News1 min ago
April Is The Cruelest Month, Breeding Lilacs Out Of The Dead Land, Mixing Memory And Desire, Stirring Dull Roots With Spring Rain.
21 Answers
Is it, or is this just a melancholy man's musings?
Answers
Best Answer
No best answer has yet been selected by sandyRoe. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.
For those in a similar position to me (i.e. ignorant 😋), I've got this off Google (not sure whether I've got it all, there's a whole book it seems, The Waste Land by T S Eliot) :-
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A 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. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
If not genius ichkeria, then I've been living my life haunted by the beauty and depth of rubbish. The opening of The Wasteland seems more and more perceptive as I age - and almost incredible that it came from such a young man.
It's the life imperative isn't it? No matter how unpromising and difficult we strive to continue. Cruel in many ways.
I'd have to have a re-read of the whole, Ich, before I could brush up on my lit.crit. enough to work out why you cringe a bit. From very-long-ago memories, (so I'll not vouch for it) I think it was phrased like that in order to act as the start of a change in mood of the poem. If you split up the syllables they are not dissimilar to the rumbles of distand thunder.
Gosh, all this before lunch!
I remember my English master robin atthill saying " pair-sed" as he attempted a few lines in 1965
https:/
he also wrote
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
which has probably bought in a lot more money to his estate even while producing one of the weirdest films ever made.
It's the cruelest Friday anyway as I sit in a layby at Drumochter pass taking my enforced break, 2 degrees, snow on the ground and currently raining.
To add to the fun I have a knackered wiper blade thanks to a suicidal pheasant resulting in an area in my eyeline that doesn't clear.
Got a petrol station sarnie though so mustn't grumble. 🙄
Related Questions
Sorry, we can't find any related questions. Try using the search bar at the top of the page to search for some keywords, or choose a topic and submit your own question.