The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 109
The day TSE first saw The Waste Land in the Dial, 12 Nov 1922, he wrote to Gilbert Seldes: “I find this poem as far behind me as Prufrock now: my present ideas are very different.” On 20 Jan 1932, he wrote to Erik Mesterton, translator of The Waste Land into Swedish, that “horns and motors, which shall bring | Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring” ([III] 197–98) “refers certainly to the Sweeney poems, but not by intention to the dialogues which I have renamed Sweeney Agonistes, because they were not written at the time. A reference to it is suitable, however”.
To Wyndham Lewis, 26 Sept 1923: “I understand that you encourage me to go on with the Sweeney play—I hope that is what you mean.” But Sweeney Agonistes was abandoned in 1925. Laverty records that in 1936 TSE told her that Sweeney Agonistes had been “written in two nights. Working from ten o’clock at night until five the next morning I succeeded, with the aid of youthful enthusiasm and a bottle of gin, in completing the work in what I believe must have been record time. Unfortunately, as one grows older, gin and enthusiasm seem to lose some of their value as mental stimulants.” (See headnote Journey of the Magi for TSE’s claim to have written the poem “in three quarters of an hour · · · with the assistance of half a bottle of Booth’s gin”.)
4. JAZZ
Jazz, so named, is documented from c. 1915, and was widely regarded as degenerate. In Jan 1921, the Contemporary Review commented: “The frank barbarism began its appeal with the nigger minstrels and has landed us in ‘jazz’.” Vivien Eliot to Mary Hutchinson, [Dec? 1917]: “One day you really must try Tom’s Negro rag-time” (see note to The Waste Land [II] 128, “Rag”). In 1922, as widespread radio broadcasting was beginning in America, F. Scott Fitzgerald published Tales of the Jazz Age.
[Poem I 113–27 · Textual History II 449–52]
To Alfred Kreymborg, 23 Aug 1923, on his book (published by Martin Secker Ltd.): “I have not told you yet how much I enjoyed the Secker Puppet Plays. I think you have really got hold of something new and fruitful in rhythm—at any rate they have been a great stimulation to me and I have read them several times. They are very different indeed from what I have in my mind to attempt, yet they are more like it than anything else I know. I am trying to get at a dominant rhythm and subordinated rhythms for the thing—I expect it will be called jazz drama. Anyway, you encourage me to continue.” Kreymborg to TSE, 14 Jan 1924: “That you are planning plays of your own—also with puppets—was and is an exciting bit of news.” The following year, in his autobiography, Kreymborg mentioned TSE’s asking him about writing for puppets (Troubadour 397). See Grover Smith 113–14 for what he calls “the tragic side of the vapid jazz age”, and correspondences between Sweeney Agonistes and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which TSE read three times. TSE to John Hall Wheelock of Scribner’s, concerning Tender is the Night (1934): “I read The Great Gatsby when it first appeared. At the time I knew nothing about the author; but I remember saying that it interested me more than any American novel I had read since Henry James’s. Since then I have been waiting impatiently for another book by Mr. Scott Fitzgerald; with more eagerness and curiosity than I should feel towards the work of any of his contemporaries, except that of Mr. Ernest Hemingway. ¶ Is the foregoing paragraph of any use to you?” (A slightly abbreviated form of the third sentence was used by Scribner’s on the jacket.)
TSE to Gilbert Seldes, 6 Nov 1923: “I enjoyed very much your article on jazz music [Toujours Jazz in Dial Aug 1923]. My play, if it is ever written, will certainly appear as a text, although I intend it for production with an orchestra consisting exclusively of drums.” Seldes had quoted Henry Edward Krehbiel: “Berlioz in his supremest effort with his army of drummers produced nothing to compare in artistic interest with harmonious drumming of these savages. The fundamental effect was a combination of double and triple time, the former kept by the singers, the latter by the drummers, but it is impossible to convey the idea of the wealth of detail achieved by the drummers by means of exchange of the rhythms, syncopation of both simultaneously, and dynamic devices · · · I was forced to the conclusion that in their command of the element, which in the musical art of the ancient Greeks stood higher than either melody or harmony, the best composers of to-day were the veriest tyros compared with these black savages”, Afro-American Folksongs (1914) 65 (Shawn Worthington, personal communication). TSE: “Poetry begins, I dare say, with a savage beating a drum in the jungle, and it retains that essential of percussion and rhythm”, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism 155. On Gertrude Stein’s work: “its rhythms have a peculiar hypnotic power not met with before. It has a kinship with the saxophone. If this is the future, then the future is, as it very likely is, of the barbarians”, Charleston, Hey! Hey! (1927). (TSE’s title is from I’m Gonna Charleston back to Charleston by C. A. Coon and J. L. Sanders, recorded 1925.)
“The primitive jazz rhythm may have been a ‘mere direct’ expression of a type of ecstasy, but it is not necessarily ‘more perfect’ than its later developments. The work of Duke Ellington etc. whether you like it or not is not simply a deteriorated version of the negro spiritual. Old Man River is of course a brilliant fake, and part of the pleasure in it comes from the awareness that it is a fake”, Comments on Mannheim’s Letter (1944). For Ol’ Man River, composed in the style of a folksong for Show Boat (Kern and Hammerstein, 1927), see letter to Theodora Eliot, 4 Jan 1937, quoted in note to the unadopted part title to Ash-Wednesday I, “All Aboard for Natchez Cairo and St. Louis”.
On Stravinsky’s music for Le Sacre du Printemps: “it did seem to transform the rhythms of the steppes into the scream of the motor horn, the rattle of machinery, the grind of wheels, the beating of iron and steel, the roar of the underground railway, and the other barbaric cries of modern life; and to transform these despairing noises into music”, London Letter in Dial Oct 1921.
[Poems I 113–27 · Textual History II 449–52]
To Hayward, 5 Aug 1941, on Disney’s Fantasia: “it is a curious and often very ingenious adaptation of Modern Art, including surrealism, for the popolo, and makes me think that perhaps surrealism is just the kind of art for the lower middle classes, when they get used to it. What goes into a surrealist picture has a strong affinity with the junk in a small Best Parlour, barring the obscenity, and they will get that in time. To provide the necessary element of the expected, you have Mickey Mouse as the Dukas Sorcerer’s Apprentice: that part is good in the Snow White way. The dinosaurs in the Sacre de Printemps (when I think of the derision with which a popular audience at the Coliseum greeted that music when the ballet was first produced, it provides interesting reflections on the popularisation of Art: anything that is not first rate, however unpopular at first, becomes acceptable to the popolo in time). The only really poisonous part was the picturization of the Pastoral Symphony, a real degradation of that music, with comic female centaurs and baby Pegasuses, and a character called Bacchus who is really Silenus. It makes you think.”
To John Gordon Caffey, 5 Oct 1944: “when I started to write many years ago a kind of play which I never finished called Sweeney Agonistes, I had designed that the speech should have an accompaniment of percussion instruments, various drums, and also the bones.”
5. ARNOLD BENNETT’S ADVICE
To Arnold Bennett, 13 July 1924, requesting help: “I have a scheme in view, concerning which yours is the only advice which would be of any help. So I hope that it will not be impossible for you to see me.” Bennett was away until August, but recorded a visit by TSE on 10 Sept 1924: “He wanted to write a drama of modern life (furnished flat sort of people) in a rhythmic prose ‘perhaps with certain things in it accentuated by drum-beats.’ And he wanted my advice. We arranged that he should do the scenario and some sample pages of dialogue”, Journals III, 1921–1928 ed. Newman Flower (1933). Bennett (1867–1931) had made TSE’s acquaintance when impressed by a reading which included The Hippopotamus, at a charity event on 12 Dec 1917. Bennett’s The Author’s Craft (1914) covered both fiction an
d drama, and he had enjoyed stage success, notably with Milestones (1912) and Sacred and Profane Love (1920). Three parts of his Florentine Journal appeared in the Criterion (Dec 1927, Jan and Feb 1928).
To Bennett 8 Oct 1924: “I have five or six typed pages of dialogue, and a very brief scenario, which I should now like to submit to you · · · I could come to see you either Monday, Tuesday or Thursday evenings of next week · · · Perhaps I shall have a little more dialogue by then.” To Bennett, 23 Oct 1924, after their second meeting: “I am reconstructing my play according to all of your suggestions · · · I shall feel that the play will be as much yours as mine.” 19 Apr 1925: “I came to see you last in November with the outline some dialogue of my play. I am writing now to explain that since December either I or my wife has been continually ill—I have had two months lately on end;—and my wife three months, of critical illness which is not ended; and I have had to let everything go. I do not want you to think that I have troubled you for nothing. The help you gave me determined me to carry out this play: I have thought of it a great deal, I shall finish it next winter.”
[Poem I 113–27 · Textual History II 449–52]
What he had drafted is not certain, but it probably included what he called The Superior Landlord, a five-page outline, of which the ribbon copy and carbon are preserved at King’s. The ribbon copy has pencil estimate of length: “Say 4000 words” and later endorsement “Early typescript T. S. Eliot”. Both copies are misbound, with the character list following the first page of text. Grover Smith 1983 62 claims that The Superior Landlord dates from 1933. Sidnell 100–101, 264–65 detects the influence of Auden’s The Dance of Death (1933) and argues that The Superior Landlord dates from 1934. Madden disputes this, and it is improbable because these foolscap leaves (watermarked “Dickinson Bond 1804”) precisely match those of the Fragments published in 1926 and 1927. The mention in The Superior Landlord of “Badinage · · · leading up to Fragment II” suggests that the Fragments were already written.
6. THE SUPERIOR LANDLORD
Manuscript Synopsis
Prologue. Doris Dusty.
Parados. Arrival of Wauchope, Horsfall, Klipstein [1st reading: Klepstein],
Krumpacker, Swarts, Snow. FIGHT between Swarts Snow. Sweeney
arrives.
Agon. Sweeney monologues.
Parabasis. Chorus “The Terrors of the Night”.
anapests—pnigos
Scene. Entrance of Mrs Porter. Debate with Sweeney. Murder of Mrs Porter.
Parados: the arrival of the chorus, singing and dancing, in Aristophanic comedy.
Agon · · · Parabasis: see headnote, 2. ARISTOPHANES. TSE scored a sentence in Cornford’s ch. VI, “The Chorus in Agon and Parabasis”: “It has been doubted whether the poet’s oration on his own behalf was an original feature of the Parabasis.”
anapests—pnigos: discussing the form of the Parabasis, Cornford writes of “an address to the audience, composed in the long anapaestic measure, and called by Aristophanes ‘the Anapaests.’ Here the mask is dropt and with it all pretence of dramatic illusion. The Leader delivers a message from the poet to the Athenian people, setting the transcendant merits of the author in contrast with the ridiculous inferiority of his rivals, and claiming credit for the services he has rendered in exposing those abominable rogues, his political opponents and prophets of contemporary culture. The speech appropriately ends in a peroration called pnigos, because it was to be delivered in one breath with increasing rapidity, the voice, perhaps, rising to a scream capable of drowning any demonstrations of disapproval from the adherents of demagogue or sophist” (121). TSE scored the last sentence. For bombastic political rhetoric, see Mr. Pugstyles.
Murder of Mrs Porter: TSE to his Swedish translator, Erik Mesterton, 25 Oct 1948: “I do not know why you should think that Sweeney was going to murder Doris. The intended victim was Mrs. Porter, who had not made her appearance at the point where I abandoned the attempt. She was, however, to prove invulnerable or else to come to life again, being in some shadowy way a kind of vegetation goddess. I do not know why the dream songs were given that title or whether I had any original intention of incorporating one or more into the play so you see that I am almost as much in the dark as anyone can be.” (For Dream Songs, see headnote to Eyes that last I saw in tears.)
[Poems I 113–27 · Textual History II 449–52]
Interruption by A. L. Old Clothes man
A. L. Boy Scouts Dustman.
A. L. Tenant Below.
A. L. Pereira
Parabasis II. Theological discussion.
Contemporary Politics.
Ode Antode Epyrheme
Chorikon. Half-choruses. αισχρολογια
Invocation of the Muse.
Scene Sweeney begins scrambling eggs. Distribution of eggs.
Return of Mrs Porter.
Exodus.
After Theological discussion TSE wrote “p.122”, referring to Cornford. In the left margin are his approximate word-counts: Prologue, 150; Parados, 300; Agon, 250; Parabasis, 100; Scene, 350 [emended from 300?]; Parabasis II, 100; Ehurikon, 50; total at foot of first leaf: 1300; Scene, 250; Exodus, 50. Total, 1600 [emended from 1650].
A. L.: Crawford 163: “Interruptions of the action by figures of the Alazon (Impostor) type, scored ‘AL.’ by Cornford, were also common.” TSE scored the first sentence of Cornford’s ch. VII, “The Impostor” (132): “There is one more constant motive in Aristophanes’ comedies still to be accounted for—the unwelcome intruders who so often thrust themselves upon the hero in the second part of the play.” He also scored a paragraph headed “The Impostor a double of the Antagonist” (148): “The Impostor in Aristophanes, as we have seen, has three essentials: (1) he interrupts the sacrifice or wedding-feast, and claims a share in the fruits of the Agonist’s victory; (2) he has a vaunting, boastful, swaggering disposition; (3) he is regularly mocked, beaten, or otherwise mishandled, and driven away. We have also found reason to suggest that he may be in some way a double of the Antagonist. We naturally look for further light to Dionysiac myth and ritual, where, I believe, we shall find the figure we seek to identify.”
Ode Antode Epyrheme: the Ode and Antode are usually a symmetrical pair of songs. The “epirrhema” is that which is said besides or afterwards, addressed to the audience.
Chorikon: a choral interlude such as that in Aristophanes’ The Birds. αισχρολογια: vulgar language.
[Poem I 113–27 · Textual History II 449–52]
Dramatis Personae and Scenario: The Superior Landlord
[Half-title page]
Be absolute for death, either death or life
Shall thereby seem the sweeter: reason thus with life—
[Title page]
THE SUPERIOR LANDLORD
PEREIRA
or
THE MARRIAGE OF LIFE AND DEATH
A Dream
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a miasma, or a hideous dream.
[new page]
CHARACTERS.
Epigraph on half-title page Be absolute · · · reason thus with life: see note on unadopted epigraphs to Sweeney Agonistes (below).
Title THE SUPERIOR LANDLORD: pencil addition above the four typed lines “PEREIRA · · · A Dream”. (Though the pencil deletion cancelled only the middle two, the intention was probably to delete all four.) In law, a superior landlord is a person to whom the ownership of a property may later revert. Grover Smith 1983: “The action was conceived · · · as the dream-vision of an insignificant man—called, in Expressionistic style, ‘the Tenant Downstairs’, Sweeney being ‘the Superior Landlord’ · · · In this dream Pereira, the lessee or subordinate landlord, has allowed two young women, Doris and Dusty, to occupy the upstairs flat, which he rents from Sweeney.” (For “any other superior bank clerk”, see note to The Waste Land [I] 69.) OED “landlord” 1b: “fig. of God”, with Richard Corbett
: “It wounded mee the Landlord of all times | Should let long lives, and leases to their crimes”, An Elegy on the Death of Dr. Ravis, Bishop of London.
Deleted subtitle THE MARRIAGE OF LIFE AND DEATH: Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (title).
Epigraph Between the acting · · · a hideous dream: Julius Caesar II i, with “miasma,” for Shakespeare’s “phantasma”. See note to The Hollow Men V 7–8. “miasmal mist”, The Hippopotamus 36. “Phantasmal gnomes”, WLComposite 341.
[Poems I 113–27 · Textual History II 449–52]
Lincoln Snow Negro Jazz Drummer