Eliot and his age : T.S. Eliot's moral imagination in the twentieth century PDF
Preview Eliot and his age : T.S. Eliot's moral imagination in the twentieth century
Eliot and His Age EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 1 2/4/2014 5:05:46 PM EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 2 2/4/2014 5:05:46 PM Eliot and His Age T. S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century Russell Kirk Wilmington, Delaware EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 3 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM Copyright © 2008 ISI Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmit- ted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo- copy, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be in- vented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Kirk, Russell. Eliot and his age : T. S. Eliot’s moral imagination in the twentieth century / Russell Kirk ; introduction by Benjamin G. Lockerd, Jr. — 2nd ed.—Wilmington, Del. : ISI Books, c2008. p. ; cm. ISBN: 978-1-933859-53-8 Republication of the rev. ed. issued by Sherwood Sugden & Co. in 1984. 1st edition, 1971. Includes index. 1. Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888–1965—Ethics. 2. Didactic poetry, American—History and criticism. 3. Moral conditions in literature. 4. Ethics in literature. I. Lockerd, Benjamin G., 1950– II. Title. PS3509.L43 Z6914 2008 2007941667 821/.912—dc22 0807 Book Design by Jennifer M. Connolly Published in the United States by: ISI Books Intercollegiate Studies Institute Wilmington, Delaware 19807 www.isibooks.org Manufactured in the United States of America EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 4 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM To Monica, Cecilia, Felicia, and Andrea, four little charmers enchanted by Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 5 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 6 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM I’ll strip the ragged follies of the time Naked, as at their birth— —Ben Jonson But if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken; nature is disobeyed; and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow. —Edmund Burke We mean all sorts of things, I know, by Beauty. But the es- sential advantage for a poet is not to have a beautiful world with which to deal: it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugli- ness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory. —T. S. Eliot EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 7 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 8 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM Contents Introduction to New Edition xiii Benjamin G. Lockerd, Jr. Chapter 1: Eliot and the Follies of the Time 1 Chapter 2: The Burial of Matthew and Waldo 9 Sir Edmund Gosse and the Hippopotamus 9 The Youngest Eliot of St. Louis 18 Harvard, Babbitt, and Paris 21 Expatriation 29 Rebellion against the Abstruse 34 Chapter 3: Hell and Heartbreak House 43 Henry James’s Successor 43 Prufrock and Tradition 48 Gerontion and Servitude to Time 53 The Inner Waste Land and the Outer 61 Chapter 4: A Criterion in a Time of Hollow Men 77 Raising a Standard 77 Orthodoxy Is My Doxy 87 A Strong Cry from a City Cellar 95 Publishing and Placemen 101 EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 9 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM Eliot and His Age x Death’s Dream Kingdom 108 Chapter 5: Catholic, Royalist, Classicist 111 Pilgrim’s Progress Toward Ember Day 111 A Capacity for Salvation 119 Abide with Me 129 Regaining the Higher Dream 142 Chapter 6: The Poet, the Statesman, and the Rock 151 Commentaries on a Time of Troubles 151 Enfeebled Heroism and Small Dusty Creatures 159 No Man Is Saved by Poetry 166 Claims of Strange Gods 174 Do Lions Need Keepers? 182 Chapter 7: Christians and Ideologues in Heartbreak House 191 The Ideologue Against the Person 191 The Witness of Blood 201 The Loss of a Standard 208 Reunion at Heartbreak House 219 Chapter 8: The Communication of the Dead 231 Is a Christian Society Conceivable? 231 The Pleasing Dreadful Thought 239 Still Point and Numinous Depths 245 On the Edge of a Grimpen 249 Fare Forward, Voyagers 254 Redeemed from Fire by Fire 258 Chapter 9: Culture and Cocktail Parties 267 All Hallows’ Eve, 1948 267 Culture and Class 272 The Blessings of Cultural Diversity 280 EliotAndHisAge_Interior.indd 10 2/4/2014 5:05:47 PM
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