This is a 13,000-word essay that I submitted for my M.A. Dissertation in EFL University, Hyderabad. It's about amending T.S. Eliot's problematic, yet prophetic vision of the world. I've not included the acknowledgments, abstract and all that paperwork rubbish.
Read Chapter II and Chapter III here.
Critique of T.S. Eliot’s Absolute, Modernity and the Rabbit Hole of Rationality
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Utopias and Absolutes
No religion, no Bhagavad-Gita, no volumes of instructions by philosophers like Plato, no rampant attempts to exorcise slavery and patriarchy, no toppling of feudalism, no conception of secular states, no strong-willed nationalist notions, nor even the pithy existence of the obscure center-left regional party would ever germinate on Mother Earth, were the human race completely content with their lives.
The gradual change from caves to bungalows, monarchs to Presidents, candles to lightbulbs or nature to culture (among other things) have, for better or for worse, resulted from concerted efforts by an individual or group to better their existing conditions. There are several examples throughout canonical literature that may validate this. One instance is the opening lines of the second part of The Leviathan in 1660.
THE final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war… (Hobbes 117)
This need to reach the stage of optimum growth, development, economic prosperity, social justice, etc. on a societal level requires reiteration. The humanities have accurately diagnosed utopia, or perfection, to be a construct, an impossible ideal. Thomas More’s Utopia and Jonathan Swift’s Houyhnhnms in Book Four of Gulliver’s Travels are, among other examples, known for undermining the very concept.
Utopia is, perhaps rightfully, regarded as a concept resisting definition. One can problematize the notion that utopia may not be strictly contingent to material conditions such as food, shelter, income, technology, etc., simply because each individual can have their own parameters of the same. Person A may consider a MacBook essential to their utopia, while Person B may consider an Ubuntu instead, which would generate two distinct definitions of the concept.
However, this must not take away from the real-world effects of any construct of utopia in the concrete world. A reluctance to acknowledge this may result in a melancholic, abstract attitude toward any actions attempting to realize utopia. To appreciate the vagaries of life is wise, yet to view it as license to an infinite regress of skepticism, may cause problems of its own. For instance, the ancient Skeptic Pyrrho was so caught in the throes of his Pyrrhonism—a philosophy that, among other things, questions the nature of all reality—that he simply walked on as he passed by a drowning man, perhaps unsure whether the person was real or not (Vogt).
Once the utopian construct is viewed as an important motive force in the context of an individual’s life, then part of the writing process of T.S. Eliot is already understood. Eliot is often defined by his strain on industrial isolation, post-war ennui, the death of morality, spiritual regeneration, etc. This form of fame has somewhat concealed what Eliot himself viewed as the true purpose of his life i.e. a search for perfection. Eliot saw himself, in this search, as prophetically above his age (Gordon 104). He resisted the urge to label his understanding of utopia. The terms that have often been associated with it are ‘Silence’, ‘Light’, ‘Pure Idea/Soul’, among others, which describe the utopia without affording it a proper label. For the purposes of clarity, this utopia shall henceforth be termed as the Absolute (another term Eliot himself used).
Of course, one must stray away from popular, conventional notions of utopia as posited by religious or political figures, in order to understand Eliot’s own. Eliot’s Absolute was not, as poet Amanda Gorman in Mr. Biden’s 2021 Presidential inauguration ceremony may say, an attempt to “compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and / conditions of man”. Unlike neo-capitalist, liberal, communist theories, Eliot’s Absolute is not a universal fix. It is not a marketable or easily digestible form of ideology that could be implemented on a national or bureaucratic level. Eliot’s problem pertains to the indivisible soul, the singular modern human being and their struggle for happiness, fulfillment or reception toward divinity. He attempts to discern—amid a dystopic, warlike milieu of smoke, amid dead leaves rattling like tin and the sounding of horns before air-raids—the paths to individual forgiveness, truth beyond skepticism, salvation and divinity (Eliot 193-195 – The Complete Poems & Plays).
Methodology and Objectives
This paper employs documentary analysis (a manner of qualitative research) to trace the origin and development of Eliot’s Absolute. Some of the author’s texts that are analyzed, include Prufrock and Other Observations, The Sacred Wood, The Waste Land, Four Quartets, The Idea of A Christian Society and Notes Toward the Definition of Culture. Critical texts include, but are not restricted to, Manju Jain’s A Critical Reading of the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot and Lyndall Gordon’s biography T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life.
The critical texts, in particular, show how Mr. Eliot is widely respected not only as poet, but also as a thinker. His intricate poetry with several allusions, his impartial and prophetic aura in discussing the ills of modernity, created a stature in his time that, as Lyndall Gordon’s T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life puts it, “made itself felt as a standard of judgement which looked beyond its time” (Gordon 480). Manju Jain is of the opinion that Eliot’s cautionary wisdom on ecology, urbanization and the environment is a signpost for the present and future (Jain ix). The Cambridge Companion notes that Eliot’s ‘disassociation of sensibility’ did, for poetry, what Marx’s alienation did for history (Altieri 193). Even the New Yorker definitively claims Eliot “the most important figure in twentieth-century-English-language literary culture” (Menand).
The most immediate objective of this paper would be to palliate the exaggerations. Of course, no utopic vision ought to be taken as gospel, yet despite that caveat, Eliot’s Absolute fails many requirements of the contemporary, secular society. Therefore, through the presentation of publicly known yet lesser-stated facts, the thought process and conclusions of Eliot’s Absolute are critiqued, sometimes by juxtaposing it with episodes from his own life, which offer valuable clues to the motivations behind his postulations. Despite the internal contradictions to the Absolute, there are several ‘general truths’ within it that need to be preserved, refined and perhaps simplified. At the same time, Eliot’s anti-Semitic, misogynist and religious undertones need to be amended. Unlike the private, individualistic nature of Eliot’s Absolute, the aim of the amended Absolute is to make it public.
The summary of the entire argument, then, is thus: T.S. Eliot’s arduous, authentic and commendable search for the Absolute (in nature applicable to a certain type of individual) contains deep-seated prejudices that have been critiqued and then amended (in nature applicable to all).
While getting into the weeds of T.S. Eliot’s arguments, they will hopefully be readable not only to the Eliot scholar, or the enthusiast of Modernist poetry, but also (at the very least) to the average academician. Therefore, the paper shall attempt to be blunt without hyperbolic, critical without being polemic, and remain forever conscious of not constraining its charges with an overly sober, purposefully meandering prose that has plagued humanities for far too long, for fear of taming the severity of its contentions. While at some moments such efforts will verily fail, it shall not be for want of trying.
Originally written: May 2021
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