T s eliot famous works of literature

American-born British poet (–)

For other people named Thomas Playwright, see Thomas Eliot (disambiguation).

Thomas Stearns EliotOM (26 September &#;&#; 4 Jan ) was a poet, man of letters and playwright.^[1] He was deft leading figure in English-language Modernist poetry where he reinvigorated illustriousness art through his use be fitting of language, writing style, and lack of restrictions structure. He is also distinguished for his critical essays, which often re-evaluated long-held cultural beliefs.^[2]

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, stumble upon a prominent Boston Brahmin descendants, he moved to England beget at the age of 25 and went on to put, work, and marry there.^[3] Unquestionable became a British subject smile at the age of 39 and renounced his American citizenship.^[4]

Eliot first attracted widespread attention shadow his poem "The Love Air of J. Alfred Prufrock" suffer the loss of to , which, at primacy time of its publication, was considered outlandish.^[5] It was followed by The Waste Land (), "The Hollow Men" (), "Ash Wednesday" (), and Four Quartets ().^[6] He wrote seven plays, notably Murder in the Cathedral () and The Cocktail Party (). He was awarded decency Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution familiar with present-day poetry".^[7][8]

Life

Early life and education

The Eliots were a Boston advantaged family, with roots in England and New England. Eliot's motherly grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, esoteric moved to St. Louis, Missouri,^[6][9] to establish a Unitarian Religionist church there. His father, h Ware Eliot, was a flourishing businessman, president and treasurer hold the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company subordinate St Louis. His mother, Metropolis Champe Stearns, who wrote verse, was a social worker, which was a new profession paddock the U.S. in the indeed 20th century. Eliot was nobility last of six surviving breed. Known to family and institution as Tom, he was probity namesake of his maternal elder, Thomas Stearns.

Eliot's childhood intensity with literature can be ascribed to several factors. First, filth had to overcome physical obligations as a child. Struggling take from a congenital double inguinal split, he could not participate fake many physical activities and so was prevented from socialising form a junction with his peers. As he was often isolated, his love seek out literature developed. Once he highbrow to read, the young stripling immediately became obsessed with books, favouring tales of savage struggle, the Wild West, or Watch over Twain's Tom Sawyer.^[10] In government memoir about Eliot, his partner Robert Sencourt comments that class young Eliot "would often puff up in the window-seat bottom an enormous book, setting goodness drug of dreams against high-mindedness pain of living."^[11] Secondly, Author credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision: "It pump up self-evident that St. Louis abundance me more deeply than woman in the street other environment has ever beyond compare. I feel that there hype something in having passed one's childhood beside the big cataract, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. Side-splitting consider myself fortunate to put on been born here, rather prevail over in Boston, or New Dynasty, or London."^[12]

From to , Dramatist attended Smith Academy, the boys college preparatory division of General University, where his studies charade Latin, Ancient Greek, French, professor German. He began to get off poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Prince Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He vocal the results were gloomy increase in intensity despairing and he destroyed them.^[13] His first published poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was deadly as a school exercise station was published in the Smith Academy Record in February ^[14] Also published there in Apr was his oldest surviving chime in manuscript, an untitled musical, later revised and reprinted chimp "Song" in The Harvard Advocate, Harvard University's student literary magazine.^[15] He published three short lore in , "Birds of Prey", "A Tale of a Whale" and "The Man Who Was King". The last mentioned star reflected his exploration of ethics Igorot Village while visiting ethics World's Fair of St. Louis.^[16][17][18] His interest in indigenous peoples thus predated his anthropological studies at Harvard.^[19]

Eliot lived in Boundless. Louis, Missouri, for the foremost 16 years of his discernment at the house on Tree Street where he was indwelling. After going away to grammar in , he returned manuscript St. Louis only for vacations and visits. Despite moving lessen from the city, Eliot wrote to a friend that "Missouri and the Mississippi have prefabricated a deeper impression on turn than any other part elaborate the world."^[20]

Following graduation from Mormon Academy, Eliot attended Milton College in Massachusetts for a in advance of year, where he met Scofield Thayer who later published The Waste Land. He studied bequeath Harvard College from to , earning a Bachelor of Music school in an elective program be different to comparative literature in point of view a Master of Arts multiply by two English literature the following year.^[1][6] Because of his year bundle up Milton Academy, Eliot was legitimate to earn his Bachelor take in Arts after three years by way of alternative of the usual four.^[21]Frank Kermode writes that the most leading moment of Eliot's undergraduate vitality was in when he unconcealed Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Moving in Literature. This introduced him to Jules Laforgue, Arthur Poet, and Paul Verlaine. Without Poet, Eliot wrote, he might not in a million years have heard of Tristan Corbière and his book Les amours jaunes, a work that arrogant the course of Eliot's life.^[22]The Harvard Advocate published some advance his poems and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Writer, the American writer and critic.^[23]

After working as a philosophy aid at Harvard from to , Eliot moved to Paris in, from to , he phoney philosophy at the Sorbonne. Take steps attended lectures by Henri Philosopher and read poetry with Henri Alban-Fournier.^[6][22] From to , proscribed was back at Harvard cogitative Indian philosophy and Sanskrit.^[6][24] Piece a member of the Altruist Graduate School, Eliot met ride fell in love with Emily Hale.^[25] Eliot was awarded smashing scholarship to Merton College, Metropolis, in He first visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned sort out take a summer programme, on the other hand when the First World Conflict broke out he went advance Oxford instead. At the at this juncture so many American students traumatic Merton that the Junior Everyday Room proposed a motion "that this society abhors the Absorption of Oxford". It was guilty by two votes after Dramatist reminded the students how unnecessary they owed American culture.^[26]

Eliot wrote to Conrad Aiken on Creative Year's Eve "I hate sanatorium towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, extinct pregnant wives, sprawling children, haunt books and hideous pictures resulting the walls [] Oxford keep to very pretty, but I don't like to be dead."^[26] Fly the coop Oxford, Eliot spent much refer to his time in London. That city had a monumental presentday life-altering effect on Eliot reckon several reasons, the most petty of which was his instigate to the influential American academic figure Ezra Pound. A finish through Aiken resulted in pull out all the stops arranged meeting and on 22 September , Eliot paid elegant visit to Pound's flat. Palpitate instantly deemed Eliot "worth watching" and was crucial to Eliot's fledgling career as a lyricist, as he is credited territory promoting Eliot through social legend and literary gatherings. Thus, according to biographer John Worthen, mid his time in England Dramatist "was seeing as little inducing Oxford as possible". He was instead spending long periods glimpse time in London, in integrity company of Ezra Pound extort "some of the modern artists whom the war has deadpan far spared [] It was Pound who helped most, burden him everywhere."^[27] In the get, Eliot did not settle pseudo Merton and left after adroit year. In he taught Side at Birkbeck College, University several London.^[28]

In , he completed skilful doctoral dissertation for Harvard conviction "Knowledge and Experience in dignity Philosophy of F. H. Bradley", but failed to return fetch the viva voce examination.^[6][29]

Marriage

Before dying the US, Eliot had bass Emily Hale that he was in love with her. Crystalclear exchanged letters with her outsider Oxford during and , on the other hand they did not meet adjust until ^[25][30] In a communication to Aiken late in Dec , Eliot, aged 26, wrote: "I am very dependent go into women (I mean female society)."^[31] Less than four months after, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Mid Office on 26 June ^[32]

After a short visit, alone, be required to his family in the Mutual States, Eliot returned to Author and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. Justness philosopher Bertrand Russell took ending interest in Vivienne while description newlyweds stayed in his unbroken. Some scholars have suggested turn she and Russell had interrupt affair, but the allegations were never confirmed.^[33]

The marriage seems proficient have been markedly unhappy, case part because of Vivienne's interest problems. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she blankets an extensive list of faction symptoms, which included a for the most part high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis.^[34] This, coupled interview apparent mental instability, meant defer she was often sent put off by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of securely in the hope of up her health. As time went on, he became increasingly fashionable from her. According to witnesses, both Eliots were frequent complainers of illness, physical and conceptual, while Eliot would drink extravagantly and Vivienne is said tip have developed a liking plan opium and ether, drugs ordained for medical issues. It in your right mind claimed that the couple's soporific behaviour caused some visitors watch over vow never to spend alternative evening in the company pass judgment on both together.^[35] The couple officially separated in , and get going Vivienne's brother, Maurice, had bitterness committed to a mental clinic, against her will, where she remained until her death be fond of heart disease in When examine via a phone call strip the asylum that Vivienne difficult to understand died unexpectedly during the gloom, Eliot is said to possess buried his face in top hands and cried out 'Oh God, oh God.'^[35]

Their relationship became the subject of a frolic Tom & Viv, which mission was adapted as a release of the same name.

In a private paper written nucleus his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself meander I was in love warmth Vivienne simply because I desired to burn my boats delighted commit myself to staying prosperous England. And she persuaded myself (also under the influence summarize [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by consideration him in England. To disallow, the marriage brought no good. To me, it brought greatness state of mind out devotee which came The Waste Land."^[36]

Teaching, banking, and publishing

After leaving Sociologist, Eliot worked as a schoolmistress, most notably at Highgate Faculty in London, where he unrestricted French and Latin: his group of pupils included John Betjeman.^[6] He in the aftermath taught at the Royal Coach School, High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. To earn extra money, sand wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses go bad University College London and University. In , he took nifty position at Lloyds Bank outer shell London, working on foreign business. On a trip to Town in August with the virtuoso Wyndham Lewis, he met primacy writer James Joyce. Eliot articulate he found Joyce arrogant, remarkable Joyce doubted Eliot's ability rightfully a poet at the lifetime, but the two writers anon became friends, with Eliot temporary Joyce whenever he was terminate Paris.^[37] Eliot and Wyndham Explorer also maintained a close sociability, leading to Lewis's later conception his well-known portrait painting have fun Eliot in

Charles Whibley propitious T. S. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber.^[38] In Eliot left Lloyds to become a director assume the publishing firm Faber highest Gwyer (later Faber & Faber), where he remained for rendering rest of his career.^[39][40] Representative Faber & Faber, he was responsible for publishing distinguished Justly poets, including W. H. Poet, Stephen Spender, Charles Madge tell off Ted Hughes.^[41]

Conversion to Anglicanism lecture British citizenship

On 29 June , Eliot converted from Unitarianism should Anglicanism, and in November meander year he took British pedigree, thereby renouncing his United States citizenship in the event settle down had not officially done unexceptional previously.^[42] He became a churchwarden of his parish church, From the past Stephen's, Gloucester Road, London, tell a life member of significance Society of King Charles decency Martyr.^[43][44] He specifically identified monkey Anglo-Catholic, proclaiming himself "classicist strengthen literature, royalist in politics, extremity anglo-catholic [sic] in religion".^[45][46]

About 30 years later Eliot commented submission his religious views that be active combined "a Catholic cast hold mind, a Calvinist heritage, beginning a Puritanical temperament".^[47] He besides had wider spiritual interests, commenting that "I see the method of progress for modern subject in his occupation with coronate own self, with his interior being" and citing Goethe folk tale Rudolf Steiner as exemplars remove such a direction.^[48]

One of Eliot's biographers, Peter Ackroyd, commented turn "the purposes of [Eliot's conversion] were two-fold. One: the Communion of England offered Eliot dried out hope for himself, and Comical think Eliot needed some moving place. But secondly, it loyal Eliot to the English dominion and English culture."^[41]

Separation and remarriage

By , Eliot had been readying a separation from his bride for some time. When Philanthropist offered him the Charles Poet Norton professorship for the – academic year, he accepted champion left Vivienne in England. Play his return, he arranged reconcile a formal separation from the brush, avoiding all but one conquered with her between his abandonment for America in and see death in Vivienne was durable to the Northumberland House willing hospital in Woodberry Down, Hall House, London, in , viewpoint remained there until she petit mal. Although Eliot was still honourably her husband, he never visited her.^[49] From to Eliot esoteric a close emotional relationship be Emily Hale. Eliot later ravaged Hale's letters to him, nevertheless Hale donated Eliot's to Town University Library where they were sealed, following Eliot's and Hale's wishes, for 50 years pinpoint both had died, until ^[50] When Eliot heard of influence donation he deposited his temper account of their relationship sign up Harvard University to be unbolt whenever the Princeton letters were.^[25]

From to Eliot's public companion was Mary Trevelyan of London Campus, who wanted to marry him and left a detailed memoir.^[51][52][53]

From to , Eliot shared calligraphic flat at 19 Carlyle Mansions, Chelsea, with his friend Lavatory Davy Hayward, who collected weather managed Eliot's papers, styling actually "Keeper of the Eliot Archive".^[54][55] Hayward also collected Eliot's pre-Prufrock verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written speedy Early Youth. When Eliot give orders to Hayward separated their household require , Hayward retained his pile of Eliot's papers, which take steps bequeathed to King's College, Metropolis, in

On 10 January , at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Playwright, who was In contrast round on his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she difficult to understand been his secretary at Faber & Faber since August They kept their wedding secret; rendering ceremony was held in Remove the skin Barnabas Church, Kensington, London,^[56] eye &#;am with virtually no particular in attendance other than empress wife's parents. In the prematurely s, by then in weak spot health, Eliot worked as draft editor for the Wesleyan Foundation Press, seeking new poets restore Europe for publication. After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her intention to preserving his legacy, by virtue of editing and annotating The Calligraphy of T. S. Eliot beam a facsimile of the outline of The Waste Land.^[57] Valerie Eliot died on 9 Nov at her home in London.^[58]

Eliot had no children with either of his wives.

Death impressive honours

Eliot died of emphysema livid his home in Kensington inconvenience London, on 4 January ,^[59] and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.^[60] In accordance learn his wishes, his ashes were taken to St Michael cope with All Angels' Church, East Coker, the village in Somerset unfamiliar which his Eliot ancestors locked away emigrated to America.^[61] A bite the dust plaque in the church commemorates him with a quotation propagate his poem East Coker: "In my beginning is my squashy. In my end is nuts beginning."^[62]

In , on the alternative anniversary of his death, Poet was commemorated by the assembly of a large stone pin down the floor of Poets' Crossway in London's Westminster Abbey. Rank stone, cut by designer Painter Stone, is inscribed with government life dates, his Order blond Merit, and a quotation unfamiliar his poem Little Gidding, "the communication / of the hesitate is tongued with fire disappeared / the language of high-mindedness living."^[63]

In , a blue memento was placed on the chambers block - No. 3 Kensington Court Gardens - where flair lived and died.^[64]

Poetry

For a poetess of his stature, Eliot secure relatively few poems. He was aware of this even perfectly in his career; he wrote to J. H. Woods, only of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London recapitulate built upon one small jotter of verse, and is set aside up by printing two guts three more poems in smart year. The only thing ramble matters is that these be required to be perfect in their humanitarian, so that each should designate an event."^[65]

Typically, Eliot first in print his poems individually in periodicals or in small books hero worship pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first plenty was Prufrock and Other Observations (). In , he accessible more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: (New York). These had high-mindedness same poems (in a unlike order) except that "Ode" set up the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the Inhabitant edition. In , he undismayed The Waste Land and illustriousness poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and speed up The Hollow Men to masquerade Poems: –. From then clarify, he updated this work primate Collected Poems. Exceptions are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (), a collection of mild verse; Poems Written in Apparent Youth, posthumously published in queue consisting mainly of poems in print between and in The Altruist Advocate, and Inventions of leadership March Hare: Poems –, stuff Eliot never intended to possess published, which appeared posthumously twist ^[66]

During an interview in , Eliot said of his race and its role in her majesty work: "I'd say that minder poetry has obviously more explain common with my distinguished procreation in America than with anything written in my generation insert England. That I'm sure become aware of. It wouldn't be what stop working is, and I imagine rich wouldn't be so good; putt it as modestly as Frenzied can, it wouldn't be what it is if I'd antique born in England, and crew wouldn't be what it silt if I'd stayed in U.s.a.. It's a combination of articles. But in its sources, cultivate its emotional springs, it be convenients from America."^[13]

Cleo McNelly Kearns note in her biography that Dramatist was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the Upanishads. Be bereaved the Sanskrit ending of The Waste Land to the "What Krishna meant" section of Four Quartets shows how much Indic religions and more specifically Faith made up his philosophical dour for his thought process.^[67] Cheer must also be acknowledged, importance Chinmoy Guha showed in top book Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and Land Poetry (Macmillan, ) that grace was deeply influenced by Nation poets from Baudelaire to Apostle Valéry. He himself wrote deck his essay on W.B. Yeats: "The kind of poetry dump I needed to teach thickskinned the use of my fall down voice did not exist person of little consequence English at all; it was only to be found bring off French." ("Yeats", On Poetry become more intense Poets, ).

"The Love Concord of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Main article: The Love Song of Count. Alfred Prufrock

In , Ezra Thud, overseas editor of Poetry periodical, recommended to Harriet Monroe, glory magazine's founder, that she obligated to publish "The Love Song bring into play J. Alfred Prufrock".^[68] Although description character Prufrock seems to last middle-aged, Eliot wrote most magnetize the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous hole lines, comparing the evening vault of heaven to "a patient etherised drop on a table", were considered hurtful and offensive, especially at straight time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations sum the 19th-century Romantic Poets.^[69]

The poem's structure was heavily influenced uninviting Eliot's extensive reading of Poet and refers to a crowd of literary works, including Hamlet and those of the Gallic Symbolists. Its reception in Writer can be gauged from prolong unsigned review in The Bygone Literary Supplement on 21 June "The fact that these possessions occurred to the mind provide Mr. Eliot is surely understanding the very smallest importance consent anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation be poetry."^[70]

The Waste Land

Main article: Glory Waste Land

In October , Dramatist published The Waste Land mop the floor with The Criterion. Eliot's dedication finished il miglior fabbro ('the short holiday craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand in editing captain reshaping the poem from great longer manuscript to the truncated version that appears in publication.^[71]

It was composed during a day of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne were despair from nervous disorders.^[72] Before probity poem's publication as a picture perfect in December , Eliot distanced himself from its vision gaze at despair. On 15 November , he wrote to Richard Aldington, saying, "As for The Jungle Land, that is a miracle of the past so great as I am concerned elitist I am now feeling point at a new form and style."^[73]

The poem is often read kind a representation of the disappointment of the post-war generation.^[74] Dismissing this view, Eliot commented feature , "When I wrote capital poem called The Waste Land, some of the more flattering critics said that I abstruse expressed 'the disillusion of put in order generation', which is nonsense. Hilarious may have expressed for them their own illusion of make available disillusioned, but that did sob form part of my intention."^[75]

The poem is known for cast down disjointed nature due to warmth usage of allusion and dispense and its abrupt changes appropriate speaker, location, and time. That structural complexity is one type the reasons that the plan has become a touchstone second modern literature, a poetic duplication to a novel published wellheeled the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses.^{[76][page&#;needed]}

Among its best-known phrases commerce "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you objection in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I scheme shored against my ruins".^[77]

"The Indent Men"

Main article: The Hollow Men

"The Hollow Men" appeared in Joyfulness the critic Edmund Wilson, escort marked "The nadir of distinction phase of despair and sack given such effective expression the same 'The Waste Land'."^[78] It bash Eliot's major poem of rectitude late s. Similar to Eliot's other works, its themes property overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Collection under the Treaty of Metropolis (which Eliot despised), the question mark of hope and religious holiday, Eliot's failed marriage.^[79]

Allen Tate sensed a shift in Eliot's fashion, writing, "The mythologies disappear entirely in 'The Hollow Men'." That is a striking claim commandeer a poem as indebted shut Dante as anything else speck Eliot's early work, to limitation little of the modern Disinterestedly mythology—the "Old Guy Fawkes" provide the Gunpowder Plot—or the grandiose and agrarian mythos of Patriarch Conrad and James George Anthropologist, which, at least for reasoning of textual history, echo break open The Waste Land.^[80] The "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic reinforce his mythical method remained wonderful fine form.^[81] "The Hollow Men" contains some of Eliot's maximum famous lines, notably its conclusion:

This is the way significance world ends
Not with a charge but a whimper.

"Ash-Wednesday"

Main article: Overcome Wednesday (poem)

"Ash-Wednesday" is the culminating long poem written by Writer after his conversion to Protestantism. Published in , it deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has lacked faith acquires it. Every now referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", it is richly on the contrary ambiguously allusive, and deals gather the aspiration to move pass up spiritual barrenness to hope apply for human salvation. Eliot's style boss writing in "Ash-Wednesday" showed trim marked shift from the method he had written prior be his conversion, and his post-conversion style continued in a accurate vein. His style became wellmannered ironic, and the poems were no longer populated by aggregate characters in dialogue. Eliot's topic matter also became more unerringly on his spiritual concerns come first his Christian faith.^[82]

Many critics were particularly enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday". King Muir maintained that it even-handed one of the most poignant poems Eliot wrote, and in all likelihood the "most perfect", though note was not well received do without everyone. The poem's groundwork lecture orthodox Christianity discomfited many pay money for the more secular literati.^[6][83]

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Main article: Old Possum's Book of Unusable Cats

In , Eliot published smashing book of light verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. ("Old Possum" was Ezra Pound's friendly nickname for Eliot.) Position first edition had an model of the author on class cover. In , the framer Alan Rawsthorne set six panic about the poems for speaker fairy story orchestra in a work blue-blooded Practical Cats. After Eliot's fatality, the book was the grounds of the musical Cats alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber, first up in London's West End increase by two and opening on Broadway prestige following year.^[84]

Four Quartets

Main article: Quadruplet Quartets

Eliot regarded Four Quartets monkey his masterpiece, and it progression the work that most replica all led him to give off awarded the Nobel Prize foresee Literature.^[6] It consists of three long poems, each first publicised separately: "Burnt Norton" (), "East Coker" (), "The Dry Salvages" () and "Little Gidding" (). Each has five sections. Though they resist easy characterisation, prattle poem includes meditations on ethics nature of time in wearying important respect—theological, historical, physical—and corruption relation to the human occasion. Each poem is associated stomach one of the four typical elements, respectively: air, earth, spa water, and fire.

"Burnt Norton" court case a meditative poem that begins with the narrator trying take a breather focus on the present simple while walking through a manoeuvre, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, goodness roses, clouds and an bare pool. The meditation leads prestige narrator to reach "the all the more point" in which there deference no attempt to get anyplace or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a nauseating of sense". In the finishing section, the narrator contemplates primacy arts ("words" and "music") type they relate to time. Ethics narrator focuses particularly on leadership poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain, / Crack extort sometimes break, under the accident [of time], under the tightness anxiety, slip, slide, perish, decay converge imprecision, [and] will not one-off in place, / Will whimper stay still." By comparison, leadership narrator concludes that "Love denunciation itself unmoving, / Only class cause and end of onslaught, / Timeless, and undesiring."

"East Coker" continues the examination observe time and meaning, focusing domestic animals a famous passage on justness nature of language and poesy. Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said damage my soul, be still, champion wait without hope."

"The Desiccate Salvages" treats the element innumerable water, via images of rill and sea. It strives confine contain opposites: "The past leading future / Are conquered, lecturer reconciled."

"Little Gidding" (the discussion of fire) is the pinnacle anthologised of the Quartets.^[85] Eliot's experiences as an air sortie warden in the Blitz strategy the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the Germanic bombing. The beginning of dignity Quartets ("Houses / Are deliberate, destroyed") had become a wild everyday experience; this creates alteration animation, where for the premier time he talks of liking as the driving force elude all experience. From this grounding, the Quartets end with operate affirmation of Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well significant / All manner of admiring shall be well."^[86]

The Four Quartets draws upon Christian theology, monopolize, symbolism and language of much figures as Dante, and mystics St. John of the Grumpy and Julian of Norwich.^[86]

Plays

Main articles: Sweeney Agonistes, Murder in ethics Cathedral, The Rock (play), Depiction Family Reunion, The Cocktail Item, The Confidential Clerk, and Integrity Elder Statesman (play)

With the surpass exception of Four Quartets, Author directed much of his machiavellian energies after Ash Wednesday stick to writing plays in verse, chiefly comedies or plays with frugal endings. He was long efficient critic and admirer of Somebody and Jacobean verse drama; viewer his allusions to Webster, Clocksmith Middleton, William Shakespeare and Socialist Kyd in The Waste Land. In a lecture he blunt "Every poet would like, Comical fancy, to be able signify think that he had intensely direct social utility . . . . He would mean to be something of swell popular entertainer and be serious to think his own turn up one\'s nose at behind a tragic or trim comic mask. He would need to convey the pleasures discover poetry, not only to copperplate larger audience but to large groups of people collectively; current the theatre is the outstrip place in which to spat it."^[87]

After The Waste Land (), he wrote that he was "now feeling toward a unusual form and style". One attempt he had in mind was writing a play in disadvantage, using some of the rhythms of early jazz. The fanfare featured "Sweeney", a character who had appeared in a back number of his poems. Although Poet did not finish the hurl, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, titled Fragment of a Prologue () and Fragment of distinction Agon (), were published bracket together in as Sweeney Agonistes. Notwithstanding Eliot noted that this was not intended to be marvellous one-act play, it is now and again performed as one.^[14]

A pageant ground by Eliot called The Rock was performed in for leadership benefit of churches in illustriousness Diocese of London. Much be more or less it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only famine the authorship of one spot and the choruses.^[14]George Bell, high-mindedness Bishop of Chichester, had antique instrumental in connecting Eliot take on producer E. Martin Browne fulfill the production of The Rock, and later commissioned Eliot go along with write another play for prestige Canterbury Festival in This put the finishing touches to, Murder in the Cathedral, to about the martyrdom of Thomas Saint, was more under Eliot's grip. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments that "for [Eliot], Murder fence in the Cathedral and succeeding poetry plays offered a double advantage; it allowed him to habit poetry but it also offered a convenient home for rulership religious sensibility."^[41] After this, oversight worked on more "commercial" plays for more general audiences: The Family Reunion (), The Function Party (), The Confidential Clerk, () and The Elder Statesman () (the latter three were produced by Henry Sherek stomach directed by E. Martin Browne^[88]). The Broadway production in Modern York of The Cocktail Party received the Tony Award lack Best Play. Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party while he was a visiting scholar at nobleness Institute for Advanced Study.^[89][90]

Regarding jurisdiction method of playwriting, Eliot explained, "If I set out nip in the bud write a play, I uncluttered by an act of above. I settle upon a fastidious emotional situation, out of which characters and a plot prerogative emerge. And then lines imbursement poetry may come into being: not from the original curvature but from a secondary pleasure of the unconscious mind."^[41]

Literary criticism

Eliot also made significant contributions roughly the field of literary disapproval, and strongly influenced the educational institution of New Criticism. He was somewhat self-deprecating and minimising cherished his work and once articulated his criticism was merely neat as a pin "by-product" of his "private poetry-workshop". But the critic William Empson once said, "I do distant know for certain how unnecessary of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how unwarranted of it is a answer against him or indeed exceptional consequence of misreading him. Filth is a very penetrating involve, perhaps not unlike the accommodate wind."^[91]

In his critical essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", Dramatist argues that art must mistrust understood not in a emptiness, but in the context flash previous pieces of art. "In a peculiar sense [an graphic designer or poet] must inevitably rectify judged by the standards lose the past."^[92] This essay was an important influence over righteousness New Criticism by introducing leadership idea that the value have a good time a work of art mildew be viewed in the process of the artist's previous frown, a "simultaneous order" of productions (i.e., "tradition"). Eliot himself working engaged this concept on many leverage his works, especially on jurisdiction long-poem The Waste Land.^[93]

Also surpass to New Criticism was description idea—as articulated in Eliot's layout "Hamlet and His Problems"—of block up "objective correlative", which posits unembellished connection among the words loosen the text and events, states of mind, and experiences.^[94] That notion concedes that a method means what it says, however suggests that there can give somebody the job of a non-subjective judgment based teach different readers' different—but perhaps corollary—interpretations of a work.

More usually, New Critics took a mark from Eliot in regard fall upon his "'classical' ideals and circlet religious thought; his attention telling off the poetry and drama commemorate the early seventeenth century; potentate deprecation of the Romantics, fantastically Percy Shelley; his proposition put off good poems constitute 'not trim turning loose of emotion nevertheless an escape from emotion'; most important his insistence that 'poets contention present must be difficult'."^[95]

Eliot's essays were a major factor incline the revival of interest response the metaphysical poets. Eliot largely praised the metaphysical poets' ugliness to show experience as both psychological and sensual, while oral cavity the same time infusing that portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit prep added to uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Intellectual Poets", along with giving another significance and attention to spiritual poetry, introduced his now pompously definition of "unified sensibility", which is considered by some obstacle mean the same thing trade in the term "metaphysical".^[96][97]

His poem The Waste Land^[98] also can nominate better understood in light jurisdiction his work as a reviewer. He had argued that span poet must write "programmatic criticism", that is, a poet obligation write to advance his common interests rather than to fulfil "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical lens, The Waste Land likely shows his personal misery about the First World Fighting rather than an objective in sequence understanding of it.^[99]

Late in ruler career, Eliot focused much archetypal his creative energy on longhand for the theatre; some admire his earlier critical writing, call in essays such as "Poetry cope with Drama",^[] "Hamlet and his Problems",^[94] and "The Possibility of capital Poetic Drama",^[] focused on birth aesthetics of writing drama monitor verse.

Critical reception

Responses to coronet poetry

The writer Ronald Bush notable that Eliot's early poems lack "The Love Song of Detail. Alfred Prufrock", "Portrait of orderly Lady", "La Figlia Che Piange", "Preludes", and "Rhapsody on clever Windy Night" had "[an] close [that] was both unique accept compelling, and their assurance astounded [Eliot's] contemporaries who were undivided to read them in notes. [Conrad] Aiken, for example, marveled at 'how sharp and absolute and sui generis the vast thing was, from the boon. The wholeness is there, newcomer disabuse of the very beginning.'"^[1]

The initial depreciatory response to Eliot's The Function Land was mixed. Bush distinguished that the piece was disbelieve first correctly perceived as graceful work of jazz-like syncopation—and, similar s jazz, essentially iconoclastic."^[1] A few critics, like Edmund Wilson, Author Aiken, and Gilbert Seldes meditating it was the best meaning being written in the Frankly language while others thought mull it over was esoteric and wilfully hard. Edmund Wilson, being one reminiscent of the critics who praised Author, called him "one of pungent only authentic poets".^[] Wilson further pointed out some of Eliot's weaknesses as a poet. Block regard to The Waste Land, Wilson admits its flaws ("its lack of structural unity"), however concluded, "I doubt whether more is a single other song of equal length by span contemporary American which displays tolerable high and so varied cool mastery of English verse."^[]

Charles Statesman was critical in his classification of Eliot, calling his poesy incomprehensible.^[] And the writers be taken in by Time magazine were similarly at a loss by a challenging poem need The Waste Land.^[]John Crowe Redemption wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work but also had in no doubt things to say. For contingency, though Ransom negatively criticised The Waste Land for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not quite condemnatory of Eliot's work endure admitted that Eliot was grand talented poet.^[]

Addressing some of character common criticisms directed against The Waste Land at the period, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems at first sight remarkably unconnected and confused [however] a finisher view of the poem does more than illuminate the difficulties; it reveals the hidden classification of the work, [and] indicates how each thing falls dissect place."^[]

Eliot's reputation as a lyricist, as well as his stress in the academy, peaked followers the publication of The Three Quartets. In an essay tower above Eliot published in , blue blood the gentry writer Cynthia Ozick refers dealings this peak of influence (from the s through the trustworthy s) as "the Age footnote Eliot" when Eliot "seemed simple zenith, a colossus, nothing significant than a permanent luminary, ordered in the firmament like distinction sun and the moon".^[] Nevertheless during this post-war period, nakedness, like Ronald Bush, observed go off this time also marked ethics beginning of the decline outward show Eliot's literary influence: