The Waste Land and Other Poems (10 page)

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Authors: T. S. Eliot

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II. A Game of Chess
77. Cf.
Antony and Cleopatra,
II, ii, 1. 190.
92. Laquearia. V.
Aeneid,
I, 726: dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.
98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton,
Paradise Lost,
IV, 140.
99. V. Ovid,
Metamorphoses,
VI, Philomela.
100. Cf. Part III,1. 204.
115. Cf. Part III,1. 195.
118. Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still?’
126. Cf. Part I,1. 37, 48.
138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s
Women beware Women.
III. The Fire Sermon
176. V. Spenser,
Prothalamion.
192. Cf.
The Tempest,
I, ii.
196. Cf. Marvell,
To His Coy Mistress.
197. Cf. Day,
Parliament of Bees:
‘When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
‘A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
‘Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
‘Where all shall see her naked skin ...’
199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.
202. V. Verlaine,
Parsifal.
210. The currants were quoted at a price ‘carriage and insurance free to London’; and the Bill of Lading etc. were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character,’ is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias
sees,
in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:
‘... Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est
Quam, quae contingit maribus,’ dixisse, ‘voluptas.’
Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti
Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.
Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem
Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’
Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem
Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.
Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto
Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,
At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita
cuiquam
Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.
221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the ‘longshore’ or ‘dory’ fisherman, who returns at nightfall.
253. V. Goldsmith, the song in
The Vicar of Wakefield.
257. V.
The Tempest,
as above.
264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See
The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches:
(P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).
266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V.
Götterdämmerung,
III, i: the Rhine-daughters.
279. V. Froude,
Elizabeth,
Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:
‘In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.’
293. Cf.
Purgatorio,
V, 133:
‘Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
‘Siena mi fe‘, disfecemi Maremma.’
307. V. St. Augustine’s
Confessions:
‘to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.’
308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s
Buddhism in Translation
(Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
309. From St. Augustine’s
Confessions
again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmi
nation of this part of the poem,
is not an accident.
V. What the Thunder Said
In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
357.
This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii,
the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec Province. Chapman says
(Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America)
‘it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.... Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.’ Its ‘water-dripping song’ is justly celebrated.
360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackle-ton’s) : it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was
one more member
than could actually be counted.
367-77. Cf. Hermann Hesse,
Blick ins Chaos:
‘Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.’
402. ‘Datta, dayadhvam, damyata’ (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the
Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad,
5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s
Sechzig Upanishads des Veda,
p. 489.
408. Cf. Webster,
The White Devil, V,
vi:
‘... they’ll remarry
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’
412. Cf.
Inferno,
XXXIII, 46:
‘ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto
all‘orribile torre.’
Also F. H. Bradley,
Appearance and Reality,
p. 346.
‘My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.... In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.’
425. V. Weston:
From Ritual to Romance;
chapter on the Fisher King.
428. V.
Purgatorio,
XXVI, 148.
‘ “Ara vos prec per aquella valor
”que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
“sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.”
Poi s‘ascose nel foco che gli affina.’
429. V.
Pervigilium Veneris.
Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
430. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet
El Desdichado.
432. V. Kyd’s
Spanish Tragedy.
434. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is our equivalent to this word.
Endnotes
Prufrock and Other Observations
DEDICATION
1
(p. 5)
Jean Verdenal,
1889-1915
mort aux Dardanelles:
Verdenal was a friend of Eliot’s from Paris, and the first person he knew who was killed in World War I (‘died at Dardanelles’).
2
(p. 5) Or puoi quantitante ... come cosa salda: The quotation is from Dante’s
Purgatorio,
21.132-135: ‘Now you can understand the quantity of love that warms me toward you, so that I forget our vanity, and treat the shades as the solid thing.’
‘THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK’
1
(p. 9) S’io credessi ... ti rispondo: The quotation is from Dante’s
Inferno,
27.61-66. Dante asks one of the damned souls for its name, and the reply is: ‘If I thought my answer were for one who might return to the world, this flame would remain without further movement. But as none ever return alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I may answer you without fear of infamy.’ The soul is, of course, mistaken that none return from Hell: Dante himself will do so.
2
(p. 9)
In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo:
The reference is to the great Italian Renaissance sculptor and painter (1475-1564); implicitly, the speaker suggests that the women have no business talking of him or are unlikely to say anything profound.
3
(p. 10)
And indeed there will be time:
Eliot’s repetition of ‘time’ in this passage echoes both Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (‘Had we but world enough, and time ...’) and the Bible (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die ...’ [King James Version; henceforth, KJV]).
4
(p. 10)
works and days:
Greek writer Hesiod (eighth century B.C.) wrote
Works and Days,
a poem that offers maxims and practical instruction to farmers.
5
(p. 10)
a dying fall:
Eliot here echoes a phrase from Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
(act 1, scene 1): ‘If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die. / That strain again! it had a dying fall.’
6
(p. 12)
my head... brought in upon a platter:
Matthew 14:3-11 describes how Salomé danced for Herod and was rewarded with the head of the prophet John the Baptist, brought in upon a platter.
7
(p. 12)
into a ball:
Compare Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress‘: ‘Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball’ to send against the ‘iron gates of life.’
8
(p. 12)
I am Lazarus, come from the dead:
In the Bible, John 11:1-44 tells of how Lazarus was raised from the dead.
9
(p. 12)
magic lantern:
This type of slide projector dates back to the seventeenth century; images were painted onto glass and projected on a wall by the light of a candle.
10
(p. 13)
Prince Hamlet:
For Eliot’s idiosyncratic appraisal of Shakespeare’s tragic hero, in which he judges the entire play to be an artistic failure, see his 1919 essay ‘Hamlet and His Problems’ (see ‘For Further Reading’).
11
(p. 13)
the Fool:
A stock figure in Elizabethan drama, the Fool often spoke nonsense but sometimes conveyed subtle, indirect insights.
12
(p. 13)
I have heard the mermaids singing:
The line echoes seventeenth-century poet John Donne’s ‘Song’: ‘Teach me to heare Mermaides singing.’
‘PORTRAIT OF A LADY’
1
(p. 14) Thou hast committed—... THE JEW OF MALTA: In this dialogue from the play (act 4, scene 1) by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a Friar accuses Barabas, the title character, who interrupts and completes the statement with his own words.
2
(p. 14)
Juliet’s tomb:
In Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
, Juliet’s tomb is the site of Romeo’s tragically mistaken surmise that Juliet is dead, precipitating his own suicide.
3
(p. 14)
Preludes:
Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) wrote piano pieces called preludes.
4
(p. 14)
velleities:
This seventeenth-century word signifies desires, without any action to bring them to reality.
5
(p. 15) cauchemar: The word is French for ‘nightmare.’
6
(p. 15)
ariettes:
Lively light tunes.
7
(p. 15)
bocks:
Bock is a type of dark, strong German beer.
8
(p. 17)
friends:
This dialogue is evocative of a scene in Henry James’s novel
The Ambassadors
(1903): Madame de Vionnet’s parting words to Strether are ‘we might, you and I, have been friends.’ The poem’s title evokes James’s
The Portrait of a Lady
(1881).
9
(p. 18)
a ‘dying fall’:
As in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (see note 5 to that poem), this phrase evokes a line from Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
(act 1, scene 1).
‘RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT’
1
(p. 21)
a lunar synthesis:
This and many other images in the poem—the geranium, the disembodied eyes—evoke the style of French Symbolist poet Jules Laforgue ( 1860-1887).
2
(p. 21)
Dissolve the floors of memory:
This concept, explained by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), a philosopher at the Sorbonne with whom Eliot studied, involves the free flow of images into the memory, where they combine. All references to memory in this poem are influenced by Bergsonian philosophy.
3
(p. 21)
‘Regard that woman...’:
For this figure, and much of the poem’s late-night seedy atmosphere, Eliot is indebted to Charles-Louis Philippe’s 1901 novel
Bubu de Montparnasse,
about a young prostitute.
‘THE BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT’
1
(p. 25)
La Rochefoucauld:
French author François La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) is best known for his
maximes,
epigrams expressing a harsh or paradoxical truth in the briefest manner possible.

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