抄録・内容(英) | T.S.Eliot was among many unexpected admirers of Marie Lloyd, the queen of music halls in London since the 1890s. He immediately wrote a laudatory obituary essay upon her death of 1922, and the essay, slightly altered, strikingly ranks with other high-brow literary essays in his Selected Essays. Rereading this essay now unveils new aspects of Modernism. These are its affinity with popular culture, contrary to the general assumption about Modernism as an élite culture, and its integration of varied academic disciplines. In music halls Eliot found a possibility of reviving the popular artistic spirit of Elizabethan plays. He considered fine art not the antithesis of popular art but the refinement of it, thus compromising the high culture/low culture dichotomy. Although he applauded lively popular art, he strongly criticized passive, uniform middle-class mass culture such as cinemas, gramophones, and motor-cars. Music halls, however, were undergoing radical changes from encroaching commercialization, and the 'Marie Lloyd' essay could be regarded as an obituary of music halls in the 'good old days'. Eliot is not always antagonistic to mass culture, and his tart criticism is directed, rather, towards the middle-classes which he abhorred as lazy, cowardly, and indifferent. His analysis of classes seems to come from an almost anthropological interest. In the same 'Marie Lloyd' essay, Eliot refers to an essay investigating the depopulation of Melanasia, written by W.H.R.Rivers, the Cambridge anthropologist, and specialist in many fields. Eliot associates the working man deprived of music halls with the natives of Melanasia who have lost interest in life because 'Civilization' was forced upon them. Eliot believes that loss of interest in life drives both of them into apathy and boredom. This curious juxtaposition reveals not only Eliot's engagement with anthroplogy but his totalistic view of relating together high and popular cultures, and different sciences. From this we can assume that the intellectual climate of Modernism is an assimilation and a crossing-over of differing disciplines, which was indeed a significant attempt during the interwar period when many previous beliefs were entirely shattered. |