"The lengthened shadow of a man" vs. "The silhouette of sweeney" in "Sweeney erect"
著者（英） Hitoshi Sano
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 37
page range 11‑25
year 1994‑03‑10
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000014772
"THE LENGTHENED SHADOW OF A MAN" VS.
"THE SILHOUETTE OF SWEENEY" IN "SWEENEY ERECT"
HITOSHI SANO
I
"Sweeney Erect" is one of Eliot's most difficult poems, as it reqUlres critics to clarify the relationship between his use of Greek mythology and the reference to Emerson. The reference to Ariadne at the beginning of the poem seems to have nothing to do with the later reference to Emerson in the seventh verse:
(The lengthened shadow of a man Is history, said Emerson
Who had not seen the silhouette Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.}
Without this reference, it might be possible to argue that the reference to Ariadne creates a conspicuous contrast between a legendary tragic heroine and a modern miserable whore. In fact, Marie Balddidge thinks that in this poem "Eliot describes with symbols out of classical literature the desolate atmosphere of the brothel, Mrs. Turner's, where Sweeney has lodged for the night" and the first four stanzas of the poem present "the contrast of the epic grandeur and the ugliness."z She thinks that Eliot articulates the moral decline in modern times, as compared with the remote past.
The contrast between the magnificent tales of the tragic heroine of the classical world and the disgusting scene of "the epileptic" at a modern whorehouse is striking but not as important as some critics maintain. Those
[l1J
12
who focus on this contrast fail to understand the poem as a whole including the seventh verse, since the seventh verse provides the key to understanding this difficult poem. If the interrelation between the context of Greek legend and that of the Emerson reference is clarified, it will support the position that the theme of this poem is not the damnation of depraved modern society. As Charles Peake acutely points out, the context of the Emerson reference is basic because Emerson's two essays, "History" and "Self-Reliance," provide an illuminating commentary on "Sweeney Erect." After showing that the poem as a whole is intimately related to Emerson's two esaays, Peake suggests that "'Sweeney Erect' can be read as a conscIOUS and ironic commentary on the matter and manner of the two essays.»3
In my essay, in addition to substantiating Peake's view, I intend to argue that "Sweeney Erect" is an ironical refutation4 of the view Emerson expresses in his two essays. I also hope to clarify the standpoint Eliot expressed in this poem.
II
The title of "Sweeney Erect" is generally said to allude Emerson's essay 'Self-Reliance' in which man's fulfilment is discussed. But the fact that the epigraph of the poem also refers to Emerson's essay is not yet generally accepted. Eliot quotes four lines as the epigraph from The Maid's Tragedy II, ii, by Francis Beaumount and John Fletcher:
And the trees about, me, Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks Groariwith continual surges; and behind me Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!
In these lines Aspatia bids her attendants weave her lamenting figure into a tapestry telling Ariadne's sad story. The epigraph is considered to be used as
background for the modern drama of a deserted miserable woman and her unsympathetic man.5 The epigraph implies that the woeful stories of passionate women abandoned by their lovers are told not only in the Greek and Jacobean tales but also in a modern whorehouse. The function of the epigraph is supposedly to present the resemblance of the wretched plight of those deserted women and to contrast the nobility of the tragic heroines and the humbleness of the "epileptic." But in relation to Emerson's essay, the epigraph performs a different function.
Interestingly, Emerson also uses a quotation from Beaumont and Fletcher's play as the epigraph to "Self-Reliance":
Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.6
He quotes from the epilogue to Honest Man
s
Fortune in order to support his idea of the "gleam of light" or the "inner light" which he especially emphasizes in his essay. The quotation is appropriate for his belief that, like the Greeks, modern man can attain the perfection of the senses, relying upon his own soul.Emerson and Eliot did not by accident quote from the plays of the same Jacobean dramatists.7 Surely, Eliot knew that Emerson admired Greek heroes because of their love of nature and felt the affinity with the Greek in reading their fine apostrophes to rocks, mountains and waves in Greek tragedies. Probably, among Emerson's favorite plays Eliot selected the lines in which Aspatia, a Greek, fervently desires to be interwoven in a tapestry with anfractuous rocks, dead trees and continual surges. These lines would make Emerson "feel eternity of man, the identity of his thought" and think"
et] he Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as 1,,,8 if he were to read them.
In the epigraph and the first two stanzas, perhaps Eliot tentatively follows Emerson. When Emerson explains the fascination for all men of ancient Greece, he says that" et] his period draws us because we are Greeks" and insists that "everyman passes personally through a Grecian period" and "[t] he Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses - of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body."g According to Emerson, even the nameless modern woman in "Sweeney Erect" is a descendant of the Greeks and feels affinity with Ariadne and Aspatia in a similar plight; she shares "the Grecian state" with ancient Greek women.
Thus, when she deplores her fate common to Ariadne and Aspatia who were deserted by their lovers, she should present herself as a Greek tragic heroine who laments her fate, apostrophizing to nature. But, in fact, her lamenting voice turns to be a hysterical and grotesque shriek which causes a misunderstanding of her as an "epiletic." As Peake points out, Eliot describes Ariadne in a rhetorical and elevated poetical style "in order to make the shift to the modern hysteric the more violent."lo But Eliot provides an ironical setting not merely for presenting a contrast between the ancient Greek era and the present day but for showing the ridiculousness of Emerson's supposition that "we are Greeks."
In the last stanza, Eliot also reveals the resemblance of the "epileptic"
modern woman to the Greek heroines, but only to articulate the differences between them.
But Doris, towelled from the bath, Enters padding on broad feet, Bringing sal volatile
And a glass of biandy neat.
As Gertrude Pattersonl l and Charles Peake12 point out, there is a remarkable parallel between the modern English woman's fate and her ancient Greek counterpart's. As Dionysius relieved Ariadne of her pitiable plight, Doris with a glass of brandy as herald of the Greek god of wine will console the
"epileptic." Bringing out a striking contrast between Dionysius and Doris, Eliot completes the ironic commentary on Emerson's supposition.
Eliot disputes Emerson's belief that human beings can reach the perfection. In order to ridicule this belief which involves the immanent progressive thought, Eliot effectively uses bathos in this poem. He starts with the pathetic solemn words of the tragic heroine of the classical world and ends with a disgraceful scene at a brothel where whores are gossiping about the shrieking modern heroine. The bathe tic declension from a noble tone to an ignoble one implies that history moves progressively backwards and the noble nature of human beings has degenerated or, more likely, is not inherent in actual people at all.
Eliot seems to have Emerson's second supposition in mind in his description of Sweeney. In "History," Emerson supposes that" [m] an is the broken giant" under the view that the story of Prometheus represents "a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude objective form, and which seems the self-defence of man against this untruth, namely a discontent with the believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous.,,13 Emerson sees Prometheus, "the defire of
J
ove,,,14 as a prototype of man who originally had a divine nature and rejected obeying the almighty God. Taking a story of another giant for an example, Emerson explains that supposition as follows:Antaeus was suffocated by the gripe of Hercules, but every time he touched his mother-earth his strength was renewed. Man is the broken giant, and in all his weakness both his body and his mind are invigorated by habits of conversation with nature15
16
Emerson seems to acknowledge that man, like Prometheus and Antaeus, is continuously reduced to despair. But the physical and mental weakness of human beings are not emphasized in the statement quoted above. He puts a special emphasis upon the belief that mother-earth revitalizes human beings and stirs their sleeping divine nature.
In the third stanza Eliot gives Sweeney a giant-figure:
Morning stirs the feet and hands (Nausicaa and Polypheme).
Gesture of orang-outang
Rises from the sheets in steam.
A. D. Moody points out that "[t] he passing mention of N ausicaa and Polypheme just recalls two of Ulysses' morning encounters - ones charged with opposite feelings."l6 He does not pay attention to the parallelism between Emerson's "broken giant" and the aside recalling in Sweeney some . resemblance to Polypheme. Charles Peake also does not mention the context of Emerson in the third stanza, and he seems to overlook that the first line of the third stanza bears an important reference to Emerson's supposition. We should notice that the "morning" in the line written in the poetical language is personified as a mother who wakes up her son. This line contains an echo from the episode of Gaia, the mother of the giants like the Cyclops. She rouses her beaten sons as morning comes. Reading this line in the light of the episode of Gaia, we see that Eliot has in mind "the broken giant" invigorated by the mother-earth.
Clearly, Sweeney acquires the figure of Polypheme, one of the Cyclops.
Polypheme is a "broken giant" who does not fear Zeus and other blessed gods, and loses his sight as a punishment for his insolence. Unlike Prometheus, who steals fire for human. beings from the gods and "suffers all things on their account,,,l7 Polypheme is not "the friend of man"l8 but a
man-eating giant. In his relations to N ausicaa, the princess of the Phaeaces, Polypheme appears as a ravager or a ravisher. Sweeney may be a descendant of "the broken giant" who defies God, but he is also a beast like Polypheme.
When morning comes, he rises from the steaming sheets, leaving his bed mate, a-descendant of the Phaeaces who have been ravished by the Cyclops.
In "History", Emerson states that he sees nothing "on any side but the transmigrations of Proteus,,19 when he gets up in the morning. On the other hand, in "Sweeney Erect," Eliot presents the modern sordid dawn-awakening scene in order to prove that Sweeney might be offspring of the cannibalistic
"broken giant" but could never be one of "the transmigrations of Proteus."
Emerson attributes images of Greek heroes and heroines to an ideal state of humanity and draws an analogy between the "broken giant" and human beings who supposedly have divine nature in themselves. On the other hand, he calls his contemporaries "half human" when he criticizes the fact that they are far from the ideal state and still in the process of evolution from animals to true human beings:
I would it were; but men and women are only half human. Every animal of the barn-yard, the field and the forest, of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, has contrived to get a footing and to leave the print of its features and form in some one or other of these upright.
heaven-facing speakers,zo
Corresponding to the shift of Emerson's reference from the "broken giant"
to "half human," now Eliot presents Sweeney as a pithecanthrope, a "half human" being in the fourth and fifth stanzas:
This withered root of knots of hair.
Slitted below and gashed with eyes, This oval 0 aopped out with teeth:
The sickle motion from the thighs
18
Jackknifes upward at the knees
Then straightens out from heel to hip Pushing the framework of the bed
And clawing at the pillow slip.
His movement in arising from bed can be associated with that of Pithecanthropus Erectus which is contriving to stand "in the erect position.,,21 The description of Sweeney's appearance and his action suggest that he is an "only half human" being who has made little progress in terms of evolution or who has regressed to the state of anthropoid ape.
Sweeney is a symbol of man's regression, of which Emerson would have strongly disapproved:
Ah' brother, stop the ebb of thy soul -- ebbing downward into the forms into whose habits thou hast now for many years slid22
Emerson thinks that men and women are only half human as long as they do not realize that "power is inborn"23 and they look for good out of themselves.
He insists that true human beings are "those upright, heaven-facing speakers"24; they are not leaning willows. Based upon Emerson's notion, one may assume that Sweeney could not stand without support since he is "only half human." However, he commands his limbs and stands on his feet.
Sweeney possesses all the qualification for "the great man" which Emerson prescribes in "Self-Reliance":
The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude25
At times the whole seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say ~ 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion.26 [italics: mine]
Charles Peake rightfully observes that "Sweeney is as far above the emotions which might trouble an ordinary man in his circumstances as he is above the complaints and moral disapproval of the women in the corridor."z7 Sweeney does not seem to mind "the epileptic" woman's condition nor the hubbub in the corridor at all. All he does is to shave, while waiting for the woman's shriek to subside.
Eliot parodies the lines quoted above from "Self-Reliance." While Emerson uses "importune" to mean "beg urgently and repeatedly," Eliot seems to interpret the same word as "solicit" or "make a sexual offer." Even when the modern wicked world seems to be in conspiracy to importune Sweeney with a hysterical whore, he is never perturbed and does not come out into the confusion in the corridor.
In the parenthetic seventh stanza which contains the direct reference to Emerson, Eliot places Sweeney on the same level as "the great man" 1ll
Emerson's definition and ridicules the so-called "great man theory of history." What Emerson has in mind in referring to "the great man" is the great hero who has performed an important role in the shaping of human history like Caesar, Antony and Luther. Emerson thinks:
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox;
Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson.z8
Those great men have trusted themselves and revealed their "perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being."z9 "An institution" or "history" is, according to Emerson, formed when a great man puts "the absolutely trustworthy" into shape. On the other hand, Sweeney does not appear to have
"the absolutely trustworthy" at his heart except the primitive, base human instinct. He does not add any achievements in history even though he fulfills
20
the requirements of "the great man," in a sense.
There is a further point which needs to be clarified: why does Emerson's theory of history seem so preposterous to Eliot? Robert G. Cook tries to give an answer to this question by assuming that Eliot shares the opinion of Tolstoy:
Tolstoy attacked the theory by deliberately assigning "great men," most notably Napoleon, a small significance in determining historical events.
"The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few men, for the connexion between those men and the nations has not been found." For Tolstoy the independence of the individual personality was severely limited; historical events are the doings of all the participants. Perhaps Eliot's attack on the great men theory in "Sweeney Erect" is in line with these ideas: Emerson spoke of his Luthers and Caesars, not realizing that the Sweeneys too cast their shadows30
Cook may be right when he supposes that both Tolstoy and Eliot think that
"the independence of the individual personality was severely limited." But his argument seems to leave the central question untouched since it is not a mere question of a view of history. Besides, he seemingly fails to understand that Emerson advocates complete reliance on "the absolutely trustworthy"
which everyone is supposed to have in one's heart and the great men also possessed. Emerson does not insist that only a few great men were blessed with "the absolutely trustworthy" and could fill history with their deeds.
To reach the core of the question, we should look more carefully into the difference between "the lengthened shadow of a man" and "the silhouette of Sweeney." Emerson's figurative phrase represen~s the highest achievement of the great man brightly illuminated by his own "gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within.,,31 The "gleam of light" is the equivalent for "the absolutely trustworthy" seated at one's heart. On the other hand, Sweeney's silhouette is cast on the walls of the whorehouse by sunlight, not
by the "gleam of light ... from within." Supposedly, he does not have the slightest idea of the "gleam of light." The sunlight projects a silhouette of the anthropoid ape-like-figure of naked Sweeney.
Eliot reveals the unreliability of Emerson's "great man theory" by pointing to Sweeney as an exception, one Emerson would not admit. The statement that Emerson "had not seen the silhouette of Sweeney straddled in the sun"
reveals that Emerson's view of human beings is limited and prejudiced.
HI
Eliot criticises Emerson as an unreliable observer of the moral life. In an essay which appeared in 1919, the poet levels criticism at Emerson by saying that "Neither Emerson nor any of the others was a real observer of the moral life .... It [Hawthorne's observation of the moral life] will always be of use; the essays of Emerson are already an encumbrance,,32 The novelist, whose works deal with the problem of sin, presents respectable persons afflicted with a strong sense of sin such as Dimmesdale and Goodman Brown.
The adverse comment about Emerson quoted above implies that Emerson would not take into consideration the problem of sin in observing the moral life. In fact, Emerson rejects the sense of sin in his essay "Spritual Laws":
No man need be perplexed in his speculations. Let him do and say what strictly belongs to him, and though very ignorant of books, his nature shall not yield him any intellectual obstructions and doubts. Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination and the like. These never presented a practical dimculty to any man - never darkened across any man's road who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps and measles and whooping-coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.33
zz
Emerson's exclusion of the problem of sin and his identification of men with divine giants seem like heresy to those who observe dark side of human nature.
The silhouette of Sweeney reflects Eliot's negative view of human nature.
Naked orang-outang-like Sweeney's figure betrays his real nature. Through the representation of Sweeney, Eliot intimates to the supporters of Emerson's ideas an opposite view that human nature inclines toward bestiality, carnality, selfishness and blindness: human beings are not endowed with that "gleam of light." Emerson's self-sufficient anthro- pocentric view of human beings is denounced as spiritual blindness.
IV
In a satirical picrure of one aspect of sordid modern life, Eliot craftily presents Sweeney who supposedly fulfills the requirements of "the great man." Sweeney stands erect without looking "for good out of him" and without having sense of sin. If his behavior and inclination met every requirement, he would appear to be a "great man" like Caesar or Antony. The fact that the supposed similarities of Sweeney to "the great man" are noted only to emphasize the differences shows that "the great man" theory is untenable. Eliot rejects "the great man" theory by revealing the basic idea of the theory to be erroneous. The silhouette of Sweeney shows that the "gleam of light" as the absolute warrant for "self-reliance" does not flash across his mind from within.
It is not until Eliot articulates his religious belief in his later poems34 that he expresses the idea of "the light of the Word," which completely opposed Emerson's "gleam of light." However, the critical references to Emerson in
"Sweeney Erect" explains Eliot's standpoint. He is diametrically opposed to the supposition that man is blessed with divine nature and can himself be perfect and to the belief that personality spontaneously grows without any
limitation. He points out the fundamental error which comes from Emerson's confusion between humanity and divinity. Eliot sees Emerson's idea of the
"gleam of light" and his subsequent view of the moral life as the underlying cause of the spiritual darkness of the humanist period of his age.35
NOTES
T. S. Eliot, "Sweeney Erect," T. S. Eliot: The Complele Poems and Plays (London:
Faber and Faber, 1969) 42.
2 Marie Baldridge, "Some Psychological Patterns in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot,"
Critical Essays on T. S. Eliot: The Sweeney Motif(Boston: G. K. Hall & Co. cl985) 48.
3 Charles Peake, '''Sweeney Erect' and the Emersonian Hero," Critical Essays on T. S. Eliot, 50.
4 In "John Dryden," Eliot's essay issued in 1921, Eliot says "Dryden's method here [MacFlecknoel is something very near to parody; he applies vocabulary, images, and ceremoney which arouse epic associations of grandeur, to make an enemy helplessly ridiculors." It may be possible to suppose that Eliot follows Dryden's method and brings epic associations of grandeur in "Sweeney Erect" to make Emerson's 'ideas ridiculous.
Cf. Eliot, "John Dryden," T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1951) 307f.
5 Cf. "In 'Sweeney Erect' the epigraph and the two opening stanzas together·
evoke a scene in The Maids Tragedy (II, ii) as background to the modern drama."
A. D. Moody, Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet: (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) 60.
6 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson(New York: The Modern Library, cl940) 145.
7 Cf. Eliot, "John Ford," T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays 193, 196-7. Eliot sets a low valuation on the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher in his essay "John Ford"(1932).
He regards them as "those whose merit consists merely in having exploited successfully a few Shakespearian devices or echoed here and there the Shakespearian verse." In the same essay he also maintains that "the signs of decay in Ford's age are more clearly visible in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher than
III his own. "
8 Emerson, 136.
9 Emerson, 134.
10 Peake, 51.
11 Gertrude P atterson, T. S. Eliot: Poems in the Making (New York: Manchester University Press, c1971) 121£.
12 Peake, 54.
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
Emerson, 138.
Emer"son, 138.
Emerson, 138.
Moody, 61.
Emerson, 138.
Emerson, 138.
Emerson, 139.
Emerson, 139.
Emerson, 169.
Emerson, 139.
Emerson, 169.
Emerson, 139.
Emerson, 150.
Emerson, 160.
Peake, 53.
Emerson, 154.
Emerson, 146.
30 Robert G. Cook, "Emerson's 'Self-Reliance,' Sweeney, and Prufrock," Critical Essays on T. S. Eliot, 44.
31 Emerson, 145.
32 Athenaeum, No. 4643(April 25, 1919).
Cf. F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot. 3d ed.(New York: Oxford University Press, 1958) 24.
33 Emerson, 191.
34 Cf. "Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light of the Word, Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
25 Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before, selfish and
purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.
T. S. Eliot, "Choruses from 'the Rock'," The Complete Poems and Plays of T S.
Eliot, 161.
35 Eliot's critical view of the humaist period of his age can be traced in one of his early book reviews. In his review of Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence translated and with an introduction by T. E. Hulme, Eliot evaluates Sorel's skeptical attitude toward liberal thought and humanitarianism. He regards Sorel as "representative of the present generation. sick with its own knowledge o'f history, with the dissolving outlines of liberal thought. with humanitarianism" and considers the scepticism of Sorel as "a torturing vacuity which has developed the craving for belief."
CL Monist, 27, No. 3(July 1917) 478-9.
