582
PARTISAN REVIEW
ELIOT AS PLAYWRIGHT
POETRY AND DRAMA.
By
T. S. Eliot. Horvord University Press. $1.50.
In this lecture, as Mr. Eliot explains, he is taking stock, asking
himself what he thinks of poetry and drama now, after more than
thirty years of writing both criticism of drama and plays of his own. His
essays are always good reading because they are so well written, even
when (as in some of his earlier pieces) he makes only one or two
small points. In this lecture the plot has · thickened: he is considering
Shakespeare, Yeats, Synge, Maeterlinck; at the same time he is not
unaware of what he had to say about some of those writers years ago;
and in addition to that he is assessing his own experiences in writing
Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion
and
The Cocktail Party.
The result is one of his most brilliant performances: he has never been
more agile, urbane, and cautious.
As
a critic, Mr. Eliot is first of all a master and a connoisseur of
lyric verse. His usual practice, especially in his earlier work, is to
assume
the poetry, and then by means of careful discriminations, and
very apt quotation, to present a single sharp, suggestive insight, which
stimulates his readers to further reading of their own. This gives him the
air of knowing far more than he is willing to say. He addresses his
audience (which is in dire need of instruction) with candor and
courtesy, but rather mistrustfully; for he never forgets his responsibilities,
to himself, to his readers, and to the poetic mystery of which he is the
hierophant. It is essential to this method to be very gingerly about
all general questions, "to halt," as he said very early, "at the borders of
metaphysics." Thus he very seldom considers the form and structure of
a whole poem, to say nothing of more general questions still-the sub–
ject of this lecture, for example. His great success as a critic has been
due both to his practical familiarity with verse-writing, and to
his
ascetic regime as a prose-writer. Under his influence a whole generation
has been anxiously exploring versification, metaphor, the use of irony
and ambiguity, and the whole fascinating lore of the lyric poet's
use of the English language. But drama is not the same art as lyric
poe–
try; in drama the synthesis of incidents, characterization, and more or
less concealed thought underlie the arts of language. And the question
is, to what extent has Mr. Eliot's long preoccupation with drama
increased his understanding of that art, and modified
his
practice as a
critic?
