Read Online The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 by T. S. Eliot - Free Book Online
Authors: T. S. Eliot
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am waiting impatiently to hear that you have found some notepaper in Bavaria, and to receive an example of it covered with your beautiful handwriting, before German beer has dulled your wits. As a matter of fact, it would have some difficulty in doing so, and we see that even a few natives of the country escaped its effects; history tells us that the formidable Schopenhauer was a great beer-lover. He also played the clarinet, but perhaps that was just to annoy his neighbours. Such things are quite enough to make us cling to life. The will to live is evil, a source of desires and sufferings, but beer is not to be despised – and so we carry on. O Reason!
I have just read – only last evening – Mother and Child by Philippe, what a good and beautiful book; as wholesome as bread and milk, without artifice or rhetoric. To understand it, you have to like it, really like it. It was in connection with Philippe that I realised what is so unsatisfactory about purely intellectual criticism, one day when I overheard some Sorbonne professor saying about his novels: ‘Very interesting! How well he has studied the lives of humble people.’ Poor, good fellow, the remark would have hurt him more than the worst of his sad experiences. To have suffered and lived every line he wrote only to become a subject of study for a professor of literature – who will miss the point – so true it is that we project ourselves on to everything outside us. Reason, in criticism, should be reserved for demolishing, for hammering charlatans, for hammering phoneys and falsifiers of art until they are laid low. The good things stand out of their own accord; they have to be talked about to make them known, as you lend a book to a friend. Any attempt on the part of the intelligence to demonstrate the beauty of a work of art is, undoubtedly, a contradiction in terms. Monsieur Dana would shudder behind his gold pince-nez if he heard this, but it’s true; a rationalistic critic always makes me think of a child breaking his clockwork toy to see what there is inside. As for scientific critics? But they are not dangerous; they are too boring and no one reads them.
Goodbye, my dear fellow, I shake you warmly by the hand. Jean Verdenal.
FROM Jean Verdenal
MS Houghton
[Mid-July 1911]
151 bis rue St Jacques, Paris
Mon cher ami,
Je reçois votre lettre 1 au moment où je vais quitter Paris pour aller quinze jours là-bas aux Pyrénées. Tout le monde a quitté déjà, à part Fellows; 2 et des figures de passage remplissent la maison; presque toutes repondent à l’étiquette ‘vieille fille americaine’. Cela suffit.
Le spectacle de Paris ces jours-ci (fête du 14 juillet) était assez intéressant. C’est, avec les jours gras, la vraie fête de Paris, maintenant que l’ ‘antique renouveau des fêtes surannées ne fleurit plus aux vieux pavés du siècle dur’. Je crois même que l’expression artistique est plus parfaite qu’au Mardi gras, rien ne sonne de travers. Illuminations officielles, revue et cocardes, populo dansant; horribles orchestres dont les valses vous suggestionnent totalement; c’est une atmosphère chaude, poussiéreuse, suante sous un ciel ardent; c’est tricolore, commandé par l’État et les gens s’en donnent de rigoler. L’après-midi les gosses triomphent, les sales gosses à mirlitons; le soir il monte une excitation sensuelle qui va en grandissant; le cheveux des filles sont collés aux tempes de sueur; la roue des loteries tourne; la roue des chevaux de bois tourne entraînante, attirante de lumière, chaque oscillation des chevaux cambrant le torse souple des poules, une jambe bien prise est entrevue par la ‘jupe fendue à la mode’; un souffle lourd et gras passe chaudement.
Toute cette manifestation extérieure répond bien, sans aucun doute, à l’actuelle tendance régnant dans le peuple de Paris. C’est, tendance peu élevée, matérialiste, mais je ne dirais pas grossière, car le peuple
I have just read – only last evening – Mother and Child by Philippe, what a good and beautiful book; as wholesome as bread and milk, without artifice or rhetoric. To understand it, you have to like it, really like it. It was in connection with Philippe that I realised what is so unsatisfactory about purely intellectual criticism, one day when I overheard some Sorbonne professor saying about his novels: ‘Very interesting! How well he has studied the lives of humble people.’ Poor, good fellow, the remark would have hurt him more than the worst of his sad experiences. To have suffered and lived every line he wrote only to become a subject of study for a professor of literature – who will miss the point – so true it is that we project ourselves on to everything outside us. Reason, in criticism, should be reserved for demolishing, for hammering charlatans, for hammering phoneys and falsifiers of art until they are laid low. The good things stand out of their own accord; they have to be talked about to make them known, as you lend a book to a friend. Any attempt on the part of the intelligence to demonstrate the beauty of a work of art is, undoubtedly, a contradiction in terms. Monsieur Dana would shudder behind his gold pince-nez if he heard this, but it’s true; a rationalistic critic always makes me think of a child breaking his clockwork toy to see what there is inside. As for scientific critics? But they are not dangerous; they are too boring and no one reads them.
Goodbye, my dear fellow, I shake you warmly by the hand. Jean Verdenal.
FROM Jean Verdenal
MS Houghton
[Mid-July 1911]
151 bis rue St Jacques, Paris
Mon cher ami,
Je reçois votre lettre 1 au moment où je vais quitter Paris pour aller quinze jours là-bas aux Pyrénées. Tout le monde a quitté déjà, à part Fellows; 2 et des figures de passage remplissent la maison; presque toutes repondent à l’étiquette ‘vieille fille americaine’. Cela suffit.
Le spectacle de Paris ces jours-ci (fête du 14 juillet) était assez intéressant. C’est, avec les jours gras, la vraie fête de Paris, maintenant que l’ ‘antique renouveau des fêtes surannées ne fleurit plus aux vieux pavés du siècle dur’. Je crois même que l’expression artistique est plus parfaite qu’au Mardi gras, rien ne sonne de travers. Illuminations officielles, revue et cocardes, populo dansant; horribles orchestres dont les valses vous suggestionnent totalement; c’est une atmosphère chaude, poussiéreuse, suante sous un ciel ardent; c’est tricolore, commandé par l’État et les gens s’en donnent de rigoler. L’après-midi les gosses triomphent, les sales gosses à mirlitons; le soir il monte une excitation sensuelle qui va en grandissant; le cheveux des filles sont collés aux tempes de sueur; la roue des loteries tourne; la roue des chevaux de bois tourne entraînante, attirante de lumière, chaque oscillation des chevaux cambrant le torse souple des poules, une jambe bien prise est entrevue par la ‘jupe fendue à la mode’; un souffle lourd et gras passe chaudement.
Toute cette manifestation extérieure répond bien, sans aucun doute, à l’actuelle tendance régnant dans le peuple de Paris. C’est, tendance peu élevée, matérialiste, mais je ne dirais pas grossière, car le peuple
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