Thinkings 001

From <http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/La_Figlia_Che_Piange>

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists…. The existing monuments [of art] form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered… the past [is] altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.^[1]

Eliot emphasizes both the way that tradition shapes the modern artist and the way that a “really new” work of art makes us see that tradition anew."

La Figlia Che Piange

1917

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— 
Lean on a garden urn— 
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair— 
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise— 
Fling them to the ground and turn      
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: 
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. 
 
So I would have had him leave, 
So I would have had her stand and grieve, 
So he would have left         
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised, 
As the mind deserts the body it has used. 
I should find 
Some way incomparably light and deft, 
Some way we both should understand,         
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. 
 
She turned away, but with the autumn weather 
Compelled my imagination many days, 
Many days and many hours: 
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together! 
I should have lost a gesture and a pose. 
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze 
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.