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

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CC.  After... : A Good Friday culmination 

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V. What the Thunder Said   

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces 130
After the frosty silence in the gardens 131
After the agony in stony places 132
The shouting and the crying 133  -------------325
Prison and palace and reverberation 134
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience  -------------330

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130 In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus (see lines 360-366 and note 138, but the theme begins to appear at lines 328-330), the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston's book, and lines 386-395; Miss Weston is introduced at note 2), and the present decay of eastern Europe (see lines 367-385 and note 139).  These themes, and the emergence of Eliot’s own voice (see lines 331-359), will lead to the poem’s “thunder” culmination, beginning at line 396.  After the  sections of earth, air, fire and water, this might be called the quintessential “spirit” section of the poem, in which the poet begins to find the peace that passes understanding.  The recognition of five classical elements can be found in early Greek, Chinese, Babylonian and Indian philosophies.  See, e.g.,  Shvetashvatara Upanishad 2.12 (ca 400-200 BC): “When earth, water fire, air and akasa [ether] arise, when the five attributes of the elements, mentioned in the books on yoga, become manifest then the yogi's body becomes purified by the fire of yoga and he is free from illness, old age and death.”

131 I.e., after the fire of Section III; see, e.g., the sweat of the river (line 266), red sails (line 270), and ultimate burning (line 308)).  The first several lines of this section also have a series of allusions to events leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion, beginning with Luke 22: 39-45 (NIV): “Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.’ He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.”  See also John 18:3, adding soldiers’ torches to the scene.

132 I.e., after the water of Section IV, with the earlier reference of the drowned girl in the hyacinth garden (lines 37 and 38).  See also Matthew 26: 36, which places the Luke and John passages in note 131 in the Garden of Gethsemane.

133 I.e., after the earth of Section I, with its stony rubbish (line 20)), and after the anguish of Jesus’s Gethsemane prayers.

134 I.e., after the air (and talk) of Section II; and this continues the Holy Week narrative. 

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DD.  Thirty Good Lines : The water-dripping song

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Here is no water but only rock 135  

Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink  -------------335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand not lie nor sit  -------------340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses  -------------345

             If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water  -------------350

A spring

A pool among the rock

If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing  -------------355

But sound of water over a rock

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees 136

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But there is no water

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135 Eliot wrote to Ford Madox Ford in 1923 that there were “about thirty good lines in The Waste Land, can you find them?” Ford declined to take the bait, so Eliot answered himself in a subsequent letter: “As for the lines I mention, you need not scratch your head over them. They are the 29 lines of the water-dripping song in the last part.”

136 This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Frank M. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America, 1896) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.... Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated. This is the longest stretch in the poem that offers Eliot’s own voice without allusions or the need for translation; at the same time, after the nightingale and swallow of Procne and Philomena (see note 57), the hermit thrush presents the hint of, or the longing for, a third voice.

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EE.  The Road to Emmaus : A march of endurance

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Who is the third who walks always beside you? 137  -------------360   
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman  -------------365
— But who is that on the other side of you? 138

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137 The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.  Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage (1919): “When I look back at those days, I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-strewn sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, "Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us."

138 At Eliot’s own prompting (see note 130), see also Luke 24: 13-31 (NIV), The Road to Emmaus: “Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’ They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, ‘Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ ‘What things?’ he asked. ‘About Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied. ‘He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.’ He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.”  By this allusion, the April poem finally moves from the pains of Good Friday to a late recognition on the morning of Easter.

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FF.  The Decay of Eastern Europe : A drunken hymn

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What is that sound high in the air 139

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming 

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth  -------------370

Ringed by the flat horizon only 140

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air 141

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria  -------------375

Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light  -------------380

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours 142
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells. 143  -------------385

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139 Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.  Herman Hesse, Blick ins Chaos (A Glimpse of Chaos: The Brothers Karamazov, or The Downfall of Europe (1920; tr. Sydney Schiff, 1922): (“Already half Europe, at all events half Eastern Europe, is on the road to Chaos. In a state of drunken illusion she is reeling into the abyss and, as she reels, she sings a drunken hymn such as Dmitri Karamazov sang. The insulted citizen laughs that song to scorn, the saint and seer hear it with tears.”) Eliot published this translation of Hesse’s essay in the first issue (October 1922) of his magazine The Criterion, the same issue that offered his debut of The Waste Land. From the same essay: “Those who cling definitely to the past, those who venerate time-honoured cultural forms, the Knights of a treasured morality, must seek to delay this Downfall and will mourn it inconsolably when it passes. For them the Downfall is the End; for the others, it is the Beginning.”

140 See lines 54-56, where Madame Sosostris (the woman of line 378?) could not find the Hanged Man (which Eliot associates with the hooded figure of Christ (see note 32 and line 364)) and saw only “crowds (now hooded hordes) of people, walking round in a ring.” 

141 The unreal city, previously seen at dawn and at noon (see note 87), is now in the violet hour (see lines 215, 220), and at war with bombs bursting, planes whistling and towers falling.

142 See line 67, “where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours.”

143 Compare line 202, translated: “children’s voices, singing in the dome”

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GG.  The Chapel Perilous: The wind’s home

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In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel 144
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home. 145

It has no windows, and the door swings,  -------------390

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico 146

In a flash of lightning.  Then a damp gust

Bringing rain  -------------395

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144 Weston, From Ritual to Romance, Ch. 13: “Students of the Grail romances will remember that in many of the versions the hero--sometimes it is a heroine--meets with a strange and terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which, we are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, force s are engaged.  Such an adventure befalls Gawain on his way to the Grail Castle. He is overtaken by a terrible storm, and coming to a Chapel, standing at a crossways in the middle of a forest, enters for shelter. The altar is bare, with no cloth, or covering, nothing is thereon but a great golden candlestick with a tall taper burning within it. Behind the altar is a window, and as Gawain looks a Hand, black and hideous, comes through the window, and extinguishes the taper, while a voice makes lamentation loud and dire, beneath which the very building rocks. Gawain's horse shies for terror, and the knight, making the sign of the Cross, rides out of the Chapel, to find the storm abated, and the great wind fallen. Thereafter the night was calm and clear.”  See Eliot’s appreciation of Weston at note 2.

145 See the “wind under the door” at line 118.  The chapel in this passage is empty and windowless; likewise the bones (see note 79) are dry and not yet brought to life.  The chapel remains the wind’s home, however, and the scene quickly changes as a damp gust brings rain.

146 Shakespeare, The Tempest, I, 2, 547-549 (1611): “ARIEL: Hark, hark! I hear / The strain of strutting chanticleer / Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.”  See also Matthew 26: 31-35, 69-75: “Then Jesus told them, ‘This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.”  But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.’  Peter replied, ‘Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.’  ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.’  But Peter declared, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.’ ...Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. ‘You also were with Jesus of Galilee,’ she said.  But he denied it before them all. ‘I don't know what you're talking about,’ he said.  Then he went out to the gateway, where another girl saw him and said to the people there, ‘This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ He denied it again, with an oath: ‘I don't know the man!’  After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, ‘Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away.’  Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, ‘I don't know the man!’ Immediately a rooster crowed.  Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: ‘Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.’ And he went outside and wept bitterly.”

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HH.  What The Thunder Said : Give

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Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves 147

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant. 148

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder  -------------400

DA

Datta: 149 what have we given? 150

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment's surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract  -------------405

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider 151

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms  -------------410

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147 Ganga is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s population.  In Indian mythology, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years to bring her down to earth.  See Valmiki, Ramayana, Bala Kanda (Book of Youth) 42-43 (ca. 400 BC). 

148 Himavant is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally  the snowy mountain.

149 Datta: “Give,” what men understood in hearing the syllable “Da.”  See note 150.

150 'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka--Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.  Upanishad 5, 2:  “The Three Great Disciplines.  Prajapati had three kinds of offspring: gods, men and demons (asuras). They lived with Prajapati, practising the vows of brahmacharins. After finishing their term, the gods said to him: ‘Please instruct us, Sir.’ To them he uttered the syllable da and asked: ‘Have you understood?’ They replied: ‘We have. You said to us, “Control yourselves (damyata).” ’ He said: ‘Yes, you have understood.’ Then the men said to him: ‘Please instruct us, Sir.’ To them he uttered the same syllable da and asked: ‘Have you understood?’ They replied: ‘We have. You said to us, “Give (datta).” ’ He said: ‘Yes, you have understood.’ Then the demons said to him: ‘Please instruct us, Sir.’ To them he uttered the same syllable da and asked: ‘Have you understood?’ They replied: ‘We have. You said to us: “Be compassionate (dayadhvam).” ’ He said: ‘Yes, you have understood.’ That very thing is repeated even today by the heavenly voice, in the form of thunder, as ‘Da,’ ‘Da,’ ‘Da,’ which means: ‘Control yourselves,’ ‘Give,’ and ‘Have compassion.’ Therefore one should learn these three: self—control, giving and mercy.

151 Cf. John Webster, The White Devil, V, vi (1612): “(Flamineo:) ‘O men, / That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted / With howling wives! ne'er trust them; ...they'll remarry / Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider / Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’”

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II.  What The Thunder Also Said : Sympathize and Control Yourself

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DA  

Dayadhvam: 152 I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only 153

We think of the key, each in his prison

thinking of the key, each confirms a prison 154  -------------415

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus 155

DA

Damyata: 156 The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar  -------------420

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

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152 “Sympathize”: what the demons understood in hearing “Da.”  See note 150. 

153 Cf. Dante's Inferno, xxxiii. 46: ed io sentii chiavar l'uscio di sotto all'orribile torre (And I heard locking up the under door / Of the horrible tower). 

154 F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality (1916): “My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it... In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”  This is the arguable philosophy of solipsism, believing that only one’s mind exists with certainty, and everything outside the mind is questionable.  Eliot, and modernist literature in general, appears to refute this, arguing instead that the world, like thunder, speaks to us all; the concepts of “datta” and “dayadhvam” go even further, telling the poet to give back and sympathize with the world.

155  Shakespeare, Coriolanus (1608) III, iii, 157: CORIOLANUS (after being banished from Rome): “And here remain with your uncertainty! / Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!”   See also T.S. Eliot, Coriolan (1931), and see Eliot, The Sacred Wood; Essays on Poetry and Criticism: Hamlet and His Problems (1920), in which Eliot proclaimed Coriolanus a better tragedy than Hamlet.  Eliot’s problem with Hamlet the play was in its character’s solipsistic lack of an objective correlative, without which the reader has trouble relating.

156 “Control yourself”: what lesser gods understood in hearing “Da.”  See note 150.

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JJ.  The Fisher King : Hamlet’s mad again

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I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me 157  -------------425
Shall I at least set my lands in order? 158

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina 159
Quando fiam uti chelidon 160 - O swallow swallow 161
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie 162  -------------430

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you.  Hieronymo's mad againe 163

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157 V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.  “...he was called the Fisher King because of his devotion to the pastime of fishing ...If the Grail story be based upon a Life ritual the character of the Fisher King is of the very essence of the tale, and his title, so far from being meaningless, expresses, for those who are at pains to seek, the intention and object of the perplexing whole.” 

158 Isaiah 38:1 (NIV): “This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die.”

159 V. Dante, Purgatorio, xxvi. 148. 'Ara vos prec per aquella valor / 'que vos guida al som de l'escalina, / 'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.' / Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.  (Arnaut Daniel speaks, after Guido Guinizelli “disappeared in the fire, / As a fish dives through water to the depths” (lines 134-135): ‘Now I petition you, by that kind Power / Escorting you to the summit of the staircase, / At the appropriate time, recall my pain.’ / Then he hid himself in the refining fire.”) Daniel is whom Dante called the better craftsman (see note 4).

160 V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.  Tiberianus, The Vigil of Venus (400 BC): “Quando ver venit meum? / Quando fiam uti chelidon, ut tacere desinam? (Ah, loitering Summer! Say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again?)”

161 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Itylus (1864): “Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow.”  In Greek mythology, after Aedon accidentally killed her son Itylus and goes mad with grief, Zeus turned her into a swallow.  See Homer, Odyssey xix 524: “So my mind is divided, and starts one way, then another.”  Compare the nightingale and swallow of Procne and Philomela (see note 57); see also Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess; A Melody (1884): “O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south.”

162 V. Gerard de Nerval, Chimeres, Sonnet El Desdichado (The Unhappy One), stanza 1 (1853): “(I am the dark one, the widower, the unconsoled, / the prince of Aquitaine whose tower is destroyed: / my only star is dead and my constellated lute / bears the black sun of Melancholy.)”

163 V. Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo’s Mad Again (1592), Act IV, Scene 1: “Hieronymo: Why then, I'll fit you; say no more. / When I was young, I gave my mind / And plied myself to fruitless poetry; / Which though it profit the professor naught, / Yet is it passing pleasing to the world.”  See also Eliot, The Sacred Wood; Essays on Poetry and Criticism: Hamlet and His Problems (1920), in which Eliot cited Spanish Tragedy as a source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

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KK.  Final Words : Shantih, repeated 164

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Datta.  Dayadhvam.  Damyata.

 Shantih shantih shantih 165

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164 Afterwords and Acknowledgements.  This concludes an effort to compile a more comprehensive set of notes than I have seen elsewhere.  My goal, initially, was to give myself a better understanding of this great poem, but ultimately my hope is to bring as much to others.  I do not pretend that this is the end all of Waste Land Study Guides.  Indeed, in the spirit of my own starting goal, the best guide will always be one’s own margin notes.  To that end I hope you, lecteur, will do what I have done: start with Eliot’s own notes, allow for the allusions, consider what others have seen and understood and find out things for yourself.
I should properly acknowledge more sources than I can remember, but I am most grateful to my modern library through the world wide web and to its prominent tools of Google and Wikipedia.  I still prefer paper, though, and having physical books on hand to read and carry with me was invaluable.  I especially appreciate the introduction and notes given by Randy Malamud in the Barnes & Noble Classic edition of The Waste Land and Other Poems, T.S. Eliot (copyright © 2005 by Randy Malamud and Barnes & Noble Inc.); and the notes and essays in The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Third Edition, copyright © 2003 by W. W. Norton & Company Inc.  On the web, besides the remarkable availability of public domain works of Shakespeare, Dante, Ovid and many of the other works cited, I must also note the annotation efforts of http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com, author surprisingly not named; http://rapgenius.com/ Ts-eliot-the-waste-land-lyrics#lyric, © 2012 Genius Media Group, and http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/waste-land#9, © the Editors (Ian Lancashire (Toronto-St. George), General Editor) and the University of Toronto.  I also appreciate the work of every translator I met along the way and will admit to stumbling across some material that I have not properly credited.  There are a few allusions that I discovered completely on my own, but even for these I am indebted to the internet in general.
I also have to acknowledge many brief web encounters with works that probably deserve a space on my shelves, even if I did not turn to them as much as I could have.  Chief among these are The Waste Land, A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot, Copyright © 1971 Valerie Eliot; A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot by B.C. Southam, Copyright © 1994, 1968 by Brian Southam; and Eliot’s own critical essays, including Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920), "Hamlet and His Problems" (1920), and Dante (1929).  There is also an iPad app out there that I have not seen (yes, I am still a PC).
Finally, thank you brother Dan, yet again, for encouraging me to keep at this.  With your words I was moved to effectively double the efforts I had first shown you.
But I must also acknowledge what started me on these efforts in the first place, before I had ever read The Waste Land: a first reading of Eliot’s Little Gidding in his Four Quartets (1943), with the footnotes in my Norton anthology telling me to compare this poem to the Fire Sermon in the Waste Land.  Thus the power of notes! 

165 Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the conduct of this word.  See Phillipians 4:7.  Still the doubting Thomas, our poet confesses to a feeble understanding of that which all believers seek.  This, in time, will change for Eliot (see The Four Quartets, and note 120), but for now it is the poet’s words in this final note, as much as any others, that have encouraged my annotations.

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