Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rickard A. Parker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: signs and wonders


On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:29:48 -0500, Terry Traynor <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>from "Gerontion":
>
>        Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign!"
>
>Does anybody know the difference between signs and wonders?
>
>Terry
>

As I wrote in another post I was reading chapter 25 of Henry Adams'
autobiography.  As I was something put the thought in my mind that
Eliot may have taken the technological devices written about by
Adams' as "signs" and the Godly miracles as the wonders.

He is one statement by Adams that may come closest to the idea:
   As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines,
   he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force,
   much as the early Christians felt the Cross.

Regards,
   Rick Parker


Here are some links and other bits of information that may be
helpful in a reading of "Gerontion" or else just a start on some
surfing. I'm including this information redundantly in two different
Eliot list posts on "Gerontion" that both mention Adam's chapter 25
of his autobiography.  One post deals with signs and wonders and the
other with the Virgin Mary and history.

Henry Adams was a third cousin of T.S. Eliot's father, Henry Ware
Eliot, Sr., whose mother was Abigail Adams Cranch, a grandchild of
Mary (Smith) Cranch, sister of Abigail (Smith) Adams.

Wikipedia article about
Henry Adams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Adams
Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 â?" March 27, 1918; normally called
Henry Adams) was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist.

Wikipedia article about the book
The Education of Henry Adams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams

Chapter 25 of The Education of Henry Adams
The Dynamo and the Virgin (1900)
http://www.bartleby.com/159/25.html

Eliot wrote a review of Adams' book.
C79. A Sceptical Patrician. Athenaeum, 4647 (May 23, 1919) 361-2.
A review, signed: T.S.E., of The Education of Henry Adams, An Autobiography.

In Chapter 25 of his book Adams writes of the Paris World's Fair of 1900.
Two prominent men mentioned are Langley and St. Gaudens.

Wikipedia article about
Exposition Universelle (1900)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_(1900)
The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in
Paris, France, to celebrate the achievements of the past century
and to accelerate development into the next.

Wikipedia article about
Samuel Pierpont Langley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley
Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834, Roxbury, Massachusetts â?"
February 27, 1906, Aiken, South Carolina) was an American astronomer,
physicist, inventor of the bolometer and pioneer of aviation.

Wikipedia article about
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (March 1, 1848, Dublin, Ireland â?" August 3,
1907, Cornish, New Hampshire), was the Irish-born American sculptor of
the Beaux-Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the "American
Renaissance".

Adams had previously commissioned Saint-Gaudens to produce a memorial
for his wife (who had committed suicide).  The public reaction was
disappointing to Adams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams_Memorial_(grave marker)


Also related to Eliot's poem "Gerontion" are allusions to
to Lancelot Andrewes:

Wikipedia article about
Lancelot Andrewes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot_Andrewes
Lancelot Andrewes (1555 â?" 25 September 1626) was an English
clergyman and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of
England during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I.
During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop
of Chichester, Ely and Winchester and oversaw the translation of
the Authorized Version (or King James Version) of the Bible.


Lancelot Andrewes: T.S. Eliot's Essay on Bishop Andrewes
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=288693049002

Lancelot Andrewes Works, Sermons, Volume One
SERMONS OF THE NATIVITY.
PREACHED UPON CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1622.
Preached before King James, at Whitehall, on Wednesday,
the Twenty-fifth of December, A.D. MDCXXII.
"Christ is no wild-cat."
http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/andrewes/v1/sermon15.html

Lancelot Andrewes Works, Sermons, Volume One
SERMONS OF THE NATIVITY.
PREACHED UPON CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1618.
Preached before King James, at Whitehall, on Friday,
the Twenty-fifth of December, A.D. MDCXVIII.
"Signs are taken for wonders"
http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/andrewes/v1/sermon12.html
corrupted?