A few weeks ago I watched a documentary on BBC, Return to TS Eliotland, presented by the eccentric but brilliant AN Wilson. I would say that Wilson cultivates this image of mild eccentricity; he is like Jacob Rees Mogg with a brain, and his dress sense is so bizarre he could be mistaken for the offspring of Dame Edith Sitwell.<\/p>\n
But watching his skillful presentation, in which he neatly encapsulated the life and work of Eliot, made me aware that I knew little if anything about the poet; I had a passing notion about \u2018The Waste Land\u2019<\/em> and \u2018Prufrock<\/em>\u2019, but little beyond that. A few months ago I was given some book tokens in Maynooth University in thanks for delivering a couple of lectures on theatre there, so when I was next in town, after having my appetite for Eliot whetted by Wilson, I went to one of the few remaining bookshops in Dublin, a city that had once been a city of bookshops. I treated myself to \u2018Young Eliot\u2019<\/em> by Robert Crawford, and Faber and Faber\u2019s Collected Poems 1909-1962.<\/em><\/p>\n I finished a project a few weeks ago, a project that took nine months to complete, and a lot of hard work every day, six days a week; I translated the autobiographies of Ernest Blythe from Irish to English. He had been an organizer for The Gaelic League, the IRB, and The Irish Volunteers, and post-independence served as Minister for Finance and in other departments. Later on he was Managing Director of the Abbey Theatre for thirty years. My modus operandi<\/em> was to translate for three hours in the morning, and then spend another couple of hours in the afternoon preparing for the following day\u2019s work; finding the English version of remote Irish placenames and surnames, and investigating and translating as best I could the many uncommon words and phrases employed by the self-taught author in his wonderful account of a decade and more of loyal service to the idea of an Irish Republic. He was renowned for his use of unusual and little-known words in his writings.<\/p>\n But as a result of finishing these three great books I am now free to read other material, and Eliot is going to be a fascinating and rewarding subject.<\/p>\n So on we go into \u2018The Waste Land\u2019<\/em> and the world of the man who wrote the immortal words \u2018I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled\u2019 when he was only in his early twenties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few weeks ago I watched a documentary on BBC, Return to TS Eliotland, presented by the eccentric but brilliant AN Wilson. I would say that Wilson cultivates this image of mild eccentricity; he is like Jacob Rees Mogg with … Continue reading