Hello all who pass by here. This is this weeks' video, or rather, the first part of a five part video series, in which I am reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. It is a five part poem and consequently I will be uploading a new part every day this week. I will be adding to the last, fifth part, a video in which I delve into The Waste Land
. Here is the first part of the poem to follow along with my reading.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 [a lake near Munich, Germany] / With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, [a park in Munich] / And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. / Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. [I'm not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, a true German] / 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 [Fresh blows the wind]
Der Heimat zu [To the homeland] / Mein Irisch Kind, [My Irish child]
Wo weilest du? [Where do you wait?] / "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. [Desolate and empty is the sea]
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 os 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 lectuer!-mon semblable,-mon frère!" [Hypocrite reader!-my likeness,-my brother!]
/= the line breaks in the poem.
