I believe you have corrected an error in my piece. When I wrote the blog post in question, I was working from my memories of reading about Eliot at Lascaux in Hugh Kenner’s The Pound Era., (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973.) Going back and re-reading the passage, page 30, Kenner does not state what cave Eliot visited, he just says, “a cave in southern France.” He quotes Eliot in the same passage as having said, “art never improves.” In a separate source at http://www.claytoneshleman.com/intro.html, Clayton Eshleman talking about his book Juniper Fuse, says that Kenner conjectured Eilot visited a cave at Niaux in the Pyrenees. Thank you for catching my mistake.

Ken Rodgers

“When T. S. Eliot came out from viewing the sixteen-thousand-year-old cave paintings at Lascaux, he is reported to have said something along the lines of, “We haven’t changed a bit,” and I could see that, I could see what he meant, as if Picasso or Klee or Matisse or de Kooning had been down there, painting away, or at least their spirits encaved in the bodies of Cro Magnon man.”

I have been interested in Eliot for years. And I would most like to be informed of the source according to which you have mentioned his visiting of Lascaux. If I am correct, he visited the “Font-de-Gaume” at Les Eyzies, but I have never heard of his visiting Lascaux.

I agree with you when you say in effect that life is short but art is long and that art has never evolved whereas technology has evolved.

I very much look forward to feedback.

Best wishes,
Tatsushi NARITA, (Mr.)
—
Nagoya Comparative Cultuer Forum, Nagoya, Japan