T.S. Eliot 1888-1965

Our first stop is at the Missouri-style 20th century mansion of T.S. Eliot, who provided the classic statement of modernist impersonality through weaving together the theory of intertextuality. He moves from the subjective paradigm of influence to a model of synchronic discursive constellations.

The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art towards the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.

T.S. Eliot deserves his place in the Historical Site because of observations such as the above, for they illuminate the relationship between the new order (multilinearity) and the old (linearity). Eliot truly reflected what he said a poet should be - " ..he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present but the present moment of the pastÖ" With this, the words of Eliot are able to resonate as our voyage in Cyberspace continues.