Self-Expression in the Poetry of Eliot - Essay Example

185228 Eliot was a radical commentator of the modern society, who revaluated the mankind and nature in his works, and every poem of his had been regarded as extremely thought provoking, and are not dead pomes. "They will lead us to other and more problematic questions as we discover the meanings and values generated in the verbal music and are confronted by Eliot's radical revaluations of nature and human society and history" Moody (1994, 142). Eliot's early poems suffered from problems of self-expression and reflected his own feelings that were too personal to be expressed through poems. Later, his writings turned into modernism and developed a distinct style of his own which the critics said 'in search of a subject'. Some poems had urban landscape as the backdrop; but mostly it is the inner landscape of the individual's mind that he tried to portray. His language focuses on the acute loneliness of the urban life that shows no sympathy to the individual. Isolation in the crowd is aptly expressed by his images, along with the ordinariness of life. His poetic forms could be termed as dreary compared to earlier poets; but he is depicting the depthless dreariness of modern life. Turned apathy with no concentration Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind (lines 103-4, Four Quartets). He said: 'A large part of any poet's imagination must come from his reading and from his knowledge of history.' His poems had a sense of history, though he ventured into assessing modern society too often. The complexity of modern life has come across through his images. Glimpses of people who live in the impersonal modern world, spiritually exhausted, emotionally unsupported are shown in The Love song' The language shows the inherent confusion, feeble images, and unauthentic pretence that go through life. The culmination in a sense of defeat is almost predictable and the language could not have been clearer. 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- In the same way, the image of the male observer in the Portrait of a Lady sounds acutely detached and unemotional while encroaching the lonely life of the woman without apology. Once again, almost in identical language, he visualises the mundane city life in Preludes. "To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms." (18-23). There is a definite sense of lack of time and difficult endeavours in the Rhapsody of a windy night. The division of hours and too many mentions of time brings it into acute focus. The same sense of rushing time comes across in the Portrait of a lady when her age is mentioned. The miserable lonely existence and the longing are portrayed alongside the mutilated life along with its acute lack of time for better things. Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone. His poetic forms and language reflect the defeated and hopeless idealism. His images show that dreams and elegance are left behind. Eliot's images portray modern society's lack of idealism, emptiness and dangerous cynicism in the modern society. He portrayed the prostitutes as one of the uglier sides of city life in Rhapsody... " 'Regard the woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin.'" (16-22). It almost sounds inhuman and devouring. His language becomes cynically powerful when he depicts the hopelessness and emptiness of the present world. The images become oppressingly pessimistic and perhaps this is the result of the World War which saw horrendous destruction in Europe the signs of which exist even today. One complete generation got wiped out and all of a sudden people were reduced to bereaved, humbled, impoverished, futureless beings. Most of them lived in or on the edges of the cities in the hope of making a living and Eliot was left to reflect on this ghastly majority that was fighting a losing battle. He had Church and religious affinities as a means of salvation, as we can see in The Hippopotamus, Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service, and Journey of the Magi. Some of his depressing poems do definitely give a feeling of anarchy though he was never an anarchist. Actually he was accused of being too close to religion and Church: "On account of this poem (Ash-Wednesday) Eliot was sometimes accused of retreating into a religious fastness when the proceedings were known only to a small number of initiates, They wee those who would charge him with abandoning the poetic role of spokesmanship for that of Christian apologist," Kojecky (1971, p.100). Eliot's poetic forms created 'deliberate relaxation of tension in the language'. "In the Four Quartets he repeatedly draws our attention away from the words, undercuts their significance, consciously chooses a graceless or a dull form or word, breaks illusions by commenting on the inadequacy of his own technique," Ward (1973, p.224). Eliot is one of those poets who could use the language to its utmost limit to prop up his images. "Despite Eliot's demurrers, The Waste Land was read as a criticism of contemporary life because its concern with sex and its mythic and primitive elements impinged on a general consciousness that had already known the work of Freud and experienced such aesthetic shocks as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps," Olney (1998, p.112). His poetic forms become as powerful as Picasso's inventions mainly through his strong rendering of language. He, as one of the modernists, is expected to write radically and re-invent literature from its conventional garb and this, in other words, means that he has to relate himself mainly to modern days and society. "Which is why modernism sometimes seems to have been directed by an impulse to convert literature into a substance entirely without attributes, to create a literature that would have nothing literary about it," Menand (1987, p.54). He used the language of modernism; but left his images and forms still rooted in the history. There are some contradictory points in Eliot's perspective of modern society. He introduced religion into social affairs through poetry. It is assumed that he also introduced asceticism and Christianity into intellectual sphere to the extent of eccentricity. His social ideas were more biographical and he asserted that Christian society should not be disturbed. "Eliot was anxious that Britain should become a 'positive' society; but he was equally anxious that its ideology should have the sanction of orthodoxy" Kojecky (1971, p.137). No doubt, his imagery was powerful; but somehow bringing religion into poetry sounds rather hallow. He even said that the 'Church's business is to interfere with the world', even though his ideas are rather vague here. He also believed that "salvaging of society, its soul, its philosophy, its art, depends upon its becoming Christian, and this concern requires discipline, inconvenience and discomfort; but here as hereafter the alternative to hell is purgatory" O'Malley (1940, p.489). Here his vision could be contradicting the modern society's cynicism. His language is much admired in the Four Quartets. "The language, unprotected by formalities of diction, maintains commerce with deliquescent clich, the speech of an age whose speech when sedate is commonly vapid, and these clichs not only never menace its decorum, they even seen transparent coinages," Kenner (1959, p.323). Despite being enamoured by Christian dogmas, he admires Buddhism in The Waste Land. He could be quite chilling in Fourth Quartets (p. 26). The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food; In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial fresh and blood Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. This could apply to the Good Friday or Christ; but also could apply to the paradoxes of modern society. Language is so damning that it could discourage further probing. Eliot is a master of words and cynicism who could write forbiddingly: 'In my end is my beginning'. If he could write depressingly about the modern society, he also could bring new hope and encouragement into it: Or whatever event, this is your real destination, So Krishna, as when admonished Arjuna On the field of battle. Not fare well, But fare forward, voyagers. (FQ., p.36). He was not a pessimist; he simply depicted the modern society in its pessimism. Each poem gives a different perspective of the modern society and Eliot succeeds various themes and presence or absence of values in modern society in all of them. Known as the Picasso of the poetry, Eliot found the interplay with music, society, war, pessimism and psychology and he presented them in an unprecedented form of poetry. Sweeny Erect shows a messed up jumbled and unenthusiastic landscape that needs mending when he says: "Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks / Faced by the snarled and yelping seas" On the whole his images, language and poetical forms depicted a war-torn, un-idealistic, pessimistic, bereaved and psychologically challenged modern society, for the salvation of which he though Christianity is more suitable than the other religions. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Eliot, T.S. (1979), Four Quartets, Faber and Faber, London. 2. Kojecky, Roger (1971), T.S. Eliot's Social Criticism, Faber and Faber, London. 3. Kenner, Hugh (1959), The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot, McDowell, New York. 4. Menand, Louis (1987), Discovering modernism, T.S. Eliot and his Context, Oxford University Press. 5. Moody, Anthony David (1994), A Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot, Cambridge University Press. 6. O'Malley, Frnacis J., 'Idea of a Christian Society, T.S. Iliot', The Review of Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4. (Oct., 1940), pp. 488-490. 7. Olney, James (1988), T.S. Eliot, Essays from the Southern Review, Clarendon Press, Oxford. 8. Southam, B.C. (1968), A Student's Guide to The selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, Faber and Faber, London. 9. Ward, David (1973), T.S. Eliot, Between Two Worlds, Routledge & Kegal Paul, London. Read More