There was an especially interesting episode of '15 Minute Film Fanatics' about Miazyaki. It argued that the progression in movies like Spirited Away is not plot progression but image progression. One picture leads to another. Perhaps Eliot is like that.
Wow. I love your argument, and even more your severe qualification, almost destruction. I need to find time to grapple with these poems in order, and your comments. Although, as an aside, I'm getting weary of all alienation, all meaninglessness, all the time, though I've written more than a little on our discontents with this civilization. Anyway, fantastic introduction. Thank you.
All the major Eliot you list plus 4 Quartets has been part of my mental furniture for 50 years but never looked closely into Gerontion so thanks. Presumably a depth of allusion to explore: I just looked up the epigraph "thou hast nor youth nor age" which is Shakespeare Measure for Measure the Duke consoling Claudio who is to be executed in the morning. For a smaller scale entry to Eliot I do commend 'Rannoch by Glencoe' which I wrote about in a lightweight way https://aboutmountains.substack.com/p/t-s-eliot-on-rannoch-moor but would love your serious account of!
I looked up "backward devils." That seems to be an allusion to Inferno XX, where false prophets' heads have been twisted to the rear so they are forced to walk backwards. That image reminds me in turn of Walter Benjamin's angel of history: it flies backwards, its hands raised to its face to conceal the ruins piling up before its eyes.
Well but those were damned souls rather than devils (4th Gulph of the 8th Circle, just looked it up...) Googling, I find the comment that compared to Prufrock, "the allusions and pastiche [are] still more private and unsusceptible to ‘public’ explanation". Gerontion was originally planned as a prelude to 'The Waste Land' and there are some cross-echoes, eg in waiting for the rain. The use eg of 'cunning' is said to echo Jacobean tragedy. The 'Hot Gates' are Therempylae but what are the other two battles? 'Knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, bitten by flies' sounds like somewhere specific. Ah, how about the 'Battle of Noddle's Island' at Boston 1775. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chelsea_Creek
When I first read "Gerontion" in my callow youth, I didn't know enough to begin to understand it. I rather disliked the impersonation of world-weary age, but that of course didn't keep me, a teenager, from doing the same thing in a superficial way: it was a contagious pose. Now, rereading it for the first time in many years, I noticed "wilderness of mirrors," a striking phrase that entered the language of espionage and books about intelligence and counterintelligence via James Jesus Angleton.
Even though the sketch of Eliot's history through "Ash Wednesday" may be over simplified, I think it would be quite useful in an introduction to Eliot. Then follow the 10 years leading up to "East Coker," the first of the Four Quartets. One of my favorite stories about reading poetry comes from Helen Gardner's Norton Lectures, published as "In Defence of the Imagination": "On that dreary day in late March 1940," she wrote, during "the most dispiriting period of the war" when nothing was going right and on one trusted the government, "I found myself reading a poem ["East Coker"] that offered no easy comfort, but only the true comfort of hearing a voice speaking out of the darkness without cynicism and without despair." She lectured on the poem shortly afterwards: "I talked about the poem for a quarter of an hour and then read it. It was plain by the absolute silence with which it was listened to that it spoke to the condition of many present as it did mine."
It turns out that Eliot and Angleton were friends in some way. "Gerontion" was recited at his funeral. As an undergrad at Yale in the 30's, he and his roommate Reed Whittemore founded and edited Furioso, a poetry journal that published Pound, Archibald MacLeish, and e. e. cummings (source: Edward Jay Epstein, "James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right?").
"I gave up on the poem when I was younger, deciding it was a failure.... "
I was pleased to read this, because I long ago gave up on it, too, though I assumed the fault lay with me, not the poem. It wasn't that I didn't like Eliot in general, as I was thrilled by "Prufrock" and others when I first encountered them in my teens. But this one defeated me. Still pretty much does. Part of the reason, I see now, is that I just couldn't situate this old fellow in any time or place. And had no idea whether most of the various people named were historical figures whom I would recognize if I were better educated, or just more or less throwaway inventions. And there isn't, to my taste, much in the details to make up in pleasure what I'm missing in intelligibility, as there is in "The Waste Land." The best I can say now is that I see more good bits than I used to.
I find Eliot very difficult, and love his work very much. I had the privilege of doing a peer review of one of G. Doug Atkins' books about Eliot, which brought to a deep appreciation of Eliot's brilliance. I don't half understand what is going on in this poem, but the first read this morning (it's been a long time since I read it) gave me chills -- it seems to be one of those poems whose images just keep coming and coming and whether you understand them or not you are overwhelmed by some (perhaps indefinable) emotion. Your explication here is very helpful and made the second read more fruitful without loss of the initial emotional reaction. Thank you!
For thirty years, I have thought, “I really enjoy reading Joseph Bottum, but ‘What T.S. Eliot Almost Believed’ was a surprisingly huge misunderstanding of Eliot.” It is so rare for people to write an essay saying, “Thirty years ago, I was wrong.” So, you can imagine my joy in reading this. To celebrate, I am off to go pre-order the new collection of the Christmas hits.
I have to say, of all the poets my friends endlessly rave about, T.S. Eliot is the one I still struggle with the most. I greatly appreciate your elucidating essays.
There was an especially interesting episode of '15 Minute Film Fanatics' about Miazyaki. It argued that the progression in movies like Spirited Away is not plot progression but image progression. One picture leads to another. Perhaps Eliot is like that.
Wow. I love your argument, and even more your severe qualification, almost destruction. I need to find time to grapple with these poems in order, and your comments. Although, as an aside, I'm getting weary of all alienation, all meaninglessness, all the time, though I've written more than a little on our discontents with this civilization. Anyway, fantastic introduction. Thank you.
All the major Eliot you list plus 4 Quartets has been part of my mental furniture for 50 years but never looked closely into Gerontion so thanks. Presumably a depth of allusion to explore: I just looked up the epigraph "thou hast nor youth nor age" which is Shakespeare Measure for Measure the Duke consoling Claudio who is to be executed in the morning. For a smaller scale entry to Eliot I do commend 'Rannoch by Glencoe' which I wrote about in a lightweight way https://aboutmountains.substack.com/p/t-s-eliot-on-rannoch-moor but would love your serious account of!
I looked up "backward devils." That seems to be an allusion to Inferno XX, where false prophets' heads have been twisted to the rear so they are forced to walk backwards. That image reminds me in turn of Walter Benjamin's angel of history: it flies backwards, its hands raised to its face to conceal the ruins piling up before its eyes.
Well but those were damned souls rather than devils (4th Gulph of the 8th Circle, just looked it up...) Googling, I find the comment that compared to Prufrock, "the allusions and pastiche [are] still more private and unsusceptible to ‘public’ explanation". Gerontion was originally planned as a prelude to 'The Waste Land' and there are some cross-echoes, eg in waiting for the rain. The use eg of 'cunning' is said to echo Jacobean tragedy. The 'Hot Gates' are Therempylae but what are the other two battles? 'Knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, bitten by flies' sounds like somewhere specific. Ah, how about the 'Battle of Noddle's Island' at Boston 1775. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chelsea_Creek
When I first read "Gerontion" in my callow youth, I didn't know enough to begin to understand it. I rather disliked the impersonation of world-weary age, but that of course didn't keep me, a teenager, from doing the same thing in a superficial way: it was a contagious pose. Now, rereading it for the first time in many years, I noticed "wilderness of mirrors," a striking phrase that entered the language of espionage and books about intelligence and counterintelligence via James Jesus Angleton.
Even though the sketch of Eliot's history through "Ash Wednesday" may be over simplified, I think it would be quite useful in an introduction to Eliot. Then follow the 10 years leading up to "East Coker," the first of the Four Quartets. One of my favorite stories about reading poetry comes from Helen Gardner's Norton Lectures, published as "In Defence of the Imagination": "On that dreary day in late March 1940," she wrote, during "the most dispiriting period of the war" when nothing was going right and on one trusted the government, "I found myself reading a poem ["East Coker"] that offered no easy comfort, but only the true comfort of hearing a voice speaking out of the darkness without cynicism and without despair." She lectured on the poem shortly afterwards: "I talked about the poem for a quarter of an hour and then read it. It was plain by the absolute silence with which it was listened to that it spoke to the condition of many present as it did mine."
It turns out that Eliot and Angleton were friends in some way. "Gerontion" was recited at his funeral. As an undergrad at Yale in the 30's, he and his roommate Reed Whittemore founded and edited Furioso, a poetry journal that published Pound, Archibald MacLeish, and e. e. cummings (source: Edward Jay Epstein, "James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right?").
"I gave up on the poem when I was younger, deciding it was a failure.... "
I was pleased to read this, because I long ago gave up on it, too, though I assumed the fault lay with me, not the poem. It wasn't that I didn't like Eliot in general, as I was thrilled by "Prufrock" and others when I first encountered them in my teens. But this one defeated me. Still pretty much does. Part of the reason, I see now, is that I just couldn't situate this old fellow in any time or place. And had no idea whether most of the various people named were historical figures whom I would recognize if I were better educated, or just more or less throwaway inventions. And there isn't, to my taste, much in the details to make up in pleasure what I'm missing in intelligibility, as there is in "The Waste Land." The best I can say now is that I see more good bits than I used to.
I find Eliot very difficult, and love his work very much. I had the privilege of doing a peer review of one of G. Doug Atkins' books about Eliot, which brought to a deep appreciation of Eliot's brilliance. I don't half understand what is going on in this poem, but the first read this morning (it's been a long time since I read it) gave me chills -- it seems to be one of those poems whose images just keep coming and coming and whether you understand them or not you are overwhelmed by some (perhaps indefinable) emotion. Your explication here is very helpful and made the second read more fruitful without loss of the initial emotional reaction. Thank you!
For thirty years, I have thought, “I really enjoy reading Joseph Bottum, but ‘What T.S. Eliot Almost Believed’ was a surprisingly huge misunderstanding of Eliot.” It is so rare for people to write an essay saying, “Thirty years ago, I was wrong.” So, you can imagine my joy in reading this. To celebrate, I am off to go pre-order the new collection of the Christmas hits.
Thank you, Joseph. Fine analysis. My intuition is that phase two Eliot is something like: only forgiveness, after such knowledge.
I have to say, of all the poets my friends endlessly rave about, T.S. Eliot is the one I still struggle with the most. I greatly appreciate your elucidating essays.