The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 136
II 22, 37: what one had expected · · · undeceived: “We have been undeceived about developments · · · expected to bring unity”, Catholicism and International Order (1933).
II 25–26 Had they deceived us, | Or deceived themselves: Hugh Latimer, of the clergy: “This is your generation · · · Have you thus deceived me? or, have you rather deceived yourselves?”, First Sermon to the Convocation before the Parliament began, 9 June 1536. TSE put extracts from Latimer’s Second Sermon into the mouth of the Preacher in the drafts of The Rock.
[Poem I 187 · Textual History II 496]
II 25–31 deceived · · · deceived · · · the quiet-voiced elders · · · deceit · · · the knowledge of dead secrets · · · from which they turned their eyes: the History of Susanna (four pages, set apart from the Book of Daniel in the Apocrypha): “And the two elders saw her going in every day, and walking; so that their lust was inflamed toward her. And they perverted their own mind, and turned away their eyes, that they might not look unto heaven · · · Then Susanna cried out with a loud voice, and said, O everlasting God, that knowest the secrets, and knowest · · · that they have borne false witness against me · · · And the Lord heard her voice · · · the holy spirit of a young youth, whose name was Daniel: who cried with a loud voice · · · beauty hath deceived thee, and lust · · · With that all the assembly cried out with a loud voice, and praised God.” deceived themselves · · · elders · · · deceit: “The elders have had the satisfaction · · · of persuading themselves that the way they want to behave is the only moral way”, Thoughts After Lambeth (1931). quiet-voiced: Henry Adams on Garibaldi: “a quiet-featured, quiet-voiced man in a red flannel shirt”, The Education of Henry Adams ch. VI.
II 27 receipt: to Hayward, 27 Feb 1940, who had marked this word with “X”: “Receipt. I mean of course in the sense of a recipe or formula. Is there any objection to bequeathing a formula? You can bequeath a copyright or a patent. I don’t quite see your point.” Composition FQ 101: “Hayward’s objection may have been to the rhyming of ‘receipt’ and ‘deceit’.” See quotation from Andrewes in note to IV 1.
II 28 hebetude: OED: “The condition or state of being blunt or dull; dullness, bluntness, obtuseness, lethargy”, citing Pound to Quinn, 3 Apr 1918: “not the hebetude of a lignified cerebrum.”
II 31–33 There is, it seems to us, | At best, only a limited value | In the knowledge derived from experience: “We need a constant reminder, too, of how little we remember, and therefore of how little we learn from experience”, A Commentary in Criterion Jan 1937. See note to A Cooking Egg 20, and see note to its epigraph for TSE writing at the age of thirty on the value of experience.
II 33–37 experience · · · the pattern is new in every moment | And every moment is a new and shocking | Valuation of all we have been: “The experience of a poem is the experience both of a moment and of a lifetime. It is very much like our intenser experiences of other human beings. There is a first, or an early moment which is unique, of shock and surprise”, Dante (1929) I. (For “the intense moment”, see note to V 21–23.) “a lifetime burning in every moment”, East Coker V 23. “(And the time of death is every moment)”, The Dry Salvages III 36. “every moment is a fresh beginning”, The Cocktail Party III. (For “Every moment is a new problem”, see note to V 3–4.) “the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted”, Tradition and the Individual Talent I (1919). Bergson: “l’intelligence laisse échapper ce qu’il y a de nouveau à chaque moment d’une histoire” [the intellect lets what is new in each moment of a history escape], L’Evolution créatrice ch. II (Philip Le Brun, RES May 1967). “For every moment | Is both beginning and end”, Little Gidding V verse draft msC [3–4].
II 39–40 in the middle of the way · · · in a dark wood: Dante: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita | mi ritrovai per una selva oscura” [In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood], Inf. I 1–2 (Hayward); see V 1.
[Poem I 187–88 · Textual History II 496]
II 41 grimpen: Conan Doyle: “life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track”, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) ch. VII (Sweeney 1941). The Grimpen Mire is a bog that claims the lives of men and horses. OED (since 1972) “grimpen”: “? A marshy area”, quoting Conan Doyle, then TSE. For Lawrence Durrell on TSE’s pleasure in his borrowing going undetected, see headnote to Macavity: The Mystery Cat. TSE makes a common noun of Conan Doyle’s proper noun; similarly “grannoch”, Whan Cam ye fra the Kirk? 3 (see note).
TSE to Hayward, 15 Nov 1939: “My movements must be as carefully calculated as if I was walking in the famous Grimpen Mire: at any moment you may hear a wild shriek, and I shall disappear like one of those unfortunate Dartmoor Ponies.” To Christopher Morley, 10 Nov 1950, regretting he cannot dine with the Baker Street Irregulars, “as I should have been delighted to participate, and, especially, if I had time to prepare a short travelogue with lantern slides on the topography of the Great Grimpen”. Pronounced grimpin in TSE’s recordings.
II 41–42 grimpen · · · fancy lights: Milton, describing Satan as an ignis fatuus leading Eve: “Hovering and blazing with delusive light, | Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way | To bogs and mires”, Paradise Lost IX 639–41. For ignis fatuus, see note to Conversation Galante 1–5.
II 43–44 Do not let me hear | Of the wisdom of old men: Kipling: “Oh, do not despise the advice of the wise, | Learn wisdom from those that are older”, Love-O’-Women (Ricks 1998). Lionel Johnson: “Wisdom of ages! wisdom of old age! | Written, and spoken of, and prophesied”, Experience; see note to Little Gidding II 88. the wisdom of old men · · · their folly: Pound: “I was a gaunt, grave councillor | Being in all things wise, and very old, | But I have put aside this folly”, La Fraisne (included by TSE in Pound’s Selected Poems). folly: against Montandon’s tr. “folie” [madness], TSE wrote “bêtise!” [foolishness].
II 44–45 old men · · · fear and frenzy: Yeats: “Grant me an old man’s frenzy, | Myself must I remake · · · Or inspired by frenzy · · · An old man’s eagle mind”, An Acre of Grass, 1938, in Last Poems (1939) (Composition FQ 68). Earlier, in Modern Poetry (broadcast 11 Oct 1936), Yeats had said: “It was in Eliot that certain revolutionary War poets, young men who felt that they had been dragged away from their studies, from their pleasant life, by the blundering frenzy of old men, found the greater part of their style” (Essays and Introductions, 1961, 500).
II 46 belonging to another, or to others, or to God: “But anyone who would write must let himself go, in one way or the other, for there are only four ways of thinking: to talk to others, or to one other, or to talk to oneself, or to talk to God”, Charles Whibley (1931).
II 47 The only wisdom we can hope to acquire: for “the wisdom which we shall have acquired”, see note to Little Gidding V 27–28.
[Poem I 188 · Textual History II 496]
II 48 humility is endless: Pascal: “Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain, and of humility in the humble · · · Few men speak humbly of humility”, Pensées 377. Lancelot Andrewes: “what was this sign a sign of? There needs no straining at all—of humility clear; signum humile, signum humilis · · · Humility then: we shall find Him by that sign where we find humility · · · Such a sign of humility as never was. Signs are taken for wonders”, Christmas Sermon 1618 (see Gerontion 17). TSE: “Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself”, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1927). To Jeanette McPherrin, 9 May 1935: “I have tried to suggest that there is a wrong way of being humble as well as a right way.”
II 49–50] TSE probably had these two lines in mind when he quoted the first to Sherrie Waites, 10 Aug 1962, saying that it had “no bearing on the history of the West of England [with no
te: Germelshausen]”, adding “I thought that this line and the line which precedes it were melodious.” houses · · · under the hill: in a squib on the name Trevelyan: “It means ‘public house under the hill’”, Miss Mary Trevelyan (in “Other Verses”). under the sea · · · under the hill: Tennyson: “O Sea! · · · the stately ships go on | To their haven under the hill”, Break, break, break 9-12 (TSE: “dark dark dark”, III i).
II 50 dancers · · · gone under the hill: Blake: “The lost Traveller’s Dream under the Hill”, Epilogue: To the Accuser Who is the God of This World 8. Pound: “Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid”, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) V 6. Friedrich Gerstäcker: “Der Tanz ist aus—die Tänzer werden jetzt zu Hause gehen” [The dance is over—the dancers have all gone home], Germelshausen (see headnote to III).
III
To H. W. Häusermann, 24 May 1940: “The third section contains several lines [35–46] adapted from the Ascent of Mount Carmel. I think that the imagery of the first section (though taken from the village itself) may have been influenced by recollections of Germelshausen, which I have not read for many years. I don’t think the poem needs or can give rise to further explanation than that” (quoted in English Studies Aug 1941 by Häusermann, who added that Friedrich Gerstäcker’s story Germelshausen was “frequently used in American schools as a text-book for beginners in German”). In the story (pub. 1860), a young artist meets and falls in love with a girl who takes him to Germelshausen, a village not found on his map, but which appears for one day every century. At midnight the village disappears, and the young man is separated forever from his love. Composition FQ 43: “What seems to have remained in Eliot’s mind is merely the idea of a man from another age encountering the revelry of the long dead.” TSE to Lady Richmond, 18 June 1936: “East Coker was delightful, with a sort of Germelshausen effect.”
[Poem I 188 · Textual History II 496]
III 1–7 O dark dark dark · · · The vacant interstellar spaces · · · dark the Sun and Moon: Milton: “O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, | Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse | Without all hope of day! · · · The Sun to me is dark | And silent as the Moon, | When she deserts the night | Hid in her vacant interlunar cave”, Samson Agonistes 80–89 (Hayward, also G. W. Stonier, New Statesman 14 Sept 1940). TSE had quoted Milton’s lines, and commented: “Here interlunar is certainly a stroke of genius, but is merely combined with ‘vacant’ and ‘cave’, rather than giving and receiving life from them”, Milton I (1936). (To Hayward, 3 Mar 1941: “while I retire into the interlunar cave.”) “lunar incantations · · · through the spaces of the dark”, Rhapsody on a Windy Night 4, 10. TSE had come across “O dark, dark, dark!” as the epigraph to ch. VIII of A. C. Green’s The Leavenworth Case (1878), a detective story he read as a boy (Crawford 29). O dark dark dark: James Thomson: “Oh, dark, dark, dark, withdrawn from joy and light!” The City of Dreadful Night XIV 30 (Crawford 51). They all go into the dark: Henry Vaughan: “They are all gone into the world of light!” Silex Scintillans (Grover Smith 268). Arnold: “the last sparkle of flame before we are all in the dark, the last glimpse of colour before we all go into the drab”, Essays in Criticism, Preface. TSE: “They vanish, the individuals, and our feeling for them sinks into the flame which refines”, earliest notes for Little Gidding (msA fol. 77; see headnote to Little Gidding in Textual History).
III 2 The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant: H. L. Mencken on the culture of the American South: “It is, indeed, amazing to contemplate so vast a vacuity. One thinks of the interstellar spaces”, The Sahara of the Bozart in Prejudices: Second Series (1920). (TSE: “‘our own vacuity’”, Conversation Galante 10.) interstellar spaces: an astronomical term at least since Francis Bacon: “we must first inquire, whether there be a collective vacuum in the interstellar spaces?” Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (1612). For Pascal on “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces”, see note to Silence 15 (“I am terrified”). Before writing his introduction to Pascal’s Pensées (1931), TSE had contributed an introduction to The Wheel of Fire (1930), where in his essay on Hamlet, G. Wilson Knight had written, “Between the sick soul and the knowledge of love there are all the interstellar spaces that divide Hell from Heaven”, 27 (Stephen Matthews 162). To Hope Mirrlees, 16 Sept 1953: “astronomy bores me—it seems to me a study that interests chiefly people with no precise Christian faith: they like to wander about in the vast interstellar spaces.” (“A dull head among windy spaces. | | Signs are taken for wonders”, Gerontion 16–17.)
III 2–8 interstellar · · · merchant bankers · · · the Sun and Moon · · · the Stock Exchange Gazette: likening stars to stocks and shares: “Dividing the stars into common and preferred”, Choruses from “The Rock” III 65. The City had been associated with the heavens in the earliest ts of The Rock:
Since building and destruction find their only
Justification in the dividends
On which the whole creation seems to move,
Which move the sun and all the other stars · · ·
Your capital is always unproductive
Which brings no increment to the investor;
You purchase shares which will never be quoted.
Bodleian, MS Don. d. 44 fol. 162, 1st reading
Tennyson: “And one far-off divine event, | To which the whole creation moves”, In Memoriam, last lines. Dante: “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars”, Paradiso, last line.
III 3 eminent men of letters: of Shaw and Wells: “We are in agreement with the eminent men of letters mentioned, in wishing to see the strengthening of central authority”, A Commentary in Criterion Apr 1929.
[Poem I 188 · Textual History II 496]
III 3–8 The captains, merchant bankers · · · all go into the dark, | And dark the Sun and Moon · · · the Directory of Directors: Revelation 6: 15: “And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains” (Preston 29). Henry James: “capitalists and bankers, retired men of business, illustrious collectors”, The Golden Bowl bk. III iv. TSE: “Those are the golf club Captains, these the Scouts, | And now the société gymnastique de Poissy | And now come the Mayor and the Liverymen”, Coriolan I. Triumphal March 25–27. To Ezra Pound, Michaelmas [29 Sept] 1933 (concerning primarily Cantos XIV, XV): “there aint anythink real about blokes like Rothermere Beaverbrook Mellon and Henri Deterding I don’t know who Lawrence is [Sir Herbert Lawrence] No matter and you cant make them real Its beyond Shakesp. etc. to give them individuality there are just types politicians profiteers financiers newspapersprops. & pressgangs, Calvin, the English, Vicecrusaders, liars, stupids pedants preachers bishops lady golfers Fabians conservatives imperialists & people who dont believe Major Douglas etc. I dont see what you can do with Hell without Sin & sinners This is not a theologgical argument its just the way it seems to me things hang together or dont It may be allright just as an interlude in Limbo but it wants to be supported by a real Hell underneath with real people in it Put me in if you Like”. In 1934: “This is exactly what we find of the society which Mr. Pound puts in Hell, in his Draft of XXX Cantos. It consists (I may have overlooked one or two species) of politicians, profiteers, financiers, newspaper proprietors and their hired men, agents provocateurs, Calvin, St. Clement of Alexandria, the English, vice-crusaders, liars, the stupid, pedants, preachers, those who do not believe in Social Credit, bishops, lady golfers, Fabians, conservatives and imperialists”, After Strange Gods 42–43. To Virginia Woolf, 22 Apr 1937: “I wondered whether you had not risen completely above literary and academic society, and were not moving in a world consisting of K.C.’s, belted surgeons, chartered accountants, generals, admirals of the blue, retired pro-consuls (e.g. Ronald Storrs), and higher ecclesiastics.”
III 6–8 all go into the dark · · · Directors: to Geoffrey Curtis, 31 Dec 1940: “I hope I do not give the impressi
on that the ‘dark’ into which the company directors go is the spiritual darkness of the mystic.”
III 7 the Sun and Moon: regular meeting place of the revolutionists in James’s The Princess Casamassima: “The Princess listened intently · · · Among other things our young man mentioned that he didn’t go to the ‘Sun and Moon’ any more · · · this particular temple of their faith · · · was a hopeless sham”, ch. XXIV. Casamassima née Christina Light.
III 7–8 Almanach de Gotha: annual directory of European royalty and higher nobility, published 1763–1944. Pronounced Allmanack de Goater in TSE’s recordings of 1946–47. Stock Exchange Gazette: weekly journal, first pub. 1901. Directory of Directors: annual guide to the City, first pub. 1879.
III 8–9 the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors · · · lost the motive of action: “to live without words which convey, or which stimulate, emotion would be suicide, for it would mean dispensing with desires and motives for action · · · more conscious use of language · · · should help to protect us against the newspapers, the wireless, and everything else that is comprehended under the term propaganda”, Poetical and Prosaic Use of Words (1943). cold the sense: “The cold craving when the sense is gone”, Little Gidding II 76–93 prose synopsis [2–3]. lost the motive of action: HAMLET: “and lose the name of action” (III i).
III 12–14 let the dark come upon you · · · the darkness of God · · · The lights: John 12: 35–36: “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you · · · believe in the light”.
[Poem I 188 · Textual History II 496–97]
III 13–17 darkness of God. As, in a theatre, | The lights are extinguished · · · rumble of wings · · · darkness on darkness · · · panorama · · · being rolled away: Poe: “in a theatre · · · in the form of God · · · mumble low, | And hither and thither fly · · · vast formless things | That shift the scenery to and fro · · · Condor wings · · · Out—out are the lights · · · The curtain · · · Comes down with the rush of a storm”, The Conqueror Worm 5, 9–15, 33, 36 within the tale Ligeia. For Poe’s poem, see Mandarins 1 13–15, “merely shifting scenes” (Conrad Aiken drew on the same description in The Jig of Forslin: see Grover Smith 268). For Poe’s tale, see note to The Waste Land [II] 79–118. As, in a theatre, | The: Richard II V ii: “As in a theatre, the eyes of men | After a well-graced actor leaves the stage”. The lights are extinguished: black-out instructions circulated from July 1939, evoking memories of Sir Edward Grey’s remark on the eve of the Great War: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” OED “black-out” 1: “Theatr. The darkening of a stage during a performance”, quoting first Shaw 1913, then the memoir in Rupert Brooke’s Collected Poems (1918). OED 3: “The action of extinguishing, covering, or obscuring lights as a precaution against air-raids”, from 1935: “instructions for compulsory ‘black-outs’ in districts where experiments were being carried out against air attacks”. For Hayward to TSE, 12 Dec 1940, “rising in the blackout”, see note to Little Gidding II 25–28, and for TSE on the distinction between the topical and the universal senses of “blackout”, see letter to Hayward, 9 Sept 1941, in note to Little Gidding II 38. To Hope Mirrlees, 12 Apr 1946: “I really must do the complete Holy Week this year, for the first time since 1940 (and we didn’t have Tenebrae then, because of the blackout).”