Where we dare.
Last time we had two conflicting views the meaning of:
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table."
Valentine Smith saw it as portending a journey of internal examination:
"There are also lines in [Dante's Inferno] Canto II that shed light on the turn in Line 3, "Like a patient etherized upon a table;":
"As one who unwills what he wills, will stay
strong purposes with feeble second thoughts
until he spells all his first zeal away—
so I hung back and balked on that dim coast
til thinking had worn out my enterprise,
so stout at starting and so early lost."
How ambivalent, how human. So, in a mere 3 lines Eliot establishes the paradigm he uses as a template for his own journey inward."
While Mitch H. saw it as promise of a calculated autopsy:
"The bit about etherization is the polar opposite of sympathetic or celebratory. It suggests, as I've said before, a chilly and arrogant attitude of satire, of analysis - of antiseptic, scalpels and the surgeon's very own god complex.
In short, that Elliot proposes to put his little clerk - with his sad little hesitations about peaches and small, carnal dreams without the animal courage to grasp them - on the table for vivisection."
Here is the next section we will discuss:
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 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, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
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 create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
54 comments:
Im having home web connection problems again. Im commenting via the phone. I may not be able to post anything until i get internet back. Sorry about that.
I have to leave soon for several too, Lem.
@deborah: Man the fort! Keep it on topic! Keep out the riff-raff who don't appreciate poetry!
What kind of racist nonsense it this?
:-)
We are back...
Where's The Beef?
Eliot could turn a helluva phrase, but a phrase about what?...about nuffin',
When the world had its tongue hanging out for heart and soul stuffin'.
Nuffin'? Maybe we'd do better to examine the words of the cowardly lion, "what's the Hottentot got that I ain't got?" ;)
So what exactly is your beef with these two stanzas? Gimme a for instance.
Hi, Lem-lem.
Haz, you remind me of the time, at another venue, a well-read, literate, articulate white guy said he didn't get poetry. Just didn't do nuffin' for him. I was surprised.
Deborah, why do you believe that I don't understand poetry? I've never said that, nor have I ever said that I haven't appreciated it when it has been posted as a topic here.
Haz, I was not speaking of you. Your statement referencing chick's 'riff-raff' who don't like poetry reminded me of the guy from another forum who didn't get or appreciate poetry.
Hubba, hubba, hubba,
Sweet Lema, Lema Lem
Returns from trubba, trubba
To connect with us again!
Is this an invitation to drop broad hints about who reminds whom of whom? Or is it who reminds who of whom?
'Cuz persons who pass out poems with the intro, "Here is the next section we will discuss" remind me of bossy female high school English teachers!
Alright then.
Eliot could turn a helluva phrase, but a phrase about what?...
Ah, but think of how his poetry wrote many a lecture for college English profs. And topics for term papers, theses, dissertations. A gold mine.
A question: Anyone know which came first -- Eliot's allusion to cats with that "yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes" or Sandburg's "fog comes on little cat feet"?
I understand the confusion, but my comment didn't reference anything related to Chick. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to riff on the ridiculous amount of racism topics of late on several blogs, including Lem's. I'll be less obtuse in the future.
Sigh. Bullcrap is just that. Lots here. Enjoy.
TOP is back, right here right now.
lol got it Michael. I can see my sentence was easy to misread, especially without the riff-raff tie in. I'll be more careful, too :)
Yes, racism is a topic of intense interest by many here, but it bores the hell out of me. I grew up with a very racist dad. I think there is a form of genetic racism that signals certain brains to be over-stimulated or alerted by out-groups. He got better in later years, as well as he could.
The favored topic here reminds me of the old Talking Points Memo message board before they went to the Disqus format, and they could have lengthy discussions. Their bugaboo was Zionism/Israel. Discussions threads about the topic became so fraught that the comments had to be turned off. And I'm not talking swearing and name-calling, but intense bitterness by a very intelligent group of people.
Ari, what do you mean?
Good question, Lydia. Your assignment is to find out the publication date of each :)
An assign for both the works...
That lift and drop a question on your plate :)
But teacher, I know!!!! Or at least the wiki claims to do so.
"Fog" first appeared in Sandburg's first mainstream collection, Chicago Poems, published in 1916. According to his description of the genesis: ...When he was carrying a book of Japanese "Hokus", he went to interview a juvenile court judge, and he had cut through Grant Park and saw the fog over Chicago harbor. He had certainly seen many fogs before, but this time he had to wait forty minutes for the judge, and he only had a piece of newsprint handy, so he decided to create an "American Hoku".
Whereas Elliot, began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910 and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse... It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem pamphlet (or chapbook) titled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917
The fog remains, leaving possible the thought of one person's awareness flowing into another's, to rest on little cat feet before any sudden leaps.
Fun connect, Lydia, regardless of what crept over the pond or didn't!
Elliot's view of old age is now obsolete. What with dental implants we can dare to eat peaches well into our dotage. The widespread acceptance of cargo shorts means that we can walk along the shore without having to roll our trousers.
And Viagra would cheer the old guy up enormously. Bring on more mermaids.
Thanks, MamaM, for that information on the dates of the two poems.
And, William, interesting about Eliot writing on old age -- he apparently completed writing most of Prufrock by the age of 22.
Deborah..you are kidding me, right?
Check the Ryan thread. Tell me that's not TOP redux.
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
I love this line but don't know what the heck its supposed to mean.
Great poetry - for some reason - is usually a young man's game. Very few poets to their best work after 50.
MamaM said...
... persons who pass out poems with the intro, "Here is the next section we will discuss" remind me ...!
... of TOP.
I mean, let us be honest here.
Ari:
"Deborah..you are kidding me, right?
Check the Ryan thread. Tell me that's not TOP redux."
Oh, that. I didn't realize you were commenting on Michael's thread. Like I said, different boards have different bugaboos.
Ari, is my style, or lack thereof, putting you off?
rc, I was never that taken with the repetition of those two lines, but I take them to mean something like the middle class aspiring to higher things, and not really understanding what they are talking about.
Keats wrote some of the most sublime poetry of all time and died of consumption at 23.
Deborah...your style?
No not really...except where is seems to mimic AA on the literature stuff....e.g., with the serial lead ins. Hey, just say, here we are...let's talk!
Generally you are far more knowledgeable on literature than AA ...her degree was long ago...like my black belt in Taekwondo...old and useless now.
I know you are smarter than that...and it is just a bug of mine, going back to AA's refusal to address my rebuttal of her acceptance of John Robert's (grossly)semantically ignorant interpretation of tax versus penalty. Among other things she ignored that I raised as a point. Hubris and arrogance does that.
You are not guilty of any of that. IN short, ignore me on that stuff .... I am a mouthy ass at times.
Ari, I want to have a discussion about a poem. It's not my problem that AA lives in your head. I don't suppose you could have exercised some kindness and simply refrained from commenting in a thread that was of no interest to you.
Very few poets to their best work after 50.
Frost published one of his best when he was past 80! link
He may have written it at as a younger man and saved it. Who knows?
Deborah...I will make a point to ignore anything you post in the future. You obviously did not get the gist my remark at 10:26 PM....it was complimentary. Sorry about that.
BTW ...AA does not live in my head, she lives only in her head. Disingenuous is a compliment if I may say so. Her little hobbit isn't worth mentioning.
"..simply refrained from commenting in a thread that was of no interest to you."
One of the oddest things on the internet is the people who will comment on thread they don't care about. Sometimes they will actually state they "I don't care about this" or "this is boring". Other times, they will post "OT: XYZ" or try to threadjack.
Imagine doing this in real life! I suggest someone go up to water-cooler office conversation and tell your co-workers that "Their conversation is boring and is no interest to you" and that "they should talk XYZ". Come back and tell us their reaction!
This is not a shot at anyone. I'm like Switzerland. I have no desire to attack anyone.
Thank you.
Dare I eat a peach?
Ari, I got the complimentary nature of the comment, unfortunately it followed a criticism based on how my approach reminded you of Althouse. Hope she pays good rent.
"-From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
-Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved,
-And be with caution bold.
-Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
-Nor all that glisters gold."
One of my favorite stanza's.
"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Another Favorite.
"-From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
-Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved,"
Sounds like that should be the epigraph for Downton Abbey. BTW, were you the one I told it was an inferior knock-off of Upstairs, Downstairs? I retract that. It's quite good, now I went on to seasons 3 and 4.
"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 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."
I like this stanza, and realized from the discussion last week that the heavy, pervading fog, that curls once about the house and falls asleep is mirroring the etherized patient.
Chick:
"Thought of in the large
Is one mighty charge
On our human part
Of the soul's ethereal
Into the material."
The human form is entrusted with the Spirit, and the Spirit is propagated through the human form. Cool thought. Not sure how this squares with original sin and other doctrinal issues. Thank you.
@deborah: We had a great conversation in the comments to that thread. I forgot that I wrote this:
The difference between melting and freezing is infinitely small in degrees Fahrenheit and is measured instead in degrees of freedom.
Another curious thread.
Moving through fog to unspecified Frost.
No one's in a hoary...
Rime!
an accumulation of granular ice tufts on the windward sides of exposed objects that is formed from supercooled fog or cloud and built out directly against the wind
Better yet, Rime! The invitation to wonder.
Sorry I didn't notice this until this morning.
Stanzas of weirdness about smog as a cat. It's just odd, a freaky, crazed extended riff on Sandburg. Then ending it with first a line about murder then one about women talking Michelangelo.
A question: Anyone know which came first -- Eliot's allusion to cats with that "yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes" or Sandburg's "fog comes on little cat feet"?
It *must* be, but the publication dates are reversed? Did both of them reference some third poet's preceding verse?
BTW, the yellowness, emphasized, was *smog*, not simple fog. Filth, killing filth. Maybe that's why the following talk of murder?
Thanks, Mitch, I must say we see that stanza differently. I think it is beautifully written. If you only skimmed, you may have missed that I think it references the 'body etherized,' in that it settles about the house and 'falls asleep.
I don't think there is necessarily a connection between Eliot and Sandburg's connecting cat and fog. After all, it does seem to sometimes creep in.
Yes, the yellow fog is dirty and pervading; it contains soot and smoke. Is the etherized body dirty?
"... not simple fog. Filth, killing filth. Maybe that's why the following talk of murder?"
Interesting. I wouldn't tie that in with: 'time to murder and create, time for all the works and days of hand that lift and drop a question on your plate.' But maybe a tie-in with the human condition, the industrial revolution, and the isolation of man in a vast city.
Skimmed or Whole
Comments which invite
Consideration
Allow the wonders
Of hard rime
To form like crystals
And present like fog
Yet be reflective
Crystallizing thought clouds.
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