Important Features of T.S.

Eliot's Poetry

Introduction
When T.S. Eliot died, wrote Robert Giroux, "the world became a lesser
place." Certainly the most imposing poet of his time, Eliot was revered by Igor
Stravinsky "not only a great sorcerer of words but as the very key keeper of the
language." For Alfred Kazin he was "the mana known as 'T.S. Eliot', the model
poet of our time, the most cited poet and incarnation of literary correctness in
the English-speaking world." Northrop Frye simply states: "A thorough
knowledge of Eliot is compulsory for anyone interested in contemporary
literature. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock", which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist
movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English
language, including The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday",
and Four Quartets. Important features of his poetry are as following;

1. The Damaged Psyche of Humanity

Like many modernist writers, Eliot wanted his poetry to express the fragile
psychological state of humanity in the twentieth century. The passing of
Victorian ideals and the trauma of World War 1 challenged cultural notions of
masculine identity, causing artists to question the romantic literary ideal of a
visionary-poet capable of changing the world through verse. Eliot saw society
as paralyzed and wounded, and he imagined that culture was crumbling and
dissolving. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" demonstrates this sense of
indecisive paralysis as the titular speaker wonders whether he should eat a
piece of fruit, make a radical change, of if he as the fortitude to keep living.
Humanity's collectively damaged psyche prevented people from
communicating with one another, an idea that Eliot explored in many works,
including "A Game of Chess" and "The Hollow Men."
2. The Power of Literary History
Eliot maintained great reverence for myth and the Western literary Canon,
and he packed his work full of allusions, quotations, footnotes, and scholarly
exegeses. In "The Tradition and the Individual Talent," Eliot praises the literary
tradition and states that the best writers are those who write with a sense of
continuity with those writers who came before. Eliot also argued that the
literary past must be integrated into contemporary poetry. But the poet must
guard against excessive academic knowledge and distill only the most essential
bits of the past into a poem, thereby enlightening readers. The Waste Land
juxtaposes fragments of various elements of literary and mythic traditions with
scenes and sounds from modern life. The effect of this poetic collage is both a
reinterpretation of canonical texts and a historical context for his examination
of society and humanity.

3. The Changing Nature of Gender Roles

Eliot lauded the end of the Victorian era and expressed concern about the
freedoms inherent in the modern age. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
reflects the feelings of emasculation experienced by many men as they
returned home from World War 1 to find women empowered by their new role
as wage earners. A disdain for unchecked sexuality appears in both "Sweeney
Among the Nightingales" and The Waste Land. The latter portrays rape,
prostitution, a conversation about abortion, and other incidences of non-
reproductive sexuality. Nevertheless, the poem's central character, Tiresias, is
a hermaphrodite - and his powers of prophesy and trans formation are, in some
sense, due to his male and female genitalia. With Tiresias, Eliot creates a
character that embodies wholeness, represented by the two genders coming
together in one body.

4. Fragmentation
Eliot used fragmentation in his poetry both to demonstrate the chaotic state
of modern existence and to juxtapose literary texts against one another. In
Eliot's view, humanity's psyche had been shattered by World War 1 and by the
collapse of the British Empire. Collaging bits and pieces of dialogue, images,
scholarly ideas, foreign words, formal styles, and tones within one poetic work
was a way for Eliot to represent humanity's damaged psyche and the modern
world. Every line in The Waste Land echoes an academic work or canonical
literary text, and many lines also have long footnotes. These echoes and
references are fragments themselves, since Eliot includes only parts, rather
than whole texts from the Canon. Using these fragments, Eliot tries to highlight
recurrent themes and images in the literary tradition, as well as to place his
ideas about the contemporary state of humanity along the spectrum of
history.

5. Mythic and Religious Ritual

Eliot's tremendous knowledge of myth, religious ritual, academic works, and
key books in the literary tradition informs every aspect of his poetry. He filled
his poems with references to both the obscure and the well known, thereby
teaching his readers as he writes. In his notes to The Waste Land, Eliot explains
the crucial role played by religious symbols and myths. He drew heavily from
ancient fertility rituals, in which the fertility of the land was linked to the health
of the Fisher King, a wounded figure who could be healed through the sacrifice
of an effigy. The Fisher King is, in turn, linked to the Holy Grail legends, in which
a knight quests to find the grail, the only object capable of healing the land.
Ultimately, ritual fails as the tool for healing the wasteland, even as Eliot
presents alternative religious possibilities, including Hindu chants, Buddhist
speeches, and pagan ceremonies.
6. Infertility
Eliot envisioned the modern world as a wasteland, in which neither the land
nor the people could conceive. In The Waste Land, various characters are
sexually frustrated or dysfunctional, unable to cope with either reproductive
or non-reproductive sexuality: the Fisher King represents damaged sexuality,
Tiresias represents confused or ambiguous sexuality, and the women
chattering in "A Game of Chess" represent an out-of-control sexuality. In "The
Hollow Men," the speaker discusses the dead land, now filled with stone and
cacti. Corpses salute the stars with their upraised hands, stiffened from rigor
mortis. Trying to process the destruction has caused the speaker's mind to
become infertile: his head has been filled with straw, and he is now unable to
think properly, to perceive accurately, or to conceive of images or thoughts.
7. Music and Singing
Like most modernist writers, Eliot was interested in the divide between high
and low culture, which he symbolized using music. He believed that high
culture, including art, opera, and drama, was in decline while popular culture
was on the rise. In The Waste Land, Eliot blended high culture with low culture
by juxtaposing lyrics from an opera by Richard Wagner with songs from pubs,
American ragtime, and Australian troops. Eliot splices nursery rhymes with
phrases from the Lord's Prayer in "The Hollow Men," and "The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock" is, as the title, implies a song, with various lines repeated as
refrains. That poem ends with the song of mermaids luring humans to their
deaths by drowning - a scene that echoes Odysseus's interactions with the
Sirens in the Odyssey. Music thus becomes another way in which Eliot collages
and references books from past literary traditions.
8. Objective Correlative
T.S. Eliot defines objective correlative as "a set of objects, a situation, a chain
of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion" that the poet
feels and hopes to evoke in the reader. He constantly employs objective
correlative in his own poetry (although Smidt complained that Eliot often
resorted to private memories which had meaning for him alone). The Waste
Land is based on an externalized structure of parallel myths which, though they
differ in appearance, stress the dilemma of the human situation as Eliot
perceived it. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is the best example of this
literary device. Prufrock is supposed to embody the general identity of the
modern man i.e. weak, over-educated and unexciting etc. Therefore the way
Eliot describes him is a sort of objective correlative for that particular
archetype.
9. Eliot's Style
Eliot's diction shows a high level of erudition, and he makes no attempt to
lower it to reach a wider audience. He is particularly fond of using phrases and
verses quoted from works in languages other than English - many verses in
"The Waste Land" are in German. While the opening verses of "The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock" are the original Latin version of verses from
Dante's Inferno. Eliot wrote in free verse form. Overall, Eliot's style is lengthy
and laden with literary devices of one sort or another. He uses his knowledge
of literature and of the English language expertly to develop poetry with an
amazing flow despite its length and use of elevated diction, and his figurative
language has a profound effect on the reader.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)