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Ryan Thomas
ENG 613
05/06/15
Ignoring the “Integral”
There is no doubt that T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is one of the most discussed poems of
the twentieth century and, as such, critics and theorists have been examining it ever since its
release in 1922. Eliot’s long poem is rife with symbolism and allusions which provides ample
fodder for dissection, examination, and explanation, but one of the facets of the poem that seems
to not have been abundantly explored is the shortest section of the larger work, “Death by
Water.” As the Norton Critical Edition of The Waste Land notes, Ezra Pound insisted that this
section of the poem was “an integral part of the poem” (16), yet the significance of this section
of the poem that Pound insisted was present hasn’t been explored as fully as the other sections of
the poem. I hope to change that in this paper.
By examining “Death by Water” and its origin in Eliot’s earlier poem, “Dans la
Restaurant,” I will make the case that Eliot actually inserted himself into the poem using Phlebas
(the Drowned Phoenician Sailor) as an allusion to his own work. This speculation will
encompass the Tarot reading from the opening section, “The Burial of the Dead,” and work
toward proving that Eliot was forecasting his own future using Madame Sosostris’s turning of
the cards and the shortest section of the poem to convey his own feelings of weariness and
disillusionment. I will also examine how “Death by Water” touches on almost every other part of
The Waste Land and how its treatment of water as a vehicle for death and forgetfulness changes
the pervasive theme of water as a needed substance that carries through much of the rest of
poem. With an exploration of pervious scholarship on the Tarot reading and a thorough analysis
of how Eliot adapted “Dans la Restaurant” into “Death by Water” I will attempt to uncover just
how “integral” this section of The Waste Land really is to the poem at large.
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It is impossible to examine “Death by Water” without first taking a speculative look at
where Eliot first introduces Phlebas to the readers in the Tarot reading from the first section of
the poem, “Burial of the Dead.” In Eliot’s notes to The Waste Land he made the comment “I am
not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously
departed to suit my own convenience” (Eliot 22), yet according to scholars such as Max Nanny
and Tom Gibbons, Eliot’s claim of ignorance of the Tarot cards doesn’t seem to hold water. In
his article, Gibbons postulates that Eliot “knew considerably more about the Tarot pack than he
was willing to admit in 1922” (561) and goes on to identify the cards played by Madam Sosostris
in an attempt to prove that Eliot had a real and usable understanding of the Tarot. The author
points out that the cards that are played contributes to the meaningful organization of The Waste
Land and that Eliot purposefully blunted his knowledge of the Tarot pack in his notes on the
poem due to not wanting to be seen as interested in the occult.
This fear of being associated with occult might stem from the overall evasiveness of
Eliot’s notes on the poem, as some scholars have postulated, but Brian Diemert offers a different
idea in his article “The Trials of Astrology in T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’: A Gloss on Lines
57-59.” In Diemert’s article, he explores the increasing legal pressure placed on “fortune tellers”
in England during the time of the publication of The Waste Land. Diemert notes that “a glance at
the Times of London in the years prior to the appearance of Eliot’s poem suggests […]
astrologers and other “fortune tellers” (crystal gazers, tarot readers, and the like) were frequently
arrested and brought before the courts on charges of fraud” (176). According to Diemert, this
created an atmosphere “wherein we see caution, diffidence, and stasis to be the norm” (176) not
only among the practitioners of these occult vocations but also their patrons. This could explain
why Eliot attempted to distance himself from such practices with his comment in the Notes
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section, but the use of the other, non invented cards of the man with three staves, the Wheel, and
the one-eyed merchant “provides conclusive,” asserts Gibbons that Eliot “was familiar with the
pack especially designed by A.E Waite” (561).
Max Nanny, in his article "'Cards Are Queer': A New Reading of the Tarot in The Waste
Land,” not only agrees with Gibbon’s assessment of Eliot’s broader knowledge of the Tarot pack
but also goes a step further in saying that not only was Eliot knowledgeable about the cards but
also well versed in how a Tarot reading would have taken place. This assumption changes Eliot
from an observer of Tarot to an actual participant. To make this claim, Nanny also references
Waite when he says “Madame Sosostris does not just enumerate a random sequence or selection
of cards, but that she starts with, and interrupts, a procedure of Tarot divination Waite calls ‘An
Ancient Celtic Method of Divination.’” (337). In today’s standards, the most popular way of
giving a Tarot reading is this “Celtic Cross Spread” and when looking at this divination
technique it is somewhat easy to make the assumption that Eliot was using this spread as the
inspiration for his reading in “Burial of the Dead.”
The Celtic Cross Spread looks as follows:
The first card that is drawn (1) is the Significator and represents the querent, or person getting
the reading. As the Significator, the card represents the person’s current state of being indicating
that Eliot used the drowned Phoenician Sailor to signify how he felt. This connection is made
later in “Death by Water” where Eliot uses a section from a previous poem of his, using a source
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outside The Waste Land to insert himself personally to the poem’s meaning. In doing so, Eliot
also gives the second card pulled, Belladonna, a personal connection to himself. In the Celtic
Cross Spread the second card pulled (2) is called the Crossing, and denotes a force that opposes
of influences the Significator. With this in mind, if the Belladonna card indicates women then
Eliot saw himself as being influenced or controlled by beautiful women who were dangerous or
even disastrous to him.
Nanny echoes this idea:
Now, I would agree with previous critics that Belladonna may be considered as a
covert reference to Eliot’s wife Vivienne (later Vivien) Haigh-Wood. For it was
she who affected the querent ‘generally’ and who principally created the
atmosphere in which he was forced to live and work. I think it is especially the
second (invented) attribute of this card, ‘The lady of situations’, which provides
one important clue to this identification. For in the light of our knowledge that
Vivien was nervous and hysterical, suffering from ‘chronic illness”, I suggest that
‘situations’ must be interpreted as meaning physical condition, state of
health’”(341).
Nanny broaches the subject of the unidentifiable, or invented, cards of the Phoenician
Sailor and the Belladonna by indicating that “the reasons for Eliot’s departure from the
traditional Tarot to suit his ‘own convenience’ must be sought in the fact that the Sosostris
passage is of a strongly personal and confessional nature” (336). I agree with Nanny that the
Tarot reading was indicative of Eliot’s personal feelings by using the Belladonna to represent
either his struggle with his wife or, at the very least, his conflict with women in general.
However, the arrival at this conclusion is not based solely on the Belladonna card but, instead, is
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rooted in the notion, postulated above, that the drowned Phoenician Sailor is meant to represent
the author himself; a deduction that his its impetus from a close reading of the short section
“Death by Water.”
As stated in the opening of this paper, the fourth section of The Waste Land has gotten
the least attention over the years by scholars and critics. There are several possibilities for the
disregard of this section, one of which might be the relative brevity of its length when compared
to the other sections of the poem. “Death by Water” is, indeed, the shortest section of the poem;
with a length of only ten lines it is practically miniscule when held up to the other sections of the
poem. This overwhelming characteristic of the section has even led some scholars to make
arguments that it does even belong in the larger work and that its inclusion does nothing for the
overall narrative of The Waste Land except interrupt and slow down the pace of the poem.
Another possible reason for the lack of scholarship on the section could stem from the fact that,
unlike the rest of the poem, “Death by Water” is relatively absent of allusions; denying the
fodder by which many scholars feed on when dissecting Eliot’s work. Indeed, Eliot himself
completely skipped writing anything about “Death by Water” in his Notes on the poem; jumping
from “The Fire Sermon” to “What the Thunder Said” without offering even a glimpse of what
the connecting section between the two might involve. Yet, I believe that this exclusion by Eliot
is actually more telling of his intention for the section than if he had offered something by way of
explanation and in this absence of elucidation by the author lays the actual importance of the
section.
Before I attempt to make my case for that point, I think it is important to first look at the
origins of “Death by Water” in order to gain an appreciation for the ten lines that Ezra Pound
said where “integral” to The Waste Land as a whole. It is well documented that “Death by
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Water” is a reimagining of the last lines of one of Eliot’s previous poems, “Dans le Restaurant,”
which existed well before any of the other four sections of The Waste Land were ever written.
Pound knew this better than anyone since one of the only translations of the “Dans le Restaurant”
is an unpublished piece by Pound himself that exists in the Pound Archive located in the
Beinicke Library at Yale University. It is no secret that Pound had a profound influence on The
Waste Land, serving as an editor and creative springboard for Eliot during the composition of the
poem, so the fact that his notes to Eliot caused a reduction to the “Death by Water” section to
occur should come as no surprise. What does come as a surprise is just how massive a reduction
did occur in the section, begging the questions of why and to what end.
Christopher Pecheux asked this same question in his article “In Defense of ‘Death by
Water’” where he examines the original version of “Death by Water” and the eventual deletion
of the first lines of the section which he assures “invites an examination of its function in the
total poem and a verdict on whether it was truly dispensable” (340). From Pecheux we learn that
the original “Death by Water” consisted of ninety-three lines when Eliot submitted it to Pound
for editing and approval and that when Pound was done he had decimated the section and left
only the Phlebas passage mainly untouched. After this, Eliot asked the question that many
scholars have asked in the intervening years – “Perhaps better to omit Phlebas also???” (341). It
is Pound’s response to this question that has become noted over and over again by scholars,
“Phlebas is an integral part of the poem; the card pack introduces him, the drowned phoen. sailor
[…] Must stay in” (341).
So what did Pound see in the last section that was so “integral” that he felt okay with
cutting over eighty lines of poetry that “one can argue […] is necessary for the full effectiveness
of the lines on Phlebas the Phoenician” (Pecheux 341) but insisted that the remaining ten stand as
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the full text of “Death by Water”? Pechuex defends the original lines of the section and states
that the canceled passage “performs an indispensable function as prelude to the lines which were
kept” (344). This is the point at which I differ with Pecheux (and agree with Pound) in my
assertion that the deleted passage that precedes the section that we now know as “Death by
Water” was an essential omission and that this deletion, as stated above, allowed the section to
stand as a symbol for Eliot himself.
To arrive at this conclusion, one must look at the fact that “Death by Water,” as it stands
today, is essentially an allusion to Eliot’s own work and is the only instance in the entirety of The
Waste Land where Eliot uses his own work as a reference. This fact alone immediately makes
the section more personal that the other parts of the poem because by doing this Eliot essentially
inserts himself into the narrative. Pecheux mentions that the original lines held allusions to “the
two major literary influences” (346) of Dante’s Inferno and Tennyson’s “Ulysses” which is why
I believe that Pound made the correct suggestion to omit the bulk of the section and leave only
the allusion to Eliot himself. By doing this, the lines isolate only Eliot’s influence and, coupled
with the examination of the Tarot reading above, highlights Phlebas not as a mere “character” to
be lumped in with the rest but as a “representation” of the poet which can stand alone.
In the Tarot reading, Eliot makes an aside after introducing the Phoenician Sailor card in
order to make an important qualification about the card. “Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Look!” (Eliot 48) is an allusion to Shakespeare’s The Tempest that actually accomplishes two
goals: to indicate that Phelbas has been under the water for a long time and to indicate that he has
gone through a “sea-change.” The lines of Ariel’s song from The Tempest read as thus:
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made:
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Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. (1.2.460-65)
In the song, Ariel hints that even though Ferdinand’s father has been lost under the water for a
long time, what he once was has not faded/eroded but merely changed into something else.
Bones become beautiful coral and eyes become treasured pearls; both having changed from
something base to something “rich and strange” through the magic of the sea. By Eliot’s time,
“sea-change” had become an idiom that indicated a broad transformation (into something
better?) which makes the use of the allusion indicative of the fact that Eliot was hinting at the
fact that Phlebas (and by extension, himself) had gone through a transformation.
This transformation comes in the form of Phlebas, the character from “Dans le
Restaurant,” being changed into Phlebas, the representation of Eliot. It is useful to note here that
Eliot actually accomplishes this feat by making “Death by Water” a version of the lines from
“Dans le Restaurant” instead of making a direct translation from the earlier poem. In “Dans le
Restaurant,” the final lines are translated from the French as:
Phlebas the Phoenician, drowned a fortnight since,
Forgot the cries of gulls and the Cornish sea-swell,
And the profits and the losses, and the cargo of tin;
A current under sea took him very far away,
Took him back through the stages of his former life.
You can imagine, it was a painful fate;
Even so, he was once a handsome man, and tall. (Geary)
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Eliot’s original version of the lines from “Dans le Restaurant” seem to act as a
remembrance or a memoriam to Phlebas, but the changes that Eliot made to the final version that
became “Death by Water,” slight as they may seem, actually cause a “sea-change” in the
meaning of the short section. Where the original version almost asks the reader to remember
Phlebas, “Death by Water” transforms the lines into a parable warning the reader who might
think they are in control to remember the sailor’s fate.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss. (312-314)
Phlebas, being dead, forgets the things of his youth that identified him such as “the cry of
the gulls” and “the deep sea swell.” Since Phlebas was a sailor, each of these things would have
represented the good and bad parts of his life. The “cry of the gulls” might have represented the
freedom of the open water or the joy that might come with the finding of land after so many days
at sea (gulls meant land was near). On the other hand, the “deep sea swell” could represent the
uncertainty of sudden storms that sailors were always afraid of. These two competing ideas of
the “good times” and the “bad times” of Phlebas’ life are reinforced by the last line of the
opening part where “the profit and the loss” are mentioned. The profit and loss represents the
desire or strive toward something, whether good or bad; a characteristic that seems to not be
shared by any of the other “characters” from The Waste Land. Yet, this part of the section also
shows that that desire fades and that both the good times and bad times eventually end as the
same thing: forgetfulness.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
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He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool. (315-318)
In these lines, the “current under sea” represents the never-changing, steady march of
time. Despite what goes on above the waves (our mortal lives with our triumphs and
disappointments, or profits and losses) the steady “wheel” of time continues to turn and the
constant march of the waves continues to erode. This idea is indicative of how the things we
can’t see on the surface can still wear down a person, even when we think that we are in control
of the situations. This sentiment is highlighted by the next line as we see that the current has
“picked his bones in whispers” unlike the waves on the surface of the water that erodes with
crashes. Instead of paying attention to the obvious way that water erodes (waves crash against
rock and steadily wear away the surface) Eliot points out this idea that the “undercurrent” does
the same job but in a more quiet and subtle manner. Yet, the main focus seems to be on the slow
wasting away represented by Phlebas’ body despite what he may or may not have accomplished
in his youth/life. This deeper current is the brother to the more violent current that is able to be
seen on the surface of the water, but just because it “whispers” does not mean that it carries any
less of a threat of erosion.
“As he rose and fell” goes back to Phlebas as he was alive and has the double symbolism
of representing both his life on the water as a sailor and the general ups and downs of life
(harkening back to the good and bad times) that he shares with every person. Eliot points toward
the idea that this up-and-down motion is how Phlebas (and everyone else) passes through their
life. Phlebas looks back on “the stages of his age and youth” as he is “entering the whirlpool,”
indicating the notion that people look back on how they spent their life when the end is near. It is
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this looking back that is dangerous, because in the backward glance lies the desire which can no
longer be filled.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. (319-321)
The last part of the section finishes the parable and acts as the warning. No matter who
you are, whether “Gentile or Jew,” all people (and their accomplishments) end up the same –
nothing. The idea of “you who turn the wheel and look to windward” represents those think that
they are in control of their own destinies and who strive to be better; those who attempt to
improve their lot or move up the social ladder. Eliot accomplishes this analogy with the use of
the word windward which, in nautical terms, meant the point or direction from which the wind
was blowing. Thus, “to windward” meant to move into an advantageous position which is a
direction one would want to go toward if they were attempting to better themselves. Yet, the
narrator is warning those that are attempting this struggle and/or those that have already gained a
“windward” position to “Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you” (321) and
see where his efforts got him. The last line completes the parable that struggle and strife, profit
and loss, are all meaningless because they end the same way – with forgetfulness in death.
With this reading of “Death by Water,” it would seem that Eliot’s changes do not support
my idea stated above concerning its representation of a transformation (or seas-change) because
in the end there is no transcendence or transfiguration for Phlebas, only death. Yet, it is not the
change of Phlebas the “character” at which Shakespearean allusion in the Tarot reading is
directed, but rather it is concerned with Eliot transforming the character of Phlebas into a
representation of himself. By cutting the preceding lines of the section, and losing the allusions
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to other works, Eliot focuses “Death by Water” on the only allusion left – to “Dans le
Restaurant” and, by extension, to himself.
Thus, “Death by Water” becomes exactly what Pound claims it was, an “integral” part of
The Waste Land as a whole, because without this short section the drowned Phoenician Sailor
becomes merely an invented card in a fictitious Tarot pack. However, with “Death by Water”
functioning as a conduit between his previous work and The Waste Land, Eliot is able to place
himself into the poem as the querent of the Tarot reading and become invested in the outcome of
the reading as well as the outcome of the rest of the characters represented throughout the poem
as a whole. This makes the Tarot reading, as Nanny pointed out, a scene “of a strongly personal
and confessional nature” which, in turn, connects Eliot personally to the rest of the poem,
making the ten lines of “Death by Water” invaluable in its ability to clarify the author’s inclusion
into his own work.
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Works Cited
Diemert, Brian. “The Trials of Astrology in T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’: A Gloss on Lines 5759.” Journal of Modern Literature 22.1 (1998): 175-181. JSTOR. Web. 26 Mar. 2015.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Michael North. New
York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Print.
Geary, Seamus. “English Versions of Two French Poems by T.S. Eliot.” Expectation, My
Heaven and Dwelling Place. Blogger, 21 Nov. 2009. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.
Gibbons, Tom. “‘The Waste Land’ Tarot Identified.” Journal of Modern Literature 2.4, (1972):
560-565. JSTOR. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
Nanny, Max. "'Cards Are Queer': A New Reading of the Tarot in The Waste Land." English
Studies: A Journal of English Language And Literature 62.4 (1981): 335-347. MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Pecheux, M. Christopher. “In Defense of ‘Death by Water’.” Contemporary Literature 20.3
(1979): 339-353. JSTOR. Web. 29 Mr. 2015.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Complete Works. Eds. Johnathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen, and
Héloïse Sénéchal. New York: Modern Library, 2007. 6-51. Print.