The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 69
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
TSE to John Theobald, 16 Aug 1935, on his poem The Earthquake: “There is all the difference · · · between notes which may be helpful to the reader, and notes which are indispensable to him. If the notes are indispensable then the poem is not quite written.”
To Gregor Ziemer, 10 Feb 1937: “The notes to the Waste Land should be taken at their face value.”
8. ANTHOLOGIES, TRANSLATIONS, ADAPTATIONS
To Miss J. Colcord, 28 Jan 1924: “In the case of The Waste Land I feel very strongly against publication of any parts separately. The poem is intended to be a whole and if I allowed parts of it to be printed separately, it might not only spread the impression that it is merely a collection of unrelated parts, but might also appear to give sanction from myself of this impression. I do not want people to read the poem at all unless they read the whole thing, and it is quite impossible for any part of the poem to give a fair conception of the whole.” To Conrad Aiken, 29 Oct 1928: “it would infringe Liveright’s rights if I let anybody print the whole of The Waste Land in an anthology, as he printed it as a book by itself. Furthermore the reason why I insisted on keeping the anthology rights was that I did not want anybody to read the poem in bits, and I shall always insist on its being published as a whole, if at all.” (Liveright’s rights had by this time expired; see above, 3. THE DIAL AND THE CRITERION.)
To Donald Brace, 27 Aug 1933, headed “Poems 1909–25: Anthology Permissions”: “I think that the most convenient arrangement for both sides would be for me to give a general authority to you—not to your firm generally, but to you personally—to use your discretion. My stipulations are that only a reasonable small amount of my verse should be used in any one anthology; second, that permission should never be granted without a reasonable fee; third, that The Waste Land should not be used in this way either whole or part. For other poems, not in this volume, anthologists should of course apply direct to me.”
To Michael Roberts, 11 July 1935, on Roberts’s selections for The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936): “I have always in the past refused to allow The Waste Land to be used either in part or whole in anthologies. To take a part mutilates it and to take the whole means taking what I regret to say is the only one of my poems which most people feel it necessary to read. You may demur to this last statement, but I am sure there is some truth in it. And, furthermore, if I gave The Waste Land for your anthology, I should find it difficult to refuse others in future. I should be glad of course if you thought fit to include Fragment of an Agon and most people would expect Gerontion to turn up, although I have no feelings about that myself.” 19 July: “Your letter of the 13th has been thoroughly discussed by my committee. They are a weak-kneed lot of men and your ferocity has had the desired effect; so you are to have the whole of The Waste Land without the notes, and my objection to the quantity of Read, Spender and myself is overruled.” The poem was included, without the Notes. To Gerald D. Saunders, 25 Sept 1941: “As for the inclusion of The Waste Land, I can say that I have now no objection to this appearing in anthologies provided that the whole poem is printed together and not merely a selection from it.” In 1947 TSE insisted that the Notes be dropped when the poem appeared in The Little Treasury of Modern Poetry ed. Oscar Williams (1947), and in reply to Edith Sitwell’s request to print it in her anthology The American Genius (John Lehmann, 1951), he wrote, 29 Dec 1949: “I have for a long time hoped that someone would put The Waste Land in an anthology without the notes, but John Lehmann might object to this.”
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
On 1 May 1925, TSE reported to Ottoline Morrell that he had received the typescript of Jean de Menasce’s translation of The Waste Land (published the following May in L’Esprit). In it, he pencilled in the omitted [III] 306 (“la la”) and numbered every fifth line (Houghton). Between the ends of the translated lines [V] 364 and 365 he first drew an arrow (pointing right) and then braced the lines. He also underlined nearly thirty lines, apparently to indicate that they are quotations or allusions (in English and other European languages) which should not be translated. The cases took various forms:
Translated by Menasce into French but restored to English in L’Esprit: [I] 74–75 (Webster); [III] 176 and 183–84 (Spenser), and 257 (Shakespeare); and [V] 426 (nursery rhyme) and 431 (Kyd). As well as underlining, TSE wrote “English ?” against [III] 176 and 257, and put a wedge at the end of [V] 426.
Translated, but with its Shakespearean words restored to English: in ts, [I] 48 read “(Ces perles ont été ses yeux. Voyez!)”, but in print it read “(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Regardez!)”
Translated and allowed to stand: in ts, [V] 428 read “Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O hirondelle, hirondelle”. In underlining this, TSE stopped after “O hirond”, then made a mark through his underlining to endorse Menasce’s use of the Latin of the Pervigilium Veneris followed by French, which was duly printed.
English not translated by Menasce but underlined by TSE: [II] 77, 125 and 172 (all Shakespearean; see line note for Laforgue’s use of the last); [II] 128–30 and [III] 199–201 (songs; Menasce substituted “bathe” for “wash” in the second); and [III] 253 (Goldsmith, except the final word).
German not translated but nonetheless underlined by TSE: [I] 12, 31–34 and 42; as likewise the untranslated [I] 427, from the Purgatorio.
French lines within TSE’s English poem and in Menasce’s ts, nonetheless underlined by TSE: [I] 76 (Baudelaire); [III] 202 (Verlaine); and [V] 429 (Gérard de Nerval).
(See note to [III] 211 for French equivalents of “C.i.f”, and for TSE’s comment on place names see note to [III] 276, 300.)
To Montgomery Belgion, 27 Aug 1942: “In my experience, translations of one’s own works are extremely useful texts for the study of a foreign tongue, especially as they have the advantage of always being interesting. The alternative in my opinion is to obtain a local translation of Sherlock Holmes.”
To Menasce, 5 Oct 1929 on a putative French volume: “What I should like, if possible, would be a selection made by you and myself, and all of the translations to be by you, instead of using the few other translations—Adrienne Monnier’s Prufrock, [André] Germain’s Preludes, and Leger’s [Perse’s] Hollow Men, which have already been made. Would you be prepared to do this? If so, let us begin making a list. I should rather like to include several of my later poems—the Magi, the Simeon, possibly Animula, which I shall send you shortly, and the set of six [Ash-Wednesday] which includes Perch’ Io non Spero and the one which Madame de Bassiano will have sent you (I have just given her your new address). This set will appear in English for the first time early next year.”
On 11 Jan 1938 the BBC broadcast D. G. Bridson’s semi-dramatised version of The Waste Land (script, Lilly). Comments by Michael Roberts and others on the production were broadcast afterwards. TSE to Bridson, 13 Jan:
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
I must congratulate you at least on having improved the performance of your actors certainly out of all recognition to their behaviour during the rehearsal that I heard. Assuming for the moment that it is suitable to produce The Waste Land in this way, I have three criticisms of detail which it might interest you to know. The first is that there were moments when the incidental business and off noises were so much to the foreground that it was a strain to hear the words, and I don’t believe that anyone who had never read the poem could have followed the words in these places. This was particularly evident in the last paragraph of Section I.
Secondly, while I did not otherwise object to the bit about the barges being sung, I thought that it led to an unfortunate reversal; I mean it is a pity that the refrain should have been spoken (which makes it sound foolish) instead of being sung to the excellent bit of music which Wagner provided for the purpose. But what shocked me most of all was that the words of the Thames Daughters which follow were also sung, to the accompaniment of an irrelev
ant and trivial strumming, instead of being spoken as they should be.
The experiment may have been worth making, as an experiment, and I feel sure that you did the best with it that anyone could do with such material. But that confidence in your own accomplishment only confirms my belief that this sort of poetry is quite wrong for dramatising in that sort of way.
To Anthony Clarke, Cape Town, 26 Apr 1949: “As radio experiments with The Waste Land have already been attempted, I see no reason why you should not do the same. So long as the entire text is preserved intact and in the same order of words as in the published text, it seems to me that you are at liberty to use any device of partition between voices and musical accompaniment that you think fit.”
9. AFTER PUBLICATION
Conrad Aiken to Robert N. Linscott, 8 Nov 1922, on The Waste Land and his own books: “Am I a cuckoo in fancying that it cancels the debt I owed him? I seem to detect echoes or parodies of Senlin, House, Forslin: in the evening at the violet hour etc, Madame Sosostris etc, and in general the ‘symphonic’ nature, the references to music (Wagner, Strawinsky) and the repetition of motifs, and the ‘crowd’ stuff beginning ‘Unreal city.’” TSE had reviewed Senlin unfavourably in Egoist July 1919. The Jig of Forslin had appeared in 1916 and House of Dust in 1920. Aiken to Theodore Spencer, 24 Mar 1923, reporting TSE’s reaction to the title of Aiken’s review of The Waste Land (An Anatomy of Melancholy in New Republic 7 Feb 1923): “‘There’s nothing melancholy about it—it’s nothing but pure calculation of effect’.”
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
Reviewing The Waste Land in Dial Dec 1922, Edmund Wilson wrote that “sometimes we feel that he is speaking not only for a personal distress, but for the starvation of a whole civilization”. TSE to Wilson, 11 Jan 1923: “I think you have understood it remarkably well, perhaps a little over-understood it! I mean read more into it than it contains here and there. I am very sensible of its fundamental weaknesses, and whatever I do next will be, at least, very different; I feel that it [is] merely a kind of consummation of my past work · · · The Waste Land does not leave me well satisfied.” (At the time of publication he had written to Richard Aldington, 15 Nov 1922: “As for The Waste Land, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style.” To Brian Coffey, 5 June 1934, on Coffey’s work: “It is difficult to say whether these poems ought to be printed by themselves or not, but on the whole, I think they are quite good enough to justify it. But whether you make a book of them depends on whether they represent something which is, for you, complete—that is to say, if you feel that the phase in your own history, which they represent, is one out of which you have passed; and if you feel that your work will represent a different stage of maturity, then I should say that you had nothing to lose by their publication. If, on the other hand, you are not certain that they belong altogether to the past, then you may regret publication because you will later wish to alter, delete or amplify.”)
On 23 Jan 1923, W. B. Yeats wrote to TSE offering the Criterion an extract from his autobiographical The Trembling of the Veil. In a postscript he added: “I find The Waste Land very beautiful, but here and there are passages I do not understand—four or five lines.” TSE replied on the same day: “It is a very great satisfaction to me to know that you like The Waste Land. When it is brought out in this country in a month or two as a book, with notes, I shall send you a copy and hope to have at some time either in conversation or by letter, a detailed statement of your criticism. It is quite possible that the passages ought to be repaired.”
To Wilhelm Lehmann, 14 May 1923: “I shall be glad of your opinion on The Waste Land when you see it, because I think it might translate better into German than into any other tongue.” (To Alfred Sperber, 1 Nov 1926: “So far as I am competent to judge, the translation is admirable and supports my theory that this poem would translate better into German than into any other language.”)
Otto Heller: “enthusiasts are quick to read a marvelous temperamental response of its author to the passing tragedy of the period, the reflection of a civilization torn away from its moorings by deep and violent perturbations. They sense in The Waste Land a poet’s intense suffering”, St. Louis Post-Despatch 24 Feb 1923 (see Letters 2 242). TSE to Heller, 5 Oct 1923: “Some time ago I read (I think in the Post-Dispatch) a review of my poem, The Waste Land by you. It struck me as the most intelligent review of that poem that I have seen · · · The poem is neither a success nor a failure—simply a struggle. Practically, one crucifies oneself and entertains drawing rooms and lounges. But the reception is irrelevant.” (“I wrote The Waste Land simply to relieve my own feelings”, On Poetry (1947) 10.)
When John Middleton Murry wrote that the poem contradicted TSE’s self-proclaimed classicism (The “Classical” Revival in Adelphi Feb–Mar 1926), TSE wrote in the margin of the typescript: “The Waste Land makes no attempt whatever to be ‘classical’” (Goldie 157). Murry also wrote that “Once its armour of impenetrability is penetrated the poem is found to be a cry of grinding and empty desolation · · · a voice from the Dark Night of the Soul of a St. John of the Cross—the barren and dry land where no water is.” TSE told the audience at his fourth Clark Lecture that “if Mr. Middleton Murry would study carefully the works of St. John of the Cross, he would see that the parallel he draws between St. John and myself is quite illusory; for what St. John means by the ‘dark night’ and what Mr. Murry means by my ‘dark night’ are entirely different things”, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 104.
[Poem I 53–71 · Textual History II 359–408]
To Claude Colleer Abbott, 13 Oct 1927: “I am pleased that you like The Waste Land and wish that I could tell you more about it. It is not an evasion, but merely the truth, to say that I think in these cases that an explanation by the author is of no more value than one by anybody else. You see, the only legitimate meaning of a poem is the meaning which it has for any reader, not a meaning which it has primarily for the author. The author means all sorts of things which concern nobody else but himself, in that he may be making use of his private experiences. But these private experiences are merely crude material, and as such of no interest whatever to the public. About the best thing that has been written about this poem is an introductory essay by Professor E. R. Curtius in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau, but I do not know whether you know German.” To Geoffrey Curtis, 20 Oct 1943: “Such an assertion as that which you quote, that in the South India Scheme the episcopate is ‘devoid of particular meaning’ seems to me an example of just the sort of thing not to say. [Footnote: It involves the assumption that ‘meaning’ means the same thing to both writer and reader: and this assumption is unwarranted.]”
To Cleanth Brooks, 15 Mar 1937, on a commentary about The Waste Land: “Reading your essay made me feel, for instance, that I had been a great deal more ingenious than I had been aware of, because the conscious problems with which one is concerned in the actual writing are more those of a quasi musical nature, in the arrangement of metric and pattern, than those of a conscious exposition of ideas”.
To Philip Mairet, 31 Oct 1956: “The fact that a poem can mean different things to different persons—something which I think has been stressed by Paul Valéry as well as myself—must, however paradoxically, be reconciled with the assertion that it has an absolute and unalterable meaning. At the same time, the author, it must be remembered, regarding his own work after it is completed, is hardly more than one reader amongst others, and while the poem is being written, he must be too busy to be fully conscious of what the poem means.”
Leone Vivante’s distinction in English Poetry (Faber, 1950) between “poetic thought” and “the thought of the poet” ought, TSE wrote in his Preface, “to deter thoughtful readers from inquiring of a poet (if living) what he meant by any particular poem. Those who ask the question assume that a poem is a poetical dressing up, or disguise, of something which can be put equivalently in simple straightforw
ard terms; and, if the poet cannot put it in other terms—the terms in which a student to be examined on a poem thinks that he can satisfy his examiners—conclude, either that is of the nature of poetry to be ‘meaningless’, or else that the meaning is to be found by probing into the unconscious mind, or the concealed biography of the author. Signor Vivante disposes of the error of supposing that a poem can be explained by the author, and the error of supposing that a poem has no meaning; and he also contradicts the assumption that all poetry can be explained by investigation of the unconscious.”
Meaning and obscurity. I. A. Richards: “by effecting a complete severance between his poetry and all beliefs, and this without any weakening of the poetry, he has realised what might otherwise have remained largely a speculative possibility, and has shown the way to the only solution of these difficulties”, A Background for Contemporary Poetry in Criterion July 1925 (repr. as Poetry and Beliefs in Richards’s Science and Poetry, 1926). TSE: “Mr. I. A. Richards did me the honour of employing one of my poems as evidence · · · I cannot for the life of me see the ‘complete separation’ from all belief”, A Note on Poetry and Belief (1927). “Mr. Richards’s statement · · · that a certain writer has effected ‘a complete severance between his poetry and all beliefs’ is to me incomprehensible”, Dante (1929) Note to II. And 1933: “when Mr. Richards asserts The Waste Land effects ‘a complete severance between poetry and all beliefs’ I am no better qualified to say No! than is any other reader. I will admit that I think that either Mr. Richards is wrong, or I do not understand his meaning”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 130. (Richards’s notebook “Notes on Belief-Problems for T.S.E.” was published by John Constable in EinC July 1990.) For “a complete suspension of belief”, see note to The Hollow Men V 28–33.