Scarriet

This is from an exchange on the distinguished TS Eliot website between an anonymous author and myself— representing Scarriet. (Earlier posts are at the bottom if you wish to follow the conversation from the start, which begins with a post including the opening passage from “A Talk on Dante by T.S. Eliot.) A peculiar thing happens at one point—the anonymous author (unknown to me, AI?) quotes a Delmore Schwartz essay—my own (!) which I failed to recognize as my child, even as I found eerily familiar a brief passage concerning Keats and money.

Replying to Anonymous participant:

There’s some confusion here. I didn’t say you believed Ransom didn’t believe in art for art’s sake. My position is: Ransom did not believe in art for art’s sake. And you think he did. In his essay, Ransom does quote “Sea Clouds” by Wallace Stevens as an example of pure aestheticism practiced by the “specialized” modern poet. Impressionism is the end of the line, the final step in the great evolution of poetry in secular, late capitalism’s division-of-labor. This is what Ransom seems to be saying. Modernists pride themselves on being the final evolutionary phase—until they finally realize it does no good to be the “end” of something because it cuts off the branch they are standing on. They can’t be “new” if they are the “end.” The simplistic rhetoric of Modernism needed to be re-written constantly because none of them really knew what they were saying. No one had really thought it through. The Modernists were ‘bad poets yet red hot revolutionaries’ equipped with a flimsy manifesto that changed every other year. Their poetry didn’t speak for them. They had to constantly explain what it was doing. They had to jump up and down and put muddy footprints on Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley and Poe and claim Villon and Donne were the “real thing.” Ransom was a bit smarter than this. He could laugh at the Marxists rebuking Shakespeare. Ransom had enough literacy that he wasn’t merely an art for art’s sake modernist. Ransom didn’t fit the silly Modernist mold. He was too smart. His defense of Shakespeare against the Marxists is not an “art for art’s sake” argument. His own poetry was not impressionistic, sea clouds, art for art’s sake, poetry. Like the rest of the Moderns, he really didn’t make a lasting impression (not like Shakespeare or Shelley or Poe) and the best of his lyrics sound, in the end, Victorian. Writers of the 20th century like Ransom, Delmore, Old Possum, did some nice things. But Modernism itself was basically a fraud, a wading pool -ism for second and third rate scholars to splash about in.

Ransom was analyzing Modernism in a far-reaching manner; his wasn’t a subjective opinion that poetry ought to concern itself with aesthetics only. Ransom didn’t believe in “art for art’s sake,” as you say. He says the old poets served us lemonade: lemon, the moral; sugar, the beauty. In the factory of modern life, division-of-labor demands poets perfect the sugar and leave the lemon to someone else. But then Ransom plays a neat trick. Salt, he says, like lemonade, is also a compound—but NA and CL vanish in the salt we taste and enjoy, unlike lemonade, where tart and sweet both remain to our taste. Elements disappearing completely in a compound is more sophisticated. Poe used this chemical metaphor in describing poetry—later stolen by Eliot in his attempt to describe emotion’s exit in poetry Eliot preferred—the neutral catalyst in a chemical reaction is how Eliot explained it—the emotion is felt, influences the poem, but is not “in” the poem. Or, the reverse can be true: the emotion is felt by the reader, but it never existed in the poet. Chemistry itself is the ruling critical idea. A simple compound like lemonade is replaced by a more sophisticated one (yet found commonly in nature!): NaCl, sodium chloride, table salt. Ransom gave the example of old religious poetry: in the present day, the local minister of our local church handles “religion” for us, not the bards. Ransom’s whole aesthetic reasoning hinges on a sophisticated analysis of historically evolving labor practices (influenced by Marx, obviously). The conservative Southerner Ransom as a Marxist? Well, sure. Ransom didn’t write free verse. He was a brilliant critic who defends Modernism in his essays, but his own poetry rhymes and moralizes (lemonade!) like a Marxist dictator who preaches “share the wealth” but lives in a mansion on a hill. Modernism is a fraud precisely for this reason—its whole existence is theft and its best spokesmen (Ransom and Eliot) were too smart for Modernism—yet wore Modernism’s clothes to be accepted, lived in its shell like ambitious crabs. Minds like Poe, Ransom, and Eliot explode the flimsy platitudes of Romanticism v Modernism. Poetry doesn’t belong to weak, “historical,” scholarly, weavers. It burns with the ingenious chemistry of the individual. Eliot excoriated Poe—while secretly stealing from him. Baudelaire was the French version of Poe, more French, and therefore more “cool,” even as Baudelaire and Eliot were, in truth, nothing without Poe.

—Thomas Brady/Scarriet Editors/Thomas Graves

John Crowe Ransom argues Modern poets abandon social responsibility for “pure aesthetic effect”. Baudelaire advocates for artifice and beauty over nature, influencing Modernism. Ransom critiques traditional poetry’s moralizing, praising Modern poets’ autonomy.

The “pure aesthetic effect” refers to art (in this case, poetry) existing solely for its own sake, without serving moral, social, or practical purposes. Ransom argues Modern poets pursue this “purity” by separating aesthetics from morality, creating art that’s autonomous and self-contained.

For Ransom, poetry is an autonomous art form pursuing a “pure aesthetic effect”. He sees traditional poetry as often serving moral or social purposes, whereas Modern poetry seeks to separate aesthetics from morality, focusing on its own internal beauty and structure. Poetry’s goal is no longer to “make virtue delicious” but to achieve artistic purity.

Traditional poetry’s moralizing refers to poetry serving moral or didactic purposes, like promoting virtue or patriotism. Ransom critiques this approach, praising Modern poets for seeking autonomy and focusing on aesthetic beauty rather than moral instruction. Modern poets, in Ransom’s view, prioritize “art for art’s sake” over conveying moral messages.

II

A summary of the article “Porphyro’s Rose: Keats and T.S. Eliot’s “The Metaphysical Poets”” by Christopher Baker:

Christopher Baker is exploring a quiet connection between John Keats and T.S. Eliot, two poets who are usually seen as opposites. Eliot famously criticized the Romantic poets (like Keats), yet Baker argues that Eliot secretly borrowed one of Keats’s most powerful images to explain his own critical idea about poetry. That image is “Porphyro’s rose” from Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes.”

Early in his career, T.S. Eliot openly attacked Romantic poetry, calling poets like Keats emotionally immature. He believed poetry after the 17th century had lost something essential: a unity of thought and feeling.
Eliot called this loss the “dissociation of sensibility.”

In simple terms, he thought modern poets either: thought too much without feeling, or felt too much without thinking. He admired the Metaphysical poets (like John Donne) because, in his view, they could think and feel at the same time.

In Eliot’s famous essay “The Metaphysical Poets,” he says that great poets “feel their thought as immediately as the odor of a rose.”
Baker’s insight is this: That image of a rose may come directly from Keats.

In “The Eve of St. Agnes,” Keats writes:
“Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose.”

Here’s why this matters:
Porphyro doesn’t slowly reason his plan: His thought arrives all at once, with emotion and physical sensation. His mind and body react together: flushed brow, racing heart. This is exactly what Eliot later describes as unified sensibility.

So although Eliot criticized Keats, Keats had already written the very kind of poetic moment Eliot praised. Baker suggests that Eliot: Needed a clear image to explain his idea. Found one already perfected by Keats. Used it without openly crediting him. This fits Eliot’s own famous line that: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” Eliot may have been “stealing” respectfully.

The essay shows that Eliot’s relationship with Romanticism was more complicated than his attacks suggest. Over time:
Eliot admitted he had been too harsh on Keats.
He later called Keats “a great poet”.
He praised Keats’s letters as intellectually profound.

Baker argues that Eliot’s critique of Romanticism was partly strategic—a way to push readers toward modern poetry—rather than a total rejection.

Keats and Eliot actually shared core beliefs:
Poetry should unite thought and feeling.
Meaning should be embodied in physical images. Poetry should create new wholes from mixed experience. Imagination reconciles opposites.

Baker’s essay argues that T.S. Eliot’s idea of “unified sensibility” may owe more to John Keats than Eliot ever publicly admitted — and that Porphyro’s rose quietly blooms at the heart of Eliot’s modernist criticism.

—Anonymous participant

John Crowe Ransom’s essay “Poets Without Laurels” says modernity’s division-of-labor landscape of a highly specialized work force naturally pushes poetry into niche obscurity. Attending a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, we do not really recognize that as poetry—it belongs to a more specialized category and whatever now occupies the category “poetry” for modern readers is not allowed to sound like Keats, Tennyson, or Lorenz Hart. When any art is defined by what it isn’t (“we can’t write like Byron anymore,” says Ransom in this same essay—it “dates” the poet who tries) it won’t be long before we don’t know what that art is. The original should always be sought, but absolute originality is impossible—we MUST be influenced by the past. If we stop trying to write poetry, which, to the amazement of everyone, is the Modernist agenda, we escape the past, we are 100% original, but we are essentially like an astronaut lost in space, a terrible situation which poets like Delmore Schwartz felt acutely. Ironically, the prison of Modernist poetry has the poet thinking of all kinds of ways to escape that prison and we can see how Schwartz tortured himself in this manner: I’ll use Freud! I’ll use Marx! I’ll use my estrangement from “modern” society!” The subjects multiply in a kind of desperation as poetry—what the public had always understood as poetry—loses the air (and every delicious odor) from the past. The poet shouldn’t panic, however. Schwartz did, because he belonged, yet did not belong, to the flesh and blood Modernist cabal in mid-century New York. A sorry fate. Almost as bad as it would have been for Keats, had he been born into a fortune.

—Thomas Graves

The article “Delmore Schwartz and the Modern Complaint” discusses Schwartz’s critique of modern poetry, particularly T.S. Eliot’s ideas. Schwartz argues that modern poetry’s obscurity stems from poets feeling isolated from society, which values materialism (e.g., banks, insurance) over poetry. He disagrees with Eliot’s notion that modern life’s complexity necessitates complex poetry, saying this oversimplifies the issue. Schwartz believes poetry should connect with society, but modern life’s focus on non-poetic aspects isolates poets. The author critiques Schwartz’s arguments, suggesting he’s projecting self-pity onto modern poetry’s challenges.

𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘻 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘶𝘱 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺. 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥, 𝘰𝘧 𝘯𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩, 𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘒𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦. 𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘒𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘴. 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦—𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘶𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺—𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦—𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴: 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘻 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺 (𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵) 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘦—𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘺 (𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘢𝘺) 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩, 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘶𝘯, 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦, 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵 (𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥) 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳. (From “Delmore Schwartz and the Modern Complaint”)

—Anonymous participant

What Eliot says is prima facie false. How could poetry be “regarded hitherto as the impossible” for poets who had hitherto not lived in “an industrial city in America.” It is a truism to say new industrial landscapes will become topics of new poems. Well of course! The cabal of “Modernists” prided themselves on what was dull and inevitable. You still need to be a good poet, no matter what hill, street corner, or exotic locale you use.

—Thomas Graves

T.S. Eliot said that “I learned that the sort of material that I had, the sort of experience that an adolescent had had, in an industrial city in America, could be the material for poetry; and that the source of new poetry might be found in what had been regarded hitherto as the impossible, the sterile, the intractably 𝐮𝐧𝐩𝐨𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜”.

From Baudelaire, Eliot learned that modern city life—even its ugly, dirty, and depressing parts—could be poetry. Things like crowds, decay, boredom, and moral darkness were usually considered unfit for poetry, but Baudelaire showed that these could be powerful poetic material. He also showed that poetry could mix realistic details with dreamlike or ghostly elements, placing the ordinary next to the strange or fantastic.

—Anonymous participant

This is a Modernist trope: poetry using “unpoetic sources.” This flies in the face of what Poe said in his “Philosophy of Composition,” where he says the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic there is. Poe was more scientific than the Modernists. In this instance, it might seem to us that Poe is too narrow in his assertion. But Poe is correct and the Modernist is wrong. There is a poetic scale, obviously. One can argue about the most “poetical topic,” of course, but the awareness of a scale and the argument is scientific and a good thing. Merely lowering the public’s taste in order to produce poetry from “unpoetic sources” is nothing but bufoonery. Baudelaire wrote fine poetry based on the lurid and the exotic, and there is a “street sublimity” of which all are familiar. Poe helped expand poetic sensibility by introducing the Gothic, the cinematic, the frightening, prior to Baudelaire. But this isn’t quite the same thing as merely using “unpoetic sources.” Art still requires art. Eliot using 20th century war to replicate Dante’s Inferno is actually a hackneyed idea. The Modernists pursued the notion that “modern life” was a kind of hell, but Delmore Schwartz called out Eliot on this point. Eliot said poetry must be “difficult” because “modern life” was “difficult.” But this is actually ahistorical and specious, typical of Modernist thinking. Schwartz asked simply, “Why?” Why does poetry need to be “difficult?” Because working at Lloyd’s was “difficult?” Because it is “difficult” for Eliot to read Dante? A close examination will reveal the shallowness, the easy assumptions, the mopey self-pity, of the Modernist experiment. Eliot wrote some lovely lyrics, but 100 years on, they look more and more Victorian than “modern”—whatever that loaded term is ultimately supposed to mean.

—Thomas Graves

I agree with you when you state that “T.S. was great at explaining things.” His long introduction, in which he admits his ignorance of Dante in a manner that nonetheless remains charming, demonstrates this clearly.

T.S. Eliot’s “A Talk on Dante” begins with his explanation that he will speak informally about Dante’s influence, rather than lecturing. He defends against potential egoism by framing this as modesty, given his non-expert status, and avoids quoting Dante in Italian out of respect.

Eliot reflects on his long engagement with Dante, starting forty years prior when he read Dante in prose translation and memorized passages. He has felt adequately prepared to discuss Dante for twenty years.

He then discusses the poet’s role in extracting poetry from seemingly “unpoetic” sources and acknowledges his debt to Baudelaire, referencing lines from “Les Fleurs du Mal”. Writing about a great poet is an act of gratitude, though his contribution is modest.

Eliot broadens the discussion to debts poets owe each other: those who suggest methods, those from whom lines are borrowed, and those who set standards for poetic virtue (Villon, Sappho). Appreciating great poets like Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, and Virgil is a lifetime task.

Eliot discusses borrowing lines from Dante to evoke scenes and relate the medieval Inferno to modern life, citing “The Waste Land”. He connects his intentions in “The Waste Land” to those in “Little Gidding,” which he intended to be a canto of the Inferno or Purgatorio, presenting a parallel, by contrast, between Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio and a hallucinated scene after an air raid. His method differed: he borrowed and adapted only a few phrases, because he was imitating Dante.

Eliot addresses the challenge of approximating Dante’s terza rima in English, noting English is less suited to rhyming than Italian. He adopted a simple alternation of unrhymed masculine and feminine terminations. He believes rhymed terza rima is less unsatisfactory for translations of the Divine Comedy than blank verse. He worries about the shifts and twists needed to fit Dante’s words into English rhyme, and no verse demands greater literalness in translation than Dante’s. He doesn’t know if his substitute for rhyme would be tolerable in a long original poem in English, but he knows he should not find enough time to write it.

—Anonymous participant

T.S. was great at explaining things (his long introduction, in which he admits ignorance of Dante in a way that manages to be charming shows this nicely) but he really was basically full of shit, as the whole “modernist” movement actually was. Whether Pound’s ridiculous Criticism (found in failed school textbooks written in middle age), Williams’ boring free verse, Eliot’s nasty assaults on Shelley and Poe, or Charles Olson’s silly “breath” theories, Modernism was merely an empty movement of the “new” which built nothing of substance, and spent most of its energy on damning great works of the past. Dante was amazing, but no one needed Eliot (who slighted Milton and didn’t know Italian) to tell them that.

—Thomas Graves

In “A Talk on Dante,” T.S. Eliot reflects on Dante’s profound influence on poetry and culture. Eliot begins by disclaiming expertise and setting a modest tone. He emphasizes that the true debt to Dante lies not in direct borrowings or adaptations, but in his shaping of thought, his view of life, and the philosophy and theology within the Divine Comedy.
Eliot highlights two key lessons from Dante: first, that a poet should be the servant, not the master, of language; and second, Dante’s unparalleled width of emotional range, capturing the spectrum from depravity to beatific vision. He argues that Dante’s achievement lies in his ability to articulate the inarticulate, expanding the possibilities of language and perception for all. Eliot sees Dante as a uniquely “European” poet, transcending provincial boundaries and offering lessons applicable to poets in any language. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of craft, speech, and the exploration of sensibility, all of which are exemplified in Dante’s work.

“A Talk On Dante” by T.S. Eliot (first page as quoted by Anonymous participant)

“May I explain first why I have chosen, not to deliver a lecture about Dante, but to talk informally about his influence on myself? What might appear egotism, in doing this, I present as modesty; and the modesty which it pretends to be is merely prudence. I am in no way a Dante scholar; and my general knowledge of Italian is such, that on this occasion, out of respect to the audience and Dante himself, I shall refrain from quoting him in Italian. And I do not feel I have anything more to contribute, on the subject of Dante’s poetry, than I put, years ago, into a brief essay. As I explained in the original preface to that essay, I read Dante only with a prose translation beside the text. Forty years ago I began to puzzle out the Divine Comedy in this way; and when I thought I had grasped the meaning of the passage which especially delighted me, I committed it to memory; so that, for some years, I was able to recite a large part of one canto or another to myself, lying in bed or on a railway journey. Heaven knows what it would have sounded like, had I recited it aloud; but it was by this means that I steeped myself in Dante’s poetry. And now it is twenty years since I set down all that my meager attainments qualified me to say about Dante. But I thought it not uninteresting to myself, and possibly to others, to try to record in what my own debt to Dante consists. I do not think I can explain everything, even to myself; but as I still, after forty years, regard his poetry as the most persistent and deepest influence upon my own verse, I should like to establish at least some of the reason for it. Perhaps confessions by poets,” [here the page ends] -TS Eliot

—Anonymous participant post in T.S.Eliot FB group