Upon the River of Cydnus

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 77-93







          The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

                    Eliot’s note: “Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II., ii, l. 190.”  See
                    William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.190 (1623).
                    Antony’s friend Enobarbus describes Cleopatra, when she first met
                    Antony: “she purs’d up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.”  He
                    continues (2.2.195-208):

                    The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
                    Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
                    Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
                    The winds were love-sick with them ; the oars were silver,
                    Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
                    The water which they beat to follow faster,
                    As amorous of their strokes.
                    ...O'er- picturing that Venus where we see
                    The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
                    Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
                    With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
                    To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
                    And what they undid did.

                    Venus was the mother of Cupid and Aeneus, further alluded to in
                    the lines to follow (see Eliot’s note at TWL 92).  Compare the
                    undoing and doing by the boys with Pia being made and unmade
                    at TWL 293).

                    See also Shakespeare, Cymbeline 2.4.85-116 (1623), where Iachimo
                    allusively describes Imogen’s chambers to her husband Posthumous:

                    ...First, her bedchamber,
                    Where, I confess, I slept not, but profess
                    Had that was well worth watching--it was hanged
                    With tapestry of silk and silver; the story
                    Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman,
                    And Cydnus swelled above the banks, or for
                    The press of boats or pride: a piece of work
                    So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive
                    In workmanship and value; which I wondered
                    Could be so rarely and exactly wrought,
                    Since the true life on't was–

                    ...The chimney
                    Is south the chamber, and the chimney-piece
                    Chaste Dian bathing: never saw I figures
                    So likely to report themselves.

                    Dian is the wood goddess Diana, whom the hunter Actaeon saw
                    naked while she was bathing in the forest.  See Ovid,
                    Metamorphoses 3:206-312 (AD 8; tr. Samuel Garth, John Dryden, 
                    Alexander Pope et al, 1717).  For other allusions to Actaeon and
                    Diana, see TWL 10 and 197.

          Glowed on the marble, where the glass
          Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
          From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
          (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

                    Iachimo continues, at Cymbeline 2.4.112-116:

                    ... The roof o' the chamber
                    With golden cherubins is fretted: her andirons–
                    I had forgot them--were two winking Cupids
                    Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely
                    Depending on their brands.

          Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
          Reflecting light upon the table as
          The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
          From satin cases poured in rich profusion.
          In vials of ivory and coloured glass
          Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
          Unguent, powdered, or liquid — troubled, confused
          And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
          That freshened from the window, these ascended
          In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
          Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
          Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

                    Eliot’s note: “Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I. 726: dependent lychni
                    laquearibus aureis incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.”
                    See Virgil, Aeneid 1.726-727 (19 BC; tr. John Dryden, 1697):

                    From gilded roofs depending lamps display
                    Nocturnal beams, that emulate the day.

                    After leaving Troy and Italy, Aeneas, in search of a new home,
                    came to Carthage, home of Juno, goddess of marriage. To
                    welcome him, Carthaginian Queen Dido had prepared a lavish
                    banquet, but the night went instead to his brother Cupid after their
                    mother Venus intervened.  Intending to protect Aeneas from Juno,
                    Venus caused him to fall asleep and then had Cupid take his place.
                    This would prove fateful for both Dido and Carthage.  Dido had
                    fallen in love with Aeneas, but they would never marry, and
                    Aeneas would eventually leave Carthage without her, ultimately
                    finding his own place as the founder of Rome.  Dido, left behind,
                    would kill herself, and later Carthage would be defeated and
                    destroyed by the Romans in the Battle of Mylae.  More allusions
                    to DIDO AND CARTHAGE occur at TWL 70 and 307; see also
                    the notes at TWL 12, 31 and 231.

                    For DYSFUNCTIONAL COUPLES beyond Dido and Aeneus, see
                    TWL 111-126 (empty talkers) and TWL 139-172 (Lil & Albert), and the
                    notes at TWL (Isolde & King Mark), 99 (Tereus & Procne), 128
                    (Hamlet & Ophelia) 145 (Lilith & Adam), 198 (Agamemnon &
                    Clytemnestra), 279 (Lord Robert Dudley & Amy Robsart), 293 (Pia
                    de Tolemei) 365 (the traveling bones wife) and 408 (howling wives,
                    men on death beds).  For some balance, see the notes at TWL 165,
                    176 and 289.  Consider also ELIOT’S MARRIAGE to Vivienne
                    Haigh-Wood, who was perpetually troubled from 1915 until her
                    death in 1947.  They separated in 1932 and were permanently
                    estranged in 1938 when she was committed to a mental hospital.
                    In a preface to Valerie Eliot, Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922 (1988),
                    T.S. Eliot later wrote,

                    To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state
                    of mind out of which came The Waste Land.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)