T. S. ELIOTのTHE ELDER STATESMAN

抄録

T. S. Eliot's latest play The Elder Statesman with its theme of atonement has some affinities with Sophocles' last play Oedipus at Colonus, but the correspondence between these two plays lies less in their plots than in the sadness and serenity of the general tone which prevail in both of them. Though we by no means think that this would be Eliot's last play, we cannot help discerning an almost valedictory gesture in its sadness. This play is also the culminating point and the logical conclusion of Eliot's activities in the field of poetic drama. For the first time, at least in his plays, there are signs that Eliot is emerging from the world of the Inferno and the Purgatorio into the more serene regions of his Paradiso. Returning to the comparison of The Elder Statesman and Oedipus at Colonus, we find a fundamental difference in the attitudes of the dramatists in those two plays. Eliot's attitude is essentially modern and derives from the trends of modern philosophy, especially those of such phenomenologists as Bradley and Husserl, who have influenced Eliot directly or indirectly. This could be illustrated by his frequent use of such a word as make-believe in juxtaposition with reality. Eliot's plays after The Family Reunion are a series of the unravelling of reality through the analysis of the phenomenal everyday world. In The Elder Statesman, Eliot's pursuit seems to have come full circle, and it strikes the present writer that it would be very difficult for the dramatist to proceed any further. Then, is The Elder Statesman Eliot's masterpiece? Opinions vary on this point. I admit that his verse has finally achieved the flexibility and freedom necessary for a successful poetic drama. But in order to attain this flexibility, Eliot, has lowered his poetic voltage so low that this play seldom rises to great poetry. Another defect of the play lies in its construction. The 'conversion' of Lord Claverton is reached too easily to convince us, and long before the last scene the climax of the drama is past, leaving the audience or the reader uninterested. I wonder, with Helen Gardner, 'whether drama can deal with sin, and still be drama, or whether, like the law, it can only deal with crime.' The odds against which Eliot has been and is fighting is very great. It would be easier for him to attain his object of giving his audience both amusement and religious illumination through poetic drama, if he lived in the Middle Ages in which the faith afforded a common basis for all kinds of people, but in the present age when the established religion is on the wane, the task of a dramatist treating the problem of faith is made overwhelmingly difficult. In spite of my admiration for Eliot's consistent pursuit to put his theory of poetic drama into practice, I am left with the impression that the most fruitful climate for a great piece of literature may be the twilit borderland between belief and unbelief.