T. S. Eliot was a poet, critic, and an editor. He was a major figure in English poetry, famous for works such as “The Waste Land,” and “The Sacred Wood. ” His critical essays helped to start a movement of literary modernism by stressing tradition, along with objective discipline. Eliot, along with the help of William Butler Yeats, and Ezra Pound set new poetic standards by rejecting the English romantics. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, MO. on September 26th, 1888. He was the youngest child in a family that had seven children, and very well known ancestors.
Some of these ancestors include Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot, who founded Washington University in St. Louis, and Isaac Stearns, who was one of the original settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Eliot’s father Henry Ware Eliot, was a prosperous industrialist, and his mother, Charlotte Eliot, was a writer. He attended school at Smith Academy in St. Louis, and Milton Academy in Massachusetts. Growing up with so many older people helped him to gain a high sense of maturity, even at such a young age.
He also became more mature through the different cultural, and community interests that his parents had. He even more proved his maturity when he read a poem that was translated by Edward Fitzgerald. But more then proving his maturity, this poem was his first influence to become a poet. Another poet that was a major influence in Eliot’s life was Edgar Allen Poe. Poe’s “The Assignation” was the poem that ‘spiritually’ moved Eliot. After reading these inspirational works, Eliot had several jobs in which he began to write poetry for several different literary companies.
In 1906, he entered Harvard University. There, he published frequently in the Harvard Advocate. ‘He took courses with such professors as Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt, the latter of who influenced Eliot through his classicism and emphasis upon tradition, and also studied the poetry of Dante, who would prove to be a lifelong source of enthusiasm and inspiration. ’ (Literature) While at Harvard, Eliot studied philosophy, and literature. He received his B. A. in 1909, and stayed at Harvard to earn a Masters Degree in English Literature.
In the fall of 1910, he spent a year in Paris, taking courses at the Sorbonne. When he returned to America, he went back to Harvard, where he took up graduate studies in philosophy, and he also became a teaching assistant. ‘He was awarded a traveling fellowship for the 1914-1915 academic year, and he intended to study in Germany, but the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 forced him to leave the country after only several weeks. ’ (Literature) In 1915, he met Vivienne Haigh-Wood. He liked her very much, because she had such different interest than he did.
They got married after being together for two months. Around the time that he was married, he met Ezra Pound. Ezra became a life-long friend, and an important literary influence. In 1933 Eliot and his wife separated, because she had a mental breakdown, and had to be confined to many different asylums from 1933, until the time of her death in 1947. The emotional difficulties caused by his marriage led him to write some intense passages in some of his later poetry. In 1917, he left his job as a teacher’s assistant, and began working at Lloyd’s Bank.
Even though he was working in a bank, he continued to write poetry. His first important poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was released during this time. On the narrator of Prufrock: ‘The speaker of this ironic monologue is a modern, urban man who, like many of his kind, feels isolated and incapable of decisive action. Irony is apparent from the title, for this is not a conventional love song. Prufrock would like to speak of love to a woman, but he does not dare. ’ (Prufrock Notes) The first volume ofverse that Eliot wrote was “Prufrock and Other Observations.
In this, he uses the imagery of urban life in addition to the poetic depth. In this same year, Eliot became the assistant editor for the journal The Egoist. It wasn’t until Eliot joined the publishing firm Faber & Gwyer that he became financially secure. During this time, the stress from him being overworked, and the tensions from his troubled marriage, finally caught up to him. All of these things caused him to have a nervous breakdown. These negative effects, along with another physical condition that he had, prevented him from entering the Navy.
During his recuperation, he finished writing “The Waste Land,” a poem that contained more then 400 lines. ‘It was published in 1922, after Eliot took some advice from Pound, by omitting much unfit material. ’ (Literature) It immediately became the most famous and controversial example of ‘new’ poetry. Even though it had quick success, it was only after Eliot’s death that people came to fully appreciate “The Waste Land,” as the facts of his life, and marriage became public. In “The Waste Land,” there is no plot, or even a hero.
It’s just a series of visions, where the poet doesn’t seem to be a person. ‘Sometimes he is portrayed as a silent listener, or other times a voice that asks questions, but gives no answers, or only cryptic ones. ’ (Gardner 89) In this poem, the ultimate meaning is death. It is the death of mans spirituality, but to some, this explanation is only a myth. “The Waste Land” is based on the story about the Fisher King, and the blight of fertility that has fallen upon his lands. This blight can only be lifted when the ‘Deliverer’ asks the magic question, or performs the magic act.
The poem is broken up into 5 different verses: Eliot’s desolation of “The Waste Land” suggests severe spiritual unrest. The emptiness in the images in the poem could possibly relate to emptiness in his life, like the fact that he may be missing something. The journey through the empty desert in search of water, and life, could be similar to journeying through life, looking for answers, and a meaning. The search for meaning is, for Eliot, a kind of spiritual unrest. The meaning of life that he seeks is possibly a renewal of life. Certain parts of the poem deal with death without ‘rebirth.
Death is a final end, but an unsatisfactory one for Eliot, yet any chance of renewal is done away with. He sees the renewal of life to be doomed from the beginning, because in the end, it will die anyway. Through The Criterion, a journal that Eliot founded in 1922, and through his essays and volumes of literary criticism, he became a great influence. Some of Eliot’s essays disappointed his admirers, especially when he expressed a liking for a society that was organized around the Christian Church and ‘suggested that such a society could afford only a limited number of “free-thinking Jews. Literature)
Religious themes became increasingly important to his poetry as well. From “Journey of the Magi,” “Ash Wednesday,” “Murder In The Cathedral,”(which was based on the death of St. Thomas Beckett), and other lyrics published in a series of pamphlets. Others included “The Family Reunion,” and “The Cocktail Party,” which became a popular success right away. His last major work of non-dramatic poetry was “Four Quartets. ” This collection was a gathering of one volume of four previously published long poems. It talked about issues of time, and spiritual renewals.
To some, it was the top of Eliot’s work, but to others it was missing something that his earlier works had. In any event, “Four Quartets” proved to everyone how good of a poet he was. This let to him being awarded both the Order of Merit and The Nobel Prize for Literature. In January 1957, Eliot stunned virtually everyone that knew him, because with no prior announcement, he married Valerie Fletcher, his secretary. In his marriage with Valerie, he enjoyed an emotional and physical closeness that he had not known from his previous marriage.
Unfortunately, his newfound emotions would be short-lived because, after a few years of declining health, he died on January 4th, 1965 of emphysema. His death came a week before his 8th wedding anniversary. It is almost impossible to overstate Eliot’s influence or his importance to 20th Century poetry. Through his essays, and especially through his own poetic practice, he played a major role in establishing the modernist conception of poetry. First and last, it was through the example of his own superb poetry that he carried the day, and the poetry will survive undivided as the details of his career withdraw into literary history.
