Page 412 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 31: Hughes and T.S. Eliot

It is appropriate, then, that the narrator should turn next to a clairvoyant; after gazing upon the Notes
past, he now seeks to into the future. Water, giver of life, becomes a token of death: the narrator is
none other than the drowned Phoenician Sailor, and he must “fear death by water.” This realization
paves the way for the famous London Bridge image. Eliot does not even describe the water of the
Thames; he saves his verse for the fog that floats overhead, for the quality of the dawn-lit sky, and
for the faceless mass of men swarming through the dead city. Borrowing heavily from Baudelaire’s
visions of Paris, Eliot paints a portrait of London as a haunted (or haunting) specter, where the only
sound is “dead” and no man dares even look beyond the confines of his feet. When the narrator sees
Stetson, we return to the prospect of history. World War I is replaced by the Punic War; with this
odd choice, Eliot seems to be arguing that all wars are the same, just as he suggests that all men are
the same in the stanza’s final line: “You! hypocrite lecteur!–mon semblable,–mon frère!”: “Hypocrite
reader!–my likeness,–my brother!” We are all Stetson; Eliot is speaking directly to us. Individual
faces blur into the ill-defined mass of humanity as the burial procession inexorably proceeds.

31.4.2 Section II: “A Game of Chess”

The second section of “The Waste Land” begins with a description of a woman sitting on a beautiful
chair that looks “like a burnished throne”—a nod to Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra. She occupies
a splendid drawing room, replete with coffered ceilings and lavish decorations. The setting is a
decidedly grandiose one. We are not sure who the woman is: perhaps Eliot’s wife Vivienne, perhaps
a stand-in for all members of the upper crust, perhaps simply an unnamed personage whiling away
the hours in a candlelit kingdom. Eliot writes of “satin cases poured forth in profusion,” “vials of
ivory and coloured glass,” an “antique mantel” and “the glitter of […] jewels.” Both the woman and
the room are magnificently attired, perhaps to the point of excess.
One of the paintings in the room depicts the rape of Philomela, a scene pulled from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. In the original story, King Tereus’s wife bids him to bring her sister Philomela to
her. Upon meeting Philomela, Tereus falls instantly and hopelessly in love; nothing must get in the
way of his conquest. Racked with lust, he steals away with her and rapes her in the woods—the
“sylvan scene” Eliot mentions. He then ties her up and cuts off her tongue so that she may not tell
others of what has happened. He returns to his wife, but Philomela is able to weave on a loom what
has befallen her; she gives the loom to her sister, who, upon discovering the truth, retrieves Philomela,
slays Tereus’s son, and feeds his carcass to the king. When he finds out that he has been served his
son for dinner, Tereus flies into a rage, chasing both Philomela and his wife out of the palace, and
all three of them transform into birds. The speechless Philomela becomes a nightingale.
Snatches of dialogue follow. It seems plausible that the woman in the room is addressing the narrator.
She complains that her nerves are bad, and requests that he stay with her. When she asks him what
he is thinking, the narrator retorts, “I think we are in rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their
bones.” Still more harried questions follow; the woman demands to find out whether the narrator
knows “nothing,” then asks what she should do now, what they should do tomorrow. The narrator
answers with a rote itinerary: “The hot water at ten. / And if it rains, a closed car at four. / And we
shall play a game of chess, / Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.”
The last stanza of the section depicts two Cockney women talking in a pub at closing time – hence
the repeated dictum: “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME.” The subject of conversation is a certain Lil,
whose husband Albert was recently released from the army after the war. He gave Lil money to get
a new set of teeth, but she has hesitated: “You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique [...] I
can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face.” Lil is apparently on pills, unhappy in her marriage, and
mother to none. The dialogue grows more fractured and the closing time announcements become
more frequent, and finally the stanza devolves into a quotation from Hamlet: Ophelia’s final words
to Claudius and Gertrude, “Good night ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.”

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