NOTES

Eliot completes The Waste Land with his own detailed end notes. They inform. I am not convinced they illuminate, nor were intended to do so.

He published The Waste Land in 1922. The ravages of the Great War must surely have informed the pessimism - perhaps fatalism is better - of the poem.

Five million died in Povolshye famine of 1921-1923. Did Eliot notice? The Holocaust, Dresden, Nanking, Hiroshima, the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Syria and much more were still to come.

Sigmund Freud wrote, also in 1922, "The facts that have led us to believe in the supremacy of the pleasure-principle in psychic life also find expression in the hypothesis that there is an attempt on the part of the psychic apparatus to keep the quantity of excitation present as low as possible..."  Perhaps the waste emerges from this tension.

There is waste and worse. We are a cruel race, especially rough with beauty which we typically break or bury alive.

And yet, I have mostly argued alternatives.

Beauty abides side by side our cruelty.  We love and murder with similar intensity.  A man conceived and constructed London Bridge and Magnus Martyr, even as other men displaced one and interred the other.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit, the single most powerful literary influence on my actual living is The Secret Garden (1911).  There is profound neglect, horrible loss, deep separation.  There is also beauty reclaimed, life restored, and wholehearted love known for the very first time.

Brokenness and healing are each real.  Choice is not the only source or cause.  Choosing the good, the true or the beautiful does not ensure our claim.  But without choosing, the default is decay.

“Might I," quavered Mary, "might I have a bit of earth?”

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

      Shantih     shantih     shantih

Μῦθος ὁ τῶν τεττίγων καὶ τῶν μυρμήκων προτρεπόμενος τοὺς νέους εἰς πόνους
Everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
Of these fragments I have made a foundation
What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Faith. Hope. Love.

     And the greatest of these is love

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

I sit upon the mountain
Writing, with the green meadow before me
Shall I at least give thanks?

Ring around the rosy,
A pocket full of posy.
Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.

Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

Agape: The stream flows
Unceasing, tumbling to the sea
Beyond azure coasts, the sea churns
Unceasing, lifting to the moon
Crashing to the shore

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA

Elpis:
My love seems mere lust
My love seems merely sensuous

My love seems mere sentiment
My love seems merely impetuous

My love seems mere neurosis
My love seems merely vivacious

My love seems mere complacense
My love seems merely spontaneous

My love seems mere dalliance
My love seems merely extemporaneous

When saying, "I love you,"
I mean that in you and through you
I find a ground of being
I know a wide angle of reality
I engage myself and non-self
With much less ambiguity
Than without you and only with you

Appearance is ambiguous
Experience is ambiguous
Life is ambiguous

But in you and through you
I touch a wholeness
Emerging and absorbing
Transforming and revealing
AH

Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA

Pistis: What have we given?
Blood rushing, hormones gushing
Desire's fitful murmurs
Two bodies breathing, slowly dying
There's all that,
                       and
A shared meal
Honest hearing
Tender smiles
The knowing ahhh
Of two lives touching
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
But unfolds in this moment
Uninvited, unexpected, and whole
AH

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA

Leaves drop from the tree
As a mother weeps for her dead child
Another and another, heavy with death
No breeze to scatter
No dance across the grass
Drop, drop, drop
Carcass of shriveled springtime
Corpses of summer sun
Drop

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Along this broad river flowing to the sea
In the early morning, dry rushes are dancing
Over the cascade of waters glistening
There a cathedral, built by faithful hands
Arched windows sparkling, towers climbing skyward,
Chapter and lay praising and confessing
A priest at the altar says:
Bless the Lord who forgiveth all our sins
The people reply:
His mercy endureth for ever
Bright light flowing through bodies of prophets
The choir singing kyrie eleison

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down...

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows...

Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death...

And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken...

Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is...

And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.

γρηγορέω

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

Pain
Cruelty
Betrayal
          are real

Blindness
Boredom
Banality
         are common

Sky
Stars
Beauty
         abound

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

The "treasure hard to attain" lies hidden in the ocean of the unconscious, and only the brave can reach it. I conjecture that the treasure is also the "companion," the one who goes through life at our side - in all probability a close analogy to the lonely ego who finds a mate in the self, for at first the self is the strange non-ego. This is the theme of the magical traveling companion, of whom I will give three famous examples: the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Krishna, and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, Moses and El-Khidr in Sura 18 of the Koran.

You
Me
Another?

You me our otherness
Traveling together
Arriving apart

You
Me
More?

And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.

There is no water
There is only rock
And the cicada singing
And a dry wind
Then a still small voice

From time to time the soul sees this flame and this enkindling grows so greatly within that it desires God with a yearning love. This love is not as a rule felt at first, but only the dryness and emptiness.

And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
If there were water

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias.

And one ran and filled a spunge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias will come to take him down.

And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock

And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Reph'idim: and there was no water for the people to drink.

Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD?

And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

We who live
Still sweat with effort

Summer gardens abuzz
Still abound with fragrance

Stones make stairs
Still reaching toward stars

Pitch and place and reverberation
Still combine as music

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
Still living, if soon enough dead

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
                                 A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                                Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

I live
I am living now
I am living here, then there

I choose
I am choosing now
I am choosing this, then that

I ride currents
I am rolled, tossed
I glide gently with a breeze

I will die, but first
I will live full and whole as
I learn the good, true, and beautiful

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

To Carthage then I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it.

+++

“All things, O priests, are on fire. And what, O priests, are all these things which are on fire?

“The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the eye are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, that also is on fire.

“And with what are these on fire?

“With the fire of passions, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation, with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.

“The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire; ...the nose is on fire; odors are on fire; ...the tongue is on fire; tastes are on fire; ...the body is on fire; ideas are on fire; ...mind-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the mind are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, that also is on fire.

“And with what are these on fire?

“With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of lamentation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.

To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it.

“Perceiving this, O priests, the learned and noble disciple conceives an aversion for the eye, conceives an aversion for forms, conceives an aversion for eye-consciousness, conceives are aversion for the impressions received by the eye; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, for that also he conceives an aversion. Conceives an aversion for the ear, conceives an aversion for sounds, ...conceives an aversion for the nose, conceives an aversion for odors, ...conceives an aversion for the tongue, conceives an aversion for tastes, ...conceives an aversion for the body, conceives an aversion for thing tangible, ...conceives an aversion for the mind, conceives an aversion for ideas, conceives an aversion for mind- consciousness, conceives an aversion for the impressions received by the mind; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, for this also he conceives an aversion. And in conceiving this aversion, he becomes divested of passion, and by the absence of passion he becomes free, and when he is free he becomes aware that he is free; and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do, and that he is no more for this world.”

Now while this exposition was being delivered, the minds of the thousand priests became free from attachment and delivered from the depravities.

"On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.” 
        la la

Each
in relationship with all
All
in relationship with each
Subtle
influence pulls me toward
You
resist and yet
Connect

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?”

Keats was born
At the Swan and Hoop
199 Moorgate

He wrote
"Beauty is truth
Truth beauty..."

Which Eliot found:
A serious blemish on a beautiful poem,
either I fail to understand it,
or it is a statement which is untrue.
Keats seems to me meaningless:
or perhaps the fact that it is grammatically meaningless
conceals another meaning from me

Τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια

Cricket on the Kew Green, St. Anne's in the background

“Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.“

We are born
Do and are undone
We die

But beginning in Highbury
Ending in Richmond or Kew
Tells of very profitable doing

Valerie's obituary appeared
Today in the Telegraph
She has returned to Tom

And is becoming acquainted with Vivienne

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
South-west wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
                          Weialala leia
                          Wallala leialala

Yes, our excess
is somehow less

Shakespeare then
Now Dancing with the Stars

Where Wren built beauty
We throw up banality

And... the sick are healed
The poor need not die cold

The Queen reigns
No longer rules

We have received
Our daily bread

But have been
Led into temptation

Mistaking accumulation
for arete

Exchanging wisdom
for wealth

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
                              Weialala leia
                              Wallala leialala

Dame Sun
sends down her rays of light;
night lies in the depths:
once they were bright,
when safe and glorious
our father's gold gleamed there.
Rhinegold!
Lustrous gold!
How brightly you once shone,
majestic star of the deep!

(They resume their swimming dance)

                              Weialala leia,
                              Wallala leialala.

(A horncall in the distance: they listen.
They splash joyful in the water)

There is loss
There is degradation
There is destruction, death

Too often
We choose wealth
Instead of loving and being loved

Der Welt Erbe
gewänne mir ein Ring:
- für der Minne Gunst
miss' ich ihn gern; -
ich geb' ihn euch, gönnt ihr mir Lust.

                           Götterdämmerung

Magnus Martyr then

“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City City, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

What we have lost
or abandoned
can be sacralized in regret

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets,
and stonest them that are sent unto thee;
how often would I have gathered thy children together,
as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings,
and ye would not!"

Yet what is lost, may be found
Abandoned, redeemed
In memory and more.

"Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again."

Retrieving in joy
Restoring in love
Releasing the sacred from seclusion.

Magnus Martyr now

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

What will I do today
What will I choose
And Why
When I finish the day
Will I be happy with what I've done
Glad with what I've finished
And Why

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…

Mistaking our desire

We make a pain of pleasure

Confusing our needs

Conversation or copulation

Caress or coitus

Clarity, even completion, comes from

Confession, compassion, communion...

Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

Simplicity can be elegant
Poverty need not forsake dignity
Failure is often the foundation of success
Much depends on what we choose to see
In our here, our now, ourselves, the other
Each has its ugly angle
Each abides with God.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Tiresias knew one reality,
Then two.
Seeing survival's struggle
He struck,
And was thoroughly
Transformed,
Understanding the other's
Mysteries,
Becoming in one self both
Her and him.
Through this wholeness
Seeing
Realities still to come.

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.

In the so-called sixth borough
Amidst the soft grays of a cloudy day
I ate a late lunch
White bean, kale, and onion soup

Reading in the Times
Of human suffering
Cold hungry fear

With a fluffy tomato and zucchini tart

Reading emails
Searching for kosher MREs
Lost children and gas stations

Completed with a fair Côtes du Rhône

The Hoopoe bird, named for its call. Tereus was transformed

into this bird by the Olympians

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Tereus
Son of god
King of Thrace
Purposeful predator
Unwilling cannibal
Villain and victim
Raping, cutting, running, eating, finally flying

Hoopoe

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole! 

The moon shines bright on me
And my wife
Walking the meadow and hillside
Un oiseau sur, l'arbre qu'on voit Chante sa plainte.

Trans: A bird in the tree one hears sadly singing.

Parsifal has vanquished the Damsels, their gentle
Babble and amusing luxury, and their bent
Toward the Flesh of the virgin boy they would tempt
To love their glowing breasts and their gentle babble.

He has vanquished the Woman with heart so subtle,
Displaying her tempting arms and throat like a lily bent;
He has vanquished Hades and returned to his tent
With the heavy trophy of burnished metal

With the spear in his arms that pierced the Saviour's side.
He has healed the king and now a king, in his pride,
He has himself become - priest of the Holy Grail.

He kneels to adore in garments of golden fire
The vase where the Saviour's blood like the morning shines -
And, O, the voices of children singing in the choir!

Paul Verlaine