“Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” – The First Letter of John
T.S. Eliot was not who we think of him as.
Far from dying his hair green, instead he sometimes wore green face powder (very faintly) to dinner parties in order to shock, discomfit, and confound his cultured, highfalutin, aristocratic hosts and their hoity-toity guests.
Like Charles Dickens and Jorge Luis Borges, he was known for taking exceedingly long nighttime walks through the most dangerous neighborhoods in the big cities he lived in, in his case St. Louis, Boston, London, and Paris. (Borges was known to take such walks in Buenos Aires even after he was a blind old man.) Eliot frequented seedy locales like workingman’s pubs and cheap restaurants; he haunted the areas where prostitutes hung out, but always kept his distance when it came to the sexual part, although he sometimes struck up brief friendships with various ladies of the evening.
He was a heavy drinker, up to and including being most likely a full-blown alcoholic for some periods at least. One indication of this is that he also had long periods of sobriety that would abruptly end; he was also known to struggle for sobriety, attempting to cut down on his drinking or quit and being unable to do so. Many people also made note of the fact that he could do things like consume a half dozen martinis during lunch and not seem intoxicated at all. For much of his life, he was also a pill hound – he kept sedatives in his pocket and was known to knock back a handful when he got nervous in crowds or social situations. We know for a fact that William Butler Yeats used marijuana in Paris on more than one occasion. While it isn’t documented, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Eliot did the same. He used the word “ganja” in his works on more than one occasion, and this multi-use word, among other things, meant the same thing back then that it does now – weed.
In an era when almost everyone smoked tobacco, Eliot was known as a heavy smoker, often a chain smoker, someone who was rarely seen without a lit cigarette in hand or mouth, unless it was an unlit one that was soon to receive the sacred flame. When he wasn’t chugging his cigarettes down, it was cigars. He died of emphysema at the age of 76.
He was known to be a staid, self-conscious, stand-offish, quiet, shy, distant, restrained, often utterly silent, anti-social, unsocial person much, or most, of the time, and all of that was true, until he purchased stink bombs at a joke shop with his nephew and set them off in a hotel lobby, or until he handed a colleague at work an exploding cigar, or until he fooled his uptight superiors at the bank with a whoopee cushion. He also loved the Marx Brothers and was obsessive about their films. Jazz was his favorite form of music. He wrote a book of children’s poetry about cats, for his godchildren (which later got turned into the famous musical Cats, which practically nobody associates with T.S. Eliot; one of his nicknames was Old Possum).
He wasn’t impressed with Oxford or Cambridge – he found the atmosphere stultifying and not inspiring. His England was the London of William Blake and Charles Dickens. His London was the place where Samuel Johnson had roamed the midnight streets with Richard Savage, two down-and-out exuberant poets and scholars who drank as much as they could whenever they could and often slept out in the open air when it was the will of God, trying (and often failing) to make their livings as Grub Street hacks.
During World War Two, Eliot could easily have returned to the US where things were a million times safer. Instead, he remained in his beloved London the entire time and worked as an Air Raid warden, which meant that he would stay atop buildings and look out for the Germans and try to warn folks before they got bombed. It was one of the most dangerous things you do could apart from putting on a uniform and fighting the Germans face to face. His image as an uptight aristocrat gets destroyed when we think of him standing on a rooftop chain-smoking and looking out for German war planes. He had left America because he felt like no one there understood him, including his family, the same reason Ezra Pound had left and never looked back. Eliot felt like he had been (to a certain extent) accepted by the more forward-thinking English people. He refused to leave them in the lurch when the going got rough. And he loved Germany because of Goethe, Beethoven and the others, but despised Hitler, the Nazis, and their Final Solution.
He had never liked the academic atmosphere back in America, either, any more than he liked the academic atmosphere in England. He failed to (or refused to) complete his PhD at Harvard, and like Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, he always had “another job” other than his poetry: in his case, elementary school teacher, low-level bank clerk, and editor, in that order. He had much less money than people think he did; in the early years, it was the always-strapped-for-cash Ezra Pound who did the job of rustling up money for both himself and the struggling Eliot.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was born from Eliot’s unrequited love for Emily Hale; The Wasteland was born from the death of his best friend in World War One, and the utter disaster and catastrophe of his first marriage. The tragic endings of relationships are beautiful, and Borges said the most important thing about The Wasteland is its beauty, which can be discerned before any solid interpretation of the poem is made; this is one essential feature of modernism, and just as true of Picasso’s paintings and Bob Dylan’s mid-1960s songs as it is of Eliot’s poems.
Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot was charming, attractive, intriguing, cute, witty, lovable, funny, fun, seductive, likable, adventurous, sweet, sexy, and awesome – until the booze and the madness set in. She was an alcoholic with Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and a large dash of Paranoid Schizophrenia thrown in for extra hijinks – she had fooled him for a while (even though he was suspicious almost instantly) but eventually her promiscuity and secretive, faithless behavior coupled with a jealousy that could have killed an elephant, drove Eliot right up to the brink of, and then over, the edge of madness himself. Her abilities at gas-lighting, triangulation, projection, devaluation, denial, playing the victim, and histrionic behavior in general were second to none. She was madly jealous of relationships he didn’t have, and even more jealous of the literary talent he was born with, and which he guarded with his life. His ability to recover from this relationship, and then move on, is an example for all of us in a world where narcissists and personality disorder folks are becoming much more common not by the hour, but by the minute or the second. (If you’ve ever been in a relationship with one of these folks, you know whereof I speak.)
These two most famous of Eliot’s poems (which add up to less than 600 lines), Prufrock and Wasteland, were also born of Eliot’s profound, deep-seated, lifelong love of literature, which he was willing to die for, just like he was willing to die for England if that’s what it took. He was also a Christian, but not the conservative kind as it may sometimes appear on the outside; rather the kind who would fall to his knees without meaning to in front of the Statue of David. He often said he felt more like a Buddhist than a Christian. It was his love for the historical Jesus himself, and all the real things the radical and love-filled, often righteously enraged Jesus did and said, that kept Eliot in the Christ-haunted mode. “A ragged figure moving from tree to tree in the back of the mind,” Flannery O’Connor called him.
We think of Eliot as a snappy, expensive dresser with perfect hair, but the truth is Eliot was much more like Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp in this regard, even though Eliot was six feet tall and stooped, as opposed to Chaplin’s perky shortness. Eliot’s hair was often messy and it hung down over his forehead. His suits were too baggy or too small and his shirts were a bit beat-up. He had favorite, oversized old overcoats that looked like ancient cloaks, and his tie, when he wore one, was usually askew and of a flashy color; the cane he sometimes carried was used much more for pointing at things than for assistance with ambulation. His shoes were scuffed up or muddy oftentimes because of his obsessive habit of walking and moving, whether it was just pacing around the room, running up and down the stairs on errands of various kinds or the long jaunts through the midnight streets. His clothes always looked rough and out of order on him, because he moved around a lot, restlessly, relentlessly, and did things like stay up all night or take sudden naps without getting undressed or letting anybody know. Sometimes catatonic, other times unstoppable. In other words, he was very much a writer’s writer. No one doubts that the Little Tramp is also a poet, after you study him a little while. A Grub Street hack with a lyrical heart; like Eliot.
And Eliot was incredibly generous with other writers, just as Ezra Pound had been generous with him. He’s often thought of as a pessimist, but true lovers of the real Jesus (I don’t say “Christians”) are never pessimists. The last word in Eliot’s most famous poem is “Shantih” – which Eliot himself pointed out was the formal ending to an Upanishad, thereby bringing the Eastern and Western worlds together. Eliot wrote, “‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is a feeble translation of the content of this word.”
His last word was the first name of his beloved second wife, who he married when he was 68: “Valerie.”
ADDENDUM or ASIDE: Very reliable, non-canonical sources exist which say that Jesus was four feet, six inches tall (or 1.37 meters) (very, very short, even for his own time), and “crooked” – which means “hunchbacked.” It’s also stated that, like the apostle Paul and like Muhammad later, his eyebrows “grew together in the middle” – a unibrow, considered sacred in many cultures (one reason for Frida Kahlo’s embracing of one of her own distinguishing features). Almost certainly, he had long hair and a beard and usually looked messy because of his habits and his restless movements. Other than those two facts, we don’t know what Jesus really looked like; he very well may have been tall and straight-backed, and either heavy or thin. We do know what many people believed. T.S. Eliot considered Jesus to be holy and the son of God, but also human; and he was deeply interested in the reality of the facts. He was known to entertain the possibility that Jesus traveled to India during his “lost years,” and studied there. Ralph Ellison was converted from music to literature by his reading of The Wasteland, which he said was “like jazz.” Bob Kaufman, the half-black, half-Jewish American street poet and literary genius whose work will be more well-known in a few decades than it is now and was when he was alive, was known to suddenly appear in the coffee shops and bars of various San Francisco dive neighborhoods. Kaufman, in manic and intoxicated glee, would jump up onto one of the tables and recite long passages from Eliot’s poetry, to the shock, bewilderment, fascination, entertainment, bemusement, and sometimes boredom of his spontaneously chosen, unplanned audiences. The great Bob Kaufman often said T.S. Eliot was his favorite poet by far (he said other things at other times). His reason for loving Eliot was the same as Ralph Ellison’s. Bob believed that Eliot was “a jazz artist in words.” Eliot’s influence on the beat literature movement in general, and on rock and roll, is also known. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison, and Bob Dylan all were (and are) massive fans of T.S. Eliot. “Desolation Row,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “The End” by The Doors would never have been written without him. He had no children with either of his wives but he’s had countless children since then. He knew whereof he spoke, when he wrote in a late poem: “In my end is my beginning.” As Nietzsche also said: “Some men are born posthumously.”
Image: A selection of dried leaves, berries and petals from Pixabay.com
literally stories 
Hello Dale
This Eliot makes much more sense than the “packaged” version. He was obviously sensitive and could have not written Prufrock or Wasteland without getting some dirt under his nails.
I read a book by Groucho Marx (a very good and witty communicator), and he spoke well of his friendship with T.S.
New meaning for “Whatever it is I am against it”!
Once again anothe outstanding essay.
Leila
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi L.A.
The other night I watched a short video about Leonardo da Vinci and in the opening segment it described him as wild-haired and almost out of control but also glued to his desk and working on three different things at once in the middle of the night by candlelight.
And it also talked about how he would’ve had lots of dirt under his nails (literally): from digging up corpses the night before and dissecting the bodies so he could make drawings of the muscles and organs. The literal meaning of getting dirt under your nails matched with a kind of fearlessness that astonishes and also reminds of Bob Dylan for some reason!
I also saw a picture of one of Bob Dylan’s high school folders. Instead of a girl’s (or a boy’s) name written all over the cover of it, it has the names of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce written all over it instead. Robert Zimmerman’s obsession with literature (not just song) started as soon as he could breathe.
Thank you!!
The Drifter of Saragun Springs
LikeLike
With all that abuse of his body, I think I’m impressed that he made it to 76 which, back then wasn’t a bad stint.
The Wasteland is too much for me, though I imagine he must have written much of it in a sort of trance just letting the words come. But Prufrock, I love. The whole of it and each little bit in isolation. I remember when I was very small listening to The Naming of Cats etc. – we had a book with his poetry in as far as I remember. It’s surprising that he has actually always been there in my life. I find his reading of his poetry a little disappointing but that is probably down to the quality of recording and of course the diction of that age. An interesting essay. Thank you – dd
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Diane!
Yes, Old Possum is a kind of Invisible Man in many ways, in the sense that he’s often there when we don’t even know it.
None of the rest of 20th century and 21st century poetry would have happened the way it did without him.
A few weeks ago I heard four different political commentators and historians on you tube describe our current situation and modern world as The Wasteland or A Wasteland. Only one of them referenced Eliot when he did so.
And when Pete Townshend penned the immortal line, “It’s just a teenaged wasteland,” there’s no doubt who he had in mind (especially because he later worked at the same publishing house Eliot did).
And I’m with you on Prufrock. That poem is so quietly, perfectly, intensely perfect in every single syllable that if I had to choose between it and the Wasteland, it might be Prufrock. (Plus maybe a few lines from the Wasteland.)
Thanks again, Diane!
Dale (aka The Drifter of Saragun Springs)
PS,
William Carlos Williams is another poet whose recordings of his own poetry are nearly unlistenable…(or just unlistenable)…
LikeLike
Thanks for this, Dale., from which I learned a good deal. I struggled with The Wasteland and greatly enjoyed Prufrock and the Four Quartets (lots of beautiful, quotable lines).
I have one Eliot anecdote you might like. James Fenton is probably my favourite current UK poet. Cameron Macintosh, the impresario, wanted to make a musical of the Old Possum’s book and asked Fenton to write the libretto. But he didn’t like Fenton’s first attempt and asked for a re-write. He didn’t like Fenton’s re-write either. So he got in somebody else to do the job.
In the UK at least, nobody makes any money out of poetry these days. James Fenton, almost alone, has become pretty well-off: his original contract entitles him to a percentage of ‘Cats’ earnings. bw mick
LikeLike
Hi Mick!
Thanks for mentioning Four Quartets. The truth is Eliot didn’t write very many poems; but the ones he did write are as durable as a sculpture by Rodin, or even Michelangelo, where the women come and go.
Four Quartets is very consoling and as such is a great antidote to the Wasteland’s despair (although the Wasteland is redemptive too, at the end) and between them they can be seen to embody the yin and yang of life itself.
I’ve never heard of Fenton until now but I will definitely check out his work, thanks for the recommendation.
At one point, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the most famous American, not just the most famous American poet, alive. His Hiawatha and other works, which are still very readable, were as popular then as Stephen King is now (but even more so, incredibly).
Longfellow still has some very beautiful writing. But there are very few who would say he could truly compete with Emily Dickinson, who was totally “unknown” in her own day and age (except in her hometown and a very little bit in Boston).
SO it’s kinda funny how things like that tend to shake out in the end!
Thanks again Mick, it’s always a joy to engage with your commentary…
Dale (aka The Drifter of Saragun Springs)
LikeLike
Fascinating. I learned so much I didn’t know about Eliot and much of what I thought I did know, this essay stood on its head. I can’t imagine how long it took you to research this, Dale. And I love the bonus quote from Flannery O’Connor.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi David
Thanks so much!
My mother first introduced me to Eliot when I was about five. Not The Wasteland, the Cat poems. But she also told me who he was (mostly about him moving to England).
Then I had a teacher in high school who taught me a lot about Eliot (in Wheaton, Illinois) and inspired me to learn more.
I also got inspired to learn more about Eliot from Marlon Brando: his performance in Apocalypse Now where he recites “The Hollow Men.”
Then there were years when I didn’t think too much about him (consciously). But in the last ten years or so, he once again became one of my all-time favorites. Some of the things I found out about him astonished me, and they’re in this essay (most of them).
And I have to say yet another thank-you about William Wantling. A great Illinois poet, and a great American poet, who I’d never heard of before (except maybe just the name) until you introduced me to him. Like Eliot, he’s a figure who can be studied (on and off, which is the best way because it gives one time for digestion) for years. For me, whenever I study a poet, the study of their life always goes with it 100% (or more so).
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Dale,
What I knew about T.S. Eliot was his name.
I know a lot more now. What stands out to me is how he embraced humanity. Not by being a sycophant but being willing to experience the darker corners of our lives. That is grounding, gives you a brilliant understanding and most importantly gives you an acceptance. This is a bit of an enigma as he seems to have been a private person, with who he chose to let in, he didn’t need to show much of himself. Maybe even the green look was not only to shock but to deter??
But who is wiser, the man who knows or the man who announces that he knows??
I’ve said every time that these are brilliant, they tweak interest and should be introduced to kids…At what age, I couldn’t say!!
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Hugh!
I think the ones who know and don’t say so have got to be the most brilliant ones of all. And there are many of them. They are exceedingly rare, but because of 8 billion people on the planet, there are more of them than we sometimes think. And when you see them, you can see that they know (and aren’t saying so) when you look in their eyes.
Good ol’ Eliot was definitely an enigma. And I think all writers are an enigma too, especially if they’re any good. The best of them hold things back, and the things they hold back are probably the most important ones. What’s not said is just as important (or more so) as what gets said. You perfected that technique in many of your short stories.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, Hugh! And thanks once again for creating and maintaining this great forum of Literally where an essay like “Eliot Behind the Mask” can appear. Believe it or not, this thing would never fly in American academia right now, one reason being the near-celebration of drinking and smoking to extremes; but for other reasons as well. (A huge reason being that American academia is, mostly, sycophants and corporate cowards now, especially in the English Departments.)
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale
My Da was a 7th grade graduate and a solid Groucho fan, and therefore associated, I suppose, through association with T S Elliot. I picked up Elliot through the usual academic sources but never had such an in depth and enjoyable lesson.
I added to my own knowledge my purchasing “Old Possum’s Book of Practical CATS” for a nine-year-old of my acquaintance that he never got. I might have been good intended, but I wasn’t an eejit, and the book got into my soul. I’ve lived with cats ever since — often against my will. The book, however, was brilliant.
I also loved the Jesus – Buddha sections. I saw a documentary recently about “The Dark Ages” featuring 2nd through 3rd century artwork of Jesus with curly hair and an androgenous sweetness to Him.
I didn’t expect an essay on T S Elliot to be enjoyable, particularly on my afternoon at the brewery with the gang, whom I ignored. But it was. I really enjoyed it! — gerry
LikeLike
Hi Gerry
THANKS for letting me know that this essay was enjoyable! I don’t see any reason why semi-academic or academic subjects need to be boring and horrible, and yet so many of them are, especially in the English Departments of today, at least in my own experience!
I’ve seen entire books on writers I love that were so boring it made me want to leap off the Mackinac Bridge in northern Michigan. It’s a horrible thing when an academic writer takes a fascinating subject and turns it into stilted and horrible jargon and incoherent nonsense in order to follow trends and advance a career. You can feel the dead writer who is abused in such a way rolling over in their grave, but I guess it goes with the territory, too.
But I want my work to be enjoyable if it can be, and I’m not always sure it is (by a long shot), so your telling me it is is hugely encouraging and I truly appreciate it. Thanks again so much!
Dale
PS
Jesus and Buddha had so much in common as human beings, I think in many ways the only major difference is one lived until 80 and died a natural death, and one was publicly executed at 33: because he refused to stay quiet or run away…
LikeLike
Like Hugh, I learned a lot.
LikeLike
Hi Dale
This is great how you lifted the mask off TS Elliot! I was drawn in by the Title.
I have this stuffy banker image in my mind of TS Elliot. The first time I learned of him was the “Tom and Viv.” movie (a doomed love affair) starring Willem Defoe and Miranda Richardson. Isn’t (Willem) kind of pretentious? I liked him best as”Sgt Alias” in “Platoon.”
I think TS Elliot is a very interesting fellow. Habit forming drinking. Definitely the signs of alcoholism. This inability to stop, which had me in my own illness, baffled into the mental ward, thinking I would die on a bar stool–(more likely in a car). Then take the hot elevator straight to hell!
It’s pretty funny this macabre green hint of face paint. That is incredibly mischievous. Almost diabolical in its humor. Love it!
The more I read of this, which is highly entertaining–the more this facade of the stuffy (British) banker is disappearing. Like the smoke of his ganja or cigarettes.
So cool that he snubbed Oxford and Cambride and opted for the streets of Dickens!
Glad he loathed Hitler and the Himmlers of the world. You can never be sure until a person comes down on this or that side.
“The Wasteland” I love the title of this but I can’t really comment because even though I’ve read it. I don’t know what to say about it. I know it’s great but it’s like I have some kind of blank spot. I think I’m more of an Emily Dickinson guy. But to be fair I haven’t given TS much of a chance, either. I think I’m more fascinated by his reputation than his work, which is ass-backwards. Fame.
You mentioned how he easily recovered from his relationship from Viv. It was like this in the movie. He seemed very cold about it.
Great descriptions of him in his scruffy muddy shoes and baggy or sometimes too small clothes. The (too small clothes) is funny, lol. It’s those little touches you write that I really enjoy. You have a great voice!
Wow the influence of TSE on Jim Morrison is cool. THE END, is a wild song! A lot of F-words… I’m one to talk. “This is the end, my only friend.” What a line!
Great essay!
Christopher
LikeLiked by 1 person
CJA
From my perspective, that movie about Eliot you mention should be taken as a warning about how “THEY” can make a movie about someone that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the real people who are supposedly being presented. I never made it through the whole thing due to boredom and a kind of low level disgust, and I do concede that I may be wrong about it. But for me, the film catches NOTHING (zero) of Eliot’s true spirit.
I think The Wasteland can best be read as an interior monologue of stream of consciousness by none other than T.S. Eliot himself as he’s in the middle of a nervous breakdown. He imagines much, remembers much, perceives much, and it’s all about the protagonist’s mind in this certain condition (which is a symbol of everyone’s modern condition).
“The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” is like a perfect short story which is also about Eliot, this time in the middle of a love affair. The words “frustrating” and “frustrated” are understatements here, but the beauty rises above all. The lovers’ frustration (and they are both frustrated) are also symbols of the modern condition, like in The Wasteland.
Congrats on three great stories in a row on Saragun Springs this week. Brilliant work! And the photos that go with that work are also brilliant. You’re an artist of the word, AND a visual artist.
The Drifter of Saragun Springs (DWB)
LikeLike
Hey Drifter
I hear what you are saying about the movie, “Tom and Viv.” From what I read on your essay about TS Elliot and a few other tidbits I’ve picked up.It didn’t quite jibe with a kind of down to the earth–sometimes even broke, person. A person that would shun Oxford and Cambridge. It made Elliot seem more British than he was too. It’s been years since I saw it. I’m not very well versed on TSE, but I did find out he was an editor for a publication. Not sure if that was mentioned in the movie.
From that perspective “The Wasteland,” sounds pretty great. It might be one of the most famous poems of all time.
Frustration has got to be the modern condition–maybe ever since the Industrial revolution and mass production. when the rich turned the happy craftsmen into unhappy drones–even forcing their unhappy children to work.
Thanks on the stories and all your great comments!
Christopher
LikeLike
Put bluntly: this is one of the best essays on Eliot I’ve read. I knew nothing of his nocturnal gadding about, his roughing it in the lower dives, his pranks, his relationship with Brother Bottle, his generosity – in fact there’s a whole lot here I was not familiar with. Fascinating too on Prufrock & The Waste Land. Love that description of Chaplin as a “Grub Street hack with a lyrical heart” ; ditto Flannery O’Connor’s depiction of Jesus as “A ragged figure moving from tree to tree in the back of the mind.” Multiple Eliots at large in this essay – all of them making for an Eliot well worth revisiting.
Geraint
LikeLike
Geraint
Thanks for your excellent comments. You combine eloquence, sympathy, and understanding in a way that is utterly unique. And your voice as a writer and reader overall: completely unique. And in this day and age of too-muchness and too much sameness, being unique is a very rare thing!
Your comments this time inspired my “Drifter” column for Saragun Springs this Sunday. It’s a column about literary critics – and music critics.
It tells who the good ones are (according to me) and it chastises the bad ones (but not by name, except maybe in one or two cases; haven’t decided yet).
Thanks for the inspiration, deeply appreciated, check it out this Sunday or whenever you can!
Dale
LikeLike
Dear Dale, thank you for this amazing, informative, at times humorous and easily relatable essay. My knowledge of TS Elliot was very sparse. I appreciate the time and care you took to give us a slice of his life – a biographical sketch that kept me reading without stopping and made me want to read his work. Your ability to curve his resonance to our beat poets, our generational poet /singer Dylan and rock and roll icons made me smile. And feel the affinity. Likewise a grand Flannery O’Connor quote that moved me.
You are a teacher at heart I think and remind me of mentors I had when I was younger (18ish…) and floundering around work and school and my future. I had the good luck to have these brilliant people to guide me along my way. Even though I am much older now I know the need for mentors in all phases of our life. Great Reading. Thanks again.
My best, Maria
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Maria
Thanks so much for reading, and it’s great to hear from you! I’m really glad you enjoyed this piece about Eliot. He gets a lot of bad press and there are a lot of misunderstandings about him, so this essay tried to humanize him a little bit. I’m really happy that everything came through, including the humor, very much there but probably not available to everyone, so thank you so much for letting me know you got it!
Thank you for calling me a teacher, I think that’s what I probably am more than anything else. When I look back at all the people who tried to guide me on my way through 58 years so far, most of them without even saying so, I could almost hang my head and cry, if I wasn’t so grateful.
And you’re totally right, we never stop needing guidance and mentors, no matter what age we are, whether it be through reading, watching good things on you tube, in person, or whatever way we can get it. For me, reading is the best and most consistent way of all.
And thanks again for the picture you sent last time. I think of it as the “Emily picture” now.
Dale
PS
I have a weekly Sunday column now on Leila’s site Saragun Springs. It’s like my writings for Literally except a little more personal (most of the time) and I write under the persona called “The Drifter” (also meant to be humorous!)…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very interesting look at Eliot, and the origins of his famous poems. Re: BPD, indeed, I know whereof you speak, so I have a glimmer of what Eliot went through with Vivienne Haigh Wood. Intriguing to know Eliot was always moving, his cane more of a pointer than an “ambulatory device,” I get a great sense of the physical, which normally one wouldn’t have thinking of this poet. And he was a practical joker! I also wonder if his association with Yeats helped form ideas for “The Second Coming,” in Yeats’ case, as well as for “The Waste Land.” Kaufman’s description “a jazz artist in words,” is very apropos.
LikeLike