Bacon and Eliot
the background of each panel work to suggest a confined, constrained space, isolating the figures and creating a claustrophobic mood.
Bacon was inspired by Eliot’s extraction of the Eumenides from Greek tragedy of the 5 th century BCE into the 20th century and how he represented them in modern clothing. Bacon did a similar thing with his depiction of the Eumenides in Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion [ Illustration 1 ], in which he inextricably linked them to contemporary events. The intensity of Bacon's painting distilled the violence of the era following the Second World War. It was shown in the final months of the Second World War when the horror of the Holocaust was revealed through the liberation of the concentration camps. The two weeks spent painting this work in 1944 coincided with the press coverage of Nazi death camps, including the release of photographs. Bacon uses the Eumenides as his mouthpiece: their visceral, turgid forms and screeches hold up a condemning mirror to humanity and its acts in the 20th century through the implication that the Eumenides are back to haunt humanity for its crimes. This reflects E liot’s use of the Eumenides in The Family Reunion , with their presence in the play being an uncomfortable reminder of the nagging, inescapable sense of guilt that gnaws away at Harry's soul. The Eumenides are guardians of the moral order, intent on punishing the wicked, hounding and haunting those who are guilty of crimes against the gods. In The Family Reunion the Eumenides act less like the Furies of Aeschylus's Oresteia and have instead been Christianized by Eliot, a devout Christian, to be in line with his God. They do not just seek revenge; rather they act as Harry's spiritual guides, pushing him along the path of salvation in the more Christian ideal of forgiveness rather than the retributive function the Greek Eumenides served. In this synthesis of Christianity and ancient Greek mythology, we see an illustration of the two aspects of Eliot's ideals amalgamated, his knowledge of classics and his Christian ideals, as well as his exploration of the tensions between the two. Bacon does not make any visual links to Eliot’s work here but instead draws on the conceptual purpose of the Eumenides. The implications of the Eumenides in Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at The Base of a Crucifixion [ Illustration 1 ] are similar to Eliot’s uncomfortable remind er to Harry of his guilt. However, Bacon’s reminder is a wider one, showing what human beings are capable of, with the disturbing visual qualities of the biomorphic figures reflecting what Bacon considers the nature of this reminder to be. This work is a stark depiction of horror created to reflect the horrors of the current world with his Eumenides returning to punish humanity for acts of the 20th century.
How Francis Bacon was inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the Four Quartets
Bacon’s dealing with post-war feelings can be linked to two of his favourite poems, The Waste Land and the Four Quartets . He states in an interview with David Sylvester that he ‘ always feel[s] I've been influenced by Eliot. The Waste Land especially and the poems before it have always affected me very much. And I often read the Four Quartets , and I think perhaps they are even greater poetry than The Waste Land , though they don't move me in the same way. ’ 12 The Waste Land, published after the First World War in 1922, dealt with the overall post-war mood of Europe, a feeling that Bacon would have
12 Sylvester and Bacon 2016: 170-4.
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