When I first thought of writing this article, I wanted to write about the poetry of T.S. Eliot, but then I realized I’m not well-versed enough (pun intended) to write about the poetry. Oh! I can understand it, but only with a guide book and, then, even with multiple guide books. In this column, I have not concerned myself much with originality, but I have concerned myself with point of view and pointing you (no pun intended) to source materials on the subject (whatever subject) at hand. There is so much source material on T.S. Eliot that I was reduced to skimming because I hadn’t the time or patience to read it all.

There is a recent biography that emphasizes T.S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism. I couldn’t find it I did read in its entirely, Peter Ackroyd’s biography, T.S. Eliot, a Life. At the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, I read Stephen Spender’s T.S. Eliot. I really liked that book and Mr. Spender’s way with both words and T.S. Eliot. Then, there’s always T.S. Eliot in the Twayne’s author series. This by Philip R. Headings. There’s T.S. Eliot, A Study in Character, by Ronald Bush, and T.S. Eliot, a Collection of Critical Essays in the Twentieth Century Views Series edited by Hugh Kenner. I also read T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1901-1950. I re-consulted Eric Bentley’s The Playwright as Thinker, and I even read T.S. Eliot’s own forward to Djuna Barnes’s novel Nightwood.

All of a sudden, it just seems to me that T. S. Eliot is everywhere with us. In a review of two new translations of Genesis, Phyllis Trible says: “In East Coker, T.S. Eliot brought the in sights together with the opening line, “In my beginning is my end,” and the closing, “In my end is my beginning.” She, I believe is referring to Genesis overall, and especially its opening. T. S. Eliot is, I think, referring to his religiosity. When I die, my life will begin in God! The point being that people still see T. S. Eliot’s message and his poetry as relevant.

Now, T. S. Eliot, in my opinion, was a bit of a fraud and a charlatan. He was constantly inveighing the younger generation not to become poets. Poetry was a useless craft unless it served another purpose such as the theater, or so he said. Did he mean it? I doubt it! Here is a man who after the worlds to then greatest conflict writes poems with the titles “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men,” and professes surprise that the world should think he was writing about “The Lost Generation.” This is a man who professed to want nothing from his poetry, but who always kept an eye on the box office; who professed the private life, but who once (only once) wrote a play that had them on line for tickets on Broadway. This, not to mention that be did win the 1948 Nobel Prize for literature. It is also interesting to note that by the time he won the Nobel Prize, the poetry only approximated 146 pages. Clearly, he had a lot to say in a little space.

Getting back to Stephen Spender, be says that Eliot believed that when Christ was on the cross, he was there to suffer. If for one millisecond Christ ever thought that it would profit him as in a new religion (Spender uses the term Jesus Christ Superstar) or immortality via human canonization, then the whole experience is cheapened. Eliot naturally believed that Christ never had a millisecond in which be thought of profit. To Eliot’s credit, deep down he knew that be wanted his suffering to profit him. However, there were probably a good 20 years when Eliot may not have recognized this. The next paragraph is original, but only in the sense that none of the books come right out and says it. It is not original in the sense that I believe that you can infer it from the sources, especially the Ackroyd biography.

T.S. Eliot entered a disastrous marriage with Vivien Heigh-Wood. I believe he knew it would be a disaster and that he did it masochistically, although somewhat like Christ on the cross, except that he knew his suffering would be rewarded. Of course, some of this must have been on an unconscious level, especially the risk reward factor. He married her in 1915, and he separated from her in 1932. Mental illness overtook her and, finally, she had to be committed. He never divorced her, Ackroyd writes of the horrible scenes she made before his friends and how he’d be forced to give up these friends for her. It would appear that they were sexually incompatible as well, and that Eliot was inadequate with her. After he left her, she’d attempt to meet him at his literary agency or at his lectures. His staff was trained in keeping them apart. Artistically, the marriage plays a major part in his art, especially in the plays The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party.

The poetry is difficult to understand without a knowledge of Dante’s Inferno and T.S. Eliot’s religious ideas. Here, I would say that the sacrifice of Christ is paramount. To some extent, staying in the marriage was his sacrifice and his crucifixion, but, unlike Christ, Eliot could stop when the pain became too intense. It took 17 years, but he did leave the marriage. No matter how difficult the poetry is to understand, it has a musical ring. Without understanding its deeper meaning, you can just enjoy the flow of the lines. Eliot referred to bis Four Quartets as his “Ring Cycle.” A minor composer, lldebrando Petrezzi set Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral as an opera, apparently not very successfully. In our time, the most successful foisting of Eliot on the public by a composer is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Incidently, Possum was one of Ezra Pound’s code names for T.S. Eliot. I have never cared much for nonsense poetry or songs. Even in Gilbert and Sullivan, the nonsense (patter) songs are not my favorites. “Memories” is a beautiful song, but – someone played for me an old jazz band song that sounded mighty similar. If you did like Cats, perhaps you’d like to read Elizabeth Sewell’s essay “Lewis Carroll and T. S. Eliot as Nonsense Poets.” Every aspect of his art has been examined and I’d put Old Possum in that category. The essay can be found in “The Twentieth Century Views” series.

Now, there’s something about T.S. Eliot I find truly amazing. For a poet who requires a Baedeker to understand, he managed to get out to the general theatrical public. The play that will probably travel the longest is Murder in the Cathedral. It is the Sir Thomas Becket story. For me it is just a bit too straightforward. Yet it is verse drama with many of Eliot’s themes such as the temptation of Becket and, above all else, sacrifice. Becket refuses all bribes and temptations and gives up his life for his conception of the clwrch. Eliot convened from Unitarianism to Anglicanism. Today, the Anglicans and the Catholics are talking about reuniting. To me, they seem guile similar wi1b mass and priests, however, Eliot vehemently denied that be became a Catholic. Acceptance of the “true church” was essential for T.S. Eliot. naturally, that is one of the places where his anti-Semitism manifested itself. It was unlikely that the Jews accepted the “true church” – his or anyone else’s. What is also clear is that he, like Pound, was anti-democratic and anti-liberal. He did much medieval scholarship, and much of his thinking was medieval. For me it’s hard to understand his politics. No one can ever accuse him of repenting, but he did ease up after he won the Nobel Prize, and he never went over the deep end like Pound.

Ackroyd entitles his last chapter: “Happy at Last, 1957-1965.” After he left his wife, Eliot encouraged two women, Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan to believe that if they took care of him they might be Vivien’s successor. Neither was given that honor. Emily Hale appears to have really suffered after her rejection. On January JO, 1957, he married Valerie Fletcher, his secretary of some eight years. She was 30 and he was 68. She had been working for him since she was 22 and seemed to always know she wanted him. By all accounts, the marriage was happy. In my opinion, Eliot had come full circle from poor, suffering, and misunderstood (or so he said) to relatively well off, happy, honored, and appreciated. More than that, he knew he was not Christ on the cross. He knew his suffering would be used in his an and that he would be a poet superstar. In this connection, there is only one work that bears analysis here. That for me is The Cocktail Parry. I’d really like you to read it and two very different analyses of it. Stephen Spender’s analysis emphasizes T.S. Eliot’s religious notions, especially sacrifice and, literally. there is a crucifixion in the play (thqnkfully, off stage), and, above all else, our duty to accept the sacrifice of the Christ ·character and live on, even if our lives will not be happy or successful. Contrast that wilh Dennis Donoghue’s analysis in the Twentieth Century Series comparing The Cocktail Party to Euripides’s Alcestis, wherein Alcestis is the sacrificial character. Think about that, whichever one you take as correct or even if you mix and match. Eliot pul Greek tragedy and/or religious tragedy on stage and he had them lining up at the box office on Broadway. In verse, no less, although the verse is sci free that he himself questioned if it was poetry. Sartre, Cocteau, Giradoux all wrote Greek myth plays, but only Eliot had ’em queuing up for tickets. If you count Cats, they are still lining up, but that’s nonsense, not Greek or religious tragedy. The best that can be said of T. S. Eliot was that, though a flawed man (who isn’t?), he did deserve the Nobel Prize for literature.