YEUX GLAUQUES OF T. S. ELIOT’S POETRY: FROM THE “SUNLIGHT ON A BROKEN COLUMN” TO “THE FIRST-MET STRANGER IN THE WANING DUSK”

Abstract

The essay deals with the so-called “symbolism of eyes” in the poetry of Thomas Stearns Eliot and starts with the explication of the syntagm - yeux glauques that Eliot’s il miglior fabbro in his Selwyn Hugh Mauberley elevates up to the level of an exquisite poetic paradigm whose growth exceeds the boundaries of modernist deconstruction of the concept of classic beauty. Ezra Pound affirms it as a universal symbol or a poet’s own “path to heaven”. This kind of symbolism is, in Eliot’s poetry, developed in the similar, rather complex manner which requires meticulous analysis of numerous poetic fragments starting from those published before The Waste Land, at the beginning of the poet’s career, to those taken from the Four Quartets composed much later. The survey will show the author’s implementation of the aforementioned symbols through the elaborate intertextual procedures with the purpose of connecting his achievements with some other poetic traditions whose beneficial influences he accumulated during a considerable period of time. Accordingly, yeux glauques of Eliot’s poetry undergo a thorough transformation so that his primary standpoints, abounding in pessimism and gloom, are turned into the true sources of spirituality and salvation so eagerly wished by the inhabitants of his “waste land”