[lbo-talk] TSE on Henry James

[Carrol Cox]

The James list has come alive for one of its periodic bursts of lively
discussion. The current thread reminded me of Elit's comment that James
had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it (word?). What did he
mean by that anyhow? And, perhaps more interestingly, did he implicitly
claim that HE too had such a mind, and if he made that (implicit) claim
then are we sinsulting hium by arguing about his "ideas." And if he did
_not_ (implicitly or explicityly) make that claim for himself, then wa
she in effect confessing that he did not have a "fine" mind, or at least
one as fine as James's? And he did neither, then what kind of nonsense
was he writing when he made this comment on James? Was it a responsible
claim, or did Eliot by chance have the habit of throwing off profound
nonsense eery so often in his criticism? If so, how do we separate the
profound nonsense from the profound sense in his criticism?

Carrol