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| m&ms487 (profile) wrote, on 6-15-2008 at 10:28pm | |
| Current mood: complacent |
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| It's late and I'm extremely exhausted; yet, I cannot, will not sleep. My body will not rest, so I am up, and writing. I am here. I was reviewing some of my anthologies of literature as I often do upon trying to sleep. I flip through the pages and catch words, lines, sometimes whole stanzas or paragraphs of immortalized words and tonight I happened across one of the most depressing, yet insightful poems written in the modern period. It is T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men." It seems like this time in the world-this time in my life with which I can view the world-fits into this piece so well. It talks about the fall of man because of what mankind has become: weak cowards. Eliot likens men to scarecrows in the desert that have no eyes and can only whisper meaningless things; their only hope is death. I. We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! We shipser together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry glass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. II. Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appera: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are IN the wind's singing More distand and more solemn Than a fading star. Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer- Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom III. This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, her they recive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone. IV. The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men. V. Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. 1925 Eliot says "This is the dead land" because we aren't living, and as much as we want to repent and "[tremble] with tenderness," we are only forming "prayers to broken stone," the same stone Eliot reveals that only exist because of the "supplication" of mankind's hands. We worship what we make, but prayers don't help any when you worship false ideals and material wealth made in hopes of becoming whole again that were made by corrupt hands. The act of the prayer can't even be completed because it can only be formed by the lips of the dead man who cannot speak; prayer that is nothing more than whispers that are "quiet and meaningless." The whole effect? The futility of life, the cowardice of man, the corruption of man, inability to speak or see, the only possibly redeption and hope in man's death or nonexistence, the "shadow" of corruption in which we ruin everything that is good and pure in the world, man's inability to end his world "not with a band but a whimper." Many times I feel this. Many times I see this. |
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gillette | 06-17-08 6:07pm hello. i am here. i exist. call me.
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