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into Eliot's life, in keeping with the British critical climate and the
temper of his subject. Ackroyd is also remarkably astute in assessing
the less successful of Eliot's works, but here, too, he does so
quietly - without any gratuitous pleasure in discovering a writer's
failings. Thus Ackroyd indicates that the later poems are not as good
as the earlier ones, corroborating my sense that
The Four Quartets,
for
example , which are an extraordinary
tour de force,
seem to be
somewhat willed . Ackroyd also notes the mechanical and abstract
quality of the plays. Though contrary to much popular opinion, this
is a judgement with which I agree . It seems clear to me that Eliot
simpl y was not a natural dramatist.
Ackroyd is not original, but very adroit and modulated as he
weaves the life and the work together. (His book was written without
the cooperation of Valerie, Eliot's widow, and he had no access to
unpublished documents and manuscripts.) Not much is known about
the second marriage to Valerie, except that it has been officially
declared to have been happy. But Akroyd has gathered a good deal
of information about the first marriage to Vivien, which was a mod–
ern mess , and Eliot's uneasy relation to women did not help, although
Vivien herself hovered on the borders of pathology. The recent play
about Eliot (which I have not seen) purportedly wallows in this mari–
tal swamp , raising once more the question of how far we have to dig
into the lives of prominent people. We know that Eliot did not want
a biography, either for sound critical reasons or for squeamish ones,
perhaps both - who knows? I suppose some of the inside story should
be known, if it throws any light on the work. But how much? Pos–
sibly the line should be drawn at scandal-mongering. In his criti–
cism , Eliot played down the significance of biographical material,
concentrating mostly on the text, and in this respect he was the
forerunner of the New Criticism. But there is some ambiguity and
suggestiveness beyond purely theoretical considerations in Eliot's
formulations. In
The Sacred Wood,
an early collection of essays, Eliot
spoke of the impersonality of poetry: "Poetry is not a turning loose of
emotion , but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of per–
sonality but an escape from personality." Still, what he escaped from
reverberates through his poetry . At the same time, this and similar
statements throughout Eliot's criticism could be read as a declaration
of poetic doctrine, signalling the reaction against the more personal
poetry of the romantics and the turn to classicism .
The relative merits of modern poets and critics have been
argued endlessl y . But to my mind , the measure of Eliot's stature is
