The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 152
[Poem I 205 · Textual History II 531]
II 76–77 Let me disclose · · · lifetime’s effort: in the Gide/Bosco tr., TSE braced with “!” the lines “J’userai des dons réservés à l’âge | Pour poser une couronne sur les labeurs de votre vie.” To George Barker, 24 Jan 1938: “Poetry is either a matter of a brief outburst, or it is a matter of a lifetime’s work” (see headnote to Four Quartets, 4. “NOT MERELY MORE OF THE SAME”).
II 76–77 variant gifts · · · prizes: to Hayward, 7 Sept: “I now think ‘prizes’ is rather heavy-handed after ‘gifts’.” To Mrs. Elsmith, 4 Sept 1942: “she is able to know and to prize the best gifts of friendship”.
II 76–93 prose draft (msC) the gifts of age—The cold craving when the sense is gone · · · doubt of self which springs from retrospection of past motives: “I was neither · · · craving · · · I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch · · · chilled delirium · · · when the sense has cooled”, Gerontion 39, 57, 62–63 (with “age”, epigraph).
II 77 To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort: Purg. XXVII 142, Virgil’s final words to Dante: “‘per ch’io te sopra te corono e mitrio’” [“wherefore I do crown and mitre thee over thyself”] (Grover Smith 286). In the penultimate typescript, Hayward underlined three assonantal vowels in this line, which then read “The final prizes of your lifetime’s effort”, writing “X X X” in the margin, and “finis coronat opus”. Hayward had used the same phrase to describe Little Gidding in a letter of Aug 1941 to Frank Morley (Smart 301). TSE: “what is more common is for the critic to assume that one’s work is finished, that the last piece one wrote represents the crowning effort of a lifetime: very often, indeed, it evidences the certain decline of the author’s powers”, Author and Critic (1955). “the poet is the least abstract of men, because he is the most bound by his own language: he cannot even afford to know another language equally well, because it is, for the poet, a lifetime’s work to explore the resources of his own”, Goethe as the Sage (1955).
II 78 cold · · · expiring sense: Conrad: “I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last forever · · · the deceitful feeling that lures us on · · · the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in a handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon, before life itself”, Youth (Unger 1956 240). For “in a handful of dust”, see note to The Waste Land [I] 30.
II 78–80 expiring sense · · · bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit: Paradise Lost XI 532–38: “So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop · · · thou must outlive | Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change | To withered weak and gray; thy senses then | Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgo”; also X 563–66: “but taste | Deceived; they fondly thinking to allay | Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit | Chewed bitter ashes” (Hands). Tourneur: “Your gravity becomes your perished soul | As hoary mouldiness does rotten fruit”, The Atheist’s Tragedy I iv; quoted in Cyril Tourneur (1930) (Grover Smith 1983 114). Arthur Symons: “tired with age and grief · · · shadowy fruit”, Faint Love (TSE: “age”, II 76).
II 79, 82, 84 enchantment · · · impotence of rage · · · to amuse: Symons: “My life is like a music-hall, | Where, in the impotence of rage, | Chained by enchantment to my stall, | I see myself upon the stage | Dance to amuse a music-hall”, Prologue: In the Stalls 1–5 (1895).
[Poem I 205 · Textual History II 531–32]
II 79, 85 enchantment · · · re-enactment: for TSE on these words, see letter to Hayward, 19 Sept 1942, in Little Gidding headnote, 2. COMPOSITION. To Desmond MacCarthy, 28 Dec 1942: “I am particularly glad that you liked the Ghost passage, because I found that piece gave me the greatest trouble. The simplicity of language at which one must aim, in this kind of verse, requires the avoidance of repetition of words (even ofs and ands and buts have to be carefully watched) and even the avoidance of words of similar formation too near together—I am not happy about enchantment and re-enactment so close together, but I could find no substitute for either word.”
II 82–84 impotence of rage | At human folly, and the laceration | Of laughter at what ceases to amuse: alongside these lines quoted in G. Jones, TSE wrote “Cf. Swift”. Hayward pointed to Swift’s epitaph on himself: “Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit” [Savage indignation there | Cannot lacerate his breast], tr. Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). (Hayward transposed “Ulterius” and “Cor”, having previously jotted them correctly beside 83 in ts9b, before, in ts12b, he suggested “laceration”, which TSE accepted.) TSE to Mrs. J. J. Hawkes, 22 Oct 1947, rejecting a UNESCO proposal that the classics should be translated into all languages: Swift “would have admitted the impotence of imagination, when confronted with human activity so much more fantastic than anything he could invent. If not wholly overcome by vertigo, he would have had to find some other medium in which to express his laceration of heart. But, as you might justly have observed, Eire is not a United Nation, and the voice of the Dean would not have been heard.”
To Geoffrey Faber, [27 Aug 1927], on Swift: “I never knew that he meant so much to you; he has always been one of the very great men to me; indeed Gulliver, and especially the last chapter of the Houhynyms, is to me with King Lear as one of the most tragic things ever written · · · I have always felt a particular sympathy and (probably) illusory understanding of Swift in connexion with Stella and Vanessa · · · I should like even to collaborate, to a small extent, on Swift. Do you know the Drapier’s Letters well? They are magnificent. But I think I could do better justice to the poetry (without vanity) than has yet been done. Swift’s obscenity is as little understood as Baudelaire’s blasphemy.” rage | At human folly · · · laceration: Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes has “the rage of power · · · heady rage · · · lacerated Friendship claims a tear”, 33, 281, 304 (see note to II 90).
II 82, 86, 88 conscious impotence · · · shame · · · things ill done: “consciousness of death, of shame and of failure”, The Cultivation of Christmas Trees ts3 29 variant.
II 85 the rending pain of re-enactment: Conrad: “Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?” Heart of Darkness pt. 3. For the passage from Conrad, see note to The Hollow Men first epigraph.
[Poem I 205 · Textual History II 532]
II 86–87 the shame | Of motives late revealed: Lancelot Andrewes: “look back upon our sins past · · · consider the motives, the base motives, and weigh the circumstances, the grievous circumstances, and tell over our many flittings, our often relapsing, our wretched continuing in them”, Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1619. TSE: “About Donne there hangs the shadow of the impure motive”, Lancelot Andrewes (1926). To Conrad Aiken, 10 Aug 1929: “My progress, if I ever make any, will be in purging myself of a large number of impure motives.” On Pascal: “the magnificent analysis of human motives and occupations which was to have constituted the early part of his book · · · seeing through human beings and observing the vanity of their thoughts and of their avocations, their dishonesty and self-deception, the insincerity of their emotions, their cowardice, the pettiness of their real ambitions”, The “Pensées” of Pascal (1931). “I am doubtful whether the right procedure is to attempt to yoke together commitments to the development of the ‘spiritual life’ · · · and social-political interests, if there is any suspicion that the motive—or one of the motives—for this union is an attempt to make room for everybody”, Moot Paper 50 (1941). (See note to III 49, “purification of the motive”.)
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: | To do the right deed for the wrong reason”, Murder in the Cathedral I (within final speech). TSE characterised the sceptic as “the man who suspects the origins of his own beliefs · · · who suspects other people’s motives because he has learned the deceitfulness of his own” (Notes o
n the Way, 5 Jan 1935). Henry Eliot took up both of these when he deplored TSE’s The Modern Dilemma (1933) in a letter to his brother, 12 Sept 1935:
I am not sure whether it is your past motives alone that you question, or your present motives also; I mean your motives for embracing the Church · · · People commonly speak as if motives were always single; whereas they are usually multiple; and often nearly as obscure to oneself as to others. But a great many secondary motives can be classified under the primary motive of wishing to appear well in the eyes of others · · · how came you to address to the clergy of Boston, a city saturated with associations of your ancestors, immediate and distant, what seems to me in all truth a fanatically intolerant and shocking tirade? · · · I cannot agree that one’s supposed duty to one’s church absolves one from the ordinary decencies; furthermore, even the Roman Church approves the injunction, “Honor thy father and mother.”
TSE replied, 1 Jan 1936: “It seems a little hard that a man’s questioning of his own motives should be taken, as you seem to take it, as evidence of their insincerity.”
II 87–88 awareness | Of things ill done: Yeats, Vacillation V in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), quoted in After Strange Gods 46 (Smidt 1973):
Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
For Yeats’s collection, see note to II 82–84.
[Poem I 205 · Textual History II 532]
II 88 things ill done: John Ford: “Sigh out a lamentable tale of things | Done long ago, and ill done”, The Lover’s Melancholy IV ii (Grover Smith 286). TSE regarded this as one of the three plays by Ford in which “we find some of the best ‘poetical’ passages”, John Ford (1932). Kipling quoted Ford’s two lines as the epigraph to Love-O’-Women, a story of repentance and of “more that was worst than any repentince” (Ricks 1998). Norman Cameron’s nine-line poem All Things Ill Done (The Winter House, 1935) closely resembles TSE’s lines (Ricks 1998). TSE: “Ill done and undone, | London so fair”, The Builders 1–2 (Ricks 141). done to others’ harm: Purg. XVII 123: “il male altrui impronti” [seeks another’s hurt]. TSE scored this line in the copy of the Purgatorio given to him by his mother (Iman Javadi, personal communication).
II 88, 90 things ill done and done · · · fools’ approval stings: Lionel Johnson: “miserable things | Done long ago, not done with: the live stings | Left by old joys, follies”, Experience (Ricks 1998). TSE: “In a verse or a line here or there of Lionel Johnson, there is a ring of the spoken voice”, The Last Twenty-Five Years of English Poetry (1940). (For Lionel Johnson, see headnote to Five-Finger Exercises II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier.)
II 89 which once you took for: Pedro and Segovia: “the brilliancy of her wit was impertinence and what once she took for modesty, was sheepishness”, Lady’s Magazine 1780. took for: to Hayward, 7 Sept 1942, in reply to his suggested emendation of the original reading: “Felt is not strong enough: I mean not simply something not questioned, but something consciously approved.”
II 90 fools’ approval stings: Dr. Johnson: “Grief aids disease, remember’d folly stings”, The Vanity of Human Wishes 117 (Grover Smith 1950 420). honour stains: Pope: “Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade”, The Rape of the Lock II 107.
II 92 that refining fire: Purg. XXVI 148 (Arnaut): “Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina” [Then he hid him in the fire which refines them]. TSE to Hayward, 27 Aug 1942: “the reference to swimming in fire which you will remember at the end of Purgatorio 26 where the poets are found. The active co-operation is, I think, sound theology and is certainly sound Dante, because the people who talk to him at that point are represented as not wanting to waste time in conversation but wishing to dive back into the fire to accomplish their expiation.” (See note to title Ara Vos Prec in headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 7. PUBLICATION OF ARA VOS PREC.) Malachi 3: 2: “But who may abide the day of his coming · · · for he is like a refiner’s fire” (Cook); famously set within Handel’s Messiah.
II 92–93 fire | Where you must move in measure, like a dancer: F. E. Brightman, introduction to his 1903 edition of Lancelot Andrewes’s Preces Privatæ: “His single thoughts are no doubt often suggested by the words he borrows, but the thoughts are made his own, and the constructive force, the fire that fuses them, is his own · · · The prayers are arranged, not merely in paragraphs, but in lines advanced and recessed, so as in a measure to mark the inner structure and the steps and stages of the movement.” TSE recommended the edition and quoted “this excellent piece of criticism” in Lancelot Andrewes (1926); see note to Ash-Wednesday III 19 (“stops and steps of the mind over the third stair”). “The differences between a great dancer and a merely competent dancer is in the vital flame, that impersonal, and, if you like, inhuman force which transpires between each of the great dancer’s movements”, Four Elizabethan Dramatists (1924). See IV 13–14, “only suspire | Consumed by either fire or fire”, and note. “deceptive cadences | Wherewith the common measure is refined”, To Walter de la Mare 28–29. The Burnt Dancer (title; March Hare Notebook). Shelley: “feet which kissed | The dancing foam · · · And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song | Of leaves · · · moved in a measure new”, The Triumph of Life 370–71, 375–77 (with “faded” 248, TSE: II 96). TSE: “When I read poetry I put myself into a kind of trance and move in rhythm to the rhythm of the piece in question”, T. S. Eliot Answers Questions (1949).
[Poem I 205 · Textual History II 532]
II 93 move in measure, like a dancer: Sir John Davies: “Time the measure of all moving is; | And Dauncing is a moving all in measure”, Orchestra st. 23 (Schmidt 2007). For Sir John Davies see note to East Coker I 25–45. Johnson’s Dictionary “Dance”: “To move in measure”. TSE: “the dance would be brought to life in all its complexity · · · each having its proper part in the measure”, The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams (1954), jacket material. like a dancer: to Hayward, 27 Aug 1942 (enclosing ts9b): “I · · · rather like the suggestion of the new line which carries some reminder of a line, I think it is about Mark Antony.” Antony and Cleopatra III xi: “he at Philippi kept | His sword e’en like a dancer”: used not about Antony but by him of Octavius (Composition FQ 31).
II 94 The day was breaking. In the disfigured street: Tennyson: “the long unlovely street · · · On the bald street breaks the blank day”, the close of In Memoriam VII, quoted in full by TSE, In Memoriam (1936): “This is great poetry, economical of words, a universal emotion related to a particular place.”
II 94–95 The day was breaking · · · He left me, with a kind of valediction: Purg. XVI 142–45 (Marco Lombardo): “‘Vedi l’albòr, che per lo fummo raia, | già biancheggiare, e me convien partirmi, | l’angelo è ivi, prima ch’io gli appaia.’ | Così tornò, e più non volle udirmi” [“See the light, that beams through the smoke, now waxing bright; the angel is there, and it behoves me to depart ere I am seen of him.” So turned he back and no more would hear me], Iman Javadi, personal communication. For “turned away” and “turned back”, see note to II 67–96, first venture in verse [22].
II 95 variant salutation: see note to unadopted title to Ash-Wednesday II.
II 96 faded on the blowing of the horn: Hamlet I i, on the disappearance of the Ghost: “It faded on the crowing of the cock.” Hayward: “The blowing of the horn here suggests, with all the associations of the horn’s melancholy and stirring notes (‘Dieu, comme le son du cor est triste’) the sounding of the ‘All Clear’ siren after the end of an air-raid.” Alfred de Vigny, “Dieu! que le son du Cor est triste au fond des bois!” [God! how sad the Horn’s sound is in the depth of the woods!], Le Cor [The Horn], closing line. Hawthorne: “The horn sounded at daybreak · · · as if · · · the trump of doom”, The Blithedale Romance ch. VI.
III
III 1 There are t
hree conditions: Henry Clarke Warren’s tr. of the Anguttara-Nikaya: “There are three conditions, O priests, under which deeds are produced. And what are the three? Covetousness is a condition under which deeds are produced; hatred is a condition under which deeds are produced; infatuation is a condition under which deeds are produced”, Buddhism in Translations (1896) 215–16 (Howarth 372).
III 1–2 There are three conditions · · · flourish in the same hedgerow: sonnet attrib. Sir Walter Raleigh: “Three things there be that prosper up apace | And flourish, while they grow asunder far” (K. Narayana Chandran, N&Q Dec 2008). TSE: “Since the time of Rousseau, men’s attitude toward life has vacillated between two points of view which are really complementary and which flourish in the same soil”, An American Critic (1916).