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by alkyon 308 days ago
Like Wagner and lots of other artists around that time. Agatha Christie's most famous novel? - Ten Little Niggers. Jean Genet was a convicted criminal. I try to separate the work from the artist, even if it's difficult.
1 comments

OP doesn’t even acknowledge it.

Eliot chose, in 1948, when the Holocaust was common knowledge, to reprint a poem that contains the line:

>On the Rialto once./The rats are underneath the piles. The jew is underneath the lot.

That isn’t a poet following a common zeitgeist, that is a deliberate, provocative act.

I think it's a valid and important observation, but it's not incumbent on someone bring up T.S. Eliot to offer a disclaimer about it, and you shouldn't write a comment that implies otherwise.
Why? Who are you to say what I can, and cannot, write?
I mean, you do you, but it's not a reasonable complaint.