The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 49
He applied similar principles to other things. “I believe that for a poet to be also a philosopher he would have to be virtually two men; I cannot think of any example of this thorough schizophrenia, nor can I see anything to be gained by it: the work is better performed inside two skulls than one”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 98–99. To Rayner Heppenstall, 29 May 1936: “If you really hope to become a professional novelist I think the out-look is rather unfavourable for the future of your poetry. I mean that while an exception is always possible I think that the verse of a professional novelist must always be a bye-product. I don’t think that a single individual can divide himself so successfully as to make a major art of two occupations requiring very different attitudes.”
For the present edition, the French poems have been newly translated by Paul Keegan into plain prose.
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
6. PUBLICATION OF POEMS (1919)
Leonard Woolf to TSE, 19 Oct 1918: “My wife and I have started a small private Printing Press, and we print and publish privately short works which would not otherwise find a publisher easily. We have been told by Roger Fry that you have some poems which you wish to find a publisher for. We both very much liked your book, Prufrock; and I wonder whether you would care to let us look at the poems with a view to printing them.” Virginia Woolf, Diary 15 Nov 1918: “He produced 3 or 4 poems for us to look at—the fruit of two years.” In advance of book publication, TSE was to offer some poems to Pound for a projected magazine, as Pound reported to his father, 10 Jan 1919: “Several poems by Eliot for Quarterly.” Virginia Woolf, Diary 19 Mar: “Today we finished the printing of Eliot’s poems.” TSE to Rodker, 17 May: “Leonard Woolf’s edition of a few of my poems is now on the market.” Poems by T. S. Eliot, “Printed & published by L. & V. Woolf at THE HOGARTH PRESS, Hogarth House, Richmond”, contained (in order) Sweeney Among the Nightingales, The Hippopotamus, Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service, Whispers of Immortality, Le Directeur (as Le Spectateur), Mélange Adultère de Tout and Lune de Miel.
Leonard Woolf in 1964: “I bought a copy of Prufrock when it was published · · · Tom showed us some of the poems which he had just written and we printed seven of them and published them in the slim paper covered book”, Beginning Again 242. Virginia Woolf, Diary 20 Sept 1920: “I taxed him with wilfully concealing his transitions. He said that explanation is unnecessary. If you put it in, you dilute the facts. You should feel these without explanation · · · A personal upheaval of some kind came after Prufrock, turned him aside from his inclination—to develop in the manner of Henry James. Now he wants to describe externals.” Victoria Glendinning records that “By the beginning of November 1919, 140 copies of Poems had been sold, and Eliot received a cheque for £1.13.10d”, Leonard Woolf (2006).
After this second slender volume, TSE never again published a book consisting entirely of discrete new poems, other than Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
7. PUBLICATION OF ARA VOS PREC
In spring 1919, John Rodker took over from Pound as London editor of the Little Review and began the Ovid Press, which lasted about a year. TSE to Rodker, 17 May 1919: “Leonard Woolf’s edition of a few of my poems is now on the market, and I understand that yours would not be ready before August, so that is all right. I accordingly authorise, or give you permission, or whatever is the legal phrase, to print your special edition of 250 copies of a book to contain the poems in the Egoist Prufrock, the poems in Woolf’s small book, and any others that I may send you in a reasonable time. I enclose three new ones [presumably Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar, Sweeney Erect and Ode]. I should like to know when you want to start on this book, as I want to think over such questions as the order of the poems, dedication; also I have two more quotations, a Latin and a Greek one, to go in as headings. Will you be able to do Greek type? There are two other short Greek quotations · · · I will send you a copy of Woolf’s.” 1 June: “If you haven’t a Prufrock I will get Weaver to send you one. I am sending you Virginia Woolf’s book which seems to me very well done. There is one other French poem, which is in one of the later Little Reviews [Dans le Restaurant], along with some others—you have that have you not? These and the three I sent you and one half-finished one [Gerontion] are all I have up to date. Oh, also the thing in Coterie [A Cooking Egg].” 9 July: “I have the new poem I spoke of—about 75 lines—which will not have appeared anywhere—but I am withholding it until I know you want it, as I may make alterations. It is also quite possible that I may have another about the same length by August 1. So I hope that the book may be more nearly what you had in mind. I think you have all the newer poems: beside the Woolf volume there is a French poem in L. Review (Dans le Restaurant), Bleistein and Sweeney Erect, Cooking Egg—of which I enclose revised version with quotations—and this new one, Gerontion.”
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
Unlike all later gatherings by TSE of his poems, both Ara Vos Prec and US 1920 printed the newer poems, beginning with Gerontion, in a section before those from Prufrock and Other Observations. (On Tues 12 Nov [?1935], TSE wrote to Virginia Woolf about a reader who was “not only an admirer but I believe admires your works in the right order—I mean, I always prefer people to like best what I have written most recently, in that order backwards.”) Within the first half of AraVP, the order was different from that of US 1920 (which became definitive). AraVP had the four French poems together, with Ode the only new poem following them. The careless contents list in AraVP reads: Gerontion, Burbank, Sweeny among the Nightingales, Sweeny erect, Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service, Whispers of Immortality, The Hippopotamus, A Cooking Egg, Lune de Miel, Dans le Restaurant, Le Spectateur, Mélange Adultère de Tout, Ode, Prufrock, Portrait of a Lady, Preludes, Rhapsody of a Windy Night, The Boston Evening Transcript, Aunt Helen, Cousin Nancy, Mr. Apollinax, Conversation Galante, La Figlia Che Piange.
To Rodker, 3 Oct 1919: “It has just occurred to me that the title ARA VUS PREC would do. For it is non-committal about the newness of the contents, and unintelligible to most people.” (For source, see note on volume title.) Gallup: “The error ‘Vus’ for ‘Vos’ in the title was discovered after all the sheets had been printed and was corrected only on the label. Concerning the title, Mr Eliot wrote me on 21 February 1936: ‘The correct title of the book is Ara Vos Prec. It only happened to be Vus on the title page because I don’t know Provençal, and I was quoting from an Italian edition of Dante the editor of which apparently did not know Provençal either. It would seem that there is no such word as Vus in that language.’” The edition of Dante has not been identified. TSE: “As for the Provençal poets, I have not the knowledge to read them at first hand. That mysterious people had a religion of their own which was thoroughly and painfully extinguished by the Inquisition; so that we hardly know more about them than about the Sumerians”, Dante (1929) III. Pound had translated much Provençal poetry, including Arnaut Daniel. The title of Pound’s first book, A Lume Spento (1908), is from Purg. III.
Alongside Beare’s opinion that AraVP was “an elaborate and, let us be honest, rather tasteless and badly printed volume”, TSE wrote “Hear hear!” (Beare ts).
Volume title Ara Vos Prec: [And so I pray you], Purg. XXVI 142–48. The passage from which this is drawn recurs in TSE. Dante (1929) II:
In this canto the Lustful are purged in flame, yet we see clearly how the flame of purgatory differs from that of hell. In hell, the torment issues from the very nature of the damned themselves, expresses their essence; they writhe in the torment of their own perpetually perverted nature. In purgatory the torment of flame is deliberately and consciously accepted by the penitent · · · The souls in purgatory suffer because they wish to suffer, for purgation · · · The canto ends with the superb verses of Arnaut Daniel in his Provençal tongue:
“Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;
consiros vei la passada folor,
e vei
jausen lo jorn, qu’ esper, denan.
[145]
Ara vos prec, per aquella valor
que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
sovegna vos a temps de mon dolor.”
POI S’ASCOSE NEL FOCO CHE GLI AFFINA.
[“I am Arnold, who weeps and goes singing. I see in thought all the past folly. And I see with joy the day for which I hope, before me. And so I pray you, by that virtue which leads you to the topmost of the stair—be mindful in due time of my pain”. Then dived he back into that fire which refines them.]
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
TSE inscribed the first two lines of this Dante passage in Mary Trevelyan’s copy of Ara Vos Prec, and in Mary Hutchinson’s he inscribed the first line and the preceding two (140–42): “‘Tan m’abelis vostre cortes deman, | qu’ ieu no-m puesc, ni-m vueil a vos cobrire | Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan’” [“So doth your courteous request please me that I cannot, nor will I, hide from you. I am Arnold, who weeps and goes singing”]. He inscribed the single line “Tan m’abelis vostre cortes deman” (140) in a copy of US 1920 “For Ezra Pound · · · with the respects of the author. T. S. Eliot 10.iv.20”, and it provided a suggested title for Ash-Wednesday II. The third line (144) provided another such for Ash-Wednesday II: Jausen lo jorn. The fifth line (146) provided an unadopted title for Ash-Wednesday III: Som de l’escalina. The sixth and seventh lines (147, 148) were TSE’s first idea for an epigraph for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The sixth line appears as the last line of Exequy (TSE replaced it with the second line, 143, but then deleted that). The first two words of the sixth line became Ash-Wednesday IV 11, “Sovegna vos”, with TSE’s “dolour”, five lines earlier, deriving from the last word of Dante’s line. The seventh line (148) concludes Dante’s canto. TSE marked it in his earliest copy of the Purgatorio, and inscribed it with the date “30.vii.26” on the half-title page of John Rodker’s copy of Ara Vos Prec (correcting the printed “Vus”). The line stands as The Waste Land [V] 427 (where it is followed by a line from Pervigilium Veneris), it also appears in ts2 of Ash-Wednesday IV (16–29 [7]), and is alluded to in Little Gidding II 92. In his Notes on the Waste Land, TSE quotes Dante’s final four lines (145–48) in his Note to 427.
Pound: “Arnaut speaks not in Italian, but in his own tongue; an honour paid to no one else in the Commedia”, The Spirit of Romance 16. Pound translated Arnaut Daniel’s Canzoni in 1911–12, but a proposed edition foundered. F. S. Flint: “Ezra used to sit on the bed and recite Arnaut Daniel, which sounded like Bantu clicks”, quoted (from conversation) by Patricia Hutchins, Ezra Pound’s Kensington (1965) 56. TSE to Mario Praz, 22 May 1936: “I certainly owe a good deal to Ezra Pound in connection with my slight knowledge of the early Italian poets. I don’t think that I ever corresponded with him on the subject, because my chief association with him was during the period when he lived in London. I owed a good deal to the essay on Dante in his early book The Spirit of Romance · · · I had read a smattering of some of the others, especially the two Guidos and Cino before I knew Pound, but he certainly sharpened my interest in these people, and you must understand that my knowledge has never been more than what everyone would call smattering.”
8. PUBLICATION OF POEMS (1920)
To John Quinn, 8 Sept 1918: “I have a book ready for Knopf, not a very big one, but I think big enough—miscellany of prose (mostly critical) and verse including Prufrock and everything of any merit since Prufrock, the manuscript of which is almost ready to go over. It is not the book I should have liked. I should prefer to keep the prose and verse apart; and the former, I fear, bears marks of haste in the writing in many places. But it is time I had a volume in America, and this is the only way to do it; and Pound’s book [Pavannes and Divisions (1918)] will provide a precedent. I hope you will not find the book a wholly journalistic compilation.”
Valerie Eliot detailed the negotiations (WLFacs xiv, xvi–xvii):
It was Pound who made the final adjustments to the manuscript before sending it to the publisher.
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
At the end of January [1919] Knopf informed Pound that he was rejecting both his and Eliot’s manuscripts, and when they were received by Quinn a fortnight later, he sent them to Boni & Liveright. On 29 April Quinn told Eliot · · · that Knopf “would like to publish your poems alone but not the poems with the prose”. Eliot wrote on 25 May that he wished to alter the manuscript if it were possible, as he had two or three essays and a very few poems (including Gerontion) to add · · · Quinn cabled him to send what he had and on the same day, 30 June, expressed his anger with Liveright who, he believed, had delayed his answer because he knew the lawyer was about to go on holiday, and hoped to force him to accept his terms at the last minute: “… Liveright expected me to put up a guaranty of $100 or $150 in connection with your book. If he had been decent about it, I should have been willing to do so.” Having retrieved the manuscript, Quinn arranged for it to be offered (with a $150 advance) to John Lane; apologizing for the delay, they replied early in August: “Mr. Eliot’s work is no doubt brilliant, but it is not exactly the kind of material we care to add to our list.” Then Quinn contacted Knopf, who “was willing and anxious to publish the poems in a volume by themselves” now that their number had increased. Both men disliked the name Prufrock—which they believed would damage the sales—and decided that the title should be Poems by T. S. Eliot.
The title proposed by TSE for a volume of poems and prose is unknown, but Quinn’s letter of 26 Aug 1919 is clear: “I dislike, apparently as much as Knopf dislikes, the name Prufrock in the title. He thinks that title would hurt the sale. I agree with him.” (TSE to F. T. Prince, 20 Jan 1938, on accepting his poems for publication: “I should like you to consider whether you wish to call the book Poems, or give it some particular title. For my part, I think that Poems is quite satisfactory for a first book.” To Vernon Watkins, 28 Mar 1941: “I agree with you that Poems is the last resource when nothing else can be found.”)
US 1920 jacket front panel:
T. S. Eliot, an American for some years a resident of London, is better known in the English and French worlds of letters than in the United States. And yet, a thinker of keen perceptions and deep understanding, he is certainly one of the most remarkable of the younger poets and critics of today. The occasional appearance of his poems in the magazines has led to an insistent demand for them in book form and here in this slender volume are gathered the very best of them. They are conspicuous for their subtlety of humor and rhythm, the freshness of the author’s vision and the keenness of his observation, the originality and fineness of his style.
[Poems I 29–52 · Textual History II 337–358]
9. TSE ON THE 1920 POEMS
To Edgar Jepson, 22 Sept 1919, comparing Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar and Sweeney Erect: “I am inclined to agree with you about the poems, though I think the first is much better than the second.” To Mary Hutchinson [9 July? 1919]: “‘Bleistein’ (like ‘S among the Nightingales’) is meant to be very serious! and ‘Hippopotamus’ and Webster [Whispers of Immortality] aren’t.” “But these w[e]re really serious men” Whispers of Immortality 12 variant (see Textual History). To Henry Eliot, 15 Feb 1920: “Some of the new poems, the Sweeney ones, especially ‘Among the Nightingales’ and ‘Burbank’ are intensely serious, and I think these two are among the best that I have ever done. But even here I am considered by the ordinary Newspaper critic as a Wit or satirist, and in America I suppose I shall be thought merely disgusting.” To Henry Eliot, 8 Dec 1922: “I consider my Sweeney poems as serious as anything I have ever written, in fact much more serious as well as more mature than the early poems but I do not know anybody who agrees with me on this point except Vivien and William Butler Yeats.” To John Preston, 30 Sept 1943, about Murder in the Cathedral: “The speeches to which you refer are intended to be satirical and should therefore be spoken with complete seriou
sness.” (For satire, see headnote to A Cooking Egg. For TSE on writing a political satire, see headnote to Coriolan, 2. AFTER PUBLICATION.) On Corbière: “there is the same yoking together of the dissimilar, which Johnson long ago noted in Donne and Cowley—with the effect of irony instead of wit. For the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century were witty but not ironic—not ironic in so serious a way as this. Real irony is an expression of suffering, and the greatest ironist was the one who suffered the most—Swift”, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 219 (Clark Lecture VIII). “So · · · we may even come to see Molière in some lights as a more serious dramatist than Corneille or Racine; Wycherley as equally serious (in this sense) with Marlowe”, Shakespearian Criticism I: From Dryden to Coleridge (1934). For the serious intention of The Waste Land and its Notes, see headnote, 6. A HOAX? (William Force Stead’s account of a reading) and 7. THE AUTHOR’S NOTES (Arnold Bennett’s question).
Gerontion
Published in AraVP, US 1920+, Sesame and Penguin / Sel Poems.
Recorded 1933, for the Harvard Poetry Room; released Mar 1934 by Harvard Vocarium Records. Unusually, TSE read the epigraph.
Undated in tss, but dated “July 1919” in the ms copy made by Nancy Cunard. Dated 1917 by TSE in Hayward’s 1925, but 1919 by TSE in Morley’s US 1920. Dated London, 1919 in Poèmes, and assigned to 1919 by Rainey 198.