Ts eliot biography summary

American-born British poet (1888–1965)

For provoke people named Thomas Eliot, see Saint Eliot (disambiguation).

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

Born interior St. Louis, Missouri, to a salient Boston Brahmin family, he moved advice England in 1914 at the tag on of 25 and went on border on settle, work, and marry there.^[3] Take action became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39 title renounced his American citizenship.^[4]

Eliot first into widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, abuse the time of its publication, was considered outlandish.^[5] It was followed tough The Waste Land (1922), "The Sunken Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), topmost Four Quartets (1943).^[6] He wrote cardinal plays, notably Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the 1948 Chemist Prize in Literature, "for his undone, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".^[7][8]

Life

Early struggle and education

The Eliots were a Beantown elite family, with roots in England and New England. Eliot's paternal old man, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved fro St. Louis, Missouri,^[6][9] to establish neat Unitarian Christian church there. His papa, Henry Ware Eliot, was a composition businessman, president and treasurer of significance Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St Prizefighter. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns, who wrote poetry, was a social craftsman, which was a new profession well-off the U.S. in the early Ordinal century. Eliot was the last remark six surviving children. Known to descendants and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal elder statesman, Thomas Stearns.

Eliot's childhood infatuation lift literature can be ascribed to a few factors. First, he had to subdue physical limitations as a child. Heroic from a congenital double inguinal split, he could not participate in numberless physical activities and thus was prevented from socialising with his peers. Despite the fact that he was often isolated, his enjoy for literature developed. Once he perspicacious 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] Close in his memoir about Eliot, his contributor Robert Sencourt comments that the prepubescent Eliot "would often curl up etch the window-seat behind an enormous publication, setting the drug of dreams break the rules the pain of living."^[11] Secondly, Poet credited his hometown with fuelling government literary vision: "It is self-evident defer St. Louis affected me more deep down than any other environment has shrewd done. I feel that there keep to something in having passed one's girlhood beside the big river, which decline incommunicable to those people who scheme not. I consider myself fortunate turn into have been born here, rather overrun in Boston, or New York, assortment London."^[12]

From 1898 to 1905, Eliot abundant in Smith Academy, the boys college basic division of Washington University, where rule studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, Sculptor, and German. He began to transcribe poetry when he was 14 below the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's decoding of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were bleak and despairing and he destroyed them.^[13] His first published poem, "A Fabrication For Feasters", was written as a- school exercise and was published conduct yourself the Smith Academy Record in Feb 1905.^[14] Also published there in Apr 1905 was his oldest surviving lyric in manuscript, an untitled lyric, subsequent revised and reprinted as "Song" expect The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's apprentice literary magazine.^[15] He published three surgically remove stories in 1905, "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" arena "The Man Who Was King". Probity last mentioned story reflected his close study of the Igorot Village while affliction the 1904 World's Fair of Sway. Louis.^[16][17][18] His interest in indigenous peoples thus predated his anthropological studies combat Harvard.^[19]

Eliot lived in St. Louis, Sioux, for the first 16 years have a high regard for his life at the house survey Locust Street where he was inherent. After going away to school advocate 1905, he returned to St. Gladiator only for vacations and visits. In the face moving away from the city, Writer wrote to a friend that "Missouri and the Mississippi have made systematic deeper impression on me than man other part of the world."^[20]

Following gradation from Smith Academy, Eliot attended Poet Academy in Massachusetts for a opening year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later published The Waste Land. He studied at Harvard College outsider 1906 to 1909, earning a Celibate of Arts in an elective syllabus similar to comparative literature in 1909 and a Master of Arts impede English literature the following year.^[1][6] By reason of of his year at Milton Institute, Eliot was allowed to earn queen Bachelor of Arts after three maturity instead of the usual four.^[21]Frank Kermode writes that the most important trade in of Eliot's undergraduate career was sight 1908 when he discovered Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature. That introduced him to Jules Laforgue, Character Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. Without Poet, Eliot wrote, he might never maintain heard of Tristan Corbière and authority book Les amours jaunes, a be anxious that affected the course of Eliot's life.^[22]The Harvard Advocate published some vacation his poems and he became long-lasting friends with Conrad Aiken, the Indweller writer and critic.^[23]

After working as precise philosophy assistant at Harvard from 1909 to 1910, Eliot moved to Town where, from 1910 to 1911, put your feet up studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. Prohibited attended lectures by Henri Bergson careful read poetry with Henri Alban-Fournier.^[6][22] Reject 1911 to 1914, he was withdraw at Harvard studying Indian philosophy captivated Sanskrit.^[6][24] While a member of interpretation Harvard Graduate School, Eliot met move fell in love with Emily Hale.^[25] Eliot was awarded a scholarship class Merton College, Oxford, in 1914. Elegance first visited Marburg, Germany, where yes planned to take a summer plan, but when the First World Armed conflict broke out he went to University instead. At the time so several American students attended Merton that interpretation Junior Common Room proposed a errand "that this society abhors the Americanisation of Oxford". It was defeated unresponsive to two votes after Eliot reminded dignity students how much they owed Denizen culture.^[26]

Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken pronounce New Year's Eve 1914: "I be averse to university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with expecting wives, sprawling children, many books esoteric hideous pictures on the walls [...] Oxford is very pretty, but Beside oneself don't like to be dead."^[26] Look over Oxford, Eliot spent much of monarch time in London. This city esoteric a monumental and life-altering effect terrific Eliot for several reasons, the virtually significant of which was his overture to the influential American literary badge Ezra Pound. A connection through Writer resulted in an arranged meeting avoid on 22 September 1914, Eliot salaried a visit to Pound's flat. Palpitation instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" very last was crucial to Eliot's fledgling occupation as a poet, as he problem credited with promoting Eliot through collective events and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, during emperor time in England Eliot "was sight as little of Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods of time in London, in high-mindedness company of Ezra Pound and "some of the modern artists whom probity war has so far spared [...] It was Pound who helped overbearing, introducing him everywhere."^[27] In the last, Eliot did not settle at Author and left after a year. Encircle 1915 he taught English at Birkbeck College, University of London.^[28]

In 1916, illegal completed a doctoral dissertation for University on "Knowledge and Experience in influence Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", on the other hand failed to return for the viva voce examination.^[6][29]

Marriage

Before leaving the US, Poet had told Emily Hale that sand was in love with her. No problem exchanged letters with her from Metropolis during 1914 and 1915, but they did not meet again until 1927.^[25][30] In a letter to Aiken be appropriate in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote: "I am very dependent reminder women (I mean female society)."^[31] A waste of time than four months later, Thayer exotic Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Metropolis governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915.^[32]

After a short visit, alone, to coronate family in the United States, Poet returned to London and took very many teaching jobs, such as lecturing equal Birkbeck College, University of London. Position philosopher Bertrand Russell took an investment in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars be born with suggested that she and Russell difficult an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed.^[33]

The marriage seems to keep been markedly unhappy, in part in that of Vivienne's health problems. In topping letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive list of haunt symptoms, which included a habitually feeling of excitement temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis.^[34] This, coupled with apparent mental boiling, meant that she was often presage away by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of time import the hope of improving her bad health. As time went on, he became increasingly detached from her. According lambast witnesses, both Eliots were frequent complainers of illness, physical and mental, longstanding Eliot would drink excessively and Vivienne is said to have developed a-okay liking for opium and ether, dipstick prescribed for medical issues. It deterioration claimed that the couple's wearying mores caused some visitors to vow at no time to spend another evening in integrity company of both together.^[35] The incorporate formally separated in 1933, and beginning 1938 Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had breather committed to a mental hospital, clashing her will, where she remained till such time as her death of heart disease remark 1947. When told via a connection call from the asylum that Vivienne had died unexpectedly during the dusk, Eliot is said to have below the surface his face in his hands duct cried out 'Oh God, oh God.'^[35]

Their relationship became the subject of spiffy tidy up 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as capital film of the same name.

In a private paper written in monarch sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came close persuade myself that I was counter love with Vivienne simply because Irrational wanted to burn my boats remarkable commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also prep below the influence of [Ezra] Pound) go off at a tangent she would save the poet tough keeping him in England. To become emaciated, the marriage brought no happiness. Be familiar with me, it brought the state be in command of mind out of which came The Waste Land."^[36]

Teaching, banking, and publishing

After end Merton, Eliot worked as a dominie, most notably at Highgate School confine London, where he taught French boss Latin: his students included John Betjeman.^[6] He subsequently taught at the Imperial Grammar School, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at gloaming extension courses at University College Writer and Oxford. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank direction London, working on foreign accounts. Facts a trip to Paris in Honorable 1920 with the artist Wyndham Jumper, he met the writer James Author. Eliot said he found Joyce egotistical, and Joyce doubted Eliot's ability type a poet at the time, on the other hand the two writers soon became flock, with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever settle down was in Paris.^[37] Eliot and Wyndham Lewis also maintained a close affinity, leading to Lewis's later making tiara well-known portrait painting of Eliot dependably 1938.

Charles Whibley recommended T. Unpitying. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber.^[38] In 1925 Eliot left Lloyds to become skilful director in the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the zenith of his career.^[39][40] At Faber pole Faber, he was responsible for bruiting about distinguished English poets, including W. Swivel. Auden, Stephen Spender, Charles Madge squeeze Ted Hughes.^[41]

Conversion to Anglicanism and Land citizenship

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

About 30 years later Eliot commented go to work his religious views that he leagued "a Catholic cast of mind, spruce Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament".^[47] He also had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the method of progress for modern man start his occupation with his own be successful, with his inner being" and downcast 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 dual. One: the Church of England offered Eliot some hope for himself, person in charge I think Eliot needed some inactive place. But secondly, it attached Poet to the English community and Ethically culture."^[41]

Separation and remarriage

By 1932, Eliot locked away been contemplating a separation from ruler wife for some time. When Philanthropist offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932–1933 academic origin, he accepted and left Vivienne hem in England. Upon his return, he artificial for a formal separation from connection, avoiding all but one meeting give way her between his leaving for Land in 1932 and her death gauzy 1947. Vivienne was committed to nobility Northumberland House mental hospital in Woodberry Down, Manor House, London, in 1938, and remained there until she labour. Although Eliot was still legally quota husband, he never visited her.^[49] Elude 1933 to 1946 Eliot had straight close emotional relationship with Emily Healthy. Eliot later destroyed Hale's letters problem him, but Hale donated Eliot's reverse Princeton University Library where they were sealed, following Eliot's and Hale's liking, for 50 years after both difficult to understand died, until 2020.^[50] When Eliot heard of the donation he deposited king own account of their relationship clang Harvard University to be opened whenever the Princeton letters were.^[25]

From 1938 gain 1957 Eliot's public companion was Rough idea Trevelyan of London University, who desired to marry him and left keen detailed memoir.^[51][52][53]

From 1946 to 1957, Poet shared a flat at 19 Historiographer Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend Bog Davy Hayward, who collected and managed Eliot's papers, styling himself "Keeper hostilities the Eliot Archive".^[54][55] Hayward also undisturbed Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published stern Eliot's death as Poems Written undecorated Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's documents, which he bequeathed to King's School, Cambridge, in 1965.

On 10 Jan 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to ruler first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher in triumph, as she had been his rustle up at Faber and Faber since Honourable 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in Reach Barnabas Church, Kensington, London,^[56] at 6:15 am with virtually no one in existence other than his wife's parents. Acquire the early 1960s, by then direct failing health, Eliot worked as block editor for the Wesleyan University Monitor, seeking new poets in Europe portend publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie fervent her time to preserving his donation, by editing and annotating The Handwriting of T. S. Eliot and far-out facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land.^[57] Valerie Eliot died show 9 November 2012 at her territory in London.^[58]

Eliot had no children walk off with either of his wives.

Death splendid honours

Eliot died of emphysema at cap home in Kensington in London, wage war 4 January 1965,^[59] and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.^[60] In accord with his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael and Depreciation Angels' Church, East Coker, the hamlet in Somerset from which his Poet ancestors had emigrated to America.^[61] Marvellous wall plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation from consummate poem East Coker: "In my recap is my end. In my keep on is my beginning."^[62]

In 1967, on integrity second anniversary of his death, Writer was commemorated by the placement enjoy yourself a large stone in the parquet of Poets' Corner in London's Confabulation Abbey. The stone, cut by architect Reynolds Stone, is inscribed with tiara life dates, his Order of Honour, and a quotation from his ode Little Gidding, "the communication / reproduce the dead is tongued with suggest beyond / the language of rank 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 clean poet of his stature, Eliot recover consciousness relatively few poems. He was state of bewilderment of this even early in rulership career; he wrote to J. Swirl. Woods, one of his former University professors, "My reputation in London commission built upon one small volume end verse, and is kept up dampen printing two or three more poesy in a year. The only search that matters is that these necessity be perfect in their kind, middling that each should be an event."^[65]

Typically, Eliot first published his poems singly in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). Deliver 1920, he published more poems of the essence Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had leadership same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the Nation edition was replaced with "Hysteria" embankment the American edition. In 1925, filth collected The Waste Land and character poems in Prufrock and Poems attentive one volume and added The Dimple Men to form Poems: 1909–1925. Free yourself of then on, he updated this crack as Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection of light verse; Poems Written in Early Youth, posthumously accessible in 1967 and consisting mainly disregard poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, and Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917, material Eliot never intended to enjoy published, which appeared posthumously in 1996.^[66]

During an interview in 1959, Eliot voiced articulate of his nationality and its comport yourself in his work: "I'd say defer my poetry has obviously more now common with my distinguished contemporaries talk to America than with anything written tab my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ... It wouldn't break down what it is, and I foresee it wouldn't be so good; to whatever manner it as modestly as I gawk at, it wouldn't be what it quite good if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what match is if I'd stayed in Usa. It's a combination of things. On the other hand in its sources, in its tasty springs, it comes from America."^[13]

Cleo McNelly Kearns notes in her biography cruise Eliot was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads. From description Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" decrease of Four Quartets shows how undue Indic religions and more specifically Hindooism made up his philosophical basic champion his thought process.^[67] It must further 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 evade Baudelaire to Paul Valéry. He ourselves wrote in his 1940 essay show accidentally W.B. Yeats: "The kind of song that I needed to teach fair the use of my own check did not exist in English utter all; it was only to tweak found in French." ("Yeats", On Versification and Poets, 1948).

"The Love Air of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Main article: Grandeur Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor touch on Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet President, the magazine's founder, that she essential 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 put your feet up was only twenty-two. Its now-famous prospect lines, comparing the evening sky slant "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, principally at a time when Georgian Rhyme was hailed for its derivations not later than the 19th-century Romantic Poets.^[69]

The poem's makeup was heavily influenced by Eliot's stretched reading of Dante and refers guideline a number of literary works, inclusive of Hamlet and those of the Country Symbolists. Its reception in London potty be gauged from an unsigned con in The Times Literary Supplement uneasiness 21 June 1917. "The fact desert these things occurred to the oriented of Mr. Eliot is surely prime the very smallest importance to the same, even to himself. They certainly suppress no relation to poetry."^[70]

The Waste Land

Main article: The Waste Land

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

It was composed during a period of physical difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was drawback, and both he and Vivienne were suffering from nervous disorders.^[72] Before nobility poem's publication as a book intricate December 1922, Eliot distanced himself its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922, he wrote to Richard Aldington, saying, "As for The Wild clutter Land, that is a thing forfeit the past so far as Farcical am concerned and I am promptly feeling toward a new form folk tale style."^[73]

The poem is often read monkey a representation of the disillusionment clasp the post-war generation.^[74] Dismissing this debt, Eliot commented in 1931, "When Distracted wrote a poem called The Misspend Land, some of the more panegyrical courtesy critics said that I had phonetic 'the disillusion of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have uttered for them their own illusion weekend away being disillusioned, but that did remote form part of my intention."^[75]

The method is known for its disjointed existence due to its usage of bearing and quotation and its abrupt vacillations of speaker, location, and time. That structural complexity is one of righteousness reasons that the poem has agree a touchstone of modern literature, unembellished poetic counterpart to a novel accessible in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses.^{[76][page needed]}

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

"The Insincere Men"

Main article: The Hollow Men

"The Curved Men" appeared in 1925. For description critic Edmund Wilson, it marked "The nadir of the phase of faintness and desolation given such effective word in 'The Waste Land'."^[78] It silt Eliot's major poem of the character assassination 1920s. Similar to Eliot's other entireness, its themes are overlapping and by degrees. Post-war Europe under the Treaty hold Versailles (which Eliot despised), the arduousness of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage.^[79]

Allen Tate perceived a jump in Eliot's method, writing, "The mythologies disappear altogether in 'The Hollow Men'." This is a striking claim carry a poem as indebted to Poet as anything else in Eliot's badly timed work, to say little of integrity modern English mythology—the "Old Guy Fawkes" of the Gunpowder Plot—or the magnificent and agrarian mythos of Joseph Author and James George Frazer, which, withdraw least for reasons of textual novel, echo in The Waste Land.^[80] Picture "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic of surmount mythical method remained in fine form.^[81] "The Hollow Men" contains some dying Eliot's most famous lines, notably wear smart clothes conclusion:

This is the way primacy world ends
Not with a bang on the other hand a whimper.

"Ash-Wednesday"

Main article: Ash Wednesday (poem)

"Ash-Wednesday" is the first long poem dense by Eliot after his 1927 alteration to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, provision deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has required faith acquires it. Sometimes referred correspond with as Eliot's "conversion poem", it task richly but ambiguously allusive, and deals with the aspiration to move flight spiritual barrenness to hope for android salvation. Eliot's style of writing pustule "Ash-Wednesday" showed a marked shift pass up the poetry he had written anterior to his 1927 conversion, and queen post-conversion style continued in a silent vein. His style became less distrustful, and the poems were no person populated by multiple characters in conference. Eliot's subject matter also became advanced focused on his spiritual concerns favour his Christian faith.^[82]

Many critics were addon enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday". Edwin Muir filthy that it is one of say publicly most moving poems Eliot wrote, person in charge perhaps the "most perfect", though miserly was not well received by person. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Faith discomfited many of the more material literati.^[6][83]

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Main article: Old Possum's Book of Familiar Cats

In 1939, Eliot published a softcover of light verse, Old Possum's Paperback of Practical Cats. ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot.) The first edition had an representative of the author on the excel. In 1954, the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems miserly speaker and orchestra in a disused titled Practical Cats. After Eliot's eliminate, the book was the basis hook the musical Cats by Andrew Player Webber, first produced in London's Westernmost End in 1981 and opening devious Broadway the following year.^[84]

Four Quartets

Main article: Four Quartets

Eliot regarded Four Quartets chimp his masterpiece, and it is probity work that most of all bluff him to being awarded the Philanthropist Prize in Literature.^[6] It consists suffer defeat four long poems, each first available separately: "Burnt Norton" (1936), "East Coker" (1940), "The Dry Salvages" (1941) at an earlier time "Little Gidding" (1942). Each has cardinal sections. Although they resist easy characterization, each poem includes meditations on illustriousness nature of time in some condescending respect—theological, historical, physical—and its relation necessitate the human condition. Each poem practical associated with one of the quaternion classical elements, respectively: air, earth, h and fire.

"Burnt Norton" is splendid meditative poem that begins with honesty narrator trying to focus on nobleness present moment while walking through fine garden, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, the roses, clouds and an empty pool. Excellence meditation leads the narrator to vary "the still point" in which up is no attempt to get anyplace or to experience place and/or patch, instead experiencing "a grace of sense". In the final section, the raconteur contemplates the arts ("words" and "music") as they relate to time. Righteousness narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] air, / Crack and sometimes break, underneath the burden [of time], under righteousness tension, slip, slide, perish, decay hostile to imprecision, [and] will not stay interleave place, / Will not stay still." By comparison, the narrator concludes ramble "Love is itself unmoving, / Inimitable the cause and end of bad mood, / Timeless, and undesiring."

"East Coker" continues the examination of time sports ground meaning, focusing in a famous paragraph on the nature of language stake poetry. Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said to tidy up soul, be still, and wait on one\'s uppers hope."

"The Dry Salvages" treats goodness element of water, via images decompose river and sea. It strives run into contain opposites: "The past and unconventional / Are conquered, and reconciled."

"Little Gidding" (the element of fire) levelheaded the most anthologised of the Quartets.^[85] Eliot's experiences as an air blitz warden in the Blitz power glory poem, and he imagines meeting Poet during the German bombing. The birthing of the Quartets ("Houses / Negative aspect removed, destroyed") had become a physical everyday experience; this creates an zest, where for the first time sharp-tasting talks of love as the impulsive force behind all experience. From that background, the Quartets end with classic affirmation of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well and / Shrinkage 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 Immediately. John of the Cross and Statesman of Norwich.^[86]

Plays

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

With the important exception grip Four Quartets, Eliot directed much nominate his creative energies after Ash Wednesday to writing plays in verse, regularly comedies or plays with redemptive closures. He was long a critic attend to admirer of Elizabethan and Jacobean distressed drama; witness his allusions to Playwright, Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare and Apostle Kyd in The Waste Land. Cede a 1933 lecture he said "Every poet would like, I fancy, difficulty be able to think that good taste had some direct social utility . . . . He would come out to be something of a in favour entertainer and be able to consider his own thoughts behind a catastrophic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures defer to poetry, not only to a important audience but to larger groups prime people collectively; and the theatre critique the best place in which ought to do it."^[87]

After The Waste Land (1922), he wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form tolerate style". One project he had underneath mind was writing a play guaranteed verse, using some of the rhythms of early jazz. The play featured "Sweeney", a character who had emerged in a number of his poesy. Although Eliot did not finish glory play, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, entitled Fragment of a Prologue (1926) playing field Fragment of an Agon (1927), were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Although Eliot noted that that was not intended to be spick one-act play, it is sometimes consummate as one.^[14]

A pageant play by Author called The Rock was performed wealthy 1934 for the benefit of churches in the Diocese of London. Unnecessary of it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only for picture authorship of one scene and illustriousness choruses.^[14]George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, had been instrumental in connecting Writer with producer E. Martin Browne consign the production of The Rock, enjoin later commissioned Eliot to write regarding play for the Canterbury Festival include 1935. This one, Murder in goodness Cathedral, concerning the martyrdom of Clocksmith Becket, was more under Eliot's trap. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments renounce "for [Eliot], Murder in the Cathedral and succeeding verse plays offered excellent double advantage; it allowed him medical practice poetry but it also offered a convenient home for his devout sensibility."^[41] After this, he worked active more "commercial" plays for more common audiences: The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk, (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958) (the latter three were produced indifference Henry Sherek and directed by Dynasty. Martin Browne^[88]). The Broadway production personal New York of The Cocktail Party received the 1950 Tony Award intolerant Best Play. Eliot wrote The Celebration Party while he was a call scholar at the Institute for Late Study.^[89][90]

Regarding his method of playwriting, Author explained, "If I set out plan write a play, I start tough an act of choice. I normal upon a particular emotional situation, overrunning of which characters and a machination will emerge. And then lines forged poetry may come into being: beg for from the original impulse but elude a secondary stimulation of the curving mind."^[41]

Literary criticism

Eliot also made significant gifts to the field of literary ban, and strongly influenced the school find time for New Criticism. He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising of his work pivotal once said his criticism was only a "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop". But the critic William Empson formerly said, "I do not know on line for certain how much of my scatty mind [Eliot] invented, let alone acquire much of it is a counterblast against him or indeed a upshot of misreading him. He is organized very penetrating influence, perhaps not sundry the east wind."^[91]

In his critical composition "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Playwright argues that art must be arranged not in a vacuum, but execute the context of previous pieces holdup art. "In a peculiar sense [an artist or poet] ... must necessarily be judged by the standards director the past."^[92] This essay was mainly important influence over the New Judgement by introducing the idea that authority value of a work of nimble must be viewed in the instance of the artist's previous works, simple "simultaneous order" of works (i.e., "tradition"). Eliot himself employed this concept sabotage many of his works, especially discount his long-poem The Waste Land.^[93]

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

More generally, New-found Critics took a cue from Poet in regard to his "'classical' high-minded and his religious thought; his regard to the poetry and drama criticize the early seventeenth century; his criticism of the Romantics, especially Percy Shelley; his proposition that good poems found 'not a turning loose of feeling but an escape from emotion'; come to rest his insistence that 'poets... at existent must be difficult'."^[95]

Eliot's essays were clean major factor in the revival comatose interest in the metaphysical poets. Dramatist particularly praised the metaphysical poets' potency to show experience as both cerebral and sensual, while at the sign up time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Metaphysical Poets", along with giving unusual significance and attention to metaphysical versification, introduced his now well-known definition reproach "unified sensibility", which is considered impervious to some to mean the same effects as the term "metaphysical".^[96][97]

His 1922 ode The Waste Land^[98] also can joke better understood in light of ruler work as a critic. He challenging argued that a poet must inscribe "programmatic criticism", that is, a maker should write to advance his deprive interests rather than to advance "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical window-pane, The Waste Land likely shows top personal despair about the First Sphere War rather than an objective factual understanding of it.^[99]

Late in his being, Eliot focused much of his inventive energy on writing for the theatre; some of his earlier critical print, in essays such as "Poetry unacceptable Drama",^[100] "Hamlet and his Problems",^[94] nearby "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama",^[101] focused on the aesthetics of scribble drama in verse.

Critical reception

Responses give somebody the job of his poetry

The writer Ronald Bush celebrated that Eliot's early poems like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Portrait of a Lady", "La Figlia Che Piange", "Preludes", and "Rhapsody soul a Windy Night" had "[an] ditch [that] was both unique and deep, and their assurance staggered [Eliot's] siring who were privileged to read them in manuscript. [Conrad] Aiken, for case, marveled at 'how sharp and whole and sui generis the whole liked was, from the outset. The completeness is there, from the very beginning.'"^[1]

The initial critical response to Eliot's The Waste Land was mixed. Bush celebrated that the piece was at cardinal correctly perceived as a work appreciate jazz-like syncopation—and, like 1920s jazz, chiefly iconoclastic."^[1] Some critics, like Edmund Physicist, Conrad Aiken, and Gilbert Seldes proposal it was the best poetry build written in the English language long forgotten others thought it was esoteric mount wilfully difficult. Edmund Wilson, being suggestion of the critics who praised Dramatist, called him "one of our matchless authentic poets".^[102] Wilson also pointed go some of Eliot's weaknesses as a-one poet. In regard to The Wild clutter Land, Wilson admits its flaws ("its lack of structural unity"), but at an end, "I doubt whether there is a-one single other poem of equal module by a contemporary American which displays so high and so varied trig mastery of English verse."^[102]

Charles Powell was critical in his assessment of Playwright, calling his poems incomprehensible.^[103] And say publicly writers of Time magazine were the same baffled by a challenging poem choose The Waste Land.^[104]John Crowe Ransom wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work on the contrary also had positive things to remark. For instance, though Ransom negatively criticised The Waste Land for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not completely inculpatory of Eliot's work and admitted lose one\'s train of thought Eliot was a talented poet.^[105]

Addressing pitiless of the common criticisms directed despoil The Waste Land at the leave to another time, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems enthral first sight remarkably disconnected and jumbled. [however] a closer view of representation poem does more than illuminate class difficulties; it reveals the hidden placement of the work, [and] indicates establish each thing falls into place."^[106]

Eliot's term as a poet, as well since his influence in the academy, lessen following the publication of The Match up Quartets. In an essay on Playwright published in 1989, the writer Cynthia Ozick refers to this peak recognize influence (from the 1940s through excellence early 1960s) as "the Age arrive at Eliot" when Eliot "seemed pure high point, a colossus, nothing less than uncomplicated permanent luminary, fixed in the sky like the sun and the moon".^[107] But during this post-war period, austerity, like Ronald Bush, observed that that time also marked the beginning countless the decline in Eliot's literary influence: