American Literature

American Literature 030511/4, 27th Mar. 2007

Lecture Eleven The American Modernism (II) (1914 - 1945)

二. T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

I. About the author: • Thomas Stearns Eliot, American-British poet and critic, was born from a middle-class family in St. Louis in 1888. • During his studies at Harvard in America, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Oxford in England, Eliot mastered French, Italian, English literature, as well as Sanskrit. • In 1914 Eliot accepted a job in London as a bank clerk establishing his residence in London. Soon the erudite young man joined the literary circle of Pound and Yeats and started to write poetry. In 1917 his first poem was published and caused a great deal of comment on both side of the Atlantic. • After the bank clerk, Eliot worked as an assistant editor of the Egoist (1917–19) and edited his own quarterly, the Criterion (1922–39). With the help of Pound he published his best-known work, The Waste Land, in 1922.

His first marriage in 1915 was troubled and ended with their separation in 1933. His subsequent marriage in 1957 was far more successful. • In 1925 he was employed by the publishing house of Faber and Faber, eventually becoming one of its directors, a position which he held until his death. In 1927 he became a British subject remaining in England where his entire life was devoted to literature. • He wrote several plays, but his best work is a group of four long poems entitled Four Quartets, written between 1935 and 1941, which led to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1948 and made him one of the most distinguished literary figures of the 20th century.

II. His works: • Poetry • Eliot’s early poetical works—Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Poems (1920), and The Waste Land (1922)—employing myths, religious symbolism, and literary allusion, signified a break with 19th-century poetic traditions, express the anguish and barrenness of modern life and the isolation of the individual, particularly as reflected in the failure of love. Their models were the metaphysical poets, Dante, and French Symbolists. Their meter ranged from the lyrical to the conversational. • his later poetry, notably Ash Wednesday (1930) and the Four Quartets (1935–42), Eliot turned from spiritual desolation to hope for human salvation.

Eliot was an extraordinarily influential critic, rejecting Romantic notions of unfettered originality and arguing for the impersonality of great art. His later criticism attempts to support Christian culture against what he saw as the empty and fragmented values of secularism. His outstanding critical works are contained in: • The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) • Essays Ancient and Modern (1936) • Notes towards a Definition of Culture (1948). • His plays attempt to revitalize verse drama and usually treat the same themes as in his poetry. The most important is: • Murder in the Cathedral (1935), dealing with the final hours of Thomas Becket.

III. His Style of Poetry: • Eliot attempted to produce “pure imagery” with no added meaning or symbolism. • He began adding one image to another in such a way that his attitude and mood became clear. In his best works, the image, his own philosophy and the music of words are all harmoniously blended although he mingled grand images with commonplace ones and combined trivial and tawdry images with traditional poetic subjects. • Eliot rarely made his meaning explicit. The internal logic of his poems is carried out by swiftly accumulating images, suggestions and echoes, depending for their interpretation upon the imagination of the reader.

3. Robert Frost

I. His life: • Robert Frost was a great poet who was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California. When Frost was two years old, his mother fled to Lawrence, Massachusetts, to get away from her husband, who was a drunkard. She stayed there until her second baby was born, Jeannie, Robert's sister. Then they went back to San Francisco on a train. A few years later, Robert's father died, so they took the body to Lawrence to be buried in the family cemetery. By the time he was 11, Robert Frost had crossed the U.S. three times. • After this rough beginning, Robert went on to become a great poet. He married Elinor White and had 2 kids. Robert never in truth had any jobs, except being a poet, but he published many poems in his lifetime. • Robert won four Pultizer awards and read The Gift Outright at the inauguration of John. F. Kennedy. He died on January 29, 1963 of a heart attack. He was 88 years old.

II. His works: • Collection of poems: • A Boy’s Will（1913） • North of Boston（1914） • New Hamphshire（1923） • Collected Poems（1930） • A Further Range（1936） • A Witness Tree（1942） • Poems: • Birches • After Apple-Picking • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening • The Road Not Taken

III. Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

小马摇缰铃，似问有否误，唯闻飒飒声，寒风共雪舞。密林景色美，信誓不可移，安眠不可得，尚须行数里。 雪夜伫立林边有感林主曾相识，村中有其舍，未悉我在此，凝视林中雪。小马颇多疑，荒野何伫立？林边冻湖间，岁末黑夜里。

It is a peaceful poem and makes man feel relaxed when we read the lines: "The only other sounds the sweep of easy wind and downy flake." Frost also uses alliteration and repetition in his poems. The rhyme scheme he uses is a-a-b-a. • It is one of the most quietly moving of Frost’s lyrics. On the surface, it seems to be simple, descriptive verses, records of close observation, graphic and homely pictures. • It uses the simplest terms and commonest words. But it is deeply meditative, adding far-reaching meanings to the homely music. It uses its superb craftsmanship to come to a climax of responsibility: the promises to be kept, the obligation to be fulfilled. Few poems have said so much in so little.

American Literature