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and they do not resemble Ford's quixotic pilgrimage except as illus–
trating the starting-point of the modem American, and his inevitable
journey to Europe. What should be made explicit here is that only
one who has known fully the deracination and alienation inherent in
modern life can be moved to make so extreme an effort at returning
to the traditional community as Eliot makes in attaching himself to
Anglo-Catholicism and Royalism. Coming back may well
be_
the
same thing as going away; or at any rate, the effort to return home
may exhibit the same predicament and the same topography as the
fact of departure. Only by going to Europe, by crossing the Atlantic
and living thousands of miles from home, does the international hero
conceive of the complex nature of going home.
Modern life may be compared to a foreign country in which a
foreign language is spoken. Eliot is the international hero because he
has made the journey to the foreign country and described the nature
of the new life in the foreign country. Since the future is bound to be
international,
if
it is anything at all, we are all the bankrupt heirs of
the ages, and the moments of the crisis expressed in Eliot's work are
a prophecy of the crises of our own future in regard to love, religious
belief, good and evil, the good life and the nature of the just society.
The Waste Land
will soon be as good as new.
