The Newsletter of the International T. S. Eliot Society Number 101 Summer 2020 CONTENTS The Eliot - Hale Archive: First Readings II The Eliot-Hale Archive: First Our readers will recall that in the Spring issue of Time Present (No. 100), we Readings II published a set of six first-response pieces to the letters T. S. Eliot wrote to Emily Eliot’s Ghost Story, Hale from the 1930s to the 1950s. In this number of our newsletter, we follow by Jewel Spears Brooker 1 that collection of responses with three more offerings from those readers fortunate enough to visit Princeton’s Firestone Library before the coronavirus necessitated Unbuttoned and Unimportant, the closing of the library and the shutting of this newly opened archive. We are by Anthony Cuda 2 grateful to this issue’s contributors—Jewel Spears Brooker, Anthony Cuda, and Love’s Errors and Effacements, Gabrielle McIntire—for sharing their early responses. We look forward to the day by Gabrielle McIntire 6 when Firestone and its archives are open to us all; we trust that these responses Program of the 41st Annual will illuminate aspects of this important, extensive, extraordinarily complex Meeting of the International correspondence. T. S. Eliot Society 3 Reviews Eliot’s Ghost Story: Reflections on his Letters Faber & Faber: The Untold Story, to Emily Hale by Toby Faber Rev. by David Chinitz 5 Jewel Spears Brooker Christian Modernism in an Age of Eckerd College I feel like the ghost of youth Totalitarianism, by Jonas Kurlberg, At the undertakers’ ball. Rev. by Elena Valli 7 “Opera,” Nov. 1909 Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature, by In a memorial essay on Eliot, Stravinsky recalled that he first met Elizabeth Outka, Rev. by Mena the poet on a December afternoon in 1956 in London. Eliot’s famed Mitrano 8 reticence, a barrier at first, dissolved when Stravinsky tapped into his “Wagner nostalgia.” Eliot’s comments led the composer to believe that Public Sightings “Tristan must have been one of the most passionate experiences of his By David Chinitz 9 life” (Stravinsky, “Memories of T. S. Eliot,” Esquire, August 1, 1965, 92). Election Outcome 13 Stravinsky’s impression, newly illuminated by Eliot’s letters to Emily Hale, points back nearly half a century, to October 1909, when Eliot, barely Eliot News & Society Notes 14 twenty-one years old and a senior at Harvard, attended a performance (or heard an orchestral arrangement) of Tristan und Isolde in Boston. In Abstracts 18 the following days, he commemorated the evening by inscribing a poem— “Opera”—into his notebook (Poems 1:1078). Paroxysms of passion in the T. S. Eliot Bibliography 2019 violins are challenged by fatalism in the horns as desire tortures itself By Josh Richards 22 into “emotional experiences,” no sooner achieved than derided as “no good at all” by a drained narrator: “I feel like the ghost of youth / At the undertakers’ ball” (Poems 1:236). continued on p. 10 Published by the T. S. Eliot Society, a tax-exempt, nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary organization PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Fathman Gift to Society Because the Society has grown in size and ambition since its foundation—and because we increasingly meet By Jayme Stayer in cities far from St. Louis—there is an earnest desire on Loyola University Chicago the part of the board and the membership to maintain this sense of warmth and camaraderie wherever In yet another remarkable act of generosity to we meet. In this spirit, I approached the Fathmans the Society, Tony and Melanie Fathman have offered about the capital campaign: one part of the plan will $20,000 to the Society as part of the quiet phase of set aside $100,000 to subsidize the cost of our away its fundraising campaign. Longtime patrons and dear conferences. Such a fund will help to keep the cost friends of the Society, their generosity has stretched of conference registration low and ensure that eating over decades. Both Melanie and Tony have served on together and socializing are retained as central, rather the board (Melanie continues to do so), and both are than peripheral, elements in how we do business. It recipients of the Society’s Distinguished Service Award. was to this fund that the Fathmans contributed. Perhaps more than any other members, Melanie I had planned to announce the Fathmans’ and Tony are responsible for the atmosphere of warm generous gift at the kick-off to the public phase of our hospitality that pervades our annual meetings. From capital campaign. However, because of the volatility its earliest years, the Fathmans have opened their home of the stock markets and economies caused by the to the Society. As a consequence, relaxed conversation, coronavirus, it seems prudent to postpone active dancing, singing, swimming, and drinking have been fundraising for the moment. Nevertheless, such gifts part of the after-hours merriment that keep so many are welcome at any time, and you may wish to consider Society members returning. The convivial nature of naming the Society in your estate planning. Tony our Society is the glue that holds together our diverse Fathman remarks: “I hope our gift will influence and membership of academics and fans, graduate students inspire others.” We hope so too. and established scholars, international attendees and St. Louis residents, university types and business people. ARCHIVE RESPONSES Unbuttoned & Unimportant: lightening the conversation—though not making light of it—here are a few choice tidbits, unbuttoned if not Tidbits from the Archive wholly unimportant. Anthony Cuda The Right Way to Boil an Egg UNC Greensboro In February 1933 Eliot recalls picking a faux- It’s true: Eliot’s letters to Hale include the most argument with Hale—maybe their first—about the intense revelations of his personal life that we’ve correct method for boiling an egg. Alas, he doesn’t ever known. There are shocking disclosures, joyous record his preferred technique. But he does admit intimacies, heartrending refusals. But because the that he instigated the tussle solely for the pleasure popular accounts of the letters focus on these almost of quarreling with her, of seeing her the slightest bit exclusively, we might think the entire archive is thus, angry. How he’d like her to pick a fight with him! He “a lifetime burning in every moment.” Au contraire concludes that boiling eggs with her (surely it’s not a mon frère, mon semblable: in these hundreds of euphemism?) has, ultimately, taught him much about missives, there is also ample evidence of the good companionship. humor and playfulness that we should expect from the author of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. And The Skirts of Posterity there are many instances of unexpected comic relief, effervescent trivia, and lighthearted surprises that we’d Late in 1939, Eliot encloses for Hale’s perusal a be sorry to overlook amid all of the teeth-gnashing, short note to him from Virginia Woolf, who stakes hand-wringing, and statement-issuing drama that a claim to his newly renowned sobriquet. Woolf had accompanied the archive’s opening. So in the hopes of continued on p. 11 Time Present 2 Summer 2020 CONFERENCE PROGRAM International T. S. Eliot Society 41st Annual Meeting October 1-3, 2020 Online via Zoom *All times are Eastern Standard Time* THURSDAY, OCtoBER 1 Kevin Rulo, Catholic U America 3:45 - 4:00 p.m. Break Peer Seminars “A strange and pleasant literary sensation”: Eliot and the Poetry 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. Session 4: Participants listed at end of program. of Alan Seeger Roundtable on Working with No auditors, please. Archives: Fair Use and Copyright Annarose Steinke, U Nebraska Law 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. Seminar 1 Kearney “I Like the Gin-Sodden Holy A roundtable discussion focusing on Twenty-First-Century Eliot: The Reprobate”: Eliot, Basil Bunting, current laws regarding the scholarly Waste Land and Questions of Influence use of unpublished material, Led by Nancy K. Gish, conducted by lawyers and scholars U Southern Maine Yasna Bozhkova, Sorbonne from the US and the UK. There Nouvelle U Paris will be time for questions from the 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. “Writing the Fragmented City”: audience. Eliot, Loy, and Mirrlees Seminar 2: Eliot and Racial Chaired by John Whittier- Others 1:15 - 1:30 p.m. Break Ferguson, U Michigan Led by Anita Patterson, Boston U Robert Spoo, Professor of Law, U 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Session 2: Tulsa Seminar 3: Eliot and the Avant- Hale Letters Roundtable 1 Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law Garde Chaired by Megan Quigley, Emeritus, American U Led by Vincent Sherry, Villanova U Lionel Bently, Professor of Law, Washington U in St. Louis Katerina Stergiopoulou, Princeton Emmanuel C, Cambridge Anthony Cuda, UNC Greensboro FRIDAY, OCtoBER 2 John Whittier-Ferguson, SATURDAY, OCtoBER 3 U Michigan 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. Seminar 4 9:00 - 9:45 a.m. Session 5 Frances Dickey, U Missouri Eliot’s Later Poetry Chaired by Ria Banerjee, CUNY Led by Aakanksha Virkar Yates, 2:30 - 2:45 p.m. Break Guttman U Brighton 2:45 - 3:45 p.m. Session 3: Amanda Golden, New York Institute of Technology 12:00 - 12:15 p.m. Hale Letters Roundtable 2 Marginalia and the Eliot Archive President’s Welcome Chaired by Julia Daniel, Baylor U Tony Sharpe, Lancaster U Jayme Stayer, Loyola U Chicago Jayme Stayer, Loyola U Chicago “Disconsolate Chimera”? Emily David Chinitz, Loyola U Chicago Hale and Eliot’s revisions to “A 12:15 - 1:15 p.m. Session 1 Jewel Spears Brooker, Eckerd C Dedication to My Wife” Sara Fitzgerald, Independent Chaired by John Morgenstern, 9:45 - 10:00 a.m.