Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot Read online

  Selected Prose of

  T.S.Eliot

  Edited wit� an Introduction by

  FRANK KERMODE

  T. S. Eliot, Nobel Laureate, renowned poet, playwright, and essayist, is a towering figure in twentiethcentury literature. The eloquence and profundity of his works are no

  less evident in his critical prose than

  in his plays and poetry.

  Eliot, in mature retrospect, perceived his prose in three groups­

  "essays in generalization," "appreciations of individual authors," and

  "social and religious criticism."

  Frank Kermode has followed this

  prescription in selecting thirty-one

  essays from Eliot's extensive prose

  published over a half century of

  social change and intellectual discovery. Every selection had previously been designated by Eliot for its particular significance. Each is presented in its entirety or in substantial

  extracts. Chronology of publication

  is followed within each group.

  The result is a volume that, with

  the editor's masterly introduction

  and notes, reveals the development

  of a brilliant man, his original ideas,

  his cogent conclusions, and his consummate skill and grace ir. language.

  T. S. ELIOT was born in St. Louis,

  lt1.�svt'J.-i, was graduated from Harvard College, and then went abroad

  and settled in England. He taught

  for a brief time and, for a period of

  eight years, was employed in Lloyds

  Bank in London. In 1925 he entered book publishing, became a

  British subject in 1927, and in 1948

  was awarded both the Nobel Prize

  in Literature and the British Order

  of Merit. He died in 1965, having

  made an indelible impress in letters

  that will survive the ultimate test of

  time.

  FRANK KERMODE is Regius

  Professor of English Literature at

  Cambridge University, has been a

  distinguished lecturer at several

  American universities, and recently

  delivered the four T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures at Kent University

  in England. An accepted authority

  on Eliot, he became convinced of the

  need for a collection of Eliot's most

  influential essays. This book is his

  response.

  Jacket design copyright © 197 5

  by Robert Anthony

  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  New York

  SELECTED PROSE OF

  T. S. ELIOT

  SELECTED PROSE OF

  T. S. ELIOT

  Edited with an Introduction by

  FRANK KERMODE

  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  New York

  Copyright© 1975 by Valerie Eliot

  Copyright 1932, 1936, 1938, 1949, 1950, © 1956 by Harcourt Brace

  Jovanovich, Inc. Copyright 1940, 1949, © 1960, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1966, 1968 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Copyright 1933 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, renewed 1961 by Thomas Stearns Eli
  books: On Poetry and Poets, copyright © 1943, 1945, 1951, 1954, 1956,

  1957 by T. S. Eliot, and To Criticize the Critic, copyright© 1965 by Valerie

  Eliot, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. "Ezra Pound: His

  Metric and Poetry," copyright 1917 by Alfred A. Knopf, renewed 1945 by

  Thomas Stearns Eliot.

  Introduction and notes copyright© 1975 by Frank Kermode

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  BCDE

  Literary criticism is a distinctive activity of the

  civilized mind.

  T . S . ELIOT, 1961

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  page 11

  I

  L I TE RA R Y C R I T I C I S M

  ESSAYS OF G ENERALIZAT I ON

  Before 1918

  Reflections on Vers Libre (1917)

  31

  1918 -1930

  Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

  37

  Hamlet (1919)

  45

  ·

  The Perfect Critic (1920)

  50

  The Metaphysical Poets (1921)

  59

  The Function of Criticism (1923)

  68

  19JD -I96S

  from Preface to Anabasis (1930)

  77

  from The Use of Poetry and the Use ofCriticism (1933)

  79

  Religion and Literature (1935)

  97

  from The Music of Poetry (1942)

  107

  What is a Classic ? (1944)

  PS

  Poetry and Drama (1951)

  132

  APPR E C IA T I ONS OF I N D I VIDUAL AUTHORS

  Before 1918

  from Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry (1917)

  149

  from Henry James (1918)

  151

  1918 -19]0

  from Philip Massinger (1920)

  153

  Andrew Marvell ( 1921)

  161

  9

  CONTENTS

  Marie Lloyd ( 1922)

  1 72

  Ulysses, Order, and Myth (1923)

  1 75

  Lancelot Andrewes ( 1926)

  179

  from Thomas Middleton ( 1 927)

  1 89

  Francis Herbert Bradley (1927)

  196

  Dante (1929)

  205

  I9JD-I965

  from Baudelaire (1930)

  231

  from The Pensees of Pascal (1931)

  237

  In Memoriam (1936)

  239

  Yeats (1940)

  248

  Milton I (1936)

  258

  from Milton II (1947)

  265

  I I

  S O C I A L A N D R E L I G I O U S CR I T I C I S M

  The Humanism of Irving Babbitt ( 1 928)

  277

  from The Idea of a Christian Society ( 1 939)

  285

  from Notes Towards the Definition ofCulture (1948)

  292

  Appendix A

  307

  Appendix B

  3 1 3

  Index

  314

  IO

  I NTRODUCT I ON

  In 'To Criticize the Critic', a lecture delivered at Leeds University in 1961, Eliot looked back over his own career as a critic and sought to draw from it 'some plausible generalizations of wider

  validity'. He distinguished several categories - Professional

  Critics, Critics with Gusto (who call attention to neglected

  writers), Academic and Theoretical Critics - but the category in

  which he placed himself was that of the critic whose criticism is

  a by-product of his creative activity, and 'particularly, the critic

  who is also a poet'. (Other critics of this kind are Johnson,

  Coleridge, Dryden, Racine and
Matthew Arnold.1) Eliot's critical

  writings are diverse and extensive, but it is not to be doubted that

  he put himself into the right group. His readers (and, of course,

  his editor) must always be mindful of this, and of certain other

  admonitions in the same retrospective survey.

  As he reviewed his work Eliot, in tones of amused severity,

  observed in it certain faults : 'the occasional note of arrogance, of

  vehemence, of cocksureness or rudeness, the braggadocio of the

  mild-mannered man safely entrenched behind his typewriter'. By

  way of excuse he urged upon all who cite his work the need to

  reflect that it is not a single seamless garment or premeditated

  system, but a series of essays belonging to different dates and

  different stages of his life. He maintained that his early criticism

  achieved its success partly because of its ·dogmatic manner and

  because it was, inexplicitly, a defence of the poetic practice of his

  friends and himself. Later readers enjoy the tones of warm

  advocacy even though they do not understand exactly what the

  author vas reacting against ; and so this early work is more

  appealing than the more 'detached' and 'j udicial' pieces he wrote

  later.

  To get his work into perspective, Eliot proposed to divide it

  into three periods. During the first he was writing for the Egoist,

  in which appeared what is arguably his most influential single

  essay, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'. The main influences

  1 The footnotes to this Introduction are at the end of the Introduction on p. 23.

  I I

  INTRODUCT I ON

  on his work at this time were Ezra Pound (and through him Remy

  de Gourmont and Henry James) and Irving Babbitt, who at

  Harvard introduced Eliot to the philosophy of Humanism, and

  whose traditionalist doctrines were reinforced, a little later, by the

  ideas of T. E. Hulme and Charles Maurras. 2

  The second period, from 1918 to about 1930, was primarily one

  of regular contributions to the Athenaeum, edited by Middleton

  Murry, and the Times Literary Supplement, edited by Bruce

  Richmond ; and the third primarily one of lectures and addresses.

  Throughout, he believed, there was 'an important line of

  demarcation' between 'essays of generalization' and 'appreciations

  of individual authors' ; and he thought the second class the more

  likely to retain a value for future readers. Without wholly accepting that judgment, I have, in this selection, adopted the classification Eliot proposed, dividing the work into three periods, and, within those periods, into 'essays of generalization' and 'appreciations of individual authors'. (They overlap, of course ; the generalizations are founded on appreciations, and the appreciations require, for reasons explored below, to be set in a context of generalization. And there are anomalies : I hope nobody will complain that Marie Lloyd is not exactly an 'individual

  author'.)

  The scheme of this book therefore complies, as far as possible,

  with Eliot's own prescription, and in the matter of selection it also

  follows his lead. I shall not embark on a general defence of my

  selections ; no two editors would fill the available space with

  identical choices, though there would be agreement about six or

  eight essays. A word, however, should be said concerning the

  policy of choosing - with two exceptions - only what has appeared in collections made by the poet himself. There is a large body of criticism by Eliot that has never been collected ; some of

  it is of high interest, and it is greatly to be hoped that it will one

  day be published. But given the exigencies of space, an editor

  ought, I think, to respect the initial act of selection made by the

  critic himself. The exceptions to this rule are early essays on

  James and Joyce, which are not only celebrated but have, with

  Eliot's consent, appeared in anthologies.

  I may here note one further restriction on my choice. I emphasize the literary, at the expense of the ecclesiastical, the political and the social criticism, which, in the course of time, came to

  constitute a considerable proportion of Eliot's prose, and which

  not only has its own importance but often illuminates both the

  literary criticism and the poetry. I have tried to give some notion

  of its tone and range, but the disproportion should be borne in

  mind. The short bibliography in Appendix B (p. 3 1 3) shows

  1 2

  I NTRODUCT I ON

  where the missing material is to be sought, and mentions one or

  two of the better studies of it.

  Eliot was clearly right in supposing that the most influential of

  his essays were among the earliest (though I believe he underestimated the degree to which later work reinforced them and ensured that they should be read with unusual attention). The

  works in question are 'essays of generalization' ; but despite their

  superstructure of system and theory such essays as 'Tradition and

  the Individual Talent', 'The Metaphysical Poets', and 'Hamlet'

  all have their origins in his own creative reading of past poetry,

  and in his programme for new poetry, his own and others', about

  the time of Gero11tion and The Waste Land.

  In May 1935, long after these seminal essays were written, Eliot

  wrote a r.::markable letter to Stephen Spender. He was commenting on Spender's critical book, The Destructive Element, but also on his own experience. 'You don't,' he said, 'really criticize

  any author to whom you have never surrendered yourself . . . .

  Even just the bewildering minute counts ; you have to give yourself up, and then recover yourself, and the third moment is having something to say, before you have wholly forgotten both surrender and recoyery. Of course the self recovered is never the same as the self before it was given.'3

  'The bewildering minute' is a quotation from The Revmger's

  Tragedy ; Eliot had used it both in 'Tradition and the Individual

  Talent' and in the essay on Tourneur of 1931:

  Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships

  For the poor bmefit of a bewildering minute ?

  He gave himself up to these lines, and by the same act possessed

  them ; it is a characteristic 'surrender'. We are here, I think,

  contemplating an aspect not only of Eliot's critical, but of his

  poetic genius. The passage by Tourneur - or, as many now

  believe, by Middleton -celebrates a peculiar blend of fascination

  and disgust, a mortuary eroticism balancing on the moment of

  simultaneous enchantment and loss, the sexual surrender. We

  encountered a version of it in The Waste Land:

  . . . blood shaking my heart

  The awful daring of a mommt's surrender . . .

  and, negatively, in the seductions of the typist and the Thamesdaughters. We recognize it even in accounts of failure, of the IJ

  I N TRODUCTION

  withholding of the self: 'I could not J Speak, and my eyes failed'and in the prayer of the Hollow Men ; transformed, it becomes in Ash- Wednesday 'The infirm glory of the positive hour'. The

  experience of the bewildering minute in poetry is powerfully

  described in the essay on Dante : 'It is very much like our in tenser

  experiences of other human beings. There is a first, or an early

  moment which is unique, of shock and surprise, even of terror

  (Ego dominus tuus) ; a moment which can never
be forgotten, but

  which is never repeated integrally ; and yet which would become

  destitute of significance if it did not survive in a larger whole of

  experience ; which survives inside a deeper and calmer feeling.'

  We remember that in the Vita Nuova it is Love who says Ego

  dominus tuus, and Love is 'of terrible aspect' - he makes Beatrice

  eat Dante's heart, and the dream, which leaves the poet sad,

  represents an unrepeatable, irreversible and fearful experience

  of a kind that may be associated both with love and with poetry.

  Dante, speaking of his first seeing Beatrice, explains that the

  whole spirit of the man or poet responds to this overwhelming

  experience; the mind reacts as to beatitude, the body knows that

  henceforth it will know perturbation and sorrow. Eliot himself,

  in the essay on Dante, is clear that Dante is speaking of something

  that happened to him : a sexual experience remarkable only in that

  one would expect it to have happened before the age of nine, and

  of course in its intensity : 'I cannot find it incredible that what has

  happened to others should have happened to Dante with much

  greater intensity.'4

  In the letter to Spender Eliot is describing the originating

  movement of his own most important criticism : a surrender, made

  in all probability before the poetry that induces it is fully understood ; an excitement later to be integrated with 'a larger whole of experience'. The second moment, of recovery, is perhaps the

  moment when such a line as Tourneur's settles into the mind

  it will henceforth inhabit as part of a different complex of

  experience. The third, 'having something to say', requires

  speculation and systematization, perhaps historical and perhaps

  theoretical - faithful to the experience but providing it with an

  intellectual vehicle.

  The first two stages occur in the poetic as well as the critical

  process ; the third, for the poet, may be that 'workshop criticism'

  of which Eliot speaks in 'The Frontiers of Criticism', 5 and which

  was strikingly exemplified in the reworking, by Pound and the

  author, of the Waste Land drafts. For the critic the third stage is

  not so much creative as speculative ; he must place his 'impression'

  within an intellectual structure ; his task is 'to analyse and con­

  Struct', to 'iriger en lois ses impressions personnelles', as Eliot puts it

  14

  I NTRODUCTION