Jan 6, 2020 1 min read

Unveiling of T.S. Eliot letters a great literary event

The news of “T.S. Eliot letters to muse to be unveiled after 60 years” (O-R, Jan. 2) may shed some lights into the intensely private life of Eliot, and hopefully we may better understand why he didn’t marry Emily Hale (the muse). Some critics maliciously suggested he, having emphysema, married his second wife, Valerie, simply because he needed a “nurse.”

In this transatlantic “epistolary romance” (1,131 letters), I am hoping we may also read the longing to have continuing connection to America for this fully anglicized American poet.

This is indeed a great literary event as the lines in his memorial stone at the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey says, “the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

Jer-Yuan Tsai

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