Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.
April is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain.Winter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow, feedingA little life with dried tubers.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888, the last of seven children in a transplanted Bostonian/English immigrant family. Among his esteemed ancestors were a missionary preacher, a Harvard University president, and the founder/chancellor of Washington University. His father was a prosperous brick-maker. His mother, a poet and deeply religious, raised him to practice self-denial to the point that he felt guilty for enjoying any pleasure, harmless as it may be, for the rest of his life. Suffering from a congenital hernia, young Eliot turned his attention to his books instead of social sports and games. From the beginning, Eliot was painfully aware of his own sinfulness and the need for atonement. Yet it would take him years of battling the angst, skepticism, and disillusionment prevalent in the early twentieth century to find the peace that had eluded him.O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss: O Lord, who may abide it?
There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And yet time for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Eliot attended Harvard, completing his bachelor's degree in 1909 and his master's in English Literature in 1910. In 1911, he visited London, Munich, and Italy, finishing The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Portrait of a Lady. After a year at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he befriended Jean Verdenal, Eliot returned to Harvard as a philosophy graduate student, completing his Ph.D. coursework and beginning his doctoral dissertation on F. H. Bradley. In 1914, he attended Marburg University in Germany. And then the Great War began. The world as Eliot knew it was about to be shattered.Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches growOut of this stony rubbish? Son of man,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket norelief,And the dry stone no sound of water.Only there is shadow under this red rock,(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),And I will show you something different fromeitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Forced out of Germany, Eliot moved to England and continued his doctoral studies at Merton College, Oxford University. In 1915, quiet Tom Eliot married flamboyant Vivienne Haigh-Wood, who refused to travel across the war zone of the Atlantic to meet his family, creating a gulf with them as wide as the ocean itself. She was, however, his "muse" and he published several key poems during this time. After settling permanently in England, news reached him that his friend Jean Verdenal had been killed at the Dardanelles in France. By the end of the war, ten million would be dead and millions more traumatically affected. The philosophy, religion, and art of the nineteenth century-with its triumphalism and near glorification of European high culture-were trampled in the mud and blood of frontline trenches. All that remained was a "heap of broken images" for those who survived the war, who were left to pick up the shattered fragments of what was thought as unbreakable.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness?In the midst of life, we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour?
Unreal City,Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,I had not thought death had undone so many […].There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying:"Stetson!"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?"
Eliot submitted his doctoral thesis to Harvard, which was accepted, but his voyage back to Boston was cancelled at the last minute. Taking this as "a sign," he never returned to give his oral defense. Leaving his doctorate uncompleted (although he would be awarded many honorary doctorates), he turned to lecturing. Short on money, newlyweds Tom and Vivienne moved in with philosopher Bertrand Russell. While living under the same roof, Russell had an affair with Vivienne who, always nervous and suffering from ill health, became increasingly unstable and hysterical. Russell wrote, "She is a person who lives on a knife's edge, and will end as a criminal or a saint; I don't know which yet." Eliot, however, continued to be devoted to his wife.For there is mercy with thee: therefore shalt thou be feared. I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for him: and in his word is my trust.
"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay withme.Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.What are you thinking of? What thinking?What?I never know what you are thinking. Think."I think we are in rats' alleyWhere the dead men lost their bones.
In 1917, due to financial necessity, Eliot began work in London at Lloyd's Bank and became assistant editor of The Egoist, while continuing to lecture. Virginia and Leonard Woolf published his Poems 1919 and became friends with the Eliots. In 1918, Eliot tried unsuccessfully (due to his hernia) to enlist in the U. S. armed forces. To add to his sorrows, his father maintained his disapproval of Tom's literary career, his move to England, and even his marriage to Vivienne; they remained estranged up to the elder Eliot's death in 1919. What little part of the estate the will awarded to Tom was put into a trust that reverted back to the estate after Tom's death. In essence, his father left him nothing. The war ended, but a sickness of soul pervaded the hearts and minds of all who survived. In 1920 through 1921, Eliot published more poems, began working on The Waste Land, and launched a new literary review, The Criterion-all while continuing to work at the bank. Vivienne grew worse. In the midst of the physical war without and the war of disillusionment and skepticism within, searching but not yet able to recognize the Risen Christ on his own road to Emmaus, Tom Eliot was on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. My soul fleeth unto the Lord: before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch.
Here is no water but only rockRock and no water and the sandy roadThe road winding above among the mountainsWhich are mountains of rock without waterIf there were only water amongst the rockAmongst the rock one cannot stop or thinkSweat is dry and feet are in the sandIf there were only water amongst the rock […]Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a womanBut who is that on the other side of you?
Per doctor's orders, Eliot retreated to the seaside town of Margate-though, against doctor's orders, Vivienne accompanied him. Not finding the rest he needed, Tom left Vivienne at a sanatorium in Paris and traveled on to Lausanne, Switzerland. With the help of fellow poet Ezra Pound, Eliot managed to finish The Waste Land, and with this poem became a predominant voice of the postwar "lost" generation. O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy.
"On Margate Sands.I can connectNothing with nothing.The broken fingernails of dirty hands.My people humble people who expectNothing." la laTo Carthage then I cameBurning burning burning burningO Lord Thou pluckest me outO Lord Thou pluckestburning
In 1925, Eliot joined the London publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), publishing The Hollow Men-inspired by Joseph Conrad's psychological novel of depraved humanity, Heart of Darkness. Eliot accepted the doctrine of Original Sin (the truth of which had become painfully clear to him), but he still stumbled at the conclusion of the prayer that would cost him, "not less than everything."Lord, have mercy. Kyrie elesion. Christ have mercy. Christe eleison.
Life is very longBetween the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the ShadowFor Thine is the KingdomFor Thine isLife isFor Thine is theThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper
Lord, have mercy. Kyrie elesion. Christ have mercy. Christe eleison.
After searching and struggling all his life, Eliot finally surrendered to the "peace which passeth all understanding." In 1927 (at the age of 39), he became a Christian and was baptized at the parish church in Finstock, a village near Oxford. Soon afterward, he became a British citizen and Journey of the Magi was published. Virginia Woolf would later write to her sister: "I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward […]. [He] believes in God and immortality, and goes to church."And with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins.
This: were we led all that way forBirth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birthand Death,But had thought they were different; this Birth wasHard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
Ash Wednesday, the public proclamation of his Christianity, was published in 1930, followed two years later with the first edition of Selected Essays. He returned to the United States to lecture and, unable to bear the relationship any longer, separated from Vivienne. She died in 1947 in a mental asylum; he remarried ten years later.Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name.
And pray to God to have mercy upon usAnd I pray that I may forgetThese matters that with myself I too much discussToo much explainBecause I do not hope to turn againLet these words answerFor what is done, not to be done againMay the judgement not be too heavy upon us […]Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our deathPray for us now and at the hour of our death […].Teach us to sit stillEven among these rocks,Our peace in His will […]Suffer me not to be separatedAnd let my cry come unto Thee.
Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.
After a lifetime of poetry, critical essays, and plays, T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1948. Between 1949 and 1959, he finished his career with Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, and three more plays. He died in 1965 at the age of seventy-seven and was memorialized in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The one who had survived "the waste land" of his own pain and questioning among the vast suffering of humanity, searching for that living water out of the rock, found forgiveness "after such knowledge" and died at peace with the God who had "plucked him out," with the hope of "blooming" into life everlasting.I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, tofinding, to forming at the ends of our fingers andbeams of our eyes.And when we have built an altar to the InvisibleLight, we may set thereon the little lights forwhich our bodily vision is made.And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us oflight.Light invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy greatglory!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
