by T. S. Eliot
Nul trait ne distinguait, du même enfer venu,
Ce jumeau centenaire, et ces spectres baroques
Marchaient du même pas vers un but inconnu.
À quel complot infâme étais-je donc en butte,
Ou quel méchant hasard ainsi m’humiliait?
Car je comptai sept fois, de minute en minute,
Ce sinistre vieillard qui se multipliait!
Que celui-là qui rit de mon inquiétude,
Et qui n’est pas saisi d’un frisson fraternel,
Songe bien que malgré tant de décrépitude
Ces sept monstres hideux avaient l’air éternel!
Aurais-je, sans mourir, contemplé le huitième,
Sosie inexorable, ironique et fatal,
Dégoûtant Phénix, fils et père de lui-même?
—Mais je tournai le dos au cortège infernal.
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Exaspéré comme un ivrogne qui voit double,
Je rentrai, je fermai ma porte, épouvanté,
Malade et morfondu, l’esprit fiévreux et trouble,
Blessé par le mystère et par l’absurdité!
Vainement ma raison voulait prendre la barre;
La tempête en jouant déroutait ses e¤orts,
Et mon âme dansait, dansait, vieille gabarre
Sans mâts, sur une mer monstrueuse et sans bords!
John Goudge (1921– ) translates “The Seven Old Men” in Carol Clark and
Robert Sykes, eds., Baudelaire in English (London: Penguin, 1997):
City swarming with people! City crowded with dreams!
Through the narrow back streets of this mighty colossus,
Like the sap in a tree, a dark mystery streams,
And ghosts clutch a man’s sleeve, in broad day, as he passes.
One morning when the houses that lined the sad street
Hovered larger than life, so it seemed, in the mist,
And resembled the banks of a river in spate,
A stage set for the shade of a pantomimist,
In the foul, yellow fog that pervaded the whole
Atmosphere I strode on, like a hero in battle,
Each nerve taut, and communed with my world-weary soul,
While the carts made the neighbourhood shake with their rattle.
All at once in the gloom, an old man came in sight,
Wearing tatters as yellow as thundery skies,
And a torrent of alms had showered down at his plight,
Were it not for the malice that gleamed in his eyes,
You’d have said that his beard was as long as a lance,
Jutting out, and the equal of Judas’ quite,
That his eyeballs were bloating in bile, that his glance
Was so cold as to sharpen the sting of frostbite.
He was not so much crooked as broken, his spine
With his legs represented a perfect right-angle,
And his stick put the finishing touch to his mien,
For it gave him the gait of and made him resemble
A lame four-booted beast or a jew with three legs.
’Twas as though in the mud and the snow as he went,
He was trampling the dead underground with his clogs—
Rather hateful and spiteful than indi¤erent.
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His twin followed him close, beard, back, stick, rags and eye,
By no mark could you tell one foul fiend from his brother.
These grotesque apparitions, pace for pace, went their way,
Each was bound for the same unknown end as the other.
Was it wicked mischance that had made me a fool?
By some infamous plot was I being seduced?
I know not, but I counted this sinister ghoul
Some seven times in seven minutes, by himself reproduced.
And the man who makes fun of my disquietude
And who feels not the chill of a brotherly shiver
Should mark well that despite such decrepitude
These grim brutes had the look of surviving for ever.
Had an eighth then appeared, I believe I’d have died—
One more pitiless twin sent to menace and mock
An incestuous phoenix, by himself multiplied—
But I took to my heels and presented my back
To this ghastly parade. As if drunk, vision doubled,
Panic-struck, I ran home, shut the door, turned the key;
I was ill, overcome, hot and cold, deeply troubled,
At once baºed and hurt by the absurdity.
And in vain did my reason attempt to take charge,
For its e¤orts were foiled by the tempest in me,
And my soul began dancing a jig, like a barge
Without masts on a monstrous and infinite sea.
62–63 [so many . . . so many]: Eliot’s note cites Dante, Inferno III, 55–57: “such a long stream / of people, that I would not have thought / that death had
undone so many.” As soon as Dante passes through the gates of Hell, he
hears first “sighs, lamentations, and loud wailings” (III, 22), then “strange
tongues, horrible languages, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and
hoarse” (III, 25–27). In the gloom he discerns “a long stream of people.”
He asks Virgil, his guide in the underworld, why these people are here, and
Virgil explains that in life these did neither good nor evil, thinking only of
themselves; like the Sibyl in the epigraph to The Waste Land, they “have no hope of death, and so abject is their blind life that they are envious of every
other lot” (III, 46–48).
64 [Sighs . . . ]: Eliot’s note cites Dante, Inferno IV, 25–27: “Here, as far I could tell by listening, / Was no lamentation more than sighs, / Which kept the air
forever trembling.” Dante has entered the first circle of Hell, or Limbo, and
describes the sound that emanates from those who died without being bap-
tized, and who therefore must live forever with the torment of desiring to
see God, yet knowing that they never will.
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66 [King William Street]: The thoroughfare (see Fig. 5) which runs from the
north end of London Bridge directly into the City, or financial district, of
London (see Fig. 9).
67 [St. Mary Woolnoth]: The church, a neoclassical work designed by Nicholas
Hawksmoor (1661–1736), who was a prominent architect in the early eigh-
teenth century, was erected from 1716 to 1724 (see Figs. 6, 7). It is located at
the intersection of King William Street and Lombard Street; Eliot worked in
the Lombard Street head oªce of Lloyds Bank (see Fig. 9), and to reach work
had to pass St. Mary Woolnoth every morning. By his time the church had
already become a relic, isolated and dwarfed by the larger oªce blocks of the
City’s banks, since people no longer resided within the City and the church
had lost its parishioners.
70 [Mylae]: A city on the northern coast of Sicily, now called Milazzo, o¤ the coast of which there occurred a naval battle between the Romans and the Cartha-ginians in 260 b.c., the first engagement in the first of the Punic Wars. The
Romans won, destroying some fifty ships, an early step in their battle for
commercial domination of the Mediterranean.
74–75 [Oh keep the Dog . . . again!]: Eliot’s note directs the reader to The White Devil (1612), a play by John Webster (c. 1580–c. 1635). It dramatizes numerous acts of political and sexual betrayal, among which Flamineo murders his
own brother Marcello. Their mother, in act V, scene iv, sings a demented
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bsp; dirge over Marcello’s body (her song is given in italics, her spoken words in
roman):
Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren,
Since o’er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm.
But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men,
For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.
They would not bury him ’cause he died in a quarrel,
But I have an answer for them:
Let holy church receive him duly
Since hee paid the church tithes truly.
His wealth is summed, and this is all his store:
This poor men get; and great men get no more.
Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.
Bless you all, good people.
76 [hypocrite lecteur! . . . mon frère]: Eliot’s note cites “Au Lecteur” (“To the
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e d i t o r ’ s a n n o t a t i o n s t o l i n e 7 6
Reader”) (1855), the first poem in Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of evil, 1857), by Charles Baudelaire.
La sottise, l’erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimable remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.
Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.
Sur l’oreiller du mal c’est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.
C’est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nos remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l’Enfer nous descendons d’un pas,
Sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.
Ainsi qu’un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d’une antique catin,
Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin
Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.
Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d’helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.
Se le viol, le poison, le poignard, l’incendie,
N’ont pas encore brodé de leur plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C’est que notre âme, hélas! n’est pas assez hardie.
Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,
Il en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu’il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;
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C’est l’Ennui!—l’oeil chargé d’un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!
The South African poet Roy Campbell (1901–1957) o¤ered this translation of
“To the Reader” in his Poems of Baudelaire: A Translation of Les Fleurs du mal
(New York: Pantheon, 1952):
Folly and error, avarice and vice,
Employ our souls and waste our bodies’ force.
As mangey beggars incubate their lice,
We nourish our innocuous remorse.
Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance.
For our weak vows we ask excessive prices.
Trusting our tears will wash away the sentence,
We sneak o¤ where the muddy road entices.
Cradled in evil, that Thrice-Great Magician,
The Devil, rocks our souls, that can’t resist;
And the rich metal of our own volition
Is vaporised by that sage alchemist.
The Devil pulls the strings by which we’re worked:
By all revolting objects lured, we slink
Hellwards; each day down one more step we’re jerked
Feeling no horror, through the shades that stink.
Just as a lustful pauper bites and kisses
The scarred and shrivelled breast of an old whore,
We steal, along the roadside, furtive blisses,
Squeezing them, like stale oranges, for more.
Packed tight, like hives of maggots, thickly seething,
Within our brains a host of demons surges.
Deep down into our lungs at every breathing
Death flows, an unseen river, moaning dirges.
If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stu¤
Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
It is because we are not bold enough!
Amongst the jackals, leopards, mongrels, apes,
Snakes, scorpions, vultures, that wish hellish din,
Squeal, roar, writhe, gambol, crawl, with monstrous shapes,
In each man’s foul menagerie of sin—
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e d i t o r ’ s a n n o t a t i o n s t o l i n e s 7 7 – 9 2
There’s one more damned than all. He never gambols,
Nor crawls, nor roars, but, from the rest withdrawn,
Gladly of this whole earth would make a shambles
And swallow up existence with a yawn . . .
Boredom! He smokes his hookah, while he dreams
Of gibbets, weeping tears he cannot smother.
You know this dainty monster, too, it seems
Hypocrite reader!—You!—My twin!—My brother!
A Game of Chess: The title is indebted to the play by Thomas Middleton (1580–
1627), A Game at Chess (1624), in which chess becomes an allegory of the
diplomatic games between England and Spain. Middleton also wrote Women
Beware Women (date disputed, 1613–1614 or 1622–1624; first published
1653), a play which Eliot cites in his note to line 137. In act II, scene ii, a
game of chess is played between Livia, who is acting on behalf of the Duke of
Florence, and the mother of Leantio, who is ostensibly watching over Lean-
tio’s young and beautiful wife. The game is a ruse to distract the mother,
whose daughter-in-law is meanwhile being seduced by the duke on the bal-
cony above. The dialogue about the chess game ironically comments on the
di¤erent mating moves being performed overhead by the duke and the
young wife.
77 [The chair she sat in . . . throne]: Eliot cites Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra II.ii.190. Enobarbus, a friend and follower of Mark Antony, describes Cleopatra as she was when floating on her ship down the Cydnus River to
Antony (ll. 192–206):
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
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bsp; The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
92 [laquearia]: A Latin term, in the plural, for a paneled or fretted ceiling. Eliot’s note refers to Virgil, the Aeneid I, 726–727. Aeneas and his crew have just arrived in Carthage after fleeing the ruins of Troy, destroyed by the Greeks
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at the end of the Trojan War; Dido, the queen of Carthage, has given them a
royal welcome and serves them dinner in a banquet hall of great luxury. The
gods have fated her to fall in love with Aeneas during this meal, which will
ensure that she provides him with aid and thus that he will go on to fulfill
his destiny, the foundation of Rome; but to do this he will have to desert her,
prompting her suicide. The story acquires irony from the reader’s knowledge
that Rome will eventually destroy Carthage. “Blazing torches hang down
from the gilded ceiling, / And vanquish the night with their flames.”
93 [co¤ered]: Decorated with sunken panels, though an undertone of “coªn” is
audible.
98 [sylvan scene]: Eliot’s note refers us to Milton’s Paradise Lost IV, 140, a line that is found within a passage that describes Satan as he approaches paradise,
where he will tempt Eve (131–141):
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access deni’d; and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Fir, and branching Palm,
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody Theatre
Of stateliest view.
100: Eliot’s note cites Ovid’s Metamorphoses, VI, 424–674, given here in the prose translation by Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916):
Now Tereus of Thrace had put these [warriors from Argos, Sparta,
Mycenae, and other cities warring against Athens] to flight with his re-
