'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 'They called me the hyacinth girl.' --Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. ==================================== The word "yet" in the hyacinth passage has always bothered me. "Yet" is a word of transition and contrast; so in what way do the final hyacinth lines ("Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden") stand in transition and contrast to the opening two lines? I've been thinking again about the analysis of the hyacinth passage provided years ago by P. K. Saha. As you may recall, Saha pointed out that the lines "I was neither / Living nor dead" is the exact equivalent of lines in Canto 34 of Inferno: "lo non mori, / e non rimasi vivo" The Italian line represents Dante's sense of fear and paralysis when he sees Lucifer. Saha also pointed out that "Looking into the heart of light" is the equivalent of Dante's vision at the end of Paradiso of being consumed in the eternal light ["I fixed my gaze on the eternal light so deeply that my entire vision was consumed in it."] ". . . ficcar lo viso per la Luceeterna, / tanto che la veduta vi consunsi!" (Paradiso, XXXIII, 83-84). Saha's point is that the structure of the lines in the hyacinth garden section parallel the overall scheme of the Commedia itself, namely, a contrast of the vision at the end of Inferno, representing the ultimate failure of love as personified by Lucifer, and the vision at the end of Paradiso, focusing on the redemptive power of love. I (and others) have also conjectured that The Waste Land is (in part) an elegy to Jean Verdenal, a Frechman who died at Gallipoli in 1915. Some believe that Verdenal had a romantic relationship with Eliot that was depicted, in some transformed way, in the hyacinth scene. If we accept Saha's analysis, the hyacinth passage in "The Burial of the Dead" is about a lost love the combines a vision of God and Lucifer, combines a vision of overwhelming love and overwhelming terror. It seems to me that the "yet" demarcates the "awful daring of a moment's surrender", marks the exact instant when the relationship transitioned from "talk" to "action", from non-physical to physical. That's the monumental significance of that deceptively simply word, "yet". Because of Eliot's guilt over his homosexuality, once the relationship crossed the line and was consummated, an "awful" moment occurred. "Awful" meaning "full of awe / awe-inspiring"; "awful" meaning "dreadful". The moment of consummation represented, to Eliot, some impossible combination of meeting God and confronting Lucifer simultaneously. -- Steve --