The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 Read online

  burning

  IV. Death by Water

  Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

  Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

  And the profit and loss.

  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.

  Gentile or Jew

  320 O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

  Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

  V. What the Thunder said

  After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

  After the frosty silence in the gardens

  After the agony in stony places

  The shouting and the crying

  Prison and palace and reverberation

  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

  He who was living is now dead

  We who were living are now dying

  330 With a little patience

  Here is no water but only rock

  Rock and no water and the sandy road

  The road winding above among the mountains

  Which are mountains of rock without water

  If there were water we should stop and drink

  Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

  Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

  If there were only water amongst the rock

  Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

  340 Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

  There is not even silence in the mountains

  But dry sterile thunder without rain

  There is not even solitude in the mountains

  But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

  From doors of mudcracked houses

  If there were water

  And no rock

  If there were rock

  And also water

  350 And water

  A spring

  A pool among the rock

  If there were the sound of water only

  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

  360 Who is the third who walks always beside you?

  When I count, there are only you and I together

  But when I look ahead up the white road

  There is always another one walking beside you

  Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

  I do not know whether a man or a woman

  — But who is that on the other side of you?

  What is that sound high in the air

  Murmur of maternal lamentation

  Who are those hooded hordes swarming

  370 Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

  Ringed by the flat horizon only

  What is the city over the mountains

  Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

  Falling towers

  Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

  Vienna London

  Unreal

  A woman drew her long black hair out tight

  And fiddled whisper music on those strings

  380 And bats with baby faces in the violet light

  Whistled, and beat their wings

  And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

  And upside down in air were towers

  Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

  And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

  In this decayed hole among the mountains

  In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

  Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

  There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

  390 It has no windows, and the door swings,

  Dry bones can harm no one.

  Only a cock stood on the rooftree

  Co co rico co co rico

  In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

  Bringing rain

  Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

  Waited for rain, while the black clouds

  Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

  The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

  400 Then spoke the thunder

  DA

  Datta: 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

  By this, and this only, we have existed

  Which is not to be found in our obituaries

  Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

  Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

  410 In our empty rooms

  DA

  Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

  Turn in the door once and turn once only

  We think of the key, each in his prison

  Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

  Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

  Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

  DA

  Damyata: The boat responded

  420 Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

  The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

  Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

  To controlling hands

  I sat upon the shore

  Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

  Shall I at least set my lands in order?

  London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

  Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

  Quando fiam uti chelidon — O swallow swallow

  430 Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

  These fragments I have shored against my ruins

  Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

  Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

  Shantih shantih shantih

  Notes on the Waste Land

  Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted. Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.

  I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

  Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel II, i.

  23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.

  31. V. Tristan und Isolde, I, verses 5–8.

  42. Id. III, verse 24.

  46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples of Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the ‘crowds of people’, and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

  60. Cf. Baudelaire:

  ‘Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,

  ‘Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.’

  63. Cf. Inferno III, 55–57:

  si lunga tratta

  di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto

  che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.

  64. Cf. Inferno IV,
25–27:

  Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,

  non avea pianto ma’ che di sospiri

  che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.

  68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

  74. Cf. the Dirge in Wesbster’s White Devil.

  76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.

  II. A GAME OF CHESS

  77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii, l. 190.

  92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726:

  dependent lychni laquearibus aureis

  incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

  98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.

  99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.

  100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.

  115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.

  118. Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still?’

  126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.

  138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.

  III. THE FIRE SERMON

  176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

  192. Cf. The Tempest, I, ii.

  196. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

  197. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees:

  ‘When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,

  ‘A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring

  ‘Actaeon to Diana in the spring,

  ‘Where all shall see her naked skin …’

  199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

  202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

  210. The currants were quoted at a price ‘cost insurance and freight to London’; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

  218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character’, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:

  … Cum Iunone iocos et ‘maior vestra profecto est

  Quam quae contingit maribus’, dixisse, ‘voluptas.’

  Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti

  Quaerere Tiresiae; Venus huic erat utraque nota.

  Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva

  Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu

  Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem

  Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem

  Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae’,

  Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,

  Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem

  Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.

  Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa

  Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto

  Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique

  Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,

  At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam

  Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto

  Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

  221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the ‘longshore’ or ‘dory’ fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

  253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

  257. V. The Tempest, as above.

  264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches: (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

  266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III, i: the Rhine-daughters.

  279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:

  ‘In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The Queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.’

  293. Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133:

  ‘Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;

  ‘Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma.’

  307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: ‘to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.’

  308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.

  309. From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.

  V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

  In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.

  357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec Province. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America) ‘it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats…. Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.’ Its ‘water-dripping song’ is justly celebrated.

  360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

  366–76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: ‘Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.’

  401. ‘Datta, dayadhvam, damyata’ (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka — Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

  407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi:

  ‘… they’ll remarry

  Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider

  Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’

  411. Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46:

  ‘ed io senti chiavar l’uscio di sotto

  all’ orribile torre.’

  Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 306. ‘My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it…. In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.’

  424. V. Weston: From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

  427. V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.

  ‘“Ara vos prec per aquella valor

  “que vos guida al som de l’escalina,

  “sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor.”

  Poi s’ascose nel foco che li affina.’

  428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

  429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

  431. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.

  433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is our equivalent to this word.

  THE HOLLOW MEN

  1925

/>   Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

  The Hollow Men

  A penny for the Old Guy

  I

  We are the hollow men

  We are the stuffed men

  Leaning together

  Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

  Our dried voices, when

  We whisper together