![]() ![]() Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1888, Eliot studied at Harvard and Oxford before abandoning his postgraduate studies at Oxford because he preferred the exciting literary society of London. Nevertheless, his poetry changed the landscape of Anglophone poetry for good. Even in his most famous poems we can often detect the rhythms of iambic pentameter – that quintessentially English verse line – and in other respects, such as his respect for the literary tradition, Eliot is a more ‘conservative’ poet than a radical. Modernist poets often embraced free verse, but Eliot had a more guarded view, believing that all good poetry had the ‘ghost’ of a metre behind the lines. It was his first major poem since The Waste Land, three years earlier, which had transformed him from one of the most important new poets writing in English into probably the most significant poet of his generation – indeed, one who many thought had given a voice to their generation through his eloquent depiction of post-war disillusionment and despair. Why Eliot, or his hollow men who speak with a sort of collective voice in the poem, should feel that the world is going to end not with a bang but with a whimper is not an easy question to answer, however.Įliot published ‘The Hollow Men’ in 1925. Eliot’s poetry, or have never encountered ‘The Hollow Men’. Eliot tells us at the end of his 1925 poem, ‘The Hollow Men’: ‘not with a bang but a whimper.’ The quotation has become famous and is known even to those who never read T. ![]() In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of T. ![]()
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