Mr. Beaver's advice

"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

The passage is from Chapter 8 in C. S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  It has been cited frequently in recent years in relation to the development of artificial intelligence.  I wondered about the original intent in 1950 in a book written for children, and I found this commentary in a literary stackexchange in 2017:

But what does makes sense is that Lewis is foreshadowing the central role that humans play in the history and salvation of Narnia. Remember that there is a prophecy that Jadis' power will be broken when two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve sit on the thrones of Cair Paravel. Only a human being can validly rule Narnia. By stressing that the witch has no human in her, Mr. Beaver is pointing out that she is not the true ruler of Narnia. That which looks human and is not is a pretender to the throne. Only a true human can occupy it.

That idea of the imposter, the thing that looks human and isn't runs through much of Lewis's work. It is there in Men Without Chests (part of The Abolition of Man) and it is there in Out of the Silent Planet where Ransom tries to explain to the Malacandrans what is wrong with Weston. It is there in The Last Battle, where Shift dresses as human and gets Puzzle to dress as Aslan.

From a theological point of view, Satan is the great imposter. Christ is the new man: that which it truly and fully human.

So no, this is not about the uncanny valley, it is about imposters, those things that set themselves up as good and true, as rightful rulers, but are not.

That was then, this is now.  I'm going to apply the rule to AI.

A review of J.D. Vance's book "Communion"

Excerpts from the London Review of Books:

Almost no politician​ writes his own books, and few people actually read them. J.D. Vance is different. Trump’s vice president was a writer before he was a politician, and brought a writer’s vices with him: a titanic but fragile ego, limitless self-interest and thirst for adulation, an unsleeping vigilance for any slight. Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s first book, published in 2016, described his childhood poverty and rise out of it, and made him the liberal media’s favourite hick-whisperer. Communion (Collins, £20), its sequel, purports to be a memoir of Vance’s disillusionment with a series of creeds – evangelical fundamentalism, Randian libertarianism, chattering-class liberalism – and his subsequent conversion to Catholicism in 2019. It is an obvious, if nebulous, manifesto for a presidential run. His publishers assure us that he wrote it himself.

Communion is a bad book. It is sloppy, unfocused, stylistically uneven, ethically vacuous, intellectually tendentious and politically cynical. Hillbilly Elegy indicted an Appalachian culture degraded through addiction, indolence and despair. Communion mounts a much wider and more diffuse attack on the values and motivations of liberal and professional America, represented by Yale University and the media. That Vance’s critique proceeds by caricature and supposition does not make it worthless, though he is hardly the first person to discover that members of the elite are inward-looking or self-congratulatory...

Political lying degrades both individual and system. Perhaps this accounts for Communion’s acreage of strawmen. During the 2024 campaign Vance peddled the racist lie that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Confronted, he admitted to ‘creating stories’ to advance his cause. He also likes a conspiracy theory, claiming that a 2024 aid package for Ukraine contained ‘a hidden impeachment clause’ against Trump. In January this year, after an ICE agent shot the protester Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis, Vance called her ‘brainwashed’, a ‘deranged leftist’ complicit in ‘a tragedy of her own making’. When ICE agents shot the ICU nurse Alex Pretti in the same city later that month, Vance claimed it was the result of ‘engineered chaos’ in local authorities compromised by the far left...

The chief emotion of Communion, however, is fear. Vance fears he will jeopardise his relationship with his wife, Usha (whom he met at Yale), because his parents’ relationship imploded. When his first son was born, he writes, ‘I felt one emotion above all others: fear.’ His fear is both personal, that he will fail as a father, and social, that his country will fail his son. Vance is not alone in this feeling. Fear – of pollution, invasion, the enemy within, modernity – is endemic in the ultra-traditionalist wing of the Catholic Church and across a swathe of the US, bristling and vigilant behind its guns. Both desire their institutions to become punitive monocultures, bulwarks against the outside world...

Why would anyone buy this? Vance has been a willing participant in a squalid government sunk in graft which has gutted the agencies that might restrain or regulate private avarice. The labour share of income is at a historic low. The most obvious question is not whether Vance believes what he claims to believe, but why, if he believes it, he acts as he does. Halfway through Communion he quotes, without irony, a recovering addict who passed on some homely advice: show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future. Perhaps Vance has forgotten who he’s been hanging out with...

Communion’s characteristic error is clearest when Vance dismisses criticisms that mass deportations are ‘too tough’, but thanks the Church for forcing a consideration of the ‘moral trade-offs’. Abstract strictness of policy is not the issue here, but wanton cruelty: the families fed maggot-infested food, the cells flooded with sewage, those beaten or asphyxiated by guards, or handed off to foreign torturers. Vance may desire ‘a more Christian economy’, but it is one ringed with razor wire...

I am lucky I'm not someone else

“It’s a troublesome world.  All the people who are in it

Are troubled with troubles almost every minute.

You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot,

For the places and people you’re lucky you’re not.”

Recently found this quotation about the "genetic lottery," so I've requested the book from the library.

Not worthy

The dark side of Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter, despite the efforts of Graham Greene and many others, is still tarred with a certain National Trust tweeness, even though her tales of murder and separation are among the darkest if funniest books ever written. Those books would be nothing without their illustrations, and in her masterpiece, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, she should have firmly established herself in a direct line of gothic illustrators stretching from Fuseli and Blake to Mervyn Peake. This picture, of Tom Kitten being turned into a roly-poly pudding, is among the funniest yet also most terrifying illustrations of the 20th century.[Martin Rowson]

Text and image from a gallery of writers' favourite classic book illustrations posted at The Guardian.  I was unaware of this supposed "dark side," but found two relevant commentaries, the first in a Guardian column in 2006:

The Tale of Tom Kitten does not teach adventurous disobedience; rather it tells us that disobedience is punished with violence. Or this, at least, is what I thought when I flung the book across the room in disgust (only, intrigued, to pick it up again soon after).

Tom Kitten and his siblings are smacked and sent to bed for their notional disgrace. Worse yet, when they continue romping in the bedroom, they disturb what Potter calls the "dignity and repose of the tea party". Can the reader who finishes the book rest easy that subversive Tom has triumphed? No: the fact is Tabitha Twitchit thrashes her children for losing their clothes. Imagine what grisly fate will befall them when she stomps upstairs from her ruined tea party! To her credit, Potter leaves the sadism of this neurotic to the imagination.

So far, my daughter and I have found Beatrix Potter to be a proselytiser for sadistic punishment, a sartorial fascist, a property-upholding reactionary, an obsessive-compulsive nutcase (or rather nut-kin) and, conceivably, a bystander in the face of an intolerable natural dystopia that, with her sick (though gifted) writer's mind, she culpably imagined. As an adult reader, I must say, I'm beginning to like her.

And this at Wig and Pen:

Use discretion when reading Beatrix Potter to your children. In almost every Potter tale, her main characters—everyone from Peter Rabbit to Jemima Puddle Duck—flirt with mortal danger...

The Silence of the Lambs has nothing on Potter’s description of the house and yard [in The Tale of Mr. Tod]:

The house was something between a cave, a prison, and a tumbledown pigsty. There was a strong door, which was shut and locked. [In the yard] there were many unpleasant things lying about that had much better have been buried: rabbit bones and skulls, and chickens’ legs and other horrors. It was a shocking place and very dark.

Peeking through a window, Benjamin and Peter discovered that Tommy Brock had retired for the night after stashing the brood—still alive and kicking--in an oven for safekeeping and for his next meal.

I have no personal insights to offer, not having read any of the canon.  Knowledgeable readers should feel free to offer comments.

Reposted from 2012 because I found it while trying to look up information on Beatrix Potter's use of cloche gardening on her farm.

Scribbles on a bookmark - solved with AI

When I read books I use white paper bookmarks so that I can jot down new words to look up. or pithy statements or clever insights worth quoting in TYWKWDBI.  The best bookmarks are cut-up greeting cards, which have white expanses and the proper stiffness.

Embedded above is a scan of the top portion of a bookmark I recently found in a pocket while doing laundry.   And to my dismay I had no idea what book I had been reading at the time, or how long ago.  I can still look up words, but how to retrieve the "advice" from some page 61? (I had already decided to skip the "cure for lesbianism" on page 32).

Does anyone want to try to guess the book, based on the words harvested?  Answer tomorrow.

Addendum:  I could not for the life of me figure out which book I had been reading.  So I asked AI:

I immediately remembered the book, which I had read because it was longlisted for the Booker Prize.  I had returned it to the library many weeks ago.  So I looked at my list of "Books read" and there it was - graded with a "2+" on my personal scale of 0-4.  

That rating meant it wasn't worth a potential future reread and not worth reviewing for TYWKIWDBI, so I won't be recommending the book here.  I may add attercop, inchwell, swingle scutch, becks, and casemate to my huge list of interesting words (sigil is already there).  And I've requested the book from the library again to see whether the "cure for lesbianism" or the "advice" are worth blogging.

I'm posting this now not for the book per se, but to make note of the amazing power of artificial intelligence.  I used the commonly-available and free "AI mode" on Google.  What amazes me is that it appears that 127 pages of this book have been loaded into a database.  So I wondered whether the book could be reproduced by asking the AI to "regurgitate" it passage by passage ("give me a sentence, give me the next sentence etc...).  This morning I asked...

That was followed by links (to New Direcrtions Publishing and to Penguin Books Australia) where I could purchase the book.  Interestingly there was no link to a third-party seller like Amazon, and (to my disappointment and that of John Farrier) no suggestion that "you can get this book from your local public library."

All of this would seem to be within the boundaries of copyright law, but it still amazes me that a book just published this past year has already been scanned into storage into a massive data warehouse that is guzzling cooling water somewhere in a rural agricultural area.

Humor for English majors

See also A Cartoon for English Majors.

Egyptian mummy buried with text from Homer's Iliad

Researchers discovered the mummy at a funerary complex located south of Cairo, in Al Bahnasa, the modern-day location of the ancient Greco-Roman city of Oxyrhynchus, during an excavation in late 2025. Upon examination, the team revealed a sheet of papyrus inside the mummy’s abdomen that contained text from the Iliad, the ancient Greek poet Homer’s epic account of the siege of Troy.

The passage is from Book II of the epic poem, in which Homer cataloged the Greek ships that came to do battle with Troy after Helen, the queen of Sparta and a daughter of Zeus, was taken there by Paris, the son of the king of Troy.

The researchers previously found scrolls in some of the other mummies interred inside three limestone chambers at Al Bahnasa, all of which date to the era of Roman rule over Egypt, which began in 30 B.C.E. and ended around C.E. 640. The newly examined mummy’s tomb dates to about 1,600 years ago, according to the researchers. None of the scrolls discovered inside other mummies at the site, however, contained any references to the Iliad, which would have already been considered a literary classic at that time.

I think it is reasonable to assume that this was not incorporated in the mummy as reading material for the afterlife.  More likely intended to grant safety for the "voyage" of the deceased.  

Image and text excerpt from Scientific American.

Asbestos-bound version of Fahrenheit 451

New York: Ballantine Books, 1953. First edition, #106 of 200 copies with limited issue asbestos binding, hand-numbered and signed by author on colophon. [viii], 199, (3) pp. Johns-Manville Quinterra asbestos binding, lettered in red. Fine, with light wear to crown heaviest to the rear, light bumping to bottom corners, trivial soiling. Two tiny spots to the textblock edge. Issued without a dust jacket. The classic dystopian, anti-censorship novel, plus two short stories "The Playground" and "The Rock Cried Out." A sought-after signed limited edition extremely uncommon in such stellar condition.

Image and description from a listing on eBay.  I did not know (or had forgotten) that such versions existed.  A tip of the hat to Neatorama for the info.  I'll keep my eyes peeled for one at our next library extra books sale.

A cure for forbidden love

"If you are enchanted by forbidden love of a woman, you must put on a pair of shoes and walk about until the feet sweat. But walk quickly, so quickly that the feet do not begin to smell. Remove then the right shoe and drink from it some ale or wine, and at once all love for her will be lost."

I found that remedy in Olga Ravn's The Wax Child, which has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.  I won't be reviewing the book for the blog, but thought I'd post this tidbit now, in case any readers are having relevant problems.  Sounds like it might work...

"Remarkably Bright Creatures"

Here is the New York Times review of the book back in 2023.   The movie is on Netflix and is thoroughly enjoyable.

The tornado in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The depiction of the tornado in the 1939 film was intense and remarkably well-executed, even by modern standards.  I found a relevant Instagram post (which I don't know how to embed) that describes the basic technology used.  

The tornado isalso discussed at some length in an article at the Oz Museum.  English majors and other wordsmiths will appreciate this aspect:

“Cyclone” is the word L. Frank Baum chose to describe the Kansas storm in his story, although he clearly meant “tornado.” Shortly after THE WIZARD OF OZ book first appeared in 1900, Professor Willis L. Moore, then Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, wrote Baum’s publishers to urge them to correct the inaccurate usage. He received a response from Frank K. Reilly of The George M. Hill Company, offering that the change would be made in the next edition.  This, however, was never done, and any who purchase a copy of THE WIZARD OF OZ reprinting Baum’s original language will find that “cyclone” remains, again and again – as colloquial and as factually incorrect as ever. (MGM got around the issue in the movie by having Bert Lahr exclaim, in idiomatic fright, “It’s a twister! It’s a twister!” Later on, however, the screenwriters were loyal to Baum, and Judy Garland’s Dorothy explains to Toto, “We must be up inside the cyclone!”)

The article goes on to discuss the various static artistic depictions of the tornado in different publications of The Wizard of Oz, including this one -

- in which the tornado is still present in Munchkinland.  The Oz Museum article is nicely illustrated, but for explication of the movie technique, see the Instagram account.

Mispronouncing Henry David Thoreau's last name

As reported by The New York Times -

It turns out that the accent does not belong on the second syllable, as in “merlot” or “Poirot.” It rests on the first syllable, like “thorough” — as in, “I am thoroughly confused by this strange turn of events.”

This front-loaded pronunciation has apparently always been there, hiding in plain sight in the halls of academe, even if no one told us about it. “There is a consensus that “THU-ro” is the correct way to pronounce it,” John J. Kucich, co-president of the nonprofit Thoreau Alliance, said in an interview. “But somehow “Thu-RO” — here Kucich uttered the word the common way — “got into the culture, and it’s in the water to pronounce it that way.”..

“People aren’t used to seeing that name; it’s not a New England name, and they pronounced it THU-ro” she said in an interview. So did the man himself, judging from ample contemporary evidence.

For instance, there’s an 1860 journal entry from Thoreau’s neighbor Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott. “Comes Thoreau and sups with us,” Alcott wrote. “He is rightly named Thorough … the pervading Thor, the sturdy sensibility and force in things.”

And in a 1918 letter from Edward Emerson, son of Thoreau’s friend Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We always called my friend Thórow, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable,” he wrote...

(Both pronunciations are actually technically incorrect, at least from the French perspective, he adds; the proper French pronunciation would be “tu-row,” with the “th” pronounced as a hard T and an accent on neither syllable.)

Why did sand fall out of this old book?

"Today I looked at a handwritten account book from 1717. It listed a series of expenses paid by the city of Leiden (the Dutch city where I live) to various suppliers - of books, papers, pens. Being a medieval book historian, any source made after 1500 is alien. Because I am used to handling parchment books, it was odd to handle a book that was made out of paper - and a lot of it, for that matter. Also new to me was the fact that related materials were held together by needles and to see dozens of rare actual receipts, small slips that were crossed out when paid. The biggest surprise, however, was the material that came falling out of the account book: sand..."

Some readers here will already know the explanation for the sand; others can find the answer at Erik Kwakkel.

Reposted from 2015 because I encountered it while searching for something else.  Sadly, the Erik Swakkel link is dormant now (but the link is still accessible).  The site is a treasure trove for those interested in medieval books.

"The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous."

"The war is not meant to be won.  It is meant to be continuous.  The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor... The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact."

From the dialogue of the movie 1984.  Via for screencap photo.

Reposted from 2011 because it still has relevance.  And repossted again from 2022 because it is still relevant.

"The Count of Monte Cristo" now on PBS

Last night I finished the 8-part series available on the PBS app, and I'm happy to recommend it with some minor reservations.  The storyline created by Dumas is of course enormously complex and detailed (the Modern Library version of the novel in our library runs to over 1,400 pages), and that complexity has always presented difficulties for screenwriters of the almost countless adaptations on film and television.  Even with the luxury of almost 8 hours of broadcast time, there are huge sections of the novel that have to be skipped over or severely compressed.  Edmond Dantès' social education by Jeremy Irons in the Château d'If is compressed to a matter of minutes.  The discovery of the treasure is depicted in a couple minutes, and then moments later he's a wealthy man riding a horse.

On the other hand, the resources available for the current production are extensive and lavish.  The estates and castles must have been a godsend for the cinematographers.  The quality of acting is excellent through out.  I'm so happy to see cinema with cast members unfamiliar to me; the world is full of superb actors - it's not necessary to ride the coattails of celebrities as Hollywood does.

I believe the series will drop on public PBS channels near the end of March.  For now it can be viewed on the PBS app.  I welcome comments from readers who have seen this.

When people used to turn into trees

Interesting how often that theme has arisen in world folklore.  Text excerpted from The Overstory.

Foreplay by intellectuals?

It's very seldom that I give up on a book after I've read a couple hundred pages.  I used to be a "completionist" slogging on to the end, but as I've grown older I find myself bailing out more quickly on books and visual media.

I didn't know what to expect from Foucault's Pendulum, but since the book was written by the author of The Name of the Rose, my expectations were high.  What I encountered was a 600+ page display of extensive erudition, harvesting centuries of history, culture, religion, and the fine arts in an effort by the novel's protagonist to come up with a sort of "theory of everything" - a syncretism where all items can be "connected" by various mental gymnastics.  

I'll transcribe one passage which seems to exemplify my disappointment.  At the end of chapter 30, the protagonist is in bed with a young lady.  They have spent the night discussing Galileo, Richelieu, John Dee the English court astrologer, Torricelli inventing the barometer, fireworks in the Hortus Palatinus in Heidelberg, the burning of Comenius' house and library in Prague, the Rosy Cross and Rosicrucians, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Thirty Years' War, Ashtoreth, Descartes, the immortality of the Count of Saint Germain, and the canonical Gospels.  Then they turn toward each other as follows...

"Amparo, the sun's coming up."

"We must be crazy."

"Rosy-fingered dawn gently caresses the waves..."

"Yes, go on.  It's Yemanja.  Listen! She's coming."

"Show me your ludibria..."

"Oh, the Tintinnabulum!"

"You are my Atalanta Fugiens..."

"Oh, my Turris Babel..."

"I want the Arcana Arcanissima, the Golden Fleece, pâle et rose comme un coquillage marin..."

"Sssh... Silentium post clamores," she said.

That is literally the closing of the chapter.  The ellipses are in the text, not my modification.  I presume they represent the interrupted conversation of rising passion, and that the protagonists proceeded to have wild and crazy sex.

Maybe I'll try a re-read of The Name of the Rose instead.

"Spooning" - and "Prufrock" (updated)

The conventional definition involves sentimental love, but the photo source also offers this comment:

The word also had homosexual connotations, as in Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Says old A. E. Housman to young A. E. Housman: “Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you’d find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Found at Modern Foppery, via. 

Addendum: I originally posted this back in 2010.  This week I encountered the photo again while browsing the web, and decided to search for more information on the unusual imagery.  When I Googled several key words, the #1 hit was...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I have to admit that was a bit startling, especially since it was one of my favorite poems when I was an English major in college (never could quite memorize it all, but I can still call up key passages).  And the connection to the photo? - just the coincidental presence of the keywords I selected ("women," "spoons," "behind," and "back.")

So I'm going to use this serendipitous event as an excuse to post the poem.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.
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—	40
(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	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …	120
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.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.	125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Composed by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), and published in Prufrock and Other Observations (1920).

Addendum:  Here's a very interesting and perhaps relevant observation by reader frenchfarmer:

"Spoon" in french is "cuillère" and is pronounced "quee-er."

Addendum #2:
Reposted once again (August 2015) because this year marks the 100-year anniversary of "Prufrock."

When T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” made its first appearance in print 100 years ago, it did not in any way disturb the universe. Having languished in a drawer for four years, the poem was finally first published in the June 1915 issue of the Chicago journal Poetry, placed toward the back because the editor didn’t much like it... The reviews were a mix of indifference, confusion, and disdain. The Times Literary Supplement remarked that Eliot’s “observations” were “of the very smallest importance to anyone—even to himself.”...

Of course, it’s now clear that “Prufrock” is one of the great poems of the twentieth century. It is widely taught in schools, and its strange and subversive incantations are freely released into the unformed souls of adolescents without any regard for the consequences...

The nature of Eliot’s personal hell during his time in Paris was complicated and multifaceted, but the fact that he was still a virgin was undoubtedly part of it. Eliot suffered from a congenital double hernia, which meant he wore a truss from an early age. His cadaverous bookishness and universally remarked-on shyness didn’t help his cause with women at Harvard or anywhere else...

Continued at the link.

Reposted in 2026 because I ran across this old post while looking up stuff about Dante's Inferno, and wanted to make sure I had already blogged Prufrock.  Nothing to add now - just wanted to revisit the poem (and reader Elagie's salient comments).

The title of Finnegans Wake

Found on Facebook and fact-checked as best I can.  Apparently this is true.  Interesting (not that I'll ever read the book, but interesting nevertheless).  Posted for other English majors and copy editors, who are the only people who will care.