Poet T. S. Eliot

¶ … Sketch of T.S Eliot The Life of T.S Eliot Eliot was born in Missouri in 1888. He studied philosophy and logic at various universities including Harvard. After graduating he spent a year at Sorbonne in Paris reading French literature. He then returned to Harvard where he studied epistemological theory, Indian languages and metaphysics. He later transferred to Oxford where he studied Greek philosophy (Kamm 143). During these years of study he also wrote many of his poems and several books of his poetry were published.

These included the poems 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' 'Preludes,' 'Portrait of a Lady' and 'Rhapsody at Midnight.' His books of poetry included Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917, Poems in 1919 and Ara Vos Prec in 1920 (Kamm 143). Eliot also offered a criticism of literature in his book The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism published in 1920 (Kamm 143). He was married in 1915, with his wife suffering from a long illness in 1920 that forced him to stop writing.

He returned to writing in 1922 with the publication of 'The Waste Land' (Kamm 143). In 1925 he became the director and editor of Faber & Faber, a London-based publisher. He remained in this role for the rest of his life, where he published a long list of now well-known poets (Kamm 143). In 1925 he published a collection of his poems titled Poems, 1909-1925. In 1927 he became a British national and also joined the Church of England. In 1944 he published four poems that represented his spiritual and religious changes in the book Four Quartets.

In his later years, Eliot focused more on writing plays. While several plays had some success such as The Confidential Clerk and The Cocktail Party, he was not well-known for his plays and much better known for his poetry (Kamm 143). In 1929 he wrote a collection of rhymes titled Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. These rhymes were later adapted to the musical known as Cats, first produced in 1981 (Kamm 143). Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the OM in 1948 (Kamm 143).

Writing Career Eliot was known for his poetry, his plays and his literary criticism. In order of impact he is most important as a poet, second as a literary critic and thirdly as a playwright. Eliot's first successful poem was 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' published in Prufrock and Other Observations.

Other well-known poems included in this book included 'Portrait of a Lady' and 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night.' This book of poems resulted in Eliot becoming known as the father of Modernism, where Modernism is broadly defined as a term applied to "experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature of the early 20th century" (Baldick 140).

Eliot, along with others, was responsible for experimenting with new forms of poetry that rejected the traditional forms, this especially included replacing "the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions" (Baldick 140). Also regarded as one of Eliot's best works is The Waste Land. This poem was written after a long break from writing during Eliot's wifes' illness. The poem details the journey of a human soul seeking redemption. The poem also makes great use of historical and literary allusions, something characteristic of Eliot's poetry.

Eliot also had an impact on poetry as a critic. His work The Sacred Wood contained various essays challenging the poets of the past and offering his own views on poetry. These essays had a significant impact on changing the future of poetry, with many of his criticisms accepted by the writing world, creating a new era in Modernist poetry.

Themes Eliot's themes in his early works include "the breakdown of civilization and its values in the cultural 'Jazz Age' disarray of the Post World War I era" (Moore & Moore 136). This theme is characterized by his first major poem, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. In this poem we see the major theme of human interaction and the reality of man in the society of the time. As Myers says "J. Alfred Prufrock is not just the speaker of one of Eliot's poems.

He is the Representative Man of early Modernism. Shy, cultivated, oversensitive, sexually retarded (many have said impotent), ruminative, isolated, self-aware to the point of solipsism" (Myers 122). Eliot's themes are reflected in the response to his early poems, as Myers describes "the speakers of all these early poems are trapped inside their own excessive alertness.

They look out on the world from deep inside some private cave of feeling, and though they see the world and themselves with unflattering exactness, they cannot or will not do anything about their dilemma and finally fall back on self-serving explanation" (Myers 122). We see in Eliot's poems a focus on a human observing the world. Unlike the poems of the times before, there is no logical event in the poem, instead the fragmentation offers a more realistic view of human experience.

In the poem we see Prufrock trying to communicate to his lady. The message of the poem is that he can never fully share his meaning with his woman, as they are separate beings and can never truly share the same thoughts. This has a meaning greater than just the man/woman relationship and extends to the whole of humankind, where each person is essentially alone. This is.