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Poll
How many polls have you answered so far?
One 0%
Two 11%
More 33%
I don't answer polls 0%
Don't make more diary entries or polls 11%
I don't know, but I like thinking that my opinion counts for something! 44%

Votes: 9

 Nya Nya Nya

 Author:  Topic:  Posted:
Apr 27, 2002
 Comments:
I'm bored. I'm going to write a diary entry.
diaries

More diaries by gohomeandshoveit
Suite-Pee
Revelation
New Twist on Godwin's Law
As Per the Norm
IMPEACH REAGAN!!!!!
I don't really want to say anything in my diary, so I'll just provide the Adequacy faithful with a new poll. Enjoy!
[content added by zikzak]

the wasteland
t.s. eliot

Part 1 - Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You canot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

    Frish weht der Wind
    Der Heimat zu
    Mein Irisch Kind,
    Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.'
--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed'und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Whell,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not tnought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
WIth a daed sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae
'THat corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? WIll it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable,--mon frere!'

Part 2 - A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
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)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candeabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meeet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion.
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strnge synthetic perfume
Unguent, powdered, or liquid--troubled, vondused
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 celing.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the clored stone
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footstpes shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

'My nerves are bad t-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rat's alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing.
'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--
It's so elegant
So intelligent
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
'I shall rush out as I am, walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
'What shall we ever do?
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said--
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
YOu have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She had five already and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it--
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goodnight Bill. Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May. Goodnight.
Ta ta. Goodnight. Goodnight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

Part 3 - The Fire Sermon

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The ratttle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
THe sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street HOtel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food; in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest--
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at one;
Exploring hands rencounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked amongh the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed love;
Her brain allows one-half formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramaphone.

'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
THe pleasant whining of a mandolin
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
WIth the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala


Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

'Trams and dusty trees
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'

'My feet are Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event)
He wept. He promisd "a new start."
I made no comment. What should I resent?'

'On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.'
la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning


Part 4 - Death by Water

Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering whirpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Part 5 - What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardends
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
WIth a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even slience in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
--But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Why are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and burst in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
ANd upsdie down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
THere is an empty chapel, on the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we give?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirums a prison
Only at nightfaull, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon--O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

    Shantih shantih shantih



yuck (none / 0) (#1)
by tkatchev on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 03:52:35 AM PST
I simply cannot stand Eliot. He is a fraud and a lying crackpot.


--
Peace and much love...




Why? (none / 0) (#6)
by hauntedattics on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 10:21:01 AM PST
Because of all the other literary references? The other languages? The vivid imagery?



Well, let me think... (none / 0) (#7)
by tkatchev on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 10:51:43 AM PST
...maybe because he cannot write poetry?

Maybe you also consider Warhol to be a "great painter"?




--
Peace and much love...




No. (none / 0) (#8)
by hauntedattics on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 11:10:37 AM PST
I don't consider Warhol to be a great anything, except maybe a great pain in the ass. Which is what you'll become very quickly if you insist upon answering sincere questions with crap like that. Just because you don't like Eliot doesn't mean he's neither a good poet nor worth reading.




This just proves that you don't know... (none / 0) (#9)
by tkatchev on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 12:08:31 PM PST
...anything at all about poetry.

Read some real poets, ones who know what they are talking about -- Yeats, or Frost, for example.

Eliot is a horrible, talentless, boring quack. We're not even talking about Warhol-level idiocy here -- think more along the lines of Piet Mondrian for the poetry snobs.


--
Peace and much love...




funny thing (none / 0) (#10)
by nathan on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 02:09:11 PM PST
Yeats and Eliot admired one another a good deal, and both of them admired Joyce.

Was the great poet Yeats too dumb to call a faker when he saw one? Even Nabokov didn't hate Eliot (he called Eliot "not quite first-rate," which is better than what he had to say about the likes of Faulkner.)

I'll agree that, purely as a writer of formal poetry, Eliot was not in the same league as Shakespeare, Milton or Donne. His poetry, contrariwise, has its own greatness and contains many a profound thought clearly expressed. Give the man his due.

To shift the subject slightly, do you like the Elisabethan writers, tkatchev? I must say that I'm getting really partial to some of it. It's ture that I have a bit of a sweet tooth for that sort of thing at the moment.

Nathan
--
Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

OK then. (none / 0) (#11)
by tkatchev on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 02:21:09 PM PST
Eliot may be a good writer, but I really object when he is called a poet. What he writes is by no means poetry. I mean, even Updike's prose is much closer to poetry than whatever Eliot writes; try to arrange Updike in columns and see what you get.

(Sorry, this is a very sore sticking point of mine.)

The Elisabethan stuff is cute. :) I liked it, though it's heavy and confusing reading.


--
Peace and much love...




well then (none / 0) (#12)
by nathan on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 02:27:54 PM PST
We are both satisfied.

I'm preparing an article on Elisabethan writers; watch for it!

Nathan
--
Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

and both are satisfied, (4.00 / 1) (#14)
by because it isnt on Tue Apr 30th, 2002 at 07:20:14 AM PST
If no one has misjudged himself. Or lied.
adequacy.org -- because it isn't

 
You know, (none / 0) (#2)
by Anonymous Reader on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 04:02:53 AM PST
The only thing I ever really liked about old Bertrand Russell was that he bagged TS Eliot's wife. That was pretty cool.

I really want to discuss something different, though. Lately I've been thinking a lot about that scene in Re-Animatior where the re-animated corpse of the father squeezes the villain's disembodied head so it bursts like a ripe melon. What a great movie. I've got to rent that again some time.

So my question is: has anybody here besides me contemplated the erotic possibilites of a lover with a living, detachable head? You could kiss them on the mouth while taking them from behind, for instance. The possibilites are endless. I hope science perfects the technology for keeping a human head alive soon.


Boom mike? (none / 0) (#3)
by Ernest Bludger on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 06:49:12 AM PST
Was Re-animator one of many movies where the boom mike is clearly visible for far longer than it should be? Love it.


 
why bother posting this? (none / 0) (#4)
by nathan on Sun Apr 28th, 2002 at 12:11:25 PM PST
I've already memorized it.

Nathan
--
Li'l Sis: Yo, that's a real grey area. Even by my lax standards.

 
nana (none / 0) (#5)
by Anonymous Reader on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 03:20:51 AM PST
Hello?


 
Gracias (none / 0) (#13)
by gohomeandshoveit on Mon Apr 29th, 2002 at 06:50:47 PM PST
Many thanks to zikzak for giving my otherwise content-free diary entry some worthwhile substance. I will try to add something of pseudo-interest next time I do an entry.

Step One: Read my screen name.
Step Two: Act upon what you just read.
Step Three: Have a nice day!


 

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