Eliot Possessed: T. S. Eliot and FitzGerald"s Rubaiyat (The Gotham Library)
Price 17.97 USD
At first glance few literary lineages might seem less likely than one connecting the foremost experimental poet of the 20th century to Victorian poet/translator Edward FitzGerald"s "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam". But the controversy surrounding the life and work of FitzGerald was approaching its peak around the time a young and intellectually fervid Thomas Stearns Eliot first found the "Rubaiyat" "lying about", and his exposure to it resulted in a profound inward change. Years later Eliot observed in his Norton lectures that the effect of his first reading of the work was "like a sudden conversion - the world appeared anew, painted with bright, delicious and painful colours". "Eliot Possessed" reminds us of this important lineage.