T.S. Eliot, Portishead; Portishead, T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot's clipped, Anglicized cadences, as heard on recordings of the modernist poet reading his own work, echoed off countless dormitory walls in the 1940s and '50s--the soundtrack for young minds engaging with the best of the Western tradition. So Cynthia Ozick wrote in the New Yorker nearly 20 years ago, in a piece lamenting the decline in Eliot's stature over the previous few decades as well as the declining respect, as she saw it, for literary greatness generally.

Here's a new soundtrack for a modern dorm room, complete with that same high-church voice, but this time with backup:

Would Ozick approve? Doubtful, as her scorn for all things "pop" is well documented. So does this recording--the video component here is superfluous--represent debasement or genius squared? You decide.

Via The Elegant Variation.