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DevinB333 t1_j6jxts3 wrote

I hope I never attain the kind of fame that makes people seek out any and all correspondence I’ve had with anyone after my death.

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trowwaith t1_j6k7bhb wrote

Yes but it might be interesting if you were able to correspond after your death.

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nom-nom-nom-de-plumb t1_j6lqtok wrote

I died 37 years ago, during the Regan administration, due to a mishap involving cocaine, a bowling pin, a bowl of sukiyaki and one of those little paddle boats that's shaped like a swan. One moment I was on top of the 80's, and the next I was unable to do any more drugs and could only communicate thru my Cellular Phone. Now, thanks to advances in technology, it's much easier for me to interact with the living. So, long story short, do more blow because when you die...you end up a ghost on reddit.

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nilyro t1_j6mg1ee wrote

What the fuck did I just read :)

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mikarala t1_j6nd4tu wrote

Why does this sound like a really fun opening paragraph to a book, though.

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NoRightsProductions t1_j6lnsma wrote

Mark Twain wanted his autobiography published 100 years after his death, which is pretty close

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HearseWithNoName t1_j6lr9o8 wrote

Pretty close 13 years ago?

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NoRightsProductions t1_j6lshzv wrote

Pretty close to the idea of corresponding after death.

Of course, 13 years ago is also considerably closer than when it was written, so, yes?

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DevinB333 t1_j6k9l4g wrote

It would be. I’ll let you know if it works out.

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trowwaith t1_j6lmi4r wrote

I’ll be too old to wait; just send the letters direct to Princeton. Best wishes.

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Polaric_Spiral t1_j6m2m6q wrote

Hey, if someone's offed you in the last several hours you've already done it!

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TD87 t1_j6lv6z4 wrote

"May we all rest in peace." I've never read that sentence before.

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AnotherLightInTheSky t1_j6mzb8f wrote

RIP humanity?

It's my default reaction to even municipal level news lol

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TD87 t1_j6n0wsq wrote

Lol yeah... I'll read a random article like "Australia commissions 400 new coal plants" and I be like we really gon die smh... But yeah this one hit different coz he wrote it for posterity, knowing that by the time we all read it, he'd be long dead and shit. I guess it made me think about my mortality, but also the context of it all makes it sad... and then there's the matter of it being funny thing to say earnestly.

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Own-Storage3301 t1_j6l4g8m wrote

Hiding Houdini tried that but no luck

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DrDildoMD t1_j6lm0wi wrote

> Hiding Houdini tried that but no luck

Well there’s your problem! He’s just hiding!

I’m sure just as soon as he’s dead he will contact us. Any minute now.

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jleonardbc t1_j6k3wh1 wrote

This is more specifically the intrigue-ridden correspondence Eliot had with his longtime muse and mistress, one of the most significant people in his life.

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DevinB333 t1_j6kaolk wrote

I understand this context. And it seems they made arrangements for their release. My statement still stands though. I wouldn’t want this type of stuff released after my death.

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gloryday23 t1_j6kido8 wrote

>I wouldn’t want this type of stuff released after my death.

I'm fairly certain, once you're dead, you won't care.

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necro_kederekt t1_j6ljise wrote

It’s an interesting philosophical question. Should the wishes of dead people be respected?

Let’s say a dying person says “please, my last wish is for all my organs to stay in my body and be buried with me. It’s very important and I won’t get into heaven otherwise.” You say “okay buddy.”

They bleed out. There are five people in the hospital whose lives can be saved by this guy’s organs. Do you let them die according to his wishes? Or do you figure he has no wishes now that he’s dead, so scavenge those organs.

And what if the stakes aren’t so high? What if somebody says “my last wish is for you to keep my flower garden presentable.” Do you have any obligation to do so after they die?

Would you be okay with me fucking your grimacing corpse on live television? Current-you may say no, but by your logic, it doesn’t matter what alive-you wants.

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gloryday23 t1_j6locle wrote

>Let’s say a dying person says “please, my last wish is for all my organs to stay in my body and be buried with me. It’s very important and I won’t get into heaven otherwise.” You say “okay buddy.”

Personally, I am 100% in favor of organ donation being neither opt-in, or opt-out, I think it should be mandatory, and there should be no exemptions.

>They bleed out. There are five people in the hospital whose lives can be saved by this guy’s organs. Do you let them die according to his wishes? Or do you figure he has no wishes now that he’s dead, so scavenge those organs.

It is insane to me that people anywhere die, because someone needs to be sure all of the organs decompose into dirt with their corpse.

>And what if the stakes aren’t so high? What if somebody says “my last wish is for you to keep my flower garden presentable.” Do you have any obligation to do so after they die?

To me this is the philosophical question, no on is hurt by the action or inaction, is your commitment to the person valid after their death, I have no idea.

>Would you be okay with me fucking your grimacing corpse on live television? Current-you may say no, but by your logic, it doesn’t matter what alive-you wants.

My friend, if you can get it (my corpse) once I'm dead, and they've taken anything usable from it for organ donation, feel free to go to town, afterlife, or no, I'll be done with it.

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necro_kederekt t1_j6lp5l5 wrote

I like your perspective! It seems internally consistent. That’s rare these days.

Do you think there should be exemptions for religious beliefs if, as in my original question, some people truly believe that they need all their pieces together? This isn’t a gotcha, I personally think religion is dumb, if you answered no, I would agree.

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gloryday23 t1_j6mzj1r wrote

I'm borderline anti-religious, so no I don't think religious or really any other exemptions shoudl be allowed once you're dead. That being said, if the world insists on it, anyone exempt from donating should be exempt from receiving them as well.

None of this matters because of how far we are from anything like this being a reality, we'll be making organs before anyone considers mandatory donation. What I don't get is why/how a person can be an organ donor, and their family can refuse on their behalf once their dead. That is just crazy to me. If we do have post mortem rights, one would think the decision we made while alive would trump decisions someone else makes for us once we're dead.

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Frank_Bigelow t1_j6mdql3 wrote

You've responded more or less exactly the way I meant to. All I'd like to add is that, in the case of the flower garden, there is no obligation created by the fact that the request doesn't hurt anyone. You may wish to care for the flower garden, whether it's because of a choice to honor the dead person's wish, or just because you like flower gardens, but the fundamental question doesn't change just because the request harms no one. A dead person's wishes carry no obligation for the living beyond those the living choose themselves.

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turkeygiant t1_j6lplzv wrote

This ties into something that a lot of people don't actually realize, a personal will is a incredibly weak legal document in many jurisdictions that only carries weight until somebody contests it. Lets say you are a perfectly mentally competent person but decide to leave your entire multi-million dollar fortune in a trust to take care of your poodle should you pass away because you don't particularly like your family. Your family can absolutely contest that decision, they don't even have to prove you were incompetent in any way, they can just say "its dumb to use all this money to care for a poodle, we are their kids, we want the money" and if a judge finds this to be a reasonable assertion they can just override your wishes. Any respect given to your wishes after you die are either due to the niceties of your family and friends respecting those wishes, or a judge deciding they are reasonable to follow.

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necro_kederekt t1_j6lpwdw wrote

That sounds nearly believable, but… I have a hard time believing any pets would be getting 100 million dollars if it were that easy to disrupt. Right? Like, people get very weird around money. Are you saying that those people’s families just happen to be very nice and not have any problem with the poodle getting all the money? Or just that the judge happened to think it was a reasonable use of the money.

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turkeygiant t1_j6lvuu4 wrote

Well the answer to that I think is that stories of these animals with trusts set up in wills are mostly apocryphal, though you could set up a trust while you were still alive if you had the cash and bypass the whole process.

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mygreensea t1_j6mix6z wrote

The answer is very simple: do what the owner of the body wishes. Since the owner is dead, the ownership passes to the next of kin. Now it is their body and they can do with it what they want.

Which is probably to fulfil the dead person’s wishes.

0

Bugawd_McGrubber t1_j6l2hmg wrote

Responses:

  1. And yet, they're still alive so they care.
  2. If there is no afterlife, then yes, it doesn't matter. If there is an afterlife, I'm fairly certain they'll still care.
−5

recumbent_mike t1_j6l7lbg wrote

If there's an afterlife where you're in eternal bliss or torture, I'm fairly certain they wouldn't care much about how their correspondence makes them look.

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dashrendar t1_j6kciso wrote

You have to do/be something/one of such note that would warrant the public to even want to read your letters.

Have you done anything that would reach that threshold?

Or are you just a nobody like the rest of us and this 'scenario' would never be an actual thing?

Edit: Lots of people be thinking they are the main character at life I guess.

−48

DevinB333 t1_j6kdmfv wrote

I haven’t claimed to be anyone of significance. My statement still stands.

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Champion-of-Cyrodiil t1_j6kdwb0 wrote

> I hope I never attain the kind of fame ...

Pretty sure they already answered your questions.

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marineman43 t1_j6kgp1b wrote

Are you just generally this abrasive to everyone you meet as a matter of principle?

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AlmennDulnefni t1_j6kmy2q wrote

It's to make sure no one cares enough to dig into their personal correspondence after they've kicked the bucket.

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AngryTrucker t1_j6kluxw wrote

That context doesn't make invading privacy a justifiable thing.

−1

jleonardbc t1_j6kufp4 wrote

Correct, it merely challenges the other person's suggestion that this event represents "people seek[ing] out any and all correspondence I’ve had with anyone after my death."

This correspondence is notable for its content and recipient; it's not just "any and all with anyone." There aren't teams of researchers trying to track down Eliot's tossed-off thank-you note to his catsitter.

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dethb0y t1_j6kcw82 wrote

You should see the entire field of study dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft's letters. Of course, that motherfucker wrote more letters in his life than most people ever dream possible, so it kind of makes sense.

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Based_nobody t1_j6kov3p wrote

Any of them good? (good in this sense meaning applicable to literary theory, writing, etc?)

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ASilver76 t1_j6kpkkj wrote

It depends entirely on how much you like reading about things like xenophobia, bigotry, and antisemitism. And classism. Never forget classism.

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CVfxReddit t1_j6l33bo wrote

There’s one he wrote near the end of his life where he realizes how fucked up his thinking was and started to sound very left wing. Then died a couple weeks after

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Tat25Guy t1_j6kxlsu wrote

Yeah he hated everyone who wasn't a wealthy white educated Christian city dwelling New Englander of British descent

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lordpan t1_j6l1jra wrote

He was about as racist as a New Englander at the time (very racist).

I heard he repudiated some of his racist beliefs towards the end of his life but I could never find a source for this.

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arvidsem t1_j6l7q6a wrote

Be fair, he was way more racist than a normal New Englander. To be clear, the average New Englander was pretty damn racist, but H. P. Lovecraft would have placed first in the racism Olympics, but he refused to compete on the grounds that lesser people would be there.

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lordpan t1_j6ldcqc wrote

In what way was he more racist? Like, was he a KKK member during its New England revival in the 1920's?

I'd honestly be interested to hear. I wonder if it's more that his racist views are more accessible to us than the idle thoughts of a random New Englander.

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arvidsem t1_j6o94ti wrote

No, he was pretty damn racist even for living when and where he did.

There is a pretty good run down here. Skip the first half and start at "Response to those who say Lovecraft merely reflected the racism and hatred of his times"

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beldaran1224 t1_j6ldqqw wrote

Lovecraft was considered racist by the people of his time.

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Mcbrainotron t1_j6l6dh9 wrote

Where do fish people figure into all this?

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DFreestyle t1_j6l9lxu wrote

Fear of misceganation, and the past or future corruption of your bloodline.

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Gnochi t1_j6l9ibf wrote

Thalassophobia. Plus racism.

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lolexecs t1_j6kz7y3 wrote

At it’s root, it seems quite a lot of it is classism.

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SAT0725 t1_j6mzjzi wrote

> wrote more letters in his life than most people ever dream possible

Writing letters back then was essentially like writing online comments. I'd bet the average person writes way more "correspondence" today than in the 1920s if you count messages online and texts, etc.

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chortlingabacus t1_j6kb00e wrote

You can put an end to your worries by ensuring that any relatives who survive you are the Estate of James Joyce.

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DevinB333 t1_j6kb526 wrote

Or I’ll just continue my current trajectory of living and dying in obscurity

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recumbent_mike t1_j6l7cxl wrote

I have a feeling you're about to be the victim of a very colorful and exciting murder.

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grubas t1_j6l17xi wrote

Hold on, writing erotic letters about farty women

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the_automat t1_j6l3j0v wrote

And fucking a glove

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grubas t1_j6lsg43 wrote

Don't remember that, but to be honest, is that such a bad thing?

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nix-xon t1_j6kh4o7 wrote

Those MSN chat logs are coming back to haunt you

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setibeings t1_j6lyxn2 wrote

Oh, those are dead and gone.... Would be a reasonable thing to assume in a better world.

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mr_ji t1_j6kcs01 wrote

I hope I do so people will realize that we're all a little screwed up and should quit being so judgemental of each other over it

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CocoXolo t1_j6myfd2 wrote

I am an archivist and reading people's correspondence has unlocked this fear in me. Luckily, my life isn't that interesting. As much as, professionally, I want people to preserve their life's work, I 100% understand anyone who orders their correspondence destroyed.

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Based_nobody t1_j6koniw wrote

I'm sure our era's posting records and messages will be fished back out for cash by our descendents. Like genaeology+

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uncre8tv t1_j6lnifd wrote

examining your yelp reviews for some residue of genius.

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ScoutsOut389 t1_j6l5dns wrote

If you read the article you’d see that these were all written prior to his death.

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CharlotteLucasOP t1_j6ly6iw wrote

Better leak all the embarrassing DMs now and get it over with while you’re still alive.

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RustedCorpse t1_j6mmi3g wrote

James Joyce wanting to smell his wife's farts is my favourite tho.

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SAT0725 t1_j6mzdi5 wrote

Some letters are better than others. The final collection of Charles Bukowski's letters is fantastic.

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AevnNoram t1_j6jey3n wrote

Emily Hale specified in her will that her letters from T.S. Eliot, written from 1930 to 1956 be donated to Princeton and only unsealed 50 years after her death. They've only been available to read in person at Princeton until now.

Some posthumous relationship drama: Eliot gave a sealed statement to the Eliot Collection at Harvard with instructions that it be made public at the same time as the Princeton letters.

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AFriendofOrder t1_j6jyg6f wrote

>Eliot gave a sealed statement to the Eliot Collection at Harvard with instructions that it be made public at the same time as the Princeton letters.

Has it? Where would you go about finding it if it has been?

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RunDNA OP t1_j6k0gol wrote

https://tseliot.com/the-eliot-hale-letters/the-statements

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LadyAsharaRowan t1_j6lq2zd wrote

Thank you so much for posting. This is a very interesting read.

They were both very insufferable. She spends her entire letter basically reminiscing about him and vilifying the first wife. And he spends castigating Emily Hill and his praising the second wife, basically saving face.

They both would have done good to just burn the letters and keep their secrets to themselves.

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tandoori_taco_cat t1_j6lw2o7 wrote

Both of these statements just come off as so self-absorbed and self-important.

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gs2017 t1_j6ld1c8 wrote

That was heartbreaking. Thank you for the link though.

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chuckletits t1_j6k29se wrote

I started to read them today.

I think they are beautiful, which makes me sad that he felt the need to release a statement that he never loved her.

That makes 1 of 2 things the truth - 1) everything he ever wrote to her was bullshit, or 2) he did love her and lied to save face.

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daedelus23 t1_j6k9jx1 wrote

I didn’t read his statement as he “never loved her” more of he loved her at one time but had changed and realized he was in love with who she was, and who he was, back when he first fell in love with her. Can confirm this happens and it can be heartbreaking to realize and difficult to admit to one’s self.

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SeanyDay t1_j6ka0n7 wrote

One has to imagine this was more common before telephones and internet made it easier to remember the current version of a person vs the memory that was held on to

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piquedinhighschool t1_j6kfwjk wrote

Still remember when I was young, my family going to the same vacation spot and seeing my summer friends once a year. The changes between a full year are so much more pronounced, especially for growing kids. I guess at this point this experience is almost entirely gone now, with people uploading selfies daily. Would have been nice to have the internet then but I enjoyed that experience as well.

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dosedatwer t1_j6lwd6p wrote

Definitely happened to me at least three times in my life already. Remembering someone that used to exist for years after I've lost touch with them, only to realise the person I loved doesn't exist anymore. They changed.

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SeanyDay t1_j6mma58 wrote

You probably did too 😉

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MajesticMetaphor t1_j6o1rsi wrote

Also lust is very strong in the beginning of relationships. You begin to see more of people as that fades and sometimes it’s unsettling.

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DankBlunderwood t1_j6kik7w wrote

He is very clear in the letter that he did love her before he left for England. What he's saying is that he was naive about matters of love and continued to idealize her even as he outgrew those feelings. Eventually his "love" was nothing more than the memory of having loved her once. As an older and wiser man he realized marrying her would have meant living the prosaic life of a professor, never excelling at anything, which was most important to him.

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ymcameron t1_j6lwbgz wrote

His feelings were made of jade. What I mean by that: I knew a girl who I had a huge crush on. She was just so cool and gorgeous and good at everything. I’d get so nervous anytime she was in the room. When I did talk to her, I was honestly a little intimidated by her intensity and the sort of things she spent her time doing. The more I got to know her the more I realized we really didn’t have anything in common, but I still felt these intense feelings towards her, not all of them pleasant. I somehow felt upset at her for not being like I wanted her to be. I realized I’d built up this idea of her in my mind and was more attracted to that than I was to her. She was named after a jewel, and so after I had a moment of clarity about how I was feeling, I renamed the idea of her after a different jewel, Jade. Now whenever I start to have these parasocial feelings or start to put someone up on a pedestal I stop and remind myself that those things aren’t real, they’re just made of jade.

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grubas t1_j6l1ezd wrote

Yup. It becomes a memory of love, he was fond of her still, but he couldn't grow with her.

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softsnowfall t1_j6klfgs wrote

I read his statement, and my take was a bit different from yours but more in line with your second option. When he mentions early in the statement that he could never write an autobiography and explains why - that along with his love for Valerie and his request that his letters to Emily Hale be destroyed, makes me believe that he did love Emily Hale.

I think perhaps at some point he realized that Emily Hale would be detrimental to his being a poet. I can understand this. I’m with a very grounded science fellow who has no interest in poetry. The difference is he cares about me so much that he cares about what inspires me. If Emily did not respect the soul of a poet within Eliot, I can see where marriage to her would mean the death of the poet within him.

Meanwhile, if he didn’t marry Emily, her very presence in a off-limits way would allow him to love her from a distance and allow that love to serve as a muse. Also, he clearly loved Valerie and did not want her to feel that his love for her was diminished or less.

I question if he would have requested his letters to Emily be destroyed if he had felt completely confident in the letters not being made public for fifty years after his death. I wonder if perhaps Emily went against his wishes in sending the letters to Princeton while they both yet lived and that was the final thing that made him decide she did not value him as he had her. His statement, I think, wouldn’t mention Emily valuing her uncle’s opinion more and perhaps caring more about his reputation than for him IF he wasn’t nursing some wounded feelings over the letters being given to Princeton early.

This is of course just my own thinking about the circumstances. I might be completely in error.

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lsop t1_j6l5l26 wrote

His request was that her letters to him be destroyed.

6

softsnowfall t1_j6ol42a wrote

I’m editing this as I’ve now read all the letters. In 1956, Eliot agreed with Emily Hale’s decision to hand over the letters to Princeton with the stipulation that they not be read by anyone for 50 years. Emily agreed until she made a formal visit to Princeton where she was talked into agreeing that the letters should be read by current scholars. Eliot wrote her back feeling betrayed and very understandably upset at the thought of anyone reading the letters while he and people mentioned were still living. He points out in his letter to Emily that fifty years is the typical modus operandi. Emily writes back saying no one had yet read his letters (I doubt her honesty as Eliot received a letter from the Librarian at Princeton about how they were cataloguing the letters and the “richness” of the material), and she says she will tell Princeton they must do the fifty years.

I assumed all along that I’d side with Emily, but in the end, I would feel betrayed and upset like Eliot. He and Emily became quite stilted and terse in the next couple of letters.

Six weeks after having been faced with Emily’s initial (She later agreed again to 50 years) choice to go against their agreement on the time of the letters, Eliot was suddenly married to his secretary Valerie.

1

jracka t1_j6l6t68 wrote

He never said he didn't love her, did you read his note? He thought he did love her and those notes were sincere, but he realized that he loved the ghost of her. So your 1 of 2 things is just not true.

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LadyAsharaRowan t1_j6lql29 wrote

Ha that's what I said in my comment above. He spends his whole letter vindicating her and saving face.

2

hyperbolicaholic t1_j6kv5v5 wrote

Take my English degree for asking this, but what’s the larger drama here about their relationship?

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grubas t1_j6l299k wrote

> Eliot’s letters to Hale, who for nearly seventeen years was his confidante, his beloved, and his muse, were another matter. They don’t just repeat “gossip and scandal,” they produce it. Scholars have known about this correspondence since Hale donated Eliot’s letters to Princeton, in 1956, but for decades, the trove of documents remained a tantalizing secret—kept sealed, at Eliot’s insistence, until fifty years after both he and Hale had died.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-secret-history-of-t-s-eliots-muse

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hyperbolicaholic t1_j6lmciq wrote

“his relationship with Hale was beyond confessional—she did not have the power to absolve him but to absorb him.”

This was a fascinating, really informative read. Thank you!

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grubas t1_j6ls2nh wrote

Yeah I was going to go wiki but I saw a new Yorker non deadwall article and figured that would be slightly more fun.

9

Hey_free_candy t1_j6k7rp6 wrote

your butt….

quakes. like summer leaves in preparation

fall

   down

       booty call
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kate_the_squirrel t1_j6lg7yf wrote

I enjoy his works but he was seriously like a wet bunched up grey flannel shirt of a person.

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jncc t1_j6ko7dg wrote

TIL that T.S. Eliot was either a liar or a cad.

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notprivateorpersonal t1_j6jxccp wrote

ok, what was the point of this request?

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youngjeninspats t1_j6kmn94 wrote

the 50 year request you mean? I'm guessing it was to protect the feelings of anyone who knew them. Anais Nin did something similar with her unedited memoirs.

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Swingingbells t1_j6mhwoi wrote

>In 1949, eight years after James Joyce died, his letters began to travel the world. Thanks to microfilm technology, popularized a few years earlier, the contents of his archive at the University of Buffalo became more accessible to curious readers and meddlesome critics than ever before.

>T. S. Eliot encountered them thousands of miles away, at the British Museum, in London, where he came face to face with a past self: his own letters to the Irish writer, lit up on a projection screen before him. Such exposure made Eliot uneasy. Later, in a letter sent across the ocean to Emily Hale, a teacher at a boarding school in Massachusetts, Eliot recalled the anxiety he’d experienced that day in the museum: “I thought, how fortunate that I did not know Joyce intimately enough to have made personal revelations or to have expressed adverse opinions, or repeated gossip or scandal, about living people!”

From the New Yorker piece about it

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Umbrella_Viking t1_j6joz9c wrote

Does he use a lot of intertextual references, I.e, copying multiple lines of someone else’s work, like he does in The Waste Land? Allusions are allusions but, dude, lifting like, line after line….

22

UtopianLibrary t1_j6ke6t9 wrote

Yes, but he was one of the people who defined modernism and he’s T.S. Eliot.

Memory all alone in the moonlight.

Dude was hilarious. Anyway, there was actually a lot of debate about using others’ works without crediting them back then. These writers intended it to be more of an homage than straight up plagiarism.

For example, Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror is basically The Tempest fanfiction, but it’s brilliant for so many reasons that makes it literary art on its own. Allusions to other work was a trademark of modernism. Commenting on tropes and breaking the fourth wall is when modernism starts to fade and post-modernism becomes in vogue.

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I_like_red_shoes t1_j6kvq0i wrote

Like sampling.

21

UtopianLibrary t1_j6lb86n wrote

Yeah, dude. It’s like saying any music artist who ever used sampling is a plagiarist. Back then, it was different. You were basically flexing if you knew about this obscure Etruscan myth and were adding the translation or references into your poem.

17

i_Got_Rocks t1_j6ls6u8 wrote

Tarantino does this in film and people hail him as a god.

Like, no, he just watches a lot of movies.

9

grawlyx t1_j6jzt03 wrote

Please elaborate, first time I’m hearing of this!

16

Veryaburneraccount t1_j6k3yw4 wrote

He alludes to classical works and other poems in his work, which is very common in poetry and literature in general, almost a way of having a conversation.

It's not plagiarism; he wasn't trying to pass off another person's work as his own, and critics and readers of his time were well aware of that.

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michaelisnotginger t1_j6khzcz wrote

The way he did it was revolutionary at the time. He segues his description of the mass of London commuters with Dante's descriptions of the indecisive angels at the vestibule of hell is amazing. And the contrast of the Philemon/Tereus story in a game of chess with it's mythology of mutilation with the conversation about demob soldiers and their girlfriends and their own sexual fulfilment (or lack). It's still so artfully done

27

JeanVicquemare t1_j6klnis wrote

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu,

Mein Irisch Kind

Wo weilest du?

4

grubas t1_j6l1zzu wrote

It was very much assumed that any reader would be able to recognize and know his references, at the very least they'd have to go hunting for it.

Plus it's like saying "ahhhh ahhh, Tenacious D ripped off Zeppelin in Tribute"....congratulations you missed the joke.

17

Veryaburneraccount t1_j6l37g9 wrote

Yep!!

1

grubas t1_j6lsd05 wrote

I mean we had Roman's in the 30s writing shit about Roman's in 300BC writing about Greeks in 600BC.

It's how you get sentences in Latin that you translate, and then require a 20 minute English explanation to understand who to the how. This is how you get nerds.

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-AshWednesday- t1_j6l1tlk wrote

I agree. Reading and writing is significantly harder nowadays because there is no established corpus, hence a lot of literature falls back again to work upon archetypal themes.

But to add to your comment, writing is always based on former writings, and one of the great achievement of modernism is a more conscious awareness of the sources at work in the creative process, seeing the potential this had to exploit it for intertextual purposes.

Elliot greatest achievement is, to put it in your words, creating a conversation, a dialogue, between vastly different sources, to make something wholly new emerge - this is more clear in his latter work, like Four Quartets.

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Omgwtf1001 t1_j6kicon wrote

The Waste Land was essentially rewritten/edited by Ezra Pound

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Umbrella_Viking t1_j6mj88p wrote

My brain will not allow me to conceptualize a person with that name existing during any other time period than the 18th century. I don’t know why, it’s just got such a colonial ring to it.

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geeeffwhy t1_j6jzv3u wrote

well what else did he wear rolled?

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Cool_Cartographer_39 t1_j6m40ae wrote

This is so great. I researched Eliot as part of my Master's thesis in the 80s. Had to get special permission but I actually got to put my (gloved) hands on The Inventions of The March Hare at the NYPL and correspondence archived at the U of MD. Hard to believe material like this is accessable now so conveniently.

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SAT0725 t1_j6mz9f3 wrote

I used to feel bad for not liking T.S. Eliot more but as I've gotten older I don't feel so bad any more. He's often impenetrable just for the sake of being impenetrable. I can't pronounce half the languages he adds to his work for no reason, and it's not pleasant having to check end notes five times in four lines.

I LOVE "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Preludes" and poems like "Journey of the Magi," but so much of his work is overtly complex for the sake of being complex. You shouldn't have to have as many pages explaining the work as you have pages of actual work.

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remymartinia t1_j6ltodl wrote

I love T.S. Eliot.

Let us go then. You and I. When the evening is spread out against the sky. Like a patient etherized on a table.

Let us go through half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats Of one night (ugh, can’t remember!) Of sawdust restaurants and oyster shells?

Oh, do not ask, what is it Let us go and make our visit

In the room, the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo

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drastic2 t1_j6lze8f wrote

J. Alfred Prufrock for the win.

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remymartinia t1_j6n16qa wrote

Yeah, I had it memorized at some point and would carry a copy in my day planner. IMO, it is a poem that is timeless and relevant at any person’s age.

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aledba t1_j6meleo wrote

Oh, Seth Meyers is going to love this

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franhawthorne t1_j6miqdj wrote

I'm trying to figure out the psychology of someone who wants personal letters made public... eventually. Is the person protecting the privacy of the other recipients and senders of the letters? In that case, why ever make them public? More likely, is it ultra-egoism and a need to control? (C'mon, do you really think the famous people are preserving the letters for History?)

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bofh000 t1_j6nmxzu wrote

Many writers used letters as a literary outlet, some used them as a literary device.

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franhawthorne t1_j6npkae wrote

Thanks for pointing out these other types of letters. If the letters are a literary outlet, I wonder how often the authors specify that their publication must be delayed for decades? When letters are used as a device within a book -- such as for an epistolary novel -- that's a very different matter, of course.

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cultureicon t1_j6obdaf wrote

I happened upon a letter telling her it's up to her what to do with them, but they should probably be withheld a good number of years because they discuss other living people.

Letter from 6 July 1932. Couldn't copy and paste on mobile.

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franhawthorne t1_j6og1j6 wrote

Thank you for telling me about that letter. It still leaves me with the basic question: Why publish the letters at all? I understand that if you're as famous as TS Eliot, you assume that every little thing you ever wrote will be fascinating to biographers and literary scholars, and I suppose he's right, but it just strikes me that at some point this becomes more egotistical and less useful to historians. Oh, I'm just being cranky!

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Lie2gether t1_j6mwzq1 wrote

Are any of the letters signed "Washington Irving?"

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go00274c t1_j6mou9h wrote

Out of the loop… who and what?

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