T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 307-311:
To Carthage then I came
See Augustine, Confessions 3: 1.1 (398 AD):
...to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.
Compare Aeneas’ visit to Carthage at Virgil, Aeneid 1 (19 BC, tr. John Dryden 1697).
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.
and see Confessions 10: 16, 25:
For thus do I remember Carthage, thus all places where I have been, thus men's faces
whom I have seen, and things reported by the other senses; thus the health or
sickness of the body. For when these things were present, my memory received from
them images, which being present with me, I might look on and bring back in my
mind, when I remembered them in their absence.
See also Confessions 10: 6, 9, reflecting this poem’s attention to each of the
classical elements in turn:
And what is this [God]? I asked the earth, and it answered me, ‘I am not He’; and
whatsoever are in it confessed the same. I asked the sea and the deeps, and the living
creeping things, and they answered, ‘We are not thy God, seek above us.’ I asked the
moving air; and the whole air with his inhabitants answered, ‘Anaximenes was
deceived, I am not God.’ I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, ‘Nor (say they) are
we the God whom thou seekest.’ And I replied unto all the things which encompass
the door of my flesh: ‘Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me
something of Him.’ And they cried out with a loud voice, ‘He made us.’
Burning burning burning burning
Eliot’s note: “The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon, (which corresponds in
importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be
found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism in Translation (Harvard
Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the
Occident.” See THE FIRE SERMON (Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, Adittapariyaya
Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 35.28 (483 BC, tr. Warren, 1896)):
The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire;
impressions received by the eye are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant,
unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by
the eye, that also is on fire. And with what are these on fire? With the fire of
passions, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation, with birth, old
age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.
...Perceiving this, O priests, the learned and noble disciple conceives an aversion
for the eye, conceives an aversion for forms, an aversion for eye-consciousness,
an aversion for the impressions received by the eye; and whatever sensation,
pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions
received by the eye... And in conceiving this aversion, he becomes divested of
passion, and by the absence of passion he becomes free, and when he is free he
becomes aware that he is free; and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he
has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do, and that he
is no more for this world.
Throughout this poem, THE EYE is veiled or averted: it fails (TWL 39), is forbidden
(TWL 54), fixes on the feet (TWL 65), hides behind wings (TWL 81), presses lidless
(TWL 138), weeps (TWL 182), turns upward from the desk (line 216) and is covered,
then opened (TWL 360-363). And compare THE PERCEPTIVENESS of the blind
Tiresias (see TWL 218) with that of the unseeing Madame Sosostris (TWL 54); the
one-eyed merchant with his allusion to the one-eyed Odin (TWL 52, 54); and the
pearly-eyed sailor (TWL 48).
Eliot reserved his discussion of the Fire Sermon, the source of the title to Section 3,
until the section’s last lines, and he immediately commingled this Buddhist lesson with
the teachings of Jesus and the reflections of St Augustine. With these pillars, the fire
section contemplates healing by a purging of emotions. Some have speculated at what
the poet wanted to personally purge, but revealing this was probably not his intent. See
Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919):
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the
expression of personality, but an escape from personality. ...There are many people
who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, ...But very few know
when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the
poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the
poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the
work to be done.
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning
Eliot’s note: “From St. Augustine's Confessions again. The collocation of these two
representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the
poem, is not an accident.” See Confessions 10: 34, 53 (tr. E. B. Pusey, 1838):
And I, though I speak and see this, entangle my steps with these outward beauties;
but Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-
kindness is before my eyes. For I am taken miserably, and Thou pluckest me out
mercifully; sometimes not perceiving it, when I had but lightly lighted upon them;
otherwhiles with pain, because I had stuck fast in them.
The reference to being plucked out mercifully comes from Psalm 25:15:
Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.
For a harsher plucking out, see Matthew 5:29 from THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT:
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable
for thee that one of thy members should perish , and not that thy whole body should
be cast into hell.
At Eliot’s own prompting, compare Jesus's Sermon on the Mount with the Buddha’s
Fire Sermon and St. Augustine’s Confessions. Jesus’s Sermon was delivered at the
beginning of his ministry, not long after he had been tested in the wilderness. It includes
many well known lessons, such as the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer and the salt and
light metaphors; see Matthew 5: 13, 14:
Ye are the salt of the earth... Ye are the light of the world
but also some harsh morality checks, as in the “eye” passages on how to respond to
one’s own adultery (see above) and how to react to the evil of others. See
Matthew 5: 38-39:
...Ye have heard that it hath been said , An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy
right cheek, turn to him the other also.
The morality check passages in the Sermon on the Mount are comparable to the
austerity measures of the Fire Sermon and Augustine’s Confessions, but see also a
continuation of the light metaphor at Matthew 6: 22-23:
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body
shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
This inner light concept is elusive, though; see Francis Beaumont and John
Fletcher, Philaster 3.2 (1620):
Preach to birds and beasts
What woman is, and help to save them from you;
How heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts
More hell than hell has; how your tongues, like scorpions,
Both heal and poison; how your thoughts are woven
With thousand changes in one subtle web,
And worn so by you;
...How all the good you have is but a shadow,
I' the morning with you, and at night behind you
Past and forgotten.
This refers back to TWL 27-29:
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
See also TWL 41:
looking into the heart of light, the silence.
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