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T.S. Eliot 18881965

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Title: T.S. Eliot 18881965


1
T.S. Eliot(1888-1965)
2
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
4
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."

5
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."

6
Eliot, Professional, or . . .1918
  • "But we must learn to take literature seriously."

7
Reception
8
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?

9
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.

13
Influence
14
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.

15
Gilbert Seldes, 1922
  • The Waste Land is a "complete expression
    of the spirit which will be 'modern' for the next
    generation."

16
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.

17
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.

18
(No Transcript)
19
Sir Alfred East (1849-1913)
20
Les Demoiselles DAvignon 1907
21
Gabon Mahongwe Mask
22
Georges Braque Clarinet, 1913
23
Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912
24
Picasso, 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

26
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

27
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).

28
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.

29
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.

30
Nijinsky
31
Stravinsky
32
Stravinsky Nijinsky
33
Joffrey BalletRite of Spring
34
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)

35
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.

36
Textual Unity
  • single speaker
  • single narrative
  • problem-resolution
  • recurring motifs, themes
  • recurring images
  • meta-statement that seems to encapsulate all
  • recurring method

37
Method
  • Modulation

38
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?"

39
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.

40
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.

41
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.

42
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.

43
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,

44
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.

45
Method
  • Composition and Revision

46
Dedication
47
The Typist manuscript
48
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?

49
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
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