Quick Eliot

Two lines, that’s all I promise, from the first stanza of III. The Fire Sermon:

“But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.”

• T.S. Eliot “The Waste Land”¹ (1922)

T.S. Eliot has recently fallen from favor for alleged espousal of views. I tend to think of this in terms of Shakespeare’s sexism, cf., The Taming of the Shrew, but then, there’s an opposing voice that suggestion that Shakespeare was really written by a woman.

The line is what I was trying to recall when I spouted out a little bit of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” I’ll admit, I misquoted Eliot². Still one of my favorite pieces of modern literature, “The Waste Land,” alongside “Howl.”³

Oddly enough, “Howl” seems even more appropriate these days.

The panorama was from the top of the Central Texas monolith, the red granite dome of Enchanted Rock.

The quote will be in next week’s video, if I get a chance.

1. “The Waste Land” seen in part here. ↩
2. Seen here, too. ↩
3. Why Ginsberg Matters ↩