T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic, whose works like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth-century Modernism.

Recognition

Formal recognition

• Awarded the Order of Merit by King George VI (United Kingdom, 1948)
• Nobel Prize for Literature for "remarkable achievements as a pioneer within modern poetry." (Stockholm, 1948)
• Officier de la Legion d'Honneur (1951)
• Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg, 1955)
• Dante Medal (Florence, 1959)
• Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (1960)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
• Numerous honorary doctorates
• Posthumously won two Tony Awards (1983) for his writing used in the musical Cats
• Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, was named for him
• Eliot has also been honored with commemorative postage stamps

Popular recognition

In 1941, Henry Reed published Chard Whitlow, an intelligent and witty satire on Burnt Norton. Eliot wrote, "Most parodies of one's own work strike one as very poor. In fact, one is apt to think one could parody oneself much better. (As a matter of fact, some critics have said that I have done so.) But there is one which deserves the success it has had, Henry Reed's Chard Whitlow."

Related Topics:
1941 - Henry Reed

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"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a greatly quoted and referenced piece. References have appeared in Hill Street Blues and The Long Goodbye by private-eye novelist Raymond Chandler.

Related Topics:
Hill Street Blues - Raymond Chandler

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In the movie Apocalypse Now based on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness, one of the side-characters, a photographer obsessed with the life of the elusive Colonel Kurtz, quoted "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," specifically the lines, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." Marlon Brando's character Kurtz later reads Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men": "We are the Hollow Men, We are the stuffed men...". Appropriately, Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" quotes Heart of Darkness in its epigraph — "Mistah Kurtz—he dead." The American photojournalist (Dennis Hopper) also references the end of "The Hollow Men" when speaking to Willard.

Related Topics:
Apocalypse Now - Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness - Marlon Brando - Kurtz - Dennis Hopper

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In the autobiographical A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken's admiration for Eliot's poetry lends credibility in Vanauken's eyes to Christianity and plays a part, along with letters from C. S. Lewis, in his conversion.

Related Topics:
A Severe Mercy - Sheldon Vanauken - Christianity - C. S. Lewis - Conversion

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A favourite of present-day Christians is "Choruses from 'The Rock'," a poem decrying what Eliot saw as the decadence of Western thought from the sublime (the Word as the Revelation of God, wisdom, life) to the humdrum (information, living).

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Liverpool poet Adrian Henri included "Poem in Memoriam T.S. Eliot" in the best-selling 1968 anthology The Mersey Sound.

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The band Crash Test Dummies released a song called "Afternoons and Coffee Spoons" from the album "God Shuffled His Feet" in the early 1990s. This song borrows from and pays homage to the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

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Surprisingly, "The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was also referenced by Chuck D of the seminal rap group Public Enemy, in Niggativaty, Do I Dare Disturb the Universe, on his solo album The Autobiography of Mistachuck.

Related Topics:
Chuck D - Rap - Public Enemy - The Autobiography of Mistachuck

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On September 20, 2005, a series of unpublished letters from Eliot and an author-inscribed first edition of The Waste Land were sold at auction for nearly $438,000. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050920/people_nm/arts_eliot_auction_dc

Related Topics:
September 20 - 2005

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