A Pebble on the Beach

On the 23rd November 1925, one hundred years ago today; T S Eliot’s poem ‘The Hollow Men’ was published, as an artistic expression that can be taken to be one of the poets finest works, and as a set of cliff notes; but of what?Three years before the ‘Hollow Men’ Eliot had published another poem that went on to become acknowledged by many as the greatest modernist poem of the 20th century. The year was 1922, an extraordinarily creative time which featured the remnant of ‘The Lost Generation’. ‘The Waste Land’ by T S Eliot leading the way in poetry, Katherine Mansfield with her short story ‘The Garden Party’ showing her mastery of this genre, Scot F Fitzgerald with an anthology called ‘Tales of The Jazz Age’ including ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; a matter of age time reversal in real time, which was extraordinary for its weirdness, ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce; a book like not many others, before it, or perhaps since, and a couple of others: not so well known but nevertheless worth a mention because of the energy and output of the writers in the coming years; ‘A Cricketers Book’ by the Manchester music and cricket correspondent Neville Cardus, who set the bar as far as observational sports journalistic hyperbole went, and an interesting book called ‘They Call Me Carpenter’ by the American writer Upton Sinclaire, of whom Time Magazine wrote; “a man with every gift except humour and silence” and who twenty one years on from ‘The Waste Land’ would go on to win the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for his book ‘Dragons Teeth’. There was more in the poetry and literature of the time but things were happening in other disciplines and areas of life; George Mallory’s attempt on Everest, the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, found through excavation by archaeologist Howard Carter and the man who financed this working expedition; Lord Carnarvon. The artist who put powerful oils for the ‘Dawn of Waterloo’ onto canvas in 1895, published her autobiography in this year with the thoroughly no nonsense title of ‘An Autobiography’ by Elizabeth Butler. In science vitamin E was discovered; vital for fertility and reproduction, especially in humanities Waste Land, and in politics the rise of fascism in Italy (Mussolini’s March on Rome), the founding of the USSR and the Irish free state. As a sign of the times, and of things to come; the first radio broadcast, and also a history lesson that seldom seems to be heeded; that of hyperinflation, propagated by debt, and hasty consequent devaluing of currency. In this year of 1922 hyperinflation took hold in Germany, quite possibly fueled by debt from the first world war; something that repeats itself in unlearned cycles of meaningless repetition, along with placing profit before value, and consuming more than is needed, or indeed produced; inbalances leading into ‘The Waste Land’ which Eliot saw foreshadowing the involution of the existing civilization of his day, and of days ahead (involution as in the Chinese word neijuan).

As poets often seem to see it first: T S Eliot begins The Hollow Men with two short epigraphs. One about a fictional corrupted and brutal ivory trader, and one about an historical terrorist. This sets a tone; as they were both flamboyant characters in their own way; but in the end also distortions of what humanity can be, men of unnecessary violence and rapacious appetites,, amounting to little more than dangerous stimulous response creatures of distorted instinct that may as well have had their heads stuffed with straw.. The power of this type of poetry comes from the struggle the poet appears to be having with two sides of himself; with a false personality immersed in the superstition of materialism, and a repressed inner essence needing something more, swimming for its life in an overwhelming oppressive ocean of every day existence; as it yearns for something more than the naturalistic drowning; submerged and unable to make the effort to rise and breath in something better above the surface of appearances: it is the heart of the poet in conflict with itself.