A Critique of T. S. Eliot

Eliot adumbrated a modern era, where art was at its most foul, so that experts couldn't live off of their craft, and marketing teams and those who wrought sheer bathos could. As is the old maxim, throw enough shit against the wall, and some of it will stick. Well, we have a wall covered with fecal matter, but underneath it is a compost heap. Like Ezekiel digging through the wall in vision, we see grotesque creatures being worshipped, and the sun, and sin... but what we do not see is an elevation of the proper elements of artistic endeavor.

There are men and women, whom only at four or five years old, could compose masterpieces rivaling that of contemporaries and charlatans who have worked in their fields for half their lives. Should such an individual be laid to the wayside, and pursue other careers? While someone who has not talent, earns their bread from throwing the fecal matter against the canvas, by babbling in tongues?

Simply put, in a market economy, there needs to be art and artists. As, what else will the common lay occupy themselves with, during their periods of rest? What will edify them? What will teach them the mysteries, and educate them long past their schoolings? As all art is a cycle, of rebirth, but Eliot's critical methods celebrate a poor work of art. It is not a good work of art. Sure, the language is pretty... but it is bathos. Eliot the poet is a supreme champion, but Eliot the literary scholar has destroyed art. 

Simply put, if the novel dies, so does the movie, so does the music, so does poetry, so does the sculpting... and then there is left a rich fanatic hording wealth for wealth's sake, and not even the edification of art. A billionaire buys for obscene amounts of money font on a blue canvas. And then truly gifted artists struggle... they end up as warehouse workers, or postmen, or line cooks, and nobody ever learns of their genius. Simply, they have an audience of one. And this is not fair to them.

A gifted writer, ought to write. A gifted painter ought to paint. A gifted reader ought to be an academic. Anyone who can understand Ulysses, ought to be in the elite of academics, but for I---having written difficult books too--if Ulysses is a stepping stone, utter banality was the heap which it descended into.

It's a simple matter of markets. Those competent to work at trade goods, if this is their genius, ought to work their genius, and the populace ought to purchase it. Not by threat, or force, but simply by the genius of the work itself. It is only fair, and without this, there are artists who can sculpt David and they end up working as a waiter, or a prostitute for a multi billion dollar company.

Not everyone can do art. Not everyone ought to do art. But, unfortunately, with Mr. Eliot's critical method employed, the very people doing art, are the ones who shouldn't be. Those succeeding are the very fools who should probably be working as waiters, or servers, or prostitutes for billion dollar companies. As, that's what their talents employ. And there's no shame in it, if the artists are making a living off of their talents. But, instead, in this kingdom, it's reversed. The exact worst people are being celebrated, those who market, those who conform, those who gauge an audience and sell them what they want. Or, there's the obscenity of such artists making urinating mannequins or sitting thirty ton boulders on top of a pillar. Which, is not art.