219. PERCEPTIVENESS: See John* 9:25:
“Whether [Jesus, by healing on the Sabbath] be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”
Compare Tiresias's ability to see (note 218) with that of Madame Sosostris (line 54), or of the one-eyed merchant with his allusion to the one-eyed Odin (lines 52, 54 and note 209), or, at the bottom of the sea, the pearly-eyed sailor (line 48). For more of the eye's limitations, see note 308.
FEELING OLD: For another perspective of an old, blind man, see Eliot, Gerontion (1920):
“Here I am, an old man in a dry month
...A dull head among windy spaces.
...An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
...And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.”
Gerontion had been part of an earlier draft of this poem but was cut at the suggestion of Ezra Pound. See F&T*, and see note 167.
See also Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (note 0.4):
“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
...
...I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”
Eliot wrote Prufrock in 1911 at the age of 26, feeling old before his time. It was first published in 1915, and Eliot’s first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917. Gerontion was written in 1919, three years before the publication of The Waste Land.
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* see note 0.1
