T. S. Eliot (1888

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"Reading Gerontion" — 1947

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Biography

Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, essayist and playwright. He was a leading figure of modernist poetry in the English language where he reinvigorated the art through his use of language, writing style, and verse structure. He is also noted for his critical essays, which often re-evaluated long-held cultural beliefs.

Timeline

The story of T. S. Eliot, told in moments.

1888 Birth

Born Thomas Stearns Eliot in St. Louis, Missouri. His grandfather founded Washington University. His mother writes poetry. The family summers on the Massachusetts coast, where young Tom develops a lifelong attachment to the sea.

Did your mother's poetry plant the seed, or was it the sea? Was St. Louis too ordinary for the poet you'd become? When did you know you'd leave America?

1915 Event

Publishes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry magazine. He's 26 and living in London. Ezra Pound championed the poem to editors for a year before it found a home. "Do I dare to eat a peach?" Nobody in English poetry has sounded like this before.

What did 'Do I dare to eat a peach?' really mean? Was Ezra Pound championing your poem the break or the validation? Did Prufrock feel autobiographical at twenty-six?

1922 Event

Publishes The Waste Land in The Criterion. Four hundred and thirty-four lines. Pound cut it from twice that length. It opens: "April is the cruellest month." Critics are baffled and thrilled. It rewrites the rules of English-language poetry.

Is 'April is the cruellest month' the truest thing you ever wrote? What did Pound's ruthless editing teach you? Were you baffled by the critics being baffled?

1927 Life

Becomes a British citizen and converts to Anglo-Catholicism. He describes himself as "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion." Friends from his Harvard days are bewildered. He never moves back to America.

Was becoming British a rejection of America or an embrace of something else? Do classicist, royalist, Anglo-Catholic all mean the same thing for you? Did your Harvard friends' bewilderment bother you?

1948 Event

Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. The citation praises his "outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He also wins the Order of Merit from King George VI the same year.

Does a Nobel Prize change the poet or just the audience? Was receiving the Order of Merit the same year meaningful? Which recognition meant more -- literary or royal?

1965 Death

Dies of emphysema at his home in London. He's 76. Per his instructions, his ashes are interred at St. Michael's Church in East Coker, the Somerset village his ancestors left for America in the 1600s. A plaque reads: "In my beginning is my end." It's a line from his own poem.

Why East Coker, the village your ancestors left for America? Is 'In my beginning is my end' resignation or peace? Did you feel like a completed circle?

In Their Own Words (20)

My general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.

"Preface" in For Lancelot Andrewes (1928), 1928

Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith.

Letter to Richard Aldington (24 February 1927), 1927

Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness.

"The Contemporary English Novelist", La Nouvelle Revue française (1 May 1927), 1927

‘A cold coming we had of it,Just the worst time of the yearFor a journey, and such a long journey:The ways deep and the weather sharp,The very dead of winter.’

"Journey of the Magi" (1927), 1927

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

"Philip Massinger", a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920), 1920