7 - The role of intellectual

Summary

T. S. Eliot planned for a place in the public sphere, well before he enjoyed its mixed blessings. Questions of cultural power and literary influence appeared in his letters soon after he arrived in London, and his developing career cast the issue of the public intellectual in a revealing light, because it so quickly raised the question of what constitutes a ‘public’. Within the small universe of experimental modernism, he soon established a name, a voice and a reputation. His work on the Egoist, his essays in the Athenaeum and the Times Literary Supplement (see Chapter 10), and his friendships (above all, with Ezra Pound) gave him a minor but significant stature. Yet the anonymity of much of this critical writing and the wartime circumstances, while providing occasions to enter the arena of critical judgement, kept his early reputation narrow.

Eliot's academic studies in philosophy involved a wide course of reading in anthropology, comparative religion and psychology. Even after abandoning his doctoral dissertation in 1916, he kept an interest in a range of intellectual and technical disciplines. This analytic turn for conceptual thinking combined with a facility for polemical writing: both would assist his rise to prominence. Eliot understood the social power of concepts. Strategic definitions, outflanking arguments and the tone of philosophical authority secured his reputation. In 1919, Eliot published two key essays, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ and ‘Hamlet and His Problems’, which established the sound of a public voice.