T.S. Eliot 18881965

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T.S. Eliot(1888-1965)
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Outline

• Biography
• Reception
• Reviews
• Influence
• Three Analogies
• Music
• Art
• Dance
• Unity
• Method
• Modulation
• Composition and Revision
• The Past
• Tradition and the Individual Talent
• Attitudes toward the Past
• Themes
• Section by Section
• Ending

3
Vivienne Haigh-Wood
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William Morton Payne, 1913

• A dream world of elusive shapes and tremulous
  imaginings is half revealed to our vision by the
  subdued lyrics which Mr. Robert Frost entitles "A
  Boy's Will." It is a world in which passion has
  been stilled and the soul grown quiet--a world
  not explored with curious interest, but
  apprehended by the passive recipient. The sun
  does not shine, but the pale grey of twilight
  enfolds nature with a more gracious charm. The
  song called 'Flower-Gathering' offers an
  exquisite example of the wistful and appealing
  quality of the author's strain."

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Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems, 1919

• Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be
  interpreted there is nothing to interpret we
  can only criticize it according to standards, in
  comparison to other works of art and for
  'interpretation' / the chief task is the
  presentation of relevant historical facts which
  the reader is assumed not to know.
• The only way of expressing emotion in the
  form of art is by finding an 'objective
  correlative' in other words, a set of objects, a
  situation, a chain of events which shall be the
  formula of the particular emotion such that when
  the external facts, which must terminate in
  sensory experience, are given, the emotion is
  immediately evoked."

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Eliot, Professional, or . . .1918

• "But we must learn to take literature seriously."

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Reception
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J.C. Squire

• I read Mr. Eliot's poem several times when
  it first appeared I have now read it several
  times more I am still unable to make head or
  tail of it. . . . Conceivably, what is attempted
  here is a faithful transcript, after Mr. Joyce's
  obscurer manner, of the poet's wandering thoughts
  when in a state of erudite depression. A grunt
  would serve equally well what is language but
  communication, or art but selection and
  arrangement?

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Louis Untermeyer

• The poem is a formless plasma, a
  mingling of wilful obscurity and weak
  vaudeville. The pleasure one receives from
  reading this poem is the gratification attained
  through having solved a puzzle.

10
Gilbert Seldes

• Eliot understands and practices the art
  of poetry. The poem does not express an idea,
  it deals with emotions. Argues that this is the
  only form possible for the emotion being
  communicated, for the theme . . .is seen to have
  dictated the form.

11
Edmund Wilson

• Wilson describes Eliot as one of our
  only authentic poets who hears in his own
  parched cry the voices of all the thirsty men of
  the past. Eliot feels intensely, and with
  distinction and speaks naturally in beautiful
  verse. However, in spite of its lack of
  structural unity the poem is simply one triumph
  after another. It is intelligible at first
  reading. Readers feel the force of the intense
  emotion and are brought into the heart of the
  singer.

12
Conrad Aiken

• The poem has an emotional value far
  clearer and richer than its arbitrary and rather
  unworkable logical value. Therefore, the poem
  must be taken,most invitingly offers itself,as
  a brilliant and kaleidoscopic confusion . . . so
  as to give us an impression of an intensely
  modern, intensely literary consciousness which
  perceives itself to be not a unit but a chance
  correlation or conglomerate of mutually
  discolorative fragments. Thus, these things
  are not important parts of an important or
  careful intellectual pattern, but they are
  important parts of an important emotional
  ensemble."
• We reach thus the conclusion that the
  poem succeedsas it brilliantly doesby virtue of
  its incoherence, not of its plan by virtue of
  its ambiguities, not of its explanations. Its
  incoherence is a virtue because its donnée is
  incoherence. Its rich, vivid, crowded use of
  implication is a virtue as implication is always
  a virtueit shimmers, it suggests, it gives the
  desired strangeness.

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Influence
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Ezra Pound, Bel Esprit, 1922

• Last winter he broke down and was sent
  off for three months' rest. During that time he
  wrote 'Waste Land,' a series of poems, possible
  the finest that the modern movement in English
  has produced, at any rate as good as anything
  that has been done since 1900, and which
  certainly lose nothing by comparison with the
  best work of Keats, Browning or Shelley.

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Gilbert Seldes, 1922

• The Waste Land is a "complete expression
  of the spirit which will be 'modern' for the next
  generation."

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Louis Untermeyer, 1930

• Our reaction to life in the trenches was
  far greater than our participation in it.
  Suffering less from shell-shock that post-war
  disillusion, many of the younger writers indulged
  themselves in prolonged literary nerves. T.S.
  Eliot (mistakenly) became their prophet,
  detachment and despair their contradictory gods.

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Bonamy Dobrée, 1929

• I would be prepared to lay odds that the
  year 1922, which saw The Waste Land, will prove
  to be as important a year in the history of the
  development of English poetry as the year 1798,
  in which Wordsworth and Coleridge produced their
  transforming volume, Lyrical Ballads.

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(No Transcript)
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Sir Alfred East (1849-1913)
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Les Demoiselles DAvignon 1907
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Gabon Mahongwe Mask
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Georges Braque Clarinet, 1913
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Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912
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Picasso, Guitar on a Table, 1912-13
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• I put all the things I like into my pictures.
  The thingsso much the worse for them they just
  have to put up with it.
• Pablo Picasso

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Montage Collage Theory

• Eliminating all literal representation, the
  Picassos, the Braques, and the Archipenkos have
  shown again that which is essential in the works
  of a Claude Lorrain or a black man the optical
  relations of the MATERIAL. Amedeé Ozenfant
• The realism in these objects requires the
  rest of the picture to oppose itself to them.
• Gertrude Stein
• If a prospective buyer of one of my collages
  acquires the picture, he is free to replace the
  print within the picture by another one, even
  by his own portrait if he wishes. That can make
  it better or worse in the same way as the frame
  one picks out for a picture. It cannot harm the
  basic qualities of the picture.
• Juan Gris

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Ezra Pound on Montage

• In this process of compounding, two things
  added together do not produce a third thing but
  suggest some fundamental relation between them. .
  . . Relations are more real and more important
  than the things which they relate (Instigations,
  377).

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Sergei Eisenstein

• . . .two film pieces of any kind, placed
  together, inevitably combine into a new concept,
  a new quality, arising out of that juxtaposition.
• This is not in the least a circumstance
  peculiar to the cinema, but is a phenomenon
  invariably met with in all cases where we have to
  deal with juxtaposition of two facts, two
  phenomena, two objects. We are accustomed to
  make, almost automatically, a definite and
  obvious deductive generalization when any
  separate objects are placed before us side by
  side.

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Eisenstein, cont.

• . . .The juxtaposition of two separate shots by
  splicing them together resembles not so much a
  simple sum of one shot plus another shotas it
  does a creation. . . .
• What is essentially involved in such an
  understanding of montage? In such a case, each
  montage piece exists no longer as something
  unrelated, but as a given particular
  representation of the general theme that in equal
  measure penetrates all the shot-pieces. The
  juxtaposition of these partial details in a given
  montage construction calls to life and forces
  into the light that general quality in which each
  detail has participated and which binds together
  all the details into a whole, namely, into that
  generalized image, wherein the creator, followed
  by the spectator, experiences the theme.

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Nijinsky
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Stravinsky
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Stravinsky Nijinsky
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Joffrey BalletRite of Spring
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Sacre du Printemps

• In everything in the Sacre du Printemps,
  except in the music, one missed the sense of the
  present. Whether Strawinskys music be permanent
  or ephemeral I do not know but it did seem to
  transform the rhythm of the steppes into the
  scream of the motor horn, the rattle of
  machinery, the grind of wheels, the beating of
  iron and steel, the roar of the underground
  railway, and the other barbaric cries of modern
  life and to transform these despairing noises
  into music.
• T.S. Eliot. London Letter, Dial (1921)

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The Metaphysical Poets, 1921

• We can only say that it appears likely that poets
  in our civilization, as it exists at present,
  must be difficult. Our civilization comprehends
  great variety and complexity, and this variety
  and complexity, playing upon a refined
  sensibility, must produce various and complex
  results. The poet must become more and more
  comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in
  order to force, to dislocate if necessary,
  language into his meaning.

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Textual Unity

• single speaker
• single narrative
• problem-resolution
• recurring motifs, themes
• recurring images
• meta-statement that seems to encapsulate all
• recurring method

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Method

• Modulation

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Rewrite

• I sat upon the shore
• Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
• Shall I at least set my lands in order?
• London Bridge is falling down falling down
  falling down
• Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
• Quando fiam uti chelidonO swallow swallow
• As I sat upon the shore,
• Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
• I asked Shall I at least set my lands in order?
• I asked it as I saw that London Bridge was
  falling down.
• And so, for the same reason that Daniel "hid
  himself in the fire that refines him,"
• I ask, "when shall I be as the silent swallow?"

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Preface to Anabasis, 1930

• Any obscurity of the poem Anabasis, on
  first readings, is due to the suppression of
  links in the chain, of explanatory and
  connecting matter, and not to incoherence, or to
  the love of cryptogram. The justification of
  such abbreviation of method is that the sequence
  of images coincides and concentrates into one
  intense impression of barbaric civilization. The
  reader has to allow the images to fall into his
  memory successively without questioning the
  reasonableness of each at the moment so that, at
  the end, a total effect is produced.
• Such selection of a sequence of images
  and ideas has nothing chaotic about it. There is
  a logic of the imagination as well as a logic of
  concepts.

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Shakespeherian Rag

• I remember
• Those are pearls that were his eyes.
• 'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your
  head?
• But
• O O O O that Shakespeherian rag--
• It's so elegant
• So intelligent
• 'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
• 'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
• 'With my hair down, so. What shall we do
  tomorrow?
• 'What shall we ever do?
• The hot water at ten.
• And if it rains, a closed car at four.
• And we shall play a game of chess,
• Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock
  upon the door.

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Reflections on Vers Libre, 1917

• The simpler metres are a repetition of one
  combination, perhaps a long and a short, or a
  short and a long syllable, five times repeated.
  there is, however, no reason why, within the
  single line, there should be any repetition why
  there should not be lines (as there are)
  divisible only into feet of different types. How
  can the grammatical exercise of scansion make a
  line of this sort more intelligible? Only by
  isolating elements which occur in other lines,
  and the sole purpose of doing this is the
  production of a similar effect elsewhere. But
  repetition of effect is a question of pattern. .
  . . But the most interesting verse which has yet
  been written in our language has been done either
  by taking a very simple form, like the iambic
  pentameter, and constantly withdrawing from it,
  or taking no form at all, and constantly
  approximating to a very simple one. It is this
  contrast between fixity and flux, this
  unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the
  very life of verse.

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Reflections on Vers Libre, cont.

• We may therefore formulate as follows the ghost
  of some simple metre should lurk behind the arras
  in even the freest verse to advance menacingly
  as we doze, and withdraw as we rouse. Or,
  freedom is only true freedom when it appears
  against the background of an artificial
  limitation. . . . Freed from its exacting task of
  supporting lame verse, it rhyme could be
  applied with greater effect where it is most
  needed. There are often passages in an unrhymed
  poem where rhyme is wanted for some special
  effect, for a sudden tightening-up, for a
  cumulative insistence, or for an abrupt change of
  mood. . . . we conclude that the division between
  Conservative Verse and vers libre does not exist,
  for there is only good verse, bad verse, and
  chaos.

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The Chair she sat in

• The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
• Glowed on the marble, where the glass
• Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
• From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
• (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
• Doubled the flames of sevenbranched cnadelabra
• Reflecting light upon the table as
• The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

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Opening lines

• April is the cruellest month, breeding
• Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
• Memory and desire, stirring
• Dull roots with spring rain.
• Winter kept us warm, covering
• Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
• A little life with dried tubers.
• Summer surprised us, coming over the
  Starnbergersee
• With a shower of rain we stopped in the
  colonnade,
• And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
• And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
• Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt
  deutsch.
• And when we were children, staying at the
  archduke's,
• My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
• And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
• Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
• In the mountains, there you feel free.
• I read, much of the night, and go south in the
  winter.

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Method

• Composition and Revision

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Dedication
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The Typist manuscript
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Section by Section

• I. Burial of the Dead Consciousness,
  Communication, and no regeneration
• coming to consciousness, no water, lack of
  communication, Madame Sosostris, vision of London
  w/ corrupt regeneration myth
• II. A Game of Chess three encounters, all
  corrupted
• overdone elegance, Philomela, disconnected
  conversation, Lil
• III. The Fire Sermon seductions, dealing with
  passions
• Thames and Thames daughters, musing about kings
  death, Eugenides, typist, Thames seduction,
  Augustine
• IV. Death by Water prophecy
• Phlebas, and a moralizing
• V. What the Thunder Said redemption,
  regeneration, or suffering?
• Gethsemane, no water, coming of rain, give,
  sympathize, control, ending performative
  language?

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Ending Lines

• I sat upon the shore
• Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
• Shall I at least set my lands in order?
• London Bridge is falling down falling down
  falling down
• Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
• Quando fiam uti chelidonO swallow swallow
• Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
• These fragments I have shored against my ruins
• Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
• Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
• Shantih shantih shantih