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Thomas stearns eliot:
The boredom, and the horror, and the glory
This series has referred frequently to TS Eliot (1888-1965) as a
critic. The time has now come to take him up as a poet. In fact, it is
the poetic occupation we have to thank for the critical, which was very
much in the nature of a workshop to help him develop his art as a poet.
In both respects, however, Eliot’s has been the foremost influence of
modern times. As a poet, in particular, he was responsible for a
revolution in expression as well as in sensibility, a dual achievement
of which only a few poets of the past had proved capable.
The revolution got under way with The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
(1915). This was a far cry from the typical love poem. And far from
being a typically poetic lover, Prufrock is romantically incompetent and
incoherent. This itself is seen to be symptomatic of a deeper malaise,
an indecisiveness and ineffectuality in regard to life itself, as
typified by the opening illustration of the “evening spread out against
the sky like a patient etherised upon a table” The imagery is unromantic
throughout, not pastoral but startlingly urban and commonplace, with
references to back streets and cheap hotels, cups and spoons.
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T S Eliot |
There is an elaborated metaphor of the yellow fog as a self-assured
cat. The language is not stylised but that of living speech, precise yet
evocative: “Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred
indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking
of a toast and tea.” The versification is generally free with lines of
varying length, no fixed metrical scheme and only sporadic rhyming. Yet
the sensation of poetic rhythm and cadence is ever present. In Gerontion
(1920) the tone of apologetic helplessness has hardened into one of
passive cynicism. Eliot has by now embarked on his mission of describing
the poet’s vision of “the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.”
This poem falls between the first two conditions. In accordance with
his theory of the necessary impersonality of the poet, Eliot does not
identify with the subject, a retired, impecunious old man in a draughty,
decaying, rented house, “waiting for rain.” The experience is conveyed
through dramatic monologue. Raking the past brings no fond memories,
only the consciousness of failure and guilt, intensifying.his sense of
hopelessness about the future. It is the lesson of history that time as
well as the individual is irredeemable.
“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” The verse is tough and
sensuous at the same time, the imagery strikingly varied, showing the
influence of the Jacobean dramatists and the Metaphysical poets that
Eliot had been writing about. “History has many cunning passages,
contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.” ‘In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut,
flowering judas, To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk Among
whispers.”
The poetic vision climaxes with The Waste Land (1922). However, the
glory referred to belongs essentially to the past, with which the
boredom and the horror of the present is implicitly and unfavourably
compared. One of many such examples is the sequel to the seduction
scene. “When lovely woman stoops to folly (this is from Oliver
Goldsmith’s poem, which continues, “And finds too late that men betray.
What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her tears
away?”, whereas this continues) and Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the
gramophone.”
The tragic consequences of a seduction, as viewed from the moral and
social perspectives of the past, are contrasted with the casual reaction
of the victim of the present. Such seemingly judgemental echoes from the
literary past permeate the many and varied conversations, monologues and
narratives, involving multiple personalities, images, styles of
expression and situations, that make up what remains the landmark poem
of modern times.
They are too numerous to mention, but they combine to provide an
overall effect of futility and regret. This gigantic pastiche is
underpinned by repeated references to an ancient fertility myth and the
legendary search for the Holy Grail. There seems, however, to be no
redemption or regeneration for the cultural, social, moral and spiritual
waste land of the present. “Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there
is no water.”
The concluding admonition, “Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. (Give,
Sympathise, Control) and blessing, “Shantih shantih shantih” (Peace
peace peace) are only “fragments shored against the ruins” of
civilisation as represented by the present, and do little to dispel the
abiding sense of failure and unreality.
In Ash Wednesday (1930), which followed his religious conversion,
Eliot describes his spiritual quest. It is based on renunciation and the
tone is refreshingly personal and beautifully elegiac. “Because I do not
hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope I no longer strive to
strive towards such things”.
There is a yearning to experience the glory by itself and to be freed
from the boredom and the horror. “Consequently I rejoice, having to
construct something Upon which to rejoice...And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain.” Yet
the desired state of spiritual exaltation in never reached in this long
poem, and we are left with the sense that the poet is still experiencing
“the time of tension between dying and birth.”.
It is in “Marina”that a sense of spiritual renewal is finally
experienced, and this short poem abounds with the wonder and serenity of
it all: “This form, this face, this life Living to live in a world of
time beyond me; let me Resign my life for this life, my speech for that
unspoken, The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.”
The Four Quartets (1935-1942) are Eliot’s magnum opus.They a series
of meditations on the subject of time, the blurring of its distinctions
between past, present and future and the effect of this upon humanity.
Eliot is said to have written this cycle under the impact of of
Beethoven’s last (posthumous) quartets. Apart from the quasi-musical
structure wherein each quartet is divided into four or five movements
like those of Beethoven, this seems to have influenced the actual
expression of the poem. Eliot had said that Beethoven, in his last
quartets, seemed to be able to express that which was beyond speech, and
that he would like to be able to do likewise in his poetry.
And it is a fact that in the Four Quartets he has developed a
uniquely beautiful philosophical style, with which he seeks to discern a
pattern amid the seething flux of time and human life.
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first
time....A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than
everything).....When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned
knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.”
TS Eliot’s greatest legacy has been in “purifying the language of the
tribe,” in creating a modern poetic diction based on living speech,
shorn of the artifices of the past and flexible enough to meet the
expressive demands of modern life.
As far as vision is concerned, the “boredom and the horror” have,
perhaps, dominated too much and the “the glory” has been insufficiently
realised. His poetry, for all the magic of its utterance, fails to
achieve that moral and spiritual dimension whereby it can present us
with a valid criticism of life. The honesty and technical skill with
which that failure is portrayed, however, is an achievement in itself.
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