More Than Just Cats
The experiment [the trend toward a rational, non-Christian society] will fail but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive to the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the world from suicide.
T. S. Eliot, Thoughts After Lambeth
In 1981, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats debuted in a London, West End theater. A year later it opened on Broadway and became one of the longest running musicals in history. It launched a hit song, “Memory,” and became a made-for-television film in 1998.
What many may not know is the musical is based on the work of one of the literary world’s brightest stars: Thomas Stearns Eliot, better known as T. S. Eliot, poet and playwright. But while his 1939 Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats laid a good foundation for actors and actresses in cat suits, his other work—far more serious in tone—is his greatest achievement.
T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, but his family roots were in New England. His was a literary family that often gathered around Eliot’s father to listen to readings from Charles Dickens. Eliot grew up a reader and remained in the business of words most of his life.
Harvard accepted him into its collegiate ranks, and Eliot finished his course of study in just three years. He would continue to study philosophy, literature, and other subjects at Harvard, Oxford, and schools in Germany and France. He settled in England and made it his home for the rest of his life. For a time, Eliot taught school and worked in a bank, then he landed a job with publishers Faber and Faber. He stayed with the firm until his death in 1965.
Eliot’s first work of note was the poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Although written in 1911, it was not published until four years later. His poems are considered some of the first in the “modernist” movement. He took on difficult topics that he felt required complicated writing.
He also wrote plays, feeling the best way to reach the masses was through that popular medium. His plays are still performed today. For seventeen years, from 1922 to 1939, he also edited the influential literary magazine he founded, Criterion.
The excellence of Eliot’s writing was recognized by his peers. In 1948, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize biography of Eliot says:
Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. Never compromising either with the public or indeed with language itself, he has followed his belief that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry. Despite this difficulty his influence on modern poetic diction has been immense. Eliot’s poetry from Prufrock (1917) to the Four Quartets (1943) reflects the development of a Christian writer.1
The Christian
Eliot joined the Anglican church shortly after he became a British citizen and even served as churchwarden in his parish. Swimming against the tide of his times, Eliot let his faith permeate his work, especially in his plays such as Murder in the Cathedral (1935), about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, and The Family Reunion (1939), and his poems, “Four Quartets” (1943) and the earlier “Waste Land” (1922), as well as others. At times he was criticized for this but he remained steadfast. He didn’t believe literature could save society or replace the church, but it could open the doors of the mind. Eliot managed to provide entertainment, show great wit, and still deal with spiritual matters.
Eliot believed that the “experiment” to create a non-Christian society was doomed. It was just a matter of time.
Some have shaped the church through finely tuned theology; others through magnificent preaching. T. S. Eliot engaged society through the printed word, showing faith is for everyone, including intellectuals. Today there are many publishers printing Christian literature. They do a great service, as do the Christian writers who team with them. Some Christian writers, however, choose to work in the secular world, publishing in a way that reaches people on both sides of the fence.
T. S. Eliot was more than a literary giant; he was a man of spiritual depth and was unafraid to incorporate it in his work.