[New-Poetry] Eagleton re Raine re Eliot

[Roger Day]

Somebody writing in the LRB said that Raines had TSE wrong: eliot is a
religious poet, and Raine, apparently, ignores this for psychological
trappings which, according to the author of the report, don't quite
fit Westminster Abbey, I mean, TSE. I think Cyril Connolly gave TS
this nickname.

The more I think about Eliot and his poetry, the less I like his poetry.

Roger

On 2/26/07, Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote:
>
>
> 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.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: jforjames at aol.com
> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 7:31 PM
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Eagleton re Raine re Eliot
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>


-- 
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." Oscar Wilde