Revisiting TS Eliot

Being a literature student and educationist,Madge has not only read all of Eliot’s works,but also went on to publish a book based on his research on Eliot’s writings. A week ago,he contacted the TS Eliot Society in the UK with a proposal to start one in India. “The society will give Eliot’s fans a platform to discuss and promote his works,” says the 67-year-old,who also established a branch of Dickens Fellowship in India in 1993,the only one in the entire country.

With September 26 commemorating Eliot’s 125th birth anniversary,Madge revisits the works and times of the Nobel Prize-winning writer,known for masterpieces such as The Waste Land (1922),The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (1915) and Four Quartets (1945),among others.

Madge first came in contact with Eliot’s writings when he was 19 and was pursuing BA at SP College. The course included The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. “It impressed me immensely and haunted me for many days. I found some kind of autobiographical element in it. Maybe I,too,like Prufrock,was going through the dilemma of expressing my feelings to my lady love,” says Madge,adding that he became so fascinated with Eliot’s poems that the book TS Eliot Collected Poems 1909-1962 was no less than a bible for him. “Even today,I find solace in the book,” he says.

Madge’s professors suggested him to undertake a PhD on Eliot’s writings. “While Eliot was known as an anti-romantic poet,my research concentrated on romantic elements in his writings; I was flowing against the tide,” he says,adding that between 1986 to 1992,during his research,he came across a rare book,titled Eliot’s Silent Voices by John T Mayre,that had paraphrases of unpublished poems of Eliot. “The poems were eventually published in 1995 by Eliot’s wife,but it was post my PhD,” he says.

In 2005,Madge published a book titled The Knight and The Saint,A Study of TS Eliot’s Development,which also included a poem written by Madge dedicated to the author.

Eliot’s style of writing,says Madge,reveals that poetry is serious business. “In his essay,Traditional and Individual Talent,he opposes William Wordsworth’s theory that poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions,which made poetry look like a casual affair,” he explains. Eliot,says Madge,advocated that when you write a poem,you must dramatise your utterance by using a persona. Don’t speak with the lyrical self “I”. The “I” in the poem should stand for someone else,one should speak through him.

“You get an artistic detachment; you can look at yourself from the third person’s point of view,” says Madge,adding that it is one of the qualities about Eliot’s style of writing,that drew him towards the author.