T.S. Eliot: “I Should Be Glad of Another Death”
Several years ago I decided to start reading poetry. This was no easy endeavor. Poetry distills complex thoughts into compact sentences full of association and tone. Thus learning to read and understand it was difficult for me. As is often the case though, the reward for such hard work is very high.
T.S. Eliot was the first poet to really grab me and refuse to let go. His poetry drew me into a new world I never expected to find. Since then I have found that his plays and prose are equally rewarding. All of Eliot’s post-conversion work exhibits a profoundly robust Christian approach to life. His life and work can be very instructional for us in exhibiting the radical change that redemption should bring not only to our actions, but also our thinking, and art.
Biography
Thomas (“Tom”) Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri to a Unitarian family. They moved between St. Louis and their summer home in Gloucester, Maine during his childhood. Thus, from his earliest days he was exposed to both the vast plains of the mid-west and the romantic adventure of the sea.
Eliot began attending Harvard in 1906, where he was heavily influenced by the literary classicist Irving Babbit. This was seminal for Eliot, because “Babbitt’s mistrust of emotional excess and individualism turned Eliot against the romantic literary tradition and toward classicism.”[1] Classicists desired “limitations and discipline” that would serve to “curb the natural human appetites and inclinations.[2]”
Eliot’s classical mindset was further modified by the poet T.E. Hulme who based his classicism on original sin. Thus, Eliot came to believe in the importance of limits and self-control in order to curb the natural appetites and inclinations of fallen humanity. Still an unbeliever at that time, Eliot stumbled unintentionally into an orthodox Christian worldview concerning art.
Though Eliot finished his Ph.D. work in philosophy at Harvard, he also spent time at Oxford in England where he eventually became a citizen and lived until his death. It was in London that the American ex-patriot Ezra Pound discovered Eliot’s poetic gift and helped him publish his work.
Literary circles soon began to recognize Eliot not only for his audacious poetry, but also for his literary criticism. Within a few decades he had even won the Nobel Prize in Literature. During this time he also founded the Criterion, a periodical of literature, culture, and politics, which was a forum for intellectuals from all across Europe to rigorously discuss current events.
All of that said, however, the most significant event in Eliot’s life occurred in 1927, for it was in that year that Eliot was confirmed and baptized in the Anglican Church. The social and artistic elites with whom Eliot mingled castigated him for his newfound religion. But Eliot continued to embrace a very ascetic Christianity. Not surprisingly, his new found faith also began to influence his art.
In 1934 Eliot produced his first play, a collaborative effort for a church benefit entitled The Rock. This was followed by five more plays, one of which earned him a Tony Award in 1950. Some were directly religious in nature, though others where more subtle.
In 1939 Eliot gave a series of lectures, which were then published as The Idea of a Christian Society. This was a serious philosophical work “in which he emphasized the crucial need for religion, community, and, culture in refashioning a society that might withstand the despotic aggressions of a tyrant like Hitler.”[3]
Finally, Eliot, a heavy smoker, suffered from emphysema for the last years of his life and passed away from heart failure. Though his biographical information informs our understanding of his work, it is the work itself that is most relevant to twenty-first century Christians.
Work
Eliot’s work is divided. That which was written before his conversion in 1927 is full of despair and fragmentary forms and images. For example, his most famous work, The Wasteland (1922) closes with this dismal confession: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”[4] Before his conversion Eliot saw no hope in modern existence. He saw society’s abandonment of traditional ideals of morality, order, and beauty as the death knell for human civilization.
However, his work after 1927 reflects the mind of a man who had found a hope beyond this fallen world. He became increasingly committed to a Christianity that looked nothing like the lost and dying world around it. Like C.S. Lewis, he was set against the Church incorporating the world’s priorities and sensibilities in any way. In all three of his areas of literary work—poetry, plays, prose—this mindset is reflected. We’ll consider briefly some examples from his poetry and plays.
a. Poetry
Though Eliot’s poetry tends to be more compact and dense than his contemporaries’, it is more accessible than the seventeenth century metaphysical poets that heavily influenced him. For example, his poem “The Journey of the Magi” tells the familiar Christmas history from the perspective of one of the magi who traveled to see the Christ child. Only 43 lines long, the poem’s essence is contained within one short sentence:
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.[5]
Having traveled long distances to see a birth, the magi find that this birth calls them to die. This unique perspective helps us better understand what the birth of Christ actually means. It means death—a hard and bitter death for our old unredeemed selves. This leaves us uneasy aliens in the world as Eliot makes abundantly clear in the closing lines of the poem:
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.[6]
Having returned from their visit, the magi find themselves strangers in their homeland. The gods that they used to worship are now foreign to the magi. This sense of displacement and longing should be familiar to us. We too have experienced the thrashing death of the old man. And we too are looking forward to another death that brings eternity. Thus, a powerful and complex emotional experience that mature Christians know well is situated within three short sentences.
b. Plays
Eliot’s work after his conversion often reflects this sense of alienation in the world. An example of a related theme can be found in the second chorus from his first play, The Rock. The chorus begins by reminding us about the church’s foundation:
Thus your fathers were made
Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of GOD, being built upon the foundation
Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone,
But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?[7]
Eliot felt that the Church had become so enamored by the world that it was trying to build its foundation upon it rather than Christ. This is a serious temptation that each generation faces. For if we have become comfortable with the world’s sensibilities, we no longer reflect the right and proper sense of alienation here. And we should feel like aliens even when trying to reach the lost.
You, have you built well, have you forgotten the corner-stone?
Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men to GOD.
‘Our citizenship is in Heaven’; yes, but that is the
model and type for your citizenship upon earth.[8]
Eliot points out that if we are more concerned about having good relationships with men than with God then we have lost our identity. Our lives here are to be reflections and types of what is to come. Thus, the church’s faith and practice should not be influenced by the world’s ideals, but rather should be a type of the communion that we will experience in eternity. Eliot’s plays are probably the easiest way to get to know him. They were all written after his conversion and deal with religious themes in a manner that is very enjoyable.
Conclusion
In a day when most Christian bookstores and bookshelves are filled with gimmicks, breezy theology, and 10-steps to success, deep and intense writing about the Christian life is refreshing. Our experiences and minds are stretched so that we can better engage our own situation. T.S. Eliot gives a unique and engaging perspective on the Christian experience. His analysis of culture and our interaction with it reminds us that we, like the magi, are now aliens looking for a better home.
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[1] Anthony Cudy, “The Poet and the Pressure Chamber: Eliot’s Life,” in A Companion to T. S. Eliot, ed. David E. Chinitz (Blackwell, UK: Wiley, 2014), 5.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 12.
[4] T. S. Eliot, “What the Thunder Said,” in The Wasteland (1922), line 431.
[5] Eliot, “The Journey of the Magi,” (1927).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Eliot, “Chorus II” from The Rock (1934), lines 1-4.
[8] Ibid., lines 11-13.
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