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Times Literary Supplement, 980 (28 Oct 1920) 703

Sir, – I hope that I am not too late in raising one or two questions suggested by the important article in your issue of September 30 entitled “A French Romantic.” 1 I have been delayed by personal preoccupations; I am excused for writing now, if I am excused at all, by the importance of the subject, the interest of the article, and the fact that no other correspondent has anticipated me.

I willingly concede the point, contested by Mr. Cyril Falls, that M. Maurras is a “romantic.” 2 M. Maurras has been handled very competently by M. Julien Benda in an appendix to Belphegor. 3 So much for M. Maurras. It is in attempting to apprehend your critic’s definitions of the terms “romanticism” and “classicism” that my intellect is confused and my serenity disturbed. We are told that Lamartine “floundered in romanticism” partly because “the sense of the mystery of things remained with him.” 4 Later we learn that “Romanticism is an excess of emotion”; but we are not informed what balance can be struck between excess of emotion (which is surely a fault) and a sense of the mystery of things (which cannot be altogether a bad sense to have). The writer treats Romanticism on the whole with disapproval until he suddenly declares that the period of classical production in France was also “a great romantic period.” This period is not the seventeenth century, which is dismissed as a period of “formalism”: it is a period which is represented by the Cathedrals and by Jeanne d’Arc (but not, apparently, by Agnès Sorel). 5 I should be interested to know how the “cathedrals” are more classical, or more romantic either, than Vézelay, St. Benoît-sur-Loire, or Périgueux; but that is not the point: the point is, what is meant by applying bothterms to their elucidation? 6

I suggest that the difficulties which veil most critics’ theories of Romanticism (and I include such writers as Pierre Lasserre and Irving Babbitt) are largely due to two errors. 7 One is that the critic applies the same term “romantic” to epochs and to individual artists, not perceiving that it assumes a difference of meaning; and the other is that he assumes that the terms “romantic” and “classic” are mutually exclusive and even antithetical, without actually enforcing this exclusiveness in the examination of particular works of art.

Another difficulty is that these writers do not always appear to distinguish between definitionsand propositions. Again, your critic introduces unexpected terms which are not defined. I cite “intellectual and emotional integrity,” “spiritual purpose,” and “larger integration.” The alternatives are to elaborate a rigidly deductive system, or to employ the terms “romantic” and “classic” merely as convenient historical tags, never stretching their meaning beyond the acceptance of the intelligent reader. And it would perhaps be beneficial if we employed both terms as little as possible, if we even forgot these terms altogether, and looked steadily for the intelligence and sensibility which each work of art contains.

I am, Sir, your obliged obedient servant, t. s. eliot

Published By:   Faber & Faber logo    Johns Hopkins University Press

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