Thoughts on this. What is the connection to "Ritual to Romance"? Is this worth reading to gain a broader understanding of the poem? I know he mentions to read it in his own notes but I don't want to track it down if its a pile of shite.
Eliot seems to be a writer who is constantly referenced but in a very shallow way. I love the sound and feel of poems like the above and especially above / The Hollow Men but at times they can feel like a string of semi-religious abstractions. I feel quite far from understanding what he means by a lot of his quotes and so on. Maybe its appropriate that now you get weird single lines of his taken out of context and re-quoted (eg Apocalypse Now, all the "not with a bang but a wimper")?
/pollit/, what do you make of Eliot's anti Jewish views and links to fashyism? Was he just being a naughty modernist like Wyndham Lewis? It was never as overt as say Ezra Pound but you do get this strong sense of his views sometimes. There's something about his heterodox doubty Catholicism which is a common background to have for the far right. Is this important to understanding his work? As important as his religious views? Indistinguishable from his religious views? Is it a response to death or what?
Adrian Sanders
I like The Wasteland. Some of my old profs started a podcast named after it, Virtue in the Wasteland.
Jayden Richardson
While I find myself very sympathetic to Eliot's political and cultural views (Particularly his anti-Usury positions), I don't think that that should play a large role in the appreciation or understanding of any poet's work. There are many far left-wing poets and authors that are objectively brilliant.
Cameron Richardson
The man's a talentless meme >Missouri hick moves to England as an adult >English have no great writers left and are trying their best to deny the genius of Joyce >maybe this guy can pretend to be English >a member of the canon is born
Brody Kelly
The thing that separates Eliot from the pack is his undeniable poetic voice. The Four Quartets is the best example of it to me. WCW, H.D., and Yeats all had similarly complex aesthetic systems/more consistently great output, but the sheer beauty of the phrases he's managed makes him the one I go back to constantly just to read aloud.
Connor Ross
Favorite lines from the poem?
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
I feel like these lines right here epitomizes the whole damn thing and his early career.
Michael Myers
>anti Jewish views and links to fashyism Literally where do you even get this from
Jayden Anderson
>his undeniable poetic voice He has no voice of is own. Even minor poets like Swinburne have more of a voice.
Isaac Campbell
>I don't know the most basic facts about TS Eliot >let me barge into a thread anyway
Jaxon Howard
>Literally where do you even get this from Literally everything he wrote that wasn't poetry alongside a solid chunk of his poetry. Read any book about him.
