艾略特(1888～1965年)
Eliot, T(homas) S(tearns)
美裔英籍诗人、剧作家和文学评论家，生於圣路易。1914年迁往英格兰之前於哈佛大学就读，自此在英格兰从1920年代开始担任编辑，直到去世。第一首重要的诗作和英语文学第一首现代主义杰作是〈阿尔弗烈德.普鲁弗洛克的情歌〉（Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915）这首前卫实验作品。《荒原》（The Waste Land, 1922）以惊人的能力表达了战後岁月的觉醒，为他奠定了国际声誉。其第一部评论集是《圣林》（The Sacred Wood, 1920），为後来的批评理论引进新观念，引起许多讨论。1915年结婚，後来他的妻子罹患精神疾病，1933年两人离异（1957年他再婚，婚姻幸福）。1927年改信安立甘宗（Anglicanism），影响了後来的作品。最後一部伟大的作品是《四首四重奏》（Four Quartets, 1936～1942），这是四首关於精神革新的诗作，连接个人和历史的现在和过去上演。後来具有影响力的论文有《怎样才算是一个基督教社会》（The Idea of a Christian Society, 1939）、《关於文化的定义的札记》（Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 1948）。他的剧作《大教堂凶杀案》（Murder in the Cathedral, 1935）是以诗来处理贝克特（Thomas Becket）殉教的故事。其他的剧作如《鸡尾酒会》（The Cocktail Party, 1950）等重要性较不那麽强。从1920年代起，他就已是最有影响力的现代主义英语诗人。1948年获诺贝尔奖，自此其地位非其他20世纪诗人所能比拟。
English version：
1888～1965年
Eliot, T(homas) S(tearns)
U.S.-British poet, playwright, and critic. Born in St. Louis, he studied at Harvard University before moving to England in 1914, where he would work as an editor from the early 1920s until his death. His first important poem, and the first modernist masterpiece in English, was the radically experimental “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915). The Waste Land (1922), which expresses with startling power the disillusionment of the postwar years, made his international reputation. His first critical volume, The Sacred Wood (1920), introduced concepts much discussed in later critical theory. He married in 1915; his wife was mentally unstable, and they separated in 1933. (He married again, happily, in 1957.) His conversion to Anglicanism in 1927 shaped all his subsequent works. His last great work was Four Quartets (1936-42), four poems on spiritual renewal and the connections of the personal and historical past and present. Influential later essays include The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). His play Murder in the Cathedral (1935) is a verse treatment of Thomas Becket's martyrdom; his other plays, including The Cocktail Party (1950), are lesser works. From the 1920s on he was the most influential English-language modernist poet. He won the Nobel Prize in 1948; from then until his death he achieved public adulation unequaled by any other 20th-century poet.