ELIOT'S HOLLOW MEN

THE HOLLOW MEN

- T.S. ELIOT, 1925

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
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

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct 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
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
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 of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
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 together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
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 but a whimper.

___________________________________

I heard this poem over the summer and it instantly felt like someone had dropped a leaden sphere into my gut. Wetness sprang involuntarily to my eye sockets. 

I later decided to read various analyses of the poem on the internet. (Man I love the internet. Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee.) 

There, I found a guy describing this last part of the poem - "Between the emotion and the response, falls the shadow" - like this: 

"it's the moment where one decides to be evil. That decision is such a tiny thing, much like a whimper...".

I can stare out the window pondering that sentiment for a long while.

Is there an internal radar which holds us, always, no matter what pop culture may tell us otherwise, to an ultimate idea of what a good life looks like? Or is that voice eroded - not swiftly - but far, far more subtly: in moments. Via things that we hear. On the radio. In Oscars acceptance speeches. In the mouths of those that we trust. In the mouths of those we distrust. And then ultimately - parrots that we are - in our own. 

The philosopher John Locke said: "We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the colour of our moral character, from those who are around us."

I do not always agree with John Locke. But this time I do.

Does this explain why we don't recognise ourselves from five years ago? All those little moments led to a lot of changes in us. Some good, some bad. Occasionally, over time, even people's eyes change. And all you know is that something has happened. They are not the same.

That nanosecond window of "decision" that the poem speaks of is not involuntary, like crying upon hearing especially haunting prose. It is preceded by making a lot of little calls. We all know with our knowers when we are making them, too. That's the worst part. 

Along my earth-stomping, I have had the extraordinary joy of meeting some of the best of humanity. These people paid in pain for the beautiful people they became afterward. And I have immense respect for the strength of their choices. And I want them to inspire mine.

We need to be more lucid than we are. More aware of the state of flux our characters tend to be in. So that when the shadow falls...

The anchor we've cultivated holds us firm to what we know.