სულისა და ხორცის დიქოტომია: თომას ელიოტის ,,ჰიპოპოტამი

აბსტრაქტი

სტატიიდან აღებული ავტორის ინგლისურენოვანი რეზიუმე:

‘Whispers of Immortality’ and ‘The Hippopotamus’ were composed in the middle of the World War 2, while Eliot stayed in London. Sharp ironical, grotesque imagery and even caricature are characteristic of both poems as is their rich allusiveness. They share much of their subject-matter and the theme, although that is hardly recognizable on the surface. Each in its own way, they both deal with the dichotomy of body and soul, the subject that would have been obviously religious had not Eliot regarded it with a great deal of ironic distance and skepticism of an erudite poet-analyst, and by no means with reverence of a devotional poet. Within the basic antithesis of “The Hippopotamus”, that of the hippopotamus and the True Church, smaller antitheses are developed by the major opposites.

For example, the hippopotamus seems firm but is frail, while the True Church presents no such opposition; yet this antithesis proves to be truer of the church. The “mysterious way” in which “God works”, gives us not only the satiric wonder of the sleeping church but also the sympathetic wonder of the limited hippopotamus taking wing and ascending to heaven. Striking similarities between the poem and Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) prove that part of Eliot’s design was to draw a parody analogy with this world famous piece of painting by borrowing from it some of the crucial imagery for his poem. All those quiring angels and ‘martyr’d virgins’, by whom the hippopotamus ‘shall be kist’, ‘the harp of gold’, on which the hippopotamus ‘performs’, ‘blood of the Lamb’, by which he will be cleaned, and ‘the True Church’ itself, personified by a group of high ranked clerics in papal tiaras, etc.

are depicted in van Eyck’ altarpiece, which is commonly considered to be one of the most important masterpieces of the 16th century Northern Renaissance painting. Behind all the external irony and grotesque, Eliot’s poem can doubtlessly be perceived as an inter textual context, where by means of a parallel extra textual associations, the motif of the Ghent Altarpiece is explicitly recognized. Parody of the Ghent Altarpiece in “The Hippopotamus” can be identified as part of the main current in Modernist aesthetics and its ideology, which repudiated root and branch the Renaissance values together with what was called ‘humanitarianism’ in T.S.Eliot’s time.

The attention, however, is drawn to what we now call the period of relative decline of the High Renaissance values, and the introduction of Mannerism and Baroque, strongly exemplified by the 17th century ‘metaphysical’ poetry and the Jacobean drama. “Whispers of Immortality” makes the use of both bodily lust and spiritual aspirations just like “The Hippopotamus” refers to The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in its imagery. In fact, both Webster and Donne are ‘possessed by death and see the skull beneath the skin’, but ironically, in Eliot’s system of values, ‘possessed’ is quite naturally perceived as ‘obsessed’, and obsession by death acquires a highly dubious meaning.

In the 17th century lyrics, as well as in the high society jargon of the time ‘to die’ often constituted an euphemism for sexual climax (Cf. Donne’s “Canonization”: ‘We can die by it, if not live by love…’), the ironic innuendo here doubtless being that Webster appears to be sex-obsessed. Donn’s spiritual exercises too, especially his aptness “to seize, and clutch, and penetrate”, bear strong resemblance to a sexual contact, being in fact, its metaphorical description. It is obvious that the soul and body are merged in both Donne and Webster, as are their spiritual intentions and the underlying ironic sexuality. Poetically, this also is a ‘metaphysical’ poem, exemplifying Eliot’s thesis of ‘dissociation of sensibility’, which took place by the end of the 17th century “…and from which we never recovered”.

At a first glance, the Elizabethan and Jacobean authors are taken against moderns. In contrast to the spiritual aspirations of Donne and Webster, we are much possessed by Grishkin , no “breastless creature’, but giving promise of ‘pneumotic bliss’. Alien, overwhelming animal, and rank, the flesh now dominates man. Unlike Webster or Donne, we have to separate thought and sense, otherwise living sense will conquer our feeble metaphysics: But our lot crawls between dry ribs To keep our metaphysics warm. Grishkin (whose prototype has been a Russian ballet girl Serafima Astafieva of Diaghilev’s company, who stayed in London after Diaghilev had left) with her ‘friendly bust’, which gives ‘pneumotic bliss’ seem to represent the flesh per se, the body as opposed to soul, and so it does at a first galnce.

But the latent meaning of Eliot’s phrasing goes much deeper and reveals an absolutely different and even paradoxical attitude. ‘Pneuma’ (the πνευμα of “pneumotic bliss”) is the Greek word for breath but the Christian tradition starting with Philon of Alexandria, has attributed to it the meaning of ‘soul’. In fact, ‘pneumatology’ is a discipline in Western theology, which is dedicated to the studies of the Holy Spirit. It seems quite obvious, that just like the “metaphysical” and highly spiritual striving of Donne and Webster have a strong sexually determined underflow, Grishkin’s uncorseted and ‘friendly’ bust contains pneuma, and hence the most exceptional spirituality, associated with the Holy Spirit.

In fact, in “Whispers of Immortality” the dichotomy of body and soul is canceled, and the cancellation represented with bitter irony if not sarcasm. Body and soul coexist, if not in harmony, but for Eliot of the 1910’s, they serve as each others manifestations. Death is not a spiritual, but a biological matter marked with strong sexual implications, and life is lust personified in Grishkin, who is a carrier of “pneumatic” spirituality. Eliot’s “metaphysical” irony is part of general skepticism reflected in his early poetry, the quality reaching its climax in “The Hollow Men”, where there is no room even for irony anymore. The turn of the century and the 1910’s were the time when many distinguished men of letters reacted most painfully to the end of one of the longest and most productive periods in Western cultural history.

World War II and its consequences exemplified to them the end of the long Renaissance history, succeeded by the Age of Reason and Romanticism. In European minds, the culture of Victorian era, known for its show-off social harmony and hypocrite morals was also coming to an end. Upcoming was the composition of “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men”, of Joyce’s Ulysses and Kafka’s The Trial. The Western creative thought was dominated with the sensation of an overwhelming cultural and psychological deadlock and the premonition of crisis.

გამოქვეყნებულია ჟურნალში „სჯანი“, ტ. 9 (2008), გვ. 82–83. ნაშრომის გახსნა