T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, Second Edition

by Anthony Julius

Of the many different kinds of anti-Semite, Eliot was the one who was able to place his anti-Semitism at the service of his art. Anthony Julius's highly acclaimed study looks both at the detail of Eliot's deployment of anti-Semite discourse and at the role it played in his greater literary undertaking. Julius begins with an analysis of Eliot's anti-Semitic poems that situates them in their critical context. He then moves to the prose work and an examination of the figure of the "free-thinking Jew." Finally, he considers whether, as has elsewhere been suggested, Eliot's postwar work made amends for this aspect of his earlier writings. Julius's seminal study has provoked a reassessment of Eliot's work among poets, scholars, critics, and readers that will continue to invigorate debate for years to come. For this second edition, Julius has provided a new preface and postscript responding to the arguments used by friendly and hostile reviewers alike and demonstrating that Eliot's anti-Semitism remains a subject of considerable importance for literary historians and readers of Eliot's poetry alike.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Jewish

340 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1995

About the author

Anthony Julius (born 1956) is a prominent British lawyer and academic, best known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales and Deborah Lipstadt. He is a senior consultant for the London law firm Mishcon de Reya.

Julius is known for his opposition to new antisemitism, the alleged expression of antisemitic prejudice couched in terms of criticism of Israel, and gives frequent talks on the subject all over the world to raise awareness. He is a founding member of both Engage and the Euston Manifesto.

He is a son of a successful London textile merchant, educated at the City of London School. His father died young of a brain tumour. Julius studied English literature at Jesus College, Cambridge graduating in 1977 with a first class degree and completed a Ph.D. in English literature at University College London under the novelist and academic Dan Jacobson. He joined Mishcon de Reya, a Bloomsbury law firm in 1981 becoming a partner in 1984. Currently he is a senior consultant to that firm.

He married in 1979 and had four children with his first wife (Max, Laura, Chloë and Theo). In 1999, following his divorce, he married journalist Dina Rabinovitch who died in 2007. They have one son together (Elon). He remarried in July 2009.

Reviews

[Tristan]

I found this to be a generally convincing and engaging work of literary criticism. Julius explores the place anti-Semitism occupies is T.S. Eliot's work, both prose and poetry over the course of six chapters. He focuses especially on how anti-Semitism makes itself felt in the poetry of Eliot's second book, poems like "Gerontion" and "Sweeny Among the Nightingales". He focuses, in the first four chapters, on the relationship between poetics and content in making poems that are anti-Semitic and do not simply depict anti-Semitism and concludes that Eliot was an anti-Semite, and one who failed to make amends (or even acknowledge his wrongdoing), while also claiming that these works have a place in literature, even if we must first grapple with their political ramifications before we think about them as works of art. I found the book to be generally convincing and well-researched, although I also found the best and most interesting portion of the book to be the first three chapters where Julius really takes apart the relationship between anti-Semitic content and Eliot's formal strategies with really powerful readings of "Gerontion" and "Sweeny Among the Nightingales", both of which are possessed of notable anti-Semitic feeling (lines like "The Jew squats on the window-sill" and so on). Recommended for those who have read Eliot extensively, since it covers a great deal of his work including out-of-print prose writings and some suppressed or unpublished poems--which I was not familiar with, but may have gotten more from the work had I read them--and so I expect not being familiar with at least the more famous pieces dealt with in the book might make it difficult to enter into. Julius assumes a great deal of knowledge, although his endnotes are often helpful.

[Ron Scrogham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a highly academic--a dissertation revised into a book-- treatment of the anti-Semitism found in T.S. Eliot's poetry and prose. The book does not aspire to diminish Eliot as a poet and leader of Modernism in the twentieth-century. It does present unmistakable evidence that Eliot's anti-Semitism was not accidental or just a product of the times. Like so many artistic heroes, Eliot appears with his faults as well as his brilliance in plain view. For reference, one might review the account of the incident where the poet Emanuel Litvinoff read his poem "To T.S. Eliot," with the latter in the audience. The poem upbraided Eliot for the unconscionable decision the republish his poem " Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," after the events of the Holocaust. Eliot muttered as he left the hall "it's a very good poem." Eliot deserves both respect and resistance. He receives both in this book.

[Stephen Selbst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julius analyzes the pervasive influence of anti-Semitism in Elliot's work, both his poetry and his prose. While the ugliness of Eliot's poetical imagery was never hidden, Julius uses his skill in literary criticism to make his case that, rather than being a minor element, anti-Semitism animates his poetry.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

certainly more clearly written than some phd theses i've read. if anything too even-handed in its treatment of eliot, when the facts are stomach turning enough to make the idea of facing his poetry again somewhat difficult

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This book began as a PhD thesis..." so starts the acknowledgement page of British author Anthony Julius's explication of the context, nature, and relationship to form of T.S. Eliot's anti-Semitism; in thus doing so, the author perhaps points out a weakness of an otherwise excellent analysis of bias and prejudice in the poet of high Modernism. For the style of the book, its sometimes overly obvious, didactic tone and substance, does detract from the visceral pleasure of reading. It is as if, as appropriate for a thesis, the points have been highlighted with a black felt pen and the asterixes have all been, stylistically at least, made all too obvious for the reader. But perhaps this a quibbling point, since the book is, otherwise, an accurate, rightly acerbic and righteous condemnation of hate in Tom Eliot's prose and poetry. Moreover, Dr. Julius's command of the tools of poetic criticism is all-encompassing, with explications of the poetry of a high and acutely accurate nature. Also, the author provides a context for Eliot's infractions, comparing him to Pound and his more virulent anti-Semitism, and to James Joyce, a writer devoid of hate and cant. Julius even analyzes the prose of Eliot, and, in a fine coda section, points out Eliot's refusal to atone for the hurt his work inflicted on his Jewish readers. This book is a rich, compelling piece of literary criticism and of moral outrage, a combination which does service for the triad of proper writing: to instruct, to entertain, and to liberate!

[Cathal · Rating 2 out of 5]

A scurrilous hit job in the form of a critical work, on the part of a man whose previous claim to fame was his role as Princess Di's divorce attorney.