The Elder Statesman

by T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot's last play, drafted originally in 1955 but not completed until three years later. Lord Claverton, an eminent former cabinet minister and banker, is helped to confront his past by the love of his daughter, his Antigone.

The dialogue in The Elder Statesman, the love scenes in particular, contain some of Eliot's most tender and expressive writing for the theatre. The play was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1958.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Poetry, Classics, Fiction

134 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1959

About the author

Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He wrote the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot

Reviews

[Bill Kupersmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reviving my Greek by reading the tragedians, I’ve found myself revisiting my fascination with the influence of the Classics on later literature. Recently I’ve read Shelley’s version of Euripides’ Cyclops (the original a parody of book IX of the Odyssey) and most recently T. S. Eliot’s play The Elder Statesman. All four of Eliot’s plays set in contemporary England were inspired by Greek originals, The Family Reunion by Aeschylus’ Oresteia, The Cocktail Party by Euripides’ Alcestis, The Confidential Clerk by Euripides’ Ion, and The Elder Statesman by Oedipus art Colonus. It is as if Mr Eliot (as we always thought of him in life) having become a classic himself, were vying with the most sublime of the tragedians, Sophocles. Long ago when I was a graduate student at Texas, we devoured William Arrowsmith’s essay arguing that the Cocktail Party was inferior to Alcestis, the fault of the latter of course being Eliot’s belief in Christianity. Now that I’ve read The Elder Statesman, I’d argue that Eliot surely had not intention of writing Classical tragedy, though like Celia in The Cocktail Party, Lord Claverton indeed experiences conversion.

Claverton is a retired politician, exiled from public office like Oedipus from Thebes. Though he suffered a stroke, he is not visually impaired, but he is blind to has past sins. His daughter Monica looks after him, like Antigone. No sister Ismene but a finace Charles, who resents her father’s engrossing most of her attention. Into Claverton’s life come two ghosts of the past to remind him of his sins. visitor reveals himself as Claverton’s best friend from Oxford, sent down from the university and convicted of forgery, who adopted a new identity in Central America and got rich by dubious means. At a nursing home he encounters a resident who turns out to be a woman whom he seduced and was bought off by his father. Finally, his estranged son Michael arrives, having just been sacked from his latest job.

I enjoyed seeing how Eliot managed to adapt Sophocles’ plot and some of the characters, especially turning Polyneices into Michael. I wonder if the busy-body supervisor of the nursing home was inspired by Theseus. And I didn’t think that Claverton was quite transformed into a Chthonic Daimon at the end, though we can feel that like Oedipus he achieves redemption, of a mor Christian variety.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

"How did this come, Charles? It crept so softly
On silent feet, and stood behind my back
Quietly, a long time, a long long time
Before I felt its presence." (p. 13)

The Elder Statesman is a play in verse about truth, identity and redemption. T.S. Eliot's final work for theatre feels stilted at times; at others it blooms into poetry. As it seems to hover between styles, I'd like to see it performed, to get a better sense of the words' effect on stage.

[إيناس سمير · Rating 4 out of 5]

حكاية سياسي ورجل دولة كهل معتل الصحة، أمضى حياته يتسلق السلم الاجتماعي، ولسوء الحظ، قاده هذا التسلق إلى التعدي على الناس وحب التملك وفرض سيطرته حتى على أبنائه، وأدى ذلك إلى تحوله لرجل أجوف، يعيش بشخصية رسمية متمادية في الادعاء والتكلف والتمويه، لكنه بناءً على أوامر طبيبه، يتقاعد من الحياة العامة ويستعد للعلاج والراحة في دار استشفاء بصحبة ابنته التي كانت ترعاه.

خلال تلك الفترة يدخل في فراغ بعد الصخب المعتاد في حياته العملية والاجتماعية، وتبدأ أشباح الماضي بمواجهته لتجعله يعيد حساباته في القناع الذي اتخذه كستار طويلًا.

ثلاثة أشباح؛ صديق وحبيبة قديمة وابن يمارسون الابتزاز والانتقام منه، وبينما يواجه أشباحه من الماضي يتعلم كيف يواجه مخاوفه، ويعترف بخطاياه، ويصبح شخصًا أكثر واقعية.

رُسمت شخصيات الرواية بدقة تامة، ليس من خلال الإسهاب في وصفها أو ذكر ملامحها، لكن من خلال ذكر مواقف بسيطة وعميقة لكل شخصية تجعل القارئ قادرًا على استنباط ملامح الشخصية بنفسه.

فيذكر إليوت لابنة السياسي "مونيكا" تأجيل خطبتها وزواجها لمساعدة والدها المحتضر. وإثبات محبتها بشدة له حتى عندما تكتشف إخفاقاته، ويذكر لابنه "مايكل" عدة مواقف تدل على التلاعب وقلة المسؤولية، وتبرير الأخطاء بإلقاء اللوم على الآخرين، والازدراء الكبير لوالده.

كعادة إليوت في استخدام نماذج الأساطير اليونانية وما يتجلى عنها من قيم في مسرحياته، فنجده هنا أيضًا في مسرحيته الأخيرة "السياسي العجوز" متأثرًا بشكل خفي بمسرحية "أوديب في كولونوس" لسوفوكليس.

ففي النهاية بعد كشفه لنفسه أمام الجميع واعترافه بأخطائه وما تسبب في أذى للغير وعلى رأسهم ابنه، يخرج اللورد كلافيرتون مغادرًا أرض دار الاستشفاء في انتظار الموت، مثلما غادر أوديب البستان في كولونوس ليجد نهايته.

ترجمة فؤاد مجلي من إصدارات المركز القومي للترجمة ممتازة للغاية، لكن مقدمة المترجم تحرق الأحداث بعض الشيء، لذلك دائمًا ما أؤجل المقدمات للنهاية.

[Abd Alaziz Al Kafrawy · Rating 3 out of 5]

للاسف قرأت النسخة المترجمة
لا يعيبها شئ
الا ان المترجم حرق المسرحية
في المقدمه

[Joe1207 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wistful melancholia with hints of optimism and nostalgia. The Elder Statesman is Eliot’s last play, and the final work published in his lifetime. The synopsis suggests a similarity to Antigone, but a better case is made with The Tempest. Eliot bids farewell to the stage, and world, through Lord Claverton, as Shakespeare does through Prospero. It’s a beautiful, hopeful send-off.

Lord Claverton has “not the slightest longing for the life [he’s] left— / Only fear of the emptiness before [him],” and he compares the moment to “sitting in an empty waiting room / In a railway station on a branch line, / After the last train, after all the other passengers / Have left, and the booking office is closed / And the porters have gone” (24). He is worried about his legacy.

My obituary, if I had died in harness,
Would have occupied a column and a half
With an inset, a portrait taken twenty years ago.
In five years’ time, it will be the half of that;
In ten years’ time, a paragraph. (26)

A former public servant, he wonders if he “never really enjoyed living” (54) in his quest for a respectable mien and reputation. Now at the end of his life, the “ghosts” of his past reappear in Mr. Gomez and Mrs. Carghill. Like the personification of sins in a medieval morality play, they represent Cowardice and Lust. Perhaps more importantly, they remind Lord Claverton of the fragile mask he hides behind.

At bottom, I believe you’re still the same silly Richard
You always were. You wanted to pose
As a man of the world. And now you’re posing
As what? I presume, as an elder statesman;
And the difference between being an elder statesman
And posing successfully as an elder statesman
Is practically negligible. And you look the part.
Whatever part you’ve played, I must say you’ve always looked it. (69)

When he denies this, Mrs. Carghill continues, “There’ll always be some sort of part for you / Right to the end. You’ll still be playing a part / In your obituary, whoever writes it” (69). He was her “first lover,” and the passing of an entire lifetime hasn’t dampened the initial frustration and vindication she felt after his father prevented their marriage. Lord Claverton says that “we were wholly unsuited to each other,

Yet she had a peculiar physical attraction
Which no other woman has had. And she knows it.
And she knows that the ghost of the man I was
Still clings to the ghost of the woman who was Maisie.
We should have been poor, we should certainly have quarreled,
We should have been unhappy, might have come to divorce;
But she hasn’t forgotten or forgiven me. (109)

Despite fifty years’ time, new loves, and a name change—from Maisie Montjoy to Mrs. John Carghill—her feelings remain the same. For Richard Ferry, now Lord Claverton, who made a career of running away, and who encased himself in a “web of fiction,” this unwavering devotion is difficult to understand. He pities Maisie and is proud of Monica, his daughter. He tells Charles, his soon-to-be son-in-law,

If there’s nothing, truly nothing, that you couldn’t tell Monica
Then all is well with you. You’re in love with each other—
I don’t need to be told what I’ve seen for myself!
And if there is nothing that you conceal from her
However important you may consider it
To conceal from the rest of the world—your soul is safe.
If a man has one person, just one in his life,
To whom he is willing to confess everything—
And that includes, mind you, not only things criminal,
Not only turpitude, meanness and cowardice,
But also situations which are simply ridiculous,
When he has played the fool (as who has not?)—
Then he loves that person, and his love will save him.
I’m afraid that I’ve never loved anyone, really. (102)

The crux of the play is telling the truth—to ourselves and others. With the end in sight, Lord Claverton realizes “the longer we pretend / The harder it becomes to drop the pretence, / Walk off the stage, change into our own clothes / And speak as ourselves” (102). He hopes Monica loves him despite being a “broken-down actor” without his “costume and makeup.” He feels at peace when he knows she does.

It is the peace that ensues upon contrition
When contrition ensues upon knowledge of the truth. (127)

Classic Eliot phrasing, teetering on tautology. Lord Claverton continues,

I’ve only just now had the illumination
Of knowing what love is. We all think we know,
But how few of us do! And now I feel happy—
In spite of everything, in defiance of reason,
I have been brushed by the wing of happiness. (128)

Redemptive endings, too, are cornerstone Eliot. With talk of love, truth, and atonement, religious dimensions are almost inevitable. Lord Claverton strolls offstage and Monica opines to Charles in the final lines,

Age and decrepitude can have no terrors for me,
Loss and vicissitude cannot appal me,
Not even death can dismay or amaze me
Fixed in the certainty of love unchanging.
I feel utterly secure
In you; I am a part of you. Now take me to my father. (132)

Suffused with symbolism and replete with romanticism, Statesman is a piece of art from another planet, one that derives its power from values long diluted in the modern conscience. The issues are pertinent—façades and dual identities are central to the social media age. But today, the deathbed confession is cliché, and the play in verse is anachronistic.

Like Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, and arguably Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Eliot experiments in a genre outside his expertise, creating a hybrid work that promotes the author more than the artform. Eliot the playwright never escapes Eliot the poet. “When he has played the fool (as who has not?)” reminds readers of Prufrock: “At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— / Almost, at times, the Fool.”

In critics’ circles, praise portends more praise, and we would be wise to remember that this play was performed to raving acclaim ten years after Eliot’s Nobel. Regardless, the shortcomings are scarce. As Eliot himself said of O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and which I quote in my too-long review of A Touch of the Poet: “One is diffident of passing judgment upon a play which one has not seen upon the stage.” I hope I get the opportunity before I’m too old.

[Mohammed Fawzi (BookTuber) · Rating 3 out of 5]

أن الهروب من الماضي أصعب بكثير من ما حدث في هذا الماضي ياديني كل ما أفتح حاجة أفتكر سوفوكليس

[Illiterate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Often we act a part and lose ourselves. Peace lies in love - someone to whom we tell all (confess) thereby escaping our ghosts (receiving absolution).

[Ahmed Sayed · Rating 3 out of 5]

مسرحية بسيطة ل إليوت بتحكي عن تاريخ أحد الشخصيات السياسية بعد ما أصابه الشيخوخة، من النقاط المهمة التي طرحتها هي فكرة الماضي و أشباحه، بين ماض حافل بالخداع و الكذب، وحاضر مؤلم و موحش، تعتريه الوحده إلا من ونس ابنته التي ترافقه، لتأتي الذكريات المفجعة لتحطمه، الشكل الدرامي مستمد من التراجيدية الإغريقية علي إيقاع هادئ عميق.
أغضبتني المقدمة التي لخصت الأحداث بالكامل.

[Austria Kovalenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

an easy start to reading Eliot's plays, and loved every word and moment.

[Marty · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off I am a big fan of Eliot. However, I haven't read too many plays. In general it is a pretty simple, short story but interesting. And though short, every line is well written. Despite it's title, this story would apply to anyone: we have all tried to mask mistakes in past judgment but those ghosts often come back to haunt us. Sometimes by shielding these experiences we don't simply become a new person with a new identity; rather we have no identity at all because we do not let people in.

[Reda Shokr · Rating 3 out of 5]

إن الموت ليهون في سبيل معرفة معنى الحياة .. ت.س.إليوت

مسرحية مباشرة في جمال وضاح كفكرتها. تقوم المسرحية على فكرة رجوع الماضي وأثره على الحاضر وحياة الإنسان في كل شيء. أشعر أنّ الفكرة تؤيد رأيي المتواضع أنّ الماضي لا يفنى ويستحدث من العدم.

مسرحية قصيرة ولكنها جميلة في كل المقايس وجاءت الترجمة موفقة جدااااااااااااااااا

[Nisreen Mubarak · Rating 3 out of 5]

لست أداري أيهما أوقع أثراً ؟
الزيف الذي قيل عني,ام الزيف الذي رددت به عليهم

[George Dibble · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

I love Eliot and was very happy to learn he'd written some plays. This is my first of him in the genre, but I will write that I think that his poem--at the beginning of the book in which he dedicated this work to his wife--was better than the play itself. Thought the ending was clichéd. However there were a lot of beautiful lines and I enjoyed the first act the most. Really cool ideas there. But even more than the content, I loved the dialogue's structure. Eliot positioned every speaking part as if a poem, with wonderful breaks. This is very personal, intimate, of the play, as the attending audience would never know this. It is the play exposing itself to its readers as if in a state of vulnerability; that the reader was chosen among many to witness it. Really beautiful.
--

Read at a park near my apartment. Warm sun. On a blanket. Overhearing a large family yelling in a game of tag. Reminded me of my many cousins and crowded Grandma Sundays. Mother's mom is a beautiful woman, although deeply injured. Her relationship with Grandpa is one I'd never want to replicate. A quick divorce would cut me from that before it would get so far. And Grandma pulls herself into a deeper existence within this as if she wants to remain undiscovered. By what? Her culture, her church, her family, her idea that she can rise above this great difficulty her her all alone and not fix but cure the uncurable to relieve the unrelievable because her own mother couldn't nor her father so it is she that must be strong and she that is the solution that never was. But she cannot. Each year is worse and worse. Yet even still, when family comes over or she to them, she puts on a costume and performs in great gestures of love, and we all feel it. So, if she herself is without it, and the woman we see is not really her, how is she able to create love? If it all comes from deceit, how does it still exist, persist? I do not know. But it does.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tome directs our attention to an elder statesman in his retired life. He had been a distinguished statesman in active life. He had been honoured and commended in his role as a statesman. The elder statesman is now on his death-bed. He sees for the first time the reflection of his true-self, of a life spent evading reality and the sense of guilt which comes from moral spinelessness. This play is simpler in conception and more human in its handling. Like Oedipus of Sophocles, Lord Claverton, the superannuated statesman of Eliot's play, reaches the places where he comes to recognize as his last resting place. And like Oedipus too, Lord Claverton is attended by a daughter and visited by a son who is in trouble and wants his help and with whom he has a scene of bitter recrimination. Lord Claverton is the scratchy Christian conception of man and woman becoming the inseparable unity of 'one flesh' which persists beyond the grave. The curing of his conscience becomes a complex process. He finds absolution only in a circuitous way. His suppression of the sense of culpability has besmirched him and made his relations with his family a pretense. Intentionally or involuntarily, Lord Claverton has become a 'hollow man' a mere disguise, a mask without a face. His mask has cut off all genuine communiqué with his wife and children. He has found himself 'at home' only in the public world, the world of politics, where everyone else wears a guise and will be less likely to notice his and where honest communication is so rare as not to be missed. As a piece of construction, in effect, the play marks a substantial improvement from its predecessors.

[Skie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This may surprise you: I feel at peace now".

It does, because I feel very tense. And anxious. And just the tad bit annoyed.
This play isn't, by any means, a thriller. It's a simple affair, with few characters and even fewer locations, where people just talk to each other. 
And, still, I felt uncomfortable and just a bit tense throughout all of it. Even knowing nothing of substance would como out of most of the characters actions, I couldn't turn away from what was happening.
All in all, a good work. I can just imagine how seeing it live would change the experience. 

[Ivan Benedict · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a fan of T.S. Eliot's poems in college. I'm not sure
that I read any of his plays back then. This play is very
well done. It involves secrets that people keep, even those
in high places, and even within families.
The consequences can be quite disturbing. Apparently,
Eliot thinks truth would be a better alternative.

[Ryan O'Malley · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If a man has one person, just one in his life, To whom he is willing to confess everything-And that includes, mind you, not only things criminal, Not only turpitude, meanness and cowardice, But also situations which are simply ridiculous, When he has played the fool (as who has not?) - Then he loves that person, and his love will save him.”

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 5 out of 5]

End-of-year Eliot reading brought me to his last published work. This is probably his best play, after Murder in the Cathedral (which is unique).
British stuck-upness gets disturbed by ghosts from the past.

[Hossam Emad · Rating 2 out of 5]

التجربة الاولى ليا مع اليوت ومعجبتنيش قوي
جايز تكون في مشكلة في الترجمة عشان المقدمة فيها جزء من حوار مش موجود في المسرحية، وان شخصية من الشخصيات اتقال انها ظهرت في اول فصل وده محصلش، واسم شخصية مالهاش وجود اصلا
يمكن اكتر حاجة عجبتني هي الاهداء

[Ayman ElKhyary · Rating 3 out of 5]

" إن الرجال يعيشون بفضل التناسي، أما النساء فلا يعشن إلا على الذكريات ".
هناك أمر لا أستطيع تغافله ألا وهو أن المركز القومي للترجمة كتب اسم المسرحية غلط على الغلاف!!

[Nomad nimrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasantly good.

[shezal · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best plays I've read. The message is universal and Eliot deals with the theme in a very superb manner.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's almost confusing that this is the same writer as the waste land, almost everything about that poem has dissipated here

[Paul Klammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is only 80 pages or so. If you have children or a parent who has died, you may find it valuable. Turns out Elliot was a mensch.

[إيم · Rating 3 out of 5]

"سكب الميت بركته على الأحياء
لن أخشى الهرم ولا الذبول"

[Matt Ambs]

Eliot examines the public and private self, as well as nomenclature, being and authority. Claverton fears becoming a ghost, remembered only in political exequies, fading slowly from the public image. In the midst of this, a formerly anathema politician, Gomez, visits Claverton under an assumed identity, speaking of his tribulations in Gaol, his exorbitant politics, and the corrupt public self which he has inherited from his comrade and former benefactor (Claverton). Claverton, troubled by his past errata, hides behind his title, living only in his public fame, as in a world of strangers. As a Statesman, Claverton encounters a loneliness beyond loneliness, aware that he has lost his private self. However, he continues to flee from his unfortunate past. Yet, in circumscribing his individual reality, he is admonished and even blackmailed by those who constitute his memories and those who share his most intimate and dangerous secrets.
Through his eventual abdication of his public status, Claverton learns the nature of love and honesty. Eliot broods over the many facets of matrimonial love as well; the union which allows two souls to speak without speaking, to find clandestine meaning within meaning, becoming one another, sharing their own world, a confluence of the public and private selves. Like two souls that have touched, love’s embrace, its effect, remains after love has gone.
Eliot captivates with his social awareness. This play capriciously drifts from the man to the figurehead, from the regretful father to the venerable patriarch tortured by the demons of his youth.

[بسام عبد العزيز · Rating 3 out of 5]

في السياسي العجوز لدينا عضو برلمان متعاقد يطارده ماضيه ليدفع وهو في خريف العمر ثمن الأخطاء التي ارتكبها و هو في مقتبل العمر..

المسرحية بسيطة و غاية في المباشرة .. الفكرة الأساسية لا تحتاج إلى أي تفسير.. السياسي الذي استيقظ ضميره عندما يجد أن ماضيه قد يدفع ثمنه ابنه الوحيد فإنه يحاول بكل قوة الدقاع عن أسرته و حياته..
هل كانت صحوة ضمير حقيقية؟ أم أن العجوز كان فقط يقوم بعمل "ما يجب عليه القيام به" دون أن يكون من داخله يشعر بالندم الحقيقي؟
بالرغم من محاولة المترجم في بداية المسرحية التأكيد على فكرة الندم و الخلاص إلا أنني أشك دائما في تلك التوبة التي تأتي فقط عندما نجدنا سنقوم بدفع ثمن خطايانا.. التوبة الحقيقية في رأيي تكون عندما نشعر أننا آمنون من العقاب فوقتها ضميرنا فقط هو الذي يقرر التوبة أم التوبة عندما نجد العقاب جاثما أمامنا فهى توبة "الخوف" من نزول هذا العقاب بنا..

على أي حال مسرحية عادية لا أجدها فيها ما يستحق الذكر أو التذكر..

[أحمد رفاعي · Rating 3 out of 5]

تتمثل هذه المسرحية البسيطة والمباشر في عرضها لمشكلة الماضي وأشباحه، وتأثيرها على الحاضر.
سبب الماضي للورد مشكلات كثيرة مما دعاه إلي الضغط على أولاده وتحديد مصيرهم لكي يهرب فيهم عن ماضية، محاولاته للتخلص من الشخص القديم الذي بداخله الذي أقترف الأخطاء أثناء شبابه والتمثل في شخص مهيب للهروب ولاخفاء ماضيه عن من حوله. فهو يريد الهروب من ماضيه ولا يستطيع، ولا يكون له خيار بديل عن مصالحة نفسه والاعتراف بما أقترف من أخطاء عندها فقط يمكن أن تنجلى عنه الهموم، ويستطيع أن يكون إنسان طبيعي متصالحا مع نفسه ومع من حوله.
يعتبر هذا أول عمل أقرأه لـ ت.س.إليوت، العمل جيد رغم بساطته وصراحته وفكرته المباشرة.
بينما الترجمة رأيتها رائعة للغاية ووفق المترجم جدا .

[Ahmed Osama · Rating 4 out of 5]

برغم ان المسرحية مباشرة وبتتكلم عن الاخطاء اللى بترتكبها فى شبابك فى الماضى وتفتكر انك ممكن نسيتها الا انها بترجع مرة تانية وممكن تسبب لك الندم لو مقدرتش تواجهها وتعترف بيها وتتصالح مع نفسك الا انها نالت اعجابى باسلوب الكاتب المميز وببعض الجمل الفريدة المعنى ... اسوا ما فى العمل هو المترجم اللى حرق الرواية فى المقدمة .. عشان كدة لو جبت الكتاب ده فيستحسن متقراش المقدمة الا بعد ما تخلص المسرحية

[Tamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

تتحدث المسرحية باختصار عن سياسي عجوز يرغب فى قضاء ايامه الاخيرة فى هدوء ولكن تظهر فى حياته شخصيتين من ماضيه وشبابه اثناء طيشه فى ذلك الوقوت ويستغلا ابن السياسي من اجل الانتقام منه
وتنتهى المسرحية بتصالح السياسي مع نفسه واستسلامه للامر الواقع
مسرحية قصيرة وجيدة تتناول فكرة ظهور الماضى وتاثيره على الحاضر