Eliot's Kind Of Literary Criticism

The first sentence of "The Sacred Wood" declares that --and perhaps the greatest-- Coleridge was the last/literary critic in English and that. Arnold was hardly more than a propagandist for criticism. Implicit in such a judgement is an assumption about the nature of literary criticism as such; and there are many such judgements in Eliot, without an explicit definition which would distinguish literary criticism from the kinds of discourse which habitually overlap-- often across, the verb often changes--upon it.

It is convenient, given Eliot's development as a prose essayist, to draw upon the classifications used by Irving Sabbitt in "Masters Of French Criticism". They are used unjustly, to some extent; but they provide a place of reference which not only takes us outside of Eliot's text, but also is helpful because Sabbitt's classification may well have been in the back of Eliot's mind for many years.

Sabbitt distinguishes between the scientific critic and the impressionistic critic, probably the term, historical, would have been superior, and scientific might well have been reserved for some other critical function.

The scientific or historical critic --aina is Sabbitt's example--is concerned about the causes of a literary work, the causes in the time and place of the author, and the causes in the author's life. Hence, his chief criterion is significance, which is to say, the extent to which the work represents or makes clear these causes. Obviously, then, the historical critic looks through the literary work as such to its genesis. And in this sense, he tends to be irrelevant. Many years after Sabbitt's distinction were made, Eliot applied Sabbitt's criticism to a history of American literature, writing an editorial in The Criterion in 1933.

3. observing that the historical critic, who is in this instance the Marxist critic, cannot distinguish or explain the differences between two authors of genius who are "the product" of the same environment; nor can such difference, we may add, be explained interms of family or personal life, for we have only to summon to mind two brothers, such as William and Henry James, and then compare them to their two younger brothers.

Eliot's essays in literary criticism touch upon the field of historical criticism in several ways which are important. First, the historical sense, the sense of the past which Eliot invokes, is to some extent an abstraction (Burnham: Symposium, 1932) because Eliot conceives of the past as free, for the contemporary reader, of historical compulsions and the old historical framework. This limitation of vision explains such a passing superficiality as Eliot's statement that the eighteenth century style rejected and attacked by Wordsworth and Coleridge was what it was because such deterioration occurs to any style "when it falls into the hands of people who can not even be called in diocrities". This is a kind of rugged individualism which is just as false as a social or cultural determinism; for surely it was neither accident nor the absence of genius which made the 18th century style inadequate to two men of genius such as Wordsworth and Coleridge; we have seen the same thing in the instance of Eliot and Pound.

And elsewhere, in the passage explaining Blake's homemade philosophy, and also in describing how tradition continues to exist, Eliot on the contrary emphasizes the dual functioning of peoptuar genius and the environment in which the genius must exist; which is a version, in a way, of the theological doctrine of grace and works for which Eliot expresses sympathy in his essay on Pascal (CF). Hence it may be said that Eliot does not sufficiently make use of

3. the historical critic; and in evaluating poets, in seeking to place them, his emphasis is on the permanent, the permanent insight into "the mystery of life", or the permanent invention or extension of a technique. This too makes him abstract the poet from the historical context which might often illuminate or give value to words, sentences, allusions, attitudes, and all the other things which are at times inspired by his time and his place as the historical plays of Shakespeare were inspired, by part, by Elizabethan patriotism and by the Elizabethan conception of kingship. And Eliot affirms this necessity or this when he writes of the Greek authors and expresses amazement/ that it should besupposed possible to understand them without a knowledge of Greek classical as a language or of Greek history.

The impressionistic critic works at the other extreme. He is concerned chiefly with the effects upon the literary work upon himself. Since these effects may be private, personal, a matter of temperament, a matter of the year in the critic's life or of his own mood, there is a great deal of room for irrelevance, and in particular it is likely that the critic may mistake what is in himself for what is the literary work. Symons is the impressionistic critic whom Eliot singles out, "Mr. Symons is living through the play as one might live through it in the theatre". The reason for this kind of criticism is often the desire of the critic to be creative, his feeling that criticism is inferior to creative writing. Substitution of any kind is suspect in the arts, since it is their uniqueness which is always important, and Eliot will come, as his career continues to protest especially against the substitution of literary works for religious studies. And the impressionistic critic is sometimes very valuable, since his sensitivity makes him aware of most readers are. Eliot credits Symons' book on new things before the general audience of readers

the Symbolists "as an introduction to wholly new feelings", as a revelation", however one's own impressions may differ from the critic's.

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Moreover, one never as a reader escapes from impressions, either one's own or another's; and Sintger en lois ses impressions personnelles, c'est from de fourmont le grand effort d'un homme, s'il est sincere" is the quotation/which begins Eliot's essay on "The Perfect Critic". It should be noted, nonetheless, that this is a question of sincerity; given the sincerity, other things are necessary in the critic. Industry in reading, for example, is likely to increase the base of the critic's sincerity.

In general, it is the confounding of personal impressions caused by the literary work with personal impressions caused by some aspect of the critic himself as a person which marks the pitfall of impressionistic criticism. The error at both extremes, historical or impressionistic, is that of failing to see the work itself, seeing more than it contains, or disregarding what it contains, except as a sign of something outside of it.

own literary criticism, we may perhaps detect it in his condemnation of Hardy as merely a minor poet, his estimation of some of Pound's poetry, particularly "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley", and his evaluation of Milton. The personal impression and the private feeling which interwees between the *this* and the literary work can be/roughly/identified in each instance. In Hardy, it may be the dogmatic atheism, and thus a question of the critic's religious beliefs; in Pound, especially in the poem praised as "a document of sensibility, compact of the experience of a certain time and place", it may be the experience of the critic, which is close to that of the poet; and in Milton, both religious belief and the strong pleasure and admiration in poetry with another purpose, especially the dramatic verse of the blankethans, may be the barrier between the critic and the work itself. But such failures, if they are failures, are few in a critical career in which every period of English poetry except the Chaucerian has been

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Reviewed with unquestionable freshness of judgement.

Rabbitt does not mention the neo-classic critic, such as
Boileau or Dryden, by that name, but both Eliot and Rabbitt are
very much aware of that kind of criticism, and Eliot credits John-
son with the production of a masterpiece of judicial criticism. The
neo-classic critic may be described in general as the one who
abstracts from masterpieces what he believes to be the formula or
the necessary framework for that kind of literary work. Thus he
requires the unities of time, place, and action; or, like Johnson,
he declares that grief cannot be sincerely expressed in the form
or kind of poem which the pastoral is. His error is that of all
those who are so to speak in advance of experience. The neo-classic
critic is deceived by his expectations, and he thinks that he knows
how the future masterpiece ought to resemble the past; masterpiece
in detail. But, says Eliot in "After Strange Gods", "the classical
is just as unpredictable as the romantic ... most of us would not
recognize a classical writer if he appeared, so queer and horrifying
he would seem even to those who clamour for him."

(Now this, for example, is just what occurred, even on the
part of as sympathetic a critic as Eliot, when Joyce's classical
masterpiece, "Finnegans Wake" began to appear.)

The mention of Rabbitt and of the misconstructions or
foolish expectations of those who desire the classics to repeat
themselves in the old garb and toga brings us naturally to the
kind of didactic criticism practised by Rabbitt, by More, and by
most critics in America when Eliot was coming to maturity. This
kind of criticism is important in relation to Eliot because with
his affirmation of a religious faith, the question of the truths
and beliefs of literary works comes to concern him very much in
such matters as religious poetry and poetry which is based on alien

["6. Believers in politics. Hume曰,人與神同在,但有不同,即人之有別於神,與神不同處在,一處在神,一處在人。人為政體,而政體之法,猶人之有別於神法,亦猶人之有別於神。政體之法,亦猶人之有別於神。政體之法,在於人之為政,與神為政。人之為政,與神為政,非以一其身,乃以眾其身。故曰:政者,政體之法也。人之為政,與神為政,非一其身,乃眾其身。故曰:政者,政體之法也。人之有別於神,與神不同處在,一處在神。人為政體,而政體之法,猶人之有別於神法,亦猶人之有別於神。政體之法,猶人之有別於神法,亦猶人之有別於神。故曰:人為政體,而政體之法,猶人之有別於神法,亦猶人之有別於神。故曰:人為政體,而政體之法,猶神為體,而神之法亦猶人為政體,而政體之法,猶神為體。故曰:人為政體,而政體之法,猶神為體。故曰:政者,政體之法也。人之為政,與神為政,非一其身,乃眾其身。故曰:政者,政體之法也。人之有別於神,與神不同處在,一處在神。故曰:人為政體,而政體之法,猶人之為政體,而政體之法,猶神為政體,而政體之法,猶人之為政體,而政體之法,猶神為政體,而政體之法,猶神為體。故曰:人為政體,而政體之法

["more false"). And in the same preface, the target is made clear when Eliot writes: \"certainly poetry is not the inoculation of morals, or the direction of politics; and nor more is it religion, or the equivalent of religion\". The pressure of the world upon literature is constant, gross, and destructive; demanding that literature be serious, and be \"related to life\", the community literature is denied or ignored; or it is brushed aside under the general term: form and technique.", "It is easy to mistake Eliot's later discussions of the relationship between literature and art for a change of mind, of theory, or of heart. But this is not so; we can see that it is not so if we read with care and sympathy, and if we do not merely juxtapose one quotation against another in the interest of demonstrating inconsistency, contradiction and a changed mind. The essay on \"Religion and Literature\", which appears in \"Essays Ancient And Modern\" (a revised selection of the essays in \"For Lancelot Andrewes\"), contains much which might be the subject of unsympathetic misunderstanding; but it also contains this important sentence (in which the reader of ill will and also the reader of good will might with ease overlook the all-important dependent clause): \"The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it literature or not can be determined only by literary standards\".", "And this sentence ought to be counterposed to the one in the essay on the poetry of Marianne Moore, as explication or gloss: \"The greatness even are involved moral and social relations...which may be said/to be the created in the process of history\". But \"genuineness\" is something which we have some want for believing that a small number...can recognise\". Now it is genuineness which can be determined by solely literary standards; and if Eliot does not name someone, if in naming them the relationship between style and subject might make for difficulty, none the less to exist on verbal precision or precision of d"]

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ition where the subject is a complicated one is often (as Whitehead, a logician, observes in speaking of being muddled and clear), is often to miss the important distinction in things which is being made. Those who are governed by a primary interest in religious belief or in moral standards; and those who are governed by an aversion to religious belief and moral standards both lose a good deal in literature and the criticism of literature by permitting this distinction, which is one which does not, above all, suppose that style exist in itself or that to judge by purely literary standards is to adopt the doctrine of art for art's sake.

When Eliot shifts to criticism in which he is writing as a Christian critic, as a man with a definite religious belief, he says that he is writing from that point of view (if point of view is the proper and neutral phrase). This naming of criticism by its proper name and this careful separation of different kinds of criticism is examplary and rare. There is an immediate stage in the development of Eliot's criticism when he makes the transition from his first method to essays in which his religious position is predominant; and in this stage of transition he writes often of Poetry and Belief, Poetry and Propaganda, and the nature of criticism (cite essays where they appeared).

Yet we have not named the kind of criticism Eliot practises as such; and if we accept the name of classicism from the preface to "For Langlot Andrewes", nonetheless a simpler and more general meaning is intended here than in Eliot's use of the word. Setting aside all questions of literary reference or literary schools, may we not say that the classical critic is the critic who has an intimate knowledge of the classics, of many other previous great works; and who uses, who is able to use this knowledge in judging the newly encountered work?

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The two tools of the critic--and his chief tools--are comparison and analysis. Where but from his previous reading, is he to get the proper works with which to compare the new work? So too with analysis: it is in the degree that his experience is rich that he is able to recognize and separate out the elements in the new work.

The connection with Eliot's doctrine of the need of a knowledge of tradition should be obvious; and obvious too, should be the connection with one of the passing remarks (which so often prove to be full of an inexhaustible significance) in a commentary in the Criterion): That a poet might get along well enough if he did not know (check: 1932) Dante, Homer, and Shakespeare; but a knowledge of these authors was a necessity for the critic. We see then that for the critic a knowledge of tradition is even more important than it is for the poet. But this must be qualified because we know, and Eliot observes again in passing, that a poet can acquire what he needs of tradition in various ways which are not sufficient for the critic; for example, a poet can learn what he needs to learn about Latin poetry of a certain kind by reading a poet of his own time, such as Extra Pound in a poem such as "Gextus Propertius". But a critic must proceed from a conscious knowledge he cannot use the habitual knowledge, the knowledge known to the whole being, which the poet not can but must use (I mean by habitual knowledge the kind we depend upon when we use our native tongue, or the kind which exists in an old friendship).

Comparison depends thus in a variety of complicated and deep-rooted ways upon the reading of the critic. And Sainte-Beuve remarks that what the critic gives us is the benefit of his reading. He shows us how torpid, and he shows us how he has read. He has read more than most readers, and from experience, which is not so much a teacher as a textbook, he knows all about reading.

10. This is the reason Eliot finds it necessary to use so many literary allusions in his criticism; to mention the names of so many authors in discussing one author. Such allusiveness has been criticized with some justice by Edmund Wilson in "Axel's Castle". The justice inheres in the tacit assumption, which Eliot would not of course affirm, that his reader has read all the important works of the past; or perhaps the assumption is that the critic is writing only for the reader of suitable learning; which is again a mirage of sorts. But it is often wise to use such illusory assumptions.

In any case, the classic 1 method, examined as Eliot uses it and in its aspect of comparison, means that Eliot will refer to Horace in analysing Marvell, Dante in discussing Blake, Shakespeare in discussing Dante. The comparison becomes what Wilson makes it out to be when the reference is to an obscure author and to an author only by name. In this use of comparison, as in metaphor, everything depends upon the specific justice of the comparison. And some of the followers of Eliot in criticism illustrate very well how amiss such comparison can be when they compare authors of very different kinds; when they compare Eliot himself as a poet to Ben Jonson as a lyric poet; or when they use Henry James to prove that Thomas Hardy is a worthless author. And "Eliot too is declared by his own comparisons, perhaps, when he uses Dryden in order to condemn the Romanic poets. But, again as with metaphor, it is not of necessity the far-fetched wide-ranging and unexpected comparison which is of necessity the one which fails. Thus Eliot uses Laforgue to illustrate and define the wit of thymountaphysical poets. Another fault at times is one already mentioned in another connection, that of ripping the author so utterly from his context and operating with an abstract conception of poetic validity that the poet is really ignored. But this occurs for the most part only when the poet is bound up with his period in the very texture of his poetry; thus Eliot condemned Byron at one point as an uninteresting mind; but

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some (number) years after, he was able to do justice to him; when, in
fact, the axe of a particular poetic method was no longer one of the
things the critic was seeking to grind. On the other hand, the use of
historical or other context is also a means of distortion, as we can
see in Eliot's highly involved effort to rehabilitate the verse, as he
calls it, of Kipling.

The first metaphor in T.S.Eliot's first book is in
a sense the beginning of modern poetry in English.

It does not matter who came first in the order of
time; this metaphor is a beginning in the sense that it is this
is what the untutored reader in most likely to encounter when
he begins to read modern poetry.

After a quotation from The Divine Comedy, "The Love
Song of J.Alfred Prufrock", begins

"Let us go then, you and I,

When theevening is stretched outaga/inst the sky

Like a patient etherised upon the table"

To compare the evening to a patient upon an operating
table is perhaps in itself a forced comparison.

For it is necessary to invert the visual image which
must
we have of such a thing: we/look down at a patient upon a table,
and we must look up at the sky.

But let us consider the metaphor not in itself, but
as an illustration of the profound change in the writing of poetry
which begins here.

Although Keats studied medicine, he could not have written
such a line.

Neither Tennyson, Swinburne, Rosetti, nor the poets of
the Nineties were capable of such a line, although Swinburne and
the poets of the Nineties studied Baudelaire, who is Eliot's for-
bear in the use of such images.

A conception of poetry and of the nature of the poe tic
prevailed which prevented these poets from that kind of image.

This very conception of the nature of poetry was itself
installed by W. B. Wordsworth and Coleridge in the effort to be free
from the barrier imposed by the eighteenth century view of poetic
style and diction.

Two.

This is the way then that poetry proceeds from age to age.
We should remember, when we consider this fact, that the romantic and the neoclassic views of the nature of poetry made possible kinds of poetry which are barred by the modern view.

We cannot look north and look south at the same time.

But we can refrain from scorning the southern view because we are looking north.

defend Such a scorn is natural because it is natural to be a point of view partisan and because the reigning taste takes for granted and proclaims its universality, forcing upon the Romantic poet a rejection of the neoclassic poet and upon the modern poet a scorn of the Romantic poet.

sense of uncertainty Then there is the natural in what is a new way of feeling and seeing; and the necessity of perceiving the shortcomings of the old way as a means of perceiving the new way.

A strong sense of the shortcomings and a turning away from the virtues of late Victorian poetry was a means of arriving at a state of sensibility where it would be possible to compare an evening to a patient etherized upon a table.

strength does not rest upon The quality of this image has no meaning for modern life, although this kind of representation of that which is new has often been taken as one of the duties and virtues of poetry, so that poets have been praised because they wrote about automobiles and about stockyards.

It is the poet's function to hold up a mirror to nature, but not in a sense which means that he must take into account every new surface of the nature of his age.

Three.

Another serious error of the same kind is to suppose
that the poet ought to represent his age as such; but this is
to confound the poet with the journalist, the photographer, and
the historian.

The capacity to use such an image, which joins two
distant kinds of experience, is important because it is a grasp-
ing of the actual.

The sense of the actual and the supreme power to grasp
the actual as such is the remarkable thing about Eliot's poetry
at the very start.

The actual is that which is exists; it is not that
which we would like to exist, nor what we hope will exist, nor
what we are taught should exist and the failure to distinguish
these things from what is actual is the cause of much weakness
and blindness.

The actual is important in itself and it is important
as a means of perceiving and formulating the ideal and the poss-
ible.

In poetry and in many other matters, it is the degree
to which the actual is grasped that determines our grasp of the
ideal.

Unless we know what exists, we are not likely to be
very right about our idea of what ought to exist.

And if we are interested in commending the ideal,
there is no more powerful commendation than an apprehension of
the actual.

Here again we come upon one of the important aspects
of Eliot's work, that its grasp of the actual penetrates to
such depths that we recognize the ideal; the limitations of
the actual bring us to an apprehension of what ought to be.