Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
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Was T.S. Eliot a racist?
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I think it's a case of there being no political correctness in the 1930's, and that Growltiger was a racist. I think there are more instances of that sort of thing in the book, but it's just a reflection of the times.
I agree with Danielle, it's a product of the times. What was deemed "okay" in the 1930's or heck the 1970's you'd never get away with now.
Too often we confuse character or narrator with author; I don't think you are suggesting here that a Siamese also bit off T.S. Eliot's ear and that's why we often see the man in profile...but I also think too often we shrug and say that's just "a reflection of the times." So Growltiger isn't T.S. Eliot, and the cat's hatred of Persians, Pekinese and Siamese doesn't necessarily shed any more light on the author's beliefs about people of "foreign name and race" any more than Gus's views of acting on stage or Skimbleshanks' attitudes toward railway efficiency tell us what Eliot thought about those two subjects. Eliot lived as a foreigner himself, and being the brilliant man that he was, he must have had some kind of empathy for immigrants and foreigners, and yet clearly at the same time he is a man whose brilliance did not allow him to resolve his own antisemitism. So I don't think that we give Eliot a free pass because of the times that he lived in, nor do we stop reading Eliot because Growltiger refers to "Chinks" (although reading that line in 2012 might make you gasp). But it does perhaps ask of those of us who read to children to make some careful selections or impromptu emendations. And if you think that is bad, you should take another look at Kipling's Just So Stories. There is a lot of material in those great stories that you wouldn't want to read outloud to the child on your knee! But then again Kipling could probably be called a racist, which I'm not sure would be accurately applied to Eliot.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Too often we confuse character or narrator with author; I don't think you are suggesting here that a Siamese also bit off T.S. Eliot's ear and that's why we often see the man in profile...but I als..."Thank you so much for sharing your view!! What you said really helped me out alot and I think you've gone and gotten me interested in Just So Stories now. I'm curious.
Danielle wrote: "I think it's a case of there being no political correctness in the 1930's, and that Growltiger was a racist. I think there are more instances of that sort of thing in the book, but it's just a refl..."Thank you.
Tina wrote: "I agree with Danielle, it's a product of the times. What was deemed "okay" in the 1930's or heck the 1970's you'd never get away with now."Thanks!!
Danielle wrote: "I think it's a case of there being no political correctness in the 1930's"While Petergiaquinta wrote "Kipling could probably be called a racist, which I'm not sure would be accurately applied to Eliot."
Eliot and his creepy mentor/crony Ezra Pound peppered their snooty rags with anti-Semitic jibes and worse.
This is Eliot:
"And the Jew squats on the window sill, the owner
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp"
(Gerontion)
Accurate enough?
Pound, among many other things, produced an essay entitled, "The Jew, Disease Incarnate".
Given the prejudices of these Americans in Europe, is it surprising, therefore, that someone like Eliot would let his racist sentiments leak into a work intended for reading to children?
As to political correctness not existing in the 1930s, though, Danielle may be on to something. These people, poets and essayist with tremendous power over words, were able to get their nasty ideas across without challenge. Philip Larkin, writing in much the same tradition a generation later, had to curb his anti-Semitism in print, turning instead on women and the working class.
Philip writes, "Eliot and his creepy mentor/crony Ezra Pound peppered their snooty rags with anti-Semitic jibes and worse."Yes, and that's something I don't understand about Eliot. As brilliant a writer as he is, he is caught up in this awful strand of antisemitism at the time (between the wars) expressed by many so-called "intellectuals," Pound being a prime example, although Pound not being someone I've ever warmed up to or cared much for on a personal or literary level. If I remember right, there was a book published in the late '80s that took a close look at Eliot's antisemitism and explored the contradictory impulses expressed in his writing and personal life.
For me, though, I expect more of Eliot. Both Chaucer and Shakespeare were writers in ages of far less political correctness than Eliot, but in their writing they somehow both give voice to the antisemitism of their times and yet transcend it. You could say that Shylock is the embodiment of "the Jew squat[ting] on the window sill," and yet Shakespeare humanizes and elevates him far beyond most of the non-Jewish Venetians in the play. And Chaucer in The Prioress's Tale mocks the absurdity of the Church's institutionalized antisemitism and skewers upstanding, well-mannered yet hateful figures like the Prioress ("snooty" would well be applied to her too). I likewise want Eliot with his big brain to be able to transcend the hatred of his times, but unfortunately I don't think he was up to it.
In my post I was distinguishing, however, between antisemitism and racism, not a distinction that is really worth defending in this discussion. But in my reading of Eliot I have not encountered the dismissive attitudes toward darker skinned peoples that you routinely will find in Kipling, and perhaps most awfully in his Just So Stories that I read out loud to my son but then skipped a few years later when reading to my daughter.
Petergiaquinta - thanks a lot: you've inspired me to look again at Measure for Measure. Sadly, I have never got into Chaucer beyond a glance or two years ago. I think he lived in an era when there was very serious anti-Semitism in England, re the massacre at York castle. You've prodded me to read the Prioress's Tale.I read Eliot at school and like many of my contemporaries can quote great reams of him with pleasure and awe. But he was a blasted snob - from the silk hat of the Bradford Millionaire to the wearing of dentures, having yellow fingers, and the "stays" (?) and loose-morals of the tenant woman eating squalid food from tins. Ironically Pound had to censor some of his worst excesses, stopping the young man carbuncular from urinating and spitting.
I think Danielle hit the nail right on the head identifying the 1920s and 30s lack of what we nowadays call "political correctness". They seem just blind to otherness, and the fact that both Eliot and Pound were Americans living in Europe only makes it more bizarre. Pound even had the cheek, after the war, to ascribe his anti-Semitism to a bourgeois attitude he had succumbed to - as if the middle classes were as much to blame for the Holocaust as him. Auden, an upper crust ex-pat who moved in the opposite direction, may not have been such a great poet; but at least his politics are much more defensible.
The fact is, Eliot is still a god. He occupies the same sort of status D.H. Lawrence enjoyed before Kate Millet came along and destroyed him with Sex Pol. I would love some new scholarly genius to come along and explode the whole Pound Set for the toffy-nosed twerps they were. Only Faber would do their damnedest to scupper it.
Chaucer and Shakespeare understood and embraced humanity and human nature — and wrote for Everyman. They also had a firm grasp of the ludicrous that lurks within us all.They placed no remove, no barriers around themselves with or in their works.
At least that's my take on it ;-)
Never sacrifice literature, history, wisdom, and learning because of pussy-footed, pusillanimous, modern political correctness. It's a terrible bargain to make. I'd treasure every word of Kipling, Pound, Eliot, or Conrad no matter what words they happened to use. Either you understand why it doesn't matter, or you stick with daytime tv talk shows and don't read books at all.
Feliks wrote: "Never sacrifice literature, history, wisdom, and learning because of pussy-footed, pusillanimous, modern political correctness. It's a terrible bargain to make. I'd treasure every word of Kipling, ..."I do agree with you.
It's foolish to generalize that, because someone embraced or expressed a belief we find offensive that's all there is to consider, or that their work is wholly unworthy of our time. It's rare that anyone or anything is completely rotten. Apparently even Hitler liked dogs.
Most prejudices are the result of ignorance, and refusing to examine what offends us can only add to our own and the collective ignorance.
In the end we get to make our own choices as to how we relate to others and whether or not we subscribe to or agree with their words.
"Never," Feliks? Are you absolutely sure about "never"???
I'm as sure as I need to be for the purpose of this question. Why, do you have some specific instance where you think I 'ought to' shirk from scholarship and put a book down?
Well, sure...by including Kipling in that list of otherwise heavyweights, I think you've made an error. You don't need to "ought to" put your your book down, but if you've read your Kipling you know what a jackass he could be about the races. It's a tad embarrassing sometimes.I'll leave it to someone else to speak to Pound...but "jackass" fails to do him justice. I'm not really even sure his poetry is worth holding one's nose for, to be perfectly honest.
I get what you're saying. And well--I'm sorry if this seems unacceptable to you--but yes, I'll still read anything by Kipling. Anything rather than block off mental activity; which is what putting the book down or taking it out of circulation does. It is anathema to me. It is a kind of 'giving up'. I feel that we ought to be able to read anything without being in danger of being 'polluted' by someone's disagreeable thoughts or biases. Don't you? Of course, if one is only fed a literary diet of hate and vitriol--if that is all one has ever been exposed to--if one is not well-read to begin with--then yes, that might concern me. That is not scholarship--it would be more like propaganda or brainwashing.
I'm in agreement; I just think we need to be cognizant of what we're reading and not give a free pass to an author like Kipling. Or even to an author like Eliot.Kipling, though...I don't treasure every word he's written. Here's my favorite thing by Kipling, though: a very interesting short story called "They":
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/they.htm
It's not a 'free pass' though; I'm not saying that I'm regarding every word of his as 'golden'. No 'quality judgments' here. I'm just saying that accusations of racism --from a modern sensibility--are among the least credible reasons I'd ever put a book down. This is not a normal era we're in now; its hyper-sensitive and untrustworthy. The pendulum is way too far over to the other side. Brandishing flaming torches and building pillories like outraged villagers is more disgusting to me than just about anything.
More disgusting than the actual racism and antisemitism this is in response to?I hope not.
Correct. If today we were still corall-ing people, packing them into deathtrap cargo holds and shipping them half-dead across the sea to work for us, I'd be against it. I'd be outraged. Nevertheless, 'different crimes for different times'. Today, the egregious behavior we need to get-a-handle-on is the redaction of knowledge. The roots of racism are merely ignorance and instinct. Not knowing any better. But the root of hysterical PC-ness is a deliberate and conscious move to eliminate information. It is disturbing in its own right.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "But in my reading of Eliot I have not encountered the dismissive attitudes toward darker skinned peoples that you routinely will find in Kipling, and perhaps most awfully in his Just So Stories that I read out loud to my son but then skipped a few years later when reading to my daughter. "I'm not a complete expert in Kipling, but I feel safe enough to say that it's kind of retarded to give up the suspicion of T.S. Eliot but not that of Kipling. It's also kind of absurd, considering that Kipling was of hybrid cultural background and did much to give a (positive) idea of a different culture and for tolerance. His kind of "racism" is probably some of the most harmless and least suspicious in all of literature and the best kind of candidate for "an expression of the times".
Those off-hand claims ("oh btw., guess who else") are often made in a debate in order to appear "balanced" by throwing someone else one is more indifferent about to the dogs... More formal and rhetorical than substantial.
Wait, not sure I understand you...you're promoting Kipling as an agent of racial tolerance? Come again?
Kipling was in there. Right in the entrepreneurial core of the British Empire, working for it, supporting it, helping to maintain the blasted thing. However, he was a pretty good writer. We can learn from reading him and be entertained at the same time. His novel "Kim", though it palls into auto-backslapping towards the end, is a fantastic portrait of the Indian Empire at its height. Therefore, we shouldn't completely shun him or his work. It just needs to come with a health warning on the packet. If that comes across as "pussy-footed, pusillanimous, modern political correctness" Feliks, then tough. Be an angry young man about it.But turning to Pound, we're dealing with another level of involvement. We're talking about one of the architects of the holocaust. We're talking about a man who left London in disgust and went to Italy to live under "the boss" - Mussolini - and work out his economic theories which blamed all the world's woes on Jewish bankers. He did so partly in his verses. That's a crime against poetry.
I'm not saying don't read him. If you can can stomach him, by all means do so. I'm not calling for any book burning. But the health warning needs to printed on the front cover.
Hitler liked dogs? So what? He was a vegetarian, for heaven's sake. It didn't stop him having people transported in cattle trucks. Or filmed while they were hung on piano wire - so he could watch their death-throes in the comfort of his bunker. "Mein Kampf" - read it! Don't ban it.
Philip wrote: "Kipling was in there. Right in the entrepreneurial core of the British Empire, working for it, supporting it, helping to maintain the blasted thing. However, he was a pretty good writer."And then later in life he switched over to cheerleading for American imperialism. It seems he had a thing for empires.
But I do like my Kipling. He could be profound (I mentioned "They" earlier), and his feel for language and meter could be uncanny (although at other times it might just as easily be dismissed as doggerel), but I don't know know how well he humanizes his colonial subjects. I still need to read Kim, so maybe I should wait before typing that sentence, but I have read a lot of other Kipling, and his portrayal of the natives is rather caricatured. My favorite thus far in my reading is Billy Fish, the Gurkha the two adventurers find on their journey in " The Man Who Would Be King," although in my memory over the years that character has blended in with Sayeed Jaffrey's portrayal of him in one of my all-time favorite movies.
If you were in Kipling's shoes during his lifetime--living where he lived--would it have made any sense to try to bring down the British Empire? Some good comments made in this thread since the last time I poked my head in (well-written, firm, articulate) but this one stands out for questioning. What the heck was a British subject supposed to do while living in a British colony? Try to demolish it? Not hardly. What moral rectitude does that exhibit? You don't try to ruin your own society, thrust it into turmoil, topple it, or plunge it into chaos. Not while you're living in it. Not to mention that the authorities (then and now) would simply throw you in jail for treason. Faster than you can say 'fuzzy-wuzzy'. Kipling didn't promulgate cattle cars or piano wire. He was as good a British subject as the next man. And I agree with Mattrh...Kipling's writings at least helped Britons become more familiar with India and vice versa. In fact--offhand, I can't think of a single negative character he ever created. If you find something disagreeable in his works, it is likely just part of what he actually found in the background/setting around him. Remember--he wrote with a journalist's eye. How are you going to criticize the man for simply adding verite' to his stories? What should he have done?
Orwell, anyone?
Wrong century. And wrong hierarchy: what Kipling observed wasn't foisted downwards upon the people from some authority above them. It came from them.Pretty soon catcalls of Orwellianism are going to be as cheap as Godwin's Law.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Orwell, anyone?"Yes, please. He went out, saw the Empire first hand, then came home and became a socialist. The man had his faults, but what a life, eh? And what a writer!
Well, he went to a lot of places in the world, not just Britain's colonies...and there's no guarantee that whatever socialism he chose for himself could have ever worked. Brilliant minds had already been striving long and hard to make socialism succeed all over Europe, without any luck.
Back to the issue of colonialism. Take a look at an author like Sax Rohmer. Today, lots of people leap to label him a virulent racist.When apparently what really happened, was that he curtailed his 'Fu Manchu' series after the first few books; not intending to keep it going. What happened?
The British reading public clamored for him to resume. They loved 'the yellow peril'. They ate it up.
He reluctantly returned to the task.
How does that grab ya?
As 'heinous' as those novels are regarded today ... guess what? Not at all the product of one 'kooky' author's personal agenda, not at all the product of one lone writer's 'blind-spot' or 'ignorance'. Nothing else but the voice of the British people of the era.
Feliks wrote: "Well, he went to a lot of places in the world, not just Britain's colonies...and there's no guarantee that whatever socialism he chose for himself could have ever worked. Brilliant minds had already been striving long and hard to make socialism succeed all over Europe, without any luck."Socialism, not yet of the individual (the libertarian) but of the kind that distributes health, education, work, justice & equality is still being striven for everywhere. Luck has nothing to do with its progress. The successes and failures still dominate the political, economic & cultural landscape. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is surely an impossible goal, couched as it is in the idealistic non PC terms of a previous century. And the uneven distribution of new wealth continues to tear at the fabric, if you forgive the pun, of societies in old and new economies. But socialism has been woven into the thread of democracy and there is no stopping its eventual hold. The people's intellectuals - such as Orwell - oversee it by enshrining the notion that humankind is essentially co-operative. Even capitalism, with its need for free trade agreements and "a level playing field", will ultimately succumb to its reach.
Paragraph breaks, please (if you actually want me to read through that verbiage!)
Feliks wrote: (on the subject of Sax Rohmer) "As 'heinous' as those novels are regarded today ... guess what? Not at all the product of one 'kooky' author's personal agenda, not at all the product of one lone writer's 'blind-spot' or 'ignorance'. Nothing else but the voice of the British people of the era. "Well, as a member of the British reading public, I have to say, "Sax who?"
Feliks wrote: "Paragraph breaks, please (if you actually want me to read through that verbiage!)"That is a paragraph, actually. It contains a single developed idea. If you look at the topic sentence, it introduces the notion that socialism is alive and well. Then follow through the various arguments to the end where you'll see my prediction for it.
"No Sax before a fight!"
Feliks wrote: ""No Sax before a fight!""Well, that blows.
But if you hum a few bars I'll follow along
So, you're a hummer?
with a haircomb and a piece of tissue paper I can keep up, I guess
Sara wrote: "~ Here's the thing. I'm a huge fan of T.S. Eliot, but I had never read "...Practical Cats". I have a new interest in Edward Gorey and I love cats, so when I saw this I grabbed it. And all in all so..."Does creating character that's racist make him a racist? Certainly not, especially when the character is the antagonist as in this case. I'd be more inclined to suggest that Eliot was against racism because Growltiger got what he deserved in the end.
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"but most to Cats of foreign race
his hatred had been vowed;
To Cats of foreign name and race
no quarter was allowed"
also... "with a frightful burst of fireworks, the Chinks they climbed aboard"???
Is it me or is that racist? Was it just that there was no political correctness in the 1930's? Was it just the time period? Can someone explain this to me please?
then again maybe it's just the cat (Growltiger) that's a racist?