T.
S.
ELIOT
v
The third of the standards with which Eliot has criticized poetry
is language as such. This is connected, as we would expect, with the
remarks I have just quoted, for Eliot says, that "in French poetry, for
example, the two greatest masters of diction are also the two greatest
psychologists, the most curious explorers of the soul." In English
poetry, however, Eliot finds that two of the greatest masters of diction
are Milton and Dryden and they triumph, he says, "by a dazzling
disregard of the human soul." Here again there is an underlying con–
sistency in the operation of Eliot's mind, for what he is saying of
Dryden and Milton is close to what he had said in 1920 of Swinburne
as being purely verbal, of using language really divorced from any
reference to objects. And it should be noted that only by a very
strong sense of the actual can we distinguish between poetry which
explores the human soul and poetry which is largely verbal. There
is an intermediate mode: poetry whose chief aim is that of incanta–
tion, of inducing a certain state of emotion. The two instances Eliot
cites are Poe and Mallarme in an essay written in French in 1926
and never translated into English.
The essence of Eliot's concern with language in itself is perhap5
best formulated in the following quotation: "The poetry of a people
takes its life from the people's speech and in tum gives life to it; it
represents its highest point of consciousness, its greatest power, and
its most delicate sensibility."
If
we take this concern with language
in
isolation it might seem that the chief purpose of poetry was to
maintain and purify the language, and indeed Eliot's praise of Dryden
often seems to be bestowed on that poet merely because he effected a
reformation in the use of language, rather than for his intrinsic qual–
ities. Throughout Eliot's own poetry there are references to the
diffi–
culties and trials of anyone who attempts to use language carefully.
In
"The Love Song of
J.
Alfred Prufrock," the protagonist resents
the fact that he is formulated in a phrase; in "Sweeney Agonistes"
one character says "I gotta use words when I talk to you," and it
should be noted that the use of slang in this play witnesses an extra–
ordinary sensitivity to colloquial language upon the part of one who
in
colloquial terms is known as a "highbrow." In "The Waste Land"
each human being is said to be isolated from all other human beings,
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