WEBVTT 00:00.360 --> 00:07.030 Professor Langdon Hammer: On Monday I left off 00:07.029 --> 00:13.949 talking about this--what shall we call it--exciting and 00:13.954 --> 00:21.394 dramatic ambivalence that one finds in the early Eliot that 00:21.393 --> 00:27.423 expresses itself in his relationship to literary 00:27.421 --> 00:33.391 tradition; where on the one hand, 00:33.393 --> 00:42.553 he presents himself as a truly subversive and aggressive 00:42.551 --> 00:49.871 entrant into literary tradition, someone who's really going to 00:49.869 --> 00:53.419 shake it up and transform it; and on the other hand, 00:53.422 --> 00:56.532 as someone who is a traditionalist, 00:56.532 --> 01:01.752 who is going to speak with deference and seek – the word 01:01.745 --> 01:05.765 he uses is "conformity"--with the past. 01:05.769 --> 01:12.639 Somehow, both these things are going on at the same time and in 01:12.637 --> 01:15.847 relationship to each other. 01:15.849 --> 01:19.889 And "Prufrock" itself is a poem, I think, 01:19.888 --> 01:26.348 preoccupied with this kind of ambivalence that I'm describing. 01:26.349 --> 01:32.539 On the one hand, it is a poem that introduces us 01:32.542 --> 01:40.842 to a speaker who lacks will and who seems timorous and timid and 01:40.843 --> 01:45.063 who hesitates before action. 01:45.060 --> 01:48.620 On the other hand, he is a speaker who says to us, 01:48.621 --> 01:51.821 "There will be time to murder and create," 01:51.819 --> 01:55.949 as if creating and murdering were, in fact, 01:55.952 --> 02:01.072 in some relation and might go on at the same time. 02:01.069 --> 02:04.199 And in fact, if one does have some sense of 02:04.196 --> 02:07.466 creativity as involving a kind of aggression, 02:07.470 --> 02:11.270 or even murderousness, one might hesitate before it, 02:11.266 --> 02:16.016 right? These psychological dimensions 02:16.020 --> 02:22.580 that I'm describing have, well, Freudian and Oedipal 02:22.583 --> 02:28.763 dimensions that I think are readily apparent. 02:28.759 --> 02:35.969 How is it possible for Eliot to claim the authority of past 02:35.969 --> 02:42.049 literature without, at the same time, 02:42.048 --> 02:53.878 either destroying it or utterly submitting himself to it? 02:53.879 --> 02:57.519 This problem expresses, I think, Eliot's double 02:57.522 --> 03:00.692 relation to the past and is expressed, 03:00.689 --> 03:05.209 as I was suggesting last time, in the ambiguous use of 03:05.213 --> 03:10.423 quotation that seems to hover between some kind of deferential 03:10.420 --> 03:15.630 honoring of the literature of the past and something much more 03:15.627 --> 03:18.697 provocative and often parodic. 03:18.699 --> 03:23.709 And you can think of the many different texts that "Prufrock" 03:23.710 --> 03:28.050 alludes to and borrows, only some of which are traced 03:28.052 --> 03:29.892 in your footnotes. 03:29.889 --> 03:36.879 In fact, there's a great many more than you find in your 03:36.884 --> 03:40.604 footnotes. There are quotations from 03:40.598 --> 03:45.058 Marvell, from the Bible, from Dante, from Twelfth 03:45.062 --> 03:48.952 Night. Well, there's that opening 03:48.946 --> 03:52.956 quotation from Dante, from the Gospels, 03:52.960 --> 03:56.830 too. Prufrock's world-weariness, 03:56.825 --> 04:01.915 you know, "For I have known them all already, 04:01.920 --> 04:06.610 known them all," as understood in the poetic 04:06.611 --> 04:11.131 context, this seems to, well, express his sense of 04:11.133 --> 04:15.563 belatedness and of the--everything having in some 04:15.563 --> 04:18.243 sense been done already. 04:18.240 --> 04:22.610 04:22.610 --> 04:26.980 In, again, Freudian or Oedipal terms, terms that Harold Bloom 04:26.980 --> 04:31.280 would develop as a reader of Eliot in his own criticism very 04:31.278 --> 04:35.918 influentially, you can put the problem this 04:35.920 --> 04:43.180 way: how can Eliot come to write in the father's place without 04:43.175 --> 04:48.285 killing him or being overwhelmed by him? 04:48.290 --> 04:53.650 In his confrontation with the past, neither he, 04:53.649 --> 05:00.639 Eliot, nor the past must be destroyed, or the game's over. 05:00.639 --> 05:04.059 Eliot thereby swerves, you could say, 05:04.058 --> 05:09.848 alternatively from each of these unacceptable alternatives. 05:09.850 --> 05:14.340 And that kind of back-and-forth-ness you feel in 05:14.344 --> 05:18.174 Prufrock's divagations and wanderings. 05:18.170 --> 05:23.220 You see it throughout Eliot's early career in his funny 05:23.215 --> 05:28.815 mixture of avant-gardism and traditionalism because he's both 05:28.821 --> 05:33.111 those things. I've been describing this in 05:33.112 --> 05:35.142 psychological terms. 05:35.139 --> 05:37.659 We could also think about it in social terms, 05:37.661 --> 05:39.841 and I think it's important to do so. 05:39.839 --> 05:45.599 This Oedipal drama that I'm describing is also a social 05:45.604 --> 05:48.384 drama in important ways. 05:48.379 --> 05:53.939 Here is a question: how does a young American – 05:53.944 --> 06:00.794 because that's what he was – go and win a place in English 06:00.785 --> 06:05.685 literary culture, insert himself in a tradition 06:05.694 --> 06:09.364 that includes Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, 06:09.363 --> 06:13.613 and Wordsworth; insert himself not only as a 06:13.610 --> 06:19.420 member of that tradition but as a central explainer of it and 06:19.418 --> 06:24.838 tastemaker, which is in fact what Eliot would become? 06:24.839 --> 06:31.319 Last time I pointed out that Eliot's expatriation, 06:31.322 --> 06:34.632 his going from the U.S. 06:34.629 --> 06:40.519 to London, was a rejection not only of America and 06:40.520 --> 06:45.690 American-ness, but in particular a rejection 06:45.689 --> 06:51.459 of his father, who died while he was abroad; 06:51.459 --> 06:56.209 and there was a certain amount of question about whether Eliot 06:56.214 --> 07:00.584 would return in time to see his father before he died. 07:00.579 --> 07:05.999 In a very short time in London, Eliot becomes more English than 07:06.004 --> 07:10.654 the English. It's a strange and marvelous, 07:10.645 --> 07:13.585 fascinating development. 07:13.589 --> 07:19.599 He learns or creates a certain style of English-ness that he 07:19.598 --> 07:24.688 then goes on to teach to the English themselves. 07:24.689 --> 07:28.729 This is what Williams – William Carlos Williams – and, 07:28.725 --> 07:32.615 in fact, other American writers despised about Eliot, 07:32.620 --> 07:38.680 that he was the--not just the Anglophile that he was, 07:38.678 --> 07:44.268 but the true English authority that he became. 07:44.269 --> 07:48.149 He made himself, without any previous standing, 07:48.153 --> 07:52.973 any connections really in London or in English culture--he 07:52.966 --> 07:56.846 made himself a central cultural authority, 07:56.850 --> 08:00.820 which became in a very short time almost synonymous with 08:00.818 --> 08:02.188 tradition itself. 08:02.189 --> 08:07.579 This is an amazing and remarkable achievement and an 08:07.577 --> 08:10.427 important cultural event. 08:10.430 --> 08:17.090 The thing is that the tradition that Eliot expounded was 08:17.092 --> 08:22.182 something to a large degree he invented. 08:22.180 --> 08:26.800 Eliot is not, as he is often seen, 08:26.796 --> 08:34.486 I think, the defender of a social order that was passing 08:34.490 --> 08:37.910 away. And sometimes Yeats represents 08:37.912 --> 08:39.212 himself that way. 08:39.210 --> 08:46.140 Rather, Eliot is the representative of a new class, 08:46.141 --> 08:54.741 a new class opposing itself to the traditional social authority 08:54.735 --> 08:59.815 of money and of blood, aristocracy, 08:59.815 --> 09:06.695 that makes its claim for social authority on the basis of 09:06.701 --> 09:10.001 knowledge, technical knowledge and 09:10.003 --> 09:13.563 expertise above all: a kind of professional class 09:13.557 --> 09:18.137 into which you, too, are being educated largely 09:18.139 --> 09:21.389 through the modern university. 09:21.389 --> 09:26.309 Eliot's tradition, that I'm saying he invented or 09:26.311 --> 09:31.341 created, described, defined--he made it out of the 09:31.336 --> 09:35.536 education he had received at Harvard. 09:35.539 --> 09:37.709 And he also, importantly, 09:37.711 --> 09:42.601 made it outside of the classroom, in part in the school 09:42.599 --> 09:46.349 of Ezra Pound who, you might remember from last 09:46.347 --> 09:50.177 week, specifically also when he expatriates, leaves behind the 09:50.175 --> 09:53.785 vulgo, the people, and sees himself as 09:53.785 --> 09:58.155 entering into some kind of timeless tradition that he 09:58.155 --> 10:03.105 identifies – Pound does – with the "spirits of irony and 10:03.113 --> 10:06.593 destiny." That's his phrase to describe 10:06.590 --> 10:09.050 the great writers of the past. 10:09.049 --> 10:15.739 Eliot also enters this kind of semi-imaginary community of 10:15.741 --> 10:19.621 tradition. Eliot's sense of tradition is 10:19.622 --> 10:24.912 established in part through his quotations and allusions in his 10:24.907 --> 10:27.667 poetry, in part and importantly, 10:27.665 --> 10:32.265 and I'll talk more about it today, through his criticism. 10:32.269 --> 10:36.199 This kind of tradition with which Eliot allies himself, 10:36.197 --> 10:39.467 you could say bankrolls everything he does, 10:39.470 --> 10:45.920 legitimizes and authorizes, gives sanction and precedent to 10:45.916 --> 10:50.136 what was Eliot's strange new poetry. 10:50.139 --> 10:54.769 Frost, you remember, as he says, "goes to market" so 10:54.770 --> 10:58.130 he could stand on his own two feet. 10:58.129 --> 11:05.869 Well, Eliot went to tradition to establish his autonomy. 11:05.870 --> 11:13.970 And tradition allows him to, well, to stand apart both from 11:13.967 --> 11:20.107 the genteel audiences that Pound resisted, 11:20.110 --> 11:24.620 that Frost in certain ways courted, and also allows Eliot 11:24.619 --> 11:27.679 to stand apart from the avant-garde, 11:27.679 --> 11:34.359 which he has a kind of ambiguous relationship to; 11:34.360 --> 11:36.510 allows him to stand apart, you could say, 11:36.505 --> 11:39.075 from the audiences of both a magazine like The 11:39.080 --> 11:41.870 Atlantic or Harper's on the one hand, 11:41.870 --> 11:45.200 and on the other hand a magazine like the Little 11:45.197 --> 11:48.847 Review or Blast even, where he did appear, 11:48.845 --> 11:52.995 or Broom --some of those magazines I showed you in the 11:53.000 --> 11:55.500 first week. Eliot's own magazine, 11:55.503 --> 11:59.453 which becomes an important vehicle for his work and his 11:59.446 --> 12:03.166 ideas and his authority and his presence in literary 12:03.170 --> 12:07.770 culture--and you can go back and look at its cover in the images 12:07.771 --> 12:09.671 for the first week. 12:09.669 --> 12:12.849 His magazine was The Criterion, 12:12.849 --> 12:17.229 a magazine that had a kind of semi-official look and 12:17.232 --> 12:21.552 represents the fantasy of, I think, a kind of 12:21.553 --> 12:25.333 institutional and universal authority. 12:25.330 --> 12:30.500 Well, how do you go about inventing tradition? 12:30.500 --> 12:36.520 In order to do so, Eliot had to demonstrate that 12:36.522 --> 12:42.932 the received existing tradition was a false one. 12:42.929 --> 12:48.129 "The Metaphysical Poets" is the great and peculiar, 12:48.132 --> 12:51.672 in many ways, essay, in which Eliot 12:51.669 --> 12:57.079 undertakes this work in a very influential form. 12:57.080 --> 12:59.970 And I'd like to look at it with you for a few minutes. 12:59.970 --> 13:05.810 It starts on page 950 at the back of your book and goes to 13:05.812 --> 13:09.642 page 953. This was a book review. 13:09.639 --> 13:13.739 This was one of the great book reviews in the history of 13:13.739 --> 13:15.229 English criticism. 13:15.230 --> 13:21.030 Eliot was reviewing an anthology of the metaphysical 13:21.030 --> 13:24.630 poets. That is, poets of wit, 13:24.634 --> 13:31.744 in particular of the--largely of the seventeenth century, 13:31.740 --> 13:40.350 including poets like Donne, whose reputation Eliot did a 13:40.347 --> 13:46.917 great deal to establish in this century. 13:46.919 --> 13:50.739 In the process of reviewing this anthology, 13:50.742 --> 13:55.112 Eliot comes up with a whole alternative theory or 13:55.111 --> 14:00.211 alternative history of English literature and certain key 14:00.208 --> 14:03.938 poetic propositions and statements. 14:03.940 --> 14:08.190 Let me just emphasize a few of them for you. 14:08.190 --> 14:13.300 You'll see how the account of literary history and Eliot's own 14:13.296 --> 14:16.976 ideas of poetics are all kind of mixed up. 14:16.980 --> 14:20.190 And so you have to consider them together. 14:20.190 --> 14:25.950 On page 951, he has just quoted Donne, 14:25.949 --> 14:30.929 and then he's quoted Tennyson. 14:30.929 --> 14:35.459 And the idea is that Donne is good, Tennyson is bad. 14:35.460 --> 14:39.450 Now, he will continue and say: The difference is not a 14:39.454 --> 14:41.304 simple difference of degree between poets. 14:41.299 --> 14:45.959 It is something which had happened to the mind of England 14:45.964 --> 14:51.294 between the time of Dunn or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time 14:51.294 --> 14:55.804 of Tennyson and Browning; it is the difference between 14:55.797 --> 14:59.447 the intellectual poet [that's a good kind of poet] 14:59.450 --> 15:01.910 and the reflective poet [bad]. 15:01.909 --> 15:06.359 Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; 15:06.360 --> 15:11.750 but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the 15:11.746 --> 15:16.006 odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an 15:16.009 --> 15:21.159 experience; it modified his sensibility. 15:21.159 --> 15:25.079 [Evidently, he felt his thought as immediately, 15:25.079 --> 15:28.149 as sensually, as the odor of a rose.] 15:28.147 --> 15:33.087 When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, 15:33.090 --> 15:38.570 it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; 15:38.570 --> 15:42.900 the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, 15:42.901 --> 15:46.271 fragmentary. [Maybe quite a bit like 15:46.267 --> 15:51.567 Prufrock's, you would think.] The latter falls in love, 15:51.570 --> 15:55.720 or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have 15:55.716 --> 15:59.716 nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the 15:59.720 --> 16:01.490 typewriter or the smell of cooking; 16:01.490 --> 16:05.280 in the mind of the poet, however, these experiences are 16:05.281 --> 16:07.951 constantly forming new wholes. 16:07.950 --> 16:12.830 Well, you can see there a little recipe for an Auden poem, 16:12.828 --> 16:17.108 excuse me – well, maybe for an Auden poem too – 16:17.107 --> 16:18.987 for an Eliot poem. 16:18.990 --> 16:22.230 It's a poem about falling in love, reading Spinoza and 16:22.230 --> 16:25.960 listening to the typewriter while somebody cooks something. 16:25.960 --> 16:29.190 We may express the differences by the following 16:29.194 --> 16:31.624 theory [And note that "we": you know, 16:31.620 --> 16:36.710 Eliot has this "we" that you just have to bow before when he 16:36.706 --> 16:40.356 uses it, or join him, I guess]: The poets of the 16:40.356 --> 16:42.976 seventeenth century, the successors of the 16:42.983 --> 16:46.513 dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of 16:46.514 --> 16:50.574 sensibility, which could devour [and that's an interesting word] 16:50.567 --> 16:52.237 any kind of experience. 16:52.240 --> 16:54.420 They are simple, artificial, difficult, 16:54.421 --> 16:56.891 or fantastic, as their predecessors were; 16:56.890 --> 16:59.360 no less nor more than Dante…. 16:59.360 --> 17:02.700 In the seventeenth century [however] 17:02.703 --> 17:08.533 a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never 17:08.531 --> 17:12.641 recovered [And this--what does he mean? 17:12.640 --> 17:17.190 He means thought and feeling have somehow come apart]; 17:17.190 --> 17:19.020 and this dissociation, as is natural, 17:19.018 --> 17:22.118 was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets 17:22.115 --> 17:24.345 of the century, Milton and Dryden. 17:24.349 --> 17:30.649 And then he goes on to complain about Milton and Dryden and then 17:30.645 --> 17:36.935 follow the Romantic inheritance of Milton and Dryden in the next 17:36.941 --> 17:39.771 paragraph. He says: 17:39.769 --> 17:43.879 The sentimental age began early in the eighteenth century, 17:43.884 --> 17:46.354 and continued. [Wouldn't you like, 17:46.347 --> 17:50.077 in your own essays, to be able to give this kind of 17:50.078 --> 17:52.988 rapid-fire summary of literary history?] 17:52.988 --> 17:56.718 The poets revolted against the ratiocinative, 17:56.720 --> 18:01.800 the descriptive; they thought and felt by fits, 18:01.798 --> 18:04.948 unbalanced; they reflected. 18:04.950 --> 18:08.260 In one or two passages of Shelley's Triumph of 18:08.257 --> 18:11.627 Life, in the second Hyperion [of Keats] 18:11.634 --> 18:15.154 there are traces of a struggle toward unification of 18:15.149 --> 18:19.239 sensibility. But Keats and Shelley died, 18:19.240 --> 18:23.780 and Tennyson and Browning ruminated. 18:23.780 --> 18:28.370 It's amazing literary criticism. 18:28.369 --> 18:36.189 Well, here is quite an extraordinary account of English 18:36.188 --> 18:38.938 literary history. 18:38.940 --> 18:40.580 Eliot is proposing this. 18:40.579 --> 18:43.629 It's quite a strange and interesting claim, 18:43.626 --> 18:46.306 which for a long time, I might add, 18:46.309 --> 18:52.829 really was persuasive and became a kind of orthodoxy among 18:52.834 --> 18:56.044 readers of English poetry. 18:56.039 --> 19:00.779 And that is: that the metaphysical poets, 19:00.779 --> 19:06.819 for centuries viewed as an anomaly in the history of 19:06.821 --> 19:13.931 English poetry because of their extreme intellectuality, 19:13.930 --> 19:20.300 their poetry of wit, that this anomaly in English 19:20.296 --> 19:27.586 literary tradition actually represents central values in 19:27.591 --> 19:34.891 literature that were lost through what Eliot views as an 19:34.887 --> 19:40.057 eccentric and aberrant tradition, 19:40.059 --> 19:44.789 which is, in fact, that which descends from Milton 19:44.788 --> 19:49.418 and runs through the Romantics and Victorians. 19:49.420 --> 19:54.600 Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century influentially 19:54.596 --> 20:00.546 complained of the metaphysical poets that they "yoked the most 20:00.554 --> 20:06.614 heterogeneous ideas together by violence" – this is Johnson's 20:06.610 --> 20:09.150 phrase. In other words, 20:09.148 --> 20:14.138 they were forced and willful and they put things together in 20:14.137 --> 20:17.517 a kind of violent and artificial way. 20:17.520 --> 20:20.370 Eliot is flipping that around. 20:20.369 --> 20:23.729 And he says, only the metaphysical poets 20:23.725 --> 20:26.215 united thought and feeling. 20:26.220 --> 20:35.800 And it's these other poets that have been deficient and marginal 20:35.798 --> 20:41.878 to the main mission of English poetry, 20:41.880 --> 20:46.670 and that they are symptomatic of some derangement in the mind 20:46.669 --> 20:51.379 of England that he calls a "dissociation of sensibility," 20:51.380 --> 20:56.400 which somehow set in in the seventeenth century or so. 20:56.400 --> 20:59.080 All of this, this whole sort of account of 20:59.076 --> 21:02.206 how English history, English literary history, 21:02.210 --> 21:05.990 developed – all of this in this essay suddenly, 21:05.990 --> 21:10.240 without any preparation, turns into a defense of modern 21:10.243 --> 21:14.183 poetry, or you might say a defense of 21:14.183 --> 21:17.393 Eliot's poetry. He says, without, 21:17.388 --> 21:21.648 as I say, really any preparation on the bottom of 21:21.646 --> 21:24.836 page 952: It is not a permanent 21:24.841 --> 21:29.381 necessity that poets should be interested in philosophy [as I 21:29.377 --> 21:32.777 was, or as I am], or in any other subject. 21:32.779 --> 21:34.829 We [and there's that "we" again] 21:34.829 --> 21:38.269 can only say that it appears likely that poets in our 21:38.266 --> 21:41.666 civilization, as it exists at present, 21:41.674 --> 21:44.154 must be difficult. 21:44.150 --> 21:49.470 Our civilization [he continues] comprehends great variety and 21:49.465 --> 21:53.535 complexity, and this variety and complexity, 21:53.539 --> 21:59.639 playing upon a refined sensibility [such as mine], 21:59.643 --> 22:05.003 must produce various and complex results. 22:05.000 --> 22:09.900 The poet [and now he's telling us what poets must do] 22:09.901 --> 22:13.861 must become more and more comprehensive, 22:13.859 --> 22:16.969 more allusive, more indirect, 22:16.966 --> 22:22.176 in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, 22:22.180 --> 22:29.650 language into his meaning. And then he will go on to quote 22:29.648 --> 22:34.648 French poetry, modern French poetry, 22:34.648 --> 22:38.638 to demonstrate, as he feels it, 22:38.638 --> 22:44.218 the continuity between modern verse and the metaphysicals. 22:44.220 --> 22:50.670 Well, here, Eliot is saying, first of all, 22:50.670 --> 22:58.380 that the character of modern poetry--and again, 22:58.380 --> 23:02.190 for which we must read, his poetry--is simply a 23:02.189 --> 23:05.749 reflection of the forces playing upon it, 23:05.750 --> 23:08.940 the variety and complexity of our civilization. 23:08.940 --> 23:12.540 In that formulation, the poet seems almost passive, 23:12.543 --> 23:16.443 doesn't he? Passive and like a kind of 23:16.443 --> 23:23.283 receptor that is naturally and necessarily producing the kind 23:23.284 --> 23:27.734 of strange poetry that Eliot writes. 23:27.730 --> 23:31.880 Then, before that idea has really sunk in, 23:31.876 --> 23:37.536 Eliot gives us another view of what the poet is doing. 23:37.539 --> 23:41.959 The poet is not in fact passive, but rather, 23:41.964 --> 23:46.594 he is forcing, he is dislocating language into 23:46.593 --> 23:50.003 his meaning. And it's such an odd phrase, 23:49.998 --> 23:52.698 to "dislocate language" into your meaning. 23:52.700 --> 24:00.370 It suggests that the poet is not merely producing language, 24:00.373 --> 24:05.933 but moving it from one place to another. 24:05.930 --> 24:10.250 The question that we might ask, though, standing back, 24:10.245 --> 24:14.635 of the metaphysicals is a question that we could ask of 24:14.642 --> 24:19.672 Eliot's poetry. That is, does this poetry that 24:19.672 --> 24:26.872 Eliot's talking about put things together or take them apart? 24:26.869 --> 24:31.789 Does it represent some kind of synthesis, or rather, 24:31.792 --> 24:35.172 some kind of violent derangement? 24:35.170 --> 24:40.540 Is it a mirror of a various and complex civilization? 24:40.539 --> 24:43.889 Is it in that sense mimetic, realist? 24:43.890 --> 24:48.450 Or is it rather expressionistic, 24:48.452 --> 24:57.142 willful, a kind of subjective and highly personal expression 24:57.136 --> 25:02.726 in which the poet is purposefully, 25:02.730 --> 25:09.170 actively dislocating and deforming language? 25:09.170 --> 25:14.830 Is it in this sense a poetry that is a kind of necessary and 25:14.831 --> 25:18.191 inevitable expression of the age? 25:18.190 --> 25:23.810 Or is it perverse and eccentric: an arbitrary 25:23.808 --> 25:27.638 assertion of authorial will? 25:27.640 --> 25:32.580 These are questions that Eliot's own work, 25:32.582 --> 25:39.212 as I say, raises and that are part of the history of his 25:39.212 --> 25:44.022 reception. Eliot, in his account of the 25:44.022 --> 25:50.152 metaphysicals and then in his defense of his own kind of 25:50.154 --> 25:53.154 poetry, seems, I think, 25:53.146 --> 25:59.896 to equivocate to a degree between these alternatives. 25:59.900 --> 26:06.290 Equivocation is, again, the key rhetoric of 26:06.286 --> 26:12.516 "Prufrock" and of Eliot's early poetry, 26:12.519 --> 26:18.109 of Prufrock's temporizing and his delays and his going back 26:18.112 --> 26:22.262 and forth. Let me say just a couple more 26:22.261 --> 26:28.251 things about "Prufrock" in the light of what I've just been 26:28.245 --> 26:33.295 quoting for you from "The Metaphysical Poets." 26:33.299 --> 26:39.929 "Prufrock" has a kind of ambiguous relation to the past, 26:39.925 --> 26:46.425 and specifically to the past of English Romanticism. 26:46.430 --> 26:54.470 The poem is simultaneously a deconstruction and critique of 26:54.473 --> 27:01.133 the Romantic ideals and values of originality, 27:01.130 --> 27:07.360 of expressiveness, and it is also a highly 27:07.363 --> 27:15.273 original and expressive reworking of those ideals. 27:15.269 --> 27:21.089 It's a kind of anti-Romantic poem that is an extension of 27:21.094 --> 27:25.914 Romanticism. Unlike the conventional love 27:25.910 --> 27:33.230 song, this one comes from the head rather than the heart or, 27:33.230 --> 27:35.810 you could say, really from that opening 27:35.808 --> 27:38.588 quotation from Dante on, it comes from, 27:38.590 --> 27:43.180 comes out of many other texts. 27:43.180 --> 27:48.430 I think that there's a kind of suggestion or implication in the 27:48.432 --> 27:53.522 poem that what people claim is original and primary is always 27:53.515 --> 27:56.475 in some sense already scripted. 27:56.480 --> 28:01.470 That consciousness, the way our minds work, 28:01.469 --> 28:06.699 is linguistic: that we think and feel through 28:06.695 --> 28:09.825 language, with language, 28:09.830 --> 28:16.530 and through a kind of collage network of verbal associations 28:16.532 --> 28:22.332 made out of texts and phrases from not only literary 28:22.326 --> 28:26.816 tradition, of course, but the whole 28:26.820 --> 28:29.960 spectrum of everyday life. 28:29.960 --> 28:33.670 Original speech, heroic action, 28:33.666 --> 28:40.706 the will, unmediated desire: these ideals are all rejected 28:40.710 --> 28:44.170 in "Prufrock"; parodied; 28:44.170 --> 28:47.790 subjected to irony, discontinuity. 28:47.789 --> 28:52.709 They're seen as Romantic illusions, clichés. 28:52.710 --> 28:57.790 The poem is not merely a parody of them; 28:57.789 --> 29:02.739 or, maybe through parody it does something else. 29:02.740 --> 29:06.140 It is, of course, in its own way, 29:06.142 --> 29:11.992 quite as daring and disturbing a poem, disturbing to the 29:11.990 --> 29:17.520 universe of poetry at least, as any modern poem. 29:17.519 --> 29:25.339 And I think you can see it as, in effect, a new kind of love 29:25.335 --> 29:32.085 song, one in which the withdrawing of desire from an 29:32.091 --> 29:39.911 object – our consciousness of our own desires – subjects 29:39.907 --> 29:47.327 them to reflection but at the same time sustains them and 29:47.326 --> 29:52.886 re-voices them through reflection. 29:52.890 --> 29:58.000 You could say that what the poem does is to intellectualize 29:57.999 --> 30:00.859 longing. And, behind that, 30:00.856 --> 30:07.826 it makes of the modern skeptic and intellectual a new kind of 30:07.833 --> 30:12.363 Romantic hero. What does Prufrock want, 30:12.356 --> 30:15.836 ultimately? What does he mean when he says, 30:15.835 --> 30:18.535 "No, that's not what I meant at all?" 30:18.540 --> 30:20.790 Well, it's hard to say exactly. 30:20.789 --> 30:25.219 But the poem does conclude, and as it does it gives us a 30:25.217 --> 30:27.307 kind of answer, I think. 30:27.309 --> 30:28.999 Why don't we look at the end of it? 30:29.000 --> 30:30.690 That's on page 466. 30:30.690 --> 30:33.720 30:33.720 --> 30:36.950 I grow old. . . 30:36.950 --> 30:41.260 I grow old. . . I shall wear the bottoms of my 30:41.257 --> 30:45.977 trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? 30:45.980 --> 30:49.860 Do I dare to eat a peach? 30:49.859 --> 30:54.069 I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the 30:54.065 --> 30:57.425 beach. I have heard the mermaids 30:57.426 --> 31:02.326 singing, each to each. You see, here, 31:02.327 --> 31:08.157 Prufrock has moved into these rhyming tercets. 31:08.160 --> 31:13.360 He says quite simply and definitively: 31:13.359 --> 31:16.519 I do not think that they will sing to me. 31:16.519 --> 31:20.259 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 31:20.259 --> 31:23.229 Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 31:23.230 --> 31:26.500 When the wind blows the water white and black. 31:26.500 --> 31:32.120 And as he describes this, there is kind of heightening of 31:32.116 --> 31:38.536 conventional lyric language with that alliteration and with those 31:38.536 --> 31:41.596 images: We have lingered in the 31:41.598 --> 31:45.278 chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with 31:45.279 --> 31:50.269 seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, 31:50.266 --> 31:52.536 and we drown. 31:52.540 --> 31:55.740 31:55.740 --> 32:00.450 It's hard to interpret, I think, the end of this poem 32:00.452 --> 32:04.392 precisely. I think that Prufrock has 32:04.392 --> 32:08.962 really no clarified, no specified desire, 32:08.957 --> 32:13.177 except maybe to hear the mermaids. 32:13.180 --> 32:18.180 "I do not think that they will sing to me": "I want them to," 32:18.180 --> 32:20.180 he seems to be saying. 32:20.180 --> 32:24.700 In a sense, I think, you could say he wants Romantic 32:24.703 --> 32:27.013 singing. He wants to hear it. 32:27.009 --> 32:31.319 Perhaps he wants to be able to join in it himself, 32:31.316 --> 32:35.706 which is a wish for lyric inspiration, isn't it? 32:35.710 --> 32:39.180 He doesn't want to make love to these mermaids. 32:39.180 --> 32:41.350 He wants to hear them. 32:41.349 --> 32:45.539 He wants to linger with them, to have access to their 32:45.540 --> 32:50.130 element, and to that extent to be among them and even like 32:50.134 --> 32:53.144 them. It is a wish for, 32:53.141 --> 32:58.381 specifically, freedom from human voices, 32:58.376 --> 33:06.136 which I take to be the endless, overheard inner voices in which 33:06.139 --> 33:12.329 the quoted, repetitive speech that makes up his consciousness 33:12.331 --> 33:15.061 consists. In this sense, 33:15.064 --> 33:20.294 it's a wish for a renewal of Romantic enchantment, 33:20.294 --> 33:26.694 which he knows is impossible, and which he also knows, 33:26.685 --> 33:34.245 I think, is a wish as old as Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale." 33:34.250 --> 33:37.920 And this is a poem, ultimately, very much in that 33:37.916 --> 33:39.516 Keatsian tradition. 33:39.520 --> 33:42.650 33:42.650 --> 33:49.140 The Waste Land: let's begin at the end. 33:49.140 --> 33:54.650 Let's begin at the end, on page 486. 33:54.650 --> 34:06.150 34:06.150 --> 34:12.040 The Waste Land is a poem that comes in five parts. 34:12.039 --> 34:18.879 The fifth section, I think, it's the longest, 34:18.882 --> 34:24.482 is called "What the Thunder Said." 34:24.480 --> 34:32.350 It reaches a kind of climax when the poem renders the voice 34:32.352 --> 34:37.252 of the thunder. In the landscape of The 34:37.252 --> 34:41.442 Waste Land, we are waiting for water. 34:41.440 --> 34:46.750 We're waiting for everything that water would represent. 34:46.750 --> 34:53.570 And thunder promises that water, and it also, 34:53.570 --> 34:59.770 importantly, represents a kind of speech: 34:59.769 --> 35:05.659 a speech that comes out of nature, 35:05.659 --> 35:11.659 something that the thunder says, has all kinds of 35:11.656 --> 35:14.776 mythological resonance. 35:14.780 --> 35:24.590 You might even view it as the voice of myth itself, 35:24.594 --> 35:35.984 here able to be given a voice and a hearing in the poem. 35:35.980 --> 35:39.850 What the thunder says, is "Da." 35:39.850 --> 35:47.850 Da: a primary syllable. 35:47.849 --> 35:57.109 There is a note explaining this, coming to us from your 35:57.113 --> 36:01.233 editor and from Eliot. 36:01.230 --> 36:07.630 It is the first phoneme that becomes part of the instruction, 36:07.633 --> 36:12.333 the series of instructions "Datta," 36:12.329 --> 36:17.489 "Dayadhvam," "Damyata," translated as 36:17.490 --> 36:21.000 "Give," "Sympathize," "Control." 36:21.000 --> 36:24.870 When the thunder speaks, this is what it has to say. 36:24.870 --> 36:28.020 It gives us these instructions. 36:28.020 --> 36:31.700 36:31.699 --> 36:39.539 On page 486, I'll just focus on one of these 36:39.536 --> 36:43.766 imperatives: Da 36:43.769 --> 36:48.589 Dayadhvam: I have heard the key 36:48.590 --> 36:52.770 Turn in the door once and turn once only 36:52.769 --> 36:56.969 We think of the key, each in his prison 36:56.969 --> 37:01.749 Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison 37:01.750 --> 37:04.320 Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours 37:04.320 --> 37:09.000 Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus 37:09.000 --> 37:12.420 Da Damyata: 37:12.424 --> 37:16.134 The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with 37:16.130 --> 37:17.940 sail and oar The sea was calm, 37:17.940 --> 37:21.210 your heart [and there's this interesting switch of 37:21.210 --> 37:25.580 tense] would have responded Gaily, when invited, 37:25.578 --> 37:28.118 beating obedient To controlling hands 37:28.119 --> 37:37.539 Well, "Dayadhvam" is translated here as "sympathize." 37:37.539 --> 37:40.559 The poem is, in many ways, 37:40.564 --> 37:45.654 concerned with sympathy as a central value, 37:45.645 --> 37:52.845 a central action in human life, and the lines that they 37:52.846 --> 38:00.836 introduce describe the condition that sympathy would redress or 38:00.842 --> 38:06.262 enter into in some kind of healing way. 38:06.260 --> 38:09.880 "I have heard the key / turn in the door once and turn once 38:09.880 --> 38:11.530 only." Well, Eliot, 38:11.528 --> 38:17.178 when he produced this poem – not the first version of this 38:17.176 --> 38:23.146 poem in The Criterion, his own magazine where it first 38:23.152 --> 38:27.292 was published, but rather when it appeared in 38:27.287 --> 38:31.137 the United States – added footnotes, 38:31.140 --> 38:33.860 or rather endnotes, to the poem. 38:33.860 --> 38:41.270 And the endnotes we have here are worth contemplating. 38:41.269 --> 38:45.559 In a sense, Eliot's notes are a kind of extension of the poem, 38:45.562 --> 38:46.902 part of the poem. 38:46.900 --> 38:51.520 These lines bear the note "four": 38:51.519 --> 38:55.079 "And below I heard them nailing shut the door / of the 38:55.082 --> 38:58.732 horrible tower." [The speaker of those lines 38:58.731 --> 39:02.431 that Eliot is alluding to, half-quoting, 39:02.431 --> 39:08.031 is Dante's Count Ugolino in the thirty-third canto of The 39:08.028 --> 39:12.198 Inferno.] The traitor Ugolino tells Dante 39:12.202 --> 39:17.992 that his enemies imprisoned him and his children in a tower to 39:17.989 --> 39:22.339 die of starvation. And of course, 39:22.343 --> 39:25.143 Ugolino would eat his children. 39:25.140 --> 39:28.890 39:28.890 --> 39:34.330 Eliot continues. He gives us that little 39:34.333 --> 39:37.213 fragment from Dante, and then he says: 39:37.210 --> 39:38.770 "Also, F.H. 39:38.773 --> 39:42.783 Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 39:42.778 --> 39:45.948 346. [When he writes like that, 39:45.947 --> 39:49.067 it's like wearing that waistcoat. 39:49.070 --> 39:54.820 It's a kind of pose, in this case the pose of a 39:54.823 --> 39:57.913 scholar-pedant. Bradley says:] 39:57.914 --> 40:02.114 'My external sensations are no less private to myself than are 40:02.114 --> 40:04.184 my thoughts or my feelings. 40:04.179 --> 40:08.889 In either case my experience falls within my own circle, 40:08.892 --> 40:13.892 a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements 40:13.887 --> 40:19.387 alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.... 40:19.389 --> 40:24.569 In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a 40:24.570 --> 40:30.650 soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that 40:30.646 --> 40:38.996 soul.'" Eliot worked on Bradley for his 40:39.001 --> 40:42.501 thesis. "The whole world for each is 40:42.500 --> 40:44.790 peculiar and private to that soul." 40:44.789 --> 40:48.049 Well, I don't know that there is any key to The Waste 40:48.046 --> 40:51.536 Land, but if there is a key to The Waste Land, 40:51.539 --> 40:55.299 it's this key in these lines, which lead us to Bradley and 40:55.299 --> 40:58.399 Bradley's view of what consciousness is like. 40:58.400 --> 41:06.090 Consciousness is a condition in which we are locked into our 41:06.085 --> 41:11.555 own, I think, linguistic representations of 41:11.556 --> 41:18.326 reality without a common language to share them. 41:18.329 --> 41:25.849 How can a common world be created out of radically private 41:25.845 --> 41:29.295 experience? Well, this is, 41:29.297 --> 41:36.497 I think, the central question that The Waste Land is 41:36.497 --> 41:40.467 meditating on, responding to. 41:40.469 --> 41:44.519 It's one of the central questions in modern poetry. 41:44.519 --> 41:49.139 We won't get too far in the poem today. 41:49.139 --> 41:54.019 We'll have to conclude our discussion on Monday, 41:54.024 --> 42:00.264 but let's look at the beginning together simply to recall how 42:00.259 --> 42:06.909 this poetry operates and make some preliminary observations. 42:06.909 --> 42:10.039 This section, the first section, 42:10.043 --> 42:15.913 is called "The Burial of the Dead" and refers to the ritual 42:15.906 --> 42:21.156 in the Anglican Church as described in the Book of 42:21.162 --> 42:23.692 Common Prayer. 42:23.690 --> 42:27.540 42:27.539 --> 42:32.459 April is the cruelest month, breeding 42:32.460 --> 42:35.580 Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 42:35.580 --> 42:41.330 Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. 42:41.330 --> 42:48.200 Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding 42:48.200 --> 42:50.590 A little life with dried tubers. 42:50.590 --> 42:56.070 Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee 42:56.070 --> 42:59.710 With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, 42:59.710 --> 43:03.160 And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 43:03.159 --> 43:07.209 And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. 43:07.210 --> 43:10.380 Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, 43:10.380 --> 43:13.050 echt deutsch. And when we were children, 43:13.052 --> 43:15.612 staying at the arch-duke's, My cousin's, 43:15.610 --> 43:20.430 he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. 43:20.430 --> 43:24.470 He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. 43:24.470 --> 43:27.050 And down we went. 43:27.050 --> 43:30.580 In the mountains, there you feel free. 43:30.579 --> 43:34.699 I read, much of the night, and go south in the 43:34.704 --> 43:38.784 winter. It's extraordinary poetry. 43:38.780 --> 43:46.070 And one of the ways in which it is extraordinary is the 43:46.072 --> 43:53.502 modulations, and where do we pinpoint the turning points 43:53.499 --> 44:01.469 between the initial, vatic, general voice of the 44:01.469 --> 44:11.279 poem and then that extremely personalized first person, 44:11.280 --> 44:17.080 who will be Marie, named that way through that 44:17.079 --> 44:20.079 memory. How do we get from "April is 44:20.080 --> 44:23.300 the cruelest month" to "I read, much of the night, 44:23.302 --> 44:25.342 and go south in the winter"? 44:25.340 --> 44:34.180 Somehow there is a variety, I think, a range of voices 44:34.182 --> 44:38.112 here. And how Eliot moves from the 44:38.114 --> 44:43.054 one to the other is a question for us as readers. 44:43.050 --> 44:46.400 I think it also raises, again, this central problem 44:46.401 --> 44:48.681 that the poem is concerned with. 44:48.679 --> 44:51.319 And that is, what is the relationship, 44:51.321 --> 44:55.321 how do we articulate the relationship between the general 44:55.318 --> 44:59.838 and the particular, between experience that is 44:59.841 --> 45:06.491 generalizable and that which is almost irreducibly private? 45:06.489 --> 45:12.959 "April is the cruelest month": those wonderful lines we all 45:12.959 --> 45:16.669 know. Well, the poem begins with 45:16.671 --> 45:23.211 allusion, which it hardly even needs to press to "Whan that 45:23.212 --> 45:25.882 Aprill, with his shoures soote," the 45:25.881 --> 45:28.251 first line of The Canterbury Tales. 45:28.250 --> 45:32.630 It evokes too, probably, Whitman's "When 45:32.626 --> 45:39.356 Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," another April elegy. 45:39.360 --> 45:46.200 The poem begins by talking about the pain of awakened 45:46.197 --> 45:54.347 desire, begins talking about the risk that comes with beginning 45:54.351 --> 46:00.401 and desiring – Prufrock's themes. 46:00.400 --> 46:03.230 Here they are, writ large. 46:03.230 --> 46:08.060 Desire, it seems, is painful because it breaks 46:08.056 --> 46:12.236 things open that are closed and shut. 46:12.239 --> 46:18.059 It's also, it seems, unsatisfiable. 46:18.059 --> 46:20.979 All of these are, to a degree, 46:20.983 --> 46:24.413 conventional Romantic topoi, 46:24.411 --> 46:27.491 motifs. Where exactly does the poem 46:27.489 --> 46:29.749 modulate into personal memory? 46:29.750 --> 46:36.700 Well, maybe somewhere in that eighth line, "Summer surprised 46:36.701 --> 46:37.171 us. . 46:37.173 --> 46:40.333 ." It started out looking and 46:40.329 --> 46:45.889 feeling a lot like "Winter kept us warm," but now the memory 46:45.888 --> 46:49.658 will become highly particularized through 46:49.656 --> 46:56.626 quotation, incidentally as your note will 46:56.631 --> 47:00.991 explain. The poem really moves into a 47:00.994 --> 47:05.134 kind of opaque set of personal associations: 47:05.131 --> 47:10.331 "…when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's," 47:10.326 --> 47:14.066 and so on; "…he took me out on a sled." 47:14.070 --> 47:18.280 These associations are meaningful and resonant and 47:18.276 --> 47:21.876 representative, I think, to the extent that 47:21.882 --> 47:24.632 they have a generic quality. 47:24.630 --> 47:29.800 That is, it's not so much that they are our memories, 47:29.797 --> 47:32.577 but they're like memories. 47:32.579 --> 47:39.099 They're like personal memories, and they're like personal 47:39.103 --> 47:46.213 memories in the difficulty of translating and sharing them. 47:46.210 --> 47:54.200 Marie has a kind of exemplary privacy about her and her 47:54.203 --> 48:02.793 memories and her sense of frustrated desire and longing. 48:02.789 --> 48:08.979 There is more that's important about this first of The Waste 48:08.975 --> 48:11.165 Land's speakers. 48:11.170 --> 48:16.590 Well, "Bin gar keine Russin" is translated for us down below as, 48:16.593 --> 48:19.523 "I'm not a Russian woman at all; 48:19.519 --> 48:23.229 I come from Lithuania, a true German." 48:23.230 --> 48:31.210 Whoever is saying that exactly, whether it's Marie or someone 48:31.207 --> 48:38.917 else, seems to be speaking of a kind of hybrid identity, 48:38.920 --> 48:44.250 a kind of mongrel or deracinated identity. 48:44.250 --> 48:54.100 The condition of locked-in sensibility and difficult 48:54.103 --> 49:03.573 private emotion is, from the very beginning of the 49:03.571 --> 49:07.991 poem, associated with metropolitan 49:07.989 --> 49:12.869 culture, a culture where there are many languages, 49:12.870 --> 49:15.850 speakers from many places. 49:15.849 --> 49:21.169 And, well, a culture where there are, as it were, 49:21.166 --> 49:26.146 a kind of cacophony of languages untranslated, 49:26.149 --> 49:30.579 existing and competing side-by-side. 49:30.579 --> 49:36.319 This is a kind of linguistic environment that The Waste 49:36.318 --> 49:42.358 Land is made out of and is also in many ways about and is 49:42.358 --> 49:46.988 the real medium of experience in the poem. 49:46.990 --> 49:49.360 Well, let me stop here. 49:49.360 --> 49:57.420 And we'll go on trying to make sense of this great modern poem 49:57.415 --> 49:58.995 on Monday.