What Specifically Set Apart Eliot From Enlightenment

Progressive, humanistic thinkers was his primary belief that perfection was reserved for God. The improvement of humanity could take place, but there would always be a flawlessness that is unattainable that the race could seek to as incentive for improving further. The imagination of Platonic absolute can be done but cannot be won. In the twentieth century the civilization of the West was far from the cultural ideal of Eliot. After his conversion, Eliot had the belief that the culture was falling apart not just because its tradition was abandoned, but also for its ignorance of Christianity. In accordance to his theory, the culture of Europe in the past two thousand years rested on the Christian foundation.

To Eliot, the alternatives for endurance were either the establishment of a new Christian society, or in the enacting of a positive pagan society. The Christian society that is new would not force its belief on all those living in it, but would instead run under the system of rigorous Christian value under the elite custodianship which is called as the Community of Christians. Eliot observes that modern society was being hostile to Christianity by promoting the aims un-Christian beliefs; so, society would have to be organized again to conform according to the Christianity. Moreover, in the interests to promote tradition and religion, a system of education which is of uniform nature would be executed. A National Church same to the Church of England would exist in tandem with it, but not under the authority of the state.

The Christian society of Eliot may appear to be a projection of his own thoughts and beliefs on the whole culture. Still, others gave the proposal of utopias, and they, too, drew from their personal dreams and beliefs. According to Eliot, nothing else would suffice in what appeared in an increasing manner to him to be bankrupt in a moral way. Eliot stated that social order of the Catholic is the most feasible form of social institution. In advocating for the order of the Catholic, he was not speaking either in an explicit or implicit way as an apologist of Public Christian but as an analyst of social forces. Critics like T. S. Eliot attempted to set everything right by restoring to man his true spiritual and moral dignity. In the words of Eliot romanticism became a heresy and in the nineteenth century, a new type of materialism had started that threatened to rob man of his personal freedom.

At this century’s dawn, man remained “dehumanized” that is they remained a plaything for the politicians and object of curious investigation for research of science. Eliot’s attempted through his writings to reinstate the glory, dignity and liberty of man, thus in turn he defended “the individual’s category in thought. He pleaded for a correct and realistic appraisal of the nature of human in all respects. The so called romanticists and idealists, while they spoke in favor of man, did not analyze nature of human in a correct way. But Eliot brought a doctrine of realistic nature in case of human nature as he brought attention to bear upon the dualism that is inherent at the heart of man as a good and evil in the battlefield and perceived life as a conflict among good and evil. Only by prayer, religious discipline and by the grace of the divine, man can keep the evil forces under his control. In his view of maturity, society is for the individual and the sacrificing of the individual must be done for the society.

So, human dignity does originate from the fact that man is a compact of the good and evil, finite and the infinite, of necessity and freedom, the natural and the supernatural, the eternal and the contingent and of spirit and matter. The achievement of Eliot lies in the dissemination and recognition of this concept of man (Eliot, 1960). T. S. Eliot can be considered as the spokesperson of his age though one of his great contributions consists in having to give expression to the feelings and dominant anxieties of his age. Through the way of his poetry the objectification of the inner struggle of man is done by him.

Without providing criticism or comment, the poems communicate the soul’s anguish and his great claim to originality consists in his recognition of the belief of artistic possibilities that sinfulness and anguish are intrinsic to the nature of human. He is said to have discovered methods of appropriate nature for expressing the modern predicament’s tragedy through the utilization of everyday imagery and conversational rhythm in poetry, the objective correlatives, the utilization of symbols and through the method of juxtaposing passages from some of the great works of the past and the present along with side by side of his own, that has given a new direction to literature and presents the life’s philosophy that is coherent.

Similar to Shakespeare, Eliot’s thought is also an accurate way of feeling and thinking. His ideas of philosophy, his capability for subtle analysis, his severity and lucidity of his style of prose that is widely admired, his power of communication of poetry and his power in synthesizing the opposites made a distinguished personality among the contemporary critics. Thomas Stearns Eliot was “one of the major poets of the twentieth century”, from the Modernist period, which is in between World War I and World War II. He was as well an eminent play write, essayist, social and literary critic. His birth place is St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States. He belonged to a prominent Brahmin family in Boston. He settled in England at the age of twenty five, in 1914. He married and settled there. He renounced his American passport at the age of 39, and became a British subject in the year 1927.

His poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”1915”, garnered widespread attention and was considered as a master piece of the Modernist movement. He also gained fame for his seven plays”. “For his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present day poetry”, The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to him in the year 1948 (Eliot, 1969). During 1933 Eliot accepted the “Charles Eliot Norton Professor Ship” offered by Harvard. His marriage with Vivienne had failed. When Eliot left for Harvard Vivienne was admitted to the Northumberland House mental hospital, stoke Newington, in the year 1938. She remained there till her death. At the age of 68, on 10th January 1957 Eliot married 30 years old Esme Valerie Fletcher, His secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949.

On 4th January, suffering from emphysema, Eliot died at his home in Kensington in London and at Golders Green crematorium he was cremated. Henry War Eliot (1843 – 1919), father of T. S. Elliot was a successful businessman. The Hydraulic Press Brick Company in St. Louis, president and treasurer was him. A poetess and a social worker (new in the early twentieth century), was T. S. Eliot’s mother, Charlotte Champ Stearns (1843 – 1929). He was the youngest among six children, four sisters and a brother. From a very early age he suffered from congenital double inguinal hernia. This disease limited his freedom as a child, thus he use to spend most of the time reading novels. This developed his love and passion for literature and writing. Eliot was conservative in his political and religious views and beliefs, but these ideas began to appear less pleasing and unacceptable in the post-war world. He did his schooling from Smith Academy in St. Louis and then attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts.

In the beginning of the twentieth century Eliot’s poems and short stories were all published and thus he chose writing for the rest of his life. His started studying at Harvard University in year 1906 and graduated later with a Bachelor of Arts degree. There professors renowned in literary criticism, philosophy and poetry influenced him greatly and had a huge contribution in shaping his literary career. Before living for France and the Sorbonne first studying philosophy Eliot was an assistant in philosophy for a year at Harvard. He came back to Harvard from 1911 to 1914. There he increases his knowledge by studying Sanskrit and reading Indian philosophy. While he was in Europe he finished his advanced degree at Harvard, but to take the final oral exam for his Ph.D. he could never go back to Harvard as World War I had started. He became a school teacher in London, England, and there he married Vivienne Haigh wood.

After some time he became a bank clerk and remained in the position until 1925 (Eliot, 1969). T. S. Eliot ‘lifelong friendship began at around this time with American poet Ezra Pound. He recognising Eliot’s poetic Genius worked for getting his poems published. After the first poem of Eliot’s important works and the first poem of that period, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, appeared in Poetry in 1915, Prufrock and Other Observations, Eliot’s first book of poems was published in 1970. With this collection Eliot was established as a leading poet of date. Besides working at his day job and writing poetry, writing reviews literary criticism kept Eliot busy. He gained same respect through his work by writing criticism field as his poetry. Despite of the promotion in his career, Eliot continued his writing which was passion. He wrote some great poems the time period of ten years, he wrote two poems and three journals about poems and poetry.

During “1930 to 1934” he wrote one poem “Ash Wednesday” and two journals “The Use of Poetry and the Use of criticism” and “After Strange Gods”. During the time period of 1940 to 1943, He wrote one poem, “Four Quartets” and one journal, “Notes towards the Definition of Culture”. Eliot’s early poems had a unique and compelling expression. His poems had mixed critical reception for example to some critics, like Edmund Wilson, Gilbert Seldes and Conrad Aiken Eliot’s poetry was one of the best poetry that have been written in English language while to others the poems were intentionally and intended for being understood by only people with elite knowledge or interest.

According to Charles Powell Eliot’s poems were not intelligent and could not be understood. The writers of Time magazine were perplexed by a challenging poem like “The Waste Land”. “Gerontion” was published by Eliot along with other poems in 1919. Unlike anything that has been ever written in the English language this poem was a blank verse interior monologue. This poem had already attracted enough attention towards Eliot’s literary art. In 1922 his poems “The Waste Land,” a colossal and complex investigation of the aftermath disillusionment of war was printed. While Eliot was writing this poem his marriage was at a sensible stage almost failing, and “nervous disorder were affecting both him and his wife (Eliot, 1945). Often thought of as the most influencing literary work of the twentieth century “The Waste Land” had almost quickly developed appreciators and cut like following from all corners of the world. Also different edition of the journal was brought out by the poet during the time period of its publication (1922 to 1939).

After living his bank post after two years, he joined the “Faber & Faber”, the publishing house where he remained for the rest of his career. There he shepherd many young poets through their writing abilities. During this time, in the year 1927 he was officially granted the British citizen ship. Eliot gave credit to Mr. John Middleton for pointing out to him the contentious and complex character of a problem. Thus the involvement of Eliot was seen in the discussions of the primary problems of life and thought in his essays of critical nature. The element of philosophy that is seen in the criticism of Eliot is his attempt for creating values in terms of which the relation of the work of art to art can be assessed. In accordance to A. G. George, The most crucial contribution of his criticism to the modern thought consist in the introduction the philosophy of life implicit that is in it. His vigor of the literary mind was same as the voyage of his philosophical mind.

The early criticism of Eliot shows him as a critic-poet and poet critic with a deep concern to defend poetry against any standards that is framed for judging its quality of merit. As a poet-critic in his young age, he wrote polemical essays in order to clarify his objectives as an artist, relating these to the analyzed and scrupulously examined works of the tradition of the past and recommending the critical and creative activities of himself and those contemporaries, like Ezra Pound. By becoming a part of the literary scene in English in the late twenties and early thirties, Stephen Spender conveyed that Eliot was found writing essays of literature of great interest and placed them on par with discussion of general problems of politics, sociology, education and culture. The first and foremost objective that runs through Eliot’s criticism is nothing but the attempt to escape from the subjective self into a world of objective values.

George Watson said that Eliot offered it a new range of possibilities of rhetoric that confirmed it in its elevating contempt for processes of history and yet reshaped its notion of period through a handful of institutions which are brilliant. This double resonance of a poet and a critic is said to have given the name of Eliot its authority, its place in the function of English literary dictators that begins with Ben Johnson and carries through the nineteenth century with the careers of those poet-critic theologians (Eliot, 1945). As a critic Eliot has his own limitations. At times he assumes an attitude of a hanging-judge and often his criticism is accompanied by religious and personal prejudices that block an honest and impartial estimate. Though, he does not judge everyone by the similar standards. In his later essays the note of didacticism can be seen and with the passage of time his faculties of critical nature were exercised in an increasing manner on problems of society. Critics have also discovered limitations with his style as too full of reservations, doubt and qualifications Though, such faults do not divert the greatness of Eliot as a critic.

The criticism of Eliot has revolutionized the great writers of the past three centuries. The recognition of the greatness of the poets who are the author of Metaphysical poems of the 17th century leads to the revival of the Metaphysical in the 20th century. The credit for the renewed interest in the dramatists of Jacobean period goes to Eliot. The restoration of Dryden and other poets in the Augustan period to their due place is done by Eliot. The essays written by him on Dante aroused curiosity for the middle ages in the later period. The novelty in his statements which is hidden in sharp phrases arrests and startles attention. According to Eliot’s viewpoint, the end of criticism is to bring readjustment among the old and the new. He conveys that from time to time it is convenient that some critic shall appear in the scene in order to review the past history of literature and set the poems and poets in a new order.

Such critics are found rarely as besides the ability for judgment, they must also possess powerful liberty of mind for identifying and interpreting its own category and values of admiration for their generation. As conveyed by John Hayward: As Matthew Arnold was such a critic as were Dryden, Coleridge, Johnson before him; and such, in his own time, is Eliot himself. The criticism of Eliot offers both reaction and reassessment to early writers. He mentioned himself as a classicist in literature. His crucial contribution is the reaction against humanism and romanticism which brought a classic revival in criticism and art. He rejected the view of the romantic poets in the perfectibility of the individual, gave stress to the doctrine of the original sin and also gave exposure to the futility of the faith of the romantics in the “Inner Voice”. Eliot conveys that instead of following his inner voice, a critic should follow the standards of objectivity and must conform to the tradition. A respect for order, a sense of tradition and authority is central to classicism of Eliot. He sought to correct the excesses of the intellectual and abstract school of criticism that is represented by Arnold. He also sought to elevate criticism to the level of science. In his logical attitude and in the attitude of objective nature, Eliot has resemblance to Aristotle in a close manner. A. G. George said that (Eliot, 2014).

The theory of Eliot regarding in the impersonality of poetry is the greatest theory on the nature of the process after the romantic conception of poetry of Wordsworth. Poetry was the medium of personality and expression of emotions for the romantics. In the past Wordsworth conveyed that poetry was an overflow of powerful emotions and its origin can be traced in the Emotions that are recollected in the tranquility. Eliot rejected this view and says that poetry is not a medium of personality and emotion but instead it is an attempt to escape from them. The poet is only an agent of catalyst that fuses emotions of varied nature into new wholes. He differentiated between the poet’s emotion and the emotion of the artist, and points out that the role of criticism is to turn attention from the poet to his poetry.

The view of Eliot on the nature of process of poetry is revolutionary in an equal way. In the viewpoint of his, poetry is an organization and not an inspiration. The mind of the poet is similar to a vessel in which are stored numerous emotions, feelings and experiences. The process of poetry fuses these different emotions and experiences into new wholes.