Prompt: Follow and unpack the eastern movement of “The Wasteland.”

In “The Wasteland,” Eliot is meeting his readers where they are—the West—and disorienting them by bringing them towards the Orient.

“The Wasteland” begins with “April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.” This is strikingly, if ironically, similar to the prologue in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “When that April with his showers sweet / The drought of March hath pierced to the root, / And bathed every vine in such liqueur / Of which virtue engendered is the flower…” By inverting the meaning of Chaucer’s text, Eliot is rejecting all that Chaucer means. Instead of embracing spring, and April, the month of Easter, Eliot rejects that revitalizing spirit with the implication that the dead are awaking to a fate worse than death—they are awaking to life. Because Chaucer is recognized as the first great English poet, Eliot is symbolically breaking ties with the legacy of British—and up to that point, primarily Christian—literature.

He goes on to reference Tristan and Isolde, an opera by Wagner that was originally a French romance, and the Fisher King from Arthurian legend. The poetic references move generally, but always consistently, east, drawing from Spenser, Dante, St. Augustine, Virgil; the poem then ends dramatically with a flurry of far eastern allusions—Buddha’s Fire Sermon, the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, and Sanskrit. “The Wasteland” ends with a feeling of mad repetition; a feeling of trance-like meditation: “Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih stantih.”

Lines 367-7 say “What is that sound high in the air / murmur of maternal lamentation / Who are those hooded hordes swarming / Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth / ringed by the flat horizon only / What is the city over the mountains / Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air / Falling towers / Jerusalem Athens Alexandria / Vienna London / Unreal.” One imagines a swarm of locusts or soldiers coming from the Far East, devouring Jerusalem, the city of organized religion; Athens, the city of reason, law, philosophy; Alexandria, the city of books and learning; Vienna, the city of high culture; and London, the city of modern industry, leaving nothing but Nirvana in its wake.

Back in that first section, Eliot introduces the exotic Madame Sosotris, a clairvoyante who foretells the future through Tarot cards. Tarot is a game of divination; mysterious and foreign to the modern British reader. She tells her listener to “fear death by water.” As there is no explicit listener-character, the reader is left in the position of accepting her premonition. As the average reader for Eliot was upper- to middle-class British, one may infer that Eliot, by way of Madame Sosotris, is prophesying the demise of British culture as it is currently understood. The poem which began with the Thames (61) ends with the “Ganga”, the Ganges, waiting for rain and London Bridge falling down. These last images reinforce my idea that Eliot does seem to be making a judgment so much as an observation of the evolution of culture and the inevitable decline of the West.

Traversing Hell towards Heaven: Following the Transformational Impact of Eliot's Conversion on His Criticism and Poetry

Thesis Statement: Eliot’s conversion to the Anglican faith in 1927 dramatically changed his critical views of the poet’s and audience’s relationship to poetry; shifting from the divided, impersonal approach of the New Critics to a more integrated and personal view of the process of creation and appreciation. His conversion also marked a shift in the style and content of his poetry. His style moved from the fragmented and dissonant poetry of the Modern movement to a more holistic and traditional format. Also, his use of Dantean references in The Wasteland and Four Quartets suggests that Eliot’s understanding of suffering changed from viewing it as a meaninglessness end to a purgative process after his conversion.

In June 1927, American-born T. S. Eliot was confirmed in the Church of England; five months later, he became a British citizen. This upheaval of his religious and national identity caught many by surprise, and its impact resonated through his art and criticism. His view of the artist’s and the audience’s relation to art is distinctly different in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1920) than in his essay on Dante, written two years after his conversion; he moves from the impersonal approach of the New Critics to a more integrated and personal view of the process of creation and appreciation. Also, Eliot’s understanding of life and the value of suffering becomes transfigured through this period of history, which becomes apparent in the way Eliot draws on Dante in his pre- and post-conversion poetry. In The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot’s allusions to Dante are drawn primarily from Inferno, suggesting that life is a mere suffering, Hellish and hopeless. His fragmented and dissonant style—common to the Modern movement—reinforces this view of life. In Four Quartets, which Eliot wrote after his Anglican confirmation, Eliot’s style becomes more holistic and traditional and his allusions to Dante are drawn primarily from Purgatorio and Paradiso, suggesting that suffering is no longer cause for despair, but is redeemed by hope of sanctification

Eliot is traditionally associated with the New Criticism movement, which attempted to maintain a disconnection between the poet and his work, rejecting the idea that one can interpret a poem by examining the author or learn about an author through his poetry. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot reacts against the ego-centricism of the Romantics and attempts to split the artist from his work. Although he rejected his affiliation with the movement, Eliot’s criticism became a pillar of New Criticism which “insisted on the intrinsic value of a work of art and focused attention on the individual work alone as an independent unit of meaning. It was opposed to the critical practice of bringing historical or biographical data to bear on the interpretation of a work.”[1] “Traditional and the Individual Talent” explicates Eliot’s idea that the poet is extraneous to the work. He claims that “the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.”^[2] In fact, the poet functions as a vessel through which the poem comes, but the poet should leave as little personal ‘residue’ on the final work as possible: “the poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”[3] The poet is supposed to sacrifice his self, extinguish his personality, for the sake of the work. He explains:

The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a “personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.^[4]

In his early criticism, then, the poet is not only disconnected from his work, but there is a distance between the poet as a person and the poet qua poet. However, in Eliot’s later critical essay, “Dante,” he seems to admit there is at least a tenuous relation between the poet as a person and his work.

Because Dante crafted a poem interlaced with the theological beliefs of his time as well as his personal convictions, Eliot argues that an appreciation of Dante’s philosophical and theological beliefs is necessary for truly appreciating the Divine Comedy. “The vital matter is that Dante’s poem is a whole; that you must in the end come to understand every part in order to understand any part.”[5] He admits that one does not need to believe what Dante believed in order to understand the work, and distinguishes between philosophical belief and poetic assent, saying that in order to “read poetry as poetry, you will ‘believe’ in Dante’s theology exactly as you believe in the physical reality of his journey; that is, you suspend belief and disbelief.”[6] On the other hand, Eliot acknowledges that for himself as a reader, the poem impacted him more deeply after he became a Christian. In reference to Dante’s line from Purgatorio “la sua voluntade è nostra pace” (“His will is our peace”) he says: “I confess that it has more beauty for me now, when my own experience has deepened its meaning, than it did when I first read it. So I can only conclude that I cannot, in practice, wholly separate my poetic appreciation from my personal beliefs.”[7] This realization of the significance one’s personal life plays in the appreciation of poetry contradicts the sentiment of his earlier criticism and apparently influences Eliot’s process of creating art as well. The connection between the poet’s personal life and his poetry continued to deepen throughout his life—Eliot’s personal conversion to faith effected profound changes in the subject matter and structure of his later poetry. “In ‘Little Gidding’ we see Eliot using Dantean imagery to highlight his acceptance of Christian thought. Whereas his earlier poetry had posited a largely infernal scheme in which there was no hope of release from the torment of one’s past, the later work admits the potential for transcendence that enables us to move beyond the past into a greater future.”[8]

“The last canto of the Paradiso…is to my thinking the highest point that poetry has ever reached or ever can reach,” says Eliot in his critical essay on Dante.[9] Dante’s Divine Comedy profoundly impacted the style and structure of Eliot’s poetry. Eliot says “more can be learned about how to write poetry from Dante than from any English poet…. the language of Dante is the perfection of a common language.”[10] He notes that readers of Dante are tempted by two extremes of interpretation: first, the belief that understanding all of Dante’s allusions are essential for appreciating his poetry, or second, that allusions are irrelevant and the poetry can be enjoyed without context.[11] Eliot argues that Dante is able to be enjoyed even if all the allusions are unknown, because “genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”[12] On the other hand, Eliot expects that the pleasure one finds in reading the Divine Comedy unaided will lead one to study it in order to understand and enjoy it more fully; it may even prompt one to learn Italian. It is similarly possible to appreciate Eliot’s poetry without examining the innumerable references he sprinkles throughout his work, but an investigation of his allusions does allow for deeper understanding of the poem’s meaning. By examining Eliot’s allusions to Dante’s Divine Comedy in The Wasteland and Four Quartets, one can follow Eliot’s ideological shift from understanding suffering as the meaningless and hopeless end of life to a means of purgation and an intermediary step before ultimate glorification.

The Wasteland correlates to Dante’s Inferno, not only in subject matter, but also in structure. The Inferno has historically been the most accessible volume of the Comedy; it is the first of the three, it is able to be appreciated independently of the other two, and it is likely that mankind relates more immediately with suffering than with blessedness; Eliot says “it is apparently easier to accept damnation as poetic material than purgation or beatitude; less is involved that is strange to the modern mind.”[13] Eliot, like other moderns, had to acquire a taste for paradise, but quickly appreciated the artfulness with which Dante painted the agony of Hell: “one has learned from the Inferno that the greatest poetry can be written with the greatest economy of words, and with the greatest austerity in the use of metaphor, simile, verbal beauty, and elegance.…”[14] One can easily see the correlation of style between Inferno and The Wasteland. The Wasteland utilizes a potent economy of expression. Eliot presents layers of cryptic images interspersed with obscure references and splices of foreign languages. For example, from “The Burial of the Dead”, the first of Wasteland’s five sections:

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind.

Der Heimat ze

Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?

‘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….

Part of the impact of The Wasteland is its disorienting style. Again, this relates to how Eliot understands Dante’s poetry. He says, “[Dante’s] difficulty [is] in making us apprehend sensuously the various states and stages of blessedness….Dante has to educate our senses as he goes along.”[15] Eliot seems to do be effecting the same thing in his poetry; he tries to get his reader to feel, not merely understand, his meaning. By choosing chaotic images and incorporating them in dissonant language, Eliot is doing a similar work in The Wasteland as Dante accomplished in the Inferno. It is fitting, then, that the majority of the Dantean images in The Wasteland are from the Inferno.

At Ezra Pound’s behest, Eliot included a set of notes at the end of The Wasteland to “help” readers.[16] In reference to line 63, Eliot quotes: “[I saw] so long a train of people, that I should never had believed death had undone so many.”[17] Dante makes this observation in the first level of Hell, just after he and Virgil pass through the infamous gate that mandates despair. This Vestibule is filled with the Futile souls who “against God rebelled not, nor to Him were faithful, but to self alone were true.”[18] These souls are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, they cannot die and envy every other soul’s fate. They chase in vain after a whirling ensign, goaded by wasps until bleeding. Eliot, in reference to line 64, cites: “Here there was no complaint that could be heard, except of sighs, which caused the eternal air to tremble.”[19] Dante is now in the first circle of Hell, known as Limbo, where the Unbaptized and the Virtuous Pagans rest, who sinned not, but did not attain salvific faith. Thet languish, painless and hopeless. These two images from Inferno serve to intensify the scene Eliot paints in “The Burial of the Dead”:

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 (lines 60 – 65).[20]

Even without Dante, the image of crossing a river is an easily recognized symbol for death, and one can visualize the apathetic, herd-like surrender of the multitude as they move forward. In light of Dante, however, the reader should also recognize that he has entered Upper-Hell. If he has no Virgil guiding him by the grace of Heaven, then he is a dead man, and no different than those he observes. By choosing to draw scenes from the Vestibule and Limbo, instead of Lower-Hell, Eliot is not passing a particularly harsh judgment upon the crowd. If one views this crowd of souls as the contemporaries of Eliot, then Eliot seems to believe that the greatest sins of his generation are apathy and faithlessness; a failure to act, rather than improper action. The narrating voice of The Wasteland cuts through the apathy:

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?

‘O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

‘You! Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’ (lines 69 – 76)

This scene is comparable to Inferno, wherein Dante meets “a loved master of arts”[21], Brunetto Latini, in the seventh circle of Hell. Brunetto supposedly “sinned greatly in unnatural crime”[22] and is thus sentenced to run among the sodomites upon burning sand under raining fire. Brunetto reaches out to touch Dante and Dante says:

When he put out his hand to me, I stared

At his scorched face, searching him though and through,

So that his shriveled skin and features scarred

Might not mislead my memory: then I knew:

And, stooping down to bring my face near his,

I said: “What, you here, Ser Brunetto? You!”[23]

Brunetto runs beside Dante, who ironically walks “with down-bent head like some devout soul in a holy place,” and prophesies that Fortune will honor Dante, and Dante, in turn, promises to honor Brunetto.

This scene especially impacted Eliot when he read Inferno. He said the lines contained “the quality of surprise which Poe declared to be essential to poetry.”[24] The scene appears at least once more in Eliot’s poetry, in the last section of Four Quartets, which merits quoting at length:

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night…
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not…

…yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good.’

A contrast of these recognition scenes in The Wasteland and Four Quartets will illustrate the different views of death (and thus the different views of life) that are present in the poems.

The Wasteland episode paints a picture of hopeless fatalism. One is first impressed by the dreariness of the setting—“The Unreal City,” “brown fog,” “winter dawn”—and then the listless silence which is unnatural for a crowd, thus giving an unearthly feel to their movements. These souls are passively undone by Death, and they sigh, shuffling with eyes fixed before them; it is a supine resignation to the inevitable. The narrator, in comparison, is obnoxiously alive. He stops the flow with an exclamation that reverberates harshly in the ear of the reader and, one imagines, in the ears of the ghosts. The reference to Mylae (a Roman naval victory against Carthage) seems out of place in an otherwise modern poem. He follows with a reference to a buried corpse, which brings forth plant life; he warns against a resurrection of body without soul. Then, suddenly, the speaker exclaims: “You! Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!” or, “Hey you! Hypocritical reader!—you are just like me—you are my brother!” It is disorienting: is he still talking to the ghost or is he talking to the actual reader? This conflation of reader with ghost implies a shared identity; Eliot seems to be saying that modern London is the city of Dis and its citizens, of whom we are one, are its infernal inhabitants. We have—or should have—abandoned all hope.

The scene in Four Quartets, though referencing a moment in Dante’s Inferno, relates more closely to Paradiso. The setting is “the uncertain hour before morning / Near the ending of interminable night.” Already, there is a foundation for hope in the symbol of morning, qualified by the “uncertain hour”; similarly, the ‘end of unending night’ sends positive, but mixed, signals to the reader. In Purgatory, time and the specific hour of day are important to the souls, because they are eager to reach Heaven as soon as possible.[25] Four Quartets continues by describing dead leaves rattling like tin across the asphalt, and the speaker meets a solitary figure, whose face is “down-turned” like Dante’s had been; Dante compared this action to an attitude of prayer in a holy place.[26] In fact, the parallel leads one to place the speaker in the situation of Brunetto Latini and this new stranger in the place of Dante—in Inferno, Brunetto is the one who first recognizes Dante and reaches out; also, both Dante and the stranger walk with down-turned heads. On the other hand, the language quickly returns the speaker to the place of Dante, who catches “the sudden look of some dead master / Whom [he] had known, forgotten, half recalled / Both one and man; in the brown baked features / The eyes of a familiar compound ghost.” The “intimate and unidentifiable” in the next line implies that the ghost is not so much an individual as a collective identity for many persons. The speaker, in turn, assumes a “double-part” who, though “here,” is not, and though “still the same” is “someone other.” The ghost’s face is half-recognized and yet becomes recognizable by being known. The speaker and stranger are “too strange to each other for misunderstanding”; it is almost as if, through this confusion of personas, Eliot is seeing himself as a stranger and recalling himself in the process.

The line, “What! are you here?” is an almost direct quotation from Dante, and the dialogue proceeds in a manner similar to the conversation between Dante and Brunetto, except that the words which come from “Brunetto” are much more reminiscent of the souls’ speeches in Purgatory, than Hell. The stranger is not eager to remember past deeds and attitudes, and quotes an adapted section of the Lord’s Prayer: “pray they be forgiven / By others, as I pray you to forgive / Both good and bad.” A little further down, the connection between the speaker and the stranger is strengthened when the stranger starts speaking in the second-person plural: “our concern was speech, and speech impelled us” (italics added). The stranger says that the “gifts” of age are senselessness, impotence, unamused laughter, and remorse. This seems somewhat hopeless, except that he ends: “From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit / Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire / Where you must move in measure, like a dancer”, at which point dawn comes and he leaves with a valediction, fading upon the blowing of a horn. The hope of purification by fire, the coming of dawn—these are not the trappings of a soul trapped in the eternal darkness of Hell.

The hopeful and purgative quality of his speech is solidified throughout the end of the poem. His words are echoed with prophetic firmness several pages later, in section IV of “Little Gidding”:

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

The images of the descending dove, the flames of fire that speak in tongues are clear Biblical images of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, and they declare that one must chose either the fire of damnation or the fire of purgation. The angel of chastity at the top of Purgatory calls through the ring of fire to Dante, exclaiming, “Holy souls, there’s no way on or round / But through the bite of fire; in, then, and come!”[27] Eliot draws a very explicit distinction between the fire of Inferno and the flames of Purgatorio in his critical essay, saying:

In hell, the torment issues from the very nature of the damned themselves, expresses their essence; they writhe in the torment of their own perpetually perverted nature. In purgatory the torment of fire is deliberately and consciously accepted by the penitent…. The souls in purgatory suffer because they wish to suffer, for purgation…. In their suffering is hope, in the anaesthesia of Virgil is hopelessness; that is the difference.[28]

The stranger met earlier in Four Quartets, then, “both one and many…a familiar compound ghost / Both intimate and unidentifiable” stands as an image of mankind, and perhaps Eliot himself, and that image is one of hope.

Another reference to Inferno in The Wasteland comes in line 412: “Dayadhvam: I have heard the key / Turn in the door once and turn once only / We think of the key, each in his prison / Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.” The first word is Sanskrit, roughly translated, “be merciful”[29]; however, when read in context of English, it serves as disorienting and alienating gibberish; the last lines of the poem are also Sanskrit, and serves a similar purpose for the English reader. It is reminiscent of the babbling monster Dante encounters in the fourth circle of Hell; Pluto, the ancient god of wealth, greets Dante and Virgil with an apparently meaningless “Papè Satan, papè Satan aleppe.”[30] Similarly, the giant Nimrod, between circles eight and nine, calls out: “Rafel mai amech zabi almni”; he is cursed with the inability to communicate intelligibly. Confusion of speech, then, is a hellish thing, and the increasingly incoherent language found at the end of The Wasteland does not bode well. I believe that Eliot intentionally packed dozens of references and four different languages into the last strophe of the poem, not as a puzzle which should be deciphered, but left frightening in its overwhelming strangeness. That said, the allusion to the Inferno cited by Eliot above may increase one’s discomfort, because it references the gruesome story of Ugolino, a traitor to his country, trapped in ice in the ninth circle of Hell. Dante finds Ugolino gnawing on the skull of another man, the Archbishop Roger. Ugolino explains that Roger, his partner in treachery, betrayed him in turn, and locked him and his four sons in a tower until, eight days later, five starved corpses were given their freedom. Thus, when Eliot says, “I have heard the key / Turn in the door once and once only,” he means he has been nailed into his coffin. The repetition within those three lines serves to hammer home the fatality of the situation. All of this, coming at the end of The Wasteland, leaves the reader with a sense of despair and a belief that suffering is meaningless.

The stark contrast between the endings of The Wasteland and Four Quartets is the most striking argument for Eliot’s changed perception of life and suffering:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning…

Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

The first thing to note is the community inherent in the choice of the pronoun ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. Secondly, even the ‘we’ is not alone—they are drawn by a personal and powerful ‘Love’ and ‘Calling’. The “unknown, unremembered gate” may be the gate to Hell, but it is more likely the gate at the entrance of Purgatory, which has been forgotten because the speaker has drunk from the river Lethe at the top of the mountain. The “last thing to discover” for Dante is God Himself – “that which was the beginning” – “the complete simplicity” of the Trinity. Dante, and it seems, Eliot, has learned that only through utter surrender may one win the only prize worth winning—salvation. Almost assuredly, when Eliot writes “All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flame are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one,” he is referring to Dante’s final heights of Heaven, the Empyrean Rose:

So now, displayed before me as a rose

Of snow-white purity, the sacred might

I saw, whom with His blood Christ made His spouse….

As bees ply back and forth, now in the flowers…

So did the host of Angels now descend

Amid the Flower of the countless leaves,

Now rise to where their love dwells without end.

Their glowing faces were as fire that gives

Forth flame, golden their wings….

Between the Flower and that which blazed above [God]

The volant concourse interposed no screen

To dim the splendor and the sight thereof…

This realm of saints, whose joy no dangers mar,

Gazed on one sign in love and unity.[31]

All things shall be well when the flames of suffering, on earth, in hell, and in purgatory, are woven into the perfect, just, and loving will of God—the fire—and He is united with His people—the rose. Eliot’s ending to Four Quartets seems as high and heady as the final canto of Paradiso that he so ardently admires.

The hope of Heaven T. S. Eliot experienced in his personal life not only transformed his philosophy of life, but also his appreciation and creation of poetry. Contrary to the ‘extinction of selfhood’ he mandated in his early criticism, Eliot the man was Eliot the poet and his poetry is unavoidably integrated with both. His use of the master, Dante, evidences the shift he experienced. The implications of Eliot’s conversion not only affected his own poetry, but serve to undermine the very foundation of New Criticism ideology. If even the prince of modern poetry was unable to eliminate himself from his art, might the endeavor to utterly compartmentalize the self from the creative process be a hopeless endeavor? More importantly, is it a beneficial endeavor? If, as some have suggested, the fragmented and chaotic flavor of Modernist literature stemmed from the loss of security and integration as a result of World War I, then it seems the disconnection was an artistic coping mechanism for society’s prophets as they struggled to make sense of their loss. Perhaps the changed style and content of Eliot’s work was an outpouring of the healing he found for himself and the hope he found for culture in the Christian faith. By writing before, during, and after his conversion process, Eliot experienced, chronicled, and now facilitates in others a Dantean journey through the hell of disbelief to the haven of faith.

Works Cited

“New Criticism.” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Volume VII. 1983.

The Temple Classics: The Inferno of Dante Aligheri. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Lo Aldine House. 1922.

Dante Aligheri. The Comedy of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica I Hell (L’Inferno). Translated by Dorothy Sayers. London: Penguin Books. 1949.

--------------. The Comedy of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica II, Purgatory (Il Purgatorio). Translated by Dorothy Sayers. London: Penguin Books. 1955.

--------------. The Comedy of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica III, Paradise (Il Paradiso). Translated by Dorothy Sayers and Barbara Reynolds. London: Penguin Books. 1962.

T. S. Eliot. T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays, 1917 – 1932. “Dante.” New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1932.

--------------. T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays, 1917 – 1932. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1932.

--------------. T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909 – 1962. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company. 1968.

Shikaripura Harihareswara. “An Article on Triple Connotations of a Single Syllable ‘da’ – ‘dama, dAna and dayA.” . 23 November 1997. Accessed 2 April 2007.

Peter Lowe. “Dantean Suffering in Shelley and T.S. Eliot: From Torment to Purgation.” English Studies, 2004.

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[1] “New Criticism.” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Volume VII. 1983. 290.

[2] T. S. Eliot. T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays, 1917 – 1932. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1932..” 7-8.

[3] Ibid., 8.

[4] Ibid., 9.

[5] T. S. Eliot. T. S. Eliot: Selected Essays, 1917 – 1932. “Dante.” New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. 1932. 218.

[6] Ibid., 218.

[7] Ibid., 231.

[8] Peter Lowe. “Dantean Suffering in Shelley and T.S. Eliot: From Torment to Purgation.” English Studies, 2004. 4. 334.

[9] Eliot. Selected Essays. “Dante.” 212.

[10] Ibid., 213.

[11] Eliot. Selected Essays. “Dante.” 199 – 200.

[12] Ibid., 200.

[13] Ibid., 214.

[14] Ibid., 213-14.

[15] Eliot. Selected Essays. “Dante.” 226.

[16] Except for my analysis of line 69, the allusions analyzed here come from these notes.

[17] Inferno III, 55-57: “si lunga tratta / di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto / che morte tanta n’avasse disfatta.” Translation from The Temple Classics: The Inferno of Dante Aligheri. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Lo Aldine House. 1922. 31.

[18] The Comedy of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica I Hell (L’Inferno). Translated by Dorothy Sayers. London: Penguin Books. 1949. 86.

[19] Inferno IV, 25-27: “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare / non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri, / che l’aura eternal facevan tremare.” Translation from The Temple Classics: The Inferno. 1922. 38.

[20] All Eliot poetry unless otherwise noted will be quoted from T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909 – 1962. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company. 1968.

[21] Eliot. Selected Essays. “Dante.” 208.

[22] Sayers. Inferno. 166.

[23] Inferno, XV, 22 – 95. Translation from Sayers’ Inferno. 1949.

[24] Eliot. Selected Essays. “Dante.” 208.

[25] Peter Lowe. “Dantean Suffering in Shelley and T.S. Eliot.” 331.

[26] Inferno XV, 44 - 45. Translation from Sayers’ Inferno. 1949.

[27] The Comedy of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica II, Purgatory (Il Purgatorio). Translated by Dorothy Sayers. London: Penguin Books. 1955. Canto XVII, 10 – 11. 281.

[28] Eliot. Selected Essays. “Dante.” 217.

[29] Shikaripura Harihareswara. “An Article on Triple Connotations of a Single Syllable ‘da’ – ‘dama, dAna and dayA.” . 23 November 1997. Accessed 2 April 2007.

[30] Inferno VII, 1. Translation from Sayers’ Inferno. 1949.

[31] The Comedy of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica III, Paradise (Il Paradiso). Translated by Dorothy Sayers and Barbara Reynolds. London: Penguin Books. 1962. Canto XXXI, 1-3, 10-14, 19-21, 26-27. 328.

Phoebe

It was the day before her thirteenth birthday.

She’d been playing on Mount Parnassus,

chasing a silver stag, when she stumbled

over a boy, lying golden the sun.

He was sleeping, and her nephew lost no time

in reflecting his own honeyed arrow

from the boy’s curls through the maid’s eye

and she couldn’t look away.

She reached out to touch his shoulder

with the lightness of a butterfly,

but he started awake, dagger ready.

She was silhouetted against the sun,

hair teased by branches into a halo,

young arms polished to a shining bronze.

They had no need for introductions.

They had no need for words.

They simply sat on the grass, gazing,

each one stunned by undiscovered wealth

unsure how to spend the time

hesitant to break the spell.

He handed her a violet to set in her blond hair

and she allowed him to trace her gently curving fingers.

He whispered in her ear

and she breathed in the earthiness of his body.

But her brother, careening through the heavens,

saw her sitting in the meadow

laughing with a mortal

and was displeased.

He summoned a boar to race across the glade,

knowing she could not remain seated before such a prize.

The pig knew his business and rushed headlong

into their tranquility.

She was on her feet in an instant, quiver ready, hands steady.

She watched the boar re-enter the woods,

then glanced down to grin at the boy,

before leaping into the shade.

The boy came too, only four steps behind.

She ran hard and fast and long,

sending arrows ahead of her when she found a clearing.

She followed that porcine bundle of wrath

with a bugle call of delight,

forgetting the one who, stumbling, followed.

Weaving through trees,

jumping over fallen trunks,

skirting boulders and skipping streams,

the three wound their way round the mountain.

The boar switched course,

zigzagged back through a dry river bed;

she stayed on track, but the boy

had lost sight of her, straining to hear

the crashing animal or crystalline laugh.

She gained speed and drew closer,

negotiating the paths she knew to trap the boar

into a rocky dead-end.

The boar, however, guided from on high,

slipped the noose and sprinted left

from whence they’d come.

She planted her feet

and drew her bow,

golden arrow pressed against her cheek,

arms tauter than the string they stretched.

She focused, aimed and with one final breath,

released.

The boar was almost out of sight,

but she knew her arrow was true

and she watched with anticipation for its final destination.

But lo! through the underbrush,

drawn by the sound of the boar,

a breathless boy crashes,

searching for the girl.

She could do nothing.

The arrow could not turn back,

not even a goddess could make it slow.

It found its home just below his left shoulder,

through the back, and lodged in his breastbone.

She, truer than her arrow, flew to catch him before he fell,

and his thick warm blood flowed through her fingers,

stained her white dress red,

Splashed onto the flower that still clung to her hair,

and seeped into the earth,

summoning her uncle from below.

Too cold does ambrosia course through immortal veins,

not stopping, though the world has stopped,

never drained, though joy has gone.

The last flashes of her brother’s chariot

streamed horizontal through the temple pillar trees

calming all the world, so it might mark his sister’s screams.

The next morning, Olympus was in an uproar of celebration,

though Hera was in a funk,

but no one could find the birthday girl.

At last, Iris found her walking in the heavens,

placing the body of a man upon the black velvet breast of night,

so that he might shine forever, a warrior constellation.

Iris led her back to the mountain,

wrapping her in rainbows

and cleansing her with dew.

No one could understand her solemnity,

but even Aphrodite stopped laughing when she arrived.

Her father spread his arms to embrace her

but she could not come.

He asked her sorrow,

but she could not speak.

Finally, he concluded that whatever was ill

could be solved with a marriage,

and he sat her down to review all eligible bachelors.

He’d made it as far as Pan,

when she, distraught, burst into furious tears

and threw herself at his feet.

She clung to his knees and begged him to stop,

Begged him to promise never to marry her to anyone.

She pleaded for a life of chastity,

like the one chosen by her cousin and aunt.

He, stunned and unhappy, asked her to reconsider—

Grey-eyed Athena could never have managed a household

and Hestia already managed everyone else’s—

his darling, adventurous daughter should have the joy of marriage.

She pressed her cheek against his thigh

and shook her head—No,

there would never be another.

“Please, father, grant that I may have a silver moon

to ride at night, that I might gaze upon the stars;

grant me fifty nymphs who will accompany every hunt,

protecting me from meadows;

grant me fifty hounds, whose baying will drown out

the rasping grief of a breaking heart.”

Two tears splashed against her father’s toes,

and he nodded his bearded brow.

She would never be forced to stop her play

never forced to trade her horn for a spindle.

And she left his hall, a day older,

a lifetime older,

ready to exchange her cheerful gold

for virginal silver.

Ready to take her throne as a helper of women

as a huntress and healer.

What’s in a Name: The Divine Power of Words in Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
John 1:1, 3

The Christian story of Creation is a poem with an important reoccurring refrain: “And God said.” The creative power of divine speech is woven throughout Genesis and the thread is picked up again by St. John the Evangelist in his Gospel. He refers to Jesus Christ as ‘The Word’ which made the world. This tradition of language as power is one that Shakespeare would have been very familiar with and the power of human language to create images and influence reality is a destructive force in Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale. In each play, a husband, or in Claudio’s case, a husband-figure, verbally accuses his wife of infidelity and death is considered the appropriate consequence. In all three cases, a feigned death is necessary for each man to recognize the power of his words and cause him to mourn his wife’s death; this allows him to hear what he could not hear before—the truth. The women’s fake sin is expunged by a fake death and each man publicly repents of his mistaken accusation. Repentance is the surrender of man to a reality not of his own making. Within the Christian schema, grace is the result of repentance and the ultimate expression of grace was Christ’s resurrection. Just as man imitates divine creation with his words, resurrection is imitated in the plays; the women are revealed as living and are reconciled with their husbands and the society.
In a world without DNA testing and Sherlock Holmes, an accusation of infidelity boiled down to a battle of wills and words. When Leontes accuses Hermione, he has on his side the coincidence that Polyxenes has been in town exactly nine months, and Hermione is in her third trimester of pregnancy. Then, because he asked Camillo to poison Polyxenes, Camillo and Polyxenes flee to Bohemia, which looks suspicious. As Hermione admits at her trial, the battle is between her word and Leontes’ word, and his very accusation has called her truthfulness into question: “Since what I am to say, must be but that which contradicts my accusation, and the testimony on my part, no other but what comes from myself, it shall scare boot me to say ‘not guilty’: mine integrity, being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it, be so receiv’d.” In Much Ado About Nothing, it is Don John’s and Claudio’s sincerity that convinces Leonato of their truthfulness. He says, “Would the two princes lie, and Claudio lie, who lov’d her so, that, speaking of her foulness, wash’d it with tears?” In Cymbeline, Posthumous believes Iachimo when Iachimo says that he slept with Imogen; Posthumous, to his credit, requires ‘proof’ and when Iachimo produces Imogen’s engagement bracelet, Posthumous accepts Iachimo’s word against Imogen’s honor. Even when Philario offers the reasonable suggestion that Iachimo stole the bracelet, Iachimo says, “By Jupiter, I had it from her arm,” and that is enough to convince Posthumous: “Hark you, he swears: by Jupiter he swears. ‘Tis true. . . .” Words are enough to incite jealousy, and words are enough to defame the women they attack.
In each case, death seems to be the expected, if not necessary, consequence of infidelity. This reflects the law of the Old Testament; Leviticus 20:10 states clearly that in case of adultery, both of the perpetrators should be put to death. Whether or not adultery was a capital offence in Elizabethan England, death seems an appropriate punishment for the crime within the plays. Posthumous tells Pisanio to murder Imogen in his letter of accusation, Leontes condemns Hermione to death in court, and Leonato says that if Hero does not die of shame herself, his own hands will strike at her life.
Because each man is convinced of the truth of his words, he is unable to hear others contradict him until he sees his words become truth; in each play, a death is desired, and in each play, a death is given. The Friar, who suggests that Hero be publicly mourned as dead, lists five goods he hopes will come of his charade: slander will be changed to remorse; Hero will be lamented, pitied, and excused; Claudio’s loss will cause him to remember Hero’s worth and goodness; Claudio will mourn and repent of his accusation, even if he still believes he was right; and her death with quell the wonder of her infamy in others. These are the things which result, not only in Much Ado, but also in Cymbeline. After Posthumous receives Pisanio’s “bloody sign” signifying Imogen’s death, he grieves and mentally reprimands Pisanio for not disobeying him. It is clear from his soliloquy that he still believes her to be an adulteress, but his own sins were more worthy of judgment than her “little faults.” The Winter’s Tale is unique, in that two deaths are necessary to disillusion Leontes. Leontes is given an oracle which proclaims Hermione chaste and Leontes a tyrant, but Leontes is so entirely convinced of the reality of his own words that he even rejects the words of the gods as false. The instant after he calls the oracle a “falsehood,” a servant enters to tell him that his son, Mamillius is dead. It is at this moment that Leontes recognizes the power of the gods; he had the legal power to execute Hermione, but the gods have divine power over life and death. By admitting he is unjust, Leontes admits that a contest between mortal and immortal wills is futile and he submits himself to a reality not of his own making. The death of Hermione is simply a nail in the coffin of Leontes’ pride; his power is broken and Paulina says that he can do nothing but despair.
The feigned deaths, therefore, allow the men to see the full power of their words, but simultaneously protects them from themselves. These plays perfectly illustrate the grace of human impotence. Because men are not gods – because they are not omniscient and good – the true divine power of creation is mercifully denied to them. Shakespeare brilliantly balances the tension between the actual and symbolic power of words by limiting the affect of words to creating an “almost” reality. Although the men wished their wives dead, they could not have born the weight of the fulfillment of their wishes. They are spared the consequences of causing such an irreparable thing as death.
The other grace extended to them is the ‘resurrection’ of their wives, but this may take place only after a public confession and a period of penitence. Polyxenes fights for Britain, whose mistress he ‘killed’; he runs around the battlefield looking for death, which will allow him to forget his sorrow and exculpate his guilt. He confesses before Cymbeline and Imogen, who is disguised, that he killed Imogen, whom he now acknowledges innocent. She reveals herself and they are happily reconciled to one another and the king. In Much Ado, Claudio, after hearing Borachio’s confession of deception, admits his fault and submits himself to Leonato, who makes him publicly proclaim Hero’s innocence, publicly mourn at Hero’s tomb, and marry Hero’s “cousin.” At the wedding, Hero is revealed as alive, and they are happily married. Lastly, in The Winter’s Tale, Leontes does sixteen years of penance, and it is only when the oracle is fulfilled – Perdita is found – that Hermione is resurrected. Because each man verbally maligned their wives, they must verbally reestablish their wives’ reputations; the one who creates a false image must be the one who destroys it. The ‘moral’, if there is one, is that man must take ownership of his words. If we have been granted the power of language, we must learn to use it responsibly. The resurrections are the miraculous counterpoint to the earlier destruction; they demonstrate that man can use his creative power for good.
With power comes responsibility and language is a power frequently associated with the divine. I believe that Shakespeare, as a man of words, understood that by writing a play, he was “sub-creating.” The references to the world as a stage in As You Like It, and Hamlet’s use of the play to ‘midwive’ reality, support this suggestion. If one accepts that words have the power to craft reality in some admittedly-mysterious way, the implications are wide-reaching. Artists are no longer men; they are God-imitators, and have the weight of responsibility thrust upon them, whether they desire it or no. Public speakers, like politicians, are vision-casters; historians do not simply recite the past, they form the way it will be seen by the future. What is in a name? The creative force of the cosmos.

My Counseling Appointment

I climb the twisting stairs and approach the door,
“Know Thyself” invisibly inscribed on its mantle.
Once inside, I wait with several other supplicants
Until called to offer up a sacrifice.
The novice takes my offering with one swipe of the magnetic strip—
Twelve dollars mysteriously winging its way into her coffers.

In the waiting room, I avoid eye contact, because
A look can be a confession, and I prefer to hide my shame
in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine.
I hear her heels before I hear my name
Which I answer by rising and smiling and following
Further back into a dimly lit room with an oversized couch
And a fake palm trapped in an ugly alabaster pot.

I tap my fingers and stare at the blue ink stain on my jeans.
She asks about my week and slips into her speech
The sweet ipecac of caring.
It doesn’t take long, and soon I’m staring at my own entrails
Strewn across an otherwise spotless carpet.
She leans over and probes my lung.
The second-hand smoke of familial dysfunctionality
Seems to be causing my alveoli to fail,
But they’re healthier than my pancreas,
Which might explain my inability to accept criticism.
Covered in mucus is a blackened photo,
A memory that got caught in the conflagration of ‘98
When all my self-esteem went up in flames.
With a raised eyebrow she lifts a trembling red
Shoelace, which I can’t identify, so I assign it to my id.

At last I think we’re done, but she stops
And holds out her hand in expectation.
Frantically, I paw through my remaining organs;
My fingers get caught in a pocket of black tar
Hiding behind my left kidney.
Upon examination, we declare it to be my fear of
Commitment and I throw it in the trash.

Five-forty-five: it’s time to leave.
She scribbles her prescription on her tripled-leaves
And keeps the pink copy.
I painstakingly rearrange my rib cage,
Careful to pick off stray lint and a long blond hair.
I pick up my purse, thank her for her time,
And head towards the car, even more confused
Than when I came to Delphi.

The World at 21 Degrees

In the midst of a dream – a good dream – Eva heard the alarm. At first it was incorporated into the dream itself. Reneé had been happily banging on her new toy and Jason was sitting behind her, showing her how to tap the hammer on the xylophone. Then the banging became rhythmic, pounding. Soon she couldn’t hear Reneé’s laugh or Jason’s gentle voice. Finally, even their images faded and it was replaced by a pulsating redness, and she knew that if she didn’t make it stop, she would never wake up.
But it stopped. At long last, Jason reached over and slammed his hand down onto the clock. 5:00 am. He had just enough time to shower, grab a cup of coffee, and then head to the lumber mill. Eva rolled back onto her left side—she, on the other hand, could fit in two more hours before Reneé woke up.
Unfortunately, when she closed her eyes, all she heard was the spackle of water ricocheting off the tile and Jason humming something they’d sung at church last night. He had a voice made for hymns.
Eva finally decided sleep was currently not an option and in a single movement, threw off her comforter and jumped to the closet to put on her terrycloth bathrobe. She trundled to the kitchen and turned on the light with a yawn. At least Reneé was sleeping through the night now; the colic had kept them both up regularly. Jason never got enough sleep as it was, so she’d volunteered to oversee most of the night shifts.
Eva spooned coffee grounds into the French press and clicked the switch on their electric kettle to heat. She wasn’t hungry, but shoved two pieces of bread into the toaster. As she waited with her eyes closed and arms hugged around her chest, she heard the water shut off and Jason rustled around their room looking for the clothes he’d laid out the night before.
The kettle began bubbling and she poured the water into the press. Jason walked in as the toast popped up.
“Hey, what are you doin’ up?” he asked as he stretched his arms wide and closed them around her waist from behind, and snuggled his chin into her shoulder.
“Weird dream. And your dumb alarm. Do you realize I wake up to that thing before you do every time?” Eva grumbled. Her eyes still weren’t open all the way.
“I’m sorry, love.” He kissed her cheek and straightened up. “Coffee smells good.”
“I made you toast.”
“Perfect! Now all I need are some Fruit Loops, an egg and some bacon, and I’ll be on my way,” he laughed.
Eva smiled half-heartedly. “You’re the reason I have to go shopping all the time—you and your lumberjack appetite.”
Jason laughed and opened the fridge. “Any more raspberry jam?”
“Check the lower right shelf.”
Jason grunted in affirmation and pulled it out, placed the toast on a napkin, and began smothering both pieces in glistening purple. Eva pushed down the press and reached for a mug. Warm aromas filled the air as she poured two cups.
Jason sat down at the table and Eva was about to sit opposite him, when he reached out and pulled her into his lap. “Much better,” he growled, and shoved a bite of toast into his mouth.
Eva smiled and wrapped her arm around his neck and nuzzled his wet hair. Gosh he smelled good.
“Guess what tomorrow is, hon,” Jason said stickily.
“Too early for guessing games, Jase.”
“It is our three year anniversary,” he announced with a grin.
Eva sat back with furrowed brow. “Uh, hon, we only celebrated our two year anniversary three months ago. Don’t you think you’re a little early?”
“Nope. Three years ago tomorrow, I kissed you for the first time, and you finally admitted that you loved me.”
“Ha! That doesn’t count,” she said as she sipped her coffee.
“Yuh-huh!”
“Nuh-uh! If you celebrate everything, then nothing’s special.”
“No sir,” he replied. “If you don’t celebrate every memory, you’ll lose ‘em all. We should have champagne every night, we’re so blessed.”
Eva smiled and helped eliminate some of those pesky crumbs all over his lips.
#
“Babababa,” Reneé babbled. “OOO-goohoo.”
Eva was feeding Reneé lunch, and Reneé thought her normal sounds were much more interesting when spoken through mushed rice.
“Bbbbbbrrrooooomm,” Eva sputtered as she swooped the plastic spoon through the air and into the giggling pink mouth.
Just then, the phone rang. Eva let Reneé clutch the spoon protruding from her face, double-checked the highchair, and turned to grab the wireless.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Hello, Mrs. Trathen?” a deep male voice answered.
“This is she. Who am I speaking to?”
“Ma’am, I’m John Gold from Ferndale Insurance Company. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but your life insurance policy lapsed yesterday. We sent you a letter, but didn’t hear back from you. Are you interested in renewing? After reviewing you and your husband’s age, financial situation, and health, we are excited to offer you the incredibly low monthly rate of $60.00 for you and your husband.”
Eva sighed. The man sounded friendly; she hated friendly salesmen—too hard to hang up on. She remembered the little yellow envelope she’d received a month ago. She began to silently weigh the expense, but one look at Reneé decided the matter for her.
“Okay, go ahead and renew our policy,” she said.
“Wonderful. All of us here at Ferndale wish our clients the best of health—” Eva smiled. I bet you do. “—but if anything should happen, please call me at 605-778-1225.”
“605-778-1225,” Eva murmured back as she hastily scrawled it on the back of a bill. “God willing, I’ll never have talk to you again,” she joked.
“Yes, ma-am. God willing.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Eva turned back to find Reneé happily dumping the jar of mushed rice into her lap.
#
Reneé had just gone down for her 4:00 nap when the phone rang again. Cursing all noisy ring tones, Eva closed the nursery door behind her and scrambled for the phone.
“Hello, this is Eva.”
“Hey, Eva, this is Jill, down at the factory,” replied a somber female voice. “Eva… there’s been an accident.”
Eva blinked. “Go on.”
“Well, no one really knows what happened, but it seems that a crane claw slipped and…” Jill paused.
“And what, Jill?” whispered Eva vehemently.
“…and Jason was trapped underneath it.”
“Oh God.”
“The paramedics arrived within minutes, but, I’m afraid they were too late.”
“What do you mean, ‘too late’?” Eva was trembling.
“They said he probably didn’t experience much pain…” Jill mumbled.
“What do you mean, ‘too late’?!” Eva screamed.
Jill burst into tears. “Jason’s dead, Eva. They just pulled his body out from under the log and are driving it to the hospital. He died about 20 minutes ago.”

In that moment, Eva’s earth slipped several degrees. Eventually, she would become accustomed to the change, but forever after, she walked on a slanted world.

“…Eva?” Jill sniffed. “Eva, are you there?”

No, Eva was not. All she could see was a red pulse. That beat. That throbbed. That stopped.
#
Reneé had been driven to Eva’s mom’s house several miles away for a few days. Jill and some ladies from church had taken turns staying with Eva and taking care of the details that arose. Eva sat on the couch in her living room in navy blue sweats, staring at a tuna fish sandwich someone had placed in her hand. She didn’t remember taking that bite.
A strong knock resounded on the front door.
“I’ll get it!” Jill exclaimed and jumped up from the magazine she’d been reading.
On the doorstep stood a tall man, early-thirties, with already graying dark hair.
“Hello, may I help you?” Jill asked.
Eva’s gaze returned to her sandwich. Someone had foolishly put celery into the tuna.
“Well, ma’am, I’m John Gold, and I’m here on behalf of Ferndale Insurance.”
“Oh yes of course,” Jill answered. “Hold on a moment.” She turned and walked over to the couch. She sat down next to Eva and put her hand on her arm.
“Eva? There’s a gentleman here to talk to you about…”
“Yes, thank you, Jill, I know. I called him.” Eva shivered and stood up. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Gold. Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you,” Gold replied. He sat on a kitchen chair and said gently, “You called me yesterday. I’ve already talked to the mortuary and they are taking care of the funeral. I believe you said the service would be held at your church…?”
“Yes, that’s right,” she answered.
“There are a few forms to sign, but other than that, my company is here to take care of you and you daughter. Aside from the paperwork, I’m here to express my sincerest condolences and if there is anything more we can do, all you need do is ask,” he smiled. He had a good smile; slightly timid, but calm and reassuring.
“Thank you, Mr. Gold, you’ve been most helpful,” Eva said with her first smile since the phone call.
“Please,” he responded. “Call me John.”
#
As the pall bearers left the church and Eva followed them down the aisle, she was struck by the horrible, backwards parallelism: a happy day, a white dress, walking towards the altar, contrasted to this sad day, in her black dress, walking away.
To her right, sitting in the second to last pew, she noticed John Gold, sitting in a dark blue suit, watching her with compassion. Tiny wrinkles were beginning to accent his eyes, but the deepest crease today was between his eyebrows. When she glanced at him, a hint of a smile of encouragement lit his eyes, then she looked away.
She didn’t see him at the reception and she thought it was odd that she should notice his absence. Jason’s presence had settled onto the person of his little daughter, but she kept expecting to find John at the drink table, waiting to offer her a glass.
Her mother found her instead.
“Eva…” her mom whispered before tearing up. “Eva, I’m so sorry.”
Eva, catching even herself off guard, managed to squeeze out a smile. “I’m alright, Mom. Listening to the Reverend speak was… soothing.”
“Yes, yes,” her mom replied. “He is definitely in a better place.”
Eva cringed. Better than here? Better than with me and Reneé?
“I know this may be too soon,” her mom continued. “But have you thought of what you’ll do now?”
“Yes, Mother. It is too soon,” Eva murmured through clenched teeth.
“Well, I just want you to consider leaving Reneé with me for a couple more days; you know, while you look for a job…” her voice trailed off at the look of horror on Eva’s face.
She’d have to get a job. She’d be a working single mother. Reneé would grow up in those ghastly, impersonal day-care centers she’d heard about from other parents.
Eva, without a second glance, walked away from her mother and up the stairs into her bedroom and shut the door.
#
Single moms are rarely afforded the luxury of prolonged grief. After rejecting her mother’s offer to care for Reneé – she’s all I have left – she’d committed herself to helping the child readjust to the loss of a parent. She woke up Thursday morning at 7:00 am, just like normal. She turned on the classical music station to help Reneé wake up slowly, made coffee – she accidentally put in two cups’ worth of grounds – and threw out the box of Fruit Loops. She ate Cheerios and stared at the words, “Gas Prices Skyrocket” on the front of the Belle Fourche’s Gazette for at least ten minutes. Then she woke up Reneé and began… life.
On Friday, the doorbell rang and Eva opened the door to see Mr. Gold on the front step.
“Hello, Ms. Trathen.” He shifted his weight and instead of the briefcase he’d brought last time, he held a well-creased sheet of turquoise paper in his hand. “I, uh, am here to see how you’re doing.”
Eva took a deep breath and considered. “As best as one could hope to be, I suppose.”
Gold nodded and stared down at the paper in his hands. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again with a quick exhalation.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Gold?” Eva asked.
“Well, see… there’s this event, uh, a concert, at my church down the road, and I, uh…” Gold swallowed, hesitated and thrust the paper towards her as he blurted out, “…and I was wondering if you’d like to join me.”
Eva had not been expecting that to follow. She paused, and accepted the paper. It read:
“Fourche’s First Presbyterian Church proudly presents Haroka Yi May, first cellist of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.” Below were listed several classical artists, of which she only recognized Vivaldi.
She looked up and returned the paper to him. As his face began to fall, she said, “I’d love to.”
#
The concert was wonderful, as was the hot chocolate they shared afterwards. And the following week, Eva had enjoyed John’s company when they went to see a film about penguins in Antarctica. Within a month, he was stopping by for dinner at her apartment once or twice a week.
The most important thing in Eva’s life was Reneé. Fortunately, the insurance and her mom and Jason’s folks were all helping to support her, so that no urgency was attached to her cursory searches through the Classifieds, and Reneé could stay at home. The women of her old church stopped by occasionally to drop off meals and chat over tea, and each day Eva found it a little easier to wake up in an empty bed. Reneé hadn’t formulated the word “Dada” but she knew he was missing and had been subdued for quite some time afterwards. She no longer looked up from her toys when someone walked into the room.
After dinner one evening, Eva mentioned this briefly to John, as she watched Reneé sit in her baby chair and stare at her video “Babies and Baby Animals.”
“The thought of her growing up without Jason makes me nauseous. All the parent guides say that a father is critical in the development of a daughter’s life,” Eva complained.
“Yes, it is hard,” John sipped on his coffee and his brow furrowed again.
Eva realized this might be an awkward subject and began to apologize. “I’m sorry, John, I didn’t mean to—“
“Eva, please don’t apologize. To tell you the truth, it’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot recently.”
“Oh?” Eva asked.
“Yes.” He stopped, held the mug a little tighter, and said, “Eva, I’ve come to care for you and Reneé quite a lot in the past few months, and I…” He stopped again.
Eva held her breath. “What?” she asked.
John shook his head.
“No, please, what were you thinking?” she pressed.
“Well, as you know, I’ve never been married. One broken engagement seemed enough for quite some time, but… I’d really like to be able to care for you both, somehow.”
He looked up at her and stared at her intently.
“I guess what I’m saying is… I wonder if you’d consider the possibility of marrying me,” he continued.
Eva sat back in her chair. Then got up and began pacing. She knew that every second was agony to John – it was for her as well – but she could not answer. On one hand, her heart was still Jason’s, but Jason was gone. Reneé needed a father. Eventually the insurance money would run out and she did, in fact, like John. But could she marry him? Could she marry anyone else? She put her hands on the sink and dropped her head.
“Eva…” John asked.
She waved at him to stop. Eva Gold. Reneé Trathen Gold. And the scales shifted. She looked back at him, and whispered, “Okay.”
He looked at her with surprise, and then a smile lit up his face. He stood up and walked to her at the sink.
“Are you sure? I mean, I know this is sudden. If you need more time to consider…?” he asked.
John had blue eyes. Eva had never noticed that before. She liked his eyes.
“No, John. I don’t need anymore time. My answer is yes, I would like to marry you,” and a smile slowly took control of her mouth.
There were no fireworks, no airy castle… Just his arms, wrapped around her, and his head resting on hers.