← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Franco
Thread ID: 11464 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2003-12-14
2003-12-14 00:07 | User Profile
Was literary icon T.S. Eliot an a-a-anti-S-S-Semite? Oh, n-n-no! Better call up a local Jewish g-g-group and ask them before you r-r-r-read any T.S. Eliot... [shudder, tremble]
[url]http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/april9/eliot-49.html[/url]
2003-12-14 13:41 | User Profile
One of my jewish professors in college admitted that "most of the great artists of the early twentieth century were basically fascists."
2003-12-15 10:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=W.R.I.T.O.S]One of my jewish professors in college admitted that "most of the great artists of the early twentieth century were basically fascists."[/QUOTE] That may explain why there were no great artists in the late 20th century. I don't know what's in store in the 21st, but I'm ironing my black shirt just in case.
2003-12-16 13:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=na Gaeil is gile]That may explain why there were no great artists in the late 20th century. I don't know what's in store in the 21st, but I'm ironing my black shirt just in case.[/QUOTE] Yes, almost nothing of lasting cultural value has been produced in the Western world after WWII.
2003-12-18 03:24 | User Profile
W.R.I.T.O.S,
[QUOTE]Yes, almost nothing of lasting cultural value has been produced in the Western world after WWII.[/QUOTE]
I would say 1914 is a better cut off date than 1945.
2003-12-18 04:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]W.R.I.T.O.S,
I would say 1914 is a better cut off date than 1945.[/QUOTE]
Eliot would certainly agree with that,
"Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine." -From the wasteland
Interesting that death is associated with the hour nine, the hour that Christ supposedly died, suggesting that cultural death may result from the same mentality that killed Christ. This echoes Blake's poem,
1I wander thro' each charter'd street,
2Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
3And mark in every face I meet
4Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
5In every cry of every Man,
6In every Infant's cry of fear,
7In every voice, in every ban,
8The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
9How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
10Every black'ning Church appalls;
11And the hapless Soldier's sigh
12Runs in blood down Palace walls.
13But most thro' midnight streets I hear
14How the youthful Harlot's curse
15Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
16And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
We are certainly in a wastelend. I have been told that Eliot's larger point is that humanity is always moving back and forth between the wasteland and cultural renaissance, which I would like to believe.
2003-12-19 08:19 | User Profile
The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rat's feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer -
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land This is the cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they recieve The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V
Here we go 'round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go 'round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existance Between the essence And the descent Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper
2003-12-23 03:28 | User Profile
I believe T.S. Elliot was an anti-Semite.
2003-12-23 06:57 | User Profile
Recall that infamous verse by TSE:
[I]The rat is underneath the pile, the Jew is underneath the lot...[/I]
The Tribe hasn't.