TS Eliot, renowned as the greatest 20th Century poet has imbedded lines from his masterpieces, The Waste Land and Four Quartets into common consciousness.
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
“April is the cruellest month.”
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
Yet the muddle of his private life left the impression of a callous, enigmatic personality. Siegfried Sassoon, his contemporary, described him as “cold-storaged humanity”. He abandoned his unstable first wife in an asylum and never visited her; dazzled an adoring sweetheart for decades with his lovestruck letters but kept her hanging on a string and eventually betrayed her; and towards the end of his life married his secretary forty years his junior. A reviewer remarked that he followed Wordsworth’s pattern where being starved of sex arguably led to his greatest work.
He was born 26 September 1888 7.45 am St Louis, Missouri, and had a 12th house Sun Libra with a highly-strung 12th house Uranus as well and a striking collection of Neptune Pluto and Moon in Gemini in his 8th house which are opposition Mars Jupiter in Sagittarius in his 2nd. He’d have more than his fair share of mental instability to cope with.
The 12th house is the chart area of the unconscious and creativity; and the 8th house for some has this magical ability to influence the masses – for good or for ill since Hitler had the same. King George VI had Neptune Pluto in the 8th opposition Sagittarius planets and he was given to uncontrollable rages. So there was a good deal more emotional turmoil going on in TS Eliot’s life than his stunted relationships might suggest.
Both his first wife Vivienne, 28 May 1888, and his arm’s-length love Emily Hale, 27 October 1891, were born with Neptune Pluto in Gemini prominent. In Vivienne’s case it was conjunct her Gemini Sun so she’d always have been battened down, poor soul, and his treatment of her exacerbated her fragile state of mind. Emily had the Neptune Pluto trine Mars and a stellium with her Sun in intensely emotional Scorpio so she hung on through the years hoping he’d fulfil the promise of his passionate letters.
Valerie, 17 August 1926, whom he eventually married for the final 8 years of his life, had been starstruck with him as a writer since her teens, married him when she was 30 and after his death tended devotedly to his estate for decades. She avoided the fey Neptune Pluto syndrome being a later generation and was a Sun Neptune in Leo opposition Jupiter in Aquarius.
I’ve always thought that the Neptune Pluto conjunction of the late 19th Century, first in Taurus and more importantly in Gemini between 1876 and 1902 had a defining effect on the 20th Century. It’s a curious and can-be terrifying mix of Pluto’s intensity with Neptune’s cosmic yearnings, both intensely sexual and equally rejecting of human desires. It imbues hubris of a stratospheric scale on some who bear its stamp – ambition without limits. It produced epically brutal leaders; fostered art, especially erotic literature and scientific advances in such intangibles as electricity, radio and telephone. As well as megalomaniac ambition, it also has a propensity for scandals.
“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
“I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land