Their revisions concentrated particularly on Part III, with Pound recommending that its first page-and-a-half be deleted. When TSE drafted a new opening, ms3 (WLFacs 24/25), upside down on the verso of the first page of the ribbon copy, he did not need to write it out in full, because he was incorporating some lines already drafted, so he used the shorthand “(Sweet Thames etc)” and “By the waters”.
In Paris, Pound introduced TSE to Horace Liveright, who just the previous month had published Pound’s Poems 1918–21. Liveright made a tentative offer, sight unseen, of $150 for TSE’s unfinished poem, against a royalty of 15 per cent. TSE appears to have disclosed the scale of the poem but not the title. Liveright wrote to Pound from London on 11 Jan 1922: “I’m disappointed that Eliot’s material is so short. Can’t he add anything? And does it all appear in one issue of the Dial—pls let me know” (Bird/Pound papers, Yale). He may have been concerned that it would be neither sufficiently long nor sufficiently new to publish as a book.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
After nearly a fortnight in France, TSE travelled back to London over the weekend of 14–15 Jan (“He will be back on Monday”, Vivien to Mary Hutchinson, 12 Jan), while Vivien went to Lyons. Discussions with Pound of the drafts then resumed by post, apparently using a new typescript, although no trace of this survives.
From Paris, Pound wrote to TSE in London on [24 Jan], enclosing a commendatory verse:
MUCH improved. I think your instinct had led you to put the remaining superfluities at the end. I think you had better leave ’em, abolish ’em altogether or for the present.
IF you MUST keep ’em, put em at the beginng before the April cruelest month. The POEM ends with the Shantih, shantih, shantih.
One test is whether anything wd. be lacking if the last three were omitted. I dont think it wd.
The song, has only two lines which you can use in the body of the poem. The other two, at least the first does not advance on earlier stuff. And even the sovegna doesnt hold with the rest; which does hold.
(It also to yr. horror probably, reads aloud very well. (Mouthing out his OOOOOOze.
I doubt if Conrad is weighty enough to stand the citation.
The thing now runs from April … to shantih without break. That is 19 pages, and let us say the longest poem in the Englisch langwidge. Dont try to bust all records by prolonging it three pages further.
The bad nerves is O.K. as now led up to.
/ / / /
My squibs are now an bloody impertinence. I send ’em as requested; but dont use ’em with Waste land.
You can tack ’em onto a collected edtn, or use ’em somewhere where they wd. be decently hidden and swamped by the bulk of accompaning matter. They’d merely be an extra and wrong note with the 19-page version.
Complimenti, you bitch. I am wracked by the seven jealousies, and cogitating an excuse for always exuding my deformative secretions in my own stuff, and never getting an outline. I go into nacre and objets d’art. Some day I shall lose my temper, blaspheme Flaubert, lie like a shit-arse and say “Art shd. embellish the umbelicus.
to yr. horror · · · Conrad: for “The horror! the horror!” from Heart of Darkness, see note to unadopted epigraph. Mouthing out his OOOOOOze: Tennyson on the poet who “Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, | Deep-chested music”, The Epic 50–51. 19 pages: after the cuts already made, to judge by the drafts reproduced in WLFacs, the poem now ran to 15 or 16 pages, but it may not be a coincidence that the Quinn, Thayer and Watson typescripts each have 19 pages (see Textual History headnote descriptions). Englisch langwidge: for the ethnic overtones of the spelling, see Pound to Alice Corbin Henderson, 20 Jan 1913: “foreigners in the U.S. and their langwidge”. The bad nerves is O.K. as now led up to: sense unclear, since the typescripts show no structural change in the lead-up to “My nerves are bad tonight”, The Waste Land [II] 111. impertinence: TSE: “I don’t think the publication of Ezra’s Cantos in this country needs any word from me or from anybody else. It is rather an impertinence”, The Cantos of Ezra Pound: Some Testimonies (1933), publicity for an American edition.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
Sage Homme
These are the Poems of Eliot
By the Uranian Muse begot;
A Man their Mother was,
A Muse their Sire.
5
How did the printed Infancies result
From Nuptuals thus doubly difficult?
If you must needs enquire
Know diligent Reader
That on each Occasion
10
Ezra performed the caesarean Operation.
E. P.
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Caul and grave clothes he brings,
Fortune’s outrageous stings,
About which odour clings
Of putrifaction,
15
Bleichstein’s dank rotting clothes
Affect the dainty nose,
He speaks of common woes
Deploring action.
He writes of A.B.Cs.
20
And flaxseed poultices,
Observing fate’s hard decrees
Sans satisfaction;
Breedings of animals,
Humans and canibals,
25
But above all else of smells
Without attraction.
Vates cum fistula
E. P.
E. P. hopeless ans unhelped
Enthroned in the marmorean skies
30
His verse omits realities,
Title Sage Homme: wise man, and a pun on “sage femme”, midwife. 2 Uranian: OED b: “A distinctive epithet of Venus (or Aphrodite). Heavenly, spiritual”; c: “Homosexual”,with John Addington Symonds (1893): “Live image of Uranian Love” and Wilde (1898): “To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble.” 3–4 A Man their Mother was, | A Muse their Sire: Swinburne on Villon: “A harlot was thy nurse, a God thy sire”, A Ballad of François Villon, Prince of All Ballad-Makers 32. 12 Fortune’s outrageous stings: HAMLET: “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (III i). 15 Bleichstein: see Dirge 1. 19 He writes of A.B.Cs: A Cooking Egg 33. 27 Vates cum fistula: “Poet with a fistula (or ulcer)”. Pound’s Fistulae appeared in his A Lume Spento (1908). 29 in the: in the The ts.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
Angelic hands with mother of pearl
Retouch the strapping servant girl,
The barman is to blinded him
Silenus bubling at the brim, (or burbling)
35
The glasses turn to chalices
In his fumbling analysis
And holy hosts of hellenists
Have numbed and honied his cervic cysts,
His follows Yeats into the mists
40
Despite his hebrew eulogists.
Balls and balls and balls again
Can not touch his fellow men.
His foaming and abundant cream
Has moulded this world
Has coated his world with. The coat of a dream;
45
Or say that the upjut of his sperm
Has rendered his senses pachyderm.
Grudge not the oyster his stiff saliva
Envy not the diligent diver. et in aeternitate
It is after all a grrrreat littttterary period
Thanks for the Aggymemnon.
TSE’s reply, [26? Jan], responded in detail to some of Pound’s advice, and in turn has annotations by Pound (given here in bold):
Cher maitre,
Criticisms accepted so far as understood, with thanks.
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Sustained by standards wrought with fruited vines
Wherefrom …??? OK
Footsteps shuffled on the stair … OK
34 Silenus: Lemprière: “attendant o
f the god Bacchus · · · generally represented as a fat and jolly old man”. Aggymemnon: around the time of TSE’s Euripides and Professor Murray (1920), Pound “asked Eliot to have a shot at the Agamemnon [of Aeschylus]. He didn’t. Or rather he sat on it for eight months or some longer period. I then took over … I twisted, turned, tried every elipsis and elimination. I made the watchman talk nigger, and by the time you had taken out the remplissage, there was no play left”, Guide to Kulchur (1938) 92–93. Pound’s fragmentary typescript is dated 1919, but his comment to TSE of [28? Jan 1922], “Aeschylus not so good as I had hoped, but haven’t had time to improve him, yet”, suggests he had returned to the task. Pound had praised the 17th-century Greek and Latin edition by Thomas Stanley in Egoist Jan–Feb 1919, and may have asked TSE to send it to him in Paris. Pound’s Opening for an Agamemnon was published by Donald Gallup in Paideuma Fall/Winter 1986. Glowed on the marble · · · Wherefrom: [II] 78–80, but not exactly matching the surviving drafts or any printed text. Perhaps a response to Pound’s comment on the typescript “3 lines Too tum-pum at a stretch” (WLFacs 10/11). For “Wherefrom”, the reading in the Criterion, see Textual History. Footsteps shuffled on the stair: [II] 107, first appearance in final form.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
A closed car. I cant use taxi more than once. OK
Departed, have left no addresses …??? OK
What does THENCE mean (To luncheon at the Cannon St. Hotel)???
Would D’s difficulty be solved by inverting to
Drifting logs
The barges wash …???
1. Do you advise printing Gerontion as prelude in book or pamphlet form?
2. Perhaps better omit Phlebas also???
3. Wish to use caesarean operation in italics in front.
4. Certainly omit miscellaneous pieces. Those at end.
5. Do you mean not use Conrad quot. or simply not put Conrad’s name to it? It is much the most appropriate I can find, and somewhat elucidative.
Complimenti appreciated, as have been excessively depressed. V. sends you her love and says that if she had realised how bloody England is she would not have returned.
I would have sent Aeschyle before but have been in bed with flu, now out, but miserable.
Would you advise working sweats with tears &c. into nerves monologue; only place where it can go?
Have writ to Thayer asking what he can offer for this.
Trying to read Aristophane.
Neither the problem with “THENCE” nor the point raised by Dorothy Pound had been mentioned in the letter from Pound. What they were and how they had been conveyed to TSE is unknown. It would have been unlike Pound to enclose a systematic list of suggestions, especially since his letter is itself an unsystematic list. On the other hand, if Pound had annotated a new 19-page typescript sent from London and then returned it, one would expect TSE to have kept it along with the other draft material and letters. The obvious way to discuss the poem by post was for TSE to keep the ribbon copy and send a carbon, as he did in other instances, so that there was no need for a packet to go back and forth. Most probably this is what happened, and there is some reason to believe that Pound still had such a copy in July (see below, 3. THE DIAL AND THE CRITERION).
Echoing the words of the voice from heaven at the baptism of Christ, “Hic est Filius meus dilectus in quo mihi conplacui” [This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased] (Matthew 3: 17), Pound addressed his next letter, probably on 28 Jan, to “Filio dilecto mihi”:
closed car: [II] 136, first appearance in final form. A closed car. I cant use taxi more than once: Pound had written “1880” against the anachronistic “closed carriage” in ts2a (WLFacs 12/13), but TSE wanted to keep “the human engine waits | Like a taxi throbbing” (WLFacs 30/31) while avoiding duplication. Departed, have left no addresses: [III] 181, first appearance in final form. Drafted in ms3 ( WLFacs 24/25), the group of lines written upside down on the verso of the first page of ts3a. No typescript of the passage survives, but Pound had presumably objected to the reading as it stood in the manuscript draft, “Departed, and left no addresses”. THENCE · · · Metropole: see note to WLComposite 326–28. On both ts3a and ts3b, Pound had objected to “perhaps” in the line “And perhaps a weekend at the Metropole” (WLFacs 30/31, 42/43). Drifting logs | The barges wash: see note to [III] 273–74. 4 Perhaps better omit Phlebas also???: referring to the lines remaining of Part IV following Pound’s cuts (WLFacs 62–69). Aristophane: see headnote to Sweeney Agonistes, 2. ARISTOPHANES.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
I merely queried the dialect of “thence”; dare say it is o.k.
D. was fussing about some natural phenomenon, but I thought I had crossed out her queery. The wake of barges washes &c., and the barges may perfectly well be said to wash.
I shd. leave it as it is, and NOT invert.
I do not advise printing Gerontion as preface. One dont miss it AT all as the thing now stands. To be more lucid still, let me say that I advise you NOT to print Gerontion as prelude.
I DO advise keeping Phlebas. In fact I more’n advise. Phlebas is an integral part of the poem; the card pack introduces him, the drowned phoen. sailor, and he is needed ABSoloootly where he is. [added: must stay in.]
Do as you like about my obstetric effort.
Ditto re the Conrad; who am I to grudge him his laurel crown.
Aeschylus not so good as I had hoped, but haven’t had time to improve him, yet.
I dare say the sweats with tears will wait.
Aristophanes probably depressing, and the native negro phoque melodies of Dixee more calculated to lift the ball-encumbered phallus of man to the proper 8.30, 9.30 or even ten thirty level now counted as the crowning and alarse too often katachrestical summit of human achievement · · ·
May your erection never grow less. I had intended to speak to you seriously on the subject, but you seemed so mountany gay while here in the midst of Paris that the matter slipped my foreskin.
You can forward the Bolo to Joyce if you think it wont unhinge his somewhat sabbatarian mind. On the hole he might be saved the shock, shaved the sock.
Here Pound writes as though “thence” had been TSE’s word, not his own. (In the typescript of Part IV he had changed TSE’s “descends | Illicit backstreet stairs, to reappear” to “descends | Illicit stairs, thence to reappear” (WLFacs 62/63), but the lines were then cut.)
Describing “the manuscript-typescript of The Waste Land”, Valerie Eliot wrote: “Someone, possibly Eliot, has divided the leaves into two sections: the main text, and the miscellaneous poems which were considered for it; these now contain forty-two leaves and twelve leaves respectively” (WLFacs xxx). Five of the twelve leaves have manuscript on the versos, so in all seventeen pages of miscellaneous material were printed in the facsimile after the end of Part V.
The Death of Saint Narcissus, two copies 4 pages
Song 1 page
Exequy, with draft third stanza on verso 2 pages
The Death of the Duchess 2 pages
After the turning of the inspired days 1 page
I am the Resurrection and the Life 1 page
So through the evening, through the violet air 2 pages
Elegy 1 page
Dirge, two copies 2 pages
Those are pearls that were his eyes. See! 1 page
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
But in what ways had these miscellaneous poems been “considered for” The Waste Land? Some of the miscellaneous poems dated back at least as far as 1915, perhaps even to 1912–13. So why did TSE put these seventeen pages, and only these, with “the manuscript of The Waste Land” when he sent it to Quinn, rather than with the sheaf of loose leaves that accompanied the March Hare Notebook at the same time?
Some of the miscellaneous poems are obviously related to The Waste Land because lines from them were adopted by it. The Death of Saint Narcissus, The Death of th
e Duchess, After the turning of the inspired days, So through the evening, through the violet air and Those are pearls that were his eyes. See! are all contributory drafts of this kind.
Three other poems might not be seen to relate to The Waste Land but for Pound’s letter of [24 Jan 1922], in which he had recommended abolishing “the last three” of the “superfluities”:
One test is whether anything wd. be lacking if the last three were omitted. I dont think it wd.
The song has only two lines which you can use in the body of the poem. The other two, at least the first, does not advance on earlier stuff. And even the sovegna doesnt hold with the rest; which does hold.
Valerie Eliot persuasively suggested that the “last three” that Pound had in mind were Song (“The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch”), which he referred to simply as “the song”; Exequy, which at one time ended “SOVEGNA VOS AL TEMPS DE MON DOLOR”; and Dirge, with drowned Bleistein being referred to in Pound’s Sage homme.
Each of these would have occupied no more than a page (“Dont try to bust all records by prolonging it three pages further”). The facsimile edition did not, however, speculate where these might have fitted into the poem before TSE’s instinct led him to put them “at the end”, and Pound’s urging led finally to their abolition.
TSE was to write to Donald Gallup, 26 Nov 1946 about Song (“The golden foot I may not kiss or clutch”), which had been published in Tyro in Apr 1921 as Song to the Opherian:
I don’t remember which verses I called Song to the Opherian but I think it was one of the short poems which were called the Dream Songs. It may or may not have been one of those included as interludes in the first draft of The Waste Land. It is impossible to settle this point now. I preserved no copies of those Waste Land lyrics; the copies that I know of were those with the original manuscript which was in the possession of John Quinn, and it disappeared from sight after Mr. Quinn’s death.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 65
