"Whispers of Immortality" by T. S. Eliot

Whispers of Immortality (category Poetry by T. S. Eliot)

modern Russian woman Grishkin whose “friendly bust/ Gives promise of pneumatic bliss”(l.19-20). In the following two stanzas, Grishkin is compared to the

"Whispers of Immortality" by T. S. Eliot

WEBSTER was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground 
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate,
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

1575?-1634 or 1638？

John Webster (c. 1580 – c. 1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage.^[1] His life and career overlappedWilliam Shakespeare's.

John Donne (/ˈdʌn/ dun) (22 January 1572^[1] – 31 March 1631) was an English poet and acleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of themetaphysical poets. 

"Whispers of Immortality" is a poem by T. S. Eliot. Written sometime between 1915 and 1918, the poem was published originally in the September issue of the Little Review and first collected in June 1919 in a volume entitled Poems published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press. It is one of the quatrain poems, a mode that Eliot had adapted from the mid-19th-century French poet Theophile Gautier.^[1] The title is a fainter parody ofWilliam Wordsworth's title of the poem, Intimations of Immortality.

Analysis[edit]

The poem was developed in two sections; each contains four stanzas and each stanza contains four lines. The first section where Eliot paid homage to his great Jacobean masters in whom he found the unified sensibility is a kind of "versified critique"^[2] of Jacobean writers, Webster and Donne in particular. Both Webster and Donne are praised by the narrator, the former for seeing the “skull beneath the skin”(l.2), the latter for not seeking any “substitute for sense/ To seize and clutch and penetrate;/Expert beyond experience,..”(l.10-12). The apparent oxymoron of a "sense" that transcends beyond "experience" is followed by references to "the anguish of the marrow"(l.13) and the uncontrollable “fever of the bone” (l.16) that are too corporeal for mundane experience. The second section begins with a description of a modern Russian woman Grishkin whose “friendly bust/ Gives promise of pneumatic bliss”(l.19-20). In the following two stanzas, Grishkin is compared to the “Brazilian jaguar” which “does not in its arboreal gloom/ distil so rank a feline smell/ As Grishkin in a drawing room.”(l.26-28) In the concluding stanza, the narrator said that even her charm is the subject of philosophy. Nevertheless “our lot crawls between dry ribs/ To keep our metaphysics warm.”(l.31-32).

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ Murphy, Russell Elliott (2007). Critical Companion to T.S. Eliot: a Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Infobase Publishing. p. 488.ISBN 978-0-8160-6183-9.
2. Jump up^ Wood and Davies, (editor) (2003). The Waste Land. India: Viva Books Private Limited. p. 5. ISBN 81-7649-433-X.

External links[edit]

•  Whispers of Immortality public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Google translate

“不朽的私語”由艾略特

韋伯斯特備受死亡附體

看見皮下顱骨;

而地下breastless生物

與無唇露齒而笑落後俯身。

水仙，而不是球

從眼睛的插座盯著！

他知道，思想依附於輪枯枝

擰緊它私慾和奢侈品。

多恩，我想，是這樣另一個

誰發現了不可替代的意義;

為抓住和離合器和滲透，

專家經驗之外，

他知道骨髓的痛苦

骨架的瘧疾;

沒有接觸可能的肉

平息骨的發燒。

。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。

Grishkin是好的：她的眼睛俄羅斯

是強調的重點;

Uncorseted，她的胸圍友好

使氣動幸福的承諾。

該措辭巴西美洲虎

迫使疾走狨

隨著貓的微妙流出;

Grishkin擁有豪宅;

圓滑的巴西美洲虎

不在其樹棲幽暗

蒸餾所以排名貓的氣味

作為Grishkin在客廳裡。

甚至抽象實體

繞行她的魅力;

但是，我們的很多幹肋骨間爬

為了讓我們的形而上學溫暖。