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Lives and Legacies
T. S. Eliot
The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the twentieth century's most famous poet and its most influential literary arbiter, T.S. Eliot has long been thought to be an obscure and difficult poet--forbiddingly learned, maddeningly enigmatic.
Now, in this brilliant exploration of T.S. Eliot's work, prize-winning poet Craig Raine reveals that, on the contrary, Eliot's poetry (and drama and criticism) can be seen as a unified and coherent body of work. Indeed, despite its manifest originality, its radical experimentation, and its dazzling formal variety, his verse yields meaning just as surely as other more conventional poetry. Raine argues that an implicit controlling theme--the buried life, or the failure of feeling--unfolds in surprisingly varied ways throughout Eliot's work. But alongside Eliot's desire "to live with all intensity" was also a distrust of "violent emotion for its own sake." Raine illuminates this paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of such poems as "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," "Gerontion," The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday , and many others. The heart of the book contains
extended analyses of Eliot's two master works-- The Waste Land and Four Quartets . Raine also examines Eliot's criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination--and he concludes with a convincing refutation of charges that Eliot was an anti-Semite.
Here then is a volume absolutely indispensable for all admirers of T.S. Eliot and, in fact, for everyone who loves modern literature.
Now, in this brilliant exploration of T.S. Eliot's work, prize-winning poet Craig Raine reveals that, on the contrary, Eliot's poetry (and drama and criticism) can be seen as a unified and coherent body of work. Indeed, despite its manifest originality, its radical experimentation, and its dazzling formal variety, his verse yields meaning just as surely as other more conventional poetry. Raine argues that an implicit controlling theme--the buried life, or the failure of feeling--unfolds in surprisingly varied ways throughout Eliot's work. But alongside Eliot's desire "to live with all intensity" was also a distrust of "violent emotion for its own sake." Raine illuminates this paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of such poems as "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock," "Gerontion," The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday , and many others. The heart of the book contains
extended analyses of Eliot's two master works-- The Waste Land and Four Quartets . Raine also examines Eliot's criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination--and he concludes with a convincing refutation of charges that Eliot was an anti-Semite.
Here then is a volume absolutely indispensable for all admirers of T.S. Eliot and, in fact, for everyone who loves modern literature.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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About the author
Craig Raine
82 books47 followersPoet and critic Craig Raine was born on 3 December 1944 in Bishop Auckland, England, and read English at Exeter College, Oxford.
He lectured at Exeter College (1971-2), Lincoln College, Oxford, (1974-5), and Christ Church, Oxford, (1976-9), and was books editor for New Review (1977-8), editor of Quarto (1979-80), and poetry editor at the New Statesman (1981). Reviews and articles from this period are collected in Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990). He became poetry editor at the London publishers Faber and Faber in 1981, and became a fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1991. He gained a Cholmondeley Award in 1983 and the Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award in 1998. He is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté.
His poetry collections include the acclaimed The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984) and History: The Home Movie (1994), an epic poem that celebrates the history of his own family and that of his wife. His libretto The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1986) is based on The Last Summer, a novella by Boris Pasternak. Collected Poems 1978-1999 was published in 1999. A new long poem A la recherche du temps perdu, an elegy to a former lover, and a collection of his reviews and essays, entitled In Defence of T. S. Eliot, were both published in 2000. Another collection of essays, More Dynamite, appeared in 2013.
Craig Raine lives in Oxford. His latest books are How Snow Falls (2010), a new poetry collection; and two novels, Heartbreak (2010), and The Divine Comedy (2012).
He lectured at Exeter College (1971-2), Lincoln College, Oxford, (1974-5), and Christ Church, Oxford, (1976-9), and was books editor for New Review (1977-8), editor of Quarto (1979-80), and poetry editor at the New Statesman (1981). Reviews and articles from this period are collected in Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1990). He became poetry editor at the London publishers Faber and Faber in 1981, and became a fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1991. He gained a Cholmondeley Award in 1983 and the Sunday Times Writer of the Year Award in 1998. He is founder and editor of the literary magazine Areté.
His poetry collections include the acclaimed The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984) and History: The Home Movie (1994), an epic poem that celebrates the history of his own family and that of his wife. His libretto The Electrification of the Soviet Union (1986) is based on The Last Summer, a novella by Boris Pasternak. Collected Poems 1978-1999 was published in 1999. A new long poem A la recherche du temps perdu, an elegy to a former lover, and a collection of his reviews and essays, entitled In Defence of T. S. Eliot, were both published in 2000. Another collection of essays, More Dynamite, appeared in 2013.
Craig Raine lives in Oxford. His latest books are How Snow Falls (2010), a new poetry collection; and two novels, Heartbreak (2010), and The Divine Comedy (2012).
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 22, 2019
Craig, you have managed the work beautifully! I am very satisfied with this one and thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am making a collection of works by and on T. S. Eliot for my research. This will be a valuable addition to Eliot's corner in my Library.
February 8, 2012
Raine's book on Eliot is focused on the work and less the life, is opinionated, and far from a breezy read. I appreciate his defense of Eliot from the charges of anti-Semitism, but am not certain I buy it. His handling of Eliot's Christianity seems wooden and awkward. Still I enjoyed his heavy lifting on so many poems and so much criticism and especially the early chapter on Eliot and the failure to live.
September 13, 2007
Well done, if a bit dense. Would have been nice to have a copy of the poems to go through alongside the analysis. Also, the argument against TS Eliot being characterized as an anti-Semite was a bit weak (I agree with the times review on that point).
April 17, 2018
Raine's thesis is that Eliot's lifelong project, pre- and post-conversion, is a synthesis of two contrasting desires: to experience life emotionally but completely rationally, as a classicist and not as a romantic. Raine is a very friendly biographer for Eliot -- he argues convincingly that Eliot wasn't anti-Semitic, or at least that the evidence we have doesn't support such a declaration (the critics have to ignore author-character distinctions to make their case, and in some cases are just plain wrong). He also argues that Eliot's treatment of his first wife may not have been as reprehensible as some have reported. A great if somewhat dense introduction to the Wasteland, Prufrock, Four Quartets and the rest of Eliot's work.
June 7, 2014
A critical survey of Eliot's work. 'The Cambridge Companion to T.S.ELiot' still seems preferable and the goodreads blurb above is laughably over stated. Given the mountain of scholarship and criticism surrounding Eliot, it seems increasingly unlikely that any one critic or poet will have anything startlingly new to say about him. Raine is comprehensive but hardly brilliant and the idea anyone is going to effectively exonerate him of the charge of anti-Semitism is just wishful thinking. (Cf Ricks, 'T.S.Eliot and Prejudice' if you're interested.)
For a critic writing about a man who famously made fun of his own reputation for (pedantic) distinctions Raine is inclined towards a generalized vocabulary..."His difficult poetry was taken seriously-by everyone except Nabokov.." is just historically wrong, but there is a tendency to prefer the adulatory over the accurate, something Eliot himself might have taken issue with.
There are times when this book is unintentionally funny, as in the chapter on Eliot's criticism where Raine sets himself up to score Eliot's performance...the summary for the end of term report: "greatly gifted-But not Infallible" (p130) (Is that an A-?). Does any intelligent person think any critic is infallible? is the comment worth making? Raine reads at times like an irritated teacher putting a prize pupil in its place. "Nor is Eliot correct to upbraid Arnold for his limited scholarship" (or for saying D.H. Lawrence lacked humor) (130) and then we "turn to Eliot's suspect formulations'.....
The key to The Waste Land is The Waste land, not any critical attempt to find the holy grail of the one true key which will unlock its mysteries. That game is nearly a century old. Any attempt to make Eliot’s work, with its revisions and changes of direction across a long life seem coherent, proves little except that you can organize your reading of a large body of work around your preferred centre. It says more about the reader than the reading that is produced. Eliot himself denied that his critical program was coherent, and the lack of coherence has been proven ad nauseum. It won't deter anyone from looking for for it.
For a critic writing about a man who famously made fun of his own reputation for (pedantic) distinctions Raine is inclined towards a generalized vocabulary..."His difficult poetry was taken seriously-by everyone except Nabokov.." is just historically wrong, but there is a tendency to prefer the adulatory over the accurate, something Eliot himself might have taken issue with.
There are times when this book is unintentionally funny, as in the chapter on Eliot's criticism where Raine sets himself up to score Eliot's performance...the summary for the end of term report: "greatly gifted-But not Infallible" (p130) (Is that an A-?). Does any intelligent person think any critic is infallible? is the comment worth making? Raine reads at times like an irritated teacher putting a prize pupil in its place. "Nor is Eliot correct to upbraid Arnold for his limited scholarship" (or for saying D.H. Lawrence lacked humor) (130) and then we "turn to Eliot's suspect formulations'.....
The key to The Waste Land is The Waste land, not any critical attempt to find the holy grail of the one true key which will unlock its mysteries. That game is nearly a century old. Any attempt to make Eliot’s work, with its revisions and changes of direction across a long life seem coherent, proves little except that you can organize your reading of a large body of work around your preferred centre. It says more about the reader than the reading that is produced. Eliot himself denied that his critical program was coherent, and the lack of coherence has been proven ad nauseum. It won't deter anyone from looking for for it.
Read
August 24, 2014Maybe I can finish it later.
January 26, 2015
Read it 3 times in a row.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews