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The Waste Land
The Waste Land - BP Poetry
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Discussion - Week Three - The Waste Land - Section II
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Section III Here we have three distinct parts.
the lady on her throne and at the end the introduction of the story of Philomel, the nervous woman and her companion/husband -- who is often identified with Vivienne.
And then there's the woman in the pub who's had an abortion and the drugs she took have caused her teeth to fall out. At the end the pub crawlers say "goonight" and we end with Ophelia's farewell.
Oops, I suddenly remembered I was going to refresh my memory on Philomel for this... :P
This discussion has been just great so far: nice balance of roaming the forest and focusing on individual trees, were waste lands to have such things. As yet, I’ve read only the poem, accompanying footnotes and the comments here, so please bear with a newbie!But about the poem…I liked the pub section as an earthy example of the death-in-life and birth trauma themes you guys discussed over in last week’s thread. Like cruel April breeding lilacs from the dead land, this mother subverts purely rosy images of regeneration. Life-giving processes can bring pain and death to both mother and offspring: she “nearly died of young George,” then took a potential life herself; she appears ancient and decayed, though young in years. And then there’s that death-knell tolling “hurry up please its time” throughout a place of mirth. Bleak.
Nice observations, Rachel, yes, images that fit in nicely with a bleak wasteland. Do you see what I meant in the other thread that it's not always about "understanding" in this poem, it's about seeing and feeling. Eliot almost sketches the dark bleak atmosphere as if he were a painter or a filmmaker. The filmmaker comparison is actually more apt, because the scene"moves" and there are sounds as well.
Is this discussion fizzling out? :S
Traveller wrote: "Is this discussion fizzling out? :S"What would you like it to tackle?
Rachel,I agree about the pub scene. There is of course life and death and abortion if nothing else is an inversion of the natural order. (So are antibiotics -- it's not a value judgment.)
Eliot's stole the standard line of the bartender to pub patrons to announce "closing time". There's also the extremely naturalistic, normal, non-mythic aspect that plays powerfully. And it's also the closing lines, which switch from the pub group to Ophelia's last lines in Hamlet.
I find the "nervous woman", usually considered to be his wife, Vivienne, very moving. In the The Wast Land's original draft the closing lines of the nervous woman are
The hot water at ten,
And if it rains, the closed carriage at four.
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. (Italics mine.)
"The ivory men make company between us" was removed and yet it seems to me a powerful image.
The notion of a loneliness so vast and deep that chess pieces were there for company seems enormously powerful.
II. A GAME OF CHESSThe 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.
There are references to the description of Cleopatra by Enorbarbus in Antony and Cleopatra and also to Dido an Aeneas.
The description by Enorbarbus is one of the most famous and beautiful in all of Shakespeare
Consider how different it is from Shakespeare:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick 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'er-picturing 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.
Shakespeare is much easier to read and feel. I found the Eliot even difficult to follow -- not understand -- just figure out what we're looking out, the mirror, the reflections, the standards, the cupid figures, etc.
We have the definitely odd lines of
...lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours;
One Vivienne's problems was frequent menstruation or bleeding (I'm not sure all whether or the bleeding was related to menstrual problems or not) and in the original there are the lines
...to the steaming bath she moves
Her tresses fanned by little flutt'ring Loves;
Odours confected by the cunning French
Disguise the good old female stench/heart female stench.
I read some of that into the lines about her perfumes.
Traveller,This is week III -- Section II because Week I was a discussion of the poem as a whole.
Because your insertion of The Game of Chess destroyed the line breaks, could you please remove that? It's too hard to read. I've posted the opening and will post more.
Traveller wrote: "Is this discussion fizzling out? :S"I think the discussion has been great. There are not a huge number of posts, but they are good, thoughtful posts. I especially appreciate Bill's interpretive summaries of a small section at a time.
Bill wrote: "II. A GAME OF CHESSThe 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
(Ano..."
Eliot's description here includes several elements of the Hebrew Tabernacle (and Solomon's Temple)--the candelabra, the cherubim ("Cupidon"), the incense (perfume). I'm not sure what to make of that, but it certainly stands out to me. Perhaps an anti-tabernacle?
Interesting. There's also the reference, more obscure than the Enobarbus speech, in the AeneidBurning torches hang from the gold-pannelled ceiling.
And vanquish the night with their flames.
I don't know if there's anything here more than a reference to classical literature or if there's a specific reference to Dido -- yet another woman who didn't make out well in love.
It definitely reinforces Eliot's vision of all time -- and I think like in "Burnt Norton" -- happening at once.
Bill wrote: "Interesting. There's also the reference, more obscure than the Enobarbus speech, in the AeneidBurning torches hang from the gold-pannelled ceiling.
And vanquish the night with their flames.
I do..."
And another layer would be Shakespeare's source in Plutarch:
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sou...
Laurele wrote: "Traveller wrote: "Is this discussion fizzling out? :S"I think the discussion has been great. There are not a huge number of posts, but they are good, thoughtful posts. I especially appreciate Bill..."
Yes, yes. I really appreciate the way Bill has been doing it, but I just became anxious now because we seem to be very quiet here, and because Jim has already opened the thread for the next section.
I also feel rather bad that I've been neglecting this because I've become rather sidetracked by unexpected other discussions that popped up elsewhere. :P ..and I really would like to see this poem discussed in detail, so apologies for my anxiety.
..so I was rather hoping you guys would hold the fort, carry the day, and all that, and you are. Good chaps y'all are, thanks! Like Britons from around Elliot's time would have said: 'Jolly good chaps, jolly good troopers; carry on. Carry on! ' :D
I was just getting lost on the internet trying to find exactly why "lidless" eyes, but sadly I have to go now. Bah.
Traveller, Jim will open a new discussion each week regardless at the rate we go. We go slow.
That's okay.
Traveller wrote: "I was just getting lost on the internet trying to find exactly why "lidless" eyes, but sadly I have to go now. Bah."Lidless=open, watchful.
Or possibly he's referring to a particular, carved chess set. But I think I prefer the notion of watchful, the chess pieces which make the company, the only sop of the loneliness, watch.What's less clear to me is why he took out one of the best lines in the poem.
Vivien evidently objected to the ivory man line, perhaps because it hit too close to their own relationship.
Ah, ok - "lidless" has a particularly reptilian connotation for me. Yes, I remember reading somewhere about Vivienne making him take the line out. He should have put it in again later. :P
Traveller wrote: "Nice observations, Rachel, yes, images that fit in nicely with a bleak wasteland. Do you see what I meant in the other thread that it's not always about "understanding" in this poem, it's about se..."Thank you for the comment about seeing the poem-I find this to be an intensely visual poem, I feel as though I'm watching a film only a film that takes place simultaneously inside me (maybe because of the powerful lines) and outside me (because of the images and conversational pieces) and the poem seems less discontinuous in the film version than when I begin intellectualizing it-not that I'm against analysis at all. Often I find that works of art fragment when first analyzed and then later re-integrate in a fuller, richer way.
A lot of words, I guess, to try to say something simple. But I love the images of the pub and I find the abortion/near-death-from birth images personalize, feminize and complement the other images of the poem.
Yes, one of the questions -- if it's not screamingly obvious -- that I always ask is why people have been reading a particular work of art, why it was influential. Certainly, the power of the imagery is a great deal of the reason here.Although here, Ellie, I think the sense of fragmentation never entirely disappears. It more that one is less bothered by it.
Laurele,The comment about hitting too close may be right. Or who knows. There's still plenty to be uncomfortable with. The "Fresca" section on the original manuscript would certainly have been uncomfortable to read where Fresca is portrayed as hopelessly shallow.
When I hear Philomel, I think of Sir Walter Raleigh's poem, "The Nymph's Reply To The Shepherd" in response to Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd..."If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
It has the spring /rebirth vs. fall/death imagery echoed here. Note the cold rock. Also, the Nymph's view of love is rather world weary, cynical and decadent, in the full sense of decaying, as opposed to the Shepherd's idealism. Seems where this poem is, too.
I once found this weird little poem of Eliot's that seems to me to be about Viv--tell me what you think. It is called "Hysteria":As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it, until her
teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,
inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by
the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading
a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying: "If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their
tea in the garden ..." I decided that if the
shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of
the fragments of the afternoon might be collected,
and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.
It's possible, but it's uncertain. For one thing, it was written in 1915 which was the year they met, but I haven't been able to date when in 19156 -- and I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't written before they were married. It was also unlikely to have been first impressions because then the marriage would have been, um, unlikely.The other and more important thing is that I don't think this poem is really about ANY woman. The hysteria is being experience by the speaker not the woman. All she's doing is laughing. The speaker of the poem is the one going mad.
Pages 8 - 10 in the Norton Critical Edition