Mystery in the Poetry of T S Eliot

Pages:123-127
Archana Sehgal (C M J University, Meghalaya)

A dedicated devotee of Donne, Dryden and Alexander Pope in practicing ratiocinative strain in his poetic thought, Eliot a prolific genius of the 20th century, endeavored hard to exclude ‘pure emotion’ of the Romantics from his writings. It is assumed that an all prevailing element of mystery in his poetry is due to the unhappy circumstances in his life. His first marriage to a mentally unstable lady, Vivienne Haighwood, in 1915 and an even more painful separation from her in 1933, is majorly responsible for the mystery in all his works written after his marriage. Also his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927 further added to the element of mystery in all his subsequent works. As if all this was enough, he married again in 1957 when he was 69 and became even more obscure. The epitome of mystery can be seen through his last great work ‘The Four Quartets’ as nowhere before. These four poems are about the spiritual renewal and the connections of personal and historical past and present.