The author gives a little list of notably memorable fragments of Eliot's poetry. Unfortunately he gets one of them wrong, which is a pity because the very thing he gets wrong is (I think) an absolute masterpiece of subtlety on Eliot's part.<p>As quoted in the article: "Humankind cannot bear very much reality."<p>As actually written by Eliot: "Human kind cannot bear very much reality."<p>The difference is a single space, separating the two halves of a compound word -- but it's a big difference.<p>1. Eliot's version is better rhythmically. It introduces a tiny extra pause between "human" and "kind", and it sounds better that way. (One particular way in which it sounds better: the slight slow-down makes it that bit more magisterial, which is part of its appeal.)<p>2. Eliot's version suggests an individual human rather than the species as a whole, which makes better sense: the human race, as such, can neither bear nor fail to bear very much reality, but individual humans certainly can.<p>3. Eliot's version, by its slight unfamiliarity, encourages the mind to dwell a bit more on the associations of those words, the latter especially. Kin. Kindness. German <i>Kind</i>, a child (children typically can't bear very much reality either).<p>[EDITED a minute or two after posting to fix formatting; no changes in content]
This article probably isn't targeted towards a layperson, but it didn't tell me why he was important to the world, important he may be. Why is literary criticism so important?<p>My background memory: A while back, didn't someone submit a made-up literary criticism to a journal in the field using false credentials, and have his work lauded?<p>Edit: The above memory doesn't mean anything regarding this subject, scratch that.