Unit V:

Sweeney Among the Nightingales

Thomas Sterns Eliot

Introduction: T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Among the Nightingales is a modernist lyric poem that first appeared in a Poems (1919). As a modernist work, the poem presents its characters as mundane and vulgar rather than as romantic or heroic.
Setting: The poem is set in a dining room of a restaurant in an unidentified locale in Uruguay.
Pharaphrase Stanza1: At a table in a public dining room is a brutish fellow with the neck of an ape and sideburns that extend to the jaw line and cross toward his chin. His name is Sweeney. His sideburns resemble the stripes of a zebra. Spreading his knees and hanging his arms at his sides, he laughs. His zebra stripes enlarge so that they now resemble the shape of the blotches on the fur of a giraffe. But they are stained, dirty blotches. Stanza 2: Sweeney's laughter belies the ominous mood of the evening. Outside, the moon trails westward in a stormy sky toward the River Plate. Ravens gather and the air reeks of death. Inside, Sweeney is on the threshold of sleep, guarding an exit gate from Hades, one made of horn. In Homer's Odyssey, Penelopethe wife of Odysseus (Ulysses)says dreams arise from phantoms in Hades and pass through either of two gates. One is a gate of ivory; through it pass false dreams that confuse the dreamer. The other is a gate of polished horn; through it pass "images of truth . . . with visions manifest of future fate". Apparently, Sweeney does not wish to know or does not care to know what the future holds for him. He is probably unaware of the ominous portents of nature suggesting that his death may be near, although he seems to become aware later (Stanza 7) that he may be in danger. Ro de la Plata could be a very oblique allusion to Agamemnon's bathtub, which had silver sides. Stanza 3: More portents appear in nature while a woman in a cape attempts to sit in Sweeney's lap. Orion and Dog refers to the constellations. Stanza 4: The woman, perhaps drunk, falls, pulling at the tablecloth and overturning a coffee cup. On the floor, she gathers herself and yawns, drawing up a stocking. Stanza 5: A silent man observes at a window while a waiter brings in fruit.

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees Letting his arms hang down to laugh, The zebra stripes along his jaw Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon Slide westward toward the River Plate, Death and the Raven drift above And Sweeney guards the horned gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas; The person in the Spanish cape Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth Overturns a coffee-cup, Reorganized upon the floor She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes; The waiter brings in oranges Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

Department of English Sem: III / Major 1: Poetry Title: Sweeney Among the Nightingales, T.S.Eliot Faculty In-charge: A.Vinodh

S.K.VELAYUTHAM WOMENS ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGE

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The silent vertebrate in brown Contracts and concentrates, withdraws; Rachel ne Rabinovitch Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

Stanza 6: The silent man withdraws while a woman named Rachel devours grapes. The word ne indicates that Rachel was born into a Jewish family named Rabinovitch but now has a different last name that of her husband. It is possible that her husband is in the room and, with his wife and the woman mentioned in the next stanza, is plotting against Sweeney. Stanza 7: Ms. Rabinovitch and the lady in the cape are thought to be plotting against Sweeney. Sweeney, therefore, declines their attentions to him and exhibits fatigue. Stanza 8: Sweeney leaves the room, goes outside, and stands at the window. Twining vines with flowers form a frame around his face. His grin reveals gold fillings in his teeth and perhaps a triumphant feeling that he has escaped the suspect ladies. Stanza 9: The host of the establishment has what appears to be a sinister conversation with someone, perhaps the silent man, while nightingales sing near a convent housing Roman Catholic nuns. Stanza 10: Nightingales also sang the day Agamemnon cried out that he had suffered a fatal wound. Later, the notes of their song (which can be interpreted as excrement) stain the burial cloth of the dead king.

She and the lady in the cape Are suspect, thought to be in league; Therefore the man with heavy eyes Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears Outside the window, leaning in, Branches of wisteria Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct Converses at the door apart, The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid droppings fall To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud. Summary The Epigraph: The epigraph is from Agamemnon, a tragedy by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus (525-456 BC). T. S. Eliot placed the epigraph in its original Greek wording: . In modern English, the quotation says, Alas, I am struck deep with a mortal blow. In the play of Aeschylus, a Greek king named Agamemnon speaks the words a moment before he dies. Agamemnon was the commander-in-chief of the Greek armies during the Trojan War. Following are
Department of English Sem: III / Major 1: Poetry Title: Sweeney Among the Nightingales, T.S.Eliot Faculty In-charge: A.Vinodh
S.K.VELAYUTHAM WOMENS ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGE

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the events leading up to his death, as recounted in the legends and myths of ancient Greece and in the play of Aeschylus. Before going off to the Trojan War, Agamemnon offends the goddess Artemis by killing a stag sacred to her. In retaliation, the gods withhold the winds necessary to propel Agamemnon's ships to Troy. To appease the deities, he sacrifices his own daughter, Iphigenia, gagging her to prevent her from cursing him at the moment of her death. The gods then loose the winds, and the Greek fleet sails to Troy. Agamemnon's brutal act has enraged his wife, Clytemnestra, envenoming her with a desire for vengeance. During the war, Agamemnon takes two Trojan women as his playthingsfirst, one named Chryseis, then another named Briseis. When the Greeks conquer Troy, Agamemnon captures another Trojan woman, Cassandra, and takes her with him as his mistress when he returns to Greece. Meanwhile, Clytemnestra has taken a lover of her own and, with him, plots the murder of Agamemnon. After Agamemnon arrives with Cassandra, his wife greets him as a conquering hero, rolling out a carpet of purple for him to walk on as he enters his home. Then, while he is bathing, she murders him. She and her lover also kill Cassandra. Clytemnestra tells citizens that she killed Agamemnon to avenge the death of Iphigenia and to vent her anger at his unfaithfulness. Agamemnon's murder was in part a result of a curse on his father, Atreus, and all his descendants. Atreus's brother, Thyestes, had pronounced the curse after Atreus murdered Thyestes' sons in a long-standing family quarrel. So it was that the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, inherited the sin and guilt of his father, just as Christians of later times inherited the sin and guilt of Adam and Eve. The curse eventually catches up with Agamemnon. Sweeney's Link to Agamemnon: The narrator of "Sweeney Among the Nightingales" describes the title character as a brute, comparing him to an ape, a zebra, and a giraffe. He then suggests that the two women in the poem are conspiring against this brute, implying that Sweeney has mistreated them. In this respectthe abuse of womenhe is like Agamemnon. In the second and third stanzas, the narrator also suggests that an ominous cloud, or curse, hangs over Sweeney just like the inherited curse on Agamemnon. Furthermore, he draws a parallelor seems tobetween the carpet on which Agamemnon walked and the grapes and wistaria (wisteria) mentioned in the poem. The carpet was purple; grapes and wisteria are usually purple.Since ancient times, purple has been the color of royalty of kings' capes, of emperors' robes, and of other trappings surrounding a monarch, including carpets. After the waiter brings in fruit, Ms. Rabinovitz Tears at the grapes with murderous paws. Is she another Clytemnestra, ready to strike out at the royal purple that is the symbol of kingly power? At this point in the poem, Sweeney leaves his chair (or shall we call it a throne?) and goes outside. There, he looks in through a window, his face framed by wisteria. Nightingales begin singing at a convent. Another name for a nightingale isphilomel, a term derived from the name Philomela. In Greek mythology. Philomela was a princess of Athens. Her sister, Procne, was married to King Tereus of Thrace. Not satisfied with only one of the sisters, Tereus lusted after Philomela and one day raped her. To prevent her from revealing his crime, he cut out her tongue. However, Philomel embroidered a tapestry depicting his brutality and showed it to her sister. The two women then plotted against Tereus (like the two women in the poem who appear to be conspiring against Sweeney) and ended up serving him his son, Itys, in a stew. When Tereus discovered what they did, he chased them with an axe. The gods then turned Philomela into a nightingale and Procne into a swallow. In later literature, the song of the nightingale became associated with tattling on promiscuous behavior, as in line 463 of Shakespeare's King Edward III: "The nightingale sings of adulterate wrong." The nightingales singing at the convent of the Sacred Heart appear to represent all the Philomelas whom King Sweeney has wronged. The poem ends before the reader learns what happens to Sweeney. The Meaning and Theme: The poem uses the brutish Sweeney to convey the idea that modern man is little more than a crude version of Agamemnonjust as corrupt, just as reprehensible, and equally deserving of an ignominious fate. That Eliot updated Agamemnon as an apparently roughhewn, uncultured boor may derive from his modernist view that everyday life is not a journey through the airy climes of romance and heroism.
Department of English Sem: III / Major 1: Poetry Title: Sweeney Among the Nightingales, T.S.Eliot Faculty In-charge: A.Vinodh
S.K.VELAYUTHAM WOMENS ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGE

Kurinjipadi

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