<---BACK TO THE POEM
64. SIGHS AND THE DEATH OF AIR:
Eliot*: “Cf. Inferno IV, 25-27:
‘Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,
non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri,
che l’aura eterna facevan tremare.’”
See Dante*, Inferno 4.25-27:
“There, as it seemed to me from listening,
Were lamentations none, but only sighs,
That tremble made the everlasting air.”
Dante and Virgil have now passed through the gates of hell and are entering a suspended state of Limbo and an even lower level of hopelessness; see Inferno 4:41-42:
“For such defects, and not for other guilt,
Lost are we and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”
Compare Eliot, Little Gidding (1943):
“The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.”
Little Gidding would later be made part of Eliot’s Four Quartets†.
See also Heracleitus, On Nature (ca 475 BCE):
“Fire lives in the death of air; water lives in the death of earth;
and earth lives in the death of water.”
66. KING WILLIAM STREET runs from Lombard Street to London Bridge over the River Thames (see note 266). Eliot worked at the Lombard end of King Williams’ Street as a Lloyd’s Bank clerk from 1917 to 1926, a “stopgap” to make ends meet. See Letters*. See also notes 67, 68, 69, 209 and 214 for other references to Eliot’s employment.
67. CHURCHES appear several times in this poem. See lines 67 (St. Mary Woolnoth), 202 (voices in the dome), 265 (St. Magnus Martyr) and 389 (the empty chapel) and their corresponding notes. See also note 71 (God’s Acre).
St. Mary Woolnoth Church is at the southeast corner of Lombard and King William Streets, just across the street from where Eliot worked. The current structure was built in 1666, but the first Wilnotmaricherche dates back to 1191 and evidence of even earlier Roman and pagan worship at the site has been discovered beneath the building’s foundation.
68. NUMBER NINE: Eliot*: “A phenomenon which I have often noticed.”
In passing, Eliot hears “a dead sound on the final stroke.“ The ninth hour is the start of the workday, but nine also marks the hour of Jesus’s death (see Luke* 23:44), Beethoven’s ultimate symphony and the final circle of Dante’s Hell (see Inferno*, Cantos 31-34). Compare this to the first part of Eliot’s epitaph, at note 306: “In my beginning is my end.”
_________________________________________
*see note 0.1 †see note 0.5
NEXT NOTE--->
