Eliot (1888- 1965) was born in the United States and became a British citizen. He is the greatest representative of late symbolism literature and the most influential poet and critic of western modernist literature. 1949, awarded Nobel Prize in Literature and "British King's Medal of Merit" for his contribution and pioneering role in contemporary poetry. 1955 won the Goethe Prize.
Eliot began to publish poems from 1909. His poems have been published successively, including Poems Collection (1909- 1925), Poems Collection (1909- 1935) and Quartet (. The Love Song of Pruefer Locke, written in 19 15, is one of Eliot's most famous poems. This poem symbolically describes the complex ambivalence of a middle-aged man in the bourgeois upper class during courtship, so as to express some people's disillusionment with modern civilization at the beginning of the century, and reveals the prevalent mental illness at that time with the help of Pruefer Locke's symbolic figures. The Quartet is Eliot's masterpiece in his later years. It is full of religious and philosophical meditation, expressing his sense of emptiness and disillusionment about time, promoting the Christian theory of religious original sin, and advocating that only abstinence and atonement can realize the liberation of the soul. This poem is regarded as Eliot's artistic peak. The long poem The Waste Land (1922) is Eliot's masterpiece. Besides poetry, Eliot also has some poetic dramas handed down from generation to generation, the most famous of which is Murder in the Cathedral.
Eliot is one of the founders of the British and American New Criticism, and is known as the "master of modern literary criticism". His "impersonal" creation and criticism theory put forward in his early years had a great influence on modern literature. Its basic content is that life and art are not equal, and there is an insurmountable boundary between them. Therefore, the writer's personal emotional experience must go through an impersonal process, transforming personal feelings into universal and artistic feelings before entering literary works. Eliot's main criticisms are tradition and personal talent (192 1), metaphysical poets (192 1) and the function of criticism (1923).
Eliot's political, religious and cultural views are contrary to the historical trend. He advocated taking religion as the center of political culture, managing the country and spreading culture through the church, so as to save modern western civilization. The prejudice of Eliot's world outlook caused the fallacy of his poems.
The Waste Land is a milestone in modern British and American poetry, the most representative work in symbolism literature, Eliot's famous work and the most far-reaching work.
The first chapter, Funeral of the Dead, depicts the western society as a wasteland where everything is bleak and vitality is dying. The first few words reveal the poet's deep pain, endless disappointment and sadness. In spring, everything is revived and business is full, but in the poet's pen, London, the symbol of modern civilization, is a withered wasteland. In this lifeless habitat, people are neither born nor dead. Although they are still alive, there is only disillusionment and despair in their hearts, and the world in front of them is only lust like the sea. In this suffocating reality, people are full of vulgar and humble desires, and the cloud of death hangs thick over the western world, and people die in a daze. Poets compare the real society to hell, and modern people regard it as a ghost without soul.