SERIATIM BURBANK
Taken from posts sent to the TSE listserv by Guy Story Brown in May & June, 1998
Re: Re: The Brown Reading -Reply
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: The Brown Reading -Reply
From: STORYBROWN
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 12:06:18 EDT

Dear List,
I began by responding to what I took to be Isaac Gewirtz' invitation to "look
at the poem' ["Burbank"], and now I would like to take up the explicit
invitation (I've forgotten from whom--my mailbox is swamped) to give a point-
by-point look at this work along the general thematic lines I laid down. The
result is longish, if abbreviated, and often rather staccato. I appreciate
your keen interest and your patience, and I hope you are not disappointed by
my effort. I especially appreciate Ken Armstrong's encouragement, and also
many of Pat Sloane's observations. I will begin at the beginning, with the
title.

Eliot’s poem “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” consists of
ten parts: the title, a complex, layered epigraph, and eight quatrains. I
will take up each of these parts seriatim in this reading of the poem. I
will try not to repeat any of what I have already sufficiently said on the
list about this piece, or repeat what others have said about it either here or
elsewhere.

The bracketed and generally telegraphic style of the reading’s glosses and
running scholia may become distracting at times [apologies, and please correct
spelling errors in whatever language], but I believe that, at least for
students already well versed in the conventional interpretations and familiar
with what is called “the literature” about the work and its Eliotic themes, it
will, with due patience and consideration, provide much the quickest and
simplest route into the poem as I see it.

“Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar,” T.S. Eliot , *Arts and
Letters* 1919

Title
[“Face” (Fr.), per head of a coin] “Burbank with a Baedecker”:
“Burbank,” Luther, an American, alive at the time of the poem’s publication,
who was famous for his botany, i.e., a scientific student of plants & trees.
“Burbank” is, in the first place, an eponymous contemporary American studying
trees in Venice, particularly, as will be noted in the proper place, the
“axletree” in the third stanza, in connection with the divine foundation of
St. Mark’s Cathedral, and the “piles” in the sixth stanza, in connection with
the unstable foundations of the commercial republic.

“Burbank” is, also, the name of a city (without any culture [=Pound’s
“kulchur” and more, not Arnold’s] to speak of: “cultureless”), which, found
“with a Baedecker” or atlas, is seen to lie near Hollywood on the far western
(Pacific) edge (“bank”) of European Christendom. It is the far west of the
West, which the Germans call “Abendland” (sp? “the evening land,” where the
sun goes down), land of the dead, the (western, sundown) side of the Nile on
which the Egyptians design their necropolis: the tomb place, the “other
side.”

“Bur-” (=shell, seed husk, “tomb”), met: “restless,” “-bank” (the
characteristic institution of modernity, rooted especially in Venice), in one
of which branches (banks have branches like trees or vines--like the church of
Christ: they are an ersatz church and discipline: investing for future
[earthly] rewards, &c) the author was restlessly (spending valuable time on
poetry!) employed-buried when this poem was composed and published.
“Burbank,” the contemporary student of Venetian wood, is Eliot as subject.
“Baedeker” (“Guide to Kulchur”), earnest guide for the touring educated
bourgeoisie: a _good_ (in those days=a Teutonic-type) guide, of which
Baedeker was in 1919 the popular commonplace). For the reader as Burbank: a
sort of guide for “the Perplexed.” It is to the Baedeker and not, say,
Henry James, to which one would turn to learn something about Venice and the
evangelist Mark.

[“Pil ou face” (Fr.) sp? “flip side”] colon (=Burbank with a Baedeker),
"Bleistein with a Cigar”

Bleistein =“Lead stone” (=rock, we should always think of the biblical
“Peter”) that smokes like a candle, like the bush that burned or the rock that
gave water. Where is the fire/light, the spirit, the “ghost in the machine”?
The “Living Stone” (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-8: “living stone”), &c.
The two parts of the poem are those of the City (part 2) and Man (part 1).
“Burbank” is also “the city”; for Greeks and Romans, ultimately Troy (Ilos);
“Bleistein” is also “the man.”

These remarks, like the title itself, will become increasingly transparent as
the quatrains are read.

Epigraph (2 Peter 1:1-9) The Perspective of Mantegna
[Face:] Our true life is like Mantegna’s candle with St. Sebastian, saviour of
cities: animal life is fleeting; art is long; only the divine is immortal
(“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”; cf. 1
Peter 1:24).
[Pil ou face:] Carnival time--anticipating the Passion (=suffering, martyrdom,
self-discipline), in the alleged locale of the ashes of St. Mark the
Evangelist, “Winged Lion” (symbol of Christ, royal blood of Judah)--a mask of
the “eternal now” and of persons who are _now_ present.
Part One: Stanzas 1-4. ”Bleistein”: the New Man: City of God
(Three Days)

First stanza
1. _Burbank crossed a little_ [land] _bridge_
[after gondola-ing Atlantic canal/ after “crossing the bar”]
2. _Descending at a small hotel_
[viz., principal Baedeker entry re: Venice: St Mark’s on the great Venetian
square. The famous throne in St. Mark’s basilica exhibits a celebrated
carving on the backrest of the Tree of Life--maybe Burbank went to study
this.]
3. _Princess_ [royal] _Volu-pine_ [Lat. “volup/tas”=“pleasure,” “delight”]
arrived [i.e., to greet him. She arrived via boat: St. Mark weathered many great sea
tempests in his travels, and where Venice is concerned, he showed up and
sailed or was gondola-ed (sp?) around to save the city and its people in the
nick of time. Once, however, he descended from heaven to save a condemned
slave.]
4. _They were together, and he fell_
[=was immersed in joy, i.e., baptized/ buried. Mark 1:4: baptism, Princess
Volupine is a figure of the Holy Spirit. Eliot is remarkable in depicting
this aspect of the Trinity as female].

Second stanza (first day: “slowly...”)
5. _Defunctive music under sea
6. Passed seaward with the passing bell_
[the “old man” is washed away...]
(NB: In taking part of the action under the surface, the author indicates for
the reader that part of the meaning of the poem is necessarily hidden, and
hence invites him to call the surface meaning into question, or to proceed
circumspectly. I will here be concerned only with what most clarifies the
“ultimate” meaning.)

7. _Slowly: the God Hercules_
[Dionysos/Osirus=pagan religion; cf. 2 Peter 1:16; “clever myths...” (I set
aside consideration of the play of St _Mark_ as against _Marc_ Antony, and
related issues)]
8. _Had left him, that had loved him well._
[and the “new man” that is born/raised up... cf. 1 Peter 1:23: “imperishable
seed” (=”bur”)]

Third stanza (second day: “dawn...”)
9. _The horses, under the axletree_
[the sun’s chariot on St. Mark’s door (the pagan Helios’ chariot and all-
seeing eye in the sky (cf. the pyramid-eye on a US $1 bill) is become Son’s
chariot; “Star of Bethlehem”: Jesus: the eyes we must see with hic et nunc)
lifts him (the “new man”) _above_ (=carries him deeper below, in the tomb &
sea) the mundane sky upon the “axletree” (=here: the Cross [tree] of Christ at
Calvary, on which the world turns), and]
10 _beat up the dawn from Istria_
[=shames Eos, “rosy-fingered Aurora,” &c, and any putative birthstar of
“divine” Augustus (Plutarch): darkness at the crucifixion of Jesus]
11. _With even feet._ [=Eos unrisen, darkness; Jesus feet nailed together so
the knees sag. If it is to one’s taste, the 2-3 stanzas may be read as hymns
to sensual immersion a la Antony & Cleopatra: _honi soit qui mal y pense_(sp?)
(Shakespeare’s Ovidian gambit, from the motto of the Order of St. George
[whom St. Mark brought to Venice once to save it] and ultimately the Epistle
of Titus 1:15: to the pure in heart, all things are pure), and Numbers 15:39:
“...the lusts of your own hearts and eyes.”]
_...Her shuttered barge
12. Burned on the water all the day_
[Venice/St. Mark’s: the Princess Volupine’s barge and the tomb,
illuminated/lit by the Son’s light, invisible to those who do not see it,
enraptured in eternal heavenly joy]

Fourth Stanza (third day)
[and the “new man”  that is born/raised up from the tomb/water... (from
stanzas1- 2) is not the mythic Cephalus or Tithonus with Eos (from stanza 3),
nor, more importantly, is it the “world-historic” Emperor Caesar Augustus
(from stanzas 2-3): it is...”Bleistein,” whose way is not the way of
Caesar/Antony, but “other” (Bear in mind also Aristotle’s remark in the
_Politics_ that the genuinely surpassing human being who is not a philosopher
[sc. in the strict Pythagorean-Platonic-Aristotelian sense] would be either a
beast or a god)]
13. _But this or such was Bleistein’s way:_
[the actual Passion, not a painting, and Jesus’ actual compassion, not a
bromide]
14. _A saggy bending of the knees
[Peter, the Christ-like crucifixion of the submitted “old man”/Lamb of God]
15. And elbows, with the palms turned out,_
[supplication and invitation, the traditional depiction of Jesus]
16. _Chicago Semite Viennese._
[=the true Christian everyman, follower of the way, not the merely born or
nominal or any other kind of “Christian” but the truly “other,” to as far west
as one can go--Burbank--and beyond the starry “axletree” As an everyman
follower of the way, Eliot is like a “Bleistein.”]
Bleistein is Eliot, but he is not the same as “Burbank,” who is also Eliot.
Burbank is with the Princess in Stanzas 1-3, where Bleistein is not; and he is
not (visible) in stanza 4, where Bleistein is. The only way to see/know that
Burbank is present and sees Bleistein in 4, is to see Bleistein as the
Crucified Christ depicted in the church, i.e., to be there, or to “fix our
eyes not on what is seen but what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). How can one truly be there?
i.e., not merely follow Burbank into the church here by investigation? “The
eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be
full of light [sc. the temple of God]. But if your eyes are bad. your whole
body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how
great is that darkness!” (Jesus quoted at Matthew 6:22-23. Then follows the
famous sentence, the theme of the _Merchant of Venice_ : “No man can serve two
masters....you cannot serve both God and Money.” And he elsewhere famously
distinguished between His things, all the things belonging to God, on the one
hand, and the things belonging to Caesar, the face on the coin, ignoring any
image or motto of the divine similarly on coins. (Incidentally, in connection
with Antony in the earlier stanzas, after Cleopatra delivered his twins, he
married Octavian’s sister Octavia in order to insure his position with the
rising kinsman of Julius Caesar, and issued coins bearing the likeness of
Octavia, perhaps the first such, it is said--the “things belonging to Caesar”
are feminine as well as masculine.)
If one does not see this, but seeks and sees something else, whether out of
spite or pride, one may be blinded by something in the eye. There is a famous
NT passage to this effect about judging others and oneself. But it is more
apt here to recall the view put forth by Bush as an ironic query: are we here
and in the following 5th stanza being asked “to share in Burbank’s disain for
Bleistein’s philistinism?” in the light of the famous NT passage condemning
the ostentatious Pharisee who wore his learning and legalism on his sleeve and
thanked God that he was not like other men.
Bleistein himself is only and always “now,” always the “new man” who is born
of the action depicted in stanzas 1-3/4. Yet, of course, if he is always
“now,” then always was (“before the creation of the world,” 1 Peter 1:20) and
always will be (generally John 1:1ff, &c; stanza 7, and all the stanzas).
“Bleistein” is a figure of Jesus Christ, who lives in his people (1 Peter
2:9-10: “a royal priesthood...called out of the darkness into his light”),
male: Burbank:Bleistein, Sir Ferdinand Klein (the royal common man: there’s
the oxymoron, whoever on the list was speaking about oxymorons: stanzas 7-8,
cf., my reference to Auerbach in an earlier post); and female: Princess
Volupine (all the stanzas).
To annotate the line (viz. 16) fully, over against, e.g., the indefatigable
Southam’s: “Chicago and Vienna are cities with large and distinctive Jewish
populations,” &c&c, begin with the middle term (qv in your Copi, _Logic_, or
Aristotle and the Scholastics &c): _Semite_. To say nothing of various others
here, _Semite_ includes Jews, certainly, descendants of those with a claim of
the promise of Israel, but is also more than merely Jews, e.g., the
Samaritans, remnants of the nation of Israel, kingdom of the 10 northern
Hebrew tribes, are equally semites (perhaps as, in some relevant sense, are
the Falashas of Ethiopia). Bleistein is _The Semite._
See, John 4:19-26 in this connection, _The Jew’s_ conversation at Jacob’s Well
with the Samaritan (!!) woman (!!!) who had more than one husband (%*!#@!),
which conversation is most apt here (l.16, also line 22 and the 8th quatrain,
as I will show at the proper place.):
_Sir, the woman said...Our fathers_ (=the Kingdom of Israel) _worshipped_
[built the temple] _on this mountain_ [near Shechem, qv. also OT:
“Shechemites,” “Dinah”], _but you Jews_ [=Kingdom of Judah, the two southern
Hebrew tribes] _claim that the place where we_ [=hiers of the covenant of
God & the house of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob] _must worship is in Jerusalem_
[viz. the city of David where David’s son Solomon built the big temple (like
Pharoah, and divided the kingdom in the process), that was later restored by
Ezraand Nehemiah, and again, in specifically the building the Samaritan woman
is talking about, by Herod. Incidentally, the Herodians, Roman appointees,
were of no royal blood: this is the issue brought to Pilate, Caesar’s
Procurator in the province of Judea, by the Herodians and Sanhedrin: Jesus is
of David’s line, the royal blood: he is executed by Caesar’s law as “King of
the Jews.”]
_Jesus answered her “Believe me, woman, a time is coming whem you will
worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem....A time is
coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth...._
Then she speaks to Jesus of the Messiah who is awaited by the Samaritans as by
all Hebrews and who who will teach this, and Jesus answers her. Among other
things in this respect, as we know, Jesus teaches that the body itself is the
true temple and tabernacle. How the spirit and truth dwell in the temple (the
body, the “ghost in the machine,” &c) is a mystery: the accounts of it are
thematic in the OT. It is treated similarly in the NT as, among other things,
light in the darkness, and specifically, in terms immediately relevent here,
of candles and candlesticks (e.g. Matt 5:14-16).
In line 16, then, to annotate: _....Semite...._ -- _The Jew_ (l.24), Jesus
Christ and Him crucified--is the (candle-) light (5th stanza) that illuminates
the union of:
_Chicago_, long before and after “Burbank’s” publication in 1919 the world’s
greatest stockyard and transit point for beef on the hoof and for butchering
[the largest railroad yards ever built were necessary to handle shipments of
Texas and other cattle herds, the second largest were in Kansas City, Mo., St.
Louis’ civic rival] and also milk cows, of course, and hides--in short, the
great city of (“animal”) bodies and flesh--on the one hand,
and _Vienna_, the city of Freud (and Jung, Adler, Reich, and whoever else) and
their “discovery” (=reduction) of the nonmaterial “subconscious” (=ersatz
“soul,” “spirit,” the more-than-”animal”): the city of the psyche, or anyway
the psychiatric.
Jesus Christ incarnates the perfect union of these “cities,” body and soul,
flesh and spirit as the “City” of God (Augustine). He is The Man: the (non-
aestheticist) teacher of humanity created in His image of what a pure and true
man is like “inside,” beginning at the beginning with submission before God:
the Way of the True Man, image and essence.
This incarnate oneness and figural trinity is gramatically indicated by the
lack of punctuation: all are capitalized not only as proper names but as
equally beginnings of the sentence qua complete thought and the final period
after completes them all as one and the same thought: the city of God.
Behind this Eliotic line, beneath this whole stanza and the whole poem, is the
thought expressed by John (Revelation 1:7):
One day every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him,
and all the peoples of the earth...”

Part Two: stanzas 5-8. ”Burbank”: the City, or the City of Man (=in need of
a saviour)
(“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like
a day,” 2 Peter 3:8-9, and context)
Fifth Stanza (End of Time)
Gloss: Turning from the depiction of the Incarnation and Crucifixion to a
depiction of the city today, Burbank is reminded of the need for a saviour of
cities (St. Sebastian)
17. _A lustreless protrusive eye
18. Stares from the protozoic slime_
[Viz: Psalm 139:13-16, and context: “For you created my innermost being, you
knit me together in my mothers womb....When I was woven together in the depths
of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body...”]
This is the perspective of Mantegna, which I believe I have discussed in
earlier posts: the perspective most instructive (without being simply
didactic), the perspective within which the perspective of Canaletto appears
fully and without any deformation for what it is.
Mantegna appeals to Bleistein-Eliot. In a letter he wrote in 1920 (in
connection with Wyndham Lewis’ at-risk “classical” potential), Eliot said:
“Mantegna is a painter for whom I have a particular admiration--there is none
who appeals to me more strongly.” Then, as commenators note, he asks whether
the reader knows Mantegno’s St Sebastian in Venice, to which reference is made
in the poem’s epigraph. Before the war (1914), Eliot had written to a
correspondent that looking in Belgian museums he had seen
“_treasures_....really great stuff....And O a wonderful _Crucifixion_ of
Antonello of Messina. There are _three_ great _St. Sebastians_ (so far as I
know): 1) Mantegna 2) Antonello of Messina 3) Memling” (p. 41 of the
Letters). Eliot worked for a time on a “Love Song of St. Sebastian,” which he
apparently never published but which, from the lines included in the
“enclosure” with Eliot’s 1914 letter to Aiken mentioning a working title
“Descent from the Cross,” is very interesting, with themes along the lines of
Shakespeare’s sonnet 19, which is alluded to at the end of “Burbank.”
Letters, pp.46-47.
19. _At a perspective of Canaletto_
[in which perspective St. Mark’s is but one fine thing among many others,
indeed, less fine than the city itself, which is incomparable and sits upon
the waters just as Zion upon the axletree: the city, center of the world, _is_
very heaven. Mais, “Ceci (=a canvas of Canaletto) n’est pas un pipe (=the
heavenly city)” (Fr. sp?)] Is not Canaletto the inspiration and envy of every
Italian restaurant muralist in Southern California?
20. _The smokey candle end of time_
[Psalms 94, beginning “The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty,” vv. 9b-10:
“Does he who formed the eye not see? Does he who disciplines nations not
punish?” The original eye, which sees by the light of Christ, sees that the
“realism” of Canaletto’s humanistic Venice is in fact doctored with heavy
cosmetics i.e., it is merely an “idealization,” however lasting its expression
it is not truth, not heavenly. Rather, it...]
Stanza 6 (Rome, Venice, Britain... Burbank, USA [in emailese, “was Chicago,”
4th stanza: movies/beef on the hoof]
21. _Declines...._
[Venice on its best day a mere shadow version the so-called “eternal city”
itself, world-center, empire of empires, the universal city of Augustus
Caesar: Gibbon. Augustus is gone; the empire is gone: Peter, however,
crucified in Rome, remains]
_....On the rialto once._
[Shakespeare, world historian, moved from depeiction of Rome herself to Rome’s
fragments, Italian city-states; England; far-flung, commercial Venice (mother
of contemporary usury & banking, not to say of modernity), also all more and
less wayward daughters of the Roman church. Here Venice is become hardly a
Christian city but, rather, a commercial city, the city that will be depicted
by Canaletto.]
Antonio, the merchant of Venice, who, like a monastic, has no family of his
own, but is devoted rather to his merchandising and friends than any religious
vows, once clears the rialto of moneylenders in obvious imitation of Jesus
cleansing the Jerusalem temple. Yet because of his way of life, he must also
borrow from moneylenders, in even more obvious (if less noted)
contradistinction to Christ, who did not borrow any money from moneylenders,
and taught that love of money is the root of evil. Antonio (like his namesake
Antony, more than a thousand years before) contains deep contradictions and
indulgences. Unself-disciplined, he wishes to have things both ways: he
serves two masters. He goes so far as to point out that the devil can cite
scripture and that “a goodly outside falsehood hath.” This truth must be
considered in light of the fact that he also uses scripture and has a goodly
outside. His rival Shylock is a Jew. That is, he is no sort of participant
or communicant of the Christian religion. But he does not keep the Mosaic
law, either. What he is, gradually, is merely more and more envious and
vengeful.
The tension between a “Christian” borrower who, although he says many true and
good things, hates and despises moneylenders and a “Jew” who, although he says
many true and good things, maintains out of nothing more than spite a personal
distinction (“I hate him for he is a Christian” _Merchant_ I.iii) is posed by
Shakespeare quite simply in Portia’s famous question: “Which is the merchant
[=”Christian”] here? and which the Jew?” (IV.i). (She does not even ask about
a Christian, that is, explicitly raise the issue of a true or genuine
Christian: the commercial law is genuinely indifferent to the answer: Venice
is “liberal” [cf. Spinoza on Venice, &c].) There is perhaps an important
point for a genuine Christian politics here [but cf. 2 Tim 12], but I set it
aside to note for immediate purposes that the Shakespearean answer to the
question of which is which is that _both_ are members of the same tribe:
merely merchants, who are ruled, like the republic of Venice herself,
ultimately and only by the commercial law, and neither is a Christian or a Jew
in truth, whatever their “goodly outsides” and their protestings: they each
“protest too much.” Opposites in so many ways, they are essentially the
same--brothers--”...if you prick us, do we not bleed,” &c&c, the whole speech
(which, in a assimilationist mood, could as well have begun, “I am an
Icelander”).
In other words, Shakespeare’s Antonio is finally a Christian (like his Marc
Antony was finally a Roman of “virtu” and nobility) and his Shylock a Jew only
in name, i.e, not at all. THE issue of _The Merchant of Venice_
(=superficially the nominal Christian but ultimately also the nominal Jew,
Hatfields and McCoys) finally is NOT one of the New and Old Law, or even one
of the sprit and the letter of the same law: it is simply the failure to keep
even the letter of the first commandement to “Keep the Law.” If it is too
much to say that religious wars only arise out of the irreligion of the
warriors, it is clear that Shakespeare’s Venice is “tolerant,” not to say
“Unitarian”: business is the business of the commercial republic. These
hypocrite Christians and Jews are merely so many “Venetians,” like the
population there of merchant Turks, and whoever else in the teeming city
(Babylon).
22. _The rats are underneath the piles_
[To pursue Shakespeare’s intent, we would say more; for Eliot, it is enough to
see that (as with Shakespeare) all such are rats under whatever skin (“goodly
outside”), in just the sense in which he had referred to “goats and monkeys”
in the Epigraph: mortal beasts, reproduced like Niobe’s children, though she
brags they are more than gods. See 2 Peter 3:4ff Also, _NB_:
“Piles”=architectural foundations of wood [=trees]--the student of trees
(Burbankish poet-botonist) must successfully distinguish between these
Venetian trees (and “Hollywood”) and the _axletree_ of St. Mark’s (the Cross)
as between a house that built on shifting sand and a house that is built upon
a _rock_ (esp. Jesus at Matthew 7:24, and context [“trees and their fruits”];
and, here, further: “skin,” “hair”: from Lat. “pilus,” “pellis”: “pile”: _such
hair too_, epigraph. And not overlooking the pun with “Pilate,” who judged,
and tried to wash his hands of it.]
A couple of further points: we have noticed the “protrusive eye,” but Eliot
wants us to appreciate how protrusive it continues to be for these stanzas.
Apart from what has already been said, we again must note the famous speech
of Shylock, which begins “I am a Jew: Hath not a Jew eyes?....&c” This speech
is resonant with the “protrusive eye,” always remembering that the “protrusive
eye” is, rather, the Light of Him who made eyes and bodies and innermost
selves (Psalms), and is meant by Shakespeare to be understood, as “Merchant”
progresses and Shylock becomes increasingly revengeful and evil-eyed, in light
of the characteristic dictum of the Old Law, “an eye for an eye.” Apart from
the commercial code that pertains to him, this is Shylock’s whole law (in
fact, the only part of the Law which he keeps and would die keeping), and
ultimately it is _also_ Antonio’s, the borrower who will not forgive the
lender who will not forgive his debt (such merchants are as much cheats as the
usurers: their “sacred nation” and the suffering “badge of all our tribe” is
_one and the same_ and also with all the children of Niobe [epigraph]), and
the “law” of Icelandic Burnt Nyal, and whoever else of the same ilk.
These considerations, the justice of an eye for an eye and the mere mortality
of the merchants and bankers (‘rats”)--and remembering also and even above all
here that _Eliot_ is a banker--bring us to the striking closing lines of the
stanza, first:
23. _The Jew is underneath the lot._
[Suddenly in in the midst of the tonb/inferno: Jesus Christ, solid rock: royal
blood of Judah: winged lion, judge of the quick and the dead: surely as much
hated in truth by the merely nominal Christians as by the merely nominal Jews,
was he not betrayed by his own disciple for money? vengence is His, who
forgave even those who crucified him at Calvary, Jew and Roman and merchant
alike. Cf. Ps.94:1-2, 15, and context.]
24. _Money in furs._ [the buying and selling of skins: people (usury) and of
“externals,” appearances, all that cannot be taken with you when Charon
arrives for you, and above all hypocrisy and betrayal, “names,” “masks”: money
in every sort of hypocrisy/prostitution: the worldly world of the market;
Inferno, Aristophanes _Ploutos_; moneychangers in the temple; Hell on earth in
Canaletto’s ersatz heaven--as noted: the _goats and monkeys, with such hair
too_ [epigraph]. Also, I believe someone has pointed out that there was a
store sign in London saying “Bleistein’s Furs”: faded Venice and fading
London, what I, last of many, have called the sepulchral city, are one, and
the fate of the merchants and moneylenders is the same in each. (Southam has
the idiotic gloss: “l.24 _Money in furs:_ meaning that there is a fortune to
be made in the fur trade, which is a Jewish trade...” If he were not
sometimes passingly useful (which he surely is), one would suppose his degrees
should all be revoked.)]
Recalling the pun on “Pilate” (l.22) before identifyiing the innocent one
treated as the lowest and least of all the merchants and soldiers and priests
and judges and officials (l.23), we are reminded now of the money [=”argent,”
“silver,” and “argentaria,” “moneylender”] to be had skinflinting and in
betraying your Master or selling out your brother (like Judah and his brothers
sold their brother “Joseph” (Hebrew root also of “Joshua,” “Jesus”) viz., the
disciple Judas, whose name (=”Judean,” “Jew”) was also the name of one of
Jesus’ brothers (cf. NT epistle of Jude, especially vv. 1-2, 18-20, and 25:
“...Jesus Christ before all ages, now and forevermore”). What is at the
bottom of this stanza, in other words, is the betrayal and passion of Christ,
and hence the question of the self-discipline and coming judgement of every
one of us (Jude 6: “...judgement on the great day...,” and context.)
_...The boatman smiles.
[Suddenly, in the midst of this Hell and lawless law, upon the mention of
Christ the judge, the boatman/Charon arrives: someone’s last day: the time has
come... 2 Peter 3:10 and context: “The day of the Lord will come like a
thief,” suddenly, and outside all commercial law/contracts and in keeping only
with the Covenant of God. This sudden (superficially, not profoundly
unprepared) appearance is like the sudden, “out of the blue” (sky or water or
both?) appearance of Bleistein in the 4th stanza. Bleistein the mortal man
selling furs in London may be/has been forgiven any shortcoming and reborn: he
is the figure of “the boatman,” i.e., “the Way” (4th stanza), the true
“pilot.” Noting that we have construed St. Mark’s as the royal priestess
Princess Volupine’s glorious barge, we must suppose that the baptized Burbank,
who is with her, Eliot the banker, Eliot the new Christian priest, is now also
a boatman (1Peter 2:9-10, and context; 2 Peter 3: 11-13: “the day of God,” and
context; Ps. 94:14). He arrives like St. Mark once arrived at a crucial
moment in Venice. He is all smiles at his sudden appearance in Hell. There,
we know from one who should know, a villain may smile on the outside to veil a
black and vengeful heart (Antonio, _Merchant_ I.iii). Here it figures of St.
Sebastian’s happy love overcoming tortuous death: he is mercy, not revenge; as
Bleistein, he is now like the candle/shares Bleistein’s cigar. Cigars are a
product of the Americas: America needs no instruction from Venice as an
imperial commercial republic, it has erected great commercial foundations of
its own.
Seventh stanza (New Morning)
25. _Princess Volupine extends
26. a meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand
27. To climb the waterstair. Lights, lights,
28. She entertains Sir Ferdinand_
[Klein.] This is an excellent stanza in which to exhibit the levels of
meaning that are common to all (literal, ethical, allegorical, anagogical).
Not simply to repeat what I have said elsewhere, we may read this as Europe
like a venereal old whore (ll. 25-26) fellating to little “fireworks”&c (l.27)
a bunch of merely cross-bred Spanish-German mongrels (ll.28-29) who all
pretend to be blue-blood better than they are with nouveau aristocratic airs
(l.28: “Sir”/l.25 “Princess”)--i.e., Europe is so many rats? or goats and
monkeys?
Yet, this is not a “realistic” or “cynical” reading of the stanza’s ethical
level, merely a partisan one: Burbank arm in arm with Marat and Robespierre.
Eliot : “Aux Barricades!” Ridiculous. Cf. One of the essays with “To
Criticise the Critic”: “I am for the monarchy in every country where there is
a monarchy.” Rather, perhaps Burbank, reflecting on time’s ruins in the part
of stanza 8 , has learned veneration of Throne and Altar, above all.
Because, after all, German-Spanish breeds may be very aristocratic: Hapsburgs
are German and Spanish, and they are the Holy Roman Empire, going back to
Charlemagne. That is about as aristocratic as Europe or anyone else can get.
They yoke together empire (themselves) and the church (the Princess), to whose
extension of her unarmed hand they owe their thrones.
The Princess of delight, in the place of the Countess in the epigraph, who is
there a Canaletto/Marston divinity but here a Mantegna figure of one, is
revealed as like an old chaste nun: she causes light in the darkness and
awakens the spiritually dead. Her action or shining in so doing, in calling
or witnessing or representing to the world [perhaps Dorothy Sayers? Or would
Eliot not yet have known of her?] however slight, is positive, inviting the
next Peter to walk out onto the water, like Peter on the sea of Galilee, like
St. Mark’s/Venice on the ocean--like the church of Christ: “universal” and all
the nations (=Sir Ferdinand), “Tradition,” but, also....]
Eighth Stanza (Alpha & Omega)
29. _Klein._ [individual and personal to each man and woman as such; and
also, if you must, to dot the eye: “Lutheran.” The last is here first. It is
the end of time not literally but in principle: the historical cycles are
known (2 Peter again, &c). The small commoner, Klein, is elevated, his royal
blood recognized and acknowledged, who, like us, an all-but nothing, all-but
nobody, now enjoys indescribable bliss forever while the movers and shakers,
slinkers and crafty, are lost in richly earned oblivion.
Where are all the great merchants and bankers of Venice, slinking Tribe of the
Fox, envious hypocrites under the great flag and name of the Winged Lion (cf.
stanza 2 with Aristophanes’ Dionysus in the costume of Hercules ready to
harrow Hades: _Frogs_ [here, per stanza 6 (and _Merchant_)=”rats”]? The Tribe
of the Fox is outfoxed for good by the royal Volupina (Southam: “A constructed
name [sc. by Eliot], with suggestions of ... foxy): the fox gobbles up all the
little rats.
And of the truly proud: Where are Gaius Julius and Antony now and their
successor? Where are Cleopatra’s children by Caesar--little Caesarion, heir-
apparent of Rome and all the world--and by Marc Antony--the twins, Cleopatra
Selene [=moon goddess], and Alexander Helios [=world conqueror & sun
god/charioteer]? And where is Antony’s new wife: Octavian’s sister Octavia?
[note: review stanzas 2-3 in this connection]
Where, above all, is the universal “princeps” Augustus Caesar [stanzas 2-3]?
In the face of commoner Klein, whither the whole proud Tribe of the Lion?
_....Who clipped the lion’s wings
30. and flea’d his rump and pared his claws?_
[Not Burbank, not Eliot, not however many generations of scribblers: cf. the
language at Rev.1:5]
31. _Thought Burbank_ [Eliot the Christian poet, contemporary child of
“Volupine” & “Klein,” and, to “Cross the t “(!): “Individual talent”],
_....meditating on
32. Time’s ruins,_
[Byron’s phrase from “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” [Bush], here Eliot’s own
pilgrimage: his “Baedecker”: Mark and the great Christians aesthetics:
Shakespeare (sonnet 19--of love, the blood of the phoenix, youth/verse, and
the rest), ]
_....and the seven laws._
[Dante, maestro, and his #7s & 14s, and Biblical Law, including the seven
deadly sins, and culminating in what Jesus taught as the “whole Law.”]
This--”Burbank”--is Eliot’s presentation of the ultimate and only meaning or
significance of “history” beyond its obvious sound and fury and boom and bust.
With this we have almost completed the reading of “Burbank”--but only
“almost.” There still remains one “small” matter: “Klein.” _Sir
Ferdinand/Klein_ (stanzas 7-8: or, in the Latin, Septem-Octo) still has his
mask on. Not his figural persona: that much, which is the most
important--though not quite the whole--we have recognized. But we have yet to
recognize his temporal persona, his “tail,” his “hic et nunc.” Our
oversight, perhaps forgiveable enough, is in our having said, at the beginning
of our comments on the eighth (Lat.: “octavus”) quatrain, that, beginning with
_Klein_, “it is the end of time not literally but in principle.” This is
not, strictly speaking, true. It is not the whole truth, that is, the whole
historical truth. “Klein” also stands for or introduces the _literal_ end of
time, that is, the 1919, the “present”: the publication date of “Burbank.”
Eliot paints like Canaletto with the perspective of Mantegna. “Burbank” spans
the whole past from before creation (cf. 1 Peter 1:20, 2 Peter 3:4ff) up to
the literal present of 1919, a year after the Armistice of the Great War in
November (=Lat. ninth), 1918. The “last” thing now, i.e., “now,” is
literally, actually, and not only figuratively, the “first” thing.
We had asked, where are the great Caesars Julius and Augustus “now,” in the
light of Klein in (stanzas) septem and octo, i.e.: July-August, September-
October? This and related wonders are part of the recognition of Klein that
we have acknowledged as now timeless. “Klein,” a German, understands this
because, as heir of the Holy Roman Empire, etc., he obviously understands
Latin. We have learned from “Bleistein” that we must understand some Latin in
order to understand “Burbank.”
The same is true the other way ‘round. We likewise must understand a little
German.
Returning to the poem’s title, we note that there are two American names or
products there, “Burbank” and “cigar,” and two German names or products there,
“Bleistein” and “Baedecker.” We have provided an account of how the new
Burbank obtained a cigar, we must now ask why the new Bleistein might need to
obtain a “Baedecker.”
To begin to see why this might be so, we must understand a little German in
considering the eighth (=”octavus”) and final stanza--not Klein’s name, but
Caesar’s [i.e., “Octavian’s”] name. That is, we must ask not where is
“Caesar” now, but where is the “Kaisar” now (“Caesar”=”Kaisar”)--and of
course, the Hapsburgs, speaking of the Vienna branch of the family. In 1919,
these heirs of Caesar are no more. Nor the branch of the family lying much
further east (“Third Rome”): where are the Czars (“Czar”/”Tsar”=”Caesar”) in
1919? Ferdinand the Catholic, King (=Lat. Rey/Rex=”Kaisar”) of Spain and all
New Spain, ruled an empire that grew and faded and finally fell in the
Spanish-American War at the turn of the century; the Ottomans likewise
collapsed in the Great War, but I do not know offhand if Lawrence’s _Seven
Pillars of Wisdom_ was yet available for “Burbank” to include among his
occasions for meditation.
“Burbank with a Baedecker: Bleistein with a Cigar” is thus freed at last by
“Sir Ferdinand Klein” from its initial, controlling image: the West. All the
heirs of Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony, the Tribe of the Lion, bow to the
hiers of Peter not merely all ‘round the Mediterranean basin (= “Middle of
Earth”), but from Luzon and Kamchatka on the Pacific in the east to Burbank on
the Pacific on the west (=The Earth). “Christendom” is not “the West,” even
if what was called “civilization” belonged to the Western daughters of the
original Roman empire. Burbank as Bleistein/Peter needs a Baedecker because
Jesus’ command to Peter and the disciples is now to go and teach all nations,
not merely all Western nations (Matt 28:16-20, Acts 10:34-48).
As for Bleistein, he is equally at home among all the nations. (1 Timothy 2:
4-6; cf. especially Paul, 1 Corinthians 9:22) And “Burbank with a Baedecker:
Bleistein with a cigar” is itself a young banker’s minting of a new Roman
(=universal) coin upon which the image of God has replaced that of Caesar on
both sides.
And, for us, this may at least begin to pass for knowing where we started for
the first time.--
This doubtless needs much polishing, and I have surely forgotten much I will
wish to add to it, but perhaps it is good enough now for email, and to begin
to open up the exploration of this great work along some promising new paths.
I believe there is no more masterful or Eliotic a poem in his whole, wonderful
canon. Please excuse the typos. And thanks to Arwin for continually coming
up with stuff!
Guy Story Brown, Dallas & LA
[email protected]
Gloss: "Burbank with a Baedeker"
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Gloss: "Burbank with a Baedeker"
From: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 14:17:09 EDT
Dear list:
Having scanned pretty carefully through the parts of the poem as they are set
down, we are now in a position to begin to attempt a more general gloss of the
whole. Here I will attempt the first part of the title and the last 4
quatrains. “Chicago,” the first part of the trinity composing line 16, might
be an apt working title.
“Burbank with a Baedeker”
A city (Burbank) is the first thing named in this work, and a city (Chicago)
is the first thing named in its middle line (16).
Upon reading through the whole poem, we now see that “Burbank with a
Baedeker,” the first of the equivalent portions of the poem’s title “Burbank
with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar,” like the city Chicago is named first
in the line “Chicago Semite Viennese” (l.16), represents the “body” of the
whole poem (per the “world’s body”), the “City of Man.”
Burbank, as we have noted, is a city in the far west of the West, which the
German’s call “the evening land,” where the sun goes down, land of the dead,
the (western, sundown) side of the Nile on which the Egyptians design their
necropoleis. This manner of imagery, imagery conceived in this gloomy manner
in 1918-1919, is Spenglerian, and was sensationalized among the learned and
aesthetic in the two volumes of Spengler’s _Decline of the West_ , the first
of which appeared in German in 1918. (Aside for Arwin: it was at this time,
doubtless, in response to Spengler, that Eliot began developing the “Burbank”
verses to complete what you have observed were the already independently begun
“Bleistein” verses.)
>From Spengler we learn, among other things, that there have been many
“cultures” over the centuries and millenia, each with their distinctive
architectural and art forms and related expressions, and so forth, and that
they are all born and obligatorily grow, blossom, and die, much like fated
plants and trees. They are organic. Spengler studies cultural organisms as
though they were plants. Judaism, for example, he studies under the
classification of “Arabian culture” as a variety “prophetic Arabian religion.”
The West is, naturally, another among these organisms, and it has now entered
its necessary and final decline.
The figure of Burbank, whose name is also that of a contemporary student of
plants, and whom we have already seen as the contemporary student of Venetion
wood, is the student, also, of Spengler, zoologist of cultural decline. As
such, he is a scientist, he has no sentiment for one tree over another.
However, “Burbank” is himself a “city-man,” a rather small one of course
(”Klein”), and cultureless. As such, he is interested above all in learning
whether there is any sort of vine or tree, that is, any sort of city or
culture, that does not decline. His is a personal interest, not merely
abstract. And the knowledge he seeks is a kind, the highest kind, of self-
knowledge. This is the purpose of his pilgrimage.
For our part, anticipating a decline, looking from the first part of the title
to the very last stanza, the end, the “rump,” we see that Burbank is there
thinking of the vanished Caesars, and meditating on “time’s ruins.” If the
stanza were not so well annotated, one could suppose that it might resemble
something out of Volney’s _Ruins_, or something more evocative, perhaps
recalling some sort of echoes above Tintern Abbey. What it _does_ resemble
above all, and what Burbank’s meditation is meant to connote is the justly
celebrated meditation at the close of Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, with the monks &c scurrying about the Forum and palacial ruins.
(Compare the historian’s description of his first visit to “the _eternal
city_”, “Memoirs of My Life,” chap.6). Gibbon was among the few things Eliot
said in 1919 that he read “over and over”: “Letters,” p.318)
Gibbon is not interested in all the world’s many so-called “cultures” and
“civilizations.” He is interested in Rome, man’s greatest political
achievement (complete unity of all of the mediterranean basin, western Europe,
&c), and particularly in the decline and fall of this achievement as that of a
fully self-conscious “world-city” with the rule of law and all the social and
political institutions and ambitions that are necessary to begin even to
generate such a conception, to say nothing of the leading men. In the very
heart of The European Enlightenment, what has been called the greatest work of
the Enlightenment, so far from celebrating Progress and empire (or Britain’s
own commercial development and expansion), in fact inexorably traces the
decline and fall of what many have regarded as the greatest of all human
achievements. If Rome could fall, and did fall, then everything man makes
will sooner or later fall, architectural forms, obligatory organic stages, and
whatever else.
“Declines” [plural]: the Spengler-Gibbon stanzas are those from the beginning
of the sixth and continuing through the “rump” (l. 30), the end of the eighth
(octavus: “Octavian,” which is also where we began in the second) with the
fall of the last Caesars: “Sir Ferdinand Klein,” and Burbank’s Gibbonian
meditation.
However, these stanzas are recounted--the fall itself is begun--in accord,
rather, with the dramatization of Shakespeare. There is no fate, no
obligatory cultural phases, and the only organisms are those with free will or
expressions of providence, or both, on the world’s stage, as viewed by the
original eye, which was the culmination of the Augustinian stanzas of the
poem’s first part, and Bleistein. This “fall,” of the “decline and fall,”
parallels the “we fell” at the beginning of the Augustinian stanzas.
In Shakespeare’s Augustinian drama [=”Shakespearean history”] a merchant of
lukewarm charity publicly (in the manner of a Pharisee) spits on a moneylender
who is spiteful and impure before the Law, and to whom the spitter is indebted
(_Merchant_ I.iii): “Signior Antonio...You call me misbeliever, cut-throat
dog,/ And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine...). Both lead us to the judgment
not merely before the Venetian law but above all to the judgement of the
“lustreless protrusive eye” (l.17), the “ruler of God’s creation” (Rev:
3:14): “Because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev.3:16).
This judgement continues: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do
not need a thing,’ but you do not recognize that you are wretched, pitiful,
poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the
fire, so you can become rich; and white [unstained, unmarked] clothes so you
can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to your eyes, so _you_ can see”
(Rev.3:17-18).
The meditation on Rome’s naked carcass, the Gibbonian ruins and the
Spenglerian ruins, including looming Spenglerian ruins to come, leads to the
discovery that the only meaning of history is a personal meaning: “Here I am:
I stand at the door and knock” (Rev: 3:20, and context). Spenglerian
apocalyticism becomes Augustinian history without, however, losing the
balanced temper and style of Gibbon. Classic. It attains the perspective of
Mantegna.
It is in first recognizing the Augustinian “city-man” of “Burbank” and his
Spenglerian-Gibbonian “Baedeker” as we have discussed them that enables us to
begin to explore what otherwise seems visible only as a “dark comedy,” though
the gloom seems slearer than the comedy, and a squabble of conflicting
passions and interests, not to say of critics. Thus far, the poem is an
affective mirror of the city of man as it is familiar to us: a contemporary
“perspective of Canaletto.” Considering the poem in the perspective of
Mantegna, every line is a lamp into the darkness, and the place that is
gradually discovered or revealed there is the city of God.
It is meant to be an education: a cultivation of true culture, culture that
does not decline and fall.
I will try a similar gloss of “Bleistein with a Cigar” and the Markan-
Augustinian stanzas as I find the time. Then I may try a conclusion on “Sir
Ferdinand Klein” and Eliot. After that I will look at any responses that the
list might have. Please excuse typos.
Guy Story Brown, Dallas & LA
[email protected]
Gloss: "Bleistein with a Cigar"
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Gloss: "Bleistein with a Cigar"
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 19:27:15 EDT
Now, let us try to bring all these considerations into a tentative resolve. I
appreciate your patience. Please excuse the typos.
“Bleistein with a Cigar”
I. Sir Ferdinand Klein
We have seen from our scan of the Spengler-Gibbon quatrains of “Burbank” that
the West as it has been known and as it has known itself from its inception as
the first daughter of Rome is now past. Now, right now, our now, it is gone.
In its place is what? A “wasteland?” John C. Calhoun, the American thinker
with greatest prevision of all such questions, said in 1850:
The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and
establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition, which
much always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error,
and wild and fierce fanaticism. [Much of this will exhibit the “delusive
hope of making the government more democratic,” and an expression
of the common “folk” or common working people.] The governments of
the more advanced and civilized [=possessed of high arts & sciences]
portions of the world [=the West and its imperial extensions] are now in
the midst of this perod... (_Disquisition on Governement_, paras. 138-139)
And they still are. His phrase “period of transition” (particularly as
signalled by the battle of Waterloo and related subjects) was first used in
this same connection by Hegel about 20 years before Calhoun (_Philosophy of
Right_ , paras 7ff) and again with the same identification and meaning by A.N.
Whitehead about 75 years after Calhoun (_Science and the Modern World_, the
closing paragraphs on “Requisites for Social Progress”). Envisioning of
coming “convulsions and revolutions, to be followed by calamities in the
beginning, however beneficial they may prove to be in the end”--a sort of
Spengler-Gibbon looking forward--Calhoun attempted to supply a posthumous
resolution, or the necessary frame of a resolution, for this fierce period: a
true “science” of government. However problematic it may be, his is the by
far most self-conscious and mature offering we have on the subject from the
political perspective of the city or government as a whole.
“Burbank” takes no such tack. As we have sufficiently seen, Eliot’s
perspective in the Spengler-Gibbon quatrains, rather, is “personal.”
6th Stanza
In the first place, here, for us, this means noticing that Spengler and
Gibbon, different as they are as men and as thinkers, are one in showing that
Jews, Arabs, Turks, Vandals, Huns, Mongel hordes and the rest are not
responsible for the decline of the West or any “period of transition” in the
passing of the West. In words of one syllable, or thereabouts: Jews as Jews,
Jews as distinct from others, did not make the West or build it up and they
did not tear it down or undermine it or betray it. They are not guilty, or,
in any case, no more guilty than anyone else, and less than some.
So, the question, in due course, necessarily arises: what are “the Jew[s]”
doing here in these quatrains? How did the “The Jew” get into the woodpile?
Why should they be accorded such an honor? Eliot brings into the center of
the Spengler-Gibbon quatrains--that is, the decline-and-fall, “city of man”
quatrains--what in Spengler and Gibbon themselves is more or less ephemeral.
In so doing, he follows Shakespeare, who had done the same. He makes visible
on centerstage what is otherwise, “historically,” marginal and all but
unvisible (and what is otherwise off stage: “ob-scene”). Eliot’s “protrusive
Eye” is all-seeing: it sees the all but invisible. And who is less directly
central to the main themes of Western history than Jews, or less visible?
We may answer this question by noting that we might about this time expect a
post from Pat to the effect that the phrase “Jew in the woodpile” is not very
common--like, say, “Chicago Jews,” etc. [:-)]. But it is familiar. It rings
a bell. That is the phrase we are looking for. It is obscene and left unsaid
by Eliot, not primarily because it is “obscene” but primarily because he is
leading the reader increasingly not merely toward the “marginal” and the
social-sociologically “invisible man” toward the one who is most
“invisible”--and often, typically, when His Name is most loudly spoken
(Antonio; the Pharisee of Mat. 5:20, 23:13, &c). Eliot is seeking the
invisible because he is seeking substance, not merely form: here is the image
of God.
The accurate phrase is “nigger in the woodpile.” Viz., Othello. Of course!
we could not stay so long in Venice with the student of Venetian wood Burbank
and altogether miss Shakespeare’s great Moor! Brave. Honest. Innocent. Of
course, to say nothing of other things, not simply innocent, certainly. Does
not Othello, the Moor whose name is like the Turk “Ottoman” (=”son/descendent
of Othman,” “Osman”) fight against his brother ? (_Othello, Moor of Venice_
i.iii: “against the general enemy Ottoman”; cf. esp. III.iii: “my name...” &c)
He is at bottom little more innocent than the rats/merchants (22). There is
still more woodpile. We must go to the bottom beneath this bottom (23). We
are seeking innocence as we seek substance, surely the deepest and most
invisible thing.
What is important here is that we note--not merely in passing--that all colors
of skin are here included in this woodpile, and none more than another, as in
Joseph’s coat and, in other words, in the sacrifice of Christ. After
all--although it perhaps does not at first seem immediately or specifically
relevant for “Burbank”--it will be important for _Othello_ and already in at
least a general way for “Burbank” if we recall that Philip the Evangelist is
no sooner through preaching among the Samaritans than he teaches the Ethiopian
about the prophecy of Isaiah, Christ, and baptism (Acts 8). The gospel is not
“Western”: according to the historian of the Gospel, the European (Macedonian)
Luke, here, it reached Africa before it reached Europe.
This leads us to consider the fact that this version of the off-scene phrase
about someone in the woodpile is not European in origin but American Southern.
“Nigger” (=”nigguh,” is yeoman Southern English for the Latin
“niger”--Span/Port: “negre/negro”: “black”--like “buttah” for “butter.”
“horruh” for “horror” &c (Faulkner&c); planter class Southern was perhaps more
usually “nigra/negra.” It is interesting that Eliot (not Shakespeare)
juxtaposes this phrase and the blackamoor and the line “Money in furs” (l.24)
and implicates Mohammedans in African slave trade. As Spengler notes (q.v.
his general treatment of the themes: “money-thought,” “slavery”) in antiquity
private enterprises had hunted slaves along the Mediterranean coast. When the
Spanish and Portuguese began to explore sub-Saharan Africa, they discovered
that though the African tribes did not have feudal institutions of peonage and
serfdom, they did trade in slaves. Slave markets for trade with Arabs were
centuries old, and lesser tribes also held slaves (cf. Chinua Achebe, _Things
Fall Apart_, the slave child of Okonkwo). “Money in furs.” European traders
gradually expanded this trade to include the whole of the “New World”
discovered by agents sponsored by Ferdinand, above all in the Caribbean and
South America (esp. Brasil) in numbers rivalling or equalling in 300 or so
years the total sold over the centuries to the Arabs.
The phrase refers to lineage or pedigree. It indicates an impure or mixed
lineage or pedigree. It may be used in opprobation, but it need not be.
There are finer and less fine people, certainly, but there are none so fine,
or almost none, that one could not find a niggah in the woodpile somewhere if
we looked hard enough. It may undermine the ruler’s claim to rule if that
rule is based on bloodline (or, as treated in Spengler, “race”). It may refer
to the claim of the Southern planter and his regime (the Old South, although
there are other questions that must be considered), it may refer to the claim
of Ezra and Nehamiah and their regime (Ezra 2; 4:1-5: the “Jews” [=tribe of
Judah], although there are other questions that must also be considered). It
is the way of the world. We are all equal in this regard, and all share the
same blood, so far as blood is concerned. We kinds of people are distinct,
but not _so_ distinct. The descendent of an African slave may also be the
descendent of a slaveowner, and not only an African slaveowner in Africa but a
European slaveowner in America. As for the claim of Ezra and Nehemiah, do not
all know the stories of Tamar and Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba, to say nothing
of others? And these are in the royal line of Judah itself, not merely “any
Judeans.”
All are ultimately what Shylock says Antonio says about a “mongrel cur.” And
all the versions of the saying about anyone in “the woodpile” refer originally
to the public bush (l.22: “piles”=”hairs”), and the unstated (off-scene) image
flows from that of the “smoky candle” in the prior stanza (and the “Cigar” in
the title) and toward the “meagre, blue-nailed, phthistic hand” (l.26) and
the “waterstair” of the following stanza (l.27). All mortal blood and birth
comes about in the manner connoted by the phrase. But it is of course not
pure or innocent blood and it does not issue in the new man. Eliot leads us
to deepen the image toward and in light of the blood of Christ and a
conception that is immaculate.
7th Stanza
I will not repeat what I have said elsewhere about the “partisan” reading of
the seventh stanza. It follows the “obcene” reading of the sixth as I have
just indicated it (cf. the noted allustion to _Othello_, l.27). Rather, I
want now to consider the figure of Sir Ferdinand Klein as the ultimate issue
of the union of Princess Volupine and Burbank in the first stanza, the figure
in whom the first is made last and the last is made first, and so forth. This
figure, Sir Ferdinand Klein, is also in some sense the reader and, and least
by intention or wish Eliot’s whole audience.
Ferdinand/Fernando is of course the name of several Spanish kings who, with
the Portuguese who divided some of the discovered lands with them, reigned
over an empire that grew to span the globe and deal in such riches that the
odd treasure galleons that they may have lost by the way here and there today
still generate dreams of untold wealth. In so doing, they pursued an absent-
minded sort of policy that Montesquieu described, perhaps in the _Spirit of
the Laws_ or the _Notebooks_, as apparently intended merely to depopulate
theSouth Americas of all natives and repopulate the continent again with
Africans. The name Ferdinand here follows the theme of the “mongrel
cur”-”woodpile” of the 6th quatrain: it connotes all these mixed bloods:
“American,” European, African, without rank or distinction.
8th Stanza
Yet there is still this distinction: the “family” name “Klein” itself This
name in fact enjoys several distinctions, not the least of which is that ,
with the name “Burbank,” it is the only personal name to begin a whole
quatrain of the epic. It is brought into this position in order to emphasize
in the strongest manner both its firstness and its “rank,” vis a vis other
names. However, it is not the name of a city, like Burbank, which begins the
first stanza, but it connotes here rather the name of a people, namely, the
New people of whom we have spoken in previous posts, and who are the fitting
celebrants of the New World discovered and ordained in accordance with the
gospels, if not by the Reyes de Leon y Castille y Navarre (sp?)--but also the
people of the Law: the Hebrews as Hebrews: these are “first” (l.29).
We have already noted that there is no especially Jewish name in the poem,
still less a necessarily Jewish one. We must now complete that thought by
noting that some are possibly Jewish, if not certainly so, and that, since by
everything we have seen and learned, the name of “Bleistein” certainly denotes
the figure of a certain Jew, “Peter,” “rock,” as the figure of Christ
crucified, “The Jew,” then the name of Sir Ferdinand Klein, is certainly also
in a sense “Jewish.”
This ambiguity is intentional: it denotes both the Pauline theme of adoption
and the new sons of Abraham that we find in Paul’s letter to the Romans
(2:17ff, 4-5, 8, 9, 10-11), are, more generally, the NT theme of the “true
vine,” and, also, the central OT themes of the priority of the Law and People
of the Covenant, and Paul’s teaching that the gospel of Christ is for these,
“the Jews” [=remnant, royal line of Judah] “first” (Roman’s 1:16).
Specifically, the unstated allusion is to Matthew 15:16ff, where Jesus speaks
to a needy Syro-Phoenician woman (viz., a gentile) of the gospel as food for
the “children” of Israel “first,” saying that what is then leftover is for the
“dogs” (gentiles).
“Ferdinand” is a mongrel of all colors and bloods, but he is a royal mongrel
by the gospel and blood of Christ.
In acknowledging and conveying this NT teaching in according Klein this rank,
Eliot in this manner turns around or turns over what had been a part of the
spiritual thrust of the political policies of the Spanish kings, and above all
King Ferdinand. When the Spanish finally drove out the last Moors from
Iberia, after centuries of historic resistence and even spectacular tenacity
in the face of apparent Moorish invinceability, they said that the Jews and
anyone else (even Moors) could stay, provided they adopted the Catholic
religion. Ferdinand thus re-enacts the command of Constantine, who decreed
what was undecreeable, and established “the way” of Christ as an official
state religion: a “thing of Caesar.” Many Jews elected to do so. However,
suspicion arose that some of these were insincere, or shamming, and Ferdinand
obtained permission to establish in his territories--including the “New
World”--what was called the Inquisition. The Inquisition was intended to
examine and determine the true faith of believers. It is sometimes said that
those executed by the Inquisition exceeded the number of Christians executed
by the Caesars. Whatever the numbers, the case is not the same: there is
nothing public about the Inquisition. The proper analogy is of course rather
with the Sanhedrin under the High Priest Caiaphus and the trial of Christ. To
correct this retrograde inclination toward the city of man, Eliot restores the
order: the name of Christ is in the first place a Jewish name, hier of
Abraham.
It is usual in most surveys to note that the grandest and most fearsome of all
the Grand Inquisitors, pious and incorruptible by money or any similar
temptations, is surely also something of a Caiaphus-like figure: Torquemada,
was descended of Jewish converts. We want to note that Torquemada’s name was,
like the first name of the author, “Thomas”: the name of a Jewish disciple.
Here in the 8th stanza (=”octavus”) the name “Klein” is that _both_ of one of
the New People entering the New World of the spirit and the new world
following the fall of the West, on the one hand, and also that of one who,
Eliot hopes in all peace, is staying in something like the Portico d'Ottavia,
in Rome.
Burbank contemplates the lions. We have pointed to the fact that they were
once the hungry lions of Nero and Diocletian which, along with the friends of
Peter, men, women and children, provided public entertainment--like concerts
or Specials--for the multitudes in the great stadiums, and now mere relics.
And the lions of the Spanish kings, once proud beyond any house upon the
earth, now faded all but out of sight.
And so, too, it might at first glance appear, the Winged Lion of St. Mark
itself, the Lion of Judah, for the Lion’s name was ever on the lips of the
Caesars after Constantine.
But now that we have cleared the moneylenders from the temple, so to speak, or
picked our way among the Gibbonean ruins, and sifted through the bur to the
seed, we are a little better prepared than before to see the opening quatrains
in “Burbank” in something like their true light, their “personal” light. This
means specifically in the light of the Gospel of Mark, to which this reference
to the winged lions recalls us.
II. “...Semite Viennese”
It is worth asking if only in passing, why Mark? Why not others? After all,
Luke, the careful historian, the gentile writer who (like us) never saw Jesus
himself would seem an obvious choice for one interested in the historical
perspective. Meyer, great reader of Gibbon, judged Luke the equal of Josephus
as an ancient historian. And, Matthew, the gospel apparently addressed
especially to contemporary Jewish and related peoples, has been called “the
most beautiful book ever written” which might well tempt those interrested in
“aesthetics.” Or, for thinkers, John, the greatest work of Christian
theology, or of any “human” or “personalist” (=non-”process”) theology.
Yet a reader who has come this far will turn at once to the Gospel of Mark,
rather than any other. We are in the great though now much faded or dying
city--what James described as a tomb--that was traditinally founded in honor
of Mark. The title, “Bleistein” means “lead stone,” or in Latin “Peter,” and
the Gospel of Mark is traditionally the teaching of Peter as told to Mark.
Besides, according to many, as Spengler wrote: “Mark is _the_ Gospel,” &c--
though Eliot is not here following Spengler but, if anyone, more popular
writers (e.g., Morison, “Who Moved the Stone?”) who have said of Mark’s gospel
that
This rugged old document stands like a great rock far out
to the sea, washed by the incoming tide before the coast-
line of the distinctively Christian literature is reached.
It casts its mighty shadow across all that littoral. It
divides the very waters that flow towards it.
Mark’s gospel is Burbank’s Baedeker.
We have looked at the beginning of this gospel sufficiently to notice both the
theme of baptism at it applies to the opening quatrain here and the crucial
“layering” of explicit scriptural references with which it opens. Mark’s
conflation is well known.
If we wish to discern what it is that Mark is trying to say,
we must observe the way he uses his material. He places
these two Old Testament citations [viz., Isaiah 40:3 and
Malachi 3:1] at the beginning so that although they refer
directly only to 1:4-8, they still function as a preface to
the whole book and introduce everything that follows as
the fulfillment of all God’s dealings with Israel. (Schweizer,
_The Good News According to Mark_)
There is also an important allusion to the Exodus involved, and a somewhat
less well known reference to a later passage in Isaiah. The opening
conflation initiates the often-noted elusive character of “ambiguity,”
“contradiction,” or “paradox” in the Markan Gospel (e.g., T.A. Burkhill, _The
Mysterious Revelation: An Examination of the Philosophy of St. Mark’s Gospel_,
and others). C.H. Dodd echoes many, saying in _About the Gospels_: “The total
effect...is to suggest a. mysterious undercurrent beneath the
ostensible....Mark is perfectly aware of this undercurrent of mystery in his
story.” Pursuit of this and related currents belongs to the study of the
Gospel of Mark. Here, we merely note that both the striking things in the
opening of Mark characterize the begining of “Burbank,” as well.
The specific mystery of “Burbank” is indicated by its going underwater in the
first three quatrains. Something is hidden. Both the something, whatever it
may be, and the hiddeness are part of the poem’s central and ultimate themes.
To consider these it may be useful to quote another sentence out of R. Bush,
_TSE: Character & Style_ (p.112): “To dramatize ‘what it feels like’ to hold
Christian belief in an age of skepticism became Eliot’s object in [later]
poems.” This statement, which admittedly needs some careful refining, is as
true of “Burbank” as of any poem Eliot ever wrote, and it deserves the most
careful reflection in beginning the study of “Burbank.”
An age of skepticism is but the first part of the difficulty, and not very
interesting in itself: all ages are skeptical to some extent (consider
generally Mary R. Thompson, S.S.M.N., _The Role of Disbelief in Mark: A New
Approach to the Second Gospel_.) Equally problematic, secondly, which is so
much the theme of Kierkegaard (who wants neither a religion that is merely
literature nor literature that is a kind of religion), is the fact that
nominal Christianity is become the banal and commonplace, routinizing its
freshness, falsifying itself. Thirdly, and above all, all of this writing
takes place in the real world of what has been called the “hidden God,” _deus
absconditus_, the God of whom we are aware, but who often brings Himself to
our awareness (presence) by seeming to be absent, by, one might say, “a
lustreless, protrusive” absence. This mysterious and ambivalant but necessary
condition is the human condition of possession of genuine free-will. None of
this is unique to Eliot of course. To say nothing of others, the speech of
the Apostle Paul to the Athenians was about the “unknown god” (the hidden god)
in the midst of the temples built to many “well known” gods.
In this context, Eliot’s poetry does not “preach.” It conveys by discovery.
In this way and only in this way it “shares” what Ransom, Tate &c would call
its inner “form.” In this way it allows the reader to participate in it
further and further by learning more and more, as well as by deepening
feeling. This simultaneously allows one increasingly to discover and
understand one’s own deepest feelings for what they are, and hence to know
oneself, while growing. (Here, this is how Eliot treats the various forms of
Spengler’s “spatialism,” “makrokosmos,” &c: how he answers Spengler’s new
question: “For whom is there ‘history’?”) In so doing Eliot’s poetry teaches.
As might have been expected, we discover the clue or connection that we seek
in line 19, the last line of the Augustinian quatrains, which begins with the
name of a city and ends with the term: “...Viennese.” “Viennese” is not a
city, like Chicago or Burbank, but a particular way or thing associated with
that city. There are fine Viennese seasonal wines, of course, and coffees and
pastries and ices, but, surely, Viennese opera is what most leaps to mind, or
the great Mozartian requiem masses for the repose of the souls of the dead,
which might seem apt for such an occasion as this, or to be experienced as the
fourth quatrain contemplated. The idea is not far-fetched as it may at first
sound. Quite the contrary. After all, Bush speaks of Burbank’s “operatic
musing,” which only ceases (according to him) when Eliot wishes ”to show us
how repulsive the real world is,” &c. However, what is more likely intended
is Listz’s oratario _Christus_--which among other things includes
compositional or harmonic forms as a symbol of the Cross and a narrative theme
of the suspension of time, the critical discussion of which has often been
characterized by various heated questions of narrative perspectives such as
are not usually found in the review of oratorios--and which, after years of
fragmentary presentations, was premiered in its entirety for the first time,
to a sensational reception, in Vienna in 1896, Ferdinand Lowe conducting.
Liszt’s _Christus_, like his precurser in Handel, balances “Burbank” in
rendering in theatrical choral celebration what Eliot in “Burbank” reserves
in silent meditation before the Cross in the basilica.
Be this as it may, what connects the beginning with the end of this line in
which the middle east meets the middle west, is a kind of meat. It is thus
via sausage that Vienna is connected to Chicago beef. Vienna sausage. Shaped
like a short candle or a cigar, the sublimation of however many Freudian hopes
and envies, in preparation for the action of the fifth, sixth, and seventh
quatrains. And the middle term of the line: lamb. The sacrificial lamb: the
scapegoat (Leviticus 16:8-26, and context; Rev. 5:12, &c).
In reconsidering all these meats, we begin to glimpse what Eliot has done.
Consulting any Venice Baedeker, we find that more than a thousand years before
“Burbank,” alert, steel-nerved Venetian sailors discovered the remains of St.
Mark in Alexandria, almost a thousand years after that city had faded from
Hellenistic brilliance into Roman obscurity and late antiquity. In order to
smuggle the Holy Relics through hostile Mohammedan guards and surly customs
officers and back to Venice, they packed them carefully under piles of old
pork, which these Mohammedans, believing according to their law that what goes
into a man’s mouth is more important to cleanliness and purity than what comes
out of it (cf. Jesus at Mk.7:6-14), wanted nothing to do with and would not
touch.
Eliot has smuggled the Book of Mark through the guards and out of the ruins of
the old culture, the “West,” and into the new, where it will bear new fruit in
the fullness of time (l.20).
The Gospel of Mark is Bleistein’s “Cigar.” --
III. “Bleistein’s Way”
Epigraph
According to Spengler, where the prime symbol of the North is endless space
and that of the Classical the body, “so we may take the word _way_ as most
intelligibly expressing that of the Egyptians.” “Strangely, the one element
in extension that they emphasize is that of direction in depth.” Egyptian art
and architecture is a rhythmically ordered sequence of spaces: the sacred way
leads from the gates through passages, halls and galleries through rooms
growing narrower and narrower to the chamber of the dead.
Cleopatra (=Cleopatra VII Ptolemy), prominent in the early quatrains, is
Macedonian, not Egyptian, and she and the squabbles of the Ptolemies no more
fulfill the life of Misr and K-M-T (sp?) than the Herods and the squabbles of
the Saducees and Pharisees fulfill the Law of Moses. Hellenistic Egypt is a
name for the decline of Pharonic Egypt. The fall of Alexandria to Octavian
effectively seals off all that had been central to the Pharonic tradition.
The gloom about “Burbank” is consistent with the part of Spengler’s _Decline
of the West_ under the rubric of “Pergamum and Bayreuth: the end of art”
(“Alexandria”), and its light is intended as the ultimate resolution of the
problem described by Spengler under the rubric of “Caesarism” (“State and
History”), including the Caesarism yet-to-come.
“Burbank” is not history. It is meant to be an education: a cultivation of
true culture, culture that does not decline and fall: solid rock.
(1st quatrain)
The way (Isaiah) out of the old tomb of Egypt and into the Wilderness was
through the divided waters of the Red Sea (l.1: “...crossed a little bridge”:
Exodus), a _type_ of baptism (Mark 1:1ff). Burbank joins and is joined by the
church and is baptised.
(2nd quatrain)
The old man is put away
(3rd quatrain)
And buried. He and his old glory is nothing,
(4th quatrain)
but he is made one with the Lamb of God crucified and resurrected. “I am with
you always, to the end of time” (Jesus at Matt.28-20).
(5th quatrain)
The Creator of time watches the forming of the unformed body (Ps 139...)
(6th quatrain)
Immaculate and colorless in the depths of the earth: Innocence and Grace in
the blood of the Lamb.
(7th quatrain)
Then the church, Bride of Christ, extends her finger (ll.26-27) to him as
Michelangelo’s figure of God extends his finger to Adam on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome: they claim the living water (Jn. &:38) and the living
stone (1 Peter 2:4ff) and heal each other and give life (per Mark 3:1-6: the
withered and extended hand) to the new babe.
(8th quatrain)
Ecce Homo: (=SFKlein) not the “ubermensch” (sp?) who would transvalue all
values (Nietzsche, cf. Spengler’s new Caesar) but the New Man (Mk.14:24) who
transcends all cities and cultures.
“Behold: I make all things new” (Rev.21:5).
Parting Thoughts on "Burbank"
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Parting Thoughts on "Burbank"
From: [email protected]
Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 21:42:16 EDT
Here are some parting thoughts or notes on “Burbank” as it now stands. As
such, they depend on the previous posts for their full sense. (Please excuse
typos.)
1st quatrain
Burbank is anyone who steps across the threshold of a church or sacred place
who thinks he knows something of what he is doing or wants to learn. He need
have no prior cultivation or “culture.” However, he needs a) an open mind and
a, like the botonist, a tireless willingness to investigate carefully and
painstakingly: say, pointalist: bright distinction by brightening distinction,
rather than quick gloomy strokes, and b) and, perhaps more difficult, an open
heart, as much as possible: Luther Burbank was expert in the grafting and
cross-breeding of Plants (John 15:1-7; esp.Romans 11:23, and related
passages).
4th quatrain
We have seen that the presentation of lines16-18) is of Christ, the Man of
Sorrows. Because the name “Bleistein” in line 16 may be a Jewish name and the
term “Semite” in line 19 may refer to the Jewish people, the description of
the Man of Sorrows may be taken to be one of Jews, particularly Jewish
immigrants around the turn of the century through the end of the revolutions
in Russia and the Great War. But, to say the least, Jews were hardly the
only or even the main immigrants or displaced persons or refugees in those
years. Much of Europe, and not only Europe, but also Mexico and the old
Ottoman empire (and Ching China), was overrun with every kind of dispossession
and displacement. If the name “Bleistein” and the term “Semite” are changed
in these lines, or even understood as referring not _merely_ to Jewish people,
the Man of Sorrows is revealed for what he is as the Grace of God for
all nations (e.g., Titus 2:11). The Man of Sorrows honors all the displaced
and dispossessed. Eliot honors the Jewish people here, as he does in another
context in the sixth quatrain, for the same reason here as there: the gospel
of Christ is to them first, and he here presents the way to Christ, _the_
Semite, as necessarily leading through the Jews.
The story of the rescue of the relics of St. Mark in a meatpacking of pork is
an allusion to the Biblical injunction about casting pearls before swine
(Matt: 7:6). It is very dangerous, but there is often some margin of safety
in the very ignorance and swinishness of the swine. In Eliot’s case, here,
one simultaneously recognizes the figure of the crucified Christ smuggled in
the midst of immigrant “Semites” and, in that figure, the fact that what is
called “anti-semitism” is itself a version or form of the antichrist. Jesus
Christ is semitic and the hope of his inheritence belongs (in first century
language rather than the Torah or Prophets) “to the Jew first...” Eliot means
this both as the truth in itself and in allusion to the view that nothing good
can come “out of Galillee” (John 7:52).
It is worth noticing that T.S. Eliot held forth this view in “Burbank,” a poem
occasioned in 1919-19920 in reaction, among other things, to the awaited
overman of Nietzsche, the newly-discovered irrational (and hence
irresponsible) contemporary man of Freud, and the awaited new “Caesar” of
Spengler, especially in view of such familiar blurbs on the jackets of
_Decline_ as: “the trembling of Spengler’s themes signaled the coming of the
Nazi earthquake,”&c. This context is, of course, “hindsight,” which is an
especially clear vision, (cf. “times ruins”). Eliot’s original vision is as
we have already presented it.
Clarity of vision is introduced thematically into “Burbank” in the 5th
quatrain, with the “protrusive eye,” but it reaches back to the last line of
the 4th quatrain: line 19, the ambiguous middle term: “Semite.” “Semite” was
a still a newish word in the wider world of the turn of the last century, one
that emerged in the new and growing post-Hegelian intellectual climate of
progress and secular class internationalism (like “International socialism” or
Communism), on the one hand, and secular race nationalisms (like National
Socialism and Zionism), on the other, in terms of the “Folk,” whether as a
certain class or race, “history,” “fate,” “destiny,” “blood and soil,”
“lebensraum” (sp), “living room,” “homeleand,” “struggle,” &c.&c. Spengler in
particular pedantically dismissed the term “semite” as an ignorant catchword
when used to identify the Arabian or Levantine races, including any Jews (and
also the term “Aryan” as identifying a Germanic “Volk”), as these were, of
course, merely philological terms properly relating to language groupings &c.
Eliot here (as in many cases in his verses) depends on the ambiguity of
popular usage. But he also alludes specifically and primarily to the
philological connotations of the term “semite.” That is his only true
interest. The middle term of line 19 means a kind of language or “word”
(viz., the Gospel of Mark) and thus assimilates to itself (viz., to the Gospel
of Mark) the cigar-Freudian penis wish & envy sublimation as he forms the
immaculate conception of the New Man that is depicted “behind” these
quatrains. The word bears fruit.
5th quatrain
We must look at the first line of the 5th quatrain in connection with what has
just been said, and particularly, now, the term “lustreless.” There are two
possible and not incompatible meanings for this term in the line. We have
spoken adequately of the “protrusive eye” as the eye of the Creator, the
original light of the world. However, the original light of the world is only
metaphorically a kind of flame or sun. Rather it is a command, a word. As
such it is lustreless. “In the beginning...God said “Let there be light ,”
and there was light. God saw that the light was good” (Genesis 1:1-4; cf.
14ff). This word is the word spoken of in the celebrated beginning of the
Gospel of John as Christ, the Word of God (John 1). It is metaphorically a
kind of flame: it is an actual or literal word--for “Burbank,” the Gospel of
Mark--and an actual person.
The second possibility is that reference may be to the the eye of the
individual reader. In such a case, the reader’s own eye may protrude
incomprehendingly into the scene, or see whatever it selects to see by its own
lights. This is where we all begin. One may be leaden and sink into the
water like Peter sometimes: the way is not easy. We have discussed all this
in the previous posts. In this case, of course, one must be careful to clear
one’s eyes.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye
and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can
you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,”
when all the time there is a plank [= a 2x4 board or beam] in
your own eye? You hypocrite [=”super judge,” “Grand Inquisitor”]
first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see
clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Jesus, Matt.7:3-5
NIV)
One’s own eyes and the planks typically found in them are the primary theme of
this whole quatrain. Eliot is trying to help the reader (all his readers, to
the extent possible) in this respect, depending on one’s qualities as a
Burbank to begin with. One might say that in “Burbank” he addresses many
“Antonios,” in fact, all the “merchants of Venice” at once. He attempts a
personal education with the aim of making them, in the context of the poem,
more Petrine. He does not satirize any of them.
Not to repeat what has already been adequately said on the subject in previous
posts, the “protozoic slime” of line 18 and “perspective of Canaletto” of
line 19 indicate Eliot’s stepping back behind or above the perspective of
Spengler--who sees “culture” as so many kinds of cultures-as-organisms among
others, like Canaletto sees the parts of Venice. Canaletto does not present
“Venice,” but only a sort of gloomy survey of Venice, a certain set view of
Venice. This is how Spengler sees “cultures as organisms.” Eliot steps back
not in the direction of anything Darwinian but rather toward the single or
monadical organism that is behind all organisms or toward the monadical
organism of all organisms as treated in such writings as Liebnitz’ _Protogaea_
and Lotze’s _Mikrokosmos_. This distinction from Spengler--who thought of all
non-European races as colored-- is all but melodramatic (at least by Eliotic
standards) with the appearance in the 7th & 8th quatrains of Sir Ferdinand
Klein, heir of Abraham, and European, American, and African (=Black, Red,
White) without distinction.
8th quatrain
In connection with what has just been said--and incidentally also recalling
Ferdinand Lowe’s primiere in Vienna (Eliot’s first poetry had primiered in
Chicago) of Liszt’s _Christus_ , probably (as it happens) the operatic
equivalent of the perspectival conflict found in reviews of Eliot’s “Burbank
with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” --wasn’t there also a German
mathematician named “Klein” who was roughly a contemporary of the American
botanist Luther Burbank and who worked in Leibnitzian mathematical “groups” or
sorts of monadical “organisms” as the _ne plus ultra_ of Western mathematics?
Guy Story Brown, Dallas & LA
[email protected]
"Brown"-"Julius" (Was Judge Julius/Brooker for the defense)
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: "Brown"-"Julius" (Was Judge Julius/Brooker for the defense)
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 20:00:20 EST
In a message dated 11/17/98 11.08.56 pm, [email protected] wrote:
<<if we refuse to face the music, we are likely to go on producing lengthy,
twisting "readings" of Eliot that explain away his apparent anti-Semitism--
the sorts of readings that make otherwise neutral parties scoff at the
"sophistry" of Eliot's defenders, and which make Julius (and others) feel it
is their "sad duty," as you put it, to "step up," yet again, and "admit the
truth" about Eliot. . . . I will [...] urge anyone new to the list to read
(or try to read) Guy Brown's so-called "Ultimate Burbank" when you can, since
it provides such an extreme illustration [...] of what I am talking about.>>
Listers,
In scrolling through the backlog of recent messages on this and related
topics, I am gratified to see at least that if there is any occasion anyone
might concoct to mention my name and that of Anthony Julius in the same breath
it is to observe that he is in every way the opposite of everything I
represent or stand for. So, however difficult (as David Chinitz emphasizes)
my posts may have been to try to read, that much, at least -- which may be the
most important thing -- comes through, for which I am thankful.
I apologize again, now, as I did all along when I was posting on "Burbank" on
the list last June, for any difficulty in reading my posts. The reading of
"Burbank" given there was composed as I posted it. It is not only emailese
but, as it were, a *seriatim* first draft. So of course it is not polished.
Subsequently I have finished a complete interpretation of "Gerontion" which
runs to about 100 pages probably, with notes, and am now working to convert my
"Burbank" posts into similar essay form -- much more readable, and with notes.
When this is done, I will seek a publisher for the two pieces. Meantime, I am
working on Shakespeare and (especially) on John Calhoun, which must have
priority, since these manuscripts have been invited by presses, and still job-
seeking.
But there is no need to go into <<lengthy, twisting "readings" of Eliot that
explain away his apparent anti-Semitism-- the sorts of readings that make
otherwise neutral parties scoff at the "sophistry". . . >> on the point David
Chinitz asserts, and refer everyone to my posts on "Burbank" in the archives:
I can easily address this claim briefly right here. To do so, I will take up
(without prejudice) part of Russ Mayne's statement in the same series of
recent posts: <<I do not see any difference between Mr.Sheetz's attack and
say, 'the jew is underneath the lot.' I am NOT claming anyone on this list is
anti-semitic nor am i claiming that you have to be anti-semitic to read Eliot.
.. . >> Specifically, will use the phrase from this statement "The jew is
underneath the lot," which of course is from "Burbank." I believe this is the
same line that is presented in the story about Eliot at the very beginning of
Julius' project as a kind of inaugural.--
"The jew is underneath the lot" occurs as line 23 of "Burbank," that is, at
about the middle (line 7) of the poem's second part (the part about Birth).
By that time (as I have shown on the list), after several readings, the
addressee has begun to understand what Burbank is doing and who Bleistein
("Lead-Stone") is, in the first part (the part about about Death).
When the line is just introduced in a polemic -- e.g., <I do not see any
difference between Mr.Sheetz's attack and say, 'the jew is underneath the
lot.'> -- we must (setting the polemic aside) restore its immediate context
(sixth quatrain) in order to recall what it originally meant. I will do this
using two points of departure in understanding what is meant by "the lot" in
the sixth quatrain.
First, let all ask what -- on the surface, superficially, least
sophisticatedly, most Canaletto-ish, and above all least "sophistically" -- is
"the lot"? It is "the Rialto" (line 21 = the market center, the agora, the
"city") and "the piles" ( line 22 = the poles that provide the artificial
foundation of the city and keep it from sinking into its lagoons and canals)
and "the rats" (line 22 = merchant Venetians).
Underneath all this ("the lot," the whole "perspective of Canaletto" and more)
-- agora, piles, sewer-life (St. Sebastian died/lived in the sewer) -- in line
23 is "the jew," in short, the true and solid foundation of the Republic of
St. Mark, of the city either (depending on the account) founded by or
repeatedly saved by and since belonging to St. Mark. This solid foundation is
"the jew."
What can this mean? Who is the solid, true foundation, the rock, under the
artificial foundation and market of the Republic of St. Mark?
Is this not evident? We might ask: well, who is "the jew" that one
immediately and necessarily associates with St. Mark (who was himself born
Jewish), patron of Venice, Republic of St. Mark? Any anti-semite knows well
who this is and must admit it. The prouder he or she is, the more humiliating
the admission will be. (Hence, some will doubtless refuse the admission out
of pride.) Or, let us go on, Who is the jew immediately and necessarily
associated with with St. Sebastian, who was not a Jew, to whom our attention
is particularly drawn by the author in the epigraph (and in the fifth
quatrain, in implicit contrast to Canaletto)? St. Sebastion is no Jew. To
deny the Jew is not to deny the Jews anything, but only oneself. Who is "The
Jew"?
What doubt can there possibly be? What person, however "anti-Jewish" can
gainsay as much?
Jesus Christ is "the jew who is underneath the lot."
This reading is what David Chinitz says is "sophistic" and justifies the work
of Anthony Julius, which it stimulates, etc., etc.
Rather, this realization has the poetic force (for reader-merchants) in
"Burbank's" Venice of Jesus' overturning the money-changers' tables and
cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem in the Gospel of Mark -- "He . . . would
not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts," but taught
them, saying "My house is a house of prayer for all nations but you have made
it a den of robbers," etc. (Mk 11:15-18) -- for Venice is the city of the
original "ghetto," where Jews were first (in post-Roman times) set aside to
live and work, as a symbol of Venetian pride. (The Venetian name "ghetto"
provides the derivation of this now widely-applied term).
Without this realization-rebuke a reader is left with the merchant-temple as
it was in 33 AD, or with commercial Venice, greatest human artifact, as
"ultimately" the adversarial spitting and spleen match of Antonio and Shylock
and their like -- so much sewer life. This is where we came in (i.e., to the
sixth quatrain, line 21): "On the Rialto, once," (viz., "The Merchant of
Venice"). Is "once" also for ever and all? Is there no exit? As I have
indicated here and in earlier posts, this is not the conclusion of the sixth
quatrain, still less of "Burbank" any more than it is of the "Merchant of
Venice," however passionately it is so proclaimed.
Secondly, there is a further meaning to the word "piles" in line 22. "Piles"
is the term used by all to identify the man-made foundations of the city. We
have just discussed this. (Anyone who is worn out by this lengthy, twisty
reading, or who cannot follow its vague extremisms any further may hit the
delete button and return to Anthony Julius or just go on to his or her next
incoming post now.) "Piles" has another and in this context deeper meaning,
viz., hairs. In this sense, it is connected both with the term "furs" in line
24, and with the allusion to Shakespeare's "Merchant" in line 21, the play
about the commercial republic Venice in which the merchants/moneylenders in
truth are in every way of the same race -- brothers under the skin (= among
other things, their selfish pride and their empty professions of religion).
"Furs" are merely "proud skins."
"Piles" and "furs" point to skin, human skin, the betrayal of brothers by
brothers (e.g., the betrayal of Joseph, who had the coat/skin of many colors,
by his brothers, whose coats were of one color, although Joseph in the end
forgave and saved them in Egypt), and to allusions to the African slave trade
in the West (and to the reference to "all nations" in the account of Mark just
cited) and, ultimately, to the betrayal of self in other lines, under all of
which "skins," according to "Burbank," is the blood of Christ.
"The Jew" is ("ultimately") already at the center of the picture in "Burbank"
(1st *and* 2nd parts), as I have said in earlier posts. That Jew is just not
Julius. Incidentally, this does not mean Eliot is therefore "Anti-Julius," or
any kind of "adversary" toward Julius, there is just no connection between
them. No relation.
Obviously, the interpretation of "Burbank" cannot be left at this, for, to say
nothing of other things, the poem consists of eight quatrains, not merely the
sixth, as well as the longest epigraph in all of Eliot. And there is much
more that may be said of the sixth quatrain of "Burbank," certainly, including
things that arise from considerations of the quatrains that come before and
after so, that its place in the whole can be properly seen. But this is
sufficient to point to the problem of taking an Eliotic line out of context in
order to make a claim about it (or something else). Its Eliotic meaning is
composed by and ultimately depends on its Eliotic context, including its
Eliotic interior (sub-surface, depth, temple-cleansed-of-the-multitude quiet),
which, whatever else it may entail, one may reach in the first place only by
remembering the first rule of Eliot's poetry: "honi soit qui mal y pense." --
This is, incidentally, just about the opposite of any rule of Anthony Julius
about anything having to do with Eliot ("I am the adversarial reader!" &c),
and that fact, not, pace David Chinitz, anything I ever said or wrote, is what
<<make[s] Julius (and others) feel it is their "sad duty," as you put it, to
"step up," yet again, and "admit the truth" about Eliot>>.
It is sad, certainly, but it is not a duty; it is a choice, even a deliberate
personal choice, in which there is little air and no light.
Please excuse any typos.
Blessings,
Guy Story Brown
[email protected]
Arwin's Mark & Jack's "Parallelism"
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Arwin's Mark & Jack's "Parallelism"
From: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 01:24:04 EST
Arwin van Arum, --
Returning to a full emailbox I note that Arwin has scolded me as little, or
complained, about my references to St. Mark in connection with "Burbank," and
pointed out that some might know about Mark's Jewishness and his relation to
Venice and some might not, etc., and that such things certainly cannot be
presumed to be common knowledge throughout the literary world.
I agree that some will and some won't be aware, and all the rest, including
its not being common knowledge -- but it is a point that anyone who looks into
a Baedecker (or reasonable analog) for Venice will discover in less time than
it takes to tell. (Also, without such a guide, unless one is pretty well read
in the scholarship, the allusion to St. Mark's church in the third quatrain
will not be noted and hence brought to bear on the question of the whereabouts
of Burbank and the Princess at that time.) in any case, the relation of St.
Mark to Venice is important to "Burbank," as I have indicated in prior posts.
A second thing that one quickly learns from such a guide that might have some
bearing on "Burbank" is that Venice is well known as the site of the most
famous of all European Jewish cantons. This was not because it was the
largest or most important but because it was the first major Jewish canton in
Europe. It was located in an area of Venice called the "ghetto," which name
came in time to refer to all Jewish (and, subsequently, other) "ghettos." One
might well anticipate some Eliotic reflection upon this fact in a poem about
Venice that includes prominant and even provocative reference to Jews. Of
course, there is always the possibility that Eliot himself was merely a
Venetian in this regard, and that he faithfully reflected the guide-book views
of the Venetians (Jewish or Gentile) in his poem about Venice.
Jack Kroll--
Well, maybe the third time is the charm.
In a message dated 12/10/98 4:49:54 PM, [email protected] wrote:
<< The rats are underneath the piles.
The jew is underneath the lot.
this is not the simplest kind of parallelism? No? You jest, surely.? Let's
say eliot had written:
The rats are underneath the piles.
The jews are underneath the lot.
Awful, of course. the silliest kind of comicbook image. rats must be plural
to express the infestation. but jew must be singular for the same reason.
because that infestation isn't physical, it's metaphysical. but again, those
lines must be two of the most parallel lines in english poetry. ... jews ...
underneath. ... not to mention the subsequent words:
Money in furs.
so what is there, in all honesty, to argue about, with talmudic, jesuitical
pretzel-thinking?>>
This amounts to saying that Eliot wrote "The Jew" in the 23rd line of
"Burbank" in order to avoid <the silliest kind of comicbook image>, which
would have been conveyed had he written "The Jews," which is what he really
meant. The only thing I agree with here is that Eliot did not write "The Jews
are underneath the lot." Let's don't say he did -- that's Julius' sort of
reading.
Let's look more carefully at these <<two of the most parallel lines in english
poetry>>
First, the 22nd-23rd lines of "Burbank" are not a "parallelism."
The rats are underneath the piles.
The jew is underneath the lot.
At most they say: "A is to B [i.e., "underneath"] as C is to D" [i.e.,
"underneath"]. The relationship emphasized is "underneath-ness." They are
each underneath something. In this only are they in any conception
"parallel." However, the point is that one of these is underneath the other,
and hence distinct and even opposite, in any case, greater.
"A" is underneath "B" is one independent sentence. "C" is underneath "D" is
one independent sentence. "C" is distinguished from "A." "C," The Jew (a
Jew, one Jew), is NOT "A" (rats). "C" is something else.
This is elementary.
"D" (the lot) includes "A" (the rats) AND "B" (the piles) AND, also, the first
and "surface" line of the quatrain, the Rialto (line 21). It is "ALL the
above." Another way of saying this is "D" (= "A" + "B" + Rialto) is Not "C."
Underneath "D" (i.e., underneath ALL the above: the Rialto; "B," the piles
underneath the Rialto; and "A," the rats underneath the piles), and the ONLY
thing mentioned as underneath "D," the lot, is "C," The Jew (a Jew). "C" (and
only "C") is somewhere else.
See? This is pretty simple. A couple of questions of the poem (not merely of
these two lines) would be, if The Jew is something else than the rats, then
"who (or what) is The Jew," and, if the Jew is somewhere else than Venice and
the foundations of Venice, then "where" is The Jew?
Now, let us look at the 22nd line:
"The rats are underneath the piles."
What does it mean?
Let us take Jack's tack and be very literal and obvious, <<in all honesty.>>
It means that "the rats," that is, rodents (like mice or squirrels) are
underneath "the piles," that is, the artfully-crafted wood foundation (called
piles) underlying the city of Venice, so that it seems miraculously to float
on or rise out of the surface of the water.
This is perfectly accurate, but it will of course satisfy very few readers,
for the literal meaning of the words does not convey a literal truth. Rats
are not really under the piles of Venice. They cannot be. That is, the line
literally does not mean
oh, the rats they're chewin', gnawin 'neath the piles
For, they cannot get down there, and could not live there if they could, &c.
So, the author's meaning in the line is metaphorical, not literal. Jack sort
of points to this by saying, <that infestation isn't physical> That is, the
rats represent something. This is indicated by the fact that the author
specifies "The" rats, i.e., certain rats, or a certain kind or meaning of
rats. The line points to a different level of meaning than the literal. (I
note in passing that I appreciate the metrical need to say something, and
observe that the author may easily contrive to say what he wishes within his
selected form and meter.)
What do they represent? What's the point of this line?
They may represent whatever you like, no doubt, once all literalism is out the
window. However, to discover Eliot's meaning, one must leave this ersatz
"parallelism" and look again at the opening line just above (21), i.e., the
Venetian marketplace and the allusion to Shakespeare's "The Merchant of
Venice," the story of (among other things) Antonio and Shylock. This allusion
is grounded in the 21st line of the quatrain, that is, in the letter of the
quatrain. It is to that extent literal. Let us look at the 22nd line with
this allusion in mind.
Declines. On the Rialto once.
The rats are underneath the piles.
The piles are the artificial physical foundation for the physical buildings of
Venice, but "Venice" is much more than those physical buildings of the Rialto
(i.e., the body) painted by Canaletto, and their artificial physical
foundation. The true life of the city, it's soul, is in commerce, in
principle, world commerce. Venice is a market-city, in fact, the archtypal
commercial republic. It's life/soul is buying low and selling high,
profiteering, an artificial legal & spiritual swirl of Mine & Thine. The true
or "natural" foundation (per Hobbes & Locke) of the commercial republic is
profiteering and merchandising, i.e., the merchants. "The rats" in line 22
ultimately represent the merchants providing the natural foundation of the
commercial republic, that is, following the allusion in the 21st line, we may
say, Shylock and Antonio, who, though they pretend and proclaim difference,
are in fact the same under the skin. They are the foundation of the
commercial republic as the piles are the foundation of the buildings.
The Jew that is underneath the Rialto, rats, and piles in the following,
independent line (24), who or whatever and wherever he may be, is other than
these "natural man," merchant rats.
We may go further and note that the term "piles," also means hairs. Under the
hair, or skin, the merchants are all the same (the "natural man"), brothers
who envy, cheat, and even buy and sell -- or generally betray -- one another
for apparent personal gain. This, "Money in furs" (line 24), weighing others
who are the same in money-terms, is the world-view of the true merchant. (I
have mentioned the betrayal of Joseph -- of the fine coat ["furs"] of many
colors -- by all of his brothers in this connection, as well as the more
obvious betrayal.) Immediately, the smiling boatman arrives with the
princess. A question would be, who is the boatman with princess? (This
question only makes sense if one takes seriously the presentation of the poem
itself as a sort of Venetian mask in the epigraph.)
So, looking at the 22nd and 23rd lines alone gradually leads us to look at the
quatrain (lines 21-24) in which they occur as a whole.
21 -- ". . . Declines" (i.e., in the first place from the surface -- the
Rialto)
The quatrain begins in the 21st line with the word "Declines." We are going
downward. The sixth quatrain of "Burbank" is a descent. Then the author
mentions the Rialto, the marketplace of the city (alluding to Shakespeare),
that is, we are on the surface, as though looking at a Canaletto of Venice.
22 -- ". . . underneath . . ."
Then the author goes underneath the city reveals what Canaletto never shows,
the artificial and the natural foundations of the city and its life: the human
truth of the city -- both as the Venetian Republic itself, including the
mansion of Antonio and the ghetto-dwelling of Shylock, and as the City of Man
as such.
23 -- ". . . underneath . . ."
Then the author goes underneath or beyond the artificial and natural
foundations of the city and its life, that is, beyond or outside the City of
Man, to "The Jew" to indicate the supernatural foundations of the City of God,
the true Republic of St. Mark.
24-- "Money . . ." (returns up thru piles [="furs"] to surface -- boatman)
Then the author returns to the surface through the artificial-natural
foundational "piles"/"furs" of the city -- betrayal -- to a canal (silent pun
on Canaletto) and the smiling boatman. The sixth quatrain is thus a descent
followed by an ascent. The author particularly does not refer to a gondolier
but to a boatman who smiles. This is not for metrical reasons but because he
wants us to see, having seen or experienced the descent as we have just
described it above, that the boatman is like Charon, who ferries the dead
across the river Styx to Hades, come for us. He has the mask of Death, the
smiling skull. (Perhaps the line begins with the term "Money" because Charon
only ferries those who have two obols in their mouths.) He means for the
reader to face this reality, the reality of his or her own morality and
judgement. The issue is our own fidelity and the constant temptation of
betrayal. The last line is funereal, but it is also happy, although this
(like the boatman behind the mask) is another issue or level which we have
previously discussed and need not take up here.
As I have indicated in other posts, all the eight quatrains of "Burbank"
exhibit similar complexity and depth, and, with the title and epigraph, form a
whole that is characterized by a developing objective interiority that,
however, does not disclose itself to an adversarial or to any casual reading.
The insistence that this interiority is "nothing" in fact strives to replace
that interiority with its own, and it naturally succeeds. This is why Eliot
often said to interlocutors about this or that poem that it means "what you
want it to mean." Because of his manner of reference, Eliot's poems are often
almost mirrors. Looking at them, what we want to know, I should think, is
what Eliot meant. I recognize the hermeneutic risks in such an assertion. I
think they're surmountable.
Please excuse typos.
Guy Story Brown
[email protected]
-- end of 1998 GSB Burbank posts --