Myth, Allusion, Gender, in the Early Poetry of TS Elliot

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Myth, Allusion, Gender, in the Early Poetry ofT. S. Eliot
Simon Matthew lames Cattle
PhD
University of Edinburgh
2000
Abstract
T. S. Eliot's use of allusion is crucial to the structure and themes of his early poetry. It may
be viewed as a compulsion, evident in even the earliest poems, rather than just affectation or
elitism. His allusions often involve the reversal or re-ordering of constructions of gender in
other literature, especially in other literary treatments of myth. Eliot's "classical" anti
Romanticism may be understood according to this dual concern with myth and gender, in
that his poetry simultaneously derives from and attacks a perceived "feminised" Romantic
tradition, one which focuses on female characters and which fetishises, particularly, a
sympathetic portrayal of femmes fatales of classical myth, such as Circe, Lamia and Venus.
Eliot is thus subverting, or "correcting", what are themselves often subversive genderings of
myth. Another aspect of myth, that of the quest, is set in opposition to the predatory female
by Eliot. A number of early poems place flG.neur figures in the role of questers in a context
of constraining feminine influence. These questers attempt, via mysticism, to escape from or
blur gender and sexuality, or may be ensnared by such things in fertility rituals. A sado
masochistic motivation towards martyrdom is present in poems between I 9 I I and I 920.
With its dual characteristics of disguise and exposure, Eliotic allusion to ritual and myth is
itself a ritual (of literary re-enactment) based on a myth (of literature), namely Eliot's
"Tradition". Allusive reconfiguration being a two-way process, Eliot's poetry is often
implicitly subverted or "corrected" by its own allusions. Thus we are offered more complex
representations of gender than may first appear; female characters may be viewed as
sympathetic as well as predatory, male ones as being constructed often from representations
of femininity rather than masculinity. The poems themselves demonstrate intense awareness
of this fluctuation of gender, which appears in earlier poems as a threat, but in The Waste
Land as the potential for a rapprochement between genders. This poem comprises multiple
layers of re-enactments and reconfigurations of gender-in-myth, centring upon
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. The Waste Land's treatment of myth should not be seen as
merely reflecting a passing interest in anthropology, but as the culmination of concerns with
myth and gender dating back to the earliest poetry. The complex interrelation of the two
aspects leaves it unclear whether Eliot's allusive compulsion derives principally from a
concern with mythologies of literature or from a concern with mythologies of gender.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Aidan Day, for his kind and extensive
advice and practical assistance. These have been of great value, and are much
appreciated. I have also been fortunate enough to benefit from the insight, expertise
and encouragement of the following people, to whom I am most grateful: Professor
Ian Campbell, Professor Cairns Craig, Ronnie Graham, Dr Kevin MacGinlay,
Brendan MacGurk, Teresa Murray, Dr Stephen Priest, Tanja Rahneberg, Monika
Smialkowska, Dr Lee Spinks and Imogen Walker. Finally, I would like to thank my
family, especially my parents and my sister Rachel, for their extremely generous
support and encouragement, without which this work would not have been possible.
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations have been employed with regard to works repeatedly
referred to. In each case, the full bibliographical information is given in a footnote at
the first instance of reference.
Wilkie Collins: WIW- The Woman in White
T. S. Eliot: ECP- Collected Poems: 1909-1962
FI.A -For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays in Style and Order
IOTMH- Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917
PWIEY- Poems Written in Early Youth
SE- Selected Essays
SP -Selected Prose
TCTC- To Criticise the Critic
TSW- The Sacred Wood
TWL- The Waste Land
TWLfacs - The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the
Original Draft
UOP- The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Oscar Wilde: PODG- The Picture of Dorian Gray
Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Declaration
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One -Authenticity and Allusion 6
Chapter Two -Marionette and Quester: Public and Private Ritual 33
Chapter Three -Midnight shakes the memory: The Symbolism of
"Rhapsody on a Windy Night" 59
Chapter Four- "One inevitable cross": Martyrdom 90
Chapter Five- "That Old Classical Drag": The Waste Land 133
Conclusion 221
Bibliography 223
Myth, Allusion, Gender, in the Early Poetry ofT. S. Eliot.
Introduction
I
In November 1923, Dial magazine carried a review of lames Joyce's novel Ulysses
entitled "Ulysses, Order, and Myth". The reviewer was T. S. Eliot. Eliot praised
Joyce's employment of Homer's Odyssey as a kind of symbolic narrative framework
for his novel, which is a simultaneously panoramic and microscopic depiction of one
day in Dublin in 1904. The startling variety and compendious nature of Ulysses is
better experienced by the reader than described by the critic here, but in short, and
put simply, it is long and difficult.
In what was to become a famous statement, Eliot assessed Ulysses as marking
a potential shift of titanic proportions in approaches to writing: "Instead of narrative
method, we may now use the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward
making the modern world possible for art" I. The line about making the world
possible for art (rather than art possible for the world) is typically provocative. What
does seem clear is that Eliot was not just describing Joyce and his novel in the article;
the appreciative reviewer is not so much casting light on Ulysses as signalling back at
it with his own mirror.
"Ulysses, Order and Myth" has commonly been viewed, in retrospect, as
much as an implicit justification for Eliot's own poetic masterpiece of the previous
year, The Waste Land, as an explicit one for Joyce's; the great modernist novel and
the great modernist poem are imagined side by side, with the family resemblance
plain to see. Indeed, it is on the grounds that this is what Eliot principally intended by
the article that Karl Shapiro came later to reject the notion of a Waste Land to which
myth was integral: for, he claimed, Eliot had misunderstood Ulysses in viewing it as
a parallel with Homer - the "mythical" form was "worthless and not even true",
equally inapplicable to both works2. The validity of this remark is partly a question
for scholars of Joyce; the reasoning is certainly strange. Nevertheless, leaving
I Dial, 75: 5 (November 1923), 480-83 (p.483).
2 The Death of Literary Judgement (excerpt), in T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land; A Case Book, ed. C. B.
Cox and Arnold P. Hinchliffe (London: Macmillan, 1986), pp.62-63 (p.62).
2
Ulysses aside, Shapiro's anti-mythical stance towards interpretation of The Waste
Land is one that has been shared by a number of other, quite vociferous, critics, so
that, as I shall discuss later in this work, there now exists a critical consensus towards
the poem in this respect that is, if no longer hostile, then at least sceptical or
indifferent.
It is because The Waste Land is viewed as central to Eliot's poetic
achievement, so revolutionary and inimitable is its form, that the question of its own
mythical quotient, real or imagined, has a powerful and unavoidable bearing on any
consideration of myth's role and significance elsewhere in his work. Subsequent to
The Waste Land's publication, the role of the myth in that text was addressed almost
wholly with regard to references to the anthropological works of Sir 1a mes Frazer
and Jessie Weston that were to be found in the Notes Eliot appended to the piece.
While these references aroused interest and enthusiasm with some critics, there
increasingly set in a reaction against the propriety and validity of such pointers. The
history of this controversy is something I examine later in this study, but the
important point is that the role of myth in the poem was then, and still is, seen to
stand or fall in relation to these outside references. Even those who have viewed
Frazer and Weston as successfully integrated elements of the poem's significance
have tended to understand this treatment of myth as unique in Eliot's poetry - a
notable exception being Robert Crawford, who makes a strong argument in finding
widespread anthropological influences throughout Eliot's work3. Those who have
seen The Waste Land as a conspicuous failure to deal with the mythical theme have,
of course, been even less inclined to look for evidence of it elsewhere in the oeuvre.
It is the central supposition of this thesis that, rather than "the mythical method"
being something to be considered simply with regard to The Waste Land, this method
is in fact a founding principle upon which his poetic revolution was built; Eliot was
not merely justifying The Waste Land in the Dial, he was justifying almost his entire
literary output to that point. The Waste Land is really no more "mythical" in its
themes and forms than the rest of Eliot's early poetry - which is to say that it is, in
fact, highly mythical.
3 The Savage and the City in the Work of T. S. Eliot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
3
11
There are two main senses in which one might understand the term
"mythical" today, and which are both relevant to a discussion of Eliot's work, namely
the anthropological and the psychoanalytical. Writers such as Weston and Frazer
clearly come into the picture with regard to the anthropological, and the likes of lung
and Freud into the psychoanalytical. They may even be seen by some as overlapping
or even identical. My study makes reference to both of these strands of the
"mythical", but it is a third strand, namely literary myth, which constitutes my main
focus of interest. By "literary myth" I mean principally representations and re
workings of myth in individual works, and the intertextual relationship of such re
workings in a literary tradition. In a subordinate but closely related sense, I refer also
to a kind of myth-of-literature: the way in which writers and texts make use of mythic
frameworks and symbolism not just for subject matter but also as a way of
envisioning the role of the poem and poet themselves in relation to other poems and
poets within history and culture.
Consequently, this study is very largely concerned with T. S. Eliot's practice
of literary allusion - the echoing and alteration of previous works of literature. I have
attempted to identify a number of new sources in this respect. The study of allusion
runs the risk of descending into pedantry or simple self-delusion, in that the reality
and significance of perceived literary echoes is a problem of some magnitude
linguistically and philosophically. Nevertheless, the allusive method is one of Eliot's
self-professed techniques, and consideration of it is, to my mind, central to an
understanding of his poetry and his role as a poet. The sources I refer to have
suggested to me that the habitual use of specifically mythical allusions is a marked
characteristic of Eliot's poetry, in terms both of character and action. Further, with
regard to the actual significance of these mythical allusions, it has seemed to me that
again and again Eliot's choice of references and the nature of his alterations point to
a preoccupation with gender. Again, such a preoccupation may be seen as pointing
back to the question of this male poet's relation to his social and literary context.
Since all these aspects of myth, literature and gender may be seen to overlap,
intersect, and sometimes form unbroken circles, in order to make my argument
4
comparatively simple, and not too long, I have chosen a more or less chronological
rather than purely thematic pattern of discussion, and my survey extends only up to
and including The Waste Land. It does, though, include some examination of earlier
poems from the recently published Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917.
There are to be found in these poems clear indications of an already highly
developed, indeed one might say compulsive, allusive technique, as well as an often
surprisingly explicit concern with myth and gender. As John T. Mayer has observed,
had Eliot persisted with and published as planned a number of these early poems "we
would have a very different view of the early Eliot than the conventional one based
on what Eliot published, poems such as "Prufrock", "Portrait of a Lady", and Boston
satires like "Cousin Nancy""4. The view would, I believe, rightly have shown far
more than has been the case the importance of myth and gender throughout the early
poetry.
This study is in five chapters. In the first chapter I try to give indications of
how Eliot's allusive technique functions, and consider its relation to ideas of influence
and gender. In the second chapter I examine early works from Inventions of the March
Hare and some from Prufrock and Other Observations, with particular regard to the
employment of marionette and flaneur figures as mythic questers torn between social
and mystic ends. Chapter Three is given over to a detailed discussion of "Rhapsody on
A Windy Night", an important and neglected poem, it seems to me, where gender
anxiety and myth meet in a dream re-enactment of fertility rituals. Chapter Four
considers a related character to the mythic quester, namely the martyr, from the poems
written at the time of "Rhapsody", through "The Death of Saint Narcissus", and up to
"Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar", a poem which may be understood
in theme and technique as a miniature model for The Waste Land, which is itself the
subject of the fifth chapter, and in which gender reversal is central to the re-enactment
of other literary texts and their own representations of myth.
In this study, I describe Eliot's allusive technique as "compulsive", and relate
it particularly to its treatment of, and entanglement with, gender. This obviously
suggests the possibility of a biographical reading, to which I imagine the ideas in this
4 "The Waste Land and Eliot's Poetry Notebook", in T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History, ed. Ronald
Bush (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp.67-90 (p.90).