The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I
Page 149
[Poem I 203–205 · Textual History II 520–21]
II 25–28 In the uncertain hour before the morning · · · At the recurrent end of the unending | After the dark dove with the flickering tongue: Blamires 142: “the last bombers have gone, but the All Clear has not yet sounded” (see note to II 96). Hayward to TSE, 12 Dec 1940: “what now passes for morning, for rising in the black-out is a queer business and makes me feel as if it were still deep midnight.” (For Donne’s “Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight”, A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day, Being the shortest day 45, see note to The Cultivation of Christmas Trees 4, 26.) TSE: “Between midnight and dawn · · · When time stops and time is never ending”, The Dry Salvages I 43–45. Purg. IX 52: “Dianzi, nell’alba che precede al giorno” [Erewhile in the dawn which precedes the day] (Praz 373). Swinburne: “It is an hour before the hour of dawn”, Tiresias, likewise an opening line (Hands). Paul Elmer More: “in the night hours just before dawn, when the noise of the city has died away and belated men look questioningly at each other as they meet”, The Great Refusal 128 (TSE: “pointed scrutiny · · · The first-met stranger”, II 37–38. For More’s account, see note to The Waste Land [I] 60–63). Kipling: “Even in that certain hour before the fall”, The Fabulists (Grover Smith 1950 419). TSE: “Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow”, A Song for Simeon 20 (Grover Smith 1950 419). uncertain hour: Coleridge: “at an uncertain hour | That agony returns: | And till my ghastly tale is told, | This heart within me burns”, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Part VII (K. Narayana Chandran, ANQ Winter 1997). ending of interminable night | At the recurrent end of the unending: James Thomson: “In their recurrence with recurrent changes”, The City of Dreadful Night I 19 (Michael O’Neill in Harding ed. 206). TSE: “End of the endless | Journey to no end | Conclusion of all that | Is inconclusible”, Ash-Wednesday II 39–42. the dark dove: Germany’s first military plane (obsolete since the start of the Great War) was the Taube, or “Dove” (Grover Smith 287). For “The dove descending”, see note to IV 1. For iconography of the dove, see note to Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service 9–16. dove · · · flickering tongue: Matthew 10: 16: “be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves”. Shelley: “unassailed · · · the great City, veiled | In virtue’s adamantine eloquence, | ’Gainst scorn and death and pain thus trebly mailed, | And blending in the smiles of that defence | The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence”, The Revolt of Islam IV xix. flickering tongue: William Morris: “of serpents · · · The burning eyes with flecks of blood and streaks of fire are stained, | Their mouths with hisses all fulfilled are licked by flickering tongue”, The Æneids of Virgil II 204, 210–11.
II 26 variant restless night: “restless nights in one-night cheap hotels”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 6.
II 28–29 dove · · · passed below the horizon of his homing: TSE underlined the Gide/Bosco tr., “plus bas que son horizon habituel”, with “?” Tilby comments that the translators failed to see the comparison of German bombers to homing pigeons. (RAF bombers carried homing pigeons as a last resort for communication.)
II 29, 37 horizon · · · pointed scrutiny: to Hayward, 5 Aug 1941: “the American freshwater college sleuth would here discover some innuendo about Spender & Connolly, but none intended”. (OED “freshwater” 1b. U.S.: “further inland · · · freshwater colleges, the adjective carrying with it some implication of rusticity and provincialism”, from 1925.) Horizon (1940–49) was edited by Cyril Connolly, with Stephen Spender as a frequent contributor. Scrutiny (1932–53) was edited by F. R. Leavis.
II 30 dead leaves: Burnt Norton I 24. To Ian Cox, 13 Oct 1937, on his poetry: “the imagery of the dead leaves is something which is very real to you, which is not conscious invention, but a real experience. Yet I find that you seem rather obsessed by it than making use of it.”
II 30, 34–35 dead leaves · · · blown towards me like the metal leaves | Before the urban dawn wind: Shelley: “numerous as the dead leaves blown”, The Triumph of Life 528. Also:
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing
Ode to the West Wind 1–3
[Poem I 203 · Textual History II 521]
(“enchantment”, II 79.) TSE misquoted this when he wrote that “the image of the leaves whirling in the wind Like stricken ghosts from an enchanter fleeing would have been impossible but for the Inferno—in which the various manifestations of wind, and the various sensations of air, are as important as are the aspects of light in the Paradiso”, What Dante Means to Me (1950).
II 31 asphalt: pronounced assonantally with lass and pal in TSE’s recording of 1946–47.
II 32 Between three districts whence: Gérard de Nerval: “Arrivé cependant au confluent de trois rues, je ne voulus pas aller plus loin” [Having arrived nevertheless at where three roads meet, I wished to go no further], Aurélia I ii (Hands). James Thomson: “a spot whence three close lanes led down”, The City of Dreadful Night XVIII 2 (Grover Smith 324). The Metropolitan Boroughs of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster converge at Knightsbridge Station on the Cromwell Road, in the area where TSE worked as a firewatcher during the poem’s composition (“patrol”, II 54: see note). However, London’s different kinds of “district”—administrative, postal and ecclesiastical—are not congruent, and common usage blurs their boundaries (Bruce Hunt, personal communication). TSE: “where three dreams cross”, Ash-Wednesday VI 21.
II 33 one: OED 20a: “simply = A person; some one” is marked “arch. or obs.” Wilfred Owen: “as I probed them, one sprang up”, Strange Meeting 6 (see notes to II 51–53 and to Burnt Norton II 1–2).
II 33–47 I met one walking · · · the sudden look of some dead master · · · Both one and many · · · a familiar compound ghost · · · And heard another’s voice cry: “What! are you here?” · · · I was still the same, | Knowing myself yet being someone other: Herbert Read: “A soldier passed me · · · His footsteps muffled, his face unearthly grey; | And my heart gave a sudden leap · · · a ghost · · · I shouted Halt! and my voice had the old accustomed ring · · · He turned towards me and I said: | ‘I am one of those who went before you · · · one of the many who never returned, | Of the many who returned and yet were dead · · ·’”, To a Conscript of 1940. In Read’s poem the encountered soldier is not a ghost and it is the officer who is ambiguous. TSE to Read, 7 June 1940, on the arrangement of Read’s Thirty Five Poems: “I like the Conscript of 1940 better than ever in its present position.” Faber published the book in its Sesame series in Nov 1940, with this poem first. See The Waste Land [I] 69–70: “There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!’ | ‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! · · ·’” and see note to The Waste Land [I] 69.
II 33–52 I met one walking · · · dawn · · · familiar · · · a double part · · · strange · · · at this intersection time: “Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn · · · When the familiar scene is suddenly strange | Or the well known is what we have yet to learn, | And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change”, To Walter de la Mare 14–18, with “presences walk with us, when alone” in the drafts (sonnet II 3). For Karl Barth, “two planes intersect”, see note to The Dry Salvages V 18–19. I met · · · face · · · the eyes · · · another’s · · · face · · · each other: for “I met my own eyes | In another face”, Perque Domos Ditis Vacuas by “F. M.”, see headnote to In silent corridors of death. (“F. M.” also has “deathly airlessness”; TSE: “the death of air” II 8.)
[Poem I 203–204 · Textual History II 521]
II 34 towards: pronounced to’rd (with no s) in TSE’s recording of 1946–47 (see notes to Burnt Norton I 13 and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 93).
II 35 variant little dawn wind: “breakers of camp in the little dawn wind”, Anabasis I xv (Abel 224). “Out at sea the little | Dawn wind slides”, East Coker I 4
8–49 variant.
II 36–37 I fixed upon the down-turned face | That pointed scrutiny: Inf. XV 44–45 (Brunetto): “ma il capo chino | tenea” [kept my head bent down] (Grover Smith 286). Purg. XXIII 41 (Forese): “volse a me gli occhi un’ombra, e guardò fiso” [a shade turned its eyes to me and fixedly did gaze] (Iman Javadi, personal communication). down-turned · · · scrutiny: TSE, 27 Aug 1942, replying to Hayward’s suggestion: “I am afraid that ‘down-cast’, that is, with a hyphen between ‘down’ and ‘cast’, would hardly do because the word will be spoken much the same whether there is a hyphen or not.” 7 Sept: “I had already changed to ‘And as I fixed upon the down‑turned face’ so that’s allright, but you seem to object also to ‘scrutiny’? I admit that the sense is late: the first example is from Fanny Burney” (OED “scrutiny” 3: “In recent use: The action of looking searchingly at something; a searching gaze”, quoting Burney, 1796).
II 36–47 I fixed upon the down-turned face | That pointed scrutiny · · · eyes of a familiar · · · So I assumed a double part · · · someone other: TSE on Wyndham Lewis’s second portrait of him: “he knows the history of one’s face as well as the expression assumed for the sitting—an expression which is sometimes a defensive or bogus one when exposed to the sustained scrutiny of an unfamiliar pair of eyes on the other side of the easel”, Time 30 May 1949.
II 37–38 That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge | The first-met stranger in the waning dusk: Inf. XV 17–21 (Brunetto): “and each looked at us, as in the evening men are wont to look at one another under a new moon; and towards us sharpened their vision, as an aged tailor does at the eye of his needle.” (In the copy given to him by his mother, TSE scored XV 16–21 in the Italian.) In Dante (1929) I, TSE commended Matthew Arnold for singling out the simile (see note to In the Department Store 4), but this is untraced in Arnold, so TSE may have been confusing C. H. Grandgent’s praise for it in his Dante (1916) 267 (see note to II 25–96) with Arnold’s repeated praise for “e la sua volontade è nostra pace” (Paradiso III 85), for which see note to Ash-Wednesday VI 30–33. For Dante “trying to make you visualise exactly that dolorous twilight in which moved the form of Brunetto Latini”, see note to Burnt Norton I 12. pointed scrutiny: “F. M.”: “looking again at the young man with a well-disguised but very sharp scrutiny”, Night Club (1925).
II 37–38 variant With which we face the first-met stranger at dawn: “To prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 27. stranger at dawn: Hayward to TSE, 1 Aug 1941: “I wish the two stressed monosyllables had’nt got to complete this line; but I don’t see how to alter this. It’s not important.” See Textual History.
[Poem I 203–204 · Textual History II 521–22]
II 38 waning dusk: to Hayward, 3 Mar 1941: Points of View “will have a different and superior status if the choice is known to have been made by you, while I retire into the interlunar cave (there is a lovely word I found in the O.E.D. and want to use as soon as I can: ‘antelucan’).” Hayward, 5 Mar: “in these times no hones or stones should be left unturned if our antelucan operations are to proceed smoothly.” TSE to Hayward, 7 Sept 1942, on the lines that gave him most difficulty: “I am glad you objected to ‘First Faint’ because it calls my attention to that fact that ‘light’ will not do either, as it comes too close (being terminal) to ‘night’ a few lines before. It is surprisingly difficult to find words for the shades before morning; we seem to be richer in words and phrases for the end of day. And I don’t want a phrase which might mean either. I am inclined to put ‘The first‑met stranger after lantern‑end’ unless it seems to you too quaint. I do mean just the moment at which we should put out a lantern, if we were carrying one. ‘End’ because ‘time’ or ‘hour’ might as well mean ‘lighting‑up time’. There is very likely some dialect word for this degree of dawn; but even if I could find it it probably wouldnt do.” After a page of other details, the letter ends: “No, I dont think ‘lantern‑end’ will do, because there is so much ending at the beginning. Is ‘lantern‑out’ too strained? I reckon it is. But it is better than ‘lantern‑down’.” 9 Sept: “I am still however wrestling with the demon of that precise degree of light at that precise time of day. I want something more universal than black‑out (for even if the blackout goes on forever, I want something holding good for the past also—something as universal as Dante’s old tailor threading his needle). On the other hand, any reference to the reverberes wd. take the mind directly to pre‑war London, which would be unfortunate. It must therefore be a country image or a general one. I have been fiddling with something like this:
The stranger in the antelucan dusk
The stranger at the antelucan hour
Perhaps it is too self‑conscious, and belongs rather to a Miltonic than to a Dantesque passage? If so, I shall fall back on one of your versions. But I did rather like ‘lantern‑end’ (more suitable there than a heavy latinism, for the image should be both sudden and homely, with the precision of country terminology for these phenomena) if only ‘end’ hadn’t clashed. (What is quite interesting is to find that this austere Dantesque style is more difficult, and offers more pitfalls, than any other).” 19 Sept: “You will observe that I have accepted ‘waning dusk’, and my observation conducted during the last few days leads me to believe that it will wear. I cannot find words to express a proper manifestation of my gratitude for your invaluable assistance.” Tennyson, on “dusk” in the morning: “now the doubtful dusk reveal’d | The knolls once more”, In Memoriam XCV. Also: “With all the varied changes of the dark, | And either twilight and the day between”, Edwin Morris 36–37. Charlotte Brontë: “for it was evening and now waxing dusk”, Villette ch. 10.
[Poem I 204 · Textual History II 521–22]
Recalling his struggle for the exact word: “I found myself in great difficulties for a word to express twilight before dawn, as distinct and different from twilight before night. The word dusk, in English, means either: but its immediate denotation, to every English speaking person, is the evening · · · I believe that I could have found one word meaning the dusk of morning, in one or more English country dialects, because country people are more likely to need such a word than townsfolk. But a dialect word—apart from the fact that its obscurity would probably have required a footnote—would have aroused the wrong associations. The scene I was describing was in a London street; the personages in the scene were not people who would express themselves in country dialect; and any uncommon word would have been most unsuitable. So, after giving up the hope of finding one word, I had to try to find two words. The substantive could only be dusk; there would have to be an adjective to indicate which dusk I meant; and if necessary I should have to support it with some other indication of the time of day. I first hit upon a word which seemed to me, for a short time, to be a real trouvaille: the adjective antelucan—‘before the light’; in the great Oxford Dictionary it is defined as: ‘of or pertaining to the hours just before dawn’. Its meaning was exactly what I required, and I was much taken by the sound of the word · · · But here was a word with the right meaning and a very agreeable sound which nevertheless would not do. It is a rare word. Though its meaning is clear enough, such a word is appropriate only for an ornate style; and the passage into which I wished to insert it was in a very deliberately plain style: the word would have attracted attention to itself, and away from the task it had to perform. It might have been a suitable word if I had been writing in the style of Milton · · · So I had in the end to put ‘waning dusk’. It was not what I wanted: but it was, I believe, the best that the English language could do for me”, Scylla and Charybdis (1952). TSE appears to have forgotten Dante’s “splendori antelucani” [brightness ere dayspring born], Purg. XXVII 109 and Pound’s “The antelucanal glamour”, The Spirit of Romance 13 (Iman Javadi, personal communication). “It may sometimes happen that the word which has the exact meaning you want, has the wrong sound. The perfect word in its place would always
satisfy both demands”, Poetical and Prosaic Use of Words (1943).
II 39–45 I caught the sudden look · · · in the brown baked features · · · “What! are you here?”: Hayward points to Inf. XV 25–30 (Brunetto):
Ed io, quando il suo braccio a me distese,
ficcai gli occhi per lo cotto aspetto
sì che il viso abbruciato non disfese
la conoscenza sua al mio intelletto;
e chinando la mia alla sua faccia,
risposi: “Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?”
[And I, when he stretched out his arm to me, fixed my eyes on his baked aspect, so that the scorching of his visage hindered not my mind from knowing him; and bending my face to his, I answered: “Are you here, Ser Brunetto?”]
Hayward
[Poem I 204 · Textual History II 523]
The verb “Siete voi” is the second person plural, the archaic respectful form (Iman Javadi, personal communication). some dead master | Whom I had known: “some dead sage, which no one has understood before; which · · · has lain unknown”, After Strange Gods 33. some dead master: in Leyris’s translation, “certain maître mort”, TSE underlined “certain” with “?” dead master: “we should · · · study very carefully the work of those dead masters whose poetry has a special appeal to us; and carefully, in a different spirit, the work of some of those masters whose work does not”, Royal Academy Speech (1960) 1st draft. See “The End of All Our Exploring”, 3. PUBLISHER AND POET. From Dec 1920 until Mar 1922, TSE began letters to Pound with “Cher Maître”. Of a different art: “a painter of the Umbrian school · · · cracked and browned”, Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service 9, 12. brown baked features: Composition FQ 175: “The ‘scorched brown features’ of the manuscript renders ‘il viso abbruciato’. Eliot probably changed ‘scorched’ to avoid a repetition of the word [from II 13 variant] · · · He first tried ‘scarred’ and then took ‘baked’ from another phrase of Dante’s: ‘lo cotto aspetto’” (see Textual History). Alongside II 40–43 in the Gide/Bosco translation, TSE wrote: “where is the cotto aspetto?”