Eliot

by Stephen Spender

Studies Eliot's entire career and oeuvre, examining all aspects of his criticism and analyzing and evaluating the poems and plays

Genres: Biography

252 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 1976

About the author

Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909–1995), English poet, translator, literary critic and editor, was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford, where he first became associated with such other outspoken British literary figures as W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice. His book The Thirties and After (1979) recalls these figures and others prominent in the arts and politics and his Journals 1939–1983, published in 1986 and edited by John Goldsmith, are a detailed account of his times and contemporaries.

His passionate and lyrical verse, filled with images of the modern industrial world yet intensely personal, is collected in such volumes as Twenty Poems (1930), The Still Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication (1946), Collected Poems, 1928–1985 (1986).

World Within World, Stephen Spender's autobiography, contains vivid portraits of Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Lady Ottoline Morrell, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and many other prominent literary figures. First published in 1951 and still in print, World Within World is recognised as one of the most illuminating literary autobiographies to come out of the 1930s and 1940s. There can be few better portrayals of the political and social atmosphere of the 1930s.

The Destructive Element (1935), The Creative Element (1953), The Making of a Poem (1962) and Love-Hate Relations: English and American Sensibilities (1974), about literary exchanges between Britain and the United States, contain literary and social criticism. Stephen Spender's other works include short stories, novels such as The Backward Son and the heavily autobiographical The Temple (set in Germany on the 1930s) and translations of the poetry of Lorca, Altolaguerra, Rilke, Hölderlin, Stefan George and Schiller. From 1939 to 1941 he co-edited Horizon magazine with Cyril Connolly and was editor of Encounter magazine from 1953 to 1967.

Stephen Spender owed his own early recognition and publication as a poet to T. S. Eliot. In turn Spender was always a generous champion of young talent, from his raising a fund for the struggling 19-year-old Dylan Thomas, to a lifelong commitment to helping promote the publication of newcomers. In 1972, with his passionate concern for the rights of banned and silenced writers to free expression, he was the chief founder of Index on Censorship, in response to an appeal on behalf of victimised authors worldwide by the Russian dissident Litvinov.

Reviews

[Harris Silverman · Rating 3 out of 5]

T. S. Eliot: 2

I only read the chapter on Four Quartets. There were some useful insights to be sure, but it's also quite desultory; some sections Spender doesn't discuss at all, and his choice of which he does mention seems pretty random. He focuses more on the work qua poetry than other commenters I've read, and maybe a little less on the content, though there's material on that, too.

As I said, the chapter was useful for such insights as it does provide. But overall, I found Elizabeth Drew's book, T.S. Eliot: The Design of his Poetry to be much more insightful, useful, and thorough.

P.S. I have no idea why Goodreads thinks this book is called 2, nor why they think it has 1000 pages; it has far fewer.

[David Lai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen Spender, as one of the leading English poets of the 1930s, got to know Eliot personally, and his familiarity with the poet himself and the literary scene of the time, as well as his unpretentious approach, give this study an immediacy and freshness you don't often find in writings about Eliot. I particularly enjoyed the evidence that much of Eliot's intimidating erudition, as exhibited in the notes to The Waste Land, was really quite fake; once that has sunk in, Eliot's writing seems less superhuman than before, and easier to relate to and compare with other poetry.

Spender went a little too easy on Eliot's reactionary views, in my opinion, and didn't do much to challenge his idiosyncratic understanding of Christianity and its corollaries.

A surprisingly enjoyable read.

[Piet · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult analysis of a difficult poet and dramatist.
A sincere attempt to clarify complexity but I did not always grasp the meaning.
The book is more than forty years old, society has changed and the religious predominance in Eliot's work is difficult to understand for me.