View source for "What the Thunder Said" Annotations

Go to [[The Waste Land Text]]

Go back to [[Shoring Up Fragments Against Our Ruin: Quotations and Allusions]]
==Title "What the Thunder Said"==
The title is taken from [["The Fable of the Meaning of Thunder"]] part of the ''Brihadaranyaka Upanishad'', a sacred sanskrit text of the eight and seventh centuries BCE, first translated 1817-1818.

==Stanza 1==

===Lines 322-330, Biblical Imagery===


    After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
    After the frosty silence in the gardens
    After the agony in stony places
    The shouting and the crying
    Prison and palace and reverberation
    Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
    He who was living is now dead
    We who were living are now dying
    With a little patience 330

'''[[John 18]]:3''' 

The scene in the poem draws its imagery from the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was betrayed.  However, the entirety of John 18 focuses on the denial of Christ, by Peter and by the Jewish people, who choose a criminal over him.  This is more imagery of betrayal, wherein the common people (gentile or Jew) refute truth and accept sin.  


'''[[Luke 22]]:44'''  

More imagery about the betrayal of Christ, but also an inclusion of the Last Supper--a holy ritual that utilizes imagery of blood and flesh as a kind of sacrifice.

==Stanza 2==

===Lines 331-359===

    Here is no water but only rock
    Rock and no water and the sandy road
    The road winding above among the mountains
    Which are mountains of rock without water
    If there were water we should stop and drink
    Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
    Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
    If there were only water amongst the rock
    Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
    Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit 340
    There is not even silence in the mountains
    But dry sterile thunder without rain
    There is not even solitude in the mountains
    But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
    From doors of mudcracked houses
    If there were water
    And no rock    
    If there were rock
    And also water
    And water 350
    A spring
    A pool among the rock
    If there were the sound of water only
    Not the cicada
    And dry grass singing
    But sound of water over a rock
    Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
    Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
    But there is no water

==Stanza 3==

===Lines 360-366, Emmaus & Shackleton===

    Who is the third who walks always beside you? 360
    When I count, there are only you and I together
    But when I look ahead up the white road
    There is always another one walking beside you
    Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
    I do not know whether a man or a woman
    - But who is that on the other side of you?

'''[[Luke 24]]: 13'''

The messiah appears on the road to Emmaus, but the two do not recognize him, until he breaks bread with them.  Interestingly, it is the women that assure the disciples that Jesus will rise on the third day, refusing to believe that he is truly dead.  Perhaps Eliot thinks there may be hope yet for women to bring their men back mentally?


'''''[[South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition'' 1914-1917''']]

==Stanza 4==

===Lines 367-368===

    What is that sound high in the air
    Murmur of maternal lamentation

===Lines 369-371===

    Who are those hooded hordes swarming
    Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth 370
    Ringed by the flat horizon only

===Lines 372-377===

    What is the city over the mountains
    Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
    Falling towers
    Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
    Vienna London
    Unreal

==Stanza 5==
    
===Lines 378-379===
    
    A woman drew her long black hair out tight
    And fiddled whisper music on those strings

===Lines 380-382===

    And bats with baby faces in the violet light 380
    Whistled, and beat their wings
    And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
    
===Lines 383-385===

    And upside down in air were towers
    Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
    And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

==Stanza 6==
    
===Lines 386-391===

    In this decayed hole among the mountains
    In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
    Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
    There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
    It has no windows, and the door swings, 390
    Dry bones can harm no one.
    
===Lines 392-395===

    Only a cock stood on the rooftree
    Co co rico co co rico
    In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
    Bringing rain

==Stanza 7==

===Lines 396-400===

    Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
    Waited for rain, while the black clouds
    Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
    The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
    Then spoke the thunder 400
    
===Lines 401-410===

    DA
    Datta: what have we given?
    My friend, blood shaking my heart
    The awful daring of a moment's surrender
    Which an age of prudence can never retract
    By this, and this only, we have existed
    Which is not to be found in our obituaries
    Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
    Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
    In our empty rooms 410
    
===Lines 411-417===
    DA
    Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
    Turn in the door once and turn once only
    We think of the key, each in his prison
    Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
    Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
    Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
    
===Lines 418-423===
    DA
    Damyata: The boat responded
    Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 420
    The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
    Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
    To controlling hands

==Stanza 8==

===Lines 424-426===

    I sat upon the shore
    Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
    Shall I at least set my lands in order?

===Line 427===

    London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

===Lines 428-430===

    Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
    Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
    Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie 430

===Lines 431-432===

    These fragments I have shored against my ruins
    Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.

===Lines 433-434===

    Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
    Shantih shantih shantih