T. S.

Eliot and Modernity

Author(s): Louis Menand
Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 554-579
Published by: New England Quarterly, Inc.
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 T. S. Eliotand Modernity

LOUIS MENAND

is a reactionagainstthemodern.This defin-
MODERNISM
itiondoes notmeetthecase ofeveryworkofliterature
or
criticism we call modernist,butit meetsthe case ofT. S. Eliot
at least as well as anyothergeneralization;and no generaliza-
tionaboutmodernism can affordto makean exceptionofEliot.
For Eliotbecame a majorfigurein a culturewhoseleadingten-
dencies he had devotedhis career to disparaging.He might
have done so as a critichonoredforhis isolation,as the repre-
sentativeof an adversarialposition,a countermodern. But he
became instead(afterstruggles foracceptancenow a littleun-
derrated)a paragonof the establishment. And the paradoxis
even more complete;forEliot's greatestinfluenceon twenti-
eth-century culturewas feltin,and transmitted through, an in-
stitution thatis a monumentto all the modernvalues he most
despised-the university. Eliot nevercourtedthe academy;he
tookthe opportunity, on variousoccasions,of insultingit. But
the modernacademy,at a crucialmomentin its history, made
an icon of Eliot. Andthissuggeststhatthe answerto the ques-
tionofEliot'ssuccessis likelyto be foundnotsimplyin whathe
had to saybutalso in theinstitutionalneedshiswriting was able
to serve.

I
Modernismis a reactionagainstthemodern.The definition
derivesfromone of the earliestconsiderations of the subject,
Horace Kallen'sarticleon "Modernism"in the 1933 editionof
theEncyclopediaoftheSocial Sciences(thoughKallenwas try-
ing to explainthe differencebetweenmodernand modernist
painting and does not seem to have had literaturein mind).It
554

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 555
soundsparadoxical,and withgood reason.For "modernism,"
taken as the name of a movementin twentieth-century
Anglo-American writing,looks like a variantof "modem,"
whichis a commontermfora phase ofWesternculturesome
(like Kallen) say began withRousseau,or, morebroadly,with
Descartes,or, more broadlystill,withthe Renaissance.And
thereis a pointofviewfromwhichmodernist writing is simply
a versionof modemwriting, a pointofview fromwhichmod-
ernismlooks perfectlycontinuouswithromanticism and hu-
manism-even in its attemptsto parody,to disparage,to cri-
tique,orto replacethosetraditions.
This point of view accommodatesEliot quite comfortably.
He belongsto the modemtradition partlybytemperament: he
made a show,in his criticism, of depreciating writersto whom
he clearlyowed a good deal ofhisvoiceas a poet and hisprinci-
ples as a critic.But he is a modernby fateas well. He could
hardlyhave hoped to makehimselfthe exceptionto the condi-
tions he analyzedwithsuch mordantdisapproval;and when
Eliot criticizedmodernlife forits lack of a coherentmoral
groundand forthe idiosyncratic and makeshift value systemsit
to
produced compensate for that inadequacy, did so in the
he
name of doctrines-"royalism," to take a notoriousexample-
whose idiosyncrasies are, to say the least, fairlypronounced.
Eliotbuilthiscastleoutofthestoneshe foundlyingaroundthe
yardof modernity, just as Wordsworth, Emerson,Arnold,and
Paterhad builttheirs.
There is a second ambiguity in the definitionof modernism
as a reactionagainstthe modern,and thisone also fitsEliot's
case. When someone refers,in the way Kallen does, to "the
modern,"we are likelyto ask,"The modernwhich?"For we are
accustomedto drawinga distinction betweenmodernart and
literature,on the one hand,and modernlife-the political,so-
cial,and economicconditionsofmodernity---on the other.We
thinkof the firstas the antagonistof the second: modernlife
runsalongitstrackofdisenchantment and demystification, and
art
modern and literature assess the damage. But thisis a dis-
tinctionEliot alwaysrefusedto recognize,and thatrefusalis
the definingcharacteristic of his thought.It is whatseparates

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556 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
himin the end fromthe nineteenth-century criticswithwhom
he otherwiseshares so much, and it constitutesthe proper
groundsforcallinghima reactionary. Eliot consideredmodem
society and modern artand literatureto be aspectsofthe same
condition.A fewwritersseemedto himto haveachieveda criti-
cal positionwithinthe cultureofmodernity-Flaubert, Baude-
laire, HenryJames.But Eliot identifiedthe main streamof
moderncultureas romanticism, and he regardedromanticism
as the secretfriendand abettorofall thetendenciesofmodem
lifehe mostdeplored:liberalism, secularism, laissez-faire.
Eliot began his career,however,by isolatingthe domainof
literaryvaluesfromthedomainsofphilosophy, politics,and re-
ligion.Convinced that extraliterary interests had intrudedupon
and adulteratedliterature and literary criticism, Eliot advanced
a strategy thatwas itselfintendedas an act ofculturalcriticism.
His earliestessaysand reviews;hisfirst volumeofcriticism, The
Sacred Wood (1920); and the three essays on seventeenth-
centurypoetrypublishedin 1921-"John Dryden,""Andrew
Marvell,"and "The MetaphysicalPoets"-are guided by the
principle,as Eliot laterexpressedit,that"whenwe are consid-
eringpoetrywe mustconsideritprimarily as poetryand notan-
otherthing."''
By 1924, though,when the essayson seventeenth-century
poetrywerereprinted bythe HogarthPressas HomagetoJohn
Dryden, Eliot had come to regardthissortofformalist criticism
as not entirelyadequate to the sortsof judgmentshe now
wantedto make."I have longfeltthatthepoetryofthe seven-
teenthand eighteenthcenturies,even muchof thatof inferior
inspiration, possessesan eleganceand a dignity absentfromthe
popular and pretentious verse of the Romantic Poets and their
successors," he declared in theintroduction to HomagetoJohn
Dryden.Now dissatisfied withthe essayshe had writtenthree
yearsearlier,he explainedthat"To have arguedthisclaimper-
suasivelywould have led me indirectly into considerations of
politics,education, and theology which I no longercare to ap-

'T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetryand Criticism,2d ed. (London:
Methuen,1928),p. viii.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 557
proachin thisway."2And in 1928,in the prefaceto the second
editionof The Sacred Wood, he announcedthat
"poetry...
certainlyhas somethingto do withmorals,and withreligion,
and even withpoliticsperhaps,"and thusthe consideration of
"poetryas poetry"constitutedmerely"a pointfromwhichto
start."AfterHomagetoJohnDryden,then,Eliot'sliterary crit-
icism-collected in For Lancelot Andrewes (1928), Dante
(1929), The UseofPoetryand the UseofCriticism(1933), Eliz-
abethanEssays (1934), EssaysAncientand Modern(1936), On
Poetryand Poets (1957), and To Criticizethe Critic(1965)-
was complementedby the muchbroadersociologicalcriticism
of modernity mountedin AfterStrangeGods (1934), The Idea
of a Christian Society(1939), and NotestowardstheDefinition
of Culture (1948). Eliottookthemodernworldas a totality, and
his critique,thoughit was not systematic or even in everyre-
spectconsistent, was undertaken in thespiritofa totalcritique.
For mostreaders,Eliot's criticismis embodiedin whatwas
arguablythe mostinfluential workof literarycriticismin the
English-speaking worldduringthe middlethirdof the twenti-
ethcentury, the SelectedEssays (1932; new edition,1950). But
thegrandedificeofthe SelectedEssayshas tendedto blockour
viewoftheextentto whichEliotwas,in hisordinary practiceas
a critic,a controversialist.He had a journalisticnose foroppor-
tunity.He sensed,usuallybeforehiscontemporaries did,when
reputations thatseemed established had become moribund and
when systemsof value thatseemed intacthad lost theirco-
gency.He broughtto these occasions"solutions"whichwere
notreallyoriginal,exceptin thesensethattheysometimesrep-
resenteda freshsynthesis or an unexpectedapplicationofideas
already current. His strongestsuitas a criticwas notoriginality
or argumentative powerbut skepticism. He could sustain(like
Joyce,whose workhe admiredbut withwhom he otherwise
had littlein common)an attitudeofseeingthrougheverything,
includingthe attitudeof seeingthrougheverything. This is far
too corrosivean attitudeto informan effective social criticism;

2Eliot,prefaceto HomagetoJohnDryden(London:HogarthPress,1924),p. 9.
3Eliot,The SacredWood,p. viii.

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558 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY

althoughitwas regardedbysome of
and Eliot'ssocialcriticism,
his admirerswithpiousrespectduringtheperiodofitsauthor's
greatestrenown,attractedfewdisciples.Buttheskepticismdid
underwrite a famously successfulliterary
criticism.

II
The greatpuzzle ofEliot'sliterary criticism, as it mustbe for
anyself-proclaimed formalism, is the relationbetween(as Eliot
himselfoftentermedit) poetryand belief.Writershave views
ofvarioustypes-philosophical, political,religious,psychologi-
cal-and whattheywritereflectsthoseviewsin variousways.
No matterhowdisciplinedwe are aboutconcentrating ourcrit-
ical attentionon the formratherthanthe contentof a literary
work---on thewaythe languageis organizedratherthanon the
"messages"itmightbe "communicating"-it is impossible,or at
leasthighlyunnatural, to reacha judgmentthatis unaffected by
the degree of our personalassentforwhatwe understandthe
writerto believe. Some of Eliot's adherents,particularly the
AmericanNew Criticsand, in England,I. A. Richardsand his
studentWilliamEmpson,triedto finessethisproblemby de-
velopingan aestheticthattooka good poem to be one in which
the "views"or "beliefs"expressedin it, in effect,cancel each
other out-thus the well-knowncriticallexicon of "irony,"
"paradox,"and "ambiguity," all of whichname techniquesfor
neutralizingcontent.But Eliot did not adopt thisvocabulary.
He was himself,afterall, a poet withratherhighlydeveloped
beliefs of his own; and so he attemptedto approach the
dilemmahead-on.
"It happensnow and then,"Eliot wrotein an essayon Ten-
nyson'sIn Memoriamin 1936,"thata poet bysome strangeac-
cidentexpressesthe mood of his generation, at the same time
thathe is expressinga mood of his ownwhichis quite remote
fromthatof his generation."4 It is hardto missEliot'spersonal
identificationherewiththe authorofa longelegiacpoem con-
structedof scrapsof lyricpatchedtogetherto forma kindof

4Eliot,"In Memoriam,"in SelectedEssays,newed. (New York:Harcourt,Brace &

World,1950),p. 291.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 559
diaryof the soul-the whole enterpriseinvestedwithpathos
because once thepoem has been takento the public'sheart,it
is no longerunderstood.And, in fact,what Eliot said about
Tennysonin 1936 was essentially an echo ofa complainthe had
made on his own behalffiveyearsbefore:"when I wrotea
poem called The WasteLand some ofthe moreapprovingcrit-
ics said thatI had expressedthe 'disillusionment of a genera-
tion,'whichis nonsense.I mayhave expressedforthemtheir
ownillusionofbeingdisillusioned, butthatdid notformpartof
my intention."5
The chiefapprovingcriticEliot had in mindhere was I. A.
Richards---one of manywriters(HerbertRead was another)
who mustoftenhave thoughttheywere followingEliot's lead
onlyto findhimlateradducingtheirworkas a cautionary exam-
ple of critical
error.In an articlein the Criterionwhich became
a chapterof Scienceand Poetry(1926), Richardshad citedthe
authorof The WasteLand as a poet who had succeededin "ef-
fectinga completeseparationbetweenhis poetryand all be-
liefs."6He casthisstatement as praise;butEliotunderstoodita
littledifferently,
and in "A Note on Poetryand Belief"(1927),
in The Enemy,he respondedby assertingthat"I cannotsee
that poetrycan ever be separatedfromsomethingwhich I
shouldcall belief,and to whichI cannotsee anyreasonforre-
fusingthenameofbelief,unlesswe are to reshuffle namesalto-
gether."7But it takesonlya littlereshuffling to see the corner
Richardshad backed Eliot into; forif we call a "belief"an
"idea"-that is, a consciouslyheldviewaboutthe natureor the
of
meaning experience-we run straight intothe tangleofide-
ology that Eliot's own poetic criticism, by considering"poetry
as poetry,and notanotherthing,"had been designedto avoid.
One wayto defusethe"views"in a poem is to accordan idea,
poeticallyexpressed,the same statusas an image or a feeling.
This was the basis forEliot's famouscelebrationof the meta-
physicalpoetsin 1921:"A thoughtto Donne was an experience;
5Eliot,"ThoughtsafterLambeth,"in SelectedEssays,p. 324.
6. A. Richards,Scienceand Poetry,2d ed. (London:K. Paul,Trench,Trubner,and
Co., 1935),p. 70.
7Eliot,"A Note on Poetryand Belief,"Enemy1 (January 1927): 16.

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560 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
it modifiedhis sensibility."8 The poet is the receptor,rather
thanthe originator, ofthought.He or she has nothinginvested
in the idea; it is onlypartof the materialsthe worldhas fur-
nishedout of whicha poem can be shaped.Eliot's application
of the principleto HenryJamesis similarly famous:"He had a
mindso finethatno Idea couldviolateit."9
Thisis a standardthatmakesit easyto disapproveofthekind
of sub-philosophical "rumination" thatEliot accusedTennyson
and Browningofin "The Metaphysical Poets."Butthestandard
also runstwodangers.The first is thatit makesthepoet a mag-
pie, a mereconnoisseurofsensation;and thisis essentially what
Eliot later,in 1926,labeled Donne and Laforguewhenhe de-
liveredthe Clark lectureson "The Varietiesof Metaphysical
Poetry"at CambridgeUniversity. Those poets had begun to
seem too indiscriminately receptiveforEliot'stastes.The sec-
ond dangeris thatthe criticwill have no groundsforratinga
poem put togetherwithattractive ideas above a poem put to-
gether with inferiorones. Perfect allegianceto the worldview
thatinformsthe poem is obviouslytoo stricta requirement; it
in since
is, fact,counterinstinctual, every reader admires works
thatexpressa rangeofviewsmuchwiderthanhis or her own.
Manypeople who are notmedievalChristians, or Christiansat
all,considerthemselvesfullyappreciativereadersofDante. On
theotherhand,theremustbe an openingforthecriticto reject
a poem solelybecause itsviewsare unacceptable;for,again,a
reader'sbeliefsdo occasionallyconflict witha writer'sto an ex-
tent that makes appreciationdifficultor impossible. Ezra
Pound's Pisan Cantos are a case in point:theyare, to many
readers,movingly written, but theyalso happen to be an un-
apologeticelegy forItalianfascism.
In trying to discoverthelinethatseparatesa legitimatefrom
an illegitimate introduction ofbeliefintothetermsofaesthetic
judgment, Eliot was continuallydrawnto a comparisonbe-
tween Dante and Shakespeare-whichis to say,verybroadly

'Eliot,"The MetaphysicalPoets,"in SelectedEssays,p. 247.

'Eliot, "In Memoryof HenryJames,"Egoist5 (January 1918): 2.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 561

speaking,betweena premodernand a modemliterary sensibil-

An
ity. essay on Dante closes The Sacred Wood. It follows an
essay on William Blake, and the pointof the juxtaposition-be-
tweena poet forwhomphilosophy was partofthe ambienceof
his timeand a poet who was compelledto fabricatea kindof
homemade mythological systemof his own (a poet who, in
Arnold'sphrase,whichEliot quoted approvingly elsewherein
The Sacred Wood, "did not know enough")-is obvious.
"Dante, more than any otherpoet, has succeeded in dealing
withhisphilosophy, notas a theory(in themodernand notthe
Greeksense ofthatword)or as hisowncommentor reflection,
but in terms of somethingperceived,"Eliot argued.10The
propercompanionto "Dante" in The Sacred Wood,though,is
nottheessayon Blake;itis theessayon "Hamletand His Prob-
lems."For thereEliot is explicitaboutthe correspondence be-
tweenformand thesourceofitscontent.In writing Hamlet,he
says,Shakespeare was influenced by ideas he had picked up
fromreadingMontaigne,but he lackeda sufficiently sensuous
relationwiththemto turnthemintoart.
Still,Eliot was quite clearthatShakespeare'serrorcould not
have been helped by more thinkingon his part. For Shake-
speare's"business,"Eliotwrotein 1925,"wasto writeplays,not
to think.""11It was just Shakespeare'sbad luck,Eliot continued
twoyearslaterin "Shakespeareand the Stoicismof Seneca,"to
livein "a periodofdissolutionand chaos."In sucha time,"any
emotionalattitudewhichseemsto givea mansomething firm...
is eagerlytakenup"; so thatShakespearebreathedan air that
mixed"theSenecanattitudeofPride,the Montaigneattitudeof
Skepticism,and the Machiavelliattitudeof Cynicism"-all
combining to produce"theElizabethanindividualism."'12 Such a
hybridmixwouldnotdo as a worldview,butthatcannot,Eliot
insisted,countagainstShakespeare'spoetry.Andhe proceeded
to draw,once again,a comparisonwithDante:

IOEliot,"Dante,"in The SacredWood,p. 170.

"Eliot, "Shakespeareand Montaigne,"TimesLiterarj Supplement, 24 December
1925,p. 895.
12Eliot,"Shakespeareand theStoicismofSeneca,"in SelectedEssays,p. 112.

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562 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
The difference betweenShakespeare and Danteis thatDante had
onecoherent of
system thought behindhim;butthatwasjusthisluck,
andfromthepointofviewofthepoetry accident.
is an irrelevant It
happened thatat Dante'stime was and
thought orderly strong and
beautiful Dante'spoetry a boostwhichina senseitdoes
receives
....
notmerit, from thefactthatthethought behinditis thethought ofa
manas greatandlovelyas Dantehimself, St.Thomas.The thought
behindShakespeare is ofmenfarinferiortoShakespeare himself.
It does notmakeDantea greater poet,or mean thatwe can learn
morefrom Dantethanfrom Shakespeare.13
This looksat firstlikea promising wayaroundtheproblemof
poetry and belief,but there are severaldifficulties, beginning
withthe questionofwhetherDante was notso greatand lovely
in the firstplace because, in fact,he had read Aquinas.There
is, as well,a suspicionthatShakespeare'sgreatnessis in some
wayconnectedto his having,thoughwithoutproducinga nor-
mativesystemof his own,demonstrated the inadequacyofthe
worldviewof"Elizabethanindividualism"-which, unlessinco-
herentsystemsnaturally criticizethemselves,surelycountsas
praiseforwhatShakespeare"thought."
Eliot repeatedhisformulafordissociating poetryfromideol-
ogy in "Second Thoughts about Humanism" (1928): "ifyou de-
preciateShakespeare forhis lower view of life,thenyou have
issuedout ofliterary criticismintosocial criticism I prefer
....
the culturewhichproducedDante to the culturewhichpro-
duced Shakespeare;but I would not say that Dante was the
greaterpoet,or even thathe had the profounder mind."'14The
requirement that readers draw a hard distinction between
Dante the man and Dante the poet Eliotwouldstateexplicitly
in a littlebook on the poet issueda yearlater."Ifyou can read
poetryas poetry,"he wrotethere,"youwill'believe'in Dante's
theologyexactlyas youbelievein thephysicalrealityofhisjour-
ney;thatis, you suspendbothbeliefand disbelief."But when
Eliot reachedthe questionof how we are to weighthe poetic
valueofDante's beliefs,he made an appealthathisowncriteria
"'Eliot,"Shakespeareand theStoicismofSeneca,"p. 116.
4Eliot,"SecondThoughtsaboutHumanism,"in SelectedEssays,p. 435.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 563
would seem to have ruled out of bounds: "Goethe always
arousesin me a strongsentimentof disbeliefin what he be-
lieves:Dante does not."15 "Dante theman,"in short,returns.
There are,then,beliefsystems to whichevena formalist may
object, and theproblem is to define the thresholdof acceptabil-
ityin a sufficiently generaland neutralway. Eliot attempted
thistaskin his Nortonlectures,deliveredat HarvardUniversity
and publishedin 1933 as The UseofPoetryand the UseofCrit-
icism.In thelectureon Keatsand Shelley,he proposedthe fol-
lowingguideline:
Whenthe doctrine, theory, belief,or "viewof life"presentedin a
poem is one whichthe mind of thereader can as
accept ma-
coherent,
ture,andfounded onthefactsofexperience, itinterposesnoobstacle
to thereader'senjoyment, whether itbe one thathe acceptordeny,
approveor deprecate.Whenit is one whichthe readerrejectsas
childish or feeble[as in Shelley'scase],it may,fora readerofwell-
developed mind,setanalmost complete check.'"
Butthiscallsfora standardofdisinterestedness thatmighthave
given even Matthew Arnold pause; forit assumesthatit is pos-
sible to separateour notionof "the factsof experience"from
ourparticular "viewoflife."
When Eliot listedthe worldviewshe consideredintellectu-
allylegitimate,it turnedout thathe could name onlytwo."Ei-
thereverything in man can be tracedas a developmentfrom
below, or somethingmust come fromabove," he argued in
"Second Thoughtsabout Humanism";"you mustbe eithera
naturalistor a supernaturalist."'7And in "Modern Education
and the Classics" (1932): "There are two and onlytwo finally
tenablehypothesesabout life:the Catholicand the materialis-
tic.'"18s the positionis perfectly
Intellectually, respectable.The
troublewithitis thatneithertheworldviewofpuresupernatu-

15Eliot,
S "Dante,"in SelectedEssays,p. 219.
Eliot,The Use ofPoetryand the Use ofCriticism:Studiesin theRelationof Criti-
cismto Poetryin England(London:Faber and Faber, 1933),p. 96.
17Eliot,"SecondThoughtsaboutHumanism," p. 433.
"sEliot,"ModernEducationand theClassics,"in SelectedEssays,p. 458.

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564 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
ralismnorthe worldviewofpure materialism has anyplace in
itforliterature.
The weaknessin Eliot'sanalysisoftheproblemofpoetryand
beliefwas, ultimately, its refusalto acknowledgethatpoetryit-
selfconstitutes a beliefsystem.Modem literatureembodiesa
set of values-not simplyformalor aestheticvalues-that
emergedat least partlyfromthe desire to findsome middle
groundbetween Eliot's two intellectually acceptable extrem-
isms.Those valuesare notanymoreconsistent thanthe values
of,say,all of modernreligiontakentogetheror all of modem
philosophy.But theyare notimportedfromphilosophyor reli-
gion. They are values expressedthroughliterature-through
"thetradition" as itwas understood, and as Arnold,forexample,
triedto interpret it,in the nineteenthcentury.This is the real
significanceofEliot'sformalism, and it returnsus to the center
of his thought:the isolationof "poetryas poetry"as the proper
object of criticism was intendedas a judgmentagainstnotthe
formbutthevaluesofmodernliterature. As the firstgesturein
an antimodemrn reaction,though,Eliot's criticalformalism re-
moved the groundsfor furtherideologicalcriticism.Having
ruled "extraliterary" interestsout of the courtof criticaljudg-
ment,he was compelledto build,in effect, anothercourtroom.

III
"I believe,"Eliot wrotein "The Idea of a LiteraryReview,"
publishedas a kindof manifesto in the New Criterionin 1926,
"thatthemoderntendencyis towardsomething which,forwant
of a bettername,we maycall classicism There is a ten-
....
dency-discernibleeven in art-toward a higherand clearer
conceptionof Reason,and a moresevereand serenecontrolof
the emotionsby Reason."'19He wenton to name sixbooksthat
seemed to him to exemplify thistendency:Charles Maurras's
L'Avenirde l'intelligence
(1905); GeorgesSorel'sRdflexions sur
la violence (1907); JulianBenda's Belphegor(1918); T. E.
Hulme's Speculations(1924); JacquesMaritain'sRdflexions sur

'"Eliot,"The Idea ofa LiteraryReview,"New Criterion4 (January

1926): 5.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 565
l'intelligence (1924); and IrvingBabbitt'sDemocracyand Lead-
ership (1925).
It is noteasyto extracta commondoctrinefromthebookson
thislist.Speculations,to takethe mostegregiousexample,col-
lectswritings acrossHulme'sentirecareer,fromessayswritten
underthe influenceof Henri Bergson("Bergson'sTheoryof
Art,""The Philosophyof IntensiveManifolds")to essayswrit-
ten,lateron,undertheinfluenceofWilhelmWorringer, and in
consciousreactionagainstBergsonism("Modern Artand Its
Philosophy," "Humanismand the ReligiousAttitude").But the
list certainlyidentifiesa discreteclusterof thought.There is
evena kindofclubbinessaboutit: Sorel'sbookhad been trans-
lated into Englishby Hulme in 1916, and his introduction to
the translationappears in an appendix to Speculations,a
posthumouscollectioneditedby HerbertRead, one of Eliot's
assistantsat the Criterion;Maritain,a Criterioncontributor,
was associatedwithMaurrasand theActionFrangaiseas one of
the foundersand editorsofthe movement'sRevueuniverselle,
begunin 1920;whenBenda'sbookwas translated intoEnglish,
a fewyearsafterEliot's articleappeared,the introduction was
writtenby Babbitt,who had been one of Eliot's teachersat
Harvard;and it was Babbittwho had firstinterestedEliot in
L'Avenirde l'intelligence, whichEliot boughtand read in 1910
or 1911, duringhis yearin Paris. Eliot's catalogueof defining
worksof"classical"tendency was not,in otherwords,an indexof
recententhusiasms. These are booksthathad,overfifteen years,
informed hispoliticaland sociologicalviewofmodernlife.
It is clear enoughthat"classicism," as Eliot used thewordin
referring to the group of writers-hehad selected,is simplya
name forthe reactionagainstmodernliberalthought.That re-
actionaryspiritis almost the only common denominatorof
Maurras'sfascism,Sorel'ssocialism,Maritain'sThomism,Bab-
bitt's humanism,and Hulme's antihumanism; and it makes
"classicism"into an essentiallynegativeconcept.The "classi-
cist"is in favorof anyofthosethingsthe liberalis supposedto
imaginemodernsocietycan getalongwithout:hierarchy, faith,
thehigher(as opposedto utilitarian) rationality,theauthority of
tradition, the sentimentofplace. Eliot betraysthe influenceof

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566 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
thisline of thoughtmostovertlynot, as manycommentators
seemto assume,in hiscriticism butin hispoetry.The imagesof
social and culturaldecadence thatsaturatethe poetryof The
Waste Land are oftenconnectedto imagesof women and of
Jews;readersofthe antimodern tractsBelphigorand L'Avenir
de l'intelligence
willhave littledifficulty
recognizingthe associ-
ations.In Eliot's literarycriticism,
though, the whole complex
of "classical"social and politicalviews tended to fade, as it
were,intothe woodwork.Eliot'sjudgmentsof particularwrit-
ers,and to some extenthis generalschemeof literary history,
coincidedwiththe "classicist"criticismof modernity; but the
correspondence was almostnevermade explicit, and Eliot gen-
erallydiscouraged readersfrom drawinglarger cultural lessons
fromhis criticalopinions(one of the reasonshe sometimes
seemsto have gone out ofhiswayto confoundhis followers by
reversing hisjudgmentsofsomewriters).
Althoughhe dedicatedthe 1929 volumeon Dante to Maur-
ras,forexample,and althoughit is evidentthathis admiration
forDante reflecteda socialand religiouspreferenceas wellas a
literaryone, Eliot was carefulto insurethathis criticalstan-
dards forappreciatingDante were literaryones. To take an-
otherexample,Eliot's disparagement of Miltonin "The Meta-
physical Poets" and "A Note on the Verse of JohnMilton"
(1936) was presumably motivated,
politically but the argument
was directedto poetic technique-formalistneutralground.
The theoryofthe "dissociation ofsensibility,"
whichEliot used
to depreciatenineteenth-century Britishpoetry,can be seen to
belong (as Eliot himselfacknowledgedin his second Milton
essay)to a largerviewof Englishpoliticaland religioushistory
involving the consequencesofthe EnglishCivilWar; but Eliot
nevernameda particular sourceforthedissociationofsensibil-
ity, and subsequent critics
who have takenup Eliot's notion
have feltfreeto blameit on an assortment ofcauses,including
Baconianscience,Cartesianphilosophy, and theriseofcapital-
ism.Andfinally, although the doctrineof impersonality and the
valorizationof traditionmay take on an extraliterary signifi-
cance in the contextof the "classical"view,extraliterary values
were not made part of the discussionin the essay in which

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 567
those terms appeared, "Traditionand the Individual Tal-
ent"(1919).
Whydidn'tEliottie hisliterary criticism up to hissocialcriti-
cism of modernity? Because he rejectedthe position-as he
saw it, the specificallymodernposition-that literaturecan
have a sociallyredemptivefunction.Eliot agreedwithArnold
thatthe progressof modernity entailedthe collapse of tradi-
tional institutionsof moral authority-thechurch and the
hereditary aristocracy-buthe did not believe thatliterature
could be called upon to fillthe gap, that "poetrywill save
us." "[I]t is likesayingthatthewall-paperwillsave us whenthe
wallshavecrumbled"20was hisresponsewhenRichardsechoed
Arnold'sline in Scienceand Poetry.The notionthatliterature
could be successfully endowedwitha political,moral,or reli-
gious function led to what he regardedas the centralfailingof
modernthought,the confusionof genres:poetrytriedto be
philosophy, literary criticismtriedto be moralor politicalcriti-
cism,theaestheticexperienceproposeditselfas a substitute for
the religiousexperience(and,ofcourse,conversely: philosophy
became literary or transcendentalist,religionbecame aestheti-
cized or reform-minded, and so forth)."By showingwhere
moraltruthand thegenuinesupernatural are situate,"Maritain
wrotein Artet Scholastique(1920), "religionsavespoetryfrom
theabsurdity ofbelievingitselfdestinedto transform ethicsand
life: saves it fromoverweeningarrogance."Eliot quoted the
sentencein his chapteron "The ModernMind"in The Use of
Poetryand the Use of Criticismand added: "Thisseemsto me
to be puttingthe fingeron the greatweaknessof muchpoetry
and criticism ofthenineteenth and twentieth centuries.'"21
Thus Eliot'sinsistenceon treatingpoetry"as poetry"and on
developinga criticalvocabularythatdoes notborrowitsterms
fromnonliterary genres.Even afterhe had, in the mid 1920s,
embarkedon the taskof formulating an ethicalsupplementto
his literary criticism, Eliot persistedin citinghis formalistprin-
ciple.The thoughtof SamuelJohnson, whomhe had quotedas

20Eliot, Science,and Dogma,"Dial 82 (March1927): 243.

"Literature,
2'Eliot,The UseofPoetryand the UseofCriticism,p. 137.

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568 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
an exemplarycriticin the introduction to The Sacred Wood in
1920, remainedhis touchstone.Neoclassicalcriticism of John-
son'stype,Eliotwrotein "Experiment in Criticism" (1929),
recognized as literature,
literature andnotanother thing.... [I]fyou
comparethecriticism of thosetwocenturies [theseventeenth and
eighteenth] withthatofthenineteenth, youwillsee thatthelatter
doesnottakethissimpletruth wholly forgranted.Literature is often
treated bythecriticrather as a meansforeliciting truth oracquiring
knowledge.... If youreadcarefully thefamousepiloguein Pater's
Studiesin theRenaissance youwillsee that'artforart'ssake'means
nothing lessthanartas a substituteforeverythingelse,andas a pur-
veyorofemotions andsensations whichbelongto liferather thanto
art.... I thinkweshouldreturn againandagaintothecritical writings
oftheseventeenth andeighteenth to remind
centuries, ourselvesof
thatsimpletruth thatliteratureis primarily a meansofre-
literature,
finedandintellectualpleasure.22
In "The FrontiersofCriticism" (1956), one ofhis lastmajores-
says, Eliot virtually reiterated sections of"Experiment in Criti-
cism";and his appeal,thistimein an argumentagainstthe ex-
cessive use of scholarshipin criticism,was to the same
standard:"We can . . . ask aboutanywriting whichis offeredto
us as literary criticism, is it aimed towardsunderstanding and
enjoyment? If it is it
not, may stillbe a legitimate and usefulac-
tivity;but it is to be judged as a contribution to psychology, or
sociology,or logic,or pedagogy,or some otherpursuit-and is
to be judged byspecialists, notbymenofletters."23
The divorceof literary criticism frommoralcriticism, on the
one hand,and fromhistorical, philological,and other forms of
human-scientific investigation, on the other,is the chiefreason
forEliot's success and influenceas a critic.Most obviously,it
enabledcriticswho held different politicalor religiousviewsto
use Eliot'scriticaltermswithouthavingto resortto ideological
disclaimers. Anyonecan speakofan "objectivecorrelative," the
criticaltermintroducedin the essay on Hamlet;you are not

22Eliot,"Experimentin Criticism,"
Bookman70 (November1929):226-27.
3Eliot,"The Frontiersof Criticism,"
in On Poetryand Poets (New York:Farrar,
Strausand Giroux,1957),p. 130.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 569
therebyobligedto believe thatmodem skepticismis insuffi-
cientas a worldview,because Eliotnevermade the connection
between the technicalformulaand antimodernideologyex-
plicit.But Eliot'sbrandofformalismwas successfulforanother
reasonas well: it answereda peculiarlymodernneed to make
literarycriticisman autonomousdiscipline.In reactingagainst
what he took to be one of the principalerrorsof modem
thought,Eliot made his own considerablecontribution to the
cultureofmodernity.

IV
The researchuniversitywas a creationofthelate nineteenth
It
century. accompanied,and was itselfa productof,a social
phenomenonwe can identify as theprofessionalization
ofoccu-
pation. The modern professions-medicine, engineering,archi-
tecture,the law, and manyothers-firsttook the formthey
have todayin the secondhalfofthe nineteenth century, when,
in responseto a hostofsocialand economicpressures,"qualify-
ing associations"and accreditingagenciescame into being to
help distinguishcertifiedpractitioners fromamateurs,dilet-
tantes,and otherunqualifiedtypes. The universityconstituted
an answerto thisdevelopmentin two respects.First,by train-
ingand conferring degreesupon futuremembersoftheprofes-
sions,itbecame a certifying institution
itself.And,second,it or-
ganizedknowledge and its specialistsby discipline-thatis, by
academic department-andassumeda virtualmonopolyover
thebusinessofproducingscholars.
"Whata tremendousquestionit is-what shallI be? When a
mananswersthatquestionhe notonlydetermines hissphereof
usefulnessin thisworld,he also decides in whatdirectionhis
ownmindshallbe developed.The different professionsare not
differentroadsconverging to the same end; theyare different
roads,whichstarting fromthe same pointdivergeforever, for
all we know."24In 1854 a distantcousinof T. S. Eliot's made

24CharlesW. Eliot,quoted by BurtonJ.Bledstein,in The Cultureof Professional-

ism: The Middle Class and the Developmentof HigherEducationin America(New
York:W. W. Norton,1976),p. 159.

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570 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
thatobservation in a letterto a friend;itbore fruitalmostthirty
years later when, as presidentof Harvard,Charles William
Eliot, the cousin, instituted the firstelectivesystemin higher
education.Enablingundergraduates to createtheirown pro-
grams of instruction bypermitting them to choose froma vari-
of
ety specializedofferings seems to reflect a beliefin a broad
educationalmission;in fact,Eliot's elective systemwas in-
tendedto lead in the oppositedirection.Its purposewas to in-
duce studentsto "track"earlyin theircollegeeducation-to se-
lect forthemselvesthe sequence of coursesthatwould lead
themintotheircareersofchoice.PresidentEliotwas nota pro-
ponentof generaleducation;he was a proponentof specializa-
tion.
If studentswere to be trainedto become specialists,Eliot
and the otherfoundersof the modernresearchuniversity ar-
gued,they should be trainedbyspecialists. It thereforebecame
necessaryto producespecialistswhosespeciality was theeduca-
tion of futurespecialists;and in 1890, seven years afterthe
electivesystemwentintoeffectat HarvardCollege, Eliot cre-
ated the HarvardGraduateSchool of Artsand Sciences,mod-
eled on the graduateprogramat JohnsHopkins,which had
been foundedin 1876 and was the firstsuch programin the
UnitedStates.The occupationof scholarship thusbecame pro-
fessionalized; and existingassociations of scholars were trans-
formed from large, informallyregulated groups operating
undera generalrubricto smallerassociationsofspecialists.The
AmericanSocial ScienceAssociation, forexample,was founded
in 1865 foramateurstudentsof the humansciences. In the
1880s,withthe adventof the researchuniversity, it brokeup
rapidlyinto smaller,independentassociations:modern lan-
guage scholars(1883), historians(1884), economists(1885),
churchhistorians(1888), folklorists (1888), and politicalscien-
tists (1889)-all university-based organizationsof academic
professionals.As an occupationalclass, professorsorganized
themselvesprofessionally in 1915 as the AmericanAssociation
ofUniversity Professors.
A fieldof knowledgein the researchuniversity systemfaced
tworequirements: it mustconstitute
first, an independentarea

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 571
ofstudywitha clearlydelineatedsubjectmatterand methodol-
ogy;and, second,it mustbe able to presentitselfas a "hard"
discipline-thatis, as an area of studyin which,following the
modelof the naturalsciences,advancescan be measured.Lit-
erarycriticism, definedas the evaluationand appreciationof
worksof literature, has a hardtimequalifying as an academic
discipline under these criteria,and in America, the firstuniver-
sityEnglishprofessors-and the firstmembers of the Modern
LanguageAssociation-werephilologists. The campaignto es-
tablishliterary criticismas a legitimate academicactivity (as dis-
tinctfromliterary history, textual studies, and other more obvi-
ouslyscholarlypursuits) was a long one, not fully successful
untilthe 1940s.So thatduringthe firsthalfofthiscentury, the
individualwith a criticalinterestin literaturewho was em-
ployedbya university confronted a challengethathas no prece-
dentin the history oftalkaboutwriting: he or (less commonly)
she was requiredto conceive of literarycriticismas an au-
tonomousdisciplinewithsome claimto contributing to the ac-
cumulationand progressof knowledge.Literarycriticismhad
to become,in otherwords,the sortof businessone could rea-
sonablypracticewithinthe structureof an academic depart-
ment.
It is easy to see, therefore, whyEliot's literary criticismap-
to
pealed particularly young academics, such as Richards,F. R.
F.
Leavis,and O. Matthiessen, and to young critics who would
eventually be drawnintothe academy,such as RichardBlack-
murand the groupwhose exampleis paradigmatic in the insti-
tutionalhistoryof twentieth-century criticism,the American
New Critics.For Eliot's criticismrecognizedliteratureas an
objectofstudyon itsownterms,independentofother"depart-
ments"of knowledgeand intellectualendeavor;it was anti-
impressionistic and scientific-sounding; it had the lookofbeing
theoreticalratherthanjournalisticor belletristic. It seemed a
deliberatedeparturefromthesortofappreciatory and unapolo-
geticallysubjectivecriticismthe turn-of-the-century man and
womanof lettersproduced,and it was thusan ideal model for
an academicliterary criticism.
Butthereis anotherwrinklein thenarrative. The same social

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572 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
forcesthatproducedan ever-expanding populationof college
studentsbound forthe high-status professionsalso exerteda
nonutilitarian demand on the academy. Introducedto the
worldofthe arts,greaterand greaternumbersofpeople in the
laternineteenthcenturybeganto lookto expertsto help them
discriminate amongthe productsavailablefortheirconsump-
tion. Consider,forexample,the titleof a book publishedin
1871 by Noah Porter:Books and Reading: Or, What Books
Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them?The titlemayseem
the literary equivalentof a bluntinstrument; but the yearthe
book appeared,itsauthorwas made presidentofYale. Charles
WilliamEliot'sown"Five-FootBook-Shelf," the HarvardClas-
sics, was addressedto the same nonspecialistaudience. The
university, havingcreateda new class of accreditedintellectual
was
experts, offering to servicethe populationat largeby pro-
ducing useful guides culture.
to
The obviousquestionwas, Whynot integratethe apprecia-
tion of cultureinto the vocationaltrainingprovidedby the
moderncollege?Andthereoccurred,in the firstdecade ofthe
twentiethcentury,a reaction,largelyon behalf of what its
championsreferred to as "liberalculture,"againsttheprofessio-
nalizationof scholarshipand the utilitarian approachto educa-
tionthatcharacterized thefirststageofthe researchuniversity.
This reactionproduced,amongotherprotests, WilliamJames's
"The Ph.D. Octopus" (1903), deploringthe requirementof a
doctoraldegreeforcollegeteachers;IrvingBabbitt'sLiterature
and the AmericanCollege (1908), an attackon "relevance";
John Jay Chapman's "The Harvard Classics and Harvard"
(1909),whichcomplainedthatHarvardwas beingrunas a busi-
ness; and ThorsteinVeblen'sThe HigherLearningin America
(publishedin 1918 but mostlywrittenbefore1910), whichac-
cused modernuniversity presidents-the "captainsof erudi-
tion,"as Veblencalledthem-of corporatism. The reactionalso
led to Eliot'sreplacement as presidentofHarvardin 1910byA.
LawrenceLowell, an eventthatwas regardedas a victoryfor
thepartisansof"liberalculture."
Thus thereemergedforthe modernuniversity a dual mis-
sion: it trains(formaterialsuccess),but it also liberalizes(for

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 573
intellectualor spiritualbetterment). This liberalizingfunction
provided an obvious of for
point entry literary criticism intothe
academicworld-as Leavis, forexample,would argue persis-
tentlyin England.The roleplayedbythe manorwomanoflet-
ters mightbe played (thoughpossiblyon a higherplane of
scholarshipand seriousness)by the college professor.Still,no
matterhow sophisticated the practiceofintroducing people to
the appreciationof literaturemightbecome, it had to be
adapted to the new institutional requirements.Literarycriti-
cismhad to become a Fach. Andhere,too,Eliot proveda use-
fulfigure.
The AmericanNew Criticswerethe firstrealwinnersin the
battleto achievean institutional standingforliterary criticism,
the
and,being victors, theygot to writeits This
history. theyac-
complished in two landmarkworkspublishedin the 1950s,
Ren6 Wellek's HistoryofModernCriticism, the firstvolumeof
whichappearedin 1955,and WilliamK. Wimsattand Cleanth
Brooks'sLiteraryCriticism:A Short History(1957). Those
worksestablisheda formthatwouldpersistin theacademylong
afterthe New Criticism had been renderedobsoleteby (among
otherthings)theinstitutional imperative thatnewknowledgein
a fieldalwaysdrivesout old knowledge:theymade the history
ofcriticism an intellectualhistory ratherthana socialhistory-a
historyofideas ratherthana history ofinstitutions.
The authorofa history ofliterary criticismneeds to establish
twoprinciplesthatmightseem self-evident but,in the yearsof
criticism'sacademicmarginality, werenot.The first is thatthere
is sucha thingas literary criticism; thesecondis that,assuming
thereis sucha thing,it has a history. The argumentagainstthe
existenceof literary criticism is a versionof the argumentthat
literatureis notan independentobjectofstudy;and inthe early
years of the modernuniversity, the questionwas open enough
forGeorge Saintsbury to note,in the finalvolumeof his His-
toryof Criticismand LiteraryTaste in Europe, completedin
1904,thatfriendshad questionedthepointofhis enterprise by
askingwhetherliterature was somethingone could talkabout
on itsown.Saintsbury assertedhisbeliefthatitwas; buthisreal
answerwas theworkhe had produced.For one proofthatliter-

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574 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
aturecan be discussedas an autonomousdiscourseis the his-
toryofefforts to discussitthatway.
The consequenceof thisformof argumentis thatcriticism
becomes indispensableto the academic recognitionof litera-
ture.There is a sense,in otherwords,in whichthe establish-
mentof literature as a fieldwas not a precondition forthe es-
tablishmentof literarycriticismas a discriminablearea of
endeavorbut in which,instead,literary criticismwas a precon-
ditionforthe existenceof "literature." Literaturewas such a
fieldbecause people sincePlatohad isolateditfordiscussion.A
historyof criticism likeWellek'stherefore offeredto solve the
literatureprofessor'smostfundamental problem:it was a wit-
nesson behalfofhisor herclaimto equal standingwiththehis-
torianand thephysicist in theintellectual structure ofthemod-
em researchuniversity. A historyof criticism was one kindof
proofthat"literature" was notan invention oftheacademy.
A counterargument remainedto be dealt with.Of course
therehave alwaysbeen people who have talkedabout poetry,
thisargumentran; but mostof those people were poets, and
theywere naturally interestedin explainingand justifying the
kindofpoetrytheywerewriting. It maybe thatthereis such a
thingas literary criticism, but it is largelypracticaland ad hoc.
This complaintrequireda two-partresponse.Saintsbury's His-
tory of Criticism, Wellek wrote in the preface to the firstvol-
ume ofhisownhistory, is "admirablein itssweepand stillread-
able because of the livelinessof the author'sexpositionand
style;... but [it]seemsto me seriously vitiatedbyitsprofessed
lack of interestin questionsof theoryand aesthetics."25To an-
swerthe chargethatliterary criticism belongsto the history of
tasteratherthanthe history ofideas,it was necessarythatcrit-
ics be considerednot as practitioners or propagandists but as
theorists."It shouldbe frankly recognized," Wellek wrote else-
wherein thefirst volume,"thatthehistory ofcriticismis a topic
whichhas itsowninherent interest, evenwithoutrelationto the
or of it is
history practice writing: simplya branchofthe history
ofideas whichis onlyin loose relationship withtheactuallitera-
25Ren6Wellek,A HistoryofModernCriticism:
1750-1950,VolumeOne: TheLater
Century(New Haven:Yale University
Eighteenth Press,1955),p. vi.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 575
tureproducedat the time."26 A primarypurposeof academic
historiesofcriticism is, therefore, to isolatethe history ofcriti-
cismfromthe history ofliterature (and from the history of any
otherkindofwriting) in theinterestsof makingcriticism a dis-
ciplineand notsimplya method.
The second responseto the chargethatliterary criticismis
merelypractical and ad hoc is that criticism is more thanthat
preciselybecause it has a And
history. heretheacademichisto-
rianofcriticism was requiredto establishnotonlythatcriticism
hangstogetherbut thatthe historyof criticismis a series of
textsthatleads directlyto his or her own.We write,explained
Wimsattand Brooksin theintroduction to theShortHistory,in
the beliefthatthereis "continuity and intelligibility
in the his-
of
tory literary argument . . . Literaryproblems occur notjust
because historyproduces them, but because literature is a thing
ofsuchand sucha sort,showingsuchand sucha relationto the
historyof humanexperience."In defenseof thisclaim,they
producedan analogythathas sincebecomefamiliar in academic
criticism:the personwho regardscriticismas ad hoc because
timesand practiceschangeis like"thestudentwho,havingdif-
ficultieswitha Latin or Germanreadingexamination, is con-
tentto put downa translation thatdoes notmakesense."Criti-
cism, in otherwords,is like a language:all specificcritical
utterancesare made coherentby the existenceof underlying
principles.And at the deepestpartofthatdeep structure is lit-
eratureitself."We havetried,"Wimsattand Brookscontinued,
"to sketcha viewof how the severalliterary genreconceptions
dominantin several ages-dramatic, epistolary,heroic,bur-
lesque,and lyric-willifstudiedcarefully open up notso many
diverseviewsintomultiplicity and chaos but so manycomple-
mentaryinsights into the one deeply rooted and perennial
humantruthwhichis thepoeticprinciple."27
Literarycriticism,then,demonstrates both coherenceand
continuity,attributes that qualifyit as an independentacademic
discourse.To tapitsperquisites, however,thetwentieth-century
A HistoryofModernCriticism,
2"Wellek, p. 7.
27WilliamK. Wimsattand CleanthBrooks,LiteraryCriticism:
A ShortHistory,
vol. 1
ofChicagoPress,1957),pp. vii,ix-x.
(Chicago:University

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576 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
academiccriticmusttakehis or herplace at the end of a long
line of thinkersreachingback to Aristotle-eventhoughthe
kindof workthe academiccriticdoes is highlydeterminedby
the requirements of an institution thatis not onlynew to the
history of literature and criticism but thatwas not designed
withthe productionof anything likeliterarycriticism in mind.
Thus Wimsattand Brooksmentionedthe emergenceof the
modem university onlyto disparagehistoricalscholarship; they
notedwithasperitythatit was not until1950 thatthe Modern
Language Associationvotedto add the word"criticism" to its
constitutional statement ofpurpose.Criticism proper floats free
of the institutionsin whichit is produced.And so the factthat
the criticis a universityprofessor is irrelevantforWimsattand
Brooks(thoughevidentlynot in-thecase of, say, Lovejoy or
Bateson,scholar-critics the New Criticwas happyto marginal-
ize). Wellek'sHistorybegan witha discussionof Kant which
led, sixvolumeslater,to a chapteron Wimsatt,as thoughthere
were an essentiallyunmediatedcontinuity betweenthe activi-
tiesofthetwo.In thestandardacademichistory or anthology of
literary criticism,the academic criticis traced back to poet-
critics-to Coleridgeand Drydenand Horace-or to philoso-
phersof aesthetics-to Nietzscheand Kant and Aristotle.The
figureto whomthe academiccriticis nevertracedback, and
who virtually neverappears,is the turn-of-the-century journal-
isticmanor womanofletters-thetruefunctional precursorof
theacademiccritic.
HistoricallyEliot standsbetweenthe firstacademiccritics-
Richards,Empson,Leavis,the New Critics-and thewholese-
quence of nonacademiccriticsstretching back to Kant, and
fromKantback to Plato. In the academiccritics'effort to situ-
ate themselveswithina historyof criticism, to constructa ge-
nealogythatextendspriorto the formation ofthe modernuni-
versity,Eliotis,in effect,thelink.His criticism is understoodto
develop out of the criticismofPater and Arnold (eitherin reac-
tionto it,accordingto Blackmur,or bydrawingArnoldiancon-
cernsintothe twentieth century, as Matthiessenthought)and
to developintothe academiccriticism of Wimsattand Brooks
(and,theoretically, beyond).
Eliot acquires,therefore, a fairlymonumentalsignificance.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 577
Wellek's chapter on him (firstpublished in the Sewanee Review
in 1956 and then reprinted,unaltered, in the sixthvolume of
the History in 1986) began with these words: "T. S. Eliot is by
far the most importantcritic of the twentiethcenturyin the
English-speakingworld."
His influenceon the tasteof his time is mostconspicuous:he has
done morethananybodyelse to promotethe shiftof sensibility away
fromthe tasteof the "Georgians"and to revaluatethe majorperiods
and figuresof thehistory of Englishpoetry.He reactedmoststrongly
againstromanticism, he criticizedMiltonand the Miltonictradition,
he exaltedDante, and Jacobeandramatists, the metaphysical poets,
Dryden,and the Frenchsymbolists as "thetradition"of greatpoetry.
But Eliot is at least equallyimportant forhis theoryof poetry,which
buttressesthisnew tasteand whichis muchmorecoherentand sys-
tematicthanmostcommentators and Eliot himselfhave allowed.His
concept of "impersonalpoetry,"his descriptionof the creative
process,whichdemandsa "unifiedsensibility," and shouldend in an
"objectivecorrelative," his justification
of "tradition,"
his scheme of
thehistoryof Englishpoetryas a processwhichled to the "dissocia-
tion"of an originally unifiedsensibility,
his emphasison the "perfec-
tionof commonspeech" as the languageof poetry,his discussionof
the relationship betweenideas and poetryunderthe term"belief"-
all theseare crucialcriticalmattersforwhichEliot foundmemorable
formulas, ifnotalwaysconvincing solutions.28
It is Eliotthetheorist whois important here,sinceit is the con-
cepts rather thanthe program thatmatter to the academichis-
torian.Eliot the practicingpoet and literaryjournalisthas dis-
appeared from thediscussion.
For his part,Eliot alwaysinsistedthathis own criticism was
ad hoc,thatitwas formulated to
principally support the kindof
writing he and his friends were doing, and that technical-
soundingtermslike"objectivecorrelative" weresimplywhathe
called,in "To Criticizethe Critic"(1961), "conceptualsymbols
foremotionalpreferences."29 Moreover,as he oftenstressed-
notably in "The Frontiersof Criticism,"in whichhe specifically

2"Wellek, A Historyof ModernCriticism:1750-1950,VolumeFive: EnglishCriti-

cism,1900-1950 (New Haven:Yale University Press,1986),p. 176.
2'"Eliot, To Criticizethe Critic:Eight Essays on Literatureand Education (New
York:Farrar,Strausand Giroux,1965),p. 19.

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578 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
disclaimedanyresemblanceto the academicNew Critics-his
criticismwas almostentirelyoccasional.Though he once or
twice announcedstudies"in preparation,"he produced only
two book-length worksof literary criticism,and bothwere lec-
tureseries:The Use of Poetryand the Use of Criticism(1933)
and AfterStrangeGods (1934). The secondbookis an exercise
in the moral criticismof literature,and it was essentially
droppedfromthecanonofEliot'sworksbyhisacademiccham-
pions.The argumentofthefirstbookis reflected in itsemphat-
icallyantitheoreticaltitle:a universaltheoryofpoetryis impos-
sible. "I have no generaltheoryof myown,"Eliot wrotein the
conclusion;"buton the otherhand I would not appear to dis-
misstheviewsofotherswiththeindifference whichthepracti-
tionermay be supposed to feel towardsthose who theorise
about his craft.It is reasonable,I feel,to be on guardagainst
viewswhichclaim too much forpoetry,as well as to protest
againstthosewhichclaimtoo little;to recognizea numberof
uses forpoetry,withoutadmitting thatpoetrymustalwaysand
everywhere be subservient to anyone ofthem."30
Eliot was,in fact,skepticalofthevalue ofteachingliterature
in anyform,historical or appreciatory. His rejectionofArnold's
beliefthatpoetrymightservea sociallyredemptive function in-
cluded a rejectionof Arnold'ssuggestionthatthe introduction
to literaturemightconstitute thecore ofmodernhighereduca-
tion.As forthe idea thatthe studyof literature mightassistin
the developmentof "mentaldiscipline,"an idea centralto
Richards'sargumentson behalfof poetry,Eliot ascribedit in
1932 to the educationalphilosophyof liberalism,a philosophy
thatwas,he thought, "committed to thefollyofpretending that
one subjectis as good as anotherforstudy."31Of the various
falseEliotsthathaveemergedfromhisacademicreception,the
Eliotwhobelievedin thesociallyexalting powerofhighculture
is one ofthe falsest.Social and personalexaltation mightbe re-
quired for the of
perfection taste, but that condition could only
be approached,in Eliot'sview,byothermeans.Assigning to lit-

30Eliot,The UseofPoetryand theUseofCriticism, p. 143.

3'Eliot,"ModernEducationand theClassics,"p. 457.

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 T. S. ELIOT AND MODERNITY 579
eraturetheroleofsocialleavenerwas one ofmodernity's great-
est errors.
Eliotwas a manofletters, a writerofcriticism thatwas mostly
occasionaland journalistic.His criticalprincipleswere consis-
tentbecause theyoccupied a carefully definedspace withina
broadercritiqueofmodernity-notbecause theycorresponded
to some truthabout the literary objectas a thingin itself.But
Eliot standspreciselyat thathistorical intersectionwherenon-
professional literary criticismgiveswayto university-based lit-
erary criticism;and thus, willinglyor not,he was of service.No
doubttherewere professors who sympathized completely with
the assaultEliot had mountedon modernity and who champi-
oned himforthatreason.But therewere manymorewho sim-
plyfoundEliotideallysuitedto thebusinessofgivingacademic
criticisma plausiblepast and who foundit remarkably easy to
separate Eliot'scriticism ofmodern society from hiscriticismof
poetry.They found it of
easy, course,because thatwas exactly
the way Eliot had designedit. But it was almostcertainlynot
the fatehe had contemplated.That he is no longercrucialto
the academiccritic'sself-definition is not due to anyrenewed
appreciation of his writing; but it is a favorto his memory
nonetheless.

Louis Menandis Professor

ofEnglishat theGraduateCenterof
theCityUniversityofNew Yorkand ContributingEditorofthe
NEW YORK REVIEWOF BOOKS.

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