The New Statesman, 30 (4 Feb 1928) 528-29
Sir, – I did not see Mr. Turner’s article in your paper to which Mr. Desmond MacCarthy replies in a letter in your number of January 21st. 1 But I have seen Mr. MacCarthy’s letter and have endeavoured to reconstruct the relevant parts of Mr. Turner’s article from that. As Mr. MacCarthy refers twice to the Criterion, I hope I may be permitted to comment on his letter.
Mr. Turner, it appears, observed that “our younger poets, writers and critics have all succumbed to influence from Paris,” and the use of the word “succumb” suggests that Mr. Turner considers this influence undesirable. Apparently Mr. Turner finds that our younger poets, etc., have consequently exalted the eighteenth century above all others. Mr. MacCarthy in his turn finds traces of Parisian influence in London, but not a trace of what he calls “eighteenth century reasonableness and respect for clarity”; Mr. MacCarthy then draws a distinction between “moral conviction,” toward which the Criterionappears to have striven, and “intellectual integrity,” which apparently the Criterionhas overlooked. As Mr. MacCarthy does not proceed to define what he means by either moral conviction or intellectual integrity, I am not in a position to argue with him. I would only point out that both Mr. Turner (again, judging only from Mr. MacCarthy’s letter) and Mr. MacCarthy himself seem to think this question of Parisian influence much more simple than it is, and especially with regard to the Criterion. Again, Mr. MacCarthy sees in the Criterionthe influence of three things which are supposed to be Parisian: Literary Nationalism, Neo-Thomism, and what he calls Rimbauism. I was not myself aware of any influence upon the Criterionwhich could be called Rimbauism, whatever that is. 2 As for Literary Nationalism, I may observe that the Criterionhas been far more international than any literary review in England, and perhaps more than any literary review published on the Continent. As for Neo-Thomism, I would remark that this is no longer limited to France. As for French influence in general, I should like to point out that the Criterionhas done its best to introduce into this country important foreign writers irrespective of their nationality. – Yours, etc.,
t. s. eliot
