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THE HOLLOW (1) MEN (2)
Mistah Kurtz—he dead. (3)
A penny for the Old Guy (4)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed (5) men
Leaning (6) together
Headpiece (7) filled with straw. Alas! (8)
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar (9)
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture (10) without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct (11) eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging (12)
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn (13)
Than a fading (14) star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate (15) disguises (16)
Rat’s coat (17), crow skin, (18) crossed staves (19)
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication (20) of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle (21) of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with (22) tenderness (23)
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope (24) together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid (25) river
Sightless, (26) unless
The eyes reappear (27)
As the perpetual (28) star
Multifoliate (29) rose (30)
Of death’s twilight (31) kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear (32)
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning. (33)
Between the idea (34)
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine (35) is the Kingdom (36)
Between the conception (37)
And the creation
Between the emotion (38)
And the response (39)
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire (40)
And the spasm (41)
Between the potency (42)
And the existence (43)
Between the essence (44)
And the descent (45)
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang (46) but a whimper. (47)
(1) Lacking in real value, sincerity, or substance: false, meaningless.
(2) Compare Shakespeare, Julius Caesar IV.ii “But hollow men, like horses hot at hand /
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.”
(3) Compare Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Kurtz, Conrad’s hero, grows corrupt
and insane in the African jungle.
(4) English children’s saying. Guy Fawkes’ conspiracy to blow up the House of
Commons (1605) was thwarted and Fawkes executed. The day of execution, November
5, is celebrated with children making effigies of the “guy” and begging pennies.
(5) Filled by packing things in, crammed.
(6) To cast one’s weight to one side for support or inspiration.
(7) An ornamental, ceremonial, or covering for the head (here, that of a scarecrow).
(8) Used to express unhappiness, pity, or concern.
(9) A room under the ground floor of a building, usually used for storing wines.
(10) A movement of part of your body, especially your hands or head, to show what you
mean or how you feel.
(11) Straight.
(12) To move freely to and fro especially in suspension from an overhead support.
(13) (Of a person) not happy or smiling; looking very serious.
(14) To become or to make something become paler or less bright.
(15) Done on purpose rather than by accident.
(16) Change your appearance so that people cannot recognize you.
(17) The fur, hair or wool that covers an animal’s body.
(18) Skin of a dead crow, separated from the body usually with its feathers.
(19) A strong stick or pole.
(20) The act of asking for something with a very humble request or prayer.
(21) A small light that keeps changing from bright to faint and to bright again.
(22) To shake in a way that you cannot control, especially because you are very nervous,
excited, frightened, etc.
(23) Delicacy; fragility.
(24) To feel about blindly or uncertainly in search.
(25) Marked by swelling: swollen, enlarged.
(26) Lacking sight: blind.
(27) To appear again after not being heard of or seen for a period of time.
(28) Continuing for a long period of time without interruption.
(29) Composed of many leaves or leaflets.
(30) Dante’s vision of Paradise in his Paradiso. Souls saved in Heaven arrange
themselves around God, like petals falling from a rose.
(31) The faint light or the period of time at the end of the day after the sun has gone
down, used to describe a state in which things are strange and mysterious, or where
things are kept secret and do not seem to be part of the real world.
(32) A type of cactus with prickles, and yellow flowers.
(33) Eliot’s version of the children’s game “Here we go round the mulberry bush.”
(34) An understanding, thought or picture in your mind.
(35) A word meaning ‘yours’, used when talking to only one person.
(36) From the Lord’s Prayer. (The Prayer with variant versions in Matthew and Luke
that according to the Lucan account Christ taught his disciples.
(37) The process of forming an idea or a plan.
(38) A strong feeling such as love, fear or anger; the part of a person’s character that
consists of feelings.
(39) A reaction to something that has happened or been said.
(40) Longing, craving.
(41) A sudden violent and temporary effort, activity or emotion.
(42) The ability to develop or come into existence.
(43) The state or fact of being real or living.
(44) The individual, real, or ultimate nature of a thing especially as opposed to its
existence.
(45) The shaping or development in nature and character by derivation from a source.
(46) In a way that everyone notices; with a powerful effect.
(47) A low weak cry that a person or an animal makes when they are hurt, frightened or
sad.
Analysis
. . . I wonder what an “intention” means! One wants to get something off one’s chest.
One doesn’t know quite what it is that one wants to get off the chest until one’s got it off.
But I couldn’t apply the word “intention” positively to any of my poems. Or to any
poem. . . .
. . .
…“The Hollow Men”, … originated out of separate poems. … Then gradually I came to
see it as a sequence. That’s one way in which my mind does seem to have worked
throughout the years poetically—doing things separately and then seeing the possibility
of fusing them together, altering them, and making a kind of whole of them. . . .
The above lines are from an interview during the poet’s final years.
One could easily see that Eliot has never been a true ‘imagist’ throughout his poetic life,
although he has used many images thoughtfully in “The Hollow Men” and many other of
his great poems. (Of which, this one doesn’t seem to be one!)
In the poem, apart from its explicit narration here and there, the relation between the
allusions and the text remains somehow vague and the structure is actually connecting
the allusions to the poem very loosely.
There are three different kingdoms spoken of in this poem;
(1) Death’s other Kingdom (‘Those who have crossed’ are in which, the chosen ones,
the elect, Heaven, most arguably).
(2) Death’s dream Kingdom (Where the ‘hollow men’ live, The Earth, or Hell, one can
never be sure of!), and
(3) Death’s twilight Kingdom (Purgatory, arguably).
The poem’s first part initiates in a dreamy atmosphere (after a party?!), when men’s
communication is over (‘dried voices’ are ‘meaningless’, like ‘wind in dry grass’), and
they cannot stand up on their own, ‘leaning together’. The only things left are ‘broken
glasses’.
Second stanza tells us more about the men. They are formless, colorless, impotent, and
motionless, not unlike their ‘Kingdom’.
In the third stanza, the ‘crossed’ are introduced, the ones with very strong stare, who
might have named us the ‘hollow’ ones.
The second part’s first stanza opens with the eyes of the crossed ones whom the
narrator, one of the hollow men, cannot stare at in present time. In the ‘other’ Kingdom,
the eyes are likened to ‘sunlight on a broken column’; the voices are ambiguous noises,
and the ‘fading stars’ might be the ‘direct eyes’.
When in the second stanza the poet doesn’t want to be ‘nearing’ the crossed ones, he has
to survive here, then, unwillingly disguising himself with valueless objects, ‘swinging’
in the wind.
The final stanza, telling the reader about a final ‘meeting’ between the two ‘ones’ in the
‘twilight’ Kingdom, is both speaking of death and preparing us for the third part.
‘Dead land’ in the third part’s first stanza is the ‘dream’ Kingdom, in which the hollow
men are preying, while dying.
‘The stone images’ in the first and second stanzas of this part are shown as some holy
beings, belonging to the past.
The fourth part continues what one might call Eliot’s painting of the ‘dream’ Kingdom,
‘valley of dying stars’, and the ‘broken jaw’, our Kingdoms.
Eliot then says in the second stanza that the hollow men are not certain about the
consequences of this ‘final meeting’. Their eyes are dying, there is no communication,
and they are by a certain ‘river’, which may lead them to the ‘other’ Kingdom.
In the third stanza, there in between the two realms, are the ‘eyes’ for which the hollow
men are begging for hope-giving. Their chances are not high, by the way.
The fifth part finally sums up what the poet tried to convey, it is the ‘twilight’ now (5
o’clock in the morning).
‘The Shadow’ is what we are, or the ‘reality’?! There is no answer. It is the Purgatory.
There is no form. It is the Biblical Kingdom. This is the contraction. The men are dying.
They can do nothing but whimper.
Thought or truth is not and never can be reality. There is a dualism of “that and what,”
of “fact and ideality,” of “existence and idea.” Though human thought attempts to
overcome this dualism and attain to reality, it can not succeed without losing its
character as thought.
Consequently, everyone inhabits the world of appearance and in the case of ‘the Hollow
Men’; it is a means of escaping ultimate reality.
And life in illusion or the world of appearance, that is, an occupation with self, things
and other persons, is the barrier between man and God.
And the ‘attachment to self and to things and to persons’ is not even a full-blooded
attachment, but rather an indifferent acceptance of the easy way. By this, they behave ‘as
the wind behaves’, blindly and without purpose aim. They experience the ideas, and
motions, the conceptions and the emotions, but between them and their fulfillments lie
indifference. They surrender without thought or struggle to the least spiritual desires.
“The Hollow Men” are not tragic because of the passion of their craving for what does
not exist, “but the irony of human mismanagement of the craving for a transcendent
reality that does exist. The theme is metaphysical blindness in a world of light.”
Nima Tahsili
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