Go to Page Number Go to Page Number
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Listener, 24 (28 Nov 1940) 773-74

Eliot: There is more than one way in which that phrase, “the writer as artist,” can be interpreted, so I want to be clear from the beginning what I am talking about and what I am not. I don’t think that you can divide writers sharply into two kinds, those who are artists and those who are not: I don’t know of any way in which they could be so divided. No more would I divide readers into those who read for mere pastime and those who read for information and those who read in order to enjoy literary art: we all read different things for different purposes at different times, or even the same things for different purposes at different times. You cannot distinguish the artist from the ordinary “writer” simply by his conscious intention. He always has some other purpose in writing than merely to create “art”; he has something he wants to convey, and the value of what he writes is both in what he has to say and how he says it. You can’t tell the artist from other writers simply by his method of working or the amount of trouble he takes: some people take much more trouble to produce bad writing than others to produce good. The artist is a man who knows when he has done the best job he can, while the man without the gift may either leave a job half finished, or else go on at it far too long – and every writer has to find out for himself when his job isfinished. And above all I don’t want you to think of the literary artist as a man who writes for a select few, either deliberately or because he can’t help himself. There are good reasons why some great writers should have to wait before they are widely read or recognised: people who are ahead of their time, in any vocation, are apt to have difficulties in getting their work accepted, and to be appreciated while living only by a few. But I never heard of a writer of genius who preferred to have only a small number of readers; he is more apt to wonder why his sales are not bigger than they are. So what I want to talk about is not how to classify writers into those who are artists and those who are not, but the function of the writer as artist, in so far as he is an artist.

I believe that the writer as artist has a very vital social function, a social usefulness which goes far beyond the number of readers who consciously appreciate his artistry, which goes beyond the circle of those who read his 132work at all, which extends even, in time, to those people for whom he becomes merely a name on a public monument. He is useful, in the degree of his greatness, to all those who speak the same language, even if they never hear of him. As an artist, his job has been to use the right words in the right order: that is, he helps to prevent the language from deteriorating or from getting ossified; and I should like to make clear, if I can, why this is a matter of vital importance for everybody.

A great language – and English is a great language – is a marvellous social creation, dependent upon innumerable factors: history has not produced more than a very small number of great languages. A living language, one that people are using in all their daily affairs, is constantly changing: for every generation lives in a rather different world from its predecessor; it has new things and new situations to deal with, and it thinks and feels about them in a new way. But what people do not always remember is that a living language, being alive, can die.

Hawkins...

Published By:   Faber & Faber logo    Johns Hopkins University Press

Access