[No surviving envelope]
You spoke in your last letter of the significance of my year to me – on the occasion of completing the Norton lectures, and of the possibility of my re-finding much that had seemed lost. ICharles Eliot Norton Lectures (afterwards The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism)TSE's immediate reflections on;c5 am not quite clear as to what you mean – but there are things that I can say about it – first I am not proud of my lectures, but I am thankful to have got through them without discredit – I am afraid they will look very thin in print – I do not believe any of my predecessors ever had to perform such a tour de force – I didn’t even know what I should talk about until I got here, and several lectures were only completed on the day of delivery. But the audience thought they were good – you can hypnotise an audience to a large extent. Astravels, trips and plansTSE's 1933 westward tour to Scripps;a8TSE reflects on;a9 to the more serious import of the year, I can’t tell until some time after I return. I mean that what this year means will depend very much upon what I make of it in my subsequent life. I have found of course that there has been much more acute pain since Christmas; but I anticipated that, and I would not have it otherwise. Buttravels, trips and plansTSE's 1932–3 year in America;a7TSE reflects on;b4 on the other hand, this has really been the happiest year of my life; I have been very happy here. It'drugs'activity ('being useful');a1 has been an unnatural life, and not a good one to continue in; there is too much excitement (though not of a very intense kind) too much drugging with activity, too little privacy and too little opportunity for meditation. I recognise that I am going to have a hard struggle with myself on my return; that I have got to begin life anew, and that is not easy at my age; all'drugs'pain;a4 my life has been a drugging, for you can drug yourself with pain as well as pleasure. InChristianityresignation, reconciliation, peace;c8following separation from VHE;a5 my new life I shall have to say, ‘this is final’; now I have got to arrange life as it is to be to the end. I have to learn to be quiet, to be alone1 – and even when solitude is a pure blessing we have to learn how to live in it; to arrange my days for the maximum of useful activity and also to get used to passivity. It will be a new facing of facts, and a self-directed austerity instead of torment. ItChristianitysins, vices, faults;d5lust;b5 is odd that a person who has got beyond the possibility of temptation should still experience perpetual cravings, and this I must endeavour to subdue, as it is a drain of energy. I suppose it might be harder, however, if I had any memories of intense happiness. BothEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)marriage to;e6sexual relations;a3 ofCunard, NancyTSE's liaison with;a1 the women I have had were women I did not really want, to whom I could not give myself completely and who did not give themselves completely to me; the experience was of the world but not of the soul or even of sensation: meaningless. The completeness of surrender is what counts. AndChristianitysins, vices, faults;d5pride;b6 one side of me hardly believes in the reality; a side which tends to be hard and bitter and gibing and proud and fighting. I know that I am in an important way ignorant and undeveloped; it tends to make me puritanical, defensive, and terribly aware of the horror rather than the beauty of life. Can I subdue all this, I wonder, and arrive not only at resignation but at reconciliation and peace? I am sometimes amused when reviewers point out my shortcomings and distortions. I know them so much better than they do.
IMilton, Johnon TSE's brain;a2 wonder what you will make of these ravings. I sometimes feel almost wickedly defiant and hostile: eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves;2 and that makes me very gentle with people, because there is nothing to be done, no way of showing [illegible words]; and then they think I am altogether gentle and good, and I am not. ‘The heart is deceitful in all things, and desperately wicked’.3 ButLawrence, David Herbert ('D. H.')deranges TSE;a6 I have just been reading D. H. Lawrence for my course, and I abominate him so that it has darkened this week. IDu Bois, Dr ArthurTSE stays with;a1 haveColumbia UniversityTSE lectures at;a3 just'Verse of John Milton, The';a1 finished a lecture on Milton and go to New York tomorrow – stay with Arthur Du Bois4 – lecture twice5 – return'Modern Education and the Classics';a1 by Saturday morning to prepare a talk for the Classical Club.6 IEliot, Vivien (TSE's first wife, née Haigh-Wood)separation from;f1communication with solicitors on;b2 am waiting for a letter from my solicitor.7 The Dean of Rochester has been very kind to me.
Whilst I was trying to write my lecture my mind kept working on a letter I was composing to you. And Now that the lecture is finished, and I have written a letter, it doesn’t seem at all like the letter I was writing in my head all that time.
But I believe that I have learned a good deal during this year: I shall find out later what it is.
I hope to find a letter on Saturday morning.8
1.Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse : ‘To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.’
2.John Milton, Samson Agonistes, 41.
3.‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’ (Jeremiah 17: 9).
4.DrDu Bois, Dr Arthur Arthur du Bois (1890–1974) – friend from Milton Academy or Harvard.
5.TSE lectured on the verse of John Milton at Columbia University, New York, Fri., 21 Apr.
6.HarryHarvard Classical Clubwrite TSE into Aristophanes;a1n Levin (1912–94) – who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1934 and rose to become Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature; author of James Joyce: A Critical Introduction (1941) – recalled: ‘Since he took a friendly interest in the activities of the Harvard Classical Club, we invited him to be a guest of honour at its annual banquet. This was a springtime relaxation after a studious year, a symposium in the convivial sense of the term; and, though we were still in the last months of Prohibition, through the good offices of a Greek bootlegger there was plenty of real – if not mellow – wine. By way of jeu d’esprit the programme featured a modern version of Aristophanes’ Frogs, reduced to the dimensions of a puppet show and adapted to the festive occasion by substituting Shakespeare for the Old Poet, Aeschylus, and Eliot himself for the New Poet, Euripides. The Aristophanic put-down developed into somewhat more of an agon than we had naively intended, with our Eliotic ironies contrasting a heroic past and a decadent present. But the author of Sweeney Agonistes bore it with characteristic patience and charity’ (T. S. Eliot: Essays from the ‘Southern Review’, 154–5). See also Levin, ‘T. S. Eliot and Harvard’, Harvard Advocate 100: 3–4 (Fall 1966), 34–5.
7.A letter relating to TSE’s separation from Vivien.
8.Sentence added by hand.
4.DrDu Bois, Dr Arthur Arthur du Bois (1890–1974) – friend from Milton Academy or Harvard.