T.S. Eliot Flashcards
Eliot
‘Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal’
James Fraser
reincarnation, religion emerges out of a human need
Carl Jung
primordial ideas
T.S. Eliot, Nobel prize speech
‘When a poet speaks to his own people, the voices of all the poets of other languages who have influenced him are speaking also’
F. R. Leavis
Eliot has a ‘technique for sincerity’ -tries to capture all emotions and experiences.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock
‘The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes/ The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes’
‘there will be time/ to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet/ time to murder and create’
‘That is not what I meant at all/ That is not it. Not at all’
‘Would it have been worth while/ to have bitten off the matter with a smile/ to have squeezed the universe into a ball/ to roll it towards some overwhelming question’
The Hollow Men
in 5 parts
‘we are the hollow men/ we are the stuffed men/ leaning together/ headpiece filled with straw’
‘eyes I dare not meet in dreams/ In death’s dream kingdom’
‘This is the dead land’
‘Lips that would kiss/ Form prayers to broken stone’
‘In this valley of dying stars’
‘Falls the Shadow’ and the Lord’s Prayers
‘this is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but with a whimper’
describes scarecrows for bonfire night and then is a meditation on death
Journey of the Magi
From a very human perspective, describes the struggles they went through, says it was worth it but questions why they were brought there
‘ “ A cold coming we had of it/ Just the worst time of the year/ for a journey, and such a long journey’
‘Finding the place […] it was satisfactory’
‘were we lead there for Birth or a Death?’
‘this Birth was/ hard and bitter for us, like Death, our death’
Little Gidding
Anglican monastery 'Midwinter spring is its own season' 'prayer is more/ than an order of words' 'the communication/ of the dead is tongues with fire beyond the language of the living' 'This is the death of the air' 'the dark dove with flickering tongue' 'the eyes of a familiar compound ghost' 'To be redeemed from fire by fire' 'into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one'
Tradition and Individual Talent
‘No poet […] has his meaning alone’
we know their work
George Orwell
argues there has been a shift in Eliot’s poetry, preferred his earlier works
more positive, due to religious conversion
A Lyric
If Time and Space, as Sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we, So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century?
Marvell
‘Had we but world enough and time’
‘Let us roll all our strength and all/ Our sweetness up into one ball’
