172.5. ACT THREE: This is the fire section. Eliot reserved his discussion of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon, the source for the name of this section, until the section’s end at notes 308 and 309, but he then immediately commingled his lesson with the teachings of Jesus and the reflections of St Augustine. With these pillars, the fire section will consider healing by a purging of emotions.
Some have speculated at what the poet may have wanted to personally purge, but revealing this was probably not his intent. See note 403, and see also Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919):
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. ...There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, ...But very few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done.”
SONGS mark the continuing evolution of this poem, following the surrender and the dying words of the previous “air” section. Songs are played and alluded to outside of Part III, at lines 26 (Ariel’s song), 31 (the sailor’s song), 128 (Hamlet’s rag), 331-359 (the water-dripping song) and 379 (the fiddled whisper music), and see also note 367 (Dmitri’s drunken hymn), but we hear the greater concentration of songs within this fire section, at lines 176 and 183 (a song to the sweet River Thames); 197 (horns and motors); 199-201 (a soldiers’ ballad); 202 (children’s voices in the dome); 203-206 (the nightingale’s song); 256 (the lovely woman’s record on the gramophone); 257 (Ariel’s song revisited, with music that crept upon the waters); 261 (the pleasant whining of a mandolin); and, finally and emphatically, lines 261-306 (the song of the three Thames-daughters). See also notes 182 (the Lord’s song in a strange land), 253 (Olivia’s song) and 258 (the graduates’ Strand song).
SONG SYLLABLES, words to carry melody over meaning, serve as regular refrains. Most prominent in section three is the river nymphs’ chorus of weialala leia, wallala leialala (lines 277-278 and 290-291) and la la (line 306), but see also the o o o o of Hamlet’s rag (line 128), the ta ta of the pub farewellers (line 171), and the da... da....da of the thunder (lines 401, 411 and 418), and note the songs of the nightingale (jug jug, lines 103 and 204, and twit twit twit, line 204), the hermit thrush (drip drop drip drop, line 358) and the rooster (Co co rico co co rico, line 393). Compare these to the mantras of time (see note 141) and peace (see note 434).
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