In 1927, at 38 years of age, the expatriated American poet T.S. Eliot was baptised and confirmed in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. The celebrated author of The Waste Land (1922) – that literary paragon of abject nihilism – had pivoted away from the liberal, philosophical underpinnings of his upbringing and education, the urbane prejudices of his peers, and the near-blasphemous despondency of his marriage, to become a man of faith.
Eliot’s change of heart and mind did not happen overnight, nor without warning. Published 100 years ago, his 1925 poem The Hollow Men provides something of a bridge between the wastelands of 1922 and the spiritual rebirth of 1927.
Alternating between the choral “we” and the more personal “I”, The Hollow Men is by turns outward-facing and inward-facing. It is diagnostic and symptomatic, accusatory and culpable, communal and personal. It is a poem about that which ails society at large, and about that which gnaws at the soul of the poet.
