Christianity & Literature-1992-Kearns-121-39.pdf

Christianity and LiteratureVol. 41, No.2 (Winter 1992)

Apocalypse andWisdom:The Problem ofTone in T.S. Eliot's Poetry

Cleo McNelly Keams

In biblical criticism the terms "wisdom" and "apocalypse" describetwo different styles and modes of expression as well as qualities ofthought, and each mode relies on certain conventions peculiar to itsway of working to shape its meaning. It is my thesis that T. S. Eliotdeeply absorbed these biblical modes, that he juxtaposed andcounterpointed them to one another in his poetry, and that he did sonot only because of their rhetorical effect but also because of theirappeal to different facets of his own poetic temperament and point ofview. To make this case, I want first to point out some of the tensionsbetween wisdom and apocalypse by bringing together the various bib-lical texts and passages in Eliot's poetry in which they occur. I shallthen draw for further analysis of such tensions on Jacques Derrida's"On an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy," a lecture Iessay that touches not only on matters of philosophy but also on mat-ters of religion, literature, and the distinctions between them. Finally,I shall return to Eliot's poetry, especially "Portrait ofa Lady," The WasteLand, and Four Quartets, to show the techniques and perspectives thatallowed Eliot to deploy and resolve these tensions in powerful andeffective ways.

Wisdom writing, as biblical scholars have come to define it, is anaphoristic, proverbial, and somewhat socially conservative discourse,often anonymous and usually written in an open and accessible style.It may have an anti-clerical bias, but it generally seeks not to tear downbut to build up the religious and human community, often through akind of pluralistic and poetic flexibility which transcends dogma ordissolves it into higher understanding. Wisdom is associated with theGreek words logos and sophia, as well as with the Hebrew figure of theShekinah. It speaks with the voice of the sage, the tribe, and the tradi-tion; it is a rational voice, low-key and open, in which predominate thevalues of equanimity, an acceptance of the cycles and limits of life, anda quiet celebration of creation.'

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Apocalypse, by contrast, is a highly wrought discourse, often alle-gorical or at least metaphorical, forsaking the voice of the communityfor that of the individual. Apocalypse is neither simple nor open; rather,it is difficult, visionary, challenging, and sometimes deliberately divi-sive, splitting its audience into those who "have ears to hear" (cf. Mark7:16; Rev. 2:7) and those who do not. The etymological roots of apoca-lypse lie in the Greek apokalupsis and the Hebrew gala, both of whichmean "disclosure," "glimpse," or "revelation" of something normallytaboo. The "truth" thus glimpsed inspires not only recognition but alsosacred terror, especially the terror associated with final judgment andthe end of all things. Furthermore, as a special or intimate revelation,given only to the privileged who are able to receive it, apocalypse tendsto constitute an oppositional community around its own special vi-sion,"

Hence, where wisdom speaks with the voice of the sage, apocalypsespeaks with that of the prophet; and where wisdom brings simplicity,consolation, and relief, apocalypse brings complexity, challenge, anddisturbance. Wisdom murmurs in our ears or addresses us in the fieldsand streets, using the sustaining voice of entire peoples and cultures. Itis the voice of our deepest recognizable selves, and it compels recogni-tion less by heightened rhetoric than by its profound contact with thenature of things. Apocalypse is heard when we go apart into marginalor liminal situations; when we dream, study, fast; when we open thebook, break the seal, unfurl the scroll. It speaks from outside us-orfrom the other within-sometimes even as a kind of daemon or form ofpossession, heralding profound, perhaps final, discontinuities, judg-ments, and conversions.

A certain group of biblical texts (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Job, Sirach,and Wisdom for wisdom; Ezekiel, Daniel, Mark, and Revelation forapocalypse) form the loci classici of wisdom and apocalyptic writing inWestern culture, and Eliot draws heavily though not exclusively on someof these books of the Bible in his work," Wisdom and apocalyptic modesare not confined, however, to the canonical writings of the West, nordid Eliot seek and find them there alone. In the Bhagauad-Gita; forinstance, a text Eliot ranked next to Dante's Commedia in value," atypical wisdom discourse is abruptly interrupted by a particularly dra-matic apocalypse. This coup de theatre must have struck Eliot force-fully, for he made careful use of it in his own work, specifically in theform of direct allusion in "The Dry Salvages" and indirectly, as a gen-eral poetic technique, at other points as well.

I shall return to the Gila's influence on Eliot in a moment, but first Ishall establish parameters of wisdom and apocalypse as they appearedto him closer to home-in the biblical texts just mentioned. Perhaps


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the most famous of these is the passage from Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven"(3:1). This passage has passed directly into popular culture in the formof a lyric refrain, and this occurrence should not come as a surprise; forits style, like that of Ecclesiastes throughout, is particularly aphoristic,proverbial, and transmissable by means of oral tradition. Many otherverses of Ecclesiastes also have this pithy and memorable quality, andit is worth rehearsing some of them here, especially ones expressingthemes found in Eliot's work: "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; allis vanity" (1:2, 12:8); "There is no new thing under the sun" (1:9); "Fora dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voiceis known by multitude of words" (5:3); "The wise man's eyes are in hishead; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also thatone event happeneth to them all" (2:14); "Then shall the dust return tothe earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it"(12:7); "And further, by these, my son, be admonished; of making manybooks there is no end: and much study is a weariness of the flesh"(12:12).

Eliot adopted this wisdom voice and formed it into his own pur-poses, both in style and in matter, throughout his poetic career. Healso made a number of direct allusions to Ecclesiastes itself. One of themost notable occurs in Four Quartets. "In my beginning is my end,"murmurs the opening of "East Coker," and when the poem continuesEcclesiastes is much in evidence:

In successionHouses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their placeIs an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth. 0-6)5

These and similar passages in Eliot's poetry strike the traditionalnote of wisdom writing, and their themes are as much a part of Eliot'swork as they are of the biblical sources on which he draws. Thesethemes include the cyclical and ephemeral nature of life, the emptinessof its forms and preoccupations, the illusion that separates the so-calledwise from the so-called foolish, the predictable return of the mutualaporias of birth and death, and the need for simplicity, equanimity,and above aU restraint of speech in the face of them. The Buddhahimself, at least according to some traditions, could hardly say more;nor could the Greek sage Heraclitus, whose comment on wisdom-thatit is logos xounos, open and accessible to all, though we always behaveas if it were our own special purview-introduces Eliot's "Burnt Norton."



This voice of wisdom in the Bible contrasts strongly, at least in someways, with the countervailing voice of apocalypse, a contrast requiringa different, more lengthy kind of citation to capture its unique quali-ties. Many of the themes and tropes associated with the apocalypticvoice may be found in Ezekiel, a source on which Eliot drew repeatedly,from The Waste Land to Four Quartets. A typical passage reads:

And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speakunto thee.... I send thee to the children ofIsrael, to a rebellious nationthat hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressedagainst me, even unto this very day.... And thou shalt speak my wordsunto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.... Andwhen I looked, behold an hand was sent unto me; and 10, a roll of abook was therein; And he spread it before me; and it was written withinand without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourn-ing, and woe. (Ezek, 2:1-10)

The book of Revelation is, of course, the most powerful site of apoca-lyptic writing in the Bible, precisely because it is both last in canonicalorder and concerned with the last things of human life on earth. Hereis a passage:

And I turned to sec the voice that spake with me. And being turned, Isaw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candle-sticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to thefoot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and hishairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as aflame of nrc; And his feet like unto nne brass, as if they burned in afurnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.... And when I sawhim I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, sayingunto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last. ... Write the things whichthou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall behereafter. (Rev. 1:13-19)

The usual themes of apocalypse are here: a glimpse of mysteriesusually veiled, a highly mediated esoteric discourse, a strong and evenominous prophetic call for immediate response. Even the pace of thiskind of writing expresses an urgency and a desire that contrast stronglywith wisdom's measured patience: "And behold, I come quickly," saysthe angel of prophecy to John, "and my reward is with me" (22:12; myemphasis); or, later, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And lethim that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come" (22:17;my emphasis). Clearly apocalyptic texts are no advocates of discretion,economy of words, and resignation to the inevitable. Rather, they ex-plode into a multiplicity of visions and voices that seem to mirror oneanother to infinity: "Write the things which thou hast seen, and the



things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter" (1:19: myemphasis), the angel repeatedly admonishes the narrator or witness inRevelation. There is in apocalyptic discourse a mandate to dissemina-tion, in spite of the esoteric nature of the message, that creates a kindof tension missing from most sapiential texts.

Eliot was as deeply responsive to the apocalyptic voices of the Bibleas to its voices of wisdom. The springing tiger in "Gerontion," whocomes like a thief in the night ("Us he devours" [49]), is a very apoca-lyptic creature; and the "Son of man" passage in The Waste Land, whichspeaks so chillingly of "fear in a handful of dust" (30), perfectly cap-tures a certain apocalyptic tone. There are, too, apocalyptic interludesor interjections in each of the Four Quartets. One of the more strikingof these, found in "Little Gidding," reads:

The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe one discharge from sin and error.The only hope, or else despair

lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-To be redeemed from fire by fire. (200-06)

Again, it is hardly necessary to point to the themes Eliot's work shareswith the biblical texts here: the impending abolition or at least purga-tion of life as we know it, the immediacy and irrevocability of death andfinal judgment, and the strong emphasis on a moment of truth or vi-sion, a moment "here and now" in which choice and commitment aredemanded. There are common stylistic devices as well: a heighteneduse of figurative language, a sense of esoteric meanings hovering justbehind the text, and above all a kind of apostrophe or address to thereader, a demand that we respond either yes or no to the perspectivesand actions for which the revelation calls.

The problem with these two modes of wisdom and apocalypse isthat, in spite of their occurrence in a single corpus (the Bible, theBhagavad-Gita, Eliot's work), they are in great tension with one an-other. Not only does each have its own distinctive point of view, butalso each in some ways undercuts the other. The wise sage makes theapocalyptic prophet sound hysterical: the apocalyptic prophet makesthe wise sage sound complacent and banal. One says, "There is no newthing under the sun" (Eccles. 1:9): the other says, "Behold, J make allthings new" (Rev. 21:5). Eliot, moreover, was equally drawn to bothvoices, sometimes at one and the same time. From his earliest days, itseems, he felt called to be at once prophet and sage, at once the onewho challenges and the one who accepts the recurring fates of peoples,



cultures, and souls. Wisdom drew him toward detachment, apoca-lypse toward engagement, and his work across his entire poetic careerreflects these opposing tendencies.

The coexistence of these very different sapiential and apocalypticpoints of view created for Eliot problems of poetic style and substancevery difficult to resolve. Derrida, writing of course long after Eliot andfor the most part in another discourse, nonetheless finds similar prob-lems in philosophy, and his discussion of these illuminates both Eliot'spredicament and his technical solutions. In "On an Apocalyptic ToneRecently Adopted in Philosophy,"! Derrida begins with an analysis ofthe temperamental, philosophical, and cultural reasons behind Kant'sdislike of what he called a certain "overlordly" tone in philosophy.Armed with the insights generated by this analysis, Derrida then turnsto a number of Western apocalyptic texts, preeminently Revelation, todevelop his points further. Focusing on a relatively new and controver-sial translation of this text into French by the scholar Andre Chouraqui,Derrida uses Revelation to specify some of the tensions generated byapocalyptic writing in general. In doing so, he wishes to show why thefull estimation of these tensions depends on a recognition of all themany devices and marks of mediation in apocalyptic texts and on anacknowledgment of the important but philosophically unspecifiablefunction of tone in their construction and transmission. In making thisargument, Derrida also suggests that an appreciation of apocalypserequires the renegotiation and perhaps even partial effacement of tra-ditional disciplinary and discursive lines between philosophy, religion,and literature.

Derrida opens his argument with an analysis of Kant's irritation withthat apocalyptic or "overlordly" tone which the German philosopherfinds mystifying and mystagogic in the hysterical and inflated senses ofthe term, Kant is clearly irked, says Derrida, by the way those whoadopt such a tone dismiss more cautious and more professionally dis-crete members of the philosophic guild as mere hacks, as well as bytheir countervailing claims to a loftier, more metaphysical, and moreimmediate insight into the mysteries of the universe. Apocalyptic pre-tense also bothers Kant, Derrida claims, because it implies a secretsociety of knowers, a kind of false aristocracy or group of initiates whohave privileged information about a transcendental realm which ex-empts them from the methods, morals, and laws common to the rest ofus.

Derrida attributes Kant's objections to this apocalyptic tone prima-rily to his preference for sober, informed, sapiential philosophy, thephilosophy of "rational knowing-living" (68), or sagesse de la vie, overprophetic, ecstatic, emotional philosophy, the philosophy of cosmic



revelation. It is natural, Derrida reminds us, that Kant would dislikelordly and cosmic philosophical stances, because everything he valuestends in the opposite direction toward an open, clear, and democraticunderstanding and practice. Unlike his antagonists in the apocalypticcamp, Kant is above all a philosopher of common or ordinary wisdom,available everywhere and at all times to men of good will and soundreason. He does also believe, of course, in the extension and refine-ment of that wisdom through a critical process undertaken by thosewho have devoted disciplined study and moral reflection to the issuesat stake. The results of this process as it evolves, however, should beopen and persuasive to all, and the process of attaining them should bean ongoing one in which no single philosopher pretends to "have thelast word."

To a certain extent Derrida wishes to endorse Kant's objections tothe apocalyptic tone, with its mystagogues, cult-followers, initiates, andmetaphysicians, and to associate himself instead with Kant's rationalwisdom, his commitment to the ongoing process of philosophical cri-tique, and his democratic and enlightened stance toward knowledgeand revelation. After all, Derrida too is in many respects a traditionalphilosopher, concerned with such nuances and distinctions of argu-ment as have most meaning for those who have formally pursued thestudy of established philosophical tradition and who are committed tothe furtherance of that tradition by critique, open challenge, and con-stant revision. Furthermore, he is by temperament anti-apocalyptic,anti-metaphysical, and anti-hierarchic, dedicated to a systematic criti-cal analysis-a "deconstruction," if that word continues to serve anypurpose, of all that pretends to the rank of universal truth, prophecy, orspecial revelation. To put it succinctly, Derrida, like Kant, does not likestances and texts that try to "have the last word" about anything. Forthese and other reasons Derrida is sardonic indeed in this essay aboutthe popular vogue for pronouncements in knowing or hysterical tonesof voice that "the end is nigh." Of these pronouncements he gives asomewhat mocking catalogue. We are always hearing, he says, aboutthe end of everything:

... the end of history, the end of the class struggle, the end of philoso-phy, the death of God, the end of religions, the end of Christianity andmorals (that ... was the most serious naivete), the end of the subject,the end of man, the end of the West, the end of Oedipus, the end of theearth, Apocalypse Now. (80)

In spite of this Kantian scorn for the apocalyptic and for pleas ofspecial revelation, however, Derrida goes on to argue that we cannotsimply pretend that these modes do not exist or that "real" philoso-



phers, philosophers with a sober regard for wisdom as well as truth, donot ever participate in them. Indeed, as Derrida points out, Kant'sdefense of reason itself is in its own way apocalyptic, warning of the"end" of a period of false metaphysics and speaking of the judgmentthat will rain down on all those who continue to threaten his morerational and enlightened project with mystification. Kant's position isalso in some ways bound up with revelation, for he cannot proclaimand defend his own project without an appeal to something beyondthe smaller voice of self, some truth or light or telosthat grounds reasonand law. The only way Kant can begin to reconcile these contradic-tions, Derrida points out, is to insist (although on very shaky grounds)that, if there is a legitimate discourse of "the end" which can coexistwith rational wisdom, the basis of their coexistence must be a mutualwillingness to forego the inflated rhetoric of poetic discourse.

Derrida draws a clear lesson from this analysis of Kant's contradic-tory position on the apocalyptic tone, and he takes pains to underlinethat lesson forcefully, even didactically. He insists, pace his great pre-decessor, that we are drawn to rational wisdom philosophies like Kant'sprecisely becauseof those moments in which they speak in another,more passionate, more apocalyptic key. Nor is this a bad thing. "Wemust not," Derrida insists, "forego what compels recognition as theenigmatic desire for vigilance, for the lucid vigil [vielle), for clarifica-tion, for critique and truth." At the same time, however, we must re-quire of that recognition that it "keep within itself enough apocalypticdesire ... to demystify, or if you prefer, to deconstruct the apocalypticdiscourse itself." Apocalypse, then, has a right to its urgency and itsrevelatory claims, but it must also be willing to ask cui bono? It must bewilling to examine and critique "everything that speculates," in theadventitious or crass or self-serving sense of the term, "on vision, theimminence of the end, theophany, the parousia, the Last Judgmentand so on" (82).

This call for a self-critical, rational, and disinterested apocalypticdiscourse-what we might call, oxymoronically, a "wise apocalypse"-seems, however, in spite of the appeal of Derrida's argument, some-thing of a contradiction in terms. Certainly Derrida himself is aware ofthe problems it raises. For what in the world, he himself asks, would orcould allow us to "hear" or "speak" apocalypse in this self-critical andself-aware way, without being deafened by its desire or overwhelmedby its apparent immediacy? What on earth could possibly allow us torespond to such prophetic power without losing touch with acountervailing wisdom and restraint? For Derrida the practicalanswerto these questions-and there is perhaps only a practical answer-istwofold: it entails (1) an awareness of textuality, of mediations, of sets



within sets of internal quotation marks-that is, of the apocalyptic textas composed of a multiplicity of voices with varying degrees of author-ity, many of them heard or overheard at second hand; and (2) a re-opening of the poetic problem of tone.

Leaving aside for a moment the issues raised here for the distinc-tions between philosophy, literature, and religion, Derrida turns to thebiblical book of Revelation to demonstrate more clearly what he meansby an awareness of mediation and tone. He focuses in particular ontwo aspects of this book: its multiple levels of transmission (texts withintexts within texts) and its repeated injunctions to "Wake up!" "Speak!""Write!" and "Come!" As Derrida points out, both the mediatedtextuality of this book and its urgent but enigmatic injunctions to actcreate interesting contradictions. In the first place, there are bothmultiple potential senders and multiple potential receivers ofthis mes-sage. The readers of this text mayor may not be its original intendedinterlocutors, and they are in any case being addressed by several speak-ers or writers, among them the narrator, his revealing angel, the angel'smentor Christ, and perhaps even in some sense Divine Authority itself.Furthermore, as we read, this variety of voices and interlocutors be-comes inevitably conflated into one, so that it is no longer easy to bearin mind these layers of mediation. We tend, then, at times very nearlyto drown in the sheer univocal immediacy of the text, though we areaware at another level of its polyphonic qualities. Given this situation,the message we receive becomes very problematic, and our own statusas adequate interpreters comes into question as well.

To specify these problems a little further, Derrida suggests that muchdepends, in reading Revelation, on the question of who is calling us to"wake up," "speak," "write," and "come" and in what tone of voice. If,for instance, the speaker of this text is simply John of Patmos, its puta-tive author, and the intended recipients are his potential disciples, theissue will be acceptance or refusal of sectarian allegiance to his cult orparticular version of the Gospel. If our sense of authority shifts, how-ever, to the voice of the angel, or the Messiah, or the deity, or the"unconscious mind," there will be quite different hermeneutic and prac-tical (not to mention ethical and political) implications and decisionsin each case. Crucial to them, Derrida argues, is precisely the problemof tone. For example, when the biblical verse says "Come!" the injunc-tion might resound in our ears as a command or an invitation, a prom-ise or a threat, a request or a solicitation, a demand or a plea. Each ofthese possible readings presumes a different theology, a different reli-gious (or secular) practice, and a different kind of interpretive commu-nity to support and validate its claims. Furthermore, as Derrida soacutely points out, there is no guarantee, no secure indication, no final


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grammatical, semantic, or syntactic determinant at all within the textas to which of these forms of address or tones of voice "should" pre-dominate. We have various clues, signs, and indications of the bestreadings, which it is the task of scholarship, criticism, and interpreta-tion (and also, for some of us, of devotion) to note and weight. Butanyone who claims that the text ineluctably compels one reading, onetone or another, will find it difficult to prove that case.

Derrida cites as a specific passage in which these questions aresharply focused Revelation 22:17. The King James version reads, "Andthe Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come.And let him that is athirst come." (Derrida uses another translation,with other nuances [92],but the fundamental issue is the same.) "Try,"Derrida suggests, "to say [or intone] the call 'come' as it is sounded inthis text. You will discover that it can be said in almost every possibletone, every possible register of voice" (94). How you prefer to renderthat register or voice depends very much on who you are, just as whoyou are depends very much on how you render it.

This radical indeterminacy of tone and address, Derrida argues, isthe very hallmark of apocalypse, and perhaps of every discourse thatclaims to reveal an ultimate truth. We know a text has become apoca-lyptic or revelational, he concludes, when we no longer know very wellwho is speaking or writing, whether human or angel or god or daimon,and in what tone of voice. In attempting to decide these issues, how-ever, as Derrida is also acutely aware, we have touched on the disci-plinary frontier that separates philosophy from literary criticism andapocalypse from poetry. For it is the task of poetry to speak in multiplevoices and to foreground that aspect of its mode, and it is the task ofliterary criticism to decide on the resulting meanings and appropriateresponses.

At this particular frontier, a very vexed one for both Kant and Derrida,we can perhaps rejoin Eliot as well, for Eliot had his own problems withthe distinctions between poetry and philosophy; and he too, well be-fore Derrida, realized that the practical issue at stake lay in those com-plexities of address, mediation, textuality, and tone deeply associatedwith the tensions between apocalyptic and wisdom modes of writing.Eliot's writing practice, of course, lay for the most part (although notexclusively) in poetry as opposed to philosophy, but there is evidenceto suggest that he arrived at some of his positions, both theoretical andpractical, by a similar, highly philosophical route.'

In Eliot's case the philosophy in question was that of F. H. Bradley,as Jewel Spears Brooker and Joseph Bentley have reminded us. Bradleywas the late idealist English philosopher who "deconstructed" ethicsand utilitarianism alike in a quasi- or proto-Derrldean way. If Eliot's



letters are any indication, it seems, furthermore, that the lesson Eliotmost profoundly learned from Bradley was precisely the lesson of tone.As he wrote to Lytton Strachey,

Whether one writes a piece of work wcll or not seems to me a matter ofcrystallization-the good sentence, the good word, is only the flnal stagein the process. One can groan enough over the choice of a word, butthere is something much more important to groan over first, It seemsto me just the same in poetry-the words come easily enough, in com-parison to the core of it-the tone-and no one can help one in theleast with that. Anything I have picked up about writing is due tohaving spent (as I once thought, wasted) a year absorbing the style ofF. II. Bradley-the finest philosopher in Engllsh-Appearance and Realityis the Education Sentimentale of abstract thought. (299)

As is so often the case with Eliot's apparently casual remarks, hemeant, I think, something far more precise here than his apparentlyofTh.and manner appears to portend. He meant in part that he hadlearned from Bradley a certain lesson, almost a trick: that of dealingwith potentially apocalyptic or ultimately compelling material-thepermutations of the Absolute or Final Truth-in an extremely detached,minimalist, and even clinical style or tone of voice. To put this a littledifferently, Bradley taught Eliot that you could, as it were, write Hegelin the key of Flaubert. Nor did Eliot fail to recognize, having Bradley'sbrilliant and effective example before him, that the resulting controlleddissonance might not only protect the writer against the worst excessesof apocalypse-those excesses Kant and Derrida alike so cogently pointout-but also generate a rhetorical power beyond anything a more ap-parently suitable match between style and substance could yield. Eliot'svocation was for poetry, not prose, but he needed only to apply thestylistic lesson Bradley's example offered to his own sphere to see itspotential.

Eliot had need of this lesson, for both apocalypse and wisdom havepitfalls for the poet that are similar to those faced by the philosopherbut that have a particular bearing on the poet's areas of special compe-tence. Among them, as we have seen, are the tonal errors of melo-drama and hysteria on the one hand versus banality and portentous-ness on the other. These dangers lurk everywhere in English literarytradition, from the hectic fevers of Jacobean drama to the didactic pi-eties of nineteenth-century prose, and Eliot's particular gift, especiallyduring his apprentice years, was to render them in such a way as tomake their false notes apparent.

For Eliot knew that before he could give these great discursive modesof apocalypse and wisdom their full weight, he had to understand their



lower as well as higher registers. In his early poems "Portrait of a Lady"and "The Love Song of I. AlfredPrufrock," for instance, and in "SweeneyAgonistes," we have almost every possible permutation of worldly wis-dom and false apocalypse, as the speakers vie with one another inarticulating attitudes from sophomoric weariness through affected cyni-cism to rhetorical side glances and stolen looks at the possibility ofdeath.

Indeed, the apparently minor but always compelling "Portrait" is infact a good place to see Eliot's first rather oblique approaches to wis-dom and apocalypse at work. "We have been, let us say, to hear thelatest Pole I Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips" (8-9), the youthful speaker of the poem begins, setting the scene withwhat no doubt passed for the height of wit and wisdom among theyoung of his circle. We collude with this somewhat callow youth, how-ever, at least long enough to experience the sense of speciousness andsocial embarrassment that attend the equally false wisdom of the Ladywho intones:

"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not knowWhat life is, you who hold it in your hands";

"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,And youth is cruel, and has no remorseAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see." (44-45,47-49)

There is, however, a deeper resonance than the merely desultory andpretentious tone of the persona here, a resonance closer to genuineinsight. This resonance is created by striking, though only very faintly,certain higher apocalyptic and wisdom notes. "Well! and what if sheshould die some afternoon?" (114), the speaker in the poem asks. Thequestion seems at first callow, even infantine, and yet with its briefglimpse of our common fate it suggests a deeper perspective thaneither character in the poem can quite achieve.

This deeper tone is far more fully realized in later and greater poems,though without ever quite quite leaving behind the more superficialmanifestations Eliot dissected so mercilessly in poems like "Portrait."Eliot could render, for instance, with uncanny accuracy a pseudo-apoca-lyptic feeling that is in fact, from a wiser point of view, mere hysteria indisguise. This tone is aptly caught in "Sweeney Agonistes," which de-scribes for our clinical delectation a moment of psychic collapse whenthe "end" does indeed feel "nigh." Sweeney recounts his experience asa common one, but it is no less compelling for that. It takes place"When you're alone in the middle ofthe night and you wake in a sweatand a hell of a fright," when "You've had a cream of a nightmare dream



and you've got the hoo-ha's coming to you." Sweeney's diction andthe sing-song and conventional verse pattern in which it is rendered dotheir own work of de constructing this specious apocalypse.

Eliot often used the poetic medium to undercut the apocalyptic tonein this way and to exploit the tensions generated by its collocation witha "wiser" or more "rational" point of view. His ability to do so was notsimply, however, a matter of poetic technique. It had to do with valuesas well as defenses, with matters of discernment as well as matters ofstyle, and in this respect his work grew incrementally in stature as hematured. Compare the feeble and febrile "'Ah, my friend, you do notknow, you do not know I What life is, you who hold it in your hands"with that voice in "The Dry Salvages" which intones:

It seems, as one becomes older,That the past has another pattern....

We had the experience but missed the meaning....

Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,Is not in question) are likewise permanentWith such permanence as time has....

People change, and smile: but the agony abides.(85-86,93, 104-08, 114)

Here we have the same content but an entirely different tone, and thetone makes all the difference.

Likewise with the Lady's wince-making appeal in "Portrait":

"You can say: at this point many a one has failed.But what have I, but what have I, my friend,To give you, what can you receive from me?Only the friendship and the sympathyOf one about to reach her journey's end." (63-67)

The lines' message in terms of content is not really so far from that of"What the Thunder Said":

Datta: what have we given?My friend, blood shaking my heartThe awful daring of a moment's surrenderWhich an age of prudence can never retractBy this, and this only, we have existedWhich is not to be found in our obituaries


134 CLEO MCNELLyKE.ARNS

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spiderOr under seals broken by the lean solicitorIn our empty rooms. (402-10)

The change in tone, however, is so profound as to alter the content inalmost substantive ways. In both instances the later poems move to-ward that "enigmatic desire for vigilance, for the lucid vigil, for clarifi-cation, for critique and truth," of which Derrida speaks.

Elsewhere, too, in The Waste Land Eliot offers an apocalyptic mo-ment still a little haunted, perhaps, by mere psychological malaise butcharged as well by a much more profound and persuasive vision of theabyss. Consider, for instance, that remarkable passage to which I havealready referred and which represents, I think, a high point of Eliot'smastery of the ambiguities of apocalyptic tone. It begins, "What arethe roots that clutch, what branches grow lOut of this stony rubbish?"(19-20). It continues, in lines made familiar both by their uncannyrhetorical power and by their frequent citation:

Son of man,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,And the dry stone no sound of water. OnlyThere is shadow under this red rock,(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (20-30)

The tone in this passage is extremely hard to specify. Part apoca-lypse and part Gothic shudder, it seems at once urgent with propheticvision and faintly aware of the possibility of self-conscious posturingand pastiche. There is great intensity here and a touch, just a touch, ofthe "hoo-ha's" as well. Eliot himself reads this passage, in the onerecording he made of The Waste Land, with a certain stress on theGothic shudder-"the horror, the horror," as Joseph Conrad would haveit. But the sheer rhetorical force of the injunction "Come" and the toneof the line "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" break through anyattempt to reduce them to a merely personal malaise, sounding andresounding, as it were, in so many registers at once that their powercannot be confined to any single speaker. Here we have discourse thatfits Derrida's definition of apocalypse as speech or writing that seemsto come from somewhere else, a somewhere deeper or higher than theusual level of consciousness of anyone person, mood, or speaker.



Nor is this the only instance of Eliot's use of a very complex tonalityand high foregrounding of mediation to allow wisdom and apocalypseto sound together and over against one another. There are a number ofinstances of his calculated deployment of all the devices of textuality-including parody, irony, indirect discourse, quotation within quota-tion, and the use ofvarious personae-to distance or shade these modesand to sound out their false as well as true notes. Thus we hear oroverhear in "A Game of Chess" the voice of genuine wisdom beneathTiresias's rather jaded "And I Tiresias have foresuffered all" (243), andwe detect or even half-create the voice of true apocalypse beneath thebartender's conventional "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" (141). As hispoetry matures, Eliot is increasingly able to isolate, pinpoint, and ex-plore these nuances of tone in apocalyptic and wisdom modes withoutthe need for masks or dramatic personae like the Lady and Sweeney toprotect him from their worst excesses.

In Four Quartets, for instance, much of the drama that sustains theselong and compelling poems consists precisely in pitting one tone, onemode, against another in an endlessly shifting series, a series in whichthe speaker or speakers are not just a single consciousness but a mul-tiple and at times even a collective one. In these poems the tone runsthe gamut from the lower and higher registers of wisdom to the lowerand higher registers of apocalypse, using one to counterpoint and attimes even deconstruct another. Eliot achieves this counterpoint intwo ways: first by juxtaposing a wisdom passage with an apocalypticone in a way that relativizes them both, and then by rendering typicallyapocalyptic themes in a typically wisdom tone of voice.

When, for instance, after Munich Eliot felt again with renewed in-tensity that so-called wisdom might all too easily lend itself to an eclipseor evasion of prophecy, he used apocalyptic vision to undercut andrelativize it in a sharp and decisive way. "East Coker" begins, as wehave seen, with classic and typical wisdom discourse echoingEcclesiastes 3. "In my beginning is my end" (1), it murmurs, and con-jures up human beings

Keeping time,Keeping the rhythm in their dancingAs in their living in the living seasonsThe time of the seasons and the constellationsThe time of milking and the time of harvestThe time of the coupling of man and womanAnd that of beasts. (39-45)

The mode changes dramatically, however, in Part II, which intro-


136 CLEO McNELLY KEARNS

duces an apocalyptic lyric, much heightened in tone:

Scorpion fights against the SunUntil the Sun and Moon go downComets weep and Lconids flyHunt the heavens and the plainsWhirled in a vortex that shall bringThe world to that destructive fireWhich burns before the lee-cap reigns. (61-67)

Flights like these are relativized again, in tum, when we are reminded,in the best Derridean manner, of their persistent textuality, their re-striction to a particular place and time, a particular speaker, with aparticular set of previous texts and positions ringing in his ears. "Thatwas a way of putting it," continues "East Coker," "not very satisfactory:I Aperiphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, I Leaving one stillwith the intolerable wrestle I With words and meanings" (68-71). Theeffect is to draw sudden attention to the mediated aspect of the cosmicrevelation, its casting in a particular and possibly dated mode of ad-dress and tone of voice. Wisdom then receives a further and even moredevastating analysis, this time at its own level of diction:

What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd the wisdom of age? Had they deceived usOr deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?

The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets. (73-77,79)

To juxtapose wisdom and apocalypse in this way is both to dramatizeand to call into question their differing angles of vision.

The effects I have been describing here depend, however, not onlyon a dominant or apparent suitability of tone to content but also, as inEliot's reading of Bradley, on a subdominant or subversive relationbetween them. Sometimes Eliot speaks the message of apocalypse in alow-key wisdom voice and the message of wisdom in a very intenseand apocalyptic one. Nowhere do we see this more effectively than inEliot's use of the Bhagauad-Gita in the third of the FourQuartets. It isthis particular instance of wisdom discourse versus apocalyptic dis-course which best reveals, I think, both their diametrical oppositionand their mutually qualifying conjunction in Eliot's work.

The Gita offers one of the more dramatic moments in all religiouswriting, for in it a typical wisdom discourse, celebrating the virtues ofequanimity, duty, acceptance of life's cycles, and respect for the world



as it is, is interrupted by one of the more terrifying apocalyptic visionsin world literature. In this book we hear or overhear Arjuna, the hero,ask to see Krishna, the incarnate Lord, as he truly is, not as hitherto inthe poem under the veil of a human body. Arjuna is given a vision sointense and so powerful that it completely undoes the yogic wisdomand inner balance he has struggled so hard to achieve. "I am timegrown old, creating world destruction," Krishna responds,

set in motionto annihilate the worlds;even without you,all these warriorsarrayed in hostile rankswill cease to exist. (11)

A sense of the cosmic backdrop, so to speak, revealed by this visionconditions our reading of the rest of the Gita, its immediacy lingeringand resonating against the continuing wisdom discourse which fol-lows. This whole sequence, moreover, comes to us, as does the revela-tion of Iohn ofPatmos, at second hand. It is all, as the frame of the Gitatakes pains to make clear, entirely overheard, overheard and reported,by one of Arjuna's opponents. Part of the drama of the Gita, then,liesin the way we are both made aware of and then challenged to forget itstextuality, its multiple levels of address, its quotations within quota-tions. The whole takes place, to quote "East Coker" again, "As, in atheatre," when "The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changedI With a hollow rumble of wings ... I And we know that the hills andthe trees, the distant panorama I And the bold imposing facade are allbeing rolled away" (113-17).

Eliot captures both the immediacy and the power of that vision ofthe Gita, as well as its textuality and theatrics, in "The Dry Salvages."The passage in question demonstrates the accomplished technique ofrendering apocalyptic vision in a dramatically low-key wisdom voice.Eliot states, first, a typical theme: "It seems, as one becomes older, IThat the past has another pattern." He then modulates, rather unex-pectedly, though only by slow degrees, toward the Gita's point. "Now,we come to discover," he goes on, and he might be speaking of eitherthe vision or the experience of reading it, that "the moments of agony"are "likewise permanent I With such permanence as time has."

People change, and smile: but the agony abides.

The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.And the ragged rock in the restless waters,Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;



On a halycon day it is merely a monument,In navigable weather it is always a seamarkTo lay a course by: but in the sombre seasonOr the sudden fury, is what it always was. (114, 117-23)

This apocalyptic message, however, is followed in turn not by a lift butby a tremendous drop in tone. "I sometimes wonder," the quartetcontinues, "if that is what Krishna meant- I Among other things-c-orone way of putting the same thing" (124-25):

That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender sprayOf wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been

opened. (126-28)

The passage then comes to rest in an aphorism that might come di-rectly out of Ecclesiastes: "You cannot face it steadily, but this thing issure, I That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here" (130-31).

It is this subtle interplay of themes and tones at many levels of tex-tual mediation that makes Eliot's handling of wisdom and apocalypseso powerful. Eliot establishes here, with extraordinary passion coupledwith extraordinary control, a unified stance toward the materials of hisart conditioned both by the simplicity of the sage and by the urgency ofthe prophet. This stance helps him to construct the point of view fromwhich, in other contexts, he makes the particular aesthetic, ethical, andpolitical judgments for which he is at once famous and notorious. Thesejudgments may be right or wrong, but they do at least have the merit ofa certain achievement behind them. For Eliot's poetry, in spite of itsreduction to a "monument" or a "seamark," nevertheless in the "som-bre season" or the "sudden fury" is "what it always was": a rock againstwhich the reader's sense and sensibility can test themselves again andagain without ever fully exhausting either its strength or its resistanceto facile readings and interpretations."

Princeton Theological Seminary

NOTES

1For an introduction to biblical criticism on wisdom writing, together withsuggestions for further reading, see Murphy.

2 For an introduction to biblical criticism on apocalypse and eschatology,see John J. Collins and also Adela Yarbro Collins.

3 See Smith for a thorough overview of Eliot's use of his sources, includingthe major books of the Bible.

4 See Selected Essays 219. For a fuller discussion of the influence of the



Bhagauad-Gita on Eliot's work, see my T. S. Eliot and Indic Traditions.5 Eliot's poetry is quoted throughout from The Complete Poems and Plays.

The numbers in parentheses after quotations from his poetry refer to lines, notpages.

6The lecture which became this essay was first delivered at a conference onDerrida's "Les Fins de l'homme" at Cerlsy-la-Salle in 1980. It was then trans-lated and published in the biblical journal Semeia and republished, with emen-dations, in the Oxford Literary Review. At about the same time the proceedingsof the conference were published in French by Editions Galilee. My treatmentof the argument is a free rendering of what I take to be its gist, made with theintent of opening up a highly elliptical discourse to as wide a readership aspossible. Naturally this process has its dangers. Consultation with the"original(s)" is advised.

7 Eliot's philosophical position, its consistency, and its importance to therest of his work are just beginning to come into scholarly perspective. Forfurther references see Brooker and Bentley.

6This essay is a revised version of the T. S. Eliot Memorial Lecture for 1991,sponsored by the T. S. Eliot Society and delivered at its annual meeting inSeptember of that year.

WORKS CITED

The Bhagauad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War. Trans. Barbara StolerMiller. New York: Bantam, 1986.

Brooker, Jewel Spears, and Joseph Bentley. ReadingThe Waste Land: Modern-ism and the Limits ofInterpretation. Amherst. U of Massachusetts P, 1990.

Collins, Adela Yarbro. "The Apocalypse (Revelation)." The New Jerome BibleCommentary 996-1016.

Collins, John J. "Old Testament Apocalypticism and Eschatology." The NewJerome Bible Commentary 296-304.

Derrlda, Jacques. "On an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy.""tLes Fins de I'homme' (A partir du travail de Jacques Derridai:" Cerisy-Ia-Salle, France, 1980. Trans. John P. Leavy, Semeia 23 (1982): 63-97. Rpt.Oxford Literary Review 6.2 (1984): 3-37.

--. Les Fins de l'homme. Paris: Editions Galilee, 1982.Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. New York: Harcourt, 1962.--. The LettersofT. S. Eliot, 1898-1922. Ed. Valerie Eliot Vol. 1. New York:

Harcourt, 1988.--. Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, 1964.Kearns, Cleo McNelly. T. S. Eliot and Indic Traditions: A Study in Poetry and

Belief. New York: Cambridge UP, 1987.Murphy, Roland. "Introduction to Wisdom Literature." The New Jerome Bible

Commentary 447-52.The New Jerome Bible Commentary. Ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A.

Fitzmeyer, and Roland E. Murphy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1990.

Smith, Grover. T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning.2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.


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