The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 105
[Poems I 102–104 · Textual History II 434–36]
McKnight Kauffer was sent the poem on 30 May 1928.
Title A Song for Simeon: Luke 2: 25–34, the presentation of the infant Christ for circumcision in the Temple, at Candlemas, now 2 February:
And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel · · · And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation · · · A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. And Simeon blessed them.
A Song for Simeon may be one for him to sing or one sung for him (Patrick Comerford, personal communication); see Tomlin in headnote to Lines for an Old Man. The Song of Simeon, or Nunc Dimittis, appears in the Prayer Book for use at evening service. (For Andrewes on “bring this to a Nunc”, see note to Burnt Norton I 1.) In 1886, shortly before his death, TSE’s grandfather wrote his own two-stanza Nunc Dimittis, printed by TSE’s mother in her biography William Greenleaf Eliot (1904) 351–52 (Oser 94–95). Against a speculation in the 1961 ts of Howarth that this Ariel poem concerned his grandfather, TSE wrote “This is utter nonsense. I was not thinking of my grandfather” (Materer). Song: to the translator Georges Cattaui, 21 July 1932: “I think that Cantique is preferable to chant”.
1–2 the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and | The winter sun: “F. M.”: “My hyacinths are bursting clumsily out of their pots, as they always do, coming into misshapen bloom before their time. And this is the essential spring—spring in winter”, opening words of Letters of the Moment I (1924), dated “February 10th” (Loretta Johnson 1988). “Midwinter · · · short day · · · brief sun · · · bloom”, Little Gidding I 1, 4–5, 16. Roman hyacinths bloom in time for Christmas.
3 The stubborn season: Beaumont and Fletcher: “the stubborn season, | That yet holds in the fruit”, The Coxcomb IV ii.
4 My life is light, waiting for the death wind: “the wind · · · Carrying | Away the little light dead people”, WLComposite 174–76.
6 Dust in sunlight: “Sudden in a shaft of sunlight | Even while the dust moves”, Burnt Norton V 33–34 (Preston 22). “And dusty roses, crickets, sunlight on the sea”, Goldfish III 7.
7 towards: pronounced to’rd in all three of TSE’s recordings, as also in Marina 33 in the recordings of 1933 and 1955.
7 variant Blooming at this season toward the dead land: “breeding | Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing”, The Waste Land [I] 1–2. “This is the dead land”, The Hollow Men III 1.
8 Grant us thy peace: morning and evening prayer: “Grant us thy salvation · · · Give peace in our time, O Lord”, Book of Common Prayer.
12 rejected: Isaiah 53: 3: “despised and rejected of men” (Grover Smith 126).
[Poem I 103 · Textual History II 435]
15 the fox’s home: Lamentations 5: 18: “Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it” (Jain 1991). Matthew 8: 20: “And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Grover Smith 126).
15–16 variant into rocky places, | Fleeing from the foreign faces: “on sweaty faces · · · in stony places”, The Waste Land [V] 322–24.
16 the foreign faces and the foreign swords: Conrad: “the foreign shores, the foreign faces”, Heart of Darkness pt. 1 (Grover Smith 313).
17 scourges: Matthew 27: 26: “when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified”.
17–20 Before the · · · Before the · · · mountain of desolation · · · Before the: “After the · · · After the · · · After the · · · distant mountains”, The Waste Land [V] 322–27. lamentation · · · mountain of desolation · · · the certain hour of maternal sorrow: “murmur of maternal lamentation · · · the city over the mountains · · · the hours”, The Waste Land [V] 367–71, 383. stations of the mountain: the fourteen Stations of the Cross represent the scenes of Christ’s suffering and death. mountain of desolation: Calvary. Mark 13: 14: “when ye shall see the abomination of desolation · · · then let them that be in Judæa flee to the mountains” (Jain 1991). Lamentations 5: 18: “the mountain of Zion, which is desolate”. desolation: pronounced dezolation in TSE’s three recordings.
20–21 maternal sorrow, | Now at this birth season of decease: John 16: 20–21: “ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” See note to Journey of the Magi 37, “I had seen birth and death”.
22 the still unspeaking and unspoken Word: see Gerontion 17–19 and note. “the unspoken word, the Word unheard”, Ash-Wednesday V 4.
24 one who has eighty years and no to-morrow: Donne: “This, no to morrow hath, nor yesterday”, The Anniversary 8. Herbert: “When a friend askes, there is no to morrow”, Outlandish Proverbs no. 32. Johnson: “Tho’ now his eightieth year was nigh · · · Death broke at once the vital chain”, On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet 32, 35. TSE: “(By ‘eightieth’ meaning whichever is the last)”, The Cultivation of Christmas Trees 28. Also: “the 80th Xmas tree · · · the 80th Festival”, The Cultivation of Christmas Trees, first full draft 21, 33.
27 glory and derision: Milton: “glorious for a while · · · Thy foes’ derision”, Samson Agonistes 363–66.
29 Not for me the martyrdom: to Karin Henn, 22 Oct 1958: “Personally I am of the opinion that Archbishop Becket was a real martyr, because I believe that he had overcome the temptation of wishing to become a martyr.” Donne: “Oh, to some | Not to be Martyrs, is a martyrdome”, The Litanie X, “THE MARTYRS”.
31 Grant me thy peace: “Graunt us thy peace”, Bk. of Common Prayer (1549), Agnus Dei (Jamie Callison, N&Q Dec 2014).
32–33 (And a sword shall pierce thy heart, | Thine also): Luke 2: 35: “(Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also).”
[Poem I 103–104 · Textual History II 435–36]
36 Let thy servant depart: see note to title. Pound had adapted Luke 2: 29 in Instigations (1920): “Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant, | Now lettest thou thy servant | Depart in peace”, Cantico del Sole 9–11.
Animula
Published separately Oct 1929, with engravings by Gertrude Hermes. A signed, limited edition on large paper was issued later the same month; repr. in Modern Things ed. Parker Tyler (1934), the first US publication; then 1936+ and Penguin / Sel Poems.
TSE was at first dissatisfied with the engraving for inside the booklet, by Gertrude Hermes (1901–83), whose husband Blair Hughes-Stanton had illustrated Ariel poems by Walter de la Mare in 1927 (Alone) and 1928 (Self to Self). She was instructed by Richard de la Mare “that if there is to be a figure in it at all, he thinks it should be made to appear very much younger” (19 July 1929, Faber archive). She submitted a second design, but TSE then expressed his preference for the first.
On 28 Oct 1932 United States Customs notified the Intimate Bookshop, Chapel Hill, that a copy of Animula, imported from London, had been seized as being “in violation of Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930”. TSE to Milton Abernethy, 18 Nov 1932: “I have been puzzling over the matter for a week, as not by the maddest imagination could one find anything censorable in this poem. I finally asked a friend to exercise his wits upon it; and he pointed out, what I should never have thought of for myself, that the trouble must be with the illustration. It is a perfectly irrelevant decorative drawing by Gertrude Hermes, somewhat in the manner of Blake, de
picting a naked man with normal genitalia. I suppose that this must be the cause of offense, though I should never have thought of it.”
Recorded 23 May 1947, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
TSE in Dante (1929) II, quoting Purg. XVI 85–96 with his own translation:
[Poems I 104–106 · Textual History II 436]
In the XVIth Canto of the Purgatorio we meet Marco Lombardo, who discourses at some length on the Freedom of the Will, and on the Soul:
Esce di mano a lui, che la vagheggia
prima che sia, a guisa di fanciulla
che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia,
l’anima semplicetta, che sa nulla,
salvo che, mossa da lieto fattore,
volentier torna a ciò che la trastulla.
Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore;
quivi s’inganna, e retro ad esso corre,
se guida o fren non torce suo amore.
Onde convenne legge per fren porre;
convenne rege aver, che discernesse
della vera cittade almen la torre.
From the hands of Him who loves her before she is, there issues like a little child that plays, with weeping and laughter, the simple soul, that knows nothing except that, come from the hands of a glad creator, she turns willingly to everything that delights her. First she tastes the flavour of a trifling good; then is beguiled and pursues it, if neither guide nor check withhold her. Therefore laws were needed as a curb; a ruler was needed, who should at least see afar the tower of the true City.
TSE had previously quoted 85–93 in Sir John Davies (1926), adding the Temple tr. when reprinting the essay in On Poetry and Poets: “From his hands who fondly loves her ere she is in being, there issues, after the fashion of a little child that sports, now weeping, now laughing, the simple, tender soul, who knoweth naught save that, sprung from a joyous maker, willingly she turneth to that which delights her. First she tastes the savour of a trifling good; there she is beguiled and runneth after it, if guide or curb turn not her love aside.”
Two years before Animula, TSE criticised Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood and other such writings about the “imagined radiance” of childhood: “it does not occur to Mr. Blunden that this love of one’s own childhood, a passion which he appears to share with Lamb and Vaughan, is anything but a token of greatness. We all know the mood; and we can, if we choose to relax to that extent, indulge in the luxury of reminiscence of childhood; but if we are at all mature and conscious, we refuse to indulge this weakness to the point of writing and poeticizing about it”, The Silurist (1927).
To John Cournos, 28 Dec 1929, after promising to send a copy of Dante: “I will also send a copy of my Christmas verses—though they are rather depressing ones!”
Title Animula: at the head of the translations in Byron’s Hours of Idleness stands the short poem by the Emperor Hadrian entitled Adrian’s Address | To His Soul When Dying, followed by Byron’s translation:
Animula! vagula, blandula,
Hospes, comesque, corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca?
Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos.
Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav’ring sprite,
Friend and associate of this clay!
To what unknown region borne,
Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?
No more, with wonted humour gay,
But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.
Hadrian’s first four lines were used by Pater as the epigraph to Marius the Epicurean ch. VIII, “Animula Vagula” (Grover Smith 129). Like Heraclitus’ Greek followers, Pater writes, Marius too “paused at the apprehension of that constant motion of things—the drift of flowers, of little or great souls, of ambitious systems, in the stream around him, the first source, the ultimate issue, of which, in regions out of sight, must count with him as but a dim problem.” (For Pater’s chapter see notes to Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think? 1 and A Cooking Egg 20.) Pound’s “Blandula, Tenulla, Vagula” appeared first in Canzoni (1911); he explained the connection with Pater to his father [28–30 Sept 1911], adding: “gentle, tender, wandering. only the ‘ula’ is a diminutive—which makes the adjectives all more whimsical, or ironical.”
[Poem I 105 · Textual History II 436]
1 Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul: Purg. XVI 85–90 (see headnote). TSE marked XVI 85–96 of the Italian in the copy his mother gave him; also XVIII 19–40, beginning “The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity.” He quoted XVI 88 again in The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 56 (Clark Lecture I). “the soul crying”, In silent corridors of death 4. “we may think, in rather mythological language, of a consciousness gradually realising itself by the effort of making itself its own objects”, The Ethics of Green and Sidgwick (1914). Issues: for the abrupt opening syntax and stationing, Mandarins 1 1: “Stands there”. But whereas the first line of Animula could follow on grammatically from the title, the singular verb “Stands there” could not follow on from the plural title Mandarins. In Beddoes’s Death’s Jest-Book III iii, Isbrand’s Song begins: “Squats on a toad-stool under a tree | A bodiless childfull of life” (III iii 328–29); see note to Coriolan I. Difficulties of a Statesman 1. (TSE: “squats · · · spawned”, Gerontion 8–9.) “at twelve o’clock | Issues the Westminster Gazette”, Airs of Palestine, No. 2 11–12. To Bonamy Dobrée, 16 Oct 1955: “Now, on issuing into the world again, I am reminded that I had engaged myself.” simple soul: “As a matter of fact, the human soul—l’anima semplicetta—is neither good nor bad; but in order to be good, in order to be human, requires discipline”, An American Critic (1916) (Ricks 229); for Dante’s “laws were needed”, see headnote. TSE again: “the choice between Christianity and secularism is not simply presented to the innocent mind, anima semplicetta”, Revelation (1937) 37. “a Dog is, on the whole, | What you would call a simple soul”, The Ad-dressing of Cats 22–23.
2 To a flat world: see Burnt Norton I 21–22, “Into our first world · · · Into our first world”, and note on Adamson’s The Individual and the Environment (1921). The bestselling satirical novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by “A Square” (Edwin Abbott Abbott) was published in 1884.
2, 14 flat world · · · playing-cards and kings and queens: see note to The Waste Land [I] 52, “the one-eyed merchant · · · this card”. Pope: “Th’ embroider’d King who shows but half his Face, | And his refulgent Queen”, The Rape of the Lock III 76–77.
5 grasping at kisses: Laforgue’s Hamlet, tr. Symons: “the little people of History, learning to read · · · fond of compliments, handshakes, and kisses”, Symons 105–106 (for Laforgue’s Hamlet see note to Preludes I 13 and related notes).
10 Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea: Swinburne: “Child of my sunlight and the sea”, Thalassius 483–84 (Archie Burnett, personal communication). TSE: “And dusty roses, crickets, sunlight on the sea”, Goldfish (Essence of Summer Magazines) III 7.
10–11 the sea; | Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor: “the sea · · · patterns · · · the floor”, Mandarins 2 6–10.
[Poem I 105 · Textual History II 436]
14 Content with playing-cards and kings and queens: Baudelaire:
Pour l’enfant, amoureux de cartes et d’estampes,
L’univers est égal à son vaste appétit.
Ah, que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes!
Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!
[For the child who adores maps and prints, the universe matches his vast appetite. Ah, how big the world is in the lamplight, but how small when viewed through the eyes of memory!] Le Voyage I 1–4, quoted in French in The Metaphysical Poets (1921) (Grover Smith 313).
14, 23 playing-cards · · · the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “against card houses · · · or objecting to the insistent adver
tisements of what he held to be a debased Encyclopædia Britannica”, Charles Whibley (1931).
19 imperatives of “is and seems”: Hamlet I ii: “Seems, madam! Nay it is; I know not seems” (Jain 1991).
22 Curl up the small soul in the window seat: “In nerveless torpor on the window seat”, WLComposite 366.
22–23 the small soul in the window seat | Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica: H. E. Bates: “The child was perching on a stool and the stool had been set on two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, so that the child could survey the world”, The Child in Criterion Dec 1928 (K. N. Chandran, English Studies Aug 2007). Charlotte Brontë: “It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat”, Jane Eyre ch. 1.
26 fare forward: see note to The Dry Salvages III 44–45.
27 the warm reality: “Inanimate objects take on animation of a kind; his old houses are not so much haunted by ghosts as they are ghosts themselves haunting the folk who briefly visit them. Under the influence of this sincere and tormented introspection, the warm reality dissolves: both that for which we hold out our arms, and that at which we strike vain blows”, Harold Monro (1933) (Ricks 229).
29–30 in its own gloom · · · in a dusty room: “Inside the gloom | Of a garret room”, Inside the gloom 1–2. “gloom · · · drawing-room”, Whispers of Immortality 26, 28.
30 Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room: “‘I suspect that within there is only the confusion of a dusty garret’ · · · ‘a room strewn with clothes, papers, cosmetics, letters and a few books’”, Eeldrop and Appleplex II (1917). “Nor in documents eaten by the lean solicitor | In our empty rooms”, WLComposite 654–55.