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A Heideggerian Reading of “Gerontion”

“Gerontion” discloses an event of an old man's existence. Following Heidegger's phenomenology I examine how Eliot describes this event. This article consists of three parts. The first part is a brief introduction to Heidegger's notion of how poets disclose Being. In the second part I attempt to find in “Gerontion” phenomenological parallels with Heidegger. In the Origin of the Work of Art Heidegger says works of art include events of Being and that poets attempt to bring these events into “the greatest possible proximity to us.” What Heidegger means by the greatest possible proximity is equivalent to what we call the visual immediacy which is one of the key terms in the twentieth-century aesthetics and means that entities are made present in just the way they look. Eliot's rhetoric insists that the only means to visual immediacy is through a rethinking of the poetic tradition. For Eliot there is no other approach to poetic truth except through constant reflection on tradition, that is, destructive (Heidegger's term) orientation toward the past. The third part is the conclusion. Eliot's own term for visual immediacy is immediate experience. In the Concept of Being in Hegel and Heidegger Gerhard Schmitt says what Heidegger means by Being is “the indeterminate immediate” which cannot be discovered through determinate concepts. Schmitt implies that we can discuss Heidegger's concept of Being and Eliot's immediate experience on the same level.