An Analysis of T. S. Eliots Poetry

Eliot attributed a great deal of his early style to the French Symbolists--Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Laforgue--whom he first encountered in college, in a book by Arthur Symons called The Symbolist Movement in Literature. It is easy to understand why a young aspiring poet would want to imitate these glamorous bohemian figures, but their ultimate effect on his poetry is perhaps less profound than he claimed. While he took from them their ability to infuse …

…is marked by a conscious desire to bring together the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the emotional in a way that both honors the past and acknowledges the present. Eliot is always conscious of his own efforts, and he frequently comments on his poetic endeavors in the poems themselves. This humility, which often comes across as melancholy, makes Eliot's some of the most personal, as well as the most intellectually satisfying, poetry in the English language.