Biography of Thomas Stearns Eliot

The modern that remains over time

26 September 1888
January 4, 1965
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), 26 September 1888. The family of British origins, belongs to the wealthy bourgeoisie of the country: the father is Manager of a brick factory and his mother descended from an ancient family of Massachusetts. The young Eliot already ten years shows particular interest in poetry, so much so that the school newspaper publishes some of his. He enrolled at Harvard in 1906 where he lives the college years and the prolific intellectual environment in Boston. He studied French, German, English literature, medieval history and the history of philosophy.
Meanwhile, interested and deepens the study of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and, that then will dedicate one of his most famous essays. Following a course on the metaphysical poets and meets Conrad Aiken, poet with whom he establishes a deep and lasting friendship. Law essays by Arthur Symons and was struck by the poetry of Jules Laforgue. Thanks to reading "The spirit of Romance," by Ezra Pound, was then revealed the Provençal and the stilnovisti. In 1911 he enrolled at the Sorbonne where he remained for a time until he returned to Harvard to study for a doctorate in philosophy. In June 1914, finished College, he went to Paris; two months later obtained a scholarship which leads him to a year in London, at Merton College, Oxford. Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915 knows that soon became his wife.
The couple rents a room in the House of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Eliot must cope with economic hardships occurred: the father, who disapproves of his choice to pursue an academic career, he refuses any help. Thomas Eliot begins to work as a teacher. Afterwards, thanks to the efforts of the family of Vivienne, enters the Lloyds Bank as a clerk, where he remained for almost ten years. During the same period he was appointed Deputy Director of "The Egoist" magazine in which literary works section Ezra Pound. In 1917 the first collection of poems by T.s. Eliot: "Prufrock and other observations" (Prufrock and other observations); of 1919 and 1922 respectively, are "Poems" and "the waste land".
From 1923 he became Director of the magazine "The Criterion", then of the Publisher Faber and Faber. In the 1927 British citizenship and convert to Anglicanism receives, step that greatly affects his literary output (in 1933 to become Vicar's Warden, the highest position of a layman in the Church of England). It is from this period the efforts of Eliot for the theatre, which is materialization by producing essays and articles like "murder in the Cathedral", "family reunion", "Cocktail party", "The trusted employee" and "the great statesman". Between the years ' 30 and ' 40 Eliot focuses particularly on ethical and philosophical problems of modern society. Eliot's work will be registered in the context of the so-called "modernism", a movement that in the period between the first and second world wars will include and will revolutionize all Arts: all authors modernists are United by their rejection of Victorian literary tradition and the recovery of the seventeenth century English poetry.
After a troubled reflection, decides to separate from wife making her committed to a mental institution, where he died in 1947. His wife's death will leave forever guilt in the mind of the poet, although he will marry again in 1957. Thomas Stearns Eliot was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry". Died of emphysema in London on January 4, 1965. His ashes, as per his wishes, are laid in the Church of San Michele in East Coker, the village from which Eliot's ancestors immigrated to America: a small plaque commemorates him. Two years after his death a large stone was placed to his memory, on the floor of the "Poets ' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.
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