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T. S. Eliot : Collected Poems, 1909 - 1962

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Eliot, Thomas Stearns;

T. S. Eliot : Collected Poems, 1909 - 1962

Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963, pages

ISBN 0571105483 / B001TIC7D0

topics: |  poetry

Poems and notes


The Hollow Men : TS Eliot p.77

	
	
	THE HOLLOW MEN
	1925
	
	Mistah Kurtz-he dead.
	


	
	The Hollow Men
				A penny for the Old Guy
	
		I
	
	We are the hollow men
	We are the stuffed men
	Leaning together
	Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
	Our dried voices, when
	We whisper together
	Are quiet and meaningless
	As wind in dry grass
	Or rats' feet over broken glass
	In our dry cellar
	
	Shape without form, shade without colour,
	Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
	
	Those who have crossed
	With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
	Remember us - if at all - not as lost
	Violent souls, but only
	As the hollow men
	The stuffed men.
	
	
		II
	
	Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
	In death's dream kingdom
	These do not appear:
	There, the eyes are
	Sunlight on a broken column
	There, is a tree swinging
	And voices are
	In the wind's singing
	More distant and more solemn
	Than a fading star.
	
	Let me be no nearer
	In death's dream kingdom
	Let me also wear
	Such deliberate disguises
	Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
	In a field
	Behaving as the wind behaves
	No nearer -
	
	Not that final meeting
	In the twilight kingdom
	
	
		III
	
	This is the dead land
	This is cactus land
	Here the stone images
	Are raised, here they receive
	The supplication of a dead man's hand
	Under the twinkle of a fading star.
	
	Is it like this
	In death's other kingdom
	Waking alone
	At the hour when we are
	Trembling with tenderness
	Lips that would kiss
	Form prayers to broken stone.
	
	
		IV
	
	The eyes are not here
	There are no eyes here
	In this valley of dying stars
	In this hollow valley
	This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
	In this last of meeting places
	We grope together
	And avoid speech
	Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
	
	Sightless, unless
	The eyes reappear
	As the perpetual star
	Multifoliate rose
	Of death's twilight kingdom
	The hope only
	Of empty men.
	
	
		V
	
	Here we go round the prickly pear
	Prickly pear prickly pear
	Here we go round the prickly pear
	At five o'clock in the morning.
	
	Between the idea
	And the reality
	Between the motion
	And the act
	Falls the Shadow
	                                        For Thine is the Kingdom
	
	Between the conception
	And the creation
	Between the emotion
	And the response
	Falls the Shadow
	                                               Life is very long
	
	Between the desire
	And the spasm
	Between the potency
	And the existence
	Between the essence
	And the descent
	Falls the Shadow
	                                        For Thine is the Kingdom
	
	For Thine is
	Life is
	For Thine is the
	
	This is the way the world ends
	This is the way the world ends
	This is the way the world ends
	Not with a bang but a whimper.
	

review


the hollow men may be the most widely-read in all of eliot poetry; striking in
construction and theme, it echoes a bleakness and pessimism - the spiritual
quest, as hinted in but not asserted in Prufrock, is of no avail.  death's
twilight kingdom beckons, and everywhere across our hollowness there looms
the shadow.  in the end, the world ends most famously, not with a bang but a whimper.

despite its apparent unity of theme (or at least the unity we see now that it
is so familiar), it seems the poem was assembled of parts of
somewhat accidental provenance.  part iii (this is the dead
land...) was first published as part of “doris’s dream songs” in 1924, and
was later included as part of the unfinished verse play sweeney agonistes.
indeed, russell murphy, in his critical companion to t.s. eliot, suggests
that much of the material was "stumbled on" - taken from tangential sketches
written for several pieces. 

the notion of hollow men reflects the droll repetitive jobs entailed in the
industrial economy.  the reference to kurtz from conrad’s heart of darkness
(1899) in the opening epigram, reflects a strong thematic bond.  kurtz
himself is "hollow at the core":

	i think [the wilderness] had whispered to him things about himself
	which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he
	took counsel with this great solitude -- and the whisper had proved
	irresistibly fascinating. it echoed loudly within him because he was
	hollow at the core.

a few pages later, as Kurtz lies dying, just before manager's the boy says:
Mistah Kurtz-he dead,  he is seen to be a "hollow sham".  Elsewhere in the
book also, a manager at the central station is talked of as "perhaps there
was nothing within him."; later, another oily company agent vying to rise up
in the organization is described as a "papier-mache" man.  in eliot, we find
a similar craft allusion in the head stuffed with straw.

as hollow men we have lost faith - the shadow has fallen between the idea -
the potential, the conception - and what is finally created, the reality,
what exists. there is a hole in our ambition.  and even our speech is
stilled - in this lost kingdom, our jaws are broken and we can only grope
towards each other in silence.  our ability to love has faltered - "lips
that would kiss / form prayers to broken stone".  and these prayers, we
find in the closing part, are futile. in fact, we can't even say the whole
prayer, it comes ut in stumbling pieces, and the kingdom, the power, and
the glory, now and forever - remain a dream as the world ends.



Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg : TS Eliot p.137


How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With a bobtail cur
In a coat of fur
And a porpentine cat
And a wopsical hat:
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
	(Whether his mouth be open or shut).

notes

mirza murad ali beg is a fictitious author on "native life", referred to  
in kipling's story to be filed for reference:

	"This," he said, "is my work — the Book of McIntosh Jellaludin, showing
	what he saw and how he lived, and what befell him and others; being
	also an account of the life and sins and death of Mother
	Maturin.  What Mirza Murad Ali Beg's book is to all other books on
	native life, will my work be to Mirza Murad Ali Beg's!"

Cuscuscaraway most likely belongs to the genre of porpentine cats and
wopsical hats. 


Contents


Prufrock-1917

  3 The Love Song of J. Alfred Pruftock
  8 Portrait of a Lady
 13 Preludes
 16 Rhapsody on a Windy Ntght
 19 Morning at the W mdow
 20 The Boston Evemng TranscrIpt
 21 Aunt Helen
 22 Cousin Nancy
 23 Mr. Apollinax
 24 Hysteria
 25 Conoe1sation Galante
 26 La Figlia che Piange

Poems-1920

 29 Gerontion
 32 Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
 34 Sweeney Erect
 36 A Cooking Egg
 38 Le Directeur
 39 Melange Adultere de Tout
 40 Lune de Miel
 41 The Hippopotamus
 43 Dans le Restaurant
	[later, this poem becomes part IV of The Waste Land]
 45 Whtspers of Immortality
 47 Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
 49 Sweeney Among the Nightingales

The Waste Land (1922)

 53 I. The Burial of the Dead
 56 II. A Game of Chess
 60 III. The Fire Sermon
 65 IV. Death by Water
 66 V. What the Thunder Said

The Hollow Men-1925


 77 The Hollow Men--

Ash-Wednesday (1930)


 85 I. Because I do not hope to turn again
 87 II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
 89 III. At the first turning of the second stair
 90 IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet
 92 V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
 94 VI. Although 1 do not hope to turn again

Ariel Poems


 99 Journey of the Magi-1927
101 A Song for Simeon-1928
103 Animula-1929
105 MarinOr-1930
107 The Cultivatton of Christmas Trees-1954

Unfinished Poems


111 Sweeney Agonistes
111    fragment of a prologue
118    fragment of an agon
125 Coriolan
125    I. triumphal march-1931
127    ii. difficulties of a statesman

Minor Poems


133 Eyes that last I saw in tears
134 The wind sprang up at four o'clock
135 Five-finger exercises
135   i. lines to a persian cat
135   ii. lines to a yorkshire terrier
136   iii. lines t0 a duck in the park
136   iv.  lines to ralph hodgson esqure. 
137    V. lines for cuscuscaraway and mirza murad ali beg

Landscapes

138    I NEW HAMPSHIRE
139    II. VIRGINIA
140    III. USK
141    IV. BANNOCH, BY GLENCOE
142    V CAPE ANN
143 Lines for an Old Man

145 CHORUSES FROM 'THE ROCK'-1934
147    I. The Eagle soars in the summit of HeaDen
152    II Thus your fathel's were made
155    III. The Word of the LOR D came unto me, saying
158    IV. There are those who would budd the Temple
159    V. 0 Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart
160    VI. It tS hard for those who have never known persecution
162    VII. In the beginning GOD created the world
165    VIII. 0 Father we welcome your words
167    IX. Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
169    X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned

Four Quartets

175 Burnt Norton-1935
182 East Coker-1940
191 The Dry Salvages-1941
200 Little Gidding-1942

Occasional verses

213 Defense of the Islands
215 A Note on War Poetry
217 To the Indians Who Died tn Africa
219 To Walter de la Mare
221 A Dedication to My Wife


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail.com) 2011 Jun 30