Brain Food #524
Eliot, Pound, and the reviving power of friendship
Thoughts of the day
It is no secret that T.S. Eliot is someone I deeply admire. Occasionally returning to his writings, one finds consolation not just through his work but through the artist’s life, one with which many will resonate. On the surface, Eliot had it all. He studied at Harvard, then Oxford, wrote myriads of masterpieces, and is considered one of the most important literary minds and poets of the 20th century, all this culminating in being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
In fact, Eliot’s road to success was troublesome, paved with illness, catastrophe, and self-doubt. In 1915, at the age of 27, he began to consider giving up poetry. After having moved to England, and following his unsuccessful marriage, Eliot, unable to afford being only a poet, worked first as a teacher, then as a clerk at Lloyds Bank. Even this income wasn’t enough to sustain him, so he started writing paid essays and literary pieces in the evenings.
In 1916, when World War I had broken out and was very much making its presence known in England, Eliot wrote to his brother: “The present year has been ... the most awful nightmare of anxiety that the mind of man could conceive,” something that will resonate with many of us today.
Eliot’s poetry was revived partly thanks to his dear friend and mentor Ezra Pound. He encouraged Eliot to switch back to more precise and controlled forms of poetry, which helped him find the direction he needed, and the joy in his poetry that he was beginning to lack. A few years later, he published The Waste Land, his magnum opus. The rest was history.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, though he was only 22 when he started it, Eliot writes, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” We might all be feeling a bit older than our age these days. But sometimes all we need to push through is someone to believe in us, and something to keep us going.
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