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The Waste Land

Page 18

by T. S. Eliot


  from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and

  torches and weapons.”

  324 [After the agony in stony places]: In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus with-

  draws to pray, according to Luke 22:44: “And being in an agony he prayed

  more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling

  down to the ground.” The phrase “stony places” is also biblical. It occurs in

  Psalm 141:6: “When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall

  hear my words; for they are sweet.” It occurs again in Matthew 13:5, in the

  parable of the sower whose seeds are cast in various places: “Some fell upon

  stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung

  up, because they had no deepness of earth.” And it occurs a third time in

  Matthew 13:20, when the meaning of the parable is expounded: “But he that

  received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word,

  and anon with joy receiveth it.”

  357: Eliot’s factitious note directs the reader to a book by the Canadian author

  Frank M. Chapman (1864–1945) titled Handbook of Birds of Eastern North

  America (New York: D. Appleton, 1895). But the reader who follows up this

  lead will discover that the quotation Eliot cites is actually taken by Chapman

  from the American naturalist Eugene Pintard Bicknell (1859–1925), A Study

  of the Singing of Our Birds (Boston, 1885).

  359 [Who is the third . . . ]: Eliot’s note at the beginning of part V outlining “three themes” to appear in the first part of part V, refers to the story of the journey

  to Emmaus. The story, recounted in Luke 24:13–32, takes place immediately

  after the disciples of Jesus return to his grave on Easter Sunday and discover

  that his body is no longer there, leaving them bewildered “at that which was

  come to pass.”

  13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called

  Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.

  14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

  15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and

  reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

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  16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

  17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are

  these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

  18 And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto

  him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the

  things which are come to pass there in these days?

  19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him,

  Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and

  word before God and all the people:

  20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be

  condemned to death, and have crucified him.

  21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed

  Israel: and beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were

  done.

  22 Yea, and certain women also of our company have made us

  astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;

  23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they

  had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

  24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre,

  and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.

  25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all

  that the prophets have spoken:

  26 Ought not Christ to have su¤ered these things, and to enter into

  his glory?

  27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto

  them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

  28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he

  made as though he would have gone further.

  29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us; for it is toward

  evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.

  30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread,

  and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

  31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished

  out of their sight.

  32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within

  us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the

  Scriptures?

  360 [When I count]: Eliot’s note directs the reader to “the account of the one

  of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but think one of Shackleton’s).”

  Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) made three journeys to the Antarctic,

  each beset with problems. His third one attempted to cross the entire

  Antarctic ice cap on foot, a journey of 1,500 miles. The expedition set sail

  on the Endurance from the island of South Georgia in December 1914, but

  their ship became trapped in ice and was eventually crushed. To return they

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  e d i t o r ’ s a n n o t a t i o n s t o l i n e s 3 6 6 – 3 8 4

  made an almost two-year journey. Three years later Shackleton published

  his account of the trip, South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition, 1914–

  1917 (London: W. Heinemann, 1919), which includes the following passage

  (209):

  When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided

  us, not only across those snow-fields, but across the storm-white sea

  that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Geor-

  gia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours

  over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed

  to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my compan-

  ions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a

  curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.”

  Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels “the dearth of human

  words, the roughness of mortal speech” in trying to describe things

  intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without

  a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.

  The phrase “O dearth / Of human words! roughness of mortal speech!” is

  from John Keats (1795–1821), Endymion (1818), book II, lines 819–820.

  366–367 [What is that sound . . . lamentation]: Eliot’s note directs the reader to

  a book by the German author Hermann Hesse (1872–1962), Blick ins Chaos:

  Drei Aufsätze (A Look into the Chaos: Three Essays) (Berne: Verlag Seldwyla, 1920), from which Eliot quotes a passage in the original German, one that

  refers to the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the German and Austro-

  Hungarian empires: “Already half of Europe, and at the least half of Eastern

  Europe, is on the way toward chaos; it is drunkenly driving forward in a holy

  frenzy toward the abyss, drunkenly singing, as if singing hymns, the way

  Dmitri Karamazov sang. The o¤ended bourgeois laughs over these songs;

  the saint and seer hears them with tears.” Dmitri Karamazov is a character

  in the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881).

  Eliot was so taken with Hesse’s book that he urged his
friend Sydney Schi¤

  (1868–1948) to translate it into English. His translation, titled In Sight of

  Chaos, appeared a year later under Schi¤’s nom de plume, Stephen Hudson

  (Zurich: Verlag Seldwyla, 1923). Schi¤ was a well-to-do man who financed

  the quarterly journal Art and Letters (1917–1920), to which Eliot contributed two poems and four essays and reviews in 1919 and 1920.

  377–384 [A woman . . . exhausted wells]: Conrad Aiken (1890–1972), who had

  been a friend of Eliot’s since their student days at Harvard, later recalled that

  when he first read The Waste Land in 1922, he “had long been familiar with

  such passages as ‘A woman drew her long black hair out tight,’ which I had

  seen as poems, or part-poems, in themselves. And now saw inserted into

  The Waste Land as into a mosaic.” See his Prefatory Note (1958) in Charles

  Brian Cox and Arnold P. Hinchli¤e, eds., T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land: A Case-

  book (London: Macmillan, 1978), 91.

  e d i t o r ’ s a n n o t a t i o n s t o l i n e s 3 8 5 – 3 9 9

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  385–394 [In this decayed hole . . . rain]: Eliot’s note at the beginning of part V

  states that “the approach to the Chapel Perilous” is one of “three themes”

  employed in this part’s opening section (322–394), and he tells the reader to

  “see Miss Weston’s book.” Weston’s From Ritual to Romance devotes a chapter (chapter 13, 175–188) to “The Perilous Chapel,” a motif which she summarizes in her opening paragraph:

  Students of the Grail romances will remember that in many of the ver-

  sions the hero—sometimes it is a heroine—meets with a strange and

  terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which, we

  are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details

  vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a

  Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening

  voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which

  supernatural, and evil, forces are engaged.

  392 [Co co rico]: In French and Italian, “cocorico” is the onomatopoeic word

  which represents the sound of a rooster, like the English “cock-a-doodle-do.”

  395 [Ganga]: A colloquial version of the Ganges, the sacred river of India.

  397 [Himavant]: A Sanskrit adjective meaning “snowy,” applied to one or more

  mountains in the Himalayas.

  399 [Then spoke the thunder]: Eliot’s note to line 402 directs the reader to

  “the fable of the meaning of the Thunder,” recounted in the Brihadaranyaka

  Upanishad 5. The Upanishads are sacred texts written in Sanskrit, the earliest of which belong to the eighth and seventh centuries b.c., a group includ-

  ing the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Their number exceeds two hundred,

  though Indian tradition put it at one hundred and eight. The Indian philoso-

  pher Shankara, who flourished around a.d. 800, commented on eleven

  Upanishads, including the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and these with two

  or three others are considered the principal Upanishads. Upanishads were

  first translated into English in 1817–1818 by Rammohun Roy (1772–1832),

  a Bengali scholar, and other translations followed throughout the nineteenth

  century. The German translation cited by Eliot, Paul Deussen’s Sechzig Upani-

  shads des Veda (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1897), comprised sixty Upanishads.

  Eliot studied Sanskrit at Harvard in 1911–1913. In the fable of the Thun-

  der which he cites, the Lord of Creation, Prajapati, thunders three times, the

  sound being represented by the Sanskrit word “da.” The text of the fable is

  from The Upanishads, ed. and trans. Swami Nikhilananda (London: George

  Allen and Unwin, 1963), 239–240:

  Praja¯pati had three kinds of o¤spring: gods, men, and demons. They

  lived with Praja¯pati, practicing the vows of brahmacha¯rins. After finish-

  ing their term, the gods said to him: “Please instruct us, Sir.” To them

  he uttered the syllable da, and asked: “Have you understood?” They

  replied: “We have. You said to us, ‘Control yourselves (da¯myata).’”

  He said: “Yes, you have understood.”

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  e d i t o r ’ s a n n o t a t i o n s t o l i n e s 4 0 8 – 4 11

  Then the men said to him: “Please instruct us, Sir.” To them he

  uttered the same syllable da, and asked: “Have you understood?” They

  replied: “We have. You said to us, ‘Give (datta).’” He said: “Yes, you

  have understood.”

  Then the demons said to him: “Please instruct us, Sir.” To them he

  uttered the same syllable da, and asked: “Have you understood?” They

  replied: “We have. You said to us: ‘Be compassionate (dayadhvam).’”

  He said: “Yes, you have understood.”

  This very thing is repeated even today by the heavenly voice, in

  the form of thunder, as “Da,” “Da,” “Da,” which means: “Control your-

  selves,” “Give,” and “Have compassion.” Therefore one should learn

  these three: self-control, giving, and mercy.

  In one tradition of commentary, it was said that self-control was demanded

  of the gods because they were naturally unruly, charity of men because they

  were naturally greedy, and compassion of the demons because they were

  naturally cruel. But it was also suggested that there were no gods or demons

  other than men. Men who lack self-control, while endowed with other good

  qualities, are gods. Men who are particularly greedy are men. And those who

  are cruel are demons.

  407: Eliot’s note directs the reader to John Webster’s play The White Devil,

  V.vi.154–158. Flamineo, a villain who has prostituted his sister, murdered

  his brother-in-law, and slaughtered his own brother, discovers that his sister

  Vittoria has betrayed him:

  O men

  That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted

  With howling wives, ne’er trust them: they’ll re-marry

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

  Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.

  411 [I have heard the key]: Eliot’s note refers the reader to Dante’s Inferno,

  XXXIII, 46–47. In the previous canto Dante has come upon Ugolino della

  Gherardesca, who is forever devouring the head of Archbishop Ruggieri of

  Pisa. Ugolino now explains that Ruggieri had locked up him and his four

  children in a tower, leaving them to starve. His four children had died first,

  and Ugolino had eaten their corpses. Ugolino had “heard the key / Turn in

  the door once and turn once only” because the guards were leaving him and

  his children to starve. Eliot’s adaptation of these lines is based on a minor

  mistake. Because the word for “key” in modern Italian is chiave, he assumes that the verb chiavar in the passage by Dante must mean “to lock” or “to turn the key.” But the word chiavi in medieval Italian meant “a nail,” and what

  Ugolino heard, in the English translation of John Sinclair, was “the door of

  the terrible tower nailed up.”

  Eliot also quotes from Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay

  (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893), a book by the philosopher Francis Her-

  e d i t o r ’ s a n n o t a t i o n s t o l i n e s 416 – 4 2 7

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  bert Bradley (18
46–1924). Bradley attended University College, Oxford, and

  graduated in 1869. In 1870 he was elected to a fellowship at Merton College,

  Oxford, tenable for life, with no teaching duties. He published Ethical Studies

  (1876), The Principles of Logic (1883), and then Appearance and Reality. During his lifetime he published only one other book, Essays on Truth and Reality

  (1914). He was the first philosopher to receive an Order of Merit, from King

  George V in 1924, three months before his death. Eliot wrote his Ph.D. thesis

  on Bradley for Harvard University, begun in 1911 and completed in 1916

  (though never formally submitted). He lived in Merton College from October

  to December 1914 and again in the spring term of 1915. His thesis, Knowl-

  edge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, was published in 1964.

  416 [a broken Coriolanus]: the protagonist of Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus

  (1607–1608) is a Roman general who despises the fickle mob. Driven

  by pride and his desire to punish an ungrateful Roman populace, he joins

  the Volscian forces against Rome. Though victorious, he is persuaded by

  his mother, wife, and son to spare Rome from sacking. To punish this new

  treachery, the Volscians hack him to death.

  424 [Fishing . . . behind me]: Eliot’s note refers the reader to chapter 9, “The

  Fisher King” (112–136), in Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance. Weston

  sums up her arguments to this point in the chapter when she declares:

  “We have already seen that the personality of the King, the nature of the

  disability under which he is su¤ering, and the reflex e¤ect exercised upon

  his folk and his land, correspond, in a most striking manner, to the intimate

  relation at one time held to exist between the ruler and his land; a relation

  mainly dependent upon the identification of the King with the Divine prin-

  ciple of Life and Fertility” (114). She goes on to argue that the Fisher King’s

  name in no way derived from early Christian use of the fish as a symbol,

  nor from any Celtic myth or legend. Instead, fish played “an important part

  in Mystery Cults, as being the ‘holy’ food” (129), partly because of “the belief

  . . . that all life comes from the water” (133) and partly because “the Fish

  was considered a potent factor in ensuring fruitfulness” among certain pre-

  historic peoples (135), a belief that had persisted and helped shape the figure

 

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