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T.S. Eliot The
Making of an American Poet
By James E. Miller, Jr.
August | 2005 | 6.125 x 9.25| 488 pages
Literature
Hardcover: $39.95 TR
ISBN: 978-0-271-02681-7
Paper Available 01/2008: $25.00 SH
ISBN 978-0-271-02762-3
Late
in his life T. S. Eliot, when asked if his poetry belonged in the
tradition of American literature, replied: “I’d say
that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished
contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation
in England. That I’m sure of. . . . In its sources, in its
emotional springs, it comes from America.” In T. S. Eliot:
The Making of an American Poet, James Miller offers the first
sustained account of Eliot’s early years, showing that the
emotional springs of his poetry did indeed come from America.
Born in 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, T. S. Eliot grew up along the
Mississippi River, only a few miles down river from Hannibal, the
boyhood home of another great American writer, Mark Twain. Miller
recounts Eliot’s early years in St. Louis schools and follows
him in the summers as he vacationed with his family in their Gloucester,
Massachusetts, home perched on the Atlantic Ocean’s edge.
In 1905 at the age of seventeen, Eliot left the Midwest for what
would prove to be a lasting separation—attending Milton Academy
in Massachusetts for one year and then Harvard for nine years, as
an undergraduate and as a graduate student in philosophy. The first
time he ventured abroad was 1910, when he spent a crucial year studying
in Paris and forming a deep friendship with the Frenchman Jean Verdenal.
It was not until 1914, when Eliot was 26 years old, that he left
America for England—and found reasons to stay there permanently,
becoming a British citizen in 1927.
Miller challenges long-held assumptions about Eliot’s poetry
and his life. Eliot himself always maintained that his poems were
not based on personal experience, and thus should not be read as
personal poems. But Miller convincingly combines a reading of the
early work—from his earliest poems through 1922, the year The Waste Land was published—with careful analysis
of surviving early correspondence, accounts from Eliot’s friends
and acquaintances, and new scholarship that delves into Eliot’s
Harvard years. Ultimately, Miller demonstrates that Eliot’s
poetry is filled with reflections of his personal experiences: his
relationships with family, friends, and wives; his sexuality; his
intellectual and social development; his influences.
Publication of T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet marks a milestone in Eliot scholarship. At last we have a balanced
portrait of the poet and the man, one that takes seriously his American
roots. In the process, we gain a fuller appreciation for some of
the best-loved poetry of the twentieth century. Eliot may have lived
most of his life abroad, but he was and continued to be an American
poet.
Contents
Preface
A Note on Sources
Introduction
1 1888–1906: Origins
1. Eliot’s St. Louis and “The Head of the Family,”
;
2. Sons and Lovers: Sex and Satan, ;
3. A Frail Youth, a Bookish Boy, ;
4. Early Landscapes, Later Poems,
2 1902–1914: Early Influences
1. Eliot at Fourteen: Atheistical, Despairing, Gloomy, ;
2. Poetic Beginnings: Merry Friars and Pleading Lovers, ;
3. Missourian, New Englander: Double Identity, ;
4. A Soul’s Paralysis: “Denying the Importunity of the
Blood,”
3 1906–1911: Harvard: Out from Under
1. Prologue: A Problematic Student, ;
2. Bohemian Boston at the Turn of the Century, ;
3. Bohemian Harvard and Isabella Stewart Gardner (“Mrs. Jack”),
;
4. A Fellow Poet: Conrad Aiken, ;
5. “A Very Gay Companion”: Harold Peters, ;
6. Practicing to Be a Poet: From Omar’s Atheism to Laforgue’s
Masks, ;
7. Poems Written 1906–1910,
4 1906–1910: Harvard Influences: Teachers, Texts, Temptations
Teachers: 1. Irving Babbitt: Human Imperfectability, ;
2. Barrett Wendell: The Inexperience of America, ;
3. George Santayana: Philosopher of Reason, ;
4. William Allan Neilson: Poetic Theorist, ; Texts:
5. Dante and Eliot’s “Persistent Concern with Sex,”
;
6. Petronius’s Satyricon: A “Serene Unmorality,”
;
7. Symons/Laforgue: The Ironic Mask, ;
8. Havelock Ellis, “Sexual Inversion,” ;
9. John Donne: Thought as Experience, ; Temptations:
10. The Lure of Europe: Brooks’s The Wine of the Puritans, ;
11. “T. S. Eliot, the Quintessence of Harvard,”
5 1910–1911: T. S. Eliot in Paris
1. The Primacy of Paris, 1910–1911, ;
2. Jean Verdenal: “Mon Meilleur Ami,” ;
3. Matthew Prichard: A Blurred Portrait, ;
4. Henri Bergson: A Brief Conversion, ;
5. Charles Maurras: The Action Française, ;
6. Finding the Personal in the Poem: Drafts of “Portrait”
and “Prufrock,” ;
7. Poems Written 1911–1914,
6 1911–1914: Eliot Absorbed in Philosophical Studies
1. Prologue: The Rise of Harvard’s Philosophy Department and
the Santayana Controversy, ;
2. The Decline and Fall of Harvard Philosophy in Eliot’s Day
and After, ;
3. Eliot and Oriental Philosophies and Religions, ;
4. Psychology as Philosophical, Religion as Psychological, Mysticism
as Magical, ;
5. Eliot and the Elusive Absolute, ;
6. Epilogue: The Eliot Controversy,
7 1914–1915: American Chaos versus English Tradition
1. Philosophy in Marburg, War in Europe, ;
2. London Interlude: Pound and Russell, ;
3. Oxford, 1914–1915: Reconsidering Philosophy, ;
4. New Friends and Old: Culpin, Blanshard, Pound, Lewis, ;
5. The Mystery of Emily Hale: “The Aspern Papers in Reverse,”
8 1915: An Inexplicable Marriage and the Consequences
1. A Sudden Marriage at the Registry Office, ;
2. Who Was Vivien? ;
3. A Flurry of Correspondence, a Day of Decision, ;
4. An Unhappy Visit Home (Gloucester, July 24–September 4),
a Disastrous Honeymoon (Eastbourne, September 4–10), ;
5. “Bertie” Russell’s “Friendship,”
;
6. “What I Want Is MONEY!$!£!! We are hard up! War!”
;
7. Hallucinations, Heavenly and Hellish Poetic Visions: “St.
Sebastian” and “St. Narcissus,” ;
8. Poems Written 1914–1915,
9 1916: Making Do, Finding Means, Expanding Connections
1. “The Most Awful Nightmare of Anxiety”; “Pegasus
in Harness,” ;
2. The Triumph of Poetry over Philosophy, ;
3. Reviews and Essays, Teaching and Lecturing: Total Immersion, ;
4. A Widening Circle of Friends and Associates, Writers and Artists,
10 1917–1918: T. S. Eliot: Banker, Lecturer, Editor,
Poet, Almost Soldier
1. Eliot the Banker: March 19, 1917–November 1925, ;
2. Eliot the Extension Lecturer, ;
3. Eliot as Eeldrop, ;
4. Eliot the Assistant Editor: June 1917–December 1919, ;
5. Eliot the Poet, ;
6. America Enters War: April 6, 1917–Armistice Day, November
11, 1918, ;
7. “Writing . . . Again”: The French and Quatrain Poems,
;
8. Poems Written 1917–1918,
11 1919–1920: Up the Ladder, Glimpsing the Top
1. Death of a Father, ;
2. Banking, Teaching, Editing, Writing: Money and Power, ;
3. Friendships and Relationships: Deeper and Wider, ;
4. A Voice from the Past; “An Encounter of Titans”; Moving
Again, ;
5. Three New Books: Poetry and Prose, ;
6. “Gerontion”: Return of Fitzgerald’s Omar, ;
7. Poems Written 1918–1920,
12 1919–1921: Notable Achievements, Domestic Disasters,
Intimate Friends
1. Prologue: Paris and the Pension Casaubon, Paris Again in the Spring,
;
2. “A Long Poem . . . on my Mind for a Long Time,” ;
3. A Family Visit: Mother, Brother, Sister—Wife, ;
4. A Room of One’s Own, Wearing Makeup, Confidante Virginia
Woolf, ;
5. Roommates, “Renowned Pederasts”: Kitchin, Senhouse,
Ritchie,
13 1922: Over the Top
1. “The Uranian Muse,” The Waste Land, and “il miglior
fabbro,” ;
2. Publication of The Waste Land, ;
3. “Out into the World”: The Waste Land Reviewed, ;
4. Pound’s Financial Scheme for Eliot: “Bel Esprit,”
;
5. Birth of The Criterion,
14 A Glance Ahead: The Making of an American Poet
1. T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman, ;
2. An American Poet Discovers His American-ness,
References to Works by T. S. Eliot
References to Works by Other Authors
Index
James
E. Miller, Jr. is the Helen A. Regenstein Professor Emeritus
of English at the University of Chicago. Penn State Press also
published his earlier book, T. S. Eliot’s Personal
Wasteland (1977). He is also the author of The American
Quest for a Supreme Fiction: Whitman’s Legacy in the Personal
Epic (1979) and Leaves of Grass: America’s Lyric-Epic
of Self and Democracy (1992).
