T. S. Eliot: The More You Know, The More You Don't

Poet, playwright and critic T.S. Eliot, circa 1920.

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From T.S. Eliot’s essay “The Perfect Critic” for the literary journal Athenaeum in 1920:

The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of information—deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.

Comments

[Michael C. Rush]

I don't know
how I feel about this.

[Ken Lauter]

Poor Tom

… when we do not know, or when we do not know enough,
we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.

- T.S. Eliot, “The Perfect Critic,” Athenaeum 1920

I used to revere you, Tom— honestly, I did.
I read Profrock, The Waste Land, etc. with awe

and a growing love of your love of words.
I read your plays and dozens of your essays

and felt that I was in touch with greatness.
Now, not so much. Now, more like pity

for a lost soul whose fondest wish was
to become a Christian saint, a life blighted

by bad luck and an enormous intellect.
(Pretty fucked going and coming, I’d say.)

As for emotions, I’ve got a few— so did you.
It plagued you. Don’t give it another thought.

- Ken Lauter