Abstract
The preceding chapters in this book raised new questions concerning Eliot’s conversion in 1927 to “anglocatholicism.” Hints appear, and the reader is likely as a result to guess, that Eliot not only knew much about Incarnational Christianity as early as 1920 but also showed a tendency then toward its embrace. This chapter considers Eliot’s only “sermon” while emphasizing his commitment to “Catholic Christianity,” his focus on “the dogma of the Incarnation,” and his notion of a “sequence” that leads “inexorably” to the understanding that begins in (often negative and satirical) observation of the world.
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Notes
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1943).
Lyndall Gordon, T.S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (New York: Norton, 1999), 87.
T.S. Eliot, preface, For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1928), ix.
Sheila Kaye-Smith, Anglo-Catholicism (London: Chapman Hall, 1925).
Geoffrey Faber, Oxford Apostles: A Character Study of the Oxford Movement (London: Faber and Faber, 1933).
Barry Spurr, “Anglo-Catholic in Religion”: T.S. Eliot and Christianity (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2010).
T.S. Eliot, “The ‘Pénsees’ of Pascal,” Selected Essays, 3rd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), 408.
William Turner Levy and Victor Scherle, Affectionately T.S. Eliot: The Story of a Friendship, 1947–1965 (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, 1968); also Rev. Levy’s essay “The Idea of the Church in T.S. Eliot,” a lecture delivered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1957, which I acquired from Bertram Rota in London (friends of Rev. Levy) in signed original typescript (it was published in The Christian Scholar). According to Rev. Levy in his book, Eliot told him “it was the best thing that had ever been written about his religious beliefs, and urged me to expand it into a book. Prior to your work, all I received was abusive criticism. There was no attempt to understand and define my position. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that this is now available” (100).
T.S. Eliot, A Sermon (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1948), 7.
On the “layman’s faith,” see my The Faith of John Dryden: Change and Continuity (Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1980).
T.S. Eliot, The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (London: Faber and Faber, 1954).
Qtd. in Levy, “The Idea of the Church in T.S. Eliot,” 21–22.
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© 2013 G. Douglas Atkins
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Atkins, G.D. (2013). From Hints to Guesses: Eliot “B.C.” and After Conversion. In: T.S. Eliot and the Failure to Connect: Satire and Modern Misunderstandings. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137364692_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137364692_7
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