ezra pound and t.s. eliot

chadwick

"ezra pound and t.s. eliot
they're fighting in the captain's tower
while calypso singers laugh at them
and fishermen hold flowers" - dylan

these are lyrics from the bob dylan song, "desolation row"

i am currently studying a bit on pound and eliot's work.
pausing pound's documentary to go swim

anyone have anything to add about either one of these gentlemen?

chadwick

http://youtu.be/Aba1dVLVSFg
Canto XLV (With Usura)

i'd like to read this to take my time on each line and stanza

CP218430

It's a great reference about Eliot's response to Pound's editing of "The Waste Land." Eliot was not too happy about Pound's extensive revisions and Dylan uses this as a beautiful contrast to the waste land he creates within "Desolation Row's" lyrics.

Word is Pound cut the poem by over half its intended length.

That song has an astounding amount of references. One of my favorites.

rollings

~~~

The Waste Land is a 434-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century."

Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures—the poem has become a familiar touchstone of modern literature.

Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih."

--Wikipedia

rollings

I posted "The Waste Land" and have so far read only about the first 23 lines

It is incredible, astounding, applicable, appropriate
a very good place to sit for a while

acrossssSsssshittt

i've read a bit of t.s. eliot... and I think I've read wasteland...

fucked me bare

tremors

My favourite TS Eliot by far is 'the four quartets'. This has a very different energy from a lot of his other work - beautiful, numinous.

http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/



Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.