An Annotation (The Waste Land, Part 4 of 5)

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BB.  Phlebas the Phoenician : Dans le Restaurant

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IV. Death by Water 126

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, 127
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea -------------315
Picked his bones in whispers.  As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward, 128 -------------320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. 129

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126 T.S. Eliot, Dans le Restaurant (1920), third stanza (translated):  “Phlebas the Phoenician, fifteen days dead, / Forgot the cry of gulls and the swell of Cornwall / And the profits and losses and the cargo of tin: / A current under sea took him far away, / past the stages of his former life. / You have to consider, it was a painful exit; / all the same, he was a man who was once handsome and tall.”   This“water” section is still heavily allusive, but the primary source is Eliot’s own voice, translated from French.  This is my untrained translation, prompted by Eliot’s restatement and adding my own interpretations of the Dans variations. 

127 Phlebas the Phoenician is clearly the drowned Phoenician Sailor of line 47, whose eyes are now pearls (lines 48 and 125) and whose death by water Madame Sosostris portended (line 55).  By being associated with profit and loss, and by Eliot’s own explanation (see note 92) Phlebas is also related to Mr. Eugenides, the one eyed Smyrna merchant (lines 52, 209); Eliot also ties him to Prince Ferdinand (see notes 33, 91) and to the hyacinth girl (see note 64).

128 Gentile or Jew, i.e., without distinction, whether one is in the faith or out of it; compare line 365 (“I do not know whether a man or a woman”).  This introduces one of several instances in the Waste Land where the poet appears to break the fourth wall by speaking directly to “you” the reader.  The poet could just as easily be talking to himself, and an earlier instance suggests that he is addressing his editor as “hypocrite lecteur” (see notes 48, 52), but this passage and several others (see especially lines 21, 76 and 360 but also lines 17, 122 and 432) seem to be directed more to the “you,” whether poet or fellow pilgrim, who would seek answers through the earth, water, etc.   Here, the wheel recalls the Tarot card and the change of seasons (see note 36), but it also reflects the whirlpool now being entered.  The“you” who look windward also suggests those who would turn to the spirit, which is the fifth classical element about to be introduced in Section 5.  First, however, the reader is told to consider again what the water has done.  Compare this to the moment in Section 1, just before the “lecteur” passage, when the reader is asked to consider what happens to a body planted in the earth (lines 71-72).

129 Plato, Philebus (360 BC), tr. Harold N. Fowler (1925), 48e: “SOCRATES: ‘And there are still more who think they are taller and handsomer than they are...’”   Philebus was one who held pleasure to be superior to intellect, in contrast to Socrates, who valued knowledge.

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