View source for "The Fire Sermon" Annotations

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==Section Title==

===[[Buddha]]===

The title of the section "The Fire Sermon" alludes to a Buddhist speech known as [[Pāli Canon Aditta-pariyaya-sutta:  The Fire Sermon]].  In this speech, Buddha relates the burning of fire with sinful passions such as lust, hatred, and sorrow.  The sermon is so powerful it frees the Bhikkhus from their passions.  The section concludes along the same lines, tying in the burning of passions with the feeling of despair so prevalent in modernist literature.

 Burning burning burning burning
 O Lord Thou pluckest me out
 O Lord Thou pluckest
 burning
 
A prior stanza refers back to the liberation of passions.

 He wept.  He promised a 'new start.'

This "he" adopts the role of a Buddha-like figure, who promises deliverance from the overwhelming feeling of dejection in modern society.

===[[The Bible]]===

==Stanza 1==

===William [[Shakespeare]]===

The lines 173-174 allude to Ophelia's death in [[''Hamlet'' (Act IV Scene VII)]].

 The river's tent is broken:  the last fingers of leaf
 Clutch and sink into the wet bank 

Line 257 alludes to [[''The Tempest'' (Act I Scene II)]]

 "This music crept by me upon the waters"

===Edmund Spenser===

Allusion to Spenser's [["Prothalamion"]]

 Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song

===Andrew Marvell===

Allusion to Marvell's [["To His Coy Mistress"]]

 But at my back in a cold blast I hear 
 The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

===[[Ovid]]===

Allusion to Ovid's [[''Metamorphoses'']]

 Twit twit twit
 Jug jug jug jug jug jug 
 So rudely forc'd.
 Tereu

===Charles [[Baudelaire]]===

Allusion to [[“Des Sept Viellards” from ''Les Fleurs du Mal'']]

 Unreal City
 Under the brown fog of a winter noon

===Walt Whitman===

Allusion to [[“These I Singing in Spring” from ''Leaves of Grass'']]

 Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

===[[Tiresias]]===

Allusion to the mythological story of Tiresias, a blind, wise Theban prophet who served seven years as a woman, causing him to be sympathetic to women’s issues.  After expressing his belief that women enjoy sex more than men to Jupiter and Juno, Juno struck him blind, but Jupiter gave him the gift of prophecy and the lifespan of seven men.

 I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
 Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

 I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
 Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
 I too awaited the expected guest.

 (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.)

===Robert Louis Stevenson===

Allusion to [["Requiem"]]

 Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
 The typist home at teatime

==Oedipus the King==

Reference to Oedipus the king of Thebes.  A prophet correctly predicted that he wouldd unwittingly kill his father and marry his mother.  After solving the Sphinx’s riddle, he was made king.

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 

===Oliver Goldsmith===

Allusion to [[''The Vicar of Wakefield'']]

 When lovely woman stoops to folly

===Thames Daughters===

Song of the Thames daughters (also known as the Rhine daughters), who were nymphs who sang a song to guard the Rhine gold.  The owner of the gold could rule the world, but would have to give up love and live in eternal desolation.

 Weialala leia
 Wallala leialala

===St. Augustine===

Allusion to [[''Confessions'']]

 To Carthage then I came