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TS Eliot’s hidden love letters to muse released after 60 years 

WION Web Team
New Delhi Updated: Jan 03, 2020, 04:19 PM IST
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Photograph:(AFP)

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Hale, the great poet’s muse and source of “supernatural ecstasy” for more than 30 years, has long been the fascination of Eliot scholars but remained hidden, on both the poet and Hale’s wishes, for 50 years after Hale’s death in 1969.

Nobel laureate TS Eliot’s love letters to scholar Emily Hale were released on Thursday amid fevered speculation and under tight security at an elegant library on the campus of the Ivy League’s Princeton University.

Hale, the great poet’s muse and source of “supernatural ecstasy” for more than 30 years, has long been the fascination of Eliot scholars but remained hidden, on both the poet and Hale’s wishes, for 50 years after Hale’s death in 1969.

The Nobel laureate met Hale when both were studying at Harvard University in 1912.

The letters reveal that his feelings for her were intense and later were reciprocated by the younger Hale – but despite this, their love was ultimately and heartbreakingly thwarted.

Hale has long been understood to be the inspiration for some of Eliot’s most breathtaking verse, including the first lines from Burnt Norton, the first poem of his Four Quartets.