“The taste of an adolescent writer is intense, but narrow: it is determined by personal needs. The kind of poetry that I needed, to teach me the use of my own voice, did not exist in English at all; it was only to be found in French”, Yeats (1940). In the Thirties: “Younger generations can hardly realize the intellectual desert of England and America during the first decade and more of this century · · · The predominance of Paris was incontestable. Poetry, it is true, was somewhat in eclipse; but there was a most exciting variety of ideas. Anatole France and Remy de Gourmont still exhibited their learning, and provided types of scepticism for younger men to be attracted by and to repudiate; Barrès was at the height of his influence, and of his rather transient reputation. Péguy, more or less Bergsonian and Catholic and Socialist, had just become important, and the young were further distracted by Gide and Claudel. Vildrac, Romains, Duhamel, experimented with verse which seemed hopeful, though it was always, I think, disappointing; something was expected of Henri Franck, the early deceased author of La Danse devant l’arche. At the Sorbonne, Faguet was an authority to be attacked violently; the sociologists, Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, held new doctrines; Janet was the great psychologist; at the Collège de France, Loisy enjoyed his somewhat scandalous distinction; and over all swung the spider-like figure of Bergson”, A Commentary in Criterion Apr 1934.
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
Pound to Harriet Monroe [May?] 1917: “The only thing I can see for strengthening the prose section of Poetry is a series of essays on French poets unknown to the Atlantic Monthly and the Great Generation of Pimps · · · Poetry could quite well do with essays on LaForgue, Corbiere, Tailhade, possibly Rimbaud, Jammes, possibly Elskamp, possibly a reminder of Mallarmé, Samain, Heredia. I would suggest that a series of this sort by me, Eliot and DeBosschere, would at least keep out a certain amount of slop.” A later letter, 26 Aug 1917, shows such an article had been commissioned from TSE: “Here is the first of the French articles [Pound’s own, on satirists]. Eliot is uncertain about his copy, undependable for anything at a given date. The work at the bank which at first seemed to leave him freer than teaching, now seems to use a great deal of his energy. It is a great waste.”
TSE on Gautier and his influence: “In the best of the slight verse of Gautier there is a satisfaction, a balance of inwards and form, which we do not find in Baudelaire”, Baudelaire (1930). “At a certain moment, my debt to him [Pound] was for his advice to read Gautier’s Emaux et Camées [Enamels and Cameos], to which I had not before paid any close attention”, Ezra Pound (1946). “These poems were largely influenced by Ezra Pound’s suggestion that one should study Théophile Gautier and take a rest from vers libre in regular quatrains”, T. S. Eliot Talks about His Poetry (1958). “the suggestion of writing quatrains was his. He put me on to Emaux et Camées · · · We studied Gautier’s poems and then we thought, ‘Have I anything to say in which this form will be useful?’ And we experimented. The form gave the impetus to the content”, Paris Review (1959). When TSE gave F. S. Flint a copy of René Taupin’s L’Influence du symbolisme français sur la poésie américaine (Paris, 1929; Berg), he corrected misquotations from Gautier: changing “visible” to “invisible” (217), “guerroyens” to “guerroyers” (218) and “douches o” to “douches à” (218).
Pound: “at a particular date in a particular room, two authors, neither engaged in picking the other’s pocket, decided that the dilutation of vers libre, Amygism, Lee Masterism, general floppiness had gone too far and that some counter-current must be set going · · · Remedy prescribed Emaux et Camées (or the Bay State Hymn Book). Rhyme and regular strophes. Results: Poems in Mr. Eliot’s second volume, not contained in his first · · · also H. S. Mauberley”, Harold Monro in Criterion July 1932 (collected in Polite Essays, 1937). Pound to William Carlos Williams, 12 Sept 1920: “Eliot is perfectly conscious of having imitated Laforgue, has worked to get away from it, and there is very little Laforgue in his Sweeney, or his Bleistein Burbank, or his Gerontion, or his Bay State hymn book” (The Whole Book of Psalms faithfully translated into English Metre, Cambridge, Mass., 1640).
TSE: “I think that the attention drawn to these French poets has been a very good thing for English verse. I think that the best of the younger poets to-day realise that it is impossible to ignore the discoveries of foreign poets, just as it is impossible for a good scientist to ignore what is going on abroad. So far as I can see, there is no poetry being written in France at present which is making any contribution whatever to the development of poetry; almost none of it is even readable. An infatuation with the French, therefore, would be as fatal as our natural insularity”, Modern Tendencies in Poetry (1920). See “A Beginner in 1908”, 1. A BREAK WITH TRADITION.
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
5. TSE’S PROFICIENCY IN FRENCH
To Edward J. H. Greene, 28 Nov 1947: “I took private lessons in French from Alain-Fournier in the course of which he also directed my reading in several directions.” To Jeanie McPherrin, 3 Oct 1935, recalling Highgate Junior School in 1916: “I found teaching French to children more difficult than any other subject. For instance, although I could usually get any irregular verb right when I was using it in a sentence, I had never got them by heart in paradigms, or whatever they are called, and I think my pupils sometimes thought that I was an imposter.”
Irving Babbitt to Dean Briggs of Harvard, recommending TSE for a Sheldon Fellowship, 27 Feb 1914: “He did unusually good work for me a few years ago in French 17” (Harvard Archives, UAIII 10.60).
Ottoline Morrell wrote in spring 1916 of TSE’s visiting Garsington with Bertrand Russell: “He is obviously very ignorant of England and imagines that it is essential to be highly polite and conventional and decorous, and meticulous. I tried to get him to talk more freely by talking French to him, as I thought he might feel freer doing so, but I don’t think it was a great success, although better than English. He speaks French very perfectly, slowly and correctly”, Morrell 1974 101–102. Thirty years later, Françoise de Castro recorded: “Il parle le français rapidement, avec un accent chantant qui abaisse les finales et roule doucement les ‘R’, ce qui me rappelle beaucoup plus l’accent des Orientaux que celui des Britanniques” [He speaks French rapidly, with a singing accent which sinks at the end, and softly rolls his “r”s which calls to my mind the accent rather of an Oriental than a Briton], Entretien avec T. S. Eliot, 23 Aug 1948 (ts, King’s).
Dora Mussey, Ilkley, Yorkshire, to Dr. D. H. S. Cranage, Cambridge University local lecture syndicate, 26 Oct 1916: “Mr. Eliot has only given us two lectures so far. His manner is not good. His delivery is very monotonous. His voice would not be strong enough for a large hall. But he is inexperienced, & even the second lecture showed improvement. He lectures from a ms., but he rarely looks at it. His matter is excellent, & he uses it in a very interesting way. He gives the impression of wide & thorough knowledge of his subject (Contemporary France). He is very fair-minded. He is friendly & easy in the class. There is nothing of the popular lecturer about him. But at the same time, I find people who know nothing of our present subject, follow him with interest. He has no Americanisms or accent · · · Mr. Eliot’s French is delightful” (Cambridge UL, BEMS 55/12; Iman Javadi, personal communication). TSE is not known to have recorded any of his poems in French. To the secretary of the British Institute in Paris, 3 Aug 1939: “As for lecturing in French, I have no experience of public speaking in that language, and should be obliged to have my lecture fully prepared and the style criticized by some French friend, and confine myself to reading the text.” Robert Halsband records TSE, over tea with John Hayward, on 10 Oct 1954: “French writers who knew English seldom bothered to speak it. I mentioned Voltaire; he said that in all his meetings with Gide, G had never spoken any English, though he had undoubtedly read a good deal in the language” (ts “Memorandum”, Columbia U.). Brigid Donovan, TSE’s secretary 1934–36, recalled: “His most remarkable physical
characteristic was his extraordinarily flat voice. He had acquired a perfect educated English accent—I don’t think any Englishman, nor an American either, could have guessed he was American by birth and childhood education, but he had overlooked the rise and fall that is particularly typical of English English speech. It may have been that he was confused by speaking French before changing over to an English accent” (Donovan).
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
Pound to Joyce, 19 Apr 1917, of Prufrock and Other Observations and the three French poems which appeared in the Little Review July 1917: “I hope to send you Eliot’s poems in a few weeks. He has burst out into scurrilous french during the past few weeks, too late for his book, which is in the press, but the gallicism should enrich the review. He is ‘just as bad’ as if he had been to Clongowes [Clongowes Wood College, Joyce’s school]. But it is perilous trying to manipulate a foreign language.” On 6 Nov 1923 TSE wrote to Paul Valéry that French spared him some of the embarrassment he felt writing English: “Quoique je n’ai jamais, hélas! bien parlé ou bien écrit en langue français je préfère l’employer en causant avec les personnes qui me sont sympathiques, parce que votre langue me donne une certaine liberté d’esprit et de sentiments que la langue anglaise me réfuse. En tout cas je me trouve moins gêné.” [Although I have never, alas! spoken the French language well or written it well, I prefer to use it in talking to people with whom I am in sympathy, because your language gives me a certain freedom of mind and feeling that the English language denies me. In any case, I find myself less awkward.]
To Kay Dick, 10 June 1943: “I have set a bad example in the way of publishing verse in French and I can only say in excuse that I did not publish very much of it and that I had submitted it to French criticism beforehand.” Lehmann records TSE’s answers to questions after a reading at Bryn Mawr in 1948: Q. “Do you think that the poet may resort to a foreign language if his own language fails him?” A. “The better he knows how to use his own language, the less he will have to use a foreign tongue, though it may happen. But then it is always a second help.”
On 3 Dec 1945, TSE wrote to Pierre Leyris, who was preparing a volume of French translations of TSE’s earlier poems: “I think the best title would probably be La Terre Gaste, précédé de quelques poèmes anciens [The Waste Land preceded by some old poems]. Only if you put in the French poem that John Hayward had [Vers pour la Foulque from Noctes Binanianæ], that dates from 1938 and therefore ancient hardly applies. But that is I think, the only one of the French poems which I would like to have included. I do not think that the others [from “Poems (1920)”] are good enough to take their place in such a small selection as this. You are quite at liberty to use that poem only I cannot provide you with a copy of it at the moment as the only copy I have is buried somewhere in a box of books, but I daresay Hayward would be very glad to type out a copy for you. It would need a few notes for which I could supply the material.”
In his interview published in Paris Review (1959), Donald Hall asked whether TSE had written any poems in French since those in his Collected Poems:
ELIOT: No, and I never shall. That was a very curious thing which I can’t altogether explain. At that period I thought I’d dried up completely. I hadn’t written anything for some time and was rather desperate. I started writing a few things in French and found I could, at that period. I think it was that when I was writing in French I didn’t take the poems so seriously, and that, not taking them seriously, I wasn’t so worried about not being able to write. I did these things as a sort of tour de force to see what I could do. That went on for some months. The best of them have been printed. I must say that Ezra Pound went through them, and Edmond Dulac, a Frenchman we knew in London, helped with them a bit. We left out some, and I suppose they disappeared completely. Then I suddenly began writing in English again and lost all desire to go on with French. I think it was just something that helped me get started again.
INTERVIEWER: Did you think at all about becoming a French symbolist poet like the two Americans of the last century?
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
ELIOT: Stuart Merrill and Vielé-Griffin. I only did that during the romantic year I spent in Paris after Harvard. I had at that time the idea of giving up English and trying to settle down and scrape along in Paris and gradually write French. But it would have been a foolish idea even if I’d been much more bilingual than I ever was, because, for one thing, I don’t think that one can be a bilingual poet. I don’t know of any case in which a man wrote great or even fine poems equally well in two languages. I think one language must be the one you express yourself in in poetry, and you’ve got to give up the other for that purpose. And I think that the English language really has more resources in some respects than the French. I think, in other words, I’ve probably done better in English than I ever would have in French even if I’d become as proficient in French as the poets you mentioned.
Edmund Dulac had designed the masks for Yeats’s Noh play At the Hawk’s Well, which TSE and Pound saw performed in Lady Cunard’s drawing-room on 2 Apr 1916. TSE repeated his acknowledgement to Dulac when inscribing Cyril Connolly’s copy of 1919, writing in it, probably in the 1960s: “This is an opportunity to record the fact that the French verses were vetted by Edmond Dulac” (U. Tulsa). In a testimonial dated 22 Aug 1918 (King’s), Dulac had praised TSE’s command of colloquial and literary French:
Connaissant M. T. S. Eliot depuis quelques années, j’ai eu plusieurs fois le plaisir de causer avec lui et de lire les nombreux poèmes qu’il a écrit en français. Je n’ai aucune hésitation à déclarer qu’il possède fort bien cette langue, et que, tout dans les tours de la conversation que dans les finesses de l’écriture il en connaît les subtilités à un rare degré.
[Knowing Mr. T. S. Eliot for some years, I have often had the pleasure of talking with him and of reading the many poems that he has written in French. I have no hesitation in declaring that he has a strong command of the language, and that in conversation as much as in the delicacies of writing, he knows its subtleties to a rare degree.]
Dulac was added as a “Further Appointment” to teach illustration in Pound’s prospectus for a College of Arts, Nov 1914. (For a slip in one of TSE’s French poems, see note to Lune de Miel 13.)
TSE to Amar Bhattacharyya, 22 June 1964: “I was moved to write in French after a period of drought during which I felt that I could not write at all. It was something to me to be able to be released in another language and after these few poems in French I found myself again beginning to write verse in English.” (“I suppose, | If you learn to speak a foreign language fluently, | So you can think in it—you feel yourself to be | Rather a different person when you’re talking it”, The Confidential Clerk I.)
“It is possible that to be completely bi-lingual would be a handicap to a man of letters: for to know two languages equally well makes complete intimacy with either more difficult”, A Commentary in Criterion Oct 1937. To H. F. G. Morris, 28 June 1945: “The question in my mind is whether it is possible to be a poet in two languages. What a man writes in a second language will always have something of the character of a tour de force. Furthermore, if a man is deliberately to choose a language not his own for writing poetry, he must, I think, like Jean Moreas, live where the language of his adoption is the vernacular. Any poet needs to keep in continual contact with the spoken language which is the language in which he writes. If therefore Senhor [Aurelio] Valls were to be domiciled in any English-speaking country he might be safe in adopting English as the medium for his verse, but if he is to be domiciled in a country where any other language is the vernacular, he would probably be better advised to stick to Spanish which, after all, is a magnificent tongue in which great poetry has been and can still be written.”
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
To I. A. Richards, 9 Aug 1930:
I shall be very much interested in any results
of your study of Chinese abstractions. I dare say it is likely to be more profitable than my attempt, so many years ago, at studying Indian metaphysics in Sanskrit. The conclusion I came to then (after it is true only a couple of years’ struggle with the language) was that it seemed impossible to be on both sides of the looking-glass at once. That is, it made me think how much more dependent one was than one had suspected, upon a particular tradition of thought from Thales down, so that I came to wonder how much understanding anything (a term, a system, etc.) meant merely being used to it. (Similarly I have observed with anything new in art, that when people say either that they cannot understand it or that they have come to understand it, that seems to mean largely either that they are not habituated to it or that they are). And it seemed to me that all I was trying to do, and all that any of the pundits had succeeded in doing, was to attempt to translate one terminology with a long tradition into another; and that however cleverly one did it, one would never produce anything better than an ingenious difformation (just as Deussen, who I suppose to be the very best interpreter of the Upanishads, has merely transformed Indian thought into Schopenhauerian—and the orientalism of Schopenhauer is as superficial as superficial can be). In other words, I thought that the only way I could ever come to understand Indian thought would be to erase not only my own education in European philosophy, but the traditions and mental habits of Europe for two thousand years—and if one did that, one would be no better off for ‘translating’, and even if such a feat could be accomplished, it didn’t seem worth the trouble. However, some such study (as far as one can see) is I believe profitable, as getting outside of one’s own skin, or jumping down one’s own throat.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 48
