T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot changed the face of poetry. He has been regarded as the most celebrated poet of his era. This Nobel Prize winning poet is credited with viewing the world as it appears, without making any optimistic judgements. Despite the ire of Mr. Eliot, it would be safe to regard him as a prophet of doom. His works reflected his frustration with mankind, and the seeming need to be released from this cold world. It was once said, “How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot.” (Time 1) His rather cynical view of man’s accomplishments leads one to regard him as a pessimist who prophesies nothing but doom for mankind.

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888. As a youngster, Thomas received the best education from schools in the United States and Europe. He went to Harvard at age 18, then on to Germany, the Sorbonne in France, and Oxford in England to study literature. In 1914 he met the entrepreneur, Ezra Pound. Pound was a publisher who helped various poets publish their works. While in England, Eliot met Vivienne Haigh-Wood whom he married in 1915. “The marriage was not a success,” (Abrams 2361). Contending with his wife’s neurotic behavior and ailing health, Eliot became stressed out and checked himself into a Swiss sanatorium in 1921. Two months later, Eliot checked out of the sanatorium and gave Ezra Pound a manuscript entitled “The Waste Land.” This work alone is considered his most famous poem. It is a “poetic exploration of soul’s struggling for redemption,” (Kimball 23). Eliot’s other works, such as “Murder in the Cathedral,” and “Old Possum’s Book of Cats” have enjoyed success as well, with “Cats” being made into a musical play.

Originally over one thousand lines long, the abridged version of The Waste Land is very pessimistic in tone. The original version was scaled down by Ezra Pound who thought it too long to publish. Some critics have said it is a jumble of thoughts and languages, with the end being a collage of various languages. Others have credited it with being the most influential poem of the 20th century. However, most critics agree Eliot can be recognized as the leader in the modernist movement in literature although he “has been reclassified over and over as a racist, misogynist, and a fascist…” (kirjasto.sci.fi 1). “The Waste Land” was a deeply unoptimistic, un-Christian and therefore un-American poem, prefaced by the Cumean Sibyl, “I want to die,” (Time 100 2). His following poems, The Hollow Men and Journey of the Magi, published in 1925 and 1927 respectively, both have the same tone. They all cry for the want of death, for the escape from an acheronian life. His poems generally deal with religious beliefs (or the absence of), sexuality, emotional impoverishment, boredom and spiritual emptiness.

The Waste Land “is a poem about spiritual dryness, about the kind of existence in which no regenerating belief gives significance and value to people’s daily activities, sex brings no fruitfulness, and death heralds no resurrection,” (Abrams 2368). “It annoyed Eliot that The Waste Land was interpreted as a prophetic statement: he referred to it (somewhat disingenuously) as ‘just a piece of rhythmical grumbling,’” (Time 100 2). Other works of his, however, show similar themes (such as The Hollow Men or Journey of the Magi). Perhaps his most famous poem, it details the journey of the human soul searching for redemption. He owes most of his ideas to the philosophies of English idealist F.H. Bradley. “Eliot’s understanding of poetic epistemology is a version of Bradley’s theory, that knowing involves three levels (immediate, relational, and transcendent),” (Cooper 94). Bradley believed that there exists a prior consciousness, a conscious consciousness and a transcendent consciousness. Eliot did his Harvard dissertation on Bradley’s philosophies and knew them quite well.

The first part of The Waste Land, titled “The Burial of the Dead,” discusses the seasons and gives the essential features of Eliot’s waste land. The first seven lines are thought to be amongst the best known and most-quoted lines in poetry. These first lines are thought to be spoken by Countess Marie Larisch, offering a “resistance to life and denial of hope or rebirth,” (Gish 45). The mention of “dull roots” and the “cruelest month” invokes mental images of hard times, of a depressed land, of a dark age. These primary lines define the theme for the story and justify the title. The beginning of the poem seems to be a kind of mourning of life.

Some critics claim the mention of roots suggest growth and life, therefore signifying Eliot’s optimism. However, he later on asks “What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” (Abrams 2370) Eliot mentions the “dull roots” in order to convey a dismal atmosphere where even the roots seem dull. He claims winter “kept us warm” (line 5),