T S Eliot and WWI

[Elsa Franker]

Hello all, While struggling to understand T S Eliot´s poem The Waste Land,  it struck me that I haven´t seen any WWI poetry from his pen. He settled in England in 1914 and worked in London so he can hardly have been unaware of what happened around him. Does anyone know if Eliot wrote any WWI poetry at all? It would be interesting to know, as I will be discussing Eliot at a seminar later in the week. Thanks for your help. Best Elsa

[Bradley Omanson]

"The Waste Land" itself has struck more than one critic as being about the war, or certainly much influenced by it. 'Rats alley' and all that.

bj

Hello all,

Thanks for your help.

Best

Elsa

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[Margaret Crane]

Dear Elsa

 

We had an interesting submission to Siegfried's Journal, about eighteen months ago, suggesting that Eliot was less immune to the War than his writings might lead one to believe. I shall have to ask the author if I can post it on this site, but I think there is a good chance that he will let us do so.

 

Meg

 

 

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[Elsa Franker]

Hello Bradley,   Many thanks. I´d never thought about reading The Waste Land as a war poem, but that gives it quite another aspect. I must admit I still have some difficulties in understanding it fully - if I ever will be able to. But I will try this reading of it.   On the other hand, the title itself, The Waste Land, would be an indication. I will try suggesting this to our tutor at the seminar later this week. I will tell you about his reaction to it.   Best   Elsa --- On Sun, 24/10/10, Bradley Omanson <ski...@labyrinth.net> wrote:

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[Elsa Franker]

Dear Meg,   This sounds most interesting indeed. Let´s hope the author of the article will let you post it onto our site. That would give me quite another view of T S Eliot.   But it would have been more than astonishing if he hadn´t reacted in some way to a war that affected the whole country where he was living.   Best   Elsa --- On Mon, 25/10/10, Margaret Crane <mmcc...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:

[David Hughes]

and, of course, by the time of The Waste Land nearing completion, his own country was in it [or almost in it] too. I wonder what Ezra Pounds influence might have been on this aspent of the 'final' version?
 
David
 

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Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:15:37 +0100
From: elsaf...@yahoo.co.uk

[Elsa Franker]

Hello,   With this background you have given me, The Waste Land now makes much more sense to me. Wouldn´t the title itself give an indication: what could waste a land worse than a war? Thanks all for pointing this out to me, I didn´t make that connection.   Best   Elsa --- On Mon, 25/10/10, David Hughes <hafo...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Margaret Crane]

Although there is no transparently obvious reference to the War in The Waste Land, I think that there are several indirect references. For example, the speaker in the first section seems to be a member of some uprooted European royal family:

 

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's ...

 

I also think that the line "I had not thought death had undone so many" - although I realise that it originated with Dante - could not possibly have failed to be connected, by any reader in 1922, with the recent war.

 

In the second section, "Lil's husband" has been recently demobbed ("He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time"). Then there is "the silk hat on a Bradford millionaire" in the third section - Wilfred Owen writes, in one of his letters, of the Leeds and Bradford millionaires (war profiteers) taking the air at Scarborough in 1918. And in the final section there is the apocalyptic vision of imperial cities falling, from ancient times to the present and the future:

 

What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London

 

The collapse of "Vienna" must surely be a war reference.

 

I have now remembered that there is an online version of the article I mentioned. It can be found on George Simmers's blog at http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/tseliots-letter-to-the-nation/

[David Hughes]

"Rats' Alley, where the dead men left their bones" ?   and the part you quote about "the city over the mountains" which "cracks and reforms" is surely the Russian capital, bursting "in the violet air". I will have to look up a long-lost essay by one of my sixth formers, but I believe that even the poem's centre on Tiresias is WW1.
 
The other thing which the British are too apt to pre-suppose is the date of the ending of the war. Clumsily, we put it on 11.11.11 - but that, of course, was only the day of an ARMISTICE, and that date which largely applied on the Western Front. The message did not reach the German commander in Africa for another fortnight (check my references: I'm bluffing) and the Eastern Front was still only just starting to sort out who was fighting who, let alone who was stopping or when. Quite a large contingent of the British Imperial Armies tried to join in that scrapping by going there via Vladivostok. I do think this whole topic of "The Waste Land" is well worth looking at - and one of the places we might start is with out notions of what/where/when Eliot (and Pound) conceived to be the 'boundaries' of WW1 - by no means as neat as our current conventions lead us to suppose.
 
David
 

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From: mmcc...@ukonline.co.uk
To: ww1...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: T S Eliot and WWI

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:59:05 +0100

[Stuart Lee]

Didn't Eliot write a letter to The Nation during the war, citing an officer's experiences there? I seem to recall a paper on this with the implication being that he did actually engage in it (i.e. think about it).

I recall someone once saying 'every book written between 1918 and 1939 is about the first world war'. Not true, of course, but I think you do not have to look too hard to find references in TWL and The Hollow Men to the despair of post-war Britain.

Stuart

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[David Hughes]

I will keep my eyes open for any such letter. If Eliot did write to The Nation, then we ought to infer that he knew enough of its tone: and it was the publication to which Sassoon directed Owen to send "Anthem for Doomed Youth". If he knew and therefore caught that tone, well...
David

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From: stuar...@oucs.ox.ac.uk
To: ww1...@googlegroups.com
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:44:27 +0100

[Margaret Crane]

Yes - the George Simmers article I've referred to is almost certainly the one you're thinking of.

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[Margaret Crane]

Please look at the link I posted to George Simmers's site for the article on T.S.Eliot and his letter to The Nation. It does distinctly change one's perspective on Eliot and WWI. Maddeningly, the Eliot estate, in their usual anally-retentive manner, wouldn't let Siegfried's Journal reprint the whole of the poem with which George concludes the article - even though its publication, in however obscure a journal, could only have enhanced Eliot's reputation. However, I see that George has taken the risk of reproducing the whole poem online, and has now succeeded in getting the letter included in the first volume of TSE's correspondence. I should have been more persistent - but at any rate, there it is in the public domain now.

 

I haven't had time so far to go back to the version of the article which was printed in Siegfried's Journal : but - apart from the fact that we could reproduce only a few lines of the poem - our version of the article was substantially the same, with, I think, a few extra footnotes.

[Stuart Lee]

Meg,

Sorry missed your note re the link. Was it to:

http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/tseliots-letter-to-the-nation/

Stuart

[Elsa Franker]

Dear Meg,   Of course there are WWI allusions in The Waste Land, but sometimes things are "too clear" to be noticed. I have also read the article from Great War Fiction on T. S. Eliot´s Letter to "The Nation", very informative and showing that Eliot was far from indifferent to the WWI. It also showed me a side of him that I previously didn´t know about.   When reading The Waste Land as a WWI poem, I think I managed to decipher some of its intricacies, this being only one aspect of it - but I have to start somewhere!   Best   Elsa ,

[Elsa Franker]

Dear Stuart,   Yes, Eliot did indeed write a letter to The Nation, citing an officer´s experiences. Meg has kindly given us the web-link to that article from Great War Fiction and you will find it a bit further down on this thread.  It is "A paper given at the American Moderinism conference at Brookes University, September 2006".   Elsa     --- On Mon, 25/10/10, Stuart Lee <stuar...@oucs.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

[Elsa Franker]

Dear David,   You´ll find the letter in question on the web-link further down on this thread. The web-link has been provided by Meg, and comes from Great War Fiction. It is a paper from a conference at Brookes University, September 2006. Very interesting and has given me an aspect of Eliot that was quite new to me.   Elsa

--- On Mon, 25/10/10, David Hughes <hafo...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Elsa Franker]

Dear Meg,   I have found the article you are referring to. Most interesting and, as you say, it does indeed change one´s perspective on Eliot and his engagement in WWI.   When reading The Waste Land as a "war poem", bits and pieces fell into place and I imagine that I understand at least some of the poem!   Elsa

[Margaret Crane]

That's the one!

----- Original Message -----

From: Stuart Lee

To: ww1...@googlegroups.com

[Margaret Crane]

I think The Waste Land is probably, on and off, a lifetime's study!

[dean echenberg]

hello......

While only indirectly related to WW1, I thought I would chime in on
the subject of Eliot and War poetry.

I have a large collection of books on the subject of War Poetry.
One of my favorites is "A Note on War Poetry" by Eliot. It examines
the direct impact of war on the individual through poetry. This in
fact is the theme of my collection, the telling of ones experience of
war through poetry.

Eliot had this first hand experience of war because of his work as an
air raid warden during the blitz and I am sure that this poem is
related to that experience. The poem was published in a 1942 in a war
time anthology of various poets and writers. I don't think he thought
much of the poem because I have not seen it published elsewhere.
Never the less it a fascinating statement of his thoughts on the
intersection of poetry and much of what is called war poetry.

My collection and be seen and searched online at www.warpoetrycollection.com

Dean Echenberg


A Note on War Poetry
by T.S. Eliot


Not the expression of collective emotion
Imperfectly reflected in the daily papers.
Where is the point at which the merely individual
Explosion breaks

In the path of an action merely typical
To create the universal, originate a symbol
Out of the impact -- This is a meeting
On which we attend

Of forces beyond control by experiment --
Of Nature and the Spirit. Mostly the individual
Experience is too large, or too small. Our emotions
Are only 'incidents'

In the effort to keep day and night together.
It seems just possible that a poem might happen
To a very young man : but a poem is not poetry --
That is a life.

War is not a life : it is a situation ;
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted,
A problem to be met with ambush and stratagem,
Enveloped or scattered.

The enduring is not a substitute for the transient,
Neither one for the other. But the abstract conception
Of private experience at its greatest intensity
Becoming universal, which we call 'poetry',
May be affirmed in verse.