Eliot, T. S.

Also known as: Thomas Stearns Eliot Born: 1888 Died: 1965 American-British poet, playwright, essayist From: The Facts On File Companion to British Poetry, 1900 to Present.

Thomas Sterns (T. S.) Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a well-known Unitarian family (his grandfather founded Eliot Seminary, which eventually became Washington University in St. Louis). His early years were relatively uneventful. He attended preparatory school from 1898 to 1905, and his intelligence manifested itself in his precocious study of Latin, Greek, French, and German during these formative years. Through his parent's Unitarian connections, he gained admittance to the prestigious Milton Academy in Boston, Massachusetts, before going to Harvard, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1909 and published a few poems in the Harvard Advocate. Afterwards he spent time traveling in Europe that included studies at the Sorbonne in Paris as well as Merton College, Oxford. He continued to explore languages by learning Sanskrit and Pali in order to be able to read Hindu and Buddhist scriptures in the original languages. Eliot eventually composed a dissertation on the English philosopher F. H. Bradley but failed to appear to defend his thesis in person; consequently Harvard denied him a doctorate. Nonetheless Eliot's studies allowed him to meet and interact with philosophers such as George Santayana, William James, Henri Bergson, and Bertrand Russell, and their works and ideas underpinned many of his poetic endeavors. Eliot's personal life grew much more complex in 1915 when he married Vivien Haigh-Wood, an Oxford governess, who proved to have severe physical and psychological problems, which, in turn, exacerbated Eliot's own rather delicate emotional nature. Yet his literary career began to emerge with the 1916 publication of "tHE lovE Song of J. alfrEd Prufrock" through Ezra Pound's influence in Harriet Monroe's Poetry Magazine. Eliot included that poem with a few others and produced his first book, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. By the early 1920s Pound facilitated Eliot's interaction with a wide-ranging collection of writers including W. B. Yeats, the painter and novelist Wyndham Lewis, and the Italian futurist Tamaso Marinetti. Despite the literary achievement, Eliot's marriage continued to become more strained as Vivien's mental and physical health deteriorated, and an emotionally stressful visit by his mother and sister after his father's death provoked a nervous collapse. He spent three months recovering, partially at a sanitarium in Lausanne, Switzerland, and during this time he began to produce a long poem examining the spiritual malaise of postWorld War I Europe that eventually became a cornerstone of the modernist movement: the waste LaND (published 1922). The original version of The Waste Land was almost twice as long, but his friend, Ezra Pound, pared material, tightening the poem's structure and making it much more enigmatic. Eliot dedicated the poem to Pound and dubbed him "il miglior fabbro"the better craftsman. The poem, divided into five parts, found inspiration in Jessie L Weston's investigation of Grail myth in From Ritual to Romance (1920) along with anthropologist Sir James Frazer's analysis of vegetation myths in The Golden Bough (13 vols., 18901915). Eliot incorporated his own interests in Eastern philosophy to create a poem that investigates Western Europe's decline into spiritual aridity and the need for regeneration. Utilizing the archetypal quest motif, the poem evokes a blend of Christian, pagan, and Eastern philosophy paralleling the Grail knight's journey to heal the wounded Fisher Kinga central figure in the Grail legend

whose condition produces drought and infertility in his lands. Eliot further complicated the poem with abundant erudite footnotes that often serve to obscure further the work's central symbolism rather than clarifying its content. Valerie Fletcher Eliot published a facsimile of the original poem, which includes Pound's suggested alterations, in 1971, and this text has greatly assisted those seeking to trace the development of the poem from inception to publication. The Waste Land established Eliot as one of the leading poets of his generation, but his financial and emotional situation remained desperate. Vivien nearly died in 1923, and the strain very nearly caused Eliot to suffer another breakdown, but he managed to gain employment as an editor with the prestigious publishing firm Faber and Faber, which he would retain for the remainder of his working life. Occupational stability was followed by his quest for spiritual fulfillment. Disenchanted with his Unitarianism, Eliot began to attend Anglican services, and new verse appearing in Poems 19091925 (published 1925) signaled a shift in Eliot's attitudes. This period culminated in his joining the Anglican Church and taking British citizenship in 1927. The following year (1928), he shocked many avant-garde friends with his politically conservative collection of essays For Lancelot Andrewes, declaring in the preface that he was a "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-catholic in religion." He spent the next couple of years studying the works of Dante Alighieri and William Shakespeare and writing a number of short poems including " Journey of the Magi " (1927), "A Song for Simeon" (1928), "Animula" (1929), "Marina" (1930), "Triumphal March" (1931), and "Ash-Wednesday" (1930)the latter The following year's Anglican-influenced response to the spiritual emptiness of The Waste Land. After 1925 Eliot's marriage irrevocably deteriorated, and in 1933 he separated from Vivien, though he refused to divorce her because of his conservative Anglican beliefs. Vivien's mental health declined, and she embarrassed him a number of times by attempting dramatic reconciliations when Eliot made public appearances. She eventually was confined to a mental hospital, which Eliot did not visit, where she died in 1947. During the 1930s and 1940s Eliot continued producing literary essays, published his ambitious poem collection Four Quartets (1943), and turned his hand to verse drama. The most famous of these are Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion (1939), and The Cocktail Party (1949). He also produced a book of whimsical verse for children, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), later adapted by the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber into the phenomenally successful Broadway musical Cats (ran 19822000). Eliot's success and fame gave him some measure of consolation after his earlier struggles, and his reputation as a literary critic reached its apex during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1948 the Nobel Committee awarded him that year's Nobel Prize in literature, citing him "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." Despite the award, from the late 1940s through the 1960s, Eliot wrote no more major verse; however he continued to produce literary essays and verse drama, including The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). In 1957 he married his longtime secretary, Valerie Fletcher, 38 years his junior, but by all accounts enjoyed more happiness in his last seven years than at nearly any time before.

Along with his creative endeavors, Eliot gained fame as a literary critic, and he is almost single-handedly responsible for reviving interest in the previously neglected British poets of the early 17th century through his essay "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921). In the essay he elevated the works of such figures as John Donne and Andrew Marvell to a high level and denigrated the romanticism of the latter 18th and early 19th centuries. He argued that the complexity and passion exhibited in the works of Donne and his contemporaries far outshone the self-centered interests of the romantics. Though it was long regarded as a masterful work of criticism, many contemporary critics have distanced themselves from the religious and political conservatism that influenced Eliot's aesthetic judgments. Eliot also made a foray into social criticism with his 1948 essay "Notes towards a Definition of Culture." This pro-Christian, proconservatism essay defined culture as an organic entity centered on the family and further reflected Eliot's conservatism, which grew more marked after his conversion to Anglicanism. In his early years, especially during his first marriage, Eliot was sensitive, physically frail, and, as noted, prone to psychological episodes that occasionally incapacitated him in his professional and creative pursuits. However, upon his separation from Vivien, and notably after his second marriage, to Valerie, he became something of a pranksterplacing whoopee cushions in chairs and providing exploding cigars to guests. Indeed he felt honored when he discovered that American comedian Groucho Marx admired his poetry and the two kept up a correspondence for a number of years. Despite his emotional tranquility in his last few years, Eliot's health steadily deteriorated and he died of emphysema in London January 4, 1965. His body was cremated, and his ashes interred in church of St. Michael's in East Coker with an epitaph taken from his Four Quartets: "In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning." In the years since his passing, his literary legacy has remained strong but not without reserve. A number of critics have found anti-Semitic statements, elitist attitudes, and a cold intellectualism in Eliot's work. Nonetheless in spite of those charges, critics have also noted that Eliot's complexities, such as his omission of connective and transitional material in many works, underscore his perceptive insights into human natureespecially the spiritual hollowness and intellectual aridness that dominated European consciousness after World War I. His influence on poetry and literary criticism since his time has been profound, and he remains one of the towering figures in British poetry of the 20th century.
Further Information
Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot. New York: Simon &Schuster, 1984. Esty, Jed. T. S. Eliot. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Available online. URL: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/eliot.htm. Accessed November 10, 2006. Gardner, Helen. The Art of T. S. Eliot. New York: Dutton, 1959. Southam, B. C. A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot, 6th ed. Fort Washington, Pa.: Harvest Books, 1996.

Citation Information
Text Citation: Persoon, James, and Robert R. Watson. "Eliot, T. S." The Facts On File Companion to British Poetry, 1900 to Present. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CBPNP131&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 10, 2011).

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