Unreal City[2]
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides,[3] [4]the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants[5]
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour,[6] when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias,[7] though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist[8] home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest —
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular,[9] arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,[10]
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."[11]
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.[12]
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- ^ The title is taken from a sermon of Buddha in which he encourages his followers to give up earthly passions and seek freedom from earthly things. It's the longest section.
- ^ The setting is London. The time of the day is a fog winter noon. The city appears "unreal" from the beggining of the text.The entire city is devoted to commercial transictions.
- ^ Mr. Eugenides, which means "well born", he is now a vulgar man (he is a merchant, he speaks French and he is unshaven) Mr. Eugenides aks to the narrator, who is a man, to spend a weekend at the Cannon Street Hotel, which is a place famous for irregular sexual relationship
- ^ The first episode describes a homosexual relationship and it rapresents the loss of values.
- ^ "The pocket full of currants" is the objective correlative of sterility. Currains are the dessicated deadened version of what were once, plump, fertile fruits.
- ^ The second episode is a squalid seduction scene. The whole scene is an objective correlative of squalor, feeling of solitude, emptiness and indifference.
- ^ Tiresias is obliged to attend this scene of seduction. The character of Tiresias is very important as he is the one who has knowledge of both sexes and thus is qualified to summarise the human experience. In the character Tiresias we see the mithical method, in fact the mythical character has fallen, he can only assist without the possibility of action. Tiresias rappresents a glorious past in opposition to the terrible present. The role of Tiresias is also appropriate to the protagonist because he is now walking "among the lowest of the dead".
- ^ The typist is a liberated woman of the early 20s, she is indipendent and free but she has not any happiness for this, we can see this from the life she leads and from the place she lives.
- ^ The young carbuncular is the opposite of the Byronic hero. He is pleased with himself and he does not realise the woman's indifference.
- ^ Between the typist and the young carbuncular there are not romantic feelings, Eliot in fact underlines the sterility and the routine quality of this sexual act.
- ^ The reaction of the typist rappresents the modern significance of lovemaking. Her "automatic hand" reinforces the impression of sterility, dullness, squalor, monotony and indiference of this relationship which is no more than a parody.
- ^ -The gramphone is the objective correlative of the feeling of mechanizatione
of human relationships.
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