I’m reading Coriolanus for Lent. I’m meditating on the text. It is well worth
while. T. S. Eliot thought very highly of the play, and, as he often did, took
the quite contrarian view that it was, together with Antony and Cleopatra,
Shakespeare’s “most assured artistic success.” (The Sacred Wood, 1919) I’ll let the scholars have that debate.
Although he makes reference to the
character, Coriolanus, near the end of The
Waste Land, Eliot’s extended treatment of the play’s central themes is
found in his unfinished collection begun in1931 entitled Coriolan. It was written at
a time when fascism was spreading in Europe and society was sagging at the
knees at home. The American philosopher Russell Kirk said of the poem: “It was
an appeal to true principles of public order, rooted in religion and in
historical consciousness, against ideology, against the cult of personality,
against the indifference or irresponsibility of the crowd, against the ‘Servile
State’ described by Hilaire Belloc, and against captivity to a moment in time.”
(Eliot and His Age, 1971)
There was much in Eliot’s day to cause
him to reflect on Shakespeare’s treatment of the story of the ancient Roman
General. The rise of Nationalism full of bold promises by great men on horseback
and the marriage of technology and empire led the poet to inquire into the deeper
sources of authority and meaning. He sought to reflect upon the love that animates
community and makes life possible. It seems to me that making room for such
reflection is one of the reasons the church observes penitential seasons. We
need simply to stand still every now and then and let the parade of pomp and circumstances
pass us by, and in that simplicity, to look, and to listen.At the still point of the turning world. O hidden.
