![]() Eliot (.)Ħ It is not my intention to suggest a direct Nietzschean influence on Eliot. Eliot, "A Review of the Philosophy of Nietzsche, by A. Thatcher, Nietzsche in England 1890-1914: The Growth of a Reputation, Toronto: University (.) It is something amazing: the moment, in one sudden motion there, in one sudden motion gone, before nothing, afterwards nothing, nevertheless comes back again as a ghost and disturbs the tranquility of each later moment. No matter how far or how fast he runs, this chain runs with him. also wonders about himself, that he is not able to learn to forget and that he always hangs onto past things. Its full achievement requires a capacity to overcome procrastination, the interminable process of weighing the pros and cons of one's decisions, the hesitations and afterthoughts-in short, all that goes by the name of “intellectual life.” (Nietzsche 2010, 6)Ĥ The notion of a cow having a stronger will than man may be disturbing, but indeed for Nietzsche everything can be boiled down to physiology and will has nothing to do with the intellect. But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man wonders on once more. One day the man demands of the beast: 'Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?' The beast wants to answer, too, and say: 'That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say'. wishes only to live like the beast, neither weary nor amid pains, and he wants it in vain, because he does not will it as the animal does. This is a superior achievement that human beings yearn for, yet are incapable of emulating. For this is where it comes against the persistence and unpliability of the traditional material it seeks to incorporate and knock into shape.ģ In “On the Use and Abuse of History for Living”, Nietzsche invites his readers to consider the cow's aptitude to enjoy each instant of its life unaffected by melancholy or weariness. They give rise to perplexing interrogations concerning the status of that which has come before but is not materially present anymore: if the dead have a presence, if their thought must still be considered, how can they manifest themselves but in ghostly form? Finally, forgetfulness also has stylistic implications, insofar as modernism is characterized by its attempt to write the contemporary and the “new”. Such ambivalent responses necessarily have metaphysical repercussions. ![]() Yet Eliot's “Tradition and the Individual Talent” evidently tries to accommodate both impetuses (towards the new and the old). Indeed, the avant-gardes' determination to jettison tradition is far removed from the preoccupations of Anglo-American canonical authors. Modernists have confronted this dilemma in different ways. 1 Finally, I will observe the impact of Eliot's conversion to Anglicanism on his poetry, arguing that it brought him closer to an acceptation of forgetfulness, albeit at a cost, for such liberation, it seems, could not be achieved in this world: only the dead would experience it.Ģ In what follows, forgetfulness will be understood as a crucial aspect of modernity, one that cannot be separated from the desperate urge to memorialize and the backward glance it occasions. ![]() ![]() Then I will examine the paradoxical relation between modernism and modernity that explains the poet's ambivalent reaction to the latter. In it I will first consider the special connection between modernity, the past and memories that justifies Eliot's distrust of the modern spirit. 1 Throughout these pages, we will stick to a general working definition of modernity which stands in (.)ġ This article concerns active forgetting in the context of T.S. ![]()
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