T. S. Eliot owed the Unitarian belief of his family for his early interest in the Orient. He was introduced to Indian religion and philosophy by George Santayana and Irving Babbitt in his undergraduate years at Harvard, which led to his serious studies of lndian religion and philosophy in his graduate years under Char1es Rockwell Lanman and James Woods. My concern here, however, is why be could not accept lndian religion and philosophy. lt is apparent that Eliot's interest in Indian religion and philosophy remained much later after completion of his graduate studies. N aturally enough, Indian religious and philosophical speculations are echoed in his various poems, particularly in The Waste Land and Four Quartets. While he worked as editor of The Criterion from 1922 to 1936, he allowed space for the forum of debate on the culture of the East and the West. By this time his early view of Indian religion and philosophy had been very much discolored, reveaIing that his position was quite similar to Henri Massis’s negative attitude towards the Oriental philosophy, which is representative of the c1assicist’s view of Action Française based on the concept of sin. Because of "a Catholic cast of mind, a Catholic heritage, and a Puritan temperament," Eliot’s interest in Indian religion and philosophy, which does not allow the concept of Original Sin, could not be permanent. The three points, among others, count for the reasons for his having not fully involved in Indian religion and philosophy. One is that he left his studies of Indian religion and philosophy half done and completed his doctoral dissertation on the Westem mystical philosophy of F. H. Bradley. Another is that he became an Anglo-Catholic in 1927, whose belief is based on the concept of Original Sin. The third is that he chose to become a man of letter rather than a philosopher by profession and declared on several occasions that he could not become a Buddhist. Eliot’s belief in Original Sin prevented him from being fully involved in Indian religion and philosophy for the emotional or practical reasons. He was simply responsive to it intellectually. His East was always next to the West and was partly appropriated to support his own poetic ideas, which shows a phase of the general Westem prejudice against the East.

• 현영민 | Young Min Hyun