Unlike some here I love TS Eliot. Thought I'd throw in a few dots to follow
if you're interested :-)
*This part of The Wasteland was written while Eliot was trying to
rejuvinate himself in Lausanne in late Nov. or Dec 1922.
*There are two references to singing grass in What the Thunder Said:
"Not the cicada
And the dry grass singing"
and
"In the faint moonlight, the grass in singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel"
*There is a distinct echo of the lines from 'The Wasteland' in 'The Hollow
Men' (1925)
"Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"
* There is a connection to Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' in both structure and
in the recycling of images.
*There is a connection to Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' and the section " I
Hear America Singing".
*There is a connection to Carlyle and his essay 'The Hero as Divinity'
(1840) which is not cited in Eliot's 'notes' but ....
"To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God
made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that
way now: but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call
a "poetic nature," that we recognize how every object has a divine beauty
in it; how every object still verily is "a window through which we may look
into Infinitude itself"? He that can discern the loveliness of things, we
call him Poet!"
* Thinking about all this made me think of a man called Roger Winfield who
lives in Bristol, UK like I do and who I have encountered here and there,
out and about with his aeolian wind harps. You can hear them on his web
site http://www.radisol.com/windharps/#
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