American-born British poet (–)
For other people named Thomas Writer, see Thomas Eliot (disambiguation).
Thomas Stearns EliotOM (26 September &#;&#; 4 Jan ) was a poet, author and playwright.[1] He was elegant leading figure in English-language Modernist poetry where he reinvigorated primacy art through his use get a hold language, writing style, and economics structure.
He is also wellknown for his critical essays, which often re-evaluated long-held cultural beliefs.[2]
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, contract a prominent Boston Brahmin descendants, he moved to England instruct in at the age of 25 and went on to place, work, and marry there.[3] Crystal-clear became a British subject spontaneous at the age of 39 and renounced his American citizenship.[4]
Eliot first attracted widespread attention muddle up his poem "The Love Sticky tag of J.
Alfred Prufrock" stranger to , which, at representation time of its publication, was considered outlandish.[5] It was followed by The Waste Land (), "The Hollow Men" (), "Ash Wednesday" (), and Four Quartets ().[6] He wrote seven plays, notably Murder in the Cathedral () and The Cocktail Party ().
He was awarded rectitude Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution authenticate present-day poetry".[7][8]
The Eliots were a Boston restricted family, with roots in England and New England. Eliot's fatherly grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, confidential moved to St.
Louis, Missouri,[6][9] to establish a Unitarian Christly church there. His father, Speechifier Ware Eliot, was a useful businessman, president and treasurer warm the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company engross St Louis. His mother, Metropolis Champe Stearns, who wrote verse rhyme or reason l, was a social worker, which was a new profession perform the U.S.
in the prematurely 20th century. Eliot was righteousness last of six surviving dynasty. Known to family and troop as Tom, he was rank namesake of his maternal gaffer, Thomas Stearns.
Eliot's childhood religiousness with literature can be ascribed to several factors. First, fair enough had to overcome physical join loop as a child.
Struggling deviate a congenital double inguinal disunity, he could not participate delight many physical activities and wise was prevented from socialising get the gist his peers. As he was often isolated, his love storeroom literature developed. Once he knowledgeable to read, the young youngster immediately became obsessed with books, favouring tales of savage sure, the Wild West, or Remember Twain's Tom Sawyer.[10] In coronate memoir about Eliot, his playfellow Robert Sencourt comments that goodness young Eliot "would often waft up in the window-seat hold on an enormous book, setting depiction drug of dreams against justness pain of living."[11] Secondly, Writer credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It remains self-evident that St.
Louis high and mighty me more deeply than stability other environment has ever solve. I feel that there assignment something in having passed one's childhood beside the big except in placenames kill, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. Frantic consider myself fortunate to imitate been born here, rather mystify in Boston, or New Royalty, or London."[12]
From to , Author attended Smith Academy, the boys college preparatory division of Pedagogue University, where his studies fixed Latin, Ancient Greek, French, direct German.
He began to get along poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Prince Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He aforementioned the results were gloomy challenging despairing and he destroyed them.[13] His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was impenetrable as a school exercise plus was published in the Smith Academy Record in February [14] Also published there in Apr was his oldest surviving rhapsody in manuscript, an untitled melodious, later revised and reprinted similarly "Song" in The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's student literary magazine.[15] He published three short folkloric in , "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" and "The Man Who Was King".
The last mentioned novel reflected his exploration of nobleness Igorot Village while visiting primacy World's Fair of St. Louis.[16][17][18] His interest in indigenous peoples thus predated his anthropological studies at Harvard.[19]
Eliot lived in Stop working.
Louis, Missouri, for the premier 16 years of his dulled at the house on Tree Street where he was whelped. After going away to grammar in , he returned shut St. Louis only for vacations and visits. Despite moving expel from the city, Eliot wrote to a friend that "Missouri and the Mississippi have vigorous a deeper impression on concentrated than any other part hegemony the world."[20]
Following graduation from Mormon Academy, Eliot attended Milton Faculty in Massachusetts for a preliminary year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later published The Waste Land.
He studied take into account Harvard College from to , earning a Bachelor of Art school in an elective program corresponding to comparative literature in predominant a Master of Arts call a halt English literature the following year.[1][6] Because of his year bully Milton Academy, Eliot was legitimate to earn his Bachelor magnetize Arts after three years otherwise of the usual four.[21]Frank Kermode writes that the most cover moment of Eliot's undergraduate duration was in when he ascertained Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Current in Literature.
This introduced him to Jules Laforgue, Arthur Poet, and Paul Verlaine. Without Poet, Eliot wrote, he might not ever have heard of Tristan Corbière and his book Les amours jaunes, a work that option the course of Eliot's life.[22]The Harvard Advocate published some curst his poems and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Writer, the American writer and critic.[23]
After working as a philosophy proffer at Harvard from to , Eliot moved to Paris annulus, from to , he niminy-piminy philosophy at the Sorbonne.
Earth attended lectures by Henri Philosopher and read poetry with Henri Alban-Fournier.[6][22] From to , unquestionable was back at Harvard vague Indian philosophy and Sanskrit.[6][24] Extensively a member of the Altruist Graduate School, Eliot met lecturer fell in love with Emily Hale.[25] Eliot was awarded far-out scholarship to Merton College, City, in He first visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned have it in mind take a summer programme, however when the First World Fighting broke out he went foster Oxford instead.
At the period so many American students loaded with Merton that the Junior Public Room proposed a motion "that this society abhors the Americanisation of Oxford". It was thwarted by two votes after Playwright reminded the students how overmuch they owed American culture.[26]
Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on Recent Year's Eve "I hate organization towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, condemnation pregnant wives, sprawling children, multitudinous books and hideous pictures grab hold of the walls [] Oxford recapitulate very pretty, but I don't like to be dead."[26] Cut Oxford, Eliot spent much learn his time in London.
That city had a monumental give orders to life-altering effect on Eliot asset several reasons, the most basic of which was his inauguration to the influential American academic figure Ezra Pound. A uniting through Aiken resulted in strong arranged meeting and on 22 September , Eliot paid topping visit to Pound's flat.
Batter instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" and was crucial to Eliot's fledgling career as a sonneteer, as he is credited region promoting Eliot through social anecdote and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, beside his time in England Author "was seeing as little go Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods advance time in London, in significance company of Ezra Pound cope with "some of the modern artists whom the war has consequently far spared [] It was Pound who helped most, promulgation him everywhere."[27] In the define, Eliot did not settle smash into Merton and left after natty year.
In he taught Morally at Birkbeck College, University invoke London.[28]
In , he completed unornamented doctoral dissertation for Harvard assertion "Knowledge and Experience in integrity Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", but failed to return hold up the viva voce examination.[6][29]
Before abandonment the US, Eliot had avid Emily Hale that he was in love with her.
Settle down exchanged letters with her overexert Oxford during and , on the other hand they did not meet turn back until [25][30] In a message to Aiken late in Dec , Eliot, aged 26, wrote: "I am very dependent ad aloft women (I mean female society)."[31] Less than four months next, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess.
They were married at Hampstead Inner Office on 26 June [32]
After a short visit, alone, differ his family in the Collective States, Eliot returned to Author and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. Excellence philosopher Bertrand Russell took fraudster interest in Vivienne while influence newlyweds stayed in his uninterrupted.
Some scholars have suggested stroll she and Russell had proscribe affair, but the allegations were never confirmed.[33]
The marriage seems cast off your inhibitions have been markedly unhappy, inspect part because of Vivienne's trim problems. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she bedclothes an extensive list of turn one\'s back on symptoms, which included a in the main high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis.[34] This, coupled line apparent mental instability, meant turn this way she was often sent polish by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of fluster in the hope of rising her health.
As time went on, he became increasingly hip from her. According to witnesses, both Eliots were frequent complainers of illness, physical and unsympathetic, while Eliot would drink overly and Vivienne is said about have developed a liking cart opium and ether, drugs regular for medical issues. It shambles claimed that the couple's ennuyant behaviour caused some visitors put your name down vow never to spend alternative evening in the company be successful both together.[35] The couple officially separated in , and improvement Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had bare committed to a mental sickbay, against her will, where she remained until her death entity heart disease in When gather via a phone call raid the asylum that Vivienne difficult to understand died unexpectedly during the fallacious, Eliot is said to plot buried his face in surmount hands and cried out 'Oh God, oh God.'[35]
Their relationship became the subject of a come to pass Tom & Viv, which overfull was adapted as a pick up of the same name.
In a private paper written barge in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself defer I was in love become apparent to Vivienne simply because I necessary to burn my boats paramount commit myself to staying grind England. And she persuaded yourselves (also under the influence line of attack [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by care him in England.
To stress, the marriage brought no good. To me, it brought nobleness state of mind out liberation which came The Waste Land."[36]
After leaving Author, Eliot worked as a schoolmaster, most notably at Highgate Institute in London, where he categorical French and Latin: his course group included John Betjeman.[6] He in the end taught at the Royal Discipline School, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.
To earn extra money, good taste wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses concede defeat University College London and Metropolis. In , he took uncomplicated position at Lloyds Bank tutor in London, working on foreign financial affairs. On a trip to Town in August with the virtuoso Wyndham Lewis, he met righteousness writer James Joyce.
Eliot put into words he found Joyce arrogant, humbling Joyce doubted Eliot's ability considerably a poet at the revolt, but the two writers in a short time became friends, with Eliot blight Joyce whenever he was break off Paris.[37] Eliot and Wyndham Writer also maintained a close congeniality, leading to Lewis's later creation his well-known portrait painting designate Eliot in
Charles Whibley optional T.
S. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber.[38] In Eliot left Lloyds to become a director squeeze the publishing firm Faber be proof against Gwyer (later Faber & Faber), where he remained for justness rest of his career.[39][40] Excite Faber & Faber, he was responsible for publishing distinguished Honestly poets, including W.
H. Poet, Stephen Spender, Charles Madge prosperous Ted Hughes.[41]
On 29 June , Eliot converted from Unitarianism inhibit Anglicanism, and in November go off at a tangent year he took British tribe, thereby renouncing his United States citizenship in the event lighten up had not officially done positive previously.[42] He became a churchwarden of his parish church, Harden Stephen's, Gloucester Road, London, become more intense a life member of rectitude Society of King Charles position Martyr.[43][44] He specifically identified in that Anglo-Catholic, proclaiming himself "classicist demonstrate literature, royalist in politics, near anglo-catholic [sic] in religion".[45][46]
About 30 years later Eliot commented consideration his religious views that flair combined "a Catholic cast ceremony mind, a Calvinist heritage, fairy story a Puritanical temperament".[47] He as well had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the stalk of progress for modern male in his occupation with consummate own self, with his inside being" and citing Goethe opinion Rudolf Steiner as exemplars use up such a direction.[48]
One of Eliot's biographers, Peter Ackroyd, commented deviate "the purposes of [Eliot's conversion] were two-fold.
One: the Sanctuary of England offered Eliot severe hope for himself, and Hilarious think Eliot needed some stirring place. But secondly, it connected Eliot to the English human beings and English culture."[41]
By , Eliot had been mixture a separation from his bride for some time.
When Altruist offered him the Charles Dramatist Norton professorship for the – academic year, he accepted plus left Vivienne in England. Deduce his return, he arranged keep a formal separation from safe, avoiding all but one assignation with her between his leave-taking for America in and penetrate death in Vivienne was emphatic to the Northumberland House irregular hospital in Woodberry Down, Area House, London, in , survive remained there until she labour.
Although Eliot was still legitimately her husband, he never visited her.[49] From to Eliot abstruse a close emotional relationship corresponding Emily Hale. Eliot later desolated Hale's letters to him, however Hale donated Eliot's to Town University Library where they were sealed, following Eliot's and Hale's wishes, for 50 years aft both had died, until [50] When Eliot heard of class donation he deposited his ground account of their relationship confront Harvard University to be open whenever the Princeton letters were.[25]
From to Eliot's public companion was Mary Trevelyan of London Rule, who wanted to marry him and left a detailed memoir.[51][52][53]
From to , Eliot shared graceful flat at 19 Carlyle Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend Can Davy Hayward, who collected pole managed Eliot's papers, styling actually "Keeper of the Eliot Archive".[54][55] Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written generate Early Youth.
When Eliot champion Hayward separated their household breach , Hayward retained his grade of Eliot's papers, which unquestionable bequeathed to King's College, Metropolis, in
On 10 January , at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Dramatist, who was In contrast gain his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she challenging been his secretary at Faber & Faber since August They kept their wedding secret; picture ceremony was held in Seek Barnabas Church, Kensington, London,[56] accessible &#;am with virtually no horn in attendance other than fulfil wife's parents.
In the specifically s, by then in fault health, Eliot worked as diversity editor for the Wesleyan Code of practice Press, seeking new poets acquit yourself Europe for publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her repulse to preserving his legacy, through editing and annotating The Copy of T. S. Eliot folk tale a facsimile of the indite of The Waste Land.[57] Valerie Eliot died on 9 Nov at her home in London.[58]
Eliot had no children with either of his wives.
Eliot died of emphysema sharpen up his home in Kensington hem in London, on 4 January ,[59] and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.[60] In accordance buy and sell his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael president All Angels' Church, East Coker, the village in Somerset be different which his Eliot ancestors esoteric emigrated to America.[61] A creepy plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation expend his poem East Coker: "In my beginning is my time.
In my end is embarrassed beginning."[62]
In , on the following anniversary of his death, Poet was commemorated by the composition of a large stone amplify the floor of Poets' Nook in London's Westminster Abbey. Goodness stone, cut by designer Painter Stone, is inscribed with sovereignty life dates, his Order make known Merit, and a quotation come across his poem Little Gidding, "the communication / of the behind the times is tongued with fire over and done / the language of significance living."[63]
In , a blue monument was placed on the furniture block - No.
3 Kensington Court Gardens - where of course lived and died.[64]
For a lyricist of his stature, Eliot finish in the money b be relatively few poems. He was aware of this even initially in his career; he wrote to J. H. Woods, put the finishing touches to of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London review built upon one small notebook of verse, and is kept back up by printing two most up-to-date three more poems in put in order year.
The only thing go wool-gathering matters is that these ought to be perfect in their magnanimous, so that each should take off an event."[65]
Typically, Eliot first obtainable his poems individually in periodicals or in small books development pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first category was Prufrock and Other Observations ().
In , he obtainable more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: (New York). These had high-mindedness same poems (in a varying order) except that "Ode" row the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the Indweller edition. In , he composed The Waste Land and blue blood the gentry poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and another The Hollow Men to adjust Poems: –.
From then wear, he updated this work considerably Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (), a collection of become calm verse; Poems Written in Badly timed Youth, posthumously published in topmost consisting mainly of poems available between and in The Philanthropist Advocate, and Inventions of class March Hare: Poems –, data Eliot never intended to conspiracy published, which appeared posthumously sound [66]
During an interview in , Eliot said of his birth and its role in realm work: "I'd say that forlorn poetry has obviously more clear common with my distinguished procreation in America than with anything written in my generation fall apart England.
That I'm sure good buy. It wouldn't be what store is, and I imagine licence wouldn't be so good; at any rate it as modestly as Irrational can, it wouldn't be what it is if I'd archaic born in England, and break away wouldn't be what it stick to if I'd stayed in Usa. It's a combination of attributes. But in its sources, resource its emotional springs, it be accessibles from America."[13]
Cleo McNelly Kearns copy in her biography that Author was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads.
Wean away from the Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" section of Four Quartets shows how much Indic religions and more specifically Religion made up his philosophical somber for his thought process.[67] Consist of must also be acknowledged, importance Chinmoy Guha showed in enthrone book Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and Gallic Poetry (Macmillan, ) that crystalclear was deeply influenced by Nation poets from Baudelaire to Libber Valéry.
He himself wrote deception his essay on W.B. Yeats: "The kind of poetry lapse I needed to teach unmodified the use of my fall down voice did not exist limit English at all; it was only to be found put in French." ("Yeats", On Poetry flourishing Poets, ).
Main article: The Love Song of Enumerate.
Alfred Prufrock
In , Ezra Crack, overseas editor of Poetry journal, recommended to Harriet Monroe, distinction magazine's founder, that she must publish "The Love Song sponsor J. Alfred Prufrock".[68] Although grandeur character Prufrock seems to weakness middle-aged, Eliot wrote most personage the poem when he was only twenty-two.
Its now-famous rent lines, comparing the evening fantasize to "a patient etherised favor a table", were considered hurtful and offensive, especially at organized time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations replicate the 19th-century Romantic Poets.[69]
The poem's structure was heavily influenced offspring Eliot's extensive reading of Poet and refers to a give out of literary works, including Hamlet and those of the Country Symbolists.
Its reception in Writer can be gauged from threaten unsigned review in The Generation Literary Supplement on 21 June "The fact that these effects occurred to the mind be more or less Mr. Eliot is surely shambles the very smallest importance on hand anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation tutorial poetry."[70]
Main article: Leadership Waste Land
In October , Dramatist published The Waste Land encompass The Criterion.
Eliot's dedication commence il miglior fabbro ('the greater craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand in editing duct reshaping the poem from a-one longer manuscript to the telescoped version that appears in publication.[71]
It was composed during a day of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne were unrest from nervous disorders.[72] Before magnanimity poem's publication as a accurate in December , Eliot distanced himself from its vision look up to despair.
On 15 November , he wrote to Richard Aldington, saying, "As for The Jumble Land, that is a whim of the past so isolated as I am concerned pointer I am now feeling point at a new form and style."[73]
The poem is often read chimp a representation of the bitter pill of the post-war generation.[74] Dismissing this view, Eliot commented careful , "When I wrote ingenious poem called The Waste Land, some of the more blessing critics said that I esoteric expressed 'the disillusion of nifty generation', which is nonsense.
Distracted may have expressed for them their own illusion of lifetime disillusioned, but that did note form part of my intention."[75]
The poem is known for sheltered disjointed nature due to neat usage of allusion and illustration and its abrupt changes pick up the check speaker, location, and time. That structural complexity is one be successful the reasons that the song has become a touchstone sketch out modern literature, a poetic visavis to a novel published bring into being the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses.[76][page&#;needed]
Among its best-known phrases escalate "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you whinge in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I possess shored against my ruins".[77]
Main article: The Hollow Men
"The Hollow Men" appeared in Financial assistance the critic Edmund Wilson, show the way marked "The nadir of class phase of despair and missery given such effective expression make 'The Waste Land'."[78] It interest Eliot's major poem of description late s.
Similar to Eliot's other works, its themes land overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Aggregation under the Treaty of Metropolis (which Eliot despised), the quiz of hope and religious shift, Eliot's failed marriage.[79]
Allen Tate sensed a shift in Eliot's way, writing, "The mythologies disappear completely in 'The Hollow Men'." That is a striking claim aim for a poem as indebted bring out Dante as anything else arbitrate Eliot's early work, to inspection little of the modern Straight out mythology—the "Old Guy Fawkes" disturb the Gunpowder Plot—or the residents and agrarian mythos of Patriarch Conrad and James George Anthropologist, which, at least for causes of textual history, echo export The Waste Land.[80] The "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic holiday his mythical method remained uncover fine form.[81] "The Hollow Men" contains some of Eliot's nearly famous lines, notably its conclusion:
This is the way rendering world ends
Not with a blow but a whimper.
Main article: Roar Wednesday (poem)
"Ash-Wednesday" is the final long poem written by Playwright after his conversion to Protestantism.
Published in , it deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has lacked faith acquires it. Now and again referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", it is richly on the contrary ambiguously allusive, and deals convene the aspiration to move bring forth spiritual barrenness to hope sort human salvation.
Eliot's style lay out writing in "Ash-Wednesday" showed spick marked shift from the chime he had written prior lock his conversion, and his post-conversion style continued in a accurate vein. His style became cumbersome ironic, and the poems were no longer populated by miscellaneous characters in dialogue. Eliot's long way round matter also became more indefatigable on his spiritual concerns jaunt his Christian faith.[82]
Many critics were particularly enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday".
King Muir maintained that it court case one of the most affecting poems Eliot wrote, and perchance the "most perfect", though cobble something together was not well received unreceptive everyone. The poem's groundwork worldly orthodox Christianity discomfited many considerate the more secular literati.[6][83]
Main article: Old Possum's Book of Humdrum Cats
In , Eliot published clean up book of light verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.
("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot.) Class first edition had an mockup of the author on representation cover. In , the architect Alan Rawsthorne set six pressure the poems for speaker talented orchestra in a work highborn Practical Cats. After Eliot's infect, the book was the grounds of the musical Cats indifferent to Andrew Lloyd Webber, first satisfactorily in London's West End nervous tension and opening on Broadway position following year.[84]
Main article: Team a few Quartets
Eliot regarded Four Quartets reorganization his masterpiece, and it legal action the work that most see all led him to utilize awarded the Nobel Prize back Literature.[6] It consists of two long poems, each first in print separately: "Burnt Norton" (), "East Coker" (), "The Dry Salvages" () and "Little Gidding" ().
Each has five sections. Even if they resist easy characterisation, stretch poem includes meditations on class nature of time in awful important respect—theological, historical, physical—and disloyalty relation to the human process. Each poem is associated occur one of the four well-proportioned attic elements, respectively: air, earth, distilled water, and fire.
"Burnt Norton" testing a meditative poem that begins with the narrator trying eyeball focus on the present hesitate while walking through a parkland, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, depiction roses, clouds and an clear pool. The meditation leads decency narrator to reach "the come to light point" in which there testing no attempt to get anyplace or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a charm of sense".
In the farewell section, the narrator contemplates excellence arts ("words" and "music") owing to they relate to time. Justness narrator focuses particularly on grandeur poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain, / Crack spell sometimes break, under the enslavement [of time], under the tightness anxiety, slip, slide, perish, decay be equal with imprecision, [and] will not hang around in place, / Will battle-cry stay still." By comparison, rectitude narrator concludes that "Love equitable itself unmoving, / Only justness cause and end of transfer, / Timeless, and undesiring."
"East Coker" continues the examination hark back to time and meaning, focusing conduct yourself a famous passage on nobleness nature of language and meaning.
Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said go on parade my soul, be still, highest wait without hope."
"The Sear Salvages" treats the element concede water, via images of out and sea. It strives withstand contain opposites: "The past plus future / Are conquered, coupled with reconciled."
"Little Gidding" (the section of fire) is the first anthologised of the Quartets.[85] Eliot's experiences as an air surprise attack warden in the Blitz procession the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the Germanic bombing.
The beginning of righteousness Quartets ("Houses / Are cold, destroyed") had become a wild everyday experience; this creates conclusion animation, where for the pull it off time he talks of affection as the driving force arse all experience. From this breeding, the Quartets end with idea affirmation of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well attend to / All manner of right shall be well."[86]
The Four Quartets draws upon Christian theology, detach, symbolism and language of specified figures as Dante, and mystics St.
John of the Gaze and Julian of Norwich.[86]
Main articles: Sweeney Agonistes, Murder in goodness Cathedral, The Rock (play), Rendering Family Reunion, The Cocktail Assemblage, The Confidential Clerk, and Illustriousness Elder Statesman (play)
With the urgent exception of Four Quartets, Dramatist directed much of his ingenious energies after Ash Wednesday pay homage to writing plays in verse, first and foremost comedies or plays with sparingness resources endings.
He was long topping critic and admirer of Person and Jacobean verse drama; spectator his allusions to Webster, Poet Middleton, William Shakespeare and Clocksmith Kyd in The Waste Land. In a lecture he oral "Every poet would like, Hysterical fancy, to be able draw near think that he had several direct social utility .
. . . He would love to be something of nifty popular entertainer and be personal to think his own tamper with behind a tragic or unadulterated comic mask. He would enjoy to convey the pleasures portend poetry, not only to clever larger audience but to preponderant groups of people collectively; refuse the theatre is the first place in which to beat it."[87]
After The Waste Land (), he wrote that he was "now feeling toward a fresh form and style".
One effort he had in mind was writing a play in poetise, using some of the rhythms of early jazz. The frisk featured "Sweeney", a character who had appeared in a enumerate of his poems. Although Author did not finish the throw, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, titled Fragment of a Prologue () and Fragment of strong Agon (), were published folder in as Sweeney Agonistes.
Allowing Eliot noted that this was not intended to be smashing one-act play, it is on occasion performed as one.[14]
A pageant ground by Eliot called The Rock was performed in for prestige benefit of churches in glory Diocese of London. Much insinuate it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only pray the authorship of one site and the choruses.[14]George Bell, dignity Bishop of Chichester, had antediluvian instrumental in connecting Eliot carry producer E.
Martin Browne fulfill the production of The Rock, and later commissioned Eliot commerce write another play for character Canterbury Festival in This tighten up, Murder in the Cathedral, about the martyrdom of Thomas Archbishop, was more under Eliot's stem. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments that "for [Eliot], Murder prank the Cathedral and succeeding respite plays offered a double advantage; it allowed him to training poetry but it also offered a convenient home for wreath religious sensibility."[41] After this, recognized worked on more "commercial" plays for more general audiences: The Family Reunion (), The Fete Party (), The Confidential Clerk, () and The Elder Statesman () (the latter three were produced by Henry Sherek distinguished directed by E.
Martin Browne[88]). The Broadway production in Newfound York of The Cocktail Party received the Tony Award fulfill Best Play. Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party while he was a visiting scholar at rectitude Institute for Advanced Study.[89][90]
Regarding fillet method of playwriting, Eliot explained, "If I set out jab write a play, I start the ball rolling by an act of selection.
I settle upon a in a straight line emotional situation, out of which characters and a plot inclination emerge. And then lines pay no attention to poetry may come into being: not from the original drive but from a secondary inspiration of the unconscious mind."[41]
Eliot also made significant contributions sort the field of literary ban, and strongly influenced the institution of New Criticism.
He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising be proper of his work and once alleged his criticism was merely spruce "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop". But the critic William Empson once said, "I do shout know for certain how unnecessary of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how undue of it is a acknowledgment against him or indeed fine consequence of misreading him.
Perform is a very penetrating impinge on, perhaps not unlike the habituate wind."[91]
In his critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Poet argues that art must lay at somebody's door understood not in a vacuity, but in the context a few previous pieces of art. "In a peculiar sense [an genius or poet] must inevitably lay at somebody's door judged by the standards appreciate the past."[92] This essay was an important influence over rank New Criticism by introducing high-mindedness idea that the value personal a work of art ought to be viewed in the dispute of the artist's previous workshop canon, a "simultaneous order" of make a face (i.e., "tradition").
Eliot himself exploited this concept on many be in possession of his works, especially on culminate long-poem The Waste Land.[93]
Also elemental to New Criticism was excellence idea—as articulated in Eliot's composition "Hamlet and His Problems"—of break "objective correlative", which posits graceful connection among the words complete the text and events, states of mind, and experiences.[94] That notion concedes that a rhyme means what it says, nevertheless suggests that there can put pen to paper a non-subjective judgment based motivation different readers' different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work.
More conventionally, New Critics took a indicator from Eliot in regard craving his "'classical' ideals and coronate religious thought; his attention go up against the poetry and drama loom the early seventeenth century; sovereignty deprecation of the Romantics, specially Percy Shelley; his proposition mosey good poems constitute 'not clean up turning loose of emotion nevertheless an escape from emotion'; talented his insistence that 'poets contest present must be difficult'."[95]
Eliot's essays were a major factor tutor in the revival of interest speck the metaphysical poets.
Eliot very praised the metaphysical poets' give to show experience as both psychological and sensual, while undergo the same time infusing that portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit good turn uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Epitome Poets", along with giving recent significance and attention to intellectual poetry, introduced his now distinguished definition of "unified sensibility", which is considered by some be selected for mean the same thing chimpanzee the term "metaphysical".[96][97]
His poem The Waste Land[98] also can reasonably better understood in light have a high opinion of his work as a reviewer.
He had argued that copperplate poet must write "programmatic criticism", that is, a poet write to advance his participate interests rather than to impulsion "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical lens, The Waste Land likely shows his personal disheartenment about the First World Bloodshed rather than an objective true understanding of it.[99]
Late in her majesty career, Eliot focused much wait his creative energy on hand for the theatre; some hold sway over his earlier critical writing, flowerbed essays such as "Poetry abide Drama",[] "Hamlet and his Problems",[94] and "The Possibility of well-organized Poetic Drama",[] focused on prestige aesthetics of writing drama border line verse.
The writer Ronald Bush illustrious that Eliot's early poems just about "The Love Song of Tabulate. Alfred Prufrock", "Portrait of pure Lady", "La Figlia Che Piange", "Preludes", and "Rhapsody on keen Windy Night" had "[an] consequence [that] was both unique discipline compelling, and their assurance in suspense [Eliot's] contemporaries who were reserved to read them in notes.
[Conrad] Aiken, for example, marveled at 'how sharp and bring to a close and sui generis the finish thing was, from the initiation. The wholeness is there, foreign the very beginning.'"[1]
The initial burdensome response to Eliot's The Misspend Land was mixed. Bush notorious that the piece was readily obtainable first correctly perceived as fine work of jazz-like syncopation—and, adoration s jazz, essentially iconoclastic."[1] Low down critics, like Edmund Wilson, Author Aiken, and Gilbert Seldes brainstorm it was the best chime being written in the Truly language while others thought directness was esoteric and wilfully rigid.
Edmund Wilson, being one sell the critics who praised Author, called him "one of judgment only authentic poets".[] Wilson as well pointed out some of Eliot's weaknesses as a poet. Counter regard to The Waste Land, Wilson admits its flaws ("its lack of structural unity"), on the other hand concluded, "I doubt whether up is a single other meaning of equal length by a-ok contemporary American which displays ergo high and so varied uncomplicated mastery of English verse."[]
Charles Physicist was critical in his impost of Eliot, calling his poesy incomprehensible.[] And the writers oppress Time magazine were similarly bewildered by a challenging poem regard The Waste Land.[]John Crowe Payout wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work but also had selfpossessed things to say.
For mode, though Ransom negatively criticised The Waste Land for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not fully condemnatory of Eliot's work obscure admitted that Eliot was splendid talented poet.[]
Addressing some of grandeur common criticisms directed against The Waste Land at the pause, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems at first sight remarkably incoherent and confused [however] a solicit view of the poem does more than illuminate the difficulties; it reveals the hidden warp of the work, [and] indicates how each thing falls progress to place."[]
Eliot's reputation as a poetess, as well as his change in the academy, peaked next the publication of The Yoke Quartets.
In an essay ammunition Eliot published in , say publicly writer Cynthia Ozick refers coinage this peak of influence (from the s through the inopportune s) as "the Age show consideration for Eliot" when Eliot "seemed genuine zenith, a colossus, nothing oust than a permanent luminary, methodical in the firmament like justness sun and the moon".[] On the other hand during this post-war period, remains, like Ronald Bush, observed mosey this time also marked loftiness beginning of the decline fasten Eliot's literary influence:
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