Hm, Eliot "the master of allusion"? Depends what you mean. Sure, there's plenty of stuff that goes into the mix. But the idea that this means the poem is like a homework assignment that makes you head off elsewhere to understand it is a little more questionable. Take it from me--I actually ran down _everything_ in "The Waste Land" & "Little Gidding" when I was hired to write the annotations for Keith Tuma's _Anthology of 20th-Century British & Irish Poetry_--many of the allusions are species of red herrings (above all, the mostly overrated reliance on Frazer & Weston). Often Eliot simply picks a phrase that stuck in his head, but the original context is fairly irrelevant. (For instance, Eliot may stitch a phrase into the fabric of his text in such a way that the referent of a pronoun is now altered [there's an instance of this in the borrowings from Dame Julien in "Little Gidding"], or the syntax or meaning of a word are quite different in the new context: I know what "Signs are taken for wonders" means in Lancelot Andrewes' sermon, but does it mean the same thing in "Gerontion", especially as, decontextualized, it's very ambiguous?) Some of the notes to _The Waste Land_ record "allusions" which do not, as far as I can see, exist at all in the conventional sense--for instance, Eliot identifies one passage as an allusion to Baudelaire but since the only thing Eliot's & Baudelaire's passages have in common is the word "city" what kind of allusion is that? Clearly he's trying to point the reader to a general intellectual debt rather than a specific allusion. &c.

I submit this essay on Eliot and the FOUR QUARTETS in particular for you consideration:

http://home.swipnet.se/~w-18693/quartet.htm

from: http://home.swipnet.se/~w-18693/index.html

Please don't consider this an endorsement of the author's views, however. It is certainly not intended to be one.

Finally, as a reader who has never really dealt with Eliot past my undergraduate education, I'd be interested to see what the rest of you have to say about the "musical structure" of the Quartets.

"Finally, as a reader who has never really dealt with Eliot past my undergraduate education, I'd be interested to see what the rest of you have to say about the 'musical structure' of the Quartets."

Well, I'll pick this up, as I decided to spend part of the weekend reading the Quartets, for the first time in many years.

If this work does have as one of its major themes time and the paradoxical permanence of constant impermanence, then tempo is critical to the development of this theme. The language here to me has a Biblical circularity (if not tautology): all those alphas and omegas, and literal and figurative turnings witin and across lines, stanzas and movements.

A simplistic enough observation, I know, but it helps me to think about how the allusions and images in the Quartets are slightly different than the references to a universe of knowledge found in "The Wasteland".

Nate, without having yet made it through the entire work, I can chalk up most of your comments to revision. Some say that Eliot learned everything he knew about allusion from Pound and Joyce. Fine instructors, if you ask me. I don't so much mind the research as I do beauty at the sake of clarity. To me, Eliot balances all of those elements. "The Hollow Men" stuck with me the first time I read it for its tone and its brevity. Boiled down, there are simply some damned fine lines in that poem. To find out years later (when I began to care more about internal structure and references) that virtually every verse was attributed to colorful boundaries between legend and history had a huge impact on me. Equal measures surprise and the elation in understanding the roots of a work.

Joe, cool. Looking forward to this.

Al--"Joe, cool"? Reminds me of a Wynton Marsalis album.... ;)

No, Eliot's habits of composition were well-established early on: by the time he'd met Pound he'd _already_ written many of his important early poems like "Prufrock" & "Portrait of a Lady". I'm sure that Joyce's _Ulysses_ had a profound impact on Eliot but again it was written after Eliot had already worked out much of his style for himself in those early poems.

Re: musical structure: it's worth keeping in mind that the _4Q_ weren't conceived in a stroke & that much of the parallelisms & structure of the sequence were only gradually worked out. It's rather like _Ulysses_: Stuart Gilbert's book on _Ulysses_ lists copious governing themes & images for each chapter but many of these were worked into the text by Joyce at a very late stage (the proofs & galleys), as baroque decorations. Similarly, _Burnt Norton_ was originally the result of Eliot's tinkering with a speech cut out of one of his plays. I'm not sure exactly when the idea of "quartet structure" came to Eliot but it wasn't worked out in advance; ditto things like the allotment of one of the four elements to each Quartet &c.

Al: not sure I understand what you're saying about "revision": you mean Eliot's own revision, or a revisionism in my reception of the work? It's worth keeping in mind Eliot's own diffidence to matters of allusion & annotation. The notes to _The Waste Land_ were not originally planned, but simply added in because the publisher of the book thought that the book was too short & asked Eliot to add them. (Eliot also thought of bulking out the book by printing "Gerontion" as a preface but Pound dissuaded him.) Eliot himself was pretty bemused by the way the notes were taken up by readers, once writing that "they seem to be more popular than the poem itself" (I'm quoting from memory).

"Similarly, _Burnt Norton_ was originally the result of Eliot's tinkering with a speech cut out of one of his plays."

Hmmm, began as oratory. There's certainly an oratorical quality to the language and the phrasing, audible even when read "silently" (to oneself).

"No, Eliot's habits of composition were well-established early on..."

Nate, I'm not quite sure what the subject of disagreement here is. Could you amplify? Thanks.

A quick note--I was responding to this--

> Some say that Eliot learned everything he knew about allusion from Pound and Joyce.

Nate, yes, Eliot's revising. Afterthoughts and original context are interchangeable with a final work. I like that -- particularly in the case of Waste Land -- that what I see is what I get. I get the feeling we have studied opposite resources when it comes to his work.

Some more recommended, if not necesaarily endorsed, reading on Eliot:

Cynthia Ozick. "TS Eliot at 101." In: FAME AND FOLLY: ESSAYS. (1996). [This peice also appeared in THE NEW YORKER, November 20, 1989.]

Majorie Perloff. "Avant-Garde Eliot." In: 21ST CENTURY MODERNISM: THE "NEW" POETICS. (2001). pp. 7-43.

Nate and Al, if either of you are so inclined, I would be most interested in anything you might have to say about Ozick's essay and its impact on Eliot's reputation.

I got some cherce words about Ozick, but they don't have anything to do with Eliot. Oh, what the hell, I might as well throw in here that if Cythia (The Misunderstood and Underappreciated) Ozick wrote it, it's probably
(a) bullshit;
(b) arrogant and condescending; &
(c) humorless (except in its tendency toward over-writing)

But speaking of the NYer, I seem to recall a piece on Eliot by Anthony Lane not too long ago. As you might expect, it was both intelligent and fun to read.

Joe--fairly busy at the moment: perhaps if you give your own comments on why you're interested in those two essays then I might have a better idea whether to actually pull them out of the library for a look? Though I was aware of their existence & am vaguely aware of what Ozick'll have to say I've never got around to looking them up.

FWIW the most useful book on Eliot for me some years ago when I was actually trying to study all this stuff was Louis Menand's book on Eliot & modernism, the title escapes me at the moment; & the pertinent chapters in Michael Levinson's book on the genealogy of modernism. Other various things since then, like JCC Mays' essay in a recentish collection of essays (Cambridge companion to Eliot?) or some remarks in a Charles Altieri essay on "Prufrock". This is all very unsystematic, in part because I found some of the "standard" texts tedious in the extreme (Lyndall Gordon's two tomes for instance); I probably should for instance have looked at Helen Gardner's early & influential book on _Four Quartets_ for instance but never got around to it.

Nate -- well, Walter expresses some of my same reservations re: Ozick the essayist (I think her fiction is rather better) that I have, but there is no denying that her Eliot peice, a strangely sadisitic one at that, has been influential. I think I can sum it up with this passage (pages 7 and 8 in FAME AND FOLLY):

"It may be embarrassing for us now to look back at that nearly universal [intellectual, specifically, critical] obeisance to an autocratic, inhibited, epressed, rather narrow-minded and considerably bigoted fake Englishman -- especially if we are old enough (as I surely am) to have been part of the wave of adoration."

There's more to the essay than that, but I would understand if you felt, based on that quote, that it might not be worth your trouble.

Whoever it was said "oratory" hit it, both its strength and its weakness. There's a poise (oops, almost typed 'pose') to it hard to appreciate past one's twenties...

where would I be able to find some critical essays on the internet on Prufrock by composers such as Helen Gardner

Learn to use a library, sonny.