[New-Poetry] Eagleton re Raine re Eliot

[Anny Ballardini]

Raine, then, is certain that he has the "meaning" of The Waste Land under his belt. He does not understand that Eliot's poetry is not a question of meaning in the first place. The meaning of a poem for Eliot was a fairly trifling matter. It was, he once remarked, like the piece of meat which the burglar throws to the guard dog to keep him occupied. In true symbolist fashion, Eliot was interested in what a poem did, not in what it said—in the resonance of the signifier, the echoes of its archetypes, the ghostly associations haunting its grains and textures, the stealthy, subliminal workings of its unconscious. Meaning was for the birds, or perhaps for the petit bourgeoisie. Eliot was a primitivist as well as a sophisticate, a writer who made guerrilla raids on the collective unconscious. For all his intellectualism, he was averse to rationality. Meaning in his poetry is like the mysterious figure who walks beside you in The Waste Land, vanishing when you look at it straight. When Raine enquires of a couple of lines in one of Eliot's poems whether we are supposed to be in a brothel, the only answer which would be true to Eliot's own aesthetic is that we are in a poem. 

and

 If there is very little stark, authentic emotion in Eliot's work, there is also a shortage of it in this commentary.
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  http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=8312
    
  March 2007 | 132 » Reviews » Raine's sterile thunder  
  TS Eliot's greatness as a poet is established beyond all doubt. So why do critics feel the need to defend him against all charges of misogyny and antisemitism? 
  Terry Eagleton
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Terry Eagleton is professor of cultural theory at the University of Manchester 
   
  TS Eliot by Craig Raine 
  (OUP, £12.99)
  For a good many decades, thick fumes of incense have been wafting from the English literary establishment in the general direction of TS Eliot. The latest offering by the acolytes to the high priest is this study by Craig Raine, which admits that some of Eliot's drama isn't up to much but otherwise won't hear a cross word about the great man. "There is no evidence," Raine piously remarks, "that Eliot was either a fornicator or a homosexual," as though being homosexual was a trespass to be vigorously rebutted. Eliot was not, he rashly maintains, a misogynist either, even though the poetry is shot through from end to end with a fear and loathing of women. He even seeks to face down the charge that this ascetic ex-bank clerk was a bit of a dry old stick, although Eliot himself admitted as much. 
   
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