T.S. ELIOT
LIFE He was born in Missouri and studied at Harvard (where he acted as Englishman, reserved and shy). He started his literary career by editing a review, publishing his early poems and developing an interest in literature and philosophy (especially Indian philosophy). He got a M.A. in 1910, came to Europe and spent 1 year in Paris (attending the lectures of Bergson and being influenced by French Symbolists). During the war he went to Oxford, where he studied Greek philosophy and met Ezra Pound.
In 1915 he married the British ballet dancer Vivienne Haigh-Wood (who was later confined in mental hospitals) and started teaching. Then he left his job and worked in Lloyds Bank in London (till 1925), but kept on writing poems and critical essays. In 1925 he joined the publishing firm Faber&Faber as an editor and then as a director.
In 1927 he joined the Church of England and became British citizen (defining himself Anglo-Catholic in religion, classicist in literature, royalist in politics ). In 1948 he gained the Nobel Prize for literature and in 1957 (at 68) he married his secretary, Valerie Fletcher.
Works Literary criticism: The Sacred Wood On Poetry and Poets Poems: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The Waste Land The Four Quartets Plays: Murder in the Cathedral
1. THE POET He had an outstanding influence on contemporary poetry. He received a traditional English literary education but rejected the Romantic conventions, broke away from all canons and evolved a new poetic technique.
THEMES o modern man s alienation from society o time vs eternity o personal identity o faith in modern civilisation o present inferior to the past o fear of living o moral, spiritual, sentimental emptiness of our time
FEATURES he was modern and traditional, he influenced and was influenced he advocated the complete objective impersonality of art (against the romantic concept of poetic subjectivism) avoid the first person singular, use of dramatic monologues and dialogues or interior monologues (= dialogues between 2 halves of the same person) poetry must communicate something through rhythm and musicality
theory of objective correlative : in order to convey an emotion without a direct statement but through something suggesting one s own feelings objective correlative = a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events such that, when the external facts are given, the emotion is immediately evoked the poet s emotions must be represented through something (landscapes, a person, etc.) so that the reader may correlate it/them with particular emotions.
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poetry has to find new expressions to describe the emptiness, pessimism, degradation and complexity of the contemporary world difficult and obscure poetry ( The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect ) importance of tradition: past and present coexist in man and the past is an active part of the present. The poet should turn to the past and write a sort of universal poetry his poetry is rich in universal symbols, quotations from European literary tradition and references to ancient rituals
he learnt from Ezra Pound and the Imagists to avoid useless decorative rhetoric and replace them with clear, precise images from the French Symbolists he learnt the poetic possibilities of the modern metropolis and to draw images from everyday life, to juxtapose the lyrical and the commonplace he focused on John Donne and the metaphysical poets (which influenced him with wit, association of images and complexity of their poems) influence of Dante: Eliot tries to find a relationship between the Medieval Inferno and modern life.
First phase he focuses on the aridity and squalor of our society (modern hell of urban life) THE WASTE LAND (1922) = poetic equivalent of Joyce s Ulysses
THE WASTE LAND
Sources J. L. Weston s From Ritual to Romance Eliot is inspired by the fertility rites and the sexual symbolism described in this book (= in a kingdom called Waste Land the ruler, the Fisher King, is sexually maimed, so the whole land is sterile; the curse could be lifted by a stranger who must know the meaning of the Grail symbols, but the stranger fails in his quest for the Holy Grail. J. Frazer s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion : Eliot got information about primitive myth and sacrificial rites to ensure the continuing cycle of the seasons.
Themes meaningful link with the past: mythic past (Fisher King story) + historical past. The past often merges with the present and makes it look even more squalid and lifeless emptiness and sterility of modern life lack of spirituality
Symbolism sterility at different levels = natural (land is dry, rocky, polluted, unfruitful) social (no communication, no love) spiritual (no religion) the ways to salvation are rain, love, faith
Structure There is no plot but only a sequence of images (apparently unconnected) linked by the association of ideas. The form is fragmentary, full of obscure allusions and quotations from various literatures (at least 35 writers, 6 languages). 5 sections: 1. The Burial of the Dead (coming of spring in the Waste Land) 2. A Game of Chess (present squalor + past ambiguous squalor) 3. The Fire Sermon (introduces Tiresias, the blind spectator) 4. Death by Water (Phlebas, the drowned Phoenician sailor = idea of purification by water) 5. What the Thunder Said (disintegration of western civilisation and suggestion of its possible salvation)
Method mythical method (the same as Joyce) = a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history
A difficult poem: reasons lack of explicit links between the episodes language (+ foreign languages) allusions, references to places various levels of reading discontinuities religious symbolism stream of consciousness peculiar temporal structure notes (which increase misunderstanding)
Second phase After his conversion in 1927 he changes and starts writing a new sort of poetry, concerned with the inner life of the spirit. He seems to find an answer to his doubts. THE FOUR QUARTETS (1936-42)
THE FOUR QUARTETS The structure is the same as The Waste Land, but there is a certain musicality in the lines, he uses alliterations, rhythm, assonance, repetition, internal rhyme Each quartet corresponds to one of the four seasons and to 1 natural element (air-earth-water-fire). Main themes = time and eternity. Message = man must learn to disregard the temporal and look beyond this life to eternity by dispossessing himself of all earthly attributes
2. THE CRITIC THE SACRED WOOD (1920): it is a collection of critical essays, among which: o Tradition and the Individual Talent (rejection of the romantic cult of individualism in favour of impersonality) o Hamlet and His Problems (theory of objective correlative)
3. THE DRAMATIST Features: Eliot believed that plays should be in verse ( poetic drama ) and so he turned to the past, blending ancient Greek theatre with Christian medieval English drama and thus producing modern mystery plays universal themes (= man s solitude, frustration and possible salvation through suffering) style: closer to everyday conversation
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL (1935) The language is highly poetic, inspired by the Bible and the Greek tragedy ( reintroduced the chorus) It is a religious play: the subject is the murder by 4 knights of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral because of his opposition to Henry II (1170). Eliot focuses on Becket s inner conflict, on his temptations and his doubts about his martyrdom.