[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr

But what got me incensed was Rogerbob's claim that Eliot's anti-Semitism (and hatred more generally) was at the center of his being, and thus (implicitly) his poetry. One makes no excuses for such things, but it only brushes Eliot's poetry, which is, on balance, deeply humane.

Quincy

I certainly never intended to imply that his hatefulness as a human being should affect the way we read his poetry. In fact, I wrote:

I didn't see anyone here claiming that our assessment of Eliot's poems should depend on our assessment of the man. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be simply curious about the man behind the poems, the way we are generally eager to read biographies about famous people from all walks of life and it is generally considered entirely proper to have such interests.

I am more concerned with allowing one's admiration for his poetry lead to excusing his hatefulness as a human being, which (rightly or wrongly) I understood some people here to be doing as they pointed out that he later tried to suppress his own hateful utterances or that some of his best friends were gay or Jewish and he was always nice to them.

I don't attack Eliot the person in order to demonstrate anything about his poetry. By the same token, I wouldn't use his poetry to defend Eliot the person.