00:00:07.170 - 00:00:28.650

Morton Marcus: And those twisting, turning, sounds of the cello of Yo-Yo Ma, take us from youth of today to really youth of almost a hundred years ago. And we go from there for young America of today, back to the beginning of the 20th century,

00:00:29.370 - 00:00:50.160

and tonight's birthday program for Thomas Stearns Eliot better known as T.S. Eliot, who was born on September 26th, 1888, and died on January 4th, 1965. He was, and I'd say, arguably, maybe not the most important poet in the English speaking

00:00:50.160 - 00:01:08.460

language for the first thirty or forty years of the 20th century. He could voice and could get response from people about what it was like to be a 20th century human being. But let me tell you a little bit about Eliot before we go into his poetry, and what

00:01:08.460 - 00:01:23.370

we'll be doing tonight. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888, and his family were among the earliest New England settlers, and for several centuries had resided in Boston, Massachusetts. His

00:01:23.370 - 00:01:44.310

family had come to St. Louis when Eliot's paternal grandfather became the president of Washington University. He was raised in the best of schools, the best of environments. And by 1906, he had entered Harvard University where he remained to

00:01:44.310 - 00:02:01.740

get his bachelor's degree in three years and go on to study philosophy for a PhD. Those are his years in Boston, and as you'll hear very shortly, they play a very important role in his early poetry. He never did get that PhD. He went over to

00:02:01.890 - 00:02:17.400

England and fell in love with England so much that he remained there literally for the rest of his life, and became a British citizen in 1927. One of the reasons that he stayed over there is that he fell in love with his future wife, Vivienne

00:02:17.400 - 00:02:35.160

Haigh-Wood, who he married, by the way, in 1915. Now, of course, what's going on in the world at this time, not only have we swung past 1899 into the 20th century, but World War I is raging, as of 1914, all the way to 1919. He held many different

00:02:35.160 - 00:02:55.980

kinds of jobs during his lifetime: he was a bank clerk, he was a schoolmaster, and finally became the editor at Faber and Faber when his reputation was established. And as I said, he remained in England and had many honors. He

00:02:55.980 - 00:03:14.430

also had many influences, and one of the influences, it's a name you can write down if you're a poetry fan out there, is the name of George Seferis, S-E-F-E-R-I-S, the great Nobel Prize winning Greek poet, who is very interesting to read in

00:03:14.430 - 00:03:35.760

connection with T.S. Eliot because what Seferis has really done has transferred the concerns of Eliot into Greek concerns, and instead of Christianity and its problems, into the sense of Greek myth and Greek history. I want to talk

00:03:35.970 - 00:03:53.190

tonight, and read from, most probably all we'll have time for, although I will read a few more if we have more time the poems from Eliot's first book, which is called, "Prufrock," and was published in 1917. It sets the tone for all the rest of his

00:03:53.190 - 00:04:11.070

work, and where the real influences were in his work, but he will go on to write poems of greater complexity and celebration, for example, "Wasteland," 1922, which really is considered the first great long poem of the 20th century in

00:04:11.070 - 00:04:31.380

the English language, and had a tremendous effect on the literary world, again, not only here, but abroad and again, with people like George Seferis, and would go on to write plays, a number of other poems, and among them, in 1935, '40, '41, and

00:04:31.380 - 00:04:48.210

'42, collected in '42, is famous "Four Quartets." Well, what I want to say about Eliot is that you have to nderstand his themes, and you ave to understand the way he rote poetry. And as far as the hemes are concerned, that's

00:04:48.210 - 00:05:04.080

oing to be easy, though again, t's taking you a hundred years way from now. And if you're not ware of what was going on at he turn of the 20th century, I ill briefly talk about that. ut then I want to talk about is use of words, and how he

00:05:04.080 - 00:05:23.360

onceived the poetry because hat, it seems to me, is what as survived him more than his oems, certainly the poems after 922 and I'll talk about that in second. The turn of the 19th century into the 20th was greeted with

00:05:23.440 - 00:05:41.270

tremendous apocalyptic visions, although there were also many positive visions. In physics, the world of Newtonian physics had been turned upside down, and it was still waiting for Einstein to suddenly appear on the scene, and set that, at

00:05:41.350 - 00:05:59.030

least for a time, right with this theory of evolution. In moral philosophy, the ideas of how one achieved one's success and chose the straight and narrow of supposedly good and evil was turned on its head by the new mechanized and highly

00:05:59.110 - 00:06:17.320

technological society in which the human being felt extremely isolated. In fact, the word that we use again and again for man and woman in the 20th century is alienated. The world had become very fragmented, people now did not see themselves as

00:06:17.390 - 00:06:35.000

individuals or families on the land, they were now parts of these huge masses in cities, and they were insignificant, they were an individual, and in themselves, they became frightened, and suspicious, and indecisive. One of the reasons

00:06:35.080 - 00:06:52.610

for this was that religion, which had bound everyone together till really about the mid 19th century, was no longer found in general ideas to be the answer to existence and especially moral existence and spiritual existence in the 20th

00:06:52.690 - 00:07:10.070

century. What would replace it would be a sense of the battle of morality inside the human being, as suddenly, instead of religion, Freudianism and psycho-analysis rose to the fore. To many of you, this sounds new because we've lived

00:07:10.150 - 00:07:27.310

with this for more than a century now, but it was very much on people's minds, especially at the time that, "Prufrock," was published and "Poems," Eliot's next book was published, and then in 1922 his really first masterwork, "The

00:07:27.390 - 00:07:51.080

Wasteland," because it talked about this fragmentation and alienation. The reason we are going to do only the first early work that he has is: one, it contains probably his most famous short poem, and two, because as Eliot matures, his poetry becomes more

00:07:51.080 - 00:08:07.220

and more difficult, it becomes filled with references that the reader is expected to know, but you would really have to be an expert in, not only philosophy, but history, literary history, on many things. He said an intelligent reader should be

00:08:07.220 - 00:08:20.660

able to understand him. I'm afraid that even for, "The Wasteland," which he changed drastically, under what I think was the very wrong advice of Ezra Pound, he still needs more than six pages of notes after it for you to even understand the

00:08:20.660 - 00:08:36.490

first level of the poem. That is not so, and we can find the essence of his work in his early work, "Prufrock," although there are a lot of references there. So, what about these words that I talked about? So many young

00:08:36.490 - 00:08:57.100

poets come to me and want me to talk about their poetry. The way I talk about it is, I say you have not learned what words can do. Words are not used arbitrarily, and the way I got this idea was from the work of T.S. Eliot which became, for

00:08:57.100 - 00:09:19.840

American poets working after the 1920s, the way poetry has gone in this country, major poetry, until now. In it, every single word that is chosen, has to be carefully thought of by the poet because it is implying, it is suggesting many things about the

00:09:19.840 - 00:09:42.340

speech of that poem: the tone, the sense of how one understands what is being talked about emotionally, experientially, as well as intellectually. What Eliot caused to happen was that he caused the complete removal of abstractions in poetry, and

00:09:42.340 - 00:10:04.090

that's an overstatement, obviously, abstractions are there, adjectives are there. But what Eliot did was he rooted the poem in the noun and what he tried to do was give you scenes that would be very concrete but which suggest ideas instead of

00:10:04.090 - 00:10:20.350

ideas being abstractly put on the page. Let me give you one example. In, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Prufrock says, "I've counted out my life with coffee spoons." And what he means is, you know, that you just sort of, you count your

00:10:20.350 - 00:10:37.030

life by putting your spoon in coffee, and then just turning it over and putting your spoon back in again, it's a very visual, concrete image but what does it suggest? And certainly, as we'll see, what does it suggest with that speaker? What it suggests

00:10:37.510 - 00:10:56.800

is that he is bored, that life is tedious for him. And that is how Elliot builds his poetry, he wants to give concrete examples of ideas so that the reader experiences. He called this writing "the objective correlative," okay, "writing the

00:10:56.800 - 00:11:11.410

objective correlative," and we will see that again and again. What's interesting about the whole first book is that many of these poems, as so many of his poems, take place with an observer talking to you. And he usually is talking about a

00:11:11.410 - 00:11:29.710

dramatic scene in some way, or some memory he has; memory is very important. And it's almost always a male, a male who is highly sensitive, but who cannot act, he cannot make choices, and here we go back to what I was telling you about the alienation

00:11:29.710 - 00:11:46.270

of the 20th century. There is no John Wayne heroic action, John Wayne's heroic action is very 19th century. In the 20th century the individual, absolutely buried by the masses, becomes very indecisive and fearful and so that's what we

00:11:46.270 - 00:12:00.430

see with many of the characters in these poems. But first, let me read some very, very simple poems by Eliot so you can get his styling, and he did use a free verse in much of his book poetry.

00:12:01.740 - 00:12:24.420

And, okay, wherever I was going to look for that poem is not there. Yes. When he was at Boston, it seemed quite evident from the poems that he really was sort of disgusted with the phony life of the Boston upper classes. To him, it was a life

00:12:24.420 - 00:12:41.610

that was empty and had disintegrated from maybe a beginning which was much more spiritual and much more meaningful. So, here he talks about what it looks like, "Morning at the Window." And again, we get the same idea of,

00:12:41.610 - 00:12:57.520

as I said, a person who is talking to you directly, an observer of a scene. MORNING AT THE WINDOW They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, and

00:12:57.520 - 00:13:17.140

along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids sprouting despondently at area gates. The brown waves of fog toss up to me twisted faces from the bottom of the street, and tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts an

00:13:17.140 - 00:13:31.520

aimless smile that hovers in the air and vanishes along the level of the roofs. So you see, everything is very, very concrete there, although these images obviously are images as seen through the

00:13:31.520 - 00:13:50.270

perspective of the speaker, but it is not a very, very powerful positive scene: the damp soul of housemaids, some sprouting despondently, there's an adjective for you, the brown waves of fog, twisted faces, aimless smile. Everything is

00:13:50.270 - 00:14:13.700

just sort of drudging and trudging and less than even inspiring routine. Here's another one called, "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," and here's a person trying to remember things, trying to remember a world that he can solidly once

00:14:13.700 - 00:14:29.300

more depend on. But the only thing solid in this poem is the street light as he takes this evening walk. RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street held in a

00:14:29.300 - 00:14:48.830

lunar synthesis, whispering lunar incantations dissolve the floors of memory and all it's clear relations, its divisions and precisions, every street lamp that I pass beats like a fatalistic drum, and through the spaces of the dark midnight

00:14:48.830 - 00:15:06.020

shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, the street lamp sputtered, the street lamp muttered, the street lamp said, "Regard that woman who hesitates towards you in the light of the door which opens on her like a

00:15:06.020 - 00:15:25.970

grin. You see the border of her dress is torn and stained with sand, and you see the corner of her eye twists like a crooked pin." That memory throws up high and dry a crowd of twisted things, a twisted branch upon the beach eaten smooth, and

00:15:25.970 - 00:15:47.990

polished as if the world gave up the secret of its skeleton, stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, rust that clings to the form that the strength has left hard and curled and ready to snap. Half-passed two, the street lamp

00:15:47.990 - 00:16:06.170

said, "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, slips out its tongue and devours a morsel of rancid butter." So the hand of a child, automatic, slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind the

00:16:06.170 - 00:16:25.670

child's eye. I have seen eyes in the street trying to peer through lighted shutters, and a crab one afternoon in a pool, an old crab with barnacles on his back, gripped the end of a stick which I held him. Half-past three, the lamp sputtered, the

00:16:25.670 - 00:16:43.400

lamp muttered in the dark. The lamp hummed: "Regard the moon, la lune ne garde aucune rancune, she winks a feeble eye, she smiles into corners. She smoothes the hair of grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks or

00:16:43.400 - 00:17:03.920

face, her hand twists a paper rose, that smells of dust and old Cologne, she is alone with all the old nocturnal smells that cross and cross across her brain." The reminiscence comes of sunless dry geraniums and dust in crevices, smells of

00:17:03.920 - 00:17:23.330

chestnuts in the streets, and female smells in shuttered rooms, and cigarettes in corridors and cocktail smells and bars. The lamp said, "Four o'clock, here is the number on the door. Memory! You have the key, the little lamp spreads a

00:17:23.330 - 00:17:47.120

ring on the stair, mount. The bed is open; the toothbrush hangs on the wall, put your shoes at the door, prepare, sleep, prepare for life." The last twist of the knife. And that poem, if it seemed hard to follow, really was just a

00:17:47.120 - 00:18:04.520

person out walking at night, very late at night, trying to summon memories. And he has sort of this dialogue with a street lamp and the street lamp points out to him what is physically all around him and that makes him try to remember what it

00:18:04.520 - 00:18:22.310

talks about. So, the first thing is the border of the woman's dress is torn and stained with sand, says the street lamp which is just pointing out to him what he's looking at. And then what- okay, is torn and stained with sand, and you see the corner of

00:18:22.310 - 00:18:36.500

her eye twist like a crooked pin. And immediately outside of that quotation mark, the man, the observer who is speaking says, the memory throws up high and dry, a crowd of twisted things, a twisted branch upon the beach to go with the woman's

00:18:36.500 - 00:18:54.740

dress with sand right, and polished as if the world gave up the secret of its skeleton, stiff and white, and then the broken spring in the factory yard. Then these catalogs of images, which are these images of the dead city, of really old,

00:18:54.770 - 00:19:14.930

the moon even has a washed-out smallpox, so that cracks her face, her hand twists a paper rose, all of these things which is a very dark view of life. And at this point, Eliot is seeing, and we'll see until 1922, the world as devoid of any kind of

00:19:14.930 - 00:19:33.580

real spiritual life and he sees the decay of our civilization. Okay, well, I hope you're all with me. What about the people in Boston? Well, we've seen what they look like from the window. There's a newspaper called the Boston Evening Transcript and he

00:19:33.580 - 00:19:47.080

has a very short poem of this period written in 1915 about what he thinks of the readers of: THE BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT, his viewpoint of modern man and woman is obviously not very high.

00:19:48.980 - 00:20:06.350

The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn. When evening quickens faintly in the street, wakening the appetites of life in some and to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, I mount the

00:20:06.350 - 00:20:23.120

steps and ring the bell, turning wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, if the street were time and he at the end of the street, and I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."

00:20:24.050 - 00:20:45.740

So, the Rochefoucauld is another time, a heroic time, and time is longer than the end of that street. And here's a speaker talking about his aunt. And again, notice in the poems that we will read how much she resembles the people in this

00:20:45.950 - 00:21:01.270

decayed society and the society that has lost its vitality. AUNT HELEN Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt, and lived in a small house near a fashionable square cared for by servants to

00:21:01.270 - 00:21:18.310

the number of four. Now when she died there was silence in heaven and silence at her end of the street. The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet. He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before. The dogs were handsomely

00:21:18.340 - 00:21:36.880

provided for, but shortly afterwards the parrot died, too. The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece, and the footman sat upon the dining-table holding the second housemaid on his knees, who had always been so careful while her

00:21:37.450 - 00:21:55.600

mistress lived. And we can see it then that Helen Slingsby had at least kept a semblance of an old world, but the minute she leaves, the footman and the second housemaid are behaving in this house that

00:21:56.200 - 00:22:27.310

is empty and holds nothing without any moral sense. Okay, so let me read another one of those poems here is, "Cousin Nancy." And you know, I hope you did see some of these details that I'm not pointing out to you. His aunt was a maiden aunt,

00:22:27.310 - 00:22:41.220

she was not married. And the idea is that in his poems, people are not married, there is an emptiness, there is a sense that life has been cut off. So, here's: COUSIN NANCY, what's she like.

00:22:43.280 - 00:23:03.710

Miss Nancy Ellicott strode across the hills and broke them, rode across the hills and broke them. The barren New England hills, riding to hounds over the cow-pasture. Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked and danced all the modern dances, and her aunts were not

00:23:03.710 - 00:23:25.750

quite sure how they felt about it, but they knew that it was modern. Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, the army of unalterable law. And of course, the idea is that Nancy Ellicott really, if she is

00:23:25.750 - 00:23:40.900

a woman of strong character, which she seems to be here, she's being looked upon very ironically because the only hills she broke were barren New England hills and as if she was riding to hounds, she was really riding over cow-pastures. And

00:23:40.900 - 00:24:09.100

she danced, she smoked, but her aunts we're not quite sure about this new modern person. And over all of this, the old books of the poets and the preachers of Puritanism from the 19th century watched the disintegration of the world they knew. And I think

00:24:09.100 - 00:24:26.500

we have, before we take our first break, another one of these poems like, "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," although a poem that has received much more attention because it really just paints this picture of modern life. And it's very much an

00:24:26.500 - 00:24:53.950

imagistic poem. And again, notice the words he uses that evoke the sounds, the smells, the sights, the touches, the tastes of the world. And notice how they also are objective correctives for ideas and notions. So here is a speaker

00:24:55.870 - 00:25:26.620

who is not in the poem or part of the poem but seems to be looking down from a godly position. And this is in four sections, and you'll notice that they happen at different times of day. These are poems called, "The Preludes, One." And before

00:25:26.620 - 00:25:40.570

I go and I'm pausing, notice that this is a winter evening so that even your months of the year, evoke something. Remember Aunt Helen was a maiden aunt; she was unmarried. Winter is the season of death.

00:25:42.700 - 00:26:00.100

PRELUDES, PART ONE The winter evening settles down to smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves

00:26:00.100 - 00:26:17.620

about your feet and newspapers from vacant lots; the showers beat on broken blinds and chimney-pots, and at the corner of the street a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.

00:26:19.540 - 00:26:32.110

TWO The morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer from the sawdust-trampled street with all its muddy feet that press to early coffee-stands. With the

00:26:32.110 - 00:26:43.120

other masquerades that time resumes, one thinks of all the hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms. THREE

00:26:43.540 - 00:26:59.200

You tossed the blanket from the bed, you lay upon your back, and waited. You dozed, and watched the night revealing the thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted. They flickered against the ceiling. And when all the world came back and the

00:26:59.200 - 00:27:15.010

light crept up between the shutters and you heard the sparrows in the gutters, you had such a vision of the street as the street hardly understands. Sitting along the bed's edge, where you curled the papers from your hair, or clasped the yellow

00:27:15.010 - 00:27:32.900

soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands. FOUR His soul stretched tight against the skies that fade behind a city block, or trampled by insistent feet at four and five

00:27:32.900 - 00:27:54.680

and six o'clock. And short square fingers stuffing pipes, and evening newspapers, and eyes assured of certain certainties, the conscience of a blackened street impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled around these

00:27:54.680 - 00:28:15.380

images, and cling: the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh. The worlds revolve like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots.

00:28:19.590 - 00:28:37.950

And notice the change of attitude, you know, this great idea of getting up and either if you're a woman, the curled papers from your hair which were the old curlers, or if you're a man, you clasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of

00:28:37.950 - 00:28:55.560

both soil hands, then the sort of again, the despondency of all this. This is the vision of the street you have and that's what makes you sit and wait. But notice this, and here's the 20th century image, you dozed, and watched the night revealing the

00:28:55.560 - 00:29:14.160

thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted. Man had so many and women had so many different attitudes towards life, what it was and what it could be for them, and that, of course, becomes the domain of Freud and then Jung and Adler

00:29:14.160 - 00:29:34.500

and all the others in which the 20th century became the rooted grounds for and thinking about the nature of human nature, if you will. And then again what he says here in the end, and notice this change in tone: I am moved by fancies that are curled

00:29:34.500 - 00:29:48.870

around these images, the ones that he's given you throughout this poem, and those images cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing. And that, though no one has ever pointed it out, is the core of early

00:29:48.900 - 00:30:04.050

Eliot, the idea that we are infinitely gentle and infinitely suffering. We don't know where we are, we don't know where we're going. But then immediately, whoever this speaker is, as will happen in all these other poems, his mood

00:30:04.050 - 00:30:22.080

changes and he gives you the picture, albeit, it seems a very cynical one, of what the world is. Oh, come on, don't even bother with that infinitely suffering thing, wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh. The worlds revolve like ancient

00:30:22.080 - 00:30:41.820

women gathering fuel in vacant lots. And again, I talk about the objective correlative. Think of that image. If you're talking about the worlds, the universe, how do you want to picture them? How does the idea come through in the picture? Well, if you're

00:30:41.820 - 00:31:04.590

going to look at the universe, as galaxies that are ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots, it is a pretty meaningless universe. But he does that all in a concrete image and that is the objective correlative. For you people who just tuned in, we

00:31:04.590 - 00:33:02.210

are celebrating the birthday of T.S. Eliot who was born on September 26th, 1888. We will return after a short, okay, a short musical interlude. And here are our announcements: Poet Speak, open poetry reading,

00:33:02.510 - 00:33:21.170

with featured reader Janet M. McEwen will take place 2pm on Sunday, October the 12th at the Santa Cruz Public Library. It's free and will be hosted by Joyce Keller. Award-winning poets April Ossmann and Anne Pavlick will read at 7:30pm on Tuesday,

00:33:21.440 - 00:33:43.970

October 14th at Bookshop Santa Cruz at 1520 Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz, donation is asked for. For more information, call Len Anderson at 831-464-8983. That's October 12th for April Ossman and Anne Pavlik. And then the Big Read and really mark

00:33:43.970 - 00:34:05.660

this one down as well as the others, but this is the Big Read on Saturday, October 25th at 7pm in Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Hall, free of charge. The poetry of Robinson Jeffers will be read by Adrienne Rich, Li-Young Li, Mark Jarman, Gary Young, Elliot

00:34:05.690 - 00:34:23.930

Ruchowitz-Roberts, Albert Gelpi, and award-winning student poets. So, make that a real note, the Big Read: the poetry of Robinson Jeffers with Adrienne Rich, Li-Young Li, Mark Jarman, Gary Young, Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts, Albert Gelpi,

00:34:23.930 - 00:34:38.900

and award-winning student poets. Again, that's October 25th, a Saturday, Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Hall and the week before that we will have on the Poetry Show at least several of those poets. So stay tuned, either Dennis will have them on

00:34:38.930 - 00:34:57.380

or I will. So, that is our public announcements for the evening. The private announcements are what the show is all about tonight, which is the poetry of T.S. Eliot; we are celebrating his birthday. He was born on September 26th 1888, and

00:34:57.380 - 00:35:18.860

he died on January 4th, 1965, which if you can do your math quick, will tell you that he was seventy-seven years old. Okay, three poems. Let's see if I really have the time to do them. And we'll end with his most famous poem from this book.

00:35:21.080 - 00:35:44.600

But let me- as we get into these more complex poems of this period, let me give you an idea. This is a poem he calls, "La Figlia Che Piange," and it's in three stazas. And I will have you- I'll tell you what's going on even before we read them.

00:35:45.260 - 00:36:05.240

Again, you have a male observer. In the first stanza, this observer is viewing a situation between a man and a woman and the man has obviously given the woman a bunch of flowers which she has thrown down because he has probably told her at the

00:36:05.240 - 00:36:27.560

same time that he's breaking up with her. In the second stanza, the speaker says how he would approve what the male he imagines is saying to the woman, and he would even go farther and be nastier than the man is to the woman. And then in the third

00:36:27.560 - 00:36:46.370

stanza, he begins to question what he saw, and he begins to question his memory, and he begins to question if he himself could not make a commitment to a woman, and what if he as poet, because this is a poet talking about how he builds a poem, what

00:36:46.580 - 00:37:07.580

has he, as poet, really imagined here that is really just his own world and not the real world, memory again. And notice how different this would be, and how he personalizes things if he was just objectively saying things like she stood on the stair, and

00:37:07.580 - 00:37:23.200

she clasped the flowers and then threw them down, but it's not that way at all. Here is: La Figlia Che Piange Stand on the highest pavement of the stair, lean on a garden urn,

00:37:23.380 - 00:37:37.450

weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise, fling them to the ground and turn with a fugitive resentment in your eyes: but weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

00:37:39.040 - 00:37:57.400

So I would have him leave, so I would have had her stand and grieve, so he would have left as the soul leaves the body torn and bruised, as the mind deserts the body it has used. I should find some way incomparably light and deft, some way we both

00:37:57.400 - 00:38:16.900

should understand, simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. She turned away, but with the autumn weather compelled my imagination many days, many days and many hours: her hair over

00:38:16.900 - 00:38:36.070

her arms and her arms full of flowers. And I wonder how they should have been together! I should have lost the gesture and a pose. Sometimes these cogitations still amaze the troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

00:38:37.680 - 00:38:53.880

So he has these changes in tone and attitude, as he observes but really personalizes. Notice, he's telling her, "Stand on the highest pavement of the stair, lean on a garden urn," and [unintelligible] do it now, it's almost a command, let it happen

00:38:53.910 - 00:39:10.770

again so I can study it again, so I can present it in a new way again. And then in the second stanza, he says, so I would have him leave, and then says how he would you know, that he's used her to get rid of him, let him get rid of her. And then he just

00:39:10.770 - 00:39:24.660

reports that this scene has come again and again to him. And he would pose it differently, he really would wonder even what they were like together, were they a good couple? Were they loving? What was really going on? And he is just, again,

00:39:24.660 - 00:39:51.800

confused and troubled. I guess in the next twenty minutes, then, I will go to, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," with starts with a- well, we'll just forget what it says, it's from Dante's Inferno,

00:39:51.800 - 00:40:06.410

and it's one of the people in the Inferno saying, "I would never tell you my secret self but since no one ever leaves this place, I will tell you my secret self." And, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," is about you and I, it's about two

00:40:06.410 - 00:40:23.720

people, he is talking to someone, is he talking to the reader? This question has come up again and again in looking at this poem. And what he is really doing, it would seem, is that he is talking to himself. And this is the poem of the inactive man,

00:40:23.990 - 00:40:41.720

the man who could not become active and again, he is an observer of his own life. And he cannot approach women, he cannot make that connection with women just as even the poet could, in the scene before this. So we have in all of these poems:

00:40:41.720 - 00:41:00.590

maiden aunts, men who cannot make commitment to women, and you got this world of total isolation and alienation, and it is the world that was once the genteel world of manners and etiquette, which has now become meaningless and shallow. And

00:41:00.590 - 00:41:13.070

notice the lines that get repeated again and again, the refrain's "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo," as though they really are not concerned, they're just name dropping.

00:41:13.750 - 00:41:30.430

But he wants to go on a trip. Prufrock wants to go on a trip and he wants some of his other self, his inner self to come with him, and as we will see can never make this trip. And I will probably stop at various parts of the poem to tell you where

00:41:30.430 - 00:41:42.490

it's come from and where it's going. But here it starts off and it starts off with great energy, and notice the energy just dissolves and it becomes fragmentary. THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

00:41:44.220 - 00:41:59.760

Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table; let us go through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats of restless nights and one-night cheap hotels and sawdust

00:41:59.760 - 00:42:15.150

restaurants with oyster shells, streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.

00:42:16.770 - 00:42:34.480

In the room the women come and go, talking of Michaelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, lingered

00:42:34.480 - 00:42:49.240

upon the pools that stand in drains, let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, and seeing that it was a soft October night, curled once about the house and fell asleep.

00:42:52.120 - 00:43:07.060

And indeed, there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the street, rubbing its back upon the window-panes. There will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet, there will be time to murder and

00:43:07.060 - 00:43:25.480

create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate. Time for you and time for me and time yet for hundred indecisions. And for hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea.

00:43:26.740 - 00:43:37.930

In the wor- in the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. [Comment] Now notice what's happened to you so far. He wants you to go with him, or he wants his inner self to go with him

00:43:38.260 - 00:43:53.650

and to ask a huge question and then suddenly we're standing behind a window and he's telling us there's time. You don't have to go. There's time for indecisions, visions and revisions. And it's time even to lift and drop a question on your

00:43:53.650 - 00:44:07.300

plate, waves and we're in no hurry to get anywhere. Suddenly his attitude has changed and he comes back to the refrain, "and the women- In the room, the women come and go talking of Michelangelo." But even he has had one of those images that

00:44:07.330 - 00:44:23.890

identify him with that world before the taking of a toast and tea. And he continues: And indeed there will be time to wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair with a bald

00:44:23.890 - 00:44:42.700

spot in the middle of my hair– (They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!") My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, my necktie rich and modest, put asserted by a simple pin– (They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") Do

00:44:42.700 - 00:45:04.010

I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions, which a minute will reverse. [Comment] So here is a very self-conscious person who imagines everyone is looking at him. And realizes that they will

00:45:04.010 - 00:45:19.370

be talking about him. And yet what he's talking about is so petty. We also realize that by the way he is dressed he is a member of this upper class. And now he is, he has totally stopped in his motion forward. "Do I dare disturb the universe.

00:45:19.730 - 00:45:30.220

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions with which a minute will reverse." None of this means anything, anything he's saying. For I have known them all already known them all: have

00:45:30.220 - 00:45:47.620

known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. I know the voices dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a father room. So how should I presume?

00:45:47.450 - 00:46:02.940

[Comment] Well, presumed what? Presume to act. And I have known the eyes already, known them all– the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, and when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, when I am pinned and wriggling

00:46:02.940 - 00:46:20.040

on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? I have known the arms already known them all– arms that are braceleted in white and bare (but in a lamp lie down with

00:46:20.520 - 00:46:41.560

light brown hair!) Is it a perfume from a dress that makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume, and how should I begin? [Comment] And again, he is talking in those stanzas about

00:46:41.560 - 00:46:58.090

his sensitivity, about his very, very self-consciousness. And though he says he has had these women, it becomes very dubious, whether he really has. He may have seen those arms. But as he says, "And should I then presume, and how should I

00:46:58.090 - 00:47:14.170

begin?" So, as he talks about those arms, he now talks about the life in the street with a different class, the working class. And notice he's talking about arms, and how he associates now the arms of working men, and what finally

00:47:14.170 - 00:47:28.480

become the clause he talks about in the next several stanzas. Shall I say I have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watch the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirtsleeves leaning out of windows?...

00:47:29.740 - 00:47:43.380

Oh, I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. [Comment] And again that picture that his arms- that the arms he knows, really are, of course contained. They're almost like

00:47:43.380 - 00:47:54.000

an armor. The pair of ragged claws, but where are they scuttling? They're scuttling across the floors of silent seas, seas that have no meaning, seas that have no vitality or life in them.

00:47:55.650 - 00:48:12.330

And the afternoon, the evening sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, asleep... tired... or it malingers, stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices have the strength to force the

00:48:12.330 - 00:48:27.570

moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet– and here's no great matter. I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I

00:48:27.570 - 00:48:41.020

have seen the eternal Footmen hold my coat and snicker, and in short, I was afraid. [Comment] Well, there- there are some of your telltale lines. "Though I've seen my head grown slightly bald" - making fun of

00:48:41.020 - 00:48:59.710

himself, "brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet." Who is he talking about? He is obviously educated. He is talking about John the Baptist. But you see that prophet was heroic and paid for it with his life but, "I am no prophet and

00:48:59.710 - 00:49:14.950

here's no great matter,." By the way, "I've seen the moment of my greatness flicker," which means that he could have been great at times. But he has also seen the eternal footmen that is death, "hold my coat, and snicker and in short, I was afraid." And he

00:49:14.950 - 00:49:26.250

continues: And would it have been worth it, after all, [Comment] Again he's trying to talk himself out of having acted, even taking the walk that he had said, "Let us go then you

00:49:26.250 - 00:49:41.680

and I," but also to even made some pretense to becoming intimate with another human being. And would it have been worth it, after all, after the cups, the marmelade, the tea, among the porcelain, among some talk of

00:49:41.680 - 00:49:56.710

you and me, would it have been worth while to have bitten of the matter with a smile, to have squeezed the universe into a ball, to roll it towards some overwhelming question, to say, "I am Lazarus, come from the dead. Come back to tell you all,

00:49:56.710 - 00:50:10.860

I shall tell you all"– If one, settling a pillow by her head should say: "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all." [Comment] And hear the confusion of the great question, you know,

00:50:11.280 - 00:50:27.990

to say that you come from the dead, that you can tell what the spiritual world is like, but then at the same time mixing this up with his inability to be romantic, and the woman- what if the woman said to him when he made some overture to him, that

00:50:28.050 - 00:50:39.750

that is not what I meant at all, that is not it at all. And he continues with this rather rhetorical phrase that he started the last stanza with: And would it have been worth it, after all, would it have been

00:50:39.750 - 00:50:54.210

worth while, after the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, after the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor, and this, and so much more? Oh, it is impossible to say what I mean! But as if a

00:50:54.210 - 00:51:08.610

magic lantern threw the nerves and patterns on a screen: would it have been worth while if one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, and turning toward the window, should say: "That's not it at all. That is not what I meant, at all."

00:51:08.570 - 00:51:30.980

[Comment] So, he now lets us know, his inability to make a decision, his inability to act in any way is what troubles him. And so immediately he comes back and the first line that he says here is clear because Hamlet, who he refers to, cannot act. It

00:51:30.980 - 00:51:43.550

is the whole point of Shakespeare's play, "Hamlet," that the prince cannot take the action he knows he should, but what he says about himself: No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; am an attendant

00:51:43.550 - 00:51:57.890

lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, politic, cautious, and meticulous; full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; at

00:51:57.890 - 00:52:08.480

times, indeed, almost ridiculous, at times, almost the [Comment] And of course he's saying, "I'm not Hamlet." I'm fool. not, even though he could not make a decision, a heroic

00:52:08.480 - 00:52:28.880

character. I am more like a pompous lord who is a bit obtuse at times and is very cautious in politic and of course, he is talking about Polonius, I almost forgot that. Oh, we do grow old, and the next lines are:

00:52:29.150 - 00:52:40.130

I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. [Comment] So here's the heroic action, finally, he realizes about himself. The most heroic thing he can look forward to

00:52:40.130 - 00:52:55.850

doing, the big decision he's going to make in his life is to wear the bottoms of his trousers rolled up. I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a

00:52:55.850 - 00:53:13.290

peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk up on the beach. I've heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves combing the white

00:53:13.290 - 00:53:29.010

hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown. But by sea-

00:53:29.010 - 00:53:39.870

[Comment] Wait let me do that again. We have lingering in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till human voices wake us, and we drown.

00:53:39.030 - 00:53:57.840

[Comment] And the whole sense of that is the sense that he has even with that other person been dreaming and all this is part of a dialogue that has gone on in his dream, but it is the most heroic imagery, the most beautiful and vital imagery.

00:53:57.990 - 00:54:15.030

He's now made it out of that house, out of those apartments and mansions with their tea cups and porcelain and tea and cakes. I have seen the mermaids, "I h ve heard the mermaids singing ach to each," I do not think the will sing to me but, :I have s

00:54:15.030 - 00:54:31.080

en them riding seaward on t e waves combing the white hai of the waves blown back when he wind blows the water, w ite and black. We have lingere in the chambers of the sea by s a-girls wreathed with seaweed, red and brown till human voices

00:54:31.410 - 00:54:51.270

ake us, and we drown." But t at's the most vital imagery, tha imagery of the sea, the image y of the women riding the wave , of the whole poem, and of cou se, that is his failure. He ould not make it to even ente ing that world where he would b

00:54:51.270 - 00:55:09.270

able to decide enough to a k one of these women for a date, shall we Those are most of the poems. There's another really wonderful poem called, "Portrait of a Lady," in which a man talks

00:55:09.270 - 00:55:29.160

about his relationship with an older woman, and how he just kept walking out on her. And I urge you to read that on your own, "Portrait of a Lady," and then try other poems by T.S. Eliot. I'm looking for a shorter one here, and I'm really not

00:55:29.160 - 00:55:49.650

finding one to be able to take us out. So, what we have done here is read the early poems of T.S. Eliot from his first book, "Prufrock," in 1917. It had a profound influence on writers abroad, even non-English writers, and those poems,

00:55:50.910 - 00:56:11.070

finally culminating in 1922, in the book, "Wasteland," the long poem, really about the empty life of people in the cities and people as part of the masses of the 20th century, really made him the first poet of international repute certainly

00:56:11.070 - 00:56:26.490

rom the United States through he 1930s. And Robert Frost's ork was published later, he was very late bloomer and he, of ourse, his work is very, very uch different than this. It's ot even an urban world that he alks about, Frost is of course

00:56:26.490 - 00:56:45.180

alking about the rural world nd with a very different set of alues, although his poems are xtremely complex, and finds the world that was known in the 19th century really changing and the same kind of conflicts going on in human beings that Eliot first

00:56:45.180 - 00:56:57.190

made into poetry. Let me just give you a contrast here. These are the cities that Walt Whitman talked about. This is the imagery that Walt Whitman brought into poetry, they're not poetic images. They are images

00:56:57.190 - 00:57:15.190

of the everyday life, they are images that at times are seedy and grimy. But what Whitman did was give you a sense of America as an endless opening of democracy and wonder and greatness, not only for the country but for the human being.

00:57:15.730 - 00:57:34.720

And here, Eliot reverses this totally really less, well, maybe a hundred, a little more than a hundred years after the first edition of, "Leaves of Grass," which came out in 1855, so it becomes a very different world. Now, go back to a program that

00:57:34.720 - 00:57:50.920

came on before this, the world of youth today, and you've got this whole world I was, I'm talking about here, totally supplanted. What happened to Eliot? He found, in 1927, a religious calling with the Anglican Church and became

00:57:50.920 - 00:58:04.780

extremely religious. He was searching for meaning and he found it in the high Anglican church which, as many of yo know, really is one step beneat Catholicism as the Englis version that Henry the Eight brought in

00:58:05.290 - 00:58:22.570

Anyways, this is Mort Marcus. I'll be seeing you in three weeks, maybe less. Remember the Big Read that's coming up on the 25th at Saturday, the works of Robinson Jeffers read by Adrienne Rich, Li-Young Li, Mark Jarman, Gary Young, Elliot

00:58:22.570 - 00:58:39.430

Roberts, Albert Gelpi, and others. And then on the 14th of October, April Ossmann and Annie Pavlik at 7:30 at Bookshop Santa Cruz. This is Mort Marcus saying thanks for listening and happy birthday, T.S. Eliot.

00:58:41.350 - 00:58:54.610

Unknown: Broadcasting in HD radio on 88.9 FM, this is Central Coast Public Radio KUSP Santa Cruz and KBDH San Ardo, streaming live and podcasting KUSP.org. Stay tuned for Giant Steps.