Eliot TS
NAME: Eliot, Thomas Stearns
ACHIEVEMENTS: Major 20th century poet.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: September 26, 1888, St. Louis, MO
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: January 4, 1965, London, England. Aged 76
DISCIPLINE: Poet/Dramatist/Editor/Critic
FIELD: Literature
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Henry Ware Eliot; Charlotte Champe Stearns
SIBLINGS: Henry; five older sisters
SPOUSE: 1) Vivienne Haigh-Wood. 2) Valerie Fletcher
CHILDREN: None
EDUCATION: Smith Academy, St. Louis; Milton Academy, Milton, MA; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
MAJOR WORK: Poetry: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "The Waste Land"; "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", "Four Quartets"; Plays: "Murder in the Cathedral", "The Cocktail Party"
LIFE AND TIMES:
At Harvard, Eliot studied under <taught by> Santayana* and <taught by> Babbitt*, who interested him in the culture of ancient civilizations. He spent 1910-11 in Paris, where he attended <taught by> Bergson's* philosophy lectures on the progressive evolution of consciousness. During this time, he wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady", both received well in literary circles.
In 1911, Eliot returned to Harvard, where, still under the influence of Bergson, he wrote a critique on the psychology of consciousness. He read extensively on anthropology and religion and studied Sanskrit, the language of the ancient Indian religious texts.
In 1914, on a travel fellowship, he went to London, where he met <encouraged by> Pound*, who was leading a movement to modernize poetry. Pound was impressed by Eliot's poetry and encouraged him to experiment with verse.
In 1917, with financial assistance from Pound, Eliot published his first volume of poetry, "Prufrock and Other Observations". Through philosopher <a pal of> Russell*, whom he had met at Harvard, he met the writers and artists of the "Bloomsbury set," including <a pal of> Woolf* and <a pal of> Keynes*. Through Pound, he met avant-garde artists such as Irish poet <met> Yeats* and the English painter Wyndham Lewis.
In 1920, in "The Sacred Wood", a volume of criticism, Eliot set out his view that poets should be free to use any material, whether from their own experience, from history or from reading, and that they should write freely, incorporating changes of style and even the use of foreign languages. During this period, he met <a pal of> Joyce, J* and agreed to proof-read Joyce's experimental novel, "Ulysses".
Eliot had a nervous breakdown in 1921, and while recovering in Lausanne, Switzerland, he completed his long poem "The Waste Land", one of his most famous works. The legend of the search for the Holy Grail provided a loose link for a series of vignettes based on Eliot's life in London. His style varied from the intensely poetical to the conversational, and the text was full of allusions, quotations, and parodies of other writers.
In 1922, he wrote an essay, "Ulysses, Order and Myth" in which he associated himself and Joyce with Albert Einstein. Also in 1922, he became the editor of a new literary journal, the "Criterion", and gathered together a distinguished list of contributors from all over Europe, including Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello, French poet <published> Paul Valery*, Yeats, <published> E.M. Forster* and Woolf.
In 1925, Eliot published another collection of his poems, which included "The Hollow Men", a sequel to "The Waste Land". In 1928, he became a British citizen. Over the next few years, his writing became more religious in tone, culminating in the poem: "Ash Wednesday" (1930). In 1932, he published parts of an experimental play, "Sweeney Agonistes", which he had begun writing in the 1920s.
In 1935, his play, "Murder in the Cathedral", debuted in Canterbury Cathedral. A volume of collected poems in 1936 included: "Burnt Norton", a long meditative poem that set the tone for the poetry Eliot wrote over the next 10 years. His play, "The Family Reunion", in which he attempted to deal with Christian redemption in a contemporary setting, was staged in London in 1939, but was not well received.
In 1943, Eliot published "Four Quartets", which included "Burnt Norton" and three new poems. One, "East Coker", referred to the village from where Eliot's 17th-century ancestors set sail for America. Another, "Dry Salvages", drew on his boyhood sailing experiences along the Mississippi and in Massachusetts. The last poem, "Little Gidding", referred to a 17th-century Anglican religious community in Little Gidding, near Cambridge. The "Four Quartets" became Eliot's most famous work, but it got mixed reviews from <mixed reviews from> Leavis* and others.
"The Cocktail Party", a modern version of the ancient Greek play "Alcestis" by Euripides, came out in 1947 and was a popular success in both Britain and on Broadway. But his later plays, "The Confidential Clerk" (1953) and "The Elder Statesman" (1958), also based on Greek dramas, were not successful. In 1948, Eliot received the Nobel prize.
ASSESSMENT: One of the foremost poets of the 20th century whose work influenced the development of poetry in Britain and the U.S.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He knew the work of <knew work of> Verlaine*
He was a friend of <a pal of> Morrell*, <a pal of> Stravinsky* and <a pal of> Spender*
<a fan was> Ford Madox Ford* admired his work
He visited <visited> Stein*
<published by> William Carlos Williams* published his early work
He met <met> Kokoschka* and <met> Perelman*
He heard <met> Sitwell* do a poetry reading
He taught <taught> Betjeman*
ONELINER: TS Eliot, major modern poet
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ackroyd, Peter, T.S. Eliot, Penguin Books Ltd., London, 1984.