T.S. Eliot Archives ~ Page 3 of 10 ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Whether Order Is the First Need of All

By Daniel J. Sundahl|2022-12-03T15:16:37-06:00December 3rd, 2022|Categories: Order, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot|

The more genuine sources of order come not from opinion-makers but from custom, convention, and continuity. The appeal is to the three parts that make an associated sensibility: heart, imagination, and intellect, and all three are calculating and decision-making, and all three tutored by the eternal standards of what is right and what is wrong. [...]

Education as if Truth Mattered

By Joseph Pearce|2022-08-25T12:54:22-05:00August 24th, 2022|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Education, Evelyn Waugh, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Great Books, Joseph Pearce, StAR, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

If the twenty-first century is to produce more great men and more great books, it will have to restore a true education; and a true education is an education as if truth mattered. The title of this essay, “Education as if Truth Mattered,” is taken from the subtitle of Christopher Derrick’s book, Escape from Scepticism: [...]

On Being Conservative

By Christopher Olaf Blum|2022-08-23T14:48:35-05:00August 23rd, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Family, Jane Austen, Marriage, Philosophy, Robert Nisbet, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

To be a conservative is first and foremost to defend or to conserve something good: to protect family, neighborhood, local community, and region. Louis de Bonald Of the many attempts to define conservatism in recent decades, one of the most compelling is Robert Nisbet’s: “The essence of this body of ideas is the protection [...]

A People Without History: T.S. Eliot’s Critique of Evolutionary History

By Benjamin Lockerd|2022-08-21T15:07:55-05:00August 21st, 2022|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, History, Poetry, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays|

H.G. Wells sought to free humanity from the “bondage” of tradition, but T.S. Eliot saw history not as an evolutionary movement, but a return to the past. While T.S. Eliot never made any comments critical of Charles Darwin or his theory of the evolution of species, he was quite critical of various popularized versions of [...]

The Privilege of Little Words and Mighty Swords

By Bradley J. Birzer|2022-06-09T22:38:55-05:00June 9th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Essential, G.K. Chesterton, History, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

Let not future generations say of us: We slept. Instead, may they remember us as those who fought the good fight for the Logos and for humanity. Let it be said that in the twenty-first century we took up either of our mythically-laden swords and wielded them with all the force imaginable. My talk today [...]

T.S. Eliot & Christopher Dawson on Religion and Culture

By Benjamin Lockerd|2023-10-12T05:23:23-05:00January 6th, 2022|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Culture, Featured, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

Eliot scholars have ignored the Dawson connection. The central claim Dawson and Eliot made, based on their wide-ranging knowledge of anthropology and history, was that every culture has a cult, some religious system that serves as an ultimate source of value and meaning. “Eliot’s reputation as a critic of society has been worse than his [...]

Is “Christian Humanism” Gone Forever?

By Bradley J. Birzer|2021-02-11T13:00:07-06:00February 11th, 2021|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, Christian Humanism, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot|

In his book “The Year of Our Lord 1943,” writing on Christian humanism, Alan Jacobs considers the fears and desires of five major but seemingly disparate figures in 1943 as they envision a post-war world after an allied victory: W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Jacques Maritain, and Simone Weil. The Year of Our Lord [...]

Give, Sympathize, and Surrender: Surviving Our Wastelands

By Kim Cameron-Smith|2021-01-22T12:03:50-06:00January 22nd, 2021|Categories: Christianity, Literature, T.S. Eliot|

Though written in the 20th century, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is a poem for our generation. It speaks to our own longings and losses, casting its bitter light on the wastelands of our lives. And, while he identifies the wasteland with brutal honesty, Eliot also sketches a path that can lead us out of [...]

T.S. Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party”: The Language & Doctrine of Atonement

By Daniel J. Sundahl|2020-12-15T10:37:44-06:00December 19th, 2020|Categories: Christianity, Culture, T.S. Eliot, Theater|

In the years between 1939 and 1949, T.S. Eliot’s task was to enshrine Christian martyrdom and to restore poetic drama. His most popular drama was “The Cocktail Party,” a comedy which develops dramatically into a philosophically darker spiritual trial and wrestles with the theme of atonement. In one of his manifesto letters to William Carlos [...]

W.H. Auden’s Discovery of Original Sin

By Cicero Bruce|2020-08-03T17:01:58-05:00August 4th, 2020|Categories: Literature, Poetry, T.S. Eliot|Tags: 1MA, Cicero Bruce|

For several months after his 1939 immigration to the United States, W.H. Auden (1907-1973) remained enchanted with all the old dogmas—psychology, Marxism, and liberal humanism—that had shaped so much of his early work. As a poet, he continued to assert his faith in man’s ability to save civilization from ruin. Composed like all mankind “Of [...]

Modernism, Formed or Fleeting?

By Nayeli Riano|2020-05-12T15:49:02-05:00May 12th, 2020|Categories: Culture, History, Literature, Modernity, Poetry, T.S. Eliot, Tradition, Western Civilization|

The dual definition of “modern”—something that is current and something that is done in a certain manner—touches on a problem that is at the heart of the literary and artistic movement of the early twentieth century known as “Modernism”: Is Modernism something that was meant to represent the “just now” or is it something that [...]

Arguing with T.S. Eliot

By Joseph Pearce|2020-05-11T09:54:15-05:00May 11th, 2020|Categories: Joseph Pearce, Literature, Poetry, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot|

T.S. Eliot once claimed, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” But as a friend and admirer of Eliot, I must disagree. One of my favourite quotes by G.K. Chesterton is his quip that he and his brother [...]

Who Was T.S. Eliot’s True Love?

By Joseph Pearce|2020-01-25T20:12:57-06:00January 25th, 2020|Categories: Character, History, Imagination, Joseph Pearce, Literature, Love, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot|

T.S. Eliot’s correspondence with Emily Hale was recently opened, having been kept in Princeton archives until fifty years after Miss Hale’s death. Also opened was Eliot’s response to the archives. It seemed that the poet’s ghost had returned for one last lover’s quarrel with the ghost of his first love, over a century after they [...]

Listening to “Little Gidding”

By Dwight Longenecker|2019-10-12T15:53:55-05:00October 12th, 2019|Categories: Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Four Quartets Series, Literature, Poetry, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot|

In “Little Gidding,” T.S. Eliot captures an experience that lodges his reader into a recurring theme of time and memory, history and destiny; the poem’s lines are among the finest and most moving in Eliot’s oeuvre. Here there is motion and emotion, intention and commitment. All is driven and motivated by love. It would seem [...]