Russell Kirk’s study of T.S. Eliot’s life and work has become a true biographical classic. Published first in 1971, close on the heels of the social, moral, and artistic trends he attempts to transcend and examine, this new edition of Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century proves Kirk’s insight still as perceptive as ever. Kirk’s relationship with Eliot was perfectly suited to a biography, an acquaintance detached enough to allow objective evaluation yet close enough to engender sympathetic interpretation leading to an honest understanding that can only come from some measure of friendship with the subject. Such, it seems, is the best kind of biographer.
That said, it is difficult to decide whether the book is a biography or critique; strictly neither, it is a little of both. Eliot’s life events structure the observations on the profound work that flowed from them, though any personal details or anecdotes are sparingly and purposefully referenced. Academically there is something for everyone: introduction for the novice, elucidation for an ardent admirer, and exhaustive footnotes for the Eliot scholar.
Kirk’s observations are not confined to Eliot’s life and work; to fairly treat these he must sketch the context found in the sociopolitical state and psyche of post WWI and WWII Europe and America. The necessity of outlining context is required by Eliot himself who adopted as his central premise that no human stands isolated; he would certainly not exempt himself from that tenet. Since Eliot did not believe an artist’s goal should be self expression but rather an expression of common and universal truths, social, historical, and spiritual themes were the prominent characters in his art. Eliot’s work is fundamentally a response to his time so understanding that time is prerequisite to understanding his work.
Eliot’s goal was to beckon anyone who would listen back from the brink of solipsism which he believed to be the primary threat to what he called “the community of souls.” Raising questions rather than answering them, and imparting a vision rather than a theology, he sought to awaken from sleep a complacent thus unwittingly degenerating world by reinvigorating the moral imagination through theology and history symbolized in art. His answers, if we dare to summarize them, take the form of commitment to what he calls “Permanent Things” and are epitomized in what the Thunder says at the end of The Waste Land: give or surrender to the Absolute, sympathize and care for the community of souls, and control the will and appetites.
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