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60. THE UNREAL CITY: Eliot*: “Cf. Baudelaire:
‘Fourmillante cite; cite; pleine de rêves,
‘Ou le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.’”
See Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal: Les Sept Vieillards (The Flowers of Evil: The Seven Old Men, 1867, tr. James Huneker, 1919):
“O Swarming city, city full of dreams,
Where in full day the sceptre walks and speaks.”
The Unreal City recurs at lines 60, 207, 259 and 377, and see also notes 208, 209, 248, 259, 374 and 376. Unreal or not, the City is also the name of London's long-standing financial district.
LONDON, the City and beyond, gets other nods at lines 60-66, 180, 207-208, 211-214, 258-260, 264, 275-276, 289, 293, 296 and 376, and see notes 66, 67, 69, 115, 209, 210, 215, 248, 258, 265, 266, 276, 283, 291, 293, 297 and 376.
61. THE BROWN FOG may allude to “the embrowned air” in Dante*, Inferno 2.1:
“Day was departing, and the embrowned air
Released the animals that are on earth
From their fatigues; and I the only one
Made myself ready to sustain the war,
Both of the way and likewise of the woe,
Which memory that errs not shall retrace”
THE GREAT WAR, now known as World War I, casts its shadow throughout this poem; see also notes 15, 18, 70, 115, 139, 200, 291, 331, 374 and 419. The crowd of lifeless city workers flows over the bridge, up the hill and down the street, with no mention of any water flowing under the bridge and only a brown fog above them. The human flow suggests a metaphor for the stream of dead and injured soldiers being sent home after the war. See Whitman†, Memories 6 (which in turn alludes to “the heads of the tired, miserable brothers” in Dante*, Inferno 32.21):
“With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads”
63. DEATH’S UNDOING: Eliot*: “Cf. Inferno III, 55-57:
‘si lunga tratta / di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto / che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.’”
See Dante*, Inferno 3.55-57:
“ ... so long a train
Of people, that I ne'er would have believed
That ever Death so many had undone.”
See also Inferno 3:35-36, 43-46, where Dante sees, at the gates of hell, how death has undone them by denying them:
“ ...the melancholy souls of those
Who lived withouten infamy or praise.
...And I: ‘O Master, what so grievous is
To these, that maketh them lament so sore?’
He answered: ‘I will tell thee very briefly.
These have no longer any hope of death...’”
Compare the Sybil’s wish to die at note 0.3: “‘I would that I were dead.’”
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*see note 0.1 †see note 2
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