T.S. Eliot Materialized is not, of course, a materialist or historicist reading of the royalist, Anglo-Catholic, and classicist poet, essayist, and dramatist. It is not, in fact, strictly speaking, a “reading.” Rather, it is an essay toward literal reading made up of chapters mirroring in thematic discovery the way of reading that Eliot himself embraced and appears to have wanted. Also about separation and healing union, the book you hold or screen reveals Old Possum’s reiterated desire to “amalgamat[e] disparate experience.” With recourse to Incarnational patterning even before he converted to Anglo-Catholicism in 1927, Eliot declined to engage in simple either/or choices; instead, for him, the letter, for example, is the spirit embodied.
I am thus challenging the familiar “deep” reading of Eliot, which often entails the search for “hidden” meanings and prizes symbols for their richness and difficulty. I also challenge the familiar, indeed perennial notion that Eliot, before and after conversion, was an idealist, really a pur-itan, fundamentally hankering to escape from time and the so-called real world for a transcendent and pure world of ideas and spirit. Readers have, unfortunately, been trained to miss his commitment to the physical, tangible, sensory world, in part because they fail to understand Incarnation. Eliot begins from the physical and the literal and proceeds in, through, and by means of it to the spiritual; he is thus neither immersed in the physical nor willing ever to leave it behind. In this, he follows such luminaries as Lancelot Andrewes (and before him, Saint Anselm).
A labor of love, this little book follows from my earlier books on Eliot (T.S. Eliot and the Essay and` Reading T.S. Eliot), in both of which the great essay-poem Four Quartets took center-stage. Here that poem has receded, perhaps, into the background, though it retains some importance, serving, I might say, as mediator as well as Magister. In treating the letter and the spirit, this book partners with my recent study of Swift and modern inwardness and subjectivity. It may, of course, be read singly, alone, and with profit, or so I trust, by specialist and nonspecialist reader alike.
I happily acknowledge my debts to Old Possum himself; his previous readers, particularly Elizabeth Drew, Dame Helen Gardner, and Hugh Kenner; and my teachers, especially Vincent E. Miller (Wofford College), who introduced me to Eliot and who taught me to read by asking questions of a text; Irvin Ehrenpreis (University of Virginia), who showed me the way to proceed in, through, and by means of eighteenth-century studies to twentieth-century ones; and Geoffrey Hartman (School of Criticism and Theory, University of California, Irvine), who showed me all about reader-responsibility.
I owe a special debt here to Brigitte Shull, senior editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who invited me to contribute to the new Palgrave Pivot series. Her invitation prompted this essai. This is my fifth, and, I hope, not last, book with Palgrave Macmillan. Working with Brigitte, whom I still have not met or spoken with on the phone, has been a pleasure and a profit. As has working with Erin Ivy, senior production manager, whose efficiency, skill, and acumen I wish I could say she took from me when she was my student. But, alas, Erin is alone responsible for her consummate capaciousness. I also owe a great deal to the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript, who provided much-needed support and offered acute suggestions for improvement. I hope I have not disappointed that reader. I thank again Lori Whitten, Paula Courtney, and Pam LeRow, who assisted in so many ways, always with grace and good cheer.
Last, but not least, I thank, once more, my daughter Leslie, her husband Craig, my granddaughter Kate, my son Christopher, his wife Sharon, my grandson Oliver, my wife Rebecca, and our child, the wonderful Millicent Bofort Black-’n-Bonny, reminders, each and every one of them, that every moment is “attended.” No one mentioned in this preface, or unmentioned, bears any responsibility for my mishaps or missteps; for them, alas, I alone am responsible.