Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to second edition
- Introduction
- 1 The growth of the poet's mind
- PART ONE 1905–1912 – AN INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- Oxford University Extension Lectures
- PART TWO 1912–1922 – ‘SHALL I AT LEAST SET MY LANDS IN ORDER?’
- PART THREE 1922–1930 – ‘ORDINA QUEST’ AMORE, O TU CHE M' AMI'
- PART FOUR 1931–1939 – THE WORD IN THE DESERT
- PART FIVE 1939–1945 – APOCALYPSE
- AFTERWORDS
- APPENDICES
- A About the text of the poems
- B The drafts of The Waste Land
- C The Christian philosopher and politics between the wars
- D The secret history of Four Quartets
- E Artful voices: Eliot's dramatic verse
- Notes
- Index
E - Artful voices: Eliot's dramatic verse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to second edition
- Introduction
- 1 The growth of the poet's mind
- PART ONE 1905–1912 – AN INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- Oxford University Extension Lectures
- PART TWO 1912–1922 – ‘SHALL I AT LEAST SET MY LANDS IN ORDER?’
- PART THREE 1922–1930 – ‘ORDINA QUEST’ AMORE, O TU CHE M' AMI'
- PART FOUR 1931–1939 – THE WORD IN THE DESERT
- PART FIVE 1939–1945 – APOCALYPSE
- AFTERWORDS
- APPENDICES
- A About the text of the poems
- B The drafts of The Waste Land
- C The Christian philosopher and politics between the wars
- D The secret history of Four Quartets
- E Artful voices: Eliot's dramatic verse
- Notes
- Index
Summary
It is not for me, but for the neurologists, to discover…why and how feeling and rhythm are related. The tendency, at any rate, of prose drama is to emphasise the ephemeral and superficial; if we want to get at the permanent and universal we tend to express ourselves in verse.
We distinguish on sound technical grounds between prose and verse. But the non-technical distinction between prose and poetry is more difficult to sustain, and may be fundamentally unsound, because the difference, in a healthy state of mind and language, is a matter of degree and not of kind. However, if one does make that distinction, then of course it follows that poetry can be written in either verse or prose, and so too can prose; or, to put it another way, it follows that verse can be a medium for both prose and poetry. We naturally think of verse as getting more out of words than prose, as heightening or intensifying the prosaic into the poetic. But verse may also be used to keep language down to a prosaic level by flattening out or repressing possible meanings and intensities.
Eliot was one who did distinguish between prose and poetry, that is, as he saw it, between the prose of ordinary consciousness and the poetry of metaphysical thought and vision.
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- Information
- Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet , pp. 342 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995