2013 Philosophe Knights Poetry Walk
 
2013 Philosophe Knights Poetry Walk
My good residents of Vinetown, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Citizen KN, and I will be your guide today for the First Annual Philosophe Knights Poetry Walk, our inaugural event now appearing in your somewhat dilapidated suburb.
We have chosen for your locale a poem by T.S. Eliot, both for its beauty and for its message. The poem is entitled, “The Hollow Men.” Eliot wrote this poem shortly after having experienced a nervous breakdown, and during a time of personal disgust with himself for experiencing “aboulie” – meaning lack of will and likely depression - and the society around him as being populated with empty, ‘hollow’ men.
The Philosophe Knights have divided Eliot’s poem into 100 lines, including directions and notations to facilitate reading and to provide a continuous trail of light exercise combined with contemplation as you stroll the subdivision.
The path of the poem winds in serpentine fashion from the northwestern most corner of Vinetown, beginning at Club Threadgould and working from east to west, then west to east and back again until finishing at the very southeastern location of Vellacott Road. The map to the right shall provide a key:
| Poem Text and Location in Vinetown
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Discussion
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1/100: The Hollow Men
2/100: by T S Eliot
3/100: Mistah Kurtz-he dead
4/100: A penny for the Old Guy
5/100: We are the hollow men
6/100: We are the stuffed men // Leaning together
7/100: Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
8/100: Our dried voices, when
9/100: We whisper together
10/100: Are quiet and meaningless (go south)
11/100: As wind in dry grass (go west)
12/100: Or rats' feet over broken glass
13/100: In our dry cellar
14/100: Shape without form, shade without colour,
15/100: Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
16/100: Those who have crossed
17/100: With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
18/100: Remember us-if at all-not as lost
19/100: Violent souls, but only
20/100: As the hollow men (go south)
21/100: The stuffed men. (go east)
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Let us begin our walk today at Club Threadgould and head eastward toward Standfield Towers.
The title immediately presents us with the first of many allusions, directly referencing two of the four main sources for this poem, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The other sources are the Gunpowder Plot and The Divine Comedy, both of which also deal with men or shadows of men who may be described as hollow at the core. Here are the lines of the poem we see during the first 21 steps we take.
The reference to Kurtz is from Heart of Darkness. A servant is reporting that Kurtz has just died – and the protagonist Marlowe suspected that Kurtz had been “Hollow to the core.” The second line, “A penny for the old Guy,” is a reference to both “Guy” Fawkes, who Guy Fawkes was convicted of trying to blow up King James I in 1605 by stashing gunpowder underneath the Parliament building. The incident is known as the "Gunpowder Plot." But Fawkes and the gunpowder were discovered before the plan went off, and Fawkes gave up the names of his co-conspirators under torture. The reference to the ‘penny’ is a meant to evoke the necessity for ancient Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman at the river Styx for passage to the underworld. These epigraphs set the tone for Eliot’s description of his ‘hollow men’ – empty and corrupt modern men.
Straw is the traditional filling for effigies burned on Guy Fawkes Day in England. The hollow men are singing together that they know they are hollow, but all they can say is “Alas...” The hollow men are lacking something essential. They speak without meaning. They are dry, they have no life. “Those who have crossed” are they who have traveled to the next place – either to be rewarded or damned – but at least have achieved the next state of existence rather than being trapped in the horrible nothingness of the hollow men. Even Kurtz for all his evil seemed to cross over to his final punishment, as his last words were “The horror, the horror.” Not so the hollow men.
We are given four examples here of things missing something essential. “Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion…” Each of these examples is impossible in the real world, but not in the netherworld purgatory of the hollow men.
Here we see the influence of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet with whom Eliot was obsessed. It is likely the idea for "The Hollow Men" comes from Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno. In that canto, Dante arrives at the gates of Hell and sees a group of people wandering around aimlessly and miserably, with lots of tears and wailing. As Dante's guide Virgil says, "They have no hope of death, and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other lot. The world does not permit report of them. Mercy and justice hold them in contempt. Let us not speak of them – look and pass by."
So, the souls in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno can't even die, they are "blind," and the world will not "report of" or remember them. They are Hollow Men. As Virgil explains elsewhere in the canto, these souls did not take sides in the universal conflict between good and evil. They thought they lived their lives apart from difficult moral questions.
Herein is probably the most important message for the citizenry of Malton: Both Dante and Eliot believed that such people are the worst of all, because they are too timid or indifferent even to do bad things.
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22/100: Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
23/100: In death's dream kingdom
24/100: These do not appear:
25/100: There, the eyes are
26/100: Sunlight on a broken column
27/100: There, is a tree swinging
28/100: And voices are
29/100: In the wind's singing
30/100: More distant and more solemn (go south)
31/100: Than a fading star. (go west)
32/100: Let me be no nearer
33/100: In death's dream kingdom
34/100: Let me also wear
35/100: Such deliberate disguises
36/100: Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
37/100: In a field
38/100: Behaving as the wind behaves
39/100: No nearer-
40/100: Not that final meeting (go south)
41/100: In the twilight kingdom (go east)
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Let us walk some more, stopping now at The Buckett Building. You at the rear, the one with the shiny glove on one hand who looks to have recently lost some overly gelled hair in a fire, please keep up; this message is as much for you as anyone. Read along with me starting at line 22...
Our timid and fearful Hollow Men avoid looking others directly in the eyes. We may think of the eyes as revealing truth, and the Hollow Men are afraid to have the truth of their condition revealed.
They are too ashamed to confront the reality of what they have become. They live in a fragmented world of "broken" and "fading" objects.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante cannot meet his late love Beatrice's eyes when he first sees her because he still feels shame and suffers their reprove. He acts like a disobedient child unable to meet a stern parent's gaze until he is purified by the waters of the River Lethe. In Heart of Darkness the protagonist Marlow encounters the force of eyes and glances throughout his adventures, ranging from the invisible eyes of the forest, to Kurtz's dying gaze, to the "guileless, profound, confident, and trustful" gaze of Kurtz's intended.
The hollow men should be shamed by the eyes of the virtuous, but at the same time those eyes contain within them a chance for redemption. This is an opportunity Dante the pilgrim accepted and Marlow refused.
Just like scarecrows that "behave as the wind behaves" – twisting and turning without direction - the mediocre souls in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno also run around with no purpose, another sign that Eliot was inspired by that text.
At the end of the section, the souls vow not to have a "final meeting" at "twilight." This meeting could refer to the Last Judgment in Christian theology and "twilight" could refer to the end of the world.
The Hollow Men are afraid of the judgment they'll receive when their character is finally examined by the "eyes." They can only delay justice, not escape it.
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42/100: This is the dead land
43/100: This is cactus land
44/100: Here the stone images
45/100: Are raised, here they receive
46/100: The supplication of a dead man's hand
47/100: Under the twinkle of a fading star.
48/100: Is it like this
49/100: In death's other kingdom
50/100: Waking alone (go south)
51/100: At the hour when we are (go west)
52/100: Trembling with tenderness
53/100: Lips that would kiss
54/100: Form prayers to broken stone.
55/100: The eyes are not here
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Let us continue onward to Stanbury Lane. You – the foul smelling acolyte of some odd faith – please refrain from talking during the lecture. Thank you.
The Hollow Men live in a region that looks like desert where nothing lives but cacti that can survive without much water. The Hollow Men pray to "stone images," which are like false gods or idols. The "dead man" is one of the Hollow Men. They are dead in the sense that they do not have life, but they also cannot cross over into the kingdom of death. The Hollow Men beg the stones to help them out of their mess. The star might represent hope or salvation, as stars are usually associated with Heaven. But their hopes are fading fast, and only a small "twinkle" of light remains.
All of a sudden the Hollow Men are curious about "death's other Kingdom." They don't really suspect that things are better in Heaven or anywhere else. Otherwise, they probably would have tried to get there. They want to know if people in the other kingdom also wake up alone, with warm and tender feelings but no outlet for them except to pray to a bunch of "broken stone" images.
If you have read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, you might notice that these lines reverse Juliet's claim that saints must use their lips for prayer rather than kissing. The Hollow Men pray, but their prayers are blasphemous and corrupted:
ROMEO: Have not saint’s lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
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56/100: There are no eyes here
57/100: In this valley of dying stars
58/100: In this hollow valley
59/100: This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
60/100: In this last of meeting places (go south)
61/100: We grope together (go east)
62/100: And avoid speech
63/100: Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
64/100: Sightless, unless
65/100: The eyes reappear
66/100: As the perpetual star
67/100: Multifoliate rose
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Let us continue - we have arrived at the half-way point at this warehouse. Please do not litter your McZed’s wrappers on the sidewalk.
We learn that the Hollow Men are gathered ‘on the banks of a swollen or "tumid" river.’ They are huddled together as if they were going to be washed away. The river is practically overflowing with water, in contrast to the dryness of the men and the desert around them.
This is the last place that they will meet before they face some more terrible fate. The river most likely represents Acheron, branch of the mythical River Styx in Greece that souls must cross into death.
To make the trip, you would have to pay Charon, the ferryman, a coin to take you on his boat.
Unfortunately, no one has arrived to take these souls across. They are stranded.
There's nothing left to say about their dire situation, so they "avoid speech." In Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, Dante asks his guide Virgil why souls are so eager to get across Acheron, and Virgil responds that God's justice "spurs them on" so that they actually want to get to Hell sooner. But the Hollow Men can't even get to Hell.
The Hollow Men are "sightless," like a bunch of underground worms, but if the "eyes" return their vision could be restored. Their only hope is if the heavenly eyes come back as a star. This star would be "perpetual" or eternal, unlike the "fading" or "dying" stars in the desert.
A "multifoliate" rose has many petals. Here again Eliot is again referring to Dante Alighieri. In Dante's Paradiso, the final vision of paradise is of a flower made up of saints, angels, and other examples of goodness and virtue. The community of Heaven is like a rose with petals made of people. Dante also compares Mary, the mother of Jesus, to a rose.
The point of these lines is that the Hollow Men cannot save themselves. They have no hope except for the Heavenly souls to come down and restore their vision of truth and goodness.
Again, the Maltonian context here could perhaps be a cadre of philosopher knights with an important message to impart to a seemingly helpless and desperate population in the throes of a post-apocalyptic macabre nightmare? But I digress. Onward to Gregory Crescent!
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68/100: Of death's twilight kingdom
69/100: The hope only
70/100: Of empty men. (go south)
71/100: Here we go round the prickly pear (go west)
72/100: Prickly pear prickly pear
73/100: Here we go round the prickly pear
74/100: At five o'clock in the morning.
75/100: Between the idea
76/100: And the reality
77/100: Between the motion
78/100: And the act
79/100: Falls the Shadow
80/100: For Thine is the Kingdom (go south)
81/100: Between the conception (go east)
82/100: And the creation
83/100: Between the emotion
84/100: And the response
85/100: Falls the Shadow
86/100: Life is very long
87/100: Between the desire
88/100: And the spasm
89/100: Between the potency
90/100: And the existence (go south)
91/100: Between the essence (go west)
92/100: And the descent
93/100: Falls the Shadow
94/100: For Thine is the Kingdom
95/100: For Thine is
96/100: Life is // For Thine is the
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"Here we go 'round the mulberry bush" is a children's song about people dancing around the bush "so early in the morning." Eliot actually gives the time at which they are dancing: 5 o'clock in the morning.
According to one commentary on the poem, "5:00 a.m. is the traditional time of Christ's resurrection.” The resurrection is the most important moment in the Christ story, but here the Hollow Men are performing a children's dance around a cactus, totally unaware of the significance of the time.
The poem gives three more examples of the Shadow's dirty work. It prevents "desire" from becoming the "spasm" of sexual satisfaction – that is, orgasm. It also comes between potential or "potency" and existence, and between the higher "essence" of things and the "descent" of this essence into our physical world.
Simply put: the Shadow prevents things that should naturally follow from one another from happening.
The stanza ends, again, with a fragment of the Lord's Prayer. They still can't say any more than this one part of the prayer. They just trail off, as if they can't remember how the rest goes or have slipped into some semi-conscious state.
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97/100: This is the way the world ends
98/100: This is the way the world ends
99/100: This is the way the world ends
100/100: Not with a bang but a whimper.
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They pick up again with another crazy adaptation of the "Mulberry Bush" song. The song provides little lessons about how to do chores around the house, like "This is the way we wash our clothes" and "This is the way we sweep the floor."
In Eliot's version, the Hollow Men are singing about how the world ends as they dance around the prickly pear. These lines are the most famous and frequently repeated lines in the poem.
The world ends not with a "bang" like you might expect, with some huge war between angels and demons, but with a "whimper," like a city abandoned by its founder, frozen in eternal struggle between the living and the dead, neither side able to utterly defeat the other, with no solution in sight to tip the balance either way. The end of the world is, in a word, anticlimactic.
If "The Hollow Men" shows where a life without purpose and meaning leads, it offers a fleeting glimpse of a way out of emptiness. Though nature, other people, and the divine have an almost entirely negative existence in the poem, they do exist as something outside the hollow men. The poem places the "stuffed men" in the context of an external world, a divine world of knowledge. Their state is defined as that of the trimmers in the third canto of the Inferno, those wretched souls, "gathered on this beach of the tumid river," who lived without blame or praise, and, like the neutral angels, were neither rebellious nor faithful to God, but lived for themselves.
Far better to be one of the "lost/Violent souls", for they were at least capable of damnation, as Baudelaire, in Eliot's essay, "walked secure in this high vocation, that he was capable of a damnation denied to the politicians and newspaper editors of Paris." To recognize the possibility of damnation is in a way to become capable of it, and therefore capable of the salvation which is denied to the trimmers.
The trimmers in Dante have no hope of another death, but Eliot's hollow men understand dimly that if they endure the death which is prelude to rebirth they have some hope of salvation. Though Eliot's language is deliberately ambiguous, it implies that the sightless eyes of the hollow men may see again, and confront the divine eyes which are "The hope only/Of empty men" and will reappear as "the perpetual star/Multifoliate rose" of heaven itself. The idealists of "The Hollow Men" have stepped out of themselves into the barrenness of an external world, and the fragments of the Lord's prayer ("For Thine is/. . . For Thine is the") which they mutter at the end of the poem are moving appeals to a divine knowledge that may be infinitely distant, but who is independent of their minds and therefore may have power to save them.
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So to you residents of Vinetown - nay, residents of Malton – we hope you have heard our message: be not empty, straw filled hollow men, but instead live a life of self-improvement and intellectual pursuit. Stand not on the sidelines, but instead pick a side in the fight for the soul of Malton, and be counted among those who made a difference in the final tally. Praise knowledge!
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