The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 114
TSE: “I have attempted a croquis [rough draft] of a play (Sweeney Agonistes) to indicate that our tragic feelings are best expressed not through ‘tragedy’ but through farce”, footnote to a lecture, Shakespeare Criticism (Excerpts from Lectures 1932–1933). “For to those who have experienced the full horror of life, tragedy is still inadequate · · · In the end, horror and laughter may be one—only when horror and laughter have become as horrible and laughable as they can be · · · there is potential comedy in Sophocles and potential tragedy in Aristophanes, and otherwise they would not be such good tragedians or comedians as they are · · · De Quincey’s Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth is perhaps the best known single piece of criticism of Shakespeare that has been written”, Shakespearian Criticism I: From Dryden to Coleridge (1934). For De Quincey’s essay, see final note to The Superior Landlord (Sweeney Agonistes headnote, 6. THE SUPERIOR LANDLORD).
Coriolan
1. Composition 2. After Publication
Triumphal March was published separately as Ariel Poem 35, with drawings by E. McKnight Kauffer, 8 Oct 1931 (with 300 signed large-paper copies, 29 Oct); then in Recent Poetry 1923–1933, ed. Alida Monro (1933); and in Modern Things, ed. Parker Tyler (1934), its first US publication. Before the publication of Triumphal March, TSE had written Difficulties of a Statesman, which was published in Commerce Winter [1931/]1932, with a facing French translation by Georges Limbour. Difficulties of a Statesman (without the translation) then appeared in Hound & Horn Oct–Dec 1932, its first US publication. The two were published in succession but as independent poems, not as Coriolan, in The Faber Book of Modern Verse, ed. Michael Roberts (1936), a month before the publication of 1936, where the title Coriolan was first used.
A proof copy of the 1931 Ariel Poem sold by Glenn Horowitz (cat. 22, 1990, item 50) bears a note in an unknown hand: “Mr. Eliot didn’t like this type so Mr. Simon is consulting with Mr. Kauffer before he sets it again.” Rather than a roman typeface, Oliver Simon of the Curwen Press finally used the strikingly modern typeface Kabel (1926–27), by the German typographer Rudolf Koch. This was the only Ariel poem by any poet set in a sans serif type.
Although TSE recorded Triumphal March four times and Difficulties of a Statesman twice, he never recorded them together.
Triumphal March was recorded May 1933, Columbia U. Second: 1946, Levy’s Sound Studios, London for the Writers Group of the Society for Cultural Relations between the Peoples of the British Commonwealth and the USSR. Third: 13 May 1947, Harvard, as part of the Morris Gray Poetry Reading. Fourth: 26 Sept 1955, London; released by Caedmon 1955 (US), 1959 (UK).
[Poems I 127–35 · Textual History II 452–55]
Difficulties of a Statesman was recorded May 1947, for the Harvard Poetry Room; released 1948 by Harvard Vocarium Records (alternative take recovered at Harvard, 2014). Second: 12 Nov 1950, for U. Chicago Round Table, broadcast by NBC.
1. COMPOSITION
Like The Hollow Men (and probably Ash-Wednesday)—and by contrast with Four Quartets—Coriolan was intended from the start to be a series of constituent parts.
To Lincoln Kirstein of Hound and Horn, 12 June 1931: “Had I had any verse to offer you, you would have received it, but I am not likely to have anything this year except a piece which I am working on for the Ariel Poems.” To Marguerite Caetani, 23 June 1931: “I have done a part of a projected long poem, but this part must be used for our ‘Ariel’ series in the autumn, so I cannot give you use of the English text; but when I have done another section, I can offer you that if it proves suitable.” (For the purposes of the Ariel series, the title of ts1 was changed from Coriolan: Part I to Triumphal March.) To Caetani, 31 Aug 1931: “I have a section of a much longer poem which I should be glad to let you see for Commerce, though I do not know whether it is translatable or whether you will like it. But as there is some remote possibility that I may finish the poem some day, I should like to know, in the event of your accepting it, when you would be likely to use it.” 14 Sept: “As for my poem, you shall have it as soon as I have time to type out a copy.” 30 Oct: “I should · · · be glad to have a cheque for £15 for the poem.” 31 Dec: “You speak as if you were enclosing corrected proofs, but perhaps you mean that you want me to return them as soon as I get them.” 24 Feb 1932: “I look forward to the forthcoming issue of Commerce.” (Sencourt 118 claims that TSE read Difficulties of a Statesman at a gathering with Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1930, but this cannot have taken place before 1931.)
After publication of Difficulties of a Statesman in France and the United States, TSE wrote to J. Clifford Turner, 8 Mar 1935: “I have your letter of the 4th, and will send you copies of Mr. Pugstyles and The Difficulties of a Statesman as soon as I have time to make copies, or have copies made. The former is unpublished, and the latter has never been published in this country. Meanwhile, I am sending Miss Thirburn the only available copy of the former. Perhaps she would let you take a copy off that.”
Hugh Ross Williamson on “the new masterpiece which 1932 sees in the making”: “It is not yet completed; even its title and plan, I believe, tentative and subject to modification · · · At the moment (July, 1932), the first two sections of this projected work (which is to be slightly longer than The Waste Land) are in print—Triumphal March · · · and Difficulties of a Statesman · · · The titles themselves suggest that, as The Waste Land was the post-War world, so here is the post-Peace world · · · As in The Waste Land, there is a world-conspectus and a simultaneity of action. The triumphal march is not only the Great War (ironically compressed into a catalogue of fighting weapons), but all processions which the mob wildly and foolishly acclaims”, The Poetry of T. S. Eliot (1932) 181–84. Williamson prints one acknowledgement only: “I should like to express my gratitude to Mr. Eliot for his kindness in supplying certain facts of which I have made use in this book, and for the stimulus of his conversation.”
[Poem I 129–35 · Textual History II 453–55]
For TSE’s work at Lloyds Bank on settlement of international loans and on John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, see note to The Waste Land [III] 277–78, 290–91. “The present age, a singularly stupid one, is the age of a mistaken nationalism and of an equally mistaken internationalism”, letter to the editor, Transatlantic Review Jan 1924.
2. AFTER PUBLICATION
To John Middleton Murry, 20 Oct 1931, of Triumphal March: “consciously, I had in mind the ordinary chatter of a crowd, and also the general state of paganism in this country; but in any such phrase, there are undertones only audible to the writer, and other undertones ignored by the writer but audible to readers like yourself. Anyway, I can’t do anything about it; except to mention that this is a part of a much longer piece, of which the second part is already written, of which the third part is I think writable, and of which I doubt whether I am able to write the fourth part—which must be largely derivative from S. John of the Cross—at all.”
To Mary Hutchinson, 28 Oct 1931: “It is a great satisfaction to me if you do like the poem—or a part of a poem, for it is merely the first of four sections of which only one other is written. I have found it an interesting problem to try to work out how to write a poem which should be in one aspect, and that the most obvious, a political satire. So far, I do not seem to have succeeded, because one reader—quite an intelligent German—wrote to me of this fragment as being ‘militarist’—I should have thought that if anything it was distinctly the contrary.”
I. A. Richards to TSE, 6 Nov 1931, on Triumphal March: “it comes off for me perfectly—but seems an easy thing, for you, to be writing. Still, the pounding of the hoofs and the central swoon of significance so soon forgotten and the sacred trivial winding it off all come so easily into the reader’s mind that he doesn’t measure the poet’s problem with them. But do you consciously dovetail into your other poems—or is that just the pathetic critic’s whim? crumpets/eagles and Cooking Egg. So many people come to me and point these things out because I once ment
ioned some such puzzling correspondences, that I’d like to know.” TSE, 11 Nov 1931: “I shall be interested to know what further impression you will get from the second part of this poem, which I have finished, and from the third and fourth parts which are not yet written. But I should like to show you the second part when I see you. As for the allusions you mention, that is perfectly deliberate, and it was my intention that the reader should recognize them. As for the question why I made the allusions at all, that seems to me definitely a matter which should not concern the reader. That, as you know, is a theory of mine, that very often it is possible to increase the effect for the reader by letting him know a reference or a meaning; but that if the reader knew more, the poetic effect would actually be diminished; that if the reader knows too much about the crude material in the author’s mind, his own reaction may tend to become at best merely a kind of feeble image of the author’s feelings, whereas a good poem should have a potentiality of evoking feelings and associations in the reader of which the author is wholly ignorant. I am rather inclined to believe for myself that my best poems are possibly those which evoke the greatest number and variety of interpretations surprising to myself. What do you think about this?”
[Poem I 129–35 · Textual History II 453–55]
To Miss M. Swann, 10 Dec 1937: “I am very interested to know that you have been experimenting with Triumphal March, because it is particularly amongst my poems one which is very much better aloud than when read to oneself. I do not quite see in what way it is susceptible of choral treatment in the ordinary sense, but it obviously could profit by being apportioned between several voices.” (See note to The WasteLand [III] 218 for TSE’s “strong dislike of dividing up for voices poems which were conceived in terms of one voice”.)
Reading Triumphal March at Harvard, 13 May 1947, TSE introduced it as “one of the most difficult of my poems for me or anyone else to read aloud, but for that reason, if for that reason only, I think one of those best worth trying to read. It is of course complete in itelf, but it was to have been part of a much longer poem in which the character persisting throughout was a certain Cyril Parker.” Of the Ariel Poems: “Triumphal March originally appeared in this series too; but I took it out of the series because I meant it to be the first of a sequence in the life of a character who appears in the first part as Young Cyril. It is rather difficult to read: I ought always to go into training for several weeks before attempting it”, Chicago Round Table (1950). Then, after reading Difficulties of a Statesman: “And that was as far as I got with that poem.”
[Poem I 129 · Textual History II 453
Title Coriolan: present in Triumphal March ts1, but not used in print until 1936. “Coriolanus may be not as ‘interesting’ as Hamlet, but it is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success”, Hamlet (1919). To G. Wilson Knight, 30 Oct 1930 (after discussing Marina): “I have been rereading Coriolanus. I wonder if you will agree with me—it is rather important—I feel now that the political criticism, so much mentioned, is a very surface pattern; and that the real motive of the play is the astonishing study of the mother–son relation: ‘he did it to please his mother …’ I think of writing a poem on this and on Beethoven’s version Coriolan.” (In his copy of the Temple ed. of the play, which he dated 1903, TSE underlined “he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud”, I i.) TSE’s mother’s Savonarola: A Dramatic Poem [1926] describes the French Army “passing through the Porta Romana · · · watching the movement of the troops · · · yonder march the French · · · ’Tis he! He comes! See, yonder rides the King · · · Yet with indifferent glances passing by · · · How fine they look! Who’d ask a braver sight? | How proudly rides each plumed and jewelled knight · · · The pride and pomp of war” (29–30); “The chivalry | And flower of France have all passed by. | Here come the herd” (32); “What sudden cry of triumph rings without? | How joyously and loud the people shout!” (34); “throw those weapons down | And take the cross” (70). TSE’s introduction speaks of “the heroes of Shakespeare and Corneille” (ix).
TSE’s view of Beethoven may have derived from Beethoven: His Spiritual Development by J. W. N. Sullivan (see headnote to Four Quartets, 7. MUSIC).
Interlude: in a Bar 11, “Broken and scarred”, had taken up “broke | And scarred” from Coriolanus IV v. (TSE: “Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus”, The Waste Land [V] 426.) Shakespeare’s scene, which gave TSE the epigraph to Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”), shows the reconciliation of the enemies Coriolanus and Aufidius, and ends with the servants looking forward to new battles against Rome, now that Coriolanus has changed sides. Second Servant: “Why, then we shall have a stirring world again. This peace is nothing, but to rust iron, increase tailors and breed ballad-makers.” First Servant: “Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night. Peace is a very apoplexy · · · it makes men hate one another.” Third Servant: “· · · The wars for my money.”
Against a newspaper announcement in Jan 1935 that Robert Speaight would play Coriolanus in a black shirt at the Mercury Theatre, TSE wrote: “I have told Speaight that Coriolanus was a patrician would have nothing to do with anything so plebeian as fascism” (Houghton). “I have at hand a book containing statements by Sir Oswald Mosley, which anyone with the merest smattering of theology can recognize to be not only puerile but anathema”, The Church and Society (1935).
Challenging Wyndham Lewis: “‘We possess a great deal of evidence,’ says Mr. Lewis, ‘as to what Shakespeare thought of military glory and martial events.’ Do we? Or rather, did Shakespeare think anything at all?” Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca (1927). Against this in his copy of the first American edition of Selected Essays, TSE wrote, probably in the 1960s: “cf. my opinion later (the chronicle plays)”. In the course of reviewing Lewis: “Coriolanus is not a defence of aristocracy, or a mere attack on the mob. Shakespeare is, in fact, completely critical and detached from any partisanship: in this play his own emotion is very strong indeed, but cannot be associated with that of any character or group in the play”, The Lion and the Fox (1937). “The fact is that the situation of belief in the modern world is more analogous to that of the later Roman Empire than to any other period that we know”, Revelation (1937). “We are all, so far as we inherit the civilization of Europe, still citizens of the Roman Empire · · · But, of course, the Roman Empire which Virgil imagined and for which Aeneas worked out his destiny was not exactly the same as the Roman Empire of the legionnaires, the pro-consuls and governors, the business men and speculators, the demagogues and generals”, Virgil and the Christian World (1951).
“I noticed in the 1930s that Troilus and Cressida, with its bitter view of public affairs, and Timon of Athens, with its mood of disillusion, were revived several times. In some circumstances—certainly in Paris in 1934—even Coriolanus may arouse a wider interest. But for the most part, these and the other later plays are plays for a limited public, and that doesn’t mean, in my opinion, that they are less great, or less dramatic, or that Shakespeare did not continue to develop”, The Development of Shakespeare’s Verse (recorded version, 1950).
[Poem I 129–31 · Textual History II 453–54]
I. Triumphal March
To Gregor Ziemer, 10 Feb 1937, referring to Matthiessen: “Triumphal March was not concerned with contemporary politics. I am afraid that I cannot give you any more explanation than the very exhaustive one of Mr. Matthiessen, who I think already explains a little too much.”
Title Triumphal March: OED “triumph” 1: “Rom. Hist. The entrance of a victorious commander with his army and spoils in solemn procession into Rome, permission for which was granted by the senate in honour of an important achievement in war.” The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature: “To be granted a triumph it was at first necessary · · · to have won a great victory over a foreign enemy, with at least 5,000 of the enemy killed, and to have brought home at least a token army to show that the war was won · · · the
triumphator · · · stood, richly dressed and wreathed in bay, on a four-horse chariot · · · The procession was joined by the magistrates and senators, captives, spoils, and sacrificial animals. It proceeded from the Triumphal Gate · · · along the Via Sacra to the Capitol.” (TSE: “triumphal cars”, East Coker II 9.)
North’s Plutarch on the triumph of Paulus Æmilius: “First, the people having set up sundry scaffolds · · · about the market-place, and in other streets of the city · · · the sight of this triumph was to continue three days, whereof the first was scant sufficient to see the passing by of the images, tables, and pictures, and statues of wonderful bigness, all won and gotten of their enemies, and drawn in the show upon two hundred and fifty charrets. The second day, there were carried upon a number of carts, all the fairest and richest armour of the Macedonians, as well of copper, as also of iron and steel, all glistering bright · · · fair burganets upon targets: habergions, or brigantines and corselets, upon greaves: round targets of the Cretans, and javelins of the Thracians, and arrows amongst the armed pikes · · · there followed three thousand men, which carried the ready money in seven hundred and fifty vessels · · · The third day early in the morning, the trumpets began to sound · · · After them followed six-score goodly fat oxen · · · young men · · · who led them to the sacrifice · · · he came himself in his charret triumphing · · · It was a noble sight to behold: and yet the person of himself only was worth the looking on, without all that great pomp and magnificence. For he · · · carried in his right hand a laurel bough, as all his army did besides: the which being divided by bands and companies, followed the triumphing charret of their captain.”