The State of Eliot Criticism

REVIEWS 429 In some respects Rommel was a thoroughly typical Gennan, and not least in his politics. There were some Getman General Staff officers who opposed Hitler before 1939-not, in most cases, for moral reasons, but because they feared he was going to start a war which Germany could not win. There were other Gennans who opposed Hitler from higher motives. Rommel was in neither category. (Incidentally , he never belonged to the General Staff Corps.) He was one of the uncounted millions who supported Hitler as long as he was winning. He wrote to his wife in June, 1940, "The Fuehrer's visit was wonderful. . . . His whole face was radiant and I had to accompany him afterwards. I was the only divisional commander who did." But disillusionment came in time. It came, in fact, suddenly, in the last stages of the Battle of El Alamein. At the moment when Rommel's battle sense told him that he must retreat in order to save what was left of his army from destruction, Hitler, far away in Europe, sent him a signal forbidding him to yield an inch of ground. He obeyed, with the result that when he had to give way two days later his army was a remnant, which never took the offensive effectively again. His confidence in Hitler probably never recovered. This book tells us little about Rommel's share in the plotting against the Fuehrer. If there were any documents the Field Marshal was too wise to preserve them·. But readers of WheeIer-Bennett's The Nemesis of Power (a book which, though unnecessarily hostile to Rommel, serves as a corrective to the extreme pro-Rommel interpretation of this episode) know that he was certainly involved; though apparently he was not privy to the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. One could write about The Rommel Papers, and quote it, at indefinite length. But those who are interested in the mind of a great captain, in the military operations of the Second World War, or in the problem of modem Germany, should read it for themselves. They will find it rewarding. THE .sTATE OF ELIOT CRITICISM* WILLIAM BLISSETT The past few years have brought a flowering-a less friendly critic might call it a rash---of studies of Mr. T. S. Eliot's work. That of Mr. D. E. S. Maxwell is one of several dealing with the poetry and with the plays and essays as they bear on the poetry, and it will afford an opportunity for a general appraisal. Of the books to appear since F. O. Matthiessen's Achievement of *The Poetry of T. S. Eliot. By D. E. S. MAXWELL. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Lirn·ited [Toronto; British Book Service (Canada) Ltd.]. 1952. Pp. viii, 224. $4.25. 430 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY T. S. Eliot (New York, 1935; revised 1947), three are collections of essays by various writers. The one edited by March and Tambirnuttu is a pleasant set of reminiscences and personal greetings to the poet on his sixtieth birthday and has no critical pretensions. The other two, edited by Rajan and by Unger, are anthologies of reviews and articles which are valuable for the record but are essentially backward looking. If these collections were intended to be helpful to critics and scholars , it would seem that they have so far failed of their intention. Writers on Eliot for the most part pay not the slightest attention to one another. Miss Helen Gardner, for instance, acknowledges the help of Matthiessen, to be sure, and of Dr. Leavis but of hardly anyone else. Her Art of T. S. Eliot (London, 1949) is a literary book, full of good phrases and of valuable observations on versification and poetic form, but not attempting much explication of text or elucidation of idea. Its readers will be grateful for the suggestion that the Four Quartets are somehow an approximation to the Pindaric Ode; for the observation that Murder in the Cathedral shows "an almost Gnostic contempt for personality and its expression in acts"; and for the smile which she provokes at the expense of Mr. Eliot's "Platonic idea of an illiterate audience.') Miss Gardner is the...