Drawing of T. S. Eliot by Simon Fieldhouse. Deutsch: T. S. Eliot, gezeichnet von Simon Fieldhouse. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“You are the music while the music lasts.” — T.S.Eliot

“In the room women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.” — T.S.Eliot

“In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.” — T.S.Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on this day in St. Louis, Missouri, USA in 1888. Today is the 125th anniversary of his birth.

He was the youngest of six surviving children born to Charlotte and Henry Ware Eliot. He was definitely the baby of the family. His closest sibling was 8 years old when Tom was born. “Afflicted with a congenital double hernia, he was in the constant eye of his mother and five older sisters.” [English.Illinois.edu] The inguinal hernia kept him from playing sports and largely from interacting with children his own age. He took refuge in books.

Tom (the family called him Tom) attended Smith Academy in St. Louis then Milton Academy (a prep school near Boston) before entering Harvard. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard  in 1909.

It was at Harvard that Eliot read The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Arthur Symons. It…

introduced him to the poetry of Jules Laforgue, and Laforgue’s combination of ironic elegance and psychological nuance gave his juvenile literary efforts a voice. By 1909-1910 his poetic vocation had been confirmed: he joined the board and was briefly secretary of Harvard’s literary magazine, the Advocate. [Ibid]

In 1910 he moved to Paris to study Philosophy at the Sorbonne for a year. Then he came back to Harvard to study Indian Philosphy and Sanskrit.

In 1914 he went to Merton College, Oxford, England on scholarship. He was disenchanted with life in a university town and moved to London where he worked as a teacher,  for a bank, and continued to write. He soon met poet Ezra Pound.

Book by T. S. Eliot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pound…

• Ash Wednesday (1930)
• Four Quartets (1943)

Literary and social criticism include:

• The Sacred Wood (1920)
• The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
• After Strange Gods (1934)
• Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940).

Plays include:

• Murder in the Cathedral
• The Family Reunion
• The Cocktail Party

[See Poets.org for more information]

English: T. S. Eliot, photographed one Sunday afternoon in 1923 by Lady Ottoline Morrell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Eliot took British citizenship in 1927. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He was a heavy smoker and he suffered from bronchitis and tachycardia for many years, in the end he died of emphysema in London in 1965.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

[Ibid]

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