Philip Ray Headings

The author is a professor at Univ of Illinois and has definite views about the poetry and plays of T.S. Eliot. In a brief Preface Professor Headings states his intentions - where he is "headed" (!):

"Because the nature and the stature of T. S. Eliot's poetry made invevitable the rapid accretion of a bewildering body of commentary and explication, the beginning studen of Elit finds himself faced with a confusing variety of interpretations and evaluation of the individual poems and plays." The Professor fears this will tend to lead the novice away from Eliot's art.

Eliot himself addressed the search for the "meaning of the poem"..."the chief use...may be...to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a bit of nice meat for the housedog." Sadly, that is quite backwards on both accounts. A burglar provides the meat for the dog, no one provides it for the burglar. And poems without "meaning" have no "use". Still, I love the conceit that a poem "does its work upon" the reader, while the reader is diverted by the search for meaning.

The Professor suggests that for Eliot's works, the problems of "meaning" are not the important ones. In "The Waste Land", logical meaning is left out almost entirely. The appropriate "experiential content"--"peculiarly poetic things"--go on within the poem. This book presents that content, "the central schemes" and the world-view implicit in them, for Eliot's most significant poems and plays.

This book only lightly touches upon metrical or theatrical devices employed by Eliot. Professor Headings stresses the "unity" and thematic consistency of the poetic works -- although ironically he misses the "Unitarian" theology entirely.

The Professor demonstrates that "Animula" restates Dante's theory of the soul, as drawn from Aristotle [Christianized by Aquinas] and adopted by Eliot. [Of course, Eliot's complication of the "simple soul" with his interjected characterization of it "Living first in the silence after the viaticum" is neither Danteian or Aristotelean.]

The Professor appears to argue that Eliot is Catholic -- "Ash-Wednesday", and the echoes of Dante throughout his work. However, he overlooks Unitarian theology - Eliot's birthright and POV. Dante himself translated nearly all of the known very pagan Aristotle, and Aquinas in his last years rejected the Trinity -- "it is all chaf". Headings could hardly be more wrong, although he is right about the influence of Dante. Turns out Dante is expressly "Unitarian"! [Cf. Philip Wicksteed, a Unitarian minister, economist and Dante scholar].

Is "The Waste Land" (1922) the most influential poem of the twentieth century? [18] Because Pound liked it? Because Pound pronounced him "modern", when in fact Eliot repeatedly admits he borrowed heavily from Dante? [37] Dante teaches that the purpose of this craft is to push back the frontiers of man's awareness. [Well, right there, Dante was Unitarian!]

The Professor adds tremendously to the joy of discovery in Eliot's work, particularly in filling in the Dantean references.… (mehr)