TWL, Lines 215-248: Tiresius

215 At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
216 Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
217 Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
218 I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
219 Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
220 At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
221 Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
222 The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
223 Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
224 Out of the window perilously spread
225 Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
226 On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
227 Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
228 I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
229 Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest —
230 I too awaited the expected guest.
231 He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
232 A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
233 One of the low on whom assurance sits
234 As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
235 The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
236 The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
237 Endeavours to engage her in caresses
238 Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
239 Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
240 Exploring hands encounter no defence;
241 His vanity requires no response,
242 And makes a welcome of indifference.
243 (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
244 Enacted on this same divan or bed;
245 I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
246 And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
247 Bestows one final patronising kiss,
248 And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

217. END OF THE WORKDAY: For the violet hour motif, see note 380.  See also note 221 for the sailor home from the sea.

218. TIRESIAS, INTRODUCED: Eliot: “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.’”

See Ovid, Metamorphoses 3:412-443:

“Twas now, while these transactions past on Earth,
And Bacchus thus procur’d a second birth,
When Jove, dispos’d to lay aside the weight
Of publick empire and the cares of state,
As to his queen in nectar bowls he quaff’d,
‘In troth,’ says he, and as he spoke he laugh’d,
‘The sense of pleasure in the male is far
More dull and dead, than what you females share.’
Juno the truth of what was said deny’d;
Tiresias therefore must the cause decide,
For he the pleasure of each sex had try’d.
It happen’d once, within a shady wood,
Two twisted snakes he in conjunction view’d,
When with his staff their slimy folds he broke,
And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke.
But, after seven revolving years, he view’d
The self-same serpents in the self-same wood:
‘And if,’ says he, ‘such virtue in you lye,
That he who dares your slimy folds untie
Must change his kind, a second stroke I’ll try.’
Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
New-sex’d, and strait recover’d into man.
Him therefore both the deities create
The sov’raign umpire, in their grand debate;
And he declar’d for Jove: when Juno fir’d,
More than so trivial an affair requir’d,
Depriv'd him, in her fury, of his sight,
And left him groping round in sudden night.
But Jove (for so it is in Heav’n decreed,
That no one God repeal another’s deed)
Irradiates all his soul with inward light,
And with the prophet's art relieves the want of sight.”

219. PERCEPTIVENESS: See John 9: 25:

“Whether [Jesus, by healing on the Sabbath] be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”

Compare Tiresias's ability to see (note 218) with that of Madame Sosostris (line 54), or of the one-eyed merchant with his allusion to the one-eyed Odin (lines 52, 54 and note 208), or, at the bottom of the sea, the pearly-eyed sailor (line 48).  For more of the eye's limitations, see note 308.

FEELING OLD: For another perspective of an old, blind man, see Eliot, Gerontion (1920):

“Here I am, an old man in a dry month
...A dull head among windy spaces.
...An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.

...And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.”

Gerontion had been part of an earlier draft of this poem but was cut at the suggestion of Ezra Pound. See note 167.

See also Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

“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?
...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.”

Eliot wrote Prufrock in 1911 at the age of 26, feeling old before his time.  It was first published in 1915, and Eliot’s first book ofpoems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917.  Gerontion was written in 1919, three years before the publicationof The Waste Land.

221. HOME FROM THE SEA: Eliot: “This may not appear as exact as Sappho's lines, but I had in mind the longshore' or 'dory' fisherman, who returns at nightfall.”

See Sappho, fragment 95 (ca. 600 BCE, tr. Henry Thornton Wharton, 1895):

“Evening, thou that bringest all that bright morning scattered;
thou bringest the sheep, the goat, the child back to her mother.”

Compare Albert returning to Lil at lines 139 and following, and see also Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem (1879):

“Home is the sailor, home from the sea.”

See also Dante, Purgatorio 8:1-2:

“Twas now the hour that turneth back desire
In those who sail the sea...”

223. CHANGING TIMES: Typists, the two-career household and ready-to-serve meals, were part of the war and post-war trend. See note 256.  Compare the typist’s teatime with Countess Marie’s coffee break (line 11), the bar talk at last call (line 139), or lunch with the Smyrna merchant (line 213). See also note 263, and observe how time moves here from evening to breakfast to teatime.

227. COMBINATIONS are undergarments; stays are corsets. Contrast the piled up bed and the hyacinth girl's hair and clothes in need of drying (line 38) with Cleopatra’s chambers (line 77).

231. CARBUNCULAR: Pimpled. A carbuncle can also describe a burning charcoal or a red garnet stone.  Compare these to the sailor’s pearly eyes (line 48). See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 2.2.401, where Hamlet recites a play passage in which a vengeful Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, has “eyes like carbuncles,” i.e red and bent on killing.  The unsourced play is a dramatization of the fall of Troy from Virgil, Aeneid 2:506-558, and in this passage Aeneas is telling Queen Dido how Pyrrhus has covered himself in blood to avenge the death of his father.  Compare Dryden’s translation at Aeneid 2:539: “And all his father sparkles in his eyes.”  Compare this to the “one bold stare” of the young man (line 232).

234. BRADFORD MILLIONAIRE: Bradford was an English manufacturing town and home to the nouveaux riche.  Compare the socialite chess players at line 137.

The expected guest, a young house clerk, is "one of the low" (line 233) and of an even station with the typist home at teatime, but his stature is raised by his self-assurance.

235. THE TIME IS NOW: Compare this to the impatience of Marvell over his Coy Mistress (note 141), the “good time” Albert is expected to want (line 148) and the bartender’s call to “hurry up it’s time” (lines 141-169), all essentially happening at once.

242. INDIFFERENCE: Compare this to the rape of Philomela, whom Tereus rendered unresponsive and indifferent by cutting out her tongue (note 99).  See also the indifferent chess players, waiting for a knock upon the door (line 138).

244. FORESUFFERANCE: Tiresias, who had “perceived the scene, and foretold the rest” (see line 229), now reminds us, with a word that may be newly coined, that he perceives only by virtue of having “foresuffered,” or first experienced.  See note 218.  In Ovid’s tale, his experience was as an “umpire”between the sexes; however, Eliot suggests at note 218 that Tiresias, having suffered both sides, is more important than a mere spectator: he “sees... the substance of the poem,” and unites all of the characters.

245. THEBES, BELOW THE WALL: See Algernon Charles  Swinburne, Tiresias (1885):

“I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in Thebes
Much evil...”

See also Homer, Odyssey 11:561-565 (ca. 800 BCE, tr. A. T. Murray, 1919), where Odysseus tells his crew,

“Ye think, forsooth, that ye are going to your dear native land; but Circe has pointed out for us another journey, even to the house of Hades and dread Persephone, to consult the spirit of Theban Tiresias;”

246. WALKING AMONG THE DEAD: See Dante, Inferno 20:34-42, where Tiresias, being one who sees the future, is consigned to walk backwards in the eighth circle of hell:

“See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!
Because he wished to see too far before him
Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:

Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,
When from a male a female he became,
His members being all of them transformed;

And afterwards was forced to strike once more
The two entangled serpents with his rod,
Ere he could have again his manly plumes.”

TIRESIAS, FROM OTHER PERSPECTIVES: Tiresias makes a range of appearances in other works of literature, although he is frequently presented as a blind soothsayer with stern advice.  In addition to Ovid (note 218), Homer (note 245) and Dante (note 246), see Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 468-474 (429 BCE, tr. Francis Storr, 1921), where Tiresias curses Oedipus:

“Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared
To twit me with my blindness--thou hast eyes,
Yet see'st not in what misery thou art fallen,
Nor where thou dwellest nor with whom for mate.
Dost know thy lineage? Nay, thou know'st it not,
And all unwitting art a double foe
To thine own kin, the living and the dead.”

See also Sophocles, Antigone 5:79-83 (441 BC, tr. Francis Storr, 1912), where Tiresias curses King Creon for threatening to bury his niece Antigone alive:

“I prophesy.  For, yet a little while,
And sound of lamentation shall be heard,
Of men and women through thy desolate halls;
And all thy neighbor States are leagues to avenge
Their mangled warriors who have found a grave
I' the maw of wolf or hound.”

Compare this passage to the dog that would “dig it up again” at lines 74-75.  The “desolate halls” of Thebes can also be compared to the desolate streets of Jerusalem at Jeremiah 33: 3 (see note 27) of Babylon at Revelation 18: 19 (see note 209) and ultimately to the unreal city of London (see note 60).

For another king sternly advised by Tiresias, see Euripides, The Bacchae (406 BCE), in which King Penteus is warned not to cross Dionysus, the god of fertility.  When Penteus ignores Tiresias’sadvice, the god’s female followers, the doglike Maenads (the “raving ones”), tear him apart limb for limb.  Euripides was said to have died a similar death shortly after writing this play; see  Satyrus, Life of Euripides (ca. 250 BCE).  Compare the assault on fertility to the infertile image of Mr. Eugenides and his pocket full of currants (see note 210) and to Frazer’s Artemis, goddess of fertility, being hung in effigy (see note 55).

For an alternative cause of Tiresias’s blindness, see Callymachus, The Bathing of Pallas (ca. 250 BCE), in which Tiresias is blinded after seeing Pallas bathing.  Compare this to Ovid’s Actaeon being killed by his own dogs after watching Diana bathe (see note 197), and also to the fate of King Penteus, above.

Finally, reflecting the Tiresias of line 219, see Guillaume Apollinaire, The Breasts of Tiresias (1917), a French play described by its author as “a surrealistic drama,” thus coining a new word in modern art. Surrealism was not fully defined as a movement until after The Waste Land, although it was directly preceded by the more current trend of Dadaism (see note 418).

248. GROPING AWAY: Line 247 is enigmatically missing a subject, but in context it is either Tiresias himself, being blind and groping, or the carbuncular guest, being the patronizing third person and a departing lover (line 250) or, in the spirit of note 218, a melting of both, and all. At the end of the scene, he “gropes his way” out of the room.  Compare Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: The Grand Inquisitor (1880, tr. ConstanceGarnett 1912): In Ivan’s dramatic “poem,” Christ’s only answer to his inquisitor is a kiss:

“The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”

Christ, like the Ovidian Tiresias “groping into sudden night” (see note 218), then leaves into “the dark alleys of the town.”

Moleskin 4.1: Audience

But where was I? Yes, the point. As I proceed past sixth grade, I begin beyond all whims and maybes to realize what wasn’t clear on the earlier pages: that I have a story to tell, a singular tale, and there is a point to it. In the summer before seventh grade I start to see past the nothing and everything of my memories that I have words that need to be said, and a narrative to lead me through my hesitations. And here is where I find myself turning, once again, to my audience. You are the point. You are the only reason I am writing, the prompt to get me to remember my lines, the pull that hooks me onto the stage and sets me before the spotlight. My better instincts would keep all this to myself and wallow in a comfortable shadowy shyness, but you, out there in the darkness, are why I have taken to these pages. All of you, in ways. But one of you in particular.

House

This is our new house, same as the old house,
Where we once lived before moving away
Into the next house, the house before this house
Ran out of room for a family to stay.
We thought the next house might be the last house
To live out our days in an ambient way
But this is the next house after the last house,
Where we once lived before moving away.

We thought the last house might be the best house,
And it was nice for a year and a day:
It was a new house, a nothing-to-do house,
All we could want for the price we could pay,
And it was a big house, a two story tall house,
A dream house for those who like dreaming that way;
At least it was newer and bigger than this house,
And it was nice for a year and a day,

But we missed our old house, our used-to-be-cold house,
And found our way back to a place we can say:
"A house that is old is a house that’s well settled,
A house that is small can be comfortably warm,
And the house that is ours at the end of the day
Is the house we return to, the house we call home."
This is a good house, the house we remember.
We’ve found our way back to a place we can stay.

Good People Of Chicago

Good People of Chicago, you and I
Belie our nature to categorize
By last names and colors of opacity:
Though I am see-through and you are tag-defined,
We all share the streets, the weather and time.

Good People, look beyond Division Street,
Past the iron gates and the cul-de-sacs:
We share main roads and fenceless avenues,
Undenied paths and ways to get home
Through this grand maze of lines: we need to share—

Good People, look beyond the lake effect
And local winds that vary by degrees:
We share the winter freeze that shuts us in
Till summer sends us out, year after year
To spraying hydrants, Michigan waves, escape—

And as we share time, Good People, you and I,
As the roads stretch on and on with potholes
And snowbanks, as seasons run their cycle,
Time touches all, heals all, moves all, tolls for all,
And here we are, Chicago, until we die.

Citybird

And who would believe the outcome of this gathering babel?

Observe Sturnus vulgaris, everywhere,
A bird become too ubiquitous to deserve
The usual refuge of conserving care,
And so it’s granted air without reserve,
Thanks to the Bard for having Hotspur teach
The bird to speak the single word of Mortimer,
Which led old Eugene Schieffelin to reach
Across the Great Atlantic to import ‘em here;
He may have heard in turn of Laurence Sterne,
Once troubled by a caged bird that would shout
For freedom: “Can’t get out!” the starling churned;
“God help thee!” said he, “but I'll let thee out.”
Thus Eugene did release his forty darlings,
Progeny to a quarter billion starlings.

The Disappearance Of Walter Herring

Walter Herring, age 29, was doodling on paper yesterday when he got carried away. Literally. According to witnesses, Herring had been scribbling on a paper place mat in a local restaurant when two men in collar-up overcoats came in and stood on either side of him. Herring and the men had a brief moment of what seemed to be conversation, then suddenly the men took hold of Herring’s arms, stood him up and walked him out of the restaurant. They pushed Herring into the back seat of a black car and inconspicuously drove away.

Tom Smith, the restaurant’s manager, had been working in the back when the incident occurred, but he was immediately called into the dining room after the abductors had left. “Everyone was gabbing away about what they had just seen,” said Smith. “After a few minutes I was able to piece together what had actually happened. ”

“It was Walter Herring, he’s my neighbor,” said Mrs. Harriet Lockwert of 872 Maplecourt Road. “He lives right next to me, so I know it was him. Yes, 874.”

“Oh, he was just sitting there, doodling, you know,” said Trent Dagnow. “What? Oh yes. He had this kind of absent face on, so he couldn’t have been writing anything seri... What? Oh, well, yes. No, you don’t need my address.”

“They just talked in whispers for a while and then they grabbed him,” said Archie Baldwin of Bensenville. “Yes, I was at the next table.”

“They looked like mobsters,” added Archie Baldwin’s wife, who asked to remain unnamed.

“Oh, Marcy, no, they were G-men, I’m sure,” said Constance Labelle.

“No, you didn’t get a good look at them,” said Mrs. Baldwin. “One of them had a scar.”

“They were from the State Department,” said Jack Lloyd.

“How do you know?” an unidentified voice in the crowd asked. “It was on their license plate. A government seal,” said Lloyd.

“Jack, you wouldn’t know a government seal if they stamped it on your forehead,” said another unidentified voice.

“Maybe so, but I saw it. It said, ‘U.S.A. State Department, Secret Service.’” said Lloyd.

“Jack, sit down,” said William Richter of Peoria. “Last I checked, you couldn’t even read.”

“Shut up, Billy, I can read.”

“What’s that say,” said Richter.

“I don’t have to prove anything,” said Lloyd.


~~~~  ζ  ~~~~


Detective Morley Bright of the Chicago Police Department arrived approximately forty five minutes after Herring’s disappearance. Bright questioned the several restaurant patrons who had remained behind waiting for him, then he talked with Tom Smith, who had taken notes from the diners who had left.

“Very concise report, Tom. ”

“Thank you. ”

“But I hate to tell you...”

“What’s that, detective?”

“The Secret Service is part of the Department of the Interior.”

“I know. I was just reporting what I heard.”

“So do you put much value in what Jack Lloyd said?”

“No.”

“Why did you record it then?”

“Oh I don’t know. ”

After further questioning, Detective Bright determined that only the quotes from Harriet Lockwert and Trent Dagnow were of any worth in Smith’s report. It was certainly Walter Herring, and he had apparently been doodling.

The other witnesses, whom Bright had interviewed directly, were able to confirm many facts about themselves and that they had all been eating lunch at Denny’s on 1213 Rowday Drive when “the hell had broken loose.” They used these words several times, but  no one would elaborate. They asked Bright if he thought the TV news was going to come, but Bright was already done talking to them.


~~~~ ξ  ~~~~


“This is Brad Kopak of the Channel 4 Eyewitness News Team, live at the scene of Denny’s Restaurant at 1213 Rowday Drive, where just moments ago a most unusual abduction occurred. Behind me are Jerry Lyman and Mimi Peters. Jerry, Mimi, can you tell our viewers what just took place here.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Uh, Jerry, Mimi, we understand that a Mr. Walter Herring of 874 Maplecourt Road was forcibly dragged out of here tonight by two mysterious men. Can either of you confirm this?”

“Today.”

“Pardon me?”

“It happened today, not tonight. About eight hours ago. The hell broke loose.”

“So you’ve been here since two o’clock?”

“Well, sure.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, right, well —then what happened?”

“Since two o’clock? Not a whole lot.”

“What happened at two o’clock?”

“They took Walter Herring...”

“He was just sitting there doodling away...”

“And then the hell broke loose...”

“...And?”

“And that’s it.”

“Uh, well! So there you have it. Obviously not all has been answered yet, but we’ll keep you posted. From the Denny’s at 1213 Rowday Drive, this is Brad Kopak, investigative reporter. Back to you, Judy.”

~~~~ ϰ  ~~~~

“What was Walter Herring doodling? That is the question —the mystery of the week here in Chicagoland, and it is very mysterious indeed. Mr. Herring had been at Denny’s waiting on a late lunch last Friday. The meal had not yet come and he took out a pen and started drawing on his place mat with what one witness called an “absent” face. Suddenly, two men wearing trench coats and dark glasses burst into the restaurant. They went immediately to Mr. Herring and picked him up out of his chair, talked to him for a minute in hushed tones and then escorted him out of the restaurant. But here’s what no one noticed right away:  They also took the place mat! It was not until after they had left with Mr. Herring that anyone noticed that the place mat was gone!

“What was Mr. Herring doodling? We may never know for sure, but that is the question we will try to uncover in this week’s episode of... ‘It Really Happened.’

“We will return to ‘It Really Happened’ after these messages.”


~~~~  ϕ  ~~~~


“Hey Obert, will ya take a look over here?” Harrient Lockwert of 872 Maplecourt Road was leaning over her sink, peering out the kitchen window. “There’s somebody snooping around at Walter Herring’s house.”

“Let it be, Har. Stop snooping.” He was reading the paper.

“But Obert, they look like criminals.”

“Exactly. Don’t get involved.”

“Don’t you care, Obert? Don’t you want to help Walter?”

“Harriet, I barely know Walter Herring. In the five years he’s lived next to us, we’ve barely waved at each other.”

“Yes.” Harriet pondered, went back to the window, this time peeking more discreetly through the curtains. “But suppose they come here next?”

“Why would they do that?”

“They’ve got my name in the police report.”

“Harriet, will you get away from the window.” Obert put his paper down. “Look, Har. You saw that show on the television last night. Those guys are all concerned about a doodle, right? But it has nothing to do with us, so let’s keep it that way!”

Harriet went back into the kitchen and closed the curtain all the way. But she couldn’t resist one last peek.

Notes From "Notes From Underground"

Dostoevsky Final (Russian 141, 11/30/90, Prof. Rubchak)

The question, with its “quoted translation,” is lost for all time; the answer is all that remains.

The Underground Man perceives the prostitute Liza as being a creature and a victim of debauchery, which itself exists, according to his perception, in lovelessness, with a general lack of all feeling.  (The quoted translation uses the phrase “at the culmination point” of love.  Another text, translated by David Magarshack, says “consummation” (339), which seems to imply that the vice is less a result of true love’s previous existence as an aspect following its absence.)  This perception differs from that of one of Liza’s more ordinary clients in that the Underground Man sees into this “general picture” and stays conscious of it, instead of merely being a “coarse and shameless” part of it.

To the ordinary man —the “plain man” or the “man of action” (269) —vice is just another stone wall before which he invariably yields.  As the Underground Man had described, to such a man of action “a stone wall is not a challenge as it is, for instance, to us thinking men... and it is not an excuse for turning aside.... No, [the ordinary man] capitulates in all sincerity” (269).  In other words, such a man yields to his debauched desire and lets himself be calmed by its effectual wall.

The Underground Man, a thinking man, sees debauchery here as  “inane... revolting... coarse... shameless;”  in another translation, “hideous... gross... absurd” (339).  In his mind he seems to turn away, repulsed —and yet he, too, is a living part of it.  The spider of vice even makes him feel “creepy” (339), as if he were the  spider himself.  Indeed, he has spent two hours “capitulating” with this as yet nameless prostitute, and still he continues to ‘lie next to her and look into her eyes.  But he is not calmed by her in any way.  The ordinary man is not revolted and pretends that there is a kind of consummated love in the prostitute’s bedroom; he becomes sincerely soothed by this lie.  But the Underground Man  is cursed by a continually sensitive conscience; he is painfully aware of this reality of absent love; and if he has paused at this wall, it has not been for “cheap happiness,” but rather “exalted suffering” (376).

TWL, Lines 207-214: Mr. Eugenides

207 Unreal City
208 Under the brown fog of a winter noon
209 Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
210 Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
211 C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
212 Asked me in demotic French
213 To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
214 Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

208. TIME FRAGMENTS: We return to the Unreal City.  Recall lines 60-61, which had set the city in the fog of a winter dawn.  Time is not linear, however, and memories are fragmented; see note 263 and compare lines 202, 222, 263.  See also note 60 for recurrences of the Unreal City and for specific London references.

209. MR. EUGENIDES is introduced just as the noon fog rolls in.  By his name alone, he would seem to be one who is well-bred (eugenetic), but the image here (lines 207-214) of an unshaven, demotic London currant merchant is unmitigatedly negative. His no-credit sales suggest a lack of trust; he chooses to speak a base version of French instead of the Greek or Turkish of his native Smyrna or the English of his clientele; and he operates within the prevailing brown fog of an unreal city. Even the product he sells, small dried grapes, are far from what one would hope to find in a healing holy grail (see note 0.2). In his notes, Eliot marked him as the “one-eyed” merchant in the Tarot deck (see line 52 and note 46) and his invitation directly follows an oblique reminder of  Philomela’s rape (see lines 203-206), suggesting that this too is the woven tapestry and birdsong of a victim’s report. But Eliot’s notes also associated the merchant with victims, identifying him as one who “melts into” the sailor who drowned and lost his looks and stature (see note 218 and see lines 312-321) and is himself tied to the drowned hyacinth girl (see note 126).

The merchant's one eye may also allude to the Norse god Odin, who gave up half his sight in exchange for a drink from the Well of Wisdom; see Storri Sturluson, The Prose Edda (ca. 1300 AD).

See also Rudyard Kipling, The Finest Story In The World (1891):

“When next I met him it was in Gracechurch Street with a bill-book chained to his waist. Business took him over London Bridge, and I accompanied him. He was very full of the importance of that book and magnified it. As we passed over the Thames we paused to look at the steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown marble. A barge drifted under the steamer’s stern and a lonely ship’s cow in that barge bellowed. Charlie’s face changed from the face of the bank clerk to that of an unknown and – though he would not have believed this – a much shrewder man.”

See also Revelation 18:1-19 (note 0.5) for multiple references to merchants of the earth in a fallen city:

“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye benot partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath  remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.  And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:  The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.”

BABYLON, the fallen city in the Revelation account, is also a town of weeping at note 182, of desolate streets at note 248 and of falling towers at note 376.

211. CURRANTS: Eliot: “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.”  In other words, shipping costs were built into the price, payable on delivery. Currants are dried, seedless berries, suggesting infertility, the opposite of the renewal and revegetation themes of the poem (see note 0.2).  They also carry inferences of homosexuality and graveside preparations; see note 214 for each of these perceptions.

212. DEMOTIC means common, of the people. Demotic and demobbed (line 139) were the only specific words Ezra Pound had suggested to improve the poem, but he also offered general encouragement and suggested broad edits.  See note 0.4.

214. THE CANNON STREET HOTEL, a hotel about a quarter mile northwest of where Eliot worked (see note 66), frequented by businessmen commuting to and from the Continent, was also reputed to be a homosexual rendezvous.

THE METROPOLE is a luxury resort hotel in Brighton on England’s southwestern coast, about sixty miles west of London. The hotel opened to great fanfare in 1890.

HOMOSEXUALITY, already suggested by the rendezvous at the Cannon Street Hotel and the follow-up weekend in Brighton, might also be inferred by the currants in the merchant’s pockets (line 210); see Whitman, These, I, Singing in Spring (note 2), in which currants are among the wild plants being “collect[ed] for lovers” as “the token of comrades”:

“Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet.”

WEEDS AND WILDFLOWERS may be a homosexual token by Whitman’s measure, or a festive accouterment by any measure (see, e.g., Spenser, Prothalamion (note 176)), but there is also a more somber parallel: Compare the merchant’s currants with the “weedy trophies” that Ophelia reached for at her watery death (see notes 172 and 378), or Cornelia’s leaves and flowers covering unburied men (see note 74).  See also Whitman, Memories (note 2) 7:

“Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,”

and compare the plants that drain their forgetfulness along the River Lethe (see note 4). See also the death and mourning ties of the lilac (line 2), the hyacinth (line 35) and the violet (note 378).

Moleskin 3.10: Staying Alive

But this is —I am —more than a collection of anecdotes, so let me get to the point.  Chapter One: I was born; Chapter Two: I am alive; and Chapter Three:  ...It’s true, I don’t want to leave chapter two. I want to stay a little more in the trump of innocence and recreate those days with a parade of self-told anecdotes; let me tangent off in a dozen directions: friend Paul raising my musical awareness of Elton John; four square and fart jokes at school; the discovery, by a friend’s Hanukkah/Christmas present, of Pachinko; the legend and tribute of the kid squished by a steamroller; the Easter snowstorm of ‘74; regularly visiting our Chicago cousins; the all-orange decor of our living room; playing ice hockey on a frozen pond, without blades or proper sticks; the odd, sad story of the Zilligans; having, briefly, a dog and a cat at the same time; being given a punching bag for Christmas; being served Rommegrot on Lenten Wednesdays; weekends with Dad at the library; afternoons with Mom at the nursing home...

Coming In From The Cold

A Prayer

He’s living, he’s dying
she’s quiet, she’s crying,
and look at me, I’m none of these
and slowly going crazy.
And he’s working and she’s playing,
and —how would they term my deliberating?
Poor dullboy Jack,
he’s never gonna win.
They’re praying all the time,
and I’m praying right beside them
but it’s what we’re doing in between
that’s gonna save us in the end. See?
He’s living and he’s dying
and she’s quiet and she’s crying,
and I run on like my prayers
hadn’t said a goddamn thing.
So let him live, God, he deserves it,
and let him die, he’s well-prepared.
Let her find her peace in you
and let her cry right in your ear.
But God just let me be
among the living dying sitting crying
God just let me be
no more in limbo,
that’s my prayer...

Scavengers

I’ll start this one in the middle:
We’re fighting even though, or just because,
We both believe in the same things
And nothing really matters
Beyond the business at hand.
We jump into our wars

And pick every little battle
As scavengers collect aluminum:
No scrap is too small
As long as it’s redeemable;
Never mind how silly we look
Dragging garbage down the street;
They’ll weigh it in the end

And we’ll have some money to eat.
Here’s one of those positions, by the way,
We share but fight about endlessly:
Having enough tender
To pay the bills, a little more
To get through rainy days,

That, and being allowed to be a dreamer:
See, I’ve, and you’ve, had dreams of better days
And both of us are wondering
And worrying the same things:
About the balance of suffering,
Today and tomorrow, and how
We’ll bear it now
And weigh it in the end.

Out In The Cold - Part 3

July 8, 1990

Still in the hotel. Called Mom yesterday, patched things up nicely. I am forgiven. But I stayed one more night here, trying to beat the last of the cold. I’m recovering, but now I’m all constipated; Ithink it’s from all the medicine I’ve been taking. Anyway, last night at 4 am I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to a nearby 7-11 and bought some Ex-Lax. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep.

My homework is done for this week. This has been a productive time. I still have to write one more short story that I feel good about, and that’s hard to do. It’s not due for a couple more weeks, but time has a way of flying.

~~~~

Will it always be the same? I talked to Josh tonight. He’s very tired after taking a round trip sailboat ride between Chicago and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Well, Josh, you know how to live. Anyway, we talked, and I realized some troubling things about myself, selfish thoughts beyond the imbalance of his weekend and mine, and now the lead question rings in several directions.

Will I ever be able to forgive Mom for kicking me out of the house for having a cold? Will I ever forgive myself for a foolish provocation? Will I get over the uncomfortable feeling that it’s best that I had been out of the way? God that’s a scary feeling, and yet it feels like it will eternally recur. Does it have to be this way?

As I talked to Josh, I privately thought that things would be okay once I got past some “X” stage of my life. But what stage? When I move out for good? When (and if) I ever get a career going? When I’m married, have kids? When I retire? When I die? God I don’t want to go through any of that if it’s just more of the same. It all seems so scary. Will it always be this way?

I realize, too, that nothing I’ve written in this journal will impress anybody, but after today I feel like at least doctors will want to take a look. God, God, God, God, God, God, God, you’re out there, aren’t you? Bless Mom. Bless Don. Bless Josh.

A Novel Without A Hero

Engl. 355, 7/9/90, Prof. Messenger

“Maybe a story is better without any hero,” scrawled Ernest Hemingway in an early manuscript of The Sun Also Rises. He was well into a story in which his narrator, his omnipresent point of view, was a man who was made sexually dysfunctional from a war wound; at this point heroism, though it might have been difficult, still could have been reached by circumvention. But a line of thought had been running through Hemingway’s head and was already woven into the novel, and perhaps he already had in mind the epigraph to this thread: an opening passage from the book of Ecclesiastes. This, with that passage in mind, would have to be a heroless novel; it would have to continue in the direction of thought of Qoheleth, the biblical philosopher [Qoheleth is the Hebrew equivalent to the Greek “Ecclesiastes,” which means preacher or leader of the assembly], because after all, whether it was written down or not, the epigraph was already being followed.

Rather than scrutinize those several famous verses from which the novel’s title came, and from which the standard Hemingway theme of a generation passing away was also born, the point might be made as clearly by looking at the verses in Ecclesiastes all around those of the epigraph and seeing how Hemingway did in fact parallel the philosophy of Qoheleth. Consider the two verses preceding the epigraph’s source: “Sheer futility, Qoheleth says. Sheer futility: everything is futile! What profit can we show for all our toil, toiling under the sun?” (Ec. 1:1,2, New Jerusalem Bible)  In other words, the Hebrew preacher asks, How can a  story of a suffered life ever have a hero? “What was, will be again,” the preacher continues after the epigraph verses, “what has been done will be done again and there is nothing new under the sun!” (Ec. 1:9)

On the surface, Jake Barnes is not nearly as pessimistic about life; but then, as always, there is that Hemingway iceberg, looming largely under the surface. Jake Barnes only occasionally lets show the “feelings of things coming that you could not prevent happening” (146), but in the same breath he reveals an “ignored tension” built around a memory of the war; and after the war he is emasculated, a fact he rarely talks about in the novel. “It’s all right,” he tells Bill, who had touched on the subject, “I don’t give a damn anymore” (124).

Qoheleth continues, and it might have been Jake himself writing at this point: “What is twisted cannot be straightened, what is not there cannot be counted” (Ec. 1:15). And in the second chapter the preacher finds, with less than heroic gesture, an ever-temporal solution: “I decided to hand my body over to drinking wine, my mind still guiding me in wisdom; I resolved to embrace folly, to discover the best way for people to spend their days under the sun” (Ec. 2:3).

In The Sun Also Rises, chapter two is devoted to a comparison between the philosophies of Jake and Robert Cohn. They are in a bar, “a good place,” with “a lot of liquor” (11). Cohn opens the discussion:

  “Listen, Jake. . . Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”   “Yes, every once in a while."
  ”Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?”
  “What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell?”
  “I’m serious. “
  ”It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
  “You ought to. “
  ”I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or another. I’m through worrying.“ (11)

Qoheleth, too, had come to this. Everything, even worrying, is futile and even vain, and it is better just to eat, drink, and enjoy whatever lies under the sun.

In the same chapter, Robert Cohn wants to go to South America, and Jake discourages him.
“I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.... If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same” (11). As if one mirrored the other, Qoheleth writes “Better the object seen (the here and now) than the sting of desire; for the latter too is futile and chasing after the wind” (Ec. 6:9).

It is clear that Robert Cohn, a hopeless worrier and a futile dreamer, cannot be the hero of Hemingway’s novel, but there are several other possibilities, and in the course of the book Jake briefly considers each of them. Mike? He practically boasts that he is a loser with no medals, and most of the time he is “tight.“ Bill? He is a “lazy bum,” and usually ahead of Jake and Mike in the “utilization” of wine. Brett? No, Jake decides. “To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Brett Ashley” (148).

Again the mirror: “This is what I think, says Qoheleth, having examined one thing after another to draw some conclusion, which I am still looking for, although unsuccessfully: one man in a thousand, I may find, but a woman better than other women---never. This alone is my conclusion: God has created man straightforward and human artifices are human inventions” (Ec. 7:27-29).

Then Jake considers the bullfighter Pedro Romero, and at first he idolizes him, standing him next to erstwhile hero Juan Belmonte, who doesn’t stand a chance. Pedro Romero, though, has an unseen iceberg himself: he will one day be, provided he survives the cycle, an aging Belmonte to some other rising star. Furthermore, even within the novel and on the surface, he is shown to be painfully human. His face swells up from Robert Cohn’s punches, and in the end even Romero cannot hold on to Brett for very long.

“Another thing I have observed under the sun,” muses Qoheleth once more, “that the race is not won by the speediest, nor the battle by the champions; it is not the wise who get food, nor the intelligent wealth, nor the learned favor: chance and mischance befall them all”(Ec. 9:11). 17.

In Jake’s story, Romero almost got away with becoming the hero. He did in fact fight the battle and win the race, and as in a stereotypical hero-novel he even left town with the girl, riding off, as it were, into the sunset. But Hemingway devised a staggered ending to work against Romero. First we learn that his victory gift, the ear of the bull, was allusively left behind in the back of a bed stand drawer. And then we are shown, after everyone has gone off in different directions, Bill here and Mike there and Romero and Brett together and Jake alone, that just as the title told us from the beginning the setting sun also rises and continues on its never-ending cycle. Brett comes back to visit Jake and Romero is left to his bulls. “How sweet light is, how delightful it is to see the sun!” (Ec. 11:7).

The two enjoy their impossible life together again, and in the end, for a brief moment, Brett considers how sweet---and heroic---it might have been if their own sun would never have set at all. “We could have had such a damned good time together,” she says, and Jake replies with the book’s famous close: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (247) In this we can hear Qoheleth’s closing comment, too, sounding less pessimistic and more matter of fact, concerning the mere prettiness of dreams and “couldabeens. “ ”Sheer futility,” he says once again, “everything is futile” (Ec. 12:8). There are no heroes, and isn’t it futile to pretend?

An Additional Thought for an Extended Paper

Certainly there is plenty to The Sun Also Rises that does not match directly with the book of Ecclesiastes, just as there is much in Ecclesiastes that doesn’t even get skimmed by the citing of several scattered verses, or the incorporation of four verses into a book’s epigraph. By the same token, there is much more that is comparable that1haven’teventouched on. For instance, Qoheleth’s and Jake’s ideas on fishing and solitude and companionship, on love and hate and on the contemplation and deference to God. But then, as Jake says, “You’ll lose it if you talk about it” (245), and as Qoheleth says, “Be in no hurry to speak. . . (and) be sparing of speech.”

Out In The Cold, Part 2

July 6, 1990

I’m still here, for at least one more night. I still have the cold.

It’s a weird guilt I’m trying to sort out. I’m feeling sorry, because it’s been hard for Mom, with her husband and her youngest son both stricken with cancer. And I have no justification to make matters worse. But then I can’t help wondering —maybe being away from home is the best thing while I have this cold. What good could I do at home? This isn’t feeling sorry for myself. I’m being logical. And I want to feel sorry for what I’ve done, but I want to keep coming to this logic, as if I’ve inadvertently done the right thing and just can’t deny it.

Oh, I’m still ashamed. I called Mom every name in the book, I coughed in her face, I raised a fist —and I walked away with the lousy rationale that I had been provoked. And I’m still feeling like leaning on that rationale, even though I know I shouldn’t.

Tomorrow will be a hard day. On top of everything, I’m not sure my cold will be gone. Maybe I’ll call first, apologize and offer to stay away until the cold disappears. That sounds phony, I know, but I should propose that sincerely. God stay with me tomorrow, as ever. I need you.

TWL, Lines 185-206: Rattling Bones

185 But at my back in a cold blast I hear
186 The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

187 A rat crept softly through the vegetation
188 Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
189 While I was fishing in the dull canal
190 On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
191 Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
192 And on the king my father's death before him
193 White bodies naked on the low damp ground
194 And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
195 Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
196 But at my back from time to time I hear
197 The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
198 Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
199 O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
200 And on her daughter
201 They wash their feet in soda water
202 Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

203 Twit twit twit
204 Jug jug jug jug jug jug
205 So rudely forc'd.
206 Tereu

185. A COLD BLAST stifles the weeping and everything is turned around, at least momentarily.  Tears (line 182) are replaced with a  chuckle (line 186), and melancholy becomes musing (line 191).  Each of these lines are malapropisms of the alluded sources: what is heard “at my back” distorts a phrase from Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress (see notes 141 and 197), and the ”musing” at line 191 modifies a line from the Tempest (see note 192).

The cold blast also marks the return of winter (line 190), as the sweet Thames of autumn (lines 173-184) becomes a dull canal beside a gashouse (lines 189-190).  Compare winter’s dull roots being stirred by spring rains at the beginning of the poem (line 4).  As the stir becomes a blast, Eliot also acknowledges the seasonal cycle of his changing emotions, rattled “year to year” (line 195).

186. RATTLING BONES occur here and at lines 22, 116, 195, 316 and 391. See also Whitman, Memories 15:

“I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them.”

See also Shakespeare, Tempest 1.2.398 (“of his bones are coral made”).

For an extended rattling bone image, see Ezekiel 37:1-9:

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,  And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came  together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

191. SITTING ON A BANK: Eliot: “Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.”  See Prince Ferdinand at Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.390-391:

“...Sitting on a bank
weeping again the king my father's wreck...”

For the moment Eliot has turned sadness to musing and chuckling (line 186), but there was weeping when he first sat down (line 182) and will be yet again (line 298, and see note 182).  The riverbank setting and the somber subject of death remain the same, however, even as the emotions change.

197. HEARING HORNS: Eliot: “Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.” For the allusion here and at line 185, see Marvell’s impatient plea (see note 141):

“For, Lady, you deserve this state
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.”

See also John Day, Parliament of Bees (1641).  Eliot: “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...’”

Day’s Parliament of Bees features a "vainglorious reveler" named Polypragmus the Plush Bee who speaks of a mechanical panorama he wants to build on the ceiling of his hive, depicting the tale of Actaeon and Diana. See Ovid, Metamorphoses (note 0.3) 3:206-312. After Actaeon the hunter saw the goddess Diana naked, she turned him into a stag to be hunted and killed by his own dogs. See also Sophocles, Electra (ca. 400 BCE) for the Greek counterpart with Agamemnon and Artemis. Compare Shakespeare, Cymbeline (note 77), in which Iachimo takes pleasure in seeing an image of Diana bathing on Imogene’s bedchamber walls.

198. SWEENEY is Eliot’s revival of a brutish character he used in three earlier poems, a counterpart to his more sensitive Prufrock (see note 0.4). Here Sweeney takes the place of Actaeon / Agamemnon (note 197), and Diana/Artemis becomes a brothel madame. Compare Eliot, Sweeney Among the Nightingales (1918), which opens with a Greek epigraph of the dying words of Agamemnon, suffering at the hands of his wife and her lover, as told in Aeschylus, Agamemnon 116 (458 BCE, tr. William Watson Goodwin (1906):

“Oh, woe is me! I am struck to the heart with a fatal blow.”

Sweeney Among the Nightingales concludes:

“The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud
And let their liquid droppings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.”

NIGHTBIRDS: The nightingale is the bird Philomela turns into after her rape (see note 99), but it has also come to symbolize the prostitute.  See the nightbird of note 200, and see Franceschina’s song in John Marston, The Dutch Courtezan (1605) 1.2.220-227:

“The dark is my delight,
  So ‘tis the nightingale’s;
My music’s is the night;
  So is the nightingale’s;
My body is but little,
  So is the nightingale’s;
I love to sleep ‘gainst prickle,
  So doth the nightingale.”

See also Anthony’s affection to his queen, in Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra 4.8.25-26: “My nightingale, we have beat them to their beds. What, girl!”

200. THE SOLDIERS’ SONG: Eliot: “I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.”  For the song's origin, see Thurland Chattaway, Red Wing (1907):

“Now the moon shines bright on pretty red-wing
the breeze is sighing
the nightbird’s crying.”

Australian soldiers corrupted the song in Gallipoli, Turkey, where Mrs. Porter was a favorite brothel madame among the troops; see C. M. Bowra, The Creative Experiment (1949), and see Ernest Raymond, Tell England: A Study in a Generation (1922):

“Oh the moon shines bright on Mrs Porter
And on her daughter,
A regular snorter;
She has washed her neck in dirty water
She didn’t oughter,
The dirty cat.”

Gallipoli is also where Eliot’s friend Jean Verdenal died at war (see note 42).

201. FOOT-WASHING: See Wagner, Parsifal (note 8) 3: At the end of his quest, Parsifal, the chief Grail knight (see note 0.2), has his feet washed in holy water to “be free from stain; from devious wandering’s dust.” He then continues:

“My feet hast thou anointed,—
Anoint my head, thou venerable knight,
That e’en today as king the guild may hail me.”

See also Paul Verlaine, Parsifal (1886; tr. John Gray 1893):

"He heals the dying king, he sits upon the throne.”
This also alludes to the Lenten event of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples during the Last Supper.  See John 13:1-17 (note 0.5).

202. CHILDREN’S VOICES: Eliot: “V. Verlaine, Parsifal.”  Gray's translation (note 201):

"And oh! the chime of children's voices in the dome."

Compare Whitman, Memories (note 2) 6:

“...with dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn.”

Children’s voices also sing out at line 385. For other voices see notes 321.5, 385, 388 and 400.  See also Sweeney’s birds at note 198. Compare these voices to the nightingale’s song at lines 203-206 and at line 103, again alluding to the story of Tereus’s rape of Philomela (again, see lines 99-103).

203. BIRD SONGS: Lines 203-204 return to the nightingale’s song from line 103. For other bird songs, see the hermit thrush (line 357) and the rooster (line 393), and see their comparison to song syllables at note 172.5.  As to interpreting these songs, see notes 185 and 200, reflecting our human nature to project meaning into the songs we hear and distort them to our own purpose.

Moleskin 3.9: Other Stories

There is more to being alive than any one chapter can speak of, and reducing life to lines on pages only makes me consider the stories upon stories I am leaving out. Maybe these are lesser tales, justifiably diminished, easily set aside. I could, for example, talk about my baseball card collection, inspired by cousin Jim and subsidized by pop bottle returns; or my extracurricular reading, against parental reservations, of Peter Benchley’s Jaws; or the cultural awareness stirred daily from living in a Jewish neighborhood; and just as quickly I would have to remember how the cards were set aside by a succession of other collections; how I got more from reading Twain in school that year; and how that old neighborhood is now predominantly Hindu and Muslim. Still, these are things to talk about, part of my history, moments in my life, substance to my soul. Every episode adds to how I am alive today. And I could go on and on...

The Underground Man

Dostoevsky Final (Russian 141, 11/30/90, Prof. Rubchak)

The general aim of the Underground Man, if not simply to be aimless, was to try to break away from socially imposed rules and chains. Plot was just another restriction, like the system of twice two, it chained the author to something systematically straightforward. He would be locked on a limited course on which his story would depend too much on sequence and consequence, on multiplier and product.

The Underground Man wanted to defiantly break away from such straight thought patterns because they, like everything else he protested, stood as a threat to his freedom. In fact, in his grasp for freedom, he rebelled against all of the conventional parameters of a normally structured “novel.” Diction is squeezed between an explanatory page-one footnote and a parenthetical closing comment. Thought often becomes contradictory and is never really conclusive. Characters, beyond the anti-hero himself, do not appear for half the book. Conflict is primarily between the writer and the reader, even as the writer is continually unstable and the reader’s existence is denied outright. And the setting through part one is a constricting coffin of an apartment, a “funk-hole” of surreality.

And ultimately, the Underground Man had to reject plot, because it is the most formally limiting of literary structures. Whereas the other parameters are primarily passive and abstract, plot is necessarily active and concrete according to the laws of time and space. The Underground Man did not want to exist for such activity. “What do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic?” he asked rhetorically. “As though such stone walls were really the same thing as peace of mind.”

In conclusion, there is no plot because that was not the purpose of there being a “story.” “An author writes something to please ‘everybody,’” considered the Underground Man. But ‘everybody’s’ pleasure is only another “golden dream,” and besides, he was simply “imagining an audience” anyway.

Out In The Cold - Part 1

July 5, 1990

My throat started scratching a little on Sunday, and by Monday night it was a full-fledged energy-draining cold. Summer colds are the worst. Maybe it was poor judgment, but I went to school, to bible study, to work on Tuesday. The next day was the Fourth of July, a day off, and I figured I could endure until then.

On the morning of the Fourth I was feeling a little better. The Koehns were coming over, and it was to be another family social thing. I was still drained, so I wasn’t looking forward to a long afternoon and I wasn’t really hungry either, but I’d be polite about it.  I kept to myself for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, and then the doorbell rang.  I opened the door for the Koehns. “Come on in,” I said, then went up the five stairs to our kitchen, where Mom was standing.

“Jon,” she said, “is it all right if you eat in the kitchen?”

I didn’t understand at first, then —of course, it was because of my cold. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll just go downstairs, in front of the TV.” After that I kept completely to myself until the Koehns left, which they did four hours later.

For the rest of the day I still avoided the family, but while I was in the kitchen, later in the evening, Mom called from the living room. “Jon, I’m sorry.” “It’s all right,” I said, but really I didn’t want to talk about it.

That was yesterday. Before I move on to today’s episode, I should explain why I was moody about being quarantined. After all, it was reasonable that I should stay away from Don and Josh. They have fewer white blood cells because of their chemotherapy, so they are more susceptible to and more in danger of the cold virus. And I shouldn’t be selfish, but yesterday, before the Koehns came, the potential problem hadn’t really occurred to me. It was certainly my ignorance, I’ll admit, and when Mom brought it up I think I realized immediately that she was right. But I wasn’t going to sit in the kitchen, apart from the family but still in view. I didn’t mean to offend by this decision, and I think if Mom had told me a few minutes before the Koehns came, there might have been a little less drama. I still wouldn’t have sat in the kitchen —a question of dignity, I guess —but maybe I could have got Mom to understand. As it was, while my cold and my standoffishness was offending, I appeared, and was, offended.

Anyway, Mom said she was sorry, five or six hours later, and I said it was all right.

Until today. I was feeling a little better when I went down for breakfast. I had the kitchen to myself. I was reading the paper and had just finished my bowl of cereal when Mom came in and said, “Jon, I meant it about you staying away from people. Will you please leave the room?” And I was offended all over again. I blew up. I swore, I breathed offensive germs in her face. She kicked me, slapped my face, told me to go to my room, no, get out of the house. And I said, okay, I would. But what was she sorry about yesterday, I wondered. She was sorry for being brash, she said. She wasn’t sorry for wanting me away from those who didn’t have a cold. Understandable, but still I argued. “I didn’t ask for the cold,” I said. “And nobody in this house asked for cancer,” she said. No, that’s true, and with that she rendered me speechless.

I went upstairs, packed my overnight bag. But I had a response for her, bubbling within me. “They didn’t ask for cancer, and they didn’t have to ask for the love and respect they’ve been given. I’ve just got a measly cold, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect very much love or respect at all. And you sure are delivering it proportionately.” Of course I was being very selfish, but as I drove off to find a motel I considered that I wasn’t screaming for love, just a little respect, enough to eat breakfast and read the paper in the kitchen alone. Didn’t she originally say the kitchen was my confinement anyway? I was still steaming, several hours later.

I’m in the cheap motel right now, for tonight and maybe for tomorrow. Maybe this is for the best. I will recover here and I won’t be contagious, and I might get some long needed rest. And I’ll have time to think and catch up on school work, and maybe I’ll even write a story.

God, it’s foolish of me to ever have to ask you for humility. It is always there for the taking, and I might have simply accepted it a dozen times in these last two days, but each time I would not let go of my pride. Even now, I could return home, apologize and go quietly up to my room until I got better. But I’d probably screw it up if I tried to do that. Help me God to humbly accept whatever you give me. Forgive me for passing up the chances. And see me through.

A Novel Without A Hero: Trailer

“Maybe a story is better without any hero,” scrawled Ernest Hemingway in an early manuscript of The Sun Also Rises. He was well into a story in which his narrator, his omnipresent point of view, was a man who was made sexually dysfunctional from a war wound; at this point heroism, though it might have been difficult, still could have been reached by circumvention. But a line of thought had been running through Hemingway’s head and was already woven into the novel, and perhaps he already had in mind the epigraph to this thread: an opening passage from the book of Ecclesiastes...

"Listen, Jake. . . Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?"

"Yes, every once in a while."

"Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?"

"What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell?”

"I’m serious."

”It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.

"You ought to."

"I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or another. I’m through  worrying."

Dicta-Poem

You can write about
a despondent woman wanting
to give up on life. But
leave out the names.
Tell them about her
problems, her woes...
Tell them how she
wasted a whole day just
crying her eyes out
apparently for no reason
at all. And then the next
morning she started
panicking because she
had to study for her finals

You’re not really
writing this, are you?

...now I’m afraid to speak.

Another Summer, Long Ago

July begins like June: the summer pace
Still fresh, the early dawn still kissed with dew
And wedding bells still ringing in my ears,
Which makes me all the wearier when
Sunlight begins to burn by 8 a.m.,
And all the kisses evaporate before
I’m out the door (with ringing in my ears).

My morning coffee pushes me along
A path of obligations to be met,
And on one corner of my desk is you
Being held by me, romantically:
It was another summer, long ago,
We danced the dance of newlyweds in love,
And in this frame we’ll dance a thousand years...

July continues batting. August waits
On deck, taking some sweltering practice swings
While April, May and June all take their leads;
They will be running with the pitch:
Two outs, three balls, two strikes, and two runs down
In the bottom of the ninth, playing at home.
All set, the pitch – and everybody cheers!

My second coffee, sugared up between
Sweet reveries imagining July
In terms beyond a life that’s otherwise
Decaffeinated, pushes me
To meet my obligations, nothing more.
Hot liquid on a hot day only works
To shift a body through its lower gears.

The day grows long.  Sweat trickles down my face,
Cool dew replaced with hot salinity,
And as it rolls my energy dissolves.
The summer pace turns casual.
Somewhere around the early afternoon
My thoughts of June, and you, begin to change:
the freshness fades, the ringing disappears.

Yet I would hold you even as your sun
Beats down on me all of these thousand years,
As you steal my coffee’s edge, and as we dance
In silence on our wedding day;
As August comes to bat, still one run down,
And as the runners take their two-out leads
I’ll stand up and resound the nervous cheers.

TWL, Lines 173-184: An Intricate Weep

173 The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
174 Clutch and sink into the wet bank.  The wind
175 Crosses the brown land, unheard.  The nymphs are
departed.
176 Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
177 The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
178 Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
179 Or other testimony of summer nights.  The nymphs are
departed.
180 And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
181 Departed, have left no addresses.
182 By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
183 Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
184 Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

176. SWEET THAMES, RUN SOFTLY:  Eliot: “V. Spenser, Prothalamion.”  See Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion (literally, "before the nuptial chamber") (1596), a double wedding poem attended by river nymphs collecting flowers for the brides:

“Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play,
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song...”

Compare note 36, where Zephyrus the wind plays a bit too hard with the Hyacinth Prince, and see note 293 for the different theme of the Thames-daughter nymphs.  The wedding is over now, the nymphs and their friends have emphatically departed (lines 175, 179, 181, and see note 250); the season has turned to autumn and summer’s last remnants have either floated away or sunk into the banks.  As an unheard wind blows (see note 389), the poet turns plaintively to the river (lines 176, 183 and 184).   See note 434 for how these triad observations and pleas will eventually evolve.

182. WEEPING: See Psalm 137:1:

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept
...How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Lac Leman is Lake Geneva, Switzerland, site of Lausanne where Eliot was treated in 1922 for mental exhaustion.  See also note 300.  Compare the lament of a Geneva-conceived monster in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818):

“I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish nothing; but, feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.”

For another Geneva scene, see Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions 4 (1782), tr. Angela Scholar (2000):

“The sight of Lake Geneva and its admirable shores has always held a particular charm for me...  I abandoned myself, as I walked ...to thoughts of the sweetest melancholy. ...I was moved to tenderness, I sighed, I wept like a child. How many times, stopping to weep at my leisure, did I not, perched on a boulder, smile to see my tears mingling with the waters.”

For similar mixed emotions, see Dante, Purgatorio 26.142, at note 428: “I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go,” and see Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, at note 253: “Her mother ...felt a pleasing distress, and wept.” See also Shakespeare, The Tempest (notes 0.1) 1.2.390, with Prince Ferdinand “sitting on a bank, weeping,” and see Eliot’s variation to this at line 191.

See also St. Augustine weeping before his conversion, at note 365.

Biblically, see Isaiah 38:1 (note 0.5), where King Hezekiah weeps after being told to “Set thine house in order” because he is about to die; compare this to line 426.  See also Matthew 26:75 (note 0.5), where Peter “wept bitterly” after the cock crowed (see note 393); and John 11:35 (note 0.5), where Jesus wept after Lazarus died.

For contrast, consider Boredom's eye filled with an unwanted tear in Baudelaire, Au Lecteur (note 76).