Puisi Esai dan Taik Kucing Teori Sastra dari TS Eliot

Masih terpesona dan terpengaruh puisi esai, dengan begitu banyak catatan kaki? Marilah kita membaca, dan hentikan sejenak semua riuh-rendah tentang puisi esai itu, untuk menikmati puisi TS Eliot, The Waste Land. Nanti di bagian bawah, setelah membaca puisi ini, kita urai soal puisi esai dan kritik sastra akademik. Dan paling bawah sendiri, bagaimana kita "memberikan" catatan kaki untuk puisi TS Eliot ini.

The Waste Land

By T.S. Eliot

                                 

                                  FOR EZRA POUND

                                  IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              I. The Burial of the Dead

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.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                      Frisch weht der Wind

                      Der Heimat zu

                      Mein Irisch Kind,

                      Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd 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.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom 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 again!

“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

              II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Glowed on the marble, where the glass

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

Reflecting light upon the table as

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

From satin cases poured in rich profusion;

In vials of ivory and coloured glass

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused

And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air

That freshened from the window, these ascended

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,

Flung their smoke into the laquearia,

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Huge sea-wood fed with copper

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.

Above the antique mantel was displayed

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene

The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

And other withered stumps of time

Were told upon the walls; staring forms

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

“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.”

I think we are in rats’ alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

“What is that noise?”

                          The wind under the door.

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”

                           Nothing again nothing.

                                                        “Do

“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

“Nothing?”

       I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”  

          

                                                                           But

O O O O that Shakespeherian 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 if 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.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—

I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

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.

Then I’ll know who to thank, 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 all right, 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?

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,

And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

              III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;

Departed, have left no addresses.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

While I was fishing in the dull canal

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck

And on the king my father’s death before him.

White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.

But at my back from time to time I hear

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter

And on her daughter

They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc’d.

Tereu

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic French

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, 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 expected guest.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with 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 still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence;

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered 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 now 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.

“This music crept by me upon the waters”

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

               The river sweats

               Oil and tar

               The barges drift

               With the turning tide

               Red sails

               Wide

               To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

               The barges wash

               Drifting logs

               Down Greenwich reach

               Past the Isle of Dogs.

                                 Weialala leia

                                 Wallala leialala

               Elizabeth and Leicester

               Beating oars

               The stern was formed

               A gilded shell

               Red and gold

               The brisk swell

               Rippled both shores

               Southwest wind

               Carried down stream

               The peal of bells

               White towers

                                Weialala leia

                                Wallala leialala

“Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet. After the event

He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’

I made no comment. What should I resent?”

“On Margate Sands.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”

                       la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

              IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

                                   A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

                                   Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

              V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

                                      If there were water

   And no rock

   If there were rock

   And also water

   And water

   A spring

   A pool among the rock

   If there were the sound of water only

   Not the cicada

   And dry grass singing

   But sound of water over a rock

   Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

   Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

   But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

                                    I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

                  Shantih     shantih     shantih

1922

Di bagian bawah tulisan ini, nanti akan disrtakan puisi The Waste Land, dengan catatan  catatan kaki di dalamnya. Catatan kaki dan penjelasannya bisa jauh lebih panjang dari puisi TS Eliot ini, seperti disertakan di sini catatan kaki untuk “menjelaskan” puisi tersebut. Oleh TS Eliot? Lantas buat apa dia menulis puisi, dan pura-pura menjadi esais?

TS Eliot bernama lengkap Thomas Stearns Elliot, lahir di St Lous Missouri AS 26 September 1888 dan meninggal di East Coker Somerset Inggris 4 Januari 1965. Sastrawan besar kelahiran Amerika Serikat yang karya-karya banyak mempengaruhi karya sastra awal abad 20. Tema-tema karyanya menghidupkan kembali drama puitik dan berperan besar bagi penulisan kritik karya sastra di Inggris dan Amerika Serikat.

Eliot mendapat pendidikan tinggi di Unversitas Harvard dan Oxford Inggris, menetap di Inggris tahun 1915 dan menjadi warga negara Inggris. Sebelum menjadi penyair, ia pernah bekerja dalam berbagai profesi seperti guru, pegawai bank, dan asisten majalah sastra The Egoist. Menikah dua kali, pertama dengan Vivien Haigh Wood tahun 1915 dan bercerai tahun 1933. Pernikaan kedua dengan Valerie Fletcher tahun 1957.

Kumpulan puisi pertamanya berjudul Prufock and Other Observations (1917), berisi sajak bebas memakai perumpamaan-perumpamaan modern tentang kehidupan kota metropolitan dengan berbagai masalahnya.

Bahasa dan perumpamaan yang digunakan Eliot dalam puisinya, belum populer pada jamannya terutama dalam puisi yang berjudul The Waste Land (1922). Puisi ini sangat populer dan menggambarkan sterilitas masyarakat modern dibandingkan masyarakat di masa lalu.

Pada tahun 1920-1921 Eliot memperluas tema karyanya dalam berbagai segi seperti sastra, budaya dan agama. Dalam esainya yang berjudul The Sacred Wood (1920), dia memandang bahwa kritikus harus memiliki kepekaan sejarah untuk menilai karya sastra pada perspektif yang tepat. Sebagai pendiri dan editor majalah The Criterion, Eliot berjasa mendirikan sebuah forum sastra bagi para penulis kontemporer ternama.

Pada periode 1930-an, karya-karya Eliot menunjukkan ketenangan dan kerendahan hati. Karyanya Four Quartets (1934), dianggap sebagai karya terbaiknya. Eliot juga terkenal sebagai penulis skenario teater. Karya populernya antara lain The Coctail Party (1934), Old Possums Book of Practical Cats (1939). Eliot meninggal tahun 1965 dan dimakamkan di East Coker tempat leluhurnya sebelum bermigrasi ke Amerika Serikat.

Puisi Esai dan Puisi Taik | Sementara itu, di sini, energi kita bisa dihabiskan untuk persoalan puisi esai yang konon paling berpengaruh di Indonesia saat ini. Pengaruh apa? Marilah dalam perdebatan itu kita memposisikan diri dengan proporsional. Mau sebagai apa? Benarkah dunia sastra hanya milik kaum ahli sastra dan kritikus sastra? Tentu tak perlu memposisikan diri secara diametral demikian, meskipun kita suka. Bagi para penulis sastra, sering dihadapkan pada posisi sulit, terutama berhadapan dengan para ahli sastra Indonesia. Dan seolah, kaum sastrawan menjadi harus mendengarkan. Sementara bagaimana kita mengembangkan sastra, dengan panduan yang akademik dan begitu teoretis? 

Mari kita belajar bersama dari puisi TS Eliot sebagai contoh kasus. Ratusan dan bahkan mungkin ribuan makalah ditulis atas The Waste Land. Dan puisi itu telah melahirkan berbagai ahli teori sastra, yang bisa jadi lebih garang daripada TS Eliot sendiri. Semua itu membuat pemaknaan puisi The Waste Land menjadi semakin luar biasa, dan di luar dugaan.

Sementara itu, what is literature? “Sebuah karya seni tidak bisa direduksi menjadi sebuah pemikiran, pertama-tama karena seni adalah produksi atau reproduksi dari keberadaan, me-menjadi (being), sesuatu yang tak akan membiarkan dirinya dipikirkan ,sebab keberadaan ini dipenetrasi sepenuhnya oleh sebuah eksistensi, yakni sebuah kebebasan yang menentukan nasib dan nilai dari pemikiran itu,...” kata Jean Paul Sartre.

Kita kemudian melupakan puisi sebagai karya seni, bagaimana Eliot berdendang, atau bahkan mengaum, berteriak. Tetapi para ahli sastra menakut-nakuti kita, dan kemudian kita lupa mendengarnya. Apakah puisi tak boleh dianalisa? Tak ada yang melarangnya. Tapi pertama kali sebagai pembaca, nikmatilah. Pekerjaan para ahli, biarkan mereka yang menganalisisnya, dan kita sebagai pembaca awam, bolah-boleh saja kemudian mengikutinya, untuk bersetuju atau tidak dengan para ahli susastra itu, dalam mencari makna lebih lanjut.

Tapi dalam proses penikmatan, mengapa kita” belum belum sudah,...” (durung apa-apa kok wis,..., belum ngapa-ngapain sudah berlagak sebagai ahli, karena dipengaruhi oleh orang yang tiba-tiba  menjadi ahli sastra rombongan). Yang menarik di Indonesia ini, ada banyak jenis kelamin ganda di antara kita. Dan kita sering kebingungan juga, ketika kita tiba-tiba membaca karya-karya sastra dengan teori-teori sastra sekaligus. Dua hal yang membuat kita jadi ambivalen ketika menikmatinya. Jadinya nyaris seperti berhadapan dengan bakul gudeg di Malioboro, yang mengatakan betapa enak gudegnya, sembari ia pamerkan bagaimana penguasaannya akan cara memasak gudeg itu.

Kembali pada Eliot, cobalah nikmati imaji-imaji yang  berloncatan dalam The Waste Land. Rasakan atmosfir yang dievokasikan oleh kepadatan diksinya. Ia sangat berbeda dengan puisi-puisi era sebelumnya, yang penuh didaktika serta sarat pesan moral yang normatif.

Dalam tulisan Mary Karr, untuk pengantar kumpulan puisi TS Elitor, dikatakan bahwa sebenarnya segala cara menemukan makna yang berarti dari puisi tak akan membuahkan hasil berarti. Dalam pandangan penyair dan eseis ini, karena Eliot dan juga para penyair simbolis zamannya (sebutlah Rimbaud), memadukan berbagai unsur ke dalam puisinya sebagai elemen-elemen puitiknya.

Tampak jelas dalam The Waste Land Eliot mencampuraduk begitu banyak referensi, mitos, larik-larik esoteris tembang Australia, bahkan mantra-mantra dalam ritual Hindu.Untuk apakah? Menurut Karr, tujuannya untuk menciptakan efek, yang bisa menggugah suasana nostalgis, sebagai aksen untuk memunculkan nuansa-nuansa puitik. Hal itu, masih menurut sang ahli sastra ini, bermakna mencerminkan kegersangan generasi Eliot setelah Perang Dunia I. Bukan makna erudikasi yang diinginkan, tetapi yang secara literer bisa dirasa dari puisi itu sendiri.

Maka kemudian muncul berbagai kajian sastra akademis (dan logis), dengan tujuan agar bagaimana kita bisa mengetahui latar belakang tiap baris dan bahkan kata. The Waste Land kemudian melahirkan begitu banyak ahli tafsir, baik yang dianggap sokeh maupun tidak sokeh.

Alangkah menyiksanya kemudian ketika kita membaca puisi. Alangkah seramnya sebuah karya sastra, yang membuat kita menjadi tidak bisa menikmati hidup sebuah karya dengan “apa adanya”. Semua orang kemudian dicoba dikerangkeng, dan dirampas kebebasannya. Jika tidak begitu, tidak bisa, tidak pinter, dan tak boleh ngomong sastra. Dan, tiba-tiba terbayang, bagaimana pemikiran kita tentang sastra kita hari ini. Sastra yang kemudian hanya hidup pada kalangan para kaum mulia yang eksklusif. Puisi-puisi kita menjadi terlalu akademis, kerontang, dan tak lagi merefleksikan kedalaman jiwa. Banyak puisi kemudian menjadi sok gagah, dan kurang rileks, mbenthoyong kata anak-anak Yogya, karena lebih menitik-beratkan sisi erudikasi ini. Hingga kemudian tiba-tiba kita disodorkan, seolah-olah ada ilham turun dari langit, bernama puisi esai, yang sangat berpengaruh, dan menganggap puisi-puisi kita selama ini bodoh. Dan Chairil Anwar bisa tak berarti apa-apa, karena menulis puisi ‘Nisan’, yang hanya berarti bagi Chairil ketika kehilangan neneknya.

Apakah puisi yang dahsyat kemudian harus pintar dalam pengertian mengandung banyak kata-kata verbal yang mempesona, akademis, penuh referensi, catatan kaki? Tetapi bagaimana kemudian jika ia kemudian menjadi kurang fokus, multi tasking tetapi sekaligus keruh, dan berbelit-belit dengan hasrat memamerkan kehebatan? Kehebatan apa? Adakah ini yang membuat kita berdecak, inilah pencapaian dan kemajuan sastra kita? Di sini kita bisa merasa, bahwa penyebutan Denny JA sebagai "konseptor" puisi esai itu, menjadi terlampau asal dan lemah logika. Artinya bukan hanya secara empirik, melainkan secara teoretik pun dipaksakan (baik dari sistem nilai maupun mekanisme).

Coba kita endapkan segala permasalahan kita hari ini pada dua sosok bernama Chairil Anwar dan Pramoedya Ananta Toer, untuk menyebut nama. Baca ulang dan resapi tulisan-tulisan keduanya. Benarkah, sebagaimana dunia politik, bahwa ada yang hilang, yang bernama ketulusan, di dalam kita bersastra? Atau karena kita kurang konsisten dan tidak proporsional dalam melihat permasalahan?

Mohon maaf untuk tulisan yang kepanjangan dan kelebaran ini. Tetapi saya hanya ingin mengajak para penulis untuk menulislah dengan kebebasan, dan kesungguhan tentunya. Sementara para akademisi dan ahli sastra atau kritikus sastra, biarlah mereka bekerja dengan patrap dan kepentingan mereka masing-masing, dalam proses keadaban itu sendiri. Seseorang dinobatkan sebagai "TS Eliot", bukanlah serta-merta, tetapi melalui pergulatan yang panjang.
Dialektika di antaranya masing-masing penulis dan kritikus sastra, akan mendapatkan tempat dan masing-masing akan mendapat manfaat. Dan kaum awam pembaca sastra, akan terkayakan. Tugas sastrawan (dan sastrawati, kata Bung Karno), adalah menulis. Mau bernilai sastra atau tidak, biarkan ahli dan kritikus sastra menulisnya. Kedua belah pihak boleh saling bekerja sama, saling meniadakan, atau bahkan dirangkap-rangkap. Tetapi toh ketika menulis dan ketika menikmatinya, sebuah tulisan adalah sebuah tulisan, yang dinikmati dari tulisan itu sendiri. Penulis yang baik tentu tak boleh men-taikkucing-kan teori sastra, apalagi jika menulis satu paragraf saja sudah kelimpungan, meski itu bernama Andrea Hirata sekali pun. Bukan dari apakah kamu tokoh atau bukan tokoh, yang perlu pentahbisan, tapi dari keinginan berbuat yang terbaik, untuk terus menjadi manusia pembelajar.

Coba juga mari kita bandingkan dengan penulisan puisi “The Waste Land” dengan begitu banyak catatan kaki yang dibubuhkannya di sana, yang penjelasannya bisa lebih panjang dari puisi TS Eliot. Ini kerjaan ahli sastra, dan bukan oleh TS Eliot sang sastrawan itu.

The Waste Land

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

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 5

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding               

A little life with dried tubers.     

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,     

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.           

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.               

And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,               

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, 

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,  15

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.           

In the mountains, there you feel free.  

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.    

               

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow       

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only      

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,               

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,              

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only        

There is shadow under this red rock, 25

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),    

And I will show you something different from either      

Your shadow at morning striding behind you      

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; 

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.  30

        Frisch weht der Wind            

        Der Heimat zu,         

        Mein Irisch Kind,     

        Wo weilest du?        

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;  35

They called me the hyacinth girl.”            

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,        

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not      

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither              

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.          

Öd’ und leer das Meer.

               

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,             

Had a bad cold, nevertheless     

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,  45

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,       

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,      

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)      

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,          

The lady of situations. 50

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,              

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,         

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,         

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find           

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. 55

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,          

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:    

One must be so careful these days.        

               

Unreal City,          60

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,               

A crowd 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.        65

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.  

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!         

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!       70

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,            

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom 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 again!          75

You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”              

                

II. A GAME OF CHESS

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,     

Glowed on the marble, where the glass               

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines             

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out             80

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing) 

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra          

Reflecting light upon the table as             

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,              

From satin cases poured in rich profusion;              85

In vials of ivory and coloured glass           

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,  

Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused       

And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air      

That freshened from the window, these ascended            90

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,          

Flung their smoke into the laquearia,     

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.        

Huge sea-wood fed with copper              

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,    95

In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.            

Above the antique mantel was displayed            

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene             

The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king 

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale          100

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice               

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,   

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.  

And other withered stumps of time       

Were told upon the walls; staring forms                105

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.            

Footsteps shuffled on the stair,               

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair    

Spread out in fiery points            

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.   110

               

“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.    

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.”       

               

I think we are in rats’ alley           115

Where the dead men lost their bones. 

               

“What is that noise?”    

                      The wind under the door.     

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”         

                      Nothing again nothing.            120

                                              “Do         

You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember       

Nothing?”          

        I remember               

                Those are pearls that were his eyes.       125

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”  

                                                         But               

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—       

It’s so elegant   

So intelligent      130

               

“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 to-morrow?   

What shall we ever do?”              

                          The hot water at ten.           135

And if 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.       

               

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said,          

I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,     140

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME        

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,       145

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.  150

Then I’ll know who to thank, 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.      155

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.)          160

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?    

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME         165

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,    

And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—    

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME        

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME        

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.   170

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.         

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.     

                

III. THE FIRE SERMON

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf              

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind       

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.    175

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.      

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,       

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends       

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.           

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;      180

Departed, have left no addresses.          

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept… 

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,       

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. 

But at my back in a cold blast I hear          185

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.      

               

A rat crept softly through the vegetation             

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank        

While I was fishing in the dull canal         

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse.             190

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck          

And on the king my father’s death before him. 

White bodies naked on the low damp ground   

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,               

Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.          195

But at my back from time to time I hear

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring            

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.   

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter             

And on her daughter      200

They wash their feet in soda water         

Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!         

               

Twit twit twit    

Jug jug jug jug jug jug    

So rudely forc’d.               205

Tereu   

               

Unreal City         

Under the brown fog of a winter noon 

Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant     

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants               210

C. i. f. London: documents at sight,         

Asked me in demotic French     

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel               

Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.        

               

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back         215

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               220

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,            

The typist home at tea-time, 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,                225

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 expected guest.           230

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,              

A small house-agent’s clerk, with 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,           235

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,          

Endeavours to engage her in caresses   

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.              

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;           

Exploring hands encounter no defence;                240

His vanity requires no response,              

And makes a welcome of indifference. 

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all       

Enacted on this same divan or bed;        

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall              245

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)      

Bestows one final patronizing kiss,          

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…      

               

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,         

Hardly aware of her departed lover;       250

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:          

“Well now 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,      255

And puts a record on the gramophone.

               

“This music crept by me upon the waters”          

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.              

O City City, I can sometimes hear             

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,        260

The pleasant whining of a mandoline     

And a clatter and a chatter from within 

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls             

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.               265

               

The river sweats              

Oil and tar          

The barges drift               

With the turning tide     

Red sails               270

Wide    

To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.    

The barges wash             

Drifting logs       

Down Greenwich reach                275

Past the Isle of Dogs.     

            Weialala leia          

            Wallala leialala      

Elizabeth and Leicester 

Beating oars       280

The stern was formed  

A gilded shell    

Red and gold     

The brisk swell 

Rippled both shores       285

South-west wind            

Carried down stream    

The peal of bells              

White towers   

            Weialala leia           290

            Wallala leialala      

               

“Trams and dusty trees.               

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew 

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees          

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.“                295

               

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart             

Under my feet. After the event               

He wept. He promised ‘a new start.’      

I made no comment. What should I resent?”     

               

“On Margate Sands.       300

I can connect    

Nothing with nothing.   

The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.  

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”            305

               

      la la 

               

To Carthage then I came              

               

Burning burning burning burning             

O Lord Thou pluckest me out     

O Lord Thou pluckest     310

               

burning               

                

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,           

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell

And the profit and loss.

                          A current under sea              315

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell              

He passed the stages of his age and youth          

Entering the whirlpool. 

                          Gentile or Jew        

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,            320

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.       

               

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

After the torch-light red on sweaty faces             

After the frosty silence in the gardens  

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying        325

Prison and place and reverberation        

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains      

He who was living is now dead  

We who were living are now dying         

With a little patience      330

               

Here is no water but only rock  

Rock and no water and the sandy road 

The road winding above among the mountains 

Which are mountains of rock without water       

If there were water we should stop and drink    335

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think        

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand     

If there were only water amongst the rock         

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit               

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit             340

There is not even silence in the mountains         

But dry sterile thunder without rain       

There is not even solitude in the mountains       

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl       

From doors of mud-cracked houses

                                If there were water        345

And no rock       

If there were rock          

And also water 

And water          

A spring                350

A pool among the rock 

If there were the sound of water only  

Not the cicada  

And dry grass singing     

But sound of water over a rock  355

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees              

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop        

But there is no water    

               

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together               360

But when I look ahead up the white road            

There is always another one walking beside you              

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded            

I do not know whether a man or a woman          

—But who is that on the other side of you?         365

               

What is that sound high in the air             

Murmur of maternal lamentation            

Who are those hooded hordes swarming            

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only  370

What is the city over the mountains       

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air   

Falling towers   

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria    

Vienna London 375

Unreal 

               

A woman drew her long black hair out tight        

And fiddled whisper music on those strings        

And bats with baby faces in the violet light          

Whistled, and beat their wings  380

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall    

And upside down in air were towers      

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours     

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.  

               

In this decayed hole among the mountains          385

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing           

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel        

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.           

It has no windows, and the door swings,              

Dry bones can harm no one.       390

Only a cock stood on the roof-tree         

Co co rico co co rico        

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust               

Bringing rain      

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves                395

Waited for rain, while the black clouds  

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.    

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.             

Then spoke the thunder              

DA          400

Datta: what have we given?       

My friend, blood shaking my heart         

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender         

Which an age of prudence can never retract      

By this, and this only, we have existed   405

Which is not to be found in our obituaries           

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider             

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor          

In our empty rooms       

DA          410

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key           

Turn in the door once and turn once only            

We think of the key, each in his prison  

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison         

Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours          415

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus           

DA         

Damyata: The boat responded 

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar           

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded     420

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient   

To controlling hands      

               

                      I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me   

Shall I at least set my lands in order?       425

               

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down 

               

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina           

Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow               

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie     

These fragments I have shored against my ruins               430

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. 

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.    

               

      Shantih    shantih    shantih    

NOTES

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 (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I 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. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Attis Adonis Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies. 

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Line 20 Cf. Ezekiel II, i.

23. Cf. Ecclesiastes XII, v.

31. V. Tristan und Isolde, I, verses 5–8.

42. Id. III, verse 24.

46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.

60. Cf. Baudelaire:

“Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rèves,

Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.”

63. Cf. Inferno, III. 55–57:

                      “si lunga tratta

di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto

che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.”

64. Cf. Inferno, IV. 25–27:

“Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,

“non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,

“che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.”

68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.

74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.

76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal. 

II. A GAME OF CHESS

77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II., ii. l. 190.

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726:

      dependent lychni laquearibus aureis

incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.

98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV. 140.

99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.

100. Cf. Part III, l. 204.

115. Cf. Part III, l. 195.

118. Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”

126. Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.

138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women. 

III. THE FIRE SERMON

176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.

192. Cf. The Tempest, I, ii.

196. Cf. Day, Parliament of Bees:

“When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,

“A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring

“Actaeon to Diana in the spring,

“Where all shall see her naked skin…“

197. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.

199. I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken; it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.

210. The currants were quoted at a price “carriage and insurance free to London”; and the Bill of Lading, etc. were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. The whole passage from Ovid is of great anthropological interest:

…Cum Iunone iocos et maior vestra profecto est

Quam, quae contingit maribus’, dixisse, ‘voluptas.’

Illa negat; placuit quae sit sententia docti

Quaerere Tiresiae: venus huic erat utraque nota.

Nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva

Corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu

Deque viro factus, mirabile, femina septem

Egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem

Vidit et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae,’

Dixit ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,

Nunc quoque vos feriam!’ percussis anguibus isdem

Forma prior rediit genetivaque venit imago.

Arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa

Dicta Iovis firmat; gravius Saturnia iusto

Nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique

Iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte,

At pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam

Facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto

Scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

221. This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.

253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.

257. V. The Tempest, as above.

264. The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches: (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).

266. The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III, i: The Rhinedaughters.

279. V. Froude, Elizabeth, Vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain:

“In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.”

293. Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133:

    “Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;

    “Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma.”

307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.”

308. The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the occident.

309. From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident. 

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston’s book), and the present decay of eastern Europe.

357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds in Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats.… Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequaled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.

360. The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

366–76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: “Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligem Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”

401. “Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathise, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.

407. Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi:

            “…they’ll remarry

Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider

Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.”

411. Cf. Inferno, XXXIII, 46:

“ed io sentii chiavar l’uscio di sotto

all’orribile torre.”

  Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346.

“My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it.… In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”

424. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.

427. V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.

“‘Ara vos prec, per aquella valor

‘que vos guida al som de l’escalina,

‘sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina.”

428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.

429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.

431. V. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “The Peace which passeth understanding” is a feeble translation of the content of this word.