Modern American Poetry

(^156) Robert Langbaum
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss,
we are justified in connecting certain details preceding this passage with
“Dans le Restaurant.” The dog may stand behind “‘Oh keep the Dog far
hence,’” and the customer who wants to separate himself from the waiter
may stand behind “‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’”
But most important, the connection with the waiter’s memory suggests that
the protagonist betrayed the hyacinth girl through non-consummation. The
experience took place after“we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,”
presumably in the rooms of one or the other. In both scenes, sexuality is
associated with rain and flowers; the hyacinth girl came back with her arms
full of flowers and her hair wet.
Having failed to consummate a union that would have combined love
with sex, the protagonist turns to the fortune-teller and then proceeds to live
out his fortune by experiencing dry, sterile lust. He fails the rich Belladonna,
overhears the dialogue in the pub, is propositioned by the Smyrna merchant,
conceives the typist’s fornication and the lament of the girl seduced on the
Thames:
“Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”
Finally the imagery of dryness and burning comes to a climax: “Burning
burning burning burning,” and we are afforded the welcome relief of
Phlebas’s “Death By Water.”
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
The passage holds out to the protagonist the possibility of a natural or pagan
salvation, the kind suggested by the song from The Tempestin which Ariel
makes drowning seem so desirable because it is “a sea change/ Into
something rich and strange” (I, ii, 401–02).
“Fear death by water,” said Madame Sosostris. “Here, said she,/ Is your
card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor”; at which point the protagonist recalled
“Those are pearls that were his eyes,” another line from this same song of