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Orwell on T. S. Eliot and the path from existential angst to serial entrepreneur

I like George Orwell. A tired fool got me started on the four-volume collection of Orwell’s essays, journalism, and letters. It’s great. Among many things I could say, one is that you know you’re reading someone damned good if you’re fascinated by their thoughts on something you formerly had no interest or experience in. There’s the essay on Dickens that I mentioned earlier, essays on cheap vulgar postcards, boys magazines, and much else besides. Gore Vidal is similarly compelling, and I think I would take his collected essays even over those of Orwell. Christopher Hitchens is similarly provocative but not in the same class as a writer. Very few are.

Today I was reading an Orwell review of three T. S. Eliot poems. I’m not into Eliot and I’m not into poetry. Like Gore Vidal’s, Orwell’s reviews are wonderful – balanced and surgical skewerings. Anyway, I came across the following, which I enjoyed enormously and decided to post:

But the trouble is that conscious futility is something only for the young. One cannot go on ‘despairing of life’ into a ripe old age. One cannot go on and on being ‘decadent’, since decadence means falling and one can only be said to be falling if one is going to reach the bottom reasonably soon. Sooner or later one is obliged to adopt a positive attitude towards life and society. It would be putting it too crudely to say that every poet in our time must either die young, enter the Catholic Church, or join the Communist party, but in fact the escape from the consciousness of futility is along those general lines. There are other deaths besides physical death, and there are other sects and creeds besides the Catholic Church and the Communist Party, but it remains true that after a certain age one must either stop writing or dedicate oneself to some purpose not wholly aesthetic. Such a dedication necessarily means a break with the past:

every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.

Apart from the fact that I am much too impatient to read poetry, one of my problems is that I never have any idea what it’s about. But at least the above is clear. It wonderfully captures the inevitable progression from the troubled search for meaning of existential youth to the amorphous struggles of the serial entrepreneur.


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10 Responses to “Orwell on T. S. Eliot and the path from existential angst to serial entrepreneur”

  1. This is a longshot, but do you still have a copy of Orwell’s review? I’ve been searching around for it online and this is the only snippet I’ve managed to turn up. Of course I could probably just schlep my lazy butt on over to the public library, but what kind of person does that any more?

  2. This is a longshot, but do you still have a copy of Orwell’s review? I’ve been searching around for it online and this is the only snippet I’ve managed to turn up. Of course I could probably just schlep my lazy butt on over to the public library, but what kind of person does that any more?

  3. Yes, I have the essay. It’s titled T. S. Eliot and was written in Oct/Nov 1942. It’s on p425 of the Everyman Library hardback of Orwell essays. I read it in the 4-volume Penguin set, which I no longer have. If you want I can try to fax it to you, or scan it to PDF, or something.

    Terry

  4. Yes, I have the essay. It’s titled T. S. Eliot and was written in Oct/Nov 1942. It’s on p425 of the Everyman Library hardback of Orwell essays. I read it in the 4-volume Penguin set, which I no longer have. If you want I can try to fax it to you, or scan it to PDF, or something.

    Terry

  5. […] Once in a while I run across a piece of writing that has little or nothing to do with being an entrepreneur, but easily could have been. I posted an example in 2007: Orwell writing about and quoting T.S.Eliot: “Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorati…“. […]

  6. I was also not too into Eliot or his poetry because I had no patience. But his short poems, like “Hysteria”, changed my mind completely. If you think it means nothing at first glance, you might be interested in finding an analysis online. I only found one that concerns Hysteria though, I’ll find the link….

    here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-13613-New-Classics-Examiner~y2009m7d7-Indepth-analysis-of-TS-Eliots-classic-poem-Hysteria

  7. I was also not too into Eliot or his poetry because I had no patience. But his short poems, like “Hysteria”, changed my mind completely. If you think it means nothing at first glance, you might be interested in finding an analysis online. I only found one that concerns Hysteria though, I’ll find the link….

    here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-13613-New-Classics-Examiner~y2009m7d7-Indepth-analysis-of-TS-Eliots-classic-poem-Hysteria

  8. […] I always enjoy running across writing that is not about entrepreneurialism but which seems directly relevant. A couple of snippets that I’ve blogged before are The entrepreneurial spirit in literature (from Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness) and Orwell on T. S. Eliot and the path from existential angst to serial entrepreneur. […]

  9. Hi Nat!!

    Thanks :-)