Thursday, November 18, 2004

McLuhan on Eliot

"It is very inspiriting to read these words from the pen of the greatest English-speaking poet and the clearest-headed critic of literature writing in our time (T.S. Eliot):

'What chiefly remains of the new freedom is its meagre impoverished emotional life; in the end it is the Christian who can have the more varied, refined and intense enjoyment of life; which time will demonstrate....The world is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail, but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the world from suicide. [p. 32]'

How much more courageous[,] realistic and honest to say 'the dark ages before us', than to gibber cravenly in Wellsian fashion of vulgar Utopias...."

Marshall Mcluhan - The Letters of Marshall Mcluhan pg 65.
[T.S. Eliot - Thoughts After Lambeth]

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