T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form

by Anthony Julius

Book Overview

Of the many different kinds of anti-Semite, T.S. Eliot was the rarest: one who placed his anti-Semitism at the service of his art. Contemporary readers of his work are likely to ask themselves certain... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521586739
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Devastating critique of anti- Semitic Eliot

I studied the work of Elliot in graduate school. I knew the Anti- Semitic passages, and thus held myself distant from the cult of Elliot worship. Nonetheless reading Julius' deeper probing into Eliot's Anti-Semitism I am angry at myself for not being more outraged. It turns out that Eliot did not want Jewish readers. He scorned us. The lines of 'Burbank with a Baedaker, Bleisten with a cigar' and other lines from 'Gerontion' would fit in well with Nazi propaganda. Apparently Eliot was as Julius points out a 'literary anti- Semite' whose hate and scorn were for the 'free -thinking sceptical Jews' he believed the enemies of Christian civilization. On a personal level he apparently was able to bear Jewish company, here and there. Julius shows how the Anti- Semitism is not a passing theme of youth but also pervades his later prose work. I believe that after reading this work it is impossible to read Eliot again without feeling moral repulsion.

T.S. Eliot and the Aesthetics of Anti-Semitism

Anthony Julius has written the most objective and informative work to date on the anti-semitic aesthetics of Eliot's early poetry. Though the author is an admirer of Eliot, he is not the least bit apologetic about his attempts to come to the grips with the literary consequences of an anti-semitic aesthetic. Julius takes a cue from deconstruction when he notes that any attempts to remove or downplay anti-semitic elements in Eliot's poetry will only serve to destroy the thematic body of Eliot's vast literary corpus. Julius also takes aim at the prose works of Eliot, thereby showing that Eliot's anti-semitism was not a phase (as most critics and scholars have argued since the post WWII period); rather, it was an integral poetic topoi. Finally, the author documents T.S. Eliot's association with fellow Anti-semite Ezra Pound and the latter's role in suppressing and expunging the anti-semitic "Dirge" from the finished portion of "The Wasteland." In closing, please believe me when I tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed reading and re-reading this book. I have yet to find anything questionable about the author's research or his methodology. To scholars and students who are interested in the life and writings of T.S. Eliot, I say to all of you: BUY AND READ THIS BOOK!