T.S. Eliot Archives ~ Page 9 of 10 ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Big Big Train: England is Now

By Bradley J. Birzer|2016-02-12T15:28:37-06:00August 30th, 2012|Categories: Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, Music, Progressive Rock, T.S. Eliot, Western Civilization|Tags: Andy Poole, David Longdon, Greg Spawton, Nick D'Virgilio|

In the last of his Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”—arguably the finest work of art to emerge in the twentieth century—the Anglo-American poet, T.S. Eliot, offered the following: A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter’s afternoon, in a [...]

T.S Eliot’s Christianity and Culture: the Problem of Establishment

By Bruce Frohnen|2016-08-03T10:37:29-05:00June 11th, 2012|Categories: Books, Bruce Frohnen, Christendom, Political Science Reviewer, T.S. Eliot|

T.S. Eliot T. S. Eliot indisputably was, and remains, in the first rank of poets of any era and any culture.[1] Eliot is almost as well known among literate persons as a critic and literary theorist. His journal, The Criterion, despite its short lifespan, remains the standard of high modernism. Continuing interest in [...]

T. S. Eliot, Poetry and Propaganda

By T.S. Eliot|2016-11-26T09:52:14-06:00June 6th, 2012|Categories: Poetry, Quotation, T.S. Eliot|Tags: Propaganda|

“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 [...]

Thoughts after Lambeth

By T.S. Eliot|2016-02-12T21:44:14-06:00May 27th, 2012|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Culture, T.S. Eliot|Tags: Thoughts After Lambeth|

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 [...]

Last Words by T.S. Eliot

By T.S. Eliot|2014-01-22T17:46:00-06:00May 24th, 2012|Categories: Culture, T.S. Eliot|

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 [...]

Russell Kirk on T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land"

By Robert M. Woods|2013-12-31T11:09:52-06:00May 1st, 2012|Categories: Robert M. Woods, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot|

by Robert M. Woods In all of our Great Books based programs we exalt the primary readings, unmediated by commentaries, critical theories, jargon ladened treatises, and a mountain of secondary works explaining what a given author meant within his work. What we generally do is encourage the students to jump right in and start swimming. By [...]

The Man of Letters and the Future of Europe

By T.S. Eliot|2016-12-21T21:29:05-06:00March 16th, 2012|Categories: Culture, T.S. Eliot|

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 [...]

The Moral Imagination

By Russell Kirk|2018-10-16T20:25:09-05:00March 5th, 2012|Categories: Edmund Burke, Moral Imagination, RAK, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot|

Russell Kirk In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. Yet no civilization rests forever content with literary boredom and literary violence. Once again, a conscience may speak to a [...]

The Conservative Adventure

By Bradley J. Birzer|2016-08-03T10:37:36-05:00February 24th, 2012|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christendom, Conservatism, Journalism, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot|

Please forgive the following rambles. I’m in Louisville, ready to work with the mighty Gary Gregg again today. Last night, I had the great privilege of speaking with a number of his excellent McConnell Fellows for nearly two hours about Eliot’s Ash Wednesday and another ninety minutes on Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I [...]

Taking Note of T.S. Eliot’s Notes on Education and Culture

By Robert M. Woods|2018-05-31T12:34:49-05:00February 16th, 2012|Categories: Christendom, Culture, Robert M. Woods, T.S. Eliot|

Beginning with the definition of education, Eliot relates the nature of education to culture as a whole. Specifically on culture Eliot says, “if we mean that Culture is what is passed on by our elementary and secondary schools, or by our preparatory and public schools, then we are asserting that an organ is a whole [...]

Elements in T.S. Eliot

By Stratford Caldecott|2016-02-14T16:01:09-06:00February 11th, 2012|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Communio, Liberal Learning, Stratford Caldecott, T.S. Eliot|Tags: DNP|

An important book by Benjamin G. Lockerd Jr, Aethereal Rumours: T.S. Eliot's Physics and Poetics, does for The Waste Land and the Four Quartets something of what Michael Ward does for the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis in Planet Narnia. In his book, Michael Ward shows that each of the seven tales of Narnia was intended [...]

T.S. Eliot, Literature of Politics (part II–conclusion)

By Bradley J. Birzer|2019-04-18T13:22:03-05:00February 1st, 2012|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Liberal Learning, Politics, T.S. Eliot|

(read part I here) . . . [in original] But how, in the end, does the work of a mere writer affect political life? One is sometimes tempted to answer that the profounder and wiser the man, the less likely is his influence to be discernible. This, of course, is to take a very short [...]

T.S. Eliot: The Literature of Politics

By Bradley J. Birzer|2019-04-18T12:41:34-05:00January 30th, 2012|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Poetry, Politics, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Traditional Conservatives and Libertarians|

The following are excerpts from a speech T.S. Eliot gave on April 19, 1955, at the London Conservative Union. I have typed verbatim what Time and Tide reprinted in its April 23, 1955 issue. One can find the full speech in T.S. Eliot, To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings (1965; Lincoln, NE: University of [...]

T.S. Eliot on Aristocracy

By T.S. Eliot|2016-10-15T18:49:57-05:00January 27th, 2012|Categories: Aristocracy, Conservatism, Quotation, T.S. Eliot|

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 [...]