The Waste Land Notes

Epigraph: "For on one occasion I myself saw, with my own eyes, the Cumaean
Sibyl hanging in a cage, and when some boys said to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you
want?' she replied, ‘I want to die.'" This account is given by Trimalchio, a
character in the Satyricon, the satirical novel written by the Roman writer
Petronius in the first century a.d. Trimalchio is a wealthy vulgarian who is
hosting a dinner which occupies the novel's middle section; he is vying with
his guests, trying to surpass their tales of wonder, but merely muddles up
commonplace stories of Hercules and Ulysses before turning to his account
of the Cumaean sibyl. His anecdote, in other words, is partly a species of
braggadocio and may even be a lie, and it is partly an excuse for him to prove
that he can speak, as well as read, Greek.

There were as many as ten sibyls in the ancient world, prophetesses
whom the ancient Greeks and Romans consulted about the future, but the
most famous was the Cumaean Sibyl, whose oracular cavern was rediscovered
by archaeologists at the site of ancient Cumae near Naples in 1934.
Her prophecies were delivered in Greek hexameter verses inscribed on palm
leaves and placed at the mouth of her cave. If no one came to collect them,
they were scattered by the winds and never read. One collection of such
verses was put in the charge of a special priestly college in Rome, guarded in
subterranean chambers beneath the temple of Jove on the Capitoline Hill.
After they were destroyed in 83 b.c. when the temple burned, a new collec-
tion was made to replace them.

The Cumaean Sibyl figures prominently in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, where
she delivers a prophecy which Christians later interpreted as foresha-
dowing the birth of Christ. She is also described at length in Virgil's
Aeneid VI, 1–155, where she tells Aeneas that he must find a golden bough in
order to enter the underworld. She also figures in Ovid's Metamorphoses XIV,
101–153, the account to which Trimalchio alludes. Promised by Apollo that she
could have one wish fulfilled, whatever it might be, she chose to live as many
years as the grains of sand she could hold in her hand; but she forgot to
choose eternal youth, and was condemned to grow ever older and more
shriveled.

In the prepublication version of The Waste Land the poem's epigraph
was taken from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1900), as the narrator
recounts the death of Kurtz: "Did he live his life again in every detail
of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete
knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some visionhhe cried out
twice, a cry that was no more than breath--‘The horror! the horror!'"

Ezra Pound, writing to Eliot on 24 January 1922 (incorrectly assigned
to 24 December 1921 by Valerie Eliot in LOTSE, 497), wrote: "I doubt if
Conrad is weighty enough to stand the citation." Eliot replied, probably
on 26 January (incorrectly assigned by Valerie Eliot to [24? January]),
"Do you mean not use Conrad quot. or simply not put Conrad's name to it?
It is much the most appropriate I can find, and somewhat elucidative."
Pound, responding on 28 January, told Eliot to "Do as you like . . . re
the Conrad; who am I to grudge him his laurel crown." See LOTSE, 504–505.

Dedication: "the better craftsman" in Italian. Eliot dedicates the poem to Ezra
Pound with the phrase that registers Dante's tribute to the Provençal poet
Arnaut Daniel, who flourished between 1180 and 1200; see Purgatorio XXVI,
117. The dedication first appeared in a presentation copy which Eliot gave
Pound in January 1923; it was published for the first time in 1925 when The
Waste Land was included in Poems, 1909–1925. For Pound's role in shaping
the poem, see the Introduction, 23–25.


The Burial of the Dead: "The Order for the Burial of the Dead" prescribes the
words and actions of a burial service within the Church of England; the text
appears in the Book of Common Prayer.

1–2: Critics often compare this account of April with the opening to the General
Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?–1400), which
adopts a more conventional and cheerful treatment of spring.

7 [a little life]: Perhaps an echo from "To Our Ladies of Death," a poem by James
Thomson (1834–1882): "Our Mother feedeth thus our little life, / That we in
turn may feed her with our death." Compare also Thomson's, "The City of
Dreadful Night,"

This little life is all we must endure,
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.

Yet the phrase "a little life" is hardly unique to Thomson. It occurs repeatedly
in Christian writing which compares the "little life" of man to the vast designs
of God.

8 [Starnbergersee]: The German name for Lake Starnberger, which is located
fifteen kilometers (roughly nine miles) from Munich. Eliot visited the city
in 1911.

10 [Hofgarten]: "Court Garden" in German. The Hofgarten, which is located in
the heart of Munich, dates to the seventeenth century and stands opposite
the Residenz, a sprawling building that until 1918 was the home of the Wit
telsbach family, the ruling house of Bavaria. One side of the Hofgarten abuts
a tall arcade, the "colonnade" referred to in line 9 (see Fig. 1), while just
beyond the arcade is the Arcade Café (see Fig. 2), situated within the Hofgarten
(see Fig. 3).

12 [Bin gar keine Russin . . . echt deutsch]: "I am not a Russian, I come from
Lithuania, a real German" (German).

15 [Marie]: In her notes to The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcription of the
Original Drafts (hereafter TWL:AF), Valerie Eliot states that Eliot "met" the
Countess Marie Larisch, though "when and where is not known," and that
"his description of the sledding . . . was taken verbatim from a conversation
he had with" her (p. 126). Marie Larisch (1858–1940) was the illegitimate
daughter of Ludwig Wilhelm, heir to the throne of Bavaria, and Henriette
Mendel, a commoner. In 1859 Marie's father renounced his claim to the throne
and married her mother. Around 1874 Marie went to live with Ludwig's sister,
her aunt, who was Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and she became a companion to
the empress's son and the heir to the throne, Archduke Rudolf. In 1877 Marie
married Georg, Count Larisch von Moennich. In 1889 the archduke was found dead,
together with his mistress, and it became known that Marie had served as a go-
between for them, leaving her in disgrace. To justify her conduct she later
wrote My Past: Reminiscences of the Courts of Austria and Bavaria, together
with the True Story of Events Leading up to the Tragic Death of Rudolph, Crown
Prince of Austria (London: Bell and Sons; New York: Putnam, 1913). In 1950 the
book was rediscovered by a scholar of Eliot's work, and for some twenty years,
until Valerie Eliot published her account in 1971, it was thought to have
served as a source for The Waste Land.

19–20 [What the roots . . . stony rubbish]: Perhaps an echo of Job 8:16–17. "He
is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his garden. His roots
are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones."

20 [Son of man]: Eliot's note cites Ezekiel 2:1. "And he said unto me, Son of man,
stand upon they feet, and I will speak unto thee." Thereafter "son of man" be-
comes the form in which God addresses the prophet Ezekiel.

22 [broken images]: Perhaps an echo of Ezekiel 6:4, in which God judges the
people of Israel for worshiping idols: "And your altars shall be desolate, and
your images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before
your idols." editor's annotations to lines 8–22 77

23 [And the dead tree . . . no relief ]: Eliot's note cites Ecclesiastes 12:5,
which describes the "evil days" that come when men are old and declining into
darkness: "Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall
be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be
a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the
mourners go about in the streets." Compare Eliot's comments on Ecclesiastes in
"Prose and Verse," 162–163.

26 [Come in . . . this red rock]: Perhaps an echo of Isaiah 2:10: "Enter into the
rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord." Or perhaps an echo of
a more consoling prophecy in Isaiah 32:2: "And a man shall be as a hiding place
from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place,
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

28–29 [Your shadow . . . rising to meet you]: Perhaps an echo from a speech
by the title character in the play Philaster by Francis Beaumont and John
Fletcher (written around 1608–1610). Philaster is a young prince who, like
Hamlet, has been unfairly dispossessed of his kingdom; he is in love with
Arethusa, daughter of the king, the man who has dispossessed him. Megra,
a lady of the court, has falsely accused Arethusa of having a love a¤air with
someone else, and her charge has been reinforced by Dion, a trusted courtier
who, wanting to force Philaster into open rebellion against the king, has sworn
that he knows it to be true. Philaster believes the accusation, and longs to
travel to "some far place / Where never womankind durst set her foot," a place
where he will "preach to birds and beasts / What woman is and help to save
them from you"--that is, from women in general. There he will deliver a homily
to the animals which will show

How that foolish man
That reads the story of a woman's face
And dies believing it is lost forever.
How all the good you have is but a shadow
I'th' morning with you and at night behind you,
Past and forgotten. (III.ii.132–137)

As used by Eliot, the relevant phrases have been stripped of their amorous
and gender-bound context and applied to humans in general.

31–34 [Frisch weht . . . weilest du]: As Eliot notes, his quotation is from the
opera Tristan und Isolde (1865) by Richard Wagner (1813–1883), I.i.5–8. "Fresh
blows the wind / To the homeland; / My Irish child, / Where are you tarrying?"
(German). The scene opens on a ship that is transporting Isolde from Cornwall
to Ireland, where she is to marry King Mark. She is accompanied by Tristan,
the king's nephew. From the ship's rigging, a sailor's voice resounds with a
melancholy song about an Irish woman left behind, which includes the lines
transcribed by Eliot. Later in the opera, Isolde decides to kill both Tristan
and herself with poison; but her companion, 78 editor's annotations to lines
23–34 Brangäne, substitutes a love potion for the poison, and the two fall hope
lessly in love.

35 [hyacinths]: In Greek myth Hyacinth was a beloved companion of Apollo.
When the two engaged in a discus-throwing contest, Apollo's discus inadver
tently killed his friend. Where drops of Hyacinth's blood touched the ground,
a purple flower miraculously arose, resembling a lily. Apollo inscribed his
grief upon the flower, which was said to have marks which looked like the
letters AI, ancient Greek for a cry of woe. The story is told in Ovid, Met-
amorphoses X, 162–219. Several di¤erent flowers seem to have been included
under this name in the ancient world, none of them the modern flower
which we call a hyacinth.

39–40 [I was neither / Living nor dead]: Perhaps an allusion to Dante, Inferno
XXXIV, 25. Dante recalls his state of mind when he first saw Satan at the
very bottom of the Inferno:

Com' io divenni allor gelato e fioco
nol dimandar, lettor, ch' i' non lo scrivo,
però ch' ogni parlar sarebbe poco.
Io non morì, e non rimasi vivo.

This can be translated:

How chilled and faint I turned then,
Do not ask, reader, for I cannot describe it,
For all speech would fail it.
I did not die, and did not remain alive.

41 [and I knew nothing]: Compare Job 8:9: “For we are but of yesterday, and
know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.”

42 [Od' und leer das Meer]: “Desolate and empty the sea” (German). From
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, III.i.24. Tristan is lying grievously wounded
outside Kareol, his castle in Brittany, tended by his companion Kurwenal. He
will die unless Isolde can come and cure him with her magic arts. Tristan wakes
from his delirium; he is clinging to life only so that he can find Isolde and
take her with him into the realm of night. For a moment he thinks that he
sees Isolde's ship approaching; but a shepherd who is watching with him
pipes a sad tune: “Desolate and empty the sea.”

43 [Madame Sosostris]: The name is obviously appropriate for someone who
equivocates, or whose answer to every question is a variant of “so so.” Not
surprisingly, her friend is named Mrs. Equitone, a variant on the notion of
equivocation. To learned readers the name Sosostris may also recall the
Greek work for “savior,” soteros, which survives in the English word
soteriological, of or having to do with the doctrine of salvation in
Christian theology. For many years scholars also thought that her name
was suggested to Eliot by a character in Aldous Huxley's novel Chrome
Yellow (1921), in which Mr. Scogan disguises himself as a gipsy fortune-
teller named Sesostris and, at the village fête, reads the fortune of a
simple young girl whom he means to seduce. This scholarly myth was first
promulgated by Grover Smith, “The Fortuneteller in Eliot's Waste Land,”
American Literature 25 (1954): 490–492.
To support his claim Smith cited a letter he had received from Eliot, dated
10 March 1952, in which Eliot had said it was “almost certain” that he had
borrowed the name from Chrome Yellow (“almost certain” are the only words
of the letter which are directly quoted). Smith then paraphrased the rest of
the letter: “He has also said that, being unconscious of the borrowing, he
was unaware of any connection between the name of the clairvoyant and that
assumed by Mr. Scogan” (italics mine). Eliot had better reason than he knew
for being “unaware of any connection” between the two characters, for he
had probably drafted the scene with Madame Sosostris by early February
1921 and had certainly completed the typescript of parts I and II sometime
in mid-May, while Huxley, who was living in Italy, did not even begin to write
his novel until the beginning of June (see Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley:
A Biography, vol. 1, 1894–1939 [London: Chatto and Windus, 1973], 117, 119).
Eliot and Huxley did not correspond during this period, as the two men were
not close; and Eliot, writing in January 1921, had damned Huxley's recent
long poem “Leda” as “a concession to the creamy top of the General Reading
Public” (see London Letter, March 1921, 139).

Smith's mistaken claim was di¤used in his subsequent monographs on
Eliot: T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Influence (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1956), 76, a work that went through numerous
impressions and a second edition in 1974, and The Waste Land (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1983), 47, 67–68. From these it became a standard
note in all commentaries on the poem.

46 [pack of cards]: The tarot deck consists of twenty-two cards, one unnum-
bered and the rest numbered through twenty-one, which are added to a pack
(British usage) or deck of fifty-six cards arranged in four suits (cups, wands,
swords, and pentacles or pentangles). Jessie Weston suggested that these
suits were repositories of primeval symbols of fertility corresponding to the
four Grail talismans, grail-cup, lance, sword, and dish (From Ritual to Ro-
mance, 77–79). Scholars have expended vast amounts of ink on establishing
precise connections between the tarot cards and Eliot's use of them, even
though Eliot, in his notes to the poem, admitted that he had little familiarity
with the tarot and had “departed” from it “to suit [his] own convenience.”

47 [the drowned Phoenician Sailor]: There is no such card in the tarot deck, but
this passage is thought to anticipate part IV of The Waste Land.

48 [Those are pearls . . . Look!]: From Shakespeare, The Tempest I.ii.399. The
play begins with a storm scene and a shipwreck: young Prince Ferdinand and
others from the court of Naples come to shore on an unnamed island inhabited
by Prospero, the former ruler of Naples whose throne has been usurped by his
brother Antonio, acting in concert with Ferdinand's father, Alonso. At Pros-
pero's behest the storm has been created by Ariel, a magical spirit of the
island who serves him. When Ferdinand laments his father's supposed death
—he is mistaken, for his father is still alive—Ariel tries to comfort him with
a song (396–405):

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth su¤er a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
　　　　Burden. Ding-dong.
Hark! Now I hear them—ding-dong bell.

49 [Here is Belladonna . . . Rocks]: Belladonna is Italian for "beautiful woman."
There is no such card in the tarot pack. Commentators have often urged that
the phrase, "the Lady of the Rocks," has overtones of a passage in the essay
by Walter Pater (1839–1894) on "Leonardo da Vinci" in The Renaissance
(1873). Pater discusses da Vinci's painting La Gioconda, popularly known as
the Mona Lisa: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the
vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secret of the grave;
and had been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and
traªcked for strange webs with Eastern merchants." But Eliot disliked Pater's
prose style; see his comments on it in "Prose and Verse," 162.

51–52 [Here is the man . . . the one-eyed merchant]: The first two cards, the
man with three staves and the wheel, are genuine tarot cards, but the one-eyed
merchant is Eliot's invention.

60 [Unreal City]: The City is the name for the financial district (see Fig. 9)
in London, located just beyond the north end of London Bridge. The area is home
to the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, and the head oªces or headquarters
of Britain's major commercial banks, including Lloyds Bank in Lombard Street,
where Eliot worked from 1917 to 1925. The London Bridge that Eliot knew (see
Fig. 4) was built between 1825 and 1831 to a design by John Rennie (1761–1821);
it was dismantled in 1967 and replaced with the current structure.
Eliot's note at this point invokes a poem by Charles Baudelaire (1821–
1867), "Les sept viellards" (1859), which recounts a ghostly encounter in the
street that sets the pattern for the incident which follows in this portion of
The Waste Land.

Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,
Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant!
Les mystères partout coulent comme des sèves
Dans les canaux étroits du colosse puissant.

Un matin, cependant que dans la triste rue
Les maisons, dont la brume allongeait la hauteur,
Simulaient les deux quais d'une rivière accrue,
Et que, décor semblable à l'âme de l'acteur,

Un brouillard sale et jaune inondait tout l'espace,
Je suivais, roidissant mes nerfs comme un héros
Et discutant avec mon âme déjà lasse,
Le faubourg secoué par les lourds tombereaux.

Tout à coup, un vieillard dont les guenilles jaunes
Imitaient la couleur de ce ciel pluvieux,
Et dont l'aspect aurait fait pleuvoir les aumônes,
Sans la méchanceté qui luisait dans ses yeux,

M'apparut. On eût dit sa prunelle trempée
Dans le fiel; son regard aiguisait les frimas,
Et sa barbe à long poils, roide comme une épée,
Se projetait, pareille à celle de Judas.

Il n'était pas voûté, mais cassé, son échine
Faisant avec sa jambe un parfait angle droit,
Si bien que son bâton, parachevant sa mine,
Lui donnait la tournure et le pas maladroit

D'un quadrupède infirme ou d'un juif à trois pattes.
Dans la neige et la boue il allait s'empêtrant,
Comme s'il écrasait des morts sous ses savates,
Hostile à l'univers plutôt qu'indi¤érent.

Son pareil le suivait: barbe, oeil, dos, bâton, loques,
Nul trait ne distinguait, du même enfer venu,
Ce jumeau centenaire, et ces spectres baroques
Marchaient du même pas vers un but inconnu.

À quel complot infâme étais-je donc en butte,
Ou quel méchant hasard ainsi m'humiliait?
Car je comptai sept fois, de minute en minute,
Ce sinistre vieillard qui se multipliait!

Que celui-là qui rit de mon inquiétude,
Et qui n'est pas saisi d'un frisson fraternel,
Songe bien que malgré tant de décrépitude
Ces sept monstres hideux avaient l'air éternel!

Aurais-je, sans mourir, contemplé le huitième,
Sosie inexorable, ironique et fatal,
Dégoûtant Phénix, fils et père de lui-même?
--Mais je tournai le dos au cortège infernal.

Exaspéré comme un ivrogne qui voit double,
Je rentrai, je fermai ma porte, épouvanté,
Malade et morfondu, l'esprit fiévreux et trouble,
Blessé par le mystère et par l'absurdité!

Vainement ma raison voulait prendre la barre;
La tempête en jouant déroutait ses e¤orts,
Et mon âme dansait, dansait, vieille gabarre
Sans mâts, sur une mer monstrueuse et sans bords!

John Goudge (1921– ) translates "The Seven Old Men" in Carol Clark and
Robert Sykes, eds., Baudelaire in English (London: Penguin, 1997):

City swarming with people! City crowded with dreams!
Through the narrow back streets of this mighty colossus,
Like the sap in a tree, a dark mystery streams,
And ghosts clutch a man's sleeve, in broad day, as he passes.

One morning when the houses that lined the sad street
Hovered larger than life, so it seemed, in the mist,
And resembled the banks of a river in spate,
A stage set for the shade of a pantomimist,

In the foul, yellow fog that pervaded the whole
Atmosphere I strode on, like a hero in battle,
Each nerve taut, and communed with my world-weary soul,
While the carts made the neighbourhood shake with their rattle.

All at once in the gloom, an old man came in sight,
Wearing tatters as yellow as thundery skies,
And a torrent of alms had showered down at his plight,
Were it not for the malice that gleamed in his eyes,

You'd have said that his beard was as long as a lance,
Jutting out, and the equal of Judas' quite,
That his eyeballs were bloating in bile, that his glance
Was so cold as to sharpen the sting of frostbite.

He was not so much crooked as broken, his spine
With his legs represented a perfect right-angle,
And his stick put the finishing touch to his mien,
For it gave him the gait of and made him resemble

A lame four-booted beast or a jew with three legs.
'Twas as though in the mud and the snow as he went,
He was trampling the dead underground with his clogs--
Rather hateful and spiteful than indi¤erent.

His twin followed him close, beard, back, stick, rags and eye,
By no mark could you tell one foul fiend from his brother.
These grotesque apparitions, pace for pace, went their way,
Each was bound for the same unknown end as the other.

Was it wicked mischance that had made me a fool?
By some infamous plot was I being seduced?
I know not, but I counted this sinister ghoul
Some seven times in seven minutes, by himself reproduced.

And the man who makes fun of my disquietude
And who feels not the chill of a brotherly shiver
Should mark well that despite such decrepitude
These grim brutes had the look of surviving for ever.

Had an eighth then appeared, I believe I'd have died--
One more pitiless twin sent to menace and mock
An incestuous phoenix, by himself multiplied--
But I took to my heels and presented my back

To this ghastly parade. As if drunk, vision doubled,
Panic-struck, I ran home, shut the door, turned the key;
I was ill, overcome, hot and cold, deeply troubled,
At once baºed and hurt by the absurdity.

And in vain did my reason attempt to take charge,
For its e¤orts were foiled by the tempest in me,
And my soul began dancing a jig, like a barge
Without masts on a monstrous and infinite sea.

62–63 [so many . . . so many]: Eliot's note cites Dante, Inferno III, 55–57:
"such a long stream / of people, that I would not have thought / that death
had undone so many." As soon as Dante passes through the gates of Hell, he
hears first "sighs, lamentations, and loud wailings" (III, 22), then "strange
tongues, horrible languages, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and
hoarse" (III, 25–27). In the gloom he discerns "a long stream of people."
He asks Virgil, his guide in the underworld, why these people are here, and
Virgil explains that in life these did neither good nor evil, thinking only of
themselves; like the Sibyl in the epigraph to The Waste Land, they "have no
hope of death, and so abject is their blind life that they are envious of every
other lot" (III, 46–48).

64 [Sighs . . . ]: Eliot's note cites Dante, Inferno IV, 25–27: "Here, as far I
could tell by listening, / Was no lamentation more than sighs, / Which kept the
air forever trembling." Dante has entered the first circle of Hell, or Limbo, and
describes the sound that emanates from those who died without being baptized,
and who therefore must live forever with the torment of desiring to see God,
yet knowing that they never will.

66 [King William Street]: The thoroughfare (see Fig. 5) which runs from the
north end of London Bridge directly into the City, or financial district, of
London (see Fig. 9).

67 [St. Mary Woolnoth]: The church, a neoclassical work designed by Nicholas
Hawksmoor (1661–1736), who was a prominent architect in the early eighteenth
century, was erected from 1716 to 1724 (see Figs. 6, 7). It is located at
the intersection of King William Street and Lombard Street; Eliot worked in
the Lombard Street head oªce of Lloyds Bank (see Fig. 9), and to reach work
had to pass St. Mary Woolnoth every morning. By his time the church had
already become a relic, isolated and dwarfed by the larger oªce blocks of the
City's banks, since people no longer resided within the City and the church
had lost its parishioners.

70 [Mylae]: A city on the northern coast of Sicily, now called Milazzo, off
the coast of which there occurred a naval battle between the Romans and the
Carthaginians in 260 b.c., the first engagement in the first of the Punic Wars.
The Romans won, destroying some fifty ships, an early step in their battle for
commercial domination of the Mediterranean.

74–75 [Oh keep the Dog . . . again!]: Eliot's note directs the reader to The
White Devil (1612), a play by John Webster (c. 1580–c. 1635). It dramatizes
numerous acts of political and sexual betrayal, among which Flamineo murders
his own brother Marcello. Their mother, in act V, scene iv, sings a demented
dirge over Marcello's body (her song is given in italics, her spoken words in
roman):

Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm.
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
They would not bury him 'cause he died in a quarrel,
But I have an answer for them:
Let holy church receive him duly
Since hee paid the church tithes truly.
His wealth is summed, and this is all his store:
This poor men get; and great men get no more.
Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.
Bless you all, good people.

76 [hypocrite lecteur! . . . mon frère]: Eliot's note cites "Au Lecteur"
("To the Reader") (1855), the first poem in Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of
Evil, 1857), by Charles Baudelaire.

La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimable remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.

Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.

Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.

C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nos remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
Sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin,
Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin
Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.

Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.

Se le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,
N'ont pas encore brodé de leur plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie.

Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,

Il en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;

C'est l'Ennui!--l'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
--Hypocrite lecteur,--mon semblable,--mon frère!

The South African poet Roy Campbell (1901–1957) offered this translation of
"To the Reader" in his Poems of Baudelaire: A Translation of Les Fleurs du mal
(New York: Pantheon, 1952):

Folly and error, avarice and vice,
Employ our souls and waste our bodies' force.
As mangey beggars incubate their lice,
We nourish our innocuous remorse.

Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance.
For our weak vows we ask excessive prices.
Trusting our tears will wash away the sentence,
We sneak o¤ where the muddy road entices.

Cradled in evil, that Thrice-Great Magician,
The Devil, rocks our souls, that can't resist;
And the rich metal of our own volition
Is vaporised by that sage alchemist.

The Devil pulls the strings by which we're worked:
By all revolting objects lured, we slink
Hellwards; each day down one more step we're jerked
Feeling no horror, through the shades that stink.

Just as a lustful pauper bites and kisses
The scarred and shrivelled breast of an old whore,
We steal, along the roadside, furtive blisses,
Squeezing them, like stale oranges, for more.

Packed tight, like hives of maggots, thickly seething,
Within our brains a host of demons surges.
Deep down into our lungs at every breathing
Death flows, an unseen river, moaning dirges.

If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stu¤
Of this drab canvas we accept as life--
It is because we are not bold enough!

Amongst the jackals, leopards, mongrels, apes,
Snakes, scorpions, vultures, that wish hellish din,
Squeal, roar, writhe, gambol, crawl, with monstrous shapes,
In each man's foul menagerie of sin--

There's one more damned than all. He never gambols,
Nor crawls, nor roars, but, from the rest withdrawn,
Gladly of this whole earth would make a shambles
And swallow up existence with a yawn . . .

Boredom! He smokes his hookah, while he dreams
Of gibbets, weeping tears he cannot smother.
You know this dainty monster, too, it seems
Hypocrite reader!--You!--My twin!--My brother!

A Game of Chess: The title is indebted to the play by Thomas Middleton (1580–
1627), A Game at Chess (1624), in which chess becomes an allegory of the
diplomatic games between England and Spain. Middleton also wrote Women
Beware Women (date disputed, 1613–1614 or 1622–1624; first published
1653), a play which Eliot cites in his note to line 137. In act II, scene ii, a
game of chess is played between Livia, who is acting on behalf of the Duke of
Florence, and the mother of Leantio, who is ostensibly watching over Leantio's
young and beautiful wife. The game is a ruse to distract the mother, whose dau-
ghter-in-law is meanwhile being seduced by the duke on the balcony above. The
dialogue about the chess game ironically comments on the di¤erent mating moves
being performed overhead by the duke and the young wife.

77 [The chair she sat in . . . throne]: Eliot cites Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra
II.ii.190. Enobarbus, a friend and follower of Mark Antony, describes Cleopatra as
she was when floating on her ship down the Cydnus River to Antony (ll. 192–206):

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

92 [laquearia]: A Latin term, in the plural, for a paneled or fretted ceiling.
Eliot's note refers to Virgil, the Aeneid I, 726–727. Aeneas and his crew have
just arrived in Carthage after fleeing the ruins of Troy, destroyed by the Greeks
at the end of the Trojan War; Dido, the queen of Carthage, has given them a
royal welcome and serves them dinner in a banquet hall of great luxury. The
gods have fated her to fall in love with Aeneas during this meal, which will
ensure that she provides him with aid and thus that he will go on to fulfill
his destiny, the foundation of Rome; but to do this he will have to desert her,
prompting her suicide. The story acquires irony from the reader's knowledge
that Rome will eventually destroy Carthage. "Blazing torches hang down
from the gilded ceiling, / And vanquish the night with their flames."

93 [coffered]: Decorated with sunken panels, though an undertone of "coªn" is
audible.

98 [sylvan scene]: Eliot's note refers us to Milton's Paradise Lost IV, 140, a
line that is found within a passage that describes Satan as he approaches para-
dise, where he will tempt Eve (131–141):

So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access deni'd; and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Fir, and branching Palm,
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody Theatre
Of stateliest view.

100: Eliot's note cites Ovid's Metamorphoses, VI, 424–674, given here in the prose
translation by Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916):

Now Tereus of Thrace had put these [warriors from Argos, Sparta,
Mycenae, and other cities warring against Athens] to flight with his
relieving troops, and by the victory had a great name. And since he was
strong in wealth and in men, and traced his descent, as it happened,
from Gradivus, Pandion, king of Athens, allied him to himself by wed-
ding him to [his daughter] Procne. But neither Juno, bridal goddess,
nor Hymen, nor the Graces were present at that wedding. The Furies
lighted them with torches stolen from a funeral; the Furies spread
the couch, and the uncanny screech-owl brooded and sat on the roof
of their chamber. Under this omen were Procne and Tereus wedded;
under this omen was their child conceived. Thrace, indeed, rejoiced
with them, and they themselves gave thanks to the gods; both the day
on which Pandion's daughter was married to their illustrious king, and
that day on which Itys was born, they made a festival: even so is our
true advantage hidden.

Now Titan through five autumnal seasons had brought round the revolving
years, when Procne coaxingly to her husband said: "If I have found any
favour in your sight, either send me to visit my sister or let my sis-
ter come to me. You will promise my father that after a brief stay
she shall return. If you give me a chance to see my sister you will confer
on me a precious boon." Tereus accordingly bade them launch his ship,
and plying oar and sail, he entered the Cecropian harbour and came to
land on the shore of Piraeus [the port of Athens]. As soon as he came
into the presence of his father-in-law they joined right hands, and the
talk began with good wishes for their health. He had begun to tell of his
wife's request, which was the cause of his coming, and to promise a
speedy return should the sister be sent home with him, when lo! Philo-
mela entered, attired in rich apparel, but richer still in beauty; such
as we are wont to hear the naiads described, and dryads when they move
about in the deep woods, if only one should give to them refinement
and apparel like hers. The moment he saw the maiden Tereus was inflamed
with love, quick as if one should set fire to ripe grain, or dry leaves,
or hay stored away in the mow. Her beauty, indeed, was worth it; but
in his case his own passionate nature pricked him on, and, besides,
the men of his clime are quick to love: his own fire and his nation's
burnt in him. His impulse was to corrupt her attendants' care and her
nurse's faithfulness, and even by rich gifts to tempt the girl herself,
even at the cost of all his kingdom; or else to ravish her and to defend
his act by bloody war. There was nothing which he would not do or dare,
smitten by this mad passion. His heart could scarce contain the fires
that burnt in it. Now, impatient of delay, he eagerly repeated Procne's
request, pleading his own cause under her name. Love made him eloquent,
and as often as he asked more urgently than he should, he would say
that Procne wished it so. He even added tears to his entreaties, as
though she had bidden him to do this too. Ye gods, what blind night
rules in the hearts of men! In the very act of pushing on his shameful
plan Tereus gets credit for a kind heart and wins praise from wickedness.
Ay, more--Philomela herself has the same wish; winding her arms about
her father's neck, she coaxes him to let her visit her sister; by her
own welfare (yes, and against it, too), she urges her prayer. Tereus
gazes at her, and as he looks feels her already in his arms; as he
sees her kisses and her arms about her father's neck, all this goads him
on, food and fuel for his passion; and whenever she embraces her father
he wishes that he were in the father's place--indeed, if he were, his
intent would be no less impious. The father yields to the prayers of both.
The girl is filled with joy; she thanks her father and, poor unhappy
wretch, she deems that success for both sisters which is to prove a woe-
ful happening for them both.

Now Phoebus' toils were almost done and his horses were pacing
down the western sky. A royal feast was spread, wine in cups of gold.
Then they lay them down to peaceful slumber. But although the Thracian
king retired, his heart seethes with thoughts of her. Recalling her
look, her movement, her hands, he pictures at will what he has not yet
seen, and feeds his own fires, his thoughts preventing sleep. Morning
came; and Pandion, wringing his son-in-law's hand as he was departing,
consigned his daughter to him with many tears and said: "Dear son,
since a natural plea has won me, and both my daughters have wished it,
and you also have wished it, my Tereus, I give her to your keeping; and
by your honour and the ties that bind us, by the gods, I pray you guard
her with a father's love, and as soon as possible--it will seem a long time
in any case to me--send back to me this sweet solace of my tedious years.
And do you, my Philomela, if you love me, come back to me as soon as
possible; it is enough that your sister is so far away." Thus he made his
last requests and kissed his child good-bye, and gentle tears fell as he
spoke the words; and he asked both their right hands as pledge of their
promise, and joined them together and begged that they would remember
to greet for him his daughter and her son. His voice broke with sobs,
he could hardly say farewell, as he feared the forebodings of his mind.

As soon as Philomela was safely embarked upon the painted ship and
the sea was churned beneath the oars and the land was left behind,
Tereus exclaimed: "I have won! in my ship I carry the fulfilment of my
prayers!" The barbarous fellow triumphs, he can scarce postpone his
joys, and never turns his eyes from her, as when the ravenous bird of
Jove [the eagle] has dropped in his high eyrie some hare caught in his
hooked talons; the captive has no chance to escape, the captor gloats
over his prize.

And now they were at the end of their journey, now, leaving the
travel-worn ship, they had landed on their own shores; when the king
dragged o¤ Pandion's daughter to a hut deep in the ancient woods; and
there, pale and trembling and all fear, begging with tears to know where
her sister was, he shut her up. Then, openly confessing his horrid pur-
pose, he violated her, just a weak girl and all alone, vainly calling,
often on her father, often on her sister, but most of all upon the great
gods. She trembled like a frightened lamb, which, torn and cast aside by a
grey wolf, cannot yet believe that it is safe; and like a dove which, with
its own blood all smeared over its plumage, still palpitates with fright,
still fears those greedy claws that have pierced it. Soon, when her senses
came back, she dragged at her loosened hair, and like one in mourning,
beating and tearing her arms, with outstretched hands she cried: "Oh,
what a horrible thing you have done, barbarous, cruel wretch! Do you
care nothing for my father's injunctions, his a¤ectionate tears, my sis-
ter's love, my own virginity, the bonds of wedlock? You have confused all
natural relations: I have become a concubine, my sister's rival; you, a
husband to both. Now Procne must be my enemy. Why do you not take my
life, that no crime may be left undone, you traitor? Aye, would that
you had killed me before you wronged me so. Then would my shade have
been innocent and clean. If those who dwell on high see these things,
nay, if there are any gods at all, if all things have not perished
with me, sooner or later you shall pay dearly for this deed. I will
myself cast shame aside and proclaim what you have done. If I should
have the chance, I would go where people throng and tell it; if I am
kept shut up in these woods, I will fill the woods with my story and
move the very rocks to pity. The air of heaven shall hear it, and, if
there is any god in heaven, he shall hear it too."

The savage tyrant's wrath was aroused by these words, and his fear
no less. Pricked on by both these spurs, he drew his sword, which was
hanging by his side in its sheath, caught her by the hair, and twisting
her arms behind her back, he bound them fast. At sight of the sword
Philomela gladly o¤ered her throat to the stroke, filled with the eager
hope of death. But he seized her tongue with pincers, as it protested
against the outrage, calling ever on the name of her father and strug-
gling to speak, and cut it o¤ with his merciless blade. The mangled root
quivers, while the severed tongue lies palpitating on the dark earth,
faintly murmuring; and, as the severed tail of a mangled snake is wont
to writhe, it twitches convulsively, and with its last dying movement it
seeks its mistress's feet. Even after this horrid deed--one would scarce
believe it--the monarch is said to have worked his lustful will again
and again upon the poor mangled form.

With such crimes upon his soul he had the face to return to Procne's
presence. She on seeing him at once asked where her sister was. He
groaned in pretended grief and told a made-up story of death; his tears
gave credence to the tale. Then Procne tore from her shoulders the robe
gleaming with a golden border and put on black weeds; she built also a
cenotaph in honour of her sister, brought pious o¤erings to her imag-
ined spirit, and mourned her sister's fate, not meet so to be mourned.

Now through the twelve signs, a whole year's journey, has the sungod
passed. And what shall Philomela do? A guard prevents her flight; stout
walls of solid stone fence in the hut; speechless lips can give no
token of her wrongs. But grief has sharp wits, and in trouble cunning
comes. She hangs a Thracian web on her loom, and skilfully weaving
purple signs on a white background, she thus tells the story of her
wrongs. This web, when completed, she gives to her one attendant and
begs her with gestures to carry it to the queen. The old woman, as she
was bid, takes the web to Procne, not knowing what she bears in it. The
savage tyrant's wife unrolls the cloth, reads the pitiable tale of her
misfortune, and (a miracle that she could!) says not a word. Grief chokes
the words that rise to her lips, and her questing tongue can find no
words strong enough to express her outraged feelings. Here is no room
for tears, but she hurries on to confound right and wrong, her whole
soul bent on the thought of vengeance.

It was the time when the Thracian matrons were wont to celebrate
the biennial festival of Bacchus [god of wine]. Night was in their secret;
by night Mount Rhodope would resound with the shrill clash of brazen
cymbals; so by night the queen goes forth from her house, equips
herself for the rites of the god and dons the array of frenzy; her head
was wreathed with trailing vines, a deer-skin hung from her left side,
a light spear rested on her shoulder. Swift she goes through the woods
with an attendant throng of her companions, and driven on by the mad-
ness of grief, Procne, terrific in her rage, mimics thy madness, O Bac-
chus! She comes to the secluded lodge at last, shrieks aloud and cries
"Euhoe!" breaks down the doors, seizes her sister, arrays her in the
trappings of a Bacchante, hides her face with ivy-leaves, and, dragging
her along in amazement, leads her within her own walls.

When Philomela perceived that she had entered that accursed house
the poor girl shook with horror and grew pale as death. Procne found
a place, and took o¤ the trappings of the Bacchic rites and, uncovering
the shame-blanched face of her wretched sister, folded her in her arms.
But Philomela could not lift her eyes to her sister, feeling herself to
have wronged her. And, with her face turned to the ground, longing to
swear and call all the gods to witness that that shame had been forced upon
her, she made her hand serve for voice. But Procne was all on fire, could
not contain her own wrath, and chiding her sister's weeping, she said:
"This is no time for tears, but for the sword, for something stronger
than the sword, if you have such a thing. I am prepared for any crime,
my sister; either to fire this palace with a torch, and to cast Tereus,
the author of our wrongs, into the flaming ruins, or to cut out his tongue
and his eyes, to cut o¤ the parts which brought shame to you, and drive
his guilty soul out through a thousand wounds. I am prepared for some
great deed; but what it shall be I am still in doubt."

While Procne was thus speaking Itys came into his mother's presence.
His coming suggested what she could do, and regarding him with
pitiless eyes, she said: "Ah, how like your father you are!" Saying no
more, she began to plan out a terrible deed and boiled with inward rage.
But when the boy came up to her and greeted his mother, put his little
arms around her neck and kissed her in his winsome, boyish way, her
mother-heart was touched, her wrath fell away, and her eyes, though all
unwilling, were wet with tears that flowed in spite of her. But when she
perceived that her purpose was wavering through excess of mother-love,
she turned again from her son to her sister; and gazing at both in turn,
she said: "Why is one able to make soft, pretty speeches, while her rav-
ished tongue dooms the other to silence? Since he calls me mother, why
does she not call me sister? Remember whose wife you are, daughter
of Pandion! Will you be faithless to your husband? But faithfulness to
such a husband as Tereus is a crime." Without more words she dragged
Itys away, as a tigress drags a suckling fawn through the dark woods
on Ganges' banks. And when they reached a remote part of the great
house, while the boy stretched out pleading hands as he saw his fate,
and screamed, "Mother! mother!" and sought to throw his arms around
her neck, Procne smote him with a knife between breast and side--
and with no change of face. This one stroke suªced to slay the lad; but
Philomela cut the throat also, and they cut up the body still warm and
quivering with life. Part bubbles in brazen kettles, part sputters on
spits; while the whole room drips with gore.

This is the feast to which the wife invites Tereus, little knowing what
it is. She pretends that it is a sacred feast after their ancestral fashion,
of which only a husband may partake, and removes all attendants and slaves.
So Tereus, sitting alone in his high ancestral banquet-chair, begins the
feast and gorges himself with flesh of his own flesh. And in the utter
blindness of his understanding he cries; "Go, call me Itys hither!" Procne
cannot hide her cruel joy, and eager to be the messenger of her bloody
news, she says: "You have, within, him whom you want." He looks
about and asks where the boy is. And then, as he asks and calls again
for his son, just as she was, with streaming hair, and all stained with
her mad deed of blood, Philomela springs forward and hurls the gory
head of Itys straight into his father's face; nor was there ever any time
when she longed more to be able to speak, and to express her joy in
fitting words. Then the Thracian king overturns the table with a great
cry and invokes the snaky sisters from the Stygian pit. Now, if he could,
he would gladly lay open his breast and take thence the horrid feast and
vomit forth the flesh of his son; now he weeps bitterly and calls himself
his son's most wretched tomb; then with drawn sword he pursues the
two daughters of Pandion. As they fly away from him you would think
that the bodies of the two Athenians were poised on wings: they were
poised on wings! One flies to the woods, the other rises to the roof. And
even now their breasts have not lost the marks of their murderous deed,
their feathers are stained with blood. Tereus, swift in pursuit because of
his grief and eager desire for vengeance, is himself changed into a bird.
Upon his head a sti¤ crest appears, and a huge beak stands forth instead
of his long sword. He is the hoopoë, with the look of one armed for war.

103 [Jug Jug]: This was a conventional way of representing the nightingale's
song, as seen in the first four lines of an untitled song which appears in a
play by John Lyly (1553–1606), Alexander and Campaspe (1584), act V, scene i,
echoed here and at lines 204–206 by Eliot:

What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O 'tis the ravish'd nightingale.
Jug, jug, jug, jug, Tereu! She cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.

"Tereu" is the vocative form of Tereus, the ravisher of Philomela, whose cry,
after she metamorphosed into a nightingale, could be heard as an outcry
against Tereus. In contrast, "jug jug" was also a crude reference to sexual
intercourse.

118 [The wind under the door]: Eliot's note directs the reader to John Webster's
play The Devil's Law Case, III.ii.148. Contarino has been stabbed, and while
undergoing treatment at the hands of two surgeons is stabbed again by the
villain Romelio, unbeknownst to the surgeons, who have left the room. They
return, thinking him dead, but he groans, and one surgeon asks the other,
"Is the wind in that door still?"

125 [Those are pearls that were his eyes]: See note to line 48.

128–130 [O O O O . . . So intelligent]: A popular song published in 1912 by
Joseph W. Stern and Co. and composed for performance at the Ziegfeld Follies,
with words by Gene Buck and Herman Ruby, music by David Stamper. An adver-
tisement for the song in Variety (19 July 1912) noted: "If you want a song that
can be acted as well as sung send for this big surprise hit." The "grizzly bear,"
used as a verb in the song's lyrics, was a popular dance which loosely mimed
a bear's motions. For the song's lyrics and music, see 96–99.

137: Eliot's note refers to the game of chess in Thomas Middleton's Women Beware
Women; see the note to the title of part II.

139 [demobbed]: A popular contraction of "demobilized," or released from mili-
tary service. The earliest OED citation of the term is from a newspaper, the
Glasgow Herald of 2 June 1920: "Some young soldiers . . . who had been recent-
ly demobbed." According to Valerie Eliot, in her notes to TWL:AF, Eliot
said that this portion of the poem (lines 137–197) was "pure Ellen Kellond,"
a maid who worked for them occasionally.

141 [hurry up please it's time]: A time-honored expression used by bartenders
to announce the imminent closing of a pub, or public house, in Britain.

160 [She's had five already]: The size of the British family had shrunk from an
average of 5.5 children in the mid-Victorian era to 2.2 between 1924 and
1929. Systematic practice of birth control had started among the middle
classes in the 1870s and had spread downward before the First World War.
Popular interest in birth control surged after the war; Marie Stopes's book,
Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Diªculties (London:
A. C. Fifield, 1918), sold 400,000 copies between 1918 and 1923.

161 [chemist]: A pharmacist, in American usage.

166 [gammon]: Smoked ham, in American usage.

172 [Good night . . . good night]: The last line of part II quotes from Ophelia's
mad scene, where she appears distracted by the news that Hamlet has murdered her
father and her sense that he will repudiate his a¤ection for her, Hamlet IV.v.
72–73. Later Ophelia drowns herself.