IV 16 Walking the waves: Milton: “Through the dear might of him that walked the waves”, Lycidas 173.
IV 17 Bringing the news from: OED “evangelize” 1a: “To bring or tell good tidings”. Browning: How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. from either Pole: Herbert, Content 18. Tennyson: “to either pole she smiles, | Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles”, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After 169–70. Mayer 61: “news of the polar explorations of Peary, Amundsen, and Shackleton · · · made headlines in 1909–1910.” Kipling: “PICCIOLA—Both Poles have been overdone in Art and Literature. Leave them to Science for the next twenty years. You did not send a stamp with your verses”, “Answers to Correspondents”, appended to With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D. (1909). In Homage to Wilkie Collins (1927), TSE foresaw a similar danger: “‘the destruction of the atom’ will probably flourish for several years in bad detective stories”.
IV 18 fourth dimension: OED from 1875 (G. H. Lewes) and citing Bertrand Russell, 1904: “The merit of speculations on the fourth dimension .. is chiefly that they stimulate the imagination, and free the intellect from the shackles of the actual.” Much pondered at the time, in, for instance, C. H. Hinton’s The Fourth Dimension (1904), early P. D. Ouspensky, and C. B. Patterson’s “thought studies in the fourth dimension”, A New Heaven and a New Earth (1909). Thomas Hardy: “A fourth dimension, say the guides, | To matter is conceivable”, A Dream Question 22–23 in Time’s Laughing-Stocks (1909).
IV 21, 23 neat · · · complete: “Neat, complete”, Suite Clownesque III 22. For “complete”, see note to Mandarins 1 1.
IV 28 aged sibyl: see note to The Waste Land, epigraph.
IV 28, 34 eyes · · · assuring certainties: “and eyes | Assured of certain certainties”, Preludes IV 6–7.
IV 29 four crossroads: Thomas Hood: “And they buried Ben in four cross-roads”, Faithless Nelly Gray 67 (Donald Gallup, personal communication).
IV 29–30 crossroads · · · oracle: perhaps invoking the story of Oedipus, though that takes place not at a crossroads but at a fork in the road. oracle: “The task of philosophy, it appears to me, is largely one of simplification: to disentangle the riddling oracles of the world, to paragraph and punctuate them and insert the emphases”, The Relativity of the Moral Judgment (1915).
IV 33 theoretic: “It must be remembered that the French mind is highly theoretic—directed by theories—and that no theory ever remains merely a theory of art, or a theory of religion, or a theory of politics”, Syllabus: Modern French Literature (1916) Lecture II, The Reaction against Romanticism.
[Poem I 248–49 · Textual History II 572]
IV 33, 36 seas · · · Hesperides: Lemprière “Hesperides”: “three celebrated nymphs · · · appointed to guard the golden apples which Juno gave to Jupiter on the day of their nuptials · · · the place of their residence, placed beyond the ocean by Hesiod, is now believed to be near mount Atlas · · · This celebrated place or garden abounded with fruits of the most delicious kind”. some Hesperides: Kipling’s concluding stanza to The Second Voyage (1903) likewise rhymes “New prows that seek the old Hesperides!” with “seas”. TSE quoted thirty lines of Tennyson’s unreprinted early poem The Hesperides, praising it highly, in In Memoriam (1936).
IV 37 small beers: OED “small beer” 1: “Beer of a weak, poor, or inferior quality”. 2. transf. “Trivial occupations, affairs, etc.; matters or persons of little or no consequence or importance”. Othello II i: “To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer.”
Suite Clownesque
Published in March Hare.
Suite Clownesque is dated Oct 1910 at the end, in Notebook.
Title Suite: OED 2d: “Mus. A set of instrumental compositions (orig. of movements in dance style) to be played in succession”. TSE to L. A. G. Strong, 30 June 1925, on The Hollow Men: “I am still in doubt as to how I wish this suite to be arranged”. Clownesque: added in pencil to the original title Suite. Fr., clown-like; see III 14 ^ 15 and note; also Humouresque. Laforgue: “La bouche clownesque ensorcèle | Comme un singulier géranium” [The clownish mouth casts a spell like a singular geranium], Pierrots I 7–8 (see note to Rhapsody on a Windy Night 12, 63). Laforgue wrote of “les virtuosités clownesques” (L’Art moderne en Allemagne II), and to his sister Marie, 14 May 1883: “Je trouve stupide de faire la grosse voix et de jouer de l’éloquence. Aujourd’hui que je suis plus sceptique et que je m’emballe moins aisément et que, d’autre part, je possède ma langue d’une façon plus minutieuse, plus clownesque, j’écris de petits poèmes de fantaisie, n’ayant qu’un but: faire de l’original à tout prix” [I find it stupid to speak loudly and to play with eloquence. These days I’m more sceptical and I launch myself less readily. On the other hand, I’m master of my speech in a way that’s more minute, more clownesque. I write little fantasy poems, with only one aim, to be original at any price].
I
I 1 Across the painted colonnades: Pope: “Beneath the pompous Colonnade”, Odyssey III 511.
I 1, 4 colonnades · · · serenades: Villiers de l’Isle-Adam: “Voici l’heure des sérénades | Où brille, loin des colonnades” [Here is the hour of serenades where there shines, far from the colonnades], Guitare (1859) 1–2. Stuart Merrill (the American who made himself a French symbolist) rhymed “colonnades · · · serenades”, Le Palais désert 6, 9.
[Poems I 249 · Textual History II 572]
I 1, 12 Across the painted colonnades · · · across the orchestra: “across the wall · · · across the floors”, Prufrock’s Pervigilium [22–34]. “live across the window panes”, Interlude in London 2 (see note to 2–8). “feet passing across the skies”, Paysage Triste 12. “stretched tight across the skies”, Preludes IV 1. “Strode across the hills”, Cousin Nancy 2. For “drips across the steps”, see the parody of TSE in headnote to Before Morning.
I 2–4 the terra cotta fawns · · · lawns · · · serenades: a fawn is not a faun, but Verlaine: “Un vieux faune de terre cuite | Rit au centre des boulingrins, | Présageant sans doute une suite | Mauvaise à ces instants sereins” [An old terra cotta faun is laughing in the middle of the lawns, no doubt foreseeing an unhappy outcome to these happy moments], Le Faune 1–4 (TSE: “Suite · · · lawns · · · comedian”, title, 3 5). John Gray’s version of Verlaine, from the same sequence: “The fountains tall that leap upon the lawns | Amid the garden gods, the marble fauns”, Claire de Lune 12–13. (For Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, see note to Mr. Apollinax 19. Here, terra cotta fawns. Mr. Apollinax 4 variant: “Priapus, terra cotta in the shrubbery”.) Laforgue brings together terra cotta, music and clowns: “Les virtuoses en musique, en terre cuite, en langues, en peinture, etc · · · en plastique personnelle (les clowns)” [Virtuosos in music, in terra cotta, in painting, etc · · · in bodily sculpture (the clowns)], Critique d’art in Mélanges posthumes (1903) 178.
I 3 Among the potted palms, the lawns: Tennyson: “Among the palms and ferns”, Enoch Arden 589.
I 3, 5 lawns · · · comedian: “Like amateur comedians across a lawn”, Afternoon 8.
I 4 cigarettes and serenades: Tennyson: “canzonets and serenades”, The Princess IV 117.
I 4, 6, 14 serenades · · · vest · · · sparkling: Symons: “singers of serenades · · · short vests, silken and bright”, From Paul Verlaine: Fêtes Galantes XV. Mandoline 1, 9.
I 5–8 comedian · · · nose | Nose · · · nose: “the propriety of Cyrano on Noses · · · in the particular case of Cyrano on Noses, the character, the situation, the occasion were perfectly suited and combined”, “Rhetoric” and Poetic Drama (1919). Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) had been promptly translated, and in 1898–99 Richard Mansfield starred in the first English-language performances in the US. When he was ten, TSE’s magazine Fireside had a note on The Theatre: “Cryno de Bergerac has created a great sensation” (No. 1, 28 Jan 1899; ms, Houghton). TSE supplied “an picture by our funny artist”, of Cryno (with nose in profile, hat, and sword). “The men (their n
ames were Comtes de Soke and de Nose) drew their swords and began to pink”, Fireside no. 3 (Jan 1899). Nose that interrogates the stars: “(Feebly contemptuous of nose)”, Humouresque 18. Coriolan has “There is no interrogation in his eyes” (I. Triumphal March 29) and “Noses strong to break the wind” (II. Difficulties of a Statesman 39). Rimbaud: “Fantasque, un nez poursuit Vénus au ciel profond” [Fantastic, a nose follows Venus in the deep sky], Accroupissements [Squattings], last line. TSE compared Massinger with Webster, to Massinger’s disadvantage: “‘Here he comes, | His nose held up; he hath something in the wind’, is hardly comparable to ‘the Cardinal lifts up his nose like a foul porpoise before a storm’”, Philip Massinger (1920). For “Possum’s Nose”, see note to A Practical Possum 60.
I 6 broad dogmatic: OED “Broad Church”: admitting “variety of opinion in matters of dogma and ritual · · · According to the Master of Balliol (Prof. Jowett), the term was first proposed in conversation, in his hearing, by A. H. Clough, and became colloquially familiar in Oxford circles, a few years before 1850.” vest: OED “vest” 3b: “a waistcoat. Now N. Amer.” 2: “An ecclesiastical vestment. rare.”
[Poem I 249 · Textual History II 572]
I 6–10 vest · · · scarlet · · · real · · · jellyfish: Byron: “No real likeness,—like the old Tyrian vest | Dyed purple, none at present can tell how, | If from a shell-fish”, Don Juan XVI x. jellyfish: OED 2 fig., from 1883: “A person of ‘flabby’ character, or deficient in energy, steadfastness, or ‘backbone’”. For “truth and error in jellyfish life”, see note to The Dry Salvages I 20–21.
I 6, 10, 23 nose · · · jellyfish · · · toes: Carroll: “when you’ve cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way” and “so he with his nose | Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes”, both from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ch. X, “The Lobster-Quadrille”. TSE’s books: Bodleian list (1934) includes “Alice in Wonderland (early ed.)”
I 8 scarlet nose: the bulbous prop essential to a clown.
I 11 without repose: Shelley: “Outspeed the chariot, and without repose”, The Triumph of Life 140 (with “ribald crowd · · · obscene · · · wild dance · · · savage music”, 136–42). Théodore de Banville, tr. Stuart Merrill: “his red shoes · · · trace without repose the figure of a lawless dance”, Harlequin in Pastels in Prose.
I 14–15, 24 His belly sparkling and immense: | It’s all philosophy · · · his soul: Wordsworth: “Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie | Thy Soul’s immensity; | Thou best Philosopher”, Ode: Intimations of Immortality 109–11.
I 14, 17–18 immense · · · the audience · · · suspense: “immense · · · an audience open-mouthed | At climax and suspense”, Convictions 4, 6–7.
I 15, 19 philosophy and art · · · entities: “the Abstract Entities”, Whispers of Immortality 29 (see note).
I 20–21 lights! · · · the world at rights: “lights · · · sets the room to rights”, WLComposite 358–360. OED 14, “to rights” (“to or into a proper condition”), gives “at rights” as rare (one instance, 1641: “to set all things at rights”).
I 20, 25 a ring of lights · · · Concentred: Paradise Lost IX 105–107: “Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, | In thee concentring all their precious beams | Of sacred influence.”
I 22 Here’s one who gets away with it: TSE of The Giaour: Byron “not only gets away with it, but gets away with it as narrative”, Byron (1937).
I 23 spreading of the toes: Henry Ware Eliot Jr (TSE’s brother), of a debonnaire figure “on the Square”: “He has a truly high-life way | Of turning out his toes”, Pierre in Harvard Celebrities: A Book of Caricatures (1901).
I 23, 25 spreading of the toes · · · vest and nose: Lear: “And it’s perfectly known that a Pobble’s toes | Are safe,—provided he minds his nose”, The Pobble Who Has No Toes, with “scarlet”, 12, 28 (TSE, 8) and “The World · · · the world”, 7, 20 (TSE: “the world”, 21). For Lewis Carroll, see note to I 6, 10, 23. TSE: “Nose · · · toes” is the concluding rhyme of A Practical Possum and appears again in Dirge.
I 24–25 self- · · · Concentred: Scott: “The wretch, concentred all in self”, Breathes there the man with soul so dead 12. (TSE to John Hayward [1 Mar 1942]: “how pleasant it is to cross the Tweed Bridge in a southerly direction and breathe the famous lines of Walter Scott, Breathes there etc.” The poem is in Oxf Bk of English Verse.) TSE: “The interest of a performer is almost certain to be centred in himself: a very slight acquaintance with actors and musicians will testify”, The Possibility of a Poetic Drama (1920).
[Poem I 249–50 · Textual History II 572]
II
II 1 with a skirt just down to the ancle: Fowler: “ankle, ancle. The -k- is usual.” TSE has “ancle” twice, to Eleanor Hinkley, 27 Nov 1914. As to the fashion in skirts: “Ankle-length ones have gained votaries across the Channel”, Daily Chronicle 1903, is OED’s first citation for the compound.
II 7 linger · · · finger: “Smoothed by long fingers, | Asleep … tired … or it malingers”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 76–77.
II 11 Seven little girls run away from school: Gilbert, The Mikado (prod. 1885), act I:
Three little maids from school are we,
Pert as a school-girl well can be,
Filled to the brim with girlish glee,
Three little maids from school!
Everything is a source of fun · · ·
From three little maids take one away.
(TSE: “Everybody is under age”, II 2.) Wordsworth’s We are Seven is also about a little maid.
II 11, 14 little · · · descend: “Burbank crossed a little bridge | Descending at a small hotel”, Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar 1–2 (see note on “Descending”).
II 13 street car: OED 1, from 1862: “N. Amer. A passenger car, running through the streets, usually on rails; a tram-car.”
II 21–22 text · · · next?: Byron ends, not a poem, but a stanza: “Men should know why | They write, and for what end; but, note or text, | I never know the word which will come next”, Don Juan IX xli. Kipling ends a poem with a question:
But to insult, jibe, and quest, I’ve
Still the hideously suggestive
Trot that hammers out the unrelenting text,
And I hear it hard behind me
In what place soe’er I find me:—
“’Sure to catch you soon or later. Who’s the next?”
The Undertaker’s Horse (1886)
II 22 “Where shall we go to next?”: “What is there for us to do?” The Death of the Duchess 12. “‘What shall we ever do?’”, The Waste Land [II] 134.
III
III 1 walking down the avenue: Paul Elmer More: “I was walking down the Avenue where the Park stretches away to your right · · · when my attention was caught by a lady just ahead”, The Great Refusal 100. the avenue: Henry James: “Hadn’t it been above all, in its good faith, the Age of Beauties—the blessed age when it was so easy to be, ‘on the Avenue’, a Beauty, and when it was so easy, not less, not to doubt of the unsurpassability of such as appeared there?” The Sense of Newport II in The American Scene. TSE: “The next I know the old cab was hauled up on the avenue”, WLComposite 49.
III 3–4 meet you · · · greet you: The Cubanola Glide (1909), quoted by TSE: “Tease, Squeeze lovin’ & wooin’ | Say Kid what’re y’ doin’”, WLComposite 10–11 variant. For TSE and popular songs, see note to The Waste Land [III] 128–30.
[Poem I 250–51 · Textual History II 572]
III 6–7 Broadway · · · moon: Nathaniel Parker Willis: “The moon hangs just over Broadway”, City Lyrics (1844).
III 7 Under the light of the silvery moon: the song By the light of the silvery moon (words, Edward Madden; music, Gus Edwards) was introduced in 1909 by the child singer Georgie Prince. It formed part of Edwards’s vaudeville sketch “School Boys and Girls” (TSE: “the girls”, 9, 16). TSE: “by the light of the Jellicle Moon”, The Song
of the Jellicles 24.
III 8–9 You may find me | All the girls behind me: for the rhyme see the ending of Kipling’s The Undertaker’s Horse, quoted in note to II 21–22. TSE: “‘Throw your arms around me—Aint you glad you found me’”, The smoke that gathers blue 18.
III 10 Euphorion: (i) Greek poet in the age of Antiochus; (ii) son of Aeschylus the tragedian; (iii) son of Faust in the Second Part of Goethe’s Faust. Santayana: “Faust retires with her [Helen] to Arcadia,—the land of intentional and mid-summer idleness. Here a son, Euphorion, is born to them, a young genius, classic in aspect, but wildly romantic and ungovernable in temper. He scales the highest peaks, pursues by preference the nymphs that flee from him, loves violence and unreason, and finally, thinking to fly, falls headlong, like Icarus, and perishes”, Three Philosophical Poets (1910) 177. (For Santayana’s essay, see note to Gerontion 69.) Pater: “Goethe illustrates a union of the Romantic spirit, in its adventure, its variety, its profound subjectivity of soul, with Hellenism, in its transparency, its rationality, its desire of beauty—that marriage of Faust and Helena, of which the art of the nineteenth century is the child, the beautiful lad Euphorion, as Goethe conceives him, on the crags, in the ‘splendour of battle and in harness as for victory’, his brows bound with light”, Studies in the History of the Renaissance ch. VIII. For ambiguous names, see note to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 94, “Lazarus”. Euphorion of the modern time: one such Euphorion is George Eliot’s plagiarist in The Wasp Credited with the Honeycomb (within Theophrastus Such).
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 167
