Mr. Eugenides

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 207-214 






          Unreal City

                    See TWL 61, setting the city in the fog of a winter dawn.  Time is not linear,
                    however, and memories are fragmented; compare TWL 202, 222, 263. 

                    The UNREAL CITY recurs at TWL 60, 207, 259 and 377; see also
                    TWL 374-376 and the note at TWL 434, and see the note at TWL 66 for 
                    specific London references.

          Under the brown fog of a winter noon

                    The noon fog rolls in just as we are about to meet Mr. Eugenides.
                    By his name alone, MR. EUGENIDES would seem to be one who is well-bred
                    (eugenetic), but the image here of an unshaven, demotic London currant 
                    merchant is unmitigatedly negative. His no-credit sales suggest a lack of 
                    trust; he chooses to speak a base version of French instead of the Greek or 
                    Turkish of his native Smyrna or the English of his clientele; and he operates 
                    within the prevailing brown fog of an unreal city. Even the product he sells, 
                    small dried grapes, are far from what one would hope to find in a healing holy 
                    grail. In his notes, Eliot marked him as the “one-eyed” merchant in the Tarot 
                    deck (see TWL 52 and note at TWL 46) and his invitation directly follows an 
                    oblique reminder of Philomela’s rape (see TWL 203-206), suggesting that this 
                    too is the woven tapestry and birdsong of a victim’s report. But Eliot’s notes 
                    also associated the merchant with victims, identifying him as one who “melts 
                    into” the sailor who drowned and lost his looks and stature (see note at TWL
                    218 and see TWL312-321) and who in turn is tied to the drowned hyacinth girl
                    (see note at TWL 126). The merchant's one eye may also allude to the Norse 
                    god Odin, who gave up half his sight in exchange for a drink from the Well of 
                    Wisdom; see Storri Sturluson, The Prose Edda (ca. 1300 AD). This 
                    ambiguity of identity, a continuing feature among all of the poem’s characters 
                    (see note at TWL 38), will culminate in the next scene with Tiresias, an 
                    androgynous blind observer whom Eliot cryptically asserted was highly 
                    important and yet “not indeed a character” (see note at TWL 218).

          Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
          Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
          C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

                    Eliot's note: 

                    The currants were quoted at a price ‘carriage and insurance free to London’; 
                    and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of 
                    the sight draft.  

                    I.e., shipping costs were built into the price, payable on delivery. 

          Asked me in demotic French

                    Demotic means common, of the people. Demotic and demobbed (TWL 139)
                    were the only specific words Ezra Pound had suggested to improve the poem, 
                    but he also offered general encouragement and suggested broad edits.  
                    See note at the Dedication and 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).

          To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel 
          Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

                    The Cannon Street Hotel, a hotel frequented by businessmen commuting to 
                    and from the Continent, was also reputed to be a homosexual rendezvous; 
                    the Metropole was a luxury resort hotel on England’s southern coast. The 
                    merchant’s homosexuality might also be inferred by the currants in his 
                    pockets (TWL 210); see Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: These, I, Singing 
                    in Spring (1892), in which currants are among the wild plants being 
                    “collect[ed] for lovers” as “the token of comrades”: 

                    Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
                    Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet.

                    In the gathering of WEEDS AND WILDFLOWERS, there is a more somber 
                    parallel, however: Compare the merchant’s currants with the “weedy 
                    trophies” that Ophelia reached for at her watery death (see notes at TWL
                    172 and 378), or Cornelia’s leaves and flowers covering unburied men (see 
                    note at TWL 74). See also Walt Whitman, Memories of President Lincoln 7: 

                    Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes
                    With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,

                    and compare the plants that drain their forgetfulness along the River Lethe 
                    (see note at TWL 4). See also the death and mourning ties of the lilac (TWL 2),
                    the hyacinth (TWL 35) and the violet (note at TWL 378). 


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