I was about to say mine,
35
I shall dine
elsewhere in future,
to clense this suture
Phlebas the Phenicien, fairest of men,
Straight and tall, having been born in a caul
40
Lost luck at forty, and lay drowned
Two long weeks in sea water, toosed of the
streams under sea, carried of currents
Forgetful of the gains
forgetful of the long days of sea fare
45
Forgetful of mew’s crying and the foam swept coast
of Cornwall,
Born back at last, after days
to the ports and stays of his young life,
A fair man, ports of his former seafare
50
thither at last
20] “What can one do at the age of eight, ts 1st reading
32 with, …] with, well, … ts 1st reading
37 ^ 38] new leaf ts (so line space is indeterminate)
[Poem I 45–46 · Textual History II 349–50]
TSE to John Hayward, 27 Dec 1939: “my own infancy, by comparison with yours, seems to have been remarkably protected from, at least, such sexual precocity. True, I had my first love affair at (as nearly as I can compute from confirmatory evidence) the age of five, with a young lady of three, at a seaside hotel. Her name was Dorothy: that is all I know. My feeling towards her was expressed entirely by bullying, teasing, and making her fetch and carry: yet I remember clearly that I pined for a bit after we were separated in the autumn. That was my preparation for reading (some years later) the Vita Nuova. My relations with later inamoratae (?) were more and more distant and respectful: a young lady with ringlets (name unknown) who took the part of the angel child who died, in a performance called The Birds’ Christmas Carol at another seaside resort—later ladies who have names: Jane Jones, Margaret Lionberger with freckles, Effie Bagnall whose family were considered distinctly nouveaux riches, and the reigning beauty of the dancing school: Edwine Thornburgh herself, who subsequently became Lady Peek of Peek Frean & Co Ltd.”
Title Dans le Restaurant: A two-word note against this in Thayer’s AraVP is now illegibly erased.
1, 5 Le garçon · · · des gueux: to Amar Bhattacharyya, 22 June 1964: “I never thought of the ‘garçon’ in Dans le Restaurant as being anything in particular. The phrase ‘le jour de lessive des gueux’ was pure invention on my part and gives no clue to the identity of the waiter.”
7 Je te prie, au moins, ne bave pas dans la soupe: Rimbaud: “Mon triste cœur bave à la poupe · · · Ils y lancent des jets de soupe” [My poor heart dribbles at the stern · · · They squirt upon it jets of soup], Le Cœur volé [The Cheated Heart] 1, 3 (Grover Smith 37).
14 un instant de puissance et de délire: Tourneur: “For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute”, The Revenger’s Tragedy III iv (see note to The Waste Land [V] 403, 405).
15 vieux lubrique: Laforgue: “le soir, doux au vieillard lubrique” [evening, sweet to the old lecher], La Première Nuit [The First Night] 1 (Grover Smith 37).
20 Mais alors, tu as ton vautour: TSE’s secretary to E. M. Stephenson, 23 Oct 1942: “Mr. Eliot · · · tells me that this line was suggested by a phrase in a book by André Gide called Prométhée Mal Enchaîné. In this particular passage, Prometheus is giving a lecture which is interrupted from time to time by his friend the eagle having to gnaw at Prometheus’ liver. Prometheus’ lecture is generally on the text: it is necessary to have an eagle.” TSE: “As André Gide’s Prometheus said, in the lecture which he gave before a large audience in Paris: Il faut avoir un aigle”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 69. To Geoffrey Faber, 7 July 1936, concerning a comic accusation signed by their colleague C. W. Stewart: “it would be doing Stewart too much honour to refer to him as a vulture. Morley’s friend André Gide once said il faut avoir un aigle. He never said il faut avoir un Stewart.” See note to A Cooking Egg 27, 29.
21 les rides: Grover Smith 36: “not merely smears or wrinkles but the ripples of waves stripping clean the sailor’s bones”.
[Poem I 45 · Textual History II 349–50]
26 les cris des mouettes: Laforgue on Corbière: “Mais jamais d’ordures, d’obscénités voyantes de commis. Strident comme le cri des mouettes et comme elles jamais las · · · satyr libidineux” [But never any filth or the manifest obscenities of the travelling salesman. As strident as the cry of gulls, and like them untiring · · · lubricious satyr], Littérature in Mélanges Posthumes (1903) 119. See note to 15, “vieux lubrique”.
29 sa vie antérieure: Baudelaire sonnet La Vie antérieure [The Previous Life].
Whispers of Immortality
Published in Little Review Sept 1918, then 1919+ and Penguin / Sel Poems.
Recorded 13 May 1947, Harvard, as part of the Morris Gray Poetry Reading.
Undated in any of the five typings. Dated “? London 1917” in Isaacs US 1920 and 1917 by TSE in Hayward’s 1925 but 1918 by TSE in Morley’s US 1920. Assigned to 1917–18 by Rainey 198. See note to 1–6 for Joyce in May 1918.
For Pound’s extensive comments on the drafts, see Textual History.
In reply to Kenneth Allott’s conjecture, 20 June 1935, that Whispers of Immortality “irritates you for coming to pieces in your hand with sharp edges in too many directions”, TSE wrote, 12 Nov 1935: “What you say seems to be correct.”
Title Whispers of Immortality: common 19th-century diction. Whitman called a sequence of poems Whispers of Heavenly Death. of Immortality: TSE on the Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood: “Wordsworth’s Ode is a superb piece of verbiage”, The Silurist (1927). Charlotte Eliot to Bertrand Russell, 18 Jan 1916: “In Bergson’s emphasis on life, its power and indestructibility, I think some persons found an intimation of immortality.” Among the titles suggested for the poem by Pound was Night Thoughts on immorality (see Textual History), invoking Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality by Edward Young. TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) includes “Young’s Night Thoughts (T. Stearns)”.
Unadopted title Try this on Your Piano: sheet music was advertised in the US under this headline during the 1880s and 1890s.
1 Webster: “The greatest of Shakespeare’s followers is undoubtedly John Webster. His skill in dealing with horror; the beauty of his verse”, lecture XVIII on Syllabus: Elizabethan Literature (1918). See note to 2–5. possessed: OED “possess” 1d: “To take up the attention or thoughts of; to occupy, engross. Obs.”, with last citation 1719. “possessed” 2a. “Inhabited and controlled by a demon or spirit”.
1–6 death | And saw the skull beneath the skin · · · bulbs instead of balls | Stared from the sockets of the eyes: Richard III I iv, Clarence’s dreamscape:
Inestimable stones, unvalu’d jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea.
Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept—
As ’twere in scorn of eyes—reflecting gems,
That woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep.
[Poems I 46–48 · Textual History II 350–55]
For TSE and drowning, see note to Mr. Apollinax 11–15. (Ever since US 1920, the account of drowned Phlebas which ends Dans le Restaurant has immediately preceded Whispers of Immortality, the French poem having been detached from the other three with which it had been grouped in AraVP.) death · · · breastless creatures · · · lipless grin · · · eyes: Joyce: “death · · · his eyes · · · His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air”, Ulysses episode III (Proteus) in Little Review May 1918 (see dating in headnote). For the episode, see note to Dirge 1–7.
1–9 Webster · · · death · · · skull · · · Donne: in his copy of Lucas’s edition of Webster (1927), 36, TSE wrote “!” beside a paragraph which ends: “In Donne, in Webster, in Burton, in Browne, in Hamlet appears this figure of the subtle humanity of the later
Renaissance gazing in fascination on the skull of that more childish world which has suffered and gone down to death before it.” TSE reviewed the edition, which is dedicated to John Maynard Keynes, in John Webster (1928).
2 the skull beneath the skin: Grover Smith 40 points to Gautier:
La squelette était invisible
Au temps heureux de l’Art païen;
L’homme, sous la forme sensible,
Content du beau, ne cherchait rien.
[The skeleton was invisible in the good old time of pagan art; satisfied with beauty, man searched for nothing beneath the tangible.]
Bûchers et tombeaux [Pyres and Tombs] 1–4
TSE quoted Gautier’s first two lines in both The Post-Georgians (1919) and Andrew Marvell (1921). Report of TSE’s lecture to the Poetry Society of Maryland, 2 Feb 1933: “‘Suppose you went into a drawing room where the people were all without their skins,’ he suggested. ‘At first it would be hard to get used to seeing people like that · · · It would be so entirely new, seeing anyone without human skin · · · Then conceive that you found them more comfortable without their skins. You would then adjust yourself to the sight · · · Afterward you would find them, possibly, more interesting. Their eyes would be more expressive. The play of their muscles would be fascinating’”, The Sun (Baltimore) 3 Feb 1933. Turgenev: “A sumptuous, brilliantly lighted hall; a number of ladies and gentlemen · · · and suddenly · · · from every head and from every face, slipped off the delicate covering of skin, and instantaneously exposed the deadly whiteness of skulls · · · those lumpy bony balls, and the rolling in them of other smaller balls, the balls of meaningless eyes”, The Skulls in Poems in Prose, tr. Constance Garnett (1897). TSE reviewed Edward Garnett’s Turgenev in Egoist Dec 1917, and A Sportsman’s Sketches (2 vols.) is given in TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934). For poetry compared to “a body stripped of its skin”, see headnote to The Waste Land, 6. A HOAX?
2–4 skull · · · under ground · · · grin: D. H. Lawrence: “My love lies underground | With her face upturned to mine, | And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss | That ended her life and mine · · · How is it I grin then, and chuckle”, Constancy of a Sort 1–4, 55 (English Review Sept 1917; later retitled Hymn to Priapus).
[Poem I 47 · Textual History II 351]
2–5 skull beneath · · · Daffodil bulbs: The White Devil V iv, Enter BRACHIANO’S ghost, in his leather cassock and breeches, boots and cowl; in his hand a pot of lily-flowers, with a skull in it · · · FLAMINEO: “A dead man’s skull beneath the roots of flowers!—” (For the scene, see note to The Waste Land [I] 71–75.) The Golden Treasury includes Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (see note on the title Whispers of Immortality) and “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (as The Daffodils).
2, 9 skull beneath the skin · · · Donne: for TSE on The Relique, see note to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 63–64.
3 breastless creatures: Ralph Hodgson: “Blind sires and breastless mothers of his fate”, The Journeyman in Poems (1916).
3–4 under ground · · · grin: “Subterrene laughter”, Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”) 2. “His laughter was submarine and profound · · · under a chair | Or grinning”, Mr. Apollinax 8, 13–14.
4 lipless grin: Thomas Lovell Beddoes: “And, when the world is old and dead, the thin wit shall find the angel’s record of man’s works and deeds, and write with a lipless grin on the innocent first page for a title, ‘Here begins Death’s Jest-Book’”, Death’s Jest-Book II iii (R. G. Howarth, N&Q 24 June 1939). TSE’s library: Bodleian list (1934) includes the Muses’ Library Beddoes (ed. Ramsay Colles). To John Lehmann, 10 Apr 1945: “Beddoes, of course, I know very well”. (For Beddoes’s father, also Thomas, see note to 20.) Byron: “Mark how its lipless mouth grins without breath!” Don Juan IX xi.
5–6 Daffodil bulbs · · · the eyes: Harold Monro: “the surface of the land | Budded into head and hand · · · blossomed into eyes. | | A flower is looking through the ground”, Strange Meetings VIII–IX in Poetry Sept 1916 (near TSE’s four poems headed Observations) and, revised, in the volume Strange Meetings, which TSE praised in Reflections on Contemporary Poetry I (1917). TSE wrote the obituary of Monro in The Times, 17 Mar 1932, and a critical note to his Collected Poems (1933). OED “blind” 12: “Of plants: Without buds or eyes, or without a terminal flower” (Betty McCue, personal communication).
9 Donne, I suppose, was such another: “Coleridge was one of those unhappy persons—Donne, I suspect, was such another—of whom one might say, that if they had not been poets, they might have made something of their lives”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 68. Donne: pronounced Don in TSE’s recording of 1947, despite the pun in A Hymne to God the Father: “Thou hast done”. To Carlton F. Wells, 12 Dec 1934: “I cannot speak on this subject with personal authority, but I believe that it is pretty well agreed amongst scholars that the correct pronunciation at his period was certainly Dun. The date at which the pronunciation became changed does not appear to be definitely known.” H. J. C. Grierson: “the name was pronounced so as to rime with ‘done’ and was frequently spelt ‘Dun’ or ‘Dunne’”, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature IV (1909) ch. XI.
9, 12, 15, 18 Donne · · · experience · · · flesh · · · emphasis: “A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility”, The Metaphysical Poets (1921). “He is a little of the religious spellbinder · · · the flesh-creeper, the sorcerer of emotional orgy. We emphasize this aspect to the point of the grotesque. Donne had a trained mind; but without belittling the intensity or the profundity of his experience, we can suggest that this experience was not perfectly controlled”, Lancelot Andrewes (1926).
[Poem I 47 · Textual History II 351–52]
10–12 found no substitute for sense · · · penetrate · · · beyond experience: Bradley: “From mere pleasure and pain we may pass on to feeling · · · in either of these senses, is it possible to consider feeling as real · · · finite content is necessarily determined from the outside; its external relations · · · penetrate its essence”, Appearance and Reality ch. XXVI; TSE underlined “external” and wrote: “is this not merely a spatial metaphor? For how cd ‘external relations’ ‘penetrate its essence’?” found no substitute for sense · · · Expert beyond experience: “expression · · · Explosion · · · experiment · · · Experience · · · not a substitute for · · · experience”, A Note on War Poetry 1–23 (variant: “no substitute for”). To Hayward, 2 Feb 1931: “faith is not a substitute for anything” (see note to The Dry Salvages II 47–48). “For Arnold the best poetry supersedes both religion and philosophy. I have tried to indicate the results of this conjuring trick elsewhere. The most generalised form of my own view is simply this: that nothing in this world or the next is a substitute for anything else; and if you find that you must do without something, such as religious faith or philosophic belief, then you must just do without it”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 113. (Van Wyck Brooks: “we have · · · ingenious devices for manufacturing music and pictures, which are, as we say, ‘just about as good’ as the true things · · · most of us are quite content with the substitute”, The Wine of the Puritans 43.) In ts1 (where the lines are differently disposed), TSE had “He found no substitute for death”. Expert beyond experience: Pound: “she also will believe it, | Being expert from experience”, Homage to Sextus Propertius (1919) viii 32–33 (R. G. Howarth, N&Q 24 June 1939).
11, 21–22 variants Our sighs pursue th’ elusive shade · · · Our sighs pursue the vanishd shade | And breathe a sanctified amen: Lancelot Andrewes: “So be it, to have our fast conclude with the hypocrite’s Amen;—no more fearful punishment in the world”, Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1622 (on Matthew 6: 16: “be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance”). TSE: “Our prayers dismiss the parting shade | And breathe a hypocrite’s amen!” Elegy 1–2.
13 He knew the anguish of the marrow: Genesis 42: 21:
“We saw the anguish of his soul.”
17 Grishkin: described as “the flamboyant whore” in G. Jones (213), but in his copy TSE underlined “whore” and wrote “not necessarily”. Pound to H. B. Parkes, 16 Dec [1931?], on influencing a fellow writer’s subject matter: “Only case where I tried it, it was a success. I led Eliot up to her wot posterity now knows as ‘Grishkin’ with the firm intuito that a poem wd. result, intention that it should” (Gallup 1970 11). Pound in 1960: “I took Parson Elyot to see the Prima Ballerina [Serafima Astafieva], and it evoked ‘Grushkin’”, Pavannes & Divagations 161.
17–20 Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye · · · bliss: braced by TSE in Thayer’s AraVP with “cf. Gautier ‘Carmen est maigre’”. Théophile Gautier in Emaux et Camées: “Carmen est maigre,—un trait de bistre | Cerne son oeil de gitana” [Carmen is thin,—a line of bistre rings her gypsy eye], Carmen 1–2 (Taupin); the lines had been quoted in Pound’s To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers in Lustra (1916), later included by TSE in Pound’s Selected Poems (Southam).
[Poem I 47 · Textual History II 352–53]
19 Uncorseted, her: Alan Seeger: “Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays, | In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness”, Paris II in Poems (1917), reviewed by TSE, Egoist Dec 1917. TSE knew Seeger from Harvard.
20 pneumatic: OED b: “Applied to things which are inflated · · · esp. to the tyres of the wheels of bicycles, and the like”, with “the india-rubber pneumatic tyre · · · so much in favour to-day” (1896) and “Cyclists owe much to the inventor of the pneumatic tyre” (1898). (Pound: “Grishkin’s Dunlap tyre boozum”, page of comments on Whispers of Immortality ts3b: see Textual History.) OED e: “humorous · · · Of a woman: having a well-rounded figure, esp. a large bosom; of or pertaining to a woman having such attributes”, with this as first citation. 4a: “Belonging or relating to spirit or spiritual existence”. 3c: citing Dunglison’s Medical Lexicon (1842): “Pneumatic Physicians, name given to a sect of physicians, at the head of whom was Athenæus, who made health and disease to consist in the different proportions of an element—which they called Pneuma, πνεῦμα—to those of the other elementary principles.” For Athenæus see note on the Bolo poem Deipnosophistic (sent to Dobrée, 29 Sept [1927]). TSE on Benlowes: “His most considerable poem is called Pneumato-Sarco-Machia: otherwise Theophila’s Spiritual Warfare; and, so far as one can make out, has something to do with theology, and the struggles of the human soul”, The Minor Metaphysicals (1930). Of Guido Cavalcanti: “very likely a heretic, if not a sceptic—as evidenced partly by his possibly having held some pneumatic philosophy and theory of corpuscular action which I am unable to understand”, After Strange Gods 42. pneumatic bliss: experiments with nitrous oxide by Humphry Davy at Thomas Beddoes’s Pneumatic Institute in 1798 gave intoxicating pleasure to Coleridge, Southey and others.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 61
