The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I

by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Christopher Ricks

  I 32, 35 heaving groaner · · · tolling bell: Hayward: The groaner “should not be confused with the bell-buoy.”

  [Poem I 193–94 · Textual History II 504]

  I 34, 39 variant stillness of the silent fog · · · anxious worried women: Geoffrey Faber in ts4: “does ‘silent’ add enough to ‘stillness’? / does ‘worried’ add enough to ‘anxious’?” TSE marked I 34 in ts4 and changed “stillness” to “oppression”.

  I 35–41 bell · · · swell · · · anxious worried women | Lying awake · · · unweave, unwind, unravel: William Morris: “Sister, let the measure swell | Not too loud; for you sing not well | If you drown the faint boom of the bell · · · Will he come back again, or is he dead?” The Blue Closet 9–11, 53. (In The Music of Poetry (1942), TSE wrote that Morris’s poem “has an effect somewhat like that of a rune or charm.”) TSE (anonymously): “Gloucester has many widows, and no trip is without anxiety for those at home”, Fishermen of the Banks by James B. Connolly (1928), Publishers’ Preface. Lemprière on Penelope and the Trojan War: “when Ulysses did not return like the other princes of Greece at the conclusion of the war, her fears and her anxiety were increased · · · she was soon beset by a number of importuning suitors · · · she declared that she would make choice of one of them, as soon as she had finished a piece of tapestry, on which she was employed · · · she baffled their eager expectations by undoing in the night what she had done in the daytime.” TSE: “Penelope would not have gone on weaving and un-weaving unless she had maintained the hope of Ulysses’ return”, Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern (1937). For “worried” and drowning, see note to Mr. Apollinax 11.

  I 44 variant at the same time: Hayward’s Queries: “‘at the same time’ (tricky pun)”.

  I 44–45 before the morning watch · · · and time is never ending: Psalm 130: 6 (Bk. of Common Prayer): “My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch” (Hayward, Grover Smith 275). TSE: “before the morning | Near the ending of interminable night”, Little Gidding II 25–26.

  I 45 When time stops: 1 Henry IV V iv: “And Time, that takes survey of all the world, | Must have a stop.”

  I 46 that is and was from the beginning: Hayward: “Cf. the doxology in the Anglican service: ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be …’”

  I 46 variant And through the fog the pretemporal ground swell: Geoffrey Faber underlined “pretemporal” in ts4 with “A difficult image—not quite sure I get its implication, or rather the implication of the prefix ‘pre-’. It’s all right, if you are sure of it. On the sound aspect, I confess I don’t like the ‘-al’ ending with its (to my ear) weakening anticipation of the sound which concludes the line.”

  I 47–48 Clangs | The bell: Cook: “the bell · · · aurally links itself to a ‘calamitous annunciation’, and etymologically associates itself with prayer. Its clang becomes a ‘Clamour’; the clamour, as clamare, becomes prayer · · · section IV will again evoke the Annunciation · · · in its reference to ‘the sound of the sea bell’s | Perpetual angelus’” (IV 14–15). Hayward to TSE, 5 Mar 1941: “I’m slightly sorry that in the final version ‘the bell’ · · · has become an object from being a subject; I liked the sonorous emphasis of ‘bell’ coming after the intransitive ‘clangs’. Clang as a transitive verb seems to me to be the weaker.”

  II

  [Poem I 194 · Textual History II 504–505]

  II 1–4 wailing · · · withering · · · Dropping · · · remaining · · · drifting: Geoffrey Faber in ts4: “the run of participles seems right here” (see note to I 28–32 variant, and line endings of The Waste Land [I] 1–6). wailing · · · flowers · · · wreckage: Conrad Aiken: “Wailing I heard, but also I heard joy. | Wreckage I saw, but also I saw flowers”, Prelude for Memnon (1931) XIV (Grover Smith 275).

  II 5 The prayer of the bone on the beach: Yeats: “Sang a bone upon the shore”, Three Things (1929), an Ariel poem (Grover Smith 275).

  II 5, 35 unprayable · · · prayable: OED “unprayable” 2: “That cannot be uttered as a prayer. rare”, citing only this line. “prayable” b: “Of a prayer: that may be made”, citing only this line.

  II 8–9 further · · · emotionless: to his French translator Claude Vigée, 1 Feb 1946: “Further. I think that I prefer the less emphatic à venir to successives. I think that your original translation impassibles is the best. It is emotionless rather in the sense of emotion dominated and kept below the threshold of consciousness.”

  II 19–20 the fishermen sailing | Into the wind’s tail: Hayward: “The fishermen in question are those engaged in cod-fishing on the famous fogbound ‘Grand Banks’ off the coast of Newfoundland.”

  II 21–23 We cannot think of a time that is oceanless · · · future: Revelation 21: 1: “for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea”. Tennyson: “There was no more sea, says St. John in Revelation · · · I remember reading that when I was a child, and not being able to reconcile myself to a future when there should be no more sea”, Hallam Tennyson, Tennyson: A Memoir (1897) I 234. oceanless: OED: “devoid of or lacking an ocean”, citing only this line.

  II 25–30 We have to think of them as forever bailing, | Setting and hauling · · · drying sails · · · Not as making a trip · · · For a haul that will not bear examination: as the draft of TSE’s preliminary note had explained, the way of life was under threat: “The Gloucester fishing fleet of schooners · · · has been superseded by motor trawlers.” Noting that the Gloucester Daily Times “devoted whole pages” as early as 1911 to falling fish stocks, Mark Kurlansky writes: “By the 1930s, British engine-powered vessels were traveling ever farther to find fish, and the British government was discussing an endemic problem in their fishing fleet causing the disappearance of fish stocks. But, incredibly, in Gloucester there were fishermen still working under sail power until 1960”, The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Our Disappearing Fisheries (2008). forever bailing: “forever building”, Choruses from “The Rock” II 26.

  II 26 lowers: OED “lour, lower”: “when said of clouds, lower [rhyming with flower] to look threatening, has some affinity in sense with lower [rhyming with mower] to descend”. Pronounced to rhyme with flowers in TSE’s recording of 1946–47. A pencilled note by TSE tipped into Hayward’s copy of 1944 reads: “LOUR (more usual, apparently than LOWER) Se renfrogner, froncer les sourcils. S’assombrir, s’obscurcir, se couvrir, menacer” (King’s).

  II 27 Over shallow banks: Clough: “Over the low sea-banks”, Amours de Voyage III iv (Murray).

  II 32 No end to the withering of withered flowers: “This is the case even · · · let us say, when a withered flower is the sign of a particular moment in our history”, Knowledge and Experience 48.

  [Poem I 194–95 · Textual History II 505]

  II 36 Prayer of the one Annunciation: spoken by Mary after the conception of Christ has been announced to her by the angel Gabriel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word”, Luke 1: 38.

  II 37–66 It seems, as one becomes older, | That the past has another pattern · · · the moments of agony · · · We appreciate this better | In the agony of others · · · the agony abides: to Hayward, who had muscular dystrophy, 2 Feb 1931: “As for suffering, it is very queer indeed. Of course, I admit that I know little, perhaps less than most, of physical suffering, and I am sure that you know much of both. But I have had considerable mental agony at one time or another, and once or twice have felt on the verge of insanity or imbecility (I mean two quite different experiences) · · · If I had died even five years ago, everything that I had suffered up to then would, so far as I can see, have been just waste and muddle. Then a pattern suddenly emerges from it, without one’s seeming to have done anything about it oneself. And I don’t suppose it is ever the same pattern for any two people.”

  II 39–40 development · · · notions of evolution: OED “development” 3b: “Of races of plants an
d animals: The same as evolution” (1844). TSE in 1948: “I am anxious to avoid speaking as if the evolution of primitive culture to higher forms was a process which we knew by observation. We observe the differences, we infer that some have developed from a stage similar to that of the lower stages which we observe · · · I am here not concerned with that development”, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture 35. Bradley: “Potential existence can, in brief, be used only where ‘development’ or ‘evolution’ retains its proper meaning”, Appearance and Reality ch. XXIV; scored by TSE. In the drafts of the poem, TSE originally enclosed “development” in quotation marks (see note to II 47–48). TSE: “Christianity will probably continue to modify itself, as in the past, into something that can be believed in (I do not mean conscious modifications like modernism, etc., which always have the opposite effect)”, A Note on Poetry and Belief (1927). “Darwin’s Origin of Species · · · was to start more speculation on the origin and destiny of man—speculation both wise and foolish, scientific and unscientific, relevant and irrelevant—than any book of the century · · · a doctrine of the almost automatic progress of the human race no longer seems credible”, “The Voice of His Time” (1942). See note to East Coker II 21. (TSE’s copy of Darwin’s book is autographed “T. S. Eliot London 1911”; Houghton.) For “Progress!”, see To the Class of 1905 78 and note.

  II 42 variant I don’t mean: Hayward’s Queries: “I don’t mean · · ·? = not merely”.

  II 42–45 moments of · · · sudden illumination · · · experience: “states of soul · · · which can be experienced only in moments of illumination”, Thoughts for Meditation (1951).

  [Poem I 196 · Textual History II 505–506]

  II 42–47 The moments of happiness · · · a very good dinner · · · restores the experience | In a different form: to Geoffrey Faber [18 Sept 1927]: “There is another ‘good thing’ of life too, which I have only had in flashes. It is the sudden realisation of being separated from all enjoyment, from all things of this earth, even from Hope; a sudden separation and isolation from everything; and at that moment of illumination, a recognition of the fact that one can do without all these things, a joyful recognition of what John of the Cross means when he says that the soul cannot be possessed of the divine union until it has divested itself of the craving for all created beings. And after this one returns (I do anyway) to the canard aux oranges or the moules marinières or whatever it be with a keener pleasure, because one is less limited to these things · · · If we are rightly directed, a good dinner can lead us towards God, and God can help us to enjoy a good dinner.” For St. John of the Cross on the peril of attachment to “a person, a garment, a book · · · a particular kind of food”, see note to Little Gidding III 3. TSE: “without the sanctions of religious faith, it is doubtful whether ‘human nature’ is able to preserve its values. And by values here I mean appreciation of right and wrong in something wider than an ordinary moral sense: I include health and recreation, artistic appreciation, and a proper cuisine: I include everything necessary for salvation and everything necessary for the preparation and enjoyment of a good soup or salad. For the modern British do not even know what to eat and drink: their minds are too lazy”, Notes on Social Philosophy (1941). In another mood: “The practised salad‑maker · · · will not expect to succeed equally well every time, because it is a matter of inspiration, and a number of imponderable and incalculable elements enter into the preparation of any salad. But it is this uncertainty that makes the preparation of salad so exciting, and that renders the great salad so memorable. Personality plays a large part”, How to Prepare a Salad (1936). fulfilment · · · a very good dinner: “the concept of ‘fullness of life’ for all men, which is set before us, is not much more comprehensive than that of fullness of stomach”, Full Employment and the Responsibility of Christians (1945). “you’ve got to give me a very good dinner”, The Confidential Clerk II. To Edward J. H. Greene, 19 Apr 1940, of Paris in 1926: “It was a very good dinner, and I remember the canard aux oranges with permanent pleasure.” To Ashley Dukes, [18 Feb 1948]: “This was an evening which will rank in my memory with a dinner given by Léon Daudet in 1926.” To Hayward, 19 May [1941]: “I shall have pleasure in supping with you (the term ‘dinner’ having dropped out of the language).” To Dorothea Richards, 9 Jan 1943: “people who think of the pleasures of taste as transitory have no palate: I get solid satisfaction still from the memory of meals eaten many years ago.”

  II 42, 45 variants, 48 I don’t mean · · · One had the experience · · · We can assign: Hayward’s Queries: “I—One—We”.

  II 45–49 We had the experience but missed the meaning · · · meaning · · · experience · · · the past experience revived in the meaning: I. A. Richards: “Many people are endowed with memories of marble upon which time can do little to efface even the slightest mark, but they benefit little from the endowment · · · To be able to revive an experience is not to remember when and where and how it occurred, but merely to have that peculiar state of mind available”, Principles of Literary Criticism ch. XXII. Against the first sentence TSE wrote, “But what do they remember.” The second he scored, underlining “revive”.

  II 47–48 beyond any meaning | We can assign to happiness: in draft, “happiness” was enclosed in quotation marks. To Hayward, 2 Feb 1931: “faith is not a substitute for anything: it does not give the things that life has refused, but something else; and in the ordinary sense, it does not make one ‘happier’. Perhaps it makes it more possible to dispense with ‘happiness’.” For “substitute”, see note Whispers of Immortality 10–12.

  [Poem I 196 · Textual History II 506]

  II 48, 56 variants, 60 I have suggested also · · · Now, the point is · · · We appreciate this better: putting “X” beside each of these phrases in ts4, Geoffrey Faber wrote at the head of the leaf (II 42–67): “I find all this passage very impressive: and all the more, for that reason, I dislike the ‘lecture-stigmata’ you (as it seems to me) wilfully give to it! The Xs mark my points of resentment!” TSE added his own “X” beside II 48 in ts4. Hayward’s Queries included “‘I have suggested also …’?”

  II 52 probably quite ineffable: to A. L. Rowse, 22 Mar 1941: “you may prefer ‘hardly expressible’, but it does not say the same thing. I mean much more than that: I don’t mean that you can’t express it very well, but that I can’t express it at all and I therefore doubt whether it can be brought into relation to words at all, and I know that my words are not approximate at all.” On Logan Pearsall Smith’s saying that there remains something “baffling and enigmatic” about Donne’s sermons: “We may cavil at the word ‘incommunicable’, and pause to ask whether the incommunicable is not often the vague and unformed; but the statement is essentially right”, Lancelot Andrewes (1926).

  II 53 the backward look: “the backward glance may yield regrets for our adventurousness, or may even change us to salt, but can bring out no information”, The Validity of Artificial Distinctions (1914). (Genesis 19: 26, of Lot’s wife: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”)

  II 56–62 the moments of agony · · · are likewise permanent · · · We appreciate this better | In the agony of others, nearly experienced, | Involving ourselves, than in our own: Aristotle: “men pity when the danger is near themselves · · · all things, which we fear for ourselves, we pity when they happen to others. And since it is when they seem near that sufferings are piteous, (while things which are ten thousand years off in the past or the future · · · are not pitied at all, or pitied in a less degree), it follows that those who aid the effect with gesture, voice, dress,—in a word those who dramatise it are more piteous · · · Hence we are moved by the tokens and by the actions of sufferers”, Rhetoric II viii. TSE: “every poet who has made poetry of some experience not previously given poetic expression, has made a permanent contribution to our awareness of life. I would also note that the poet is not necessarily limited to his own experience. It se
ems probable that a man who has had strong emotions, and who has been more conscious than most men of the feelings he has experienced, is thereby better equipped for writing poetry; but he may, or may not, limit himself to his own experience. He may be concerned with emotions he has never himself suffered, but only observed and imagined”, Poetical and Prosaic Use of Words (1943).

  II 56–66, III 3–15 agony · · · permanent · · · permanence · · · agony · · · experienced · · · experience · · · people change · · · agony · · · the future · · · a book that has never been opened · · · those who · · · the past · · · different lives · · · future: “To the Reader” from Inoubliable France [title page translation: France Remembered] (1944):

  [Poem I 196 · Textual History II 506–507]

  Those who open this book, to study the photographs, of scenes so familiar and so strange, and to read the evocative text, are likely to be drawn to it first by its power of awakening memories from their own past lives. Whether these are memories of six or seven years ago, or out of a more remote past, it makes no difference. To most English lovers of France, the most recent visit now appears in as distant a perspective as the first recollections. To some, this book will bring memories of holidays, or of visits to French friends; to some, memories of studies pursued with the ardour and curiosity of youth; to some, memories of still more intense experience. The views of familiar places will recall the moments of our lives which were passed there; those of places unvisited, will be assimilated to other scenes of French landscape which we have known.

  The picture of a place, however, as it evokes personal memories, may identify that place too closely with a life that is buried, or a chapter that is closed. I would remind you therefore that these photographs do not come from your album of souvenirs, they record the expression of their subjects, the demeanour of the monuments and streets and countryside, under actual conditions. Yet with the passing of the horde they have little concern. They are of the present, and also of the permanent France; they will remind you that the France you loved did not die when you parted from her; and they will, I hope, help to span the gulf between the France you knew and the France you look forward to knowing, between the thoughts and sentiments and experience of the past and those of the future. So, when we receive a recent photograph, of a friend who has passed through agonies since our last meeting, we may say first “how little changed!” and presently, “Yes, changed, certainly, and I am glad to think that I have changed too; for unless we both change, and change in harmony, how can our affection survive?”