"Death by Water" Annotations
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The title refers the reader back to Madame Sosostris' card reading in part one, "The Burial of the Dead" (see [["The Burial of the Dead" Annotations]] for more information). She bids her client to "fear death by water." | The title refers the reader back to Madame Sosostris' card reading in part one, "The Burial of the Dead" (see [["The Burial of the Dead" Annotations]] for more information). She bids her client to "fear death by water." | ||
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| + | An important point to note is that this section is really just a translation of a poem eliot had written 1916-1917 "Dans le Restaurant." Many early commentators thought that this section was based upon an understanding of a ritual in the Adonis section of Jessie Weston's ''From Ritual to Romance.'' In this ritual, as spread by sailors from Phoenicia (like Phlebas, possibly), a head made of papyrus was sent across the sea to celebrate the spring and the wedding of Aphrodite and Adonis. This would make the second stanza the experience of the head. '''However,''' Weston's book was only published in 1920, 3-4 years after Eliot had initially written the poem--an interesting mystery. | ||
===Lines 312-318, Ancient History=== | ===Lines 312-318, Ancient History=== | ||
