Very interesting to me that T. S. Eliot is often quoted as saying “Good poets borrow. Great poets steal.” When in fact what he actually said was “One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.” Which of course has a completely different meaning, less “All the greats plagiarize,” and more “Completely original ideas are a fantasy; the originality lies in how you weave an idea that has been previously woven differently.”
“East Coker” by T. S. Eliot (excerpt) (read by Jeremy Irons)
IV.
The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease If we obey the dying nurse Whose constant care is not to please But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse, And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees, The fever sings in mental wires. If to be warmed, then I must freeze And quake in frigid purgatorial fires Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood— Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
East Coker is the second poem of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. It was started as a way for Eliot to get back into writing poetry and was modelled after Burnt Norton. It was finished during early 1940 and printed for the Easter edition of the 1940 New English Weekly.
It’s a long, modernist poem in five parts tracking man’s place (or lack thereof) through history and literature.
Modernist?
That basically means it doesn’t rhyme or have a fixed metre.
Don’t we call that “prose”?
I’m not getting into that. The poem is a series of references to classical and not-so-classical literature and songs expressed as various people from different time periods making prophecies and jokes.
Although if you’ve read Game of Thrones and you can’t handle a complicated series of interwoven narratives from different times and places, you should present yourself to the relevant authorities at first light.
That sounds complicated.
If you think that’s complicated, wait until you read the series of notes he wrote to “explain” all the imagery. They’re so abstruse that he might have written them specifically to mock the sort of people who look at a piece of art and ask, “Yes, but what does it mean?”
What should I say to make people think I’ve read it?
“How can a poem be so full yet broadcast so much emptiness?”
What should I avoid saying when trying to convince people I’ve read it?
“My April didn’t go to badly.”
Should I actually read it?
Yes. It’s a barrage of images and voices that you may not have experienced before, and that’s never a waste of time.
Had a brilliant day at Charleston Festival @CharlestonTrust watching and listening to Benedict Cumberbatch and the Britten Sinfonia perform TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, as well as enjoying the beautiful gardens.
first stanza from «The Waste Land» by t. s. eliot [The Waste Land and Other Poems, faber & faber, london, 1940, p27]. set in bauer bodoni—for typeface details vide‹neo-classical luncheon›.
“A joy to be performing with Benedict Cumberbatch today (during a performance of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’). His voice is as flexible and beautiful as a Strad cello.”x
“Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.”
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.
For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl swinging in her bottle, and when the boys asked her, “Sibyl, what do you want?”, she replied, “I want to die.”
