In poetry as in politics, revolutionaries are really frustrated fighters for old ideals. They are purists, bearing witness to betrayed hopes. As a result, the revolutionary is often thoroughly rational, devoted to logic and memory as well as compassion. His purpose is probably the rebuilding of a lost condition of grace and freedom. The purpose cannot be revenge or defiance, as ideals cannot be encouraged by bitterness or cynicism, but only assaulted by them. If the revolutionary is often confused with the embittered anyway, and even with the maddened nihilist, this is because the two may come to use the same weapons and on occasion resemble each other. Clearly, the twentieth century overflows with these confusions, in politics and the arts, including poetry. The confusion is dramatic between T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and it may be valuable, even crucial, to revise the commonly held view of Pound as the “truer” revolutionary of the two. Pound may be less a revolutionary than a possibly crippled, if sometimes brilliant poet, whose bitterness, savagery and self- pity make in the end a bizarre parody of the whole idea of revolution.

It is entirely apropos to take a dispassionate look at these issues during the centennial of Eliot's birth. In fact it may also be apropos to take a backward glance, comparing a few of the powerful poetic revolutions of the past with Eliot's own achievement. Eliot may here be seen to rank with Catullus, Dante, Marlowe and Milton, other acknowledged revolutionaries in the art. This list might be slightly expanded— it is not as long as might be imagined— but it will perhaps appear surprising only to those accustomed to seeing their revolutionaries as bomb- throwers rather than creators, as wrenchers of language and the human spirit rather than as clarifiers, as avengers rather than as bountiful providers of new ways of seeing ourselves and the world.

Eliot, if the masses of books recently published about him are any guide, has never been more popular, never commanded greater interest. This too may surprise those prepared to take his presence for granted, much like an old gray ghost kept around the house and cheerfully ignored as harmless. In language, the old and often rational gray ghosts rule us all. Eliot knew about the “ghost problem,” of course.