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The Hollow Men
"The Hollow Men" is a poem by the modernist writer, T. S. Eliot. Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles One of the major themes prevalent in “The Hollow Men” is the struggle to maintain hope. . The Hollow Men are stuck on the banks of the River Acheron, and though they are dead, they cannot cross into the realm of death. In Dante's Inferno, it is explained that some souls can be accepted into neither Hell nor Heaven.
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1925
About the author
T.S. Eliot
1,073 books5,812 followersThomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He wrote the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 163 reviews
October 31, 2017
You are about to embark upon journey of life; life as it is contradictory like our hollow men who lack something essential to life- probably have brain only but no heart, or perhaps stuffed like an effigy. Their voice scare them that no one should hear them- it occurs not to them, whether reverberations of sound waves they give birth convey anything if at all they do, they doubt their existence- as if their being not shone from the darkness of nothingness; blood doesn't flow in their veins or they don't have veins underneath sheath covering the structure stuffed with skeleton and bones. Dante's Inferno surges up from the depth of darkness, the other kingdom where death takes you to, but hollow men are not fortunate enough to be there, for they struck in some limbo, for they are not passionate and only those who have violent passion can transcend to Inferno. The hollow man dare not make eye contact in nether world, for eyes always convey the truth, the shiver he feels through his spine on realization that eyes would show him inside out, for others may look into his being to realize that he is just an effigy and nothing else. He wants to conceal his being somehow from the probing eyes of Paradiso, for justice may happen in the final meeting and hollow men can only delay it but can't escape it, for their fate it is. They have some faith in gods to transcend them to the other kingdom but their hope is diminishing with every passing moment, for those who can't help themselves how could they help them ? Hope continues to fade, their eyes left them, the torch bearings of their beings are not with them anymore. They grope together one last time, the justice of God may send people Paradiso or Hell but for our hollow men, even the scorching gates of Hell do not make way for they are just effigy s. The hope they have is as hollow as our hollow men. They have ideas but cannot bring them into reality, for some shadow always falls like an iron curtain to block their intentions, their existence doesn't begets essence for always the shadow stands in between. Perhaps that's how world ends, for a bang not required to end it, as one may expect, but a little whimper is good enough to pull curtains and put end to the drama of life on the stage of being and nothingness.
There is a deep despair here, a horror; the horror of nihilism staring up at you from the darkness; a deep black gulf of nothingness. The idea, that one is imbecile to confront the reality of life; and his existence is just a shadow of a being which is apparently hollow is very frightening; one keeps on struggle with realities of his inauthentic existence, the nihilistic horror one confronts through the probing eyes of The Other robs him from any sort of comfort his inauthentic existence may beget. Eventually, when the illusion of hope is ripped apart by the harrowing absurdities of life, he may come to make amend with the harsh possibilities in life and in effect may accept the perpetual end of life. The poetic style of the verses marked by verbal austerity and relentless negation forms a structural counterpart to a thematic strategy that repudiates the validity of human experience at every level. In this respect the poem expands upon the theme of denial explored as part of the individual's search for meaning in The Waste Land.
The negation of life ultimately leads to stark encounter with nothingness wherein every sort of inauthentic existence may be shredded in pieces which then may lead to birth of faith in God, as per religions or madness as per nihilistic reality or even to absurd and fully conscious existence as per Camus and Sartre; Kierkegaard may say that simultaneous fear and intense awareness of nothingness, opens up the possibility of faith in an infinite beyond human comprehension, the negation brings the individual to a terminal point marking the boundary between the finite and the infinite.
Excerpts
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
...........................
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow.
...........................
This is the way world ends
This is the way world ends
This is the way world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
There is a deep despair here, a horror; the horror of nihilism staring up at you from the darkness; a deep black gulf of nothingness. The idea, that one is imbecile to confront the reality of life; and his existence is just a shadow of a being which is apparently hollow is very frightening; one keeps on struggle with realities of his inauthentic existence, the nihilistic horror one confronts through the probing eyes of The Other robs him from any sort of comfort his inauthentic existence may beget. Eventually, when the illusion of hope is ripped apart by the harrowing absurdities of life, he may come to make amend with the harsh possibilities in life and in effect may accept the perpetual end of life. The poetic style of the verses marked by verbal austerity and relentless negation forms a structural counterpart to a thematic strategy that repudiates the validity of human experience at every level. In this respect the poem expands upon the theme of denial explored as part of the individual's search for meaning in The Waste Land.
The negation of life ultimately leads to stark encounter with nothingness wherein every sort of inauthentic existence may be shredded in pieces which then may lead to birth of faith in God, as per religions or madness as per nihilistic reality or even to absurd and fully conscious existence as per Camus and Sartre; Kierkegaard may say that simultaneous fear and intense awareness of nothingness, opens up the possibility of faith in an infinite beyond human comprehension, the negation brings the individual to a terminal point marking the boundary between the finite and the infinite.
Excerpts
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
...........................
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow.
...........................
This is the way world ends
This is the way world ends
This is the way world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
February 8, 2016
Though The Hollow Men is more stark and elegant than Eliot's complex poem, The Wasteland, one could still end up spending hours if you were to dissect this poem line by line.
Whether one agrees with Eliot's sentiments and his personal philosophy or not, his imagery is simply superb.
Bleak bleak bleak outlook. One has to applaud the sheer force of the imagery. What could be more disturbing than a procession of brainless, shuffling zombies? Possibly a horde of sightless, shuffling strawmen, hollow at the core, leaning against one another to remain upright, whispering with dry voices, whispering, whispering, with arid voices like the rustle of wind through the dry grass... whispering like rats feet scurrying over broken glass in a dank subterranean cellar...
Can you see it in your mind's eye?
That could be “us”, that could be mass culture, consumerism. I do think that Eliot meant to include secularism into his aspect of hollowness, but it needn’t be read that way; in fact, it can be any cultural situation that espouses “hollowness” , and it can be any lack of deep values.
This is what makes the poem so classic; because of its bareness, its bleakness, its muted though deeply effective, controlled imagery, it can be used as a basis for almost any contextual interpretation that you’d care to tack on to it.
...and then of course, there is the subtlety... The sheer subtle genius of passages such as:
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
and
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
and
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
and
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Eliot was apparently pretty depressed when writing it, and it shows; even more than with The Waste Land.
Note that he speaks of The Hollow Men as "us". So he is including himself here, possibly his whole generation.
There is a deep despair here, a horror; the horror of nihilism staring up at you from the darkness; a deep black gulf of nothingness. If poems were to be classified into the same genres as prose, this would be one of my favorite horror poems; it is darker, certainly, than anything Poe has written.
Re-reading this poem made me realise that I REALLY need to brush up on guys like Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre.
Noting what some critics 'see' in this poem, makes me smile a little, but then, the poem lends itself so well to possible allusions, and of course, Eliot is known as very allusive poet; an image which he himself was quite eager, it seems, to enforce.
No doubt most of the allusions were deliberate, and of course many clues were planted by the erudite Eliot in person. But even if this poem contained not a single literary reference or allusion; just as it stands by itself, it already oozes a frightful, horrific genius sheerly via its evocative power alone.
Although the poem is probably more meant as an an attack against the loss of idealism and as an attack on secularism and/or atheism, and though it smacks of the despair created by the threat of meaninglessness and absurdity that existentialism sneaks into our world view, (the poem seems to have quite a few allusions to covert subversion), I can personally apply it to a more modern frustration with mass consumerist culture and corporate greed (which was of course not quite as ubiquitous back in 1925 when the poem was written, as it is now).
Since I do think Eliot himself was at a pretty low point psychologically when he wrote this, it sort of touches one with its notes of personal anguish too. So, for me, this poem can be read both on a personal and on a societal level.
Whether one agrees with Eliot's sentiments and his personal philosophy or not, his imagery is simply superb.
Bleak bleak bleak outlook. One has to applaud the sheer force of the imagery. What could be more disturbing than a procession of brainless, shuffling zombies? Possibly a horde of sightless, shuffling strawmen, hollow at the core, leaning against one another to remain upright, whispering with dry voices, whispering, whispering, with arid voices like the rustle of wind through the dry grass... whispering like rats feet scurrying over broken glass in a dank subterranean cellar...
Can you see it in your mind's eye?
That could be “us”, that could be mass culture, consumerism. I do think that Eliot meant to include secularism into his aspect of hollowness, but it needn’t be read that way; in fact, it can be any cultural situation that espouses “hollowness” , and it can be any lack of deep values.
This is what makes the poem so classic; because of its bareness, its bleakness, its muted though deeply effective, controlled imagery, it can be used as a basis for almost any contextual interpretation that you’d care to tack on to it.
...and then of course, there is the subtlety... The sheer subtle genius of passages such as:
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
and
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
and
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
and
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Eliot was apparently pretty depressed when writing it, and it shows; even more than with The Waste Land.
Note that he speaks of The Hollow Men as "us". So he is including himself here, possibly his whole generation.
There is a deep despair here, a horror; the horror of nihilism staring up at you from the darkness; a deep black gulf of nothingness. If poems were to be classified into the same genres as prose, this would be one of my favorite horror poems; it is darker, certainly, than anything Poe has written.
Re-reading this poem made me realise that I REALLY need to brush up on guys like Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre.
Noting what some critics 'see' in this poem, makes me smile a little, but then, the poem lends itself so well to possible allusions, and of course, Eliot is known as very allusive poet; an image which he himself was quite eager, it seems, to enforce.
No doubt most of the allusions were deliberate, and of course many clues were planted by the erudite Eliot in person. But even if this poem contained not a single literary reference or allusion; just as it stands by itself, it already oozes a frightful, horrific genius sheerly via its evocative power alone.
Although the poem is probably more meant as an an attack against the loss of idealism and as an attack on secularism and/or atheism, and though it smacks of the despair created by the threat of meaninglessness and absurdity that existentialism sneaks into our world view, (the poem seems to have quite a few allusions to covert subversion), I can personally apply it to a more modern frustration with mass consumerist culture and corporate greed (which was of course not quite as ubiquitous back in 1925 when the poem was written, as it is now).
Since I do think Eliot himself was at a pretty low point psychologically when he wrote this, it sort of touches one with its notes of personal anguish too. So, for me, this poem can be read both on a personal and on a societal level.
February 27, 2025
The hollow men is us now. Free market postmodernism stands on its last legs, the queasy, flabby legs of me, Fergus (quondam happy face) - a 20th century over-medicated dope. Bored and vapid consumerism waits in the wings. She is the heir apparent.
The pills make me dopey and unable to face hyper reality. I live therefore in Death’s Dream Kingdom. I read cozy lit to defend these illusions, unlike my departed confrères from Death’s Other Kingdom, which is the reality of death and judgement.
Let me be no nearer to it now. Here in this valley of bones, dressed up into something lifelike.
No, not that! My headpiece must remain of straw.
Dorothy must fend for herself in Oz…
The Real Oz, behind the smoke and mirrors!
Death’s Other Kingdom, crass, fraudulent reality. And conviction.
There can no longer be subterfuge in the Other Kingdom. It is Conviction.
We are ALL convicted - though like me, we all avoid facing the Face.
Once we see the true face of Dr. Oz we are all Toast. Charred toast. Here we go round the prickly pear.
I admit, my prickly pear facade is a convenient one. The utter uselessness of frozen frustration, and the gateway to hell…
Though Death’s Dream Kingdom is a nice place to visit, no one on slurred drink or neuroleptics (comme moi) is ever happy there. That’s the setup: right you are, doc! You are the the face of the Real World's - the Other Kingdom’s - real face.
Why do we always create a soporific prickly pear Hell in Heaven’s Despite? Neverworld. Squirm City.
The final resting place of dead drunks - or doped dupes like me:
Unless we self-consciously go round and round it -
Like the poor blessed souls go round and round Mount Purgatory -
To reboot their brains and thereby revisit the false face of their freely chosen Damnation.
The pills make me dopey and unable to face hyper reality. I live therefore in Death’s Dream Kingdom. I read cozy lit to defend these illusions, unlike my departed confrères from Death’s Other Kingdom, which is the reality of death and judgement.
Let me be no nearer to it now. Here in this valley of bones, dressed up into something lifelike.
No, not that! My headpiece must remain of straw.
Dorothy must fend for herself in Oz…
The Real Oz, behind the smoke and mirrors!
Death’s Other Kingdom, crass, fraudulent reality. And conviction.
There can no longer be subterfuge in the Other Kingdom. It is Conviction.
We are ALL convicted - though like me, we all avoid facing the Face.
Once we see the true face of Dr. Oz we are all Toast. Charred toast. Here we go round the prickly pear.
I admit, my prickly pear facade is a convenient one. The utter uselessness of frozen frustration, and the gateway to hell…
Though Death’s Dream Kingdom is a nice place to visit, no one on slurred drink or neuroleptics (comme moi) is ever happy there. That’s the setup: right you are, doc! You are the the face of the Real World's - the Other Kingdom’s - real face.
Why do we always create a soporific prickly pear Hell in Heaven’s Despite? Neverworld. Squirm City.
The final resting place of dead drunks - or doped dupes like me:
Unless we self-consciously go round and round it -
Like the poor blessed souls go round and round Mount Purgatory -
To reboot their brains and thereby revisit the false face of their freely chosen Damnation.
October 15, 2018
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence...
...I read this, and get hit by countless images, multiple voices and associations, and a sense of closeness, being all part of the hollow individuality, the shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion ; oblivious to the bang and the whimper.
Way to go, Eliot.
Sept 22, 18
* Also on my blog.
June 21, 2016
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Certain phrases are always echoing in my mind, and this is one of them. Whatever else may be said of my useless high school years, they got the meditations of one T.S. Eliot into my head. In high school, I loved to pick Eliot's poems apart, running every allusion back down to unlock the 'true' meaning. Rereading this for a group read, I am gratified to find that the imagery itself arrests me now in a way it has never done before. (Once I have devoured this again for the first time, it gets a proper review.)
***************************
Four months later, here is the proper review. Only it is impossible for me to really review this poem, because it is one of my all time favorites. Hard to review the things that made me what I am. So here is more of an experience of it, an appreciation of the imagery, if you will. (Eliot would hate this for annotation and anachronism, but that's what you get for being a poet who stands the test of time.)
I strongly suggest you read the poem yourself first before proceeding to the images I am about to attach to it. It is quite readily available online (here, for instance).
Ready?
Here we go.
***************************
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river.
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Full review finished 6/17/16
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Certain phrases are always echoing in my mind, and this is one of them. Whatever else may be said of my useless high school years, they got the meditations of one T.S. Eliot into my head. In high school, I loved to pick Eliot's poems apart, running every allusion back down to unlock the 'true' meaning. Rereading this for a group read, I am gratified to find that the imagery itself arrests me now in a way it has never done before. (Once I have devoured this again for the first time, it gets a proper review.)
***************************
Four months later, here is the proper review. Only it is impossible for me to really review this poem, because it is one of my all time favorites. Hard to review the things that made me what I am. So here is more of an experience of it, an appreciation of the imagery, if you will. (Eliot would hate this for annotation and anachronism, but that's what you get for being a poet who stands the test of time.)
I strongly suggest you read the poem yourself first before proceeding to the images I am about to attach to it. It is quite readily available online (here, for instance).
Ready?
Here we go.
***************************
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river.
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Full review finished 6/17/16
August 3, 2024
The Hollow Men is a poem written in 1925 by T.S. Eliot in the context of WWI's aftermath.
Was I able to comprehend all the intricacies of this poem? No. Do I think it's a grimly beautiful piece of writing? Yes, absolutely!
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Was I able to comprehend all the intricacies of this poem? No. Do I think it's a grimly beautiful piece of writing? Yes, absolutely!
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
November 30, 2016
...
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
...
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
...
September 18, 2017
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
May 28, 2026
The Loss of a Faith
Each loss of faith feels probably like this:
However, each loss of faith is also highly individual, depending on the times, the kind of betrayal and on what you believed in. T.S. Eliot’s loss of faith was brought about by the terrors of the Great War, the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century, a war that was fought on various pretexts, one, for the U.S., who was a late-comer to the party, that of defending civilization against the barbarous Huns. And yet, this war also showed that this civilization was a pious dream, that its technology, which also had its good, life-improving sides, was, all in all, about multiplying death and inciting young men, their head-pieces filled with the straw of dulce et decorum, to fall like grass under the scythe of machine-gun fire. A more or less careful look, though, might have revealed earlier on that this civilization was a golden calf resting on feet of clay, as the introductory quotation “Mistah Kurtz – he dead” implies, since Kurtz is the symbol of the hypocrisy of saviourism meant to disguise the brutal business of Western imperialism.
The Hollow Men, a poem published in 1925, three years after the similarly pessimistic The Waste Land, describes a situation in which people find themselves blind, paralysed – the shadow falling between their conceptions and their creations – and stuffed with straw in an empty cactus-limbo:
I have never lived through a war, but nevertheless do I feel quite the same way in my native country, where I was brought up in the belief that the government served the people rather than any idea, that public institutions and the media could more or less be relied on to act and inform independently of any agenda, that people were equal before the law and that public interference into private life required a really good reason. And then came Covid and its far-reaching anti-Covid measures, setting us apart, at one point, into staunch Believers and shifty Blasphemers, and, worse still, the vaccination. It did not take long before those who chose to forego the jab, a right that was undeniably theirs, were faced with discrimination, calumny and hatred, all of which not only arose in the hearts and minds of their fellow people but were supported by media, politicians and institutions. It did not take long before children were looked askance at, old people in residences no longer could see their relatives, even on their deathbeds, before it suddenly mattered how many people you invited for Christmas and what vaccination status they had and before we were called on to point our fingers at those who were said to be guilty of the ongoing pandemic. Things were falling apart, the centre couldn’t hold, and people turned into jackals, not wolves. And then the craze had blown over, although other hatreds came, and most people are willing to let bygones be bygones.
I, however, repeatedly ask myself what had happened in those scarred years and no longer deem it wise to set foot on the tenuous bottom pebble of my former convictions, the broken stone of democracy, of human rights and justice. Where will I send my faith? There is but one stone left – not the stone of the Church, an institution which was also willing to play the game, but the Stone of Jesus Himself.
I only hope I will find it.
Each loss of faith feels probably like this:
”Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.”
However, each loss of faith is also highly individual, depending on the times, the kind of betrayal and on what you believed in. T.S. Eliot’s loss of faith was brought about by the terrors of the Great War, the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century, a war that was fought on various pretexts, one, for the U.S., who was a late-comer to the party, that of defending civilization against the barbarous Huns. And yet, this war also showed that this civilization was a pious dream, that its technology, which also had its good, life-improving sides, was, all in all, about multiplying death and inciting young men, their head-pieces filled with the straw of dulce et decorum, to fall like grass under the scythe of machine-gun fire. A more or less careful look, though, might have revealed earlier on that this civilization was a golden calf resting on feet of clay, as the introductory quotation “Mistah Kurtz – he dead” implies, since Kurtz is the symbol of the hypocrisy of saviourism meant to disguise the brutal business of Western imperialism.
The Hollow Men, a poem published in 1925, three years after the similarly pessimistic The Waste Land, describes a situation in which people find themselves blind, paralysed – the shadow falling between their conceptions and their creations – and stuffed with straw in an empty cactus-limbo:
”We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar”
I have never lived through a war, but nevertheless do I feel quite the same way in my native country, where I was brought up in the belief that the government served the people rather than any idea, that public institutions and the media could more or less be relied on to act and inform independently of any agenda, that people were equal before the law and that public interference into private life required a really good reason. And then came Covid and its far-reaching anti-Covid measures, setting us apart, at one point, into staunch Believers and shifty Blasphemers, and, worse still, the vaccination. It did not take long before those who chose to forego the jab, a right that was undeniably theirs, were faced with discrimination, calumny and hatred, all of which not only arose in the hearts and minds of their fellow people but were supported by media, politicians and institutions. It did not take long before children were looked askance at, old people in residences no longer could see their relatives, even on their deathbeds, before it suddenly mattered how many people you invited for Christmas and what vaccination status they had and before we were called on to point our fingers at those who were said to be guilty of the ongoing pandemic. Things were falling apart, the centre couldn’t hold, and people turned into jackals, not wolves. And then the craze had blown over, although other hatreds came, and most people are willing to let bygones be bygones.
I, however, repeatedly ask myself what had happened in those scarred years and no longer deem it wise to set foot on the tenuous bottom pebble of my former convictions, the broken stone of democracy, of human rights and justice. Where will I send my faith? There is but one stone left – not the stone of the Church, an institution which was also willing to play the game, but the Stone of Jesus Himself.
I only hope I will find it.
May 8, 2021
Figure senza forma, ombre senza colore. Forza paralizzata, gesto privo di moto
Siamo Mistah Kurtz di Cuore di tenebra, vuoti dentro, senza più moralità. Siamo esseri senza un’idea, irresoluti, uomini di paglia, come il fantoccio Guy Fawkes. Siamo gli ignavi di Dante, ammassati sulle rive dell’Acheronte, indegni di essere traghettati oltre da Caronte. Abitiamo deserti dove le stelle si spengono. Divenuti incapaci di recitare preghiere diveniamo adoratori di pietre infrante e danziamo attorno ad un fico d’india. Non comunichiamo, siamo muti o al massimo mormoriamo come vento tra l’erba secca o come zampe di topo sopra vetri rotti. Brancoliamo nel buio, i nostri occhi non vedono. Ed è questo il modo in cui finisce il mondo.
Si trova ovunque in rete essendo di pubblico dominio, ad esempio qui in italiano e inglese.
Resta per sempre associata all’interpretazione di Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, allucinato Kurtz dal suo antro semibuio nella foresta cambogiana.
Marlon Brando/Kurtz in Apocalypse Now mentre recita Gli Uomini Vuoti Video originale Video in italiano
Siamo Mistah Kurtz di Cuore di tenebra, vuoti dentro, senza più moralità. Siamo esseri senza un’idea, irresoluti, uomini di paglia, come il fantoccio Guy Fawkes. Siamo gli ignavi di Dante, ammassati sulle rive dell’Acheronte, indegni di essere traghettati oltre da Caronte. Abitiamo deserti dove le stelle si spengono. Divenuti incapaci di recitare preghiere diveniamo adoratori di pietre infrante e danziamo attorno ad un fico d’india. Non comunichiamo, siamo muti o al massimo mormoriamo come vento tra l’erba secca o come zampe di topo sopra vetri rotti. Brancoliamo nel buio, i nostri occhi non vedono. Ed è questo il modo in cui finisce il mondo.
Si trova ovunque in rete essendo di pubblico dominio, ad esempio qui in italiano e inglese.
Resta per sempre associata all’interpretazione di Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, allucinato Kurtz dal suo antro semibuio nella foresta cambogiana.
Marlon Brando/Kurtz in Apocalypse Now mentre recita Gli Uomini Vuoti Video originale Video in italiano
June 23, 2017
The main problem with this poem (as Bukowski pointed out in his day) is the ending: it was poetic and clairvoyant... until the atomic bomb. That ending ruins the whole experience of the poem for me, as the flawed intuition that it is. Since that last verse couldn't be more wrong, instead of being insightful it sounds pedantic (three repeated lines preparing us for such a lack of vision!). Pretty much everything that happens in our lives may end with a whimper, from our relationships to our very own lives themselves, but the world... could have been finished already because of nuclear weapons various times (Chomsky points out some cases throughout history in his book "Who rules the world?"), which means a total "bang".
B--!
B--!
January 16, 2026
Obsessed, obsessed. My man gets Joseph Conrad like no other. [Myself excluded, of course.] I'm obsessed, obsessed, obsessed!
"The Hollow Men" (1925) is an ICONIC poem by THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT (prepare to get sick of me bc I will use this man's government name any chance I get; Thomas Stearns is my guy!). Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles, hopelessness, religious conversion, redemption and, some critics argue, his failing marriage with Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot. It was published two years before Eliot converted to Anglicanism.
Divided into five parts, the poem is 98 lines long. Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English". HE WAS THAT GUY!!!! In case you're wondering what those lines are: "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." I AM TELLING YOU, HE WAS THAT GUY. MY MAN, MY MAN, MY MAN.
Eliot wrote that he produced the title "The Hollow Men" by combining the titles of the romance The Hollow Land by William Morris with the poem "The Broken Men" by Rudyard Kipling; but it is possible that this is one of Eliot's many constructed allusions. The title could also be theorised to originate from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or from the character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, who is referred to as a "hollow sham" and "hollow at the core". The latter is more likely since Kurtz is mentioned in one of the two epigraphs. It is also the interpretation that I personally subscribe to. The Conrad ➜ Eliot pipeline is a real one, and I am one of itsvictims profiteers.
The two epigraphs to the poem, "Mistah Kurtz – he dead" (YOU NEED TO READ Heart of Darkness to understand how ICONIC this is but I would never recommend Heart of Darkness to you, I haven't lost my marbles. Yet.) and "A penny for the Old Guy", are allusions to Conrad's character and to Guy Fawkes.
he Hollow Men follows the otherworldly journey of the spiritually dead. These "hollow men" have the realisation, humility, and acknowledgement of their guilt and their status as broken, lost souls. Their shame is seen in lines like "[...] eyes I dare not meet in dreams [...]" calling themselves "[...] sightless [...]" and that that "[...] [death is] the only hope of empty men [...]". (DO YOU SEE KURTZ'S GHOST TAKING POSSESSION OF THIS FUCKING POEM???? HULLO???) The "hollow men" fail to transform their motions into actions, conception to creation, desire to fulfillment. This awareness of the split between thought and action coupled with their awareness of "death's various kingdoms" and acute diagnosis of their hollowness, makes it hard for them to go forward and break through their spiritual sterility.
Eliot invokes imagery from the Inferno (this man was as obsessed with Dante as I am and we all should be—periodt), specifically the third and fourth cantos of the Inferno which describes Limbo, the first circle of Hell – showing man in his inability to cross into Hell itself or to even beg redemption, unable to speak with God. He states that the hollow men "[...] grope together and avoid speech, gathered on this beach of the tumid river [...]", and Dante states that at the Gates of Hell, people who did neither good nor evil in their lives have to gather quietly by a river where Charon cannot ferry them across.
As the poem enters section five, there is a complete breakdown of language. The Lord's Prayer and what appears to be a lyric change of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" are written until this devolution of style ends with the final stanza, maybe the most quoted of Eliot's poetry (see above). When asked in 1958 if he would write these lines again, Eliot said he would not. ICONIC. (Also rather dark if you take into consideration that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have had something to do with Eliot's change of heart. Shit humanity proved him wrong. The world ended with a bang, not with a whimper. Bleh.)
"The Hollow Men" (1925) is an ICONIC poem by THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT (prepare to get sick of me bc I will use this man's government name any chance I get; Thomas Stearns is my guy!). Like much of his work, its themes are overlapping and fragmentary, concerned with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles, hopelessness, religious conversion, redemption and, some critics argue, his failing marriage with Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot. It was published two years before Eliot converted to Anglicanism.
Divided into five parts, the poem is 98 lines long. Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English". HE WAS THAT GUY!!!! In case you're wondering what those lines are: "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." I AM TELLING YOU, HE WAS THAT GUY. MY MAN, MY MAN, MY MAN.
Eliot wrote that he produced the title "The Hollow Men" by combining the titles of the romance The Hollow Land by William Morris with the poem "The Broken Men" by Rudyard Kipling; but it is possible that this is one of Eliot's many constructed allusions. The title could also be theorised to originate from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or from the character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, who is referred to as a "hollow sham" and "hollow at the core". The latter is more likely since Kurtz is mentioned in one of the two epigraphs. It is also the interpretation that I personally subscribe to. The Conrad ➜ Eliot pipeline is a real one, and I am one of its
The two epigraphs to the poem, "Mistah Kurtz – he dead" (YOU NEED TO READ Heart of Darkness to understand how ICONIC this is but I would never recommend Heart of Darkness to you, I haven't lost my marbles. Yet.) and "A penny for the Old Guy", are allusions to Conrad's character and to Guy Fawkes.
he Hollow Men follows the otherworldly journey of the spiritually dead. These "hollow men" have the realisation, humility, and acknowledgement of their guilt and their status as broken, lost souls. Their shame is seen in lines like "[...] eyes I dare not meet in dreams [...]" calling themselves "[...] sightless [...]" and that that "[...] [death is] the only hope of empty men [...]". (DO YOU SEE KURTZ'S GHOST TAKING POSSESSION OF THIS FUCKING POEM???? HULLO???) The "hollow men" fail to transform their motions into actions, conception to creation, desire to fulfillment. This awareness of the split between thought and action coupled with their awareness of "death's various kingdoms" and acute diagnosis of their hollowness, makes it hard for them to go forward and break through their spiritual sterility.
Eliot invokes imagery from the Inferno (this man was as obsessed with Dante as I am and we all should be—periodt), specifically the third and fourth cantos of the Inferno which describes Limbo, the first circle of Hell – showing man in his inability to cross into Hell itself or to even beg redemption, unable to speak with God. He states that the hollow men "[...] grope together and avoid speech, gathered on this beach of the tumid river [...]", and Dante states that at the Gates of Hell, people who did neither good nor evil in their lives have to gather quietly by a river where Charon cannot ferry them across.
As the poem enters section five, there is a complete breakdown of language. The Lord's Prayer and what appears to be a lyric change of "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" are written until this devolution of style ends with the final stanza, maybe the most quoted of Eliot's poetry (see above). When asked in 1958 if he would write these lines again, Eliot said he would not. ICONIC. (Also rather dark if you take into consideration that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have had something to do with Eliot's change of heart. Shit humanity proved him wrong. The world ended with a bang, not with a whimper. Bleh.)
March 23, 2015
"Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion" - lines 11-12
Nothing like agood T.S. Eliot poem. I mean it is giving you everything and very little. To get the full effect of this poem it has to be recited out loud or to your self--but it has to be recited.
"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley" - lines 52-55
The poem is like most modernist work from this period, being concerned with WWI and its aftermath. In it we are given a descent into the underworld(s) a la Dante which is standard of most Eliot's work (try to name a volume of Eliot's poetry that does not allude to Dante) and it gives a very short but beautiful imagery of becoming and of being undone as "hollow men" often are. The fact that this poem can be matched perfectly with The Divine Comedy and is one the most persistently quotable poems in pop culture history increases its value and importance. Allusions to Heart of Darkness and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, as well as Guy Fawkes are spread throughout this poem. Fawkes, Brutus, and Joseph Conrad's Kurtz are the titular "Hollow Men".
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper." lines 95-98
Paralysed force, gesture without motion" - lines 11-12
Nothing like a
"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley" - lines 52-55
The poem is like most modernist work from this period, being concerned with WWI and its aftermath. In it we are given a descent into the underworld(s) a la Dante which is standard of most Eliot's work (try to name a volume of Eliot's poetry that does not allude to Dante) and it gives a very short but beautiful imagery of becoming and of being undone as "hollow men" often are. The fact that this poem can be matched perfectly with The Divine Comedy and is one the most persistently quotable poems in pop culture history increases its value and importance. Allusions to Heart of Darkness and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, as well as Guy Fawkes are spread throughout this poem. Fawkes, Brutus, and Joseph Conrad's Kurtz are the titular "Hollow Men".
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper." lines 95-98
November 16, 2024
"this is the way the world ends,Not with a bang but a whimper" 🤎
Read
October 13, 2024I like the simplicity of this one and the Poe-like imagery of kingdoms and stars and so on. I suspect it was more emotionally impactful in 1925. Imagine being on the cusp of a century of war and you think you've already seen the worst. It's kind of unsettling for what it isn't, more than for what it is.
September 6, 2021
Ahhhhhh well this tore my heart out and left it pulsing on the floor
" This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. "
" This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. "
May 23, 2021
one of the most revelation-inducing things I've ever read. Soul shattering, terrifying and beautiful
November 12, 2025
“The Hollow Men” portrays humanity as spiritually empty and morally paralyzed after modernity’s collapse. Its scarecrow figures murmur broken prayers, waiting for meaning that never arrives, Eliot’s bleak vision of a world ending not with violence, but with silence.
January 7, 2026
"Shape without form, shade without colour
Paralysed force, gesture without motion"
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"
Paralysed force, gesture without motion"
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"
August 15, 2020
Poetry is not my cup of tea. I read this because of 'The Sinner's season 3 where the following lines were mentioned a number of times-
"Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning. "
I need to understand this poem more deeply.
"Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning. "
I need to understand this poem more deeply.
January 17, 2026
Pomiędzy koncepcję
I kreację
Pomiędzy wzruszenie
I odczucie
Pada Cień
I kreację
Pomiędzy wzruszenie
I odczucie
Pada Cień
Read
March 2, 2025"Between the idea
and the reality,
between the motion
and the act
falls the Shadow.
For Thine is the Kingdom"
and the reality,
between the motion
and the act
falls the Shadow.
For Thine is the Kingdom"
July 4, 2025
4.5⭐️
“This is the way the word ends/not with a bang but a whimper.”
Basically today’s world described in 98 lines.
We are “the hollow men”.
We are “the stuffed men”.
“This is the way the word ends/not with a bang but a whimper.”
Basically today’s world described in 98 lines.
We are “the hollow men”.
We are “the stuffed men”.
August 4, 2017
Aren't we all bunch of hollow men, wandering above this wicked planet? Looking for salvation in the simplest things, maybe "An eye", "A kiss" or something else. Bunch of people full of sins, full of mistakes, dreams maybe or hope. Gazing at the "Death's other Kingdom" eyes full of timid hope, legs trembling between marching forward to paradise and retreating backward to netherworld. But like our ancestors, The Hollow Men, we have frozen in our places year after year, like scarecrows.
All the literary influences in the life of Eliot, have led to this masterpiece. Where its profoundly metaphorical lines, force you to imagine the smallest detail in the lives of these hollow men. Land of nothing but dust and cacti, a mud river maybe. Men reciting their final lullaby into the ears of other generation of hollow men. However, those men completely understand their condition, they are unhappy, full of regret, full of lust, perhaps they want to turn back the time so that they may find salvation in it, for their current situation. You can't actually know if god has forsaken them or they have forsaken him, the situation in which they are in, I believe, is a sacrifice from both parties.
Eliot's succeeded in creating a state of physical and psychological suffering, so the reader can realize that those hollow men are aching from the inside and out, like the Dead Men in Pirates of The Caribbean. The narrative talked about a shadow that prevent them from doing things that they want to do, but chew on this; aren't we all have that shadow? Dogmas, families, money, physical pain, lake of imagination, lack of knowledge or experience, lose of a loved one, anything. We have that shadow right behind us. Some have the courage to face it and put an end to it, while some just leave it roaming around them and build a prickly wall of fear wrapping their lives.
I'm developing the idea of a hollow man. What makes a person hollow? I think every single person on this earth is missing something; and the thing that he misses makes him hollow in a way or another. Some people are philistine, talentless, with disabilities, with high IQ or low IQ, too sensitive or too solemn. Anything that we lack could make us hollow. Moreover, I do not lean to the idea that "Death's dream kingdom" is heaven per se; maybe it's the thing that we aspire to complement our lack, our weakness, and our inability, which makes us less hollow.
"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
Here, I do believe that the hollow men do not want us -the next generation of possible hollow men- to be like them, they want us to learn from their mistakes and do much better that what they have done. I can't but salute Dante and whoever helped with giving influence to Eliot so he can come up with this brilliant ode.
All the literary influences in the life of Eliot, have led to this masterpiece. Where its profoundly metaphorical lines, force you to imagine the smallest detail in the lives of these hollow men. Land of nothing but dust and cacti, a mud river maybe. Men reciting their final lullaby into the ears of other generation of hollow men. However, those men completely understand their condition, they are unhappy, full of regret, full of lust, perhaps they want to turn back the time so that they may find salvation in it, for their current situation. You can't actually know if god has forsaken them or they have forsaken him, the situation in which they are in, I believe, is a sacrifice from both parties.
Eliot's succeeded in creating a state of physical and psychological suffering, so the reader can realize that those hollow men are aching from the inside and out, like the Dead Men in Pirates of The Caribbean. The narrative talked about a shadow that prevent them from doing things that they want to do, but chew on this; aren't we all have that shadow? Dogmas, families, money, physical pain, lake of imagination, lack of knowledge or experience, lose of a loved one, anything. We have that shadow right behind us. Some have the courage to face it and put an end to it, while some just leave it roaming around them and build a prickly wall of fear wrapping their lives.
I'm developing the idea of a hollow man. What makes a person hollow? I think every single person on this earth is missing something; and the thing that he misses makes him hollow in a way or another. Some people are philistine, talentless, with disabilities, with high IQ or low IQ, too sensitive or too solemn. Anything that we lack could make us hollow. Moreover, I do not lean to the idea that "Death's dream kingdom" is heaven per se; maybe it's the thing that we aspire to complement our lack, our weakness, and our inability, which makes us less hollow.
"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
Here, I do believe that the hollow men do not want us -the next generation of possible hollow men- to be like them, they want us to learn from their mistakes and do much better that what they have done. I can't but salute Dante and whoever helped with giving influence to Eliot so he can come up with this brilliant ode.
October 29, 2021
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
November 23, 2020
Read for my paper "British Literature: Early 20th Century" in Oct-Nov 2020
Read
November 8, 2022wow, depressingly beautiful
December 31, 2025
3.5
studied for school
studied for school
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