The Waste Land

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by T. S. Eliot


  1764), a clergyman and poet, was noted in the eighteenth century for his

  rough satires. For Thomas Gray, see “Andrew Marvell,” n. 23, 219. William

  Cowper (1731–1800) was the author of many celebrated lyrics and a long

  poem, The Task. Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774) was the author of The Citizen of the World (1760–1761), a fictional Chinese gentlemen’s account of English manners and mores; The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), a sentimental novel; The Deserted Village (1770), a nostalgic poem about the passing of a simpler, happier, rural past; and She Stoops to Conquer (1773), a play. All these authors, according to the book by Mark Van Doren which Eliot is reviewing, attested

  to Dryden’s importance and influence.

  5. George Crabbe (1754–1832) was a Romantic poet; Byron defended Pope and

  the eighteenth-century poets (implicitly Dryden) in his satirical poem English

  Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Van Doren argues (265) that the begin-

  ning of Poe’s poem “Israfel” was influenced by Dryden.

  6. From John Dryden, The Secular Masque (1700), which treats the transition

  from one century to another (in Latin, saeculum means “century,” whence the title). Momus is reviewing the achievements of each of the gods in the last

  century:

  m o m u s : All, all, of a piece throughout;

  Pointing to Diana:

  Thy Chase had a Beast in View;

  to Mars:

  Thy Wars brought nothing about;

  to Venus:

  Thy Lovers were all untrue.

  j a n u s : ’Tis well an Old Age is out,

  c h r o n o s : And time to begin a New.

  The passage is quoted by Van Doren ( John Dryden, 189) without speech

  indications, as if it were an independent poem, and Eliot follows him.

  7. From Shelley, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama, ll. 1060–1065.

  8. The Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford:

  2 3 6

  n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 17 3 – 17 5

  Clarendon, 1900), 700–701. Quiller-Couch excerpts the final chorus from

  Hellas and titles it “Hellas.”

  9. [Eliot’s note:] John Dryden, by Mark Van Doren (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe).

  10. “Mac Flecknoe” is a short satirical poem (217 lines) which Dryden wrote and

  published for the first time in 1682. Absalom and Achitophel, a longer work (1031 lines), he published a year earlier.

  11. Thomas Shadwell (1642?–1692) was an English dramatist and poet. His

  plays, written in the tradition of Jonson’s comedy of humours, are noted for

  realistic pictures of London life and frank, witty dialogue. They include The

  Sullen Lovers (1668), Epsom Wells (1672), and The Squire of Alsatia (1688).

  He succeeded Dryden as poet laureate in 1689. Having attacked Dryden in

  The Medal of John Bayes (1682), he was lampooned as Og in Dryden’s Absa-

  lom and Achitophel, part II, and as “T.S.” and “Sh———” in “Mac Flecknoe.”

  Elkanah Settle (1648–1724) is better known to students of music than

  of literature; he wrote the lyrics for many songs by Henry Purcell. He is

  satirized as the character Doeg in Absalom and Achitophel, part II. Shaftesbury is Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury (1621–1683), an

  English statesman who was first a supporter and later an opponent of King

  Charles II. Initially a believer in parliamentary government, he came to

  oppose the autocratic regime of the English Commonwealth under Oliver

  Cromwell, and after Cromwell’s death in 1658 was influential in restoring

  Charles II as king of England. He became a key member of the so-called

  Cabal, an elite advisory group serving King Charles. In 1660 he was made

  privy councillor, in 1661 chancellor of the exchequer, and in 1672 earl of

  Shaftesbury. But in 1673, after the king’s brother James, duke of York, had

  publicly acknowledged his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Shaftesbury

  renounced his earlier religious toleration and supported the anti-Catholic

  Test Acts. He was dismissed from oªce and in 1678 supported the anti-

  Catholic agitation connected with the Popish Plot. As leader of the Whig

  faction in Parliament, he opposed the duke of York as heir to the throne.

  In 1681 Shaftesbury was held for treason, but was released and fled to Hol-

  land, where he died on 21 January 1683. Dryden, who himself converted to

  Catholicism, satirizes Shaftesbury in Absalom and Achitophel. George Villiers (1628–1687), the second duke of Buckingham, was a member of the Cabal

  and was made a privy councillor. He wrote a play, The Rehearsal (1671), which patronizes John Dryden. He was dismissed from oªce in 1674 on charges

  of misusing public funds, but continued to intrigue with the duke of York

  until he retired from politics in 1681. He, too, is satirized by Dryden in

  Absalom and Achitophel.

  12. Of the four lines quoted immediately below by Eliot, Dryden quotes the first

  in his “Author’s Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence,” which pref-

  aced The State of Innocence (1677); see John Dryden, Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson (London: J. M. Dent, 1962), vol. 1, 205.

  13. Eliot is quoting from Davideis, an unfinished epic poem on the life of David

  n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 17 5 – 17 9

  2 3 7

  by Abraham Cowley (on him, see “Andrew Marvell,” n. 6, 217). Eliot’s

  quotation splices together lines 79–80 and 75–76.

  14. John Dryden, “Mac Flecknoe,” ll. 72–78.

  15. On François Villon, see “Andrew Marvell,” n. 38, 221.

  16. Matthew Arnold, “Thomas Gray” (1880), in The Complete Prose Works of

  Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

  1960–1977), vol. 9, English Literature and Irish Politics (1973), 202. Arnold’s passage on Dryden is quoted in Van Doren, John Dryden, the book Eliot is

  ostensibly reviewing, on 322.

  17. Walter Pater, “Style,” Appreciations: With an Essay on Style (London: Macmillan, 1899; rpt. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987), 7. Pater’s

  comment on Dryden is quoted by Van Doren, John Dryden, 324. For Eliot’s

  view of Pater, see “Prose and Verse,” 162.

  18. William Hazlitt, “On Dryden and Pope,” lecture IV in Lectures on the English Poets, in P. P. Howe (ed.), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt (London: J. M. Dent, 1930), vol. 6, 68.

  19. For Mallarmé see “Prose and Verse,” n. 23, 225.

  20. Pope’s “portrait of Addison” (the essayist Joseph Addison [1672–1719]) takes

  up ll. 193–214 of his “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” (1735).

  21. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, part I, ll. 156–158.

  22. Dryden, “Cymon and Iphigenia, from Bocacce,” Fables, ll. 399–408. The

  same passage is quoted, with the same punctuation that Eliot uses, in Van

  Doren, John Dryden, 213.

  23. Eliot is quoting from Dryden’s poem “Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Mu-

  sic; an Ode in Honour of St. Cecilia’s Day,” ll. 66–68 (the entire poem is 180

  lines long). The poem, a classic representative of the ode, features a famous

  flute player named Timotheus. This passage is not quoted by Van Doren.

  24. John Milton, Paradise Lost, V, 407–413.

  25. Nathaniel Lee (c. 1653–1692) is chiefly known for having co-written Oedipus: A Tragedy (1696) and a Preface to John Dryden’s opera The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man (1677), from which Eliot is quoting
here.

  26. John Dryden, “Author’s Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence,”

  which served as his preface to The State of Innocence (1677); see Dryden,

  Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, vol. 1, 196. Eliot will next quote lines 1–6 from that opera.

  27. John Dryden, Miscellany Poems, in Two Parts: Containing New Translations of

  Virgil’s Eclogues, Ovid’s Love-Elegies, several parts of Virgil’s Aeneid, Lucretius, Theocritus, Horace etc. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1685).

  28. John Dryden, All for Love (1678), ed. N. J. Andrew (New York: Norton, 1975), II.281–291, 295–296. The play is a restaging of the Antony and Cleopatra

  story, and both passages here are addressed to Cleopatra by Antony. Neither

  is quoted by Van Doren.

  29. “The Indian Emperor must have sounded suddenly and loudly like a gong.

  Dryden broke forth in it with consummate rhetoric, consummate blu¤, and

  consummate rhyme” (Van Doren, John Dryden, 110).

  2 3 8

  n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 18 0 – 18 3

  30. John Dryden, Aureng-Zebe (1675), ed. Frederick M. Link (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), II.257–267 and 272–279. The play dramatizes

  the virtuous activities of Aurengzebe, a son who defends his aging father,

  the emperor, against the intrigues of his brother and various high oªcials.

  31. Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) and Jean Racine (1639–1699) are the two

  great French tragedians of the seventeenth century, more or less contempo-

  raries of Dryden.

  32. Charles Baudelaire, ll. 21–22 of “Les Petites Vielles” (Little old women), first published in 1859 and then collected in the second edition of Les Fleurs du

  mal (1860): “Have you ever noted how some coªns of little old women /

  Are almost as small as that of a child?”

  33. Dryden, Aureng-Zebe, V.301–303. Eliot has spliced together speeches spoken by di¤erent characters:

  i n d a m o r a : His love so sought, he’s happy that he’s dead.

  O had I courage but to meet my Fate,

  That short dark passage to a future state,

  That melancholy riddle of a breath.

  n o u r m a h a l : That something, or that nothing, after death:

  Take this, and teach thy self. [ Giving a dagger. ]

  The passage is not quoted by Van Doren.

  34. John Dryden, “To the Memory of Mr. Oldham” (1684); Eliot quotes the entire

  poem.

  London Letter, July 1921

  1. Although dated July 1921 by the editors of the Dial, the essay was probably written in mid-June. On the one hand, it refers to two new ballets, Cuadro

  Flamenco and Chout, which premiered in London on 29 May and 9 June, respectively; and it refers to a photograph of Einstein which was published

  in the Daily News on 11 June (see n. 3, 239). On the other hand, it contains no reference to Le Sacre du printemps, which was first given with new choreography on 27 June. Yet Le Sacre is conspicuously mentioned in Eliot’s next London Letter, September 1921. It is reasonable to infer that the essay was

  written before Le Sacre had premiered but after the photograph of Einstein

  was published, or sometime between 11 and 27 June. On the Dial, see

  London Letter, March 1921, n. 1, 202.

  2. The Daily News, 17 June 1921, 5, col. 4: “The Drought / Lowest Rainfall for /

  35 Years / Parched Crops”:

  There was again no rain yesterday, and the drought has now lasted—

  with slight showers, which can hardly be taken into account—nearly

  five months.

  In January the fall of rain was very slightly above the average. Of the

  136 days which have elapsed since the end of the month, 89 have been

  n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e 18 3

  2 3 9

  entirely rainless and of the others the total fall recorded amounts to only

  3.6 in.

  The normal figure for January to June over a long period of years is

  rather more than 11 inches. The fall this year has been slightly over six

  inches. Since September, the amount of rain which has fallen has been,

  except for two months, below the normal average of the past 35 years.

  Charles John Darling (1849–1936) was appointed a justice in October

  1897 and served until his resignation in November 1923. His reign as a

  media favorite began in 1918, when he presided over a sensational libel trial

  brought forward when the beautiful American dancer Maud Allen sued the

  Conservative MP and journalist Noel Pemberton Billing, who had charged

  her with lesbianism (part of his crusade to stop the first London production

  of Wilde’s Salomé). The trial became the most well-publicized since Wilde’s

  in 1895, and newspapers followed it obsessively. Darling was soon noted for

  his double-edged witticisms. “The Law is open to all . . . just like the doors

  of the Ritz Hotel” was only one among many. His comment that he could

  not distinguish between Albert Einstein and Jacob Epstein the sculptor is

  probably an invention of Eliot’s.

  3. Albert Einstein, returning from the United States to Germany, disembarked

  from the steamship Celtic in England on 8 June 1921. That same day he gave

  the Adamson Lecture at the University of Manchester. On 10 June he went to

  London, where he was greeted at the railway station by Lord Richard Burdon

  Haldane (1856–1928), the first viscount Cloane, a former politician who also

  had lively scientific interests. Einstein gave an address to the Royal Astro-

  nomical Society, then was taken to Burlington House to see Newton’s por-

  trait, and then to a dinner at Lord Haldane’s house with distinguished guests

  who included George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Alfred

  North Whitehead, and the archbishop of Canterbury. Einstein resumed his

  round of appearances on Monday, 13 June: he went to Westminster Abbey,

  where he left a gift of flowers at the tomb of Isaac Newton, then to King’s

  College, where he gave a lecture that was extensively covered in the press.

  He appeared in a photograph together with Lord Haldane in the Daily News,

  11 June 1921, 5, col. 4, under the headline “Some Einstein Perplexities.”

  The caption read: “Professor Einstein, who is spending the week-end with

  Lord Haldane, enjoying a joke with his host outside his chambers in Queen

  Anne’s Gate, yesterday.”

  4. The Pons-Winnecke comet was visible from England around 17 June, and

  newspapers reported on its appearance. See the Times, 1 June 1921, 4, col. 5,

  “Stars of the Month.” A report on “the sunspots” appeared in the Daily News,

  10 June 1921, 6, col. 5, under the headline: “sunspots’ new turn. / Electrical

  Chases Round a / Discomfited World”:

  The rotation of the sun on its axis has again brought the great

  sunspot area visible, and telescopic observation shows that the titanic

  convulsion in the photosphere is still in progress.

  2 4 0

  n o t e s t o e l i o t ’ s p r o s e , p a g e s 18 3 – 18 4

  Other sunspots may appear at any time while the unrest continues,

  for the region of the sun involved is little short of 2,000,000,000

  square miles. The whole of this region, there is reason to believe, is a

  huge magnetic field, and it is continually discharging streams of elec-

  trified particles into space.

  These particles, should they come earthwar
ds, enter the upper strata

  of the atmosphere and set free its potential electricity, which runs amok,

  as it were, round the earth, causing aurorae at both poles, upsetting the

  normal records of the instruments which record the phenomena of ter-

  restrial magnetism, and at times, as last month, rendering temporarily

  useless the world’s telegraphic systems.

  If there is a repetition of these happenings this month we may

  expect it during the next few days.

  A discovery which, in the opinion of Dr. Crommelin, of Greenwich

  Observatory, “seems to make it desirable to rediscuss the dynamics

  of the stellar system,” has just been made by Dr. Pannekoek, a Dutch

  scientist.

  He has demonstrated the existence of a gas or dust cloud to the right

  of Orion’s belt, the area of which, he says, is twenty thousand million

  times greater than that of the sun.

  “The poisonous jellyfish and Octopus at Margate” are probably Eliot’s

  inventions, reports of the sort that typically appear in what is now called

  “the silly season,” the time when Parliament is in recess, theaters have

  closed, and there is a dearth of news.

  5. On Robert Lynd, see London Letter, May 1921, n. 21, 233. It is not known

  where Lynd made the comment which Eliot attributes to him. For J. C.

  Squire, see London Letter, March 1921, n. 16, 206.

  6. The Daily News, 17 June 1921, 5, col. 7, “news in brief: A New Complaint”:

  “Many people are su¤ering from a complaint resembling influenza, due, it is

  stated, to germs being blown about in the air owing to the non-watering of

  the roads.”

  7. A strike by miners began on 1 April 1921 and lasted for four months. The

  complex negotiations between the owners and workers were closely followed

  by the press. They came back into prominence when the owners and the

  unions met on Friday, 10 June 1921. See Daily News, 10 June 1921, 1, col. 7:

  “Coal Peace in Sight? / To-Day’s Conference of Delegates.”

  8. Eliot’s sentence is a pastiche of two motifs from the Old Testament. One

  derives from the prophet Jeremiah, who repeatedly laments that the people

  of Israel “have forgotten the Lord their God” (Jeremiah 3:21), or since God

 

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