T.S. Eliot’s Translation of Religious Mysticism to Literature: Richard of Saint Victor and Saint John of the Cross

Abstract

T.S Eliot read and quoted the great European mystics, among them Richard of Saint Victor and Saint John of the Cross and was influenced by the Biblical prophets. Their works coincide not only in religious believes, but there is a parallelism between Eliot`s linguistic devices and style and religious concepts like the disappearance of the Ego. The expression of the mystical experience through images implies a theory of imagination which uses visible things to explain the invisible and provides a source for meditation, in the same way as Eliot understands poetry as a means to make humanity aware of its need to turn to God.