T. S. Eliot as the
International Hero
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
A
CULTURE HERO
is one who brings new arts and skills to man–
kind. Prometheus was a culture hero and the inventors of the radio
may also be said to be culture heroes, although this is hardly to be
confounded with the culture made available by the radio.
The inventors of the radio made possible a new range of ex–
perience. This is true of certain authors; for example, it is true of
Wordsworth in regard to nature, and Proust in regard to time. It is
not true of Shakespeare, but by contrast it is true of Surrey and the
early Elizabethan playwrights who invented blank verse. Thus the
most important authors are not always culture heroes, and thus no
rank, stature, or scope is of necessity implicit in speaking of the author
as a culture hero.
When we speak of nature and of a new range of experience,
we may think of a mountain range: some may make the vehicles by
means of which a mountain is climbed, some may climb the moun–
'tain, and some may apprehend the new view of the surrounding
countryside which becomes possible from the heights of the mountain.
T. S. Eliot is a culture hero in each of these three ways. This becomes
clear when we study the relationship of his work to the possible
experiences of modem life. The term, possible, should be kept in
mind, for many human beings obviously disregard and tum their
backs upon much of modem life, although modem life does not in
the least cease to circumscribe and penetrate their existence.
The reader of T. S. Eliot by turning the dials of his radio can
hear the capitals of the world, London, Vienna, Athens, Alexandria,
Jerusalem. What he hears will be news of the agony of war. Both
the agony and the width of this e-xperience are vivid examples of how
the poetry of T. S. Eliot has a direct relationship to modem life.
The width and the height and the depth of modem life are exhibited
in his poetry; the agony and the horror of modem life are represented
as inevitable: to any human being who does not wish to deceive him–
self with systematic lie<;. Thus it is truly significant that E. M. Forster,
in writing of Eliot, should recall August 1914 and the beginning of
