The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

  Quoted as “la sua voluntade e nostra pace” in Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1927). The following year TSE used a text beginning “E ’n la sua”, translating it “And in His Will is our peace” and commenting “I like this passage because it seems to me to express, better than any other lines of Dante or of any other poet, one of the greatest ideas of the Christian religion”, My Favourite Passage from Dante (1928). “the statement of Dante seems to me literally true. And I confess that it has more beauty for me now, when my own experience has deepened its meaning, than it did when I first read it”, Dante (1929) Note to II. “La sua voleuntade è nostra pace is the last word about free will”, Notes on the Way in Time & Tide 19 Jan 1935 (with a letter from TSE on 2 Feb correcting the spelling to volontate). Spellings: Temple Classics “volontate”; Arnold “volontade”; TSE in Dante (1929) and the unadopted title to Ash-Wednesday V, “voluntade” (misspelling after the Latin noun voluntas, -atis); Dante in Selected Essays (1932) “voluntate” (Jennifer Formichelli, personal communication).

  To Laurence Binyon, 28 Apr 1941: “I am flattered that you should want my opinion about Sua Voluntade. I should think it was one of the most difficult things to translate in the whole Commedia: partly because it is one of the few lines that everybody knows, and therefore no translation of it can come with such a bang as to satisfy the reader. By itself, I do prefer just ‘in his will is our peace’ which is what 99 readers out of 100 will expect and want: but how you are to fill out the line I don’t know, unless you can append an extension, or begin the following line. I mean, I don’t think you want to carry over the preceding line: the line in the speech comes at just the right point and is just right as a whole line—that is the difficulty. You may have to use the stuffed line: anyway, I shall be most excited to know your final decision.” (Binyon: “And in His will is perfected our peace.”) For Binyon’s Dante, see headnote to Little Gidding, 3. DANTE.

  “When Dante says la sua voluntade e nostra pace it is great poetry, and there is a great philosophy behind it”, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1927). “Consider what is perhaps the most purely philosophical and scientific of all great poems, Lucretius On the Nature of Things. Dante’s and Milton’s long poems are also philosophical, but mixed with narrative of events happening to human beings and beings conceived similarly. There is no a priori reason why Lucretius should not have worked out his own system of philosophy, and then expressed it in verse. But in practice, that would mean doing two men’s work: first, to think out the system solely with the aim of finding abstract truth, and second to examine what it feels like to believe that system · · · What Lucretius actually does, is to express what it feels like to believe that particular philosophy, and to have a passionate emotion about it. To believe anything, and to believe it to be of great importance, is necessarily to have an emotion about it. Lucretius, therefore, is giving us some very important information about the atomistic philosophy of his time, by telling us what it feels like to believe it. In the course of doing this, he has to give us a good many details about natural phenomena, such as the causes of hail and snow, which, if taken out of the whole poem, do not strike us as very poetical”, Poetical and Prosaic Use of Words (1943). (In his copy of A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance by J. E. Springarn, 1899, TSE scored Castelvetro’s convictions that “Prose is not suited to imitative or imaginative subjects, for we expect themes treated in prose to be actual facts” and that science is “not suitable material for poetry, and accordingly such writers as Lucretius and Fracastoro are not poets”.) For TSE’s judgement that “for a poet to be a philosopher he would have to be virtually two men · · · the work is better performed inside two skulls”, see headnote to “Poems (1920)”, 5. TSE’S PROFICIENCY IN FRENCH.

  [Poem I 97 · Textual History II 431]

  VI 31 among these rocks: see note to WLComposite 582 “Among the rock”.

  VI 32, 34 Sister, mother · · · Suffer me not to be separated: TSE’s mother died in 1929. Apart from Theodora (who had died in infancy before TSE’s birth), the first of his siblings to die, in 1926, had been the sister named Charlotte after their mother.

  VI 33 spirit of the river, spirit of the sea: see letter to Herbert Read, 15 Sept 1932, quoted in headnote to The Dry Salvages, 2. “THE RIVER IS WITHIN US, THE SEA IS ALL ABOUT US”. spirit of the sea: OED “Stella Maris”: “‘star of the sea’. A title given to the Virgin Mary · · · used allusively for a protectress or a guiding spirit” (with first citation from George Eliot, 1876). See Textual History for “the waves · · · the seas · · · the waves”, VI 19–35 tsAW [2–4].

  VI 34 Suffer me not to be separated: Hayward in his 1936 proof: “Anima Christi” (“Soul of Christ, sanctify me · · · Suffer me not to be separated from Thee”).

  VI 35 And let my cry come unto Thee: Psalm 102 (“A Prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord”), 1, 3: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee · · · For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.” To Henry Eliot, 19 Apr [1924]: “You know what you can do—I only know my own need, and merely cry out to you.”

  [Poem I 97 · Textual History II 431]

  Ariel Poems

  Dates of publication:

  Journey of the Magi Aug 1927

  A Song for Simeon Sept 1928

  Animula Oct 1929

  Marina Sept 1930

  [Triumphal March Oct 1931 Subsequently Part I of Coriolan;

  see “Unfinished Poems”]

  The Cultivation of Christmas Trees Oct 1954

  Faber’s Autumn Catalogue 1927 announced Ariel Poems 1–8, by various poets: “This series of little booklets consists of single previously unpublished poems each suitably decorated in colours and dressed in the gayest wrappers. It has been designed to take the place of Christmas cards and other similar tokens that one sends for remembrance sake at certain seasons of the year. Some of the poems have Christmas for their subject: but a genuine poem is not a thing appropriate only to one season of the year, and any one of these poems with its attendant decorations would be a joy to read and to see at any time, whatever the season might be · · · For collectors of first editions it is worth remembering that most of these poems have been written specially for the series and that all of them appear here separately for the first time and are thus ‘first editions’—and first editions that have been printed at the Curwen Press!”

  During the late 1920s Faber published occasional poetry anthologies and reprints, as well as volumes by TSE himself, by Pound and by Herbert Read, mainly gathering previously published poems. TSE was sceptical about the availability of good new poetry, as he told Faber’s directors in his reader’s report of 1926 on William Jeffrey’s The Lamb of Lomond:

  This book raises a question of policy: how much verse do we wish to publish and with what purpose? There are, I believe, some authors of verse such as John Oxenham and Mrs. [Ella Wheeler] Wilcox who have no literary reputation whatever but whose books do repay their publishers: are we to publish verse of this sort? There are also a few authors of established reputation such as Kipling, Hardy, Yeats, de la Mare, etcetera, whom I suppose we should have no hesitation in publishing if we could get them. No other versifiers can do more than add distinction to our list. I should make exception, I suppose, of young or unknown poets who impress us so tremendously that we are sure that they will eventually add distinction to the list. Practically all of the verse which has been submitted to me for examination falls into none of these categories.

  Faber published poetry by John Gould Fletcher in 1926 and 1928, and went ahead, despite TSE’s tepid reader’s reports, with volumes by Richard Church in 1927 and C. Henry Warren in 1928.

  [Poems I 101–10 · Textual History II 433–47]

  Selwyn & Blount had published Walter de la Mare’s A Ballad of Christmas (1924) and The Hostage in small format pamphlets (illustrated by Alec Buckels) in 1924–25, and the Arie
l series was conceived by de la Mare’s son Richard, whose letters commissioning the poets mentioned that his father and TSE would be contributing. The other poets for 1927 were all long established: Hardy, Newbolt, Binyon, Chesterton, Wilfrid Gibson and Sassoon. The same was true in succeeding years, and of the 21 poets who contributed to the first series (1927–31), only de la Mare, TSE, Sassoon and Roy Campbell would come to be associated with Faber.

  In 1930 Faber published Auden’s Poems, Joseph Gordon Macleod’s The Ecliptic and P. P. Graves’s The Pursuit (announced together on a bookmark), signifying a new initiative. To J. Edward Fisher, 9 Feb 1937: “We began our publication of poetry some years ago with paper-bound volumes at half a crown [2s. 6d.], which we published at a loss, and we only learnt through experience the sad fact that we can sell just as many copies of a volume of new verse by producing it more expensively and pricing it at 6s. or 7s. 6d. as we could by reducing costs and profit.”

  From series to section title. “Ariel Poems was the title of a series of poems which included many other poets as well as myself; these were all new poems which were published during four or five successive years as a kind of Christmas card. Nobody else seemed to want the title afterward, so I kept it for myself simply to designate four of my poems which appeared in this way. Journey of the Magi is obviously a subject suitable for the Christmas season”, Chicago Round Table (1950). Over the years the series included Blunden, de la Mare, Edith Sitwell and Yeats. They were published as small four-page pamphlets with designs by artists including Edward Bawden, Eric Gill, Paul and John Nash, and Eric Ravilious. As a director of Faber, TSE contributed to the series each year: Journey of the Magi (no. 8, 1927) and A Song for Simeon (no. 16, 1928) both with drawings by E. McKnight Kauffer, Animula (no. 23, 1929) with wood-engravings by Gertrude Hermes, and Marina (no. 29, 1930) and Triumphal March (no. 35, 1931) again both with drawings by Kauffer. To Norman Foerster, 15 June 1932: “The Ariel poems were all written in the year of publication.” Later Ariel Poems by lesser known writers sold poorly, and on 11 Aug 1932, TSE told George Bell: “the Ariel series has come to an end, or at least is postponed indefinitely”. TSE collected his contributions in 1936, writing to Geoffrey Curtis, 14 Feb 1936: “These little pamphlets are to be scrapped, I am glad to say: all these bits are being gathered together in my Collected Poems, now in proof.” Creating the section “Ariel Poems”, he transferred Triumphal March to the section of “Unfinished Poems” as part of Coriolan. “Triumphal March originally appeared in this form too; but I took it out of the series because I meant it to be the first part of a sequence in the life of the character who appears in this first part as Young Cyril”, Chicago Round Table (1950).

  In both Collected Poems and Selected Poems, the “Ariel Poems” section follows Ash-Wednesday, although Journey of the Magi was published earlier than any part of Ash-Wednesday.

  [Poems I 101–10 · Textual History II 433–47]

  In 1954 Faber published a second series of Ariel Poems, in larger format, by eight poets (Auden, Roy Campbell, de la Mare, TSE, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Edwin Muir and Spender). Writing to commission a poem from Walter de la Mare as early as 20 Mar 1952, TSE described the terms, beginning by saying that once again “the proposal of a new series of ARIEL POEMS originated in the fertile brain of Dick [de la Mare] · · · According to our estimates it will be possible to issue a new set of Ariel Poems, each to be provided with an illustration by a different artist, at the price of two shillings and sixpence each. Each poem should not be more than sixty and not less than twenty lines long; and must, of course, be a poem not previously published anywhere. As the new series, like the old one, will be aimed at the Christmas market, to serve the purpose of Christmas cards for the discerning public, a subject suitable for the season would be most acceptable: though any poem not obviously inappropriate will, from the right poets, be welcome. For such a poem we offer an outright fee of twenty guineas · · · It is strongly felt that your name, and—alas!—my own, are needed in this series, as senior sponsors.” Walter de la Mare and TSE became the only poets to contribute in every year of the Ariel Poems series, including 1954.

  To C. W. Dilke, 18 Dec 1948, offering to record for the BBC German service a short commentary explaining the history of the Ariel Poems: “The four poems which appear in my collected works as ‘Ariel Poems’ represent my contribution to the series during four years. Journey of the Magi was the first of these. Like my Song for Simeon which followed it a year later, it asks the question: how fully was the Trust revealed to those who were inspired to recognise Our Lord so soon after the Nativity?”

  The series of six poems altogether (including Triumphal March and The Cultivation of Christmas Trees) was published as a separate illustrated volume, Ariel Poems, in 2014.

  Journey of the Magi

  Published separately Aug 1927, with drawings by E. McKnight Kauffer, then 1936+, Sesame and Penguin / Sel Poems. A limited edition of the Ariel pamphlet in boards was issued in Nov 1927. To secure American copyright, an edition of 27 copies was printed by William Edwin Rudge, Mount Vernon, New York, in Dec 1927.

  Recorded May 1947, for the Harvard Poetry Room; released by Harvard Vocarium Records, 1948. Second: 23 May 1947, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Third: 12 Nov 1950, for U. Chicago Round Table, broadcast by NBC.

  The year before TSE’s birth, Charlotte C. Eliot published The Three Kings in The Christian Register Christmas 1887:

  “We are three kings who have traveled far,

  O’er desert waste and sandy plain.

  Before us moved a radiant star,

  Its light along our path has lain.

  Faint and weary, our journey’s end

  We seek; but the star moves onward still.

  We know not whither our footsteps tend,

  Obedient to a higher will.

  “So each of us, omnipotent

  Within his kingdom, holdeth sway · · ·”

  [Poem I 101–102 · Textual History II 433–34]

  The Christmas of 1927, which saw publication of the first group of Ariel Poems, was TSE’s first after his reception into the Church of England in June. To Sister Mary J. Power, 6 Dec 1932: “perhaps the simplest account that I can give is to say that I was brought up as a Unitarian of the New England variety; that for many years I was without any definite religious faith, or without any at all; that in 1927 I was baptised and confirmed into the Church of England; and that I am associated with what is called the Catholic movement in that Church, as represented by Viscount Halifax and the English Church Union. I accordingly believe in the Creeds, the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, the Sacrament of Penance, etc.” To Michael de la Bedoyère, 28 Apr 1936, offering to write for the Catholic Herald from his own experience: “assuming that Anglican and Roman Orders and Sacraments are equally valid, on what grounds did a person brought up altogether outside the Christian Faith elect to become a member of the former community rather than the latter?”

  To Conrad Aiken, 13 Sept 1927: “Thanks for your compliments about the Christmas poem. I have no illusions about it: I wrote it in three quarters of an hour after church time and before lunch one Sunday morning, with the assistance of half a bottle of Booth’s gin.”

  Horace M. Kallen to TSE, 12 Oct 1927: “There is no way that men travelling with horse and camel can pass from snowline to vegetation over-night and reach Bethlehem. That sink lies in the arid Judean hills, which stick up sharp and nude all around. They slope eastward to the waste lands of the Dead Sea, south to the Desert. There is no snow nearer than Hermon, to the north, several camel journeys away.” TSE, 22 Oct: “I am much interested to hear your criticism of my geographical ignorance. Theoretically I believe one ought to make verse as watertight as prose on such points. On the other hand, if I had bothered about the topography and archaeology of Asia Minor, I should have had to omit a good deal of detail which really is meant to be symbolical.” To Alan Porter, 13 Dec: “As the whole story of the Magi is not, I believe, an essenti
al matter of Christian doctrine, I felt a certain liberty to treat it according to my own fantasy of realism. I did not intend to put forward, and still do not believe that I did put forward, any view which would either conflict with Christian doctrine or any imagination which would tend to weaken belief. The notion that the three Magi were the three religious leaders whom you mention does not appeal to me because what little I know of their religions makes me unable to accept the imaginative possibility of such a tribute · · · I meant that the Magi were drawn by a power which they did not understand, and I used them as types of a kind of person who may be found at almost any period of history. I meant them to be pathetic as Dante’s Virgil is pathetic.”

  To Harold Monro, 4 June 1929: “had I had a volume of verse ready this year I should probably have included it [Journey of the Magi]; but as things are, and as it still sells a little, my co-directors would rather I did not allow it [to] appear in any anthology”.

  Vassar Miscellany News 10 May 1933 reported TSE’s reading at the college three days previously: “There was a comparatively simple piece, The Christmas Carol of the Magi, which showed the Three Wise Men, having gone on the quest for the infant Christ, alienated from and lost among their own more materialistic people. Three trees were mentioned which foreshadowed the Crucifixion, and there was a phrase about dicing for silver, which was to recall both Judas and the soldiers casting lots for the garments of the dead Christ, Mr. Eliot explained.”