ishtat
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2004
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Litvinoff died on September 24th aged 96. A good poet and fine writer he is almost completely forgotten save for the slashing criticism he made of TS Eliot.
Litvinoff was born and brought up as one of 9 children in an impoverished Jewish Household in Whitechapel, London.
In the 20's and 30's Eliot (like many others) wrote some fasionably anti semitic poetry. This extract is from Burbank with a Baedecker: Bliestein with a cigar. Burbank was described as,
"Chicago Semite Vienese" whose "lustrous protrusive eye stares from the protozoic slime."...On the Rialto once./The rats are underneath the piles/The Jew is underneath the lot/ Money in furs."
Litvinoff, usually a shy diffident man, and an admirer of Eliot had largely forgiven Eliot for this, but Eliot re-published the poem after the war(1948), when knowledge of the Holocaust was known, he was furious.
At the inaugural meeting of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Litvinoff read to an audience which included Eliot, his poem To TS Eliot. The audience thought it was a tribute piece but when Litvinoff began. "I share the protozoic slime of Shylock." It went on in similar vein. Uproar ensued, almost solely condemnation of Litvinoff, not of Eliot's misjudgement.
WIth the benefit of hindsight it's easy to see that Litvinoff had an important point to make, though at the time he received little support, except from one man, Eliot himself, who acknowledged that Litvinoff's response was an excellent poem.
Litvinoff deserves to be remembered for more than this controversy, in particular for his "Journey through a Small Planet."which should be compulsory reading for all Londoners and particularly Jewish Londoners.
Litvinoff was born and brought up as one of 9 children in an impoverished Jewish Household in Whitechapel, London.
In the 20's and 30's Eliot (like many others) wrote some fasionably anti semitic poetry. This extract is from Burbank with a Baedecker: Bliestein with a cigar. Burbank was described as,
"Chicago Semite Vienese" whose "lustrous protrusive eye stares from the protozoic slime."...On the Rialto once./The rats are underneath the piles/The Jew is underneath the lot/ Money in furs."
Litvinoff, usually a shy diffident man, and an admirer of Eliot had largely forgiven Eliot for this, but Eliot re-published the poem after the war(1948), when knowledge of the Holocaust was known, he was furious.
At the inaugural meeting of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Litvinoff read to an audience which included Eliot, his poem To TS Eliot. The audience thought it was a tribute piece but when Litvinoff began. "I share the protozoic slime of Shylock." It went on in similar vein. Uproar ensued, almost solely condemnation of Litvinoff, not of Eliot's misjudgement.
WIth the benefit of hindsight it's easy to see that Litvinoff had an important point to make, though at the time he received little support, except from one man, Eliot himself, who acknowledged that Litvinoff's response was an excellent poem.
Litvinoff deserves to be remembered for more than this controversy, in particular for his "Journey through a Small Planet."which should be compulsory reading for all Londoners and particularly Jewish Londoners.
