m&ms487

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.

1 Meaning | What is your life meant to be?