Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry
by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
To remember T.S. Eliot is also to recapitulate the entire ethos of a century because in writing himself he wrote his times more than anyone else. He reconstructed the poetry; there is mixture of thought, feeling and vision. Most readers of Eliot are particularly handicapped by an inadequate knowledge of modern philosophy. Eliot is an immensely learned poet. His development as a poet cannot be understood without noting his philosophical background. It is obvious that Eliot’s study of philosophy played a crucial rule in nourishing his creative imagination and critical intellect. It is imperative to trace his philosophical concepts for a better understanding of his poetry. Eliot pursued philosophical questions throughout his career, though he ceased to do so through philosophical channels. Instead, Eliot insightfully investigated these questions in his poetry.
It is an established fact that the early absorption in philosophy was very important for his development as a poet. T.S. Eliot began his career by training as a professional philosopher rather than as a poet but his creative imagination perceived the limitations of philosophy. He did not find the academic study of philosophy satisfying because a philosophical system implied the maintenance of a single, more or less consistent point of view and was necessarily based upon the presupposition of the author.
Eliot's early philosophical work in fact provides a rich source for mapping the development of his major literary intellectual and religious pre-occupations. As is known, Eliot pursued philosophical questions throughout his career. Though he renounced philosophy for poetry, he insightfully attacked these questions in criticism, social theory and poetry. The relationship of philosophy and poetry, and consequently thought and feeling, remained one of his lifelong concerns.
Eliot had deep interest in philosophy. Eliot’s study of philosophy played a very significant role in the formation of his sensibility. Manju jain points out:
Eliot chose to give up the prospect of an academic career in philosophy for poetry, preferring to remain as a man of letters in England rather than return to America to become a professor of philosophy. Eliot renounced philosophy for poetry although his philosophical interests were never wholly divorced from his literary concerns and creative endeavours. (x)
Eliot gave up philosophy for poetry, yet his philosophical interests always ruled over him. The relationship of philosophy with poetry remained one of his lifelong concerns. Eliot admitted that when a poet has pursued philosophical studies, these will have played an important part in his formation and will have informed his poetry. The poetry of T.S. Eliot manifests his philosophical bent of mind. Being a serious scholar of philosophy, he has used various philosophical concepts in his poetry. His poetry is earnest and broadly philosophical. Manju Jain observes:
In his discussion of the relationship of philosophy and poetry the crucial distinction that Eliot makes is that between theory and vision. Philosophy is the statement of a theory; poetry is the embodiment of a concrete vision …. However, if poetry, for Eliot, expresses a vision of life and not a theory, this vision is in complete if it does not include some philosophy,…” (246)
T.S. Eliot began his career by training as a professional philosopher rather than as a poet or critic. He pursued academic study at major philosophical centres such as Harvard, the Sorbonne, Marbury and Oxford, between 1908 and 1915. He completed his doctoral thesis on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley in 1916, and even published, between 1916 and 1918, a number of professional articles and reviews of philosophy. His early absorption in philosophy was very important for his development as poet and critic.
When Eliot was doing his graduation from Harvard University, he studied Sanskrit and Pali under Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman, a giant literary figure of those days. Eliot has elaborated the influence of Indian philosophy on his poetry in Notes towards the Definition of Culture. Eliot's Indic studies began in 1911 at Harvard. He developed a strong inclination towards the oriental studies, especially the Indic studies. Eliot studied Sanskrit and Pali language under the guidance of Charles Rockwell Lanman. Eliot read Patanjali's metaphysics under James houghton Woods. All three courses intensified his interest in Indian classical philosophy. Lanman was the first source of Eliot's knowledge of the Vedas. He prepared eliot's mind for absorbing Hindu thought. The Waste Land exhibits a sterile world of spiritual and moral degeneration, in which one does not know how to make the spirit work. The land in the poem is Christian, but Hinduism works as an infusion of regenerative waters. The poem begins on the banks of the "Thames" begins on the banks of the and at the edges of "unreal city", and ends on the banks of the river Ganges. As far as the "thunder', used in section V of the poem, and taken from the "Thunder" passage in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (5:1-3), constitutes the most "complete and philosophical movement of the poem" (Rai 123). Eliot's concern here is clearly Vedic. "What the Thunder said", as the 'most complex of all the five sections of The Waste Land (Shahane viii), not only projects Eliot's vision of the human condition and the predicament of man in the contemporary world, it also aims at a solution on Vedic principles. The journey of the protagonist, from part first to fifth of the poem, shows that the solution is evident in the philosophical restraint of the East.
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered for distant, over Himavant.
The Jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta .........
..................
DA
Dayadhvam ......
...........................
DA
Damyata : ........
........................... (395-99, 400-01,410-11 417-18)
The arrival of the thunder, which justifies the title of the section, "What the Thunder Said", is marked by the three commands. The thundering sound, 'Da', used thrice in the section, abbreviates the three Sanskrit sutras- Datta, Dayadhvam and Damyata. Eliot refers the readers to the fable of the Thunder in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, 2. The three fold offspring of the creator Prajapati, gods, men and demons, approach Prajapati for instruction after completing their formal education. To each group he utters the syllable 'Da'. Each group interprets this reply differently.The gods interpret it as 'damyata' (control yourself'). The men interpret it as 'datta' ('give'). The demons interpret it as 'dayadhvam' ('be compassionate'). When the groups, in turn, give their interpretations, Prajapati responds with 'Om' signifying that they have fully understood. The Fable concludes : "This very thing the heavenly voice of thunder repeats da, da, da, that is, control yourself, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad, self-control, giving and compassion" (Radhakrishnan 289-290). The concluding line, "Shantih Shantih Shantih" (403) of The Waste Land, is in consonance with the title of the last section. It makes Eliot's Vedic references more explicit. The Shantih- chanting appears for the first time in the Yajurveda (36:17). It is part of both ritual as well as religious activity in the vedic way of living. The words are not automatic, but Eliot wants the universe to be at peace, including the peace for the waste-landers, those who live in an acute atmosphere of awe, fear, doubt and frustration.
In many poems , eliot has drawn upon the Gita. In "The Dry Salvages", it is to be found in the lines:
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers. (III, 169-172)
During 1909-1910 Eliot came in contact with Professor Irving Babbitt. The latter had a philosophical inclination and the lectures which eliot attended were, concerned with French literary criticism: but they had a great deal to do with Aristotle and Longinus. They touched frequently upon the Confucius, Rousseau and contemporary religious movements. Babbitt was distinguished by his unflinching defence of what he considered to be the values of reason and civilization, tradition and the past, as opposed to the anti- intellectualism of prevailing philosophies of the flux- such as those of William James and Henri Bergson- which exalted intuition at the expense of reason and the intellect. Some of the central concepts of Babbitt’s thought continued to be Eliot’s major preoccupations- the importance of tradition; the necessity for the poet and the critic of mediating between the past and present and the unification of thought and feeling.
It was Dante who exercised the most persistent and deepest influence upon T.S. Eliot from Dante Eliot learned the lessons of craft, of speech and exploration of sensibility. Eliot was profoundly influenced by the philosopher Henri Bergson, whose lectures he attended at the college de France. In his writings, Eliot can be seen scrutinizing the implications of Bergson’s views on time, memory, intuition and consciousness. It is clear Bergson continued to exercise a strong fascination on Eliot’s imagination. Even in 1952, whilst advocating a philosophy based on dogmatic theology, Eliot expressed:
A longing for the appearance of a philosopher whose writings, lectures, and personality will arouse the imagination as Bergson, for instance, aroused it forty years ago. (quoted in Pieper 11)
Bergson held the view that the intellect misinterprets time as a succession of distinct, separate units. the real characteristic of time is duration and it flows in an indivisible continuity. In contrast to intellect, Bergson sets intuition, which grasps the real nature of time as 'duration' and the world, is better known as the individual process of 'becoming'. Thus, the world is a 'flowing stream of vital impulses that can neither be divided into fixed and determinate parts nor can be attached and regulated with unalterable law.According to Bergson time is constantly moving and, as an individual, tries to peep into the past; his present goes in his subconscious mind, which is nothing but an image of the past. Similarly, his experiences of a whole life are collected in the mind and take the form of memory. this memory, irrevocable - self, is a living past which is always present with us. These are deeply related to one another. Therefore time is a combination of past, present and future, and all these three are correlated. The Human mind divides time into past, present and future for the convenience and also because every man visualises time individually, or it can be said that the sense of time sense is really a matter of perceiver's consciousness. "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" was written during the period when eliot was under Bergson's influence. The poem is critique of some of the implications of Bergson’s' philosophy, especially with references to his views on time, memory and consciousness.
The poem records the loose sallies of the midnight memories of a young man as he walks towards his rented room, after his nocturnal orgies perhaps, through the city slums where prostitutes live and ply their sordid business. he is in a sort of mental drowsiness and the contents of his memory, fragments of rotten things connected with his environment, which rush forth pell-mell, are a nice blend of the realistic and phantasmagoric, which Eliot appreciated in Baudelaire and Laforgue. The internal sally, however, is regulated by the lighted posts along the street which measure the clock-time and direct the operation of the half-demented memory. In this way a method is imposed from outside on the apparent madness of memory. Freud has gauged the personality of a person through the interpretation of his or her dreams, and here the character of the night-walker and of his environment has been vividly portrayed by means of his memory contents and the picture of life emerging from the poem is most nauseating in the whole range of Eliot's early probing into the depth of the inferno of modern city life.
At Harvard Eliot was busy with the study of the philosophy of F.H. Bradley, the fruit of which is represented by his doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley”. Bradley’s influence on Eliot came as a great liberating force at a time when he was too heavily inclined towards the dry, ironical method of Laforgue. Bradley provided him with several crucial concepts and ideas, as well as the model of a prose style well suited to his reticent temperament.
With his migration to London is 1914 Eliot gradually gravitated towards Ezra pound, the most active and energetic figure in the English literary life of the day. Pound proved to be a mentor for T.S. Eliot. Another powerful influence during these early years came from T.E. Hulme. Hulme was a Bergsonian philosopher and sponsor of the Imagist style in poetry. He was sternly opposed to the Romantic style and the romantic ideal of the perfectibility of man. He was Christian and stressed the belief in the original sin and the natural limitation of the weak, sinful mortals.
St Augustine also deeply influenced the ideas of T.s. Eliot. It will be right to say that in the case of Eliot's poems, the reader should bring some knowledge St Augustine, for St Augustine is important figure, with his ideas and concepts, in many poems that Eliot wrote after 1914. The inclusion of St Augustine, with effective allusions in the poem The Waste Land, makes it highly relevant. The section "The Fire Sermon" may be felt through the whole poem. The presence of St Augustine enriches The Waste Land considerably. it is a further example of unity of emotional and cultural health and of how the collapse of one is mirrored in the decline of the other. Rajnath observes in T.S. Eliot's Theory of Poetry:
St Augustine has always loomed large on Eliot's mental horizon. "Mixing memory and desire" in the opening lines of The Waste Land is Augustinian and St Augustine has been juxtaposed with the Buddha in "The Fire Sermon." It is the Confessions from the fifth book of which Eliot quote in "The Fire Sermon" that sets forth in the eleventh book the philosophy of time embodied in the Four Quartets. (159)
The view of human life, lived purely on the sensual plane, is supported by the words in the Confessions of the Christian philosopher, a true representative of Christian asceticism. The reminder of St Augustine is not in accident. V.K. Rai states:
The intention here is to present life in The Waste Land as a reckless surrender to the senses and all the abnormality, morbidity and perversion to which it leads. The remedy for this torment of in satiated craving is continence as prescribed by the Buddha and St Augustine. (128)
Sexual appetite has been let loose and men and women are meeting, coupling and then parting in season and out of season. Not satisfied with normal sex, they are apt to devise abnormal, perverse and unnatural ways for lending a novelty to their sexual pleasures and gratifications. In The Waste Land, it is the burning in lust and restlessness that Eliot contrasts to the enlightened Buddha's view of men and women with the inclusion of St Augustine.
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning buring
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou Pluckest
burning (307-311)
It has reference to the Confessions of St Augustine. Eliot refers the readers to the Augustine's Confessions. St Augustine wrote of the sensual temptations of his youth. He was born in what is now Algeria and went to Carthage when he was sixteen. St Augustine prayed for God's help to save him from the fire of lust prevailing in Carthage. Augustine seeks God's grace for freedom from lust and is eventually saved.
In England, T.S. Eliot was progressing and his fame grew slowly but steadily. In 1927, he obtained the citizenship of England and joined the Anglican Church. The recognition of his merit and poetic eminence came in 1948 with the awards of The order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for literature. At the close of his life in 1965 he had risen to the enviable position of a literary figure that summed up an epoch. T.S. eliot died on 4 January 1965. among the mourners at the memorial service in West Minister Abbey was Ezra pound, whose tribute to Eliot is perhaps the most appropriate: ‘I can only repeat, but with the urgency of 50 years ago: READ HIM’ (Quoted in Moody 13). It is obvious that Eliot’s study of philosophy played a crucial rule in nourishing his creative imagination and critical intellect.
The age in which Eliot lived was intensely chaotic and problematic, throwing up several challenges and possibilities of human activity. It was definitely a baffling mass of current and cross- currents in English literature. It would be a miracle indeed if someone were born to voice the multiple concerns of the age in a forceful manner. The miracle happened and it happened in the shape of T.S. eliot, who through his exemplary work and worth presented the credentials of a wide ranging artistic sensibility and incorporated the 'best' of American education and training as well as of European tradition and culture. Eliot was, beyond doubt," an integral poet" (Smidst 114), who was searching for a form of poetry as well as a form of life. In spite of varied influences, Eliot is original in thought and matter. He has fused what he borrowed from others and turned it into something rich and strange.
Universality transcends the limitations of time, space and region, caste, colour and creed Eliot is decidedly a 'universal' poet of the first rank. He is an American by birth, a British by professed religion and naturalized citizenship, a European by culture and tradition, and an internationalist by philosophical outlook upon life. One has to recollect that Eliot as a true 'universalist' has used at least six foreign languages and thirty five authors in The Waste Land alone. Eliot is dead, but his contributions to literature remain invaluable assets. His life consisted of painful happenings, and so, the quality of his writing is inseparable from the integrity of his character. His personal experience of life was common, but the experience communicated in his works in unique in its intensity of moral, as well as philosophical meanings.
WORKS CITED
Rajnath. T.S. Eliot's Theory of Poetry. Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann Publishers (India) Pvt.Ltd.,1980. Print.
Jain, Manju. T.S. Eliot American Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print.
Eliot, T.s. "The Possibility of A Poetic Drama". The Sacred Wood. London: Metheun, 1960. Print.
Rai, V. The Poetry of T.S. Eliot. Delhi : Doaba Houses, 2007, Print.
Kukreti, Sumitra.Time- Philosophy of T.S. Eliot. New Delhi:Anamika Publishers & Distributors, 2002. Print.
Ghosh, Damyanti. India Thought in T.S. Eliot. Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1978. Print.
Eliot, T.S. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. London: Faber and Faber, 1948.Print.
Elliot, G.R. “T.S. Eliot and Irving Babbitt. American Review, Vol. 7 (April-October),1936. Print.
Pieper, Joseph. Introduction to Leisure the Basis of culture. Trans. Alexander Dru. London : Faber and Faber, 1962: Print.
Moody, A.D. Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1979. Print.
Smidst, Kristian. Poetry and Belief in the Work of T.S. Eliot. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. Print.
by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
To remember T.S. Eliot is also to recapitulate the entire ethos of a century because in writing himself he wrote his times more than anyone else. He reconstructed the poetry; there is mixture of thought, feeling and vision. Most readers of Eliot are particularly handicapped by an inadequate knowledge of modern philosophy. Eliot is an immensely learned poet. His development as a poet cannot be understood without noting his philosophical background. It is obvious that Eliot’s study of philosophy played a crucial rule in nourishing his creative imagination and critical intellect. It is imperative to trace his philosophical concepts for a better understanding of his poetry. Eliot pursued philosophical questions throughout his career, though he ceased to do so through philosophical channels. Instead, Eliot insightfully investigated these questions in his poetry.
It is an established fact that the early absorption in philosophy was very important for his development as a poet. T.S. Eliot began his career by training as a professional philosopher rather than as a poet but his creative imagination perceived the limitations of philosophy. He did not find the academic study of philosophy satisfying because a philosophical system implied the maintenance of a single, more or less consistent point of view and was necessarily based upon the presupposition of the author.
Eliot's early philosophical work in fact provides a rich source for mapping the development of his major literary intellectual and religious pre-occupations. As is known, Eliot pursued philosophical questions throughout his career. Though he renounced philosophy for poetry, he insightfully attacked these questions in criticism, social theory and poetry. The relationship of philosophy and poetry, and consequently thought and feeling, remained one of his lifelong concerns.
Eliot had deep interest in philosophy. Eliot’s study of philosophy played a very significant role in the formation of his sensibility. Manju jain points out:
Eliot chose to give up the prospect of an academic career in philosophy for poetry, preferring to remain as a man of letters in England rather than return to America to become a professor of philosophy. Eliot renounced philosophy for poetry although his philosophical interests were never wholly divorced from his literary concerns and creative endeavours. (x)
Eliot gave up philosophy for poetry, yet his philosophical interests always ruled over him. The relationship of philosophy with poetry remained one of his lifelong concerns. Eliot admitted that when a poet has pursued philosophical studies, these will have played an important part in his formation and will have informed his poetry. The poetry of T.S. Eliot manifests his philosophical bent of mind. Being a serious scholar of philosophy, he has used various philosophical concepts in his poetry. His poetry is earnest and broadly philosophical. Manju Jain observes:
In his discussion of the relationship of philosophy and poetry the crucial distinction that Eliot makes is that between theory and vision. Philosophy is the statement of a theory; poetry is the embodiment of a concrete vision …. However, if poetry, for Eliot, expresses a vision of life and not a theory, this vision is in complete if it does not include some philosophy,…” (246)
T.S. Eliot began his career by training as a professional philosopher rather than as a poet or critic. He pursued academic study at major philosophical centres such as Harvard, the Sorbonne, Marbury and Oxford, between 1908 and 1915. He completed his doctoral thesis on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley in 1916, and even published, between 1916 and 1918, a number of professional articles and reviews of philosophy. His early absorption in philosophy was very important for his development as poet and critic.
When Eliot was doing his graduation from Harvard University, he studied Sanskrit and Pali under Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman, a giant literary figure of those days. Eliot has elaborated the influence of Indian philosophy on his poetry in Notes towards the Definition of Culture. Eliot's Indic studies began in 1911 at Harvard. He developed a strong inclination towards the oriental studies, especially the Indic studies. Eliot studied Sanskrit and Pali language under the guidance of Charles Rockwell Lanman. Eliot read Patanjali's metaphysics under James houghton Woods. All three courses intensified his interest in Indian classical philosophy. Lanman was the first source of Eliot's knowledge of the Vedas. He prepared eliot's mind for absorbing Hindu thought. The Waste Land exhibits a sterile world of spiritual and moral degeneration, in which one does not know how to make the spirit work. The land in the poem is Christian, but Hinduism works as an infusion of regenerative waters. The poem begins on the banks of the "Thames" begins on the banks of the and at the edges of "unreal city", and ends on the banks of the river Ganges. As far as the "thunder', used in section V of the poem, and taken from the "Thunder" passage in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (5:1-3), constitutes the most "complete and philosophical movement of the poem" (Rai 123). Eliot's concern here is clearly Vedic. "What the Thunder said", as the 'most complex of all the five sections of The Waste Land (Shahane viii), not only projects Eliot's vision of the human condition and the predicament of man in the contemporary world, it also aims at a solution on Vedic principles. The journey of the protagonist, from part first to fifth of the poem, shows that the solution is evident in the philosophical restraint of the East.
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered for distant, over Himavant.
The Jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta .........
..................
DA
Dayadhvam ......
...........................
DA
Damyata : ........
........................... (395-99, 400-01,410-11 417-18)
The arrival of the thunder, which justifies the title of the section, "What the Thunder Said", is marked by the three commands. The thundering sound, 'Da', used thrice in the section, abbreviates the three Sanskrit sutras- Datta, Dayadhvam and Damyata. Eliot refers the readers to the fable of the Thunder in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, 2. The three fold offspring of the creator Prajapati, gods, men and demons, approach Prajapati for instruction after completing their formal education. To each group he utters the syllable 'Da'. Each group interprets this reply differently.The gods interpret it as 'damyata' (control yourself'). The men interpret it as 'datta' ('give'). The demons interpret it as 'dayadhvam' ('be compassionate'). When the groups, in turn, give their interpretations, Prajapati responds with 'Om' signifying that they have fully understood. The Fable concludes : "This very thing the heavenly voice of thunder repeats da, da, da, that is, control yourself, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad, self-control, giving and compassion" (Radhakrishnan 289-290). The concluding line, "Shantih Shantih Shantih" (403) of The Waste Land, is in consonance with the title of the last section. It makes Eliot's Vedic references more explicit. The Shantih- chanting appears for the first time in the Yajurveda (36:17). It is part of both ritual as well as religious activity in the vedic way of living. The words are not automatic, but Eliot wants the universe to be at peace, including the peace for the waste-landers, those who live in an acute atmosphere of awe, fear, doubt and frustration.
In many poems , eliot has drawn upon the Gita. In "The Dry Salvages", it is to be found in the lines:
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers. (III, 169-172)
During 1909-1910 Eliot came in contact with Professor Irving Babbitt. The latter had a philosophical inclination and the lectures which eliot attended were, concerned with French literary criticism: but they had a great deal to do with Aristotle and Longinus. They touched frequently upon the Confucius, Rousseau and contemporary religious movements. Babbitt was distinguished by his unflinching defence of what he considered to be the values of reason and civilization, tradition and the past, as opposed to the anti- intellectualism of prevailing philosophies of the flux- such as those of William James and Henri Bergson- which exalted intuition at the expense of reason and the intellect. Some of the central concepts of Babbitt’s thought continued to be Eliot’s major preoccupations- the importance of tradition; the necessity for the poet and the critic of mediating between the past and present and the unification of thought and feeling.
It was Dante who exercised the most persistent and deepest influence upon T.S. Eliot from Dante Eliot learned the lessons of craft, of speech and exploration of sensibility. Eliot was profoundly influenced by the philosopher Henri Bergson, whose lectures he attended at the college de France. In his writings, Eliot can be seen scrutinizing the implications of Bergson’s views on time, memory, intuition and consciousness. It is clear Bergson continued to exercise a strong fascination on Eliot’s imagination. Even in 1952, whilst advocating a philosophy based on dogmatic theology, Eliot expressed:
A longing for the appearance of a philosopher whose writings, lectures, and personality will arouse the imagination as Bergson, for instance, aroused it forty years ago. (quoted in Pieper 11)
Bergson held the view that the intellect misinterprets time as a succession of distinct, separate units. the real characteristic of time is duration and it flows in an indivisible continuity. In contrast to intellect, Bergson sets intuition, which grasps the real nature of time as 'duration' and the world, is better known as the individual process of 'becoming'. Thus, the world is a 'flowing stream of vital impulses that can neither be divided into fixed and determinate parts nor can be attached and regulated with unalterable law.According to Bergson time is constantly moving and, as an individual, tries to peep into the past; his present goes in his subconscious mind, which is nothing but an image of the past. Similarly, his experiences of a whole life are collected in the mind and take the form of memory. this memory, irrevocable - self, is a living past which is always present with us. These are deeply related to one another. Therefore time is a combination of past, present and future, and all these three are correlated. The Human mind divides time into past, present and future for the convenience and also because every man visualises time individually, or it can be said that the sense of time sense is really a matter of perceiver's consciousness. "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" was written during the period when eliot was under Bergson's influence. The poem is critique of some of the implications of Bergson’s' philosophy, especially with references to his views on time, memory and consciousness.
The poem records the loose sallies of the midnight memories of a young man as he walks towards his rented room, after his nocturnal orgies perhaps, through the city slums where prostitutes live and ply their sordid business. he is in a sort of mental drowsiness and the contents of his memory, fragments of rotten things connected with his environment, which rush forth pell-mell, are a nice blend of the realistic and phantasmagoric, which Eliot appreciated in Baudelaire and Laforgue. The internal sally, however, is regulated by the lighted posts along the street which measure the clock-time and direct the operation of the half-demented memory. In this way a method is imposed from outside on the apparent madness of memory. Freud has gauged the personality of a person through the interpretation of his or her dreams, and here the character of the night-walker and of his environment has been vividly portrayed by means of his memory contents and the picture of life emerging from the poem is most nauseating in the whole range of Eliot's early probing into the depth of the inferno of modern city life.
At Harvard Eliot was busy with the study of the philosophy of F.H. Bradley, the fruit of which is represented by his doctoral dissertation, “Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley”. Bradley’s influence on Eliot came as a great liberating force at a time when he was too heavily inclined towards the dry, ironical method of Laforgue. Bradley provided him with several crucial concepts and ideas, as well as the model of a prose style well suited to his reticent temperament.
With his migration to London is 1914 Eliot gradually gravitated towards Ezra pound, the most active and energetic figure in the English literary life of the day. Pound proved to be a mentor for T.S. Eliot. Another powerful influence during these early years came from T.E. Hulme. Hulme was a Bergsonian philosopher and sponsor of the Imagist style in poetry. He was sternly opposed to the Romantic style and the romantic ideal of the perfectibility of man. He was Christian and stressed the belief in the original sin and the natural limitation of the weak, sinful mortals.
St Augustine also deeply influenced the ideas of T.s. Eliot. It will be right to say that in the case of Eliot's poems, the reader should bring some knowledge St Augustine, for St Augustine is important figure, with his ideas and concepts, in many poems that Eliot wrote after 1914. The inclusion of St Augustine, with effective allusions in the poem The Waste Land, makes it highly relevant. The section "The Fire Sermon" may be felt through the whole poem. The presence of St Augustine enriches The Waste Land considerably. it is a further example of unity of emotional and cultural health and of how the collapse of one is mirrored in the decline of the other. Rajnath observes in T.S. Eliot's Theory of Poetry:
St Augustine has always loomed large on Eliot's mental horizon. "Mixing memory and desire" in the opening lines of The Waste Land is Augustinian and St Augustine has been juxtaposed with the Buddha in "The Fire Sermon." It is the Confessions from the fifth book of which Eliot quote in "The Fire Sermon" that sets forth in the eleventh book the philosophy of time embodied in the Four Quartets. (159)
The view of human life, lived purely on the sensual plane, is supported by the words in the Confessions of the Christian philosopher, a true representative of Christian asceticism. The reminder of St Augustine is not in accident. V.K. Rai states:
The intention here is to present life in The Waste Land as a reckless surrender to the senses and all the abnormality, morbidity and perversion to which it leads. The remedy for this torment of in satiated craving is continence as prescribed by the Buddha and St Augustine. (128)
Sexual appetite has been let loose and men and women are meeting, coupling and then parting in season and out of season. Not satisfied with normal sex, they are apt to devise abnormal, perverse and unnatural ways for lending a novelty to their sexual pleasures and gratifications. In The Waste Land, it is the burning in lust and restlessness that Eliot contrasts to the enlightened Buddha's view of men and women with the inclusion of St Augustine.
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning buring
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou Pluckest
burning (307-311)
It has reference to the Confessions of St Augustine. Eliot refers the readers to the Augustine's Confessions. St Augustine wrote of the sensual temptations of his youth. He was born in what is now Algeria and went to Carthage when he was sixteen. St Augustine prayed for God's help to save him from the fire of lust prevailing in Carthage. Augustine seeks God's grace for freedom from lust and is eventually saved.
In England, T.S. Eliot was progressing and his fame grew slowly but steadily. In 1927, he obtained the citizenship of England and joined the Anglican Church. The recognition of his merit and poetic eminence came in 1948 with the awards of The order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for literature. At the close of his life in 1965 he had risen to the enviable position of a literary figure that summed up an epoch. T.S. eliot died on 4 January 1965. among the mourners at the memorial service in West Minister Abbey was Ezra pound, whose tribute to Eliot is perhaps the most appropriate: ‘I can only repeat, but with the urgency of 50 years ago: READ HIM’ (Quoted in Moody 13). It is obvious that Eliot’s study of philosophy played a crucial rule in nourishing his creative imagination and critical intellect.
The age in which Eliot lived was intensely chaotic and problematic, throwing up several challenges and possibilities of human activity. It was definitely a baffling mass of current and cross- currents in English literature. It would be a miracle indeed if someone were born to voice the multiple concerns of the age in a forceful manner. The miracle happened and it happened in the shape of T.S. eliot, who through his exemplary work and worth presented the credentials of a wide ranging artistic sensibility and incorporated the 'best' of American education and training as well as of European tradition and culture. Eliot was, beyond doubt," an integral poet" (Smidst 114), who was searching for a form of poetry as well as a form of life. In spite of varied influences, Eliot is original in thought and matter. He has fused what he borrowed from others and turned it into something rich and strange.
Universality transcends the limitations of time, space and region, caste, colour and creed Eliot is decidedly a 'universal' poet of the first rank. He is an American by birth, a British by professed religion and naturalized citizenship, a European by culture and tradition, and an internationalist by philosophical outlook upon life. One has to recollect that Eliot as a true 'universalist' has used at least six foreign languages and thirty five authors in The Waste Land alone. Eliot is dead, but his contributions to literature remain invaluable assets. His life consisted of painful happenings, and so, the quality of his writing is inseparable from the integrity of his character. His personal experience of life was common, but the experience communicated in his works in unique in its intensity of moral, as well as philosophical meanings.
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Smidst, Kristian. Poetry and Belief in the Work of T.S. Eliot. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. Print.
