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Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns Eliot)

‘The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together’ (T S Eliot, The Use of Poetry) Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri and, while he was raised in the South, extended summers were spent with relatives in New England. Eliot’s grandfather had moved from Massachusetts, the regional hub of New England, to Missouri, to establish a Unitarian church. The Eliot family had a distinguished heritage and were able to trace roots back to the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Prominent relatives included a recent president of Harvard University and three presidents of the United States – John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Rutherford Hayes.

Eliot was conscious of his own family history and felt the weight of the past impinging on the present. He struggled with his identity, noting that he ‘had always been a New Englander in the South West, and a South Westerner in New England’. In later life he would relish the role of outsider, distancing himself from America and embracing British citizenship.

Eliot completed his secondary education at the Smith and Milton academies in Saint Louis, before relocating to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University. Eliot travelled to Oxford University to undertake further research for his Harvard doctorate. He is known to have commented that he ‘liked Aristotle, disliked Oxford’. While in England, Eliot abandoned Philosophy to pursue poetry. In marrying Vivien Haigh-Wood in 1915, Eliot committed to her to demonstrate his commitment to England. Eliot’s family disapproved of his wife and his new vocation as a writer.

Key work: ‘The Waste Land’ (1922)
Eliot commented on the ravages of war across Europe. Following the end of the First World War in 1918, nine million were dead, with dynasties and political parties disintegrating in several countries. Eliot saw an effect of the violent upheaval as a collapse of culture and history. He continued exploring this idea in his larger work ‘The Waste Land’. Written between 1919 and 1921, and published in the inaugural issue of The Criterion in 1922. Eliot juxtaposed the ordered world of myth with the chaos of modern history. He weaved in references to myth in a poem with shifting perspectives. The personal and political intertwined as the poem addressed death, civilisation, and potential for rebirth and restoration. Throughout the poem connections are made between sexuality and violence.

In writing ‘The Waste Land’, Eliot also drew on his own personal struggles: the breakdown of his marriage, estrangement from America and his family, who disapproved of his marriage, and abandonment of academic studies in Philosophy. The modernist writer Virginia Woolf felt Eliot’s personal life had a direct influence on his writing: ‘He was one of those poets who live by scratching, and his wife was the itch’.

Eliot defended ‘The Waste Land’ from criticisms of chaotic form, arguing ‘There is a logic of the imagination’. He went on to reject the mantle of spokesperson of a generation:

Various critics have done me the honour to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life. It is just a piece of rhythmic grumbling’. Eliot on ‘The Waste Land’

Eliot had set out his views on writing in his 1919 essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’. Literature had an ideal which stretched back to the classical writing of Homer. Eliot was critical of movements such as Romanticism, which celebrated the artist in isolation. He found it was not in contradiction to view text both as an object in itself and an ongoing collaboration with the reader. The balance between novelty and tradition is seen as ‘imaginative sense’.

Eliot objected to the concept of ‘interpretation’, where a reader may regard some element of a text as providing an allegory, which may not be in the poem. He warns critics not to dissect works in relation to the poet. However, he did recognise that the writer would be present in the work. He felt even Shakespeare was occupied with the struggle ‘to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and impersonal’ (Eliot, Selected Essays).

Challenging Elements
There are problematic elements in Eliot’s work. The poems have been found to be misogynistic in the generalisation of women and treatment of females. Prufrock claims he is afraid to speak, yet is given agency and dialogue in his thoughts. In ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, the young prostitute is objectified and overshadowed by the pockmarked moon, personified as an old madam.

Likewise, there is evidence of ingrained anti-Semitic views with derogatory language and stereotypes present in a number of his earlier poems. Eliot wrote to his mother in 1924 noting his own views were becoming ‘reactionary and ultra conservative’, and letters were exchanged with fascist and far-right groups in Europe, although ultimately Eliot rejected these associations.

Beyond difficulties with content and attitudes, some readers find the range and complexity of references in Eliot’s work create a distancing effect. Associations are often inferred. Thomas Fuller suggested that Eliot ‘sails to his goal by a side wind’. Eliot’s work is characterised by irony, symbolism and antithesis. The poems demonstrate lyrical economy, as Eliot was often concerned with what can be left out. Eliot felt that ‘genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood’ (Selected Essays).

Eliot on Eliot
In an introduction to critical essays in 1928, Eliot categorised himself as: ‘Classical in literature, Royalist in politics and Anglo-Catholic in religion’. These potentially contradictory positions seem to reflect his poetic style, which fuses disparate images, references and emotions. He viewed his art as a science, describing poetic elements as ‘particles which can unit to form a new compound’ (Eliot, The Use of Poetry).

Eliot was keen to deny the role of speaker for a generation. He had been drawn to Christianity and was contemplating his own salvation. He had already considered and rejected Buddhism and philosophical models. Ash Wednesday was the first day of Lent and a period of repentance and self-examination. In his earlier works, Eliot sought to make art out of the chaos of history. In the poem ‘Ash Wednesday’, art becomes a means of making life possible.

Eliot believed he treated his subjects in such a way that ‘our own solid, dreary, daily world would be suddenly illuminated and transfigured’ (Eliot, Poetry and Drama, 1951).

There is much in Eliot’s work to engage the modern reader: the psychological discourse of public versus private self; the use of fragments and experimental forms to suggest the disintegration of society; the biting satire that charts the corruption of the modern world; the sensory images that convey the disorder of a world in crisis.

Eliot’s context of writing was a time of great social and political upheaval; our context of reception is a world that continues to lack stability or certainty for many. Students can decide for themselves whether Eliot can still be claimed to be ‘the voice of the modern consciousness’.

Further Reading
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1888

Birth

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis Missouri, the seventh child of a New England schoolteacher and a merchant from St Louis, who also had roots in Massachusetts.
1906

The Harvard student

Eliot’s undergraduate study was primarily in Philosophy. He had a keen interest in languages from the outset, studying Latin, Greek, German and French, with later exploration of Sanskrit.
1909

European influences

Eliot continued his postgraduate study of Philosophy at Harvard. He travelled to France in 1910 to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. Baudelaire provided an influence in his evocation of sordid settings and urban issues.
1911

Philosopher or poet?

Eliot showed academic strengths and embarked on his PhD in Philosophy at Harvard.

He began to write poetry at this time. He had drafted ‘The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock’ during 1910 and 1911. ‘Portrait of a Lady’, ‘Preludes’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ were also written during this period.
1914

Oxford and London

Eliot attended Merton College, Oxford in order to complete his doctorate. He visited London and befriended poet Ezra Pound, who supported him in drafting his poetry and later assisted in the publication of Prufrock and other Observations. Eliot’s family were unhappy that he was neglecting his work on Philosophy.
1915

Marriage and mourning

Eliot married Vivien Haigh-Wood, an English governess he met through a Harvard acquaintance. Their union was strained by Vivien’s poor physical and mental health and Eliot’s sense of obligation to her. His family disapproved of the marriage and he became estranged from relatives and his homeland.

1915 was also a time of mourning for Eliot, as his close friend Jean Verdenal was killed in the war. The Eliots lived in the financial heart of England’s capital, the City of London, and witnessed bomb strikes. Eliot’s own poor health made him unsuitable for fighting.
1915–19

Early employment

Eliot faced financial pressure and balanced early writing with caring for his wife and full-time work as a teacher. In 1916 he completed his doctoral dissertation, although he never received his PhD as he did not attend Harvard to defend and submit the work. He then worked in the Foreign Department in Lloyds Bank, where he remained for nine years.

Alongside this employment, Eliot continued to write poetry and maintain literary interests, undertaking work as editor of The Egoist.
1917

Prufrock and Other Observations

Eliot wanted to enlist and support the war. He had attempted to join the US Navy, but was rejected on medical grounds. The poems collected in Prufrock and Other Observations combined the individual poetic voice of Prufrock with those of Burbank and Sweeney in the quatrain poems. The quatrains presented character types, heavily influenced by French writers such as Baudelaire.
1919

Death and depression

Eliot was deeply affected by the death of his father. It took a heavy toll on his health, as it coincided with the continuing breakdown of his marriage. Eliot tried to remain kind to his wife, although poems such as ‘Hysteria’ (1915) and ‘Ode’ (1918) allowed negative feelings to surface.
1920

Publication of collection of critical essays The Sacred Wood. The poem ‘Gerontion’ also completed.

‘Gerontion’ is often read as a prelude to ‘The Waste Land’. ‘Gerontion’ could be read as the mind of Europe. The poem travels from the battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE) to the Treaty of Versailles (1919). Eliot recognises his allusions and thoughts as ‘houses within houses’.

Eliot saw links between violence and the collapse in common culture. He felt the loss of myth and criticised the loss of shared assumptions based on religion and philosophy.
1921

Illness and ‘The Waste Land’

A bout of exhaustion from balancing writing, working and care commitments saw Eliot’s own mental health suffer. He felt himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown and took leave from the bank to recuperate at a sanatorium in Switzerland. Here he continued to work on ‘The Waste Land’, which he had started in 1919.
1922

The Criterion magazine launched, with ‘The Waste Land’ published in the first issue.

Eliot was both a founder and editor of The Criterion.

‘The Waste Land’ divided critics. Eliot himself felt this was a personal poem rather than a piece of cultural commentary. He described his work as ‘a piece of rhythmic grumbling’. A key feature of the work is parataxis, the juxtaposition of fragments. Eliot also won the Dial Award for his poem ‘The Waste Land’.
1925

Poems 1909–1925

This collection included the poem ‘The Hollow Men’. There was a movement towards God and the Church in this poem, with a sense that human and sexual love has failed. Eliot made references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The poem also incorporated the Gunpowder Plot.

In 1925, Eliot launched a successful career with the publishers Faber and Faber. He would remain with them throughout his lifetime.
1927

Confirmed citizen

On the 29th June 1927, Eliot was confirmed into the Anglican faith. While the Church of England is a Protestant faith, Eliot’s beliefs could be regarded as ‘high’ Anglican; he described himself as an ‘Anglo-Catholic’. In November of the same year, Eliot was also naturalised as a British citizen, renouncing his American citizenship.
1930

‘Ash Wednesday’ and ‘Marina’ published.

As a poet, Eliot worked on the poems which come to be known as the Ariel poems between 1927 and 1930. ‘Ash Wednesday’ showed his spiritual struggle. The poem was personal and confessional, looking at the tension between birth and death.
1932

Selected Essays

Eliot separated from Vivien. He did not want to divorce Vivien; instead, he prepared and filed a ‘Deed of Separation’. The couple now lived apart, with Eliot travelling to America to deliver Norton lectures at Harvard. These were published in 1933 as The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism.
1935

Published collection of poems aimed at children, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Play The Family Reunion published. Also published a collection of religious and social criticism, The Idea of a Christian Society. Eliot lost friends from his literary circle: Yeats in 1939 and Joyce and Woolf in 1941. He saw the impact of the war in his role as fire watcher on the roof of Faber and Faber in 1940.
1942

Lecture collection The Music of Poetry.

Eliot embarked on a series of university lectures in America. Between lectures in Princeton, Chicago and Washington he found the opportunity to reunite with relatives in America.
1943

Four Quartets published.

Four Quartets drew together the poems ‘Burnt Norton’ (1941), ‘East Coker’ (1940), ‘The Dry Salvages’ (1941) and ‘Little Gidding’ (1942). Eliot believed ‘Little Gidding’ to be his best poem.
1947

Death of Vivien

Eliot’s wife, Vivien, passed away. She had been treated in an institution for a number of years.
1948

International recognition

Eliot was awarded the prestigious Order of Merit by King George VI. In this year he also received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1949

Popular playwright

His play The Cocktail Party was performed on Broadway.
1957

Later love

Eliot’s second marriage, to his personal secretary, Esme Valerie Fletcher, was happier than his first.
1958

The Elder Statesman

Although forty years his junior, Valerie inspired him, with the verse drama The Elder Statesman subtitled ‘A Dedication to my wife’.
1965

Death

Died of emphysema on 4th January 1965.