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T.S. Eliot and Prejudice. - book reviews
National Review, Sept 29, 1989 by Russell Kirk
Mr. Ricks is an admirer of Eliot, and his book is a learned and temperate endeavor to investigate Eliot's prejudices and his alleged anti- Semitism. But his study is illorganized, convoluted, annoyingly allusive, and tedious to anybody but the Eliot specialist. In his chapter on prejudice, Ricks draws distinctions between "prejudice" and " prejudica- tion," and points out that Eliot preferred the word "convictions" to " prejudice." With his philosophical habit of
mind, Eliot was one of those "men of speculation," in Edmund Burke's words, who "instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them."
In short, so far as " prejudice" signifies the received common sense of a people, essential pre-judgment on moral questions, healthy custom, con-
vention, and prescription-why, Eliot was a friend to those prejudices which Burke had called wise," as set against foolish prejudices. Ricks seems timid and pedantic, though certainly well-read in Eliot, in his argument on this head. He does recognize the need for prejudice in time of emergency, and approves Eliot's "convictions."
The chapter on prejudices is intelligent, though insufficient; the chapter entitled "Anti- Semitism" is feeble-although perhaps it is the reason why Ricks wrote his book, what with the recent attacks on Eliot by the zealots and by men of the Left. Ricks concludes his tortuous observations on this head by throwing up his hands:
What has to be faced, though, is that no one can write seriously and at length about anti-Semitism without giving offense. . . . It is unimaginable that
anyone could ever judge these matters
exactly right, or speak of them without
a single failure of tone, or be fully alive
to justice and to mercy. The minefield
stretches on all sides, and being innocent or
not particularly guilty-will not save
any commentator (and certainly not any
commentator on T. S. Eliot) from being
blown up. The timorous Mr. Ricks, by the way, teaches English at Boston University, not in Beirut.
Although given in other matters to fine and subtle distinctions, such as that between prejudice and prejudication, Mr. Ricks does not define at all the term "anti-Semitism." Surely one needs to know what the offense is, before handing down judgment? Well, Mr. Ricks ought to know that the word appears to have been employed first by Wilhelm Marr, a hater of Jews, about 1873. The ideology of anti-Semitism, with its queer and sinister genetic and cultural notions, its theories of race, was developed more fully by Alfred Rosenberg (hanged after the Nuremberg trials) and embraced by Hitler and the Nazis.
Now nobody, so far as I know, ever has ventured to suggest that Eliot entertained any crazy notions about a Semitic race, or in any way approved the Nazis; so really the question is not whether Eliot was an anti-Semite, but whether he disliked the Jews, or at least some Jews.
All of us cherish our prejudices, and obviously Eliot had his. There may be found in his early poems some evidence of dislike or suspicion of "freethinking Jews"-notably Bleistein with a Cigar. But also, in those sardonic early poems, Eliot does not conceal prejudices against-well, anyway, he is ironic about-old ladies in Boston, Harvard professors, Americans of Irish extraction, Madame Blavatsky, complacent Christians, Russian women with friendly busts. Are we to regard him as a hard hater of all elderly females, Irish-Americans, members of the Church of England, etc.?
