Macavity Macavity Macavity is a fictional character who is described in a poem in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", by T. S. Eliot. He also appears in "Cats", the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. The name "Macavity" is a pun by T. S. Eliot, on the names of several characters from other works of literature : "Macheath," a supervillain who appears both in John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera", its sequel "Polly" and roughly 200 years later as Mack the Knife in "The Threepenny Opera" written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in 1928, "macuahuitl", the Aztec obsidian sword, and "Moriarty", the
T. S. Eliot And the writers of "Time" magazine were similarly baffled by a challenging poem like "The Waste Land". John Crowe Ransom wrote negative criticisms of Eliot's work but also had positive things to say. For instance, though Ransom negatively criticised "The Waste Land" for its "extreme disconnection", Ransom was not completely condemnatory of Eliot's work and admitted that Eliot was a talented poet. Addressing some of the common criticisms directed against "The Waste Land" at the time, Gilbert Seldes stated, "It seems at first sight remarkably disconnected and confused... [however] a closer view of the poem does more than illuminate the