Thomas Stearns Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born to a very distinguished New England family
on
September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware,
was a very
successful businessman and his mother, Charlotte Stearns Eliot,
was a poetess.
His paternal grandfather established and presided over
Washington University.
While visiting Great Britain in 1915, World War I
started and Eliot took up a
permanent residency there. In 1927, he became a
British citizen. While living in
Britain, Eliot met and married Vivienne
Haigh-Wood and at first everything was
wonderful between them. Then he found
out that Vivienne was very ill, both
physically and mentally. In 1930,
Vivienne had a mental breakdown and was
confined to a mental hospital until
her death in 1947. Her death was very hard
on Eliot and he died on January 4,
1965. Most of Eliot’s works were produced
from the emotional difficulties
from his marriage. Because of Eliot’s economic
status, he attended only the
finest schools while growing up. He attended Smith
Academy in St. Louis
and Milton Academy in Massachusetts. In 1906, he started
his freshman year at
Harvard University studying philosophy and literature. He
received his
bachelor’s degree in philosophy in only three years. Eliot went
on to study
at the University of Oxford and also at the Sorbonne in Judice 2
Paris.
At the Sorbonne, he found inspiration from writers such as Dante
and
Shakespeare and also from ancient literature, modern philosophy and
Eastern
mysticism. T. S. Eliot’s first poem was The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock
written in 1915. It is widely recognized as one of Eliot’s most
brilliant
poems. J. C. C. Mays claims that, "It is one of his most
approachable poems
since it structurally takes fewer risks than some of his
later poems. The tone
of effort and futility of effort is central in Eliot’s
poems" (Mays 111).
Another poem, The Waste Land was written in 1922 and
it contrasts modern society
with societies of the past. "The assumption of
the mythical method is that
our culture and language once had a pervasive
meaningfulness which has been lost
in our increasingly rational and
discontinuous society, but by recovering the
lost myth from within our
culture, poets can restore mythic unity to
literature" (Leavell 146). Eliot
converted his religion to Anglo -
Catholicism and in 1927, his poetry
took on new spiritual meaning. Ash Wednesday
was the first poem he wrote
after his conversion. It was written in 1930. It is
said that it traces the
pattern of Eliot’s spiritual progress. It strives to
make connections between
the earthly and the eternal, the word of man and the
Word of God and the
emphasis is on the struggle toward belief. "Eliot
develops independently and
begins immediately in all of his works. Ash Wednesday
takes place in a world
which is all meaningless, and yet is a plea directed
toward the infinite,
toward a realm that is ultimately unknowable" (Leavell
152). Judice 3 In
the poem, A Song for Simeon, a man sees the Incarnation after
his birth.
After seeing this, the man wishes only for death because he feels now
that he
is free from sin. In this poem, Eliot used images of Jesus’ life such
as: the
crucifixion, Roman soldiers, and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. I think
Eliot
used these images because of how important Jesus’ life and death are
to
everyone in the Christian faith. "A Song for Simeon is an
essentially
interior monologue with the repetition of his prayer for peace,
oblivion, and
death" (Brooker 101). Other poems Eliot has written are:
Portrait of a Lady
(1915), Mr. Apollinax (1916), Sweeny Among the
Nightingales (1918), and Four
Quartets (1943) which he believed to be his
greatest achievement. Eliot also
wrote the play "Murder in the Cathedral"
(1935). It was about the
murder of Thomas Becket and was later turned into a
film in 1952. Other plays
written by Eliot are: "The Family Reunion" (1939),
"The Cocktail
Party" (1949), "The Confidential Clerk" (1953), and
"The
Elder Statesman" (1959). "Thomas Stearns Eliot has been considered
by
many to be the leading American poet of this century. His poem The Waste
Land is
a summation of the disillusion and fragmentation that was felt by so
many people
following the first World War. It contained many poetic
techniques that changed
the face of modern poetry" (Costa 96). Eliot is
considered one of the
greatest poets and equally one of the greatest critics
to ever live even though
many were put off by his personality. He received
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948
and the United States Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1964.
Bibliography
Brooker, Jewel Spears. Words in
Time: New Essays on Eliot’s Four Quartets.
London: Athlone, 1993. Costa,
Marco. The Norton Anthology of American
Literature. Fourth edition volume
2. Norton Company Inc. 1994. Leavell, Linda.
T.S. Eliot: Essays from the
Southern Review. Oxford: Claredon, 1988. Mays, J. C.
C. "Early Poems:
From ‘Prufrock’ to ‘Gerontion’." The
Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot.
Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1994. 108 - 120. 1996
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Copyright 1996 Grolier
Interactive,
Inc.