Inside / Outside: Eliot, Perspective, and the Modernist Moment

Abstract

How can the poet, confined to the ruins of contemporary history, gain the perspective required to understand it? Perception occurs in time; perspective requires a view that transcends time and place. Eliot’s position, discussed in his prose and illustrated in “Gerontion” and The Waste Land, was that art requires a binary perspective. To be true to the moment, the poet needs a perspective within history; to understand it, he needs a perspective that transcends it. In “Gerontion,” Eliot draws on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley to generate a platform from which to understand his moment; in The Waste Land, he draws on the work of J.G. Frazer and Jessie Weston to create a timeless reference point.