69 There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
70 “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
71 “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
72 “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
73 “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
74 “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
75 “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
76 “You! hypocrite lecteur! —mon semblable, —mon frère!”
69. STETSON, readers once believed, referred to Eliot’s friend Ezra Pound, who was known to wear the occasional Stetson cowboy hat and who, by being Eliot’s “lecteur,” or editor, was given the poem’s opening dedication. Eliot denied the Stetson-Pound connection but never gave a more satisfactory alternative, suggesting only that Stetson was not an actual person but a generic London banker with an arbitrarily common name. But there may be another more plausible explanation. In World War I, Australian troops, who would have been more associated with a naval battle and buried corpses than a London banker, wore felt Stetson hats, and it was among these troops at Gallipoli, where furloughed soldiers sang to Mrs Porter (see line 199), that Eliot’s friend Jean Verdenal died (see note 42).
70. THE BATTLE OF MYLAE (260 BCE) resulted in a Roman naval victory over Carthage, home of Aeneas’s onetime lover Queen Dido (see note 92). In present tense, the battle is over and the surviving sailors are grounded. Compare the return of troops at note 61, and see more references to Carthage at note 307.
71. THE PLANTED CORPSE: See 1 Corinthians 15: 37, 42-44:
“And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain ...So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
In a Moravian tradition begun in Germany and adopted in America, Easter Sunrise Service is held in a churchside graveyard called “God’s Acre,” with hyacinths decorating the graves where the bodies of the dead have been “sown as seed.” See the legend of the hyacinth at note 36. See also Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, God’s Acre (1866):
“With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow!”
Compare Longfellow, Hyperion 2.9 (1836):
“...the green terrace or platform on which the church stands, and which, in ancient times, was the churchyard, or as the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre; where generations are scattered like seeds.”
Thus, this Burial of the Dead section ends where it begins, with the possibility of stirring dull roots in spring. The reader’s brother (mon semblable, mon frère) remains uncertain, though, and still perceives the season’s cruelty; he closes the section with questions and exclamations that are all earth, no air, water or fire.
74. KEEP THE DOG FAR HENCE: Eliot: “Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.”
See Webster, The White Devil 5.4.96-105. This is Cornelia’s song as she lay flowers around a corpse, giving the impression that she has lost her mind:
“Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the fieldmouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm
And, when gay tombs are robb'd, sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.”
Compare this to Ophelia’s final actions in Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.7.166-169:
“Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.”
See note 172. The “Long purples” in her garland are hyacinths; see notes 36 and 71.
76. HYPOCRITE LECTEUR: Eliot: “V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.”
See Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil: Au Lecteur (To the Reader (my own translation)):
“See Boredom’s eye hold back a wanton tear
Welled up from gallows dreams and hookah smoke.
You’ve met him, reader, the consummated monster:
You! Hypocrite lecteur! My twin! My brother!”
See also Eliot, The Lesson of Baudelaire (1921):
“All first-rate poetry is occupied with morality: This is the lesson of Baudelaire. ...English poetry, all the while, either evaded the responsibility, or assumed it with too little seriousness. ...On the other hand, the poets ...who know a little French, are mostly such as could imagine the Last Judgement only as a lavish display of Bengal lights, Roman candles, catherine-wheels and inflammable fire-balloons. Vous, hypocrite lecteur!”
For other takes on the hypocrite reader, see the fortune teller at note 55, and recall the editor’s role at note 69. See also “you” as reader, at note 311.5.
LITERARY CRITICISM, a la Eliot as lecteur, is also discussed at notes 130, 165, 172.5, 331, 403, 417 and 419.
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