Obsession with sex and sin

The obsession with sex and sin in his poetry – he proves to be a far more personal poet than he wanted anyone to think he was – and in a great many of his literary essays, along with his profound expressions of guilt and of the need for expiation, may seem peculiarly at odds with the stark impoverishment and extraordinary infrequency of sexual contact in his life. In a letter written in April 1928, and quoted to good effect by Seymour-Jones, he wrote to his confessor, the Rev. William Force Stead, that he was in need of ‚the most severe . . . the most Latin kind of discipline, Ignatian or other. It is a question of compensation. I feel that nothing could be too ascetic, too violent for my own needs.‘ This was written at the time of his conversion and of the vow of chastity that soon followed. The passion and conviction about sex, sin and damnation in Eliot’s life and in his writing cannot adequately be appreciated unless its seeming contradictions are recognised as not at all eccentric or special to him. / Richard Poirier, London Review of Books 3.3.03 über T.S. Eliot in einer Besprechung der Biographie seiner ersten Frau Vivienne Eliot.

Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot by Carole Seymour-Jones. Constable, 702 pp, £9.99

Vgl. im Archiv der Lyrikzeitung die Ausgaben April, Mai und Juli 2002.

In dem beeindruckenden Jahrhundertarchiv des Times Literary Supplement findet sich ein Leserbrief von T.S.Eliot vom 22. April 1920 über „The Criticism of Poetry“ als kostenloses Beispiel. (Das Archiv ist kostenpflichtig, erlaubt aber eine kostenlose Probezeit.)