Unadopted title PERCH’IO NON SPERO: see note to I 1, VI 1 and note to I 1.
Unadopted epigraph di tornar piu mai | ballatetta, in Toscana … : TSE misquotes the Italian (see note to I 1).
I 1, VI 1 Because · · · Although I do not hope to turn again: R. P. Blackmur: “Perche may be rendered either ‘because’ or ‘although,’ depending on the context”, The Double Agent (1935) 193.
[Poem I 85–87 · Textual History II 424–25
I 1 Because I do not hope to turn again: Guido Cavalcanti (1255–1300): “Perch’io non spero di tornar già mai”, Ballata. In Exile at Saranza 1. (John Hayward in his 1936 proof: “Cavalcanti”.) The poem is again recalled at II 8. Rossetti translated Cavalcanti’s first stanza: “Because I think not ever to return, | Ballad, to Tuscany,— | Go therefore thou for me | Straight to my lady’s face, | Who, of her noble grace, | Shall show thee courtesy”, The Early Italian Poets 364. Pound (who translated the first line as “Because no hope is left in me”) singled out “that matchless and poignant ballad” in the introduction to his translation of Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti (1912, rev. 1920), and quoted it again in The Serious Artist in New Freewoman (later Egoist), 15 Nov 1913 (Literary Essays 53). In a reader’s report in 1927, TSE recommended that Pound’s translation be reissued with the Italian text: “Guido Cavalcanti is the most important of the contemporaries of Dante. He is a very important poet indeed.” (The book did not appear.)
To Jean de Menasce, 22 May 1928: “I have sent your translation on to Madame de Bassiano without any alterations · · · I trust that you know the beautiful Ballata of Guido which suggested the poem to me.” To L. H. Nouveau, 23 Nov 1955:
I am much interested by your translations and appreciate your scruples over the various nuances of translation of the first line of Ash-Wednesday. The first line itself was, of course, suggested by the opening of one of the most famous poems of Guido Cavalcanti. I have not the text to hand, but I think it goes:— “Perch’io non spero di tornar giammai, | Balatetta, in Toscana”. The “tornar” in the verse of Cavalcanti is, of course, much more precise than my own use was intended to be. Mine meant “return” in several senses, to place, to time, and to a past state of emotion. It may interest you to compare your own rendering with two previous translations. This section of the poem was translated in 1928 by my friend, Jean de Menasce, and published in Commerce. The first line reads:—“Et puisqu’il n’est plus rien qui me soit un retour”. The translation made by Pierre Leyris in 1947 for his volume of my poems, reads:—“Parce que je n’espère plus me tourner à nouveau”. I think I prefer “tourner” to “retour”, but cannot justify that. It may be simply that I like the suggestion of the physical action of turning round.
[Poem I 87 · Textual History II 425]
To Warner Allen, 25 May 1960: “The line · · · is obviously inspired by the first line of Cavalcanti’s poem. It has no other relation to the poem, and further is a straight borrowing and not an allusive borrowing. That is an important distinction. That one line of Guido had stuck in my mind for years and I had to get it out that way.” turn again: repeatedly in the Bible. Psalms 85: 8: “let them not turn again to folly”. Lancelot Andrewes: “shall I continually ‘fall’ and never ‘rise’? ‘turn away’ and not once ‘turn again’?” Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1602. Again: “Repentance itself is nothing else, but redire ad principia, a kind of circling; to return to Him by repentance, from whom, by sin, we have turned away. And much after a circle is this text: begins with the word turn, and returns about to the same word again · · · First, a turn, wherein we look forward to God, and with our whole heart resolve to turn to Him. Then a turn again, wherein we look backward to our sins wherein we have turned from God”, Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1619. Othello IV i: “Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on, | And turn again”. Emerson: “I keep, and pass, and turn again”, Brahma (in Oxf Bk of English Verse); for this poem see also headnote to I am the Resurrection and the Life. Pound: “Time has seen this, and will not turn again”, Silet in Ripostes (1912). turn: OED v. 29 trans.: “To induce or persuade to adopt a (different) religious faith (usually with implication of its truth or excellence), or a religious or godly (instead of an irreligious or ungodly) life; to convert”; 30 intr.: “To adopt a different (esp. the true) religion, or a godly life; to be converted”. Tindale, Matthew 18: 3 “Except ye turn and become as children.” Andrewes’s “An Act of Confession” begins with three Old Testament verses: Ezekiel 33: 11, “that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways”; Lamentations 5: 21, “Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned”; and Ezekiel 18: 30, “Turn us from all our transgressions”, The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes, Daily Prayers and Meditations. (TSE to his mother, 5 Oct 1927, sending the Devotions: “These are the prayers which he wrote for his own use, and which he bequeathed to the man who became Archbishop Laud. I like to turn to them during the night whenever I cannot sleep.”) Joseph Brackett’s Shaker song of 1848, Simple Gifts (“’Tis the gift to be simple”) ends “To turn, turn, will be our delight | Till by turning, turning we come round right.”
I 1–3 Because I do not hope to turn again | Because I do not hope | Because I do not hope to turn: for various forms of iteration in TSE, see note to The Waste Land [III] 277–78, 290–91, 306. To his brother, 19 Oct 1929: “I have begun life three times: at 22, at 28, and again at 40; I hope I shall not have to do so again, because I am growing tired” (leaving America; marrying; acceptance into the Church). Because · · · Because · · · Because: at the head of these lines, and of eight others in this Part. Also within four consecutive lines in The Love Song of St. Sebastian (34–37). Because: Bradley: “If there is a ‘because’ to my acts, responsibility seems to go; and yet we have an irresistible impulse to find a ‘because’ everywhere. But is it not the sort of ‘because’ which gives all the trouble?” Ethical Studies Essay I. The same page has a footnote on “change of character”: “Often we feel tolerably sure that this or that old reprobate is hopelessly hardened, but we can not say there is no chance of his turning again.” TSE: “any explanation in terms of ‘because’ (a term made necessary by the weakness of human conceiving) can be only misleading unless we turn it about the other way as well”, Knowledge and Experience 144.
I 1–3, 5 hope · · · strive to strive: St. John of the Cross:
For the mortifying and calming of the four natural passions, which are joy, hope, fear and grief, from the concord and pacification whereof come these and other blessings, the counsels here following are of the greatest help · · ·
Strive always to prefer, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult;
Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;
Not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least;
Not that which is restful, but that which is wearisome;
Not that which is a consolation, but rather that which is disconsolateness;
Not that which is greatest, but that which is least;
Not that which is loftiest and most precious, but that which is lowest and most despised;
Not that which is a desire for anything, but that which is a desire for nothing;
Strive to go about seeking not the best of temporal things, but the worst.
Strive thus to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty
Ascent of Mount Carmel I XIII 5–6
[Poem I 87 · Textual History II 425]
In his copy, TSE underlined “hope” in the first sentence and wrote: “Hope as a passion—distinction from theological hope?” To Dom Sebastian Moore, 24 Apr 1946, in reply to a submitted script: “As for the spiritual experience and the language in which to express it, you know a great deal more than I do. I am only a poet, and only St. John of the Cross can write something in verse which satisfies the requirements of poetry and of mystical statement both perfectly.” 3 May: “I think it is rather a question
of where the balance of the author’s interest lies. He is either making use of verse as a means of conveying the experience or he is making use of the experience for the purpose of writing poetry. The difference in the result may be difficult or even impossible to detect. Occasionally, as I have suggested, a great mystic may incidentally express his experience in a great poem but I think you are more likely to produce a poem if you take the line I suggested than if you set out to write a poem and attempt to adapt the experience to it.” For St. John of the Cross, see notes to the second epigraph to Sweeney Agonistes and to Burnt Norton III 25–32.
I 1, 7 turn again · · · mourn: Joel 2: 12–14: “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning · · · Who knoweth if he will return and repent.”
I 1, 12, 38 I do not hope · · · I know I shall not know · · · Teach us to care and not to care: to A. L. Rowse, 18 Apr 1931: “I have ceased to care about some things, and ceased to respect some things, and ceased to accept some things, and ceased to believe some, and ceased to expect many” (see headnote to The Waste Land, 9. AFTER PUBLICATION).
I 1, 26, 30 turn again · · · turn again · · · turn again: trad. rhyme:
Turn again, Dick Whittington,
Not yet lost or undone,
Whittington lord-mayor shall be,
Whittington thrice mayor shall be.
Thrice lord-mayor of London!
For Whittington, see Gus: The Theatre Cat 32 and The Rock 81: “Ballet: The Legend of DICK WHITTINGTON and his CAT”.
I 4–6 Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope · · · (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?): Shakespeare Sonnet 29: “Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope · · · Haply I think on thee and then my state, | Like to the lark at break of day arising | From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.” this man’s gift and that man’s scope | I no longer strive to strive: Arnold: “Who fluctuate idly without term or scope. | Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives”, The Scholar-Gipsy 167–68 (Grover Smith 140). TSE: “many people have to be unhappy in this world · · · and some learn · · · to gain, or at least to strive towards, a kind of peace”, “Son of Woman: The Story of D. H. Lawrence” by John Middleton Murry (1930), review. I no longer strive to strive towards such things | (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?): William Morris: “Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? · · · my murmuring rhyme | Beats with light wing”, The Earthly Paradise, An Apology st. 4 (see note to VI 18, and note to The Waste Land [II] 79). I no longer strive to strive towards such things: “To get beyond poetry, as Beethoven, in his later works, strove to get beyond music. We never succeed, perhaps, but Lawrence’s words mean this to me, that they express to me what I think that the forty or fifty original lines that I have written strive towards”, English Letter Writers (1933).
I 5, VI 8 towards: pronounced to’rd in TSE’s recordings.
[Poem I 87 · Textual History II 425]
I 6 (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?): Psalm 103: 5: “thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s”; echoed by Augustine, Confessions XI 9 (Moody 138). Hayward in his 1936 proof: “Dante Purgatorio. Legend that eagle in old age flies up into a circle of fire, is burned and blinded and falls into a fountain of water with his youth renewed (cf. Bestiaries).” Smidt 1973 25: “The eagle and leopards and unicorn belong to the pageantry of the ‘high dream’ described in Eliot’s major essay on Dante (1929) II” (see IV 20 and note). Purg. IX 19–30: “in a dream methought I saw an eagle poised in the sky, with plumes of gold, with wings outspread, and intent to swoop · · · Then meseemed that, having wheeled awhile, terrible as lightning, he descended and snatched me up far as the fiery sphere.” Deuteronomy 31: 11: “an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings”, cited in Andrewes’s Christmas Sermon 1606 (Stephen Matthews 143). TSE to Warner Allen, 25 May 1960: “I am afraid that my mind was very empty of allusions when I used the phrase ‘agèd eagle’. It just came that way. I was afterwards upbraided by Edmund Wilson for referring to myself as an agèd eagle at the age of forty or so, but I suppose I was turning myself into a dramatic character. After all, I wrote a poem when I was twenty-two which contains the line ‘I grow old … I grow old’”.
I 6, 14 the agèd eagle · · · I cannot drink: Nicholas Udall: “Aquilae senectus, the old age of an eagle is a Latin proverb used to be spoken of old men, or others that live more by drink than by meat”, Flowers (1533–34), from Pliny; cited Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs.
I 7 Why should I mourn: Andrewes: “If weep we cannot, mourn we can: and mourn we must”, Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1619.
I 10 The infirm glory of the positive hour: Two Gentlemen of Verona I iii: “The uncertain glory of an April day” (Ricks 224). infirm glory: Virginia Woolf: “all the poets, all the novelists, all the beautiful women and distinguished men of her time · · · now either dead or secluded in their infirm glory”, Night and Day (1919) ch. III (Southam).
I 13 veritable: Fowler: “OED records that by about 1650 the word was dead, but the early 19th c. revived it · · · has the effect of taking down the reader’s interest a peg or two · · · as the now familiar herald of a strained top note.” transitory: pronounced as three syllables in TSE’s recording of 1933, but as four full syllables in that of 1955.
I 15 there is nothing again: King Lear I i: “Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.” TSE: “Nothing again nothing”, The Waste Land [II] 120.
I 18–19 what is actual is actual only for one time | And only for one place: “The objective world is only actual in one or other point of view”, Knowledge and Experience 90.
I 24–25 rejoice, having to construct something | Upon which to rejoice: Shelley: “to hope till Hope creates | From its own wreck the thing it contemplates”, Prometheus Unbound IV, quoted in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 92.
I 26 pray to God to have mercy upon us: repeated throughout the Litany. The final chorus of Murder in the Cathedral ends: “Lord, have mercy upon us. | Christ, have mercy upon us. | Lord, have mercy upon us. | Blessed Thomas, pray for us.”
I 32 For what is done, not to be done again: Donne: “When thou hast done, thou hast not done”, A Hymne to God the Father 5, 11 (Southam).
I 33 heavy upon us: frequent in the Bible. 1 Samuel 5: 6: “the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them”. Job 33: 7: “neither shall my hand be heavy upon thee”.
[Poem I 87–88 · Textual History II 425–26]
I 34–35 no longer wings to fly | But merely vans to beat the air: Arnold: “Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”, Byron. TSE, of Sacheverell Sitwell: “He tends in his weaker moments to fly off like a beautiful but ineffectual aeroplane, beating its propeller vainly in a tree”, Verse Pleasant and Unpleasant (1918). Of Henry Adams: “the wings of a beautiful but ineffectual conscience beating vainly in a vacuum jar”, A Sceptical Patrician (1919) (Bush 137). Dryden on the death of Periclymenos, in the shape of an eagle: “He wheel’d in Air, and stretch’d his Vans in vain; | His Vans no longer cou’d his Flight sustain”, Ovid’s Metamorphoses XII 749–52 (TSE: “stretch his wings”, I 6). van: OED 3: “a wing. Chiefly poet.”
I 36 The air which is now thoroughly small: Virgil’s “largior aether”, Aeneid VI 640, as “larger air”, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh VIII 356, and Tennyson, The Mystic 44. small and dry: William Morris: “they grow gray with time, grow small and dry”, The Blue Closet 48 (a poem praised by TSE in The Music of Poetry as having “an effect somewhat like that of a rune or charm, but runes and charms are very practical formulae designed to produce definite results”). T. E. Hulme: “It is essential to prove that beauty may be in small, dry things”, Romanticism and Classicism in Speculations (1924) 131 (Grover Smith 314). Andrewes: “For dry and lean both is our sorrow”, Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1619. E. B. Pusey: “my Lord, I am all
too cold and dry and hard”, Private Prayers 27. TSE mentioned Pusey’s prayers along with “the Private Prayers of Lancelot Andrewes” in The Bible as Scripture and as Literature (1932), and wrote to Frank Morley, 4 Aug 1938: “I recommend strongly Pusey’s Private Prayers”. Hope Mirrlees: “Hark to the small dry voice”, Paris (1919) 18 (see headnote to IV, and headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION). dry: OED 13: “In early use, chiefly: Wanting spiritual emotion or unction.”
I 37 dryer than the will: St. John of the Cross: “leaving the understanding dark, the will dry”, Dark Night of the Soul II iii 3 (Unger in Unger ed. 355–56). For Dark Night of the Soul see note to Burnt Norton III 25–32. To Geoffrey Curtis, 2 Apr 1936: “I do not approve of extreme mortification of the flesh—taking heaven by negative physical means—but I like to think that men should sometimes be impelled in this direction, and then ‘moderated’ · · · I should agree that St. John of the Cross illustrates admirably the via media”. Concerning a list of the world’s greatest books, TSE wrote to Daniel Starch, 11 Mar 1937, that he disapproved of the enterprise, but naming some writers who “deserve no place” and then suggesting one additional name, St. John of the Cross.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 99