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Section Two. Important Poets: T.S Eliot
and Robert Frost
Ⅰ. T.S. Eliot
1. Life: Eliot was a
poet, playwright, and literary critic. He became an acknowledged
leader of the new poetry and criticism by 1925 and nearly dominated
poetry and criticism in the period between two world wars and shaped
the tastes and the critical vocabulary of a generation.
Eliot was
born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri in the Midwest. He
studied as an undergraduate at Harvard in 1906-1910, at the Sorbonne
in Paris in 1910-1911, and again at Harvard in 1911-1914 for a Ph. D
in philosophy. During his studies, he gained a good command of
French, Italian, English literature, and Sanskrit. He began writing
poems as a college student, and in traditional modes at first. Then
he was greatly influenced by the French symbolist poets. In 1911 he
drafted The Love Song of T. Alfred Prufrock , a poem that
reveals the spiritual crisis of modern intellectual.
Eliot
finally settled in England and got married. He worked first as a
teacher and later in the foreign department of Lloyds Bank.
2.
Literary career: Eliot, as a modernist poet, composed poetry
difficult to understand. He inherited literary traditions from the
classics and the poets at the time of Shakespeare. He transformed
the traditions and made them the foundations of his poetry and
criticism. In 1915 he published “The Love Dong of J. Alfred
Prufrock ” in Poetry and Preludes in Blast. His first
book of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, came out in
1917; and in 1922, The Waste Land, which is generally
regarded as one of his great works, was published. The Waste
Land precisely describes the state of culture and society after
World War 1 and illustrates the spiritual poverty of the West of the
time.
The waste Land
consists of five segments, each of which contains many fragments of
various voices and characters. It has not only literary and
historical allusions but contemporary life as well. The organizing
principle of the poem is the myth of death and rebirth. The Waste
Land, characterized by its originality and severe attack on
postwar Europe, reads like the manifesto of the “Lost
Generation”.
Eliot became the
editor of the Criterion in 1922. Then he also wrote some
plays, such as, Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail
Party, The Confidential Clerk, all religious in theme.
And in 1943, his best work, a group of four long poems entitled
Four Quartets was first published
together.
Collections of
Eliot’s critical essays include The Sacred Wood, The Use
of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, On Poetry and Poets,
etc.
3. Features: Eliot did not accept the validity of the
American dream. He was not as optimistic as the other poets like
Whitman. His audience was not the common people but elites who took
a view of society different from mass culture. Therefore, his
audience was small.
4. Selected
Work:
[Introduction]
“The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” was published in 1917, which has been one of the American
literary classics.
The poem depicts a typical western
intellectual of 20th century, Prufrock. He was a gloomy, inefficient
and radical character, He was caught between the two worlds--life
and death--in that he had a strong desire but could never fulfill
it. His idealism tortured him all the time because he was so timid
that he never took action. Thus he fell in the state of depression.
Such conflict went through the whole poem reflecting his
embarrassment in love.
The form of the poem, a sort of inner
monologue, well suits the content. Lots of seemingly unrelated
scenes, events and images were put together in random. The poet
turned from one scene to another, jumped from one thought to another
readily and easily . Therefore, the poem seems rather fragmented and
disordered. Yet, the mood, as a consistent clue runs through the
whole poem and links the various images. Eliot was good at employing
analogy and symbol to illustrate his ideas, and his poem was full of
observation, memory, meditation and comment as well. In this poem,
even punctuations are very unique, which contribute to the depiction
of a hesitant intellectual.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credessi
che mia risposta fosse
A persona
che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa
fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma
per cio che giammai di questo
fondo
non torno uiuo alcun, s’i’odo
il uero,
senza
tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and
I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a
patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain
half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless
nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with
oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of
insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming
question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make
our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of
Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the
window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the
evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let
fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by
the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft
October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell
asleep.
And
time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a
question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me ,
And
time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and
revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the
room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And
indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I
dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald
spot in the middle of my hair-
(They will say: “How his hair is
growing thin! ”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to
the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple
pin-
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do
I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For
decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I
have known them all already, known them all-
Have known the
evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with
coffee spoons;
I
know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music
from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have
known the eyes already, known them all-
The eyes that fix you in
a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a
pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how
should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and
ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms
already, known them all-
Arms that are braceleted and white and
bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is
it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that
lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then
presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone
at dusk through narrow
streets
And watched the smoke that
rises from the pipes
Of lonely min in shirt-sleeves, leaning out
of
windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling
across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the
evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long
fingers.
Asleep…tired…or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor,
here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and
ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But
though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed
Though I have
seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought
in upon a platter,
I am no prophet-and here’s no great
matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I
have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And
in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it,
after all.
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the
porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been
worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile.
To
have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some
overwhelming question,
To say: “I
am Lazarus, come the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I
shall tell you all ”-
If one, settling a pillow by her
head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is
not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after
all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the
dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the
teacups, after the skirts that trail
along the floor-
And
this, and so much more?-
It is impossible to say just what I
mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the
nerves
in
patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one,
settling a pillow or throwing off a
shawl,
And turning toward
the window, should say:
“That is
not it at all,
That is not
what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not prince Hamlet, nor was
meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To
swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince: no
doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic,
cautious, and meticulous;
Full
of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost
ridiculous-
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old…I grow
old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall
I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear
white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the
mermaids singing, each to each,
I do not think that they will
sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the
waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the
wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the
chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and
brown
Till human voices wake us, and we
drown.
Topic Discussion:
1.What’s the purpose
of mentioning Hamlet?
2. Discuss the image of yellow
smoke.
Answer:
Ⅱ.
Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)
1. Life: Frost was born in
San Francisco on March 26. His father was originally a New Englander
and a graduate of Harvard. While studying at Lawrence High School,
Frost wrote poems and finished his studies with honor. He attended
Harvard College from 1899 and then fell ill with tuberculosis. So he
had to take his family to the countryside in order to get recovered.
He loved farm life and wrote many poems.
2. Literary Career: In
1912 he went to England, where he met Ezra Pound, who helped him
publish his poems. In 1915 he returned to America and settled down
in New Hampshire. Most of his major poetry was written before 1930.
His major books include Mountain Interval (1916), New
Hampshire (1923), West-Running Brook (1928), A Further
Range (1936) and In the Clearing (1962). He received the
Ballinger Prize in 1963 and died on January of that year at the age
of 88.
3. Features: Robert Frost was the most popular American
poet from 1914 to his death. Different from the other modernist
poets who were obscure and incomprehensible, Frost could be
understood by the average person. His poetry is full of life, truth
and wisdom. For his achievement in poetry, Frost won the Pulitzer
Prize four times. His poems are characterized by the
following:
The setting in his poems is New England. The subjects
come from daily life of ordinary people. Frost wrote about farmers,
shepherds, and rural events, isolated from urban society. Building
fences and picking apples are not uncommon to appear in his poems.
His theme includes landscape and people of New England, loneliness
and poverty of farmers; beauty, terror and tragedy.
Frost was conservative
politically. He stood aside from the literary movements of the 20th
century since he showed little interest in experimentation in form.
Under his pen the New England landscape reflects the fragmentation
of modern society. The characters were confronted with the tension
of modern life and alienation among modern
people.
Frost took a
simple style in his poetry. He used simple language, graceful style
and traditional forms. He liked regular iambic meter and sometimes
used blank verse. He was good at expressing profound ideas through
symbols.
4. Selected Work
Mending
Wall
[Introduction]
This poem was published in “North
of Boston”, a collection of poems, in 1914. One of the subjects
frequently occurring in Frost’s poems is about mending and
maintaining wall.
Mending Wall presents us such a scene in
which people are mending wall in spring. In this poem, “I” (the
narrator) bear some ideas unconventional and therefore speak
differently, while the neighbor clings to the old thought passing
from his father. At first, the narrator talks about how the wall
works against nature; later, he turns to the talking of their
mending wall once a year. People intend to separate themselves from
others and keep private by building wall, but actually the wall is
not very effective. The narrator mentions the absurdity of having a
wall between him and his neighbor and thinks that the old saying
“Good fences make good neighbors” is really old.
This poem
seemingly describes daily reality, but in fact it is a fable in
which the poet tries to explore the relation between tradition and
nature. He tries to tell readers about the embarrassment of human
being that people want to make good neighbors by having a wall, but
the wall just keeps friendship away. Such is the situation of
western civilization.
“Mending Wall” employs blank verse
of iambic pentameter, and it is full of colloquial and direct
expressions, which are easily understood.
Mending
Wall
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That
sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper
boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass
abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come
after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on
a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To
please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them
made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them
there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we
meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once
again.
We
keep the wall between us as we go.
To
each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are
loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make
them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are
turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh,
just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to
little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
“Why
do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But
here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to
know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was
like
to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a
wall,
That wants it down.” I
could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d
rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a
stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like
an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness
as it seems to me,
Not of wood s only and the shade of
trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes
having thought of it so well
He
says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Topic
Discussion:
1. Discuss the theme of the poem.
Answer: | |
