The Letters of T. S. Eliot by T. S. Eliot

Author:T. S. Eliot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

TO John Middleton Murry

MS Valerie Eliot

[mid-April? 1925]

[London]

In the last ten years – gradually, but deliberately – I have made myself into a machine. I have done it deliberately – in order to endure, in order not to feel – but it has killed V.2 In leaving the bank I hope to become less a machine – but yet I am frightened – because I don’t know what it will do to me – and to V. – should I come alive again. I have deliberately killed my senses – I have deliberately died – in order to go on with the outward form of living – This I did in 1915. What will happen if I live again? ‘I am I’3 but with what feelings, with what results to others – Have I the right to be I – But the dilemma – to kill another person by being dead, or to kill them by being alive? Is it best to make oneself a machine, and kill them by not giving nourishment, or to be alive, and kill them by wanting something that one cannot get from that person? Does it happen that two persons’ lives are absolutely hostile? Is it true that sometimes one can only live by another’s dying?4

<Answer this> During this illness she really went away – for three days she felt that she had left her body. Is this wrong? Should it be discouraged? Is there a way in which I can lay down my life and gain it? Must I kill her or kill myself? I have tried to kill myself – but only to make the machine which kills her. Can I exorcise this desire for what I cannot have, for someone I cannot see,1 and give to her, life, and save my soul? I feel now that one cannot help another by ruining one’s own soul – I have done that – can one help another and save it?

Does she want to die? Can I save myself and her by recognising that she is more important than I?

T. S. E.

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