Abstract
T.S. Eliot’s character Sweeney appears in the collection 1920, the long poem The Waste Land, and the play Sweeney Agonistes. He embodies two opposed aspects of masculinity: a brutal, threatening side associated with gender violence and a spiritual, mystical side. Because of this polar duality, Sweeney sums up most of Eliot’s male characters, including those in his early poems (Bleistein, the “young man carbuncular”) and in his later plays (Harry in The Family Reunion, or Colby in The Confidential Clerk). The study of these characters reveals a gradual detoxing of Sweeney’s masculinity, consisting in the attenuation of his brutality and the growth of his spirituality, which conditions later male characters in accordance with Eliot’s choice of illumination and purgation.
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Notes
- 1.
Although there is no obvious similarity in terms of story or action, Eliot’s title evokes John Milton’s dramatic poem Samson Agonistes (1671), suggesting an ironic connection with the heroic, Biblical character.
- 2.
All the quotes reproduce the original layout, emphasis, and capitalisation (it was Eliot’s practice to capitalise the first word of each verse line).
- 3.
In connection with Sweeney’s Irish origins, we should recall that Victorian satirical journals such as Punch often represented the Irish as monkeys or apes (see Wade 2011).
- 4.
Dante’s original line is “Io non mori’, e non rimasi vivo” (1961: 420), translation by John D. Sinclair.
- 5.
Translation into English by Willis Barnstone. The original lines are “Vivo sin vivir en mí,/y de tal manera espero,/que muero porque no muero” (1972: 62). Very similar lines are also attributed to Saint Teresa of Ávila, a contemporary of Saint John of the Cross.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been supported by the project “T. S. Eliot’s Drama from Spain: Translation, Critical Study, Performance (TEATREL-SP),” funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and by the European Regional Development Fund (PGC2018-097143-A-I00).
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Llorens-Cubedo, D. (2023). From Brutal to Spiritual Men in T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Drama: Sweeney and Beyond. In: Martín, S., Santaulària, M.I. (eds) Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22144-6_4
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