Biography of 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 ...
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...mplores the dead to remember the living. This speaks from a grim standpoint, and the tone is no different from that of The Waste Land. This one, however, can be interpreted to be from a more religious standpoint. He could be discussing the hollowness of not knowing God. He could be discussing the emptiness from being single. The poem does not celebrate life, though. That much is certain.
In Journey of the Magi, he ends with “I should be glad of another death,” (Abrams 2387). This closing statement tells how Eliot waits expectantly for death. It is similar to the lines found in “What the Thunder Said,” in The Waste Land. Eliot seems to enjoy the subject of death, and he speaks of it in a rather celebratory note. He speaks of life, however, in a depressed state.
T.S. Eliot is one of the greatest poets ever. It is safe to say that he is a prophet of doom due to the analysis of his poems. The same grim tone seems to permeate his works, and his celebratory manner of speaking about death seems to show that he wishes to escape from this life. Due to T.S. Eliot’s great education, he is able to interweave various poems and stories into his works to make them great and lasting.
He quotes them stating, “Blessed be God for he created Death!…and the Death is at rest and peace…And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease” (Lines17-20). The audience can easily decipher through this quote that the mourners did not harbor anger or an attitude of bitterness. Rather, the mourners obtain an attitude of acceptance. The tone in this quote remains the same as it does throughout the poem. Therefore, the audience can tell that the mourners’ perspective of death was not positive, but at the very same circumstance, they understood it was something out of their control, in which they transferred their emotions to God by praising Him (Line
These memories become his "key" to awken the rest of us who are still pretending. The reader is left with two choices at the end of the poem. S/he can either forget about the poem, and go back to living in a waste land, or s/he can stop repressing pain and feeling and leave the waste land. Eliot ends the poem with a man (maybe himself?) sitting on a shore, "[f]ishing, with the arid plain behind me" and asking, "Shall I at least set my lands in order?" (425-36) The man here, by facing his pain, has left the waste land, and is able to move ahead.
Eliot, T.S. The wasteland. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1447-1463.
Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot; a Poem by Poem Analysis. New York:
The world is changing and evolving at an astounding rate. Within the last one hundred years, the Western community has seen advances in technology and medicine that has improved the lifestyles and longevity of almost every individual. Within the last two hundred years, we have seen two World Wars, and countless disputes over false borders created by colonialists, slavery, and every horrid form of human suffering imaginable! Human lifestyles and cultures are changing every minute. While our grandparents and ancestors were growing-up, do you think that they ever imagined the world we live in today? What is to come is almost inconceivable to us now. In this world, the only thing we can be sure of is that everything will change. With all of these transformations happening, it is a wonder that a great poet may write words over one hundred years ago, that are still relevant in today’s modern world. It is also remarkable that their written words can tell us more about our present, than they did about our past. Is it just an illusion that our world is evolving, or do these great poets have the power to see into the future? In this brief essay, I will investigate the immortal characteristics of poetry written between 1794 and 1919. And, I will show that these classical poems can actually hold more relevance today, than they did in the year they were written. Along the way, we will pay close attention to the style of the poetry, and the strength of words and symbols used to intensify the poets’ revelations.
"T.S. Eliot: Childhood & Young Scholar." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
The Modernist era of poetry, like all reactionary movements, was directed, influenced, and determined by the events preceding it. The gradual shift away from the romanticized writing of the Victorian Era served as a litmus test for the values, and the shape of poetry to come. Adopting this same idea, William Carlos Williams concentrated his poetry in redirecting the course of Modernist writing, continuing a break from the past in more ways than he saw being done, particularly by T.S. Eliot, an American born poet living abroad. Eliot’s monumental poem, The Waste Land, was a historically rooted, worldly conscious work that was brought on by the effects of World War One. The implementation of literary allusions versus imagination was one point that Williams attacked Eliot over, but was Williams completely in stride with his own guidelines? Looking closely at Williams’s reactionary poem to The Waste Land, Spring and All, we can question whether or not he followed the expectations he anticipated of Modernist work; the attempts to construct new art in the midst of a world undergoing sweeping changes.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was not a revolutionary, yet he revolutionized the way the Western world writes and reads poetry. Some of his works were as imagist and incomprehensible as could be most of it in free verse, yet his concentration was always on the meaning of his language, and the lessons he wished to teach with them. Eliot consorted with modernist literary iconoclast Ezra Pound but was obsessed with the traditional works of Shakespeare and Dante. He was a man of his time yet was obsessed with the past. He was born in the United States, but later became a royal subject in England. In short, Eliot is as complete and total a contradiction as any artist of his time, as is evident in his poetry, drama, and criticism.
T.S. Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. His poem“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, is different and unusual. He rejects the logic connection, thus, his poems lack logic interpretation. He himself justifies himself by saying: he wrote it to want it to be difficult. The dissociation of sensibility, on the contrary, arouses the emotion of readers immediately. This poem contains Prufrock’ s love affairs. But it is more than that. It is actually only the narration of Prufrock, a middle-aged man, and a romantic aesthete , who is bored with his meaningless life and driven to despair because he wished but
The speaker started the poem by desiring the privilege of death through the use of similes, metaphors, and several other forms of language. As the events progress, the speaker gradually changes their mind because of the many complications that death evokes. The speaker is discontent because of human nature; the searching for something better, although there is none. The use of language throughout this poem emphasized these emotions, and allowed the reader the opportunity to understand what the speaker felt.
Predominantly the poem offers a sense of comfort and wisdom, against the fear and pain associated with death. Bryant shows readers not to agonize over dying, in fact, he writes, "When thoughts of the last bitter hour come like a blight over thy spirit, and sad images of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, and breathless darkness, and the narrow house, make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart -- go forth under the open sky, and list to Nature 's teachings." With this it eludes each person face their own death, without fright, to feel isolated and alone in death but to find peace in knowing that every person before had died and all those after will join in death (Krupat and Levine
T.S. Eliot’s poems are mainly what got him famous. When “Murder In The Cathedral” was out there was a reviewer That actually said, “it may well mark a turning point in English drama.” When his poem, “The Waste Land”, got published he won a two thousand dial award. In 1954 he got the Hanseatic Goethe prize; Confidential Clerk. Two years later he got to lecture an audience of fourteen thousand people at the University of Minnesota.
T.S. Eliot is often considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. Not only were his highly regarded poems such as “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” influential to the literary style of his time, but his work as a publisher highlighted the work of many talented poets. Analyzing his poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with psychoanalytic criticism reveals several core issues in the speaker of the poem, and may reflect Eliot himself.
In his poetry, Eliot combines themes such as aridity, sexuality, and living death. He uses techniques such as narration, historical, literary, and mythic allusions. Using themes and techniques from his earlier work, Eliot publishes The Wasteland. The Wasteland is a poem Eliot wrote after his divorce from his wife Vivienne Haighwood. Critics say the title of the poem, the wasteland, comes from his thoughts on his marriage.
...ze anything other than the awful finality of despair. The sense of healing and salvation at the end of The Waste Land indicates that there is hope for meaning, even in fractured worlds and obfuscated poems. But it is up to each of us to discover it.