Editing T. S. Eliot (section)

==Poetry==
For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced relatively few poems. He was aware of this even early in his career; he wrote to J. H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event."<ref>Eliot, T. S. "Letter to J. H. Woods, April 21, 1919." ''The Letters of T. S. Eliot'', vol. I. Valerie Eliot (ed.), New York: Harcourt Brace, 1988, p. 285.</ref>

Typically, Eliot first published his poems individually in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets and then collected them in books. His first collection was ''Prufrock and Other Observations'' (1917). In 1920, he published more poems in ''Ara Vos Prec'' (London) and ''Poems: 1920'' (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925, he collected ''The Waste Land'' and the poems in ''Prufrock'' and ''Poems'' into one volume and added ''The Hollow Men'' to form ''Poems: 1909–1925''. From then on, he updated this work as ''Collected Poems''. Exceptions are ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' (1939), a collection of light verse; ''Poems Written in Early Youth'', posthumously published in 1967 and consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in ''[[The Harvard Advocate]]'', and ''Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917'', material Eliot never intended to have published, which appeared posthumously in 1996.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html |title=T. S. Eliot: ''The Harvard Advocate Poems'' |publisher=Theworld.com |access-date=3 August 2009}}</ref>

During an interview in 1959, Eliot said of his nationality and its role in his work: "I'd say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I'm sure of. ... It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be so good; putting it as modestly as I can, it wouldn't be what it is if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America."<ref name="hall interview">{{cite interview |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4738/the-art-of-poetry-no-1-t-s-eliot |title=The Art of Poetry No. 1 |last=Eliot |first=T.S.|interviewer=Donald Hall |interviewer-link=Donald Hall |issue=21 |date=Spring–Summer 1959 |magazine=[[The Paris Review]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091003162716/http://www.parisreview.com/media/4738_ELIOT4.pdf |archive-date=3 October 2009 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>

Cleo McNelly Kearns notes in her biography that Eliot was deeply influenced by Indic traditions, notably the [[Upanishads]]. From the Sanskrit ending of ''The Waste Land'' to the "What Krishna meant" section of ''Four Quartets'' shows how much Indic religions and more specifically Hinduism made up his philosophical basic for his thought process.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n01ymdF9_vsC|title=T. S. Eliot and Indic Traditions: A Study in Poetry and Belief|year=1987|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|last=Kearns|first=Cleo McNelly|isbn=978-0-52132-439-7|access-date=8 March 2016}}</ref> It must also be acknowledged, as [[Chinmoy Guha]] showed in his book ''Where the Dreams Cross: T S Eliot and French Poetry'' (Macmillan, 2011) that he was deeply influenced by French poets from Baudelaire to Paul Valéry. He himself wrote in his 1940 essay on [[W. B. Yeats|W.B. Yeats]]: "The kind of poetry that I needed to teach me the use of my own voice did not exist in English at all; it was only to be found in French." ("Yeats", ''On Poetry and Poets'', 1948).

==="The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"===
{{Main|The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock}}

In 1915, [[Ezra Pound]], overseas editor of ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'' magazine, recommended to [[Harriet Monroe]], the magazine's founder, that she should publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".<ref>Mertens, Richard. [http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0108/features/letter.html "Letter By Letter"] in The University of Chicago Magazine (August 2001). Retrieved 23 April 2007.</ref> Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when [[Georgian Poetry]] was hailed for its derivations of the 19th-century [[romanticism|Romantic Poets]].<ref>See, for example, Eliot, T. S. (21 December 2010). ''The Waste Land and Other Poems''. Broadview Press. p. 133. {{ISBN|978-1-77048-267-8}}. Retrieved 27 February 2019. (citing an unsigned review in ''Literary World''. 5 July 1917, vol. lxxxiii, 107.)</ref>

The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of [[Dante]] and refers to a number of literary works, including ''[[Hamlet]]'' and those of the French Symbolists. Its reception in London can be gauged from an unsigned review in ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' on 21 June 1917. "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to ''poetry''."<ref>Waugh, Arthur. [https://www.usask.ca/english/prufrock/recept1.htm "The New Poetry"], ''Quarterly Review'', October 1916, p. 226, citing the ''Times Literary Supplement'' 21 June 1917, no. 805, 299; Wagner, Erica (2001), [https://www.theguardian.com/Archive/Article/0,4273,4250053,00.html "An eruption of fury"], ''The Guardian'', letters to the editor, 4 September 2001. Wagner omits the word "very" from the quote.</ref>

===''The Waste Land''===
[[File:T.S. Eliot, 1923.JPG|thumb|right|Eliot in 1923 by [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]]]]
{{Main|The Waste Land}}
In October 1922, Eliot published ''The Waste Land'' in ''[[The Criterion]]''. Eliot's dedication to ''il miglior fabbro'' ('the better craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand in editing and reshaping the poem from a longer manuscript to the shortened version that appears in publication.<ref name="MillerJames E. Hughes Jr2005">{{cite book|last=Miller| first=James H. Jr. |title=T. S. Eliot: the making of an American poet, 1888–1922|year=2005|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|location=University Park, PA|isbn=978-0-271-02681-7|pages=387–388}}</ref>

It was composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne were suffering from nervous disorders.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ackroyd |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Ackroyd |title=T. S. Eliot |publisher=Simon and Schuster |location=New York |year=1984 |page=113 |ol=24766653M}}</ref> Before the poem's publication as a book in December 1922, Eliot distanced himself from its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922, he wrote to [[Richard Aldington]], saying, "As for ''The Waste Land'', that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style."<ref>''The Letters of T. S. Eliot'', Vol.&nbsp;1, p.&nbsp;596.</ref> 

The poem is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lewis |first1=Pericles |title=The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |page=129 |isbn=9780521828093 |ol=22749928M}}</ref> Dismissing this view, Eliot commented in 1931, "When I wrote a poem called ''The Waste Land'', some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed 'the disillusion of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention."<ref>''The Poems of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1: Collected & Uncollected Poems''. Edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue, Faber & Faber, 2015, p. 576</ref>

The poem is known for its disjointed nature due to its usage of allusion and quotation and its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time. This structural complexity is one of the reasons that the poem has become a touchstone of [[Modernist poetry in English|modern literature]], a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''.<ref>MacCabe, Colin. ''T. S. Eliot''. Tavistock: Northcote House, 2006.</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2024}}

Among its best-known phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I have shored against my ruins".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Tearle |first1=Oliver |title=10 of the Most Famous Lines by T. S. Eliot |url=https://interestingliterature.com/2021/02/ts-eliot-most-famous-lines-quotes/ |website=Interesting Literature |access-date=3 February 2024 |date=4 February 2021}}</ref>

==="The Hollow Men"===
{{Main|The Hollow Men}}

"The Hollow Men" appeared in 1925. For the critic [[Edmund Wilson]], it marked "The nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in 'The Waste Land'."<ref>[[Edmund Wilson|Wilson, Edmund]]. "Review of Ash Wednesday", ''New Republic'', 20 August 1930.</ref> It is Eliot's major poem of the late 1920s. Similar to Eliot's other works, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary. Post-war Europe under the [[Treaty of Versailles]] (which Eliot despised), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, Eliot's failed marriage.<ref>See, for instance, the biographically oriented work of one of Eliot's editors and major critics, Ronald Schuchard.</ref>

[[Allen Tate]] perceived a shift in Eliot's method, writing, "The mythologies disappear altogether in 'The Hollow Men'." This is a striking claim for a poem as indebted to Dante as anything else in Eliot's early work, to say little of the modern English mythology—the "Old [[Guy Fawkes]]" of the [[Gunpowder Plot]]—or the colonial and [[Agrarianism|agrarian]] mythos of [[Joseph Conrad]] and [[James George Frazer]], which, at least for reasons of textual history, echo in ''The Waste Land''.<ref>Grant, Michael (ed.). ''T. S. Eliot: the Critical Heritage''. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.</ref> The "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" that is so characteristic of his mythical method remained in fine form.<ref>" 'Ulysses', Order, and Myth", ''Selected Essays'' T. S. Eliot (orig 1923).</ref> "The Hollow Men" contains some of Eliot's most famous lines, notably its conclusion: {{blockquote|''This is the way the world ends''<br />''Not with a bang but a whimper.''}}

==="Ash-Wednesday"===
{{Main|Ash Wednesday (poem)}}
"Ash-Wednesday" is the first long poem written by Eliot after his 1927 conversion to [[Anglicanism]]. Published in 1930, it deals with the struggle that ensues when a person who has lacked faith acquires it. Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", it is richly but ambiguously allusive, and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human [[salvation]]. Eliot's style of writing in "Ash-Wednesday" showed a marked shift from the poetry he had written prior to his 1927 conversion, and his post-conversion style continued in a similar vein. His style became less ironic, and the poems were no longer populated by multiple characters in dialogue. Eliot's subject matter also became more focused on his spiritual concerns and his Christian faith.<ref>Raine, Craig. ''T. S. Eliot'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)</ref>

Many critics were particularly enthusiastic about "Ash-Wednesday". [[Edwin Muir]] maintained that it is one of the most moving poems Eliot wrote, and perhaps the "most perfect", though it was not well received by everyone. The poem's groundwork of orthodox Christianity discomfited many of the more secular ''[[Intellectual|literati]]''.<ref name=EB/><ref name=Untermeyer>[[Louis Untermeyer|Untermeyer, Louis]]. ''Modern American Poetry''. Hartcourt Brace, 1950, pp. 395–396.</ref>

===''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats''===
{{Main|Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats}}
In 1939, Eliot published a book of [[light verse]], ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats''. ("Old Possum" was [[Ezra Pound]]'s friendly nickname for Eliot.) The first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954, the composer [[Alan Rawsthorne]] set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra in a work titled ''Practical Cats''. After Eliot's death, the book was the basis of the musical ''[[Cats (musical)|Cats]]'' by [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]], first produced in London's West End in 1981 and opening on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] the following year.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-old-possums-book-of-practical-cats|title=An introduction to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats|website=The British Library|access-date=27 February 2018|archive-date=25 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190325153418/https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-old-possums-book-of-practical-cats|url-status=dead}}</ref>

===''Four Quartets''===
{{Main|Four Quartets}}
Eliot regarded ''Four Quartets'' as his masterpiece, and it is the work that most of all led him to being awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].<ref name=EB/> It consists of four long poems, each first published separately: "[[Burnt Norton]]" (1936), "[[East Coker (poem)|East Coker]]" (1940), "[[The Dry Salvages]]" (1941) and "[[Little Gidding (poem)|Little Gidding]]" (1942). Each has five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each poem includes meditations on the nature of time in some important respect—[[theological]], historical, physical—and its relation to the human condition. Each poem is associated with one of the four [[classical elements]], respectively: air, earth, water, and fire.

"Burnt Norton" is a meditative poem that begins with the narrator trying to focus on the present moment while walking through a garden, focusing on images and sounds such as the bird, the roses, clouds and an empty pool. The meditation leads the narrator to reach "the still point" in which there is no attempt to get anywhere or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a grace of sense". In the final section, the narrator contemplates the arts ("words" and "music") as they relate to time. The narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden [of time], under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, [and] will not stay in place, / Will not stay still." By comparison, the narrator concludes that "Love is itself unmoving, / Only the cause and end of movement, / Timeless, and undesiring."

"East Coker" continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness, Eliot offers a solution: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope."

"The Dry Salvages" treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It strives to contain opposites: "The past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled."

"Little Gidding" (the element of fire) is the most anthologised of the ''Quartets''.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2013-12-22|title=The complete simplicity of T. S. Eliot|url=https://joshuaspodek.com/complete-simplicity-t-s-eliot|access-date=2020-11-07|website=Joshua Spodek|language=en|quote=Little Gidding (the element of fire) is the most anthologized of the Quartets.}}</ref> Eliot's experiences as an air raid warden in [[the Blitz]] power the poem, and he imagines meeting [[Dante]] during the German bombing. The beginning of the ''Quartets'' ("Houses / Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of love as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the ''Quartets'' end with an affirmation of [[Julian of Norwich]]: "All shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well."<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Newman|first=Barbara|date=2011|title=Eliot's Affirmative Way: Julian of Norwich, Charles Williams, and Little Gidding|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658355|journal=Modern Philology|volume=108|issue=3|pages=427–461|doi=10.1086/658355|jstor=10.1086/658355|s2cid=162999145|issn=0026-8232}}</ref>

The ''Four Quartets'' draws upon Christian theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, and mystics [[St. John of the Cross]] and [[Julian of Norwich]].<ref name=":2" />