1/9/05
Dear fellow Eliotics,

I hope you enjoyed the first meeting of our Eliot course;
I certainly did. And now, off we go again…………

Think back for a moment to the end of "Preludes":
  I am moved by fancies that are curled
  Around these images, and cling:
  The notion of some infinitely gentle
  Infinitely suffering thing.

I neglected the obvious question: what do you think that "infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering" thing might be?
It makes sense that the speaker would find such a "notion" moving, for the context in which he is "moved"
is one so lacking in gentleness. But can we go any further in speculating about what that "thing" might be?
Let's begin our next class with that question.

One of you asked for the Eliot quotation I read last time about "difficulty in poetry," so here it is.
(It's from The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, pp. 150-151, but unfortunately I have no more
information about the source since I just discovered my copy is missing. "To loan or not to loan," THAT is the question.)

…The difficulty of poetry (and modern poetry is supposed to be difficult) . . . may be
due to novelty: we know the ridicule accorded in turn to Wordsworth, Shelley and
Keats, Tennyson and Browning-but must remark that Browning was the first to be
called difficult; hostile critics of the earlier poets found them difficult, but called them
silly. Or difficulty may be caused by the reader's having to be told, or having
suggested to himself, that the poem is going to prove difficult. The ordinary reader,
when warned against the obscurity of a poem, is apt to be thrown into a state of
consternation very unfavorable to poetic receptivity. Instead of beginning, as he
should, in a state of sensitivity, he obfuscates his senses [note that Eliot doesn't say
"mind" but "senses"] by the desire to be clever and to look very hard for something,
he doesn't know what-or else by the desire not to be taken in. There is such a thing
as stage fright, but what such readers have is pit or gallery fright. The more seasoned
reader, he who has reached in these matters, a state of greater purity, does not bother
about understanding; not, at least, at first. I know that some of the poetry to which I
am most devoted is poetry which I did not understand at first reading (Shakespeare,
for example). And finally, there is the difficulty caused by the author's having left out
something which the reader is used to finding; so that the reader, bewildered, gropes
about for what is absent, and puzzles his head for a kind of "meaning" which is not
there, and is not meant to be there.

(NB: Note in that first sentence how Eliot plays with his nouns such that the noun of "know" is "we,"
meaning Eliot & his readers, whereas the noun of "must remark" is also "we," but now the word means "I, the writer."
Who do you know who speaks of her/himself as "we"? This is one of the ways Eliot as a critic acquires a tone of enormous authority.)

(Also note that what he's saying may seem less strange if you recall that we can enjoy music without "understanding" it,
& I don't mean formally but emotionally. Imagine you say to me "I absolutely LOVE Shubert's Impromptus" & I say
"That's all well & good, but what do they MEAN?" You see my point, yes? On the other hand, it's true that language isn't music,
but nevertheless the analogy may help.)

I'm reading a biography of Eliot by Peter Ackroyd (Simon and Schuster, 1984) & keep being reminded of Herb's sense that
Eliot was an extremely formal man & his humility really a sham. (I don't mean to put words in your mouth, Herb,
but that was your drift, no?) Here are two corroborating quotations from the biography:

Brigit Patmore [?] knew the Eliots early in their marriage & wrote of Eliot that he was not only "critical of people,
but also of their class and position in the world [i.e., he was a snob]. Never had I met a less humble man." (86)
"In her diary Virginia Woolf . . . suspected him of a vanity which he tried hard to conceal just as, on a later occasion,
she intuited a driving will beneath his somewhat diffident exterior." (104)

THE WASTELAND The "Notes," the famous notes, oi veh those notes. You should know that they were concocted at the last minute
at the request of the publisher.Books were (& mostly still are) of prescribed lengths, & the pamphlet in which
"The Wasteland" first made its solo appearance needed more text to fill up the pages.
So the publisher prevailed on Eliot to compile the notes. They're bizarre. The speaker early speaks of the
church of Saint Mary Woolnoth which "kept the hours / With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine."
Eliot's note? "A phenomenon which I have often noticed." That's so irrelevant as to be ridiculous,
& makes it perfectly clear that Eliot is at least in part just inventing filler.
On the other hand, some of the notes are extremely helpful, like the one that tells us that
"What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem" & also the note to line 412 which quotes F. H. Bradley.
(Eliot originally planned to become a professor of philosophy & got as far as finishing a doctoral dissertation on Bradley.
He was booked for passage on a liner to return to Harvard in 1916 to defend his dissertation when the
trip was cancelled because of World War I. That was the end of his academic ambitions.
However, he remained influenced by Bradley for the rest of his life.)

A tip which you might find helpful. There are of course many different ways of approaching "The Wasteland," & no one has ever produced a definitive reading of it.
I find it helpful to imagine a protagonist who is an inhabitant of the Wasteland & who threads his way throughout the poem.
He frequently speaks but other voices also come & go: Lil's friend, a Biblical voice like that of Ezekial or Jeremiah,
the Hyacinth Girl, & of course the voices of the many quotations among many others.
The protagonist I imagine begins speaking with "April is the cruelest month" & a short time later visits Mme Sosostris
who tells his fortune using Tarot cards. He then leaves her & as he proceeds throughout his day his fortune
is enacted according to Mme Sosostris' predictions. Belladonna becomes the neurotic woman the protagonist
visits in part II, "A Game of Chess." The one-eyed merchant becomes Mr. Eugenides.
The drowned Phoenician Sailor ("Fear death by water") appears in Part IV, "Death by Water."
The "crowds of people, walking round in a ring" whom Mme Sosostris sees appear as soon as
the protagonist leaves her lodgings & begins crossing London Bridge.

That's all that's on my mind for this little visit, but I'm sure I'll be back in touch with you again soon.
Cheers………………..Alan