{"id":8905,"date":"2015-09-28T05:51:14","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T08:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/culturedarm.com\/?p=8905"},"modified":"2015-09-28T14:15:22","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T17:15:22","slug":"cultureteca-27-09-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/cultureteca-27-09-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultureteca 27.09.15"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cultureteca<\/a><\/p>\n

T. S. Eliot’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’ Published\u00a0in Others<\/strong><\/p>\n

One hundred years ago this month, the third issue of Alfred Kreymborg’s little New York\u00a0literary magazine Others<\/em><\/a>\u00a0appeared. The first issue, published in July, most notably contained Mina Loy’s first four ‘Love Songs’<\/a>; the second, published in August, poems by Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens, including Stevens’ first major poem, ‘Peter Quince at the Clavier’. The September issue featured just four poets: T. S. Eliot, John Gould Fletcher, Maxwell Bodenheim, and Walter Conrad Arensberg.<\/p>\n

It led with T. S. Eliot’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’. Somewhat overshadowed by ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, which had emerged in the more established Poetry: A Magazine of Verse<\/em> –\u00a0founded in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe – in June,\u00a0like ‘Prufrock’,\u00a0‘Portrait of a Lady’ inhabits Boston society, but more particularly the thoughts and impressions of the poem’s male narrator. Rather than the steady stream of consciousness of ‘Prufrock’ however, here the narrator provides a sort of commentary around lines of reported speech, recounting in three parts the course of an acquaintance with an older lady who at first seems to be drawing the young man into an intimate friendship. But in the final part, she remarks, ‘I have been wondering frequently of late […]\u00a0Why we have not developed into friends’, cutting the relationship cold as the man intends to travel abroad.<\/p>\n

\"Others<\/a><\/p>\n

The lady intended by the depiction, described\u00a0by Conrad Aiken as\u00a0‘Our dear deplorable friend, Miss X, the pr\u00e9cieuse ridicule<\/i> to end all preciosity, serving tea so exquisitely among her bric-\u00e0-brac’, was later revealed by Valerie Eliot as\u00a0Adeleine Moffatt, who ‘lived behind the State House in Boston and invited selected Harvard undergraduates to tea’.<\/p>\n

Eliot’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’\u00a0draws its title from the novel of the same name by Henry James, published in 1881. Its epigraph is taken from Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta<\/em>, written about 1590. The poem shows the marked influence of the French Symbolist Jules Laforgue<\/a>, with the lines of\u00a0Laforgue’s\u00a0‘Another Complaint of Lord Pierrot’ from\u00a0‘Finally, if one evening she dies amid my books, \/\u00a0Quiet; feigning not yet to trust my sight’ resembled in Eliot’s ‘Well! and what if she should die some afternoon, \/\u00a0Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose’. The theme of Pierrot would reappear in the October issue of Others<\/em>, in the form of John Rodker’s ‘The Dutch Dolls’ series of poems.<\/p>\n

\"Others<\/a><\/p>\n

‘Portrait of a Lady’ (1915), by T. S. Eliot<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thou hast committed \u2014<\/em>
\n Fornication: but that was in another country,<\/em>
\n And besides, the wench is dead.<\/em>
\n (The Jew of Malta)<\/em><\/p>\n

I
\nAmong the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
\nYou have the scene arrange itself \u2014 as it will seem to do\u2014
\nWith “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
\nAnd four wax candles in the darkened room,
\nFour rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
\nAn atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
\nPrepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
\nWe have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
\nTransmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
\n“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
\nShould be resurrected only among friends
\nSome two or three, who will not touch the bloom
\nThat is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
\n\u2014And so the conversation slips
\nAmong velleities and carefully caught regrets
\nThrough attenuated tones of violins
\nMingled with remote cornets
\nAnd begins.<\/p>\n

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
\nAnd how, how rare and strange it is, to find
\nIn a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
\n(For indeed I do not love it … you knew? you are not blind!
\nHow keen you are!)
\nTo find a friend who has these qualities,
\nWho has, and gives
\nThose qualities upon which friendship lives.
\nHow much it means that I say this to you \u2014
\nWithout these friendships \u2014 life, what cauchemar!”
\nAmong the winding of the violins
\nAnd the ariettes
\nOf cracked cornets
\nInside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
\nAbsurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
\nCapricious monotone
\nThat is at least one definite “false note.”
\n\u2014 Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
\nAdmire the monuments,
\nDiscuss the late events,
\nCorrect our watches by the public clocks.
\nThen sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.<\/p>\n

II
\nNow that lilacs are in bloom
\nShe has a bowl of lilacs in her room
\nAnd twists one in her fingers while she talks.
\n“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
\nWhat life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
\n(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
\n“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
\nAnd youth is cruel, and has no remorse
\nAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
\nI smile, of course,
\nAnd go on drinking tea.
\n“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
\nMy buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
\nI feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
\nTo be wonderful and youthful, after all.”<\/p>\n

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
\nOf a broken violin on an August afternoon:
\n“I am always sure that you understand
\nMy feelings, always sure that you feel,
\nSure that across the gulf you reach your hand.<\/p>\n

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
\nYou will go on, and when you have prevailed
\nYou can say: at this point many a one has failed.<\/p>\n

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
\nTo give you, what can you receive from me?
\nOnly the friendship and the sympathy
\nOf one about to reach her journey’s end.<\/p>\n

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ….”<\/p>\n

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
\nFor what she has said to me?
\nYou will see me any morning in the park
\nReading the comics and the sporting page.
\nParticularly I remark.
\nAn English countess goes upon the stage.
\nA Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
\nAnother bank defaulter has confessed.
\nI keep my countenance,
\nI remain self-possessed
\nExcept when a street-piano, mechanical and tired
\nReiterates some worn-out common song
\nWith the smell of hyacinths across the garden
\nRecalling things that other people have desired.
\nAre these ideas right or wrong?<\/p>\n

III
\nThe October night comes down; returning as before
\nExcept for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
\nI mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
\nAnd feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
\n“And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
\nBut that’s a useless question.
\nYou hardly know when you are coming back,
\nYou will find so much to learn.”
\nMy smile falls heavily among the bric-\u00e0-brac.<\/p>\n

“Perhaps you can write to me.”
\nMy self-possession flares up for a second;
\nThis is as I had reckoned.
\n“I have been wondering frequently of late
\n(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
\nWhy we have not developed into friends.”
\nI feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
\nSuddenly, his expression in a glass.
\nMy self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.<\/p>\n

“For everybody said so, all our friends,
\nThey all were sure our feelings would relate
\nSo closely! I myself can hardly understand.
\nWe must leave it now to fate.
\nYou will write, at any rate.
\nPerhaps it is not too late.
\nI shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”
\nAnd I must borrow every changing shape
\nTo find expression … dance, dance
\nLike a dancing bear,
\nCry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
\nLet us take the air, in a tobacco trance\u2014
\nWell! and what if she should die some afternoon,
\nAfternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
\nShould die and leave me sitting pen in hand
\nWith the smoke coming down above the housetops;
\nDoubtful, for quite a while
\nNot knowing what to feel or if I understand
\nOr whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon …
\nWould she not have the advantage, after all?
\nThis music is successful with a “dying fall”
\nNow that we talk of dying\u2014
\nAnd should I have the right to smile?<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

2015 Supermoon Lunar Eclipse<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Supermoon<\/a><\/p>\n

Tonight the sky turned a hazy red according\u00a0to a rare phenomenon which has variously been dubbed simply a total lunar eclipse, a ‘supermoon eclipse’, a ‘super blood moon’, and all accretions and terms in between.<\/p>\n

A lunar eclipse occurs when the\u00a0Earth comes\u00a0directly between a full Moon and the Sun, with the Moon therefore passing within the Earth’s shadow. At the beginning of a lunar eclipse, the Earth’s shadow darkens the Moon only slightly. But as the shadow begins to cover the Moon, the scattering of sunlight in the Earth’s atmosphere causes the Moon to take on a reddish-brown glow. This is most pronounced during a total lunar eclipse, when the Moon is fully covered.<\/p>\n

Tonight saw not only a total lunar eclipse, but also a ‘supermoon’: a colloquial term for the coincidence of a full Moon with the Moon’s closest approach to the Earth on its elliptical orbit. The closeness of the moon makes it appear larger, often by up to 14% in diameter.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0joint\u00a0phenomenon of a total lunar eclipse with a ‘supermoon’ was last observed in 1982, and won’t be repeated until 2033. While it was possible to view a partial eclipse over several hours tonight, totality lasted little more than an hour. The event was visible on Sunday evening in the Americas, and early on Monday morning in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Photographs from around the world are already appearing via\u00a0The Guardian<\/a><\/em>, The Telegraph<\/a><\/em>, Gizmodo<\/a>, and less excitedly the Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n