Discussion - Week Two - The Waste Land - Section I

[Bill]

Perhaps Eliot's wife. Belladonna = beautiful lady. Belladonna, the plant, is called "deadly nightshade" and is highly toxic. There may be an overlay of the Mona Lisa as a visual -- but I don't see religious symbolism here.

[Traveller]

Lily wrote: "Notes on Belladonna:

"Belladonna is a plant. The leaf and root are used to make medicine.

"The name 'belladonna' means 'beautiful lady,' and was chosen because of a risky practice in Italy. The b..."

Bill wrote: "Perhaps Eliot's wife. Belladonna = beautiful lady. Belladonna, the plant, is called "deadly nightshade" and is highly toxic. "
So... this immediately made me wonder if she actually took Belladonna as part of her medical regimen. ..and then the belladonna would actually have a double meaning- including the medication and his wife herself.

[Traveller]

Laurele wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Fear death by water. What's that about?"

That part always takes me back to The Tempest. In scene 1, where all the sailor talk is, Gonzalo says of the boatswain:

"I have great c..."

Hmm,interesting. I guess the whole poem is taking excerpts from aspects of Western culture and subverting them, and linking and interweaving them in new ways.

[Bill]

Yes, Traveller, exactly. I'm almost 100% certain she didn't take Belladonna.

I just think it was a number of things mixed by Eliot in imagination.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "Yes, Traveller, exactly. I'm almost 100% certain she didn't take Belladonna...."

I'd be more inclined towards possible allusions that the Lady herself could act as a rather deadly or at least disorienting poison, at least if she might be Eliot's wife versus being the Virgin Mary.

[Bill]

The lady of situations is as ambiguous as late Henry James. :-)

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "The lady of situations is as ambiguous as late Henry James. :-)"

But a man would have been expected to be in clear control in Eliot's day? So, since we have [situations of] ambiguity here, it is appropriate a lady impersonates them?

[Traveller]

Heh, but still, a woman could be deadly in other ways - like a femme fatale for instance - fatale, you know?

[Lily]

Traveller wrote: "Heh, but still, a woman could be deadly in other ways - like a femme fatale for instance - fatale, you know?"

Are you suggesting the poem reflects some bifurcated Madonna and the whore attitudes towards women? I have had that feeling.

It may be so simple here as that Madame Sosostris is "the lady" with "control" of [the situations on] the Tarot cards?

[Bill]

There are female figures in the major arcana in Tarot. Eliot just added an imaginary one of the lady of situations. Fortune tellers are often women. I think it would be eccentric to associate her with the card. She has limited powers as well -- there are things she's not permitted to see -- or at least one.

And I have a problem with thinking of Vivienne as a femme fatale. I tend to think of Eliot as the sort of person who would feel anxiety about making a pass a prostitute. After he paid her.

[Ellen]

Oh Bill, so unkind-and yet so much the image I have of Eliot.

[Traveller]

Well, I was making a sort of double-entendre on the word fatale, (Fatale =fatal= deadly, and fatale = fateful)

In those senses, I suppose Vivienne was 'toxic' if not in the traditional meaning of the term femme fatale. So, I was actually doing a kind of a pun as I suspect that Eliot made on belladonna.

Regarding the female element, I think that Eliot represents females rather well, (for him, given his reputation as a misogynist, and given the time period) and once again, I point out the use of Tiresias, who was turned into a woman for a good many years, and so had a very good perspective from a neutral/ bi-gender point of view.

[Bill]

Traveller wrote, "In those senses, I suppose Vivienne was 'toxic' if not in the traditional meaning of the term femme fatale. So, I was actually doing a kind of a pun as I suspect that Eliot made on belladonna."

That's very fair. I think he does do the women well. On the other hand the notions that sex is always brutal, unwanted and regretted is something I have problems with.

You have got me thinking about Tiresias again -- but I'm not sure where I'll come out.

[Bill]

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!”

This last with all its weirdness might be my favorite section.

Again it's the question of winter and burial being disturbed at the end -- which balances with the beginning. There is the water again, the crowds flowing over the bridge, the association of London and hell, even sound is "dead". The call out to Stetson seems so out of the blue and funny, in a way, something out of a play. And the ending from Baudelaire with its accusation. Hypocrite lecteur.

What do you guys think?

[Ellen]

"The corpse you planted" is an image that I think led to Ionesco's (I think it's his play) about the growing corpse-and perhaps indirectly to Little Shop of Horrors.

It speaks tellingly to how we nurture our destruction, vividly help death to flourish-certainly as true now as ever.

[Lily]

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?..."

This one for me has images both of planting very dead looking tubers in the fall, then seeing them sprout in the spring, and of the awful murder stories we encounter from time to time with the body eventually recovered from a shallow grave in some remote spot. The contrast is so, so stark.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "And the ending from Baudelaire with its accusation. Hypocrite lecteur."

One of my favorite lines. I shall remember this exercise for my introduction to this phrase from Baudelaire if for no other reason: hypocrite reader. Aren't we all?

[Bill]

Lily wrote: "Bill wrote: "And the ending from Baudelaire with its accusation. Hypocrite lecteur."

One of my favorite lines. I shall remember this exercise for my introduction to this phrase from Baudelaire if..."

Perhaps, but in what sense?

[Lily]

"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...."

Really reminded me of Dante. But also of all those lost at Verdun and all the trenches of the Great War, as it was still called. Note the "surprise" at how great is "I had not thought death had undone so many" -- we still get surprised at the toll of these disasters. Also, the mind jumps to "London Bridge is falling down, falling down."

[Bill]

The surprise is, I think, directly from Dante.

I think the power is also in the rhythms, the repetition of "so many, and the effect of "infrequent". He says the sighs are "short and infrequent" and yet the effect is to have a sense a great deal more sighing.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "Lily wrote: "..hypocrite reader. Aren't we all?"

Perhaps, but in what sense? ..."

Following the various definitions of hypocrite to hypocritical to specious, this is probably closest: "apparently right or proper : superficially fair, just, or correct but not so in reality : appearing well at first view : plausible."

It's so easy! LOL! We fall into it all the time, probably including me right now. :-) It's like throwing the humor, the cynicism, the sarcasm back at the audience, and I have always liked that kind of comedian.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "The surprise is, I think, directly from Dante."

You mean the line: "I had not thought death had undone so many" is directly from Dante? Or do you mean the sense of surprise that is embedded in the meaning of the line is directly from Dante?

For me, it was as if the line from Dante was used to evoke the surprise Eliot, or any of us, experience in the face of catastrophe that has been greater, larger than we first understood or even first imagined.

Like your comment about the sighing! Yes, it does feel like a lot of sighing.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "The call out to Stetson seems so out of the blue and funny, in a way, something out of a play...."

Also reminds me of a character in Dante or of Odysseus speaking (or at least wanting to) across the barrier to the dead.

[Lily]

"With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine...."

Is nine the last of the three hour cycles of the liturgical day, where the next one at twelve starts the new day?

[Bill]

I had assumed 9:00 AM -- people going to work. Eliot worked in The City and was very conscious of the urbanization of the area.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "I had assumed 9:00 AM -- people going to work. Eliot worked in The City and was very conscious of the urbanization of the area."

It does say "dawn"! I got caught up in end of the day, end of time, death. OOops!

[Bill]

Lily wrote: "Bill wrote: "I had assumed 9:00 AM -- people going to work. Eliot worked in The City and was very conscious of the urbanization of the area."

It does say "dawn"! I got caught up in end of the day...oops"

Also, in The City, which was becoming increasingly less residential, the streets wouldn't be filled at 9PM.

[Lily]

Pages 190-1 of Norton do a pretty good job with analysis of these immediate lines, including placing the lines from Dante.

[Traveller]

I see these lines of a crowd of zombie-like people on their way to work in the morning; remember that The Waste land was written during Eliot's recovery from his nervous breakdown, and he'd been working at a bank before that.

I can't help wondering if that type of white-collar work would be as stifling for his artist's soul as it is for mine, therefore creating a kind of death of the soul. I often felt like a zombie shuffling off to work when I was still doing white-collar work full time, and perhaps that's why I see it from that perspective.

[Traveller]

I think Eliot also subverts Wordworth's sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge:

_

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept_. 3, 1803


Earth has not any thing to shew more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in it's majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

[Bill]

Traveller,

I'll see your Wordsworth and see you a Blake (1798)

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street.
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse


I was thinking of different ways to experience a city.

[Traveller]

Nice, Bill! That's a lot closer to Eliot's vision, eh?

[Bill]

I don't know, actually. I was actually thinking of different ways to imagine a city.

The literary sources of Eliot may be more Baudelaire and Laforgue. Speaking of Baudelaire, Peter Ackroyad wrote, talking about the young Eliot, "- he started reading Baudelaire. Here ,to, a he confronted a 'personage' who combined morbidity with extreme self-consciousness, a poet who raised the imagery of the metropolis to a hgh degree of intensity and then wrapped it around himself so that it became an echo chamber for his own suffering."

I don't know what I think of that, or really what it means. But it's interesting to think about.

Eliot was a city poet. He was not a nature poet, and he used to walk the streets of the city -- his cities being primarily St. Louis, Boston and New York.

Also -- everyone -- the thread for the next section is up, week III.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "I was actually thinking of different ways to imagine a city...."

Clearly not Eliot related, but I presume you know Calvino's Invisible Cities ?

And in stark contrast is Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" (~1916):

http://carl-sandburg.com/chicago.htm

(Actually of course there is a whole group of them from Sandburg: http://carl-sandburg.com/POEMS.htm)

[Bill]

Well, that's certainly presumptuous. And wrong. :-)

[Bill]

No, actually, not at all.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "The lady of situations is as ambiguous as late Henry James. :-)"

@57-64 A return to this topic. A Google search on the phrase "lady of situations" led to this rather interesting treatise on Sir Gawain and the lady:

http://www.gradesaver.com/sir-gawain-...

[Traveller]

Lily wrote: "Bill wrote: "The lady of situations is as ambiguous as late Henry James. :-)"

@57-64 A return to this topic. A Google search on the phrase "lady of situations" led to this rather interesting trea..."

Ooh, nice link, thanks, Lily! I've had sir Gawain and the Green Knight on my shelf since my college days, due to my obsession with Arthurian legend, but somehow I never really got through it, since the language proves to b a barrier for me. So..it's nice to see a nice modern synopsis like this one. :)

[Bill]

Well, also, remember "Fear death by water" is one of the things fortune tellers say. "You will meet a tall, dark stranger."

[Tracy]

Laurele wrote: "Bill 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 ..."

I don't know. For some reason, when I read this passage, lines 20-30, I keep picturing a Roman, or Pontius Pilate, or one of the Roman soldiers taunting Jesus before, during, and perhaps after being on the cross. "The roots that clutch" seem to me like it could do with Jesus' attempt to renew the faith of the Jews--from the stony rubbish of the Roman empire---it directly addresses the "Son of Man" (was the Magritte painting before or after TWL?) rather than "Son of God" because Jesus was both, according to the dogma--but the Romans would prefer to address him as "Son of Man" to sneer at his divine aspirations---the fear in a handful of dust, then, would be a direct reference to the Romans killing Jesus, and, the attempt to kill the new faith growing from the broken images, the stony rubbish---just like will need to happen after WWI foists its changes on the world.

[Tracy]

Bill wrote: "OH -- but -- GREAT WORK everyone.

And ELLIE --

Eliot was from St. Louis -- but the city proper, in a changing neighborhood (not for the better.) His reference there is usually the river.

I do ..."

I am from St. Louis. My parents' house was literally on the River. It is definitely brown. In fact, when you are in the water, underwater, you cannot see your hand in front of your face. And there are rocks there, but they are not red. They are white--made of limestone.

[Tracy]

I might be a little ridiculous here, stating the obvious, that Madame Sosostris is using tarot cards in this section, and in many old parts of Europe, eastern Europe especially, and also, in New Orleans, down river from me and Mr. Eliot, weird Santeria-like primitive practices that mixed Christianity, voodoo, folklore mythology, etc. were common, but often hidden (the "wicked" pack of cards, I suspect, is because Protestants associated cards with gambling, the devil, or at the very least, superstitious and unenlightened practices best drowned and forbidden.) But in dangerous times, times of change, don't people tend to latch back on to such almost- forgotten practices for comfort?

[Zadignose]

Somehow I stumbled into an old thread. Hmmm. Well, anyway...

Bill wrote: "Traveller,

I'll see your Wordsworth and see you a Blake (1798)

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street.
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe..."

Unfortunately, I cannot ever read this again without hearing the voice of Tuli Kupferbeg in my mind. Visit this video, at around thirteen minutes (13:00) if you want to share my affliction:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TorPkuJEZUs

[Tracy]

Ellie wrote: ""The corpse you planted" is an image that I think led to Ionesco's (I think it's his play) about the growing corpse-and perhaps indirectly to Little Shop of Horrors.

It speaks tellingly to how we..."

Anachronistic, but it makes me think of Rear Window--especially when the neighbor lady's dog keeps digging up the flower bed.