The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 3: Literature, Politics, Belief, 1927-1929

A Commentary (Sept 1927)

The Monthly Criterion: A Literary Review, 6 (Sept 1927) 193-96

In a letter published in this issue, and in an editorial note in The Calendar, Mr. Bertram Higgins and Mr. D. R. Garman respectively take up a point raised in our June number. ¹ While these contributions do not seem to go very far toward clearing up the issues, it is a good thing that interest should be directed upon the meaning and use of the Protean term “classicism”; and we hope at a later date to organize some more general discussion of the matter.

Mr. Higgins indicates that he used the term “neoclassicism” in extension to denote certain writers here and abroad, and remarks that the term has been used in the same way by contributors to The Criterion. That may be so: but it is dangerous to use a term in extension which cannot be safely used in intension also.

“Neo-classicism” cannot have a definite meaning until “classicism” has a definite meaning. But there was never any age or group of people who professed “classicism” in the sense in which St. Thomas and his followers professed “Thomism.” One of the points to be cleared up is this: whether the term “classicism” can be used in England as it can be used in France; and whether, in either country, it can be applied strictly to literaryor artcriticism; or whether it has meaning only in relation to a view of life as a whole.

We are still puzzled to know why the policy of The Criterion, neo-classical or no, should be qualified as “repressive.” Mr. Garman says “it is possible that such criticism . . . could have a repressive influence by an over-insistence or an undue appreciation of the dogmas which support neo-classicism.” ² It is not clear to what dogmas he refers; but everybody, who insists at all, is apt to over-insist; and everyone, who believes in anything, must desire that some things should be altered or controlled. We could only “repress” a writer of genius by influencing him, and the repression consequently would take the form of the writer’s criticism of his own work. If there is any other repression, it is only in the sense in which Mr. Jack Dempsey is anxious to repress Mr. Gene Tunney. ³

We take the opportunity of expressing regret at the suspension of The Calendar. Were the demise of one literary review useful to the success of another, we should assume no mask of hypocrisy; but this is not at all the fact. Our complaint against most of our contemporaries is that they are so little interested in ideas that it is never worth while either to agree or disagree with them; but in The Calendarand The Adelphiwe have sometimes found, at least, a common ground for disagreement.

On the books with which Sir Edmund Gosse usually concerns himself, in his weekly causeries, one usually prefers to accept Sir Edmund’s opinions, along with his copious information, rather than bother to hold an opinion of one’s own. But in a recent essay on “Symbolist Poetry” Sir Edmund seems to have gone seriously wrong. ⁴

Some protest ought to be raised first against his dismissal of Jules Laforgue and Tristan Corbière as “eccentrics” (the last he calls “sheer eccentric” – one marvels why he has not called Rimbaud an “eccentric” too); and second against his statement that “the interesting French poetry of the end of last century (including apparently the poets just mentioned) . . . has had practically no influence at all on English metrical writers.” ⁵ The latter assertion goes to suggest that Sir Edmund Gosse is completely out of touch with modern poetry.

The International Festival of contemporary music at Frankfurt is described on another page. It was held in connexion with an exhibition: “Music in the Life of the Nations,” ethnological, historical and commercial, in which nearly all countries seem to have been represented except England. ⁶ It would be interesting to...