The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 130
N. Parkinson (N&Q Jan 1955) was the first of several commentators to invoke Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story The Secret Garden: “The ivy hung thick over the door, the key was buried under the shrubs, no human being had passed that portal for ten lonely years—and yet inside the garden there were sounds. They were the sounds of running, scuffling feet seeming to chase round and round under the trees, they were strange sounds of lowered, suppressed voices—exclamations and smothered, joyous cries. It seemed actually like the laughter of young things, the uncontrollable laughter of children who were trying not to be heard, but who in a moment or two—as their excitement mounted—would burst forth · · · Was he losing his reason and thinking he heard things which were not for human ears?”, final chapter, “In the Garden”. Parkinson quotes Burnt Norton I 11–14, I 40–41 and V 35–36 (see note below); East Coker III 31–33, The Family Reunion (see note to Burnt Norton I 13–46) and The Confidential Clerk II.
[Poem I 179–84 · Textual History II 486–90]
Epigraphs] The two Greek quotations originally appeared on the part-title page, when Burnt Norton was published within 1936, but were omitted from all five impressions of Burnt Norton as a separate pamphlet (1941–43). See Textual History. They appeared opposite the opening of Burnt Norton in 1944, but before the newly introduced section title page, as epigraphs to the whole book, in 1979. Diels: Hermann Diels’s Greek and German edition of the Fragments of the Pre-Socratic philosophers was published in Berlin, 1903–10, and regularly reprinted. TSE to Bonamy Dobrée, 11 Apr 1927: “I have sent for the translation of Diehl’s book · · · I attended Diehl’s lectures years ago, and have read a couple of his books. Do you know his Manual? It has a lot of interesting illustrations.” Herakleitos: Hayward: “The epigraphs from Heraclitus may be translated as follows: 1. ‘Although the Word (Logos) is common to all, most men live as though they had each a private wisdom of his own’. 2. ‘The way up and the way down are one and the same’.” Philip Wheelwright: “‘The way up’ meant to Heraclitus, outwardly, the qualitative movement from rock and earth through the intermediate stages of mud, water, cloud, air, and aether, to the rarest and uttermost of all states, which is fire; ‘the way down’ meant the contrary movement. Both the movements are in process all the time in all things that exist, hence they are said to be ‘the same’. Existence thus involves unceasing tension between upward and downward pulls—toward the realm of rarity, warmth, light and toward the realm of density, cold, dark. The pull is not only observed in physical phenomena, it operates too in our souls”, Rajan ed. 100. In his copy of Charles M. Bakewell’s Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, TSE underlined and marked the translation “The way up and the way down is one and the same.” His student notes of 1911–12 include scholars’ opinions of Heraclitus gleaned from G. T. W. Patrick’s Heraclitus of Ephesus (1889) (Jain 198). He quoted Heraclitus in Greek again in Gordon Craig’s Socratic Dialogues (1955). To E. M. Stephenson, 8 Oct 1945, of the first epigraph:
Diels’ Fragmente der Vorsokratiker is, I believe, still considered the standard text of the pre-Socratic philosophers; at any rate it was when I was a student of these matters. His text is accompanied by a German translation · · · “Aber obschon das Wort allen gemein ist, leben die meisten doch so, als ob sie eine eigene Einsicht haetten.”
I should say that Herakleitos meant a great deal more than simply “the word is in common use”. I think he meant rather that the reason, the Logos, or the rational understanding of the nature of things is common or available to all men. Most people live as if they had a peculiar and individual insight. No one translation, however, can be considered as anything more than a limited interpretation since the meanings of key words in Greek philosophy can never be completely rendered in a modern language. That is the reason for my putting the Greek text instead of an English translation of it.
[Poem I 179–84 · Textual History II 486–90]
TSE underlined the Greek and put a pencil mark against the German in his copy of Diels (vol 1, 77). For Heraclitus and Villon, see headnote to Mr. Apollinax.
To Henry Eliot, 28 Apr 1936: “I think that there is something to be said for your suspicion of epigraphs: that is, I am aware that they may appear to be there for the wrong reason. The purpose is to give a clue to the tone and mood of the poem, rather than to the literal meaning. The word LOGOS was important in this way, suggesting the current of Greek thought uniting with the Gospels, coming down to the hermits of the Thebaid, to St. John of the Cross, and to an item of individual experience in the world to-day. But the immediate effect on most readers is very likely wrong.” To Raymond Preston, 9 Aug 1945: “I should not wish to pin myself down to any particular interpretation of a phrase from Herakleitos. The value of such an epigraph is partly due to the ambiguity and the variety of possible interpretations. The fragments of Herakleitos as we know them have extraordinarily poetic suggestiveness and I have sometimes wondered whether his essays would not lose in value if we had his complete works and saw the sentences in their context.” To Hermann Peschmann, 12 Sept 1945: “As for the quotations of Heraclitus, the reason for presenting them in the original Greek is that it preserves their delightful obscurity. Any translation must be a personal interpretation and I had no wish to interpret. But the meaning is something as follows: the word Logos is almost untranslateable. It may mean reason or explanation or it may mean word in the sense which was developed for the first chapter of St. John. ‘Logos being common to all men was universal’ or ‘Although the Logos is common the majority of men live as if they had an individual understanding’. This is a very rough translation and not good enough to use, and people can differ indefinitely as to what it means. The translation of the second fragment is perfectly straight-forward: ‘the way up and the way down are the same’, but as to what Heraclitus meant by it, that is a very different matter.”
To Hans Paeschke, 6 Feb 1947, about a typescript essay by Hans Egon Holthusen: “there are many · · · valuable points · · · for instance, the distinction between the connotation of the word time in English and the word zeit in German. While Dr. Holthusen is right in mentioning the philosophers as well as Heracleitos it is obvious that there is much more influence of the latter than of the former, and the reconciliation, identification, or however one chooses to phrase it and the temporal and the timeless probably spring much more from Indian philosophy, insofar as it is not Christian, such as the commentary of Patanjali.” (Perhaps referring to Pada III, Sutra 52: “Two moments cannot occur together; for no order is possible for any two things occurring simultaneously. Order is the sequence of the following moment from the preceding one. Therefore the present is the only moment, there being none either past or future; and as such there is no collective term for it (as Time). The future and the past moments (those that are popularly so called) are to be explained as referring to the different modifications”, The Yoga-Darsana: The Sutras of Patanjali, tr. Ganganatha Jha [Bombay, 1907], the text used by James Haughton Woods at Harvard.)
To Dr. Nicola Coppola, 28 Jan 1960: “I was certainly in my youth very much influenced by Herakleitos, and I think that this influence has been a permanent one. The quotations at the beginning of Burnt Norton are a tribute to my debt to this great philosopher.”
I
[Poem I 179–84 · Textual History II 486–90]
I 1–2] Ecclesiastes 3: 15: “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.” Augustine: “in the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present; whereas no time is all at once present: and that all time past, is driven on by time to come, and all to come followeth upon the past; and all past and to come · · · flows out of that which is ever present”; “if times past and to come be, I would know where they be · · · time past · · · is not: but now when I recall its image · · · I behold it in the present, because it is still in my memory”, Confessions bk. XI 11, 18 (TSE: “memory”, I 11). Bradley: “In morality the past is real because
it is present in the will; and conversely, what is not present in the will is only past”, Ethical Studies Essay I; “If there is not, present in this passing ‘now’, a Reality which contains all ‘nows’ future and past, the whole of our truth and knowledge must be limited to the ‘now’ that we perceive”, Essays on Truth and Reality 332. William James: “The past, the present, and the future in perception, for example, are absent from one another, while in imagination they are present or absent as the case may be. If the time-content of the world be not one monistic block of being, if some part, at least, of the future, is added to the past without being virtually one therewith · · · then it is absent really as well as phenomenally and may be called an absolute novelty”, Some Problems of Philosophy ch. VIII. TSE: “Past, present and future are one, which abstraction decomposes”, Notes in French on Bergson’s Lectures (1910–11) (tr., Marx 29). Among his notes in the front of his copy of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, TSE wrote: “Time?”, “Is there any present connection between ourselves and the past?”, “The past exists to us as present”, “Can we argue about anything but the present?” and “Have we anything but the present?”
To his mother, 30 Dec 1917, on a photograph album: “It gives one a strange feeling that Time is not before and after, but all at once, present and future and all the periods of the past, an album like this” (see East Coker V 28). “the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence · · · Whoever has approved this idea of order · · · will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past”, Tradition and the Individual Talent I (1919). “the present consists of a great deal of the past and a little of the future”, A Preface to Modern Literature (1923). “as the age is not an instant, but an indefinite span of time including part of both past and future, we can still, with our retrospective selves, appreciate such acting as that of Bernhardt”, Dramatis Personæ (1923).
In Henry James’s The Sense of the Past bk. II, Pendrel has been bequeathed an old house, and dreams of “Recovering the lost · · · to that extent was he not, by his deepening penetration, contemporaneous and present? ‘Present’ was a word used by him in a sense of his own and meaning as regards most things about him markedly absent.” TSE to W. K. Lowther Clarke, 16 Mar 1934: “I have always been an admirer to James, and particularly of The Sense of the Past.” See notes to I 13 and to Little Gidding II 42 and II 47. “I am the old house | With the noxious smell and the sorrow before morning, | In which all past is present”, The Family Reunion I i.
I 1 Time present: The Cloud of Unknowing ch. 4: “time is precious: for God, that is the giver of time, giveth never two times together, but each one after other” (scored in TSE’s copy). Lancelot Andrewes: “when all is done, we shall have somewhat to do, to bring this to a Nunc, to a time present · · · Now, is the only sure part of our time. That which is past, is come and gone. That which is to come, may peradventure never come”, Ash-Wednesday Sermon 1619. TSE: “reason counsels us to avoid surrendering ourselves either to a present which is already past or to a future which is unknown”, Education in a Christian Society (1940).
I 4–8 all time · · · Only in a world of speculation: “that which is purely in time cannot be said to exist at all”, Knowledge and Experience 110.
I 5 All time is unredeemable: Ephesians 5: 15–16: “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” TSE: “Redeem | The time”, Ash-Wednesday IV 18–19. “not redeemed from time”, Little Gidding V 21. “all past is present, all degradation | Is unredeemable. As for what happens— | Of the past you can only see what is past, | Not what is always present”, The Family Reunion I i (Bush 188). See note to The Waste Land [V] 402–404.
[Poem I 179 · Textual History II 488]
I 6, 34 abstraction · · · dry concrete: “The confused distinction which exists in most heads between ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ is due not so much to a manifest fact of the existence of two types of mind, an abstract and a concrete, as to the existence of another type of mind, the verbal, or philosophic”, The Perfect Critic II (1920) (Ricks 257).
I 7–8 Remaining a · · · possibility | Only in a world of speculation: for I. A. Richards, “he has realised what might otherwise have remained largely a speculative possibility”, see headnote to The Waste Land, 9. AFTER PUBLICATION. For “speculation”, see note to The Dry Salvages II 39–40.
I 8, 11, 12, 14, 17 world of speculation · · · echo · · · Down · · · echo · · · I do not know · · · echoes: Tennyson: “Echo · · · down? who knows? for a vast speculation had failed · · · worldling”, Maud I [i] 4, 9, 11.
I 11, 14–15 echo in the memory · · · My words echo | Thus, in your mind: Lionel Johnson’s Dead has “something in it, a tone, a few lines and phrases, which re-echo in the mind for a lifetime”, A Personal Anthology (1947). See headnote to Five-Finger Exercises II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier. On Andrewes, Donne and Jeremy Taylor: “Their words linger and echo in the mind”, John Bramhall (1927).
I 11, 16 echo in the memory · · · rose-leaves: Shelley: “Music, when soft voices die, | Vibrates in the memory · · · Rose leaves, when the rose is dead”, To —— , quoted in Swinburne (1920).
I 12–14 Down the passage which we did not take | Towards the door we never opened | Into the rose-garden: a childhood friend recalled the position of the Eliots’ house beside a girls’ school: “They lived on Locust Street, adjoining the building then occupied by the Mary Institute · · · Beside the school building there was a big yard, grass-grown, with a number of trees. From this yard a door opened into the school gymnasium and the Eliots had a key. Tom and I usually played in this yard and in the gymnasium”, Thomas McKittrick to Harford Powel, 19 June 1953 (see note to I 28–29).
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ch. I: “Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage · · · she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway.” Louis L. Martz: “Mr Eliot has remarked in conversation upon the importance of Alice in Wonderland here”, Unger ed. Conrad: “One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness—and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the path has its seduction · · · One goes on. And the time, too, goes on, till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind. This is the period of life in which such moments of which I have spoken are likely to come. What moments? Why the moments of boredom, of weariness, of dissatisfaction”, The Shadow-Line I (Unger 1956 237–38). TSE: “Children singing in the orchard”, Ode (“Tired. | Subterrene”) 12. Frost: The Road Not Taken (Donald Sommerville, personal communication).
I 13 Towards: pronounced t’ords in TSE’s recording of 1946–47. the door we never opened: Henry James: “if life was · · · but a chain of open doors through which endless connections danced there was yet no knowledge in the world on which one should wish a door closed”, The Sense of the Past bk. II. James’s notes, published with the unfinished novel in 1917: “on opening the door of the house with his latchkey he let himself into the Past”.
[Poem I 179 · Textual History II 488]
I 13–19 the door we never opened · · · Quick, said the bird: MacNeice: “And we wait in vain, expecting a door that never opens, | But have you heard the mocking-bird, the mocking-bird, the mocking-bird?” Adam’s Legacy in Blind Fireworks (1929).
I 13–46 the door we never opened · · · Other echoes | Inhabit the garden · · · the first gate · · · dead leaves · · · vibrant air, | And the bird called · · · dry concrete · · · What might have been and what has been | Point to one end: The Family Reunion II ii:
AGATHA I only looked through t
he little door
When the sun was shining on the rose-garden:
And heard in the distance tiny voices
And then a black raven flew over.
And then I was only my own feet walking
Away, down a concrete corridor
In a dead air · · ·
HARRY · · · I was not there, you were not there, only our phantasms
And what did not happen is as true as what did happen
O my dear, and you walked through the little door
And I ran to meet you in the rose-garden.
AGATHA This is the next moment. This is the beginning.
We do not pass twice through the same door
Or return to the door through which we did not pass.
I 16 Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves: Austin Dobson: “I plunge my hand among the leaves: | (An alien touch but dust perceives, | Nought else supposes;) · · · memory of the vanished days | When they were roses”, Pot-Pourri 1–6 (see note to Portrait of a Lady II 4–5). TSE: “And dusty roses, crickets, sunlight on the sea”, Goldfish III 7. Ferris Greenslet on Pater: “almost the sole luxury he allowed himself was a bowl of rose-leaves, preserved by an old lady in the country from a special receipt, and sent every year as a present to him, as a reminder of her friendship”, Walter Pater (1903) 30. TSE to Greenslet, 13 Jan 1932: “When I had to leave Germany rather hurriedly in 1914 one of the books · · · I had to leave behind · · · was your essay on Walter Pater.” TSE’s Arnold and Pater (1930) may have been prompted by Greenslet’s comparison of the two Victorians (69–72). To Pierre Geffroy, 14 June 1944, on his translation of Burnt Norton: “I had forgotten, I admit, that the English usage of the word potpourri was so completely different from the French. I suppose then that a bowl of dried rose leaves is a particularly English institution for which there is no French word. It would be rather a wider dish I think than is indicated by the word coupe but you must exercise liberty in that respect in order to preserve the rhythm of your line.” OED “pot-pourri” 2: “A mixture of dried petals of different flowers mixed with spices, kept in a jar for its perfume.” Fr. medley.