Eliot's dark angel : intersections of life and art

293 Pages·1999·18.16 MB·English

by  Eliot

ELIOT' S DARK ANGEL

Eliot's Dark Angel
INTERSECTIONS OF LIFE AND ART
RONALD SCHUCHARD
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1999 by Ronald Schuchard
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schuchard, Ronald.
Eliot's dark angel : intersections of life and art
/ Ronald Schuchard.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-510417-X; 0-19-514702-2 (pbk)
1. Eliot.T. S. (Thomas Stearns). 1888-1965—Psychology.
2. Eliot,T. S. (Thomas Stearns}. 1888-1965—Knowledge—Popular
culture. 3. Poetry—Authorship—Psychological aspects. 4. Poets,
American—20th century—Psychology. 5. Popular culture in
literature. I. Title.
PS3509.L43Z86352 1999
821'.912—dc21 98-54730
Frontispiece: Saint Sebastian and the Angel,
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
FOR A. WALTON LITZ
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iwish to express my deepest thanks to Mrs.Valerie Eliot for her interest and assis-
tance during the preparation of this book, for her permission to examine re-
stricted materials, and for allowing me to quote from unpublished writings by
T. S. Eliot in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library,Yale University; the Berg Collection of English and American
Literature, the NewYork Public Library, Astor, Lenox andTilden Foundations; the
Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library; the Modern Archive Centre,
King's College Library, Cambridge; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research
Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Houghton Library, Harvard University;
the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections,
Princeton University Library, and the Herbert Read Archives, McPherson Library,
University of Victoria, British Columbia. All such quotations are reprinted by per-
mission of Mrs.Valerie Eliot and Faber and Faber Ltd., © Mrs.Valerie Eliot, 1999,
and the respective libraries. I am further grateful to Mrs. Eliot and to Faber and
Faber for permission to quote generously from numerous uncollected literary
writings by T. S. Eliot, and for permission to quote from The Waste Land: A Facsim-
ile and Transcript by T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot. Material is reprinted by per-
mission of Faber and Faber, Ltd. from the following books by T. S. Eliot: After
Strange Cods; The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot; For Lancelot Andrewes; In-
ventions of the March Hare: Poems 1900—1917; Knowledge and Experience in the Philosphy
of F.H. Bradley;The Letters of T.S. Eliot, vol. I; On Poetry and Poets; The Sacred Wood,
second edition; Selected Essays ;To Criticize the Critic, The Use of Poetry and the Use of
viii Acknowledgments
Criticism, second edition; The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry. Versions of some sec-
tions of this book first appeared in ELH, the Modern Schoolman, Orbis Litterarum,
PMLA, the Review of English Studies, and the Southern Review. Versions of some
paragraphs in the prelude first appeared in Yeats: An Annual of Textual and Critical
Studies, the Recorder, and Princeton University Library Chronicle. I am grateful to the
respective editors for permission to reprint the material.Versions of other sections
first appeared in T. S. Eliot: Essays from the Southern Review, ed. James Olney (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press 1988); The Southern Review and Modem Literature,
1935-1985, ed. Louis P. Simpson, James Olney, and Jo Gulledge (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press 1988); The Placing of T.S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears
Brooker (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press 1991); Words in
Time: New Essays on Eliot's Four Quartets, ed. Edward Lobb (London: Athlone
Press 1993); Modernist Writers and the Marketplace, ed. Ian Willison, Warwick Gould,
and Warren Chernaik (London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press 1996). I
am grateful to the respective editors and publishers for permission to reprint this
material.
For assistance in locating Eliot's syllabuses and records relating to his Exten-
sion lecturing, I am grateful to the late F. W. Jessup and A. E. W Ingram of the
Department of External Studies, Oxford University; T. F. Evans and J. M. Pavey
of the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of London, and A.R.
Neate of the Greater London Record Office. I am also grateful to Sharon Adam-
czak Schmidt, archivist for the Harcourt Brace and Company archives in Or-
lando, Florida, for providing me with copies of correspondence related to the
publication of Selected Essays and for permission to quote from archival material.
I should like to thank librarians Cathy Henderson, Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center, University of Texas, and Eric R. Nitschke, Woodruff Library,
Emory University, for valuable research assistance. I am indebted to Richard
Mangan, administrator of the Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson Theatre
Collection, and to Max Tyler, historian of the British Music Hall Society, for pro-
viding me with photographic illustrations of music-hall performers.
For assistance and advice of various kinds I am indebted to the late William
Arrowsmith;John Bodley, Faber and Faber;Jewel Spears Brooker, Eckerd College;
Miriam Chirico, Emory University; T. Susan Chang, Oxford University Press; the
late Alan Cohn; Ann Margaret Daniel, University of Richmond; Stephen Enniss,
Emory University; Edward Lobb, Queen s University, Kingston, Ontario; Thomas
Pinney, Pomona College; Christopher Ricks, Boston University, and Chris But-
tram Trombold, Sam Houston State University. Warwick Gould, Programme Di-
rector of the Institute of English Studies, and Terence Daintith, Dean of the
School of Advanced Study, University of London, provided me with a visiting re-
search fellowship and facilities that enabled me to bring this study to completion.
The Emory University Research Committee and Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences further supported the preparation of this volume. I owe thanks to A.Wal-
ton Litz of Princeton University for persuading me to pause and put together in
book form my ongoing study of Eliot's life work. My intellectual and scholarly
debt to Professor Litz over twenty-five years of discussing modern literature to-
gether is only faintly marked in the dedication. Each chapter of this book bears the
impress of my most discerning reader and critic, Keith Schuchard.
CONTENTS
Abbreviations xi
Prelude: The Dark Angel 3
One: In the Lecture Halls 25
Two: Hulme of Original Sin 52
Three: "Our mad poetics to confute":
Laforgue and the Personal Voice 70
Four: The Savage Comedian 87
Five: In the Music Halls 102
Six: The Horrific Moment 119
Seven: First-Rate Blasphemy 131
Eight: "All Aboard for Natchez, Cairo and St. Louis":
The Journey of the Exile in Ash-Wednesday 148