There’s always too much to say—or need to express—in
October. March has its own magic, but I’ll never unclasp what 45 years have fed
me: the nexus of summers’ windings down and winters’ rush to get on with its own
agenda forever intrigues me. I won’t pretend an allegiance to a North Dakota
milieu in which Charlie Brown invents a myth about an easily refutable ‘Great
Pumpkin’; I won’t seek European stalwarts like ‘vinobrany’ and other spirit
festivals that celebrate the fermentation process complete (or begun—I cannot
comprehend the ground-to-gizzard timetable).
This October is unique insofar as I’ve been in a position to
hold a body dying and, consequently, ask dear Ben to pray better than anybody
was willing or able. There is nothing satisfying about ‘Albatross Dreams’ or
any other immediate mark of that event. Instead of framing it further, I’ll ask
for prayers for Lyuba’s daughters—especially Anicka, whom we see walking to and
from school almost every day, and who looks like a responsible older sister shouldering
the weight of an uncertain future.
In my hubris to try to extend chapters 6 and 7 of ‘Babi
Leto, Babi Yar’, I’m trying to imagine how a quixotic and Sovietized wandering
Jew would be, inevitably, transported to a post-Stalinian gulag, I realize how
utterly naked we are to what The Who calls ‘the wide open-spaces’ and what
Shakespeare calls ‘this extremity of the skies.’ I watched with Joey and Emma a
disgarded DVD of ‘Tommy’ this morning, where the Roger Daltrey protagonist
wrestles to undo the ‘deaf, dumb, and blind’ conditions of his life to somehow
persuade the same ‘deaf, dumb, and blind’ circumstances of the millions who
will be ‘marching in the street, with children at their feet.’
So, to brass tacks. Jon’s annotations of ‘The Wasteland’ remind
us of Godspell, I hope, in the 77th
note of what Eliot is suggesting through the Thames. “On the willows there we
hung up our lives” may not be parcel to English river lore, but that is what
resonated with me when I read through this third part of the poem. I liked the
name breakdown of ‘Eugenides’ and the further development of Tiresius, and
desire further annotation of the ‘Isle of Dogs’ and the ‘he wept’ allusion to
John 11: 35. Anyone on the Symposia, by the
way, can comment accordingly! By the time we get to Part IV, the shortest of
Eliot’s poem (and, notably, the most rushed of almost all of Shakespeare’s
equivalent acts in his five-act template), we have less to add or ask of the
poem, though I still would love more insight on line 319 about the dynamics of
Gentile or Jew, especially as I try to finish Yakov’s effect (which as much as
anything attempts to bridge this ongoing divide).
Stay tuned to both the final installment of Jon’s annotation
and the odyssey of Yakov. Comment please accordingly. Continue to pay attention
to elections, sports leagues, children’s goings-on (as I do to the max); but
pay ample attention to what is going on here, and any other symposia likewise.
Dan
Hi Dan - I hope you know that I too appreciate Babi Leto. I haven't been commenting on it much because I'm still taking it all in and following Yakov's road trip and wondering where his journey will lead him. But you've got me reading it and enjoying it and looking forward to going back to reread it after you give us all of the installments.
ReplyDeleteAs for Eliot's Gentile or Jew, I think he was only saying there is no real distinction between being in the faith or out of it, at least not as far as the poet knew at this stage. I'd like to think, too, that this was a turning point for Eliot, away from his anti-Semitic tendencies.
You have a different goal with Yakov, I'm sure, as you've started with more of a bridge mentality to begin with, whereas Eliot had previously shown more divisiveness and trouble about the distinctions of Gentile and Jew. Frankly, though, this may be what appeals to me in Eliot's poem, sort of like how David could not be much of a psalmist if he weren't sinful to begin with.
I am adding a note to identify Isle of Dogs. There is a subtle tie to the dogs that dig up the corpse in part 1, but I'm limiting my note to the geography and the context with Queen Elizabeth.
As for "he wept," you've got me to find a lot more on the subject -- See my updated notes 77 and 113, listing allusions include Psalm 137, Eliot's treatment at Leman, Shelley's Frankenstein and, yes, Jesus weeping with the sisters of Lazarus. I tend to think the Jesus allusion is the weakest in this case, but I mentioned them all.
Indeed these notes help, and I wonder if a dog digging up a corpse is an image in Sophocles' Antigone (Anouilh has his Antigone lament leaving her dog named 'Puff' in my translation, but this version comes a solid 20+ years after 'The Wasteland'). I have heard of the 'Isle of Dogs'--notably NOT during any of the Olympic hype--but wonder why it was named so in the first place... I still have the Bedlam novel in my radar, though that is unfinished project number umpteen...
ReplyDeleteAnother anachronistic reference I thought of in rereading was around your note 79 and the clear allusion to Marvel's 'Coy Mistress'. You already know one of my favorite poems of all is Frost's 'After Apple-Picking' and the speaker's "hearing from the cellar bin / The rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in." An annotation of 'The Wasteland' speaks logically to the influences on Eliot and his machinations; perhaps there is room for the reverse speculation on the influences Eliot effects on the literary tradition thereafter, including Frost (and dare I say, us!). I wouldn't have even pursued this line of thought but that the Leman / 'Magic Mountain' / Mary Shelley milieu of Swiss convalescence centers (and, to be mundane for a moment, a feckless Davos annual economic summit and star-struck Caux conventions to 'make sense of it all' ('it' being the world, praytell)) compelled me to think of being "overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired."