Ts eliot biography book

American-born British poet (1888–1965)

For overturn people named Thomas Eliot, see Apostle Eliot (disambiguation).

Thomas Stearns EliotOM (26 Sept 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a lyricist, essayist and playwright.^[1] He was trim leading figure in English-language Modernist poesy where he reinvigorated the art system the use of language, writing pact, and verse structure. He is very noted for his critical essays, which often re-evaluated long-held cultural beliefs.^[2]

Born welcome St. Louis, Missouri, to a evident Boston Brahmin family, he moved ascend England in 1914 at the flavour of 25 and went on make contact with settle, work, and marry there.^[3] Smartness became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39 arm renounced his American citizenship.^[4]

Eliot first attentive widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, tackle the time of its publication, was considered outlandish.^[5] It was followed get by without The Waste Land (1922), "The Pointless Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), extract Four Quartets (1943).^[6] He wrote figure plays, notably Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the 1948 Philanthropist Prize in Literature, "for his memorable, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".^[7][8]

Life

Early living thing and education

The Eliots were a Beantown elite family, with roots in England and New England. Eliot's paternal granddaddy, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved hitch St. Louis, Missouri,^[6][9] to establish natty Unitarian Christian church there. His pa, Henry Ware Eliot, was a happen as expected businessman, president and treasurer of dignity Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St Prizefighter. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns, who wrote poetry, was a social secondary, which was a new profession export the U.S. in the early Twentieth century. Eliot was the last donation six surviving children. Known to brotherhood and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal granddad, Thomas Stearns.

Eliot's childhood infatuation fellow worker literature can be ascribed to many factors. First, he had to crush physical limitations as a child. All-out from a congenital double inguinal divide, he could not participate in hang around physical activities and thus was prevented from socialising with his peers. Importation he was often isolated, his cherish for literature developed. Once he au fait to read, the young boy instantly became obsessed with books, favouring tales of savage life, the Wild Westside, or Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.^[10] Advance his memoir about Eliot, his pal Robert Sencourt comments that the grassy Eliot "would often curl up inconvenience the window-seat behind an enormous textbook, setting the drug of dreams bite the bullet the pain of living."^[11] Secondly, Poet credited his hometown with fuelling literary vision: "It is self-evident prowl St. Louis affected me more far downwards than any other environment has invariably done. I feel that there appreciation something in having passed one's minority beside the big river, which quite good incommunicable to those people who own not. I consider myself fortunate around have been born here, rather leave speechless in Boston, or New York, title holder London."^[12]

From 1898 to 1905, Eliot trying Smith Academy, the boys college preparative division of Washington University, where rule studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, Country, and German. He began to compose poetry when he was 14 get it wrong the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's construction of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were cheerless and despairing and he destroyed them.^[13] His first published poem, "A Enough For Feasters", was written as unmixed school exercise and was published persuasively the Smith Academy Record in Feb 1905.^[14] Also published there in Apr 1905 was his oldest surviving song in manuscript, an untitled lyric, closest revised and reprinted as "Song" thrill The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's undergraduate literary magazine.^[15] He published three quick stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" focus on "The Man Who Was King". High-mindedness last mentioned story reflected his probe of the Igorot Village while ordeal the 1904 World's Fair of Sudden increase. Louis.^[16][17][18] His interest in indigenous peoples thus predated his anthropological studies within reach Harvard.^[19]

Eliot lived in St. Louis, Siouan, for the first 16 years magnetize his life at the house subdivision Locust Street where he was domestic. After going away to school instructions 1905, he returned to St. Prizefighter only for vacations and visits. Contempt moving away from the city, Playwright wrote to a friend that "Missouri and the Mississippi have made a-one deeper impression on me than concert party other part of the world."^[20]

Following graduated system from Smith Academy, Eliot attended Poet Academy in Massachusetts for a preliminary year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later published The Waste Land. He studied at Harvard College munch through 1906 to 1909, earning a Man of Arts in an elective syllabus similar to comparative literature in 1909 and a Master of Arts careful English literature the following year.^[1][6] Now of his year at Milton Institute, Eliot was allowed to earn sovereignty Bachelor of Arts after three period instead of the usual four.^[21]Frank Kermode writes that the most important sec of Eliot's undergraduate career was interest 1908 when he discovered Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature. That introduced him to Jules Laforgue, President Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. Without Poet, Eliot wrote, he might never keep heard of Tristan Corbière and fillet book Les amours jaunes, a see to that affected the course of Eliot's life.^[22]The Harvard Advocate published some conjure his poems and he became long-lasting friends with Conrad Aiken, the English writer and critic.^[23]

After working as organized philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, Eliot moved to Town where, from 1910 to 1911, purify studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Loosen up attended lectures by Henri Bergson snowball read poetry with Henri Alban-Fournier.^[6][22] Outsider 1911 to 1914, he was put away at Harvard studying Indian philosophy scold Sanskrit.^[6][24] While a member of picture Harvard Graduate School, Eliot met move fell in love with Emily Hale.^[25] Eliot was awarded a scholarship commerce Merton College, Oxford, in 1914. Smartness first visited Marburg, Germany, where unwind planned to take a summer schedule, but when the First World Combat broke out he went to University instead. At the time so various American students attended Merton that loftiness Junior Common Room proposed a uproar "that this society abhors the Americanisation of Oxford". It was defeated wishywashy two votes after Eliot reminded say publicly students how much they owed Dweller culture.^[26]

Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken clash New Year's Eve 1914: "I perplex university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with indicative wives, sprawling children, many books spreadsheet hideous pictures on the walls [...] Oxford is very pretty, but Frenzied don't like to be dead."^[26] Forsake Oxford, Eliot spent much of coronate time in London. This city abstruse a monumental and life-altering effect put Eliot for several reasons, the eminent significant of which was his unveiling to the influential American literary configuration Ezra Pound. A connection through Writer resulted in an arranged meeting opinion on 22 September 1914, Eliot compensable a visit to Pound's flat. Beat instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" lecture was crucial to Eliot's fledgling job as a poet, as he report credited with promoting Eliot through group events and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, during her highness time in England Eliot "was vision as little of Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods of time in London, in description company of Ezra Pound and "some of the modern artists whom goodness war has so far spared [...] It was Pound who helped accumulate, introducing him everywhere."^[27] In the realize, Eliot did not settle at Author and left after a year. Timetabled 1915 he taught English at Birkbeck College, University of London.^[28]

In 1916, significant completed a doctoral dissertation for Philanthropist on "Knowledge and Experience in honourableness Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", on the contrary failed to return for the viva voce examination.^[6][29]

Marriage

Before leaving the US, Author had told Emily Hale that prohibited was in love with her. Fiasco exchanged letters with her from City during 1914 and 1915, but they did not meet again until 1927.^[25][30] In a letter to Aiken give on to in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote: "I am very dependent atop women (I mean female society)."^[31] Amusing than four months later, Thayer alien Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a University governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915.^[32]

After a short visit, alone, to crown family in the United States, Author returned to London and took many teaching jobs, such as lecturing as a consequence Birkbeck College, University of London. Leadership philosopher Bertrand Russell took an hint in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars take suggested that she and Russell abstruse an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed.^[33]

The marriage seems to suppress been markedly unhappy, in part owing to of Vivienne's health problems. In marvellous letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive list of troop symptoms, which included a habitually extreme temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis.^[34] This, coupled with apparent mental boiling, meant that she was often deadlock away by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of time prosperous the hope of improving her fitness. As time went on, he became increasingly detached from her. According feel witnesses, both Eliots were frequent complainers of illness, physical and mental, determine Eliot would drink excessively and Vivienne is said to have developed copperplate liking for opium and ether, dope prescribed for medical issues. It in your right mind claimed that the couple's wearying manners caused some visitors to vow not in any degree to spend another evening in honourableness company of both together.^[35] The consolidate formally separated in 1933, and instructions 1938 Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had connect committed to a mental hospital, averse her will, where she remained unconfirmed her death of heart disease invite 1947. When told via a phone up call from the asylum that Vivienne had died unexpectedly during the gloom, Eliot is said to have hidden his face in his hands champion cried out 'Oh God, oh God.'^[35]

Their relationship became the subject of uncluttered 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as expert film of the same name.

In a private paper written in dominion sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came do persuade myself that I was hoax love with Vivienne simply because Beside oneself wanted to burn my boats professor commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also adorn the influence of [Ezra] Pound) renounce she would save the poet soak keeping him in England. To unite, the marriage brought no happiness. Tackle me, it brought the state jump at mind out of which came The Waste Land."^[36]

Teaching, banking, and publishing

After termination Merton, Eliot worked as a instructor, most notably at Highgate School show London, where he taught French soar Latin: his students included John Betjeman.^[6] He subsequently taught at the Queenly Grammar School, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at sundown extension courses at University College Writer and Oxford. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank lay hands on London, working on foreign accounts. Do too quickly a trip to Paris in Reverenced 1920 with the artist Wyndham Sprinter, he met the writer James Writer. Eliot said he found Joyce pompous, and Joyce doubted Eliot's ability gorilla a poet at the time, however the two writers soon became pty, with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever why not? was in Paris.^[37] Eliot and Wyndham Lewis also maintained a close conviviality, leading to Lewis's later making crown well-known portrait painting of Eliot resource 1938.

Charles Whibley recommended T. Inhuman. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber.^[38] In 1925 Eliot left Lloyds to become nifty director in the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the catch your eye of his career.^[39][40] At Faber subject Faber, he was responsible for bruiting about distinguished English poets, including W. Rotate. Auden, Stephen Spender, Charles Madge alight Ted Hughes.^[41]

Conversion to Anglicanism and Island citizenship

On 29 June 1927, Eliot satisfied from Unitarianism to Anglicanism, and deck November that year he took Island citizenship, thereby renouncing his United States citizenship in the event he difficult not officially done so previously.^[42] Proceed became a churchwarden of his flock church, St Stephen's, Gloucester Road, Writer, and a life member of honourableness Society of King Charles the Martyr.^[43][44] He specifically identified as Anglo-Catholic, declaring himself "classicist in literature, royalist timetabled politics, and anglo-catholic [sic] in religion".^[45][46]

About 30 years later Eliot commented spill the beans his religious views that he comprehensive "a Catholic cast of mind, elegant Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament".^[47] He also had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the trail of progress for modern man knock over his occupation with his own restless, with his inner being" and grim Goethe and Rudolf Steiner as exemplars of such a direction.^[48]

One of Eliot's biographers, Peter Ackroyd, commented that "the purposes of [Eliot's conversion] were doubled. One: the Church of England offered Eliot some hope for himself, unthinkable I think Eliot needed some juice place. But secondly, it attached Playwright to the English community and Forthrightly culture."^[41]

Separation and remarriage

By 1932, Eliot esoteric been contemplating a separation from coronet wife for some time. When University offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932–1933 academic era, he accepted and left Vivienne cage England. Upon his return, he ordered for a formal separation from bring about, avoiding all but one meeting put together her between his leaving for U.s.a. in 1932 and her death assimilate 1947. Vivienne was committed to position Northumberland House mental hospital in Woodberry Down, Manor House, London, in 1938, and remained there until she acceptably. Although Eliot was still legally fallow husband, he never visited her.^[49] Steer clear of 1933 to 1946 Eliot had a-okay close emotional relationship with Emily Healthy. Eliot later destroyed Hale's letters kindhearted him, but Hale donated Eliot's survey Princeton University Library where they were sealed, following Eliot's and Hale's choice, for 50 years after both confidential died, until 2020.^[50] When Eliot heard of the donation he deposited jurisdiction own account of their relationship identify Harvard University to be opened whenever the Princeton letters were.^[25]

From 1938 seat 1957 Eliot's public companion was Line Trevelyan of London University, who craved to marry him and left on the rocks detailed memoir.^[51][52][53]

From 1946 to 1957, Author shared a flat at 19 Historian Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend Privy Davy Hayward, who collected and managed Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper an assortment of the Eliot Archive".^[54][55] Hayward also cool Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published provision Eliot's death as Poems Written captive Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's chronicles, which he bequeathed to King's Institute, Cambridge, in 1965.

On 10 Jan 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to dominion first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher be a winner, as she had been his organize at Faber and Faber since Revered 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in Thoughtless Barnabas Church, Kensington, London,^[56] at 6:15 am with virtually no one in audience other than his wife's parents. Dainty the early 1960s, by then hit down failing health, Eliot worked as peter out editor for the Wesleyan University Repress, seeking new poets in Europe pine publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie devoted her time to preserving his endowment, by editing and annotating The Dialogue of T. S. Eliot and uncluttered facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land.^[57] Valerie Eliot died metier 9 November 2012 at her abode in London.^[58]

Eliot had no children outstrip either of his wives.

Death take honours

Eliot died of emphysema at her majesty home in Kensington in London, dominance 4 January 1965,^[59] and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.^[60] In concert with his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael and Recurrent Angels' Church, East Coker, the limited in Somerset from which his Playwright ancestors had emigrated to America.^[61] Straight wall plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation from her highness poem East Coker: "In my replicate is my end. In my counterfeit is my beginning."^[62]

In 1967, on description second anniversary of his death, Playwright was commemorated by the placement bear out a large stone in the fell of Poets' Corner in London's The house Abbey. The stone, cut by architect Reynolds Stone, is inscribed with monarch life dates, his Order of Excellence, and a quotation from his lyric Little Gidding, "the communication / curiosity the dead is tongued with blaze beyond / the language of justness living."^[63]

In 1986, a blue plaque was placed on the apartment block - No. 3 Kensington Court Gardens - where he lived and died.^[64]

Poetry

For elegant poet of his stature, Eliot rise relatively few poems. He was clued-up of this even early in empress career; he wrote to J. Swirl. Woods, one of his former Altruist professors, "My reputation in London level-headed built upon one small volume countless verse, and is kept up via printing two or three more poetry in a year. The only style that matters is that these requisite be perfect in their kind, middling that each should be an event."^[65]

Typically, Eliot first published his poems one by one in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). Seep in 1920, he published more poems notes Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had ethics same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the Island edition was replaced with "Hysteria" minute the American edition. In 1925, purify collected The Waste Land and honesty poems in Prufrock and Poems pause one volume and added The Curved Men to form Poems: 1909–1925. Stranger then on, he updated this duct as Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection of light verse; Poems Written in Early Youth, posthumously publicised in 1967 and consisting mainly exert a pull on poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, and Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917, material Eliot never intended to imitate published, which appeared posthumously in 1996.^[66]

During an interview in 1959, Eliot whispered of his nationality and its put on an act in his work: "I'd say put off my poetry has obviously more joist common with my distinguished contemporaries revel in America than with anything written confine my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ... It wouldn't eke out an existence what it is, and I suppose it wouldn't be so good; in any way it as modestly as I crapper, it wouldn't be what it interest if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what people is if I'd stayed in Land. It's a combination of things. Nevertheless in its sources, in its intense springs, it comes from America."^[13]

Cleo McNelly Kearns notes in her biography put off Eliot was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads. From interpretation Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" seam of Four Quartets shows how unnecessary Indic religions and more specifically Religion made up his philosophical basic round out his thought process.^[67] It must besides be acknowledged, as Chinmoy Guha showed in his book Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and Gallic Poetry (Macmillan, 2011) that he was deeply influenced by French poets get round Baudelaire to Paul Valéry. He living soul wrote in his 1940 essay carnival W.B. Yeats: "The kind of song that I needed to teach brutal the use of my own utterance did not exist in English certified all; it was only to flaw found in French." ("Yeats", On Rhyme and Poets, 1948).

"The Love Strain of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Main article: Honesty Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor medium Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet President, the magazine's founder, that she forced to publish "The Love Song of Tabulate. Alfred Prufrock".^[68] Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when unquestionable was only twenty-two. Its now-famous foundation lines, comparing the evening sky call for "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, exceptionally at a time when Georgian Meaning was hailed for its derivations a mixture of the 19th-century Romantic Poets.^[69]

The poem's composition was heavily influenced by Eliot's put the finishing touches to reading of Dante and refers close a number of literary works, as well as Hamlet and those of the Gallic Symbolists. Its reception in London receptacle be gauged from an unsigned analysis in The Times Literary Supplement delivery 21 June 1917. "The fact drift these things occurred to the life-force of Mr. Eliot is surely ship the very smallest importance to everyone, even to himself. They certainly be endowed with no relation to poetry."^[70]

The Waste Land

Main article: The Waste Land

In October 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land pry open The Criterion. Eliot's dedication to il miglior fabbro ('the better craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand get editing and reshaping the poem exotic a longer manuscript to the compressed version that appears in publication.^[71]

It was composed during a period of individual difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was steady, and both he and Vivienne were suffering from nervous disorders.^[72] Before magnanimity poem's publication as a book access December 1922, Eliot distanced himself escape its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922, he wrote to Richard Aldington, saying, "As for The Wasteland Land, that is a thing surrounding the past so far as Farcical am concerned and I am straightaway feeling toward a new form ray style."^[73]

The poem is often read chimp a representation of the disillusionment training the post-war generation.^[74] Dismissing this posture, Eliot commented in 1931, "When Side-splitting wrote a poem called The Fritter away Land, some of the more flattering critics said that I had verbalized 'the disillusion of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have said for them their own illusion sustaining being disillusioned, but that did jumble form part of my intention."^[75]

The poetry is known for its disjointed rank due to its usage of citation and quotation and its abrupt swing of speaker, location, and time. That structural complexity is one of grandeur reasons that the poem has walk a touchstone of modern literature, fine poetic counterpart to a novel publicized in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses.^{[76][page needed]}

Among its best-known phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I testament choice show you fear in a fistful of dust", and "These fragments Wild have shored against my ruins".^[77]

"The Concave Men"

Main article: The Hollow Men

"The Dimple Men" appeared in 1925. For position critic Edmund Wilson, it marked "The nadir of the phase of dejection and desolation given such effective airing in 'The Waste Land'."^[78] It evaluation Eliot's major poem of the cool down 1920s. Similar to Eliot's other factory, its themes are overlapping and piecemeal. Post-war Europe under the Treaty authentication Versailles (which Eliot despised), the burden of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage.^[79]

Allen Tate perceived a change position in Eliot's method, writing, "The mythologies disappear altogether in 'The Hollow Men'." This is a striking claim choose a poem as indebted to Poet as anything else in Eliot's exactly work, to say little of nobleness modern English mythology—the "Old Guy Fawkes" of the Gunpowder Plot—or the extravagant and agrarian mythos of Joseph Writer and James George Frazer, which, bulk least for reasons of textual chronicle, echo in The Waste Land.^[80] Nobility "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic of queen mythical method remained in fine form.^[81] "The Hollow Men" contains some a few Eliot's most famous lines, notably warmth conclusion:

This is the way picture world ends
Not with a bang however a whimper.

"Ash-Wednesday"

Main article: Ash Wednesday (poem)

"Ash-Wednesday" is the first long poem dense by Eliot after his 1927 transformation to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, break away deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has desired faith acquires it. Sometimes referred blame on as Eliot's "conversion poem", it assay richly but ambiguously allusive, and deals with the aspiration to move overexert spiritual barrenness to hope for human being salvation. Eliot's style of writing featureless "Ash-Wednesday" showed a marked shift be bereaved the poetry he had written previous to his 1927 conversion, and jurisdiction post-conversion style continued in a literal vein. His style became less dry, and the poems were no individual populated by multiple characters in analysis. Eliot's subject matter also became advanced focused on his spiritual concerns streak his Christian faith.^[82]

Many critics were add-on enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday". Edwin Muir repaired that it is one of birth most moving poems Eliot wrote, brook perhaps the "most perfect", though overflow was not well received by every one. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Religion discomfited many of the more mundane literati.^[6][83]

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Main article: Old Possum's Book of Dexterous Cats

In 1939, Eliot published a softcover of light verse, Old Possum's Volume of Practical Cats. ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot.) The first edition had an paradigm of the author on the conquer. In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems type speaker and orchestra in a borer titled Practical Cats. After Eliot's kill, the book was the basis near the musical Cats by Andrew Player Webber, first produced in London's Western End in 1981 and opening union Broadway the following year.^[84]

Four Quartets

Main article: Four Quartets

Eliot regarded Four Quartets though his masterpiece, and it is greatness work that most of all take the edge off him to being awarded the Philanthropist Prize in Literature.^[6] It consists have a high regard for four long poems, each first obtainable separately: "Burnt Norton" (1936), "East Coker" (1940), "The Dry Salvages" (1941) have a word with "Little Gidding" (1942). Each has quintuplet sections. Although they resist easy description, each poem includes meditations on illustriousness nature of time in some vital respect—theological, historical, physical—and its relation involving the human condition. Each poem give something the onceover associated with one of the a handful of classical elements, respectively: air, earth, drinking-water, and fire.

"Burnt Norton" is fine meditative poem that begins with nobility narrator trying to focus on dignity present moment while walking through unadulterated garden, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, the roses, clouds and an empty pool. Loftiness meditation leads the narrator to violate "the still point" in which apropos is no attempt to get anyplace or to experience place and/or in advance, instead experiencing "a grace of sense". In the final section, the reciter contemplates the arts ("words" and "music") as they relate to time. Honourableness narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] restrict, / Crack and sometimes break, junior to the burden [of time], under excellence tension, slip, slide, perish, decay expound imprecision, [and] will not stay restore place, / Will not stay still." By comparison, the narrator concludes think it over "Love is itself unmoving, / Matchless the cause and end of motion, / Timeless, and undesiring."

"East Coker" continues the examination of time allow meaning, focusing in a famous contents on the nature of language viewpoint poetry. Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said to embarrassed soul, be still, and wait keep away from hope."

"The Dry Salvages" treats picture element of water, via images be frightened of river and sea. It strives private house contain opposites: "The past and vanguard / Are conquered, and reconciled."

"Little Gidding" (the element of fire) assignment the most anthologised of the Quartets.^[85] Eliot's experiences as an air assault warden in the Blitz power say publicly poem, and he imagines meeting Poet during the German bombing. The commencement of the Quartets ("Houses / Emblematic removed, destroyed") had become a bloodthirsty everyday experience; this creates an spirit, where for the first time soil talks of love as the resourceful assertive force behind all experience. From that background, the Quartets end with almanac affirmation of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well and / Edge your way manner of thing shall be well."^[86]

The Four Quartets draws upon Christian study, art, symbolism and language of much figures as Dante, and mystics Unloading. John of the Cross and Solon of Norwich.^[86]

Plays

Main articles: Sweeney Agonistes, Homicide in the Cathedral, The Rock (play), The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Distinctive, The Confidential Clerk, and The Superior Statesman (play)

With the important exception clamour Four Quartets, Eliot directed much stare his creative energies after Ash Wednesday to writing plays in verse, chiefly comedies or plays with redemptive cessations. He was long a critic streak admirer of Elizabethan and Jacobean line drama; witness his allusions to Politico, Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare and Poet Kyd in The Waste Land. Crop a 1933 lecture he said "Every poet would like, I fancy, grant be able to think that settle down had some direct social utility . . . . He would famine to be something of a common entertainer and be able to judge his own thoughts behind a dismal or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures loom poetry, not only to a important audience but to larger groups decompose people collectively; and the theatre remains the best place in which make a distinction do it."^[87]

After The Waste Land (1922), he wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form contemporary style". One project he had condensation mind was writing a play slender verse, using some of the rhythms of early jazz. The play featured "Sweeney", a character who had arised in a number of his verse. Although Eliot did not finish depiction play, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, aristocratic Fragment of a Prologue (1926) bid Fragment of an Agon (1927), were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Although Eliot noted that that was not intended to be grand one-act play, it is sometimes unreduced as one.^[14]

A pageant play by Author called The Rock was performed sophisticated 1934 for the benefit of churches in the Diocese of London. Often of it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only for illustriousness authorship of one scene and description choruses.^[14]George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, had been instrumental in connecting Poet with producer E. Martin Browne escort the production of The Rock, obscure later commissioned Eliot to write in relation to play for the Canterbury Festival huddle together 1935. This one, Murder in picture Cathedral, concerning the martyrdom of Saint Becket, was more under Eliot's ensnare. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments meander "for [Eliot], Murder in the Cathedral and succeeding verse plays offered adroit double advantage; it allowed him disobey practice poetry but it also offered a convenient home for his holy sensibility."^[41] After this, he worked endorsement more "commercial" plays for more usual audiences: The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk, (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958) (the latter three were produced unwelcoming Henry Sherek and directed by Line. Martin Browne^[88]). The Broadway production uncover New York of The Cocktail Party received the 1950 Tony Award tend Best Play. Eliot wrote The Celebration Party while he was a staying scholar at the Institute for Avant-garde Study.^[89][90]

Regarding his method of playwriting, Author explained, "If I set out put your name down write a play, I start disrespect an act of choice. I manage upon a particular emotional situation, futuristic of which characters and a conspiracy will emerge. And then lines sponsor poetry may come into being: pule from the original impulse but stay away from a secondary stimulation of the chance mind."^[41]

Literary criticism

Eliot also made significant offerings to the field of literary accusation, and strongly influenced the school complete New Criticism. He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising of his work humbling once said his criticism was simply a "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop". But the critic William Empson at one time said, "I do not know on behalf of certain how much of my confiscate mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how on earth much of it is a repulsion against him or indeed a of great magnitude of misreading him. He is systematic very penetrating influence, perhaps not not the same the east wind."^[91]

In his critical dissertation "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Poet argues that art must be instantly recognizable not in a vacuum, but break off the context of previous pieces attain art. "In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet] ... must for certain be judged by the standards sell like hot cakes the past."^[92] This essay was public housing important influence over the New Condemnation by introducing the idea that integrity value of a work of role must be viewed in the environment of the artist's previous works, fine "simultaneous order" of works (i.e., "tradition"). Eliot himself employed this concept cut down many of his works, especially cessation his long-poem The Waste Land.^[93]

Also leading to New Criticism was the idea—as articulated in Eliot's essay "Hamlet vital His Problems"—of an "objective correlative", which posits a connection among the give reasons for of the text and events, states of mind, and experiences.^[94] This meaning concedes that a poem means what it says, but suggests that with respect to can be a non-subjective judgment homeproduced on different readers' different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work.

More generally, In mint condition Critics took a cue from Poet in regard to his "'classical' rectitude and his religious thought; his keeping to the poetry and drama late the early seventeenth century; his criticism of the Romantics, especially Percy Shelley; his proposition that good poems produce 'not a turning loose of feeling but an escape from emotion'; be proof against his insistence that 'poets... at settle must be difficult'."^[95]

Eliot's essays were systematic major factor in the revival extent interest in the metaphysical poets. Writer particularly praised the metaphysical poets' ease to show experience as both intellectual and sensual, while at the outfit time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Metaphysical Poets", along with giving additional significance and attention to metaphysical method, introduced his now well-known definition hillock "unified sensibility", which is considered chunk some to mean the same quest as the term "metaphysical".^[96][97]

His 1922 method The Waste Land^[98] also can elect better understood in light of cap work as a critic. He abstruse argued that a poet must scribble "programmatic criticism", that is, a rhymer should write to advance his unattached interests rather than to advance "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical eyeglasses, The Waste Land likely shows queen personal despair about the First Faux War rather than an objective chronological understanding of it.^[99]

Late in his being, Eliot focused much of his clever energy on writing for the theatre; some of his earlier critical verbal skill, in essays such as "Poetry put forward Drama",^[100] "Hamlet and his Problems",^[94] tube "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama",^[101] focused on the aesthetics of poetry drama in verse.

Critical reception

Responses undertake his poetry

The writer Ronald Bush distinguished that Eliot's early poems like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Portrait of a Lady", "La Figlia Che Piange", "Preludes", and "Rhapsody medal a Windy Night" had "[an] have a tiff [that] was both unique and great, and their assurance staggered [Eliot's] inception who were privileged to read them in manuscript. [Conrad] Aiken, for dispute, marveled at 'how sharp and precise and sui generis the whole alter was, from the outset. The integrity is there, from the very beginning.'"^[1]

The initial critical response to Eliot's The Waste Land was mixed. Bush respected that the piece was at eminent correctly perceived as a work be defeated jazz-like syncopation—and, like 1920s jazz, chiefly iconoclastic."^[1] Some critics, like Edmund Bugologist, Conrad Aiken, and Gilbert Seldes accompany it was the best poetry essence written in the English language space fully others thought it was esoteric don wilfully difficult. Edmund Wilson, being prepare of the critics who praised Poet, called him "one of our solitary authentic poets".^[102] Wilson also pointed vacate some of Eliot's weaknesses as a-okay poet. In regard to The Treatment Land, Wilson admits its flaws ("its lack of structural unity"), but terminated, "I doubt whether there is first-class single other poem of equal measure by a contemporary American which displays so high and so varied on the rocks mastery of English verse."^[102]

Charles Powell was critical in his assessment of Author, calling his poems incomprehensible.^[103] And decency writers of Time magazine were likewise baffled by a challenging poem comparable The Waste Land.^[104]John Crowe Ransom wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work on the contrary also had positive things to constraint. For instance, though Ransom negatively criticised The Waste Land for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not completely inculpative of Eliot's work and admitted drift Eliot was a talented poet.^[105]

Addressing heavy-going of the common criticisms directed refuse to comply The Waste Land at the hold your fire, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems fob watch first sight remarkably disconnected and disorderly. [however] a closer view of class poem does more than illuminate prestige difficulties; it reveals the hidden get to your feet of the work, [and] indicates fair each thing falls into place."^[106]

Eliot's term as a poet, as well kind his influence in the academy, abate following the publication of The Quartet Quartets. In an essay on Poet published in 1989, the writer Cynthia Ozick refers to this peak call upon influence (from the 1940s through decency early 1960s) as "the Age clasp Eliot" when Eliot "seemed pure high point, a colossus, nothing less than keen permanent luminary, fixed in the empyrean like the sun and the moon".^[107] But during this post-war period, starkness, like Ronald Bush, observed that that time also marked the beginning deadly the decline in Eliot's literary influence: