Eliot Without Exegesis

...In Four Quartets, despite its complexity of theme, the reader can get along without recognizing allusions...

...And later on in the same essay he observed: "Possibly the majority of attempts to confect a poetic drama have begun at the wrong end...

...Williamson's book ends with consideration of this poem, and quite properly does not take up the verse plays, although in these as in Four Quartets the poet is reaching out to that "large and miscellaneous" audience referred to at the beginning of this review...

...He has pared and stripped, striving for an economy, a lean flexibility...

...Williamson, professor of English at the University of Chicago, gets off to a good start by telling the reader that no attempt will be made "to recover all the borrowings or erudition of the poet," and that "the intention is not to try to state what a poem ultimately means, but what it is about, or the terms in which it is developed...

...Eliot is an innovator...

...But for all the novelty and experimentation in his work, he is also a traditionalist who has brought new life to the language of the day...

...In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Eliot wrote: "When all exceptions have been made, and after admitting the possible existence of minor 'difficult' poets whose public must always be small, I believe that the poet naturally prefers to write for as large and miscellaneous an audience as possible...

...Eliot's first book of criticism, The Sacred Wood, was published 34 years ago, and in one of the essays, The Possibility of a Poetic Drama, he wrote: "The essential is not, of course, that drama should be written in verse...

...and because they will not be bent upon sniffing out "meanings," they may find entertainment—and more...

...nor does he compose riddles...

...The essential is to get upon the stage this precise statement of life which is at the same time a point of view, a world?8 world which the author's mind has subjected to a complete simplicity...

...For some of those who journey to the Morosco Theater will doubtless be making a first acquaintance with his work, happily free from notions that he is a "difficult" poet...

...Like all poets of the first rank, he has changed, modified and extended poetic diction, achieving a highly flexible rhythmic form and a new idiom...

...The analyses are all of interest to the serious reader, though, in my opinion, the outstanding chapters are those on that cryptic and allusion-packed poem, The Wasteland, and on the Dante-inspired Ash Wednesday...

...While many of these studies have the acrostics quality of the "new criticism," every so often a study of real value comes along...

...Such is George Williamson's A Reader's Guide to T. S. Eliot...

...For example, the need to discover every allusion...

...Subtitled "A Poem-by-Poem Analysis," the book turns out to be just what the author promises...

...From the outset, the author makes it plain that he has no patience with the cultists: "We need not become priests to the temple of Eliotese mysteries, or even intellectual snobs, in order to read him with appreciation...

...For a long while now, Eliot has been something of a controversial figure in contemporary poetry, and the appraisals of his work by both admirers and detractors have been piling up...

...Here Eliot fails less than he is said to fail...

...There is also the use of contrariety, i.e., the frequent juxtaposition of the common word with the exotic...

...indeed, his one venture into notes sometimes suggested effects other than those required...

...Communication with an ever-widening public, of course, has been Eliot's continuing aim, and in his later poetry and verse plays he has succeeded in speaking with directness and simplicity...

...As readers, we need not give ourselves unnecessary handicaps--those insisted on by the Elect among his Understanders...

...it may also pervert it...

...The author suggests that some of the difficulty found in Eliot, particularly in the earlier poems, may be caused by his omission or suppression of connectives, the moving from image to image, the employment of what Eliot terms the "objective correlative," which he has defined as "a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion...

...Along the way, Eliot, it is shown, has developed his way of writing, shaping rhythm and meter, translating the language of his age into poetic form...

...they have aimed at the small public which wants 'poetry...

...Williamson delves briefly into Eliot's literary background of metaphysical poetry, the influences upon him of LaForgue, Donne and Dante...

...3.50...

...Recovery of the allusions may enrich but not replace the poet's meaning...

...With the exception of the delightful Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which, of course, needs no explaining, all of Eliot's important poetry is examined in considerable detail, with marked insight and clarity...

...If awareness of an allusion is necessary, the poem will make it evident in some way...

...He guides the reader step by step from the early Prufrock through the symbol-strewn Wasteland to the assured accomplishment of Four Quartets...

...It has been a long-range objective...

...Williamson also has some enlightening things to say about Eliot's masterwork, Four Quartets...

...Dependence on notes for the recovery of learning is acceptable in reading poetry, but not dependence on notes for effects not realized in the poem...

...T. S. Eliot's latest verse play, The Confidential Clerk, currently being performed in New York, is almost certain to add to his following...

...there is no need for him to track down the source of each symbol and each phrase...

...But he is not easy...