The Technique of T. S. Eliot: A Study of the Orchestration of Meaning in Eliot’s Poetry [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9783110809695, 9789027931900

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D E PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica,

39

THE TECHNIQUE OF T. S. ELIOT A Study of the Orchestration of Meaning in Eliofs Poetry

by THOMAS R. REES

1974

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N . V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission the publishers

print, from

L I B R A R Y OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 72-94500

Printed in Hungary

To the Memory of F. O. Matthiessen A poet in the art of criticism whose sensitive perceptions enabled him to recognize the full spiritual and artistic achievement of T. S. Eliot in our time.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

And should I then presume ? And how should I begin? "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

How should I begin to thank those who have helped me compose my study of T. S. Eliot's poetry? And how should I presume to acknowledge my intellectual and artistic indebtedness to those whose hands and minds have unwittingly written substantial portions of my book? First of all, I acknowledge supreme indebtedness to the ghost of T. S. Eliot himself, whom I consider to be the musician of letters par excellence in the sphere of Anglo-American poetry. As one of the prime instigators of the twentieth century artistic revolution, he has inspired me to recognize his work as a species of composition which helped to raise literature to the level of the fine arts. And what about his lifelong friend and mentor, Ezra Pound, whom I visited at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington during the early 1950's ? From Pound I learned that great art is generated by the union of artistic excellence with thematic complexity. Second, I wish to acknowledge some rather sizeable debts to those critics, living and dead, whose comprehensive studies of T. S. Eliot have critically illuminated vast areas of Eliot's patterns of technique and meaning: F. O. Matthiessen, Grover Smith Jr., and Hugh Kenner. Third, I am grateful to the authors of special studies of Eliot's technical and thematic apparatus: Helen Gardner, B. H. Fussell, and Dorothy E. Rambo. One such critic is Marcello Pagnini who forced me—with the help of a battered grammar, an ItalianEnglish dictionary, and a previous knowledge of Latin and French— to brush up on my Italian. Signor Pagnini's finely developed musical intelligence empowered him to perceive, with Mediterranean logic

8

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

and clarity, "la distribuzione e l'organizzazione dei temi" in the Four Quartets: in his study "La Musicalità dei 'Four Quartets'" (Belfagor XIII, 1958), he delicately demonstrates how Eliot's poetic dialect conforms to the dialect of musical discourse. Another such critic, Harvey Gross, uses his musician's ear to penetrate the rhythms and thematic structure of the Quartets. Fourth, I am deeply indebted to the two successive directors of my doctoral dissertation (Tulane University, 1965), Professors E. P. Bollier and Richard Adams. Inasmuch as the dissertation forms the basis of the present book and constitutes at least a third of its material, the seemingly interminable counselling and corrections of these two men are responsible for whipping a vast heterogeneous lump of Eliot materials into at least a semblance of proper form. Professor Bollier's observations on the early apprenticeship of Eliot to the French symbolist poet Jules Laforgue—as well as his strong advice to avoid ornamental and metaphorical language in the text of my dissertation—produced the effect, hopefully, of "setting me straight" in the composition of my first few chapters. Professor Adams, as a stickler for accurate detail and clearly drawn logical sequences and critical judgments, helped to discipline my analyses of Eliot's early verse. In addition, his own original observations on the meanings of certain difficult passages in Eliot greatly facilitated my own attempts at critical explication. And then there is my wife, Dona, whose typing speed of approximately 100 wpm contributed not a little to the mechanical rendering of my text. One is tempted at this point to praise the unlimited patience, iron nerves, and devotion of one's spouse. Suffice it to say that she put up with me for the many long months of work that went into the book. To the editors of Forum, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and the Louisiana State University Press, I am grateful for their generosity in granting me permission to use materials from my articles which appeared in their publications. I also acknowledge indebtedness to Faber and Faber for allowing me to quote extensively from the poetry of T. S. Eliot: Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. from Collected Poems, 1909-1962. And to Harcourt Brace for extensive quotations from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot; copyright, 1936, by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright© 1963, 1964by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

9

Last of all—and this is an odd category of indebtedness—I should like to thank those lovers and haters of T. S. Eliot whose various opinions have created a rich current of ideas on Eliot, without which my study would be of very little value or interest.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

7

I. Introduction

13

II. Eliot's Apprenticeship: The Harvard Poems

19

III. The Prufrock Syndrome: A Study of Neurosis and its Poetic Instrumentation

29

IV. A Dual Portrait of the Speaker and His Lady

78

....

V. Some Preludes and a Rhapsody, or Music on a Silent Keyboard 104 VI. The Oxford Poems, "Conversation Galante", Figlia che Piange", and the Satiric Quatrains

"La

VII. "Gerontion", or Prologue to The Waste Land VIII. The Waste Land

126 149 165

IX. "The Hollow Men", or Epilogue to The Waste Land

246

X. Ash-Wednesday, or the Orchestration of Penitence

260

XI. The Intermediate Phase: An Experimental Interlude 279 XII. The Four Quartets

303

XIII. Conclusions

362

Appendix

378

Bibliography

386

Index

390

I INTRODUCTION

Since the publication of "J. Alfred Prufrock" critics haverecognized T. S. Eliot as a radical innovator in poetic style. Moreover, they have perceived a definite correlation between the style and content of his poetry, regarding his style as something which cannot be separated from the substance of his poetry and its significance. Indeed, certain critics have identified his style as an integral component of the meanings of his poems. To date, however, most critical studies have been content to sketch out the major innovations and to suggest somewhat generally the interrelationship of technique and meaning rather than to attempt a sustained technical analysis. Even the more comprehensive studies — such as those of F. R. Leavis, F. O. Matthiessen, Grover Smith, and Hugh Kenner — have been concerned more with meaning than with the mechanics of style. The few critics who have been concerned primarily with technical analysis have limited themselves to special prosodic problems and have not related their findings either to Eliot's meanings or to the total pattern of his technique. Equally restrictive are those studies dealing directly with the "musicality" of Eliot's verse — that is, with the close resemblance between his technical devices and those used by musical composers. Some of the more important of these musicological studies are by Harvey Gross, Marcello Pagnini, D. Harvey Botman, and Herbert Howarth. No one study of Eliot's poetry, in short, is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed to present an adequate understanding of the mechanical features of his technique and its relationship to his meaning. I propose, therefore, to attempt a more thorough description and assessment of Eliot's poetic style as manifested in its visible mechanical aspects. By consolidating into a systematic statement the conclusions of my predecessors, I hope to prove that

14

INTRODUCTION

the technical methods used in Eliot's poetry, however dissimilar from traditional English poetic style, particularly in regard to prosody, conform rigorously to a system of aesthetic principles common to all arts, namely the principles of unity, variety, repetition, and rhythm. Ultimately I hope to correlate Eliot's technique with the meaning of each of his major poems. A cursory examination of Eliot's style reveals a number of seemingly unresolvable paradoxes. While his individual poems can usually be identified as distinct products of his own craftsmanship and manner, the style of his verse changes, often radically, from poem to poem, involving numerous shifts in the mechanical structure of his verse. His style is at once derivative and original — derivative in that it is syncretized from diverse models, and original in the peculiar combination of borrowed formal techniques, tones, and phrases as they appear in each poem. Eliot's style is not a complex constant that adapts itself, with minor modifications, to successive individual poems after the fashion, say, of Shakespeare's dramatic blank verse, Dryden's heroic couplets, or Dr. Johnson's symmetrical phrasing. One must consider his style, rather, as a complex variable made up of many recurring technical components, with some of the components common to most poems and some not. Because the complex of technical devices used in Eliot's verse varies from poem to poem, it is difficult to move from general characteristics abstracted from the whole of his poetry to those operative in a particular poem. No single general characteristic applies technically to all of Eliot's poems. Although Eliot's angle of vision shifted and widened in the course of his initial poetic development, as seen in his increasingly complicated patterns of imagery and character development, there does not seem to be any corresponding "improvement" of technique. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is technically as good in its way as "Gerontion", which was written six or seven years later; "Portrait of a Lady" is by no means inferior to "Burbank with a Baedeker", and it is certainly superior to "The Hippopotamus", despite the fact that it antedated the other poems by at least seven years. Instead of progressing in a straight line of improvement, Eliot attained to a number of peaks of skill, so to speak, and during the intervals between these peaks he might either improve or retrogress. Such a mode of development, uneven though it occasionally is,

15

INTRODUCTION

seems for Eliot inevitable and necessary. His first works were modeled roughly on the French symbolist and seventeenth-century English dramatic poets. In choosing these models he was exploiting perhaps the best available influences of the day. Having perfected the techniques he had learned from these masters, he might have arrested his technique by continuing to write in the same manner. Instead he chose a new but inferior model (Gautier) and expanded his sphere of mastery. In The Waste Land, which marks a grand climax in Eliot's first major phase of creativity, he exploited all of his previous technical devices and added several new ones, many of which were borrowed from other art forms, making that poem one of the most complicated productions in twentieth-century poetry. After The Waste Land and The Hollow Men Eliot's poetry entered into its intermediate phase of development, and his technique underwent radical changes. While retaining a small portion of his earlier technical practices, he extended his technique into several different areas and subordinated it to the treatment of religious states of mind. His imagery now became less immediate and concrete, more generalized and deliberately vague. He had moved from the graphic but symbolic images of external reality to a more generic symbolic imagery drawn from religious meditation. The perfection of this method may be seen in the Four Quartets, which marks the poet's third and final creative phase. Inasmuch as Eliot had tightened the structural organization of this masterwork by enclosing its content in a complex musical format based on Beethoven's sonata form, the quartets represent still another peak in his technical development. Much of the complexity of Eliot's poetry is traceable to his use of the eclectic method, including his special technique of quotation and allusion. His consciousness of the fructifying influences of tradition largely accounts for his frequent employment of this method. For, as Eliot himself has stated, "the great poet is, among other things, one who not merely restores a tradition which has been in abeyance, but one who in his poetry re-twines as many straying strands of traditions as possible".1 By uniting his own lines with those of his illustrious predecessors, he revivifies an interest in the great writers of the past and strengthens the sense 1 The Use oj Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies Criticism to Poetry in England (London, 1959), p. 85.

in the Relation

of

16

INTRODUCTION

of continuity between traditional and modern artistic productions. In quoting or paraphrasing the words of dead authors, he at times seems to make tradition come alive, in a manner of speaking, by viewing the past as a present reality. From Rémy de Gourmont Eliot had taken the idea of the necessity for a European literary tradition. At least it was necessary, according to René Taupin, to maintain the illusion of a tradition and to organize the best moments from diverse literatures into a central core of aesthetic values. This illusion was especially needed in an age of vague romanticism, Taupin continues, in order to counteract the poisons of sentimental subjectivity by means of hard classical models extracted from literary tradition.2 Although the roots of this European tradition in literature, as Eliot conceived it, lay in Athens and Rome, passing from Virgil's hands into Dante's, the English dramatists and metaphysical poets as well as the French symbolists represented later manifestations of this continuous tradition — or perhaps they were fruitful variations upon it, both drawing from the tradition and enriching it by giving it new forms of expression. To illustrate more vividly the nature of Eliot's indebtedness to other authors, I will now trace briefly the development of one of the more dominant sources of traditional influence — that of Dante. Standing squarely in the middle of the cultural mainstream of European poetry, Dante constituted an ideal source for the cultural and aesthetic nourishment of contemporary European literature in general and for the strengthening of Eliot's poetry in particular. His influence exerted itself throughout the entire course of Eliot's poetical development, beginning with the epigraph to Eliot's first published poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and continuing through to the richly symbolic closing lines of "Little Gidding". For illustration let us examine a certain stanza from Dante's Purgatorio, XXVI, 148: "Ara vos prec, per aquella valor que vos guida al som de l'escalina, sovegna vos a temps de m a dolor." Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

1

L'Influence du Symbolisme 1929), pp. 214-215.

Français

sur La Poésie

Américaine

(Paris,

INTRODUCTION

17

F. O. Matthiessen gives the following translation of the above lines: " 'And so I pray you, by t h a t virtue which leads you to the topmost of the stair, be mindful in due time of my pain.' Then dived he back into t h a t fire which refines them." These lines, describing the penance of the lustful, are spoken in Provençal by the poet Arnaut Daniel. 3 Verses from this stanza are used again and again by Eliot in his poetry. The line Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina is quoted in the closing section of The Waste Land; Sovegna vos appears in AshWednesday, while Ara Vos Prec was used as the title of a 1919 volume of Eliot's poems. Matthiessen remarks t h a t this particular canto from Dante had taught Eliot the value of purgation: t h a t is to say, the souls in Purgatory suffer because they want to suffer, and this is the way to salvation. 4 Eliot believed, too, t h a t poetry springs from suffering, and through the beauty and discipline of suffering the artist creates his special visions. I n this regard, as Eliot points out, Shakespeare had converted his personal agonies into great impersonal works of art. At any rate, the refining fires of purgation constitute a central motto-theme in Eliot's poetry — a theme which reaches its highest fruition in the closing lines of the Four Quartets: When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

Here the Dantesque symbols of the fire and the rose are dramatically united into emblems of suffering and beauty. Besides exerting a religious and ideological influence on Eliot's poetry, Dante also contributed to the formation of Eliot's mechanical style. Dante's concision, his swift transitions, and clear visual images certainly provided an excellent model for Eliot's verse. I n his own critical remarks on Dante, as Matthiessen points out, Eliot "dwells chiefly on the power of Dante's precision of diction, and of his clear, visual images", admiring his "simple style, his great economy of words". 5 The complex and variable nature of Eliot's style is due also to 3

F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement ofT. S. Eliot (New York and London, 1958), pp. 100-101. 4 Matthiessen, p. 101. 5 Matthiessen, p. 11.

18

INTRODUCTION

another form of eclectic synthesis, t h a t is, his practice of using a variety of formal methods within a single poem in which he freely adapts traditional forms in order to bring out his varied meanings. The tight and regular form of Gautier's tetrameter quatrains, for example, appropriately serves to project Eliot's satiric intentions, while the blank verse variations in "Gerontion" sustain the speaker's meditative reveries. Sometimes the successive adaptations of mechanical form to content in Eliot's verse are exceedingly minute and smooth in transition. At other times they are made with unusual abruptness. I n the third movement of The Waste Land, for instance, the heroic verse of the opening paragraph, set in a slow, dragging tempo to match the speaker's plaintive mood, suddenly gives way to a fast and heavily accented fragment from a popular song; and this abrupt transition brings out the contrast between a stately past and the vulgar contemporary scene. B u t whether the transitions are rough or smooth, gradual or abrupt, each change in technical mode supports a change in meaning or mood. I n order to show Eliot's skill in adjusting his technical means to the shifting currents of meaning in his poetry, I shall analyze the specific technical components used in his more important individual poems. I intend in the following chapters to make a detailed descriptive analysis of each of Eliot's important poems, arranged mostly in chronological order and in such a way as to demonstrate the development of his technical skills. My main objective, however, will be to show how skillfully Eliot correlates the meanings of his poems with their mechanical forms and how these forms are often inseparable components of his meanings. Finally I hope to prove t h a t Eliot's work is not simply a collection of other poets' phrases and mannerisms, b u t the conscious artistic product of an individual poet living in his age — perhaps one of the highest and most original stylistic developments in the poetry of our time.

II ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP: T H E H A R V A R D POEMS

From the verse of Jules Laforgue and the metaphysical poets, the philosophy of F. H. Bradley, and the criticism of Rémy de Gourmont, Eliot formulated his doctrine of the unified sensibility. I t is this doctrine which contributed a great deal to his later formulation of a device known as the objective correlative — a device enabling the poet to embody his private feelings in objective forms. Although Eliot's earliest work represents a carefully studied extension of the methods of French symbolism, mainly the method of Jules Laforgue, the verse of the metaphysical poets provided Eliot with a model for projecting his ideas and feelings in a richly symbolic manner. In an essay entitled "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921) Eliot stated that the poets of the metaphysical school were possessed of a unified sensibility, in which both thought and feeling were merged into one act of thinking; he perceived in Chapman a "sensuous apprehension of thought" and commended Jonson and Chapman because they "incorporated their erudition into their sensibility: their mode of feeling was . . . altered by their reading and thought". He remarked that a "thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility", and that the metaphysical poet's mind was "constantly amalgamating disparate experience" while the experience of the ordinary man is "chaotic, irregular, fragmentary". In the minds of metaphysical poets, moreover, such disparate experiences as the noise of a typewriter and Spinoza and a cooking smell are always forming new wholes — for the metaphysical poets possessed "a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience". But in the second half of the seventeenth century writers began to think and feel "by fits" — they thought in prose and felt in poetry. Eliot calls this disintegrative process a "dissociation of sensibility".1 1 "The Metaphysical Poete", Critiques and Essays in Criticism, 1920-1948, ed. Robert Wooster StaUman (New York, 1949), pp. 51 ff.

20

ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP: THE HARVARD POEMS

From F. H. Bradley Eliot learned that the life of the mind " 'exists in the union of intellect and emotion' "2 so that a unified sensibility implies a high degree of coordination between the sensory, affective, and intellectual faculties of the mind. But if there is a dissociation of sensibility, the creative and cerebral processes are not only uncoordinated but each act of the mind is partially dissociated into its sensory, affective, and intellectual components. A welldeveloped sensibility would therefore involve the harmonious operation of all faculties of the human mind, with sensations, emotions, and ideas existing as synthesized elements of a unified sensibility. It is not improbable that Eliot derived a part of his doctrine of the unified sensibility from an essay by Remy de Gourmont entitled "Subconscious Creation". In this essay De Gourmont states that through repeated training and systematic exposure to various cultural influences, the normal human mind not only accumulates a "deep reservoir of verbal memory", but it also develops unconscious powers of inductive reasoning which are superior to deductive logic. Such powers, the critic concludes, are present during the act of poetic creation, and they also form a powerful impetus for "the discovery of the scientist and the ideological construction of the philosopher".3 In order to achieve a poetic sensibility capable of executing verse of a highly complex and symbolic nature, the poet's state of mind during the heat of composition should be such that the unconscious creative powers are utilized to the fullest. At such times the powers of the whole mind — including its sensory, affective, and intellectual faculties — should be brought to bear on the subject so that the poet might attain a complete harmonization of his ideas and feelings. It is during these heightened moments of creativity, then, that the poet's sensibility is unified — that is, it is capable of synthesizing disparate experiences, of finding precise metaphorical equivalents for thoughts and emotions. In Jules Laforgue, whose poetry seemed to be a product of a unified sensibility, Eliot found a fairly modern model for composing a type of verse which would allow him to execute his ideas and feelings in an objective symbolic form. 2

Eric Thompson quoting Eliot in "The Critical Forum: 'Dissociation of Sensibility I' ", Essays in Criticism I I (1952), 209. 3 Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas, trans. William Aspenwall Bradley (New York, 1921), p. 91.

ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP: THE HARVARD POEMS

21

Eliot's earliest published poems, appearing in the Harvard Advocate in 1909 and 1910, reveal the poet's concern for finding objective expression for his personal feelings. Underlying the composition of these poems is the strong influence of Laforgue, for here Eliot borrows Laforgue's device of concealing sentiments in irony as well as his method of using concrete images to symbolize his ideas and feelings. Laforgue showed Eliot the possibilities for using parody; for using irony as a means for conveying tender feelings in an indirect manner, and also as a method for detaching his own emotions from those of his speaker. I n such Advocate poems as "Nocturne" and "Humouresque", 4 Eliot makes use of a speaker who sardonically undercuts his own fine feelings, thus prefiguring Prufrock's "self-ironical, self-distrustful attitudes", and this dramatic device derives largely from Eliot's French master. 5 I t is evident from these poems t h a t Eliot must have singled out Laforgue as a model almost as soon as he had read Arthur Symons' work on French symbolism. I n the "Nocturne", published in the Advocate in November of 1909, Romeo importunes Juliet beneath " a bored b u t courteous moon"; in his "best mode oblique" he rolls toward the moon " a frenzied eye profound", which has the effect of drowning his female readers in tears. This poem recalls Laforgue's manner of regarding the moon as an artificial stage effect, his habit of dragging the moon down to his own level and speaking to her with undue familiarity and jocularity. I n Complainte de cette bonne lune Laforgue addresses her as "mam'zell' la Lune" and accuses her of powdering her face with flour. When the hero of "Nocturne" rolls a frenzied eye toward the moon in his "best mode oblique", Eliot proves by this dramatization how well he has learned Laforgue's art of parodizing his speaker in a mock romantic pose. Another Harvard Advocate poem, "On a Portrait", 6 shows Eliot's mastery of the cynical twist on which many of Laforgue's poems end. Here Eliot plays with the discrepancy between the poet's romantic fantasies over a woman and a parrot's sardonic appraisal of her. In the opening lines one is given glimpses of a lone figure in a 1 "Nocturne", Harvard Advocate L X X X V I I I (November 12, 1909), 39. "Humouresque", Harvard Advocate L X X X V I I I (January 12, 1910), 103. 5 F. R. Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry (London, 1950), pp. 78-79. (January 26, 1909), 135.

22

ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP: THE HARVARD POEMS

portrait surrounded by a crowd of dreams and hurrying people. What secret meditations are concealed in that painted head of hers? Then suddenly a crude image obtrudes upon the speaker's reverie — The parrot on his bar, a silent spy. [sic] Regards her with a patient curious eye.

Here, in the style of Laforgue, is the final twist, a stroke of cutting irony. The same capacity for self-irony can be seen in "Humouresque". Its opening stanza shows rather close modeling after the second stanza of Laforgue's Locutions des Pierrots (XII): Encore un de mes pierrots mort; Mort d'un chronique orphelisme; C'était un coeur plein de dandysme Lunaire, en un drôle de corps. 7

Eliot's version One of my marionettes is dead, Though not yet tired of the game, — But weak in body as in head, (A jumping-jack has such a frame).

substitutes a puppet for Laforgue's clown. In this poem Eliot displays that peculiar quality of dramaturgical ventriloquism by which Laforgue extends his personality by speaking through an imaginary body. By making his speaker express foppish sentiments through a puppet's mouth, Eliot transposes the speaker's thoughts into a strangely artificial key. He dilates on Laforgue's casual mention of dandyism and makes it more dramatic by use of quotations — " 'The snappiest fashion since last spring's' ", " 'Why don't you people get some class?' " These fashionable colloquialisms of the day, smart phrases, and cliches convey some of the precise decor of the Edwardian age, just as Laforgue's conversational and bantering tone reproduces the Paris of the seventies. The ending is also characteristic of Laforgue. Eliot asks what star should enshrine his puppet-hero. Without bothering to answer, he abruptly exclaims, "what mark bizarre !" ' Poésies complètes (Paris, 1943), p. 204.

ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP : THE HARVARD POEMS

23

Besides using a marionette as a speaker, Eliot further strengthens the dramatic qualities of "Humouresque" by setting down his puppet's nuances of facial expression; the face is Pinched in a comic, dull grimace; Half bullying, half imploring air, Mouth twisted to the latest tune; His who-the-devil-are-you stare; Translated, maybe, to the moon.

Indeed, Eliot's undergraduate poems show him to be, like Laforgue, a competent manager of stage effects. The opening lines of "Nocturne" reveal a carefully arranged setting not usually found in conventional sonnets: Romeo, grand serieux, to importune Guitar and hat in hand, beside the gate With Juliet, in the usual debate Of love

The speaker in this poem even ventures a comment on the stage decor: "Blood looks effective on the moonlit ground . . .". In "Spleen"8 even abstractions are concretized and placed in dramatic context — And Life, a little bald and gray, Languid, fastidious, and bland, Waits, hat and gloves in hand, Punctilious of tie and suit (Somewhat impatient of delay) On the doorstep of the Absolute.

Here Eliot dramatizes a constricted view of life in order to transmit a feeling of disillusionment and disgust over the watered down Christianity manifested in fashionable New England churches; and in the last two lines he draws a sudden startling contrast between tepid religiosity and absolute religious values. The clothing imagery not only echoes the imagery of the opening stanza: Sunday: this satisfied procession Of definite Sunday faces; Bonnets, silk hats, and conscious graces

•Harvard

Advocate L X X X V I I I (January 26, 1910), 114.

24

ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP: THE HARVARD POEMS

I t also foreshadows the personal appearance motif of "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock", in which trailing skirts and a morning coat symbolize the contrast between outer elegance and inner spiritual vacuity. In harmony with some of the nineteenth century developments in impressionistic music and symbolist poetry, both Eliot and Laforgue exploited an approach to subject-matter known in musical terms as inverted romanticism. In the music of Ravel or Debussy, for example, a stirring military refrain might be placed in languid rhythms and opaque harmonies, or a light and gay waltz might be executed in rashly dissonant chords, with the result t h a t romantic effects are ironically or satirically inverted. I n poetry this technique involves such devices as giving a sardonic turn to well-known sentimental phrases, juxtaposing caustic witticisms with ideal sentiments, setting a serious subject in a deliberately light theatrical decor, or placing the speaker in mock romantic poses. The sentimental phrase "Love forever" in Eliot's "Nocturne", for instance, is placed side by side with the cynical question "Love next week?". Even the musical titles, such as "Nocturne" and "Humouresque", are conceived ironically in order to point up the discrepancy between the romantic titles and the mock romantic contents of the poems. This approach carries over into the Prufrock volume with poems such as "Rhapsody on a Windy N i g h t " and "Preludes". Eliot's inverted romanticism, combined with his parodying devices, enables the poet to communicate both his disillusionment with romantic sentimentality, as in "Nocturne", and his dissatisfaction with the spiritual vacuity of his age, as in "Spleen". I n regard to the latter poem, Eliot has projected his feelings in terms of concrete symbolic images associated with the modus vivendi of well-dressed religious hypocrites — Sunday: this satisfied procession Of definitely S u n d a y faces; Bonnets, silk hats, and conscious graces I n repetition t h a t displaces Y o u r m e n t a l self-possession B y this unwarranted digression.

This complex of salient images, set in fluid rhythmical phrases, not only foreshadows the symbolic imagery of the Prufrock volume, but the closely rimed iambic tetrameters anticipate the tetrameter quatrains appearing in Eliot's 1920 volume. I n both "Spleen" and

e l i o t ' s apprenticeship : t h e h a r v a b d poems

25

the tetrameter quatrains, the poet's satiric intentions are molded in a taut tetrameter line. In the second stanza of "Spleen" Eliot's satirical tone seems to lower itself deliberately to the level of burlesque. Evening, lightB, and tea ! Children and cats in the alley; Dejection unable to rally Against this dull conspiracy.

The fairly strict duple rhythm "degenerates" into music hall and nursery rhythms in the second and third lines. In contrast to the fast-moving triplet rhythms of these two lines, the first and last lines of the stanza are set in the duple meter that dominates the rest of the poem. The rime scheme of the stanza reinforces the rhythmical groupings of the lines, the outside lines being duple and the two inside lines being triple in rhythmical sequence. The last line of the stanza, a regular iambic tetrameter, leads into the first line of the closing stanza with its slower tempo: "And Life, a little bald and gray . . .". The relatively slow and stately iambic tempo of this measure corresponds to the exterior elegance of "Life", as it waits impatiently with "hat and gloves in hand" and stands, almost profanely, on the threshold of absolute religion. The metrical contrast between this line and the line "Children and cats in the alley" harmonizes with the contrast in tone and imagery between the two lines. It is a contrast between a complicated life and a simple one, between a sophisticated and hypocritical existence and one that is natural and uninhibited by constricting social pressures. The contrast in imagery and meter here is a préfiguration of Eliot's skill in adapting form to tone and subject-matter, indicating how his formal methods change according to the exigencies of the subject. Eliot's earliest published poems are executed in established and recognizable forms of versification. He contents himself largely with syllabically oriented duple rhythms with triplet variants, while an occasional music hall sequence intrudes upon the dominant metrical arrangement, as in the second stanza of "Spleen". In making use of such a conventional form as the sonnet, as he does in "Nocturne" and "On a Portrait", Eliot has invested the form

26

ELIOT'S APPRENTICESHIP: THE HARVARD POEMS

with a theatrical decor and a degree of dramatic irony not usually associated with the traditional sonnet, thus adding new dramatic dimensions to its customarily meditative tone. These two sonnets also indicate his early apprenticeship in the use of the iambic pentameter line, the dominant meter of such later poems as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Gerontion", and The Waste Land. The iambic pentameter lines of Eliot's two sonnets seem appropriate for sustained meditative and dramatic effects as well as for slowly developed ironies with a twist at the end of the poem. The iambic tetrameters of "Humouresque" and "Spleen", on the other hand, are effective for enclosing a succession of quick satiric thrusts, as can be seen in the quick-moving, dry cynicism of the second stanza of "Humouresque": / But this deceased marionette I rather liked: a common face, (The kind of face that we forget) Pinched in a comic, dull grimace . . .

The slow, tentative opening quatrain of "On a Portait" Among a crowd of tenuous dreams, unknown To us of restless brain and weary feet, Forever hurrying, up and down the street, She stands at evening in the room alone.

carries the speaker's mood of reverie and contemplation; and the long iambic lines, together with the fairly even duple feet set in a slow tempo, sustain this mood. The triplet variant in the third line ("hurrying") registers, however slightly, the agitation in the speaker's brain as he draws a contrast between the static portrait of the woman and the restlessness of the crowds in the street. Here and elsewhere, Eliot uses evenly flowing duple measures to reflect the surface tranquillity or superficial elegance of a scene, whereas the variant meters often indicate disturbances in the speaker's mental composure, with the music hall or nursery rhythms adding a note of parody or burlesque on the speaker's presumptions. Nevertheless iambic sequences — whether in tetrameters, pentameters, or other meters — dominate Eliot's early poems, and the prevalence of these meters extends through "The Hollow Men".

e l i o t ' s apprenticeship: t h e h a r v a r d poems

27

The reason for this iambic dominance is that Eliot often used the rhythms of conversational phrases. In exploiting these rhythms he arrived at a greater regularity of beat than one would ordinarily find in speech or even in fine prose fiction; he reduced conversational and speech rhythms to consistent patterns of recurring rhythmical components; and by using the heroic line, with its prevailing iambic flow, he projected an aesthetic image of the rhythms of speech. The Harvard poems stand as Eliot's elementary exercises in syllabic versification, establishing his reliance on duple rhythms and indicating the course of much of his subsequent rhythmical development. These exercises, executed within conventional formats, imposed an exterior discipline on Eliot as a developing artist, investing his work with a degree of formal control that might have been lacking if he had contented himself exclusively with free verse or accentual rhythms. They forced him to assess the value of older forms, and to exploit them for what they were worth in adapting them to contemporaneous situations and subject-matter, thus helping to extend their usefulness to modern times. In his earliest published work Eliot combines elements of conventional English metric with the techniques of French symbolism in order to produce a poetry that is at once dramatic and symbolic. One must remember, however, that the Harvard poems are merely preliminary sketches, that is, germinal productions whose elements will be elaborated and refined in Eliot's later work. Yet the basic technical components are there: the symbolic imagery, the dramatic and ironic tone, the mock romantic treatment of subject-matter, the predominating iambic rhythmic sequences broken into by triplet variants and an occasional music hall progression. These components recur again and again in Eliot's later poetry as he progressively complicates them by giving them novel applications and combining them with new technical devices. If the irony in the Harvard poems seems too transparent, if their decor is rather too theatrical and their attitudes too smugly cynical, one need only examine, say, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" or "Portrait of a Lady" to see how these excesses are diminished as Eliot's technique becomes more refined. The Harvard poems represent the work of a gifted apprentice experimenting with forms supplied by English poetic convention and French symbolism — forms which Eliot uses to project the speakers' feelings and attitudes. The poems in the Prufrock volume, unlike

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the Harvard group, reflect the craftsmanship of a mature poet who is now an experimenting journeyman (as in "Aunt Helen"), now an accomplished master of his craft (as in "Prufrock"). In his first published volume Eliot begins to adapt his forms with a high degree of precision to situations, subject-matters, and meanings; and in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" his skill in correlating form and meaning reaches one of the highest developments in his poetic career.

Ill T H E P R U F R O C K SYNDROME: A S T U D Y OF N E U R O S I S A N D ITS POETIC INSTRUMENTATION

1 One need hardly glance beyond the title of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to perceive the ironic conception of this poem. Consider the implications of the name "Prufrock" in contrast to "Love Song". Here we have what appears to be the solid citizen, perhaps a member of the cultured haute bourgeoisie, who decides, in a moment of rare self-realization, to sing of love. Thus we have, even in the title, an ironic inversion of the usual romantic lover. Eliot seems to have modelled his speaker after the persona of some of Jules Laforgue's poems. There is the same mixture of metaphysics and dandyism, the same dichotomy of external cynicism and inner pathos; and in his fumbling attempts to justify himself, to solve the riddles of his unhappy existence, Eliot's speaker, like Laforgue's, plays a role that is at once pathetic and ridiculous; he becomes his own caricature, a creature assailed by doubts, by trepidations, by feeble volitions which can never be satisfied. Like the speaking flame of the poem's epigraph, Prufrock dares to bare his soul, for he feels that he can speak with impunity. In the Laforguian tone of serious joking, the poem begins as a love-song, but it soon plunges into matters of more complicated import. We discover early that, as a lover, Prufrock cuts a rather poor figure: he is ready to declare himself but always backs off, lacking the courage to resolve his psychic dilemma. Prufrock's dilemma involves failure to make decisions. His sexual and spiritual impotence, his fear of future failures, his many tiny embarrassments and humiliations — all of these things paralyze his will. In fact, he is utterly incapable of coming to the simplest decisions — shall he part his hair behind? does he dare to eat a

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peach? These relatively uncomplicated problems obsess him, torture him, and make his existence a miserable affair. At the end of the poem he finally regresses into a most morbid condition of infantilism. But even here, in his world of fantasy and dreams, he cannot relive the vanished joys of his childhood, for he has lost the capacity to believe, to dream, to imagine, to create. In spite of his somewhat ridiculous actions, Prufrock is none the less a pathetic figure. As Grover Smith Jr. observes, he "suffers in a hell of defeated idealism, tortured by unappeasable desires". His is the plight of the "hesitant, inhibited man, an ancient dreamer trapped in decayed, shabby-genteel surroundings, aware of beauty and faced with sordidness . . .". But this sensitive figure has a tragic flaw: "through timidity he is incapable of action".1 He has impulses to do great things, "to murder and create" or "to be or not to be": but he lacks the will power to execute his resolutions2 and allows himself to suffocate in the stuffy atmosphere of Edwardian drawing-rooms. According to Miss Drew, the grand conceptions of Shakespeare or Michelangelo, or the great worlds of John the Baptist or Lazarus, are beyond him; he retreats into "the world of despairing introspective day-dream", seeking refuge in the sea of his childhood dreams.3 But even the sea — as primal creator and destroyer, as a source of vital energies and the rhythms of life — cannot save him. In his conception of Prufrock's character Eliot is, in some respects, as much indebted to Henry James as to Jules Laforgue. Both Eliot and James are masters in depicting the psychological nuances of character; both excel in a type of drawing-room drama in which inner psychic tensions contribute to the dramatic interest as much as, if not more than, exterior conflicts between characters. As expatriate Americans who became British citizens, Eliot and James knew the value of European culture and selected Continental models for their own works — the one choosing the French symbolist poets, the other absorbing the nineteenth century French and Russian masters of fiction. The London scene, whether Victorian or Edwardian, provided 1 T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning (Chicago, 1956), p. 16. 2 Elizabeth Drew, T. S. Eliot: the Design of His Poetry (New York, 1949), p. 34. 3 Elizabeth Drew, p. 35.

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both authors with an excellent locale for urban imagery and stagesettings, and of course such a scene forms the setting or background music, so to speak, for Prufrock's tired reveries. As one of the few major novelists in the world who have been authentic members of high society, Henry James drew much of his atmosphere and imagery from the salons of the upper classes. The upper-class, or at least the upper middle-class, setting for "Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady" reveals Eliot's similar talent for utilizing elegant settings for his dramatic and poetic effects. The language, the decor, the tone of much of Eliot's verse are drawn from the atmosphere of the salons of aristocratic Boston and London. The works of both authors reflect an almost puritanical fear of sex as one of life's vulgarities. In The Wings of the Dove, James has Kate Croy refer to sex as "that particular vulgarity". 4 Even Jules Laforgue, Eliot's chief French model, avoids the usual French penchant for elaborating on the intimate details of sexual passion; indeed, he often depicts it as a manifestation of brutal animalism. In Laforgue's La Premiere Nuit, for example, cold-breasted whores are searching like beasts of prey for prospective male victims in the pale gaslight of the Paris boulevards.5 In the world of Eliot, James, and Laforgue, therefore, sex takes the form of some unspeakable vulgarity. The allusions to sex in "Prufrock", as in James's novels, are extremely subtle. When the speaker is "pinned" by women's eyes, and when he becomes painfully conscious of his deteriorating physique, one is aware of a strange sexual pathology underlying these morbid reveries. Prufrock's masochistic tendencies are at once evident in his portrayal of himself as weak and impotent while the women seem strong and dominating (at least with their eyes). The same dichotomy — strong women versus weak men — appears in many of James's novels. In The Sacred Fount there is a ruling implication that sexual relationships drain men of their vitality and strengthen the women, and vice versa. Unlike James' male characters, however, Prufrock lacks idealism and courage, and he is more of a masochist than an idealist. In James and Eliot the raw terms of physical sex are never directly mentioned but only alluded to. What is presented in their 'Vol II (London, 1923), p. 180. s Poesies (Buenos Aires, Argentina, [1944]), p. 36.

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works is a life in which the sexual components have been repressed and sublimated. That is, the erotic energies are often distilled into a finer essence, into something more penetrating and more complex because they are made more subtle in the form of veiled allusions. The lines describing Prufrock as a victim of women's eyes and arms do not require any clinical gloss or detailed explanation: they expose the tortured soul of a man who is caught in the throes of masochism. And his neurosis expresses itself in the muted erotic imagery of the those lines. Not a small part of Prufrock's tragedy is traceable to his neuroticism. There is a neurotic conflict between his spiritual ideals and his psychic incapacity to achieve them. According to Edmund Wilson, some of Prufrock's neurotic tendencies come from his inhibited Puritan background — a background which Eliot seems to have given him. As with James's heroes, there is in Prufrock's character "regret at situations unexplored, that dark rankling of passions inhibited . . .". Like the heroes of Henry James, also, Prufrock "dared too little", for he had been "living too cautiously and too poorly" from fear of life and its vulgarity. Hence he would be neurotically incapable of living the life of his imagination and dreams.6 There is, according to Roy P. Basler, a "psychological pattern" underlying the images in the poem; that is, Prufrock's experience is manifested in a set of "transferences" and "condensations" which are symbols of his neurotic state of mind.7 The psychosexual impotence of the speaker, then, takes the form of special images; and these images, in turn, are symbolic of general spiritual sterility. Eliot has projected an aesthetic image of Prufrock's soul. With a few salient strokes he has executed a portrait in which the symptoms of Prufrock's neurosis become (by transcendence) the symbols of the spiritual decay of our times. Although the speaker appears to be a frock-coated gentleman in good society whose exterior is evidently without blemish, his inner life is pathetically insecure. He makes a few desperate efforts to assert himself, to form his life on some great pattern, but he does not follow through — he lacks

6 Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 (New York, 1931), pp. 102-103. ''Sex, Symbolism and Psychology (New Brunswick, N . J., 1948), pp. 203-204.

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t h a t power of sustained effort which is concomitant with healthy mental development. Because of his many false starts, because of the half-formed volitions t h a t fade and are replaced by new volitions, his life is discontinuous and fragmentary, like the verses and patterns of imagery in his monologue. Indeed, human existence seems too complex for him; he would rather revert to the simple existence of a crab scuttling across the ocean's floor. What appears to be Eliot's mastery of the art of the indefinite, the art of blurred effects, is really grounded in psychological realism. B u t as a psychological realist Eliot has drawn the soul of his feeble hero with amazingly sharp intuitions and subtle technical devices. Prufrock's vacillations and hesitations are really so many symptoms composing his neurotic syndrome. Hence the poem's symbolism embraces many levels of meaning at once. There are denotations of external reality, such as the sawdust restaurants and cheap hotels; there are the broken phrases of Prufrock's monologue which are symptomatic of his own nervous condition as well as the images of sordid urban life which symbolize the sterility of twentieth century civilization. Some of the basis for the poem's imagery may be traced to the metaphysical doctrines of F. H . Bradley. Bradley held t h a t human understanding is limited strictly to a perception of fluctuating appearances emanating from the finite world and t h a t no one man is capable of absorbing more than a small proportion of these appearances. Each man, in terms of the Bradleyan metaphysic, is merely a finite center whose conception of reality is governed by his limited experience in the finite world. Prufrock exists fictionally and symbolically as one of these finite centers — perhaps as a specialization and constriction of Eliot's own sensibility — absorbing the images of external reality and not being able to "organize" them in the manner prescribed by the proponents of philosophical idealism. His mind is powerless to form complete ideas; he has only imperfect notions of reality. And yet he seems to have a pathetic awareness of his shortcomings. As a limited sensibility with a limited view of the world of external reality, Prufrock's mind is filled with delusions and wish fantasies t h a t are intermixed with concrete images (appearances) from the finite world, all of which are formed according to his own immediate experience, and since his comprehension of exterior reality (as a finite center) is much too limited, the images created

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by his mind assume a highly irrational and discontinuous pattern: they appear as so much flotsam drifting in the sea of life. The psychological implications of Prufrock's neurosis have much to do with the formation and organization of the poem's patterns of imagery. Prufrock "thinks in images", which is to say t h a t he finds metaphorical equivalents for his thoughts, so t h a t each image in the poem is a symbol for some segment of his mental life, some ideational complex or volitional field. H e projects his varying states of mind onto the objects of external reality; or rather his mind seems unconsciously to select images from external reality in order to symbolize his shifting states of feeling. Through psychological transfer, for example, he makes an implied comparison between the fog and a cat, or he compares the evening to an etherized patient — t h a t is, he transfers some of his own feelings to the inanimate phenomena of nature and thus finds a means for symbolizing his mental states. Many of the images in the poem emerge as products of Prufrock's morbidly masochistic wish fantasies —- for example, " I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas". When he imagines himself pinned and "wriggling on the wall", his masochistic fantasies are even more evident. B u t masochism often ends in self-destruction. Prufrock's ego can no longer survive these self-inflicted blows, and he finally regresses into childhood. I t is not strange t h a t much of Eliot's tone and imagery is drawn from the poetry of Jules Laforgue. Eliot saw in Laforgue an artistic temperament and sensibility rather closely allied with his own. I n this connection Grover Smith J r . remarks t h a t Laforgue's own temperament was romantic, but his manner was cynical. H e had a disposition to jibe clownislily at sentiments. This habit, though it shaded his poems with a subtle pathos, brightens them with a tinsel novelty all the more bizarre because of their slang. Splitting or "doubling" himself into languid sufferer and satiric commentator, he wrote poems deriding in one passage the tenderness of another. Eliot accomodated this idiosyncrasy to his own needs; it helped him veil personal agonies with impersonal irony. 8

I n Laforgue, then, Eliot saw the possibilities for using self-parody as a means for veiling personal feelings; and like Laforgue he employed images of "urban disillusion . . .". 9 * T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays, p. 5. » F. R. Leavis, p. 78.

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Like Laforgue, Eliot sought to mask his feelings in a symbolic imagery which would transmit his meaning to his audience in an indirect manner. H e felt t h a t the poet should construct a set of symbolic images whose arrangement would suggest definite states of feeling or precise ideas to the reader. These symbolic images, or objective correlatives, stand for the speaker's feelings. And while they are not intended to be formulas for communicating feelings, they should tend to evoke certain feelings in the reader. "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock" strongly reflects Laforgue's tone and technique. The mastery of conversational idiom, the neat turns of wit, the smart cliches and imagery drawn from both the street and drawing-room, with all of it orchestrated into a lively succession of rhythmical phrases — these devices are reminiscent of the technique of Laforgue, the work of a poetic craftsman who seems also to be a fashionable boulevardier. Frank Wilson feels that Prufrock's "romantic cynicism", his bitterness which masks selfpity, and the tone of "subdued pathos" are borrowed from Laforgue; and, as in Laforgue's Derniers Vers, there are references and allusions in the poem to Hamlet and Ophelia. 10 More specifically, as Ramsey observes, Laforgue contributed to the formation of such images as "sawdust restaurants with oystershells", "yellow smoke", and "head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter". 1 1 Images of planets, of diseased nature and deformed humanity, and of living things t h a t are despoiled or remain moribund in the noxious atmosphere of the modern city, are rather common in Laforgue's poetry. Many of these images are found in Eliot, and one of the sources of them may be Laforgue's Couchant d'hiver — D a n s les arbres pleurait un vent désespoir A b a t t a n t du bois mort dans les feuilles rouillées.

The sun is U n disque safrané, malade, sans rayons, qui meurt á l'horizon balayé de cinabre

as it feebly tinges the rheumy clouds. The sun here is sickly in " u n decor pointrinaire et macabre". 12 This phrase recalls the image 10 11 12

Six Essays on the Development of T. S. Eliot (London, 1948), pp. 7 - 9 . Jules Laforgue and the Ironic Inheritance (New York, 1953), pp. 199-200. Poesies Completes, pp. 40-41.

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of the "etherized" evening in "Prufrock". Elsewhere in Laforgue's poem the poet speaks of the people drinking their absinthes in the waning yellow gaslight of the misty boulevards ("Au gaz jaune et mourant des brumeux boulevards"). 13 Does this not bring to mind the "yellow smoke" in the third stanza of "Prufrock"? Some of Eliot's submarine imagery may be traced to Laforgue's Après-diner torride et stagnant, a prose-sketch in which the poet is suffocating in the hot stagnant evening air. The atmosphere is so stifling, indeed, t h a t he would love to be a fly on the damp tile floor of a kitchen: "Or rather a passive sponge, a branch of coral encrusted at the bottom of the sea, watching the parade of submarine nature . . . !" 14 This suggests the lines I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas . . .

and We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The tone of willing subjection to powerful undersea forces, of the desire to escape from oppressive worldly cares into an underwater refuge, is unmistakable here in both Eliot and Laforgue. Eliot goes beyond Laforgue in loading his images with symbolism. Not content merely to let the images express his personal feelings, Eliot goes further by investing them with complex moral and spiritual meanings. The image of "one-night cheap hotels", instead of standing for urban sordidness and for nothing else, symbolizes the restlessness and aimlessness of the vagrant human soul. 15 The voices "dying with a dying fall" form a kind of music, a requiem or dirge, for a dying civilization. Besides its symbolical aspects, the imagery seems in many respects highly realistic. The restaurants, the sprinkled streets, and the yellow smoke are salient details of city life, and they are all selected and arranged so as to project an aesthetic image of the 13

Poésies Complètes, pp. 50-41. In A n Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valéry in Translation, ed. Angel Flores (New York, 1968), p. 224. " D r e w , p. 33. u

English

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

37

modern urban environment. A t the same time, each image functions as a symbolic detail — a minute dramatization, so to speak of Prufrock's morbid fantasies. Through occasional metaphorical verbs Eliot is able to involve his speaker's emotions with the phenomena of external reality. As images which may serve to illustrate this device, I cite the evening, as it sleeps or malingers, and the muttering streets. The progression of images in "Prufrock" is such that the reader is often shocked or jolted by the unanticipated contrasts. The "soft" imagery of the evening in the opening lines, for example, is followed by the "hard" imagery of the streets; next, the street imagery is followed by the soft images of the drawing-room and the yellow fog in the second and third stanzas. These images, in turn, are interwoven with Prufrock's reverie on time — And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street . . .

I t is as though the speaker's morbid meditations and his physical environment were blended together to create one unified impression, or as if the concrete objects observed by Prufrock were merely symbolic exterior manifestations of his secret thought processes. Accompanying these sudden contrasts in imagery are the rapid scene-shifts. Sherma S. Vinograd observes that we move from "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare" near the table and shawl to the narrow streets inhabited by "lonely men in shortsleeves"; next we find ourselves on the "floors of silent seas"; then we return to the drawing room with Prufrock and his lady. 18 The locale of the imagery, then, alternates generally between the streets and the drawing-room — between the hard and the soft, the masculine and the feminine — with an incidental glimpse into the bottom of the sea. Finally, at the poem's end, we find ourselves drawn to the seashore and thence to the "chambers of the sea" among mermaids. The diversity of effects proceeding from Eliot's contrasting images and textures seems to be unified in part by the psychological exigencies of the speaker. That is to say, the progression d'effet (as Ford Madox Ford calls it) in "Prufrock" is governed by the 16 "The Accidental: A Clue to Structure in Eliot's Poetry", Accent I X (1949), 232-233.

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associative laws of similarity, contrast, causality, and contiguity; and Eliot's arrangement of effects in this particular poem, moreover, involves certain modulations and repetitions of textures and tones in such a way as to be aesthetically pleasing to the reader. This means t h a t in the interplay of emotional and sensory impressions suggested by the changing imagery, the progression of effects is rich and varied rather than monotonously repetitive, which is to say t h a t the individual images and tones in "Prufrock" are usually arranged in patterns of periodic recurrence rather t h a n in the form of consecutive repetition. For example, the street imagery, instead of being confined to one or two stanzas, recurs periodically throughout most of the poem. As the street imagery at various times mingles with other types of imagery, a pattern of changing textural contrasts emerges — between hard and soft images (streets versus fog), or between indoor and outdoor images (teacups and novels versus sunsets and dooryards). The exterior form of "Prufrock" is not that of narrative sequence or of logical disquisition, as in stories or in discourses. Rather, it follows an associative process of organization not unlike the associative patterns of dreams: "sound-links, sense-links, and memory-links" determine the progression of images. There are other dreamlike and hallucinatory qualities found in the poem's sequence of images — symbolism, condensation, suggestiveness, intensity, quick transitions without apparent linkages, contrast and comparison. 17 Though dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations provide some of the basis for formal progression in "Prufrock", we need not go beyond normal thinking processes in order to establish a correlation between Eliot's progressions and the train of mental impressions. We must remember, too, t h a t the flow of impressions in the stream of consciousness is always quick, fleeting, and often fragmentary, and t h a t developing ideas seldom occur all at once, or in a definite ratiocinative order, but in recurring waves of ideation. The half-faces of Picasso, the incomplete phrases and deferred resolutions of Debussy and Stravinski, the half-developed ideas of contemporary music with its incessant repetitions of certain melodic and harmonic patterns — these aesthetic phenomena bear a very close analogy 17

Gordon Kay Grigsby, "The Modern Long Poem: Studies in Thematic Form" (unpubl. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1960), pp. 35-36.

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to the actual progression of our mental impressions, governed as they are by unconscious factors. I n "Prufrock" Eliot has given us an aesthetic image of this progression. The recurrence and development of image cycles corresponds to the recurring waves of ideation which run through our consciousness. Prufrock's many false starts and hesitations resemble the succession of tiny truncated volitions t h a t seep every minute into our consciousness and create hundreds of "visions and revisions". So while the sequence of images in "Prufrock" may seem like so much debris floating in the sea of consciousness, these fragmentary images are, in reality, so many pieces in a larger pattern, all connected somehow and all in order. Eliot therefore achieves a high degree of psychological realism in the poem which would have been almost impossible before the advent of depth psychology. As a structural device enforcing the unity of impression in "Prufrock", Eliot weaves the various images into definite patterns of repetition and recurrence. Here we see how the images, often identical words and phrases, may be reiterated as much as eight or nine times: but with each repetition the image appears in a strikingly different context so t h a t it alternately attacks the reader's mind from several different angles at once. As can be seen in Table I of the Appendix, the images recur in interlocking cycles. Instead of reiterating identical words, Eliot occasionally repeats the various species of generic categories, thus giving more variety to his repetitive patterns. For example, his food imagery manifests itself in the form of "oyster-shells", "toast and tea", "marmalade"; his personal grooming imagery takes the form of a necktie, morning coat, and flannel trousers. Both types of imagery occur as part of the social ritual motif — t h a t is, the recurring series of empty social or personal gestures, like drinking tea or combing one's hair, grouped under dominant recurring image-complexes t h a t shift according to the changes in locale. Other generic categories include images related to the drawing-room, images of the dressing-room, of the streets, and of the sea. By allowing his poem to center on certain dominant words and motifs, Eliot uses this repetitive technique as a structural as well as a textural device since it unites form to content and intensifies the unity of tone. The composition of "Prufrock", then, is based on a sort of revolving or cyclical form in which there is no progression in the usual sense, but only a series of shifting and fragmentary

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developments as the poem moves from one group of images to another. Eliot's mode of repetition, moreover, corresponds roughly to the way we think — in terms of recurring impressions. And the more frequently an image or an idea is repeated, the more deeply it is impressed on the mind. The deferred resolutions in the music of Chopin and Debussy find their analogies in Eliot's practice of breaking off Prufrock's thought sequences before they are completed and then resolving these sequences later in the poem. For example, Prufrock's desire to compress "the universe into a ball" (that is, to solve the riddle of his existence) is introduced in the thirteenth stanza; the answer to his question is postponed, and the problem is finally brought to a head in the fifteenth stanza in which Prufrock admits t h a t he is not capable of dealing with such problems. Accompanying Prufrock's vacillating efforts to solve his dilemma are the various interlocking cycles of repeated images which appear to enclose his thoughts in a circumambient fluid, giving them a definite tone and color. By repeating certain images and introducing new ones as the poem advances, Eliot succeeds not only in enforcing the unity of impression but also in establishing a mode of progression. The method by which Eliot develops his patterns of imagery in "Prufrock" is intimately related to the poem's stanzaic structure. Like the paragraphs of prose fiction, Eliot's stanzas vary in length according to the developmental exigencies of the topic; and the topics, in "Prufrock" as in most of his other poems, change in accordance with shifts in scene or locale. That is to say, each stanza either encloses a dominant complex of images, or it forms an integral part of one of these complexes. I n studying the progression of images in "Prufrock", we observe that the first paragraph is concerned with street imagery; the next brief paragraph (the Michelangelo couplet) introduces the images of the drawing-room; the third sends us back into the street where we perceive the "yellow fog"; the fourth returns us once more to the drawing-room; and so on. I n Eliot's stanzaic progressions we perceive patterns of alternating contrasts, of successive elaborations of an idea or a feeling, of reiterated impressions. Modulations in scene from paragraph to paragraph communicate a sense of movement; and these modulations, in turn, are accompanied by changes in the dominant image-motifs. Interstanzaic unity, on the other hand, is maintained by means

THE PRUFROCK SYNDROME

41

of verbal and phrasal repetitions, lines that are common to two or more stanzas, and by a continuity of tone pervading the entire piece. Sometimes a phrase will unite a related group of stanzas. For instance, the fourth and sixth stanzas are united by the line "And indeed there will be time"; the expression " I have known . . . already, known them all" brings the seventh, eighth, and ninth stanzas together; stanzas thirteen and fourteen have the same beginning line ("And would it have been worth it, after all"). The aesthetic effects in "Prufrock", however, do not merely succeed one another and repeat themselves in agreeable patterns. They are also periodically intensified and enriched. Eliot achieves this intensification by means of the technique of quotation and allusion — a technique which enables him to distil the spirit of volumes into a single line or phrase. "Prufrock" is filled with echoes and quotations from the great literature of the past. A title from Hesiod, a phrase from Twelfth Night, an allusion to John the Baptist, a quotation from Chaucer, a reference to Hamlet, and a veiled allusion perhaps to Polonius; suggestions of Tennysonian consonance, French prose rhythms, Gilbert and Sullivan sequences, and Elizabethan blank verse — all of these heterogeneous effects are woven into the poem in such a manner as to invest the speaker's monologue with unusual depth and richness. Although the speaker is solidly ensconced in the decor of his age, replete with a great many salient and realistic details of the Edwardian era, there is an aura of historico-literary references and allusions surrounding him. It is as though the currents of time were running through him. Hence many of Prufrock's words reverberate with echoes from the great poetry of bygone ages. Andyet, for all its eclecticism, "Prufrock" is by no means pastiche. Eliot usually transposes another's melody into his own key, his own image-patterns, his own rhythm, and all of it with quick but fluent transitions, so that the disparate fragments are woven into a single cloth. As F. R . Leavis comments, despite the immense richness of Eliot's poetry, and despite its "variety and power of assimilating odds and ends . . . its staple idiom and movement derive immediately from modern speech". 18 Eliot unified the diverse effects in his poetry by means of fairly regular metrical sequences, these sequences being extracted and New Bearings, p . 8 2 .

THE PRUFROCK SYNDROME

42

synthesized from the common speech of his time. However, inasmuch as Eliot's rhythmical organization always runs concurrently with unity of tone and certain repeated patterns of imagery, his metrical sequences represent merely one of several unifying devices. Even so, rhythm is the life-blood of poetry, and the conversational rhythms in "Prufrock" constitute an extremely interesting and essential element of unity in that poem. One is impressed by the unusual variety of rhythms in "Prufrock". In addition to the rather stately blank verse variations, which constitute the prevailing metrical pattern of the poem, one finds Victorian music hall rhythms, purely accentual sequences, and the rhythms of French prose and English conversation. One of the reasons for maintaining such a variety of cadences within a single poem is that the incidental rhythms, especially the Gilbert and Sullivan sequences, provide a sort of satiric commentary on the more serious blank verse lines. For example, after the very serious and somewhat pathetic Hamlet episode, written mostly in irregularly rimed heroic lines, we encounter the ironic couplet I grow old . . . I grow old . . . \

n

//

^

\

a

n

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

This couplet is followed by the double trochees of the following Gilbert and Sullivan sequence: //

W

\

W

11

//

\

W

11

Shall I part my hair behind 1 Do I dare to eat a peaeh ? 0

\

w

//

n

^

\

^

//

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

The rhythms of the poem therefore change according to the speaker's fluctuations in feeling. English conversational and French prose rhythms provide a certain fluidity of progression in the poem. Since the rhythm of English speech is mainly duple, mainly iambic, Eliot has exploited this principle in his use of common English phrases. Such expressions as these — "For I have known them all", "So how should I presume", "And would it have been worth it, after all", — are all fairly commonplace in our language, and all of them are iambic. Eliot insinuates them easily and naturally into the fabric of his

THE PRTJFROCK SYNDROME

43

verses, repeating them several times and blending them imperceptibly with the more unusual expressions found in the adjacent lines. The parallel syntax of these lines A f t e r t h e cups, the marmalade, t h e tea, Among t h e porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

suggests the r h y t h m s of French prose with its frequent repetitions in phrasing. I n order to establish a formal rhythmical design, however, there must also be, among other things, a principle of unity at work — t h a t is, a dominant metrical pattern which runs counter to the various subordinate rhythms. I n "Prufrock" the prevailing meter is the heroic line, while the predominating rhythm is iambic — or, more precisely, approximately eighty-five per cent of the poem's feet are duple. Some of the prose rhythms as well as the Gilbert and Sullivan sequences act as subordinate variants. Approximately forty per cent of the verses in the poem are pentameters; and by dividing the total number of feet by the number of lines we find t h a t the average line length is about five feet. Of the fifty pentameter lines, about half are "regular" and the rest are "irregular", which is to say t h a t there are about twenty-five lines t h a t both read and scan regular iambic pentameters. Approximately half of the remaining sixty per cent of the lines are hexameters and the other half are lines of four feet or less, with a sprinkling of septameters and octameters t h a t are used for special effects. Hence a definite pattern of dominance and subordination emerges: there are nearly twice as many pentameter lines as there are hexameters, and almost twice as many hexameters as tetrameters. Besides the unity which comes from dominant metrical patterns, there is also the u n i t y of progression, or a sort of continuity in the flow of measures from one line to the next. Some of this continuity comes from Eliot's mode of phrasing — that is, his habit of stringing his sequences together in a succession of rhythmical phrases, most of which are conversational and iambic. By this means he is able to melt a diversity of rhythmical motifs together in a more or less stable metrical emulsion, with iambic rhythms predominating. Another pattern of metrical dominance and subordination arises from Eliot's practice of alternating regular and irregular lines, duple and multiple feet. I n the lines

44

THE PRUFROCK SYNDROME

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time

we observe the strictly iambic sequence is intruded upon b y the substitutions and inversions which I have marked. Such departures from the regular flow make the prevailing iambic meter more forceful by setting it off against the anapestic and dactylic variations; they give more life and diversity to a line t h a t might otherwise grow stale with monotony. Besides satisfying the aesthetic necessity for variation, the irregular feet and variant lines often represent a certain restlessness or disturbance in Prufrock's mind — especially when they occur in sequences where their incidence is unusually high. Most prominent among the multiple-foot variants is the double trochee. This quadruple foot recurs frequently throughout the poem, either in muted form (" Would it have been worth while") or in the form of a strongly accented nonsense rhythm ("Do I dare to eat a peach?"). The latter form, suggestive of the rhythms of the music hall, occurs in six different stanzas, while the more subdued version makes its appearance in nearly every stanza of the piece. Because of its frequent recurrence in prominent passages, the double trochee, like an oboe in a symphony orchestra, seems to have a quality which penetrates and dominates, even if it is placed in a subordinate role. Hence its prominence as a dynamic variant in the progression of metrical units. Eliot's pattern of lineation has a great deal to do with the unity of rhythmical progression in "Prufrock". Because his phrases are frequently grouped according to the syntactical divisions of sentences, a particular rhythmical phrase appears either alone as a short line, or it may be grouped with other rhythmical phrases to form a cadence pattern. As a result we discover a wide variation in line-lengths in the poem. Variable line-lengths not only set off the patterns of metrical flow; they also indicate movements and transitions in t h a t lines may be lengthened or shortened to accomodate the speaker's modulations of mood or feeling. Such septameter lines as The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

45

serve as frames for extended and unified series of ideas or feelings. Short lines, on the other hand, are usually better for lyrical effects, for staccato phrasing, and for situations in which the images are detached for clarity. Sometimes a short line is used either to introduce or to break off a given passage — D o I dare Disturb the universe ? I n a minute there is time F o r decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse . . . A n d I h a v e seen the eternal F o o t m a n hold m y coat, and snicker, A n d in short, I was afraid.

In the first example above, there is a climactic arrangement of line-lengths in which the lines expand with the idea; the surprise twist of the word reverse in the last accelerated line constitutes the sting on the tail of an epigram. Eliot's lineation patterns are often reinforced, especially in "Prufrock" and the earlier poems, by concurring patterns of consonance. These consonant patterns unite lines and stanzas; they modify and accentuate metrical patterns and currents of meaning; they create sound harmonies and textural contrasts which run concurrently with the structural designs of the poem. In "Prufrock" we find interlocking patterns of consonance, in which tonalities are brought into play and then dissolved b y the introduction of new tonalities — L e t us go, through certain half-deserted streets, T S B 8 BT S RT STR S T h e muttering retreats T B t s is

Here we have an interplay between the three prominent recurring sounds — S, T , and R — together with the supporting assonance of long E and U R as well as the composite tonalities of T R and R T . These are resolved into a cluster of S and T : Streets t h a t follow like a tedious argument 8 TS T T 8 T Of insidious intent 8 S T T

The S-cluster is dissolved — first b y the liquids in " T o lead you to

46

THE PETJFEOCK SYNDROME

an overwhelming question", and finally by the rich succession of liquids in the Michelangelo couplet. In the above examples we see the clear operation of dominant and subordinate patterns of consonance. These patterns, in turn, are accompanied by supporting rhythmical patterns (the predominant duple meter versus the subordinate triplets). Ultimately, both the sonal and the rhythmical patterns give support and corroboration to the flow of meaning — for example, the hard streets versus the soft women in the Michelangelo couplet. Modulations in meaning, then, are accompanied by modulations in rhythm and tonality. Elsewhere we find interesting examples of tone-leading — t h a t is, the gradual introduction of a tone, its formation into a tone-cluster, and its dissolution by a new group of tones. The "yellow fog" stanza is a case in point: The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains . . .

The first line has a dominant tonality of labials (P and B) and introduces the U tonality in "rubs"; then the U sound is reinforced in the next line by the close repetition of "rubs its muzzle", at which point it yields to the dominating tonality of liquids (indicated above by the double underscore). The tone-leading of liquids began in the first line of the stanza, in which the words "yellow" and "window-panes" unobtrusively introduce the liquid tonality. Finally, in the closing lines of the stanza, the liquid dominance is dissolved b y S and T tonalities. Sometimes we find in Eliot's verse a line or group of lines which have an almost obsessive richness. Consider the lines For I have known them all already, known them all: — N O N M AHL AHT, NO N M AHT, Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons . . . N O N IN8 MONNfl UN

in which all b u t five of the words are consonant. As in Tennyson's poetry, from which Eliot seems to have drawn a great many of his musical effects, these lines are packed heavily with liquids to match

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

47

the softness of Prufrock's impressions. Almost invariably, however, they are broken off by a line whose recurring sound effects are drastically reduced. Such a line breaks off the above verses: " I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." I t is as though the first mixture was too sweet: now the poet must counteract this richness by bringing in a "lean" verse. Here and elsewhere Eliot exercises a great deal of moderation in his use of consonance. H e modulates the richness of his verses from f a t to lean, from dense to sparse, so t h a t the reader does not become glutted with an excess of sonal harmonies. Knowing the aesthetic value of veiled effects, he disguises his harmonies by including large numbers of unaccented sounds in his patterns of consonance. Again, Eliot has affirmed unequivocally t h a t words cannot be chosen for their sound value alone: there must be a grammatical statement, 1 9 t h a t is, a pattern of meaning underlying and supporting patterns of consonance, and vice versa. If a large number of Eliot's lines, therefore, are "wired for sound", they also carry the circuits of meaning: for no literary art form can specialize in atmospheric effects alone. I t is also evident t h a t many of Eliot's lines have very little consonance, and these "lean" verses balance out the rich ones. Indeed, the frequency of luxuriantly consonant lines declines rapidly in Eliot's later poetry. As with consonance, Eliot's employment of rime is extremely subtle. Its use in "Prufrock" is distinguished chiefly by its irregular incidence. Inasmuch as the rime occurs at unanticipated intervals, the reader often perceives the accoustic concord subliminally before he is consciously aware of it, and thus the effect of the rime is psychologically more intense than it would be if the riming occurred at regular intervals. Sometimes the rimes in "Prufrock" compensate for some of the metrical irregularities. If the heroic verses are either truncated or extrasyllabic, then they are rimed, with the result t h a t the irregularities on the one hand are balanced by the regularities on the other. This practice seems to satisfy a certain aesthetic craving which calls for a conflict between dominant regular forms and subordinate irregular ones. 19

[T. S. Eliot], Ezra Pound, His Metric and His Poetry (New York, 1917), pp. 13—14.

48

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

As a mode of acoustic concord, we might say that the patterns of verbal repetition in "Prufrock" constitute a form of identical rime, both internal and otherwise. The repeated identical words — especially the word time in the fourth stanza — seem to represent a sort of sonal counterpoint which runs concurrently with the other forms of sound harmony in the poem.

2

Having thus far dealt with the more general and salient technical aspects of "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock", I will now attempt to analyze the poem on a stanza-by-stanza basis. In so doing I hope to convey a clearer impression of the exact progression of aesthetic effects as they run concurrently with the poem's flow of meaning. In short, I would like to demonstrate the fact that the technical aspects of "Prufrock" are integral components of its total meaning structure, and that these two aspects of the poem are inseparably joined together to produce a unified aesthetic whole. The first two stanzas of "Prufrock" present a novel variation on our traditional and habitual notions of the love poet. Instead of a weeping or garrulous Elizabethan lover, or a knight who transforms his mistress into a frigid goddess, one encounters what appears to be a modern sort of cynical cavalier who inverts the tradition of love poetry by forgetting to glorify his lady; he prefers to probe the neurotic complexities of his own soul. The conventional lover, a product of chivalric and romantic tradition, has been displaced by this introverted dandy, this ornament of drawing-rooms and restaurants. And yet the true nature of the speaker's neuroticism is partially concealed from us in these stanzas. Prufrock's morbid fantasies and moral vacillations are hinted to us in only the most oblique manner: by the simile of the "etherized" evening and by the digression of the streets that "follow like a tedious argument". The strong trochees which mark the opening lines of "Prufrock" indicate a certain strength of resolution, a certain aggressiveness and quickness of mind, on the part of the speaker. Prufrock's aggressive tendencies are further reinforced by the mild imperative "Let us go", which is reiterated three times in the first paragraph. When the speaker finally comes to a point of what seems to be a

THE PB.UFROCK SYNDROME

49

startling revelation concerning the "overwhelming question", he suddenly catches us short with a jaunty flourish: Oh, do not ask, "What is i t ? " Let us go and make our visit.

The adverb then in the opening line ("Let us go then, you and I") adds a Browningesque touch. We feel that we are intruding on the monologue of the speaker in a moment of rare self-realization: he has probably just finished discussing some other subject with his imaginary lady, and now he abruptly breaks off their former conversation and asks her to accompany him on an evening stroll. As in Browning's dramatic monologues, we are led to believe that something important is about to transpire between the speaker and his implied listener. Prufrock's veiled declarations here are weary and sophisticated; they represent the muted aggressions of a smug skeptic rather than the reveries of a gentle neurotic soul. When he commands his lady to accompany him through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

the S-cluster, particularly in "certain half-deserted streets", reminds one of the hissing of a serpent. It is a type of cynicism which seems to hiss and mutter between clenched teeth, blending with the hard T articulations. The harsh articulations of D, T, and S, as well as the assonance of long E, seem appropriate to the decor of the streets and out-of-doors. As the locale of the imagery shifts to the drawing-room of the next stanza, these harder articulations are dissolved in a sea of liquids (N, M, NG, L) colored by the rich vowel sound of long O — I n the room the w o m e n come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

The softness of the articulations here corresponds to the softness of the women and their velvety environment. The lightness of their arty talk and chatter is in diametric contrast to the deep religious and artistic conceptions of Michelangelo.

50

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

The next stanza, describing the yellow fog in terms of a cat, is dominated by liquids, as seen in these lines: L i c k e d its tongue into the comers of the evening, Lingered upon the pools t h a t stand in drains . . .

But in the last three lines of the stanza, the liquids surrender almost completely to the harder tonalities of S and T supported by the assonance and rime of long E : Slipped b y the terrace, made a sudden leap, S

T

S

S

EE

A n d seeing t h a t it was a soft October night, SEE

T

T

SAWT A W T

T

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. S

OWT

OWS

S EE

(Note also the AW-assonance in "soft October" as well as the OW-assonance in "about the house".) Here, as before, the patterns of consonance shift with the locale. In the description of the fog settling on the city streets, one finds a subtle blend of soft and hard articulations to match the opposing qualities of the new locale. It is as if Prufrock were standing near a French window and viewing the fog outside. The feline attributes of the fog have a certain psychological significance, for Prufrock is here projecting some of his own feelings and desires onto the external environment; or rather he has appropriated for his own use a symbol to express his state of mind. B y ascribing cat-like characteristics to the yellow smoke, he betrays his own desire for narcissistic self-sufficiency, his own softness of mental fiber, and his own surrender to subjective musings. Again, this paragraph represents an abrupt change from the weary cynicism of the opening stanza. The speaker's tone is no longer that of muted aggression and cynicism: he has now allowed himself to luxuriate in the misty atmosphere of the boulevards. In harmony with this change of tone, the quick, aggressive rhythms of the opening lines have now been dissolved, as it were, into a succession of soft tonalities set in a slower tempo. The Michelangelo couplet, with its heavy liquid richness, acts as a transition in introducing the new set of tonalities found in the "yellow fog" stanza. There is also, according to Frank Wilson, an underlying blank verse pattern concealed in this stanza, which could be reduced as follows:

51

THE PRUFROCK SYNDROME

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon The window-panes, the yellow smoke that rubs Its muzzle on the window-panes [and] licked Its tongue into the comers of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains . . . 20

Mr. Wilson wonders why the passage was not simply written in pure blank verse in the first place. Eliot's reasons for using his own pattern of lineation appear to be aesthetic. The rhythmical and syntactical groupings of images are more distinct, and the metrical progression is smoother, in the stanza as Eliot conceived it than it would have been if divided into pentameter measures. If the passage had been executed in strict blank verse form, moreover, a great deal of parallel phrasing would be lost: consider the parallelism of "The yellow fog" and "The yellow smoke" lines, as well as the verbs introducing the succeeding four lines. The rhythm of these lines would be weakened if the elements of parallel structure were removed. The rhythmical unity of this stanza might better be illustrated by the following musical transcription of its meter: u / w

I

V

I

U

I

u (O

o

/

u

/

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

n. n

s~2 j f f n s i

J

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle ^on the window-panes

/"3 f ^ n

n >

/

n

I

J

I

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

i

i

/

/

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

j j//j J J n

r 3

J

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

J > J W 3 J73 - T 3 f ~ l . 28

Six Essays,

pp. 9-10.

n .

THE PRTTFROCK SYNDROME

52 /

/

/

/

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

N^RM J> I

J

1 / I I I And seeing that it was a soft October night,

J>

N-JYIN J

N

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

Y

In a sense we might say that the strong dominance of the duple measure of this stanza merely resumes and reinforces the duple rhythms of the first stanza. A similar pattern exists in both stanzas: the regular duple rhythm is periodically dissipated by an occasional triple or polysyllabic foot. That is, the dominant progression of these stanzas is duple (J ]or/~), and it runs in opposition, 3

mainly, to triplets ( J J ] o r / - - ) and quadruplets (J"JT3 o r / - - ) so that the metrical sequence, both here and elsewhere in the poem, embraces a series of alternating contrasts between dominant and subordinate rhythmical units. These variations on the dominant norm seem like intrusive minutiae disturbing the flow of Prufrock's reveries; and, like a gas flame which gutters from time to time, his musings now burn steadily, now flicker, now resume their regular flow. But while there is only one trochaic line in the "fog" stanza, half of the lines in the first two stanzas scan trochaically. As seen in the above transcription, the third stanza definitely establishes the iambic measure as the dominating norm. Such phrasal repetitions as "Let us go", "The yellow smoke" (or "fog"), and "window-panes" further reinforce the rhythmical unity by means of an exact duplication of each particular rhythmical figure. These repetitions fit neatly into Eliot's over-all scheme of recurrences which run through the poem and have the effect of emphasizing dominant tones and rhythms, which in turn serve to underscore Prufrock's compulsive thought patterns as they repeatedly dwell on certain images. The repetitive scheme is intensified in the fourth stanza by the heavy repetition of the word "time" and the phrase "there will be time". Here the dense repetitive structure is in complete harmony

THE PBUFBOCK SYNDROME

53

with Prufrock's morbid obsession with time. Indeed, the sound of the word "time" now emerges as the dominant tone, forcing the other tones into subordinate positions: it is repeated eight times in the space of ten lines. I t remains firmly in the ascendant position until it is at last usurped by the ZH tonality in "indecisions", "visions", and "revisions". The strength of the ZH sound is multiplied both by the close repetition of that sound and by its positions as a riming word. When consonance is reinforced by rime, as well as by the prevailing iambic flow, the dominating power of the consonance is greatly magnified. Frank Wilson remarks t h a t "Prufrock's lament, 'there will be time, there will be time', may well be a reminiscence of Brutus's lament, ' I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time' . . .". B u t when Eliot adds "to murder and create", Wilson continues, his verses become " a caricature of the Elizabethan grand style, the irregular rimes substituting a syncopated jazzy cadence". So even in his earliest poetry, Eliot "juxtaposes the present and the past" — at least by technical implications. 21 Although the predominantly duple-iambic progression and the incessant repetition of the "time" phrase insure the rhythmical unity of this paragraph, the expression "there will be time" is also an element of interstanzaic unity inasmuch as the line "And indeed there will be time" reappears as the opening verse of the sixth stanza. Indeed, nearly every line of the fourth stanza contains an image which echoes corresponding images in preceding or subsequent stanzas. The lines For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes . . .

not only recapitulate the "yellow smoke" lines of the preceding stanza, but they also provide an interesting study in repetition and variation — t h a t is, the same image is repeated, but in different form and context. The images of the "plate" and the "toast and tea" introduce the recurring food imagery of the poem and point forward to the images of teacups, coffee spoons, marmalade, and the peach found in later passages. The clothing and personal grooming imagery is introduced by the line "To prepare a face to meet the faces t h a t you meet", and this line prefigures those images concerned with the sparse 11

Six Essays,

pp. 9-10.

54

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

hair and thin legs, the bald spot, the braceleted arms, the perfumed dress, and skirts t h a t "trail along the floor". These images are symbolic details of Prufrock's weary existence; they are the trivia floating in his brain and represent the futility of his exhausted spiritual life. When Prufrock says, "There will be time", he is postponing the need to make a great decision: he has perhaps had " a hundred visions and revisions" and " a hundred indecisions", but all of them have been made over tea tables, and none of them have been really very difficult. H e can neither create like a Michelangelo or murder like a Medici, for he lacks the power to execute; he has no determination, no finesse. His life is filled with awkward moments of desire, frustration, and regret over things left undone-hence his visions, revisions, and indecisions. I n his disordered brain the minor necessity of grooming himself is mixed with a desire to "murder and create", just as "visions" are falsely equated with "revisions". Hesiod's Works and Days are reduced to the work of hands t h a t "lift and drop a question on your plate". The monotonously insistent duple rhythm of the fourth stanza matches the dreary monotony of Prufrock's meditations. Since eighty-three per cent of the feet in this stanza are either trochees or iambs, the regularity of flow has a quality t h a t is almost hypnotic, supporting the stanza's conversational mode, while the variations on the heroic line maintain the dominant dramatic tone. Indeed, the regular metrical progressions — whether iambic or trochaic, pentameter or tetrameter — sustain the smooth, quiet and conversational flow of Prufrock's meditations, and these meditations are unified further by his manifold references to time. I n opposition to the metrically regular elements in the fourth stanza are the irregular variants — anapests, dactyls, double trochees, spondees. Here are the lines containing these variants: For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes . . . To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet . . .

/ v

/

- U) -

And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions /

w

w

^

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

55

The five double trochees (including the inverted one) predominate as the subordinate variant, forming part of the pattern of quadruple rhythms which run through the poem. The irregularities here represent disturbances and agitations that intrude on the otherwise unified flow of Prufrock's meditations. The Michelangelo couplet reappears for the second and last time as a tired refrain; and then, in the sixth stanza, the time motif is resumed with the opening line "And indeed there will be time". Other motifs resumed from the stanza are those of personal appearance and grooming as well as that of "decisions and revisions", the latter being finally recapitulated in the nonsense rhythms of the music hall. The same pattern of contrasts and antitheses which had run through the fourth stanza is maintained in the progression of condensed conceits that mark Prufrock's fluctuations of feeling in the present paragraph. After making what seems to be an allusion to the stairs leading from Hell to Heaven in Dante's Purgatorio, Prufrock has a vision of himself as a balding dandy content to defer indefinitely the decision to assume the higher responsibilities of his spiritual life ("Time to turn back and descend the stair"). He therefore descends from this Dantesque allusion and occupies himself with petty concerns over his manner of dress — My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

It is as if he were trying, like Thomas Buddenbrooks, to bolster his flagging ego by ignoring the great problems of existence and taking refuge in his dressing room. His false bravado and artificial confidence are reflected in the rising iambic rhythm of these long lines whose very length seems to sustain his confidence momentarily — that is, the lines expand and the rhythms "mount" in harmony with his expanding ego and "mounting" collar. Then he rises again and boldly asks if he dare "disturb the universe?" But the nursery rhythms of the last two lines w

u

w

v

w

n

In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

form a satiric commentary on both his dandyistic aspirations and his metaphysical probings. His ego punctured, he resigns himself

56

THE PRTJFKOCK SYNDROME

gloomily to a life of inaction, for in the passage of time all his "decisions and revisions" will be reversed. I t is worth noting that the personal appearance motif, introduced by a single line in the fourth stanza ("To prepare a face"), is here being given extended treatment, adding a note of anxiety and fear to what was before simply a casual statement. Prufrock worries about his growing baldness, his thin arms and legs; then he takes feeble consolation in the fact t h a t he is foppishly attired. Yet his fine clothes cannot conceal the effects of aging — "They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!' " — any more than his fine manners can conceal his deteriorating psyche. The trochic-iambic preponderance is still maintained in the sixth stanza. Two-thirds of the feet are duple, while half the lines read in a regular duple measure. The fact t h a t the nonsense rhythms of the last two lines are strictly metronomic adds a further element of regularity to the other duple verses. Altogether there are eight double trochees in this stanza, four of which appear in subdued or lightly accented form and four in the heavier Gilbert and Sullivan manner //

^

\

^

("In a minute there is time"). I n its heavier and more obvious form the double trochee accentuates the self-parodying or satirical elements in the line; it seems also to emphasize by contrast t h e petty and ridiculous nature of some of Prufrock's notions. The seventh stanza marks an abrupt change as Prufrock's mood suddenly turns retrospective and sad. His mental agitations melt in a sea of Tennysonian liquids and deep vowel sounds — For I have known them all already, known them all: — Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons . . .

Like the Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night, or like the dyspeptic Tennyson himself, he seems to have lapsed into a state of melancholy resignation. As if in masochistic self-indulgence, we see Prufrock measuring his life, or rather his superficial existence, in coffee spoons; he listens to the dying voices and subdued music, for his whole life has been a succession of falling cadences: I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

Here Eliot is alluding to the opening scene of Twelfth Night. When the Duke Orsino, whose passions are unrequited, calls for sad music

THE PRTJPROCK SYNDROME

57

to accompany his mood ("That strain again! it had a dying fall"), one perceives a thinly concealed masochism underneath his emblem of the bleeding heart; the mood is one of Byronic melancholy, somewhat perverse and pathological, in which the dying strain seems momentarily to soothe him. This music and these voices mingle to harmonize with Prufrock's introspective mood. The smooth iambic succession of soft articulations t h a t are set in an adagio tempo, the liquids and full vowel sounds, the parallel phrasing, the insistent long U rhymes — all of these things seem to enforce the unity of Prufrock's feelings. The food and time motifs, the voices and the elegant rooms, are recapitulated and set in the sad music of this stanza. What he knows — the coffee spoons, the dying voices, the music — seems meaningless and tedious to him: so how can he presume to know anything of real importance? The eighth and ninth stanzas resume Prufrock's mood of melancholy retrospection, but with greater elaboration and detail as seen in the concreteness of the new imagery. Instead of evenings and afternoons, dying voices, and music, there are eyes and arms, pins, butt-ends, tables, and shawls. Even the verbs are more concrete: "pinned", "wriggling", "spit". I t is as though the shorter seventh stanza was merely a general and preliminary sketch for the fuller and more detailed picture presented in the two succeeding stanzas. As a continuation and elaboration of the preceding paragraph, the resumption of the old mood is set by the opening lines: And I have known the eyes already, known them all — The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall . . .

Here we encounter an interlocking pattern of repetition and variation: the word "eyes" is repeated in the first and second lines; "formulated" is repeated in the second and third lines; "pin" in the third line reappears as "pinned" in the fourth. Hence the lines are sonally and semantically linked tightly together. The same monotonously slow duple-iambic rhythm marks the cadence here as in the previous paragraphs, but in the present paragraph Prufrock's reveries assume a strange masochistic aspect as the eyes of imaginary women pin him to a wall and paralyze his

58

THE PRTJFKOCK SYNDROME

will to speak or to act. The word "pin" takes on a sinister connotation. I n the sixth stanza Prufrock's tie is "asserted by a simple pin", b u t here the women's eyes pin him down, perceiving his inner weaknesses and preventing him from asserting himself. Since he is trapped in a vicious cycle of superficial social activities and is unable to rise above the trivialities of his existence, he cannot even begin to reject the life which has imprisoned his soul; he can presume nothing — Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of m y days and ways ? And how should I presume ?

I n the expression "butt-ends" we have another reiteration of the smoke-fog and candle-end motto image. This motto recurs in the "Preludes" as "The burnt-out ends of smoky days" and in "Burbank with a Baedeker" as "The smoky candle end of time". Here Eliot alludes to Prufrock's weary succession of frustrations, his burnt-out desires and unfinished business. Indeed, the phrase "butt-ends of my days and ways" symbolizes the speaker's entire fragmented existence, and the memory of his frustrations cannot be erased from his mind. The ninth stanza gives the final touch to the portrait begun in the seventh. We now progress from the ladies' eyes to their arms and dresses — And I have known the arms already, known them all — Arms that are braeeleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair !] \

H

^

la it perfume from a dress U

w

\

That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?

What began as a vague and general picture of Prufrock's boredom a t last becomes more concrete and vivid as our eyes focus on the details of the ladies. Certain nuances of their personal appearance do not escape the observation of the speaker: the women's braeeleted arms, which ordinarily seem to be bare, are "downed with light brown hair" in the lamplight.

THE PRUFROCK

SYNDROME

59

Yet the ladies remain faceless and bodiless: like Picasso, Eliot has exhibited only salient details of their persons, t h a t is, only those details which contribute directly to the speaker's moods and meanings. I n executing his concise portrait of the ladies, Eliot has suppressed all extraneous description and concentrated exclusively on those attributes which particularly affect Prufrock's state of mind — the eyes t h a t burn into his soul and paralyze his will, the arms t h a t seem to soothe or imprison him, the dress t h a t diverts him from the business of serious thinking. We feel the penetration of the eyes, the graceful movement of the arms as they "lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl"; we smell the perfume from a dress. The details of the portrait are unusually sharp. At the same time, the picture is left deliberately incomplete: we see the ladies only in fragments, in partial though vivid glimpses, and their unreality is such that they seem simply an abstraction born of Prufrock's brain. I n short, they are exhibited only as they are conceived by Prufrock; and if the reader sees them as an illusory image, it is probably because Prufrock, in his neurotic state, also sees them in this light. A definite pattern of repetition and variation, as well as of progression, unifies stanzas seven through nine. Consider the opening lines of each stanza: For I have known them all already, known them a l l . . . . And I have known the eyes already, known them a l l . . . . And I have known the arms already, known them a l l . . .

The picture of Prufrock's life with certain women, whether real or imaginary, progresses from the general to the concrete — from a generalized portrait of Prufrock's tired existence to particular aspects of t h a t existence. The latter manifests itself in the form of Prufrock's perception of particular attributes of his ladies — those attributes which singularly affect him. The predominance of liquids and soft articulations in all three stanzas, corresponding to the softness of the decor and the softness of the ladies, give further support to the unity of tone and mood pervading them. The repetitions in words and phrasing, as well as the predominant duple rhythms, tend to stabilize the movement of these three paragraphs, while the introduction of new images and the growing concreteness of the imagery gives us a sense of progression.

60

THE PRTTFROCK SYNDROME

Another unifying factor is found in the repetition of riming sounds. Such rimes as ALL, UME, and I N form part of the riming scheme for all three stanzas; in fact, these sounds compose nearly twothirds of all the rimes, thus contributing to the overall pattern of sonal unity. As in most of the other paragraphs, the double trochee still maintains its role as the chief subordinate rhythmical figure. Although it appears mostly in a muted or somewhat irregular form ("Arms t h a t are braceleted and white and bare") its disguised form prepares us for the music hall rhythms of its climactic appearance near the end of the ninth stanza: II

w

^

^ II

\

Is it perfume from a dress

u

w

^ \

^ II

That makes me so digress ?

This heavily accented couplet is followed by a line containing two double trochees of a more subdued variety: "Arms t h a t lie along a table, or wrap around a shawl". The closing lines of this stanza reaffirm the iambic predominance: v>

/

w

/

w

/

And should I then presume ? ~

/

^

/

^

/

And how should I begin?

The tenth stanza marks an abrupt transition as the locale of t h e imagery shifts from the lamplit drawing-room to the sordid streets of a depressed neighborhood: Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows ? . . .

There is also a shift in social classes from the upper echelons of society to what appear to be the dregs of humanity. Although t h e iambic meter continues to predominate, the articulations grow harder as if to harmonize with the harsher attributes of the streets. Not only is this paragraph distinguished by a return of the street imagery, but there are also repetitions of the evening image (dusk), the smoke image (pipe smoke), the clothing imagery (shirt-sleeves), and the windows. The connotations of the clothing imagery are

THE PBTJEROCK SYNDROME

61

quite different from those in the sixth stanza — for here, in this lower-class urban environment, all suggestions of foppishness and vanity have been removed. The men with whom Prufrock empathizes are left alone with their lonely thoughts, untainted by dandyism and unadorned by any morning coats and stiff collars. The next brief paragraph, a blank verse couplet, announces another sudden shift in locale: I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The submarine imagery occurs in startling contrast to the preceding imagery of drawing-rooms and city streets. A pattern of descending levels is also in evidence as Prufrock's soul falls from elegant rooms to the lonely streets; thence he sinks to the bottom of the sea. The metonymy for a crab ("a pair of ragged claws") characterizes the speaker as a victim of strong and incomprehensible outside forces. As an undersea image, it is a faint echo of the "sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells" of the poem's opening; but, more importantly, it points forward to the concluding stanza of "Prufrock", in which the speaker reminisces that he has "lingered in the chambers of the sea . . .". I n the twelfth stanza Prufrock abruptly shifts back into present tense and he once again finds himself in the drawing-room; bu^ this time, as in the sixth stanza, his state of mind is greatly agitated by his memory of failures which flash through his mind with unusual rapidity. That is, he has failed in the past, and he is fearful lest his f u t u r e ventures fall short of success and thus embarrass him. This stanza is pivotal in t h a t it acts as a transitional recapitulation of nearly all that has gone before. The central images of times of day, food, and personal appearance are all dynamically recapitulated in a condensed and novel form, so that the entire passage might be considered as a subclimax preparing us (perhaps falsely) for some startling new insight into Prufrock's character. This stanza illustrates the cumulative effects t h a t arise naturally out of Eliot's repetitive scheme. That is, each of the earlier stanzas may introduce two or three new images while reiterating others. Here, however, several dominant images are brought together in close order, creating an abrupt and intense accumulation of prior effects. This complex of effects, in turn, is symptomatic of the speaker's cumulative mental crisis.

62

THE PBTJFROCK SYNDROME

The quiet opening of the stanza, reiterating Prufrock's mood of melancholy resignation, is rather deceptive: And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

The speaker seems to be transferring his own feelings to the evening. There is, too, an echo and elaboration of the etherized evening image as well as of the closing line of the "yellow smoke" stanza ("Curled once about the house, and fell asleep"). The "you and me", of course, suggests the "you and I " of the poem's first line. Again, like the evening, Prufrock no doubt sees himself "Stretched on the floor" as an unwilling victim of circumstances, and he probably "malingers" in his dyspepsia. He asks: Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

This question, implying self-doubt, hints t h a t his drawing-room existence gives him no preparation for solving the deeper problems of life. The dissonant rhyme of "ices" and "crisis", furthermore, accentuates the conflicting nature of the two lines; it emphasizes the contrast between his superficial social life and the necessity of resolving his psychic difficulties. He frames his opening question in the inadequate terms of his meaningless social environment — dinner-plates, coffee spoons, tea, cake, and ices — so t h a t he can neither dare nor presume anything. I n the last half of the stanza, his reveries assume pathological proportions: But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

There is no melancholic resignation or simple emotional transfer here. He is now in a state of morbid and masochistic fantasy as he imagines his decapitated head served on a platter. B u t even here he cannot escape the embarrassment of appearing ridiculous, of

THE PRTTFROCK SYNDROME

63

seeing his own balding head in contrast to the head of J o h n t h e Baptist — note the self-parodizing quality in t h e music-hall //

^

\

w

H

r h y t h m of "in upon a platter". Prufrock's conception of God as " t h e eternal F o o t m a n " adds a tone of humor and ridicule to this passage, revealing the speaker as an incorrigible snob even during his most serious religious meditations. The sentence " I a m no p r o p h e t " prefigures t h e Hamlet episode ( " I am not Prince H a m l e t " ) and fits into Prufrock's p a t t e r n of self-degradation. His envisioned moment of greatness has flickered; he realized t h a t his triumphs in t h e world are ridiculous, whether in t h e eyes of God or women; and now, for the first time, he admits his defeat. Eliot's studies of French prose seem to have influenced t h e rhythmical a n d syntactical qualities of his verse. As in French there are a great m a n y parallel constructions in this stanza — " t h e afternoon, t h e evening" as it "sleeps" or "malingers" and is "Smoothed b y long fingers"; it is "Asleep" a n d " t i r e d " as it lies "Stretched on the floor . . .". The repeated subject, t h e repeated verbs, adjectives, a n d past participial phrases — these reiterated elements give a unity and flow to the first sentence of the stanza. The remaining eight lines of t h e stanza, as in a typical French paragraph, are all centered on the subject — "Should I " , " B u t though I have", "Though I have", " I am no prophet", " I have seen", " A n d I have seen", " I was afraid". As in the first sentence, t h e parallel syntactical elements and t h e phrasal repetitions create groups of nearly identical rhythmical configurations. Compare t h e /

^

^

/

/

^

following rhythmical phrases: "though I have w e p t " , "Though I have seen", " I have seen", " A n d in short", and so on. The iambic progression is still the dominant r h y t h m of this stanza, taking up about seventy-five per cent of t h e feet. Y e t there is n o t a single line t h a t flows in a uniform duple r h y t h m : each verse contains one or more metrical variants t o break t h e evenness of t h e iambic flow. Also, a new p a t t e r n of subordinate rhythmical variants emerges here as a result of t h e fact t h a t t h e triplet (anapests and dactyls) has conspicuously displaced t h e double trochee as the main subordinate variant. Indeed, t h e preponderance of triplets over double trochees is at a rate of over three to one (there are three double trochees, eight dactyls, a n d two anapests). The following verses illustrate t h e emergence of this new triplet p a t t e r n :

64

THE PRFFROCK /

w

w

/

w

SYNDROME /

w

\

I am no prophet — and here's no great matter; w

w

/

l

w w w

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, w

W

/

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

The fact that there is a more complex pattern of subordinate rhythmical variants at work here intensifies the feeling of Prufrock's increased mental agitation. The agitated dactylic rhythms, which break the regular iambic flow of each line, pack the verses with additional force and seem to reflect the speaker's almost unbearable mental tension: \

w

w

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, /

W W

Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, / W W

I am no prophet . . . .

The tension created by the increased frequency of dactylic-anapestic figures is momentarily broken in the thirteenth stanza. Here the evenly flowing iambic rhythm is interrupted by a number of double trochees - though triplet figures, and even a quintuplet, contribute to the overall pattern of metrical variations. The incidence of double trochees increases slightly as if in preparation for their dominant role in the fourteenth stanza. I n the thirteenth stanza the mind of Prufrock drifts once more into the drawing-room, still trying to resolve its dilemma, still trying to simplify and schematize its role in the world by squeezing the universe "into a ball" (as in Marvell's "Coy Mistress"). We find the same repetitions and hesitations, the same shrinking from the task at hand, the same pathetic barrier to understanding between himself and his imaginary lady. He asks himself: Would an a t t e m p t to solve the "overwhelming question" of the meaning of life be worth-while? The patterns of repetition here are justified both aesthetically and psychologically, reflecting the hesitations and half-formed resolutions of a man whose strongest yearnings remain stillborn. Even while he is trying to formulate his "overwhelming question", he is diverted by the superficial conditions of his empty life — "the cups, the marmalade, the tea". Finally, in the five fines beginning

THE PRTTFROCK SYNDROME

65

"To have bitten off the matter with a smile" and ending with " I shall tell you all", he seems at the point of recognizing his problem. The pattern of repeated infinitive phrases suggests the tone of aggressive self-assertion by dint of their steady rhythm, their strong beat, and their climactic arrangement. None the less, he is put off in his quest by one of the women, who says: " 'That is not what I meant at all' " . O r perhaps this statement echoes Prufrock's inability to articulate his thoughts. Other repetitions in phrasing are in evidence: "And would it have been worth it, after all", "Would it have been worth, while", "After all", "after the cups", "Among the porcelain, among some talk", "come from the dead", "Come back to tell you all", "tell you all", "That is not what I meant", "That is not it". The word all is repeated five times in different positions in the stanza, always strategically at the end of a line. Altogether, in a stanza of only twelve lines there are at least twenty-one repeated elements. In addition, all but five of the lines carry the same riming sounds as are found in previous stanzas, and four of the rhymes are identical — all of this gives us a highly unified pattern of sound. As pointed out earlier, the repetition of identical words and phrases insures the recurrence of nearly identical rhythmical patterns, thus contributing to the rhythmical unity of the whole. Such phrases as "after all", "would it have been worth it", or "at all" carry these reiterated rhythms. The particular phrase after all, besides serving rhythmical and sonal functions, also acts as a link between the first lines of the stanza, tying in with " A f t e r the cups". The phrase you and me echoes both the initial you and I in the poem's opening line and Time for you and time for me in the fourth stanza. There are also certain patterns of movement discernible in the meter-fluctuations between a firm and regular pulse, and one that wavers as if with indecision, reflecting Prufrock's own mental vacillations. The following transcription of the stanza's rhythms will better illustrate this point: And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 3 3

THE PKTJFKOCK SYNDROME

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

J> -T3 fh

U~2

J73 r~}. J

Would it have been worth while,

J J J J

J)

J

7

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

•H fTT^

FTTi

J~~

To have squeezed the/universe into a ball

j — r r r m j To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

j) j~2 ¿/—j n si.

fi

To say: "I am Lazarus, come f r o m t h e dead,

J>J n s h

r~r~} J

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" —

i n n . s ^

n.j

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

j j ' r h i m J— Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.

1

J

n r ~ n

That is not it, at all."

/ 0 the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter

Ft

J

]

J

J J J f5 -

And oil her daughter

They wash their feet in soda water

i ¿>

f31

These words are modeled after the popular song "Redwing". Immediately after this sequence about Mrs. Porter, Eliot quotes from Verlaine's "Parsifal": "Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!" Thus he brings about a sharp contrast between the vulgar actions of Mrs. Porter and her daughter and the voices of children s inging. Although the dominant metrical form of the opening paragraph is heroic versification, the beginning lines do not strictly conform to this pattern: The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf /

/

w

w

w

/

•

/

x

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

/ ^

I

I

\

/

/

W W /

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. / / (\) / / Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. i i i / / / The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, /

/

W

/

/

/WW

/

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends /

/

\

W

W

/

/

/

W W /

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. /

/

/WW

/

/WW/

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; /

W

W

/ W W /

Departed, have left no addresses. WW

/

WW

/

WW

/

w

w

/

B y the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . .

Here we find a mixed accentual-syllabic pattern in which accentual triplets and monosyllabic feet (marked) are combined with duplesyllabic sequences. The first two are accentual pentameters, the

'the waste land'

206

t h i r d verse is an accentual hexameter, and t h e fourth is a strict iambic pentameter. The remaining lines are all accentual with a dominant p a t t e r n of iambs, while the triplets constitute the leading subordinate pattern. I n the last three lines of the sequence we discern a thickening triplet pattern, culminating in an accentual tetrameter t h a t is a pure anapestic sequence reminiscent of Biblical rhythms. The predominating iambic progression in these lines corresponds to the steady flow of the Thames River, while the conflict between t h e duple a n d triple feet corresponds to t h e antithesis between the contemporary setting of the river a n d its Elizabethan traditions. I t is t h e iambic measure t h a t prevails, however, for it leads directly into t h e main heroic p a t t e r n of the next sixteen lines, beginning with a repetition of Eliot's quotation of Spenser: / / / / Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, / / / / / Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. (\) / / \ / But at my back in a cold blast I hear / i i i i i The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

i

i

i

i

\

A rat crept softly through the vegetation

i

i

i

\

i

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

i

i

I I

While I was fishing in the dull canal

T h e first line is a strict iambic pentameter; t h e second reads as an accentual pentameter b u t scans as an iambic hexameter; t h e third scans as a heroic verse, while the fourth is an accentual hexameter; t h e last three lines conform to t h e rules of iambic pentameter scansion, even though t h e fifth verse contains eleven syllables, giving it a feminine ending. Significantly, t h e last three lines parody t h e modern industrial scene: written in dignified heroic versification and enriched with liquid harmonies (marked), their sole descriptive function is to depict a rat. The remaining nine lines of t h e passage roughly conform to t h e rules of heroic versification. Of t h e two iambic pentameter lines quoted from The Tempest, i ^ ^ i / i / Musing upon the king my brother's wreck i

i

i

I

I

And on the king my father's death before him,

'THE WASTE LAND'

207

one contains a dactylic substitution in the first foot, and the other is strictly regular. These brief quotations from Shakespeare and Spenser, besides intensifying the contrast between the Renaissance and modern times, add the luster and authority of tradition to Eliot's original metrical devices; they plaintively recall an imaginary past which seems superior to the "gashouse" squalor of the present. The incidental rime that adorns these heroic variations is often used to accentuate the tone of mordant irony: Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long,

or it may serve to unite sentences within the passage: Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

Eliot's quotation from the marching song, with its music hall rhythms, abruptly breaks off the heroic pattern; and the dissonant rime between "Porter" and "daughter" gives this passage a sort of jazzy vulgarity in keeping with its profane allusions. Thoughout the opening stanza of the third movement, metrical unity is enhanced considerably by the numerous phrasal repetitions. The borrowed refrain from Spenser, "Sweet Thames, run softly", is repeated twice: once in the fourth line and again in the eleventh. This is the key line in Eliot's scheme of metrical induction, for with it he introduces the prevailing heroic pattern of the stanza. The image "Sweet Thames" is repeated three times, while the expressions "But at my b a c k . . . I hear" and "The nymphs are departed" are each reiterated twice. Besides repeating dominant images and feelings, these expressions also make for exact duplications of interlocking rhythmical sequences and imitate the speaker's repetitive thought patterns. The next brief paragraph, i

i

i

Twit twit twit I

i

I

i

i

I

Jug jug jug jug jug jug w / / So rudely forc'd. ^ / Tereu,

'the waste

208

land'

reiterates and recapitulates in final form the Philomel image, reemphasizing the "dirty" sound by setting it in the vulgar context of Mrs. Porter and the homosexual Mr. Eugenides. The strong iambic progression of the last two verses prepares us for the blank verse variations of the next paragraph: / / Unreal City / / \ i i Under the brown fog of a winter noon i

i

I

I

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

i

i

i

\

i

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants / / / C.i.f. London: documents at sight, / _ / / Asked me in demotic French

i

i

i

T o luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

i

\

i

\

I I

Followed b y a weekend at the Metropole.

These highly irregular variants on the blank verse line emphasize the repugnance of the speaker toward the Smyrna merchant's invitation. Although all but the first, sixth, and eight lines scan as iambic pentameters, the seventh is the only line that both reads and scans as a regular iambic pentameter. The last line of the closing couplet is a strict trochaic hexameter, its dissonant rime echoing the dissonance of the Porter-daughter rime of the first paragraph and reflecting the speaker's disgust. With the substitution of "winter noon" for "winter dawn", the first two lines are an exact duplication of the opening two lines from the fourth paragraph of the first movement, thus marking a return to the city imagery of that movement. Just as Mrs. Porter represents an elaboration of the Belladonna image from the Tarot pack, Mr. Eugenides is a development of the "one-eyed merchant". The entire paragraph is a reiteration of the cosmopolitan motto with more sinister connotations — that is, unnatural vice as a manifestation of the sterility and love themes. The next two stanzas, composing the clerk-typist section, constitute the most carefully and elaborately developed scene in The Waste Land. Moving from the general setting of London in the twilight hour of the late afternoon, the description next focuses on the typist and her friend. A t the close of the scene we find ourselves once again along with the young woman as she paces her room and

'the waste

land'

209

reflects absently on the weary futility and boredom of her love affair. Tiresias's role as the observer of the scene here assumes dominant proportions, for it is through his eyes t h a t we view this sordid love affair; hence the scene is controlled by a unified point of view. Since Tiresias is both man and woman, he is the ideal observer for the love-making scene. He has seen and experienced sensual love from the viewpoint of both sexes and has judged t h a t men derive more pleasure from love than women. This notion is reflected in the fact t h a t the clerk's passions in this scene are violently aroused while the typist's responses are indifferent. Tiresias is also a witness to the eternal recurrence of sterile passions whether they occur in ancient Greece or modern London: (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

I n the realms of both the living and the dead he has seen men and women caught in the vicious cycle of sensual passions t h a t burn with a sterile fire. And with his prophetic powers he can foresee only the endless repetition of this profitless coupling of men and women so t h a t his observations invest the scene with strong ironic undertones. He is the all-experienced interpreter of human sins. Tiresias's role here is not without a note of lewdness associated with the violet coloration suffusing the scene. The ambiguous lighting effects of the "violet hour", in which the day melts into night, seem appropriate as a setting for the ambiguous sexuality of Tiresias, a man who had melted into woman and who now exists as both man and woman. Retrospectively, the indefiniteness of the color corresponds with the indefinite sexuality of Mr. Eugenides, a man with a woman's passions. Remembering the craving for violet and mauve on the part of the fin-de-siecle aesthetes, as well as the morbid interest in voyeurism t h a t pervaded the decadent art of t h a t period, we note t h a t the violet coloration seems to associate itself with Tiresias's role as voyeur, pathologically interested in spying on naked human forms. Or if we are to consider the color violet as the traditional color of mourning in terms of Christian symbolism, we discern a tone of mourning for the death of fruitful love, or for the sterility of modern passions, which is the theme of this section.

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The clerk-typist section presents a variation on the love and sterility themes. As the Mr. Eugenides episode exhibits a homosexual perversion of love, the present scene dramatizes the fruitless and unsatisfying affair of the typist and her lower middle-class lover, and both are related to the theme of modern spiritual sterility. The typist, as a variant on the feminine motif, symbolizes meaningless sexual activities; her lover represents fruitless lust. The dominant versification pattern of the scene is that of heroic verse set roughly in alternating rime, in which the reader perceives a dynamic tension between the traditional form and the contemporary subject-matter. In using heroic versification in this manner, Eliot is pouring new wine into an old bottle, enriching the older form by extending its application to novel subjects. The clerk-typist scene contains the most sustained passage of heroic verse that has ever been found in Eliot's poetry, with the highest percentage of strict iambic pentameter lines. The unity of the form is further enhanced by the heavily increased frequency of rime in comparison with the other sections of the poem. Only a fourth of the lines are blank, whereas in most parts of the poem rime is used only casually for special effects. Eliot exploits the traditional dramatic propensities of the iambic pentameter line and adorns it with rime in order to project what is perhaps the most sustained and intensely dramatic scene in the poem. Like the good chef who defers the main course of a fine dinner until after a few appetizers are served, Eliot does not launch into his heroic versification immediately at the outset of his scene. H e "teases the appetite" by introducing the scene with a succession of long accentual lines mixed with a few iambic pentameters: / / / (\) / / A t the violet hour, when the eyes and back / (x) / / Turn upward from the desk, when the human j

/

engine waits

/ / / Like a taxi throbbing waiting, / / i i a I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between / \ two lives, I

I

i

i

i

i

* b Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see \ i i / / / a A t the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

'THE WASTE LAND' I

/

I

211

I

I

* b Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, / / / / / The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, / lights / / / / Her stove, and lays out food in tins. / i i i c Out of the window perilously spread i i \ i / d Her drying combinations touched by the sun's i

last rays, i

/

i

i

/

* c On the divan are piled (at night her bed) i

i

i

/

d Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. i i I I / / I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs i

i

I

I

(e) Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

The iambic pentameters (marked with asterisks) prefigure the dominant heroic versification of the next twenty-seven lines. The predominating duple rhythm eases the transition into the heroic passage, while the frequency of the rime increases in anticipation of the rimed heroic verse. The introductory verses show a tendency toward a stronger regularity and unity, which aesthetically conditions the reader for the more regular verses to follow. The structural unity and continuity of this passage are maintained, not only by the irregular alternation between accentual verses and iambic pentameters, but also by the repetitions and variations that dominate the opening lines, which I have rearranged so as to show the two main repetitive patterns in close juxtaposition: (1) At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits . . . At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward . . . . (2) I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour . . . I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene . . . .

These repetitions, in addition to emphasizing the role of the observer and the twilight setting, serve also to intensify the leading rhythmi-

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cal patterns. They conduce to the unity of impression while t h e variant phrases contribute to the forward movement of t h e lines. The reiterated phrase " A t t h e violet h o u r " introduces a rising iambic cadence. when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human /

^

/

engine waits,

followed by the falling trochaic r h y t h m of the next line, (O ~ / ~ / / Like a taxi throbbing waiting, so t h a t t h e r h y t h m s alternately aspire a n d fall off nervously in harmony with the tired aspirations and depressions of t h e characters in this scene. This alternating r h y t h m resembles t h a t of a badly tuned internal combustion engine in which the motor idles in fluctuating cycles of smoothness and unevenness. Eliot's continued mechanization of t h e r h y t h m here, enforced b y t h e machine imagery of taxis a n d gramophones, suggests t h e " d e n a t u r e d " quality of the characters' lives. 35 Here we have a portrait of m a n detached f r o m t h e religious and intellectual aspects of life; he is all nerves a n d sterile passions in a world t h a t is mechanized and dehumanized. Eliot's tired r h y t h m s and machine imagery create an appropriate atmosphere for t h e dull and mechanistic affair of the typist and her lover. The close verbal repetitions of " w a i t " a n d "throbbing" in when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives . . . .

serve to knit these three lines tightly together. These repetitions strengthen the impression of anxious waiting, a n d they help bring about a fusion of h u m a n and mechanical qualities. The ascription of throbbing bisexuality to Tiresias, moreover, adds a sexual and historical note to this modern industrial setting. Despite the unified progression of effects from verse to verse, maintained in p a r t b y verbal a n d phrasal repetitions, the setting 35

Matthiessen, p. 60.

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for the clerk-typist scene reveals a great many contrasts in imagery, texture, and diction. Not only is the ancient figure of Tiresias superimposed on the modern scene amidst desks, human engines, and taxis, but the contemporary waterfront itself carries echoes from Sappho and from Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" ("Home is the sailor, home from the sea"). The contrast between the sailor and the typist is accentuated by the sudden shift in syntax, in which "the typist" changes from the object of "brings" to the subject of "clears": and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast . . . .

These images are connected by the central image of the "violet hour", for it is the hour t h a t seems to draw all to their respective homes, focusing at last on the typist as the main character of the scene. Even the textures of the images contained in the long opening nine-line sentence provide a series of interesting contrasts. The soft images of "violet hour" and "eyes" run in opposition to the hard textures of "back" and "taxi". All of these heterogeneous images and impressions are melted together in the twilight hour of the scene, in which, as Matthiessen observes, there is " a weaving back and forth" between phrases echoing "traditional loveliness" and those rendering "sharp, realistic perceptions of the actual city".3® Having composed the general setting for the scene and introduced the young woman as his principal character, Eliot next brings her bold lover into the picture and describes their weary love-making. Here Eliot presents, in concise dramatic form, two modern variants on the masculine and feminine motifs in order to develop synchronously the themes of sexual love and sterility. The role of woman as fertility symbol is inverted, for her indifference to her lover's caresses is as sterile as the lover's fruitless but burning passions. From the verses describing the lover's arrival to those which close the scene, a unified succession of alternately rimed iambic pentameters governs the meter. Fifteen of the twenty-seven lines are strict iambic pentameters, while the rest scan as heroic lines, resulting in a sustained pattern of heroic versification composed according to the best models of eighteenth-century heroic poetry. 37, 36 37

Matthiessen, p. 31. Kenner, p. 166.

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214

Yet we find none of the smooth, luxuriant rhythmical flow of Shakespeare's sonnets or the richly ornate thundering of accents as in Milton's Paradise Lost; nor do we find t h e precise mechanical staccato a n d symmetry of Pope's heroic couplets. Instead, we discover a kind of pastel reminiscence of the traditional heroic line. Despite the metrical correctness a n d balance of Eliot's lines, his passage produces effects t h a t are widely divergent from those of his Renaissance and eighteenth-century masters. The faint accents, t h e prosaic diction, t h e flat tone of the narrative, the mechanical tiredness of t h e typist's responses, a n d her indifference to her lover's passions — all of these qualities and tones are new to t h e heroic line, indicating t h a t Eliot h a s invested this traditional mode of versification with entirely novel effects. Eliot next prepares t h e reader for the dramatic action by bringing the young man onto the stage: I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbunoular, arrives, * A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. * The time is now propitious, as he guesses, * The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses * Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; * Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, * And makes a welcome of indifference.

(The regular iambic pentameters are marked with asterisks.) This passage has little of the lyric melancholy t h a t h a d characterized the opening lines. Kenner finds t h a t "its repeatedly disrupted rhythms, t h e automatism of its cadences, in alternate lines aspiring a n d falling nervously . . . constitute Eliot's most perfect liaison between t h e self-containing gesture of the verse and the presented fact." 3 8 Eliot's quick introductory sketch of t h e lover as he enters t h e flat is a little masterpiece of compressed insights and ironic observations. The young man's brash aggressiveness as he nonchalantly assaults the woman with his passions seems at once primitive a n d *' Kenner, Loc. Cit.

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mechanical, the latter quality harmonizing with t h e machine imagery t h a t opens and closes the scene. Her indifference t o his love-making symbolizes the death-in-life of h u m a n passions, bringing out the themes of sterility and sexual love in dramatic relief. As the lover "gropes his way, finding t h e stairs unlit", t h e reader is made to feel the intense despair and depression t h a t follows in t h e wake of useless sexual excitement. The concluding paragraph of the scene returns us once more to t h e woman alone in her flat: * a She turns and looks a moment in the glass, b Hardly aware of her departed lover; * a Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: b "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." * c When lovely woman stoops to folly and d Paces about her room again, alone, * c She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, * d And puts a record on the gramophone.

I have marked the regular iambic pentameter lines with asterisks in order to indicate t h e alternating pattern of regular and irregular heroic lines t h a t marked the opening verses of "A Game of Chess". Yet here the diction and phrasing are more prosaic, the accents are weaker, and the setting is less elegant. J u s t as the more elevated manner seems more appropriate for describing the society lady, the flatness of the style in this passage is entirely in keeping with the lower middle-class station of the typist. Matthiessen remarks t h a t the woman is not being "caricatured or mocked", b u t t h a t the underlying pathos is brought out b y " t h e contrast between her surroundings a n d those of traditional 'romantic love'". 3 9 Even the ironic overtones of "lovely w o m a n " in the Goldsmith quotation are muffled by the pathetic realization t h a t this woman has somehow been cheated out of a productive love life. I n inverting t h e role of woman as a fertility symbol, t h e woman here becomes a desiccated image of modern sterility, a n d her motions have become just as mechanical, just as dehumanized, as t h e taxis and gramophones which image modern life. Her speech Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.

J> J~2 j 39

Matthiessen, p. 32.

m n

/]•

216

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land'

reflects the nervous agitation of syncopated gramophone music. Nevertheless, it is the automatic gesture, the cheap gramophone music — and not the music of love or the satisfaction of a fruitful union with her lover — with which she tries to cure her boredom and relieve her nervousness. Considering the clerk-typist passage as a whole, we find t h a t Eliot has developed the scene with the same studied care as t h a t used to construct a scene in a well-written modern novel. There is the tripartite division of setting, action, and effect of action; there is a separate exposition for each of the characters as well as a climactic point at which they are brought together in dramatic synthesis; and at last there is the final paragraph portraying the aftermath of this synthesis as it appears in the consciousness of the woman. While continuity is maintained by the orderly progression of parts, the point of view is unified by the speaker, Tiresias, who remains the alert b u t passive spectator of the scene. As both participant and spectator of love-making in all ages, and as one who has felt the passions of both sexes, he seems unusually qualified to enter into the minds of both the woman and her lover. He is the all-experienced observer who is here witnessing another instance of the sterile burning of passions. Except for some of the strong emotive language and rich phrases used in the beginning of the scene ("violet hour", "throbbing between two lives"), most of the verses are set in flat, contemporary phraseology. Indeed, the first four verses of the concluding paragraph of the scene might have been arranged into prose: She turns and looks a moment in the glass, hardly aware of her departed lover. Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: "Well, now that's done, and I'm glad it's over."

The above prosaic description might easily have appeared in some of Somerset Maugham's fiction. If not for its poetic context, the phrasing might even appear to be a bit trite and overdone. But by setting this passage and others like it in definite patterns of lineation, rhythm, and rime, Eliot creates a poetic image of modern reality. The moderately long heroic lines are conducive to the same dramatic and narrative effects as those used in Elizabethan and Jacobean, or even Miltonic, blank verse; the modern phrasing and concrete diction, however, soften the accents of this traditional line and render it more suitable for framing contemporary subject-matter.

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The next stanza forms a transition, or bridge, between the clerktypist scene and the songs of the three Thames-daughters. Its opening line, "This music crept by me upon the waters", refers back t o the gramophone record and forward to the mandoline music. I t also calls to mind the prayer of Spenser quoted in the opening of the third movement: "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song." As a quotation from The Tempest, it recalls the lament of Ferdinand in his role as Fisher King and carries a strong reminiscence of the Thames in all its Renaissance grandeur; and as a perfect iambic pentameter line it ties in with the heroic versification of the preceding scene. Structurally, the first line of the stanza functions as a reiteration of the musical motif. Its music is softer and sweeter than the harsh syncopated pulses of the "Shakespeherian R a g " or the music hall rhythms of " 0 the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter". Nor does it have the "whining" quality of the mandolin music or the plaintiveness of the "Weialala leia" chant, both of which occur later on in the movement. Eliot brings about a fusion of the musical motif with the dominant water imagery as well as with a brief reiteration of the city or street imagery: / / / / / "This music crept by me upon the waters" / / / / / And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

I

l

l

!

/

O City city, I can sometimes hear / / / / / (\) Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

i

i

i i

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

i

i

i

And a clatter and a chatter from within

I

i

I

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

i

/

i

Of Magnus Martyr hold /

/

i

i

i

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The second line echoes the verse "Flowed up the hill and down King William Street" from the first movement, repeating some of the dominant rhythms and imagery of that movement. And just as we are brought to St. Mary Woolnooth in the first section of the poem, we are here confronted with the church of Magnus Martyr. The locale of the imagery has shifted from the typist's flat in the last

218

'the waste

land'

scene to the Thames waterfront — a new locale which synthesizes the imagery of both the water and the city streets. Like a cinematographer Eliot moves his "camera eye" along the waterfront streets; he hears the music and chatter from a low public bar; and then, by way of contrast, he suddenly focuses his lens on the elegant "Ionian white and gold" of Magnus Martyr. As a metrical transition between the iambic pentameter lines of the preceding scene and the short accentual lines of the next section, this stanza reveals a gradual weakening of the heroic verse. The first, third, fourth, and fifth lines are fairly regular iambic pentameters. Although the second line is extrasyllabic, it maintains the dominant iambic flow; and while the seventh line lacks a syllable, the arsis after the colon helps to give the verse a steady flow of accents; / / / (-> / "Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls . . . ."

The eighth line is a trimeter, and the closing line of the stanza is an accentual pentameter. The vulgar music hall rhythms of u v, // o \ o // o \ " II And a clatter and a chatter from within

-N I

M

JJ J JJ

simulate the quality of the mandolin music and momentarily dissipate the iambic pentameter base of the preceding line. In contrast to the isochronous succession of double trochees in this almost nonsensical modern line, the stately rhythm of the last three lines of the stanza carries a reminiscence of England's great past and thereby closes the stanza on a dignified tone. Having moved from the typist's flat to the waterfront, the lens next focuses on the river itself. In the first two stanzas the three Thames-daughters sing together as a group; then each of them sings separately and laments the loss of her virginity. As a setting for the girls' songs, the image of the modern Thames is projected in terms of short and largely unpunctuated lines that frame a succession of fluid but fragmented impressions. These irregularly rimed, truncated lines suggest debris floating in the river as well as the quick, fleeting images which they contain: / / The river sweats / / a Oil and tar

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/ / The barges drift ^ w / / b With the turning tide / s Red sails b Wide / / ^ ^ / / a To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

The rime, including t h e delayed rime in t h e last line, punctuates t h e accentual rhythmical sequence, in which the prevailing duple flow is periodically interrupted by an occasional triplet or spondee. The light accents are in harmony with t h e delicate visual impressions of the river and its floating world of detached objects. The subordinate triplet p a t t e r n assumes a dominant role in t h e chant which Eliot quotes from Wagner's Götterdämmerung: / i / Weialala leia 3 n JJ2J«J)J

y

Wallala leialala 7 1 2 J

A L U ?

This chant, taken from t h e Rheintochter-Motiv, serves to break t h e regular duple flow of t h e preceding lines, obtruding itself like a sudden breeze or note of agitation against t h e river's calm flow. More importantly, it relates Wagner's Rhine-daughters to Eliot's Thames-daughters with reminiscences of Spenser's river-nymphs. I n t h e Götterdämmerung t h e Rhine maidens bewail t h e t h e f t of t h e river's gold, for t h e loss has ruined t h e b e a u t y of the Rhine. T h e Thames-daughters bewail t h e loss of their virginity, and as a result the Thames is contaminated, for example, with "Oil a n d tar". I n the second stanza of t h e Thames-daughters' song, the scene melts back into t h e glorious days of the English Renaissance — Elizabeth and Leicester a Beating oars The stern was formed b A gilded shell

220

'the waste l a n d ' R e d and gold b The brisk swell a Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream b The peal of bells a White towers . . . .

Here again Eliot projects the scene in the same short and unpunctuated lines that were used in the first stanza of the Thames daughters' song, thus uniting the two stanzas. He enforces the elegance of the scene not only b y his reference to Elizabeth and Leicester but also b y his suggestion of the imagery used in Shakespeare's barge scene from Antony and Cleopatra. The dissonant rimes of bells with swell, and towers with shores, however, partly mar the beauty of this paragraph; similarly, the love affair of Elizabeth and Leicester, though superficially elegant and refined, proved to be as stale and fruitless a relationship as that of the typist and her lover. Following an exact repetition of the Weialala chant, the first of the Thames-daughters sings her lament: I

/

/

a "Trams and dusty trees. /

w

w

/

/

w

W

/

b Highbury bore me. Richmond and K e w /

/

,

w

w

,

/

a Undid me. B y Richmond I raised m y knees w

w

/

w

w

/

w

w

/

b Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe."

In order to differentiate the individual songs technically from the preceding two stanzas, Eliot has punctuated them with firm periods and set the songs in lines that are somewhat longer. Still the lines are reasonably short, and the phrasing is staccato to match the disjointed quality of the girls' broken lives. A fairly even accentual rhythm, alternating between triple and duple feet, characterizes this first song, with a pure dactylic sequence in the last line. I t is significant that the regularity of the rhythmical pulse, which is rather even in the first girl's song, decreases rather sharply in the second and third songs. The prevailing triplet pattern from the first song is carried into the beginning two lines of the second song, /

w

w

/

w w

/

M y feet are at Moorgate, and m y heart / W W

/

/

w

w

w

/

Under m y feet. A f t e r the event,

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but the last two lines are still more irregular: !

/

\

I

He wept. H e promised 'a new start.' / / i i i I made no comment. W h a t should I resent ?

The last song, the least rhythmical and most inarticulate of all the songs, closes the Thames-daughters' section: / / a " O n Margate Sands. / / b I can connect / / x Nothing with nothing.

i

i

I

I

a The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

i

i

/

b M y people humble people who expect / x Nothing." la la

Even the rime-scheme running through all three songs (abab) is less evident, more hidden, in the last song. The triple repetition and identical rime on nothing intensified the emptiness of the girls' lives, which are broken and floating aimlessly in the world like the debris drifting on the Thames. The final truncated reiteration of the Weialala chant ("la la") conveys the speaker's attitude of light cynicism and muted pathos as he hears the Thames-daughters lament the loss of their virginity. The Thames-daughters' songs, using the feminine motif, represent the last variation on the combined themes of sterility and sexual love. The disjointed metrical sequence of their individual songs, against the background of popular resort areas along the Thames, reflects the sterile disorganization of their minds following fruitless love affairs. In contrast to the limp meters of the preceding paragraphs, the firm accentual and syllabic rhythms of St. Augustine's message seem to measure the force of the saint's anger as he condemns the burning of sterile passions: i

/

i

To Carthage then I came

i

I

i

i

i

I

Burning burning burning burning

i

O Lord Thou pluckest me out /

I

O Lord Thou pluckest / burning

222

'THE WASTE LAND'

These strong rhythmical lines emphasize the urgency of the saint's message as he discovers in Carthage the "cauldron of unholy loves" t h a t "sang all about mine ears". In this "collocation" of "eastern and western asceticism", as Eliot calls it, the words of the Buddha and St. Augustine are synthesized, although in the Buddha's "Fire Sermon" the reader is asked to shun the senses because they are all on fire. The image of burning which closes the movement, according to Kenner, comprehends "the restless lusts of the nymphs, the heirs of city directors, Mr. Eugenides, the typist and the young man carbuncular, the Thames daughters", all of whom are unaware t h a t they are being burned. 40 The abrupt transition from commercial London to commercial Carthage adds historical emphasis to the notion of the eternal recurrence of sterile passions and lends further support to the themes of sterility and sexual love. Throughout the third movement both the feminine and masculine motifs have been exploited in order to dramatize the two synthesized themes. The nymphs, Mrs. Porter and her daughter, the typist, and the Thames-daughters represent the feminine motif; and the city directors, Sweeney, Mr. Eugenides, the house agent's clerk, Tiresias, and St. Augustine bring out the masculine motif. I t is perhaps intentional t h a t the basic imagery of this movement has been drawn from what the ancient and medieval philosophers considered to be the four fundamental elements — water, fire, earth, and air. Such images as " b a n k " and "low damp ground" represent earth imagery. The sentence "The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard" fuses earth and air imagery. The dominant images of the movement, however, are those of fire and water. Eliot achieves a unique unity of effect by dramatizing in successive glimpses the fire of sterile passions burning against the watery background of the Thames. 5

I n accordance with Eliot's pattern of alternating contrasts, the brief fourth movement is dominated by water imagery in opposition to the fire imagery t h a t closes the third movement. Since water is a fertility symbol, this passage is a variation on the fertility and " K e n n e r , p . 172.

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rebirth theme with strong mythical overtones from the ancient vegetation cults. The drowned sailor suggests the drowned gods, Tammuz, Adonis, and Siva, whose watery deaths supposedly promoted the fertility of the land. The movement also represents an expansion of the sketchy details presented in the Tarot pack; it recapitulates in final elaborated form the characters of the "drowned Phoenician Sailor" and the "one-eyed merchant", with suggestions of Mr. Eugenides and Ferdinand. Even the image of the wheel from the pack is subjected to a new development: it refers to the whirlpool that sucks Phlebas to his death. As we learn in Eliot's French poem, Dans le Restaurant, Phlebas is a merchant-sailor trading with Cornwall who is absorbed in "les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d'etain . . .". He is therefore, at least in part, a symbol of greedy mercantilism. Like Mr. Eugenides and the others, he is caught in the vicious circle (the "wheel") of materialistic exploitation. The notion of death and resurrection (or rebirth) is brought out in Phlebas' death. As he drowns he re-enacts the rises and falls that he has experienced in life: his whole life passes in review as an instantaneous memory. This brief dramatization of Phlebas' death prefigures the allusions to the death and resurrection of Christ in the last movement. In the drowning of Phlebas we have a novel variation on Eliot's submarine motto: / / / A current under sea / / / / / Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell / / / / He passed the stages of his age and youth / / Entering the whirlpool.

The motto originally appears in "Prufrock" as a crustacean creature "scuttling across the floors of silent seas", and as one who has "lingered in the chambers of the sea . . .". In "Mr. Apollinax" it takes the form of "worried bodies of men" drifting down in the "green silence". Here, as in "Mr. Apollinax", the speaker imagines the dead men under sea dreaming and in motion, or worried; he projects his own emotions into the lifeless bodies of the drifting men. In "Death by Water", however, he relates the submarine motto to the theme of fertility and rebirth. The rhythmical steadiness of the accents in this movement seem to match the steady rhythmical life of the sea. Unlike the predo-

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minantly accentual verses of the last several stanzas of "The Fire Sermon", the lines of "Death by Water" are all solidly based on a conventional scheme of syllabic versification. All except one of the lines may be scanned iambically; the exception scans as a trochaic hexameter ("Picked his | bones in | whispers. | As he | rose ^

/

and | fell. . ."). Indeed, the first two verses may be reduced to iambic pentameter scansion: / i i ) Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, / / / / (\) / Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

The true rhythmical sequence, though varying greatly from the basic heroic scheme, carries a fairly steady pattern of accents. This variation between the true rhythmical sequence and the abstract iambic scheme runs through every verse but one, and here the two metrical forms coincide: W

/

^

/

/

^

/

^

/

^

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward . . . .

I t is as if the imprisoned iambic pentameter rhythm, hinted at in the earlier lines, had suddenly sprung free to assert itself as the dominant form. The highly varied heroic lines of "Death by Water" have little of the regularity of the heroic versification used in the preceding movement. Their very irregularity, moreover, foreshadows the immense weakening of the heroic form that takes place in the fifth and final movement of The Waste Land, so that the fourth movement stands as metrical transition between the first three movements and the last movement of the poem.

6

The progressive weakening of the heroic structure in the fifth movement is accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of fourstress lines. Of the one hundred and eleven lines in the movement, only thirty are based on heroic versification while forty-four are four-stress lines, the pattern of which resembles that of AngloSaxon versification. Only twenty per cent of the heroic lines are strictly regular iambic pentameters, the rest being blank verse

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variants. To make matters worse as far as the purity of heroic versification is concerned, there are five highly irregular variants on the heroic lines. Such lines as Turn in the door once, and turn once only / / / / / Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

are so far from the iambic pentameter metrical base that one is tempted to disqualify them as permissible variants on this traditional meter. This progressive "debilitation" of the heroic pattern is evidenced in the fact that half of the heroic variants appear in the first two paragraphs, after which their appearance is only sporadic and incidental. In the remaining paragraphs there are twice as many four-stress lines as heroic ones, indicating that the accentual tetrameter has displaced the heroic line in this movement as the dominant metrical form (forty per cent of the verses are accentual tetrameters). It is significant that the opening three verses of the movement are simultaneously heroic variations and four-stress lines: / / / / / After the torchlight red on sweaty faces i i i / After the frosty silence in the gardens /

I

i

i

After the agony in stony places

This synthesis of the two metrical forms gives hint of a struggle between them. It is a struggle in which the four-stress line will win out. After the first stanza, all but a few of the four-stress lines have a metrical sequence that is entirely free of the iambic pentameter base — that is, the four-stress line breaks loose from blank verse dominance and functions as an autonomous metrical entity. Such /

i

i

i

a verse as "Who are those hooded hordes swarming" is a pure accentual sequence foreshadowing Eliot's increasing dependence on stress rhythms. The deterioration of the heroic structure in the fifth movement coincides with the speaker's vision of the decay and collapse of Western civilization. Images of decay and sterility assume such nightmare proportions that to put them in orderly blank verse would be entirely out of keeping with the chaotic images with which this movement abounds. The instability of the speaker's

226

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state of mind, therefore, is reflected in the rather unstable metrical sequences in which his feelings and impressions are set. From the point of view of structural thematics, the fifth movement represents a recapitulation of the sterility theme, taking up once again the dominant imagery of the second paragraph of the first movement: What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish?

I n the present movement the images of aridity, of the physical desert waste predominate; they are here expanded, elaborated upon, and recapitulated as symbolic projections of the sterility theme. In absence of the fertility theme, the water imagery has completely disappeared, except as a symbol of memory and desire: "Here is no water but only rock . . .". I n fact, there is an intensified repetitive pattern revolving about the words "water" and "rock" in the second paragraph; this pattern parallels a similar repetitive pattern involving the words "rock" and "shadow" in the first movement. The fertility theme is only hinted at as a plaintive hope ("If there were the sound of water only . . . ." and "Then a damp gust / Bringing rain"), while the love and sex theme is not treated at all, with the result t h a t the atmosphere of sterility is intensified. The feminine motif, which usually appears in conjunction with either the fertility theme or the love and sex theme, is here dissociated from these themes; it manifests itself either in weird and sinister forms ("A woman drew her long black hair out t i g h t . . . ." or " I do not know whether a man or a woman . . .") or in the form of women who seem to be wailing over the death of Christ ("Murmur of maternal lamentation"). The masculine motif is maintained, of course, by the voice of the speaker as well as by the allusions to Christ, his apostles, and the questing knight. The city imagery, like the feminine motif in this movement, occurs in conjunction with the sterility theme; b u t its manifestations always take the form of chaos and ruin — "Falling towers", "London Bridge is falling down". The orderliness of London as the "timekept City", 41 with its armies of citizens going to work in "the brown fog of a winter dawn" (Movement I) or coming home " F r o m Eliot's "The Rock", I.

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at "the violet hour" (Movement III), gives way to images of violence and disorder. Even the associated river imagery, which forms the dominant background for the third movement, appears only once in the present movement; it occurs, not as a fertility symbol, b u t as a component of the sterility theme: "Ganga was sunken . . .". Similarly, the vegetation imagery, having been introduced in support of the fertility theme in the first movement, reappears for the first time in this movement as part of the sterility theme in the form of "dry grass" and "limp leaves". Nearly all of the images from previous movements, therefore, are recapitulated here in distorted or inverted form, and all of them are marshalled in support of the sterility theme, resulting in a high degree of thematic unity for the movement as a whole. The first five paragraphs of "What the Thunder Said", as Eliot's notes indicate, represent a sustained narrative development of three subjects: (1) the journey to Emmaus in which Christ appeared to two of his disciples on the third day after the Crucifixion; (2) t h e approach to the Chapel Perilous, which is climaxed in the fifth paragraph by the final ordeal of the Christian knight in quest of the Grail; (3) the present decay of Eastern Europe. The three subjects are distinctly different; b u t while the first two are related in t h a t each of them is a pilgrimage or religious quest, the last subject may allude to the virulent atheism of the Eastern European barbarians who threaten the Christian West with extinction. 42 I n connection with the almost simultaneous development of these three subjects, Eliot has compressed several levels of time and space into the five beginning paragraphs. Not only has he drawn his subjects from three different epochs — antiquity, the middle ages, and modern times — but he has also shifted his locales, moving from Europe to the Holy Land and thence to the Antarctic wastes, and from ancient North Africa to modern Vienna and. London; then the speaker finds himself once more in a desert land metamorphosed into the questing knight. At the end of the pilgrimage we are suddenly transported to India during a terrible drought. I n condensing several locales and epochs into these five paragraphs, Eliot multiplies his aesthetic perspectives and deepens the religious symbolism of his poem by packing it with allusions to related myths, legends, and religious events from different times 12

See Eliot's Waste Land footnote for lines 366-377.

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'the w a s t e land'

and countries, all of which intensify our impression of spiritual drought and the need for salvation. I n t h e four preceding movements concrete instances of ancient a n d modern spiritual sterility h a d been dramatized in the consciousness of Tiresias. His mind having been saturated with detailed evidence of this spiritual decay, Tiresias is now transformed into the persons of the two disciples a n d t h e questing knight; he longs for salvation in the spiritually desiccated waste land of Western civilization. There are no longer any dramatic episodes, whether prolonged or brief; there is only the consciousness of universal spiritual decay coupled with t h e fervent hope for salvation because t h e physical aridity of the land has been symbolically transformed (in the speaker's mind) into t h e spiritual sterility of t h e soul, a n d t h e speaker seems to be praying for the heavenly waters of deliverance. T h e first stanza, with its images of " t h e frosty silence in the gardens" and "agony in stony places", as well as the line " H e who was living is now dead", contains unmistakable allusions to the Crucifixion of Christ and its effects on the world. There are also, according to F . R . Leavis, muted allusions to "the Hanged God a n d all t h e sacrificed gods . . . 'Adonis, Attis, Osiris', a n d all t h e others of The Golden Bough come in". For there is not only agony in t h e garden for Christ b u t agony in t h e modern waste land as well, a n d the waste land journey along 'the sandy road' becomes the J o u r n e y to Emmaus. 4 3 Structurally, this stanza creates an atmosphere of spiritual death-in-life a n d religious unrest; it prepares us f o r t h e perilous journey through a wilderness of mountain a n d plain. T h e dominating metrical sequence of the opening twenty-four lines consists of an alternation between blank verse variations a n d four-stress lines. These heavily accented long lines with their variable feet a n d phrasal repetitions reflect the tense anxiety and compulsive apprehensiveness which gnaw at t h e speaker's mind as he begins his waste land journey. As in the beginning of the Thamesdaughters' songs in the third movement, Eliot composes his first two paragraphs in an u n p u n c t u a t e d style, thus increasing t h e fluidity of movement f r o m line to line. I n order for the poet to project such a style with any degree of effectiveness, he must have 43

Leavis, p. 99.

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a simplicity and clarity of syntactical elements, and his lineation must be arranged in such a manner t h a t the implied punctuation and pauses are self-evident. I n these two stanzas a great deal of t h e syntactical clarity arises f r o m the m a n y verbal and phrasal repetitions t h a t r u n through them. The p a t t e r n of phrasal repetitions is set in t h e opening lines of t h e movement: /

^

/

w

/

W

/

I

/

/

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces w

/

/

After the frosty silence . . . . W

/ W W

After the agony . . . .

These repetitions take a different form at t h e end of t h e stanza: /

^

^

/

/

/

He who was living is now dead /

w

W

/

/

/

We who were living are now dying . . . .

I n t h e two passages quoted above, all of t h e lines begin with dactyls; t h u s they are united rhythmically as well as syntactically. Although the beginning stanzas of the Thames-daughters' song and the first two stanzas of the fifth movement are both unpunctuated, the structural differences between t h e two passages are a t once obvious. The soft, drifting movement of t h e two-stress lines in t h e Thames-daughters' section seems appropriate for conveying the fragmented impressions t h a t are floating lightly in t h e speaker's brain. The stronger accents a n d more sustained rhythmical force of t h e above-quoted lines, however, support t h e heaviness and tension which weigh upon the speaker at the opening of " W h a t t h e Thunder Said". The second stanza of the fifth movement continues in t h e same u n p u n c t u a t e d mode, although its beginning lines are somewhat longer in order to carry the sustained heaviness of the speaker's plaintive meditations. The increased line-lengths here represent an intensification of the speaker's feelings; the prolonged lines contain concrete images of drought and physical desiccation as opposed to t h e more generic images of the opening stanza. The incessantly reiterated words "mountains", "rock", a n d " w a t e r " strengthen our impression of t h e speaker's thirst, while certain less frequently repeated images, such as " t h e sandy r o a d " a n d "feet are in t h e sand", also intensify this impression. E v e n t h e casual images — "Sweat is d r y " , "Dead mountain mouth of teeth t h a t cannot

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spit", and "dry sterile thunder" — lend support to the general feeling of aridity and thirst which dominates the stanza. The lines / 1 1 / But red sullen faces sneer and snarl / / / From doors of mudcracked houses

reiterate the image of the opening verse of the movement ("After the torchlight red on sweaty faces") and place it in the more concrete setting of "mud-cracked houses". The verbs "sneer" and "snarl" seem in a sense to be objective correlatives for the physical sterility of the scene. The first few lines of the second stanza indicate a high degree of interlineal unity because of the words t h a t are repeated (italicized) from one verse to the next: / / / / Here is no water but only rock / i i i i Rock and no water and the sandy road i i i i / The road winding above among the mountains / i i i Which are mountains of rock without water / i i If there were water we should stop and drink / i i i i Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

According to Leavis, "the verse loses all buoyancy, and takes on a dragging, persistent movement as of hopeless exhaustion . . ,". 44 Some of this "dragging" movement, no doubt, is due to the numerous verbal repetitions which tend to arrest the progression of images by repeating them. These repetitions also suggest t h a t the speaker is suffering from a compulsive neurosis, perhaps a hallucination, for his whole mind is saturated with almost uniform impressions of aridity and thirst. Besides the interlineal unity within the stanza, there is an inter stanzaic unity t h a t depends on certain repetitions in imagery. We have already seen how the image of "the torchlight red on sweaty faces" is repeated in the image of "red sullen faces" in the second stanza. Besides this, the image of "thunder of spring over distant mountains" reappears in a varied form in the lines 44

Leavis, pp. 98-99.

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There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain,

t h e latter image being an elaboration of the first. The second half of the stanza, while continuing in the unpunctuated style, differs radically from the first half: / / If there were water / \ And no rook / / If there were rock /

I

And also water / And water / A spring I

I

I

A pool among the rock . . . .

I n this succession of predominantly two-stress lines, we are reminded of t h e almost identical form which Eliot uses for t h e Thames daughter passage. Nevertheless, because of t h e incessant and interlocking p a t t e r n of repetitions, these lines show a mental agitation on the p a r t of t h e speaker, a restlessness a n d nervous tension n o t present in the beginning of the Thames-daughter section. The repetitions of "rock" and " w a t e r " in various forms betray a wishfantasy: t h e speaker is dreaming of water while dying of thirst. Toward the end of the stanza the imagery becomes animated as t h e lines increase in length: Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water . . . .

The lines gradually lengthen as the speaker's desire for water expands, reaching a climax with his vision of the hermit-thrush; then, in his moment of disenchantment, when he realizes t h a t no water exists, t h e line abruptly contracts. The third stanza marks an abrupt change in tone a n d technical characteristics. The speaker's mind seems no longer able to sustain the tension of his thirst-ridden reverie: it must now shift to another subject. The former p a t t e r n of intensive repetitions set in short,

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land'

choppy lines gives way to a series of longer punctuated lines in which there is a progressive movement from verse t o verse. The lines There is always another one walking beside you / / ^ / / / Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded /

/

w

v.-

/

^

^

/

I do not know whether a man or a woman

contain a strong allusion to Christ as he appeared to two of his disciples on the journey to Emmaus. H e had revealed Himself as the mysterious, elusive stranger. The last line refers to the bisexual propensities of Tiresias, in whose person all the characters of the poem have merged. The meter of this stanza no longer depends on an iambic pentameter base; it is almost purely accentual with a prevailing duplet-triplet alternation. Although the first of these lines is set in a uniform succession of anapests, the other verses contain feet of variable length. The last verse of the third stanza, / / / / / —But who is that on the other side of you i

leads into the fourth stanza: / / / / What is that sound high in the air / / / Murmur of maternal lamentation / i i i Who are those hooded hordes swarming i

i

i

/

\

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth /

i

i

i

Ringed by the flat horizon only . . . .

The two stanzas are linked by their common reference to the Crucifixion, the "maternal lamentation" referring to the women weeping for Christ. The rich liquid consonance and evenly flowing quadruplets of the line "Murmur of maternal lamentation", incidentally, correspond with the softly flowing laments of the weeping women. Rhetorically, the two paragraphs are linked by the repeated questions t h a t run through both: there are two questions in the third stanza and three in the fourth. The last question in the passage brings in Eliot's third subject — decay of Eastern Europe and the fear t h a t Western Civilization will be overrun by Slavic barbarians. This subject also represents Eliot's terminal recapitulation of the crowd imagery from Movement I. The "crowds of people" are no

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longer "walking round in a ring", as revealed in Madame Sosostris' strange vision; nor are they the crowd t h a t "flowed over London Bridge". Instead they are a frenzied mob galvanized into the image of "hooded hordes swarming". The last half of the stanza begins with another question, thus relating it, again rhetorically, with the rest of the stanza: / I I / What is the city over the mountains /

/

/

I

I

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air / / Falling towers I

/

I

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria / / Vienna London / Unreal . . . .

Here is Eliot's final recapitulation of the city imagery: b u t instead of referring only to London, important cities of both ancient and modern times converge into one "Unreal city". Eliot has recapitulated this imagery, not in the quiet tones of his previous descriptions, but in terms of violent collapse. By using such strong concrete verbs as "cracks" and "bursts" in conjunction with the "Falling towers" image, he intensifies the impression of chaotic violence as these cities crumble into ruins. He has even twisted the symbolism of the color violet. With somewhat immoral connotations it refers in the third movement to the twilight atmosphere of modern London. I n this paragraph, however, it is a flash of explosive color emanating from the destruction of great cities. The pattern of decreasing line-lengths at the close of the paragraph marks the end of the speaker's vision of violence. From what Leavis calls the speaker's "Hallucinated vision" of destruction, the speaker passes next into the nightmare stage of his reverie, 45 in which everything appears to him in a highly distorted shape. I

I

I

/

/

* A woman drew her long black hair out tight /

I

I

/

I

* And fiddled whisper music on those strings /

i

i

I

I

And bats with baby faces in the violet light 45

Leavis, p. 100.

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'the waste

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/ / 1 Whistled, and beat their wings / i i i * And crawled head downward down a blackened

i

wall I

I

I

/

And upside down in air were towers / \ / / / i Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours / / / / \ And voices singing out of empty cisterns and / / exhausted wells.

Here the feminine motif, in combination with the musical imagery, is recapitulated in its most macabre form. The persons of Madame Sosostris and her deadly mirror-image, Belladonna, have been fused into the black-haired woman who, as Grover Smith suggests, has "locked Tiresias up in a tower of morbid enslavement". 46 There are allusions, too, to the society lady in "A Game of Chess", whose hair "Spread out in fiery points". The color symbolism of violet is again subjected to radical alteration. Instead of connoting the quiet twilight mood of the early evening as in the clerk-typist scene, or the explosive destruction of cities as in the preceding paragraph, its symbolism is extended to the twilight of a dying civilization as seen in a nightmarish vision. Indeed, some of the neutral or faintly symbolic images from earlier movements have now taken on the qualities of a nightmare. The towers and bells from the Elizabeth and Leicester passage, as well as the clocktower "where St. Mary Woolnoth kept the hours" of the timekept city, are transformed into inverted towers t h a t toll "reminiscent bells". Finally, the voices "singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells" represent a twisted variant on the earlier image of "ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la couple!" Metrically, the nightmare stanza represents a momentary return to iambic-duple regularity. By way of metrical induction, the perfect iamb in the last line of the preceding paragraph ("Unreal") leads into the iambic sequences in this paragraph. I n fact, all except three of the feet are duple, and three of the eight lines in the paragraph are strict iambic pentameters (marked with asterisks). The metrical regularity here contrasts with the irregularity of the nightmare images, thereby setting off these images in sharp relief. 46

Grover Smith, p. 97.

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The regular meter of this rimed stanza also contrasts with the accentual rhythms of the unrimed fourth stanza with its variable feet and line-lengths, so t h a t this paragraph is technically detached from the adjacent ones. Because of this technical detachment the nightmare stanza is placed in a position of unusual prominence in comparison with the less regular passages in the movement; as the speaker's nightmarish vision reaches a climax, the heightened rhythmical regularity seems to match its increased intensity. As if tapering off from the fairly strict regularity of the nightmare paragraph, the first three lines of the sixth stanza are blank verse variations: / / / / / In this decayed hole among the mountains / / i i In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing I

/

/

i

/

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel . . . .

While the third line is fairly regular by blank verse standards, containing only one substituted foot (an initial dactyl), the first two verses are highly irregular variants on the heroic line, indicating t h a t the heroic structure of lineation continues to deteriorate. Indeed, there are only about four remaining lines in the poem t h a t may be considered as genuine blank verse variants; and from this point on, the four-stress accentual line becomes increasingly the dominant metrical form. The sixth stanza concludes Eliot's development of the three subjects with the final disillusionment of the Christian knight. Having survived the perils of his desert journey and experienced a hideous nightmare vision, he suddenly finds himself in a "decayed hole among the mountains". I n this moment of realization he learns t h a t his arduous quest has led to nothing. There is no respite from his suffering, no chance for salvation, no Holy Grail to emblematize the consummation of his quest. There is only the ruined chapel amidst the singing grass and moonlight: /

i

i

i

i

\

There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. i

/

i

i

It has no windows, and the door swings,

i i

I I

Dry bones can harm no one. i

i

i

/

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

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236 1

n

• I

I

I

Oo co rico co co rico

J> J JU J> J J)J , / / \ / / I n a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust / / Bringing rain . . . .

I n this stanza Eliot recapitulates several of the dominant images from other movements: the corpse and bones images, the bird images, and the wind motto, all of which figure so prominently in "A Game of Chess". The church-and-chapel imagery, introduced by "St. Mary Woolnoth" (Movement I) and the church of "Magnus Martyr" (Movement III), is here recapitulated in the image of the ruined chapel, symbolizing the collapse of Christianity in t h e Western world. This symbol is reinforced by the allusion to Peter denying Christ, which is carried by the crowing of the cock in Portuguese. Though the cock is a good omen, promising rain and salvation, the questing knight will not be able to answer the three forthcoming commands of the thunder; therefore his chance for salvation will be lost. Four of the seven above-quoted lines are accentual tetrameters, confirming the four-stress line as the main metrical form. The prevalence of triplets and spondees anticipates the triplet and spondaic rhythms in the first few lines of the seventh paragraph. The lightning flash and the "damp gust / Bringing rain" in the last two lines lead directly into the next paragraph: /

w

w

/

w

w

/

,,

/

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves /

w

w

/

w

w

Waited for rain, while the black clouds / W W /

,

W W /

Gathered far distant, over Himivant. / / / / The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Here we encounter an alternating pattern of triplets and spondees similar to the one t h a t runs through the preceding paragraph. This same pattern had dominated the opening lines of "Gerontion" /

\

w

w

/

\

/ W W /

("Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass . . ."). As in "Gerontion" the metrical sequence is enforced by assonance and alliteration. The phrase "waiting for rain" in "Gerontion" finds

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its parallel here; both Tiresias and Gerontion are hoping for the waters of spiritual salvation. After the onomatopoetic speech of the thunder, /

^

^

/

Then spoke the thunder DA /

/

^

/

^

Datta: what have we given? in which the abrupt, staccato, and percussive rhythm of a thunderstroke is imitated, Eliot launches into a succession of reflective lines that suggest the gloomy meditative reveries of Gerontion: / / what have we given? /

/

/

/

* My friend, blood shaking my heart /

/

/

/

* The awful daring of a moment's surrender /

/

/

/

* Which an age of prudence can never retract / i i i / B y this, and this only, we have existed / I I I * Which is not to be found in our obituaries i

i

I

I

* Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider i

i

i

\

I

I

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor /

I

I

In our empty rooms . . . .

These lines, though moderately long in harmony with their prevailing reflective tone, are shorter than the blank verse variants which frame Gerontion's sustained meditations. In place of the iambic pentameter base, the above passage is dominated by the four-stress line marked with an asterisk, reaffirming this line as the metrical norm of the movement. Couched in a somewhat prosaic rhythm, the progression of accents is not quite as steady as it is in other parts of the movement, setting the passage off from those containing a larger proportion of recurring symbolic imagery. Eliot's phrasing here, and even his "beneficent spider" image, suggest the influence of Jacobean models. In "Gerontion" the model was Middleton; here he models a verse after a passage in Webster's The White Devil. In both "Gerontion" and in this passage, the spider image seems to represent the operations of high finance, in which the great financiers starve the people of their religious life and be-

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neficently gild over their spiritual emptiness. The "contrived corridors" a n d "cunning passages" in the confused mind of Gerontion are here reduced to " e m p t y rooms"; t h e speaker of The Waste Land, while not relapsing into stoical despair like Gerontion, is acutely conscious of t h e spiritual vacuum in which he exists, a n d he makes no false show of courage. To the thunder's command, "Datta" (or "Give"), he can only reflect t h a t he has been too prudent to surrender himself either to sexual love or religious faith; he realizes t h a t he is a lost soul praying for the waters of heavenly grace. The thunder's second command — " D A / D a y a d h v a m " — finds him equally reluctant to obey. H e is asked to sympathize, perhaps t o understand a n d love humanity. Yet he is a prisoner locked in his solitary dream; he is imprisoned in his own subjective world a n d utterly unable to communicate with his fellow men, each of whom is another solitary prisoner: /

/

i

i

* Dayadhvam: I have heard the key / i \ / / Turn, in the door once and turn once only i i i I * We think of the key, each in his prison i i i / / Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison i i i / * Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours i i i / * Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

The memory of t h e "broken Coriolanus" merely intensifies t h e speaker's loneliness, for t h e aristocratic a n d mob-hating Coriolanus was guilty of the sin of pride; he lacked t h e humility of self-surrender, the willingness to sympathize with others, which is so necessary for spiritual salvation. Most of t h e verses here are accentual tetrameters (marked with asterisks). Though not as rhythmically emphatic as the tetrameters in the opening paragraph of the movement, t h e four-stress lines in this passage carry heavier accents t h a n do their counterparts in the passage immediately preceding. The greater strength and regularity of the rhythmical pulse in these lines is partially attributable to t h e p a t t e r n of t h e verbal repetitions, which tends to accent u a t e repeated words. The repetition of R ' s and O's in t h e last two lines (marked) also emphasizes t h e rhythmical pulse.

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i i \ A t last t h e thunder issues its final command: 'DA / D a m y a t a . . This is t h e command to control, perhaps to control oneself and to allow God t o control one's spirit: / / The boat responded

/ i t i t Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

i

i

/

The sea was calm your heart would have / responded

i

/

i

/

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient / / To controlling hands . . . .

The rhythmical sequence of these lines is less regular t h a n t h a t of most other passages in t h e movement. I t is more tentative a n d indefinite, like t h e light and hesitant r h y t h m s of t h e hyacinth girl episode and those t h a t measured the Thames-daughters' solos, t o which the passage refers. Eliot is here recapitulating t h e water imagery in terms of t h e Damyata command; b u t water as a fertility symbol exists only as a reminiscence, set in t h e imaginary world of " w h a t might have been". The concluding stanza of The Waste Land is of great structural and thematic importance. I t is like the stretto of a fugue in t h a t there is a sudden thickening of thematic entities. Here we are confronted with a brief b u t intense regrouping of dominant images — t h a t is, of t h e symbolic recurring images t h a t serve as thematic components. These images burst upon t h e reader in short flashes as in a cinematographic montage, a n d these flashes illuminate salient p a r t s of t h e poem, knitting t h e m together, however violently, in t h e reader's mind. The acceleration of t h e recapitulating process has already begun with t h e water imagery a t the close of t h e seventh stanza. The water imagery here, in turn, leads into the opening lines of t h e concluding stanza: i

i

/

I sat upon the shore

/ i i Fishing, with the arid plain behind me \

/

i

i

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

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240

land'

Here Eliot refers for the last time to the persons of Ferdinand and the Fisher King, who long to remove the curse from the droughtstricken land and who thirst for spiritual salvation. In this passage we remark an abrupt regularization of the meter accompanied by an increased steadiness and strength in rhythmical pulse due to the dominance of the duple rhythm. The metrical regularity of these verses leads into the heavy b u t heterogeneous rhythms of the poem's last lines: / / / / / / / London Bridge is falling down falling down falling /

down /

/

/

/

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina / / / / \ / / Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie / / / / These fragments I have shored against my ruins / \ / / / / Why then He fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. / / \ / \ Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. / / / Shantih shantih shantih

This compressed medley of meters in five different languages corresponds to the violent collapse of all order in the speaker's mind. The retarded trochaic tetrameter of the "London Bridge" line (which recapitulates in nursery rhythms the crowd imagery from the first movement), the triplets of the Provencal and French lines, the trochees of the Latin fragment, the blank verse variations, and the staccato regularity of the closing Sanskrit lines — all of these represent, as Mervin W. Williamson observes, "a multilingual fragmentation of the secular consciousness". 47 This multilingual conclusion also illustrates Eliot's complex technique of quotation and allusion, his power of bringing the words of diverse authors to bear on his central meaning. The line from Dante, Poi s'ascose nel foco, relates to the speaker's need to plunge himself into the refining fires of purgation. The Latin fragment — Quando fiam uti chelidon ("When shall I be like the swallow?") — refers to a desire to be free from distress, while the verse 47 "Eliot's 'Gerontion': A Study in Thematic Repetition and Development", University of Texas Studies in English X X X V I (1957), 124.

'THE W A S T E

LAND*

241

from Nerval is a reminiscence of the inverted tower image t h a t appears earlier in the movement. While apparently irrelevant, the sentence "Hieronymo's mad againe" intensifies our impression of the mad disorder in the speaker's brain; the reiteration of the thunder's commands in combination with the final "Shantih", on the other hand, poses a solution to the spiritual madness of the world. All of these fragmentary quotations, even though they reveal the disorderly quality of the speaker's thinking, represent positive memories of past greatness which still linger in his mind. They further represent his conscious effort to consolidate these fragments of remembered experience, possibly as building blocks for reconstituting his ruined intellectual and spiritual life. This might also explain Eliot's frequent employment of quotations and allusions; they may have formed a basis in traditional literature for developing and renewing his own poetry. At any rate, some of the fragments of past greatness survive in the memory of Tiresias as the speaker, and whether they will contribute to his spiritual salvation is still in doubt at the end of the poem. He has "shored" them against his "ruins", but his mood still seems suspended between hope and despair. I n his role as the Fisher King, it seems improbable that he can bring the waters of deliverance to the cursed and thirsty land. The poem seems to end, therefore, on a note of profound disillusion with Tiresias still "unable to participate, through his interior life, in the April renewal of earth". 4 8 7

The Waste Land as a whole presents a pattern of changing thematic stresses and developments, with each movement containing a different arrangement of themes, motifs, dominant and subordinate image patterns, and other technical components. The first movement introduces all the themes, the masculine and feminine motifs, the principal characters, many of the locales, and most of the dominant image complexes. The sterility theme is manifested in the images of the desert wilderness, in the frustrated love affair of the hyacinth girl, in Madame Sosostris's parody of true religion, and in the images of death in the form of the drowned Phoenician sailor 48

Grover Smith, p. 98.

242

' t h e waste l a n d '

and the corpse in the garden. The fertility theme appears in the form of spring rain, vegetation, and wet hair, while the love and sex theme makes its initial appearance in the hyacinth girl episode. Embodying the feminine motif are the German noblewoman, the hyacinth girl, and Madame Sosostris, all representing variants of the three principal themes; the speaker, the one-eyed merchant, the Phoenician sailor, and Stetson project the masculine motif; and the leading characters of the poem, embodying both motifs, are prefigured in Madame Sosostris' Tarot pack. As components of all three themes, the various images form dominant patterns, often according to the shifting locales of the movement: the desert waste land and urban images, for instance, connote sterility; the vegetation images, fertility. Water, as the dominating image of the poem, carries an ambivalent symbolism; as rain that nourishes the spring vegetation, it symbolizes fertility, but in the image of the drowned sailor it suggests sterility. In adapting his rhythms to the tones and subject-matter of the movement, Eliot shows exceptional skill. The strong stress rhythms of the opening paragraph introduce the fertility theme and aggressively counterpoint the conflict between the fertility of spring and the aridity of the speaker's heart. Free and somewhat irregular conversational rhythms underlie the speeches of the women embodied in the feminine motif, while variations on blank verse sustain the speaker's gloomy meditations on the sterility of the stony land and the modern London scene. The second movement develops the sterility and the love-sex themes as manifested principally through the feminine motif, which is represented by the society lady and the Cockney woman. The fertility theme is suggested by Lil and her five children as well as by her husband, the polyphiloprogenitive Albert, the latter being a variant on the masculine motif. Neither Lil nor Albert, however, are active characters in the poem but exist merely as subjects of the Cockney woman's conversation. The masculine motif is manifested in the society lady's sterile lover, who introduces the rat-bones-death motto, so that he appears as a component of the sterility theme. The first part of the movement, describing the society lady in her dressing-room, constitutes the most sustained blank verse passage in the poem; the elegance of this traditional verse form and the expensive artifacts in her room correspond to the elegance of the lady. Her neurasthenic speech, on the other

'the waste land'

243

hand, is carried in heavily stressed but irregularly disposed accents which imitate her compulsive speech patterns. In contrast to the stately lines describing the fine lady, the speech of the Cockney woman is set in vulgar colloquial rhythms that act as a prosaic collage in the metrical framework of the movement. Using the dominant background imagery of the river, as well as that of the city, the third movement represents a further development and intense blending of the sterility-love-sex themes with emphasis on the burning lusts of sterile lovers representing various manifestations of the masculine and feminine motifs. Supported by the speaker (who now merges into the person of Tiresias), the house agent's clerk, and St. Augustine, the masculine motif achieves greater prominence than it did in the second movement, and the feminine motif makes its appearance in the persons of the typist, Mrs. Porter and her daughter, and the ruined Thames-daughters, all victims of wasteful sexual passions. Although the images of water and fire dominate the opening and closing paragraphs respectively, the rat-bones-death motto, introduced briefly in the second movement, receives special emphasis here: it is elaborated as a strong sterility symbol in the speaker's mind. Using a device similar to the "camera eye", Eliot shifts his scenes and image patterns with the skill of a cinematographer: he moves from scenes of the Thames and its riverbanks to a seedy, commercial waterfront district; then he focuses on the typist's flat and brings out the clerktypist scene in detailed dramatic relief; from here he moves to a waterfront pub, then back to the Thames itself for the Thamesdaughters' songs; and finally he shifts the scene abruptly to burning Carthage, in which image he symbolically recapitulates, the sterile, burning lusts of the characters in this movement. Eliot's rhythmical transitions exhibit the same degree of skill. The opening variations on heroic verse point out the contrast between England's past glory and her present sordidness. The heavy music hall rhythm of such lines as "O the moon shone bright on Mrs. //

Porter" seems to parody the smooth-flowing heroic verse preceding it, and the irregularities in the succeeding blank verse passage indicate the speaker's embarrassment over Mr. Eugenides' perverse invitation. The flaccid and mechanical rhythms of the rhymed heroic lines of the clerk-typist scene suggest the tired and automatic love-making of the clerk. The lines of the concluding section, set

244

'THE WASTE

LAND' /

I

/

/

in hard-driving accentual lines ("To Carthage then I came | Burn/ / t ing burning burning burning"), appropriately close the movement as the sterile lovers are consumed in an inferno of flaming lust. The fourth movement utilizes the masculine motif exclusively in developing the fertility and rebirth theme in the character of Phlebas the Phoenician. In the act of drowning he experiences the sensation of rebirth as he remembers the past stages of his life. As an elaboration of the "drowned Phoenician Sailor" from the Tarot pack, with suggestions of Mr. Eugenides and Ferdinand, he recapitulates these three characters in final dramatic form. Similarly, the submarine motto is recapitulated in the lines describing the sailor's watery death. B y way of contrast, the image of fire from the closing lines of the third movement is replaced here by sea imagery, as if the waters of death have extinguished the flames of passion; the rhythms of the sea, meanwhile, seem to be measured by the rhythmically steady accents of the blank verse lines. The technical function of the fifth movement is that of recapitulation of themes and images. I t is dominated by the sterility theme projected mainly through the masculine motif, although the feminine motif plays a strong supporting role through the characters of the women grieving for Christ's death and the black-haired enchantress. All of the dominant recurring images are recapitulated in a condensed and freshly symbolic form. The recapitulating process begins slowly at the opening of the movement with the reiteration of the physical waste land imagery from Movement I — that is, with the images of the desert and aridity, dramatized by the perilous journey of the questing knight through a desert wilderness. The process quickens with Eliot's final summary of the city imagery followed by the nightmare sequence. Suspended momentarily while the quester listens to the thunder's commands, the process of recapitulation is resumed in the last paragraph at a greatly accelerated pace until it is brought to an abrupt halt by the abbreviated coda: "Shantih shantih shantih". The calmly flowing heroic verses dominating the preceding movements are displaced by heavy accentual rhythms which support images of violence and disorder. The sterility theme is treated almost exclusively throughout the movement. The fertility theme is touched on only as a faint reminiscence or hope, without really being expressed directly, while the love and sex theme is excluded altogether. The

'the waste land'

245

feminine motif, which usually appears in conjunction with the latter theme, is here subordinated to the sterility theme. As thematic components, the symbolic recurring images are nearly all transformed into symbols t o support the main theme of sterility. Hence the fifth movement not only recapitulates the dominant images; it also achieves a high degree of thematic unity. I n The Waste Land, by means of a multiplicity of technical devices gathered and refined from his previous poetry, Eliot succeeded in executing an unusually complex work of a r t in which each line seems to be interrelated with the other lines in the poem. His technical means derive not only from a great variety of poetic methods syncretized from his predecessors and contemporaries, b u t also from other art-forms — prose fiction, drama, music, painting, a n d cinematography. Y e t The Waste Land is more t h a n a pyrotechnical display of artistic devices. Eliot's technical facility is pressed into the service of a complicated pattern of subject-matter development. I t has been subordinated to a thematic strncture t h a t is certainly more complex t h a n any which Eliot h a d previously essayed. Much of this complexity, moreover, arises from the a u t h o r ' s mode of thematic fragmentation, in which t h e three principal themes are introduced, developed, and recapitulated by means of recurring images t h a t symbolically project t h e manifold meanings of t h e poem. The Waste Land, then, represents a climactic development in Eliot's prolonged struggle for artistic excellence — namely, his struggle to a d a p t the technical forms of his verse to t h e meanings of his poetry.

IX " T H E HOLLOW MEN", OR EPILOGUE TO THE LAND

WASTE

1 If The Waste Land is a compressed masterpiece of great thematic and ideological comprehensiveness, "The Hollow Men" is a masterpiece in miniature, a specialized treatment of the main Waste Land theme of sterility. Far from being an appendage or simple epilogue to the longer poem, however, "The Hollow Men" as Grover Smith says, "may most profitably be read as an extension of the same design of quest and failure", except that here the quester has already failed at the poem's opening.1 Instead of using a single speaker, or a succession of speakers, as in "Gferontion" or The Waste Land, Eliot projects his theme of spiritual sterility through a chorus of speakers representative of the so-called lost generation. This chorus appears, according to Kenner, as the composite voice of a generation of modern bankers, stockbrokers, corporation directors, and others whose dry voices bespeak the spiritual emptiness and futility of their times; they intone a weary song of the religiously disenchanted. All of them are no doubt respectable upperclass gentlemen: but they are condemned, in part by their own inertia and in part by dint of a historic process reaching back to the Renaissance, to live in "death's dream kingdom".2 Lacking the grandeur of heroic sinners like Mark Antony or even Lord Byron, they speak quietly and meaninglessly as paratypes of the inhabitants of Dante's Limbo, that is, those who had lived on earth without praise or blame because they lacked the will and passion to do either good or evil. Guilty of the sin of inertia, they are condemned to wander without direction. Grover Smith, p. 104. *The Invisible Poet, p. 188. 1

"THE HOLLOW M E N " , OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE LAND'

247

In composing "The Hollow Men", Eliot uses several of The Waste Land's images and salient technical devices. The wind motto, symbolic of spiritual vacuity, as well as the rat-bones-death motto, appears in both poems. In reference to the wind motto, the scarecrow in the wind symbolizes "the living dead in a limbo of secularism".3 Such concrete images as "broken glass", "dry grass", and "broken stone" are of the type used in The Waste Land's desert wilderness and drought imagery. Again, the imagery of both poems is set in a pattern of recurrences involving both verbal and phrasal repetitions. In "The Hollow Men", as in The Waste Land, there is the occasional alliance of gravity and levity, of erudition and childishness. The popular song and nursery fragments appear side by side with heroic passages in the longer poem, while in "The Hollow Men" paraphrases of nursery jingles are placed next to fragments of the Lord's Prayer. Other technical similarities are found in the occasional use of the unpunctuated style and a studied alternation between syllabic and accentual metrical schemes. But in a few important respects the technical structure of "The Hollow Men" differs greatly from that of The Waste Land. The imagery in many places is more vague and abstract — for example, "fading star" and "death's dream kingdom". "The Hollow Men" has a much shorter linear norm (two and three stresses) and more metrical uniformity, with not a single passage written in irregular rhythms. Whereas The Waste Land depends on a heroic versification structure, "The Hollow Men" has no heroic lines and depends more on short accentual lines for metrical unity. Proportionately, there is more rime and consonance, more repetition of words and images, and there are more verses set in the unpunctuated style in "The Hollow Men". All of these modifications are part of a process of technical retrenchment, and this process involves two distinct though inseparable operations: (1) that of reducing for use in "The Hollow Men" the variety and multiplicity of Waste Land themes, subject-matter, locales, images, and meters; and (2) that of using some of the more important technical devices from The Waste Land and concentrating them in "The Hollow Men". This retrenchment results in a more condensed though somewhat less enriched style for "The Hollow Men". The five-part division of the poem corresponds to the five move3

W i l l i a m s o n , p. 115.

248

"THE HOLLOW MEN", OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE

LAND'

ments of The Waste Land. Instead of using each movement to introduce or develop one or more of the manifold themes as in The Waste Land, however, Eliot uses his divisions in "The Hollow Men" merely to set off successive variations on the single theme of modern sterility. The function of the five parts is described by Sister M. Martin Barry as follows: (1) Exposition. S t a t e m e n t of t h e s t e r i l i t y t h e m e : t h e H o l l o w M e n i n d i c t t h e m s e l v e s a s c r e a t u r e s of s p i r i t u a l v a c u i t y w h o a r e l e a d i n g idle a n d useless lives. (2) Complication. T h e t h e m e is e l a b o r a t e d . T h e H o l l o w M e n r e c o u n t t h e i r m i s e r y a n d b r o k e n d r e a m s in a p l a i n t i v e lyrical m o d e . (3) Climax. T h e H o l l o w M e n realize t h e f u t i l i t y of p r a y e r ( " L i p s t h a t w o u l d kiss I F o r m p r a y e r s t o b r o k e n s t o n e . " ) a n d t h e r e a l i t y of t h e i r d a m n e d cond i t i o n . P l a i n t i v e lyricism c o n t i n u e s . (4) New Complication from, Climax. T h e s p i r i t u a l loneliness a n d l o s t n e s s of t h e H o l l o w M e n is intensified a n d f u r t h e r e l a b o r a t e d . T h e y realize t h a t t h e i r h o p e is t h e " h o p e o n l y / of e m p t y m e n . " (5) Resolution. T h e H o l l o w M e n r e l a p s e i n t o a p r i m i t i v e s o r t of i n f a n t i l i s m as t h e y m a k e a n i n c a n t a t o r y r e c i t a l of t h e i r sin—viz., t h e f a i l u r e t o a c t , s p i r i t u a l i n e r t i a . T h e i r w o r l d e n d s " N o t with a bang but a whimper."*

Except for the fifth part of the poem, in which the theme is succinctly elaborated and resolved, "The Hollow Men" is unified by the schematic arrangement of recurring images that runs through its first four sections. Each of the repeated images "is a symbolic component of the sterility theme, and with each recurrence the theme is deepened and intensified, until the theme is ultimately rèsolved in the last section. This pattern of recurrences creates much the same type of continuity between stanzas and sections that typifies The Waste Land and a great deal of Eliot's earlier poetry. The repeated images usually recur in dominant complexes. Often they are introduced separately, and subsequently they recur in varying combinations, deepening the poem's symbolism with each successive recurrence. The auditory images (voices, speech, singing, whisper) recur five times; occasionally they occur in combination with the wind motto, signifying that the Hollow Men's voices are as empty and as spiritually vacant "As wind in dry 4

B a r r y , p . 105.

"THE HOLLOW MEN", OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE LAND'

249

grass . . .". I n combination with "rats' feet" and "broken glass", the voices carry connotations of death and ruin. The leading image-complex comprehends the images of death, kingdom, eyes, and star. The number of repetitions for each of them respectively is 8, 7, 6, and 4, indicating t h a t each is a dominant image. Here is the pattern of successive recurrences for this particular image-complex: (1) Those w h o h a v e crossed W i t h direct eyes, t o death's

other K i n g d o m . . . .

(2) Eyes I dare n o t m e e t in d r e a m s I n death's d r e a m kingdom, . . . . (3) There are n o eyes here I n this v a l l e y of dying stars

....

(4) This broken j a w of our lost kingdoms (5) T h e eyes reappear A s t h e perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom

....

....

The first eyes belong to saintly persons who have entered the kingdom of heaven (called "death's other Kingdom"). I n the second through fifth recurrence the eyes belong to God: these are the eyes which the Hollow Men dare not face; indeed, they dare not complete the phrase "kingdom of heaven", for their constricted materialistic vision cannot penetrate that far. The stars — now fading, now dying — represent the futile hopes of the Hollow Men for salvation. I n the fifth recurrence we observe the synthesis of the eyes-star-death-kingdom complex of images, in which the eyes of God become the "perpetual star" and the "Multifoliate rose", and here the development of this image cycle reaches its climax. I n the above complex of recurring images we encounter successive permutation of symbolic images. There is not so much progressive development as intensification and elaboration of meaning. Images of lesser strength, such as those of twilight and dream, are also caught up in the repetitive pattern, having the effect of modifying and coloring the dominant complex. The images making up this complex are all general and abstract; that is, they are all generic terms that are obviously metaphysical in significance. Yet the more specific images, such as "broken glass" or " R a t ' s skin"

2 5 0 "THE HOLLOW MEN", OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE LAND'

that occasionally occur in combination with these general images, have the effect of giving them more precise connotations. The image of eyes, occurring in Eliot's poetry since 1911, appears here as the eyes of God in various attitudes of judging or warning,5 and at one point they are concretized in the form of "Sunlight on a broken column". The twilight coloration of the piece suggests that the Hollow Men are living in the late afternoon of a dying civilization; the sky is grey and growing darker.® The line-base consists of three stresses for the first four parts and two stresses for the concluding part of the poem. There is little variety in line-length, for all the elements are "reduced to their barest essentials" so that the effect is one of "a monotone, a chant without variation" in this "ghost of a poem". To support this simplicity of structure there is a great deal of repetition combined with the use of parallel clauses and apposition.' The short lines, enclosing detached rhythmical phrases, sustain "the nerveless rhythms" of the Hollow Men's weary chorus since no line is long enough to enclose more than a few words, and each line begins and ends with "the energy of bare survival". 8 Certain passages, if set in longer lines, might be so devoid of rhythm as to sound like prose. Kenner reduces the third paragraph into the following prose paragraph: " 'Those who have crossed with direct eyes to death's other kingdom remember us — if at all — not as lost violent souls, but only as hollow men, the stuffed men.' " He calls this "an admirably disciplined prose . . .".* In considering the poem's structure we find that Eliot has taken great pains to adapt its technical forms to the subject and tone of the piece. Just as the short lines encompass the gasping utterances of the Hollow Men and sustain the "nerveless rhythms" of some of their prosaic sentences, the fairly uniform metric seems appropriate for the monotonous lives of these weary men who are chanting in unison. The strange muted discords in their broken lives are reflected in the dissonant, off-beat rimes ("meaningless" and "glass"), occult acoustic affinities ("star" and "appear"), and broken phrases ("For thine is" and "Life is"). 5

Gardner, pp. 106-107. •Gardner, p. 111. ' Gardner, pp. 105-107. 8 Kenner, p. 184. •Kenner, p. 183.

"THE HOLLOW MEN" ,OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE LAND' 2 5 1

As in "Prufrock" and The Waste Land, the opening lines of the poem are couched in a strong, aggressive rhythm: 1 I (\) We are the hollow men

fTl

fTl

We are the stuffed men J >

j—3

m

i i i i Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

J~1 JT3J

J1

The heavy dactyls that lead into an emphatic trochaic-syllabic rhythm indicate a strength of resolution which quickly dissipates on the exclamation of "Alas!". The rest of the lines in the paragraph carry lighter accents in harmony with the despairing tone of the speakers: /

/

/

Our dried voices, when /WW/

We whisper together /W

W

/ W W

Are quiet and meaningless / / \ As wind in dry grass /

\

w

W

/

/

Or rats' feet over broken glass WW

/

/

In our dry cellar . . . .

The dissonant rime indicates the discord in their weary lives, while the use of "when" as an end-word inserts a note of awkwardness that is justified only by the mechanical exigency of rime. The spiritual emptiness of their lives is conveyed by the simile incorporating the wind motto. Such images as "dried voices", "dry grass", and "dry cellar" enforce the unity of our impressions concerning the spiritual aridity of the Hollow Men's existence. The triplets in the opening two lines are echoed in the dactyls of the second and third lines as well as in the dactyls of the last two lines. As a sub-

252

" T H E HOLLOW M E N " , OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE LAND'

ordinate metrical pattern, the monosyllabic feet in "dry grass" /

/

are echoed in "dry cellar". The emphatic accentual tetrameters composing the next paragraph, /

I

I

I

Shape without form, shade without colour,

J

IP3 J a J

7

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion,

J73

J>y J J J J J ^ v

contrast with the rather flaccid rhythms of the preceding lines, taking up the triplet pattern of the opening lines and thickening it with a quadruplet near the end of the couplet. Here is another strong self-indictment by the chorus of Hollow Men. They are formless, colorless, and motionless beings and fit inhabitants for Dante's Limbo; they are not "lost violent souls" but merely passive inert drifters. They are conscious of the "direct eyes" of the saints who condemn them from heaven and who recognize them only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

These lines close Part I of the poem. They are written in the form of a recapitulation of the opening two verses, thus rounding out the first section. The second part of the poem begins with the plaintive lyrical regrets of the Hollow Men, who dare not meet the judging eyes of God: / / I I E y e s I dare not meet in dreams D E BE DEEEM I

/

I

In death's dream kingdom D

DREE I

/

D

M

I

These do not appear: a There, the eyes are I

/

I

Sunlight on a broken column '

'

'

b There, is a tree swinging

"THE HOLLOW MEN", OR EPILOGUE TO 'THE WASTE LAND' /

253

/

a And voices are S S

ft

/ / b In the wind's singing IN

I N D S SING

/

'

'

More distant and more solemn M R D

N"

N M R S

/ / a Than a fading star. N

DING S

M

R

Their dulled spiritual sensibilities can catch only momentary whiffs, so to speak, of the Divine Presence: God's eyes are seen as "Sunlight on a broken column", and He appears to them as a "fading star". Kenner remarks the French syntactical arrangement of the opening three lines: " 'Eyes I dare not meet in death's dream kingdom these do not appear.' " Here, he says, the main verb is "deferred with Gallic formality . . .". 10 This is balanced by the delayed rime of "star" following a climactic arrangement of line-lengths in the last four lines of the paragraph. These four lines, moreover, besides being adorned with rime, are exceedingly consonant because of the density of acoustic concords (marked). The four stresses of the first line are metrically balanced with the three stresses of the second because the three consecutive monosyllabic feet in the second line tend to retard the rhythmical movement. In contrast to the dominant accentual rhythms of the first part, the rhythms of Part II are duple-syllabic. This alternation between the two types of metric relieve the monotony of the dominant three-stress line of the first four sections of the poem. The closing two stanzas of the second part contain a muted prayer. The Hollow Men pray that they may be spared the knowledge of God in order to remain what they are, passive and spineless automatons who dare not face metaphysical reality and who fear the Day of Judgement in "the twilight kingdom". They prefer to behave as "the wind behaves", continuing to live in spiritual vacuity. The world of the Hollow Men is "a dying planet, doomed to extinction", and they pray to be left in it as stuffed effigies or scarecrows; they do not act but are acted upon. They feel no responsibility for their fate, for coming to terms with death, or for achieving spiritual regeneration in Purgatory.11 10 11

Kenner, p. 183. Drew, pp. 95-96.

254

"THE HOLLOW MEN", OR EPILOGUE TO THE WASTE LAND'

In the fifth stanza such abstract images as "death's dream kingdom" are balanced by the concrete images that symbolize the Hollow Men's death in life: "Rat's skin, crowskin, crossed staves". This stanza is sparsely rimed, containing only the rime of "staves" and "behaves" and the weird acoustic concord of "hearer" and "wear". The image of "the twilight kingdom" in the last line of the section echoes the image of "death's dream kingdom" which opens it. The first two lines of Part III echo the aggressive triplet-accentual rhythms of the poem's opening lines. The first five lines of this part embrace a pattern of phrasal repetitions beginning with "This" and "Here": ™ This is the dead land 1

m

n

/ / (\ i This is cactus land

f i - f n

/ i i Here the stone images

i

i

i

Are raised, here they receive / / / (\) / The supplication of a dead man's hand . . . .

The syncopations in the opening feet of the first two lines serve to emphasize the Waste Land images in these lines. The phrasal repetitions make the aggressive accentual rhythm even more emphatic. The accentual meter contrasts with the duple-syllabic meter of Part II. The Waste Land imagery of aridity is seen in such images as "dead land", "cactus land", and "stone images". These images establish the atmosphere of spiritual sterility which accompanies the supplicatory mood of the third section. The abstract images of "fading star" and "death's other Kingdom" are reiterated here in the context of the men's futile prayers: "Lips that would kiss / Form prayers to broken stone." The last half of Part I I I contains both dissonant and delayed rimes (this-tenderness-kiss and alonestone). The deferred rimes gain emphasis in keeping with the climactic nature of this section.

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255

Part I V represents an elaboration on the preceding section. The rhythms, though accentual, are less emphatic and urgent, representing a tapering off from the poem's climax. In fact, Kenner insists that the rhythms of the last two stanzas of this section are prosaic and "nerveless", reflecting the spiritual fatigue of the speakers themselves. He reduces these rimeless stanzas to a single prose sentence: " 'In these last meeting places we grope together and avoid speech, gathered on this beach of the tumid river . . . .' " 1S There is also a transmutation of the auditory imagery: the men are no longer whispering together; now they "avoid speech". The last paragraph of the section becomes more poetical as it grows more metaphorical and intense. Here the dominant images of eyes, stars, and "death's twilight kingdom" are fused with the "Multifoliate rose" into one metaphysical entity: / / Sightless, unless / / The eyes reappear / / As the perpetual star

J

J J J RJ

N

J

/

Over the paving.

JT?

Tt^

/ I I I I I And the flags. And the trumpets. And so many eagles.

J~3 J * N 12

R^IR^ R H

The Achievement, pp. 82-83.

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The first line is an exact metrical duplication of a verse describing the forced march of Satan and his army in Book I I of Paradise / / / / / / / \ Lost: "Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.. ." 13 The lines of both Eliot and Milton may be scanned, abstractly, as iambic pentameters; yet each of them reads as an accentual octameter dominated by heavy monosyllabic feet. The legato flow of "over the paving" comes as a sudden contrast to the hard articulations of the opening verse. The rhythmical figures of all three lines suggest the crude precision of a military drum beat. The next six lines continue in the same heavy rhythm, which is more or less metronomic in character. The regularity of the beat in these lines, besides imitating the movement of the parade, reflects the shallow excitement of the mob as it views this massive display of soldiers and flags and armaments. Suddenly a line of prose interjects itself: "The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving". The flaccid rhythm of this line contrasts with the steady tempo of the surrounding lines, indicating that any effort to think perceptively will be crushed in the rhythmical excitement of the unfeeling crowds. The next two lines resume the plodding heaviness of the opening measures, but once again the regularity is broken by a dry enumeration of the military equipment: "5,800,000 rifles and carbines, / 102,000 machine guns, / 28,000 trench m o r t a r s . . . " . This piece of collage, resembling a quartermaster general's report, seems designed to shock the reader into a realization of the sterility, horror, and futility of war. Even the spectators are bored: "What a time that took . . .", says one of them. They are anxiously awaiting the approach of Coriolanus. At last the hero, Coriolanus, comes into view, but the crowds can hardly distinguish him from the golfers and members of the gymnastic society who precede him. The shallow excited thoughts of the spectators are in diametric contrast to the agonized introspection of the hero: /

\

/

I

I

I

O hidden under the dove's wing, hidden in the turtle's breast, I

/

i

i

I

I

Under the palmtree at noon, under the running water \

I

I

/

I

I

/

At the still point of the turning world. O hidden. 13 Cf. Eliot's earlier use of successive monosyllabic feet in "Gerontion": "Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds".

THE INTERMEDIATE PHASE: AN EXPERIMENTAL INTERLUDE

299

As Coriolanus's thoughts gravitate toward a spiritual "still point" away from the mad whirl of a violent world, his inward eye avoids the glaring eyes of the gazing crowds and seeks the tranquillity of quiet places. The rhythm of these lines is softer, slower, and less regular than the rhythm which punctuates the shallow impressions of the parade watchers. It is the subtle rhythm of introspective thought and not the crude metric of superficial mental excitement. The still point motto, incidentally, had been introduced in AshWednesday, and it is intensively developed in the Four Quartets. With the approach of the sacrificial virgins carrying urns of dust, the metronomic pulse is once again resumed, and the parade ends as it had begun — Dust Dust Dust of dust, and now Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses' heels Over the paving.

The pattern of increasing and decreasing line-lengths, building into a climax and then tapering off, represents the gradual expansion and sudden contraction of the procession of cavalrymen as they come at the tail-end of the parade. The repetition of the word "dust" intensifies the image of a sterile world which honors violence and militarism. The last stanza is a sort of vignette of conversational fragments. Since the rhythms of speech are used, the tempo is slightly less steady than that which had marked the opening lines of the poem. The memories of the great parade and its hero quickly dissolve in the aftermath, and the people return to their own selfish concerns. They attend church only when they are unable to go to the country. In church the bell reminds young Cyril only of crumpets, for the church has lost all spiritual significance to him and others like him. Near the end of the poem, when someone in the crowd asks casually for a light, the tone of the poem abruptly modulates into a spiritual key: "Light/Light . . .". In lineation and rhythm these lines echo the "dust" lines of the preceding stanza. The sterile dust kicked up by the men and horses in parade seems to have choked off the spirit, and now the cry for "light", or spiritual illumination, is suddenly heard. This cry is also an echo of Coriolanus' search

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for a "still point", a spiritual oasis away from the worldly madness of the crowds. The last line of the poem, a quotation from Maurras' book, ab/

/

/

ruptly muffles out the cry for light: "Et Us soldats faisaient la haie? / / ILS LA FAISAIENT". The reader once again returns to the shallow stimulation of the parade as the soldiers form a fancy arcade, or "hedge", with their rifles. And so the poem ends as it began — with the spectators ignoring spiritual matters in their greedy desire to watch sterile military flourishes. As we have seen, the nearly metronomic pulse of the lines in "Triumphal March" registers the crowd's excited pulse in viewing the parade. Even though Eliot is merging locales and epochs in the poem, from modern Paris and London to ancient Rome, the hard relentless beat of the military drum unite Roman eagles, French gymnastic societies, and English crumpets. 5 In the choruses from The Rock Eliot departs from some of the metronomic severity of "Triumphal March" while preserving the heaviness of its cadence. Set in long accentual four-stress lines, the opening measures of the first chorus evince a dignity of versification that is appropriate to the poet's cosmic conceptions: / / / / The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, / / / / The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. / / / / O perpetual revolution of configured stars, / / / / O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons . . . .

These long lines serve as frames for large and sustained ideas while the relative steadiness in tempo marks the determination of Eliot's thought. Elsewhere in The Bock one frequently finds reiterative phrasing in which the repeated phrases occur in either consecutive or alternate lines: / / We will build with new stone Where the beams are rotten

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301

We will build with new timbers Where the word is unspoken We will build with new speech There is work together . . . .

The phrasal repetitions in these two-stress lines, while enforcing the metrical unity, also intensify whatever idea or image the poet wishes to convey. Repeated as in a litany, the phrasing is so simple that punctuation is unnecessary. At times Eliot uses extremely long lines which carry the anapest/ / ic-dactylic rhythms of the Bible: "Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: 'The trowel in hand, and the gun rather /

^

/

loose in the holster.' " The steady triplets (marked) give a strong rhythmical unity to this line, and the last phrase suggests the colloquial anachronisms of Pound's Cantos. When Eliot wrote The Rock he designed it as a dramatic production which would appeal to the general public. He apparently felt that a fairly strong, regular accentual rhythm would be more natural for the speaking voice than would the meters of traditional English syllabic verse. The heavy accents, moreover, match the gravity and rhetorical exigencies of the subject. The dominating metric of the Four Quartets is also accentual, but in many passages traditional syllabic verse is used. Since the tone of the quartets is largely meditative and lyrical rather than dramatic, the accents are usually softer than they are in The Rock, while the versification is more varied and subtle as it adapts itself to the changing moods of the speaker. Yet The Rock, as an exercise in forced composition, served a high artistic purpose. I t released Eliot's "blocked poetical powers" and opened a rich vein of creativity, 14 thus clearing the way for the composition of the Four Quartets. Since the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, Eliot had written nothing to approach the thematic scope and complexity of that great poem. The poems of the transitional period (1925—1935) merely reaffirm Eliot's position as an astute master of nuance, as one who can execute verse in a limited sphere. These poems reveal the miniatura of a great talent; they resemble etudes, or practice 14

Herbert Howarth, "Eliot, Beethoven and J. W. N. Sullivan", Comparative Literature I X - 4 (1957), 323.

3 0 2 THE INTERMEDIATE PHASE: A N EXPERIMENTAL I N T E R L U D E

exercises, designed to prepare the poet for work of a higher artistic order. With the publication of "Burnt Norton" in 1935, Eliot proved that he was indeed capable of producing a second important masterwork; and just as The Waste Land represents a culmination of Eliot's first major phase of creativity, the Four Quartets comprehend many of the leading thematic ideas and techniques developed during the transitional phase. By basing the thematic organization of his quartets on the sonata-allegro form, Eliot was able to orchestrate these ideas and techniques within a more comprehensive format. The composition of the Four Quartets, therefore, marks the poet's third and final phase of poetic development.

XII T H E FOUR

QUARTETS

1 From the time of his earliest compositions Eliot has continually exploited the musical idiom as a source of formal organization in his verse. I n "Portrait of a Lady" and "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock", the unity and progression of images is based on interlocking patterns of repeated words and symbols, which approximate the progression of interweaving motifs in the impressionistic music of Debussy and Ravel. The numerous false starts and broken phrases of Prufrock's dialogue follow an incremental development pattern similar to Chopin's deferred resolutions. The confused and fragmentary development of themes in The Waste Land, combined with the use of recurrent patterns in the dominant image-groups, reflect the fused influences of Stravinski and the Wagnerian leitmotif. Finally, in the composition of the Four Quartets, Eliot molds his deepest religious feelings into a broader format for thematic organization suggested by the sonata-allegro form of Beethoven's string quartets. I t is a format ideally suited to the orderly and sustained development of contrasting themes. An examination of the standard sonata-allegro form might help us to understand more clearly the analogy existing between the form of the Four Quartets and that of a musical quartet. I n the first movement of a conventional quartet there are three principal sections: (1) the Exposition Section which introduces two contrasting themes or subjects; (2) the Development Section in which these two themes are subjected to manifold variations, extensions, inversions, and counterpointing; and (3) the Recapitulation Section where the original themes are restated in final form, having been resolved and transfigured in the Development Section. This fruit-

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ful form also constitutes the structural base for the composition of sonatas, quartets, overtures, concertos, and symphonies. 1 The basic subject, or thematic idea, of the Four Quartets is the poet's search, through mortal time, for eternal reality. I n adapting his material to the sonata-allegro form Eliot arranges the subject into two contrasting but related themes — the main theme of eternity versus the counter-theme of temporal mutability. I n each of the quartets these themes are introduced, developed, and recapitulated in such a way that the poet's ideas, as he moves closer to his moment of ultimate reality, are expanded in an amplifying pattern from quartet to quartet. The two opposing themes are synthesized in the idea t h a t the poet can perceive eternity only through his experiences in the temporal world. The themes are projected in terms of dominant images which either vary or are reiterated in expanded form from one quartet to the next. The main theme of eternity most often recurs as the still point in the garden in which the poet catches glimmerings of ultimate reality. The subdominant theme of temporal mutability manifests itself in a variety of forms: the joyful village dancers in "East Coker" whose end is death, the eternal confusion of human desires and neurotic preoccupations, the Heraclitan flux in mind and nature. Although treatments of the two major themes run alternately all the way through the quartets, the specific subjects change from section to section. The recurring patterns of earthly and planetary 1 The same schematic pattern, moreover, because of its propensity for comprehending the dramatic fusion of opposing elements, had been exploited by artists and thinkers long before its formal invention in the eighteenth century. Indeed, this pattern seems to underlie several important philosophical, literary, and scientific forms. A formal essay or philosophical discourse often embraces the exposition (thesis and antithesis), development, and synthesis (resolution) of ideas. Many novels and plays are arranged into three sections: the introduction of principal characters (protagonist and antagonist), the development of their conflict, and the conclusion or denouement (resolution of conflict). And even in the field of natural science the stages of a chemical reaction appear to adhere to this same formal pattern: the introduction of chemical reagents in a test tube, their transmutations during the recomposing process, and their synthesis at the conclusion of the experiment. In the Four Quartets we encounter a peculiar chemistry of ideas and images which have been transformed poetically and rearranged to conform, at least approximately, to the thematic structure of a quartet.

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305

motions, deaths at sea, the river's flux, the sultry fields — these passing subjects might be considered as sub-themes or incidental themes which support the two main themes. In recurring form they graduate to positions of dominance and function as motto-themes. The artist's struggles with form, the visionary journeys, the old historical battles and ideological conflicts, and the mystical moments in the garden are all mottos which recur in all of the poems as leading thematic components. Each subject, at any rate, is a frame enclosing the poet's images and ideas, and as such it forms a solid, recognizable base for the projection of thematic materials. "Dry Salvages" provides an excellent illustration of how Eliot presents his two related but contrasted themes in the form of dominant images. The river, in symbolizing the mortal time which we feel within ourselves, represents the temporal mutability theme, while the sea around us represents the eternity theme in t h a t it makes us aware of the vast time that stretches before and after us. The two themes are first presented consecutively, then they are developed together as contrasting modes, and finally the sea-theme of eternity asserts its dominance as a preserver and destroyer of mortal life and time. The formal resemblance of the Four Quartets to a musical quartet, however, must not be exaggerated. Many critics have come dangerously close to subscribing to the tenuous proposition t h a t a nearly exact formal analogy exists between the structure of Eliot's poem and that of Beethoven's late string quartets. I n reality the exterior structure of the Four Quartets stands merely as a rough approximation of the form of Beethoven's quartets. Nor does Eliot's poem, as a literary adaptation of musical form, have a strict formal correspondence to any other quartets or symphonies. First of all, the reading time for all four of Eliot's quartets is about the same as the playing time for a string quartet or short eighteenth-century symphony. The four poems of the Quartets, moreover, correspond to the four movements of a conventional quartet or symphony, except for the fact t h a t the sonata-allegro form is repeated in all four of Eliot's poems. I t might be preferable, therefore, to consider the entire work as one quartet, for all of the poems are united by interlocking patterns of dominant images which project the two themes of eternity and temporal mutability. A single movement of a musical quartet constitutes a separate,

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autonomous composition with its own distinctive themes and style. Similarly, each of Eliot's quartets (but not the movements within the quartet) conform generally to the principles of autonomy and stylistic distinctness. Furthermore, like a movement in a musical quartet, each of Eliot's poems contains a full exposition, development, and recapitulation of themes. For these reasons each of the four quartets should perhaps be treated as a movement within the quartets as a whole. The five divisions within each of Eliot's quartets have been called "movements" by several commentators. Since none of these divisions is formally complete (as a musical movement should certainly be), they must be analyzed simply as segments or sections within the movement which represent progressive phases of thematic development. A parallel mode of thematic treatment informs each of the quartets. As the comments on the jacket of Eliot's recording indicate, the first section of each quartet presents "two or more subjects which are to be interwoven and eventually resolved". The second section treats one of the subjects in "two contrasting ways, a n d the ideas are expanded and developed". I n the third section we encounter further explorations of the ideas presented in the first two sections. The brief fourth section represents a "purely lyrical" development of one of the subjects, while the fifth "recapitulates the earlier themes and resolves the contradiction" propounded in the opening section. 2 I n a word, in each quartet "themes and counter-themes are modulated and interwoven" and "all four poems employ a recapitulation or coda with the last four lines of "Little Gidding" as a thematic coda of the whole poem . . .". 3 This pattern of development might be typical for a single movement within a musical quartet, but not for an entire quartet. Despite the fact t h a t a different set of leading images dominates each of the poems, most of the important image patterns occur in two or more of the poems. The motto-image of the garden, as a component of the eternity theme, is found in all four poems; t h a t of the sea appears predominantly in " D r y Salvages", although it receives light treatment in both "East Coker" and "Little Gidding". 2

"Four Quartets", Angel 45012, Electric and Musical Industries (U.S.) Ltd. 3 Grigsby, p. 422.

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The subordinate image of water (rivers, pools, ponds, and rain as distinguished from sea-water) appears in all of the poems except " E a s t Coker", where it appears to be absorbed, as it were, by the dominant earth-imagery of that poem. The interweaving and overlapping of these and other images from poem to poem suggest a pattern of structural organization which departs radically from Beethoven's sonata-allegro form inasmuch as Beethoven selected different subjects and styles for each of the movements within his quartets or symphonies. Because of the recurrence of dominant image patterns throughout the four poems, the true form of the Four Quartets in many respects resembles the format of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which represents an elaboration on the traditional sonataallegro form. I n addition to the regular introduction, development, and recapitulation of themes, Berlioz introduces a motto-theme to unite all the movements of his symphony, and owing to the recurrence of this theme in each movement, the form is called cyclical. Either by coincidence or by the author's intention, the structural organization of the Four Quartets bears at least as much resemblance to Berlioz's cyclical form as it does to the form of Beetnoven's string quartets. For whatever reason, Eliot exploits the mottotheme device and thereby enhances the continuity of his work, for all of the poems are threaded together by means of mottoimages. These images, in projecting the two themes of eternity and temporal mutability, create a highly integrated thematic texture. B u t whether the external structure of the Four Quartets is more like the form of Beethoven's quartets or the cyclical organization of Berlioz's symphonies, the important thing to remember, according to Marcello Pagnini, is t h a t Eliot's poetic dialect conforms to the dialect of musical discourse. Besides t h a t part of the poetic discourse involving the interweaving of opposing themes, the quartets also allow for a dialect of opposing voices. Eliot varies his voices like instruments used in a musical quartet, and in "Burnt Norton", for example, one can distinguish two voices, the lyric and the didactic. 4 These voices, however, are variant manifestations of a single voice in different moods. Hence the quartets lack the complexity of The Waste Land with its multiplicity of dramatic 4 Marcello Pagnini, "La Musicalità dei 'Four Quartets' ", Belfagor (1958), 435-436.

XIII

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THE 'FOUR

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voices. As B. H . Fussell remarks, the poem is a dialogue t h a t reveals the profoundly subjective experiences of "a single consciousness in the act of thinking and feeling . . ."; it is an interior dialogue involving the fusion of opposing voices. 5 The tension created by these oppositions in voice and theme are reinforced by tensions arising from the flow of meaning. Tense moments are often followed by sudden resolutions and resolutions dissolve into conflicts, with lyric smoothness alternating with the roughness of unresolved dilemmas. This flow of tensions and resolutions resembles the changing harmonic progressions in a musical composition in which dissonances resolve into harmonies. Since the structural organization of the Four Quartets does not conform exactly to any recognized musical format, Eliot's poem must be judged ultimately by standards which are primarily literary. And regardless of Eliot's success in exploiting the musical idiom, the musical influences must be carefully weighed against the complexly varied influences deriving from literature, philosophy, and religion. Chief among the literary influences are the medieval theological notions and concrete symbolic imagery of Dante. The rendering of such concise visual images as t h a t of the fire and the rose with their multiple symbolic connotations are traceable to Dante's influence. Despite the final glimpse of paradise in "Little Gidding", the predominant coloring of Eliot's poem is purgatorial, and with Eliot as with Dante the image of fire often symbolizes spiritual purgation and divine suffering as well as the burning away of carnal desires. From the point of view of "overall structural framework", the quartets appear to be arranged according to " 'an ordered scale of emotions' " such as one finds in the Inferno. This scale provides a scaffold for the progression of purgatorial effects in Eliot's poem. 6 Reinforcing the emotional and religious scaffolding of the Four Quartets is Eliot's symbolic use of Heraclitus' four basic elements — air, earth, water, and fire. Each element represents the dominant symbolism for each of the quartets. "Burnt Norton" is dominated s "Structural Methods in Four Quartets", Journal of English Literary History X X I I (1955), 212-214. 6 Dorothy E. Rambo, "An Analysis of Four Quartets by Eliot with Particular Respect to its Prosody" (unpub. diss.. Northwestern University, Chicago, 1958), pp. 34-35.

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by the symbol of air, which signifies the breath of life, spiritual resuscitation, the destruction of earthly things; it is "the wind t h a t sweeps the gloomy hills of London . . .". "East Coker" is elemented by earth and is characterized by the earthly village dancers. I n "The Dry Salvages", dominated by water imagery, symbolic manifestation of river and sea are presented. The last of the poems, "Little Gidding", is symbolized by fire, progressing from the image of the sun flaming on ice to the "crowned knot of fire" at the poem's climactic ending. The philosophy of Heraclitus also thickens the poem's thematic structure. I n order to underscore the temporal mutability t h e m e with firm philosophical concepts, Eliot borrows Heraclitus' notion t h a t everything is in a state of eternal flux; t h a t is, everything is in the process of becoming, nothing is complete and nothing is permanent except change itself. But for this ceaseless change not to become chaos, according to Miss Rambo, "it must conform to fixed patterns under the control of a divine intelligence" which is the Logos or still point around which the wheel of flux turns; 7 it is the unmoving spiritual force which governs the endless Heraclitan movement. The wheel of flux then is a symbolic projection of the temporal mutability theme while the still point symbolizes the theme of eternity. Both themes are synthesized in the image of the wheel of flux turning around the still point. Even the images of the poem seem t o exist in a state of Heraclitan flux. The idea of eternal recurrence is echoed in the recurrence of leading symbols — the sea, the rose-garden, the fire. These occur in all or most of the poems, reflecting a world of changing appearances. I n moving from quartet to quartet the reader is aware of a sort of shadowy dance of returning images or recurring thematic components t h a t flit in and out of the poem's ideological structure illuminating the principal themes. This dance of leading images is governed or "timed" by a firm metrical structure which varies according to subject and mood yet consistently reflects the poet's changing voices. The metrical structure of the Four Quartets reveals Eliot's musicological perception of poetic rhythm. I n choosing the four-stress accentual line as his norm for the poem, Eliot settled on a type of metrical sequence which approximates the measured sequence of 7

Rambo, pp. 51-53.

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a melodic line in music: while the number of unaccented notes or syllables may vary within each beat, the accents tend to fall with some degree of regularity; metrical unity here derives from the preponderance of recurring rhythmical units within a given sequence. In music these rhythmical units might be duplets, triplets, quadruplets, or multiples thereof; in poetry they are iambs, trochees, anapests, and so on. As the metrical norm for all of the quartets, the four-stress accentual line recurs frequently throughout the poem. In its more regular and strongly accented form this line usually gives firm support to the eternity theme as illustrated in the beginning lines of "Burnt Norton": / / / / Time present and time past / / i i Are both perhaps present in time future . . . .

When its metrical structure is somewhat more dense and heavy, yet tending to be regular in the disposition of accents, the labored cadence reflects the struggles of the artist in expressing difficult ideas — / '. ' ' Midwinter spring is its own season \ i / / Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, i

i

I

I

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

The accentual tetrameter with its strong medial pause, according to Helen Gardner, provides Eliot with a flexible metrical base enabling him to shift at will into "the evenness of duple or the ripple of triple rhythm", depending on the desired effect. 8 Counterpointed against the accentual norm are sequences of rimed and conventional syllabic verse, occurring principally in the second and fourth sections of each quartet. Here we find iambic tetrameters closely but irregularly rimed; a sequence of rimed accentual tetrameters (as a variant on the earlier syllabic tetrameters); a variation on the sestina form, a sequence containing internal rimes, a succession of five stanzas in a fixed rime scheme, and so on. In each instance the regular meter and rime emphasize the lyric parts 8

Op . Git., p. 29.

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of the poem and are accompanied by imagery of unusual symbolic richness. In the lines beginning "If you came this way in may time . . .", Eliot uses a combination of rich Tennysonian assonance and internal rime to underscore the sensuous beauty and heavy voluptuousness of the scene. Such luxuriant effects, however, are sporadic and rare in the poem. As in Eliot's use of rime and traditional English metric, they serve chiefly to intensify the lyrical episodes of the poem in contrast to the discursive passages. I n opposition to the many highly rhythmical and imagistic passages in the quartets are several sustained passages which seem utterly lacking in rhythmical character. Indeed, if one subscribes to the principle of regularity in the succession of accents as well as t h a t of dominant and subordinate rhythmical figurations as being fundamental requirements of verse, then certain parts of the poem cannot be considered as verse at all. As a case in point one might consider the following lines from "The Dry Salvages": I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna m e a n t — A m o n g other things—or one way of putting the same thing . . . .

Here one perceives the irregular rhythms and unsteady tempos of English prose discourse. There are no predominating rhythmical figurations, no subordinate variants, no regular beats — only a hodge-podge of heterogeneous rhythmical units. Yet many of these prosaic passages serve a particular function. Like the Cockney scene in The Waste Land but lacking its racy, repetitive colloquial rhythms, these passages are patches of prose collage introduced into what is primarily a verse medium. At their worst they seem like awkward and digressive interpolations. At their best, however, they heighten the realism of the poem and paradoxically expand the sphere of poetry by adding a nonpoetic dimension to the quartets. Within the stricter context of the poem itself they exist in dynamic opposition to the lyrical passages and seem appropriate to the discursive purposes of the poet. At all events, the Four Quartets abundantly illustrate Eliot's skill in adapting a variety of formal devices, both musical and literary, to the changing flow of meaning. Although the earlier verse also reflects Eliot's adaptive skills, the modified sonata-allegro form of the quartets provides the poet with a more orderly mode of thematic development than do the forms of his earlier work. Hence,

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in comparison with "Gerontion" or The Waste Land, the progression of stylistic effects in the quartets is more regularized, with easier transitions and more sustained patterns of development. I n the four succeeding sections of this chapter I will analyze more minutely this progression of stylistic effects. In so doing I will attempt to relate Eliot's use of these effects to the semantic and thematic structures of the poem.

2 The opening section of "Burnt Norton" introduces the two main themes in the form of statement and counter-statement, presenting the contrast between an abstract speculation on eternal time (eternity theme) and the poet's concrete experience in the garden (temporal mutability theme mixed with hints of the eternity theme). The second section develops the eternity theme in two opposing manners, the lyric and the discursive, with the poet's conception of the eternal recurrence of natural forces and the image of the still point in garden and chapel. In the third section the poet begins by making an extended exploration of the temporal theme in terms of the sterile lives of Londoners trapped in their empty "twittering world"; in the last stanza of the section, as the poet plunges deeply into despair, he is being purged of earthly visions, thus moving closer to the eternity theme in his spiritual search. The brief lyrical fourth section, a variant on the temporal mutability theme, captures the poet's fears of death and his doubts of ever experiencing rebirth. In the image of "the still point of the turning world" at the end of the section, the eternity theme makes a brief appearance. The concluding section of the quartet recapitulates the garden imagery and resolves the contradictions propounded in the opening section, closing with a strong statement of the eternity theme. The thematic structure of the poem is enforced by the Heraclitan master symbol of air, with the symbolism of this element varying from section to section. At first, as a projection of the temporal mutability theme, it signifies man's limited intellectual capacity which has left him helpless in a selfish secular world. Yet it also calls to mind the vastness of eternal time, disturbing the poet's reminiscences in the garden and reminding him of the innocence

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of his childhood. In the third division of the poem the air becomes purgatorial, driving away the deceptive phantoms of sublunary existence and clearing the way for the divine: as such it prepares the reader for the resumption of the eternity theme. In the last section its presence is merely implied. Here it symbolizes the eternity theme as it blows away the secular dust of earthly time: it seems to stimulate the innocent laughter of children, suggesting the poet's return to his eternal moment in the garden and the possibility of redeeming his lost childhood innocence. The poem opens with a statement of the thematic problem. The poet sets certain preliminary conditions for comprehending the nature of eternal time: /

T i m e present and time p a s t A r e both perhaps present in time f u t u r e , /

/

/

t

/

A n d time f u t u r e contained in time past. / / / / I f all time is eternally present / / \ / A l l t i m e is unredeemable.

All time converges on the present and is therefore unredeemable — for we cannot redeem what is perpetually here and now. In these five lines the four-stress accentual line is established as the metrical norm of the Four Quartets. Here Eliot demonstrates the flexibility of this line by developing his ideas on time through repetition and rhythmic expansion. Harvey Gross illustrates Eliot's exploitation of this device with the following notations: >

time present

J

time past

J j

time future time is eternally time is unredeemable

J

n

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As the idea accumulates emotional power, the rhythmic texture is thickened, 9 and the last line of the sequence carries an accumulated rhythmic tension commensurate with the strength of the idea. The rhythmic expansion device, incidentally, is often used by Beethoven in the opening sections of his quartets and symphonies. I n the next five lines the past is merged with what might have been, and these two conditions of mortal time are also absorbed into the present. Since mortal time is part of eternally present time, the poet may perhaps catch glimpses of eternity through the mists of earthly time. Thus the eternity theme, instead of being stated directly, is merely implied; it is expressed as a tentative, exploratory gesture, leaving room for further development as the poem progresses. The poet, in recalling what might have been, finds himself drawn into the rose-garden: Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.

Echoes reverberate in the minds of poet and reader while the lines of the poem begin to echo one another. The condition of what might have been suggests the unexplored passages and unopened gates in everyone's life, the eternal moments which are now lost and may never return. The dust on the bowl of rose-leaves in the second stanza is the dust of mortal time which has buried the past. A gust of heavenly wind, apparently, blows the dust away and stimulates the poet's early memories. As in many of Eliot's other poems, the garden motto stirs up old half-forgotten memories which seem alive and vibrant in contrast to the deadness and sterility of the present. The poet does not know why these memories should be revived, yet he feels an irresistible urge to relive these buried moments. He is drawn into "our first world", suggesting the Garden of Eden filled with innocence and pristine truth. "Many small things", including the beckoning bird, "draw the mind forward through 9

Gross, "Music and the Analogue of Feeling: Notes on Eliot and Beethoven", The Centennial Review of Arts and Science, Michigan State University III (1959), 276.

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this verse. The syntax beckons just a little ahead of our attention . . .". 10 The quickness and elusiveness of the poet's memories are intensified by the images of the bird, the flowering lotus, the sudden laughter of children, and the forward-moving syntax of the lines. The garden is a symbol of the poet's central experience. Eliot had visited an empty mansion in Gloucestershire in the summer of 1934 and had ambled through its ruined formal garden. This garden, then, symbolizes a metaphysical garden of childhood innocence in which the poet perceives glimmerings of ultimate reality — the reality of God's invisible world. But since his experience here is set in mortal time, the garden scene at this point mainly projects the temporal mutability theme with only an occasional flash of the eternity theme. Besides, the experience may be deceptive, for mortal memory is filled with illusions. The poet nevertheless continues to pursue his hopes. The other echoes, the thrush, the invisible presences, the unheard music, the laughing children in the shrubbery — all of these images symbolize the innocence of the poet's childhood and his memories of the elusive lost moment. Grover Smith remarks t h a t Eliot is here alluding to Kipling's "They", a tale of "ghostly dream children" who may represent the poet's past selves. 11 The poet glances down into the brown-edged empty pool which suggests the sterility of the temporal world. B u t suddenly the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

The mystical light from the lotos flower transforms the temporal world and floods the garden with heavenly illumination. The poet is exposed briefly to a flicker of the eternity theme, but the passing of a cloud obscures the garden and returns him to the sterility of the everyday world — a world filled with the wastes of time. I n the second section of "Burnt Norton" the eternity theme is masked. I n the images of perpetual motion — the perpetual struggle and pursuit, the eternal recurrence of natural events and the broad 10 11

Kenner, p. 290. Smith, p. 256.

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analogies in the movements of nature — the poet conceives a moment or order in which opposites are reconciled. The aching of old wounds ("The trilling wire in the blood/Sings below inveterate scars . . .") is a reminder that old wars had been painful but are now forgotten, and the old conflicts are reconciled in time. As if in imitation of the recurring rhythms of nature, the first stanza of the section is written in rimed duple tetrameters and is perhaps "based on the Heraclitan idea of perpetual strife which resolves itself into beautiful harmony". 1 2 Then the style abruptly changes. The tempo slows, the lines lengthen, the imagery decreases, and the mood becomes more meditative and analytic. The fierce tensions of natural conflict seem t o dissolve A t t h e still point of t h e turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither f r o m nor towards; a t t h e still point, there t h e dance is . . . .

Here Eliot restates the eternity theme in terms of one of its domin a n t symbols. The still point is beyond mortal time, beyond the world of "practical desire", and it offers "release from action and suffering . . .". Still the poet must pass through these stages of mortal time in order to arrive at the still point. The last stanza of the second section marks a return to imagery. Eliot elaborates on the idea of perceiving eternity through mortal time and briefly reiterates some of the garden imagery from the first section: Time p a s t and time f u t u r e Allow b u t a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time B u t only in time can t h e moment in the rose-garden, The m o m e n t in t h e arbour where t h e rain beat, The m o m e n t in the draughty church a t smokefall Be remembered; involved with p a s t and future. Only through time time is conquered.

The repetitions of "conscious" and "consciousness", of "time" and "moment", strengthen Eliot's momentary recapitulation of the eternity theme by knitting the lines firmly together. The third section introduces our first strong expression of the temporal mutability theme. Executed in slowly moving yet bold 12

Drew, p. 155.

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317

accentual tetrameters for the most part, this section begins byimmersing the reader in the sterile half-light of a spiritually desiccated world: / / \ / Here is a place of disaffection / / / / Time before and time after / / In a dim light . . . .

The air takes on a different symbolic aspect. Like the twilight air of the Hollow Men or the faint light of Dante's trimmers, it symbolizes the sterility of those who pursue neither good nor evil. The half-light reveals "the strained time-ridden faces" of those whose minds are filled with delusions, men without direction or purpose. Then, as the tempo picks up slightly, the dim air stirs to life as /

/

t

t

t

\

Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind i

i

i

i

That blows before and after time . . .

are driven by "the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London . . .". The poet's feeling here is one of disaffection and apathy as he turns away from the half-light of this twittering world and sinks i

i

I

into the darkness of sensual deprivation: "Descend lower, descend I

I

!

I

I

o n l y / I n t o the world of perpetual solitude . . .". And "while the world m o v e s / I n appetency, on its metalled ways", the poet finds himself all alone in the darkness of the London tube, having separated himself from the time-ridden and wind-driven inhabitants of London. His descent into the lower depths of despair, or dark night of t h e soul, is marked by a further slowing down of the tempo accompanied by a scarcity of images. I n a sense he is closer to salvation because his senses have been purged of all affection for worldly things. The poet's despair at the close of the third section gives way to feelings of fear in the fourth section. I n this brief lyric, a variant of the garden motto, the garden is stripped of all connotations of eternity and all of the images are pressed into the service of the temporal theme. The "dark night" of the poet is aggravated by sudden fears of death in which he experiences grave doubts t h a t he will ever be spiritually reborn:

318

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' / / / / Time and the bell have buried the day B E D DAY B L / / / \ The black cloud carries the sun away. BL K KLOWD KER S S AT (\> / / / Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis L S OW TUB T S L KL TS / / / / Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray S AT OW T S T S AY / / Clutch and cling? K T K

In contrast to the slow tempo and discursive language of the preceding stanza, the fourth section is rich in images set in the quickened tempo of rimed accentual tetrameters which mark the poet's change in feeling. The feeling is intensified further b y frequent assonance and alliteration (marked above). The poet's death fears are climaxed in the image of the yew-tree (a death-symbol) curling its fingers around his corpse. This image also climaxes the first extended treatment of the temporal mutability theme. A t the close of the section the eternity theme reasserts itself. I t comes upon the reader quickly, in the form of a momentary flash, but its expression is vivid and forceful: / / / A f t e r the kingfisher's wing / i i / i i Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still / (\) / / / A t the still point of the turning world.

I t is as if the poet has experienced a sudden illumination. The bright tempo and the brightness of the kingfisher's wing, together with the rich consonance and verbal repetitions, are in direct contrast to the slower-moving lines of the preceding passage. The stillness of the last line, however, is intensified b y an abrupt ritardo, which prepares us for the slower and more meditative lines of the concluding section. In the last section of "Burnt Norton", the principal themes are recapitulated, and the contradictions of the opening section are resolved. The first four lines, in partially recapitulating the temporal mutability theme, introduce a new aspect of the theme: the difficulties endured by the artist in his struggles with form —

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319

/ / / _ / Words move, music moves / / / / / Only in time; but that which is only living i

i

i

i

i

Can only die. Words, after speech, reach / / Into the silence.

The next few lines seem to resolve these difficulties with a fresh statement of the eternity theme in which the verb "reach" is repeated in a new context — this time to emphasize the act of reaching into eternity. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness.

Even if the materials of art are subject to the laws of mutability, art may live if its form and pattern achieve permanence — t h a t is, if its expression attains the still point beyond the shackles of mortal time. As in Beethoven's quartets, tension is quickly followed by resolution: the shifting meanings of words and music resolve into larger patterns of permanence. A few lines later on, the tensions return with a restatement of t h e temporal mutability theme. Words strain and decay with imprecision; voices shriek to be heard b u t are meaningless and frustrated. I n the image of "The Words in the desert" surrounded by tempting and chimerical voices, Eliot finds a new expression for " t h e still point of the turning world". The Word, or Christ, is the still point, and He is surrounded by the whirling empty voices of t h e world. Here Eliot fuses the two themes of eternity and mutability before launching into his final recapitulation of the eternity theme. I n the last stanza of the section Eliot alludes to the stillness of the Chinese jar: "The detail of the pattern is movement. . .". The p a t t e r n itself is unmoving though it inspires movement in other things: it is the still point, the Word, the principle of eternal recurrence, and finally the eternal moment in the garden — Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, always— Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.

320

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS'

Thus the eternity theme is recapitulated in terms of the contradictions proposed in the first section. The poet breaks through the physical aspects of time and recovers the lost moment of innocence in the garden, discovering t h a t it is only through mortal time that eternal time can be perceived.

3

I n "Burnt Norton" Eliot had searched into his own past experiences for evidence of ultimate reality. In "East Coker", however, he explores his ancestral past, going back to the Somersetshire village of East Coker whence his forbear, Andrew Eliot, had set sail for America in the seventeenth century. 13 Because of the charming landscape surrounding the village, and to commemorate the time of Andrew Eliot's departure for America, the third stanza of the poem appropriately introduces a variety of pastoral images associated with the earthly existence of the Somersetshire villagers as they must have lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The earthly beauty of the village evidently inspired Eliot to select this place as the symbolic setting for his poem, with earth-images representing the temporal mutability theme. The thematic structure of "East Coker" departs radically from the scheme of thematic development used in the first quartet. Instead of treating the two themes in alternating patterns from section to section, he assigns a special prominence to the temporal mutability theme by allowing it to dominate the first two-thirds of the poem. B u t why does Eliot give such prominence to the secondary theme? Earth is the master symbol of " E a s t Coker" — the earth with its lessons of mortality and mutability, its smell of dung and decay, its grim reminders of worldly pleasures and desires which end in death. Since images drawn from the earth take precedence in the poem, it seems natural t h a t these earth-images, symbolizing a dying world of changing appearances, should give strong support to the theme of temporal mutability. This theme is projected b y such images as crumbling houses, villagers performing their eternal 13

Gardner, p. 159.

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QUARTETS'

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dance of death, overblown flowers, and violent planetary disturbances. Some of the leading images of "Burnt Norton" are here subjected to a reverse symbolism. The garden motto, for example, had mainly supported the eternity theme in "Burnt Norton"; but in the present poem, through the imagery of overblown hollyhocks and late roses trapped in early snow, this motto serves the temporal theme. I n the second section of "Burnt Norton" the poet sees order in the perpetual recurrence of planetary motions; but in "East Coker" he perceives great cosmic disorder and heavenly destruction. The transmuted symbolism of these images reflects certain transmutations in the poet's mind, indicating t h a t he has suffered a sort of spiritual relapse as fresh doubts undermine his earlier feelings of confidence. I n the last third of the poem, however, the eternity theme assumes as ascendant position, reflecting a sudden resolution of the poet's spiritual tensions. After envisioning the earth as the graveyard of all humanity and everything human, including man's deepest wishes and hopes, the poet comes to realize t h a t redemption from mortal sin and final salvation can come only through great humility and intense agony. Christ as the wounded surgeon cleanses the soul with purgatorial fires, and in this way He nurses the suffering world back to health. Finally, the poet no longer sees his death as the inevitable end of his life. Instead he conceives his death as the beginning of eternal life. Yet Eliot begins the poem with a vision of death. I n the opening stanza, in which the subject is stated in general terms, the poet sees himself as an essential component of the dying order of nature. For man is born of the earth, his maturation and growth are nourished by the earth, and ultimately he declines and dies, only to be buried in the earth. His body, mingled with decaying vegetation and dung, fertilizes the soil, thus preparing the way for new life; and the cycle of generation and decay begins anew. These rhythmic cycles of regeneration and decay are aesthetically mirrored in the heavy sustained rhythms of the long lines which frame the poem's opening sentences: / / \ / / / In my beginning is my end. In succession / / / / i i Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

322

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' / / / / / / Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place / / / \ / Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

The trochaic hexameter rhythm of the first three lines above gives way to an accentual rhythm of spondees and triplets in which monosyllabic feet are used to accentuate the images (italicized below). The syncopated beat of these accentual verses, though somewhat less regular, remains strong and persistent as if to reflect the struggles and violence of nature — / \ / \ Old stone to new building, I

I

I

/ / / \ old, timber to new fires,

/

/

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth \

I

I

I

/

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, / / / / / Bone of m a n and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

I t is the law of nature to kill, and then to recreate something new out of the rotting remains of what it has killed, whether it be man or beast, vegetation or houses. The earth, its creatures, and its creations are all subject to the laws of mutability, and all are in a state of flux and impermanence. The last five lines of the stanza restate the dominant imagery of houses, this time with a concrete illustration of a deserted and ruined mansion: Houses live and die: there is a time for building And a time for living and for generation And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

The absence of spondees in these smooth accentual lines creates a steadier rhythm to match the steadiness of the wind's gradual attrition as it blows through the empty mansion. The wind comes as a reminder of the passage of earthly time. I t seems to animate what had once lived but is now dead and forgotten. I n bygone days the motto on the tapestry might have symbolized the grandiose dreams of an illustrious and powerful family. But now the family is extinct, and the motto is silent or meaningless, as vacant as the wind. The wind, of course, is one of the symbolic manifestations of air, the Heraclitan element dominating "Burnt Norton". Its symbolism

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in "East Coker", however, is slightly modified. Here the air combines with the earlier image of fire as a symbolic agent of destruction and renewal in the world, reinforcing the symbol of earth as creator and destroyer of worldly phenomena. Having stated the subject of the poet's earthly mortality in the first stanza, Eliot next sets the scene for the dance of the villagers. H e has already invoked the earth with its creations and mutable phenomena; now he becomes suddenly more concrete by setting the proper mood and locale for what is to follow — In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon . . . .

The poet leans against a bank and watches a van pass by, feeling hypnotized in the "electric heat". The mood here is lethargic, narcotic, sleepy; the poet seems to be lulled by the soft voluptuous atmosphere of the earth as he contemplates the open field where the dancers will meet. Even the air takes on a different symbolic connotation, for the poet's mood of drowsiness is intensified by the "sultry light" as the "dahlias sleep in the empty silence". The first and second stanzas are united by the same beginning sentence: "In my beginning is my end." Eliot relates the third stanza to the second by repeating the image of the "open field" — In that open field If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a Summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And see them dancing around the bonfire The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie . . . .

The archaic language of a quotation from Sir Thomas Elyot's The Boke named The Gouvenour emphasizes the antiquity of dancing as a fertility rite, which is sublimated in Elyot as a proper prelude to Christian marriage, the "necessaryie coniunction" t h a t "betokeneth concorde". B u t here the pagan and Christian traditions become scrambled at the expense of the Christian, for the bonfire suggests an unholy and paganistic lust which joins the sexes in voluptuous merriment.

324

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS'

/ / / Round and round the fire

/ i i i Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles, / / / / Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter

f

/

/

/

r

Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes, / / ¡ i t Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth . . . .

T h e Heraclitan element of fire, hithertofore symbolizing the destruction of man's artifacts, emerges now as a symbol of the destruction of man's soul through the lower appetites. The Elizabethan sexual pun in "country mirth" suggests the lecherous motives of the dancers. Fussell identifies this scene of dancing and merriment as a festival of fertility held on St. John's Eve, in which couples would "leap over and through flames to ensure generation . . ," 14 . T h e steady duple-syllabic meter measures the rhythm of their dance. Suddenly, however, the fertility dance changes into a grim danse macabre as the dancers die, their dead bodies supplying manure to nourish the corn. The dancers die, yet the dance goes on as new generations continue the old dance: Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling. Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

The heavy duple rhythm, marking time for the dancers, becomes even more pronounced as the villagers, with their feet of clay, dance themselves to death. Repeating the form for the "time" variations from the first stanza, Eliot recapitulates the idea of the cyclic earth-rhythms which govern seasons, crops, motions of planets, marriage, death, and the rhythms of life t h a t beat in man. B u t in his earth-bound vision man cannot see beyond the pales of the mortal world. He perceives only one thing: every earthly thing dies including himself, who ends in "Dung and death". 14

Fussell, 227.

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The section concludes with a statement of the eternity theme: Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

By ending the stanza with the phrase " I n my beginning", Eliot rounds out the section. The omission of "is my end" appears to stress the idea of hope. The elements of air and water carry a refreshing symbolism: they seem to dissipate the heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the village dancers, blowing and washing away the earthy smell. The poet's hopes, however, are quickly dissolved, for in the second section he suffers a vision of grave disorder in the natural world. Instead of feeling the steady earth-rhythms of the preceding section, or perceiving the orderly recurrence of natural forces as he did in "Burnt Norton", he sees only the violent destruction of the universe. I n the second section the temporal mutability theme is treated in two opposed manners, the lyric and the discursive. I n the lyric stanza introducing the section, the poet's vision of chaos is set mainly in an iambic tetrameter metrical scheme. The duple-syllabic meter resembles the meter of the dancing scene, except t h a t the lines are shorter with irregular and sporadic rimes. The fairly steady duple rhythm suggests that the rhythms of the dance as well as the rhythms of natural cycles are being carried into the outer reaches of the universe. Beginning with images of confused seasons — spring and summer weather in November, overblown hollyhocks, and snow-filled roses — the confusion spreads into the heavens. Here the planetary motto is expressed in terms of a war of the worlds: I I I / Scorpion fights against the Sun / / I I Until the Sun and Moon go down / I I I / Comets weep and Leonids fly I

/

I

I

Hunt the heavens and the plains /

I

I

I

Whirled in a vortex that shall bring /

I

I

I

The world to that destructive fire ' ' ' ' Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

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THE 'FOUR QUAKTETS'

The heavily accented iambs in the last two lines stress the destructive force of the fire and bring the first stanza of the section to a strong finish. I n the image of fire and ice Eliot brings the war of opposing planets to a forceful and vivid climax. The lyrical stanza comes to an abrupt end as Eliot begins his discursive treatment of the temporal theme. He opens with a short treatment of the artistic struggle motto:

I

I

I

I

I

That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:

-nil n

r r i i u j j j j j h y

A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,

t f h n

FTft

r r i s h n V

Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.

The highly uneven beat, the absence of dominant and subordinate rhythmical units, and irregularly disposed pauses indicate the extremely prosaic nature of these long lines. I n contrast to the concrete imagery and quick steady tempo of the preceding stanza, the slow-moving prose of this sequence sets off the poet's gloomy reflections in strong relief. Eliot concludes t h a t age, instead of bringing wisdom, simply fills us with fresh delusions; the pattern imposed by knowledge is false, for our mental patterns become fixed and rigid while the pattern of things and events is in a state of continuous flux. The poet is caught in the middle of his deceptions and fantasies; he feels lost in a dark wood, in a bramble, On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold, And menaced by monsters, fancy lights, Risking enchantment.

With this return to imagery and meter, the stanza ends with a short statement of the eternity theme: The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

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For it is only through extreme self-abnegation t h a t one may grasp the power of the absolute, the ultimate vision of eternity. The two parallel one-line stanzas which close the section / / / / The houses are all gone under the sea. / i i / The dancers are all gone under the hill. . .

recapitulate the temporal mutability theme in terms of its two main images. I n detaching these lines Eliot is exploiting "the expressive possibilities of silence" in order to allow the sentences to echo in our minds. 15 The poet's feelings of utter humility, his perception that all mortal things die, lead the reader directly into the third section in which the poet suffers another period of black despair. I n the third sections of both "Burnt Norton" and "East Coker", the poet is plunged into the dark night of the soul. I n both poems, also, the darkness paradoxically precedes illumination, leading eventually into a strong statement of the eternity theme. Here, however, the agony seems more intense. Set in a dynamic accentual rhythm, the lines in this section are longer, the beat is heavier and the tempo is quicker, suggesting that the poet's despair is deeper and more anxious than it had been in "Burnt Norton". The quality of darkness is intensified further by repetition: /

(

/

)

/

/

/

!

0 dark dark dark. They all go into the dark /

/

/

I

/

I

/

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, i

/

i

i

I

I

The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters . . . I

I

I

/

I

I

/

Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, I

I

T

I

I

I

And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha I

I

I

/

/

And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors . . . .

The poet sees himself perish along with everyone else and with all the pompous vanities of the world. I n the quotation from Milton's Samson Agonistes Eliot strengthens the image of the ultimate blindness and invisibility of the mortal world. The eternity theme flickers fitfully in the lines 1 said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. 13

Gross, 285.

328

the 'four

quartets'

Like the spectator in a theater or passenger in a tube, the poet feels the darkness descend upon him: he passively awaits his salvation as he contemplates the fading scenery of the mortal world. A few lines later the above-quoted phrase is repeated in varied form: " I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope" — yet, as Howarth remarks, "there is already a trace of the hope in the animating lift of the lines". 16 And with this hope comes a glimmer of salvation as the eternity theme reasserts itself: "So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing." I t is through passive waiting, through utter abnegation of self, the negative way of St. J o h n of the Cross, that the poet hopefully anticipates his salvation, having suffered loss, deprivation, and loneliness. I n the next stanza, as the poet draws closer to his moment of eternity, the tempo picks up and the images become more concrete and vivid — / / / / / Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.

Here the garden motto serves the eternity theme by hinting t h a t redemption is possible only through agony and ecstasy. I n the phrase "pointing to the agony", Eliot anticipates the purgatorial mood of the fourth section. In the last stanza the eternity theme is treated discursively in a series of framed paradoxes culminating in the strange realization t h a t the poet knows nothing, owns nothing, and exists nowhere. I n his transitional state, which is beyond the temporal but short of the spiritual, he is caught between two worlds. For him the visible world has already ceased to exist, and the invisible world of the spirit has not yet manifested itself except by subtle intimations and shadowy hints. The intensely lyrical fourth section bursts upon the reader like a spring whose waters had been gradually building up pressure in the preceding sections. The poet's feelings of abject humility and darkest ignorance suddenly give way to a lyrical realization t h a t salvation will come only through acceptance of suffering and death. 16

Howarth, 325.

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329

Here the eternity theme takes on a profound purgatorial coloring. Christ appears as the wounded surgeon who restores us by making our sickness worse; His church may be "the dying nurse", and Adam is presumably the "ruined millionaire" who has endowed the earth with a patrimony of suffering through our inheritance of original sin. The earth, finally, is our hospital in which we must suffer and die in order to be cured. The paradoxes propounded in the third section are here transposed into a lyrical key, rich in imagery and symbolism. The lyricism is strengthened by the fixed versification format. The five stanzas all carry an ABABB rime, and each of them adheres to the same metrical scheme: three iambic tetrameters followed by an iambic pentameter and an iambic hexameter. The long hexameter which closes each stanza carries the accumulated burden of ideas in the stanza and terminates it with a strong, sustained climactic period. The purgatorial feeling of the section is climaxed in the fourth stanza: T h e chill a s c e n d s f r o m f e e t t o k n e e s , T h e f e v e r sings i n m e n t a l wires. If to be warmed, t h e n I m u s t freeze A n d q u a k e i n f r i g i d p u r g a t o r i a l fires Of w h i c h t h e flame is roses, a n d t h e s m o k e is b r i a r s .

Suddenly the poet's voice becomes more personal, more intense, as the "we" changes into " I " . The poet himself is now the hospital patient and his body is burning with the paradoxical symptoms of chill and fever. The climactic closing line of the stanza fuses the garden motto (roses and briars) with the image of purgatorial fires. The rose is also a symbol of the flowering blood of Christ as it flows from His wounds and purifies the sinner's soul. All of these images, the smoke, the flaming roses, the wounding briars, are melded together to form a complex and richly connotative master-image. Taken together they symbolize the beauty and agony of purgatorial suffering. I n the last stanza the idea of the Crucifixion combines with the idea of the Holy Eucharist in which the "dripping blood" and "bloody flesh" of Christ are consumed. Both ideas merge with the idea of purgatorial suffering. Indeed, the partaking of Communion and the memory of the Crucifixion seem to blend synthetically in

330

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the poet's mind as a simultaneous purgatorial action. The flesh and blood of Christ are so real to the poet t h a t human flesh and blood seem utterly insubstantial, for it is Christ's blood and body which bring the poet's sickness to a crisis and cleanse his soul of impurities. Hence the day of the Crucifixion is called Good Friday because from t h a t day onward, through Christ's suffering flesh and bleeding wounds, Christians might be purged of their moral errors and redeemed from the curse of original sin. Eliot opens the fifth section, somewhat feebly and discursively, with an extended treatment of the artistic struggle motto (as a variant on the temporal theme). The lyric intensity of the preceding section seems to have suffered a relapse, for the rhythmic pulse is rather weak and the tone is coldly discursive. The poet's new mood is one of dissatisfaction and frustration — So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of Ventre deux guerres— Trying to l e a m to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure . . . .

The poet evidently feels that the interbellum period is part of the "waste sad time" of his mortal existence. The years have been lost in a struggle to articulate ideas through the unstable medium of words, which are characterized as "shabby equipment" or "Undisciplined squads of emotion". The poet closes his treatment of the temporal theme by asking why he should try to reproduce something t h a t had already been executed "by men whom one cannot hope / To emulate . . .". Despite the danger of repeating what might have been better expressed by his literary predecessors, the poet resolves his complaint by concluding t h a t the artist must always fight "to recover what has been lost", even under unpropitious conditions. "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." These last four lines of the stanza function as a transitional episode, leading directly into the poet's final statement of the eternity theme. The closing stanza of "East Coker" reasserts the eternity theme in a series of bold positive statements of belief and resolves the conflicts treated in the earlier sections. The opening lines of the stanza once again confirm the value of artistic creation, extending a n d developing the idea into fresh areas of application:

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/ / / / / Home is where one starts from. As we grow older / / / / The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated i

i

i

i

i

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment / i t i Isolated, with no before and after, /

i

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i

But a lifetime burning in every moment . . . .

I n contrast to the irregular prosaic rhythms of the preceding stanza, the strong even pulse of these lines measures the increased mental activity of the poet as well as the strength and confidence of his resolution. As stated in the first sentence of the stanza, the poet is free to return to where he started from and begin anew. The materials of his past experience do not dissolve into nothingness; they are rearranged into new patterns so t h a t they are repeated as different phases of themselves. The intense moments in the garden, the moments of artistic creation, are no longer isolated and discontinuous: they may now stretch into eternity as they repeat themselves in different forms during a lifetime of burning creativity. Since each successive moment might recapitulate past experience, nothing is truly lost and all may be redeemed. Even the experiences of great predecessors may be vicariously felt ("old stones t h a t cannot be deciphered"). The emphasis here is placed on effort: it is the noble fight of the artist, his struggle with words and meanings; and through his efforts the pattern of old truths may be reaffirmed from generation to generation. The moments of lesser intensity may also be redeemed — "the evening under lamplight" and evenings spent with "the photograph album". There is a time and season for everything, and the mortal time of "here and now" no longer matters. What counts is the continuing struggle for truth and excellence, the great effort which one expends in renewing the old true patterns. The closing lines project a variant on the journey motto. But this is not the weary journey of passengers on a railway car or in a subway train. I t is a mystical journey of exploration. The poet seems to have passed through the terminus of his mortal existence, and the earth, with its connotations of mutability and death, no longer darkens his view. Now he earnestly wishes to explore the deepest recesses of his soul —

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THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' / \ / / Old men ought to be explorers / / / Here and there does not matter \ / / / We must be still and still moving i i / Into another intensity i

i

/

/

For a further union, a deeper communion / i \ / i Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, / (\) / (\) / / The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters i

i

\

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i

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

By synthesizing his past intense moments and by communicating with the ideas and ideals of dead authors, the poet will move into "another intensity", for his mortal time will be transposed into eternal moments of fruitful creativity. His renewed excitement and fresh hopes are reflected in the stronger and steadier beats, which quicken their pace with the introduction of images from the sea. The sea imagery functions as a transitional lead-in for "The Dry Salvages", prefiguring the dominant water imagery of t h a t poem. Responding to the cry of the waves and the wind, the cries of the sea-birds, the poet's journey will carry him over the great waters beyond the pale of earthly desolation. In his birth he had seen both his own death and the deaths of all earthly things. But in the death of mortal time he now envisions renewed life in an eternity of great strivings. Thus the concluding sentence, "In my end is my beginning", rounds out the poem by inverting the meaning of the poem's opening sentence. With the words rearranged t o support the eternity theme, the poet's earthly dilemma is now resolved. The vastness of the sea is like eternity, beckoning the poet forward on his soul's pilgrimage. But instead of the thrush in the garden vaguely reminding him of a single ecstatic moment, the sacred sea-birds call him to a mystical voyage which promises an infinite succession of intense and burning moments.

4 Eliot had begun his difficult quest for eternal reality by searching into his own individual past. I n "East Coker" he explored his an-

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cestral or racial past. In "The Dry Salvages", however, he probes even deeper by digging into the obscure regions of the paleontological past. Appropriately, the sea with its prehistoric life emerges as the leading symbolic image of the poem inasmuch as its primordial existence renders it "Older than the time of chronometers" and beyond the mortal time of men. In the beginning of the poem the sea is conceived as the creator and destroyer of man and man's institutions, thus serving the destruction-regeneration motto as it had done in "Marina"; but as a projection of the eternity theme in "The Dry Salvages" its symbolism is greatly amplified. The Dry Salvages themselves are a cluster of rocky islands just off the Massachusetts coast, and they are closely associated with Eliot's childhood. These rocky islands symbolize permanence and strength as they endure perpetually in the eternal sea surrounding them. The river is presented as the leading symbol of the temporal mutability theme. As a "strong brown god" and "conveyor of commerce" it suggests the attributes of power and permanence, and like the sea it is at once creator and destroyer. B u t unlike the sea its course continually changes and its moods are often unpredictable and unreliable. Because of its fickle character it is subject to the laws of mutability. Hence it projects the secondary theme. I n treating certain salient aspects of the river Eliot seems to be alluding to the Mississippi, which is also intimately related to his childhood. Those images associated with the river, therefore, are unusually personal and concrete. Since the river and the sea are the leading thematic components of "The Dry Salvages", the Heraclitan element of water acts as the poem's master symbol. Although water imagery predominates, it occasionally intermingles with air in the form of a sea-wind while the element of earth does not appear until the very end of the poem. Fire imagery is entirely absent, and logically so, for the dominating presence of water, rock, and sand precludes the existence of fire. Comparing the present poem with " E a s t Coker", one perceives certain significant changes in the disposition of Heraclitan elements, and these changes create a corresponding shift in thematic emphasis and organization. With earth as the master symbol of "East Coker", the temporal theme occupies the great majority of lines in t h a t poem. On the other hand, since sea imagery dominates "The Dry

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Salvages", it seems only natural t h a t the eternity theme should take up nearly three quarters of the lines. Returning to the thematic format of "Burnt Norton", Eliot introduces the two principal themes in a tentative and exploratory manner by touching upon the temporal and eternal aspects of river and sea respectively. As the poem progresses the difficulties and problems posed in the first section are eventually resolved in the succeeding sections through alternating treatments of the two themes, with treatments of the eternity theme predominating. Eliot leads off with an exploration of the temporal theme, which is projected through images associated with the river — I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

/

s

/

/

/

t

Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce . . . .

The river is conceived, at least provisionally, as some sort of minor deity, somewhat paganistic and inconstant in his moods. B u t if his great residual power over the affairs of men is forgotten, he revenges himself against man and the products of man's civilization, / / / / / Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder / / / Of what men choose to forget.

As a symbol of the temporal flux and change in human affairs, the rhythms of the river vary considerably: the rhythm is now slow and even, now somewhat irregular and hesitating, now swift, regular, and strong — b u t the rhythmical flow is always there whether smooth or rough. These rhythmical variations in the river's flow are reflected in the flow of the lines. The first line of the poem is unmetered; the second, matching the strength of the brown god, is strong and regular; the third and fourth lines, being discursive and analytical, carry a rather flat prosaic rhythm, while the verses describing the river's raging floods are heavily accented and nearly metronomic in their regularity. Yet all of the lines are long and flowing, suggesting the endless flowing of the river. I n holding to his seasons and his rages the river god reminds us of our bondage to nature, measuring the mortal time which we feel in our pulses:

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THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom, In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard, In the smell of grapes on the autumn table, And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The second stanza introduces the contrasting imagery of the sea as the leading symbolic component of the eternity theme. Unlike the fluctuating currents of mortal time symbolized by the river, the eternal time of the sea is measured in a stronger and slower tempo. Encompassing vast stretches of space and time, it offers up evidence of its primordial existence: / / / (\) / The river is within us, the sea is all about us; / / \ / / The sea is the land's edge also, the granite '.

.

'

'

'

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses / / / / It hints of earlier and other creation: / / / / The starfish, the hermit crab, the whale's backbone . . . .

I t also reminds us of our losses: "the torn seine", broken oars, dead men's possessions. i

i

/

Next comes a short episodic paragraph: "The salt is on the briar i

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\

i

r o s e , / T h e fog is in the fir trees". The even progression of iambs here detach the paragraph from the predominantly accentual paragraphs of the section, emphasizing the fact t h a t the sea's influence permeates the land. The vastness of the sea transcends the narrow limits of the river with its one angry or sullen god: "The sea has many voices, / Many gods and many voices". 17 Eliot distinguishes some of these voices — / \ The sea howl / \ / / And the sea yelp, are different voices / i i / / Often together heard; the whine in the rigging, /

The menace and S / / The distant rote IST1I 17

/

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caress of wave that breaks on water, KES WAT R AY W R 1

1

in the granite teeth, N R NT T

Cf. Tennyson's description of the sea which "Moans round with many voices. . .".

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/

/

/

And the wailing warning from the approaching headland N W W NG NG W w :ENN6 / (\) / Are all sea voices . .

The sea is not, like the river, a simple melody with variations. Its many contrasting and interweaving voices suggest t h a t the sea is at once symphonic and polyphonic in character, producing the effect of a subtly orchestrated fugue. The musicological effects are strengthened by contrasting and onomatopoetic patterns of consonance (marked). As a ground note controlling the rhythm of this polyphonic variety of sea-voices, the slow regular sound of a tolling bell pierces the heavy fog. I t measures eternal time, not "the time of chronometers" or the time "counted by anxious worried women" who try futilely to unravel and gather together past and future. The steady repetition of the word "time" imitates, onomatopoetically, the tolling of this perpetual bell. Measuring out immortal time the bell rings as a reminder of our mortality, a reminder of the futility of worldly absorptions. I t also represents a desire for stability, for a still point, amidst the flux of human affairs. Actuated by the steady "ground swell", it rings before and after mortal time. The abrupt closing lines of the section come as an aesthetic shock:

the subject it is reminiscent of the brief b u t decisive resolutions of some of Beethoven's cadences. "The bell sounds a warning and a summons: it demands a response." I n announcing Christ's immortal presence, "it reminds us of our death, and calls us to die daily". The closing lines also lead into the prayerful strains of the second section, for the deep resounding tones of the bell are " a call to prayer and a commemoration of the mystery of the Incarnation . . ,". 18 The second section begins with the poet's lament for the endless numbers of dead who lie among the wreckage on time's ocean. His lamenting tones blend with a prayerful hope for deliverance from the shackles of mortal time. Thus the themes of eternity a n d tem18

Gardner, pp. 171-172.

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337

porality are fused in alternating patterns of temporal lament and a prayerful hope for eternal life in the Incarnation of the Word. The first half of the section is lyrical, the second discursive and didactic. The lyrical opening is a variation on the sestina form. But instead of repeating the same end-words from stanza to stanza, Eliot introduces new riming end-words in each successive stanza: yet the rime-scheme remains constant throughout. His purpose here is to produce the effect of "repetition without progression, a wavelike rise and fall" in the stanzaic succession. 19 "The listless hypermetric endings trail over an eternal emptiness", while the "insistent repeated 'ings' establish an undertone of meaningless accumulations" of the wastes of time. 20 The meter is fairly steady to match the rhythms of the sea as measured by the doleful tolling of the bell. Rhythmical variety comes from the mixture of the predominantly accentual meter with occasional syllabic sequences, and the variety here matches the full and rich rhythmical life of the sea. Eliot asks if there is any end to the "silent withering of autumn flowers", the wastes and wrecks of the sea, and the great numbers of dead bodies strewing the ocean's beaches. After years of living among the broken ideals of yesterday and the dying order of the present world, he feels that the impermanence of things in the temporal world makes them "fittest for renunciation". Yet, amidst all this chaos and destruction, he hears the bell of eternal time reminding him of his possible redemption in Christ: the sound he / / / f f hears is the "Clamour of the Bell of the last annunciation". This warning from the bell gives him one last chance, for its sounds are heard at a time when his vision of chaos in the world has reached a climactic point. Finally, he concludes that / / \ / / There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing, / / / / No end to the withering of withered flowers, To the movement / To the drift of the / / The bone's prayer / prayable / / Prayer of the one 19 20

of pain that is painless and motionless, / / / sea and the drifting wreckage, / / / / / to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely / / Annunciation.

Gardner, p. 38 N. Rajan, ed. T. S. Eliot, p. 84.

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The syntactical repetitions in the stanza enforce the idea t h a t sorrow and death in the world are endless. The poet realizes ultimately t h a t his hope lies in salvation by Christ, and to this end he directs his prayer. Eliot opens the discursive part of the section with a flat prosaic treatment of the temporal theme, citing the popular delusion t h a t civilization evolves into progressively higher states as time moves on. I n disowning the past as something backward and perhaps primitive, people worship the present while disregarding the value of past experience: "We had the experience but missed the meaning". The "experience" might be the still moment or "sudden illumination" in the garden. Man must realize t h a t the past is eternally present and t h a t the great moments to be recalled must not be restricted to the memories of one man's life; he must call upon the experiences of "many generations". Here, in alluding to the eternal moments within the grasp of human memory, Eliot seems to be groping toward the eternity theme. Behind the comfortable facade of recorded history lies "the primitive terror" of ultimate reality — the emptiness of human aspiration. But behind the terror we discover "the moments of agony", and the agony abides as an eternal reminder of the permanence of the human condition. Through his agony we see eternal time as the destroyer and preserver; it is like the river "with its cargo of dead Negroes, cows and chicken coops" or the bitter apple of original sin. In short, it remains perpetually as / / / / the ragged rock in the restless waters, / \ / / / Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it; On a halcyon day it is merely a monument, In navigable weather it is always a seamark To lay a course by: but in the sombre season Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

The image of the rock is a symbol of eternal time and the abiding quality of human agony. With this return to imagery and metrical strength enforced by alliteration, the eternity theme reasserts itself, closing the section on a strong, confident note. I n the third section the imagery decreases considerably as Eliot probes both themes in an analytical, tentative manner. The long

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discursive passages are interrupted b y occasional metaphorical extensions or illustrations of the poet's ideas. Beginning with an exploration of the temporal theme, the prosaic opening statement I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant— Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing . . .

blossoms into the metaphorical reflection / / / / / / / That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray i i i i i / Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret, /

i

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Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been / opened.

Previously the poet had been concerned with the mutability of the past. Now he perceives the extension of the mutability principle into the future: for in a world of fading appearances he foresees t h a t the future shall fade just as the past has melted away behind him. The color symbolism of these lines is well worth noting. The "Royal Rose", a symbol of Charles I's suffering, suggests the bloody sufferings of future generations; the lavender spray gives off an odor of faint mourning (as opposed to the deep mourning symbolized by purple) — the poet is mourning for those who are not yet born. The last line above alludes to the book of destiny whose yellowed pages signify an ancient pattern of eternal recommencement: the lives of countless unborn souls are trapped in this pattern of birth and death, and each of them shall pass a lifetime of regrets. The mutability of the past, therefore, prefigures the mutability of the present and future time, and all of it conforms to an ancient recurring pattern. The next line represents a brief probing of the eternity theme: "And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back". As if to encourage himself in his earlier resolve to penetrate ultimate reality, the poet here recapitulates the idea t h a t he must humble himself and retrogress to the moment of innocence in order to progress upward toward his salvation: he must retrench his vanity and descend into the dark night of suffering in order to rise in spiritual stature. The poet comes to realize t h a t the passage of mortal time will not bring him closer to eternal reality. I n the metaphors of the

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railway and ocean liner passengers who cannot free themselves from their temporal absorptions (a reiteration of the journey motto), he is forced to concede that one can neither escape from the past nor obliterate it. Using the words of Krishna he warns the passengers on the voyage of life that they must "Fare forward . . .". They cannot redeem their temporal pasts and they will not arrive at any earthly paradise. Since the past dies behind them they will be different persons at the end of the journey, and not the same persons who left the station or saw the harbor receding. Man must therefore detach himself from earthly time and journey forward to his one "real destination", the moment of his death. The action of his mind when he dies must constitute "the one action"; his moment of death is the eternal moment toward which he should always be striving, and thoughts of death should dominate every moment of his life. The section concludes with a prayer in which the voyagers and seamen are reminded that death is their ultimate destination. Those whose bodies "suffer the trial and judgement of the sea" should not hope for a pleasant journey through life: "Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers". Instead they should accept their suffering in life and expect only the inevitability of their deaths. The strong accentual rhythms of the last stanza, measuring the tense wishes of the poet, lead directly into the short lyrical fourth section, which is a prayer to the Holy Virgin. She is addressed conventionally as Queen of Heaven as well as by Dante's paradoxical epithet, Figlia del tuo figlio. The sea and voyage imagery of the preceding section are carried into the new section, bringing the eternity theme to a strong preliminary climax in the last stanza: i i / i i Also pray for those who were in ships, and / / / / (\) Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips \

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Or in the dark throat which will not reject them \ / / / / / Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's / / Perpetual angelus.

In the last two lines the poet's prayer is abruptly expanded to embrace those who live outside the Christian faith and cannot hear the sound of the great sea bell of eternal time. As the angeluB

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the bell becomes also a symbol of the Annunciation. The section closes with the deep metallic voice of the bell announcing anew the birth of Christ. In the concluding section Eliot continues his pattern of alternating contrasts. Breaking away from the prayerful lyrical strain of the fourth section, he opens the new section with a somewhat prosaic catalogue of pseudo-religious cults embraced by distressed men and women who vainly seek escapist remedies for the disease of secular living — / / / / T o c o m m u n i c a t e w i t h M a r s , c o n v e r s e w i t h spirits, / / / T o r e p o r t t h e b e h a v i o u r of t h e s e a m o n s t e r , I I / / Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry, O b s e r v e disease in s i g n a t u r e s , e v o k e /

I

I

Biography from the wrinkles of the palm . . . .

The heavy accents and spirited tempo of these lines measure the pace and intensity of the poet's feelings as he roundly condemns a host of escapist practices — astrology, spiritualism, fortunetelling, barbiturates — all of which are mental drugs designed to insulate people from mental anguish. Even Freudian psychology is exposed as a sort of ersatz religion whose priests and believers dissect the "recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors" and "explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams . . .". In examining this medley of vain and illusionary cults we see a great variety of deluded believers who clutch strange gods and try to narcotize themselves against the pangs of reality. Unlike true Christianity each of these false religions, in one way or another, strives to deny or suppress the reality and necessity of suffering in this world. In clinging to the dimensions of past and future, each of them is subject to the laws of mutability, and each is ultimately doomed to failure. The Christian saint, however, transcends the dimensions of mortal time and strives toward timeless reality. Refusing to deny the reality of evil and suffering and death, he surrenders himself humbly to these things and lovingly embraces his own death in every moment. Most Christians, on the other hand, cannot feel the true saint's complete "selflessness and self-surrender".

342

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' F o r m o s t of us, there is o n l y t h e u n a t t e n d e d M o m e n t , t h e m o m e n t in and o u t o f time, T h e distraction fit, lost in a s h a f t of sunlight, T h e wild t h y m e unseen, or t h e winter lightning Or t h e waterfall, or m u s i c heard so d e e p l y T h a t it is n o t heard a t all, b u t y o u are t h e m u s i c W h i l e t h e m u s i c lasts.

Here Eliot momentarily recapitulates some of the imagery of the music, the water, and the garden from the opening section of "Burnt Norton". H e recaptures the feeling of the eternal moment in the garden, the fleeting impression t h a t one has experienced a moment of truth; and as in "Burnt Norton" the temporal and eternal spheres are crossed as the poet once again catches a transitory glimpse of eternal reality in a moment of mortal time. As a mortal creature trapped in his temporal surrounding, he must fill his life with "prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action", hoping t h a t the "hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation". Yet the poet comes to realize that the truth of the Incarnation, though veiled and mysterious, has descended upon him during the ecstatic moment in the garden. His thoughts have been "preserved in memory" and are "fruitful beyond the moment in which they were first felt", and he is now free from the domination of past and future. Hence time is redeemed. Not only does the poet redeem his particular experience in the garden; he also redeems "the sum of experiences we call the past, our own past and the past of the human race", in harmony with the paleontological theme of the poem, so that history itself is redeemed. 21 By embarking on a course of "right action" the poet is freed from the tyranny of mortal time. H e reiterates one of the leading ideas from the concluding section of "East Coker" — namely, t h a t one is undefeated only because he has "gone on trying . . . " H e strives for moral excellence even though his aims will never be realized here on earth, for it is the action itself, and not the fruit of the action, which brings him closer to the final reality of his life. H e concludes by saying t h a t if our moral conduct and our aims are right, then we are content at the end

21

Gardner, pp.

175-176.

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If our temporal reversion nourish (Not too far from the yew-tree) The life of significant soil.

This temporal reversion, according to R . P . Blackmur, constitutes a going back in time, "the returning of an estate to grantor or his heirs". 22 Hence the earth belongs to God and is returned to Him at our death. Our souls, nourished by the earth's "significant soil", are also returned to God and redeemed immortally. Our death and resurrection is symbolized by the yew-tree which gives the soil its significance and reminds us of our rebirth in immortal time. 5

"Little Gidding", as the concluding poem of the Four Quartets, represents a grand recapitulation of all the leading thematic elements treated in the earlier quartets. The two principal themes together with all of the dominant symbolic images and subjects are recapitulated in final form, crystallizing in the climactic image of the fire and the rose at the end of the poem. Except for the second section, in which the two themes are intermingled in alternating treatments, the eternity theme largely prevails throughout the poem, intensifying the pattern of thematic dominance established in "The Dry Salvages". In each successive section of the poem Eliot's treatment of the eternity theme becomes bolder and more comprehensive, building into progressively higher subclimaxes, until it reaches its crowning climax in the last two lines. The principal theme is projected mainly through the Heraclitan master symbol of fire, an element which had been completely absent from "The Dry Salvages". Having been suppressed in the earlier quartet, the fire suddenly breaks out in "Little Gidding" with renewed energy and multiplied symbolic connotations. The fire here, as in the other quartets, is mostly purgatorial; b u t it is also pentecostal, symbolizing the descent of the Holy Ghost on tongues of flame and thereby suggesting divine illumination. Again, in the form of warplanes spitting fire or of flames consuming homes and sanctuaries, it symbolizes the destruction of earthly things. As 22

Language as Gesture: Essays in Poetry (New York, 1952), pp. 212-213.

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Helen Gardner says, the element of fire means different things to different people: it is "torment to the self-living, purgation to the penitent, and ecstasy to the blessed . . . " 2 3 United with the rose in the last two lines of the poem, its purgatorial and pentecostal attributes are wedded to those of the rose (symbolizing the Holy Virgin, the blood of Christ, and earthly beauty). In the symbolic union of the fire and the rose, the reader senses that the poet has finally arrived at his moment of mystical truth: he has purged himself both of sin and of worldly desires, redeemed the beauty of his lost moments in the garden, received divine illumination, and come to the point of salvation. Of the other Heraclitan elements only water figures prominently. As a symbol of destruction and regeneration it often accompanies fire as a purgatorial element, but as the "voice of the hidden waterfall" it functions as a symbol of the momentary intimations of timeless reality, thus associating itself with the still-point-in-thegarden motto. E a r t h symbolism is rare and incidental; however, in the phrase "the ground of our beseeching", reminiscent of "significant soil" in the preceding quartet, the implication is t h a t the poet must return to his earthly beginnings before achieving salvation. The earth also acts as a starting-point for the poet on his mystical journey inasmuch as the rose-garden (where the lost moment must be redeemed) is nourished by the earth's soil. Thus the earth, usually a symbol of the temporal theme, is made to serve the eternity theme. On the other hand, air in the form of wind is almost entirely absent. I n the second section it makes a brief appearance as the "urban dawn wind" t h a t blows in the ghost of a dead master; and in reviving the feeling that the poet's past life has been mostly fruitless, it momentarily projects the mutability theme. However, the wind does not appear in the other sections. Perhaps its absence in these sections creates an atmosphere of tranquillity harmonizing with the stillness of the mystically illuminated garden. The temporal mutability theme is projected intermittently and weakly by a number of images connoting death or decay. The ruined house and chapel, the barren dry soil, the smoking debris of bombed-out London, the decayed dreams of the poet, the forgotten dead — all of these images symbolize a dead or dying temporal " Gardner, p. 183.

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world. I n each succeeding section the poet seeks to redeem the temporal elements of his life in eternal time along with the glory of bygone days; and in their redemption they are reborn to serve the eternity theme. Hence the temporal theme loses power and seems to fade away before the power and dominance of the triumphant eternity theme. As the poem progresses the past is slowly redeemed in the poet's mind. Not only is the poet's individual past redeemed, b u t the racial and paleontological pasts are also reclaimed in eternal time. The poet ultimately conceives the present as a distillation of all past experiences - his own experiences and those of others before him — and mortal time is seen as an integral aspect of eternal time. The lost moment in the garden, the great moments of history, the poet's struggle for excellence against the erosion of time — all will be preserved in the poet's immortal memory, for Christ has come with his promise of redemption, and the mind embracing these memories will be redeemed in eternity. And yet, if the poet is to receive Christ's mercy and be redeemed from his prison of mortality and mutability, it is necessary that he obey certain paradoxical moral injunctions. He must perceive his own unworthiness in order to be worthy in Christ's eyes, he must humble himself in order to raise himself spiritually, and finally his mind must be purged of moral error. Through suffering and penance the poet is to purify his mind, thus disciplining himself for a life of prayer and devotion. The Huntingdonshire village of Little Gidding was closely associated in Eliot's mind with the attitude of prayer and devotion. The English theologian, Nicholas Ferrar, gave up an active career in trade and parliament in order to retire to the manor of Little Gidding where he founded a small religious community and lived in an atmosphere of strict spiritual austerity. The devout King Charles I, during his troubles with parliament in 1633, sought refuge at the manor, visiting the Arminian nunnery there. Unfortunately, the little community broke up ten years after its founder's death, and the manorhouse soon fell into ruins. Eliot had visited Little Gidding on a winter afternoon and prayed in the chapel. During his visit thoughts of the martyred king and Ferrar's devoted life no doubt filled his mind. These thoughts probably inspired him to select Little Gidding — already sanctified historically as a place of suffering, devotion, and prayer — as the symbolic locale of the poem.

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The first section of "Little Gidding" begins with a somewhat bolder exploration of the eternity theme than is found in the opening section of the other quartets, reflecting the poet's newly intensified hopes for spiritual redemption. The eternity theme is further strengthened by t h a t fact the it is expressed through one of its leading mottos, that of the garden; and in the opening section the garden motto receives its final extensive treatment. Here many of the principal images from the first section of "Burnt Norton" are recapitulated in an entirely new form and setting. No longer does the poet experience momentary flashes of eternal reality as he did while wandering in the warm autumnal air of the rose-garden in "Burnt Norton". Here the feeling is more intense, more taut, more sustained, as the winter garden seems to revive magically under the cold flames of the afternoon sun. There are no birds singing, no laughing children, no breezes stirring the dust on rose-leaves: only a cold windless day in the dead of winter (the same time of the year as that in which Christ was born) — a day whose brightness emulates the light of spring with its connotations of rebirth. Instead of a pool flooded with "water out of sunlight", there is only the sun flaming on the icy ponds and ditches. Yet the winter sun is a symbol of the pentecostal fires of divine illumination, stirring the poet's mind and burning his heart in its flames. The image of the "heart of light" from the first quartet becomes in "Little Gidding" the brightness of the "heart's h e a t " as the poet's emotions quicken with spiritual perceptions. The temporarity of the garden seems to melt away in the sun's eternal light, and the garden is metaphysically transformed into a spiritual place. Even the snowy hedgerow, glistening in sunlight, appears laden with supernatural blossoms. The sight of this garden during the midwinter spring is a vision of mortal time suspended in eternity. The unseasonable brightness of the day, occurring during what would normally be " t h e dark time of the year", suggests t h a t such a day is not "in the scheme of generation", thus transcending the sphere of mortal time. The intensity of the poet's emotion is measured by the strong accentual rhythms of the opening lines — / / / \ Midwinter spring is its own season MI

INTB S EI

ITS

N S

S N

/ / Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, \

S

/

TEN

S D

NT

BDS S ND

N

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Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. S

S

N

N TAI

T

N

TR

/ / / / When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, N

ET

EAI T

T

S

N

FR

T

FAIR

/ ( \ ) / / / / The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches . . . . F S N F

S

N

N

S

The heaviness of the rhythm is underscored by dense and intricate patterns of consonance (marked), and the beat seems to be struggling toward regularity, reflecting the poet's mental tensions. The first four lines above are accentual tetrameters, but the remaining lines of the stanza are mainly accentual pentameters. The lengthening of the lines here corresponds to an extension and expansion of the poet's thoughts and feelings as he probes more deeply into his subject and attempts to unravel the mystery and significance of the midwinter spring. In the second stanza Eliot mentally transposes the midwinter spring into a real spring, imagining the same winter garden as it might appear in May. / / t If you came this way, / / \ / / Taking the route you would be likely to take / / / From the place you would be likely to come from, /

/

/

( \ )

/

I

If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges / / / / (\) / White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.

In contrast to the dense alliterative patterns and heavy, quick rhythms of the opening stanza, the tempo here becomes slower and more leisurely, drawn out by the assonance of the long A and I sounds (marked). These patterns of assonance, enforced by verbal and phrasal repetitions, create an atmosphere of drowsy voluptuousness which accentuates the beauty of the scene and harmonizes with the poet's mood. In the next sentence Eliot continues the same patterns of assonance, but with more reticence, and his variations on the phrase "If you came this way" combine in interlocking fashion with the phrase " I t would be the same":

348

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' It would b e t h e s a m e a t t h e end of t h e journey, I f y o u c a m e a t n i g h t like a broken king, I f y o u c a m e b y d a y n o t k n o w i n g w h a t y o u c a m e for, I t w o u l d be t h e s a m e , w h e n y o u l e a v e t h e rough road A n d t u r n behind t h e p i g - s t y t o t h e dull f a c a d e And the tombstone.

The numerous repetitions in this stanza create an impression of tentativeness and hesitation as they seem to arrest the forward movement of the poet's thoughts. Suddenly, the repetitious phrasing comes to an end; the rich patterns of assonance melt into a succession of dry prosaic statements, and the thoughts of the poet are abruptly resolved. Or rather his thoughts dissolve into the unsatisfactory and inconclusive feeling that his quest may have been in vain. The great end toward which he had been striving may be different from what he had originally conceived, or perhaps his quest has been utterly without purpose; or, once again, his end might be nothing more than death at sea or "over a dark lake . . .". I n this momentary resolution of the poet's thoughts, Eliot has used the garden motto to project the theme of temporal mutability. In its midwinter setting the garden transcended the bounds of mortal time, b u t here the transitory splendor of the garden in May symbolizes the temporal theme with its connotations of death and decay. I n changing the time setting of the garden from winter to spring, Eliot has transposed the garden motto into a temporal key. The last two lines of the stanza, however, B u t this is t h e nearest, in place and time, N o w and in E n g l a n d . . .

lead directly into the strong concluding stanza of the section with its bold restatement of the eternity theme. The questions propounded earlier are resolved as the poet succinctly states his purpose in coming to the garden. He must find his eternal moment in the garden here and now; his purpose in coming is not to verify his quest or to satisfy idle curiosity, but merely to kneel and pray, for the communication Of t h e dead is t o n g u e d w i t h fire b e y o n d t h e language of t h e living. H e r e , t h e intersection of t h e timeless m o m e n t I s E n g l a n d and nowhere. N e v e r and a l w a y s .

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The Fire of the dead men's prayerful words is at once purgatorial and pentecostal in t h a t the poet feels the agonies of their deaths as well as the divine illumination t h a t comes from their presence. Through this communication with the dead, therefore, the two past conditions of what-has-been and what-might-havebeen are fused into the present moment, and the here and now of the garden stretches into an eternity. The second section begins with three lyric stanzas, each conforming to a strict scheme of coupling rime and each composed in a steady but mixed syllabic-accentual meter. The temporal mutability theme comes to the forefront with the four Heraclitan elements combining to destroy all vestiges of the temporal world — houses, sanctuaries, even the land itself. Ultimately the elements destroy themselves: the earth chokes the air with dust; the flooding water eviscerates the soil and destroys the earth; and finally the fire, after evaporating away the water, burns itself out. Images of mutability are recapitulated from the preceding quartets: decayed houses, parched land, ruined sanctuaries. I n contrast to this lyric explosion of the mutability theme, the second part of the section is discursive and colloquial. Longer and slower lines measure the meditative reverie of the poet as he holds a colloquy with his "dead master" of long ago. Here, also, Eliot preserves a certain degree of metrical unity, which is often absent from his other discursive passages. The rhythm is strong and steady; most of the lines are accentual tetrameters and pentameters, and all of them are bound together by alternating masculine and feminine endings. This unified metrical pattern, combined with vivid concrete imagery, makes the ghost scene stand out prominently, while the conversational language harmonizes with the dramatic exigencies of the poet's colloquy. The atmosphere is ambiguous and dreamlike. I n the "uncertain hour" of an early morning twilight, following the bombardment of London by "the dark dove with the flickering tongue", the poet encounters the paradoxical figure of a "familiar" stranger wandering in the smoking ruins of the city. He had been blown toward the poet like the metal leaves in the dawn wind. He seems both "loitering and hurried", and his face is turned down — I caught the sudden look of some dead master Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled

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Both one and many; in the brown baked features The eyes of a familiar compound ghost Both intimate and unidentifiable.

The symbolism here is as blurred and ambiguous as the atmosphere. The face of the ghost has no definite shape, and its features are still being formed as it speaks. In this face one perceives, certainly, a variety of possible identities. But who is the ghost? Could it be Jules Laforgue, who taught Eliot the use of the ironic mask? Could it be Ezra Pound, il miglior fabbro, who helped Eliot refine and concretize his language? Or perhaps Apollinaire whose poetry provided a model for the modern format of The Waste Land? Or, once again, it might be the ghost of the poet's buried self, with the colloquy being merely an interior monologue in which the poet hears echoes of his own voice mixed with the voices of others. Then who is the ghost? The "familiar compound ghost" is a peculiar synthesis of many different writers, living and dead, who have exerted strong influences on the formation of Eliot's poetic technique, and their combined influence reaches back to the early years of the century. These variegated influences fuse together and are so thoroughly interwoven in the poet's being that the voice of his own past merges inextricably with the voices of his early masters. Eliot's sudden encounter with the ghost is probably modeled after Dante's tense meeting with his old master, Brunetto Latino, in the depths of the Inferno. Brunetto foretells Dante's future whereas Eliot's ghost attempts to assess the poet's past performance before predicting the future. Here Eliot plumbs the depths of his own past life, and the echoes of all past influences reverberate in his soul during an intensely dramatic moment of heightened consciousness. A t length the ghost of his past speaks. Or is this a subliminal echo of the poet's own voice? So I assumed a double part, and cried And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?' Although we were not. I was still the same, Knowing myself yet being someone other . . . .

Then the ghost speaks more succinctly: For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

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Yesterday has nothing to say to today, and each generation of writers must develop its own distinctive language and style. The ghost's words seem to give the poet a feeling of dissatisfaction. Like Pound, the ghost represents an expatriate American who is alienated from his home and left to wander in exile. His spirit is "unappeased and peregrine", caught between the two worlds of past and future. Nor can he profit from past experience, for his past is dead: " I left my body on a distant shore". 24 But is the past entirely dead? And is it utterly devoid of value? Surely the artistic collaboration of Eliot and Pound in the 1910's and early 1920's must stand as a solid accomplishment for posterity to admire and emulate — Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight, Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

These gifts, ironically, turn out to be not only useless but painful to contemplate: "First, the cold friction of expiring sense" bringing the "bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit"; then the "impotence of rage" followed by lacerating laughter at what no longer amuses one, And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Here Eliot restates the motto of old men's follies, which he had introduced germinally in "East Coker". The old men of " E a s t Coker", in their inverted wisdom, learn only one thing — namely, t h a t they have learned nothing. In this treatment of the motto, however, Eliot becomes more dramatic and personal. The hollow victories of the poet's earlier life return to torment him, and the 21

This notion of the sterile life of a wandering exile also appears in Eliot's Mélange Adultère de Tout. The poet's vision of his own corpse lying on a distant shore is hinted at the close of Mélange: "On montrera mon cénotaphe / Aux côtes brûlante de Mozambique." Here, however, the corpse has vanished, and only a hollow cenotaph remains. But in the line from "Little Gidding" as well as in Melange, Eliot suggests that the end of fruitless exile is death.

352

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f u t u r e years of old age promise nothing more t h a n a mocking repetition of his past mistakes. The ghost concludes t h a t Eliot's past life has been a terrible mistake, a bitter joke, a capital irony. H e predicts sourly t h a t Eliot will be condemned to repeat the follies of his youth, "unless restored by that refining fire / Where you must move in measure, like a dancer". Thus the poet's speech ends on a dramatic climax with a translation of a phrase from Dante's Purgatorio (italicized above b y me). Eliot is sternly warned t h a t his artistic and critical accomplishments are next to worthless a n d t h a t his redemption will come only after the purgatorial flames have burned away his worldly vanities. The scene closes quickly and adroitly with a description of the ghost fading in the morning light: The d a y was breaking. I n the disfigured street H e left me, with a kind of valediction, And faded o n the blowing of the horn.

The last line reveals Eliot's unfailing mastery of the technique of quotation and allusion. Near the end of the ghost's speech Eliot had quoted f r o m Dante. Here he adapts a line f r o m Hamlet in which the ghost "faded on the crowing of t h e cock". Through t h e alchemy of eclectic synthesis the ghost of Hamlet's father magically becomes Eliot's composite ghost, who is transposed in time f r o m Renaissance England to twentieth-century London; Shakespeare's time-honoured cock becomes the all-clear signal of t h e air raid siren. The fading of the ghost symbolizes the fading away of t h e temporal world with all its delusions and dreams. Both parts of the second section — the lyric a n d the dramatic — treat opposing aspects of the temporal mutability theme. The opening lyric heralds the swift destruction of the worlds of exterior nature and the artifacts of man, including land, crops, a n d houses. I n the dramatic colloquy the powers of divine destruction are visited upon man himself, mainly upon man's cherished intellect. Near the end of the section the poet is reminded of t h e sin of intellectual and artistic pride. H e may be redeemed only if he allows the purgatorial flames to destroy the dross in his h u m a n nature b y burning off t h e volatile essences of artistic pride a n d vanity. Thus the Renunciation here takes on a new meaning. I n renouncing his pride in worldly accomplishments t h e poet retains t h e faint hope t h a t his soul may be refined in these spiritual fires.

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353

The third section opens with a continuation of the temporal theme, and it is linked to the preceding section by an allusion to the sin of intellectual pride ("Attachment to self"). Although Eliot's treatment of the secondary theme in this section lacks the lyricism and dramatic excitement of the ghost scene, the subject is developed more directly and rapidly here than it is in the second section. Eliot begins with a description of the three temporal conditions of man: There are three conditions which often look alike Y e t differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow: Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment From self and from things and from persons: and, growing between them, indifference . . . .

This last condition, a sort of sterile Stoic detachment, is fruitless and unflowering, for it is not formed through love. Of the three temporal conditions, that of attachment holds the greatest promise because it involves love as an essential component. Even though selfish attachments to small things must be outgrown (as a child outgrows his fondness for toys), such attachments are important in that they form a primary phase in the development of the soul. To remain always devoted to small things, however, is to become a victim of chronological time, a slave of history. But if one's capacity for love is expanded to include a broader, more comprehensive view of historical actions, then history can free one from the tyranny of particular people and events. One's initial attachment to a restricted field of action, therefore, must eventually be sublimated into a "love beyond desire" -- a love which transcends small actions and embraces all contending parties in history's unending power struggles. Seen in such a light, the faces and places which the self had loved become "renewed, transfigured, in another pattern". Above the noise of temporal conflicts, the eternity theme emerges triumphant as the ancient struggles of humanity are resolved in eternal time. Sin is Behovely, but A l l shall be well, and A l l manner of thing shall be well.

Quoting from the fourteenth-century mystic, Dame Julian, the poet is saying that evil and sin persist as moral necessities in the world,

354

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but eternal time dissolves the evils committed by warring parties and transfigures their actions in its wake. All opposed parties, having fought and died for forgotten causes, are brought together "in the strife which divided them", even the Puritan and the Cavalier. So it is that the broken King Charles I and the blind, neglected Milton are folded together in eternal harmony. The transfiguring influence of love and prayer ennobles the motives of those who have died. We cannot summon "the spectre of a Rose" or march to an "antique drum", for the causes of the War of the Roses and other ancient conflicts are now extinct. What alone survives are the deaths and prayers of the contending parties: "A symbol perfected death". The ground on which they have died is hallowed by their blood and prayers — And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well B y the purification of the motive In the ground of our beseeching.

Here the poet experiences his love beyond desire — a loving prayer embracing all warring factions. And with this love comes the "temporal reversion", the return to the "significant soil" of death as the proper grounds for his salvation. The lyrical fourth section proclaims suffering and death as the cause of spiritual rebirth. The strict versification scheme here provides a taut, concise frame for projecting Eliot's recapitulation of the purgatorial and pentecostal motifs. In addition, the heavily accented iambic tetrameters, set in a fixed rime-scheme, lend considerable rhythmic force to the fire imagery, making the fire images stand out in strong relief. The smoldering Heraclitan fires, burning quietly throughout most of the poem, now erupt with sudden violence; and as the section progresses, the purgatorial, infernal, and pentecostal flames crystallize into a single complex image connoting both suffering and damnation as well as divine love. Here Eliot gives new impetus to the eternity theme by restating the theme in terms of its leading symbolic image — fire. In a vivid opening image of a warplane spitting fire and destruction, i

i

i

i

The dove descending breaks the air / i i i With flame of incandescent terror . . .

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355

the poet celebrates the idea that the flames of purgatorial suffering / / (/) / will redeem him from the flames of Hell: "To be redeemed from fire by fire". The dual and reverse symbolism of the dove image projects a complex assortment of associated meanings. Usually a symbol of peace, the dove here acts as a variant of the destruction-regeneration motto. As a projection of the battle motif, the image of the belligerent dove links the fourth section to the second and third sections in which battle imagery figures so prominently. Paradoxically the dove also symbolizes the descent of divine grace. By synthesizing the fire imagery with t h a t of the dove, Eliot suggests t h a t final redemption will come not only through suffering but through the pentecostal gift of divine grace and love as well; for love is the Name / / / Behind the hands that wove / i i The intolerable shirt of flame i

i

I

I

Which human power cannot remove.

Alluding to the burning shirt of Nessus as a dual symbol of purgatorial suffering and pentecostal grace, the poet finds refuge in the saving fire and torments of divine love. Here Eliot unites suffering and love in a single fiery symbol. Thus he proclaims t h e perpetual nature of suffering and love, which humans cannot alter; and in choosing the fire of God's love over the fires of self-love, he "celebrates the eternal Pentecost, the perpetual descent of the Dove in tongues of fire".25 The concluding section presents a grand resolution of all leading thematic ideas and images which had appeared in the preceding quartets. Returning to the easy but steady accentual norm (with the four-stress line predominating), Eliot recapitulates the eternity theme in terms of its main symbolic images. His manner is calm yet confident and hopeful. The section opens with a final treatment of the artistic struggle motto. The problem of articulating one's thoughts is resolved by the poet's firm belief t h a t carefully chosen words and phrases, promise artistic permanence: 25

Gardner, p. 182.

356

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS' And every phrase A n d sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, And easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) E v e r y phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, E v e r y poem an epitaph.

Aristotle's golden mean, Flaubert's mot juste, the discovery of the precise word after one has expended his finest efforts, the correct word-harmonies — these are the things which the artist must weigh before beginning his art-work. Having established his metier through his practiced studies and knowing how to select the right words and phrases, the poet now feels confident in his role as artistic craftsman. The poet is also cognizant of the paradoxical Heraclitan notion of simultaneous time: "the beginning is often the end . . .". The beginning moment of artistic execution frequently comes at the end of a labored conception, and the art-work promptly dies at the very moment of execution. A t the same time this ending of the executed art-work clears the way and fertilizes the mind for the composition of other art-works. Each poem is an epitaph because it commemorates that which has already died — for example, the experience motivating it. Y e t it modifies this past experience and renews it in the remembering mind as well as in the minds of its readers. Thus artistic creation is part of a simultaneous order of dying and renewal following the pattern of death and rebirth in the flux of historical time. The poet conceives that human actions adhere to this same pattern of death and renewal. Each action is " a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat / Or to an illegible stone . . ."; and although we "die with the dying", we are also born with them in that their deaths, their prayers, and their suffering are part of immortal time, and in sharing their experiences we partake of their immortality — See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration.

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The moments of experiencing natural beauty, the moments of suffering and of death, are all the same, for all are redeemed in eternity as part of history's pattern of "timeless moments". Eliot closes the first stanza by recapitulating part of the setting from the first section: So, while the light fails On a winter's, afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England.

He senses that the chapel is sanctified by the prayers of the dead, and in communicating with their spirits he feels all time converge on the present — that is, the present moment in the chapel, which has been redeemed in eternal time. The next stanza acts as a bridge leading directly into the poem's final recapitulation. Consisting of only one line, it is a quotation from The Cloud of Unknowing:26 "With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling . . .". The attraction of Christ's love, and the answer to His calling, draws the poet forward into the sphere of timeless reality. In the last stanza of the poem Eliot "draws together all of the preceding 'hints' and 'guesses' of Divine Illumination into a fully expressed vision".27 The concluding stanza shows the effects of Christ's love in dissolving the spiritual tensions suffered by the poet and in resolving the thematic questions introduced earlier in the quartets. Under the allpervasive influence of His love and His Divine Intelligence, the various components of the eternity theme, including all leading images and mottos, are gathered together and recapitulated into a final comprehensive vision of timeless reality. Eliot opens the stanza with a recapitulation of the mystic journey or exploration motto: / / / \ We shall not cease from exploration / / / And the end of all our exploring /

/

I

Will be to arrive where we started / / i \ And know the place for the first time. / i i i Through the unknown, remembered gate . . . . M 27

Gardner, p. 183. Gardner, pp. 120-121.

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In the last section of "East Coker" Eliot had concluded that "Old men ought to be explorers" in order that they might move into a deeper communion with eternal time. Now there is no longer any doubt as to final destination. The poet must/ end his journey where he had begun it, where he had first caught his glimpse of ultimate reality ("In my end is my beginning"); he must return to his beginnings and open the "remembered gate" of his childhood — the "door we never opened . . .". The question of the unopened door had been explored in "Burnt Norton", but here the question is answered when the poet realizes that he must enter that door in order to redeem the lost innocence of childhood. Once through the door he will find himself in the rose-garden and hear the children's voices, symbolic of pristine innocence. Here, at the mystical still point in the garden, the temporal world will be dissolved only to be transfigured into the divine order of eternal reality. The still point is also found at the "source of the longest river" where the voices of the children and the waterfall can be heard. As an auditory image the still point is only half-heard bacause it comes between "two waves of the sea". The water imagery — recapitulated in part from "Burnt Norton" but mostly from "The Dry Salvages" — mingles with the image of children's voices to symbolize freshness, fertility, innocence, and rebirth. Having been redeemed from a sinful life by God's mercy, the poet may now be reborn to his original state of grace, for he has been baptized in the eternal waters of suffering and love. In the line "Quick now, here, now, always . . .", Eliot alludes to the beckoning bird from "Burnt Norton". The bird reminds the poet that the spiritually intensified present moment shall endure forever since it has been redeemed in eternal time. A t last the poet comes to the end of his long and arduous mystical journey. He has returned to his point of origin — the still point of eternity in the garden of childhood innocence. Relieved of the burden of original sin he understands his mystical experience in the rose-garden for the first time. In the last four lines of the poem, the poet convinces himself that he has finally experienced his moment of ultimate reality: A n d all shall be well and A l l manner of thing shall be well W h e n the tongues of flame are in-folded

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359

Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

The multiple symbolic connotations of the fire and the rose compress the entire thematic burden of the poem into a few lines. The rose functions as a resurrection symbol, a symbol of the Holy Virgin and her love; it is " 'the Word divine made flesh . . .' " 28 Signifying both natural beauty and the flowering blood of Christ, its symbolism fuses worldly and heavenly elements, thereby redeeming the poet's enjoyment of earthly beauty as a partial manifestation of a divine order. Although the fires have been mostly purgatorial throughout the quartets, they have burned away the dross in the poet's soul, and now he experiences spiritual rebirth as the purgatorial flames become the tongues of divine illumination announcing his ultimate redemption. Thus the two leading symbolic images of the poem are fused together to form Eliot's final recapitulation of the eternity theme. The purgatorial and pentecostal fires of God impregnate the earthly beauty of the rose, rescuing it from mortal decay and symbolizing the poet's hope for eternal life beyond the evil and suffering of the temporal world. The theme of temporal mutability, meanwhile, is absorbed by the eternity theme, for the secular world has been purged of its impurities by heavenly fires only to be transfigured and sublimated into the divine order of things. The intense mystical moment in the garden, the great living moments of history, the prayers of the dead and the dying — all have been purified by purgatorial flames, all have been redeemed by Christ's love and mercy. With the promise that "All shall be well" and through the symbolism of the fire and the rose — that crowning symbol of redemption by suffering, love, and divine grace — the poet feels similarly purified and redeemed; he has answered the calling of his Lord, and his salvation in eternity is assured. In direct contrast to the feelings of neurotic despair and horror dominating the closing lines of The Waste Land, Eliot's last great masterpiece ends on a strong affirmative note as the poet acknowledges the power of Christ's love and receives His promise of redemption. The Waste Land had represented a culminative stage in the first phase of Eliot's spiritual and ideological development 28 John M. Bradbury quoting Dante in "Four Quartets: The Structural Symbolism", Sewanee Review L I X (1951), 269.

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THE 'FOUR

QUARTETS'

which coincided with a climactic stage in the development of his poetic technique. Similarly the Four Quartets represent a culmination, both technically and spiritually, in the poet's last great phase of poetic creation. Eliot's earlier methods of eclectic synthesis, thematic fragmentation, and sudden transitions are appropriate to the Waste Land theme of sterility in the modern world — a sterility which might eventually lead to the collapse of European civilization and culture. The fragmentary form of the poem reflects the confusion existing both in the modern world and in the poet's mind as he suffers in his dark night of the soul. By the time the Four Quartets are conceived, however, Eliot had passed through his dark night, and the cynicism and pathos of The Waste Land give way to feelings of religious affirmation. The composition of the quartets, therefore, coincides with a new development in the poet's metaphysical and religious thought — namely, his acceptance of Christ as Saviour. His object here is to show the poet's search, beyond the confusion and flux of temporal life, for eternal reality: hence arise the two principal themes of eternity and temporal mutability. Eliot evidently felt t h a t a type of thematic organization modeled after the sonata-allegro form would provide an ideal format for the systematic exposition and development of these two themes. For this reason the sharply discontinuous progressions and fragmentary developments of The Waste Land are largely avoided in the quartets, and the resultant form is smoother in transition and more unified in structure, while thematic developments are more sustained. The quartets gain further unity through Eliot's use of only one dramatic voice. Instead of using a variety of speakers to symbolize different aspects of the sterility theme, as he does in The Waste Land, the poet speaks in his own voice. The voice manifests itself in a variety of moods (e.g., lyric, didactic, prosaic), but the poet's exclusive role as speaker is felt throughout the poem, thus unifying the diverse sections. Unity in the quartets derives not only from the unity of voice but also from the predominance of the eternity theme as projected through its leading symbolic images — the still point in the garden, the fire, the sea, and the rose among others. Through their recurrence these images knit the quartets together, bringing out the shifting flow of meaning in amplifying patterns of thematic development.

THE 'FOUR QUARTETS'

361

The two principal themes and their symbolic components are held together within the firm but flexible scaffolding of the sonataallegro form. The interior structuring — metrical sequence, literary quotations and allusions, the symbolism and ideologies of Dante and Heraclitus — is deftly interwoven with the musicological exterior structure to produce a tightly integrated art-form. The fruitfulness of the sonata-allegro form notwithstanding, Eliot is too much of a master of eclectic synthesis to rely too heavily on any one musical form in adapting formal devices to the flow of meaning in the Four Quartets. By syncretically fusing several important musical and literary influences in the composition of his poem, he is able to produce something that goes beyond poetry — t h a t is, a species of writing t h a t expands the dimensions of poetry by exploiting nonpoetic devices. As the last great masterpiece of T. S. Eliot, the Four Quartets crown the poet's lifelong struggles with artistic form. I n addition, Eliot's masterpiece resolves a lifetime of spiritual conflict and of wrestling with difficult metaphysical and philosophical ideas. As a literary work of art the poem predominantly reflects the efforts, not of a musician, but of a sensitive literary craftsman, albeit with refined musical tastes, who has succeeded in exploiting certain musicological and literary devices in an effort to articulate a new kind of poetry. Perhaps Eliot's last great performance is indeed " a poetry beyond poetry".

XIII CONCLUSIONS

Eliot's general technique, despite its fairly logical growth and development, resists systematic analysis because of the great heterogeneity of images and rhythms, the high degree of eclectic synthesis in the poetry, and the immense diversity and multiplicity of its models. The problem is further complicated by the fact that the speakers, or personae, differ from poem to poem. Although individual poems can be readily recognized as products of Eliot's "style", it is impossible to infer general principles from a study of the verse and then to apply these principles to any considerable body of the work. Notwithstanding the variety of personae, there is an orderly growth pattern in Eliot's use of speakers and characters as they appear in successive poems. During the poet's first major phase of creativity there is a widening and multiplication of the poet's projected point of view as he moves from the obliquely personal feelings of the Prufrock volume to a more objective view of the world in "Gerontion" and The Waste Land. Prufrock, the speaker in "Portrait of a Lady", and the poet of the "Preludes" all seem indirectly to represent certain aspects of Eliot's personality. Unlike the characters of Browning or Shakespeare they are not highly individuated with personal idiosyncrasies and peculiar habits. They are more like puppets or strange automatons moved by invisible strings — impulses, memories, desires — but these strings are usually attached to personality components within Eliot's own psyche. Sweeney, on the contrary, might represent certain morbid and unexpressed tendencies in the poet, existing as an antitype of the gentler Prufrock. In such later poems as "Burbank with a Baedeker", the incidental characters appear to be detached from the poet's personality and act as symbols designed to project the theme of sterility; they exist, according to Elizabeth Drew, as symbolic

CONCLUSIONS

363

personages, not as "actors in a realistic drama". Burbank, for example, stands for the "creative arts"; Klein for "the new commercial order"; and Bleistein for usury. 1 They at once dramatize and symbolize conflicting ideas. In the mind of the speaker in "Gerontion" Eliot presents a much more dramatic and complicated Weltanschauung than hitherto, and this expanded outlook is intensified by his use of a group of symbolic incidental or supporting characters, each of whom is concisely and incisively drawn. By using an old man for the persona, Eliot has chosen a speaker remote from his own situation and thus achieves greater objectivity and impersonality than he had attained in his earlier work. By symbolizing the mind of Europe in that of the old man, Eliot projects himself into a more "comprehensive and representative consciousness".2 Finally, in The Waste Land, a large number of dominant and subordinate characters are fused in the person of Tiresias, who emerges as the all-experienced observer of sterile human actions as they are manifested both in the contemporary world and in several distinct epochs and countries. Therefore Eliot advances, in a series of orderly developments, from the narrow and neurotic subjectivity of Prufrock to the confused world-view of Gerontion, and from that to Tiresias' painful conception of universal and timeless anarchy. After the composition of "The Hollow Men", however, the trend toward objectivity is abruptly reversed. Following Eliot's conversion to the Anglican faith, which signals the beginning of his intermediate phase, the verse tends once again to be subjective as the poet attempts to project various aspects of his religious experience, sometimes speaking through a persona and sometimes not. Still, the personae used by Eliot during this period are for the most part merely thin disguises of the poet's true feelings. The Four Quartets mark the last phase in the development of Eliot's nondramatic verse. Here the poet casts aside all masks and voices his profound religious thoughts in his own person. Thus the gamut from subjectivity to objectivity and back to subjectivity has run full circle. Yet the subjectivity of the Harvard or Prufrock poems differs vastly from that of Eliot's last masterpiece. In the

1 2

T. S. Eliot, pp. 40-41. Leavis, p. 83.

364

CONCLUSIONS

Four Quartets the poet's mind has undergone a "sea change"; it has been transfigured by a succession of intense religious experiences and the speaker's vision seems to have been enlarged and sublimated, as it were, by these experiences. The progressive development in Eliot's use of personae during the first phase carries with it a corresponding development in the widening applications of his symbolic imagery. Early images associated with t h e streets and drawing-rooms of modern industrial cities are displaced in "Gerontion" by images connected with the decaying house of Europe as viewed in historical perspective; and in The Waste Land the imagery expands to include a variety of locales in the modern and ancient worlds. The thematic unity of Eliot's early poems is maintained, moreover, by the fact t h a t both his images and his characters are symbolic, being symptomatic of the spiritual and moral deterioration of modern life. The imagery of Eliot's later poetry, while equally symbolic, becomes much less concrete, and its sources are not infrequently Biblical and liturgical rather than urban. I n such poems as Ash-Wednesday and the Four Quartets the poet often uses garden imagery and other natural images to project metaphysical and religious ideas. Eliot's doctrine of the objective correlative may be extended to include characters as well as images. In his constant struggle for greater objectivity a n d impersonality in this earlier verse, Eliot concealed his feelings under the mask of a character or set of characters; at the same time he transmuted these feelings by means of symbolic imagery of the sort which would communicate his meanings to his audience indirectly. Eschewing "romantically personal verse" of t h e highly subjective and sentimental variety, Eliot chose, according to J . R. Daniels, "the objective form, a figure, a situation, a dramatic fragment" t h a t would "exactly embody the emotion he desires to express". 3 Eliot thought t h a t he should project feelings t h a t are not only private to the poet or his persona, b u t also communicable to the sensitive reader. "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art", says Eliot, "is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of t h a t particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must

3

Daniels, 391.

CONCLUSIONS

365

terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately invoked." 4 From Laforgue Eliot learned to invert romantic sentiments by couching them in irony, to allow his speaker to parody himself, and to mask his feelings in symbolic imagery, using all of these devices to project the meanings of his poems. Superadded to what he had gleaned from Laforgue, the precise images of Dante and Gautier, together with the imagism of Pound and Hulme, helped Eliot in arriving at a purity of image. The basic unit of expression, according to Hulme and Pound, is the image itself in pure form, detached from all sentimental connotations. Pound maintains that, where images occur in combination, they should be so arranged as to produce a specific emotion, and this theory may have formed one of the bases for Eliot's concept of the objective correlative. Eliot had extracted two main qualities from Pound's imagism: the importance of approaching reality without mental reservation, 5 and "the poetic value of small, dry things" as opposed to vague picturesque effects. 0 Unfortunately, the imagists scarcely went beyond "the elaboration of a single visual image" or a series of such images, "in a compound but not a complex relationship". 7 Each of their productions was little more than a physical emulsion of polished émaux exhibited in chronological succession — not an organically synthesized chemistry of effects. That is, the imagists, according to Ramsey, were "rarely able to suggest realities beneath appearances". 8 Missing were the intentional blurs and studied obscurities, the rich symbolic aura of meanings, such as one finds in the poetry of Eliot or Mallarmé. Eliot no doubt recognized these weaknesses in the doctrines and practice of the imagists. H e therefore enriched imagism; he rendered an apt formula for expressing more things without losing imagist precision, and he sustained the force of objects more varied in his poems. 9 Eliot's images, more than those of Pound, are at once notations and connotations of external reality. Although they often graphically delineate an urban locale, they also carry symbolical connota4

"Hamlet", Elizabethan Essays (London, 1934), p. 61. Taupin, L'Influence, p. 211. 6 Ramsey, Jules Laforgue, p. 205. 7 Ramsey, p. 205. 8 Ramsey, p. 205. 9 Taupin, p. 240.

5

366

CONCLUSIONS

tions reflecting the poet's moods or ideas. Their selection and ordonnance, moreover, are usually dictated by the poetic emotion insofar as states of mind are "projected to the surrounding environment". 1 0 I n reading Eliot's early poetry we journey into a world where inner disorder and outer confusion mirror each other, as can be seen in Gerontion's feeling of "chilled delirium" in a "wilderness of mirrors", or Prufrock's uneasiness in visualizing his "nerves in patterns," as objects frequently seem to "grow out of emotion" instead of emotions attaching themselves to objects as in certain kinds of romantic poetry. 11 I n Eliot's earliest poetry such images as a "broken spring in a factory yard" or a "crowd of twisted things", according to Elizabeth Drew, are objective correlatives for "moral, not material disintegration". "The outward scene exists", Miss Drew continues, "as a set of symbols, 'a thousand sordid images', through which the imagination senses the quality of a civilization not of an environment." 1 2 The scene does not exist for its own sake or to call attention to specific sociological evils, as in Zola's novels; rather the scene symbolizes emotional states or spiritual qualities which transcend the specific realities depicted. What are the "burnt-out ends of smoky days", asks Miss Drew, if they are not symbolic of a dying civilization or an age in process of dissolution? 13 Such poems as "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock", "The Preludes", and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" were composed during the years 1909—1911. This was an intermediate period coming between the death of romanticism and the birth of the twentieth-century artistic revolution; it was a transitional age in which French symbolism and musical impressionism were already somewhat overworked, an age in which Picasso and Stravinski were experimenting in new forms of expression. Eliot's poetry of these years takes on much of the decor of La belle epoque just as Jules Laforgue's pieces savor of the Paris of the 1870's. We find traces of Edwardian elegance, subdued or inverted romanticism, Jamesian psychological penetration, fin-de-siecle cynicism, French symbolism and irony. The poems themselves are saturated in the 10

R a m b o , p . 8. D e u t s c h , This Modern 12 D r e w , p . 33. 13 D r e w , p . 33.

11

Poetry,

p . 131.

CONCLUSIONS

367

atmosphere of yellow smoke, lonely cab-horses, gas lamps, trailing skirts, and Dresden clocks. The repetitive schemes governing Eliot's imagery represent an extension of the methods of French symbolism. While patterns of recurrent imagery are often found in French symbolist poems, the practice of reiterating dominant images is greatly intensified and systematized in Eliot's work; moreover, it forms an integral structural component of many of his early poems, contributing to both the unity and progression of these poems inasmuch as each recurrence of a particular image reveals a modification in its symbolic connotations. Because of the patterns of repetition and variation created by these schemes of image-recurrence, Eliot's device is analogous to the musical practice of repeating short melodic phrases in varying harmonies, rhythms, and orchestral textures. Each successive repetition of an image in Eliot's poetry results in an elaboration or modification of the meaning. I n "Portrait of a Lady", for instance, the image of the "bowl of lilacs", which initially contributes to the soft decor of the lady's room, suddenly becomes symptomatic of her nervousness and agitation when she accuses the young man of not knowing what life is; she indicates her nervousness by "slowly twisting the lilac stalks". The music imagery sometimes symbolizes the rough dissonance and confused thought patterns of the speaker as he becomes progressively disillusioned in both the lady and himself. In imitating the repetitive thought processes of the human mind, furthermore, and in indicating the speaker's obsessions with certain dominant images, Eliot's repetitive schemes achieve a degree of psychological realism. As Eliot's poetry becomes more complicated, he uses more complex repetitive schemes. Instead of relying almost exclusively on the reiteration of identical words and phrases, as he does in "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock", he gradually comes to repeat various particular aspects or attributes of general images, thus widening the application of their symbolic meanings and making his schemes more subtle. In such later poems as "Gerontion" the generic "decayed house" image recurs as parts of the house — the kitchen, the gutter, the corridors, and so on. Eliot's motto-images form an even broader part of his pattern of image-repetitions, for the individual mottos recur in two or more of his poems. Each of these mottos, instead of being a single image,

368

CONCLUSIONS

is made up of a complex of associated images t h a t changes with each recurrence, the changes representing transmutations in meaning and symbolic context. The music motto, for example, often creates an atmosphere, a mood, a tone; or it may symbolize a state of mind. I t is introduced in "Prufrock" as an important b u t incidental effect; in "Portrait of a Lady" it becomes the leading motif, reflecting the speaker's shifting mental states. This motto is entirely absent in the flat, colorless, soundless worlds of the "Preludes" and "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", despite the musical titles of those poems. In The Waste Land the music motto forms part of the scheme of dominant images, recurring as soft mandoline music, syncopated ragtime, innocent voices of a children's choir, and bird songs. Ultimately, as the unheard music of the Four Quartets, it is a symbolic manifestation of the eternity theme. In Eliot's earlier poetry the motto-images almost always occur as part of the repetitive scheme of imagery peculiar to each poem. The smoke-fog motto, symbolizing the spiritual death accompanying the smoky twilight of a dying industrial civilization, contributes to the repetitive schemes of "Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady", but it disappears from the texture of "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and "Morning at the Window". Later on it makes its appearance as parts of isolated but intense schemes of imagery in some of the other poems: for example, "The smoky candle end of time" in "Burbank with a Baedeker". Again, in the first section of The Waste Land, the dispirited London crowds mechanically march to work under "the brown fog of a winter dawn"; in the second section, in contrast to the fog-choked streets, the motto appears in a lady's elegant dressing-room where the candle-flames fling their smoke "into the laquearía". The spiritual sterility'which the motto symbolizes affects both aristocrats and commoners in the modern world. This motto is reinforced in The Waste Land and in other poems by the motto of cheap cosmopolitanism, in which the ersatz religion and corrupt capitalism of the morally depraved characters displace traditional religious beliefs. By using common symbolic motifs in several poems and interlocking their meanings, Eliot imparts a firm unity and continuity, both of style and of meaning, to a great deal of his poetry. This device also enables him to perfect the development of certain key images by multiplying their associations and contexts. I n spite of the heterogeneity of Eliot's images, each of them is

CONCLUSIONS

369

related to the subject-matter and locale of individual poems, and each is part of the poet's repetitive schemes. The recurring symbolic images found in his earlier verse act as minute manifestations of the sterility theme, resulting in a complicated pattern of development and elaboration among the central images. The great variety of images in his early poetry, therefore, besides reflecting a variety of subjects and locales, indicates the range and application of his symbolism, thereby projecting an intricate pattern of meanings tones, and textures. I n Eliot's later verse the repetitive patterns are greatly modified. Instead of repetitions of identical words, one finds frequent reiterations of liturgical phrases and religious mottos. The sea motto, for example, recurs time and again as a symbol of the destruction-regeneration or death-and-rebirth theme. One of the most striking characteristics of Eliot's earlier poetry is its eclectic quality. I t is this quality which reflects the manifold influences that molded his style. What seems to be a mosaic of many cultures and many countries, what strikes the casual reader as a pastiche composed of the music of innumerable dead poets, is really a carefully wrought body of poetry woven from a variety of sources. By piecing together fragments from all these varied sources Eliot succeeded in synthesizing a highly individual style, at once personal and cosmopolitan, variegated and yet consistent in atmosphere and tone. His method of eclectic synthesis largely accounts for the abrupt transitions, the sudden contrasts of association, the rapid tempo changes, and the number of heavily or lightly veiled allusions, in which the echoes of many poets are compressed into a few lines. Eliot's eclecticism, however, undergoes considerable retrenchment during his later phases of creativity. What had been a central characteristic of his earlier verse becomes an important but incidental effect in his later verse. Thus Eliot, in an effort to project his themes in a more orderly and straightforward manner, avoids t h e fragmentation and abrupt transitions which the technique of eclectic synthesis creates in his earlier work. The quotations and allusions, when they do occur, are drawn largely from religious and metaphysical sources. By fusing the influences of French symbolism and the dramatic blank verse of the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, Eliot at first produced a poetry t h a t was symbolic, indirect, and ironic as well as conversational and dramatic. Superadded to what he had

370

CONCLUSIONS

learned from his French and English models were the devices he borrowed from musical form — the interweaving patterns of recurring motifs, the tone-leading of vowels, the broken sentences, the deferred resolutions. As his style developed, particularly in the 1920 volume, he gradually adapted the stricter forms and occasionally some of the imagery of Dante and Gautier. Later still, in The Waste Land, he appears to have used certain devices gleaned from Picasso and the surrealist painters, even going so far as to borrow ideas of thematic fragmentation from Stravinski. Indeed, this poem marks a grand climax in Eliot's early career, for he not only consolidated and intensified all previous technical accomplishments but he synthesized these with several new devices. Eliot's style, however, is more than a special fruition of diverse artistic influences. These influences — both native and foreign, both literary and musical — often sounded kindred chords and intensified like strains in his own temperament. The quality of Laforgue's irony and muted pathos is found also in Eliot; the same applies to Baudelaire's deep religious feelings, his sense of evil, and his susceptibility to the aesthetic values of the modern urban environment. Dante's moral and religious strictness corresponds to Eliot's ardent Anglo-Catholicism, just as the peculiar dramaturgical and conversational qualities of the Jacobean dramatists strengthened Eliot's propensities along these lines. Musically, he shares Chopin's and Debussy's feeling for nuance, Beethoven's sense of thematic organization, Wagner's conception of the leitmotif. In short, Eliot appears to have exploited the art-works of composers and writers whose artistic qualities served to deepen his own aesthetic or spiritual sensibility, and the depth of their individual influences is roughly commensurate with the extent to which their respective temperaments are compatible with elements in Eliot's own makeup. Besides the subjective elements in the formation of Eliot's eclectic style, one must also consider his strong sense of tradition, his great struggle for impersonality and objectivity. By multiplying and diversifying his models and by gathering from them a great number of technical devices, he expanded his sensibility beyond the narrowly subjective sphere and made of himself a fine instrument for the production of aesthetic effects. In organizing his masters into an artistically ordered continuum, he created an order of values external to himself, thereby forging a complex mechanism

CONCLUSIONS

371

of style for bringing out his varied and intricate patterns of meaning. He created a tradition, a complex of literary and cultural values which continually live and breathe in his work — hence the wealth of quotations and allusions t h a t suffuses his poetry and gives it t h a t peculiar eclectic flavor. Echoes from past ages mingle with the concrete images of the present, juxtaposing ancient monuments and modern tenements, and music of a boys' choir with snatches of jazz, Tiresias and Mrs. Porter, Agamemnon and Sweeney, all intermingling like gases imprisoned in a jar. Such poems as "Gerontion" and The Waste Land, however, are far more than pasteboard collections of odd fragments from heterogeneous writings. Whenever Eliot borrows he syncretizes diverse fragments into the fabric of his verses in such a manner t h a t the progression of effects is orderly and precise. By means of dominant rhythms some of the most dissimilar images are united harmoniously and smoothly, despite the quickness of transitions or abrupt changes in locale. I n comparing Eliot's verse with traditional English verse, one discovers t h a t the degree of unity in Eliot's rhythmical sequences is perhaps higher than t h a t of most British and American poets. This rhythmical unity is in part traceable to the high proportion of recurring rhythmical units, such as iambs or trochees, in a given sequence of Eliot's lines. The true rhythm of a poem — whether by Eliot, Dryden, or Shakespeare — comes from the repetitions of identical or nearly identical rhythmical configurations; and the figurations within a line need not be consecutive, but the stresses should tend to fall evenly. Rhythmical tension and variety, on the other hand, are born of the conflict between dominant and subordinate rhythmical patterns. Eliot's experiments with heroic verse indicate his skill in modulating between regular and irregular iambic pentameter lines, creating a tension between the regular iambic pentameter and the line which scans as a heroic line but reads as another type of line with a variable disposition of stresses. As an element of metrical unity going beyond the scope of phrasal repetitions and iambic progressions, Eliot's variations on the heroic line constitute perhaps the leading metrical component of his early verse. From the time of his first published poems in the Harvard Advocate to the opening lines of Ash-Wednesday, the heroic line, whether rimed or blank, remained a steadily recurring pattern in his poetry. One of the reasons for the

372

CONCLUSIONS

prevalence of this line lies in the fact t h a t Eliot used t h e English Renaissance dramatists as some of his first models. H e discovered in t h e dramatic verse of t h e English Renaissance a means of strengthening his lyric poetry by infusing it with t h e dramatic a n d rhythmic qualities of his predecessors. Such dramatic intensification is found in "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock", in which t h e irregularly rimed heroic line sustains a variety of subtle effects connected with Prufrock's reveries. After Ash-Wednesday Eliot abandons the heroic line in favor of equally rhythmical accentual lines, notably accentual tetrameters, which form t h e metrical norm for his early plays a n d t h e Four Quartets. Although traditional syllabic sequences occur frequently as variants against the dominant accentual medium in t h e later work, the poetry of his last two phases reveals a strong tendency toward accentual verse as a more flexible metrical f o r m a t for voicing his religious sentiments. Eliot's experiments with a mode of controlled free verse a r e worth noting. I say controlled because Eliot worked in both traditional and modern metrical patterns and because he usually adhered t o the principles of regularity of accent as well as those of repetition and variation in rhythmical figurations. H e made no a t t e m p t t o overturn traditional values; instead he regarded his metric as a logical and orderly departure f r o m English traditional a n d actually worked a great m a n y conventional forms into his verse. Some of t h e earliest of Eliot's free verse occurs in such Oxford poems as " A u n t Helen" a n d "Cousin Nancy", in which he uses t h e rather unsteady r h y t h m s of conversation to carry the light satirical tone. H e next abandoned this mode of versification in favor of t h e t a u t tetrameter quatrains of the 1920 volume, feeling no doubt t h a t the tighter forms of Gautier would be more appropriate for setting off his concise, satiric portraits; and, except for the prosaic sections of t h e Four Quartets, Eliot's use of free verse r h y t h m s virtually disappears from his verse. Wishing to avoid t h e looseness of t h e Oxford metric, he settled on t h e steadily recurring accents of accentual rhythms, depending a great deal on lineation p a t t e r n s t o enforce t h e r h y t h m s of his phrases. As with t h e vers-librists of France, t h e rhythmical line of movement in Eliot's poetry is generally governed by the syntactical divisions of the sentence. Also, like his free-verse colleagues, he exploited the richness of prose in order to find exactly t h e right r h y t h m to m a t c h each

CONCLUSIONS

373

sentiment or idea. Feeling that the late nineteenth-century developments in prose fiction had opened up a whole new sphere of aesthetic effects, he perhaps agreed with Pound that some of the subtleties and nuances of prose ought to be incorporated into verse. Just as the flute, with its greater precision and range, had obsoletized the recorder, the recent developments in French prose had made a great deal of Victorian romantic poetry appear like an obsolete instrument of thought with a limited range of expression. Eliot sought, therefore, to absorb some of the qualities of artistic prose into his poetry — namely, its rhythm, its flow, its precision, and its flexibility. His experiments with French prose rhythms, for /

^

instance, may have resulted in this line from "Prufrock": "After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor . . .". Here he takes advantage of the rhythmical propensities of consecutive phrasal repetitions, a common device of French fiction. In extending Flaubert's doctrine of the mot juste, he was not content merely to find the exact word for the exact feeling; he strove to embody his feelings in exact phrases and rhythms, so that much of his poetry consists of a succession of rhythmical phrases which symbolically convey a complex of precise feelings. The diversity of rhythms in Eliot's poetry sometimes perplexes readers who are unaccustomed to swift tempo changes. But in praising Pound's ability to adapt his meters to his moods, Eliot reveals a central characteristic of his own metric — that is, the abrupt rhythmical changes which accompany changes in meaning or mood.14 Not only do we find conventional metrical schemes juxtaposed with accentual or metronomic sequences, but we also discover, as in The Waste Land, mixtures of heroic verse with music hall rhythms and modern syncopated sounds. The medley of contrasting metrical textures in Eliot's early verse helps to bring out a variety of different moods and meanings. The heroic versification underlying "The Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock" is used in several ways to project the confused drama of Prufrock's inner mind; the uses of the heroic line are expanded in The Waste Land. to articulate more various moods, feelings, and ideas. In contrast to smooth legato flow of heroic lines that sustain Prufrock's reveriesP 14

\T. S. Eliot], Ezra Pound, His Metric and His Poetry ( N e w Y o r k , 1917),

pp. 7 - 8 .

374

CONCLUSIONS

the crisp staccato effects of Eliot's satiric quatrains appropriately convey the poet's satiric intentions, while his music hall rhythms produce effects of parody and caricature. With his musician's ear Eliot has been able to organize the immense diversity of English rhythmical effects into unified metrical patterns which serve to emphasize and modify his meanings. Eliot's fine susceptibility to both rhythms and acoustic concord is reflected in his employment of the various technical devices used to project his meanings. I n his poetry there is always a subtle adaptation of form to subject in which manifestations of form are concealed from the immediate observation of the reader, resulting in a subliminal perception of artistic affects and meanings t h a t penetrate far more deeply than the obvious mechanisms of style. Eliot's artistry, therefore, manifests itself in hidden rimes, muted consonance, and delicately varied metrical sequences. Eliot hardly ever writes in strict traditional forms. The conventional pattern, to him, is always a point of departure, something to exploit for maximum aesthetic-semantic effect; for, in adapting his forms to the subject-matter, he found it necessary to modify the older forms in order to adjust them to modern situations. In Eliot's poetry the new form is frequently tighter and more closely unified than almost any traditional form. For example, while he departs from the blank verse pattern by varying line-lengths, he more than compensates for this variation, in certain poems, by creating a steadier metrical flow than usual and by adding rime as well as structural, sonal, and verbal repetitions. If he introduces a strange rhythm, as he does in the parallel enjambments in the opening of The Waste Land, he conditions our ears to this r h y t h m by repeating it forcefully, so t h a t the very dominance of the new rhythmical figuration sews its thread of unity into the pattern of verses. Yet traditional forms, however disguised, are seldom completely absent from his poetry. They are like hidden springs which nourish the life of his poetry and keep it within the bounds of poetic tradition. What is most important, however, is the fact t h a t Eliot at times deliberately conceals these forms (as he does with the rime in Ash-Wednesday, V). This concealment is part of his technique of indirection, his mastery of subtlety and nuance. The manner in which Eliot veils his forms is related also to his indirect method of conveying emotions to the reader. To use concrete images as a means of transmitting feelings and ideas, and to adopt

CONCLUSIONS

375

a mouthpiece through which he communicates private states of mind — these are the means by which Eliot at once disguises and reveals his thoughts. Although the objective correlative is not a precise formula for representing ideas and feelings in the form of carefully wrought images, it is none the less the expression of an artistic intention — t h a t is, it is a way of projecting these ideas and feelings to the reader by means of symbols t h a t have common meanings to both author and reader. Even the characters are symbols. Madame Sosostris personifies the perversion and decay of religion, just as Eliot's sharp portrayal of the rotted life of our great cities symbolizes the spiritual and moral decay of modern life. These are all symbolic of the disease of our times; and the incidental characters are like puppets enacting their stereotyped roles on the world-stage of conflicting moral, religious, and aesthetic values. As his central characters expand in outlook, the subordinate characters increase in number and complexity, all reflecting the widening scope and application of Eliot's themes and symbols. Meanwhile the symbolic characters and situations are bathed in the atmosphere and tone of the age in which they are found — whether in the lingering fin-de-siecle decor of the Edwardian and Georgian periods, or in the machine-age atmosphere of the 1920's with its automobiles and jazz. These contemporary effects also carry strong histcrical overtones which they acquire from the aura of allusions and quotations surrounding them. Many of Eliot's lines remember the past, as it were, in the same way t h a t the present moment includes not only contemporary sights and sounds but recollections of the past as well. I n Eliot's poetry, therefore, we discover a careful blending of contemporaneity and tradition, of innovations and conventional forms. And the same mechanism of sensibility which harmonizes aesthetic effects from divergent ages is also capable of absorbing a multiplicity of artistic modes from diverse countries and cultures. Notwithstanding the diversity of influences molding Eliot's style, his early verse is governed by orderly phases of development, beginning with the influence of the French symbolists and English Renaissance poets and ending with the complicated set of influences that are fused in The Waste Land. His later verse absorbs, in subdued form, many of these earlier influences, b u t the structure of the verse is informed mainly by religious influences as well as b y

376

CONCLUSIONS

formal structural devices which seem most adaptable to his religious subject-matter — for example, his adaptation of Beethoven's sonata-allegro form to the treatment of the eternity and temporality themes in the Four Quartets. The diversity of Eliot's models, however, does not render his poetry chaotic and formless. Nor are the formal values of his individual poems as elusive as many critics have come to believe; for the exterior structure of his verse — involving such technical components as image-repetition, metrical sequence, and thematics — can usually be plotted and measured with fair precision, and his poems conform more or less strictly to general artistic rules of unity and variety. The unity deriving from Eliot's schemes of image-repetition as well as the thematic unity of The Waste Land and the Four Quartets, is attributable in large part to the influence of musical form. Eliot has come to be recognized as one of the leading experimenters who have successfully explored the analogical rapport between literary and musical forms. Whether he borrowed the tone-leading technique of the French impressionist composers in constructing his patterns of consonance, or exploited the Wagnerian leitmotif in composing The Waste Land — whether he used Berlioz's cyclical form or Beethoven's traditional sonata form in writing his last great masterpiece — his poetry profits from his study of various musical devices. W h a t was formerly regarded as a matter of occult speculation, a mysterious preoccupation of aesthetes and dilettantes, a fin-de-siècle dream of the marriage of all spheres of art becomes in Eliot's poetry a quickening reality, at least as far as music and poetry are concerned. Along with Mallarmé, Mann, Joyce, and others, he enriches literature by borrowing structural devices from music, and in so doing he helps in elevating literature as one of the fine arts. If style is indeed, as Rémy de Gourmont says, "a specialization of sensibility", then Eliot's style is a product of a specialized sensibility filtering a variety of aesthetic impressions. Under his doctrine of the unified sensibility, the doctrine calling for a union of idea and feelings, Eliot achieved the aesthetic ideal of harmonizing the intellectual and emotional components of artistic conception. By means of his eclectic mode of composition Eliot has formulated a style t h a t is radically different from the styles of either his contemporaries or his predecessors. H e combines in an orderly fashion certain traditional poetic devices with those taken from

CONCLUSIONS

377

other arts. I n adapting various combinations of technical devices to the shifting contents of his poetry, he gives his individual poems the fluidity and flexibility of form characteristic of modern paintings and musical compositions, thereby raising the artistic standards of poetry. That is, the influences of tradition keep his poetry well within literary bounds, b u t his innovations, drawn largely from other art forms, lend his work a new artistic dimension t h a t is often lacking in the poetry of his contemporaries. Therefore his poetry exists as part of an artistic genre which seems to go beyond the sphere of literature. Indeed, Eliot's poetry seems more artistic than t h a t of most of his contemporaries because of the number, variety, and organization of technical devices he borrows from other art forms. His artistry, moreover, is a byproduct of his successful attempt to adapt various mechanical forms to the meanings, or contents, of his poems. By exploiting both artistic and literary influences and absorbing them into his sensibility, Eliot was able to forge for himself a refined instrument for orchestrating effects and meanings, and the resultant poetry is made up of varying complexes of recurring technical components, such as heroic verse and symbolic incidental characters, which run together in different combinations to produce particular effects. I n uniting these technical components with various intricate semantic patterns, Eliot has brought about a most intimate and convenient marriage of meaning and form.

APPENDIX

TABLE I Some of t h e Repeated Words, Phrases, and Images in " T h e Love Song of J . Alfred Prufrock"* I (times of day) evening

II

III (food)

IV

V

VI

streets streets oyster-shells yellow smoke yellow fog soot

evemng night

time yellow smoke

time time time time time

plate time time toast & tea time known known known evenings, mornings, afternoons coffee spcons

known known

VII

APPENDIX

379

Table I (continued) I (times of day)

II

III (food)

IV

V

VI

VII

known streets smoke afternoon, evening tea & cake & ices platter worth it the cups, the marmalade, the tea worth while worth it worth while streets teacups worth while * The words, phrases, and images grouped under the roman numerals represent either identical words or phrases or image-complexes that recur throughout the poem. Each class of images is arranged in numerical order as it occurs in the poem, from I to V I I . Reading from top to bottom, the images are arranged according to their order of appearance in the poem. Proceeding from left to right and from top to bottom, then, one notes that a pattern of interlocking image cycles emerges in which an image from one class intermingles with images from other classes, creating a polyphony of textures. The progression of dominant images in the first three paragraphs, for example, is as follows: evening, streets, oyster-shells, yellow smoke, evening, and night. A similar interlocking pattern informs the other repeated images.

380

APPENDIX TABLE II

Repeated

Wards and Images

in

"Portait

of a

Lady"*

Music Preludes Chopin (piano) concert room violins r e m o t e cornets violins ariettes cracked cornets tom-tom prelude monotone "false n o t e " out-of-tune broken violin Polish dance 8 street piano worn-out-common song dance, dance dancing bear 12 I Cry like a p a r r o t chatter like an ape 13—music. . . " d y i n g f a l l " Friends m y friends friend friendship friendships m y friend 6 frie n d s h i p 7 —friends 10—friends j f o u r friends [friends ^

& Outdoor

sporting page b a n k defaulter 12—Let us t a k e t h e air 13 — smoke . . . housetops Feeling, ing

Knowing,

Understand-

You do n o t know you knew ? you do n o t know you do n o t know understand My feelings feel feel h a r d l y know learn 10 — know 11 — h a r d l y u n d e r s t a n d understand N o t knowing 13 feel understand Time

of

Day

1 — afternoon 4 — sunsets 5 — afternoon 8—morning 9-night some afternoon Afternoon grey a n d s m o k y evening yellow and rose

{

Public

8

park comics

Images

1—smoke a n d fog L e t u s t a k e t h e air m o n u m e n t s late events public clocks drink our bocks

I

Month,

Season

1 — December 4—April 4—Paris in t h e spring 5 — August

381

APPENDIX Table I I (continued) 9—October 13—smoke. . . housetops (winter implied) Flowers,

j 2 igrey and s m o k y (smoke. . . housetops Death

Garden

1—Juliet's should Should 13 "dying dying

1 — bloom lilacs , bloom 4 lilacs lilac stalks smell of h y a c i n t h s across t h e garden Smoke,

tomb die die fall"

Cosmopolitanism 1—the latest Pole 4 —Paris in t h e spring English countess 8 Greek Polish dance

Tobacco

1 — smoke and fog 3—tobacco t r a n c e 12—tobacco t r a n c e

* T h e repeated images are listed according to subject. T h e n u m b e r appearing before each image, or group of images, indicates t h e p a r a g r a p h in which t h e given image appears.

TABLE III R e p e a t e d Words a n d Images in The Waste Land Arranged according t o S u b j e c t a n d Movement. N. B. Among t h e i m p o r t a n t images and m o t i f s o m i t t e d here for reasons of space are t h e masculine and feminine motifs as well as t h e images of cheap cosmopolitanism, foreign words and phrases, love and l u s t , a n d architectural ruins. Death, Corpses, Bones,

Rat

I d e a d land d e tid tree a h a n d f u l of d u s t L i v i n g nor dead d r o w n e d Phoenician sailor Fear death by water I h a d n o t t h o u g h t d e a t h h a d undone so m a n y d e a d sound T h a t corpse y o u p l a n t e d

II r a t s ' alley Where t h e dead m e n lost their bones III T h e r a t t l e of bones A r a t crept s o f t l y its slimy belly t h e king m y f a t h e r ' s d e a t h W h i t e bodies n a k e d on t h e low d a m p ground bones cast in a little low d r y garret

382

APPENDIX Table I I I (continued)

B a t t l e d b y the rat's foot only walked among t h e lowest of the dead IV

Sweet Thames Sweet Thames dull canal low damp ground soda water

"Death by Water" Phlebas t h e Phoenician, a fortnight dead

brings the sailor home from sea The music . . . upon the waters fishmen

Picked his bones in whispers

The river sweats The barges drift W i t h the turning tide R e d sails Drifting logs Beating oars Rippled both shores narrow canoe

V H e w h o was living is now dead W e w h o were living are now dying t h e tumbled graves D r y bones can harm no one our obituaries

IV Water (Boats, Ships) I spring rain Starnbergersee shower of rain drank coffee no sound of water your hair w e t das Meer the drowned Phoenician sailor Fear death b y water ships at Mylae II drowned the sense in odours The hot water at ten A n d if it rains III river's tent w e t bank Sweet Thames The river t h e waters of Lemai.

" D e a t h by. W a t e r " the deep sea swell a current under sea the whirlpool V Here is no water without water water drink Sweat is dry spit without rain I f there were water A n d also water A spring A pool among t h e rock t h e sound of water only sound of water over a rock Drip drop drip, etc. B u t there is no water e m p t y cisterns exhausted wells a damp gust/Bringing rain Ganga (river) Waited for rain

383

APPENDIX T a b l e I I I (continued)

dried t u b e r s roots t h a t clutch w h a t branches grow dead tree hyacinths h y a c i n t h girl H y a c i n t h garden corpse you planted . . . in y o u r garden H a s it begun t o s p r o u t ? Will it bloom . . . ?

T h e b o a t responded •ail a n d oar t h e shore Fishing Desert, Aridity,

Dust I

dead land dried t u b e r s stony rubbish t h e sun b e a t s t h e dead tree t h e cricket a h a n d f u l of d u s t

II f r u i t e d vines III

II Filled all t h e desert withered s t u m p s of time

t h e last fingers of leaf t h e vegetation low d a m p ground

III

V

T r a m s and d u s t y trees Burning burning, etc. V no water no water sandy road rock w i t h o u t w a t e r Sweat is d r y a n d feet are in t h e sand t e e t h t h a t cannot spit d r y sterile t h u n d e r w i t h o u t rain mudcracked houses B u t t h e r e is no w a t e r Cracked e a r t h e m p t y cisterns a n d e x h a u s t e d wells D r y bones can h a r m n o one Garden,

Vegetation,

Fertility I

b r e e d i n g / L i l a c s o u t of t h e dead land s t i r r i n g / D u l l roots w i t h spring rain Earth

silence in t h e gardens And d r y grass singing pine trees t h e grass is singing limp leaves T h e jungle crouched Mountains,

RocJc, Stone I

In the mountains s t o n y rubbish d r y stone red rock red rock t h e L a d y of t h e Rocks V t h e agony in s t o n y places distant mountains rock Rock among the mountains

384

APPENDIX Table I I I (continued)

m o u n t a i n s of rock A m o n g s t t h e rock amongst t h e rock D e a d m o u n t a i n m o u t h of carious t e e t h t h a t cannot spit silence in t h e m o u n t a i n s solitude in t h e m o u n t a i n s no rock If t h e r e were rock A pool a m o n g t h e rock w a t e r over a rock t h e c i t y over t h e m o u n t a i n s City

Imagery I

the Hofgarten a crowd flowed over L o n d o n bridge K i n g William S t r e e t III t h e loitering heirs of c i t y directors b e h i n d t h e gashouse T h e s o u n d of horns a n d m o t o r s Unreal city U n d e r t h e b r o w n fog of a w i n t e r n o o n t h e Cannon Street Hotel Followed b y a weekend a t t h e Metropole t h e desk W h e n t h e h u m a n engine w a i t s / L i k e a taxi throbbing waiting The typist A n d along t h e S t r a n d , u p Queen Victoria S t r e e t O City city, I can sometimes h e a r Beside a public b a r in Lower T h a m e s Street To Carthage then I came V W h a t is t h e city over t h e m o u n t a i n s Falling t o w e r s J e r u s a l e m A t h e n s Alexandria

Vienna L o n d o n Unreal L o n d o n Bridge is falling d o w n . . . Fire

II

D o u b l e d t h e flames of s e v e n b r a n c h e d candelabra I n f a t t e n i n g t h e prolonged candleflames, F l u n g t h e i r s m o k e into t h e l a q u e a r í a H u g e sea-wood fed w i t h copper B u r n e d green a n d orange U n d e r t h e firelight. . . h e r hair S p r e a d o u t in fiery p o i n t s Glowed into words III " T h e Fire S e r m o n " B u r n i n g b u r n i n g , etc. V t h e torchlight r e d Wind II (perfumes) stirred b y t h e a i r ' W h a t is t h a t noise?' T h e w i n d u n d e r t h e door III T h e w i n d / Crosses t h e b r o w n l a n d , unheard. B u t a t m y b a c k in a cold b l a s t T h e r e is t h e e m p t y chapel, o n l y t h e wind's home Then a damp gust/Bringing rain Seasons,

Months

A p r i l . . . cruelest m o n t h Winter Summer winter dawn

385

APPENDIX Table I I I (continued) III (autumn implied) summer nights winter evening winter noon

A woman drew her long black hair out tight And fiddled whisper music on those strings t h e grass is singing London Bridge is falling, etc.

y Church, Chapel thunder of spring Music

I (Wagner lyrics) II

0 0 0 0 t h a t Shakespeherian Rag — I t s so elegant So intelligent

Saint Mary Woolnoth kept t h e hours W i t h a dead sound on t h e final stroke of nine Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! where t h e w a l l s / of M a g n u s Martyr hold/Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold The peal of bells V

III Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end m y song Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end m y song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long O t h e moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And p u t s a record on t h e gramophone 'This music crept b y me upon t h e waters' The pleasant whining of a mandoline V And dry grass singing Where t h e hermit-thrush sings

And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, t h a t kept t h e hours t h e chapel t h e e m p t y chapel, only t h e wind's home. I t has no windows, and t h e door swings Crowds of People I I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so m a n y V Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked e a r t h

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books Aldington, Richard, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot (Hurst, Berkshire, England, 1954). Barry, Sister M. Martin, O. P., An Analysis of the Prosodic Structure of Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot (Washington, D. C., 1948). Basler, R o y P., Sex, Symbolism, and Psychology (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1948). Blackmur, R f i c h a r d ] P., Language as Gesture: Essays in Poetry (New York, 1952). Braybrooke, Neville, ed., T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for his Seventieth Birthday (London, 1958). Davie, Donald, Articulate Energy (London, 1955). De Gourmont, R e m y , Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas, trans. William Aspenwall Bradley (New York, 1921). Deutsch, Babette, This Modem Poetry (London, 1936). Drew, Elizabeth, T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry (New York, 1949). Eliot, T[homas] S[teams], Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (New York, 1964). - , The Confidential Clerk (New York, 1954). - , Elizabethan Essays (London, 1934). [Eliot, T. S.], Ezra Pound, His Metric and His Poetry (New York, 1917). Eliot, T. S., For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (Garden City, New York, 1929). - , From Poe to Valery (New York, 1948). - , On Poetry and Poets (London, 1957). - , Poetry and Drama (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1951). - , Points of View (London, 1947). - ,The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (New York, 1960). - , Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (London, 1932). - , The Three Voices of Poetry (London, 1955). - , The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England (London, 1959). - , What Is a Classic 1 (London, 1946). Flores, Angel, ed., An Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valery in English Translation (New York, 1958).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

387

Gallup, Donald, T. 8. Eliot: A Bibliography, Including Contributions to Periodicals and Foreign Translation (New York, 1953). Gardner, Helen, The Art of T. S. Eliot (London, 1949). Kenner, Hugh, The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot (New York, 1959). Laforgue, Jules, Les Complaintes de Jules Laforgue (Paris, 1949). - , Poésies (Buenos Aires, Argentina, [1944]). - , Poéssis CompUtes (Paris, 1943). Leavis, F . R., New Bearings in English Poetry (London, 1950). Lewis, Charlton M., The Principles of English Verse (New York, 1906). Matthiessen, F . O., The Achievement of T. S. Eliot (New York and London, 1958). Musgrove, Sfydney], T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman (Wellington, New Zealand, 1952). Poe, E d g a r Allan, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. 5 Volumes (New York, 1904). Pound, Ezra, Selected Poems, ed. with introduction by T. S. Eliot (London, 1928). R a j a n , B[alaehandra], ed., T. S. Eliot: A Study of His Writings by Several Hands (New York, 1948). Ramsey, Warren, Jules Laforgue and the Ironic Inheritance (New York, 1953). Sansom, Clive, The Poetry of T. S. Eliot (London, 1947). Sebeok, Thomas A., Style in Language (New York and London, 1960). Smith, Grover J . , T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning (Chicago, 1956). Stallman, R o b e r t Wooster, Critiques and Essays in Criticism, 1920-1948 (New York, 1949). Tate, Allen, Collected Essays (Denver, 1959). Taupin, René, L'Influence du Symbolisme Français sur La Poésie Américaine (Paris, 1929). Unger, Leonard, T. S. Eliot (Minneapolis, 1961). Unger, Leonard, ed., T. S. Eliot : A Selected Critique (New York and Toronto, 1948). Valéry, Paul, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry (vol. 7: The Art of Poetry, t r . Denise Folliot) (New York, 1958). Verlaine, P a u l Marie, Oeuvres Poétiques Complètes (Paris, 1938). Williamson, George, The Talent of T. S. Eliot (Seattle, 1929). Wilson, E d m u n d , Axel's Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 (New York, 1931). Wilson, F r a n k , Six Essays on the Development of T. S. Eliot (London, 1948). Winters, Yvor, The Anatomy of Nonsense (Norfolk, Conn., 1943). Wright, George T[haddeus], The Poet in the Poem: The Personae of Eliot, Yeats, and Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960).

Articles Baker, Sheridan, "English Meter Is Quantitative", College English (1960), 309-315.

XXI.

388

BIBLIOGRAPHY

University of Brotman, D. Bosley, "T. S. Eliot: 'the Music of Ideas' Toronto Quarterly X V I I I (1948), 20-29. Christian, Henry, "Thematic Development in T. S. Eliot's 'Hysteria*", Twentieth Century Literature VI (1960), 76-80. Daniels, J . R., "T. S. Eliot and His Relation to T. E. Hulme", The University of Toronto Quarterly I I (1932), 380-396. Freedman, Morris, "Jazz Rhythms and T. S. Eliot", South Atlantic Quarterly L I (1952), 419-435. Fussell, B. H., "Structural Methods in Four Quartets", Journal of English Literary History X X I I (1955), 212-241. Giannone, Richard J., "Eliot's 'Portrait of a Lady' and Pound's 'Portrait d'une femme' " Twentieth Century Literature V (1959), 131-134. Gross, Harvey, "Music and the Analogue of Feeling: Notes on Eliot and Beethoven", The Centennial Review of Arts & Science, I I I (1959), Michigan State University, 269-288. Hough, Graham, "Free Verse", Proceedings of the British Academy X L I I I (1957), 157-177. Howarth, Herbert, "Eliot, Beethoven and J . W. N. Sullivan", Comparative Literature I X - 4 (1957), 322-332. Korg, Jacob, "Modern Art Techniques in The Waste Land", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism XVIII (1960), 456-463. Levy, Jiri, "Rhythmical Ambivalence in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot", Anglia L X X V I I (1959), 54-64. Martz, Louis L., "The Wheel and the Point", Sewanee Review LV (1947), 126-147. McElderry, B. R. Jr., "Eliot's 'Shakespeherian rag' ", American Quarterly I X (1957), 185-186. Moorman, Charles, "Order and Mr. Eliot", South Atlantic Quarterly L I I (1953), 73-87. Pagnini, Marcello, "La Musicalita dei 'Four Quartets' . . .", Belfagor X I I I (1958), 421-440. Peruzzi, Emilio, "La parola dominante", Vox Romanica XVI (1957), 246256. Spencer, Theodore, "The Poetry of T. S. Eliot", Atlantic Monthly CLI (January 1933), 60-68. Thompson, Eric, "The Critical Forum: 'Dissociation of Sensibility' ", Essays in Criticism I I (1962), 207-213. Vinograd, Sherma S., "The Accidental: A Clue to Structure in Eliot's Poetry", Accent I X (1949), 231-238. Williamson, Mervin W., "Eliot's 'Gerontion': A Study in Thematic Repetition and Development", University of Texas Studies in English X X X V I (1957), 110—126. Wimsatt, Wfilliam] K. and Mfonroe] C. Beardsley, "The Concept of Meter", PMLA LXXIV (1959), 585-598. Wormhoudt, Arthur, "A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of 'Prufrock' ", Perspective I I (1949), 109-117. Wrenn, C. L., "T. S. Eliot and the Language of Poetry", Thought X X X I I (1957), 239-254.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

389

Dissertations Grigsby, Gordon K a y , " T h e Modern L o n g P o e m : Studies in Thematic F o r m " (Unpublished dissertation). University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1960. R a m b o , Dorothy E . , " A n Analysis of Four Quartets by Eliot with Particular Respect to its P r o s o d y " (unpublished dissertation). Northwestern University, Chicago, 1958.

Phonograph

Recordings

Eliot, T . S. [poetry reading], The H a r v a r d Vocarium Records, H . F . S. 3124, 1947. - , T- S. Eliot reads his Four Quartets, (Angel 45012, Electrical and Musical Industries [U. S . ] Ltd.), [n. d.].

INDEX

Accentual tetrameter (four-stress lino), 225,228, 236, 237, 238, 300, 309-310, 313, 318, 347, 355 Acoustic concord, 48 Adonis, 166, 228 " A i n ' t We Got F u n ? " , 291 Andrewes, Lancelot, 280, 281 Anglican religion, 260 " A n i m u l a " , 285-286 Antony and Cleopatra, 195-196 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 140, 176-177, 350 Architectural ruins motto, 154 Aristotle, 356 Artistic struggles motto, 305, 318-319, 326, 330, 331, 355-356 Ash-Wednesday, 258, 260-278, 364, 371 Attis, 166, 177, 228 " A u n t Helen", 127, 372 L'Avenir de VIntelligence, 297 B a r r y , M. Martin, 248 Basler, R o y P., 32 Baudelaire, Charles, 140, 193 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 305, 307, 314, 376 Belladonna, 188, 208 Belle epoque, 366 Berlioz, Hector, 307, 376 Bible, 261, 275, 364 Blackmur, R . P., 343 B l a n k verse, 42, 50-51, 137-138, 140, 149, 161-164, 165, 179-181, 190-191, 192, 194-195, 197-198, 204, 205-206, 208, 214, 228, 235, 237, 258, 374 The Boke named The Gouvenour, 323 B o t m a n , D. H a r v e y , 13 Bradley, F . H., 19-20, 33 Braque, Georges, 173 Browning, Robert, 49, 362 Bubu de Montparnasse, 111, 117-118 Buddenbrooks, Thomas, 55

INDEX

391

" B u r b a n k W i t h a B a e d e k e r " , 143-147, 152, 165 " B u r n t N o r t o n " , 285, 312-320, 325, 327, 334, 358 Cantos, 175, 301 The Changeling, 162 Channing, Dr. William Ellery, 148 Charles I, 345, 354 Cheap cosmopolitanism m o t t o , 152-154, 182, 208, 289, 295, 368 Children-laughter-garden m o t t o , 285 Chopin, Frédéric, 83-85, 91-92, 96, 303 Christ, 156, 157, 166, 177, 187, 191, 232, 269, 275, 276, 282, 321, 329, 330, 336, 341, 344, 345, 357, 359, 360 Christian symbolism, 209 Christianity, 340, 341 C i n e m a t o g r a p h y , 218, 239 The Cloud, of Unknowing, 357 Cockneys, 199-203 Collage, 201 Consonance, 45-47, 49-50, 70, 72, 84, 85, 160, 183-184, 197, 238, 281-282, 311, 318, 335, 336, 346-348 "Conversation G a l a n t e " , 132-135 Coriolanus, 238, 298-300 Counter theme, 304, 306 "Cousin N a n c y " , 126, 128-129, 372 Crucifixion, 191, 232, 329-330 Cyclical form, 39-40, 307, 376 "Dans le Restaurant", 223 D a n t e , 16-17, 182, 193, 240, 246, 252, 256, 261, 268, 269, 270, 285-86, 308, 318, 340, 350, 352, 361, 370 " D a r k N i g h t of t h e Soul", 260, 265, 327 D a y of J u d g e m e n t , 253 D e a t h - a n d - r e b i r t h (destruction-regeneration) m o t t o , 282, 283, 333 D e a t h - a n d - r e b i r t h (destruction-regeneration) m o t t o - t h e m e , 369 D e a t h imagery, 288 Debussy, Claude-Achilles, 303 Deferred resolution, 40, 303 Deutsch, B a b e t t e , 281, 282-83 Dissociation of sensibility, 19-20 Dissonant rime, 121, 250, 276 The Divine Comedy, 261 D r a m a t i c monologue, 49, 78, 137-38 Drew, Elizabeth, 166, 169, 362-63, 366 " T h e D r y Salvages", 306, 309, 332-343 D u k e Orsino (in Twelfth Night), 56-57 " E a s t Coker", 306, 307, 309, 320-332, 333, 342, 351, 358 Eclecticism, 15-17, 369

392

INDEX

Eliot, Andrew, 320 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 323 Émaux et Camées, 141 Eternity theme, 285, 304, 312, 314, 315, 316, 318, 321, 326-27, 328-29, 332, 333-34, 336-37, 339, 343, 344, 345, 348, 353, 358, 359, 360 Eucharist, 272, 329 Exoticism, 295 Feminine motif, 172, 181, 182, 184, 187-88, 193, 213, 221, 226, 234 Ferrar, Nicholas, 345 Fertility (or rebirth) theme, 168-69, 171-73, 181-82, 187, 193, 222-23, 226, 242-44 Fin-de-siècle, 366 Fisher King, 240 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 289 Flaubert, Gustave, 356, 373 Ford, Ford Madox, 37 Four Quartets, 15, 267, 279, 280, 301-302, 303-361, 363-64, 376 Free verse, 372-73 Garden motto, 262, 305, 314, 318, 321, 328, 329, 348, 358 Garden of Eden, 277, 314, 315 Gardner, Helen, 310, 344 Gautier, Théophile, 140-43, 365, 370 "Gerontion", 149-164, 192, 237, 269, 283, 312, 362, 363, 366, 367 The Golden Bough, 228 Götterdämmerung, 219 Gourmont Rémy de, 19-20, 95, 376 Grace, 278 The Great Gatsby, 289 Gross, Harvey, 313-314 Hair-flower-girl motto, 136, 186, 271 Hamlet, 69, 203, 352 Harvard Advocate, 371 Harvard Advocate poems, 21-28 Hemingway, Ernest, 290 Heraclitan elements, 344 Heraclitus, 308-309, 312, 361 Heroic verse (iambic pentameter), 26, 42, 43, 70, 74, 91, 101, 103, 104, 13435, 137-38, 141, 158, 161-64, 179-81, 184-85, 190-91, 194-95, 197-98, 205-206, 210-211, 213-214, 216, 218, 224-26, 228, 234, 235, 247, 265-66, 371-72 "The Hollow Men", 246-259, 279, 318, 363 Holy Ghost, 343 Holy Grail, 166-67, 235 Howarth, Herbert, 13 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, 140

INDEX

393

Hugo, Victor, 141 Hulme, T. E., 365 "Humouresque", 22-23 Incarnation, 342 Inferno, 182, 268, 308 Inverted romanticism, 24 Irony, 21, 24, 70-71, 97, 138-39, 198 James, Henry, 30-32, 79-80, 87, 104 Jazz Age, 289, 292 John of the Cross, 260, 265 Joyce, James, 376 "The Juniper Tree", 269 Kenner, Hugh, 13, 70, 93, 126, 187, 214, 250, 253, 255, 261-62, 263, 281 Kipling, Rudyard, 315 "La Figlia che piange", 135-140, 186 Laforgue, Jules, 19-23, 29, 34-36, 80-82, 109-110, 118-119, 133, 138-40, 286, 350, 365, 366 Latino, Brunetto, 350 Leavis, F. R., 13, 149, 228, 230, 233, 274 Leitmotif, 303, 376 Leonardo Da Vinci, 188 Levy, Jiri, 276 Limbo, 246, 252 "Little Gidding", 306, 308, 309, 343-359 Lord's Prayer, 247, 257 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", 24, 27-28, 29-77, 104, 108, 165, 178, 303, 362, 363, 366, 367, 368, 372, 373 Love (or sex) theme, 201, 202, 208-210, 213, 215, 216, 222, 226, 243 Lunar imagery, 114-115, 119-20 Machine imagery, 212, 215 Magnus Martyr, 217 Main theme, 304 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 140, 365, 376 Mann, Thomas, 376 "Marina", 283-85 Marvell, Andrew, 64, 204 Masculine motif, 172, 187, 213, 226, 241, 244 Masochism, 57-58 Matthiessen, F. O., 13, 17, 215, 264, 269, 274 Maud, 87 Maurras, Charles, 297, 300 "Mélange Adultère de Tout", 351 n. Metrical consistency (or unity), 100—101

394

INDBX

Middleton, Thomas, 162-63, 237 Milton, J o h n , 214, 298, 327 Mississippi River, 333 Mock romantic, 27 Montage, 239 "Morning a t t h e Window", 109-110, 128 Mot juste, 373 Motto images, 367-68 Motto-theme, 307 "Mr. Apollinax", 129-132, 148 Murder in the Cathedral, 280 Music, 13, 38, 40, 51-52, 56-57, 65-67, 77, 81, 82-83, 84-85, 86-87, 91-92, 96, 97-98, 99, 105, 115, 133-34, 145, 170-71, 172-73, 204-205, 217, 218, 219, 239, 284, 304-305, 360, 361, 370, 376 Music motto, 368 Musical symbolism, 56-57, 82-85, 87, 90, 96, 98-99, 105 Mystical journey motto, 305, 331-332, 339-340, 357-358 Nerval, Gérard, 241 Neurasthenic, 197-198, 200, 242 Neurotieism, 32 New Testament, 275 Nunc dimittis, 283 Nursery jingle, 240, 247, 255-56, 257-58 Objective correlative, 126, 285, 364-65 Old Testament, 282 "On a P o r t r a i t " , 21 Onomatopoeia, 131, 197, 237, 336 Osiris, 166, 177, 228 Oxford poems, 126-132, 372 Pagnini, Marcello, 307 Painting, 173-74 Paradise Lost, 214, 298 Parody, caricature, and burlesque, 21, 25, 29, 62-63, 94-95, 128 Pentecost, 355 Pericles, 283 Persona (or speaker), 21, 149, 164, 178, 181, 192-193, 241, 246, 360, 362-364, 374-375 Philippe, Charles Louis, 111, 117-118 Philomel, 196, 208 Phlebas, 223 Picasso, Pablo, 38, 59, 106, 140, 173, 366 Pollonius, 69 Pope, Alexander, 214 " P o r t r a i t of a L a d y " , 27, 76-77, 78-103, 104,-133, 161, 303, 362, 367, 368

INDEX

395

Pound, Ezra, 140, 175, 281, 282, 301, 350, 351, 365, 373 "Preludes", 104-114, 366, 368 Pre-Raphaelite, 263 Primitivism (and atavism), 292, 296 Progression d'effet, 37 " P r o t h a l a m i o n " , 170 Purgatorio, 270 Purgatory, 253 Quotation and allusion technique, 15-17, 41, 75-76, 174-176, 371 R a m b o , Dorothy, 309 Rat-bones-death motto, 198, 203-204, 242, 247, 248-249 Ravel, Maurice, 24, 303 " T h e R a v e n " , 68 The Renunciation, 352 R h i n e maidens, 219 Rhythm accentual, 42, 128, 189, 220, 258, 278, 280, 286, 296, 301, 322, 323 accentual-syllabic alternation, 205 conversational, 126-128, 130, 186, 201, 280, 297, 372 — 373 French prose, 68, 86 Gilbert and Sullivan or music hall, 25, 42, 71, 94, 122, 200, 289, 290-291, 292, 295 isochronous or metronomic, 128-129, 204-205, 275, 296, 297, 299, 300 jazz and ragtime, 199-200, 289-292, 294, 295 musically transcribed, 65-66, 199, 205, 215, 236, 251-252, 254, 257, 2 8 9 291, 293-296, 297, 313, 326, 336 nursery, 128, 290 prosaic, 311, 326 R h y t h m i c a l unity, 65 The Rock, 280, 300-301 R o m a n Catholic religion, 260, 261, 272, 274 The Sacred Fount, 31, 79-80 Samson Agonistes, 327 Sea motto, 369 Sex, 31-32, 150, 208-210, 212-213, 214-215, 216, 220-222, 257, 287, 288, 289, 292, 296, 323-324 Sex (or sexual love) theme, 168-169, 171-173, 187 Shakespeare, William, 195-196, 199, 207, 214, 352, 362 Smith, Grover, 13, 30, 34, 117-119, 272, 289, 315 Smoke-fog motto, 91, 368 Sonata-allegro form, 302, 303-304, 304 n., 307, 311, 361, 376 " A song for Simeon", 282-283 Sonnet, 25 Spenser, E d m u n d , 170, 203, 207 "Spleen", 23

396

INDEX

Stair motto, 270 Sterility theme, 155, 165-166, 168-169, 171-173, 181, 185, 187, 191, 193, 196, 201, 202, 208-209, 212-213, 222, 226-228, 241-245, 246, 248, 288, 362-363 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 213 Still point motto, 275, 298-299, 300 Stravinski, Igor, 38, 140, 284, 366 Submarine motto, 36, 61, 71-73, 223 Sub-themes, 305 Surrealism, 174 Sybil, 185-186, 187 Symbolism (French), 27, 140, 367, 369 Symphonic FanXastique, 307 Symphony, 305 Syncopation, 289, 291, 295 Tarot, 182, 190, 208 Tate, Allen, 264, 265, 268 The Tempest, 199, 203, 206, 284-285 Temporal mutability theme, 304, 309, 312, 315, 316, 319, 320, 326-27, 330, 333-334, 336-337, 339, 344-345, 340, 349, 353, 359, 360 Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 56, 87, 271 Tetrameter quatrains, 24-25, 140-143 Thammuz, 166, 177 Thematic fragmentation, 245 Tiresias, 164-165, 167, 177, 187-188, 209, 212, 232, 241, 363 Tristan und Isolde, 182-186 "Triumphal March", 297-300 Twelfth Night, 56-57 Unconscious, 20 Unity of tone, 39-59 Verlaine, Paul, 108-111, 205 Vers librists, 372 Vinograd, Sherma S., 37, 190 Virgin Mary, 261-262, 267-268, 273, 340, 344, 359 Vila Nuova, 261 Wagner, Richard, 170, 182, 186, 219, 303, 376 Wagnerian picture-frame, 96, 258 The Waste Land, 15, 18, 107, 109, 152, 165-245, 246-248, 251, 254, 256, 264, 301-302, 312, 350, 359-360, 362, 363, 364, 373, 374, 375, 376 Webster, John, 237 Weltanschauung, 363 Wilson, Edmund, 32, 264 Wilson, Frank, 53 Wind motto, 155, 199, 247, 248-249, 251, 322-323

INDEX

The. Wings of thè Dove, 87 Winters, Yvor, 165 Works and Days, 54 Yew tree (as death symbol), 318, 343 Zola, Emile, 366 "Zone", 176-177

397