The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

  In conclusion, may I repeat what every author knows: that criticism is only valuable to an author when it is particularised.

  Religious dramas and pageants. “I suspect that, for the most part, people still tend to regard the performance of a religious play as something to be attended, like a bazaar or a jumble sale, from a sense of duty rather than for the purpose of enjoyment. You may even feel that you have fulfilled your duty if you buy tickets and manage to give them away to somebody who will go in your place. You may even think of them as you may think of pageants—as performances which give a great deal more pleasure to the people taking part in them (especially if the costumes are interesting) than to the audience”, Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern (1937).

  After The Rock, TSE was surprised by requests for permission to perform it in other dioceses. To S. Eley, 24 June 1938: “I have personally no wish to see The Rock revived, and but for not wishing to stand in the way of any public cause, I would hardly give my consent. The fact that I have allowed the text to go out of print, and have only preserved the choruses, is sufficient indication of my own attitude.” (There had been a second impression in June, and would be a third in September.)

  TSE was asked to write or contribute to several new pageants, including one by Martin Browne about Peace and the League of Nations (see headnote to Sweeney Agonistes, 2. ARISTOPHANES). In addition he was asked to comment on pageants by, among others, Rodney Bax, Mary Boutwood, Christopher Fry, Gertrude Leigh and Vernon Watkins. To John Hayward, 13 July 1939: “in my opinion no pageant will ever surpass that · · · at the Albert Hall for the Mothers’ Union Annual Festival · · · Enid [Faber] promises me the unusual treat of TWO Agricultural, cattle, flower, vegetable, cake and corgie shows this year. I like local Shows almost as much as pageants.” To the Rev. Richard Roseveare, 24 June 1942: “Pageantry is a matter on which I cannot be a very helpful adviser; I detest pageants of all sorts. Of course, I do not know the particular group of youth to which you hope to appeal, but I think that a pageant would have to be a real work of genius in order to captivate the minds of young people of any critical intelligence.”

  [Poem I 151–76 · Textual History II 469–81]

  Dramatic and choral writing. To Paul Elmer More, 20 June 1934: “You must by this time have received the copy of The Rock which I sent you. It represents, so far at least as the verse choruses go, a venture on a wider sea than before; and I shall be curious to know whether you find as deep a fissure between ‘actuality of form’ and ‘actuality of content’ as you do in its predecessors.”

  To I. A. Richards, 20 July 1934: “I think that the verse in The Rock does at times get too near to what I have called literalness, to be really important—perhaps very often. And one had to stick to very crude symbols.”

  To Christopher Fry, 9 Mar 1939, about Thursday’s Child, a collaboration with Martin Shaw: “I am apprehensive lest your choruses become too elaborate and difficult for the purpose they are to serve. The necessity for simplification is so great in chorus that you can hardly go too far in that direction in writing. The simplification must go farther according to the number of speakers: a chorus of eight voices must be much simpler than one for four, and so on. Furthermore, as your choruses are to be spoken in the open air, they must be simpler still, and the great thing is that each chorus should represent a definite emotional tone, as that is about all that most of the audience will get. To adopt the figure of speech used by Cocteau, I feel that this chorus tends to a delicate lacework where what is needed is a large simple pattern in coarse rope. I am sure you can do this if you keep in mind that a chorus is a kind of poster art, and that the details of beauty which are possible in verse to be read or to be recited as chamber music by a single voice, are quite lost in verse for this purpose. The rhythm is very important; the general emotional tone should be unmistakeable; and the key has to be given by a few verses and iterated words of the simplest kind. If a chorus is not immediately intelligible to a very simple mind on reading, it is probably too elaborate.” (In the Introduction to Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies in 1927, TSE had written: “The art of dramatic language, we must remember, is as near to oratory as to ordinary speech or to other poetry. On the stage, M. Jean Cocteau reminds us, we must weave a pattern of coarse rope that can be apprehended from the back of the pit, not a pattern of lace that can only be apprehended from the printed page. We are not entitled to try fine effects unless we achieve the coarse ones.” Revising this for Selected Essays as Seneca in Elizabethan Translation, TSE dropped the sentence about Cocteau, who had been describing his libretto for the ballet Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel, 1921.)

  To E. M. Stephenson, 21 Nov 1941: “choral verse is a very different thing from straight ‘poetry’. The choice and order of words is affected when the verse is written to be spoken by a number of voices. The more voices you have in view, the greater the simplification has to be; and the appeal has to be much less intellectual and more simply emotional, if the chorus is to affect an audience at all. The result is something that in some respects is more crude than poetry intended to be read or recited by one voice.”

  [Poem I 151–76 · Textual History II 469–81]

  “I shall begin with 1933: that is a good date for me, as that is the year in which I broke into Show Business. In that year I was commissioned to write the text for a mammoth Pageant to advertise the need for 45 new churches in the outer suburbs of London. The Pageant was produced at Sadler’s Wells in the summer of 1934 with great success and so many amateur actors that the Clerkenwell Town Hall had to be adapted temporarily as a dressing room”, Harvard Class of 1910, Fiftieth Anniversary Report (1960).

  On the timeliness of the commission: “Twenty years ago I was commissioned to write a pageant play to be called The Rock. The invitation to write the words for this spectacle · · · came at a moment when I seemed to myself to have exhausted my meagre poetic gifts, and to have nothing more to say. To be, at such a moment, commissioned to write something which, good or bad, must be delivered by a certain date, may have the effect that vigorous cranking sometimes has upon a motor car when the battery is run down. The task was clearly laid out: I had only to write the words of prose dialogue for scenes of the usual historical pageant pattern, for which I had been given a scenario. I had also to provide a number of choral passages in verse, the content of which was left to my own devices: except for the reasonable stipulation that all the choruses were expected to have some relevance to the purpose of the pageant, and that each chorus was to occupy a precise number of minutes of stage time · · · This chorus of The Rock was not a dramatic voice; though many lines were distributed, the personages were unindividuated. Its members were speaking for me, not uttering words that really represented any supposed character of their own”, The Three Voices of Poetry (1953).

  Title The Rock: to Webb-Odell, 5 Feb 1934: “I have tried various ‘fancy’ titles, but they usually suffer from obscurity, and I think that a simple straightforward title which gives some clue to the subject matter is what is wanted. It ought to include both ‘London’ and ‘Church’ or ‘Churches’, I take it. Is The Church Bells of London too flat, or too clumsy, or anything else? ‘Bells’ has a merry sound, and perhaps [Martin] Shaw could introduce a few chimes here and there—that would be a good thing anyway, I think · · · A title which had some simple familiar allusion would be more pat, but I cant think of one. I wish I could get a more ‘catchy’ title.” Webb-Odell replied on the same day: “As to Title, frankly I hate Church Bells. It reminds me of some transpontine melodrama of my youth. Martin Browne to-day suggests, Many Mansions, which doesn’t seem bad. What is wrong with the title Lady Keeble gave it, vide yesterday’s Observer—The Rock?” (OED “transpontine”: “across or over a bridge; spec. · · · south of the Thames · · · of drama in vogue in the 19th century at the ‘Surrey-side’ theatres”.) TSE replied, 8 Feb: “Browne’s Many Mansions seems to me quite good. My only objection to The Rock is that the Rock himself, if he gives the
title to the production, will be identified by most people as St. Peter pure and simple, which does directly conjure up to my mind the Petrine Claims—which are hardly appropriate. Do you think this is a considerable objection or not? If not, then perhaps this is the best title. Another point. I saw a poster to-day which describes me as ‘the author’. This is not correct, and gives me what is not due. I should be glad if posters could in future read ‘Produced by Martin Browne. Words by T. S. Eliot. Music by Martin Shaw.’ or something like that?” (OED “Petrine”: “Petrine claims, claims of the Popes, based on their traditional succession from St. Peter.”)

  The opening stage direction introduces the Chorus: “The scene is an open place, with an irregular rocky hill in the middle. The CHORUS, seven male and ten female figures, are discovered. They speak as the voice of the Church of God.”

  I

  I 1 The Eagle: the constellation Aquila.

  I 2 The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit: see note to Sweeney Among the Nightingales 9.

  I 8, 15 knowledge of motion, but not of stillness · · · the wisdom we have lost in knowledge: Tennyson: “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers · · · Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers · · · moving toward the stillness”, Locksley Hall 141, 143–44.

  [Poem I 151–53 · Textual History II 470]

  I 11 All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance: see note to East Coker III 38–39, and for St. John of the Cross see note to East Coker III 35–46.

  I 14 Where is the Life we have lost in living: “But where is the penny world I bought”, A Cooking Egg 25. “this life | Living to live in a world of time beyond me”, Marina 29–30.

  I 15–16 the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge · · · the knowledge we have lost in information: “The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of information—deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known · · · it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not”, The Perfect Critic II (1920). Aristotle, whom TSE cites in the same paragraph, ranked knowledge (episteme) below wisdom (sophia) in the scale of consciousness at the beginning of the Metaphysics bk. 1. TSE: “What we need is not information but knowledge”, Dante (1929) III. “in the mere matter of information, there are nowadays so many subjects about which we should like to know something, that we are in danger of knowing too little about too many things”, Leadership and Letters (1949). To T. J. Wood, 19 Apr 1940: “I should be willing to admit that modern science has displaced earlier views of the nature of the world, but I am not quite prepared to admit that it has put anything in their place · · · I am by no means clear as to what philosophies are outworn, or indeed whether any philosophy wears out.”

  I 19 timekept: OED has this example only (the word recurs at III 29).

  I 21 we have too many churches: for the proposal to demolish nineteen City churches, see Commentary on The Waste Land [III] 264, “Magnus Martyr”.

  I 22 chop-houses: OED quotes Johnson’s Dictionary, “a mean house of entertainment, where provision ready dressed is sold” and Clough, “Dines in a dingy chop-house”.

  [Poem I 153 · Textual History II 470]

  I 24–29 spend their Sundays. | In the City · · · We toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor | To Hindhead, or Maidenhead: Exodus 23: 12: “Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest.” MacNeice: “Man’s heart expands to tinker with his car | For this is Sunday · · · drive beyond Hindhead · · · Escape from the weekday time”, Sunday Morning in Criterion Jan 1934. TSE: “You say that the hundreds of thousands, who listen in or ride about in Morris cars on Sunday because they are too British in their ‘shyness’ to go to Church · · · constitute the Church of England · · · not a visible Church of communicants, but a wholly invisible Church of shy schoolboys”, Parliament and the New Prayer Book (1928). “I do not know how much pleasure is enjoyed by the man who drives a car the machinery of which he understands no better than he understands his own stomach, in a stream of similar cars along a monotonous road on a Sunday afternoon”, The Search for Moral Sanction (1932). “The world seemed futile—like a Sunday outing”, After the turning of the inspired days 13. (“The inhabitants of Hampstead have silk hats | On Sunday afternoon go out to tea · · · On Monday to the city, and then tea · · · They have another Sunday when the last is gone”, The Death of the Duchess I 1–7.) To Frank Morley, 4 Aug 1938: “people who are saved from the abyss by religion would be saved by anything, say a Sunday excursion to Scarborough”. Hindhead, or Maidenhead: Vivien Eliot to Aurelia Bolliger, 12 May 1932: “on Monday let us all go down to the country in the car to see my Aunt Lillia at Hindhead”. Aurelia Hodgson, notes on TSE (1932?): “Trip to Maidenhead: Tom watch roadsigns | I watch map | V[ivien] drives | Derby Day” (Bryn Mawr).

  I 34 the country now is only fit for picnics: “much of the change of a destructive kind · · · seems to result from the over-development of town life and the atrophy of the country. It is from a population habituated to town life, a population to which the countryside represents holidays, whether on an elaborate or a simple scale, that the countryside has to be protected”, A Commentary in Criterion Oct 1934.

  I 46–47 ceaseless labour, | Or ceaseless idleness : “One effect of industrialisation is that many of those who have work must work too hard or too long, and most of those who have no work must be idle”, The Seach for Moral Sanction (1932).

  I 49 I have trodden the winepress alone: see note to VIII 6–7.

  I 57 Make perfect your will: see note to VIII 46–48.

  I 58 take no thought of the harvest: Matthew 6: 25–26: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink · · · Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.”

  I 64 perpetual struggle of Good and Evil: “the perception of Good and Evil—whatever choice we make—is the first requisite of spiritual life”, Personality and Demonic Possession (1934).

  I 72 ^ 73 variant Squeezed like tooth-paste in the tube-train: toothpaste was first sold in collapsible tubes in the 1890s.

  I 75 I will show you the things · · · done: “Come in under the shadow of this gray rock, | And I will show you”, The Death of Saint Narcissus 2–3. “I will show you something different · · · I will show you fear in a handful of dust”, The Waste Land [I] 27–30.

  I 78 the work of the humble: “the very word ‘work’ has altered its meaning in an industrial society. Truly, for me, ‘work’ means work primarily for the benefit of others and for the community as a whole; and such work includes giving pleasure or amusement to others. Nowadays ‘work’ means rather making money; either a little money by tending a machine, or more money by manipulating money”, The Search for Moral Sanction (1932).

  I 92–93 And a job for each | Every man to his work: “every worker must learn his job: what the artist has to learn is to do it the way it has been done in the past; and then to do it in a different way”, Note for The Moot, sent to J. H. Oldham, 11 Nov 1944.

  I 94, 106, VII 39 No man has hired us: Matthew 20: 6–7: “about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us” (Grover Smith 1956 173).

  I 115–16 They shall not die in a shortened bed | And a narrow sheet: Isaiah 28: 20: “For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it” (Grover Smith 1956 173).

  [Poem I 154–56 · Textual History II 470–71]

  II

  Heading in ts CHORUS AA: indicating that this was composed after Chorus III, which was originally headed “CHORUS I” but changed to “CHORUS A”.

  II 2–3 citizens of the saints · · · chief cornerstone: Ephesians 2: 19–20: “ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitiz
ens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”

  II 7 Your building not fitly framed together: Ephesians 2: 21: “In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple.” the Spirit which moved on the face of the waters like a lantern: Genesis 1: 2–3: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” TSE in 1941: “I find that I share Micklem’s difficulty about the use of ‘the Spirit’ with a capital and ‘the spirit’ in lower case; and I wonder whether this does spring from a desire to be comprehensive and make room for all the shades of Christian belief and of non-Christian belief and of those who show the ‘awareness’ of ‘spiritual issues’ · · · The word ‘spirit’ has a very wide network of meanings, and a network which may always become an entanglement”, Letter from T. S. Eliot Mar 1941, a paper for The Moot. set on the back of a tortoise: the Church Missionary Society: “the great body of the Hindoos · · · believe that the Earth was actually drawn up by the tusks of a Boar, and rests to this hour on the back of a Tortoise!” Ignorance and Superstition of the Hindoos in Missionary Papers Michaelmas 1820.