Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Discussion: T. S. Eliot's Poetry
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Patrice wrote: "I think what bothers me, and I've been struggling with this, is the idea that we can say "it was the first time". I think all of the writers and historians have expressed that sense of pre-war and..."Can the cyclical nature of war be compared to the cycle of the seasons? War followed by mourning followed by recovery followed by flourishing... then more war, like the changing of the seasons. I'm not sure if Eliot subscribed to this theory of history, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did.
Patrice wrote: "I think what bothers me, and I've been struggling with this, is the idea that we can say "it was the first time". I think all of the writers and historians have expressed that sense of pre-war and..."I'd say that compared to previous falling-aparts WWWI fell happened within the space of 4 years, before the eyes of the western world.
I'm just saying it was a unique and abrupt change to the way a lot of people thought about war.
Without going too far off topic, consider the poetry of Wilfred Owen, for example:
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
and compare it to the poetry of Rupert Brooke in 1914:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetr...
Only a few years difference between the dates of the above two poems but a sea change in the way people thought about the meaning and glory of war.
Was there a time in western civilization before WWI when people allowed themselves to consider that war might be insane and meaningless?
When Vietnam happened we had WWII and WWI as part of our history to refer back to. The poetry of Wilfred Owen reminds me of the line in The Waste Land: "I had not thought death had undone so many". Probably belongs in the other thread, but I don't want to get ahead of the discussion in that one. The line just occurred to me in relation to the Owen poem.
The Charlie Rose interview sounds interesting.
In 1914, Europe hadn't seen a long large-scale war for almost 100 years (since Napoleon). Some speculated that the European powers were so interdependent economically that war between them was really impossible. What European wars there were were short, generally decided in one sharp campaign. Most people expected the 1914 war to be short. But technological changes like machine guns had made it harder to achieve a tactical decision on a battlefield. Also, the large size of the quickly-mobilized armies made it hard to achieve a decision by operational maneuver, such as around a flank. Things settled down to a kind of continent-scale siege warfare with trenches and barbed wire. British losses in WWI were much greater than in WWII, and out of a smaller population and in 4 rather than 6 years.
Roger wrote: "In 1914, Europe hadn't seen a long large-scale war for almost 100 years (since Napoleon). Some speculated that the European powers were so interdependent economically that war between them was rea..."Up till then, the world was thought to be getting better and better. Scientists, Saints, and sages were ushering in th Millennium. Then BOOM!
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Patrice wrote: "Theresa wrote: "Was there a time in western civilization before WWI when people allowed themselves to consider that war might be insane and meaningless?"I think there are insane and meaningless w..."
I agree. I am just pointing out that the experience of WWI as Roger describes it, made it more possible to dare to question the meaning and glory of war. Was it ever possible before for mothers to entertain the possibility that their sons died for no really good reason?
I'm not suggesting that everyone at that time questioned the value of war, only that such questioning began to emerge.
And maybe also the questions Tolstoy raised in his novel/book about war and peace ushered in new ways of thinking about the cycle of war. I think perhaps that book made some people think more about the value of peace.
War and Peace: first published in its entirety in 1869.
Patrice wrote: "What do those last 3 words mean?"Stay tuned.
Lily wrote: "War and Peace: first published in its entirety in 1869."Tolstoy's book on pacifism The Kingdom of God Is Within You was published in 1894. Ten years later, the war between Russia and Japan broke out, he wrote Bethink Yourselves! in response. This was 6 years before his death and 10 years before WWI. His premonition of a global and disastrous war proved prescient.
Nemo wrote: "I added the missing piece. Thank you Lily. :)"Thank you, Nemo! The issue wasn't what I assumed.
Distracted minds + Broken images = Modernism(I think I've caught the modernist bug)
Theresa wrote: "I'd say that compared to previous falling-aparts WWWI fell happened within the space of 4 years, before the eyes of the western world. "I'm not sure I would agree with that -- the Civil War was also of fairly short duration, killed a higher percentage of the American population, I believe, than the Great War killed of the European population, and was followed by the public in newspapers and broadsheets and telegraph transmissions pretty much as WWI was. It was WWII that had the public huddling around their radio sets and watching newsreels to get for the first time in a major war a direct and almost instantaneous record of what was going on.
WWI was certainly a major event, but did it have more impact on the known world than, say, the Persian wars, the Islamic creation of the caliphate and the invasion of Europe, the Crusades (much longer period, true, but a major focus of Western attention)?
I'm not persuaded.
Fragments from the life of T. S. Eliot. Here is an excellent documentary by BBC In six parts. Each part has a link in the notes to the next part.http://youtu.be/gB7BiC53ssk
On the hand, the American Civil War happened on the other side of the pond. WWI did not have so much more impact on the United States than the Civil War did on Europe.
Everyman wrote: "Theresa wrote: "I'd say that compared to previous falling-aparts WWWI fell happened within the space of 4 years, before the eyes of the western world. "I'm not sure I would agree with that -- the..."
Comparing effects of wars is always going to be subjective with no definitive answer. From a European perspective WW1 has such importance, because it destroyed whole generations (not just in the fighting but the epidemic of the Spanish flu which spread so far and quickly because of the movement of the soldiers going home), it was effectively an end to what I've been told is the largest Empire the world had seen, it challenged the class system through the acknowledged misleadership of the upper classes, led to increased liberation of women and ultimately enabled the rise of Hitler, fascism and it's supposed opposite, communism.
WW1 caused hyperinflation in Germany, the forming of the (admittedly ineffectual) League of Nations, and although as we know it didn't last, it filled people with a longing for peace.
How much of all this is reflected in Eliot's writing, I am unsure. Such social upheaval had to have influenced the movement of modernism. But from the little critical reading I have done, there doesn't seem to be much indication that he addressed the politics of it directly. Although I understand he was a Tory so would have been averse to change.
The Great War serves as a time marker for Modernism, but the social upheaval, the turning away from Christian morality, which began during Victorian times, was the important thing.
From a Google news item that appeared for me today:"Indeed, the famous eclecticism of 'The Waste Land,' which incorporates quotations from multiple languages and literatures, can be seen as a tribute to the educational philosophy that governed Harvard during Eliot’s time there. Under the presidency of his distant relative Charles William Eliot, the College had introduced an elective system that gave students wide leeway in choosing their own classes from a variety of subjects and departments. Later in life, Eliot lamented this undergraduate freedom: 'I was one of the victims of the "elective system,"' he wrote in a letter to his mother. He had been 'so interested in many things that I did nothing thoroughly, and was always thinking about new subjects that I wanted to study, instead of following out any one.'
"Yet as Crawford shows in the impressively researched 'Young Eliot,' the 'melange of topics' that Eliot explored in college 'mightily enriched his poetry.' Eliot’s studies with the philosopher George Santayana planted the seeds of the idea that later emerged in his criticism as the 'objective correlative'—the notion that poetic images function as a formula to evoke an emotion. In the recently founded Comparative Literature department, Eliot studied with scholars who 'encouraged people…to connect literary works through anthropology to supposedly primitive rituals.' This would become a major technique of 'The Waste Land,' which uses the Grail legend, as interpreted by scholars like James Frazer and Jessie Weston, as a structuring myth.
"Crawford even manages to track down the moments when Eliot first discovered images and individual words he would later employ in his verse. As a junior, for instance, he took a class on the Roman novel that included Petronius’s Satyricon; years later, the novel’s image of an undying Sibyl appeared in the epigraph of 'The Waste Land.' In Eliot’s own annotated copy of the novel, which Crawford examines, the poet glossed the Latin word for mushrooms, tubere in the text—a word that returns in 'The Waste Land,' where he writes of winter 'Feeding/a little life on dried tubers.' There is something thrilling about the way Crawford locates such moments in time and space, showing how a poem as mysterious and complex as 'The Waste Land' draws on something as familiar as a college syllabus."
http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/07/th...
The entire article is interesting.
Lily wrote: "From a Google news item that appeared for me today:"Indeed, the famous eclecticism of 'The Waste Land,' which incorporates quotations from multiple languages and literatures, can be seen as a tri..."
Very interesting, Lily. His loss, our gain.
I came across Seamus Heaney's short poem 'Stern' which mentions TS Eliothttp://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqz4...
Which led me to this article Heaney wrote about reading Eliot:
http://bostonreview.net/influences-th...
If you have the time to browse through it, it is well worth it. It shows how even a fellow great poetic mind takes years to appreciate the rhythm and work of Eliot. And Heaney has a warm and embracing style of writing that makes me like Eliot a little bit more than I did before.
Clari wrote: "...Which led me to this article Heaney wrote about reading Eliot:http://bostonreview.net/influences-th........."
Thanks for bringing us the article, Clari.
This passage:
"Dante, in fact, belonged in the rag-and-bone shop of Eliot’s middle-aging heart, and it was from that sad organ, as we are more and more realizing, that all his lyric ladders started."
reminded me of Krook's rag-and-bottle shop filled with papers in Bleak House. Do all authors perhaps have such "rag-and-bone shop" sources?
Lily wrote: "Clari wrote: "...Which led me to this article Heaney wrote about reading Eliot:http://bostonreview.net/influences-th........."
I liked that article, too,Clari. Lily, I believe Heaney is specifically referring to a Poem by WB Yeats which ends in a line about the rag and bone shop of the heart and is about his sources of inspiration, called The Circus Animals Desertion. It sounds like Mr Heaney would answer your question yes.
Susan wrote: " Lily, I believe Heaney is specifically referring to a Poem by WB Yeats which ends in a line about the rag and bone shop of the heart and is about his sources of inspiration, called The Circus Animals Desertion. It sounds like Mr Heaney would answer your question yes..."Thanks, Susan. "The Circus Animals Desertion" by WB Yeats:
http://ireland.wlu.edu/landscape/Grou...
An aside: I will be away without computer access for the next three or four days, so if you should happen to notice my absence and wonder whether I'm okay, I am. Just out of communication.
Everyman wrote: "An aside: I will be away without computer access for the next three or four days, so if you should happen to notice my absence and wonder whether I'm okay, I am. Just out of communication."Right-oh.
Everyman wrote: "An aside: I will be away without computer access for the next three or four days, so if you should happen to notice my absence and wonder whether I'm okay, I am. Just out of communication."Time for you to make your presence felt again, Everyman. :)
I found this overview by Jeanette Winterson of TS Eliot which is quite an inspiring and enlightening way to approach his work:http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008...
Laurel wrote: "A home for Eliot:http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015..."
The pictures of young Tom are quite moving, it is strange to think of him as a normal little boy playing by the sea whilst contemplating the complex depth of his adult poetry.
Out of interest is it correct saying that USA readers have had an ambiguous relationship with him because of his move to England?
The Guardian has so many articles about Eliot!
I just read this longer one:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...
it is so strange to think of Eliot mucking about with stink bombs, he is always such a formidable intellectual figure in my mind.
Hello all,I'm not sure how many group members are in the UK, but Gresham College are doing a free lecture on "Poetry and Exile: T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets" on Tuesday 13 October. It's at the Museum of London and the speaker is Professor Belinda Jack from the University of Oxford.
Lecture synopsis: These poems retain a stubborn opacity and no interpretation is ever wholly satisfactory. The difficulty of Eliot's poetry is partly a function of the poems' dense allusions to so much other poetry. But by expoloring the idea of exile in relation to locality and the idea of space more abstractly, the shape of Four Quartets as descriptive of a spiritual journey comes into better focus. Autobiographically it is clear that Burnt Norton, the house and its extensive gardens, East Coker, and above all the religious community at Little Gidding, matter greatly to our understanding of both Eliot's life and also his poetry. But the antithesis of place, that is the idea of exile from place, is equally important.
Full details: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Thanks, Lori! If it is treated as the others in the series are, there will be an online video of the lecture once it's over.
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Bleak House (other topics)Bethink Yourselves! (other topics)
The Kingdom of God Is Within You (other topics)
T. S. Eliot: The Poems (other topics)
The Bhagavad Gita (other topics)
More...
so it was the first time the world seemed to fall apart. In previous wars they knew how to make sense of it.