The general point of view may be described as classicist
in literature, a royalist in politics, and
anglo-catholic in religion.
-T.S.
Eliot describing his worldview
Did T.S. Eliot have a sense of humor? I don't know; but, I sure as heck hope so. Because as we reach its end, the greatest poet of the 20th Century seems destined to be remembered as the guy who wrote Cats. His banishment from the canon was probably inevitable, what with being a white male Christian and the whiff of anti-Semitism wafting from him, but if he ever had a chance to cling to his spot on the basis of his early classics like The Wasteland and Prufrock, works like The Hollow Men pretty much guaranteed he would be consigned to oblivion. For this poem, while not as coherent an attack on Modern values or lack of said, as the writings of someone like C.S. Lewis, is certainly one of the most eloquent.
THE HOLLOW MEN (1927)
Mistah Kurtz-he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is the cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they recieve
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go 'round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go 'round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existance
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
I wouldn't pretend to understand all of this, nor exactly what it is he's trying to say, but I do know what it says to me. I take it as an indictment of Modern man and the failure of confidence that characterizes us. The epigraph about Mr. Kurtz, from Conrad's Heart of Darkness (see Review), seems to harken back longingly for even such monstrous men who at least believed in what they were doing, however horrific the results. It sets up a natural contrast to the hollowness of Modern man , who fundamentally believes in nothing and is, therefore, empty at the core of his being, like a Guy Fawkes dummy.
Two other powerful images really appeal to me. The comparison of the sound of modern voices to "rat's feet over broken glass" aptly dismisses all of the psycho babble and faux spirituality of the age, all of modernity's futile effort to replace the beliefs that have been discarded. And, of course, the great lines, "This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper" remind me of an argument that I used to enjoy during the Cold War when such melodramatics seemed more appropriate; that it would be better to just juke it out with the USSR, just let the missiles fly, than to gradually succumb to Communist domination. Of course, this seems like the product of unbalanced minds now that we've triumphed, but think back to things like Dr. Strangelove and you get a feel for the tenor of the confrontation between absolutists and appeasers. I for one preferred the bang to the whimper.
This is a powerful poem that rewards repeated readings, revealing different
interpretations and images with each successive return.
(Reviewed:27-Dec-99)
Grade: (B+)
