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34. FRESH BLOWS THE WIND: See Wagner†, Tristan und Isolde 1.1.5-8:
“Fresh blows the wind
For home:
My Irish child,
Where tarriest thou?”
This is a sailor’s song overheard by Princess Isolde, en route to her loveless marriage to King Mark of Cornwall; Isolde wants to drink poison to escape her fate, but her maid substitutes the poison with a love potion. She takes the potion in front of the king’s nephew Tristan, the potion takes its effect and they fall in love. Compare Venus sending Cupid to poison Queen Dido with love for Aeneas, at Virgil*, Aeneid 1. 684-685:
“let thy secret fire
breathe o'er her heart, to poison and betray.”
See note 92 for the extended story of Venus, Aeneas and Dido.
TRISTAN was, with Parsifal of the Grail legend, one of King Arthur’s knights. See Weston**, The Quest of the Holy Grail. See also Dante*, Inferno 5.61-69, where Tristan commiserates with Cleopatra (see line 77) and the widow Dido (see above), condemned for their lust to the second circle of hell.
36. THE HYACINTH GIRL, reflecting the name of a perennial April wildflower, was initially a Spartan prince endeared by the sun god Apollo (and also, in other accounts, by the wind god Zephyrus). While playing quoits in the sun the prince was killed by a wind-blown quoit; Apollo raised a purple flower out of his blood, traced a mournful “ai, ai” on its petals and named it Hyacinth. See Ovid*, Metamorphoses 10:256-323. For other hyacinth references, see lines 37, 125, 176 and 323 and notes 39, 42, 71, 74, 76.5, 111, 125, 138, 176, 209, 214, 227, 311.5, 312, 323, 378 and 429.
39. AMBIGUOUS IDENTITIES recur throughout this poem. See Eliot* at note 125, tying the hyacinth girl, whose gender is already changed from its Ovidian source, to the drowned sailor with pearly eyes; this as the speaker’s own eyes are failing. See also lines 12, 39-40, 46-48, 54, 126, 207-08, 218-19, 312-18 and 320.
40. NEITHER LIVING NOR DEAD: See Dante*, Inferno 34.25:
“I did not die, and I alive remained not.”
See also Bhagavat Gita 2:11 (ca. 100 BCE, tr. Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, 1882):
“Learned men grieve not for the living nor the dead.”
Compare lines 117-126 (those who know nothing) and 182 (one who grieves).
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*see note 0.1 **see note 0.2 †see note 8
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