Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Discussion: T. S. Eliot's Poetry
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TWL II A Game of Chess
It's called a game of chess, but no mention of chess pieces or moves.
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
Nemo wrote: "It's called a game of chess, but no mention of chess pieces or moves."Good observation. Are there any games?
Laurel wrote: "The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes beh..."
The first line comes from Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" (someone can tell us where Shakespeare got it) and prepares us for something regal and gorgeous. Is that what we get?
Enobarbus: I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
—A&C, 2.2
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
I wonder why "Chair" is capitalized?
Shmoop (thank you, Laurel) says "burnished" is an allusion to Antony and Cleopatra and that didn't work out for Cleopatra.
Mmmm. DID Cleopatra "just happen" to fall in love with Caesar and then, too, with Antony? Or were these sexual alliances for other reasons?
I bring that up because I keep reading that sex in a theme in The Waste Land.
This woman's marriage. The marble makes me think it is cold. The glow on the marble is merely reflected... which makes me think there is no fire, no passion in the marriage....
The game of chess is such a mental game... Makes me wonder if the husband and wife are playing head games with one another.
From my background reading, probably yours, too:
[A Game of Chess]: The title from a Thomas Middleton play…an allegory for the diplomatic games between England and Spain…Middleton also wrote Women Beware Women…a game of chess played…the game is a ruse to distract the mother, whose daughter-in-law is in the other room or the balcony above being seduced
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
I wonder why "Chair" is capitalized?
Shmoop (thank you, Laurel) says "burnished" is an allusion to Antony and Cleopatra and that didn't work out for Cleopatra.
Mmmm. DID Cleopatra "just happen" to fall in love with Caesar and then, too, with Antony? Or were these sexual alliances for other reasons?
I bring that up because I keep reading that sex in a theme in The Waste Land.
This woman's marriage. The marble makes me think it is cold. The glow on the marble is merely reflected... which makes me think there is no fire, no passion in the marriage....
The game of chess is such a mental game... Makes me wonder if the husband and wife are playing head games with one another.
From my background reading, probably yours, too:
[A Game of Chess]: The title from a Thomas Middleton play…an allegory for the diplomatic games between England and Spain…Middleton also wrote Women Beware Women…a game of chess played…the game is a ruse to distract the mother, whose daughter-in-law is in the other room or the balcony above being seduced
Laurel wrote: " Are there any games?"
Made me think of a book I read years ago:
Games People Play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Pe...
Made me think of a book I read years ago:
Games People Play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Pe...
Laurel wrote: "The first line comes from Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" (someone can tell us where Shakespeare got it)"From Plutarch, Life of Antony Ch. 26: When Cleopatra met Antony
Though she received many letters of summons both from Antony himself and from his friends, she so despised and laughed the man to scorn as to sail up the river Cydnus in a barge with gilded poop, its sails spread purple, its rowers urging it on with silver oars to the sound of the flute blended with pipes and lutes. She herself reclined beneath a canopy spangled with gold, adorned like Venus in a painting, while boys like Loves in paintings stood on either side and fanned her. Likewise also the fairest of her serving-maidens, attired like Nereïds and Graces, were stationed, some at the rudder-sweeps, and others at the reefing-ropes. Wondrous odours from countless incense-offerings diffused themselves along the river-banks.
Why a "sevenbranched candelabra"? Isn't that a menorah?
Patrice wrote: "I just read in "Young Eliot" that one of the reasons he added his notes was so that he would not be accused of plagerism. He does take an awful lot from other works. It seems strange to me."I'm quoting from Ashley's comment in another thread
In "Tradition and the Individual Talent" Eliot says "... if we approach a poet without his prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously."
It is not plagiarism if you're preserving the intellectual heritage of those that have lived before. Eliot also says it is the poet's obligation to preserve the language itself, or something to that effect.
Thomas wrote: "Why a "sevenbranched candelabra"? Isn't that a menorah?"Yes, it is. This might be a rich or newly rich Jewish couple in this section. We seem to be in their parlor, where there is a lot of glitter that may not be gold. The synthetic perfume is a tip-off.
Patrice wrote: "He suffered from depression. I don't think it was about WWI. It was about his life. .."
virginia Woolf suffered from depression, made worse by the memories of WWI.
Patrice wrote: "I think it's not plagiarism because he's doing something different with the poems. .."Exactly. He re-invents them, brings them back, breathes new life into them and ultimately 'owns' them as one of his creations.
Nemo wrote: "Though she received many letters of summons both from Antony himself and from his friends, she so despised and laughed the man to scorn as to sail up the river Cydnus in a barge with gilded poop, its sails spread purple, its rowers urging it on with silver oars to the sound of the flute blended with pipes and lutes...."poop? She lured Antony with the smell of poop?
I do remember the lines from Shakespeare's play, but I thought it was all more lovely and fragrant.
I wonder if anyone here watches the HBO series Game of Thrones? The throne at king's landing resembles the one described here.
Theresa wrote: "poop? She lured Antony with the smell of poop?"Yes, that's about right. :)
(poop: the stern of a ship)
probably. I didn't know what a poop deck was.
So being "pooped" has to do with being overwhelmed by a wave. Learn something new everyday here :)
When I read Antony and Cleopatra I didn't think of feces but in Plutarch's account, in context with his description of "scorn" and "wondrous odours" I had to do a double take.
A Game of Chess: A stylized version of war, with stylized slaughter. In the game/battle between the man and woman (husband and wife?) in the poem, the man uses the strategy that Alice Kahn called MUTE Syndrome--Male Unable To Express--a masculine counterpart to PMS. The hidden violence is annihilation, denying the other's existence; better than the murderous rage below the surface. "Any man has to,needs to, wants to/Once in a lifetime, do a girl in." Eliot, Sweeney Agonistes
Plagiarism: The use of fragments from high culture and low is analogous to Collage Cubism in painting, most vividly in Picasso's combining a bicycle seat and handlebars to make a bull's head.
In the edition I bought it says: "At the asking of Eliot's wife, Vivienne, a line in the A Game of Chess section was removed fron the poem: "" And we shall play a game of chess/The ivory men make company between us/Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door"". This section is apparently based on their marital life, and she may have felt these lines too revealing."
Autobiography: "Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling." Eliot
"Some critics use this working title (He Do the police in different voices) to support the theory that, while there are many voices (speakers) in the poem, there is only one central consciousness."I don't buy that. What about you guys?
Patrice wrote: "I think it's not plagiarism because he's doing something different with the poems. April is cruel, not gay, etc. I think I get it. It just took me aback at first. It's like a symphony that inco..."In my edition it says he read Ulysses in 1922 and cited as an influence.
"Source of which Eliot quotes or alludes, include the works of: Homer, Sophocles, Petronius, Virgil, Ovid, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Dante, Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Gérard de Nerval, Thomas Kyd,Chaucer, Thomas MIddleton, John WEbster, Conrad, Milton, Andrew Marvell, Baudelaire, Wagner, Oliver Goldsmith, Hermann Hesse, HUxley, Verlaine, Whitman, and Bram Stoker. Eliot also makes a big deal of use of Scriptural writings including the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Hindu Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and the Buddha´s Fire Sermon, and of cultural and anthropological studies such as Sir James Frazer´s The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston´s From Ritual to Romance."I am already tired just of writing this, imagine reading it.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
Dolphin. “The dolphin was a symbol of re-birth in early Christian art. In Greek mythology the dolphin cared the souls of the dead to the islands of the blessed."
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
Dolphin. “The dolphin was a symbol of re-birth in early Christian art. In Greek mythology the dolphin cared the souls of the dead to the islands of the blessed."
Don wrote: "A Game of Chess: A stylized version of war, with stylized slaughter. In the game/battle between the man and woman (husband and wife?) in the poem, the man uses the strategy that Alice Kahn called ..."Oh, good, Don. Thanks!
Luiz wrote: "In the edition I bought it says: "At the asking of Eliot's wife, Vivienne, a line in the A Game of Chess section was removed fron the poem: "" And we shall play a game of chess/The ivory men make ..."
Ah! That explains the lidless eyes. Thanks!
Patrice wrote: "The theme of water...it made wonder if he'd read Ulysses before writing this. I think they were published the same year but he may have read it before it was published. Didn't Bloom love water?."Yes, and Stephen Dedalus hates it. The Waste Land is not a poem Bloom would have identified with... the lines about the rats (in the next movement) reminded me of Bloom at Glasnevin cemetery, where he empathizes with the rats and wonders how they survive, what they do, how they must feel living amongst the graves. I'm not sure Eliot, based on this poem, would have much in common with Bloom, but I think he would find a brother in Stephen.
“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
“What is that noise?”
The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
Nothing again nothing.
“Do
“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
“Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
“What shall we ever do?”
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
Luiz wrote: ""Source of which Eliot quotes or alludes, include ...Andrew Marvell, Baudelaire, Wagner, Oliver Goldsmith, Hermann Hesse, HUxley, Verlaine, Whitman, and Bram Stoker."Bram Stoker?! There's an odd man out... or is he?
Laurel wrote: "“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I ..."
"Shakesperian Rag" is a song.
Thomas wrote: "Luiz wrote: ""Source of which Eliot quotes or alludes, include ...Andrew Marvell, Baudelaire, Wagner, Oliver Goldsmith, Hermann Hesse, HUxley, Verlaine, Whitman, and Bram Stoker."Bram Stoker?! Th..."
The bat crawling headfirst down the castle wall. Takes me to Transylvania every time.
Thomas wrote: "Luiz wrote: ""Source of which Eliot quotes or alludes, include ...Andrew Marvell, Baudelaire, Wagner, Oliver Goldsmith, Hermann Hesse, HUxley, Verlaine, Whitman, and Bram Stoker."Bram Stoker?! Th..."
It caught my eye too.
Adelle wrote: "The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes beh..."
Maybe because she is a queen and seats on a throne, and that relates to chess?
Nemo wrote: "It's called a game of chess, but no mention of chess pieces or moves."Lines 137-8.
Thomas wrote: "
Bram Stoker?! .There's an odd man out... or is he? ."
I think not. Death...of a sort. And re-birth... of a sort. Transformation... of a sort.
Bram Stoker?! .There's an odd man out... or is he? ."
I think not. Death...of a sort. And re-birth... of a sort. Transformation... of a sort.
Luiz wrote: "Maybe because she is a queen and seats on a throne, and that relates to chess? .."
Mmmm... I quite like the chess connection.
Mmmm... I quite like the chess connection.
In chess, the queen can be sacrificed to protect the king or gain victory. Is Eliot suggesting this kind of relationship between husband and wife?
Don wrote: "In the game/battle between the man and woman (husband and wife?) in the poem, the man uses the strategy that Alice Kahn called MUTE Syndrome--Male Unable To Express-."Does this "UTE" syndrome affect male only, or does it affect female as well?
Eliot seems quite capable of expressing himself, and his personal grouse against life finds resonance with so many.
Nemo wrote: "In chess, the queen can be sacrificed to protect the king or gain victory. Is Eliot suggesting this kind of relationship between husband and wife?"I don´t think so, if we take it as, atleast, loosely based on the relationship between him and his wife ( which I do)
Adelle wrote: "Luiz wrote: "Maybe because she is a queen and seats on a throne, and that relates to chess? .."Mmmm... I quite like the chess connection."
'Glowed on the marble, where the glass
I picture that as a cold, lifeless, throne for a cold,lifeless queen in a cold, lifeless relationship, but then it comes the golden Cupidon and the vines... Does it means that there is still hope for they? Or is it just an antithesis, paradox? ( Inever know the word for this kind of thing)
Laurel wrote: "The bat crawling headfirst down the castle wall. Takes me to Transylvania every time. "Ah ha! How much more could be packed into this poem?
When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
Regarding the passage from Antony and Cleopatra: It is derived, as Nemo noted, from Plutarch. Unlike Eliot though, in Shakespeare it is the barge she sat in.
This is a critical image in the play. As Goddard notes, it illustrates that [she does not have to issue orders. The elements serve her lovingly] "Here is power of another species than military or political."
Marjorie Garber says the imagery "...presents Cleopatra as a paradox of nature and a work of art."
The Romantic poet John Keats may have been thinking of it when he wrote: "tis the eternal law/That first in beauty shall be first in might."
As a couple of people speculated, the common perception is that Cleopatra's power is sexual and the scene does nothing to dispel this. However, I recently read a fascinating biography of her by Stacy Schiff. One of the themes I took from the book was how Cleopatra used much more than sexuality to navigate her way as head of one of the world's super powers of the time. She was intelligent, savvy and quite ruthless. The way the poets of the future have portrayed her with an emphasis on the physical says more about them and their times than it does about Cleopatra.
This is a critical image in the play. As Goddard notes, it illustrates that [she does not have to issue orders. The elements serve her lovingly] "Here is power of another species than military or political."
Marjorie Garber says the imagery "...presents Cleopatra as a paradox of nature and a work of art."
The Romantic poet John Keats may have been thinking of it when he wrote: "tis the eternal law/That first in beauty shall be first in might."
As a couple of people speculated, the common perception is that Cleopatra's power is sexual and the scene does nothing to dispel this. However, I recently read a fascinating biography of her by Stacy Schiff. One of the themes I took from the book was how Cleopatra used much more than sexuality to navigate her way as head of one of the world's super powers of the time. She was intelligent, savvy and quite ruthless. The way the poets of the future have portrayed her with an emphasis on the physical says more about them and their times than it does about Cleopatra.
Zeke wrote: "The way the poets of the future have portrayed her with an emphasis on the physical says more about them and their times than it does about Cleopatra. ."Indeed. Plutarch wrote of Cleopatra's charm and intelligence. A lesser being would not have ruled a kingdom, and captivated men like Caesar and Antony.
For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted
P.S. Come to think of it, perhaps the conversations in A Game of Chess wouldn't be so lifeless if Cleopatra were the speaker.
Laurel wrote: "“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”.."
"Nothing" and "tomorrow":
Macbeth:
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Schiff notes that Plutarch wrote 76 years after Cleopatra died. One of the themes of her book is that "To restore Cleopatra is as much to salvage the few facts as to peel away the encrusted myth and the hoary propaganda." As I mentioned before, the book is wonderful at revealing the agendas of the myth makers.
If anyone is at all interested in Cleopatra or in well written biography, this book is worth a look.
If anyone is at all interested in Cleopatra or in well written biography, this book is worth a look.
Zeke wrote: "To restore Cleopatra is as much to salvage the few facts as to peel away the encrusted myth and the hoary propaganda.."What criteria does Schiff use to separate facts from myth and propaganda?
Text, with notes http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/waste...
Shmoop's line by line summary http://www.shmoop.com/the-waste-land/...
Eliot's reading http://youtu.be/n-cNx5eEFIo