Flowers of Evil), by the French tic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite poet Charles Baudelaire (1821?1867): 'Swarming arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.' city, city full of dreams, / Where the specter in 6. See part 4. Phlebas the Phoenician and Mr. broad daylight accosts the passerby.' The word Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant?both of whom reve was originally misspelled reve. appear later in the poem?are different phases of 3. Cf. Inferno III, 55-57 [Eliot's note]. The note the same symbolic character, here identified as the goes on to quote Dante's lines, which maybe trans' Phoenician Sailor.' Mr. Eugenides exports 'cur-lated: 'So long a train of people, / that I should rants' (line 210); the drowned Phlebas floats in the never have believed / That death had undone so 'current' (line 315). Line 48 draws from Ariel's many.' Dante, just outside the gate of hell, has song in Shakespeare's The Tempest (1.2.400?08) seen 'the wretched souls of those who lived with- to the shipwrecked Ferdinand, who was 'sitting on out disgrace and without praise.' a bank / Weeping again the King my father's 4. Cf. Inferno IV, 25-27 [Eliot's note]. In Limbo, wrack,' when 'this music crept by me on the the first circle of hell, Dante has found the virtuous waters.' The song is about the supposed drowning heathens, who lived before Christianity and are, of Ferdinand's father, Alonso. The Waste Land therefore, eternally unable to achieve their desire contains many references to The Tempest. Ferdi
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2298 / T. S. ELIOT
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.5 There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!6 'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!7 'That corpse you planted last year in your garden, 'Has it begun to sprout?8 Will it bloom this year? 'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? 'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, 'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!9 'You! hypocrite lecteur!?mon semblable?mon frere!'1
II. A Game of Chess2 ^
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,3 Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion; In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid?troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Flung their smoke into the laquearia,4 Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
of seeing God. Dante's lines, cited by Eliot, mean 'Hypocrite reader!?my likeness?my brother!' 'Here, so far as I could tell by listening, / there was 'Au Lecteur' describes humans as sunk in stupid- no lamentation except sighs, / which caused the ity, sin, and evil, but the worst in 'each man's foul eternal air to tremble.' menagerie of sin' is boredom, the 'monstre deli
5. A phenomenon which I have often noticed cat'?'You know him, reader.' [Eliot's note]. St. Mary Woolnoth is a church in 2. The title suggests two plays by Thomas Middle- the City of London (the financial district); the ton (1580?1627): A Game at Chess and, more sigcrowd is flowing across London Bridge to work in nificant, Women Beware Women, which has a the City. According to the Bible, Jesus died at the scene in which a mother-in-law is distracted by a ninth hour. game of chess while her daughter-in-law is 6. Presumably representing the 'average business-seduced: every move in the chess game represents man.' a move in the seduction. 7. The battle of Mylae (260 B.C.E.) in the First 3. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii, 1. 190 [Eliot's Punic War, which, in some measure like World note]. In Shakespeare's play, Enobarbus's famous War I, was fought for economic reasons. description of the first meeting of Antony and Cle8. A distortion of the fertility god's ritual death, opatra begins, 'The barge she sat in, like a bur- which heralded rebirth. nish'd throne, / Burn'd on the water.' Eliot's 9. Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil [Eliot's language in the opening lines of part 2 echoes iron- note]. In the play by John Webster (d. 1625), the ically Enobarbus's speech. dirge, sung by Cornelia, has the lines 'But keep 4. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726 [Eliot's note]. the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, / For with Laquearia means 'a paneled ceiling,' and Eliot's his nails he'll dig them up again.' Eliot makes the note quotes the passage in the Aeneid that was his 'wolf' into a 'dog,' which is not a foe but a friend source for the word. The passage may be trans- to humans. lated: 'Blazing torches hang from the gold-paneled 1. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mai [Eliot's ceiling [laquearibus aureis], and torches conquer note]. The passage is the last line of the introduc-the night with flames.' Virgil is describing the ban- tory poem 'Au Lecteur' ('To the Reader'), in quet given by Dido, queen of Carthage, for Aeneas, Baudelaire's Fleurs dii Mai; it may be translated: with whom she fell in love.
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THE WASTE LAND / 2299
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
95 Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene5 The change of Philomel,6 by the barbarous king
100 So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, 'Jug Jug'7 to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time
105 Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points
no Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
'My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 'Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. 'What are you thinking of ? What thinking? What? 'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'
115 I think we are in rats' alley8 Where the dead men lost their bones.
'What is that noise?' The wind under the door.9 'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?' 120 Nothing again nothing.
'Do 'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember 'Nothing?'
I remember 125 Those are pearls that were his eyes.1 'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But O O O O that Shakespeherian Bag2? It's so elegant
BO So intelligent
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?' 'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
5. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 140 8. Cf. Part 111, I. 195 [Eliot's note]. [Eliot's note]. The
