(DOWNLOAD) "Meeting Eliot and Hodgson in Five-Finger Exercises (T. S. Eliot, Ralph Hodgson) (Critical Essay)" by Yeats Eliot Review # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Meeting Eliot and Hodgson in Five-Finger Exercises (T. S. Eliot, Ralph Hodgson) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Yeats Eliot Review
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 201 KB
Description
Recently, I came upon Patrick Heron's half-scowling, half-smiling painting of T. S. Eliot reproduced in an anthology (1) alongside Eliot's part V of Five-finger Exercises. (2) It seemed to me that the pairing was emblematic of the partial familiarity we have with the poetic sequence as a whole--of all of FFE, only part V, "Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad All Beg," has any substantive memory for most of us. The section comprises, of course, the famous and witty word-portrait of the poet as "unpleasant" to meet. But, knowing part V as well as we do, one wonders why we have been so quiet about the sequence as a whole? Is it that we have long understood the whole to be an unimportant "exercise in allusiveness and imitation" and not more? (3) Do we think these animal "fables" only reveal Eliot's "lighter side"? (4) Perhaps we are aware that "our pleasure indicates they are fairly serious about something.... [that] these pieces refer to Eliot's own revolutions in poetry method" (5) and we leave it at that. However, there is indeed something broader to be said about the sequence poem that has not yet been said about it. FFE, we may find, tells us of the nineteen-twenties' literary war between the Georgians and the Moderns (6) and that one Georgian poet, Ralph Hodgson, a personal friend of Eliot, seems to be the parodic target. It is Hodgson who bears the brunt of the attack being made in the name of the Moderns, whose standard-bearer is, naturally, T. S. Eliot. II.