In 1953, cultural critic Russell Kirk (Redeeming the Time)
informed his friend TS Eliot of his intention to write a book on "The
Age of Eliot". After eighteen years (and Eliot's death), that book
appeared under the title Eliot and His Age. Kirk traces Eliot's
path from his birth in St Louis (2635 Locust St) to his burial in East
Coker, but the bulk of the book is devoted to an analysis of Eliot's
work, fitting for a man who believed that "there is, in all great
poetry, something which must remain unaccountable however complete might
be our knowledge of the poet."
Kirk
locates the heart of Eliot's work not in the ephemeral world of things
that pass away, the world of "relevance" and fashion, of Lawrence's
"chewers of newspapers", but in the "permanent things" that endure
eternally. In this reading, Eliot's life work, his poetry and drama but
especially his criticism, aimed at the revitalization of history and
tradition as the only way to bring water to the wasteland. Change must
surely come, but if it is not rooted in respect for the past and concern
for the future, it will inevitably be sterile. However, Eliot was more
pessimistic than Dostoevsky, who famously wrote, "Beauty will save the
world." Literature, in the modern world, can only ever appeal to a
minority. Its purpose is not to overwhelm but to preserve.
A
book by a master writing about a genius. It does demand a certain
knowledge of Eliot's creative work.
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