T. S. Eliot is widely acknowledged as the greatest modernist poet. I return to his works constantly; they resonate with our postmodern condition and their literary merits are infinitely fruitful. However, he was an avowed racist, classist, misogynist and antisemite.
His early works beg the question: can prejudice have literary merit? This question resonates with Eliot moreso than contemporaries who shared his prejudices, because his early works often deploy anti-semitic tropes against the reader's sentiments - he is transparently rather than opaquely antisemitic. You cannot excuse his antisemitism as coincidence.
For example, take Sweeney Among the Nightengales - a sarcastic commentary on the state of modern society. The poem contrasts the plight of Sweeney, an animal drinking in a brothel entertained by prostitutes, with that of Agamemmnon, notoriously murdered by his wife, having sacrificed his daughter for favorable winds. The poem describes the brothel's owner as "Rachel née Rabinovich / [who] tears at the grapes with murderous paws." This plays on contemporary stereotypes of Jewish women as lascivious, duplicitous, and animalistic. In other words: to understand the poem, one must understand Eliot's opinion of Jewish women.
We can go further, citing Gerontion or Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleinstein With a Cigar, which contain even more repulsive antisemitic images. Fortunately, his later works are largely devoid of explicit antisemitic imagery. Nevertheless, I cannot shake the feeling that his comparison between the first world war and the Punic Wars in The Waste Land, along with his depiction of the foreign merchant and Phoenician sailor, have nothing to do with his earlier expressed antisemitism.
The TLDR of my post is twofold: (1) should we "cancel" Eliot for his prejudices, given that he never renounced them and should have known better; and (2) how should we respond to contemporary authors who display similar hatred, but produce works of great literary merit? I realize that this post is mostly a personal conflict between my love of Eliot's poetry and his ideologies, but am wondering whether beauty (something I would ascribe to Eliot's poetry) can arise from such deep prejudice?
His early works beg the question: can prejudice have literary merit? This question resonates with Eliot moreso than contemporaries who shared his prejudices, because his early works often deploy anti-semitic tropes against the reader's sentiments - he is transparently rather than opaquely antisemitic. You cannot excuse his antisemitism as coincidence.
For example, take Sweeney Among the Nightengales - a sarcastic commentary on the state of modern society. The poem contrasts the plight of Sweeney, an animal drinking in a brothel entertained by prostitutes, with that of Agamemmnon, notoriously murdered by his wife, having sacrificed his daughter for favorable winds. The poem describes the brothel's owner as "Rachel née Rabinovich / [who] tears at the grapes with murderous paws." This plays on contemporary stereotypes of Jewish women as lascivious, duplicitous, and animalistic. In other words: to understand the poem, one must understand Eliot's opinion of Jewish women.
We can go further, citing Gerontion or Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleinstein With a Cigar, which contain even more repulsive antisemitic images. Fortunately, his later works are largely devoid of explicit antisemitic imagery. Nevertheless, I cannot shake the feeling that his comparison between the first world war and the Punic Wars in The Waste Land, along with his depiction of the foreign merchant and Phoenician sailor, have nothing to do with his earlier expressed antisemitism.
The TLDR of my post is twofold: (1) should we "cancel" Eliot for his prejudices, given that he never renounced them and should have known better; and (2) how should we respond to contemporary authors who display similar hatred, but produce works of great literary merit? I realize that this post is mostly a personal conflict between my love of Eliot's poetry and his ideologies, but am wondering whether beauty (something I would ascribe to Eliot's poetry) can arise from such deep prejudice?
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