T.S Eliot

 

Thomas Stearns Eliot, winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the most influential literary figures of the early twentieth century. The period was a melting pot for literary innovations and revolutions, with many of the century's most important writers, such as W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, making an impact, but Eliot holds a special place for the comprehensiveness of his vision and complexity of his outlook.

At Harvard he was influenced by the philosopher George Santayana, and the critic Irving Babbitt, the latter being responsible for Eliot's anti-Romantic attitude, a stance reinforced by the writings of F. H. Bradley and T. E. Hulme.

His travels and studies interrupted by the First World War, Eliot moved to England in 1915. He spent time in Paris, but never returned to Harvard to complete his PhD. He taught himself Buddhism and Sanskrit, and studied under George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, who established "The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man', first in Russia and later in France.

Eliot became acquainted with Ezra Pound, who encouraged him to write, the result being ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, which was published in the Chicago magazine Poetry in 1915. Prufrock, the perfect gentleman, is tormented by the meaningless gentility, conventionality and socialising by which he is surrounded, and by his inability to express his anguish. Uncertain of his own identity, he feels he has heard something other, but is unable to respond. The fragmented form of the poem reflects his fragmented and anxious state of mind. From a technical point of view the poem was revolutionary, and the extraordinary imagery, such as a quiet evening being likened to a patient etherised on a table, was shocking, but caught the public's attention. Pound introduced Eliot to Harriet Weaver, who published Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917: an event which could be taken as the beginning of the Modernist revolution in poetry.

In 1915 Eliot married the ballet-dancer Vivienne Haigh-Wood, but the marriage was not a success. His wife was much more vivacious than he was and very temperamental. She suffered from mood swings and was eventually diagnosed as hysterical and confined to a mental institution.

In 1919 Aru Vos Prec (entitled Poems in the United States) was published, containing the poem Gerontion, a contemplative interior monologue in blank verse - another revolution in itself. In the same year Eliot published the influential essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, in which he presented the doctrine of impersonality in poetry. This was followed by the collections of essays, The Sacred Wood (1920). The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) and The Classics and the Man of Letters (1942). In Hamlet and His Problems" in The Sacred Wood, he further developed his theory of impersonality, and coined the term 'objective correlative. In The Metaphysical Poets and Andrew Marvell, published in Selected Essays, (1932) he re-assessed the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poets, praising the intricate harmony of intellect and passion found in their work. He also used the famous phrase "dissociation of sensibility". which, like many of the ideas expressed in his criticism, seems to suggest an approach helpful in the appreciation of his own poetry. These influential writings changed the face of literary criticism.

From 1917 to 1919 Eliot was assistant editor of The Egoist and in 1922 he founded Criterion, a quarterly review which closed only with the beginning of the Second World War. Three years later he joined the publishing house Faber and Gwyer, which later became Faber and Faber.

In 1922 Eliot suffered a breakdown, and during his stay at a sanatorium in Lausanne he composed The Waste Land' (1922). The poem attracted adverse reactions from conservative quarters, and praise from younger poets. Among the critics were E. E. Cummings, who regarded Eliot as arrogant and pedantic, and Stephen Spender, who commented that there was a ‘certain cultivated heartlessness’ about the poem. Nevertheless, the poem became a symbol of the disillusionment of the post-First World War generation, and Eliot's conversational style made him an icon, a model for generations of poets to come.

With Pound's guidance Eliot abridged 'The Waste Land' to about half its original L length, and divided it into five parts, each consisting of a series of dramatic monologues. It is a carefully crafted chorus of voices, with delicately mingled cultural and historical references. Material was drawn from sources such as the Grail legend, the story of the Fisher King, Frazer's Golden Bough, and Dante's Divine Comedy, and the final words  are in Sanskrit. This reliance on allusion to cosmopolitan mythology, and the liberal use of foreign words, were the aspects most strongly criticised. These elements can alienate the reader, but one's focus should be on the poem's presentation of the predicament of man searching for salvation, rather than on the scholarly references. Eliot had already shown himself to be a fine craftsman, and in this poem he proved himself to be a metrical magician. The five sections are structured on a system of fragmented discontinuity, reflecting the discordant experience of modern secular man. Eliot himself said in Tradition and the Individual Talent that he was striving to attack the very concept of the unity of soul.

Eliot published three short prose works reflecting his interest in socio-theology: Thoughts After Lambeth (1931), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). He converted to Anglicanism in 1927, as well as adopting British citizenship.

During this period Eliot published poems such as The Hollow Men, Ash-Wednesday and Four Quartets, all of them ripe with problems of allusion and linguistics. Ash Wednesday is particularly interesting as it was the first long poem written after his conversion. This poem addresses religion in a way that no other poem had previously, expressing the pain of accepting religion at the cost of one's disbelief. The poem was not well received, its apparently secular outlook being interpreted as an expression of disillusionment.

Fur Quartets led to Eliot being awarded the Nobel Prize, and Eliot himself regarded it as his masterpiece. The four poems, Burnt Norton (1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1942) and Little Gidding (1942) are carefully crafted, starting from geography and leading into the exploration of such themes as theology, history and humanity. The four were written separately, but when brought together assumed a harmonious structure, being united by the theme of the past. This work was universally accepted, even those who were not in sympathy with the Christian message being impressed by the thematic and technical mastery.

 
Eliot's religious searching and slowly emerging convictions found expression in his plays, from Sweeney Agonistes to The Elder Statesman. He wrote his plays in blank verse in an attempt to reintroduce verse drama to the stage, but not all of them can be ranked with his best poetry.

Murder in the Cathedral (1935) is perhaps the most significant, dealing with a deeply religious experience which is attained through doubt and temptation. Influenced by the seventeenth-century preacher Lancelot Andrews, it is based on the death of St Thomas Becket. The play resulted in Eliot being appointed to the committee in charge of a new English translation of the Bible. The Family Reunion (1939), in which Eliot used dialogue closer to natural speech, did not win the popularity of Murder in the Cathedral, the audience finding it difficult to accept the classical story of Orestes adapted to a modern domestic setting and given a heavy dose of psychological realism.


Eliot's fame has not been without blemish; he has been accused of racism, and of supporting Fascism. One particular poem, ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistan with a Cigar’, has been the focus of controversy as it contains a suggestion of anti-Semitism, a suggestion which will permanently tarnish his image.