The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 5: Tradition and Orthodoxy, 1934-1939

Mr. Eliot’s Virginian Lectures. To the Editor of The New English Weekly

The New English Weekly,4 (15 Mar 1934) 528

Sir, – I have read with keen interest Mr. Pound’s kindly note upon my Virginian lectures, in your columns; and I find myself in cordial agreement with the major part of what I am able to understand of it. ¹ What I do not understand include statements which, to me, have no meaning.

I agree with paragraphs 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, and 13, though not necessarily with every inference that might be drawn from them. ² Though I fail to see their relevance to the subject of Mr. Pound’s note, the truths contained are so important that no opportunity should be missed for repeating them.

I find that paragraph 4 has no meaning for me. That has sometimes been one’s experience with statements beginning with the words the fact is that. I am also a little surprised to find Mr. Pound, who does not, in his literary criticism, show any great deference towards that spectre, the “average man,” citing him as an authority in this context. ³

Paragraph 11 puzzles me a little. Many of us would admit that there has been and is great ethical weakness within organised Christianity. I do not know whom he means by the “(often subsidised) ecclesiastical bureaucrat.” ⁴

As for the second sentence of paragraph 14, ⁵ your readers may find some of these lacunae, and some of the statements which say either too much or too little, pointed out in an admirable review of this book by Mr. Edwin Muir in The Spectatorof March 9. ⁶

If Mr. Pound would rewrite paragraph 9 in Basic English, avoiding phrases like “when religion was real,” and “vital phenomena,” it might possibly turn out to be a statement which I could accept. ⁷ I do not understand paragraph 15, but I believe that it contains something which might be put in a form in which it would have some meaning for me. ⁸

t. s. eliot