THE SHADOW OF MARRIAGE: SINGLENESS IN ENGLAND, 1914–60 (REVIEW)

829 The remaining essays—by Astradur Eysteinsson and Eysteinn Thorvaldsson, Leonore Gerstein, Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan, Stefano Maria Casella, Lihui Liu, and Shunichi Takayanagi—share a focus on historical contexts. While some are more theoretical than others, as a group they offer a distinct fascination by framing Eliot in specific literary histories. Eysteinsson and Thorvaldson on Iceland, like Gerstein on Israel, demonstrate Eliot’s reception and influence on tradition and modernity. Casella, on the other hand, combines literary history with comparative modernism by defining Montale’s and Luzi’s “Dantesque line” (125) of Italian poetry and using it to illuminate Eliot as well as his Italian fellow poets. Similarly, Guerrero-Strachan uses the writings of key Spanish authors to examine Eliot as well as his influence on Spanish poetry. Liu on China and Takayanagi on Japan combine chronological accounts of Eliot’s early profound influence with cultural analyses of later gaps during war and political disruption; both give illuminating accounts of Eliot’s work, despite periods of exclusion, as a voice for the desolation and waste of their own countries in periods of violence and destruction. While this collection inevitably varies in its theoretical and critical emphases, the quality remains high, and it is well edited. Given the diversity of topics, it would have helped to have a somewhat more developed introduction, but the essays do raise new questions. For example, Trehearne’s claim that extensive borrowing from a single poet can be a form of “impersonality” (209) calls for another, longer study. Though his historic and archival work is detailed and illuminating, J. H. Copley’s personalization of the break between Eliot and Curtius leads to the odd claim that Curtius attacks Eliot by calling English a “Germanic dialect swamped by the foreign influences of Romance and Latin” (253). This raises unanswered questions about the history of English—given that Anglo-Saxon is, in fact, a Germanic language that did later merge with French—and why this would be a personal attack at all, while Eliot’s quoted statement in 1940 that he “does not like” Germans is not seen as an attack on Curtius “personally” (254, 259). It is worth noting this emphasis since it seems a problematic distinction in contrast to the article’s significant historical material. Däumer’s compelling argument for the importance of Eva Hesse raises important questions about how one should evaluate a more free and open translation. And the absence of any women authors other than Hesse suggests gaps to be filled. But given the originality of this project and the value of its many voices, these are challenges for individual readers: they call for more study in the directions laid out. This book is an essential resource for all Eliot scholars; it adds to the reconsideration of Eliot as a more complicated figure than much traditional Anglo-American reading made of him.