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.brought together pieces from as far back in hisEliot s intentions for the ideas expressed in After career as 1917, but if they shared any particularStrange Gods might best be summed up by the epi- feature, it was that they provided more commen-graph on the title page, a verse from the fourth- tary than was typical for Eliot on figures and topicscentury B.C.Greek playwright Sophocles s tragedy connected with American literature, an area thatOedipus the King.The king of Thebes, Oedipus hasdid not often occupy his critical attention.Amongset out to discover the killer of his predecessor inthem was the essay  American Literature and theorder to free the city from a deadly curse.Unbe- American Language, which had originally beenknownst to him, however, is the fact that he is thepresented as a lecture at Washington University inkiller that he seeks.The words that Eliot selectedST.LOUIS on June 9, 1953.for his epigraph are spoken to Oedipus by Teire-SYNOPSISsias, a blind soothsayer whom he has consulted inan attempt to learn the killer s identity.OedipusEliot s choice of topic that evening may have beenand Teiresias argue over precisely who the killer ofmade by his hosts, but whatever the case, it wasthe old king, Laius, may be.Teiresias knows thatcertainly fortuitous.Not only is St.Louis locatedOedipus is the killer, while Oedipus, except forin the American heartland on a waterway, the Mis-Teiresias s renown for never being mistaken in asissippi River, that carries the mythic pulse of theprophecy, has no way of knowing that he is himselfnation and its people, but the city was Eliot s birth-absolutely wrong.Loosely translated, Teiresias splace, where his family made their home well intoparting shot at Oedipus, and Eliot s epigraph, ishis own young manhood.Furthermore, the poet s You think me a fool, but your parents thought megrandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had beenwise.instrumental in the founding of Washington Uni-The point that Eliot is aiming to drive homeversity, the venue for the evening s lecture.Every-to his audience by his choice of just such an epi-thing about the event strained at the Americangraph is pretty clear: He has cast himself in the roleexperience that had shaped Eliot s character andof a prophet trying to tell his readers somethingdestiny, so it comes as no surprise that his lecturethat they desperately need to hear, something thatshould focus on American literature and the ideapreceding generations would have given him noof an American language, especially since Eliot hadargument about.However, like Teiresias, Eliot isbecome a British subject back in 1927 and hadalso telling his contemporary readers that he is nobeen living in England virtually continuously sincefool, so he hardly expects them to believe him or1914.By now, he owed the literature of his nativeto trust the purity of his own motives as he goesland more than a nodding acquaintanceship, andabout introducing his thesis that there is much thatthe time for a payback to the culture and nationis wrongheaded in the thinking among his fellowthat had given his early life and values all theirpoets and other writers of the time.impetus had come.In fact, Eliot begins his remarks by reminiscingabout his St.Louis upbringing and the devotion toduty and service that were instilled in him through American Literature and thethe model of the esteem in which his grandfatherwas held. I am very well satisfied with having beenAmerican Language (1953)born in St.Louis, he concludes these reminis-During the year before his death early in Janu- cences,  rather than in Boston, or New York, orary of 1965, Eliot was busily working on prepar- London.ing a number of previously published essays and Eliot then ruminates on the literature and lan-public lectures for publication in a single volume.guage that the American experience has produced,This volume, To Criticize the Critic, posthumously confessing that the differences between the Brit-  American Literature and the American Language 43ish and American versions of English as a com- the case with American literature up to the timemon language are negligible [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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