The Life and Works of TS Eliot
The Life and Works of T.S. EliotOne of the most influential and celebrated writers of the twentieth century was T. S. Eliot. In his writings he was able to successfully capture the feelings of his time. His contributions to the genre of poetry has had a profound effect on modern literature. While Eliot is most well known for his poetry, he was also an accomplished playwright and author of several books of social criticism (Kunitz 303).
Thomas Stearns Eliot, the youngest of seven, was born September 26, 1888 in St. Louis Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot, was a Washington University graduate and son of a very respected Unitarian minister. At the time of his son=s birth, he had risen to the position of chairman of the Hydraulic Press Brick Company. The city of St. Louis was growing rapidly and the Eliot=s brick firm was becoming very successful. (Unger 567). Thomas Eliot=s mother, Charlotte Champe Eliot, came from an affluent family in Massachusetts. In her spare time she wrote several books including a biography of her father-in-law (Sencourt 3).
The childhood of Thomas Eliot was especially pampered because he was afflicted with a hernia. His parents wealth allowed them to hire an Irish nurse to look after him. Later when Eliot was to attend grammar school at Smith Academy, he was unable to partake in games with his peers because of his infirmity. Instead, young Eliot used this time to develop his reading and writing skills. As a child, Eliot was an admirer of Mark Twain=s classic novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Having grown up in a city on the Mississippi, he was able to relate to many of the people and places in the story. Thomas grew up in a very strict Unitarian household where both his grandfather and uncle were very prominent ministers. His father held strongly to his religious teachings and encouraged his children that through thrift and intelligence, the goal of a Unitarian was to gain success in this world (Sencourt 5-9).
At the age of sixteen, Eliot was sent to Massachusetts and attended Milton Academy preparatory school. Milton was a highly regarded Unitarian school for the privileged. There Thomas concentrated his studies on physics, Latin, and history. During his years at Milton, Eliot began to cultivate an interest in sailing. His father had purchased a house in Glouceter, on the coast of Massachusetts. It was here where he and his brother, Henry Ware Eliot Jr., learnt to sail. Eliot=s hernia prevented him from participating in many sporting activities thus sailing became a keen interest of his which he pursued until his years at collage (Sencourt 10-14).
In 1906, after spending two years at Milton, Eliot was accepted into Harvard University. At Harvard, he majored in philosophy and studied under such famous professors as William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience and leader of the pragmatic movement, and Charles Eliot Norton, who translated the works of Dante. Eliot partook in several extracurricular activities as well. For several years he served as editor of the Harvard Advocate, who he occasionally wrote poems for. Even here at Harvard, Eliot felt the strong influence of Unitarianism due mostly to Harvard=s pious president, Charles William Eliot, a distant relative of Thomas. It was at this time when Thomas began to reject both the teachings of the Unitarian church and the American literature of the early nineteen-hundreds. Instead Eliot turned to European literature for a source of inspiration (Sencourt 17-21). His discovery of the symbolist literary movement influenced Eliot greatly. The French poet, Jules Laforgue, was the most influential of these symbolist writers. Eliot once said, AThe form in which I began to write, in 1908 or 1909, was directly drawn from the study of Laforgue@ (Unger 569).
During Eliot=s years at Harvard, he decided to study abroad in France at the Sorbonne for a year. Here Thomas was free of the constant restraints of the Puritan traditions that followed him from birth. While he was there, he fell in love with the city of Paris, which later became a theme of some of his work. After finishing up his undergraduate work at the Sorbonne, Eliot returned to America to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard. After three years of intense study, Eliot=s dissertation, later published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, won him the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship for one year=s study at Oxford University (Sencourt 30-38).
It was here at Oxford where Eliot befriended Ezra Pound, a fellow poet from Ohio. Pound had attended Oxford for over a year now and had many connections among the English elite as well as many famous writers of the day. Pound was essential to Eliot=s later career as a writer by introducing him to many people who would later fund and publish his work. During the summer of 1914, Eliot also met Vivienne Haigh Haichwood, who after only a few months of dating, Eliot decided to marry without consent of either=s parents. While Vivienne=s parents took the news of their marriage well, Eliot=s father was outraged. The courtship did not follow his parent=s traditions and was seen as an embarrassment to the Eliot name. Thomas=s father severed all ties and support to him and never saw his son again. This incident cost Thomas most of all of his connections in America and Europe, thereby destroying any prospect of an academic career (Sencourt 41-52).
After Oxford, Eliot chose to stay in war-torn England and took up a teaching post at Wycombe Grammar School where he taught French and history. Nearly broke, Eliot was forced to take up residence with Bertrant Russell, a friend from Oxford who was secretly having an affair with Eliot=s wife. The first years of Eliot=s marriage were also strained by Vivienne=s gradual loss of sanity. After a year of teaching, Eliot quit his job as a teacher because it was to demanding. In 1917, he took a position with Lloyds Bank, where he settled pre-war enemy debts. Three weeks later, America joined WWI and Eliot volunteered his service to the US Navy, but was refused because of his hernia. His job at the bank offered Eliot more time to write and he often contributed to such literary reviews as The Monist, The Athenaeum, The Chapbook, Arts and Letters, and The Egoist (Sencourt 54-82).
In 1921, Eliot took a prolonged leave from his job at the bank and traveled to France where he wrote most of the poem The Wasteland. Soon after his return to Britain, he began to work as editor for The Criterion. Eliot continued to work at the bank until 1925, when he left his job to become a director of Faber and Faber Publishing Company. The next eight year were a time of drastic change in Eliot=s personal life. In 1927, he officially converted from Unitarianism to Anglicanism. These years also mark a time of marital problems for Eliot and Vivienne and after eight years of a notoriously unhappy marriage, Eliot separated from his wife in 1933 (Sencourt 94-158).
The late twenties thru thirties saw Eliot rise to become a celebrated writer in England. His poetry and plays were very popular and he was regularly asked to give lectures at collages and universities in both Europe and American. His work won numerous awards and he was even granted an audience with the King and Queen of both England and Sweden and Pope Pius XII (Sencourt 100-98). In January of 1957, Eliot was remarried to Valerie Fletcher, his thirty year-old personal secretary (Unger 568). Eight years later, Eliot died of emphysema. A memorial service was held for him at Westminster Abby a month later. In attendance was the Queen and Prime Minister of Britain, President Lyndon Johnson, and Eliot=s lifelong friend, Ezra Pound (Sencourt 235).
Eliot is most closely tied to the modernist literary movement. This movement started in the early nineteen hundreds when many young writers began to reject literary traditions (AThomas Stearns Eliot@). In Eliot=s poems and plays, he was able to capture the feelings of the intellectuals of his time. One of his major themes was that one can not have a fulfilling life unless they take their life seriously (Waggoner 438-39). Eliot would often portray older people in his works as having missed the opportunity to do things they no longer are able to do (Ellmann 15). The idea of religious humility and serenity was also a major theme in his earlier work (AThomas Stearns Eliot@). Other themes include the failure of communication between a man and a woman and the isolation of an individual from the outside world (Unger 570-71). To convey these themes, Eliot utilized a great deal of symbolism in his poetry and plays.
Thomas Eliot wrote a wide variety of works including poetry, plays, and books. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately gained him notoriety among the British literary circle. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, Thomas=s popularity grew even more (AT.S. Eliot@). His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, of whose dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party (Kunitz 303).
Eliot=s masterpiece, The Wasteland, Ais a grand consummation of the themes, techniques and styles that Eliot had been developing@ (Unger 575). The success of The Wasteland surprised Eliot because originally the poem had been merely a bundle of personal gripes that he scribbled down during a retreat to France (Waggoner 439). However, thanks to the help of his friend Ezra Pound, Eliot was able to transform it into a literary masterpiece (Ellmann 12). In its final form, The Wasteland became a work of social criticism in which Eliot used a wasteland as an extended metaphor for the cultural decline he believed to be rampant in the early nineteen hundreds (Waggoner 441). It was a type of poetry the world had never seen before and serves as the standard to which all other modern poetry is compared (Karr B7).
When someone begins reading The Wasteland, they are immediately struck by the complex nature of the poem. The interjection of lines written in German and the sudden changes in the basic style and structure of the poem serve to confuse the reader. The average reader would also have difficulty grasping the ornate symbolism, of which The Wasteland was woven. The poem is littered with allusions to a countless number of literary works ranging form the Bible to Dante=s Inferno. Only the best read person reads this work and walks away with a basic understanding of all of the themes expressed in this poem (Eliot 37-55).
Eliot received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to American literature. In 1948, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his pioneering work in the genre of poetry. That same year Eliot was bestowed the Order of Merit by King George VI of England. In 1954, Life magazine named Eliot @the world=s most distinguished living poet@ (Kunitz 303). Ten years later President Lyndon Johnson awarded Eliot with the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom (AThomas Stearns Eliot@).
T.S. Eliot has become one of the most influential and celebrated writers of the twentieth century. Eliot=s combination of French symbolist and both American and English modern writing technique produced a style of poetry of which the world had never seen. Using his unique style he was able to successfully capture the feelings of his time. Eliot will always be remembered for his literary genius and his contribution to twentieth century literature will forever shape the way we look at poetry.