COMMENT
THE editors have the pleasure of announcing that for the year 1922 The Dial's award goes to Mr T. S. Eliot.
Mr Eliot has himself done so much to make clear the relation of critic to creative artist that we hope not to be asked whether it is his criticism or his poetry which constitutes that service to letters which the award is intended to acknowledge. Indeed it is our fancy that those who know one or the other will recognize the propriety of the occasion; those who know both will recognize further in Mr Eliot an exceedingly active influence on contemporary letters.
Influence in itself, however, is no service, and what makes Mr Eliot a significant artist is that his work, of whatever nature, is an indication of how ineffective the temptation to do bad work can, for at least once, become. Few American writers have published so little, and fewer have published so much which was worth publication. We do not for a moment suspect Mr Eliot of unheard-of capacities; it is possible that he neither has been pressed to nor can write a popular novel. But the temptation not to arrive at excellence is very great, and he is one of the rare artists who has resisted it. A service to letters peculiarly acceptable now is the proof that one can arrive at eminence with the help of nothing except genius.
Elsewhere in this issue will be found a discussion of Mr Eliot's poetry, with special reference to his long work, The Waste Land, which appeared in The Dial of a month ago; in reviewing The Sacred Wood, and elsewhere, we have had much to say of his critical work, and may have more. At this moment it pleases us to remember how much at variance Mr Eliot is with those writers who having themselves sacrificed all interest in letters, are calling upon criticism to do likewise in the name of the particular science which they fancy can redeem the world from every ill but themselves. As a critic of letters Mr Eliot has always had preeminently one of the qualifications which he requires of the good critic: "a creative interest, a focus upon the immediate future. The important critic is the person who is absorbed in the present problems of art, and who wishes to bring the forces of the past to bear upon the solution of these problems." This is precisely what Mr Eliot has wished, and
