...other people at all; only with finding the right words, or anyhow, the least wrong words . . . He is oppressed by a burden which he must bring to birth in order to obtain relief.'7 If some such process is, as 1 suggest, at the heart of Eliot's greatest poetry, then the...

...this suggestion even more clearly in Eliot's "Three Voices of Poetry." The poet, Eliot argues, "is oppressed by a burden which he must bring to birth...order to obtain relief. Or, to change the figure, he is haunted by a demon and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of form of exorcism of this demon"...

...will ever listen to them or not, or whether anybody else will ever understand them if he does. He is oppressed by a burden which he must bring to birth in order to obtain relief. . . . and when the words are finally arranged in the right way — or in what he comes to accept as...

...don't - but I see them: they are hunting me down . . .'). As late as 1953, Eliot spoke of the poet 'haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels...name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a form of exorcism of this demon'. All through these fraught years of Eliot's middle age he seems to...

...— this obscure impulse. He does not know what he has to say until he has said it ... He is oppressd by a burden which he must bring to birth in order to obtain relief. Or ... he is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless because in its first manifestations...