[log in to unmask] wrote:

> In fact, expanding on your point, there is a progression of
> "gardens" in 'Burial of the Dead' that may imply, if not a
> 'fall' from Eden, at least a journey from happiness into the desert:
>
> 1) First garden:
>
> "Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
> With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
> And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,"
>
> Here the narrator is physically with his partner. They are both alive.
> The incident is told as an unfolding story, a narrative.

I take this to mean that you think "us" to be TSE and JV (and maybe Marie.)
Eliot was in Munich in 1911. Verdendal appears not to have made the trip.
See the English translation of a letter on p. 26 of Letters (Vol. 1.)
Incidently JV mentions that he will be reading Conrad's "Youth" (probably
at TSE's suggestion.) A quote from "Youth:" "I remember ... the heat of
life in the handful of dust ..." Also in the letter: "One of my friends
would like to know in which parts of Germany they speak the purest German.
Could you tell him?" Maybe Lithuania?


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> Of course, in "What the thunder said", we get one more garden:
>
> "After the frosty silence in the gardens"


I also see this as qualifying as a garden too:
    In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
    Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
Cemetaries as gardens!?! Well, there is the Mount Auborn Cemetary
a short walk from Harvard.

Another place a garden shows up in TWL is Eliot's note for line 126
where he directs us to line 37 (--Yet when we came back, late, from
the Hyacinth garden,)

See if these fit into your garden progression in some way.


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> it is interesting that the second set of German lines are from an
> opera about love,


From what I've read in it and about it the words "passion" or "desire"
would better describe the theme of the opera. But of course that
doesn't really change your argument. I'm just hoping to open up a new
theme for musically inclined members of the list.


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> By the way, as I was looking at the facsimile edition I noticed that Eliot
> circled the entire hyacinth passage and drew an arrow that points to just
> under the Hofgarten passage. It looks like he was considering moving the two
> passages physically closer together, which would have further emphasized the
> relationship of these two sections.


My guess is that he didn't move it because it would have caused even
more people to think that Marie was the hyacinth girl.


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> It was at the battle of Gallipoli in May, 1915 that Jean Verdenal was
> killed. So I think the reference [Lithuania] is intended to "point" to
> Gallipoli.


The invasion at Gallipoli was intended to draw Turkish troops away
from Russia so it could fight better against Germany. Still, to say
that Eliot was using the "Bin gar ..." line to "point" to Gallipoli is
leaving out that the pointing was done after playing a few games of
cat's cradle.


---------------------


> On your web page, Rick, you have pointed out that the "Starnbergersee"
> (mentioned just before the characters enter the Hofgarten) is the
> historic site where a royal member of the Hapsberg family, Ludwwig,
> was found dead under suspicious circumstances, possibly having been
> killed by members of his own royal family.


Ludwig II (1845-1886) was not an archduke but King of Bavaria
(1864-1886) and was of the royal house of Wittelsbach (not an imperial
Hapsburg.) Ludwig II was Marie's second cousin and thirteen years
older (Marie Larisch's dates were 1858-1940.) Crown Prince Rudolph
was Marie's age, a first cousin, an archduke and, once Marie went to
live at her aunt's place around age 16, accessible.


---------------------


> I can imagine a conversation like this:
>
> "Ludwig was killed at the Starnbergersee by his own family -- kind of like
> the Russians killing their own Tzar. Say, you're not Russian are you, since
> your family seems to act like the Bolsheviks?"
>
> (indignantly) "I'm not Russian. I'm from Lithuania. Pure German."
>
> All this triggers a memory of Ludwig for Marie (who is NOT the speaker from
> Lithuania), who continues,
>
> "And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
> My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
> And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
> Marie, hold on tight. And down we went."


I'm lost here Steve. It looks as if you are saying that Marie said
"And down we went." but **NOT** "I'm not Russian. I'm from
Lithuania. Pure German." You are imagining a conversation here--who
do you imagine DID speak the "Bin gar ..." line? Certainly not Verdenal!


Regards,
    Rick Parker