18 Vital Force: OED has citations from 1702. Emerson: “In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital force”; “Only so can · · · vital force accumulate”, The Conduct of Life ch. I, II. OED has a separate entry for Bergson’s élan vital in L’Evolution créatrice (1907), often tr. as “vital force” (though in Arthur Mitchell’s translation of 1911, only so in the index). TSE: “in spite of the appearance of Bergson · · · I am inclined to believe that philosophies which admit the inclusion · · · of anything which eludes rational grasp—such as vitalism—are more natural to non-‘Latin’ countries”, Revelation (1937). “Vers libre does not exist, and it is time that this preposterous fiction followed the élan vital and the eighty thousand Russians into oblivion”, Reflections on “vers libre” (1917).
19 Cetus: constellation, the Whale.
[Poem I 254–55 · Textual History II 574]
20 the relation of life to matter: Bergson: “la vie est, avant tout, une tendance à agir sur la matière brute” [life is, more than anything else, a tendency to act on inert matter], L’Evolution créatrice ch. I. See The smoke that gathers blue and sinks 6–7 and note.
21–22 variant a fork and knife · · · Place: “If you look for a knife or a fork | And you think it is merely misplaced—”, Mr. Mistoffelees 33–34.
23 Bootes: OED: “A northern constellation, the Wagoner, situated at the tail of the Great Bear and containing the bright star Arcturus”. Pope: “When clouds conceal Boötes’ golden wain”, Thebais 521.
23, 25–26 unsettled · · · questions · · · indigestions: “ours is an unsettled age · · · conscious of these questions as a man with indigestion is conscious of his stomach”, The Idealism of Julien Benda (1928). Byron: “For ever and anon comes Indigestion · · · and perplexes | Our soarings with another sort of question · · · confusion of the sorts and sexes, | Of being, stars, and this unriddled wonder, | The World · · · a glorious blunder”, Don Juan XI iii. W. S. Gilbert: “Commencing with a gentle pain | Scarce worth a question, | It grows apace, till you complain | Of indigestion”, The Mountebanks (prod. 1890) act I. Austin Dobson rhymes “Your cynic question” with “due | To indigestion”, A Gage d’Amour 16, 11–12.
27–28 chattered · · · mattered: “Oh, Lady Kleinwurm’s monde—no one that mattered— | Somebody sang, and Lady Kleinwurm chattered”, WLComposite 255–56.
Entretien dans un parc
Published in March Hare.
Dated Feb 1911 in Notebook.
Title Entretien dans un parc: [Conversation in a Park]. J.-B. Pater’s painting Conversation galante dans un parc was then in the Rothschild collection, Paris. (TSE’s Conversation Galante was also drafted in the Notebook.) Watteau’s Assemblée dans un parc (Louvre) has, on the left, a couple moving away; on the right, a seated couple talking; and a woman in tension with a suitor. The painting anticipates Watteau’s L’Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère, for which see headnote to Goldfish II. Embarquement pour Cythère. Verlaine: “Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé | Deux formes ont tout à l’heure passé” [In the old lonely icy park two figures have passed right on time], Colloque sentimental 1–2. TSE’s cancelled title for First Debate between the Body and Soul was Reflections in a Square. dans un parc: “From April to middle-December | He is apt to occur in the parks”, How to Pick a Possum 21–22 (here: “April”, 3).
[Poem I 255–56 · Textual History II 574–75]
Unadopted title Situation: “Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, | The lady of situations”, The Waste Land [I] 49–50. OED 1: “place, position, or location”; 9a: “Position of affairs”; 9b: “A particular conjunction of circumstances (esp. one of a striking or exciting nature) under which the characters are presented in the course of a novel or play”; 9c, without article, has Sheridan, The Critic (1779): “This scene goes entirely for what we call situation and stage effect · · · There’s situation for you! there’s an heroic group!” (TSE: “All the scene’s absurd!” 19). For TSE on “Situation” in Henry James, see note to Portrait of a Lady II 9. Pater repeatedly used the word “situation” of Browning: “His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of situations · · · His gift is shown by the way in which he accepts such a character, throws it into some situation · · · [In Dis Aliter Visum: or, Le Byron de Nos Jours, the two jaded Parisians] begin to interest us only when thrown into a choice situation · · · what an artificial light is constructed and broken over the chosen situation”, Studies in the History of the Renaissance ch. VIII. Browning’s failed lovers invoke Paris, so theirs would be an Entretien; and like TSE’s title, Browning’s subtitle is in French. TSE’s cancelled title, Situation, might or might not be French.
Unadopted title, 13 Situation · · · She smiles: “smiles at situations · · · I smile, of course”, Portrait of a Lady II 9–10.
1, 6–7 afternoon · · · I wonder if it is too late or soon · · · our lives : “Well! and what if she should die some afternoon · · · should die · · · tardy or too soon · · · Now that we talk of dying”, Portrait of a Lady III 31–40. On hearing that his brother Henry had only months to live, TSE wrote to Frank Morley, 10 Nov 1946: “One doesn’t want to arrive too soon, or too late. That is the invariable problem in such cases.” (To Anne Ridler, 30 June 1947: “Your father must have been very proud of your success as both a poet and a mother. My own father died too soon to be able to see me as anything but a son who had taken the wrong course in life. Those are fortunate who die at the right time.”) too late or soon: “Gives too late | What’s not believed in, or · · · Gives too soon”, Gerontion 39–41.
3 We walked along: “through which we walked along”, So through the evening, through the violet air 12 variant.
3–4 April · · · uncertainties: Two Gentlemen of Verona I iii: “O, how this spring of love resembleth | The uncertain glory of an April day, | Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, | And by and by a cloud takes all away!”
4 variant certain uncertainties: “Assured of certain certainties”, Preludes IV 7.
5 becomes intense: Browning: “While, oh, how all the more will love become intense”, Fifine at the Fair 881.
5, 18, 21, 28 Struggling intention that becomes intense · · · a bit ridiculous · · · And what we feel, or not · · · But if we could have given ourselves the slip: Bradley: “a kindred difficulty attaching to what is called Introspection. Can I observe my own present state, and, if not that, what in the end can I observe? · · · when I try to observe exhaustively, say, some internal sensations, the idea that I am struggling to remember them seems even ridiculous · · · What I feel, that surely I may still feel”, On Our Knowledge of Immediate Experience (Jan 1909), Essays on Truth and Reality 166.
6, 11 late or soon · · · the world has not been changed: Wordsworth has Proteus, the changer, in his sonnet The world is too much with us; late and soon.
12, 15 revision · · · decision: “indecisions · · · revisions”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 32–33.
14 So little: Miltonic, particularly at the head of the line: “So little here, nay lost; but Eve was Eve”, Paradise Regained IV 6; “So little is our loss, | So little is thy gain”, On Time 7–8.
[Poem I 256 · Textual History II 575]
17 And yet this while we have not spoken a word: Browning: “And yet—she has not spoke so long!” The Last Ride Together 100; “And yet God has not said a word!” Porphyria’s Lover, last line.
18 It becomes at last a bit ridiculous: “At times, indeed, almost ridiculous”, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 118.
19–20 All the scene’s absurd! | She and myself: As You Like It II vii: “All the world’s a stage, | And all the men and women merely players”.
21 And what we feel, or not: see note to Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think? 1.
22–25 Round and round, as in a bubbling pot · · · cool · · · fire · · · fire: Macbeth IV i: “Round about the cauldron go · · · pot · · · Fire burn and cauldron bubble · ·
· Cool”. Augustine: “To Carthage I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves bubbled up all around me”, Confessions, tr. J. G. Pilkington (1871), opening of bk. III. TSE’s Note to The Waste Land [III] 307 quotes a different translation of the same sentence. On Walter Lippmann: “When · · · describing fact or criticising human affairs, he is apt to be right; when he philosophises, he is not wholly wrong. When he stirs the two ingredients together in his witches’ cauldron, a foul vapour rises”, The Relationship between Politics and Metaphysics (1914). pot · · · ridicule: Ecclesiastes 7: 6: “For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity”.
26 blind alley: “the blind alleys of taboo and superstition”, The Relativity of the Moral Judgment (1915). Of logical positivism: “even if some of its avenues turn out to be blind alleys, it is, after all, worth while exploring a blind alley, if only to discover that it is blind”, TSE’s Introduction to Leisure the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper (1952). stopped with: King John IV ii: “stopped with dust: the first of April” (TSE: “April”, 3; “dusty”, 34).
26–27 Up a blind alley · · · childish scrawls!: to Robert Waller, 21 Sept 1942: “I do fear that Dylan Thomas has been up a blind alley, an alley choked with rather rank vegetation of verbiage.” walls · · · chalked with childish scrawls: Shelley: “a brick house or wall | Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl | Of our unhappy politics”, Letter to Maria Gisborne 266–68.
30 No stumbling: 1 John 2: 10: “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him”. ends unshaped: Hamlet V ii: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” (with “unshaped”, Hamlet IV v). Shelley: “Who shaped us to His ends and not our own”, The Boat on the Serchio 31. TSE: “ends unknown”, The Engine I.
30, 32 ends · · · moles: “The mole digs and the eagle flies, but their end is the same, to exist”, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (1928), Introduction. Blake: “Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? | Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?” The Book of Thel, Thel’s Motto 1–2.
[Poems I 257 · Textual History II 575]
32 keep · · · ants or moles: Webster’s Dirge, from The White Devil V iv:
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm
And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men,
For with his nails he’ll dig them up again
(In Palgrave’s Golden Treasury; see note to The Waste Land [I] 71–76.) For ants and moles in an erotic context, see Remy de Gourmont, Physique de l’amour. The ant, ch. X: “Il meurt sur place, la femelle se relève, gagne son nid, pond, avant d’accueillir la mort. Les noces des fourmis, c’est toute une fourmilière à la fois; la chute des amants simule une cascade dorée et la résurrection des femelles jaillit au soleil comme une écume rousse” [He dies on the spot, the female gets up, returns to the nest, lays, before dying. The fêtes of the ant are of the whole ant hill at once, the fall of the lovers like a golden cascade, and the resurrection of the females gleams in the sun like a russet foam]. The mole, ch. IX: “il n’est peut-être aucune femelle qui ait, autant que la taupe, de justes motifs pour craindre le mâle · · · il · · · finit par l’acculer dans une impasse, et, tandis qu’elle enfonce dans la terre son museau aveugle, il l’agrippe, l’opère et la féconde · · · Et quelle vierge humaine montra jamais une telle constance à garder sa vertu? Et laquelle, seule dans la nuit d’un palais souterrain, userait ses mains à ouvrir les murs, toute sa force à fuire son amant?” [there is perhaps no female who has better reason than the mole for fearing the male · · · he · · · ends by catching her in an impasse, and while she is still ramming her blind muzzle into the earth, he grips, operates, fecundates · · · What human virgin would show such constancy in the defence of her virtue? Who, alone in the night, in a subterranean palace, would use her hands to open the walls, all her strength to flee from her suitor?]
34 But then, what opening out of dusty souls!: Meredith: “Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul | When hot for certainties in this our life!” Modern Love L (TSE: “uncertainties”, 4; “life”, 15). TSE’s “moles · · · souls”: Meredith ended Hard Weather with the rhyme “soul · · · mole”. For TSE and Meredith, see headnote to Cousin Nancy. TSE: “damp souls of housemaids | Sprouting”, Morning at the Window 3–4.
Interlude: in a Bar
Published in March Hare.
Dated Feb 1911 in Notebook.
2, 5–6 forms that pass · · · broken glass | | The walls · · · scattered: Tennyson: “forms that passed at windows · · · the wall · · · wind-scattered”, A Dream of Fair Women 23, 27, 31. TSE: “rats’ feet over broken glass · · · form”, The Hollow Men I 9–11.
4–5 floors that · · · glass: Tennyson: “That crashed the glass and beat the floor”, In Memoriam LXXXVII 20. TSE: “I lie on the floor a bottle’s broken glass”, Hidden under the heron’s wing 7.
6–8 fling back the scattered streams · · · Visionary, and yet hard: Shelley: “flung | Its green arms round the bosom of the stream”, The Question 6–7 (with “visionary”, 33). the · · · streams | Of life · · · Visionary: Wordsworth: “the sister streams of Life and Death”, The Prelude (1850) VI 439 (recreating his Descriptive Sketches 72: “the mystic streams of Life and Death”). scattered streams | Of life: Byron: “Whose scattered streams from granite basins burst, | Leap into life”, The Corsair I 127–28.
[Poems I 257 · Textual History II 575]
11 Broken and scarred: Coriolanus IV v: “broke | And scarred”. TSE: “a broken Coriolanus”, The Waste Land [V] 416.
12–13 fingernails | Tapping the bar: Tennyson: “a tap | Of my finger-nail on the sand”, Maud II [ii] 69–70, with his “the sand” and TSE’s “the bar” oddly combining as the sand-bar of Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar (for which see note to Goldfish II. Embarquement pour Cythère 11–12).
Bacchus and Ariadne: 2nd Debate between the Body and Soul
Published in March Hare.
Dated Feb 1911, ms1.
Title Bacchus and Ariadne: Lemprière “Ariadne”: “According to some writers, Bacchus loved her after Theseus had forsaken her, and he gave her a crown of seven stars, which, after her death, was made a constellation.” Moody 61 suggests that the final stanza of Sweeney Erect “may allude to a variant of Ariadne’s tale, which has it that she did not die of a broken heart, but was loved by Bacchus”. Crawford 108 links this with the present poem, “probably inspired by Titian’s painting in the National Gallery. He [TSE] ticked this picture in his London Baedeker, whose commentary singles it out for its great ‘exuberance’”:
Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, painted in 1514 for Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara. “This is one of the pictures which once seen can never be forgotten · · · Rich harmony of drapery tints and soft modelling, depth of shade and warm flesh all combine to produce a highly coloured glow; yet in the midst of this glow the form of Ariadne seems incomparably fair. Nature was never reproduced more kindly or with greater exuberance than it is in every part of this picture. What splendour in the contrasts of colour, what wealth and diversity of scale in air and vegetation; how infinite is the space—how varied yet mellow the gradations of light and shade!”
(quoting Joseph Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle,
The Life and Times of Titian, 1877, 2nd ed. 1881)
TSE, slightly later than this poem, on the interior of the Doge’s Palace, Venice: “Only painting that I note is the Bacchus & Ariadne of Tintoretto. As near to feeling as T. ever came”, notes on Italy, summer 1911 (Houghton).
1 lives · · · like a wave: Shelley: “Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! | I fall upon the thorns of life!” Ode to the West Wind 53–54. TSE on Donne’s The Extasie 2 (“A pregnant banke swel’d up”): “he means rather, ‘was swollen’ or perhaps swells like a wave”, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry 269 (Turnbull Lecture II)
.
[Poems I 257 · Textual History II 575]
1, 3 their lives curl · · · wave · · · grave: Ernest Dowson: “Beneath the long curled wave, | So quiet a grave. | | And they sleep well | These peasant-folk, who told their lives away”, In a Breton Cemetery 5–8. TSE on his childhood reading: “nothing that was recommended to me served the purpose of what I found for myself. Byron and Shelley, Omar Khayyám, Rossetti, Swinburne—and smaller men too, like Ernest Dowson: I seemed to get suddenly a personal intimacy with these poets whom I read for myself; and perhaps the feeling that some of them would not be approved by my elders added to the pleasure”, Prize Day Address, Penzance (1938). curl · · · wave · · · break: “a wave of excitement curled into the street and broke”, Eeldrop and Appleplex I (1917).
4–5 tendencies unknown · · · drums: “hammered and hummed · · · ends unknown”, The Engine I.
5–6, 9 The drums of life were beating on their skulls | The floods of life were swaying in their brains · · · desert: TSE ended The Beating of a Drum (1923): “It is equally possible to assert that primitive man acted in a certain way and then found a reason for it. An unoccupied person, finding a drum, may be seized with a desire to beat it; but unless he is an imbecile he will be unable to continue beating it, and thereby satisfying a need (rather than a ‘desire’), without finding a reason for so doing. The reason may be the long continued drought. The next generation or the next civilization will find a more plausible reason for beating a drum. Shakespeare and Racine—or rather the developments which led up to them—each found his own reason. The reasons may be divided into tragedy and comedy. We still have similar reasons, but we have lost the drum.” In the Introduction to his mother’s play Savonarola (1926): “the meaning of the series of acts is to the performers themselves an interpretation; the same ritual remaining practically unchanged may assume different meanings for different generations of performers; and the rite may even have originated before ‘meaning’ meant anything at all. The persons concerned may believe that the ritual is performed in order to induce a fall of rain” (Crawford 117). drums · · · brains: “Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins”, Portrait of a Lady I 32.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 169
