One of the central concerns of both Robert Crawford’s biography of T. S. Eliot and the new volume of Eliot’s letters from 1930–31, is with the disastrous consequences of the hasty marriage that shaped the poet’s subsequent life and work. It is not an easy story to unravel. After the marriage in 1915, the twenty-seven year old Eliot became obsessively secretive and during his lifetime prevented the publication of his letters. When their mother died in 1929, Henry Eliot sent his younger brother the letters that he had written to her—and that she had kept. T. S. Eliot’s response was, “If I could destroy every letter I have written in my life, I would do so, before I die. I should like to leave as little biography as possible.” But many personal ones were kept in libraries and in individual hands. Peter Ackroyd had access to most of this material (which, however, he was not allowed to quote from), when he wrote his excellent biography, T. S. Eliot (1984). Now, fifty years after Eliot’s death, Crawford’s Young Eliot attempts to trace his life and career until the age of thirty-four. The period has, of course, been deftly covered by Ackroyd, and also to a lesser extent by Lyndall Gordon in her Eliot’s Early Years (1977). But Crawford has had access to almost all the letters, including those in the Faber archives, and he has expanded his book to about five hundred pages, in order to document and annotate his findings in the manner of a research student. In the process it loses its narrative flow and often becomes anecdotal. Crawford accumulates the smallest details of Eliot’s life without a coherent point of view. For instance quite early there is a long and largely irrelevant description of the family clock that Eliot’s grandfather carried from New England to St. Louis, and a tedious account of Eliot’s unremarkable grades at Smith Academy, St. Louis, which was founded in 1854 by his grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, a Unitarian missionary. Crawford announces that his book is not an “official biography” (nor was it published by Eliot’s firm, Faber & Faber). It starts with the idea that Eliot had suffered personal wounds from his early life. Apart from the usual disappointments, however, that young men are subjected to, Crawford does not unearth any major hurt in Eliot’s life, until he reached adulthood and suddenly got married in 1915. In fact, from all other accounts, Eliot had a happy childhood. Though he grew up in St. Louis in the South, his family

中文翻译：

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TS艾略特注定的婚姻

罗伯特·克劳福德 (Robert Crawford) 的 TS 艾略特传记和艾略特 1930-31 年的新书信的中心关注点之一是仓促婚姻的灾难性后果，这种婚姻塑造了诗人随后的生活和工作。这不是一个容易解开的故事。1915 年结婚后，27 岁的艾略特变得非常神秘，并在他有生之年阻止了他的信件的出版。当他们的母亲于 1929 年去世时，亨利·艾略特 (Henry Eliot) 将他写给她的信件寄给了他的弟弟——她一直保存着。TS Eliot 的回答是：“如果我能毁掉我一生写过的每一封信，我会在死前毁掉。我想尽可能少留下传记。” 但许多私人物品被保存在图书馆和个人手中。彼得·艾克罗伊德（Peter Ackroyd）在撰写出色的传记 TS Eliot（1984 年）时可以访问这些材料的大部分（但是，不允许他引用这些材料）。现在，艾略特去世五十年后，克劳福德笔下的年轻艾略特试图追溯他的生活和事业，直到三十四岁。当然，Ackroyd 巧妙地涵盖了这一时期，林德尔·戈登 (Lyndall Gordon) 在她的《艾略特的早年》(Eliot's Early Years，1977 年) 中也略有提及。但是克劳福德可以访问几乎所有的信件，包括那些在 Faber 档案中的信件，他将他的书扩展到大约 500 页，以便以研究生的方式记录和注释他的发现。在这个过程中，它失去了叙事的流畅性，常常变成轶事。克劳福德在没有连贯的观点的情况下积累了艾略特生活中最小的细节。例如，很早就有一段很长但基本上无关的描述，描述了艾略特的祖父从新英格兰带到圣路易斯的家庭时钟，以及对艾略特在圣路易斯史密斯学院的不起眼成绩的乏味描述，该学院于 1854 年由他的祖父威廉·格林利夫·艾略特 (William Greenleaf Eliot) 是一位一神论传教士。克劳福德宣布他的书不是“官方传记”（也不是由艾略特的公司 Faber & Faber 出版）。它始于艾略特早年遭受个人创伤的想法。然而，除了年轻人通常会遭受的失望之外，克劳福德并没有发现艾略特生活中的任何重大伤害，直到他成年并于 1915 年突然结婚。 事实上，从所有其他方面来看，艾略特都有一个幸福的童年. 虽然他在南方的圣路易斯长大，