1 Marin!: Corbière was a sailor and the son of a sea-captain. His poem Matelots [Sailors] has its exclamation: “Matelots!” (97). The paragraph from Verlaine quoted by Le Goffic (see note to epigraph) began: “Tristan Corbière fut un Breton, un marin et le dédaigneux par excellence” [Tristan Corbière was a Breton, a sailor and the perfect disdainer]. Marin! je te connais: “There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson! | ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! · · ·’” The Waste Land [I] 69–70. je te connais: Baudelaire: “Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, | —Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!” [Dear Reader, you are well acquainted with that fastidious monster—hypocritical Reader—my second self—my brother!], the close of Au lecteur [To the Reader]; quoted as the close of The Waste Land I.
2 Qui veillait dans la nuit comme un vieil hibou: Corbière, of himself: “Lui, seul hibou payant” [He, the only paying owl], Le Poète contumace 19; and again: “Voleur de nuit, hibou d’amour” [Night-thief, owl of love], Guitare 7.
[Poem I 279 · Textual History II 592]
3 toi qu’on nomme an Ankou: Le Goffic’s preface to Les Amours jaunes began: “Le Ier mars 1875, dans la trentième année de son âge, s’éteignait à Morlaix un pauvre être falot, rongé de phtisie, perclus de rheumatismes et si long et si maigre et si jaune que les marins bretons, ses amis, l’avaient baptisé an Ankou (la Mort)” [On the 1st of May 1875, in the thirtieth year of his age, there was becoming extinguished a poor lamp of a creature, eaten away by phthisis, crippled with rheumatism and so lanky and so thin and so yellow that the Breton sailors, his friends, had christened him an Ankou (a Dead Man)]. Again: “la maladie en fit une pauvre caricature d’homme, l’espèce d’Ankou, de spectre ambulant dont se moquaient les Roscovites” [sickness made him a poor caricature of a man, a kind of Ankou, a walking spectre whom the Bretons of Roscoff made mock of]. Pound on Corbière: “his personal appearance had earned him the nickname ‘an Ankou’ (the corpse)”, New Age 2 Oct 1913. Corbière uses the word at the beginning of a prose poem: “Un pays,—non, ce sont des côtes brisées de la dure Bretagne: Penmarc’h, Toul-Infern, Poul-Dahut, Stang-an-Ankou · · · Des noms barbares hurlés par les rafales” [A country,—no, this is the shattered coast of harsh Brittany: Penmarc’h, Toul-Infern, Poul-Dahut, Stang-an-Ankou · · · Barbarous names squalled by the squalls], Casino des trépassés [Casino of the Dead], tr. Val Warner. (TSE: “Bat sur les côtes bretonnes la mer en rafales”, 8).
4 barbe pointue: “with a pointed beard”, Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think? 17.
8 rafales: Corbière rhymes on this in Mirliton, which TSE copied out (see headnote).
9–10 Des rayons de soleil · · · après-midi · · · au Luxembourg: “I am willing to admit that my own retrospect is touched by a sentimental sunset, the memory of a friend coming across the Luxembourg Gardens in the late afternoon”, A Commentary in Criterion Apr 1934. See notes on the dedication of Prufrock and Other Observations and The Waste Land [I] 2.
11 poudre de riz: Corbière: “Kh’ol, carmin et poudre de riz” [Kohl, carmine and facepowder], Déjeuner de soleil [Lunch in the sun] 6.
11–12 la poudre de riz. | Et Lieutenant Loti: Laurent Tailhade: “Loti, fleur des rizières”, Odelette (1904) 22. Pierre Loti (1850–1923), naval officer, novelist and travel writer, was repeatedly Tailhade’s butt in Poèmes aristophanesques (see March Hare notes to this poem).
12, 14 Loti · · · grue: Francis Jammes dedicated to Loti his poem Les grues [The Whores].
14 variant Fait le trottoirs: [walks the streets] (as does a street-walker). Corbière: “Là, sa pauvre Muse pucelle | Fit le trottoir en demoiselle. | Ils disaient: Qu’est-ce qu’elle vend?” [There his poor maid of a Muse walks the street like a young lady. They used to say, What has she for sale?] Paris I 9–11. Fait le trottoirs · · · grue: Corbière: “C’est très parisien, dans les rues, | Quand l’Aurore fait le trottoir, | De voir sortir toutes les Grues | Du violon, ou de leur boudoir” [It’s very Parisian, along the thoroughfares, when Dawn walks the street, to see all the prostitutes come out from the lock-up or from their boudoir], Idylle coupée [Idyll Cut Short] 1–4. TSE: “une ancienne grue”, Vers pour la Foulque 20 (in Noctes Binanianæ); translated by TSE as “a retired great coarse woman / a superannuated prostitute”.
[Poem I 279 · Textual History II 592–93]
Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”)
Published in AraVP as the last of the poems newer than Prufrock (which is then reprinted as the book’s second half). Not in US 1920. This is the only poem published by TSE in a volume of his poems but not then collected. Sending AraVP to his brother Henry, he wrote, 15 Feb 1920: “I have not sent this to Mother or told her about it. I thought of cutting out the page on which occurs a poem called Ode and sending the book as if there had been an error and an extra page put in. Will you read through the new poems and give your opinion. The Ode is not in the edition that Knopf is publishing, all the others are. And I suppose she will have to see that book. Do you think that Sweeney Erect will shock her?” Ode was reprinted in James E. Miller, T. S. Eliot’s Personal Waste Land: Exorcism of the Demons (1977); Vicki Mahaffey in American Literature Jan 1979; H. A. Mason in Cambridge Quarterly Apr 1990; then March Hare.
To Dr. Alfred Weber, 15 Jan 1958: “If there are any two poems from which you have agreed to take four lines which you would care to print in full (with the exception of Ode which I do not like) you are welcome to do so.”
TSE adapts Laforgue’s Persée et Andromède, where the map of the heavens is scanned, and mention is made of Cassiopeia, the Great Bear and other constellations. (For Laforgue’s poem see notes to Inside the gloom 11 and the title of Goldfish II. Embarquement pour Cythère.) Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda is in the Wallace Collection, and in his Baedeker TSE marked the room in which it hung. (Arrowsmith 1981 is in error in placing the picture in the National Gallery.) Grover Smith 37–38 explains the mythology of the poem.
Title Ode: The poem’s three parts roughly correspond to the strophe, antistrophe and epode of a classical ode. TSE to Herbert Read, 6 Jan 1941, on a poem of Read’s: “I agree that it would be better to call it just Ode, or else find another term than ‘rhetoric’, because ‘rhetoric’ means everything to everybody: and I am not quite sure that this comes under any definition of ‘ode’. What is an ode, anyway?”
Unadopted title Ode | on Independence Day, July 4th 1918: the date may or may not be that of writing. TSE wrote to his mother, 7 July 1918, that Independence Day had been celebrated in London “solemnly, more as a very serious act of international courtesy, something of gravity, than the hilarious 4th of boyhood. I think that the appetite for the noisier sort of fireworks should have died out for this generation.” Alexandria Gazette 12 July 1843, on the irony of marrying on Independence Day: “One of the toasts offered was candid: ‘State of Matrimony—Happiness to those who have this day assumed the only chain which freemen can wear’” (“the bridegroom”, 9).
[Poem I 280 · Textual History II 593]
Epigraph] CORIOLANUS, on the wounds he has inflicted on Aufidius and the Volscians: “My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done | To thee particularly and to all the Volsces | Great hurt and mischief” (IV v). Three times in the play Coriolanus is compared to a dragon (18). For the reconciliation of enemies as leading again to war, see note to the title Coriolan.
2 Subterrene laughter: “his laughter was submarine and profound”, Mr. Apollinax 7. “under ground | Leaned backward with a lipless grin”, Whispers of Immortality 3–4. “he shall hear | A breathless chuckle underground”, Exequy 27–28.
3 the sacred wood: Virgil: “cum iam glandes atque arbuta sacrae | deficerent silvae et victum Dodona negaret” [when the acorns and arbutes of the sacred wood began to fail, and Dodona denied men food], Georgic I 148–49, referring to the oracular grove of oaks at Dodona (Stormon). TSE’s The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism was published on 4 Nov 1920, the title likening the poet
critic to Frazer’s priest: “In the sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead · · · A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and · · · he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier”, The Golden Bough I 8–9 (George Watson, The Literary Critics, 1962, ch. 9). (Frazer: “Perpetual fires, kindled with the wood of certain oak-trees · · · if such a fire went out, it was lighted again by friction of the sacred wood”, The Golden Bough II 366.) Sweeney Among the Nightingales has “the Sacred · · · wood” across the final two stanzas (36–37). For “the sacred grove” in Frazer, see note to Exequy 6–7.
4–5 bubbling of the · · · | Mephitic river: Maurice de Guérin, tr. Stuart Merrill: “inarticulate as the bubbling of the rivers”, The Centaur in Pastels in Prose.
5 Mephitic: OED: “offensive to the smell · · · pestilential, noxious, poisonous”. Virgil: “fonte sonat saevamque exhalat opaca mephitim” [echoes with hallowed fountain, and breathes forth from her darkness a deadly vapour], Aeneid VII 84 (Stormon).
7 Profession of the calamus: writer (“calamus scriptorius”, a sharpened reed used for writing). Whitman’s Calamus is a series of forty-five poems. The second has: “Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves! | Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!” Scented Herbage of My Breast 19–20; the third: “Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you, | With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss, | For I am the new husband and I am the comrade”, Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand 19–21 (TSE: “the bridegroom”, 9). TSE: “I did not read Whitman until much later in life, and had to conquer an aversion to his form, as well as to much of his matter, in order to do so”, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (1928), Introduction.
9 the bridegroom: when Coriolanus reveals himself as the enemy leader (see epigraph), he is welcomed by Aufidius: “more dances my rapt heart | Than when I first my wedded mistress saw | Bestride my threshold” (Coriolanus IV v).
9–10 the bridegroom smoothed his hair · · · upon the bed: “The features of the injured bride!” Elegy 12. “publication of the bride-sheets!” Anabasis X v.
[Poem I 280 · Textual History II 593]
9–10, 16 the bridegroom smoothed his hair · · · upon the bed · · · Perseus: Laforgue: “Persée · · · ramène les boucles blondes de sa chevelure” [Perseus · · · while he rearranges his golden curls], Persée et Andromède. TSE: “Enacted on this same divan or bed · · · smooths her hair”, The Waste Land [III] 244, 255.
10–14 blood upon the bed · · · Hymen · · · Succuba eviscerate: in response to congratulations from Conrad Aiken on the publication of 1925, TSE sent a page from the Nursing Mirror and Midwives’ Journal 28 Nov 1925, on which were underlined the words “Blood, mucus, shreds of mucus, purulent offensive discharge.” (Faber had recently taken over publication of the journal.) See Letters 3 43–44 and Conrad Aiken to Robert N. Linscott, 4 Jan 1926, in Aiken’s Selected Letters.
12 Children singing in the orchard: see note to Landscapes I. New Hampshire 1, “Children’s voices in the orchard”.
13 Hymen Hymenæe: Catullus 61: “io Hymen Hymenæe io, | io Hymen Hymenæe”. In this repeated refrain, the ritual cry ὑμήν is lengthened to ὑμέναιε, where the quantities are different, making the line notoriously difficult to scan. F. M. Cornford on the “form and content of the Phallic Song”: “the Marriage Songs—hymenaeal and epithalamium—with their ribald stanzas and the refrain ‘Hymen, O Hymenaee!’”, The Origin of Attic Comedy 39. TSE: “a sort of hymenaeal hymn is sung”, Sweeney Agonistes draft, The Superior Landlord II. Gordon 125 points to Whitman:
O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?
O why sting me for a swift moment only?
Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you
would soon certainly kill me?
O Hymen! O Hymenee!
Hymen: OED “Hymen” 3, “Marriage; wedlock”, citing Dryden’s Aeneid VII 769–70: “A bloody Hymen shall th’Alliance join | Betwixt the Trojan and Ausonian line.”
14 Succuba eviscerate: Jonson: “Then, my glasses | Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse | And multiply the figures, as I walk | Naked between my succubæ”, The Alchemist II ii. TSE quoted these lines (but not the last—perhaps deleted by an editor at the TLS?) in Ben Jonson (1919). Succuba: OED “succubus” 1: “A demon in female form supposed to have carnal intercourse with men in their sleep”. 2b: “A strumpet, a whore”. eviscerate: see Little Gidding II 13.
14 variant suspired: see note to Little Gidding IV 13–14.
15 Tortuous: OED 1b: “Astron. Applied to the six signs of the zodiac from Capricornus to Gemini, which · · · rise more obliquely than the other six. Obs.”
16–17 Perseus · · · dragon: Lemprière: Perseus “discovered, on the coast of Ethiopia, the naked Andromeda, exposed to a sea monster. He was struck by the sight, and offered her father Cepheus to deliver her from instant death, if he obtained her in marriage as a reward of his labours. Cepheus consented, and immediately Perseus raised himself in the air, flew towards the monster · · · and plunged his dagger in his right shoulder, and destroyed it.”
[Poem I 280 · Textual History II 593]
17, 22 dragon · · · Charles’ Wagon: Mahaffey: “the constellation Draco · · · in spring and summer, lies beneath · · · Ursa Major” (Charles’ Wagon). King Lear I ii, EDMUND: “My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous”. TSE: “the circuit of the shuddering Bear”, Gerontion 68.
19 Indignant: Virgil: “vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras” [with a moan life passed indignant to the Shades below], Aeneid XII 952, the final line (Stormon).
20 the cheap extinction of his taking-off: Macbeth I vii: “his virtues | Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu’d, against | The deep damnation of his taking off” (for the speech, see Airs of Palestine, No. 2 6).
21 Now lies he there: Julius Caesar III ii (Grover Smith 37).
22 Tip to tip washed beneath Charles’ Wagon: published in 1898, the cartoon Ten thousand miles from tip to tip signified the extent of US domination—from Manilla to Puerto Rico—after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War. washed · · · Charles’: the Charles River runs through Boston. (“The barges wash”, The Waste Land [III] 273.)
The Death of the Duchess
Published in WLFacs.
Gordon 158 explains that evidence for dating The Death of the Duchess from the paper “is inconclusive” because the same kind of paper was used both for ts3 of Gerontion (1919) and for the unpublished review, Autour d’une Traduction d’Euripide (1916). On the basis of the paper, Rainey 34 assigns the poem to Sept 1916, despite assigning the review, which twice uses the date 1916, to Feb 1919.
Grover Smith 1983 16 calls the poem TSE’s “companion piece” to Gerontion and persuasively assigns it to 1919, “perhaps dating from the autumn, when he reviewed a production of The Duchess of Malfi”. Valerie Eliot’s notes in WLFacs identified II 23–24 as deriving from Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, but did not specify that II 51–53 derive from the same passage (see note to II 23–24, 51–53). See headnote to The Waste Land, 1. COMPOSITION.
Gordon 158: “Valerie Eliot tells me there is a letter to Eliot, written in 1919, in which the correspondent refers to The Death of the Duchess and Mr. Bleistein (in Dirge).” The Bleistein poem, however, was probably Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar (published summer 1919). The letter was probably that from Sachev
erell Sitwell described by Sarah Bradford. On 1 Mar 1919, she writes, TSE showed Sitwell Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar and another poem (Bradford 92). Three days later, Sitwell wrote to TSE saying he was “overwhelmed”, referring to “the ‘hillmen’ of Hampstead” and quoting “They discuss the evening papers, and other bird-news” (see I 1 and II 16).
[Poems I 280–81 · Textual History II 593–94]
I
I 1–6 The inhabitants of Hampstead · · · On Sunday afternoon go out to tea · · · They know what they are to feel and what to think, | They know it with the morning printer’s ink: “I journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told: | We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor | To Hindhead, or Maidenhead. | If the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers”, Choruses from “The Rock” I 28–31. what they are to feel and what to think, | They know it with the morning printer’s ink: “Wakening the appetites of life in some | And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript”, The “Boston Evening Transcript” 4–5.
I 1–4, II 1 inhabitants of Hampstead · · · tea · · · tea · · · tea · · · people hang upon the bridge rail: “F. M.”: “unkempt sub-editors (of monthlies) goggling over the gallery rail, and ladies from Hampstead who have met there for a good talk and a cup of tea”, Letters of the Moment I (1924).
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 179