5 - Visions and Revisions

Summary

In part because of his belief that drama was the art best suited to the cultural integration of all strata of society, in part because the “demon” that once drove him to “meditative verse” seemed to have been, if not exorcised, at least tranquilized by church ritual, Eliot abandoned nondramatic poetry entirely following the war. The graceful harmonies of the Four Quartets had superseded the syncopated rhythms of The Waste Land to the satisfaction of Eliot if not always to that of such earlier champions as Pound, for whom disgust with the modern world had gone beyond being a stimulus to a career and become the career itself. Moreover, for Eliot, speaking with the authority of the church and the reputation of his own poetic achievement, the more personal voice of meditative verse now seemed out of place. He had become the tradition that future individual talents would have to reckon with. While this may seem a premature ossification of great gifts, it is in keeping with a view Eliot had maintained about himself. Having always regarded his body as a stained and ill-fitting suit of clothes, he tended to present himself, from early in his career, both in his choice of poetic personae and in private life, as much older and more enfeebled than he actually was. Now, although he had two decades of life still left, he seemed to begin considering himself with a posthumous eye.