T. S. Eliot's Parisian Year

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. All translations from French are mine, with the exception of those from the letters of Verdenal and Alain-Fournier in The Letters of T. S. Eliot and newspaper accounts in Mailer’s chapter on the theft of the Mona Lisa. Close translations appear in quotation marks. Newspaper articles are documented in the text. 2. Eliot himself also wrote in the 1934 “A Commentary” that “[t]he predominance of Paris [in 1910–1911] . . . was incontestable” (451). 3. Valerie Eliot reveals that, “On the deaths of his mother and brother, in 1929 and 1947, TSE recovered his correspondence with them and burnt a good part of it, together with their side, thus removing the family record of his final school year, his student days at Harvard and the period in Paris” (Letters xv). She does not explain why he did so. 4. I challenge Gordon’s contention that “Paris did not change Eliot very much” and that he was disillusioned with the city by February 1911 (54–6). She offers little evidence for these statements and indeed interpolates the latter from several early poems; however, as we know, a writer’s invented characters do not necessarily reflect his/her own feelings, attitudes, or beliefs. 5. For example, E. J. H. Greene’s book (available only in French) T. S. Eliot et la France discusses the influence on his poetry of Laforgue, Rimbaud, Tailhade, Corbière, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Perse and on his prose of Gourmont, Benda, Maurras, Baudelaire, and Maritain. Grover Smith’s wide-ranging T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning identifies and explains various sources from French literature; John J. Soldo’s The Tempering of T. S. Eliot contains chapters on Laforgue and Baudelaire; and Piers Gray’s T. S. Eliot’s Intellectual and Poetic Development, 1909–1922 discusses Laforgue, Bergson, Benda, and Gautier. A number of essays explore the influence of a single French writer on Eliot, such as James Torrens’s “Charles Maurras and Eliot’s ‘New Life,’” Philip Le Brun’s “T. S. Eliot and Henri Bergson,” Michael Hancher’s “The Adventures of Tiresias: [Anatole] France, Gourmont, and Eliot,” while Paul Douglass presents an in-depth study of the influence of Bergson on Eliot in his book Bergson, Eliot, and American Literature. Chapter 1. “Un Présent Parfait” 1. He said in a speech given at Aix-en-Provence in 1947 that “I needed no master to arouse in me a passionate love of French poetry,” suggesting that it grew on its own rather than having been inspired by a professor (King’s College Library). 2. See Ricks’s Appendix D for an excellent collection of Eliot’s comments on a variety of subjects germane to this study, especially Section vi, “TSE on Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature, and on France and the French Symbolists” (399–409). 3. For example, in letters to Bertrand Russell of January 18 and May 23, 1916, one can see that she was indeed a force to be reckoned with; she attempts to enlist his aid in convincing Eliot to choose a career as a professor of philosophy—clearly her wish—rather than that of a poet. In the latter, she writes, “I am sure your influence in every way will confirm my son in his choice of philosophy as a life work. . . . I had hoped he would seek a University appointment next year. If he does not I shall feel regret. I have absolute faith in his Philosophy but not in the vers libre” (Letters 139; see also 131). 4. However, a note in The Letters of T. S. Eliot tells us that his first trip to London was in April 1911 (17), which may be erroneous, unless Eliot had ordered and received the London Baedeker prior to his departure. 5. Although the pension served dinner, Eliot may have eaten lunch at this little café or at the newly opened student restaurant nearby at 55 rue St-Jacques (as announced in the November 7 issue of Le Petit Parisien: 2). 6. According to the title page of the journal at the time of Eliot’s residence, its offices were located at 78, rue d’Assas (for correspondence and manuscript submission) and 31, rue Bonaparte, where visitors were received on Mondays from 10 a.m. until noon. The board of directors was made up of Jacques Copeau, André Ruyters, and Jean Schlumberger, with Pierre de Lanux as secretary. A yearly subscription...