Title: T.S. Eliot 18881965
1T.S. Eliot(1888-1965)
2Outline
- 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
3Vivienne Haigh-Wood
4William 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."
5Eliot, 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."
6Eliot, Professional, or . . .1918
- "But we must learn to take literature seriously."
7Reception
8J.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?
9Louis 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.
10Gilbert 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.
11Edmund 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.
12Conrad 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.
13Influence
14Ezra 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.
15Gilbert Seldes, 1922
- The Waste Land is a "complete expression
of the spirit which will be 'modern' for the next
generation."
16Louis 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.
17Bonamy 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.
18(No Transcript)
19Sir Alfred East (1849-1913)
20Les Demoiselles DAvignon 1907
21Gabon Mahongwe Mask
22Georges Braque Clarinet, 1913
23Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912
24Picasso, Guitar on a Table, 1912-13
25- 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
26Montage 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
27Ezra 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).
28Sergei 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.
29Eisenstein, 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.
30Nijinsky
31Stravinsky
32Stravinsky Nijinsky
33Joffrey BalletRite of Spring
34Sacre 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)
35The 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.
36Textual Unity
- single speaker
- single narrative
- problem-resolution
- recurring motifs, themes
- recurring images
- meta-statement that seems to encapsulate all
- recurring method
37Method
38Rewrite
- 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?"
39Preface 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.
40Shakespeherian 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.
41Reflections 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.
42Reflections 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.
43The 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,
44Opening 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.
45Method
46Dedication
47The Typist manuscript
48Section 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?
49Ending 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