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.In the present case, however, Eliot moves theif not outright wrongheadedness.In support of hisdebate regarding the validity of his famous separa- view that Shakespeare may have held in privatetion between the man who suffers and the mindlife very different views from what we extract fromthat creates as close as he ever will to his own per- his extremely varied published works, Eliot goes onsonal circumstances as a creative intellect and also to assert that I am used to having cosmic signifi- Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca 371cances, which I never suspected, extracted from my they were occupied with turning human actionswork : .to having my personal biography recon- into poetry. structed from passages which I got out of books,.If poets are not thinkers, by this definition of theto having my biography invariably ignored in what I term, what then are they, one might well ask, cling-did write from personal experience. ing to the possibility that poetry can at least expressConvinced by this experience of his own that ideas, even if it does not necessarily originate them.people who insist on using the text as a sort of Eliot answers that question: Rather than being apersonal seismograph of the poet s ethical, spiri- thinker as such, [t]he great poet, in writing him-tual, and philosophical ups and downs are as likely self, writes his time. Poets are, as it were, messen-to be wrong about Shakespeare as they are about gers rather than the message they do not makehim, Eliot then tells his reader that he is there- their age; they express it.As such, they are limitedfore going to propose a Shakespeare influenced by by what thoughts and beliefs their age is capablethe stoicism of Seneca, the great tragic playwright of thinking and of believing, but their capacity asof the classical Latin stage, since such a proposal poets is limited by nothing other than their imagi-must most certainly be on the way in any case.native skills.He concludes, Thus Dante, hardly(Indeed, in a longer, more scholarly, and consider- knowing it, became the voice of the thirteenth cen-ably less flippant essay published in 1927, Sen- tury; Shakespeare, hardly knowing it, became theeca in Elizabethan Translation, Eliot will fulfill representative of the end of the 16th. Nev-his own prophecy.) Thus far, so that the reader ertheless, Eliot insists, that each occupies such adoes not miss the value of Eliot s position, though position has nothing to do with the quality of theirhe is presenting it in a lighthearted manner, he is thoughts and everything to do with the quality ofnot attempting to be frivolous in citing the critical their poetry, which is quite another matter, harderexcesses.From this point on, he makes a brief but to gauge and far more difficult to discuss in theconvincing case that there is as much of Seneca as intellectual terms required of criticism.of Montaigne and Machiavelli, otherwise the two Be that as it may, Eliot can conclude thatreigning candidates of choice, in the Elizabethan you can hardly say that Dante or Shakespearemindset, although Eliot admits that he is not so believed, or did not believe the prevailing phil-much concerned with the influence of Seneca on osophical systems that inform either their ageShakespeare as with Shakespeare s illustration of or their work.Rather, the task of the poet, theSenecan and stoical principles. great poet, is to express the greatest emotionalIt is, as a distinction, one most worthy of critical intensity of his time, based on whatever his timenote, drawing an implied contrast between poetry happened to think. In Dante s case, it was theas a medium for the transmittal of ideas and poetry coherent system of Christian belief codified by St.as a medium for the dramatization of them.In any Thomas Aquinas, and that, not Dante s capacitiescase, it is a distinction that allows Eliot, several as a thinker, gave his poetry its remarkable coher-pages later, to go off on a fruitful tangent by regard- ence [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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