FLOREAT LUX

On “The Waste Land”

“The Waste Land” has often been interpreted in a framework of spiritual angst, a view based in part on the many religious references, and perhaps also Eliot’s own uneasy embrace of High Anglicanism five years after the poem’s publication. But when you examine it more closely, this is not really supported by the text. The religious allusions are mostly from the Vedas or Buddhism, fueled no doubt by Eliot’s studies at Harvard, and are not so much in the form of religious faith as moral philosophy. To this author, “The Waste Land” is not at all concerned with religion but instead with what could be characterized as the Nothingness part of Being and Nothingness (not yet written, of course)—that is, it is not spiritual, it is existentialist. Existentialism is not religious; it is anti-religious—Sartre was militantly atheistic. In this context, religion could be characterized as something of a plug that people employ to shut out Nothingness, that is, to paper over a sense of purposelessness vaguely perceived but too difficult to dwell upon. This helps account for the strange anomaly of the universal agreement that “The Waste Land” is a great work, despite the fact that no one seems quite able to explain why. The key, I think, is in the Quixotic grandeur of the quest: “The Waste Land” seeks to look Nothingness full in the face, and this gloves-off determination to do so is the real source of the poem’s power. It also explains the notorious obscurity: the text is operating at the extreme limits of understanding, a place where language, shaped by the quotidian cares of everyday life, necessarily flounders. Hence poetry; in prose form, “The Waste Land” would be ridiculous.

One can’t trust Eliot on the matter. Consider his odd note to line 199, “I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines were taken; it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.” This sounds unlikely and, moreover, deliberately worded to sound unlikely. In his analysis, scholar Lawrence Rainey concludes, “this note may not be serious.” I agree: Eliot was prone to scattering a little sand in the eyes: for example, in the note to line 46 he delicately admits to having “departed to suit my own convenience” in making up [Tarot] connections; and line 356’s pseudo-academic note—“factitious,” according to Rainey—referring readers to Chapman’s Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, where they will find a misattributed quotation supposedly elucidating the line “Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop.” I think these oddities can be attributed to Eliot’s wry sense of humor—one mustn’t forget that beneath the buttoned-down Establishment Englishman there always lurked the genial Midwesterner, not opposed to a gentle prank or two, even in the greatest of all modern poems.

In Floreat Lux, “The Waste Land” is introduced when Sabrina reads it in the forest while leaning back against the dragon plinth—it is not an accident that the really weird stuff begins at that point. The aim was that “The Waste Land”’s sense of uneasiness and menace should be present throughout the remainder of the narrative, and occasionally this is explicitly emphasized through episode titles taken directly from the poem (“A Game of Chess,” “The Fire Sermon”) or alluding to it (“The Unreal City,” “Unburying the Dead”).

These notes on the poem are being penned at the beginning of April, appropriate given the famous first line, but actually the timing is coincidental. “The Waste Land” is a constant thing, a little nugget that lies just beneath the surface of consciousness, subtly shaping thought when thought runs in those directions. This author has three copies of it, which sounds obsessive but isn’t: the first is part of a collected edition purchased decades ago; the second is Rainey’s excellent 2005 study and annotation; and the third was a gift, a limited edition printed on handmade paper and signed by Eliot himself (signature pictured, and in that simple autograph we perceive again the plain Midwesterner, no?)

“The Waste Land” is frequently characterized as the greatest poem in Modernism, but in fact it might not even be the greatest of Eliot’s. Try watching the film of Ralph Fiennes reading Four Quartets, something done during COVID when there wasn’t much else for an actor to do, and see if that’s not the most engaging thing you’ve seen on a television screen in a long time.

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What was the inspiration for the “star journey”? (update)

The artwork “Creation (Megaplex),” installed in the elevators at the Standard Highline in New York’s Meatpacking District, has previously been cited here as an inspiration for Floreat Lux‘s star journey episode. That work has now been replaced by another Marco Brambilla video collage, “Heaven’s Gate,” still seductive, although more linear than the swirling vortex that fit so well with Sabrina’s hallucinogenic voyage into deep inner/outer space. In addition to the Standard’s elevators, the new artwork has been installed in more monumental form at various galleries in London, Las Vegas, Montreal, and Miami. A video of the installation at the last of these, including commentary from the artist, can be seen here.

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Does the book have a motion-picture analog?

No. The final film made by the late French New-Wave auteur Alain Robbe-Grillet, Gradiva (2007), captures some of the same style and sensibility—a nebulous search; present but imprecise menace; somewhat surrealistic & hallucinogenic. Also, the Gradiva legend, strange enough to have fascinated both Freud and Dalí, is dreamlike, much as the experiences that Sabrina undergoes. (See the accompanying tableau-vivant-like still from the movie: you can see how it would have appealed to those two dream-obsessed figures from the last century). But as an analog it soon breaks down—different stories, settings, underlying themes; Floreat Lux has other sources.

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Has Boyle’s Wish List been fully realized?

What Boyle actually meant by some of the items on his Wish List is not always clear, such as “Varnishes perfumable by Rubbing,” but here is an item-by-item accounting, assessing each in turn as having been achieved or not, with explanatory comments where appropriate.

The result: twenty items accomplished and four not yet. But all four not-yets are just variations on the same theme: making human beings physically more capable than nature created them. Now that we are on the brink of the era of genetic programming, it is reasonable to assume that these four will be achieved sometime in the near future, perhaps within a generation, thus completing a list that must have seemed to Boyle to be a wild dream, but most of whose items are so commonplace to us now that we don’t even think of them.

Photo: Portrait of The Honourable Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691), Irish natural philosopher. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.

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What was the inspiration for the “star journey”?

It is hard to say what lies behind an act of imagination, but Sabrina’s hallucinogenic voyage into deep inner/outer space has several identifiable sources. The fact of the scene being labeled “The Fire Sermon” points to two: Buddhism, by way of T.S. Eliot. Recent advances in the mathematics and physics of laser light—a field of study loosely labeled “nonlinear wave topology”—were also influential; these are manifested in Bronaryre’s description of the mechanism. And the imminent launch of the James Webb telescope, which promises to look back 13.5 billion years into the 13.8 billion years of the Universe’s existence, no doubt influenced the imagery at the end of Sabrina’s journey.

A vivid inspiration was the artist Marco Brambilla, whose work the author first became acquainted with in 2016 at The Standard High Line, down in New York City’s Meatpacking District. One of Mr. Brambilla’s video artworks—Creation (Megaplex)—is installed in the hotel’s elevators, otherwise darkened, and this has the effect of seeming to plummet passengers through cosmic spacetime as they journey up and down between the lobby and the rooftop bar—a clever way to display such art.

The accompanying photograph is a snapshot from the video inside those elevators, showing strands of DNA with life (including mermaids) emerging from the primordial swirl, but the full effect is inseparable from movement and needs to be appreciated in video form. So, if in New York, take a trip to The Standard High Line’s rooftop bar and enjoy the show along the way—or it can be seen here.

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What is the background photo at the bottom of the website?

The background of the Contact section is a shot from the interior of an E-Type Jaguar—the basis for Bronaryre’s—and is the same vehicle as on the rear jacket of FLOREAT LUX. The exact model is a 1969 Series 2 Roadster, right-hand-drive and British specification, which is to say that the 4.2-liter straight-six is equipped with triple SU carburetors—Sabrina’s “row of shiny little tea kettles”—not the dual Zenith-Stromberg units on American XKEs, fitted to meet US emission standards but reducing power. In this shot is visible “a lever to the left of the steering column” that Sabrina thinks of as “selecting flap for take-off” (in fact it chokes those triple SUs, enriching the mixture for a cold start).

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Is Temple Slaughter Preceptory based on a real place?

In its basic layout—Palladian structure, topiarized parterre, broad parade, clock tower, Neptune fountain, sounding room with a wonderfully ornate grille—Bronaryre’s estate is based on Cliveden House. Sabrina’s room, too, was inspired by Cliveden’s Lady Astor suite, including the fanciful Jacobean fireplace that fueled Sabrina’s phantasmagorical dreams (pictured).

However, there are many differences: Cliveden is located on the Berkshire-Buckinghamshire border, just ten miles northwest of Heathrow, and sits on the mighty Thames rather than the modest Windrush. Also, although it has been home to a Prince, two Dukes, an Earl, and four Viscounts, as far as is known no one claiming to be the Lord of the Underworld has ever occupied the place. Nevertheless, there is a certain scandalous reputation to Cliveden that might appeal to that gentleman: the original house was built by George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, son of a rogue and himself a rogue: he used the place to stash his mistress, and killed her husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, in a duel over her; between the World Wars it was the scene of lavish parties on a Gatsbyesque scale, hosted by the Astors and whose guest lists included luminaries as varied as Charlie Chaplin, Mahatma Gandhi & Lawrence of Arabia; more lately, it was the setting for the key events in the Profumo affair.

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Is it true that “no two genuine democracies have ever gone to war”?

As far as the author is aware, Bronaryre’s assertion is correct. In the first Indo-Pakistani War (1947) both sides were technically democracies, but the partition had just occurred, there were still independent princelings deciding which if either nation they would join, and there had been no instance of the peaceful transition of political power that distinguishes genuine democracies. In the 1965 & 1971 wars, Pakistan was under military dictatorship (there had been an election in 1970, but the winner was imprisoned by the ruling general). In the fourth war, in 1999, both sides were again technically democracies, but the fact that there was another military coup in Pakistan that same year makes it hard to assert that democracy there was as yet genuine.

The intermittent “Cod Wars” between Iceland and the United Kingdom (1958-1976) resulted in some ships being damaged in collisions, but there were no deaths and these conflicts cannot count as real wars.

More recently, in the Russia/Georgia and Russia/Ukraine conflicts both sides were nominally democracies, but the assertion that Russia under Putin is a genuine democracy is not credible.

Any counterexamples would be interesting to hear. In their absence, Bronaryre’s observation makes a compelling argument for a political system so effective in bringing peace to such a belligerent species, and should encourage the democracies to more resolutely close ranks against today’s global rise of authoritarian regimes.

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SS United States propeller

Where can Ravenscroft’s “magnesium-bronze monstrosities that…seem to shimmer” be seen?

All four of the SS United States‘ propellers are on display on the East Coast of the US. The inboard pair were five-bladed—one of them is located at the Mariner’s Museum at Newport News, VA, where the ship was built; the other at the State University of New York Maritime College in the Bronx. The outboard pair were four-bladed—one is at the museum adjacent to the US Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, Long Island; and the other (pictured, courtesy of the SS United States Conservancy) is at Pier 76 on Manhattan’s westside.

For those doing a transatlantic crossing on QM2, she carries a spare propeller on her fo’c’sle that has a similar machined effect, and which can be inspected close-up.

The Conservancy’s website, ssusc.org, has much more detail about the SS United States, including a paper discussing her propellers.

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Can the Tate Rothkos—just colored rectangles, after all, & originally intended to decorate a restaurant—really be disturbing art?

In 2012, one fellow found the Tate Rothkos sufficiently disturbing to physically attack them. He spent a year and a half in prison as a consequence, the same amount of time it took the Tate Modern to complete the restoration.

Whatever one’s opinion, the Tate Rothkos are certainly epic, despite being as brooding & brutal as the building that now houses them, the chimney of which appears in this photograph, dirty brown & windowless, rising like a malignant tower of Sauron on the South Bank—contrasting, as Sabrina notes, with the pale purity of St. Paul’s on the other side.

Also captured in this panorama is Bronaryre’s “unattractive hodgepodge of oddly-shaped modern buildings” downriver. The limestone structure in the left foreground is Somerset House, and on its flagstaff can be seen a glimpse of the same red-and-gold blazon of the house of Plantagenet that Sabrina scrutinized.

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