Christopher Ricks: “T.S. Eliot’s Humanism”

that's what a well-behaved group this is this is really impressive well good afternoon I'm Mike Peters the president of st. John's College the fix wasn't in I didn't pay that person to do that and on behalf of the faculty and the staff and students at st. John's we would have welcome you all to this wonderful conference on this wonderful Santa Fe de Santa Fe weekend we have a number of events that's surrounding the 50th anniversary which we're going to remind you of because it's on your name tag of st. John's College in Santa Fe they're focused on members of the community on our programs events for the Alumni for friends for students for faculty and staff in this conference though is the centerpiece of that celebration because it focuses on what is the heart of the college for us our hope and commitment to liberal education and our program of instruction and it's an opportunity for us at the college to pause and with your help to reflect on on this commitment to liberal education and specifically how we approach such an education but more generally and maybe more importantly how to understand and articulate the strengths and dare I say value of liberal education and those challenges that are facing us and how to think about them and how to address them there are a number of people who are responsible for bringing us all together for this conference and there's two that I would like to particularly mention first our tutor Judith Adam who is the chair of the faculty and staff committee that helped put this all together and I don't know that you'd assume yes she is there she is Judith thank you so much and Dean Walter sterling who has done everything from the conceptual right down to choosing the wise for for this and I want to also especially thank the mellon Foundation as probably many of you in this room know the mellon Foundation has been a stalwart supporter of liberal education one of those few foundations that hangs on to the truth and it was a very generous grant from the mellon foundation that has helped make this conference possible and we're eternally grateful to them for this and for all the other things they do on behalf of all of us in liberal education so let me just wrap up again by saying thank you welcome it's wonderful to have you here I hope you enjoy and benefit from the conference as much as I know all of us at the college will and with that I would like to turn it over to tutor Andy Kingston who's going to reduce our opening speaker Christopher Rick's it is my great pleasure to welcome Christopher Rick's back to Santa Fe and the campus of st. John's College professor Rick's was the 2011-2012 steiner lecturer on this campus as well as the steiner lecture this past year on the annapolis campus and we are honored that he has returned to join our celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of this campus professor Rick's is the warm professor of the humanities and the co-director of the editorial Institute of Boston University he was professor of poetry at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2009 and also lectures at the new College of the humanities in London I won't list all of his works but the bookstore has a number of them and I encourage you to go to go get some but his critical studies range from John Milton to Bob Dylan and he has edited numerous poetry collections including editions of Tennyson and TS Eliot and if you do happen to pick up something from the bookstore Christopher has agreed to sign those outside afterwards if you would like in a 2011 article in The Times Literary Supplement defending the new college of the humanities professor Rick's wrote the following which seems to me to speak to us directly here at st. John's particularly regarding the place of the formal lecture in the st. John's program and I quote I never forget how much my university education owed to tutorials into seminars but many of my most memorable experience as a student were of lectures it is extraordinary how many kinds of power electric and manifest can wield and can create lectures present an extended substantiated account at once imaginative and scholarly not for the immediate response or critique that valuably characterizes the tutorial or seminar but for subsequent pondering and reflection and conversation among ourselves here are the hum and the buzz that arise from an audience that has common interests that values the common pursuit of true judgement quoting - yes Elliot and that finds itself often - it's delighted surprise arriving at the sense of a common cause please help me welcome Christopher Rick's who will speak to us this afternoon about TS Eliot's humanism thank you TS Eliot's humanism both in the sense of what it meant to Elliot humanism what the word men and the ways in which he does himself embody humanism but I want to start with humanity in its double senses as we all know it's the noun from human and the noun from humane and the hope or faith vested in the word is one that hopes that humanity will behave humanely and I'm going to start with a letter that Elliot wrote to miss Alice Quinn aged 16 who is not the Alice Quinn who matters in the American literary scene at the moment because the letter is from 1952 so here is the letter which to me is not only an extraordinary summary of many things that matter to humanism but an extraordinary act of humanity 19th of February 1952 dear Miss Alice Quinn I do not often answer letters because I am too busy but I liked your letter and I'm glad that you are at a Catholic school I cannot tell you how to concentrate because that is something I've been trying to learn all my life there are spiritual exercises in concentration but I'm not the person to teach what I'm trying to learn all I know is that if you're interested enough and care enough then you concentrate but nobody can tell you how to start writing the only good reason for writing is the one has to write you ask seven questions no one event in one's childhood starts one writing no doubt a number of events and other causes that remains mysterious my advice to up-and-coming writers is don't write at first for anyone but yourself it doesn't matter how many or how few universe is one goes to what matters is what one learns either investors or by oneself my favorite essay I think is my essay on Dante not because I think I know much about Dante but because I loved what I wrote about the wasteland is my most famous work and therefore perhaps will prove the most important but it is not my favorite I'm interested to hear that units and hey craft work of reference say that I prefer to associate with nobility and Church dignitaries but I'd like to know every sort of person including nobility and dignitaries I also like to know policemen plumbers and people one does not always need to know a subject very well in order to teach it one doesn't need to know is how to teach and I went to a very good school which no longer exists in Saint Louis Missouri where I was well taught in Latin Greek French and elementary mathematics those are the chief subjects worth learning at school and I'm glad that I was well taught in these objects instead of having to sub studies such subjects as TS Eliot at the university I studied too many subjects and mastered none if you study Latin Greek French mathematics in the essential of the Christian faith that is the right beginning I like living in London because it is my city and I'm happier there than anywhere else with best wishes TS Eliot I think it's a very touching there a beautiful letter it touches on an immense number of the things as the subject of this conference and so on so that's why my delight in choosing it my delighting in choosing there is also a tribute to Valerie Eliot whose death we mourn Valerie Elliot had the generosity in the humanity to give this letter to a volume of which Eliot himself might not have approved that is a charity vol Hockney's alphabet to raise money for people living with AIDS now Eliot was not a nun ungenerous person but I think it's an act of singular generosity in his widow to have get handed over this letter for the alphabet and the letters beautifully not attached to any one letter of the alphabet it's attached to ampersand this is the is the only thing in the book which isn't a letter there it is an ampersand I think it is a genuinely humanitarian move by mrs. Elliot and the word humanitarian is one which Elliot was suspicious of partly because of its religious sense and the way in which that way in which it was in conflict with Orthodox Christianity the conflict within the word humanism the necessary tension between the different senses that he has is evident in the oxford english dictionary we know that earlier it could mean belief in the mere humanity of Christ I've started to watch the word mirror lately I think if one thinks of something is solely something or other it's that usually the better we're putting it than merely something or other and Elliot himself has a rather tendentious recourse to mere and merely it's the character or quality of being human devoted human interests it's any system of thoughtful action which is concerned with merely human interests and the oxford english dictionary is going for the word rather there and it is of course in the main sense of this conference devotion to those studies which promote human culture literary culture especially the system of the humanists the study of the roman and so on that we all know Dennis Donohue recently wrote the introduction to the Daedalus volume what humanists do and he began earlier this year he began by saying it is a minor embarrassment that the words humanists and humanism have regularly found on the same page of big dictionaries he doesn't sound embarrassed by it at all nor should he be indeed as a great convenience to him as a way into his entire article we should always watch it when people say they're embarrassed by something and wonder if we could actually contemplate them genuinely blushing that fighting that were humanists in the world but the tension between the different senses is very very important the contributors to this issue of Daedalus a humanist because they work on the humanity and teach them often under conditions that seem unpropitious allusion to Elias lines of course in colleges and universities what they are otherwise in their personal and social lives is none of my business don't now it isn't any of the Dennis's business that is true but it remains something in which we all have to think about that is we have to think about the relation between Christianity and humanism we shouldn't use lightly Christian humanism as if it didn't present any sort of tension and difficulty it is not a paradox like the paradoxes or officer Moore's that we used to but there is a valuable tension between the different senses of the term and that comes out I can spend a little bit of time now with Elliott's amiable quarrel with Irving Babbitt which is where his writings on humanism essentially begin I will read something to you and what I will try to do please is identify things which I which it would be good to argue with the author about humanism is either an alternative to religion or is ancillary to it to my mind it always flourishes most when religion has been strong and if you find examples of humanism which are anti religious or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time then such humanism is purely destructive first has never found anything to replace what it destroyed any religion of course is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and Howard though ritual and habit be essential to religion it is only renewed and refreshed by an awakening of feeling and fresh devotion or by the critical reason the latter may be the part of the humanist but if so then the function of humanism though necessary is secondary so the moments I'd want to identifies were conversationally for this if in the characteristics and John's manner this were then a text to engage in in principled and courteous conversation it would be something like this the religious faith of the place and time are we confident there is one such thing we could be less and less confident of it but was it really the case and as it were in Harvard in in Elias day that the religion faith and faith of the place and time are in the singular they're not religious faced there's the religious faith of the place and time any religion is in danger of petrifaction on other occasions Eliot knows that is also always in danger of putrefaction that is we really mustn't set it out that the there isn't Scylla and Charybdis does the rock of petrifaction as the terrible the terrible fluidity of putrefaction anything himself says very beautifully I'm as cherry of Order as cherry of order as of disorder but it was not natural to him to be equally Jerry it was actually much more cherry of disorder though disorder was repeatedly the source of extraordinary fecundity and beauty and wisdom in his own writing as indeed in the writing of Poe the the latter that is the critical reason maybe the part of the humanist but if so though necessarily it is secondary now I'm very uneasy about primary and secondary here if you have a compound it doesn't make sense to think of something as primary or secondary my students Boston University are always trying to get me to say what the really important thing is about the work that we're looking at but the really important thing is the relationship between that thing and everything else that is in it and that's a that's a very wise thought of Eliot's own but it's the thought that like all of us he sometimes forgets one's own thoughts are no more endlessly available then the other people's thoughts so in a compound like water it doesn't make sense to say clearly it's the hydrogen that's really important because there's twice as much of it no you only get if the contribution played by humanism is of the kind that Eliot is describing you can't get it through notions of primary and secondary there could be something very very tiny about the airplane there was indispensable turrets flying successfully and it's much much better I think to think as Elias art does in terms of compounds he has his own rhetoric as we all do we're better at spotting other people's rhetorical moves than spotting our own which is why we need friends who are genuinely critical of us on occasion he says about Babbitt it is the joints of his edifice not the materials that sometimes seem a bit weak now I think he means what he conveys you is that they are weak but instead of saying that they are weak he needs the triple prophylaxis of sometimes seem a bit weave now we shouldn't we shouldn't do that the we shouldn't put in in a tentatively courteous and scrupulously judged way there which is not actually a point of that kind at all it is run but let me give you the whole set intentions mr. babish critical judgment is exceptionally sound and there's hardly one of his several remarks that is not by itself acceptable it is the joints of his edifice not the materials that sometimes seem a bit weak now I think that's intimating one thing but not taking the responsibility for it and the same the same I think is true of this and unless by civilization you mean material progress cleanliness etc which is not what mr. Babbitt means if you mean a spiritual and intellectual coordination on a high level then it is doubtful whether civilisation can endure without religion and religion without a church now it is doubtful seems to me not to be facing the responsibility saying that if you believe as Elliott does that actually civilization cannot endure without religion and religion cannot endure without a church then should up front say so but what this does is say it is doubtful well everything is doubtful everything really is doubtful because doubt is essential to faith and it believes in the necessity for faith and to believe in faith is to believe that you do not know there's a there is a doubt which you overcome and it isn't overcoming that doubt that you deserve to be honored so the word doubtful can't really be it gives the impression that there's it well it is a very busy man had he more time he would lay out the ground he would substantiate this as a point but he doesn't substantiate it he is justifiably I think taught when it is suggested that he would that he is an enemy of humanism I believe that it is better to recognize the weaknesses of humanism at once and allow for them so that the structure may not crash beneath an excessive weight and so that we may arrive at an enduring recognition of its value for us and of our obligation now the that in that enduring recognition of his value is something which he then returns to in the second of the humanist essays second thoughts about humanism so the first is humanism in Irving Babbitt the second is second thoughts about humanism Eliot says I was just wanting to point to his weak points before some genuine enemy took advantage of them so Eliot is telling you he's not a genuine enemy though that too is a slightly equivocal way of putting you eat humanism can be and is already of immense value but it must be subjected to criticism while there is still time and again this is been entirely on wrong position that he's taking there it is swathe in the wish to propitiate more people than you can propitiated any one occasion he gives a list of what for him constitutes true one the function of humanism is not to provide dogmas or philosophical theories humanism because it is general culture is not concerned with philosophical foundations it is concerned less with reason than with common sense when it proceeds to exact definitions it becomes something other than itself well what I would identify here is the danger of putting reason in inverted commas or scare quotes do you mean reason or do you not mean reason you put it in the quotation marks and that allows you floated without again actually taking responsibility for it the contrast of reason as against common sense to humanism makes for breath tolerance equilibrium and sanity it operates against fanaticism great trivia three the world cannot get on without breath tolerance and sanity any more than it can get on without narrowness bigotry and fanaticism now I understand I think it's very witty thing to assert that last thing but how am I supposed to say this I mean actually we could get on without those things and we will get on better without those things so what is happening to the to the rhetoric of the performance is great performer for it is not the business of humanism grew to refute anything it is critical rather than constructive it is necessary for the criticism of social life and social theories political life and political theories and then he musters his particular hate list without humanism we could not cope with mr. Shaw mr. Welles Earl Russell actually wonderful move from mr. Durrell well-being but not higher but Oh Russell mr. Menken mr. Sandberg Monsieur Claude L hare Ludwig mrs. McPherson all the governments of American and Europe does it now again it's a bit of writing but it is not it is not behaving responsibly now is it done humanism can have no positive theories about philosophy or theology all that it can ask in the most tolerant spirit is is this particular philosophy or religion civilized or is it now but it can ask more than is it civilized or is it not I mean that is their key degrees of civilization it's not either/or you're either civilizer or not I'm reminded of what for me is the the great humanist version of a question the one imperative question is is this true another and I think the more usual humanist question is what truth is there in this now what truth there is there in this it's not a more important or more valuable question than is it true but it is a very very different question it moves you towards degrees of acquiescence degrees of conviction it has a quite different relation to belief from is this true or not and positive is a really dangerous word the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University after a meeting recently when I had objected to the wording of a decane or document which it said that these concerns must now take a backseat to larger goals I didn't see how something could take a backseat to a larger goal I didn't see why you wanted a larger goal because the whole part of the sport is that the goal should be the same size and so on and after the meeting she said to me can you never say anything positive and I said quick as a flash but imperiled I said hygiene is positive now and that is a real question about negativity important and the positive Eliot's own view of humanism is that it is highly neatly necessary and there's no good saying but although it's only a matter of a night no no it's it's deeper than that the essay on whom is in which area did not reprint unfortunately it's the one called religion without humanism and it is well worth looking up it's a pity he didn't reprint it because it gives his case his very powerful case for humanism he calls it though a very useful ingredient in the world which is no better than it is and again the figure of speech and ingredient seems to me one we would want to stay with it might be something is not merely an ingredient in the sense it doesn't matter whether you do or don't had cinnamon to it but it might be something which is more than really in that the compound isn't does not created and this this is present in it but he says this the ideal world will be the ideal Church but very little knowledge of human nature is needed to convince us that hierarchy is liable to corruption and certainly to stupidity that religious belief when unquestioned an uncritical to degenerate into superstition that the human mind is much lazier than the human body and that the communion of saints in tibet is of a very low order i resent and resist that last remark i don't think that eliot at this date would have been able to conduct a spirited viper voci examination of himself on the quality of tibetan sanctity i mean there's certainly knew a lot about the east isn't any question about that but it's thrown in it seems to me simply to say very little knowledge of human nature is needed to know that the communion of saints in tibet is of a very low order no no you don't know those things were knowledge of human nature you know those things through a close study of particular institutions the context of which has to be real to you but the position that he's taking here i think is admirable in its admiring humanism if we cannot rely on it seems that we can never rely upon adequate criticism from within it's better that this should be criticism from without for there's no doubt in my mind the co-temporary religious institutions are in danger from themselves and the whole of this shortish essay which is well worth looking now is concerned with this I've already said what I think of humanism without religion I respect it the graphs of the previous especially are not really clear but he's moved into a statement of respect I respect it believe it to be sterile how religion without humanism produces the vulgarities and the political compromises of Roman Catholicism the vulgarities and the fanaticism of kandacy it produces mrs. McPherson and it produces liberal uplift and it produces the Bishop of Birmingham for it is the chief point of this short paper that religion without humanism produces the opposite and conflicting types of religious bigotry but he has told us that the world needs bigotry in the early appear so that the thing is the thing is is the kind of rich confusion which in the poetry again and again creates something magnificent but in prose discourse I think does not let me let me jump that sorry so what would the criticisms that humanism if you think a few minister ms critical if you if you believe as I do that it doesn't quite make sense to say that the critical is not a positive contribution and so on what would the humanists possible criticisms of earlier be and again I think identifying things in a way for discussion here at Stu Stephen spender 1932 what really matters and I want to resist that immediately the whole rhetoric of what really matters what really matters is not what I think about the church today or about capitalism or military processions or about communism what matters is whether I believe in original sin now I think humanists ought to say to that no no what matters is relationship between what you believe about original sin and the church today and capitalism and military processions and communism all of which figure in some way in your in your writings in your poem so there's military processions is kavya lon triumphal march and the relationship so there's this wish what i really is going to set aside and i want to wonder quote the bit of Elliott and I had in mind and felt quite a little bit earlier he said it should be the task of a literal review to maintain the autonomy and disinterestedness of literature and at the same time to exhibit the relations of literature not to life but to all contrast through literature but to all the other things which together with literature are the components of life don't ever set up a contrast of literature and life because literature is just as matter map a feature within life as anything else it maintained the autonomy of literature but also show the relation of literature to all the other things which together with literature constitute life so that it seems to be the amputation here say it's not this that matters that is not the spirit in which his poems are created I want to quote a letter to bond Amitabh Rea in 1936 the doctrine that in order to arrive at the love of God one must divest oneself of the love of created beings was thus expressed by Sanjana the cross you know that is a man who was writing primarily not for you and me but for people seriously engaged in pursuing the way of contemplation it is only to be read in relation to that way that is merely to kill one's human affection it will get one nowhere it would be only to become rather more completely a living corpse than most people are but the doctrine is fundamentally true I believe or to put your belief in your way that only through the love of created beings can we approach the love of God that I do believe to be untrue in capitals whether we mean by that domestic and friendly affections or a more comprehensive love of the neighbor of humanity in general attending that ordinary human affections are capable of leading us to the love of God but rather that the love of God is capable of informing intensifying in elevating our human affections which otherwise may have little to distinguish them from the natural affections of animals I think he's very thrilling written I mean I think many of these letters around it wasn't they were written but again if I want to identify the the moments what will they be well is to say that you need to know that's in John of the Cross and saying divest yourself of the love of created beings is speaking only for somebody not for you and me but for those seriously engaged in pursuing a way of contemplation but in that case how can that be the epigraph to Sweeney AG industries hence the soul cannot be possessed of the divine union until it has divested itself of the love of created beings Elliott cannot have believed that the readers of Sweeney Anestis would have known the point about this way of contemplation or the the readers of Sweeney amnesties are the you and me the Elliott and the bonhomie tabret in the letter itself and again notice what happens when he says that if you believe that the love of God and so on otherwise may have little to distinction little distinction means not nothing so there is something that would distinguish this from from during what I'm suggesting that whole rhetoric of saying little to distinguish is it rhetoric which I hang on then what is the little because the little can make an immense difference Eliot himself says so for certain Rises the extraordinary way in which they they can be original with the minimum of alteration now that I think is a wise remark but it must mean that if there is little difference between this one belief in the other there is a difference not that there is no difference there's a whole rhetoric yeah y'all have seen it in politics everywhere it is hard to see why somebody's done censor if you mean impossible say impossible if you mean hard then stay with it and wrestle with it and see whether it is impossibly hard but it's basically as a certain kind of certain kind of referee it's a face it's wonderful latitude abre it ends yours perpetually tea confidence in the afterlife an excessive love of created beings his attack on Paul Elmer more of the utmost courtesy I am perturbed by your comments on Hell to me it is justice yes Sapienza I'm Laura and I cannot help saying with all due respect of a somewhat younger and much more ignorant man that I'm really shocked by your assertion that God did not make hell it seems to me that you've relapsed into humanitarianism the Buddhist eliminates hell only by eliminating everything positive about heaven is your God Santa Claus wonderful name but I have to say if I had to choose between making Santa Claus into a God and making Moloch into a God I would prefer Santa Claus but all his always terrified of sentimental lapses of Middleton Marie yet he has seen far more clearly than others the real issue the choice that one must make the fact that you must either take the whole of revealed religion or none of it now I can simply can't get my mind around that the whole of revealed religion is clearly not going to be limited then to Christianity and Christian does not have a monopoly of Revelation what would how could a person mode would it mean to say you must either take the hold of a review of religion or none of it it's driving - it's driving to decision where I think decision is simply unimaginable before his conversion in 1927 you'll remember he describes himself as brought up outside the Christian fold whether Unitarianism is Christian continues I think rightly to be a real question and certainly the the family was very very shocked at what seemed to them to be an accusation when he went he speaks oh but in 1917 ten years before he becomes a Christian and an Englishman this is the way in which he writes and I think we can't ever repudiate things that strike a chord with us even if the author could repudiate them that is John Crowe ransom can tell us that only fifty of his poems are worth reading but we should not believe him he he can repudiate the poems we should not and I make glad to say that an edition of drunken ransoms collected poems will be coming out very soon you have to trust the poems more than the writer of the poem since I'm not good enough for him perhaps but no man or woman is a perfect judge of his or her and work so here is his Elliot in 1917 on Collinwood it is true that history and philosophy as mr. Collingwood contends are interdependent but philosophy depends upon the whole course of history not upon any particular signal and unique facts and its freedom of interpretation is limited only by its obligation to exclude nothing religion on the other hand or at least the Christian religion depends on one important fact philosophy may show if it can the meaning of the statement Jesus was the son of God but Christianity Orthodox Christianity must base itself upon a unique fact that Jesus was born of a virgin a proposition which is either true or false its terms having a fixed meaning now I think it is for me not and I mean as a as an atheist humanist it is for me not enough for Elliot himself no longer to believe that I want to know what the arguments are against this wonderfully lucid account that he is in the International Journal of ethics as I want to know what his arguments would be against his own words mr. Collingwood admits that the universe as a totality is only in passe one is tempted to ask whether the nepeta and absolute goodwill of God are also in passe now that didn't cease to be a question a real question because Elliott came to believe that the answer to it was no shouldn't be dare to do I said I'm wondering together I'm thinking I'm trying to reply seriously the Prince Elliott's own principle that humanism will offer a critique of religion and I'm trying to identify the moments when this will be sir International Journal of ethics 1917 but to agree with the author that lives not only concede that intellect imagination science and art would reach their culmination in the apprehension and contemplation of the supreme principle of the universe adequately embodied and incarnate but that this combination is found in Christianity and might it not be maintained that religion however poor our lives would be without it is only one form of satisfaction some others among others rather than the culminating satisfaction of all satisfactions now then the young Elliott and his late twenties is asking a real question there and I go back to the thought that part of our responsibility to her to a writer or a seer a sage like Elia would be to not permit him or her simply to disown without argument things expressed with such Clare with such clarity and and force the intellectual case for Christianity is very strong indeed and one which demands a great deal of study and to be quite fair there is a good case to be made up for atheism as well now I honor Elliott for writing that but I think it does create a a problem that is there's a good case which apparently need never be addressed by him despite his philosophical training let me give an example of let me give peace two examples of what for me our Christian humanism this is a poem the hill shade by William Barnes I thought to include it today because my friend will Wendy lesser he's going to give a talk tomorrow and it was in her ass and German or the Threepenny review that I printed it mister Victorian poem I printed it with with a few words the hill shade at such a time of year and day in ages gone that steep hill brow cast down an evening shade that lay in shape the same as lies there now though then no shadows wheeled around the things that now are on the ground the hills high shape may long out stand the house of slowly wasting stone the house may longer shade the land than man's on gliding shade is shown the man himself may longer stay than stands the summers writ of hay the trees that rise with boughs are a bass to me for trees long fallen may pass and I could take those red-haired cows for those that pulled my first known grass our flowers seemed yet on ground and spray but o our people where are they now I think it's a great energy it is entirely at one with Christian belief but it in no way supposes that if you don't share Christian belief you can't be moved by the poem our people where are they the answer for Barnes would be in and afterlife that given how good most of them were is going to be heavenly but it doesn't but it remains a true humanist question our people where are they I can see again I can imagine this necklace I found it exceptionally beautiful poem and had I world enough and time I'd wander so take you through what it does with rhymes why rhymes come back in a certain way why assonance has come back all that difference between words that at the end of lines End de l'Est now as are they as against a round ground stand land all those terminations at the end of the line which resists any kind of ease ease of movement so that for me is is a work is a work of art that is committed to showing realizing what is that what you have to do if like William Barnes you write a Christian poem knowing very well that many people are no longer Christian so the other great statement I think is the one by Wordsworth in the essay supplementary to the preface where he needs to point out the terrible danger that you are in if you share the religious convictions of the people whose work you're reading men who read from religious or moral inclinations even when the subject is of that time it's their proof are beset with misconceptions and mistakes peculiar to themselves attaching so much importance to the truths which interest them they are prone to overrate the authors by whom those truths are expressed and enforced they come prepared to impart so much passion to the poet's language that they remain unconscious how little in fact they receive from it and on the other hand religious faith is to him who holds it so momentous a thing and error appears to be attended with such tremendous consequences that if opinions touching upon religion occur which the reader condemns he not only cannot sympathize with them however animated the expression but the verses of the most part and end put to all satisfaction and enjoyment now was was divet devoutness is a devotion is it cannot being questioned but what it wants to do is criticize any complacency of congruence that is you yeah this is a this is the poem for you because it is congruent than what you believe the two last things I want to do one is to talk about belief in itself because the the humanist question is all questions of what it is to believe things and Elliot has a masterly insight here which he never developed and which I don't have the imagination to develop myself we can say I think that belief is not a simple act of the mind of such a kind that to believe in the world of the school men and to believe in a mechanistic universe as acts of believing identical we might even suggest that believing changes from age to age although no age will possess the terms in which to define the difference between it's believing and they're out of any previous age so it's very important him to say it's not that they believed different things is that what they were doing when they're believing was a different thing to do he says about the ideas in poems by Cowley in 17th century they are certainly more coherent and orderly but are not believed by himself with the same intensity with which the ideas of done were entertained by himself so he tries to he says that we need a history of belief and that sketch I think hasn't been fulfilled by anybody and it is a favor a daunting task it it clearly will bring together six or eight or ten quite different disciplines and imaginative imaginative powers of mind and so on mind you I am NOT speaking of the object of belief but of the believing itself he says of power all of his ideas seemed to be entertained rather than believed and in a way he would like to hold that against Poe but he can't bring himself all together to hold against Poe because he does believe that there is a value in entertaining beliefs he thinks that you must never lose sight of the difference between holding a belief in entertain Ian but if you cannot bring yourself to entertain beliefs you don't hold you are condemned to avail a narrow view indeed of what of what humanity is the belief itself has been in constant mutation he says about Ramon Fernandez he Nasus tan understand perhaps that in which human believed or tried to believe but he understands better than almost anyone the way in which neumann believed or tried to believe in so it is a great challenge i think that hasn't been paid i think there is a very great deal in it this idea and i'm it matters to me of course for two rather different reasons one is that it opens that possibility of chris of a critical spirit which is positive it goes with what truth is there in this entertainingly the only way in which we the only way in which we entertain with great sympathy opinions that we do not hold and which we may actually find a parent by courtesy of friends and people whom we love and by courtesy of works of art these are the great these are the great occasions on which it is possible for us to entertain without simple acquiescence or becoming brainwash entertain beliefs that we do not hold and it was very very much the belief of William Empson who is I think the the really important adversary of Eliot in so many matters the author of great many fine poems and of a great many fine works of criticism as I hope you know let me just remind you of some of Emerson it strikes me that modern critics have become awfully resistant to admitting that there is more than one code of morals in the world whereas the central purpose of reading imaginative literature is to accustom yourself to this basic fact I do not at all mean that a literary critic ought to avoid making moral judgments that is useless as well as tiresome because the reader has enough sense to start guessing around it at once it seems to me that the chief function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people are very various many of them quite different from you with different systems of value as well but the effect of almost any orthodoxy is to hide this to grasp a wide variety of experience imagining people with codes and customs very unlike our own now that's the sense in which I think Empson more of a humanist than the word dogma is for Eliot as simply a probationary term he might have found some dogmas false but the word dogma about the word dogma he has no reservation and he says that he agrees with T Hume that is not the you accept the dogma because you want the sentiment you accept the sentiment often reluctantly because you want the dogma so I'm going to end with anyway the tension about timing and end with marina so let me read you marina and say quote something a daily Isetta bout it one of the Ariel poems is you know what sees what Shaw's what gray rocks and what islands what water lapping the bow and scent of pine and the wood thrush singing through the fog what images return on my daughter those who sharpen the truth of the dog meaning death those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death those who sit in the sky of contentment meaning death those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals meaning death I'll become unsubstantial reduced by a wind a breath of pine and the wood song fog by this grace dissolved in place what is this face less clearer and clearer the pulse in the arm less strong and stronger given or lent more distant and stars and nearer than the eye whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet under sleep where all the waters meet bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat I made this I have forgotten and the rigging week and the canvas Rotten between 1 June and another September made this unknowing half-conscious unknown my own the garbha straight leaks the seams need caulking this form this faceless life living to live in a world of time beyond me let me resign my life for this life my speech for that unspoken the awakened lips parted the hope the new ships what seas what Shaw's what granite islands thoughts my timbers and wood thrush calling through the fog my daughter William Empson 1931 reviewed it when it came out as an astonishing piece of criticism to full review in the nation and Athenaeum marina c3 one of mr. Elliott's very good poems better than anything in Ash Wednesday the dramatic power of his symbolism is here in full strength and the ideas involved have almost the range of interest the full orchestra of the wasteland one main reason for this is the balance maintained between other worldliness and humanism the essence of the poem is the vision of an order a spiritual state which he can conceive and cannot enter but has not made clear whether he conceives an order in this world to be known by later generation that Moses on Pisgah or the life in heaven which is to be obtained after death like Dante well might a first thing the second I knew was meant but Marina after all was a real daughter is now at sea like himself rather than already in the promised land and is to live in a world of time beyond me which the scarcely bear description of heaven at any rate the humanists meaning is used at every point as a symbol of the otherworldly one this seems the main point to insist on in a brief notice because it is the main cause of the richness of the total effect in either case the theme is the peril and brevity of such vision now the peril umbrella T is something I think which the religious and the non-religious could agree upon Eliot says writing to the editor of the edition of the play yes marina was suggested by the recognition scene in Shakespeare's Pericles and has to do of course with the same father/daughter relationship I had no daughter now I find there very extraordinary thing for him to say I had no job I have no daughter wouldn't would not be the same at all it's as if in some extraordinary way this this is his most this is his most tender though and it's full of terrible pain and grief and loss but Vita I had no daughter but the relationship interested me and then interested is sort of pulling yourself together after the sort of proper throg and so on and of course recognition in my experience is something that comes repeatedly in life he wrote John Heywood soon after publishing this poem I have no family no career and nothing particular to look forward to in this world I doubt the permanent value of everything I've written I never lay with the woman I liked loved or ever felt any strong physical attraction to I no longer even regret this lack of experience I no longer even feel acutely the desire for progeny which was very acute once now all of those things go into the poem you don't need to know them to value the poem but if you're fascinated as some of us are by how poems come into being this is how it comes into being and the contrast in due course blessedly between the second mrs. Elliot and the first mrs. Elliot the second mrs. Elliot meant that no longer were those terrible things needing to be thought or said mayhem the slowest post Democrat on the day of Elliot's first announced his first marriage and 1915 is a lot of international war news there are a lot of terrible stories on the front of that but the particularly terrible thing is Thomas Elliot wedge abroad now in the end he wouldn't be where did somebody that was better than abroad but the really strong is the immediate below this headline in caps there is an upper and lower case with simply a narrow bar slays a girl and kills himself thank you thank you thank you do you ask a question if you would like to please yes it's at the page says Thomas Elliott where's abroad it then says his family it his the nd family of a tight-lipped of course they deeply disapproved there's a little heading which which records that she I wish I brought the economy with me it records that she danced at the Royal Academy and so on the royal royal is doing a little bit and she did have a double-barrelled name which will have slightly pleased her hate would will sign you please and it says the family don't really comment on it though we know that they were against it it then says just below slay his girl and kills himself and it tells the story of a young couple who had married against their parents wishes where the man has decided that that it would not work and where he kills the girl and curves himself mr. fate it's just one of these terrifying things it's the world of Marshall McLuhan and simply having one thing just repose with another it has other terrifying merit or misery stories on the same page it's just they they you you should look at I mean you should look it up I'm not good at finding things on screens but 19:15 isn't Louis Post Democrat and it is a very extraordinary page because it's got a woman being poisoned by her unfaithful husband on the front bay and it's so doing a girl in is a big earlier preoccupation thank you that's all thank you thank you please you have the air or somebody who's in house well the agreement might be that it is possible for us no great intelligence imagination and goodness to believe this thing I don't believe myself as his George Herbert remedies for me to religious poet who must identify myself believing the Christian system as we're dimensions phrase pathogens on I quoted it once I met the professor of theology at Cambridge yes yes there's more in this now we are not diving as teachers forbid that we all sacrifice but my brother was able to read for no reason that it would come in my name is five and can say he could read waste remains the waste remains and kills in a way which I can't read it is so the story is a different part about taking people's words there was nothing in what they had previously said yeah I think that remark about religion as is it necessary the satisfaction of all satisfactions and it's left there I think others tended to by area and would be worth our agenda listen Tommy traditional says it set on Cocteau's fraud but everything every element for German people's business changes villains are always nice but true reasoning to be restored our sickness I think he wants you to say yeah that's true very nice on the situation so that's what this one if we're gonna get better than half cake was then this is going to have to be some complete collapse of but there are only things that are in the bones where it's not clear that you're being asked why do you be else to do with braces and bear is wanting to give you I'm not an anthropologist my son-in-law is the is it's essentially a question about essentialism isn't it as you were saying is it is it true that human beings by Barcia felt same thing the mother whose child this is your mind

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Length: 76min 32sec (4592 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 18 2014