little more covering than the formal mode of address, “Mr.” Arguably, both SYNOPSIS Prufrock and Apollinax might seem to be unlikely In his 1950 essay “What Dante Means to Me,” names for the subjects of a poetic treatment at first citing the influence of CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, Eliot glance, but there is still both virtually and literally noted that one of the gifts that the French symbol- a world of difference between the effect of the one ists gave him was the poetical possibility afforded name and the effect of the other. by a juxtaposition of the matter-of-fact with the That is to say, the American experience may fantastic, a rule of composition that could as eas- be multicultural, but it is still to this time an Eng- ily be applied to the so-called doubling methods of lish-language experience, and that was especially so Laforgue as well. It is the method of composition in Eliot’s time. In that context, J. Alfred Prufrock, that Eliot employs to such great and reasonably while it may not be a name that an English-speaking uncluttered effect in “Mr. Apollinax.” Someone reader of the period would have been used to com- wanting to study that poetic technique of Eliot’s in ing across in the context of poetry, nevertheless has isolation would do well to begin and end here. The the ring of fairly familiar things and associations—an poem’s comparative clarity of purpose makes read- upper-class gentleman, perhaps, the moneyed rich, a ing it line by line much like discovering a sketch captain of industry. The name, in other words, calls in which an artist has blocked out all the elements less attention to itself and more to its power to evoke for a projected painting but has not yet compli- certain values and lifestyles. Mr. Apollinax, on the cated them into a finished composition, where the other hand, the formality of the form of address transparent blocking would disappear into a whole aside, sounds foreign to an ear familiar with English- effect, as it necessarily must. In “Mr. Apollinax,” language sounds, suggestive, perhaps, of Apollo and in other words, the ways in which Eliot achieves so of Greece and its environs. the otherwise befuddling effects for which he was These kinds of associations need not work directly famed are exposed very near to the surface because on the reader; indeed, the more they act subliminally, the finished poem is itself little more than a highly the more they achieve the modern poet’s aim, which polished surface exercise. is to keep readers off their game in order to surprise

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them rather than inundate them with “meaning.” From this point on, the poetry quickly clarifies Surely, then, this process of moderate disorientation its intentions by moving rapidly into the realm of is continued into the epigraph, which is attributed to the satirical. First, however, the reader should con- Lucian, the second century A.D. Greek rhetorician sider the idea that has been proposed but not too and satirist; the epigraph is presented in the original convincingly supported otherwise by some later Greek, characters and all. Eliot frequently used epi- commentators that Mr. Apollinax is meant to be graphs, often entirely unattributed, from Greek and the brilliant British analytical philosopher BER- Latin, as well as, in the case of “Prufrock,” Italian, TRAND RUSSELL. Eliot did take a postgraduate semi- but in this particular case, recalling WILLIAM SHAKE- nar under Russell at Harvard in 1914, while Russell SPEARE’s famous turn that the incomprehensibly was a visiting professor honored at at least one aca- alien Greek to an English speaker, the Greekness of demic tea that Eliot attended, and Eliot and Rus- Apollinax is subtly reenforced. Indeed, that seems to sell did become complicatedly involved with each be the epigraph’s only function otherwise. Whereas other largely as a result of their equally complicated an Eliot epigraph, once its source is revealed, usu- relationship with Eliot’s first wife, Vivien. Such a ally provides an ironic counterpoint or comments in suggestion, then, may ground the poem more sat- some especially revealing way on the poem to come, isfactorily for some readers, by giving it a vaguely in this case Lucian’s words, which, translated, read, autobiographical twist, but otherwise the sugges- “What a novelty, Hercules, what a wonder! Man is tion lends nothing in particular to an understand- an ingenious and wily creature,” do little more than ing of the poetry that follows, which is by and large provide a preview of all the outlandishly ingenious a self-sustained exercise in poetic license. ways in which the speaker will go on to present this The clues that the reader is primarily caught mysteriously exotic Mr. Apollinax to the reader in up in the realm not of the biographical but of the the poem. purely satirical are not too difficult to come by or That initial suspicion that this Mr. Apollinax, discern. For one thing, and this particular feature meanwhile, is no ordinary man and may in fact be is very unusual in any Eliot poem from virtually any a foreign personage as well is fulfilled in the open- period in his long poetic career, the abrupt mat- ing line, telling the reader of the time that Mr. ter-of-factness of the opening line makes it appear Apollinax came to the United States, which qui- that the reader is being addressed in rather con- etly confirms the associations with foreignness that fidential terms, as if the whole of the poem is an have been insinuated into the reader’s reactions to anecdote that the speaker is now about to share begin with. The reader should notice how careful with no one other than the reader. Being drawn Eliot is being to set just the right tone and to make into the speaker’s confidence in this manner, the the tone a meaningful component of the poetry. reader also becomes a conspirator, privy, as it were, Had he not used “Mr.” and had he said “America” to “inside” information regarding the presumptively instead of “United States,” the variety of associa- “famous” Mr. Apollinax. tions for the typical English-speaking reader would Furthermore, whoever he may be, the first detail have been quite different, suggesting instead, per- of Apollinax’s visit that is called to the reader’s haps, an immigrant from southern Europe having attention is how boisterously infectious his laugh- just arrived here in search of a fabled “better life,” ter was, at least from the speaker’s point of view, a common enough occurrence during the period and the further detail regarding teacups makes it that the poem was composed. By saying “Mr. Apol- equally as rapidly apparent that, during his visit, linax” and having him come not to America but to Mr. Apollinax moved only in the best circles of the United States, however, Eliot establishes the society. To this day, a tea is an exceptionally for- distinct impression that Mr. Apollinax is a celebrity mal affair. Indeed, as the poem continues, it would of some sort, the epigraph from Lucian further sug- seem that Apollinax’s laughter and name-dropping gesting—all of this subliminally—that his celebrity are the only things that are of any concern to the is of a literary or academic nature. speaker regarding Apollinax’s otherwise fabulous

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visit to our shores. Among a variety of ambiguous chair. The laughter gone now, his “dry and passion- allusions to such a mythological creature as Pria- ate talk”—contradictions in terms there—sounds pus, the Roman god of the phallus, and to a famous like centaur’s hooves, another classical allusion, as syrupy-sweet French rococo painting by Jean- his conversation literally “devours” the afternoon, Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) called The Swing, recalling the rather carnivorous association of Pro- the speaker paints, as it were, his own picture of fessor and Mrs. Channing-Cheetah’s surname. delighted company and appropriately surreptitious Perhaps the reader is being encouraged to imag- peeping Toms, the sort of behavior the visit of a ine that the speaker had attended the formal recep- man of Mr. Apollinax’s charm and celebrity would tion under the influence of recreational drugs in be expected to bring about. order to survive the boredom. Whatever, the poem The use, meanwhile, of such unlikely names as concludes by summarizing the typical sort of post- “Mrs. Phlaccus,” with its undergraduate-humor mortem comments that invariably ensue once the magazine connotations of flatus and phallus, and notable and noteworthy guest has departed. By the the incongruous conjunction of “Professor Chan- time they are through with him, the host and host- ning-Cheetah” support the notion that the tone ess and the other guests have all apparently con- of the entire poem is satirical, although precisely cluded that Mr. Apollinax, whatever his particular what is being satirized is left equally ambiguous. claim to fame that had brought him to these shores It could be academic social gatherings or visiting to begin with, was not all that he had been cracked academic celebrities or both, or more, including up to be. But as a surrogate for the now-maligned even someone with the sensibilities of the speaker, celebrity, the speaker has the last laugh by suggest- who reveals his own shallow values (though wide ing that they, both hosts and guests, were then even less than that. Indeed, all that the speaker claims to reading and exposure to art) by reacting to such a remember of the rest of them, on the tail of all the supposedly momentous event as Mr. Apollinax’s rich even if confusing associations that Mr. Apol- visit with nothing more than his own sophomoric linax and his visit and conversation had brought humor. In summary, no one and nothing is spared to his mind, are a few details as ludicrous as their the speaker’s barbs, but to what end is never really names—“a slice of lemon and a bitten macaroon.” explained. Not that it should be, but satire, to be effective, is supposed to provide not only a definite CRITICAL COMMENTARY target but a positive alternative. While the reader would be wrong to make too As the poem continues, the speaker’s view of much of “Mr. Apollinax,” it would be equally as Mr. Apollinax becomes increasingly mixed with wrongheaded, on the other hand, to dismiss it as metaphors and allusions that take the reader hither nothing more than a bit of witty fluff. In writing and yon but ultimately to no place in particular. “Mr. Apollinax,” Eliot was still a young, new liter- His laughter is first summed up as that of “an irre- ary talent trying to gauge the range of poetic daring sponsible foetus” and then becomes “submarine,” rather than the depths of poetic feeling. As such, a not unlikely association if one thinks of the fetus the poetry teases the reader in a manner typical of in its amniotic sac within the womb. But then Mr. Eliot at the time, still under the influence of the Apollinax is transmuted, by association perhaps French symbolist JULES LAFORGUE. Such poetry of again, into another Greek as a mythic allusion to his virtually defined early modernism, filled with its Proteus, the shape-changing “old man of the sea,” promises of rewards for efforts at understanding that intervenes, bringing with it not more laughter but do not materialize, of meanings that do not finally images of the “worried bodies of drowned men.” cohere, and of intentions that are not quite ever ful- And Proteuslike Mr. Apollinax remains, shifting his filled, perhaps because they are never really either form this way and that as the poetry continues to initiated or realized by the poet, who may ultimately drift on a sea of fun-loving nonsense. Rather like a be more interested in technique than in statement. character from Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, he Perhaps for all those reasons, “Mr. Apollinax” grins over a screen after his head has rolled under a can provide the attentive reader nevertheless with

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an excellent case study in the distances that Eliot tone from those earlier models. The trained ear could create between the text and the context. Any would have discerned definite differences among a reader of a typical Eliot poem, particularly from Poe and a Longfellow, a Tennyson and a Browning, this period in his career, during which much of his but the range of those differences would have been creative endeavor was being expended in compos- predetermined by what were regarded as the fixed ing the sometimes delightfully witty and clever but rules of English prosody that had been in place always opaque quatrain poems, knows how much virtually from the time of Edmund Spenser and he can strum the tensions between what the poetry Philip Sidney in the late 16th century. There were on the page seems to be saying and what the poetry some experimenters and innovators, the American may be proved to be saying as one moves beyond poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson primary the text into the possibilities for meaning suggested examples among them, whose foremost aim was to by sources, allusions, and so forth. extend that range, but they either were not widely “Mr. Apollinax” is no exception to that rule and read or were regarded as so independent in their may be, as has been already noted, an excellent innovations as to be separate cases unworthy of case study in demonstrating how those tensions, imitation. While these experiments in vers libre, even when they may seem to be in conflict, can or free verse, may now be regarded as precursors often be found instead to create new and unex- of modernism, it was not in fact these American pected harmonies rather than disjoin them. The poets or even another stylistic innovator, the Eng- most genuine fruits of that kind of virtuoso tech- lish priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who nique eventually emerged in Eliot’s first genuine gave shape to the modernist technique that Eliot literary masterpiece, The Waste Land, in 1922, but explores and exploits in “Mr. Apollinax” so much in “Mr. Apollinax,” as in the quatrain poems to as those French poets already named. Laforgue, come, a comparison between the sort of meaning Baudelaire, and others of their generation liberated that can be elicited from the poem’s surface detail not only the length of the poetic line but poetry’s and what further meanings can be deduced from range of topics and scope of language as well. Any the contexts indicated by biographical data and experience, and any level of language, from the allusions may not necessarily enrich the experience most technical and scientific to the most vulgar of the poetry, but neither will it frustrate the reader and vernacular, became fit for serious poetry and desiring to come into possession of the modern- for manipulation within the same poem. Within ist poetic grail—a single, acceptable reading of this context, it can be easily seen that Eliot is play- the poem. What results from exercising such an ing this new poetic game by attempting, in “Mr. approach is a recognition of why this early poem Apollinax,” to take an extremely unpoetic topic has garnered much critical attention through the and venue—a formal reception being held for a vis- years yet remains a minor achievement for the sim- iting academic dignitary—into the domain of the ple reason that the poet himself seems to go out of “poetic” in a manner that poetry in English had his way to assure his reader that nothing significant never quite been written before and that redefined is at stake. Following the lead of such writers as what could be meant by the poetic. Baudelaire and Laforgue, Eliot’s first aim in virtu- Eliot employs the comparatively common but ally any poem from this period is to avoid sound- otherwise new tactics of surprise and rapidly shift- ing anything like what readers had come to expect ing associations, suggested as much by pressures of poetry to sound like. Influenced largely by the word choice as by the poet’s own conscious inten- stately formalism and ornate diction of 18th- and tions, to contrast the diaphanous, private impres- 19th-century poetry, and colored by the powerful sions made on the speaker by the visiting celebrity sentimentality introduced into serious poetry by with the dense, public expectations of the event’s the English romantics of a century earlier, the typi- organizers. Rather than trying to impress his read- cal poetry of Eliot’s time would not have sounded ers with a profound theme presented in elevated to the untrained ear much different in form and language and by literary devices, Eliot shows how

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 319 9/5/07 2:36:15 PM 320 “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” language itself both operates and can be manipu- “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday lated in order to create the very impressions that the event, itself not particularly noteworthy oth- Morning Service” (1918) erwise, may make upon an observer who is himself well suited to literary imaginings. Meanwhile, since “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” makes it clear the event is not ultimately of much importance in from word one—“[p]olyphiloprogenitive,” which the vast scheme of things, it is easy for the poet to essentially means “producing many offspring”—that deflate the entire experience of the poem by the it is about the Word, of which John’s Gospel tells end, so that the reader generally ends up feeling and which, as the final line of Eliot’s first stanza not edified but set up. echoes, was there in the beginning. The poem, how- If there indeed is a fly in the ointment of the new ever, is one of Eliot’s quatrain poems, those exer- poetics that Eliot was at the time proposing, it was cises in elevated nonsense and lowlife high jinks that very problem. If by poem’s end readers are left that bleed a reader’s credulity dry at the same time to feel that their struggle toward understanding was that they suddenly become deadly serious in the a fruitless one to begin with (otherwise why would midst of their frenzied and wordy zaniness. Eliot and the poet close by undercutting his own effort), then his close friend and literary advisor, the American there is the chance for concluding that modern- poet EZRA POUND, were experimenting heavily with ist poets such as Eliot are satirizing nothing more the quatrain form that they had borrowed from the than serious poetry itself, or worse, are satirizing mid-19th century French poet, Théophile Gautier. those who read serious poetry. Barring that, the last Pound, for example, would use it to great effect in laugh still may be on the poet, who, after all, has his Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1919). Eliot employed not stinted in his technical virtuosity. Rather than the quatrains mainly in this handful of exercises feeling exposed, however, to a new range of poetic composed between 1917 and 1919. While the dat- experiences and emotions, the reader of a poem like ing of each of the seven quatrains, composed col- “Mr. Apollinax” was (and, perhaps, still is) more lectively between 1917 and 1919, is not quite exact, likely to come away from the poem imagining that it is known that “Mr. Eliot” was first published in it was little more than an exercise in light verse of a September 1918 in the Little Review. wholly satirical nature and the ostensible subject of the satire hardly worth the reader’s attention. SYNOPSIS In fine, the application of the new poetic prin- Just how irreverent the poetry of “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday ciples according to which Eliot composed “Mr. Morning Service” may be is suggested by the epi- Apollinax” and which he was thereby espousing graph from Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of , an may be too subtle to achieve the effect that he Elizabethan drama that also provided an epigraph is after. Rather than extending the possibilities of for Eliot’s “Portrait of a Lady.” To describe the clergy poetry and the range of poetic language and topic, as caterpillars, creatures that undulate as they move, Eliot may instead merely seem to be constraining suggesting both a sluggishness of spirit and a predict- the entire effort to the realm of relatively vacuous able, sing-song redundancy of thought, certainly does satire of interest to a very few. That will indeed not suggest any high regard for the religious vocation, come to be the case shortly with the publication of and the first stanza does not stint in offering the The Waste Land, an indisputably serious poem that reader a like view of those who manage the church. many contemporary readers took to be a poetic In the second stanza, the Word that began all parody. To his credit, in “Mr. Apollinax,” a poem things is shown to go through a devolutionary pro- about a misunderstood celebrity, Eliot himself may cess once it falls into the hands of those whom the be raising a warning flag, announcing both to those poem will shortly called the “sabled presbyters.” who are devoted to the new poetics and to those These “sutlers,” that is to say, mercenary peddlers, who see it as a travesty of everything that poetry of the Word, in their ornate robes are again por- ought to be that tastes, like art, are protean and lia- trayed as being redundant, hence close to useless. ble to change form and focus at a moment’s notice. For Eliot has them fertilizing an ovum that has

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already been well fertilized by the Word itself; that, Sunday Morning Service” that he does not think at least, is the meaning of superfetation. very much of the fruit of 2,000 years of Christian If it requires a dictionary to keep up with Eliot’s history, although it is equally as clear that he is wordplay, that is his very point about these neutered reserving judgment on Christianity itself. His tone descendants of Origen, a second-century Christian alone tells readers as much. theologian who was so extraordinarily chaste in With their four-beat lines and four-line stanzas his relationships with female converts that it was rhyming on the second and fourth lines, Eliot’s rumored, perhaps maliciously, that he had castrated quatrain poems lend themselves to the sort of himself as a young man in order to maintain his verbal musicality and clever wordplay that might sexual purity. That sort of putting-the-cart-before- make even the most serious material sound light- the-horse religious zealotry is exactly what Eliot is hearted or frivolous. “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning fearful of and, so, exposes to a merciless ridicule Service” is no exception. In fact, in many ways it as the poem continues. It is not, then, too far an may be the spiritual father of the lot, even if this alliterative stretch from the sutlers of the first stanza is not chronologically the case. Partaking, as it through the sable presbyters of the fifth stanza to does, of features found in at least four of the other the “masters of the subtle schools,” their contempo- quatrains although not shared among all five, “Mr. rary descendants, for whom religion is controversial Eliot” straddles the scope of the major concerns and multifaceted (polymath denotes wide learning) that Eliot addressed in the various poems as a but not, apparently, religious. group. With its emphasis on and scathing critique If the Word has been taken over by the slicers of what is generally called organized religion, for and dicers of the Word and of the flesh, there is still example, “Mr. Eliot” takes a place alongside “The the original vision, embodied in a fresco of the bap- Hippopotamus” and “A Cooking Egg” in exposing tism of Christ, in which “the wilderness,” this lowly the hypocrisies that can result from an excess of plain of the soul’s earthly existence, is “cracked and ritual and doctrine, but the present poem does so brown” except for the life-giving water. There is in much more direct and obvious terms. also the world of nature itself, where bees carry on Some of Eliot’s critique of organized religion the processes of pollination that permit regenera- here, however, may also be the result of his trying tion rather than stultification and desiccation, the to stay true to form in the poem’s self-evident hom- drying out of all natural impulses. Earth’s nature, age to the cleverly anticlerical subtleties of a JULES however, is a fallen nature, the poem reminds the LAFORGUE, Eliot’s own French symbolist mentor. reader. From the bees’ instinctive efforts comes a Then, too, “Mr. Eliot” is one of the three of the sweet by-product, honey. That is not the case with quatrains, along with “Sweeney among the Night- much human endeavor, nevertheless. ingales” and “Sweeney Erect,” to give his comic The priests may be self-removed from the realities creation, the notorious “apeneck Sweeney,” Eliot’s of the world and the Word. Their young charges are type of the natural man, some brief space in which not, however. They are depicted as being “pustular,” he might do his beastly things, as it were. pimpled-faced, with the juices of their own individual To repeat, “Mr. Eliot” combines into itself themes early sexual awakenings, and in the midst of it all sits and elements that are developed independently in at man the brute, Sweeney, thinking only of himself and least four of the other quatrains, a claim to inclu- of the flesh, as he “shifts from ham to ham” in his siveness that none of other six quatrain poems can bath. Surely there is a satirical echo of the murdered make. Furthermore, these themes and elements Agamemnon, who will appear in “Sweeney among reflect what will increasingly become abiding inter- the Nightingales,” and it is hardly an appetizing vision ests in both Eliot’s poetry and his prose. A mistrust of humanity, despite its porcine overtones. of human systems and a distaste for behaviors, life- styles, and ways of thinking that fly in the face of CRITICAL COMMENTARY tradition and common sense head that list. Self- By their fruit they shall be known, the gospels important pomposities and a self-centered intellec- intone. If so, Eliot makes it clear in “Mr. Eliot’s tual and spiritual smugness easily bring up the rear.

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If Eliot’s other early poems either prefigure his staying as a weekend guest at Bell’s episcopal pal- theme of the urban wasteland, such as “Rhapsody ace. Eliot was then just coming off the success of on a Windy Night” or the “Preludes,” or else display The Rock, a pageant play that had been performed the ambivalence of his treatment of themes related to before 1,500 spectators at Sadler’s Wells Theatre love and human sexuality, such as “The Love Song in London between May 28 and June 9, 1934. Eliot of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” “Mr. nevertheless had done little more than write the Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” treats mainly the text for The Rock, his first real venture into live topic that will gradually subsume all those others as theater, in keeping with others’ directions. E. MAR- the most important focal point for Eliot’s creative TIN BROWNE had written the scenario for the play, genius: the vagaries and varieties of religious experi- intended to aid a church building fund for the Dio- ence. “Ash Wednesday” and “Little Gidding” are still cese of London. Browne was working from a story years away, however, and with “Mr. Eliot” the young line based on historical episodes suggested by yet poet is still close enough to the vicarious nature of his another individual, the Reverend R. Webb-Odell, childhood religious experiences as the grandson of a and it was under these considerable constraints prominent Unitarian thinker, WILLIAM GREENLEAF that Eliot wrote the actual choruses and dialogue. ELIOT, and a highly devout mother, Charlotte, to Browne and Eliot, who would collaborate on all be adolescently whimsical and wholly irreverent in of the poet’s subsequent original dramatic works, his treatment of one of literature’s most enduring beginning with Murder in the Cathedral, had first themes, the religious impulse. met at Bishop Bell’s palace in December 1930. On balance, the Eliot poem is guardedly anti- During that weekend visit, Eliot had read from clerical and antidogmatic but not necessarily anti- his just-published sequence “Ash-Wednesday.” religious and hardly anti-Christian. As the poem’s Browne, an actor by training, had turned his hand title wryly suggests, for “services,” this particular to theatrical production and direction after hav- “Mr. Eliot” must be spending his time at home ing been tapped by Bishop Bell to reinvigorate the Sunday mornings, contemplating the catastrophe long-standing relationship between drama and reli- that organized religion has become in helping to gion in the English church, being appointed the define humankind’s place in a universe of the birds diocesan director of religious drama. After Browne and the bees, castrated theologians, and hygienic and Eliot’s successful collaboration on The Rock, it secular sensualists. There is the powerful sugges- seemed inevitable that, when Bell suggested that tion that, if history is a struggle between the Ori- Eliot prepare an original work for that next year’s gens and Sweeneys, the Sweeneys will win, much Canterbury Festival, Eliot should again turn to to everyone and everything else’s considerable dis- Browne for his expertise with staging and directing, may, even if no one cares enough to notice. not to mention the personal rapport that they had already developed through their work on The Rock. The choice of topic for the dramatic contribu- tion that Eliot, with the assistance of Browne’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935) theatrical and directorial expertise, would conse- quently make to the Canterbury Festival was per- T. S. Eliot’s verse drama Murder in the Cathedral haps the easiest element of the proposed project was first performed in the Chapter House of Can- to arrive at. Alternately called Fear in the Way and terbury Cathedral the evening of June 19, 1935, The Archbishop’s Murder Case, the verse play that before an opening night audience of 700 as a part ultimately emerged as Murder in the Cathedral, of the Canterbury Festival. despite the melodramatic implications of its various titles, could not help but benefit from an increasing BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS focus on the public uses of poetry in Eliot’s verse The idea for the drama had originally been pro- writing and criticism. Given the fact, too, that the posed to Eliot the summer before by George Bell, finished play would be performed within 50 yards of the Anglican bishop of Chichester, while Eliot was the site where Becket’s murder occurred, the play’s

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theme can also be seen, on careful consideration, as lor, the chief civil administrator after the crown. something of a foregone conclusion as well. Then, in 1161, on the death of the seated arch- Whatever new interests had already drawn Eliot bishop, Henry, seeing an opportunity to strengthen to a poetry that had as its primary aim weighing the his own hand by having such a close friend in the relative merits of an intense private morality oper- most powerful religious position in his realm, named ating within the sphere of expedient public values, Becket, who had been invested as a priest so that he that had certainly been the ostensible theme of might be qualified for the post, the new archbishop “Coriolan” and had as well, despite the happen- of Canterbury. This action set off a series of events stance of its composition, been at the heart of the that make the story of Henry and Becket into a near choruses from The Rock. Meanwhile, both The Uses classical example, equivalent to Sophocles’ ancient of Poetry and After Strange Gods, although they Greek tragedy Antigone, of the tragic consequences have as their major thesis Eliot’s take on the issue that occur when issues of church and state contend of the proper role and degree of the expression of with each other, and matters of duty, friendship, belief in poetry, comment nevertheless to a great and conscience are forced into conflict. extent on the relationship between poetry and soci- In his new role, Becket saw his first allegiance ety. Most important, since the time of Eliot’s com- now as being to the authority of the church, so, when position of the poetry that became both the Ariel Henry sought to extend his power further by bring- poems and “Ash-Wednesday,” Eliot had been deal- ing any clergy charged with wrongdoing under the ing not so much with belief in his poetry as with authority of the king’s courts, Becket defied the order. the individual’s engagement with matters of belief. Henry reacted by changing the pertinent laws, a Indeed, it can safely be argued that such consider- move to which Becket refused to agree. Henry’s next ations go back as far in Eliot’s poetry as the time step was to question Becket’s handling of finances of his composition of The Waste Land and “The during his period as chancellor, making it clear to Hollow Men,” poems that focused on individuals Becket that the king was aiming to bring charges of either inhabiting a world without any coherent pat- theft or worse against him unless he relented. Rather terns of belief or being incapable of engaging them. than surrender his principles, Becket fled to France, In the light of this history, anyone familiar with which at that time was also under the influence of the story of Thomas à Becket’s confrontations with English (that is, Norman Plantagenet) rule. King Henry II, the details of which follow, could After a six years’ absence, in 1170, Henry and imagine nothing less than that Murder in the Cathe- Becket, who had never officially relinquished his dral would become, in Eliot’s hands, the trenchant position as archbishop, appeared to have resolved exploration of the catastrophe that results when their differences. On November 30, Becket returned worldly power conflicts with the personal values of to Canterbury, but he still refused to absolve sev- an individual mindful of the dimensions and pitfalls eral bishops whom he had earlier excommunicated of an equally powerful spiritual commitment. for siding with Henry in the original dispute. Henry is reported to have been driven into a murder- THE ORIGINAL STORY ous rage by this continuation of Becket’s apparent The story of Thomas à Becket (1118–70) no doubt stubbornness, demanding of no one in particular, makes for great drama. Well placed in English soci- “Who will rid me of this mettlesome priest?” Four ety at the time as the son of a wealthy merchant who knights at court took Henry at his word and set sail had also been sheriff of London, Becket, trained as for England, arriving at Canterbury on December a lawyer, had by 1154 become the archdeacon of 29. They sought out Becket, who, realizing their Canterbury, the chief aid to the archbishop of Can- intent, fled to the cathedral where a service was in terbury, foremost in authority among the English progress. There all four slew him at the altar with prelates. When the archbishop introduced Becket repeated blows from their broad swords. to the newly crowned king, Henry II, the two hit it Becket quickly became recognized as a martyr, off famously, so that he made Becket his chancel- and subsequent reports of miracles occurring at his

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tomb led to his canonization. In 1174, Henry did themselves to be compelled “to bear witness.” public penance at the site of his tomb for his own Eliot borrows from the traditions of classical Greek questionable part in the murder of the archbishop, drama by introducing a chorus, and by virtue of his dear friend, and Canterbury became a popular this structural allusion to ancient tragedy, he also shrine visited by many pilgrims for the next sev- implies that a drama of cosmic proportions is about eral hundred years. Indeed, by the end of the 14th to transpire. In keeping with common practice, the century, the English civil servant and poet Geoffrey chorus in Greek drama, more than setting a mood Chaucer would use the annual spring pilgrimage to and tone, is free to feel and express the common the martyr’s tomb at Canterbury as a plot device woes, confusions, and fears. around which to organize his Canterbury Tales, and In their bewilderment, then, the women of Eliot allegedly alluded to Chaucer’s famous open- Canterbury throughout the play give its language, ing lines, here rendered in modern English, “When rather than dramatic force, its poetic scope, as they April with her sweet showers . . . ,” in his own describe the dull drudge of their daily lives. This is equally famous opening to The Waste Land: “April their role: to speak of duties and obligations cen- is the cruelest month.” tered in the common sphere. They are simple peo- So runs the story of St. Thomas à Becket, a tale ple, women used to hardship and suffering, and they that by Eliot’s time had become one of England’s are reluctant to take even a subsidiary part in some greatest national treasures. Now a foreign-born great moment that they know they cannot stop and poet, albeit of English ancestry, was about to make may never understand. “Content if [they be] left that treasured story into a verse drama for a con- alone,” they are aware that they, too, are among temporary audience among whom even the most the martyrs—that being what martyr means, to bear devout had been steeped in the healthy skepticism witness—so, with no illusions about the nature of of a secular, modernist culture. The challenge must power, its brutal capacity to make its will everyone’s have seemed breathtaking in every way. will, they know that for them, who represent the “most of us” in the Eliot play, “there is no action, / SYNOPSIS But only to wait and to witness.” The chorus thus Part I fulfills its role of setting the mood and the tone for As the first act, part I, opens, the setting is the Arch- the coming action by commenting on it trepida- bishop’s Hall on December 2, 1170, the day that tiously from the distant angle of those whose hard Thomas Becket, as Eliot identifies him in the play, lives are little changed by the memorable events returns to Canterbury. There, within a matter of that are generally thought to move the world. weeks, Becket will be murdered. Eliot stays true to Appropriately, it is now time for more indi- the historical detail, but, in good dramatic fashion, viduated characters to step onto the stage in the not to mention good storytelling, does not waste any persons of three priests. They each represent a dif- time in getting down to business. On this day, after ferent point of view regarding developments closer all, from the point of view of the various persons of at hand—what the pope and Henry and Thomas the drama, Becket is at last coming home to Canter- and the French king are up to as each of those bury after an absence of seven years. An event that power centers maneuvers for the most favorable should be a cause for great celebration under any position. Eliot also uses the priests’ conversation other circumstances will find instead only degrees of to fill in informational gaps. If from the chorus of trepidation in each welcoming heart, in view of the Canterbury women the audience has gotten a taste straitened circumstances of the strained relationship of local color, emotional and psychological as well that Becket and Henry continue to maintain. as social and economic, from the priests will come A chorus composed of the women of Canter- the factual details, such as that it has been seven bury sets the mood and tone of the opening scene years since Becket’s self-imposed exile and that the and the entire play with their expressions of a sense king is as much at odds with the barons as with the of foreboding, “some presage” to which they feel stubborn archbishop.

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Shortly, as a herald appears to tell them that cies of prophecy as well with his talk of Becket’s Becket has landed in England and is at that very “pride and sorrow,” of a peace that is “nothing like moment on his way to the cathedral, it becomes clear an end, or like a beginning”—of things, in other that Eliot uses the three, furthermore, to express the words, not being quite right, not quite adding up. three distinctly different responses that those near- Like Agamemnon in the Aeschylus tragedy of est to the events, from a religious point of view, may the same name, Becket appears onstage soon after feel. The first priest is fearful of what now may ensue his approach has been announced by the herald. for both Becket and the church, knowing that the First, however, the chorus of women must itself stalemate of the conflict between the king and his speak out again one more time, sensing the vio- archbishop, the state and the church, is about to end lence that is to come. Mistrustful of the motives one way or another. By contrast, the second priest of the great and powerful, they know little more is filled with joy, confident that, now that he is back than that whatever may come, it will not relieve in England, Becket will give them the guidance that the misery that they have been born to endure. As they have been missing so that the church can once if to avert another of the ceaseless setbacks that again be a balancing force between the contend- the poor suffer through age after age (“Shall the ing centers of power that are dividing the nation. Son of Man be born again in a litter of scorn,” they The third priest, as might be expected, is resigned, had queried earlier), now they plead for Becket to ready to accept whatever may come of events that return to France, to leave them “to perish in quiet.” are foreordained in his eyes. He views the coming It makes it all the more ironic, as a result, that confrontation, for good or ill, in terms of the working as Becket now appears on stage virtually on the out of forces that the lead characters only manifest, heels of their words, with their fatalistic foretaste of exactly as Eliot casts them. doom, the first word out of his mouth is, “Peace,” Here is one point, however, where poetic drama and he directs it at the second priest, who has been serves the purposes of the kind of ritual that drama chiding the women for their glumness. often is when it is best conceived. The three priests Eliot quickly establishes Becket’s as a winning might have come through as rather wooden char- personality by portraying him as sympathetic to the acters had they spoken their joys and doubts and fear and foreboding that the women are experi- fears in a plain and unenriched language. Instead, encing, and that response quickly establishes his the elevation of speech permitted by Eliot’s use of selflessness as well, for who would blame him if he verse gives their varying emotional appeals the color were distracted instead by the ambiguities of his of three-dimensional characterizations, although the own situation? Here is, after all, the man of the three remain as nameless and faceless as the chorus. hour, both literally but also in a tragically ironic Like the priests in their generic anonymity, a her- sense. That his first thoughts should be of others ald now appears with word of Becket’s imminent commends his character. There are those who have arrival at the cathedral. Like them, too, the herald “sworn to have [his] head,” Becket makes clear, speaks with a greater authority and more ominously but an even worse challenge awaits him, he reveals, than if he had merely been an ordinary character in a “strife with shadows,” as each of four tempters an ordinary play. Though it may appear that Eliot is now step forward, one after another, to try both his reducing everyone else on stage to their functional resolve and the depths of his commitment to serve roles in order to let Becket stand out with that much neither Henry nor himself but God. more clarity in relief, the ultimate effect is to make Like the priests, who, though real characters, still it obvious that everyone, Becket included, is play- each represent a particular aspect of the response ing out a compulsory part in an unfolding tragedy among his devoted followers to Becket’s return, whose conclusion is inevitable and that is larger than the four tempters, too, while they are scripted as any of them. There is in every word, then, the sense clearly defined characterizations with full-fledged that something momentous, something historical, is personalities, each represent an aspect of the sorts about to occur. Therefore, the herald speaks a spe- of psychological and spiritual confusions that can

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scuttle not Becket’s mission but his destiny. He has what may be a greater good for both himself and no focused mission, after all, no specific course of for England. action, for he knows that “acting is suffering / And He has, it seems, overcome all those temptations suffering is action,” and all are fixed on the wheel that might have kept him from fulfilling his sacred of fortune now, playing their part as it spins and destiny. There was one thing that Becket had not comes to a stop. Becket is easily, perhaps even all banked on, however, and that is that there might too smugly prepared to face each of his tempters, be a fourth tempter. This fourth tempter represents for he knows what is at stake, and that requires him the worst temptation of all: one’s own desires—to merely to play his part to the end. Failure can come be true to oneself but to neglect God as the source only if he allows any one of the tempters to distract of one’s being and action. This is not as subtle a or sidetrack him from achieving that end, and he temptation as it may sound on the surface, and that faces them, each in succession, confident in the may be why Eliot has Becket invoking Samson in fact that that will not happen. Gaza just before this fourth and final, unexpected The first tempter calls back to Becket’s mind the tempter appears. The idea is to do what is neces- good old days when he was “Old Tom, gay Tom, sary, but not to do it because one wills it for him- Becket of London,” the king’s great friend and con- self, but because God wills it. The fourth tempter fidante. There is the suggestion but never the prom- allows Becket to realize that even becoming a mar- ise—temptations cannot make promises—that that tyr can be regarded as act of vanity and pride: “To amity with the king can be rekindled, not just for do the right deed for the wrong reason”—not for Becket, but among all the clergy. However, Becket God’s glory, but for one’s own (even if that glory cannot be fooled. One cannot “turn the wheel on then seems nevertheless to serve God). which he turns,” Becket rejoins, sending the first Becket had thought that he had already encoun- tempter on his way. tered and overcome all those possible weaknesses— The first tempter vanquished, Becket faces the the lust for glory and power, along with those second, who tries to convince Becket to make hay personal failings and misgivings that might con- out of the opportunity that this turmoil among ceivably sidetrack him from fulfilling God’s purpose the powers that he has created. According to him, for him and for the sacrifice of his martyrdom. It is Becket should make a grab for very sort of temporal in this confrontation with the fourth tempter that power that he used to wield when he was Henry’s his true agon, or struggle, begins, however. Eliot’s trusted chancellor. That, of course, would require recourse in the allusion to Samson, calling to mind Becket to abandon his spiritual calling or mission, the 17th-century English poet John Milton’s por- thereby giving up the principles that he has sought trayal of the biblical hero, gives Becket’s dilemma to assert and defend, all for the expediencies of the profound scope that it deserves. Blinded by power and glory. Once more, Becket overcomes the Delilah’s treachery and a captive of the Philistines, temptation, rejecting such a choice as beneath his Samson is also tempted by others suggesting what dignity as a man of God, although such a defense he might do to escape his fate, whereas he knows now makes him susceptible to succumbing to pride that what he must actually do is find the will to and vanity and, so, perhaps flattery as well. abide until God is prepared to act through him. The third tempter is much more devious in So, too, Becket must overcome the prospect of expressing his particular blandishment, and that martyrdom, not because that very likely is going to tactic is in keeping with the temptation that he be his fate in any case, but because he cannot desire represents. Becket must coax it out of him, and it it and still do God’s will. As a result, part I comes to is essentially that one should doubt the possibility an end with the chorus, the priests, and the tempters of any reconciliation with Henry for the sake of all exhorting Becket in every direction but the direc- forging a “happy coalition” with Henry’s enemies, tion that he knows his life must take, and that is to including the French and the pope. Becket rejects accept God’s inscrutable will on God’s inscrutable this temptation to commit treason for the sake of terms. The man who had earlier proclaimed that

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“acting is suffering, / And suffering action,” words another man might will to rule. Rather, and quite that the unexpected fourth tempter, the embodi- to the contrary, a martyr or saint is “always made ment of his personal desires, has thrown back at him, by the design of God,” in order “to warn them . . . now sees the impossible light: “I shall no longer act and bring them back to his Way.” or suffer.” He is instead prepared to wait. Eliot, using the device of the sermon, thus enables Becket to clarify his commitment in no The Interlude uncertain terms. He has found his peace in “submis- During the interlude between part I and part II, sion to God,” exactly as the model of Samson had Becket gives a sermon on Christmas morning. proposed in part I. With that, the central principle While from the point of view of the dramatic of the action established, Becket and the drama at action the key event, Becket’s tragic murder, is hand are now prepared to move on into the closing yet to come, from the point of view of the theme, action of part II. There will occur the martyrdom which is to describe through Becket’s martyrdom that has been looming as the inevitable conclusion the way of the saint, the rest of the drama is anticli- of Becket’s agon, and he closes the sermon with the matic. Becket has come to know his true purpose, observation that this likely will be his last sermon. which is that he has no purpose that he should know if he is truly to serve and follow God. So, Part II then, Becket must be “still and still moving,” which This closing part, which is divided into two scenes, is how Eliot will express a similar requirement in the first in the archbishop’s hall, the second in the “Burnt Norton,” a poem whose composition was cathedral, takes place on December 29, the day of virtuously contemporaneous with Murder. Like Becket’s murder. Aside from the four tempters, the Samson, Becket now must wait for God to act. same speaking characters will be appearing on the This, then, becomes the theme of Becket’s hom- stage as in part I—the chorus of women, the three ily, in which he muses on the Christian paradox priests, and Becket. It is an effective dramatic strat- that allows for mourning and rejoicing “at once for egy that the tempters of part I, who had represented the same reason.” Just as each Mass celebrates the the instruments of psychological, social, political, Passion and Death of Jesus, so does the Christmas and spiritual forces arrayed to prevent Becket from Mass in particular also celebrate his birth, Becket accepting his destiny, are gone now but find a dra- observes, and then he calls to his congregation’s matic symmetry in the four knights who replace attention the fact that the following day’s Mass will them in part II. It is these knights, after all, who are honor the first martyr, St. Stephen. Here again, the instruments not of the king’s wrath but of the Becket notes, just as there is a simultaneous mourn- fulfillment of Becket’s destiny as God has designed ing and rejoicing found in the birth and the death it, just as Judas is only the instrument, not the insti- of Christ, there is also the opportunity to “rejoice gator, of Christ’s fulfillment. and mourn in the death of martyrs.” As part II opens, the chorus of women picks up He had already taken an opportunity to com- the note of Becket’s just-ended sermon from the ment on the present troubled state of affairs in interlude. The idea that there should be peace on England, where the king and the barons are at earth and good will among men leaves them puz- odds, to illustrate the nature of Christ’s peace, by zling out the ceaseless conflict that characterizes taking for his text Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the the affairs of men. Meanwhile, they know that they highest, and on earth, good will toward men.” Now must go on with their labors, as each season requires, he takes the opportunity of the reference to Ste- obliged only to wait, although “waiting is long.” phen to comment on the martyrdom that appears If the chorus of common folk possess their souls in to be awaiting him. In doing so, he is able to bring their patience, the knights, who now appear on the to bear the lesson that he learned from the earlier scene are, like the priests, subjected to the whims encounter with the fourth tempter. Martyrdom, of the forces of the world of another kind of human Becket concludes, is “no accident,” but still less is activity. There one finds the working out in action it the result “of a man’s will to become a Saint,” as and suffering not of God’s will or of his works so

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much as of the abstract tedium of the maneuverings know that “[h]uman kind cannot bear very much of powers and interests organized against one another reality,” an observation that Eliot will repeat in like pieces on a game board. The knights make two the soon-to-be-penned “Burnt Norton.” The idea is things clear from the outset: They have not come to not easily grasped, and that is Eliot’s point. But the pay a social call, and they are not pleased with the chorus’s dilemma dramatizes his meaning. They are way in which Becket either has handled the power aware that something of a great and terrible signifi- and station bestowed upon him by the king or has cance is occurring, but they have no way of putting repaid the kindness of the king’s mercy by permitting the impending event into any kind of perspective. Becket to return peaceably to Canterbury. As they The priests, too, know that a terrible moment is see it, in fact, Becket has at every juncture served at hand, and they urge him to flee to safety; them either his own interests or those of the French king he assures with the words that “I am not in danger: and the pope—has, in other words, betrayed both only near to death.” For Becket, danger would be the king’s trust and his own loyalty. something that imperils the fate of his immortal Becket defends himself, arguing that he has soul; to die a martyr is not, then, any danger. No only been doing what the responsibilities of the matter what, he will not flee, but the priests, fearful office that the king has bestowed upon him com- what will become of them should Becket die, forc- pel him to do, not to mention his duty to the ibly carry him off, against his will, to the cathedral, church. The knights will have none of that, and ostensibly to preside at vespers but in truth to con- Eliot makes sure to keep to the historical reality ceal him from the knights. that they do not listen to the reasoning of Beck- Thus begins the second scene of part II. The et’s arguments regarding protocol and obligation. chorus sings a “Dies Irae,” or Day of Wrath, plead- Instead, like the fanatics that they are, doing not ing for God’s help in the “last fear,” the fear of what the king commands so much as what they impending doom. But for the ordinary person that think, in their misguided loyalty, will please him, doom is death, while for Becket, once more, it is the the knights start to attack Becket soon after their death of the soul. The priests, caught up in a tem- interview with him begins. Their violence is pre- poral distress—Becket’s life is at stake—order that vented only by the intervention of the priests and the doors be barred, whereas Becket, who knows other attendants on hand. that it is in fact the fate of his immortal soul that is Still, Becket continues to give them a hearing, at stake, orders that the doors be kept open, for the and they boldly tell him that the king commands church can endure any assault. He will not have him to return to France, a command whose authen- it that the ways of the world will be triumphant. ticity Becket tells them he regards as dubious. Fur- Rather, he proclaims that he is willing to give his thermore, he proposes that he shall not desert his life to “the Law of God above the Law of Man.” flock again. The knights accuse him of treachery, Obeying his command, the door is opened, and the leaving him in no doubt that his life hangs in the bal- knights, slightly tipsy now, enter the cathedral. ance, and as they exit the hall, Becket’s words that As might be expected, that single event toward he is prepared for martyrdom follow after them. which the entire drama has been leading, the mur- The chorus now launches into a macabre litany der of Becket, takes place in fairly short order on recounting all the putridness that flesh and death the reentrance of the knights. Their previous head- are capable of connoting, for they sense that the strong wrathfulness now that much more embold- “death-bringers,” as they call the four knights, have ened by drink, they call out for Becket, the so-called come at last. They apologize to Thomas for their traitor to the king, and he as boldly announces him- inability to be stronger and more supportive at such self, secure in both the justice and the sanctity of an hour, and Thomas consoles them. All this suf- his cause. Speaking as one in four-line stanzas, one fering and death and confusion, he tells them, shall line to a knight, the knights will have as little to bring “a sudden painful joy” when God’s purpose do with his defense as Becket will have to do with is completed; for now, he counsels, they should their charges. Nevertheless, might is on their side; if

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Becket has the Cross, they have the sword, and they The final speaker, Richard Brito, makes the most strike him down where he stands as he commends specious case of all: Becket was his own execu- his cause and the church to God and to the commu- tioner. Brito argues that it was Becket’s own desire nion of saints, who have also served God’s will. for martyrdom that put him on the collision course The chorus of women cries out with a passion with the king in the first place. The verdict: Becket that far exceeds their previous resignation. Blood died a “Suicide while of Unsound Mind.” There has blinded them, they exclaim, and nothing will is, of course, as strong a measure of the ironic as ever again be the same. Not only has Becket been of the ludicrous here. Becket was, from the point murdered, but he has been struck down and blood of view of those who worship the world and all its has been shed in the house of God. The whole empty promises, as the four knights most certainly world has been rendered “wholly foul” by such a do, of “ ‘unsound mind” inasmuch as he threw away dastardly deed, and they cry out that not just the incredible opportunities for worldly success and stones, but the sky, the wind, the sinew, and the power and glory all for the sake of his principles bone be cleaned as a result. and religious convictions. For their part in this bloody history, Eliot now Their case, in their view, made, the knights strips bare the mask of myth, ritual, and drama in depart, in keeping with their no-nonsense, business- which that history has been cloaked until now to like demeanor. And now it is left for the priests, the give the four knights the honor of their actual identi- only ones who have not spoken in the aftermath of ties as they all four advance to address the audience, Becket’s death, to pick up the pieces of what may identifying themselves one by one. Reginald Fitz Urse yet be left of faith and of virtue in a world such speaks first, pulling the old warrior’s ploy of excusing as the knights have just described and defended. himself as a man of action rather than words. Never- The first priest, who had, at the drama’s outset, theless, they now wish to plead their own case before expressed his fearful misgivings, sees a church with- the bar of justice, that is, the audience. ered and in disarray as a result of the catastrophe Fitz Urse, clearly the group’s leader (it was he that they have just witnessed. whom Becket had condemned by name only It is, however the third priest, he of the earlier moments before his murder), now lets the others resignation, who now speaks the play’s final sum- speak, all in their own behalf. The youngest, Wil- mation before the chorus will launch into the “Te liam de Traci, speaks next, in the same prose as Deum,” a song of praise, on which the drama ends. Fitz Urse. The poetic drama of a martyr’s murder is In his estimation, this in fact is the day on which done, Eliot signals his audience, and now begins the the church will have been seen to triumph, for it prosaic postmortems. De Traci talks the lingo of a finds its strength in the adversity and suffering that working-class bloke after a night of pub crawling; he produces martyrs while the world, in the persons of identifies himself and his three buddies as “four plain the knights, proceeds on its merry way “forever in Englishmen who put our country first.” While admit- the hell of make-believe / That is not belief.” As a ting that it may not have been quite right to kill an result, the third priest now finds cause for rejoicing archbishop, he wants it to be clear that they did not instead in the fact that God has “given us another get a penny for doing the dirty deed. It is as shallow a Saint in Canterbury,” for, in his view, that is what way to defend one’s cause as can be imaginable. endures in the nature of belief. Now Hugh de Morville speaks. He argues that Now the chorus of Canterbury women, who they were only executing the will of the people, have been themselves transformed by the event people like those sitting in the audience, people of Becket’s death, just as the third priest has, sing who know that a man cannot serve two masters, in a song of praise. It is they who virtually through- Becket’s case, his convictions and the king. Becket, out the play had been the glum prognosticators of by asserting allegiance to a higher power, a higher the expect-nothing school of human misery. There order than the king had violated his trust as a ser- will always be those who, whether in the face of vant of the king. miracle or martyrdom, will, like the first priest, for

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whom nothing has changed but the cause of his work on theatrical pieces was providing. Virtually perpetual fearfulness, find nothing to alter their from the time of the publication of The Waste Land notion that the world is what it is, but it is through in 1922, Eliot’s creative energies had been seriously the chorus of the women of Canterbury that Eliot flagging. From this vantage point, a person looking can reveal what he calls “the type of the common back at Eliot’s poetic output in the period under man.” These are the “most of us,” as he will call consideration, from 1923 to 1935, might see noth- them in the Four Quartets, who witness the signifi- ing but success after success—“The Hollow Men,” cance of the world as it unfolds in action and who “Ash-Wednesday,” the Ariel poems—whereas in never quite understand it, but who accept that fact there were few sustained efforts. limit in themselves, rather than flaunting such “The Hollow Men” appears to have been cob- ignorance as a badge of honor. bled together from bits left over from the unfinished The chorus shows that even the hopeless and “Sweeney Agonistes,” while the first three sections helpless who have been downtrodden by both nature of “Ash-Wednesday” were also published separately and their fellow man, particularly in the guise of those and independently, as had been all four of the Ariel who would lead and benefit them, can now find a poems. The latter poems, meanwhile, inasmuch as renewed sense of both their own and life’s worth in a they were a part of Faber & Faber’s annual Christ- tragedy such as Becket had just endured. Thus, they mas promotion, were more in the nature of com- can genuinely rejoice, praising and thanking God in missioned than inspired pieces. Indeed, during the the midst of such an awful moment, with a praise 1930s Eliot had come to feel that he was marking and thanksgivings that reach beyond despair. For time as a poet and had again become convinced, them, Becket’s tragic end was not his death but that as he had been at a number of other key junctures he should have died being, as it were, too good for in his career, that he had “exhausted [his] meager the world—which is not his, but humanity’s tragedy. poetic gifts.” Aside from “Ash-Wednesday,” pub- “[T]he blood of the martyrs and agony of the saints lished as the decade began, there was the unfin- / Is upon our heads,” they say, confirming what the ished “Coriolan,” which comprised another Ariel knights had argued, but seeing it as their own admis- poem, “Triumphal March,” and “Difficulties of a sion of a guilt for Becket’s loss, the beginning not of Statesman.” Furthermore, like The Rock, this was make-believe but of belief. a poetry more in keeping with Eliot’s social and Through Becket’s having died in the spirit of his political concerns—public themes, that is, rather cause, which is what matyrdom, bearing witness, is than with the sorts of intensely personal, private all about, he has proved that death is no bar to the themes that had generally beleaguered the typical fulfillment of the human spirit that devotes itself Eliot speaker to this time. not to the pursuits of the world but to discerning So, then, Murder in the Cathedral signals the the will of God. In so doing, Becket has come, in first time in some 13 years that, beyond such prose death, to embody the essence of the Christian faith works as The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism that he died professing. As Eliot’s Becket himself and After Strange Gods, themselves efforts that had had predicted in his Christmas sermon, embraced emerged relatively piecemeal out of the processes by the spirit of Christ, of both his birth and his of series lecturing in 1933, Eliot had conceived and death, one can both mourn and rejoice, and with executed a coherent literary piece from start to their “Te Deum,” the chorus does just that, singing finish and beginning to end. With the story of the the play to an end. historical confrontation between Henry and Becket for his primary material, it is highly unlikely that CRITICAL COMMENTARY a poet of Eliot’s skills, imagination, and religious Eliot’s succcesss with Murder in the Cathedral can convictions would have failed to produce a drama best be appreciated from the point of view of the col- of the towering proportions that he did. All of that lateral benefits that Eliot was able to reap at this time conflict’s various elements, after all, are the stuff of from this new avenue for creative expression that his great drama and theater, what with an archbishop

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at odds with a king, and two former friends at odds the circumstances by which the martyr or saint may with each other, where there is also the age-old emerge to permit God to edify his people, as Becket conflict of values that results when conscience runs may himself have explained it. As for Eliot, a child a collision course with duty. of the modern, secular world that his own earlier In his usual manner, nevertheless, Eliot allows all poetry had helped formulate, while the personal the themes to have their day in court. The theme of issue may still be a theological one, the poet and the tragedy that can result when a powerful social playwright is not caring to bring doctrinal matters impulse—one must obey the codes and traditions of belief to the forefront, but matters of individ- of the civic community—runs afoul of an equally ual moral and ethical responsibility. “All are pun- powerful religious conviction—one is compelled ishéd,” the prince proclaims in Shakespeare’s Romeo in the final analysis to obey the higher law, which and Juliet. That at least is the case in Murder in is God’s—is at least as old as Sophocles’s classic the Cathedral, but all are edified and enlightened as treatment of it in the fifth century B.C. in his great well, if they wish to be, both on stage and off. drama, Antigone. Eliot is writing his version of that Once more, then, when history lays a story as classic conflict nearly 2,500 years later in the midst good as Becket’s in the poet’s lap, it is difficult not of a modern bureaucratic state in which the ever- to produce a major-league effort—which is not to increasing pressures on individuals to be “good citi- say, however, that it was an easy task. All Eliot zens” at the expense of their own moral consciences needed do was be true to the original material, but were already beginning to have more and more dire even that required facing more of a challenge than effects in dictatorships such as Russia and Germany. might appear to have been the case on the face of Indeed, Becket’s last words virtually uphold the things. For example, what may at first glance appear authority of the church over the state, a cue also to be a strength—Eliot already had his story in hand required in the face of the increasing secularism of full-blown—can be seen as a serious weakness, if the so-called Western democracies as well. not an insurmountable barrier that must be some- The strength of Eliot’s dramatic treatment of how skirted. If everyone in the audience already Becket’s death, however, is that he does not leave knows how the story will turn out, or at least ought it at that. Dealing with the belief system of a Chris- to, there has to be some other solution for the first tian universe in which the individual has a per- order of business for any stage performance, and sonal relationship with God, Eliot is able to do the that is keeping the audience’s attention. Sophocles theme one better. The drama that Eliot Unlike with The Rock, the scenario of which crafts therefore also exposes the audience to the had already been sketched out in detail, to succeed incredible agony that Becket must undergo in the with this present dramatic project, Eliot not only private arena of his soul, represented on stage in needed to write the sort of great verse that would his encounter with the four tempters. Had Eliot be expected of a poet of his public reputation. He limited his handling of the dramatic material to needed as well to make critical choices in matters that aspect of its conflict alone, he still would have of characterization and plotting in order to tell in created a play worthy of attention for the manner the most arresting manner that he could manage a in which it explores how the good person hoping to story that was already quite well known to his audi- do God’s will must act against all human instincts, ence. Eliot’s challenge would be to tell a story that including his own purest motives. had become an indelible part of English history Finally, Eliot does not leave the audience out and of the religious character of the English nation of the fracas. The knights, in their defense of in a way that was not merely convincing and illu- their action, and especially the chorus, in the self- minating but that, too, would do authentic justice indictment of their closing “Te Deum,” make it to both the monumental nature of the original obvious to any thinking, feeling person who may events and to the demands of a stage production. have been watching the drama unfold that no one Then there was the additional problem of the is merely a spectator. All conspire to bring about nature of dramatic poetry itself. The constraints on

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verse that is prepared to be read at one’s leisure and ations on the poet, requiring him to think in terms of verse that must be spoken in a live context with all a multiplicity of points of view and for a wide variety the dramatic energy that a theatrical performance of audience members. Not everyone in the audience requires are so divergent as to be two entirely dif- might grasp the central idea or even the same ideas, ferent kinds of writing. The solution that Eliot fell just as among the characters on stage all would be on was to exploit both the religious nature of the sharing in the unfolding drama but none, except for drama’s setting—the murder did in fact occur in a the protagonist, if even he, might ever have a perfect cathedral during services—and the ritual nature of understanding of its actual dimensions. Still, by the a story whose chief purpose is its moral and spiri- same token, no one should be excluded from shar- tual edification. He does so by using the model of ing to some degree in either expressing, if on stage, religious ritual drama from the classical theater of or comprehending, if in the audience, the varied the ancient Greeks. In a later essay, “Poetry and significances that could be derived from the action. Drama,” Eliot would comment on the chief dif- For a poet who had achieved his renown by writing ficulty of composing a drama in verse, which is to a complex poetry whose appeal hardly cut across all keep the verse unobtrusive until the moments for strata of society, such a challenge must have seemed great poetry comes. By the same token, for Eliot both exhilarating and daunting. to have chosen to tell the story in a naturalistic or However effectively Eliot may have achieved realistic way would have hampered the develop- that goal in The Rock, with Murder in the Cathe- ment of its true theme and purpose. dral, and with Browne there to guide him in terms If Eliot was aiming to produce not only a success- of what might or might not work in actual produc- ful evening at the theater but a work of literature tion, Eliot was free to follow his own lights. Using (which are not the automatically the same thing), the dramaturgy of such Greek classics as Sopho- then it would be necessary for him to involve his cles’ Oedipus the King and Aeschylus’s Agamem- dramatic presentation not with what had happened non for his models, and perhaps even a far more to Becket at Canterbury or even with why it had recent work such as John Milton’s Samson Ago- happened—those, after all, had been topics of dis- nistes, Eliot’s plan of attack was to dramatize by cussion of one form or another for centuries—but representing the dynamics of the unfolding catas- with whatever what had occurred at Canterbury trophe through an anonymous chorus identified those many centuries before might still mean to each only as the women of Canterbury, just as other member of the audience as individuals. Each one of equally anonymous characters would be identi- them, it would be a safe bet, would be struggling in fied only by their social or psychological function, his or her own way with the same sorts of dilemmas, as the case may be, thus maintaining the illusion whether they were conscious of the struggle or not. that the audience would not be witnessing real- As late as March 1933, in his final Charles Eliot ity unfold, but rather something in the nature of Norton lecture at Harvard, the lecture series that a moral mathematics with cosmic consequences. would eventually become The Use of Poetry, Eliot Just as Sophocles and Aeschylus were each able had already proposed that the theater was the to take a bare-bones story from Homer that had “ideal medium” for the composition of a socially acquired its own immense cultural significance useful poetry. To that time he had only the never- over the passage of time and then shape that story completed “Sweeney Agonistes” to his credit as a to their own thematic ends with incredible pas- work in which he had tried his hand at writing sion and conviction, and just as Milton was able specifically for the stage. Nevertheless he used it to do so with the story of the Old Testament hero as an example of what one might hope to do with Samson in the hands of his people’s enemies, the dramatic poetry written for the purpose of perfor- Philistines, so Eliot takes, not the story of the rise mance before a paying audience. and fall of Thomas à Becket, a 12th-century politi- In his view, writing in verse for the so-called legiti- cian and cleric, but the agon or conflict of the day mate stage forced certain kinds of practical consider- that a martyr is murdered for his faith, to create a

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drama that is entirely his own and yet worthy of He admits, for example, that he was personally such a momentous event. never very good at scanning lines of poetry, that What might be lost in terms of a naturalistic that shortcoming has never troubled him because verisimilitude was gained, and then some, in the he was more interested in any case in determining freedom that such stylized characterizations thus why one line of poetry was good and another bad, allowed Eliot in getting right to the point of the a matter that no consideration of scansion could drama—not those sweeping historical details, but ever successfully resolve. In fact, “only the study, its direct impact as a single defining event on those not of poetry but of poems,” he explains, “can affected by it and the significance of that impact train our ear.” That study enables the individual to as it resonates to this day. Thanks to Eliot’s effort, develop not so much the capacity to imitate as to that resonance now has acquired a magnificent assimilate the styles of the poet or poets that each undertone, unique to the tenor of these times, and new, young writer most admires and, so, aspires to it is one that will accompany Becket’s story hence- sound like. In this way, too, aspiring poets are as forth for centuries to come. likely to be exposed to the familiar as the eccentric and even foreign in the search for those manners FURTHER READING of expression that they might associate with lan- Browne, E. Martin. The Making of T. S. Eliot’s Plays. guage that sounds like poetry. Even so, one law Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. of nature must always prevail, nevertheless, Eliot Donoghue, Denis. The Third Voice: Modern British and asserts, and that is “the law that poetry must not American Verse Drama. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton stray too far from the ordinary language which we University Press, 1959. use and hear.” Jones, D. E. The Plays of T. S. Eliot. London: Routledge It is at that point in his presentation that Eliot and Kegan Paul, 1960. finally introduces his topic, arguing that there is Raveendran, N. V. T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathe- a close connection between the music of poetry dral: A Study in Style. Madras, India: Emerald Pub- and conversation inasmuch as the music of poetry lishers, 1995. is inextricably bound up with its meaning. That Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in meaning, he further contends, is not what the poet Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of may or may not intend for the poem to be saying Chicage Press, 1974. but is what there is about the poetry that moves the reader so much so that “if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless.” “Music of Poetry, The” (1942) Eliot defines the music of poetry for his reader as that quality of its sound that meaningfully moves This essay was first presented as the third W. P. readers or listeners. While this may seem to be Ker Memorial Lecture at Glasgow University in either a very amorphous or extremely technical 1942 and subsequently collected in 1956 in On definition of the term, Eliot’s meaning here may Poetry and Poets. be better understood by comparing Eliot’s defini- tion to the experience of hearing a song sung in a SYNOPSIS foreign tongue. The listener cannot understand the Eliot is more than a third of the way into the essay words at all but derives some not only satisfactory before he finally clarifies what he means by “music” but frequently moving sense of their meaning nev- with regard to poetic composition. Till then he had ertheless. Eliot uses this analogy to singing himself been commenting on how each poet derives his or when he summarizes his position in this way: “. . . her own individual style. As Eliot sees it, style is poetry attempts to convey something beyond what itself an extension of the poet’s taste in poetry, to the can be conveyed in prose rhythms, [but] it remains result that the poet “is always trying to defend the . . . one person talking to another; and this is just as kind of poetry he is writing, or . . . wants to write.” true if you sing it. . . .”

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Eliot continues in this vein, making it clear that example, moves between controlling artificiality poets should not attempt to achieve in their poems a with simplicity and then elaborating on that sim- poetry that sounds exactly like the speech that they plicity. The poet who can contain those opposing hear around them, but the music of such poetry, tendencies adds to the resources of the spoken lan- nonetheless, must be the music latent in the ordinary guage of the time, but at no time should it be the language of the time. The ideal is that readers will primary aim of the poet to effect a revolution in the think not that the poetry reflects how they sound but language, for then sounding new or different would that it reflects how they might sound if they could take a debilitating precedence over the first require- “talk poetry.” In modern times, for example, poetry is ment of poetry, which is that it should make sense, meant to be not sung but spoken, yet that does pre- even if that sense is not always easily come by. vent the poetry from possessing a “musical pattern.” It follows that Eliot should then turn his atten- As Eliot defines it, this pattern is one of both sound tion briefly to the revolution in poetic speech and meaning, and it is “indissoluble and one.” that was effected by the early modernists, himself He raises a similar point in 1952, in the essay included, and that was primarily the introduction “Poetry and Drama.” There he implies that the of VERS LIBRE, or free verse. Eliot observes that it is chief benefit of writing drama in verse is that it generally assumed that “modern poetry has done enables a dynamic range to the language by which away with forms,” but he disagrees with that assess- the playwright can virtually modulate the audi- ment. “Only a bad poet,” he asserts, “could welcome ence’s emotional and intellectual responses, and free verse as a liberation from form.” Free verse, he that sort of a modulated or, perhaps, orchestrated insists, was “a revolt against dead form, and a prepa- ration for new form or for a renewal of the old.” In range of sound and sound quality, as opposed to that regard, he brings his essay to a close by propos- mere lexical meanings, is denied prose. ing that the last 20 years have seen poets engaged in In this present essay, as might be expected, Eliot the “search for a proper modern colloquial idiom.” eventually delves into the issue of dramatic poetry There, though he confesses to having little techni- as well, noting that the dependence of verse on the cal musical expertise, he recommends that in this spoken language is much more direct in dramatic search poets should think of those properties that poetry than in other types of verse. Yet English poetry and music have in common, “the sense of prosody has long since exhausted the resources rhythm and the sense of structure.” of blank verse, the celebrated unrhymed iambic pentameter line in which virtually all English dra- CRITICAL COMMENTARY matic poetry and much great epic and lyric poetry, At the time Eliot prepared those remarks that too, had been written for some 300 years, from became “The Music of Poetry,” he was developing the time of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE to the late 19th “Little Gidding,” the final of the four long poems century. In matters such as these, the poet is con- that he would then collect under the title Four trolled by the necessities of the period. That the Quartets. Eliot’s most pertinent recommendation English blank verse line no longer holds the poten- is that poets begin to think more in terms of the tial for successful exploitation that it once did is concert hall than the opera stage for their musi- an accident of history and of the great versatility cal models. “There are possibilities of transitions in that blank verse provided to poets as different as poems comparable to the different movements of a Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. In the end, symphony or a quartet,” he suggests. it was such a successful form that its widespread Like Shakespeare’s individual development, Eliot use eventually exhausted its potential. In all cases, asserts, language itself progresses by developing at however, the poet’s main task is “to catch up with extremes, between musical elaborations and the sim- the changes in colloquial speech, which are funda- plicities of direct speech. While Eliot seems to imag- mentally changes in thought and sensibility.” ine that his is a time for musical elaboration, he no Poetic language, Eliot argues, using the devel- doubt endorses keeping an ear out for the simplicity opment of Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry for his and directness of ordinary speech as an anchor on

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the sort of overinventiveness that deadens rather of which can be safely gathered together under the than invigorates the natural connection between the single heading, culture, at least inasmuch as he will spoken language and the language of verse. set about defining the term. So much, indeed, are these earlier positions and opinions, though modi- fied, embedded in the text of Notes that, for the sake of moving on into a consideration of its con- Notes towards the Definition tent, it would be more effective to contrast Eliot’s of Culture (1948) earlier with his present views as these relevant issues are raised and brought to bear by him the Eliot himself gives an uncustomarily detailed pages of Notes towards the Definition of Culture. account of the publication of Notes towards the SYNOPSIS Definition of Culture in his brief preface to the book- Eliot states at the outset that his sole purpose, rather length edition first published in November 1948. than to propose a social or political philosophy, is to Four years earlier, what he calls “a preliminary define culture, a term that he feels “has come to be sketch” of the eventual work was published, under misused.” He imagines that, as a result, perhaps, of the same title, in three consecutive issues of The the destructiveness of the recent war, the term has New English Weekly, accounting for Eliot’s appar- come to be used by journalists, for example, as if it ent coyness later in calling such a thoughtful work, were a term synonymous with civilization. Eliot does as the completed study turned out to be, mere not deny that those two words may be interchange- “notes.” He goes on to tell his readers that those able in certain contexts, so his aim is not to erect any preliminary notes were subsequently perfected into artificial distinctions between them but to define the a longer paper, “Cultural Forces in the Human one, culture, in such a way that it will not continue Order,” and published in a 1945 volume, Prospect to be easily mistaken for being a synonym for “art” in for Christendom. Revised, it is the first chapter of general or, even more vaguely, for “a kind of emo- the finished book. He also tells his readers that the tional stimulant.” It is the latter case that he implies, second chapter is a revised version of a paper first and fears, is becoming the more and more common. published in The New English Review in October As he outlines his approach to the topic in the 1945, and that there is an appendix compiled from coming essay, Eliot also reveals, of course, his per- three radio broadcasts he had made, in German, to sonal bias, which is that there is a relation between the German people in 1946. culture and religion, so much so, indeed, that “the While Eliot may not have had any specific inten- culture [of a people] will appear to be the product tion behind presenting such a detailed bibliograph- of the religion, or the religion the product of the ical history for the material at hand, the reader culture.” Furthermore, he believes that a culture is ought to be impressed by the fact that the ideas “organic,” that is, that it grows and changes so that expressed therein did not simply spring full-blown it may be transmitted through succeeding genera- onto the page in some effort of Eliot’s to write a tions; that it should be reducible to more and more book on the topic, but were themselves the prod- local manifestations, as is implied by regionalism; ucts of much working out of issues and nuances and that, as far as religion is concerned, it should over an extended period of time and in a variety reflect both unity and diversity. of contexts and venues. One can go further than By way of an example of his meaning here, read- that, however. So much did Eliot’s literary criticism ers familiar with the ideas that Eliot had already begin to merge with social criticism, social criticism expressed in his book-length essay The Idea of a with religious criticism, and religious criticism with Christian Society a decade earlier would already cultural criticism, that anyone would have to say be acquainted with his hope that, at least in the that Notes towards the Definition of Culture, his last Christian nations of Western Europe, a universal- major published prose work, is a culmination of ity of doctrine would be mitigated, but not diluted, Eliot’s thinking to date on a wide range of issues, all by local devotional custom and practice. Where

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these three conditions—transmission through Culture, for Eliot, is not something that one generations, regional flexibility, and diversity in can “deliberately aim at” achieving, nor, one might unity—are not met, Eliot goes as far to say, a high suspect, changing either. The conditions of culture, civilization is not possible. he asserts as he concludes his introduction, are Finally, Eliot promises that any such discus- “natural” to human beings. If he places quotation sion must close itself by “disentangling” just such marks around the word natural, it is only to suggest a definition of culture from any consideration of that one need not know what it means in order to the educational and political life of the community. recognize that it does nevertheless apply. In any Here Eliot freely admits that he is liable to trample event, it will be this emphasis on the naturalness of on what others may regard as sacred ground by culture, as opposed to the idea, for example, that it appearing to be elitist or exclusive in his definition can or should be consciously manipulated, that the of culture. That, however, he argues, underscores reader should keep in mind, for Eliot certainly will his very reason for wishing to define the term: If as he continues to frame his definition. a culture is to be sacrificed in the name of other Chapter 1 social and political goals, so be it, Eliot would say. But, he would add, let it be clear what one means In his first chapter, Eliot discusses “The Three Senses to sacrifice when they speak of sacrificing culture. of ‘Culture.’ ” (Again, putting quotation marks around This is an Eliot who, far back in his own career as the word culture reminds the reader that these are a social commentator, in essays such as “The Func- uncharted seas that nevertheless seem deceptively tion of Criticism” in 1923 and After Strange Gods familiar.) Culture, then, can describe the develop- in 1934, had been arguing, sometimes stridently ment of an individual, he says, a group or class, or the but always with a passionate cogency, against liter- society as a whole. Since the last comprises the other ary and other intellectual forces that he saw to be two, it is there that he wishes to begin. Normally, at enmity with his own cherished beliefs and atti- however, it has been the other way around, Eliot tudes. Now he appears to be ready to accept that argues, for he demonstrates convincingly that socio- such intellectual and moral conflict is inevitable logical and other treatments of culture, such as MAT- as long as it is recognized as a necessary conflict, THEW ARNOLD’s Culture and Anarchy, generally begin not as a foregone conclusion. He seems to be ready and end by focusing on the class or group if not even, to make peace with those positions with which he as in Arnold’s case, just the individual. Such lapses, does not agree by continuing to explain why he Eliot contends, give the term culture the “thinness” does not agree with them rather than by trying to with which it is often popularly associated. present the opposing position as patently disagree- Furthermore, there are various contexts in able, as he had done in many an earlier diatribe. which one may think of culture—in terms of man- Here now, Eliot makes every effort to establish ners, for example, or of learning, of philosophy, himself as one who is opposed neither to change or of the arts—and these are all too often nei- nor to opposition. Rather, he is opposed to those ther taken into account or accounted for. The net who “have believed in particular changes as good result is that people are thus encouraged to think in themselves, without worrying about the future of of themselves as persons of culture when they are civilisation, and without finding it necessary to rec- versed in one area of it but are totally unaware that ommend their innovations by the specious glitter of there are other areas as well. unmeaning promises.” Eliot would like to see enter Eliot’s point is that all these various senses, then, such dialogues a “permanent standard” by which and all these various levels of culture must be taken one could compare one civilization with another, not into account in a coherent manner if anything just one’s own with others’, but one’s own with the approaching an adequate definition can ever hope civilization that it has been at various times or may to be achieved. These various characteristics and be becoming. So, then, his essay will ask “whether categories of culture overlap; there is, for example, there are any permanent conditions, in the absence even in more primitive cultures, distinct separation of which no higher culture can be expected.” between art and religion or between the activities

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of the individual and the goals of the group. The Thus, Eliot’s presentation arrives at a critical more advanced a culture, the more abstract distinc- moment: “[N]o culture can appear or develop tions are forced on these critical activities of any except in relation to a religion.” Indeed, Eliot goes culture, specifically, religion, science, politics, and even further in linking a people’s culture to their art, so that there begin equally abstract struggles belief system by noting that all that he has just said for dominance of one over the other three. Those by way of describing how a culture may decline tensions, Eliot argues, may further become tensions and disintegrate may also be said of the same phe- within individuals, citing for his example the con- nomena as they would occur in the history of a tention between the demands of the state and the religion. Here, of course, he can again bring to bear demands of the church that form the basis for the as evidence present conditions in Western Europe, tragedy in Sophocles’ Antigone. A culture in which a situation that he had already addressed in 1939 these kinds of conflicts begin to occur represents a in The Idea of a Christian Society. The divergence very advanced stage of civilization, Eliot proposes, of belief in Christianity that commenced in the for it requires an audience already aware of those 16th century may not be, in Eliot’s view, anywhere tensions in order for a dramatist to articulate them. near as pernicious a sign of its decline as a cul- Little by little then, the culture of the class tural mainstay as much as an increasing tradition or group emerges from the intracultural tensions of a nurtured skepticism is. Not only can culture, as formed between the individual and society. These Eliot views it, not be preserved or extended in the more highly cultured groups—groups, that is, whose absence of religion, but in the absence of a religious motive for being is shaped by cultural tensions—lead foundation, it is possible, Eliot is afraid, to adopt an to further specialization, and that, of course, can indifferent attitude toward culture. lead to cultural disintegration, a point that enables Rather, Eliot would like to imagine a society in Eliot to begin to focus his discussion on the contem- which “both ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ . . . should mean porary scene. “Cultural disintegration,” he writes, for the individual and for the group something “is present when two or more strata so separate that toward which they strive, not merely something these become in effect distinct cultures,” and this which they possess.” Religion can thus be “the whole can result from a separation of classes as well. The way of life of a people, . . . and that way of life is also religious sensibility becomes separated and distinct its culture,” or it may be a way of life that a people from the artistic, for example, or manners become share with other peoples but with whom they do not a class distinction unique to a particular economic share a common culture, as in the case of Christian stratum within the society. This process of disin- Europe. Ultimately, then, if culture “includes all the tegration and stratification leads inevitably to a characteristic activities and interests of a people”— decline of the total culture, a decline manifested, and here Eliot cites numerous English interests and internally, in social ailments and, on a global scale, activities as disparate as Derby Day and beetroot in in relations among nations. In the latter case, it vinegar—then all those interests and activities are becomes a matter of defining a nation or people in “also a part of our lived religion.” terms of its state or political identity rather than on But if culture is a people’s lived religion, the the basis of each people’s own cultural cohesion, converse is not necessarily true: that religion is a abstracting human-to-human interaction all that people’s lived culture. “[T]he actual religion of no much more. These difficulties ultimately influence European people has ever been purely Christian, or matters of education as trivial-seeming on the sur- purely anything.” Indeed, Eliot contends, “behav- face as the decline of a national cuisine, since that iour is also belief,” and the purity of line between implies a lack of cohesion in the culture resulting in how a people believe and how a people behave col- a disconnect between the requirements of life and ors every aspect of their being and constitutes, ulti- the quality of life. “Culture,” Eliot can say at this mately, what may be called their culture, even if it juncture, “may even be described simply as that is not seen exclusively as their religion. Or, as Eliot which makes life worth living.” puts it, “bishops are a part of English culture, and

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horses and dogs are a part of English religion.” Put a way neither of justifying or condemning such a yet another way, a people’s culture is “an incarna- state of affairs but, rather, a necessary part of the tion of its religion,” no matter how well they profess analytical processes that enable definition. That the particular faith that they otherwise adhere to. said, Eliot quickly in his second chapter establishes The truth or falsity of a faith, then, does not matter a fact that is presented not as something to be as far as culture is concerned, so that a people with praised or lamented, but merely understood. While a “truer light” may have a culture inferior to a peo- a classless society remains the ideal at higher stages ple who live a lesser faith with a greater intensity. of development, a culture divides into classes. Eliot is wise to avoid particular examples, but Higher classes emerge wherein “superior individu- who would deny that a people who do not believe als” in political administration, the arts, science, in the values by which the culture claims that lives philosophy, and physical prowess form “into suit- ought to be led are leading a sham cultural exis- able groups, endowed with appropriate powers, and tence that cannot long sustain itself? Eliot there- perhaps with varied emoluments and honours.” fore can conclude his first chapter by proposing These groups, he tells his readers, telling them that “any religion, while it lasts, . . . gives an appar- nothing that they do not already know, “are what ent meaning to life, provides the framework for a we call élites.” culture, and protects the mass of humanity from Not to belabor the matter, but it is necessary boredom and despair.” for the reader to note that Eliot is neither defend- ing nor attacking a cultural elitism, only describ- Chapter 2 ing the manner in which such a state of affairs Eliot begins his next chapter, “The Class and the comes about. Indeed, he imagines that at some Elite,” by carefully addressing two sensitive issues future point in the development of a society strati- even for his time: the notion of higher civilizations fied by class distinctions, congregations of elites will versus lower or primitive societies, and the notion replace class structure by transcending it. Today of cultural elites. such an idea might be called a meritocracy, and it It has understandably become more and more seems to foster its own inequitable divisions. difficult if not embarrassing to pronounce a particu- Nevertheless, all that Eliot is really suggesting is lar way of life as more “advanced” than another or a that when a culture begins to identify inherent skill particular social class as more inherently privileged and talent, class distinctions are seen for the artificial than another, yet qualitative differences, whether criteria that they are and thus class is not a measure or not such distinctions are openly addressed by a or reflection of the relative merits of an individual’s society, are made nevertheless and permeate every potential for contributing to the larger community. human society. Indeed the potential for allowing The result of the emergence of elites would, there- the pernicious nature of these ways of thinking and fore, be that “all positions in society should be occu- of behaving to dominate a society’s way of life and pied by those who are best fitted to exercise the treatment of others is increased especially when functions of the positions.” The danger of investing distinctions of that kind are not openly addressed, all cultural integrity in the hands of elites, however, analyzed, and questioned. For then it becomes an is that they tend to become further and further iso- unspoken commonplace that the making of such lated, one group from another, whereas the notion judgments is “the way it’s always been done.” that there is within a culture, guiding and forming Eliot’s addressing the entire matter, then, forms it, the elite enables its various groupings to interact a very real part of the analysis that he is carrying more harmoniously for the common good. on in order not to prescribe but to describe those Eliot takes up the views of Dr. Karl Mannheim elements that constitute a “definition of culture.” to espouse his own opposing view. Mannheim, Seen from that perspective, his interest in describ- Eliot tells his readers, fails to distinguish between ing how class and, ultimately, a class of elites even- elites, with their tendency to cluster and become tually emerges in so-called higher civilizations is isolated in their various fields, and the elite, who

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through separate interests would nevertheless oper- that differences among and between groups and ate in concert in support of the common interest of regions, nations and peoples, are both inevitable a common culture. This elite may represent or be and welcomed. constituted of the ruling or governing class in some Eliot’s contemporary readers would have been instances, but “in concerning ourselves with class as equally well versed in that same proposition, versus élites,” which is what for Eliot has been a however. Those political organizations that are primary focus of his argument throughout, “we are now defined as “nations,” which may by now seem concerned with the total culture of a country, and to have been the building blocks of diverse human that involves a good deal more than government.” societies since time immemorial, are actually fairly It may be that, rather than a “classless” society, recent historical developments. There was not, for Eliot is making a case for what a society should want example, any such political entity as Germany or its so-called “ruling” class to be. So, then, “[w]hat Italy before 1865, less than 100 years before the is important is a structure in which there will be, time of Eliot’s writing, and even ’s from ‘top’ to ‘bottom,’ a continuous gradation of “” of England, Scotland, and Ire- cultural levels.” This culture must, meanwhile, be land is a political invention of the late 18th cen- transmitted primarily by the family rather than what tury. For Eliot to speak of regions and sects and Eliot calls educationists, inasmuch as the latter will cults within the context of a Christianized Western dispute whether or not there ought to be a class Europe is mandatory, then, since post-Reformation structure present in the society at all, while the fam- Europe, even within the relatively insular realms ily, rather than concerning itself with the pros and of the British Isles, had long ago become as frag- cons of a class structure, will naturally represent the mented religiously as it had always been regionally values of the culture in miniature, whatever class and, in the oldest sense of the term, tribally. the particular family embodies or belongs to. “Unity and Diversity,” the general title that However, in order to ensure the viability of the Eliot gives to chapters 3 and 4, is hardly proposed family unit, Eliot ends his second chapter with what as an original conceptualization by Eliot, who then sounds like an impossible requirement for a modern discusses “The Region” in his third chapter and industrial state such as England: that there must be “Sect and Cult” in his fourth. Instead, it is his yield- “groups of families persisting, from generation to gen- ing to the social, spiritual, ethnic, and even geo- eration, each in the same way of life.” And he follows graphical realities of the varied peoples of the very that stipulation by sounding once more his ominous English culture that he had earlier defined as the caution that while such conditions may not bring “whole life of the whole people.” If these two chap- about a higher civilization, “when they are absent, ters have a common thesis, as Eliot’s titulary way the higher civilization is unlikely to be found.” of linking them suggests that they do, it can be found in the epigraph from the 20th-century Brit- Chapter 3 ish thinker A. N. Whitehead’s Science and the Mod- Eliot’s chapters 3 and 4 are continuations of each ern World that Eliot cites at the opening of chapter other, inasmuch as he now sets out to describe how 3: “A diversification among human communities a unified culture must nevertheless both enable is essential. . . . Other nations of different habits and express diversity in order to remain viable. In are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require a manner of speaking, Eliot’s entire essay through- of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to out to this point has been tacitly endorsing the be understood, something sufficiently different to same proposition, what with its talk of higher and provoke attention, and something great enough to lower levels of society acting in concert to make a command admiration.” way of national life constitute what, by his defini- In summary, if differences inspire competition, tion, can be rightfully called a culture. None of this that competition ought to be itself inspired by emu- should come as any surprise to present-day readers, lation. From that, the health of the entire human who should already be well schooled in the idea community emerges. What is true of the benefits

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of a healthy diversity between nations and peo- idiosyncratic habits that have emerged from it as ples, Eliot happily and wisely contends in his next distinctions peculiar of a region inasmuch as Irish two chapters, must be true as well of the diversity could be found in every major metropolis in Eng- among an otherwise common people sharing what, land itself. Still, such distinctions can nevertheless from the outsider’s point of view, appears to be a be identified as “regional” for all the other reasons common culture. already cited. Eliot’s is always the time-honored media via, These satellite cultures, as Eliot comes to call middle way, of the Anglican tradition of England them, using Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as out- that was itself inspired by that people’s desire, dur- standing examples, must be encouraged to maintain ing the Reformation, to be free of the dominance and nurture their original identities as well, but not of what they regarded as a foreign culture, Rome’s, so much as to cut themselves off completely from over their national religion and yet to remain true, the primary culture, in this case England’s, through by and large, to long-standing Catholic Christian which they are linked to Europe and, through practices, rituals, and devotions. Thus, Eliot is Europe, the world. Eliot does take a tangent here, always taking pains to point out that a totally class- however, that may not find universal agreement. less society is as pernicious to the maintenance and When a satellite culture has become united by lan- growth of a healthy national culture as a society guage to another, he argues, it ought to abandon that is very rigidly organized by class distinctions. its own language in favor of the central culture for Rather, he writes, “[t]he unity with which I am literary purposes. This sort of cultural imperialism concerned must be largely unconscious,” that is to should certainly strike most as inexcusable, includ- say, it should not be something that is being per- ing even Eliot, who only a few years earlier, in petually identified and celebrated, “and therefore “The Social Function of Literature,” had rightfully can perhaps be best approached through a con- commended the Norwegians, just recently liberated sideration of the useful diversities.” Region is one. from the control of Nazi Germany, for tenaciously Citizens, then, should be encouraged to think of clinging to a national, Norwegian-language litera- themselves as citizens not of the nation, but “of a ture and arguing that it is vital that every people do particular part of [their] country, with local loyal- so for the benefit of all other peoples. ties.” By the same token and in the same spirit, A special exception could be made in the case however, one’s loyalty to a locality or region, no of English, nevertheless, as a common tongue for matter how exotic or unique its cultural heritage all the peoples of the British Isles. (The same phe- may seem to be in its own right, cannot be fostered nomenon, for example, has occurred in modern in such a way that it ends up taking precedence Italy, a land of many dialects and of long literary over one’s sense of belonging to those ever-enlarg- traditions in each, where, nevertheless, the Tuscan ing groups that eventually make up the whole peo- dialect of DANTE ALIGHIERI has, since national uni- ple and the whole culture. fication, become what the world knows as the Ital- Nor is this sense of locality or region limited to ian language, a situation of which Eliot would have geographical entities, even when it may seem to been well aware, although he does not cite it.) His be defined or interpreted in that manner. Dialects argument, in any case, regards the transmission of a provide a point of immediate reference, and Eliot culture, not the dynamics of its political and often uses the Irish for an example. While as a people military history. A culture, he insists, is “a peculiar they had long since, at least in Eliot’s time, lost way of thinking, feeling and behaving.” He contin- their own language and were for the most part, as ues: “[F]or its maintenance, there is no safeguard a result of English colonial policies in Ireland, Eng- more reliable than a language. And to survive for lish-speaking, the English that they speak retains this purpose it must continue to be a literary lan- idiomatic and other markers of their original Gaelic guage—not necessarily a scientific language but tongue. Furthermore, it would be unfair to define certainly a poetic one. . . .” Regarded from that their ethnic background and the dialect and other point of view, in fact, his comments on the main-

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tenance of Norwegian as a literary language under only be exacerbated to an intolerable degree by Nazi rule are no less in keeping with his remarks any effort to impose a world culture, since cultures here on the various peoples of the British Isles writ- do not all follow the same processes of growth, a ing solely in English, although all individuals of condition that such an imposition would require. Welsh, Irish, and Scottish extraction might not Some areas of the world, Eliot notes in ending his find themselves in agreement with his position. remarks on unity and diversity as regional issues, Eliot himself would go as far as to defend and citing as an example India, where a Hindu and encourage such disagreements, for they too form a Muslim culture existed side by side at the time, part of a culture. Whereas friction in the mechani- have seen the evolution of competing cultures to a cal universe may be a waste of energy, in human degree that would make Eliot’s comments on Brit- cultures, all those frictions created by class and ish regionalism seem a mockery. region, including those just discussed involving sat- Chapter 4 ellite cultures that have been reduced to second- ary roles, “by dividing the inhabitants of a country In his fourth chapter, as previously noted, Eliot into . . . different kinds of groups, lead to a conflict takes up the topic of cultural unity and diversity favourable to creativeness and progress.” As he puts as it is affected by cults and sects. Specifically, he it, paraphrasing the Whitehead epigraph for effect, defines his topic as “the cultural significance of reli- “One needs the enemy.” Indeed, the disastrous gious divisions.” He begins by lamenting, in what transformation of Italian and German cultures by he terms “more developed societies” such as one the ideological single-mindedness of fascism pro- might find in Western Europe, the sort of cohe- vides Eliot with a vivid and recent illustration of sion between religious and nonreligious activities what can occur when dialogue and debate cease that one would expect to find in more primitive or within a culture. less developed societies, keeping in mind that he is As the reader might have already observed, speaking of degrees of complexity and abstraction Eliot appears to be proposing a model of culture here, not quality and significance. As he puts it, the that involves ever-widening but concentric circles, more conscious belief becomes, the more conscious from the village to the region to the nation to the unbelief becomes, leading to habits of indifference, world. The difficulty there, of course, is that once doubt, and skepticism. one transcends the idea of a national culture, one In The Idea of a Christian Society a decade ear- has to abandon most of the political associations lier, Eliot had already addressed many of these same that culture also implies. The United Nations had difficulties attendant on maintaining a meaning- already been formed by the time of Eliot’s writing, ful national religious life in a postindustrial, highly and the visionary ideal of a world government had materialistic, and contentious modern society. become a utopian commonplace ever since U.S. Now, however, he emphasizes that he wishes to president Woodrow Wilson’s proposing a League explore those same issues not from the point of view of Nations following hard on the catastrophe of of the Christian apologist but from that of the soci- World War I in 1919. ologist. As a result, “[m]ost of my generalisations Still, Eliot contends that if his pleading for the are intended to have applicability to all religion, integrity of local cultures has any practical validity, and not only Christianity.” If, then, he neverthe- then “a world culture which was simply a uniform less appears to be discussing matters that are wholly culture would be no culture at all.” Eliot is forced Christian, it is because he is “particularly concerned to conclude that although we are “pressed to main- with Christian culture, with the Western World, tain the ideal of a world culture,” we are at the with Europe, and with England.” Finally, he empha- same time forced to admit “that it is something we sizes as well that whether one is a believer or an cannot imagine.” Indeed, the “colonization prob- unbeliever, no one can be so completely detached lem,” as he terms the imposition of one culture from the religious experience as to approach and on another by force by an outside power, would discuss it in a wholly objective manner.

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That said, he continues by undertaking a con- Since Anglicanism as an offshoot of Catholicism sideration of “unity and diversity in religious belief was the result of a decision made at the top, in this and practice” in order to “enquire what is the case by Henry VIII in his own dispute with Rome, situation most favourable to the preservation and whereas the Protestant dissenters were opposing improvement of culture.” Those religions that have themselves on native ground specifically against the greatest universality, as he sees it, are most what they saw as little more than a national expres- likely to “stimulate culture,” and their universality sion of Catholicism, England may be culturally more is determined in part by their being able to appeal stratified religiously in ways that are themselves to and be accepted by peoples of different cultures. modified by cultural distinctions among classes. Christianity certainly fills that bill; however, Eliot This Eliot is willing to attribute to the regional observes that there is always the danger that too divisions based on ethnicities that he desribed in broad a cross-cultural appeal can also result in the the preceding chapter. In the most basic terms, dilution of a religion’s core values. he is willing to concede that the British Isles’ hav- These general premises established, Eliot ing been home to many peoples makes it ripe for announces that he will devote the remainder of frequent dissension and stratification in all areas of this discussion to the relation of Catholicism and culture, but especially religion. Protestantism in Europe, as well as to the diversity The next logical step is to consider the ecumen- of sects that Protestantism has itself produced. It ical movements that are becoming more common. serves his purpose, for he finds himself compelled After making a distinction between intercom- to admit that Europe since the 16th century, a munion and reunion, he observes that complete convenient period reference for the Protestant Ref- reunion would entail a “community of culture.” The ormation, has certainly not suffered in terms of result would not, however, be that dreaded uniform overall cultural development. While he must also culture worldwide, but rather a “Christian culture” admit that it is impossible to say what sort of cul- manifested in its various local components. Here tural developments may have occurred instead had again, the danger would lie in such a Christianity’s Europe remained Catholic and Christian, he can- attempting to be all things to all people, reducing not avoid the obvious conclusion that, based on “theology to such principles that a child can under- the European experience, “[e]ither religious unity stand,” which he sees as a cultural debility. A worse or religious division may coincide with cultural danger, in keeping with the modern tendency to efflorescence or cultural decay.” be polite to avoid the risk of appearing assertive, When he uses England itself as the focus for a is that a sort of “cultural equality” may begin to similar discussion, however, he is less sanguine, for prevail, and again the lowest-common-denominator while the two dominant religious cultures in Eng- approach to both theology and ritual might very land are both Protestant—the Established Angli- well follow. When it comes to determining whether there should be an international church—Roman can Church and the various Protestant sects that Catholicism—or a national church—here Angli- have splintered from it during the centuries—the canism would provide a good example—or sepa- English atheist still shares in the religious life of rated sects, Eliot takes the moderating position as culture when it comes to signficant social events he so often has done in this present treatise, pro- such as births, marriages, and deaths. Nevertheless, posing that the maintenance of a persistent tension Eliot sees the major Protestant cultures of Northern among all three possibilities is desirable. “Christen- Europe, where the Protestant Reformation suffered dom should be one,” but “within that unity there its widest and most enduring successes, as having should be an endless conflict between ideas.” cut those regions off from the mainstream of Euro- pean cultural development, which is largely Latin Chapter 5 in origin. While he avoids evaluating the pros and Eliot devotes his last two chapters to culture and cons of that separation for the cultures of the north, politics and culture and education. That he treats he returns again to its consequence for the English. both topics in a far more cursory fashion than he

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had culture and class, culture and region, and cul- not directly involved with the governing elite. In ture and religion suggests that he does not view other words, these “men of action,” the political, those last two categories as being as critical to the would not be isolated in their own dangerously and maintenance and transmission of cultural values. disproportionately powerful subculture but would However, culture and religion, politics, and edu- instead be subject to the judgment of those who cation together form a broader category, which respect thought over action. This governing elite is culture and the nation. Politics and education, should, then, be required to study history and polit- from that point of view, are relatively equal to reli- ical theory, so that they are inculcated in the life of gion in forming the bedrock of a people’s culture the mind. as a nation, although the reader should recall at all Eliot has a pointed reason for bringing the politi- times that, as far as Eliot is concerned, religion and cal to the broader cultural table: “Today, we have culture are virtually inseparable. become culture-conscious in a way which nourishes No wonder, then, the short shrift that he gives to nazism, communism and nationalism all at once; in politics, which is in and of itself, though dominant a way which emphasises separation without helping in the short term, a transitory aspect of any culture’s us to overcome it.” A more culturally astute gov- ongoing health. Still, Eliot is enough a child of his erning elite would obviously go a long way toward time to recognize the importance that the culture overcoming those separations that are otherwise itself, particularly in the postwar environment in exposed to the exploitation of unscrupulous parties which he is writing, attaches to the political sphere, with agendas of their own. so he treats it gingerly but with a profound respect Eliot cites present-day communist Russia as an for its genuine even if superficial importance. The example of a culture attempting to export their rev- political, for one thing, bandy the word culture about olution to all kinds of disparate cultures throughout quite freely. Yet, while all may engage in the politi- the world by presenting theirs as a culture condon- cal process, by voting, for example, or paying taxes, ing the equality of cultures at all cost—a successful few actually engage in politics, so that, in view of strategy despite its patently obvious contradictions. the considerable power that they wield, these few The democratic West, meanwhile, does little bet- form a virtual elite unto themselves. It is that idea, ter. Eliot cites the British Council, an official body if not practical reality, that Eliot hopes to short cir- created to promote “cultural exchanges,” to show cuit somewhat as he now defines what he sees to be how those tactics are little different, since it too the place of the political in a culture. makes the transmission and exchange of culture a “In a healthily stratified society,” he observes, function of the state apparatus. “public affairs would be a responsibility not equally Eliot rightfully wonders when it “again will be borne.” Nevertheless, the governing elite must not possible for intellectual elites of all countries to itself become one “sharply divided from the other travel as private citizens.” As should be appar- elites of society.” To achieve this aim, he would ent, he imagines that that can occur only if there not like to define the governing elite as opposed is a governing elite who do not imagine that the to the other elites as if the first were men of action national culture and its dissemination and trans- as opposed to men of thought. Rather, he says, the mission is not the exclusive prerogative of the state. relationship should be regarded as one “between Eliot concludes chapter 5 on culture and politics by men of different types of mind and different areas reiterating that we cannot “slip into the assump- of thought and action.” tion that culture can be planned. Culture,” he says A society that is graded accordingly, Eliot con- emphatically, “can never be wholly conscious.” tends, with “several levels of power and author- ity,” might find the politician “restrained” in his Chapter 6 use of language by his fear of censure if not ridicule When Eliot, in chapter 6, takes up the topic of from “a smaller and more critical public,” com- culture and education, the reader may recall that posed of those other segments of the elite who are Eliot had, in chapter 2, argued that culture is better

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maintained and transmitted by the family than by latent abilities that may otherwise lay dormant (the those he calls educationists for the simple reason “Mute Inglorious Milton dogma” he calls it, invok- that the family unconsciously embodies the cul- ing a central image from Thomas Gray’s sentimen- ture, while education, to be successful, must be tal masterpiece, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”). a conscious process. And, as the reader is amply If there is a commonality to these assumptions cautioned at the conclusion of chapter 5, culture that he raises only to challenge them, it is that they can never—should never—be a “wholly conscious” all emphasize the social benefits of education rather affair. Rather than revisit that earlier argument in than promoting it for its own sake and as a force chapter 6, then, Eliot analyzes the general expec- to help shape individual lives. The emphasis on tations associated with the idea of education by opportunity and education, for example, he sees as the culture, in order to extrapolate a more general indicative of the “depression of the family” and the idea of how education might best serve cultural “disintegration of class.” The reader should recall purposes. To do so, he first sets out to examine and how integral Eliot sees the role of the family and set in order the prevalent assumptions regarding class to be in the maintenance, dissemination, and education. transmission of culture. The first examination, involving the prevailing Eliot goes as far as to assert that in the mod- notions of the purpose of education, entails the ern world education has become an abstraction, most extensive summary on Eliot’s part, citing such “remote from life” and implying a disintegrated contemporary authorities as H. C. Dent, Herbert society. Meanwhile, education is thought to be the Read, and C. E. M. Joad. In each instance, he panacea for “putting civilisation together again.” convincingly demonstrates that to varying degrees If by education in that regard, Eliot continues, we education has come to be seen as an instrument mean “everything that goes to form the good indi- for advancing social ideals. He remarks that it is vidual in a good society,” then he has no problem therefore unfortunate if education as a means for with that, revealing in the process his own defini- individuals to acquire wisdom, knowledge, and a tion of education. If, however, education means a respect for learning is overlooked in the interest standardized curriculum mandated by government of serving broader social aims. If nevertheless it is bureaucracies, then “the remedy is manifestly and finally agreed that education’s purpose is “making ludicrously inadequate.” people happier,” then that assumption ought too to Ideally, education, he continues, defining the be examined. Eliot quickly concludes in this partic- term as he goes, is the “process by which the com- ular case that “education is a strain” that very often munity attempts to pass on to all its members its “can impose greater burdens upon a mind than that culture.” But when in practice education becomes mind can bear.” what today would be called a government-spon- Eliot deals with his three other “assumptions” sored and -directed entitlement, thereby bringing regarding the value and purpose of education in preselected aspects of the whole culture to bear equally quick succession. (He could have as easily in order to satisfy social and political agendas, the called them “myths” except that he has a poet’s more systematically is the root culture betrayed. respect for the meaning of words.) Thus, he is “Whether education can foster and improve cul- happy to debunk the notion that everyone wants an ture or not, it can surely adulterate and degrade education. (“A high average of general education,” it,” Eliot concludes, imagining a future in which, he observes, “is perhaps less necessary for a civil the root culture lost to living human memory by society than a respect for learning.”) He dismisses the distortions of programmatic education, all the notion that education makes for an “equality that would be left of the culture would be “barbar- of opportunity” (he imagines instead that expand- ian nomads . . . encamp[ed] in their mechanised ing educational opportunity can as likely lower caravans.” educational standards) and the somewhat related Eliot closes by reminding his reader of what he notion that an exposure to education will unleash clearly thinks is a cardinal point, perhaps the cardi-

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nal point of his entire presentation thus far: “. . . we every other.” He holds this to be as true of painting cannot set about to create or improve culture, . . and music as of poetry, and in the second of his only will the means which are favourable to cul- three broadcasts, he extends the notion that there ture.” To do as much, returning to his purpose for is a unified European culture as much to be found composing the essay at hand, one must at least in ideas as to be found in the arts. know what one means, what values of behavior, Besides the fact that the thoughts expressed habits, and institutions one refers to, in invoking in this appendix are a reflection of Eliot’s overall the term. thinking at the time, as they tended beyond his European Culture earlier parochial considerations toward broader and far less exclusive views of what values and behav- In an appendix, which comprises the English-lan- iors ought to prevail in the human community, guage transcriptions of three radio broadcast talks the appendix is appropriate to the overall topic of that Eliot originally made in German in 1946, he human culture. Throughout the book, Eliot has comments on the unity of European culture. been defining culture as those inherited values, Addressing a German-speaking audience in their behaviors, and institutions that define the same own language within a year after they had suffered people living in the same place, an idea borrowed a deserved and total defeat in World War II, Eliot somewhat from the early 19th-century German introduces himself as a poet and editor—a man of philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel’s definition of letters. He begins by commenting on the rich variety nation. That while this culture is the expression of languages that make up modern English, which he of the whole people, that expression is continu- identifies as the best language for writing poetry, for ously being modified, revised, and adjusted by the that reason. It has extensive elements from German, sometimes conflicting interactions and goals of the Scandinavian through Danish, French through the various groups, classes, and regions that make up Normans, not to mention the Celtic that has infil- any single culture. trated the language through the Welsh, Irish, and Furthermore, because a culture so defined is as Scottish peoples of the British Isles. living and as organic a thing as any other natural He goes on to comment on the other great con- product of the thinking, feeling universe, it is best tributions that Europeans, in particular the Ital- transmitted by the human families that compose ians, French, Germans, and English, have made in its most central collective unit. In any event, what painting, music, and poetry, but he ends by singling must be most avoided is any effort by the state or out the advances that the French made in poetry other more rigidly organized entities, such as edu- in the 19th century under the leadership of poets cators, to “stage-manage” cultural developments such as CHARLES BAUDELAIRE and Paul Valéry, who and dissemination in any conscious way, since that influenced later poets such as W. B. YEATS but who will automatically truncate the natural processes had themselves been influenced by the American of growth and change that any culture requires. It poet Edgar Allan Poe. Musing so, he points out should be apparent that Eliot would then, of neces- the irrefutable fact that “no one nation, no one sity, take a long step back from English culture, language, would have achieved what it has, if the which, sensibly enough, had been the primary focus same art had not been cultivated in neighbouring of his presentation till now, to take a look at the countries and in different languages.” From there, same phenomena from the point of view of a larger using the experiences of the American contempo- cultural sampling, the European experience. rary poet EZRA POUND, Eliot also establishes the As he continues his survey of European cultural influences of Asian, in this case Chinese, poetry on unity, he is indeed able to bring his own experi- the languages of modern Europe to make a further ence to bear by recounting in general but never- point: “For when I speak of the unity of European theless detailed terms the 17 years, from 1922 to culture, I do not want to give the impression that I 1939, that he edited a literary review, the Criterion. regard European culture as something cut off from Though it was published in English, he made every

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effort to publish, in translation, continental writ- bond that, unlike political or economic bonds, does ers as well, particularly those who might otherwise not require one loyalty; indeed, it may flourish best be overlooked by the general reading public. In under many. Universities across Europe, however, the process, he was in regular contact with other, should have “their common ideals” and “their obli- similar reviews. That all these reviews failed he gations to each other.” regards as the result of “gradual closing of the men- Eliot concludes on an ominous note regarding tal frontiers of Europe.” After 1933, the year that circumstances unique to the times, but that may the Nazis came to power under the leadership of reoccur without warning at any time. Because of the Adolf Hitler, for example, contributions from Ger- economic and other restrictions on personal free- many became less and less easy to find; the same dom brought about by years of devastating warfare, could be said of Fascist Italy, although in that case men of letters throughout Europe are not as free to it had occurred even earlier. “A universal concern travel and to communicate with each other as they with politics does not unite,” Eliot can report with ought to be. They can try, he nevertheless pleads, to considerable authority, “it divides.” preserve the legacy of Greece, Rome, and Israel to Before then, foreign ideas, in all senses of the which Europe is heir, for, as he sees it, “these spiri- term, had been welcomed “without hostility, and tual possessions are also in imminent peril.” with the assurance that you could learn from them.” More, there was the sense that within Europe there CRITICAL COMMENTARY was “an international fraternity of men of letters” For the present-day reader reasonably well-schooled who were as united by a common respect for ideas in the idea of culture, there may not seem to be as others were by a national or religious loyalty. anything new about Eliot’s observations in their That Eliot mourns the passage of such a time and most general sense. Since the Smithsonian Institu- spirit is very clear, but it also permits him, in the tion decided to include Elvis Presley’s guitar among third and final part of his presentation, to introduce those artifacts that define American culture, for the idea of a European culture. example, individuals had become used to the idea There can be no such thing, he asserts, if the that culture is not limited to highbrow pursuits and countries of Europe are isolated from each other, interests but is, much as Eliot defined it, the whole as they had been, catastrophically, for the decade expression of the whole people. A critical point not or more preceding his talk. After defining culture to be missed, however, is that that very dramatic much in the same terms as he subsequently does and necessary sea change in the common percep- in Notes, he makes it clear that, ultimately, there tion of what culture means and of what it con- is no demarcation totally separating one human stitutes has Eliot’s own work and thought on the culture from another; still, he can insist on a unity topic in part to thank. of European culture. That unity is based, he feels, From early in his career as a literary and social on Christianity, not as a communion of believers thinker, Eliot had invoked the idea of tradition and but as a common tradition. “If Asia were converted had taken his stand more and more as a conserva- to Christianity tomorrow,” he says in order to illus- tor of those practices and beliefs and attitudes that trate his meaning, “it would not thereby become he personally associated with the Anglo-Ameri- a part of Europe,” because although Asia would can experience and, with it and by extension, the have embraced Christian beliefs, it would not have European experience as well. That he equally as acquired the traditions in the arts, law, and thought often associated those concerns with England and that have developed over centuries in Europe as a Europe’s Christian background and traditions gave result of its own unique Christian experience. even him, perhaps, the impression that his was an So, then, Eliot can assert as well that “[t]o our exclusionary and conservative stance, one that may Christian heritage we owe many things besides reli- have beguiled him into making his extremely unfo- gious faith,” and that “this unity in the common ele- tunate remark regarding “free-thinking Jews” in ments of culture . . . is the true bond between us,” a After Strange Gods.

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As his career as a social commentator and Chris- become consciously treated as the official preroga- tian apologist continued, however, it seems to have tive of bureaucratic and commercial interests. As a become apparent to him that his defense of Chris- bulwark against that possibility, Eliot envisions an tian England and its traditions was not any endorse- elite of individuals in the arts, sciences, religion, ment of being Christian and English. Rather it was philosophy, and government who are respected not an argument that any individual should foremost for their inherited or appointed position in the cul- be mindful of and loyal to the cultural legacy of ture but for the inherent capacity that they each his or her own people, not to the exclusion of an exhibit for keeping the cultural life of the com- exposure to and respect for other cultures and their munity viable and active, so that change occurs as values, but in order better to appreciate those other a result of the shaping power of natural talents and cultures as a part of the continuing and mandatory skills among individuals, and most certainly not of dialogue regarding not what it is to be English and preconceived public policies. Christian, but what it is to be human. At least that It is possible, however, that after all is said and is the turn that Eliot’s thought begins to take in The done, Eliot may have missed a critical beat in his Idea of a Christian Society and that terminates in his analysis of what makes human cultures work and literally definitive statement on this important mat- develop, a lapse for which he can be forgiven but ter in Notes towards the Definition of Culture. which still should be brought to the attention of To define culture, Eliot attempts to demonstrate interested readers. Quite simply, the processes by in that work, is to define humanity at all its various which cultures are formed and fostered may them- levels—individually, ethnically, regionally, nation- selves have been undergoing a radical transfor- ally, globally. Whether or not he succeeds in doing mation in the 20th century, one that required an as much, his title boldly suggests that his is only a entirely new assortment of social methodologies for preliminary contribution to a dialogue that, once maintaining and transmitting them. Eliot himself begun, can never be abandoned. Cultures may best had been able to speak of progressive stages and develop unconsciously, but humanity can never be levels of cultural development. As much as such too overly conscious of how much the interactions terms may make thinkers nowadays blush, he could of the world’s various cultures through time form point to primitive and high cultures in explaining what is called history. To shape that history to how different rules and practices apply as cultures everyone’s benefit requires each person’s mindful- advance. If primitive and high were to be replaced by ness of the culture that has nurtured him and an simple and complex, or if those words, too, seem too equal admiration for all those other cultures that prejudiciously evaluative, then perhaps cluttered nurture others. It is Eliot’s considered view that and uncluttered might do as well. only the broadest and most generous definition of The point is that the more complex or clut- culture can acquaint individuals with the impor- tered a culture becomes, as the cultures of Western tance of that ongoing endeavor. Europe certainly have over the past several hun- Meanwhile, there are other crucial consider- dred years of their development, the more they ations, to say the least. In a nutshell, the increas- need precisely what Eliot, from his vantage point, ing abstractedness of the state and its more and is justified in regarding as the death blow of a via- more total control of the instruments of education ble culture, and that is a conscious management at the expense of more natural units of human imposed from above. Perhaps there is, in other association, such as the family and the region, can words, a point at which culture ceases to advance result only in the stultification of culture, a pros- best by advancing unconsciously, and Eliot could pect that humanity has never contemplated before. not possibly have known that he was living through The shape of that future, Eliot would be the first just such a period of not catastrophic but cataclys- to admit (as he was also one of the first to contem- mic change, bringing with it not an end but the sort plate), is anybody’s guess, but its arrival is ensured of new beginning that Eliot otherwise has always if the maintenance and transmission of culture cherished. No doubt it remains to be seen how

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much the increasing pressure of both population publishing house with which he had been employed growth and widespread urbanization on a virtually as both editor and board member since 1925, had global scale during the 20th and 21st centuries may been announcing the appearance of a volume of alone require an entirely new set of paradigms than poetry by Eliot devoted to cats. Eliot’s. The only certainty is that Eliot’s efforts in Still, for all that such a collection would appear that same regard and in the midst of that same piv- to have been a left-hand activity for Eliot to be otal century should at least provide a worthwhile engaged in while more ambitious projects were call- point of reference for future thinkers and thinking ing on his main attention, there is something of on this critical and sensitive topic. a farewell performance in the volume’s pages, as if Eliot, consciously or not, had rolled up all the youthfully precocious whimsy remaining in him Old Possum’s Book of into one considerably consistent effort in order to get his penchant for nonsense finally out of his Practical Cats (1939) system. Whether or not that was the point, after the publication of Old Possum’s Book of Practical T. S. Eliot published his first successful contempo- Cats, Eliot would never write whimsy again—at rary verse drama, The Family Reunion, in 1939. This least none that has ever subsequently seen the light work the author himself declared to be his most of day. despairing work to date. In 1939 he published as And yet, although on the surface, Old Possum’s well the prose work The Idea of a Christian Society, Book of Practical Cats may seem to be, in com- which, for all its celebration of the possibilities of a parison with his other literary efforts at the time, coherent community in England based on Chris- refreshingly lighthearted and devil-may-care in the tian principles, actually was a lament for the loss of sheer energy of its play of both language and imagi- the viability of just such a community in an increas- nation, lurking just beneath the surface of the vol- ingly secularized England and a harbinger of the ume may very well be all the potential of a darker disastrous conflict of World War II, which broke intent, just as the potential of an ironic intent peeks out the same month that the book was released. continuously out from behind the lines of Eliot’s Yet 1939 was also the same year that Eliot pub- more sober and serious literary endeavors. Read- lished Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and any ers of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats have to reader familiar with the whimsical humor of the 14 decide rather quickly whether they are in the realm poems, some as much as two pages in length, in the of make-believe or a realm where nothing is as it volume knows that it lives up to the mock serious seems—and be able to discern the difference. nature of the title. The volume’s 14 poems are composed in a vari- ety of rudimentary stanzaic patterns, ranging from SYNOPSIS quatrains to stanzas whose lengths vary as much by Eliot had always been one to entertain friends with content as any preconceived structural principle. his salaciously witty and scatological poems regard- For all that he and his close friend, the American ing the fictional King Bolo, and it is said that some poet EZRA POUND, had virtually invented that free- of the poems in the Practical Cats volume may have dom from regular structure that quickly became been written originally to delight the Faber chil- known as vers libre, or free verse, under Pound’s dren. Whatever the case may be, Eliot had appar- tutelage and encouragement, Eliot had been wont ently been planning the volume for some time, even to use quatrains as well as far back as 1917, so there while he was engaged in a far more serious proj- is nothing new or daring in technique here. One ect, the composition, in 1935, of “Burnt Norton,” outstanding prosodic feature, nevertheless, is the that wistfully philosophical sequence destined to nearly complete use of rhyming couplets, although become the first part of the Four Quartets. As early several of the poems—“The Naming of Cats,” “The as 1936, Faber & Faber, Eliot’s publisher and the Song of the Jellicles,” and “Old Deuteronomy”—

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employ the more authentic quatrains, utilizing an The reader may detect what seems to be a defi- abab rhyme scheme throughout, that Eliot had used nite movement in the sequence as further poetry in his own so-called quatrain poems back in the introduces the criminal exploits of the Great Rum- late teens. “Of the Aweful Battle of the Pekes and puscat, who puts the battling Pekes and Pollicles the Pollicles,” in fact, goes as far as to use three-line on their ears, or Macavity, a “master criminal” rhymes virtually throughout. “called the Hidden Paw,” who, aside from his being The poetry saves the best inventiveness, how- a four-legged rather than two-legged animal, could ever, for the cleverness of its language, although have stepped straight out of the pages of one of at times, by approaching the sing-song quality Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about his famous of nursery rhymes and nonsensical doggerel, the fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes. If there is obvious delight that Eliot finds in naming his vari- no more violent or intractable creature in all the ous cat characters may lose some of its sprightly animal kingdom than cats, the hero of “Skimble- good humor. Still, who with an active imagination shanks: The Railway Cat” is a rather winning sort and no more than a tolerance for felines can resist and model citizen—the very thing that most cats Jennyanydots, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, are not. His task in life is to see to it that everything Bustopher Jones, and Skimbleshanks, a random runs smoothly on the various mail runs. Whether selection of the various cats that will appear rep- the poetry represents cats as they are, even if a resenting as good a sampling as any of the sheer bit extravagantly, or cats as they could be if they fun of it all. were otherwise human, two notes come through Eliot stresses that a cat’s name is in and of itself consistently and clearly: Cats do as they please, significant. In a complete sequence of poems that and their self-possessed swagger is no laughing mat- will close on how one should go about address- ter. The volume’s final poem, “The Ad-dressing of ing cats, it is appropriate that the opening poem Cats,” gets to the nub of the matter: There is no should be titled “The Naming of Cats.” In that getting the better of cats. A cat must be addressed opening piece, such delicious sounds as Coricopat by his name, the reader is told, but the first poem and Jellylorum meet the eye and fill the ear, while in the volume, “The Naming of Cats,” had already the 12 poems composing the main body of the insisted that each cat has a name only “the cat text each deal with a very particular, individualis- himself knows, and will never confess.” tic sort of cat. Old Gumbie Cat’s ironically nurturing treatment CRITICAL COMMENTARY of mice and roaches makes for “well-ordered house- Thanks to the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats, holds,” while Growltiger is a criminal cat whose the volume could as well be called Old Possum’s “last stand” burlesques the violence found in the Book of Popular Cats, even if the best-known song Lost Boys, pirates, and Indians of Sir James Barrie’s from that 1980s extravaganza, “Memory,” is a Peter Pan (1904) or Bertolt Brecht’s Three-Penny delightfully maudlin travesty of a much earlier and Opera (1928). A feline like Rum Tum Tugger, on genuinely serious poem of Eliot’s, the youthful— the other hand, is the very model of the contrari- 1911—effort, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” Not ety cats are fabled to be blessed with, while a pair to say that there was not always a bit of the lugubri- like Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer add to the high ously ludicrous in even the most serious Eliot poem. jinx by making a shambles of their adoptive house- Indeed, up to the time of The Waste Land, perhaps, hold. Then there are those other cats who seem to Eliot could always be counted on for writing poetry clearly portray human types. The title roles in “Bus- that seemed as liable to evoke mad laughter as topher Jones: The Cat about Town” and “Gus the sober reflection. Theatre Cat” should strike the reader as nothing Prufrock’s wondering whether or not he should more than outlandish versions of the sorts of cads part his hair behind, apeneck Sweeney rising from and ne’er-do-wells who inhabit the demimonde of his bath, even Gerontion’s nervous Nelly tedium, any modern city. all point as much to the ludicrousness of parody

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(sometimes self-parody) as to the searing honesty of the Pounds’ nickname for Eliot, the sobriquet refer- a coldly dispassionate take on the vacuity of modern ring to what Pound perceived to be Eliot’s ability, life. The Waste Land itself has its moments—many possumlike, to play at being what he was not, as the of them, indeed. One thinks of Madam Sosostris possum plays dead to thwart the plans of potential and her “wicked pack” of cards, or of the friend, so- predators. Eliot’s forte in much of his serious poetry called, going on in the pub about Lil and Albert’s is the allusional hint that is as likely to lead readers troubled marriage. up a blind alley as toward some revelatory meaning. When, by the mid-1920s, Eliot’s vision seemed That he would, then, choose to allude to Pound’s to darken in such efforts as the unfinished verse identifying him as a trickster in the very title of a drama, “Sweeney Agonistes,” and the disheart- volume of poetry that appears to be children’s verse ening poem sequence, “The Hollow Men,” Eliot bordering somewhere among the whimsical, the never quite lost his touch for the hysterically eru- satirical, and the nonsensical, is encouragement dite stretch, the school of mock seriousness and enough to warrant reading the poetry with a mildly faux humor. Sweeney proposes to make a “neat” jaundiced eye. cannibal stew of Doris; the hollow men call up a This is not to say, however, that Old Possum’s silly image as they lean together, their heads filled Book of Practical Cats is composed of anything in with straw. Eliot, even as he labored on the poetry the of way animal fables such as one might find that would eventually become, in 1930, “Ash- in the tales of the ancient Greek fabulist Aesop Wednesday,” continuously tried his hand at poetry or of Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus. Eliot in a light and clever vein. The “wopsical hat” of the maintains too much the authentic tone of some- “unpleasant” Mr. Eliot of “Five Finger Exercises V” one who is mainly having fun with the words and is only that minor sequence’s most obvious example images and characterizations for one to imagine of a poetry that is meant to be enjoyed, as it were, that that is not his primary if not only goal. Still, it and surely not profoundly engaged. would be as wrongheaded to assume that there is So, then, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats no serious intention whatsoever to the poetry. For may not have come as a complete surprise even to all the heady erudition of his major works, Eliot was those readers who had followed Eliot’s drift into always a fancier of popular forms and appeals to the darker and deeper waters than ever were plumbed popular mind as audience. by him before with his work, in the early 1930s, Hanging on the wall of his office at Fabers was a on religious drama, most notably 1935’s Murder photograph of the popular film comedian Groucho in the Cathedral and such a contentiously polemi- Marx, with whom the poet developed a personal cal prose work as After Strange Gods, ominously friendship through correspondence and whose work subtitled A Primer of Modern Heresy, from 1934. shared with Eliot’s a love for twisted irony and On the whole and on balance, Old Possum’s Book absurdist parody. Too, Eliot had written an essay of Practical Cats is clearly intended as light verse. on the passing of Marie Lloyd, an equally popular Indeed, when one notices that, along with someone comedian of the English music-hall stage. Eliot was identified only as the Man in White Spats, there also a lover of popular mystery novels, often person- are four other individuals to whom the volume is ally reviewing them for his otherwise lofty literary dedicated in appropriately weighty terms regarding review, the Criterion. As an example of his affinities their “encouragement, criticism and suggestions,” for popular culture, Murder in the Cathedral, his first all of whom are the children of friends, including successful play on the murder of Thomas à Becket, Geoffrey Faber and Christopher Morley, the argu- archbishop of Canterbury, was originally and more ment is clinched that Eliot’s aim for the volume appealingly titled The Archbishop Murder Case. was to please himself and others by paying meticu- Even in his major poetry, Eliot was as likely to lous attention to perfectly delightful tomfoolery. allude to popular song lyrics as to the Greek and A clue that these were Eliot’s intentions is fur- Roman classics, and as his celebrity as a particularly ther found in his choice of title. “Old Possum” was obscure and erudite poet grew, he was always one

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to eschew the incredibly complex interpretations it means exactly what it is saying. It would be too applied to his work, arguing that poetry can com- much to say that the very same Eliot who, for a municate before it is understood, and once going as while, made himself a subsidiary career by success- far as to observe that the best audience for poetry fully denying any intention behind all the cosmic was one that could neither read nor write. Whether meanings readers and critics had drawn from The he meant by that that an illiterate or a preliterate Waste Land would go out of his way to conceal pro- culture was more conducive to poetic production fundities in the verses of Old Possum. and appreciation, it should be clear from the pre- Nevertheless, one must wonder why Eliot would ceding record that Eliot did not regard poetry as expend so much serious effort on a volume of light the exclusive preserve of highbrow scholars and verse, no matter how delightful, that also has the critics. He spoke for the auditory imagination, the potential for being thinly disguised reflections on one that is most stimulated by intriguing sound pat- standard modern urban types, these coming coin- terns, and for what he called the music of poetry, cidentally from a poet who, it is worth repeating, that is, its ability to transmit degrees of meaning virtually wrote the book on modern urban verse through tonal variations in structure and rhythms in English. Whether a reader would be making rather than through processes of pure intellection. much ado about nothing or missing the boat by a Taken together, the foregoing ought to suggest mile, depending on whether the poetry is read as rather powerfully that Eliot was as serious about a coded commentary on modern city life or is read the poetry of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as for saying what it does and leaving it at that, such he was about any of his other poetry. More intrigu- considerations still bait the key question, and that ing, however, is the fact that, despite the work’s is that Eliot more or less single-handedly forever having gone through a gestational period, during changed the face of poetry by suggesting, in poem the time that Eliot was finally conceptualizing and after poem, that poetry is what readers, not poets, organizing the volume, he was also just beginning to make it. be extremely engaged in composing a most serious Great art is anything that can survive changes and philosophical poetry that would later become in taste and fashion without being transformed into Four Quartets, with its complex exploration of the a travesty of itself. No one, we imagine and must interrelatedness among God, person, and nature hope, will ever read Hamlet as a social comedy or in terms that are as universally spiritual as they are will not appreciate the timeless dual theme of young personal and Christian. It cannot be mere happen- love and tragic love in Romeo and Juliet. But we can stance that one of the 20th century’s most Chris- only imagine that. On its publication, The Waste tian poets also focuses on an animal as self-absorbed Land was thought of by some as a parody of the and likely to do as it pleases as the domesticated excesses of modernism—which, ironically enough, cat, or that the poet who virtually first gave voice, it displayed in abundance. “Ash-Wednesday,” on in The Waste Land, to that major cultural crisis that the other hand, has an unmistakably serious tone, has since been termed the “urban apocalypse” has as do “The Hollow Men” and “Burnt Norton.” created a cast of primarily city cats. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by having Like all good art, Old Possum’s Book of Practical such a definite tone of whimsy, encourages some Cats first should delight readers by giving them the readers, oddly enough, to imagine that they may pleasure of enjoying words beautifully used, where be missing something. Even more oddly, it is Eliot the cleverness of invention meets the sonority of who, more than any other figure in 20th-century sense. A couplet such as “Macavity, Macavity, literature, has created such a sophisticated wariness there’s no one like Macavity, / For he’s a fiend in in readers. Perhaps, then, it is best to make of Old feline shape, a monster of depravity” means abso- Possum’s Book of Practical Cats exactly what one lutely nothing in the sense of some “hidden” mean- will because, as Eliot himself would observe, that ing in a line of verse, but it “means” absolutely is exactly what each reader does with any poem— nothing in that sense of the word precisely because make of it what one will.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 351 9/5/07 2:36:19 PM 352 “Philip Massinger” “Philip Massinger” (1920) ing experiences as a poet-turned-dramatist. In any case, he emphasizes, the effects of style and rhythm in dramatic speech, whether it be prose or verse, See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. should be unconscious lest they call attention to themselves at the expense of the dramatic action. Thus far, however, Eliot’s approach appears to “Poetry and Drama” (1951) be neutral. That is to say, he does not seem to be taking up for any one style of dramatic writing at Presented as the first Theodore Spencer Memorial the expense of the other. That is perhaps because Lecture in 1951, “Poetry and Drama” was later col- his purpose is in fact twofold: to promote poetic lected in On Poetry and Poets in 1956. drama, but not at the expense of dramatic poetry. If the distinction between prose and verse written for SYNOPSIS the stage is, in its continuous use, a minimal one, Inasmuch as Eliot is able to, he lays out not so since either is as far removed from natural speech much rules as guidelines based on his own experi- as the other, there is nevertheless the danger that ences with composing poetic dramas. He begins such verse “will not be ‘poetry’ all the time,” and by proposing that a play should not be written in will and should, in fact, be poetry only when the verse if prose is an adequate medium to begin with. dramatic intensity requires it. How that is determined is a matter left ultimately The point is, of course, that at such a time, a play to each playwright, of course. Eliot does provide a written in verse can match that dramatic intensity rule of thumb that may be applied, and that is that, with an appropriate elevation of the language from when all else fails, the play itself should be intense verse to poetry, whereas one written only in prose enough that attention is not called to its medium of to begin with cannot change pitch without striking expression. a note of discordance that will draw attention away There is a great deal of food for thought here from the action and toward the language, thus vio- because it reveals something of what Eliot sees lating Eliot’s primary rule of leading with the action. to be the proper relation between language and As Eliot has been taking pains to emphasize all drama. If the language of the drama appears to be along, no self-respecting playwright will want to do more important than the action that is transpiring that. Using the opening of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s on the stage, then, Eliot would argue, the work may Hamlet for his example, Eliot easily demonstrates be good poetry, but it is not good drama. In this how this modulation of pitch that a verse-poetry same regard and by an application of the same rule continuum allows for also enables the playwright to of thumb, Eliot can make a convincing argument modulate the audience’s emotional response to the that prose dialogue is no more natural-sounding action. Much of the dialogue could as easily be prose a medium of actual human speech than is verse until the ghost appears and is challenged, at which dialogue, to the end that “prose, on the stage, is as point the leap from verse into poetry heightens the artificial as verse,” or, interestingly, that “verse can action without drawing one’s attention away from it be as natural as prose.” and toward the language. Once more, the guiding critical principle here is The problem then presents itself that the poet is the unspoken conviction that drama is action first, writing for those few kindred spirits, some of them language second. By the time that Eliot was pen- critics, who can respond to his or her vision as it has ning these remarks, he had already seen three verse been expressed in words, whereas the dramatic poet dramas produced for the stage, including Murder in is writing to communicate a dramatic sequence of the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cock- events to a live audience during a live performance, tail Party, the last of which had been commercially an audience whose attention cannot be allowed successful. It is quite likely, then, that his readers to flag or wander. If there is, then, an ultimate are getting the practical benefit of his own learn- criterion to test what constitutes the validly poetic

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in a verse drama, it comes when Eliot again turns flaws: He had neither too loosely nor too closely to Shakespeare. Using lines from Macbeth—“To- adapted Aeschylus’s original, rearranging it as a morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow”—and from strange mixture of adaptation and recasting that Othello—“Keep up your bright swords, for the dew could only totally bewilder the attentive playgoer. will rust them”—for his examples, Eliot cites two He had spent too much time establishing premises key principles by which such an introduction of the in the first part and then gone on to establish even purely poetic into the dramatic moment can alone more in the second, thereby running the risk of be justified: It neither interrupts the action nor both betraying and losing his audience’s attention. sounds out of character. Finally, his introduction into a contemporary set- Rather than the audience feeling that the play- ting of the ghostly Aeschylan Furies (in the play wright has thought of a beautiful line that he wishes itself he refers to them as the Eumenides, a closely to fit in, in instances like these, Eliot explains, the related but entirely different concept) made for lines may surprise, as the sudden intrusion of the ludicrous staging problems. genuinely poetic would, but the ultimate effect is Learning from these mistakes, with his succeed- that they either fit the character to begin with or, ing effort, The Cocktail Party, he decided to use equally as effective, compel the audience to adjust his Greek source, Euripides’ Alcestis, as a point of their conception of the character in keeping with departure rather than as a helter-skelter paral- the poetic statement. Such a discussion finally lel plot, and he dispensed with trying to model a enables Eliot to define dramatic poetry (as distinct Greek chorus. Finally, he had let the necessities of from verse or poetic drama) as poetry that “does not plot and character development take precedence interrupt but intensifies the dramatic situation.” over the problems of versification, so much so “that Earlier, Eliot had brought his own, first tenuous it is perhaps an open question whether there is any experiences as a dramatic poet to bear to expose poetry in the play at all.” some of the pitfalls that the writer of verse for the Eliot concludes the essay by wondering if stage will want to avoid if at all possible. With poetic drama is possible any longer but proposing Murder in the Cathedral, for example, the subject its achievement as an excellent goal to pursue in of as legendary and sainted an historical figure as any case. Thomas à Becket lent itself so readily to a treat- ment in verse that writing it had not enabled him CRITICAL COMMENTARY to resolve “any general problem” of verse style for The essay “Poetry and Drama” provides Eliot’s the stage; in summary, “the play was a dead end.” most single-minded and personal treatment of a Determined as a result that in order for verse or topic that, as he himself observes in the opening poetic drama to achieve prominence again, it had paragraph, has nevertheless occupied his attention, to “bring poetry into the world in which the audi- first critically and later creatively as well, for the ence lives,” he made his next dramatic effort a con- better part of his professional life. That topic is, of temporary drawing-room melodrama, The Family course, poetic drama. Indeed, when one regards the Reunion, loosely basing it on the Oresteia of Aeschy- largely dramatic nature of much of his finest early lus. There, however, by focusing so intently on poetry, from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” issues of versification for the contemporary stage, and “Portrait of a Lady” to “Gerontion” and that he encountered a different kind of problem: “I had crowning achievement, The Waste Land, Eliot can given my attention to versification at the expense be seen as one who was always treading that very of plot and character.” thin line between the poetic—language expressing Eliot concludes the essay by returning to a con- all the nuances that words can bear—and the dra- sideration of his personal experiences with writing matic—character isolated by action and presented verse for the stage. Still focusing on the shortcom- without the benefit of a guiding narrative com- ings of The Family Reunion as he now views that mentary. Eliot does not generally tell stories in his play, Eliot comments on some of its more obvious poetry; rather, he dramatizes characters through

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their use of and response to words. This method- SYNOPSIS ology continued well into the late 1920s in other The Epigraph notable poetry such as “The Hollow Men” and all For his own part, Eliot may have learned his tactics of the Ariel poems as well, with the exception of for discombobulating his readers’ expectations from “Animula.” the French symbolists, but in “Portrait,” which is That he subsequently followed his own lead, to perhaps the most original, in the sense of its being the extent that most of the latter half of his creative the least derivative of Eliot’s work from this time, life would be devoted to writing for the stage, com- the skill at keeping readers off their guard seems ments that much more on the increasing importance to be all Eliot’s. By the same token, however, “Por- that poetic drama held for him as a literary form. trait” may not achieve the same level of poetic When, then, he turns his equally acute critical eye, intensity as “Prufrock” does and therefore is not as he did in this present essay, to attempt to discern overall as successful or memorable a poem. Never- the why’s and wherefore’s of using poetry in drama, theless, Eliot’s merely playing “Portrait” ’s title off there is much to be learned by paying close heed against the epigraph from Christopher Marlowe’s to his remarks and to the distinctions that he takes Elizabethan drama, The Jew of Malta, tells readers pains to make. Only in such drama, he believes, can that the poetry to come will be neither an ordinary human action and its moral consequences approach poem nor a typical poetic experience. the sort of harmonious balances normally associated On the one hand, the reader is presented with with music, yet not dissolve into the inarticulate. the idea that this is somehow to be a portrait of Art, he concludes, imposes a “credible order upon a lady. The trope of a poem as portrait contrasts, ordinary reality,” thereby allowing the reader or lis- of course, with the other poems of his from this tener to perceive “an order in reality.” period, whose titles most often contain musical It is that kind of perception, Eliot believes, that analogies: “love song,” “rhapsody,” “prelude.” The brings individuals to “a condition of serenity, still- reader’s imagination is automatically set up not ness, and reconciliation.” If he is correct, that is no only for a visual as opposed to an aural experience small achievement for poetic drama to accomplish, but also for the further cultural connotations that a and yet it can be accomplished only by applying the portrait brings to mind, with its overtones of a for- requirements of poetic discourse to the purposes of mal and studied sitting; a measure of graciousness trenchant and engaging dramas. and beauty, not to mention wealth and prestige, in the subject; and, last but not least, cultivated tastes. The reader is compelled by the title to see in the “Portrait of a Lady” (1915) mind’s eye all of life’s finer things, in no set order surely, but the point is maintained that a lady is not Composed during the same period of early cre- just anyone. And then the very first words that the ative energy, innovation, and experimentation reader encounters call up the immediate and vulgar of 1910–11 that produced “The Love Song of J. image, from Christopher Marlowe’s verses, of a for- Alfred Prufrock,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” nicating wench. The contrast is a startling one, to and “Preludes,” with which it was later collected say the least, and no doubt intended that way. The in his first major collection in 1917, Prufrock and reader is already puzzling out what sort of a lady is Other Observations, “Portrait of a Lady,” published about to be encountered, but then has to deal with in Others in September 1915, shares with those the fact that entry into the poetry seems to be an other early creations Eliot’s fascination with the intrusion into private intimacies. use of a dramatized voice, disjunctive associations, and unusual observations that shock or surprise the The Poem reader with their tonal imbalances and unexpected A voice is speaking, but it is addressing the lady of shifts of emotional focus. the title apparently, “you,” and not the reader, in

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which case the speaker would have referred to the bit put out and put off by the lady—her conversa- lady in the third person, “she.” With any modernist tion, her tastes, her habits. poem, but especially one by Eliot and particularly at They apparently attend social functions this point in his development, it is best not to imag- together; she speaks of a Chopin concert. But they ine that the poet, rather than some invented mask are otherwise rather like characters in a tale by à la JULES LAFORGUE, is the speaker. (In the case of Henry James, the then-reigning serious American “Portrait,” there is not even good reason to imagine fiction writer, one of whose major works is also that the speaker is a male.) Surely approaching “Por- entitled “Portrait of a Lady,” although that is an trait” as if it is not veiled autobiography but a char- entirely different story from Eliot’s. The personages acter study with two characters—the speaker as he of Eliot’s “Portrait” are more reminiscent of May is revealed through his friendship with and unspoken Bartram and John Marcher from James’s 1901 short attitudes toward the lady, whom the reader meets as story, “The Beast in the Jungle.” Those two keep well through her quoted conversation—will allow company for many years, but the reader is encour- the reader more latitude in coming to terms with the aged to imagine that they shared little more than poem’s otherwise enigmatic content. each other’s social company through all their years Coming upon this text as if there is a key to together, although they may have shared that inti- it to be found in some information outside the mately enough, a secret between themselves. While text—the “real” identity of the lady in question, for James gives the reader both sides of the story—as example, or Eliot’s relationship with her (assuming Eliot does, sort of—the tragedy of the James tale is that there was a real lady)—all too often results built around Marcher’s being so self-absorbed in his in false confidence and falser readings. Approach- own destiny that he never takes the time to notice ing the text instead as a self-enclosed world, while that May has become an integral part of it. The tale limiting the information base to the text alone, ends poignantly with Marcher suddenly coming nevertheless expands the range of defensible read- upon the discovery, a year after May’s death, that ings. What a reader approaching “Portrait” in this she had been in love with him all along. manner, having survived the blow to the sensibili- In his defense, Eliot’s speaker lacks Marcher’s ties that is struck by the double-edged sword of the density and does not to appear to be in any dan- contrast between the genteel title and vulgarity of ger of becoming sentimental. If anything, Eliot’s the epigraph, discovers very quickly, then, is that speaker seems to know all too well what is going the speaker is engaged in a one-sided conversation, on, and he does not, on balance, like it. The temp- a device that Eliot picked up from Laforgue and tation to link the speaker with the poet is always would use to great effect in the opening gambit in a strong one, of course, and since Eliot was still a “A Game of Chess,” part 2 of The Waste Land. young man of 22 at the time of the poem’s compo- In “Portrait,” the words of the lady, enclosed in sition in March 1911, there is also a strong tempta- quotation marks, are apparently being spoken in tion to imagine that this may be a May–December some context or another; the words of the speaker, sort of pairing, a younger man with a much older or on the other hand, are his unspoken reflections at least not quite as callow woman. on her and her utterances, either at the moment That might explain the none-too-thinly veiled that she is speaking them or later when, in private, eroticism of the epigraph—wishful thinking, or just they recur to him. Surely there is a hint in the plain old frustration. Surely there is little doubt “let us say” that, as much as she may have let the that the speaker is dissatisfied with the kinds of “scene arrange itself,” the speaker, too, is arranging activities in which he and the lady engage during a future scene, or rearranging a past scene, either of their time together and seems to be wishing, or at which will expose the lady’s true nature (which is least delights in imagining, that they might let their what a successful portraitist always aims to do). For hair down, as it were. Still, the reader should be if one thing is certain, it is that “Portrait” is not is looking for evidence of this in the text, not making a love poem. If anything, the speaker seems to be a the speaker a stand-in for a youthful Eliot.

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As the poem opens, the speaker recounts a day, hands and knees.” There are great turns of thought an afternoon, an evening, perhaps all three, that he and speech as well: “(But our beginnings never and the lady have just recently spent or will shortly know our ends!)” is a concept that, with only slight spend in each other’s company. He recounts the modification, will serve Eliot well as one of the events with a sort of begrudging deference that themes in one of his greatest poetic achievements, borders or an insolent and mocking cruelty. If she Four Quartets. Otherwise, however, the lady’s self- seems overly polite and cordial, he seems to be deception and the speaker’s self-serving deception reacting to her cautiously familiar formalities with must become as tiresome for the reader, after a a secret desire that she were less of a stuffed shirt. while, as they do for the speaker. Very likely, how- If, then, she is in a “darkened room” that reminds ever, that is the very effect that Eliot wishes to him of Juliet’s tomb, the implication is assuredly achieve, and the reason why reading the poem as not that he is regarding himself as a young swain if it were semiautobiographical rather than a fictive on a dangerously erotic adventure, but that she is construct diminishes both Eliot’s efforts and the past her prime and conceals time’s fabled ravages poetry’s effectiveness. by keeping the lights low. Like “Prufrock,” to which “Portrait” is in many As they converse, she seems to be always mak- ways a companion piece that also has as one of ing elaborate excuses for this or for that, excuses its aims exposing the limits of social interaction in that he, on reflection, resents but that he appar- polite society, “Portrait” comments tragically on the ently otherwise suffers gladly as she makes them. dilemmas that human communication, which ought And so, as part I ends, he can speak of “a dull tom- to be a means toward self-revelation and interper- tom . . . / Absurdly hammering” and of a “Capri- sonal fulfillment, can create when the process is cious monotone” as he then suggests, rather wryly, turned inward. The lady is talking to hear herself and certainly not to the lady’s face, that they would talk; the speaker is talking about her, but not to her. do better to go out for cigarettes and beer. It should Both are missing the point of what human conver- go without saying that that would not be the kind sation is all about, which is to talk to each other. of activity that any self-respecting lady of the time Toward the poem’s end, as the lady expresses in which Eliot is writing would be caught doing, no her belated, perhaps, realization that they will matter who was her escort. never now be friends, since he is leaving, his lan- The other two parts of the poem continue in guage reaches its greatest capacity at expressing this same vein, and if “Portrait” has a flaw that the frustrations that their strained relationship has makes it far less successful an achievement, finally, caused for him. He imagines himself “a dancing than the contemporaneous masterpiece “Prufrock,” bear . . . a parrot . . . an ape.” He goes to extremes it is that “Portrait” strikes a note but then never trying to characterize his frustrations, granted. The much develops or varies it. Once the parameters problem remains that he never speaks them and of their relationship are defined in the first part of never has spoken them, not, at least, to her. the poem, the lady continues to patter on about her So it is proper that the speaker is left to pon- lost youth, his youthfulness, and their friendship. der, at poem’s end, the imponderable: “Well, and The speaker continues to listen in what must be a what if she should die. . . . / . . . should I have the respectful silence that she takes for acquiescence right to smile?” If the musing sounds cold-heart- but that is actually a colossally petulant boredom edly detached, it should nevertheless not strike that he nevertheless is polite enough to conceal. any reader as surprisingly so. The portrait that the With their pity-me honesty, his reflections do speaker has “painted” is as much a portrait of him- take on a tone and style that equal some of the self as of the lady, perhaps even more so. By poem’s best urban sophisticate poetry that Eliot was at the end, then, even that sort of a prospect, that she same time turning into poems such as “Rhapsody may die, sounds like a minor bump in the speaker’s on a Windy Night” and the “Preludes”: “I mount obligatory sense of attachment to the lady, not to the stairs . . . / And feel as if I had mounted on my mention his social calendar.

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CRITICAL COMMENTARY confesses to having to drag himself to their assigna- If Gaston Leroux’s popular early 20th-century novel tions, as if it were a chore, and to finding the pros- The Phantom of the Opera (1910) had any power- pect of her death a mildly pleasant one. fully mythic energy at its core, it was that the great This otherwise inexplicable love/hate relation- and fragile beauty that one expected of high art ship of the speaker’s with the lady makes sense emerged from sources that were all too often hor- only if the reader imagines that Eliot is using the rifying and terrible to behold in their original form. same Laforguean doubling ploy in “Portrait” as in The idea that the insane jealousy of the disfigured “Prufrock,” but in a context that makes it more “phantom” underpinned the beautiful musical tal- realistic. Whereas in “Prufrock” a single character- ent of the young heroine merely mimicked, even ization runs the gamut from pathetic fool to tragic if only unintentionally, what modernist art of the agon, sometimes from one line of verse to the next time, particularly in poetry, was attempting to do, (“I grow old. . . . / I shall wear the bottoms of my to abandon the commonplace notion that art had trousers rolled”), in order to create the extremes of to be beautiful. This it replaced with the manifesto dramatic tension that give the poetry its particu- that it only had to be truthful. “Truthful,” however, larly unsettling effect, in “Portrait” Eliot eschews all too frequently came to mean a reality that was the same sort of Laforguean doubling of the mask sordid and ugly. The French poet CHARLES BAUDE- that enables him to make the poetry, without warn- LAIRE had already led the way with his volume of ing, now tragic, now comic. poetry, first published in 1857 and tellingly titled By now these techniques may have become com- Les fleurs du mal, or The Flowers of Evil, and younger monplaces of poetic composition, at least as far as French poets had followed by continuing to rewrite the influences of modernist poetry still remain, but the book on what sort of language and themes in their time, just after the close of the first decade properly constituted that increasingly vague liter- of the last century, they were liable both to confuse ary category, the poetic. Among them was Eliot’s and to put off readers with their unabashedly frank own youthful idol, the French symbolist poet JULES and intentionally difficult approach toward subjects LAFORGUE. That same devotion to an unflinching that had formerly been treated by artists in any truthfulness, however, often manifested in a more medium—music, literature, painting, sculpture— than usual emphasis on life’s more turgid, torrid, or with respect, delicacy, and clarity, even if that last sordid aspects, also seemed to require heavy doses quality often depended on a strict adherence to for- of subtle ironies and inverted logic as well, all to mulaic conventions of poetry writing. In essence, keep readers on their toes and off their game of the reader knew what to expect from poetry, and second-guessing, generally wrongly, a poet’s inten- the poet’s job, by and large, was to satisfy those tions. If the older poetry had somehow allowed expectations without necessarily catering to them. readers to feel easy, comfortable, and familiar, the The self-appointed task of the new, young poets new poetry aimed to keep them ill at ease in order like Eliot, in contrast, was to discombobulate their to confuse them into discovering a meaning all on readership, overturning those ingrained expecta- their own or missing it entirely. tions by playing off against them. In “Portrait,” this sort of intentional ambiguity In “Portrait” Eliot divides the disparities of per- is illustrated vividly in the speaker’s own dilemma: sonality required for maintaining a dramatic ten- He cannot come to honest terms with his relation- sion—or at least makes those disparities more ship with the lady whom he is portraying precisely plausible—by creating two entirely distinct person- because he cannot speak honestly to her. Whether ages in the speaker and the lady. Doing so, Eliot she fascinates him or repulses him is impossible permits them to play out their ying/yang, chatterbox/ to determine for the very reason that he cannot silent commentator, frigid socialite/closet debauch determine as much himself. The self-absorbed self- relationship, a relationship that in “Prufrock” must importance of her one-sided conversations leaves be manifested in the conflicts between his private him wishing not to be gone but to be daring, yet he aspirations and public frustrations. Either way, the

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thematic thrust of both poems is the same. The IV seems almost to be a short narrative poem as poetry exposes our ability to hurt without being it speaks, in the third person, of an unlikely male hurt, to be hurt without hurting back. The unut- character, “his soul stretched tight across the skies” terable painfulness of adult relationships that lack (an image reminiscent of Prufrock’s famous evening communication is palpable in the poetry of “Por- sky that itself calls up, for the speaker, the image trait,” so palpable, in fact, that it and the poetry are of a patient etherized upon a table). That fourth inseparable. The reader sees emerge from the poet’s and final segment ends, however, with the sudden words one enduring image of humans engaged in introduction of a first-person persona who seems to discourse but saying absolutely nothing, whether it summarize all of the preceding vignettes and thus is Prufrock expressing for the reader’s benefit but ties them together, somewhat, by telling the reader otherwise harboring his innermost feelings for fear of that he, the speaker, is “moved by fancies that are being rejected or the speaker of “Portrait” resenting curled / Around these images.” the lady for her obtuseness but failing to call it to her What especially unites the four segments is, attention or to let her go. As Eliot will say in another of course, the social and moral milieu that they of his poems, written decades later, “Ridiculous the evoke. Rather like “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” waste sad time / Stretching before and after.” the “Preludes” are four short poems that offer snap- shots of urban landscapes that give glimpses of a very private and provocatively intimate world, one that seems to hover on the brink of moral disaster “Preludes” (1915) and that certainly has been embraced by despair and decay. In a word, no one caught in its grip First published in the July 1915 issue of Wyndham seems to be content. Lewis’s Blast and subsequently collected in 1917 in The reader is called upon to think of “a thou- Eliot’s first volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other sand furnished rooms,” “a thousand sordid images,” Observations, “Preludes” are four somewhat interre- of restlessness and sleepless nights, booze and ciga- lated poems offering vignettes of the more steamy, rettes. If these are not desperate lives, they are at less genteel aspects of modern city life. least vacant lives, and the only question, as the speaker observes these lives and events as if he is SYNOPSIS a dispassionate clinician on his rounds, is whether Search for it in vain, there is likely nothing more the reader is intended to suppose that the crea- than that mood unifying the four parts, and yet, as tures under “observation” are themselves aware Eliot will himself establish years later, in the 1942 of their plight. To unravel that conundrum, the essay “The Music of Poetry,” often the play upon reader is forced to regard the speaker. The poetry’s those similarities and contrasts of mood and tone prevailing mood, the ruling metaphor, is insom- are all that are required to make a sequence, or nia, the same that haunts the verses and streets of even a single poem, work. “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” It is the same dis- Each of the four identifies or is addressed to a order that may afflict J. Alfred Prufrock, as he, too, different personage, for example. Preludes I and wanders “certain half-deserted streets” and knows III are addressed by an anonymous speaker to an “restless nights” and “lonely men in shirtsleeves, equally anonymous second person (although in III leaning out of windows.” this anonymous “you” is at least given a bit more specificity by a detail suggesting that she may be a CRITICAL COMMENTARY woman—she had “curled the paper from your hair,” On the basis of the discovery of manuscript copy of that is, just finished giving herself a permanent). Eliot poems from this same period, collected by him On the other hand, the tone of II is formal and under the title Inventions of the March Hare, schol- impersonal, identifying the human presence in the ars now know that Eliot was working on poetry that poem with the indefinite pronoun “one.” Finally, would eventually become the “Preludes” as early

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as 1909, while he was still an undergraduate at vidual titles. They were first called, in order, “Pre- Harvard. No doubt as independent pieces, this sort lude in Dorchester,” composed in October 1910; of poetry was distinct from the more Laforguean “Prelude in Roxbury,” also composed in October pieces with which he was also experimenting at 1910; “(Morgendämmerung [German for “morn- this time, so called because they were heavily influ- ing twilight”]): Prelude in Roxbury,” composed enced by, if not outright imitations of, the poetry in July 1911; and “Abenddämmerung ([“evening of the late French symbolist JULES LAFORGUE. That twilight”]),” composed after Eliot had returned to latter experimentation generally resulted in pieces the United States, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that were coyly elegant and self-mockingly witty in November 1911. The prominence of Dorchester and clever. In poems of that sort, Eliot’s self-dra- and Roxbury as locales is easily explained: They matized and often self-deprecating speaker shared are to this day other working-class towns located his aslant view of society and learning with a reader near Cambridge, the sort of places a young man of who was thus honored as being equally as clever means might haunt when he was up to no good or and detached. Readers would come to know this just “slumming it,” as the saying used to go. Eliot best in the seven quatrain poems that he By his later removing the place names, retain- would later write between 1917 and 1919. ing only the consecutive numbering from the final The early experimentation that would lead to the printed pieces, and combining them into a sort of “Preludes,” however, was of a different order, cer- musical suite, Eliot instantly turns minor set pieces tainly, at least from the sort of poetry that might be that would have had only a sort of sketchbook produced by modeling one’s craft on Jules Laforgue’s interest into mood pieces behind which might lay example. This other kind of poems had titles such that sort of an insidious but otherwise formless as “First Caprice in North Cambridge” and “Second intent with which he loved to dally in his earliest Caprice in North Cambridge,” both composed in work. Furthermore, by making the four relatively November 1909, and their subjects were cityscapes disparate pieces that had been linked by nothing that focused, in a handful of spare lines confined more than the same interest in a certain level of largely to descriptive techniques, on the under- contemporary urban experience appear now instead belly of inner-city living. In these are the first of the to be pieces combined by a unified and consecutive inklings of yellow evenings, gutters, streaked win- theme, the mood of the poetry—its vague but very dow panes, piles of refuse, tinny pianos, and even real discomfiture—becomes all that the reader can cheaper music—“minor considerations,” the poet cling to for refuge, inasmuch as that similar mood is calls them, although they seem, in the poems, to the only element that the four poems, as individual occupy a great deal of his time and attention. composition, have in common. There followed several more “caprices,” a cat- The poem presents the reader with a “physi- egorization taken from a musical term that ironi- cian heal thyself” paradox. The empty lives that are cally enough denotes a short and lively musical being witnessed are colored by the observer’s own piece. These later caprices were a result of Eliot’s empty life, and therefore his conclusions are liable 1910–11 study sojourn in Paris: “Fourth Caprice in to be tainted, so that the poetry compels the reader North Cambridge” and “First Caprice in Montpar- to form his or her own conclusions. Like any other nasse,” the famous Left Bank or student/bohemian paradox, however, this is one not easily resolved. district of Paris that would subsequently be immor- Unlike “Rhapsody,” which will end with “the last talized in the 1920s for English-speaking readers in twist of the knife,” or Prufrock, which ends with the fiction of Ernest Hemingway. Along the same “human voices wak[ing] us, and we drown,” the lines as these caprices are other urban, gritty Eliot “Preludes,” for all the bleakness of their accumu- poems with titles such as “Interlude in London” lated observations, end on not one but several posi- and “Interlude: in a Bar.” tive notes. As originally cast, the “Preludes,” too, had There is, foremost, the speaker’s sudden admis- much a more place-specific emphasis in their indi- sion—sudden for the very reason that it is doubtful

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that any reader of the poem has ever been prepared SYNOPSIS for it—that he, in the midst of all these images of the If there was any one particular feature of literary squalid and the sordid, is moved nevertheless by “the modernism that, when it was just coming into some notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering public prominence as a cultural phenomenon, first thing.” Whatever else that may mean, it certainly raised eyebrows and set tongues to clucking, it had offers the reader, as well as the speaker, the hope to be VERS LIBRE, or free verse. A poet could write that there is something else, perhaps even some- totally incomprehensible twaddle, but as long as thing more to life than he has thus far witnessed. it marched across the page in fixed-length lines That hopefulness, meager and vulnerable though it and stanzas, like squadrons of well-disciplined and may be, is subsequently reinforced in the next and orderly troops on parade, poetry was behaving itself final stanza, where the speaker again addresses an and all was well with the world—or at least the anonymous “you,” who is encouraged to laugh. The literary corner of it. The bolder of the modernists reason given is that “worlds revolve”—our realities, seemed to have grasped this idea intuitively—if you like our perceptions of them, come and go—“like wanted to blow the public’s mind, topple the long- ancient women / Gathering fuel in vacant lots.” cherished idea that poetry was distinguished from Small though that action, too, may seem in the vast any other species of writing by virtue of the fact scheme of things, one cannot gather fuel without that it had a fixed number of syllables to each line a faith in the future, even if it is only a faith that and, if at all possible, rhymed. there will be one. That there will be a need for fires Poetry in English, a language system more to prepare the food over, to keep out the cold and limited in the opportunity for rhyme than the the night, and to keep the beasts at bay—these are Romance languages with their vowel endings on reasonably healthful expectations. nouns, adjectives, and verbs, had long been permit- “Preludes,” as the name suggests, is a begin- ted the option of the blank verse or the unrhymed ning, an introduction to worlds not yet realized. line, but even then it had to have a fixed number Out of the long night that these four short poems of syllables or “feet,” that is, stresses, per line. Into describe comes day, which is, if nothing else, at that orderly world came vers libre, setting so many least a brighter prospect. teeth on edge and poetasters aghast that, as a liber- ating device, it may actually have backfired. What was partly a way to outrage and, so, reori- ent public taste in poetry was actually and primarily “Reflections on an effort on the part of such poets as Eliot and his Vers Libre” (1917) close friend and mentor EZRA POUND to revivify poetic language in order for it to approximate more In his final collection of prose criticism, To Criticize naturally the intensities of living speech rather than the Critic, which was published posthumously by sound like an artificial language. That indeed would Faber & Faber in 1965, Eliot included two critical be part of Eliot’s and Pound’s complaints regard- pieces from very early in his career as a poet and ing the turn that English poetry had taken since critic. These were “Ezra Pound: His Metric and the 17th century, beginning with John Milton: The Poetry” and “Reflections on Vers Libre.” Both had English used in poetry began to sound more and originally been published in 1917. “Reflections on more like a language that was encountered only Vers Libre” first appeared in the New Statesman on in poems. Gradually, it seemed to be, too, that it March 3, and the appreciation of Pound was pub- expressed sentiments and feelings and even situa- lished anonymously later that year as a book-length tions that were encountered only in poetry, further pamphlet by Alfred A. Knopf on November 12. separating the poetic from the commonplace. More important than that synchronicity, they share Despite the efforts of individual poets like the an aim in introducing the reading public to what early 19th-century English romantic poet Wil- was then an entirely new way of writing poetry. liam Wordsworth to bring the “real language of

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men” into his poetry writing, the young Pound and CRITICAL COMMENTARY Eliot, aside from a poet like the American Walt According to Eliot’s widow, Valerie, writing in Whitman, were unable to find, as Eliot would a short note introducing the 1965 collection To express the dilemma much later, in the 1953 essay Criticize the Critic, he had included the two items “American Literature and Language,” “a single liv- on Pound and on vers libre “in response to many ing poet, in either England or America, . . . whose requests,” and that is likely true. By the mid-1960s, work was capable of pointing the way to a young these early comments of Eliot’s on, among other poet conscious of the desire for a new idiom.” As modernist phenomena, vers libre, or free verse, had Eliot would famously put it, he found himself being acquired, in addition to their intrinsic value as liter- drawn instead to foreign sources of influence, par- ary criticism, a historical value as well. They remain ticularly the vers libre of French symbolist poets an integral part of the living record of a watershed such as CHARLES BAUDELAIRE and, most particu- moment in English literary history, transcribed by larly, JULES LAFORGUE. one of the principal participants as the events were The purity of both this effort and its motives themselves occurring. As such, there is much to was, however, somewhat lost, it is worth repeating, be learned from them, but one must be careful to in the shock effect that free verse worked upon the separate the passions and interests of the moment public mind. A sincere attempt to “resuscitate the from the more enduring benefits that can be gained dead art of poetry,” as Pound would characterize it from Eliot’s commentary. in his 1919 poem, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, became The attentive reader can hear the critic in Eliot instead confused with a means of gaining undue speaking out of the lived moment, not his later and undeserved attention by outraging public tastes memory of it. Thus, he can perhaps be more taken and sensibilities for no other purpose than to “rock at his word, even if the conclusions that they lead the boat,” as it were. to are not earth shattering. Based on such authen- Essays such as Eliot’s “Reflections on Vers Libre” tic early testimony, it is clear that, from Eliot’s point were intended primarily to counteract, if not halt, of view, vers libre implied, for the poet committed this tendency to confuse the serious efforts of the to its practice and spirit, not any freedom from an modernists to craft a new poetic language with a abiding respect for rhythm and meter—in a word, puerile desire on their part to be nothing more craftsmanship—in poetry, but from a slavish con- than noticed. Eliot does not take long to get down formity to preset verse forms that were themselves to cases. “Vers libre does not exist,” he proclaims arbitrary in their origins. Thus, Eliot can safely say by the end of his second paragraph, going on to that “freedom is only truly freedom when it appears explain before the close of the second page that against the background of an artificial limitation.” that is because “there is no freedom in art.” Hence, And he can as safely conclude by insisting, as he “the so-called vers libre which is good is anything began, that “vers libre does not exist, for there is but ‘free.’ ” He had made a similar point in the only good verse, bad verse, and chaos.” anonymous introduction to his essay on Pound’s metric: Pound could write a free verse only because he had “worked tirelessly with rigid forms and dif- ferent systems of metric.” Whether or not Eliot means exactly what he “Religion and Literature” appears to be saying is quite another matter, how- (1934) ever. He is implicitly defining free verse in the way that its detractors like to characterize it, as if Another essay from that period in Eliot’s career as a it were synonymous with a lazy carelessness and social and literary critic when he was staking out the licentious arrogance. Naturally, then, it is easy for parameters of his conservative views, “Religion and Eliot to argue convincingly that there is no such Literature” was originally from a lecture organized thing, since, in fact, there is not. by the Reverend V. A. Demant and published in

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the volume Faith That Illuminates. Subsequently, in ten and delightful to read, but whose primary claim 1936, Eliot himself collected the essay in his Essays to any reader’s attention is their significance in Ancient and Modern, a somewhat revised version of regard to the field of endeavor or study or interest his own earlier collection, For Lancelot Andrewes: that is being addressed. Another sense is as what Essays on Style and Order, from 1928. is called “devotional poetry.” This often suggests the limitation, however, that that sort poetry is SYNOPSIS minor poetry. At the very least, Christian poetry in Eliot’s apparent aim for the essay is not to prove English, Eliot believes, “has been limited . . . almost who is and who is not failing to meet the bar that exclusively to minor poetry.” The third sense in he sets for dealing with spiritual matters or matters which one might refer to “religious literature” of belief in literature, so much as to establish which is in regard to works that advance some specific “explicit ethical and theological standards” can be religious viewpoint. These kinds of works do not properly brought to bear in the realm of contem- interest Eliot in his present critical effort because porary literature. He makes this case because he he wants, he says, a “literature which should be feels that literary criticism requires “a definite ethi- unconsciously, rather than deliberately and defi- cal and theological standpoint.” His further, and antly, Christian.” more urgent, point is that in our own time, there is Now Eliot is ready to get down to critical issues no agreement on what that standpoint should be, raised by the dual topics of religion and literature. making it all that much more imperative that indi- The primary one is that “we fail to realize how viduals scrutinize their reading accordingly, partic- completely, and yet how irrationally, we sepa- ularly since the “greatness” of literature “cannot be rate our literary from our religious judgements.” determined solely by literary standards.” Using the 19th-century English novel for his case In the immediate context of his remarks, Eliot in point, he divides the development of this sepa- specifically identifies these individuals as Chris- ration between religion and literature into three tians, given the further fact that, in his view, he was phases. In the first, faith was omitted entirely from as much fighting a holding action for asserting the “the picture of life” that these novels portrayed. In Christian basis to European culture as attempting the second, faith was “doubted, worried about, or to resolve this particular critical conundrum. Eliot contested.” It is the third phase, the one “in which is correct in pointing out the obvious: “[M]oral we are living,” that causes Eliot the most concern. judgements of literary works are made only accord- From this concern of his, only the Irish novelist ing to the moral code accepted by each generation, JAMES JOYCE is excepted, and it is that by now “the whether it lives according to that code or not.” The Christian Faith [is not] spoken of as anything but point is indisputable: Whatever its source, however an anachronism.” it may categorize itself or be categorized, a moral The absence of the notion of a viable and living code directs our judgments of human behavior, religion from contemporary literature is a serious including behavior that is manifested or explicated problem because, in Eliot’s view, “what we read in works of literature. does not concern merely something called our lit- The operating principle that he establishes as erary taste, but . . . affects directly, though only he commences his actual process of analysis is that amongst many other influences, the whole of what his concern will be not religious literature, “but we are.” Omitting religion from literature as any- with the application of our religion to the criticism thing other than as an anachronism clearly also of any literature.” He does not get down to doing omits it, for the contemporary reader who has no that, however, until he establishes the three senses way of knowing any better, from that very “whole in which one might refer to religious literature in of what we are.” the first place. One is in the same way as “we speak The entire matter of literature’s more uncon- of ‘historical literarture’ or of ‘scientific literature,’ ” scious and unintended effects upon a reader’s total and that would constitute works that are well writ- sensibilities, including the continuing formation

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of his or her moral and theological standards, is than drama and dramatists and English metaphysi- at the heart of Eliot’s message. “The relation of cal poetry, as well as on major literary figures such what I have been saying to the subject announced as WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and DANTE ALIGHIERI. should now be a little more apparent,” he is now On the other hand, and in a parallel vein, he was finally able to declare. He continues: “Though we engaging in a quasi-literary debate dealing with the may read literature merely for pleasure, of ‘enter- limits of secular humanism as an evolving, atheistic tainment’ or of ‘aesthetic enjoyment,’ this reading intellectual posture and contemporary ameliorative never affects simply a sort of special sense: it affects for social ills. These two areas of inquiry and criti- us as entire human beings; it affects our moral and cal opinion often merged in the matter of the spiri- religious existence.” tual or religious nature of human experience as an Eliot does not blame or condemn the individual aspect of literary endeavor. writer and his or her values and beliefs either, such Thus, Eliot was often raising and addressing as they are. “[W]hat a writer does to people is not questions related to the effective communication necessarily what he intends to do.” Indeed, Eliot of thought and of feeling, the connections between can confess, quite honestly, one must imagine, that poetry and belief and between poetry and phi- “I am not even sure that I have not had some losophy, and the proper intellectual and historical pernicious influence myself.” So, then, it is not so foundations for assessing and maintaining moral important to describe and define the relationship and spiritual order and action. In “Religion and Lit- between religion and literature as to admit, and erature,” Eliot is less contentious and more analyti- accept, that there always is one. While it is “our cal with regard to the topic at hand, but he is still a business, as readers of literature, to know what we Christian apologist. like,” for Christian readers, it is “our business . . . to As Eliot sees it, there is only one solution to the know what we ought to like.” culture and society’s increasing secularization of Modern literature, Eliot concludes, is neither matters formerly left to religion, and it is a practical amoral nor immoral, although the implication is and practicable solution: Those with a view toward that it would be more suitable if it were because obtaining a religious view of life from contempo- then those attitudes would be out in the open. rary works of literature must work “tirelessly [to] Rather, the problem is that it either “repudiates, criticize it according to our own principles, and not or is wholly ignorant of, our most fundamental and merely according to the principles admitted by the important beliefs,” thereby “encourag[ing] its read- writers and by the critics who discuss it in the public ers to get what they can out of life while it lasts.” press.” There is always present in the culture a rela- That sort of a hedonistic approach toward human tion between religion and literature because they existence, without any reference to the soul or are two critical components of any human culture eternity, is well within the realm of possible reasons of any time. In our own time, Eliot believes, that given for living at any time, but Eliot’s cavil is with necessary relation must be safeguarded, even if only the apparently acceptable reality that, in our time, for themselves, by individuals who care not what such a view is so prevalent a one as to seem to the the moment may bring, but what eternity may. typically unwary consumer of contemporary litera- ture to be the only reasonable view. CRITICAL COMMENTARY “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” For the decade or more preceding “Religion and (1915) Literature,” Eliot’s prose writing had been forking off in two separate but complementary directions. First published in the July 1915 issue of Wyndham In the one case, he was investigating the constitu- Lewis’s Blast and later collected in the 1917 vol- ents of what he regarded as effective poetry and ume Prufrock and Other Observations, “Rhapsody dramatic verse in essays on such subjects as Elizabe- on a Windy Night,” with its gritty emphasis on

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the seamy underside of urban life, may strike a working class vernacular with the stilted coded lan- reader who has come to Eliot through the more guage of high society and the multisyllabic neolo- genteel though no less disharmonious environs of gisms of science and the academy—borrowed as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “Portrait much from the music hall and vaudeville stage as of a Lady,” with their afternoon teas and Chopin from the models of the clever patois associated concerts, as very much out of keeping with this with the 19th-century French symbolist poet JULES poet’s central concerns, which appear to focus LAFORGUE. on the awkwardnesses that can be caused by an Eliot was a wordsmith, a master of tone, voice, individual’s social ineptness amid the expecta- and mood, diction and wit. “Rhapsody,” from the tions generated by a rigidly stratified class struc- beginning, exemplifies all these traits and talents in ture. Yet there is a very real linkage between these their earliest and most unabashedly fresh manifes- two kinds of poems emerging from the fledgling tations. It is no wonder that “Memory,” the most poet between 1909 and 1911, the period that pro- memorable song from the Andrew Lloyd Weber duced the poems in question. What may at first musical Cats, its book freely adapted from the non- seem to be depictions of two distinct if not oppos- sense verse of Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical ing social venues and lifestyles drawing the poet’s Cats, finds its lyrics in a poem like “Rhapsody on a interest—the seedy nightlife vistas of “Rhapsody” Windy Night” instead. If there is a difference, it is and the “Preludes” versus the stuffy drawing room that Old Possum’s Book is filled with an intentional melodramas of “Prufrock” and “Portrait”—have a whimsy; “Rhapsody” is not. common source in the French symbolist poets who For all its beauties as a created thing, that which had gained Eliot’s fascinated devotion in late 1908 is called for lack of a better term a work of art, on his reading of ARTHUR SYMONS’s The SYMBOLIST “Rhapsody” details a world of loneliness and alien- MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE. ation, regret and bitterness, and the strong hint of vice and viciousness. In good Laforguean fashion, SYNOPSIS with a dollop of another 19th-century French sym- “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” with the musical bolist poet, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, added for good connotation of its title, is, for all its bleakness, a measure, it is by presenting unpleasantries in com- rather lyrical poem, if by that is meant not sim- paratively pleasant terms that the purposes of art, in ply that it is of a first-person or experiential order this case poetry, can be turned to making palatable but that it is particularly melodic in its blending of the unthinkable if not the quite yet unspeakable. rhythms, images, and sound patterns. Eliot had a What reader reading the poem, its poetry flowing lifelong habit of blurring the distinctions between directly out of its relatively winsome musical title— art forms. From his earliest efforts he freely blended shades of all those odes and hymns penned by the the associations of his poetry with musical forms— English romantic poets less than a century ear- the love song, preludes, the rhapsody, the triumphal lier—does not stop short as the first stanza comes march, choruses—or other art forms—the portrait to an abrupt end with the disconcerting image of or landscapes—or, last but hardly least, the lyrical a “madman shaking a dead geranium”? What does poem with dramatic forms. that mean? one may well ask. The inexorable point While it is not uncommon to associate the is that this is the new, not the old poetry, so it may poetic arts with either music or painting, no other mean whatever the reader wishes it to mean. The poet did so with as much consistency up to and trouble is that none of those meanings are going to including his final masterpiece, the suite of poems leave the reader feeling very comfortable. called the Four Quartets. Surely, consciously or not, That is how the modernist poet, among whom this was Eliot’s way of calling all of the reader’s Eliot was one of the first and remains perhaps the aesthetic and imaginative sensibilities to bear—the chief proponent and practitioner in English, surren- aural, the visual, the narrative, the theatrical. Even dered one domain of control over the reader, with his love for freely mingling levels of discourse—the its promises of an accessible, commonly accepted

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meaning, in return for another, greater control over town sequence of undergraduate carousing in a the reader’s psychological and perhaps even spiri- late-night Cambridge. Although that section may tual prerogatives. The modernist like Eliot does not itself have been inspired by if not borrowed from tell the reader what to think, but through a careful the model of JAMES JOYCE’s Ulysses, its content nev- manipulation of language controls instead the far ertheless provocatively suggests that Eliot knew more pertinent zones of how the reader thinks and, firsthand whereof he spoke from his own under- so, by extension, feels. graduate days experiences there. Recall that image of the lunatic with which the Also, by the time he was first composing “Rhap- poem opens. Is the madman shaking the dead gera- sody,” in March 1911, Eliot had been living, since nium in some insane effort to revive it? Is he shak- the previous October, in Paris, that longtime den of ing it with some sort of maniacal grin on his face, iniquity from the point of view of innocent Ameri- mocking death and the typical individual’s grief cans abroad. True, Eliot was there enrolled in a and fear in the face of it, even when its victim is class at the Collège de France being taught by the only a flower? Is it merely a totally irrational act, renowned French philosopher Henri Bergson, but the sort of which can drive a sane individual to the the young Eliot was also reading Charles-Louis edge of a momentary madness the more he or she Phillipe’s 1901 French novel, Bubu de Montparnasse, tries to force logic and order upon it? Whatever which recounted in explicit details the exploits and solution the reader arrives at, it is no real solution, exploitation of a Parisian streetwalker of the times and the windy night into which the poetry, like (and to which, for a 1932 English translation, Eliot the sirens’ song, has lured the reader has only just happily provided a preface). begun, appropriately enough on the opening stroke Those autobiographical considerations mar- of midnight. shaled and accounted for, nonetheless, it is far too With each successive stanza, the poem and, facile and misleading an argument to suggest that with it, the speaker sink more and more deeply into these sorts of experiences, as common as they are in a dark night of bored desperation and the men- general and speculative as they very well may have ace of madness. The reader is forced to assume been in Eliot’s case, account for the poetic realities the psychological (but, it is important to note, not of such a work as “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” spiritual, for then there might be some reward for For those, the reader must reach back into the far the distress) posture not only of a denizen of the so- more profound interest that the French symbolists called demimonde, the world of nighttime sexual held for the young poet, not as a young man about adventures and drunken escapades, but as a deni- town but as an individual seeking to find a poetic zen who is definitely not having any fun and is mor- voice and poetic themes unique to himself and to his bidly depressed and may in fact be mad. time and his place. In that regard, what would later became known in critical circles as the urban apoc- CRITICAL COMMENTARY alypse was a theme just then emerging in poetry. That there may have been some autobiographical Fostered by the social and economic processes and biases in Eliot’s attraction, at that time, to scenes problems of increasing urbanization in the industri- more reminiscent of fleshpot literature than social alized nations of 19th-century Europe and America, registers is possible, no doubt. These were Eliot’s the phenomenon gained an increasing measure of undergraduate years at HARVARD University, and literary recognition in the English-speaking world Cambridge, Massachusetts, and nearby BOSTON’s by midcentury and later in the novels of Charles working-class neighborhoods provided late-night Dickens and poems such as James Thomson’s The diversions for well-to-do college boys interested in City of Dreadful Night (1874), among others. other things than their IQs and grade-point aver- It was the French symbolists, however, chief ages. A part of the poetry excised from The Waste among them in this particular instance Baude- Land, composed nearly a decade after these earliest laire, who did more than merely address the topic. poetic ventures, involved a racy, raunchy Night- Instead, in response to this urban nightmare, they

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had created a new tone for poetry, one that com- While Eliot’s execution of The Waste Land, his bined, in the place of the sentimentalities of a first truly major work, is still a decade or more away, romantic overkill, the understatement of bitterness poems such as “Rhapsody,” whatever combination and resignation into an oddly celebratory aesthetic. of experience, influence, and poetic challenges may With it, they were able to reflect on the new, gaslit have finally produced them, were definitely the urban landscapes revealed only at night among an workshops and laboratories out of which that mas- often sordid squalor in which bred a brutalization terpiece would eventually emerge. So, then, the of the spirit and a collective despair that were only speaker of “Rhapsody” can be viewed as a Prufrock just then beginning to assault the human psyche. of sorts. (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was It must be admitted that it may be unlikely that coming into its own final form at virtually the same Baudelaire in particular was one of Eliot’s guiding time, March 1911.) Just as Prufrock can imagine spirits as early as the time of the composition of mermaids who do not like him (or at least refuse “Rhapsody” for the simple reason that the French to sing to him), “Rhapsody’s” speaker is out for a poet was not among the symbolists originally night on the town apparently for the sole purpose included in Symons’s introduction to their work of making himself absolutely miserable. and vision, a book that the young Eliot had read in There is, of course, much keen observation of 1908. Baudelaire is included nevertheless among human nature here of the individual’s capacity to those books which Eliot’s mother, Charlotte, listed be his or her own worst enemy, but where this is in a 1920 letter to him as being among those of great poetry is found in Eliot’s willingness to aban- his to be moved from their St. Louis home, and don not only an ostensible theme or meaning but since he had not been in the United States since even the merest hint of a discernible purpose for 1915, the Baudelaire had to have been acquired the sake of creating discomforting psychological well before then, perhaps even while Eliot was first effects, rather like a discordant piece of modern- in Paris in 1910–11. Indeed, for a while Eliot had ist music or abstract art. The poetry keeps up its contemplated staying on in Paris and writing poetry inexorable sense of meaningless doom right down only in French. to the literalness of the “last twist of the knife,” the Otherwise, Baudelaire’s dark and forbidding bleak and bitter note on which this poem, which urban vision, expounded in the volume Les fleurs had promised, with its title, all the harmonious du mal, containing a poetry infested with images comforts of a musical composition, ends. of sexual license, physical decay, and self-loathing, Not just the ear but the reader’s eye has been undoubtedly helped shape Eliot’s and other con- assaulted throughout as well, what with the speaker temporary English-language poetry. Surely there is calling attention to soiled hems, rusted factory more of Baudelaire than of the dandified and plain- yards, a child with dead eyes, a barnacled crab, a tively witty Laforgue in these urban nocturnes of streetwalker’s pockmarked face, all stained with the Eliot’s, of which “Rhapsody” is the most outstand- odor of female smells and of cigarettes and alcohol. ing and memorable example. For his own part, Eliot These are not pretty sights or sounds or smells, nor famously alluded to Baudelaire’s preface to Les are they intended to be, but due to the careful mea- fleurs du mal in one of the most urban apocalyptic sure of the language—the idea that someone, even moments in The Waste Land, in the “Burial of the if it is only the poet, is in control—makes what may Dead” section as the crowd of zombified urbanites seem to be a brutal ugliness into genuinely beauti- crosses over London Bridge. Indeed, in 1950, Eliot ful art. “Rhapsody” achieves that rare thing: beauty wrote that all of Baudelaire’s influence on him can that is not manifest in the events or the objects but be summed up in two lines of the latter’s poetry, that can be revealed through the manner in which in which he describes the city as if it were a seeth- it is presented. ing anthill, lines that Eliot more paraphrases than It does take a leap of the imagination to accept translates in The Waste Land when he describes the premise that poetry can redeem the debase- London as the “unreal city.” ments brought about by nature and by human

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nature. The last twist of the knife may not betoken The playwright Eliot uses to illustrate this point a pleasant ending, but it is still an ending, and a cer- at which mere rhetoric, or bombast for bombast’s tain order has been imposed on the less attractive sake, becomes viably dramatic is neither Elizabe- aspects of reality that otherwise gnaw at the edges than, however, nor, inasmuch as he is a relative of consciousness, disturbing the individual without contemporary, even English-speaking. Rather, it is enlightening him. This new poetic art that Eliot the 19th-century French playwright Edmond Ros- pioneers in a poem such as “Rhapsody on a Windy tand, the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, Rostand’s Night” intends to be inclusive, to find a place in 1897 play featuring the 16th-century French wit the poem for a madman shaking a dead geranium and swordsman and his love for Roxanne. While and soiled hems and cigarettes, since they too are having at first accused Rostand of utilizing a stage all a part of the same common reality, which, if not rhetoric that far outstrips any the English Elizabe- celebrated, can at least be poeticized. thans may ever have employed, Eliot concedes that in Cyrano’s famous speech on noses—Cyrano’s claim to both fame and wit being that he had a par- ticularly noteworthy nose—the rhetoric matches “ ‘Rhetoric’ and Poetic Drama” the moment, whereby “the character, the situation, (1919) the occasion were perfectly suited and combined.” Eliot was still some four years away from first In his 1927 essay “Seneca in Elizabethan Transla- trying his hand at an original verse drama, with tion,” among those negative tendencies in Elizabe- “Sweeney Agonistes” in 1923, and it would be more than drama against which Eliot defends the Roman than a decade after that before he successfully com- playwright Seneca is that he is responsible for the pleted another original one when, in 1935, Murder bombast found in dramatic works from that period in the Cathedral was staged at the Canterbury Festi- in English literary history. “Without bombast, we val. In 1919, nevertheless, Eliot was already essay- should not have had King Lear,” Eliot argues, point- ing the proper balance that must be struck between ing out a serious distinction between drama and stage language and “real speech,” whatever that, as life: Drama requires effects that are larger than life a particular kind of discourse, may be. but that are still emotionally manageable. Dramatic For drama to satisfy, Eliot concludes, it “must take poetry, of course, requires that it be a language con- genuine and substantial human emotions, such emo- taining more power of expression than is found in tions as observation can confirm, typical emotions, ordinary speech, and yet it cannot be so overdone and give them artistic form.” But the range of “typi- that it sounds too theatrical to elicit sympathy. cal” human emotions, as Rostand’s Cyrano readily In this present essay, published nearly a decade attests, is a rather broad one, and it may sometimes earlier, Eliot addresses the difficult question of entail the use of what one would normally call rheto- keeping dramatic poetry at a level approaching con- ric if those kinds of emotions and their situations are versation without making that style itself into just to be given their day, too. If so, “we may apply the another species of rhetoric—which he defines as term ‘rhetoric’ to the type of dramatic speech which “any convention of writing inappropriately applied.” I have instanced,” Eliot writes, referring to Cyrano “[I]f a writer wishes to give the effect of speech he on noses, “and then we must admit that it [‘rheto- must positively give the effect of himself talking in ric’] covers good as well as bad.” his own person or in one of his roles,” Eliot pro- To know how to strike that balance wherein high poses, and to do so, he further proposes, necessitates drama can be given its due while the natural lan- an adaptation that moves from the rhetorical, as he guage is not paraded across the stage as a parody has just defined it, to more refined ways of express- of itself requires, as Eliot has already made clear, a ing ordinary thought and feeling. Such a develop- confluence of character, situation, and occasion. In ment is “partly an improvement in language and it his 1951 essay, “Poetry and Drama,” Eliot astutely is partly progressive variation in feeling.” observes that writing drama in verse to begin with

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allows the playwright to bring all of the power and Eliot was, and has remained, far more renowned for beauty of poetry to bear, but only when and as the writing at this point in his career as a literary critic. dramatic action requires it. To know that moment is Indeed, the essay was specifically commissioned by to know precisely how and when to use what Eliot, Charles Whibley, a friend and journalist who had in this present essay, calls rhetoric in poetic drama. introduced Eliot to Geoffrey Faber in 1925, leading to Eliot’s lifelong career as an editor and director with the publishing house Faber & Faber. “Seneca in Elizabethan Translation” was Sacred Wood, The (1920) intended to serve as an introduction to the Tudor Translation Series, accounting, no doubt, for its Eliot’s first collection of his prose criticism, The highly academic-sounding approach to the entire Sacred Wood was published simultaneously by topic. As a result, the essay, inasmuch it was Methuen in London and Knopf in New York in intended as a document to be studied, is laid out 1920. Aside from incidental reviews, the collec- with a much more painstaking attention to a formal tion brought together work that Eliot had been organization than is typical for Eliot, whose major publishing to that time in such outlets as the Egoist. critical work was often pieces intended as literary This opportunity for getting his views out there in journalism or developed from lectures and other book form presenting itself, he also worked fever- public presentations. By the same token, there is ishly well into July of that year on original pieces to much in the essay that cannot easily be, and need be included in the volume. not be, summarized. Among the collection’s 18 items, excluding Eliot’s introduction, all but seven were subsequently SYNOPSIS collected in Selected Essays, 1917–1932. These The Tudor translations in question are the Tenne included such notable early work as “Tradition and Tragedies, which had been edited by Thomas New- the Individual Talent,” a 1919 essay that is mistak- ton and published as a complete collection in Lon- enly assigned a 1917 publication date in Selected don in 1581. The translations of Seneca’s own Essay’s table of contents, and “Hamlet and His Prob- first-century A.D., classical Roman adaptations of lems,” also from 1919, which introduced the idea of popular tragedies from the Golden Age of Greek the objective correlative. Among those pieces in tragedy during the fourth century B.C. were by a The Sacred Wood omitted from Selected Essays was variety of hands, however, most notably Jasper an early (1920) essay on Dante that was among the Heywood. Heywood contributed no less than three first to introduce Eliot’s notion that poetry could of the 10—Troas, Thyestes, and Hercules Furens— treat philosophical matters without itself becoming and there were titles among the selection that had a mere substitute for philosophy. Eliot develops this been issued separately from as early as 1559. notion most fully in “Shakespeare and the Stoicism The primary critical problem that these trans- of Seneca” in 1927 and in the longer “Dante,” pub- lations from Seneca’s original Latin into English lished in 1929. represented virtually from the time of their pub- lication as a finished editorial project in 1581 is how much and in what manner they influenced popular Elizabethan drama, which would have just “Seneca in Elizabethan then been coming into its own with the work of Translation” (1927) playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and John Marston in the late 1580s. For the As the dry tone of the title suggests, “Seneca most negative view of the influence that Seneca’s in Elizabethan Translation” is really more of an tragedies, which had been thus made generally extended piece of critical scholarship than one of accessible as a result of Newton’s collection, had on the more trenchant kinds of literary essays that subsequent original dramas in English, the remarks

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of Thomas Nashe in his 1589 preface to a play by As he sees it, they have a “documentary value” not Thomas Greene are most often cited. Eliot cer- only as Elizabethan drama in its embryonic state but tainly had recourse to Nashe’s remarks. Nashe had as texts representing the transformation of an older commented on how a theatrical emulation of Sen- form of versification—the so-called fourteener— eca, whose own choice of themes was most often into a new one, that is, the unrhymed, iambic pen- drawn from and exploited the most brutally violent tameter line called blank verse. That form would of classical Greek drama, had brought nothing but dominate English poetry for the next 300 years and blood and violence to the Elizabethan stage. more, well into the epoch of free verse ushered in by It is this well-known note of disapprobation on the modernists. which Eliot himself picks up most prominently as More important, perhaps, these translations he begins his own consideration of what benefits brought about what Eliot sees as a transformation the development of English drama in the Elizabe- of language and sensibility. “Few things that can than period may have derived from the Senecan happen to a nation,” he says with some personal model to which young English dramatists were experience of the phenomenon, “are more impor- exposed by the Tenne Tragedies. Specifically, Eliot tant than the invention of a new form of verse.” wishes to explore three areas of critical contention Eliot finishes with a paean to the age that had regarding the influence of Seneca. After establish- thus ended as a result of the influence of the Sen- ing that the only point of agreement among critics ecan translations. In Heywood’s Hercules Furens, regarding Seneca is that the five-act division in Eliot writes, one hears “. . . the last echo of an modern European drama is due to Seneca, Eliot earlier tongue, the language of Chaucer, with an identifies those three areas that he will consider: overtone of that Christian piety and pity which Seneca’s “responsibility for what has been called disappears with Elizabethan verse.” “[O]ne feels,” . . . the Tragedy of Blood . . . the horrors which Eliot says, “a curious strain on the old vocabulary disfigure Elizabethan drama; second, his responsi- to say new things.” It is an observation that is itself bility for bombast in Elizabethan diction; and third, poetry. Surely Eliot will make it so in the poetry of his influence upon the thought, or what passes for his own Four Quartets, which were still a decade thought, in the drama of Shakespeare and his con- and more in the future. temporaries.” Eliot is quick to preview his conclu- sions to each of the three: “the first . . . has been CRITICAL COMMENTARY overestimated, the second misconstrued, the third It is when Eliot touches on the topic of Seneca’s undervalued.” influence on what among the Elizabethans passed On the first matter, Eliot argues that Seneca for thought, or one might say ideas, that Eliot may have provided Elizabethan dramatist with “a reaches a conclusion that has far-reaching criti- pretext or justification for horrors . . . for which cal value. A persistent theme in Eliot’s criticism is there was certainly a taste . . . which would cer- the relationship—that is often better characterized tainly have been gratified at that time whether as a confusion—between poetry and philosophy. Seneca had ever written or not.” As for the Eliza- Another persistent theme is his judging the worth bethan love of bombast’s having been inspired by of a poet on his or her having a mature view of life. Seneca, Eliot does not deny it, observing that the Senecan thought among the Elizabethans, Eliot Elizabethans themselves ridiculed the bombastic says, may be regarded as the foundation for that tendencies in imitations of Seneca’s style. How- crucial poetical hallmark, which he identifies in ever, he also imagines that such a trend was not this essay as “their attitude toward life so far as it unrelentingly harmful to English dramatic verse. can be formulated in words.” “Without bombast,” he concludes, “we should not Eliot is not about to pretend, however, that have had King Lear.” such an “attitude toward life” as might have Eliot concludes the entire treatise by commenting been expressed by Seneca, a pagan Roman, in his on the Tenne Tragedies as texts in their own right. recounting of the more violent of the great and

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equally pagan Greek myths, could possibly be equal invites consideration of the further question of the to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas that influ- relationship between the poet and his age. enced Dante. Nevertheless, that is not to the point, in Eliot’s view, because Shakespeare and Dante SYNOPSIS “were both merely poets,” so any “estimate of the Eliot begins on a note that is far more jocund than it intellectual material they absorbed does not affect is profound, and that is for him to take stock of the our estimate of their poetry.” While Eliot deals with number of “new” Shakespeares that are suddenly this question much more effectively and extensively appearing on the literary scene. He is not referring in another essay from the same period, “Shakespeare to new editions of the bard’s works, but rather to and the Stoicism of Seneca,” here he is much more treatments that purport to reveal exactly who the succinct. playwright “really” was, particularly to categorize It is true that readers make different use of him inasmuch as the value system—his system of Dante and Shakespeare as a result of the differ- belief, if you will—revealed through his dramas will ent attitudes toward life that inspired their poetry, allow. As a result, Eliot observes that there are but Eliot does not see it as a means toward judg- now available to interested readers cases to make ing the relative merits of each’s poetry as poetry. Shakespeare “a Tory [i.e., politically conservative] Indeed, Eliot concludes that it was Shakespeare’s journalist or a Liberal journalist, or a Socialist jour- “special role in history” and perhaps even “a part nalist . . . a Protestant Shakespeare, and a sceptical of his special eminence” that he was a poet capable Shakespeare, and . . . an Anglo-Catholic, or even a of “express[ing] an inferior philosophy [meaning Papist Shakespeare.” Seneca’s] in the greatest poetry.” Eliot’s aim here is not so much to question the wide range of disparities, which alone underscore the probability that someone must be wrong, as to wonder over “the remarkable resemblance” that “Shakespeare and the each categorization happens to bear to its propo- nent of the moment. “I have not a very clear idea of Stoicism of Seneca” (1927) what Shakespeare was like,” Eliot writes, “but I do not conceive him as very like either Mr. Strachey, Like many another Eliot essay, the ostensible topic or Mr. Murry, or Mr. Wyndham Lewis, or myself,” of this particular piece—the influence of Senecan listing a number of the more prominent recent pro- stoicism on the philosophical premises underlying ponents. Though this is expressed with something Shakespeare’s drama—is at first approached almost of a mock incredulousness for humor’s sake, Eliot’s tongue-in-cheek. Quickly, however, it evolves into observation exposes a deep-rooted problem with a treatise on the relationship between poetry and literary source and influence hunters, and that is belief and, so, too, between the poet and the poem. that they tend to find the sources and influences That latter area had been and would remain fertile that they seek, particularly when they enter the territory for Eliot’s unique contributions through- especially murky zone between the poet’s life and out much of the first half of the 20th century to the the poet’s work. ongoing dialogue that is the field of literary criti- Here, introducing himself into his text “as a cism, contributions that began with his propound- minor poet,” Eliot happily brings his own experi- ing an impersonal theory of poetry in the landmark ences with that sort of criticism to bear as a case in essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in point for that methodology’s inherent weaknesses, 1919. In the present case, however, Eliot moves the if not outright wrongheadedness. In support of his debate regarding the validity of his famous separa- view that “Shakespeare may have held in private tion between the man who suffers and the mind life very different views from what we extract from that creates as close as he ever will to his own per- his extremely varied published works,” Eliot goes on sonal circumstances as a creative intellect and also to assert that “I am used to having cosmic signifi-

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cances, which I never suspected, extracted from my they were “occupied with turning human actions work”: “. . . to having my personal biography recon- into poetry.” structed from passages which I got out of books, . . . If poets are not thinkers, by this definition of the to having my biography invariably ignored in what I term, what then are they, one might well ask, cling- did write from personal experience. . . .” ing to the possibility that poetry can at least express Convinced by this experience of his own that ideas, even if it does not necessarily originate them. people who insist on using the text as a sort of Eliot answers that question: Rather than being a personal seismograph of the poet’s ethical, spiri- thinker as such, “[t]he great poet, in writing him- tual, and philosophical ups and downs are as likely self, writes his time.” Poets are, as it were, messen- to be wrong about Shakespeare as they are about gers rather than the message—they do not make him, Eliot then tells his reader that he is there- their age; they express it. As such, they are limited fore going to propose a Shakespeare influenced by by what thoughts and beliefs their age is capable the stoicism of Seneca, the great tragic playwright of thinking and of believing, but their capacity as of the classical Latin stage, since such a proposal poets is limited by nothing other than their imagi- must most certainly be on the way in any case. native skills. He concludes, “Thus Dante, hardly (Indeed, in a longer, more scholarly, and consider- knowing it, became the voice of the thirteenth cen- ably less flippant essay published in 1927, “Sen- tury; Shakespeare, hardly knowing it, became the eca in Elizabethan Translation,” Eliot will fulfill representative of the end of the 16th. . . .” Nev- his own prophecy.) Thus far, so that the reader ertheless, Eliot insists, that each occupies such a does not miss the value of Eliot’s position, though position has nothing to do with the quality of their he is presenting it in a lighthearted manner, he is thoughts and everything to do with the quality of not attempting to be frivolous in citing the critical their poetry, which is quite another matter, harder excesses. From this point on, he makes a brief but to gauge and far more difficult to discuss in the convincing case that there is as much of Seneca as intellectual terms required of criticism. of Montaigne and Machiavelli, otherwise the two Be that as it may, Eliot can conclude that reigning candidates of choice, in the Elizabethan “you can hardly say” that Dante or Shakespeare mindset, although Eliot admits that he is “not so “believed, or did not believe” the prevailing phil- much concerned with the influence of Seneca on osophical systems that inform either their age Shakespeare as with Shakespeare’s illustration of or their work. Rather, the task of the poet, the Senecan and stoical principles.” great poet, is “to express the greatest emotional It is, as a distinction, one most worthy of critical intensity of his time, based on whatever his time note, drawing an implied contrast between poetry happened to think.” In Dante’s case, it was the as a medium for the transmittal of ideas and poetry coherent system of Christian belief codified by St. as a medium for the dramatization of them. In any Thomas Aquinas, and that, not Dante’s capacities case, it is a distinction that allows Eliot, several as a thinker, gave his poetry its remarkable coher- pages later, to go off on a fruitful tangent by regard- ence. In Shakespeare’s, it was a mixture of Seneca, ing the relationship between the poet as thinker Machiavelli, and Montaigne boiled in a free-spir- and the poet as poet (or qua poet, as Eliot liked ited, free-thinking Renaissance stew, and that to put it). Eliot finds it reasonable to imagine a gave Shakespeare’s poetry its remarkable energy Shakespeare not thinking “anything at all.” Eliot and range. will not deny that, when the typical reader encoun- Although Eliot takes his own closing argument ters a Homer or Virgil, Dante or Shakespeare, that there, rounding it out instead with some further reader imagines that he is encountering great ideas, considerations of those particular Senecan quali- but that is not because the poet is a “thinker.” “In ties that a reader might yet find in Shakespeare, truth, neither Shakespeare or Dante did any real the reader might well wonder how Eliot’s take on thinking,” Eliot insists, for the very real and trans- the relationship between a great poet and the age parent reason that “that was not their job.” Rather, might play out in the age of modernism, which is

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characterized by so many varieties of thinking as to that is not what ought to make the poetry a thing defy categorization. of permanent interest to others. The example of the past is evidence that Eliot may be right. Hom- CRITICAL COMMENTARY er’s “beliefs” were, for him, as real as anyone’s, but Eliot’s continual interest in the question of poetry, for any reader nowadays, they are simply an intrigu- the age, and belief may have been profoundly ing addition to the story that he tells. inspired by his own awareness that muddled think- ing does not produce clear anything. His equally constant effort to keep his eye on tradition and what he called orthodoxy may finally have more to do “Sir John Davies” (1926) with an attempt to keep his own arsenal of fresh ideas well stocked with the tried and the true rather Eliot’s essay on Sir John Davies, which was origi- than with any overwhelming personal commitment nally published in the the Times Literary Supplement to those same kinds of ideas. It is hardly splitting and subsequently collected, in 1956, in On Poetry a difference to permit as much to come into con- and Poets, takes up succinctly what was during the sideration whenever one finds oneself confronting 1920s so common a complaint of Eliot’s that the what appear to be beliefs of any sort in Eliot’s poetry. essay is well worth the reader’s attention despite its By the same token, at this time, 1927, Eliot’s own relative brevity. Davies, an early 16th-century Eng- poetry writing was moving in directions that seemed lish jurist and poet, was a contemporary of many to suggest a distinctly autobiographical basis to his other figures who also occupied Eliot’s attention at choice of themes. He was undergoing a conversion this time, including the prose stylist Sir Lancelot experience that, by June of that year, led him to Andrewes and the metaphysical poet JOHN DONNE, being baptized in the established Church of England, as well as the celebrated circle of Elizabethan dra- making him, in essence, an Anglo-Catholic whose matists, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE among them. orthodoxy made him about as far removed from the Unitarian apostasies of his ancestors as one could SYNOPSIS possibly be, short of becoming a Roman Catholic. In Eliot’s view, Davies the poet, whose primary Such details might encourage the reader to claim to fame is Nosce Teipsum (Know Thyself), imagine that this further emphasis of Eliot’s, in fares particularly well in such illustrious company. “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca,” on the Why Eliot holds this high opinion of Davies, and separation between the biography of the living man what eventually compels him nevertheless to qual- and the products of the creative mind, with Eliot ify it, offer insights into Eliot’s way of assessing using his own creative output for a part of the case and evaluating literature, insights that are other- in point, may have been a smoke screen, or at least wise not easily come by. To his credit, then, Davies an effort to preempt whatever future critical bias was, in Eliot’s estimation, a poet who, “[i]n an age such personal readings of his poetry would impose. when philosophy, apart from theology, meant usu- The likeliest conclusion to such speculation would ally . . . a collection of Senecan commonplaces,” have to be that a person of Eliot’s astuteness and had an independent mind. Indeed, Eliot goes even critical acumen would no doubt have anticipated further: For an Elizabethan poet, Davies’s “thought the kind of intense personal scrutiny his own poetry is amazingly coherent.” Eliot continues: “. . . there would undergo in the critical search for the beliefs is nothing that is irrelevant to his main argument, and philosophies that it may seem to express. Who, no excursions or flights. . . . [T]he thought is con- then, could blame him for hoping to add his own tinuous.” Perhaps most important, Eliot commends two cents’ worth of opinion to the question of Davies for possessing “that strange gift, so rarely poetry and belief? bestowed, for turning thought into feeling.” Eliot is not saying that a poet’s beliefs may or Coming from Eliot, that is high praise indeed. may not be found in his poetry; he is saying that One need only have a limited awareness of Eliot’s

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attitude toward the disjunction between thought extremely wide variety of human beliefs—but on and feeling that he saw occurring later in the 17th the grounds of a doctrinal coherence. Even if that century and that he famously termed, in the essay seems to be splitting hairs, it still admits that there “The Metaphysical Poets,” the “dissociation of sen- are hairs to be split. What else is human thought, sibility,” to appreciate how important it is, in Eliot’s and particularly belief, if not its refinements? mind, for thought and feeling to be expressed as That, in a word, is what and where Eliot finds inseparable components of human experience. that Davies comes up lacking. To appreciate Even more to the point for Eliot here, however, how and why, one would first have to have some is Davies’s consistency of thought and feeling. acquaintance with Eliot’s take on Davies’s beliefs, Whereas a Donne “was ready to entertain almost or at least his expression thereof. Essentially, Eliot any idea,” Davies has a greater capacity for belief lodges against Davies the same charge that he had and, so, “has but the one idea, which he pursues lodged against the late 18th-century poet Wil- in all seriousness—a kind of seriousness rare in his liam Blake in a 1920 essay and would level again age.” Echoing the praises that he had, in “Lancelot against several contemporary poets, most notably Andrewes,” poured out on Andrewes as a thinker EZRA POUND and W. B. YEATS, and the novelist and believer in comparison with Donne, Eliot here D. H. Lawrence in 1934 in After Strange Gods. The goes as far as to give Davies the laurel for a more gist of the charge is that such writers go to great medieval mind than Donne’s modernist, humanist trouble, both for themselves and for their readers, bent—such terminology being as much code words seeking to create whole-cloth or to modify exist- in Eliot’s time and usage as they are in our own for ing systems of belief when a perfectly good one, the forces of orthodoxy and tradition in opposition time-tested and widely regarded as acceptable, is to the forces for liberalization and reform. already in place. In Davies’s case, Eliot points out that his Nosce CRITICAL COMMENTARY Teipsum is a “long discussion in verse of the nature This essay, like “Lancelot Andrewes,” in which of the soul and its relation to the body,” wherein Donne is excoriated to Andrewes’s benefit, comes Davies is “more concerned to prove that the soul is from that period in Eliot’s life when he was grad- distinct from the body rather than to explain how ually converting to classicism, royalism, and such distinct entities can be united.” In so doing, Anglo-Catholicism, as he would himself phrase it. Davies invariably gets himself entangled in other Someone more tradition-bound, as Eliot seems to theorizing—for example, that the ear is whorled in be implying that Davies was, would be more likely order to keep sound from striking the brain directly to draw his praise and attention. Yet that does not and thereby confusing it—in order to support his necessarily mean that Davies, in the final analysis, primary one. Eliot is forced to conclude that, what- earns himself a place in Eliot’s pantheon of con- ever the sources of Davies’s “theories,” “we cannot servative heroes. For for all his good features, as take them very seriously.” they have been enumerated here thus far, Davies For Eliot, mixing philosophy and theology with nonetheless fails the most critical test, and that poetry is never a good idea to begin with, as he has to do with those very beliefs that he holds and will shortly argue at greater length in essays such seriously espouses with such a perfect balance oth- as “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca” in erwise of thought and of feeling. 1927 and, in 1929, “Dante.” The problem, as Eliot Before one proceeds into allowing Eliot to expa- sees it, is an endemic one. Davies is a poet, not a tiate on Davies’s failing, however, it would be wise philosopher, although “he had a gift for philosophi- to grant to Eliot the same scrupulosity of thought cal exposition.” Thus, his appeal is to feeling, not and feeling that he expects of others. If, then, thought, not because poetry cannot appeal to both, Eliot faults Davies’s beliefs, it will not be on doc- but because Davies’s poetry does not appeal to both. trinal grounds—Eliot had been very well and very Davies’s theory of the relationship between the formally trained in appreciating that there is an body and soul, even if he had used better sources,

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still “does not matter a fig,” therefore, because it is SYNOPSIS not Davies’s theories but his poetry that ought to Such an approach, as might be expected with matter. a topic as broad itself in scope as poetry’s social As harsh as this dismissal may sound, Eliot is function, thus enabled Eliot to make more use- only being practical and, if the truth be known, ful pronouncements than he had previously made fair as well. Poetry is to be judged as poetry, not by focusing only on the more controversial kinds as philosophy or theology. Readers must be care- of social function that poetry might serve in the ful to split the same hair in the same way as Eliot give-and-take of the contemporary moment. Freed does here now. While he finds Davies’s so-called from the necessity of having to apply or justify his theories quaint, that is not the source of his dis- conclusions on the basis of his own and his con- satisfaction with them as poetry. Rather it is that temporaries’ practices and purposes, Eliot is able they are made to seem to be the purpose for the in this essay to establish what he sees to be poetry’s poetry, whether they were quaint or not, rather ultimate and, so, enduring social function. than the other way around; that is to say, the He lays out his case in a methodical fashion as whole purpose for the discussion of the soul and well, beginning by establishing for his reader which the body in Davies is to have grounds for the of the commonplace functions assigned to poetry poetry. will not be of concern to him. Not surprisingly, he Eliot, in closing, can turn to a no less spiritual reiterates in convincing terms that a poet’s actual poetry on the same topic, that being the passage advocacy of or attack on a particular social attitude in DANTE ALIGHIERI’s Purgatorio that describes the cannot constitute poetry’s social function for the soul as if it were a little child. (Eliot would himself obvious and simple reason that the poetry remains shortly have recourse to this same passage as a to be of some value to humanity long after the spe- source for one of his Ariel poems, “Animula.”) As cific social causes that may have inspired it—if, for a sign of how much Eliot, in disparaging Davies’s that matter, there happen to have been any—have ideas, is not disparaging Davies’s poetry, Eliot sug- quite literally become lost to history. While he does gests that, while Dante was, in comparison with not himself cite an example, the classical Greek Davies, a “vastly greater poet” depending on an tragedian Euripides’ Medea provides a convenient “infinitely more substantial and subtle” philosophy, one. Scholars rightly view the play as Euripides’ anyone who can appreciate the beauty of Dante’s commentary on the deplorable state of affairs that verse “should be able to extract considerable plea- resident aliens were forced to endure in the Athens sure from Nosce Teipsum.” The wary reader will of his time. Any reader or audience member who readily note that Eliot emphasizes deriving beauty has subsequently been exposed to Medea, how- and pleasure, not philosophy and theology, from ever, has undoubtedly been moved by its tragic either man’s poetry, as it should be. dimensions despite being, for the most part, totally unaware of the social function that the play would have served for a contemporary Athenian audi- ence. “Real poetry,” as Eliot astutely concludes, “Social Function of Poetry, “survives not only a change of popular opinion but The” (1945) the complete extinction of interest in the issues with which the poet was passionately concerned.” In this essay, which was first delivered as an address Where, then, does Eliot see poetry serving a to the British-Norwegian Institute in 1943, then social function if it is not to be found in those further developed for delivery before an audience issues that a contemporary audience or even the in Paris in 1945, and finally collected, in 1956, in poet himself would have regarded as germane? To On Poetry and Poets, Eliot focuses on this especially answer the question, Eliot suggests looking to those pertinent topic in its broadest possible terms. services that poetry traditionally provides to a soci-

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ety. For example, and with a large measure of self- for the same reason that it speaks most to those who assurance, he notes that poetry gives pleasure, and are native to and in the language, so that it does not he identifies that service as a social function of travel well. poetry. His strongly endorsing here an idea of this order It must be something more than mere pleasure, may have come later as a surprise to Eliot’s Welsh, however, or it would not be the sort of pleasure that Irish, and Scottish writers of the British Isles whom the greatest poetry provides. To do that, the poetry he would in a relatively short time ask not to write must provide as well the “communication of some in their native tongues but in English instead, for new experience, or some fresh understanding of the the sake of English culture. That would be in Notes familiar, or the expression of something we have towards the Definition of Culture, which he was busy experienced but have no words for.” By doing so, writing during the mid-1940s and published in En- poetry not only serves a social function by provid- gland in 1948. However, one could safely argue that ing the high order of pleasure that only it can sum- Eliot is correct in the case of British literature, in mon, but it “makes a difference to the society as a which the most prominent Scottish, Irish, and Welsh whole,” even for those who do not enjoy poetry. poets such as , Thomas Moore, George That is because poetry, Eliot observes, “differs Gordon Lord Byron, and Dylan Thomas did in fact from every other art in having a value for the peo- write in English because it was the more dominant ple of the poet’s race and language, which it can culture politically, economically, and militarily. have for no other.” It is on that observation that Eliot’s insisting, then, that poetry “makes a Eliot will then go on, in the rest of the essay, to difference to the speech, to the sensibility, to the establish what he sees to be the foremost among lives of all the members of a society, . . . the com- poetry’s social functions—its fostering of a culture munity, . . . the whole people” is based on actual through its maintenance of that culture’s people experience, for it must be regarded as virtually axi- through the vitality and viability of their language. omatic that the dominant literary language, even in Indeed, Eliot will assert that “no art is more stub- a multilingual culture, shapes the way that that cul- bornly national than poetry,” so much so that “a ture thinks and feels far more than any other single feeling or emotion expressed in a different language feature of that culture. Eliot summarizes finally by is not the same feeling or emotion.” saying that “what I mean by the social function of With regard to poetry’s social function, the fore- poetry in its largest sense” is that “it does, in propor- most duty of a poet, Eliot can declare, is not to the tion to its excellence and vigour, affect the speech people but to their language. To fulfill this func- and the sensibility of the whole nation.” A decline tion, the poet’s orders with regard to the native in poetic discourse, therefore, for whatever reason tongue are “first to preserve [it], and second to “would mean that people everywhere would cease extend and improve” it. By performing these tasks to be able to express, and consequently be able to for the “dialect of the tribe,” as Eliot will elsewhere feel, the emotions of civilized beings.” Essentially, call a poet’s native tongue, the poet performs as they would lose the habits of feeling that guide the well the task of “making people more aware of what shaping of cultures. they feel” by giving utterance to those feelings and Without having to provide evidence, since few impulses that would otherwise remain mute. would dispute the contention, Eliot observes that So critical does Eliot view this particular func- “when religious feeling disappears, the words in tion of poetry to be that he sees the deterioration which men have struggled to express it become of a people’s language through poetry leading ulti- meaningless.” The same could happen to what he mately to a deterioration of their whole culture, terms “poetic feeling.” He cannot deny that the to the end that they might even run the risk of feeling for poetry and for its typical material may “becom[ing] absorbed in a stronger one.” Earlier, one day disappear, an event that would “facilitate indeed, when he had asserted that “no art is more the unification of the world.” That is to say, if lan- stubbornly national” than poetry, it was very likely guage were to be made universal, then feeling and

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thought would invariably follow suit. Eliot man- confessedly, less forbearing terms. Indeed, by the ages, however, to render that prospect as a totally time of After Strange Gods his focus repeatedly undesirable one. For what would be lost would seemed to be on destroying the credibility of those be the rich variety of human experiences that who did not agree with him. That sort of a win- the race’s various cultures express for the cease- ner-take-all contentiousness can never make for less delight and edification of one another. In the reasonable critical discourse or a balanced critical final analysis, then, Eliot leaves in the reader’s viewpoint. On the other hand, perhaps it is because mind the suggestion that such a world would be he was so sensitively attuned to the critical cultural inhabited by an entirely different kind of human- issues of his own time that he felt the shape of the ity completely disconnected from all its traditions, coming age that would emerge from his. Whatever or entirely dominated by a single one. the reason, in his later criticism Eliot does seem to have anticipated the very issues of globalism versus CRITICAL COMMENTARY diversity that are now at the forefront of current For a more detailed consideration, on Eliot’s part, social, political, and economic thought. of prospects of this sort, the interested reader would be well advised to turn to the discussion on Eliot’s Notes towards the Definition of Culture. Nonetheless, “The Social Function of Poetry” is perhaps Eliot’s “Song for Simeon, A” (1928) most definitive word on the relationship between poetry and the social makeup of the culture that it If the Ariel series was intended as Faber’s clev- both serves and helps shape, touching as it does on erly commercial way to send out Christmas holi- a topic that had engaged Eliot’s critical attention day greetings to their clients and other business from at least the mid-1920s. acquaintances and friends, it is doubtful that any- In his comments regarding poetry and belief one would have considered Eliot’s first contribution in essays such as “Shakespeare and the Stoicism to the series, “Journey of the Magi,” a greeting filled of Seneca” (1927) and “Dante” (1929), Eliot had with holiday cheer. Because, as a commissioned generally taken the position that there is a con- piece, it is intended for a far more general audience siderable distinction between poetry and the soci- than a poet thinking strictly in terms of his own etal values or beliefs that it may appear to suggest poetry writing may ever have otherwise composed, or propose. By the same token, nevertheless, in it is nevertheless a far more immediately accessible those same essays he would take the position, using poetry than is typical of Eliot’s output to this time. Dante as his primary example, that the greater the Still, “Journey of the Magi” shares with all that system of beliefs and values that guided a soci- earlier work, and with the contemporaneous effort ety, the greater the poetry that that society might that Eliot was then putting into poems that would produce. Eliot had gone on to develop and refine subsequently emerge under the overall title “Ash- this position of his further and with more apparent Wednesday,” an attitude toward the religious that contentiousness in The Use of Poetry and the Use of inflicts more psychological pain than it may ever be Criticism and After Strange Gods, both dating from given credit for relieving. 1934, as he began to take upon himself the role of His next contribution to the Ariel series, “A a conservatively partisan spokesman in the debate Song for Simeon,” also seems to refuse to offer as regarding poetry and its possible functions in social much as a sop to the commonplace feel-good spirit as opposed to purely aesthetic contexts. associated with the Christmas season. This second By then, but beginning as far back as the 1923 poem of Eliot’s in the Ariel series, however, does essay “The Function of Criticism,” Eliot was “Journey of the Magi” one better by choosing for its approaching the subject of literature and its effec- subject an event with much more profound doctri- tive place in the overall culture in more contem- nal associations with the Nativity, associations that porary and, as a consequence, far less general and, a nonbeliever would not be likely to make. That is

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to say, in Christian countries to this day—and that calling it a song “for” rather than “of” Simeon, most certainly would have been an accurate way to even though he clearly makes Simeon the poem’s characterize the England of the 1920s when Eliot speaker. Indeed, with the Gospel passage in mind, was composing these poems—a person of another readers should find that there is not a more acces- religious persuasion or of no particularly strong reli- sible poem in the entire Eliot canon because he vir- gious beliefs of any kind whatsoever would still have tually lets the poem write itself by imagining what been likely to have been exposed in a variety of it must have felt like to have been Simeon, a man ways—through carols, depictions, dramatizations, who witnessed with his own eyes what he took to and so forth—to the story of the three wise men be the fulfillment of God’s purpose for his creation. and their journey from the East, guided by the Star That Eliot chose for his speaker another quasi- of Bethlehem. In stark contrast, one would have to historical figure whose relation to the Christmas be either an adherent or scholar of the Christian story is that he was there to bear witness to its faith to know the no less obscure but hardly popu- somewhat terrifying significance rather than, say, lar story of Simeon and his own connection with someone who has benefited spiritually from it in the birth of Christ. some more immediate and commonplace way gives Simeon’s story is told in Luke 2:25–33, in regard Eliot’s readers further insights into his intentions. to Jesus’s presentation in the temple. Simeon, a As the reader comes quickly to realize, Simeon, for “righteous and devout” man to whom it had been all the grace given him by the Holy Spirit so that he revealed by the Holy Spirit that “he should not see may know that he has seen God’s promise to Israel death before he had seen the Messiah of the Lord,” fulfilled, ultimately speaks of the occasion of the was present in the temple when Joseph and Mary Christ’s coming into the world with the same trepi- brought their infant child there, at which point dation and sense of foreboding as the speaker of the Simeon “took him into his arms and blessed God.” magi poem had. That trepidation and foreboding He then pronounced the words that have since can only mirror anyone’s, believer or not, when an entered the Liturgy as the Song of Simeon: event beyond the ken of the human imagination nevertheless enters history in the form of a creature Now, Master, you may let your servant go as small and helpless as a human infant. in peace, according to your word, The obvious cannot help here because there is for my eyes have seen your salvation, simultaneously both nothing and everything famil- which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, iar in the moment of Simeon’s recognition. What a light of revelation to the Gentiles, is the great God of creation up to? one might very and glory for your people Israel. well ask, and Eliot seems to be doing as much. If, Simeon then blessed Joseph and Mary as well, then, as with his first Ariel poem, there is a lack telling her that “ ‘this child is destined for the fall of any noteworthy Christmas cheer in Eliot’s sec- and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that ond treatment of the Christmas theme, it is obvi- will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will ously because he is more interested in exploring pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be the more ponderous aspects of that theme—not its revealed.’ ” superficial holiday joy but its awesome mystery and its capacity to beggar, quite literally, the human SYNOPSIS imagination. These are not the “tidings of great joy” revealed by It is possible to see Eliot’s as a manifestation of the angels to the shepherds, but it seems that Eliot a dourly puritanical Christmas spirit, in keeping is not inclined toward reveling in that aspect of the with his New England ancestry, but it would be far Christmas story. Instead, Eliot weaves these more more profitable and perhaps even more proper to ominous details from Luke, and their theological see it as the manifestation of the awe felt by one and psychological implications, into the result- both humbled and consternated by the idea of the ing poem, to whose title he gives an odd twist by godhead made flesh in the person of a mere infant.

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That person thus affected may be thought of as grasp far more than the magus the universal mean- Eliot’s speaker Simeon or, by extension, as Eliot ing of this event, he can but barely see how any of himself as the poet, or as, by further extension, the it may come to pass except to be able to speak such reader. The point is that it is not important to iden- dire warnings to Mary, that she who holds in her tify the person thus affected so much as to identify arms the savior of the world shall see her own heart with him—which is the purpose of poetry as Eliot pierced by a sword. often describes it. A reader discovering, for example, that Eliot CRITICAL COMMENTARY was himself experiencing, through a conversion Eliot captures this mixture of befuddlement and experience, a reconfiguration of his own encoun- blessedness in Simeon’s clinging, like the magus, ter with Christ, might then insist on finding some to selfhood, but Simeon is capable of acknowledg- connection between that information and this par- ing how much he is simply a supernumerary in ticular poetry. Such a reader would do well, how- an unfolding drama of colossal cosmic significance, ever, to consign the connection to little more than and a supernumerary whose role in the drama is the fact that in both “Journey” and “Song” Eliot is, being written out even as he plays it. Again, in consciously or unconsciously, projecting that per- this regard he stands in for all the rest of us, like sonal spiritual psychology into characterizations of the ambiguously present but powerless speaker of those who were among the first of humanity to Eliot’s The Waste Land, or that same poem’s Tire- experience firsthand an encounter with the endur- sias, who, Prufrocklike, has seen it all already but ing Christian mystery of the Incarnation. Despite still must witness it again. their significant but nevertheless superficial dif- Unlike the speaker of “Gerontion,” Simeon ferences, then, in the face of this mystery each evinces not fatigue but resignation. This powerful is the same person, whether it be the magus or sign that he has been awaiting also signals his own Simeon, Eliot or the reader. And that same per- death, becoming another apt metaphor for the par- son is any person witnessing the end of his way adox of a spiritual transformation, inasmuch as, in of life because of his having been transformed by order to live, the soul must die in Christ. And quite an encounter with Christ, God Incarnate. But as unlike the speaker of “Journey of the Magi,” who Eliot will essay shortly in the next poem in the finds his joy in earthly pleasures now dampened by Ariel series, “Animula,” a transformation of that that long ago encounter with the Christ, Simeon order can leave such a puny thing as a mere mortal finds joy in the simple things of nature—hyacinths reeling with conflicting emotions of anticipation, blooming, the winter sun on snowy hills. “My life is doubt, and even despair over the simplicity that light,” he says, and he knows that to be the truth, has been lost, with fear as well in the face of what for he has followed the laws of the God of Israel complexities may yet be engendered. and kept the faith is every way. A religious conversion, in other words, is fre- But that same God, through the Holy Spirit, quently not a pretty sight, and Eliot, in these two has permitted him to see what the magi can never poems, seems to delight in reminding his readers find in their stars—the coming catastrophe this of that. Like the magus, then, Simeon sees in the simple, humble birth forecasts. The time of sorrow child not help but disaster, although in his case it will come, and there will be “cords and scourges is a disaster that he would be more than willing to and lamentation,” all elements in the arrest, beat- see come to pass, for it is a disaster that will save ing, and execution of Jesus with which the jour- the world from its dark night, that old dispensation ney begun with this birth shall end, and yet Christ of the pagan gods. Like Moses, however, Simeon is the same Lord God of Israel to whom Simeon, shall not see the Promised Land but die in the “who has eighty years and no to-morrow,” must still wilderness, and he knows this. An old man, he was pray for peace and consolation. Simeon sees with a promised that he would live to see the Messiah’s clairvoyant spirit the commitment to sacrifice and arrival, not his fulfillment. Although Simeon can suffering, sorrow in this world for glory in the next,

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to which the Christian ethos will subsequently call achievement over long periods of time. For Eliot, generations of humanity, but here is where Simeon nevertheless, these fallow periods typically resulted shares again a common fate with the magi, for he in somewhat fruitless experimentations that inevi- is as much as they a prisoner of human history, too. tably would culminate in a new and unexpected Not for him, then, “the martyrdom, the ecstasy direction for his poetry. of thought and prayer, / . . . the ultimate vision,” so his agony shall forever be that, though he shall not BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS share that path, he can see it and where it leads. Eliot’s earlier experiences with the quatrain poems Still, it is in his sorrow for that deprivation that, provide a case in point. In them Eliot carried to paradoxically, he begins his own way to Christ, excess the sorts of archly ironic social and psychocul- rather like the speaker of “Ash-Wednesday,” who tural commentaries that he had executed far more intones in that poem’s opening section, composed successfully in earlier poetry such as “The Love Song virtually simultaneously with “A Song for Simeon,” of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Rhapsody on a Windy “Because I do not hope to turn. . . .” Simeon does Night.” Yet the very excessiveness of the quatrain not hope to know Christ, and yet in that very fact poetry, which mingled—and mangled—levels of embraces Christ’s nature nevertheless. And, so, he language as capriciously as it mixed elements of light is able to ask the savior he shall not otherwise and of serious poetry, would pave the way for the know, “Let thy servant depart, / Having seen thy far more ambitiously serious poetry of “Gerontion,” salvation.” with its pointed if veiled commentary on a defeated and fatigued postwar Europe. Thus, “Gerontion” can now be seen as the first breaths of the poetic style that would become The Waste Land. “Sweeney Agonistes” (1923) Similarly, although “Sweeney Agonistes” is included among unfinished poems in the Collected After the effort of composing The Waste Land and Poems and denominated as an unfinished work in dealing with both the celebrity and critical suc- its subtitle as well “Fragments of an Aristophanic cess that followed its publication in late 1922, Eliot Melodrama,” this abandoned verse drama continues found his creative talents laying fallow again, as to occupy a significant place in the Eliot canon for they had following the equally successful publica- the voice that it finally gives to one of his most bril- tion of the slim but influential volume Prufrock and liant characterizations, the brutish Sweeney. Com- Other Observations in 1917. Then he had spent mentators are divided on whether Sweeney, with the next several years composing little more than his slavishness to his animal appetites, represents the quatrain poems while agonizing over whether Eliot’s version of the noble savage, the natural man, his poetry-writing abilities had waned before he or the primitive. His relationship to the character managed to achieve a new voice and vision in Sweeney Todd, the murderous 19th-century barber, “Gerontion.” In this present case, however, the dry is equally problematic and very likely coincidental. spell, such as it was, would not really end until the Whatever his source, the real point is that by publication of “The Hollow Men” in 1925. That the time that Eliot had begun work on “Sweeney poem, too, however, was originally conceived of Agonistes,” Sweeney had long since been occupy- as a poetic sequence rather than a sustained and ing a key place in Eliot’s imagination, a fact sup- coherent piece, further indicating that the best ported by extensive evidence. Indeed, Sweeney had efforts that Eliot was capable of producing during already previously appeared in three of the seven the years following The Waste Land were by and quatrain poems that Eliot had composed between large fragmentary, including the verse drama now 1917 and 1919. Twice it was in title roles, in “Swee- under consideration. It is not surprising, of course, ney among the Nightingales” and “Sweeney Erect,” that a poet should find it difficult to maintain a and in the third case, “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning consistently high level of creative activities and Service,” Sweeney makes an appearance as a major

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and perhaps even pivotal character. Meanwhile, of prostitution, “Sweeney Agonistes” strikes a pon- Doris, another character in “Sweeney Agonistes,” derous tone sufficient to make it seem now, with appears in “Sweeney Erect” as well, and Sweeney the possible exception of “The Hollow Men,” the and Mrs. Porter, yet another character who is at last gasp of The Waste Land’s more despairing and least mentioned in the course of “Sweeney Ago- depressing aspects, revealing the mordantly savage nistes,” have walk-on parts in “The Fire Sermon” quality of verse that had become virtually a hall- in The Waste Land. mark of Eliot’s poetry by this point in time. The Eliot was evidently bringing together in “Swee- high, or low, point in the play will come when ney Agonistes” a variety of character treatments Sweeney announces his existential trinity of “birth, and themes from these earlier poetic efforts, but the copulation, death,” a philosophical perspective that unfinished play is significant as well as for its being certainly does not paint a very attractive picture Eliot’s first real attempt at verse drama, a genre that of either life in general or the human condition in would come more and more to occupy his creative particular. attention during the succeeding decades. Whatever Such pronouncements from Sweeney may leave shape the finished drama that Eliot was planning to some readers, no doubt, wishing that Eliot had execute in “Sweeney Agonistes” would eventually kept the annoyingly uninhibited Sweeney speech- have taken, comments that he shared with friends less, notwithstanding that such a lugubrious vision and other correspondents suggest that Eliot defi- of existence would not be at all out of keeping nitely conceived of “Sweeney Agonistes” as a work with the themes of human despair and degrada- ambitious enough to be a suitable successor to The tion that appear to have been obsessing Eliot all Waste Land. By the same token, he wanted it to be along till now. Indeed, it may puzzle some that a wholly original composition in both its concep- Eliot thought of “Sweeney Agonistes” as a new tualization and execution in order to contrast with and original beginning for his poetry, so much if not repent of the obviously derivative quality of does the fragmentary work echo past Eliot motifs much of The Waste Land’s poetry. and poetic strategies. Some of the verse drama was written as early as In addition to the posture of a philosophical September 1923, less than a year before The Waste despair, most outstanding in this regard is Eliot’s Land’s publication, but whether it was due to an ability to rag high art and serious literary endeavors excess of ambitiousness at the expense of focus or while simultaneously relying on the accumulated to a plot and characters that were not equal to the authority of traditional themes and authors to insin- demands of the projected work’s literary pretensions, uate a consideration of serious matters into a poetry Eliot could never quite seem to nudge the material which seems poised always—but only ever merely into the sort of compelling shape and direction that poised—at the brink of parody. Again, “Sweeney could spell the successful conclusion of any enter- Agonistes” is no exception on this particular front, prise of great scope and purpose. In any case, Eliot further making suspect the assertion that Eliot was abandoned the project entirely in 1925, although seeking to establish something new and original for excerpts were published in the Criterion in October both himself and for modernist poetry in the work’s 1926 and January 1927, and he reportedly viewed eventually discarded pages. the poem sequence that would eventually emerge as “The Hollow Men” (the third part, originally called The Title “Doris’s Dream Songs,” was published in the Chap- No reader familiar with English literary history can book for 1924) as poems related in their own origi- encounter Eliot’s title “Sweeney Agonistes” without nality of tone and theme to “Sweeney Agonistes.” immediately becoming mindful of the heroic poetic drama Samson Agonistes (1672) penned by the SYNOPSIS 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–74). For all the burlesque qualities of its setting and There is absolutely no doubt that Eliot intends the characters, the denizens and habitués of a house otherwise oblique allusion, although to serve what

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purpose is nowhere near as immediately apparent. son by any stretch of the imagination has, after due Is he sending up the high seriousness of the Milton consideration, an authentic viability to offer, one drama and other works of that ilk by virtue of the that permits the reader to see connections among comparison, or is Eliot’s mocking gesture a way of human motivations and aspirations that transcend broadcasting the far less than serious theme and time, class, and ethnicities and that may therefore plot of his own verse drama? Or is Eliot suggesting otherwise escape notice. that, despite the centuries and levels of discourse Eliot seems to be implying some sort of double- and public values that may separate them, his and dealing approach in his play as well, which he sub- Milton’s plays have features in common, and, if so, titles “Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama.” then what may they be? Surely Eliot either is again being coy or is grossly The Milton piece selects for its topic the last few mistaken (and given the nature of both his coy- hours of the biblical hero Samson, who has been ness and the extent of his education, the former captured by the Philistines. By play’s end, in keep- option must assuredly be the case). Few if any read- ing with his Old Testament source, Milton’s hero ers familiar with the great Greek comedian Aris- brings their pagan temple down upon the heads of tophanes (448–380 B.C.) would think of him as his Philistine captors in the midst of their revelries, the writer of melodramas (unless, that is, Eliot is assuring his own destruction as well. Milton’s real being even more precious than he seems at first aim, however, is to present the agony, or conflict, glance to be and means by melodrama a musical that Samson must undergo as he struggles to dis- drama). In any case, any claim to literary fame that cern God’s will for him in the midst of the surrepti- Aristophanes may duly collect is based on plays of tious efforts of Samson’s fellow Israelites to free him his that were undoubtedly comical and satirical in from his captivity. their nature and matter, if not lewd to boot. Clearly the Milton play is rich in its explora- Shades of Sweeney’s sexual shenanigans to tion of metaphysical and spiritual considerations come, it may very well be Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and struggles, the kinds of moral and psychologi- in which the women band together and vow to deny cal paradoxes that lend themselves to the making their men any sexual services until and unless the of a literary masterpiece. It is difficult to imagine, menfolk put a stop to their puerile warfare, rather however, that Eliot, by introducing Sweeney into than Aeschylus’s Agamemnon that comes to mind the equation, is aiming quite so high. Indeed, Eliot for a well-read reader first encountering Eliot’s employs a similar strategy of characterizing Sweeney Sweeney. If so, however, it is not because Lysistrata as an antiheroic lowlife by calling to mind a heroic is melodrama, but because it is a sexual farce. literary classic in “Sweeney among the Nightin- These ambiguities of intention and implica- gales.” There, by means of the epigraph taken from tion cast an even more deceptive light on the the Greek tragic play Agamemnon by Aeschylus proceedings in the fragments of the Eliot play to (525–456 B.C.), Eliot compels his readers to think come when he then introduces in his epigraph to of Sweeney in terms of that work’s title character, “Sweeney Agonistes” a tag taken not from Aris- the victorious leader of the Greek forces at Troy tophanes, whom the subtitle has just introduced, who is slain virtually at his doorstep by his wife and but from Aeschylus. Indeed, although the sub- her lover on his return home from that war. title teases with the promise of an Aristophanic While it may seem at first that there is little to melodrama, whatever that may be, the epigraph recommend comparisons either favorable or unfa- suggests that Eliot may be employing the same vorable between the “apeneck Sweeney” and the kind of strategy that he had in his earlier Sweeney Greek hero of the Aeschylus play, by poem’s end poetry. His bringing to mind Milton’s drama of the a certain measure of similarity between the worlds biblical Samson’s spiritual struggle in his own title of betrayal and violence that each inhabit is estab- allows him to explore in the play that follows the lished. In “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” what potentials of both farce and tragedy in new and at first strikes the reader as an outlandish compari- provocative ways, so that the play both is and is not

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a serious commentary on the human condition, in House of Atreus, especially as it involves Agamem- the best modern way. non and Orestes, and the ostensibly farcical history The First Epigraph of the antiheroic Sweeney will, perhaps, become more readily apparent after Orestes’ own part in the Eliot provides readers of “Sweeney Agonistes” ancient story is fleshed out more fully. The words with two epigraphs to guide them on their way, that Orestes is heard speaking in the epigraph come and unlike his usual practice of not identifying his near the end of the Choephoroi, whose action takes sources, in both cases these epigraphs are attrib- place some 10 years after Agamemnon’s slaying at uted. The two are equally interesting in terms of the hands of his wife and Orestes’ mother, Clytem- the light that they may cast on the tone and theme nestra, and her lover, Agamemnon’s first cousin of the poetic drama to come, but the first is par- Aegisthus. In the Choephoroi, Orestes returns home ticularly interesting for its connections to another in disguise and gains access to the royal palace source that Eliot had already used for epigraphi- by convincing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus that he cal material in another, earlier poetic treatment has arrived with news of Orestes’ death. Once he of Sweeney. The speaker in the present case is the is in the presence of the royal couple, with their Greek hero Orestes, whose literary pedigree is a guard down, he wastes little time in revealing his long and illustrious one. Indeed, for his particular true identity and killing them both on the spot, exploit, he is one of the first personages referred to thus avenging Agamemnon’s death, exactly as the by Homer in the Odyssey—in the opening pages of god Apollo had commanded him to do. that great epic poem, as a matter of fact. Aeschylus, however, who is using what was for It is not to Orestes’ appearance in Homer that his own time a no less ancient story to explore Eliot turns for his epigraph to “Sweeney Agonistes,” the theme of the evolution of human justice, now however, but to a much later source, a fifth-century introduces a new twist into the plot. Balance in B.C. drama called, in the original Greek, the Cho- the eye-for-an-eye universe that the characters ephoroi, or The Libation Bearers. Both sources call inhabit has been restored inasmuch as the tak- attention to Orestes for the same singular act of ing of Agamemnon’s life has been avenged by the heroism, which was to take vengeance on the mur- taking of his killers’ lives, but a new imbalance derers of his father, the same Agamemnon to whose has been created. In killing his father’s murderers, death the epigraph to Eliot’s “Sweeney among the Orestes has also killed his own mother, Clytem- Nightingales,” mentioned earlier, relates. nestra. Although the terms of the blood vendetta, The connections between that epigraph of Eliot’s one that even the gods as represented in Apollo and this later epigraph to “Sweeney Agonistes” endorse, have been satisfied, that has been accom- do not quite end there, however. An outstand- plished by a child’s taking a parent’s life, and in ing one is that the Choephoroi was also composed terms of primal justice, that is the most heinous by Aeschylus, the author of the Agamemnon, from of crimes, even if it may otherwise appear to have which the earlier epigraph to “Sweeney among the been justified by the extenuating circumstances of Nightingales” is taken. Furthermore, those two Agamemnon’s murder and the command of the plays not only share an author, Aeschylus, but are god Apollo. the first and second installments in a trilogy of At the moment that Orestes is speaking, the plays by Aeschylus that detail the especially bloody Furies—three vulturelike hags who represent the and awful history of the House of Atreus, a trilogy pangs of natural conscience—have appeared. Their known to literary history as the Oresteia because task will be a simple one: not to permit Orestes a they celebrate not Agamemnon or his murderers moment’s rest henceforth in retribution for his hav- but rather his son and avenger, Orestes. ing shed his own mother’s blood. When in Eliot’s Just why Eliot is obviously asking his readers epigraph, Orestes says, “You don’t see them, you again to draw comparisons and contrasts, if not don’t—but I see them: they are hunting me down, outright parallels, between the tragic history of the I must move on,” he is speaking to the chorus, and

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the “them” of whom he speaks are the Furies, who The Second Epigraph have now appeared to him in reparation for his Readers of Eliot would have encountered already mother’s death. Aeschylus will resolve Orestes’ in his poetry representations of this species of spiri- dilemma and this conflict in human justice in tual conflict, most notably in “The Fire Sermon,” the third and last play in the Oresteia trilogy, the wherein the Buddha and St. Augustine are held up Eumenides, a drama that will itself form the classi- as emblems of those who have overcome a slavish cal underpinnings for another Eliot play, The Fam- devotion to desire of any ilk. In “Sweeney Ago- ily Reunion (1939); but Orestes’ significance as a nistes,” however, the essential quality of that sort of figure to introduce “Sweeney Agonistes” is limited ascetic detachment, which contrasts sharply with by Eliot to his role in the Choephoroi, and that is a the violent engagement of a Samson or an Orestes, limit that readers should respect. is cogently summarized for the reader in the second Thus far the reader has had two distinct heroes, epigraph, which is taken from the writings of great Samson and Orestes, called to mind by Eliot, each Christian mystic St. John of the Cross: “Hence at his particular moment of agony or conflict, and the soul cannot be possessed of the divine union, each one a representative of one of the two cultural until it has divested itself of the love of created strains that constitute most of the value system of beings.” How appropriate it is, then, that the reader Western civilization—the biblical Judaic and the of “Sweeney Agonistes,” fast on the heels of St. classical Greek. What that all may tell the reader John of the Cross’s admonition to eschew the love about to embark on an engagement with the Eliot of created things for the sake of divine union, this text can be summarized in three words from the complex of directed meaning that Eliot has created French: Cherchez la femme (look for the woman). by virtue of the thematic markers carried by the lit- Samson, it should be recalled, was undone not by erary allusions in his title and epigraphs and moves the Philistines so much as by Delilah, and while into “Fragment of a Prologue,” wherein two “kept” Orestes had neither a romantic nor an erotic women, Dusty and Doris, are carrying on a conver- attachment to Clytemnestra, his undoing was sation about the various men in their lives. clearly the result of his challenging the awesome emotional and psychological power that a human “Fragment of a Prologue” mother maintains over her offspring. Orestes may As the play opens, neither Dusty nor Doris sound have killed her despite her maternal appeals to his quite comfortable with the “arrangements” that mercy, but the Furies symbolize the price that he they have made. At the very least, although it is must pay for trying to break a bond that will not be someone named Pereira who “pays the rent,” the so easily broken. women agree that “he’s no gentleman.” When the This reading of the allusive significances of phone rings and it turns out to be Pereira, conse- Samson and Orestes would not be warranted were quently, Dusty lies for Doris, telling him that she is it not for the second epigraph, as well as for Eliot’s not feeling well. Sweeney’s own notorious regard—or ironic disre- The two young women then decide to entertain gard—for women. They represent not so much the themselves by “reading” the cards. Again, readers feminine in any literal biological or physiological of Eliot’s The Waste Land had already been intro- sense as they do an attachment to the physical, the duced through Madama Sosostris and her “wicked material plane, at the expense of a more fruitful pack of [Tarot] cards” to another of his metaphors and meaningful engagement with matters of the for spiritual discontent manifested in an inordinate spirit rather than of the flesh. Behavior such as desire to know the future by “haruspicating,” as Samson’s and Orestes’ results not only in the soul’s Eliot will call the practice of fortune-telling in a being distracted from its goal of union with the much later poem of his. Doris and Dusty, by their spirit but in violence as well, a disruptive imbal- description, use a pack of ordinary playing cards. ance that each must seek to rectify if he is to find a Nevertheless, the idea is the same: Anyone satis- personal peace. fied with his or her life and circumstances would

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not care to know what tomorrow might bring and vert” the “nice little, white little, soft little, tender would, rather, be content with the here and now. little, / Juicy little, right little” Doris into a “mis- As they cut the cards, their emotions swing sionary stew,” strikes just the right note of imbal- this way and that, depending on the favorable or ance between a desire that is worldly and therefore unfavorable prospect that each new card reveals. corrupted by violence with the desire that is spiri- A whistle from outside interrupts them. It is Sam tual and therefore inspired by the divine. Wauchope, apparently one of Mrs. Porter’s “cli- Sweeney even begins to paint a paradisiacal pic- ents,” and he has brought with him an old army ture for Doris of “life on a crocodile isle,” where all buddy, Captain Horsfall, and a couple of visiting the materialistic trappings of modern urban life are Americans, Klipstein and Krumpacker—shades left behind. Doris is not biting—“I’d be bored”— of Bleistein and Burbank—who also happen to be and then Sweeney goes and gets philosophical on veterans. (Eliot seems to have been of the opinion her in any case: “You’d be bored. / Birth, copula- that ethnic-sounding names sound comical to an tion, and death. / That’s all the facts when you American ear.) come to brass tacks. . . .” It is some of Eliot’s best That these men are all veterans should not be poetry of despair, for Sweeney’s observation, in the surprising, however. Not only had World War I universe circumscribed by the values and lifestyle ended less than five years earlier (assuming that the that he and Doris and the others (Agamemnon and play is set in 1923, the year that Eliot began work Orestes among them) represent, is indubitably a on it), but the allusion to Agamemnon by way of pretty empty venture wherever one spends it. For Orestes would already have called to mind Western him, apparently, “[d]eath is life and life is death,” civilization’s first great war, the Trojan War. Like so no time is a good time. the ill-fated Greek leader, these men now crowding This second “fragment,” the reader should recall, Doris’s apartment have returned from conquest, is Eliot’s version of an agon. In the Greek models and in the parlance of Eliot’s day, they would be from which it is taken, it is the drama or melodrama wanting a “good time,” even if their war had not or comedy’s argument, its central debate: “I’ve been quite ended only just yesterday, as had Agamem- born, and once is enough,” Sweeney concludes. The non’s. (These returning warriors with their “needs” picture that the play, through its spokesman Swee- bring to mind as well Albert from The Waste Land, ney, paints of human life—of life itself—is not an who also had “been in the army four years, [and] attractive one, nor is it meant to be, although there he wants a good time.”) Men are always wanting is always to be found in Eliot’s title and epigraph the good times provided by willing women, and Doris fleeting hint and glimpse of the option offered in the and Dusty certainly seem to be willing and able contending choices made by Milton’s Samson, who to do as much. As this “Fragment of a Prologue” elects to surrender to God’s will, and by St. John of draws to an end, then, the six are getting along the Cross, who also does. famously, preparing the way for Sweeney to make But that is the way of the saint. For most his entrance in the play’s second surviving section, humans, as Sweeney puts it to Doris, somewhat “Fragment of an Agon.” echoing if not completing J. Alfred Prufrock’s “It is impossible to say just what I mean”: “I’ve gotta “Fragment of an Agon” use words when I talk to you.” What sounds like a Sweeney’s is quite an entrance. “I’ll carry you off / tautology at one level is at another an apt formula- To a cannibal isle,” our man Sweeney tells Doris tion of Sweeney’s agony: Whatever he may mean, right off the bat, and they then go on for the next let alone feel, the event is reduced to words, which page or more carrying on a punning frolic that can never be adequate. That is both the human is ripe with the sort of psychosexual insinuation limitation and the human liberation. At the very and innuendo that hovers between foreplay and least, it is the limitation and liberation that poetry rape. The pseudoreligious quality of their banter, provides. Since words are all we have, each individ- wherein the “cannibal” Sweeney promises to “con- ual is permitted to use them as best he or she can.

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The songs, then, that interrupt Sweeney’s more in his agony is trying to tell Doris, for which of and more lugubrious musings are both comic relief us, in the final analysis, is not alone, left to the and antidote. As opposed to the existential gloom awkwardly limited device that “I gotta use words that Sweeney expresses, there are in the two unti- when I talk to you,” even if it may be “impossible tled songs, the first sung by Wauchope and Hors- to say just what I mean”? Like The Waste Land, fall, the second by Klipstein and Krumpacker, a the drama ends with the notion that each of us is less somber approach toward it all, if not a let’s- locked within himself or herself where “you wait for make-the-best-of-it nonchalance. Based more or a knock and the turning of a lock for you know the less loosely on the relatively popular 1903 song hangman’s waiting for you.” “Under the Bamboo Tree,” whose pidgin English lyrics are themselves meant to mimic a South Sea CRITICAL COMMENTARY island insouciance, the songs attempt to entice Few readers would have as their first reaction to Doris once more with a paradisiacal vision, this “Sweeney Agonistes” the thought that it is a par- time a bit more lighthearted in scope. Rather than ticularly enlightening experience. Perhaps because give up her city life, however, Doris insists that “I’d it is presented as fragmentary, its experimentation just as soon be dead.” shows to disadvantage. It seems to be witty at the It is at this point that Sweeney says, “That’s expense of clarity, clever at the expense of logic, what life is. . . . Life is death.” But here, if the and morbid at the expense of humor. Surely it is reader reads between the lines (and recalls, too, a new departure for Eliot inasmuch as, despite the that elements from “The Hollow Men” echo within typical appeal to the erudition suggested by the this poetry, and vice versa), then Sweeney is not title, subtitle, and epigraphs, the play does not being gloomy so much as truthful. In the sense of seem to be attempting to appeal to or to provoke any meaningful existence, say, of the kind proposed thoughtfulness as virtually all of Eliot’s other poetic by the choices made by Samson and St. John of efforts to date had done. the Cross, the lives of the Dorises and Dustys, the There are some who may see that as a positive Sweeneys and the Wauchopes of the world are in result. To this day there are readers who are put fact a death of sorts. It is not a matter, after all, of off by Eliot’s notoriously unfailing ability to intel- whether there is a meaning to be sought; the poet lectualize even the taking of a toast and tea. With of The Waste Land had already proposed, so much “Sweeney Agonistes,” however, despite Sweeney’s as that one seeks a meaning. own tendency to muse philosophic, the level of As Doris protests Sweeney’s morbid assertion, thoughtfulness required for grasping the blow- remembering how, earlier, she had drawn the card by-blow progress of the dialogue, which comes representing the coffin, the others insist that she let through as only so much inane banter, seems to him go on. She does not want to hear of death any be toned down considerably if not perhaps even more than she wants to hear of a primitive para- entirely shut off. dise, whereas Sweeney becomes more and more a That may not be the case, nevertheless. Rather, spokesman for inclusivity: Without the awareness since Eliot is working with drama here in which of death, there is no such thing as life. So he tells ideas are being expressed with an ear for characters an awful tale about a man he knew, suggesting that interacting in real time and with an eye toward an it may be himself, who “did a girl in” and then kept audience who must grasp those ideas at least tenta- the body in his apartment until he did not know if tively as soon as they are spoken, he may be trying he was alive or dead or the girl was alive or dead: to tone down the impression that there are great “For when you’re alone / When you’re alone like he ideas flowing through his text. The trouble is that was alone / Your’re either or neither.” they are there just the same, for the very simple Life—being alive, being engaged, being aware— reason that poetry is meant to engage thought as is a state of mind as much as if not more than it much as feeling and to engage them both to the is a state of physical being. That is what Sweeney same thematic end.

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Regarded strictly from the point of view of its pher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), no doubt thematic elements, there is much in “Sweeney influenced by these ideas that placed an increasing Agonistes” that makes it conform to standard emphasis on subjectivity and materialism, would treatments of issues that had been engaging the criticize social systems organized at the expense Western literary imagination since perhaps as far of individuality and argue that the human in his back as the mid-17th century and the beginnings of natural state is a more dignified and moral creature a rationalist subjectivism in philosophical systems. than one constrained by the hypocrisies of civilized If there is something called the truth, then for most mores. Indeed, Rousseau would question even the of human history, there were only two approaches hierarchical organization of society and propose toward it. The truth is what is there to be heard, instead that states exist by virtue of a social con- and anyone who seeks it will find it. Or the truth tract, whereby each individual consents to be gov- is what one should like to be able to hear, but here erned and, therefore, can reject that same authority one can only ever hope to catch some glimpse of if it impedes individual fulfillment. its distant shadow. In either case, it was a singu- The increasing importance assigned to subjec- larity—something “out there” for each individual. tively formulated choices and judgments altered With the emergence of what historians have come not only social and political ways of thinking and to call the Renaissance, a new notion entered the behavior, giving rise to the democratic movements picture: The truth is whatever one hears and wishes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but aes- to label “true.” It is, for each individual, something thetic responses to experience as well, resulting in “in here.” romanticism and eventually literary realism. Oddly In summary, older, more hierarchical traditions enough, instead of celebrating this newfound liber- that defined social relationships and the relation- ation from outmoded ways of perceiving humanity’s ship between humanity and the natural universe place in the universe, each of these movements in according to the idea that the truth was a singular its own way lamented the loss of innocence that the phenomenon began to be challenged if not sup- human race had apparently undergone in its centu- planted by newer models of society and of nature ries-long passage from an agrarian to a more and that stressed the centrality of the individual and of more urbanized and, hence, mechanically organized experience in determining behavioral norms and world. The very rationalism that had freed human- the laws by which the natural order was governed. ity had enslaved it to closed systems: Whatever was These new ideas embodying what has subsequently logical was true. That longing for more innocent been called humanism have become the mainstay times had its boons, obviously, but it also had its of present ways of so-called post-Christian think- banes. Much of the escapism associated with 19th- ing to such a wide extent that they can be quickly century art in all its various manifestations—music, and easily identified and exemplified. The English poetry, drama, painting—finds its roots in the dis- philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) would content to which such a longing gives rise. Then declare a typical human life to be something nasty, there followed those cynical responses to escapist brutish, and short, dispensing with the idea that art, culminating in the wittily vacuous poetry of life served a greater unknown purpose, while fel- the young JULES LAFORGUE, whom the young Eliot low Englishman John Locke (1632–1704) and would later so admire. the French philosopher and René The reference in one of the songs in “Swee- Descartes (1596–1650) would advance arguments ney Agonistes” to the 19th-century French painter making all human knowledge empirical, or based Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), who fled France for on experience, and declaring experience itself to be the South Seas in order to escape the same crush- a function of mind, not body. ing boredom and pressures to conform that forced Ideas take time to move from the intellectual his contemporary CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821–67) to the social arena. In this case, by the late 18th to write the despairingly bitter poetry of his Les century, the French social and political philoso- fleurs du mal, is Eliot’s way of summarizing what

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had become, by his time, a social commonplace, deringly absurd realities strikes a single note, it is one that his own poetry frequently addresses—that not that each human creature will die but that the human in the city is a sorry animal and a sor- all human creatures are alone and isolated, relying rier soul. Bereft of all the old magic, the indivual on such tenuous relationships as are defined by is also left bereft of all the old belief, and one lives love and by friendship to keep them from drown- in a universe that can be explained but does not ing in what 19th-century English poet MATTHEW make sense. ARNOLD called the “salt estranging sea.” “Sweeney Agonistes,” however, goes one step It is not for nothing that “Sweeney Agonistes” further, continuing to question what benefits to is set in what is essentially a brothel (the ref- individual growth and contentment could possibly erence to Mrs. Porter of “Sweeney Erect” fame accrue from humanity’s present circumstances as clinches that) and its characters are all purvey- prisoners of our own overly civilized and deperson- ors of affection that is bartered for cash. This is alized “mind-forg’d manacles,” to borrow a phrase Eliot’s way of stripping away all figurative illusions from . It also casts into doubt, how- and getting his audience down to the brass tacks ever, whether there would be any benefits, either, of which Sweeney will speak. In his continuing as promised by the myth that a return to some sort interpretation of the human dilemma, Eliot had of Edenic innocence or, at the very least, environ- consistently been portraying us as we are, stripped ment would save the individual by restoring to him of the illusions of social conventions. He por- or her that lost primal bliss and freedom. trays us, for one contradiction, as individualists Just as Eliot’s characterization of Sweeney as a who are compelled to be social creatures and, for self-indulgent sexpot may be his way of critiquing another, as spiritual creatures who are compelled the idea that man in a state of nature is a Rous- by the necessities of our appetites and other bio- seauvian noble savage, so may the almost comical logical functions to be animals. emphasis in “Sweeney Agonistes” on “getting away In “Sweeney Agonistes,” Eliot has simply taken from it all” be Eliot’s way of critiquing the idea this very human dilemma to its logical conclusion, that there is any going back. Rather, Eliot seems which is that there is none—at least not in the new to be arguing that we have made the humanist’s materialist universe that modern humans have cre- post-Christian world our bed, as it were, and are ated for themselves. Using the structures of Greek trapped here, that there is in fact no going back, drama, in his play Eliot sets up an agon, a debate, that, instead, there is only that waiting for the incorporating the terms that the last several hun- hangman to knock. It is this utter hopelessness that dred years of human intellectual history have made makes Eliot’s vision in “Sweeney Agonistes” pecu- the only pertinent terms, but employing them as liarly modernist, and perhaps the play is, as he had each is represented not as an idea but by a person been proposing, his first truly unique work. who is living according to the idea. That, after all, Throughout the rest of the 1920s, Eliot criti- is drama. cized what he saw as the humanist agenda, its aim Doris is unable to understand the appeal that to supplant religion with a secular reasonableness. Sweeney makes to her, which is not to run away Then, in After Strange Gods (1934), Eliot the social with him to a crocodile/cannibal isle but to see that critic emerged, sharply attacking those who settled that is what human relationships are if they are for attractive half-truths in their efforts to recon- conducted without any reference point outside the struct a meaningful universe out of the wreckage self—lonely islands where, like the pathetic couple of the old. In “Sweeney Agonistes,” however, Eliot in “A Game of Chess” from The Waste Land, each can only describe the human wreckage who inhabit devours the other for lack of anything better to it, as he had been doing since as early as “The Love do. The chorus in the play, meanwhile, composed Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with its hand-wring- of the old army buddies, bungles Sweeney’s case ing bouts of self-degradation and self-absorption. by trying to make it for him, reducing it to Eliot’s If Sweeney’s frenetic commentary on life’s bewil- relatively close adaptation of the sappy lyrics of

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a novelty love song, “Under the Bamboo Tree,” the hopeful. So, then, it does seem that Eliot where “One live as two, two live as one, / Under became aware that he was doing nothing more than the bamboo tree.” Ironically, that is, of course, covering old ground in the ostensibly “new and dif- the Edenic ideal. That Doris rejects it—she would ferent” “Sweeney Agonistes” and made the choice “just as soon be dead”—reveals how impossible it to abandon it as a work that had served its purpose is to achieve it any longer, leaving us all “alone in by giving his own work an entirely new direction, the middle of the night” waiting for the hangman, though not a new modus operandi. Death, to knock. Otherwise, as Sweeney intones Such a supposition is borne out by two distinct just before the closing chorus, “that’s nothing to sets of evidence. First, there is a telling comment me and nothing to you,” which is all that there is that Eliot made nearly a decade later regarding his left for anyone in this brave new humanist world. general aim for the play. In the winter of 1932–33, The reader will recall that Eliot never completed Eliot was delivering a series of lectures on literature “Sweeney Agonistes.” It could be that he had come as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard to recognize that in the play he had arrived at a University, and they were subsequently collected creative impasse that might itself be reflective of in a volume titled The Use of Poetry and the Use an impasse in his ways of thinking of, or at least of of Criticism (1933). In the last installment, deliv- perceiving, the human place in creation. He had ered on March 31, 1933, and appropriately entitled created a fictive world in which, and from which, “Conclusion,” he observed that “the ideal medium there was no salvation for the individual, only the for poetry, to my mind, and the most direct means frustration of feeling imprisoned and the knowledge of social ‘usefulness’ for poetry, is the theatre,” and that escape is impossible. he went on to explain that that is because in that This lack of any sense of peacefulness or purpose medium the poetry affects the auditor at all levels. in the individual life is the one thing the humanist, By way of an example of what he was intend- postreligious readjustments fail to account for, and ing to say, he mentioned having once drafted a yet, in Eliot’s view, the individual still craves these few scenes of a verse play, undoubtedly referring to absent assurances. Hence the persistence of the Samson Agonistes, explaining how he had planned myth of the return to paradise that still haunts the it so that one character would have a “sensibil- culture. As Eliot’s mouthpiece in the play, Sweeney ity and intelligence . . . on the plane of the most regards that myth as just that—a myth. For him, as sensitive and intelligent members of the audience,” for most of the denizens of The Waste Land, there is while the other personages of the play to whom only that sense of frustration and futility. If in The that character addressed his remarks “were to be Waste Land, for all its despair, Eliot had concluded material, literal-minded and visionless.” The idea by bringing the reader to a shore beyond the desert was that Sweeney’s remarks would be addressed and a state of mind where peace, shantih, may be as much to those in the audience who shared his found, the Sweeney play’s savage wit had, in the sensitivity and intelligence as to those characters final analysis, been reduced to only that: wit to no on the stage who did not. While in relative terms other purpose than to expose humanity’s appar- Eliot’s Sweeney may not seem a model of intel- ently cosmic hopelessness. ligence and sensitivity, it is not hard to imagine his Aside from “The Hollow Men,” itself a poem words—“I gotta use words when I talk to you”—as composed with the thematic interests of “Sweeney having two levels of meaning that, while they do Agonistes” in mind, Eliot would not revisit these not contradict each other, nevertheless have more themes of despair and emptiness again, however, portent than Doris or the army buddies can pick up. except to dismiss them. Indeed, in his next major If nothing else, and if there should be any further poem after “The Hollow Men,” “Ash-Wednes- doubt, Eliot’s remarks in the Norton lectures reveal day,” with its opening phrase, “Because I do not Sweeney’s critical role in the play as a prophetic hope. . . . ,” Eliot’s poetry took a decided turn not voice whose vision exposes an otherwise unutter- toward the religious, as some may think, as toward able truth that no one else in the play can hear, but

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that the audience can discern: These characters would present forthrightly and unabashedly and, are us, the victims of a soulless cosmology, and they inasmuch as the contingencies of poetry might per- are all hopelessly lost. mit, in a wholly personal context the terms of the The other set of evidence requires the reader to spiritual dilemma with which he saw humanity in return to a consideration of that oddly incongruous the 20th century struggling, himself included. selection of characters alluded to in the play’s title and epigraph: Milton’s Samson, Orestes, and St. FURTHER READING John of the Cross. In this reading, each of them Dillingham, Thomas F. “Origen and Sweeney: The prefigures for the play’s reader the key to Sweeney’s Problem of Christianity for T. S. Eliot.” Christianity own agony, for each has come to his moment of des- and Literature 30, no. 4 (Summer 1981): 37–51. peration out of the necessity of choosing between Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in social and cultural demands—escape, revenge, Sources and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of worldliness—or the claims of his individual soul to Chicago Press, 1974. serve his god’s will. Now perhaps it is possible to answer the ques- tion posed near the outset of this entry, regard- ing Eliot’s intentions for his allusion to Milton’s “Sweeney among the Samson Agonistes in his own title. Surely it must be Nightingales” (1918) apparent by now that Eliot was indeed suggesting by the allusion that, despite the centuries that may Composed in 1918 and published in 1920, “Swee- separate the two texts, his and Milton’s plays have ney among the Nightingales” employs in a much one outstanding feature in common, inasmuch as more troublesome manner many of the same inno- they each deal with the hard choices that the indi- vative and idiosyncratic techniques that Eliot vidual must make in a world in which faith in God had already introduced in “The Love Song of J. is a questionable endeavor and unpopular pursuit. Alfred Prufrock” and that he would shortly use to The only difference would be—and it is no small greater advantage in composing The Waste Land. one—is that for Milton, it was his protagonist’s The influences of the French poet and ironist JULES choice that was at stake; for Eliot, it was his own. LAFORGUE remain present in the poem’s apparently Sweeney is not himself personally involved in a insouciant criticism of social norms and public struggle between belief and a scientific rationalism. mores, but the effective use of a beguilingly com- His barely formulated lust for a more meaningful life pounded irony that will make The Waste Land an merely gives that struggle voice for anyone capable enduring literary text is beginning to emerge. of discerning the causes of Sweeney’s dilemma. It is his creator, Eliot, who has tried in the play to come SYNOPSIS to terms with the conflict of values that his poetry Like The Waste Land, “Sweeney” is a poem in has been dramatizing to one degree or another all which Eliot eschews meaning in the sense of any along, the conflict between the demands of per- commonly derivable or acceptable theme for the sonal salvation and the pressure to be reasonable sake of providing his readers with a firsthand repre- and tolerant of humanist rationalism, and he has sentation of the lurid and the absurd. Despite that found those terms wanting, thus accounting for his tactic, however, Eliot does not hesitate to keep his abandoning the play but not disavowing it. readers on task by also providing them with the If “Sweeney Agonistes” exposed a flaw in Eliot’s mediating intervention not so much of a subtext or approach toward one of the major intellectual and even of undertones as much as of a backdrop drawn emotional crises of his age, it was that the time for from the Western literary tradition, in this case the such clever subtleties as these had passed. Although ancient Greek tragedy the Agamemnon by Aeschy- there would be work still to be done to clarify his lus. By constructing what is ostensibly a modern position, beginning with “Ash-Wednesday,” he sexual farce on the underpinning legitimacies of a

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literary classic, Eliot leads readers to a satisfacto- be any more enlightening than the original Greek. rily discoverable meaning in the poem’s climatic To learn further that they are the words spoken by moment of tragic insight, an insight contingent on Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek forces readers’ knowledge of the larger, mythic context for who have just conquered Troy, who has returned Agamemnon’s “stiff dishonoured shroud.” home to be murdered at his very doorstep by his As it spins readers on an associative merry- wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, may be go-round of denotative and connotative mayhem of some help but of no particular usefulness. Still, that mimics the poetry’s ribaldry, the final effect the epigraph serves as a talisman of sorts, a warning achieved by these disorienting techniques employed that a reader thinking that he or she is in relatively throughout the text is to keep readers distracted familiar territory may prove to be entering zones of from thinking or even feeling long enough for the meaning quite foreign, perhaps even hostile. full force of the disjunctive connection between In the Greek drama, Agamemnon cries out from “apeneck Sweeney” and the murdered Argive king behind a door that has been closed to both the to hit home. Examining these elements in more chorus on the stage and the audience in the audi- detail should provide some further indication of torium, the easier for the two lovers to kill the how well and effectively Eliot utilizes the chaos king, who has been duped by his own pride into of apparently disparate surface details to create imagining that he has stepped inside to have the his own scheme of meaningful relationships both dust and grime of battle and travel washed from within the poem and with other literary texts. him. Instead, entangled in the robe that they have The Title and Epigraph given him to prepare him for his bath, he is stabbed to death. If nothing else, then, the epigraph acts as True perhaps to the fabled frugality of his New a sort of metaphorically closed door to the poem, a England forbears, Eliot follows the Yankee waste- door that readers must open at their own risk. Once not, want-not adage by making even the poem’s within the poem, that risk to discover meaning in title and epigraph function effectively in creating puzzling incongruities is virtually compounded in both a tonal disparity and an undercurrent for verse after verse and stanza after stanza. meanings not realized. The incongruities of the title give readers pause. Although it is a common The Text enough surname, Sweeney, which would have had “Sweeney among the Nightingales” changes tone for a person of Eliot’s class and social background and direction and even putative locale so rap- its Irish-American, Roman Catholic connotations idly, a great part of both its enjoyment for and its of a working class tough, seems out of place among challenge to readers is its steadfast unwillingness nightingales, a species of songbird renowned for to follow any conventional pattern of exposition its rich symbolic significances, literary refinement, or thematic development or to pursue a line of and associations with the delicate, the fragile, and thought or even imagery for very long. Sweeney’s the beautiful. Surely, for an English reader, John “apeneck,” “zebra stripes,” and giraffelike jaw, for Keats’s famously beauteous poem “Ode to a Night- example, may put the reader in mind of Africa, but ingale” would not be far from mind, while Sweeney then there is a reference to the River Plate, which is might strike one as the name of a prizefighter at in Argentina, which may explain the woman in the best, an impression hardly discouraged by the open- “Spanish cape” who tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees. ing image of “Apeneck Sweeney.” (The Paraguayan capital city of Montevideo, where Before readers can get to that opening image, Eliot’s poet-hero JULES LAFORGUE was born in 1860, however, they must first pass through the cryptic also happens to be on the River Plate.) Meanwhile, epigraph, which is presented not only without the the introduction of Rachel Rabinovitch may put benefit of any identified source but in the original more knowledgeable readers in mind of Central Greek as well. To know that the epigraph trans- Europe, a popular setting, at the time, for equally lates “I am struck with a fatal blow within” may not popular Broadway operettas, and that possibility

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may make the melodramatic quality of the action, may nevertheless bring to mind the love-crazed with its hint of a torrid mystery and suspense (the speaker of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” yearning woman in the cape and Rachel are “thought to be for his lost Lenore. in league”), make a certain kind of sense. If Sweeney is also love-crazed, however, it seems Returning to those apparent references to the to be more a problem of a bestial appetite gone African veld, they could as likely be references to awry than of any profound spiritual longing for a a public zoo and so an urban setting, accounting reunion with a dearly departed beloved. And then for the café society setting for Sweeney’s osten- comes the ominous notion that Sweeney “guards sible and frustrating amorous adventures, just as the hornéd gate.” The sexual connotations of the surely as the circumscribed “golden grin” of the horn aside, the hornéd gate has a particular mean- surreptitious men in the mocha brown coat calls ing. In Greek mythology, also the source for the to mind Lewis Carroll’s cat from Alice in puzzling epigraph from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, the Wonderland. Eliot is so skillful, in fact, in dazzling hornéd gate is the gate through which true dreams his readers with wit and erudition, mixing hints come to humans; false dreams, meanwhile, come of a serious intent with large dollops of delightful through the gates of ivory. The ancient Greeks nonsense, that two of the key elements of any act placed great stock in their dreams, imagining that of communication—the identity of the speaker and the gods spoke to them in their sleep, but they were the intended audience—hardly enter the picture as also aware that dreams can be deceiving. In a poem items for consideration. whose chief aim seems to be recondite deception, The poem appears not to be in the lyrical mode. it is possible that Sweeney is guarding the hornéd At the very least, a first-person speaker never gate to protect the portal through which divine reveals himself. But neither is the poem dramatic, truths emanate; conversely, perhaps he is there to and if it is an exercise in narrative poetry, the expo- prevent those truths from emerging. sition is so intentionally haphazard as to encourage Since Sweeney, along with the other characters readers not to expect a coherent story, with a tradi- in the poem, seems to embrace the code of sexual tional beginning, middle, and end, to emerge. violence, either open or implied, it is hard to imag- A reader left to ponder whether the poem is ine that Sweeney might be up to any good in guard- describing action taking place in a zoo, a funhouse, ing the hornéd gate. Another Eliot poem from the a crime scene, or a house of ill repute, for example, same period, “Sweeney Erect,” with its connota- also must be left equally puzzled by the bumpy ride tion of both male sexual arousal and its play on a the poem’s diction takes. Granted, there had been simianlike demeanor and behavior, reenforces the the warning in the epigraph in Greek that an ele- supposition that Sweeney is Eliot’s commentary ment of learnedness is required of anyone attempt- on the human as brute, an idea further supported ing to negotiate the poetry’s treacherous terrain. by images of Sweeney and his disreputable cohorts Nevertheless, levels of discourse are mixed as freely despoiling nature’s abundance—“oranges / Banana and as readily as tone and attitude, and with as figs and hothouse grapes”—by fouling their own much of an apparent aim toward nothing more nest with self-indulgent feeding frenzies and sexual than further bedevilment. What, for example, is escapades. one supposed to make of a speaker or poet who In “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” the can use the word maculate—to spot, speckle, or reader finds violence even in movements. People stain—correctly, and should that put a reader in are described as slipping and sprawling and over- mind of the Immaculate Conception, since later we turning things, as if they are clumsy or merely ine- hear of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, bringing briated. If Sweeney is “apeneck,” then Rachel has to mind a group of women devoted to Christ? The “murderous paws,” and the “silent man in mocha speaker is also up on his astronomy with references brown” is later called a “silent vertebrate” whose to Orion and the Dog star, Sirius. The mention of movement “contracts and concentrates,” as if he “Death and the Raven,” while broad and generic, were a mutated insect specimen, wormlike in its

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movements. Perhaps the poem is suggesting that their shortened, four-beat lines (in contrast to the humans the likes of Sweeney and human behavior typical line of poetry in English since the time of the likes of his are somehow subhuman and so are Shakespeare, which would have had five beats) an impediment to a truer vision of our humanity, a rhymed on each paired couplet to create a lively, more godlike view of ourselves. breezy tone and pace. The shortness of both the Ironically, however, nightingales, which seem stanza and the line, meanwhile, also encouraged to suggest a measure of gentility and gentleness, a somewhat staccato rhythm. The end result was play a key role themselves in Greek mythology, one a poetic style that had a tendency to lend itself to that also links sexuality and violence in the story the cloying, witty patter more typical of light verse of Philomela, which Eliot will reintroduce in The if not, in fact, the English music hall stage, of which Waste Land. Raped and mutilated by her brother- Eliot was himself a fancier. in-law Tereus, she contrives a way to tell her story In typical Eliot fashion, it is when one thinks to her equally abused sister Procne. When Procne that the meaning of a poem of his has been caught takes her revenge by killing her and Tereus’s chil- and is now pinned and wriggling on a wall that it dren, he pursues the two sisters to wreak his further somehow always manages to slip away, like Lewis revenge on them. Procne is transformed by the gods Carroll’s Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. into a nightingale, whose song is the saddest of bird For what Eliot is perhaps showing his readers is that songs, and Philomela into a swallow, and they are once the patina of age and tradition are removed able to escape him. from them, these ancient myths, venerated though Sweeney among the nightingales, then, may they may be in our own time, also tell of the cheap very well be what he appears to be—the fox in the and the tawdry, the mean and the brutal. henhouse, the barbarian within the gates, bring- The story of the rape of Philomela, as awful ing down all of that vision and insight and glory as it is, pales in comparison with the history of on his head and modern culture’s as well, with its the house of Atreus, of which Agamemnon is a emphasis on the cheap and the tawdry while the scion. That history is one, long horrendous tale nightingales lament the ensuing catatastrophe. Yet of infanticide and unwitting cannibalism, sacrilege just when a reader thinks that he or she might have and blasphemy, betrayals and adultery, of which solved the mystery that the poem proposes, there the killing of the conquering hero is only a chap- comes a different vision of the nightingale and of ter. Agamemnon, who is portrayed by Aeschylus as the mythic and its place in human consciousness. weak willed and vain, is murdered primarily for the Instead of a symbol of high art and its transfigur- sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, a sacrifice that ing powers, the bird suddenly becomes just that—a he permitted, without Clytemnestra’s knowledge, bird, whose “liquid droppings fall” on Agamemnon’s so that the Greek fleet might set sail for Troy. If bloodied corpse. The nightingales are there at the Sweeney is a brute, then Agamemnon, for all that moment of Agamemnon’s so momentous death he is enshrined in our collective psyches as a prob- not to lament, but only to heed nature’s call and lematic model of the hero and horribly cuckolded defecate in unadulterated innocence and purity of husband, was a beast. motive on the blood-stiffened bathrobe that has As honored and privileged as the mythic may be become his burial shroud. now, “Sweeney among the Nightingales” encourages readers to see that those old tales and their heroes CRITICAL COMMENTARY too are stained, maculated, with human blood and “Sweeney among the Nightingales” is one of the other excrement—contaminated, as all things as so-called quatrain poems, so named after a stanzaic things are with the corruption of the animal uni- form with which Eliot and his friend, the Ameri- verse in which humans themselves must reside right can poet EZRA POUND, were experimenting at the along with the apes and the zebras, the nightingales time. Borrowed from the 19th-century French poet and the giraffes, despite our myths about hornéd Théophile Gautier, these four-line stanzas with gates through which true visions come.

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However, through the complex interplay between past and present, high art and low art, startling erudition and farcical nonsense, the Eliot poem also encourages readers to recognize the commonalities as well as the anomalies. The same nightingales who sing and do their other things outside the Convent of the Sacred Heart also sang and did their other things for Agamemnon and his killers, too, and certainly for young John Keats, and—and this is where the poem takes off—for brutish Sweeney and his madcap cohorts as well. No matter how “Sweeney among the Nightin- gales” may finally be construed or categorized, its dislocating juxtapositions, vague and often conflict- ing generic clues and signals, and free intermingling of elements commonly thought of as high art (liter- ary and classical allusions) with elements generally The Mary Institute in St. Louis, 1895. Eliot’s grandfather associated with low art (near-doggerel rhyme and founded this girls’ school, located adjacent to the family rhythms, a self-mocking tone, socially questionable home on Locust Street. Eliot’s sisters were educated there, and he used to play in the schoolyard. Some activities) combine into a reading experience that scholars see it as a possible model for the Convent of must have left even the most experienced poetry the Sacred Heart, referred to in “Sweeney among the lovers of the time puzzled with regard to both the Nightingales.” (Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard author’s intention and their own proper response, University) and that puzzlement continues to this day. And it is likely that this very effect of puzzlement and befud- dlement formed a great of Eliot’s aim for the poetry. time immemorial. Eliot most often falls on the lat- To trick rather than talk the reader into reacting ter half of that divide. to a line of verse is one of the hallmarks of liter- Out of all those disparate events that constitute ary modernism. Although these techniques may by experience come works of art—Aeschylus’s tragedy, now be a bit less discombobulating for a typical Keats’s ode, Eliot’s present poem. For all its hom- reader than they were back in those days when age to art, nevertheless, it is finally to the immu- they were first being employed, Eliot uses them table, maculated world not of art but of nature in “Sweeney among the Nightingales” to promote that the poem “Sweeney among the Nightingales” such an ambiguous thematic goal that the poem and its poet bow. It is in this arena that human- remains the center of critical debate, especially ity, although mimicking nature’s mindless and vio- with regard to the work’s apparent ethnic slurs, lent behavior, also mythologizes it, inspired by its among them its patent anti-Semitic overtones. shortcomings to conceive greater glories for the However various interpretations of the poem imagination than mere nature ever offers. In the may continue to be, the overall effect of the final analysis, “Sweeney among the Nightingales” poem is to set up the kinds of startling and often becomes a trope for the paradoxical contradiction shocking contrasts that make Eliot’s poetry of of the human animal living in the midst of fictive this period vivid object lessons in the very sorts splendors that are formulated by the creative mind of moral and cultural chaos that his poetry was functioning in the midst of an animal universe. The generally assumed to be mirroring. The question poem does not predicates these conclusions on the remains, however, whether that chaos is unique old style of persuasive and other rhetorical strate- to the modern age or is a condition of the physical gies but rather demonstrates its theme in the very and moral space that humans have inhabited since collision of the old with the new, the living with

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the dead, the symbol with the reality, and the word ary and cultural insinuation, but it will be in find- with the vision it both inspires and encounters. ing a commonality among these insinuations that Sweeney’s essential reality will, if not emerge, at least find its own common denominator. It is a major source of irony that allusions to “Sweeney Erect” (1920) classical myths and literary classics, which appear in abundance in virtually any Eliot poem but par- “Sweeney Erect” is another among those poems in ticularly in those written in the 1910s, are found the quatrain mode with which Eliot and his close in “Sweeney Erect” in an almost overabundance. It friend and literary adviser, the American poet EZRA is ironic because it is doubtful that a character like POUND, were heavily experimenting between 1917 Sweeney would be either well schooled or well read and 1919 when Eliot employed the quatrains in enough to recognize any of the allusions that Eliot a handful of poetic exercises. The dating of each employs in this particular poem. of the seven quatrains that Eliot composed is not With regard to the unattributed epigraph, it exact. Some were published separately in 1918, may be equally important for the reader to regard while “Sweeney Erect” was not published until its content as to seek to identify its source. In that 1920 when Eliot brought out his second collection way, the reader quickly discovers what it is reason- of poems, Ara Vos Prec. With their four-beat lines able to assume Eliot wishes the epigraph to imply: and four-line stanzas rhyming on the second and There is an arrogant or at least a domineering per- fourth lines, these quatrains lent themselves to the son commanding others to set a stage or a scene of sort of verbal musicality and clever wordplay that desolation, and this speaker apparently has little might make even the most serious material sound regard for women, whom he (if the speaker in the lighthearted or frivolous. The two had borrowed epigraph is a male, that is) identifies as “wenches,” the form from the mid-19th century French poet, hardly a complimentary or polite form of address. Théophile Gautier, and Pound used it to great By approaching the epigraph in this manner (or, effect in his Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1919). for that matter, any epigraph to an Eliot poem, par- ticularly when the epigraph is either unattributed SYNOPSIS or obscure and in English), then, when the reader Should the reader miss the sundry implications of comes to understand its source and context, the the title, “Sweeney Erect,” Eliot is less subtle when, issue of its meaning for the poem will not be liable little more than four stanzas into the poem, he iden- to become clouded by determinations and inter- tifies Sweeney with an orangoutang and remarks on pretations that have more to do with the original how a “sickle motion from the thighs / Jackknifes source than with Eliot’s own particular use of it. upward,” an image of Sweeney getting up out of (The wise reader is warned, however, not to dis- bed, but again suggestive of a male becoming sexu- regard the source meaning entirely, since Eliot is ally aroused as well. wont to delight in compounded ironies.) Before the reader meets Sweeney, however— It will no doubt be a surprise for most readers aside, that is, from his introduction in the title, of to learn that the speaker of the present epigraph course—the reader must pass the usual pickets and is Aspatia, a woman whose lover has wronged her sentinels to meaning that it was Eliot’s wont to set in the Fletcher and Beaumont Restoration drama up in his poetry from its earliest days. There is the The Maid’s Tragedy. In the words that Eliot cites in epigraph, unattributed as is also often the case, and the epigraph, Aspatia is directing her serving girls, then nearly three full stanzas dense with allusions as they weave a tapestry depicting the plight of to classical myths to wade through before reaching Ariadne, to make the scene appropriately desolate the happy isle where Sweeney, about to awaken, in order to reflect Aspatia’s own present feelings. rests. To know who Sweeney is, the reader must Knowing this, the reader can quickly connect the come at him through this swampy thicket of liter- epigraph, in ironic and mocking ways nonetheless,

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to the poem that follows—provided that one has a helpless female, although the exact circumstances some additional knowledge of who Ariadne was, are somewhat different, to say the least. In his case, of course. he is doing so by climbing out of bed, apparently As the Eliot poem itself begins, it sounds as if in a brothel, where the prostitute he leaves behind Aspatia is continuing to give orders to her ser- starts to suffer an epileptic seizure. Sweeney, how- vant girls. At least, there is the continued use ever, is too busy shaving and otherwise arraying his of the imperative mood: “Paint me a cavernous comical physical self for the day ahead, so he bliss- waste shore. . . .” The poem identifies the locale fully ignores her plight. for this “waste shore” as the Cyclades, the 1000- island archipelago south of the Greek mainland CRITICAL COMMENTARY where Ariadne, who is now introduced by name In his earliest poems Eliot’s poetic style may seem, in the second stanza of the poem, was abandoned to the novice reader, to be a lyric, or first-person, on the island of Naxos by her lover, the Athenian poetry. However, Eliot is in fact, from the begin- hero Theseus. One story goes that Theseus did it ning, as much if not more a dramatic than a lyric intentionally after Ariadne had helped him defeat poet. While his poetry is often cast in the first the Minotaur and he was running off with her to person, the “I” speaker of the poem is not always Athens where they were to be married. Another easily identified with the poet-writer; indeed, there version tells that Theseus left her there for her are instances when an identification between the own safety in the face of storms at sea. Either way, speaker and poet is rendered unlikely if not impos- Ariadne died on Naxos without ever seeing The- sible. The lugubriously self-centered title charac- seus again. Eliot seems to have it both ways: The ter of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a reference to Aeolus, the Greek god of the winds, speaker who is definitely not to be mistaken as and the “insurgent gales” implies that storms at sea the poet, Eliot. So should the unnamed speaker of were responsible for Ariadne’s plight; the mention “Gerontion.” There are, too, the collective hollow of “perjured sails,” meanwhile, clearly questions the men, the speakers in the poem of the same name, purity of Theseus’ motives and intentions. who come to life strangely but vividly nonetheless Whatever the implications, the reader is hardly as they spell out their mind-numbing, choral con- into the poem before he or she has encountered fession of ill-spent, empty lives. two abused examples of the human female, Aspatia Other times, even when the speaker, as in the and Ariadne. In the third stanza, Eliot distorts his case of “Portrait of a Lady” or “A Cooking Egg,” original source a bit to introduce a third abused remains altogether anonymous, he still takes on female. Eliot pairs Nausicaa, the maiden Phaiakian the characteristics of a full-fledged personality. princess whom Athena used to bring the ship- The context for his words to the equally anony- wrecked Odysseus safely to the king’s palace, with mous lady being “portrayed” or about Pipit carry Polyphemos, the monstrous, one-eyed Cyclops who the weight not of personal revelation, it must be ate Odysseus’s men. Although the two appear in imagined, but of a dramatic situation of some order totally unrelated episodes in Homer’s great epic that has been imaginatively conceived by the poet poem the Odyssey, Eliot’s pairing them again puts in order to render his likenesses. the reader in mind of the sort of tragedies and con- The result of these dramatic skills of Eliot’s as a flicts that can result when the vulnerable feminine poet is that Eliot also happens to be responsible for is mixed with the aggressive male principle. having created a number of interesting if not neces- These three instances of frail, trusting females, sarily engaging characterizations embodied by these whom brutal, insensitive males have taken advan- dramatized speakers. Generally, too, these charac- tage of by abandoning or ill-using them, now find terizations of Eliot’s strike the reader as being per- their mock complement in the remainder of the sons of some learning and, as it was phrased back in poem in Sweeney, or so it may seem at first glance. Eliot’s time, “breeding.” They identify themselves A certifiably brutish male, he is also “abandoning” with aspects of and in allusions to high culture and

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even higher education. Such touches lend them- Dichotomies between the values and attitudes of selves, perhaps, to readers’ often confusing these the country mouse and those of the city mouse are characterizations with the poet himself, since it is surely ages old. Still, the idea of the noble savage or typical for any writer to write about what he or the natural man had been a dominant one in Euro- she knows best, and Eliot is no exception. The pean thinking, shaping poetic thought as much as son of a relatively wealthy and socially prominent public policy, from at least the time of the late 18th- family, Eliot was himself a learned and well-bred century French social philosopher Jean-Jacques individual, so it should come as no surprise that his Rousseau. For him, man, meaning humanity, leads characterizations commonly enough emerge from a more morally and socially open and innocent life the same sorts of social settings and backgrounds. in a state of nature than do his citified neighbors And then there is Sweeney. Although Swee- corrupted by changeable social mores and the cul- ney would finally be allowed to speak for himself tural faddishness found in a typical urban environ- in “Sweeney Agonistes,” Eliot’s first and eventu- ment of any day. That was the positive side of this ally abortive attempt at a poetic drama in 1923, particular point of view and was itself an attitude otherwise, whatever else he may represent, Swee- freely adopted by other thinkers and artists, promi- ney is, foremost and above else, the inarticulate nent among them in the English-speaking world lout who lets his actions speak louder than words. being romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Indeed, it is a most telling commentary on what Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon, Lord Eliot makes of Sweeney, and thus may want his Byron. Such ways of thinking, with their emphasis readers to make of him—that Eliot seems not to on the natural goodness of the human creature trust Sweeney to have enough sense and, again, unfettered by civilizing restraints and constraints, “breeding” to speak for himself at all, so that in also helped shape both the ideals and the practical his earliest manifestations in the three quatrain realities of American democracy and fomented the poems in which he appears, Sweeney is spoken atmosphere out of which the French Revolution about rather than speaks. would emerge in 1789. That fact should say much as well about this There was, however, embedded in the intellec- fascinating characterization of Eliot’s nevertheless. tual and artistic communities a persistent critique of For all that Sweeney’s is a presence that dominates these same attitudes, one that saw humans in a state “Sweeney among the Nightingales” and for all that of nature as potentially if not essentially depraved he is a scene-stealer in the final stanza of “Mr. creatures for whom the ameliorative actions of the Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” it is in the third processes of civilization were the only hope and bul- of these quatrain poems, “Sweeney Erect,” that our wark against social and personal anarchy and self- hero most reveals, and revels in, his true nature. serving fragmentation. These fears took longer to There he is exposed, quite literally, for the creature take form in public discourse but began to emerge that he is. The only problem is, it is never made in such 19th-century literary works as Robert Louis quite clear exactly what that might be. Stevenson’s famous novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, To this day, critics remain divided on whether which exposed the unbridled monster of natural Sweeney, as a characterization, represents the ordi- appetites lurking within the refined sensibililties of a nary person, free of the cultural and social baggage well-educated English gentleman. JOSEPH CONRAD’s that burden many of Eliot’s other characteriza- HEART OF DARKNESS essayed the same theme in an tions, or the human brute, not too pure but other- action novel that focuses on uncovering the blood- wise simple and all appetite. This critical dilemma curdling colonial policies of an otherwise high- may itself be partly the result of Sweeney’s literary minded European social reformer, Kurtz, who had pedigree, which, by the time of Eliot’s writing in ventured into the African jungle to help if not in the early decades of the 20th century, would have fact civilize the natives. been, though of a fairly recent vintage, nevertheless Such a shift in thinking was no doubt accen- a long though not precisely illustrious one. tuated by misinterpretations of Charles Darwin’s

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theories of evolution, which seemed to propose tures in common between the past and the present that only the fittest survived, giving rise to a view than at first meet the eye. Ariadne betrayed her of nature as a bloody battleground “red in tooth father, King Minos, in order to help Theseus, who and fang,” as the English poet Alfred Lord Tenny- had been brought to Crete as part of a contingent of son would put it. Also helping make the case that young Athenians who were periodically sacrificed natural man was not an angel was the psychological to the Minotaur, itself a monster half-human and theorizing of the late 19th-century Austrian phy- half-bull. Until then, Ariadne had had no trouble sician and so-called father of psychoanalysis, Sig- countenancing such a bloody and bestial sacrifice mund Freud, with his division of the human psyche of the innocent, making hers hardly an ennobling into higher and lower forms of control. The every- and instructive tale. day personality, the ego, stood between social and The Eliot poem ends with Doris, one of the moral tensions created by a tug of war between the other “girls,” saving the day by rushing to revive superego, which defined our best moral impulses the epileptic with brandy and smelling salts. But and social skills, and the id, which was guided only if Sweeney, the modern stand-in for the heartless by baser, self-serving instincts. Theseus, does nothing for the poor epileptic’s sake, The noble savage had been replaced, in short so much is true as well of Mrs. Turner, the madam, order, by the terrifying vision of the ape/man. The whose only concern is what sort of negative effect American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s work, The such a disruptive incident may have on her house’s Hairy Ape, for example, is built on motifs and meta- good reputation, which is, of course, solely a busi- phors such as these. His drama presents the horrify- ness consideration and an odd one, too, consider- ing prospect of a humanity increasingly brutalized ing the nature of her “business.” by interaction with machinery. Eliot, however, had In the final analysis, if anyone or anything is already beaten O’Neill to the punch with “apeneck being held up for cruel scrutiny in “Sweeney Erect,” Sweeney,” as he is introduced without much need a common practice in the quatrains, it is not the of further fanfare in “Sweeney among the Nighin- comical hero, Sweeney Erectus, but the whole gales.” Similarly, it should be quite evident that the vainglorious and loutish lot of us, homo erectus, the title “Sweeney Erect,” with its dual connotation of upright ape, who can never do a thing, no mat- a simianlike creature (homo erectus is the scientific ter how small and self-serving it may be, without tag given to modern man’s, homo sapiens’s earliest convincing himself that his motives are ennobling ancestors) and male sexual arousal, another animal- and worthy of consideration if not understanding. like addition, does not leave the reader much room Maybe “Sweeney Erect,” both poem and character, for the free play of imaginative interpretations. is just a great deal more honest about its/his pedi- It is not too difficult to imagine, then, that this gree and motives. He serves best who serves him- is another one of those poems, typical of Eliot at self, the poem mockingly suggests, making victims the time and would culminate in “Gerontion” and and victimizers of everyone. The Waste Land, in which he appears to contrast an ennobled and imaginatively enriched past with a sordid and sadly diminished present. Instead of Theseus, the modern world has Sweeney. Instead “Thomas Heywood” (1931) of Ariadne, it has an epileptic and nameless whore. Nevertheless, in virtually the same way in which See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. Eliot, in the other notable Sweeney poem, “Swee- ney among the Nightingales,” compares more than contrasts Agamemnon, the cuckolded and mur- dered husband, with apeneck Sweeney’s escapades “Thomas Middleton” (1927) among an assortment of unsavory characters, this present poem also suggests that there are more fea- See ESSAYS ON ELIZABETHAN DRAMA.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 397 9/5/07 2:36:25 PM 398 “Thoughts after Lambeth” “Thoughts after Lambeth” I dislike the word “generation,” which has been a talisman for the last ten years; when I wrote (1930) a poem called The Waste Land some of the approving critics said that I had expressed the This rather lengthy essay represents Eliot’s assess- “disillusionment of a generation,” which is non- ment of what was then the most recent of the Lam- sense. I may have expressed for them their own beth Conferences that the bishops of the Anglican illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not Communion or Church of England hold virtually form any part of my intention. every decade at the invitation of the archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglicans’ chief prelate, whose A comment like this signals how much Eliot is official residence is Lambeth Palace. Eliot’s own using the forum of this commentary on the report conversion to Anglicanism in June 1927 had been of the Lambeth proceedings to come “out of the followed by his becoming a British citizen a short closet,” as it were. time later. That he had now a personal interest As if the process of his own intellectual and in the moral, ethical, and spiritual directions that spiritual development has recently completed Anglicanism was taking is understandable, but his itself, he seems to be inordinately determined to conversion had also completed his progress toward make clear what should have been reasonably a more and more conservative social and spiri- clear all along—that despite the apparent icono- tual position that had been evidenced to varying clastic bent of his poetry and free form of his degrees in his literary criticism from as early as the poetic technique, Eliot’s had never been a voice late 1910s, in his constant emphasis on a respect for radical reform. That same sense of a comple- for tradition. tion and “coming clean,” however, had already been more formally announced in the reflections SYNOPSIS on the present state of Christian English culture Ironically, one of the most noteworthy of Eliot’s in “Thoughts after Lambeth.” In his 1928 preface comments in “Thoughts after Lambeth” has nothing to a volume of prose essays ostensibly devoted to a to do with the latest Lambeth Conference at all or series of 17th-century literary figures, For Lancelot even with the current state of Anglo-Catholicism, Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order, Eliot had although the comment is inspired by an aspect of declared himself a classicist, a royalist, and an the bishops’ deliberations that particularly peeved Anglo-Catholic. Eliot. That was what he took to be the blather, These three stances in the parlance of any time, inspired in his view in large part by the daily press, but particularly in the context of the violent cul- with regard to the relative well-being of England’s tural fluxes that characterized the 1920s—that free- “Youth,” the younger generation. With his poet’s spirited postwar decade—aligned him not with the unfailing ear for the incipient vacuities of the popu- radical social and intellectual elements normally lar idiom, Eliot says that he thinks of all this talk associated with the literary avant-garde, among about generations as a peculiarly 20th-century phe- whom he had become a veritable guiding light, but nomenon invented mainly to sell newspapers, in also with the stodgily conventional protectors of which there appear endless stories of some group or public morality, law, and order, the individuals and interest or progressive new idea or movement that interests who would seem to be the avant-garde’s is invariably “on the march” (“from nowhere to sworn enemies. In “Thoughts after Lambeth,” Eliot nowhere,” Eliot adds, a bit sarcastically). himself recounts the reaction that his apparently That the church should feel itself obliged to sudden split with the more liberal elements among take up such inane drivel about generations com- the intelligentsia had caused. A reviewer for the pels Eliot to digress into the following and oft- Times Literary Supplements, Eliot notes, wrote what quoted observation on his status with regard to his amounted to “a flattering obituary notice”: “. . . I own generation: had suddenly arrested my progress—whither . . . I do

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not know—and . . . I was unmistakably making off easy”—soft-peddling it, as it were—but by their in the wrong direction. Somehow I had failed, and “finding it difficult . . . both to the disorderly mind had admitted my failure; if not a lost leader, at least and to the unruly passions.” On the Anglicans a lost sheep; what is more, I was a kind of traitor.” coming out in favor of the use of contraceptives, Readers would be unsympathetic, or at the very a practice to which Rome was adamantly opposed, least mistaken, to imagine that they now can cat- Eliot commends the general stance but questions egorize Eliot as an arch-conservative, however. the wishy-washy nature of an escape clause that In that particularly ideological period, one should puts the final determination for their use in the hardly find it surprising to discover that Eliot had hands of couples “if perplexed in mind.” That sort opinions and interests all his own. That he should of ambiguity he sees as a means for the Church to suddenly start taking pains to express them in ven- abrogate its own responsibilities to guide the faith- ues where such expressions are not only expected ful. (Eliot’s “Animula,” one of the Ariel poems, had but appropriate should come as no surprise either. touched on the dangers of this kind of lukewarm Nor was his taking a relatively conservative Church leadership not long before.) This is typi- stance in matters religious all that sudden a devel- cal of Anglicanism, he feels: “In short, the whole opment to begin with. He had taken an openly resolution shows the admirable English devotion Catholic, classical stance in “The Function of Criti- to commonsense, but also the deplorable Anglican cism” as early as 1923, where he had first excoriated habit of standing things on their heads in the name his own personal “liberal” bogeyman, J. MIDDLETON of commonsense.” MURRY. Murry, whose “Inner Voice” approach to The Church had also been exploring the pos- creative inspiration and personal moral direction sibility of “Reunion” with splinter sects at home receives a final critical assault in After Strange Gods and with the Greek Orthodox Church centered in in 1934, finds his way into the pages of “Thoughts Turkey. These ideas are only somewhat appealing after Lambeth” as well. There, Eliot says, this social to Eliot, however. Finally, Eliot, despite his own commentator’s “highly respectable new religion” of internationalism in matters cultural, insists that a relativistic and secular humanism is another phe- an English people must have an English church, nomenon that the press is touting “continually . . . a posture that he will perfect and argue to greater to be ‘on the march.’ ” effectiveness of purpose in 1939 in The Idea of a What is different for these criticisms of Eliot’s Christian Society and again, in 1948, in his Notes now is that, as a professed member of a mainstream towards the Definition of Culture. He will continually and relatively moderate Christian sect, he seems moderate his position that a culture, including its to be feeling a new freedom to explore the intel- religion, should be the whole expression of a whole lectual and moral implications of belief in personal people, but it is a persistent view that is just begin- rather than in abstract and critical terms. He has ning to be given an airing by Eliot here in the pages not so much “come out” as dropped all pretenses of “Thoughts after Lambeth.” and evaded any causes for potential misunderstand- ings of his own position and its ramifications. The CRITICAL COMMENTARY personal tone and vigor, then, with which Eliot While the issue may seem to be one of papist Rome engages in commenting on other positions that the versus liberal Lambeth, Eliot’s position is ultimately Anglican bishops have taken as a result of their con- not as parochial as it may seem to be on the sur- ferring should be taken as expressions of Eliot’s per- face, nor has it ever likely been. The poet of The sonal views as a person of faith (not to mention as Waste Land imagines in the pages of this essay in a member of the Anglican communion) rather than no less serious but far more sectarian terms a world as his own pontifications upon what drum others on the march to an anemic hell of materialism must march to as the world goes “on the march.” and self-congratulatory thinking. That he finds the With regard to the young, he remarks that solution in an orthodox Christianity does not make they will not be attracted “by making Christianity him any more right than anyone else, but it does

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not make him any more single-minded or wrong- that poem, belief comes to roost not in doctrine or headed either. polemic but in the pressures of lived experience. The He recognizes that there are divisions even tenets of one’s faith become for Eliot things to be within this relative bastion of faith and tradition. exercised, not proselytized or pondered. But these “differences are healthy differences within a living body.” What he is far more fearful of are those increasing divisions in the contem- porary world between people of faith and social “Three Voices of Poetry, The” secularists. It is in those kinds of consideration that (1953) Eliot’s views in “Thoughts after Lambeth” reach their greatest scope of vision. “The World is trying This essay was prepared from a 1953 address, the experiment of attempting to form a civilized the 11th Annual Lecture of the National Book but non-Christian mentality.” League and then later collected, in 1956, in On Surely he would have the fascist states just then Poetry and Poets. emerging in Italy and in Germany in mind, as well as the communist state already in place in Russia, SYNOPSIS as much as the increasingly secularized systems of Eliot does not get to the point until he is well into social welfare and management gaining credence his address. The moment in question comes as he among the Western democracies. There is as well, is speaking of “the minor Elizabethan dramatists” in humanism’s entrenchment as a field of thought (although the example he winds up having in mind and belief all its own, a similar movement toward is none other than Christopher Marlowe and his an atheistic secularism afoot in academic and other Tamburlaine). In these plays, Eliot says, there are intellectual settings as well. “The experiment will “passages of great poetry which are in both respects fail,” Eliot says of these efforts to reform human out of place,” for they are “fine enough to preserve thought and organization in accordance with totally the play for ever as literature,” yet they are so inap- secular models and principles. propriate otherwise “as to prevent the play from While one may wish that he had then explained being a dramatic masterpiece.” This is an issue why he thought that would be the case, he con- that Eliot had raised much earlier in his critical cludes no less ominously and a bit prophetically: career. In “ ‘Rhetoric’ and Poetic Drama” in 1919 “[W]e must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; and again in his 1927 essay “Seneca in Elizabethan meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith Translation,” Eliot had tackled the causes of, and may be preserved through the dark ages before tried to justify, what he termed the “bombast” in us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the Elizabethan drama. World from suicide.” (The specter of nuclear war Here now, however, Eliot is still touching on was still some 15 years away.) the matter of bombast—dramatic speech in excess There are those who feel that the awful failures of the dramatic action—but only tangentially. His of the 20th century were themselves the result of the real concern, having by now been a poetic dramatist failure of Europe to apply to its own actions those himself and a successful one at that, is how a dra- very Christian principles that it otherwise so force- matist may write a poetry that is not merely poetry fully exported, but clearly Eliot was not one of these. (if one might offer so bold an expression), but is a In “Thoughts after Lambeth” he gives voice and language “in which characters may be said to live.” shape to a new and more coherent vision. The obli- That, it would seem, would mean that they seem to gation to be Christian to be a people of faith is not a be speaking “real speech,” even though the audience matter for the state but for individuals. That 1930 knows that it is all made up—which is especially the will also witness the publication of “Ash-Wednes- case when the dialogue is composed as verse. day,” a new departure for the poet of wastelands Eliot’s innocent enough opening paragraph in peopled by hollow men, is surely no coincidence. In which he lays out very neatly these “three voices

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of poetry,” while not entirely a ruse, is somewhat modernist cast. In a dramatic monologue, although misleading nevertheless in giving every indication the objective is a character study, the poet in writ- that he will take a cut-and-dried approach toward ing a poetry of the second voice is not required to his topic. In that introduction he lays out the three find a voice unique to the characterization because voices of poetry as follows: the poet talking to him- there is no compelling need to give him or her a self, the poet talking to an audience, and the poet distinctive presence in the ensemble of character- talking as an imaginary character to other imagi- izations that an actual drama may require. Eliot can nary characters. Simple enough, but as Eliot devel- fairly argue, then, with some confidence that the ops the idea of each of these three distinct voices voice that readers hear in such poetry is the “voice throughout the remainder of his essay, it becomes of the poet, who has put on the costume and make- more and more clear that the distinction between up either of some historical character, or of one out the second and the third voice is not as sharp or sim- of fiction.” ple as it may seem at first glance to be. Speaking in Eliot saves for last what most readers think of the second voice as one’s own imaginary character, when they think of poetry, and that is lyric poetry, that is to say, is not the same as speaking in the third although Eliot claims not to like the term lyric. voice as an imaginary character to other imaginary In any event, it is poetry of the first voice, poetry characters. There, indeed, is the distinction, noted “which is not primarily an attempt to communicate above with regard to the Elizabethans, between what with anyone at all.” Many readers of poetry are no might be effective as poetry but not as drama. doubt made quite happy by Eliot’s confirming what Eliot qualifies the distinction between this second they have always suspected, and that is that poetry, voice, the voice of poetry, and the third voice, the “real” poetry, is often not very clear—that is to voice of verse drama, by using for an example his say, that it does not communicate well. Here Eliot personal assessment of his accomplishment with the explains why that must be the case. The poet of the chorus in Murder in the Cathedral, his first completed first voice is “not concerned with other people at original verse drama from 1935. The chorus is a cho- all: only with finding the right words or, anyhow, rus of the women of Canterbury. As Eliot explains the least wrong words.” the task of applying, in this instance, the third voice, Eliot ends his essay by encouraging his listeners he says: “I had to make some effort to identify myself and readers to try to discern the various voices that with these women, instead of merely identifying the poet gives his characters the next time that them with myself.” There is all the difference in the they attend a play. However, he also asks them world. The poet who takes the second tack—“iden- to be more tolerant of the effort the next time tifying them with myself”—merely writes poetry. they read poetry by a poet of the first voice. “If Depending on his talents, it may be great poetry, as you complain that a poet is obscure,” Eliot exhorts, in the case of Marlowe, but it is that and only that, “remember that what he may have been trying to and it is assuredly not great dramatic poetry. do, was to put something into words which could The gist of the matter is, then, that the poet not be said in any other way.” writing in the third voice must “extract the poetry from the [particular] character, rather than impose CRITICAL COMMENTARY the poetry” when the poet is pretending to be a Readers would do well to keep these exhortations character himself and, as a result, involving the of Eliot’s in mind when reading much of Eliot’s own second voice, by which the poet is speaking to an finest, certainly most celebrated, and very likely most audience. Eliot uses the 19th-century English mas- enduring poems. His definition of the first voice, for ter of the dramatic monologue, Robert Browning, example, must give anyone pause, inasmuch as it is, in this instance, but he could as easily have used in and of itself, an interesting spin on the old and sac- himself, who, in earlier poems such as “The Love rosanct Aristotelian triad, wherein every act of com- Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” had already extended munication involves three elements: the speaker, the range of the dramatic monologue by giving it a the subject, and the audience. It is not difficult to

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imagine someone speaking or writing about some- posthumously by Faber & Faber in 1965. “To Criti- thing to someone else, but Eliot proposes that poetry cize the Critic” had been originally presented as of the first voice is someone speaking or writing the sixth Convocation Lecture at the University about something, and that is the end of it. of Leeds in July 1961. A brief introductory note to On the other hand, it is not so difficult to imag- the posthumous volume by Eliot’s widow, Valerie, ine, either, someone musing for no one’s benefit or informs readers that he never finished revising the edification other than his or her own, and that is essay for publication. Had he, she continues, he what Eliot likely means when he says that the first “would have incorporated further reflections into voice is “not primarily an attempt to communicate the former.” The observation permits readers to with anyone at all.” The “primarily” is a critical understand how much the essay is itself a looking qualifier, no doubt, but Eliot’s real point is that the back, a survey of a lifetime’s achievement in a field first-voice poet is engaged foremost with the strug- of endeavor to which he had contributed much and gle to put thoughts and feelings and experiences on which he had exerted great personal influence into words rather than with any effort at achieving as well. what is normally called an act of communication. Eliot equally reveals his idea of the relationship SYNOPSIS between technique and theme when he discusses his Eliot begins his reflections with a delightful quo- dramatic verse, or the third voice. For it to be great tation from F. H. BRADLEY, the English idealist dramatic poetry, the women of Canterbury, return- philosopher who had been the topic of Eliot’s ing to Eliot’s example, must not sound like poets but Harvard doctoral dissertation in 1916. Metaphys- like the women of Canterbury. This is a more telling ics, Bradley had once remarked, is “the finding insight than it may appear to be at first glance and of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, is quite easily illustrated. There is a story that when but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.” Harrison Ford was first starting out in Hollywood, he The gist of Bradley’s witticism is that metaphysics, met the famous producer Louis B. Mayer of MGM. or speculative philosophy, often does not arrive Mayer wanted to impress on him what it took to be at any satisfactory solutions to the questions that a great star. He told Ford how another young star, it addresses, but seeking those solutions is itself Tony Curtis, when he was just starting out, had a a part of the process of questioning. In the same small walk-on part as a telegram delivery boy. “But,” way, Eliot strongly implies, his parallel endeavor, Mayer extolled, “even in that small a role, you could literary criticism, will never say anything satisfac- tell what a great actor he was. He came on like tory about the experience of literature, either from a star.” Legend has it that the ever-cheeky Ford’s the point of view of producing it or from the point astute retort was: “I would have thought that if he of view of consuming it, but such criticism is nev- were such a great actor, he would have come on like ertheless more than a mere necessary evil. Rather, a telegram delivery boy.” There is the same insight- it is, like metaphysics, a part of an intricately inter- ful truth in that retort of Ford’s as in Eliot’s saying woven process that enables the creation of the that his chorus of Canterbury women was written to very texts that it then addresses. sound like a chorus of Canterbury women, not like a From that point on, Eliot continues in what crowd reciting poetry in unison. seems to be a forgiving and generous mood. For example, certain critical intellects in the tradition of English literature—in particular, the 17th-cen- tury poet John Dryden, the 18th-century man of “To Criticize the Critic” letters Samuel Johnson, and the 19th-century poet (1961) and critic Matthew Arnold—who had been given rather short shrift if not outrightly condemned in This essay is the title piece in Eliot’s last collection an earlier work, The Use of Poetry, now are enlisted of prose, To Criticize the Critic, which was published under the banner of “masters of English criticism.”

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Eliot will, of course, have already been involved this individual is more interested in becoming “the in much other revisionist thinking by this point in advocate of the authors whose work he expounds, his life and career. In addition to his considerable authors who are sometimes the forgotten or unduly accomplishments, by the late 1930s he already had despised.” become a literary celebrity and what might be called Following them are members of that group who today a cultural icon, particularly in university class- perhaps need no introduction at all, so much have rooms, where thought is first winnowed and sorted, they become associated in the popular mind with so that his every utterance, for good or ill, had more forming the first and last bastion of literary erudi- impact than he may have ever intended. Always a tion. These are the academic and the theoretical reasonably judicious and fair-minded intellect and critics. Among them he includes many of the most individual, there can be little doubt that Eliot did outstanding luminaries of modernist literary criti- not necessarily relish giving the world the appear- cism, such as I. A. Richards, William Empson, and ance of a rabid partisanship in matters literary. In F. R. Leavis. the mid-1940s and again in the early 1950s, for two The last category is that “company [into which] outstanding examples, he reassessed his previous I must shyly intrude,” Eliot tells his readers, and disparagement of such notable literary geniuses as that comprises those “whose criticism may be said the 17th-century English poet and polemicist John to be a by-product of [their] creative activity.” Milton and the late 18th- to early 19th-century Ger- From the vantage point of “forty-odd years” later, man poet, novelist, naturalist, and thinker Johann as Eliot identifies the starting point for his own Wolfgang von Goethe, finding himself somewhat career as a critic, Eliot can be simultaneously accu- wanting in his earlier negative judgments. satory and forgiving of himself. What he claims As Eliot will himself say only a little later in this that he most regrets now is “the errors of tone: present essay, “When we are young we see issues the occasional note of arrogance, of vehemence, sharply defined: as we age we tend to make more of cocksureness or rudeness,” although he does not reservations, to qualify our positive assertions, to disown those past judgments and assessments and introduce more parentheses.” The same, then, may pronouncements. be said to hold true for the expansiveness with Indeed, what he claims to dislike most is to have which he is now prepared to categorize what, and “my words, perhaps written thirty or forty years who, constitute the field of literary criticism proper. ago, quoted as if I had uttered them yesterday.” He Eliot quickly breaks literary critics into four groups, uses his famous “classicist, royalist, Catholic” state- the last of which will include practicing poet-critics ment from his preface to For Lancelot Andrewes as such as himself. a particularly egregious example. For all the atten- These categories of Eliot’s are not particularly tion that that remark has garnered as a means of surprising, although that does not make them any pigeonholing Eliot’s value system ever since that less worthy of consideration. First, then, he speaks 1928 admission, he now reveals that it was made at of the professional critic. These would be persons the urging of an old Harvard mentor, Irving Bab- whose main claim to literary fame, whether or not bitt, who, learning of Eliot’s conversion to High they also happened themselves to be failed creative Anglicanism in 1927, suggested that he “come out writers, is their commenting on the quality of the into the open.” Of course, however, the gist of literature of others. “Super-Reviewers,” Eliot calls Eliot’s explanation of what the statement “really them, without attempting to be in the least bit dis- meant” is that it meant what everyone else thought paraging now. Often they are the “official critic for that it meant. some magazine or newspaper,” whose work is occa- He then goes on to divide his own critical career sionally collected in a book that may itself achieve into three phases, the first two of which were rather respectable stature in the field. short-lived, the first while he was writing for and Then there is what Eliot calls the “Critic with helping edit the Egoist, in which he published, in Gusto.” Rather then a setter of trends and tastes, 1919, the essay that continues to be a landmark

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critical document in the history of English litera- Other poets who influenced him in his “formative ture, “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The stage” and who continue to hold his unflagging second phase occurred after The Egoist folded in admiration are, in addition to Donne and Laforgue, 1919. The third seems to be marked—since he Stéphane Mallarmé, George Herbert, WILLIAM does not otherwise really identify it as clearly as SHAKESPEARE, of course, and DANTE ALIGHIERI. the other two—by the moment he turns from what Of Dante, he writes, “There is one poet, how- he calls “essays of generalization” to “appreciations ever, who impressed me profoundly when I was of individual authors,” which do seem to make up twenty-two and . . . who remains the comfort and a great deal of his writing in the 1920s, although amazement of my age, although my knowledge of that trend did not necessarily continue unabated his language remains rudimentary.” Dante con- into the 1930s and 1940s when he turned his hand tinued to shape and influence Eliot’s poetry writ- quite frequently to a literary criticism with pro- ing well into the 1940s, obtaining a position of nounced social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. supreme honor when Eliot imitates the style of his During this part of the essay, he comments on Divine Comedy in the most moving passage of “Lit- his present state of mind regarding his two most tle Gidding,” the concluding sequence in the Four famous literary formulations: the “dissociation of Quartets. The passage recounts the firebombing of sensibility” and the “objective correlative.” “[T]hey London by Nazi warplanes during World War II. have been useful in their time,” he happily observes, Eliot thus makes Dante’s terza rima, the three-line as indeed they have been, although he now sees stanzas that he used throughout the Divine Com- them more in terms of “conceptual symbols for [his edy, an enduring part of both English literature and own] emotional preferences.” In any event, he can English history. see now in the formulation of each a way of con- Eliot concludes by reflecting on those authors cretizing a bias, on his part, toward the dramatic whom he cannot fairly resurrect from his earlier and lyric work of the 16th and early 17th centuries negative criticism. The 20th-century English nov- and against the poetry being written in the 19th elist D. H. LAWRENCE, a major modernist figure and early 20th century—the literary period just in his own right, stands out in this regard. In After preceding his own. Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy, published He closes the essay by commenting, in the last in 1934, Eliot had labeled Lawrence’s as a “spiritu- several pages, on those authors who have influ- ally sick” vision of the human condition. Now Eliot enced his own work the most, observing rather tell- tones down this scathing criticism somewhat, say- ingly that “I am certain of one thing: that I have ing mainly that he will “always waver between dis- written best about writers who have influenced my like, exasperation, boredom and admiration” in his own poetry.” The list would not stun any student estimation of both Lawrence’s work and his worth. of Eliot’s poetry and the history of its development. Among these writers he includes, for example, sev- CRITICAL COMMENTARY eral philosophers and, intriguingly enough, not just The remarks contained within “To Criticize the their thought but their style. They are Bradley, Spi- Critic” are essentially Eliot’s final thoughts on a noza, and Plato. topic that he had addressed frequently throughout He eschews the commonplace encomium that his long career as a literary critic. Although not he had started a vogue for the poetic style and pas- limited to the following instances, in essays begin- sionate thought of the 17th-century English meta- ning with “The Function of Criticism” in 1923 physical poet, JOHN DONNE, although he admits and continuing became through the Charles Eliot that if he “wrote well about the metaphysical poets, Norton lectures at Harvard, delivered in 1932 it was because they were poets who had inspired and 1933, that became his The Use of Poetry and me.” Yet he can confess, too, that he has never the Use of Criticism, all the way up to the cloying written anything about JULES LAFORGUE, “to whom stance that he took against the excesses of aca- I owe more than to any one poet in any language.” demic scholarship in “The Frontiers of Criticism”

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in 1956, Eliot had always had a vested interest in of readers. Perhaps this issue would have been describing the parameters of what he took to be included among his “further reflections,” those literary criticism’s benefits and obligations to both that his death cut off. In any case, here was an writers and readers alike. opportunity forever missed. By the time of “To Criticize the Critic,” how- ever, he no longer is interested in nor desires to make new judgments and formulate new principles. Rather, while he still has the opportunity, he is try- “Tradition and the Individual ing to secure his own place in the history of literary Talent” (1919) criticism in English by saying what he sees that position to have been. This is neither a vain nor Eliot’s essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” an arrogant gesture on his part. His pronounce- was first published as an anonymous piece in The ments have been the source of controversy, and he Egoist, a London literary review, in September and had long been a controversialist himself. Now he December 1919 and subsequently included by Eliot is ready to sum up not his positions but his contri- in his first collection of essays, The Sacred Wood, bution. He decides that, ultimately, his best work published in 1920. That it continues to exert a “falls within rather narrow limits,” being those genuine influence on thought regarding the inter- essays “concerned with writers who had influenced relationship among literary classics, individual art- me in my poetry.” There, he can safely say, without ists, and the nature of the creative imagination, is a fear of censure or debate, that “in so far as literary comment on its value. In any case, Eliot was able to criticism is purely literary, . . . the criticism of art- let loose in this comparatively short essay—it runs ists writing about their own art is of greater inten- to little more than 3,000 words—packing virtually sity, and carries more authority.” every sentence with pronouncements that, in any Who would deny Eliot’s premise, when it is other context of presentation, might have required stated in those terms? Still, one might wish that far more elaboration and persuasive defense. Eliot had chosen to revisit as well other areas of earlier controversy that, while they were not purely SYNOPSIS literary, were nevertheless subject to his singular Despite these genuine virtues and the essay’s authority to address and, if possible, redress and deserved renown, “Tradition and the Individual that continue to tarnish his otherwise untarnished Talent” is rather loosely, perhaps even haphazardly reputation. What comes most immediately to mind constructed and is worthy of consideration far more is his unfortunate characterization of “free-thinking for the power of its suggestiveness than for the Jews” in After Strange Gods. Whatever Eliot may precision of its organization. In essence, the essay have meant by his insisting that such individuals proposes a series of key concepts that would subse- can be disruptive to the cultural integrity of the quently become germane, for one thing, to readings American experience, such intellectual subtleties of Eliot’s own poetry and that would also eventually must of necessity be virtually instantly lost on any become the root if not the immediate source for reader who is acutely sensitive to the bias and big- major critical approaches with regard to modernism otry that such a characterization betrays. in general and the methodology of New Criticism Eliot was not oblivious to the problem. Fol- in particular. In addition to exploring the question lowing its initial publication in 1934, Eliot never of the relationship between the tradition—that permitted After Strange Gods to be reprinted. Still, is, works already preexisting in a national or even he fails to acknowledge even so much as a nod- multicultural body of literature—and any one poet ding acquaintanceship with this black mark on his in particular (that is, “the individual talent”), Eliot literary and personal reputation in the very essay also delves into and, so, makes pronouncements on that places his own imprimatur on how he wishes the relationship between the poet as a person and his legacy to be regarded by future generations the poet as a creative intellect.

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He comments as well, finally, on how much process that involves the reception of a preexisting or how greatly a work of literature ought to be text, is a quite different approach. Nevertheless, regarded as giving expression to the personality the essay’s central premise, as well as its continu- of the poet, giving birth to the impersonal the- ing critical value, is, in essence, Eliot’s argument ory of poetry. Coming relatively hard upon the that the creative process is an impersonal process, poetry of the English romantics, the longest-lived despite the tendencies of many readers to per- of whom, William Wordsworth, had been dead sist in identifying the speaker of a poem with the nearly 70 years by 1919 and whose subjective, poet. Keeping this central premise in mind ought expressive approach toward the writing of poetry to demystify many of Eliot’s pronouncements on still wielded excessive sway over both the com- similar subjects. position and the reading of poetry, Eliot’s efforts The Living Talent and the Tradition to found in principle in what would later become Eliot begins his presentation by directly address- known as the impersonal school of poetry can ing the essay’s ostensible topic, the relationship hardly be scanted or overlooked. While his essay between tradition and the individual talent. What may not have initiated the powerful reaction to may seem to be the most obvious point in his open- romanticism that is now thought of as literary ing argument is certainly the most salient, that the modernism, the essay certainly gave that move- ment voice and a clear agenda. tradition is at any one time a completed whole that In keeping with an analytical approach, Eliot comprises all of the preceding creative endeavor structures his central argument around various out of which the individual author creates a new issues of separation. Specifically, and as will be work. Tradition, then, is a continuum, and this examined in more detail shortly, there is the mat- point is one of the essay’s more daring stances. It ter of the quality and degree of the separation that may seem by now to stand to reason that the living may or may not exist between the body of past lit- practitioners of any one discipline add to and, so, erature, or the created tradition, and the individual shape and alter the accumulated store of their pre- living poet creating within the tradition’s most cur- decessors’ efforts—that, in other words, these past rent or ongoing moment. Eliot also considers the efforts live in a present that is continuously trans- degree and quality of separation necessary between forming itself into new efforts that then themselves that living poet as a fully rounded person (what become the efforts of the past, and so on. he calls—perhaps a bit too colorfully—the “man Though such a position may sound reasonable who suffers”) and those aspects of that individual’s and justified, Eliot’s taking that position, as his feel- intellectual choices and other selective processes ing the need to defend it to his readers should that result in the making of an actual work of lit- readily attest, flew in the face of the conventional erature (what he calls the “mind which creates”). wisdom to that time and that had been in place vir- Finally, Eliot takes into consideration the degree tually from the beginnings of the European Renais- and quality of separation that is necessary between, sance. According to that wisdom, the ancients, on the one hand, the artist as an individual whose meaning the classical writers of Greece and of utterances may be thought to express a personal- Rome—Homer, Sophocles, Seneca, Virgil, Ovid, ity and, on the other hand, the semblance of per- and others—were giants who towered over their sonality that is, or can be, expressed in the work puny modern descendants, who consequently char- without any need for reference to the author’s own acterized themselves as pygmies. personality. In that older way of casting the debate, the mod- As may be apparent, there is some considerable erns, although by no means capable of being better overlap and confusion of terms here, as well as or wiser than their ancient forbears, still had the some overlap between matters that involve the act advantage of being able to build on and improve of writing—actions that involve the creation of a such models as those ancients had left behind. text—and the act of reading, which, because it is a Indeed, the term classic, in addition to connoting

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excellence in its field, implies a representative pro- in new patterns that then form the work of art, totype within the particular genre or kind of work— like the chemical compound that results from the epic, drama, lyric poem, and so forth. To complete introduction of the necessary catalyst into the pres- the metaphor, if the ancients were giants and the ence of the elements to be combined. While the moderns pygmies, those pygmies could nevertheless catalyst initiates and enables the chemical reaction, stand on the shoulders of the ancients and, in that or poetic process, to take place, resulting in the way—but that way only—surpass them. new compound or poetic composition, the catalyst Eliot comes out firmly against any notion of itself is not otherwise affected and certainly, for all couching the tradition in terms of a conflict and intents and purposes, is unchanged by the event. In competition between the old and the new, the past other words, poetic composition is an impersonal and the present. In sharp contrast to this older process, engaging the poet’s creative and critical idea of a combative relationship among long dead faculties but not necessarily any more of his or her and living traditions and long dead and living art- personal life than, say, the chemical reactions that ists, Eliot, who shortly before writing the essay now take place in the laboratory personally involve the being considered had visited the underground cav- chemist. erns in southern France where cave drawings that A romantic notion persists to this day among were tens of thousands of years old had recently readers that poets pour forth their souls in their been discovered, could talk of a mind of Europe poetry. Eliot says not that that is not the case, that had discarded nothing of its virtually timeless but that it ought not to be the case. As cold and creative traditions along the way, as if there were dispassionate as this may sound as a description in fact neither any seam nor any conflict separating of the creative process, Eliot is responding to the present from the past, the ancients from the nearly a century of that same process’s having been moderns, or one work of art from another. Rather, regarded as something akin to Plato’s divine mad- there was only that constant stream of statement ness. The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and restatement, adjusting and altering and coming is how William Wordsworth had defined the poetic back upon itself as each new voice is added to, and impulse more than a century before in his preface adds to, the mix. So, then, Eliot asserts that poets to Lyrical Ballads (albeit with some further quali- cannot write after the age of 25 unless they have fications that Eliot later will cite). Wordsworth’s developed what he calls the historical sense, that idea seems clear: Poetry is an expression of personal being a sense not of the pastness of the past, as he emotions that can no longer be contained by the puts it, but of its presence. poet unless he express them in his poetry. It is at this point that Eliot’s argument takes a Eliot is trying to counter that claim by proposing sudden, or at least unanticipated, turn by suggest- that the creative act is as calculating and conscious ing that the more perfect they are, the more artists an endeavor as any other constructive action and express not their own personal lives and points of therefore is one that can be regarded wholly in view so much as contribute to that living stream of terms of itself and of the traditions out of which creative endeavor. This abrupt turn makes much it emerges, rather than in terms of the individual logical sense, however. Having just redefined the poet’s life and experiences. So, then, Eliot can fur- nature of tradition, one half of his title, Eliot is now ther claim, legitimately for his purposes—which obligated to define what he means by the individual are to separate the poet from the poem and thus talent, the other half. give primacy not to personality but to poetry—that poetry is not an expression of but an escape from The Impersonality of Creation personality, not a turning loose of but an escape To explain his position on this score, Eliot intro- from emotion (emphasizing a bit too coyly in his duces a simile drawn from chemistry, in which the closing remark that only those who know what per- mind of the individual artist is likened to a catalyst. sonality and emotions are would understand why As such, it allows disparate experiences to combine one would want to escape from them).

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As Hamlet says, however, that idea would be then, that it is the forcefulness, confidence, and “scanned,” or scrutinized, for it must seem that, clarity with which the central ideas of the essay if the reader takes Eliot at his word, then Eliot is are expressed that account for its enduring celeb- suggesting that the best poetry is escapist because rity. It has been argued that the very anonymity personality and emotions are powerfully dangerous that Eliot was able to maintain as he penned his things whose expression ought to be avoided at all thoughts and opinions on such a weighty and con- costs. In actuality, that is not Eliot’s point. Eliot troversial literary question as the source of origi- is trying to propose an entirely different model of nal poetic impulses might account for that tone what poetry ought to concern itself with, as well as of sublime authority in which Eliot conducts his of how people ought to concern themselves with presentation. One is inclined to share ideas more poetry. It is in his attack on the commonplace way expansively and without fear of easy contradic- of thinking of poetry as a personally expressive and tion or challenge when the source of those ideas emotive art that he is trying to propose, not that can be anyone and, so, becomes that powerfully poetry is therefore escapist but that a poem is expe- impersonal force, the expert. rience that has been objectified by structuring pro- This does not take away from Eliot’s ultimate cesses and the conscious selection of language and achievement as a budding literary critic. To add, therefore is, as a statement, self-referential, nothing as Eliot does in his essay, even another sentence or more and nothing less. paragraph, let alone another page, to the ongoing debate regarding the relationship among the poet, CRITICAL COMMENTARY the culture, and the poem is quite an accomplish- Debates over whether artists in any medium of ment, and Eliot might never have arrived at such expression produce out of and, so, comment only an accomplishment on the basis of the considerable on their own personal experiences or whether they reputation as a man of letters that he had achieved can instead express universal and thus objecti- by his early middle age. Rather, it is the strength of fied human situations are as old at least as Plato’s the idea itself that carries the day. Eliot makes the Republic and his dialogue “Ion” from the fifth cen- poetry the important thing. tury B.C. In the Republic, Plato, through his mouth- Another way to put it is to say that poetry is piece Socrates, famously banished virtually all the an abstract construct rather than any sort of per- poets from the ideal community because, in his sonal statement and that its “meaning” then can view, they do not speak universal truths openly be found in how it is put together rather than in and sincerely. Rather, they either conceal them- what it is necessarily “saying.” If readers imagine selves behind masks, that is, their characters, or that a poem is nothing more than personal expres- else speak only for themselves. In the “Ion,” Plato sion, for instance, then poetry wins or loses its similarly argues that the poet is merely a medium authority on the basis not of its own qualities but for divine truths that have their origin elsewhere, of matters entirely exterior and thus extraneous so poetry is nothing more than a species of divine to the poem. The poet’s beliefs and attitudes and madness. Either way, Plato treated the poet, and habits and foibles, not as readers know them but poetry, as a special case, difficult either to catego- as they become known by the hearsay of gossip rize or to discuss. Whatever else he may have done and rumor, scholarship and biographies, become as a result, Plato established a long-running tradi- more important than his or her poetry. That is a tion that the relationship between the poet and the self-evidently absurdist posture. Lost in the process poem is a knotty one. of adhering to the notion that a poem is nothing The fact is, however, that Eliot composed more or less than prettified self-expression is, of all the essay in question while he was still relatively things, the poem as a thing all its own, the way a young—just turned 30—and not only was he at flower or stone or bird is all its own thing and not the time also a relative unknown himself, but the what would be made of it by making it something essay was published anonymously. It is more likely, other than itself.

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 408 9/5/07 2:36:26 PM “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” 409 Such a way of perceiving Eliot’s “impersonal “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” theory of poetry” will lead readers right back to the importance that he places on regarding tradition as (1923) a living cultural force in the opening pages of the essay. There Eliot argues that the intensity of poetry A key concept regarding the literary uses of the is dependent not on the intensity of the poetic mythic past is formulated by Eliot in “Ulysses, process but on the “intensity of the artistic pro- Order, and Myth,” a November 1923 review of cess.” The poet has not a personality to express but JAMES JOYCE’s Ulysses published in the Dial, the a “particular medium” to work with and through, same New York review that, barely a year before, whereby “impressions and experiences combine in had first introduced American readers to The peculiar and unexpected ways.” Waste Land. The tack that Eliot’s remarks take also His points are well taken if they can be seen to reveals much regarding modernism’s early effects be emphasizing artistic expression on its own terms, on shaping the literary imagination. formed by and adding to generations of tradition, rather than as a mere extension of the personality SYNOPSIS and emotions of the particular poet. Then the artis- Eliot makes it clear from the outset of his review tic product can be viewed, regarded, appreciated, that he wishes primarily to call attention to a fea- and even criticized not in terms of what it appears ture of Joyce’s considerable achievement that has to tell readers of the peculiarly limited life and until now not been given its due, and that is “the times of its author, as if literature were only sec- significance of the method employed.” Because ond-rate or at least far less rigorous history or social Joyce employs such a wide range of both traditional science, but in terms of the universal abstractions it and innovative narrative and stylistic techniques in reveals in the concrete terms of language and what the novel, one might imagine that Eliot is about to Eliot will later call art emotions. Those, he insists, launch into one of his typically erudite treatises on are not the emotions of any single person, however how these various technical strategies combine to interesting a personality he or she may have been, create some new species of art experience for the but of common human experience generalized into reader, but that turns out not to be Eliot’s point those poetic contexts and constructs that form the or focus. Eliot does indeed comment in passing on traditions out of which an endless stream of new Joyce’s now-celebrated use of varying styles and individual talents continue to write. symbols to distinguish among the novel’s various Eliot further insists that the individual tal- sections and characters, but even that notewor- ent writes best when it writes not for the sake of thy aspect of Joyce’s contribution to the modernist expressing itself as a personality, but for the sake agenda to “make it new” is not the foremost feature of constantly shaping that tradition, whether that of Joyce’s accomplishment to which Eliot wishes to individual talent knows of it or not. (Naturally, call his reader’s attention. Eliot would argue that anyone aspiring to prac- Rather, it turns out that by “the method em- tice an artistic endeavor should know its traditions ployed” Eliot primarily means the most obvious through and through.) By virtue of the radical aspect of that method, which is Joyce’s use of con- stance that he takes in “Tradition and the Indi- tinuous parallels to Homer’s Odyssey. It should vidual Talent,” Eliot argues that the individual come as a surprise to many that Eliot feels called talent ought to know what his or her obligations on to comment on this facet of the Joyce novel to the tradition are and to know that one must inasmuch as the novel’s parallels with the litera- have absorbed the tradition. It is, as it were, a ture of the past, Homer especially, are hardly a never-ending circle in which personal issues have concealed element of its structure. In fact, Eliot no place, although their rich variety, transmuted himself is the first to admit that one would think by the intensity of impersonal poetic processes, is that those parallels above all ought to have drawn indisputably the raw material of art, but only that. the attention of reviewers and critics alike.

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Instead, compelling this observation now is no one has ever before used a similar method to Eliot’s estimation that the Joyce novel’s parallels build the structure of a novel, it is because such a to Europe’s classical, mythic past have been treated method “has never before been possible,” but now by reviewers much like an “artful dodge,” scaffold- that Joyce has shown the way, he has pursued a ing used by Joyce merely to get the story told but method that “others must pursue after him.” then worthy only of dismissal. Indeed, using a par- Specifically, Eliot argues, that the novel as read- ticularly scathing review by Richard Aldington to ers know it “was simply the expression of an age,” further his case, a review in which Aldington calls one that could be managed by formal narrative Ulysses a “libel on humanity” and Joyce a great but devices. That form, however, no longer is an ade- undisciplined talent, Eliot proposes that critics until quate means for expressing the sorts of psychologi- now have missed the forest for the trees when it cal and social realities that the novelist must deal comes to seeing the significance that Joyce assigns with in the new age that has emerged with the 20th to these classical parallels as a means of his being century, a period fraught with many challenging able to accomplish a coherent aesthetic vision in questions and few promising answers. Instead, after the midst of the modern world. It is on this matter Joyce, rather than the narrative method, there will of Aldington’s charge regarding the undisciplined be what Eliot calls “the mythic method.” As he nature of Joyce’s abilities that the crux of the argu- explains it, using myth to run “a continuous paral- ment that Eliot will finally frame in Joyce’s favor lel between contemporaneity and antiquity” pro- turns. Eliot sees it as Aldington’s way of putting vides the modern writer with “a way of controlling, Joyce in the camp of “romanticism,” which at this of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance time was not enjoying the vogue that it had a cen- to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy tury earlier. which is contemporary history.” Others, such as the Romanticism, with its emphasis on subjectivity Anglo-Irish poet W. B. YEATS, had already seen as and unbridled emotional and technical energies much, according to Eliot, and to the list, although and enthusiasms, was by now regarded as the great modesty prevents it, can be added the poet of The enemy of its opposite, classicism, which placed all Waste Land as well, since Eliot had pointedly used its emphasis on order and objectivity. For the sake the myth of the Grail quest, among others, to give of an illustrative parallel, if classicism was the rock- his work some semblance of narrative cohesion in hard foundation of all the inherited cultural tradi- its attempt to represent the experience of life in a tions available to the literary artist at any time in modern urban environment. history (the general idea advanced in Eliot’s own 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”), CRITICAL COMMENTARY then romanticism was that tempestuous sea whose If there is another modernist work in English to perpetually erratic and unpredictable behavior rival any claim that The Waste Land may make to could only ever eventually erode that foundation being the most notorious example of the celebrated until there was nothing left but a boundless and stylistic eccentricities of that particularly peculiar misdirected creative energy. literary movement, that work would undoubtedly Joyce is a classicist in Eliot’s view, however, not be Joyce’s Ulysses. As an example of the literary because he adheres to the tradition in some pre- imagination gone ballistic, the Joyce novel shares determined manner, as if these distinctions can be many affinities with the Eliot poem, perhaps the likened to those describing political allegiances, most notable being that they were both published but because Joyce does “the best one can with the in 1922. Readers familiar with both have, from the material at hand.” For the writers of this present first, noticed far more suspicious affinities, how- generation, that is the material that contemporary ever, including but not limited to a conspicuous history permits, and if judged on that score, Eliot use of cultural monuments from the mythic and finds that Joyce’s parallel use of Homer’s epic poem literary past to comment on the contemporary has “the importance of a scientific discovery.” If moment, an equally conspicuous experimentation

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with language and syntax to mirror psychological conventional novel in order to appreciate the states, and a nearly pathological obsession with the importance of his utterances on the topic. Certainly physical decay and moral decadence of the modern modernism remains renowned to this day because urban landscape. of its propensity for genre-bending experimenta- These affinities became even more pronounced tion in the face of a breakdown of conventional when Eliot’s widow, Valerie, published in 1971 a structures on virtually all fronts and in all fields of facsimile edition of the drafts of The Waste Land human endeavor. before they underwent extensive revision at the The liberating value of these cultural readjust- hands of Eliot’s poetic mentor, fellow American ments notwithstanding, poets like Eliot and Yeats expatriate EZRA POUND. The poem as originally and novelists like Joyce were concerned, as artists conceived by Eliot had even more similarities with will always be, not with the broad, general effects the Joyce novel, including a long opening sequence of these chaotic fissures but with their impact on that seemed to mimic Ulysses’s famous Nighttown individuals and their capacity to cope with the per- sequence, a hallucinatory passage centered around sistent trials of moment-to-moment, day-to-day drunken debaucheries on which the action of the existence. To give “shape and significance” to the Joyce novel climaxes. Coupled with the fact that experience of a culture is one thing; to do it from Eliot, as editor of the Egoist, had published the early and for the point of view of the individual affected chapters of Ulysses in that so-called little review in by it but not otherwise profoundly connected to it 1919 and had read much of the rest of it in manu- is quite another. For the artist, then, Eliot is not at script before its publication in book form in Paris all off the mark when he commends Joyce for hav- by Shakespear & Company, it seemed to some that ing achieved, with Ulysses, something on the order there was much borrowing, both conscious and of a scientific discovery. unconscious, from Ulysses on Eliot’s part. However, it is much more likely that the two were influenced by the same wartime and postwar cultural anxieties as well as by the same recon- Use of Poetry and the Use of figurations that the poetic and narrative imagina- tion of Europe was undergoing at the time. Eliot, Criticism, The (1933) after all, had been working up images and lines of verse that would eventually find their way into On September 17, 1932, Eliot set sail from England, The Waste Land from as far back as 1915, predating where he had been in residence virtually nonstop his exposure to Ulysses. That he and Joyce should since the late summer of 1915, to assume for the have come up with common images and symbols coming academic year the Charles Eliot Norton bespeaks their contemporaneity more than any professorship at his alma mater, Harvard University, other linkage or association. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He would also use One of the major benefits that did come from the extended absence from his first wife, Vivien, Eliot’s admiration for Joyce and his no less consid- required of him by this academic appointment to erable achievement was that it enabled Eliot to for- make final and legal what had become an emotional mulate a key concept regarding the unique nature and physical separation from her, whose marriage to of literary modernism, perhaps even enabling him him in 1915 had by now become a disastrous failure to identify what will remain its most singular con- in everyone’s eyes except, apparently, her own. The tribution to the ongoing traditions that constitute fruits of his labors at Harvard would include a sub- literature: That is its ability to account for the wide stantial fee for his services, one that would better disparities among thoughts, feelings, and beliefs enable him to establish a separate household on his that typify the modern experience of culture. Ulti- return to England the following year. mately, it is not a matter of ascertaining whether In the meantime, free to travel elsewhere in the Eliot was correct in announcing the death of the United States provided that he fulfill his primary

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obligation to Harvard, Eliot saw to it that this year SYNOPSIS abroad allowed him ample opportunity to tour and The Introductory Lecture lecture extensively. Thus, in addition to the visiting As Eliot delivered his first, introductory lecture, it professorship at Harvard, Eliot made appearances was the eve of a national election. America, already at various other academic venues, including at the deep in the throes of the Great Depression, was just University of California, Los Angeles, in Decem- about to elect Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt ber and at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, in to the presidency for the first time. In a stunning February. In April, he was invited to give the Page- victory over his Republican rival, President Herbert Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia in Hoover, Roosevelt would usher in a new regime for Charlottesville, and these addresses, in keeping a nation desperate for economic rescue but not quite with the terms of that lectureship, were later col- ready for the radical social and political changes that lected and, in February 1934, published by Faber & would constitute the New Deal. Europe, meanwhile, Faber under the intriguing title After Strange Gods: was moving into a period wherein the continuing A Primer of Modern Heresy. economic and political turmoil resulting from World While that book may have achieved far more War I would, by decade’s end, catastrophically bring notoriety because of its apparent xenophobic slant about new and increasing hostilities and the even- and anti-Semitic overtones, The Use of Poetry and tual outbreak of World War II. the Use of Criticism should nevertheless be regarded Such a state of affairs is mentioned because as the foremost result of Eliot’s U.S. sojourn. Eliot Eliot alludes to these pending changes in his seems to have agreed. Like the lectures that com- opening remarks, thereby paying tribute to the prise After Strange Gods, Eliot was enjoined by the lectureship’s namesake, the late Harvard profes- terms of the Norton professorship to publish the sor Charles Eliot Norton, who, Eliot illustrates by lectures that resulted from the series at Harvard, and they now make up The Use of Poetry and the citing from his letters, was also a man of letters Use of Criticism. He would expressly forbid any who was generously in tune with the great public future publication of After Strange Gods after its events of his time. Norton was a distant cousin of initial release; The Use of Poetry, on the other hand, Eliot’s, as was the past Harvard president Charles would not only be rereleased in a new edition in William Eliot, for whom Harvard’s newly opened 1964, toward the end of the poet’s life, but would be Eliot House where Eliot was being put up dur- provided with a preface prepared for that new edi- ing his stay in Cambridge was named. Clearly, the tion. In that preface, Eliot would make it clear that guest professorship was, in very real terms, a family he would rather be remembered for these essays affair for Harvard alumnus Eliot, himself by now a than for his most celebrated critical essay, “Tradi- world-renowned poet whose poem The Waste Land tion and the Individual Talent,” which, though he had come virtually single-handedly to describe the declined to repudiate it, he labeled “the product of unique character of the modern moment as much immaturity.” in the popular imagination as for literary and aca- Including the introductory and concluding lec- demic audiences. ture, between November 4, 1932, the date of the Homage to Norton accomplished, Eliot sets first, and March 31, 1933, the date of the last, Eliot about defining the business of the evening at hand: delivered eight lectures, presenting an overview of to “try to find out, in examining the relation of English literature from the time of Shakespeare to poetry and criticism, what the use of both of them the present. Throughout the lectures, Eliot’s aim is.” Poetry, Eliot admits, is the more difficult of would be twofold. As the title makes clear, he the two to define otherwise; criticism, he insists, wished to establish some guiding principles regard- is not, being of two kinds—that which seeks to ing the uses both of poetry and of the criticism of define poetry and assess its value and uses, and poetry, primarily as they interacted with each other that which, by making assumptions regarding those but also as each served a larger social purpose. matters, treats actual poetry. The first kind con-

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siders what poetry is, he explains, while the other that a highly critical age cannot produce great cre- determines what is a good poem or good poetry. ative efforts, although he would never dispute that That distinction is the crux on which the an age can produce great poetry without produc- remainder of his introductory lecture depends. Cit- ing any written criticism. Still, he argues as well, ing authorities as varied and disparate as Aristotle, “you cannot deplore criticism unless you deprecate Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, philosophy,” for he sees the best criticism emerging and his own contemporary, the psychological critic from periods when poetry no longer expresses the I. A. Richards, whose Principles of Literary Criticism whole of a culture—when, in other words, there is remains a classic in the field, Eliot points out that great and productive intellectual ferment. (While there are those who can, as it were, talk the talk but he does not say it at this juncture, his own age is not necessarily walk the walk. They can, in other most certainly experiencing just such a ferment.) words, tell the reader what should constitute a good At this point, Eliot makes a shift in his presenta- poem but not satisfactorily discern the difference, in tion, subtle but nevertheless discernible, from the practice, between a good and bad poem. general, what poetry and criticism is, to the particu- Words and their limits are the problem at either lar, the last 300 years of the development of a more end, and Eliot calls on Richards’s authority, as he and more sophisticated critical apparatus in English does throughout the lectures, to clarify certain letters. This shift to the particular allows him, in points (although it should be observed that Eliot good expository fashion, to introduce an outline of does not defer to Richards’s judgment on all points, the remainder of his lectures. He chooses to begin, regarding the ethical relativism of his critical stance he says, with the age of Edmund Spenser and WIL- as a questionable moral posture). What a poem LIAM SHAKESPEARE because, over and above their says, then, is not, either in Eliot’s or in Richards’s own especial notoriety as literary masters, it was view, anywhere near as important as what that during this time, the late 16th century, that the same poem is. This idea is not as thickheaded as it so-called native tradition in English literature (i.e., may seem. If the poem is judged merely on the basis Anglo-Saxon) came into open critical conflict with of the quality of the statement that it makes, then it the influences of continental (i.e., Latinate) literary is little different from any other kind of expository, precepts and practices. He will then, he says, move analytical, or persuasive writing. Whatever else a on to the age of John Dryden, because this 17th- poem may be, the given for the critic as well as century English poet was instrumental in winning for the poet is that poetry is something altogether the day critically for the nativists, thereby giving different from other species of writing, even if that the shaping impetus to the succeeding two centu- difference cannot be, as Eliot continually stresses, ries of English poetry and criticism. easily defined. Something more critical, for lack of a better The experience of poetry that the critic brings word, is at stake at that juncture as well, however. to any one poem is the other end of the spec- The use of poetry, which to that time had been trum. The wider and more varied the experience, thought of as “at once delight and instruction, . . . it stands to reason, the more the critic, as reader, an adornment of social life and an honour to the is able both to identify the bogus and to distinguish nation,” an attitude as old as the Roman poet Hor- it from the new that may appear to the less widely ace’s utile et dulce dictum (poetry is “useful and read person to be bogus as well. sweet”), begins to undergo a radical transformation Eliot also labors to make it clear that by criticism that will become complete by the time of the English he means that very intellectual process by which romantics in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. one endeavors to determine what poetry is, and by “Wordsworth and Coleridge,” Eliot concludes, “are doing so, he tries to divorce himself from any asso- not merely demolishing a debased tradition, but ciation with that school of thought that sees the revolting against a whole social order,” resulting in critical and creative impulses as processes at odds the confidence with which another English roman- with each other. Thus, too, he rejects the notion tic, Percy Bysshe Shelley, can proclaim that poets

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are the “unacknowledged legislators of mankind.” The point of controversy that Eliot focuses on Eliot hopes to occupy the middle territory here might best be described in terms of the old argu- between an age that agrees on the use of poetry ment regarding the ancients and moderns, in which and, so, looks for its most felicitous expression and the classical poets and dramatists of ancient Greece an age that debates the use of poetry as an instru- and Rome were seen to have laid down principles ment for effecting moral and social change and, so, of composition that the modern poet or dramatist produces much criticism but is less scrupulous in could ignore or violate only at his or her own peril. separating the wheat from the chaff. Shakespeare’s total disregard for the three unities of While Eliot was obligated to publish the lectures time, place, and action, for example, and his appar- as they were presented, he was also free to expati- ent disregard as well for the unity of sentiment ate further in endnotes, as he does in the case of (that is, of not mixing the comic and the tragic) the first lecture, to which he appends a note on the made him a lesser artist in the eyes of many of his development of taste in poetry. Here he concludes, most astute contemporaries, but it has made him a using his own recollections of the development of genius in the eyes of posterity. If those contempo- his taste in poetry as a boy and young man, that raries of Shakespeare were so blinded by classical the taste for poetry seems to diminish in most at precepts that they could not otherwise recognize about the time of the onset of puberty, and for the brilliance of Shakespeare’s creative spark, then, those in whom it continues, it never really quite Eliot argues, the criticism of the time, of which settles down until early adulthood, at which point Sir Philip Sidney’s Apology for Poetry provides an it likely never develops much further. The mature outstanding example, would have to be regarded as taste, nevertheless, he defines as one in which the antagonistic to the creative spirit that was present. reader comes to recognize that both the poem and Eliot cites, too, the debate between Thomas the poet have an existence “apart from us” read- Campion and Samuel Daniel over whether Eng- ers. That is the point at which one is ready for a lish prosody should adhere to the artificial rules of lifelong engagement with the great poets, and with rhyme and meter derived from classical Latin and identifying the sources of that greatness, neither of other Latinate masters or should follow the inclina- which are regarded by Eliot as topics easily taught tions, inherent in native Anglo-Saxon verse forms, in formal academic settings. of naturally stressed lines that often resulted in blank—that is, unrhymed—verse. Eliot concludes “Apology for the Countess of Pembroke” that the debate, as contentious as it might seem to The second lecture, delivered on November 25, have been, nevertheless legitimized the use of natu- is titled “Apology for the Countess of Pembroke.” ral rhythms and unrhymed verse in English, pav- In it Eliot will make good on the promise made in ing the way for the genius of Shakespeare. Indeed, his first lecture to begin with an examination of in Eliot’s view, “our greatest [English] poetry” was the critical and poetical precepts that dominated the direct result of “the struggle between native the age of poets like Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Edmund and foreign elements.” Nor should the reader for- Spenser, and William Shakespeare. His thesis, as get how much of Eliot’s own poetry continued to well as his means of approaching it, already hav- be a rich mixture of native and foreign elements, ing been established in his introductory lecture, (JULES LAFORGUE and DANTE ALIGHIERI prominent Eliot gets right to business. In this second lecture, examples in the latter case), and of both comic and his aim will be to show that the critical mind and tragic touches, often on the same page, if not in the creative mind were not as much at odds in fact in the same line. the Elizabethan period as is generally thought, thus Sidney’s complaint that the drama of the day enabling him, he hopes, to advance eventually his lacked unity of feeling or sentiment, meanwhile, central thesis that in later periods the creative and is one with which Eliot tacitly agrees, because he the critical mind enjoyed an increasingly intimate imagines that at the time that Sidney lodged his relationship. complaint, 1580, the great plays of the Elizabethan

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period had yet to be written. It takes a “much more difficult to resolve the question of the use of poetry highly developed audience,” Eliot proposes, to deal in any society. Still. the example of a Sidney, for with pure comedy or pure tragedy, but again he whom Eliot expresses great disdain as a poet, dem- concludes that that very unity of feeling did in fact onstrates, in his view, that even in a time when it eventually emerge, not, however, in slavish obedi- appeared that the critical and the creative faculties ence to Sidney’s critical wishes that the two modes were in a state of major disconnect, there was in not be too freely mixed, but because Sidney touched fact a certain measure of complementary mutuality on improvements that “a maturing civilization to their common concerns. In other words, “you [such as Elizabethan England’s was] would make for cannot dissociate one group . . . from another . . . itself.” Here, Eliot is able to single out Shakespeare and say here is backwater, here mainstream.” as a poet who could turn the necessities forced on In the final analysis, the Elizabethan poets were him by the tastes and fancies of his own time to never dull, having been “galvanised into animation his own advantage, so that the “comic relief” in by the necessity to amuse . . . or starve.” Some- a Shakespeare tragedy, rather than weakening the where behind that closing observation has to be the effect, makes for contrasts that empower the tragic idea that those in the countess of Pembroke’s circle moment. Eliot, nevertheless, is pleased to see the never had to trouble their literary concerns with comic element disappear as Shakespeare matured. such mundane matters as sheer survival. Maybe Eliot then enters into a long passage regard- Eliot is implying that that is more of a difference ing the famous debate over the inviolability of the than one should ever have to mention, since every- dramatic unities, particularly those of time and one ought to know it. place, which are generally attributed to Aristotle “The Age of Dryden” but which Eliot argues were imported into England The exigencies of the typical academic year with largely from Italy. Eliot appreciates the prejudice for its holiday break between semesters aside, it should the unities, he claims, since it is one that theater come as no surprise that while only one week— audiences share to this day, but he astutely observes from December 2 to December 9, 1932—elapsed that too rigid a respect for them can only lead inevi- between the third lecture, “The Age of Dryden,” tably to their violation, as indeed became the case. and the fourth, “Coleridge and Wordsworth,” The countess of Pembroke to whom this lec- more than two months would elapse before the ture’s title alludes was the center of a literary circle fifth, “Shelley and Keats,” which was presented on that included such gentlemen of the court as Sid- February 17, 1933. Even less surprising should be ney and Sir Edmund Spenser. Theirs was a criti- the fact that Eliot would devote a single lecture to cism that emerged during a period when popular 150 years of English literary critical history, from literature was, as Eliot puts it, “mostly barbarous.” the time of the early 16th century and Ben Jon- But the real effect of her circle was not to alter the son to the mid-17th-century man of letters Sam- course of popular literature—as Eliot had pointed uel Johnson, but two full lectures to the 20 years out earlier, the advancing causes of civilization did of developments covered by the critical writings that by creating the rich literary environment out of the four English romantic poets: Samuel Tay- of which a comedian of the genius of a Ben Jonson lor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe could emerge—but to engender valuable critical Shelley, and John Keats. As anyone as astute as debate. Spenser’s verse contributed itself to the Eliot, and certainly as the learned members of his resolution of the other issue—the matter of verse audience, would be aware, the reason is that any technique—by influencing Christopher Marlowe’s critical tradition in English letters was more or less blank verse, from which John Milton’s verse line merely marking time between the richly conten- would eventually spring. tious period of critical debate and creative activity Eliot ends the lecture by observing that the that marked the Elizabethan period and the equally common confusion between the poet as a maker or animated period identified with romanticism that craftsperson and the poet as a philosopher makes it came about nearly 200 years letter.

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Eliot’s lecture on Dryden and Johnson, as a cial-sounding language of poetry characterized as result, devotes the first few pages to Ben Jonson, poetic diction that had been in vogue for the last the Jacobean playwright whose Discoveries or Tim- century or more. In this regard, Coleridge, with- bers, a so-called commonplace book or compen- out detracting from the natural vigor and vividness dium of odds and ends, constitutes a critical record of Wordsworth’s use of language, argued instead by virtue of its occasional insights into the tenor of that the distinction was not one between the kinds Jonson’s literary times and his interests as a writer. and levels of language that particular poets wrote Indeed, the attention that Eliot affords Dryden him- insomuch as one between levels of creative genius. self and then Johnson is rather scant, as if he can- These he distinguished as the imagination, whose not wait to get to a dicussion of Coleridge, whom products were fresh and original, and the fancy, he mentions virtually as frequently. Perhaps Eliot’s whose results, however interesting, were merely own regard for this age of Dryden is best summed repetitions of past performances. up in the disparaging comment on the criticism of While not trying to take sides, Eliot commends Joseph Addison, the 17th-century English essay- Wordsworth’s contribution more than Coleridge’s, ist and pamphleteer, whom he calls “a conspicu- perhaps because Wordsworth’s applies more to ous example of this embarrassing mediocrity, . . . poetic practice and Coleridge’s more to its evalua- a symptom of the age which he announced.” It is tion by others. On the issue of diction, then, Eliot no doubt due to that mediocrity, nevertheless, that wonders “what all the fuss was about,” finally com- the romanticism that ushered in the next century ing to rest on the astute observation that “it is not was so abundantly luscious with new ideas and atti- the business of the poet to talk like any class of tudes toward poetry and poetry writing that they society, but like himself.” Recognizing nevertheless are still being sorted out to this day. that there was a conscious social agenda on Word- sworth’s part to give voice to the lives and con- “Coleridge and Wordsworth” cerns of the economically and socially excluded, Within the 20 years or less separating Words- Eliot recognizes, too, that Wordsworth’s is a poetry worth’s publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, to that is better understood in the context of “the which he appended his famous preface in 1801, and purposes and social passions which animated its Coleridge’s publication, in 1817, of his Biographia author,” inspiring him to use the selection of so- Literaria, or Literary Biography, the sleeping giant of called real language. the English critical sensibility was awakened with Coleridge fares less well, perhaps because Eliot a series of violent starts that continue to trouble saw the elder poet as a man who squandered his poetry’s formerly dreamy waters into our own time. considerable talents. While he thus acknowledges Everything old was new again, but, as a later poet “the great importance” of the distinction that would put it and as Eliot certainly seems to feel, it Coleridge draws between the imagination and the was a terrible beauty that was born. fancy, in the final analysis Eliot sees it as amount- In the case of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the ing to little more than “the difference between good topics of his first lecture on romanticism, Eliot and bad poetry.” Providing such a critical tool is no was wise to confine himself to Coleridge’s doc- small accomplishment, of course, and Eliot does trine of fancy and imagination and to Wordsworth not gainsay that fact. Still, when he commends and Coleridge’s literary dialogue on the topic of Coleridge as a critical intellect from whom “there poetic diction, the two most common areas of is a good deal to learn,” it is not for any particular scholarly concern. Even so, Eliot is stepping into precept or contribution but for the new dimensions literary historical territory that was still undergo- of “a richness and depth, an awareness of complica- ing reassessment and revision. The debate here, tion” that Coleridge’s, and Wordsworth’s, delibera- such as it was, involved Wordsworth’s claim to be tions bring to English critical discourse. writing in “a selection of language really used by In recognition of the fact, then, that it is his men,” as opposed to the highly stylized and artifi- purpose in these lectures to show how attitudes

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toward the uses both of poetry and of criticism have as whether or not they are of a sufficient depth and reached their present state of development in Eng- experience to deserve one’s attention, and on this lish literature, Eliot concludes the present lecture score Eliot finds Shelley’s views lacking (as he will on that topic by handing the laurel to Coleridge, shortly do with the views or beliefs of a number despite his reservations regarding the applicabil- of his prominent contemporaries in After Strange ity of Coleridge’s actual conclusions. Thus, while Gods, three lectures that he would deliver at the Wordsworth in his own criticism “knew better University of Virginia in April). what he was about,” it was Coleridge who “did As for Keats, if Eliot gives this youngest and much more” by having brought “attention to the shortest-lived of the romantics what appears to be profundity of the philosophic problems into which the shortest shift, it is probably a sign of genuine the study of poetry can take us.” approbation on Eliot’s part. He calls him a great “Shelley and Keats” poet, no small compliment to a man who died at 26, and concludes the few pages that he devotes to him One philosophic problem, and one that he had by remarking that, unlike Wordsworth and Shelley, already touched on with a painstaking astuteness “Keats had no theory. . . . [H]e was merely about in his 1929 essay “Shakespeare and the Stoicism his business.” That that was the writing of poetry, of Seneca,” is the problem of poetry and belief. In and that Eliot had earlier commended Johnson for his next lecture, “Shelley and Keats,” which was treating poetry as poetry “and not another thing” delivered on February 17, 1933, Eliot traces that suggests how much, for Eliot, such an attention issue to a possible source, at least in English poetry, to the task of composing poetry was, too, no small by laying its modern manifestation squarely at the matter. So, then, it is indeed a high compliment to doorstep of Shelley. Anyone familiar with Shelley’s the purity of Keats’s intellect, which was no less poetry knows that he appears to be, in many of philosophic in Eliot’s view, to commend him pri- his poems, espousing a very particular social and marily for his attention to craftsmanship. political agenda, often couched in terms of human liberty and frequently cast in quasi-religious spiri- “Matthew Arnold” tual terms. This is very much in keeping with the Eliot’s sixth lecture, on the 19th-century poet and revolutionary fervor and enthusiastic passion for literary and social critic Matthew Arnold, was liberation from artificial constraints that typified delivered on March 3, 1933. Eliot was beginning the times, of course. However, Eliot seizes on it as to move into territory that was extremely close to the bane of Shelley’s poetry and criticism and thus home, and that perhaps accounts for the tone of as a pernicious influence on the view of poetry and complaint that he seems to adopt as he comments the poet that subsequently emerged in the popular on all Arnold’s efforts to create an intellectual cli- imagination. mate in which critical thinking and critical dis- The idea that the poet is both poet and philoso- course in English letters could properly flourish. pher, a purveyor of truths that have an extraliterary Indeed, considering that Eliot has been aiming all validity and impact, is, for Eliot, at the heart of the along to clarify the principles whereby both cre- confusion that is often made between poetry and ative and critical literary endeavors might be given belief to the detriment of the poetry. As Eliot puts their due and have been rightly balanced, it seems it, “Shelley both had views about poetry and made odd that he should spend most of this lecture on use of poetry for expressing views.” Furthermore, Arnold severely disparaging Arnold’s own consider- in Eliot’s view, Shelley’s views, his beliefs, have able accomplishments on behalf of the same goals. all of the unrealistic enthusiasm and none of the To those familiar with his work, Arnold remains practical values of an adolescent mind, explaining, a significant literary figure from the second half of for Eliot, why one is drawn to Shelley in youth but the 19th century. Rather like the young writers abandons him in maturity. It is not for Eliot a mat- of Eliot’s own generation, Arnold was a poet who ter of whether one agrees with the beliefs so much felt that not just his own creative career but that

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of his times had come to a dead end, repeating to the range of critical discourse of which English themes that had already been belabored by several letters might be capable, observing that Arnold preceding generations. Determined at least to set came to “an opinion of poetry different from that a course for a future generation’s own success with of any of his predecessors.” If Wordsworth and a reinspired creativity, he turned his hand entirely Shelley’s fault was that they too freely suggested to critical endeavors, hoping thereby to lay the a link between poetry and philosophy, one that groundwork for what he called a “current of fresh remains an undercurrent of criticism and of reader ideas” out of which a new poetry might emerge. He response to this day, Arnold felt that “the best sounds, indeed, quite a bit like a younger Eliot, call- poetry supersedes religion and philosophy.” This ing for a more objective and tradition-bound vision is very much in keeping with premises crucial to to guide poetic production, and for a new order of Eliot’s own position on the matter; he had noted balance between the critical and the creative. in his lecture on Shelley that he could not imagine It is possibly this genuine affinity between the how a poet could be a philosopher without being aims of the two poet-critics that makes the compe- “virtually two men”—a clear indication from Eliot tition between them, from Eliot’s end, seem more that the two are separate endeavors and ought to strident than objective. Arnold, who died the year be kept and treated that way. that Eliot was born, comes too close to fulfilling a However, if on this point Eliot gives Arnold his role that Eliot would like to claim for his own. In due, it is only to take it away at lecture’s end where any case, Arnold is, for Eliot, “the poet and critic he observes that Arnold was so engrossed in the of a false stability,” one for whom writing about question of “what . . . poetry was for, that he could poets merely “provided a pretext for his sermon,” not altogether see it for what it is.” To require of a man more likely to think about “the greatness of any critic that he or she do as much is, of course, poetry rather than . . . its genuineness.” While he a rather tall order, as Eliot himself had pointed should not be neglected, he nevertheless also dealt out in his inaugural lecture in the series. Perhaps, in “departments of thought for which his mind was nevertheless, Eliot reveals more of his antipathy unsuited and ill-equipped.” to the validity of Arnold’s methods and conclu- These kinds of charges against Arnold from sions when he cites him as well for a “conservatism Eliot begin to sound more and more like the sort which springs from lack of faith.” of criticisms that were lodged against Eliot him- Arnold had sought to make a religion of poetry, self as his own criticism ventured into areas that as it were, one that he saw as a consoling cul- were not wholly literary in nature. To be sure, the tural force and that would be “at bottom a criticism level of that criticism against his own tendency to of life.” Earlier in the lecture, Eliot had lacerated appear to be sermonizing and lecturing others in Arnold for that kind of a conviction. “That is a his own criticism would be ratcheted up after Eliot great way down,” Eliot says of the bottom. “At the delivered the condemnations of the moral values bottom of the abyss is what few ever see, . . . and it exhibited in the works of many of his own out- is not a ‘criticism of life.’ ” standing contemporaries in After Strange Gods. It is For the benefit of Eliot’s achieving that kind of reasonable to assume that Eliot could hardly have an observation, one worthy of the finest aspects of been unaware of the similarities between himself what Wordsworth and Coleridge would both call and Arnold and their critical methods, which was the philosophic mind, it is perhaps worth it as well a more or less scorched-earth policy. If Eliot seems to hear him flay a fellow conservative critic like to minimize those similarities here by pretending Arnold in public. While Eliot does not hold others that they do not exist, it may be for the purposes of to his faith and convictions, he does hold them, thereby throwing the hounds off his own scent by Arnold included, to a very high standard of what giving them Arnold to excoriate in his stead. faith and convictions ought to be if those are to be Be that as it may, Eliot does not deny that in the terms of the argument. So, then, Arnold’s faith his critical endeavors, Arnold added significantly in poetry alone just does not cut it for Eliot.

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“The Modern Mind” ards becomes the final focus of Eliot’s argument for In the seventh lecture, delivered two weeks later, keeping poetry poetry and belief belief. For himself, on March 17, 1933, Eliot finally gets into territory in the matter of poetry and religion, Eliot remains in which he is not so much expert as an original firmly of the mind that to confuse one for the other boarder: “The Modern Mind.” Eliot, after all, had or to substitute one for the other does no good had by this time a great deal to do with helping for either and even less good for the individual shape the literary manifestations of the modern or culture that has been thus confused. Richards’s mind in English letters, so it is safe to say that much dismissive proposition that religion is constituted of of his spin on the matter is valuable for his own “pseudo-statements” (ideas that sound good but are proximity to the phenomenon. Whether or not a intellectually meaningless otherwise) that are no new kind of mind had emerged on the cultural longer accepted as true is, for Eliot, itself a pseudo- scene, enough critical ink had been spent on the statement in its attempt to preserve the emotions fact that one apparently had emerged for Eliot to of religion to the exclusion of the beliefs that have get right down to business. historically given them context. He turns back to Arnold once more, giving him At the opposite extreme, meanwhile, is the credit for an insistence on a moral valuation in idea that poetry is a handmaiden to the powers literature that suited his own time, but now, Eliot that be, a resurgence of sorts of Sidney’s notion argues, a greater clarity and more exacting lan- that poetry was an adornment in which the nation guage are needed if criticism is to respond to the could take pride. Eliot identifies this idea as one self-consciousness that typifies the modern mind. being put forward in his time by the Russian Com- Out of those adjustments, being made by indi- munist ideologue Leon Trotsky. An ideology of a viduals such as I. A. Richards and, presumably, social materialism was just beginning to find fertile Eliot himself, should come a critical apparatus for ground through the emergence of the global politi- learning “to distinguish the appreciation of poetry cal policies of the Soviet Union, and with it was from theorising about poetry.” The danger is inher- emerging a new aesthetics to support state policy. ent in the times themselves, for modernism as a In Eliot’s view, the only difference from Richards’s mindset “comprehends every extreme and degree ideas, although a major one, is that, according to of opinion.” The challenge of achieving clarity and the communist model, poetry should serve the exactness of thought and wording in such a liberal larger purposes of state bureaucracies. Between the environment is not an easy one, nor one to be one extreme and the other—Richards’s substitute taken lightly. for religion and Trotsky’s service to the political In fact, Eliot fears that when it comes to the topic community—Eliot sees little difference, since each of poetry, there is not much agreement beyond the requires poetry to be something other than what notion that it is something of, or has some, impor- it is, even if, as Eliot frequently admits, that can tance. Furthermore, it puzzles Eliot that an age that never quite be resolved. Each model, nevertheless, has produced so much poetry should be debating attempts to make it something less. questions about its nature, and he sees that prob- Finally, Eliot mentions yet another modality by lem as one going back to the entire matter of peo- which the so-called modern mind seeks to shape ple’s having made poetry a substitute for religion, a a view of poetry suitable to its own purposes and problem that began with a poet and critic such as needs. This last one comes from a book titled Shelley and culminated in Arnold’s critical stance. Prayer and Poetry by Abbé Brémond, in which he Now Eliot adamantly rejects the quasi-religious seeks to identify poetry as a sort of inspired mysti- notion that “poetry is capable of saving us,” an cism. Eliot will have none of that either, arguing utterance of Richards’s, who thanks the influ- that any theory of poetry, first off, only relates to ence of Arnold for the insight. Indeed, because of what poetry the theorizer knows and enjoys and, what Eliot views as the “intense religious serious- furthermore, that any theory that tries to intimate ness” of Richards’s attitude toward poetry, Rich- a close relationship between poetry and a religious

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or social agenda thereby limits poetry, as if by some invariably fallen on the side of the poem as a total ersatz legislative process. experience, one not limited in a person’s ability to “Conclusions” evaluate it only to the statement that it makes on a particular topic or theme. Anyone who had heard Eliot launches into his eighth and last lecture, or read this series of lectures, especially beginning appropriately titled “Conclusions” and delivered on with the fifth lecture, “Shelley and Keats,” should March 31, by answering the question that must now understand why Eliot takes such a stand. The have been on everyone else’s mind by the close tendency to search for a meaning in a poem lends of the seventh lecture: What is Eliot’s theory of itself to what Eliot sees to be the pernicious ten- poetry? He does not mince his words: “I have no dency, in recent times, to confuse poetry with phi- general theory of my own.” Nevertheless, he feels losophy and with religion, a confusion made by that it is an obligation to be on guard against theo- both poets and critics alike. ries that claim either too much or too little for The position that Eliot takes now is clearly poetry and to recognize that there may be never- stated, and it is that meaning is overrated. Indeed, theless a variety of uses for poetry without insisting Eliot likens it to be the bit of meat that the burglar that poetry must be subservient to them. puts out for the dog, distracting the reader’s more The reader may recall that that is virtually where intuitive sensibilities while the poem does its “real Eliot’s survey of the uses of poetry and the uses work” on the reader. The burglar metaphor should of criticism began—with the contentious debate not be carried too far, or one may well begin to among the critics, and between critics and prac- wonder just what Eliot thinks that real work is. ticing poets, that marked the Elizabethan period. Otherwise, Eliot’s point is well taken. If all the poet Theory, in other words, should serve the reader’s wishes to do is render a particular meaning, then enjoyment of poetry, not overpower and master it there are equally effective and perhaps even more for its own sake. So, then, Eliot also concludes that effective ways to do it in prose. he is not necessarily even in conflict with Abbé That brings Eliot to the next part of his conclu- Brémond’s point of view. For one thing, poetry sion: There are other valid means of expressing writing can be akin to or even enhance what is thoughts and feelings in words, so poetry must per- typically called a mystical experience, but, Eliot mit a particular and unique way of rendering those insists for his own sake now, he would hesitate to thoughts and feelings. This idea partakes a bit of suggest that that describes all poetry. Indeed, he Coleridge’s distinction between poetry and prose, observes that “the way in which poetry is written is which rested ultimately on the writer of each hav- not . . . any clue to its value.” After using his own ing a specific aim in mind to begin with. For the poetry as an example of how a particular line of poet, it was to convey not meaning, or “matter of verse might find its way several times over into a fact,” as Coleridge calls it, but pleasure. By that, poet’s work without any direct way of knowing how Coleridge meant that poetry makes an appeal to or why it does, Eliot asserts that there is much that all of the reader’s senses and faculties, not just is not and very likely cannot be known about the the rational mind or moral intellect. While Eliot sources of poetic output except to say that every does not make a similar distinction himself, it is theory regarding same, up to his own time, has likely that it underlies his assertion that “any- some particular defects, all of which inadvertently thing that can be said as well in prose can be said aim toward expecting “too much, rather than too better in prose.” little, of poetry.” As might be expected, Eliot saves his most inter- One of the most important issues that Eliot esting observations for last. The entire purpose of tackles in his parting shots is the entire question this series of lectures has been not only to trace of meaning in poetry and, ultimately, its relative creative and critical developments in English let- importance as a constituent element. Whenever ters from Shakespeare’s to contemporary time but he had come to this issue in the past, Eliot had to comment on the shifts in expectations that have

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been made of each over those intervening centu- which he makes passing reference in this closing ries. Of criticism, Eliot asks that it be less restrictive lecture. in its definition of poetry while at the same time it Eliot would follow his own advice to a consider- restrict more severely the increasing demands that able degree for the remainder of his literary career. it has been making that poetry function as a tool Within a year’s time, indeed, Eliot provided the for social order and spiritual well-being. Of poetry, poetic text for The Rock, a religious pageant play, he seems finally to believe that little more can be and within another year he completed his first orig- asked of it except that it continue to be written inal verse drama, Murder in the Cathedral. By 1959, in an age that behaves as if it has little use for any another four verse dramas will have flowed from his species of discourse that serves no immediately rec- pen, all of them successful productions on the Lon- ognizable social function. don stage and still part of the standard repertoire. The poet, too, Eliot observes, is especially aware For now, he brings his remarks to a close by of this crisis. As the confused condition of the observing, perhaps only slightly coyly, that for all modern world calls for a more and more complex the risks to a personal peace of mind that the poet response from the poet, so does the most respon- runs “for the pains of turning blood into ink,” he sive poetry come to be characterized as obscure may as well be willing to try to please a live audi- and difficult (Eliot’s own having perennially been a ence exactly as if he were a music hall comedian, candidate for such charges). To that valid criticism if the result would nevertheless be “a play which Eliot offers an equally valid justification, that read- is real poetry.” In his concluding paragraph, Eliot ers ought to be glad that poets nowadays express reiterates that he has not, in his lectures, tried to themselves at all. He adds the further observation define poetry and has rather insisted that there be that much of the difficulty and obscurity of mod- a variety of poetry and that it not be defined by its ernist texts may be more a matter of reputation uses. If, he says, poetry ultimately does little more than of fact. than help others consider those very real features of Still, he is willing to offer a way of solving the day-to-day human existence that most of us spend entire problem of the tenuous relationship between most of our time evading, then, in his view, it has the modern poet and the modern readership for achieved some purpose, even if that purpose seems poetry. The solution that he proposes is that “the not to have any immediately assignable or recogniz- most useful poetry” for his own time would be able social use. one that “could cut across all the present stratifi- cations of public taste”—stratifications that may CRITICAL COMMENTARY be themselves merely signs of social disintegra- No doubt because the lectures of The Use of Poetry tion. This “most useful” poetry, he suggests, would and the Use of Criticism were presented to an appre- be dramatic poetry, that is, verse written for the ciative and sympathetic audience at such a leisurely stage, and he further argues that not only the “ideal pace over a long period, but in keeping with the medium,” but also the “most direct means of social rigorous academic and scholarly standards required ‘usefulness’ ” for poetry is the theater because it per- by the venue, Eliot achieves a neat and orderly sur- mits levels of significance to persist simultaneously. vey of modern English literature. Much that he says Eliot does not deny that this may be too simplistic is not new, although that does not mean that it is a solution, for the poet would then be forced to tai- not necessarily original. Where a reader can benefit lor not only his verse but his themes, such as they most from Eliot’s observations, however, is where are, to the wide variety of individuals in a typical he touches on the uses and benefits of poetry in the theatrical audience. The age of Shakespeare comes present time. to mind, of course, during which many of the best There he speaks with a great deal of personal poets wrere playwrights. But so does the fact that experience and reflection behind him, and with Eliot had already experimented with a stage play an authority that, while it may not be unassailable, in verse, the abandoned “Sweeney Agonistes,” to is nevertheless inspired by an impeccable integrity

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and constant practice. He has for his credentials SYNOPSIS the fact that he has been devoted to the cause that Eliot offers an innocent enough agenda for the work he takes up, the cause of poetry, perhaps the high- at hand: “What interests me here are those charac- est but unquestionably the most misunderstood teristics of Virgil which render him peculiarly sym- of the arts, underrated where it ought most to be pathetic to the Christian mind.” Eliot begins his cherished, and overrated in arenas where it can do examination of those characteristics of Virgil by the least good. turning to the fourth eclogue, celebrated because, Eliot’s continuing and increasingly emphatic on the subsequent emergence of Christianity in insistence that readers and critics alike avoid the the former territories of the Roman Empire (that pitfall of demanding of poetry that it be belief or phenomenon depended in large part, too, on the philosophy forms no small part of his own criti- extent, influence, and common culture that that cal agenda. Whatever human needs poetry may Empire entailed), many a learned Christian com- address, Eliot knows that it cannot address them mentator saw in Virgil a prophet, albeit a pagan successfully and, as a result, service those needs one, who had foretold the birth of Christ. if succeeding generations of poets and of readers Eliot is not convinced of that; as he sees it, if begin to demand a poetry that is nothing less than a prophet is one who has knowledge of what he is bad poetry and worse philosophy. That is exactly speaking, the first-century B.C. Roman poet Virgil, what he fears is beginning to happen on several most renowned for his epic poem “foretelling” the fronts in the present-day culture. The pressures founding of Rome, the Aeneid, was no prophet at of psychology to make poetry and poets into case all. However, as Eliot goes on to explain, “if the studies, of the state to confuse poetry and poets word ‘inspiration’ is to have any meaning, it must with public relations, and of scholarship to make mean just this, that the speaker or writer is uttering all of it into elaborately high-stakes puzzles—these something which he does not wholly understand.” are forces doing more to shape the public percep- It is in that sense, then, that Eliot will accede that tion of the uses of poetry than the poets themselves the poet “need not know what his poetry will come can ever hope to counteract. For Eliot, bad poetry to mean to others,” any more than a prophet needs is poetry that aims to prove or to make a point to understand his utterances’ full meaning either. rather than to give verbal shape to the timeless Eliot, then, is more interested in the fact that, human impulses that make us desire to prove and thanks to the sanctions that the fourth eclogue to make points. The distance between the one and earned Virgil, his writings were deemed to be suit- the other is greater than any measurable distance able reading for Christians, thus opening the way in the universe, and no critical mind can ever suc- for his influence in the Christian world. cessfully analyze or account for that distance. It is, Eliot starts the main body of his essay with a nevertheless, a real distance, and Eliot’s point is rather dry and clinical analysis of the Roman vir- that we recognize that. tues that, thanks to Virgil’s influence, may have been carried over as hospitable to Christian values as well. Eliot focuses on three, using the original Latin in each case—labor, pietas, and fatum. “Virgil and the Christian The first is rather obvious, but it is more than World” (1951) just the idea that there is dignity in labor or work. Eliot points out that Virgil most bespeaks the dig- This essay was first presented as a radio address nity of labor in the Georgics, his poem on husbandry over the BBC in 1951 and then published in that or farming. This devotion to working the soil or, if broadcaster’s magazine, The Listener. Eliot sub- one be a landlord, maintaining one’s rural estate sequently reprinted it in the 1956 collection On in good order, reflects for Eliot the principle that Poetry and Poets. the life and health of the nation and the people are

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tied to the land. In his own time, Eliot had become Thus, Eliot can happily conclude that “in the devoted to the Agrarian Movement that originated sense in which a poet is a philosopher . . . Vir- among a handful of American poets, Allen Tate gil is the greatest philosopher of ancient Rome,” prominent among them, in the 1930s. The idea one “uniquely near to Christians” because of the that the wholesome industry of agricultural pursuits virtues that he espouses. Virgil, Eliot claims, was would keep vital the traditional values on which alone among the poets of antiquity as a person “for even a modern nation-state such as England or whom the world made sense, for whom it had dig- America is founded is based on Christian principles nity and order, and for whom, as for no one before of simplicity and the common good, but Eliot finds his time except the Hebrew prophets, history had a source for those values in Virgil. meaning.” Pietas means duty in Latin. There, too, Eliot sees Virgil notching up the expected notion of the CRITICAL COMMENTARY Roman’s sense of duty to his family and state. In Those are words of high praise for Virgil, and the Aeneid, the hero Aeneas is defined by his duti- Eliot shares the high esteem in which his own fulness, being called “pius Aeneas,” or “the dutiful poetic master, the great 14th-century Floren- Aeneas.” Such a tactic on Virgil’s part, however, tine poet DANTE ALIGHIERI, held Virgil and his does not simply elevate a sense of devotion and worldview. Eliot, however, may have extraliterary duty as a son and citizen to level of that single issues in mind as he praises Virgil’s accomplish- characteristic which most defines heroic action. ments. For most of his adult life, in one form As Eliot points out, Aeneas’s sense of duty is most or another, Eliot had been fighting to maintain demonstrated by Virgil in his hero’s being pious the coherence of Christian Europe in the face toward the gods as well. “[I]n no way does his of 20th-century secularism. In fact it would be piety appear more clearly,” Eliot insists, “than hard to imagine him saying anything less with when the gods afflict him.” If viewed as Chris- regard to the singular significance of Virgil and tian humility rather than a pagan Roman virtue, his Roman classic in terms of what that poet rep- Aeneas can be seen to evince again values and resented to the cause that Eliot was constantly attitudes that have come to be regarded as typi- defending—the order and right thinking that he cally Christian. saw embodied in orthodoxy. Finally there is fatum, which Eliot would rather This debate had come to center itself around the define as destiny than as fate. The older Greek larger issue of the place and importance of tradition heroes were the victims of fate, whereas Aeneas in the face of the constant, rapid, and dramatic has a choice to accept or reject, through his accep- change that, in turn, characterized the modern tance or rejection of his duty to the gods, the des- scene, with its secularist materialism and attendant tiny that the gods have prepared for him. It is not consumerism. The old order was changing but, in difficult for Eliot to sound convincing in seeing this Eliot’s view, not being replaced by anything equally attribute of Virgil’s hero, too, as one betokening as viable or meaningful. the Christian concepts of free will and the accep- In prose works from as early as the 1923 essay tance of God’s will as a conscious choice engaging “The Function of Criticism” to as late as his book- the whole person. length diatribe, After Strange Gods, which was sub- Eliot would be the first to admit that the Rome titled A Primer of Modern Heresy and published in for which Aeneas sacrificed himself is not the ruth- 1934, Eliot had pretty much excoriated those whom lessly real Roman Empire of historical fame, but a he perceived to be representing the enemy camp, purely literary construct. That, too, is Eliot’s point, either in their professed thinking or their creative however. The Aeneid’s Rome is, rather, “something endeavors. His poetry turned more and more to which exists because Virgil imagined it.” Eliot con- the theme of preserving or, at least, respecting the tinues: “It remains an ideal, but one which Virgil past as well, notably in his choruses from The Rock, passed on to Christianity to develop and to cherish.” another effort of the early 1930s. By 1939, he had

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softened his views enough to present them in more poetry in English of the 20th century, a poem so reasonable, far less strident, but no less contentious celebrated even in its own time that it generated a terms, publishing his Idea of a Christian Society. By whole slew of legends, misinformation, and general 1944, in an essay titled “What Is a Classic?,” Eliot myths about its origins, intentions, and impact on had settled on Virgil’s as the exemplary literary clas- the contemporary scene of postwar Europe in the sic, and he was at that time preparing the preliminary early 1920s, a scene of which the poem has by now essays from which his Notes towards the Definition of come to be regarded as a perfect reflection. Surely, Culture would eventually emerge in 1948. It would if nothing else, the notion that it is barely readable, appear, then, that by 1952 all of these various but let alone intelligible, is a part of The Waste Land’s intricately related parts of a cause that had been reputation among readers. No one would dispute occupying Eliot’s attention and energies as an essay- that The Waste Land stands among the handful ist for much of his adult life should finally have set- of literary works from this time—other examples tled on presenting Virgil as the archetypal Christian including most notably Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by poet in the very process of proving, elegantly and Eliot’s close friend, literary confidante, and erst- astutely, that he is no such thing. while mentor, the expatriate American poet EZRA None of this has been said to disparage Eliot’s POUND, and Ulysses, the highly experimental, project. Having seen Europe’s modern secular states innovative, and epic novel by Irish novelist JAMES succumb to an armed conflict, World War II, that JOYCE—that typified modernism in English lan- had consumed 50 million lives and immeasurable guage literature, both from the point of view of its treasure, Eliot could have done far worse, by the most energetic practitioners and its most ardent early 1950s, than recommend to his fellow citizens detractors. the model of the pagan Roman poet Virgil and his Modernists such as Eliot, Pound, and Joyce were virtues of hard work; duty to family, community, obsessed with the idea that the literary artist could and God; and the acceptance of immortal destiny create a text in any medium, be it the novel, poetry, as facts, not of history, but of life. or a theatrical piece, that would freely and enthu- siastically break all the rules and fly in the face of centuries of conventional wisdom and traditions, all for the sake of creating equally enduring works Waste Land, The (1922) of literature that did more than just comment on human experience—that, instead, could effectively Nothing could have prepared either the literary mirror its most obscure psychological and spiritual world in general or the curious reader who had been sources and dimensions. Other motives and issues following Eliot’s career to date for the publication, in compelled these younger artists as well, of course. late 1922, of The Waste Land. Published in October The world had changed radically between 1800 of that year in Eliot’s own literary review, the Crite- and 1900, a century that was and continues to rion, in London and in the Dial in New York, it was be regarded as an age of revolution in virtually then released in book form in December of that year all fields of human endeavor and on all fronts of by the New York publishing house Boni & Liveright. human concerns. Efforts to revivify or revolutionize Virtually overnight The Waste Land became a focal the arts coincided with these other efforts. What point and rallying cry for the culture wars of its time they themselves called modernism was the response and brought Eliot a celebrity and iconic status that of many of those involved with creative activities, he would never live down and, within a short time, particularly among the young, to these very real would be adamantly refusing to live up to. shifts, some of them quite cataclysmic, in what is called, for lack of a more inclusive term, the human BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS condition. On the other side of what was then and Eliot’s The Waste Land is undoubtedly the most possibly remains a great divide were those who saw renowned if not notorious literary achievement in nothing but anarchy and chaos, nihilism and irrev-

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erence, tastelessness and arrogance, in those who of trailblazer from whom a more somber and sober were practicing modernist techniques and utilizing poetry would emerge with “Gerontion” in 1919, as modernist ways of thinking that eschewed authori- if he had learned to bring the frivolous erudition of tarianism and absolutes and advocated in their the quatrains to bear with the power of the same place relativistic ways of thinking and perceiving sort of tragic vision that had given “Prufrock” and reality. “Rhapsody” their deserved but unassuming gravity. From his debut on the literary stage in the mid- For those who despised the newfangled ways 1910s, Eliot was unmistakably one who had cast his that modernism seemed to be espousing and to lot with these newer ways of thinking and of defin- take a certain iconoclastic relish in embodying, The ing the relationship among the writer, the work, Waste Land was the last straw, the arch case in and the reader. In his most famous early poems, point for the argument that, with the modernist among which “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- movement, serious literature, and poetry in par- frock” and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” stand out ticular, had reached a low point in its development, to this day as exceptionally new and original works, one from which it might never fully recover. The Eliot showed that he was far more interested in subsequent publication of the poem in book form expressing his time and place, its moral and social with notes, of all things, appeared to them to clinch dilemmas and inner anxieties, than in carrying on the argument for good. What kind of poet could business as usual. Rather than becoming an artist imagine that his work needed notes in order for a of the beautiful, it was clear as he attempted to reader to be able to understand it, some wondered, translate the vision and attitudes of the French claiming that the notes only made any attempt symbolists into contemporary American poetry, toward comprehending The Waste Land worse, not that his aim was to be an artist of the real, even better. Indeed, what with James Joyce having virtu- if that often meant the sordid, the squalid, and ally simultaneously published in Ulysses what, from the boring. Whether it was for these reasons or for the point of view of even sophisticated readers, was other characteristics that Eliot’s poetry exhibited, an unreadable novel, many were inclined to begin his intentional efforts to “resuscitate the dead art of to believe that the entire modernist movement was poetry,” words from Pound’s Mauberley, led Pound an elaborate hoax, a private joke executed by a few to proclaim Eliot, in a letter to Poetry editor Harriet dozen overeducated and pretentiously self-absorbed Monroe, a poet who had “made himself modern all literary snobs. on his own.” But there were as many, if not more, who For a while, it seemed, however, as if Eliot might embraced the poem for what they took it to be say- not be able to continue to live up to this reputation. ing about their times, times that had just witnessed The quatrain poems that, with their iconoclas- the conclusion of a four-year war that had virtually tic and sophisticated tone, succeeded these early brought European civilization to its knees. This was efforts may not have been quite up to the same a civilization that had brought the world unheard mark of originality and meaningful innovations as of technological and commercial progress at the the poetry composed in 1910–11, primarily during expense of their own populations and of the rights Eliot’s Paris sojourn. In these later poems, Eliot’s of other peoples around the globe to self-determina- efforts to surprise and puzzle his readers with a pet- tion and self-government. The catastrophe of World ulant cleverness and an excessive erudition, includ- War I, or the Great War, had compelled Pound to ing the use of obscure, Greek-based medical terms label Europe “an old bitch gone in the teeth.” What and other multisyllabic words that were more likely price glory, after all, if that quest for glory had come to be found in use in the academy than in the liter- to this: a Europe in ruins, if not quite literally, as ary salon, may all too often have overwhelmed the was the case in many areas, at least economically reasonably serious themes underlying the poetry of and in terms of the morale of its people? works such as “The Hippopotamus” and “Whispers Oddly enough, both the Eliot poem and the on Immortality.” Still, Eliot remained something Joyce novel won as much favor as recrimination

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for the uses that each author made of Europe’s of composition can all contribute to finding in the classical past, although on reflection it is perhaps finished poem one of the most incredibly conceived not odd at all. In Joyce’s case, he retold in modern works of literature ever composed. terms the epic homeward journey of Homer’s hero, In his effort to resist modeling his poem on Odysseus. In Eliot’s case, allusions to sources as any previous work while simultaneously paying an sundry as Sophocles and DANTE ALIGHIERI, WIL- oblique homage to the accumulated accomplish- LIAM SHAKESPEARE and Ovid, make up much of the ments of past epochs, Eliot created a work that is poetry of The Waste Land. a tribute neither to the past nor to the present and For those who were imagining that Europe had certainly not to European literature in particular or just gone to hell in a handbasket, the invidious to culture in general, but to the human imagination comparisons that Eliot and Joyce seemed to be mak- and its capacity to make order out of the chaotic and ing between the great literary monuments of the random. That is the struggle of art in any age, but it past and the diminished scope for original creative seemed to be a more obvious and compelling struggle vision in the present were seen as a fitting critique during the time that Eliot and his generation were of a civilization that had fallen into a cultural and both formulating and executing those masterworks spiritual decline. On the other hand, those who still of literary modernism among which The Waste Land held out hope for the future lamented the fact that shall remain a spectacularly shining example, albeit all that modernism appeared to be able to produce an occasionally blinding one as well. were works that looked back in sorrow, mimicking The War past triumphs but unable to equal them. The sides may not have been quite as neatly divided as this, Sometimes scholarship does not have to uncover but there were sides and the debate was furious, the obscure for fear of appearing to belabor the even if it was carried on mainly in the pages of little obvious. That is certainly the case with the pro- magazines, as the major reviews of those days were foundly devastating impact that World War I had called, and in university classrooms. on all aspects of European civilization. The war’s Within time, however, both works took their causes remain as transparent as its effects, and nei- places as literary masterpieces that, like the great ther paint a pretty picture of human nature or of works of ages past, tell the future something sig- the sorry consequences of greed, pride, and bla- nificant of their own times, even if the times them- tant stupidity. One might question the notion that selves did not necessarily realize or recognize as Europe had indeed produced a civilization in the much to be the case. It did not take long for Dante first place, for it was the ferocity, destructiveness, to become the voice of the Renaissance, for Shake- and futility of the war that inevitably gave rise to speare to be seen as a literary genius of world- the disillusionment that the catastrophe of the war wide importance, or for Joyce to be widely read and ultimately engendered in the young, who also were highly respected. those who fought and died in it. It was this same The Waste Land, however, remains a problem disillusionment that the literature of the 1920s, The text. While no one would deny its importance as a Waste Land a notable example in this regard, would literary document, the precise nature of its achieve- reflect, according to some. ment as a work of literature, pure and simple, A brief overview of the causes and consequences remains elusive for the very reason that the poetry of the war will expose the severely dissipating remains difficult to read and is seldom rewarding impact that it had on any and all notions of cul- for the novice reader. Some modest preparation, tural and racial superiority that had been running nevertheless, can make The Waste Land not only rampant among Europeans up to that moment. accessible but challengingly so. To understand the The popular imagination would have it that the times that produced it, the place that it occupies outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 was in Eliot’s development to this point in his poetic the direct result of the assassination by a Serbian career, the poetry’s sources, and Eliot’s methods nationalist of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, heir

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to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the way. A modern phenomenon came into being: his wife, Sophia, in Sarajevo, the capital of Serbia. world war. The catastrophic irony was that the very An event of that order was a long time in both self-congratulatory pomposity that had led up to the coming and the making, however. As awful the outbreak of conflict now only underscored the as such an act of political terrorism was, it was war’s relentless brutality, and that irony was itself only the famous spark that ignited the tinderbox ironical. that Europe had become in the century since the In earlier works such as HEART OF DARKNESS, final defeat of Bonaparte at Waterloo in such authors as the Polish-born English novelist 1815. It had been a century during which the four JOSEPH CONRAD had already borne witness to the great European powers—England, France, Russia, moral travesty of 19th-century European colonial and Austria-Hungary—jockeyed for military domi- and cultural imperialism, but so pervasive were its nance and colonial and commercial one-upsman- self-assured successes that the moral bankruptcy ship in a game of constantly shifting alliances and that it portended seemed nevertheless to defy easy treaties amid bureaucratic and palace intrigues. By analysis or even satire. The legal impunity and moral the last third of the 19th century, those four powers immunity with which the European ruling classes had been joined by Italy and Germany, which only manipulated public opinion and the fate of nations recently had unified into the modern nations that worldwide gave rise to a new, cynical, and skeptical we know today. An already stiff competition for literature, like the French symbolist movement, a territorial and market expansion only became that literature that was all the vogue among the avant- much stiffer. garde during Eliot’s youth and that would become To put it simply, the European powers started the seedbed for the modernism that had then sub- stepping on each other’s toes no matter where they sequently burst on the literary scene on both sides turned and whenever they turned. Ultimatums and of the Atlantic, but particularly in Europe, in the threats were made with an ever-increasing belliger- prewar years. If literary artists had found it difficult ency. Pledges of support and mutual defense were to grapple effectively with the contradictions of val- sworn to as freely. Sooner or later, someone or ues and moral paradoxes that had led up to the war, something was bound to slip up. however, they were to find it far more difficult to The bullets that killed Franz-Ferdinand and his deal with the hypocrisy and fanatical nationalistic consort in 1914 had been fired nearly a century patriotism that the war itself produced. Indeed, so before when in 1820 the same great powers had immune had prewar European self-aggrandizement carved up post-Napoleonic Europe among them- become to the normal community channels of criti- selves at the Congress of Vienna. Along with the cism and correction such as the arts, the church, royal couple, the same assassin’s bullets struck and legitimate political dissidence, all of which as down a century of posturing that had convinced institutions had been either neutralized or radical- Europe if not the world that theirs was the most ized into ineffectiveness, that it would finally take successful and refined civilization that history had nothing less than a conflict on the scale of World seen to that time. When hostilities finally broke War I to expose the essential corruption of vision out in August 1914 on a continent that had been at the heart of European cultural arrogance and put legendarily teetering on the brink of war for more one abrupt stop to the whole awful show. than a decade, no one was particularly surprised, In a manner of speaking, the war unraveled all although nearly everyone was convinced that the the lies that a civilization had been telling itself and conflict would be over in a matter of months if the rest of the world for decades, perhaps even cen- not weeks. turies, and left in their place only emptiness. The Germany and Austria-Hungary quickly found rationales of a racial, managerial, and entrepre- themselves allied against England, France, Russia, neurial superiority by which Europe had justified and Italy, and it was well nigh impossible for other, colonizing and otherwise exploiting to some degree lesser European nations and powers to stay out of or another most of the known world from the 16th

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century onward were now revealed to be nothing cable news channels of our own time, required more than a justification for those old standbys, reams of lurid copy and appropriately graphic pho- greed and territorial expansion, that simply could tographs of the war in order to sell newspapers. not, when the true trial came, pan out. Europe’s In one final, capping irony, when the war finally vaunted superiority had been forever blasted. ended after more than four years, on November Part of the value of The Waste Land, as its title 11, 1918, it was not in any emphatic victory for suggests, is that its complexities are intended some- one side or the other, but in an armistice, a truce what to mirror, portray, and embody this emptiness of sorts (although Germany would be penalized that the war left behind; but there was far more to with reparations and other territorial and economic the aftermath of the war than that. There was also sanctions that eventually would lead to a renewal the bitter irony that such a bloodbath had achieved, of hostilities a mere 20 years later in what his- by demolishing the myth of European greatness, no tory now knows as World War II). Fussell sum- other end than that. That it had left not opportu- marized all these results and their impact on ways nities for new beginnings but only emptiness and of thinking in the remainder of the 20th century despair in the place of that previous self-confident in this manner: “there seems to be one dominating arrogance. As much was an irony that not even force of modern understanding; . . . it is essentially art could successfully engage without seeming to ironic; and . . . it originates largely in the appli- distort itself as well. That is, great art, be it literary cation of mind and memory to the events of the or musical or plastic, can portray great tragedy or Great War.” great comedy, but it cannot easily portray small- From start to finish, the war had had as devas- mindedness, futility, and meaninglessness. A sense tating an effect on literary artists and their hope of that withering loss of all perspective and purpose and belief in the future as on any other members is exactly what the war had engendered in those of the communities affected by it. In a letter com- who survived it, particularly those of a more cre- posed shortly after Great Britain’s entry into the ative spirit like Eliot’s. A now-famous study pub- war in August 1914, the American novelist Henry lished in 1973, Paul Fussell’s The Great War and James, who had been residing in England for most Modern Memory, makes an extremely convincing of his adult life, spoke for the dashed hopes of many case that the cultural catastrophe that the war both when he wrote that “the plunge of civilization into was for and wreaked on Europe changed the very the abyss of blood and darkness . . . gives away the ways in which poets wrote about war and in which whole long age during which we have supposed the the public perceived its purpose and results. world to be . . . gradually bettering.” Ultimately, he Battles were fought in which casualties in the declared the prospects of the cultural and social tens of thousands were produced in a matter of disaster that the war was forecasting for Europe to days if not hours. The front in the West became be “too tragic for any words.” Though already in his stalemated and shifted sometimes only in terms of 70s, James was so moved by the cataclysmic strug- yards over months on end. Rats in the no-man’s- gle that then ensued as the result of Britain and the land between the heavily fortified trenches became rest of “civilized” Europe’s waging total war that, to as large as cats and dogs from feasting on the dead signal his moral support for the British cause in the and wounded who had to be left where they lay. conflict, he became, and, in 1915, died, a British There was chemical warfare, so horrible a means subject. of waging war that it has been condemned and Eliot, for his own part, was a man young enough outlawed as battlefield ordinance among civilized for military service in a world where young men nations ever since. All of these gruesome details, who were not supporting the war effort in some meanwhile, were communicated willy-nilly and manner or another were becoming more and more nearly instantaneously by a popular press that had scarce commodities on the so-called home front. become a major competitive industry in the last He had been in London more or less permanently part of the 19th century and, so, like the 24-hour since the summer of 1914 as an Oxford student

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and later a figure on the London literary scene, powers that waged the war (seven if the Ottoman part-time Latin teacher, and bank clerk, but he had Turkish Empire is included), three suffered irrepa- remained a U.S. citizen, and the United States was rable fissures in their traditional power structures. a neutral power for most of the war years. (Late The longtime hereditary rulers of Germany, Aus- in 1918, Eliot would try to enlist for service with tria-Hungary, and Russia were sent packing. the U.S. armed forces but ran into so much red The old order had vividly, demonstrably, finally tape that he abandoned the effort.) Neverthe- changed, even if it had nearly brought the whole less, there can be no doubt that he was personally precarious structure of civilized society down with affected by an epic conflict that was laying waste it. In the aftermath of such a stunningly unan- his own generation. Lost to the future would be ticipated changing of the guard, modernism, with such brilliant and promising young thinkers, art- its emphasis on making the arts new, was none ists, and poets as T. E. Hulme, Henri Gaudier- too surprised to find that it had been waiting in Brzeska, and Wilfrid Owen. the wings since the turn of the century if not ear- In December 1917, as the war stretched into its lier and was more than ready to tackle the task of fourth year and the United States had by then been chronicling this new moment in European, perhaps dragged into the European conflict as well, Eliot even human history. No one will deny that Eliot’s could comment in a letter to his father on how much The Waste Land, a poem based on the ancient myth the lives of everyone around him, himself included, of a wounded king and a blasted land that is seek- had been “so swallowed up in the one great tragedy ing a questing hero who will heal its deadly illness, that one almost ceases to have personal experiences holds an honored and most telling place in that or emotions, and such as one has seem so unimport- chronicle. ant.” Eliot concluded the thought by remarking nev- The Immediate Sources ertheless that he had “a lot of things to write about The Waste Land is done a serious disservice, how- if the time ever comes when people will attend to ever, if it is treated as only or even primarily being them,” but that does not mean that wartime was not a poem about or in response to the war that had otherwise a time for poetry and for poetic renewal. just ended in Europe. Eliot was always careful to If World War I was a war that depoeticized warfare distinguish between the work and the biographical, by deromanticizing it, it was nonetheless not a war social, and historical sources that produced it, not that did not produce poetry—but it was a changed to obfuscate matters but for the sake of emphasiz- poetry, one that was capable of rendering the para- ing that a poem is not second-rate or even second- doxes and ironies of a human and cultural tragedy of tier autobiography or journalism or history but is colossal proportions in terms of its impact on indi- itself a species of human record, human knowing of viduals rather than on nations. an entirely different order. Perhaps no other form The most startling feature of the war, if that of human communication, and there are many, is could be summarized in a single word, was in fact so difficult to understand and accept in terms of its waste—of time, of resources, of human energy, itself and itself alone. That is an attitude, a preju- of life itself—young life, promising life, hopeful life. dice, that Eliot sought to ameliorate if not overturn Every war exposes warfare as a terrible way to con- in the best of his critical commentaries, yet he has duct human affairs. World War I, however, did often been the poet most associated with autobio- this in a way that those who were left to survey graphical or documentary readings, perhaps for the the wreckage of a civilization that the war had left very reason that his poetry, as poetry, is a difficult behind found to be intolerable and disgraceful. nut to crack to this day. (The poetry of The Waste One of the most immediate and devastating Land provides the best example of that very dif- results was that traditional sources of authority and ficulty and complexity.) stability, the state and the military, but particularly Another case in point is Eliot’s mental and emo- the remnants of the ancient European aristocracy, tional condition at the time of The Waste Land’s were totally discredited. Of the six great European composition. While it would be foolhardy to deny

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that the horrors and fears generated by four years sequence in Ulysses. Another section, involving the of unceasing warfare found their way into aspects typist and her erstwhile lover, was far longer, too, of the tone and texture of the poetry of The Waste in keeping with the source after which it was mod- Land, those effects are as blended with the effects eled, Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. There of other untold experiences, both conscious and was, as a consequence, a more logical flow to the unconscious, so that to try to disentangle or iden- poetry and poem both than could ever be guessed tify particular ones would be equally foolhardy. at from the poem that was finally published. Nevertheless, legend has it that Eliot was either Perhaps equally as important are the biographi- undergoing treatment for or actually having a men- cal data, however. Eliot’s nerves were often if tal breakdown at a psychiatric clinic in Lausanne, not always bad under the stress of his marriage to Switzerland, in the fall of 1921, during the period Vivien Haigh-Wood and her own ill health; he that he was writing The Waste Land. The fact is also suffered from the weakening effects of his own that the poem was hardly composed at one sitting never sturdy physical constitution, which made or even several. It combines as many if not more him prone to chronic but never serious illnesses. bits and pieces from earlier, often discarded poetic In September 1921, a physician had recommended treatments by Eliot himself, written at scattered a period of rest and recuperation as treatment for times in his life, as from other poets. headaches that Eliot was suffering (there had just A significant passage from early on in “The been six months of drought in London). However, Burial of the Dead,” the first part of The Waste when Eliot applied to his employers, Lloyds Bank, Land, for example, can be found virtually verbatim for an extended vacation so that he might avail in “The Death of Saint Narcissus,” a poem that was himself of such medical rest, the paperwork that his set in galleys for the October 1915 issue of Poetry supervisors subsequently filed to justify his absence but was never published. Nearly the entire text of from work identified the reason for the three-month the fourth part, “Death by Water,” meanwhile, is leave as a “nervous breakdown.” Finally, although taken from a poem of Eliot’s, “Dans le Restaurant,” Eliot, following a month on the coast at Mar- that was published in the Little Review in October gate, initially planned to sojourn for the remain- 1916. These lines cannot be said to be verbatim ing two months of his leave in a country cottage transcription, however, because the Eliot original belonging to Lady ROTHERMERE, who was under- is written in French. Furthermore, the nightmarish writing the Criterion, at the last moment OTTOLINE or hallucinatory and always fragmentary qualities MORRELL prevailed upon him to go instead to Lau- of the poetry of The Waste Land, qualities that sanne and a clinic run there by a Dr. Vittoz, who seem to support or at least suggest the view that had had some success with treating people who they are either the results of or meant to mimic were emotionally run down, among them Lady an unstable state of mind, can be found in Eliot’s Ottoline herself and Julian Huxley, brother of the finished poems from as early as the “Preludes” and novelist Aldous. “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” written in 1911, While the foregoing depiction of how Eliot came all the way up to “Gerontion,” composed as late to be in treatment at a psychiatric clinic in Laus- as 1919. anne while he was composing the better part of The Pound’s severe editing out of some of Eliot’s Waste Land hardly constitutes a comedy of errors, original sections of the poem also had the effect of neither does it suggest that Eliot had suffered any- making the finished text seem far more fragmentary thing even remotely resembling a mental break- than Eliot’s initial design would have indicated. down. The hints with which The Waste Land opens There was much more detailed narrative description of people visiting one of those European health in the manuscript that Pound worked from, a draft resorts or spas frequented by members of the leisure that began with a long episode of youthful revelers class further underscore what his time in Lausanne enjoying a night on the town in Cambridge, Massa- must have seemed like for him. In resorting in this chusetts, reminiscent of Joyce’s famous Nighttown way to biographical information to clarify poetic

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detail, it is important to remember that the issue from his earliest attempts at poetic composition. is not whether biography and current events can That a young descendent of Puritan American shape poetic output but whether they do anything stock could find not only inspiration but a voice more than that, thereby giving the poetry all its and poetic techniques in the French symbolists, purpose and meaning. Where does the life and its not to mention a 13th-century Italian adherent attendant experiences leave off and the poetry, of Roman CATHOLICISM, the poet Dante, as Eliot which is what must matter, begin? indeed did, speaks reams in favor of his having Eliot was acutely aware of this conundrum. At cultivated from the start an approach toward lit- just about the same time that the aftermath of the erature that stressed its timelessness, but not at the war was sinking in on both public life and private expense of its power as art. At the very least, his mentalities, Eliot, in 1919, was penning the essay own wide literary interests would have been living “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in which proof to him that there was something in the poetic he was forcefully arguing for the necessary separa- act that superseded cultures and even language sys- tion between, as he put it, the person who suffers tems, providing it with an essential capability to and the mind that creates. Eliot’s aim in proposing speak with fresh impact over great passages of both as much was not to deny that the poet writes out time and geographic distance and despite barriers of personal experience—what more does anyone of language and culture. It was as if for him and his have?—but that creative processes transform that methods of composition, literature formed a pres- personal experience into something else altogether, ent and living whole in which all the works of much as digestive processes transform food into all the ages were somehow contiguous with each nutrients that then become muscle and blood cells. other, shaped by and shaping one and the other. To that notion that there is not a direct rela- Nor is that a very far-fetched proposition. If tionship between poets’ personal experiences and people are capable of accepting that there are only the poetry that they write could be added a corol- six degrees of separation between any two human lary requiring a like separation between the times beings chosen at random from out of the billions and the literary works that emerge from them. For who are alive at any one moment, how much more Eliot, however, there is a greater consideration at reasonable it is to accept the idea that all works of hand than the transformative powers of art, and the imagination, of which there are so many less, that is its transcendent qualities. If art only com- affect and are affected by each other. In any event, ments on the times that produce it, then it can- that had become by the time of the publication of not possibly continue to serve as commentary on The Waste Land the hallmark of Eliot’s style. The enduring or permanent aspects of human experi- easy commerce in his texts among original lines ence, which it clearly does. of verse and both open and veiled allusions to the Any reader who has ever confronted a work of works of others, virtually always without attribu- literature from the past without any information tion and never with any sort of advanced warn- other than the text itself knows this simple fact ing, bespeaks this attitude toward the uses and the well. True, there may be a subsequent desire on a presence of both past and present voices in his reader’s part to learn about the times or people or work. Nor was he alone in this. For just one out- culture that produced the text as a result, and hav- standing example, the poetry of Ezra Pound also ing that subsidiary information to begin with may depended for its challenging effectiveness on his make for an entirely different reading experience— sprinkling the words and phrases of other poets, but neither is a necessary condition or conclusion, often in their original, non-English form, liberally and someone of Eliot’s way of thinking would argue among his own. that everyone’s reading experience, as well as every Indeed, while The Waste Land is not an easy text reading, is different in any case. and does not even lie well on the page, what with It is this transcendent aspect of poetry that had its irregular stanzaic patterns and line lengths, not apparently been of critical interest to Eliot himself to mention frequent appearances of whole lines of

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verse, often consecutively, in languages other than used to achieve that end is the literary allusion. The English, no one who had been following Eliot’s Waste Land is no exception. poetry to this time would have been particularly Throughout his critical career, Eliot maintained struck by his methodology. (This time he even pro- that nothing should be regarded as a substitute for vided notes, when he published the work in book engaging the poem, as poetry, in its own terms. The form.) Criticism has come to call this methodology commentators and readers of poetry in general and intertextuality, referring to the processes of cultural of Eliot’s poetry in particular who seem adamant in and generic cross-pollination that have taken place insisting that his poetry is little more than veiled among texts very likely from the beginnings of the autobiography may not be missing the point, but use and easy dissemination of the written word. they are most certainly missing the poetry. The Virgil’s great epic the Aeneid is founded on Homer’s danger is in imagining that identifying a source in Iliad and Odyssey, and anyone familiar with either The Waste Land constitutes an understanding of text would know that, but someone who was not the verse or verses as they appear in that poem. familiar with Homer would not hardly miss Virgil’s It would be wise to recall Eliot’s own justification, essential points. from “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” for The author does not have to be conscious of having an awareness of voices of the past. It is in his or her borrowings, however, any more than a the voices of the present that the past speaks most reader does. The only difference that a poet like clearly, and that to the only audience that ever can Eliot, and poetry like Eliot’s, makes is that, because matter, the living. Anything more is guesswork, Eliot exposes his allusions, the reader is made con- and anything less is severely restricted by the end- scious from the outset that literature is the prod- less possibilities for other interpretations that offer uct of a continuous human dialogue whose terms themselves even as one meaning or interpretation can crop up in the unlikeliest of places and often is emerging. without either recognition or attribution on the The Epigraph author’s or reader’s part. If the mind is like a mir- ror, it is important to remember that a mirror has Anyone familiar with “The Love Song of J. Alfred no memory. There is no before and after, earlier Prufrock” knows that that poem’s unattributed epi- and later. The whole of the past is a simultaneous graph, in the original Italian, from Dante’s Divine experience for anyone who knows it by the bits and Comedy is far more than mere window dressing, a pieces by which each of us know it as it rises, quite showing off of the poet’s erudition. Once identified, frequently totally unbidden, to the surface of the contextualized, and translated, Guido da Montefel- reflective mind. tro’s words about his condition for speaking freely Into the structure of The Waste Land, then, and and truly set the tone for a poem in which another onto its complicated surface detail, Eliot weaves suffering soul, in this case, J. Alfred Prufrock, dis- centuries, millennia, of that mirror’s magic sights. burdens himself of the pains of a lifetime of being a His trick is that he lets his readers know that he wallflower. is doing this, so that along with him, or at least Other examples of the importance of the epi- along with the poem’s unnamed and unintroduced graph to the substance of an Eliot poem abound, protagonist, Eliot’s readers share the quest that the but “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” with its poetry embodies, a quest, appropriately enough, for unattributed epigraph in the original Greek, pro- meaning on a stormy sea of signifiers (although, vides for present purposes one more telling illustra- in keeping with The Waste Land’s ruling metaphor tion of the epigraph’s importance to an appreciation of cultural drought, it would be more like a desert of the complexities of meaning that Eliot weaves sandstorm). Poetry’s aim is to quicken not the intel- into even a relatively minor work. How else to par- lect, but the imagination, to make it make connec- allel the shallowness of Sweeney’s moral fiber than tions that cannot otherwise be easily spelled out, to remind readers, once they know that the source as it were. The device that Eliot has consistently of that poem’s epigraph is Aeschylus’s ancient trag-

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edy, the Agamemnon, of how equally shallow were the blind seer of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, in the self-serving motives of Agamemnon for killing its pages, has every right to feel that he or she is his own flesh and blood, his daughter Iphigenia, so on to something. Oedipus, after all, is himself a that the fleet that he commanded might set sail to seeker after the truth, even if he tragically misreads lay waste the fabulous city of Troy, all to his own the significance of the Delphic oracle’s prediction greater glory and wealth? How self-servingly shal- that he will murder his father and have children low, too, were the motives of his wife, Iphigenia’s by his own mother, and, like the seeker who must mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, unravel the Sibyl’s tangled messages, he is a solver Agamemnon’s first cousin, who then took revenge of riddles to boot, having solved the riddle of the by killing the Greek leader virtually at his doorstep Theban Sphinx. All this information in hand, any upon his triumphant return from that war some 10 reader must feel quite justified in imagining that long years later. And so his cry, “I am struck within this epigraph sets just the right tone of a dire seri- by a mortal blow,” echoes across the centuries by ousness for the theme of the poem to come. The virtue of Eliot’s giving the words a place and a mean- epigraph’s appropriateness in this regard is further ing in a thoroughly modern context in the epigraph underscored if the reader focuses immediately on to his poem “Sweeney among the Nightingales.” the Sibyl’s withering reply to the boys’ taunts: “I If the epigraph matters as much in poems that want to die.” After all, if a quest is one of The are otherwise reasonably self-sustaining poetic com- Waste Land’s themes, so, apparently, is the poem’s positions, how much more it must matter in a poem equally heavy attention to the futility of action and such as The Waste Land, whose poetry is largely com- to the range and depth of human desire as well, all posed quite openly of the poetry of others, with its of which themes the Sibyl’s reply seems to endorse. epigraph in Greek and Latin. The passage, in Latin The only problem is that the epigraph that and Greek, contains a report of what the Cumaean underscores such potential meanings can just as Sibyl is reputed to have said to a group of boys who nimbly undercut them. The further information, were taunting her. Translated, it reads: “For I saw for example, that the source text for the epigraph with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a is a first-century A.D. Roman social satire, the bottle, and when the boys said to her, ‘Sibyl, what Satyricon, may undermine a reader’s confidence in do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die.’ ” the profundity of the epigraph and faith in Eliot’s The Sibyl was originally a single Greek oracle, own intentions for it. Indeed, Eliot is as liable to an elderly woman who wrote her prophecies in weave, and is capable of weaving, as tangled a web ecstatic trances and then would toss to the seeker of potential meanings as any the Sibyl ever has, the leaves on which they were written. It would as anyone who knew the comings and goings of be up to the seeker, then, to make sense of the seriousness and frivolity in his poetry would have prophecy. The Cumaean Sibyl was a later but no been well aware by the time of The Waste Land’s less celebrated manifestation of this ancient Greek publication. If the content of the epigraph sounds original. In one of the most famous stories about profound, the knowledge that the context is a work the Sibyl of Cumae, a Greek settlement near Naples of satire, traditionally not regarded as serious litera- in the south of Italy, she offered the last Roman ture, makes that profundity immediately suspect. king a series of nine books containing prophecies Not only is the epigraph’s source a satire rather regarding Rome, destroying each succeeding one than a work of serious literature, but the satire’s the longer he refused to meet her price, until only title, Satyricon, with its reference to those notori- three were left. These remained in Rome, in the ous sexual libertines, the half-men, half-goat satyrs, temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, well into does not bode well, either, for its being a sober imperial times. commentary on seeking wisdom and overcom- A reader who goes on to discover that The Waste ing desire in the midst of life’s vanity and futility. Land, too, deals with a seeker, the Grail quester, Indeed, the Roman source in question is attributed and has another famous Greek soothsayer, Tiresias, to Petronius, a wealthy Roman whose main claim

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to historical fame is that he was the director of right in front of the assembled guests, who were revels for the notoriously decadent emperor, Nero, sent flying as the guts came bursting out. But the whose sexual and other outrageous exploits remain joke was all on them, for the “guts” turned out to legendary. Petronius himself led a richly comfortable be cooked sausages. Having fooled his guests to life as a favorite of the decadent emperor but died a their own delight, it is then that Trimalchio tells suicide (having slit his wrists, he then went on to them stories of his various other exploits, includ- regale his friends with witty talk as he slowly bled to ing the story about seeing the ancient Sibyl, so death) after he had been falsely accused of conspir- withered by age that she could fit inside a jug, ing against Nero. About the only substantiated link, telling the boys that she wished only for death. such as it is, between Petronius and the passage that What else is anyone to think except that this Tri- Eliot uses as the epigraph to The Waste Land is that malchio, famously generous host though he may Petronius happened to have died at Cumae. be, is nothing more than a practical joker and Eliot’s readers, the more they come to know of teller of tall tales, among whose repertoire is this this epigraph, have every right to wonder if they are tale of his having seen the Cumaean Sibyl “with not being put on, not just by its putative author, my own eyes”? Petronius, but by Eliot as well. An Eliot reader’s All is not lost, however, for the epigraph still, head ought by now to be spinning, as is often the ironically enough, comes full circle, reminding the case of encounters with any Eliot poem written dur- reader of the ancient wisdom that, in the midst of ing the first decade and more of his poetic career. our revels, there is death. The story of the Sibyl The story of this particular epigraph, however, does hanging in a bottle and wishing only for death is not end even on this note of compounded double not a happy one, after all, whether it is a true one meanings of insidious intent. or not. Furthermore, while Trimalchio’s report is in Left for the curious reader is the task if not Latin, the words of the boys and of the Sibyl that obligation of finally discovering that, in that all- he is reporting are in Greek. These words introduce important textual area, context, the Sibyl’s with- a multilingual poem (seven distinct languages in ering words to those nasty boys are related in yet a variety of dialects are cited directly within it) another person’s first-person account—confusing, written some 2,000 years later for an audience that but not unintentionally so. That latter person, Tri- speaks English, itself a language partly derived from malchio, is being quoted by Encolpius, a man whose Latin and ancient Greek. name in Latin pretty much means “encrotched” In simple terms, by the time a reader has even and who is himself the Satyricon’s fictitious narrator begun to try to unravel the substance of the Sibyl’s of a work by an author about whom little is other- “meaning” when she says, “I want to die,” and then wise known (since no one is certain that its author further attempts to apply that substance to the sub- actually was Petronius, after all). stance of the text, that reader has already had lin- It may seem by now as if Eliot’s epigraph is a guistic instincts and capacities exploited and left sort of literary black hole, absorbing all meaning unsettled, in very much the same manner in which whatsoever into its darkening bowels, but there are poetry exploits a reader’s verbal equilibrium and yet further depths to plumb. Words are not spoken assumptions long before that same reader happily, in isolation from events, after all, and that is the almost desperately, can attach a meaning to the case with Trimalchio’s eyewitness report about the experience. This is precisely the effect Eliot wishes Cumaean Sibyl. A very wealthy man who some to have the epigraph achieve: The illusion of meaty think may have been modeled somewhat on Nero meaning in the Sibyl’s words distracts us from the himself, Trimalchio tells his tale as he regales his immediate work of the epigraph as a play on the guests, Encolpius among them, at a fabulous din- veracity of firsthand observation, particularly as ner party. the artist utilizes the device—and that understand- The party had begun with Trimalchio’s slaves ing can itself be arrived at only by one’s having carrying in a huge pig that was then disemboweled complete access not only to understanding the lan-

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guages of the epigraph in the first place but also to No one can speak for Conrad’s intentions, of understanding the context of the words as well. course, any more than anyone can speak for Trimal- These kinds of complexities, however, serve a chio’s, let alone Encolpius’s, let alone Petronius’s, purpose for Eliot and for the complexities of the let alone Eliot’s. Still, it seems that, the similarities poem. It is possible, in fact, to read the epigraph between the Conrad and Petronius epigraphs being not for the specific detail of its content as much as structural as they are thematic, the poet of The as for taking it as a model, a miniature exemplar, Waste Land wants his readers to think about the of how the text of the poem is to be read. This structure as much as about the substance of the idea is borne out by the fact that Eliot originally statements in both cases. While the reader/listen- intended to use for the poem’s epigraph a pas- er’s instinct is to take any report at face value, the sage from Joseph Conrad’s short novel, Heart of poet seems to be demonstrating with both choices Darkness. In that novel, an anonymous narrator for epigraph how it is impossible to know another (like Encolpius in the Satyricon) tells the reader person’s words firsthand, let alone in context, let what Marlow, a seaman, told him about Kurtz, a alone as meaning. And yet in literary experiences, fabled ivory trader who apparently went mad in readers foremost derive some species of meaning the depths of jungle along the Congo in Africa. from the words before they ever consider any other So, then, the epigraph from Conrad’s Heart of purpose for their particular arrangement. Darkness that Eliot had originally intended for the So much as a reader or listener can be tricked poem shares with the passage from the Satyricon into assuming meaning where no clearly defined or nothing more than the fact that it too is a report intended meaning exists, Eliot would say, so much (in this case thrice removed, once by Marlow, does this drive for meaning master the reader, who a sort of Trimalchio in this case, and then by is then rendered liable to being tricked continu- the anonymous narrator of the Conrad story, and ously, at least as he or she reads an Eliot poem, par- finally by Conrad) of Kurtz’s last words, which ticularly The Waste Land. In his poetry, Eliot simply would be the equivalent of what Trimalchio uses the neutral territory of language in action (and reported the Sibyl to have said: “Did he [Kurtz] often other people’s language) to prove as much to live his life again in every detail of desire, tempta- the reader, should he or she care to take notice. The tion, and surrender during that supreme moment fact is that a reader is drawn toward the meaning of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at toward which the artist wishes to draw the reader, some image, at some vision,—he cried out twice, but that is not necessarily the meaning the poet is a cry that was no more than a breath—‘The hor- himself aiming to achieve or exploit. Like all art ror! the horror!’ ” forms, after all, poetry works on the reader before The reader is left to imagine that those were that person can determine whether the poem is Kurtz’s last words, for they seem to be very much enjoyable, let alone whether it is intelligible. in keeping with the guilt that the reader is also Eliot the poet/critic would later say, in The Use left to imagine that Kurtz must have been suffer- of Poetry, that the poet puts meaning into his poetry ing as he lay dying. But the reader is only allowed in much the same way that the burglar puts out a to imagine what Marlow has made of it, and even bit of meat for the guard dog, and that is to distract Marlow’s recollection is filtered through a retelling the reader while the poem does its “real work” on by Conrad’s anonymous narrator. Furthermore, him or her. It is no accident certainly that this Kurtz’s cry is reported as being “no more than a analogy of Eliot’s equates meaning with meat, for it breath.” Could Conrad, the fiction’s constructer, would be like Eliot to play with the popular notion be asking us to imagine that it was Kurtz’s breath that meaning is the muscle of poetry to which tech- suspiring, not the words “the horror, the horror,” nique and structure are merely genetic code and that Marlow heard, who heard, like all humans circulatory system. Physiologically speaking, muscle do, only generally what he expected to hear, not is vital but not primary. So with meaning in poetry, necessarily what was to be heard? in Eliot’s view, who goes on to say that there are

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still poets who do not even care that much for “You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful meaning and who become instead “impatient of reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different this ‘meaning’ which seems superfluous, and per- voices.” In essence, she is saying that Sloppy reads ceive possibilities of intensity through its elimina- her the police report section of the newspaper, and tion.” One must wonder what that “real work” that when he does, he changes his voice to characterize Eliot speaks of might be, and it would not be too far each of the different individuals being quoted by amiss to suggest that it is poetry’s capacity to dem- the reporter in each news item. onstrate vividly how meaning is arrived at, what- The idea, a fairly simple one, put Eliot schol- ever the meaning might be, rather than to express a ars into high gear competing with each other in particular meaning to the exclusion of any other. using this information as if it were a secret formula As much is illustrated in the curious case of by which they could now unravel the complexities the poem’s original title. This information became of one of the most enigmatic poems ever written. widely known in 1971, when the poet’s widow, After all, and not surprisingly, there were connec- , published the original manuscript tions among the line from Dickens, the novel itself, of The Waste Land, as it had been considerably and the poem (and does not Eliot, in the poem, edited and revised by the poet’s then-wife, Vivien, urge his readers not to be like his speaker who can and his friend and literary confidante, the fellow “connect nothing with nothing”?). For one thing, expatriated American poet, Ezra Pound. After the then, The Waste Land, with its occasional empha- poem’s publication, Eliot had sent the manuscript, sis on the forlorn and frustrated lives of the lower in October 1922, as a gift to John Quinn, a New classes—Madam Sosostris and the young man car- York businessman, in recognition of Quinn’s con- buncular, Lil and Albert and the typist home at tinuing patronage and support of Eliot on the New teatime—gives his readers a sort of police report York publishing scene. On Quinn’s death in July world where people suffer from and with each other 1924, this fascinating piece of 20th-century literary over their modest peccadilloes. (And in the earliest history passed into relative obscurity until October versions of the poem, before Pound severely edited 1968 when the New York Public Library, which the text back, there was much, much more of that had acquired the manuscript from a grandniece of kind of material.) Furthermore, for all that they are Quinn’s, made public its existence. classical myths, the stories of rapes and mutilations Along with providing details such as, for exam- and murders that fill the pages of Sophocles and ple, Eliot’s initial plan to use the passage from Heart Ovid are also the stuff of police reports, such as of Darkness for his epigraph (a plan that Pound they are. Like Sloppy, then, The Waste Land as well talked him out of, leading Eliot to substitute the does “the Police in different voices.” present epigraph from Petronius), Valerie Eliot’s Furthermore, Our Mutual Friend has an osten- later scholarly reproduction of the lost manuscript sible theme that also resonates with the ostensible in book form was a genuine publishing event that theme of The Waste Land, that is, finding riches provided scholars with a veritable treasure trove in the debris of the past. For at the center of the of new information, including the information that conflict in Our Mutual Friend is the question of the poem was first titled He Do the Police in Different who will inherit mounds of ashes left behind by a Voices. Fortunately, Valerie Eliot’s studious notes man who has been a trash collector all his life— provided scholars with the precise source for such the thought being, no one knew what incredible a quaint title, which, like so much else in a typical treasures he or she might find by sifting through Eliot poem, turned out to be a literary allusion. the rubbish. The sentence comes from Charles Dickens’s Once these connections between Our Mutual novel Our Mutual Friend and is spoken by one char- Friend and The Waste Land were made public in acter, an impoverished widow, about a young boy the flurry of reviews that had followed the publica- whom she has adopted. In describing how much of tion of Valerie Eliot’s work, they seemed so obvi- a joy the boy, Sloppy, has become for her, she says: ous that it was hard for many to imagine that The

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Waste Land had not finally been deciphered. How- That said, there is still one other item of front ever, such euphoria did not last very long. If any matter to be considered, and that is the dedication scholarly career was eventually made by this par- to Ezra Pound. It too has a story, and that story will ticular critical escapade, it was made by the scholar lead the reader to still another source, in this case a who cried out, “Hold on, now!” To imagine that major one for Eliot—Dante. Eliot intended The Waste Land to do and to mean The Dedication and Eliot’s Use of Dante just this and just that because Our Mutual Friend The dedication to The Waste Land is made to Ezra included just this and just that was no less imagin- Pound, the American poet who had befriended the ing, no less speculating, no less second-guessing. younger Eliot almost from the time of the latter’s Thus ended the case of just what could be learned arrival in London in 1914 and who had taken it from the fact that Eliot had originally planned to on himself to help foster Eliot’s burgeoning literary call the poem He Do the Police in Different Voices. This is a good lesson for any reader of The Waste career. Pound’s editorial advice had a great deal Land to keep in mind as he or she ventures into to do with the final shape of The Waste Land as a the poem: To discover a source is not to discover completed poetic composition. It should not be too a meaning. It may help circumscribe the possibili- surprising, then, to discover that, in the dedication, ties for how far a meaning may be extended, but Eliot praises his mentor Pound by calling him “the even then, someone else, not armed with the same better maker.” source material, is no less likely to discover mean- No doubt, the finest compliment that one ings as well. Sources, in other words, may have craftsman can pay another—and poets, like any meant a great deal to the author and may continue other artists, are foremost craftsmen—is that the to be meaningful experiences for the scholar to other is better at what they both do. As a poet and explore and perhaps exploit, but the less a reader is critic, not only was Pound an individual to whom mindful of them, the more the poem itself becomes Eliot turned constantly with early drafts of poems the thing itself, as it should be. such as the quatrains, for example, and most assur- What, then, the frustrated student of Eliot’s edly with the original draft of The Waste Land, first truly major work and one of the major liter- seeking his response and the benefit of his edito- ary achievements in English of the 20th century is rial judgment and acumen, but Pound’s was also a liable to ask, is the purpose of all those source sign- forceful and authoritative personality. His advice, posts that Eliot sprinkles liberally, to say the least, no doubt, was neither given nor taken lightly. Not throughout his famously difficult text. Why make only that, but Eliot applied Pound’s advice with such a point of the poem’s being a combining of a liberal hand. Entire sections of The Waste Land sources if to know the sources is not the point? But as Eliot had initially conceived the poem were does Eliot in fact isolate each source, or does he scrapped at Pound’s suggestion, and the history of assimilate them all into the far greater whole called the two poets’ editorial collaboration remains an The Waste Land, which is its own work with its own interesting chapter in textual criticism. So, then, purposes? The fact of the matter is that Eliot is not whatever other motives may have compelled Eliot hanging wallpaper. Eliot is a poet who has blended to make the comparison, it seems fitting for Eliot all these various sources and others never to be to have praised his friend and to have acknowl- known so well into a unique creation of his own, edged his contribution by not merely dedicating its own, that scholars are, to this day, still finding The Waste Land to Pound, but by declaring him to new sources for those old lines. What else should be the better poet, or at least craftsman, as well. that tell the frustrated Eliot scholar but that the The only problem is that the dedication, which sources are many things, the poem but one? When is in Italian, il miglior fabbro, is itself a literary allu- in doubt, stick to the poem and the poetry that it sion, in this case to Dante’s Purgatorio, the second has made into its own self, whatever the original part of his great masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. source may have been. Dante is one of those poets whom Eliot himself has

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identified as being among his literary models from that Guido declines the compliment, however, and his undergraduate days, and, for just one outstand- points out to Dante another poet suffering in the ing example of Eliot’s admiration for Dante, “The same fires for sins of carnality, telling Dante that Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has for its unat- that one was “was a better craftsman [miglior fab- tributed epigraph a passage from Dante’s Inferno, bro] in the mother tongue.” The poet so honored by the first part of the Comedy. Once more, then, Dante through Guido’s compliment is none other it should come as no surprise that, in a poem in than Arnaut Daniel, the greatest of the 13th-cen- which Eliot alludes to almost every major literary tury Provençal troubadors, on whose work Dante tradition and/or master up to his day (the list is had modeled his own love poetry. Furthermore, long but includes, in addition to Dante, Sophocles, Arnaut Daniel was a poet whom Pound, in the Ovid, Shakespeare, and CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, earliest phases of his own career as both a language to give some brief sense here of its breadth and scholar and poet, had also studied and translated. scope), Eliot should use the words of a master such Eliot puts himself in the dedication in the position as Dante to compliment that living poet, Pound, of both Guido and, by extension, Dante, then, by whom he apparently regards as his own master. not only praising Pound as the better modern poet Another problem is, however, that Eliot’s use but by comparing him favorably to Pound’s, and of Dante in The Waste Land does not stop there. Dante’s, own poetic idol, Arnaut Daniel. Indeed, although disguised innocuously as noth- If Eliot’s use of Dante in The Waste Land stopped ing more than an erudite and appropriately accu- there, the dedication would be a rich and multi- rate dedication to a fellow poet, the dedication, layered enough literary tribute from one poet to once it is put in the larger context of Eliot’s use of another, but things do not stop there by any means. Dante in the total poem, serves a much broader In fact, they instead come full circle. To under- thematic purpose. Maybe it is just the waste-not, stand and appreciate, however, exactly how they want-not Yankee frugality of Eliot’s New England do that, it is necessary to map out, quite literally, forebearers that made Eliot give his dedication a the subsequent uses that Eliot makes of Dante in double purpose, but it is far more likely that it is The Waste Land. merely another way for Eliot to illustrate, and to The analogy to a map is a fitting one, inasmuch drive home, The Waste Land’s essential point: that as both The Divine Comedy and The Waste Land are there is nothing in a poem or on the page that spatial in concept, each depending for its structural does not contribute to what readers call, for lack integrity in large part on its being designed as the of a better word, that elusive commodity known as representation of a journey or quest. In Dante’s “meaning.” To appreciate just how much even the case, it is a quest for spiritual enlightenment and dedication to The Waste Land, by virtue of its allu- eternal salvation within the rubrics of an orthodox, sion to Dante, contributes to that poem’s meaning, Western Christian theology. In Eliot’s, it is a quest it will first be necessary to locate the words of the for meaning within the disorienting chaos resulting dedication from Dante, “il miglior fabbro,” in the from the counterclaims of tradition and modernity Dante poem. in the secular wasteland of post-Christian Europe. As already mentioned, the phrase comes from In either case, for the metaphor of the quest to be Dante’s Purgatorio and is spoken to Dante by Guido convincing, it must make its passage through the Guinizzelli, whom he encounters in canto 26 of the physical realities of a self-defined space, a geogra- Purgatorio, where Guido is suffering in purgative or phy, as it were, even if that space is fictional in its refining, as opposed to infernal or damning, fires to conceptualization, as much as through the lines of be cleansed of the sin of a bestial carnality. When verse on the page. Guido inquires why Dante is apparently an admirer In Dante’s case, his protagonist, whom he por- of his, Dante tells Guido that he admires him for trays as himself at the midpoint in his life, actually his “sweet verses” that will be treasured “as long traverses the environs of the pit that is hell and as modern usage endures.” It is at that moment then mounts the physical mountain that is purga-

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tory. In Eliot’s case, his protagonist, who manifests echoes in line 63 of The Waste Land: “I had not himself largely as the speaker that comments from thought death had undone so many.” time to time on the flow of the action, must traverse Line 64 echoes the moment shortly later in a psychological wasteland, a desert of the mind and the Inferno, canto IV, lines 25–27, when Dante soul that is no less real a geographical space simply stands at the edge of the precipice overhanging the because it cannot be found on any map. Appro- immense abyss that is hell. At that moment he says, priately, then, the first allusion to Dante comes “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, / non avea pianto, reasonably early in The Waste Land, near the close ma’ che di sospiri, / che l’aura eternal facevan tremare” of the first part, “The Burial of the Dead,” and from (“There, according to what could be heard, / there a point in the Dante text relatively near, as well, to was not weeping but sighs / that made the eternal the beginning not only of that lengthy poem but of air tremble”). Eliot, according to his own notes, the first, critical steps of Dante’s journey of discov- paraphrases the sentiments of that moment in the ery, his descent into the Inferno. Inferno with his own observation that “sighs short Though these first two allusions to Dante in and infrequent” were being exhaled by the crowd Eliot’s text come back to back, lines 63 and 64 in the flowing over London Bridge. These lines from early first section of The Waste Land, they are separated by on in beginning cantos of the Inferno are set as nearly the length of a canto in Dante (approximately markers along the way and come near the begin- 150 lines). In The Waste Land, the immediate context ning, too, of Eliot’s speaker’s own journey through is the moment at which, subsumed by the “brown fog his personal, modernist Inferno, The Waste Land. of a winter dawn,” the speaker makes his way over The next allusion to Dante comes from near London Bridge with a crowd of other early morn- the beginning of the Purgatorio, the middle sec- ing office workers and such. (Though this famous tion of Dante’s journey, at the end of canto V, in bridge has long since been replaced, its counterpart line 133. In Eliot, meanwhile, it falls at the end of leads across the Thames into the the middle section of The Waste Land, “The Fire proper, not only the site of the original Roman settle- Sermon.” “The Fire Sermon,” of the five sections ment but the present-day commercial, financial, and of The Waste Land, is the most explicit about the administrative center of the metropolis. Not far from vagaries of human desire, especially and explicitly the bridge’s terminus in the city, for example, was the sexual desire. At the point in this section where Exchange as well as the offices of Lloyds Bank, where the allusion to Dante occurs, the reader encoun- Eliot was employed at the time.) ters quoted dialogue, apparently of a young woman, To depict this crowd of the nameless, faceless who is relating how she was born at Highbury but bureaucratic and clerical types who have come to “undone”—that is, sexually compromised by a be the heirs of city directors, as Eliot will allude to young man—in a canoe on the Thames between them later in the poem, he draws on two images Richmond and Kew: “Highbury bore me. Rich- from Dante’s Inferno. The first occurs in Dante’s mond and Kew / Undid me.” Inferno, canto III, lines 55–57, not long, that is, According to Eliot’s notes, this line and a half after Dante has passed through the infernal portal of verse echoes a passage in the Purgatorio, where with the ominous injunction, “abandon all hope, a woman, who identifies herself as “la Pia,” which ye who enter here.” The first sinners he sees are a may be her name or an attribute (in Italian, it swarm of faceless, nameless humanity. These are would mean “the pious woman”), asks Dante to the Opportunists, those who in life had been nei- remember her when he returns to be among the ther hot nor cold so that in death heaven will not living, telling him: take them and hell does not want them. There are so many of them that Dante says “ch’io non avrei Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; mai creduto / che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta” (“I Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma. . . . would never have believed / that death would have [Remember me, who is la Pia; undone so many of them”), a sentiment that Eliot Siena made me, Maremma unmade me. . . .]

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Sienese by birth, Pia goes on to tell Dante that the jailers turning the key to lock the single door to the man who “did her in” in Maremma, as it were, was tower—“io sentí chiavar l’uscio di sotto / a l’orribile the same who had placed the ring on her finger, torre” (XXXIII.45–46). Although his sons did not that is, her spouse. So, then, while Pia’s exact his- realize it at the moment, the count knew that they torical identity remains a matter of scholarly con- were now going to be left in the tower to starve to troversy, Eliot clearly makes her his marker at this death, which they then did, one by one, the count point in The Waste Land because she represents dying last. Now both he and the archbishop are another woman undone in one way or another in here in the very same circle of hell for their sins, order to satisfy a man’s “needs.” and Ugolino is allowed to wreak such a perverse The next allusion to Dante in the Eliot poem, justice as Dante had just witnessed on the man and the next to last, comes very close to the end who, in life, had made Ugolino and his sons suffer of The Waste Land but falls very near the conclu- such a slow and horrible death by starvation. sion of the Inferno, in this case the next-to-last Eliot’s allusion to this poignant episode from the canto of the Inferno, canto 33. At first glance, that Inferno itself has a place of honor in The Waste may seem odd. If the speaker’s progress through Land. Eliot uses it to define by analogy the sec- The Waste Land is being marked by Dante’s parallel ond of the third injunctions from the Upanishads progress through the Inferno on into the Purgatorio, that form the core of the fifth and last section of as witnessed thus far, it may seem to be backtrack- The Waste Land, “What the Thunder Said.” That ing for the speaker of The Waste Land to have fallen second injunction, Damyadhvam, to sympathize, is back into the Inferno again. However, such a vacil- symbolized by Eliot in the count’s having “heard lation between the one and the other—near the the key / Turn in the door,” signaling for him how end of the Inferno, at the beginning of the Purgato- he and his sons are being cut off forever from the rio—could be regarded as a more realistic render- gifts of human compassion. Once more, fittingly, ing, by Eliot, of the stop-and-start, back-and-forth this allusion comes near the end of The Waste nature of spiritual or moral progress and growth, Land—lines 411 and 412 of a 433-line poem. If the which is never a perfectly straight line. first two allusions to Dante came from early in the Whatever the case, this particular allusion to Inferno and come early in The Waste Land, then, Dante’s Inferno is one of the most memorable from despite the momentary springing forward into the a particularly memorable poem. As he traverses the beginnings of the Purgatorio, this late allusion to frozen lake, Cocytus, which lies at the very bottom Dante comes from near the end of the Inferno and of hell and comprises Circle Nine, where the sins of at the very end of The Waste Land. compound fraud or betrayal are punished, Dante But there is one more allusion to Dante before comes on a man who is gnawing on the head of The Waste Land ends a mere 21 lines later. Line 427 another man, both of whom are otherwise frozen is a direct quotation from Dante’s poem and one of up to their necks in the ice. The man doing the those fragments that the speaker, with “the arid gnawing is Count Ugolino, his victim Archbishop plain behind him,” now uses as “shor[ing] against Ruggieri, although in life their roles had been some- my ruins.” The line from Dante in question reads, what reversed. Ugolino stops chewing on Ruggieri’s Poi s’sacose nel foco che gli affina (“Then he hid him- head long enough to tell Dante the story of how self in the fire that is purging him”). Its exact place- the count and his young sons had been imprisoned ment in Dante is line 148, the last line, of canto 26 in a tower by the archbishop’s trickery. of the Purgatorio. In and of itself, however, that was not the cause That ought to give any reader pause. As The of the hellish retribution that the count is now Waste Land ends, the symbolic markers of forward being permitted to mete out to the archbishop. progress that allusions to Dante have provided sud- Ugolino describes the day that, at the time when denly take a quantum leap forward—from canto they would normally bring Ugolino and his sons 33 of the Inferno to canto 26 of the Purgatorio—as their meager prison rations, he heard instead his if now that the speaker, having received the guid-

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ance of the rain-bringing thunder, has the waste- poet and their guide, has already been there and land behind him, there is no further vacillation and made it out—has figuratively completed the Inferno he is free to make his way past the modern hell in as well as the better part of the Purgatorio, that is to which the poetry of The Waste Land had had him say; otherwise, he would not be able to cite from it. embroiled till now. That is, one must admit, a won- If, then, by the end of The Waste Land, the speaker derful symmetry, but Eliot is not done yet. If the identifies the same passage from Dante as the poet foregoing has been something of a demonstration had identified in his opening dedication, that is of how Eliot uses allusions not to show off his learn- Eliot’s way of confirming for his readers that they, ing but to underscore his poem’s meaning, such as too, have now successfully made their way out of it is, it should mainly serve as a demonstration of the hellishness that The Waste Land is intended to the delightfully rewarding complexities of structure portray and, like him and his speaker, stand near and insinuation those same allusions serve. the peak of Dante’s purgatorial mountain. The final allusion to Dante is spoken in regard The following analysis of the poem, section by to Arnaut Daniel, who has just greeted Dante after section, demonstrates that The Waste Land takes its Guido Guinizzelli had called Daniel to Dante’s readers on a hellish journey for the sake of bringing attention as the “miglior fabbro”—the better maker them, like Dante, to some point of positive recogni- or craftsperson—the same words that Eliot used in tion that the hell of self can be mastered and left the dedication to Ezra Pound. Indeed, the quota- behind. The question is, How? tion from Dante in the dedication (one that Eliot, A Note on the Notes in his notes, does not attribute, by the way) comes No doubt, there are still those who hold up the six a mere 31 lines—canto 26, line 117—before the or seven pages of author’s notes that follow The line from Dante, canto 26, line 148, on which The Waste Land as proof positive that Eliot must have Waste Land, lacking but six lines, virtually ends. regarded the completed poem as unintelligible with- What is Eliot up to, the reader might well ask. out them. Only the poem’s earliest readers, that is, This is one of those many instances where Eliot’s those who had the opportunity to read it when it renowned and often unduly annoying complexities was first published, in October 1922, in two reviews, become disarmingly simple. The separation between the Criterion and the Dial, will ever know what the the poet and the identity of the speaker in The experience of encountering The Waste Land’s decid- Waste Land is a murky one. Indeed, there are those edly complex text must have been like without the who will argue that The Waste Land has no speaker benefit of Eliot’s notes. On the other hand, it has or at least one who is consistent from part to part, long since been recognized that the notes, by calling stanza to stanza. Unlike Eliot’s “The Love Song attention to any one particular detail at the expense of J. Alfred Prufrock,” where the speaker is easily of another in a richly detailed tapestry of allusions identified as Prufrock, or, for the sake of contrast, and other poetic devices, may as often be a hin- “Whispers of Immortality,” where the speaker is drance to understanding and clarity as a help. clearly the poet, The Waste Land is a poetry more in No one wants to approach The Waste Land unat- keeping with “Portrait of a Lady” or “La Figlia che tended; still, it is unfortunate that that privilege Piange,” in which it is difficult to discern if the “I” has forever been denied readers once Eliot intro- is the poet or a fictive projection that he simply has duced his notes into the poem, with its publica- not taken the trouble to introduce and identify by tion in book form in December 1922. By now, the name and function. notes form as much of the experience of the poem That said, with his dedication, Eliot is telling as its lines of poetry, almost as if Eliot had always his readers, or at least those who recognize it as an intended them to be a part of the poetic effect of allusion to Dante’s Purgatorio, that as The Waste The Waste Land from the first. Land opens and they are about to make their own Whatever other reputation for often intention- descent into the hell that The Waste Land will ally obfuscating the obvious that Eliot may deserv- depict in excruciatingly nightmarish detail, he, the edly have earned by now, however, his notes came

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to be appended to the text of The Waste Land com- ful suggestiveness to look elsewhere—for example, pletely by happenstance and most assuredly with- the reference to the Starnbergersee, which calls up out any subtle motivation on his part. The story King Ludwig of Bavaria, or the reference to Marie, goes, and there is no reason to doubt its verac- that seems to be a reference to the tragic suicides at ity, that when Boni & Liveright was preparing The Mayerling—that sources not identified by Eliot will Waste Land for publication in book form in late be introduced into the discussion. 1922, they discovered that there would be a quan- Incidentally, Eliot does not always identify an tity of extra pages. That was because the text of the obvious source or provide an expected one. For poem would fill only 48 pages. To this day, the typi- example, the absence of an identification of a source cal trade book is printed in a format to produce the for the epigraph is singularly conspicuous. For standard 6 × 9-inch size. This book size is achieved another example, Eliot does not let the reader in on by printing 16 pages at a time on each side of a 24 the inside joke that the dedicatory words to Pound inch × 36-inch sheet that is then folded four times, allude to the same passage from Dante alluded to so that each finished page is one-16th of the origi- elsewhere in the poem. That the title of the first nal size of the sheet. These 32-page units, which are part, “The Burial of the Dead,” is apparently taken subsequently trimmed back at the top, bottom, and from the Anglican burial service of the same name, outside edges so that they can be opened properly is also not noted. Identifying the alleged allusion to after binding, are called signatures. Once the text Chaucer in the opening line, meanwhile, is left up of The Waste Land was set in type, it was discov- to the agility of the reader’s imagination. ered that it would fill only 48 finished pages, but it Still, anyone doubting the story of how the notes would have to be printed in two signatures never- came to be there in the first place—that they were theless, leaving 16 pages blank. Eliot was prevailed provided by Eliot to fill what would otherwise have on to provide some additional poetry to complete been blank space—need only compare the number the volume. He opted, however, to provide the of pages occupied by the notes with the number of notes instead, hoping, as he says, that they might pages occupied by the poem itself. The ratio should assist “any who think such elucidation of the poem come out at just about one to three, accounting for worth the trouble.” the same proportionality that would have resulted if That is not to say, nevertheless, that Eliot may there indeed were those 16 blank pages to account not have eventually employed the notes as much for out of two 32-page signatures, leaving 48 pages to misdirect as to direct. The question remains of poetry. whether he did so intentionally. Scholars have sub- SYNOPSIS sequently discovered many more possible sources The following is a section-by-section if not quite and alternatives to sources for lines that Eliot him- line-by-line reading of The Waste Land. This read- self identified than Eliot’s notes could have listed ing is designed to be consistent and coherent, but in the space allowed him. Still, one must question not exhaustive. To be exhaustive, a treatment of what mode of selection Eliot may have employed the poem would easily take a volume equal in size in determining what to omit, what only to point to this present one, and even then it could not pos- toward, and what to expatiate on in painstaking sibly take into account in any genuinely satisfactory detail. Every choice, of course, shapes the response manner all the various other commentaries that that the reader and the scholar formulate to the the poem has generated virtually from the day of its line or the source in question—a prejudicing of first publication. the evidence, as it were, that someone of Eliot’s astuteness and acute intelligence would have been Part I: “The Burial of the Dead” highly aware. Thus far, the information being presented has had In the following discussion, to identify a source a single aim, and that has been to prepare a novice of Eliot’s, the notes will be relied on for the most reader of The Waste Land for the experience of its part, and it will be only when there is a power- poetry without unnecessarily daunting that reader

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before he or she even begins. With the achieve- pose, and history, it no doubt has in it much power- ment of that aim in mind, such a reader will find ful and beautiful language, not to mention powerful useful as well the following characterization of the and moving sentiments as well. Raised in his ances- approach to the text of The Waste Land that is tors’ Unitarian traditions, Eliot would, later in about to ensue. That approach is to think of The the 1920s, begin to attend Anglican services and Waste Land as a verbal space, literally—a wilderness eventually convert to the Anglican church in 1927. of words and word-images, allusions and literary Finally, as the actively intelligent, engaged, and sound bytes, nonsense syllables and foreign words curious human being that he was, Eliot would have and phrases, and anything else that may come to known something of the Book of Common Prayer, mind or eye or ear. Just as the poem’s speaker will even if that were only for its literary, historical, and have to, the reader too must traverse that imagi- cultural importance to English-speaking peoples. nary space with only one goal in mind—surviving Still, and all that said, it is pure speculation the experience so that, by poem’s end, he or she that Eliot had that source in mind at the moment may sit on the shore, like the speaker, with the arid that he selected the title for the first section of plain behind them both. The Waste Land and, furthermore, even should it If a single principle can be isolated from all those be proved conclusively that he did, the question foregoing presentations made thus far regarding remains whether it is necessary for a reader to have The Waste Land, it would be that the richness and that information in order to feel the impact and complexity of the poetry of The Waste Land should import of the words, “the burial if the dead,” partic- never be sacrificed for the sake of a facile reliance ularly in terms of the tone and the mood that they on stringing together the semblance of meaning set for the poem that is to follow. “Of course not,” by treating the wealth of background and source is the only fair answer that could be made to that information as if it were the poem. It simply is speculative question, and that is the very point that not. However, a corollary principle has emerged, Eliot makes by leaving so many putative allusions, and that is that Eliot does rely on his readers’ hav- including this present one, unattributed. The acci- ing some sense of those general cultural reference dentals of reading and memory and writing surely points within the various texts and figures to which play a part in anyone’s use of language. Words may he calls attention by virtue of the poem’s many come to mind in a particular order or echoing a allusions. The danger would be to imagine that particular source as much for their rhythms as for there might ever be a one-for-one connection their initial meaning or source. In the case of Eliot, between these allusions as they operate in their this particular horse—that every word must have original sources and as they operate in Eliot. There its specific source, every source its specific impli- is likely no better place to begin to demonstrate cation for meaning—is one that cannot possibly the validity of this corollary principle than with the be beaten to death too often inasmuch as it is the opening line, which has traditionally been regarded phoenix of dead horses and has a way of becoming as a direct allusion to the opening lines of Geoffrey an interpretative nightmare to boot. Chaucer’s 15th-century English treasure, The Can- That said, it is fair to examine the poem’s cel- terbury Tales. ebrated opening clause, “April is the cruelest So complicated has the issue of Eliot’s use of month,” with the same spirit of skeptical reserva- literary and other allusions in The Waste Land tion when it comes to imagining that that opening become, however, that even the title of the first image, such as it is, is an allusion to Chaucer. The part of the Eliot poem, “The Burial of the Dead,” General Prologue to his celebrated collection of needs first to be quickly considered and then as tales, in Middle English, told to each other by a quickly dismissed as an allusion to the funeral ser- band of pilgrims on their fictitious journey to Can- vice from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. terbury to visit the shrine to the martyred 13th- That service is indeed called the Burial of the Dead century saint Thomas à Becket, opens by setting and, like any item of great liturgical interest, pur- the following springtime scene:

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Whan that aprill with his shoures soote after all, have a fixed goal and purpose in mind. The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, The reader of The Waste Land will discover quickly And bathed every veyne in swich licour that if there is a protagonist inhabiting the lines of Of which vertu engendred is the flour; The Waste Land, his or her most outstanding char- . . . . . acteristic is aimlessness and confusion of purpose Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, or direction. Even so, the ability to make even that . . . . . sort of a connection with Chaucer would require The hooly blisful martir for to seke, some familiarity with Chaucer to begin with. That hem hath holpen whan that they were That familiarity absent, the question would then seeke. be, Would that ignorant reader obtain a meaning [When April with his showers sweet of some sort from Eliot’s words about April and The drought of March had pierced to the root, the spring rain, dull roots, and dried tubers? The And bathed every vine in such liquid answer to such a question could be nothing less Of which virtue engendered is the flower; than a resounding yes...... For example, in the headnote that precedes the Then long folks to go on pilgrimages, notes at the end of the poem, Eliot states that JESSE . . . . . L. WESTON’s study, From Ritual to Romance, a work The holy blissful martyr for to seek, of fairly recent scholarship that had theorized that That them had helped when they were sick.] the origins of the Grail legend were to be found in Equally celebrated by now are the opening seven ancient vegetation myths regarding the need for lines of The Waste Land, which describe April as the earth to renew itself in new life after the death the “cruelest month” because the spring rain breeds of winter, informs “not only the title, but the plan “lilacs out of the dead land” and stirs with a quick- and a good deal of the incidental symbolism” of ening liveliness “dull roots” that would otherwise The Waste Land. Also involved in the quest for the apparently be content to remain sluggishly embed- Grail is the legendary cup from Christ’s last supper, ded in their wintry torpor. To this mix of the con- another story involving a journey or pilgrimage. So, flict between an awakening natural universe and then, there are several points of contact in general what, in Chaucer’s time, would have been called with the Chaucer poem, but beyond that, they do acedia, a tragic slothfulness of the spirit resulting not seem to point toward any particular meaning or in a disengagement from the processes of life, Eliot in any particular direction so much as onward. also adds how April mixes “memory and desire,” What that particular meaning and direction the longing for a past contentment, perhaps, con- maybe should be the reader’s entire focus, of course, tending with that same promise of new life, new but Chaucer, having been brought up, must first activities, springing into being. The point seems to be laid to rest. In other words, knowing Chaucer’s be that, for the speaker or observer of the event, “meaning” will never clarify Eliot’s. To get past the that promise is clearly not necessarily a welcome first line, the reader must get past Chaucer—the one, since its aim is to rouse the sleeper out of the reader must bury the dead. Throughout its pages, cocoon of acedia. The idea being promoted with The Waste Land plays with and, to some degree, little fanfare or argument as the poem begins, then, virtually milks humankind’s vastest and most com- is essentially one that the spirit, much like the body mon store of symbols and symbolical imagery and or mind, is reluctant to be wakened, so April is actions, those that have to do with life and death, “cruel” by awakening all living things whether they birth and resurrection, sterility and fertility—in wish it or not. summary, the conflict between procreative sex and This is not to say that there may not be good sexual recreation, as well as another conflict, that reason for imagining that Eliot wants his readers at one between what has been sapped of all its vital the outset to be thinking of Chaucer’s Canterbury energy and life and that sap that restores all vital pilgrims, if only for the sake of contrasts. They, energy and life.

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If The Waste Land is a wasteland, the reader that the so-called crazy King Ludwig of Bavaria, comes to feel that it is one because there has been the royal patron who underwrote much of Rich- no life-giving rain, there is no water in it, noth- ard Wagner’s operatic efforts, including his Parsifal, ing of that sweet liquid that can restore the dead which recounted the Grail legend for 19th-century land. That water is the life-giving water celebrated Germans, not only built his renowned storybook in countless myths from countless human cultures castle that imitates the Grail castle but subsequently over countless ages, every one of which associates drowned himself, a suicide. The reference to Marie, life with the supple and the quickened, and death meanwhile, is commonly thought to harken back with the dried out or desiccated and the dulled, the to Baroness Marie Vestera, the mistress of the numbed. April is indeed the cruelest month, then, Archduke Rudolph of Habsburg, crown prince of not because the ghost of Chaucer or of his par- the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and first cousin to ticular sentiments on the same ageless topic haunt the same Archduke Franz-Ferdinand whose subse- those opening lines of Eliot’s, but because it is that quent assassination would precipitate the outbreak month in which the struggle between the forces of of hostilities that became World War I). Rudolph death and the forces of life are there for all to see and Marie, in one of the most famous scandals as most obviously in conflict—provided that one of the late 1880s, apparently committed suicide has awakened to see it. Rather than the spirit being together on January 30, 1889, at his hunting lodge willing but the flesh is weak, in April the flesh is at Mayerling in Austria. Although the truth of willing, but the spirit may be weak, or weakened. the matter may never be known (some argue that Certainly, it may be more willing to sleep than to he was brutally murdered), there is no doubt that awaken. Rudolph’s untimely death began the final series of It is this fear—that this spring there may be not crises and setbacks, involving matters of succession that usual, age-old victory of spring over winter, but and alliances, that would bring Europe from the rather a defeat for the new life that is awakening, height of its glory as a human culture to the brink both literally and figuratively—that will permeate of a devastating war within a matter of decades. the entirety of the remainder of The Waste Land. Inasmuch as Eliot’s intentions are concerned, That is how Eliot is able easily to slip between a however, all of the forgoing is purely speculative. poetry that at one moment seems to be a cultural What the reader does know is that in the midst critique of the shortcomings of his own time and, of the polyglot activity of winter with which The at others, seems to be merely yet another chapter Waste Land opens, what is missing is any sense in the enduring human tale of death versus life car- of the ancient foreboding: What if the springtime ried on in the terminology of a symbology as old, does not come? If, for example, the Grail legend perhaps, as the human imagination itself. is centered around a wounded king whose wounds “Winter kept us warm,” the speaker, or a must be healed if the land is itself to be healed, a speaker, says, and it is perfectly understandable story whose origins are far, far older than Sopho- that the winter should have but only if it is the cles’s Oedipus the King, then it is none too puzzling false warmth of the body dying into a paralyzing that The Waste Land opens with these allusions to numbness, not the true warmth of the spirit reviv- “wounded” royals, both of them connected to those ing. No wonder, then, that the poetry moves now two powers, Germany and Austria, that would very quickly, but not unexpectedly for the reader become the initial aggressors in World War I. who has been cued in to what the essential crisis Do myth and reality live so near each other, The is, to persons who are content to haunt “health” Waste Land asks, that one can be seen to blend eas- resorts, where they may partake of artificial cures in ily into the other. The Waste Land can ask that ques- artificial settings while the real work of the natural tion, however, only of the reader who is himself or universe progresses all about them. herself conscious that he or she, too, is a living link The reference to the Starnbergersee is particu- in the ever-shifting present that resides between the larly appropriate at this juncture. It is at that lake past that is winter, memory, myth, and a future that

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could be possibly spring but may only be frustrated The Waste Land’s poetry is its ability to change by confused signals and mixed desires. tone and mood at the drop of a line, and that abil- Logically, compellingly enough, into the next ity owes to the speaker’s uncanny power to master stanza in this poem of irregular stanzas and irreg- the poetic moment. With the opening of the first ular lines, lines that rhyme and lines that end part’s second stanza, then, the whirlwind of voices abruptly leading nowhere, suddenly appearing in and thoughts that both mar and mark the confus- a foreign tongue only to disappear instantly into ing energies and bewildering directions of the first another tongue or into an English that itself often stanza settle down. seems to make as little sense, as if it too were a lan- It is just as if that whirlwind has dropped the guage from another land, the wasteland, comes the reader in a sandy, stony, burning waste in stanza speaker, speaking clearly but hardly cheerily. This two, and the voice of someone who seems to know speaker calls the reader directly into the poem, what is happening but may otherwise be as lost confronting him with dire questions and more dire and bewildered intones, “What are the roots that consequences. In so many words, he tells the reader clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rub- that, although it may be spring, they are both lost bish?” That stony rubbish is the tumble of voices in the wilderness, in a desert that is the wasteland and images and allusions that have just assaulted of their mind and spirit and culture. the reader’s sensibilities; that stony rubbish is as Thus far in this commentary there have been well the figurative acres of wasteland imagery passing references made to a speaker in and of The and poetry still before the reader. But here, for Waste Land, as if he is an easily identified entity, a moment, the anonymous, faceless, bodiless but perhaps even a personage. Before proceeding, the hardly speechless speaker briefs his fellow trekker. reader might find it valuable to ponder briefly who “Son of man,” he remarks, “you cannot know / For that speaker may be. For he does now seem at you know only a heap of broken images.” this juncture to step suddenly out of the page and If Pound in 1919 in his Hugh Selwyn Mauberley address The Waste Land’s readers directly: “you.” could witheringly summarize the accomplishments If this forthright voice, the speaker, is to be the of all European culture as “a few gross of broken reader’s friend or taskmaster, the reader’s Virgil statues / a few thousand battered books,” Eliot dis- as that Roman poet was Dante’s guide, then as tills the total by that much more to its barest figu- the reader continues the trek across the pages of rative minimum—a heap of broken images—lost The Waste Land, it may not hurt to try to get this gods, lost myths, lost symbols, broken dreams, and spectral speaker’s measure before venturing much shattered hopes. Lost in the desert that the past further or farther. For as Joseph Conrad’s narrator can quickly become when there are no reference Marlow says of the mysterious Kurtz in Heart of points to guide the way, there is indeed no relief Darkness, Eliot’s speaker is more a voice, a pres- from the relentless heat of time’s burning passage. ence, than any flesh-and-blood persona such as J. The image of “fear in a handful of dust” brings to Alfred Prufrock. Exactly when this voice speaks, mind the Sibyl who, knowing all things, seeks only for example, and what he has to tell the reader, death, hardly an endorsement for continuing any are neither easy matters to discern, because a great kind of human enterprise at all. part of the power, the realism, of the poetry of The If Christ has been invoked in the epithet “son Waste Land is its uncanny, albeit disconcerting abil- of man,” the only title in the Gospels that Jesus of ity to mimic the cacophony of contending sensory Nazareth claimed for himself, the relatively mod- claims on the distracted and often disconnected ern, post-Christian 19th-century New England reader’s attention span. When that voice speaks, transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, with his however, it seems to have the power to make its American philosophy of self-reliance and belief presence known, almost as if it were someone or in the universal goodness of the oversoul, is also something that existed simultaneously within and invoked, but all to no avail, in the image of the outside the poetic line. A long-noted feature of shadow that extends before and after all human

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endeavor. In “The Hollow Men,” near the mid- ing at discus with the young and handsome mortal, dle of the 1920s, Eliot will use the image of the so the story goes, Apollo accidentally killed Hya- shadow to even greater advantage, but here in The cinthus, and the flower that now bears the young Waste Land he uses it to call to mind his own direct man’s name is traditionally regarded as a token of reference to Emerson in “Sweeney Erect.” In that the god’s great grief. poem, one of the quatrains composed during 1917 In a poem in which Tiresias’s bisexuality will, in and 1918, Eliot jokes that Emerson could not ever the third part, “The Fire Sermon,” become a central have envisioned the new man, embodied for Eliot metaphor, gender is developing more as an impedi- in Sweeney, that the democratic masses of America ment to understanding than any metaphorical could breed, nor could an idealist like Emerson gateway. The reader might recall how, in the first have envisioned the catastrophe that modern his- stanza of “The Burial of the Dead,” someone who tory would become, either, in that shadow rising is assumed to be a man (since the poem is written to meet us. Apparently, the only respite for the by one) suddenly morphs into Marie when words speaker of The Waste Land can be found in conceal- are spoken to him or her. So, too, these gender- ment from the blazing light of that kind of a sear- bending myths, and Eliot’s use of them, seem to be ing truth, within whatever shade a red rock might intended as a way of separating the theme of love, provide, while what the body, what the soul, what which must inherently transcend issues of gender, the mind craves is the life-giving water, of which from sexual desire and human reproduction. there is none, at least not here and not now. It is In the next part, “A Game of Chess,” for a fur- only ever “out there,” beyond the seeker’s reach ther example, the reader will encounter two frus- but not his ken. trated couples whose problem seems to be that they Although The Waste Land is more a poetry of have confused connubial love with sexual coupling point of view, reflecting a state of mind rather than and its attendant results. In “The Fire Sermon,” any actual character development or other ele- meanwhile, an allusion to that passage from The ments typical of plot and motive, it is neverthe- Confessions in which Augustine admits that he was less by giving The Waste Land at least this species “in love with being in love” plays a key role. of a narrative structure, using the concept of the Unavoidable is the further suggestion in this quest as the motivating factor and driving force, allusion to the tale of Apollo and Hyacinth as well that the poem’s forward progress can be observed, that the relationship with the hyacinth girl did not measured, and made sense of. For there is a forward end either happily or productively, a possibility progress to both the poem and the poetry, though encouraged by the verses that Eliot cites from Rich- it may be difficult to imagine that that is the case ard Wagner’s tragic opera Tristan und Isolde that as one reads on from one moment, or one line, to come just before his reference to the hyacinth girl. the next. Wagner has already appeared obliquely in stanza Suddenly the reader, who has been asked to one of “The Burial of the Dead” by virtue of the imagine a desert, is in a hyacinth garden, exactly as allusion to his patron, King Ludwig, and now the the scene might shift entirely by some odd quirk of tragic love affair of the Archduke Rudolph and the association in a dream. Furthermore, the speaker, Baroness Marie Vestera of stanza one is echoed in the reader’s friend, has fallen silent, although voices Wagner’s tragedy of the lovers Tristan and Isolde, continue. Someone is telling someone else that he who also die as the result of a star-crossed love called her the hyacinth girl—or he may be telling affair destined to end miserably. Their story had that to a male, since the Hyacinthus of myth was a originated in the 12th century and by Wagner’s beautiful young man with whom the god Apollo fell time had undergone many revisions and retell- in love. Here again, in a poem that will ultimately ings, including being incorporated finally into the prove to be full of tales of and allusions to tragic Arthurian literature, of which the Grail quest is a or empty love relationships, is Apollo’s, which was part. In every version, however, including Wag- another awful story of love gone fatally askew. Play- ner’s, Tristan, the knight, falls prey to the

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charms of the Irish beauty, Isolde, and as a result only into the “heart of light, the silence”—a deaf- ends up betraying his master, King Mark, whose ening and blinding emptiness. There is no hope, wife Isolde becomes. the poem seems to be saying, only loss. Without a doubt, this theme of love’s betrayal, But another stanza awaits, for always, although like the spring’s, will permeate the entire Eliot even the individual life and hope may cease to be, poem, but the speaker, and the reader, will come poetry continues—a thought that forms no small to learn that it is a betrayal that is fomented by part of The Waste Land’s primary intent. They say unreasonable expectations and desires as well as that a body ache should be treated by alternat- by self-deceptions and self-serving machinations. ing applications of heat and cold. Eliot appears to The speaker’s reluctance to accept the bidding of be a poet who subscribes to this remedy for his the spring is as much his undoing, for example, as reader’s spirits as well, for Eliot follows the bitter- the unwillingness of the material universe to set sweet tragedy of stanza two, with its dire predic- its clocks by an individual human’s needs. In the tions of disaster, with a comically ominous visit to a same way, love is all too often the name given the fortune-teller, “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoy- irresistible desire to scratch a bodily itch by abusing ant.” Perhaps the speaker, as troubled by his own someone else’s trust and confidence. confusions as the reader may be, has dropped in on The verses that Eliot cites from Wagner contrast a lark on his return home that evening after work a sailor’s song, sung early in the opera in Isolde’s and maybe will stop at the club for a bit of wine and presence, with a report made much later in the cheese to hold him till supper. opera, near its close. Quoted directly by Eliot in the After all, the news has not been good. There original German, as was his wont, the first four lines are wars and rumors of wars, even in the swanky portray a lover wondering where his beloved might resort where the speaker may have just spent his be, because the winds that should be bringing her holiday hobknobbing with the rich and famous and home to him over the sea from Ireland are favor- powerful. Even they have been dropping like flies able: “Frisch weht der Wind,” and so forth. The line lately, suicides one and all, emblems of a culture set with which the Eliot stanza closes—“Oed und leer on a course for self-destruct. Although last night’s das Meer”—relates to Isolde herself, who is coming performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, with its by ship again, this time bringing a magic potion that overwhelmingly tragic vision of love gone askew, can save Tristan’s life. Impatiently awaiting not only was grand, tonight may be a night for something his beloved but a restorative (bringing to mind those different, something not quite so depressing, so the restoring processes of spring with which the speaker speaker, suspended as he is between memory and of The Waste Land is obsessed), Tristan sends a ser- desire, a past filled with regrets, a future vague and vant to scan the horizon for sight of her vessel. While cloudy, visits a fortune-teller, and what does she Isolde will eventually arrive, it is only to have her tell him? Something depressing. beloved die in her arms. However, at the moment in The Waste Land is built upon a constantly shift- the opera when the words that end Eliot’s stanza are ing but always thematically consistent array of spoken—in English, “The sea is wide and empty”— parallels, and even in this third stanza of the first the servant, a shepherd, has returned to tell Tristan part of the poem, with its turn to parody if not that there are no sails, there is no ship in sight. The even nonsense, those parallels continue to manifest hoped-for restoration is derelict. themselves. This “blind” fortune-teller (she con- The reader, who began this stanza in one waste- cludes her spiel by telling the speaker that “one land, one of burning sand, will end it with the must be so careful these days,” making it clear that vision of another, a wide and empty expanse of she does not know what the next minute will bring, dismal seascape. The impact of this second stanza is let alone the future) harkens back to the Sibyl, of a heavy blow: Looking for some sign of a meaning- course, but also to the mythic Greek soothsayer fully renewed engagement with the external uni- Tiresias, the figure that Eliot, in his notes, makes verse, one is instead left speechless as eyes look central to the poem’s drama.

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Furthermore, Madame Sosostris reads the Tarot, Roman times) calls up for the speaker an image of the earliest form of the modern deck of playing the damned making their way across the Acheron cards, whose suits—the cup, the lance, the sword, into the hellish pit of the Inferno. and the dish—are derived from the Grail legend This area of the City of London that Eliot is as well, according to Weston. As comical as the describing is one with which he would have been madame’s turn is, then, it ties together two of the personally very familiar. The Church of St. Mary major dynamics of the poem: The individual’s Woolnoth, for example, is near where Eliot at that desire to seek the fulfillment that the future rep- time worked, in the offices of Lloyds Bank. This resents (that is, the quest) is matched only by his locale in Eliot’s time would have been the financial or her fear to know what that future may be. This and commercial center not just of London but as attraction-repulsion relationship with the future, the seat of British imperial power, of the world, embodied in the alternating promise and nagging the equivalent in its time of the New York World insistence of spring, will shortly be embodied in the Trade Center. To make it a fit landscape for hell fear of the resurrection of the wrong dead, that is, is not any reference to its squalor or tawdriness, the infamous “sprouting” of the corpse that Stetson consequently (the squalid and the tawdry will come “planted last year in [his] garden.” soon enough in The Waste Land) but to the tran- But, like the future, that moment in The Waste sient service to the temples of materialism and of Land is yet to come. For now and for the speaker, other temporal and empty pursuits that humans there is the “future” that Madame Sosostris, read- engage themselves in there. ing the cards, has to tell him. That it is nonsense The reader is now very near the end of the sec- is made clear by the fact that she tells the speaker, tion entitled “The Burial of the Dead,” after all. who is lost in a wasteland where there is not even How many and how much is buried under this the sound of water, to fear death by drowning. Inad- square mile of English earth, one must ponder. vertently on Madame Sosostris’s part, here again, Not too far from St. Mary Woolnoth, for example, nevertheless, is another foreshadowing, in this case stands Christopher Wren’s monument to Charles of Phlebas, the drowned Phoenician sailor of the II for his restoration of the city following the Great fourth part of The Waste Land, “Death by Water.” Fire of September 1666 that literally laid waste to Not that Madame Sosostris, charlatan that she four-fifths of the city itself, thereby giving Wren is, deserves any credit for that. Eliot gives her a one of the greatest architectural opportunities in cold and punningly jokes about her “wicked pack modern history. of cards.” (An old saying reminds us that even a Caught up in this sensual music of birth, copula- broken clock is right twice a day. The point is that tion, and death, destruction and restoration, loss nothing is ever meaningless, not even a charla- and renewal that is all around him, the speaker tan’s predictions.) Apparently left depressed by the feels not the lightness of the coming spring with madame’s sorry vision, however, the speaker, in whose promise the poem opened but the weight the last stanza of “The Burial of the Dead,” heads of the years and the toil and the sin. Rebirth spells the rest of the way home now, joining the crowd responsibility, after all. The cry that the speaker of other weary wayfarers wending their way across thus calls out to Stetson, asking after that man’s London Bridge. particular guilty secret, sounds like the greetings Here comes that moment in The Waste Land, that Dante makes to those among the damned that already dealt with in the earlier comments on he recognizes on his own trek through hell itself. Eliot’s dedication of the poem to Ezra Pound, Here is the moment where the fear that is in a where the literary ghost of Dante and his vision handful of dust finds its name, and it is indubitably of the human soul in Eternity is first invoked. The fear for one’s sins—the corpse that was planted crowd making its way across the ancient bridge last year may resurrect to point a withering fin- (not that the structure is itself ancient, of course, ger of accusation. Fear makes the spirit reluctant but the Thames has been bridged at this point since to awaken and instead, Sibyl-like, makes it desire

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death, like those doomed lovers Rudolph and Marie, or like Tristan and Isolde, whose last great aria, in Wagner, is the Liebestod, death-love. Now, too, the quester, the speaker, knows his charge: to seek life or to seek death, to awaken or to die. Let the dead bury the dead, the Gospels say, but what are the living to do in the midst of so much buried death? the poem clearly asks. But this message in The Waste Land, at the end of the first part at least, is not about religion; it is rather about dealing with the quiet, invisible ter- ror—Kierkegaard not many decades earlier had called it fear and trembling—that is existence, and so in both the opening and the closing lines of final stanza of “The Burial of the Dead,” Eliot invokes The clock on the Church of Saint Mary Woolnoth not one of the great religious poets of history such would have been a familiar landmark to Eliot, who as Dante but one of literature’s most famous bad worked mere blocks away at Lloyds Bank in the City of boys, Charles Baudelaire, a mid-19th-century London. Eliot memorializes the church and its clock, atheist, French symbolist, and iconoclast. Though albeit rather darkly, in the closing stanza of “The Burial Eliot’s is a very free translation, the fragmentary of the Dead” when he introduces Baudelaire’s “Unreal line with which this final stanza begins—“Unreal City” into The Waste Land. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy) city”—is from Baudelaire’s “Les sept vieillards,” or “The Seven Old Men,” a nightmarish vision of the Waste has been making throughout this first of its modern city as a place inhabited by the walking five parts: The distinction between life and death, dead, who may be vampires or even demons. The and between the living and the dead, has become Baudelaire poem’s first image is of the city as an ant- a far less vividly dramatic one than poets of yore, hill, aswarm with subterranean dreams and ghosts with the possible exception of Dante, were capable and secrets, making the words “unreal city,” Eliot’s of imagining, that in order to cope in a modern less vivid translation of Baudelaire’s original phrase, urban landscape, humans require not a new vision “fourmillante cité,” along with Eliot’s own subse- (that is why Eliot can call up as many of the voices quent use of images from straight out of Dante’s of past poets as he has and will) but a new way of Inferno, all the more telling and appropriate. seeing how the old visions may still apply. It is Baudelaire’s vision of what commenta- The idea is not that the dead land whose imag- tors have come to call the urban apocalypse that ery permeates the poetry of the poem’s opening is again invoked at the end of the stanza and of section, “The Burial of the Dead,” will not yield “The Burial of the Dead” itself. In “To the Reader,” something. The idea is that it is as likely to yield the opening poem in Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, or what has already died and been buried—the corpse Flowers of Evil, the French poet accuses his reader interred in Stetson’s garden, for example—as to of being, like himself, a hypocrite, unwilling to provide what is genuinely vital and inspiriting new admit that it is in each other that each human indi- growth. That is all the difference in the world, of vidual is compelled to recognize himself or herself course, a difference between repeating the past to among the living and the dead, “mon semblable— no useful purpose or moving on into a future that mon frère!”—“my reflection, my brother!” These may be uncertain but is nevertheless built on rather two uses by Eliot of Baudelaire’s uniquely modern than mired in the past. The one course of action urban vision to clarify the inescapably deadening is redundant and stultifying, not to mention ter- reality of the commonalities that life takes on in a rifying. The other is renewing and invigorating but teeming modern city drive home the point that The perhaps, in its newness and strangeness, no less

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terrifying. And, so, the putative hero struggles with asserted, one comes away with “a sense of the hor- choices and mixed signals, neither of which are ror, the boredom, and the glory.” The issue is not ever clear and both of which are always confused. whether it was Eliot or Arnold who was correct In any event, that seems to be how the speaker in this particular instance; the issue is that Eliot of the poem, who is “suspended between mem- recognizes boredom as a major motivating factor in ory and desire,” between a past that is dead and human life. a future that is uncertain, views the matter; for if Perhaps that view was a part of the influence “The Burial of the Dead” has a consistent tone, it on Eliot of the French symbolists with their jaded is one of confusion and doubt. Faced with an array and irreverent sensibilities and tastes. The words of of bewildering avenues of thought and action and Baudelaire identify boredom as the one vice that is meaning that, rather than proving to be liberating more ugly and foul than all the rest, though not as for him, seem instead to have paralyzed the speak- spectacularly interesting or inviting, and that other er’s capacity for choice, the speaker, if he is indeed symbolist whose work influenced Eliot far more on a quest, a meaningful journey, seems to be get- than any other, JULES LAFORGUE, carved his disil- ting nowhere fast, as the saying goes. Rather he lusioned and jaded doubled personae out of a word wanders the streets of a great metropolis, London, that had ceased, it seemed, to engage the young feeling, apparently, more as if he has died and gone poet’s intellect or heart any longer. There are many to hell than as if spring and its promise of renewal kinds of death, but none is perhaps worse than the and rebirth are in the air. death of the will to engage life with an active pas- He has come to find himself stalemated, driven sion. Eliot’s early poetry had consistently chroni- to a standstill by fear and doubt, both personal cled the more superficial aspects of this very kind of and cultural, and the second part of The Waste a death; The Waste Land explores it in depth. Land, “A Game of Chess,” seals the speaker’s com- Part II: “A Game of Chess” pact with the modern world’s only remaining sin, ennui—boredom. “The Burial of the Dead” ends Identifying boredom as humankind’s greatest bane with Baudelaire’s words to his readers, challeng- may reflect a uniquely modernist attitude on the ing them to deny the, for him, obvious truth that French symbolists and Eliot’s part, indicative of the the greatest vice of all, and the most insidious, is increase in middle- and leisure-class activities that boredom—insidious because it is a vice that every- had come about as a result of the Industrial Revo- one excuses and no one can resist. Eliot, indeed, lution. After all, the sort of subsistence living that may yet turn out to be the great poet of that elu- most humans had endured for virtually all of the sive state of being in which more humans spend previous eons of human history seldom left them more time than any of us would ever care to calcu- with enough leisure time to give rise to either the late—boredom. The empty life of a Prufrock or the bane or the vice of boredom. Whatever the social speaker of “Portrait of a Lady,” the insomniac world causes of the phenomenal attention suddenly paid of “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and “Preludes,” to boredom by poets in the mid- to late 19th cen- even the pointless antics of the Sweeney poems or tury, few if any other previous literatures deal with the frenetic wit of the more personal-seeming qua- and detail boredom as a motivating factor in human trains, and most assuredly “Gerontion” ’s exhausted psychology as much as early 20th-century literature and monotonous monologue all point in one direc- did, and from their earliest manifestations, Eliot’s tion, and that is into the bottomless pit of vacant works are prominent among those that do. self-absorption called boredom. With the possible exception of “The Hollow Commenting on the 19th-century English poet Men,” no other poetry of Eliot’s captures the qual- and social critic MATTHEW ARNOLD’s observation ity of the theme of boredom quite as well as does that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life, Eliot the second part of The Waste Land, “A Game of astutely observed that one does not come away Chess.” This should come as no surprise. It makes with criticism when one hits bottom. Rather, he a certain kind of sense to settle on being bored as

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the one way to resolve the two conflicting choices own description of the room in which the bored with which “The Burial of the Dead” has presented 20th-century couple sits, playing a game of chess, the speaker—staying buried in a dead past or being does more than merely call to mind past splendors, restored to life in an uncertain present. however, be those splendors those of Shakespeare’s Boredom offers at least the simulacrum of activ- or the Caesars’ times. ity; to an outsider, indeed, the bored individual Indeed, one must always be careful when tak- might very well appear to be quite comfortably at ing the measure of a classical allusion in Eliot. All ease, even content, amid the luxuries of an upper too often it as likely to deconstruct the past as to middle-class apartment or sharing a pint or two honor it. With this particular allusion to Shake- with his or her chums at the local working-class speare, which as much brings to mind Cleopatra as pub. In any event, those are the two opposing set- an iconic historical figure as it does those so-called tings, rather like the ying and yang of the black glories of the past, the reader should be mindful yet and the white pieces in a game of chess, for the again that sexual attraction and amorous interest action of “A Game of Chess.” By exploring these are being employed not to any ameliorative or con- two extremes of the social order, Eliot dismisses structive or even only merely recreative effects or the ages-old myth that each end of the spectrum purposes. Much to the contrary, Cleopatra remains of human culture has regarding the other, the notorious for having used her considerable sexual rich believing that only the poor are truly happy, charms to ensnare and exploit to her own best the poor that only the rich are truly happy. In the political advantages two of the most powerful men scheme of things that The Waste Land is developing in the Roman world, Julius Caesar and Marc Ant- wherein happiness is not a superficial emotional ony. Shakespeare may make Antony and Cleopa- detail to be found in possessions or in the forget- tra’s story a tragic love affair, but Antony’s love for fulness brought about by empty sexual encounters and faith in her also brought about his defeat, ruin, or by an alcoholic stupor, no matter what one’s and death. The larger lesson to be gained from bank account may be, there is no getting away from all this is not one about sexual politics or gender boredom, which the characters all carry with them issues, however, so much as one that reveals in like a virus that they inflict on one another. dramatic terms how much self-centeredness and In the first half of “A Game of Chess,” then, self-interest rule human behavior even in a context is a middle-class couple who seem to be able to as ostensibly nurturing, sharing, and becoming inti- succeed at doing nothing better than getting on mate as the kind of human bonding that results in each other’s nerves. To set the scene, Eliot appeals coupling and marriage. to his reader’s acquaintance with an especially Of course, Cleopatra’s way to a man’s heart also lush moment in act II of Shakespeare’s Antony serves in the scene to follow as an ironic counter- and Cleopatra when Enobarbus, at the insistence point to the fact that the couple whom the reader of Agrippa, recounts the entrance that Cleopatra, is about to meet apparently have lost the knack queen of Egypt, made when she visited with, and for arousing any sort of sexual, let alone amorous, succeeded in conquering the heart of, Marc Ant- interest in each other. For the reader to see how ony, the powerful Roman general and spiritual heir this particular modern couple fail to relate or to to the reputation of the assassinated Julius Cae- connect with each other, however, the reader must sar. Enobarbus waxes poetic as he describes how meet another tragic couple from ancient times. In “The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, / this case, the source is Greek rather than Roman, Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold; / the story finding its basis in a myth rather than in Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds history. Still, in most of its details, it rings no less were love-sick with them. . . .” These are memo- true or likely for being myth rather than history. rable lines that anyone that has ever encountered It is the story of Tereus, the king of Thrace, and them is not likely to forget; Eliot’s calling them to his wife, Procne. Eliot introduces them into the his reader’s attention immediately as he begins his poetry of The Waste Land at this point in the poem

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by calling to his reader’s attention a print that the Anyone who would see in this story Eliot com- London couple have hanging on the wall above the paring a glorious past with a sordid present, as some fireplace mantle. In this “sylvan scene,” the reader contemporary readers of The Waste Land did, are learns, is depicted “the change of Philomel, by the certainly missing the point, which, again, in typi- barbarous king / So rudely forced,” a tale that not cal Eliot fashion, is multilayered. For one thing, in only reflects on the modern couple but on much of a poem whose overall theme is loss and waste, the the rest of the direction that The Waste Land takes. tale of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus surely fill the Procne was the daughter of the king of Athens, bill whenever and wherever it may have occurred. and when Tereus won her hand in marriage, all In this particular instance, however, it is not just Thrace rightly rejoiced. She soon gave Tereus an the adults who suffer, as in the case of Rudolph and heir to the throne, their son, Itys, but after a while, Marie or Antony and Cleopatra, but the children, Procne grew homesick and requested that her too. Itys is portrayed as a very small and innocent younger sister Philomela might come to visit them. child, like Iphigenia in the Agamemnon, the trag- Willingly, Tereus went to fetch her. The minute he edy that Eliot alludes to in “Sweeney among the laid eyes on her, however, he lusted after her, and, Nightingales,” or the infant Oedipus, whom the as Ovid, Eliot’s source for the horrible tale, tells it presence of Tiresias in the pages of The Waste Land in the Metamorphoses, his collection of stories of will bring shortly to mind as well. The ancient idea mythic transformations, Tereus now burned only is that a culture that slaughters its young does not to have Philomela for himself. Instead of bringing have long to survive, and so a constant condition her home to his palace and the waiting Procne, he of the wasteland that The Waste Land portrays is its took Philomela to a tower deep in a forest where slaughter of innocence and of the innocent. he raped her, a virgin, and then, rather than killing That point will be much more fully developed her as she pleaded, cut out her tongue so that his shortly in the second part of “A Game of Chess,” horrible deed might never be known. There is the the pub scene. For now, Philomela’s rape and the further suggestion that in that way, too, he could disgraced marriage bed appear more as a comment have his pleasure of her whenever he wished. on the bored couple that the reader is about to hear Tereus managed easily to convince Procne that as they engage in a fruitlessly one-sided conversa- her sister had died on the homeward journey from tion in their well-appointed apartment. Athens, but unbeknownst to him, Philomela con- The reader is now told that, along with the print trived to weave a cloth in whose threads she told depicting the rape of Philomela, “Other withered the tale of Tereus’s awful treachery. Philomela stumps of time / Were told” on the apartment’s tricked an old maid servant into bringing the tell- walls. The clear implication rather is that these tale tapestry to Procne as a gift, and when the emblems of and lessons from the human family’s dishonored wife and mother learned of the shame mythic past, containing its store of conventional that Tereus’s lust had brought on her family and wisdom and cautionary tales regarding destructive their marriage bed, not only did she free her muti- behavior patterns, have become mere wallpaper, lated sister from her confinement but, to avenge as it were, nothing more than window dressing his crime, the two sisters mercilessly slaughtered and decorative elements inasmuch as this modern Itys, roasted his dead body, and served it to couple, who are starving in the midst of plenty, Tereus. When he discovered what they had done, are concerned. A vast panoramic history of ideas they fled, with Tereus hot in pursuit. The gods and images hovers just at the edge of their con- transformed the three into birds: Philomela into a sciousness, if even there, but otherwise has no swallow, because the swallow cannot sing but only abiding effect on or benefit to their lives. Like the cries out; Tereus into a hoopoe, a bird of prey; and “roots that clutch” to no avail in “The Burial of the Procne into a nightingale, whose plaintive song is Dead,” the ancient tales have become “withered taken to be inspired by the grief of a mother per- stumps,” an image recalling Philomela’s severed petually mourning her lost child. tongue, to be sure, but also echoing the image,

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again from “The Burial of the Dead,” questioning ing-class person unabashedly gossiping about a what branches—new growth, new ideas—might good friend as she goes on about the marital advice “grow out of this stony rubbish.” A withered stump that she tried to give to this other person, Lil. The bears no fruit. monologue—although a one-sided conversation Cut off from the past, from its instructive powers may again be, like the stressed wife’s of the first over the living human spirit meant to inherit and episode, a more apt description in this case, too— be shaped by it, and bereft of any unifying principle introduces us to yet another married couple, Lil of their own, the twosome sit there, bored out of and Albert. If The Waste Land drives its “story” for- their skulls with each other, their surroundings, and ward on an endless stream of parallel stories drawn themselves. What then follows is, once more, the from different human epochs and locales, Lil and couple’s one-sided conversation in which she com- Albert’s, though they may be far more just “com- plains that her nerves are bad and that they never mon” folk, is a story that is no less sad or tragic than do anything, and he pulls a long-suffering silent the couple’s sharing a loveless and sexless marriage act, never apparently responding to her complaints in the midst of their comfortable surroundings, or directly but thinking, nevertheless, about how bored than Tereus and Procne’s. (Indeed, it may very well he is, too, with the whole show, the whole lot of be Eliot’s intention to use Lil and Albert to dispel them. “What shall we ever do?” she asks, or is it the old literary myth that only the highborn can him and of himself, as they sit there, drowning in a know what genuine suffering is. Eliot was the child sea of human voices, hearing nothing, connecting of a democratic culture; he would have known that nothing with nothing? Eliot almost gets his read- tragedy is no respecter of classes.) ers to wish that they might at least find the passion Any reader can easily gather the details. Albert and the conviction that individuals like Procne and has just been released from military service after Philomela, even the brute Tereus, had. For all their four years, having been in the war for the duration, destructiveness, they at least engaged life and the no doubt, and the friend has been advising Lil to living of it as if such things were meaningful and try to look her best if she wants to keep her man important experiences in and of themselves, as if life now that he has come home for good at last. Lil, mattered. This new, modern scene of marital trag- however, has been having trouble with her teeth, edy, however, ends not with mad pursuit, but with and Albert would like to see her get them all pulled someone “pressing lidless eyes”—there is no rest, no and replaced with false teeth. Lil’s excuse is that relief, and there apparently will be none. her bad teeth and her sorry looks are the result of If this opening episode of “A Game of Chess” is her having taken drugs to abort her last pregnancy, one of the least difficult sections of The Waste Land having had five children by Albert already. Shades to get a handle on because of its clarity as drama, of the slaughtered Itys and Procne’s mournful tears as narrative, particularly after the challenges to aside, Lil’s friend makes it clear to her listeners that order and coherence with which “The Burial of she has made it clear to Lil that if Lil does not give the Dead” has just presented the reader, then the Albert the “good time” he wants, “there’s others pub scene that follows is a close competitor. The will, I said.” “Then I’ll know who to thank,” Lil tells transition may be abrupt, but it should not be too her. So the story goes. difficult for the attentive reader to get his or her Interspersed with this particular mournful tale of bearings because it is clear that, despite the lack love gone awry and adultery on the wing is the bar- of quotation marks, there is now someone being tender’s crying out, “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME”— caught in the act of actually speaking, rather than the last call in a London pub. If it will help keep a the poet or the anonymous speaker speaking only dramatic focus, the reader might wish to imagine to the reader. that the husband of the couple in the first part of “A “When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—,” Game of Chess,” no longer able to bear his spouse’s this someone begins, and it quickly becomes appar- irritable nagging, has stepped downstairs into a pub ent from her turns of speech that she is a work- that occupies the street level in their or an adjacent

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apartment building. Eliot and his wife Vivien did combining the allusive, the dramatic, and the the- indeed live in a London apartment near a pub at matic in a way that both advances the immediate this time in their married life. Although theirs was action—the quest is still on, after all, even if it not a loveless match by all accounts, it was, because seems that the text cannot get past square one, to Vivien’s difficult menstrual cycles, a great deal that being the City of London—and the universal more sexless than is natural or normal. Imagining dynamics of human relationships that compel that that the couple bored to distraction, the husband action. driven to a late-night drink, might be Tom and Viv If The Waste Land is the dead land, it is not that will not make the significance of the moment in it is incapable of springing to life; it is that the hero The Waste Land have any greater or lesser signifi- must desire life. Otherwise, all is lost inasmuch as cance, however, since it could be a thousand other the human element is concerned. Procne’s mourn- couples in a thousand other cities on a thousand ing cry is what survives—“the inviolable voice” that other nights—which is Eliot’s point. By dragging Lil can fill all the desert with its song. That song, Eliot and Albert, Tereus and Procne, and Antony and tells his reader, is the poetry—the enduring beauty, Cleopatra (and, shortly, Tiresias) into the endless if you will—that is made out of all of this other- tale of human betrayal and disappointment in the wise transient suffering. Shakespeare, in another name of love, he is not telling his own tale; he is of his plays, The Tempest, will say it best, perhaps, telling everyone’s tale to one degree or another. when he says that song is that magic that turns all For now, the poetry is mainly exposing the with- our suffering into something “rich and strange”—a ering irony that there is no getting away from the phrase that Eliot will resort to frequently in his crit- agony that is human existence, its interminable icism. Perhaps, then, it is appropriate that that very boredom, and its seeking after quick and all too moment from The Tempest in which Shakespeare often violent pleasure in reaction. Seeking some has the sprite Ariel utter those words underpins the surcease from his sorrow, such as it is, the speaker opening movement (to shift to a musical analogy) (for might not the husband driven from his apart- of the next section of The Waste Land. ment by his nerve-wracked wife not be the seeker- Part III: “The Fire Sermon” speaker of “The Burial of the Dead?”) has to sit and The third part’s opening motifs of less-than- listen—at an adjoining table of his own, of course; enticing scenes set by the River Thames as it wends he would hardly dare to mingle—to Lil’s friend go it way through English literary history as well as on and on as another dreary night draws to another past the sleeping modern metropolis of London dreary close. is in keeping with the only somewhat convenient The patrons finally begin to depart, bidding each premise that The Waste Land, rather than a collage “goonight,” and another echo of that “Shakespehe- of mangled verse, is a narrative poem reflecting the rian Rag” creeps over the water, bringing to mind thoughts and feelings of a single personage. Though one last pair of doomed lovers, Hamlet and Oph- he may be more a ruling intelligence than any eas- elia. In the midst of all those good nights is Ophe- ily isolated and identified agent or personality, the lia’s—“Good night, ladies”—as she drowns, having speaker whose presence periodically manifests itself been driven mad, first, by Hamlet’s abusive behav- clearly and distinctly among all those bit and pieces ior toward her in his plot to feign madness and then from sources as varied as past literary masterpieces, when Hamlet’s kills her father, Polonius, mistaking snatches of conversation caught as if in passing, him for yet another murderous king, Claudius. All and present-day popular songs does seem to take stories are the same story, it has been said, and in on more discernible characteristics and a personal- “A Game of Chess,” Eliot’s aim is simply to prove ity as the poem proceeds, so that by the opening of this maxim in as few words and with as great an “The Fire Sermon,” with its morning-after ambi- economy of stagecraft and fanfare as possible. If ance, this anonymous speaker’s trail follows logi- it were a stand-alone poem, “A Game of Chess” cally upon the flow of the dramatic action that has would still be an outstanding poetic achievement, just transpired in “A Game of Chess.”

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It is not too difficult to imagine, for example, Burial of the Dead.” Shortly, for example, he will that this ruling or guiding personage, whose inte- invoke those images of the “unreal city” again, and rior monologue and exterior meanderings form from the landmarks that he cites, it will be made the substance of The Waste Land, having left his clear that he is once more near London Bridge. apartment and nagging spouse at some point the This is certainly Eliot’s vivid way of suggesting evening before and then hung out till closing in that the speaker, like the aimless opportunists in the early morning hours in a pub in part two of the vestibule of Dante’s Inferno, is going around in The Waste Land, now finds himself, in part three, meaningless circles. The only problem is that he is wandering the deserted streets of London in the supposed to be on a quest if the wasteland is ever early morning hours. As one half of that middle- to be delivered from its awful doldrums. That will class couple, unhappy not just with each other so come later, however. For now the speaker seems to much as with life itself, or at least with the lifestyle be haunting the waterfront itself, the seedy banks they have found themselves compelled to live in of the river, and as he does so, he bears an uneasy this contemporary urban environment, he may very witness to the sordid detritus of the previous night’s well be reluctant to return home. He has had his fill furtive activities along those ancient banks littered of nagging women the night before. with “other testimonies of summer nights.” Whatever the case, he seems now to be retrac- Such a conceit—that the speaker has lost his ing his steps from the closing passages of “The way as he walks off a hangover, perhaps—would

The Church of St. Magnus Martyr, whose high altar is pictured here, is praised in Eliot’s “The Fire Sermon” for its “[i]nexplicable splendour.” (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

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enable the reader to make sense and even order out dom literature from ancient times to the present, of this third part’s tangle of allusions, fragments, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (to which Eliot, in and images. If the sensibilities of this ruling intel- his notes, compares The Buddha’s Fire Sermon) ligence, the speaker, are suffering a disorientation included. With its exhortation to store one’s trea- from the marital stress and heavy drinking of the sure in heaven, where it cannot rust, Christ’s guid- sleepless night before, then all these dulled and ance to his followers is based on the same principle confused memories of past trysts that will dominate as The Buddha’s: The world that the senses per- virtually the whole of “The Fire Sermon” are still ceive to be the only world is instead a place of cor- very much in keeping with the speaker’s own cur- ruption, where nothing, not even thought or belief rent interests and predicament, even if that is not or love, lasts long—if, that is, it is built on nothing as clear to him at the moment as it ought to be to more than the shifting sands of human knowledge the keenly observant reader. Assaulted on all sides and human interaction. by a culture top-heavy with the totems and tokens So, too, then, the shifting scene that the speaker of the past, and unsure of the direction that his life discovers as he wanders the riverside at early morn- and marriage have taken, the distracted speaker ing is one that emphasizes that no human pleasure has not lost sight of his quest so much as not yet endures either, not even the lustful dalliances of come to realize that he is even on one—a quest not the night before, as the remnant debris that he for the Grail itself but for the ability to make the encounters bears witness. Like the nymphs, who kind of sense and order out of experience that the were only ever imagined anyhow, and the city reader also craves as the poetry of The Waste Land directors and their heirs, who come and go on fame continues on its inexorably chaotic way. and fortune’s changing winds, lovers, too, are all Any pursuit that lacks direction or purpose must or soon will be departed or parted, just like the ultimately seem to be a vain one, and that is cer- power-brokers—Lil as well as Cleopatra, Antony as tainly the point that this section’s title, “The Fire well as Albert. To underscore that poignant truth, Sermon,” makes. The title is a direct reference to Eliot plays on a refrain from Sir Edmund Spenser’s a sermon, a teaching text from The Buddha, and 16th-century poem in honor of a wedding, The Pro- as such The Buddha’s Fire Sermon emphasizes a thalamion: “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my spiritual lesson by means of the figure that all of song.” Spenser’s love song for the young bride and the material universe is on fire—burning, that is, or groom ended long ago, as did that young couple, as changing—even as the soul witnesses it. The Bud- will this echo of it, the poetry suggests. The river dha uses this figure to teach the lesson that the cre- runs on, no matter, in good Hercleitean fashion. ated world of time and space, which for the sensory, (Heracleitus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, is sensual self seems to be the only substantial reality famous for having observed that no one can step that there is, is in fact nothing but an illusion. into the same river twice.) That as such, furthermore, it can only deceive the Echoes of Shakespeare’s The Tempest are heard individual soul into imagining that what is “real” is here, too, another literary work that emphasizes this world, with its wealth, fame, power, and all its loss. Ferdinand, a prince of Naples, fearing that other attachments as well, including those to the his father, Alonso, the king, has been lost in a flesh and its pleasures and to the flesh of others shipwreck, has his fears confirmed by “music that in the pleasures of sexual or connubial love. This crept by me upon the waters,” so he weeps in grief world, however, is in fact illusory, according to The while sitting on the bank. That this Alonso was Buddha’s teachings, for the simple reason that it not a very pleasant person is not factored in to is always changing. Hence, nothing in it endures, Ferdinand’s grief, nor should it be. In any case, whereas the soul does. So, then, the soul must seek the report of Alonso’s death later turns out to be the sources of its peace elsewhere. a lie, the basis for an illusion created by the magi- The idea that nothing here matters because cian Prospero, himself the former, usurped king of nothing here endures is at the heart of much wis- Naples exiled by Alonso to this lonely island with

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only his daughter Miranda for company. Who does merely and for the most part a convenient short- not have a story of loss worthy of another’s tears? hand by which Eliot may define the essential prob- In a world of illusions, however, it makes no dif- lem of human existence, that being the individual’s ference to the speaker what is true or what is false, attachment to the material universe, which, as The for “son of man, / You cannot say or guess.” In Buddha and the poets insist, is all only an illusion the wasteland that the speaker inhabits, even the anyhow, changing ceaselessly even as it unfolds or source of tears seems to have dried up (shades of undresses before the seeker’s eyes, hungry for the Lil’s friend’s unsympathetic analysis of Lil’s “sorry” sight of something meaningful, maybe even just marriage). interesting. When in doubt, a comely naked The speaker now ends up fishing along the bank. will always do nicely to illustrate the point. Whether that is literal or he is pruriently fishing for The locale of a river, then, also itself becomes a clues about what sorts of amorous activities may suitable metaphorical reference point for the river have transpired there last night under the conceal- of time, of course, which, like time and tide, waits ing cover of darkness, it brings to mind the Fisher for no one. Art may seek the changeless, but as the King, who though wounded monitors the hero’s 17th-century English poet Andrew Marvell says, access to the Grail that can cure him. Still, this is “at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot a moment of a forced, false resolution that will not hurrying near / And yonder all before us lie / Des- take; much more travail and learning lay ahead erts of vast eternity.” Those awful sentiments, from for the speaker before, at poem’s end, he will have Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” a cleverly witty earned the right to sit finally at the shore, fishing, invitation to his beloved to surrender her chastity the arid plain behind him. to his desires, are alluded to twice over within 12 For now, he is still lost in a wilderness of confu- lines of this same opening stanza to “The Fire Ser- sion, selfishness, and desire. That is why the domi- mon,” so that the reader is not allowed to escape nant note struck in “The Fire Sermon” will be its what the old scholars and religious used to call a almost obsessive emphasis upon sexual desire, lust. memento mori—a reminder of death. (Eliot, in his Dante was astute enough to consign the majority notes, identifies the second allusion to Marvell as of the sinners confined to hell proper to Circle an allusion to an obscure poem called “Parliament Two, where the lustful are punished, and Shake- of Bees,” but this may be the sort of red herring speare never missed an opportunity to introduce that Eliot delighted in tossing under the noses of a bit of bawd to liven up an otherwise weighty scholarly source hunters. He was alluding to Mar- dramatic moment. Eliot, too, knows that, while the vell’s duly celebrated poem as early as “The Love great mythic images of a lost or wounded king and Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and his criticism had a blighted land longing to be rescued by a savior/hero/ great deal to do with making this poem of Marvell’s Grail knight may tug at the heartstrings and appeal celebrated among modern readers.) to the imagination of a certain kind of reader (Eliot By the end of the first stanza, nevertheless, the himself included, no doubt), unadorned metaphors reader finds Eliot exercising his typical propensity and images drawing on the raw energies of sexual for undercutting any earlier indications of a too desire and its related abuses will always strike a serious intent for the poetry. The gloom and doom resounding clarion chord with most readers, since expressed in the poetry from The Tempest and from most humans know what it is to lose sight of goals, Marvell that has been alluded to, not to mention proper action, and even clear thinking when the in the images of rats dragging “slimy” bellies or heat of sexual passion clouds the intellect and scurrying over bones cast into dry attics—shades moral judgment. of “Gerontion” or of “The Hollow Men” yet to Nor should this emphasis be thought of as either come—suddenly take a turn toward the ludicrous a pandering to his readers’ baser instincts or as but no less sexually seductive. Using the second moralizing or preaching to them on Eliot’s part, allusion to Marvell to execute the segue—“But at since that is not the point. Human sexuality is my back from time to time I hear”—Eliot permits

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his caricature of the natural man, Sweeney, to swim to in “The Burial of the Dead.” The morning has into the picture. Followed by a ragged verse that passed, and it is now a winter afternoon. Just as comes from a relatively bawdy and contemporary Madame Sosostris was a false start on Tiresias, song about a Mrs. Porter whose daughter “washes who shall appear momentarily, Mr. Eugenides, the her feet in soda water,” reminiscent, perhaps, of Smyrna merchant, is a false start on the drowned the epileptic Doris from Mrs. Turner’s bawdy house Phoenician sailor that she read in the speaker’s in “Sweeney Erect,” Sweeney’s entrance into the future. That personage, too, will appear shortly in pages of The Waste Land may lighten the moment part four as Phlebas. For now, however, this scene, but not the matter. with its rather patent overtones of a homosexual Whatever else the reader may think of someone pickup, appears to serve as a way for Eliot further who uses soda water to clean her feet, the idea to emphasize the speaker’s lack of any real forward calls to mind a very famous poetic tag by George progress, for here he is, still as suspended between Gordon, Lord Byron, the early 19th-century Scot- memory and desire as he was within the first few tish libertine, poet, and bon vivant. If the speaker lines of the entire poem. is indeed suffering a hangover as he muses on dead What now is about to ensue is an assignation kings and deader desire, he may be recalling, too, between a young woman—a typist—and a rental another gibe at drunkenness and sermons and soda agent—the “young man carbuncular,” that is, water as this first stanza of “The Fire Sermon” ends. pimple-faced. (Eliot refers crudely to young male Although this gibe is hardly as sobering as The Bud- adolescents’ faces that have apparently broken out dha’s injunction, it has as its target the same sort of in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” as being frivolously vain human behavior: “Let us have wine “red and pustular”; he may, however, only be using and women, mirth and laughter,” Byron’s couplet that kind of an identifying characteristic as a sign runs, “Sermons and soda water the morning after.” of physical and, so, behavioral immaturity, rather Soda water would have been a dyspeptic, the than being insensitive.) Alka Seltzer of its day for those who had indulged Whether the speaker is a witness to this scene, too heavily the night before. That said, Byron’s a participant in it, or absent from it is difficult to sentiments are clear, almost indeed the drunken determine. Since this scene is also famously wit- libertine’s age-old battle cry: If I have to hear nessed by Tiresias, it is perhaps one of the most preaching, let it be after I have enjoyed the plea- critical in the Eliot text, not simply for Tiresias’s sures of sinning. It is a worldly man’s morality, nat- mythic importance as a seer but for the special sig- urally, and hardly what The Buddha would have nificance that Eliot assigns him in the notes to the had in mind, although Sweeney would no doubt poem. It is doubtful, nevertheless, that the speaker subscribe to the idea. Whether or not the speaker and Tiresias are the same person, as some commen- of The Waste Land does as well will be answered in tators have suggested; rather, introducing Tiresias the next stanza. at this point gives Eliot the opportunity to take the On balance, and despite this possible allusion to typist’s part as well as the young man’s for reasons Byron through Sweeney and Mrs. Porter’s daugh- that will be explained shortly. ter, the first stanza of “The Fire Sermon” may That leaves two other options for where the seem to betoken on the part of a repentant speaker speaker has gone. He has been until now present regret or at least some caution regarding sexual and virtually without cease, after all, even if only as a other sorts of pleasure-seeking excess in the face sorry murmur from time to time since the second of life’s brief candle—particularly when it is being stanza of “The Burial of the Dead,” so why should burnt at both ends, as the saying goes. If there he suddenly disappear from the scene at just this were any lessons to be learned, however, stanza juncture? To imagine that he has not disappeared two suggests strongly that they simply did not take. leaves only one option: that the speaker may be The speaker is back in the same locale of “unreal the carbuncular young man who by late afternoon city” that he had already managed to find his way and after a near sexual encounter with another

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male relieves all his own pent-up sexual frustra- A further connection between Sophocles’ use of tion, energy, and stress with the typist, an old flame Tiresias, incidentally, can be found in the fact that perhaps or maybe even a present one, given the Oedipus the King deals with a city that has become tenuous state of the speaker’s marriage. Ultimately, a wasteland because it is unwittingly harboring the it is not that important a matter, of course. The killer of the previous king. In other words, inten- typist and young man’s moment of sexual intimacy tionally or not, Sophocles builds his Theban trag- is merely another one of those universal moments edy on the same primitive vegetation myths—with repeated ceaselessly “on this same divan or bed,” as their sacrificed or wounded king and a blighted Tiresias so astutely observes. So, too, this scene in land awaiting its deliverance—a myth, Eliot tells his The Waste Land is that single one toward which all readers in his notes, that he has utilized as well to of the poetry to this juncture has been pointing, the establish his own wasteland motifs in keeping with poem’s dramatic climax (coming, as is appropriate, his reading of Weston’s From Ritual to Romance and three-fifths of the way through). It is, at least, the SIR JAMES FRAZER’s The Golden Bough, which both easiest scene in the poem for a reader to follow. contain “references to vegetation ceremonies.” But In a note, Eliot cites a longish passage from if Eliot does not think or wish his reader to be igno- Ovid’s Metamorphoses not only to give his own rant of Tiresias’s Greek pedigree, why, then, does readers an introduction to Tiresias but also to tell Eliot call special attention neither to the Tiresias of them how that mythic personage is intended to Homer nor to the Tiresias of Sophocles, reasonably function in this section of The Waste Land. Several original Greek sources, but to Ovid’s tale of Tire- issues arise immediately, however. For one thing, sias, a tale based on those same original sources, no Eliot uses a Roman source for a mythic character- doubt, but otherwise composed in far distant Impe- ization that is Greek in origin. True, the source is rial Roman times? a poet of no less stature than Ovid, but it is not as Fortunately, Eliot’s extended note dealing with if the Greek sources for Tiresias are obscure or any Tiresias answers this question in rather precise but less celebrated as poetic achievements. Indeed, not necessarily perfectly clear terms. For one thing, few readers familiar with Greek literature, a cat- Eliot tells his reader that the myth of Tiresias that egory of individuals that would certainly include Ovid relates (Eliot cites it virtually in full but leaves Eliot, would be likely to think first of Ovid when it in the original Latin) is “of great anthropological Tiresias comes to mind. interest”—hardly a minor detail but, as phrased, not Such a reader would think foremost, no doubt, a particularly useful one either. That myth relates of the Tiresias whom Odysseus, in Homer’s Odys- how Jove teased Juno by telling her that wives had sey, must visit in the Underworld in order to dis- the better part of it in lovemaking. Juno disagreed, cover what perils still lie before him as he continues and to settle the argument, they turned to Tiresias, his homeward voyage to Ithaka. Failing that, such who had spent seven years of his life as a woman a reader would be as likely to recall Sophocles’ (explaining why Eliot portrays him as an “old man Oedipus the King or his Antigone, two tragic plays with wrinkled breasts”) as the miraculous result of in which the same Tiresias, here portrayed as the his having struck two snakes while they were copu- blind seer, futilely informs others of the unassail- lating. Tiresias decided the argument in Jove’s favor able truths of their fate, truths that they cannot, or (whether in deference to Jove’s might or to the truth do not wish to, hear. To be sure, Eliot does make a as he, Tiresias, knew it is not clarified by Ovid). point of reminding his own readers of those equally Juno had to live with the decision, of course, but celebrated appearances of Tiresias in ancient Greek to punish Tiresias for siding with Jove, she struck myths. His Tiresias speaks, for example, of his hav- Tiresias blind (an action that commented on what ing sat outside the walls of Thebes, the locale of she thought of Tiresias’s opinion). Jove could not the two tragedies by Sophocles, and of his having undo the punishment—no god can—but was able walked among the lowest of the dead, that is, as he to compensate Tiresias for the loss of his physical is seen to be doing in the Underworld of Homer. sight by making him able to see the future.

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Eliot does not miss the mark by much when he awe, having known human sexual experience as says that Ovid’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek ren- both a male and a female. Indeed, Ovid’s Tiresias dering of the myth is of great interest, exposing is one of the few, perhaps the only characterization, as it does the far more ancient and epic battle of in all human literature, whose point of view can the sexes, which apparently goes on even among truly be called universal and so objective. On this the immortal gods, and the drolly ironic subtext, basis it might be concluded that the substance of which suggests that each gender thinks that the The Waste Land is its comment on the inability of other side enjoys sexual activity more, thus imply- the individual, be that person a man or a woman, ing that neither side does. Fortunately, too, Eliot’s to find peace and contentment and fulfillment in note explains the significance of all this inasmuch another human being on this side of the grave. as it affects The Waste Land, which, by this point The reader of The Waste Land has already seen in its unfolding progress as a poetic narrative, is a parade of lovers, like players in a French sexual as clearly obsessed with human sexuality as with farce, come sweeping past, much like the hetero- anything. (A commentator once suggested that sexual lovers in Circle Two of Dante’s Inferno who the poem ought to have been entitled The Waist are blown on a hot and stirring wind, the very Land.) In this same note, Eliot proposes that all the emblem of their restless desire for rest in another’s various male characters in The Waste Land are one embrace—Rudolph and Marie, Tristan and Isolde, male character, just as all the various women are Antony and Cleopatra, Tereus and Procne and one woman, and that the two sexes meet in Tire- Philomela, the couple at their game of chess, Lil sias, “the most important personage in the poem.” and Albert, the typist and the rental clerk, Tire- Eliot goes on to explain that “What Tiresias sees, in sias. All have been left frustrated by that which fact, is the substance of the poem.” ought to fulfill—love. And all are at a loss for what That sounds to be more than a hint as to the went wrong. meaning of The Waste Land straight out of its poet’s Shortly the reader will be introduced to other own mouth, but the overzealous reader must be examples of love, sex, attachments that went careful here, nevertheless. Eliot’s note, his words, nowhere except into the sadness of what was are not necessarily a trap, but they require inter- wasted. The reader, continuing a journey down a pretation on the reader’s part as well. What Tire- river that is both the river of time, of history, and sias sees, for example, may seem obvious—a couple the real Thames, encounters Elizabeth and Leices- making rather perfunctory “love,” as it is often ter, whose legendary dalliance ended nowhere. euphemistically put, almost as if the sex act were Then the reader hears from each of the three young a duty or an obligation, like eating or sleeping or modern women whom Eliot, in another note, calls voting, rather than the intimate sharing of an abid- the Thames-daughters. Each one makes her con- ing and pleasurable procreative energy with each fession of surrendering her virtue to a male com- other. However, what Tiresias also sees, as he com- panion who was all too willing to take it, and none ments—“I Tiresias have foresuffered all”—is that of them found satisfaction or fulfillment in that this is how humans most often have engaged, and awful daring of a moment’s surrender that is the do engage, in such a powerfully life-giving, life- complete submission of oneself, emotionally and healing action, not with zest, but with reluctance physically, to another person in the throes of love, and relief: “ ‘I’m glad it’s over.’ ” So, then, what be it another name for sex or for passion. Tiresias sees is not the human tragedy but the First, however, the speaker must stand one human comedy, thus, too, explaining why, for his last time, as he has done twice before, on or near Tiresias, Eliot turned to the less somber and sober London Bridge (Wren’s church of St. Magnus the Roman source, Ovid. Martyr, a fishers’ parish, is close by). Once again Ovid’s Tiresias, the reader now should remem- he must survey the unreal, the swarming human ber, speaks of the subject with an impressive author- city, filled with thousands of individuals seeking or ity, after all, one of which even the gods stand in already lost in the arms of a significant other, each

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one in the tangle of the ultimate human embrace troublesome and difficult for him to overcome from imagining, like Ovid’s Jove and Juno, that it is the his own point of view was his inability, from the other one who is getting the better part of the bar- time that he entered puberty, to keep himself away gain. Eliot’s point, if not the anonymous speaker’s, from the sexual pleasures that he found in women. too, by now seems to be rather obvious: There must As Book III of The Confessions opens, it continues, be something else. This sad and apparently time- “a cauldron of illicit loves leapt and boiled about less, ceaseless parade of human hope and folly can- me. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with not be all there is—cannot be what it is or was love.” More than anything else, Augustine found meant to be all about. his carnality to be the foremost impediment to his That it is not, was not, is, of course, the thrust finding peace with God and so peace with him- of both the entire poem and the seeker/speaker’s self—in a word, happiness. And in those closing quest. That much is clear. But if the lives of most five truncated lines of poetry with which “The Fire humans are lives lost in the errors of misplaced Sermon” closes, there is, in essence, another appeal longings, as Eliot suggests by his use of so much to the tradition of renunciation of the flesh and the past poetry as examples, the reader now has the things of this world that also forms the basis of The right to demand of the poet something more than Buddha’s teaching. just the critique, something more in keeping with a In Eliot’s view, Augustine’s Confessions is to the possible solution to this universal human dilemma. traditions of Western asceticism what The Bud- What, then, is human happiness? dha’s Fire Sermon is to the traditions of Eastern Eliot had already introduced in the section’s asceticism, an observation on which Eliot himself title, “The Fire Sermon,” one possible solution, elaborates in his note to these closing verses of found in the asceticism promoted by The Bud- “The Fire Sermon” and their allusion to St. Augus- dha—happiness can come only through the com- tine’s Confessions. The only difference, perhaps, is plete renunciation of all the allure of the physical that if The Buddha calls for personal renunciation, universe, since it is all only an illusion in any event. Augustine calls for surrender to the will of a greater Now, as the third part of The Waste Land draws to a person, God: “O Lord Thou pluckest me out.” In close, Eliot introduces words from another ancient either case, the solution is the same: self-denial, text that also offers a solution to the question of, or in preparation for the next section of The Waste the quest for, human happiness. “To Carthage then Land, “Death by Water,” the extinction of self. I came,” are the words that open Book III of The Suspended as he is between memory and desire, Confessions of St. Augustine. In that work, a book the speaker till now has been learning that desire that is regarded as the first autobiography and that is the danger and that all the sources of renewal, was written in A.D. 397 when he was 43, Augus- or at least a clue to them, are to be found in, are tine, then the Catholic bishop of Hippo Begius in stored in, memory. Just as, in virtually real terms, North Africa, recounts the history of his life not as spring is the vegetable world re-creating itself and, the actions of a man but as the quest of a soul crav- with it, the living Earth out of the cellular memory ing only one thing—to come to know, love, and of past springs, past rebirths, and renewals, stored serve its God. in a dormant natural universe, so, then, dormant That Augustine, as a result of that quest, chose within the speaker is the memory of hope. Lest to know, love, and serve the Judeo-Christian God he die to the animal appetite that drives him— of the Old and New Testaments is not to Eliot’s desire—that memory will not be freed to awaken, point, so much as that in coming to do so, Augus- however. Overcoming desire will be the focus of tine had to learn to put behind him his sinfulness, “What the Thunder Said,” the fifth and final sec- which, from his viewpoint, was his attachment to tion of The Waste Land. But first, like Phlebas, the the things of this world. Among those attachments speaker must experience a death—must recognize were the usual run-of-the-mill varieties—fame, that physical death itself only symbolizes the death fortune, glory—but the one that was particularly of the will to chart one’s own destiny.

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Part IV: “Death by Water” “Death by Water” is virtually a direct translation of The fourth section of The Waste Land must, at first the closing stanza of “Dans le Restaurant.” glance, come as a relief to any reader who has made The stanza on Phlebas does not seem to have it this far into the poem. Not only does “Death by a place in Eliot’s French-language original, which Water” run a mere 10 lines, but there does not involves an elderly waiter recounting a curiously appear to be a single non sequitur among them. erotic episode that he had had with a young girl Indeed, the four sentences of which the single stanza when he was just a boy. The only discernible is composed not only are all grammatically complete, connection seems to be that the patron requires but they present a consecutive and logical exposition change for a bathhouse, bringing to mind the pos- from beginning to end, and the form of the stanza, sibility of a homosexual liaison, as well, perhaps, divided by breaking lines three and seven into two as the homosexual encounter that the speaker of half-lines apiece, make for a rather pleasant-looking The Waste Land has just had in “The Fire Sermon” pattern on the page, resembling somewhat the roll- with Mr. Eugenides, the one-eyed Smyrna mer- ing waves of the sea in which Phlebas the Phoeni- chant, who invited him to a weekend at Brighton, cian sailor-merchant must have drowned. a popular seaside resort (and whose own French, Furthermore, the text is all in English, and there “demotic,” was not of the highest standards either, is only one literary allusion among the stanza’s 70 by the way). words. That allusion, such as it is, is to a poem by Any hints of the sea or water have implications of Eliot himself, “Dans le Restaurant,” or “In the Res- the notion of an imminent rescue from the oppres- taurant,” composed, as the title suggests, originally sive dryness of The Waste Land, although in both of in French and first published in the Little Review Eliot’s poetic treatments, water proves to be deadly in September 1918. Eliot had been a longtime stu- for Phlebas. However, if death of self, in a spiritual dent of recent French verse. Not only did he model sense, is the only salvation from the endless round many of his earliest poems after the style of Jules of sexual desire, mayhem, and exploitation that the Laforgue, but he developed the latter quatrains in reader has thus far witnessed in The Waste Land, imitation of Théophile Gautier, particularly “The then “death by water” can easily connote a saving Hippopotamus,” which was adapted from one of grace. Christian baptism, for example, utilizes the Gautier’s own quatrain poems. symbolic death of immersion in water to remind During his student year in Paris (1910–11), Eliot the initiate that he has died to sin and been reborn would later confess in a Paris Review interview in in Christ. So, then, the overall significance of the 1959, he had toyed with the idea of settling down death of Phlebas, who is held up as a reminder, in in Paris where he would “scrape along . . . and grad- the fourth part of The Waste Land, to both “Gen- ually write French.” That went the way of many tile or Jew” that Phlebas’s is the common human another young person’s romantic dream of throw- fate—each of us is mortal, dies—fits neatly into the ing all career and caution to the wind. Later still, overall movement of The Waste Land to this point. after his early successes, Eliot admitted in the same Thus far, that is to say, the reader has seen Eliot interview that he thought that his poetic talent using the resources of myth, history, literature, and had “dried up completely.” He continued, “I hadn’t even current events—“He Do the Police in Differ- written anything for some time and was rather des- ent Voices”—to present a vision of humanity that perate. I started writing a few things in French has universal implications. The human individual is and found I could.” Eliot admitted, too, to having presented as a creature bearing the double burden had some help in editing these poems from Pound of consciousness (“memory”) and an animal nature and another French-speaking friend, Edmund du (“desire”), frequently unable to satisfy the rigorous Lac. “Dans le Restaurant” was one of the better demands of either, and afflicted on all sides with products of that period and is to this day included the need for constant interaction with other simi- among the minor poems in The Complete Poems larly burdened human creatures, leaving trails of and Plays. Otherwise, its main claim to fame is that loneliness, grief, regret, and violence in their wake.

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To that catastrophe sages like The Buddha and history of the British peoples, it is hard to imag- St. Augustine offer the antidote of self-denial and ine that Eliot, as he made his workday excursions surrender to a greater will and, one must hope, week after week in those very same environs of the purpose. “unreal” city, where he was himself employed, did Phlebas has certainly found a certain sort of not see that mural frequently. peace; in death, he has “forgotten the profit and There is, however, another, far more telling con- the loss”—the scorekeeping, as it were, that keeps nection among the Cornish tin trade, Middle East- the game going—but the benefit seems minimal. ern merchant adventurers, and The Waste Land. He is caught in the whirlpool, after all. Is death just Not too far inland up the Cornish peninsula from another round of frustration and fruitless hope? the Cornwall is Somerset, home to Glastonbury, which poetry seems to be asking, even if it asks the reader is famed in British legend both as the burial place to recognize in Phlebas’s fate the fate that awaits of Arthur and Guinevere and as the site in Britain every individual. to which Joseph of Arimathea came, fleeing the The reader might wonder why here, at a junc- persecution of the Christ’s followers in the Holy ture that is clearly a crossroads in the poem, Eliot Land following the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus of did not choose to use a more publicly available and Nazareth. With him, in fact, Joseph, who is named accessible reference point than an obscure passage in the Gospels for having provided both the burial and characterization from one of his own poems. garments and the tomb for Jesus’s interment, is If he had chosen a more commonly known mythic reputed to have brought the chalice that Christ reference point, for example, there may have been blessed and from which he and the Apostles drank a clearer signal as to whether Phlebas is intended as the wine of the First Eucharist at the Last Supper— a model or an admonishment. The key to a suitable a chalice that came down into medieval times as the answer to that question may be found, however, legendary Holy Grail whose quest would obsess cer- in a detail from the original appearance of Phlebas tain among Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. in Eliot. In “Dans le Restaurant,” Eliot tells us an Eliot’s allusion, by bringing Phlebas, the drowned intriguing piece of information that is omitted from Phoenician sailor, to the reader’s attention at this the same story as it is retold in The Waste Land. critical juncture in The Waste Land, to his own ear- Eliot tells us exactly where Phlebas, the Phoenician lier poem also, by extension, brings the Grail quest sailor, drowned. back to the forefront once more as well, but in a It was off the coast of Cornwall, in the farthest manner at odds with Jesse L. Weston’s reading of southwestern reaches of England. That locale the quest, which Eliot himself cites quite favorably has its own historical legitimacy for playing host in his headnote. to such a significant event. Cornwall has been a By establishing in the old vegetation rituals that source for tin from ancient into relatively recent permeated ancient Indo-European cultures the times, and it is a well-known historical fact that likelihood of a pagan Welsh origin to the Grail leg- the ancient Phoenicians, a seafaring and mercan- end, whereby the blood-sacrifice of the Fisher King tile people who hailed from the area now occupied in the autumn was a fertility act required to ensure by modern Lebanon in the eastern Mediterranean, the Earth’s rebirth in the spring, Weston builds her carried on an active trade in Cornish tin perhaps entire thesis to overthrow the longstanding notion from as far back as that tin was first being mined. that the Grail is connected with the chalice of the Phoenician traders bartering with Celtic tribes- Last Supper through Joseph of Glastonbury and, so, man even happens to be the subject of a mural in connected as well not simply with the subsequent the old Exchange Building in the City of London. Arthurian sagas but with the origins and beliefs of Although a recent redevelopment of that impres- Christianity. As in any scholarly argument, Weston sive temple of trade and banking into an upscale does not disprove the possibility of a Christian ori- dining and shopping mall now obscures the mural gin and significance for the Grail legend but merely along with all the others depicting the economic casts it into scholarly doubt, and Eliot soon seems

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to hedge his own bets by introducing Christ and Everyman for The Waste Land, bearing the weight elements of Christianity into the closing section not only of all the lovers, comic and tragic, that of The Waste Land, which openly emphasizes ele- people the poetry but also the rest of a doomed ments from the Grail quest that have been only humanity as well. Thanks to Eliot’s providing a implied this far. roadmap based on his own previous poetry, added There is one last significant detail regarding to that critical role that Phlebas plays in The Waste the Phlebas-Cornwall-Glastonbury-Joseph link- Land are the further connections that his pres- ages that Eliot is establishing in “Death by Water.” ence implies to Glastonbury and the Grail, baptism Legend also has it that Joseph of Arimathea’s ulti- and redemption, mystery and wonder. To “con- mately settling in Glastonbury, which would then sider Phlebas,” as the speaker enjoins the reader, have been the far reaches of the world for a man requires considering all those relationships and born and raised in ancient Israel, is the result of significances. His epitaph is a reminder found on his having, as a wealthy merchant, visited Corn- many a tombstone in many a graveyard: “As I am wall many times before in the company of Phoeni- now, so shall you be.” That is not a threat but a cian traders. Providing the inspiration for William truth; Eliot permits the truth of Phlebas’s fate to Blake’s famous couplet—“And did those feet in enlarge itself into each reader’s fate—Gentile or ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains Jew, Buddhist or Hindu, for that matter—by sug- green?”—this legend claims that Joseph may have gestion rather than preaching. even on occasion brought his young nephew along Any reader fearful that the foregoing suggests with him—Joseph and Mary’s son, Jesus. that Eliot may be waxing religious, nevertheless, is Perhaps now the reader can better appreciate missing the point. The same holds true, however, for why Eliot, in a poem in which he unabashedly uses any reader who may think, either to Eliot’s credit or past myths and poetry with an abandon that is his shame, that he is simply trying to be ingenious forgivable only because, on reflection, it serves The or even precocious by planting these insidiously Waste Land’s larger purposes, not only fails to give clever breadcrumbs leading back, through “Death his readers their usual mythic bearings in part IV by Water,” to “Dans le Restaurant,” and from that but cribs some obscure poetry of his own for the poem to a gushing wellspring of mythic, historical, sake of giving the moment clarity. That is to say, and religious potential for meaning. Eliot is not there is a direct line, for any reader willing to follow purveying a mythic sampler, after all; rather, Eliot’s it, from part IV of The Waste Land back through poetry is attempting to achieve a mythic under- “Dans le Restaurant” to the reference to Corn- standing and to work out a mythic calculus of its wall. Through this connection to Cornwall, Phle- own, in its own terms, and on its own terms. Other- bas brings to mind not only Joseph of Arimathea wise, it is not poetry, not art; instead, it is polemic and thereby Christ and the Grail but the entire at best, a collation of “favorite hits of human cul- Arthurian literature, as well as Wagner’s Tristan ture” at worst. und Isolde, for Tristan was a Cornish knight. Wag- It stands to reason, then, that at this key junc- ner, meanwhile, calls to mind Ludwig and Rudolph ture Eliot could do nothing more or less than turn and Marie. Through Phlebas’s connection to Pho- to his own poetic powers of personal mythmaking, nenicia, meanwhile, his presence in the poem also where his own talents are not inconsiderable, and brings to mind Mr. Eugenides and Madame Sosos- bring to bear, from his own store of images and tris’s drowned sailor, and through the fortune-tell- symbols, the most powerful totems that he could ing Madame Sosostris the reader is made mindful conjure up of human spiritual aspiration. He then of the Sibyl and Tiresias. Phlebas’s connection with presents those, likely enough, as they had already the sea provides a further connection to the Fisher occurred in the context of a poem that he himself King, and so on. had previously written, “Dans le Restaurant.” By Combined in the characterization of Eliot’s own not referring to an external myth or literary work creation, Phlebas, in other words, is a veritable at this point in a poem that is notorious for doing

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as much (“Death by Water” does not have a single forces. The thing is, as the speaker has been learn- note, for example), Eliot is granting his readers and ing, unlike with a physical death, that it is impos- his speaker a moment of quiet in which to contem- sible to know just when that other sort of a death, plate and regroup—“consider Phlebas”—in prepa- the death of the spirit, has occurred. ration for the assault on the senses and sensibilities If, however, the speaker chooses life, he must that is about to come in The Waste Land’s lengthy undergo a symbolic death of self. All things are closing section, part V, “What the Thunder Said.” mirrored in their own lesser manifestation, so it is The thunder will bring to the wasteland refresh- easy for the individual to become misled and mis- ing rain, after all, but water can also bring death directed. The seductive power of life, for example, by drowning (the old “too much of a good thing” finds its own parody and grotesque debasement problem). To survive the necessary immersion in in the seductive power of sexuality for sexuality’s the saving graces of wisdom, the reader and the sake. Cleopatra’s encounter with Antony, Lil’s speaker both must be prepared to overcome the friend’s designs on Albert, Tereus’s betrayal of other kind of surrender, not to life, but to death; Philomela, the Thames-daughters’ three con- that latter surrender, though far less attractive in secutive confessions of having been taken in and hindsight, is the easier by far. taken by listening to the empty promises of lust- For all his value as a key marker in the complex ful males, the waiter’s boyhood encounter with poetic and narrative structure that makes up The a female friend—these examples of the powerful Waste Land, Phlebas stands as an emblem not of driving force of sexual energy gone askew are not surrendering the self to a greater good and goal, as introduced into the poetry for their prurient inter- The Buddha and Augustine both suggest, but to est but rather as symbolic moments illustrative of letting go, to giving up, to drowning. The theme of life’s seductively all-consuming allure gone awry. The Waste Land can now be defined as seduction— In Eliot’s hands, the whole sordid history of sexual life itself, enforced in the spring, seducing back to seduction that The Waste Land portrays is intro- its own primal vitality the weary soul that would, duced primarily as a vivid and dramatic way of if it could, remain numb and motionless otherwise. demonstrating and emphasizing how the seductive However, if all positive and affirmative things are vitality of life itself, of the call to risk life, can be deceptively mirrored in their own lesser, negating debased into its own brutal, brutish opposite in manifestation, then when the call to awaken to life acts of violence, emotional or physical or both, one comes, there will be the temptation to yield to the against another. more appealing and opposing seduction of death, If that is humanity’s common burden—to miss which can give the image, but not the substance, of the forest for the trees, the rose for its odor— a genuine release. then Phlebas’s is humanity’s common fate. But In “The Hollow Men,” Eliot will shortly play the only choices are not death or death-in-life. with ideas of life-in-death and death-in-life; they do One may also choose life itself, the promise of the not constitute that difficult a distinction to discern. spring, of renewal and rebirth. For that choice, it The first is the triumph of the spring over winter; is never too late. For his part, then, the speaker, the other is a surrender to that winter that keeps with Augustine, has cried to be plucked out of the the individual warm with the illusion of warmth whirlpool, the senselessly pointless cycles of birth, that is actually a gradual numbing of the senses copulation, death, that is proclaimed by Sweeney into extinction. When that extinction is the actual to be the order of things in “Sweeney Agonistes,” physical death of an individual, as in Phlebas’s case, an aborted work of Eliot’s that would come shortly for example, who could fail to observe its cold final- after The Waste Land. But, Sweeney, like the waiter ity. But the poem has focused all along thus far in “Dans le Restaurant,” is not the Grail knight, on those walking dead—those who have embraced the hero. The speaker of The Waste Land is not, death-in-life, who think that they are living but are either—not yet at least. Before him now lies the in fact dead to all of nature’s life-giving powers and burning plain, the arid vista of death-in-life. It had

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first confronted him back in the second stanza of book jacket blurbs are wont to put it. Eliot seems to “The Burial of the Dead.” be implying that every human story is a remarkable By now, however, the speaker has taken the story of survival in the face of incredible odds, as desert’s measure. Having trekked his confused way Christ’s Resurrection is meant to attest. across it, he knows that the terror of the waste- Before there can be a Resurrection, however, land, like its emptiness, is an interior event, a space let alone a road to Emmaus, there must first be within himself. It exists because he—humankind the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and the immemorial—has, except for a precious few, The Crucifixion on Golgotha. The first stanza takes Buddha and Augustine among them, imagined that the reader from the Agony in the Garden through it exists. With the dead, who are embodied in Phle- Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. He is now dead, the bas, behind him, the speaker forges on, hoping to speaker and poet, merged here, tells the reader, hear what the thunder, the giver, the bringer, of and the living are dying. rain, has to say. (Incidentally, the word restaurant In the emptiness left by that catastrophe, the is based itself on the notion of restoring, renewing, speaker is thrust back into the desert that is all revitalizing. Dans le restaurant, indeed.) around him, ever threatening to overcome him, where there is only rock and sand and no water— Part V: “What the Thunder Said” not even the sound of water. The poetry makes In the fifth section, a poem that has kept its focus clear that there is nothing, indeed, other than primarily on life in a contemporary Western Euro- this vacant, lifeless, pitiless desert, a place of the pean city, London, and its environs now moves phantasmagoric and apocalyptic, where “red sul- both eastward in space and backward in time, as if len faces sneer and snarl” from behind the doors of the speaker himself is aboard the ancient ship off mud houses and hooded hordes swarm “over end- the Cornwall coast with Phlebas, but unlike him less plains, stumbling in cracked earth.” Yet, in the who drowned there, has made the successful voy- midst of it all, there is the moment of revelation on age home to Phoenicia just in time to be on hand in the road to Emmaus, although even it is rendered as Jerusalem to witness the passion of the Christ. if it were a hallucination. In this dark and desperate According to Eliot’s headnote to this last sec- delirium, the speaker now begins to suffer through tion of the poem, one of its themes is the journey to a vision as dispiriting as anything witnessed by John Emmaus when the risen Christ anonymously joined on Patmos in the Book of the Apocalypse. with several of his disciples, seeking to know, as if The great cities of Western history—Jerusalem, he were a stranger in these parts, why they were Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London—are named so low in spirit. They shared with him as best they in quick succession, reminding the reader of all the could the horror and tragedy of the Crucifixion that doomed souls already encountered among them. had just transpired. It was only later, as he shared These locales, however, no sooner are permitted with them a repast of fish, that, in the breaking of to bring back to mind the stories of Rudolf and the bread, he revealed himself to them as Christ. Marie (Vienna), Antony and Cleopatra (Alexan- The hooded figure who inhabits this section dria), Elizabeth and Leicester and Lil and Albert of The Waste Land is that same mysterious figure, (London) than each of those cities is dismissed as “the third who walks always beside you”—the pres- “unreal,” a human of ghostly frustrations. ence that is both unreal and real, threatening and This is the fourth time that the poet has pulled familiar, companionable and distant. Eliot takes out from under his readers any appeal to the fruits that idea, he explains in another note, from the of civilization, that is, its great metropolises, for jus- Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s account of tification of so much human misery and misunder- the arduous journey that he and another crewman standing, even if it is on those same fruitful results took to reach a radio station and obtain help after that the authority of The Waste Land’s poetry is their ship had foundered. Theirs was a remarkable based. The reader is being asked, simultaneously, story of survival in the face of incredible odds, as to both abhor and exalt the cultures that have

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brought the poet the skills to question the achieve- Eliot’s hanging “upside down in air.” This disori- ments of those cultures. But there is a method to enting display has been Alice tumbling down the this madness: What if civilization’s own methods rabbit hole as well, and in the next full stanza, it is have been flawed all along? There is the recent now as if the speaker, having passed through and memory and witness of the war to warrant such a been thrown out of his own personal whirlpool, suspicion and validate such a wild surmise on the awakes to find himself in a “decayed hole” in the speaker’s, and Eliot’s, part. In the same headnote in mountains, where reality seems, if not better, then which he identified Emmaus as one of the themes at least a bit more stable and orderly, tame. There of part V, Eliot also identifies the “present decay of is faint moonlight, and in it the Chapel Perilous is eastern Europe” as another of its themes. in sight. Eliot’s note to this passage in the poetry gets Weston identifies the chapel as the locale in more to the point. He cites, in the original Ger- which the Grail knight faces a serious and mys- man, novelist Hermann Hesse’s Blick ins Chaos terious peril, and she cites similar instances from (Glance into Chaos), in which Hesse laments that a number of variant versions of the Grail quest. same decline, calling up an image of the drunken Since Eliot in his headnote to “What the Thunder laughter of Dmitri Karamazov from Fyodor Dos- Said” himself identifies as another of its themes the toyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, to do so. approach to the chapel as Weston presents it, the Whatever else Hesse might have in mind, Eliot importance of the Chapel scene for the reader may surely would have in mind the chaos brought about be explicated in what Weston makes of the gen- by the socialist and communist revolutions that eral meaning of these various episodes, since they had brought down the Russian czar in 1917 and appear in all the major Grail romances. The Grail were still, in 1922, wreaking havoc on that nation’s quest, in all its variants, is the story of an initiation, suffering populace. No wonder sounds of “maternal Weston proposes. She writes that lamentation” fill the air and call to mind, yet again, the Mystery ritual comprised a double initia- Procne’s mourning song for her lost son, Itys. tion, the Lower, into the mysteries of genera- In one last terrifying descent into sheer madness, tion, i.e., of physical Life; the higher into the then, it is as if the speaker has succumbed to despair Spiritual Divine Life, where man is made one himself and entered the all-consuming whirlpool with God. . . . the tradition of the Perilous Cha- of life-in-death and death-in-life that had engulfed pel, which survives in the Grail romances in Phlebas. The reader, too, is assaulted by a series confused and contaminated form, was a remi- of unsettlingly grotesque images that have neither niscence of the test for this lower initiation. meaning nor purpose, yet beg for clarity: A woman plays her stretched out hair with a fiddlestick, bats Armed with that information, the reader might with baby faces crawl down a blackened wall, tow- then well question why, when Eliot’s speaker ers hang upside down in air, voices sing out of cis- reaches the Chapel, he does not face a terrifying terns and exhausted wells. If these are merely more test of his courage (in one of the Grail romances, glimpses of the sorts of vistas one might expect to for example, a black hand reaches out of a mir- find in Dante’s Inferno, of which the reference to ror to snuff a single taper lit on an otherwise bare “unreal” cities ought to have reminded the reader, altar), but instead finds the chapel “empty . . . only then it may be time to scream, “Enough!” And, to the wind’s home.” At first glance, that set of cir- be honest, the poetry seems to anticipate that very cumstances may seem to imply that the speaker frustration on the reader’s part. has proved unworthy of the quest and, hence, this As Dante climbed down Satan’s body to exit lower level of his initiation. A more likely reading, the Inferno, having reached the absolute bottom however, particularly in view of what ensues, is that of the pit of hell, at Satan’s waist Dante passed the he has already undergone the process of initiation, midpoint of the Earth and looked down to see the which, according to Weston, is “into the mysteries rest of Satan pointing upward, like those towers of of generation.”

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In the course of the text thus far, after all, the If the reader, like the speaker, has been trav- speaker has borne his own often tedious witness eling backward through time and through space to the pain and the boredom that can result from to the sources of memory, the fonts of humanity’s sex without love and misdirected emotion. He first discoveries of mystery and wonder and wis- has transcended the need for initiation because dom, it is no doubt appropriate that the quester, he knows full well the common abuses that that having survived the Chapel Perilous quite handily, natural, generative power undergoes as it becomes finds himself on the banks of the Ganges in dis- entangled with other motives on a day-to-day basis tant India. The word that the thunder is about to in the “unreal city,” where swarms of humanity speak is in Sanskrit, the mother tongue of all of the take advantage of each other in myriad ways. Eliot’s various other Indo-European languages—Greek, myth, like most, nevertheless uses the amorous and Latin, German, French, Italian, Provençal, and, of the sexual to best dramatize the tangle of motives course, English—that have been employed thus far and their results. throughout the poem at one time or another, in one For this modern Grail hero, then, having wit- setting or another. Furthermore, the Asian subcon- nessed the hopelessness that he has witnessed, not tinent is also the primal breeding grounds for the to mention the horrors and waste of war, what various myths that the poem has also employed. possible terror can any mystical chapel hold for Taking her cue from Sir James Frazer’s The him? “Dry bones can harm no one,” he observes, Golden Bough, the compendium of comparative for the Grail quest and all its “mysteries,” like those mythology and ritual to which Eliot, in his notes, “other withered stumps of time” that had become also refers his readers, Weston, for example, finds mere decoration in the lives of the couple in “A evidence for the earliest types of the Grail king, or Game of Chess,” are all just dry bones by now, as Fisher King, of whom more will be now witnessed are all those humans alive then who had created and heard as the poem draws to its close, in early its romance to answer their own need for order and Babylonian rituals. She concludes that he is “that understanding. The need itself has not changed, strange mysterious figure whose presence hovers however, only the individual’s way of satisfying it. in the shadowy background of the history of our The terms of the quest for a transcendent mean- Aryan race,” by which she would have meant Cau- ing may long since have altered, become “contami- casians. As such, this prototypical Fisher King is a nated and confused,” as Weston puts it, but not “divine or semi-divine ruler, at once god and king, the impulse to seek, to find, and not to yield as one upon whose life, and unimpaired vitality, the exis- pursues what meager clues are available at any one tence of his land and people directly depends.” In time in human history for making sense and pur- the Grail romances, this vitality has been impaired pose out of experience. by an injury to the king that is most often depicted The speaker is now ready to learn the lesson of as or associated with a debilitated sexual potency The Waste Land: The goal to accomplish meaning (generally, for example, there has been a wound can be achieved only individually, one person at a to the thigh that is impairing sexual function). time, and not collectively. A culture cannot resolve The idea that the Grail quest introduces into the its conflicts, but each individual who makes up that ancient mythos is that there must be a hero who culture can resolve his or her own. That was the can somehow recover or activate the talisman or original meaning of the Grail quest—that it is to talismans by which the Fisher King will be healed be undertaken by the lone individual, not by an of his wound and thus restored to a lost vitality, army of lonely souls or a swarm of equally confused and, with him, the land and people will be, too. humanity. Knowing this—that he need save only Impelled by the vivid metaphorical implications himself, heal only himself—the speaker finds that of the wounded king and a blighted land, Eliot uses revelation comes as there is a “flash of lightning” the Grail legend to describe a contemporary Europe and then, to a parched land, a parched soul, “a debilitated by a failed cultural and political leader- damp gust / Bringing rain.” ship, a land laid waste by war and the impotence of

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grief. However, he must replace the outer process The story, according to Eliot’s original source, is of healing the king with an inner process, an act of intended to teach the three principal virtues, hardly healing one’s own sense of selfhood and purpose. a small matter, and it goes like this: The three One of the consequences of war is that it removes orders of beings—the gods, humans, and demons— from individuals any sense of a capacity to change having observed self-restraint, approached Brahma, their own condition for the better, so much are the Creator, to seek instruction in how they ought they caught up in vast events beyond their control. to behave if they wished to be virtuous. To each, The crowds flowing over London Bridge are no Brahma imparted a single word, more syllable than different, inside, than the hooded hordes sweeping a word, more letter than a syllable: DA. Each group over the arid plains. All are lost, all are aimless, understood what Brahma said to them perfectly, because none of them sees, let alone believes, that although each heard the instruction differently. he or she has still has access to the most potent of The gods or celestials, who live in paradise, transformative powers—the power to change one- never grow old, and know only pleasure, are bound self. But how to activate it? That is the question to get carried away with enjoyment. They need to that the thunder is now about to answer. practice restraint, so when Brahma uttered “Da,” At this moment in the Eliot poem, then, the to them, they heard him saying, “Damyata,” which speaker, having passed the initiation, is ready to means to restrain or control. In other words, they fulfill his goal of healing the Fisher King. Eliot’s need to practice subduing their senses if they wish twist is that he will make the Grail knight and the to be virtuous. Humans, who are forced to spend Grail king the same person; by healing himself of an inordinate amount of time and energy acquir- the illnesses of the spirit to which his land, people, ing things—food, shelter, clothing—are liable to and culture have succumbed, he will heal himself become too acquisitive and, as a result, greedy and and restore the land and its people, his culture, to selfish, hoarding everything for themselves at the its vitality, one person at a time, beginning with expense of their neighbors. In Brahma’s “Da,” they himself. It is a brilliant conception on Eliot’s part heard him saying, “Datta”—give, be charitable, and even more brilliantly executed, particularly inasmuch as practicing the virtue of charity is the now, as he pulls out all the stops for this grand only check on greediness and selfishness. Finally, and mythic finale for which all of the preceding the demons, who can be very cruel and have no text has been, for all its complexities, only so much scruple against hurting others with insults and preparation. injury, heard Brahma say, “Dayadhvam,” which By being located in India, the speaker has, in means to be merciful or compassionate. obvious and direct terms, arrived at the source— In each case, the instruction requires the recipi- “what roots clutch”—that he has been seeking all ent or initiate to overcome his or her own worst along. The entire figurative structure is unmistak- nature. In the case of the humans and the demons, able as well. Though the Ganga is sunken (that is, that is to be done for the sake of being mindful of the water level is down), it has not yet dried up, the needs of others. In essence, that is what virtue and the help needed to restore it to its full flow— is—thinking of the other person before one thinks the healing rain—is on the way, announced by the of oneself. thunder. Replacing the dry, sterile thunder that Eliot adapts this fable, as he is wont to do with echoed earlier in the poem, this thunder not only all his various source materials, to fit the needs brings rain but will speak primal truths. Eliot’s note of his own thematic and narrative aims. So, then, tells us that the words the thunder speaks come the thunder, with each clap, speaks the primal syl- from a fable in the Upanishads, a vast collection of lable, Da, three times to the Grail seeker, and in Hindu wisdom literature intended to impart secret each case, the seeker hears the instruction that truths, through fables and parables, to its initiates. Brahma gave in the fable, although in the seeker’s Eliot uses a fable from the fifth chapter of the Bri- case, they are slightly out of order (the instruction hadaranyaka Upanishad. that Brahma gave to the gods came last instead of

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first), and they are regarded as personal in nature. subjective and limited, Eliot, along with most of the In each case as well, Eliot illustrates the instruction world’s great religions and other ethical and phil- with an episodic gloss, so that his reader need not osophical systems, stresses that very few humans be familiar with the source story or even with the behave accordingly. Most of us, in the give and meaning of the Sanskrit, for that matter. take of day-to-day relationships and reactions, Datta, give, is the first instruction that Eliot’s imagine that the reality that we perceive is the speaker hears, and he reflects, quite bluntly, “What reality that is in fact there. The conflict between have we given?” Sometimes, the poetry makes clear, appearance and reality and the confusions, ironies, one gives too much or not wisely, into tempta- ambiguities, and paradoxes that attend it is one tion, for example, “the awful daring of a moment’s of the mainstays of much of the modernist way of surrender,” being uncharitable to himself. Other thinking. Eliot, however, whose field of graduate times, when the giving could have been to another study at Harvard was not just philosophy but ideal- and positive, the individual is, conversely, reluc- ist philosophy, which deals with the ways in which tant to let go; the poetry here suggests that one’s mind and matter interact in processes of thought, charity in his or her lifetime will not be measured was especially interested and expert in these kinds by what there was left to leave to others in a will of inquiries. or in an obituary’s record of that individual’s At its extreme, the individual can become genu- “accomplishments.” inely self-imprisoned, behaving as if, but otherwise In a poem that was originally intended to have a not realizing the error in thinking that, reality is tag from a novel by Charles Dickens for its title, it is what he or she makes it to be. That state of mind not too difficult at this juncture in The Waste Land’s is called solipsistic (from the Latin solus ipse, one- closing lines to hear Marley’s response to Scrooge self alone). It does not take much imagination to when, in A Christmas Carol, the latter insists that understand, by this point in The Waste Land, at Marley should not be damned because he was which the idea of sympathizing is being empha- always a good businessman. To that bit of wish- sized, how much of the suffering that has been ful thinking and moral obfuscation on Scrooge’s witnessed in the poem can be attributed to the part, Marley, whose ghostly remorsefulness is more destructive or abusive or exploitative behavior that than a bit redolent of those lost souls that Dante can result when individuals think only of them- encounters in the Inferno, replies, “Mankind should selves. The question, the problem, of solipsism is, in have been my business,” as apt an illustration as other words, much more than an academic or phil- any of what Eliot is driving at here. osophical one inasmuch as the dramatic necessities Then comes the next clap of thunder, giving the of The Waste Land are concerned. Its speaker/hero, instruction, Dayadhvam—to sympathize. Here, by for whom the Grail is not an object but wisdom, way of an illustrative definition, Eliot brings to bear must learn to overcome self-centeredness and self- the allusion to one of the episodes from Dante’s centered interests, even though to be self-centered Inferno discussed earlier in this commentary, in is itself a part of the nature of human intelligence conjunction with Eliot’s dedication of the poem and psychology. to Ezra Pound. This is where Eliot’s speaker recalls As F. H. BRADLEY, the contemporary English Count Ugolino’s being locked in the tower to idealist philosopher whose examination of this starve to death with his sons, but Eliot makes that question was the topic of Eliot’s Harvard doctoral event itself only a metaphor for how each human dissertation, puts it—and Eliot himself cites in is locked within the prison of self, in terms of the his note to this passage from The Waste Land:— physical limitations that the body imposes on the Regarded as an existence that appears in a soul, individual, but more in terms of the psychological the whole world for each is peculiar and private to limitations that experience itself also imposes. that soul. Caught within what Bradley calls their While it is hardly a unique idea that every opaque spheres, nevertheless, individuals imagine human individual has a point of view that is wholly that the external existence that they are witnessing

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is the same, and is being evaluated in the same way, arrived at unless there is added to it, however, the as their neighbors’. As Eliot defines the resulting ancient notion that both the fish and the fisher are psychological and spiritual problem, locked in his “Life symbols of immemorial antiquity.” To be the or her prison, “each confirms a prison.” There is no Fisher King, then, is to be that one, whoever he or getting out of that sort of a prison; it comes, quite she may be, who is adept at tapping the life-source, literally, with the territory, in this case, human flesh exactly as our speaker is now doing as he sits on and bone. But there is developing the understand- the shore fishing. Nor will he not “set [his] lands ing that one’s point of view may not be another’s, in order,” exactly as the Fisher King, once he has yet it is equally as valid. Thus, the second injunc- been restored to full health and vigor, is immemori- tion, to sympathize. Such a point of view enables ally fabled to do, according, once more, to Weston. one to transcend the other, more selfish approach, His is, of course, a figurative, a spiritual, a tran- which could lead a Coriolanus to betray an enemy scendent kingship, just as the land that will now and then betray Rome to them when, in his view, be set in order is the interior landscape of the Rome betrayed him. That sort of vicious circle of mind and spirit of each individual, in this case, the selfishness can lead the hero only nowhere. speaker/poet of The Waste Land. Similarly, if the By now, it should stand to reason why the third individual psyche can figuratively constitute a land injunction should be Damyata, control, for it is the laid waste by doubt and confusion but that is now equilibrium and poise that are needed in order to being delivered by the restored vigor and vitality engage and exercise the other two, which alone of its personal Fisher King, who is the chastened can free the quester from the endless cycle of self- and instructed ego that commands the individual ishness and desire. Here Eliot, so capable a sailor being, so can it also be represented as a structure, a from years of his family’s spending their summer house or temple, for example, against whose ruins, vacations along Massachusetts’s North Shore that and ruin, the same commanding ego, who has he wished to be known to his closest friends in his learned to give, to sympathize, and to control, has young adulthood by the nickname The Captain, shored fragments like hewn posts to keep it from uses the image of the pleasantly breathtaking expe- collapsing. rience that expert sailing can be when sea, man, There the metaphor is rather transparent. The boat, and wind become one single and harmoni- fragments shored against the speaker’s ruin, his ously blended action. personal collapse into the madness of desire and The lessons learned, and the wasteland watered misunderstanding that has been The Waste Land by the restorative rain, the last stanza of The Waste till now, are all those bits and pieces of other poems Land, and the end of a trek that began with April’s and of myth and of history scattered hither and cruel awakening and then the merciless desert vis- yon throughout the poem, and drawn from hither tas both of mind and soul, flesh and spirit, begins and yon among the epochs of preceding human with the speaker sitting “upon the shore / Fishing cultures, in which other humans, over time, like . . . the arid plain behind me.” In one final trans- Tiresias, have suffered similar doubts and confu- formation, the Grail hero has become the Fisher sions and desires to no good purpose other than King, the physician the healed patient, the seeker that they resulted in poetry. So, then, very much the found. like a man who knows that one can never build Weston, despite all the various symbolic signifi- sturdily enough, in the last few lines of the poem, cances that can be, and have been, assigned to the the speaker adds still more of those fragment beams idea of a “fisher king” throughout history and cul- and piers and struts, lines recalled for no other tures (including, of course, the Christian concept purpose than that they sustain him with their sup- of the Apostles as Fishers of Men), reminds her porting scaffolding. readers that the Fisher King was called as much These last few follow no particular order, nor “because of his devotion to the pastime of fishing.” can they, emerging as they do helter skelter from That is not a very earth-shattering conclusion to be the pools of memory: a children’s nursery rhyme

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about London Bridge, recalling the passages over lives nearby. What, they ask him, is his secret. “Let it made earlier in the poem; the words spoken each man cultivate his own garden,” this simple by Arnaut Daniel in Dante’s Purgatorio, recall- man says, imparting, of course, a great deal of unin- ing the poem’s opening dedication to Ezra Pound; tended wisdom. In the same manner, The Waste a refrain translated from an ancient love poem, Land ends by saying, “Let each one find his own recalling Philomela raped and mutilated and then inner peace.” But that can be done only if each per- transformed by the gods; a verse from a sonnet son overcomes his or her own inner wasteland. by Gerard de Nerval, another near-contemporary French poet, this time recalling, through Aquitaine, THE CONTEMPORARY Provence, the source of many of the elements in CRITICAL RESPONSE the Grail romances; a passage from an Elizabethan One might think that, despite the worldwide celeb- play, recalling that Shakespherian rag, perhaps; and rity that The Waste Land eventually has obtained, then, not silence, but the next best thing. the initial response to the poem was a rather clos- After the three injunctions from the Upanishads eted literary event, limited to those reviewers and are repeated, the poetry all but comes to a stop as critics who were themselves among the vanguard the word shantih is repeated three times. In his final of individuals devoted to the pursuing the latest note, Eliot says that the word essentially denotes trends in literature. Despite the high regard in “the peace that passeth understanding.” In other which his pre–Waste Land poetry is now held, after words, it is the word that is used when words are no all, Eliot had a reputation solely among fellow mod- longer available or, better yet, required. ernists poets and critics, as well as the handful of The speaker has learned simple truths: He can- readers of the so-called little magazines. His name not save the world from disorder and chaos. He was hardly a household word, nor was it likely that cannot make perfect sense out of the ceaseless dis- the poem in question would be one that everyone parities of human experience and the bewildering would be anxious to have sitting on the coffee table assaults of otherness. But he can resolve his own at home. inner conflicts. He can set his own house in order Nevertheless, the New York publication of The and then make a comfortable abode there, within Waste Land in book form in December 1922, two himself, for himself. That kind of a separate peace, months after its simultaneous publication in the to borrow a phrase that Ernest Hemingway would Criterion and the Dial, hardly went unnoticed, nor coin relatively shortly in his World War I novel A was this attention by the reviewers limited only Farewell to Arms (1929), may sound like a far more to those periodicals of interest to the specialized selfish choice on the speaker’s part than not, as if reading audience that typically follows such devel- he is turning his back on everyone else’s distress, opments. Indeed, given the haste of the produc- but the poem recommends this same resolution to tion methods whereby they could go to press with and for everyone, not just its anonymous speaker. copy within a matter of days rather than weeks or For no one would deny that the world would be a months, the earliest public notice given The Waste far better place if everyone sought inner peace and Land can be found in major media outlets, which, outer calm—in a word, contentment. in those days, were mainly the large-circulation In the 18th century, the French philosopher metropolitan dailies. These reviews often appeared and wit Voltaire composed a bitingly clever satire in these daily’s even more widely circulated Sunday to ridicule the notion that “this is the best of all editions and, in some cases, as if to underscore the possible worlds.” Candide tells a tale of relentless significance of the event, were in response to the human cruelty and stupidity in hilarious terms, but poem’s initial periodical publication rather than its it ends on a positive note. After all their travails, appearance in book form. the sundry protagonists find themselves at last lead- It must be emphasized as well that these early ing relatively comfortable lives on the outskirts of reviews were not the sort of brief notices that Constantinople, and an equally contented farmer one might generally expect for a publication that

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is hardly aimed at a mass-market audience. The lated publishing event continues to color responses reviews were, rather, assigned apparently to the to The Waste Land, certainly among the general best staffers or literary stringers that these publi- reading public, and possibly to the detriment of the cations had available, and often these individuals poem’s and the poet’s original intentions. were themselves, or soon would be, other poets and In view of the richness of both cultural and per- critics who had made a respected name for them- sonal experience that the poetry of The Waste Land selves in modernist circles. At the very least, their can provide typical readers, it is surprising how names are by now a veritable roll call of those who polarized were the common notes struck in this played significant roles in framing the critical tradi- initial public response to The Waste Land, and they tion that emerged from literary modernism. quickly became a melody of like opinion that per- As if in an intuitive recognition of the impor- sisted for the better part of the 1920s and may, in tance that The Waste Land would indeed achieve the popular imagination, persist to this day. These as a watershed icon in the cultural history of the likeminded responses, more than the poetry, set the 20th century, and perhaps in large part the cause tone for what The Waste Land “means,” that being of its achieving that reputation, the reviewers went that the poem was, by and large, a bitter and invec- out of their way to be circumspect, taking pains to tive indictment of a contemporary culture that had place the poem in its contemporary cultural and failed. Such a measure of critical consistency can social context. By treating the Eliot poem as some- be attributed only to either a sort of critical band- thing more than a publishing event, one that would wagon effect (once a few reviewers had set a “pre- do until the next “major” book came along, these vailing opinion,” few dared or cared to contradict reviewers and critics seemed to indicate that they it) or to an otherwise unspoken consensus as to the were conscious that they were writing not simply poem’s negative qualities. book reviews but continuing chapters in a histori- In that latter regard, and from the first, it would cal record that would be of equal interest to later seem, The Waste Land is taken by its contemporaries generations of readers, scholars, and critics. This to be a poem whose viewpoint is, in a word, despair- record of their response, then, should have some- ing. Burton Rascoe, reviewing the theme of The thing more than a passing value to any student Waste Land for the New York Tribune in November not just of The Waste Land but of modernism in 1922, admired the poem primarily as an accurate general. In fact, the interest that the poem then assessment of this well-founded modern despair. generated in both the little reviews and the popular Exhibiting what becomes a common bias toward press would last for the rest of the 1920s, itself a reading and evaluating the poem as social criticism very literary decade. rather than literature or poetry, Rascoe found The Nothing can garner that sort of attention with- Waste Land to be “analysis and realism, psychology out engaging a genuine interest and then satisfy- and criticism, anguish, bitterness and disillusion.” If ing that interest. Clearly, somehow, the Eliot poem he could finally also see in the poem “a thing of bit- struck a chord loudly and clearly among those who terness and beauty,” even these are aspects “arising were alive at the time to hear it. Whether or not from the spiritual and economic consequences of that was the case, it has certainly proved to be the the war, the cross purposes of modern civilization, net result. The Waste Land turned out to be, no the cul-de-sac into which both science and philoso- doubt, what we would now call a phenomenon, and phy have got themselves and the breakdown of all the extent of its contemporary response provides great directive purposes which give zest and joy to us with a very telling record of precisely what the the business of living. It is an erudite despair.” poetry of The Waste Land said to readers then and For another early critic of The Waste Land, Gil- of its time. Their response is, of course, ultimately bert Seldes, who reviewed the poem for The Nation no more valid than any other, but an irony is that in December, the theme of the poem was equally this virtually unheard-of attention among its imme- as pessimistic, nor was it “a romantic pessimism of diate contemporaries to an otherwise relatively iso- any kind”:

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. . . [O]ne feels simply that even in the cruelty human consciousness becomes a rag-bag, a rubbish and madness which have left their record in heap—there is nothing more to be done with it.” history and in art, there was an intensity of life, Wilson reviewed The Waste Land again in a germination and fruitfulness which are now December, this time for the Dial. Although he enti- gone, and that even the creative imagination, tled his later remarks “The Poetry of Drouth,” he even hallucination and vision have atrophied, was now much kinder to Eliot. Since Wilson was so that water shall never again be struck from a now using the annotated Boni & Liveright edition rock in the desert. of The Waste Land, his kindness may be attribut- able to the assistance that Eliot’s notes rendered to The font of inspiration has gone, and all hope critics attempting to understand the poem for itself. is “buried deep.” Clearly, both these early review- Wilson seems to have become a convert and suc- ers saw The Waste Land as a valid assessment of cumbed, like Rascoe and Seldes, to the validity of the absolute decline of the modern Western world, the poem as a statement of justifiable despair in the an assessment free of the taint of any romanti- face of the vacuity of modern life: cally subjective self-deception about the true state of things. Mr. Eliot uses the Waste Land as the concrete Another early reviewer was Edmund Wilson, image of a spiritual drouth. His poem takes who reviewed the Eliot poem in conjunction with place half in the real world—the world of con- several other recent works, most notably James temporary London, and half in a haunted wil- Joyce’s Ulysses, for the New York Evening Post Lit- derness—the Waste Land of mediaeval legend; erary Review of November 25, 1922. Wilson, who but the Waste Land is only the hero’s arid soul went on to achieve an outstanding reputation of and the intolerable world about him. The water his own as a modernist critic, calls his article, “The which he longs for in the twilit desert is to Rag-Bag of the Soul”: “The characteristic literary quench the thirst which torments him in the form today . . . [presents] the whole world sunk in London dusk.—And he exists not only upon the subjective life of a single human soul—beyond these two planes, but as if throughout the whole whose vague and impassable walls there is nothing of human history. solid or clear, there is nothing which exists in itself Again like Rascoe and Seldes, Wilson eschews as part of an objective order.” giving the poem a hearing on the basis of more Though this tack on Wilson’s part may seem universal truths for the sake of its contemporary to oppose Seldes’s antiromanticizing effort, Wilson applicability: arrived at the same reading of The Waste Land—it is a subjectification of social realities—but, unlike [Eliot] is speaking not only for a personal dis- Rascoe or Seldes who admired Eliot’s analysis, tress, but for the starvation of a whole civiliza- Wilson faulted Eliot’s vision on that basis, for tion—. . . It is the world in which the pursuit such works as The Waste Land “involve no belief of grace and beauty is something which is felt in any sort of order—either moral or aesthetic.” to be obsolete—the reflections which reach us Summarizing Eliot’s approach, Wilson castigated from the past cannot illumine so dingy a scene; its amoral, virtually clinical nonchalance: “Let us that heroic prelude has ironic echoes among the merely explore a single human consciousness and streets and the drawing rooms where we live. make a record of what we find there without ven- Louis Untermeyer, in a review of The Waste turing even the most rudimentary ideas as to what Land for The Freeman in January 1923, echoed both their significance may be or as to which of them Wilson’s earlier reservations and his later admira- may be considered the most valuable.” Playing off tion when Untermeyer called the poem “Mr. Eliot’s his thesis against the sort of The Waste Land/waste- poetic variations on the theme of a super-refined land motif Eliot’s poem suggests, Wilson concluded futility.” It quickly becomes clear, however, that that by virtue of such an aesthetic approach, “the Untermeyer did not intend that remark as praise,

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even guardedly so. The Waste Land, in conse- lations into prosaic semblances of verse—they quence, may be “a pompous parade of erudition,” pale as one reads The Waste Land. . . . Our Untermeyer observed, but “[a]s an echo of con- epoch sprawls, a desert, between an unrealised temporary despair, as a picture of dissolution, of past and an unimaginable future. the breaking down of the very structures on which In the same month, however, Eliot’s friend from life has modeled itself, The Waste Land has definite their Harvard undergraduate days, Conrad Aiken, authenticity.” for the New Republic, wrote just about the only Still, although “as an analyst of desiccated sen- published contemporary response that recognized sations, as a recorder of the nostalgia of this age,” the poem for its poetry (which even then becomes Eliot has “created something whose value is, at virtually coincidental with recognizing its tech- least, documentary,” even at that archival rate, The Waste Land remains a “misleading” document. nique): “The Waste Land is unquestionably impor- According to Untermeyer, tant, unquestionably brilliant . . . partly because it embodies . . . the theory of the ‘allusive’ method in The world distrusts the illusions which the last poetry. The Waste Land is, indeed, a poem of allu- few years have destroyed. One grants this latter- sion all compact.” day truism. But it is groping among new ones: Aiken’s approach was structural. Taking issue the power of the unconscious, an astringent with another reviewer who commended the art- skepticism, a mystical renaissance—these are fulness of the poem’s structure, Aiken questioned some of the current illusions to which the West- whether the poem is “a perfect piece of construc- ern World is turning for assurance of their, and tion.” He went on to ponder, “Has it the formal and its, reality. Man may be desperately insecure, but intellectual complex unity of a microscopic Divine he has not yet lost the greatest of his emotional Comedy; or is its unity . . . of another sort?” Aiken needs, the need to believe in something—even then, by illustrating how misleading the allusions in his disbelief. For an ideal-demanding race, are for any attempt to consign them to the category there is always one more God—and Mr. Eliot is of precise referents required for meaning to be elic- not his prophet. ited, argued that we must “conclude that the poem It is noteworthy that the preceding reviewers all is not, in any formal sense, coherent”; “With or agree on the cardinal point that the poem, as the without the notes the poem belongs rather to sym- aspiring poet Hart Crane would put it in a letter bolical order in which one may justly say that the to his friend Gorham Munson, is “good, . . . but so ‘meaning’ is not explicitly, or exactly, worked out.” damned dead.” (Crane in fact was so inspired by Rather, as Aiken saw it, the poem achieves a Untermeyer’s comments that the 24-year-old poet different order of unity, of coherence, by being “a sent a copy of his just completed “For the Marriage brilliant and kaleidoscopic confusion; . . . a series of Faustus and Helen” to the elder reviewer as an of sharp discrete, slightly related perceptions and example of the sort of positive, vital poetry Crane feelings . . . giv[ing] an impression of an intensely heard Untermeyer calling for.) modern, intensely literary consciousness which Harold Monro’s review in the Chapbook for Feb- perceives itself to be not a unit but a chance cor- ruary 1923, for another example, was an openly relation or conglomerate of mutually discolorative facetious little piece that nevertheless touches what fragments.” He continued: are rapidly becoming all the mandatory thematic If we perceive the poem in this light, as a series bases. He observed that The Waste Land of brilliant, brief, unrelated or dimly related pic- is at the same time a representation, a criticism, tures . . . [t]he “plan” of the poem would not and the disgusted outcry of a heart turned cyni- greatly suffer . . . by the elimination of “April is cal. It is calm, fierce, and horrible: the poetry the cruelest month” or Phlebas, or the Thames of despair itself becomes desperate. Those poor daughters. . . . These things are not important little people who string their disjointed ejacu- parts of an important or careful intellectual pat-

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tern; but they are important parts of an impor- or highwaymen, or [get] on intimate terms with tant emotional ensemble . . . a dim and tonal Thomas A. Edison” (which would be our equiva- one, not exact. lent of navigating the Internet). Says Monroe: For Aiken, the poem as meaningful statement We live in a period of swift and tremendous “will not bear analysis.” Rather, “the poem succeeds change: Mr. Eliot feels it as chaos and disinte- . . . by virtue of its incoherence, not of its plan; gration, and a kind of wild impudent dance-of- by virtue of its ambiguities, not of its explanations death joy, Mr. Sarett feels it as a new and larger [including those provided by Eliot in his notes]. Its summons to faith in life and art. . . . He could incoherence is a virtue.” For all its critical complex- talk with Thomas A. Edison, or perhaps with a ities, Aiken’s technical approach to the poetry and sequoia or skyscraper. theme of The Waste Land allowed the poetry some Sarett’s prodigious powers of communication much needed breathing space, and yet despite the aside, Monroe did give Eliot some due recogni- widespread critical validity such structural readings tion for meeting squarely, “with an artist’s invoca- would subsequently obtain, his remained for now a tion of beauty,” the condition of the modern world voice crying in the wilderness. as Eliot’s too “city-closeted” mind nevertheless The extremely influential editor Harriet Mon- misperceived that condition. roe, who did not review The Waste Land for Poetry Monroe’s view soon became a choral effort until March, was back among the madding crowd, out to put Eliot in his place. In March 1923, N. especially since the delay gave her a volume by P. Dawson’s review, “Enjoying Poor Literature,” Lew Sarett called The Box of God to hold up for scored The Waste Land for its instant celebrity. comparison’s sake. Though the Sarett volume is Dawson chalked up the whole distasteful phenom- now happily otherwise quite forgotten, the result, enon to the debilitated sensibilities of a reading in Monroe’s hands, was what amounted to a com- public overly enamored of the “bad, obscure, ‘frank’ monplace book of these contemporary responses to and especially ‘despairing.’ ” In all these particu- The Waste Land. lars, Eliot’s Waste Land, of course, fitted the bill, She saw the distinction between Sarett and and Dawson’s own despair was that, if the reading Eliot as a distinction between “the man who affirms public was paying so much attention to “all the and the man who denies; the simple-hearted and despair and all the dryness and the lamentation” the sophisticated man; the doer, the believer, and best typified in the Eliot poem, “sane and intel- the observant and intellectual questioner . . . led ligible and humorous” literature must languish as by separating paths to opposite instincts and con- a result. Thus, Dawson concluded, if the reading clusions.” In this context, Eliot did not come out public were to spend more time with good litera- ahead; rather, Monroe told her readers, Eliot ture instead of indulging themselves in the fad- gives us the malaise of our time, its agony, its dish despair of such stuff as The Waste Land, they conviction of futility, its wild dance on an ash- too would realize that “the world will be saved. The end of civilization will once more have been heap before a clouded and distorted mirror. . . . postponed.” He shows us confusion and dismay and disin- By April, Herbert S. Gorman, apparently feel- tegration, the world crumbling to pieces before ing called on to take up a renewed defense of The our eyes and patching itself with desperate gay- Waste Land for the Literary Digest, began by calling ety into new and strangely irregular forms. the poem “a battle-field.” But it is unclear whether For her, then, as well as for many of his other he ultimately did Eliot or the poem any service, contemporaries, Eliot was the nay-sayer, one of for Gorman merely reemphasized the ying/yang those “poets of idle hands and legs and super-sensi- dynamics of the debate by retrenching behind the tized brains; varied by a bank clerk routine with sec- original critical lines. For Gorman, The Waste Land ond-rate minds” who cannot consort with “heroes was great poetry because it more than sufficiently

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and accurately expressed a contemporary despair in The Waste Land’s apparent formlessness and that over the state of Western civilization: the form is found in Eliot’s use of literary allusions. Ransom had relegated them to nothing more than The laborious subterfuges that have carried parody; Tate argued that they are effective irony Man forward into the arid stretches of modern and that the very “form” of the poem is “this ironic civilization have failed. That is what Mr. Eliot attitude.” Unfortunately, given the context of the states in “The Waste Land.” We have come to remarks, Tate did not elaborate on this insight, nor a dry desolation, and there is nothing here but did he more fully explain his closing remark: “it is hard rock and the faint mirages of a freshness likely that the value of The Waste Land as art is his- that actually existed once, but which has now torical rather than intrinsic.” dwindled into the haunting fragments of bro- If we can see here the beginnings of a criticism ken memories. that did more recondite justice to the thematic An especially interesting exchange of views on complexities of allusion in The Waste Land, it was The Waste Land occurred during the summer of not until 1939 that Cleanth Brooks brought such 1923. John Crowe Ransom, then an English profes- a critical approach to full bloom in his essay “The sor at Vanderbilt University, reviewed the poem Waste Land: Critique of the Myth.” The rest of for the New York Evening Post Literary Review in 1923 would see further treatments of The Waste mid-July. During the first week of August, a reader Land remain within the narrow critical confines sent a letter refuting Ransom’s position. The reader already established. Regarding the theme of the was Allen Tate, a former student of Ransom’s and poem, there seemed to be no in-between. Whether future fellow “Fugitive.” Ransom had essentially the reviewers praised The Waste Land or lambasted assaulted Eliot for distorting both reality and aes- it, nothing that passes for a thematic consideration thetic representations of reality. While “Mr. Eliot’s seemed capable of removing it from the boon-or- performance is the apotheosis of modernity,” Ran- bane of its being social commentary and, in that som did not think much of that “modernity” if such context, an unequivocating, unequivocal statement a poem was its apex, for The Waste Land finally of absolute despair. “seems to bring to a head all the specifically mod- Helen McAfee touched on the poem briefly in ern errors, and to cry for critic’s ink of a volume an Atlantic article, assessing what she called “the quite disproportionate to its merits as a poem.” literature of disillusion” of the postwar era. Speak- Those errors, Ransom would have it, are largely ing of the disastrous psychic scars that the war had errors of modes of perception. Art, he insisted left on the creative sensibilities of an entire genera- ought not to partake of the disunities of the sensi- tion of young writers, she noted that: bility that science has forced on the modern mind. the most striking example of this depth of confu- But for him The Waste Land exhibited an aesthetics sion and bitterness is Mr. Eliot’s The Waste Land. that did precisely that, “as if he [Eliot] were naming As if by lightning it reveals the wreck of the cosmos Chaos. His intention is evidently to present storm. For this effect it is clear that the author a wilderness in which both he and the reader are has consciously striven—indeed he refers to his bewildered.” works as ‘my ruins.’ . . . It is mood more than Ransom’s position was that the poet ought to idea that gives the poem its unity. And that be an imaginative synthesizer who counteracts mood is black. It is as bitter as gall; not only with rather than contributes to the disruptiveness of a personal bitterness, but also with the bitter- modern life, and it is that point that Tate’s let- ness of a man facing a world devastated but for a ter took up: “Mr. Ransom . . . has offered only an war by a peace without ideals. The humor—for abstract restatement of superannuated theories of it has humor—is sordid and grotesque. consciousness . . . all to the end that a philosophy of discontinuity is not only lamentable but entirely It should come as no surprise that by September wrong.” For his part, Tate insisted that there is form 1923, readers would find the reviewer for the Times

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Literary Supplement repeating the usual cant: “From whether in praise or dispraise, modern science or the opening part of The Waste Land to the final one industry.’ The poets have not risen to the offer”: we seem to see a world, or a mind, in disaster and Indeed, the poets . . . have been more preoc- mocking its despair. We are aware of the toppling cupied with the negative than the positive side. of aspirations, the swift disintegration of accepted I have spoken of Eliot’s “Waste Land,” which stability, the crash of an ideal.” F. L. Lucas, review- gives a vivid suggestion of the whole vast mod- ing the poem for The New Statesman a month later, ern fabric crashing down in ruinous chaos; and wrapped the poem up in largely the same man- there are many other poems which present or ner: “The gist of the poem is apparently a wild imply or prophesy failure or spiritual disaster in revolt from the abomination of desolation which is the modern scheme. In other words, the poets human life, combined with a belief in salvation by have preferred weakness to strength. the usual catchwords of renunciation.” The year of The Waste Land’s initial celebrity Perhaps the ultimate expression of an entire crit- past, there now followed a hiatus in significant ical generation’s paradoxical love/hate affair with a commentary on The Waste Land. But the occasional figment of their own imaginations, and of their own comment in the succeeding years did not bring any emotional longings for a time before despair became new point of view to bear. Edmund Wilson, for a character called “Mr. T. S. Eliot,” can be found in example, reviewing Stravinsky’s music for the New “Waste of Time or, T. S. Eliot of Boston: A Yawn Republic in 1926, had finally grown tired, it seems, by Jack Lindsey,” published in London Aphrodite for of Eliot’s despair (“The Hollow Men” had just been December, 1928. Having read “en bloc” all of Eliot’s published in a new collection of Eliot’s poetry), works, Lindsey wondered where Eliot’s reputation yet he never considered whether the Eliot whose ever came from: despair he was growing tired of might simply be a Has Eliot given us anything positive at all? Has fictive element in his own intellectual and emo- he stated anything beyond a fear of death? A tional growth. Like his friend Hart Crane, Wilson feebly corrective intellectualistic viewpoint (bor- had apparently had an experience of Eliot that was rowed from Valéry) dwindling more and more to now becoming rather tedious, without wondering if a kind of Calvinistic Roman Catholicism (!) and Eliot’s “faults” might not lie in the commonplaces a few formal experiments that are exemplified of critical misconceptions of that poet, the very sort far better in the at least gargantuan hurly-burly of misreadings to which Eliot has never ceased to of Ulysses or the technical modulations of Edith fall prey. In any case, Wilson observes that and Sacheverell Sitwell. Always nothing but a no artist has felt more keenly than Mr. Eliot the thin terror, and from fear of death come all rot- desperate condition of Europe since the War tenness and abstractions ghosting life. nor written about it more poignantly. Yet, as Lindsey concluded, “[Eliot] is the last remnant of we find this mood of hopelessness and impo- the pre-war generation, disillusioned further by tence eating into his poetry so deeply, we begin the war, frightened of life, desperately but uncon- to wonder whether it is really the problems of sciously expressing this fear in an effort to castrate European civilization which are keeping him life of its dangers by the blade of intellectualism.” awake nights. Edmund Wilson weighed in one last time dur- Harriet Monroe resurfaced, too, on the question ing the first decade of criticism inspired by The of Eliot and his terrible poem when she was quoted Waste Land, and it would be appropriate to regard extensively in an anonymous review in The Literary his as the last word of that initial critical response Digest for November 26, 1927. Echoing her Eliot- before forming our own conclusions about the wide Sarett review of four years earlier, Monroe told of disparity between The Waste Land as poetry and an offer made by “a designer of power-plants” to the poem’s reception among its contemporaries. In award a prize for a poem “ ‘touching adequately, his landmark critical survey of modernism, Axel’s

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Castle (1931), Wilson took his text from an earlier own generation was so apparently thick-headedly observation of his own. In 1926, he had written, single-minded in its reading of the poem and if “one suspects that [Eliot’s] real significance is less there is anything that can be learned from their that of a prophet of European disintegration than shortsightedness, if not their out and out wrong- of a poet of the American Puritan temperament.” headedness and narrow-mindedness. There is an Wilson now developed this idea into what interesting parallel in that the poem is itself about appears to be a new view of Eliot and his poetic the dangers of shortsightedness and wrongheaded- vision: ness and narrow-mindedness. Another is that Eliot himself did all he could to derail the prevailing The present is more timid than the past: the critical insistence on seeing the poem as an expres- bourgeois are afraid to let themselves go. The sion of disillusionment (although to this day many French had been preoccupied with this idea see that disclaimer as Eliot’s way of trying to side- ever since the first days of romanticism; but track certain potentially explosive personal issues). Eliot was to deal with the theme from a some- He did not deny that the poem had its negative what different point of view, a point of view quality; a bit of rhythmical grousing against the characteristically American. . . . One of the world, he once called it. But even at that rate, it principal subjects of Eliot’s poetry is really that is a grouse that serves the purpose of transcending regret at situations unexplored, that dark ran- rather than wallowing in bitterness and despair. kling of passions inhibited, which has figured Everything must begin from somewhere, but it so conspicuously in the work of the American does not then automatically end there as well. Such writers of New England and New York from a thought sounds very much like the sort of obser- Hawthorne to Edith Wharton. T. S. Eliot, in vation that T. S. Eliot, student of F. H. Bradley and this respect, has much in common with Henry connoisseur of delicious epistemological dilemmas, James. may have made himself. It certainly sounds like As such, “Eliot’s most complete expression of the Eliot who found himself 20 years later in Four this theme of emotional starvation,” Wilson con- Quartets ending where he began but now knowing tinued, “is to be found in . . . ‘The Waste Land’ ” the place for the first time. In comparison with him, whose expression of “sterility we soon identify as the then, his contemporaries, at least those who took sterility of the Puritan temperament” (104–105). the time to comment publicly on what The Waste Land was all about, were chasing a tail that did not We recognize throughout “The Waste Land” even have the good grace to be their own. the peculiar conflicts of the Puritan turned art- Perhaps that is the rub, however. To appreciate ist: the horror of vulgarity and the shy sympa- The Waste Land as a contemporary event, one must thy with the common life, the ascetic shrinking become its contemporary. Then the interested indi- from sexual experience and the distress at the vidual would read the poem not as universal mean- drying up of the springs of sexual emotion, with ing versus post–World War I angst and despair but the straining after a religious emotion which as the indictment, as likely intended as not, of a may be made to take its place. reading culture lost not in its own myths but, like Although on the surface this appears to be a any other, in its own smug assumptions. Such an refreshingly radical approach to The Waste Land individual would have to be among a lot of other (which is, after all, set in London), Wilson has well-educated, well-read, well-fed, and well-placed really only brought Eliot’s despairing corpus home young men and women who think that the world to native shores, so that the bane of despair and is literally what these scions of the ruling class and negativism still hangs over the poet and what was inheritors of Western civilization make it, knowing, then his most ambitious work to date. meanwhile, that they and their fathers and grand- Other readings of, and ways of reading, The fathers had just gone and made it something awful Waste Land aside, readers must wonder why Eliot’s and confusing and despairing because of a war. Yet

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that in itself, whether it is good or is bad, only has smug and European and upper middle class, but added to their certain belief that it is they, for good holistically human. Then, through sympathy and or for ill, who are calling the shots. self-discipline and service, he finds the beginning Such a smugness, compounded by denial, cannot of the springs of an inner peace that will culmi- be awakened to any universal truths, not because nate in a genuine self-acceptance, a story, at least these people are dead or asleep but because they Sophocles’ Tiresias would agree, as old as Oedipus have fallen into the insomnia of individuals and of Thebes. of a culture that is wrapped up in itself without The Waste Land is a critique of neither the myth any due regard for the past or the future or each nor the urban apocalypse. The Waste Land is the other, “read[ing] much of the night,” “pressing lid- first work of Western secular literature to recognize less eyes.” It is in this context that The Waste Land and, more important, to illustrate, that no human must continue to be regarded, for whether or not value system is central to the needs of the entire the poem has a speaker or protagonist, let alone a human race, and yet “regarded as an experience hero, it certainly at least has a point of view, and which appears in a soul, the whole world for each that point of view exposes boredom and compla- is peculiar and private to that soul.” That is Eliot’s cency and self-satisfied certainties far more than citation from F. H. Bradley’s Appearance and Real- it expresses despair or an embittered nostalgia for ity, which the poet of The Waste Land quotes in his the past. note to line 412. As much as it is also an expression The hero of The Waste Land—and for the sake of the theme of the poem, the myopia of the poem’s of this argument it must be said that there is one— contemporary responses confirms that theme’s is typical of those same well-educated, well-read, validity. well-fed, well-placed young people of the time, all of them up and comers, but with one glaring dif- CRITICAL COMMENTARY ference: The hero of The Waste Land knows that The Waste Land may have meaning only as a com- the world is what he makes of it only in figurative mentary on the severe limitations on our ability to terms. His problem is not that he knows nothing, arrive at universally acceptable meanings, and it but that he knows too much, so that there is no achieves that “meaning” of its own by disassociat- center or purpose or direction to his knowing. His ing itself from the techniques of meaningful litera- despair is not that there has been an awful war (he ture, a goal it further achieves by bringing to bear, hardly mentions it) but that all of his learning and for examination and consideration, fragments of training and seeking has come up spades, particu- that very kind of literature as it has developed, in larly when he finally resorts to fortune-tellers. His the West, through several millennia. It is not, how- lesson is that all of that despair is typical, however, ever, the thematic substance of the poetry’s literary not just for anyone else of his own time, but for fragments, or their sources, for that matter, that anyone who has ever lived, real or imagined, be constitute the poem’s meaning, which is instead it The Buddha or Augustine, Tiresias or Lil, even arrived at as its readers undergo the same processes Jesus Christ, and certainly Phlebas the Phoenician. of self-discovery as the speaker undergoes. We are And yet our hero, perhaps unlike anyone who has The Waste Land while The Waste Land lasts, and ever lived before, has been brought up to believe then it is gone. that he and his age are anything but typical, are in Rather like Bertrand Russell’s teacher’s paradox fact the inheritors of the ages, the modern world of the two sides of the sheet of paper that per- fulfilled at last in system, thought, and institution, petually refute each other—the statement on the gramophone and taxi cab. opposite side of this sheet is true, reads one side; That realization—that he is, after all is said and the statement on the opposite side of this sheet is all is done, only human—is the source of his disil- false, reads the other—so Eliot continually confirms lusion. But a liberating disillusionment it is, for his meaning by as continually denying its possibility by solution is now to learn how to be human, not just as constantly echoing its myriad formulations

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in the past. The reader who studies each particular literature. If the poem can be summed up in the fragment fails to realize that it is a whole, not a par- words, “Physician, heal thyself,” then the poem tial vision, that matters. Thus this “theme” of The would be giving itself the lie to end by implying Waste Land, though it is assuredly the heart of the that it is the answer. It presents itself only as a way poem’s poetic experience, is developed by example, to finding an answer. never stated, for the simple reason that to even hint But what, then, is left? One could safely con- at it as a theme would be to undermine its validity. clude that it is the spirit of the quest itself. The The poet is a liar trying to tell his reader the truth, hope, blind though it may be (what hope is not?), but for the reader to hear what truth the poet is that one can find one’s own way through the waste- speaking, he must know when the poet is lying. land of The Waste Land is, after all, the same hope To approximate something as cataclysmically that enables each one of us to find his or her way profound as each human individual’s longing through the far more real wasteland that is experi- to hear a truth by which he or she may live a ence itself, particularly when that experience does meaningful life with some mere token from the not offer the wayfarer specific and objective moral poetry of the past—the quest for the Holy Grail, and ethical guidance. The journey through the for example, or the romantic tragedy of Tristan wasteland that Eliot depicts in his poem is finally and Isolde—or with the mechanical lovemaking nothing more than a metaphor, perhaps among the of the typist and the clerk, or with the bisexuality most apt ever devised, of each individual’s journey of Tiresias, or even with the ennui of the middle- through the confusing maelstrom that is life itself. class couple playing chess or of the working-class The poet might very well caution the reader to sort locals gabbing at their pub, all of which is what the through the chaos of data to find one’s own satis- poetry of The Waste Land will do, is to lie, but it factory meaning, guidance, and path. is the human bane never to know for certain that the truth one hears is indeed the truth, let alone FURTHER READING a truth that can be applied to one’s own circum- Bedient, Calvin. He Do the Police in Different Voices: stances. That is the point of art—that it can only The Waste Land and Its Protagonist. Chicago: Uni- ever approximate things that are indefinite to begin versity of Chicago Press, 1986. with. That, too, is the point of Eliot’s epigraph, both Bolgan, Anne C. What the Thunder Really Said: A Ret- the one from Petronius as well as the discarded one rospective Essay on the Making of The Waste Land. from Conrad. That, finally, is why the poem extends Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973. beyond all those accumulated images and those var- Brooker, Jewel Spears. “ ‘The Second Coming” and The ious kinds of circumstantial moments into a approx- Waste Land: Capstones in the Western Civilization imated image of its own, the wasteland, but will Course.” College Literature 13 (1986): 240–253. end at the seashore with—an incredible irony here Brooker, Jewel Spears, and Joseph Bentley. Reading for a poetry that uses seven languages—a pointing The Waste Land: Modernism and the Limits of Inter- toward the ineffable: Shantih shantih shantih. pretation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts If the Sanskrit word is generally translated to Press, 1990. mean the peace that surpasses understanding, Brooks, Cleanth. “The Waste Land: The Critique of then that is itself another way of identifying that Myth.” In Modern Poetry and the Tradition. 1939. point at which words fail but life goes, happily, on. Reprint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Such an ending to such a word-intensive poem is Press, 1967, 136–172. a self-evident mockery of the efficacy of words to Childs, Donald J. “Stetson in The Waste Land.” Essays do anything more than confuse readers out of the in Criticism 38 (1988): 131–148. very peace they seek to find through and in them. Chinitz, David. T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide. Chi- That is one reason that it is fair to see The Waste cago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Land, for all its bookish erudition, as a cautionary Cox, C. B., and A. P. Hinchcliffe, eds. The Waste Land: against trusting anything too much, particularly A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1968.

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Crawford, Robert. The Savage and the City in the Works of Schwarz, Robert L. Broken Images: A Study of The T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Waste Land. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. Press, 1988. New York: Scribner’s, 1949. Smith, Grover. The Waste Land. London: Allen and Eliot, Valerie, ed. The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Unwin, 1983. Transcript of the Original Drafts. London: Faber and Unger, Leonard. T. S. Eliot: Moments and Patterns. Min- Faber, 1971. neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. Freedman, Morris. “Jazz Rhythms and T. S. Eliot.” South Atlantic Quarterly 51 (1952): 419–453. Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot. New York: Dut- ton, 1950. “What Dante Means to Me” Greene, Gayle. “Shakespeare’s Tempest and Eliot’s Waste Land: ‘What the Thunder Said.’ ” Orbis Lit- (1950) terarum 34 (1979): 287–300. Gunter, Bradley, ed. The Merrill Studies in The Waste On July 4, 1950, Eliot gave a lecture at the Ital- Land. Colombus, Ohio: Merrill, 1971. ian Institute in London titled “What Dante Means Hargrove, Nancy. Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of to Me,” which was subsequently collected in the T. S. Eliot. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, posthumous volume To Criticize the Critic in 1965. 1978. As Eliot’s title suggests, the address on Dante was Hinchliffe, Arnold P. The Waste Land and Ash intended more as an anecdotal piece rather than Wednesday: An Introduction to the Variety of Criti- as a scholarly or critical presentation. At the very cism. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press least, the resulting essay does not come anywhere International, 1987. near achieving the same level of authoritative Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: pronouncements as Eliot’s 1929 exercise on the McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. same topic, titled simply “Dante.” Still, a poet and Knoll, Robert E., ed. Storm over the Waste Land. Chi- critic of Eliot’s stature can seldom if ever touch on cago: Scott, 1964. the subject of another great poet without offering Leon, Juan. “ ‘Meeting Mr. Eugenides”: T. S. Eliot and insights into his own work as well as into the nature Eugenic Anxiety.” Yeats Eliot Review 9, no. 4 (Sum- of poetry and of the poet in general, and this pres- mer/Fall 1988): 169–177. ent instance proves to be no exception. Litz, A. Walton, ed. Eliot in His Time: Essays on the Occa- sion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of The Waste Land. SYNOPSIS Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973. In keeping with the informal nature of the setting Lockerd, Benjamin G., Jr. Aethereal Rumours: T. S. (his audience was no doubt mixed and probably as Eliot’s Physics and Poetics. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell interested in hearing Eliot for his status by then of University Press, 1998. an international celebrity and cultural icon as for Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. London: his interest in Dante), Eliot begins by protesting Macmillan, 1989. that he is not in possession of any special exper- Martin, Jay, ed. A Collection of Critical Essays on The tise when it comes to Dante and even declines Waste Land. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, the opportunity of citing from Dante in the origi- 1968. nal Italian, perhaps for fear of botching the accent Matthiessen, F. O., and C. L. Barber. The Achievement of among linguists and any native speakers who may T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958. have been present. As he had done those more Miller, James E., Jr. T. S. Eliot’s Personal Waste Land: than 20 years earlier in his first appreciation of Exorcism of the Demons. University Park: Pennsyl- Dante, Eliot instead confesses that he never read vania State University Press, 1977. Dante without having a prose translation at hand. Miller, Milton. “What the Thunder Meant.” ELH 36 It is a confession that makes particularly impres- (1969): 440–454. sive his further claim that he would nevertheless

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commit especially pleasing whole cantos to memory to think of Baudelaire as a “more limited” version from time to time (a typical canto in Dante’s La of the equally great and far more recent German divina commedia, or the Divine Comedy, would run poet, Goethe, he is given his due by Eliot ultimately anywhere from 130 to 150 lines). Even in establish- for his having a unique sense of his age and an ing a genuine modesty, in other words, Eliot easily engagement with “the real problem of good and makes it clear that he is hardly a novice when it evil,” particularly as it was manifested in the “ennui comes to Dante, a fact that would not come as of modern life.” any surprise to most readers of Eliot’s own poetry, Now, these 20 years later, however, Eliot singles filled as it was with epigraphs from and allusions to Baudelaire out as an example of another kind of Dante from its earliest days. influence from that on him of Laforgue or Dante, Having made it equally clear from the outset a poet from whom one can learn “some one thing.” that the only area of Dante studies in which he With that for an introduction, Eliot tells his audi- can claim expertise is in Dante’s influence on his ence that from Baudelaire he learned that “the more own poetry writing, Eliot convincingly admits that, sordid aspects of the modern metropolis . . . the sort after 40 years, or dating back to the time of the of material that I had, the sort of experience . . . in initial composition of “The Love Song of J. Alfred an industrial city in America, could be the mate- Prufrock,” he continues to regard Dante’s poetry rial for poetry.” The example both of Laforgue and “as the most persistent and deepest influence upon Baudelaire, however, are presented for the sake of my own verse.” emphasizing what a far more lasting and beneficial Before he goes into that influence in more detail, influence Dante has been on Eliot’s work. Though however, Eliot digresses momentarily into the nature his tribute to Baudelaire is as expansive as one poet of influences in general, identifying other ones in can make to another, Eliot acknowledges that he his own case, specifically the French symbolist poets may seem to have gone seriously afield from his main JULES LAFORGUE and CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. In the aim, which is to propose the influence that Dante case of Laforgue, Eliot makes the valid and gracious has had on him, but then he astutely observes that observation that the young French poet, whose life its extent cannot be appreciated without comparison was cut tragically short by tuberculosis, was precisely to the influence of other poets on him as well. the sort of influence that Eliot could have used and As he begins to discuss Dante in particular, he may have needed at that point in both his own life reiterates a central point that he had made regard- and his poetic career. Simply put, in a case like that, ing the kind of poet that Dante is, among whom one turns not to a great master like Dante, Eliot sug- he would also include Homer, Virgil, and Shake- gests, but to a kindred spirit, one more like oneself speare, and that is that “the appreciation of their and closer, too, in time. At least, he confesses that poetry is a lifetime’s task.” He then recounts the he did and that it was much to his advantage. various ways in which he has borrowed from and Baudelaire offers a similar contrast, being admit- alluded to and even imitated Dante over the years, tedly a lesser poet than Dante yet one who enjoyed ranging from the series of direct echoes that form a far wider reputation than Laforgue. Certainly much of the thematic underpinnings of The Waste by the time that Eliot would have turned to him, Land in 1922 to the passage composed in 1942 Baudelaire had developed a reputation as a daring in “Little Gidding” from Four Quartets, in which innovator in both form and theme. Eliot had dealt he attempted what he describes in quite techni- with him already in a much earlier essay, composed cal terms as the “nearest equivalent” to a canto of during the same period as his first essay on Dante, Dante’s as he, Eliot, could achieve. in 1930. Then, in fact, Eliot had commented on the tendency to identify Baudelaire as a “fragmen- CRITICAL COMMENTARY tary” Dante, observing that “many people who While Eliot hands the laurel for the poet in English enjoy Dante enjoy Baudelaire.” Although for his most powerfully influenced by Dante to Percy Bys- own part Eliot makes it clear that he would prefer she Shelley, from whose Triumph of Life he cites

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 484 9/5/07 2:36:37 PM “What Is a Classic?” 485 extensively, Eliot ultimately disclaims the idea that “What Is a Classic?” (1944) influence, however, can be measured mainly in terms of actual borrowings and echoings. In the This essay was presented in 1944 as the Presiden- 1929 essay, Eliot had, in the final analysis, praised tial Address to the Virgil Society, then published by Dante mainly for the clarity, simplicity, economy, Faber & Faber in 1945, and finally collected in On and vividness of his language, and that is the essen- Poetry and Poets in 1956. Eliot begins his remarks by tial note that he strikes here again, when all is said moving straight to the point. and done. Influence, in other words, may be more a matter of showing how a thing can be done, rather SYNOPSIS than providing a format for its doing. Put another By classic, Eliot means a work that reflects the way, a poet need not “sound” like Dante or favor maturity of a culture. Indeed, he argues that “[a] Dantean themes and images in order to have been classic can occur only when a civilization is mature; influenced by him. when a language and a literature are mature; and it Eliot singles out Dante’s as a verse that seems must be the work of a mature mind.” to demand a literal translation because one is con- Eliot had at this same time been preparing the vinced that “the word he has used is the word he preliminary essays from which his Notes towards wanted, and that no other will do.” Eliot by now the Definition of Culture would eventually emerge would have been quite mindful of how a poet’s in 1948, and he had also discussed in the 1943 mastery of words, of word choices—the best words essay “The Social Function of Poetry” the inte- in the best order—often takes a backseat to con- gral relationship that exists between a people and siderations of theme and social context and even their national language. It is no doubt that it is extraliterary matters such as belief and biography, these same considerations that are now making politics and historical events. And yet the poet him identify what is called a classic with the matu- is the person most responsible in any human cul- ration of a people and of their language as they ture for extending the possibilities of the language are realized in a single work, itself the product of a as a resource for expressing the ranges of human mind capable of wholly embracing that same mea- experience. sure of cultural maturity. For his part, Dante succeeds on both counts, Given the context of his remarks—an address in Eliot’s view. By having “pass[ed] on to poster- to the members of the Virgil Society—it makes ity one’s own language, more highly developed,” further sense that, along with the obligatory pass- and by having as well “express[ed] everything in ing reference to WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Eliot the way of emotion . . . that man is capable of should use as his model the first-century B.C. experiencing,” from the most depraved despair to Roman poet Virgil, whose epic of the founding the most exalted blessedness, Dante fulfills the of Rome, the Aeneid, is one of the great master- “task of the poet.” That task is to “mak[e] people pieces of the Classical Age. That, however, is not comprehend the incomprehensible” by perfecting what makes Virgil’s epic poem a classic. Using the the linguistic resources that are their sole means Aeneid as his running example, Eliot requires that for doing so, both individually and collectively. a classic foremost cannot be manufactured with As Eliot sees it, it is in “these lessons of craft, that aim in mind: “it is only by hindsight, and in of speech and of exploration of sensibility” that historical perspective, that a classic can be known Dante excels, thereby setting both a standard and as such.” a model for others to follow. To take Eliot at his By the same token, there has to be a history word when he says that he personally followed behind it; that is to say, the literature of a people Dante’s lead throughout his own poetic career will and their culture must have arrived at a point that provide any reader of Eliot’s poetry with primary the writer of genius has already in place the tools insight into the essential tasks that his poems aim and traditions by which a classic can be achieved. to accomplish. Furthermore, with Virgil’s Rome still as his model,

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Eliot observes that a common literary style must also Eliot does not stop there. Because Virgil’s language have emerged because the “society has achieved a happened to have been Latin, which, thanks to the moment of order and stability, of equilibrium and influence of the Roman Imperium that Virgil him- harmony.” Out of that kind of a culture can come self celebrated, “came to be the universal means that final ingredient: maturity of mind. That sort of of communication between peoples of all tongues maturity, Eliot feels, requires both “history, and the and cultures,” Virgil writes in a language to which consciousness of history.” In other words, a Virgil no modern language can ever hope to aspire in must find all these conditions available to him but terms of that very universality. As a result, no must also be able to avail himself of them. Thereby, modern language, Eliot asserts, can achieve a clas- the characters and situations that Virgil manipu- sic on the order of Virgil’s. Indeed, on the basis lates are not in any manner provincial but ready, as of his preceding argument, he can say with some it were, to step onto the world stage. confidence that “[o]ur classic, the classic of all That these conditions obtained for Virgil is Europe, is Virgil.” shown in the expansive way that he operates his Eliot concludes by strongly implying that in material, one that “never appears to be according celebrating Rome and by placing Roman culture to some purely local or tribal code of manners: it is and values and language at the center of human in its time, both Roman and European.” The result history, Virgil unconsciously paved the way for a is not just great poetry by a great poet but a classic. new epoch in history. His vision of a common The great poet, such as a Shakespeare or a Milton, order, an ideal harmony, for humanity “led Europe may exhaust a form as it has come to be developed towards the Christian culture which he [Virgil] in that culture and for that language. When, by could never know.” contrast, the poet in question is, like Virgil, a great classic poet, “he exhausts, not a form only, but CRITICAL COMMENTARY the language of his time; and the language of his Eliot’s rationale for such broad claims is explained time, as used by him, will be the language in its in detail in a subsequent essay, “Virgil and the perfection.” It follows, then, that the great clas- Christian World,” which Eliot presented as a radio sic poet will ultimately “express the maximum pos- address on the BBC in 1951. There he makes a sible of the whole range of feeling which represents convincing case that Virgil’s Roman virtues found the character of the people who speak that lan- a hospitable soil in the ethics that the teachings guage.” If, however, the resulting work is truly to of Christ inspired. It may seem that Eliot, who achieve the status of a classic, it must not only have had started out “What Is a Classic” by making seized the right historical moment and exhausted rather modest claims for his intentions, ends with the possibilities of the language but transcended extravagant ones instead. In fact, however, he goes even purely literary values. “If Virgil is thus the from arguing that a classic must, in effect, sum- consciousness of Rome and the supreme voice of marize a whole people to establishing that classics her language, he must have a significance for us are, in and of themselves, a summarization of even which cannot be expressed wholly in terms of liter- greater cultural and historical developments. ary appreciation and criticism.” Eliot also was likely aware that any reference on What such a poet leaves behind, rather than a his part to “classic” might call up memories of the critical legacy, is itself a criterion by which other romanticism versus classicism debate that engaged works in its category may be judged. That would much English literary thinking during the 1910s indeed be the very definition of a classic—that it is and the 1920s and in which Eliot himself had been so much a product of its time, place, and cultural, a passionate partisan on the side of the Classicist linguistic, and historical conditions that it does not agenda. This debate, in which Eliot most famously so much exhaust its form as set a new standard for took issue with J. MIDDLETON MURRY, whom he what that form might achieve, should all the other characterized as marching under the banner of conditions be propitious. In Virgil’s case, however, “Muddle Through,” centered primarily around the

031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 486 9/5/07 2:36:37 PM “What Is Minor Poetry?” 487 larger issue of the place and importance of tradition “What Is Minor Poetry?” in the face of the constant, rapid, and dramatic social change that, in turn, characterized the mod- (1944) ern scene at that time. In prose works as early as the 1923 essay “The Function of Criticism” and as In 1956, Eliot published On Poetry and Poets, his late as his book-length diatribe, After Strange Gods, first major compilation of previously published which was subtitled A Primer of Modern Heresy and essays since Selected Essays in 1932. Among the published in 1934, Eliot had pretty much excori- essays collected in the later volume is “What Is ated those whom he perceived to be representing Minor Poetry?,” which Eliot had first delivered as the enemy camp, either in their professed thinking an address before the Association of Bookmen of or their creative endeavors. Swansea and West Wales in September 1944 and Even from this vantage point, the matter would then published in The Sewanee Review. not necessarily strike any informed person as one to be taken lightly. Whether a society founds itself on SYNOPSIS long-established values or on self-corrective evalu- Eliot quickly makes his aim clear: To dispel any ations of contemporary needs remains a source for “derogatory association” that the term minor poet intellectual conflict. In the case of Eliot, then, who might inspire. In keeping with that aim, he also had in 1928 declared himself a Catholic, a classi- hopes to establish what kinds of minor poetry there cist, and a royalist—that is to say, a traditionalist or may be, and, more important perhaps, “why [we] conservative on all counts—his defense of valued should . . . read it.” traditions and traditional values was not petulance Eliot begins by identifying minor poetry as but a moral imperative. anthology poetry, by which he means collections of By 1944, however, the time of these present work by new, young poets. After a lengthy digres- remarks, England along with most of the rest of sion concerning the craze for anthologies them- Europe and virtually the entire globe as well had selves, a craze that he likens to an addiction among been engaged for five years in that armed conflict a certain cast of readership, Eliot leads to a defini- known to history as World War II. It would be tion not of minor poetry, but of minor poets. Eliot hard to imagine anyone still harboring old intel- had already taken care to protest that he did not lectual animosities in any life-and-death struggle want to get into a debate over who are the minor such as global warfare portends. At the very least, and who are the major poets. To say that a minor the far more pressing requirements of that conflict poet is, then, a poet who wrote only short poems or seem to have had an ameliorative effect on Eliot’s whose reputation rests on a single, very long poem, intellectual and moral largesse when it came to begs the question, and requires exceptions—John principled conflicts. Donne, for one—but does not debate who is minor If his definition of a classic as a summary work and who is major. holds true, then it would be equally true that, for By this point in Eliot’s presentation, he has European history and culture, no classic can ever already identified such indisputably major poets as equal Virgil’s Aeneid for the simple reason that Edmund Spenser and William Wordsworth, and Europe would never again realize such cultural and Donne and William Blake, as well as such indisput- linguistic cohesion as it did during the time of Cae- ably minor ones as and Thomas sar Augustus, whose reign Virgil celebrates. Eliot, Moore. The reader begins to recognize that, even who had been fighting a holding action to maintain should there be no clear way to distinguish between the coherence of Christian Europe in the face of the one and the other, be it as poetry or poets, liter- 20th-century secularism and who was writing in ary cultures certainly do as much. To know how or the midst of a European conflict that would, by why, then, does become a valid course of inquiry. its conclusion in May 1945, leave 50 million dead, A poem’s length cannot be the determining fac- knew whereof he was speaking. tor, since there are minor long poems and major

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short ones. Even determining relative quality cannot 1935 a section of his own poems called “Minor help the sorting process, since that would require Poems,” among which, by his own claim, are poems subjective criteria and impressonistic judgments. that are all distinctively Eliot. Eliot does take the risk of concluding, neverthe- In his own defense, however, some of the poems less, that what makes a poem major is that its whole that he had included in this manner—“Five Fin- winds up being greater than the sum of its parts. ger Exercises” and “Landscapes,” for example—are This seems to come down to meaning that manifestly Eliot only after the fact. “Five Finger the poem is so much of its time and place that Exercises,” for example, can be seen to be char- it reflects those coordinates without necessitating acteristic of Eliot’s poetry after he published Old the reader’s personal knowledge of them. Thus, Possum’s Book of Practical Cats in 1939, while “Land- George Herbert, the 17th-century religious poet, scapes” bespeaks his style more, once its technique holds one’s attention because his view of things is viewed in terms of Four Quartets, completed in is so thoroughly Elizabethan as to need no other 1943, a work whose four component sections are introduction. Herbert’s near contemporary Robert each inspired by the features, associations, and sig- Herrick, meanwhile, Eliot can dismiss as a less- nificances of a particular place. than-major poet who wrote short poems because It would be fair to say, then, that that whole that the short poems that Herrick wrote show “no such is greater than the sum of its parts, but that yet is continuous conscious purpose.” Now Eliot seems identifiable in each part, and that then goes on fur- to be getting somewhere: The major poem or poet ther to form the corpus of a poet who is major, can expresses a unique view of experience—has, in a only be known and recognized once the whole is word, vision. complete. As Eliot will himself say in terms of judg- ing the relative merits of living poets in these terms, CRITICAL COMMENTARY “we ought to stick to the question: ‘Are they genu- Throughout the essay, Eliot continues to stress ine?’ and leave the question whether they are great the importance of what he calls vision or “a unity to the only tribunal which can decide: time.” As to of underlying pattern” in a poet’s work in order what constitutes being genuine, Eliot had already to help determine whether that poet is minor or defined it as whether “this poet [has] something to major. Although he plays this determining factor in say [that is] a little different from what anyone has said before, and . . . found not only a different way a variety of ways, he always seems to come back to of saying it, but the different way of saying it which the idea that, the quality being uniform otherwise, expresses the difference in what he is saying.” This there is something distinctive and identifiable in is not circular reason. Rather it is hallmark of any each poem that enables one to know that particu- great artist in any medium: uniqueness. lar poet and his or her work. One need not know the whole of a major poet’s work, then, to come to know the unique view and voice that the works express, although knowing the whole corpus of a particular poet, should that poet be of a major sta- “Whispers of Immortality” tus, enhances the appreciation of each work in the (1918) canon. The idea, then, is clearly one of continuity from one work to another, as much as an underly- “Whispers of Immortality” is one of the quatrain ing unity of point of view or vision. poems, a mode that Eliot had adapted from the It might be noted as well, nevertheless, that mid-19th-century French poet Théophile Gautier. Eliot has moved away from defining minor poetry. Written sometime between 1915 and 1918, it was By his definition, it would appear, for example, that published originally in the September 1918 issue of a major poet cannot write a minor poem. Yet Eliot the Little Review and first collected in June 1919 by himself, who is more certainly a major poet by his Leonard and VIRGINIA WOOLF’s Hogarth Press in a own definition, included in Collected Poems, 1909– volume titled simply Poems.

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SYNOPSIS represent as otherwise imperfect but balanced parts In the opening four stanzas of “Whispers of of that unnamed whole. Immortality,” the first half of the poem, the reader The title may help in resolving this sort of a encounters little more than a compendium of dis- problem (a delightful one, by the way, as long as ease-ridden imagery. Such a compendium seems a focus is kept on the fact that it is poetry, not to be intended to reflect a morbid consciousness of algebra). The phrase whispers of immortality suggests our fatality that is ameliorated only somewhat by its hints of our mortality, and those hints as surely being presented as if this catalog of mortal horror suggest reminders of death. The death head with which the poem opens, that skull beneath the flesh were an exercise in the history of literary tastes, that the English playwright John Webster, “much with references to John Webster and JOHN DONNE. possessed by death,” sees, has been treated univer- In the second half of the poem, the atmosphere sally as a memento mori (reminder of death) since has the hothouse headiness of an excursion to, and time immemorial, after all. exercise in, a sort of sexual farce, reminiscent of the So, then, if a theme for this poem seems to be two quatrain poems featuring Sweeney—“Sweeney quite clearly stated in the title, unlike with many Erect” and “Sweeney among the Nightingales.” another Eliot poem from this same period and There is no missing the fact that sex, love, and beyond, as the reader reads on, he or she will not death are related and certainly associated ideas be too sorely disappointed by imagining that that and experiences, but Eliot has elected to jerk them theme—the corruption of death embodied in its so violently apart that “Whispers of Immortality” necessary opposite, the promise of immortality or, seems to be two separate poems made haphazardly more precisely, death’s constant and defining pres- into one. It is possible that Eliot was experimenting ence in the very fatality of mortal life—is exactly with the techniques of the French symbolist JULES what the poetry goes on to develop, until at least the LAFORGUE, freely interspersing the serious with the section break, that is. From “the skull beneath the light, the elegant with the vulgar, the ironic with skin” and dead limbs of the opening stanzas to the the sentimental. If so, then in “Whispers of Immor- references to marrow, ague, skeleton, fever, and bone tality,” instead of intermingling the two contrasting of the fourth, the first section of the poem speaks of tonal modulations, as is the more typical practice, nothing but deathliness, humankind’s fatality that he is sifting those two rhetorical extremes out into acts as the perpetual goad to thoughts of immortal- the two separated halves of the poem that are then ity, and the poetry speaks of this promised theme in left quite literally facing each other on the page. a language redolent of the two English writers whom Each side of the coin as much negates as mirrors, the poem openly identifies, Webster (1580–1625) mirrors as negates, the other, so that the reader and his contemporary, the metaphysical poet John must maintain the contrasts that each half of the Donne (1572–1631). Both were poets who emerged equation portrays, such as they are, suspended in from an age obsessed with death, albeit that is a mind. By this reading, the structural irony of the comment that can be made of any age from any section break acts like a fulcrum, all the better to human culture. In the case of Webster and Donne, focus on the contending biases as if they formed a however, that thin and invisible line between vital- simultaneous whole. ity and fatality and their paradoxical dependence on To achieve balance, after all, is the aim of art; at each other were never far from mind, so that theirs least, it is one of the first principles of composition. was an age that came to see the most life-provoking (Interestingly enough, the first half of the poem and life-promoting of human actions, the sex act, as focuses on decomposition.) In any case, if it can be a “little death” because of the window that its spent demonstrated that each half of the poem presents passions seemed to open, even if only for a brief and the opposing but reconcilable side of a binomial fleeting moment, into eternity. equation, then the theme of the poem should be The observant reader may have noticed early on found in the sum that the two sides are intended to that “Whispers of Immortality,” out of keeping with

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virtually any other poem of Eliot’s from this period In “Whispers of Immortality,” then, Eliot may be and with much of his subsequent poetry as well, has beginning to exercise his soon-to-be regular habit of no Eliotic epigraph, thankfully perhaps, inasmuch essaying historical contrasts between one world and as they typically lend themselves more to mystifying its set of values—that is, the Renaissance world as not. Nevertheless, it might be that these opening typified for Eliot by the sort of imaginative conjoin- four stanzas, with their meticulous duplication of a ings of disparate elements that poets such as Web- 17th-century vision of the uncomfortably close rela- ster and Donne were capable of executing—with tionship between the totems of life and the icons of another world—this one of witty but enfeebled and death—the lustful spirit of vitality and the rapacious overly refined subtleties of social observation for power of corruption, the flesh in its beauty and heat their own sake. That would be the world obsessing and the corpse that derides them both—provide the the modern imagination, embodied in the poetry poem with that missing epigraph, thus making the of Laforgue and, to a great degree, of Eliot as well. remaining four stanzas, with their sudden turn to Such contrasts as these, within a matter of a mere the more typical Laforguean poetry that Eliot was few more years, would form the crux of Eliot’s early writing at this time, a perfectly logical conclusion masterpiece, The Waste Land, but for now they were and counterbalance. operating in an embryonic state in these spare and Indeed, Grishkin and the so-called love that she otherwise enigmatically disjointed stanzas compos- represents are themselves presented as something ing the two halves of “Whispers of Immortality.” that may mimic but is nevertheless removed from To illustrate this assault of an older and more any real measure of animal vitality or mortal fatality. coherent sensibility on what he perceives to be a For all the playfulness of its descriptive power, call- fragmenting modern one, Eliot has taken great care ing her breasts “pneumatic” suggests that they give in choosing Donne and Webster to lead the charge, the appearance but not the substance of the life- after all. Along with Dante and Laforgue, no other breeding, life-bearing emblems that these physical literary figures or periods have as much importance in attributes of the human female embody, implying, defining Eliot’s view of the poet and of poetry. In his in this case, that there is nothing but air beneath 1921 essay “The Metaphysical Poets” on the subject their superficial allure (hints there too, perhaps, of of metaphysical poetry, of which Donne is by now “The Hollow Men” yet to come). In summary, she the most celebrated practitioner, Eliot makes it clear is all only so much clever surface detail, exactly as that he sees the poets of that period as being among the poetry being used to describe her is itself. the last to have what he calls a unified sensibility. By that, Eliot means that they were capable of balancing CRITICAL COMMENTARY and treating equably and equivalently matters of the Like “The Hippopotamus,” “Whispers of Immortal- heart and of the mind, of the flesh and of the spirit, ity” is another of the quatrains that Eliot is later neither giving one primacy over the other nor con- reported to have identified as a poem that is not to fusing the impulses of one for the other. be taken seriously. Unlike “The Hippopotamus,” In sharp contrast to their capacity for maintain- however, the intensely morbid sobriety of the open- ing a healthy respect for life and for death, for mor- ing verses is not going to impress a reader with tality and for immortality, as the necessary halves of notions of levity, and in view of the fact that that the individual’s experience, Eliot saw the modern intensity continues through the remainder of the world, which he would date from the time of the two first four stanzas, at which point a line of periods most prominent English poets of the mid-19th cen- is introduced to suggest a section break, the reader tury, Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson, would have to conclude that, while the poem may as one whose poets “think, but . . . do not feel their not be serious, it is at least grave. And perhaps thoughts.” Eliot further concludes that this state of that is the whole point because the remaining and affairs was the result of a long historical process of a concluding four stanzas are, in contrast, light if not declining poetic imagination whereby “the language frivolous or at least seem that way. became more refined, [but] the feeling became more

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crude.” He called this gradual separation between being expressed through open allusions to the musk thought and feeling in poetry (or, more to the point, of a large cat, the sleek, exotic, and predatory Bra- the poet’s capacity to express thought and feeling zilian jaguar, come through as only that—clever- with an equal skill and respect for the propensities ness. It is devoid of passion or even erotic arousal, of both) a “dissociation of sensibility.” that kissing cousin of death that poets like Donne Donne, then, continues to be renowned for his and Webster knew firsthand and recorded in their ability, in his earlier poetry, to write of his beloved poetry. To borrow a phrase from W. B. YEATS, and of his passions for her as if he were writing caught in the sensual music of such superficial stan- religious verse. In his later years, he would indeed dards of beauty as Grishkin represents, the con- write a religious poetry that sounded very much temporary man of letters, unlike his 17th-century like amorous and passionate love poetry. forbears, among them Webster and Donne, who Clearly, there was for Donne no separation could see death lurking beneath life’s otherwise between thought and feeling or between language pleasing but illusory surfaces, is not anywhere near and expression. Everything aimed toward achieving as up to the task of accomplishing the same totality a single end—a true representation of the complex of vision, one that spans both life and death. For interrelationships of both thought and feeling as the contemporary poet, “our lot crawls between dry they each contribute to an experience of any sort. ribs,” hungry worms for whom only the desiccated Webster, although he was a playwright, was from bones of the forming experiences are left and all the same time period as Donne, both of them writ- memory and traces of the corruptible human flesh ing before thought and feeling became, in Eliot’s that housed those bones in its mortal comeliness view, separated. Like Donne, for whom Eliot says a are gone, at least from the poetry of our age. thought was an experience that “modified his sensi- Eliot writes a poetry in “Whispers of Immortality” bility,” Webster, too—in plays like The White Devil that becomes a virtual casebook for his critical posi- and The Duchess of Malfi, tragedies involving indi- tion at this time. If the first four stanzas are aimed viduals caught up in the maelstroms of such power- at imitating the intensity of language, thought, and ful and overpowering emotions as love, jealousy, feeling that he associates with the English meta- greed, and vengeance—maintained the necessary physical poets, then the remaining four stanzas of balance between thought and feeling, physical and the poem are a parody of the exploitative modernist emotional experience, without separating either verse that he is himself practicing, a wry and witty out of the equation as unrelated to motives and use of language that masks nothing but crude and events. If Webster was indeed “possessed by death,” empty feelings. It is exceedingly difficult to think of as Eliot puts it, it was because Webster could see “Whispers of Immortality” as light or at least “not that death lives in the flesh and so could make it serious” verse, though Eliot is reported to have said live as well in the lives of his characters. later that it was. The poem is both an exercise in a If Donne and if Webster could keep the two probing self-criticism and a treatise in miniature on halves, death and life, thought and feeling, insepa- the turn that Eliot’s own poetry would take shortly, rably together, however, the poem “Whispers of in 1920, with the publication of “Gerontion.” Immortality” does not. Now perhaps it is possible to understand the otherwise totally inexplicable shift from the deadly serious to the coy and the tawdry in the Eliot poem’s second half. Eliot is, through “William Blake” (1920) the apparent discontinuity between the two parts of the poem, demonstrating the very dissociation The late 18th-century English visionary, poet, and of sensibility that he would later comment on criti- lithographer William Blake is one of the most cally in his essay “The Metaphysical Poets.” eccentric and, therefore, problematic poets in En- The Laforguean cleverness of the description of glish literary history. As a result, Eliot’s treatment Grishkin’s sexual endowments, her animal vitality of him in this brief essay published in the Times

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Literary Supplement in 1920 highlights those char- CRITICAL COMMENTARY acteristics that account for great poetry, as well as Eliot’s simultaneous approbation of certain aspects for renegade art. of Blake’s poetry and disapproval of others enable one to discern even at this early a stage in Eliot’s SYNOPSIS career as a critic the subsequent direction of his First, Eliot puts Blake in the party of history’s great- own development. In the 1923 essay “The Func- est poets, those who have a special kind of honesty tion of Criticism,” Eliot inveighs against those of “in a world too frightened to be honest.” Such an his contemporaries who imagine that they will be honesty is unpleasant for most, Eliot says, and there- able to execute poems of great vision merely by fore he commends Blake’s as a poetry that “has the listening to what he calls an “Inner Voice” rather unpleasantness of great poetry.” No one can doubt than by paying heed to long-established and inher- that in the poems found in his Songs of Experience ited traditions. By the 1930s, this will have become Blake did not pull any punches, and it is this kind a cause for Eliot, culminating in 1934 in the viru- of honesty to which Eliot refers. In consequence, lent polemics of After Strange Gods: A Primer of Blake the poet “was naked, and saw man naked, Modern Heresy. and from the centre of his own crystal,” and yet it He expects great poets to have vision, what is the intensely personal version of Blake’s honesty he will call in 1944 in “What Is Minor Poetry?,” that also compels Eliot to view it as flawed. “a unity of underlying pattern.” This vision, how- Blake’s philosophy was, like everything else ever, will be subjected to a more and more severe about his unique view of things—his visions, his test as time passes, and that is whether it finds its insights, his technique—all of his own making, own source in the bedrock of longstanding cul- according to Eliot, and it is on that very point tural traditions or blooms unimpeded by anything of an intensely personal creativity that Blake, in other than personal embarrassment full-blown from Eliot’s view, ultimately fails. “You cannot create a the poet’s own mind. The seeds of this culturally very large poem,” Eliot insists, “without introduc- conservative bent of Eliot’s can already be seen in ing a more impersonal point of view, or splitting it his condemnation of Blake’s too personally derived up into personalities.” Intriguingly enough, Eliot philosophy. Yet there is much to be said for Eliot’s would have at this time just begun work on his own contention that only that poetry that builds on the long poem, The Waste Land, with its multiplicity past has a rightful claim to a stake in the future. of points of view and wide variety of poetic voices (and no less unpleasant honesty). Eliot concludes with a comically apt trope. Blake’s philosophy, he says, is like an “ingenious piece of “Wind Sprang Up at home-made furniture.” Eliot continues: “We admire the man who has put it together . . . but we [English] Four O’Clock, The” (1924) are not really so remote from the Continent, or from our own past, as to be deprived of the advantages See MINOR POEMS. of culture if we wish them.” Eliot sees in Blake a man with many gifts but none of them controlled or disciplined by any external constraints such as reason, common sense, or a scientific objectivity. “Yeats” (1940) “What his genius required, and what it sadly lacked, was a framework of accepted and traditional ideas Following the passing of the renowned Anglo-Irish which would have prevented him from indulging in poet WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1867–1939) on Janu- a philosophy of his own.” Had he not done so, Eliot ary 29, 1939, Eliot was invited by the Friends of the contends, Blake would have been, like Dante, a clas- Irish Academy to deliver, in 1940, the first annual sic, rather than “only a poet of genius.” Yeats Lecture at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, whose

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company Yeats had himself helped found. The given the context again, Eliot does not now elabo- resulting appreciation was subsequently published rate. Nevertheless, it is an unwarranted honesty. in the periodical Purpose and then included by Eliot Rather, he commends Yeats for having success- in his prose collection On Poetry and Poets in 1956. fully translated himself from a poet of one era and mindset into that of another, his career having SYNOPSIS spanned the late Victorian period and early mod- As he ought to, given the circumstances, Eliot has ernism. Yeats’s ability to survive if not transcend much to say that is positive regarding the elder poet literary trends culminated in his carving out a whose passing he is here to memorialize, but he place for his own distinct vision and voice. “[O]nly still manages to damn Yeats with faint praise, very those who have toiled with language know the much as Eliot had done a mere seven years earlier labour and the constancy required to free one- in the Page-Barbour Lectures given at the Univer- self from such influences,” Eliot observes, mindful, sity of Virginia and would subsequently publish in perhaps, as he is now himself composing the poetry After Strange Gods. that will become the masterpiece of his own matu- Eliot begins by noting that Yeats was already rity, the Four Quartets, what he had to sacrifice a “considerable figure” on the world poetry scene along the way to achieve the freedom to speak as when he, Eliot, first began to write poetry himself and for himself. and that, while Yeats’s influence on the younger Yeats had been born into a world in which poets of Eliot’s generation may have been mini- “Art for Art’s Sake” was generally accepted, Eliot mized by the uniqueness of Yeats’s idiom, it was notes, and then lived on into one in which “art has nevertheless a benefit for them to have “the spec- been asked to be instrumental to social purposes.” tacle of a great living poet” available as a constant Although Eliot’s road has not been entirely paral- inspiration. Despite this, Eliot takes inordinate pain lel, he, too, can appreciate the difficulty of not to emphasize repeatedly that the source of that allowing poetry to become either something else inspiration was not Yeats’s poetry but the figure of or something less. Eliot concludes by commending the poet that Yeats cut—“the integrity of his pas- Yeats for holding “firmly to the right view which is sion for art”—one who “cared more for poetry than between these.” Yeats, he says in closing, is “one of for his own reputation as a poet.” Furthermore, he those few whose history is the history of their own can say that he sees in Yeats a poet who achieved a time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age particular sort of impersonality—always, for Eliot, a which cannot be understood without them.” That, critical aim for the artist to achieve—one whereby at the last, is very high praise. he was able, “out of intense and personal experi- ence, . . . to express a general truth . . . [and] make CRITICAL COMMENTARY of it a general symbol.” The modernist period during which Eliot produced So far, so good—unless, that is, one recalls Eliot’s the bulk of his work as a poet saw an abundance earlier condemnation of the early Yeats as a poet of noteworthy poets and impressive achievements, who had dealt with matters that were “trifling and and Eliot was frequently at the forefront of these eccentric.” Eliot continues to point toward Yeats’s accomplishments. If any one of these other poets, middle and later years when singling him out as a however, had as widespread a reputation as Eliot’s singularly significant voice, finally going as far as to among readers and scholars as the most outstand- label him “pre-eminently the poet of middle age.” ing living English-language poet of his day, it would It is, to say the least, a somewhat puzzling catego- not have been his close friend EZRA POUND or even rization, smacking as it does of holding up Yeats the famously homespun Robert Frost. Rather, it as a measure for outstanding mediocrity. Eliot is would have been the Anglo-Irish poet Yeats. fair enough not to deny that “there are aspects of Indeed, Yeats had, even as a very young man, made Yeats’s thought and feeling which to myself are a significant enough mark as a poet that ARTHUR unsympathetic,” though, thankfully and tactfully, SYMONS, in 1890, dedicated his influential study,

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The SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE, to the subsequently published under the ominous title 23-year-old Yeats. After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy in As to how influential Symons’s study may have February 1934, Eliot lambasted a litany of his fel- been, one need only know that it was Eliot’s read- low contemporary authors, Yeats among them, for ing of Symons’s work as a Harvard undergraduate in their failure to provide the modern world with the 1908 that, while it may not have been the impetus sort of spiritually sound vision that only something for Eliot’s lifelong career as a poet, certainly gave as doctrine-neutral as literature can normally do his earliest poetry, particularly “The Love Song of for an otherwise healthy culture. In addition to the J. Alfred Prufrock,” much of its unique tone and British novelist D. H. Lawrence and Pound, Eliot focus. Eliot was drawn primarily to what Symons chastises Yeats for having created in his visionary had to say about the French symbolist poets, espe- poetry, with its emphases on pagan myth and the cially JULES LAFORGUE, and did not seem ever to occult, a world that is not one of “real Good and find a sympathetic voice or source of inspiration in Evil, of holiness or sin.” Eliot can only conclude the elder English-language poet, Yeats. That may that Yeats is a poet who, in his maturity, although be due to Yeats’s own poetic interests, which were he has not achieved a genuine philosophy, has “at at first parochially entrenched in old Irish myth least discarded . . . the trifling and eccentric.” and occult lore and then became so idiosyncrati- For his own part, Yeats would, in 1937, send a cally the works of his own genius as to defy imita- shot across Eliot’s bow by declaring that he had tion or even literary homage. always taken Eliot to be nothing but a satirist, a There are even stronger indications, however, level of literary achievement and esteem several that Eliot had more specific antipathies to the work notches below that of a serious and major poetic of a poet like Yeats. Eliot held a view not only of voice. It would be wise not to take this sort of lit- literature but of sociocultural developments in gen- erary feuding all too seriously itself since it is more eral that had come to rely more and more heavily often made up by outside observers rather than on the individual talent’s subordinating its interests actively engaged in by the participants themselves. to the preservation of tradition. As such, he may Nevertheless, it is a shame that two such great simply have had a philosophical dislike for the work literary figures who had much in common other- of poets like Yeats, who seemed intent on devis- wise—an affinity for symbolist poetry, an abiding ing personal mythologies and their attendant value friendship with Ezra Pound, an interest in reviving systems out of the chaos of the modern world, with verse drama in English, a profound devotion to its rapid change and catastrophic tendency toward the causes of poetry and of culture—should have self-destruction. had such a professional animosity toward each In the Page-Barbour Lectures, which Eliot deliv- other’s work, however superficial that animosity ered at the University of Virginia in April 1933 and may have been.

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Related People, Places, and Topics

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Aiken, Conrad (Potter) (1889–1973) The Amer- celebrated and productive literary and personal ican poet, short-story writer, novelist, and critic friendships. For years, Eliot and Aiken would con- Conrad Aiken was born on August 5, 1889, in tinue to carry on a correspondence, in which Eliot Savannah, Georgia, but was raised in Massachu- shared with his old college friend the notoriously setts after the 11-year-old Aiken was orphaned by scurrilous King Bolo verses. his parents’ murder-suicide as a result of financial Perhaps because of his close personal and profes- problems. Educated at private schools in the greater sional association with Eliot, Aiken, a particularly Boston area, Aiken enrolled as an undergraduate perceptive critic, was an astutely sensitive reader at Harvard College in 1908. Like any undergradu- of Eliot’s work, especially his most problematic ate, Aiken was quite active in various social clubs poem, The Waste Land. In February 1923, within that then constituted the core of the undergradu- months of the first publication of The Waste Land ate experience, forming many a lifelong friendship the previous October, Aiken reviewed the poem in the process. Most notable among them was with for the New Republic. It is the only published con- the fellow future poet and critic T. S. Eliot, whom temporary response that recognizes the Eliot poem he joined in 1909 on the board of Harvard’s under- for its poetry as opposed to its social commentary. graduate literary magazine, the Advocate. Several Aiken writes that “The Waste Land is unquestion- years behind Eliot in school, Aiken would not grad- ably important, unquestionably brilliant . . . partly uate until 1912, although he did manage to visit because it embodies . . . the theory of the ‘allusive’ with Eliot in Paris in the summer of 1911 toward method in poetry.” the end of Eliot’s year abroad. There he encoun- Aiken’s approach to Eliot’s achievement ulti- tered a homesick Eliot, who expressed a determi- mately is structural, putting his reading well ahead nation to return to Harvard and continue with of the times. Aiken illustrates how misleading the graduate studies in philosophy. allusions can be if one attempts to consign any to As was Eliot’s, Aiken’s poetry writing was the category of precise referents in order for mean- heavily influenced by the French symbolists, to ing to be elicited, so he argues that we must “con- whom he, too, would have been introduced by clude that the poem is not, in any formal sense, ARTHUR SYMONS’s landmark 1899 study, The SYM- coherent.” He continues: BOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE. Most signifi- cantly, through Aiken’s kind offices, Eliot first met With or without the notes the poem belongs another fellow American poet, EZRA POUND, later rather to symbolical order in which one may in London on September 22, 1914, thus begin- justly say that the “meaning” is not explicitly, or ning one of American and English letters’s most exactly, worked out. 497

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As Aiken sees it, the poem achieves a different fellow poet Emmanuel Litvinoff read a poem attack- order of unity, of coherence, from anything that ing Eliot’s attitude toward Jews. Ackroyd gives no has come before it, by virtue of its being “a bril- further details regarding the attack itself, except to liant and kaleidoscopic confusion; . . . a series of say that Eliot was heard to remark favorably on the sharp discrete, slightly related perceptions and feel- poem at the reading’s end. The entire incident was ings.” And so, for Aiken, an approach to the poem reported in the British press, and Eliot’s secretary as meaningful statement will not hold up under was quoted as saying, “Many Jewish people have scrutiny. Rather, “the poem succeeds . . . by virtue written to him accusing him of anti-semitism [sic]. of its incoherence, not of its plan; by virtue of its It is not true.” ambiguities, not of its explanations. Its incoherence To be Semitic is to be any person of Jewish or is a virtue.” Arabic descent, for Jews and Arabs are traditionally Aiken became a significant contemporary poet regarded as the children of Shem, one of Noah’s in his own right. In 1930, his Selected Poems was sons, from whose name the word semite is derived. awarded a Pulitzer Prize. In addition to Selected However, anti-Semitism as either a conscious or an Poems, his volumes of verse include Earth Trium- unconscious attitude and mode of behavior refers phant (1914), The Charnel Rose (1918), And in specifically to a veiled or open hostility toward or the Hanging Gardens (1933), Brownstone Eclogues prejudice against Jews. (1942), Collected Poems (1953), A Letter from Li One cannot understand the awful dimensions Po (1956), A Seizure of Limericks (1964), and The of anti-Semitism without fully appreciating its pre- Clerk’s Journal (1971). Aiken also single-handedly cise meaning and its historical foundations. The introduced the reclusive 19th-century American popular explanation, and all too often excuse, for poet Emily Dickinson’s works to the reading pub- the terrifying and shameful persistence of Christian lic when, in 1924, he edited her Selected Poems, Europe’s long tradition of anti-Semitism is that it thereby essentially establishing her literary reputa- originated in the mistaken belief that the Jews were tion. He was also the author of two novels, Blue responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, Voyage (1927) and Great Circle (1933). Two of whom Christians worship as the Christ, the Son of his short stories—“Silent Snow, Secret Snow” and God and third person of the Holy Trinity. “Blame “Mr. Arcularis”—have been frequently included in it on the Jews” became a subspecies of public pol- undergraduate anthologies. icy in most European nations, and the Holocaust, Like Eliot, the significance of musical pat- the name given to the systematic extermination terns attracted Aiken’s attentions as a poet, and of some 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World his poem “Music I Heard” has often been set to War II, was, for anyone familiar with how deeply music by composers, Leonard Bernstein most nota- rooted anti-Semitism has been in the European ble among them. Among his other honors, Aiken consciousness, nothing more than the horrifically held the poetry chair at the Library of Congress tragic but all too natural conclusion to centuries from 1950 to 1957 and in 1969 was awarded the of a sanctioned tolerance for intolerance. No won- National Medal for Literature. In his later years, der, then, that anti-Semitism should be regarded as Aiken returned to his native Savannah, where he something more than a mere prejudice and should passed away on August 17, 1973. be treated instead as the virulence that it is and has been for centuries. Anglicanism See CATHOLICISM, FORMS OF. However, how much art is required to reflect a culture with all its warts and blemishes intact Anglo-Catholicism See CATHOLICISM, FORMS OF. without running afoul of the more profound moral and ethical dilemma that occurs when such reflec- anti-Semitism In February 1951, according to tions perpetuate rather than expose those self-same biographer Peter Ackroyd, Eliot attended a poetry warts and blemishes, anti-Semitism among them, reading at which, unbeknownst in advance to Eliot, can often be a basis for confusion and controversy.

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Eliot’s attitude toward Jews, as that attitude is goes on bartering its heritage. Whatever else Eliot expressed in his poetry and prose, is most certainly may be getting at, it is difficult to account for the a source for confusion and controversy among insensitivity and savagery with which he identifies both devotees and critics of the poet alike. There and then depicts Bleistein’s ethnicity. are definitely elements of anti-Semitism in Eliot’s As with the Sweeney poem, however, it is not poetry and prose. The earliest and most prob- as if other characters in the poem fares any better, lematic instance comes from one of the quatrain whatever their ethnicity. When last seen, Burbank poems composed between 1917 and 1919, “Swee- is meditating on time’s ruins and the seven Noahid ney among the Nightingales.” In that text, in the laws—the Jewish laws from God’s covenant with midst of other shenanigans, a woman introduced Noah, to which even non-Jews are expected to as Rachel née Rabinovitch “[t]ears at the grapes adhere. For a poem, then, that carries preponder- with murderous paws.” If the far more inventive antly the theme of a present that is squandering presence in that same poem of the brutish Sweeney the riches of the past, among those riches Eliot has may be taken, among other things, as a demeaning clearly placed Judaism, and among the squander- attack on the moral caliber of Irish-Americans and, ers he has put Bleistein. That is stereotyping, to be by extension, Roman CATHOLICISM (and Sweeney’s sure, but it is not necessarily anti-Semitism. presence may be taken in that manner without So, then, a similar motive can be seen to under- much loss of credibility), then Rachel Rabinovitch’s lie the Eliot text when in the next instance, in appearance in the same text does constitute anti- “Gerontion,” 1919, the speaker is seen to “stiffen Semitism, although it may put more knowledge- in a rented house.” As the description continues, able readers in mind of Central Europe, a popular it is “. . . a decayed house, / And the jew squats setting, at the time, for equally popular Broadway on the window sill, the owner.” Here, while the operettas with nonsensical plots. anti-Semitism appears quite blatant, it reflects The next documentable instances come in nevertheless the notion that, like the Venetians another of the quatrain poems, in this case “Bur- and like Bleistein himself, the speaker of “Geron- bank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar.” tion” has mortgaged his inheritance, bringing up a Writing the same sort of energetic nonsense as in further point. Since the poem is clearly a dramatic all the quatrains, Eliot disparages everything that monologue, then here, too, the reader is at least has to do with tourists and tourist sites, in the lat- required to imagine that it is the speaker’s values ter case, Venice. But Eliot feels free to go one step and attitudes that are being expressed, not neces- further with Bleistein by portraying him in another, sarily the poet’s. harsher light than one that is distinctive merely of The same concept—that Europe had in effect an acquisitive crassness suggested by the cigar, a whored itself—later is reflected in “Gerontion” in long-time symbol for those who engage in conspicu- the image of someone named Hakagawa, another ous consumption. Eliot makes it clear that Bleistein “non-European” person apparently of Japanese is Jewish: “Chicago Semite Viennese.” Virtually as heritage, bowing among the Titians. The cumula- a racist caricaturist might, Eliot then further por- tive implication seems clear: Europe is no longer a trays Bleistein with “lusterless protrusive” eyes and vibrant culture. Rather, she is a vacated house that describes him further in terms of “protozoic slime.” has become an attraction for foreign tourists with- Nor does Eliot stop even there. Lower indeed out any vital connection to the local culture or its than the rats that lurk under the pilings that hold preservation, key concerns of Eliot’s throughout his the Venetian Rialto up is in the speaker’s view the poetic and critical career. “jew [who] is underneath the lot”—an image that If these three examples were the only three cases may mean that the Jew is beneath everyone else or of overt anti-Semitism to be found in Eliot’s work, is behind every shady business deal in the auction one would have to admit that, at the worst, Eliot houses where Canalettos and other masterpieces of was a poet who, for the sake of an over-the-top Venetian art may occasionally be sold, as Venice line or image, would not go out of his way to avoid

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offending any number of ethnicities, all of them— done for “reasons of race and religion”; nor can Irish, Italian, Jewish—fair game from the point any explanation resist the fact that Eliot’s remark of view of Eliot’s white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant sounds blatantly anti-Semitic, if that term has any upbringing. However, in April 1933, in the course meaning whatsoever. of introducing the Page-Barbour Lectures that he In Eliot’s defense, he subsequently forbid any was then presenting on the campus of the Univer- reissuing of After Strange Gods, yet he never retracted sity of Virginia in Charlottesville, Eliot outdid him- the statement, not even in the 1961 essay “To Criti- self so boldly that the strain of anti-Semitism in his cize the Critic,” whose whole intent and purpose was intellectual and moral makeup becomes obvious. to make peace with and amends for past editorial The lectures were later published, in 1934, as and critical transgressions. The best that anyone can After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy. In do is to argue that Eliot was, like most of the rest of his introductory comments, Eliot takes a moment us, a victim of the prejudices and ethical shortcom- to assert that “a native culture,” apparently mean- ings of his time and place. ing by that a white and Protestant one, has more The first 20 years of Eliot’s life coincided with hope of being reestablished in Virginia than in New an incredible influx of European immigrants; at the York because Virginia has been “less invaded by time of his birth, for example, a quarter of the foreign races.” One is forced to imagine that, by nearly half-million residents of his native city, ST. “foreign races,” Eliot means all those recent immi- LOUIS, were foreign born. grants from southern and central Europe, who were Members of Eliot’s class and ethnicity in the likely to be Jewish or Roman Catholic. Nor does he America of the times—upper-middle-class individu- stop there. Expanding on the earlier statement, he als of English or Dutch descent, and descendants as further argues that tradition must represent “the well of the nation’s original colonial settlers—were blood kinship” of a people, an exclusionary view wont to look askance at “foreigners” of any ilk, but of a national experience such as America’s, which those of a Southern European and Catholic back- is made up of so many different peoples as to be ground or of a Central European and Jewish back- the entirety of the human race. Yet he goes on in ground were generally the most despised, degraded, this kind of exclusionary manner by stressing the and, when possible, rejected. That may explain why, importance of maintaining the homogeneity of the during his sojourn in Paris in 1910–11, the youthful American population, particularly with regard to Eliot was drawn to the ideology of Charles Maur- preventing it from “becom[ing] adulterate.” ras’s Action Française, which, despite its ostensibly Finally, and most deplorably, he emphasizes the Roman Catholic leanings, was actually a national- need for that unity of tradition to be particularly ist movement that was profoundly anticlerical and backgrounded by a common religion. Presumably, anti-Semitic in its principles and practice. that religion, in Eliot’s view, ought to be Christian, At the very least, the remarks in After Strange for he pointedly remarks that, with that end in mind, Gods some 20 years later were an insensitive and “reasons of race and religion combine to make any inappropriate way of expressing what Eliot may large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable” on have seen to be a legitimate intellectual gripe, the American intellectual and cultural scene. although how it was even only that is itself impos- Many have tried to characterize these remarks sible to explain or to justify. At the worst, the in such a way as to imply that the excluded group remarks regarding “free-thinking Jews” were irre- is not Jews in general, but “free-thinking” Jews, and sponsible and reprehensible, because it was cultural that furthermore the emphasis should be placed on critics like Eliot who insisted that we have a right “free-thinking,” not “Jews.” Such explanations—for to expect more from our artists and thinkers when there are not many who would approach a defense it comes to matters of common sense, common of Eliot’s remark in any way that may appear to be decency, and simple justice. endorsing or justifying it—still leave intact the no An attitude is not an iceberg, however. With less onerous problem that this exclusion is to be an iceberg, the tip is merely a tip-off that there is

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something larger at hand. With an attitude, the In his 1995 study, T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, tip is the top, the bottom, and all four sides. What, and Literary Form, Julius argues that Eliot’s poetry then, is the precise dimension of Eliot’s anti-Semi- does not merely “reflect the anti-Semitism of the tism as can be determined from these remarks? It times; . . . Eliot’s work contributed to the anti- is not enough to say that he just was not thinking. Semitism of the times.” Considering that Nazi All the more the shame, then, both for him and for Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, whose bestial regime would his audience. His overall attitude toward the Jews be the architect of the Holocaust, was just com- in his poetry—that, as caricatures, they are good ing to power in Germany at the same time that for a comic turn every now and then—mimics a After Strange Gods was being published, Julius’s similar attitude toward Irish Catholics, as they were is a powerfully stinging indictment, and one that embodied, say, in the serving girls of a poem such cannot be dismissed out of hand or, very likely, as “Morning at the Window,” but especially in his even refuted. One’s words do affect others, and the characterization of Sweeney, whose predilection for words of a great poet affect others by that much prostitutes and, it is to be assumed, strong drink and more. Whether or not he would in any way, man- unsavory company makes him a “stage Irishman” ner, or form condone anti-Semitism in others, par excellence. expressions that can be construed as anti-Semitic But we must now return to the question of in Eliot’s poetry and in his prose certainly legitimize the special prerogatives of art and of the artist. anti-Semitism, exactly as Julius argues. Is Eliot exhibiting these social and cultural fail- Eliot would, if he could, say that contributing ings or exposing them? His poetic style is gener- to the anti-Semitism of the times did not form any ally intended more as a means for representing part of his intention, and it is likely that he would rather than stating, and it is frequently masked. So, be telling the truth. That may not excuse him, but then, is he exploring states of mind and feeling, or it would permit forgiveness. There are lessons to be exploiting them, or unwittingly revealing them as learned here. A great mind must be possessed of a being present in himself? great heart, and a great heart cannot but condemn Of course, the more subtle becomes an analysis, hatred. On the score, there can be neither compro- let alone any approach toward a defense of Eliot’s mise nor subtlety. apparent bigotries, the more likely it is to miss the point. The point is that there clearly are elements Arnold, Matthew (1822–1888) The son of of anti-Semitism and of other forms of prejudice in Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby who Eliot’s poetry and his thinking and that that state is celebrated to this day in Thomas Hughes’s im- of affairs cannot now ever be rectified. mensely popular 1852 English novel Tom Brown’s The topic reached critical mass in 1988, Eliot’s Schooldays, the English poet and literary and cul- centennial year, during which conferences and tural critic Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, other events in his honor were being organized Middlesex, on Christmas Eve 1822 and educated at throughout the English-speaking world. Respond- Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, at which he be- ing to this outpouring of affection and respect came a fellow in 1845. In 1851, however, through for Eliot, the following year the American novel- the influence of Lord Lansdowne, to whom Arnold ist Cynthia Ozick felt compelled to weigh in, in a was private secretary, Arnold was appointed in- long article published in the popular New Yorker spector of schools, a position that he held for most magazine, with a scathing indictment of him as a of the rest of his life. He would nevertheless also self-made and therefore phony Englishman whose be appointed professor of poetry at Oxford and in poetry is no longer read and who was an anti-Sem- 1883 would be pensioned off at a sum then equal- ite. Since then there have been numerous articles, ing $1,000.00 per year, a very generous amount. books, and reviews attempting to set the record While Arnold made his living as a minor bureau- in order, none succeeding, perhaps, as well as the crat, he made his reputation as a poet and critic of English critic Anthony Julius’s. considerable power and conviction. In poems such

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as “Dover Beach” (1851), “Stanzas from the Grand inspiring a more positive creative response to those Chartreuse” (1852), and “The Scholar Gypsy” conflicts and deficiencies. (1853), Arnold sketched a postromantic response One could argue that the modernist movement to a world that was becoming increasingly secu- in the arts that would begin some 40 to 50 years larized and “modernized,” but without any great later was the very sort of new literature that Arnold advantage for the individual that he could see or was envisioning. For his own part, Arnold encour- happily identify. Rather, the splintering effects aged others to follow his lead in what he called of political, intellectual, and religious factional- a “disinterested” critical endeavor “to learn and ism encouraged him to describe the current cul- to propagate the best that is known and thought tural landscape as one in which “ignorant armies in the world,” without any regard for what set of clash[ed] by night.” ideals or party may thereby benefit from those con- In response to this moral chaos, the best minds clusions. His major work in that regard remains of his generation had lost their way as well, finding the book-length essay Culture and Anarchy (1869), their beliefs and ideas “[w]andering between two whose title pretty much sums up what he took to be worlds, one dead, / The other powerless to be born.” the terms of engagement. Those two worlds of his represented the old, medi- Eliot had difficulty throughout the better part of eval world order that had crumbled in the face of his own career as a cultural and literary critic abid- the onslaught of the Protestant Reformation and the ing with Arnold’s positions. In the essay “Arnold humanist, empiricist revolution in thought and in and Pater” (1930) and then in On the Use of Poetry knowing and a truly modern world, comfortable with and the Use of Criticism (1934), Eliot took issue itself, that might, at some point in the future, emerge with Arnold for attempting to make poetry a sub- from the castastrophe of readjustment required by stitute for religion, a position that, in Eliot’s view, such widespread cultural transformation. had given rise eventually to the secular human- As if in response to his own poetic despair, ism advocated by his former Harvard mentor, Pro- Arnold slowly but surely turned his hand more and fessor IRVING BABBITT. If Arnold could say that more to writing trenchant essays that critically ana- poetry was “at bottom, a criticism of life,” Eliot lyzed the set of circumstances that had led to the could retort that when one hit bottom, one did not impasse that he was envisioning and that might, as encounter the ability to criticize better, but rather a consequence, begin to repair the serious breach “the horror, the boredom, and the glory”—planes in the life of the intellect that had caused it. In of experience, that is to say, that are neither easily summary, he felt that a major part of the problem rendered nor easily identified. and, so, a potential solution for it was that the By now we can see, as Eliot did later in his life, creative impulse had itself become stultified—that that Arnold was waging his own cultural wars on the poets, and poetry, were in essence spinning the same field and for many of the same reasons that their wheels in vain efforts at expressing the despair Eliot would be later waging his—in the hopes that that such a breach had engendered. Instead they something of the old, the tried, and the true might should inspire the general community to recog- survive an increasingly mechanized and secularized nize the dilemma of a lack faith in both human public realm. Matthew Arnold died on April 15, and divine agency to ameliorate the situation and 1888, a man who had devoted himself to serving the address that dilemma, rather than the tumultuous public good with all the skills and talents that he had feelings that it aroused, directly. Beginning with had at his disposal and to encouraging his fellows to essays on the order of “The Function of Criticism do likewise. For Eliot, finally, one must imagine that at Present Time” in 1864, Arnold began to propose Arnold was more of a model than an impediment, that now was not the time for poetry, that, rather, offering him a way in which to make genuine liter- now was the time to take unflinching critical stock ary criticism a part of the general discourse by which of the culture as a whole entity in order to identify cultures and societies can identify their shortcom- its conflicts and deficiencies with an eye toward ings and seek to rectify them before it is too late.

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Babbitt, Irving (1865–1953) Born in Dayton, mechanistic secularism that had begun to domi- Ohio, on August 2, 1865, the American academic nate public life, policy, and discourse throughout and literary critic Irving Babbitt was a shaping force the balance of the 19th century. Out of the New in the development of what became known as the Humanist movement, for example, would emerge New Humanism, which in turn shaped much of the the Great Book movement that guided the teach- American intellectual agenda from 1910 to 1930. ing of literature in American academia for the bet- Babbitt was educated at Harvard, from which he ter part of the 20th century. The idea was that graduated in 1889. After taking a teaching posi- literature served the purposes of both the aesthetic tion for several years in Montana, he continued and the religious imagination, training the mind his education at the Sorbonne in Paris and then while molding the spirit. took a master’s degree in Sanskrit at Harvard. In that regard, Babbitt might be regarded as a After a second teaching stint at Williams College disciple of the mid-19th-century English poet and in Massachusetts, Babbitt was offered a position social and cultural critic MATTHEW ARNOLD. Like as an instructor, in French, at Harvard, where he Arnold, Babbitt proposed a place for aesthetic remained the rest of his academic career, eventu- experience, including literature, that would give ally rising to the rank of full professor. those kinds of human activity a transcendent valid- Thanks to the wide variety of his training and ity formerly reserved only for religion. While this interests in cultures and languages, he is credited tack is to be commended for its insistence on a less with introducing the study of comparative liter- materialistic and more spiritual approach toward ature at Harvard and may have had a hand in determining and benefiting from the dynamics of influencing his undergraduate student, the young culture, it also tended to make poetry a substitute T. S. Eliot, in developing his own famously eclec- for religion. tic tastes in world literatures and languages. These It is on those grounds that Eliot, in a 1927 review would be honed to their highest degree by Eliot in of Babbitt’s book Democracy and Leadership titled 1922 in his celebrated multicultural extravaganza, “The Humanism of Irving Babbitt,” would attack The Waste Land. his former Harvard mentor’s essential position. In In keeping with the parallel thinking of his Har- Eliot’s view, where Babbitt’s arguments failed was vard colleague Paul Elmer More, Babbitt’s human- in their proposing too extensive a social purpose for ism made an effort to chart a course between the poetry, one that it could simply not possibly deliver. sentimental sloppiness of that early 19th-century Eliot would revisit his criticism of Babbitt’s human- phenomenon romanticism, with its emphasis on ist posture in a 1928 essay, “Second Thoughts on the self and on intense feeling, and the increasingly Humanism,” in which he felt called on to clarify 503

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his earlier condemnation of certain aspects of Bab- was bound, therefore, only by the single restriction bitt’s thought that, if carried to their logical conclu- that he tell no lies. The poem should leave read- sion, would, in Eliot’s view, diminish the cultural ers feeling uncomfortably agitated, not benumbed effectiveness of both poetry and religion. Despite and satiated. Indeed, much of T. S. Eliot’s brand this professional and ideological rivalry, Eliot and of modernism takes its cue from these aspects of Babbitt remained good friends personally, and they Baudelaire’s poetics, with its painfully abrupt hon- maintained an amicable master-pupil correspon- esty intermingled among typically “poetic” touches. dence with each other. In Baudelaire’s famous image of the human city Babbitt passed away on July 15, 1933. In 1960, as an anthill teeming with the desperately bored, Harvard established and endowed the Irving Bab- he challenged his “hypocrite readers” to see them- bitt Professorship of Comparative Literature in selves in their brother poet, bringing to them his his honor. bouquet of unpretty flowers. Although he studied for the law, Baudelaire had Baudelaire, Charles (1821–1867) Baudelaire was set his sights on a literary career from a very early born in Paris on April 9, 1821, the son of a former age. His writing skills were honed largely in his priest and a mother who had been orphaned in her years of translating the American poet Edgar Allan childhood. A notorious womanizer and drug addict Poe, whose similarly skewed vision and excesses of who lived a life of the same sort of decadence that imagery fascinated Baudelaire as much as they did his poetry would celebrate and his criticism would his fellow French poet, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842– justify, he would die at the relatively young age 98). Along with poets like Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine of 46 on August 31, 1867, the victim of syphilis, (1844–96), Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91), and JULES which he had become infected with as a young LAFORGUE (1860–87), Baudelaire effectively led man. For all of that, Baudelaire managed to fashion the way in dramatically revivifying not only French out of his archetypal “life on the wild side” a model poetry writing but, by virtue of his influence on for the kind of sensibility that was required in order such modernist poets as Eliot and European and to respond to the vista of moral and spiritual degra- American poetry writing as well. For all that they dation and despair that were, in his lifetime, rapidly seemed at times to wallow in the sordid details of becoming the hallmarks of urban experience in the ordinary life, these symbolists, as they came to be mid-19th century. called, sought to create through their poetry a win- Modernism as a way of thinking was only just dow into human experience unadorned by roman- then coming into its own; modernism as a way of tic sentimentalities but no less richly beautiful and feeling, believing, and behaving would be shaped strangely meaningful. by the likes of Baudelaire and the other, young A young Eliot first came to know many of the French urban poets of his day. In his single volume most original French symbolist poets by read- of poetry, Les fleurs du mal, or The Flowers of Evil, ing ARTHUR SYMONS’s landmark study The SYM- Baudelaire was among the first to identify squalor BOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE in December as a source of beauty, the conventionally beautiful 1908. Although Baudelaire would not have been as a mark of corruption, and ennui or boredom as included in that earlier edition of Symons’s book, the only authentic human vice. When it was first Baudelaire’s vision of the so-called urban apoca- published in 1857, all involved in its writing and lypse had had enough of an impact on Eliot for it to publication were prosecuted and found guilty of be reflected in the “[u]nreal city” that provides the obscenity and blasphemy. A second edition in 1861 locale for most of the goings-on in the first three managed to pass the censor’s bar. sections of Eliot’s The Waste Land, first published Baudelaire’s poetry remains problematic because in October 1922. From his readings in Baudelaire, he eschewed the provincial, middle-class idea that Eliot appears to have overcome the taboo that pre- art is meant to be an adornment. For him, the artist cluded the mechanics of human sexuality from seri- was the conscience of the human community and ous artistic endeavors, poetry among them.

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Baudelaire’s poetry may be filled with images career as a scientist and mathematician but even- of lust and of decay, but those are no less genuine tually made a name for himself in the humanities aspects of the human condition and of the factors with an essay on the Roman philosopher Lucretius. motivating a wide range of human behavior. By mak- By 1889, he had earned a doctorate in humane let- ing what had previously been held to be the obscene ters from the University of Paris on the strength of and the blasphemous the subjects of serious literary a thesis on Aristotle and the manuscript of what endeavors, Baudelaire made them as well the objects would be his first published philosophical work, of legitimate concern not just for the beleaguered Time and Free Will. With the publication of Matter individual but for the entire community. Further- and Memory in 1896, Bergson established himself as more, Baudelaire’s success in bringing these issues one of the leading thinkers of his day. His work was to the table of “important human concerns” made founded on years of real scientific investigation into them become the topic of intellectual discourse in the functioning of the brain and the body, although the academy and of political and social discourse in his most significant conclusion—that the experi- the popular press and in the halls of government. ence of change is, for the individual, a matter of That this constitutes a cultural revolution of the perception that is not confirmed by anything in the first order is beyond dispute, and Baudelaire deserves physical universe, or objective experience—seems credit for nearly single-handedly initiating it. at its heart to be largely within the realms of specu- In his youth, Baudelaire had been a political lative philosophy, or metaphysics, in keeping with activist, taking to the barricades during the Paris the work of the English idealist philosopher F. H. uprising of 1848 that ushered in the so-called BRADLEY, a contemporary thinker. Second Republic in France. A democrat at heart, Supposedly independently, Bergson, for exam- Baudelaire did not seek to use human sexuality as ple, argued for a view of experience in keeping with a means to titillate or otherwise exploit his readers. the 19th-century American pragmatist William Rather, he found a way to write “for the masses” James’s concept of a “stream of consciousness” that that included all of us at the most basic levels of the ordinary mind distorts through categorical con- existence, which included more typical emotions cepts. Similarly, in keeping with Bradley’s notions like frustration, despair, and boredom. His poetry of the necessary conflicts and confusions between reinvigorated the ancient idea that the poet spoke appearance and reality, Bergson’s work focused pri- not merely to and for the kindred aesthetes but marily on matters of perception and memory, those to one’s fellow, whoever he or she may be, and to means of processing not merely information but the the entire community, stripping away illusions and very essence of experience, means that were then shame and self-deception for the sake of approach- just coming into vogue as areas of scholarly and ing a true beauty and a purer truth. philosophical investigation. In 1900, he was appointed to a professorship at Beacon Hill See BOSTON. the Collège de France, first to the chair of Greek philosophy, but eventually succeeding, in 1904, to Bergson, Henri (1859–1941) Although he was the chair of modern philosophy. In 1907, Bergson born French, on October 18, 1859, in Paris, the published his third principal work, Creative Evolu- philosopher Henri Bergson was created by all of tion, in which he developed most fully his theo- Europe. His father was of Polish Jewish descent, ries regarding the purposes of the arts in furthering his mother of Irish and English Jewish descent, and human social development. the family lived in London for nearly a decade fol- It was partly to attend his lectures that the lowing Henri’s birth. Eventually, however, they young T. S. Eliot, just graduated with an M.A. in returned to France, and Henri became a natural- English literature from Harvard University, trav- ized French citizen. eled to Paris in the fall of 1910, remaining there As befitting a thinker and academic, Bergson led until the summer of 1911. Eliot’s poetry writing a relatively quiet and uneventful life. He began his at the time, confined to works as significant as his

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early masterpiece “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- Massachusetts Bay Colony and subsequent Com- frock,” reflects the influence of Bergsonian think- monwealth of Massachusetts, as the state is called, ing, with its emphasis on a reality that is totally are most certainly the Eliots. Not only was the intuited and therefore of the perceiver’s making family founder Andrew Eliot, who had emigrated and that is furthermore shaped as much by pre- from East Coker in England, a juror with the Salem conceptions as by received experience. Individuals witch trials in the 1670s, but an Eliot was later a are, as it were, prisoners of their own “mind-forg’d president of HARVARD University. In any roll call of manacles,” as the late 18th-century English poet these founding families, then, which would include William Blake no less accurately portrayed the psy- names as enduringly embedded in American his- chological phenomenon that is consciousness. tory as the Cabots and the Lodges, the Lowells and A much-honored individual who was invited to the Adamses, the Peabodys and the Winthrops, lecture at major universities in both England and would be the Eliots. the United States and was awarded the Nobel Prize Eliot’s own branch of the family, however, for Literature in 1927, Bergson nevertheless saw was founded in ST. LOUIS in 1834, when the fam- his influence fall into a decline in the final decades ily patriarch, WILLIAM GREENLEAF ELIOT, then a of his life. Bergson’s last major work was his The recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, set out Two Sources of Morality and Religion, published in for that frontier town to establish the first church 1935, in which he extended the ramifications of his devoted to UNITARIANISM west of the Mississippi. thought into the areas of art, religion, and morality. Even as a child of the great Midwest and the Mis- Although he desired to convert to Roman Catholi- sissippi Valley, however, the young Eliot came to cism toward the end of his life, as a sign of solidarity know his New England roots as well. His family with his fellow Jews, Bergson registered as a Jew in summered every year in GLOUCESTER, north of Bos- keeping with the requirements of the anti-Semitic ton on Cape Ann, and his father built an immense policies of the Nazi-backed Vichy government summer home on Eastern Point, Gloucester, in then managing so-called unoccupied France during 1896. Furthermore, in 1905 the teenage Eliot was World War II. Bergson passed away on January 4, sent east to attend Milton Academy in Milton, 1941. In keeping with his wishes, a Roman Catho- Massachusetts, just south of Boston, in prepara- lic priest said the prayers at his funeral. tion for his enrolling, in 1906, in Harvard College, located just across the Charles River from Boston Boston The community that now is Boston, Mas- in Cambridge, Massachusetts. sachusetts, was first settled in June 1630 within 10 By this time in U.S. history, waves of early immi- years of the famous landing at Plymouth Rock in grants from Western Europe, particularly the British 1620, making the city of Boston one of the oldest Isles, had been followed by immigrants from South- places of continuing habitation settled by English- ern and Central European nations, so that by the speaking colonists in the continental United States. end of the 19th century, the Boston area had a Boston, however, has many another claim to fame, populace that was as likely to be of Irish or Ital- not the least among them being that its citizens ian descent and was composed of tradespeople and were the first to fan the sparks of rebellion against craftspeople whose task it was to service the needs of the British crown with the Boston Tea Party in the old, established families of Anglo-Saxon descent 1765, and Boston and its surrounding communi- who still controlled the community’s political, com- ties, most notably Concord and Lexington, are still mercial, and educational bases. Such a melting-pot fabled for their key roles in the Revolutionary War culture has become a commonplace experience that subsequently ensued following the colonists’ by now, typifying urban life in the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. throughout most of the 20th century. A young Eliot Among all the various Anglo-American families was on hand to witness the mixed fruits of this who have achieved prominence because of their national transformation, so that Cambridge and long and continuing ties to the development of the other upper-middle-class and working-class locales

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are prominently featured in much of Eliot’s early belly of inner-city living. These first inklings of yel- poetry, either providing readers with glimpses into low evenings, gutters, streaked window panes, piles the values of a bygone era or introducing them to of refuse, tinny pianos, and even cheaper music the comparative squalor of the new. were “minor considerations,” as the poet called Beacon Hill, for example, which continues to them, yet they seemed to occupy a great deal of contain the most valuable residential properties in his time and attention. As a result of Eliot’s 1910– the United States, would have been the home to 11 study sojourn in Paris, he would pen “Fourth Boston’s social elites, the so-called Brahmins who Caprice in North Cambridge.” As originally cast, set the tone and tastes for a city that still regarded the “Preludes,” too, had much a more place-spe- itself as the Hub of the Universe, with some justi- cific emphasis in their individual titles, being first fication. Located on prime real estate just across called, in order, “Prelude in Dorchester,” com- the Charles River from Cambridge, the south slope posed in October 1910; “Prelude in Roxbury,” also of the hill overlooks the famous Boston Common. composed in October 1910; “(Morgendämmerung Beacon Street, the area’s main thoroughfare, is [German for ‘morning twilight’]): Prelude in Rox- home to the Boston Athenæum, an independent bury,” composed in July 1911; and “Abenddäm- library and museum founded in 1807 on the model merung [‘evening twilight’],” which was composed of similar private galleries in England. A few doors after Eliot had returned to the United States, in down is the headquarters of the Unitarian Univer- Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 1911. salist Association, the modern organization repre- The prominence of Dorchester and Roxbury as senting the religious denomination that dominated locales is easily explained: They are to this day the spiritual life of southern New England for most other working-class towns located near Cambridge, of the colonial period and to which the Eliot family the sort of places a young man of means might belonged. The hill’s narrow, gaslit streets, with their haunt when he was out for a “night on the town.” sidewalks and row after row of Federal-style houses, Such locales find their way into the opening of should come to mind as one reads “The Love Song “Prufrock” as well, with its images of “sawdust res- of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “Portrait of a Lady,” from taurants with oyster shells” and men in shirtsleeves 1911, and this exclusive area for proper Bostonians leaning out of windows. no doubt figures as well in such later Eliot poems Eliot’s most significant use of Boston and its envi- as “The Boston Evening Transcript,” “Aunt Helen,” rons, however, comes in He Do the Police in Different “Cousin Nancy,” and “Morning at the Window,” Voices, the original version of The Waste Land. all composed in about 1915. As an undergraduate, Eliot was not above “slum- Bradley, F[rancis] H[erbert] (1846–1927) Influ- ming it” either, so Boston’s working-class locales ences are all too often chicken-and-egg proposi- were sources of inspiration for his early poems as tions. How can it be determined to any degree of well. Inspired by JULES LAFORGUE and, very likely, satisfaction whether a writer’s way of thinking is CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, the two French symbolist influenced by another or that writer merely finds poets who most influenced his early urban and that other writer’s or thinker’s ideas and beliefs social poetry, Eliot experimented with poems congenial to ideas and beliefs that he already holds? whose interests and topicality were involved with Sometimes, too, a person may give expression to the seamier side of life in a vast metropolis such someone else’s way of thinking that, until then, had as Boston. This early experimentation would lead not been articulated in any systematic or clear way eventually to the “Preludes.” Eliot was penning by that person. The point is that when the connec- poems with titles such as “First Caprice in North tion is made, there is no way of determining what Cambridge” and “Second Caprice in North Cam- wiring there was in place already that made the bridge” as early November 1909. Their subjects connection possible. It is this very indeterminate were cityscapes that focused, in a handful of spare nature of the relationship between an event and a lines confined largely to description, on the under- person’s knowledge of the event that is at the heart

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of the philosophy of the English idealist philoso- ist HENRI BERGSON, whose philosophical premises pher F. H. Bradley. resembled Bradley’s, inasmuch as Bergson, too, Along with the 19th-century French symbolist stressed the essential and yet unknowable stabil- poet JULES LAFORGUE and DANTE ALIGHIERI, it is ity of objective reality, which could be known doubtful that anyone exerted as much influence on only by degrees of perceptual coloration. It was Eliot’s thought and writing as Bradley did, yet the not until June 1913, meanwhile, that Eliot’s inter- extent and exact nature of that influence, like any est in Bradley can be documented. Still, he was other, is purely speculative. That one may never drawn enough to Bradleyan thinking to make a acknowledge an experience until it has already critique of the philosopher’s thought the subject occurred, so that the acknowledgment is itself col- of his Harvard doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge ored by the experience that has inspired it, is not and the Objects of Experience in the Philosophy a philosophical postulate but practical reality— of F. H. Bradley,” which he completed in April although it may take a great deal of philosophi- 1916. The dissertation would be published by Eliot cal postulating to prove as much. That is where a in 1964 under the title Knowledge and Experience in philosopher such as Bradley comes in. How does the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. one illustrate, let alone postulate, let alone verify Suffice it to say in the final analysis that Brad- those unverifiable aspects of experience that one ley’s philosophy, like Eliot’s poetry, seeks to close nevertheless believes constitute its true nature? the gap between knowledge and experience by The obvious answer is that one does not without regarding the ways in which the individual objecti- entering the realms of what is called speculative fies that experience. In that sense, it is absolutely philosophy, or metaphysics. true that objects exist only as ideas. For Bradley, the true nature of experience or, By the time that Eliot arrived at Merton Col- as the philosophers say, reality is not constituted lege, Oxford, to study under one of Bradley’s dis- of our interaction with objects existing and oper- ciples, Harold Joachim, Bradley’s seminal work had ating independent of each other; rather, reality is already been accomplished, although he contin- an integrated whole that exists ultimately as ideas ued to be a presence at Oxford. Born on January rather than objects. Any summary of Bradley of this 30, 1846, in Clapham, now a suburb of London, order is likely to do serious damage to the subtle Bradley was the son of an Evangelical minister and complexities of Bradleyan idealism. Nevertheless, his second wife. His brother, A. C. Bradley, would the lines of engagement that his philosophy draws become a distinguished Shakespearean scholar. F. reveal an unmistakable affinity with the challenges H. Bradley was first educated near home but even- facing the artist, particularly a literary artist such as tually attended University College, Oxford, obtain- Eliot, for whom one’s perception of any experienced ing his position at Merton College in 1870. event is invariably colored by one’s ideas and words Widely regarded as the most brilliant English are always an inadequate means of expressing that philosopher of his day, Bradley’s reputation did not complex of event, thought, and emotion. Whether hold up well after his death in the late summer of Eliot’s poetics, with its unconventional treatment 1927. Interest in scientific positivism and math- of meaning as a thing that the reader must struggle ematics had begun to rule the roost among younger to make all on his or her own with little or no English philosophers, BERTRAND RUSSELL among assistance from the poem’s speaker, was inspired in them, and Bradley’s idealism became more and part or in whole by Bradley’s idealism or whether more dismissed for its necessary speculative biases, Bradley’s thinking was hospitable to ways in which while Bradley himself was labeled a metaphysician, Eliot had already been thinking and composing is, as certain a kiss of death as any among the emerg- then, itself impossible to determine, although it is ing analytical philosophers. His most significant more likely that the latter is the case. works are Ethical Studies, published in 1876, which Eliot had, after all, already attended, in Paris in Eliot particularly commends in his essay on Bradley; 1910 and 1911, the lectures of the French ideal- The Principles of Logic, much of which is regarded

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now as polemical rather than analytical, published year’s Canterbury Festival. For his theme, Eliot in 1883; and Appearance and Reality, published in settled on a drama dealing with the martyrdom, 1893. That last work most encapsulates the prin- at Canterbury of the 12th-century English arch- ciples of Bradleyan philosophy, and Eliot cites it bishop Thomas à Becket and turned to Browne in one of the most significant notes in The Waste for his expertise with staging and directing the Land, in this case to line 412, regarding the confes- new play. Alternately called Fear in the Way and sion of Count Ugolino. The Archbishop’s Murder Case, the verse play that ultimately emerged as Murder in the Cathedral Browne, E[dward] Martin (1900–1980) In 1930, was first performed in the Chapter House of Can- the Most Reverend George Bell, the Anglican bishop terbury Cathedral the evening of June 19, 1935, of Chichester, hired a young man named E. Martin before an opening night audience of 700 as a part Browne to reinstitute the longstanding relation- of the festival. ship between drama and religion in the English Browne and Eliot’s collaboration continued with church, appointing Browne the diocesan director The Family Reunion, Eliot’s first completed verse of religious drama. An actor by training, in this drama with a contemporary setting. At Browne’s new capacity Browne turned his abilities at direct- urging, that play went through several rewrites ing toward re-creating a manageable production before opening to a disappointing five-week run from the 14,000 lines of the York Mystery Cycle, a at London’s Westminster Theatre on March 21, 14th-century pageant play depicting the Bible from 1939. Nevertheless, the two had by now forged a the Creation to the Last Judgment. His resulting lasting professional collaboration. script for a pageant play is used in performances in A successful revival of The Family Reunion fol- En gland to this day. lowing the war encouraged Eliot to try his hand at a Browne first met Eliot at Bishop Bell’s episco- new verse drama. By July 1948, he had sent a draft pal palace in December 1930 during a weekend of the first three acts of the new play, which he had visit when Eliot read from his then just-published originally intended to title “One-Eyed Reilly,” to his sequence “Ash-Wednesday,” with its prominently theatrical collaborator Browne. The Cocktail Party, religious overtones. When Browne subsequently as the new played was finally called, was mounted agreed to write the scenario for a pageant play to at the Edinburgh Festival during the last week aid the Anglican Diocese of London with a church- of August 1949 and was a popular success there. building fund, although he would be working from Unable to secure a theatre in London’s West End a story line that was based on episodes suggested for its commercial premier, producer Henry Sherek by the Reverend R. Webb-Odell, Browne asked premiered it on New York’s Broadway instead, Eliot to write the choruses and the dialogue. The where it opened on January 21, 1950, to a long poet happily obliged. The resulting play, The Rock, and successful run in the Henry Miller Theatre. It was, then, the product of several hands, perhaps would be Eliot’s greatest theatrical triumph, a mon- explaining why Eliot would later include only the eymaker, as they say on Broadway, that enjoyed an choruses in his Collected Poems, 1909–1935. When equally successful run later in London. the play was finally performed at Sadler’s Wells Browne and Eliot would collaborate on two more Theatre in London from May 28 to June 9, 1934, verse dramas aimed at a popular audience. Eliot nonetheless, it drew a total audience of 1,500, an had the first two scenes of The Confidential Clerk impressive outcome for Eliot’s first entry into writ- drafted as early as May 1951 after The Cocktail ing for what amounted to the popular stage. (An Party had closed for London audiences. His plans earlier effort begun in 1923, “Sweeney Agonistes,” were to premier the new play at the Edinburgh had been abandoned by the poet in 1925.) Festival the summer of 1952, but he would not With Browne and Eliot’s successful collabora- complete the play until February 1953, thus delay- tion on The Rock behind them, Bell now sug- ing its Edinburgh Festival debut until the following gested that Eliot prepare an original work for next August. There, it was very well received. The play

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opened at London’s Lyric Theatre on September September 1958. Eliot’s reputation as a dramatist 16, 1953, where it continued to experience great and his ability to gauge public tastes, had peaked popular success. with The Cocktail Party, however, and this last col- By the end of 1957, Eliot had a completed draft laboration of theirs did not enjoy anywhere near of yet another new play, which he had originally the same level of critical and commercial success. intended to call The Rest Cure. When he learned Browne would write his own reminiscence of his that that title had already been used, he elected to nearly three decades of working with Eliot in the call his verse drama The Elder Statesmen instead. book The Making of T. S. Eliot’s Plays, which was The London production of the play, again under published by Cambridge University Press in 1969, Browne, opened in the Cambridge Theatre in late four years after Eliot’s death in January 1965.

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Catholicism, forms of Americans think of the Among the central tenets of Christian faith is terms Catholicism and Catholic as pertaining to the one that asserts that the church that Christ founded rituals and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, is not a sect but the universal church, although as so called because its leadership is located at the a tenet it was one that by Eliot’s time was not Vatican in Rome. Eliot, however, uses the terms dif- being as aggressively proposed and pursued as it ferently. When Eliot, for example, speaks of Cathol- once had been. In summary, the Christian believes icism as if it is a coordinate ideology with classicism in that there is no other church than Christ’s. Hence, his 1923 essay “The Function of Criticism,” or when inasmuch as the word catholic denotes something he is variously quoted as having proclaimed himself a that is “universal; general; all-inclusive,” Christian- classicist, a royalist, and a Catholic or Anglo-Catho- ity is synonymous with a church that is catholic. lic in his preface to For Lancelot Andrews in 1928, or That the American experience has encouraged a when he writes of “Catholicism and International large portion of the Christian community to hear Order” in the 1949 essay of that name—in all those the word catholic as denoting a specific denomina- instances, it is not a religious denomination per se so tion, Roman Catholicism, is an understandable cul- much as a theological concept that he has in mind. tural phenomenon and one to which Eliot himself In all three of these contexts, and with the pos- would have been exposed, being an American by sible exception of Eliot’s discussion regarding the birth, upbringing, and education himself. Never- schism between Roman Catholic and Anglican theless, when Catholic is used to identify a Roman belief in his Notes towards the Definition of Culture, Catholic, it is really something more in the way of Eliot is never speaking about a denominational issue a familiar shorthand than anything approaching a regarding the faithful’s practice of their religious theological or doctrinal correctness. beliefs when he refers to or uses the word catholicism Indeed, Eliot would himself, and does, draw a or any of its variants. Rather, he is addressing the distinction among Roman Catholicism, Anglo- central concept of that body of belief derived from Catholicism, and Anglicanism, but this distinction the Gospels detailing the life and teachings of Jesus would be in regard to belief, ritual, and practice. of Nazareth, the individual recognized by Christian That is to say, the differences are not quite denom- faithful, whatever their particular denomination, as inational only but are significant nonetheless. The the Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity original breach between Rome and London, as it and Son of God. (Curiously enough, an exception were, occurred during the reign of Henry VIII, who among nominal Christians to this generalization is severed all ties with the papacy in Rome in 1533 as UNITARIANISM, the faith of Eliot’s family and, so, of the result, largely, of a dispute over whether or not his childhood and young manhood.) he could divorce his present wife, Catherine of 511

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Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn, the future conversion to the Church of England in June 1927, mother of Elizabeth I. There is no denying that was letting it be known that, while not granting any there were issues purely doctrinal in nature as well semblance of authority to Rome in terms of his per- behind the so-called English Reformation that thus sonal faith, he was so-called High Church Anglican resulted, but Henry’s own motives were by and and still capable of adhering not only to the idea large what we would call to this day geopolitical. that the Eucharist is transubstantial but also to a Subsequently, however, there was a serious doc- devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, which many trinal breach regarding the nature of the Eucharistic Protestants see as idolatrous. Anyone who knows Host, the most significant of Christian sacraments. both the acts of faith of Roman Catholicism and For adherents of Roman Catholicism to this day, the Eliot’s 1930 poem “Ash-Wednesday” may be liable Host that is taken by the faithful at Communion rep- to think of Eliot as a Catholic—meaning now, in resents the real presence; while it retains the appear- the common parlance, a Roman Catholic—instead ance of mere bread, it has become in fact, and not of an Anglican. Indeed, it is safe to say that some- symbolically, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In one well versed in the belief systems of each would that regard, the sacrament is an act of what is called be far more likely to think him a Roman, as the transubstantiation. This, again, is a central—perhaps English say, rather than an Anglican. Eliot stopped the most central—belief of a Roman Catholic Chris- at the very threshold of becoming a Roman Catho- tian. Lutheran doctrine, however, introduced a seri- lic largely because, as he explains it himself in great ous modification into this belief; for these Protestants detail in his 1948 book-length essay, Notes towards (i.e., those who “protested” the authority of Rome as the Definition of Culture, he feels that religion should having the final say in matters of faith), the Eucharis- be the expression of a people and their own unique tic Host is representative of the sacramental process culture, and not because he was not himself, in the but does not fully embody it. Instead of transub- final analysis, a Catholic. stantiation, the process is one of a consubstantiation, whereby the Host is either/or (or, from another point Conrad, Joseph (1821–1924) Born in Poland of view, neither/nor). To individuals not especially on December 3, 1857, the son of wealthy Polish devoted to the sacrament of the Eucharist, such a landowners and christened Jozef Teodor Konrad distinction may seem to be a trivial one, perhaps Korzeniowski, the late 19th-century English novel- even a silly one. To persons of faith in the doctrines ist and prose stylist Joseph Conrad learned English and rituals that have just been described, the distinc- by first pursuing a career in the British merchant tion is all the difference in the world. marine. Fiercely patriotic, both of Conrad’s par- The point is that while the breach between the ents died by the time he was 11 as a result of their Roman and the English church may not have origi- being exiled to Siberia by Russian authorities, who nally been based on a doctrinal dispute, as was then were governing territories that had formerly the case with Martin Luther’s original opposition belonged to Poland. In order to evade conscription to Rome, as years passed, Anglicanism accepted into Russian military service, young Jozef escaped the doctrine of consubstantiation at the expense of to the West, first France and later England, and he a belief in transubstantiation. To the uninitiated, achieved both his Master Mariner’s certificate and the difference between a Roman and an Anglican British citizenship by age 21. service, or Mass, may seem to be absolutely none Despite these successes in translating himself at all, particularly since the reforms in the Roman into Joseph Conrad, he left the sea in 1894 to church as a result of Vatican II in 1962. For the devote his attention full time to novel writing. His faithful on either side of the divide just described, first novel, Almayer’s Folly, was published in 1895. however, those similarities are all show ultimately Conrad utilized the experiences of his own youthful without any authentic substance whatsoever. adventures as a seaman in the South Seas in much Eliot, in choosing to identify himself as an Anglo- of his early fiction. An Outcast of the Islands (1896) Catholic instead of as an Anglican following his and Typhoon (1902) are early examples. But Con-

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rad, whose father had been a writer as well, had the tion and duplicitous political maneuverings in a artist’s knack for combining the extremely enter- world of colonial exploitation and power-jockey- taining with the profoundly philosophical, and his ing among the major Western powers. For Conrad, sea yarns and tales of political intrigues in Western the real basis of human behavior and aspirations and Central Europe became more and more the was all a flickering light in an immense darkness, a stuff of high art and the early inklings of modern- mystery; in the meantime, the great world of power ism as well. and politics went its merry way, enslaving the poor, With other fiction writers of the period, most vanquishing the conscientious, and celebrating the notably the English novelist Ford Madox Ford and hypocritical, in the name of hollow principles and the young American novelist and short-story writer hollower causes. Stephen Crane, Conrad developed a school of fic- Were Conrad’s an isolated vision of the social and tion writing called impressionism. It was founded political and economic realities of his time, his would on the principle that the literary realism that was still have been a viewpoint with which to be reck- all the vogue at the moment, with its emphasis on oned. Rather, he seemed to be at the vanguard of a an almost journalistic approach toward recount- radically changing attitude toward the efficacy of art ing narrative experience, failed to account for the and the limits of individual choice and power. Clearly complexities of experience as a lived event. The Eliot, for whom Conrad would have one of the lead- impressionists wrote tales that unfolded from the ing “serious” writers of his own youth, was drawn point of view of a single character who was often toward Conrad’s drolly dark depiction of modern not the narrator but whose perspective neverthe- humanity. Heart of Darkness holds an honored place less colored the moral dimensions and therefore in the Eliot canon by being one of the few works of the meanings and the themes of the unfolding fic- contemporary literature to which the poet has fre- tion. Rather than the novel being a conventional quent recourse, alluding to it at significant junctures narrative that told a story from beginning to end in both The Waste Land and “The Hollow Men.” and more or less merely chronicled the life of the Joseph Conrad died of a heart attack on August times, it became a tool for awakening readers to 3, 1924. the shortcomings of human knowledge, especially when it came to experiences as near at hand as Criterion Nearly from the time of Eliot’s arrival one’s own and those of one’s neighbor. in London in July 1914 to commence a year of Conrad experimented as well, in such novels graduate studies at Merton College, Oxford, he as Heart of Darkness (1899) and Lord Jim (1900), was networking into the exciting developments in with framed first-person narratives, wherein one review publishing that were accompanying the bur- character related what another had said, and with geoning movement in the arts known as modern- novels told from a multiplicity of points of view, ism. Eliot would not have known at the time that such as 1915’s Victory. In keeping with natural- the outbreak of war in early August, coupled with ism—another literary movement of the time that his marriage to Vivien Haigh-Wood the following emphasized the random nature of experience— June, would wind up making him a de facto resi- trivial actions, or actions construed as trivial, take dent of England who would never again return to on great significance in his fictions, so that lives live in the United States for any extended period. are ruined and empires fall as a result not of great Even if he had every intention of returning to the calamities but of what may appear to have been United States, however, after his year of study meaningless gestures. In the meantime, in novels abroad on a traveling fellowship from Harvard, it such as Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), would have been foolish of him as an aspiring poet, and Under Western Eyes (1911), Conrad used these literary critic, and essayist not to take advantage of techniques for creating ambiguous narratives whose the opportunities for a career in literary journalism moral underpinnings were equally as ambiguous in then available in London; the war only aggravated stories that dealt with the ironies of self-decep- these circumstances for the better.

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In addition to reviewing for the New Statesman They hoped to secure financial backing to launch in London, Eliot was getting his poetry published in a London edition of the Dial that Eliot would edit so-called “little magazines” such as the American and that might thereby give it a highly competitive poet and critic Alfred Kreymborg’s Others and Har- and unique publishing presence as an international riet Monroe’s Poetry, outlets that were leading the journal of the arts. way in introducing the day’s exciting young writ- Sidney Schiff, who wrote novels under the ers to a wider and sympathetic reading audience. pseudonym Stephen Hudson and was himself a These connections were made thanks in large part wealthy art patron, introduced Eliot to Lady Lil- to the efforts of his fellow American poet and expa- ian Rothermere in the summer of 1921. Although triate EZRA POUND and were located in New York by that time she was already estranged from Har- and Chicago, respectively. As early as June 1917, old Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere, the newspaper however, thanks again to Pound, Eliot landed work magnate and one of the wealthiest men in England, as the assistant poetry editor for Harriet Weaver’s Lady ROTHERMERE was herself extremely prominent EGOIST. That journal no sooner ceased publication in London’s social and artistic circles and quite in late 1919 (but not before publishing Eliot’s land- capable of throwing her considerable wealth and mark essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”) influence behind the very sort of publication that than he landed a post as contributing editor to the Eliot and Thayer were proposing. These credentials Times Literary Supplement through the good offices made her the perfect contact for Eliot’s own some- of the English poet and novelist Richard Alding- what avant-garde issues and interests. For her part, ton. Eliot had other publishing “gigs,” not the least Lady Rothermere wanted to endow a new publica- among them a regular “Letter from London,” which tion that would cut a swath through the so-called he contributed to the New York review the DIAL, smart set by featuring cutting-edge fiction and edited by Scofield Thayer, his friend from their essays, whereas Eliot wanted to manage something schooldays at Milton Academy and then Harvard. that would publish only the best writers and writ- Nonetheless, Eliot was starting to chew at the ing of the day, in keeping with the most exacting bit to have editorial control of a review all his own. literary standards. There would be no illustrations Several factors contributed to this desire. For one in the proposed journal. Despite these philosoph- thing, the Eliots were themselves no slouches when ical differences, they were all in agreement that it came to managing enterprises of great note all it should aim toward an exclusive audience that on their own. His grandfather WILLIAM GREEN- might never exceed a circulation of 1,000. LEAF ELIOT had founded a Unitarian church in his As two of the leading lights of the modernist adopted hometown, ST. LOUIS and not only had movement then sweeping literary England and been instrumental in founding that city’s WASH- America, Eliot and Thayer were easily able to con- INGTON UNIVERSITY but acted as its president for vince Lady Rothermere that they could fulfill their several decades. The poet’s father, meanwhile, part of the bargain. When Lady Rothermere finally Henry Ware Eliot, Sr., was a highly successful busi- struck a publishing deal, however, it was with Eliot, nessman who managed a brickyard in St. Louis. A to the exclusion of Thayer. Rather than a trans- distant cousin, Charles W. Eliot, was president of atlantic journal, she would underwrite the publi- Harvard University at the time that a young T. S. cation of a review housed in London and edited Eliot attended that university. by Eliot. The result was the Criterion, and its first Those considerations aside, however, a more issue would be a publishing landmark. Coming out compelling reason was that Eliot did not appreciate October 16, 1922, it contained Eliot’s new poem, the fact that the little magazines were not thriv- The Waste Land, which the Dial published simul- ing and that the movement it both fostered and taneously in New York. Lady Rothermere thought reflected was likely to be preempted by more and the first issue, of which 600 copies were printed, more commercial publishing endeavors. Thayer rather “dull,” and it would subsequently remain and Eliot began to develop a publishing venture. Eliot’s constant aim to try to please the taste of his

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wealthy patroness while maintaing his own rather GINIA WOOLF, E. M. Forster, Hart Crane, Hermann conservative editorial standards and beliefs. Hesse, Hugo von Hoffmanstahl, Noel Coward, and In July 1925, Lady Rothermere’s three-year con- Eliot’s wife, Vivien, are among them. Throughout, tract with the journal’s publisher moved toward its Eliot’s aim was to present a selection of writings that expiration, and Eliot began to fear that she might reflected the most interesting intellectual and aes- simply close the review down. Instead, Lady Rother- thetic trends in contemporary European culture. mere made an agreement with Faber & Gwyer, the In October 1938, as the war clouds began to new publishing house with which Eliot had just gather again over Europe following the appease- taken a position as poetry editor and a board mem- ment with Nazi Germany’s expansionist aims by ber, to take over publication of the Criterion, now British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in his launched as the New Criterion, in January 1926. infamous Munich Pact, Eliot and Faber decided By May 1927, Faber & Gwyer began to publish the finally to suspend publication of the Criterion. The Criterion, until then a quarterly publication, as a first number the Criterion for 1939 would also be the monthly, however, increasing the production costs. last, and by September 1 of that year, Europe was at By now the journal had a circulation approach- war again following the German invasion of Poland. ing 800. The result was that Lady Rothermere By then the Criterion’s circulation, never large by finally felt forced, in December 1927, to summon design, had been reduced to 600, but it would be Eliot and inform him that she was withdrawing her shortsighted to conclude that Eliot’s decision was financial support. motivated solely by financial considerations. The financial blow that her actions precipitated Eliot, in a 1946 radio address to the German nearly caused the Criterion to cease publication, but people, would comment on the topic of the unity of Geoffrey Faber decided that in view of the writers European culture. Germany had just been defeated that it attracted and would help publicize for other after a long and destructive war that had chal- publishing projects, the Criterion served a useful lenged the viability of a European culture of any purpose for Faber & Gwyer as an ongoing con- order, and Eliot’s remarks would later be included cern. He thus used his own considerable influence as an appendix to his Notes towards the Definition among the London establishment to obtain enough of Culture, published in 1948. Among his vari- financial support to keep the Criterion going, albeit ous points, he noted that the Criterion had aimed returned to a quarterly publication schedule. always to be an outlet for and conduit among the Throughout the 17 years that the Criterion pub- various cultures that constituted European cul- lished, it provided a significant publishing outlet ture. That “gradual closing of the mental frontiers not only for numerous American and British writ- of Europe” that began with the more and more ers, but for writers from the European continent as aggressive stance that fascism took in Germany and well—and, of course, Eliot himself, who, in addi- Italy in the early 1930s, however, led to a closing of tion to The Waste Land, published parts of “The those avenues of communication, so that by 1939, Hollow Men” and “Ash-Wednesday” in its pages. a publishing venture of the scope and aspirations of The roll call of authors published in the Criterion the Criterion could no longer succeed—not for eco- is impressive—Aldous Huxley, the SITWELLS, VIR- nomic but for intellectual and cultural reasons.

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Dante Alighieri (Alighieri, Durante degli) (1265– Florence, ancient home of the Etruscans who had 1321) Durante degli Alighieri, who has come once ruled much of Italy in pre-Roman times, was down to us through literary history as the great Ital- hardly an exception. The Guelfs, to which faction ian poet Dante, is one of the most influential early Dante’s family belonged, supported the papacy, figures in that European cultural and intellectual while the Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman phenomenon now known as the Renaissance and Emperor, the Roman Catholic pope’s archrival for was perhaps one of its founding impulses. Born in military authority on the Italian peninsula. Florence, Italy, sometime in the late spring of 1265, Once the Ghibellines were effectively subdued Dante was descended from the Alighieri, a family and removed from power, the Guelfs themselves long prominent in Florentine affairs and, conse- divided into two factions, the Whites, to whom quently, thickly embroiled in the political faction- Dante belonged, and the Blacks. The Blacks con- alism of the day. Indeed, Dante’s own time would tinued their devotion to the papacy, while the hardly have seemed as enlightened to him or his Whites were suspicious of papal motives now that contemporaries as it now does to posterity, but that the Ghibellines had been declawed. This new fact no doubt may account for the continuing power configuration of violent civic rivalries resulted, in and allure of his poetic vision, and in particular of his November 1301, in the slaughter of the Whites, a masterwork, La commedia divina, or The Divine Com- fate that Dante, in Rome at the time, fortunately edy. Rather than as the beginning of anything, that escaped. is to say, Dante would have seen his era and work as However, Dante now was tried in absentia, the continuation, though perhaps a bit more refined, exiled for two years, and ordered to pay a heavy of a Christian Europe that had fragmented socially fine. When he was unable to do so, his sentence and politically as a result of the slow diminishment of was commuted to perpetual exile, and he was con- Roman power beginning in the fifth century but that demned never to return to Florence, under pain of had nevertheless achieved to a remarkable degree death. From exile he carried on a public relations the spiritual coalescence to be found in a common assault against his Black enemies, but this strategy Christian faith, Roman Catholicism. backfired. When the Whites were eventually par- By Dante’s time especially, Italy, which had doned, Dante was not among those receiving such never been anything more than an extremely loose clemency, and he later refused, in 1315, a general confederation of tribes and localities even in the pardon on principle. He died in September 1321 in heyday of the Roman Empire, had been reduced to exile in Ravenna. Although Florence later repented warring districts, each with its own distinct system of its harsh treatment of its native son, the city did of government and even language. The Tuscan city not make amends for another 500 years when, in 516

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1829, an ornate tomb was constructed there in his ing with the requirements of the courtly lover. She honor. Repeating the greeting with which the poets became, that is to say, Dante’s lady, the embodi- in Limbo welcomed Virgil in Dante’s Inferno, the ment of all that is pure and beautiful and, in order legend carved on the stone commands the visitor to keep it so, unattainable. The poet’s love for her to “honor the most high poet”—but Dante’s body thus made him a lifelong servant of Amore, or Love, remains buried in Ravenna to this day. which is itself, manifested here in this world, noth- A well-born man of his time, Dante pursued no ing more than a pale image of the divine love that, regular profession, although he did excel at diplo- for Dante as a profound Christian believer, rules macy in his later years. He was also a warrior and the universe and guides all creation back to itself. a political leader during the Whites’ brief period It is in Dante’s second and far more significant governing Florence in 1301. It is, however, as a achievement as a poet, The Divine Comedy, that poet that he made his mark and his name even in Dante combines that great theme with his more his own day. parochial political and social themes, as well as While Italy was divided along many different with the whole panoply of human knowledge, wis- cultural, linguistic, and social lines, it shared a dom, and experience, virtually from the beginning common system of belief in Roman Catholicism of recorded history to the present day. While the and, so, a spiritual identity that, in Dante’s time, poet’s eye is never off his native Florence or his both in Provence in the south of France and on pain and anger over his exile from that city (the the island of Sicily, to the west of the tip of the so- poem is set during Easter 1300, one of Dante’s last called Italian boot, had found secular expression in to be spent in Florence), Dante controls this vast a new kind of love poetry, the courtly love tradi- array of material and interest with a single, cen- tion. Originating in the court of Eleanor of Aqui- tral metaphor: He has lost his way spiritually, and taine in the late 13th century, poets working in to regain it, he must take a guided tour through this tradition celebrated the female beloved as an the afterlife. This tour commences with a journey unattainable object, very much in keeping with the through hell in the Inferno, continues through pur- notion that divine love can touch men and elevate gatory in the Purgatorio, and culminates in a vision them above their bestial needs and desires. While of heaven in the Paradiso. still a young man, Dante had fallen in with a group Everything in the work is carefully crafted. As a of Florentine poets who practiced writing in this reflection of the divine Trinity, for example, Dante entirely new school of poetic thought and feeling, used a three-line, rhyming stanza, called terza rima. which they called the Dolce Stil Nuovo (“sweet new Then, too, each of the three sections named above style”). Among others, these fellow poets included comprises, as poetry, 33 songs or, in Dante’s par- Dante’s close friend Guido Cavalcanti and a former lance, cantos. Canto I, meanwhile, in which Dante teacher, Brunetto Latini. first awakens to the fact that he has fallen into Two works of Dante’s stand out as fulfilling the error and lost his way to salvation, makes for 100 requirements for turning the poet’s most intensely cantos altogether, 100 being the perfect number. personal sentiments, emotions, and experiences Dante is scrupulously orthodox as well. For into the most highly stylized kinds of poetic expres- example, it is the pagan Roman poet Virgil, who sion. The first was his La vita nuova, or The New in Dante’s time would have been thought of as the Life, which Dante is thought to have composed in greatest mind of the ancient world (Dante himself 1292 or 1293. In it he both recounts and celebrates bestows on him the title “Prince of Poets”), who ini- through a series of vignettes—now prose, now tially acts as Dante’s guide. Dante is quickly taught poetry; now critical, now fanciful—his encounters, even by this pagan poet, however, that it is through beginning at age nine, with Beatrice Portinari, a the grace and love of Mary, the Blessed Mother, fellow Florentine who was at the time 18 and with as well as with the permission of God the Father, whom Dante, according to his own report, carried that the entire process of his salvation has been set on a years-long love affair from a distance, in keep- in motion to begin with. Furthermore, for the last

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part of his journey, Dante will be guided by none a work enbued with so much of his experience as other than his lady, Beatrice, who had passed away a scholar, a thinker, and person merely to extract in 1290 and whom, in Dante’s fictive invention, his pound of flesh from those who had done him the Virgin Mary now dispatches to fulfill Dante’s injury. rescue from sin and error. Thus, by manipulating Surely it was Dante’s capacity for vision—his the creative potentialities of a poetic vision that ability to conceive of a monumental poem that is unitive in the truest sense of the word, Dante brought together all the values and beliefs that his manages to bring the great theme of love, in all of time and his culture cherished—that drew Eliot its human and its divine manifestations, together in to Dante and his great poem over and over again, this single, great work. commencing with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- Scholars generally assume that Dante began frock” in 1911 and ending with the most poignant The Divine Comedy, which he had titled, simply passages in “Little Gidding,” the last of the Four enough, La commedia, in 1301, shortly after his Quartets, in 1943. Eliot’s profound debt to Dante is exile from Florence and that he did not complete self-acknowledged and widely recognized. In 1930, it until shortly before his death nearly 20 years he would identify Dante and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE later. The temptation to see his Comedy as a work as the two greatest poets of all time, bar none, and in which Dante “gets even” with his foes and hon- late in his life, he singled Dante as the one endur- ors his benefactors is an easy one to fall prey to. ing influence throughout his poetic career. Who would not welcome the opportunity to con- sign one’s detractors to hell and one’s patrons to Dial Among the so-called little magazines that heaven? Dante does as much himself. Farinata provided the necessary publishing outlets for the degli Uberti, for example, one of the Ghibellines’ new, young artists and writers who began to emerge great military leaders, is to be found in the Sixth as modernism took deeper and deeper root during Circle of hell among the heretics (Inferno X), and the first few decades of the 20th century, Scofield Boniface VIII, the seated pope at the time that Thayer’s Dial was one of the most prominent, influ- Dante’s exile is imposed, will find himself assigned ential, and stylish. This New York–based review to the Eighth Circle, where he is to be punished had originally been founded in 1840 as a forum for having used his religious offices for personal for the transcendentalist thinking of such individ- financial gain (Inferno XIX). Cangrande I della uals as its first editor, Margaret Fuller, and was Scala, on the other hand, who permitted Dante later edited by one of the time’s leading transcen- to live in comfort in Verona for a period of time, dentalists, the American poet and essayist Ralph finds himself rewarded with a place in heaven Waldo Emerson. Reestablished in 1880 as a source (Paradiso XVII). for commentary on the more liberal thinking of its But Dante is as unsparing of friends and influ- day, the Dial began to catch the tide of the chang- ences. His beloved teacher and fellow poet, Bru- ing times under the editorship of Martyn Johnston, netto Latini, is encountered in the Inferno among beginning in 1916. This new and more ideologically the sodomites (XVI). The great Provençal trou- daring approach, however, brought the publication badour Arnaut Daniel, whose work had inspired to near financial ruin until Thayer bought it and Dante’s circle, is found suffering in the Purgatorio transformed it from a contentious liberal rag into with the Carnal (XXVI). one of the premier journals for art and culture then More than these isolated examples, however, being published in America. there is the testimony of the scope and power of The wealthy Thayer had been an undergraduate the work itself to commend it to our attention as with Eliot at Harvard and later attended Magdalen an achievement that transcends both its time and College, Oxford. Thanks to his connections with its poet’s intentions for it, whatever they may have other poets, critics, and artists like Eliot, Thayer been. It would be wrongheaded to imagine that had access to the finest writers and artists then Dante would have devoted so much of his life to working in both America and Europe. Within its

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first years of publication under Thayer’s editorship realize that in the first few decades of the 20th cen- the Dial would publish Sherwood Anderson, Djuna tury, interest in his poetry had to undergo a revival Barnes, Kenneth Burke, Hart Crane, E. E. Cum- that was led chiefly by T. S. Eliot. Whether it is a mings, Charles Demuth, Kahlil Gibran, Amy Low- typical early Donne love poem such as “The Flea,” ell, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Odilon Redon, in which he asks his lady to buy the argument that Bertrand Russell, Carl Sandburg, Van Wyck they should abandon all sexual restraints because Brooks, and W. B. YEATS—a veritable roll call of their “bloods commingl’d be” already inasmuch as the leading poets, composers, and artists of the day. the same flea had bitten both him and her, or one Thayer also provided readers with letters from con- of his later, far more somber and sober “Holy Son- tributing editors reporting on the cultural life of nets,” in which he conceives of God as a blacksmith European capitals. Eliot, for example, contributed (“Batter my heart, three-person’d God”) or a rapist a letter from London, while EZRA POUND wrote (“I be not chaste except thou ravish me”), Donne’s one from Paris, and the novelist Thomas Mann wit, as this rich talent for making far-fetched con- reported on similar trends in the literary and cul- nections or “conceits” was called then, would have tural life of Germany. The Dial’s greatest claim to seemed to be insurance enough for an enduring enduring literary fame, however, came in October literary reputation. 1922 when, simultaneously with the Criterion that Donne proves, however, that kindred spirits, Eliot was just then beginning to publish in London, and a kindred age, may be as necessary as well. For it published The Waste Land. Donne’s wit amazes not with its brilliance, which Thayer had, in June 1921, established the Dial might seem so to any age, so much as with its apt- Award, an instantly prestigious and generous liter- ness, which requires a wit as ready to receive it for ary award that would enable one of the magazine’s it to be appreciated. Later metaphysical poets— contributors the financial wherewithal to find the Donne’s was among the first poetry written in this leisure to continue to compose. The first recipient, style in English—may reach for the more and more in 1921, was the novelist and short-story writer extravagant conceit. Donne does not reach at all; Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. he merely tries to put into words, with a compelling In 1922, the recipient of the $2,000 award, a feat consecutive logic, the twists and turns and stops of engineered by Pound and underwritten by the New starts of human thought and passion and feeling as York lawyer and art patron JOHN QUINN, was Eliot. they each contend for supremacy in the struggle to The Dial continued to flourish throughout the comprehend what fools these mortals be. better part of the 1920s under the guidance of Donne’s parents were a wealthy London iron- Thayer’s tastes and funds. In 1926 the critic Gilbert monger and the daughter of the playwright John Seldes joined Thayer as managing editor, but as the Heywood (and a relative of Sir Thomas Moore, the years passed, Thayer took a less and less active role martyred legal advisor to Henry VIII). Donne was in the review’s preparation, eventually leaving New born into tumultuously exciting times with a nota- York to take up more or less permanent residence ble pedigree but one outstanding strike against him. in Europe. The poet Marianne Moore edited the England was not only caught up in the throes of the Dial for two years when Thayer fell ill in 1927, but Renaissance in thought and in learning then taking by July 1929, in the absence of any further finan- place on the continent but in the spiritual, social, cial support from Thayer, the magazine was finally and political turmoil of intrigues and conflicts that forced to cease publication. had resulted from the Protestant Reformation which began in the late 15th century. In England, Donne, John (1572–1631) By now, the continu- Henry VIII had broken with the Church of Rome ing celebrity of the 17th-century English divine and in 1537. Although the Church of England might metaphysical poet may be easily attributed to the have then been only administratively estranged incredible vigor of both intellect and imagination from Rome, it still was not wise to be openly Roman that his work displays. It may be difficult, then, to Catholic, as the Donne family was.

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Educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, from became more and more obsessed with death and neither of which he took any degree, the well-born with his own mortality. His Meditations upon Emer- Donne nevertheless managed to wangle for himself gent Occasions, published in 1624, includes his a successful career in law that put him close to famous Meditation 17: “No man is an island.” In a the sources of power, although his brother Henry’s portrait completed a few weeks before his death, he death in prison for hiding a suspect Roman Catho- posed in his own shroud, and he even went as far as lic priest came near to shattering Donne’s faith. to preach “Death’s Duel,” his funeral sermon, two Whether for that reason or for the heat of his youth- weeks before he died on March 31, 1631. ful blood, these were the days of “Jack” Donne, As Eliot observes in “The Metaphysical Poets,” who also became a notorious womanizer and hard itself a 1921 review of Herbert J. C. Grierson’s drinker. This lifestyle also produced some of his ear- Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth liest poetry, whose bawd was concealed and forgiven Century: Donne to Butler, the English metaphysical by virtue of its technical virtuosities and powerfully poets were the losers in their own particular brand direct expression of sentiment and thought. of culture wars. While their poetry had not fallen Then, in 1601, Donne came close to ruin- into total obscurity, their capacity to wed thought ing everything for good by secretly marrying the and feeling seamlessly together in a direct and 17-year-old daughter of a well-placed courtier. often abrupt English while nevertheless conveying Although the marriage was not annulled, Donne richly suggestive analogies did not continue as the and those who assisted him in the deception prevailing mode of English poetic style. Instead, by spent some time in prison for their cheek—and Eliot’s time, in his view, English poets talked about Donne lost all chances for the advancement that what they thought and what they felt, rather than had seemed inevitable. The young couple had to trying to find ways to convey their thoughts and struggle, particularly as their family grew. Even- feelings. The result, as Eliot identified it then, was a tually they became reconciled with their in-laws, “dissociation of sensibility” that had been continu- and in and around 1610 Donne made it clear in ing unchecked since the time of the late 17th-cen- several published polemics that he was no longer tury English poet John Dryden. Roman Catholic. One of the polemics, “Pseudo- It became Eliot’s hope and his aim that modern- Martyr,” which argued that one could swear spiri- ist technique might restore a measure of intellect tual allegiance to the crown without jeopardizing to English poetry without distorting its capacity to one’s faith, won him favor with James I, but James render the parameters of an emotion as well. Surely withheld his patronage until Donne took orders as Eliot the novice poet, who, in 1911 in “The Love a priest in the Anglican faith in 1615. Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” fashioned such a per- Those youthful passions and indiscretions tamed fect metaphysical conceit as that poem’s opening by age and responsibility, and especially by the comparison between the evening sky and “a patient tragic loss of his wife in childbirth in 1617, Donne etherized upon a table,” had already learned from now turned from the needs of the flesh and devoted the English Metaphysical poets—although it may his attention to the life of his soul in the Holy Son- have been in the guise of their 19th-century French nets, published in 1618, bringing to that theme the descendants, the symbolists, JULES LAFORGUE chief same powers of expression and invention. Donne among them.

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Egoist One of the truly little of the so-called lit- came to an end in the fall of 1918. The review tle magazines that featured the new, young writers would cease publication in 1919, but not before, emerging in England at the beginning of the 20th in its last two numbers published in November and century, the Egoist was published in London only December, it published in two installments one of from 1914 to 1919; yet during that time it pub- the most significant critical documents produced lished work by some of the most outstanding mod- by the modernist movement, Eliot’s essay “Tradi- ernist literary figures of the day, including JAMES tion and the Individual Talent.” JOYCE and T. S. Eliot. Founded by Dora Marsden as a successor to her feminist journal The New Free- Eliot, William Greenleaf (1811–1887) As the woman, the Egoist was appropriately enough sub- social and cultural status that the Eliots enjoyed titled An Individualist Review. Published biweekly suggests, other members of the poet’s family were for the first half-year of its existence, when the Ego- adept at succeeding in their chosen fields and in ist went monthly under the editorship of Harriet service to the greater community, in keeping with Shaw Weaver in the second half of 1914, it became the spirit of UNITARIANISM that Eliot’s branch of a more and more significant outlet for poets and the family had been devoted to at least since the critics alike. time of his paternal grandfather, William Green- Assistant editors included Richard Aldington leaf. Henry Ware, Sr. (1843–1919), for example, and H. D., or Hilda Doolittle, a companion of the the poet’s father, was an astute businessman and American poet EZRA POUND, at approximately the eventual president of the Hydraulic-Brick Company same time that CONRAD AIKEN, the future poet and in ST. LOUIS, while the poet’s mother, Charlotte recent Harvard graduate, would arrange for Pound Champe Stearns Eliot, not only raised seven chil- to meet a young American who had only recently dren but was an accomplished poet who instilled arrived in England—T. S. Eliot. That meeting a lifelong love of learning in her precocious and would occur in September 1914. By 1917, the Ego- youngest child. Their claim to fame, nevertheless, ist Limited Press would publish Eliot’s first volume is contingent upon their having parented a literary of poetry, the groundbreaking collection Prufrock figure who had obtained worldwide celebrity by his and Other Observations. In 1917, when Aldington early 30s and was awarded a Nobel Prize in litera- left for service in the army, Eliot would take his ture in 1948. place as assistant poetry editor. Eliot’s grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, The Egoist, which had come into its own with on the other hand, has earned his own place in the outbreak of the World War I in the summer American social history for his efforts on behalf of 1914, did not survive long after that conflict of American Unitarianism and his service to his 521

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adopted hometown, St. Louis. William was born in achievements and legacies, however, is St. Louis’s New Bedford, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1811. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, which was originally orga- It was in that New England state, primarily in the nized in 1853 as an educational institute associated BOSTON area, that the Eliot family had made their with Eliot’s church. It was over his strong protest that home since the family founder, Andrew Eliot, the school was the initially called the Eliot Seminary. emigrated there from the village of East Coker in In 1857, it was organized into Washington Univer- Somerset, England, at the end of the 17th cen- sity, largely with the support of Eliot’s congregation, tury. After his graduation from college in 1831, and Eliot would serve as its president from 1870 to William attended HARVARD Divinity School and his death in January 1887, contributing funds as well was ordained a Unitarian minister on the comple- to its continued construction and maintenance. tion of his course of study there on August 17, It was to the campus of Washington Univer- 1834. In 1854, the school would award him an sity that its founder’s grandson, by then a world- honorary doctorate for the ministerial work that renowned poet, critic, and playwright, would he subsequently accomplished. venture on June 9, 1953, to deliver an address No sooner had young William acquired the titled “American Literature and the American Lan- necessary religious training than he followed the guage,” his only one on that topic. Commenting in course of what would be his and several succeed- his opening remarks on the grandfather whom he ing generations of American’s manifest destiny never knew, Eliot noted that “I was brought up to by “going West.” In his case, he settled later in be very much aware of him . . . as still the head of 1834 in the Mississippi River frontier town of St. the family.” William Greenleaf had, from beyond Louis, known to this day as the Gateway to the the grave, instilled in his grandson a devotion to West. Founded by French settlers, St. Louis was moral responsibility and a consciousness of “our still largely Roman Catholic in tone and culture, decisions between duty and self-indulgence,” so but it was there that William, with a missionary’s much so that any deviation from the rules of con- zeal, founded the Church of the Messiah, the first duct that William had brought down, like Moses, Unitarian church west of the Mississippi. He would as tables of the Law “would be sinful.” remain its minister from 1834 to 1870, and the Eliot continues: “Not the least of these laws, congregation remains active to this day as the First which included injunctions still more than prohibi- Unitarian Church of St. Louis. tions, was the law of Public Service.” That service William, in keeping with the Unitarian ideal of extended into three areas: the church, the city, and civic duty, helped found many other institutions the university, Eliot notes, and he makes it clear that enhanced the quality of life in the burgeon- that, for his family, all three of those institutions ing metropolis, among them the St. Louis Public were to be found for them there in St. Louis, the Schools and the St. Louis Art Museum. In 1861, he city to which his grandfather William had come was among those who managed to keep Missouri in more than a century earlier as a young man just the Union following the outbreak of the Civil War turned 23, determined to serve God and his com- in April of that year. Among his most significant munity on the American frontier.

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Frazer, Sir James (1854–1941) There is very popular tastes but a work of impeccable scholar- likely no work of scholarship more exciting, for ship by a Cambridge University fellow, replete with those who care to hazard its formidable length, than notes identifying all the various sources that consti- The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, who tute the wealth of knowledge, analysis, and inter- virtually invented modern cultural anthropology. pretation that the work entails. The original 12-volume study of the relationship Born on January 1, 1854, in Glasgow, Frazer was among magic, religion, and science in the ancient educated there and later at Trinity College, Cam- world, limiting itself to no single human culture, bridge, from which he graduated in 1874. Aside from begins with an anecdotal image worthy of the most a year teaching anthropology at Liverpool, Frazer compelling mystery novel. It is set in ancient Italy, remained at Trinity for his entire academic career. in the woodlands of the Alban hills near a lake Even more intriguing, however, is Frazer’s own alternately called the lake of Nemi or the lake of tale of how he came to write The Golden Bough in Aricia, the two villages located nearby. Frazer goes the first place. He would relay this tale some 32 on to say, years later in the abridged edition of his work, pub- lished in 1922, that he prepared for the less daunt- In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree less but no less ambitious reader. (This abridged round which at any time of the day, and prob- version runs a mere 864 pages, index included.) ably far into the night, a grim figure might be In his preface to that edition, he explains that the seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn primary aim of The Golden Bough was to “explain sword, and he kept peering warily about him as the remarkable rule which regulated the succession if at every instant he expected to be set upon of the priesthood of Diana at Aricia,” for that was by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; who that figure in the sacred woods had been—the and the man for whom he looked was sooner or priest of Diana, herself the hunter-goddess and pro- later to murder him and hold the priesthood in tector of wildlife. Frazer continues: “When I first his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A set myself to solve the problem more than thirty candidate for the priesthood could only succeed years ago, I thought that the solution could be pro- to office by slaying the priest, and having slain pounded very briefly, but I soon found that to ren- him, he retained office till he was himself slain der it probable or even intelligible it was necessary by a stronger or a craftier. to discuss certain more general questions, some of The pace, power, and intrigue of the narrative does which had hardly been broached before.” not let up from that moment on, and yet, of course, What Frazer had come to discover was a rela- this is not a work of fiction aimed at pleasuring tionship between the function of king and of priest 523

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that transcended cultural traditions to such a This plain-spoken conviction of Weston’s, degree that it had to have as its source a founda- despite the unabashed confidence with which she tional relationship to the organization of human states what is otherwise an obvious fact, flies in societies. In her own way, and on a related topic, the face of the then-prevailing scholarship con- the literary scholar JESSE L. WESTON in her FROM cerning the origins of the Holy Grail. Until then, RITUAL TO ROMANCE, published in 1920, would scholars had asserted with the same plain-spoken find that much of the earliest lore traceable to the conviction that the Grail was the cup of the Last origins of the legend of the Holy Grail that would Supper, miraculously bequeathed to Joseph of Ari- sweep Western Europe in the late 12th century has mathea by Christ himself after the Crucifixion and to do with wounded or sacrificial kings. Resurrection. As Robert de Boron, a 12th-century Eliot confessed to having recourse to the work Frankish knight, told that tale, Joseph, famed in of both Frazer and Weston as he was develop- the Gospels as the wealthy man who provided the ing the archetypal superstructure for his poem tomb and burial cloths in which Jesus was buried, The Waste Land, published in the fall of 1922. In was in prison at the time. He was permitted by the the headnote to his celebrated notes to The Waste cup’s powers to free himself, and he then fled the Land that he appended to the poem when it was Holy Lands, taking the sacred vessel with him to published in book form in December 1922, Eliot what would then have been the farthest reaches admits to being “so deeply indebted” to Weston’s of the Roman world, Glastonbury in the southwest book that he recommends it to any reader of his of what would then have been Celtic Briton, near who might wish to have The Waste Land eluci- Cornwall. dated. He saves the greater praise for Frazer, how- Robert’s tale apparently inspired others to tell ever. The Golden Bough, Eliot says, “has influenced not so much similar stories as stories that took up our generation profoundly,” and he then singles out the Grail at further and further removes from the two of Frazer’s 12 volumes, on the topics Adonis, origins that Robert had claimed for it. In the Per- Attis, and Osiris. While Weston may have given ceval of Chrétien de Troyes, the story has been Eliot a useful view of the Grail with which to work, moved up to the time of Arthur, the Celtic king of there can be no doubt that the vegetation rituals the Britons. In it the cloddish Perceval comes near that underlie The Waste Land’s primary metaphor to discovering the Grail and thereby saving the of a dead land that the hero must, by seeking self- wounded Fisher King and restoring vitality to the sacrifice, restore to life come from Frazer’s com- Wasteland, but Perceval fails in his unwitting quest pendious work. because he does not ask the proper questions of Knighted in 1914, Sir James died on May 7, the strange sights that he sees in the king’s palace. 1941, in Cambridge. His Golden Bough, subtitled While Chrétien’s account does not in any way con- A Study in Magic and Religion, not only remains a nect the Grail with the Last Supper or with Christ classic in the field of comparative religion but by in any other way, he does introduce the notion that now has achieved the status of a classic work of the fabled Quest of the Holy Grail is an elaborate literature as well. stand-in for the notion that the hero must, quite literally, “question.” From Ritual to Romance JESSIE L. WESTON Another source is Wolfram von Eschenbach’s begins her landmark 1920 study regarding the true Parzival, which retells Chretien’s story but incor- origin of the Grail legend with the observation porates into it the Joseph elements found in Rob- that “the theory of Christian origin breaks down ert’s, so that the Christic element is restored by when faced with the awkward fact that there is no Wolfram to the now-burgeoning legend. From that Christian legend concerning Joseph of Arimathea point on, in the late 12th century, the story had and the Grail.” Indeed, Weston asserts, the story so much power to capture the imagination that of Joseph and the Grail occurs only in the Grail countless versions and variants sprang up all over literature itself. Western Europe, primarily in the Provence region

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of France, flowering at last, for English speakers at engaged with ensuring not just a bountiful harvest least, in the 14th-century Arthurian narrative, the but the restoration of the Earth to its fecundity in Morte D’Arthur, or The Death of Arthur, by Thomas the spring. To establish the validity of this other- Malory. wise unorthodox assertion, Weston, taking her lead This brief summary provides insight into both from Frazer’s methodology, surveys many related Eliot’s use of the Grail legend as a structuring motif ancient traditions in Indo-European culture, cross- for his 1922 poem The Waste Land and the daring referencing them with Robert de Boron’s Joseph of of Weston’s claim. It also provides hints why Eliot Arimathea, the progenitor of all the Grail literature does not rely on the older scholarship that had lim- that flourished in Western Europe from the end ited the legend to a Christian morality play viewed of the 12th until well into the 14th century. In through the lens of an elaborately extravagant sym- essence, her argument is that in his Joseph, Robert, bolism but rather defers to Weston’s recently pub- rather than relating any actual Christian legend lished From Ritual to Romance as a text that might regarding the Holy Grail as most previous schol- “elucidate” his poem. What she proposes is not only ars took for granted, had done nothing more than daring but more reasonable and, therefore, much retell an ancient story in the relatively modern more interesting. Taking her lead from Sir JAMES garb of the Christian mythos—her point being that FRAZER, whose The Golden Bough had encouraged a there is no such legend before Robert. more anthropologically astute approach to the folk- What Eliot made of this, in The Waste Land, was lore and legends of the human past, Weston had that he could use the Grail as a marker to univer- found in the Grail legend the traces of a root story salize a myth that was already, in its most primal or master narrative that transcended what must origins, universalized: the myth that the hero must otherwise appear to be the comparatively parochial sacrifice himself if the land is to be saved. Put rela- concerns of late medieval Christian knights. tively simply, one must not be self-centered but, Without doing her thesis in that famous study rather, like the mysterious speaker of The Waste too much injustice, it is fair to say that her entire Land, learn to give, to sympathize, and to control, aim was to prove in From Ritual to Romance that virtues that the Sanskrit extols as if itself to give the Grail legend was in its origins based on the credence to Weston’s assertion that behind the pagan story of the Welsh dish of plenty, itself a quest for the Grail is a universal myth of profound derivative of many old vegetation myths and rituals human significance.

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Gloucester, Massachusetts Originally settled by in 1630. As a further claim to fame, Gloucester English colonists in 1623, this major and still active has been associated with the fishing industry and fishing port located on Cape Ann northeast of shipbuilding for nearly as long. The first schoo- Boston was the first settlement in what eventually ner was constructed there in 1713, and people of became the Massachusetts Bay Colony, predating Gloucester have been fishing the Georges Banks off the founding of Salem in 1626 and of Boston itself Nova Scotia since the 17th century. The famous

The summer home that Henry Ware Eliot, Sr., built for his family on Gloucester’s Eastern Point in 1896, as it looks today (Courtesy of Russell Murphy) 526

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image of the Gloucesterman in his “nor’wester” shore, Eliot became an able sailor, taking solo voy- manning the wheel of a fishing schooner as he ages up the coast as far as Canada. In later life but bravely faces a stormy sea is both the logo of the while still a young man, he used “The Captain” as a Gorton Seafood Company, founded in 1829, and nickname among close friends. a civic emblem commemorating all those fishers It was during his sailing days off Cape Ann that of Gloucester who “have gone down to the sea he came to know the nautical marker off Rockport, in ships.” Gloucester’s long relationship with the the community located at the tip of the cape. These sea, in particular the perilous North Atlantic, has were three rocks barely visible above the surface of been celebrated in Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 classic the sea and called the Dry Salvages. Years later, he novel, Captains Courageous, made into an equally would honor them by titling the third poem in the classic film in 1937, and in the recent film, The sequence Four Quartets after them. In that poem, Perfect Storm (2000). he would speak of the Lady whose “shrine stands In addition to the income derived from fish- on a promontory.” Some believe that the allusion is ing, Gloucester began to derive a good part of its to Gloucester’s Our Lady of Good Voyage Catholic income from tourism beginning in the 19th century Church on Pleasant Street, the parish for the local as Bostonians made its coastal beaches and rugged, population of Portuguese fishermen and their fami- rocky points locations where they might sunbathe lies who settled there in the late 19th century. The and, over time, build immense summer homes. church stands prominently on a hilltop overlooking The Eliot family summered in Gloucester, first in the harbor. Eliot’s nurse as a boy was a young Irish- rented accommodations and eventually in a large woman, Annie Dunne, who was said to have taken house that Henry Ware Eliot, the poet’s father, had the child to Mass with her when the family was constructed on Goucester’s Eastern Point, which vacationing in Gloucester. remains prime seaside real estate. (The house still stands.) Thanks to these summers spent at the Golden Bough, The See FRAZER, SIR JAMES.

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Harvard The institution of higher learning leaving for a student year abroad in Paris from 1910 known to this day as Harvard College, which would to 1911. Then he would reenroll in a graduate pro- itself later be incorporated into Harvard University, gram at the university, this time to pursue a course was founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of studies toward a Ph.D. in philosophy, complet- when one of the early English colonial settlers, ing everything but the oral defense, or viva, of his John Harvard, bequeathed in his will his library to dissertation, “Knowledge and the Objects of Expe- the community so that they might found an acad- rience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley,” thus emy there for the training of young men of intel- effectively accomplishing but never actually earn- lect. As such, it is the oldest institution of higher ing or being awarded the degree. learning in the United States and most assuredly in Those are only the bare facts, however, of the the English-speaking areas of the Western Hemi- influences that that esteemed institution must sphere, a claim to fame and to distinction that Har- have had on one of the most famous and accom- vard has scrupulously guarded virtually from the plished American poets of his generation. Indeed, first. Indeed, so given were its founders to creating that influence must have been inestimable. Not a learning environment of the first order on what only did he encounter such mentors as IRVING BAB- was for them the alien soil of a New World—recall BITT and JOSIAH ROYCE during the course of both that the earliest of these settlers had arrived on the his graduate and undergraduate studies there, but Mayflower a mere 16 years before in 1620 in what it was in one of its student that he first they regarded as a veritable wilderness—that the would encounter, late in December 1908, ARTHUR Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was invited to be SYMONS’s The SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERA- the fledgling college’s first president. TURE, a book that would change his life and, so, As might be expected, the Eliot family, itself in its own significant way, the course of Ameri- among the first to arrive in what became known can literature in the 20th century. There, too, he as the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had had genera- made friendships that would stand him well, both tions of connections with Harvard, and it was not as a person and throughout the early years of his so much expected as an automatic given that the development as a poet and critic. CONRAD AIKEN, young T. S. Eliot, like his elder brother, Henry another future poet, and Scofield Thayer, later Ware, Jr., would matriculate there when the time the influential editor of the DIAL, are noteworthy came, which was for young Thomas the fall of among them. More, his early poetry reflected his 1906. He completed his in Harvard days, not as student experiences but as three rather than the traditional four years and they reflected the tenor and tone of the times of then took a master’s in English literature before this time in his life. Much of this has to do with the

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locale as well, for example, Cambridge and BOS- The initiating figure was a young American TON with its common and the stately mansions of scholar, one George Ticknor, but it required an Beacon Hill where Eliot’s kind lived, as reflected in institution with the commitment to education that “Aunt Helen,” for example. Harvard has always embodied to inspire Ticknor’s The fact remains, nevertheless, that just as one accomplishment. In 1816, the 25-year-old Tic- never forgets his or her college years as a particularly knor was invited to become Smith professor of the free time in one’s life, between the coddling paren- French and Spanish languages and literatures at tal discipline of childhood and the rigorous demands Harvard College. Ticknor was a lawyer by profes- of adulthood, it was Eliot’s being an undergradu- sion, but his interest had always been in humane ate at Harvard that gave his earliest poems—“Pre- letters. On his appointment to the Harvard pro- ludes,” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” “Portrait of fessorship, he meant to do right by the incredible a Lady,” and especially “The Love Song of J. Alfred opportunity that he now saw. Aware of advances Prufrock”—their peculiarly insider/outsider sensibil- in the teaching of philosophy and literature then ity, the likeness of a dreamy nightmare that is being occurring in Europe, Ticknor spent 20 months at lived more for the hell of it than out of despair. As the University of Göttingen in Germany, so that late as 1921, when he was first writing the poetry that when he returned to his new post at Harvard, he became The Waste Land, the poet first off harkens was ready to apply these new European methods back to a drunken evening on the town in Cambridge, there, including lecturing in the prescribed lan- not to his Oxford days or to his years of working as a guages. The end result was a revolutionary program young banker in the City of London, as if to relive the in modern languages at Harvard that introduced reckless nonchalance of an undergraduate bender, in young American scholars, for the first time, to the the subsequently discarded opening sequence. literature of those languages, Dante and Italian Finally, and in the long run, Harvard gave Eliot among them. DANTE ALIGHIERI as well, the poet whom he would Among the most illustrious beneficiaries of later identify as the “most persistent influence” on Ticknor’s methodologies would be another young his own poetry. From 1382, when Geoffrey Chaucer American, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Influ- first began to incorporate his own translations of enced no doubt by the reforms that Ticknor had some 100 lines of Dante in and among his various implemented at Harvard, Longfellow’s alma mater works, until 1761, when the first translation of the Bowdoin College in Maine, established a chair of Inferno, in prose, appeared in English, Dante was a modern languages and asked Longfellow, a recent cultural footnote for English speakers. Indeed, there graduate, to become the first professor. He was was not a complete translation of Dante in a cred- allowed time to travel and study in Europe to pre- ible English poetry until the American poet Henry pare himself for his new post, and for the next Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation of the Comme- several years he visited , Italy, France, Ger- dia, in blank verse, was published between 1865 and many, and England, returning to America in 1829 1867. That present-day readers of English might not, to take up a career as a college professor of modern without some research, be aware of those preced- languages. ing five centuries of a comparative neglect of Dante In 1834, Longfellow was appointed to a professor- among English speakers is due in part to the exten- ship at Harvard where, in 1835, he succeeded Ticknor sive use that Eliot would make of Dante a little less as that institution’s professor of modern languages than a half-century later in his own poetry. How this and literature. Longfellow would not only publish the deplorable gap in cross-cultural history was filled in first complete English translation of Dante’s Comme- such a comparatively short period of time is a com- dia to do poetic and artistic justice to the scope and mentary, however, not on Eliot but on how forward- breadth of Dante’s masterpiece, but in 1881 he helped thinking and academically progressive an institution found, along with the poet James Russell Lowell and of higher learning Harvard University was. Harvard art history professor (and a distant cousin

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of Eliot’s) Charles Eliot Norton, the Dante Society the three. Renowned as much for the high adven- of America, the second- oldest such organization in ture of his sea yarns and tales of the South Seas, the world. Norton himself would be a later Ameri- Polish-born Conrad, who had in fact had a suc- can translator of the Divine Comedy. cessful career as an officer in the British merchant Under Ticknor’s guidance, the major American marine, possessed a unique talent for writing grip- institution of higher learning of its day, Harvard, ping narratives that entertained as much as they had transformed American academia by introduc- instructed. With Heart of Darkness, however, there ing a program in Romance languages, including emerged, as the title might suggest, a no less grip- Italian, into its curriculum. One especially fruitful ping but far more philosophical text, full of mystery result of this transformation is that Eliot, as a Har- and profundities that never quite connect, thereby vard undergraduate, would have been thoroughly making readers ill at ease in the indifferent but still exposed, some 25 years later, to Dante through threatening universe that Conrad painted. Harvard’s advanced comparative literature pro- This shadowy, twilight reality of his, where gram. Beginning with Eliot’s famous epigraph to his nothing is either what it seems or what it is capable youthful masterpiece “The Love Song of J. Alfred of being, would become more and more the hall- Prufrock,” taken from canto XXVII of the Inferno, mark of Conrad’s fiction, making him one of the Dante’s Italianate, papist vision of eternity (a view- first serious practitioners of fiction in the modernist point that would have been regarded as entirely mode. Heart of Darkness stands as a masterpiece for anathema by the white, Protestant American rul- that reason alone. More important, with Heart of ing class little more than a century earlier) became Darkness Conrad touched on a handful of themes a crucial thematic element in Eliot’s poetry. That that became more and more the central issues not vision, once so neglected among English speakers, just in 20th-century literature but in social, politi- has thus become a permanent part of 20th-century cal, and ethical fields as well. The exploitation of American popular culture. native peoples for the purposes of financial gain It is a significant achievement, not on Eliot’s stands out most egregiously, as do matters of cul- part, but on Harvard’s in its effort to educate young tural and moral imperialism, whereby one people men, and women, as well as was humanly possible. imposes their notions of right and wrong, good and Thanks to this significant turnaround in education bad, proper and improper, on another. sponsored by the idea of a university that Harvard has continuously aimed toward engendering, an SYNOPSIS American poet like T. S. Eliot was able to honor Based very loosely on experiences that Conrad Dante’s accomplishment as an achievement not himself had had as the captain of a river steamer simply of Italian culture, but of world culture. plying the Congo River in what was then a Belgian colonial territory maintained primarily for obtain- Heart of Darkness (1899) Elements from JOSEPH ing ivory and any other riches to be had in that CONRAD’s celebrated novella, Heart of Darkness, fig- part of Africa, Heart of Darkness tells the story of a ure prominently in several Eliot poems, particularly young seaman, known only as Marlow. Bored with The Waste Land and “The Hollow Men,” if not in being between berths, he hires on as a riverboat their final versions, then as details from the working captain for a trading company plying an unnamed drafts. river that leads into the so-called Dark Continent, The Conrad novella was first published in 1899 Africa. There he is appalled by the stunning inepti- in serial form in Blackwood’s Magazine and was sub- tude, greed, and racist cruelty that he encounters sequently collected in a hardcover volume titled on arriving at his new post, although he hears posi- Youth in 1902, along with the title novella and The tive things about a man named Kurtz, a legendarily End of the Tether. Early reviewers and, it must be successful agent who has penetrated deep into the imagined, readers of the time as well found Heart of interior in his zeal for improving rather than raping Darkness to be the least accessible and enjoyable of the land and its people.

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Marlow welcomes the opportunity to take a European imperialist expansionism, with its rapa- boat far upstream when it is learned that Kurtz cious greed masked behind racial theories of white has apparently fallen seriously ill and needs to be supremacy and misguided altruistic goals. Conrad’s “brought out.” Once the journey upstream finally indictment, while still widely read in high school gets under way, the sailing is anything but smooth. and college curricula, has itself become more and The most awful part of this less and less romantic more controversial in recent years. Some have adventure, however, awaits Marlow at journey’s made valid arguments that it is sexist and racist, end, when they at last reach Kurtz’s encampment setting Marlow up as a spokesman for the very sorts deep in the jungle. of misguided idealism and ideas of white male supe- Surrounded by the adoring and obedient native riority that the narrative is ostensibly condemning. population (the walls of his compound are festooned Without gainsaying these reassessments, criticism with the skulls of the victims of Kurtz’s “enlight- has long recognized that Conrad was experimenting ened” justice), Kurtz has become a maniacal tyrant, as much with point of view as with any fascinatingly still spouting pious nonsense about improving the complex tale of greed, madness, and hypocrisy, and lot of the native population while in fact exerting a it may be in that confluence of craft with theme deadly power over them to obtain his ivory. “Exter- that Eliot found his own fascination with Conrad’s minate the brutes,” the last entry in a “learned” now classic text. essay that Kurtz had been writing, prefigures the What is known for a fact about Eliot’s interest in horrific madness of the Nazi’s extermination policy, the Conrad text is scant but provocative. For one their so-called Final Solution yet to come, looming thing, it had been Eliot’s original intention to use a mere four decades ahead in the future, suggest- as the epigraph for The Waste Land (1922), then in ing, too, how well Conrad knew his material. Kurtz draft form and tentatively titled He Do the Police in is at least somewhat forgivable, for the reader is Different Voices, the most famous passage from the allowed to imagine that too much unbridled power Conrad tale—the moment when the dying Kurtz, in mixed with a fervent idealism has driven him mad, an apparent delirium, cries out, “The horror! The whereas the other officers of the company are con- horror!” Eliot’s friend and sometime mentor, the scious of the hypocrisies of their cause as they steal American expatriate poet EZRA POUND, prevailed a continent and a people’s treasure under the guise on him to scuttle that plan (Conrad, Pound said, of bringing them progress. was not “weighty enough”), and Eliot discarded the passage from Heart of Darkness, replacing it for his CRITICAL COMMENTARY epigraph with a passage from the Satyricon of Petro- The story line may also sound vaguely familiar nius regarding the boys taunting the Cumaean to anyone who has seen ’s Sibyl. Still, Eliot’s first choice remains a faint echo 1979 film, , which freely adapted near the end of the opening section of The Waste the Conrad story to reflect the travesty and trag- Land, “The Burial of the Dead,” when the Eliot edy, as Coppola viewed it, of America’s similarly poem’s anonymous but equally cryptic speaker wrongheaded involvement in Vietnam, wherein comments on staring into the “heart of light.” good intentions turned into bad policy, bad policy What all this may mean is more easily elucidated into atrocities. (In the film, incidentally, the char- if another, later poem of Eliot’s, “The Hollow Men” acter Kurtz, played appropriately enigmatically by (1925), is examined for its uses of the Conrad text. the late , is shown to be reading There is in that poem an overt allusion to Heart not Conrad but T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. of Darkness in the epigraph, the first line of which Alfred Prufrock.”) reads, “Mister Kurtz, he dead.” These words come It is fairly easy for the reader to see in Conrad’s in Conrad’s text within less than a page of the pas- characterization of Kurtz the learned idealist turned sage in Conrad that Pound had convinced Eliot to moral monster, a vivid embodiment and thus scath- discard as the epigraph to The Waste Land, almost ing indictment of the tragic ironies of 19th-century as if Eliot could not ultimately let go of his desire

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to allude to that passage from the Conrad novella. nevertheless that there is more than a little of Con- Indeed, the words from the epigraph to “The Hol- rad’s paper-thin and empty company clerks pres- low Men” are spoken to Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, ent in Eliot’s conceptualization of his own “hollow within moments of the time that Kurtz has had his men,” particularly when one last likely connection final say about the horror. They are spoken by a between “The Hollow Men” and Heart of Darkness native retainer bringing Marlow the news that Kurtz is considered. has at last succumbed to the jungle fever that had, “The Hollow Men” ends on an ominous note along with his moral blindness, driven him mad. that also may have been drawn from Conrad’s story. There is, however, a covert allusion to Conrad’s Marlow is Conrad’s narrator, but Conrad’s narra- tale in the poem’s title, “The Hollow Men.” In tive technique is actually a bit more complicated the text of the poem, the collective “we” repeat- and ambiguous than that. The narration is actually edly talk of themselves as the hollow men, the framed: Readers first meet an anonymous narra- stuffed men, empty men, whose heads are filled tor who sets the scene (he and a group of friends, with straw. Among the various images, or, in Eliot’s among them Marlow, are on a cruising yawl at dusk phrase, objective correlatives, that such a concep- in the lower reaches of the Thames, waiting for tual description deploys in the reader’s mind are, the tide to go out). This anonymous narrator then no doubt, the corporate nonentities who inhabit tells how, in the twilight stillness, Marlow starts to the modern world’s bureaucracies, from boardroom speak and winds up telling the story of his harrow- and committee room to classroom and church. ing journey up river to “rescue” Kurtz. It is a clever Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, was among the narrative device on Conrad’s part, and a total first European authors to identify this new breed deception, for no one could possibly recall verbatim of humanity, the Organization Man, who is all sur- every word that Marlow spoke that night. The trick face but nothing of any substance or fiber beneath works well enough, however, for the reader also to or within—hollow men, in other words, who are fall under the spell of Marlow’s “voice” and of the described exactly so by Conrad. In Heart of Dark- dark, nightmarish adventure that he relates. ness, when Marlow first encounters the manager Marlow begins by imagining what the mouth of the Central Station, a company man whose only of the Thames must have appeared like to those managerial skill seems to be that “he inspired uneas- ancient Romans who first encountered it some iness,” Marlow is forced to conclude that “[p]erhaps two thousand years earlier, when Britain was there was nothing within him.” Shortly thereafter, inhabited solely by Celts who would have seemed, among the various lackeys vying for position and to the invading Romans, barbarians at best, sav- advantage, Marlow meets a company agent “with ages at worst. “And this also . . . has been one of a forked little beard and a hooked nose,” a man the dark places of the earth,” Marlow suddenly who is so transparently oily that Marlow sees right says, breaking the anonymous narrator’s own pri- through him instantly. Marlow describes this unc- vate reverie, which had been, according to him, tuous agent as a “papier-mâché Mephistopheles.” focused on all the light of civilization that had He is another “hollow” man, a farcical devil whose flowed down the Thames and out into the rest of values and character run no deeper than the slick the world over the centuries. façade that one encounters to begin with. The reader will learn, as Marlow’s story then Eliot may claim later, in a January 1935 let- develops, that he had been drawing for himself a ter, that the title for his poem “The Hollow Men” parallel between Britain in Roman times and the came from his combining the title of a romance by African Congo in his, and Kurtz’s, own. Civiliza- William Morris, The Hollow Land, with the title of tion and all its restraints and constraints are but a poem by Rudyard Kipling, “The Broken Men,” a thin veneer in his view, for Marlow has seen, but Eliot was also notorious for intentionally toss- as the reader soon will, what a so-called civilized ing red herrings into the path of source-hunting man can become when he is left strictly to his own literary scholars. This textual evidence suggests devices, as Kurtz was. “We live in the flicker,” Mar-

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low says as he starts to tell the tale of Kurtz’s fate in der and a wiser” person, but not a more comfort- the jungle. What Conrad is saying here through his able one. Not just the surface details of the Conrad philosophical seaman/spokesman is the same point novella but its profound critique of the limits of that the reader hears in the closing litany of Eliot’s human endeavor are there as well in Eliot’s own poem “The Hollow Men,” when, amid echoes of the vision of misguided desire and ambition, limita- Lord’s Prayer, the hollow men continue to remind tions found not only in the ideas that both authors the reader/listener that between all human impulses express but in the matter of point of view as well. and their fulfillment, all human aspirations and Both Heart of Darkness and “The Hollow Men” their achievements, “falls the Shadow.” In terms of confine the information that is given to the reader the physics of light, there may be quite a distinction to a speaker or speakers, the veracity and accuracy between Conrad’s “flicker” and Eliot’s “Shadow.” of whose reports must naturally be called into ques- In terms of the metaphors by which the poet can tion by the reader/listener. The use of a so-called awaken the imagination to those realities that shape “unreliable narrator,” a term coined by the critic the human individual but that otherwise cannot be Wayne Booth, is hardly original with either Conrad seen or even measured or weighed, the distinction or Eliot, but it typifies both their work and the liter- between a flicker and a shadow is less than nothing. ary age that they and their work helped to define. The sensitive and attentive reader comes away from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in the same way Hogarth Press See WOOLF, VIRGINIA. as he or she comes away from Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s phrase, “a sad- Holy Grail See FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE.

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Joyce, James (Augustine Aloysius) (1882–1941) exile from his native Ireland. Ireland’s religious, Among those modernists writing in English at the intellectual, and political turmoil under the bane of time that Eliot was himself first making his mark, a centuries-long British colonial occupation appar- none was perhaps more celebrated in literary cir- ently had caused him nothing but exasperation cles than the Irish novelist and short-story writer and pain throughout most of his youth, and, with James Joyce. the exception of a brief visit during the summer of Born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, Joyce, the 1912, he would never again return there. eldest of 10 children in a Roman Catholic family, Partly through the good graces of his brother exhibited a literary precociousness from a very early Stanislaus, he never lost touch with his Irish roots, age. When he was nine, he wrote—and his proud however, both as the locale and inspiration for his father had published—a poem, “Et Tu Healy,” literary compositions and as the outlet for his work. dealing with the scandal that ruined the political A series of short stories, providing realistic glimpses career of the Irish home-rule advocate Charles into urban Irish life at the turn of the century, was Stewart Parnell and that apparently led to his early published in book form under the collective title death. Although young Joyce’s middle-class family’s Dubliners in 1914. Most noteworthy among these gradual decline into poverty impeded the quality of baldly unsentimental tales are “Araby,” detailing his formal education somewhat, he was neverthe- a young boy’s frustrating encounter with roman- less trained from his childhood by Jesuits, a rigorous tic high hopes and dashed expectations, and “The order of Catholic priests, first at Clongowes Wood Dead,” a novella that exposes the unconscious College and later at Belvedere College. Joyce him- hypocrisies underlying much of an ethnic Irish soci- self entertained a vocation for the priesthood until ety split between its buried native impulses and he was 16 and also flirted for a time with a career as a shallow devotion to contemporary fashions in an operatic tenor. thought and behavior. Learning and literature ultimately won out as An early (1904) essay on aesthetics, meanwhile, his two primary interests. In 1898, Joyce enrolled “A Portrait of the Artist,” eventually became the in University College Dublin, where he studied abortive autobiographical novel Stephen Hero. It modern languages, including English, French, and finally emerged, after a virtual rewriting, as his first Italian. By 1904, he was able to travel to the conti- major novel and modernist masterpiece, A Portrait nent with his wife Nora to take up a post teaching of the Artist as a Young Man. This work details the English with Berlitz Language Schools, first in Zur- developmental years of its overly sensitive protago- ich, Switzerland; later in Trieste, Italy; and finally nist, and Joycean alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, as he in Rome. Thus began Joyce’s famous self-imposed struggles with the normal problems of growing up, 534

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problems that are compounded in a culture where enough just to have made it through the day with individual sensibilities are devoured by the cease- all its grind and misgivings. less conflicts of confused allegiances to church, With its complex mixture of narrative styles, state, and nation. Like Joyce himself, his young including stream-of-consciousness techniques, hero discovers that, in order to survive and create and of Joyce’s own extensive learning in both lit- “the uncreated conscience of [his] race,” he must erature and history, Ulysses stands as one of the leave Ireland altogether. greatest literary achievements, in any language, of This would be achieved, by Joyce himself, in the the 20th century. Beyond a doubt, it rivals Eliot’s transformation that another early project took. It The Waste Land, published during that same year, started out to be a short story, intended originally as a work that embodies the spirit and nature of for inclusion in Dubliners, following the progress the modernist revolution in the arts. Indeed, in a of an outsider to Irish culture, in this case a Jewish review, “Ulysses, Order and Myth,” Eliot focuses ad canvasser. Like Portrait, the work in question approvingly on Joyce’s accomplishment in using took on a life of its own, eventually emerging, in the scaffolding of classical myth to give order to the 1922, as the renowned modernist novel Ulysses, a apparent chaos of modern experience, saying that present-day recasting of the ancient Homeric epic that approach to the past has the same significance The Odyssey, which recounts the difficulties that as a scientific discovery. In any case, Eliot employed its hero, Odysseus, met and overcame in order to a similar method in The Waste Land, and, even as return home from the war at Troy. A soberly comic he later became more and more conservative in his achievement of the first order, Joyce’s multifaceted literary and moral judgments, Eliot would continue novel is also a brilliant tour de force that offers to exempt Joyce, with his emphases on longstand- challenging reading experiences from one page to ing European cultural and religious traditions, from the next, let alone from chapter to chapter and among those contemporary authors who fostered episode to episode. what Eliot termed, in 1933, “modern heresies.” The novel explores a single day—June 16, 1904 It would take Joyce another 15 years and the (which also happens to be the day that Joyce and remainder of his life to complete his final master- Nora met)—in the life of the city of Dublin as piece, the novel Finnegans Wake, which Eliot’s own experienced primarily by Joyce’s Odysseus, Leopold house, Faber & Faber, published in 1939, just two Bloom, and by Joyce’s earlier protagonist/alter ego, years before Joyce’s death in Zurich on January 13, Stephen Dedalus, who now functions for Joyce as 1941. Finnegans Wake is a massive modernist text Telemachus, Odysseus’s son. The role of Penel- so filled with multilingual puns and elaborate cross- ope, Odysseus’s long-suffering wife, meanwhile, is referencing of literary and historical allusions as to played by Bloom’s own wayward wife, Molly, and be nearly unreadable, yet scholars and critics, not their home at No. 7 Eccles Street becomes Ithaka, to mention the occasional dauntless reader, con- Odysseus’s home island and the goal at the end tinue to pore over its pages in an effort to decipher of all his wanderings. In Bloom’s case, it will be its many interconnected meanings.

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Laforgue, Jules (1860–1887) The influence that Verdenal, for example, would allude to an anec- the tragically short poetic career of the French dote from Laforgue’s life in a February 1912 letter symbolist poet Jules Laforgue had on T. S. Eliot is to Eliot, suggesting that he had reason to believe very likely incalculable but nevertheless cannot be that Eliot was familiar enough with Laforgue as exaggerated since it is quite well documented by well to appreciate the allusion. the younger poet’s own subsequent and extensive testimony. Eliot was first introduced to Laforgue INFLUENCE ON ELIOT through ARTHUR SYMON’s The SYMBOLIST MOVE- Whatever the case may be, Eliot would recall his MENT IN LITERATURE, a book that Eliot encountered profound indebtedness to the influence of Laforgue while still an undergraduate at HARVARD in Decem- well into his own later life. In the 1950 essay “What ber 1908. By the spring of the following year he had Dante Means to Me,” Eliot again expresses his acquired a three-volume set of Laforgue’s complete indebtedness to Laforgue from the time when he works, and as early as in an August 1917 letter to an was himself just beginning as a poet, saying that admirer of Prufrock and Other Observations, he would Laforgue was the first to show him the “poetic pos- admit to feeling “more grateful” to Laforgue than sibilities of my own idiom of speech.” In the same to any other poetic influence that he could think of passage, Eliot further singles Laforgue out for hav- to that time. In the same letter, Eliot confessed as ing a temperament akin to his own. After noting well that he could at first barely translate Laforgue’s that a young poet is not likely to be influenced by a verse because so few of his words were to be found great master such as DANTE ALIGHIERI, Eliot char- in a dictionary. While Eliot presumably would have acterizes Laforgue as an influence who was to him been using the sort of French-English dictionary an more like “an admired elder brother.” undergraduate might have access to, his observation Eliot echoed these sentiments three years later still provides a revealing detail about Laforgue’s use in the essay “American Literature and Language” of language, which tended to be very idiosyncratic. when, although he is speaking in broad generali- That it would take Eliot, again according to his ties, Eliot seems to have the influence of Laforgue, own 1917 account, several more years after that and of Dante, too, in mind when he observes that initial 1909 encounter before he would meet some- a young talent need not be shaped or even influ- one who had also read Laforgue suggests that the enced by poets of his own nation or language group poet might have been a mutual interest that Eliot (as Eliot surely was not). Rather, that forming came to share with the young French medical stu- talent, Eliot proposes, may find most attractive a dent Jean Verdenal, whom Eliot would meet dur- poet writing in another language or another, more ing his 1911–12 postbaccalaureate sojourn in Paris. distant time, of whom the younger might wonder 536

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what similar things he can do in his own language poetic form, a mode that came to be known as VERS and in his time and place. Surely, then, an interest LIBRE, or free verse, Laforgue also extended the idea in and attraction to Laforgue constituted no mere of the metaphor by making the most outrageous passing fancy for the still youthful Eliot, nor was parallels between one sensation and another for Laforgue’s influence on Eliot limited to just this or the sake, apparently, of nothing more than to open that particular angle of vision or way with a phrase. his readers’ minds to the possibilities of experience. As frequently as he was wont to comment on the While such farfetched conceits, or comparisons, benefits that he as a young, aspiring poet might in their extravagance can all too often stretch the gain from studying and emulating the French sym- reader’s credulity and patience as much as his or her bolists, Eliot would comment later on the dearth imagination, they are, as well, nothing particularly of worthwhile poetic influences to be found among new in the traditions of English poetry, having been English-language poets of the time. exploited to the fullest by those metaphysical poets From as early as 1924, as far as the written of the 17th century, including Donne. Eliot never- record is concerned, Eliot would complain to Vir- theless clearly was first and foremost influenced by ginia Woolf of the absence of poets of any par- Laforgue in this regard, coming upon his admiration ticular accomplishment from the immediately for Donne’s work only later. For just one outstanding preceding generation, a charge that he would reit- example, Eliot’s startling comparison, in the opening erate well into the 1950s. He spoke frequently of lines of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” of the poetic scene in English in those early years the evening sky to a patient lying etherized on an in terms of it being a blank for him, aside from operating table is totally, and, it would seem, inten- such poets as the Anglo-Irish poet W. B. YEATS tionally as well, in the manner of Laforgue. and Symons himself, whose primary value at the A closer examination of what Symons had to say time, according to Eliot, was that they assured about Laforgue, then, should clarify those aspects of him that there was “something to be learned from character and career that drew Eliot so powerfully the French poets of the Symbolist Movement.” to Laforgue that the former would still be acknowl- Among those French poets, as has been already edging both his indebtedness to and his fascination established, Laforgue stands out. Indeed, from the with Laforgue nearly a half-century later, by which range and tenor of Eliot’s remarks, it seems fairly time Eliot’s own worldwide renown as a poet had clear that Eliot found not just a style of writing far eclipsed whatever recognition his mentor might poetry but a shared vision and kindred spirit in his ever have achieved. French precursor. To Laforgue, in another of Eliot’s seminal criti- LAFORGUE IN SYMONS cal essays, “The Metaphysical Poets,” first published Even the briefest introduction to Jules Laforgue in 1921, Eliot pays the profound tribute of placing will single him out as an innovator in that style of him in technique and style closer than any mod- poetry called vers libre, or free verse. Such a loose ern poets writing in English to the much admired, term, despite its French origins, can be extremely by Eliot, 17th-century English clergyman and poet deceptive, however. The typical reader might auto- John Donne in their shared capacity for turning matically associate it with the wildly irregular pat- ideas into sensations and observations into states of terns of lines and stanzas of poets in English such mind. In a 1928 introduction to a collection of Ezra as Eliot and his own contemporaries, most notably Pound’s work, Eliot calls Laforgue “not quite the Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Mean- greatest French poet after [CHARLES] BAUDELAIRE,” while, there were English-language poets actively a compliment whose very guardedness makes it engaging in and openly experimenting with free- that much more noteworthy. verse forms well before the modernist era and ear- In addition to his freeing up the nature of what lier even than French symbolists like Laforgue. Two should properly constitute the language of poetry mid-19th century American poets, Walt Whitman and introducing a more relaxed approach toward and Emily Dickinson, come almost immediately to

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mind in this case, as does the English poet Gerard the liberty of the moment . . . distressingly con- Manley Hopkins from during the same period. scious of the unhappiness of mortality, . . . it plays, In Laforgue’s case, and where Eliot may be seen somewhat uneasily, at a disdainful indifference.” later to mimic him the most, his use of vers libre is In his poetry, then, as in his life, Laforgue’s best defined as a mode of poetry writing that liber- persona “has invented a new manner of being,” ated both language and meter from the rigid con- Symons declares. This thoroughly modern poetic straints of convention and traditions, rather than persona of Laforgue exhibits “an inflexible polite- one that set out deliberately to break all the rules or ness towards man, woman, and destiny . . . com- obstinately to create new ones. The difference here poses love-poems hat in hand, . . . is very conscious is between doing something radically new for the of death, but . . . is, above all, gentlemanly. He will sake of doing something radically new as opposed not permit himself, at any moment, the luxury of to doing something radically new for the sake of dropping the mask: not at any moment.” saying what one has to. In Symons, whose chapter It is difficult to read Symons’s analyses of Laforgue on Laforgue is the briefest in the study, Laforgue is and not see the future J. Alfred Prufrock peeking singled out as well for his free play of language and out from behind every other phrase, almost as if unpredictably assorted levels of speech, whereby he Eliot’s own famed characterization were an inten- makes “subtle use of colloquialisms, slang, neolo- tional amalgam of Laforgue the man and the style. gisms, technical terms, for their allusive, their facti- A closer examination of the details of Laforgue’s life tious, their reflected meanings, with which one can will reveal parallels to Eliot himself as well, although play, very seriously.” those parallels may not be readily apparent. As a result of manipulating the poetical with the colloquial and the technical, Laforgue thus cre- LAFORGUE’S LIFE AND WORKS ates, in Symons’s view, a verse that, though “always Born to Breton parents in Montevideo, Uruguay, elegant, is broken up into a kind of mockery of on August 16, 1860, Jules Laforgue was six when his prose.” Symons continues: “The old cadences, the family returned to France after his father’s school old eloquence, the ingenuous seriousness of poetry, failed. Though the family would eventually number are all banished. . . . Here, if ever, is modern verse 12 children, Laforgue’s mother would die when he verse which dispenses with so many of the privi- was 16, his father when Laforgue was 20, and he leges of poetry, for an ideal quite its own . . . a very seemed to have adopted the habits of the lonely, self-conscious ideal, becoming artificial through its reticent, but always proper and correct scholar extreme naturalness.” and thinker almost from the onset of adolescence. Lest it be misconstrued, the focus in Laforgue, Cursed with both fragile health and a morosely however, is never on sounding clever or cute so skeptical mind, and influenced by the scathingly much as on exposing the moral and social condi- fashionable irreverence of Charles Baudelaire’s Les tions of a new sort of human type, the world-weary fleurs du mal, Laforgue gave up his family’s Roman urbanite, a bit jaded and bored but a gentleman CATHOLICISM as his own faith in his late teens, and nevertheless. This different type is one whose life in his earliest poetry he, too, contemplated, like had never before been the stuff of which all the Baudelaire, the futilities of human existence, albeit great poetry of the past had been made. in what Laforgue would later regard as an overly For Symons, Laforgue’s view of things is new emotional and oratorical verse. particularly because it “is terribly conscious of daily In 1881, Laforgue obtained a position as reader life, cannot omit . . . a single hour of the day; . . . to the Empress Augustus of Germany, and for the he sees . . . the possibilities for art which come next, and last, five years of his life he traveled amid from the sickly modern being, with his clothes, his the luxurious and pampered boredom attached to a nerves.” According to Symons, “There is in it all royal court as it made its annual rounds from Ber- the restlessness of modern life, the haste to escape lin to Baden-Baden to Coblentz and back around too willingly from whatever weighs too heavily on again. He has been described during this period as a

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rigidly masked person, uncertain and slow if not in not so much be traced to Laforgue as be regarded fact unable to connect easily with others, although as indebted to him for helping Eliot find the proper he did fall in love with and eventually married a tone and rhetorical distance in and from which such young Englishwoman, Leah Lee. The experiencing otherwise potentially sentimental or vulgar attitudes of a lifestyle as jaded and sheltered as that of an and observations could be expressed. imperial court also, and perhaps as important, gave For his part, Symons concluded that Laforgue him enough distance from his earlier philosophical could conceal as much of life’s suffering and despair, pessimism, which he now turned into an ironic self- and even resignation, beneath and behind the detachment and self-effacement in some 50 mock- mask of a studied nonchalance and moral detach- ing, clever, but tragic Complaints, as he called them, ment because, dead of a life-altering, sapping dis- wherein his alter ego, the clownishly aloof Pierrot, ease before reaching 30, Laforgue had been, in deals with the bitter sorrows of love in a playful lan- literal terms, a dying man all his life. As a result, guage that forbids serious emotion to take root, let Symons concludes, this tragic poet was able to think alone grow, and that chides all human endeavor, “intensely about life, seeing what is automatic, but particularly love. pathetically ludicrous in it, almost as one might who Within days of his 27th birthday, in August has no part in the comedy.” In his poetry, with its 1887, Laforgue succumbed to the tuberculosis that coy verve and wit, Laforgue could elegantly eschew had itself mocked the vivacity of his youth and dispensing an overbearing sense of life as tragedy for young manhood and no doubt gave his poetry its the very reason that his life was one. peculiar bent. A year and one month later, Eliot It is there that any putative resemblances would be born in ST. LOUIS, Missouri. He was a between Laforgue and Eliot break down, however. lonely and intelligent child born late to a well-bred When he encountered Laforgue, Eliot was a 20- and well-heeled couple, raised among older women year-old undergraduate who had his life before relatives, exposed all his life to the rarefied envi- him and everything to live for, including now the ronment of high learning and culture and privilege, prospect that Laforgue’s poetry offered him. It had relatively sickly and therefore perhaps pampered taught Eliot how a man of his own intellectual and a bit spoiled, shy but extremely clever and and social accomplishments might write a poetry articulate, with a bent for both poetry and philoso- that would be both original and powerful without phy—a genuine prize, as it were, very much like expending emotional capital or personal integrity. the young Laforgue. It is not hard to imagine, then, Like the tragic clown Pagliacci of Italian operatic how Eliot in his own early 20s might be drawn fame, according to Symons’s reading of the relation- to the personality and poetic vision of the young ship between the young Laforgue’s life and his work, French poet with whom he shared so many char- Laforgue could laugh through his tears and make acteristics and whom he would later claim to have both seem to be hollow mockeries of the real thing. seen as an elder brother and mentor. But not even the wit of his ironies could alter the physical realities of Laforgue’s rapidly wasting body. ELIOT’S DEBT TO LAFORGUE Able to engage the style as Laforgue’s legacy “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” alone owes without having to live and die the life that had to Laforgue the vivid and unexpected use of a new engendered the Laforguean manner in the first place poetic language, free to say whatever needs to be (if Symons’s thesis is correct), Eliot did his mentor said as long as it adds to the dramatic weight not Laforgue one better, stealing the mask but placing of the theme but of the presentation, of the social it on the face of poetic personae who were invented mask that Laforgue himself could wear so well, hav- solely for the sake of fitting the mask. Nor should his ing virtually invented it. Eliot’s poetry’s morbid pre- arriving at that tactic ultimately come as any wonder occupation with decay, deceit, and madness, with for as socially and constitutionally highly refined a his scenes of madmen shaking dead geraniums and sensibility as Eliot’s. Raised in a tradition whereby gentlemen noticing the hair on a woman’s arm, can- poetry was most frequently regarded as an intensely

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personal and emotional mode of communication As might be expected, Lawrence suffered per- charged with a romantic high seriousness, Eliot no sonally, critically, and legally for his free-spirited doubt must have found in Laforgue’s studied and approach toward reforming not only the world but detached elegance, with its capacity for striking just human nature through literature. His works were the right balance between restraint and insouciance, often condemned and virtually always censured, craft and recklessness, not only the method but a and he spent the better part of his adulthood in self- sanction for writing a poetry that could properly imposed exile from England, although he was partly reflect the world that Eliot alone knew while still seeking warmer climes in such places as Italy, Cey- commenting on the human condition in general. lon, Australia, and, eventually, Taos, New Mexico, because of persistently frail health that affected his Lawrence, D[avid] H[erbert] (1885–1930) The weakening lungs. In those warmer climes as well, English novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and Lawrence, who was as much an accomplished poet critic D. H. Lawrence was one of the major figures and painter as he was a novelist and essayist, found from the period of literary modernism and also no the mirror of the passionate exoticism that his spirit doubt one of that rich epoch’s most controversial if seemed always to crave. not notorious authors. If one feature of Lawrence’s In his personal life, from childhood on, he had writing sets him apart from his equally daring con- known what was the price one paid to think and temporaries, it was not his writing style, which to feel differently from mainstream values and pat- tended to be brilliantly commonplace and even at terns of behavior. Born the son of a coal miner in times a bit florid, so much as his unabashed take on Nottinghamshire, England, on September 11, 1885, society’s ills, which he consigned for the most part Lawrence was the sensitive, artistic child of a brut- to an excess of sexual repression coupled with cease- ish father who could not understand his gifted son’s less battles for dominance among individuals. To yearnings and aspirations. That Lawrence would such a negative view of human nature in the mod- eventually be condemned by most as nothing more ern world, Lawrence offered as an antidote a har- than a pornographer is understandable since it was mony between men and women, as well as between his conscious choice to outrage the middle-class people of the same sex, founded on an unrestrained sensibilities of the day with their typically conven- freedom to express oneself sexually and a mutual tional view of what constitutes moral choices. His respect for the will and desire of the other. career would enjoy a critical rebirth in the licen- In novel after novel, beginning with such early tious 1960s, which regarded him as a prophet of the ventures as Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow unbridled sexuality and uninhibited experimenta- (1915), and Women in Love (1920), and then in his tion with drugs and alternative lifestyles that had more mature fictions, most notable among them shocked Lawrence’s own time. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), Lawrence wrote Back in 1934, however, T. S. Eliot would, per- provocatively engaging, if somewhat long-winded haps, summarize the attitudes of a generation of narratives that dramatized through equally engag- Lawrence’s detractors by confessing, in After Strange ing characterizations drawn from all walks of British Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy, that while he, life the human comedy. As Lawrence saw it, that Eliot, did not doubt that Lawrence as a writer was comedy unfolded not so much between the sheets spiritual, he was nevertheless “spiritually sick.” Eliot as within and among the unspoken power struggles was, of course, pursuing his own social, moral, and whereby parents sought to dominate children, lovers aesthetic agenda in that assessment of Lawrence’s sought to dominate each other, and wealth sought to worth. However, as late as 1961, in the retrospec- dominate everything. The characters who survived, tive essay “To Criticize the Critic,” although Eliot or seemed to offer the possibility that they might, would take the time therein to apologize for many often learned from each other and through love, of his own youthful critical indiscretions, he still often expressed in erotic passions, to share rather could not bring himself to say anything positive than squander the pleasure of each other’s company. regarding Lawrence.

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Lawrence had eloped with a married woman, individual freedom and liberation as Eliot was. The Frieda Weekley, in 1912, but they would not marry simple truth is that Eliot found his liberation in until July 1914, after she had obtained a divorce. submitting his will to the power of tradition and the She would remain by his side through the turmoil dictates of the spirit as promulgated in orthodox of his personal life and persecutions, his restless Christian belief, whereas Lawrence sought his lib- travels, and his continuing and growing ill health. eration within, as if his animal nature and spiritual In 1925, in Taos, he nearly succumbed to a bout of being were an inseparable whole. malaria and tuberculosis and, so, had to be aware Tragically enough, it was Lawrence’s weakening that he did not have very long to live. Very much animal self, bereft of that vitality and energy that a child of his times, the well-read Lawrence had his fiction, at its very best, unerringly celebrated, familiarized himself with the leading thought of the that cut his vision off just as it was maturing. Law- day, including Einstein’s theories of relativity and rence was committed to a sanatorium in southern Freud and Jung’s theories of the workings of the France, dying there on March 2, 1930, shortly after unconscious. A man with a mission—to save his fel- his release from the facility. Frieda eventually had low creatures from the empty, distracted, and often his ashes brought to their ranch in Taos, where meaningless lives that he witnessed continuing all they are now enshrined in a small chapel. around him, especially in the awful destructive- ness of World War I from 1914 to 1918—Lawrence London The London that T. S. Eliot knew when was, oddly enough, as committed to the causes of he first arrived there in July 1914 to take up what

The grand entrance to the British Museum in London. This world-famous institution stands just around the corner from Russell Square, where Eliot worked for many years. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

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would turn out to be a virtually lifelong residence whelming as a human city from ancient times to in England no longer exists. This is not to say that the present is confined to those districts that most it has merely undergone the wide array of trans- fulfill his or her attentions, intentions, and needs. formation that any city of virtually any size would In Eliot’s case, one of those districts of London was undergo within the space of nearly a century as a the City of London itself, or what one would call result of the simple processes of renewal and catas- the old or original city. This ancient human domi- trophe, flux and change and retrenchment. From cile is entered by traversing a bridge that has been that perspective, every place has changed radically built and rebuilt many times over the centuries within that same time frame. London, however, but that has always been called, in some dialect or which has otherwise most certainly undergone all another, London Bridge. those other, more typical transformations, includ- In Eliot’s day, although that bridge was a major ing major destruction as a result of the persistent thoroughfare into the teeming heart of the great bombing of the city by the Nazi Luftwaffe during metropolis, it would strike one today as quaintly old World War II, has seen a more dramatic, radical, fashioned. In any event, the City of London remains and very likely irreversible change. to this day the heart of London in so many ways that The London that Eliot came to know intimately the metaphor fails. There are Christopher Wren’s and is by now forever associated with thanks to St. Paul’s Cathedral with its landmark dome and poems of his such as The Waste Land and “Little the Exchange, now an upscale shopping mall but Gidding” was the capital of the British Empire, then then the financial center of world trade, finance, very much in its prime. With overseas holdings that and commerce. Immediately near the bridge was extended from Canada through Australia and into the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, a fishermen’s the vast Asian subcontinent that now comprises church (London is a river city) that Eliot locates in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; continuing across The Waste Land, and only a bit further up the street the Middle East into Egypt and westward toward is the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth. There the Gibraltar, the veritable rock that guards the nar- wool workers would once have gathered. It, too, is row straits connecting the Mediterranean with the featured in The Waste Land, and in Eliot’s time one Atlantic Ocean; southward toward Nigeria and would more likely have found within its pews, if any- South Africa and Rhodesia; the Atlantic across the one at all, stock traders and bond salesmen, bankers Caribbean Ocean to Bermuda, and then into the and lawyers and myriad clerks, as well as trades- islands of Jamaica and Trinidad, it was an axiom that people and shopkeepers, waitresses and barbers. was far more true than anyone might ever believe Eliot ended up in an apartment in fashionable that “the sun never sets on the British flag.” Kensington for a time, but he knew the city’s work- Queen Victoria’s long reign had just come to an ing-class haunts and music halls as well as its salons end, and George V ruled as the emperor of India as and private clubs for gentlemen who really were much as he was the king of Ireland, England, and gentlemen. Located nearby, amongst the chop Scotland. In keeping with such preeminence, Lon- houses on narrow streets where one might catch a don, which had been founded as a military encamp- bite to eat for lunch before returning to work, were ment by the Romans on a bend in the Thames the offices of Lloyds of London, that major banking River nearly 2,000 years before, was only enhanced house and insurance firm for which Eliot worked by the fact that it was also, in terms of population on international banking accounts for seven years if not its sprawling urban and suburban outreaches until he finally landed himself a position as poetry into the surrounding English countryside, the larg- editor and a member of the board of directors with est city on Earth, a title to which it easily clung well the London publishing house of Faber & Gwyer, into the 1960s. later Faber & Faber, in 1925. The city that Eliot knew most intimately, how- That brings this tour of Eliot’s London to its ever, was limited to two areas primarily, just as next and last stop, and that is the Bloomsbury dis- anyone’s experience of a phenomenon as over- trict, famed in literary history for giving its name to

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This building housed Faber & Faber during Eliot’s years there. From its roof Eliot acted as a fire watcher during Germany’s air raids on London in World War II. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy)

monumental British Museum, which houses, to this day, among other treasures and artifacts, the famous Elgin marbles that inspired John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. From this vantage point, for the next 40 years, the so-called Pope of Russell Square, poet of The Waste Land and defender of the realm of human tradition, did not hold court but, rather, worked. A very proper English figure with tightly wrapped umbrella, bowler hat, and striped waistcoat, Eliot The Art Deco elegance of the Senate House, located on became the sort of Englishman and Londoner that the campus of the , bespeaks the he would have been had his ancestor Andrew Eliot ambiance of nearby Russell Square, the heart of London’s never left the village of East Coker three centuries Bloomsbury district. (Courtesy of Russell Murphy) earlier. They say that he even took the tube, or Lon- don subway, to work. Once, on a bus, he was asked by a curious citizen if he was not the poet T. S. Eliot. the Bloomsbury Group, organized not by but eventu- Speechless, he turned and ran the other way. ally around Leonard and VIRGINIA WOOLF. There, As if to seal his destined relationship with this on a corner of Russell Square, Faber & Faber located great city, although Eliot’s ashes are at St. Michael’s, its offices within easy walking distance of the main the East Coker village church, he is commemorated campus of the University of London with its reason- by a plaque at Westminster Abbey in London, one ably towering Senate House on Mallet Street and the of England’s highest honors.

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Morrell, Ottoline (1873–1938) Like many of In their politics Lady Ottoline and Morrell were the leading lights of English cultural life during that equally unconventional. Perhaps in keeping with period of radical change and catastrophic conflict the fact that much of her early education had been that characterized Britain during the period in which confined to memorizing passages from the Bible, the modernist movement in the arts and literature she did nothing by halves. Morrell was elected to was just coming into its own, Ottoline Morrell was Parliament as a Liberal in 1906, and the couple particularly well born and well heeled. While she was so critical of the government during World figures in the history of the Bloomsbury Group cen- War I, from 1914 to 1918, that they pointedly tered around such individuals as Leonard and VIR- sheltered a number of conscientious objectors on GINIA WOOLF, Lady Ottoline was a cultural force of their country estate at Garsington near Oxford, her own by virtue of the literary talent that peopled including the future war poet Siegfried Sassoon. her salon and weekended at her country estate out- Morrell did not stand for reelection in the general side London. election of 1918. Born Ottoline Violet Anne Cavendish Bentinck It was Lady Ottoline’s literary salon that has in 1873, she became Lady Ottoline in 1879 when her earned her a place in the history of modernism, half-brother became the sixth duke of Portland. Lady however. Beginning in 1908, Lady Ottoline enter- Ottoline was also a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, tained the political and literary celebrities of the later to become queen to King George VI, the par- day on Thursday evenings at her townhouse on ents of the present Queen Elizabeth II. Educated at Bedford Square. The same crowd weekended fre- home as a child, Lady Ottoline grew up to be a very quently at her country retreat at Garsington Manor reclusive, almost religiously austere individual, who in Oxfordshire, not far outside London. In addition first sought out a quiet life in the country far from the to Sassoon, she counted the American novelist bustle and glitter of London. Later, she studied poli- Henry James, the mathematician and philosopher tics and history at Somerville College, Oxford. BERTRAND RUSSELL, the Woolfs, the British novel- In 1902, however, after her marriage to the ist D. H. LAWRENCE, and the English social satirist attorney Philip Morrell, she took up residence with Aldous Huxley among her friends and acquain- him on Bedford Square in London’s Bloomsbury tances. J. MIDDLETON MURRY, who later crossed district. While their marriage would last for the rest swords with Eliot over their social and political of her life, in keeping with the quietly scandalous views on the pages of reviews during the 1920s, was behavior of her crowd of unconventional aristo- another frequent guest. For her kindness and hos- crats, theirs was an open marriage. pitality, Lady Ottoline is now remembered for being

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ridiculed by Lawrence as the pretentiously dense its many contributors, Eliot being one of them. It Hermione Roddice in his 1920 novel, Women in was from this vantage point, however, that Murry Love. Huxley would satirize her, too, in his take-off was able to promote his essentially liberal and on the contemporary literary scene, Crome Yellow, romantic views—read humanist—of art and lit- published in 1921. erature as a means of shaping the new materialist Bertrand Russell, who had been one of Lady and spiritually enlightened culture that seemed at Ottoline’s many lovers, introduced Eliot to Mor- the time to be rapidly supplanting the last thou- rell’s salon in 1915, and it was through that con- sand years of a traditional Christian and hier- nection that Eliot made his first real entry into archical culture in England. As the battle lines London’s social life, which also happened, at the were drawn up throughout most of the 1920s, it time, to include its literary circles, so much were all became a conflict between classicists and Cath- the “smart” people of the day engaged in the revolu- olics (meaning a universal Christian church) tion in the arts and learning then taking place. Her on the one hand and romantics and humanists most significant claim to fame is that it was Lady (meaning a secularist tolerance for all points of Ottoline who, when Eliot was on an extended leave view) on the other. from Lloyds Bank in late 1921 to recuperate from Eliot would fire the first or at least the most nervous exhaustion, recommended to him that he historically memorable salvo in his “Function of take what was then a fashionable rest cure at Dr. Criticism” in 1923, in which he holds Murry up Roger Vittoz’s clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland. It as a perfect model of the new kind of intellec- was Eliot’s taking her advice that has led to the leg- tual emerging on the English cultural stage. Eliot end that he had been committed to an insane asy- sees them marching under the banner of “Muddle lum after suffering a nervous breakdown while he Through” and believing that the only moral guide was in the process of composing The Waste Land. that they require is an “Inner Voice.” For his own part, Murry would accuse Eliot, particularly after Murry, J[ohn] Middleton (1889–1957) It is not the latter’s formal conversion to Anglo-Catholi- unusual for a literary critic or scholar, or even a cism in 1927, with having an agenda that was not creative type, to achieve literary notoriety primarily purely literary at heart. by virtue of his or her getting caught up in a prin- Eliot effectively ended the war in 1934 in cipled debate with a figure whom history will later After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy come to regard as particularly significant. in which Murry again was displayed for ridicule The literary conflict between the British literary and invective as a model of the sort of thinking journalist and author J. Middleton Murry and T. S. that was deceiving the reading public by propos- Eliot provides a fairly dramatic example. ing an “anything goes” approach toward issues of Born on August 6, 1889, in London, Murry was moral choice. The fallout was as deleterious for the author of some 40 books, but it is doubtful that Eliot’s career—in Strange Gods he had inveighed any of them remain in print today. The husband against “free-thinking Jews” and criticized the of the short story writer Katherine Mansfield and work of such celebrated contemporaries as W. B. a close friend of novelist D. H. LAWRENCE, Murry YEATS, EZRA POUND, and Lawrence—as not, for had, by 1921, become editor of the Athenaeum, he came through sounding petty, mean-spirited, one of the most prestigious literary periodicals of and self-righteous. its day. Although it folded shortly afterward as an Eventually, in works such as The Idea of a Chris- independent journal, it continued publication well tian Society and Notes towards the Definition of Culture, into the 1930s by merging first with the Nation and Eliot could admit that theirs was in fact an absolutist later with the Statesman. versus a relativistic approach toward the foundations Despite its somewhat leftist leaning, the Athe- and maintenance of culture. Furthermore, more naeum included the best writers of the day among pressing matters, such as the approaching World

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War II and its attendant ideological conflicts, would long as they have existed, and the debate between soon intervene even in literary affairs. Years later, traditionalist conservatives and liberal reformers will Eliot would wonder what all the fuss had been about, last, no doubt, just as long. as well he might. However, so-called culture wars Murry died in Suffolk, England, on March have been a staple of human societies for perhaps as 31, 1957.

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Pound, Ezra (Weston Loomis) (1885–1972) he acted as personal secretary for a number of For many of his contemporaries the leading light of years, and his introduction to the work of Ernest the modernist movement in letters in English, the Fenollosa, a student of Oriental languages, had a American poet Ezra Pound was a startlingly origi- profound effect on transforming Pound’s aesthet- nal innovator as a poet, a garrulously adept critic ics and, so, the direction that modernist poetry and editor, and, for a slew of fellow artists, a staunch would take. Influenced by the concept behind the friend and ardent promoter. A rabid anti-Semitism Chinese ideogram, in which there is often little that eventually infiltrated his work nevertheless distinction between the referential meaning of a continues to mar one of the 20th century’s most word and its appearance on the page, Pound was accomplished and noteworthy literary careers. instrumental in founding the imagist movement in Born on October 30, 1885, in Hailey, Idaho, poetry. As Williams would later summarize it in Pound was educated at the University of Penn- his rallying cry, “No idea but in things,” the move- sylvania, where he became acquainted with two ment was inspired by the two economies of brevity other future poets, Hilda Doolittle, who would and simplicity and by a suspicion of the abstract later publish under the pseudonym H. D., and Wil- and generalized. Precision of expression became a liam Carlos Williams. After receiving a degree from keynote. A volume of Pound’s translations from Hamilton College in 1905, Pound, whose primary the Chinese, Cathay (1915), was inspired by such area of academic interest was medieval Romance new and rigorous principles of poetic composition, literature, specifically the troubadour poets of including VERS LIBRE, which literally freed the poetic Provence, taught college for a year before travel- line from what Pound characterized as the tyranny ing to Europe, where he settled in London in 1908. of the metronome. His earliest poetry, which he first began to collect Pound had cemented his bonds with the lit- in 1908 in volumes with such exotically delicate- erary movement in London by marrying Dorothy sounding titles as A Lume Spento, is in the ornately Shakespear, the daughter of Yeats’s erstwhile lover formal and archaic style of the love poetry of the Olivia Shakespear, in 1914. Always a leader, along troubadours whom he so greatly admired, particu- with other avant-garde writers, artists, and thinkers larly Arnaut Daniel, himself a primary influence on of the time, such as the novelist and poet Wynd- the poetry of DANTE ALIGHIERI. Pound would also ham Lewis, the critic T. E. Hulme, and the sculp- explore their work in his first major critical study, tor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Pound now was able to the scholarly The Spirit of Romance (1910). give the burgeoning modernist movement a coher- Pound’s subsequent close association with the ent direction under the banner of vorticism. This Anglo-Irish symbolist poet W. B. YEATS, for whom broader movement, encompassing all the arts and, 547

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in the midst of a world war begun in 1914, social famously, all in the name of the new art that was protest as well, was given voice in the pages of Blast, then emerging everywhere. a literary review about which everything was bold Pound took a willing Eliot under his wing, and and new right down to its layout and typography. along with Aiken they succeeded in getting him into The war took an even greater toll on Pound, other literary circles where he would meet editors however, than it did on such comrades of his as and publishers, including Leonard and VIRGINIA Hulme and Gaudier-Breska, who had both been WOOLF of the Hogarth Press, and where he would killed in action. The war’s catastrophic destruc- get an opportunity to do some editing and reviewing tiveness embittered and disheartened Pound, caus- himself. By 1917, largely through Pound’s help, Eliot ing him to doubt the efficacy of art. In postwar saw the Egoist Limited Press publish his first volume poetry volumes such as Homage to Sextus Proper- of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations. Return- tius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Pound satirically ing the favor, Eliot wrote an introduction to Pound’s denounced the aestheticism of his own earlier poetics, Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, which efforts on the part of the “dead art of poetry” and was published anonymously in 1917 in conjunction bemoaned a world in which many fine young men with an American edition of Pound’s work. could die for “old men’s lies” and a “botched civili- Then, when Eliot began to imagine that his zation.” Like the rest of Europe and the world, nei- days as a poet were over, as would often be the ther Pound nor his poetry would ever be the same case with Eliot throughout the first few decades of again. Back in September 1914, however, just as his poetic career, it was Pound who got him into the war had been beginning and Pound was himself writing poetry again by experimenting heavily with caught up in the thick of his own impassioned and the quatrain form, which Pound had borrowed often frenzied activities on the part of his fellow from the mid-19th century French poet Théophile creative artists, an event occurred that would bring Gautier. Pound, for example, would use it to great a brilliant and continuing respite of sorts into the effect in his Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. These four- course of Pound’s life. line stanzas with their shortened, four-beat lines A young American graduate student from Har- (in contrast to the typical line of poetry in English vard who had arrived in England earlier that July since the time of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, which to study philosophy at Oxford’s Merton College would have had five beats) rhymed on each paired was introduced to Pound by another Harvard man couplet to create a lively, breezy tone and pace. then living in London, the poet CONRAD AIKEN. Eliot, meanwhile, employed the quatrains mainly This young man had also been dabbling seriously in seven exercises composed between 1917 and in poetry writing, and the poems that he showed 1919 that included such notable works as “Swee- to Ezra Pound inspired the older man to proclaim ney among the Nightingales,” “Burbank with a him to the editor Harriet Monroe as a poet who Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar,” and “Whispers had “made himself modern all on his own.” The of Immortality.” young American in question was, of course, T. S. Pound and Eliot’s collaboration truly came to Eliot, and one particular poem that had so stunned a head, however, when Eliot, on the way to Lau- Pound that he convinced Monroe to publish it sanne, Switzerland, for a rest cure in the winter in her review, Poetry, was “The Love Song of J. of 1921, stopped to visit Pound in Paris, to which Alfred Prufrock.” city Pound had moved from London in 1920. Eliot This initial meeting of somewhat kindred if brought the manuscript of a long poem that he had slightly mismatched spirits would be the beginning been working on. Tentatively titled at the time He of a beautiful friendship. Pound was garrulous and Do the Police in Different Voices, it was the famous outgoing, Eliot shy and unassuming. Pound was first draft of a poem that would enter literary his- an operator and player; Eliot was a philosopher tory as Eliot’s The Waste Land. Pound’s “editing” with an accountant’s soul, or an accountant with of Eliot’s original, giving the poem its trademark a philosopher’s soul. Nonetheless, they hit it off fragmented structure, has long since been docu-

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mented literary history as well, but it would be Somewhere along the line of this otherwise with the conclusion of this chapter of their virtually complicated reasoning, however, Pound’s obsession lifelong friendship that their master-and-appren- with usury, as the lending of money at interest is tice relationship ended. There would be one last called, ran afoul of an apparently engrained streak comic turn, however, in which Pound’s efforts to of anti-Semitism in Pound. In Pound’s view, the raise enough money to get Eliot out of his job with Jews, who were thought to control some of the Lloyds Bank backfired when the British press got most influential banking houses in Europe, were at wind of it, embarrassing all involved. the root of the entire problem; “usury age-old and Back in the midst of the war, in 1915, in the age-thick,” he had labeled the problem in Hugh Sel- meantime, Pound had already begun to work on wyn Mauberley. Once Pound was on this soapbox what would become his own “long poem.” Called for social and economic reform, there was no get- the Cantos, they began as a very loosely organized ting him off or turning him off. sequence of poems, more a series, that treated vor- As long as he confined these ideas and the preju- ticism’s principal belief that history can be sum- dices that they enflamed in him to his poetry, there marized and discerned in a series of outstanding may ultimately have been no great harm. Indeed, moments taking place at various places and times Pound may have ended up writing his way out of but all having in common a collective energy that the moral and ethical miasma that was drenching reemerges at some later date in some other place. his creative juices. Instead, to what would eventu- (Pound and his friends thought of the London of ally be his own great chagrin and shame, Pound their time as just such a vortex.) The first four had began to try to live the very sort of historical reality been published in 1919 in The Fourth Canto. Then, that he was preaching and poeticizing. commencing with the publication of A Draft of XVI In 1924 he had moved again, this time from Cantos in 1925, Pound would write or publish very Paris to Rapallo, Italy. Some two years earlier the little else throughout the remainder of his poetic Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, had suc- career, so that the Cantos, rather like the 19th- ceeded in becoming prime minister. Though at century American poet Walt Whitman’s Leaves least at this time in its development Italian fascism of Grass before it, became one of literary history’s was not especially anti-Semitic in its social and great continuing and unfinished poems. political policies, the fascist model of a state that It was a poem intended to “contain history,” as controlled all aspects of national life, including its Pound put it, but it also contained a great deal of economic and industrial capacity, without stifling his social, economic, and political theory, which can private initiative, as Soviet communism was then be summarized under the concept of social credit. doing in Russia, seemed to Pound to be a system Though it did not originate with him, Pound embraced that might ultimately enable a social credit system its novel economic theory, gradually becoming com- to operate. Furthermore, Pound was attracted to mitted to, if not obsessed by the idea. Following the the idea that great men are the true motive force massive destructiveness of the war, which, like most behind history, and he saw the pompously charis- wars, had been funded with borrowed money, those matic Mussolini as just such a figure. What Pound sources of credit subsequently “dried up” once hos- could not have foreseen was the outbreak of World tilities and the capacity for profiting from them had War II in September 1939, followed by Italy’s join- ceased, creating widespread economic hardship. As ing the war in June 1940 on the so-called Axis side a corrective, social credit proposed that the use of with Germany, rather than with its former English money, as opposed to its exchange as a commodity, and French allies. ought itself to be taxed. The end result would be that Pound had remained living in Italy for all those the accumulation of wealth in a few hands would be intervening years, continuing to work on the Can- stifled, and those who lent money could no longer tos and trying to get the powers that be to enter- profit from the exorbitant interests that they were tain his economic theories. He once had gotten as permitted to charge. far as to have Mussolini read some of the Cantos,

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which the puzzled Italian dictator had pronounced ary circles rallied to his defense, viewing him as a “un divertimento,” that is to say, an entertainment. seriously misguided but hardly criminal or mentally This was hardly the response that Pound had been ill individual. Among them was his old friend Eliot, hoping for, no doubt. who visited him at St. Elizabeths as circumstances The truly tragic consequences of these choices allowed. On his release in 1958, Pound returned to and actions came, however, on December 8, 1941, Italy, where he remained until his death in Venice when, following the Japanese attack on the U.S. on November 1, 1972. In later years, Pound sup- naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the United posedly regretted his obsession with an anti-Semitic States declared war on Japan and its European allies, view of modern history, but it is unclear whether he Germany and Italy. Although Italy was now an ever actually rejected it. Equally problematic is the enemy country, Pound remained there throughout place of himself and his work in American literary the war, still attempting to influence public policy history. The scope of his influence in the early days for what he thought, in the long run, would be the of modernism is alone enough to have earned him best—and still writing and, as best he could, pub- an enduring place in that history, and the quality of lishing the Cantos. When Mussolini was removed his poetry before his anti-Semitic beliefs became an from office by the Italian king Victor Emmanuel indisputable part of it is as well too masterful to be III following Allied victories in the south, the Ital- easily dismissed. ian dictator fled northward, and Pound continued Perhaps Pound has become an outstanding exam- to support his regime, until Mussolini’s arrest and ple, and victim, of a critical dilemma embodied in his execution in the spring of 1945. and Eliot’s own arguments against focusing more on Arrested by Italian partisans in May 1945, the poet’s life than on his work and other accom- Pound later turned himself in to U.S. forces, who plishments. Just what are the limits, and where the confined him in an open cage in Pisa for 25 days. division should be made, become more than aca- From this ordeal came the Pisan Cantos, which demic issues when the poet’s personal beliefs are won him the Bollingen Prize from the Library of undeniably expressed in the poetry, and among Congress in 1948. That was the result of a rather those beliefs are totally unjustifiable viewpoints that ironic turn of events, however. Pound had earlier are perniciously hateful and harmful. Pound pas- been charged with treason and, found mentally sionately defended the proposition that the artist is unfit to stand trial, had been declared insane and compelled to give what he called a true report, that confined at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, the artist should omit nothing of his view of human- D.C., from 1946 to 1958. The assumption is that ity from his work. But what are the limits of frank- the insanity plea was entered in order to avoid ness and of honesty when the artist honestly believes Pound’s possible execution if he had been found something that is reprehensible and, by any standard guilty as charged. Many a figure in American liter- of human decency and justice, wrong?

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Quinn, John (1870–1924) A wealthy cor- critical voice, since it might impede Eliot’s progress porate lawyer in New York and of Irish descent, and promise as a poet in his own right. Later that John Quinn became a significant patron of the year, Pound sought Quinn’s assistance and advice arts following a 1902 meeting with the Irish poet in keeping Eliot from enlisting in military service W. B. YEATS when Yeats visited New York City once the United States had entered the war in in the midst of an American tour. Through his Europe late in 1917. acquaintanceship with Yeats, Quinn later became The opportunity for Quinn to step up to the acquainted with the American poet EZRA POUND, plate to assist Eliot in his poetic career did not who by 1908 had become the elder poet’s per- come for another four years, however. That sonal secretary. Through Pound, Quinn eventually occurred when Eliot, returning from a rest treat- became so closely associated with the destiny of a ment in Switzerland, rejoined his wife, Vivien, in work by another young American poet, T. S. Eliot’s Paris in January of 1922 and paid a visit to Pound, The Waste Land, that his outstanding generosity who was by then living in the French capital. After has earned him a deserved place in modernist liter- their meeting. Pound reported to Quinn that Eliot ary history. had had in his suitcase “a damn good poem (19 Pound had first met Eliot in September 1914 pages),” one that he, Pound, hoped that Scofield soon after the latter’s arrival in London to begin Thayer would soon publish in the pages of the a course of graduate studies at Merton College, DIAL, a stylish New York review of arts and letters Oxford. Convinced of Eliot’s genius as a modern- that had already attracted Quinn’s attention. The ist talent, and equally convinced that his younger manuscript was, of course, Eliot’s The Waste Land, American friend needed all the help that he could albeit while it was still tentatively titled He Do the get to free up his time for poetry writing, Pound was Police in Different Voices and had not yet been sub- already seeking by September of 1916 to secure for jected to Pound’s famous pruning. Eliot, whom he wished to characterize as a strug- After that poem’s simultaneous publication, in gling young poet, a patron in Quinn. When in Janu- October 1922, in Eliot’s Criterion in London and ary 1918 Knopf published in New York Eliot’s Ezra Thayer’s Dial in New York, with Pound working Pound: His Metric and Poetry, a critical introduction as usual behind the scenes, it was Quinn never- to Pound’s latest work, Pound would confide again theless who made the necessary arrangements for in Quinn his own continuing interest in both fur- Eliot to receive from the Dial that year’s prestigious thering and protecting Eliot’s literary career. Pound and lucrative Dial Award, a prize of $2,000. Sub- wrote to tell Quinn that he did not want Eliot’s sequently, as a token of Eliot’s esteem for Quinn’s name to be too much associated with his own as a generosity, Eliot would remand manuscripts of much 551

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of his early poetry to Quinn, including the original by Quinn’s niece, Mary (Mrs. Thomas F. Conroy). Waste Land manuscript, which includes Pound’s and Eliot had passed away, on January 4, 1965, but his Vivien’s suggested revisions, most of which Eliot widow, Valerie, would publish these original drafts had incorporated into the finished poem. of The Waste Land in both facsimile and transcript Quinn died in 1924, and that manuscript, a in a superbly scholarly book-length edition in the literary treasure, effectively disappeared from the spring of 1971. The existence of that significant public consciousness until October 25, 1968, when contribution to the archival history of literary mod- the New York Public Library revealed that it had ernism has the generosity of John Quinn to thank been sold to its Berg Collection in April of 1958 for its existence.

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Roman Catholicism See CATHOLICISM, FORMS OF. Harvard, who now was editor of the DIAL housed in New York City, Eliot was hoping to launch a Rothermere, Lilian, Viscountess (1868?–1937) London edition of that review that might give it a Born Mary Lilian Share, the future Lady Rother- highly competitive and unique publishing presence mere married into what would become one of the as an international journal of the arts. largest private fortunes in England when she wed For her part, Lady Rothermere wanted to endow Harold Sidney Harmsworth, later the first viscount a new publication that would cut a swath through Rothermere (1868–1940), whose brother, Arthur the so-called smart set by featuring cutting-edge Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, was the publisher of fiction and essays. As two of the leading lights of the Daily Mail. Following the American model of a the modernist movement then sweeping literary small, cheap newspaper that provided brief—and England and America, Eliot and Thayer were eas- often lurid and scandalous—stories to appeal to the ily able to convince Lady Rothermere that they lowest common denominator of popular tastes, the could fulfill their part of the bargain. She appar- Daily Mail at one point had a circulation approach- ently was taken with Eliot. It was she who had ing 2 million, and for his interest in the papers, offered him the loan of her cottage in Alps during including the Daily Mirror, Lord Rothermere would his famous episode with a “nervous breakdown” in eventually amass a fortune in the neighborhood of late 1921 while he was composing the poem that $125 million, an unheard of sum in its day. would become The Waste Land. By the time Sidney Schiff, who wrote novels In any event, Lady Rothermere finally struck under the pseudonym Stephen Hudson and was a publishing deal with Eliot, to the exclusion of himself a wealthy art patron, introduced Eliot to Thayer. Rather than a transatlantic journal, she Lady Rothermere in the summer of 1921, she was would underwrite the publication of a review already estranged from Lord Rothermere. Never- housed in London and edited by Eliot. The result theless, she was extremely prominent in London’s was the CRITERION, and its first issue would be a social and artistic circles, throwing her consider- publishing landmark. Coming out in October 16, able wealth and influence behind such eccentric 1922, it contained Eliot’s new poem, The Waste figures as the Greek-Armenian mystic, author, and Land, which the Dial published simultaneously in teacher George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866–1949). New York. These credentials made her the perfect contact Despite such an auspicious debut, Lady Rother- for Eliot’s own somewhat avant-garde issues and mere thought the first issue rather “dull,” and it was interests. With Scofield Thayer, his friend from Eliot’s constant aim to try to please the taste of his their schooldays back at Milton Academy and then wealthy patroness. By July 1925, as her three-year 553

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contract with its publisher moved toward its expira- in composition and literature in 1878 but soon tion, Eliot began to fear that he might end up having chafed at being at such a great distance from the to close the review down. Instead, Lady Rothermere intellectual centers of contemporary American made an agreement with Faber & Gwyer, the new thought then located on the East Coast. In 1882, publishing house with which Eliot had just taken he accepted an offer from Harvard to replace Wil- a position as poetry editor and a board member, to liam James during his sabbatical year from that take over publication of the Criterion, now launched campus. Royce ended up resigning his appointment as the New Criterion, in January 1926. at Berkeley in order to do so. By 1892 he had By May 1927, Faber & Gwyer began to publish achieved an appointment as professor of the history the Criterion, till then a quarterly publication, as a of philosophy at Harvard, and he would remain monthly, and the increased production costs that on the philosophy faculty there until his death in resulted finally forced Lady Rothermere, in Decem- September 1916. ber 1927, to summon Eliot and inform him that Royce and James, whose own thinking had led she was withdrawing her financial support. The him into areas of philosophical inquiry that were blow nearly caused the Criterion to cease publica- relativistic and pragmatic in nature, depend- tion, but Geoffrey Faber decided differently. Using ing more on empiricism and practical reality for his own considerable influence among the London their validation, would maintain a healthy rivalry establishment, he succeeded in getting enough throughout their academic careers. Ultimately, it financial support to keep the Criterion going, albeit would be James’s more positivistic and logically as a quarterly again. verifiable approach to knowing that would prevail Lady Rothermere, who had lost two of three in academic circles, eclipsing the speculative and sons in World War I, died on March 16, 1937, as metaphysical approaches that had been developed Europe hovered on the brink of a second world by the likes of Bradley and Royce. war. The Criterion would continue publication for Eliot had already been exposed, before encoun- another two years after the death of the wealthy tering Royce, to the speculative philosophy of the woman whose initial support had given Eliot the day during his student year in 1910 and 1911 in opportunity to make his publishing dream an Paris, where he attended lectures given by the impressive reality. French philosopher HENRI BERGSON. Eliot’s pur- chase, in June 1913, of Bradley’s major work, Royce, Josiah (1855–1916) An absolute idealist Appearance and Reality, suggests that Eliot, who in the same vein as F. H. BRADLEY, Josiah Royce was was by then enrolled in a doctoral program in phi- one of the thinkers and teachers who would exert a losophy at Harvard, continued to be drawn to an powerful influence on Eliot’s own ways of thinking absolute idealist line of reasoning. It comes as no during his student years at Harvard. From the first surprise, then, that that fall semester Eliot enrolled of Royce’s contributions to the field of philosophi- in a course in various types of scientific meth- cal inquiry, in The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, ods being offered by Royce. The paper that he published in 1885, Royce posited the idea of an produced for that course, on assessing primitive Absolute Knower, an infinite mind that contains rituals, would conclude that any scientific validity all that is knowable. Like Bradley, he believed that is flawed by virtue of the fact that the observer’s the disparate nature of ordinary experiences and observations are distorted by his own experiences. our categorical knowledge of them is only appar- Tenets such as these, questioning the human ent and that all knowledge and experience actually ability to access any experience that might be said constitute a unified whole. to approximate an objective reality, are the founda- Born November 20, 1855, in a mining town tion of idealism, which depends on the finite lim- in northern California, Royce began his teaching its of human knowing, and would ultimately form career at the University of Califormia, Berkeley, the foundation for Eliot’s dissertation on Bradley,

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“Knowledge and the Objects of Experience in the Born in Wales on May 18, 1872, and grand- Philosophy of F. H. Bradley,” which he completed son of a former prime minister under Queen Vic- in April 1916 following a year of additional gradu- toria, Russell was a graduate of Trinity College, ate study under Bradleyan Harold Joachim at Mer- Cambridge, from which he earned degrees in both ton College, Oxford. Such tenets are also at the mathematics and moral philosophy. His academic foundation of much of modernism as a movement career was cut short, however, when he engaged in in the arts, largely as a result of the exposure that antiwar activities and was dismissed. A second epi- poets like Eliot had to these ways of thinking dur- sode of such conduct while World War I continued ing their philosophical heyday in academic circles earned him a six-month jail sentence. Russell also in the late 19th and early 20th century. earned himself a reputation as a notorious woman- izer, so much so that in the 1940s he was denied an Russell, Bertrand (1872–1970) Bertrand Rus- appointment to City College, New York, for being sell is noted primarily for his revolutionary work morally unfit for classroom teaching. in the area of mathematics and logic theory, and Eliot would have first met Russell in the spring he is regarded as one of the foremost logicians of of 1914 when the latter was a visiting professor at the 20th century. Russell’s Paradox, which he for- Harvard, where Eliot was a graduate student in mulated in 1901, essentially undermined the foun- philosophy. He and Russell renewed their acquain- dations of set theory by proposing the set of sets tance when Eliot traveled to England to continue that are not members of themselves. Such a set his studies at Merton College, Oxford, in July 1914. would contain sets that existed only if they did not It is generally assumed that the jovial visiting celeb- exist. A paradox, by virtue of itself, need not make rity of “Mr. Apollinax” fame is Bertrand Russell. logical sense; that, indeed, is its purpose for being. (Eliot published the poem in 1917.) There is strong But mathematics must make logical sense or perish, evidence to suggest that Russell had an affair with and Russell had succeeded in exposing a paradox Eliot’s first wife, Vivien, whom Eliot had married at the heart of mathematical logic. In a nutshell, if in June 1915. Although Russell was said to have mathematics is not founded on unassailable logical regarded the marriage as a bad match, he alleg- principles, then what good are the results of its con- edly justified the adultery by arguing that it would clusions? While this is largely a problem in analyti- force the young couple to improve their own sexual cal philosophy rather than practical application, it relationship. is nevertheless a problem. Clearly what Russell had In his later years, Russell, who had continued discovered was a serious logical flaw in the manner his political activism through several unsuccessful in which set theory had first been promulgated. runs for a seat in Parliament, became a staunch Russell then went on to make a career for him- opponent of nuclear armament. He lent his cre- self by—and in 1950 was awarded a Nobel Prize dentials as a ranking member of the British intel- in literature for—attempting to resolve the intel- ligentsia and a Nobel laureate to protests regarding lectual turmoil that had resulted from his introduc- England’s nuclear weapons program through the tion of the paradox. Beginning with his Principles in 1950s and into the 1960s. With Albert Einstein 1903 and culminating in his central work, Principia in 1955, he issued a manifesto calling for a curtail- Mathematica, published between 1910 and 1913 ment in the manufacture and testing of nuclear and on which Alfred North Whitehead worked as bombs. Prominently politically active into his 90s, a collaborator, Russell succeeded in proposing a Russell died in Wales on February 2, 1970, at the theory of types, or hierarchical sets, that would per- age of 97. mit a member of a set not to be a member of itself by stratifying the set. Russell Square See LONDON.

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St. Louis The city of Eliot’s birth, St. Louis, France in 1800, and on March 10, 1804, as a result Missouri, is among a handful of American cities, of the famous Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the terri- including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chi- tory was transferred to United States. cago, New Orleans, and San Francisco, that hold At the time of the purchase the population of a virtually mythic place in the American psyche. St. Louis was approaching 10,000, a sizable enough In the case of St. Louis, that city’s fame as a river community for what was then still rugged frontier. city, located at the confluence of the Mississippi By the time Eliot’s paternal grandfather, WILLIAM with the Missouri, the North American continent’s GREENLEAF ELIOT, ventured to St. Louis in 1834, two major waterways, would alone have earned it a young man of 23 prepared to forge his destiny an enduring place in American history. The further by bringing UNITARIANISM to the rugged frontier, fact that St. Louis also happened to be the spot the population had increased to more than 15,000. along the river through which pioneers heading William’s choice of destination was a most fortu- west passed throughout the better part of the 19th itous one, for U.S. expansion into the uncharted century, giving the city its sobriquet as the Gateway West would shortly be taking off, and no city in to the West, remains a mark of distinction in which America would benefit as much from this surge of St. Louis takes pride to this day and celebrates with population westward as would St. Louis. her imposing and impressive Gateway Arch. In 1840 the city’s total population had grown Despite its location deep inland, far from the to 35,979. Impresssive though that may be, a half- English colonial settlements along the Atlantic sea- century later, in 1890, two year’s after the poet’s board from which the fledgling American republic birth, the city had become one of the major North eventually would emerge in 1776, the region sur- American metropolises of its time, with a total of rounding the future site of the city was explored 451,770 residents, of whom more than a quarter as early as 1673 by the French Jesuit priest Jacques were foreign born. So urbanized had this former Marquette and his companion, Louis Joliet (Jolliet). frontier town become within William’s lifetime By 1682 René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle would (he would pass away in 1887) that Locust Street, claim the entire Mississippi valley for France, nam- where he had built the family home and founded ing the area Louisiana in honor of the French king. his Church of the Messiah, would be facing inner- St. Louis was no sooner itself founded by two French city blight by the time of Eliot’s birth in 1888. settlers, Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau, in Though not on the Eastern seaboard, the St. 1764, than, in 1767, Louisiana was ceded to Spain Louis of the day was quite able to give the future as a result of the French defeat in the French and poet the experience of the grime and grit and Indian War. The Spanish would return Louisiana to excitement of a modern metropolis. In a word, 556

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the city was a player, so much so that Hungar- it is telling that, for all the renown that Dante has ian-born Joseph Pulitzer (1847–1911), who had in achieved in recent times, some of it due no doubt 1872 become the owner and publisher of the St. to Eliot, allusions to Dante often require a footnote Louis Post, which he later merged with the Eve- that explicate the source and possible purpose, ning Dispatch, could easily build on those successes. whereas allusions to Shakespeare, even when they By 1883, Pulitzer was able to move to New York, do stand out as such, speak for themselves. where he acquired the New York World and gave Prufrock’s musings beginning “No, I am not newspaper mogul William Randolph Hurst’s Jour- Prince Hamlet . . . ,” and ending with “Almost, at nal-American a run for its money that became one times, the Fool,” make any reader more than barely of the first media wars in U.S. history. literary instantly feel quite comfortable suddenly Although Eliot did not reside in the city for any with a poem that, like the desert in The Waste considerable length of time following his departure Land, otherwise provides no relief. In The Waste for Milton Academy in Massachusetts at age 17 in Land itself, while it need not be known that the 1905, he would later recall how it had given him echoing refrain “Good night, sweet ladies” with the sensibilities of a child raised “in the more sordid which part II, “A Game of Chess,” ends harks back aspects of the modern metropolis, . . . in an indus- to Ophelia’s own parting words, knowing as much trial city in America.” His subsequent readings in lifts the entire episode off the ground instantly, the French symbolist poets CHARLES BAUDELAIRE giving it wings to move any reader toward mean- and JULES LAFORGUE would teach him that poetry ing, even if that meaning, like Ophelia’s parting, could be made from experiences of this order. The be in vain. The point is how sparingly Eliot uses so-called urban apocalypse of the 20th century that his Shakespeare and yet how effectively. When he Eliot’s The Waste Land would notoriously chronicle writes that Shakespeare and Dante share the world in 1922 was not, then, born on the streets of New of literature between them and that there is no York or Boston or London but on the banks of the third, it seems almost as if it were more a nod to Mississippi, a fact that Eliot would duly celebrate in Dante than a conviction. his famous opening to the third of his Four Quar- Eliot criticized, in the street sense of “fault- tets, “The Dry Salvages”: “I think that the river / Is ing,” Shakespeare only once, in his famous 1919 a strong brown god.” essay “Hamlet and His Problems.” There, organiz- Speaking in 1953 on the topic of “American ing a process of thought that culminated in his Literature and the American Language” at St. Lou- formulating the idea of the objective correlative, is’s Washington University, an institution that his Eliot argues that Shakespeare fails to dramatize grandfather William had helped found, Eliot could Hamlet’s plight in a manner sufficient to make say, “I am still very satisfied with having been born it immediately apparent what his plight is. The in St. Louis: in fact I think I was fortunate to have point, though unintended no doubt, is obvious: been born here, rather than in Boston, or New Even when he fails, there are lessons to be learned York, or London.” from Shakespeare. Shakespeare informs English poetry to such a degree that is impossible to tell Shakespeare, William (1564–1616) If there is where his influence in any one writer begins and any one figure in world literature who can lay claim ends. Learn his cadences—hallmarks as sure to to being universally regarded as a writer for all mark his distinctiveness as any other feature of times, all peoples, and all places, it has to be Wil- the writing—and you will hear him in Byron and liam Shakespeare. T. S. Eliot’s uses of Shakespeare, in Keats, in Tennyson, in Faulkner, and in YEATS. which seem to fall so glibly from his pen, have been You may never hear him in EZRA POUND, but you discussed by many scholars. However, Eliot prob- will most assuredly hear him in “The Love Song of ably alluded less to Shakespeare than to others. J. Alfred Prufrock.” Surely, as a world author Dante must lead the pack While they surely must exist, it is hard to think as the “most alluded to” literary figure in Eliot, yet of an important critical piece of Eliot’s that does

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not at some point make reference to Shakespeare. in and of themselves. Descended on their moth- Most assuredly, whenever Eliot is speaking of those er’s side from the Plantagenets, the royal family attitudes of mind or thought or feeling, belief or who had ruled England until the Tudor dynasty expression or description that make for the great emerged in the early 16th century, and sired by Sir artist, he never fails to draw at some point on George, fourth baronet, himself an antiquarian and Shakespeare for the sake of a positive example, as geneaologist known for his upper-class eccentrici- if it were a sacrilege not to. Eliot, after all, is writ- ties, the Sitwell children were, more than a literary ing in the same language in which Shakespeare group, virtually a species unto themselves. wrote—and thinking and feeling in that language In order of birth and eventual celebrity, they as well. Along with maintaining a whole and con- were Dame Edith Louisa, born on September 7, sistently developing vision of life and of the world, 1887; Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell, fifth baronet, Eliot argues that the great poet virtually makes a who was known as Osbert and born on December language out of the raw material that was at hand 6, 1892; and Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, sixth baronet, and available to him. born on November 5, 1897. All three ended up Surely Dante’s Italian is Italian because no one devoting their lives to art and literature and, to can express himself better in that language and all some degree, controversy, since their social status its varying dialects. Just as surely, for the same rea- permitted them to live their lives as they thought son, Shakespeare’s English is the modern English fit, which was not always conventionally. Dame that all English speakers can recognize. To make Edith, for example, lived with her former govern- one’s language one’s own is a rare achievement for ess for quite a while but supposedly had a love a poet, because it means that everyone who follows affair with a Russian painter who was himself a wants to sound like that or succeed in failing to. homosexual. Much later in life, living again in Eng- Eliot was one of the first poet-critics to recognize land after a decade or more of residence in France, in conscious ways that English as a literary language she converted to Roman CATHOLICISM, always a can and should grow and change around Shake- problematic alternative for a member of the British speare, but that it can never escape his shadow ruling class, for whom Anglicanism was the estab- and still be English. In 1943, Eliot wrote in “Little lished church. Gidding,” which is for all intents and purposes the Edith had first begun to publish her poetry in last major poem that he ever wrote, that the task of 1913 and, from 1916 to 1921, edited an annual poets is to “purify the dialect of the tribe.” To give poetry anthology, Wheels. An impassioned and one’s fellows the means of expression whereby they authoritative advocate of the “new” poetry then fall in love and raise families and wage war and emerging in virtually every corner of Anglo-Ameri- praise God and argue the purposes of Creation is can culture, London included most prominently no mean accomplishment or unworthy aim or small among those venues, her most significant work task, but the poets do do it, and, in English, Shake- would be Gold Coast Customs, published in 1929. speare did it best. That poem addressed, like many another modernist text, the superficiality and artificiality of contempo- Sitwell, Dame Edith See SITWELLS, THE. rary urban life and modern society, a theme under- scored by a tom-tom beat and her use throughout Sitwell, Sir Osbert See SITWELLS, THE. of other jazz rhythms. Sir Osbert and Sir Sacheverell were no less Sitwell, Sir Sacherevell See SITWELLS, THE. renowned and active in literary circles. Often in collaboration with each other and with their sis- Sitwells, the The three Sitwell siblings were so ter, they were constantly involved with one writing prominent in English literary circles throughout project and art exhibition after another, all of them most of the first half of the 20th century that they generally well received, although the Sitwells’ privi- have generally been regarded as a literary group leged position and familial solidarity often made

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them the victims of unwarranted criticism. Each of ARTHUR SYMONS “a great debt,” Eliot was speak- the sons was educated at Oxford and served with ing of Symons’s by then well-known introduction distinction in World War I, as would be expected to contemporary , particularly its of young men of their class and background. poetry, The Symbolist Movement in Literature. By Osbert began to write poetry during the war; the time of Eliot’s remark, the Symons book had however, he ultimately turned his talents more to undergone several revisions since its first publica- novel writing and, after he had succeeded to the tion in 1899. In the view of most commentators, baronetcy, published a five-volume autobiography the two latest revised editions, in 1919 and 1924, that is essentially a personal history of 20th-century which expanded Symons’s list of “symbolist” poets British nobility. Sacheverell, the youngest of the considerably and therefore may have diluted his three, was primarily a poet, although in reaction original idea of a concerted movement, did little to to the kinds of criticism that the Sitwells often improve a text that, by all accounts, had inflamed a received, he refused to publish his poetry for many generation of young writers in English on both sides years. He established a considerable reputation as of the Atlantic. well as an art critic and a writer on architecture. It may have been the 1908 revised edition that The Sitwells, despite their affinities for each inspired the young Eliot, then an undergraduate other as siblings, were hardly reclusive loners. at Harvard, when he read the Symons book in They mingled freely among the literary groups December of that same year. In any case, that edi- that formed early in the century in a city as cos- tion was substantially unchanged from the origi- mopolitan and open to daring and change as Lon- nal edition that had been published in London in don was at the time. They were associated with September 1899, and it is undoubtedly to that first the celebrated Bloomsbury Group that had formed version that critics and scholars still refer when around individuals such as VIRGINIA WOOLF and they cite the book for the powerfully constructive her husband, Leonard, and they frequented Lady and creative effect that Symons’s work had on the OTTOLINE MORRELL’s weekend gatherings of writers directions that the English-language poetry of the and artists at Garsington, her country estate outside time subsequently took. Oxford. Indeed, it was at Garsington sometime in In those same remarks of his cited earlier, Eliot 1915 that Dame Edith first became acquainted with singles Symons out for having introduced him to the young Harvard graduate student and poet T. S. the work of Arthur Rimbaud and JULES LAFORGUE, Eliot. According to all reports, she was quite taken the latter of whose influences on Eliot’s early with him, not a typical response to the shy and often poetry, and thus, by extension, all his subsequent socially awkward Eliot, and would keep up a lifelong work as well, are incalculable. Eliot concludes his acquaintanceship with him, as did her brothers. 1930 homage to Symons by saying that his is one Dame Edith died on December 9, 1964, barely of those books that have “affected the course of my a month before Eliot’s death on January 4, 1965. life”—substantial praise coming from a man who She still enjoyed a wide reputation as an eccentric by that time, as the poet of The Waste Land and but formidable literary talent and modernist poet. author of such influential critical essays as “Tradi- She was followed on May 4, 1969, by her brother tion and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and Osbert, who had been for many years the victim His Problems,” was one of the most prominent liv- of Parkinson’s disease. The last born, Sacheverell, ing writers in English in the world. Added to Eliot’s who then succeeded to the baronetcy, passed away praise is the fact that Symons had dedicated the nearly two decades later, on October 1, 1988. original edition of his book to another foremost practitioner of poetry writing in English, the Anglo- Symbolist Movement in Literature, The When Irish poet and 1925 Nobel laureate WILLIAM BUT- T. S. Eliot wrote in 1930 in the pages of the Crite- LER YEATS (who would also later acknowledge a rion, the international literary review that he had heavy debt to Symons), making it impossible to helped found and that he edited, that he owed deny that Symons’s influence played a pivotal role

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in shaping poetry and poetry writing among English part of his intention to suggest that he is, in the speakers at the beginning of the 20th century. most general terms, introducing his readers to con- There must nevertheless be some puzzlement cepts with which they are not already familiar. He as to what there was in what Symons had to say begins with the indisputable assertion that “with- about French-speaking poets that could have had out symbolism there can be no literature; indeed, such a profound effect on another national lit- even language.” He then defines the word sym- erature, English, that already had a rich and varied bolism in equally straightforward terms, according tradition all its own, one including such highly to accepted wisdom, as “a form of expression, at regarded luminaries as Geoffrey Chaucer, WILLIAM the best but approximate, essentially but arbitrary, SHAKESPEARE, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and until it has obtained the force of a convention, for Lord Byron, to name just a few, and one going an unseen reality apprehended by the conscious- back more than a thousand years. The key to the ness.” Perhaps Symons’s effort toward definition is particular effectiveness of Symons’s thesis is his more easily accomplished when he next cites the emphasis on symbolism. An understanding of observation of a French scholar and critic who says just what he meant by the symbolist movement that a symbol is “a representation which does not then taking place in French literature goes a long aim at being a reproduction.” That is the crux of way toward explaining that movement’s virtually the matter. The symbol must be something entirely instantaneous and total absorption and subsequent other than the thing, or abstraction, that it symbol- exploitation by poets living and writing across the izes, yet it must instantly represent, summarize, or English Channel from France, and even across the symbolize that thing. Atlantic. For present purposes, and very briefly, the rose provides as good an example of what all that may LITERARY SYMBOLISM mean as not. From the point of view of nature, the At first glance there may seem to be nothing either rose is a flower produced by the rose bush largely for so startlingly new or refreshingly different about a the purposes of reproducing the species by attract- literature that is symbolist, or symbolical, in its ori- ing, through its scent, insects that then enable pol- entation toward reality that it would require some- lination. From the point of view of the human, one, in this case Symons, to write an introduction however, although a rose is a rose is a rose that by to it as a literary movement. Readers nowadays any other name would smell as sweet, thanks to the tend to think of the symbol as the poet’s stock in efforts of countless love poets in even more count- trade, and there is no reason to assume that there less love poems, the rose betokens—represents but would have been a very different attitude toward is not a reproduction of—a wealth of meanings, the common notion that the symbol is a standard values, emotions, and commentaries on the exqui- device in both the literary and pictorial arts in site fragility of youth and beauty and love, mean- Symons’s time. Indeed, the symbol-making capac- ings that the object itself, as gorgeous as it may be, ity of the human mind has long been regarded as does not itself have even the remotest connection one of the most outstanding and principal features to inasmuch as nature is concerned. To return to of human intelligence. Language itself, some have Symons’s earlier shorthand definition, the rose, as argued quite successfully, is nothing more than a symbol, is an arbitrary expression that becomes a vast, complex, and continuously updating system convention approximating all those other, unseen of symbolic structures within symbolic structures realities that the consciousness may apprehend in within symbolic structures. it, but only if someone has taken the trouble to put Symons, in his brief introductory chapter, goes it forth as a symbol. Then all those implied realities out of his way himself to make the same points are called immediately to mind. about the longevity and universality of symbol- Symons notes that what the poets hope is “that ism and of the symbolic structures identified with our convention [or symbol] is indeed the reflec- the workings of the human mind; nor is it any tion rather than merely the sign of that unseen

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reality.” That is, of course, a high hope, one with THE FRENCH SYMBOLISTS immense implications for the relationship between In the original 1899 edition of the Symons book as language, or human signs, and objective reality, as well as in the slightly revised edition of 1908, one the philosophers refer to raw experience. Symons or the other of which Eliot would have read, the can further, and finally, conclude his definition by French symbolist poets include Gerárd de Nerval, stating that “We have done much if we have found a playwright and suicide driven mad by his love a recognisable sign”—certainly one of the great for an actress (and whom Symons identifies as an understatements in the history of English literary unconscious symbolist inasmuch as the subsequent criticism. symbolist movement originated with him); Villiers Symons next addresses the question of what he de l’Isle-Adams, author of the immensely influential is hoping to achieve if he begins a work ambitiously play Axël, which set a tone for an entire generation entitled The Symbolist Movement in Literature with and involved itself with the occult; Arthur Rim- the completely valid critical admission that sym- baud, Paul Verlaine, and CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, all bols, and so by extension symbolism, have been of whom were already enjoying critical reputations with us since time immemorial, indeed, from the as radically innovative poets; Stéphane Mallarmé, beginnings of the foundation of human language most significant for his prose translations of the systems. Citing the Scottish philosophical writer poems of the American poet Edgar Allan Poe; and Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) as his authority, JULES LAFORGUE. It was, in Symons’s view, these Symons sees something more in the symbol than contemporary French poets’ very self-consciousness any mere literary device. He sees “some embodi- of the fact that they were writing as symbol makers, ment and revelation of the Infinite,” and he then or symbolists, that makes them interestingly new explains that it is “in such a sense as this that and that continues to do so to our time. the word Symbolism has been used to describe a On this point, however, Symons does not go out movement which, during the last generation, has of his way to establish that earlier poets were not profoundly influenced the course of French litera- themselves equally as self-conscious in their cre- ture. . . . What distinguishes the Symbolism of our ation of symbols. While that would not be an easy day from the Symbolism of the past is that it has task, it leaves unclarified what Symons precisely now become conscious of itself.” means by the self-consciousness of the French sym- That is a critical qualification on Symons’s bolists in their own creative endeavors. His point part, perhaps the most critical distinction that is well-taken, nevertheless, if by it he means that he makes: These French poets are symbolists not these French poets made the construction of vivid because they are the first to employ symbols (that and often daring and shocking symbols and sym- having been done since time immemorial) but bolic connections the essence of their poetic line, because they are employing symbolism consciously to which all other considerations of form and state- in their poetry in order to reflect hitherto disre- ment were relegated to an inferior status. garded dimensions of human spiritual and psycho- Even then, there are two ways of approaching logical experience. In the remainder of his book, the idea of what constitutes a symbol and the sym- Symons singles out and discusses the comparative bolic. In the case of Mallarmé, for example, the sym- merits and innovations of this group of French bolic involved richly vague references to ideas that poets, thereby introducing the young T. S. Eliot to the poet may have had but that were never clearly what would have seemed to him to be an entirely related, almost as if the poet were speaking in a new theory of how works of literature ought to be secret code. The vaguer the symbol, the better. For produced, that is, by the conscious construction Baudelaire, in contrast, the symbolic might be found of symbolic relationships within the poem. It was in a skewed view of the ordinary, so that elements on this very distinction that much of Eliot’s later in typical urban landscapes took on the until-then critical theory, and indeed modernism as a literary unrecognized characteristics of decay and deceitful- movement, would pivot. ness. For Laforgue, meanwhile, the symbolic might

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entail making a farfetched connection. In one poem, or conceits, and their bold, unconventional use of he compares his ideas to a foreign lamp. His mean- language, borrowing as freely from the language of ing is not obscure or even complicated so much as religion and science as from any literary models. totally unlikely and therefore surprising (and, finally, That same affinity between the English meta- sensible in a coercive fashion). physical poets and the French symbolists would Influenced by Symons’s recommendation of the also be observed by the American literary critic French symbolists, Eliot’s poetry and the poetry Edmund Wilson in his landmark 1931 study of of other English modernists such as EZRA POUND modernism, Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative and Yeats partake of and exploit all these various Literature of 1870–1930. Indeed, Wilson argues that modes of symbolizing and symbol making. By now, it was through the French symbolists, themselves no doubt, it has become a style of poetry writing influenced by Mallarmé’s bad translations of Poe, that takes little getting used to, so much did it that an earlier vigor was restored to English poetry, come in the modernist era to dominate the Eng- which had itself lost sight of the accomplishments lish literary landscape as a result of Symons’s book of elder poets such as Donne. and of the stock that the young poets of the time Finally, however, Symons does not have to placed in it. adhere to the same standards of judgment and As with any work whose reception is overrated precision to which we hold those who, their ideas at first, Eliot, while never modifying his sense of shaped by him, were able to refine the concepts a deep indebtedness to Symons, would eventually at Symons’s expense. Toward the end of his intro- say, in 1952, that the elder poet’s criticism did not ductory chapter, Symons can speak of the new in and of itself stand the test of time. Part of the style that these symbolists bring to poetry writing problem was that Eliot felt that Symons neglected in impressionistic terms that do little to benefit some other important examples of the movement, a reader’s understanding now. He talks of their but it may also be that Symons was more adept at “perfecting form so that form may be annihilated”; defining than describing or presenting. notes how “description is banished that beautiful things may be evoked, magically”; and says that SYMBOLIST POETRY “the regular beat of verse is broken in order that In applying his definition of symbolism to the actual words may fly, upon subtler wings.” One hundred poetry, Symons is often scant of detail and does years and much literary theory later, those ideas not always keep on task, leaving it to the reader’s may seem to hold very little water or to have very own sense of exactly what this new French poetry much in the way of substance behind them, but is doing that is new and different, to determine they inspired those who could then better grasp any real understanding of the features that distin- their meaning in their freshness, Eliot among them. guish the movement and its style. Indeed, a reader These ideas of Symons’s, expressed in a prose filled steeped in literary history might otherwise identify with the same symbolic intensity as the new kind Symons’s attributes of French symbolism as similar of poetry that he was attempting to introduce, did to what in the English literary tradition was called in fact create a new kind of English poetry, despite metaphysical poetry. It was itself a movement of how much, on closer examination, that new poetry sorts that had flourished in the early to mid-17th may be seen to have flourished as well from roots century and was practiced by such poets as JOHN that had already been firmly established in the Eng- DONNE and Andrew Marvell, both of whom the lish literary tradition. young Eliot also came later to admire and to imi- Symons believed that in the symbol litera- tate. Eliot would himself observe this obvious affin- ture “may at last attain liberty, and its authentic ity between a French symbolist such as Laforgue speech.” Precisely what that may mean may be up and an English metaphysical poet such as Donne in for debate for decades to come, but readers have his essay, “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), noting Eliot’s own testimony that through the influence of their mutual admiration for farfetched comparisons, Laforgue, whom he encountered first in the pages

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of Symons, Eliot found a way to write poetry in his critical study appeared. Along with Yeats and own language and idiom. That discovery on Eliot’s Ernest Dowson, he was a member of the Rhymer’s part went to form an even greater part of the birth Club; had published work in the Yellow Book, the of modernism. There are very few works of literary outstanding avant-garde journal of his day; and had criticism that can claim such impressive results as become, in 1896, the editor of the Savoy, whose Symons’s on that count alone. art director was none other than the remarkably talented illustrator and designer Aubrey Beards- Symons, Arthur (1865–1945) The late 19th- ley. In keeping with the symbolist techniques that century English poet and critic Arthur Symons is he did much to popularize, Symons published one of the few among those poets writing in Eng- two volumes of poetry—Silhouettes in 1892 and lish at the time that Eliot chose poetry writing as London Nights in 1895—that lyrically confronted a profession whom Eliot would later cite as having the increasing complexities of urban life. He also had any shaping influence on his own poetry. From translated the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine this vantage point, it is clear that that acknowl- and wrote travel pieces. A mental breakdown in edged influence was due largely if not entirely to 1908, however, effectively ended Symons’s writing Eliot’s exposure to Symons’s groundbreaking critical career, although he published, in 1930, Confes- study, The SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE. sions, an account of his ordeal. First published in 1899, it would be encountered Symons died on January 22, 1945, having out- by Eliot in December 1908 when he was a young lived most of his contemporaries from the aesthete Harvard undergraduate, and in its pages he would movement that had characterized Edwardian En- discover the French symbolist poet JULES LAFORGUE, glish poetry and had left a young T. S. Eliot without from whose influence much of the most apparently any viable role models in his native tongue, either idiosyncratic features of Eliot’s first major poems, British or American. Nevertheless, much earlier, in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” outstanding 1930, Eliot had felt confident enough to say that he among them, would come. owed Symons “a great debt” for having introduced Born February 28, 1865, in Pembrokeshire, him those many years before, through the pages of England, and a near contemporary of the Anglo- The Symbolist Movement in Literature, to both the Irish poet W. B. YEATS, to whom The Symbolist spirit and the masters of that movement in France, Movement was dedicated, Symons was a recognized thereby giving impetus and a profound shape to literary figure in his own right when his celebrated Eliot’s own then burgeoning career as a poet.

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Thayer, Scofield See DIAL. ally acquainted with Luther, and Michael Servetus (1511–53), who died at the stake for his writings Unitarianism Although Unitarianism has taken rejecting the Nicene dogma of the Trinity that had various forms over the centuries as the name of been in place among orthodox Christians since the the movement clearly denotes, the central tenet time of the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. That his- of Unitarian Christianity is that it opposes the toric gathering had been convened at the order of doctrine of the Trinity—God the Father, God the none other than the Roman emperor Constantine Son, and God the Holy Ghost—but recognizes the for the express purpose of clarifying and codifying moral authority of Jesus of Nazareth, whom most Christian beliefs. Given those circumstances sur- Christian sects venerate as the Christ, the second rounding the sect’s origins, it is not difficult to see person of the Trinity or Son of God. Unitarianism how Unitarians quickly came to embrace as well a as a historical system of belief—that is, one whose thoroughgoing respect for the rule of reason and for emergence can be documented—dates back to the so-called free thinking. first decades of the Protestant Reformation that While the Unitarian view of Christ and the was inspired, in 1517, by Martin Luther’s rejec- nature of his divinity might have remained a topic tion of Roman authority in directing church teach- of debate and frequent readjustments among them, ing. For Luther, the individual Christian should be none of these views would have passed muster with guided by faith and conscience, founded on a care- beliefs held by Catholic, or Trinitarian, Christians. ful attention and strict adherence to Holy Scrip- Indeed, Unitarianism is regarded by some as a ture, rather than the dogmatic assertions of Roman return to the Arian heresy from the days of early CATHOLICISM, with its hierarchical gridlock on doc- Christianity, later manifested among the Albigen- trine guided by an individual, the pope in Rome. sians in Southern France in the late Middle Ages The freedom to think and to believe as one chose and generally associated with doctrine that falls led to a wide variety of reforms and conflicts within under the heading of gnosticism. While accepting what until then had been traditional Christian doc- Christ as some species of a divine being, the Arian trine; among those dissenters were those who took heresy rejected the notion that Christ was true god an anti-Trinitarian view of the godhead. God was and true man, a point of contention that was the one—hence, Unitarianism. real crux of the doctrinal dispute that had been Foremost among this hardly new but, in Chris- settled at Nicaea. tian circles, totally reinvigorated doctrine were Unitarianism made inroads on the continent of Martin Cellarius (1499–1564), who was person- Europe, particularly in Poland and Hungary, but 564

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it did not become firmly and formally entrenched he had traveled westward to ST. LOUIS to perform in England until the last quarter of the 18th cen- missionary work for his faith. tury. Regarded as nonconformism, Unitarian ide- Anyone even only vaguely familiar with the path als understandably tended to flourish with far that Eliot’s own religious, intellectual, and spiritual more vigor in England’s American colonies, how- life took almost from the time of his earliest matu- ever, particularly the Massachusetts Bay Colony rity would recognize the apparent paradoxes that founded in and around BOSTON, and especially all the foregoing suggests. Put simply, Eliot became in the wake of the religious revival known as the more and more a Trinitarian, expressing his devo- “Great Awakening” in the early part of the 18th tion to Catholicism and opposition to humanism in century. Peopled by individuals seeking religious essays beginning with “The Function of Criticism” freedom and many times themselves former vic- in 1923 and continuing into such pieces as “The tims of intolerance, American Unitarians tended Humanism of Irving Babbitt” in 1927, the year of to take on a more and more open-minded, ser- his famous conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. vice-oriented aspect. Although in several of the quatrain poems com- By the middle of the same century, HARVARD posed between 1917 and 1918—“The Hippopota- College was a center for Unitarian thought, and mus” and “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” Unitarian congregations began to appear through- come most immediately to mind—a youthful Eliot out New England. As Congregationalism, indeed, had appeared to be appropriately irreverent in any it became the more or less “established” religion expressions of belief, by 1919, in “Gerontion,” he of English colonists and their descendants in that speaks of “Christ the tiger” in tones that suggest region of the future American republic. William more awe than reverence, but that still suggest Ellery Channing (1780–1842) eventually would something more substantial than the rational idea. emerge as the leader of American Unitarianism, He does as much in responding to the chaos and which was further shaped by the transcendental increasing secularism of modern life, itself perhaps idealism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. a by-product of the reformist zeal inspired by Luther Unitarian Universalism, as the church eventu- and his contemporaries, the early Unitarians among ally came to be called, was respectful of the dignity them. And yet in doing so Eliot himself was reject- of the individual and of the freedom to think as ing the traditions of a free-thinking liberalism in one chooses, yet its membership by 1900 is said to which and with which he had himself been raised. have numbered little more than 100,000. Among Rather than looking for an underlying psychol- them would have been a young T. S. Eliot, whose ogy, however, it is easy to see in Eliot’s conver- grandfather, WILLIAM GREENLEAF ELIOT (1811–87), sion just that—a genuine conversion back to what had attended Harvard Divinity School, from which were for him the traditions and faith of his ances- he was ordained a Unitarian minister on August tors before humanism and its attendant secularism 17, 1834. Indeed, although his paternal grandfa- burst on the scene in the late 15th century. Even ther had passed away the year before Eliot’s birth, that reading, however, gives Eliot’s conversion a the infant Eliot would be baptized in the Unitar- sociocultural spin, whereas fairness and respect for ian Universalist Church of the Messiah that his a fellow should compel us finally to imagine that it grandfather had founded more than a half-century must have been inspired, as such things most often earlier when, newly ordained minister that he was, are, by a genuine spiritual need.

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vers libre There is probably no single literary menting with what he called “sprung rhythm”— term peculiar to the last century that is more widely lines of varying syllabic length that nevertheless known than vers libre, or free verse and yet, too, had the five strong stresses required of the pentam- no other term that has been more freely adapted eter, or five-beat, line that, primarily as blank verse, and applied, suggesting that, in keeping with its had been the mainstay of English prosody since the own insistence on a measure of liberality, the term time of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and John Milton. has been as loosely defined as the sort of poetry Still, Dickinson and Hopkins were not widely and poetic style it purports to identify. Generally, or extensively published until well into the early vers libre is most often associated with the mod- part of the 20th century, and Whitman’s voice, ernist poetry that was emerging in the early 20th style, and persona were so uniquely his own as to century in America among young writers such as preclude if not in fact to defy imitation. Indeed, T. S. Eliot and EZRA POUND, although it initially Eliot would say that he did not know Whitman had been applied to a loosely organized move- at all as a youth and that even into his adulthood ment dubbed the symbolist movement by ARTHUR Whitman’s poetry took some getting used to for SYMONS that had originated in France in the mid- him. It would be the French symbolist poets, par- to late 19th century. The term could be applied as ticularly those to whom Eliot had been introduced well, however, to experimentation with the poetic by Arthur Symons in his 1899 study, The SYMBOL- line occurring coincidentally in England and, to a IST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE, that would give rise greater extent, America at the same time. and impetus to Eliot’s own initial interest in and The American poet Walt Whitman experi- then advancement and further development of free mented openly and intentionally with rhythms and verse in English poetry. line lengths in his personal epic Leaves of Grass, Once again, the term must be approached cau- and he did not hesitate to describe his unfashion- tiously and in a relativist manner. While the idea able verse as “barbaric yawp” and “lawless music,” a of free verse can sometimes imply as much as a “type of the modern,” in good iconoclastic Ameri- total abandonment of all formal considerations in can fashion. Another Civil War–era American the writing of poetry, the tenets of vers libre, if poet, Emily Dickinson, meanwhile, used, it seemed, the practices that emerged could be called tenets, whatever poetic form that her fancy, and the fancy were hardly ever meant to encourage the complete of the moment of inspired creation, took, writing disregard of formal elements such as meter or even short, enigmatic poems with little more than dashes rhyme in poetic compositions. Pound put it best for punctuation. In England, during relatively the when he urged fellow poets to write not accord- same period, Gerard Manley Hopkins was experi- ing to the mechanical precision of the metronome, 566

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with its monotonous repetition of fixed beats in that the casual reader and more-casual novice poet keeping with the rigid requirements of the Eng- often forget or neglect. lish iambic pentameter line, but in the spirit of the In “Reflections on Vers Libre,” a 1917 essay first musical phrase instead. published in the New Statesman and then reprinted For the French symbolist precursors, JULES by Eliot many years later, in 1965, in To Criticize LAFORGUE prominent among them, poets to whom the Critic, he would ridicule the notion that there Eliot was introduced initially by the Symons book, is any such thing as vers libre, concluding that the rules governing the formal structure of French “there is only good verse, bad verse, and chaos.” poetry were so strict that even only tampering with The parochial interests inspiring the cleverness of their rigidity by shortening or randomly varying that sort of a formulation aside, it would be equally lines and the length of stanzas would have qualified as ridiculous to deny that the freeing of verse from them for the title of free verse, although such tam- long-established formal constraints remains one of perings often resulted in a poetry that might strike the most outstandingly obvious achievements of a typical reader as being rather formalist by today’s the modernist movement in poetry. Much of Eliot’s standards. The mid-19th-century French poet poetry, even from long after such modernist inno- Théophile Gautier, for example, whom Symons vations had become passé, can be regarded as out- would include among the symbolists (but only as standing examples of that kind of liberated poetry. an afterthought in a later edition than the one that For Eliot, whose poetic ear seemed for the most first inspired Eliot), worked extensively with qua- part to require a dramatic context for it to be trains—four line stanzas of tetrameter (four-beat) most fully realized, vers libre was akin to what he verse that rhymed generally only on the second would call the spoken idiom of colloquial speech, and fourth lines—that were employed successfully, as opposed to the stilted and often artificial-sound- more or less, by both Eliot and Pound in poems that ing qualities of what is called poetic diction. In his they composed in the late teens, primarily 1917 remarks on his early influences, Eliot often stresses through 1919. While it is true that such a strictly that quality of natural speech to be found in the formal stanza would not count as free verse by vir- poetry of the contemporary English poets whom tually anyone’s standards, Eliot, in poems such as he most admired in his youth, Arthur Symons and “Sweeney Erect” and “Burbank with a Baedeker, Ernest Dowson in particular. (As for American Bleistein with a Cigar,” created a poetry that is models, Eliot remarked emphatically in a 1936 lec- unmistakably modernist in its tone and attitude. ture that “there were no American poets at all” In the final analysis, it is safe to say that the free available to him in his youth.) He also frequently verse movement, such as it was, has taken roots attributed his early attraction to Laforgue to that that it is difficult to imagine ever being undone and poet’s showing him the value of shaping one’s own has come to typify, perhaps unfairly and certainly a personal idiom or voice into a poetic tool. bit misleadingly, the spirit of modernism in poetry The notion of a poetry that would sound like as being one of a free-wheeling and rebellious cast. speech as it is spoken is, then, perhaps the best and Surely, if nothing else, the free exercise of the certainly the broadest definition that can be applied principles of free verse prosody did serve notice to to vers libre. If nothing else, it is an idea endorsed readers everywhere that nothing in poetry writing by Eliot when he likened Laforgue’s vers libre to the would ever be the same again. As WILLIAM BUTLER later verse of Shakespeare, John Webster, and Cyril YEATS, a poet not at all enamored of free-form Tourneur, all of them 17th-century dramatists and, composition, might have it, with the emergence as such, not even vaguely contemporary writers. To of vers libre, a terrible beauty was born. Neverthe- use vers libre is not, then, to write as if one were less, the vers libre of poets such as Pound and Eliot speaking in a current vernacular so much as to write requires as much, if not more, precision, control, as if one were using a language whose rhythms are and craftsmanship as any more-formal and rigidly shaped by the ebb and flow of living, natural speech, prescribed prosody ever might, and that is a point and the dynamics of natural experience that shape

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it. Such poetry is “free” then to take it own shape his 1922 masterwork and most celebrated achieve- as the exigencies of the moment require, rather ment, the famously unreadable The Waste Land. It than being contrived to fit a predetermined rhythm, is difficult to deny that in that poem Eliot brings rhyme scheme, and so forth. to bear vers libre principles, in the sense of the For his own part, Eliot would maintain the prin- unbridled and the unkempt, for the very purpose of ciples of free verse, particularly in its analogy to exposing in epic terms the catastrophe of a culture music and to the spoken language, throughout his and value system that can no longer cohere but career, although for the popular imagination his that still clings to survival. Suitably enough, then, use of it very likely achieves its most outstanding more than any other poet of the period, Eliot is to expression in the fragmentary lines, disjointed sen- be credited with making vers libre and modernism tences and ideas, and chaotic stanzaic patterns of synonymous in the popular imagination.

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Washington University A major American evening was apparently inspired by, and certainly research institution of higher learning, Washington endorsed, the debt that he owed to the culture and University was founded in ST. LOUIS in 1853 by social life of St. Louis for the formative experiences WILLIAM GREENLEAF ELIOT (1811–87), the poet’s that he had encountered there during the first 17 grandfather. Originally called, over William’s pro- years of his life. test, the Eliot Seminary, the academy was intended to be the educational arm of the Church of the Weston, Jessie L[aidlay] (1850–1928) An inde- Messiah, which was the first church west of the pendent scholar, Jessie L. Weston entered the pages Mississippi devoted to UNITARIANISM and which of literary history when her iconoclastic work on William had also founded, in 1834. In 1857 the the origins of the legend of the Holy Grail, FROM seminary was reorganized into Washington Univer- RITUAL TO ROMANCE (1920), was cited by T. S. sity, largely with the support of Eliot’s congregation, Eliot in his headnote to the notes that he appended and Eliot would serve as its president from 1870 to to The Waste Land when Boni & Liveright pub- 1887, contributing funds as well to its continued lished that celebrated modernist poem in book form construction and maintenance. In keeping with the in New York in December 1922. Although not spirit of tolerance and freedom of thought out of an unknown in the areas of folklore and medieval which the Unitarian movement had sprung in the Arthurian literature in which she had been publish- early 16th century, the university’s charter forbade ing since 1896, Weston in From Ritual to Romance sectarianism in religion or politics. At the time of challenged the long-held tradition among scholars William’s death on January 23, 1887, there were that the Grail legends were wholly Christian in ori- 1,600 students enrolled in the university, and 100 gin. She proposed that they were instead the result faculty members were teaching in its colleges and of overlaying a Christian mythos on older Welsh schools of law, medicine, dentistry, fine arts, and myths regarding a so-called Dish of Plenty. engineering, an impressive achievement. Following a methodology famously introduced On June 9, 1953, Eliot would deliver the address by Sir JAMES FRAZER in his monumental anthro- “American Literature and the American Language” pological study The Golden Bough (1890), Weston at the university. By then, Eliot had long since used cross-cultural sources in folklore as much renounced his U.S. citizenship in order to become as literary and historical sources in an attempt to a British citizen, and he had never before, in a long validate her contentions and conclusions. Though and illustrious career as a literary critic and scholar, much railed against, as any daringly original work turned his attention to the accomplishments in let- of critical scholarship is liable to be, Weston’s study ters of his native land. His choice of topic that continues to have an influence on the direction 569

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that legitimate Grail studies take to this day. At based on her recollections of her own childhood. the very least, she proposed a thesis that, once it Woolf suffered a nervous breakdown when she was has been introduced into the discussion, can never only 13, apparently as a result of sexual abuse by again be easily overlooked or dismissed. her two half-brothers, and serious bouts of mental In The Waste Land, Eliot seems to have focused illness would trouble her all the rest of her life. She primarily on the vegetation myths and rituals that, eschewed the label of being a feminist writer and according to Weston’s reading of the Grail legend, duly regarded hers as the great themes of humanism, apparently underlie it, rather than on the tradition inspired no doubt by the tragedy of her childhood. that the legend magically underscores that transfor- Leonard (1880–1969), the son of a London mation of the natural universe rendered by Christ’s barrister, was himself a member of the Cambridge sacrifice on the Cross. Apostles from whom the Bloomsbury Group, named for its reasonably fashionable London locale, Woolf, Leonard See WOOLF, VIRGINIA. emerged. A political theorist and civil servant by training and profession, he had married Virginia Woolf, Virginia (1882–1941) The English nov- in 1912, and together they began the Hogarth elist and essayist Virginia Woolf was one of the Press using a small, hand-operated printing press in foremost practitioners of modernism in literature at 1917, partly as part of Leonard’s efforts to keep Vir- the height of that movement’s heyday. A member ginia distracted from the frequent bouts of intense of the famous Bloomsbury Group, which included depression that she continued to suffer. such other literary and intellectual notables as Hogarth published several of Eliot’s early volumes, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard including his Poems in June 1919, but later had a Keynes, Leonard Woolf (Virginia’s husband), and professional parting of the ways in 1925 when Eliot, Vita Sackville-West, who was for a time Virginia’s now an editor with Faber & Gwyer, not only began lover. With Leonard, Virginia also ran the Hogarth to publish under their imprint but lured other writers Press, which published many of the avant-garde from the Woolfs’ stable. Virginia had a begrudging writers of the day, Eliot among them. love-hate relationship with the shy but immensely Born in London’s fashionable Hyde Park district talented and proper young American poet. He inti- as Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882, mated to the Woolfs many of the anxieties that his Woolf was the daughter of the eminent editor and first marriage to Vivien caused him over the years. critic Sir Leslie Stephen, himself the widower of For her part, Virginia saw him as a stuffed shirt who novelist William Thackeray’s daughter. Such lumi- wore a “four-piece suit,” so uptight was he. naries as the American novelist Henry James and Leonard, who was Jewish, was among the first to poet James Russell Lowell were frequent guests at acknowledge that Eliot had a steak of the garden- the Stephens’s home, and Woolf was raised not variety ANTI-SEMITISM typical of men of his class, merely in the lap of luxury but in a very literary background, and the times. Virginia recorded in her environment at the heart of London’s intellectual diary in 1925 that her husband regarded Eliot as a life. It was no surprise, then, that she herself should “queer shifty creature”—which could mean a vari- become a noted novelist and essayist. ety of things, none of them approving or compli- Her most critically acclaimed and very likely most mentary. Eliot could count many Jews, most notably enduring works are the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Woolf himself and Sidney Schiff, the novelist and and To the Lighthouse (1927), each utilizing the art patron, among “some of his best friends,” as the complexities of a stream-of-consciousness narrative standard protest against being prejudiced goes. Nev- technique and multiple points of view that change ertheless, that may have been the very problem— without warning. In keeping with modernism’s focus that Eliot did not recognize what was anti-Semitic on the ordinary, on the other hand, they tell rather in his attitudes and behavior. What someone like homely tales bordering on the trivial, which they Leonard very likely had encountered in Eliot was seek to enhance. Supposedly, the novels were loosely a tacit assumption on Eliot’s part that categorized

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Jews collectively as cultural outsiders and so helped Virginia’s perennial depressions, through which foster the stereotypes that are at the root the cause Leonard nursed her, would only be exacerbated by of more virulent forms of anti-Semitism. the outbreak of war in September 1939. She com- With the passage of time, and somewhat as a mitted suicide by filling her pockets with stones result of the breach caused by Eliot’s employment and wading out into the River Ouse near her home with Faber, the Woolfs and the Eliots saw less and in Rodmell on March 28, 1941. Her last work, less of each other, particularly as the Eliots’ marriage Between the Acts, was published posthumously, also began to disintegrate in the mid- to late 1920s. in 1941.

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Yeats, W[illiam] B[utler] (1865–1939) The strange tales of human interaction with the world Anglo-Irish poet W. B. Yeats remains one of the of fairies and sprites. most significant literary figures writing in English Yeats’s further, fervent association with the Her- during the 20th century. His career as a poet, metic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society essayist, and eventual dramatist began, however, that incorporated Rosicrucian and possibly Masonic as early as 1885, when the young Yeats published a traditions, found its match only in the intensity handful of poems in the Dublin University Review. If with which he devoted himself to trying to preserve T. S. Eliot had never become aware of him in any the remnants of Ireland’s long neglected Celtic other way, he would have been familiar with Yeats’s traditions. Finally, largely through an on-again, name and reputation as a symbolist poet from the off-again love affair with another young Dubliner, time when, in 1908, the young Eliot read The SYM- Maude Gonne, Yeats became attached as well to BOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE, that landmark Ireland’s increasingly open struggle for political 1899 critical work dedicated to Yeats by its author, independence from the British Crown and the par- ARTHUR SYMONS. Such a singular distinction com- liamentary authority of the English. ments on the renown that Yeats had achieved as a The resulting combination, in his poetry, of the poet among his own contemporaries. romantic with the realistic, the practical with the Born the son of a pre-Raphaelite painter in spiritual, the passionately private with the publicly Dublin on June 13, 1865, Yeats would have been impassioned, and the ancient with the modern exposed from his childhood to the world of avant- made it easy for Yeats to accomplish successfully garde literature and art, and that exposure would the transition from being a flighty poet of the late only have been intensified when the family made Victorian or Edwardian period, with its empha- its home in London from 1867 to 1881. Yeats sis on ars gratia artis (“art for art’s sake,” that is, originally planned to be an artist himself, but his art with no interest in effecting social, moral, or interests were drawn more to two vaguely related political change) to being a major poetic voice of areas of arcane knowledge that seemed better the modernist period. No doubt the transition was suited to literary expression. One was the occult, made even easier under the tutelage of his Ameri- with its emphasis on secret ritual, ancient wis- can protégé EZRA POUND, who served as his per- dom, communication with spirits, astrology, and sonal secretary from 1908 to 1913. mystical experiences. The other was ancient Ire- More often than not, nevertheless, Yeats man- land’s body of Celtic mythology, which was just aged to accomplish this transition in poem after then undergoing a revival and which included, poem by finding, in his lifelong obsession with dis- along with the typical stories of legendary heroes, covering symbolic patterns and discerning historical 572

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repetition, an apparently ceaseless order to human known as World War I hardly figure in his poetry existence and, hence, art itself. Yeats’s hallmark except as that violent conflagration affected him lyricism became less flowery but no less delightfully personally. The death, in aerial combat, of Robert eccentric. If, then, some of his earliest poems deal Gregory, the son of Yeats’s dear friend and bene- with fairies, Irish heroes, or Rosicrucian mysticism, factor, Lady Gregory, resulted, for example, in two his later poetry deals with finding in ancient con- exceptionally powerful poems, “An Irish Airman flicts, such as the Trojan War of Homeric myth, Foresees His Death” and “In Memory of Major and in fabulously ancient cities, most prominent Robert Gregory.” Yeats also addressed the social among them Byzantium and Constantinople, the and political turmoil that would ensue as a result symbolic roots of present dichotomies between of the war in one of his most widely anthologized peace and war and between the requirements of poems, “The Second Coming,” published in 1919. artistic creation and the practical necessities of nat- Otherwise, Yeats’s poetry writing continued in ural processes and human societies. a relatively insular fashion until 1916. Then two There was one other factor intervening, how- events, occurring within 18 months of each other, ever, in shaping the world poet that Yeats eventu- provided the further impetus that would shape ally became. That factor was Yeats’s own interest, much of the remainder of Yeats’s career as a poet, as time passed, in identifying himself and his peo- allowing him to escape his 19th-century sonorities, ple with the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy but not their essential sentimentality. The first was although he associated himself with the cause of the armed Irish nationalist, or republican, upris- Roman Catholic Ireland’s freedom. During the first ing of Easter 1916, popularly known to history as few decades of the 20th century, Protestant Ire- the Easter Rebellion. Though the bloody assault on land, the Ireland of Yeats’s people, was witnessing Dublin’s General Post Office was a military disas- the erosion of its three-centuries-old power base ter, and the leading conspirators, including Maude as the older order of indigenous ethnic Irish, pri- Gonne’s husband, Captain John MacBride, were marily Roman Catholics who had been reduced to captured, tried, and executed by England, the effort penury and peasantry by their Protestant English was such an affront to British authority in Ireland overlords, seized more and more power both by that it culminated, in 1921, in the formation of an legitimate political means and through armed con- Irish Free State in the south of Ireland. The north flict with the troops and police forces of the Brit- of Ireland would remain under British authority, as ish occupation. Thus, Yeats’s earliest poetry offered it has to this day. Competing Irish nationalist fac- such titles as “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” tions would first come to blows over the terms of “Fergus and the Druid,” “The Man Who dreamed the so-called peace and partitioning of Ireland. By of Faeryland,” “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” the mid-1920s, however, enough military order and “The Secret Rose,” and his most renowned poem political stability had been achieved in the south from this period, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Dur- for Yeats himself to serve as a senator in the gov- ing his middle career he turned to such titles as ernment of the fledgling republic that that portion “No Second Troy” and “Upon a House Shaken by of Ireland quickly became. the Land Agitation,” or a mouthful such as “To a If that series of developments effectively pro- Wealthy Man who Promised a Second Subscription vided closure for the impassioned spirit of Irishness to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if It Were Proved that had both benefited and afflicted his poetry the People Wanted Pictures.” virtually from its beginning, the other event, occur- So much, indeed, did Yeats become embroiled ring in October 1917, provided his poetry with new in the conflicting claims of Irish nationalism and sources of meaning and inspiration that would also his own identification with the Anglo-Irish ruling come both to benefit and to afflict the clarity of class that as cataclysmic an event in modern Euro- his poetic vision. That October, Yeats’s new wife, pean history as the hostilities on the continent that Georgie, later George, Hyde-Lees, who was also began in August 1914 and that eventually became interested in occult lore, began to channel what

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she claimed to be, and what Yeats took for, spirit that same period, and culminating in his volume communications. How authentic these experiences The Tower in 1928, Yeats could, in powerfully per- were will forever remain in the realm of critical and sonal terms, review the essential tragedy of human biographical debate in Yeats studies. What remains aspiration while still endorsing such aspiring. indisputable, however, is that much of his best later During the last decade of his life, Yeats’s cre- poetry, beginning with the 1919 volume The Wild ative vision underwent one last period of revitaliza- Swans at Coole, would result from Yeats’s theories tion and renewal. Without necessarily forsaking all of human psychology and human history that sub- his earlier emphases on pagan myth and the occult, sequently emerged from these alleged communica- not to mention the passions of Irish republicanism tions “from beyond.” and the conflicts of Irish identity, in such later Most notable among the same poetic achieve- poems as “Lapis Lazuli” and “The Circus Animals’ ments are the two Byzantium poems, “Sailing to Desertion,” both from 1938, Yeats could, with the Byzantium” (1925) and “Byzantium” (1931). With same lyrical beauty that had infused the fairy poems their mystical talk of phases of the Moon and of of his youth, direct an unforgivingly harsh light on the primary and antithetical gyres, meanwhile, the his earlier and, some might argue, virtually lifelong communications also gave Yeats the material for unwillingness to accept life on its terms. A Vision, a complexly obscure prose analysis of the “Now that my ladder’s gone,” Yeats concludes system that he was thus able to propose. Indeed, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” “I must lie down if any one work of Yeats’s would have permitted where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and Eliot, in 1933, to take Yeats to task as a poet for bone shop of the heart.” It turned out to be one of having created, in his visionary poetry, a world that his last poems, composed in September 1938 (he is not one of “real Good and Evil, of holiness or would die the following January). Yeats’s enduring sin,” it would have to be because of the ostensibly greatness as a poet is ensured by an even greater outlandish ideas that Yeats put forth in A Vision, unwillingness on his part ever to rest on his lau- which was first published in 1925 and subsequently rels or leave well enough alone. While his appar- revised and reissued in 1937. ently insatiable thirst for truth and restless quest for Having been awarded the Nobel Prize in litera- wisdom may have frequently led him down paths ture in 1923, Yeats had by then been a leading better left unexplored or, if explored, unexpressed, figure on the world literary scene for nearly a half- they made his a body of work that incorporates the century. Yet his spirit of poetic daring and thematic very essence of those drives, transforming their raw experimentation never stinted, despite Yeats’s con- and often destructive energies into what he once stantly shifting interests and allegiances. In “Among termed “monuments of unaging intellect”—that is, School Children,” another renowned poem from into the beautiful, into works of art.

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Appendices

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1888 vard. Begins work on the poems that will even- Born on September 23 in St. Louis, Missouri, the tually become “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” seventh and last child of Henry Ware Eliot and and the “Preludes.” Charlotte Champe Stearns. 1910 1896 Earns a master’s degree in English literature at Henry, Sr., builds a substantial summer house on East- Harvard. That fall, sets off for a year abroad in ern Point at Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the Paris to study French language and literature at family has been vacationing annually. Eliot learns the Sorbonne and attend lectures at the Collège to sail in these waters. de France conducted by the renowned French idealist philosopher Henri Bergson. Works on 1898–1905 “Portrait of a Lady,” a poem that he does not Is educated at Smith Academy in St. Louis. Pub- complete until November 1911, after his return lishes several stories in the Smith Academy to America. Strikes up a friendship with a young Record inspired by the native village exhibits at Frenchman, Jean Verdenal, and becomes inter- the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. ested in Charles Maurras’s Action Française. 1905 1911 Spends his last year of secondary education as a Composes “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In student at Milton Academy in Milton, Massa- April, travels to London, in July to Munich and chusetts, in preparation for matriculating as an then south into Northern Italy. Returns home undergraduate at Harvard College. in September and that fall semester enrolls in 1906 Harvard’s graduate program to read for his doc- Passes the Harvard entrance exam in June. Enrolls torate in philosophy. Composes “La Figlia Che at Harvard College, where he completes the Piange” in November. undergraduate program in three years’ time. 1912 1908 Meets and falls in love with Emily Hale. In December, discovers Arthur Symons’s study, The Symbolist Movement in Literature. Begins to write 1913 poetry inspired by the French symbolists, in par- In June, purchases a copy of F. H. Bradley’s Appear- ticular Jules Laforgue. ance and Reality, the work that would become the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Studies 1909 that fall semester under Josiah Royce. In Octo- Joins the board of Harvard’s undergraduate literary ber, is appointed president of the University magazine, the Advocate. Graduates from Har- Philosophical Club. 577

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1914 tain him financially for the next seven years. In In March, meets Bertrand Russell, then visiting September begins to teach a six-month series at Harvard. Eliot obtains a Sheldon Travelling of weekly lectures on Victorian literature. Is Fellow in Philosophy to study Aristotle under reviewing for the prestigious Little Review and is the tutelage of Harold Joachim, one of Bradley’s appointed assistant poetry editor for the equally disciples at Merton College, Oxford. Arrives in significant publication, the Egoist. Publishes England in July and is in Marburg, Germany, “Dans le restaurant.” With Pound, begins to when war between Russia and Germany beaks experiment with the quatrain form developed out on August 1. Meets fellow American poet by the 19th-century French poet Théophile Ezra Pound in London on September 22. In early Gautier. Poems such as “The Hippopotamus” October, Pound sends Eliot’s “The Love Song of and “Sweeney among the Nightingales” ensue. J. Alfred Prufrock” to Harriet Monroe of Poetry magazine, for which Pound is the European edi- 1918 tor. Eliot begins his course of study at Oxford on In January, Knopf publishes in New York Ezra October 6. Pound: His Metric and Poetry, Eliot’s introduction to Pound’s latest work. 1915 On April 24, meets Vivien Haigh-Wood, the daugh- 1919 ter of the landscape and portrait painter Charles The Woolfs’ Hogarth Press releases Poems in May. Haigh-Wood; they marry on June 26. Jean Verde- Goes on a walking tour of southern France nal is killed in action in the Dardanelles in May. with Pound in August; views the Magdalenian “Prufrock” comes out in Poetry in June. Summers cave drawings to be found there. In September, with his family at Gloucester in July; Eliot will begins to write leading articles for the Times Lit- otherwise maintain his residence in England from erary Supplement. The Egoist ceases publication that time on. Through Lady Ottoline Morrell’s in December. “Tradition and the Individual Tal- literary salon at her estate at Garsington, comes ent” is published in its final numbers in Septem- to know Dame Edith and Sir Osbert Sitwell, Vir- ber and December. The idea of the objective ginia and Leonard Woolf, Aldous Huxley, and correlative is introduced in the essay “Hamlet Wyndham Lewis. Publishes the “Preludes” and and His Problems.” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” in Blast; “Portrait of a Lady” in Others; and “The Boston Evening 1920 Transcript,” “Aunt Helen,” and “Cousin Nancy” In February, Knopf publishes Poems 1920, which in Poetry. Pound includes him in his Catholic includes “Gerontion,” and the Ovid Press pub- Anthology of new voices then emerging in Eng- lishes Ara Vos Prec. Meets James Joyce in Paris in lish and American poetry. August. That September, intimates his hopes to find the time to work on “something . . . better 1916 or more important” than anything that he has Completes his Harvard doctoral dissertation, accomplished thus far—the future The Waste “Knowledge and the Objects of Experience Land. The Methuen Press publishes his first col- in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley.” Harvard lection of critical prose, The Sacred Wood, that accepts his thesis without any defense, transat- November. lantic travel being impeded by the war. Teaches Latin at Highgate Junior School and lectures on 1921 modern French and English literature. In March, Vivien collapses and has to be hospital- ized. With Dial editor Scofield Thayer, in July 1917 approaches Lady Rothermere with a proposal for In March begins to work for Lloyds Bank’s colonial a companion journal, the Criterion, that Eliot will and foreign department, a job that will main- edit from London. Works on The Waste Land. In

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late September, a physician recommends a pro- Spends January, February, and March presenting longed period of total rest for Eliot. Eliot takes a the Clark Lectures at Cambridge, which, titled three-month leave from Lloyds. In October, con- “The Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth valesces with Vivien in Margate; in November, Century,” are to be the first part of a never-com- checks into a clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland. pleted trilogy to be titled “The Disintegration Introduces the idea of the dissociation of sensi- of the Intellect.” Begins to translate the French bility in the essay “The Metaphysical Poets.” poet St.-John Perse’s Anabase. Visiting with his family in Rome later that year, Eliot falls to his 1922 knees in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà. In Paris in January, shares with Pound the manu- script of He Do the Police in Different Voices, an 1927 early draft of The Waste Land. In a letter to New Asks Stead for his assistance in becoming confirmed York lawyer and art patron John Quinn, Pound in the Church of England. On June 29, is baptized declares it “a damn good poem.” The Waste Land by Stead into the Church of England at Finstock is published simultaneously in the first number Church in the Cotswold. In November, becomes of Eliot’s Criterion in London and Thayer’s Dial a British citizen. Publishes “The Journey of the in New York in October and published in book Magi,” the first of five Christmas poems in Faber form, with notes, by Boni & Liveright in New & Gwyer’s Ariel series. Lady Rothermere with- York in December. Through Quinn’s support draws her financial support from the Criterion, Eliot is awarded a prize of $2,000 by the Dial. which returns to a quarterly publication schedule Eliot remands to Quinn the original The Waste and now is published by Faber & Gwyer and Land manuscript, which includes Pound’s and edited by Eliot. Eliot and Vivien become more Vivien’s suggested revisions, most of which Eliot and more estranged. In the preface to the prose incorporates into the finished poem. volume For Lancelot Andrews, declares himself a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and 1923 an Anglo-Catholic in religion. Publishes “Seneca Publishes 10 articles between April and December in Elizabethan Translation” and “Shakespeare 1923, including “The Function of Criticism.” and the Stoicism of Seneca.” Begins “Sweeney Agonistes.” Meets William 1928 Force Stead, an American poet who has also Publishes “Song for Simeon.” been ordained an Anglican priest. 1929 1924 Publishes “Animula.” Faber & Gwyer becomes Abandons “Sweeney Agonistes.” Faber & Faber. Publishes “Dante.”

1925 1930 Publishes “The Hollow Men,” a sequence cobbled Publishes “Marina.” “Ash-Wednesday,” parts of together from discarded verses from “Sweeney which had been appearing in the Criterion since Agonistes.” Begins to be drawn toward ortho- 1927, is published by Faber & Faber. Meets his dox Christianity. Leaves Lloyds for the publish- future theatrical collaborator E. Martin Browne ing house Faber & Gwyer, later Faber & Faber. at the episcopal palace of George Bell, the Angli- Faber & Gwyer publishes Poems, 1909–1925 in can bishop of Chichester, in December. December. 1931 1926 Publishes “Triumphal March,” Eliot’s final contri- Launches the New Criterion in January as a monthly bution to the Ariel series. It will later be incor- review that is more international in scope. porated into “Coriolan.”

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1932 1937 In September, Eliot returns to America for the first In August, visits East Coker, the Eliot ancestral time in 17 years to assume the Charles Eliot home in Gloucestershire. Completes a first draft Norton professorship at Harvard. In Cambridge, of The Family Reunion in November. renews his acquaintanceship with Emily Hale. Lectures at University of California, Los Ange- 1938 les, in December. Vivien is committed by her family to a private men- tal hospital. 1933 Revisits the subject of the Clark Lectures by pre- 1939 senting the Turnbull Lectures, titled “The Vari- Publishes Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and eties of Metaphysical Poetry,” at Johns Hopkins The Idea of a Christian Society. The Family Reunion in Baltimore in January. Lectures at Yale in New runs for a disappointing five weeks at London’s Haven, Connecticut, in February. In February Westminster Theatre, opening on March 21. In or March, asks his solicitors back in England to September of that year, begins to work on “East prepare a deed of separation from Vivien. She Coker.” Increasing tensions in Europe force the will not learn of the move until July. In April, Criterion to fold. gives the Page-Barbour Lectures at the Univer- sity of Virginia in Charlottesville. The Norton 1940 lectures are issued under the title The Use of “East Coker” is published in the Easter issue of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. Back in England, the New English Weekly. When Faber & Faber begins to work with Browne on the scenario and publishes “East Coker” in pamphlet form in Sep- choruses for a pageant play, The Rock, to aid a tember, it sells 12,000 copies. Begins to compose church building fund for London. “The Dry Salvages.”

1934 1941 In February, Faber & Faber publishes the Page-Bar- Sends a completed first draft of “The Dry Salvages” bour Lectures in After Strange Gods: A Primer of to his friend and confidante John Hayward on Modern Heresy. The Rock is performed at Sadler’s New Year’s Day. Publishes the finished poem in Wells Theatre in London from May 28 to June the New English Weekly in February. Completes a 9. Visits Burnt Norton with Emily Hale, who is first draft of “Little Gidding” in July. in England for the summer. Begins to work with Browne on Murder in the Cathedral. In Septem- 1942 ber, files for a formal separation from Vivien. Begins preliminary work on Notes towards the Defi- nition of Culture. Publishes “Little Gidding” in 1935 the New English Weekly in October. Murder in the Cathedral is presented in the Chap- ter House of Canterbury Cathedral on June 19. 1943 Composes “Burnt Norton.” Eliot’s Russell Square office and adjacent apart- ment at Faber & Faber’s is nearly destroyed by a 1936 “flying bomb” in June. Four Quartets comes out Begins work on The Family Reunion. In April, in book form in October. publishes Collected Poems, 1909–1935, which includes all of his major work to date as well as 1944 minor and unfinished poems. Makes a personal Publishes as “a preliminary sketch” a long article titled pilgrimage to Little Gidding, the site of a defunct “Notes towards a Definition of Culture” in three religious community, in May. consecutive issues of The New English Weekly.

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1945 1953 “Cultural Forces in the Human Order” is published Gives the lecture “American Literature and the in Prospect for Christendom, and finally appears American Language” at Washington University as the first chapter of Notes towards the Definition in St. Louis on June 9. The Confidential Clerk of Culture. debuts at Edinburgh Festival in August and opens at London’s Lyric Theatre on September 1946 16. Takes up residence with Hayward in a spacious London flat. Visits America. A new production 1954 of The Family Reunion is successfully mounted at In the autumn, Faber & Faber publishes what will the Mercury Theatre in October. Makes a series be his last poem, “The Cultivation of Christmas of radio addresses to the German people on the Trees,” as a part of their revived Ariel series. unity of European culture. 1956 1947 Publishes On Poetry and Poets, a new collection of On January 22, Vivien dies of a heart attack at selected essays. Drafts the first two acts of The the private mental hospital where she had been Elder Statesman, tentatively titled “The Rest confined since 1938. Is in the United States Cure.” from April to June. Receives an honorary degree from Harvard. The Family Reunion and 1957 Murder in the Cathedral are both selected for Marries Valerie Fletcher, his personal secretary at performances for the inaugural season of the Faber & Faber, on January 10. Completes The Edinburgh Festival. Elder Statesman that autumn.

1948 1958 In July, sends Martin Browne a draft of the first In late May, is awarded the Dante Gold Medal three acts of a play titled “One-Eyed Reilly.” at the Italian Institute in London on behalf of Publishes Notes towards the Definition of Culture the comune of Florence, Dante’s native city. The in November. On December 10, in Stockholm, Elder Statesman debuts at Edinburgh on August Sweden, Eliot is awarded the Nobel Prize in lit- 24 and opens at the Cambridge Theatre in Lon- erature for that year. don in September.

1949 1959 A production of “One-Eyed Reilly,” now called “To My Wife,” his last published poetry, serves as The Cocktail Party, is successfully mounted at his dedication to The Elder Statesman when it is the Edinburgh Festival during the last week of published in book form. August. 1961 1950 The Eliots spend seven weeks in America, where The Cocktail Party premiers at New York’s Henry he makes a series of public appearances, fol- Miller Theatre on Broadway on January 21. lowed by an extended holiday in Barbados. Eliot is featured on the cover of Time magazine on March 6. 1962 They return to England in March. Contemplates 1951 a new play, but never commences work on it. Drafts the first two scenes of The Confidential Clerk. Prepares his Harvard doctoral dissertation for In May, The Cocktail Party opens in London. publication. At year’s end, he collapses and is

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hospitalized under continuous oxygen for the published posthumously later that year. Eliot’s next five weeks. ashes are interred at St. Michael’s, the East Coker village church. 1963 Eliot is in and out of hospitals as his lungs and 1967 heart continue to deteriorate. In November, he On the second anniversary of Eliot’s death, a and Valerie make a last visit to America, return- memorial plaque is installed in his honor in ing to England the following April. Westminster Abbey.

1964 1968 Is busy at work on a collection of his essays, To On October 25, the New York Public Library Criticize the Critic. Publishes his Harvard doc- reveals that the original drafts of The Waste toral dissertation under the title Knowledge and Land had been sold to the Berg Collection in Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. In April 1958 by John Quinn’s niece, Mary (Mrs. October, collapses at home and is hospitalized Thomas F. Conroy). in a deep coma and with a paralysis on his left side. 1971 In the spring, Eliot’s widow, Valerie, publishes the 1965 original drafts of The Waste Land in both facsim- Dies on January 4 at his Kensington home. To Criti- ile and transcript in a heavily annotated book- cize the Critic, a final collection of his prose, is length edition.

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Unless otherwise noted, Eliot’s London publisher Murder in the Cathedral. London, 1935. was Faber & Faber; his publisher in New York was Collected Poems, 1909–1935. London, 1936. Harcourt, Brace. Essays Ancient and Modern. London, 1936. The Family Reunion. London, 1939. Prufrock and Other Observations. London: Egoist The Idea of a Christian Society. London, 1939. Limited Press, 1917. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. London, 1939. Ezra Pound, His Metric and His Poetry. New York: “East Coker.” London, 1940. Knopf, 1918. “Burnt Norton.” London, 1941. Poems. London: The Hogarth Press, 1919. “The Dry Salvages.” London, 1941. Ara Vos Prec. London: John Rodker, 1920. “Little Gidding.” London, 1942. Poems. New York: Knopf, 1920. Reunion by Destruction. London, 1943. The Sacred Wood. London: Methuen; and New Four Quartets. London, 1944. York: Knopf, 1920. Notes towards the Definition of Culture. London, The Waste Land. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1948. 1922. The Cocktail Party. London, 1950. Homage to John Dryden. London: The Hogarth The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. London, Press, 1924. 1952. Poems, 1909–1925. London, 1925. The Confidential Clerk. London, 1954. For Lancelot Andrewes. London, 1928. The Cultivation of Christmas Trees. New York: Far- Dante. London, 1929. rar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956. Anabasis, a Poem by St-J Perse. London, 1930. Essays on Elizabethan Drama. New York, 1956. “Ash-Wednesday.” London, 1930. On Poetry and Poets. London, 1957. Thoughts after Lambeth. London, 1931. The Elder Statesman. London, 1959. Triumphal March. London, 1931. Collected Plays. London, 1962. John Dryden: The Poet, the Dramatist, the Critic. New George Herbert. London, 1962. York, 1932. Collected Poems, 1909–1962. London, 1963. Selected Essays, 1909–1932. London, 1932. Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Sweeney Agonistes. London, 1932. Bradley. London, 1964. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. London, To Criticize the Critic, and Other Writings. London, 1933. 1965. After Strange Gods. London, 1934. Poems Written in Early Youth. London, 1967. Elizabethan Essays. London, 1934. The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot. London, The Rock. London, 1934. 1969.

583

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The Waste Land [A facsimile and transcript of the The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. Edited by Ronal original drafts]. Edited by Valerie Eliot. London, Schuchard. New York, 1993. 1971. Adventures of the March Hare. Edited by Christo- Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Edited by Frank Ker- pher Ricks. New York, 1996. mode. London, 1975.

575-589_Eliot_p4-bm.indd 584 9/5/07 2:47:21 PM SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY SOURCES

Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: A Life. New York: Simon & Blissett, William. “The Argument of T. S. Eliot’s Four Schuster, 1984. Quartets.” University of Toronto Quarterly 15 (Janu- Ali, Agha Shahid. T. S. Eliot as Editor. Ann Arbor: ary 1946): 115–126. UMI Research Press, 1986. Bolgan, Anne C. What the Thunder Really Said: A Ret- Allan, Mowbray. T. S. Eliot’s Impersonal Theory of rospective Essay on the Making of The Waste Land. Poetry. Lewisburg, Pa.: Associated University Press, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973. 1973. Bornstein, George. Transformations of Romanticism Alldritt, Keith. Eliot’s Four Quartets: Poetry as Cham- in Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens. Chicago: University of ber Music. Totowa, N.J.: Woburn Press, 1978. Chicago Press, 1976. Antrim, Harry. T. S. Eliot’s Concept of Language: A Braybrooke, Neville, ed. T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for Study of Its Development. Gainesville: Florida Uni- His Seventieth Birthday. New York: Farrar, 1958. versity Press, 1971. Brooker, Jewel Spears. “Civilization and Its Discontents: Badenhausen, Richard. T. S. Eliot and the Art of Col- Eliot, Descartes, and the Mind of Europe.” Modern laboration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Schoolman 73, no. 1 (November 1995): 59–70. 2004. ———. Mastery and Escape: T. S. Eliot and the Dia- Bagchee, Shyamal, ed. T. S. Eliot: A Voice Descanting. lectic of Modernism. Amherst: University of Mas- London: Macmillan, 1990. sachusetts Press, 1994. Bantock, G. H. T. S. Eliot and Education. London: ———, ed. The Placing of T. S. Eliot. Columbia: Uni- Faber, 1970. versity of Missouri Press, 1991. Bedient, Calvin. He Do the Police in Different Voices: ———. “ ‘The Second Coming’ and The Waste Land: The Waste Land and Its Protagonist. Chicago: Uni- Capstones in the Western Civilization Course.” versity of Chicago Press, 1986. College Literature 13 (1986): 240–253. Beehler, Michael. T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and the ———. “The Structure of Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’: An Discourses of Difference. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Analysis Based on Bradley’s Doctrine of the Sys- State University Press, 1987. tematic Nature of Truth.” ELH 46, no. 2 (1979): Behr, Caroline. T. S. Eliot: A Chronology of his Life and 314–340. Works. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1983. ———, ed. T. S. Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews. Bergonzi, Bernard. T. S. Eliot. New York: Collier Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Books, 1972. Brooker, Jewel Spears, and Joseph Bentley. Reading The ———, ed. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: A Casebook. Waste Land: Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Bergsten, Staffan. Time and Eternity. A Study in the Brooks, Cleanth. The Hidden God: Studies in Heming- Structure and Symbolism of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quar- way, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren. New Haven: tets. Stockholm: Uppsala, 1960. Yale University Press, 1963. 585

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———. Modern Poetry and the Tradition. 1939. Rpt. tianity and Literature 30, no. 4 (Summer 1981): New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. 37–51. Browne, E. Martin. The Making of T. S. Eliot’s Plays. Donnelly, Mabel C. “The Failure of Act III of Eliot’s Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. The Cocktail Party.” College Language Association Bush, Ronald. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Journal 21 (1977): 58–61. Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Donoghue, Denis. “On ‘Gerontion.’ ” Southern Review Canary, Robert H. T. S. Eliot: The Poet and His Critics. 21 (1985): 934–946. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ———. The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in Modern Chace, William M. The Political Identities of Ezra Pound Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1968. and T. S. Eliot. Stanford: Stanford University Press, ———. The Third Voice. Modern British and Ameri- 1973. can Verse Drama. Princeton: Princeton University Chandran, K. Narayana, ed. “DA/Datta: Teach- Press, 1959. ing The Waste Land.” CIEFL Bulletin 11, no. 1–2 Douglass, Paul. Bergson, Eliot, and American Literature. (December 2001). Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986. Chiari, Joseph. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir. London: Enithar- Drew, Elizabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry. mon Press, 1982. New York: Scribner’s, 1949. Childs, Donald J. “Stetson in The Waste Land.” Essays Ellis, Steve. The English Eliot: Design, Language, and in Criticism 38 (1988): 131–148. Landscape in Four Quartets. London: Routledge, Chinitz, David. T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide. Chi- 1991. cago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Ellmann, Richard. Eminent Domain: Yeats among Wilde, Clubb, Merrel D., Jr. “The Heraclitean Element in Joyce, Pound, Eliot, and Auden. New York: Oxford Eliot’s Four Quartets.” Philological Quarterly 40 University Press, 1967. (January 1961): 19–33. Everett, Barbara. “In Search of Prufrock.” Critical Comentale, Edward P. Modernism, Cultural Produc- Quarterly 16 (1974): 101–121. tion, and the British Avant-Garde. Cambridge: Cam- Fabricius, Johannes. The Unconscious and Mr. Eliot. bridge University Press, 2004. Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1967. Cowan, Laura, ed. T. S. Eliot: Man and Poet. Vol. 1. Foster, Genevieve W. “The Archetypal Imagery of T. Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1990. S. Eliot.” PMLA 60 (1945): 567–585. Cox, C. B., and A. P. Hinchcliffe, eds. The Waste Land: Fleissner, Robert F. T. S. Eliot and the Heritage of Africa: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1968. The Magus and the Moor as Metaphor. New York: Craig, Cairns. Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and the Politics of Peter Lang, 1992. Poetry. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Flinn, Anthony. Approaching Authority: Transpersonal Crawford, Robert. The Savage and the City in the Works of Gestures in the Poetry of Yeats, Eliot, and Williams. T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1997. Cuddy, Lois, and David Hirsch, eds. Critical Essays on Freed, Lewis. T. S. Eliot: The Critic as Philosopher. West The Waste Land. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991. Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1979. D’Ambrosio, Vinnie-Marie. Eliot Possessed: T. S. Eliot Freedman, Morris. “Jazz Rhythms and T. S. Eliot.” and Fitzgerald’s “Rubáiyát.” New York: New York South Atlantic Quarterly 51 (1952): 419–453. University Press, 1989. Frye, Northrop. T. S. Eliot. Edinburgh: Oliver and Dale, Alzina Stone. T. S. Eliot: The Philosopher-Poet. Boyd, 1963. Wheaton, Ill.: Shaw, 1988. Gallup, Donald. T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography. Rev. ed. Davis, Robert Gorham. T. S. Eliot. New York: Barnes, New York: Harcourt, 1969. 1963. ———. T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Collaborators in Dean, Michael P. “Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi,’ 24– Letters. New Haven: H. W. Wenning/C. A. Stone- 25.” Explicator 37, no. 4 (1979): 9–10. hill, 1970. Dillingham, Thomas F. “Origen and Sweeney: The Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot. New York: Dut- Problem of Christianity for T. S. Eliot.” Chris- ton, 1950.

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———. The Composition of Four Quartets. London: Horgan, Paul. “To Meet Mr. Eliot: Three Glimpses.” Faber, 1978. American Scholar 60, no. 3 (1991): 407–413. ———. T. S. Eliot and the English Poetic Tradition. Not- Howarth, Herbert. Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. tingham: University of Nottingham, 1966. Eliot. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. George, A. G. T. S. Eliot: His Mind and Art. New York: Huisman, David. “Title and Subject in The Sacred Asia Publishing House, 1969. Wood.” Essays in Criticism 39 (1989): 217–233. Giroux, Robert. “A Personal Memoir.” Sewanee Review Ishak, Fayek M. The Mystical Philosophy of T. S. Eliot. (Eliot Issue) 74 (1966): 331–338. New Haven: College and University Press, 1970. Gish, Nancy K. Time in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot: A Study Jain, Manju. T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The in Structure and Theme. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Harvard Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Noble, 1981. Press, 1992. Gish, Nancy, and Cassandra Laity, eds. Gender, Desire, Jay, Gregory S. T. S. Eliot and the Poetics of Literary and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University University Press, 2004. Press, 1983. Gordon, Lyndall. Eliot’s Early Years. New York: Oxford Jeffreys, Mark. “The Rhetoric of Authority in T. S. University Press, 1977. Eliot’s Athenaeum Reviews.” South Atlantic Review ———. Eliot’s New Life. New York: Farrar, 1988. 57, no. 4 (1992): 93–108. Grant, Michael, ed. T. S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage. Jones, D. E. The Plays of T. S. Eliot. London: Routledge Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982. and Kegan Paul, 1960. Gray, Piers. T. S. Eliot’s Intellectual and Poetic Development, Jones, Genesius. Approach to the Purpose: A Study of 1909–1922. Sussex, U.K.: Harvester Press, 1982. the Poetry of T. S. Eliot. Westport, Conn.: Green- Greene, Gayle. “Shakespeare’s Tempest and Eliot’s wood, 1964. Waste Land: ‘What the Thunder Said.’ ” Orbis Lit- Julius, Anthony. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Liter- terarum 34 (1979): 287–300. ary Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Gunter, Bradley, ed. The Merrill Studies in The Waste 1995. Land. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1971. Kearns, Cleo McNelly. T. S. Eliot and Indic Traditions. Habib, M. A. R. The Early T. S. Eliot and West- Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Kenner, Hugh, ed. T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Press, 1999. Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1962. Hall, Donald. “Interview with T. S. Eliot.” In Writers ———. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. 1959. Rpt. New at Work: The Paris Reviews, 2d Series, 89–110. New York: Citadel Press, 1964. York: Viking, 1963. Kirk, Russell. Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot’s Moral Harding, Jason. The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Imagination in the Twentieth Century. New York: Periodical Networks in Inter-war Britain. Oxford: Random House, 1971. Oxford University Press, 2002. Knoll, Robert E., ed. Storm over the Waste Land. Chi- Hargrove, Nancy. Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of cago: Scott, 1964. T. S. Eliot. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Kojecky, Roger. T. S. Eliot’s Social Criticism. London: 1978. Faber, 1971. Hay, Eloise Knapp. T. S. Eliot’s Negative Way. Cam- Leavis, F. R. English Literature in Our Time and the Uni- bridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. versity. London: Chatto and Windus, 1969. Headings, Philip R. T. S. Eliot. New York: Twayne, 1964. ———. New Bearings in English Poetry. 1932. Rpt. Helmling, Steven. “T. S. Eliot and Ralph Ellison: Insid- London: Chatto and Windus, 1971. ers, Outsiders, and Cultural Authority.” Southern Lee, Brian. Theory and Personality: the Significance of T. Review 25 (1989): 841–858. S. Eliot’s Criticism. London: Athlone Press, 1979. Ho, Cynthia Olson. “Savage Gods and Salvaged Time: Leon, Juan. “ ‘Meeting Mr. Eugenides’: T. S. Eliot and Eliot’s Dry Salvages.” Yeats Eliot Review 12, no. 1 Eugenic Anxiety.” Yeats Eliot Review 9, no. 4 (Sum- (Summer 1993): 16–23. mer/Fall 1988): 169–177.

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Litz, A. Walton, ed. Eliot in His Time: Essays on the Mayer, John T. T. S. Eliot’s Silent Voices. Oxford: Oxford Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of The Waste University Press, 1989. Land. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. McDonald, Gail. Learning to Be Modern: Pound, Eliot, Lobb, Edward. T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tra- and the American University. Oxford: Oxford Uni- dition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. versity Press, 1993. ———, ed. Words in Time: New Essays on T. S. Eliot’s Menand, Louis. Discovering Modernism: T. S. Eliot and Four Quartets. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan His Context. New York: Oxford University Press, Press, 1993. 1987. Lockerd, Benjamin G., Jr. Aethereal Rumours: T. S. Miller, James E., Jr. T. S. Eliot’s Personal Waste Land: Eliot’s Physics and Poetics. Cranbury, N.J.: Associ- Exorcism of the Demons. University Park: Pennsyl- ated University Presses, 1998. vania State University Press, 1977. Longenbach, James. Modernist Poetics of History: Miller, Milton. “What the Thunder Meant.” ELH 36 Pound, Eliot, and the Sense of the Past. Princeton: (1969): 440–454. Princeton University Press, 1987. Montgomery, Marion. T. S. Eliot: An Essay on the Amer- Malamud, Randy. Where Words Are Valid: T. S. Eliot’s ican Magus. Athens: University of Georgia Press, Communities of Drama. Westport, Conn.: Green- 1969. wood, 1994. ———. The Reflective Journey toward Order: Essays Manganiello, Dominic. “Literature, Science, and on Dante, Wordsworth, Eliot, and Others. Athens: Dogma: T. S. Eliot and I. A. Richards on Dante.” University of Georgia Press, 1973. Christianity and Literature 43 (1993): 59–73. Moody, A. D. T. S. Eliot: Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ———. T. S. Eliot and Dante. London: Macmillan, Naik, M. K. Mighty Voices: Studies in T. S. Eliot. New 1989. Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1980. Mankowitz, Wolf. “Notes on ‘Gerontion.’ ” In T. S . Newton-De Molina, D., ed. The Literary Criticism of T. Eliot: A Study of His Writings by Several Hands, S. Eliot. London: Athlone Press, 1977. edited by B. Rajan, 129–138. New York: Haskell Olney, James, ed. T. S. Eliot: Essays from the “Southern House, 1964. Review.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. March, Richard, and Tambimuttu, eds. T. S. Eliot: A Ozick, Cynthia. “A Critic at Large: T. S. Eliot at 101.” Symposium. London: Frank Cass, 1948. New Yorker, November 20, 1989, 119–154. Margolis, John D. T. S. Eliot’s Intellectual Development: Patterson, Gertrude. T. S. Eliot: Poems in the Making. 1922–1939. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1971. 1972. Perl, Jeffrey M. Skepticism and Modern Enmity: Before Martin, Graham, ed. Eliot in Perspective: A Symposium. and After Eliot. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer- New York: Humanities Press, 1970. sity Press, 1989. Martin, Jay, ed. A Collection of Critical Essays on The Pinion, F. B. A T. S. Eliot Companion: Life and Works. Waste Land. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, London: Macmillan, 1986. 1968. Pratt, William. “Eliot at Oxford: From Philosopher to Martin, Mildred. A Half Century of Eliot Criticism. Poet to Critic.” Soundings 78 (1995): 321–337. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1972. Raffel, Burton. T. S. Eliot. New York: Unger, 1982. Materer, Timothy. Vortex: Pound, Eliot, and Lewis. Rajan, Balachandra. The Overwhelming Question: A Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979. Study of the Poetry of T. S. Eliot. Toronto: University Matthews, T. S. Great Tom: Notes towards the Defini- of Toronto Press, 1976. tion of T. S. Eliot. New York: Harper, 1974. Read, Herbert. “T. S. E.—A Memoir.” Sewanee Review Matthiessen, F. O., and C. L. Barber. The Achievement (Eliot Issue) 74 (1966): 31–57. of T. S. Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Rees, Thomas. The Technique of T. S. Eliot. The Hague: 1958. Mouton, 1974. Maxwell, D. E. S. The Poetry of T. S. Eliot. London: Ricks, Beatrice. T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography of Secondary Routledge, 1952. Works. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1981.

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Ricks, Christopher. T. S. Eliot and Prejudice. London: Soldo, John J. The Tempering of T. S. Eliot. Ann Arbor: Faber, 1988. UMI Research Press, 1983. Schneider, Elisabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Pattern in the Car- Southam, B. C. A Student’s Guide to the Selected Poems pet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. of T. S. Eliot. London: Faber, 1987. Schwartz, Sanford. The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Spender, Stephen. T. S. Eliot. New York: Viking, 1975. Eliot, and Early Twentieth-Century Thought. Princ- Spurr, David. Conflicts in Consciousness: T. S. Eliot’s eton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Poetry and Criticism. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illi- Schwarz, Robert L. Broken Images: A Study of The nois Press, 1984. Waste Land. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, Stead, C. K. The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot. London: 1988. Hutchinson, 1964. Scofield, Mark. The Ghosts of Hamlet: The Play and Stephenson, E. M. T. S. Eliot and the Lady Reader. New Modern Writers. Cambridge: Cambridge University York: Haskell, 1966. Press, 1980. Strothmann, Friedrich W., and Lawrence V. Ryan. ———. T. S. Eliot: The Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge “Hope for T. S. Eliot’s ‘Empty Men.’ ” PMLA 73 University Press, 1988. (1958): 426–432. Sencourt, Robert. T. S. Eliot: A Memoir. Edited by Sullivan, Sheila, ed. Critics on T. S. Eliot. London: Donald Adamson. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1971. Allen & Unwin, 1973. Seyppel, Joachim. T. S. Eliot. New York: Unger, 1972. Sultan, Stanley. Eliot, Joyce, and Company. Oxford: Sharma, L. R. The T. S. Eliot–Middleton Murry Debate: Oxford University Press, 1987. The Shaping of Literary Theory, Modernist to Post- Tate, Allen, ed. T. S. Eliot: The Man and His Work. structuralist. Allahabad, India: Silver Birch, 1994. New York: Dell, 1966. Shusterman, Richard. T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Thompson, Eric. T. S. Eliot, the Metaphysical Perspec- Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, tive. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. 1963. Sigg, Eric. The American T. S. Eliot: A Study of the Thormälen, Marianne. Eliot’s Animals. Lund: Gleerup, Early Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University 1984. Press, 1989. Timmerman, John H. T. S. Eliot’s Ariel Poems: The Simpson, Louis. Three on the Tower. The Lives and Poetics of Recovery. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell Uni- Works of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos versity Press, 1994. Williams. New York: Morrow, 1975. Tobin, David Ned. The Presence of the Past: T. S. Eliot’s Skaff, William. The Philosophy of T. S. Eliot: From Skep- Victorian Inheritance. In Studies in Modern Literature ticism to a Surrealist Poetic, 1909–1927. Philadel- 8. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983. phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Unger, Leonard. T. S. Eliot: Moments and Patterns. Smidt, Kristian. Poetry and Belief in the Work of T. S. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Eliot. New York: Humanities, 1961. 1956. Smith, Carol H. T. S. Eliot’s Dramatic Theory and Prac- Verma, Rajendra. Royalist in Politics: T. S. Eliot and tice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963. Political Philosophy. London: Asia House, 1968. Smith, Grover, ed. Josiah Royce’s Seminar, 1913–1914, as Ward, David. T. S. Eliot between Two Worlds. London: Recorded in the Notebooks of Harry T. Costello. New Routledge, 1973. Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963. Warren, Charles. T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare. In Studies ———. T. S. Eliot and the Use of Memory. Cranbury, in Modern Literature 66. Ann Arbor: UMI Research N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1996. Press, 1987. ———. T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources Williamson, George. A Reader’s Guide to T. S. Eliot: A and Meaning. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chi- Poem-by-Poem Analysis. 2d ed. New York: Noonday cago Press, 1974. Press, 1966. ———. The Waste Land. London: Allen and Unwin, Wilson, Edmund. Axel’s Castle. New York: Scribner’s, 1983. 1931.

575-589_Eliot_p4-bm.indd 589 9/5/07 2:47:22 PM INDEX

Note: Page numbers in The Eumenides 172–174 air, in “Burnt Norton” 188, Anglo-American culture boldface indicate main Oresteia 172–174, 203 35–42 entires. Page numbers in 180–181, 382–383 Albert (character) 454 Anglo-Catholicism 18, italic indicate photographs. aestheticism 53–54, 233. Alcestis (character) 511–512 See also pure poetry 105–106 Anglo-Catholic Summer A Africa 390–391, 530–531 Alcestis (Euripides) 104, School of Sociology 87 “Abenddämmerung” 507 After Strange Gods 33–42 105–106 Anima Christi (prayer) 71 Absolute Knower 554 anti-Semitism in 405, Alchemist, The (Jonson) 165 “Animula” 48–50 abstraction, in “Burnt 500 Aldington, Richard 410, child in 144 Norton” 194 audience of 34 514, 521 composition of 19 academia, career in 99 conservatism of 286, Alice in Wonderland (Carroll) “Marina” and 303 academic critics 403 399 391 publication of 143 accessibility 125–126, 146, critical commentary alienation 40. See also The Rock and 95–96 191–192, 385, 425 41–42 isolation Annunciation, in “The Dry action on criticism 237–238 allegory 146–147, 242, 243 Salvages” 212, 213–214 in drama 352 on cultural deterioration Almayer’s Folly (Conrad) 512 anthologies 487 in Four Quartets 200, 103 “Al som de l’escalina” Antigone (Sophocles) 331, 206–207, 208, 223, Lawrence in 540 19, 55. See also “Ash- 460 224, 225–226, 226 lectures of 20 Wednesday” anti-Semitism 498–501 in Murder in the Murry in 545 America 317, 500, 565 in After Strange Gods Cathedral 327 publication of 405 American Criticism (Foerster) 34–35, 405 Action française 87, 288, public commentary in 262 in “Burbank” 83, 84–85 500 135 American culture. See in “Gerontion” 241 “Ad-dressing of Cats, The” synopsis 33–41 Anglo-American culture of Pound 547, 549 349 The Use of Poetry and “American Literature and Woolf (Leonard) on Admetus (character) 105– 412 the American Language” 570–571 106, 115–116 Yeats in 494 42–44, 522, 536–537, Antony and Cleopatra Advent 304 Agamemnon (Aeschylus) 557, 569 (Shakespeare) 452 Advocate (magazine) 6, 7, 172, 381, 389–390, “Among the School Apocalypse Now (film) 531 497 432–433 Children” (Yeats) 574 Apollo (mythological figure) Aegisthus (mythological Agamemnon (mythological Anabase (Perse). See 173–174 figure) 172–173, 382, figure) 172, 382, 384, Anabasis Apology for Poetry (Sidney) 390, 433 390, 392 Anabasis 19, 44–47 414 Aeneas (character) 186, Agatha (character) 174– Anabasis (Xenophon) 44 “Apology for the Countess of 423 180, 183, 184 Anderson, Sherwood 519 Pembroke” 414–415 Aeneid (Virgil) 102, 186, “Age of Dryden, The” Andrewes, Lancelot 100, appearance, v. reality 127 422, 423, 485–486 415–416 277, 285–286 Appearance and Reality Aeschylus aging 130–133, 206, 222 “Andrew Marvell” 47–48 (Bradley) 8, 230, 279, 509 Agamemnon 172, 381, agony 140, 384, 467 Angel, Lucasta (character) apprehension, perception 389–390, 432–433 Agrarian Movement 423 119–125 and 282 Choephoroi 173, Aiken, Conrad 7, 476–477, Anglicanism 511–512. See “Araby” (Joyce) 534 382–383 497–498, 521, 528, 548 also Anglo-Catholicism Ara Vos Prec 13, 83, 249 590

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Argentina, in “Sweeney composition of 330 autocrats 135 Becket, Thomas (character) among the Nightingales” confession in 70 autoeroticism, in “The 324–330. See also Thomas 390 conversion experience Death of Saint Narcissus” à Becket, Saint Ariadne (mythological in 71–72 150 beginnings, in Four Quartets figure) 394–395, 397 critical commentary “Autre Complainte de Lord 196, 203, 226 Arian heresy 564 71–74 Pierrot” (Laforgue) 129 belief Ariel Poems 19, 50–52. guilt in 59–60 autumn, in “East Coker” in Ariel Poems 51–52 See also “Animula”; ideology of 15 188 in “Ash-Wednesday” “Cultivation of Christmas individual in 58 awakening 55–58 Trees, The”; “Journey influences on, Dante in “Ash-Wednesday” in Christian society 268 of the Magi”; “Marina”; 60, 61–63, 62–63, 59–63 in Dante 147–148 “Song for Simeon, A” 64, 71 in “The Burial of the in Davies 373–374 child in 144 intentions of 55 Dead” 444, 445 international order conflicts in 301 landscape in 63 in “Burnt Norton based on 87–90 publication of 143 meaning of 71–74 194–195 in “Little Gidding” 220 title of 51 as modernist long poem in The Family Reunion modern problem of 73 “Triumphal March” and 45 176, 178, 179 necessity of 50, 92 134 obscurities of 192 to reality 182–183, v. poetry aristocracy 84, 429 as poetry of belief 69 184 in After Strange Aristophanes, Lysistrata 381 prayer in 61, 65, 67, 70, in spiritual biography Gods 37, 38–39 Arjuna (mythological figure) 71, 73 72 in Ariel Poems 52 211, 213, 215, 217 precursors to 44 Axël (Villiers de l’Isle critical commentary Arnold, Matthew 501–502 publication of 19, Adams) 561 on 148, 229, 408, Babbitt influenced by 54–55, 515 Axel’s Castle (Wilson) 562 419 503 purgative in 63–65 in “Goethe as Sage” Bradley compared to redemption in 67 B 246 231 regeneration in 63–64 Babbitt, Irving 102, 261, poetry of 56–57, 67–69, critical theory of 238, religion in 56–57 403, 503–504, 528 69, 73, 147–148, 214 417–418, 419 simplicity in 57 Babylonian captivity 95 of poet v. person 52, humanism of 52–54 speaker of 58 Baedeker travel guides 82 148 in “To Criticize the spiral staircase of 64– balance, in “Whispers of Bell, George 21, 22, 91, Critic” 402 65, 201, 202 Immortality” 489 322, 509 Arnold, Thomas 501 as spiritual biography “Ballad of the Goodly Fere, “Ben Jonson” 164–165 “Arnold and Pater” 52–54 72 The” (Pound) 276 Bergson, Henri 279, art synopsis 59–71 Balliol College 501 505–506 in Christian society 267 Part I 59–61 baptism 463 biography 3–29 collaboration with Part II 61–63 Battle of Britain 24, 191, critical attention paid audience 300 Part III 63–65 193, 218–219, 220–221, to 3 complexity in, reasons Part IV 65–67 224, 244 in The Elder Statesman for 192 Part V 67–68 “Baudelaire” 76–80 171 in “La Figlia Che Part VI 68–71 Baudelaire, Charles 504– in Four Quartets 188, Piange” 187 unitive in 65–68 505 196, 204, 210, 218 responses elicited by Aspatia (character) 394– Donne compared to in poetry 71–72 247 395 100 Blacks (Guelfs) 516–517 sale of 84 Aspern Papers, The (James) influence of 80, Blake, William 491–492 Arthur (character) 178 83 141–142, 313–314, blank verse 98, 360, 414, Arthurian legend, Holy Athena (mythological 366, 484 415 Grail in 524, 569–570 figure) 174 Laforgue influenced blasphemy, in After Strange Ascent of Mt. Carmel, The Athenaeum 13, 246, 545 by 538 Gods 40–41 (St. John of the Cross) Atreus (mythological figure) Poe and 234 Blast (review) 11, 358, 363, 207 172–173, 392 in symbolism 561 548 Ash Wednesday 58–59 attachment, in “Little truthfulness in 357 Blavatsky, Madame 132– “Ash-Wednesday” 54–74 Gidding” 223 in The Waste Land 450 133 allusions in 55, 60, Augustine, Saint 447, 462 wit of 47 Bleistein (character) 83–85, 62–63, 64, 71 “Aunt Helen” 11, 74–76, Beacon Hill 507 499 awakening in 59–63 141, 507 “Beast in the Jungle, The” Blick ins Chaos (Hesse) 468 background autobiography, poetry and (James) 355 Bloomsbury district 542– considerations 55–59 145–146 Beatrice 62, 66, 517, 518 543, 543

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Bloomsbury Group 11, 543, Brémond, Abbé 419–420 Ulysses compared to Candide (Voltaire) 473 544, 559, 570 Bridge, The (Crane) 200 535 Canterbury Festival 22, Boleyn, Anne 511–512 British Empire 137–140, 542 urban life in 200 322, 509 Bolo poems. See King Bolo British Museum 541, 543 vers libre in 568 Canterbury Tales, The poems British-Norwegian waste in 453 (Chaucer) 324, 443–445 bones, in “Ash-Wednesday” Institution 374 World War I and 428 Cantos (Pound) 171, 260, 63 Brito, Richard (character) “Burnt Norton.” See also 549 Bonfire Night 253–254 329 Four Quartets Cape Ann 209, 526–527 Boniface VIII (pope) 518 Broadway 104, 509 aging in 133–134 “Cape Ann” 310 Boni & Liveright 424, 442 “Broken Men, The” air in 188, 203 Captains Courageous Book of Common Prayer (Kipling) 252, 532 allusions in 198, (Kipling) 215, 527 443 Brooks, Cleanth 478 199–200 cards, suits of 449 Book of the Governor (Elyot) Brothers Karamazov, The awakening in 194–195 Carghill, Maisie (character) 204–205 (Dostoyevsky) 468 as beginning 196 156, 157, 158–160 boredom 300, 451–452, 454 Browne, E. Martin 509–510 biography in 196 caricature, Marlowe and 98 Borgia, Lucretia 132 collaboration with 21– children in 195–196, Carlyle, Thomas 561 Boston 506–507 22, 91–92, 180, 322 201 Carroll, Lewis 391 in “Aunt Helen” 74–76 Murder in the Cathedral Christ in 201 Cathay (Pound) 547 in “The Boston Evening and 189–190, 322 composition of 22, Catherine of Aragon Transcript” 80, 81 Browning, Robert 83, 293, 189–190 511–512 connections to 3 401 contrasts in 199, 201 Catholic Anthology 11 in “Cousin Nancy” Bubu de Montparnasse death in 201 Catholicism 45, 58, 141–143 (Phillipe) 365 eternity in 201 511–512, 565. See also high society of 142 Burbank, Luther 85 inspiration for 21 Anglicanism; Anglo- in “The Love Song of J. “Burbank with a Baedeker, memory in 194–197 Catholicism; Christianity; Alfred Prufrock” 289, Bleistein with a Cigar” motifs of 194 Roman Catholicism 290 82–85, 241, 499 movement in 201–202 “Catholicism and propriety of 74–76, 142 “Burial of the Dead, The” Murder in the Cathedral International Order” Unitarianism in 565 442–451 and 22, 189–190 87–90, 511 Boston Athanæum 507 allusions in (See Waste music in 198 Catiline (Jonson) 165 Boston Common 507 Land, The, allusions in) philosophy in 189, 203 Cats (musical) 349 “Boston Evening Transcript, awakening in 444 reality in 194–197 cause, devotion to 258–259 The” 80–82 boredom in 451 reference points of 194 Cavalcanti, Cavalcante Beacon Hill in 507 death in 451 rose garden in 128, dei 60 “Cousin Nancy” and fear in 449–450 194–195, 200 Cavalcanti, Guido 140–141 fortune-telling in still point in 199–200 “Ash-Wednesday” and publication of 11 448–449 subway in 200–201 20, 45, 55, 58–59 ritual in 315 gender in 447 summer in 188 Dante and 517 Boston Tea Party 506 hyacinth garden in 447 synopsis 194–203 in The Divine Comedy Boutwood Foundation 264 London Bridge in 449 Part I 194–198 60 Bradley, A. C. 508 love in 448 Part II 198–200 exile of 59, 67–68 Bradley, F. H. (Francis speaker of 441, 446 Part III 200–201 Cecil, Hugh 287 Herbert) 8, 471, 507–509 spirituality in 56, 70, 383 Part IV 201 celebrity, in “Mr. Apollinax” Bergson and 505 as structural model 201 Part V 201–203 317 in “Burnt Norton” success of 143, 313 time in 194–197, 201 Cellarius, Martin 564 199–200 synopsis 442–473 Burnt Norton (place) 188, Chamberlain, Neville 23, “Francis Herbert “The Burial of the 195, 197 270, 271 Bradley” 230–232 Dead” 442–451 “Bustopher Jones: The Cat Chamberlayne, Edward influence of 281, 282 “Death by Water” about Town” 349 (character) 106–118 Knowledge and 463–467 “Byron” 85–87 Chamberlayne, Lavinia Experience in the “The Fire Sermon” Byron, George Gordon, Lord (character) 106–118 Philosophy of F. H. 455–462 85–87, 245, 459 change 115 Bradley 279–285 “A Game of Chess” “Byzantium” (Yeats) 574 Channing, William Ellery style of 231 451–455 565 in “To Criticize the “What the Thunder C Channing-Cheetah, Critic” 402 Said” 467–473 Cambridge University 99, Professor (character) 318 Brahma 470–471 temptation in 58 523 Chapel Perilous 468–469 Brahmins (Boston) 142, 507 title of 436 Campion, Thomas 414 Chapman, George 164

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character, v. power 135–136 in “Journey of the Magi” Christmas 144, 327. See also debate of 102, 410, characters 276–277 Ariel Poems 486–487 in dramatic monologue in The Rock 92 Christmas Carol, A Eliot on 89 401 in “A Song for Simeon” (Dickens) 471 in Ulysses (Joyce) 410 “Gerontion” and 242, 377–378 “Christopher Marlowe” classics 243 in Unitarianism 564 98–99 defining 102, 485–487 in “The Love Song of J. Virgil and 422 church individual talent and Alfred Prufrock” 297 in The Waste Land 446– abandonment of 406–407 poet in 165–169 447, 464–465, 467 94–95 language of 486 speakers as 395–396 Christendom 87 in Christian state 267 national literature as voice of poetry Christian community, in in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday rooted in 103 400–401 Christian state 266 Morning Service” “Classics and the Man of Charles (character) 174– Christianity. See also 320–322 Letters, The” 102–103 180, 183 Unitarianism in “The Hippopotamus” Claverton, Lord (character) Charles Eliot Norton Advent in 304 248–250 154–159, 171 professorship 20, 33, 37, in After Strange Gods 41 national 268 Claverton, Michael 388, 411–412 anti-Semitism and 498 necessity of 94, 97 (character) 156–157, Charles I (king of England) in “Ash-Wednesday” 55 in The Rock 93–96 158–160 188, 219 baptism in 463 Church of England 18, Claverton-Ferry, Monica Chaucer, Geoffrey 324, Baudelaire and 78–79 21–22, 91, 398–399, 509. (character) 154–160 443–445 conversion to 16–17, 18 See also Anglicanism Cleopatra (character) 452 Cheetham, Eric 28 in “Coriolan” 137, 140 Church of St. Magnu Martyr cleverness, meaning and 228 cherchez la femme 383 in “The Cultivation of 456 Clytemnestra (mythological child (children) Christmas Trees” 144 Church of St. Mary figure) 172–173, 382, in Ariel Poems 144 in Four Quartets 201, Woolnoth 449, 450 383, 390, 392, 433 in “Burnt Norton” 208, 212, 213–215, Church of the Messiah (St. Cocktail Party, The 104–118 195–196, 201 217, 224 Louis) 522, 556, 565 allusions in 112, 116– in “Marina” 303 freedom in 105 “Circus Animals’ Desertion, 117, 118–119 soul as 49–50 in “Gerontion” 241–242 The” (Yeats) 574 background Chinese jar 202 in “The Hippopotamus” city of London 449, 542 considerations Chinese poetry, influence 248–250 civilization 104–106 of 345 international order v. culture 335 choice in 112, 113 Choephoroi (Aeschylus) 173, based on 87–90 family in 339 composition of 25, 509 382–383 in Ireland 573 in Heart of Darkness critical commentary choice 112, 113, 127, 153 in “Journey of the Magi” (Conrad) 532–533 113–118 chorus 275–278 higher v. lower 338– death in 109 in The Family Reunion in “Marina” 304 339 in development as 174 in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Clark Lectures, The 20, 33, playwright 125 in Murder in the Morning Service” 99–102, 101 faith in 112 Cathedral 168–169, 320–322 class identity in 111–112, 324–325, 327–330, obligations of 400 absence of 340 114–115 401, 402 soul in 145 culture and 336 isolation in 110, Choruses from The Rock universal church in emergence of 338–339 111–112 90–98 268, 511 in The Family Reunion love in 118 background Virgil and 422–424 181–182 as poetic drama 353 considerations 90–92 in The Waste Land 446– in “A Game of Chess” premier of 25–26 critical commentary 447, 464–465, 467 452, 454 self in 108–109, 111– 96–98 Christians, community of, in in “Morning at the 112, 114–115 publication of 20 Christian state 266 Window” 315–316 social masks in 160 social commitment in Christian society of music hall audiences success of 152 97–98 components of 266– 299–300 synopsis 106–113 synopsis 92–96 268 Classical Association 102 Act 1 106–110 Chouteau, Auguste 556 defining 265 classicism Act 2 110–112 Chrétien de Troyes 524 national church in 268 v. romanticism Act 3 112–113 Christ need for 265–266 in After Strange Coleridge, Samuel Taylor anti-Semitism and 498 political organization of Gods 36, 37–38 on Christian community in Four Quartets 201, 268–269 in criticism 237– 267 208 Christian state 266 238 conservatism of 287

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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Conrad, Joseph 512–513 story of 135–136 limits of 235 (continued) Heart of Darkness 513, in The Waste Land 134 modern 419–420 critical theory of 416– 530–533 corn field, in “The Boston norms maintained by 417, 420 in “The Hollow Evening Transcript” 81 274–275 images used by 236 Men” 252–253, Cornwall 447, 464–465 opinion in 238, 239 on imagination 48 257, 258–259 courtly love 62, 517 on poetic drama Collected Poems, 1909–1935 humanity in 396 “Cousin Nancy” 11, 75, 150–153 92, 190, 251, 509 in The Waste Land 140–143, 507 process of 235 colonialism 427–428, 513, 435 craft (poetic) 7, 247 purpose of 235–237 530 consequences, in The Elder Crane, Hart 200, 476 religion in 362–363 Commedia, La. See Divine Statesman 161–162 Crane, Stephen 513 sensibilities of, time and Comedy, The conservatism creation 58, 208, 238, 273–274 communication 146, of Coleridge 287 407–408 source studies as 236, 148–149 cultural, in criticism 286 Creative Evolution (Bergson) 370 communion bell, in of Eliot 17–18, 398–399 505 standards in 238, 239 “Coriolan” 137 in “Function of crime drama, The Family theology in 362 communism 270, 343 Criticism” 91 Reunion as 181 in “To Criticize the community 94–95, 266 in For Lancelot Andrewes Criterion (journal) 513–515 Critic” 402–405 competition, in culture 339 91 under Eliot 18 tradition in 238, 239 Complaints (Laforgue) 539 v. liberalism, in After European culture and types of 412–413 Complete Poems 73 Strange Gods 36, 89 345–346 use of 402, 412–422 composition 312–313 Conservatism (Cecil) 287 founding of 13 criticism, of tradition, conceits 208, 305–306, 519 consubstantiation 512 “The Hollow Men” and necessity of 36, 41 confession, in “Ash- content, v. craft, in poetry 7 251 Critic with Gusto 403 Wednesday” 70 context, v. text, in “Mr. Rothermere and 553 Crucifixion Confessions (Symons) 563 Apollinax” 318–319 “Sweeney Agonistes” in “Coriolan” 138 Confessions, The (Augustine) contraceptives 399 in 251 in “Journey of the Magi” 447, 462 contrasts 199, 201, 204 “The Tunnel” in 200 277–278 Confidential Clerk, The conventions, in Elizabethan The Waste Land in 14, in The Waste Land , 118–128 drama 164, 165 551 “What the Thunder accessibility of 125– Convent of the Sacred critic Said” 467 126 Heart (fictional place) categories of 403 cry, in “Coriolan” 138–139 composition of 26, 393, 393 Eliot as, v. poet 167 “Cultivation of Christmas 509–510 conversation, meaningful experience of 413 Trees, The” 19, 27, critical commentary 129 professional 235 143–145 125–128 “Conversation Galante” time periods of 273–274 cults, in culture 341–342 identity and freedom in 128–130 criticism (literary) cultural anthropology 523 124, 125, 128 conversion (religious) of Arnold 238, 417–418, cultural criticism 33–42, influences on 118 16–17, 18, 378 419, 502 502. See also culture kindred spirits in 124, “Cooking Egg, A” 130–134, career in, phases of “Cultural Forces in the 128 395 403–404 Human Order” 25, 335 love in 124, 128 Coplestone, Celia of Coleridge 416–417, cultural imperialism 427– parentage in 119–125, (character) 106–115, 117 420 428, 513, 530 127–128 Coppola, Francis Ford 531 contributions to 405 cultural unification, classical spirituality in 127–128 “Coriolan” 134–140. See creation and 238 heritage in 103 synopsis 119–125 also “Triumphal March” cultural conservatism culture. See also tradition conflict background in 286 categories of 336–337 in Ariel poems 301 considerations definition of 412–413 in Christian society in “The Love Song of J. 134–136 development of 413 267, 269 Alfred Prufrock” 297 composition of 19, 44 of Dryden 415–416 v. civilization 335 in Murder in the critical commentary Elizabethan 414–415 class and 336, 338– Cathedral 331 139–140 ethics in 362 339 spiritual, in “Sweeney faith in 97 focus of 236 classless 340 Agonistes” 383 synopsis 137–139 function of 402, common reference universal 181 Coriolanus 412–422 points of 192 conformity, in Lawrence 40 character of 134 influence of 235–236 competition in 339 confusion, of Baudelaire’s in “A Cooking Egg” 132 of Johnson 273–275, contexts of 336 time 78 in “Coriolan” 139–140 415–416 definition of 335, 347

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deterioration of 103, Daniel, Arnaut in The Cocktail Party “Ulysses, Order, and 274, 315, 375 “Ash-Wednesday” and 109 Myth” in 409 development of 336, 20, 55 in “Coriolan” 138 The Waste Land in 14, 342, 345, 347–348 in The Divine Comedy in Four Quartets 189, 424, 551 disintegration of 337 64, 438, 441, 518 201–202, 220–221 Dial Award 519, 551 diversity in 339–341 “Little Gidding” and in “The Hollow Men” dialects 340–341 education and 342– 222 255–256 “Dialogue on Dramatic 345, 347 Pound and 547 in Laforgue 539 Poetry, A” 54, 150–153 elites of 338–339, 347 Daniel, Samuel 414 perfection and 201– Diana, priesthood of 523 faith and 338 “Dans le restaurant” 12, 202 diaspora 95 friction in 341 313, 430, 463–464 reality of 201 Dickens, Charles 436–437, in history, interactions “Dante” 101, 145–149 soul after 48–49 471 in 347 Dante Alighieri 516–518 as state of mind 385 Dickinson, Emily 498, 566 individual and 336 “Animula” and 48, in “Sweeney Agonistes” “Difficulties of a Statesman” isolation of 346 49, 50 385 44 language in, in satellite “Ash-Wednesday” and in The Waste Land 451, discontent, fortune-telling cultures 340–341 19–20, 45, 55 466 and 383–384 multilingual, literary belief of 52 in “Whispers of “Disintegration of the language of 375 Cavalcanti exiled by 59 Immortality” 489– Intellect, The” (lectures) in Notes towards the Donne compared to 100 491 17–18 Definition of Culture exile of 67–68 “Death by Water” 463–467. dissociation of sensibility 335–348 experience rendered See also Waste Land, The, Dryden and 272–273 organic nature of 335 by 147 allusions in Eliot on 404 poetry and 376 as great European 245 “Death of Saint Narcissus, metaphysical poets politics and 342–343 Harvard and 529–530 The” 149–150, 430 and 286, 306–307, popular 300, 350–351 influence of 149, 404, “Death’s Duel” (Donne) 490–491 regional 335–336, 484–485, 529–530 520 Milton and 309 340–341 language of 485 decadence, in Baudelaire Divine Comedy, The (Dante) religion and 335–336, poetry of (See also Divine 504, 505 517–518 337, 341–342, 399 Comedy, The) deception, in “Portrait of a allegory in 146–147 as religion exclusively accessibility of 146 Lady” 356 “animula” in 48, 49, 50 337–338 allegory in 146–147 decomposition, in “Whispers in “Ash-Wednesday” 60, society and 336 belief in 147–148, of Immortality” 489 62–63, 64, 71 transmission of 335, 371 Deianira (mythological Cavalcanti in 60 343–344 in “The Hollow figure) 192 as classic 102 unified 339–341, Men” 255–256 Delilah (biblical figure) 383 in The Cocktail Party 112 345–346 personal experience Demant, V. A. 361–362 Easter setting of 60 in The Waste Land in 66–67 democracies 135, 343 English translations of 467–468 Thomas Aquinas and Democracy and Leadership 149, 529 World War I and 428 371 (Babbitt) 503 geography in 438–439 worldwide 341 vision of 148 Denman (character) 175 in “The Hollow Men” Culture and Anarchy in “What Dante Means Dent, H. C. 344 255–256, 259 (Arnold) 231, 502 to Me” 483–485 Descartes, René 386 in “Little Gidding” Culverwell, Fred (character) Dante Gold Medal 28 desert, in The Waste Land 221–222, 404 154–155 Dante Society of America 467 in “The Love Song of J. Cumaean Sibyl 433–434 149, 529–530 desire 384, 462 Alfred Prufrock” 290, Curtis, Tony 402 darkness 96, 207, 277–278 despair 65, 384, 388 291–293 Cyclades 395 Darwin, Charles 396–397 destruction, in “Little personal struggle in Cyrano de Bergerac Datta 470, 471 Gidding” 224 69–70 (Rostand) 368 Davies, John 372–374 detachment, in “Little as poetry of belief 148 Cyril (character) 137–139, Dawson, N. P. 477 Gidding” 223 quest in 438 140 Dayadhvam 470, 471 devotion, to cause 258–259 revenge and 518 “Cyril Tourneur” 166 “Dead, The” (Joyce) 39, devotional poetry 362 Satan in 468 534 Dial, The (journal) 518– soul in 374 D death 519 as spiritual biography Da 470 in Alcestis (Euripides) Eliot in 514 72 Daily Mail (newspaper) 553 105–106 “The Hollow Men” and in The Waste Land 64, Damyata 472 boredom and 451 251 437–441, 449

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divine love 58–59, 517 “The Love Song of J. time in 216–217 education 102–103, 342– Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 396 Alfred Prufrock” 258, water in 188, 210–211, 345, 347 doctrine 226, 335–336 276, 293–294, 295 214 Eggerson (character) Dolce Stil Nuovo 517 “Marina” 301 winter in 188 119–125 Donati, Piccarda de rules of 293 Dry Salvages (place) 188, Egoist, The (journal) 521 132–133 “A Song for Simeon” 209–210 Eliot at 12, 169, 403– Donne, John 519–520 90 Dublin 535 404, 514 Andrewes compared to voice in 401 Dubliners (Joyce) 534 “Tradition and the 285–286 dramatic poet 165–169, Duchess of Malfi, The Individual Talent” in The Clark Lectures 352–353 (Webster) 491 in 405 100 dramatic poetry 150–153 Dunne, Annie 4, 215, 527 Eighteen-Eighties, The, in “East Coker” 208 “The Hollow Men” as Dusty (character) 383 “Arnold and Pater” in 52 French symbolism and 258 duty, as virtue 423 Elder Statesman, The 562 “Journey of the Magi” as 153–163 influence of 404, 537 275–276 E biographical aspects “Little Gidding” and 193 language of 334 earth, in “East Coker” 188, of 171 modernism of 100 as live language 168, 204 composition of 27–28, “Whispers of 400 “East Coker.” See also Four 153, 510 Immortality” and Murder in the Cathedral Quartets consequences in 489, 490 as 331–333 allusions in 203–204, 161–162 wit of 47 speakers of 395–396 207, 208, 209 critical commentary Dorchester 359, 507 “Sweeney Erect” as 395 autumn in 188 160–163 Doris (character) 383–385, use of 352–354 beginnings in 203 dedication to 153 387–388, 397 as voice 165 biography in 204 forgiveness in 162–163 “Doris’s Dream Songs” 251 dreams, in “Sweeney among Christ in 208 freedom and identity in Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 468 the Nightingales” 391 composition of 23, 190 159, 160, 162 dove, in “Little Gidding” Dryden, John 152, 272–273, contrasts in 204 guilt in 162 224 306, 402, 415–416 darkness in 207 love in 153, 154, 157– Downing (character) 175, “Dry Salvages, The.” See also earth in 188, 204 158, 159, 160–162 176, 179–180, 183 Four Quartets ends in 203 as morality play 161 Dowson, Ernest 567 Annunciation in 212, Eucharist in 208 premier of 28 Draft of XVI Cantos, A 213–214 language in 189, reception of 153 (Pound) 549 biography in 210 204–205 redemption in 162 drama. See also Choruses composition of 23–24 life in 204 social masks in 160 from The Rock ends in 211–212 movement in 209 synopsis 154–160 action in 352 eternity in 210–211 paradox in 204, understanding in as amusement 151, 152 future in 216–217 207–208 162–163 conflict in, universality Gloucester in 527 past in 204, 206 worldliness in 160– of 181 Incarnation in 217 stillness in 209 161 emotion in 368 Mary in 213–214 subway in 207 Eleanor of Aquitaine 517 faith necessary to 151 Mississippi River in 3 synopsis 203–209 elements, in Four Quartets as form 151, 152–153 music in 212 Part I 203–205 188, 203, 204 as ideal medium for Orwell’s review of Part II 205–206 Eliot, Andrew 3, 204, 506 poetry 388 229–230, 274 Part III 206–207 Eliot, Charles William 7, language of 352 patterns in 212 Part IV 207–208 412 v. life 367 publication of 190 Part V 208–209 Eliot, Charlotte Champe Mass as 151–152 religion in 211, 212, theater in 207 Stearns 6 poetic 150, 152, 213–215, 217 time in 204–205 influence of 4–5, 149 352–354 river in 210 East Coker (place) 4, 23, 29, life of 3 poetry in 126 St. Louis in 557 188, 191, 203, 203, 522 literary aspirations of prose composition of sea in 189, 210–211 Easter 60, 137 4–5, 521 352 still point in 212–213 Easter Rebellion 573 Eliot, Henry Ware, Sr. 3–4, purpose of 151–153 synopsis 209–218 economics, in Christian 514, 521 understanding in 182 Part I 210–211 society 266–267 Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns) unities of 152, 415 Part II 211–212 ecumenical movements, 10, 26 dramatic monologue Part III 212–213 culture and 342 accent of 7 “Journey of the Magi” Part IV 213–216 Edinburgh Festival 104, American literary 90, 275–276 Part V 216–218 118, 509 influences on 43

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anti-Semitism of 571 at Oxford 9–10 ends, in Four Quartets 203, in Four Quartets 284 biography 3–29 in Paris 7–8, 290–291, 211–212, 226 in “The Hollow Men” critical attention 463, 505–506 England, Christian society 257 paid to 3 poetic focus of 57 for 264–272 immediate 280–281 in The Elder Pound and (See Pound, English Civil War 219, 223 in impressionism 513 Statesman 171 Ezra) English language intellectual, in Dante in Four Quartets as progressive 41–42 American v. British 66–67 188, 196, 204, publications of 583–584 42–43 knowledge of 279, 210, 218 religious conversion of as best language for 280–281, 282, 554 in poetry 71–72 16–17, 18, 565 poetry 345 in Laforgue 537 Boston and 142 siblings of 4 Elizabethan 189, 204– in La vita nuova (Dante) British literary speakers in poems of 205, 558 148–149 influences on 43 7, 58 of Shakespeare 558 in literary realism 513 chronology of 577–582 teaching career of 11–12 English poets, Eliot on 537 Locke on 386 composition 312–313 during World War I English Reformation memory of 212 conservatism of 17–18 428–429 203–204, 223, 511–512, in metaphysical poetry early life 3–6, 5 youth of 131 519–520 306 education of 6–7, 8–9, Eliot, Valerie Fletcher 27, escapism 407–408 in Milton 307 528 27–28 Essays Ancient and Modern objective observation of emphysema of 8, 25, 28 Eliot, Vivien Haigh-Wood 9 87, 362 8–9, 554–555 employment of 11–12, death of 25 Essays on Elizabethan Drama perception and 281–282 15–16, 17, 99 health of 9, 10, 14, 430 99, 163–169 personal, in poetry face powder worn by 16 marriage to 9–10, 18, Essays and Studies 307 66–67, 71–72 fame of 26 20–21, 411, 430 eternity, in Four Quartets of poet 297 health of 430 Russell and 9–10, 317, 189, 194, 201, 210–211, in poetry 284–285, 375, holiday poems of 19 555 226–227 421, 431 influences on 404 separation from 20–21 Ethical Studies (Bradley) 508 rendering of 147 American literature Eliot, William Greenleaf 42, ethics, in criticism 362 Royce on 554 43 521–522 “Et Tu Healy” (Joyce) 534 spiritual 66–67, Baudelaire 76–77, life of 3 Eucharist 208, 512 148–149 (See also 80, 484 in St. Louis 506, 514, Eumenides (characters) spirituality) Bradley 230, 281, 556 173, 174, 177, 179, 183 in “Sweeney Agonistes” 508–509 Unitarianism of 3, 556, Eumenides, The (Aeschylus) 259 British literature 43 565 172–174 v. truth 386 Conrad 531–532 Washington University Euripides 104, 105–106, in understanding 228 Dante 149, 404, and 569 193, 374 verbal formulations of 484–485, 529–530 elites, cultural 338–339, 347 Europe 282–283 France 6–7 Elizabeth (character) 461 culture of 345–346, expiation, in The Family French symbolists Elizabethan criticism 427–428 (See also Reunion 181 291, 484 414–415 culture) “Eyes That Last I Saw in influence of 282 Elizabethan drama. See also in “Gerontion” 241–242 Dreams” 310 Italy 6–7 Essays on Elizabethan Drama greatness of culture Ezra Pound: His Metric and Laforgue (See conventions in 164, 165 244–245 Poetry 12, 548 Laforgue, Jules, as national theater 164 heritage of 83, 103, “Ezra Pound: His Metric influence of) realism in 164 241, 487, 499 Poetry” 169–171 metaphysical poets Seneca’s influence on prewar 427–428 304 165, 368–370 evolution 396–397 F symbolism 7, 80, 559 tragedy in 165, 168 experience. See also human Faber, Geoffrey 17, 28, 143 Symons 563 Elizabethan English 189, experience Faber & Faber Yeats and 494 204–205, 558 with aging 130–133 Ariel Poems and 50 literary legacy of 171, Elizabethan Essays 163 Bergson on 279, “East Coker” published 403 Elizabethan poetry 414–415 505–506 by 190 as Londoner 542–543 Elyot, Thomas 204–205 Bradley on 280–281, location of 543, 543 marriage to Valerie Emerson, Ralph Waldo 508–509 Old Possum’s Book 27–28 446–447, 518, 565 in “A Cooking Egg” of Practical Cats marriage to Vivien emotion 248, 272, 368 130–133 published by 348 9–10, 18, 20–21, 411 emphysema 8, 25, 28 of critic 413 The Rock published old age of 28–29 Encolpius (character) 434 Descartes on 386 by 92

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Faber & Gwyer 17, 515, reality of 283 fortune-telling 383–384, “East Coker” 554, 570 thought and 286, 448–449 203–209 face powder 16 372–373, 491 “Four Elizabethan “Little Gidding” faith Fenollosa, Ernest 547 Dramatists” 99, 163, 218–227 in Ariel Poems 51–52 Ferrar, John 219 164. See also Essays on themes of 189 in “Ash-Wednesday” 65 Ferrar, Nicholas 188, 218 Elizabethan Drama Fourth Canto, The (Pound) Baudelaire and 78 Ferry, Dick (character) 155 Four Quartets 187–230. 549 in The Cocktail Party 112 “Figlia Che Piange, La” 8, See also “Burnt Norton”; “Fourth Caprice in North culture and 338 184–187 “Dry Salvages, The”; “East Cambridge” 359, 507 international order Finnegans Wake (Joyce) 228, Coker”; “Little Gidding” Fragonard, Honoré 318 based on 87–90 236, 535 allusions in 192–193 frame narration, in Heart of in “Little Gidding” 220 fire, in “Little Gidding” 188 approaches to reading Darkness (Conrad) 257, necessity of 92, 97, 151 “Fire Sermon, The” 455– 191–193 532 requirements of 87, 95 462 biography in 188, 196, France, influence of 6–7 Faith That Illuminates 362 allusions in (See Waste 204, 210, 218 “Francis Herbert Bradley” Fall, the 67 Land, The, allusions in) composition of 22, 230–232 family, in culture 339, Fisher King in 458 23–24, 220 Franz Ferdinand (archduke 343–344 happiness in 462 critical commentary of Austria) 426–427 Family Reunion, The 171– London Bridge in 456, 227–230 Frazer, Sir James 101, 184 461–462 elements in 188, 203, 523–524, 569 allusions in 118–119 renunciation in 462 204 freedom awakening in 176, 178, sexuality in 458, epigraphs of 228 in choice 127 179 459–461 experience in 284 in Christianity 105 chorus in 174 speaker of 455, general overview identity and 124, 125, classical background 459–460 187–189 128, 159, 160, 162 172–174 spring in 462 geography of 188 Lawrence and 541 class in 181–182 worldliness in 457 holiness in 229 “free-thinking,” in After composition of 22–23, “First Caprice in human experience in Strange Gods 35, 500 171–172, 509 Montparnassse” 359 228 free verse. See vers libre critical commentary “First Caprice in North influences on 484, 518 free will 50, 51 180–184 Cambridge” 359, 507 landscapes in 311 French poetry 232–234, 504 in development as Fisher King 458, 469–470, love in 202, 225 French symbolists 561–562 playwright 125 472 meaning in 284 achievements of 345 identity in 183–184 fishing industry, in music in 189, 193 Aiken influenced by individual in 105 Gloucester 527 obscurities of 192, 497 Oresteia as basis of 172, Fitzgerald, F. Scott 225 227–228 Baudelaire in 76–77, 173–174 Fitz Urse, Reginald Old Possum’s Book of 504 past in 160 (character) 329 Practical Cats and 351 “The Hippopotamus” as poetic drama 353 “Five-Finger Exercises” 23, places in 188, 203, influenced by 249– revival of 104 309, 310–311, 488 209–210 250 sleep in 176, 178 “Flea, The” (Donne) 519 poetic style of 57 influence of 7, 80, success of 181 fleurs du mal, Les (Baudelaire) as poetry of belief 214 249–250, 291, 364, synopsis 174–180 77, 504, 538 publication history 365, 484 Part I 175–177 Florence, Italy 6–7, 59, 189–191 juxtaposition in 316 Part II 177–180 516–518 relationships within 188 Laforgue in 537–538 persons of the Flowers of Evil, The. See religion in 229 Mallarmé in 198 drama 174–175 fleurs du mal, Les rereading 193–194, modernism influenced Farewell to Arms, A Foerster, Norman 262 228–229 by 43 (Hemingway) 473 Ford, Ford Madox 513 seasons in 188 Poe and 233 fascism 270, 549 Ford, Harrison 402 self-sacrifice in 105 truthfulness of 357 fate 423, 464 Ford, John 166 stillness in 201, 202 urban life and 76 Faust (Goethe) 244 foreign ideas, in After structure of 201, 205 vers libre of 566–567 Fawkes, Guy 253–254, Strange Gods 35 success of 187 Freud, Sigmund 397 258–259 forgiveness, in The Elder synopsis 194–227 “From Poe to Valéry” fear 144, 145, 449–450 Statesman 162–163 “Burnt Norton” 232–234 feelings For Lancelot Andrewes 20, 194–203 From Ritual to Romance as objects of experience 33, 91, 511 “The Dry Salvages” (Weston) 444, 524–525, 280, 281–282 form, vers libre and 334 209–218 569–570

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“Frontiers of Criticism, The” public commentary in Great War and Modern Harpies (characters) 235–237 135 Memory, The (Fussell) 428 173–174 Fuller, Margaret 518 reality in 239 Greek mythology 391, Harvard 528–530 “Function of Criticism” 91, self in 104–105 392. See also Aeschylus; Aiken at 497 235, 237–239, 399, 511, speaker of 240, 395 Euripides; Sophocles Babbitt at 503 545 synopsis 239–242 Greek tragedy 332 dissertation for 11, “Function of Criticism at title of 242 Gregory, Robert 573 279–280 the Present Time, The” The Waste Land and grief, in “La Figlia Che education at 7, 8–9, (Arnold) 238, 502 379 Piange” 186–187 279 Furies (characters) 173– Gerontion (character) 241 Grierson, Herbert J. C. 100, Eliot (William) at 522 174, 382–383 Ghibellines 516 305, 520 modern languages at Fussell, Paul 428 ghost, in “Little Gidding” Growltiger (character) 349 149, 529–530 future 178, 184, 194–197, 221–223 Guelfs 59, 516 Royce at 554 216–217, 448–449 ghost story, The Family Guido do Montefeltro 292, Unitarianism at 565 futurism, Pound in 170 Reunion as 181 432 visiting professorship at Gideon Seymour Lecture guilt 59–60, 162, 181 10, 20, 33, 37, 388, G 235 Guinizzelli, Guido 64, 438, 411–412 “Game of Chess, A” Glasgow University 333 441 Hayward, John 24, 25 451–455 Glastonbury, in Grail legend Gunpowder Plot 253–254 Heart of Darkness (Conrad) allusions in (See Waste 464–465, 524 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch 513, 530–533 Land, The, allusions Gloucester, Massachusetts 553 in “The Hollow Men” in) 5–6, 6, 506, 526, 526–527 “Gus the Theatre Cat” 349 252–253, 257, boredom in 451–452, God 189, 564. See also Guy Fawkes Day 253–254, 258–259 454 Christianity; religion 258–259 humanity in 396 class in 452, 454 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Guzzard, Mrs. (character) in The Waste Land 435 innocence in 453, 454 von 244–246, 403 119, 122–125 He Do Police in Different speaker of 454 “Goethe as the Sage” 85, Voices, Boston in 507 garden 128, 194–195, 200, 244–246 H Hegel, Friedrich 200, 345 447 Gold Coast Customs (Sitwell) H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) 521, hell, in “The Hollow Men” garlic 198–199 558 547 255–256 Gauguin, Paul 386–387 Golden Bough, The (Frazer) Hadrian, epitaph of 48–49, Hemington, Charles Gautier, Théophile 12, 523–524, 569 303 (character) 154–155, 82–83, 131–132, 250, Gomez, Frederico Haigh-Wood, Charles 9 157–159 548, 567 (character) 154–156, 157, Hail Mary (prayer), in “Ash- Hemingway, Ernest 473 gender 150, 447 158–160 Wednesday” 61 Henrietta Hertz Lecture generations, modern Gonne, Maude 572 Hairy Ape, The (O’Neill) 307 concern with 398 Gorman, Herbert S. 397 Henry II (kind of England) geography 188, 438–439, 477–478 Hakagawa (character) 499 323–327 467 Grail legend Hale, Emily 21, 22, 196 Henry VIII (king of Georgics (Virgil) 422 card suits from 449 Hamlet (Shakespeare) England) 511–512 Gerald (character) 174– Chapel Perilous in 246–248 Heracleitus 228 180, 183 468–469 “Little Gidding” and Herakles (mythological “Gerontion” 239–244 Fisher King in 458, 222 figure) 192 anti-Semitism in 241, 469–470, 472 in “The Love Song of J. Herbert, George 488 499 Glastonbury and Alfred Prufrock” 557 Hercleitus, on change 115 “Burbank” compared 464–465 as poetic drama 352 Hercules (character) to 85 in From Ritual to in The Waste Land 455 105–106 critical commentary Romance (Weston) “Hamlet and His Problems” Hercules Furens (Seneca) 242–243 524–525, 569–570 13, 163, 246–248, 368, 302, 369 as dramatic poetry 150, vegetation myth in 444, 557 heresy 20, 33–42 258 464–465 Hanseatic Goethe Prize 244 hermaphrodism, in “The epigraph of 241 Great Book movement 503 happiness, in The Waste Death of Saint Narcissus” heritage squandered Great Depression, political Land 462 150 in 499 consequences of 135 Harcourt-Reilly, Henry Hermetic Order of the individual in 104–105 Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) (character) 110–113, Golden Dawn 572 mood and tone of 241 225 117–118 Herrick, Robert 488 personality in 116 Great Rumpuscat Hardy, Thomas, as Hesse, Hermann 468 in Poems 1920 13 (character) 349 blasphemous 41 Heywood, Jasper 368

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Heywood, Thomas 165–166 prayer in 257 human experience. See also hyacinth garden 447 High Church Anglicanism. precursors to 44, 251 experience Hyde-Lees, Georgie See Anglo-Catholicism publication of 251, 515 in Ariel Poems 50–52 573–574 higher civilization, v. lower reading of 254–255 boredom in 451, 452 Hydraulic-Press Brick 338–339 The Rock compared in Four Quartets 211, Company 3, 521 Highgate Junior School 11 to 96 226, 228 “Hysteria” 262–264 Hinduism 211, 213, 215, salvation in 256–257 in “The Hollow Men” 96 217, 470–472 self in 104–105 identity in 117 I “Hippopotamus, The” 12, shadow in 96, 257 labor in 93, 95 idea 23, 47, 248–250, 248–250 soul in 259 limited value of 211 meaning and 283, 284 historical consciousness 78, speaker in 252 in “The Love Song of as reality 284 274, 275, 407, 486 spirituality in 56, 258, J. Alfred Prufrock” as symbol 284 history 347, 485–486, 549 259 297–298 transmittal v. Hitler, Adolf 270, 501 “Sweeney Agonistes” in modernism 97 dramatization 371 Hobbes, Thomas 386 and 251 perception of 471–472 idealism 230, 279–285, Hodgson, Ralph 311 synopsis 252–257 in poetry 421, 431 505–506, 508–509, 554 Hogarth Press 11, 17, 570 epigraphs 253–254 reality in, capacity for Idea of a Christian Society, holiday poems 19 general overview 182–183, 184 The 264–272 holiness, in Four Quartets 252 in “Sweeney Agonistes” Anglicanism in 399 229 Part I 254–256 259, 386–387 conversion addressed Hollow Land, The (Morris) Part II 256 universality of 228 in 18 252, 532 Part III 256 in The Waste Land 469 critical commentary “Hollow Men, The” 251– Part IV 256–257 humanism 260–262 269–272 260 Part V 257 Arnold in 52–54, 231 on cultural deterioration of Babbitt 261, 503 allusions in 254 text 254 103 The Divine Comedy title 252–253 concept of human in 88 inspiration for 23 (Dante) 255– technique in 260 as literary experience intentions of 265 256, 259 title of 252–253 262 synopsis 265–269 Heart of Darkness Holocaust 498, 501 of Murry 545 identity (Conrad) 257, Holy Grail legend. See Grail Pater in 52–54 change in 115 258–259, 513, legend v. religion 232, 261–262 in The Cocktail Party 532–533 Holy Sonnets (Donne) 519, religion in 53–54, 151 111–112, 114–115 choral chant in 90 520 self in 261 concealment of 126– in The Cocktail Party Holy Spirit 224, 564 “Sweeney Agonistes” 116 Homer 245, 395, 409–410 and 386, 387 127 composition of 16, 330 homoeroticism, in “The v. tradition 232 in The Family Reunion critical commentary Death of Saint Narcissus” “Humanism of Irving 183–184 257–260 150 Babbitt, The” 53, 231, in “La Figlia Che death in 255–256 homosexuality, in The Waste 260–262 Piange” 186 as dramatic poetry 150, Land 459, 463 humanity freedom and 258 honesty, in Blake 492 in Conrad 513 in The Confidential epigraphs of 252–254, Hoover, Herbert 412 depravity of 396–397 Clerk 124, 125, 258–259 hope, in “Preludes” 360 evolution of 396–397 128 experience in 257 Hopkins, Gerard Manley Hobbes on 386 in The Elder States- hell in 255–256 40, 566 in humanism 88 man 159, 160, 162 individual in 57, hornéd gate 391 as noble savage 396 in human experience 104–105 horror tale, The Family in “Rhapsody on 117 influences on 530, Reunion as 181 a Windy Night” in Lawrence 40 531–532 Horsfall, Captain 366–367 place and, in “Burnt landscape in 63, 256 (character) 384–385 suffering of, capacity Norton” 197 life in 255–256 Housman, A. E. 101 for 79 public v. self 160 love in 256 Huckleberry Finn (Twain) in “Sweeney Agonistes” as social construct meaning in 251, 252 214 380, 384 126–127 modernism in 96 Hughes, Thomas 501 in “Sweeney among the Ignatius, Saint 248–249 as modernist long poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Nightingales” 393 imagery, logic of 46 45 (Pound) 12, 243, 320, in Upanishads 470 imagination, Coleridge on as pastiche 251–252 548 in The Waste Land 48, 416 personality in 116 Hulme, T. E. 43, 102 463–464, 469 imagism 43, 170, 547

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immediate experience J modernism of 424 as dissertation paper 280–281 James, Henry 83, 175, 355, as orthodox writer 39 11, 528 immigration, to America 428 A Portrait of the Artist as publication of 28, 171, 500, 506–507 James, William 554 a Young Man 39, 72, 230, 279 impressionism 53, 513 Jason (mythological figure) 534–535 synopsis 280–282 Incarnation, in “The Dry 193 religion and 362 Krishna (deity) 211, 213, Salvages” 217 Jesus. See Christ Ulysses 215, 217 India 341, 470 Jew of Malta (Marlowe) 320, acceptance of 426 Krumpacker (character) indifference, in “Little 354 composition of 535 384–385 Gidding” 223 Jews. See anti-Semitism in The Egoist 13 “Kubla Kahn” (Coleridge) individual Joachim, Harold 9, 280, 508 on history 140 236 in “Ash-Wednesday” Joad, C. E. M. 344 modernism of Kurtz (character) 253, 257, 57 John (character) 178 410–411 258–259, 435, 530–533 culture and 336 “John Dryden” 272–273 orthodoxy and 39 education for 344 “John Ford” 166 reception of 425– L in The Family Reunion “John Marston” 166–167 426 labor 93, 95, 422–423 105 John of the Cross, Saint 55, review of 409–411 labor strike, by plebeians in “Gerontion” 104– 207, 383 The Waste Land 136 105 Johns Hopkins University. compared to 411, Laclede, Pierre 556 in “The Hollow Men” See Turnbull Lectures 535 La Commedia. See Divine 104–105 Johnson, Samuel 273–275, Judaism, as cultural Comedy, The in “The Love Song of 305, 402, 415–416 inheritance 85 lady, in “Ash-Wednesday” J. Alfred Prufrock” “Johnson as Critic and Poet” Julian of Norwich, in “Little 65, 66, 68 104–105 273–275 Gidding” 192, 223–224 Laforgue, Jules 536–540 purpose of 388 Johnston, Martyn 518 Julius, Anthony 501 “Autre Complainte de reality perceived by Joliet (Jolliet), Louis 556 juxtaposition, in French Lord Pierrot” 129 471–472 “Jolly Corner, The” (James) symbolist poetry 316 in French poetry 504 in “Sweeney Agonistes” 175 influence of 7, 80 105, 386, 388 Jonson, Ben 99–100, K on “Conversation tradition and 406–409 164–165 Kaghan, B. (character) 119, Galante” 129 Inferno. See Divine Comedy, Joseph of Arimathea 464– 122–125, 127 on “A Cooking Egg” The 465, 524 Keats, John 390, 417 131–132 innocence 130–133, 453, Joseph of Arimathea (Robert kindred spirits, in The on “Cousin Nancy” 454 de Boron) 524, 525 Confidential Clerk 124, 128 141–142 intellectual experience, in “Journey of the Magi” king, sacrificial 524 and critical writings Dante 66–67 275–279 King Bolo poems 23, 348, 404 intelligentsia, politicians composition of 19 497 Eliot on 484 and 287 critical commentary kingfisher 201 on “Hysteria” 262 interextuality 431–432 278–279 Kipling, Rudyard 215, 252, on “Preludes 359 “Interlude: in a Bar” 359 as dramatic monologue 527, 532 on “Sweeney among “Interlude in London” 8, 90, 275–276 Klein, Ferdinand (character) the Nightingales” 359 Perse’s influence on 45 84 389 international order, based on personality in 116 Klipstein (character) speakers in poems of 7 Catholicism 87–90 publication of 143 384–385 in symbolism 559, “Ion” (Plato) 408 speaker of 276–277 knights (characters) 561–562 Iphigenia (mythological synopsis 276–278 327–329 truthfulness in 357 figure) 172, 392, 433 joy, in “The Cultivation of knitting 131, 133 wit of 47 Ireland 340, 534, 572–573 Christmas Trees” 144, 145 Knopf 13, 169 Lambert (character) 154 Irish Catholics 499, 501 Joyce, James 534–535. See knowledge 279, 280–281, Lambeth Conferences 398 isolation 40, 110, 111–112, also Ulysses 282, 294, 554 “Lancelot Andrewes” 387 “The Dead” 39, 534 Knowledge and Experience 285–286 Isolde (legendary figure) Dubliners 534 in the Philosophy of F. H. “Landscapes” 309–310, 488 447–448 in The Egoist 521 Bradley 279–285, 508 language Italian Institute 483 Finnegans Wake 228, background changing 274 Italians 499 236, 535 considerations in classics 486 Italy 135, 516, 549–550 on history 140 279–280 in cultural deterioration Ivy (character) 174–180, “Little Gidding” and critical commentary 375 183 222 282–285 of Dante 485

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language (continued) Latin, universality of 486 “Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier” renunciation in 219– deterioration of 209 Latini, Brunetto, Dante and 311 220 development of 334– 147, 221, 517 Listener, The (magazine) 422 spring in 188 335 laughter, in “Hysteria” 263 literary journals. See also synopsis 218–227 dissociation of sensibility Lausanne, Switzerland, Criterion; Dial, The; Egoist, Part I 219–220 and 306, 309 clinic in 14, 430–431 The; Poetry Part II 220–223 of drama 352 Lawrence, D. H. 540–541 Eliot’s career in 167 Part III 223–224 in “East Coker” 189, as blasphemous 41 failure of 345–346 Part IV 224–225 204–205 as heretical writer in London 513–514, Part V 225–227 economy of words in 147 39–40 521 time in 226, 227 imprecision in 204 later criticism of 404 literary symbolism 560–561 understanding in 226 in “Journey of the Magi” Morrell and 544–545 literature Little Gidding (place) 188, 276 Lazarus 295–296 American 42–44 218, 218 in Laforgue 536, 538 leadership, of Christian state moral judgments of 362 Little Review (journal) 12, limitations of 384–385 266 national, classical roots 320, 488 in “Little Gidding” 558 Leaves of Grass (Whitman) of 103 Liturgy of the Eucharist, in of love poetry 185–186 566 as religion 151 “Ash-Wednesday” 65 in “The Love Song of J. Leavis, F. R. 101 religion separate from Litvinoff, Emmanuel 498 Alfred Prufrock” 294 Lee, Leah 539 362–363 Liverpool Post (newspaper) v. meaning 146 Léger, Alexis Saint-Léger 44 religious 362 15 in metaphysical poetry Leicester (character) 461 timelessness of 431 Lives (Plutarch) 135 305–306 Leroux, Gaston 357 “Literature of Politics, The” Lloyds of London Bank 12, in Milton 307–308 “L’Hippopotame” (Gautier) 287–288 15, 130 in “Mr. Apollinax” 250 “Little Gidding.” See also Locke, John 386 319–320 Libation Bearers (Aeschylus) Four Quartets logic theory 555 in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday 173, 382–383 aging in 133–134 London 541, 541–543, 543 Morning Service” liberalism v. conservatism, in allusions in first visit to 8 320–321 After Strange Gods 36, 89 Dante 149, 404 literary journalism in in Murder in the life Herakles 192–193 513–514, 521 Cathedral 325 boredom in 451, 452 Julian of Norwich in The Rock 93 natural speech 126, compromises in 120– 192, 223–224 in World War II (See 334–335, 567–568 121, 127 Medea (Euripides) Battle of Britain) in Old Possum’s Book of cycle of, in “East Coker” 193 London Bridge 449, 456, Practical Cats 349 204 Battle of Britain in 461–462, 542 poetic 360 v. drama 367 191, 193, 218–219, London Conservative Union in poetic drama 367– in The Elder Statesman 220–221, 224 287 368 154 beginnings in 226 London Nights (Symons) in poetry 98, 333–335, in Four Quartets 189, belief in 220 563 416, 567–568 204 biography in 218 Longfellow, Henry possibilities of, in in “The Hollow Men” composition of 24, 191 Wadsworth 149, 529 function of poet 126 255–256 detachment in 223 Lord Jim (Conrad) 513 of satellite cultures as labor 93, 95 Divine Comedy (Dante) Lord’s Prayer, in “The 340–341 in Laforgue 539 and 221–222, 404 Hollow Men” 257 suggestive v. explicit of lower classes 436 ends in 226 Lost Generation, Eliot as 282–283 poetry as criticism of eternity in 226–227 leader of 15 in “Sweeney Agonistes 451 faith in 220 Louisiana Purchase 556 384–385 in “Sweeney Agonistes” fire in 188 love. See also courtly love; temporal quality of 222 385 ghost in 221–223 divine love time and 222 in “Whispers of history in 219 action and 225–226 universality of 146 Immortality” 489– Holy Spirit in 224 in Alcestis (Euripides) in vers libre 170 491 influences on 484, 518 104, 106 in Wordsworth 360– Lil (character) 454 language in 558 in “Ash-Wednesday” 361, 416 Lindsey, Jack 479 love in 225 58–59 in Yeats 493 “Lines to a Duck in the past in 225 betrayal by 448 La Rochefoucauld, François Park” 311 on poetic style 57 in The Cocktail Party de 81 “Lines for an Old Man” 310 prayer in 220 118 La Salle, René-Robert “Lines to a Persian Cat” publication of 191 in The Confidential Clerk Cavalier de 556 310–311 religion in 189 124, 128

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in “Conversation as dramatic monologue lower classes Marius the Epicurean (Pater) Galante” 129 258, 276, 293–294, in “A Game of Chess” 49 in The Divine Comedy 295 452 Marlow (character) 252, 518 as dramatic poetry 150 lives of 436 257, 435, 530–533 in The Elder Statesman epigraph to 149, 290, Lowes, John Livington 236 Marlowe, Christopher 153, 154, 157–158, 291–293, 432 Lucas, F. L. 479 98–99, 320, 354, 415 159, 160–162 frivolity in 23 Lucian 317 Marquette, Jacques 556 in Four Quartets 189, Harvard and 529 “Lucifer in Straight” marriage, in The Waste Land 225 importance of 288–289 (Meredith) 141 454–455 in “The Hollow Men” individual in 57, Lucretius 505 marriages (Eliot’s) 9–10, 18, 256 104–105 Lucy, Saint 144 20–21, 27–28 in Lawrence 540 influences on Ludwig (king of Bavaria) Marsden, Dora 521 in “The Love Song of Bergson 505–506 445 Marston, John 83, 166–167 J. Alfred Prufrock” The Divine Comedy Luftwaffe 24 martyrdom, in Murder in the 294–295 (Dante) 290, Lustra (Pound) 169 Cathedral 326–327, 330 in “Marina” 302–304 291–293, 518 Luther, Martin 564 Marvell, Andrew 47–48, redemptive power of Laforgue 290, 537, Lutheranism, Eucharist in 208, 296, 458, 562 153 538, 539, 563 512 Marx, Groucho 300, 350 self-denying 62 metaphysical poets Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth) Marxism 270 stillness of 202 520 407 Mary. See Virgin Mary as temptation 58 landscape in 311 Lysistrata (Aristophanes) Mary (character) 174–180, transformative power of language of 294 381 183 62–63, 304 listening in 295 Mary, Queen of Scots in The Waste Land 448, love in 294–295 M 203–204 461 as love poem 185 Macavity (character) 349 Mary Institute 393 in “Whispers of as love song 294 MacColgie Gibbs, Alexander Mass, as drama 151–152 Immortality” 489 meaning in 294 (character) 106–113, Massinger, Philip 166 love poetry 184–185 modernism of 425 117–118 masturbation, in “The love song 294 name in 316 Machiavelli, Niccolò 83, Death of Saint Narcissus” “Love Song of J. Alfred objective correlative in 371 150 Prufrock, The” 288–299 248, 283–284 magi 275–279 mathematics 555 alienation in 291 in Poetry 11, 548 Maid’s Tragedy, The Matter and Memory allusions in polite society in 142 (Fletcher and Beaumont) (Bergson) 505 biblical 295–296 precursors to 130 394 Maurras, Charles 87, 102, The Divine Comedy publication of 169, 548 make-believe, in The 288, 500 (Dante) 149, sea in 289 Confidential Clerk 120– Mayer, Louis B. 402 290, 291–293 sentimentality in 298 121 McAfee, Helen 478 Shakespeare 557 social masks in 160 Making of T. S. Eliot’s Plays, meaning “To His Coy speaker of 185, 289, The (Browne) 510 assumption of 435 Mistress” 294, 395 Mallarmé, Stéphane 198, cleverness and 228 (Marvell) 47, 296 success of 288 310, 504, 561 in “A Cooking Egg” 131 audience of 293–294 synopsis 291–296 Malory, Thomas 525 in Four Quartets 284 background dramatic monologue Mann, Thomas 519 in “The Hollow Men” considerations 293–294 Mannheim, Karl 338–339 251, 252 289–291 epigraph 291–293 Mantegna, Andrea 83 idea and 283, 284 biography in 296–297 text 294–296 Marburg, Germany 9 v. language 146 Boston in 289, 507 title 291–293 Margate 14 in “The Love Song of J. as character study title of 291–293 “Marie Lloyd” 299–300 Alfred Prufrock” 294 298–299 understanding 294, “Marina” 300–304 in “Mr. Apollinax” in The Cocktail Party 295 child in 144 316–317, 319 116 urban life in 75, 507 composition of 19 multilevel, in composition of 8 women in 295–296 critical commentary Shakespeare 182 concealment of yellow fog of 248, 295 303–304 in Old Possum’s Book of personality in 126 Lowell, Amy 43, 170 publication of 143 Practical Cats 351 critical commentary Lowell, James Russell 149, synopsis 302–303 patterns in rendering 296–299 529–530 Marina (character) 301– 198 dramatic elements lower civilization, v. higher 303 poetry and 146, 333, of 90 338–339 Maritain, Jacques 17 408, 420, 435–436

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meaning (continued) definition of 304–305 review publishing in Russell and 555 in “Rhapsody on in Samson Agonistes 381 513 synopsis 316–318 a Windy Night” Methuen Press 13 truthfulness in 357 text and context in 364–365 Middleton, Thomas 164, unpoetic in 316, 318–319 v. source 437, 443 165 319–320 “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning in “Sweeney among military, in World War I 429 vers libre in 360, 566, Service” 320–322, 396 the Nightingales” Milton, John 307–309 567 Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf) 570 389–390 education of 103 The Waste Land in 424 Mulhammer, Claude in “Sweeney Erect” 394 influence of 306 of Woolf 570 (character) 119–125 in The Waste Land 438, “Little Gidding” and of Yeats 572–573 Mulhammer, Elizabeth 469, 481–482 222 Yeats and 493–494 (character) 119–125, 127 Measure for Measure Marvell compared to 47 modern languages, at multiculturalism 34, 503 (Shakespeare) 241 reassessment of 403 Harvard 149, 529–530 Mungojerrie (character) Medea (Euripides) 193, 374 Samson Agonistes Monchensey, Amy 349 Medea (mythological figure) 380–381 (character) 174–180, 183 Murder in the Cathedral 193 “Milton I” 307–309 Monchensey, Harry 322–333 Meditations upon Emergent “Milton II” 307–309 (character) 175–180, audience in 331, 332 Occasions (Donne) 520 Milton Academy 506 182, 183 background Melanesians 300 Minor Poems 309–313, 488 Mond, Alfred 132 considerations memento mori 489 composition of 312 Monist (journal) 11 322–323 memory 64–65, 194–197, critical commentary Monro, Harold 476 “Burnt Norton” and 22, 212, 505–506 311–313 Monroe, Harriet 11, 477, 189–190 “Memory” (song) 349, 364 publication history 479, 548 character v. power in Merchant of Venice, The 309–310 Montaigne, Michel 371 135 (Shakespeare) 83 synopsis 310–311 Moore, Marianne 519 chorus in 168–169, Meredith, George 141 minor poetry 487–488 morality 79, 232, 362–363. 324–325, 327–330, Metamorphoses (Ovid) 453, minor poets 487 See also After Strange Gods 401, 402 460 Minos (mythological figure) morality play 161, 240 composition of 22, 189– metaphor, in After Strange 397 More, Paul Elmer 503 190, 331–332, 509 Gods 35–39 Mississippi River 3, 210, “(Morgendämmerung): conflict of 331 Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems 556 Prelude in Roxbury” 507 critical commentary of the Seventeenth Century: mob, in “Coriolan” 137–140 “Morning at the Window” 330–333 Donne to Butler (Grierson) modernism 424–425 81, 313–316, 501, 507 in development as 100, 305, 520 as American literature Morrell, Ottoline 11, 544– playwright 125 metaphysical poetry 43–44 545, 559 as dramatic poetry conceits in 208, 305– in Anabasis 44–45 Morrell, Philip 544 331–333 306, 519 Arnold and 502 Morris, William 252, 532 The Family Reunion and experience in 306 in “Ash-Wednesday” 73 Morte D’Arthur (Malory) 180 French symbolism and Baudelaire in 77, 504 525 language in 325 562 boredom in 300 Morville, Hugh de martyrdom in 326–327, language in 305–306 Conrad in 530 (character) 329 330 “Whispers of critical theory of 419 movement original story 323–324 Immortality” and Donne and 100 as meaningful action past in 160 489–491 experimentation in 411 200 as poetic drama 353 “Metaphysical Poetry of the in “The Hollow Men” in Murder in the power in 323, 326, 331 17th Century, with special 96 Cathedral 327 self-sacrifice in 105 reference to Donne, human experience perfection and 201–202 sermon in 327 Crashaw and Cowley, in 97 stillness and 209 synopsis 324–330 The” 99 influences on 43, 504 of time 213 tempters in 325–327 metaphysical poets 208, of Joyce 410–411, 535 “Mr. Apollinax” 316–320 themes of 331 304–307. See also Donne, Laforgue and 538 allusions in 319 Murry, J. Middleton 17, John; Marvell, Andrew of “The Love Song of J. critical commentary 232, 235, 237, 399, “Metaphysical Poets, The” Alfred Prufrock” 289 318–320 545–546 13, 47, 272, 304–307, Morrell and 544 epigraph of 317 music 520, 537 poetry defined in 46– meaning in 316–317, in Aiken’s poetry 498 metaphysics 47, 421 319 in Four Quartets 189, of Bradley 508–509 Pound in 547–548 name in 316–317 193, 212 Bradley on 402 reaction against 425 reader and 264 of poetry 333–335

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poetry and, properties New Humanism, Babbitt observation, in “Preludes” P common to 198 in 503 359 pagan society 265–266 in “Rhapsody on a New Statesman (journal) 11, occult 127, 572–574 Page-Barbour Lectures 20, Windy Night” 364 169, 360 “Ode to a Nightingale” 33, 412, 500 as structural model 201 nightingales 392, 393 (Keats) 390 Palm Sunday, as triumphal in “Sweeney Agonistes” Nobel Prize 26, 506, 574 Odysseus (mythological march 137 385 noble savage 386, 396 figure) 395 Paradiso. See Divine Comedy, music hall 299–300 “No man is an island” Odyssey (Homer) 395, The “Music I Heard” (Aiken) (Donne) 520 409–410, 460 paradox, in “East Coker” 498 nonsense 23, 348 Oedipus the King (Sophocles) 204, 207–208 “Music of Poetry, The” 197, Norton, Charles Eliot 149, 42, 433, 460 parentage, in The 333–335 529–530 Old Gumbie Cat (character) Confidential Clerk 119– Mussolini, Benito 135, 270, Norton Lectures. See 349 125, 127–128 549–550 Charles Eliot Norton Old Possum’s Book of Paris, Eliot in 7–8, 290–291, “My Last Duchess” professorship Practical Cats 22–23, 311, 463, 505–506 (Browning) 293 Norwegian language, 348–351, 488 Parnell, Charles Stewart mysticism, poetry as preservation of 340–341 O’Neill, Eugene 397 534 419–420 Nosce Teipsum (Know On Poetry and Poets 28, 235, parody 349–350 mythology 391, 392, 409– Thyself) (Davies) 372, 273, 307 Parzival (Wolfram von 410, 465–466 373 “Poetry and Drama” Eschenbach) 524 Nostromo (Conrad) 513 in 352 past N Notes towards the Definition “Sir John Davies” in 372 in The Elder Statesman “Naming of Cats, The” 349 of Culture 335–348 “The Social Function of 161 Narcissus 150 Anglicanism in 399 Poetry” in 374 in The Family Reunion Nashe, Thomas 368–369 “Catholicism and “The Three Voices of 160, 178, 184 National Book League 400 International Order” Poetry” in 400 in Four Quartets 184, nationalism, of Yeats 573, and 88 “Virgil and the Christian 194–197, 204, 206, 574 Catholicism in 511 World” in 422 225 national literature, classical composition of 25, 335 “What Is Minor in Murder in the roots of 103 conversion addressed Poetry?” in 487 Cathedral 160 National Medal for in 18 “Yeats” in 493 patterns of 227 Literature 498 critical commentary opinion, in criticism 238, in The Waste Land 82, nations 339, 345, 429 346–348 239 453–454 native tradition 413 synopsis 335–346 order, in Minor Poems 312 Pater, Walter 49, 52–54 Nativity, in “Journey of the Chapter 1 335–338 Oresteia (Aeschylus) 172– patricians 135–136 Magi” 276–277 Chapter 2 338–339 174, 180–181, 382–383 patterns, in Four Quartets nature 141, 393 Chapter 3 339–341 Orestes (mythological of action 226 Nausicaa (mythological Chapter 4 341–342 figure) 173–174, 382–383 contrasts in 199 figure) 395 Chapter 5 342–343 Organization Man 252–253, in “The Dry Salvages” Nazi regime, anti-Semitism Chapter 6 343–345 532 212 of 501 European culture orthodoxy 36, 423 in “Little Gidding” 226 Nero (Roman emperor) 434 345–346 Orwell, George 229–230, of past 227 Nerval, Gerárd de 561 “Nowhere Man” (song) 201 274 reality as 199 Nessus (mythological figure) Othello (Shakespeare) 83, in rendering meaning 192 O 279 198 neutral society, tolerance objective correlative Others (journal) 11, 514 Pembroke, countess of 415 in 266 247–248 Our Lady of Good Voyage people, a 36 New Criterion (journal) 17, Bradley and 283 Catholic Church 215, perception 281–282, 515. See also Criterion Eliot on 404 215, 527 505–506 (journal) in The Family Reunion Our Mutual Friend (Dickens) Perceval (Chrétien de New Criticism 101, 405 183 436–437 Troyes) 524 New English Weekly (journal) in “The Hollow Men” Outcast of the Islands, An “Perch’ io non spero” 19, 55. “The Dry Salvages” in 252 (Conrad) 512 See also “Ash-Wednesday” 24, 190 objectivity 8–9, 279, 508– Ovid 453, 460 Pereira (character) 383 “East Coker” in 23, 190 509, 554–555 Ovid Press 13 perfection 201–202 “Little Gidding” in 24, objects 283 Oxford University 9–10, Perfect Storm, The (film) 191 obscurities 192, 227–228, 501, 508 215, 527 “New Hampshire” 310 401 Ozick, Cynthia 501 performance 299

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Pericles (character) 301, Plutarch 135 poetic language 360 debate over 413– 302–303 Plymouth Rock 506 poetic vision 34, 105, 148, 414 Pericles (Shakespeare) 118, Poe, Edgar Allan 488, 492 social function 301–303 as American 43 poetry 374–376 Perse, St.-John. See Anabasis Baudelaire and 504 accessibility of 191–192 idea in 284–285, 371 personal experience 66–67, Europe and 245 anthologies of 487 as immediate experience 71–72 influence of 232–234 autobiography and 281 personality poetic theory of 233– 145–146 impersonal theory of in Byron 86–87 234 of belief (See poet, v. person) concealment of 126– symbolists and 562 “Ash-Wednesday” language of 98, 333– 127 Poems 1909–1925 17, 252 as 69 335, 416, 567–568 of dramatic poet Poems 1920 13 Dante as 147–148 layered meaning in 59 165–169 poésie pure 233 Four Quartets as logic of 46 of Ford (John) 166 poet 214 material of, choice of in Heywood 165–166 creation by, experience function of 56–57 272–273 imposition of 40–41 used in 297 modern capacity for meaning and 146, 333, ineffectual 116 Eliot as, v. man of letters 67–69, 73 408, 420, 435–436 lack of 115 167 v. belief minor 487–488 of Marston 166–167 function of 126 in After Strange modern requirements of Massinger 166 historical consciousness Gods 37, 38–39 of 421 in Middleton 165 of 78, 407 in Ariel Poems 52 moral choices in 79 poetry as escape from major 487 critical commentary music and, properties 407–408 minor 487 on 148, 229, 408, common to 198 poetry united by 166 performance of 206 419 music of 333–335 in “Portrait of a Lady” v. person 145, 372, 396 in “Goethe as Sage” as mysticism 419–420 357 beliefs of 52, 148 246 native v. foreign of Tourneur 166 in “The Love of Byron 86–87 influences on 414– in Yeats 493 Song of J. Alfred changing fashions of 206 415 Peter (biblical figure), in The Prufrock” 290, communication through obscurity in 401 Rock 92 296–297 146, 148 order in 312 Petronius 433–434 Pound and 550 complexity in, reasons personal experience in Phantom of the Opera, The separation of 406, for 192 71–72 (Leroux) 357 431 craft v. content in 7 personality in unity “Philip Massinger” 166 in Shakespeare as criticism of life 451 of 166 Phillipe, Charles-Louis 365 370–372 culture and 376 philosophy and 100– Philomela (mythological in “Tradition and as distinct field 145– 101, 145–146, 229, figure) 392, 453 the Individual 146 373, 415 philosophy Talent” 130 in drama 126 Poe’s theories of of Blake 492 in The Waste Land drama as ideal medium 233–234 in “Burnt Norton” 189, 441 for 388 poet’s relation to 203 personality of dramatic (See dramatic 407–408 poetry and 100–101, in characters poetry) poet’s study of 333 145–146, 229, 373, 165–169 dramatic use of 352– as political literature 415, 417 in Elizabethan 354 288 truth in 386 drama 165–169 Eliot in redefining political use of 419 Phlaccus, Mrs. (character) in Murder in the 46–47 as portrait 354 318 Cathedral 168– Eliot’s theory of 420 v. prose 46, 420 Phlebas (character) 463–465 169 Elizabethan 414–415 purpose of 234 Phoenicians 464 as philosopher 415, 417 emotion in 272 reality in 284–285 Piggot, Mrs. (character) 156 relation to poetry as escapism 407–408 as religion 418, 502 Pipit (character) 130–133 407–408 of everyday speech 126 religion in, tolerance Pisan Cantos (Pound) 550 v. thinker 371 experience in 284–285, of 56 place, in “Burnt Norton” in “The Three Voices of 375, 421, 431 salvation through 419 197 Poetry” 86, 401 extended works of, rarity show v. tell in 306 Plato 408 voices of 86, 400–402 of 46 social function of pleasure, as social function poetic, vision, of Dante 148 function of 52, 412–422 374–376 of poetry 375 poetic drama 150, 152, Arnold on 418, 502 sound in 333–334 plebeians 135–136 352–354, 367–368 Baudelaire on 504 statement of 413, 420

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symbolist 562–563 speaker of 354–356, in Murder in the propriety 74–76, 141, taste in, development 395 Cathedral 135, 323, 289–290, 355–356 of 414 synopsis 354–356 326, 331 prose, v. poetry 46, 420 temporal quality of truthfulness in 357 time’s ravaging of Prospect for Christendom 25, 222 urban life in 75, 507 206–207 335 themes in, clarity of 92 postromanticism 502 prayer Protestant Reformation theology and 373 Pound, Ezra 547–550 in “Ash-Wednesday” 73 342, 511–512, 519–520, time and 206, 222 Aiken and 497 Anima Christi 71 564 as unique medium 420 “The Ballad of the confession 70 Prothalamion, The (Spenser) united by personality Goodly Fere” 276 Hail Mary 61 457 166 Cantos 171, 260, 549 Liturgy of the Prufrock and Other use of 412–422 career of 10–11 Eucharist 65 Observations voices of 400–402 in The Dial 519 Salve, Regina 67 “Aunt Helen” in 73 wisdom in 246 Dial Award and 519 in Four Quartets 216, “The Boston Evening of World War I 429 friendship with 10–11 220 Transcript” in 80 Poetry (journal) in futurism 170 in “The Hollow Men” “Conversation Galante” “Aunt Helen” in 73 heretical writer 40 257 in 128 “Conversation Galante” Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Prayer and Poetry (Brémond) “Cousin Nancy” in 141 in 128 12, 243, 320, 548 419–420 dedication of 8 “Cousin Nancy” in 141 in imagism 170 Praz, Mario 101 “La Figlia Che Piange” “The Love Song of J. involuntary prejudices, in After Strange in 184 Alfred Prufrock” in commitment of 10, Gods 33–35 “The Hippopotamus” 11, 169, 288 25, 28, 550 Prelude, The (Wordsworth) in 248 “Morning at the “Little Gidding” and 72 “Hysteria” in 262 Window” in 313 222 “Preludes” 358–360 “Morning at the “Mr. Apollinax” in 316 “The Love Song of J. Boston in 507 Window” in 313 publication in 11, 514 Alfred Prufrock” and composition of 8, “Mr. Apollinax” in 316 “Poetry and Drama” 104, 289 358–359 “Preludes” in 358 334, 352–354 Lustra 169 Harvard and 529 publication of 12, 169, political writers 288 meeting 521 hope in 360 521, 548 politicians, intelligentsia on Milton 309 “Morning at the “Rhapsody on a Windy and 287 in modernism 43 Window” and 315 Night” in 363 politics modernism of 424 observations in 359 “Pseudo-Martyr” (Donne) in Conrad 513 professional publication of 11 520 in “Coriolan” 138–139 encouragement of urban life in 75 Pulitzer, Joseph 557 culture and 342–343 12–13, 169, 514, pre-political area 288 Pulitzer Prize 498 Eliot’s writing on 287 548–549 present 184, 194–197 pure poetry 233 in Heart of Darkness quatrain form used by Prester John 129 purgative 63–65, 72–73 (Conrad) 530 12, 320, 548 Priapus (mythological figure) Purgatorio. See Divine poetry used for 419 Quinn and 551 318 Comedy, The Pope, Alexander 430 subscription raised by priests (characters) 324– Purpose (magazine) 493 popular culture 299–300, 15, 549 325, 327–328, 329 350–351 transformations of Prince, The (Machiavelli) Q Portinari, Beatrice 517 170–171 83 quartet 189 portrait, poem as 354 vers libre of 170, 361 Principia Mathematica quatrains 12, 82–83 Portrait of the Artist as a The Waste Land and (Russell and Whitehead) “Burbank” 82–85 Young Man, A (Joyce) 39, collaboration on 10 555 “A Cooking Egg” 130 72, 534–535 dedication to 64, Principles (Russell) 555 of Gautier 567 “Portrait of a Lady” 354– 437–438, 471 Principles of Literary “The Hippopotamus” 358 editing by 14, 45, Criticism, The (Richards) 248–250 Boston in 507 411, 430, 437, 235, 413 importance of 134 composition of 8 548–549 Principles of Logic, The language of 425 critical commentary influence in 15 (Bradley) 508–509 “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday 357–358 Yeats and 572 prison, in The Waste Land Morning Service” as dramatic poetry 150 power 128 320–322 Harvard and 529 v. character, of Procne (mythological figure) in Old Possum’s Book as love poem 185 Coriolanus 135–136 392, 452–453 of Practical Cats polite society in 142 in Conrad 513 professional critics 403 348–349

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quatrains (continued) in The Elder Statesman self in 261 river, in “The Dry Salvages” Pound and 12, 320, 548 153, 159, 162 service in 95 210 structure of 392, 394 “Gerontion” and 242 social purpose of 93 River Plate, in “Sweeney “Sweeney Agonistes” in “Little Gidding” social structure based among the Nightingales” 379 224–225 on 265 390 “Sweeney among the through love 153 v. spirituality 56 Road to Xanadu, The (Lowe) Nightingales” 392 “Reflections on Vers Libre” spiritual purpose of 236 “Sweeney Erect” 394 169, 360–361, 567 93–94 Robert de Boron 524, 525 “Whispers of Reformation. See English unification under 88 Robertson, J. M. 246 Immortality” 488– Reformation; Protestant as universal impulse Rock, The 491 Reformation 56 choruses from. See quest, in The Waste Land regeneration, in “Ash- universality of 342 Choruses from The 438, 447, 457, 482 Wednesday” 63–64 as way of life 337 Rock Quilpe, Peter (character) region, in unified culture “Religion and Literature” composition of 21–22, 106–113, 117 340–341 38, 361–363 91, 509 Quinn, John 12, 14, 436, relationships 357–358, 387 Religious Aspects of Philosophy dialogue of 92 519, 551–552 religion. See also (Royce) 554 The Family Reunion and quintessence, in Four Christianity; Hinduism; religious literature 362 180 Quartets 188 Judaism Renaissance, Dante in 516 Murder in the Cathedral abandonment of 94–95 renunciation 219–220, 462 and 322 R in aestheticism 53–54 Republic (Plato) 408 performance of 91–92 Rachel née Rabinovitch Baudelaire and 78–79 resignation 139, 140, social commitment in (character) 390–391, 499 in coherent tradition 378–379 97–98 racism, in After Strange 36, 500 Resurrection 467 Roman Catholicism Gods 34 in The Confidential Clerk Revenger’s Tragedy, The American prejudice “Rannoch, by Glencoe” 310 127–128 (Tourneur) 166 against 500 Ransom, John Crowe 478 culture and 335–336, Revolutionary War 506 v. Anglo-Catholicism Rape of the Lock, The (Pope) 337, 341–342, 399 “Rhapsody on a Windy 18 430 culture as, exclusively Night” 363–367 as “Catholicism” 511 Rascoe, Burton 474 337–338 Baudelaire and 366 as cultural expression rational skepticism, divisions in, in culture composition of 8 512 literature under 53 341–342 Harvard and 529 Eucharist in 512 Ravenna, Italy 516–517 in Four Quartets 229 as lyrical poem 364 in Ireland 573 Read, Herbert 17, 344 “The Dry Salvages” meaning in 364–365 of Joyce 534 realism, in Elizabethan 211, 212, 213– “Memory” (song) and in “Sweeney Among the drama 164 215, 217 349, 364 Nightingales” 499 reality “Little Gidding” modernism of 425 romanticism ambiguity of 227 189, 224 “Morning at the v. classicism v. appearance 127 in “The Hippopotamus” Window” and 315 in After Strange asleep to 182–183 248–250 music in 364 Gods 36, 37–38 awakening to 182–183 in humanism 53–54 objective correlative in criticism 237– in “Burnt Norton v. humanism 52–54, in 283 238 194–197 232, 261–262 publication of 11 debate of 102, 410, of death 201 in Ireland 573 speaker of 81 486–487 of feelings 283 literature and, separation urban life in 75 Eliot on 89 in “Gerontion” 239 between 362–363 “‘Rhetoric’ and Poetic Murry on 545 human capacity for literature as 151 Drama” 367–368 critical theory of 182–183, 184 local, doctrine in rhyming couplets, in Old 416–417 idea as 284 335–336 Possum’s Book of Practical poetry of 406 as patterns 199 morality and 232 Cats 348 pure poetry and 233 perception of 471–472 in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday rhythm, in “Burnt Norton” Ulysses (Joyce) and 410 in poetry 284 Morning Service” 198 Roman tragedy, Elizabethan reconciliation, in The Elder 320–322 Richards, I. A. 101, 235, drama influenced by 168 Statesman 160 necessity of 94, 97 413, 419 Rome, ancient redemption in poetry, tolerance Rimbaud, Arthur 504, 559, in Aeneid 423, 485–486 in “Ash-Wednesday” 67 of 56 561 in “Coriolan” 137–140 in “Burnt Norton” 194 poetry as substitute for Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coriolanus in 135–136 choice of 224–225 418, 502 The (Coleridge) 236 influence of 422–423

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Roosevelt, Franklin Delano in “The Hollow Men” The Sacred Wood and in “Sweeney among 412 256–257 368 the Nightingales” rose, as symbol 560 through poetry 419 “What Is Minor 391–392 rose garden, in “Burnt from time 217 Poetry?” in 487 in “Sweeney Erect” 394 Norton” 128, 194–195, Salve, Regina (prayer) 67 self in The Waste Land 58, 200 Samson (biblical figure) annihilation and 439–440 Rostand, Edmond 368 326, 381, 383 reconstitution of 63 “The Burial of the Rothermere, Lilian, Samson Agonistes (Milton) in The Cocktail Party Dead” 444 Viscountess 13, 514–515, 380–381, 389 108–109, 111–112, “Death by Water” 553–554 sapphires 198–199 114–115 466 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Sarett, Lew 477 in “Gerontion” 104– “The Fire Sermon” 386, 396 Sassoon, Siegfried 16 105 458, 459–461 Roxbury 359, 507 satellite cultures 340 in “The Hollow Men” “A Game of Chess” Royce, Josiah 8, 279, 528, satire 248, 272, 317 104–105 454 554–555 Satyricon (Petronius) in humanism 261 in “Whispers of Rudolph (archduke of 433–434 in “The Love Song of Immortality” 489, Austria) 445 Savonarola 4–5 J. Alfred Prufrock” 491 Rugby 501 Scala, Cangrande I della 104–105 Shackleton, Ernest 467 Ruggieri, Archbishop 440 518 v. public identity 160 shadow 96, 257 Rumpelteazer (character) Schiff, Sidney 514 in religion 261 Shakespear, Dorothy 547 349 School of Donne 99, 100 self-deception, tradition as Shakespeare, William Rum Tum Tugger science, in The Rock 93 defense against 41 557–558 (character) 349 Scotland, as satellite culture self-deprecation 132, Antony and Cleopatra Russell, Bertrand 9–10, 264, 340 230–231 452 317, 545, 555 sea self-discovery, in The Elder in “Ash-Wednesday” Russell’s Paradox 555 in “Ash-Wednesday” Statesman 160 59–60 Russell Square 24, 24, 543 70 self-purgation, in “Ash- authorship of 370 in “The Dry Salvages” Wednesday” 55 belief in 371 S 189, 210–211 self-sacrifice 105 contemporaneous Sacred Wood, The 13, 246, end of 211–212 Seneca opinion on 414 368, 405 in “The Love Song of J. drama of 367 education of 103 sacrifice 105, 138 Alfred Prufrock” 289 Elizabethan drama experience rendered sacrificial king 524 in “Mr. Apollinax” 318 influenced by 165, by 147 “Sailing to Byzantium” in Pericles (Shakespeare) 168, 368–370 as great European 245 (Yeats) 574 301 Hercules Furens 302, Hamlet 246–248 St. Elizabeth’s Hospital 10, seasons 188, 445–446, 462, 369 “Little Gidding” and 25, 550 466 stoicism of, 222 St. Louis, Missouri 556– “Second Caprice in North Shakespeare and in “The Love 557 Cambridge” 359, 507 370–372 Song of J. Alfred in American heartland “Second Thoughts on tragedy of 369 Prufrock” 557 42 Humanism” 53, 260–262, “Seneca in Elizabethan as poetic drama birth in 3 503–504 Translation” 99, 163, 352 Eliot family in 506, Secret Agent, The (Conrad) 368–370 in The Waste Land 521–522 513 senses 194, 307 455 foreign-born population sects, in culture 341–342 sentimentality 131–132, Marlowe and 98 of 500 secular society 265, 400 187, 298 Measure for Measure St. Michael’s Church 23, 29 seduction, in The Waste “sept vieillards, Les” 241 Salem witch trials 506 Land 466 (Baudelaire) 450 The Merchant of Venice “Salutation” 19, 55. See also Seldes, Gilbert 474–475, sermon, in Murder in the 83 “Ash-Wednesday” 519 Cathedral 327 Milton compared to salutation, in “Ash- Selected Essays 1917–1932 Servetus, Michael 564 308 Wednesday” 62 “Arnold and Pater” set theory 555 multilevel meaning in salvation in 52 sexuality 182 baptism and 463 Elizabethan drama in Baudelaire 505 Othello 83, 279 in Baudelaire 79–80 essays in 99, 163 in “The Death of Saint Pericles 118, 301 in “Coriolan” 140 essays on drama in 151 Narcissus” 150 stoicism in 370–372 in Eliot’s poetic focus “Marie Lloyd” 299– in Lawrence 540 The Tempest 51, 57 300 in politics 452 457–458

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“Shakespeare and the “Song for Opherian” 251 in “Sweeney among the Stoll, Elmer Edgar 246 Stoicism of Seneca” “Song for Simeon, A” 19, Nightingales” 391 Strong, Thomas Banks 18 370–372 90, 143, 376–379 in The Waste Land 194, structure, in “Burnt Norton” Baudelaire in 77 Songs of Experience (Blake) 473 198 composition of 99 492 “The Burial of the subway, in Four Quarters in Elizabethan Essays Sons of Ben, The 99–100 Dead” 441, 446 200–201, 207 163 Sophocles 42, 331, 433, 460 “The Fire Sermon” success, in “Coriolan” 140 on Othello 279 Sorrows of Young Werther, 455, 459–460 Sudetenland 23 poetry v. belief in 37, 52 The (Goethe) 244 “A Game of Chess” suffering, human capacity “Shakespeare as Poet and Sosostris, Madame 454 for 79 Dramatist” 301 (character) 448–449 “What the Thunder summer, in “Burnt Norton” Shantih 473, 482 soul Said” 472, 473 188 Sheldon Travelling in “Animula” 48–50 speculation, in “Burnt Sweeney (character) Fellowship in Philosophy awakening of 444 Norton” 194 in “Sweeney Agonistes” 9 as child 49–50, 96 Spenser, Edmund 415 379–380, 384–385 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 417 in “The Cultivation of spiral staircase, in “Ash- in “Sweeney among Sherek, Henry 104 Christmas Trees” 144, Wednesday” 64–65, 201 the Nightingales” Shuttlethwaite, Julia 145 spirit. See soul 387–388, 390–392, (character) 106–113, in Davies 373 Spirit of Romance, The 394–395 117–118 in The Divine Comedy (Pound) 547 in “Sweeney Erect” Shylock (character) 83 374 spiritual biography 72–73 395–396 Sibyl of Cumae 433–434 guidance for 50 spiritual conflict, in in The Waste Land 459 Sidney, Philip 132, 414–415 in “The Hollow Men” “Sweeney Agonistes” 383 “Sweeney Agonistes” Silhouettes (Symons) 563 259 spiritual experience 66–67, 379–389 Simeon (biblical figure) labor of 95 148–149 abandonment of 16, 376–379 in “Marina” 303 spirituality 388 Simpkins, Colby (character) in “Morning at the in The Confidential Clerk accessibility of 385 119–125, 128 Window” 314 127–128 audience of 388–389 simplicity, in “Ash- in Murder in the in The Divine Comedy background Wednesday” 57 Cathedral 328 517 considerations sin, purpose of 223–224, in The Rock 95 in “The Hollow Men” 379–380 225 sound 189, 233–234, 307, 258, 259 characters of 379–380 “Sir John Davies” 372–374 333–334 v. religion 56 composition of 16, 44 Sitwell, Dame Edith source, v. meaning 437, 443 in Samson Agonistes 381 critical commentary 558–559 Soviets 270 in The Waste Land 56, 70 385–389 Sitwell, Sir Osbert 558–559 speaker 7, 58, 293, 395. See in Yeats 494 death in 385 Sitwell, Sir Sacherevell also poet, v. person spiritual struggle, in “Ash- despair in 384, 388 558–559 in “Ash-Wednesday” 58 Wednesday” 57 dramatic elements of 90 Sitwells, the 11, 558–559 as character 395–396 spring 188, 445–446, 462, epigraphs of 382–383 “Skimbleshanks: The of dramatic poetry 466 experience in 259 Railway Cat” 349 395–396 staircase, in “Ash- faith in 97 sleep. See awakening in “Gerontion” 240, 395 Wednesday” 64–65, 202 The Family Reunion and Smith Academy 6 in “The Hollow Men” standards, in criticism 238, 180 social contract 386 252 239 “Fragment of an Agon” social credit 549 in “Journey of the Magi” statecraft, in “Coriolan” 384 social dynamics, change 276–277 138–139 “Fragment of a in 115 in Laforgue 7 states of being, in “Burnt Prologue” 383 “Social Function of Poetry, in “The Love Song of J. Norton” 194–195 “The Hollow Men” and The” 98, 374–376 Alfred Prufrock” 185, Stead, William Force 16, 18 251 social masks, in The Elder 289, 294, 395 Stetson (character) 449– individual in 57, 105, Statesman 160 in “Morning at the 450 388 social responsibility, v. Window” 81 Stevenson, Robert Louis influences on, Oresteia choice, in The Elder in “Portrait of a Lady” 396 (Aeschylus) 172, Statesman 153 354–356, 395 stillness 201, 202, 209, 327 173–174, 382–383 social roles, in identity in “Rhapsody on a still point, in Four Quartets isolation in 57, 387 114–115 Windy Night” 81 199–200, 212–213, 227 landscape in 63 society 266, 336. See also in “A Song for Simeon” stoicism, in Shakespeare language in 384–385 Christian society 377 370–372 life in 385, 466

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as poetic drama 150– Aiken influenced by “Thoughts after Lambeth” Lawrence in 540 153, 332 497 135, 398–400 literary legacy in 171 publication of 251 influence of 7, 528 “Three Voices of Poetry, on “Milton II” 308 relationships in 387 Laforgue in 536, The” 86, 165, 168, Todd, Sweeney 379 setting of 380 537–538 400–402 “To His Coy Mistress” synopsis 380–385 Yeats in 493–494, 572 Ticknor, George 149, 529 (Marvell) 47–48, 296, first epigraph Symons, Arthur 7, 563, Tillyard, E. M. W. 101 458 382–383 567. See also Symbolist time. See also future; past; tolerance 56, 266 “Fragment of an Movement in Literature, present Tom Brown’s Schooldays Agon” 384–385 The (Symons) forward movement of (Hughes) 501 “Fragment of 213 “To My Wife” 27–28, 153 a Prologue” T in Four Quartets 189 To the Lighthouse (Woolf) 383–384 T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and “Burnt Norton” 570 second epigraph Literary Form (Julius) 501 194–197, 201 tourism, in “Burbank” 82 383 Tate, Allen 28, 423, 478 “The Dry Salvages” Tourneur, Cyril 164, 166 title 380–382 technology, in The Rock 93 210–211, 213, Traci, William de title of 380–382 Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 216–217 (character) 329 “Sweeney among the 51, 457–458 “East Coker” tradition Nightingales” 389–394 temptation, in The Waste 204–205 in After Strange Gods allusions in 391 Land 58 “Little Gidding” 35–42 anti-Semitism in 499 tempters, in Murder in the 225, 226, 227 in Christian society 269 “Burbank” compared Cathedral 325–327 minor poetry and 488 as continuum 406 to 85 Tenne Tragedies 368–369 poetry and 206 in “Cousin Nancy” 143 critical commentary Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 147, as river 210–211 in criticism 238, 239 392–394 209 salvation from 217 criticism of 36, 41 epigraph of 381, 382, Tereus (mythological figure) wisdom and 206 in Davies 373 390, 432–433 392, 452–453 Time and Free Will (Bergson) as defense against self- heritage squandered terza rima 517 505 deception 41 in 499 Testament (Villon) 131 Times Literary Supplement deterioration of 103 influences on, Oresteia text, v. context, in “Mr. Eliot at 514 v. humanism 232 (Aeschylus) 172, Apollinax” 318–319 Eliot in 13, 398–399 individual talent and 173–174, 381 Thaisa (character) 301, 302 “The Metaphysical 406–409 Irish Catholics in 499, Thames 257, 455, 457–458, Poets” in 305 literature as link to 103 501 532 “Sir John Davies” in religion in 36, 500 meaning in 389–390 Thayer, Scofield 13, 514, 372 thought without quatrain form of 12 528, 553. See also Dial, The “William Blake” in reference to 38 setting of 391 theater, in “East Coker” 207 491–492 Virgil and 423–424, speaker of 391 themes, clarity of 92 tin, in Cornwall 464 487 synopsis 389–392 theology 362, 373 Tiresias (character) 42, in Yeats 494 title of 390 theoretical critics 403 459–461 “Tradition and the wit in 47 Theosophical Society 132 To Criticize the Critic 28, Individual Talent” “Sweeney Erect” 23, 85, Theseus (mythological 402 405–409 394–397 figure) 395, 397 “American Literature Baudelaire in 77 Swinburne, Charles thinker, v. poet 371 and the American in The Egoist 13, 514, Algernon 98 Thomas à Becket, Saint Language” in 42 521 Swing, The (painting) 317 322–333. See also Becket, “Ezra Pound” in 169, on poet v. person 52, symbolism 560–561 Thomas (character) 171 90–91, 130, 297 in Anabasis 44–45 Thomas Aquinas, in Dante “From Poe to Valéry” in The Sacred Wood 13, definition of 560–561 371 in 232 368 French 561–562 “Thomas Haywood” “The Literature of tragedy 165, 168, 369 (See also French 165–166 Politics” in 287 518, 565 symbolists) “Thomas Middleton” 165 “Reflections on Vers transubstantiation 512 in “Gerontion” 240 thought Libre” in 360 Treaty of Versailles 243 literary 560–561 feeling and 286, 372– “To Criticize the Critic” Trimalchio (character) 434 poetry of 562–563 373, 491 402–405 trinity, in Unitarianism 564 Symbolist Movement in responsible 38–39, 40 After Strange Gods and Trinity College 99 Literature, The (Symons) without reference to 500 Tristan (legendary figure) 559–563 tradition 38 on criticism in youth 98 447–448

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Tristan and Isolde (Wagner) Under Western Eyes on “Sweeney Agonistes” in “Coriolan” 138 447–448 (Conrad) 513 182 in The Divine Comedy triumph, cost of 138–139 Unidentified Guest 106– synopsis 412–421 517 “Triumphal March” 19, 44, 110 “The Age of European culture and 134, 143 Unitarianism 564–565 Dryden” 415–416 245 Trojan War 384 Christ in 511 “Apology for the language of 486 Trotsky, Leon 419 of Eliot (William) 3, Countess of Pem- “Little Gidding” and troubadours 10, 20, 55, 521–522, 556 broke” 414–415 221–222 62, 547 at Washington “Coleridge and virtues of 422–424 truth 386 University 569 Wordsworth” “Virgil and the Christian truthfulness, in modernism Unitarian Universalism 416–417 World” 102, 422–424 357 565 “Conclusions” Virgil Society 485 Tudor Translation Series Unitarian Universalist 420–421 “Virginia” 310 368 Association 507 introductory lecture Virgin Mary “Tunnel, The” (Crane) 200 United States. See America 412–414 in Anglo-Catholicism Turnbull Lectures 20, 33 unities of drama 152, 415 “Matthew Arnold” 512 Turner, Mrs. (character) unitive 65–68, 72–73 417–418 in “Ash-Wednesday” 66 397 universality, of American “The Modern in The Divine Comedy Twain, Mark 43, 214 literature 43 Mind” 419–420 517 Two Sources of Morality and University of Leeds 402 “Shelley and Keats” in “The Dry Salvages” Religion, The (Bergson) University of Minnesota 417 213–214 506 235 “Usk” 310 in “A Song for Simeon” Typhoon (Conrad) 512 University Philosophical usury 549 377, 378 typist (character) 459–460 Club 9 utilitarianism, Bradley and vision 34, 105, 148, 488, University of Virginia. See 231 492 U Page-Barbour Lectures Vision, A (Yeats) 574 Uberti, Farinata degli 518 unpoetic, in modernism V vita nuova, La (Dante) 19, Ugolino, Count 440, 471 316, 319–320 Valéry, Paul 232–234 55, 61–63, 148–149, 517 Ulysses (Joyce) Untermeyer, Louis 475– values. See After Strange Gods Vittoz, Roger 14, 430–431, acceptance of 426 476 “Varieties of Metaphysical 545 composition of 535 Upanishads 470–472 Poetry, The” (lecture) 20 Volpone (Jonson) 165 in The Egoist 13 upper classes, in “A Game of variety shows 299 Volsci 136 on history 140 Chess” 452 Venice 82–85 Voltaire 473 modernism of 410–411 urban life 507 Venus (character) 186 Volupine (character) 84 orthodoxy and 39 in “Aunt Helen” 75 Verdenal, Jean 8, 290–291, reception of 425–426 in Baudelaire 76 293, 536 W review of 409–411 in “The Boston Evening Verlaine, Paul 504, 561 W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture The Waste Land Transcript” 81 vers libre 360–361, 333 compared to 411, 535 in “Morning at the 566–568 Wagner, Richard 447–448 Ulysses (mythological figure) Window” 313–314, form and 334 Wales, as satellite culture 147 315 of Laforgue 537 340 “Ulysses” (Tennyson) 147, noble savage and 396 language of 170 Warburton, Dr. (character) 209 in “Preludes” 358 of Pound 10–11, 170, 175, 176, 177–178, 183 “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” in “Rhapsody on 361, 547 Washington University 3, 409–411, 535 a Windy Night” Vestera, Marie 445 42, 514, 522, 569 understanding 363–364 via negativa 207 Waste Land, The 424–483. allusions in 192–193 subway as symbol of Vichy government 506 See also “Burial of the v. communication 200–201 Victory (Conrad) 513 Dead, The”; “Fire 148–149 in symbolism 365–366 Villiers de l’Isle Adams, Sermon, The”; “Game through criticism 236 in The Waste Land 200, Auguste de 561 of Chess, A”; “What the doctrine and 226 450 Villon, François 131, 133 Thunder Said” in drama 182 Use of Poetry and the Use of violence 224, 391–392, 466 accessibility of 425, 426 in The Elder Statesman Criticism, The 411–422 Violet (character) 174–180, allusions in 193, 162–163 critical commentary 183 431–437 experience in 228 421–422 Virgil. See also Aeneid Antigone (Sophocles) in “Little Gidding” 226 lectures of 20, 33 (Virgil) 460 “Under the Bamboo Tree” on poetry in drama 126, Christianity and Antony and Cleopatra (song) 385, 387–388 332, 388 422–424 (Shakespeare) 452

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Baudelaire 450 dedication 437– From Ritual to water Blick ins Chaos 441 Romance (Weston) in “The Dry Salvages” (Hesse) 468 epigraph 432–437 524, 525 188, 210–211, 214 Book of Common sources of 429– Ulysses (Joyce) 411 Mary and 214 Prayer 443 432 landscape in 311 in The Waste Land 445, Bradley 509 World War I London Bridge in 449, 463 The Brothers 426–429 456, 461–462 Wauchope, Sam (character) Karamozov bones in 63 London in 542 384–385 (Dostoyevsky) boredom in 451–452, love in 448 Weaver, Harriet Shaw 521 468 454 manuscript of 14, 436, Webb-Odell, R. 21, 91, 509 Buddha 457 Boston in 507 552 Webster, John 164, 489, 490 Byron 459 celebrity from 99 meaning in 438, 469, Weekley, Frieda 541 The Canterbury class in 452 481–482 Westminster Abbey 29 Tales (Chaucer) in The Cocktail Party modernism of 424 Weston, Jessie L. 569–570. 443–445 116–117 as modernist long poem See also Grail legend A Christmas Carol comedy in 23 45–46 “What Dante Means to Me” (Dickens) 471 composition of 13–14, multiculturalism in 503 77, 221, 483–485, 536 The Confessions 429–431, 545 Nighttown sequence of “What Is a Classic?” 102, (Augustine) 447, contemporary critical 365, 430 307, 485–487 462 response 473–481 notes on 236, 441–442 “What Is Minor Poetry?” “Dans le restaurant” in “Coriolan” 139 parody in 350 487–488 463–464 Coriolanus in 134 past in 82, 453–454 “What the Thunder Said” The Divine Comedy Cornwall in 464–465 Pound and 467–473 allusions in (See Waste (Dante) 64, 437– critical commentary collaboration with 441, 449, 471 Land, The, allusions 481–482 10 Fisher King 458, in) death in 451 dedication to 64, 469–470, 472 Christianity in 467– dedication of 15, 64, 437–438 Hamlet (Shake- 468 437–438, 441 editing by 14, 45, speare) 455 culture in 467–468 dramatic elements 411, 430, 437, Heart of Darkness Fisher King in 469–470, of 90 548–549 (Conrad) 435, 472 editing of 14, 45, 411, influence on 15 513, 531 Grail legend in 468–470 430, 437, 548–549 precursors to Les fleurs du mal speaker of 472, 473 epigraphs of 432–437 (Baudelaire) 77 “Dans le restaurant” spirituality in 56 Odyssey (Homer) fate in 464 251, 313, 430 Upanishads in 470–471 460 geography in 438–439, “The Death of Saint Wheels (anthology) 558 Oedipus the King 467 Narcissus” and Whibley, Charles 368 (Sophocles) 433, Grail legend and 444, 150, 430 whimsy 348 460 449, 464–465, 468– “Gerontion” 240, “Whispers of Immortality” Philomela 453 470, 570 379 488–491 The Prothalamion Hinduism in 470–472 prison in 128 White Devil, The (Webster) (Spenser) 457 humanity in 463–464 publication of 14–15, 491 Satyricon (Petronius) ideology of, Eliot on 15 424, 442, 514, 519, Whitehead, Alfred North 433–434 incoherence of 497– 551, 553 555 Shakespeare 557 498 quest in 438, 447, 457, Whites (Guelfs) 516–517 The Tempest individual in 57 482 Whitman, Walt 43, 566 (Shakespeare) influences on reception of 14–15, “William Blake” 491–492 457–458 Baudelaire 504 425–426, 473–481, Williams, William Carlos Tiresias 459–461 Bradley 509 497–498 547 “To His Coy Mis- The Divine Comedy renown of 424 Wilson, Edmund 475, tress” (Marvell) (Dante) 64 reviews of 473–481 479–480, 562 47, 458 The Golden Bough seduction in 466 Winchell, Sergeant background (Frazer) 524 sex in 58, 439–440, (character) 175, 178 considerations Harvard 529 444, 454, 458, 459– “Wind Sprang Up at Four 424–442 Heart of Darkness 461, 466 O’Clock, The” 45, 251, author’s notes (Conrad) 530, sources in 429–432 310 441–442 531–532 speaker of 194, 473 winter 188, 445, 466 Dante in 437–441 Pound 15 Sweeney in 459 wisdom 206, 222, 246

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wit Woolf, Leonard 11, 17, Byron’s reputation after writers, education of in “Conversation 570–571 86 102–103 Galante” 129 Woolf, Virginia 11, 17, Eliot during 9, 12–13, in “A Cooking Egg” 570–571 428–429 X 131–132 Wordsworth, William emotional aftermath xenophobia, in After Strange definition of 48 autobiography used of 428 Gods 34–35 of Donne 519 by 72 “Gerontion” and 243 Xenophon 44 of Marvell 47–48 critical theory of 205– impact of 426 in poetry 47–48 206, 407, 416–417 Morrell during 544 Y in The Rock 94 influence of 406 poetry of 429 “Yeats” 492–494 Wolfram von Eschenbach language of 360–361, political systems after Yeats, W. B. 492–494, 524 416 270 572–574 women work, as virtue 422–423 Pound during 547–548 heretical writer 40 hysterical 263–264 worldliness Russell during 555 influence of 493 in “The Love Song of in “A Cooking Egg” 132 The Waste Land and 428 “Little Gidding” and J. Alfred Prufrock” in “Coriolan” 139–140 waste of 429 222 295–296, 297–298 in The Elder Statesman Yeats during 573 Pound and 547 in “Morning at the 160–161 World War II Symons and 559–560, Window” 314–315 in international order Bergson during 506 563 in Murder in the 88–89 Christian society and on vers libre 567 Cathedral 324 lack of comfort in 97 271 Yeats Lecture 492–493 in “Sweeney Agonistes” in “Marina 302–304 Criterion and 515 yellow fog 248, 295 383 purgation of 61 Eliot during 23–25 yew tree, in “Ash- in “Sweeney Erect” in The Rock 94–95 Holocaust of 498 Wednesday” 67 395 time’s ravaging of Pound during 549–550 York Mystery Cycle 91, in “Whispers of 206–207 shipping during 190– 509 Immortality” 490 in The Waste Land 457, 191, 216–217 youth 398, 399 Women in Love (Lawrence) 462 Wren, Christopher 449 545 World War I 426–429

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