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| New edition of TS Eliot poems challenges perceptions of his sexuality | New edition of TS Eliot poems challenges perceptions of his sexuality |
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| The sex life of TS Eliot has traditionally been seen through the prism of his unhappy first marriage and the dysfunctional portrayals of sexuality in his poetry, but a new edition of his work reveals the more assured side of the modernist master. | The sex life of TS Eliot has traditionally been seen through the prism of his unhappy first marriage and the dysfunctional portrayals of sexuality in his poetry, but a new edition of his work reveals the more assured side of the modernist master. |
| “I love a tall girl. When she sits on my knee/ She with nothing on, and I with nothing on/ I can just take her nipple in my lips/ And stroke it with my tongue,” he writes, in a poem titled How the Tall Girl and I Play Together. | “I love a tall girl. When she sits on my knee/ She with nothing on, and I with nothing on/ I can just take her nipple in my lips/ And stroke it with my tongue,” he writes, in a poem titled How the Tall Girl and I Play Together. |
| The poem is one of three works that were discovered in notebooks handwritten for his second wife, Valerie, who had been his secretary and was nearly 40 years his junior. To the surprise of most who knew them – and particularly to two women who had been pursuing him for years – the couple married in 1957 when he was 68 and she was 30. | |
| Valerie, who was 5ft 8in (1.7m) tall, kept control of his estate until her death three years ago when the notebooks came to light. She hinted publicly that there was nothing wrong with their sex life, after an interviewer asked why his first marriage had failed. “There was nothing wrong with Tom, if that’s your implication,” she said. | |
| In another poem, Eliot – who took a vow of chastity in 1928 after being confirmed into the Church of England – celebrates the “miracle of sleeping together” as he “touch[es] the delicate down beneath her navel”. | In another poem, Eliot – who took a vow of chastity in 1928 after being confirmed into the Church of England – celebrates the “miracle of sleeping together” as he “touch[es] the delicate down beneath her navel”. |
| The newly found poems mark a fresh edition of Eliot’s work, published by Faber in November and edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. The stated intention of their release, according to Faber Poetry editor Matthew Hollis, is to “stabilise the record”. | |
| “Eliot was not only a poet and publisher but also his own curator which is quite unusual. Instead of publishing his poems collection by collection, he used his Collected Poems as a perpetually evolving home,” he said. | “Eliot was not only a poet and publisher but also his own curator which is quite unusual. Instead of publishing his poems collection by collection, he used his Collected Poems as a perpetually evolving home,” he said. |
| Related: TS Eliot: the poet who conquered the world, 50 years on | Related: TS Eliot: the poet who conquered the world, 50 years on |
| Hollis said the new edition honoured the official version of Eliot’s work by opening with collected works but that it also included uncollected poems from Eliot’s youth, as well as The Waste Land typescripts, poetry for children and poems intended for personal circulation. It is this final section that will challenge the received view of Eliot, which harks back to Bertrand Russell’s description of him, just two weeks after his first marriage to Vivienne, as “exquisite and listless”. | |
| The philosopher – who it is believed went on to have an affair with the increasingly unstable Vivienne – concluded that the couple’s three-month affair only turned into marriage to satisfy Eliot. “She says she married him in order to stimulate him, but finds she can’t do it. Obviously he married in order to be stimulated. I think she will soon be tired of him,” he wrote. | |
| In another of the revelations of the notebooks, Eliot has restored a line to his great poem The Waste Land, which Vivienne had made him delete from the official version. “The ivory men make company between us,” it says, referring to the chess pieces that Eliot felt had become the only thing the couple had in common. | In another of the revelations of the notebooks, Eliot has restored a line to his great poem The Waste Land, which Vivienne had made him delete from the official version. “The ivory men make company between us,” it says, referring to the chess pieces that Eliot felt had become the only thing the couple had in common. |
| After Vivienne’s death, he disappointed an American woman called Emily Hale, whom he had been in love with as a student at Harvard and whom he had hoped would be the next Mrs Eliot. While he told her that the loved her, he acknowledged it was “in the way usual to men less gifted ie with complete love thro’ a married relationship.” He also turned down an English admirer, Mary Trevelyan, saying that, after Vivienne, the idea of living with someone was a “nightmare”. | |
| Related: TS Eliot: guilt, desire and rebellion at respectability | Roz Kaveney | Related: TS Eliot: guilt, desire and rebellion at respectability | Roz Kaveney |
| Although Eliot scholars have long been aware of the less effete personality revealed through poems such as “King Bolo and his Big Black Kween” and intended only for the eyes of friends such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Clive Bell, such work never suggested a man at ease with sexuality. | Although Eliot scholars have long been aware of the less effete personality revealed through poems such as “King Bolo and his Big Black Kween” and intended only for the eyes of friends such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Clive Bell, such work never suggested a man at ease with sexuality. |
| Clare Reihill, who runs the Eliot Estate, said the poet created the notebooks because he knew how long Valerie was likely to be alive without him – “47 years a widow, as it turned out”. She added that they were “a profound consolation. Valerie read them all the time”. | Clare Reihill, who runs the Eliot Estate, said the poet created the notebooks because he knew how long Valerie was likely to be alive without him – “47 years a widow, as it turned out”. She added that they were “a profound consolation. Valerie read them all the time”. |
| For lovers of a happy ending, there can be no resolution more gratifying than that shown in the poem How the Tall Girl’s Breasts Are: | For lovers of a happy ending, there can be no resolution more gratifying than that shown in the poem How the Tall Girl’s Breasts Are: |
| “Her breasts are like ripe pears that dangle | “Her breasts are like ripe pears that dangle |
| Above my mouth | Above my mouth |
| Which reaches up to take them” | Which reaches up to take them” |