The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 100
I 38–39, as also VI 27–28 Teach us to care · · · Teach us to: “wisdom; something which, certainly, educational institutions cannot teach · · · but which they can teach us to desire”, Catholicism and International Order (1933).
[Poem I 88 · Textual History II 426]
I 39 Teach us to sit still: Psalm 46: 10: “Be still and know that I am God.” Coleridge: “For not to think of what I needs must feel, | But to be still and patient, all I can”, Dejection: An Ode 87–88; TSE scored 87–90 in the Poetical Works (1907). In The Cloud of Unknowing ch. 8, he scored a paragraph: “a man may not be fully active, except he be contemplative · · · The condition of active life is such, that it is both begun and ended in this life; but not so of the contemplative life. For it is begun in this life, and shall last without end. Because that part that Mary chose shall never be taken away. Active life is troubled and travailed about many things; but contemplative sitteth in peace with one thing” (TSE: “The Lady is withdrawn · · · to contemplation”, II 16–17). Although this copy of The Cloud of Unknowing is dated 1942 by TSE, he knew the work earlier, writing to Naomi Mitchison, 18 Apr 1939, about The Family Reunion: “I don’t think that there are any direct—certain no intentional—borrowings from The Cloud of Unknowing in the play. It is some time since I read that work, and although I have a keen admiration for the 14th-century mystics, I was not aware of using more than this very beautiful phrase” (II ii, AGATHA: “Accident is design | And design is accident | In a cloud of unknowing”). Emerson: “I see action to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good”, Essays: Spiritual Laws. Henry Adams: “one of the greatest minds, between Descartes and Newton—Pascal—saw the master-motor of man in ennui, which was also scientific: ‘I have often said that all the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still’”, The Education of Henry Adams ch. XXIX, apparently paraphrasing Pensées 139: “all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber”. TSE: “everybody, at least according to Fleet Street, is on the march; it does not matter what the destination is, the one thing contemptible is to sit still”, Thoughts After Lambeth (1931). Hugh Ross Williamson: “We are not altogether inclined to join with Mr. Eliot in the prayer: ‘Teach us to sit still,’ for we feel that we battled through the waste land to find some nobler occupation than that”, The Bookman Mar 1931. TSE to Williamson, 31 Aug 1931, thanking him for his article: “why should the mention of ‘sitting still’ suggest a static conception of life, and is the distinction between the static and the dynamic so easily transferable from physics to ethics as everybody seems to think?” For “the still point of the turning world”, see Burnt Norton II 16–21. “The stillness · · · Moves perpetually in its stillness”, East Coker V 6–7.
I 39, II 1 Teach us to sit still · · · sat under a juniper-tree: “the unprofitable habits of The Blessed One had been extirpated · · · at the time he sat cross-legged under the Bo-tree. Profitable habits, however remained to The Blessed One”, Buddhism in Translations tr. Henry Clarke Warren (1896) 91 (“The Buddha’s Daily Habits”, which tells how he would “sit retired” and “sit down, and for a while remain solitary”).
I 40–41 Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death · · · our death: having sent Part I to Marguerite Caetani for Commerce on 19 Mar 1928, TSE wrote again on 4 Apr: “At the beginning of each of the last two lines please alter the words ‘be with’ to ‘pray for’. One might as well stick to the exact quotation.” (The Hail Mary, the prayer of the angelic salutation: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”) “Pray for · · · Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth”, Animula 36–37. To Frank Morley, 4 Aug 1938: “so may the B. V. M. pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, yours etc.” the hour · · · the hour: “the hour · · · the hour”, Silence 7–8.
[Poem I 88–89 · Textual History II 426]
II
Ezekiel 37: 1–11: “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.”
Nathaniel Wanley: “many Christians · · · went from Cairo to a little barren Mountain · · · in times past assign’d for the burial of the dead: in this place there meet ordinarily every year an incredible multitude of persons to see the dead bodies there interred, coming out (as it were) of their Grave and Sepulchres · · · There may you see Bodies wrapped in their cloaths after the old fashion: but they see them not either standing or walking, but only the arms or the thighs, or some other part of the body which you may touch; if you go farther off, and presently come forward again, you shall find these arms or limbs appearing more out of the ground”, The Wonders of the Little World (1678) ch. XXXVIII, “Of the entombed Bodies, how found at the opening of their Monuments; and of the parcel Resurrection near Gran Cairo”. Noting in a TLS review in 1925 that Wanley, “like some contemporary poets, is very sparing in punctuation”, in Wanley and Chapman (1925) TSE quoted more than half of his poem The Resurrection (see note to II 5–6), observing that Wanley was
much interested in the problems of resurrection. In a prose book, The Wonders of the Little World—a sort of Burtonian collection of odds and ends, there is a note on “Parcel [partial] Resurrection” which is so good that we cannot forbear to quote it · · · This Parcel Resurrection of Legs and Arms Etc. useth to be seen and believed upon Good Friday [i.e., near “Gran Cairo”] and the Eve of that, saith Mr. Gregory · · · And he told me moreover that he had · · · touched divers of these rising members. And he was once doing so upon the hairy head of a child, a man of Cairo cryed out aloud, Kali, kali ante materasde, that is to say, Hold, hold, you know not what you do
(glosses in square brackets by TSE)
“It is to be hoped”, TSE’s review added, “that we may have an edition not only of Mr. Wanley’s Scintillulae Sacrae and other poems, but of his Wonders of the Little World.” (L. C. Martin’s edition of Wanley’s Poems (1928) was duly followed in 1931 by J. C. Furnas’s edition of this prose work.) See Bush 138; also note to “Cairo” within the unadopted title for Ash-Wednesday I; and for ambiguous names, see note to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 94, “Lazarus”. TSE to his mother, 7 Feb 1928, on Hardy’s funeral: “That was a scandal · · · They put his body in Westminster Abbey, and they buried his heart in Dorchester. Curio hunting I call it. Why not divide him joint from joint, and spot him about the country? I think that if one is buried at all one should decently be buried all in one place.”
J. C. Squire had ended his review of TSE’s Poems 1909–1925: “Why on earth he bothers to write at all is difficult to conceive: why, since he must write, he writes page after page from which no human being could derive any more meaning (much less edification or pleasure) than
if they were written in Double-Dutch (which parts of them possibly are) is to me beyond conjecture. Why to the Waste Land add a Valley of peculiarly Dry Bones?” London Mercury Mar 1926. The Waste Land had “bones” five times; The Hollow Men, at the close of 1925, had “valley” twice but no bones. TSE to Bonamy Dobrée, advising on his poetry [16 Aug 1927] (Brotherton): “Keep away from Bones they are my Patent”. Three years later, Ash-Wednesday was to have “bones” six times.
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Unadopted title Salutation: Dante, Vita Nuova [XVIII] tr. Rossetti: “‘Ladies, the end and aim of my Love was but the salutation of that lady of whom I conceive that ye are speaking; wherein alone I found that beatitude which is the goal of desire’”, The Early Italian Poets 253. The Italian furnished one of two epigraphs for TSE’s Clark Lectures, in the fourth of which he quoted a longer passage of Rossetti’s translation (The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 40, 116). When editing Pound’s Selected Poems (1928), TSE included Salutation and Salutation the Second.
Unadopted title Jausen lo jorn: Purg. XXVI 142: “e vei jausen lo jorn, qu’ esper, denan” [“and I see with joy the day which I await before me”]. For TSE’s returns to this passage about Arnaut Daniel, see note to title Ara Vos Prec in headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 7. PUBLICATION OF ARA VOS PREC. Pound: “We await, vei jauzen lo jorn, the time when the student will be encouraged to say which poems bore him to tears”, Notes on Elizabethan Classicists III in Egoist Nov 1917 (Literary Essays).
Unadopted title TAN M’ABELIS Purg. XXVI 140: “‘Tan m’abelis vostre cortes deman’” [“So doth your courteous request please me”].
Unadopted epigraph The Hand of the Lord Was Upon Me:—e vo significando: Ezekiel 37: 1 (see headnote to II); Purg. XXIV 52–54: “‘Io mi son un che, quando | amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo | che ditta dentro, vo significando’” [“I am one who, when Love inspires me take note, and go setting it forth after the fashion which he dictates within me.”] (“vo significando”: “setting it forth”.) Hayward in his 1936 proof: “e vo significando (Dante, Purg.) ‘I am one who when love inspires finds melody and as he dictates to my mind, so do I give utterance.’”
II 1 Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree: Pound: “The milk-white girls | Unbend from the holly-trees, | And their snow-white leopard | Watches”, Heather (1913), included by TSE in Pound’s Selected Poems. Also: “The black panther lies under his rose tree”, Cantus Planus (1915). TSE to Philip Parker, 17 May 1930: “Do not worry at being unsure of the meaning, when the author cannot be sure of it either. The Vita Nuova might give you some help; but on the other hand it is much more obscure than I have the talent to be. If you call the three leopards the World, the Flesh and the Devil you will get as near as one can, but even that is uncertain.” Litany: “Good Lord, deliver us. From fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil”; see letter to George Bell, 20 July 1930, quoted in headnote, 3. AFTER PUBLICATION. St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle III II 4–5:
it behoves him that will go forward not to turn aside and pluck these flowers · · · but it behoves him also to have the courage and the fortitude to say:
· · · nor fear the wild beasts;
I will pass by the mighty and cross the frontiers.
In these lines the Bride speaks of the three enemies of the soul, which are world, devil and flesh, and these are they that war upon her and make her way difficult. By the “wild beasts” she understands the world; by the “mighty,” the devil; and by the “frontiers,” the flesh.
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TSE to Charles Williams, 22 May 1930: “if the three leopards or the unicorn contain any allusions literary, I don’t know what they are. Can’t I sometimes invent nonsense, instead of always being supposed to borrow it?” To Gregor Ziemer, 10 Feb 1937: “I do not remember any leopards in the Bible, but I have no Concordance; my leopards represent simply the world, the flesh and the devil. I have been told that there is a similar use of white leopards in certain Sudanese folk lore, but I did not know this at the time.” (Jeremiah 13: 23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” Though their skin colour is unusual, white leopards too have spots.) Stephen Spender on a meeting of the Oxford Poetry Club: “an undergraduate asked him: ‘Please, sir, what do you mean by the line: Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree?’ Eliot looked at him and said: ‘I mean, Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree’”, Spender 129. sat under a juniper-tree: “cf. Isaiah 1”, Hayward in 1936 proof (although this chapter does not mention the juniper). 1 Kings 19: 4–5 of Elijah: “But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die · · · And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat” (this passage is quoted in Donne’s sermon Death’s Duel, as is Ezekiel 37: 1, for which see headnote to II) (Smidt 1973 28). “when the juniper tree breaks the tombstone”, Anabasis VII viii (1930 text; later revised to “jujuba tree”); Perse: “quand l’arbre jujubier fait éclater l’assise des tombeaux” (asseoir, to seat).
II 1–2 leopards · · · fed to satiety: in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (ed. Hastings et al., 1908–26) the entry for Animals: Leopard ends “a man who has killed a leopard remains in his hut three days; he practises continence and is fed to satiety” (Unger in Unger ed. 360).
II 1–5 juniper-tree · · · having fed · · · On my legs my heart my liver · · · Shall these bones live?: Unger in Unger ed. 357–58:
The Juniper Tree, one of Jakob Grimm’s tales, is an account of a husband and wife who, having no children, but desiring one, finally acquire a boy by supernatural aid. When the wife dies in childbirth the man marries a woman who, having a daughter of her own, Marlinchen, hates the boy. She kills him, makes puddings of his flesh which she gives to her husband for food, and lies about the boy’s absence. Marlinchen carries the boy’s bones to a juniper tree. Then there are mist and flames, and a bird appears, singing—
My mother she killed me,
My father he ate me,
My sister little Marlinchen,
Gathered together all my bones,
Tied them in a silken handkerchief
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Kywitt, kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I!
The bird finally causes the death of the stepmother and becomes a boy again.
II 2 in the cool of the day: see note to II 50.
II 4 In the hollow round of my skull: “Within the circle of my brain”, The Burnt Dancer 30.
II 5–6 Shall these bones live? shall these | Bones live?: Nathaniel Wanley: “Or shall my tombe restore my scattred dust? | Shall ev’ry haire find out its’ proper pore | And crumbled bones be joined as before”, The Resurrection 2–4. Auden: “No, these bones shall live”, Poems (1930) XXIII (“Nor was that final”).
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II 7 chirping: to his Italian translator, Roberto Sanesi, 2 June 1960: “I think the right word for ‘chirping’ in that passage of Ash-Wednesday is ‘stridere’. We have the word ‘stridulate’ in English, and the sound in my own ears as I speak the lines is that of crickets or grasshoppers, and you are quite right, we want a dry word for it. ‘Cavalletta’ [grasshopper] is a charming word. I should not have thought of that myself. I would not say ‘locusta’, but if my Italian was good enough I should probably have thought of ‘grillo’ [cricket].”
II 8 Because of the goodness of this Lady: Cavalcanti, tr. Pound: “Unto my Lady straightway, | And out of her courtesy | Great honour will she do thee”, Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti (1912), Ballata XI (Praz 370); see note to I 1.
II 8–9 Lady · · · loveliness: Rossetti: “Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness”, The House of Life XXIX 1 (Grover Smith 314). Cavalcanti, tr. Pound: “There where this
Lady’s loveliness appeareth”, Ballata V.
II 8–10 this Lady · · · and because | She honours the Virgin in meditation: to Geoffrey Faber [18 Sept 1927]: “I have found my own love for a woman enhanced, intensified and purified by meditation on the Virgin.” On the language of the New English Bible: “It is sufficient for the moment for me to cite Luke 1: 27, where the word παρθένος appears as ‘girl’ instead of the Authorized Version ‘virgin’ (‘a girl … and the girl’s name was Mary’). This alteration cannot be in correction of a previous mistranslation: both Liddell & Scott and Westcott & Hort give ‘virgin’ as a correct translation · · · what moved the learned committee to approve the change?” New English Bible (28 Apr 1961).
II 11 dissembled: OED “dissemble” v. 3: “Obs. rare. To separate, disperse: = DISASSEMBLE”, intransitive only, with one citation, 1591.
II 12 Proffer my deeds to oblivion: Troilus and Cressida III iii: “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, | Wherein he puts alms for oblivion · · · Those scraps are good deeds past” (Southam).
II 13 gourd: Jonah 4: 3–11: “Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live · · · And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd · · · Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” OED “gourd” 1, 2b lists the name of the plant “used allusively after Jonah”, for something that perishes abruptly. TSE: “he who has his opinions on the use of a gourd”, Anabasis X vii. OED and Fowler recommend the pronunciation gored, but TSE says goourd in his recordings.