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    14 views16 pages

    What Is A Classic PDF

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    BlueBoots15

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 16
    WHAT IS A CLASSIC? WHAT IS A CLASSIC? an address delivered before the Virgil Society on the 16th of October 1944 y T.S. ELIOT FABER & FABER LIMITED 24 Russell Square London Fire pobliched in Merle by aber and Fober Lisi 24 Rosell Square London W.C. 1 Printed in Groat Bltain by AR. Maclehoe and Coopany Linitsd The University Pree Glagow All igh rosered PN ab cl ey WHAT IS A CLASSIC? ne post who can fish the teste for more gy ate arity of daconre than Virgil The fa hat he syle so mach inte story of Envopes andre prsent ich cea European rly, the Jusiston Tor our founcing a scey to preserve his cry: the fic dt he Isto conte aso comprehen Tey Junie fr thi addres, For Vis poetry were + ‘jest spon which on eclae held premmef spnk, Jon wuld not ve put nen hs poston, a are eared {olan to what have toy am emboldened by he e- Heton that no apelin weg or prfincy can Confer the excuie te to tk abou Vir Speakers of the most vere pacer, con bring hi pocy fo ber "pom matter within her compstete can hope fo cone ‘eo hw sn toch ey hve pen ee ‘nds, the elastin fier; cm try fle or the gene sey the bent of whatever wom. Virgt zy hve helped them to sequen elation to thei om CSpesence is, Fach cn sve his eon of Vig Fetion tothe ajecs mich be Knows best, or tpn tic he as mow Gp refacteds that wt neat by Save In heen, we yl be sing the sme thing in Sheree ways and that fe what feat by eat ey. "he abject which Thve ake is singly the question: ‘What fa cic? Ie not new questo, There for tI insane, a famous eany by Ste Beuve with thi ets ‘whether isa misfortune of no, that-—not having read St for some thiry-odd yean-aceents ofthe prerent me have preventel ine from rereading before preparing {hsadre hope to nd outs soon bres re mare fecosiblc sed books more plentifil. The pertinence of ‘skin his question, with Vig parilry in ming, are ‘vious: whatever the definition we arsine at eeannat be ‘one which exlades Virgie may ty confidently eat ft Soest he one which will expel eckon with hi, Bat Trefore I go fer, Taio ike £0 dspone of certain p= juices and antipte cern mnmndertandigs. Td not kim w mpersede, or to oullw, any tee of the word “Chic? which precedent bw sade. permis, The sword has) and wl continue fo have, several meanings in evel smtenta: [am concerned with one meaning in one ontoxe In defining te term in hissy, donot bind my {al forthe futures not to use the term in any ofthe other Swan which eh been wed Hor nance, yo find me Grtame future oecaon, in wing, in public speech, or im convertion, using the word ‘cede! merely to mean sur ahora any Inguage—sing merely as an inition ofthe gretne, or ofthe pertsnence std in portance of writer in his ov Gel, se when we speak of The Hh For of St. Dennis 38 & claw of schoolboy fection, oF Handley Cros a clase ofthe hunting fkd— ou ae not to expect an apology. And there 15 very Pee bcd ce th Coy wish fl Joathow pick the Desby winner. On oer cccsons, Dorit mel to mean by “he clas ele Latin ad {Grek Ineratre in ot, or the genes authors of those languages, asthe conte indicates, And, filly, T think that the account of he clase which I propose wo give here io should remove it from the area of the antithesls between ‘elawic’ and ‘romantic’—a pair of terms belonging £0 ry polities, and therefore arousing passions which 1 should wish, on this occasion, Acoles to contain inthe bag. “This leads me to my next point, According tothe terms ‘of the clasic-romantic controversy, the rules ofthat game, 1 call any work of art ‘clases!’ implies either the Dighest ratte or the most cantempious abuse, accarding to the party to which one belongs Ie implies certain par ticular merits or faults: either the perfection of form, oF the absolute of frigidty. But I want to define one kind of art, and am not concermed that its absolately and in every respect bt or worse than another kind hall enumerate certain qualities which | should expect the classic to play. But I do not say that, ia Literature Is to be a great literature, ie must have any one author, oF any one period, Jn which all these qualities are manifested. If, as I think, they ae all to be found in Vieg, eat fs not to assert eat he is the greatest poet who ever wrote—stch an assertion about any poet seems to me meaningless—and ft i cer tainly not to assere that Latin literature is greater than any other literature, We need not consider it at a defect of ny erature, if no one author, oF no one pettod, is con pletely classical; or if, as is true of English literature, the period which most nearly fills the classical definition i not the greatest. I think that those literatures, of which English is one of the most eminent, in which the classical qualities are scattered between various authors and seversl periods, may well be the richer. Every langeage hat fts ‘own resources, and its own limitations, The canditons of 4 Tanguage, and the conditions ofthe history ofthe people ‘who speak it, may put out of question the expectation of a classical perlod, or a classiest author, That ix ot in itself , ea any more a matter for regret than itis for gratultion, Ie did happen thatthe history of Rome was such, the charac> ter ofthe Latin language was such, thatata certain moment ‘uniguely classical poet was possible: though we must remember that it needed that particular poet, and a life= time of labour on the part of that poet, to make the classic ‘out of hie material. And, of course, Viegil couldn't know that chae was what he was doing. He was, ifany poet ever wae, acutely arare of what he was trying to do: the one thing he coulda’e aim a, or know that he was doing, was to compose a classe: for It is only by hindsight, and in his- torical perspective, that a claisie ean be known a such, If there is ane ward on which we can fix, which will suggest the maximum of what I mean by the term ‘a classic’, it ie the word metuiy. I shall distinguish be- ‘oween the universal clic, like Virgil, and the clasic ‘which is only sch in elation tothe other literature in its conn language, oF according to the view of life ofa parti> cular period, A classic can only occur when a civilisation fsmature; when language and literature are mature; and ‘tmmust be the work of « mature mind, It isthe importance ‘ofthat civilisation and ofthat language, a¢ well asthe com- preheasiveness of the mind of the individual poet, which gives the univemsality, To define marry without assuming that the hearer already knows what it means, is almost ‘impossible: let ws say then, that if we are property mature, sa well a educated persons, we can recognise maturity in @ Ciilsation and ina literature, ss we do tn the other human beings whom swe encounter. ‘To make the meaning of maturity reilly apprchensible—indced, even to make it acceptable tothe immature, is perhaps impossible, But if we are mature we either recognise maturity immediatly, ‘or come to know it on more Intimate acquaintance, bo} No reader of Shakespear, for instance, can fail to recog- nse, increasingly he himself grows up, the gradual ripeaing of Shakespeare's mind: even a less developed reader Can perceive the rapid development of Elizabethan Jiterature and drama asa whole, from carly Tudor crudity to the phys of Shakespeare, and perceive a decline in the work of Shakespeare's suecerors, We can alo observe, upon a litle conversince, tht the plays of Christopher Marlowe exhibit a greater maturity of mind and of styl, than the plays which Shakespeare wrote a the same age: i 'sinterestng to speculate whether, if Marlowe bad lived as Jong a5 Shakespeare, his development would have con- tinged atthe sime pace. I doubs i: for we observe some minds maturing earlier than others, and we observe that those which mature very erly do noe always develop very far. Trase this point ata reminder, first thatthe value of maturity depends upon the value of that which matures, and second, tht we should know when we are concerned vith the maturity of vidual writers, nd when with the relative maturity of literary periods. A writer who indi ‘dually fas e more mature mind, may belong to a less ‘mature period than anther, so that in that rerpect his ‘work willbe lest mature, The materit of iterate isthe reflection ofthat ofthe society in which ii produced: an individual author—notably Shakespeare and Virgl—can do much to develop his language: but he cannot bring that language to maturity unless the work of his predecesors has prepared it for his final touch, A mature literature, therefore, has a history behind its history, tat is not ‘merely a chronicle, an accumulation of manuscripts and ‘writings of this kind and that, but an ordered chough un «conscious progress of a language to realise its own poten- ‘altos within its own limitations, fey Teint be observed hat sce, and Meare, like so inves han’ eing, do 0 ecemly mate ualy and concurrently i ever epet. The precocious td ten, in some Sous ays cd far is ape fn comparison with ordinary clea, Is there aby ob¢ pect gis tertne twhich we an pin bn Fil outures comprehensively andincqiiinum? donot {Bidkvoran, atl rept ter, hope isnot 0. We Canon tat ay nd pot In gh ar i he Soue ath fe becomes more matre msn a Shake Spee: wecmot ven y tat ay poet a one 0 mc, Tanengecpable of expressing the tot le Bough oF now refed se of elng Yet we enot bit el tha psy ke Congreve’ War the Wd ty some way more mate than any psy of Satespear's but only this epet, da fe wells a Iran att sotety—that iy lacs restr ratty Ot mone The ety for rich Conger ote, from out pol of view, couse and bral enough: ye ts eer our tin the niet ofthe Taor: paps for ar rewon we jug eth more every, Neverthe, tress soelely more plied sd Tes prov: rind ov Sony sensi more rictdy a ot Tome promise af matwity but realsed another S0 C0 Ira of nde ms dtr of mer "The progres ova rity of Ingag 1 eink mnoe eal recog and more ex cowed a the development of prose, than In tat of poetry on STerng prove we ae Tee itrced by adel ier thoes grains and noe fnlined Jomand pore inion toes commen sand commen vor th oman sentence rare etn, nt he prove which dear the farthest fom thse common [ey standards, which is individeal to the extreme, that we fare apt to denominate ‘poetic prose’. At a time when England had already accomplished miracles in poetry, her prose wat relatively Immature, developed sufficiently for ‘certain purposes but not for others: at that same time, ‘when the French language had give litle promiscof poctry as great a6 that in Englth, French prose was much more ‘mature han English prose. You have only to compare any ‘Tudor writer with Montalgne—and Montaigne himself, as 4 stylist, is only a precursor, his atyle not ripe enough to Fulfil the French requirements for the classic. Our prose ‘as ready for some task before it could cope with others: AMalory could come long before a Hooker, a Hooker before 4 Hobbes, and a Hobbes before an Addison, Whatever dlifculties we have fn applying this standard ta poetry, ie is possible to sce thatthe development of aclatte prose Is the Hfevelopment towards a comnoa ape, By this | do not mean that che best writers ave indistingulshable from each other ‘The essential and characteriatie differences remain: ifs not that the differences ae less, but tat they are more subtle and refined, Toa sensitive palate the difference between the prose of Addison and that of Swift willbe a marked a the Aiference between two vintage wines to a connoiscur. ‘What we find, ina period of clsie prose, isnot a mere common convention of writing, lke the common syle of newspaper leader writers, but & community of taste. The age which precedes a clase age, may exhibit both eccen- tricity and monotony: monotony, bersuse the resources of the language have not yet been explored, and eccentricity because there is yet no generally accepted standard-—if, in deed, that canbe called eceentrie where theres no centre ts writing may beat che same time pedantic and Iicentious. ‘The agefollowinga classic age, may azo exhibit eccentricity 31 and monotony: monotony because the resources of the language have, forthe time atleast, been exhausted, and cccentrcity because originality comes to be more valued than correctness, But the age in which we find a common style, will bean age when society has achieve a moment of order and stability, of equilibrium and barmony as the ge ‘which manifest the pretest extremes of individual style vill be an age of development or an age of decay. ‘Maturity of language may naturally be expected to sccom- pany maturity of mind and manners. We may expect the Tangoage co approach maturity a the moment when i has era soe f the at, cotdence in he prt and no eonsctousdoube of the Future. In terature tis means that the poet is aware ofhis predecessors, ad that we are ovate of the predecestors behind his work, as we may be aware of ancestral tals in aperion who ist the ame time Individual and unique. "The predecesors shouldbe thern- scles great and honoured: but their accomplishment must bbe such as to suggest sill undeveloped resources of the Tanguage, and not such as to oppress the younger waiters swith the fear that exerything tht ean be done has been lone, in theie language. The poet, certainly, in a mature 2g, may stil obtain simul from the hope of doing some= ‘thing tht his predecestors have not done; he may even be {in evolt against them, ata promising adolescent may re- ‘role agsinst the belief, che habits and the manners of his parents; but, in retrospect, we can sce ht he i alo the Continuer of their ations, that he preserves estential family characteris, and that his diference of behaviowr {sa difference in the circumstances of another age. And, on the other hand, just as we sometimes observe men whose lives are overshadowed by the fame of a father or grand father, men of whom any achievement of which they are 4

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