Page 415 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes “Unreal City” reprises the line from “The Burial of the Dead,” evoking Baudelaire once more and
bringing the reader back to modern London. Mr. Eugenides, a merchant from Turkey (and probably
the one-eyed merchant Madame Sosostris described earlier) invites the narrator to luncheon at a
hotel and to join him on a weekend excursion to Brighton. In the stanza that follows, the narrator,
no longer himself and no longer the Fisher King, takes on the role of Tiresias, the blind prophet who
has lived both as a man and a woman, and is therefore “throbbing between two lives.” Tiresias sees
a “young man carbuncular”—that is, a young man who has or resembles a boil—pay a visit to a
female typist. She is “bored and tired,” and the young man, like Tereus, is full of lust. He sleeps
with her and then makes off, leaving her alone to think to herself: “Well now that’s done: and I’m
glad it’s over.” She plays music on the gramophone.
The music seems to transport the narrator back to the city below. “This music crept by me upon the
waters” is another quote from The Tempest, and Eliot proceeds to describe a bustling bar in Lower
Thames Street filled with “fishmen.” This account paves the way for another vision of the river
itself: sweating “oil and tar,” a murky, polluted body replete with barges and “drifting logs.” Eliot
quotes Wagner’s Die Gotterdammerung, in which maidens upon the Rhine, having lost their gold,
sing a song of lament: “Weialala leia / Wallala leialala.” A quick allusion to Queen Elizabeth’s boat-
ride with her suitor the Earl of Leicester, described in James Anthony Froude’s History of England,
contains references to the rich woman of “A Game of Chess” (“A gilded shell”) and another
description of the sounds of the city—“The peal of bells / White towers.”
Finally, one of the “maidens” raises her own voice, recounting her proper tragedy. “Highbury bore
me. Richmond and Kew/Undid me”: in other words, she was born in Highbury and lost her
innocence in Richmond and Kew. Bitterly she recalls how the man responsible promised “a new
start” afterwards; as it now stands, the maiden “can connect / Nothing with nothing.” The stanza
ends with references to St. Augustine’s Confessions and Buddha’s Fire Sermon—in each case to a
passage describing the dangers of youthful lust.

Analysis

The central theme of this section is, to put it simply, sex. If death permeates “The Burial of the Dead”
and the tragically wronged woman—be it Philomela or Ophelia—casts a pall over “A Game of Chess,”
“The Fire Sermon” is in essence a sermon about the dangers of lust. It is important to recognize that
Eliot culminates this passage with an invocation of both Eastern and Western philosophy; he even
says so himself in his notes. “To Carthage then I came” refers to Augustine; “Burning burning burning
burning” recalls Buddha’s Fire Sermon, in which “All things, O priests, are on fire.” Both Augustine
and Buddha warn against purely physical urges, as they must inevitably serve as obstacles or barriers
to true faith and spiritual peace. The image of fire, familiar from countless representations of Hell in
Christian art, is here specifically linked to the animal drives that push men and women to commit
sinful acts.
Of course, to interpret Eliot’s poetry this moralistically is to miss much of its nuance and wit. While
recalling the strictest of religious codes, Eliot is at his most literately playful here, spinning Tempest
quotations into odes to Wagner, littering Spenser’s Thames with “cardboard boxes” and “cigarette
ends,” replacing Actaeon and Diana with a certain Sweeney and a certain Mrs. Porter. There is a
satirical edge that cuts through this writing -– and perhaps real indignation as well. Much has
already been made of the episode involving the typist and the carbuncular man. What is particularly
fascinating about it is the way in which Eliot mixes and matches the violent with the nearly tender:
the young man’s first advances are “caresses” and he is later described as a “lover.” At the same
time, however, “he assaults at once,” his vanity requiring “no response.” It is close to a scene of
rape, and the ambiguity makes it all the more troubling.
Eliot offers a voyeuristic glimpse of a young woman’s home, her sexual liaison with a man, and her
moments alone afterwards. Ironically, he presents this Peeping Tom’s account from the narrative
perspective of the blind Tiresias: the “Old man with wrinkled female breasts.” The decrepit prophet

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