TWL I. The Burial of the Dead

[Theresa]

Luiz wrote: "I think water is a symbol of life and redemption. ..."

It usually is. I wonder if Eliot has turned that symbol on its head in this poem? There is thirst and threat of drowning. It is all so negative.

[Acontecimal]

Agreed. But I don't know what to make of "fear death by water" if we take water as life, reborn...

[Acontecimal]

Agreed. But I don't know what to make of "fear death by water" if we take water as life, reborn...

[Acontecimal]

Makes sense if we take it as a threat of drowning.

[Theresa]

The narrator's card is the drowned Phoenician Sailor, who Eliot is comparing to Alonso, the King of Naples in The Tempest. It is a bit confusing. Alonso is a bit of a weak character in the play, easily deceived and inclined to make mistakes. I am not quite sure if he is tragic or comic.

[[deleted user]]

Laurel wrote: "What do you make of the hyacinth girl? ..."

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."


The death and rebirth Luis posted on in #19. Yes. (Nice resource.)

I "felt," too, that there was ... disenchantment, or, perhaps, the loss specialness. I thought of "the 'it' girl."

(Upper class British slang at the turn of the century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_girl)

It was as though she had been everything to him last year, and everyone noticed her, "The called me the hyacinth girl."

And now... that specialness seems missing... She says she's neither living nor dead.

[[deleted user]]

"Looking into the heart of light"

Given Eliot's first epigraph choice, I wonder how "heart of light" relates to "heart of darkness."

[Mary]

Luiz wrote: "Agreed. But I don't know what to make of "fear death by water" if we take water as life, reborn..."

Life, as in April, is risky, has its perils, its costs, its demands. . . one might move from a vague half-life to death, instead of to life.

[Laurel]

Adelle wrote: ""Looking into the heart of light"

Given Eliot's first epigraph choice, I wonder how "heart of light" relates to "heart of darkness.""

Good thought!

[[deleted user]]

Laurel wrote: "Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe
With a wicked pack of cards.

If you see dear Mrs. Equitone
..."

I thought that a fortune teller was being consulted might have been intended to show an negative aspect of society... looking for answers in superstition or mere chance.

The cards themselves... wicked. (I don't think wicked became a "positive" adjective until well after Eliot. I tried to find a date for that.)

The crowds of people... walking round in a ring... I saw as negative... Many, many people... without purpose.... simply walking in circles in their lives.

I don't recall where I found this, but I liked it:

"[Madame Sosostris]: appropriate for someone who equivocates, or whose answer to every question is a variant of “so so.” Not surprisingly, her friend is named Mrs. Equitone, a variant on the notion of equivocation. "

[Mary]

Patrice wrote: "Yes, purposelessness. I think that's a strong theme throughout."

What after all makes for a better spiritual wasteland than purposelessness?

[[deleted user]]

Laurel wrote: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. ..."


Lots of Biblical allusions. I read in “A Student’s Guide.”

“If the root be holy, so are the branches.” Romans 11:16.

“stony places” Matthew 13:5-6 where the ‘seed’ of faith springs up to be scorched in the sun and wither away.

“He is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his garden. His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones” (Job 8:16-17)

Eliot’s notes refer to where God addresses Ezekial: “Son of man, stand upon they feet, and I will speak unto thee.”

Eliot’s note refer, too, to Ecclesiates 12:5: the tree, the grasshopper, desolation.

If the world, post WWI, is a world of stony rubbish… what kind of branches will people put out?

I like Theresa’s thought, too, at #50, that there may be a pre-Christian aspect…
Didn’t Ritual have something about the vegetation god?

Also, I rather liked thinking about it as a psychological observation. Families have roots. Offspring (branches) grow out of those roots. To me, it does FEEL sometimes that those family roots DO clutch. We grow in a specific culture. You gotta grow where you’re planted. Eliot, though, moved to Europe.

[Laurel]

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon Frère!"

We are deep in Dante land here—and it's not Paradiso.

I saw a banner there upon the mist.
Circling and circling, it seemed to scorn all pause.
So it ran on, and still behind it pressed

a never-ending rout of souls in pain.
I had not thought death had undone so many
as passed before me in that mournful train.
—Inferno 3.49-54, Ciardi


Here, as far as I could tell by listening,
was no lamentation other than the sighs
that kept the air forever trembling.
—Inferno 4.25-27, Hollander


And some I knew among them; last of all
I recognized the shadow of that soul
who, in his cowardice, made the Great Denial.
—Inferno 3.52-54

[Laurel]

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon Frère!"

This reminds me so much of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" with Jimmy Stewart And Grace Kelly. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/
Of course, the movie came later.

[[deleted user]]

"Rear Window" comment.

;-)

[Everyman]

Laurel wrote: "Why is April cruel?"

I'm not persuaded by Eliot's argument, if you can call it an argument. He seems to be intentionally countering the usual assumption, as in Chaucer, that spring is a time of excitement, of new hope after a long winter. Certainly I think early man didn't see April as cruel, but as a relief from the long cruelty of winter with its limited food, cold, and disease and death.

For farmers and gardeners, April is a month of hope, of expectation, of time to begin the process of reaping the bounty of the earth after the desolation of winter.

And for Christians, of course, April is the time of Easter, of the resurrection and hope eternal. For Christians it is the most positive month, isn't it?

So why is Eliot countering all this? Is he just being contrary? Is he setting himself out to say that he is going to challenge established assumptions and expectations?

I'm not sure. But I do wonder whether outside of the poem he really actually believed that April is the cruelest month.

[Everyman]

Laurel wrote: "... and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. ... "

Shades of Pilgrim's Progress?

[Nemo]

Laurel wrote: "A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many."

I don't know if Dante was inspired by Herodotus. But the scene reminds me of Xerxes, who invaded Greece with a great armada and *bridged* the Hellespont with his huge fleets:

And now, as he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good fortune; but after a little while he wept. Then Artabanus, the king’s uncle …went to him, and said:—“How different, sire, is what you are now doing, from what you did a little while ago! Then you did congratulate yourself; and now, behold! you weep.”

“There came upon me,” replied he, “a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness of man’s life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.”

[Theresa]

Everyman wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Why is April cruel?"

I'm not persuaded by Eliot's argument, if you can call it an argument. He seems to be intentionally countering the usual assumption, as in Chaucer, that spring..."

People would starve in April if the spring didn't come on time.

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

I thought these men were soldiers returning from the war and that they were undone by the sight of so much death.
The way they breathe is like a death rattle.

[Laurel]

Everyman wrote: "Laurel wrote: "... and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. ... "

Shades of Pilgrim's Progress?"

I immediately thought of that, too, Everyman.

[Thomas]

Everyman wrote: "So why is Eliot countering all this? Is he just being contrary? Is he setting himself out to say that he is going to challenge established assumptions and expectations?."

I don't think he's challenging expectations exactly, but he is certainly being contrary. New life springs from dead land. Winter keeps us warm. Corpses sprout. It's an elegant expression of depression.

[Thomas]

Laurel wrote: "“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!."

Why is "Dog" capitalized?

[Laurel]

Thomas wrote: "Laurel wrote: "“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!."

Why is "Dog" capitalized?"

Dog—God?

That reminds me of Francis Thompson's wonderful poem, "The Hound of Heaven."

Text http://www.bartleby.com/236/239.html

Reading by Richard Burton http://youtu.be/gToj6SLWz8Q

[Laurel]

What can you say about Eliot's craft in "The Burial of the Dead"?

For instance, Thomas has pointed out that it begins with iambic pentameter but not quite. What does the enjambment of the first few lines do? (Notice how the idea stops before the last word of the line, making our mind have to decide just what to do with the -ing words.)

[Laurel]

Here, for your enjoyment, is Fiona Shaw's dramatization of "The Burial of the Dead." You'll have to get the iPad app to see her perform the rest of the poem.

http://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk

[Thomas]

Laurel wrote: "Thomas wrote: "Laurel wrote: "“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!."

Why is "Dog" capitalized?"

Dog—God?

That reminds me of Francis Thompso..."

I suppose that would explain the "nails". In addition to Rear Window, I'm getting a picture of Lazarus being resurrected, unwillingly.

Joyce plays the same game with dog/god and the dog's corpse in episode three of Ulysses. I find it weird -- it's a simple palindrome with no apparent significance, but both authors seize upon it. Very odd.

[Nemo]

Dog is man's best friend after all. BTW, does either of them own a pet?

[Laurel]

Nemo wrote: "Dog is man's best friend after all. BTW, does either of them own a pet?"

Surely Eliot must have had a cat or two; he knows them so well.

[Laurel]

From an article entitled "T. S. Eliot was the original crazy cat lady":

"Mungojerrie, Rumpelteazer, and Bustopher Jones were the names of some of Eliot’s own pets; his tribe also included Bubbles, Xerxes, Wiscus, and George Pushdragon. He catered to their whims, even when one of his beloveds cost him quite a lot of money by refusing to eat anything but rabbit. He belongs to a long tradition of cat-mad artists. Mysterious and remote, cats have long been associated with "creative types," in contrast to the dog’s role in white-picket-fence happiness." http://mic.com/articles/65199/t-s-eli...

[Nemo]

Laurel wrote: "Nemo wrote: "Dog is man's best friend after all. BTW, does either of them own a pet?"

Surely Eliot must have had a cat or two; he knows them so well."

I don't have a cat, but those who do tell me, "You don't own a cat, the cat owns you."

[Laurel]

I am definitely a servant to Pushkin and Christina Rossetti, Nemo.

[[deleted user]]

Eliot was reading sections of Ulysses 1917-1918.

[Nemo]

Laurel wrote: "I am definitely a servant to Pushkin and Christina Rossetti, Nemo."

What are your wages? :)

[Suzann]

Thomas wrote: "Rather than the epiphany that Dante has, Eliot's narrator is struck blind and speechless and knows nothing when he looks into the "heart of light." "

Thought it was interesting that Pound convinced Eliot that Conrad's lines "...The horror, the horror" were an unworthy epigraph for the Waste Land. It is in the heart of darkness that the voice of Kurtz is heard and the indirect light of the sun reflected by the moon illuminates the fog which was unknown in bright light. This might be a tenuous connection!

[[deleted user]]

Expanded information re Joyce and Eliot. No spoilers.

(view spoiler)[ From A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot

“Alongside Dante, the dominant exemplars for Eliot were James Joyce and Joseph Conrad…. In 1923, Eliot haled Joyce’s Ulysses as ‘the most important expression which the present age has found’ … and he went on to point to Ulysses as ‘a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape’, and to Joyce as ‘one of the great writers, not of our time only, but of all European literature’.

The nature of Eliot’s own personal indebtedness is referred to in the prefatory notes to TWL. It is also worth remarking that Eliot’s use of allusion, as a device central to his poetic technique, becomes much more pronounced in the poetry of 1978-18 at the very time he was reading sections of Ulysses” (22).

“…Eliot was familiar with much (perhaps all) of [Ulysses] before beginning work on TWL. Five sections of Ulysses came out in The Egotist while he was the assistant editor…. Some of these had appeared earlier… Pound had showed many sections to Eliot, who suggested improvements to Joyce.

Joyce also sent Eliot sections in manuscript. He found them ‘superb’, ‘stupendous’, ‘truly magnificent’. Of ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ he wrote, ‘I have lived on it ever since I read it’ and of 'The Oxen of the Sun’ and ‘Circe’ he wrote to Joyce, in May 1921, ‘I have nothing but admiration; in fact, I wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it.’



*... similarities convinced Joyce that Eliot had stolen the substance and style of TWL from U. He took his revenge in Finnegan’s Wake where Eliot’s closing line is shorn of it reverential tone in Joyce’s ‘Shaunti! Shaunti! Shaunti!’ (130).



“Several of Pound’s annotations on the manuscript of TWL confirm the influence of Joyce: against line 64 he wrote ‘JJ’ and against line 125 ‘JJ’ and ‘Penelope’.

But as with other important influences on Eliot, the evidence is not to be reckoned up quantitatively in the number of direct allusions and borrowings” (131).
(hide spoiler)]

[Acontecimal]

Thanks Adelle

[Acontecimal]

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”


― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

[Laurel]

Luiz wrote: "“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”


― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood"

That does it!

[Thomas]

Suzann wrote: "It is in the heart of darkness that the voice of Kurtz is heard and the indirect light of the sun reflected by the moon illuminates the fog which was unknown in bright light. This might be a tenuous connection! "

Not tenuous at all -- it sounds right on point to me. This poem is made of shadow and smoke and fog.

[[deleted user]]

Well... I can't answer to that... maybe it was a situation ("the lady of situations") in which a new/ different mode of art was coming into existence... perhaps they both had been moving in that direction..

I took it that the reason Eliot said he wished he hadn't read it... was so that Joyce wouldn't think he had lifted Joyce's style...

But... Joyce seemingly thought there were TOO many similarities. And Eliot seemingly didn't think that he had.

No spoiler:

(view spoiler)[ "Eliot told an interviewer that the sight of the manuscript chapters of U arriving on his desk at the Egoist showed him that what 'he was tentatively attempting to do, with the usual false starts and despairs, had already been done, done superbly' in prose. Whatever admiration (and consternation) lay behind these compliments, Eliot later paid a direct and generous tribute to Joyce's achievement in 'Ulysses, Order and Myth' (1923).

One passage in that essay goes right to the heart o his own use of myth in TWL: 'In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him.

They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent, further investigations" (131).

(hide spoiler)]

[Acontecimal]

Thomas wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Why is April cruel?
What things strike you about this section? "

Rebirth is difficult, hard work, even cruel perhaps. It's easier to stay under the forgetful snow, where all is warm..."

I read it as Marie saying it that when she was a child she went south on the winter. If she was a child and she was "frightened" makes sense going south where it´s easier, warm, lifeless...

[Acontecimal]

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

The reference o Mylae I interpret as it saying tha war have always been present at Europe.
He is worried if the corpse has been disturbed at his bed( his rest after a war) by the sudeen frost. The sudden frost being the WW1( which caught everyone surprised, ending la belle epoque) that is disburting him because he is going to have to war again as he always have. And also the frost being winter and the war.

[Thomas]

Adelle wrote: "Expanded information re Joyce and Eliot. No spoilers.

From A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot

“Alongside Dante, the dominant exemplars for Eliot were James Joyce and Joseph..."

Thanks for this! I wonder what the source is for the plagiarism claim. The account in Joyce's biography is that they were cordial acquaintances and respected each other's work, though they were not close friends. I don't see anything about plagiarism claims. Joyce parodied works he loved, and apparently he did like The Waste Land.

But after reading The Waste Land, he remarked to a friend, "I had never realized Eliot was a poet." She replied, "I liked it too but I couldn't understand it," and Joyce retorted with the question that Eliot himself might have asked, "Do you have to understand it?"

James Joyce, Richard Ellmann

[Thomas]

Adelle wrote: "I took it that the reason Eliot said he wished he hadn't read it... was so that Joyce wouldn't think he had lifted Joyce's style... "

I interpreted it a little differently. It sounds to me like Eliot did not want to be unduly influenced by Joyce's style, but in the end he couldn't help it.

[[deleted user]]

Thomas wrote: "Adelle wrote: "I took it that the reason Eliot said he wished he hadn't read it... was so that Joyce wouldn't think he had lifted Joyce's style... "

I interpreted it a little differently. It sounds to me like Eliot did not want to be unduly influenced by Joyce's style, but in the end he couldn't help it. ."

Mmm. Yes, I can see that might be true.

If Joyce enjoyed parodying works, perhaps he wasn't upset. I'll see if the book gives a source on that perspective. Eliot certainly spoke well of Joyce's work.

[[deleted user]]

"April is the cruelest month."

Those of us who live in New England probably would not dispute that!

Slightly off topic, but one of my favorite quips from Emerson: "In March many weathers. March always comes, [even] if it do not come until May. May generally does not come at all."

[[deleted user]]

Thomas, regarding 100, 103. The paragraph beginning "...similarities convinced Joyce..." was an asterisk-comment at the bottom of the page. I looked, but there is no source cited. So...

I don't know if it's a fact or simply someone's interpretation. :-)... I read your remark's on Cass's thread ;-)

[[deleted user]]

Laurel wrote: "
"Frisch weht der Wind. . . ." This song is sung by the steersman at the very beginning of Wagner's "Tristram und Isolde," which is about one of the incidents in the Arthurian legends: love forbidden and thwarted

Bloom on The Tempest aspect: The shipwreck in The Tempest is an illusion. It has been created by the magician Prospero in order to reveal to the voyagers the corrupt condition of their lives…thus Eliot makes Shakespeare’s play into a metaphor for the condition described in TWL. The barrenness of the world, the impotence of its creatures is an illusory reality. It is caused by an obstruction of vision, which is the result of a passionate attachment to desire.

[[deleted user]]

Adelle: In my humble opinion, Bloom is all wet (pun intended) if that is his reading of The Tempest. I'd be curious what lines he cites to demonstrate that the shipwrecked corrupt men, including the brother who betrayed Prospero, have had this revelation of their corrupt nature. On the contrary, the reconciliation comes from Prospero--prodded by the spirit Ariel. The key lines:

Prospero. .... Say, my spirit,
How fares the king and's followers?

Ariel. Confined together
In the same fashion as you gave in charge,
Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,
In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;
They cannot budge till your release. The king,
His brother and yours, abide all three distracted
And the remainder mourning over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly
Him that you term'd, sir, 'The good old lord Gonzalo;'
His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops
From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit?

Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human.

Prospero. And mine shall.
Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason 'gaitist my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent,
The sole drift of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel:
My charms I'll break, their senses I'll restore,
And they shall be themselves.

For me, if anything, it is a story of the redemptive nature of forgiveness and charity, not a forecast of the barren nature of life in the twentieth century.

This is not to suggest that Prospero's own difficulties are not the product of his "obstruction of vision, which is the result of a passionate attachment to desire." He does, after all, abjure his "rough magic," break his staff, and drown his book. It is necessary for him to do this in order to escape his own illusions and embrace charity.

[[deleted user]]

Zeke wrote: "Adelle: In my humble opinion, Bloom is all wet (pun intended) ..."

Fear death by water.

Well Sir, having read your post, I have now read more of The Tempest than ever I did before. :-)

Your humble opinion is always good enough for me. And you DID provide lines to back up your opinion. Mr. Bloom did not. At least not in the book I was reading.