Repost: 25 Famous Authors’ Poetic Descriptions of Paris

http://flavorwire.com/404021/25-famous-authors-poetic-descriptions-of-paris

 

by Alison Nastasi

July 14, 2013

 

Happy Bastille Day! It’s the 224th anniversary of the storming of the famous Paris prison, which helped dismantled France’s repressive monarchy. If you can’t dance along the Champs-Élysées, but want to spread the Parisian pride, head past the jump for a few eloquent and adoring words from famous writers that celebrate the City of Light.

 

Image credit: Ernest Hemingway Collection.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

Ernest Hemingway

 

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

 

“Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.”

 

“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.”

 

Charles Dickens

 

“I cannot tell you what an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!”

 

Henry James

 

“The great merit of the place is that one can arrange one’s life here exactly as one pleases… there are facilities for every kind of habit and taste, and everything is accepted and understood.”

 

“Paris is the greatest temple ever built to material joys and the lust of the eyes.”

 

Honoré de Balzac

 

“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.”

 

Victor Hugo

 

“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”

 

 

Oscar Wilde

 

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”

 

Willa Cather

 

“Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.”

 

Harriet Beecher Stowe

 

“At last I have come into a dreamland.”

 

Katherine Anne Porter

 

“Paris loves anybody who can live anarchically and be delightful entertainment at the same time.”

 

Henry Miller

 

“When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.”

 

Gaston Leroux

 

“In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.”

 

 

Gertrude Stein

 

“Paris, France is exciting and peaceful.”

 

“America is my country, and Paris is my hometown.”

 

Anaïs Nin

 

“Sometimes I think of Paris not as a city but as a home. Enclosed, curtained, sheltered, intimate. The sound of rain outside the window, the spirit and the body turned towards intimacy, to friendships and loves. One more enclosed and intimate day of friendship and love, an alcove. Paris intimate like a room. Everything designed for intimacy. Five to seven was the magic hour of the lovers’ rendezvous. Here it is the cocktail hour.”

 

“In Paris, when entering a room, everyone pays attention, seeks to make you feel welcome, to enter into conversation, is curious, responsive. Here it seems everyone is pretending not to see, hear, or look too intently. The faces reveal no interest, no responsiveness. Overtones are missing. Relationships seem impersonal and everyone conceals his secret life, whereas in Paris it was the exciting substance of our talks, intimate revelations and sharing of experience.”

 

Katherine Mansfield

 

“I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city… It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see.”

 

Edmund White

 

“Paris… is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.”

 

Allen Ginsberg

 

“You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.”

 

 

Alexandre Dumas

 

“I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.”

 

Jean Cocteau

 

“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.”

 

James Thurber

 

“The whole of Paris is a vast university of art, literature and music… it is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything”

 

Molière

 

“Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.”

 

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

“The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older — intelligence and good manners.”

 

Angela Carter

 

“Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.”

 

James Joyce

 

“There is an atmosphere of spiritual effort here. No other city is quite like it. It is a racecourse tension. I wake early, often at 5 o’clock, and start writing at once.”

 

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

 

“Paris is a mighty schoolmaster, a grand enlightener of the provincial intellect.”

 

François Villon

 

“Good talkers are only found in Paris.”

 

The Poetry of Lisel Mueller

Things

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
... the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.




Why We Tell Stories

1

Because we used to have leaves
And on damp days
Our muscles feel a tug,
Painful now, from when roots
Pulled us into the ground
And because our children believe
They can fly, an instinct retained
From when the bones in our arms
Were shaped like zithers and broke
Neatly under their feathers
And because before we had lungs
We knew how far it was to the bottom
As we floated open-eyed
Like painted scarves through scenery
Of dreams, and because we awakened
And learned to speak

2

We sat by the fire in our caves,
And because we were poor, we made up a tale
About a treasure mountain
That would open only for us
And because we were always defeated,
We invented impossible riddles
Only we could solve,
Monsters only we could kill,
Women who could love no one else
And because we had survived
Sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
We discovered bones that rose
From the dark earth and sang
As white birds in trees

3

Because the story of our life
Becomes our life
Because each of us tells
The same story but tells it differently
And none of us tells it
the same way twice
Because grandmothers looking like spiders
Want to enchant the children
And grandfathers need to convince us
What happened happened because of them
And though we listen only
Haphazardly, with one ear,
We will begin our story
With the word and

 
Lisel Mueller Bio - http://www.lakeforest.edu/library/archives/mueller/

 

Poetry Foundation Bio - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lisel-Mueller

 

More Poems from Lisel Mueller - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lisel-mueller#about

 

Repost: 9 Things You Can Learn from Shakespeare's Hamlet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-critchley/9-things-you-can-learn-fr_b_3529453.html

 

by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster

Posted: 07/01/2013

 

Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster are the authors of

the new book Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine.

 

 

The main reason why Hamlet is Shakespeare's most enduring play is that it requires the most endurance. Contrary to centuries of Shakespeare scholarship on Hamlet's quintessential modernity, this requirement is first and foremost factual: Hamlet is the Shakespeare character with the most lines in a single play and Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, clocking in at over 4 hours onstage. Hamlet in its entirety might be thought of as Hamlet in its eternity. Hamlet is a king of infinite space.

 

Hamlet also requires our endurance for he is a consummate philosopher, which is why he thinks so much and at such great length and ultimately acts so little. It is difficult for us to peer through centuries of romantic fog that whirl around his character. We tend to imagine the play as lofty, overblown, the pinnacle of Western literature. But the fact is, Hamlet was a revival of an earlier play also called Hamlet- which had been a big hit- and was thus a kind of box-office sequel by London's most successful dramatist: WS. Commercially, Shakespeare never put a foot wrong. Hamlet was a blockbuster. It remained a blockbuster in the decades and centuries that followed.

 

Here we reach a conundrum: Hamlet is a revenge drama. Everyone loves a revenge drama, right? But the play consists of Hamlet's inability to take revenge. The audience would have thought they were going to watch a Tarantino-esque Elizabethan action movie with a few good sword fights. But instead of bloody acts, they get endless bloody thoughts. Hamlet soliloquizes on the meaning of life, dithers and feigns madness, tying himself up in the most exquisite dialectical knots, doubting everything, even the ghost who demands revenge. When he concocts the play within the play, to catch the conscience of the king, and it works- Claudius confesses his guilt- still he doesn't do it.

 

If Hamlet is Shakespeare's most enduring play, then the paradox is that there is something unendurable about it. The play goes on and on. Hamlet goes on and on. Spinning out words, words, words that lose the name of action. The weirdest thing is that having been a crowd pleaser from the very beginning, it seems to do so little to please the crowd. Our expectations about tight, coherent, fast-moving, well-executed plot unravel in scene after scene, spiraling down into Hamlet's infinite jest and perspicuous melancholia.

 

Hamlet is not a version of our best self, let alone our authentic humanity, but what is worst and most selfish in us. His failure of commitment, his radical inhibition, his suicidal melodrama, and his violent misanthropic and misogynistic cruelty, are some of the rather unappealing aspects of our selves. Shakespeare forces us to stare at that which we do not want to look; to see what Uncle Teddy Adorno felicitously called our Hamlet Syndrome.

 

Hamlet is a kind of camera obscura that presents us with a true picture of the world in its inverted form. What if the modern depressive Dane Lars Von Trier was right and some malevolent meteor obliterated the entirety of human civilization in a flash? If somehow after that apocalyptic devastation a single copy of Hamlet remained, a faithful record of our culture could be reconstructed on its basis. It's not a pretty picture.

 

So, what life lessons can Hamlet teach us? Here are a handful:

1. "The world is a prison," Hamlet sighs. This is not just a statement of his mental state. Shakespeare's play is also a drama of surveillance in a police state. Everyone is being watched. This once required expensive and expansive networks of spies. Now it simply requires the use of the internet.
"To thine own self be true"- NOT. People tend to forget that this line was put in the mouth of the Daddy of all windbags, Polonius, and was heavily laden with irony. Polonius's self-serving drivel is an endless source of amusement.




"Were you not sent for?" Never trust your friends. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they might have been sent for by your ever-loving parents and be secretly plotting your execution.




"Mother, you have my father much offended". Hamlet doesn't know if his mother was in on the murder of his father. The Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt, felt that Gertrude's guilt functions like a dark spot in the play. The lesson seems to be - you'll never figure out what your mother wants. Leave her to heaven, as the Ghost says.




"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In other words, believe in ghosts. In a world where time is out of joint and the air is filled with war and rumors of war, the dead are the only creatures courageous enough to speak the truth.




"I did love you once... I loved you not." Let's just say that Hamlet has commitment problems, while the ever-faithful and naïve Ophelia is the one labeled a Janus-faced whore. It's good to remember that this war between the sexes has gone on for hundreds of years and men cannot tolerate the question of what a woman wants.




"Tender yourself more dearly." Polonius's seemingly affectionate paternal advice circles around the valuation of his daughter Ophelia as a commodity to be brokered on the marriage market. Lessons on money abound. Here and everywhere in Shakespeare, the language of love degrades into the language of commerce.




"O shame, where is thy blush?" Hamlet accuses his mother of acting shamelessly in marrying his Uncle in rude haste after the death of his father. But the truth is everyone in Hamlet acts shamelessly and for us the moral of the play is the production of shame in its audience. Not too much, just enough.




"Stay, Illusion!" Illusion is the only means to action. The only thing that can save us in this distracted globe is theater. The only truth is found in illusion.

 

Edgar Allan Poe - Annabel Lee

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love -

   I and my Annabel Lee -

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me -

Yes! - that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we -

   Of many far wiser than we -

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling - my darling - my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea -

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

 ~ Edgar Allan Poe, c. 1809-1849 (Painting by Kate Curry)

    More about the author - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/edgar-allan-poe

Poems by Shannon Eason

 

 

 

 

Love Between Friends

 

Love between friends is

 

So hard to live with because

 

You can't be yourself no matter

 

How hard you try so you cry yourself

 

To sleep by the pain of loving a friend.

 

Love between friends is the unwise thing

 

To do because in the end you'll break yours

 

And his heart into a million pieces and the

 

Friendship will be over within minutes.

 

 

Shannon Eason

Submitted: Monday, July 04, 2011

Edited: Monday, July 25, 2011

 

 

 

 

Love

 

 

What is love? Love is where

 

Two people fell in love with

 

Somebody that they can not

 

Live without feeling like they

 

Are dead or on another planet.

 

Love is the reason why people

 

Have broken hearts and tears in

 

Their eyes. Love is trouble to cause

 

People pain of both happy and hurt.

 

Shannon Eason
Submitted: Monday, July 04, 2011
Edited: Tuesday, July 05, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

R.E. Slater - The Glory of the Lord (a psalm)

The Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

The Glory of the Lord

by R.E. Slater

Where is thy glory now O Kings of Egypt?
Where is the glory of the tombs of thy people?
For dust thou art and to dust thou hast returned,
And naught but the Lord doth sustain.

Who rules over the heavens and earth,
Who commands the seas and all that is in them,
Who raises up mountains and lays low
Those who by pride would stride the earth.

Who rule not by wisdom nor by mercy,
But by brute strength and vain glory,
To these the Lord of the heavens commands,
Bow down and lay low all ye nations of the earth.

For I am the Lord your God,
Maker of the heavens and the earth,
Whose forgiveness is unmeasured,
Whose joy is boundless as the stars.

Whose glory arises on the wings of the dawn,
Who strideth the earth seeking wisdom's mercy,
That peace might reign over the land of the living,
Before all nations of men full of sin and ruin.

For you, O Lord, art enthroned forever,
You are remembered throughout all generations,
Even as your years endure through all generations,
May all the kings of the earth fear your just name.

O Lord, we lie as a broken people,
Spent before the hot mid-day sun,
All our works lie in toil's upheaval,
Worn out like perishable garments.

O Lord, hear the prayers of the destitute,
Despise not the prayers of your children,
Who lament in sin's grief and lie stricken before you,
Whithered upon the dark days of mortal distress.

O Lord, remember the cries of your servants,
That we might dwell in your glory and praise,
Though the heavens be rolled up like a scroll,
Though the earth passes like an evening shadow.

For you, O Lord, art enthroned forever,
You are remembered throughout all generations,
Even as your years endure through all generations,
May we, your servants, dwell securely in your holy name.


- R.E. Slater
April 6, 2013
*written as a psalm

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Psalm 102
English Standard Version (ESV)

Do Not Hide Your Face from Me

A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint
and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

102 Hear my prayer, O Lord;
let my cry come to you!
2 Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress!
Incline your ear to me;
answer me speedily in the day when I call!

3 For my days pass away like smoke,
and my bones burn like a furnace.
4 My heart is struck down like grass and has withered;
I forget to eat my bread.
5 Because of my loud groaning
my bones cling to my flesh.
6 I am like a desert owl of the wilderness,
like an owl[a] of the waste places;
7 I lie awake;
I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop.
8 All the day my enemies taunt me;
those who deride me use my name for a curse.
9 For I eat ashes like bread
and mingle tears with my drink,
10 because of your indignation and anger;
for you have taken me up and thrown me down.
11 My days are like an evening shadow;
I wither away like grass.

12 But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;
you are remembered throughout all generations.
13 You will arise and have pity on Zion;
it is the time to favor her;
the appointed time has come.
14 For your servants hold her stones dear
and have pity on her dust.
15 Nations will fear the name of the Lord,
and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory.
16 For the Lord builds up Zion;
he appears in his glory;
17 he regards the prayer of the destitute
and does not despise their prayer.

18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height;
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die,
21 that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,
and in Jerusalem his praise,
22 when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

23 He has broken my strength in midcourse;
he has shortened my days.
24 “O my God,” I say, “take me not away
in the midst of my days—
you whose years endure
throughout all generations!”

25 Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
28 The children of your servants shall dwell secure;
their offspring shall be established before you.

Footnotes:
Psalm 102:6 The precise identity of these birds is uncertain

T.S. Eliot - The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
   A penny for the Old Guy


I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the 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
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

- by T S Eliot, © -1, All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

Editor's notes

 

1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
2. A...Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the "gunpowder plot" failed.
3. Those...Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante's "Paradiso".
4. Eyes: eyes of those in eternity who had faith and confidence and were a force that acted and were not paralyzed.
5. crossed stave: refers to scarecrows
6. tumid river: swollen river. The River Acheron in Hell in Dante's "Inferno". The damned must cross this river to get to the land of the dead.
7. Multifoliate rose: in dante's "Divine Comedy" paradise is described as a rose of many leaves.
8. prickly pear: cactus
9. Between...act: a reference to "Julius Caesar" "Between the acting of a dreadful thing/And the first motion, all the interim is/Like a phantasma or a hideous dream."
10. For...Kingdom: the beginning of the closing words of the Lord's Prayer.

 

 

Summary

http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/summary.html

 

 

The poem begins with two epigraphs: one is a quotation from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness remarking on the death of the doomed character Kurtz. The other is an expression used by English schoolchildren who want money to buy fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. On this holiday, people burn straw effigies of Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British Parliament back in the 17th century.

 

The poem is narrated by one of the "Hollow Men."

 

In the first section of the poem, a bunch of Hollow Men are leaning together like scarecrows. Everything about them is as dry as the Sahara Desert, including their voices and their bodies. Everything they say and do is meaningless. They exist in a state like Hell, except they were too timid and cowardly to commit the violent acts that would have gained them access to Hell. They have not crossed over the River Styx to make it to either Heaven or Hell. The people who have crossed over remember these guys as "hollow men."

 

In the second section, one hollow man is afraid to look at people who made it to "death's dream kingdom" – either Heaven or Hell. The Hollow Men live in a world of broken symbols and images.

 

The third section of the poem describes the setting as barren and filled with cacti and stones. When the Hollow Men feel a desire to kiss someone, they are unable to. Instead, they say prayers to broken stones.

 

In the fourth section, the hollow man from Section 2 continues to describe his vacant, desolate surroundings, in which are no "eyes." The Hollow Men are afraid to look at people or to be looked at.

 

The fifth and final section begins with a nursery rhyme modeled on the song "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush," except instead of a mulberry bush the kiddies are circling a prickly pear cactus. The speaker describes how a "shadow" has paralyzed all of their activities, so they are unable to act, create, respond, or even exist. He tries quoting expressions that begin "Life is very long" and "For Thine is the Kingdom," but these, too, break off into fragments. In the final lines, the "Mulberry Bush" song turns into a song about the end of the world. You might expect the world to end with a huge, bright explosion, but for the Hollow Men, the world ends with a sad and quiet "whimper."

 

 

 

 

Explanation

http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/

 

 

In A Nutshell

 

"The Hollow Men" is a huge downer of a poem. In this way, it fits into the general arc of T.S. Eliot's career, which can be divided into Huge Downers and Glorious Uppers. For example, The Wasteland: Huge Downer; Four Quartets: Glorious Upper.

 

Clearly we're over-simplifying. But Eliot was going through a rough patch when he wrote "The Hollow Men." His marriage to Vivienne Eliot had collapsed, and some scholars think she was having an affair with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Also, Eliot was still moving toward a religious conversion to Anglicanism that did not arrive until 1927. Several of the poems that Eliot wrote before this conversion concern the total failure of religious hope and love (see, for example, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock").

 

"The Hollow Men" begins with a quote from Joseph Conrad's famous novella Heart of Darkness, the story of a colonial Englishman who goes power-hungry in Africa, and things only go downhill from there. Eliot's poem is about a group of scarecrow-like individuals who exist in a state between life and death and suffer from a serious case of moral paralysis. They are forever trapped on the banks of the River Styx, the ancient Greek symbol for the dividing line between life and death. Some critics consider "The Hollow Men" to be a companion piece for Eliot's most famous work, The Waste Land, another poem about moral paralysis.

 

Eliot's poems from the 1920s are often read in a political context as a reaction to the aftermath of World War I. Eliot was preoccupied with the idea of a European literary and ethical tradition, and he saw this tradition fragmenting everywhere around him. He turned, as he often did, to his favorite Italian poet Dante Alighieri, whose Inferno was inspiration for this poem. "The Hollow Men" was published in 1925, three years after The Waste Land. In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

 

Why Should I Care?

 

Many people know this poem only for its immortal final lines:

 

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

We find these lines terrifying because we tend to like stories to have big, flashy endings, and what could be a bigger story than the history of the world? And yet, sometimes real life isn't very dramatic. Every time some petty and preventable catastrophe befalls humanity (or a part of humanity), you'll find journalists, diplomats, and newspaper editorialists turning to T.S. Eliot 's prediction that the world will end with a "whimper."

 

Don't believe us? Try a Google search with a major global problem and the words "bang" and "whimper." Global warming? Click here. Conflict in the Middle East? Got it covered here. Financial meltdown? But of course. The last lines of "The Hollow Men" have entered the mainstream culture as a way to describe the sometimes arbitrary ways that we humans make a mess of a situation.

 

The irony is that Eliot really disliked journalists. He thought they were just like the "hollow men" of this poem, and that the politicians and newspaper editors in Paris weren't even capable of making enough of a splash to get into Hell (source). When you read the final lines of "The Hollow Men" in light of the rest of the poem, you'll see that the poem is not so much about the end of the world as about people who sit around and talk without ever trying to put their beliefs or ideas into practice. The poem's message is dark: if you're not going to be a good person, then at least be a really bad person.
 

 

Sectional Analysis

 

Section 1 - http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/section-1-summary.html

Section 2 - http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/section-2-summary.html

Section 3 - http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/section-3-summary.html

Section 4 - http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/section-4-summary.html

Section 5 - http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/section-5-summary.html
 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Epigraphs

http://www.shmoop.com/hollow-men/epigraphs-summary.html

 

First Epigraph

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

• The first epigraph is a quote from a servant in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
• The servant reveals to the character Marlow that another character named Kurtz has just died.
• Conrad's novel is a true classic, but we don't think you need to rush out to read it to understand this poem.
• Here's the lowdown: Kurtz is an British ivory trader in Africa, and is one of the many Europeans who arrived to exploit that continent's resources in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He seems to have some qualities of greatness because he collects more ivory than other traders, but in one memorable passage, Marlow suspects Kurtz of being "hollow to the core" and lacking a human and moral nature. (Read more.) The epigraph tells us that, in some sense, the poem is set after the death of Kurtz, or someone "hollow" man like him.

Second Epigraph

A penny for the Old Guy

• The English celebrate Guy Fawkes Day every November 5th with fireworks and the burning of little straw men or "effigies."
• Guy Fawkes was convicted of trying to blow up King James I in 1605 by stashing gunpowder underneath the Parliament building. The incident is known as the "Gunpowder Plot." But Fawkes and the gunpowder were discovered before the plan went off, and Fawkes gave up the names of his co-conspirators under torture.
• To celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, English children ask for money to fund the explosions of their straw effigies of Fawkes, so they say, "A penny for the guy?" "Guy" being his first name. You can read more about it here.
• But there's more. According to Ancient Greek mythology, a person who died would need to pay Charon, the ferryman, with a coin before he would take you across the River Styx into the realm of death. So the "Old Guy" also refers to the ancient figure of Charon. Apparently, someone is begging for a "penny" to give the ferryman to get across the Styx.

 

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 

 

Wikipedia Info

  

Bio: TS Eliot - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ts_eliot

 

Poem: The Hollow Men - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Men








 

 

R.E. Slater - Three Coins in a Fountain (a poem)

Three Coins in a Fountain

by R.E. Slater

I placed three coins in a templed fountain,

wishing each worn farthing fare thee well,

content before its glittering, flowing waters,

against a clearing sky’s deep azured blue.

With the first I wished for wonder’s contentment,

the second a lifetime filled with abiding joy,

and third for love’s sublime abundance,

upon all my days this jealous earth.

Thence followed to my greatest pleasure,

a golden parade playing wondrous tunes,

heralding fine instruments in regaling colours,

filling with boys and girls each gaily dressed,

bearing fair golden lockets upon blazing vests.

Bright with happy, joyous faces beaming,

clasping flashing golden harps their breasts,

marching to brassy drums’ thunderous beats,

beneath superfluous melodies soaring high.

So fine a parade that I forgot my wishes,

feeling blessed with warmth and happiness,

lasting all my days until evening’s hours,

when darkness finally came to rest.

And there before the golden fountain,

I sought again each coin I tossed,

to give each one a little lad beside me,

filling all his days and waking hours,

like as mine upon a fountain blest.

- R.E. Slater

March 25, 2013

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