"April is the cruelest month", "nonetheless:...

In response to Zhi Yun's query regarding "WHY APRIL?", this is my answer. Again, it's TSE. Let it be noted that I am NOT a fan of Eliot. My favourite poet, William Carlos Williams, HATES Eliot (and so i have to follow suit...). But Eliot's influence on English poetry and literature is immense. I don't know whether Orwell had this poem in mind when he penned 1984, but there's no doubt he read it. (EVERY educated person who knows English read and will have to read TSE, though you don't have to LIKE what he wrote, unlike Shakespeare...). [Incidenntally, Eliot, in charge of Faber and Faber books, refused publication of Animal Farm as he thought he thought it was too sympathetic to the Soviets].

I think my views of Eliot can be summarised by this short extract from Raymond Chandler. (I've not read this story in full; copied it from a website i found).

"`I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."

He smiled. "That is from the `Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.` Here's another one. `In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"

"Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women."

"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."

"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"

- The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

---
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).

The Waste Land
1922

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

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.

...

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'