"O, that this too too sullied flesh ‑‑" : T.S.Eliot's "The hollow men"
著者(英) Miyuki Kosetsu
journal or
publication title
Core
number 9
page range 1‑19
year 1980‑03‑20
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000016391
1
0 , T h a t T h i s Too Too S u l l i e d F l e s h . . . "
一 一
‑T.S .
Eliot' s The Hollow Men"一 一 一
Miyuki Kosetsu
It is commonly agreed that" The Hollow Men門 representsthe nadir of Eliot's despair. F. O. Matthiessen
,
for instance,
writes that from the early poems through The Waste Land,
"the prevailing theme of Eliotラspoems is the emptiness of life without belief,
an emptiness that finally resounds with sickening Iear and desperation in 'The Hollow Men.'円 1 Let us make a brieI survey of what 1 conceive to be Eliot泡
despair.
From the beginning Eliot has been trying to find the significance of living. This is to establish between the two choices: one being the reflective
,
asceticラother司worldlyway of life; and the other the immedi‑ate
,
vital,
this‑worldly way. In the former he would have to yield himself up to divine love,
and in the latter he would have to plunge himself in human love. In either way,
commitment is vital,
if he is to make life meaningful. And this commitment is what the Prufrockian speakers,
such as Prufrock himself,
the young man in Portrait of a Lady, "
and the speaker of The Waste Landタabso1ute1ylack. Those areviolent souls" who "have cro附 djWith direct eyes" to death
,
whether the ultimate end is salvation or damnation,
which Is at least better than being in the eternal Limbo.In the poems in the 1920 volume
,
we have seen‑along with the2 0, That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's Th己HollowMen"
increasing polarization of the Prufrockian type indining to the other‑ worldly way oflife
,
and the Sweeneyish type representing a this‑worldly way of life‑the historicizing and universalization of the opposition and the poetラsalmost deliberate denial oI the vital way of life through human love. And The Waste Land is the whole‑scale rendering of this theme of the futility of human love and of this world,
assembling evi司 dences from every dεtail of life. All is dross here on earth; no ecstasy of earthly love can match the state of beatific union which the speaker of TheれTasteLand seems to have glimpsed in that experience in the hyacinth garden. Through the vision blighted" by this ineffable experience of ful五
llment,
the speaker,
seeing the world around hi:rn,
passes judgement upon it and regards himself self‑pityingly as victim of universal degradation.
The J!Vaste Land is a horizontal universalization of the poetラsview of the human predicament
,
as it depicts failures ofhuman love everywhere in the ,,,'orld and at every time in historう ん
1n "The Hollow Men, "
howeverラwecan recognize the poεtラsincreasing endeavour to conceive experience in the vertical dimension. The hint of the vertical dimen‑
sion doubtless is present in The Waste Land
,
notably in the voices of the thunder; but there the poem moves mainly along the horizontal coor‑ dinate axis. 1n" The Hol1ow Men, "
the poet comes to recognize the absolute and ultimate insignificance of man and what man does as a particular body,
in the divine eyes; none can c1aim to be perfect before God. This is universalization that is vertical. Having realized this vertical dimension the Doet becomes less concerned about man's significance as unique individual,
as a particu1ar body; achievement here on earth seemョtohim ofless importance.0, Tnat This Too Too Sullif:d F12sh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men " 3 An ordinary man's despair would stop here
,
though doubtl号ssit is already too much. But Eliot,
being a poet,
has the clamouring need to drag out that despair into daylight,
in the form of poetry. He finds himselfin a paradoxical situation. To wrIte poetry is to ma)児 sensual apprehension of the vvorld,
as Eliot writes in his essay on the mεtaphysi圃 cal poets: Teロ丘ysonand Browning are poets,
and thξy think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a 1'ose. A thought to Donne was an exper、ience;it modified his sensibility." 2It is to p1'esent the poetラsvision in all its visibiliγand tactility. Eve立
that Vv'hich is quite
‑ a
bstract 01' ineffable 01: unearthly must be packed into words enchained to earthlinessぅ unlessone vvhollyァieldsto the ineffabilityラasDante does at the end of Paradiso,
saying, "
Th巴nC己for‑ ward,
what1
saw,
/vVas not fo1' words to speakラnorJTlεinorγs sd可
To stand against such outrage on her skill.日 Towl ' I
te poetry is to be immersed in particularity. And this is precisely what Eliot is trying to retreat合omas his way of life. The Hollowl ¥ l I
en " bet1'ays the ve1'y collision ofthese t'¥NO opposing motives. Beneath its d1'astic aらstractnes宮of expression
,
simme1'ing and erupting 1S the inextricable yeaming fo1'particularity
ヘ
Thepoem rep1'esents a tightrope feat of Eliot. The purpose of this essay is to show how the poet endeavours to hold within an utte1'ly abstract fo1'u'1 the seething pa1'ticularlty that rduses to be contained.F
1'om the humble realization of the ultimate insignificance of man's existence,
there can be two ways that a1'e conceivably taken.出 。
can work towards the ful五llmentof human love he1'e on earth as best we can; or one can completely yield himself up to divine love
,
divesting himself of ea1'thly attachments. And Eliot steers towards the latter in4 0, That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Mell "
this poem; and it is well in keeping with his spiritua
. 1
movement hitherto. It is" the be‑all and the end‑all" giving up of the search for a unique self within its time and p1ace. He no 10nger wishes to be a heroic figure. The vio1ent way of Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder Plot is not ultimate1y justifiable; for he is now reduced to only a straw man.And Kurtz
,
the dark hero of Conrad's Hearto f
Darkness,
is declared dead at the very beginning. The Limbo‑dwellers 1ike Prufrock and those who are capable of damnation are alike in being finally unredeemed.What the poet then seeks is the way to 100k to death " with direct eyesラ3
so as to be redeemed. And that is to transcend human love and the body towards divine love and that which is 1asting
,
as exemplified by saints,
but without falling into the sin of pride by pretending to be one. Once the overwhelming vertica1 dimension is realized,
any unique particu1arity seems paltry.Hence
,
we recognize disappearance of the unambiguously personal,
of particu1arity in " The Hollow Men." As critics suggest
,
in a way the poem may be considered an expression of the desolation of The f!Vaste Land in a teηonal manner; it depicts the interior landscape. But the very way the same theme is presented is devoid of any specifically persona1 references; the speaker is 80 universalized that his experience does not necessari1y have to be that of a certain individual 1iving in a certain place in Europe at a certain time; The men
,
including the speaker himsel ,fdepicted there are stripped of all persona1 milieu and seen in the essential and barest particularity. In this sense the poem is impersonal in the way The Waste Land never is. And this impersona1帽 ity derives from the fact that the poet presents the 10st men including himself as doomed to be judged by the higher existence. In order to0
,
That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men " 5 examine the way the poet presents this effort towards the yie1ding up of himse1f to divine 1ove,
the vertica1 dimension,
we have to restore the discarded sections of The Hollow Men."There are three ear1ier versions of" The Hol1ow Men " out of which the present form finally ev01ves. 1t first appeared in Chapbook
,
1924,
as Doris's Dream Song " [A]
,
4 consisting of three sections: (1) Eyes 1 dare not meet in dreams ... 1n the twilight kingdom, "
(2) The Wind sprang up at four o'clock '" The Tartar horsemen shake their spears, "
which has now drifted into " Minor Poems円 inCollected Poems (3) This is the dead land ... Form prayers to broken stone." The second version [B]
,
entitled Three Poems, "
appeared in CriteTion,
January
,
1925ヲconsistingof three sections: (1) Eyes 1 dare not meet in dreams . . ., "
(2) Eyes that 1ast 1 saw in tears ... And ho1d us in derision, "
now included in " Minor Poems, "
(3) The eyes are not here ... Of empty men." Next there is the third version (C],
"The Hollow Men, "
appearing in Dial,
March,
1925,
which has al1 the foursections the present version has
,
except the last beginning with Here we go round the prick1y pear. . . ." Looking from this perspective,
we notice that the fina1 form of the poem has evo1ved by discarding the conspicuous1y persona1 on the way to gaining universality and abstrac‑
t
lOn.The version [A] is entit1ed "Doris's Dream So
時 "
Doris,
we reinember,
is one of the sensua1ist Sweeneγs set .
Maxwell comments that she is:. . . a typica1 spokesman for the mass of Sweeneγs peers. At this stage it would seem to have been p1anned purely as an e1aboration of One of the flashes of insight granted to the
6 0, That This T口,oToo Sullied Flesh. . ." : T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men "
people of the waste land
,
uttered by one of themin dream.5We recollect that in "Sweeney Erect "Doris is a kind ofsavior b1'inging
"sal volatilef And a glass of b1'andy neat" to 1'elieve the epileptic,
whereas othe1' " ladies of the co1'1'ido1'円and Mrs. Turner do not know what to do. And
,
although this is to anticipate,
in " SweenぞyAgo司 nistes," she neu1'otically fea1's death. Even the Sweeney type, who lives fo1' a moment '
s pleasure, has the capacity of t1'anscending the present self and wonde1'ing if hIs life Is justifiable acco1'ding to the absolute standa1'd. The sensual type puts on the P1'uf旨
ockianawareness as P1'uf1'ock is to t1'ansmig1'ate mo1'e definitely into Sweeney in " Sweeney Agonistes.円 Upto The Waste Land,
the sensual people have been the objects of the poet‑speake1"s open condemnation,
if not without his sec1'et envy fo1' them. But he1'e he is level with the condemned sensual type,
speaking f1'om inside one of them.In the subsequent ve1'sions, howeve1', Doris is d1'opped and the speake1'
becomes one ofthe" we," which inc1udes Do1'is, Sweeney, and Prufrock. The poet欄speakerrealizes that he is no better than Sweeney. Even the best of the sensualist type a1'e ultimately unredeemed. Guy FaV¥ァkes is now 1'educed to a st1'aw man and 111'. Ku1'tz is pe1'ished. Those who a1'e caught up in ea1'thly attachments, whethe1' violent men 01' not, a1'e not finally defensible in the eye of the absolute that demands uncondi咽 tional sur1'ende1'. Implicit he1'e is the ve1'tical dimension. The poet changes his position f1'om that ofseeing and condemning to that ofbeing seen and condemned: "Eyes I da1'e not meet in d1'eams."
And indeed 1hぞimageof the eyes is of crucial impo1'tance. M1'.
P1'uf1'ock, too, has been af1'aid of the eyes. But the eyes he has fea1'ed
0
,
That This Too Too Sulliεd Flesh. . .": T. S. Eiiot's The I‑Iollow Men " 7 have been those of the society people,
over whom he has been secretly feeling superior a11 the while. But the eyes here are those that the speaker can in no way defy. They are lil叫li討
vers路a1and仏 f
ar円 'tl
出
h児 討
eirt甘ra叩ns託ce∞
nd配
en剖tnature is hinted at by equating them V羽v7せ江
ii剖t出
lhs臼un吋
li氾gh加
t. These亡 匂
ye叫S為,s叩o10ng as the s叩
pea北
ke訂rs回ay戸she 己dぬ
arenot rneet t仕 白
hem工立1ラmllst be condemning and threatening,
the eyes of judgemeht. Into these aggressive eyes me1t a11 the previous eyes: the eyes of the lady importu‑nately looking at the young man in Portrait
, "
the WOInanうseye whose corner twists like a crooked pin" in" Rhapsody, "
the eyes of the hyacinth girl whom the speaker has failed,
the searching eyes of the neurotic lady in The Waste Landうandthe repro乱chfuleyes of the injured bride in " Elegy円 merginginto the menacing eyes of God. There Is much of the very personal behind these eyes. And these terrible色yes,
full of personal significance
,
are transformed into something universal and beautifu1,
as "the perpetual starjJ¥1ultifoliate rose円'cvhennext they appear. We can thus recognize depersonalization and vertical universalization.Depersonalization and universalization are consolidatεd as the sections starting respectively with The wind sprang up . . . 円 inthe version [A ] and with " Eyes that 12坑
1
saw in tears . . . 円 inthe version [BJ are discarded one after the other. And both of them ha¥冷 much of private substance.The wind sprang up at four o'clock The wind sprang up and broke the bells Swinging between life and death Here
,
in deathラsdream kingdom The waking echo of confusing strife8 0, That This Too T口DSullied Flesh. .プ T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men"
Is i t a dream or something else
When the surface of the blackened river Is a face that sweats with tears?
1 saw across the blackened river The camp fire shake with alien spears. Here
,
across death's other riverThe Tartar horsemen shake their spears.
The wind sprang up . . . 円 evolvesfrom " Song for the Opherian"
which has been eliminated from The Waste Land: The golden foot 1 may not kiss or clutch Glowed in the shadow of the bed Perhaps it does not come to very much
This thought this ghost this pendulum in the head Swinging from life to death
Bleeding between two lives waitingモ長古毛a touch
a
寸fta.tヶbreath The奇vindsprang up and broke the bells Is it a dream or something else
When the surface of the blackened river Is a face that sweats with tears?
1 saw across the sullen river The campfires shake the spears
waiting that touch After thirty years.6
an alien?
1t is a poem which Eliot thought could go only into " the nerves mono‑
logue円 in" A Game of Chess
, "
and it doubtless refers to the poet's private marital situation. 1 t depicts the frustration in which the speaker finds himself unable to wade across the " blackened river " of sensuality0, That This Too Too Sullied Flesh.一":T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men " 9 to the other bank where he may hope to fulfill ecstatic union, both physical and spiritual
,
with the lady. "Waiting that touchjAfter thirty years円 maybe taken to indicate,
since the poet then was only a few years past thirty,
that the ecstatic union which he wishes is the kind that is possible only for " the simple soul " with original righteousness,
that has become misshapen as it has fared through the world.7 Such personal quali1y is certainly obscured in the p1'esent ve1'sion of" The Wind sprang up円 ln Do1'isラsDream Song"; but it shows up when we see the poem through its earlie1' version
,
"Song for the Ophe1'ian.円 Compa1'ing these two ve1'sions,
we must note,
besides the decrease in the personal qualityラ thedisappea1'ance of the suggestion of ca1'nal human love. "The golden foot 1 may not kiss 01' clutch/G10wed in the shadO¥v of the bed 日 ln Songfor the Opherian " is quite e1'otic; whereas in Doris's Dream Song, "
all that is left is a face that sweats with tears.円The persona1 tone is obvious in Eyes that last 1 saw in tears . . . .円 First
,
note the repeatedラandinsistent "This is my a但
iction"; the speaker is 80 concerned about himself as to be on the verge of unseem1y self‑pity. The eyes that the speaker 1ast "saw in tearsjThrough division円 arelike1y those of that lady with whom h巴failedto be united. Here she further loses physicality,
reduced to the eyes and tears. "The golden vision" connects immediate1y back to " the golden foot" inSong for the Opher旬n";note that here also physicality is diminished. 1t a1so throws back upon the image of" La Fig1ia Che Piange" with her hair shining in the sun1ight: Go1den apoca1ypse" in Ode"
written in 1918: and
,
of course,
the hyacinth garden episode in which the beauty of ecstasy is blinding and its goldennes日isunderlined when10 O
,
Th且tThis T口oToo Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow M己n"read in the light of Tennyson
泡
Tiresias." That means that a11 the experiences of unconsummated ecstasy meet i孔 thisline, The golden vision reappears, "
vvith the image of woman utterly disεmbocli巴d. Here,
a11 the golden physicality gone,
the 'vvoman is transformed into a spiritual presence.The discarding of these two sections of private substanceぅespecially that of" Eyes that 1ast 1 saw in tears
, "
is decisive in the process " The Hollow Men" has taken tmvards depersonalization and unive1'sali‑ zation. In" The wind . .. "the woman still in her mo1'ta1 state,
has tea1's on her face,
because the speake1' has failed he1'. In Eyes.. , 円
she
,
like Beatrice,
has "changedJhe1' mo1'tal fo1' immortal " 8出 the speake1"s VlSlOn. But she seems to be indiffe1'ent to him,
shovving no pitying tea1's fo1' him. And that is his affiiction. He even fears that he may end up in h世 ultimatederision; he1' eyes are not like Beatrice's"beaming eyesラ',9and she is not going to be a Beat1'ice to lead him to salvation.
The speake1' fears judgeme国 on0問 handand longs fo1' pity on the othe1'; he sways between remorse and repentance. According to Reinhold Niebuhrフremorseand repentance a1'e two significant religious experiences of being confronted with God; they "presuppose some knowledge of God.日 Inremorse
,
one is aware of God as j吋
ge,
a吋
1n repentance,
as redeemer. And fo1' remorse to be transmuted into repentance,
one must have the knowledge of divine love; otherwise one perishes in despair without hope.10 Only when this delicat巴stateis revealed to us,
as in the veぉion[B],
the eyes next appearing " As the perpetual starjrvfultifo1iate rose" of hope can have some persuasive force,
without bewildering us with its unexpectedness. Even then,
0
,
That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eiiot's The Hol1ow Men " 11 note the insistent As円 theeyes are not the perpetual starfMulti‑ foliate rose円 yet,
but they are yoked together by violence. 1n the final version,
this section dropped,
the svvaying l110tion of l11ind between re‑l110rse and repentance is not to be known to us. VVe wonde1' how the eyes of judgel11ent he dare not l11eet can be transforl11ed into the pertetual star
1 M 吐
tifoliaterose.門 Theeyes and the star and1'08記 v~Tere
linked only perilously by As " already
,
and novI the linkage here iil the final versi:on appea1's even more fo1'ced; the1'e is a sudden .
leap in the ve1'tical dimension. 1t only expresses a ve1'y subjective wish of"1 wish they might
. ・ ・ , "
and no substantial hope rooted in firm faith. For a good contrast,
we maγ 1'emember what ter1'ible remorse and repentance Dante goes through before he is able to fix his eyεs upon Beatriceうsb巴aml時
eyes(Purgatorio,
XXX and XXXI).TOv¥氾rdsthe final form of The Hollow IVlen
, "
the poet eliminates the personal and physical; and that is in accord with the drastic change in the way of experssion from The Waste Land to " The Hollow :NIen, "
the change to depersonalization and vertical universalization. To discard the p町sonaland physical is to avoid the particularity of man limited by nature. The free spirit of man enables him to transcend the self and to look at himself in some universal perspectives; and in this vision he is made to realize his insignificance and impe1'fection. But this is only momentary; he is pulled back next moment by his " here and now " relation to a particula1' body and aJlxious to protect his own security.ll One cannot finally get rid of particula1'ity; even to try to do so is mystical escapism. D1'agging our particularity
,
we can only hope to work it and free spirit of universality dialectically up towards perfection.12 0, That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's Th巴HollowMen"
The formulaic utterances in the final section of " The Hollow Men "
reveal this hope and the endeavour to transcend particularity
,
at least on the level of the form of poetic expression. 1 t is a consummately abstract way of expressing the problem of particularity. There is always a gap between what man conceives and what man does; man is always hindered from achieving perfection by particularityョwhichis the temporal existence to which death is inevitable for every person as particular body. This problem of particularity is formally solved here in the apparent abstractness of these formulae.Between the idea And the reality Betもveenthe 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 Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
Life is ve
て
ylongFor Thine is the Kingdom
0
,
That This T∞Too Sullied Flesh. . ."; T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men " 13 The Shadow is the threateneing manifestation of this particularity of the body. 1t refers back to the shadow of St. Narcissus,
in " The Death of Saint Narcissus日,whofalls in 10ve with his own physical beauty and who is fina11y reduced to a shadow. 1t a1so reminds us of Sweeney's shadow in the fo11owing lines of Sweeney Erect " :(The lengthened shadow of man Is history
,
said Emerson 1へlhohad not seen the silhouetteof Sweeney stradd1ed in the sun.)
History
,
we gather,
Is not so much a monument of nob1e human crea‑ tivity as a ruined pi1e of haphazard appetites. The real nature of man,
the builder of history
,
as conceived by the poet,
is here r巴presentedby this beastly Sweeney; and hence earthly achievement is of dubious value. The shadow,
which is cited by the prophetic speaker in The Buria1 of the Dead " of The Waste Land,
always waiting to engulf one,
points to death. That myriad‑faceted particu1arity,
life on earth‑the fu11‑ blooming of which the poet has hitherto secretly yearned for‑is now abstracted and reduced to this one co1ourless word "Shadow." That is a11 the earth1y type finally amounts to,
un1ess transformed.As critics inform U8
,
"the Shadow日 maybe inspired byBrutus's words in Juμus Caesar and Ernest Dowson's " Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae." But the nature of "the Shadow " can be best under‑stood when
i t i
s considered in connection with what E1ioi says ofBaudかlaire. 1n" Baude1aire in
Our
句Time, "
written in 1928,
Eliot writes that the French poet has looked into the Shadow." 12 What Eliot means by the word is not immediately apparent; but it Is clear when we read14 0
,
That This Too Too Sullieh Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men "the essay together with his other essay on Baudelaire written in 1930. His contention is that Baudelaire is " primarily occupied with religious values
, "
13 and that he is " engaged in an attempt to exp1ain,
to justify,
to make something of them [passions]
,
an enterprise which puts him a1most on a level with the author ofthe Vita Nuova." 14 1n" Baudelaire, "
written in 1930
,
he mentions this French poet side by side with Dante in a similar context:But in the adjustment of the natural to the spiritual
,
of the bestial to the human and the human to the supernatura1,
Bal:トdelaire is a bungler compared with Dante; . . . 1n his book
,
theJ
制 御uxIntimes,
and especially in Mon仰 UT mis a nu,
he has a great dea1 to say of the love of man and woman. One aphorism which has been especially noticed is the following: la volutte unique et sUtTeme deμ仰 UTgit dans la certitude de fa的
lemal .
This means,
1 think
,
that Baudelai1'e has perceived that what distinguishes the1'el抗ionsof man and woman from the copulation of beasts is the knovvledge of Good and Evil (of moral Good and Evil which a1'e not natural Good and Evil o1'Puritan Right 01' ¥V1'ong).15
How he considers Dante supe1'io1' to Baudelai1'e in this respect is pe1'司
ceived in the following passage f1'om his essay.on Dante:
The attitude of Dante to the fundamental experience of the Vita Nuova can on1y be unde1'stood by accustoming ourse1ves to find meaning in jinal causes 1'ather than in origins. 1t is not
,
1 believe,
meant as a desc1'iption of what he consciously felt on his meeting with Beat1'ice
,
but 1'athe1' as a description of what that meant on matu1'e 1'eflection upon it. The final cause is theattraction~to
wards God. . . . the love of man and woman (01' fo1' that matte1'
0, That This To口TooSullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men " 15 of man and man) is on1y eXplained and made reasonable by the highe1' 10ve
,
01' else is simp1y the coupling of animals.16Devoid of divine love to exp1ain human 1ove
,
Baude1ai1'e sees on1y evi1 and beastliness in the 10ve of man and woman. But this 1'ecognition of .
evi1 and sin,
though negative in itse1f,
is " a New Life" 17 in the world so misguided earlie1' by the optimistic vision of evo1ution. Baude1aire's obvious immersionin the sense of sin paradoxically 1'eveals his deep yearing fo1' redemption. This is E1iotラscontention. And the point to be noted is that he unde1'stands this uniqueness ofBaudelai1'e pa1'ticular国 ly in the aspect of his notion of love of man and wOman compa1'able with that of Dante. Then we may take what Eliot means by Baud←
laire's " Shadow日 tobe man's true nature
,
sinful and beastly,
as made apparent in the act of 10ve. Taking this into consideration,
we may say that the Shadow in The Hollow. r
1en" 1'epresents all that hinders maぜ
sself‑t1'anscendence: sensuality,
pride,
sin,
the anxious se1f,
temporal existence
,
in a wo1'd,
the bor J .
九whichcan only lead one to nothingness,
unless 1'edeerned.In this closing section
,
the poet a1so endeavou1's to sea1 in the fo1'mal movement of children's game and the sets of abstract formu1ae the sexual connotations that pe1'tain to particu1arity; but they show through the abstraction. As is commonly noted,
the song of" the p1'ick1y pear円 is a pa1'ody of a chi1dren's song on " The Mu1berry Bush ラ円ラin which the m江m叫
u叫
11出be町rr町
yis ,'the fertility symbol c∞
onnoting 1肝0VO
ぱ
fthe mu1berry,
we have the p1'ick1y pear,
a cactus,
which,
according to Grover Smith,
is an image purely phallic.円 Healso mentions that the chant is reminiscent of the maypole dance and the ' country16 0, That This Too Too Sullied Flesh.・プ:T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men "
copulatives. '" There is very much sexuality concealed in this seemingly innocent game. And 1 wholly concur with Smith when he asserts that in " this terminal section
,
one is backラ80to speak,
in the marriage chamber ofEliot's 'Ode, '
where sex has gone wrong.円 19Something very physical and sexual transpires through the three formulaic stanzas quoted above
,
driving home the gap between what is possible in the purest imagination and its actuality. The poet has hitherto envisioned the beatific consummation of human love. And after repeated disiIlusionments,
this is the conclusion he resignedly comes tO: human love in temporal existence must necessarily be de‑ graded into shoddiness of sexual exploitation because of the veηT fact ofmanヲsbeing temporal existence,
always anxious to protect his own interests. And the poet formally realizes this contention of his in The Hollow Men."The last of these propositions: "Between the essenceJA
吋
the descentjFalls the Shadow." Here the essence is " the unapprehensible ideal " and the descent its expression " in the lower,
material plane of reality." 20 This aptly rounds off the grim vision of man's existence here and now. The gap is inevitable; and man has to bear out the burden of the body,
of being here on earth. Life is verγlong 円 isthe feeble moan of a man weighed down by this burden,
which he can hope to cast down only when he yie1ds his soul back into the hands of the Creator. Hence the broken words of the Lord's Prayer pressed out even from between the unwilling lips. But the prayer is not completed;and the world continues its meaningless movement.
Just as sexual significo.nce is concealed in the childrenラsgame and the maypole dance
,
radical sensuality is forcibly imprisoned in these for‑0
,
That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. .プ T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men " 17mulae; particularity yie1ds to be contained in abstraction and uni幽 versalization
,
so that it be eXplained and controlled. And the motive we can detect behind this abstraction is the same as that Eliot may have when he writes that the sentiments of lust and rage "can be subdued and disciplined by religion " 21 in his essay on Yeats. The directionon the avoidance of sensuality,
and hence the denial of human loveフhas been already apparent in The Waste Land; and the horizontal universali‑ zation of the poet幽speakerちspredicament in human love has been recog‑ nized. But there it has been expressed in all particularities,
not ex圃 c1uding personal substance and milieu. We can delineate the speaker in his particularity,
if not as c1early as Prufrock in his poem. But here in "The Hol1ow Men, "
the personal elements shorn off as much as possibleぅthehuman plight is expressed in a form absむなctand vertically universal to the utmost; that is,
man nakedly is seen to be confronted by God,
before Whom al1 of man's significantぅachievedparticularities are insignificant.Essentially
,
there is nothing new in " The Hol1ow Men " ; what Is in the poem has been initiated in The Waste Land. That is,
if we look at the poem solely in the light of the movement of the poetラsmind in the direction of the denial of the body and human love in favour of the spirit and divine love,
what we have here is only the enhancement of this direction. What is significant in the poem is that the enhancement,
the poetラsendeavour to yield to divine love,
is fOrHlally fixed. The personal and particular are abandoned,
not only in the substance of imagination but also on the level of formal expression,
in the hope of achieving the abstract expression which should be suitable for the over闇 all universalization of the human predicament. Personal sentiments18 0, That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . ." : T. S. Eliot's Th己HollowMen"
pushed to the farthest back
,
the perpetual starjMultifoliate rose円seem remote, merely borrovγed symbols. However, all this is to say,
the other way round
,
that through the abstract,
ultra四universalsurface of expression,
we can perceive the personalフparticularity,
inextricable attachments to " here and now " that the poet is painfully trying to seal in. The Hollow Men " represents the nadir in which Eliot is involved both as man and as poet .
NOTES
1 .
F. O. Matthiessen,
The Achievement 0] T. S. Eliot (New York: Oxford Uni司versity Pr白 鳥 1969),p. 99.
2. T. S. Eliot
,
Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber,
1969)タ p.287.3. Dante, The Divine Come
め ら
trans. Edmund Gardner (London: Dent, 1967),p.448.
4.
As
to the evolution of the poem, see D. E. S. Maxwell, The Poeliy 0] T. S. Eliot (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969)ラ andA. D. Moody, Thomas Stearns Eliot,
Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pressラ 1979).5. Maxwell, op. cit., p. 137.
6. This is as it is found in the facsimile of the original dra氏。fthe poem, with Eliot's own corrections.
7. See Eliot's Animula."
8. Dante, op. cit., p. 277. 9. Ibid.
,
p. 281 .
10. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny 0] Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), 1, 257.
1
1 .
Ibid., p. 170.12. T. S. Eliot, For Lancelot Andrews (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), p. 7
1 .
13. Ibid.,
p. 72.14. Ibid., p. 7
1 .
15. Eliot, Selected Essa )"S, p. 428. 16. Ibid., p. 274.
17. Ibid.
,
p. 427.0
,
That This Too Too Sullied Flesh. . .": T. S. Eliot's The Hollow M2n" 19 18. Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1971), p. 107. 19. Loc. cit.
20. B. C. Southam
,
A Stu向lt'sGuide to the Selected Poems0 1
T. s. Eliot (London:Faber and Faber
,
1977),
p. 109.21. T. S. E1iot, On Poet仁yαndPoets (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), p. 258.