A vintage that tastes of Old Possum

Eliot. After 50 years trying to make sense of his verse, and at the risk of admitting to rampant philistinism, I propose three conclusions. At his best, he is one of the finest poets in the language. Partly because he is straining language and thought to the uttermost — an analogy with the final Beethoven piano sonatas — he is sometimes incomprehensible: sometimes, indeed, falls into arrant pseudery. Finally, his anti–Semitism before the war, his rejection of Animal Farm after it: this great man and devout Christian was not exempt from original sin.

Gerontion. ‘The Jew squats on the window sill, spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp.’ We turn our eye from the page in revulsion and pity. Even before Auschwitz, how could one of the finest sensibilities of our era have written that? A few lines later: ‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness?’ Truly, this was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.