Musings On Eliot

It has been a really long time since I posted on my blog.I realised that I had no inclination to write something and put it up.I think it is because of general Exam sloth that seems to take over every time I hear the word'exam'.
I woke up in the morning and the first thing I did was to pull out my poetry file and what do I see?
Eliot's "The Wasteland". I have to confess that Eliot is one of my favourite poets.He wasn't just a poet though.A critic, philosopher and dramatist par excellence,his writing appeals to me not only at an intellectual level but also a deeper, atavistic level.So I decided to put down some of my favourite from a selection of his writing and try and see why these lines appeal to me.
The first piece of writing I ever read by Eliot was "Macavity"It made me laugh like nothing else had ever done before.The line that captured my imagination was "His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare".I guess it was because of the Indian connection that I really liked the line. I went back to it many years later and was struck anew by the ease with the which the lines meshed together and the very subtle wit that laced the poem.I had to read the rest in the collection too but no poem in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats ever came close to the magis that Macavity created for me.I might mention that this poem is where I first came across the word suavity and since then have grown to love the way it seems to slide of your tongue.It is so smooth.
What captivated me next was his verse drama "Murder in the Cathedral".Based on the murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the play explores what martyrdom means and what place religion holds in the context of this day and age.A verse drama, Eliot captures the dark and terrifying sentiments of a man who knows he will soon be killed on the orders of his sovereign and one time friend.
There are two aspects of this play that stand out. One is his revival of the tradition of the Chorus and the use of the four Knights as the four Tempters.
The Chorus was an integral part of the Greek dramatic traditon and eliot revives this tradition in this play.Where his chorus differs from the traditional chorus is that they are a character in themselves and are comprised of the women of the town of Canterbury.They mark the passage of time, set the mood and tone of each scene and closely mirror the spiritual evolution of the Archbishop.The play opens with the chorus asking what presentiment of doom has bought them to the steps of the cathedral. They say,"We are forced to bear witness...For us, the poor,there is no action/But only to wait and witness."
the Choric lines in this play are some of the most powerful lines I have ever read.
A sampling:"You come with applause,you come with rejoicing,but you come bringing death into Canterbury
A doom on the house,a doom on yourself,a doom on the world...
But now a great fear is upon us...A fear like birth and death,when we see birth and death alone
In a void apart."

"God is leaving us, God is leaving us, more pang, more pain than birth or death.
Sweet and cloying through the dark air
falls the stifling scent of despair;"


I have smelt them, the death bringers; now it is too late
For action,too soon for contrition.
Nothing is possible but the shaned swoon
Of those consenting to the last humiliation.
...Am torn away, subdued, violated,
United to the spiritual flesh of nature,
Mastered by the animal powers of spirit,
Dominated by the lust of self-demolition,
By the final uttermost death of spirit,
By the final ecstasy of waste and shame."

"Every horror had its definition,
Every sorrow had a kind of end:
In life there is not time to grieve long.
But this,this is out of life, this is out of time.
An instant eternity of evil and wrong."

You can sense the rising hysteria of the Chorus and the lines come at you with a hammer punch.The sense of despair and misery keep building up until the murder is finally committed.After that it is like the lancing of a boil from which all the fear and frustration is released and with this release comes a sense of acceptance of their fate and a certain rejuvenation of the spirit. One can go on and on about this play as it has so much to offer both in terms of intellectual appreciation of technique andsheer mastery of form and in terms of sheer enjoyment and empathy.
Any appreciation of Eliot is incomplete without a reference to his Preludes, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland.All these poems have certain themes of threads that link them. Preludes is a collage of images that depict the monotony and the humdrum quality of modern life.More than anthing, there is a quality of rooltlessness, a feeling that there is no centre in the world or in the lives we lead.
"The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o' clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days."
There is an immediate sense of dreariness and lethargy inherent in this line.There is also a sense of griminess, as if something like soot was stuck to your hand and you can't get rid of it.
This feeling is heightened by some other lines from this poem,
"The morning comes to consciousness
of faint stale smells of beer
...One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms."
The best lines come at the end of the poem where the poet declares
" I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling
The notion of some infinitely gentle,
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant parking lots."
These lines send shivers down my spine every time I read them. The cynicism and the weariness that comes through makes me wonder everytime if this what my life has been reduced to.
Prufrock and The Wasteland echo these sentiments only to differing degrees.
My favourite lines from Prufrock would have to be
"Let us go then, You and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherised upon a table."

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."(How can a man have such genius to be able to compress the sense of the frivolity and inanity of life and social mores in one single image?)
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me."( this is the line that makes me cry.The lonliness and despair leap and grab me by the throat)
I will not dare speak of The Wasteland as I feel I will do it injustice by not giving it enough space.
But there is one poem I must mention as a personal favourite and that is Marina. Written as part of the Ariel Poems, it is based on the story of Pericles and his search for his daughter Marina.
The poem is related from the perspective of Pericles himself and opens with the epigram,
"Quis hic locus, quae
regio, quae mundi plaga?" which loosely translated from the Latin goes something like this
"What palce is this, what region,what quarter ofthe world?"
The opening lines of the poem echo this statement.
The best lines according to me are,
"What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger-
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye

Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying
feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet."
This is the place where he sights his daughter after a long and arduous voyage and in her rcognises a symbol of hope and rejuvenation of the spirit.Marina and the voyage then become symbols of a journey from despair and loss of hope to an acceptance of the situation, a rekindling of innocence and an affirmation of hope and faith.

I do not possess the credentials to even attempt an appreciation or criticism of Eliot.Forgive me if this piece sounds pretentious.It is meant to be an attempt at explaining the fascination Eliot holds for me and has always held for me.