enough to stamp the seal of melancholyBut Eliot is a brilliant poet, WW - and, sometimes unwittingly, shows that from the depths of despair something infinitely precious and beautiful (yet also fantastically commonplace) can be retrieved. Classic examples of this could be the great Blues performances, but continuing on the Eliot theme,
The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock:
http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.htmland
Preludes:
http://www.bham.net/soe/arclight/orb2.htmand
The Hollow Men:
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html-will all do nicely.
It seems to me that in conjuring up infinite despair, Eliot nonetheless conjures up infinity. And his eloquence and use of often surreal and dream-like imagery is amazing. His despair is rooted in a tremendously powerful realisation of what we all
could be, and what he himself longs to be. So - to the extent that he communicates his longing and to the extent that we share the feeling, his is a powerful affirmation of humanity.
Returning vaguely to the theme of this thread (ha ha! turning an oil tanker..) Eliot projects a dismal present into
eternity, the only way out being a revolutionary leap into the unknown.
That's also the underlying meaning of W'ON's (or rather Nietzsche's) Eternal Return. If Now is Forever it can be infinitely depressing or infinitely wonderful. Or, indeed, both at the same time.