T. S. Eliot’s Use of Buddhist Material in The Confidential Clerk

Abstract

T. S. Eliot is a tactful poet and dramatist. He makes use of “borrowing” from a huge range of sources, including Indian and Buddhist materials. “Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata” and “The Fire Sermon” in The Waste Land are typical examples. But they are mere visible tips of the mass. This paper focuses on The Confidential Clerk and observes how he manages the characters in the drama in accord with the personages in the two Buddhist sutras, Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sutta and Śrīmālā-sutta, about which he learnt in Anesaki’s lectures in 1913 at Harvard. (The documents are now kept in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.)Eliot’s characters, Sir Claude and Lady Elizabeth show a close resemblance to King Prasenajit and Queen Mallikā, and Lucasta looks like Śrīmālā, together with Kagan, Ayodhyā. Colby’s paternalship to Sir Claude is almost the same with the case of Prasenajit and his son. In this way, the theme of Eliot’s play of a lost and found children is framed and woven stealthily by “authors remote in time, or alien in language.”