Page 418 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 31: Hughes and T.S. Eliot

of giving up control for one fleeting instant, no matter the consequences. Indeed, such an act is Notes
perhaps preferable to that which the “beneficent spider”—a reference to Webster’s The White Devil,
according to Eliot’s notes—allows; “empty rooms” and a “lean solicitor” cannot hope to understand
the impulses that lead to an act of “folly.” Is “an age of prudence” even worth the trouble?
Next comes sympathy—“dayadvham”—as if Eliot were reminding the reader to show compassion
for lustful men and women. We cannot help but remember the grief-stricken maiden of “The Fire
Sermon” or the lonely typist with her gramophone; at the root of such tragedy is, after all, a sincere
love for humanity. Eliot cares for these characters he has created, these refractions of his own modern
world. The sermonizing of previous stanzas here gives way to a gentler view, albeit in the form of
spiritual commandments. “I have heard the key/Turn in the door once and turn once only” refers
to Dante’s Inferno, in which Count Ugolino starves to death after being locked in a tower for treason.
The subsequent allusion to “Coriolanus” completes the cycle: a Roman who turned his back on
Rome, Coriolanus is another example of an outcast. These distinctly male visions of loneliness and
removal echo the female counterpart of the typist, alone in her room at night. Eliot asks us to
sympathize with these figures, and to acknowledge their pain.
The following stanza lifts the spirits; after the wreckage of lust and the torment of isolation,
“Damyata” invites a happier perspective. The boat responds “Gaily, to the hand expert with sail
and oar,” like the boat upon which Isolde hears the sailor’s song in “The Burial of the Dead.” We
have returned then to the beginnings of love, the promise of a joyful future. “Your heart” is perhaps
even an address to Eliot’s wife, begging the question of whether their romance might be rekindled.
It is worth noting the tense Eliot employs: “would have responded” implies a negative. It is possible
that what we are seeing is merely a token of what might have been, and not what is.
More direct is the past tense the narrator uses in the next stanza, in which he sits upon the shore,
fishing. He is once again the Fisher King, impotent and dying, and he is flanked by an “arid plain.”
We are unable to fully escape the wasteland. Eliot tempers the hope of the previous lines with this
evocation of despair. “Shall I at least set my lands in order?” the narrator asks. The end is drawing
near. The world is collapsing: London Bridge falls, Dante is quoted yet again, and an excerpt from
Nerval involving “Le Prince d’Aquitaine” points to a crumbling or destroyed tower—“la tour abolie.”
The hellish imagery of earlier parts of the poem returns here, complete with another view of modern-
day London, with its towers and bridges. The word “ruins” is of particular importance: “These
fragments I have shored against my ruins.” The narrator is still attempting to stave off destruction...or
perhaps he has at last surrendered, accepting his fate and that of the world.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:
6. Which month is the “Cruellest”?
(a) September (b) December
(c) April (d) May
7. Where is the Starnbergersee?
(a) Just outside London (b) In Michigan
(c) In Paris (d) Near Munich
8. “The river sweats....
(a) oil and tar.” (b) fumes and fire.”
(c) saffron and lilac.” (d) water.”
9. Who is demobbed?
(a) Madame Sosostris (b) Sweeney
(c) Prufrock (d) Lil’s husband

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