The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 53
67 De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel: TSE drew lines in Thayer’s AraVP from each of the three names to notes now illegibly erased. Bailhache: pronounced By-ash in TSE’s recording. Fresca: “The white-armed Fresca blinks”, WLComposite 231 (see notes to WLComposite 229–98).
67–71 whirled · · · Bear · · · snow: Cicero: “The furthest tip of either axle-end is called the pole. Round the pole circle the two Bears, which never set” (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor), De natura deorum II xli 105. Measure for Measure III i, CLAUDIO: “thick-ribbed ice; | To be imprison’d in the viewless winds | And blown with restless violence round about | The pendent world” (Braybrooke ed. introduction). TSE: “Whirled in a vortex that shall bring | The world to that destructive fire | Which burns before the ice-cap reigns”, East Coker II 15–17. Sir John Davies: “As the two Beares whom the first mover flings | With a short turne about heavens Axeltree, | In a round daunce for ever wheeling bee”, Orchestra st. 64 (for Davies’s poem see notes to 34 and to East Coker I 25–45; for Chapman’s “axletree”, see note to Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 7–12).
67–72 whirled · · · the wind · · · windy · · · running · · · feathers: Harriet Monroe: “blow like a feather · · · the winds of fate”, Night in State Street in You and I (1914), followed, two poems later, by “ships that outrun the gale · · · a feather of steam · · · whirling”, The Ocean Liner. the wind · · · windy · · · feathers · · · driven: “a feather on the wind: | Driven”, Choruses from “The Rock” VII 3 variant.
[Poem I 33 · Textual History II 341]
68 Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear: glacialis ursæ, shivering with cold (“chilled”, 62); TSE quotes the Latin term within Seneca in Reflections on Contemporary Poetry IV (1919). See note to Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”) 22, “Charles’ Wagon”. circuit of the · · · Bear: OED “circuit”: “the compass, circumference”. OED “arctic”: “L. articus, arctic-us, Gr. ἀρκτικ-ός of the Bear, northern, f. ἄρκτος bear, the constellation Ursa Major.” Hence, Arctic Circle. (“The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit”, Choruses from “The Rock” I 2.)
69 fractured atoms: Rutherford’s splitting of the nitrogen atom was reported by The Times on 7 June 1919, some 15 years after he began speculating on potential uses for its vast stores of energy. TSE: “ghosts, influences, strange elements with terrifying properties (‘the destruction of the atom’ will probably flourish for several years in bad detective stories) are all in the same category”, Homage to Wilkie Collins (1927). On Henry Adams: “Wherever this man stepped, the ground did not simply give way, it flew into particles”, A Sceptical Patrician (1919). In Grierson’s Introduction to Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century (1921) xxvi, TSE underlined the words “disintegrating collision in a sensitive mind of the old tradition and the new learning”. TSE on Gertrude Stein: “I am inclined to wonder · · · whether the mechanical complication of life does not bring about · · · simplification of sensibility · · · In this Hogarth essay · · · the atom is dissociated”, Charleston, Hey! Hey! (1927).
Describing the “profound melancholy” of Lucretius II 139–74 (in terms similar to Gerontion, “fatigue of the will, lassitude in pleasure, corruption and disintegration in society”), George Santayana wrote of “the final dissipation of the atoms of his soul, escaping from a relaxed body, to mingle and lose themselves in the universal flow”, Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe (1910) 44–45 (Gray 219). TSE called this “one of the most brilliant of Mr. Santayana’s works” (The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 48). TSE had taken Santayana’s course “The Philosophy of History: Ideals of Society, Religion, Art and Science in their Historical Development” at Harvard in 1909. See note to The Hollow Men V 31. Gull against the wind: “The gull comes against the rain”, Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, citing “The Gull cometh not, but against a tempest” (against = in anticipation of).
69–73 variant a shilling against oblivion: Troilus and Cressida III iii: “alms for oblivion”.
[Poem I 33 · Textual History II 341]
70–71 Belle Isle, or running on the Horn · · · the Gulf: alongside “Belle Isle” in Thayer’s AraVP, TSE wrote “near Labrador (not Belle Isle France)”, with a line from “Horn” to a note now illegibly erased. Belle Isle is off the coast of Labrador, north of Newfoundland which partly encloses the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Liners en route from Europe to Montreal pass through the straits of Belle Isle, as TSE did in 1932. Many ships have run aground on Cape Horn (as though impaled? see note to Ash-Wednesday V 22, VI 4), but many run on round it. The Horn could also refer to the zodiacal signs Aries and Taurus, and to the constellation Ursa Minor (see note to 67–71 and OED “horn” n. 1c). Belle Isle · · · the Gulf: Tennyson: ‘It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: | It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles”, Ulysses 62–63 (Jain 1991). running: OED “run” 10a: “To sail swiftly or easily”, citing “With a fair wind we ran past the Bird rocks”. 10b: “To sail or be driven on or upon the shore, rocks, etc.” the Gulf claims: OED “gulf” 3: “An absorbing eddy; a whirlpool. In later use chiefly fig., that which devours or swallows up anything.” TSE: “Entering the whirlpool”, The Waste Land [IV] 318. In Seneca in Elizabethan Translation (1927), TSE quotes John Studley: “O Lethes Lake of woful Soules the joy that therein swimme, | And eake ye glummy Gulphes destroy, destroy me wicked wight” (xxx). claims: The Ladies’ Companion May 1837: “The Pestilence which walketh in darkness · · · claimed a victim.” The Times 1 Aug 1908: “the town of Winchelsea was claimed by the sea”.
70–72 Horn · · · an old man: Edward Lear: “There was an Old Man of Cape Horn, | Who wished he had never been born; | So he sat on a chair, | till he died of despair, | That dolorous Man of Cape Horn”. Also “There was an Old Man of Thermopylæ” (TSE: “an old man · · · the hot gates” 1, 3); “There was an Old Man in a Marsh” (TSE: “an old man · · · marsh · · · an old man”, 1, 5, 15). For Lear, see Five-Finger Exercises headnote to IV and V.
71 White feathers in the snow: A. E. W. Mason: “Three white feathers fluttered out of the box · · · They lay like flakes of snow”, The Four Feathers (1902), a bestseller about Gordon at Khartoum, ch. IV. “A white feather could mean nothing but an accusation of cowardice”, ch. XXI. From Aug 1914, the “Order of the White Feather” shamed men into uniform. TSE’s efforts to obtain a commission in Intelligence culminated in a telegram (Missouri History Museum) to his brother in Chicago, 2 Aug 1918:
ELIOT
ENQUIRE CHANCE TRAINING COMMISSION MILITARY OR NAVAL IF RETURN AMERICA BA NKING JOURNALISM LANGUAGES YACHTING MARRIED THIRTY REPLY IMMEDIATELY MARLOW
ELIOT
Vivien Eliot’s letters to Mary Hutchinson that month show that she was desperate to save him from active service. The couple remained friends of Ottoline Morrell and Bertrand Russell, who were at the centre of the pacifist movement. In his Temple edition of Dante, TSE underlined “che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto” [him who from cowardice made the great refusal], Inf. III 60. Hayward compared the phrase to The Waste Land [I] 69 (see note). Dante’s line may colour “the refusal propagates a fear. Think | Neither fear nor courage saves us · · · our heroism” (43–45). For Paul Elmer More’s first book, The Great Refusal (1894), see notes to The Waste Land [IV] 314 and Little Gidding II 67–71.
71–73 White feathers in the snow · · · An old man driven by the Trades | To a sleepy corner: Pound: “Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern | In icy feathers”, The Seafarer 23–24 (see note to 1–5). TSE: “waiting for the death wind, | Like a feather · · · memory in corners”, A Song for Simeon 4–6 (Kenner 216). See notes to Choruses from “The Rock” VII 3 variant and 16 variant. driven by the Trades | To a sleepy corner: OED “doldrum” (usually in pl. doldrums) 3: “A region in which ships are specially liable to be becalmed · · · where the trade winds meet and neutralize each other”. (Also 1: “a dull, drowsy or sluggish fellow. Obs. citing
1812: “a long sleeper”.) Henry Adams: “Adams would rather, as choice, have gone back to the east, if it were only to sleep forever in the trade-winds under the southern stars”, The Education of Henry Adams, ch. XXI. Thayer’s AraVP has a line drawn by TSE from “Trades” to a note now illegibly erased.
73, 75 corner · · · brain: “some close corner of my brain”, Present in Absence attributed to Donne in The Golden Treasury but probably by John Hoskins.
[Poem I 33 · Textual History II 341]
74–75 Tenants of the house, | Thoughts: Tennyson: “Life and Thought have gone away · · · Careless tenants they!” The Deserted House 1–4 (Musgrove 42).
75 Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season: Austin Dobson: “Thought gets dry in the brain”, in two successive stanzas of In Town, which in Carolyn Wells’s A Vers de Société Anthology (1907) is immediately preceded by Dobson’s A Song within the Four Seasons (Ricks 1998). For Dobson see notes to A Cooking Egg 1 and 26, and Burnt Norton I 16. dry brain: Tennyson: “dry brain”, Fatima 26 (Musgrove 42). Bacon: “The Ape is also a witty Beast, and hath a dry Brain”, Sylva Sylvarum (9th ed., 1670) Century X, 978. Thomas Willis: “those that have a hot and dry Brain are found more prone to a Frenzy”, The London Practice of Physick (1685) 454–55. Samuel Crook: “if the brain be too hot and dry, it receives no impression · · · the dry brain of age”, Divine Characters (1658) 615.
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
Published in Art & Letters (edited by Frank Rutter and Osbert Sitwell) Summer 1919, where this and Sweeney Erect were editorially numbered I and II. Then AraVP, US 1920+ and Penguin / Sel Poems.
No recording known.
Undated in tss. Dated “? London 1918” in Isaacs US 1920; and 1918 by TSE in both Morley’s US 1920 and Hayward’s 1925. Profile: Ezra Pound: An Anthology Collected in MCMXXXI (Milan, 1932) gives “about 1915 or 1916”. TSE showed the poem to Sacheverell Sitwell on 1 Mar 1919 along with The Death of the Duchess (see its headnote). Soon afterwards Sitwell published a series of poems imitating (or parodying) TSE’s quatrain poems. TSE sent Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar to John Rodker 17 May 1919.
TSE on discovering a Venetian tale: “When I was eleven or twelve years old, and once a week or so I had, like many children, to visit a dentist to have my teeth straightened. In this dentist’s waiting room · · · was a complete set of Edgar Poe’s Works; and while waiting for my appointments I read the whole of Poe’s prose and verse writing. One story—and a highly romantic story too, is called The Assignation. As the epigraph to this story I found the lines ‘Stay for me there! I shall not fail | To meet thee in that hollow vale.’ Followed by the attribution to Bishop King”, Personal Choice (1957). King’s poem is An Exequy To his Matchless never to be forgotten Friend. (For Poe’s tale, see notes to Gerontion 64–65 and The Waste Land [I] 36–38, [II] 83–88, 85–95.)
Wilkie Collins’s novella The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice, was praised by TSE in Wilkie Collins and Dickens (1927). Ricks 34–35:
Collins’s anguished femme fatale is the Countess Narona (kin to “the countess” of Eliot’s epigraph and to the poem’s Princess Volupine; a cigar is bizarrely important to Collins’s plot; so is the Countess’s concealment as “Mrs James” (the poem is a Jamesian story); and the central blackmail in the story is the threat by the Countess’s brother to sell himself: “‘The woman who will buy me’, he says, ‘is in the next room to us at this moment. She is the wealthy widow of a Jewish usurer.’”
[Poems I 33–35 · Textual History II 341–42]
Matthiessen 9 on James’s The Aspern Papers: “Eliot has said that the method in this story—‘to make a place real not descriptively but by something happening there’—was what stimulated him to try to compress so many memories of past moments of Venice into his dramatic poem, superficially so different from James.” (Matthiessen’s acknowledgements, 1935, thank TSE “for the great benefit of conversation during his recent year at Harvard”.)
Title Burbank: Luther Burbank (1849–1926), American horticulturalist known for cross-breeding, whose works appeared in 12 vols in New York and London in 1914. Crawford 65–66: “Luther Burbank was a plant breeder over whom there was considerable controversy · · · hailed by the Nation as ‘the most ingenious and successful of all hybridizers’ [13 July 1911] · · · Burbank’s ideas did not stop at plant life · · · but went on to deal with ‘improving the human plant’.” Grover Smith 1983 9: “Burbank is all about breeding.” (“Thus art ennobles even wealth and birth, | And breeding raises prostrate art from earth”, WLComposite 285 ^ 286 [16–17]; from a fragment with affinities to the activities of Princess Volupine.) Pound: “Even Bose with his plant experiments seems intent on the plant’s capacity to feel · · · a persistent notion of pattern from which only a cataclysm or a Burbank can shake it”, Cavalcanti (1934) in Literary Essays ed. TSE (1954). Burbank with a: “Burbank Steps Forward with a Super-Wheat”, headline in Popular Science (US) Jan 1919. Baedeker: for Karl Baedeker’s Handbook for Travellers, London and its Environs, see notes to Mr. Apollinax 2–5 and 4, 13. TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) includes “Five Baedekers”. Arthur Symons on Gautier: “It is not everyone who can write poetry like the Emaux et Camées · · · to say nothing of such inspired Baedekers as the Voyage en Espagne”, Studies in Two Literatures (1897) 259. Pound: “This essay on Henry James is a dull grind of an affair, a Baedeker to a continent”, opening paragraph of his Henry James in Little Review Aug 1918 (Literary Essays). Bleistein: “Bleistein and Company, fur and skin merchants, were established first in St. James Place, Garlick Hill, and then just around the corner in Upper Thames Street · · · the founder, Mr. S. Bleistein, had been engaged in the fur trade in London since the eighteen nineties · · · He used to smoke Coronas, and frequently lunched at the Cannon Street Grill” (B. K. Martin, N&Q July 1967). Commenting upon Dirge, Valerie Eliot emphatically pronounced the name “Blest-in”, BBC broadcast 2 Nov 1971. TSE to Pound, 15 July 1939, of Canto LII: “if you remain keen on jew‑baiting, that is your affair, but that name of Rothschild should be omitted. Obvious to me from start, but you cant expect all minds to work as fast as mine. Alternative blank or fancy name, and if you care to have it will present you with Bleistein which is almost of equal value METRICALLY.” with a Cigar: Kipling: “The butt of a dead cigar · · · And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a smoke”, The Betrothed (epigraph: “‘You must choose between me and your cigar.’ BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885”). Kipling has “the Moor”, and TSE’s epigraph quotes Othello, the Moor of Venice. For Kipling’s poem, see note to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 60, 71. TSE: “with cigars”, Interlude in London 7.
[Poem I 34–35 · Textual History II 342]
Epigraph] E. V. Lucas’s A Wanderer in Venice (1914) follows the convention of giving chapter summaries as short phrases between dashes, a practice TSE followed for this poem alone. F. W. Bateson characterised the epigraph as a literary conundrum or puzzle, to which the answer is “Venice” (Criticism’s Lost Leader in Newton-De Molina ed.). Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire: Gautier: “Tra la, tra la, la, la, la laire!”, cry of the gondolier, Variations sur le carnaval de Venise II: Sur les lagunes 1. nil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera fumus: “nothing is permanent unless divine; the rest is smoke”, motto on an emblematic candle in a St. Sebastian by Mantegna which TSE saw in Venice in 1911. (“Nil” is a common contraction of the more correct “nihil”. Which of these Mantegna wrote is disputed, but guidebooks that TSE may have used give “nil”.) TSE in Thayer’s AraVP: “Lines on Mantegna’s great St. Sebastian in the Ca d’Oro Venice”. To Conrad Aiken, 19 July 1914: “There are three great St. Sebastians (so far as I know): 1) Mantegna (ca d’Oro) 2) Antonello of Messina (Bergamo) 3) Memling (Brussels).” Less than a week later, on 25 July, he sent Aiken a ts of The Love Song of St. Sebastian. To Sydney Schiff, 24 Mar 1920: “Mantegna is a painter for whom I have a particular admiration—there is none who appeals to me more strongly.
Do you know the St. Sebastian in the Franchetti’s house on the Grand Canal?” In the summer of 1911, TSE had visited the Ca d’Oro—“Mantegna. First quality”—and Bergamo, noting: “Ant. da Messina: St. Sebastian” (notes on Italy, Houghton). the gondola stopped, the old palace was there, how charming its grey and pink: Henry James: “the gondola stopped, the old palace was there; it was a house of the class which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified name. ‘How charming! It’s grey and pink!’ my companion exclaimed”, The Aspern Papers I. The quotation had been contracted to the words that TSE used (though with different punctuation) in Ford Madox Hueffer’s Henry James: A Critical Study (1913) 141 (John J. Espey, American Literature Jan 1958). TSE began both The Hawthorne Aspect (1918) and Observations (1918) with the book by Hueffer (later Ford). To Eleanor Hinkley, 1 Apr 1918: “I believe that the Aspern Papers, the American Scene, and the Middle Years are very good · · · I am reading R. Hudson now in preparation for an article for the James number of the Little Review.” goats and monkeys: “Goats and monkeys!” Othello, the Moor of Venice IV i. Hueffer also quoted (140, 143) the words “Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats—all human life is there”, from James’s The Madonna of the Future (Espey). with such hair too!: Browning: “Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold | Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old”, final lines of A Toccata of Galuppi’s (see note to 12). The Venetian composer Galuppi Baldessare (1706–85) was maestro di capella at St. Mark’s. so the countess passed on · · · and so departed: concluding words of John Marston’s masque The Hon. Lord and Lady of Huntingdon’s Entertainment of their right Noble Mother Alice, Countess Dowager of Derby, the first night of her honour’s arrival at the house of Ashby (1607?). Marston, like all the other components of the epigraph, has a Venetian link: Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge—both discussed by TSE in John Marston (1934)—are Venetian (see note to 9–11). All six quotations were identified by I. A. Richards, New Statesman 20 Feb 1926. TSE summarised them in Thayer’s AraVP: “Gautier | Lines on Mantegna’s great St. Sebastian in the Ca d’Oro, Venice. | the Aspern Papers | Othello | Browning: Toccata of Galuppi’s. | from a masque by Marston”.