Nabokov thought Eliot a
"fake".
Has VN written critically, as well as allusively, about Eliot?
Anything beyond opinions? What is one to make of this
judgment (above)? Does VN's disesteem of Eliot's "postured probing,"
(Mr. Boyd's words, below) reflect an attutude that extends to a
dislike of, or uncomfortableness with, other late-19th and 20th
century poetry in which intimation and word-music obscure or take the
place of narrative and description? Do such strong opinions mask a
streak of philistinism, or is he right?
Hazel Shade "ensures in ways that even her father cannot
imagine that in his four cantos the world of timelessness will
intersect time, end will lead back to the beginning, in a way far more
thrilling and inventive, far more skeptical and yet more magical, than
in the postured probing of Eliot's 'Four
Quartets.'"
Walter Miale