The Conversion of T.S. Eliot - Lord Harries of Pentregarth
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- čas přidán 1. 08. 2024
- T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland was the voice of a disillusioned generation and reflected a world in disarray. Then in 1928 Eliot announced to a startled world, and the disapproval of his contemporaries, that his general point of view could be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics and anglo-catholic in religion. The previous year he had been baptised behind closed doors in Finstock Church, near Oxford.
This lecture will consider that conversion with three interlinked questions in mind: From what was he converted? Why did he convert? What was the immediate effect of that conversion? The recently published 6 volumes of Eliot's letters covering the period help shed light on the answers.
The lecture will also explore how this new direction in his life is reflected in the poems he wrote at the time.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an...
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T.S. Eliot…he purified, concentrated, and distilled language giving words the power to live on impacting our souls
T. S. Eliot did a radio broadcast on September 26, 1959, for Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk. Here is the quotation: “I think that the present time will spontaneously lead to something like the separation of individual human beings from time’s events. They will stand on their own feet, and from their innermost being they will seek new paths, spiritual paths. It seems to me that Goethe, for example, had a compass of consciousness which far surpassed that of his nineteenth century contemporaries. Rudolf Steiner expressly upheld this, and I do too. In a certain connection, atomic science has a meaning, namely inasmuch as it is in the hands of men who are in no way able to cope with it. It has no importance whatever for the progress of mankind. I see the path of progress for modern man in his occupation with his own self, with his inner being, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner.”
T.S. Eliot is one of the greatest poets/writers of all time. I love his poem "Morning at the Window." W.H. Auden is my favorite poet and Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" is my favorite poem. The Waste Land is Eliot's magnum opus. I read it long ago. He died 8 years before I was born but I would have been so honored to have been able to sit down and just talk to Eliot.
This lecture is MIND BLOWING.Wow. I need to listen to this at least 2 or 3 times.
Thank you, Lord Harries, for this. Marvelous.
Thanks a lot for this mind blowing lecture
Absolutely beautiful! And Lord Harris's book Haunted by Christ is fabulous.
Herbert Read was a wonderful critic and scholar. The best way to study Eliot's thought and life is to read his poems and essays first to last.
Very interesting and enjoyable reflections on the great man. A little mistake at 1.42 - his second wife was Valerie Fletcher. Vivienne was the name of his first wife.
I rarely make comments on YT, but I appreciate the humility and tact with which you made that correction. Both are in short supply online.
@@gabrielbtongs6787 - well put - I agree - we need to accept that people make mistakes when speaking. Here it is clear that the speaker knows who Eliot's second wife was because he gets the second name correct - he simply muddles two very similar first names.
Thank you.
Thank you
Thanks a lot
Very Interesting
Thanks for sharing!!!
When he refers to "W. T. Stead"(e.g. 12.00), I think he means William Force Stead, thus W.F. Stead.
At the bottom of every man's there is a beast. Therefore, they require;Strict Spiritual Self-discipline.
Thank you, I was very curious what led to Eliot’s return to the Christian faith. I know he suffered terribly in his marriage. I also wonder how much Bertrand Russel impacted his conversion- perhaps in seeing the hypocrisy and shallowness of Russell’s atheist philosophy (as I wrote this, you mention it). I wonder if it is Russel he runs into in the section of Little Gidding where he tells this person...” of the things done to others harm which you took for exercise of virtue ...” such an incredible mind was TS Eliot .
Wrote the journey of the magi with the help of half a bottle of gin....how I love this man. And how very British of him.
@@sandiarnp - you make a lot of judgements based upon your assumption that an atheist MUST be a bad person. Please explain how there is any such thing as an atheist philosophy (don't bother because there isn't one: atheism is simply the rejection of the idea that gods exist), oh, and what harm did Russell do to others (this is what you are implying isn't it?)
5 ads in 9 minutes, classy
This lecture could have been powerfully made had the man used a blackboard with an outline sketched on it. Then, he would have been free to look at people rather than stumble through reading.
W.T. Stead died in 1912.
Splendid commentary, a rather poor reading....
Educated southern people should really learn to be wary of the phrase "of all places" - it rarely reflects well on them!
He was born in Saint Louis( Lewis)..NOT Saint Looee !
Is it still compulsory to be LGBT +in order to become an Anglian ? Just
checking ...
I always laugh when I hear Sanskrit pronounced as Sanscript. It is pronounced as “Sunskrit”. JIC you’re interested. 😊
Unitarian church today is woke today
Well, my Boston family has more accurate stories
Part sod part genius part hypocrite. Rough life....
A real Lord Haw Haw here babbling on.
A few lines from Eliot's book of Practical Cats and his correspondence with Groucho Marx might have dispersed the yellow fog. Now abide these three: gloom, doom, despair?
Unitarianism is NOT Christianity.