The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 115
Cornford: “The marching songs of various English regiments, with their ribald satire on the officers, still perpetuate the fescennine tradition of the Roman triumph. [Footnote: Similar customs lived on through the Middle Ages at church festivals, especially those which perpetuated the Roman Kalends. Thus, the Synod held at Rome in 826 · · · speaks of bad Christians who go to church on feast days]”, The Origin of Attic Comedy 40–41. In hospital in 1962, TSE sang Fred Gilbert’s music hall song of 1892, The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo: “my daily walk | To the great Triumphal Arch is one grand triumphal march” (T. S. Matthews 171).
Kenner 221: the poem’s “interminable pageant · · · incorporates a Roman general’s triumph, Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, the Lord Mayor’s show, the pageant in Purgatorio Canto XXIX, the viceregal cavalcade in Ulysses” (episode XI, Sirens). Kojecky 101 invokes Mussolini’s coup and the March on Rome in Oct 1922 as enthusiastically reported in the Daily Mail and collected in The “Red” Dragon and the Black Shirts: How Italy Found her Soul by Sir Percival Phillips (57): “The three columns of Fascisti assembled at the Villa Borghese · · · There were 117,000 in all · · · For seven hours they defiled before the impressive Victor Emmanuel Memorial · · · As the units finished their triumphal march they went to the railway station, where trains were waiting to take them home.” The Daily Mail was owned by Lord Rothermere, whose estranged wife was funding the Criterion, which was first published in the month of the March on Rome. TSE to Grover Smith, 4 July 1949: “My ability to forget dates in connection with my own work is, I should think, somewhat exceptional. My impression however is that according to the silly calendar which was somewhat pretentiously and vainly adopted after Mussolini’s march on Rome, the year 1922 and not 1921 was Anno I.”
[Poem I 131 · Textual History II 453–54]
Six weeks after the Allied victory in the Great War, Vivien Eliot described to Charlotte Eliot, 30 Dec 1918, the visit of President Woodrow Wilson: “London was looking its most beautiful when Wilson drove through the streets. Although very tired after Xmas day, Tom and I went early and stood in the best place we could find, for over two hours. Even then we had quite thirty rows deep of people in front of us—and I should have seen nothing at all if Tom had not lifted me up just as they passed.”
France especially celebrated the defeat of an old enemy. A stereoscopic photograph of the Victory Day Celebrations at the “Arch of Triumph” Paris, on Bastille Day, 14 July 1919, published by the Keystone View Company, gave a summary: “On this great day Paris was almost delirious with joy and pride. The terrible war which had strained the resources and taxed the spirit of France almost to the limit had ended in glorious victory; the dreaded enemy beyond the Rhine whose threats and menaces had for half a century hung like a black cloud over the nation, was humbled in the dust. Today the victory celebration; today countless thousands are out in holiday attire, lining the sidewalks as the veterans who have won the war march by; today, for the first time in the history of France, foreign soldiers, allies in the glorious struggle, march in triumph under the Arc de Triomphe · · · From its summit 155 feet high, one has a wonderful view—the city spreads out interminably in every direction, at one’s feet these magnificent avenues lined with stately buildings and bordered with handsome trees; near by the Seine, its winding course spanned by bronze, stone and marble bridges; in the distance the great cathedral of Notre Dame, the stately Palace of the Louvre and other great buildings. The Arc de Triomphe was erected to commemorate the victories of the Great Napoleon · · · On the inner side of the arch are inscribed the names of those great victories which made France so powerful and which stamped Napoleon as the greatest military commander of his age.” “F. M.”: “behind us the huge grey mass of the Louvre · · · impending, magnificent, imperial—triumphant symbol of · · · the one people which has supreme belief in its own power and its own destiny”, A Diary of the Rive Gauche II (1925). For TSE’s “depression caused by the hollow gaiety of the public celebrating” at the end of the Second World War, see note to The Hollow Men V 28–31.
Keynes on Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, in 1919: “His philosophy had · · · no place for ‘sentimentality’ in international relations · · · In spite, therefore, of France’s victorious issue from the present struggle · · · her future position remained precarious in the eyes of one who took the view that European civil war is · · · a normal, or at least a recurrent, state of affairs for the future, and that the sort of conflicts between organised Great Powers which have occupied the past hundred years will also engage the next · · · For a Peace of magnanimity or of fair and equal treatment · · · could only have the effect of shortening the interval of Germany’s recovery and hastening the day when she will once again hurl at France her greater numbers and her superior resources · · · as soon as this view of the world is adopted · · · a demand for a Carthaginian Peace is inevitable”, The Economic Consequences of the Peace ch. 3. “Clemenceau’s aim was to weaken and destroy Germany in every possible way”, ch. 5. For Keynes on the Carthaginian Peace at Versailles, see note to The Waste Land [III] 277–78, 290–91. TSE to his mother, 2 Oct 1919: “it is certain that at the Peace Conference the one strong figure was Clemenceau · · · and that Wilson went down utterly before European diplomacy. It is obviously a bad peace, in which the major European powers tried to get as much as they could, and appease or ingratiate as far as possible the various puppet nationalities which they have constituted and will try to dominate.”
[Poem I 131 · Textual History II 453–54]
“We cannot, after the treaty of Versailles, believe that any war will end war; we believe rather that war breeds war: certainly that a bad peace breeds war”, The Christian in the Modern World (1935). “That the French should be in constant apprehension of German aggression · · · is quite natural”, A Commentary in Criterion Jan 1936. For TSE in 1939 on “many among the enemy who are inspired by no worthier ambition than that of reversing the situation of 1918”, see note to East Coker V 2, “the years of l’entre deux guerres”.
To Stephen Spender, 9 June 1932: “What really matters is not what I think about the Church to-day, or about Capitalism, or military processions, or about Communism: what matters is whether I believe in Original Sin.”
1–5 Stone, bronze, stone · · · the City: “Foundation of the City. Stone and bronze · · · stones”, Anabasis IV i, iii (Abel 222–23). stone, oakleaves: “The Church shall protect her own, in her own way, not | As oak and stone; stone and oak decay”, Murder in the Cathedral II. oakleaves: Coriolanus: “His brows bound with oak”; “he comes the third time home with the oaken garland”; “browbound with the oak” (I iii, II i, II ii). Oakleaves are variously used in military decorations. London Gazette 29 Dec 1922: “laurel leaves for gallantry, or with oak leaves for meritorious service.” horses’ heels: CORIOLANUS: “Let them pull all about mine ears, present me | Death on the wheel, or at wild horses’ heels”, opening of III ii.
1–2 Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels | Over the paving: Joyce: “Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing”, Ulysses, opening of episode XI (Sirens). Achille Delaroche, tr. Stuart Merrill: “to trample under the steel of their horses’ hoofs the prostrate”, The Conquering Dream in Pastels in Prose. TSE: “dead leaves still rattled on like tin | Over the asphalt · · · metal leaves”, Little Gidding II 30–31, 34. “stone and steel”, WLComposite 341.
2–3 paving. | And the flags: “flagstones” are etymologically unrelated to “flags”.
4–5 people · · · the City: Coriolanus III i, SICINIUS: “What is the city, but the people?” ALL: “True, the people are the city” (with “the city” two dozen times in the play).
4, 13–17 Count them · · · 5,800,000 rifles and carbines · · · 53,000 field and heavy guns, | I cannot tell how many projectiles: Atkins 22: the speaker “cannot have counted so many and so specifically (even if the numbers be rounded off)”.
[Poem I 131 · Textual History II 453]
4–46 such a press of people · · · so many crowding the way · · · our sausages · · · indifferent · · · the temple · · · the country · · · to church · · · sausage: Shelley, Swellfoot the Tyrant II i: The Public Sty. The Boars in full Assembly. PURGANAX: “religion, morals, peace and plenty · · · The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments, | Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes · · · the failure of a foreign market for | Sausages, bristles and blood-puddings · · · a state-necessity— | Temporary of course · · · Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions | Inculcated by the arch-priest. A loud cry from the PIGS.” TSE to the Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott, 17 June 1930: “a large public which is indifferent · · · a much smaller public which is hostile, and there is another public which is rejoiced, when the Anglo-Catholic Congress takes place · · · a great many others, scattered about the country · · · I hope that I may take advantage of your hospitable sausages at 4d. per lb.” And such a press of people · · · and weso many crowding the way: “What of the crowds that ran, | Pushed, stared, and huddled, at his feet, | Keen to appropriate the man?” Mandarins I 3–5.
8–9 Are they coming? · · · Here they come. Is he coming?: Coriolanus: “Ha? Martius coming home? · · · Martius coming home?”; “He’s coming”; “Now he’s coming” (II i, III iii, IV vi).
10 The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving: Edmund Husserl: “The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a continuous perceiving, actual or potential”, Ideas tr. W. R. Boyce Gibson (1931) 127. TSE to James Haughton Woods, professor of philosophy at Harvard, 5 Oct 1914: “I have been plugging away at Husserl, and find it terribly hard, but very interesting; and I like very much what I think I understand of it.” TSE’s annotated copy of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (which he gave to Michael Roberts) is dated “Marburg 1914”. To Martin D’Arcy, 19 Aug 1931, of Husserl: “it proved to be about the most difficult German that I have ever read, with occasional flashes of clarity. But I do think that he is a really important man.” (TSE: “Losskij’s essay reaches us through the cumbrous constructions of the German language”, “Der Sinn der Ikonen” by L. Ouspensky and V. Losskij, reader’s report, 1952.)
10–11 The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving · · · our sausages: “a poet’s mind is · · · constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes”, The Metaphysical Poets (1921). Ego: pronounced eggo in TSE’s recordings.
11–12 We can wait with our stools and our sausages | What comes first? Can you see?: “timid plugs 50 yrs hence will be lining up with campstools to see the 1st performance of the old favorite”, jotting on “Timidity” (c. 624 fol. 104). (OED “plug”, 6b: “An incompetent or undistinguished person”.)
11–15 our sausages · · · 28,000 trench mortars: OED “sausage” 2e: “slang. A German trench-mortar bomb, so called because of its shape”, with 1918: “At first we called them ‘sausages’, then · · · they became ‘flying pigs’.” In 1915, Harry Champion recorded the song My Old Iron Cross: “All at once a thousand Germans shouted ‘Give us meat’ | I gave them a sausage that I’d dug up for a treat”. OED “sausage” 2d: “slang. A German”, from 1890. In 1914, Mark Sheridan recorded the song When Belgium put the Kibosh on the Kaiser: “A silly German sausage | Dreamt Napoleon he’d be · · · he talked of peace | While he prepared for war”. Robert Graves: “Sausages are easy to see and dodge · · · the faint plop! of the mortar that sends off the sausage · · · we pick out at once”, Good-Bye to All That (1929) ch. XIII.
A sausage-seller is one of the adversaries in the agon of Aristophanes’ Knights. TSE told Richard Eberhart, 30 Mar 1933, “that the sausage is of Aristophanic origin, besides being phallic” (Harvard Advocate Dec 1938). Eberhart: “I read Christ into Caesar, which he said was not intended; but one could have it if one liked” (Joel Roache, Richard Eberhart, 1971, 96).
11, 46 sausages · · · sausage: pronounced saussages in TSE’s recordings of 1933 and 1955, but sorsages in 1947.
[Poem I 131 · Textual History II 453]
13–23] Both the inventory and the layout of these lines derive from The Coming War by General Erich Ludendorff published by Faber in June 1931 (Grover Smith 162). This was Christopher Turner’s translation of Weltkrieg droht auf deutschem Boden, published in Munich earlier the same year (jacket: “Ludendorff forecasts the events of a second world war, which he tells us is immediately impending”). Ludendorff: “The world war has proved a disappointment to the supernational forces in many ways. They are too affected by superstition, their Jewish mentality, or the teaching of Christianity to understand that the nations are governed by spiritual laws of the highest import” (12). The book was a call to the German people to “take the sword to regain their liberty” (175) as they had before (67–68):
It is with feelings of shame and indignation that I transcribe the details of our self-emasculation. We surrendered:
5,800,000 rifles and carbines,
102,000 machine-guns,
28,000 trench mortars,
53,000 field and heavy guns,
nearly all our projectiles, mines and fuses, to the
amount of many millions,
13,000 aeroplanes,
24,000 aeroplane engines,
50,000 ammunition wagons,
55,000 army wagons,
11,000 field kitchens, 1,150 field bakeries,
1,800 pontoons, as well as a large amount of
miscellaneous war material.
Our enemies to-day are supplied with war material on a similar scale, enough, indeed to enable them to equip every fit man.
See note to title Triumphal March for the punitive terms demanded at Versailles. 102,000 · · · 1,150: spoken as “a hundred two thousand · · · a thousand a hundred and fifty” in TSE’s recordings of 1933 and 1947, but as “a hundred and two thousand · · · a thousand one hundred and fifty” in 1955. (There is no known recording of TSE reading Five-Finger Exercises IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre., with its “999 canaries”.)
24 What a time that took: Roman triumphs were notoriously long. Suetonius reports that “upon his triumph day”, Vespasian was “wearied with the slow march and tædious traine of the pompe”, Life of Vespasian §12 (tr. Holland, Tudor Translations, introduction by Charles Whibley, 1899).
[Poem I 131 · Textual History II 453]
25–27 the Scouts · · · the Mayor and the Liverymen: The Times of 30 Mar 1929 reported celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, at which Lord Mayors and Lady Mayoresses and officials of the United Associations of France and Great Britain were met by the Sub-Prefect of Grasse · · · the Deputy Mayor of Cannes and “a cordon of Boy Scouts · · · Then followed a drive through the triumphal arch framing the Rue Maréchal Foch, and along streets ablaze with banners · · · and thronged with citizens and people from the country.” Scouts: “A troop of well-disciplined helpful boy-scouts”, The Old Gumbie Cat 34. Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouting movement, had successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking during the Boer War. TSE: “The first part · · · a documented account of the Boy Scouts · · · and such ‘movements’, contains valuable material and is horrid reading”, “Totem: The Exploitation of Youth” by Harold Stovin (1936), review.
26 société gymnastique de Poissy: many French athletics societies had a paramilitary side.
28–31 There he is now, look: | There is no interrogation in his eyes | Or in the hands, quiet over the horse’s neck, | And the eyes watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent: “He merely stands and waits | Upon his own intrepid dignity; | With fixed regardless eyes— | Looking neither out nor in— | The centre of formalities”, Mandarins I 8–12.
29 There is no interrogation in his eyes: MACBETH (to Banquo’s ghost): “Thou hast no speculation in those eyes” (III iv), following “our stools” and “hide” (TSE: “our stools”, 11; “hidden · · · hidden”, 32). Arthur Machen: “in a mad hurry, with an awful interrogation in his eyes”, The London Adventure (1924) 85 (Andrew Roberts, personal communication).
30–33 horse’s · · · dove’s · · · palmtree: “I have halted my horse by the tree of the doves, I whistle a note so sweet”, Anabasis closing Song i (Abel 225).
31 indifferent: Coriolanus II ii: “he waved indifferently”. For Charlotte Eliot, “with indifferent glances passing by” (from her Savonarola) see note to title Coriolan. To Stephen Spender, 9 May 1935: “One has got at the same time to unite oneself with humanity, and to isolate oneself completely; and to be equally indifferent to the ‘audience’ and to oneself as one’s own audience. So that humility and freedom are the same thing.” See note to Little Gidding III 4, “indifference”.
31–32 eyes · · · under the dove’s wing · · · breast: Ernest Dowson: “Dove-eyed, with the breast | Of a dove, to my side”, Chanson sans paroles 18–19 (see note to So through the evening, through the violet air 1). Swinburne: “Breasts more soft than a dove’s · · · And all the wings of the Loves”, Hymn to Proserpine 25–26. For Swinburne’s poem see notes to Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service 13–14, The Waste Land [I] 6–7 and Ash-Wednesday III 11.
31, 32, 42 eyes · · · dove’s · · · eagles: Coriolanus: “those doves’ eyes”; “That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I | Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioles” (V iii, V vi). For the second of these speeches see Noctes Binanianæ, note to Three Sonnets [III] 3.
32 O hidden under the dove’s wing, hidden in the turtle’s breast: after mention of the March on Rome: “The deterioration of democracy has placed upon men burdens greater than they could bear, and surreptitiously relieved them of those they could bear · · · in this state of mind and spirit human beings are inclined to welcome any regime which relieves us from the burden of pretended democracy. Possibly also, hidden in many breasts, is a craving for a regime which will relieve us of thought and at the same time give us excitement and military salutes”, The Literature of Fascism (1928). Hidden under the heron’s wing (title).