T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 69-76
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
Early readers asserted that Stetson referred to Eliot’s friend Ezra
Pound, who was known to wear the occasional Stetson cowboy hat
and who, by being Eliot’s “lecteur,” or editor, was given
the poem’s opening dedication. Eliot denied the Stetson-Pound
connection but never gave a more satisfactory alternative, suggesting
only that Stetson was not an actual person but a generic London banker
with an arbitrarily common name. See T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, a
Facsimile & Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations
of Ezra Pound, edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot (1971).
But there may be another more plausible explanation. In World War I,
Australian troops, who would have been more associated with a naval
battle and buried corpses than a London banker, wore felt Stetson hats,
and it was among these troops at Gallipoli, where furloughed soldiers
sang to Mrs Porter (see TWL 199), that Eliot’s friend Jean Verdenal
died (alluded to at TWL 42).
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
The Battle of Mylae (260 BC) resulted in a Roman naval victory
over Carthage, home of Aeneus’s onetime seducer Queen Dido
(alluded to at TWL 92). In present tense, the battle is over and the
surviving sailors are grounded. See also the return of troops
alluded to at TWL 62.
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
See 1 Corinthians 15: 37, 42-44:
And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be,
but bare grain ...So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in
corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is
raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is
sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.
In a Christian tradition said to have begun in the Moravian Church,
Easter Sunrise Service is held in a churchside graveyard called “God’s
Acre,” where the bodies of the dead are “sown as seed.” Thus, this
Burial of the Dead section ends where it begins, with the possibility of
stirring dull roots in spring. The reader’s brother (mon semblable, mon
frère) remains uncertain, though, and still perceives the season’s cruelty;
he closes the section with questions and exclamations that are all earth,
no air, water or fire.
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
Eliot’s note: Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil. 5.4.96-105. From
John Webster, The White Devil 5.4.96-105 (1612), this is Cornelia’s song
as she lay flowers around a corpse, giving the impression that she has lost
her mind:
CORNELIA
Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the fieldmouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm
And, when gay tombs are robb'd, sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
Compare this to Ophelia’s final actions in William Shakespeare,
Hamlet 4.7.166-169 (1605):
QUEEN
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
“You! hypocrite lecteur! —mon semblable, —mon frère!”
Eliot’s note: V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal. From Charles
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal: Au Lecteur (The Flowers of Evil: To
the Reader) (1867; tr. J. Vold, 2013):
...And yet among the jackals, panthers, apes,
The bitches, scorpions, vultures, serpents, beasts,
Of all the vile menagerie of our vices
That bark, howl, grunt and crawl upon the ground,
There’s one more ugly, wicked and unclean
Who without dramatic gestures or great cries
Would easily turn our planet into trash
And swallow up the world with just a yawn:
See Boredom’s eye hold back a wanton tear
Welled up from gallows dreams and hookah smoke.
You’ve met him, reader, the consummated monster:
You! Hypocrite lecteur! My twin! My brother!”
See also Eliot, The Lesson of Baudelaire (1921):
All first-rate poetry is occupied with morality: This is the lesson of
Baudelaire. ...English poetry, all the while, either evaded the
responsibility, or assumed it with too little seriousness. ...On the other
hand, the poets ...who know a little French, are mostly such as could
imagine the Last Judgement only as a lavish display of Bengal lights,
Roman candles, catherine-wheels and inflammable fire-balloons.
Vous, hypocrite lecteur!
from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)
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