![]() Between the conception and the creation – what is a baby after it has been conceived but before it has been born? This is not to say that such an analysis of Eliot’s lines decides the matter once and for all, of course. What is being described here? One possible interpretation is that Eliot is talking about that other interim state between death and life – not at the end of our lives, but at the beginning. And indeed, when we reach the final lines of the poem, we are told that we are witnessing the end of the world, which happens anticlimactically, with a whimper rather than a bang. In five sections, Eliot lets the collective voice of the Hollow Men address us from their between-world which is at once a desert space (‘cactus land’) and a place suggestive of entropic decay, as though the end of the world or even the universe has come: that fading star, and the general lifelessness of the world the Hollow Men inhabit, imply that this land of twilight is a world in its death throes. ![]() ![]() The ‘Hollow Men’ of the poem are themselves trapped in some sort of between-world, a limbo or purgatory between death and life, existence and nothingness, light and darkness. Instead, we find ourselves in the desert wilderness that was glimpsed sporadically in The Waste Land: an arid land which has now become everything and is everywhere. But it's the world as a whole that comes to an ignominious end in the famous final lines of this poem.īut if we need a poem that expresses these views "The Hollow Men" is a masterpiece at doing this in a way that anyone can read and grasp.But whereas The Waste Land offered us a modern London in which people have lost their way – crowds of clerks commuting to work over London Bridge in some sort of stupor, typists having unsatisfactory romantic liaisons with estate agents on sofa-beds – ‘The Hollow Men’ leaves behind all traces of the modern world. ![]() Has there been a better illustration in literature of ineffectuality leading to refuge in religion? To be fair, the religious solution breaks down somewhat in this poem as well. Look at the impotence expressed in the lines:īetween the idea And the reality Between the motionīetween the conception And the creation Between theĮmotion And the response Falls the Shadowīetween the desire And the spasm Between the potencyĪnd the existence Between the essence And the descent Seems to be "Everything human is not only alien to me but rather disgusting." Great intellectuals have said "Nothing human is alien to me" but Eliot's view I still don't like Eliot's philosophy or his arid view of life. The Christian or anti-Enlightenment positions. View of life in this world, or in this society, without necessarily buying into Simpler language.Īnd because of all that, it's a much greater poem in my book.Īn unlettered person could read it and understand it as a depressing It contains no mix of languages, no show of classical learning "The Hollow Men" is shorter-alwaysĪ good sign. Children's rhyme next toĮven the images are back for a repeat: rats, broken columns and death,īut the differences are substantial too. The attempts to revive religious concepts, to offer hope for salvation in another The view of this world as insubstantial, a realm for the living dead. All the important elements of Eliot's longer, more difficult poem
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