TS Elliot – The Hollow Men. LitDiscourse – Verses Inked

In the times of Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Literature Prize in 2017, we at Verses Inked are still talking about Elliot – winner of the award in 1948, for his distinguished and among all, ‘pioneering’ contribution to the field of literature.

You could not but be preoccupied with poetry at Verses Inked.September 28th is observed as National Poetry day in the United Kingdom and Ireland. September 26th is the birth anniversary of T.S.Elliot, preceded by a day each by the birthdays of William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. An overdose of poetry and literature. The kind of stuff that gets us exited at Verses Inked.

April, however is the cruelest month, as Elliot says in the opening lines of his much revered – The Waste Land. April as a matter of fact and co-incidence is also celebrated as the National Poetry month by the Academy of American poets.

Now to a day of business at Verses Inked. About the Verses Inked way of going about an affair. More than making the best of a given situation. Its about talking what you want to talk about. Its about sharing an experience. It is how you distinguish an occasion. It is about keeping a tradition going.

TS Elliot – The Hollow men – LitDiscourse -Verses Inked.

“this is the way the world ends,

this is the way the world ends,

this is the way the world ends,

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

The famous concluding stanza from the poem, the hollow men, a poem identified the social and political tensions in Europe post world war I. An in-between phase for the author in many ways. The above quoted stanza, arguably is the most quoted lines in 20th century poetry. Yet to speak of beginnings. The poem commences upon its course with the following lines.

Mistah Kurtz he dead

A penny for the old guy.

Two seemingly harmless references before the verse is delivered and a TS Elliot masterclass is set upon its destined projectile.

Mistah Kurtz is a key character in Joseph Conrad’s Novella – The Heart of Darkness. The persona in chief who in the shadow of the vile capitalist forces renders relevance to the title.

The next line – ‘A penny for the old guy’, is cry from British kids for donations to buy fireworks on Guy Fawkes day, to commemorate the failure of the gun powder plot.

In fact the mention of 2 monumentally shadowed characters to commence on a barrage of the most extra-ordinary verse, which makes TS Elliot one among the masters of modernism.

Even as the poem commences, the modernist poet right away is hard put to task, drawing heavily from formalism and Imagism. Rhythmic, precise, intricately structured, heart wrenching, lyrical, drawing vivid imagery and that should be it. A true student of the art as the modernist poet is, there are several references to Dante, to be followed by a hint of a mention of Shakespeare’s Brutus, and a reference to the Lord’s Prayer in the lines, ‘For thine is the kingdom.’

As a body of work, the poem in its entirety is of 98 lines. Far too much of literature for poetry to be exhaustive about and not sound academic. More-so when the entire compilation of the verse is quote worthy, at every drop of a punctuation. Death has an a predominant influence on the subject matter. Death qualifies as a kingdom, described with the adjectives – dream, twilight and other. The theme of the poem, which elevates as the common factor in the various segments of the poem, is a sense of incompleteness, complimented with futile excesses and rank obscenities. Yet all so exquisite poetry to sound, as only was possible in the early half of the 20th century. The poet draws brilliant, vivid images in quick succession through out the entire expanse of the written verse.

The entire verse is laid out in the following segment for the benefit of the reader. Plain and simple poetry – As and how we have had known it. This is how after all – The World Ends . In a Whimper. The state of poetry..rests its case.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer-

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.