Discussion - Week Five - The Waste Land - Section IV & V

[Jim]

This discussion covers Section IV "Death by Water" and Section V "What the Thunder Said" in The Waste Land.

Pages 16 - 20 in the Norton Critical Edition

[Lily]

I'm going to post these two sections at the beginning of this thread (in two posts) so we can readily refer back to them:

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea 315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

[Lily]

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying 325
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience 330

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink 335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
If there were water 345
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring 350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock 355
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together 360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you? 365

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only 370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London 375
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings 380
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains 385
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one. 390
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves 395
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA 400
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed 405
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA 410
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours 415
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded 420
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order? 425

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

This section is so long we will certainly want to address parts of it at a time.

[Lily]

Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London 375
Unreal

911
WTC
NYC
USA

[Jim]

Line 392 has the 'cheer' I learned recently for watching French sports. 'Co co rico' to represent the French sports mascot - Le coq sportif

BTW, I'm curious to find out next week why section 4 is so short. And maybe more importantly, was Ezra Pound a good influence on this poem.

[Bill]

Cocorico is the cock's cry, not just le coq sportif, I learned it in elementary school, in a French song.

Not to let the cat out of the bag (which would scare the coq) Section IV is a translation of an earlier poem, Dans le Restaurant, which Eliot wrote in French. Pound wanted it in, as I recall, because it carried forward the motif of the drowned sailor. This is one of Eliot's obsessive motifs in this poem, drowning.

It's worth noting also that Eliot was a sailor, the one sport he was allowed because of his double hernia, and his summers in Massachusetts were filled with it. Water also was part of his growing up, the Mississippi River.

I'm not suggesting this adds meaning, but it's a source of his imagery, perhaps in part.

[Bill]

It is interesting that first "verse" seems to reintroduce the desert imagery of the first part, the thunder of spring reminds me of "summer surprised us" in the beginning.

And then comes some very interesting lines.

He who living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.

He might be Christ might be anyone.
We might we something specific or all mankind.

But I think in those line is a great deal of (good) ambiguity and suggestiveness, which is part of the attraction of the poem.

There is also the oddness of "We who were living are now dying/With a little patience."

If we were living shouldn't we already be dead? Does with "a little patience" suggest impatience or resignation? Or something else?

And the sonorous quality of it seems to have as much meaning as anything else. The music of those lines, the cadence, the repetitions of the words, the enjambment as the line carries over from "are now dying" to "a little patience."

As Molly Bloom might have said, "Yes!"

[Lily]

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.

These lines always remind me of a personal trainer who said of her divorce: "Our vows were until death do us part. Death (of our marriage) it was."

(I wrote more, but my fateful editor of the wrong key deleted all, and I am not being successful in reconstructing to my satisfaction right now. It had at least Botox, cosmetic surgery, a suffering 95-year old nearing palliative hospice care, and tenebrae mixed up together. May return later or maybe not.)

Oh, yes, "personal trainer" is fictional; the story is not.

PS -- Last night Frederick Teardo, organist, performed Johannes Brahms's Eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122 at the St. Thomas Cathedral. According to the program notes, after the death of Clara Schumann and as his own health and general demeanor declined, Brahms was sensing his life nearing its end, "compelling" him to compose his final musical testament, published posthumously in 1902. Was this "patience" or "impatience"?

[Lily]

Where is everyone?

[Bill]

It seems that you and I are the only ones lasting until the end. I was dealing with a family emergency, fortunately it wasn't my family. But still. And my accountant is bugging me about taxes.

[Bill]

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together 360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

I think these lines are fascinating, knowing the source. What strikes me is that it's an excellent example of how poetic consciousness works. He takes the idea out Shakleton (?) and embellishes and puts it into the poem. What exactly does it mean. Just the sense of mysterious presence, the inability to trust our own senses, the line where the normal and unexplainable touch.

[Bill]

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

That is one of the oddest images in the poem. But once again there is violet light.

And this is Chapel Perilous from the grail legend.

In this decayed hole among the mountains 385
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "...But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?"

This passage reminds strongly of the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.13-35 (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/k...

Text:(view spoiler)[
[13] And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.
[14] And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
[15] And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.
[16] But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
[17] And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?
[18] And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass therein these days?
[19] And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
[20] And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.
[21] But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.
[22] Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;
[23] And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
[24] And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.
[25] Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
[26] Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
[27] And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
[28] And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
[29] But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
[30] And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
[31] And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
[32] And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
[33] And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,
[34] Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
[35] And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread. (Bold added.) (hide spoiler)]

For me, it is perhaps one of the most hopeful passages in a poem seemingly intended to be without hope. We may not know who walks beside us, but maybe, even probably, somebody does. somebody does?

[Laurel]

Bill wrote: "It seems that you and I are the only ones lasting until the end. I was dealing with a family emergency, fortunately it wasn't my family. But still. And my accountant is bugging me about taxes."

I am here, but speechless. This section has more to feel than to talk about.

[Lily]

Laurele wrote: "I am here, but speechless. This section has more to feel than to talk about. ..."

Okay. Can you feel at (for?) us with words? Some sort of transmigration from feelings to words?

(Yes, I'm pleading -- begging might be more accurate, in case you haven't noticed. And your comment is insightful. I do think that applies to the whole poem, at least for me.)

[Laurel]

Bill wrote: "Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together 360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrap..."

I think this is a trick of the mind in illness. The brain of some old or I'll people seems to retrieve fragments of memory at random and jam them together in confusion. Much of section V seems to me to be the sadness and confusion of a brilliant but weary mind.

[Laurel]

Bill wrote: "A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a bl..."

Makes me think of Count Dracula.

[Laurel]

Lily wrote: "Bill wrote: "...But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is tha..."

Yes, there is definitely a remembrance of Emmaus there, and also of Shadrack, Mesheck, and Abednego.

[Laurel]

Murmur of maternal lamentation

What an amazing line!

[Lily]

Laurele wrote: "...I think this is a trick of the mind in illness. The brains of some old or ill people seem to retrieve fragments of memory at random and jam them together in confusion. Much of section V seems to me to be the sadness and confusion of a brilliant but weary mind...."

Oh, that hits home so close tonight as cousins walk alongside my 94-year old aunt who is striving to overcome stroke and other health complications.

[Cleo]

Lily wrote: "Where is everyone?"

Sorry everyone ......... my mom has been in the hospital since this weekend so I've been focussing on dealing with that and have dropped out. She should be home tomorrow and, depending on how busy I'll be with her, I'll do my best to catch up although my thoughts are somewhat scattered at the moment. I'm enjoying catching up on your posts!

[Bill]

Laurele wrote: "...I think this is a trick of the mind in illness. The brains of some old or ill people seem to retrieve fragments of memory at random and jam them together in confusion. Much of section V seems to me to be the sadness and confusion of a brilliant but weary mind...."

Lily wrote, Oh, that hits home so close tonight as cousins walk alongside my 94-year old aunt who is striving to overcome stroke and other health complications.

Or simply alone in the wilderness perhaps, like a mirage. Eliot's reference to the "extra man" in Shackleton seems important to me, closer than Emmaus.

Also, interestingly, I find the close of the poem interesting.

Shantih, Shantih, Shantih -- because it is HERE after everything that Eliot releases the burden of his knowledge.

Because Eliot later joined the CofE I think it's a mistake to overlook the Buddhism in the poem, or the Hinduism if you prefer.

There is the sense of world which always unsatisfactory and always unchanging, the three principles of the world being always unsatisfactory, the world always changing, and we ourselves just random accidents of feelings, thoughts, ideas, impressions. And that the realization of that state in ones deepest sense is to be awake, to be Buddah (Buddha = awake), to make some peace possible.

I think it was floating around in Eliot's mind.

[Cleo]

I'm struck by the contrasts of water and the lack of it; when Eliot speaks of a body of water there are currents and whirlpools and swirling and sweat .... basically an abundance. But when he speaks of the land there often appears to be a lack of water: cracked earth, dry, sterile ..... even back in Part I there is dead land, stony rubbish, a dead tree, dry stone, etc.

[Cleo]

Wow, there are a number of contrasts/opposites:

Part IV
" .... the profit and loss ...."
" .... rose and fell ...."
" ...... age and youth ....."
" ........ Gentile or Jew ....."

Part V
" ...... the torchlight red on sweaty faces ... the frosty silence in the gardens ..."
" ..... prison and palace ...."
" ....... He who was living is now dead ...."
" ..... We who were living are now dying ....."

[Lily]

Cleo wrote: "Lily wrote: "Where is everyone?"

Sorry everyone ......... my mom has been in the hospital since this weekend so I've been focussing on dealing with that and have dropped out. She should be home t..."

Cleo -- Thanks for "checking in" and letting us know you are "out there." First things first, of course.

But, thx, too, for your posts.

[Cleo]

In Part V Eliot speaks of "agony", "shouting and crying", and "dying with a little patience" (a slow death, perhaps ....???). There is no water and we have a vision of figures walking (two or three?) Where would they be going? To search for water or have they another purpose? Who are the hooded hordes? Others also searching? The woman with the black hair is beyond me, as are the bat babies crawling down the wall, although I love the image this evokes!

After "Falling towers / Jerusalem Athens Alexandria/Vienna London /Unreal" , there is a feeling that the world is devoid of people:

".... upside down in air were towers ..."
" .... voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells" .... only echoes of the past
"..... decayed hole ...."
" ....... tumbled graves ......."
" ....... empty chapel ....... It has no windows, and the door swings ..."

Then: " Dry bones can harm no one ....."
Now that mankind has disappeared, so has all the hatred, strife, cruelty ....... all the "harm" that the human race perpetrated on each other ....????

And lastly: "In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust/ Bringing rain"

Only when man has been wiped out, does the rain finally come and the earth can be renewed ......?

I'm struggling with the rest of Part V. Could part of it be compared to a dirge?

[Laurel]

The empty cisterns come from Jeremiah:

http://bible.cc/jeremiah/2-13.htm

The dry bones are from Ezekiel:

http://bible.cc/ezekiel/37-11.htm

[Traveller]

I've not given up, still following you guys... but I'm also still a bit stuck on the previous section. Who would have thought a 33 page poem could contain so much?

[Lily]

The Exodus story is so full of deserts, rocks, wanderings, of cries for water (and food). But also of waters parting, waters gushing forth from struck stones. How very close to primal human conditions of slavery, immigration, displacement, the chaos of freedom, needs for daily water and food.

See here for a Wiki perspective on refugees in today's world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee

It is easy to forget or ignore (or over-emphasize?) the parallels of ancient stories or modern ones like The Wasteland with current geopolitical conditions.

[Bill]

And the hordes come from Hesse -- again the notes in The Waste Land. I overlooked the Hesse note for a while -- Check Norton P. 60.

Also check my comment in Message 7 for "He who is living is now dead"

[Lily]

Laurele wrote: "The dry bones are from Ezekiel:

http://bible.cc/ezekiel/37-11.htm"

The commentary here is interesting, implying that the "dry bones" represent not just individuals but whole communities or "nations" of people. Also, that the loss of marrow (dry) implies the inability to heal (live again?), at least without divine intervention.

[Lily]

Finally finished The Tiger's Wife this week, with all its intertwined Balkan folktales. It raised for me the extent to which folktales are a part of life and literature in the modern world and literature. Does Eliot have an element of folktales in The Wasteland? (Is that even a useful question to pose?)

I sensed a bit of folk lore in:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings 380
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

A dark haired Rapunzel, perhaps a Rudāba?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapunzel

[Bill]

Actually, what I didn't notice before was the fact that she's she's fiddling with her hair, something witchly I think.

The question is why the bats are crawling downward.

I like the image of fiddling with her hair. It doesn't remind of what I know of Rapunzel, though, which seems about letting down her hair so someone may climb up it, not using her hair as a musical instrument.

[Lily]

Bill wrote: "I like the image of fiddling with her hair... using her hair as a musical instrument."

AH! Thx for that, Bill! I missed that entirely.

I have a favorite poem for which I have lost the book that contained it -- must have loaned the book to someone years ago -- should have been called Cancer Ward but wasn't because Solzhenitsyn had recently issued his novel. Anyway, the poem about an orchestra had two lines about the ethereal music created by "horse hair on cat's gut" -- an image I remember probably every time I watch a violin, viola,or ....

I like this image of a woman creating music on her tautly held black hair. Still, did Rapunzel get us there, through some crazy intertwined thought facilitated by this crazy medium we are using? (The blackened wall on which the bats climbed downward, along with the woman's hair, had taken me to Rapunzel and her tower.)

Don't bats usually hang downward? Why "crawling"?

[Laurel]

I think bats do crawl down head first. Dracula did, too:

"But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall". --Bram Stoker, Dracula, ch. 3

The hair combing reminded me of Heine's bewitching Lorelei:

2. Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar,
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,
Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewalt'ge Melodei.

2. The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, so wondrously fair;
Her golden jewelry is glist'ning;
She combs her golden hair.
She combs with a gilded comb, preening,
And sings a song, passing time.
It has a most wondrous, appealing
And pow'rful melodic rhyme.

http://ingeb.org/Lieder/ichweiss.html

[Lily]

Thank you, Laurel.

There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
If there were water 345

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves 395
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder

How different the images of thunder and rain. I like the expression dry sterile thunder without rain. It would have been so applicable to the white heat lightening and thunder of many summer storms on the plains -- it probably still is.

[Bill]

Water which has been drowning our Phoenician sailor, under which Ferdinand's father's eyes have become pearls, is here seen as seminal.

But now thunder speaks wisdom Da, Da, Da

[Tracy]

Lily wrote: "I'm going to post these two sections at the beginning of this thread (in two posts) so we can readily refer back to them:

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the..."
I can't help but think this is a counterpoint to baptism, which is supposedly rebirth by water--the waters of life, etc. There's the "Full Fathom Five, thy father lies" echo once again. Ophelia, who may or may not have consummated her relationship with Hamlet, saying goodnight ladies in section II, has a death by water--she is drowned.

[Tracy]

Ok...I'm going to try my interpretation out on y'all.

First, I have an Oxford with perhaps different notes, and it keeps making references to Eastern Europe, reeling drunkenly towards chaos--and relates it to Dmitri singing in the Bros Karamazov. Might be of interest to the political times: revolution , rise of communism, etc. Also connections to all that folkloric Slavic element that seems to have faint echoes here with fortunetellers, etc.

There are also notes on allusions to Chapel Perilous and the Grail. In the Arthur legend it is Lancelot's virgin son who finally attains the Grail.

Notes on Ugolino, from Dante's Inferno, who is seemingly locked in a tower with himself forming his own hell (Sartre?) for, like Tereus, devouring his children.

The last bit of Italian is from the purgatory section of Dante, not hell, where the speaker locks himself in the tower away, perhaps an ascetic attempt to cleanse himself of worldly desires. The ending is peace surpassing words.

So, I see it this way. The Thunder, for some reason puts me in mind of the I CHING (book of Change), which might have a connection to Buddhism?--it's one of the elements of nature that is represented frequently in the the hexagrams. Like the tarot cards, it is used for divination, but the answers apparent in the I Ching are more about soul searching and responding to the world around you than any sort of magic. Natural elements such as wind, mountains, thunder, heavens, earth, water, wood, sun, fire are represented in various combinations in the hexagrams. (You can see some of these on the Korean flag, if you want a visual: broken and unbroken lines in sets if six.)
Thunder, BTW, is represented by two broken lines over one unbroken.
Recall that eastern philosophies promote balance, and in particular the balancing of natural elements, and human opposing behavior --aggression vs. passivity, for example . The enlightened man assesses the world around him and acts accordingly--perhaps he needs to "listen to what the THunder said" which in this poem is dry and ominous. Thunder in the I Ching represents movement, and "sprouting" (whatever that means, but remember it's a word in the poem!) Most of the recommendations with Thunder fortunes seem to promote the idea of a righteous man's resistance.

So. To sum up, I think Eliot is listening to the dry thunder (perhaps the ominous movement toward war, revolution, modern sterility that was in fact coming, particularly in Eastern Europe) and deciding to lock himself away in his own tower of purgatory, where he might cleanse himself of desire and find the Grail (Inner peace) through asceticism.

[Bill]

1) You're coming to the discussion a year after it's over, so you probably missed my recommendation of editions, but the best notes are in the Norton Edition of "The Waste Land". It's the most useful group of notes I found because it doesn't merely tell you what is being referenced but excerpts it.

I am not aware of any relationship between the I Ching and Buddhism. The I Ching is very old and Chinese. Buddha was much later and Hindu. While Buddhism gained a later hold in China and some of the sects are associate with China (and or Japan), I don't see this connection.

The poem was written shortly after WWI ended while Eliot was having some kind of nervous breakdown. I don't seem him worrying about developments in Eastern Europe at that point.

But Eliot is always concerned with sex as destructive and civilization unmoored from its tradition and from religion.

I think it's very hard to make the poem mean one thing.

[Tracy]

I didn't miss your recommendation, but I just went with what I had--plus old notes from a college class I took years ago.

I think I skipped some steps in my logical progression --I shoulda said the I Ching may have a connection to ELIOT'S INTEREST in Buddhism...both being from the east, and a counterpoint to western religions. If he was interested in one, maybe also the other, especially since he seems to be alluding to other Hindi ideas in the poem.

It was my Oxford that made the scholarly connections to Eastern Europe's brewing troubles, and although I don't doubt there isn't a really clear emphasis on this in the poem, I think what the Oxonians meant was a man of Eliot's sensitivities probably realized WWI hadn't resolved everything--more trouble was coming, contributing, as you say, to the unmooring of civilization.

I think what made me think of the I Ching (totally my own ridiculous notion--not Oxfords!) is the divination aspect, relating to the earlier references to fortune-tellers. It also makes me think of "the eyes" in "The Hollow Men"--the sort of desperate, cult-of-personality leaders the hopeless look to in times of trouble and change.

I think we essentially see the same universal ideas in the poem. And for the record, I'm not a practitioner of the I Ching...just part of the trivia cluttering up my brain. Like the words to Gilligan's Island's theme song.

[Jim]

Tracy wrote: "Like the words to Gilligan's Island's theme song..."


Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship...


Interesting thought about divination - when the going gets tough, consult the cards/tiles/tea leaves...

[Bill]

"It was my Oxford that made the scholarly connections to Eastern Europe's brewing troubles, and although I don't doubt there isn't a really clear emphasis on this in the poem..."

No, you misunderstood. The Norton notes give you precise sources of what he was talking about. It's Herman Hesse writing about the subject and talking about Dostoevsky.

If memory serves, Eliot studied Eastern religion at Harvard -- at least one course. And his graduate work was in philosophy. He never got his PhD only because he didn't return to defend his thesis.

[Bill]

Jim,

If you can't find the truth in the entrails of beasts, where can you find it? I'm just saying.

[Jim]

Bill wrote: "Jim,

If you can't find the truth in the entrails of beasts, where can you find it. I'm just saying."

That's why I eat foie gras every Sunday. God Bless le boucher, for he showeth me the truth.....