English 10C
You big an' ugly old tu' n-foot Be'n neber know fe wear a boot; An chigger nyam you' tumpa toe, Till nit full I' like herrin' roe.
A Midnight Woman to the Bobby
Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A) Year of Publication: 1843 B) Formal Qualities: Irony Form and context carry out some process of critique and reform. 1st person narration The narrator is not apart of the story, nor is he omniscient. Interesting: most of the time he tells what he doesn't know Authorial intrusions: author interjects a lot of comments about what is transpiring. He pretends he is in the room with you "standing at your elbows". Pathos: ex- Tiny tim C) Thematic Concerns: Obsession with wealth, economy, speaks to the consciousness of people and appealing, the role of christmas in Industrial capitalism, effect on family dynamic, critique child labor new literary form revitalizing familial relationships within the industrial revolution D) Key Moments/Quotes in Text: Centering on scrooge Pg. 6 "not my business"- idiom= not my concern. Also has literal meaning suggesting the practice of business has individualized people and made them selfish. Pg 3- argument with fred shows what christmas means to Scrooge. For him it means the passage of time and a reminder of his morality. Pg. 7-8: "At length the hour...on the threshold." Pg. 14: "Mankind was by business...ocean of business." Business is fundamentally breaking families and ideologically individualizes. Pg. 18: "The curtains of his bed....spirit at your elbow." Dickens wants to draw a parallel between ghosts and Scrooge and us and author OR reading of book is supposed to have same effect as ghosts are to Scrooge Pg. 26: "It isn't that...cost a fortune." Pg 26- the emotional/familial relationship between the boss and the workers Critique showing all that's wrong with the industrial revolution. Things were better in old days when family was the important unit. Pg. 36: "Spirit...themselves, not us." Pg. 54: "Every person has a right to take care of themselves." Self-determination and freedom is missing from this time period. Shows it as a dog eat world exploitation. Economics brings out the worst in people. E) Historical Context: Industrial Revolution Dickens came to the U.S. and witnessed child labor in coal mines and textile industries. These were long and harsh working conditions that led to white and black lung disease by late 20's. As a result, he wanted to appeal to British public of poor children. This motive is responsible for characters like Tiny Tim. (critique on industrial capital) He grew up middle class, by 12 his father was in debt and private collectors placed his whole family in debtors prison. He was forced to polish shoes for a year and stamp the jars. This inspired various pathetic characters such as the orphans, sick, poor etc. Created new market for book industry. This is why Scrooge shows his reformation as a new man by buying stuff. Negative effects industrial revolution= broken families from working. People don't live near their parents anymore in an attempt to find work. Christmas is an antidote to Industrial Capital because it provides things that the industrial capital has removed from the society. Hungry 40's (economy) Time of labor unrest. Ex: 1848 socialist revolutions throughout Europe. This is a negative effect of the Industrial Revolution. F) Relation to Other Texts: Goblin Market Just like A Christmas Carol, Goblin Market branded itself as an illustrated book concerning Christmas Didactic and supernatural to reflect/mirror real life and reveal greater themes The Intuitionist Dealing with the supernatural to reflect/mirror real life G) Genre: Fable; Victorian fiction
Sylvia Plath, Assorted Poems
A). Years of Publication: 1956-1963 (death) Majority of poems (50) written in last 6 months of her life Last 12 poems written a week before her death B). Formal Qualities: Earlier poetry Conventional, slant form Rhyme scheme End-stopped lines Later Poetry (Change marked in writing seminar with Robert Lowell- Confessional poetry) Shorter lines and stanzas 3-line units, unrhymed Using metaphorical language to describe a serious reality Started writing about herself C). Thematic Concerns: Femininity in relation to masculinity Isolation Motherhood D). Key Moments/Quotes in Texts: Pg 73- Metaphors "I'm a riddle in nine syllables" Metaphor implies pregnancy Pg. 107- Morning Song "I'm no more your mother/ Than a cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow/ Effacement at the wind's hand."- Central metaphor of poem- mother and child connection is ephemeral and temporary Also, metaphors used leak into one another, ex: line 15 baby's mouth opens, but the windows swallow Pg 113 Tulips "I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted/ To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty./ How free it is, you have no idea how free-" Pg 197 Fever 103 "I have been flickering, off, on, off on./ The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss." "Three days. Three nights./ Lemon water, chicken water, water make me retch." - Comparing herself to Jesus. Too pure even for water "I think I am going up,/ I think I may rise-" Pg 221 Sheep in Fog "People or stars/ regard me sadly, I disappoint them. Everything is leaving to this other place that she wants to get to- death. Pg 226 Child "Clear eye"- innocent child who reflects what is observed, Plath's perfect poet "Pool in which images/ Should be grand and classical/ Not this troublous/ Wringing of hands,"- child sees her/his mother's anxiety and struggles Pg 236 Balloons Poet's presence is impersonal- "the heart" when referring to her heart (line 16) "Seeming to see/ A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it,/ He bites," Pg 238 Edge "The woman is perfected./ Her dead/ Body wears the smile of accomplishment," "Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,/ One at each little/ Pitcher of milk, now empty./ She has folded/ Them into her body as petals" E). Historical Context: Plath's continuous struggle with mental health Toxic relationship with husband Electroshock therapy to "cure" depression F). Relation to Other Texts: Similar to Dickinson's themes of death, isolation, pain Interested in Woolf's life during college- Mrs. Dalloway's ideas of gender roles, isolation and identity Lived in Ginsberg's time, both find out that there's no place for them in society Howl - mental illness and electroshock therapy G). Genre: Poetry
" Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner."
Christmas Carol The business descriptions proceed the friendly relations they had together
"At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat. "You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge. "If quite convenient, Sir." "It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be bound?" The clerk smiled faintly. "And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work." The clerk observed that it was only once a year. "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!" The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the news-papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold."
Christmas Carol
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me."
Christmas Carol
"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing." "I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit. "Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge. "There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
Christmas Carol Critique of seventh day off because of the church.. Spirit disregards church
Silent till Lizzie slept; Then sat up in a passionate yearning, And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, an wept As if her heart would break.
Goblin Market Strong emotions that suggest a deeper meaning than just wanting the fruit
A crowed flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
The Wasteland The Burial of the Dead
"On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
The Wasteland The Fire Sermon
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?" But O O O O that Shakespearian Rag- It's so elegant So intelligent "What shall I do now? What shall I do?" "I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street "With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? "What shall we ever do?" The hot water at ten. And it it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
The Wasteland A Game of Chess
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. "What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? "I never know what you are thinking. Think"
The Wasteland A Game of Chess
In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid- trouble, confused And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
The Wasteland A Game of Chess
He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience
The Wasteland What the Thunder Said
She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright. For having lived in Westminster- how many years now? over twenty, - one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity;
Mrs Dalloway
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply I am indebted, Miss Weston's book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble.
The Wasteland Notes
De fiel' pretty? Ot couldn't less 'an dat, We wuk de bes', an' den de lan' is fat; We dig de row dem even in a line, An' keep it clean- den so it mus' look fine
Quashie to Buccra
But it's our future, not theirs. It's ours. And we need to take it back. What he made, this elevator, colored people made that. It's ours. And I'm going to show that we ain't nothing. show them downstairs and the rest of them that we are alive."
The Intuitionist
The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
The Wasteland What the Thunder Said
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
A). Year of Publication: 1956 B). Formal Qualities Title suggests something formless (into by William Carlos Williams) Elegy: no regimented line or poem length, no rhyme scheme Long lines that mimic prose Written in free verse Regular use of anaphora → shifts the pattern from the end to the beginning, used to structure in place of rhyme Repetitive structure of parallelism Imagery: principle of imaged juxtapositions Heightens ordinary juxtaposition and adds element of surprise C). Thematic Concerns: Suffering from mental illness Electroshock Therapy Electrical metaphor D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: Pg. 10: "terror through the wall" Pg. 18: "who through potato salad" Pg. 19: "with him not safe I'm not safe" Pg. 17: "who jumped off the brooklyn bridge" - an actual, true-life instant E). Historical Context: Ginsberg's history: Mother was in an insane asylum and declared incurably psychotic Electroshock therapy was, at the time, seen as an alternative to lobotomies Carl Solomon: friend Ginsberg met when he, himself, was in a psychiatric facility Solomon also received electroshock therapy and was put into a diabetic coma → Ginsberg sees him as an alter ego for himself and his mother Publication history: Published out of City Light Bookstore Obscenity trial Declared to be of "redeeming social importance" and thus not pornographic One of the last instances of such trials in the US F). Relation to Other Texts: Urban setting: relates to Mrs. Dalloway, The Wasteland, Goblin Market, Lonely Londoners Alienation / mental illness: relates to Mrs. Dalloway--in particular treatment for mental illness--, Sylvia Plath's poetry, Emily Dickinson's poetry (in the sense of isolation) G). Genre: Poetry
Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
A). Year of Publication: 1855 within Leaves of Grass B). Formal Qualities: Free verse, 52 sections, C). Thematic concerns: -Plurality with the concern of adding to oneself → Commonality vs sociality -Celebration of oneself -"loafing," or constant wandering from place to place throughout the text results in many different settings and interactions with many different people D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: -Section 24, Kosmos: seeing creation as a microism, part of a larger whole, Kosmos spelled that way to suggest something to do with the universe "Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son," is a proclaimation neither in first person or third person → adding to the theme that it is not oneself or from the crowd/perspective looking from outside E). Historical Context: Pre-American Civil War F). Relation to Other Texts: The backdrop of much of Whitman's poetry is a quickly changing mix of both urban and natural settings , which stand in contrast to the strictly urban-based poems and prose such as "The Wasteland," "A Christmas Carol," Mrs. Dalloway, and Lonely Londoners -could also argue that Whitman's focus on nature is in opposition to the heavy industrialization and urban settings in the United States leading up to the Civil War -in contrast to "The Wasteland," the more people Whitman's narrator seems to interact with, the more inspired and happy he becomes--whereas the multitudes of people the narrator of "The Wasteland" interacts with seems to give him anxiety G). Genre: Poetry (but in free verse and constant variation), a Transcendentalist text
Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market and Assorted Poems (May, Absence, Winter: My Secret, Sleeping at Last)
A). Year of Publication: 1862 B). Formal Qualities: no regular form, rhythmic but rhyme is not regular, playful form C). Thematic Concerns: Involvement in commerce makes you less than human - men are goblins Commodification of people - Laura gives up part of herself to pay for fruit Market eats you up Solidarity of sisters/family v. temptation of men/market D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: "Eat me, drink me" - Lizzy as Christ figure, Christian allegory "Then sat up in a passionate yearning/And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire" - addiction Description of excess of fruit - sensuality E). Historical Context: 1859 Goblin Market written while volunteering at St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary for women (rehab) Industrial Revolution Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (desire for pre-renaissance world; critique of industrialism, labor conditions, and products) F). Relation to Other Texts: Published as illustrated book for Christmas (taking advantage of xmas market created by Dickens) Supernatural elements (related to Dickens) G). Genre: Victorian narrative poetry Shorter poems = lyrics
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
A). Year of Publication: 1922 B). Formal Qualities: synecdoche, fragmentation of scenes, insistently rhythmic, automatic verse C). Thematic Concerns: loss of identity, lack of communication, alienation of the self from society D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: SYNECDOCHE: their body parts are made to represent who they are, insinuating a lack of identity -Unreal City (I. Burial of the Dead): people are lost in the crowd, and everybody is doing the same actions; lack of subjects and identity, as they are dissolved in crowd, with everybody doing the same thing, everyday -Typist and her boyfriend sex scene (III. The Fire Sermon): typist is identified with what she is useful for (lack of identity, as she is never named), lack of communication with the boyfriend, and lack of intimacy - line 139 to the end of the section: conversation in bar → shows depraved relationship, 5 children (1 abortion), all competitive, even women-women or man -woman, working class set of speakers, relations between sexes → depraved - reduction of people to body parts, in conditions of work - doesn't take the whole person - division of labor: Dividing up labor process into parts Division of the laborer, no longer takes the entire person Line 216: "The human engine..." → the human was machine The woman is called a typist even at home in lien 222 E). Historical Context: Post WWI disillusionment, consumerism, new technology (airplanes, cars, ect.), intro of films and radio/mass culture When the poem was published in 1922, it received lots of negative commentary from the press For literary people, the poem was very popular It held the quintessential picture of modern world and Western Civilization F). Relation to Other Texts: urban setting in relation to Mrs. Dalloway, although "The Waste Land" depicts a much more bleak outlook on the city than Mrs. Dalloway Resembles Song of Myself in that there's a panoramic view of American society, like a scrapbook of ideas G). Genre: modernist poetry
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
A). Year of Publication: 1925 B). Formal Qualities: Free Indirect Discourse, Direct Discourse vs Indirect Discourse, Irregular Narration format, Unknown narrator, Stream-of-consciousness, modernism, minor character's points of views construe up the protagonists image/plot, relation to memories and places to help build background and plot development, unchronological temporal plot, plot is only a single day time span, verb tense & point of view shift constantly C). Thematic Concerns: Life vs Death, Class struggle, Marriage, Love, Gender roles, wealth, Sexuality, Time, Identity D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: Introduction; page 2 reference to Mrs. Foxcroft & Lady Bexborough relate to Mrs. Dalloway's morbid outlook on herself and life, sets the novel up for her extensive identity crisis. Peter Walsh referring to Clarissa "there's nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage" overarching conflict of the novel is acceptance versus marriage (page 24). "One must seek out the people who completed them; even the places..." (91) Relates to Clarissa's constant reference to her past and how her past has impacted her and helps her realize her own significance as a woman. E). Historical Context: Post World War one era - London left in financial shambles F). Relation to Other Texts: Somber perspective on what it means to live and be alive, whether being married or not, resembles T.S. Elliot and his abhorrence towards the working class or how mundane life can cause self-dread/hate & despair G). Genre: Fiction
Sam Selvon, Lonely Londoners
A). Year of Publication: 1956 B). Formal Qualities: Lack of central plot Rejects standardized English Stream-of-consciousness narration C). Thematic Concerns: Racial prejudice Urban isolation D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: "'London not like Kingston, you know. A man could get lost here easy, it have millions of people living here and your friend could be living in London for years and you never see him,'" (72). "Jesus Christ, when he say 'Charing Cross,' ... It didn't matter about the woman he going to meet, just to say he was going there made him feel big and important, and even if he was just going to coast a lime, to stand up and watch white people, still, it would have been something," (84). "'Boy, you know what I want to do? I want to go back to Trinidad and lay down in the sun and dig my toes, and eat a fish broth and go Maracas Bay and talk to them fishermen, and all day long I sleeping under a tree, with just the old sun for company,'" (130). E). Historical Context: British Nationality Act of 1948 F). Relation to Other Texts: Claude McKay, Assorted Poems G). Genre: Fiction
Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist
A). Year of Publication: 1999 B). Formal Qualities: Written in Present Tense, although novel is set in the Past C). Thematic Concerns: Appearance (imperial) vs Reality (intuition), Technology D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: Elevator falling (over the period of 65 pgs) "But it's our future, not theirs. It's ours. And we need to take it back. What he [Fulton] made, this elevator, colored people made that. It's ours. And I'm going to show that we ain't nothing. Show them downstairs and the rest of them that we are alive." (Pg 140) E). Historical Context: Written right before/during technological book of the late 20th/early 21st century F). Relation to Other Texts: Relates to Christmas Carol's literary form such as use of prose, and Scrooge's fetishization of money and the technology that is used to make it. Mrs. Dalloway's concerns social roles and the urbanization that supports these roles Lonely Londoners impact of race due to urbanization, untraditional narration, invented form of a global language G). Genre: Speculative Fiction
Emily Dickinson, Assorted Poems
A). Year(s) of Composition: 1860s B). Formal Qualities: tends to follow certain patterns with some single deviation that is significant (Ex: ABAB quatrains with one unrhymed line), simple meter and rhyme, lyrical, short, elliptic, terse C). Thematic Concerns: soul, society vs. individual, death, pain, solitary experience D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: #465 - narrated from beyond the grave, religious imagery of Christ replaced with a fly, "between the light and me" → reality of death overcomes spiritual salvation #650 - largeness of pain, "pain overcomes everything", begins & ends with the word "pain" #712 - disparity between naivety/sweetness and the reality of death, eternity over immortality, finality of death #241 - "I like a look of Agony", truth, pain cuts through the facade #280 - funeral within the body, repetition of "And" in beginning of lines, funeral/death as a metaphor for physical/mental breakdown E). Historical Context: wrote during the Civil War but it does not enter her poetry F). Relation to Other Texts: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (expansion of the self, how the soul exists within the crowd), Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (isolation of the self, solitary experience) G). Genre: Poetry
T.S. Eliot, "Preludes" and "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
A). Year(s) of Publication:1917, 1915 B). Formal Qualities: Marked an important transition from 19th century Romantic poetry to 20th century Modern poetry. Preludes features 3rd person narrator, irregular line lengths and the early stages of free verse, but still features rhythmic qualities. Love Song features first person narrator, couplets, and shifts from future to past perfect to past perfect conditional texts. C). Thematic Concerns: response to industrialism, current projections of modern life in literature, progress, critique of urban life, D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: E). Historical Context: Response to Industrial Revolution, WWI, Radio F). Relation to Other Texts: G). Genre
Claude McKay, Assorted Poems
A). Years of Publication: 1910s/20s B). Formal Qualities: poems in Jamaican Creole English and standard English, regular rhyme schemes, favored the sonnet form, C). Thematic Concerns: racial issues, homeland memories, resistance, duality between external/internal identity, search for a different language D). Key Moments/Quotes in Text: Final line of "O Word I Love to Sing," first line of "Quashie to Buccra" E). Historical Context: The beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance, increasing protests against racial inequality (poem "If We Must Die" a message of resistance in response to the race riots of "Red Summer" of 1919. F). Relation to Other Texts: McKay's corpus can be compared to Selvon's Lonely Londoners in that both write in other Englishes, and both works discuss dilemmas of alienation and identity for immigrants from colonies to colonial centers, although the works provide different perspectives and are far from each other in publication date. G). Genre: Poetry
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
Christmas Carol Comparison to Scrooge's reply to charity donations mentioned earlier in the text
"The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow."
Christmas Carol First person narrator author pretends he is in the room with the readers
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one." "Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted Scrooge. "Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; "
Christmas Carol Map of how the story occurs. Clock seems to go backwards at time. Three days don't pass when the three spirits visit
" I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave,"
Christmas Carol Reinforces Scrooge's fears of death coming
"What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?"
Christmas Carol Scrooge's number one importance is money
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
Christmas Carol Familial Relationship
Like a foam-topped waterspout Cast down headlong in the sea, She fell at last; Pleasure past and anguish past, Is it death or is it life? Life out of death
Goblin Market
Do you not remember Jeanie, How she met them in the moonlight, Took their gifts both choice and many Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Goblin Market Anecdote about someone who gave in to the market
Lizzie veiled her blushes: Crouching close together In the cooling weather, With clasping arms and cautioning lips, With tingling cheeks and finger tips. "Lie close," Laura said, Pricking up her golden head: "We must not look at the goblin men, We must not buy their fruits:
Goblin Market Blushing suggests an erotic experience of their allure
Through the goblins cuffed and caught her, Coaxed and fought her, Bullied and besought her, Scratched her, pinched her black as ink, Kicked and knocked her, Mauled and mocked her, Lizzie uttered not a word; Would not open lip from lip Lest they should cram a mouthful in: But laughed in heart to feel the drip Of juice that syrupped her face, And lodged in dimples of her chin, And streaked her neck which quaked like curd
Goblin Market Lizzie's enjoyment is in her resistance
The kind heart made her windy-paced That urged her home quite out of breath with haste And inward laughter. She cried "Laura," up the garden, "Did you miss me? Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises, Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeezed from goblin fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin dew. Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura, make much of me; For your sake I have braved the glen And had to do with goblin merchant men
Goblin Market Reference to Last supper- Christ's body Eating her resistance will save Laura
Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, Come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;-
Goblin Market Sensuality of word describes the fruit
One has a cat's face One whisked a tail, One tramped at a rat's pace, One crawled like a snail, One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
Goblin Market The men described as animals
I'm with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep I'm with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
Howl
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Howl
who cowered in unshaven rooms i underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
Howl
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
Howl
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Dues to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bun and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of American's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heat of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
Howl
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you has a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
Howl
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
Howl
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
Howl
with mother finally ******, and the fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 am and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful bit of hallucination- ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time-
Howl
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child?... I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child... the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. An now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues! And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere; The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceased the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward... and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Leaves of Grass
Through me the afflatus surging and surging... through me the current and index. I speak the password primeval... I give the sign of democracy; By God! I will accept nothing which cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of slaves, Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons, Voices of the diseases and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars- and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the trivial and flat and foolish despised, Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung. Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts... voiced veiled, and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.
Leaves of Grass
If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of my body; Translucent mould of me it shall be you, Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you, Whatever foes to the tilth of me it shall be you, You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my like; Breast that presses against other breast it shall be you, My brain it shall be your occult convolutions, Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you, Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you, Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you; Sun so generous it shall be you, Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you, You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you, Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you, Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you, Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.
Leaves of Grass Repetition of "it shall be you"
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing, If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the tying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe.
Leaves of Grass Use of anaphora. Stating the thing and its opposite allows it to be all-encompassing
But she said, stilling on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not "here, here, here"; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter- even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with the horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death... perhaps- perhaps.
Mrs Dalloway
Septimus was one of the first to volunteer. He went to France to save an England which consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare's plays and Miss Isabel Pole in a green dress walking in a square. There in the trenches the change which Mr. Brewer desired when he advised football was produced instantly; he developed manliness; he was promoted; he drew the attention, indeed the affection of his officer, Evans by name. [...] when Evans was killed, just before the Armistice, in Italy, Septimus, far from showing any emotion or recognising that here was the end of a friendship, congratulated himself upon feeling very little and very reasonably. The War had taught him. It was sublime. He had gone through the whole show, friendship, European War, death, had won promotion, was still under thirty and was bound to survive. He was right there. The last shells missed hi. He watched them explode with indifference. When peace came he was in Milan, billeted in the house of an innkeeper with a courtyard, flowers in tubs, little tables in the open, daughters making hats, and to Lucrezia, the younger daughter, he became engaged one evening when the panic was on him- that he could not feel.
Mrs Dalloway
The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one's feeling for a man. It was completely disinterested, and besides, it had a quality which could only exist between women, between women just grown up. It was protective, on her side; sprang from a sense of being in league together, a presentiment of something that was bound to part them (they spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe), which led to this chivalry, this protective feeling which was much more on her side than Sally's. For in those days she was completely reckless; did the most idiotic things out of bravado; bicycled round the parapet on the terrace; smoked cigars. Absurd, she was- very absurd. But the charm was over-powering, to her at least, so that she could remember standing in bedroom at the top of the house holding the hot-water can in her hands and saying aloud, "She is beneath this roof... She is beneath this roof!"
Mrs Dalloway
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told to just keep it, not to look at it- a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which as they waled (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!- when old Joseph and peter faced them: "Star-gazing?" said Peter.
Mrs Dalloway
A young man (that is what Sir William is telling Mr. Dalloway) had killed himself. He had been in the army." Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought. [...] What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party- the Bradshaws, talked of death. He had killed himself- but how? Always her body went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And the Bradshaws talked of it at her party! She had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never more anything more. But he had flung it away. They went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded; people kept on coming). They (all day she had been thinking of Bourton, of Peter, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter,, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
Mrs. Dalloway
Oh, he did, she cried. But he did not mean it, she said. Of course not. It was merely a question of rest, said Sir Willian; of rest, rest, rest; a long rest in bed. There was a delightful home down in the country where her husband would be perfectly looked after. Away from her? she asked. Unfortunately, yes; the people we care for most are not good for us when we are ill. But he was not mad, was he? Sir Willian said he never spoke of "madness"; he called it not having a sense of proportion.
Mrs. Dalloway
To his patients he gave three-quarters of an hour; and if in this exacting science which has to do with what, after all we know nothing about- the nervous system, the human brain- a doctor loses his sense of proportion, as a doctor he fails. Health we must have; and health is proportion; so that when a man comes into your room and says he is Christ (a common delusion), and has a message, as they mostly have, and threatens, as they often do, to kill himself, you invoke proportion; order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and rest; rest without friends, without books, without messages; six months' rest; until a man who when in weighing seven stone six comes out weighing twelve.
Mrs. Dalloway
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to here, when with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French Windows and plunged at the Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"- was that it?- "I prefer men to cauliflowers"- was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace- Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which , for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished- how strange it was!- a few sayings like this about cabbages.
Mrs. Dalloway
"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! what an awful lesson!" [...] "What is it that one was taught to say in one's boyhood. 'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has to be answered. The prayer of your repentance will answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished."
Picture of Dorian Gray
"Have you a really bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral- immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written form him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race.
Picture of Dorian Gray
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry. "Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expressions of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry- too much of myself!"
Picture of Dorian Gray
"When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." "Ah! but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward. "Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his char, and looking at Lord Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?" "To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life- that is the important thing. [...] Besides, Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality." "But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter. "Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich." "One has to pay in other ways but money." "What sort of ways, Basil?" "Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in... well, in the consciousness of degradation." Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders.
Picture of Dorian Gray
"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. [...] Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's goof looks- We shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."
Picture of Dorian Gray
He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. Or had his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him- life, and his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins- he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of shame: that was all.
Picture of Dorian Gray
Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.
Picture of Dorian Gray
The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence. Bit it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. [...] Yes , there was to be, a Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. It aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the sense, of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a like that is itself but a moment.
Picture of Dorian Gray
There are moments, psychologist tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominate a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is take from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion it fascination, and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, the morning-star of evil, fell from heaven, it was a revel that he fell.
Picture of Dorian Gray
What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. The would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him- for it was really love- had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo has known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now.
Picture of Dorian Gray
"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young, It will never be older than this particular day of June... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that- for that- I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"
Picture of Dorian Gray Exactly what happened.
"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, holding up his Burgundy against the light, and wondering how it was that he could discuss the matter so calmly. "I have no the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate."
Picture of Dorian Gray Lord Henry's fear of death
"You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Like has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."
Picture of Dorian Gray Life as an artform
And that smell of rain is stronger now. The infamous design problem from her school days: What does the perfect elevator look like, the one that will deliver us from the cities we suffer now, these stunted shacks? We don't know because we can't see inside it, it's something we cannot imagine, like the shape of angels' teeth. It's a black box. [...] "Everyone's working on black boxes," Lila Mae counters. "That's where all of American and Arbo's research and development money goes. There's nothing new about that." If Otis's first elevation delivered us from medieval five- and six-story construction, the next elevator, it is believed, will grant us the sky, unreckoned towers: the second elevation. Of course they're working on the black box; it's the future.
The Intuitionist
By the ninetieth floor, everything is air, but that's jumping ahead a bit. It starts with the first floor, with dirt, with idiocy. As if we were meant for this. As if this is what fire meant, or language. To crawl about, prey to the dull obviousness of biology, as if we were not meant to fly. To lift.
The Intuitionist
It was the same feeling she gets when she's, standing on the car. There's an old inspector's maxim: "An elevator is grave." Such loss and devastation in there. That's why the inside walls of the car are never sheer: they're broken up into panels, equipped with a dorsal rail. Otherwise it would be a box.
The Intuitionist
See, the Empiricists stoop to check for tell-tale striations on the lift winch and seize upon oxidation scars on the compensating rope sheave, all that muscle work, and think the Intuitionists get off easy. Lazy slobs. Some nicknames Empiricists have for their renegade colleagues: swamis, voodoo men, juju heads, witch doctors, Harry Houdinis. All terms belonging to the nomenclature of dark exotica, the sinister foreign. Except for Houdini, who nonetheless has something swarthy about him. Some counter-nicknames from Intuitionists: flat-earthers, ol' nuts and bolts, stress freaks ("checking for signs of stress" being a commonly uttered phrase when the Empirically trained are out running the streets), Babbits, collators (this last word preferably hissed for optimum disdain). No one can quite explain why the Intuitionists have a 10 percent higher accuracy rate than the Empiricists.
The Intuitionist
They see his skin and see a white man. Retreat behind the stone walls of the Institute does not change matters. He is still not colored. There is another world beyond this one. He was trying to tell them and they wouldn't hear it. Don't believe your eyes. [...] Lila Mae knew he was joking because he hated himself. She understood this hatred of himself; she hated something in herself and she took it out on Pompey. Now she could see Fulton for what he was. There was no way he believed in transcendence. His race kept him earthbound, like the stranded citizens before Otis invented his safety elevator. There was no hope for him as a colored man because the white world will not let a colored man rise, and there was no hope for him as a white man because it was a lie. He secretes his venom into the pages of a book. He knows the other world he described does not exist. There will be no redemption They want to be near to hell as they can.
The Intuitionist
Bananas ripe and gree, and ginger-root Cocoa in pods and alligator pears, And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit, Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs, Set in the window, bringing memories Of fruit-trees laden y low-singing rills, And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies In benediction over nun-like hills. My eyes drew dim, and I could no more gaze; A wave of longing through my body swept, And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
The Tropics in New York
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert, He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time, And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. Them I'll know who to than, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can't. But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face, It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don't want children?
The Wasteland A Game of Chess
"You were with me in the ships at Mylae! "That corse you planted last year in your garden, "Has it begun to sprout? Will it blood this year? "Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, "Or with his nails he'll dig it up men!
The Wasteland The Burial of the Dead
At the violet how, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins. Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest- I too awaited the unexpected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with the one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which are still unreproved, in undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have forsuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit... She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: "Well not that's done: and I'm glad it's over." When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.
The Wasteland The Fire Sermon
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.
The Wasteland The Burial of the Dead
