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Discretion and Indiscretion in the Letters of T. S. Eliot

2010; Oxford University Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/camqtly/bfq021

1471-6836

Arthur E. Stillman,

Modernist Literature and Criticism

Writing from London, at the age of 26, to a friend back in America, T. S. Eliot ends his letter: I hope you will write soon and tell me about yourself. I think one's letters ought to be about oneself (I live up to this theory!) – what else is there to talk about? Letters should be indiscretions – otherwise they are simply official bulletins. Always yours Tom (i. 82) ‘The desire to write a letter, to put down what you don't want anybody else to see but the person you are writing to, but which you do not want to be destroyed, but perhaps hope may be preserved for complete strangers to read, is ineradicable. We want to confess ourselves in writing to a few friends, and we do not always want to feel that no one but those friends will ever read what we have written.’