Why T.S. Eliot still matters | Hacker News Reader

Why T.S. Eliot still matters

standpointmag.co.uk

61 pointsapollinaire53 comments

I remember the first time I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It spoke to me, powerfully.

I tried The Wasteland next, but I didn't get it.

You have to be in the right frame of mind. I think it can help to look at it like a series of short stories, each one building up a psychological or philosophical premise under the surface that is then layered onto by the next.

Because, Cats.

In the public forum, Eliot’s stature does seem to be high. Yet I wonder how many people celebrating him are under the age of thirty. Readers over thirty are likely to have discovered him in decades past when, firstly, there was more of a culture of actual print books (Eliot’s long and intricate verse works best on the physical page), and secondly, much of the canon (and the whole idea of a canon) had not yet been so savagely criticized as white, male and elitist.

Readers under the age of thirty, on the other hand, may have grown up discovering poetry through a phone screen, and for readers who believe that favoring female and minority voices is a moral and ethical issue, Eliot’s male and privileged background works against him.

Thus, while Eliot’s stature is momentarily high because readers of an older generation with older values are presently in a position of authority and can celebrate him, I suspect a critical backlash in the years to come.

I think you're right, which saddens me. Is it not possible for a while elite male to write about the universal?

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

Who could remain unmoved by words like these, regardless of sex or color?

Right? David Bowie, for instance; incredibly influential to me despite his white male-ness.

David Bowie, extremely influential to me as well and not caring what color his skin was, what religion or any affiliation he had. The status quo is irrelevant to me, rather think for myself, stumble on stuff and appreciate it all by myself.

David Bowie still has considerable cultural weight even amomg some people distrustful of white males, purely because he presented as queer. This turns out to have been an act -- Bowie was comfortable hanging out with queer personalities but he himself was quite vanilla -- but that act was successful.

I discovered Eliot in my 20s. I’m still discovering him: I’ve been working my way through Four Quartets for about five years. Spent about 10 years discovering The Waste Land.

Yes he’s a privileged white male.

But even for younger readers, that’s not a huge turn off.

Besides, he may have been gay.

Regarding his public stature - he’s still present - more so than, say, Ezra Pound.

For example, “Better You Believe” (http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/better-you-believe...) is one of the most popular short stories of the past decade. It’s partially inspired by the Waste Land. Parts of Song if Ice and Fire also drew inspiration from it.

Some readers must have an enormous problem with literary output by 'anonymous'. They might even have to resort to judging a piece on its merit.

I view the waste land as a form of hiphop before the concept ever existed. It's the pinnacle of rhythmic language and I guess it came before the beat generation? But yea it's like reading Ulysses by James Joyce -- you're better off reading it with a guide

The Beats are in the 50s (e.g., Howl 1956, On the Road 1957). The Waste Land is 1922.

The Waste Land was heavily influenced by radio. It’s as if you’re flipping through different channels.

Also Eliot included rigorous footnotes. Still helps to have a guide, but the footnotes go a long way.

> for readers who believe that favoring female and minority voices is a moral and ethical issue

A strange morality indeed that mandates sexism and racism...

Indeed. It is produced by the addition of qualifiers to words like "justice." As if justice, equality, and such need qualifiers. It's about inverting oppression instead of getting rid of it. As if oppression is any better inverted.

What is strange about it? The male only canon is result of morality that mandated sexism. If that was not strange, adding some women into mix is not strange and existence of some (apparently minority) people who prefer women should not be strange either.

It comes down to the old question, "Do two wrongs make a right?"

If racism is a function of power, then calling for readers to eschew white male voices in favor of disempowered female and minority voices is arguably not a "wrong".

I think it's closer to The Trolley Problem.

Adding some women into the mix seems like a whole different kettle of fish than saying that for moral reasons people are going to have to stop enjoying white male authors!

(Also, I don't think the prevailing western attitude was that it was immoral to enjoy women authors. They certainly existed and were popular! Shelley, Bronte Sisteres, George Eliot, Jane Austen, probably lots more... I think the situation was more like sexism was a thing and not contraindicated by prevailing morality. To respond to that historical fact by postulating that it's now morally required to not enjoy white + male writers, as some sort of psychic vengeance of evening of the scales, continues to seem strange to me.)

(Of course, on an individual level, read whatever you want.)

The Brontes originally had to publish under male pseudonyms (or rather, pseudonyms of intentionally indeterminate sex). George Eliot is a male pseudonym. Jane Austen arguably wasn't considered serious literature until recent decades; previously her status was more similar to, say, Miss Read in that she was a writer of rather lightweight tales for mainly a female audience.

Perhaps we should republish Eliot under a female pseudonym?

But yes, fair points, and I'm not disputing there was sexism! But to describe the situation as "male only" is overstating things significantly.

Males currently have no problem to get printed, get publicity and get attention. It is just not true that it would be impossible or hard for male writer to get success.

So, there is not reason to reprint male under female pseudonym. With exception od romantic literature, male pseudonym is not disadvantage at all.

But, my original point was that there is nothing strange or unusual about morality that is sexist in one way or the other, that was actually norm.

How about: strange post-Enlightenment to see explicitly sexist morality become trendy? I take your point that viewed from a broader historical context it's not strange at all.

> strange post-Enlightenment to see explicitly sexist morality become trendy?

Enlightenment period ended in 1815, it is 2020 now.

post

but we're still living in an era largely defined by enlightenment ideas/ideals

(tho, increasingly less so, as evidenced by eg this thread)

Lots of Eliot's well-known work is a century old, plenty of it is short, most of it has been through the wringer of various forms of literary theory, interpretation and critique. I'm not sure what evidence there is the idea of a canon has come under some particularly 'savage' recent critique that would affect people under 30 especially or that such people don't read much on paper or that the work itself is particularly tied to paper in some important way. I think you're shoehorning some sort of generalized social critique/viewpoint of your own into the perception of Eliot and I can't see how it actually fits other than by generalities so mushy they can be made to fit anything.

> and for readers who believe that favoring female and minority voices is a moral and ethical issue, Eliot’s male and privileged background works against him.

I find it strange that you suggest younger readers would pass over Eliot given his race and background. If one is going to mix ethics and art, surely the fact that Eliot was an adamant anti-semite would be considered long before Eliot's race or background.

Even when Eliot was alive, there were calls from those in the currently "over thirty" crowd to discard Eliot (or fellow anti-semites like Ezra Pound) from literary study.

My own impressions of "under thirty readers" is far more favorable than yours. They seem as thoughtful as ever and take a very nuanced view of such issues. I think one can recognize the brilliance of Eliot's work, but also argue that time for literary study is limited at every level, so making cuts is inevitable. If we are making cuts anyway, arguing that diversity and ethical considerations are worth considering seems quite reasonable.

(or fellow anti-semites like Ezra Pound)

Not to make excuses for Eliot's anti-semitism but Pound was a raging fascist no mere 'fellow anti-semite'. A whole other level of ick.

The literary critic, Christopher Ricks, disputes that characterization of Eliot as an anti-semite. He wrote a book in defense of him here: https://www.amazon.com/T-Eliot-Prejudice-Christopher-Ricks/d...

Does he? While I haven't read T.S. Eliot and Prejudice my impression is that the book is almost entirely devoted to literary analysis and doesn't attempt to exonerate Eliot himself or draw any definite conclusions about his character.

Perhaps you mean Craig Raine's Defence of T. S. Eliot?

The thoughts of great literary critics not withstanding, my own conclusion is that I think several of Eliot's poems are anti-semitic in a rather straightforward way.

"And the Jew squats on the window sill, the owner,

Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,

Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47254/gerontion

There is no disputing Eliot's antisemtism. Eliot was born in the late 1800s. Back then pretty much everyone, especially the educated, were antisemites and racist. Even the "lovable" Albert Einstein was racist. It was a different world/time. And the racism of Eliot or Einstein doesn't detract from the work. You have to separate the art/science from the artist/scientist.

"Back then pretty everyone were antisemites and racist".

That's a pretty bold statement, but I will add that the modern state of Israel could not have come about without some key luminaries who stood up for the Jewish people. One being Benjamin Disraeli, UK prime minister. Among many others. In fact, it could be argued that the uk in the 1800s was one of the friendliest places for Jews to live and work.

Also, much of 19th century English literature has a history of jewish friendly works. Look at such works as George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda", William Blake's Jerusalem, Lord Byron's Hebrew Hymns.

"Older" values like an appreciation of brilliance, originality and beauty? In your ageist dismissal, you inadvertently do the young wise (who won't be so easily misled by similar prejudice) a disservice!

There will only be a critical backlash by people whose screwed-tight political blinkers do not permit them to see genius, whatever their age.

While I don't disagree with you, I think at some level we need to remove the "lens" with which we are appreciating poetry or any other art-form and to appreciate it for the art itself. In that regards his privileged upbringing or whiteness shouldn't take away from the merits of his actual poetry.

That's assuming he ever mattered in the first place, as good an example as any of begging the question.

He didn’t. He was a fad of high school English teachers in 2000-2005, so now a handful of 30-somethings think he was some kind of important figure. Silly.

> He didn’t. He was a fad of high school English teachers in 2000-2005

"The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922"

It’s hot takes like this that make me come to HN to read ppl’s opinions on literary figures. It’s as if the Nebraska Farm Report had a society weddings page.

Talking about 20th century critics and not mentioning Elliot is like talking about pop music in 1960s Hamburg and failing to mention the Beatles.

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. You've done it a lot, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How is it unsubstantive?

It is a shallow dismissal, snarky, and a non sequitur, for starters.

Should I find all the other comments that mimic mine in the past week to see if you’ve singled them out? There’s twitter threads full of them.

Never long dang you’re right. I won’t comment or submit anything again. I clearly don’t understand the criteria. Cheers.

You're entirely welcome to participate here, and it's not hard to understand the criteria, if you read the guidelines and take the intended spirit of the site to heart. Basically, we want to have a place on the internet that's good for curious conversation and manages to escape the default outcome of internet forums, which is to decline and eventually destroy themselves.

If you take a look at these links maybe the reason why we do things this way will get a little clearer, and if not, we're happy to answer any questions from users who sincerely want to use HN as intended.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

You will certainly find lots of comments that should have been moderated but weren't. That's because we don't come close to seeing everything here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

He wrote a whole collection about cats. Cats are like 56% of the internet right? Definitely still matters.

"...what can be saved from the ruins"

What ruins would this apply to now? I see that the mission statement of the magazine is "defending Western civilization". Erm...

Law of the jungle's where it's at.

The Waste Land might be the most pretentious thing I've ever read. It just oozes self-importance. I've never seen any work that could be described as great that has an overt peacocking quality to it.

I feel the same way about both Joyce and Eliot: they make their readers do a lot of the interpretative work that other authors do on behalf of their readers. Some people enjoy doing that work, and some don’t. I think the latter group gets frustrated when the former does that work and then proclaim it as the highest form of genius. Sure, it’s genius, but it’s not _more_ genius than certain approachable prose/poetry, it’s just a different kind.

If you think that's bad, try Byron. "Overt peacocking" has been a thing in poetry for centuries. The hiphop of our era is an example.

I have the opposite impression of Eliot though. I thought self-erasure was a core principle of his poetics.

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