TWL, Lines 411-417: Thunder To The Demons

411 DA
412 Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
413 Turn in the door once and turn once only
414 We think of the key, each in his prison
415 Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
416 Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
417 Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

412. THE PRISON KEY: Eliot: “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.’”

See Dante, Inferno (note 0.2) 33.46-47:

“And I heard locking up the under door
Of the horrible tower.”

SOLIPSISM: F. H. Bradley was Eliot’s professor at Oxford, and his book, Appearance and Reality (1893) was the basis of Eliot’s doctoral thesis in 1916. Bradley advanced the philosophy of solipsism, suggesting that only one’s mind exists with certainty and everything outside the mind is questionable. Eliot, and modernist literature in general, refuted this, arguing instead that the world, like thunder, speaks to us all.

THUNDER’S SECOND DISCIPLINE: The concepts of “datta” and “dayadhvam” go even further, telling the poet to give back and sympathize with the world.  See note 400:  Dayadhvam means “Sympathize,” what the demons understood in hearing “Da.”

417. A BROKEN CORIOLANUS: See Shakespeare, Coriolanus (0.1) 3.3.125-126, where Coriolanus speaks after being banished from Rome:

“And here remain with your uncertainty.
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!”

THE OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE THEORY, a literary criticism theory advanced by Eliot and his “new critic” peers, asserts that a literary work needs explicit, relatable elements to express itself and evoke emotions in its audience.  By this theory, Eliot proclaimed Coriolanus a better tragedy than the more solipsistic Hamlet (note 4).  See Eliot, The Sacred Wood; Essays on Poetry and Criticism: Hamlet and His Problems (1920), and see Eliot’s objection to Bradley’s solipsism at note 412.  But see note 432 for Eliot’s awareness of emotions beyond explanation.