Gerontion
Encyclopedia
"Gerontion" is a poem by T. S. Eliot
that was first published in 1920. The work relates the opinions and impressions of a gerontic, or elderly man, through a dramatic monologue
which describes Europe
after World War I
through the eyes of a man who has lived the majority of his life in the 19th Century. . Eliot considered using this already published poem as a preface
to The Waste Land
, but decided to keep it as an independent poem. Along with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
and The Waste Land
, and other works published by Eliot in the early part of his career, Gerontion discusses themes of religion
, sexuality
, and other general topics of Modernist poetry
.
, editing The Egoist
, and trying to publish poetry. Eliot had published in 1920 Ara Vos Prec, a limited printed work that collected his early poems including Gerontion.
Two earlier versions of the poem can be found, the original typescript of the poem as well as that version with comments by Ezra Pound
. In the typescript, the name of the poem is "Gerousia", referring to the name of the Council of the Elders at Sparta
. Pound, who was living in London, England in 1919, acted as Eliot's editor and influenced many of his works. When Eliot considered publishing the poem as the opening part of The Waste Land
, Pound discouraged him from doing so saying, "I do not advise printing Gerontion as preface. One don't miss it at all as the thing now stands. To be more lucid still, let me say that I advise you NOT to print Gerontion as prelude". The lines were never added to the text and remained an individual poem.
play Measure for Measure
) which states:
The poem itself is a dramatic monologue
by an elderly character that critics believe to be an older version of J. Alfred Prufrock
. The use of pronouns such as "us" and "I" regarding the speaker and a member of the opposite sex as well as the general discourse in lines 53-58, in the opinion of Anthony David Moody, presents the same sexual themes that face Prufrock, only this time they meet with the body of an older man. The poem contains six stanza
s of free verse
describing the relationship between the narrator and the world around him, ending with a couplet that declares,
which describes the monologue as the production of the "dry brain," of the narrator in the "dry season" of his age. Hugh Kenner
suggests that these "tenants" are the voices of The Waste Land and that Eliot is describing the method of the poem's narrative by saying that the speaker uses several different voices to express the impressions of Gerontion. Kenner also suggests that the poem resembles a portion of a Jacobean play as it relates its story in fragmented form and lack of a formal plot.
from the viewpoint of the Modernist individual with various references to the Incarnation and salvation. Childs believes that the poem moves from Christmas Day in line 19: "in the Juvescence of the year," to the Crucifixion
in line 21 as it speaks of "Depraved May" and "flowering Judas". He argues that Gerontion contemplates the "paradoxical recovery of freedom through slavery and grace through sin". In line 20, the narrator refers to Jesus as "Christ the tiger", which emphasizes judgment rather than compassion, according to Jewel Spears Brooker in Mystery and Escape:T.S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism.
Peter Sharpe states that "Gerontion" is the poem that shows Eliot "taking on the mantle of his New England
Puritan
forbears" as Gerontion views his life as the product of sin. Sharpe suggests that Christ appears to Gerontion as a scourge because he understands that he must reject the "dead world" in order to obtain the salvation offered by Christianity. However, other critics disagree; Russell Kirk believes that the poem is "a description of life devoid of faith, drearily parched, it is cautionary". Marion Montgomery claims that Gerontion's "problem is that he can discover no vital presence in the sinful shell of his body".
In The American T.S. Eliot, Eric Whitman Sigg describes the poem as "a portrait of religious disillusion and despair", and suggests that the poem, like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", explores the relationship between action and inaction and their consequences. To this, Alfred Kazin adds that Eliot, especially in "Gerontion" shows that "it is easier for God to devour us than for us to partake of Him in a seemly spirit.". To Kazin, it is religion, not faith that Eliot describes through the narrative of "Gerontion", and that religion is important not because of its spirituality but because of "the 'culture' it leaves". Kazin suggests that in lines 33-36 the poem attempts to show how Elliot tells his generation that history is "nothing but human depravity:
Nasreen Ayaz argues that in the fourth movement of the poem, Gerontion shows that his loss of faith in Christianity has resulted in an emotional sterility to go along with the physical. In that stanza he remembers a former mistress and regrets that he no longer has the ability to interact with her on a physical level. The "closer contact" sought by the narrator represents both the physical longing of intimacy as well as the emotional connection he previously had with the female described in the poem.
In lines 17-19, Gerontion alludes to the Pharisees statement to Christ in Matthew 12:38 when they say "Master, we would see a sign from thee." The narrator of the poem uses these words in a different manner:
James Longenbach argues that these lines show that Gerontion is unable to extract the spiritual meaning of the Biblical text because he is unable to understand words in a spiritual sense: "Gerontion's words have no metaphysical buttressing, and his language is studded with puns, words within words. The passage on history is a series of metaphors that dissolve into incomprehensibility".
Ian Duncan MacKillop in F.R. Leavis argues that impotence is a pretext of the poem the same way that embarrassment is the pretext of "Portrait of a Lady
". He argues that the narrator writes each line of the poem with an understanding that he is unable to fulfill any of his sexual desires. Gelpi, in A Coherent Splendor: An American Poetic Renaissance also states that the poem is centered upon the theme of impotence, arguing that old age brings the poet "not wisdom but confirmed decrepitude and impotence." He also argues that this theme continues into Eliot's later works Ash Wednesday
and Four Quartets
. To Sharpe, the inability of the narrator to carry out his sexual desires leads him to "humiliated arrogance" and the "apprehension of Judgement without the knowledge of God's mercy.
In lines 59-60, the speaker explains that he has lost his physical senses due to his age:
Marion Montgomery, writing in T. S. Eliot: an Essay on the American Magus, equates the loss of these senses with the mindset that controls the narrative of the poem. Gerontion has lost the ability to partake in the same sexual endeavors that face Nathaniel Hawthorne
's hero in "Young Goodman Brown
", yet Montgomery believes he has "turned from innocent hope to pursue significance in the dark forces of the blood". Gerontion's exploration of sinful pleasures takes place in his mind, according to Montgomery, as he can "discover no vital presence in the sinful shell of his body".
and Charles Evered
, of novels by Max Frisch
, and of albums by bands such as Waysted
. Rock singer Fish
entitled his first solo album Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
.
Some commentators believe that James Jesus Angleton
took the phrase from this poem when he described the confusion and strange loop
s of espionage and counter-intelligence, such as the Double Cross System
, as a "wilderness of mirrors". It thence entered and has since become commonplace in the vocabulary of writers of spy novels or of popular historical writing about espionage. It was the title of an episode of the television series JAG where the protagonist is subjected to disinformation
.
Another prominent line in the poem, "In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas/To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk," is the origin of the title of Katherine Anne Porter
's first collection of short stories, Flowering Judas and Other Stories (1930).
's views. In Eliot's doctoral dissertation, later published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, Eliot explores Bradley's philosophy in order to determine how the mind relates to reality. By relying on Bradley, Eliot is able to formulate his own skepticism and states: "Everything, from one point of view, is subjective; and everything, from another point of view is objective; and there is no absolute point of view from which a decision may be pronounced." In terms of poetic structure, Eliot was influenced by Jacobean dramatists like Thomas Middleton that relied on blank verse in their dramatic monologues. Lines within the poems are connected to the works of a wide range of writers, including A. C. Benson
, Lancelot Andrews, and Henry Adams's The Education of Henry Adams
.
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
that was first published in 1920. The work relates the opinions and impressions of a gerontic, or elderly man, through a dramatic monologue
Dramatic monologue
M. H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:-Types of monologues:One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is the Romantic poets...
which describes Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
through the eyes of a man who has lived the majority of his life in the 19th Century. . Eliot considered using this already published poem as a preface
Preface
A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...
to The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
, but decided to keep it as an independent poem. Along with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked the beginning of...
and The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
, and other works published by Eliot in the early part of his career, Gerontion discusses themes of religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
, and other general topics of Modernist poetry
Modernist poetry
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature in the English language, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases of the critic setting the...
.
History
Eliot was working on the poem after the end of World War One when Europe was undergoing changes as old systems of government and international relations were being replaced. During that time, Eliot was working at Lloyds BankLloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank Plc was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1765 until its merger into Lloyds TSB in 1995; it remains a registered company but is currently dormant. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies...
, editing The Egoist
The Egoist (periodical)
The Egoist was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to "recognise no taboos," and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses...
, and trying to publish poetry. Eliot had published in 1920 Ara Vos Prec, a limited printed work that collected his early poems including Gerontion.
Two earlier versions of the poem can be found, the original typescript of the poem as well as that version with comments by Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
. In the typescript, the name of the poem is "Gerousia", referring to the name of the Council of the Elders at Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...
. Pound, who was living in London, England in 1919, acted as Eliot's editor and influenced many of his works. When Eliot considered publishing the poem as the opening part of The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
, Pound discouraged him from doing so saying, "I do not advise printing Gerontion as preface. One don't miss it at all as the thing now stands. To be more lucid still, let me say that I advise you NOT to print Gerontion as prelude". The lines were never added to the text and remained an individual poem.
The poem
"Gerontion" opens with an epigraph (from Shakespeare'sWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
play Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...
) which states:
- Thou hast nor youth nor age
- But as it were an after dinner sleep
- Dreaming of both.
The poem itself is a dramatic monologue
Dramatic monologue
M. H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:-Types of monologues:One of the most important influences on the development of the dramatic monologue is the Romantic poets...
by an elderly character that critics believe to be an older version of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked the beginning of...
. The use of pronouns such as "us" and "I" regarding the speaker and a member of the opposite sex as well as the general discourse in lines 53-58, in the opinion of Anthony David Moody, presents the same sexual themes that face Prufrock, only this time they meet with the body of an older man. The poem contains six stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
s of free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
describing the relationship between the narrator and the world around him, ending with a couplet that declares,
- Tenants of the house
- Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."
which describes the monologue as the production of the "dry brain," of the narrator in the "dry season" of his age. Hugh Kenner
Hugh Kenner
William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
suggests that these "tenants" are the voices of The Waste Land and that Eliot is describing the method of the poem's narrative by saying that the speaker uses several different voices to express the impressions of Gerontion. Kenner also suggests that the poem resembles a portion of a Jacobean play as it relates its story in fragmented form and lack of a formal plot.
Themes
Many of the themes within "Gerontion" are present throughout Eliot's later works, especially within The Waste Land. This is especially true of the internal struggle within the poem and the narrator's "waiting for rain". Time is also altered by allowing past and present to be superimposed, and a series of places and characters connected to various cultures are introduced.Religion
To Donald J. Childs, the poem attempts to present the theme of ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
from the viewpoint of the Modernist individual with various references to the Incarnation and salvation. Childs believes that the poem moves from Christmas Day in line 19: "in the Juvescence of the year," to the Crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
in line 21 as it speaks of "Depraved May" and "flowering Judas". He argues that Gerontion contemplates the "paradoxical recovery of freedom through slavery and grace through sin". In line 20, the narrator refers to Jesus as "Christ the tiger", which emphasizes judgment rather than compassion, according to Jewel Spears Brooker in Mystery and Escape:T.S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism.
Peter Sharpe states that "Gerontion" is the poem that shows Eliot "taking on the mantle of his New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
forbears" as Gerontion views his life as the product of sin. Sharpe suggests that Christ appears to Gerontion as a scourge because he understands that he must reject the "dead world" in order to obtain the salvation offered by Christianity. However, other critics disagree; Russell Kirk believes that the poem is "a description of life devoid of faith, drearily parched, it is cautionary". Marion Montgomery claims that Gerontion's "problem is that he can discover no vital presence in the sinful shell of his body".
In The American T.S. Eliot, Eric Whitman Sigg describes the poem as "a portrait of religious disillusion and despair", and suggests that the poem, like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", explores the relationship between action and inaction and their consequences. To this, Alfred Kazin adds that Eliot, especially in "Gerontion" shows that "it is easier for God to devour us than for us to partake of Him in a seemly spirit.". To Kazin, it is religion, not faith that Eliot describes through the narrative of "Gerontion", and that religion is important not because of its spirituality but because of "the 'culture' it leaves". Kazin suggests that in lines 33-36 the poem attempts to show how Elliot tells his generation that history is "nothing but human depravity:
- After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
- History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
- And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
- Guides us by vanities.
Nasreen Ayaz argues that in the fourth movement of the poem, Gerontion shows that his loss of faith in Christianity has resulted in an emotional sterility to go along with the physical. In that stanza he remembers a former mistress and regrets that he no longer has the ability to interact with her on a physical level. The "closer contact" sought by the narrator represents both the physical longing of intimacy as well as the emotional connection he previously had with the female described in the poem.
In lines 17-19, Gerontion alludes to the Pharisees statement to Christ in Matthew 12:38 when they say "Master, we would see a sign from thee." The narrator of the poem uses these words in a different manner:
- Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
- The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
- Swaddled with darkness.
James Longenbach argues that these lines show that Gerontion is unable to extract the spiritual meaning of the Biblical text because he is unable to understand words in a spiritual sense: "Gerontion's words have no metaphysical buttressing, and his language is studded with puns, words within words. The passage on history is a series of metaphors that dissolve into incomprehensibility".
Sexuality
The narrator of the poem discusses sexuality throughout the text, spending several lines, including lines 57-58 where he says:- I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
- Since what is kept must be adulterated?.
Ian Duncan MacKillop in F.R. Leavis argues that impotence is a pretext of the poem the same way that embarrassment is the pretext of "Portrait of a Lady
Portrait of a Lady (poem)
Portrait of a Lady is a poem by T. S. Eliot, first published in September 1915 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, March 1916 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, in February 1917 in The New Poetry: An Anthology, and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other...
". He argues that the narrator writes each line of the poem with an understanding that he is unable to fulfill any of his sexual desires. Gelpi, in A Coherent Splendor: An American Poetic Renaissance also states that the poem is centered upon the theme of impotence, arguing that old age brings the poet "not wisdom but confirmed decrepitude and impotence." He also argues that this theme continues into Eliot's later works Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday, in the calendar of Western Christianity, is the first day of Lent and occurs 46 days before Easter. It is a moveable fast, falling on a different date each year because it is dependent on the date of Easter...
and Four Quartets
Four Quartets
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral...
. To Sharpe, the inability of the narrator to carry out his sexual desires leads him to "humiliated arrogance" and the "apprehension of Judgement without the knowledge of God's mercy.
In lines 59-60, the speaker explains that he has lost his physical senses due to his age:
- I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
- How should I use them for your closer contact?
Marion Montgomery, writing in T. S. Eliot: an Essay on the American Magus, equates the loss of these senses with the mindset that controls the narrative of the poem. Gerontion has lost the ability to partake in the same sexual endeavors that face Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
's hero in "Young Goodman Brown
Young Goodman Brown
"Young Goodman Brown" is a short story by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story takes place in 17th century Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that humanity exists in a state of depravity, exempting those who are born in...
", yet Montgomery believes he has "turned from innocent hope to pursue significance in the dark forces of the blood". Gerontion's exploration of sinful pleasures takes place in his mind, according to Montgomery, as he can "discover no vital presence in the sinful shell of his body".
Other prominent lines
The phrase "wilderness of mirrors" from the poem has been alluded to by many other writers and artists. It has been used as the titles of plays by Van BadhamVan Badham
Van Badham is an Australian writer. A playwright and novelist, she writes dramas and comedies.-Early life:Van Badham was born Vanessa Badham in Sydney in 1978 . Her mother and father worked in the New South Wales gaming and track industry, with her father eventually working for the registered club...
and Charles Evered
Charles Evered
Charles Evered is an American-born playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Evered grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, the fifth child of Marie and Charles J. Evered...
, of novels by Max Frisch
Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...
, and of albums by bands such as Waysted
Waysted
Waysted are a heavy metal band formed by UFO bassist Pete Way and Scottish rocker Fin Muir in 1983. Recruiting Frank Noon , Ronnie Kayfield and Paul Raymond, Waysted signed to Chrysalis Records and released Vices in 1983....
. Rock singer Fish
Fish (singer)
Derek William Dick, better known as Fish, is a Scottish progressive rock singer, lyricist and occasional actor, best known as the former lead singer of Marillion.-Biography:...
entitled his first solo album Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors was the first solo album that rock singer Fish released after he departed Marillion in 1988. Although the recordings for this album finished as early as June 1989, EMI Records decided to delay the release until early 1990, to avoid collision with Marillion's album...
.
Some commentators believe that James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton was chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975...
took the phrase from this poem when he described the confusion and strange loop
Strange loop
A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started.Strange loops may involve self-reference and paradox...
s of espionage and counter-intelligence, such as the Double Cross System
Double Cross System
The Double Cross System, or XX System, was a World War II anti-espionage and deception operation of the British military intelligence arm, MI5. Nazi agents in Britain - real and false - were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast...
, as a "wilderness of mirrors". It thence entered and has since become commonplace in the vocabulary of writers of spy novels or of popular historical writing about espionage. It was the title of an episode of the television series JAG where the protagonist is subjected to disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
.
Another prominent line in the poem, "In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas/To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk," is the origin of the title of Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim...
's first collection of short stories, Flowering Judas and Other Stories (1930).
Sources
There is a connection between Gerontion and Eliot's understanding of F. H. BradleyF. H. Bradley
Francis Herbert Bradley, OM, was a British idealist philosopher.- Life :Bradley was born at Clapham, Surrey, England . He was the child of Charles Bradley, an evangelical preacher, and Emma Linton, Charles's second wife. A. C. Bradley was his brother...
's views. In Eliot's doctoral dissertation, later published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, Eliot explores Bradley's philosophy in order to determine how the mind relates to reality. By relying on Bradley, Eliot is able to formulate his own skepticism and states: "Everything, from one point of view, is subjective; and everything, from another point of view is objective; and there is no absolute point of view from which a decision may be pronounced." In terms of poetic structure, Eliot was influenced by Jacobean dramatists like Thomas Middleton that relied on blank verse in their dramatic monologues. Lines within the poems are connected to the works of a wide range of writers, including A. C. Benson
A. C. Benson
Arthur Christopher Benson was an English essayist, poet, and author and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge....
, Lancelot Andrews, and Henry Adams's The Education of Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams , in his later years, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th century educational theory and practice. In 1907, Adams began privately...
.