Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual [...]
There are several attitudes towards Christmas, Some of which we may disregard: The social, the torpid, the patently commercial, The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight), And the childish — which is not that of the child For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel Spreading its wings at the summit [...]
The majority not only have no language to express anything save generalized man; they are for the most part unaware of themselves as anything but generalized men... I Eeldrop and Appleplex rented two small rooms in a disreputable part of town. Here they sometimes came at nightfall, here they sometimes slept, and after they had [...]
Thou hast committed — Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. (The Jew of Malta) I Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do— With "I have saved this afternoon for you"; And four wax candles in [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join T.S. Eliot as he considers what it means to be a man of letters. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher I wish first to define the sense in which I shall use the term “man of letters.” I shall mean the writer for [...]
The Universal Church is today, it seems to me, more definitely set against the World than at any time since Pagan Rome. I do not mean that our times are particularly corrupt; all times are corrupt. I mean that Christianity, in spite of certain local appearances, is not, and cannot be within measurable time, ‘official.’ [...]
The number of people in possession of any criteria for discriminating between good and evil is very small; the number of the half-alive hungry for any form of spiritual experience, or what offers itself as spiritual experience, high or low, good or bad, is considerable. My own generation has not served them very well. Never [...]
In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition"; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is "traditional" or even "too traditional." Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in [...]
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life. Few men have known better than he* how to give just place to the claims of the public and of the private life; few men have had better opportunity, few of those having the [...]
“First of all no art, and particularly and especially no literary art, can exist in a vacuum. We are , in in practice, creatures of divers interests, and in many of our ordinary interests there is not obvious coherence.” (598) “I do not suppose that there ever has been, or will be, a critic of [...]
I had the privilege of transcribing Eliot’s famous essay, “Thoughts on Lambeth.” Below is a significant part of the essay (roughly 2/3 of it). I have edited it only down in size; I’ve not made any other changes. This is some of Eliot’s most revealing writing, especially regarding The Waste Land as a personal journey not [...]
With this number I terminate my editorship of The Criterion. I have been considering this decision for about two years: but I did not wish to come to a conclusion precipitately, because I knew that my retirement would bring The Criterion to an end. During the autumn, however, the prospect of war had involved me [...]
I wish first to define the sense in which I shall use the term “man of letters.” I shall mean the writer for whom his writing is primarily an art, who is as much concerned with style as with content; the understanding of whose writings, therefore, depends as much upon appreciation of style as upon [...]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES Sir.— The traditional use of the word [aristocracy] implies, I believe, an emphasis upon inheritance: not merely the inheritance of property, however important that may seem to some, but the inheritance, partly through biological transmission and partly through environment, of, other less tangible values. In other words, the unit [...]