3.

HIS LITERARY WORKS

T.S. Eliot was a versatile writer. During his long creative
he wrote poetry, prose, drama, critical and social essays, etc. Hecareer,
also
Worked as a journalist and cditor. His writings, however, are divided
under the following heads
Poetry
Eliot's poetic career can be divided into five periods :
(a) First Period (1905-1909)-It was the experimental period
whenhe began poetic exerciscs while still a boy at Smith's Academy.
The poems of this period are immature, juvenile prOductions, mere
school bOy exercises, yet showing signs of poetic talent. The poems
were published in the various college and school magazines, as the
Smith Academy Record and Harvard dvocate.
(b) Second Period (1909-1917)-This is the period of urban
poetry of Eliot. The collection entitled Prufrock and Other Obser
vations, 1917 came out. The most important poems of this collection
are 1. The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. 2. Portrait of a Lady, 3. The
Preludes. 4. Rhapsody on a Windy Night. 5. The "Boston Evening
Transcript". 6. Mr. Apollinax.
The poems of this collection were written in Boston, in Europe,
and during his first year in England and show considerable influence of
Eliot's reading of French writers, particularly Laforgue. They are
sophisticated observations of people, of social behaviour, and of urban
landscapes." The poetry is of urban streets, and houses and people, not
of woods and fields and flowers. Eliot is frankly satirical of Boston
society and the love-theme, when it appears, receives an ironic
treatment. The rottenneSs, the corruption and decadence of
contemporary society is exposed with a rare poignancy.
(c) Third Period (1918-1925)-This is the period of most
significant poems, such as 1. Gerontion, 2. Burbank with a Baedekar
3.Sweeney Erect, 4. A Cooking Egg, 5. Sweeney among the Nightingales,
6. The Waste Land, 1922, 7. The Hollow Man, 1925.
These poems reveal the poet's dejection at the decaying modern
European society. Most of the poems are black in tone, therefore
generally called pessimistic. Their gloom is the resultant of the poet's
inner gloom consequent upon overwork, ill health, the continued
mental illness of his wife,a and the harrowing, nerve shattering impact
the poet's
of the world war on a sensitive temperament. AS a result of
experience of the society, the range and scope of his poetry is now
and
much enlarged. Up till now he had dealt with particular peoplecalled
places, but now he "writes a poetry which belongs to whatThe is
and Waste
major or great poetry. I may be calledforepicit poetry
portrays the state or
Land is a kind of compressed epic
civilisation out of which ii grows", This is done in a limited way, but
still The Waste Land stands in the epic tradition. The poems reveal
characteristic style and
Considerable maturity of the poet's powers. The spccially.
used. The Waste Land,
technique of Eliot are now efectively cohesion, thus symbolising the
Is fragmented in effect, lackingin in
the cultural life of the West.
breakdown of beliefs and values
6 | TS. Eliot
(1925-1935)-This is the
(d) Fourth Period most important period of
religious or Christian poetry. The
Wednesday, 1930. 2. Joumey of the poems
Magi 3.
of this Eliot's
period4.
are 1. Ash Rock" 6.
Marina 5. Chouses fron "TheDuring this Coriolanus 7. A A Animila
period, Eliot had number of
minor and unfinished poems.
Church of England. This
Anglicanpoems
change of faith is joined
markedly the
in the of this period. The poet searches for a right way,reflected
Solutioin to the human dilemma, and he does so through the a right
material and imagery of Christianity. The tone israther traditional
oplimistic,
there are indications of the solution which thepoct is likely to rea and
(e) Fifth Period (1935-1943)-Thiss is the period of the famous
Four Quartets of Eliot, published as follows :
1. Burnt Norton, 1936. 2. East Coker, 1940. 3.
1941. 4. Little Gidding, 1942.
The
Dry Salvages,
The Poems of this period are also religious, but they are different
from the Christian poems of the earlier period. In both the phases
Eliot is areligious poet-as he ever was-bul in the previous period he
used Christian imagery and tradition, while nOw the examines the
eternal problems of men without reference to the Christian tradition
«The poems combine the drab and grim picture of modern society
which had been prominent before with an intricate contemplation of
the problems of space and time, life and death, past and future" (T. S.
Pearce). The poet had cast his looks at the worst, and yet looks at life
with faith and hope.
Drama
As a dramatist, Eliot is known for the revival of English
poetic
drama. His dramas are : 1. The Rock, a Pageant Play, 1934. 2. Murder
in the Cathedral, 1935. 3. The Family Reunion, 1939 4. The
Party, 1950. 5. The Confidential Clerk, 1954. 6. The Elder Cocktail
1959. Statesman,
A00Ut his return from poetry to drama, Eliot himself wrote :
"Reviewing my critical
ind how constantly output for the last thirty
I have returned to theyears
I am surprsed to
examining the work of the contemporaries of drama, whetherOyDy
reflecting on the possibilities of the future... AsShakespeare,
I
earned more abOut the problems of poetic drama, and have the
gradualy
conditions
which it must fulfil, if it is to iustify ítself. Ihave made a
O myselt, not only my own reasons for little cleae
but ne wanting to write in this TOs
place." more general reasons for wanting to see it restored t0
AS Eliot had always shown himself
believing that the most direct means of interested
social in poetic
usefulness' for poetry
da is
the theatre, it was to
play in verse. In the beunfinished
expected that
Sweeney Or later he
SOoner Agonistes (1926), useda
wouldhewrite

Contemporary
melodrama. musicyearshalllaterrhythms
Eight he as the
wrote the works
basis for
for aanchurch
Aristophanic
pageant,
the Rock,
on the followed by a
full-length verse-play, Murder in the
Cathedral,
murder of
Canterbury Festival Archbishop Thomas Becket, first produced at the
with
in June 1935, and London
later played in
 General Introduction | 7
great success. The Family Reunion (1939) is a verse play on a subjcct
irom Greek mythology with a modern setting, dealing not with crime
and punishment, but with 'sin and expiation.
Prose
TS. Eliot was an outstanding prose-writcr. Most of his prose
writings include his literary criticism. In fact, Eliot stands in the long
line of illustrious poet-critics beginning with Ben Jonson and including
Dryden, Dr. Johnson, Coleridge and Matthew Arnold. Eliot's principal
critical works include : 1. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism,
(1933) 2. The Idea of a Christian Society, (1939) 3. Notes Towards a
Definiion of Culture, (1948) 4. Selected Easays, (Third Edition, 1951)
5. On Poetry ar.d Pocts, (1957) 6. To Criticise ihe Critic (1965).
Besides these, his morc popular critical works are Tradition and
Individual Talent, Poetry and Drama, The Function of Criticism, The
English Metaphysical Poets and The Frontiers of Criticism.
Apart from litera:y criticism, Eliot also did journalistic writing.
He edited The Criterion from 1922 to 1939.
Referring to Eliot's works, Westland has remarked in
Contemporary Literature, "Thomas Stearns Eliot (b. 1888) was born in
the United `tates, and became a naturalised British subject in 1927.
His carly publications were Prufrock and Other Obserations (1917),
Ara Vos Proc (1919)and Poems (1920). From the futilities of post-war
Europe, Eliot drew arid hopeleSSness and wrote about it in dry and
bare language. In Waste Land (1922) he contrasted the desert which
was England with the cultures of other ages and countries. The poem
is full of irony, overburdened by scholarship, heavily marked by denial
of faith in anything human or divine. Everything is parched, sterile,
harsh, lyrical, amazingly vivid in its natural rhythms, bewilderingly
symbolical. Wastc Land is cHserved by
"I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two tives
Old inan with wrinkled fenmale breasts....
pass through our
by whose guidance pictures in the driest coloursunbelief
minds. In effect, we have a powerful statement of and at least
something
in retrospect, an appalling need for a faith, a tradition,
uite opposed to the cynical,
which will supply to reality a lifeworld."
unreliable actuality Eliot saw in the