T. S. Eliot and Paul Valéry: 1926-1929

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore, from the perspective of biographical criticism, the relationship between T. S. Eliot, the greatest English modernist poet, and Paul Valery, the greatest French Symbolist poet during the years 1926-1929. This paper is to thoroughly trace the mutual relationship and the influential interaction between Eliot and Valery mainly through the nexus of The Letters of T. S. Eliot 3: 1926-1927 (2012) and The Letters of T. S. Eliot 4: 1928-1929 (2013). Although Eliot’s brief encounter with the French poet and critic at a London reception in 1927 inevitably and repeatedly triggered unpleasant feelings, the editor of The Criterion and a board member of Faber & Gwyer positively and supportively mediated in trying to have Valery’s friend and adjutant William McCausland Stewart’s and the latter’s friend Thomas McGreevy’s English translations of Valery’s French prose and verse published by Faber & Gwyer or the Hogarth Press or Jonathan Cape in place of the Criterion Press. Thanks to Eliot’s insistent endeavors through his correspondence, however, McGreevy’s translation Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci was published by John Rodker in 1929 and Stewart’s translation Eupalinos or The Architect finally not by the Hogarth Press but by the Oxford University Press in 1932. In short, numerous English and/or French letters of Eliot, Valery’s translators, Leonard Woolf the publisher of the Hogarth Press, a mutual friend of W. B. Yeats and Eliot Thomas Sturge Moore the poet-critic, and other men of letters over a period of four years intensively reveal the two masters’ trustworthy and respectful friendship especially with regards to publication of English translations for the worldwide spread of the French poet-critic’s work.