Arwin van Arum wrote:

> What I meant when I referred to French was that Eliot's most important
> modernist influence was French poetry, and that is very very good poetry.
If
> you want to understand Eliot's modernism, then the French inspirations are
> very important, and as modernist poetry I'm fairly certain that in time
they
> will be recognised as being the most important modernist poems.

My immediate reaction to this statement is that the French language itself
was not very important. Translations into English should have had much the
same effect. Something would be missed of course but I don't see how
modernism was affected by the language other than what effect it may have
had on the French culture.

Regards,
   Rick Parker