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PARTISAN REVIEW
("And I Tiresias have foresuffered all") and is international. So
too the old man who is the protagonist of "Gerontion" must refer
to human beings of many nationalities, to Mr. Silvera at Limoges,
Hakagawa, Madame de Tornquist, Fraulein von Kulp and Christ
[the tiger] and he finds it necessary to speak of all history as well as
his failure in love. History is made to illuminate love and love is
made to illuminate history. In modern life, lwman beings are whirled
beyond the circuit of the constellations: their intimate plight is seen
in connection or relation with the anguish of the Apostles after ·
Calvary, the murder of Agamemnon, the insanity of Ophelia and
children who chant that London bridge is falling down. In the same
way, the plight of Prufrock
is
illuminated by means of a rich, passing
reference to Michelangelo, the sculptor of the strong and heroic man.
Only when the poet is the heir of all the ages can he make signifi–
cant use of so many different and distant kinds of experience. But
conversely, only when experience becomes international, only v.·hen
many different and distant kinds of experience are encountered by
the poet, does he find it necessary to become the heir of all the ages.
Difficulty in love is inseparable from the deracination and the
alienation from which the international man suffers. When the tradi–
tional beliefs, sanctions and bonds of the community and of the
family decay or disappear in the distance like a receding harbor, then
love ceases to be an act which is in relation to the life of the com–
munity, and in immediate relation to the family and other human
beings. Love becomes purely personal. It is isolated from the past and
the future, and since it is isolated from all other relationships, since
it is no longer celebrated, evaluated and given a status by the com–
munity, love does become merely copulation. The protagonist of
"Gerontion" uses one of the most significant phrases in Eliot's work
when he speaks of himself as living in a
rented
house; which is to
s~y,
not in the house where his forbears lived. He lives in a rented
house, he is unable to make love, and he knows that history has
manv cunning, deceptive, and empty corridors. The nature of the
house, of love and of history are interdependent aspects of modern
life.
When we compare Eliot's poetry to the poetry of Valery, Yeats
and Rilke, Eliot's direct and comprehensive concern with the essen–
tial nature of modern life gains an external definition. Yeats writes
of Leda and he writes of the nature of history; Valery writes of
Narcissus and the serpent in the Garden of Eden; Rilke is inspired
by great works of art, by Christ's mother and by Orpheus. Yet in
