T.S.Eliot..doc

Bai Lina 0710091089 A Biography of T.S. Eliot And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. (the third stanza from the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”) In this stanza from the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which has remained memorable through the years, Eliot revealed the emptiness, ugliness, and boredom of the genteel life of the “bourgeois”, and shaped a young character who fears to “disturb the universe”. As is depicted in his poem, we “can intuit the dramatic scope and evolution of Eliot’s own life” in his profound criticism of secular life, modern culture, and tradition (). Thus, reading Eliot’s works may help us understand his life in an indirect way. However, apart from studying his outstanding literary works, it would be better for us to get some knowledge about this poet’s life. Thomas Stearns (T.S.) Eliot was born on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, as the last child of Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Champe Stearns who also wrote poems in her spare time (). Born and raised in a family that was fairly well-off, Eliot had a relatively happy childhood. At the age of ten, Eliot attended Smith Academy to study Latin, Ancient Greek, French and German (), which laid the foundation for his literary journey. It is also at that time, he showed his talent in writing. Young as he was, he began to write poetry at the age of fourteen “under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam, though he said the results were gloomy