Tom strikes again

Of course I don't mean the Oxonian

carillon, that I've been privileged

not to hear; and of course I do mean

the man of The Waste Land, which so

possessed this page at one time, a

strenuous experience, like all our

dearest won, tentatively suspended 
struggles for what he remembers as, 

life in accordance with the mind.

Yes, I mean the Tom of that poetry,

whom The New York Review has re-

discovered in an unpublished lec-

ture on the Elizabethan poet and

translator of Homer, Chapman. What

can be said, but that Mr Eliot has

cast another snare in our complais-

ant path, but that because he did,

we can take it seriously. 

Ted Cruz and I had the same college

education, and we attended similar

law schools. Too obviously, he went

there for answers, to learn their

seduction. I went there for ques-

tions, to share their embrace. The

reason for this posting is the gale

of spontaneous hugs in T.S. Eliot;

I don't know what to do with them,

but I don't deny, I need them.

Dante knew as well as Chapman and 

Dostoevski that man belongs to two 

worlds: that the human life when it 

is human, is a compromise and a con-

flict. It is an error to regard Dan-

te’s conception of love as romantic. 

.. But I do say that if you accept 

Christian problems then you should 

accept Christian conclusions. When 

I find a writer for whom clearly the 

Christian other world does not exist, 

or who has found another “other world,” 

then I will not judge him by Christian 

standards. But I say that Chapman and 

Donne and Dostoevski, and also James 

Joyce, accept Christian problems; they 

are operating with Christian categor-

ies; and that they are all infer-

ior to Dante because they do not draw 

Christian conclusions. This is I think 

the great distress of the modern world, 

that it is neither Christian nor defin-

itely something else.

It's inevitable to hear again in

these words an elegy for coheren-

cy, entirely in keeping with The

Waste Land. The demand is exactly

what can lead to a Ted Cruz, un-

less it rises from intelligence

disciplined by humbling error,

clobbered about enough on the

practice field and in tutorial,

to emerge by playing fair. And 

then the bracing invigoration of 

the untoward question surpasses

all intimidation. Is the mind 

a lesser gift than my fear, had

not been on my mind. Now the in-

convenient carillon has pitched

that very question, and why are

we so glad?

T.S. Eliot

A Neglected Aspect

  of Chapman

1924

The New York Review of Books

November 7, 2013©

Bastian van Gaalen