From Dr Martyn Halsall
Sir, - Context is vital, and its consideration may prove helpful
to the Revd Alexander Faludy in his assessment of the anti-Semitism
he discerns in the work of T. S. Eliot (Letters, 13
March). To offer context is not to offer excuses, but it may
suggest that Eliot's words reflected other aspects of his life than
simply a desire to be crudely anti-Semitic.
In his biography of Eliot, Peter Ackroyd also highlights the
passages quoted by Fr Faludy. Ackroyd also quotes four instances,
in private correspondence, of Eliot's writing disparagingly about
Jewish people.
Ackroyd comments: "All the available evidence suggests, then,
that on occasions he [Eliot] made what were then fashionably
anti-Semitic remarks to his close friends." He also quotes Leonard
Woolf, a Jew and early publisher of The Waste Land, as
saying: "I think T. S. Eliot was slightly anti-Semitic in the sort
of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite
genuinely."
Ackroyd dates Eliot's most prominent anti-Semitic statements to
"the Twenties or just before", when he was also prone to
misogynistic remarks, and "when his own personality threatened to
break apart". Ackroyd argues that Eliot's dislike of Jews and women
could be interpreted as "the sign of of an uneasy and vulnerable
temperament in which aggression and insecurity were compounded". He
adds: "This is an explanation, however, and not a
justification."
Out of the turmoil of the first half of the 1920s, Eliot
embraced the Christian faith in the second. In his poetry and his
plays, he explored the teachings of both Old and New Testaments.
Perhaps those poetic statements of faith, as in the concept of
sacrificial death that concludes "Journey of the Magi", is
effectively the apology for his earlier anti-Semitism that Fr
Faludy desires?
MARTYN HALSALL
1 London Head
Santon Bridge, Holmrook
Cumbria CA19 1UY