T.S Eliot | Mysite

T.S. ELIOT:

1888-1965

Infirm as a child due to a congenital disease Thomas Shearn was isolated indoors frequently and literature became his painkiller (he is not unlike Robert Louis Stevenson in that respect as both converted their physical limitations into fuel for mental challenge and these 'debilities' only enhanced their imagination). Eliot, despite completing the majority of his education in America, went to Oxford for University but later spent time in London where he met perhaps his greatest influencer and soon-to-be quasi publicist, Ezra Pound. His major works include: The Wasteland (apparently reflective of his marital mindset), The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock and The Hollow Men.

his works:

1. The love sone of J. Alfred prufrock (-1915)

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

This epigraphical verse is taken from Dante's Inferno. Guido, an inhabitant of Hell, converses with Dante, believing him to be the same. Craving the cathartic release of telling his truth without fear of repudiation leads Guido to tell Dante of his fateful sin - false counsel, which resulted in his punishment of being encased in flame.

about the author:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

Through his direct address - Eliot captures the reader as embodiment of Dante's as he begins his confessional. Guido feels affinity with Dante due to their apparent unification in death, Eliot could see his poetry as his medium for his own catharsis.
First rhyming couplet leads reader into false sense of Romantic poetry with idyllic imagery of the evening sky, only to, in true bathetic Modernist fashion, plough through the expectation or poetic tradition with not only a polemic simile but also a divergence from the rhyme scheme. The reference to Ether, a anaesthetic, could be emulating his own addled/vegetative mind frame - almost a disclaimer to the unreliability of his perspective.
Refrain of 'let us go' includes either the reader and himself as a collective or has connotations of multiple personality disorder with the 'then' demonstrating a conversational/colloquial tone about perhaps a habitual or preplanned 'visit'. Also - through its lexical parallelism, it alludes to a sense of urgency/insistence on the part of the speaker
'Muttering retreats' could allude to clandestine places of leisure or pleasure - not generally shouted about through the streets suggesting societal shame and renunciation but unspoken approval through inaction. 'cheap hotels' - designed solely for the purpose of tawdry exploits, leaves behind any expectation of Romantic love much more prosaic - appears a frequent action for Prufrock
The idea of these sawdust restaurants shows how cheap and convenience-orientated they are what with the sawdust referring to an efficient way to cover and soak up vomit (giving an accurate impression of his standards) also oysters are synonymous for aphrodisiacs however the absence of them shows how this is an emotionless conquest devoid of intimacy.
He appears almost paranoid that the streets he leaves behind as he meanders appear to leave a malicious reminder of his past - a lingering unmask-able trail.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

Appears quite dismissive of women, almost satirical - if the setting is in fact whorehouse or a party in which is likely to be able to enact his debauchery - these women (stereotypically) are unlikely to be talking of Michelangelo - a sculptor pertaining to the high arts rather than the lower pleasures. Therefore he appears to belittle the intelligence of the women -

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep

Seems to be a circumlocutory motif for a cat with behaviours axiomatically associated with a domesticated feline entity. The transient habits of a cat could also be metaphorical or representative of the fluidity of towns
The smoke metaphor itself could refer to city smog and pollution with its ubiquitously penetrative qualities, even pressing at the window panes of people's houses.
Also the yellow could be allusion to chlorine gas and its use as chemical warfare in the WW1 along with its deceivingly harmless appearance
the nondescript imagery of yellow smoke replacing the cat alludes to some lack of clarity or obscurity perhaps in his capability to identify things for what they are.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Refrain of 'there will be time' could refer to carpe diem and Prufrock excusing himself for his indecision, negating the latinate phrase as though one needn't be hasty or in fact proactive - he is justifying his capriciousness/ineptitude.
The faces to which he makes reference could connote the repertoire/spectrum of facades eligible for normative societal conduct - links to the last line referencing the comportment of polite society to 'take toast and tea'.
Quite harsh/dissonant antonyms in 'murder and create' - the binary opposition perhaps showing his multiple personalities or indecision within himself. Strangely reminiscent of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
'Works and Days' is a didactic poem written by Ancient Greek Poet Hesiod - almost an instruction manual for agriculture and its nuances. As well as this - it talks of injustice and the value of 'nihil fit ex nihilo' and how to work is more valuable than to find your means by bribery or indolence
The enjambment of hands and the idiomatic line afterwards mimics the action of hands literally lifting woes and troubles onto his plate. Could also reference the custom of handing the butler of the visited house a calling card, to which the owner can choose to grant admittance to or not - perhaps at this stage he is in a state of limbo/suspension - awaiting acceptance.
Idea of the stuttered and frenetic through processes 'hundred revisions' etc. plays into summarising the methodology of the stream of consciousness technique prevalent in Modernist literature.

Repeated rhyming couplet - appears to act as a grounding reminder for Prufrock himself of his surroundings and to tamp down on his mental tangents and wanderings.

Existentialist wonderings
Modernly bathetic in that he clearly doesn't not follow heroism and turns his back to bravery - diverges from cliched tropes
Svelte motif - could be reference to debilitation
Extreme self-consciousness
His armour is his constrictive clothing - reticent and timid - pedantic detail to his clothing shows social awkwardness
Acutely aware of his peers and their opinions of him - self-conscious and paranoid
The 4 short lines of enjambment are impactful and create a languid note isolating the lack of audacity.
The hyperbolic self impression of the gravity of his own actions makes him think that if he dares he will disturb the universe - self inflated notion of his impact
Talks of the ephemeral nature of time and how a minute can change everything
Like Duke Orsino who thinks that 'love can fall into abatement even in a minute' - apparently his love or other emotions are as temporally fleeting as a minute

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

Discordance of his thought processes is exemplified through his description of time being out of chronological order - mentally in disarray
HIs life seems to have passed him by, marked by routines and rituals like coffee spoons measuring the passing of a day - doesn't go by time - ritualistic
Quite stingy, austere with himself - rarely extravagant - doles out pleasure or excerpts of himself by the coffee spoon
Dying could be euphemistic for orgasm and him knowing the voices they come from

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

His social anxiety stretches a metaphor across a stanza of feeling pinned - like a fly on the wall only he is pinned there and cannot escape.

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

Gives impression of a voyeur-entranced by his muse/muses, so intoxicated is he by a smell of perfume, or the colour light casts on a hair or arms enshrouded in a shawl - all sensual and relating to the senses - distracts him easily and suggests he does not perhaps have much experience with women or is utterly infatuated with them,
Known could be alluding to having already had experiences with these women.

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Perhaps an echo of the beginning of the poem and the setting

'Ragged claws, scuttling and silent seas' could allude to a crab, whose motion is never forwards and backwards only horizontal showing lack of progress but a stagnant lifelihood instead - never daring to go forward - mono-dimensional

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

Almost personification of the time periods, the afternoon and the evening sleeping - as though lulled to sleep by the caress of 'long fingers'
Ellipses echoes the shuttering of near-slumbering eyelids
The personified afternoon/evening 'stretched on the floor' - gives this languid/depressive state
Reaching 'crisis' is euphemistic for orgasm - as though he is satirising/mocking the conduct and frippery he has to endure before he can expect to take a woman to bed - lacks patience in the practice of courtship - appears to prefer just the act without effort.
Despite acknowlegding that he is no prophet - has has to deal with all the practices and ministrations of one - 'weeping', 'fasting', praying' etc.
'head served on a platter' - appears to anticipate his being scorned by a woman
Appears to predict the moment of his death or the aftermath of reaching his pinacle - bathetic
The eternal footman is a reference to Death. But this is also a servile reference therefore making his derisive appraisal of Prufrock doubly belittling. Death appears to mock his utter lack of life fulfilment/achievement and almost anticipates taking his life 'holding his coat'.
Prufrock is afraid of dying and having lives an unfulfilled life.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all.”

He is still debating whether he can pluck up the courage to ask her this overwhelming question - speculated to be a marriage proposal or something as simple as a proposition to court or sleep together. So reticent, coy, abashed, self-effacing he is that this takes an entire poem to ponder/deliberate.
'roll up universe in a ball' - is said to reference Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' how this is inverted and instead a coy man silently debating whether he has the courage to approach his mistress.
Lazarus is a biblical reference to a man Jesus brought back from the dead - the idea of resurrection here mirroring the excerpt from Dante's 'The Divine Comedy' to begin with. Lazarus is almost proof to Guido that people do come back from the dead and therefore his divulging of his sin 'false counsel' (not dissimilar to Prufrock's situation) is not necessarily confined within the underworld.
He is apprehensive of reproach and wonders with he has misunderstood their dialogue and misconstrued her politeness for flirtation

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

After the long-winded agonising process of analysing this woman's reciprocity of his feelings - is it even worthwhile. However, his anxiety being the cause for the extended time frame makes this him culpable for this vicious cycle of cowardice.
'its impossible to say what I mean' - expression of aporia (utter doubt/lack of knowledge of meaning)
Repetition could emulate his anxious state of mind - going over the monotonous encounters in his head and overanalysing their significance and worth
'Magic lantern = a projector - questions whether he can put himself out there like images on a screen as though his nerves would manifest as patterns

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

He is a foil to the protagonist, forever resigned himself to play a minor role in the periphery
He, as a character in a Hamlet would be the anonymous one rarely of any use and expendable to the plot
Plays the role of the Fool (Natural or licensed it does not say) but either way to be at the expense of the main character and to be at their whim.
Cannot define himself - merely is identifiable by the side of the protagonist

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

Describes bland indicators of old age - nothing too exciting but the sort of thing an old man worries about - having already thought he was past his time/prime he is preemptively catastrophising about a lonely old unexciting existence. He feels his time is running out

Bathetic deflation of his daring - early it was a question of his bravery to put himself out there now, in true modernist fashion, is talking about a peach (a satire of his demise)
Even the mermaids are not singing to or with him - instead he is anticipating his solitude

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

As is common with Modernism - he builds us up with this idyllic mermaid dreamscape only to be anticlimactically awoken by humanity and its pervading voices and we drown in wakefulness

2. the wasteland:

FOR EZRA POUND

IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

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 the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

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!”

II. A Game of Chess

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.

“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.

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

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

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!

Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc’d.

Tereu

Unreal City

Under 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 weekend at the Metropole.

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 teatime, 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 patronising 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.

The river sweats

Oil and tar

The barges drift

With the turning tide

Red sails

Wide

To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

The barges wash

Drifting logs

Down Greenwich reach

Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars

The stern was formed

A gilded shell

Red and gold

The brisk swell

Rippled both shores

Southwest wind

Carried down stream

The peal of bells

White towers

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

“Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet. After the event

He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’

I made no comment. What should I resent?”

“On Margate Sands.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”

la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

A current under sea

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,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace 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

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

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

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 mudcracked houses

If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water

A spring

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

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

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?

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

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

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

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

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.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

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

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

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, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

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?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

A 'landmark modernist poem'. In an attempt to diverge from the typically recycled motif of his Georgian poet peerage, Eliot looked towards the French poets i.e. Baudelaire who was amongst the first to look as infrastructure, modernity and technology in his poetry.

Can be seen (like above) as a 'modified dramatic monologue'. 'The Waste Land' comes from an Anglican burial service. Utises free verse in places, mythic narrative and intertextual allusions to add depth to his works.

Sets the typical moroseness of tone of the modernists one of jarring pessimism and nihilism. Consistent themes include: Sex, the sanctity of marriage, war, death, chastity, rape

Declarative opening neutral perspective transitions to a speaker

Antithetical perception to that of ordinarily positive connotations of April - rebirth, babies, renewal, transition
Each line has enjambment of the present continuous suggesting a long, consistent, interminable rhythm,
Perhaps mixing the concept of past seasons and the remnants of the past springs and the inherent 'desire' or impulse to plant anew.
Theme of antithesis continues with the idea that 'winter kept us warm' a paradox in itself - a misplaced bitterness
Almost like they looked to winter for not only security but a blanket of ignorance to smother unwelcome 'memories' which resurface with Spring.
Appraisal of all the seasons with perhaps a purposeful omission of Autumn?
Emphasis through caesura.
roots are associated with God

Industrialisation, modernity and its smothering of green life and potential. When you literally cover the earth, what can practically grow and survive. Caesura through rhetorical question mark. Also the debilitated ground presumably after a bellicose cause and whether that has permanently sterilised the ground with its greyness.
Apostrophises man and his monodimensional perspective - he sees one life stage of a tree, where it serves little tangible purpose and he defines the tree.
Motif of shadows and shade
We are governed by our own visible sphere - we see not shadows under other objects only our own.
'Handful of dust' - perhaps a reference to certain religious rites said 'dust to dust' etc. reference to fear of death or the mere mention of the allusive 'dust'

Roughly translated: (Intertextual reference to Tristan and Isolde

The wind is blowing fresh

To home

My Irish, child,

Where are you

Due to the provenance of such a quote it suggests disharmony or incongruity - a pair or assembly that does not marry together or is not destined to succeed.
A sense of liminality/fugue
Ref to Sybil and her living the same no. of years as dust in her han

Element of prolepsis
Gives a sense of bathos and clarification/depreciation - only with her cards or the demographic of tarot card readers is she renowned for her wisdom
parenthesised quote from The Tempest implying 'metamorphosis' or transformation but otherwise this card is of questionable validity as to whether it was a real card or based off one
'belladonna' is an extremely poisonous plant
The framed by caesura and finality of the imperative 'fear death by water' adds emphasis
Rocks which shipwreck (poison's analogous lethality)

Consonance of 'un' implies emphasis of the disbelief and the indistinguishable setting.
Now a recognisable metropolis setting - London, characterised often by its 'smog'
Ephiphora of 'so many' emphasises abundance or perhaps an overwhelming/claustrophobic multitude - innumerable
With reference to these dead/undead people is an underlying intertextual reference to Dante's Inferno . Perhaps the consistency of this liminality motif is reference to humanity's mortality and its transience or perhaps if we are so governed by death and our time limit in life are we really living.
With each man chasing the path ahead before his feet can keep up of course life will pass by chasing inevitably towards the death we always anticipate.
The anachronism of such a claim that both he and Stetson fought at Mylae - a war fought centuries before their time suggests the inherence of war in human capacity and compulsion. War transcends ages and societal trends etc.
The macabre image of planting a corpse alludes to culpability of felled opposition in war and also the fecundity of land fertilised by the dead - the poppy fields cultivated by the futile bloodshed of men. Also the inherent symbiotic poetry of death bringing forth new life.
The notion of hypocrisy here is almost accusatory towards Death and the paradox which is its inherent role in the cycle of life in promoting/catalysing the next revolution.

Dual meaning of 'throne' coarsely alludes to her toilet (reaffirmed later by notions of 'odours'
The gilt totems of decorum and behaviours instilled in society are ornamental and pretty in appearance but a mere facade
'seven branched candelabra' is a Jewish Menorah a symbol of light and creation.
A description of an opulent room occupied by an authoritarian female figure with obvious emphasis coming from the semantic field of decadence and the typical materials associated with affluence.

Dominates speech as though there is a response but she consumes it/repeats it and it becomes a monologue
Irony in that she mandates the other person to speak but leaves no room for mutual dialogue
Short, succinct lines take the appearance of a response - a tired, almost caustic voice filled with ennuyeux
Stark contrast with the woman's circumlocution/verbal diarrheoa and the recipients short prosaic response
Almost hysterical
The man appears tired, enduring some sort of trauma perhaps and (like Eliot) utilises the metaphor and recycled quotes of others to respond - perhaps too indifferent or damaged to reply with authenticity
Shellshocked soldier morbidity as desensitised
dialogue decomposes

That age old ultimatum in order to coerce women into sexual favours for men misconstruing that for ensnaring or ensuring a man's fidelity.
The women-shaming/ beauty-shaming and how women had an expiration date but were expected to defer it as long as possible
Also brought up is a fundamental pillar of society under a patriarchy and a fundamental woman's purpose - she is interrogated as to why she could possibly want to marry not to have children and the correlation drawn between femininity and maternal fulfilment.
the refrain of 'hurry up please its time' adds a real sense of urgency though for what is ambiguous just knowing there is a time constraint adds pace.

The titular reference is to the Buddhist Fire Sermon - a ritual/practice to rid oneself of suffering

Affectionate apostrophe to the River Thames suggests an almost fondness of locational heritage etc and birthplace. However, the notion that the speaker and the river are so symbiotic as to dictate when the river stops running softly is implausible but poetic as though he is singing a soft lullaby to the personified River
Refrain of 'the nymphs are departed' which could refer to an absence/bereftness of the industrialised, litter-strewn london having lost its mysticism and fantastical creatures of old. Or it could more prosaically refer to prostitutes or jovial women.
Their is a possible euphemism in 'friends' suggesting the former sexual partners of these 'nymphs' which is a cynical appraisal of the river banks purpose now ; a tryst site rather than a place of fantastical creatures as the meaning of 'nymph' has slowly diluted down into a mere fragment of its former glory.

Continued theme of the Fisher King (from the Arthurian legend of the Holy Grail) and wrecks presumably a nod to the Tempest

A motif of bellicose imagery particularly the disease ridden, rat infested trenches which transformed into mass graves, trespassed by the very rats they encountered in life.

Significant markers of modernity and the metropolis

'philomel and Tereu' is a reference to Philomel who was raped by her brother-in-law Tereus and turned into a nightinghale for her pain

the risqué/lewd enjambment here leaves the impression of innuendo as in the woman being in a compromising position (sexual undertone)

continues the motif of clairvoyance - Tiresias is a figure in Greek Mythology who was the blind prophet of Apollo. The dual meanening of perceived as in voyeuristically intrudes rather than a sacred act of interpeting the future. Abuse of power.

The violence of the verb 'assaults' suggests a lack of consent or aggression on his part, indifferent to her evident lacklustre/disengagement
The misconception that omission or silence is synonymous with consent but instead he clearly and purposefully morphs her 'indifference' into a conscience soothing 'welcome'. His arrogance/'vanity' is such that it is unimaginable/unthinkable for her to want to refuse him.

This appears to be an analogy for rape - a steadfast/indefatigable/relentless motivation to continue the act despite all the signs warning against the path ahead or despite the obstacles clearly prohibiting the way forward.

Such an offhanded/bathetic tone suggests frequency or commonality of such a quasi-consensual act and also alludes to the lack of satisfaction. A lack of confirmations of pleasure or even assent were not as taboo then it seems. She then slips into habitual acts as though trained to tolerate such an experience.

onomatopeia really conjures up the urbane setting

Dido (a tragic feature i history) was Queen of Carthage, a place of much prosperity, wonder, myth and tragedy.

profit and loss, a natural flow like tide. The entire section seems to have a to and fro rhythm - rocking or vacillating like the sea
Antithetical pairings; 'age and youth' 'rose and fell' 'profit and loss' - follows the same rhythm but also alludes to the extremes in life and the inherent alterity and cycle of life. HOwever such pairings exemplifying inherent alterity are perhaps examples of mortal concepts all of which (despite their polarity) which are nullified by death
Phlebas may well be a fabricated character for this poem therefore his utter lack of identity outside of this poem and lack of existence alludes to mortality or legacy or how ultimately we could be a mere written name like Phlebas one day.
Despite this edition's fourth section being so markedly short in comparison to the other sections - readers must note that the original was much longer.
It does however succeed in validating Madame Sosotoris' prophetic ability in her omen/augur to 'fear death by water' (a contrivance perhaps but either way convincing)
Eliot is almost admonishing those who look beyond the norm; either the people who look to technology and modernity or look windward for travel or new discoveries - he is cautioning them that regardless of your lofty aspirations - you can easily be humbled.

Semi-coherent

A very nihilistic appraisal of life and death

Eliot appears to be looking for water in this section (a cure for the Waste land). Almost inebriated circumlocution as though he weren't fully aware of his words

Mutation/change from 'should not' to 'cannot' - modal verb change

Even this mouth is so dehydrated it is dry of saliva

Tripartite negative

Almost like pleonasm in stating there is not even silence when usually it is noise which is absent not silence.

Something as simple as a window is rendered obsolete/superfluous by the lack of rain

Almost like even bones require water to be livened etc.

TLDR/OPinion: 6/10

Book Reviews and Analysis

T.S. ELIOT:

1888-1965

his works:

1. The love sone of J. Alfred prufrock (-1915)

about the author:

2. the wasteland: