Arturo Cattaneo - T. S. Eliot: The American roots of English Modernism

[Music] let's imagine a poem that contains phrases in german french sanskrit italian latin and ancient greek and then discover that such a poem is considered the greatest achievement in english modernism we are talking of course of tia celia's the wasteland in whose 434 english lines are intertwines quotations from different languages six different languages translation or adaptations from dante baudelaire and many other writers ancient and modern according to a collage technique machine fader with modern artists of modernism the literary movement that dramatically changed poetry fiction and drama in the late 10th and early 20s eliot was

one of the founding members and he became a cult figure in academia and among lovers of poetry his status as a writer being sanctioned finally sanctioned in 1948 by the nobel prize in literature but if we take a close look at his life we find that the road to becoming a literary myth was not a straight nor an easy one for elliot he was a sort of amphibious creature as a writer and man he was born in the usa but lived most of his life in england he was a great experimenter inform and content but

he was also a classicist he started with a deeply pessimistic view of life which later turned into a serene and christian acceptance of it as a young man he kept moving from place to place from his native san luis missouri where he had been born in 1888 into a family of english descent to harvard university when he took his degree in philosophy in 1906 and from there to europe to continue his studies first at the saw born in paris then to germany and finally at oxford england in 1914 1915 was a crucial year for eliot

he married vivian haywood a ballet dancer and a writer a talented woman they were afflicted by bad health and bad nerves two traits she had in common with her husband in fact in the same year elliot began work at the lloyds bank which he never liked and although in 1917 his first major poem the love song of j alfred prufrock was published uh the years from 1915 to 1925 those 10 years were a great strain on eliot as a man many problems having to work full-time in a bank poor relations with his wife his own

nervous instability and a general dissatisfaction with modern life common to most artists of the time all these combined to take into the brink of a nervous breakdown in november 1921 to recover he went for arrested medical treatment to a swiss sanatorium in lausanne during this time fortunately he also managed to finish the wasteland the publication of the wasteland in 1922 made elliot the leading modernist poet writing in english and thanks to its success he was able to leave work at the bank the poem represents the culmination of the first phase in elliot's career which might

be called nihilistic the poet is only ruins and desolation around him and is concerned with the decay of western society and culture at this point however eliot's life and work took a different turn in the late 1920s and 1930s eliot found a way out of naidism in religion his gradual acceptance of the christian faith is reflected in the poems he wrote at that time the journey the magi and ash wednesday in particular this reached its culmination with this best-known play murder in the cathedral which is about the death and martyrdom of thomas beckett and with

a collection of poems four quarters finally published together in 1943 written at the darkest hour of world war ii during the german air race on great britain they are perhaps elia's most personal work since they're linked to places that had a special relevance to eliot both in england and america after world war ii eliot was mostly occupied with drama criticism and reviewing in 1948 he received the nobel prize for literature and in the latter years of his life he led a retired life mostly writing lecturing and giving public readings of his poems he died in

london in 1965. a century after the publication of the wasteland elliott remains a towering figure and for all his classicism and traditional views in politics and religion an astonishingly modern poet the cultural and linguistic collage at the cover-proof rock are on the wasteland of the four quarters bringing together christianity and buddhism western and non-western civilizations and cultures for edith really the world of culture and ideas was a melting pot