Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Notes
1. Mistah Kurtz: a character in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."
2. A...Old Guy: a cry of English children on the streets on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, when they carry straw effigies of Guy Fawkes and beg for money for fireworks to celebrate the day. Fawkes was a traitor who attempted with conspirators to blow up both houses of Parliament in 1605; the "gunpowder plot" failed.
3. Those...Kingdom: Those who have represented something positive and direct are blessed in Paradise. The reference is to Dante's "Paradiso".
4. Eyes: eyes of those in eternity who had faith and confidence and were a force that acted and were not paralyzed.
5. crossed stave: refers to scarecrows
6. tumid river: swollen river. The River Acheron in Hell in Dante's "Inferno". The damned must cross this river to get to the land of the dead.
7. Multifoliate rose: in dante's "Divine Comedy" paradise is described as a rose of many leaves.
8. prickly pear: cactus
9. Between...act: a reference to "Julius Caesar" "Between the acting of a dreadful thing/And the first motion, all the interim is/Like a phantasma or a hideous dream."
10. For...Kingdom: the beginning of the closing words of the Lord's Prayer.
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Comments
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What a highly profound work of art. Eliot's style was so far ahead of it's time and is such a joy to read. It meanders along and carries you off into a wonderful place where intricacies and syllables scarcely matter.
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I don't Understand it!
From guest Tom (contact)
Please tell me what is the poem's meaning or what the point of it, i'm entrigued! -
Wow.....
T S Eliot's poetry is featured repeatedly in "The Taking" by Dean Koontz. As a result of reading this book, I began to entertain the idea of reading some of Eliot's work. I thought he was a decent poet; I was wrong. He has a style to rival that of Edgar Allan Poe. This is the very DEFINITION of the term 'masterpiece'. -
Great
this is a master piece. very true..yes , we are Hollow men -
From guest eamarti (contact)
One of my favourite poems of all time. I remember reading it in high school and it was only recently that I understood what the hollow men were. Has amazing depth and very clever use of language.Love the way he uses repetiition to enhance his point - brilliant. -
Good call, that's along the lines of most critical interpretation of Heart Of Darkness (though I could site sources and make an arguement against it). Either way, I think the footnote is itself inaccurate through its speculation. I'll take care of it.
SeanJ - OP Researcher. -
I take extreme exception to the first foot note regarding "Mistah Kurtz". That is a complete misreading of "Heart of Darkness" (a work of genius if there ever was one). Kurtz was not corrupted by "primitive" Africans because of his weakness. In reading the work, it is clear that Kurtz's own "civilization" is indeed what is barbaric. Pay attention to how whites treat the Africans throughout the book. Indeed, Kurtz's behavior is just an extreme extension of what the whites were doing in the Belgian Congo in general, and it was not an exception to an otherwise "civilized" endeavor. This is one of Conrad's main points, and this is one of the huge ideas that FF Coppala captured so masterfully in the film adaptation "Apocolypse Now".
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I have not read this piece in such a very long time. I am still just as entralled with it today as I was when I first read it. I had completely forgotten this!
♥ Kimberly -
My Impression:
People lost in the world of commerce become 'quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass' and when they speak it is with empty mind, as in 'rat's feet over broken glass, in our dry cellar'... and Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'- very poetic prose...
Edited on Jan 28, 7:05 p.m. because '...of a penchant for fiddling...'. -
Read this in the 10th grade and loved it.. especially hearing T.S. Eliot himself reading it.. we never let that go as a laugh... He says it in monotone but when he gets to the prickly pear.. well, we all had a good laugh. Love this poem. One of my all time faves
*~Rosey~*
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I have bits of this written on my wall. It's one of my favorites of his. I mean, DANG it's beautiful. The lyrical-ness of it just gets me every time. I think I'm gonna go read it now.
+digs up battered old copy+ heh.... -
After reading Heart of Darkness, my English professor was definitely trying to push this poem on this. Completely unnecessary, as I'm a huge fan of Eliot's poetry anyway... I just couldn't pass by this poem without throwing up a huge shout-out to the author of my favorite poem (not this one, but "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
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I can remember reading this as a literature assignment in my senior year of high school or either my first year of college.
There is so much depth in this poem that it needed much explaination for me then, and now. I am glad to see the authors comments. They help to anaylize the poem. The form and structure is that of free verse, and is well formatted for the rendering of such a wondrous word tapestry. This poem has inspired me to write something with this type of depth. Let the muse surface. I thank you Mr. Eliot for your superb guidence. -
excellent ts
i remember doing this poem in high school when i was a teenager...many years ago...the final section is the one i remember most vividly from those days ...& readiung it again tonight, saw just what a wonderful piece of poetry it is...
thanks for rekindling this...prufrock was my favourite poem for many years... -
Eliot rocks!!! That said, I have to say the fifth section of this poem is what really truly endears it to me. The somewhat apathetic, nonchalant tone at the beginning that drifts into madness is what really grabs me in this piece. The last two lines are by far(in my opinion) the most profound things I have ever read. I first read this piece in eleventh grade and have since committed it to memory. There is something in it that rings so true to me that it almost makes me choke. /"We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men."/ Beautiful to me, and his sources for this piece only make the abstract nature of it more concrete.
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i KNEW i read this, *shudders* i HATED heard of Darkness, awful awful! though, unlike this poem
i love the abstract imagery in this, it's always good to see an author who thinks outside the box. i also like how it sound slike a nursery rhyme, how it skips in it's "musicalness" paaaahhritty!
Nyx...
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