How do
Yeats and Eliot present the past?
Both Eliot’s and Yeat’s poems explore the way that memory
shapes us and yet, when under scrutiny, it is unreliable, easily changed and
barely a remnant of what once was.
Eliot explores the way in which the past is the foundation
of our characters in Rhapsody on a Windy Night. The moon, despite being old and
having ‘lost her memory’ still acts like a young girl in her prime, and seems
unable to escape from her younger self. Eliot portrays her as a beautiful
society girl, who ‘winks’ and smiles’ flirtatiously at non-existent lovers
while she ‘smoothes the hair’, with the care she takes over her appearance
connoting that she was once very pretty. The moon is thousands of years old,
and the reader realises this through Eliot’s descriptions of her as ‘feeble’
and as having ‘smallpox while the moon is unaware that she is such a pathetic
figure. The moon may represent the way that mankind clings onto the past, and
its obsession with staying young, or the way that the past can be detrimental,
tricking us into living in a falsehood but defining our presonaltites. Its long
lasting effects are shown in the way that the moon ‘twists a paper rose that
smells of dust and eau de cologne’, as it is almost like a nervous tic or a
vehicle on which to take out her distress. The way the past mingles with the
present is shown in the way that the perfume of her youth mixes together with
the smell of dust of her present decay. The narrator experiences the same pain
as the moon does from remembering his past, as he describes it as the ‘last
twist of the knife’ indicating that the past stays with you but at a high cost.
Eliot could perhaps be suggesting that while memory defines us, it does not
always have a positive effect, and that we must continue living in the present
if we are to escape the pain of the past.
Eliot explores the way that memory can provoke emotions not
only in Rhapsody on a Windy Night but also in The Journey of The Magi and The
Burial of The Dead. All three poems
explore the pain that reminiscing gives them, although the past is full of
beauty. Marie in ‘The Burial of the Dead’ seems to recall her youth as full of
light and beauty as the ‘summer surprised’ them with ‘showers of rain’ and
‘sunlight’. This contrasts with what would seem to be Marie’s present, as her
tone abruptly changing from nostalgic and content to dispassionate and clipped,
perhaps showing how her circumstances have changed. There are 10 lines full of
joyous remembrances of a happy past, then a single line stating that now she
just reads ‘much of the night, and (goes) south in the winter’. The fact that
now she stays up in the dark and hides from real life, as well as the
connotations of bird migration when she ‘goes south in the winter’ suggests
that she is enjoys the freedom that her happy memories give her, and perhaps
she is ‘migrating’ or returning again and again to her past because she feels
‘free’ and happy. In ‘The Journey of The Magi’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy night’
the past has the opposite effect, hurting and numbing people. The memories the
narrator explores in ‘Rhapsody on a Windy night’ are no where near as pleasant
as Marie’s, with Eliot filling them full of grime, ‘cats... devour(ing) a
morsel of rancid butter’ and an ‘eye’ like a ‘crooked pin’. In this Eliot
explore the different effect of the past on people, but to both of them the
past, while provoking long gone emotions, is also painful, keeping them living
in their minds instead of the world.
Eliot and Yeats both investigate the way that long lost love
still intrudes upon the present. In Yeat’s poem ‘To a Young Girl’ he looks at
the way that the love he felt is still with him and that though ‘young girls’
think they are in love and indeed are the right age and probably of the right
sensibility, he still loves ‘more than another’ or at least can still recall
this love as though it had never gone. Unlike him the woman he loves ‘has
forgot’, meaning that now he is alone in his love, and the fact that she has
‘forgot’ might make it all the more poignant for him. The contrast in the two old lovers feelings probably
indicate their difference in feelings at the time of their love, as she ‘broke
his heart’ but in was only ‘her blood’ that was ‘astir’. Her lust compared to
his love is probably the reason that he remembers, and the differences in how
people remember the past is another way in which it shapes their present.
Perhaps Yeats is suggesting that the deeper the feelings the deeper the memory,
but in Eliot’s Rhapsody on a Windy Night we get no such comparison, as his memory
tortures him and drives him awawy from others as he walks the streets at
‘Twelve o’clock’. ‘The Woman’ described in the poem could be a stranger, a
prostitute, or perhaps a dead figure from his past. Whoever she is the name of
‘the woman’ makes her seem impersonal and a little frightening, and she could
be a metonym for all his relationships with women. The way in which these
figures of the past plague him though could perhaps indicate a deep emotional attachment,
and because she ‘hestitates towards’ him there is an implication that there may
be a relationship between them. In both the poems the narrators reflections of
women are not particularly pleasant or reassuring, again reiterating the
dangers of memory.
Eliot explores the way in which memories of the past decay
and alter, until they become like a ‘dead geranium’. The fact that the
‘geranium’ can still be recognised is significant though as it suggests that,
while memories retain their ‘skeleton’ they are just bare remnants of the
beauty and life that they actually contained whilst being lived out. Eliot
continues with his use of a nature lexis, describing memory as a ‘twisted
branch upon the beach/Eaten smooth, and polished’, which suggests that memory
is a natural thing, and therefore decays naturally. The way the branch has been
‘eaten smooth’ by the sea is also a natural process, but it is also sad as the
branch has lost part of itself and has become a ‘smoother’ and lesser version
of itself. This reflects the suggestion in the poem that memory is unreliable
as it no longer has its full form, and just as the branch has lost its rough
bark so do memory lose the things that displease or embarrass us, become
‘smooth’ and easier to remember. The ‘beach’ suggests that the branch is
constantly washed with the tide coming in, its outer surface eroding gradually
until it is barely recognisable to what it once was, much in the way that
humans look back into the past, altering their memories each time. The ‘branch’
becoming ‘smooth’ could also represent the way that humans easily forget the
past, as what used to be is gradually broken down and lost. Either way, Eliot
looks at the way we lose sight of and try to change the past, and while it is
natural to forget things if we are not careful we may lose them forever.
In conclusion I think that Eliot present memory as a
dangerous and potentially destructive thing, with Yeats backing him on ideas of
memory creating pain.
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