Brain Pain discussion
This topic is about
The Waste Land
The Waste Land - BP Poetry
>
Discussion - Week Four - The Waste Land - Section III
date
newest »
newest »
All right, guys, this week Four, Section III, The Fire Sermon -- which includes the Thames "daughters", Weialala, Queen Elizabeth and ending with Buddha and St. Augustine, although these two are noted in the notes.We can talk about this -- or we can wait a little until we get to it.
Okay. Cool.It's interesting that this is called the Fire Sermon although the reference to the first sermon -- the burnings at the end -- only come at the end.
I read (sorry, I don't recall the source at the moment) that Eliot told someone he was considering becoming a Buddhist during the time he wrote this.
It's very much an alternate route to Christianity. Eliot had studied Buddhist philosophy at Harvard, but I don't know what he made of it. For example, if he ever did so much as engage in meditative practice.
Here we begin, with Spenser and references to Andrew Marvell, The Parliament of Bees, and Parsifal
Parsifal
by Paul Verlaine
Parsifal a vaincu les Filles, leur gentil
Babil et la luxure amusante - et sa pente
Vers la Chair de garçon vierge que cela tente
D'aimer les seins légers et ce gentil babil;
Il vaincu la Femme belle, au cœur subtil,
Étalant ses bras frais et sa gorge excitante;
Il a vaincu l'Enfer et rentre sous sa tente
Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril,
Avec la lance qui perça le Flanc suprême!
Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même,
Et prêtre du très saint Trésor essentiel.
En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole,
Le vase pur où resplendit le Sang réel.
- Et, ô ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole!*
it can be translated as follows:
Parsifal has vanquished the daughters, with their gentle
Babble and amusing luxuriance; despite delight
Of the flesh that lures the virgin youth, tempts him
To love their swelling breasts and gentle babble;
He has vanquished fair Womankind, of subtle heart,
Her tender arms outstretched and her throat pale;
From harrowing Hell, he now returns triumphant,
Bearing a heavy trophy in his boyish hands,
With the spear that pierced the Saviour's side!
He healed the King, and shall be himself enthroned,
As priest-king of the sacred, vital treasures.
In robe of gold he worships that sign of grace,
The unblemished vessel in which shines the Holy Blood.
- And, o those children's voices singing in the dome!
III. THE FIRE SERMON
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse.
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Leman is Lake Geneva where Eliot recovered from his nervous breakdown.
We see the fisher king mixed with references to The Tempest.
The last is particularly interesting.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
This is a reference to the Parliament of Bees and the myth of Diana and Actaeon whom she turned into a stag and had him ripped apart by his own dogs for see her bathing naked. Apparently, Diana was touchy on this point.
But Eliot takes this well away from the gods of Greece with his own vulgar character Sweeney (who also has roots in Irish folklore) and "Mrs. Porter" -- Mrs. Porter and her daughter were referred to a brothel in Cairo -- and in the original, their feet weren't what they were washing.
And then we move with the greatest possible irony to "0 the voices of children singing in the dome"
and from Parsifal.
Bill wrote: "But Eliot takes this well away from the gods of Greece with his own vulgar character Sweeney (who also has roots in Irish folklore) and "Mrs. Porter" -- Mrs. Porter and her daughter were referred to a brothel in Cairo -- and in the original, their feet weren't what they were washing."May be of interest:
http://rifatsonsino.blogspot.com/2011...
The author teaches at Boston College and retired from the congregational rabbinate in 2003 (Temple Beth Shalom, Needham. MA).
Similar to points made at a recent series on Early Christianity I have been attending.
Note the alliteration in these passages, for example, rattle (of the bones), rat; death, damp, dry (garret). Others may not qualify as alliteration, but there seems a sense of repetition of sound that mounts to an effect, e.g., "slimy belly on the bank while I was fishing on the dull canal..."
Lily wrote: "Note the alliteration in these passages, for example, rattle (of the bones), rat; death, damp, dry (garret). Others may not qualify as alliteration, but there seems a sense of repetition of sound ..."Amd the rats were in rats alley, the trenches of WWI.
Lily wrote: "Bill wrote: "But Eliot takes this well away from the gods of Greece with his own vulgar character Sweeney (who also has roots in Irish folklore) and "Mrs. Porter" -- Mrs. Porter and her daughter were not washing feet..."Or foot soldiers. I haven't found the exact word but I have found the explanation was that it was obscene and wouldn't be used by schools if the word were quoted.
Bill wrote: "Okay. Cool.It's interesting that this is called the Fire Sermon although the reference to the first sermon -- the burnings at the end -- only come at the end.
My source (the most excellent iPad app) says that the Buddha preached the fire sermon against lust and other passions, so it would apply to the entire section.
Parsifal.So we have material from/about three of Wagner's operas: Tristan und Isolde (the "Irish Kind" song of the sailor In section I), Die Götterdämmerung (the "Weialala" lament of the Rhine daughters crying for the stollen gold they were supposed to have been guarding), and the quotation from Verlaine's 'Parsifal.' I keep bumping into Wagner in Modernist writings.
'The river's tent is broken."This took me right back to Cleopatra's barge, the Nile turning into the Thames and all the charm gone. Also, the Tabernacle was the Tent of Meeting:
"Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken.
"But there the glorious LORD will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby." --Isaiah 33:20, 21
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.This is from Spenser's "Prothlamion," which was written to celebrate the double marriage of the two daughters of the Earl of Wocester, "two Honorable & vertuous Ladies." We start the section with a hymn to holy matrimony, but everything, so to speak, goes downstream from there. This section is about the unholy uses of sex, which was ordained as part of the holy ordinance of marriage. Everything has turned foul.
Yes -- but then you could say that the whole poem is obsessed with sexual desire. The whole poem is a fire sermon, at least different parts are shot through with it.Why here particularly?
When I found that comment about Eliot's considering becoming a Buddhist -- I also look at this in a less Christian light.
Teh whole poem is informed but by craving, the source of suffering. Burning, burning, burning.
LIfe is suffering
Suffering has a cause
The cause is craving
The way to stop craving is the noble 8 fold path
One of the points made by some is that Eliot's later conversion shouldn't be confused with his feelings at the time of writing The Waste Land.
What is interesting in this case is Eliot's own overwhelming obsession with sexual desire -- either literally or figuratively. Don Juan, he wasn't. Or a gay version.
To some extent I think Eliot is mourning the human condition. I'm not sure he understands that. :-)
Unreal CityUnder the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.
This was apparently based on an incident that happened to Eliot.
And then there's the complicated section with Tiresias, the typist and the "young man carbuncular"At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City City, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
No more posting until I get some conversation here. People -- think, talk, eat grapes, post.
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lightsHer stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
Eliot foreshadows Margaret Drabble (e.g., The Radiant Way), Penelope Fitzgerald (e.g., The Bookshop) and others, with their stories of quiet, restricted women living out lives, often alone, in post-WW1 and WW2 in England. The Waste Land is one of those poems with the ability to speak to the future which followed its publication as well as to culminate the past which fed its existence.
Beautifully said, Lily. I love the way that typist suddenly appears and fits in so adroitly. Reminds me of the women who come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.
Except they're probably not as well educated. I don't know that the typist could talk about Michelangelo.Lawrence Rainey goes on and on about the typist in popular literature of the time and how inventive it was for Eliot to use a typist.
Random thought (provoked by asking self if typists would or would not have been familiar enough with Michelangelo to have been speaking of him) -- at an "old" company for which I once worked, they talked about male secretaries (hence I presume typists) before female ones became common. I wonder if that was more common in the U.S. than in Britain.
I like the (I assume) reference to Oliver Goldsmith's "When lovely woman stoops" and its juxtaposition with the gramophone-both a startling contrast and a sense of continuity.I think Eliot often portrays a world decayed that was never whole.
That's a lovely line, Ellie, "a world decayed that was never whole." It's the contrast between what was which was brutish and violent -- the rape and mutilation of Philomel, Procne's cooking and feeding her child to Tereus -- and a certain sense that it was more grand and more beautiful anyway. Eliot prefers opera to a world where no one is singing, perhaps. He likes the musical hall.
I think these are at least powerful tensions if not absolute contradictions.
There are other things at work. Eliot's notion of impersonal poetry and the poetic tradition, which he inherited from a Harvard professor, which I simply don't understand. I'd have to do a lot of reading to understand it, and I haven't had the time on that.
Ellie wrote: "I think Eliot often portrays a world decayed that was never whole. ..."Ellie -- what do you see that as saying about Eliot? Does he understand that it was never whole? Or is he romantic enough to believe that it was? Or...
Bill wrote: "...He likes the musical hall...."And, Bill, you consider the textual evidence to be....?
I think that he probably believes both-as an anglo-Catholic I assume he believed in the fall from grace, a fragmenting of the wholeness of our original state.At the same time, I think that he was smart and educated enough to know that that fall (assuming it took place), happened a very long time ago-before written history or literature.
I think that would also be a partial response to the question of whether he knows he's mourning the human condition-as a Catholic, he would. And although in theory (Catholic dogma, that is), humans were restored to wholeness by Christ's sacrifice, in practice that means fully accepting that sacrifice and turning completely towards God. So only a few saints would achieve a "healed" state, the rest of us are still wounded to greater or lesser degrees (or perhaps greater and greater degrees).
Although since his conversion comes after the composition of WL and Unitarianism doesn't provide the same framework, Eliot's awareness of these issues would depend on what he was already familiar with by 1922. But his breakdown was part of led him to his conversion, wasn't it?
By the way, I think becoming Anglican is a highly romantic act (I think being a Catholic is a romantic gesture-speaking as a Catholic, that is).
There's no textual evidence in the poem exactly how he feels about it He uses it. That Shakespeherian Rag, the barracks room version of Little Red Wing now about Mrs. Porter.But we know Eliot liked the musical hall because he wrote about it and said he did and it was about the same time he wrote The Waste Land.
Ellie wrote, "But his breakdown was part of led him to his conversion, wasn't it?"It all very hard to know, not mention exactly what his "breakdown" consisted of -- a failure of will.
I think I understand what you mean by a broken world. I'm not sure how you're using "romantic" in those sentences. I'm not rejecting it. I just don't understand it.
To me, the whole trust in the notion that life has inherent meaning and worth is somewhat romantic and then add all the metaphors of the Catholics, the added measure of someone taking on to himself the brokenness of humanity & transforming it or healing it into wholeness is romantic.
Here's how I see this section. In two ways it is the Fire Sermon against lust, Christian and Buddhist. He always seems to choose fragments of literary culture where people are punished for their passions, rather than rewarded. Tereus, Oedipus--my notes don't mention Oedipus in the( eye) plucking lines, at the very end--(following what Tiresias prophetically "sees")--but that's what I think of....the poor passionless typist, the pub lady, Sweeney, the Fisher King. Passion has no good endgame for them.I like the song here: it was on one of my favorite episodes of MadMen: "We sat down and wept, and wept, and wept, for you Zion." A dream that was never consummated?
I've read a lot of versions of King Arthur's tales, which I believe borrows heavily from the Fisher King mythology.
Arthur's "wound" that ruins his land Camelot is the betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere, which of course expresses itself in sexual consummation, although the betrayals are many and layered long before that, and not all sexual--Gawain ( Who in one version kills his mother for being slutty), even plays a role, by accusing Guinevere of treason, which she is actually at that time not guilty of. Guinevere feels betrayed by Arthur for not defending her, and putting her on trial in a show of his impartiality to the Knights of the Round Table. His rep as a just king at stake, as well as all Camelot.
The passionate Lancelot has been thought a traitor by the Knights, but again is not guilty. He has been betrayed by Elaine , who convinced him she took his virginity while he was drunk, which is also not true. In King Arthur, all the "betrayals" are illusions--possibly perpetrated by black magic. Thus, they keep our sympathy and seem tragic--tricked by "blind" fate.
In Eliot, however, the sexual situations seem to be overwhelmingly tawdry and devoid of any real love or passion. I think the tragedy is, he wants to replace earthly paradise with some ascetic ideal from either Christanity or Buddhism, but he doesn't seem to really believe in them enough. Lust unconsummated still haunts him? The river is dirty, soda water can't wash the stench away,and the mermaids still refuse to sing to him--the shadow falls between himself and whatever act he imagines he wants. So...eh. Buddhism.
Pages 11 - 15 in the Norton Critical Edition