Turnbull Lecture II (1933): “the word is not merely the sound with a meaning; the word becomes interesting for its meaning elsewhere as well as for its meaning in the context; for its own meaning as well as what the writer means to mean by it”. Also: “it is often a useful exercise to take a figure of speech to pieces: if it can be put together again it is all right”, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 272–73, 269.
To Derek Phit Clifford, 16 Mar 1934: “I do feel that you must get a much greater respect for the individual souls, so to speak, of the various words in the English language. There are a good many words in the language. I am not sure that there are not too many. I hope that you have access to, and occasionally browse in a book which is most valuable for any one who wants to write poetry, I mean the complete Oxford English Dictionary. The numbers of meanings which one word may have, as given in that dictionary, should help to impress on anyone the great care and respect with which words should be used. Also it is a good thing sometimes to examine microscopically the way in which Shakespeare uses words. You will find again and again that this use of a word will be perfectly proper according to previous usage, but that it will bring in a further meaning not previously used, and that often a word will have also a meaning in a particular context, which while true to the general meaning of the word will exist in that place alone. I think that this sort of consideration helps to throw light on the extraordinary vigour of Shakespeare’s language.” 6 Apr 1934: “one should continue to respect the Oxford Dictionary because one is not entitled to use a word in a new way until one is fully aware of all the ways in which it has been used previously. ¶ I think that just as the ear takes precedence over the eye and reason in poetry so the [three or four word lacuna in the typed letter]. This, however, does not absolve one from the duty of using exactly the right word.”
The Writer as Artist (1940): “The dictionary is the most important, the most inexhaustible book to a writer. Incidentally, I find it the best reading in the world when I am recovering from influenza, or any other temporary illness, except that one needs a bookrest for it across the bed. You want a big dictionary, because definitions are not enough by themselves: you want the quotations showing how a word has been used ever since it was first used. Of course, even the best dictionary can tell you only half the story; it can only trace the history of a word from author to author—it can never tell you of the contribution made by all the anonymous people who may have used that word in talking, and helped to change or amplify its meaning. The dictionary is a work of art in which, as you say, the whole people—for thirty-odd generations—has contributed: and every time we pass a few words with a friend, we are contributing to some future edition of it. Some, of course, contribute more than others. If you look for all the uses of words—new uses for existing words, I mean, more than new words—which Shakespeare has contributed, you will find how often he discovered new meanings in old words—meanings already latent which only genius could discover. And there are some words, the history of which is almost the history of England.”
To Ronald Duncan, 19 Oct 1942: “All the thought about what the poem is to say should take place some time before the poem is started. Once begun, it becomes an exercise in form. And the other thing is to keep a big dictionary and look up the words one uses.”
To Robert Waller, 19 Oct 1942 (taking up the retort of Mallarmé to Degas that poems are not made with ideas but with words): “Poetry is made with words not with ideas, though it exploits ideas just as a poet exploits his private experiences and emotions. It isn’t that he wants to tell the world about what he feels, but that what he feels is the only thing he has to tell it: he wants to write a poem, and so he uses whatever material he has. A poem is primarily FORM and making words come alive · · · my mind ticks rather slowly, so that I can spend a year or more, off and on, over the same poem and perhaps get it finished before I have outgrown it.”
Poetical and Prosaic Use of Words (1943): “Poetry is founded upon conversation, and cannot afford to depart too far from the way people actually talk at the time when it is written. One sometimes has the word which is exactly right, both for sound and meaning, but which cannot be used because it is likely to suggest something irrelevant or absurd to some, if not to all readers. On the other hand, we must distinguish between cognate meanings of a word the awareness of which breaks it up and weakens its force, from those which reinforce it and give it more scope. This reinforcement can be obtained, not merely from the several meanings which a word may have in different contexts for the same generation of readers, but in the various layers of meaning which constitute its history. I find, in trying to write poetry still more than in writing prose, that I constantly refer to the largest English dictionary available: and still more for words, if they are key words, the current use of which I fully understand, than for words of the meaning of which I am not sure; and the reason for using the biggest dictionary, is to study the examples of the meanings of the word, the ways in which it has been used, by English authors since it was first coined. The more of these meanings that can be suggested in one’s own use of the word, the better. Of course, the dictionary is not enough, for the biggest can only give a scanty selection of meanings: it cannot include all the uses of that word as a symbol, that is to say, not only the meanings it has had, but the emotions it has aroused.”
American Literature and the American Language (1953), “script used” for the address at Washington U. (King’s): “The champions of a radical simplification of spelling—who are zealous and vocal in England—overlook the fact that in attempting to base spelling on pronunciation, they are endeavouring to fix the pronunciation … I also hold that a word is something more than the noise it makes: that is to say, it represents its own history, the story of the way in which one meaning has altered, expanded, split up into related meanings, as a consequence of the work it has been called upon to do by successive generations; and therefore it should not disown its origins or disguise its ancestry.”
Robert Burchfield (then Editor of the OED): “Mrs. Valerie Eliot confirmed (in a conversation on 7 November 1988) that her husband possessed a copy of the Shorter Oxford but not of the OED itself”, Unlocking the English Language (Faber 1989) 79. In the fourth of these T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, Burchfield pointed out that the definition of “definition” placed on the title-page of Notes towards the Definition of Culture is not, as it purports to be, from OED, but from the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. For TSE and recourse to the dictionary see note to Gerontion 52–53, and for evidence of his using OED in 1927, see Commentary to Montpelier Row, Author’s Notes, 9. In one version of Gerald Kelly’s portrait of 1962, a set of OED is visible behind TSE.
OED AND THE PRESENT EDITION
When this edition was begun, the current editions of OED were the print version of the second edition and a CD-ROM, which was several times updated. References to OED in the Commentary are to these manifestations, although a subsequent programme of revision has changed the Dictionary substantially for its presentation online. It continues to be updated every three months.
There have been changes to the order of senses and the definitions, and quotations have been both added and removed. The changes are sometimes substantial:
“JAZZ, n. orig. U.S. slang.” has become part of “JAZZ, n. and adj.”, and
1. A kind of ragtime dance (see quot. 19192); hence, the kind of music to which this is danced; (the usual sense) a type of music originating among American Negroes, characterized by its use of improvisation, syncopated phrasing, a regular or forceful rhythm, often in common time, and a “swinging” quality (see quots.); loosely, syncopated dance-music
Connection with Amer. Eng. jasm “energy, enthusiasm” (see Mathews Dict. Amer. s.v.) cannot be demonstrated.
has become
3. a. A type of popular music originating (esp. in ragtime and blues) among African Americans in the southern United States, typically performed by ensembles and broadly characterized by regul
ar forceful rhythms, syncopated phrasing, modifications to traditional instrumental tone and pitch (such as the use of blue notes), and improvisatory soloing. [OED Online, June 2014.]
The first eleven of the supporting quotations, beginning with 1909 (now thought erroneous) and 1913, have all been replaced, with the new series beginning in 1915.
Our notes on TSE’s vocabulary range from those on technical or specialized words (“concitation”, “hebetude”) to those on common words with uncommonly precise or elaborate significance for TSE (“experience”, “prevents”). Often a particular sense is quoted not because it alone is relevant, but because more current or more apparent senses might lead to its being overlooked.
Index of Identifying Titles
for Prose by T. S. Eliot
The purposes of this index are (i) to enable the use of standard Identifying Titles throughout the present edition and beyond, (ii) to enable readers to distinguish between items with similar or identical titles (or none) and (iii) to enable readers to find any prose writing by TSE referred to in the present edition, other than unpublished letters, as readily as possible.
In his 1962 Preface to Elizabethan Dramatists, TSE wrote: “The date of each essay is given in the Table of Contents. This is a practice I like to observe in printing any collection of essays; but it is peculiarly important where the critical judgments may depend on the conclusions of current scholarship.” In order to keep dates before the reader’s eye without repeating publication details on each occasion, references to TSE’s prose writings use Identifying Titles consisting of the item’s title in italics, followed by the year of first publication by TSE given in brackets in roman: Ben Jonson (1919). In the case of posthumous publication, the date of composition (or sometimes that of delivery of a lecture) is given. This index details first publication, and first appearance (if any) in a collection by TSE. Appearances in the final edition of Selected Essays (1951) are also listed. The titles of TSE’s prose books are also indexed here.
The Identifying Title of an item published by TSE under more than one title is that of the final appearance, although the date remains that of the first publication. The use of other titles is explained in each entry. When an item appeared in two or more parts, the numerals “I ”, “II ” etc. are adopted as part of the titles before the date—“Eeldrop and Appleplex II (1917)”—distinguishing them from section numbers of books, which appear after the date: “Dante (1929) II”. The alphabetical order of titles is as in Gallup (i.e. definite and indefinite articles are ignored; abbreviations such as “St.” and “Mr.” are taken as though spelt out; “H. F.” precedes “Harvard”, “Son of” precedes “Song”). “Separately” indicates that an item was issued independently, though it may also have appeared in a periodical, collection or anthology. Items listed as appearing within Selected Essays appear in all editions of that collection unless otherwise specified. Later printings of essays in Selected Essays or TSE’s other collections are not noted. In the case of items published in TSE’s lifetime, the date attached to the title is that of first appearance in print, so that, for instance, Leadership and Letters is dated “(1949)” although the address was delivered in 1948. This ensures that the date will be that under which each item is first listed in Gallup; it is used even in cases where content or title were later changed (so that although a later text may be standard, the date remains that of the first printing).
Numerous additions to Gallup have been made. Some published items identified since the second edition of Gallup’s bibliography in 1969 are included, such as those identified by David Bradshaw in N&Q June 1995, by Elizabeth R. Eames and Alan M. Cohn in Some Early Reviews by T. S. Eliot in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America July 1976 and by Arthur Sherbo in Studies in Bibliography 50 (1997). Also listed are many unpublished items: identifying titles have been assigned also to some other documents referred to in the Commentary, such as TSE’s Notes in French on Bergson’s Lectures (1910–11), made at the Sorbonne, the inventory TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) and Henry Eliot’s record of TSE’s year in America, Excerpts from Lectures 1932–1933. Writings by “F. M.”, “Fanny Marlow” and “Feiron Morris” published in the Criterion 1924–25 are also included, because the drafts (in the Bodleian Library, with stray leaves at the University of Maryland) show that TSE helped his wife Vivien with the writing of most if not all of them (see McCue 2016). (Mrs. Pilkington by “Felix Morrison”, in Criterion Oct 1924, was written by TSE’s secretary, Irene Fassett, with editorial advice from Vivien Eliot, and is not included.) The use of “F. M.” for more than one persona may have been a gesture towards William Sharp (1855–1905), who wrote also as “Fiona MacLeod” (Grover Smith 1983 102). Whether the pieces are signed with initials or one of the names, the Commentary refers always to “F. M.” Drafts by “F. M.” and Vivien Eliot’s manuscripts are in the Bodleian except where specified.
The Identifying Titles of book reviews are the last to be used by TSE when reprinting them, or, in the case of unreprinted reviews, the given titles, though these are often editorial. In some cases an Identifying Title has been taken (following Gallup) from the contents list or the wrapper of a periodical. Book reviews that were untitled, jacket material by TSE and reader’s reports by him (usually about books submitted to Faber for publication) give the authorial title in italics and within quotation marks. Unless otherwise stated, reader’s reports are in the Faber archive. Not all are listed here individually.
Publishers are not generally noted, except when TSE’s relation to them is important. Place of publication is noted only if outside Britain or America.
TSE to Bruce Richmond, 6 July 1931: “As for myself, my ‘column’ reviewing for you has always been deliberately impersonal; I cannot say, without going through it carefully, how much I might not have written differently had I been writing over my signature. It seems to me perfectly legitimate and proper that a man should write differently when he signs and when he writes anonymously; and I cannot help thinking that most of my reviews would have been only the worse, if I had written them with an eye to their future inclusion in a ‘bibliography’. Nay, I should be deterred from ever reviewing another book for you, if I thought it was sure to be unearthed later by some industrious bibliographer. As for Leaders, for myself I don’t want these included in bibliographies until I have included them in books. They can wait till then. When an author signs or initials anything, he is surely legitimate prey for the bibliographer. But not in anonymity. That is merely one writer’s opinion—but I do feel strongly—and I should be surprised to find that any large number of reputable writers thought otherwise.”
Contributions to the TLS were routinely anonymous during TSE’s lifetime (signed reviews becoming the norm only in 1975), and his only signed piece for the paper was Bruce Lyttelton Richmond (1961), in which he praised the practice of anonymous reviewing.
Address by T. S. Eliot, ’06, to the Class of ’33, shorthand transcription, Milton Graduates’ Bulletin Nov 1933
An Address to Members of the London Library (1952)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Cresset Press, 1950), Introduction
After Strange Gods (1934)
The Age of Dryden in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
The Aims of Education, four lectures: 1. Can “Education” be Defined?, 2. The Interrelation of Aims, 3. The Conflict Between Aims, 4. The Issue of Religion in Measure, respectively Dec 1950, Spring, Summer and Fall 1951. Collected in To Criticize the Critic
The Aims of Poetic Drama (Aug 1949) separately as Presidential Address to the Poet’s Theatre Guild (Gallup A54), broadcast in slightly variant form in 1949, and repr. in New York Herald Tribune 15 Jan 1950. (See next two entries)
The Aims of Poetic Drama (Nov 1949) in Adam Nov 1949 (Gallup C544), partially repr. in rev. form in Poetry and Drama (1951).
The Aims of Poetic Drama (1950), two extracts from a lecture in Germany, in Time & Tide 10 June and 17 June 1950
All Souls’ Club, unpublished address, 1 June 1960 (ts, Valerie Eliot collection)
An American Critic in New Statesman 24 June 1916
American Literature in Athenæum 25 Apr 1919
American Literature and the American Language separately (St. Louis, 1953), and in To Criticize the Critic
Andrew Marvell (1921) in TLS 31 Mar 1921, Andrew Marvell 1621–1678: Tercentenary Tributes ed. Wm. H. Bagguley (1922) and in Selected Essays
Andrew Marvell (1923), review of the Nonesuch Miscellaneous Poems, in Nation & Athenæum 29 Sept 1923
An Anglican Platonist: The Conversion of Elmer More in TLS 30 Oct 1937
Apology for the Countess of Pembroke in Harvard Graduates’ Magazine Dec 1932 and in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Archbishop Bramhall see John Bramhall
Arnold and Pater in The Eighteen-Eighties ed. Walter de la Mare (1930, as The Place of Pater) and in Selected Essays
The Art of Poetry by Paul Valéry, tr. into English by Denise Folliot (1958), Introduction
“The Aspect of Olympus” by Rendel Harris, review in Monist Oct 1918
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 191