Eliot, Frost, Stevens - Prospettive poetiche americane sulla vecchiaia

Abstract

T.S. Eliot returns again and again in his poetry to old age (Gerontion, A Song for Simeon, Little Gidding), which is presented consistently as a condition of loss and debility which allows us to fully realize our human weakness and encourages us to seek for meaning and fulfillment beyond time. This paper considers in detail Eliot’s poetic statements on old age, and goes on to compare them more briefly with Robert Frost’s ironic realism (An Old Man Asleep, Provide, Provide) and Wallace Stevens’s hopeful view of old age as a condition in which by recourse to imagination inevitable loss can provide no less than ‘a new know-ledge of reality’.