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grawlyx t1_j6jzt03 wrote

Reply to comment by Umbrella_Viking in The letters of T. S. Eliot to Emily Hale that were kept sealed from 1956 to 2020 have been released for free online by RunDNA

Please elaborate, first time I’m hearing of this!

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Veryaburneraccount t1_j6k3yw4 wrote

He alludes to classical works and other poems in his work, which is very common in poetry and literature in general, almost a way of having a conversation.

It's not plagiarism; he wasn't trying to pass off another person's work as his own, and critics and readers of his time were well aware of that.

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michaelisnotginger t1_j6khzcz wrote

The way he did it was revolutionary at the time. He segues his description of the mass of London commuters with Dante's descriptions of the indecisive angels at the vestibule of hell is amazing. And the contrast of the Philemon/Tereus story in a game of chess with it's mythology of mutilation with the conversation about demob soldiers and their girlfriends and their own sexual fulfilment (or lack). It's still so artfully done

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JeanVicquemare t1_j6klnis wrote

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu,

Mein Irisch Kind

Wo weilest du?

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grubas t1_j6l1zzu wrote

It was very much assumed that any reader would be able to recognize and know his references, at the very least they'd have to go hunting for it.

Plus it's like saying "ahhhh ahhh, Tenacious D ripped off Zeppelin in Tribute"....congratulations you missed the joke.

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Veryaburneraccount t1_j6l37g9 wrote

Yep!!

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grubas t1_j6lsd05 wrote

I mean we had Roman's in the 30s writing shit about Roman's in 300BC writing about Greeks in 600BC.

It's how you get sentences in Latin that you translate, and then require a 20 minute English explanation to understand who to the how. This is how you get nerds.

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-AshWednesday- t1_j6l1tlk wrote

I agree. Reading and writing is significantly harder nowadays because there is no established corpus, hence a lot of literature falls back again to work upon archetypal themes.

But to add to your comment, writing is always based on former writings, and one of the great achievement of modernism is a more conscious awareness of the sources at work in the creative process, seeing the potential this had to exploit it for intertextual purposes.

Elliot greatest achievement is, to put it in your words, creating a conversation, a dialogue, between vastly different sources, to make something wholly new emerge - this is more clear in his latter work, like Four Quartets.

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