Modern Language Association

The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

Author(s): Genevieve W. Foster
Source: PMLA, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jun., 1945), pp. 567-585
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/459088
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 xxXV
THE ARCHETYPAL IMAGERY OF T. S. ELIOT

"TD ICHTEN heisst, hinter Worten das Urwort erklingen lassen."

These words of Gerhardt Hauptmann are quoted by C. G. Jung
in his essay "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetic Art,"'
as illustration of the poet's sense of tapping a deeper level of the psyche
than that which is called into play in everyday thought and action. This
lower level of psychic activity (Jung explains), that of the collective or
racial unconscious, contains the inherited potentiality of mental images
that are the psychic counterpart of the instincts. "In itself the collective
unconscious cannot be said to exist at all; that is to say, it is nothing but
a possibility, that possibility in fact which from primordial time has been
handed down to us in the definite form of mnemic images, or expressed in
anatomical formations in the very structure of the brain. It does not yield
innate ideas, but inborn possibilities of ideas, which also set definite
bounds to the most daring phantasy. It provides categories of phantasy-
activity, ideas a priori as it were, the existence of which cannot be ascer-
tained except by experience."2This theory is not peculiar to Jung, being
in fact rather prevalent in our time. "I began certain studies and experi-
ences," says Yeats, describing his activities in the year 1887, "that were
to convince me that images well up before the mind's eye from a deeper
source than conscious or subconscious memory."3 Jung, however, has
given the idea its scientific formulation. For these ideas a priori of the col-
lective unconscious, Jung employs the term "primordialimage," borrowed
from Jacob Burckhardt, or "archetype" as used by St. Augustine.4 The
peculiar gift of the poet, or of the artist in any field, is his ability to make
contact with the deeper level of the psyche and to present in his work one
of these primordial images. The particular image that is chosen will de-
pend on the unconscious need of the poet and of the society for which he
writes. "Therein lies the social importance of art; it is constantly at work
educating the spirit of the age, since it brings to birth those forms in
which the age is most lacking. Recoiling from the unsatisfying present
the yearning of the artist reaches out to that primordial image in the
unconscious which is best fitted to compensate the insufficiency and one-
1 Contributionsto Analytical Psychology, translated by H. G. and Cary F. Baynes (N. Y.,
1928), pp. 225-249. I shall refer to the English translations of Jung's work, which are more
accessible in this country then the originals. The German version of the above essay may
be found in Seelenproblemeder Gegenwart(Zurich, 1931).
2
Contributions,p. 246. s Autobiography(N.
Y., 1938), p. 160.
4For a fuller definition, see Jung's Psychological Types, translated by E. Godwin Baynes
(N. Y., 1926), pp. 554-560.

567
568 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

sidedness of the spirit of the age. The artist seizes this image, and in the
work of raising it from deepest unconsciousness he brings it into relation
with conscious values, thereby transforming its shape, until it can be
accepted by his contemporaries according to their powers."5In this view
the artist is the cultural leader indispensable to any social change. "What
was the significance of realism and naturalism to their age? What was
the meaning of romanticism, or Hellenism? They were tendencies of art
which brought to the surface that unconscious element of which the con-
temporary mental atmosphere had most need. The artist as educator of
his time-much could be said about that today."6
It is not so difficult a matter to trace the rise of the compensating image
in the poetry of a past period. There is a unique interest, however, in ex-
amining the work of one's own time for the same purpose. The chances of
accuracy are lessened, to be sure, by a view that is so close to the subject,
but the contemporary image, to the extent that it is understood, has
relevance to unsolved contemporary problems, and hence has a kind of
meaning for the contemporary mind that historical imagery cannot have.
The work of many writers of our time embodies the search for a new im-
age and a new value, and occasionally the reader seems able to trace that
value as it emerges. A group of the poems of T. S. Eliot exhibits both the
search and the rising image with peculiar clarity. The Waste Land, The
Hollow Men, and Ash-Wednesday,written over a period of approximately
ten years, describe the quest. In another group of poems, chronologically
overlapping the first-Journey of the Magi, A Song for Simeon, Marina,
and Triumphal Mlarch-the image sought in the first group seems gradu-
ally to be apprehended. The four poems recently collected under the title
Four Quartets exhibit an increasingly clear realization of the value in
question. It is of the first two groups of these poems, those describing the
search and the early realization of the value, that I wish now to write.
Lest the discussion that follows should seem fantastic or arbitrary to aca-
demic readers, I should like to explain that I am merely attempting what
I believe to be an ordinary Jungian interpretation of certain of Eliot's
images. It seems to me that this method, or something like it, can be ap-
plied very usefully to that part of contemporary literature that is written
largely from the unconscious level and that deals in images and imagina-
tive patterns and leaves the task of intellectual formulation to the reader.
The general substance of The Waste Land is much clearer to the reader
than it was twenty years ago.7 Parts I to II consist of a series of episodes
6 Contributions,p. 248. 6 Ibid., pp. 248-249.
7
Among the critics who have contributed to this better understanding are Edmund
Wilson, in his chapter on Eliot in Axel's Castle (N. Y. and Toronto, 1931), Hugh Ross
Williamson, in The Poetry of T. S. Eliot (N. Y., 1933), F. O. Matthiessen in The Achieve-
 GenevieveW. Foster 569

and comments unconnected except by their common theme. The reading

is difficult because all exposition is omitted; the reader must use his
intuition to determine when one episode ends and another begins, who
the characters are and what their relation is to one another, and what the
significance is of the episodes taken as a group. In this last task he is
given considerable guidance by the author's notes. The episodes chosen
involve characters drawn from various classes in England and on the
Continent at the time of writing-that is, in the years just before 1922.
The poem is, then, a criticism of post-war European society. But in the
note on Tiresias, who appears in line 218 of the poem, Eliot implies that
the poem is at the same time an exposition of the state of mind of an in-
dividual: "Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into
the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdi-
nand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two
sexes meet in Tiresias."8 This is to say that the poem is to be taken at
once subjectively and objectively. Although it deals with the ills of a
society, it is also the expression of a single protagonist, various facets
of whose character are represented by the different men and women of
the poem. This necessity for interpreting simultaneously in two modes
makes an unusual demand on readers accustomed to look for a single
"meaning" in a poem,9 but it is familiar enough to those acquainted with
Jung's distinction between the objective and subjective modes of inter-
preting dreams. "I call every interpretation in which the dream symbols
are treated as representations of real objects an interpretation on the
objective plane. In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers back
to the dreamer himself every part of the dream, as, for instance, all the
personalities who take part in it. This is interpretation on the subjective
plane."10
ment of T. S. Eliot (Boston and N. Y., 1935), and F. R. Leavis in a chapter in New Bearings
in English Poetry (London, 1938). To the last named I feel particularly indebted. The
psychological interpretation of the poem given by M. Esther Harding in her study of the
myths associated with the Magna Mater, entitled Woman's Mysteries (London, N. Y. and
Toronto, 1935), is in general the same that I am attempting to formulate here. I am in-
debted to her particularly for the interpretation of a crucial passage in The Hollow Men.
8 Leavis' comment on this note is of interest here: "If Mr. Eliot's readers have a right
to a grievance, it is that he has not given this note more salience; for it provides the clue to
The Waste Land. It indicates plainly enough what the poem is: an effort to focus an inclusive
human consciousness" (p. 95).
9 The effect produced by Eliot's ambiguity in the use of words has received attention
from Mr. William Empson in Seven' Types of Ambiguity, London, 1930 (pp. 98-101).
"Two or more meanings all add to the single meaning of the author" (p. 62). We seem to be
dealing here with an allied phenomenon.
10 Two
Essays on Analytical Psychology, translated by H. G. and Cary F. Baynes (N. Y.
1928), p. 87.
570 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

The Grail legend, via Miss Weston's now famous book From Ritual to
Romance" and with some contributions from Frazer's Golden Bough,
furnishes the basic imagery of the poem. The waste land to which the
Grail knight must travel symbolizes thus the condition both of a single
individual and of the civilization in which he lives. Because of the illness
of the king of the country, the rain will not fall; therefore the crops do not
grow, and the cattle and the people do not reproduce; all life is at a stand-
still. If some modern Parzifal could achieve the vision of the Grail, he
would restore the king to health, and the land to fertility. The poem is
the record of a quest for the essential vision. In this earth-water symbol-
ism, earth stands for material reality, or conscious life; water for the
psychological or spiritual values of the unconscious-or, in an older
terminology, of the imagination. Water is a constant symbol for the
unconscious in mythology and folk-lore, as well as in dream-language.'2
It is clear from Eliot's individual episodes that the earth-water imagery
has ils usual meaning here. The characters, whatever their situation in
life, are caught up in material reality and can make no contact with the
imagination. The two psychological realms co-exist but they do not in-
terpenetrate. The tourists, the young couple, and the crowd flowing over
London Bridge of Part I, the neurotic lady and the two gossips of Part
II, and the typist and the clerk of Part in, all are leading essentially aim-
less and barren lives. The point is made sharp by the sudden allusions
to other times-ancient Greece, or the England of Elizabeth-when the
conscious life was permeated with the imagination and accordingly had a
significance now lost. For instance, the luxurious apartment of the neu-
rasthenic lady described in Part II contains a picture showing "the
change of Philomel," and for a moment we are transported to the world
of the ancients where myth and reality were intermingled. Then, as we
are brought back from past to present, the tone shifts with the tense,
within a single sentence, from poetry to ugly actuality:
Yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desertwith inviolablevoice
And still she cried,and still the worldpursues
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
If the rain could fall, if the qualities of the unconscious could enter into
everyday affairs, life would become fruitful again. Instead the uncon-
scious is felt to be simply a menace. "Fear death by water," says the
fortune-teller in Part I.
11Cambridge, 1920.
12 A discussionof this
principle,aswellas of the themesof sacrificeandrebirth(mentioned
below), may be found in the last four chaptersof Jung'sPsychologyof the Unconscious,
translatedby BeatriceM. Hinkle(N. Y., 1916).
 Genevieve W. Foster 571

The poem has been so frequently interpreted that the briefest summary
of the first three parts will suffice.l3The first seven lines of Part I are a
commentary of the poet's on the cruelty of springtime, which brings new
life to all nature, but not to man. These lines introduce the first episode
(11.8-18), in which a group of tourists in Germany have coffee together,
and the chatter of an idle woman dominates the conversation. Another
comment of the author's follows (11.19-30), in which, in language drawn
from Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes, he laments the barrenness of the life just
described. A four-line love-song borrowed from Tristan and Isolde intro-
duces the second episode, a scene between a young man and a girl (11.
35-42), in which the criticism of society implied in the first episode is
sharpened and individualized. The problem is the failure of relationship.
The man and the girl are together; she is lovely, but the feeling between
them fails because his attention is turned inward:
I could not
Speakand my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Lookinginto the heart of light, the silence.
Oed'und leerdas Meer.
In the third episode (11.43-59) an unnamed character visits a fortune-
teller, and the cards of the Tarot pack which she uses serve to introduce
the important characters of the poem"l-the Phoenician Sailor, who is
drowned in Part IV of the poem; the man with three staves, who cor-
responds to the Fisher King; and the one-eyed merchant, who appears
in Part III. There is also "Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady
of situations," who seems not to appear again in the poem except as a
presiding deity (unless she is represented by the typist in Part III), but
who is destined to appear, transformed, in much of Eliot's later work.
The fourth episode (11.60-75) shows us the crowd moving over London
Bridge, a crowd of the living dead. Among them the poet spies an ac-
quaintance, a man whose name is Stetson, but whose relation to the
author is timeless ("You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!")
and he directs to him a curious question:
"That corpseyou plantedlast year in your garden,
"Has it begunto sprout?Will it bloomthis year?
"Orhas the suddenfrost disturbedits bed?
"Ohkeep the Dog far hence,that's friendto men,
"Orwith his nails he'll dig it up againl"
13 The clearest interpretation, I believe, is that of F. O. Matthiessen. My summary of

these three parts contains nothing that is very new except the digression on Sweeney.
14 Miss Weston traces the Tarot
cards, like the Grail legend itself, to the near Eastern
mystery cults. Eliot was not familiar with the actual Tarot pack, however, and invented
a number of cards to suit his purpose.
572 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

The Dog, Eliot explains in a note, is the dog-star, which heralds the rising
of the waters of the Nile and brings fertility to the land. The timeless
companion knows the burial place of that which is dead, that which is
lost; the dead might be resurrected; and resurrection is to be both hoped
and feared. The poet turns upon the reader: this is your problem as well
as mine: "You, hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere!"
Part II of the poem consists of only two episodes, and these have a
common theme, the failure of human relationship in our civilization. In
the first, a wealthy and nervous woman, driven frantic by the meaning-
less round of her life ("The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car
at four."), quarrels with someone, presumably her husband. He, with all
his attention turned inward, like that of the man with the girl in Part I,
does not answer, but pursues his own fantastic and desperate thoughts.
In the second episode, two Cockney women in a pub discuss a third
woman, who, it appears, is too shiftless to get herself some false teeth
to please her husband. Their talk is interrupted by the bar-tender, an-
nouncing the closing-hour.
In Part in, the season has changed to autumn, and the scene is the
Thames, the Thames of Spenser's Prothalamion, the Thames of the river-
nymphs. But, it develops in one of those characteristic transitions from
past to present, these are different nymphs, city nymphs, whose "friends,
the loitering heirs of city directors;/Departed, have left no addresses."
Here sits the Fisher King, the king of that country in the Grail legend
which is laid waste for lack of rain; but he is the modern Fisher King of
a modern Waste Land "fishing in the dull canal/ On a winter evening
round behind the gashouse." Musing on death, he nevertheless hears at
his back (his only hope, it seems)
The soundof hornsand motors,whichshall bring
Sweeneyto Mrs. Porterin the spring.
An adequate discussion of Sweeney would occupy a whole essay. It may
be enough, however, to say that he is a character with whom Eliot is
much occupied in other poems, among others the unfinished Sweeney
Agonistes, and that he is a hearty and vulgar person who seems to act as
foil and counterpart to the intellectual and academic author. He serves
here somewhat the same purpose that Bloom serves in Ulysses as coun-
terpart to Stephen. In Yeats' terminology he represents the "anti-self"
("most like me, being... my double, And... of all imaginable things
the most unlike"), while Jung would probably call him the "shadow," the
representative of those psychic potentialities that are not a part of the
conscious personality.15Hence he appears here in the poem as a symbol
15 "If the
repressed the shadowas I call them,weredecidedlyevil,there
tendencies,
 Genevieve W. Foster 573

of hope, for he is necessary to the achievement of wholeness. Of Mrs. Por-

ter, Sweeney's lady friend, we know nothing except that she washes her
feet in soda water-but perhaps the less said of her the better. We are
briefly reminded again of the song of the nightingale, and the next epi-
sode introduces "Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant," the modern
and degraded version of the ancient sea-farer of the Mediterranean, of
whom Phlebas the Phoenician, in Part iv, is to be the true type. The
next episode (11.215-256) recounts the meeting between the typist and
the clerk, which, according to Eliot's note, is the real substance of the
poem. Here again the theme is the absence of true psychological relation-
ship. The clerk's chief emotion is vanity, the typist's is boredom; in
truth they care nothing for each other and hence the affair between them
is absolutely sterile, void of real values. The encounter is witnessed by
the blind seer Tiresias, who possesses the wisdom of all times and all
places:
I who have sat at Thebesbelow the wall
And walkedamongthe lowest of the dead.
After a brief transition in which the author speaks in the first person,
comes the song of the three Thames-daughters (11.266-306), patterned
on that of Wagner's Rhine-daughters, in which the contrast between
past and present is again made sharp. The next few lines (307-311), bor-
rowed from the Fire Sermon of the Buddha and the Confessions of St. Au-
gustine, introduce the theme of fire for the first time in the poem. The
tone is one of despair and (it may be) of readiness for sacrifice. The two
allusions taken together indicate a turning away from the world, which is
thought of as burning with sterile desire.
Part iv, entitled "Death by Water," marks a turning point in the
poem. A character called Phlebas the Phoenician, who "melts into" the
one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, and "is not wholly distinct from"
Ferdinand Prince of Naples, falls into the water and is drowned.
Phlebasthe Phoenician,a fortnightdead,
Forgotthe cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profitand loss.
A currentundersea
Picked his bones in whispers.As he rose and fell
He passedthe stages of his age and youth
Enteringthe whirlpool.

would be no problem whatever. But the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive,
unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains inferior, childish or primitive
qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but 'it is not done."'
(Psychologyand Religion [New Haven, 1938], p. 94b.)
574 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

Gentileor Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
ConsiderPhlebas,who was once handsomeand tall as you.

Taking this on the subjective plane, we must say that a component of

the writer's personality has been submerged in the unconscious. From
the lines at the beginning of Part v, however, this death is seen to be not
a simple calamity, but something in the nature of a sacrifice. The open-
ing imagery suggests the moment immediately after the crucifixion of
Christ, and-as we are assured by the reference to Frazer's GoldenBough
-the deaths of the other sacrificed gods.
After the torchlightred on sweaty faces
After the frosty silencein the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shoutingand the crying
Prisonand palaceand reverberation
Of thunderof springover distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who wereliving are now dying
With a little patience.
Shortly we are reminded of the journey to Emmaus: "Who is the third
who walks always beside you?" With Part v the tone of the poem has
changed. The first three parts were made up largely of episodes taking
place in reality; in Part v the imagery is strange and imaginative, with
a touch of prophecy.
What is that sound high in the air
Murmurof maternallamentation
Who are those hoodedhordesswarming
Overendlessplains,stumblingin the crackedearth
Ringedby the flat horizononly?
It is as though the artist in Eliot had been drawn down into the region of
the unconscious in search of a solution to the problem posed in the first
three parts of the poem. "Recoiling from the unsatisfying present the
yearning of the artist reaches out to that primordial image in the un-
conscious that is best fitted to compensate the insufficiency and one-
sidedness of the spirit of the age." That image, however, is not found
within the limits of the poem. The essential sacrifice has been made, but
the redeeming vision has not yet been attained. The corresponding point
in the Grail legend is the visit to the Chapel Perilous, where the knight
sees the vision of the dead hand that puts out the altar light, and whence
he barely escapes. The nature of the compensating value-the nature of
the quality signified by the Grail-is, however, suggested at the end of
 GenevieveW. Foster 575

the poem by the allusion to the Indian legend of the three words of the
thunder, Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata-"Give, Sympathize, Control."
The thunder, the voice of God, speaks these words in the manner of an
inquisition, and the poet is compelled to reply, for himself and his con-
temporaries, that the three commands have been virtually disobeyed.
Only to the first, "Give," can he offer a small, ironic claim. We have
given
The awful daringof a moment'ssurrender
Whichan age of prudencecan never retract-
By this, and this only, have we existed.
To the word Sympathize the reply "I have heard the key/ Turn in the
door and turn once only" refers us to the line in Canto xxxmII of the
Inferno
Ed io sentii chiavarl'uscio di sotto
All'orribiletorre.
The door is that which locks in Ugolino and his sons to perish of starva-
tion. The word Controlis answered in a past contrary to fact statement:
"The sea was calm, your heart would have responded."
Although all the replies to the inquisition of the thunder have been in
the negative, the questions themselves give a certain clue to the missing
value. What is required in each case is a manifestation of human feeling
-the "moment's surrender which a lifetime of prudence can never re-
tract" is most evidently a surrender to feeling, and with "Sympathize"
and "Control" the meaning becomes obvious. This feeling, indeed, has
been the missing element in each of the episodes describing the barren-
ness of our civilization-notably in those describing the failure of the rela-
tionship between two people. "What Tiresias sees, in fact," the bored,
meaningless encounter between the typist and the clerk, "is the sub-
stance of the poem." For the modern intellectual, feeling is what Jung
designates the "inferior function," the undervalued, often repressed
function the conscious development of which is an essential to psycho-
logical wholeness. As a social document the poem suggests the same un-
balance in our civilization-fact and logic have a high valuation while
feeling-judgments are too often dismissed as irrelevant.16The poem ends
with the tension unresolved; the knight, still sojourning in the Chapel
Perilous, has not yet come to the Grail Castle nor attained the vision
16 "The Voice of the Thunder in Wasteland
speaks not only of the emotional problems
of modern man as an individual but also of world problems in a century where the al-
most exclusive concern with masculine and mechanical concepts of life has well-nigh choked
the springs of living water which are gifts of ... the feminine principle of Eros." (Harding,
p. 298.)
576 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

of the redeeming symbol; the rain has not fallen, though all the world
waits for it.
The Hollow Men, published in 1925, presents essentially the same prob-
lem as The Waste Land,'7 but it is worth considering because of the new
clarity with which the problem is grasped and with which the redeeming
symbol is intuitively apprehended. The terrible division between inner
and outer values was implicit in The Waste Land; here it is explicit. Be-
tween the will or imaginative conception and its counterpart in reality,
"falls the shadow," whether in the sphere of human love or in the mys-
tery of transubstantiation.
Betweenthe idea
And the reality
Betweenthe motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thineis the Kingdom
Betweenthe conception
And the creation
Betweenthe emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is verylong
Betweenthe desire
And the spasm
Betweenthe potency
And the existence
Betweenthe essence
And the descent
Falls the shadow
For Thineis the Kingdom
In this poem the redeeming symbol is imagined as "the eyes"-but it is
merely imagined; like the Grail of The Waste Land, it is never attained,
never truly seen. The poet fears this essential vision:
Eyes I darenot meet in dreams
In death'sdreamkingdom....
Let me be no nearer
In death'sdreamkingdom....
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.
17 Leavis
(p. 84) points out that Gerontionis an earlierpresentationof the sametheme.
 GenevieveW. Foster 577

Death's dream kingdom (contrasted in the poem with "death's other

kingdom," i.e. death itself) would seem to stand for the imagination or
the unconscious-for the unconscious in an unfavorable sense, for the
devouring waters rather than the life-giving waters-"Fear death by
water." So long as the two psychological realms, conscious and uncon-
scious, are kept apart, they necessarily have a hostile relation to each
other. Later in the poem alternate symbols are given for the eyes. We,
the hollow men, are
Sightless,unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetualstar
Multifoliaterose
Of death'stwilightkingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

Equating the eyes, the rose, and the star with the Grail of the earlier
poem as different modes of imagining the (as yet unattained) redeeming
value, we can see that, as symbols, they have certain qualities in common.
Miss Weston's book attempted to trace the Grail legend, as well as the
Tarot cards, the St. George play, and the morris-dance, to an origin in
the pre-Christian mystery religions. Whether or not the historical chain
of evidence was complete, the common significance of the different imag-
inative manifestations seemed to be established beyond question. The
eyes, the rose, and the star likewise play their part in the symbolism of
the mystery religions. Salvation of the modern world, the poem seems
to suggest, is dependent upon the emergence of those psychological values
that were represented in the ancient world by the Magna Mater, goddess
of fertility, and in the medieval world by the legend of the Grail.'8 It is
hard to determine how much of this imagery is deliberately used by
discussionof the cult of the MagnaMatermay be foundin Dr. Hard-
18 A psychological

ing's book, cited above. She discussesEliot's WasteLandas a modernmyth having the
same significanceas those connectedwith the GreatMother. She does not mention The
HollowMen, but I am indebtedto her for an interpretation,made in conversationsome
yearsago, of the lines on the eyes, the rose,and the star. In Chaptersix and x of the book
are collected a numberof reproductionsof ancient emblemsof the Magna Mater. The
"eyes of Horus"are to be found on p. 207. The "rosesof Isis," whichfiguredin the cere-
monyto that goddess,are discussedon p. 287. The star appearswith the moonin illustra-
tions on pp. 175, 177, and 196. (The most importantof the ancient symbols,the moon,
is not used by Eliot.) The star seems one of the least importantof the ancientsymbols,
but one of the mostimportanttoday. (Cf.forinstancethe fallaciousbut extremelyinterest-
ing use of the "morningstar" in D. H. Lawrence'sPlumedSerpent.)Robert Briffault's
study of the cult of the Magna Mater in his anthropologicalwork The Mothers(N. Y
1927),Chap.xxiv, shouldalsobe mentionedhere.
578 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

Eliot, and how much depends upon the operation of the collective un-
conscious. Eliot acknowledges his dependence upon the volume of Frazer
entitled Attis, Adonis, Osiris; but none the less it seems certain that his
images are true symbols in the sense that they represent important un-
conscious facts or qualities.l9 In any case, the reader's attention is turned
back to a historical period when certain "feminine" values-represented
by the image of the Magna Mater-had an importance currently denied
them. To call such values feminine is to imply that they form part of the
conscious life of the average woman, while for a man they belong more
or less to the unconscious.20They are primarily the relationship values,
dependent on feeling, as indicated by the words of the Thunder at the
end of The Waste Land.
The theme of Journey of the Magi and A Song for Simeon is the birth
of a divine child. The birth or rebirth of a god or hero, or some equivalent
imagery, regularly indicates the resolution of an important psychological
problem. This is a universal symbol of the renewal of the libido and of its
surmounting of those obstacles which from time to time stand in the
way of human development.2' "Psychologically, the divine birth heralds
19See Psychological Types, pp. 601-610. "The symbol always presupposes that the chosen
expression is the best possible description, or formula, of a relatively unknown fact; a fact,
however, which is nevertheless recognized or postulated as existing. ... In so far as a
symbol is a living thing, it is the expression of a thing not to be characterized in any other
or better way. The symbol is alive only in so far as it is pregnant with meaning" (pp.
601-602). Jung's general use of the term, as I understand it, is very close to that of Yeats
and the symbolists. Genuine symbols "cannot be taken as ao-JoZaor as allegories, and ex-
haustively interpreted." They are "ambiguous, full of intimations, and, in the last analysis,
inexhaustible." (The Integration of the Personality. Translated by Stanley M. Dell (N. Y.
and Toronto, 1939), p. 89.)
20 The psyche is, in a sense, bi-sexual, the values of the other sex always appearing in

the unconscious. See the chapter on "Anima and Animus" in Jung's Two Essays (Part iI,
Chapter ii). This fact seems to account, incidentally, for the bi-sexuality of Tiresias better
than Leavis's explanation: "A cultivated modern is (or feels himself to be) intimately
aware of the experience of the opposite sex."
21 "When the libido leaves the bright upper world, whether from the decision of the

individual or from decreasing life force, then it sinks back into its own depths, into the
source from which it has gushed forth .... Therefore, when some great work is to be ac-
complished, before which weak man recoils, doubtful of his strength, his libido returns to
that source-and this is the dangerous moment, in which the decision takes place between
annihilation and new life. If the libido remains arrested in the wonder kingdom of the inner
world, then the man has become for the world above a phantom, then he is practically dead
or desperately ill. But if the libido succeeds in tearing itself loose and pushing up into the
world above, then a miracle appears. This journey to the underworld has been a fountain
of youth, and new fertility springs from his apparent death." Psychology of the Uncon-
scious, pp. 330-331. The process is discussed in detail in this volume: the withdrawal of the
libido into the unconscious; its struggle there to free itself; and its renewal and emergence.
The specific problem discussed in the book is that of adolescence, the need of the young
 Genevieve W. Foster 579

the fact that a new symbol, a new expression of supreme vital intensity,
is being created.... From this moment the supreme intensity of life is
to be found only upon the new line."22This is the first of that series of
symbols in Eliot's poems which attempt the mediation of those two
worlds, conscious and unconscious, so terribly set apart in The Waste
Land and The Hollow Men. What is desired is a mid-point, a "still
center," in which the conflicting values and attitudes can be reconciled.
In Jung's terminology, this irrational point of reconciliation is called the
Self.23An interesting feature of both poems is that the poet speaks as a
spectator, like Tiresias in The Waste Land; the rebirth, that is, is an event
perceived against the background of the unconscious, but it is not wholly
understood. The magi do homage to the Child, but they do not partici-
pate in the new era:
We returnedto our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longerat ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien peopleclutchingtheir gods.
And Simeon says:
Not for me the martyrdom,the ecstasy of thoughtand prayer,
Not for me the ultimatevision....
Let thy servantdepart,
Having seen they salvation.
The birth of the new era involves the destruction of the old.24For the
adult to free himself from dependence on the family. These poems of Eliot's concern the
problem of an older and maturer person, namely that of achieving psychological wholeness,
but the symbols that emerge are in part analogous. A discussion of the latter problem and
its variety of symbols, particularly as it is expressed in the literature of alchemy, may be
found in Jung's The Integration of the Personality. See also Psychological Types, especially
pp. 320-336 and 601-610, and Two Essays, Part II, Chapter iii; also Harding, Chapter xv;
and Frances G. Wickes, The Inner World of Man (N. Y., 1938), Chapter Ix.
22
Psychological Types, p. 235.
23 "Since the middle
position, as a function of mediation between the opposites, pos-
sesses an irrational character, it appears projected in the form of a reconciling God, a
Messiah or Mediator. To our Western forms of religion, which are still too primitive in
matters of discernment or understanding, the new possibility of life appears in the figure of
a God or Saviour, who, in his fatherly care and love and from his own inner resolve, puts
an end to the division, in his own time and season, for reasons we are not fitted to under-
stand. The childishness of this conception is self-evident. The East has for thousands of
years been familiar with this process, and has founded thereon a psychological doctrine of
salvation which brings the way of deliverance within the compass of human intention.
Thus both the Indian and the Chinese religions, as also Buddhism which combines the
spheres of both, possess the idea of a redeeming middle path of magical efficacy which is at-
tainable through a conscious attitude." (Psychological Types, p. 241 f.)
24 "The birth of the deliverer is
equivalent to a great catastrophe since a new and powerful
life issues forth just where no life or force or new development was anticipated." (Psycho-
logical Types, p. 328.)
 580 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

individuals involved, even as mere spectators, the experience is painful

in the extreme.
Werewe led all that way for
Birth or Death? Therewas a birth, certainly,
We had evidenceand no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thoughtthey weredifferent;this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our Death.
In Ash-Wednesdaythe writer struggles to bring his own life, which he
feels has now passed its zenith, into some connection with the value, the
reborn god, the "Word within a word, unable to speak a word," which he
has seen as a vision but to which he has no relation. The poem is marked
by its liturgical language and rhythms, and by the introduction for the
first time of a "lady" who is a non-human figure, therefore a psychologi-
cal image. Such a figure is a component of every man's imagination;
Jung's term for it is anima. This is the most prominent and most easily
personified of the unconscious complexes, so that it regularly represents
the unconscious itself. "The anima ... is a natural archetype that satis-
factorily subsumes every pronouncement of the unconscious and of the
primitive mind that gave form to language and religion. The anima is a
'factor' in the proper sense of the word. Man cannot make it; on the
contrary, it is always the a priori element in moods, reactions, impulses
and whatever else is spontaneous in psychic life. It is something that
lives on its own account, that makes us live; it is a life behind conscious-
ness that cannot be completely integrated with it, but from which, on
the contrary, consciousness arises."25The anima is ordinarily "projected"
on an actual woman, being represented by mother, wife or sweetheart.26
and it is this projection that gives to those relationships their intensity.
It is only with the attainment of real maturity that such projections may
be withdrawn and replaced by a more conscious form of human relation-
ship. In such cases the anima is realized first as a personified image of
the unconscious and finally simply as a psychological function, that
function which serves as guide to the unconscious. This changed relation
to the anima is a task of extreme difficulty, but one absolutely necessary

2 Integrationof the Personality,p. 76. See also PsychologicalTypes,pp. 588-599; Two

Essays, Part II, Chapter ii.
26 "Fora man, a womanis best fitted to be the bearerof his soul-image,by virtue of the

womanlyqualityof his soul;similarlya man,in the case of a woman.Whereveran uncon-

ditional,or almostmagical,relationexistsbetweenthe sexes,it is alwaysa questionof pro-
jectionof the soul-image.Sincesuchrelationsarecommon,just as frequentlymustthe soul
be unconscious,i.e. greatnumbersof men must be unawareof how they are relatedto the
innerpsychicprocesses."(Psychological Types,p. 597.)
 GenevieveW. Foster 581

for the attainment of psychological completeness.27Part iv of the poem

seems to sketch the evolution of the anima from an unconsciously pro-
jected image represented by a human being to a fully realized figure of the
imagination. At first the poet speaks of her, in the past tense, as an or-
dinary woman, who was dressed
in white and blue, in Mary'scolour,
Talkingof trivial things
In ignoranceand in knowledgeof eternaldolour,
Who movedamongthe othersas they walked.
But he acknowledges the power of the archetype, even as it appears in
human form, in the lines
Who then made strongthe fountainsand madefresh the springs
Made cool the dry rockand made firmthe sand.
Now, much later, "the years that walk between," bring her back again,
but now simply as an archetype,
One who moves in the time betweensleep and waking,wearing
Whitelight folded,sheathedabout her, folded.
Several times he appeals to her for intercession, but she makes no re-
sponse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Betweenthe yews, behindthe gardengod,
Whosefluteis breathless,bent herheadand signed,but spokeno word.
In Part II of the poem, the dry bones scattered in the desert chant a
litany to the anima in her highest aspect, that of the Virgin Mother,
das ewig Weibliche; she is describable only in paradoxes:28
Lady of silences
Calmand distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhaustedand life-giving
Worriedreposeful....
27 "Ifthe comingto termswith the shadowis the companion-pieceto the individual's
development,then that with the animais the masterpiece.For the relationwith the anima
is againa test of courageand-more than that-a test by fire of all a man'sspiritualand
moralforces."(Integrationof thePersonality,pp. 78-79.)
28 "Withthe
archetypeof the animawe enter the realmof the gods or of metaphysics,
for everythingin which the anima appearstakes on the quality of the numen-that is,
becomesunconditional,dangerous,taboo, magical.... For life in itself is not something
good;it is morethan that, it is also evil. In that the animawisheslife it wishesgood and
bad." (Integrationof thePersonality,p. 77.)
582 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

In Ash-Wednesday too comes the amazing "word" passage, in which

Eliot borrows Bishop Launcelot Andrewes' phrase describing the Christ-
child, "the word within a word, unable to speak a word." Here the
"Word," capitalized, stands for the archetypal supreme value, "the still
center," beyond our consciousness; and the "word" for the human
temporal and spatial apprehension of the value. The value in question is
that represented by the divine child of the earlier poems, but here it is
more fully and more profoundly imagined; the reference to Bishop
Andrewes furnishes the link between the two images. The "word" yet
to be created is still "unheard" and "unspoken," for as yet "the right
time and the right place are not here." Hence for the poet individually,
and for his era, this is "the time of tension between dying and birth."
The poem ends with a final appeal to the anima, and this appeal is psy-
chologically sound, since the anima is the only possible guide to the un-
conscious.
Blessedsister,holy mother,spiritof the fountain,spiritof the garden
Sufferus not to mock ourselveswith falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even amongthese rocks
Ourpeace in His will
And even amongthese rocks
Sister,mother
And spirit of the river,spirit of the sea.
Sufferme not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
Marina contains the answer to this appeal, and, in fact, seems to mark
the definitive turning-point in Eliot's poetry. This poem expresses neither
despair nor resignation, but for the first time, hope. It is one of the most
personal of Eliot's poems; it is Ichdichtungwhereas so many of the others
are Wirdichtung, or at least a mixture. Here the anima is rediscovered,
this time not as sister or mother, but as daughter (for this protean figure
can take many shapes). She is called Marina after the rediscovered
daughter of Shakespeare's Pericles.
What is this face, less clearand clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strongand stronger-
Givenor lent? moredistant than stars and nearerthan the eye
Whispersand small laughterbetweenleaves and hurryingfeet29
Undersleep, whereall the watersmeet.
29 This line
refers,I believe,not to Marinaherself,but to the hidden,laughingchildren
who appearin BurntNorton-a differentthoughrelatedimage.The readerinterestedin a
closerinterpretationof this particularbit of imagerymay find a relevantpassagein Mrs.
Wickes'book,pp. 119-120.
 Genevieve W. Foster 583

The second important image in the poem is that of a ship, closely related
to the anima image in that it, too, is now rediscovered; in fact the two
symbols are juxtaposed in such a way as to seem almost inseparable.
Bowspritcrackedwith ice and paint crackedwith heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember,
The riggingweak and the canvasrotten
Betweenone June and anotherSeptember,
Made this unknowing,half conscious,unknown,my own.
The garboardstrakeleaks, the seams need caulking.
This form,this face, this life,
Living to live in a worldof time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speechfor that unspoken,
The awakened,lips parted,the hope, the new ships.
The ship, much in need of repair though it is, seems here to have the
significance of a means or way-a very important symbol, it would seem,
for a poet whose intuitive vision has everywhere outrun his power of
locomotion.30 With the rediscovery and the new relationship to the ani-
ma, and with the "way" thus indicated, comes renewed life and hope,
but hope no longer for something personally desired by the poet, but for
the value beyond his desire, even beyond his comprehension, as the last
three lines quoted indicate.
In a later poem, Triumphal March, a god-like hero rides through the
streets in a procession.3' The archetypal nature of the event is made
clear by the mingling of historical eras-ancient Rome and contemporary
England are simultaneously represented-; and by the fact that the
hero has divine attributes, the entry into Jerusalem is also suggested.
The people waiting on the curb with their lunch and their camp-stools
notice him as he rides by, but they are almost as much interested in the
enormous array of armaments that constitutes most of the procession.
When he does appear, utterly calm in the midst of the tumult, the image
immediately associated with him is that of the central psychological
value, "at the still point of the turning world."
30 Comparethe visualimpressionrecountedin Integrationof thePersonality,p. 189.
31 Forthe sakeof simplifyingthe discussion,I have omitted"Difficultiesof a Statesman,"
which, with "TriumphalMarch"makesup the unfinishedCoriolan.It seems to me that
this secondpoemrests on a misapprehension on the author'spart of the significanceof the
first.It is writtenin the firstperson,and the authorseemsmoreor less to identifyhimself
with the hero (the same figure,presumably,as the heroof "TriumphalMarch");in other
words,the impersonalvalues of the Self are taken (temporarily)as attributesof the con-
sciousego-something that can happenall too readily.The allusionto Coriolanus,whose
overweeningpridewashis downfall,supportsthis conjecture.The last line is, significantly
enough,"RESIGN, RESIGN, RESIGN."
584 The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

Therehe is now, look;

Thereis no interrogationin his eyes
Or in the hands, quiet over the horse'sneck,
And the eyes watchful,waiting,perceiving,indifferent.
O hiddenunderthe dove's wing, hiddenin the turtle'sbreast,
Underthe palm-treeat noon, underthe runningwater
At the still point of the turningworld.O hidden.
Because of this association with the central psychological value, the hero
of Triumphal March must be understood as another in the series of
symbols of the Self that appear progressively in Eliot's poems. That
which is "at the still point of the turning world" is the Word of Ash-
Wednesday, where
Againstthe light the unstilledworldstill whirled
About the centerof the silent Word.
The Word in turn is the "Word within a word," or the new-born child of
the Journey of the Magi. This symbol, however expressed, whether as
god, hero, way, or function, stands always for the manifest value that
focuses the consciousness of an individual human being, and that,
arising from the welter of a single man's experience, orders and redeems
it. Thus the archetypal drama of sacrifice and rebirth, which so fasci-
nated Eliot in The GoldenBough and in the Grail legend as Miss Weston
presented it, has been reenacted in his own poetry. The new value is,
perhaps, imperfectly "translated into the language of the present";
certainly, at the time of writing of Triumphal March, imperfectly under-
stood by the poet himself; still it is there. With the appearance of this
image, the way is gradually prepared for the profounder experiences of
those poems now collected as Four Quartets,discussion of which would
take us beyond the scope of this paper.
To translate the living myth that reveals itself in Eliot's poetry into
cold intellectual concepts is in some measure to falsify it, but it seems
better to make the attempt than to leave our intellectual understanding
unsatisfied. We have been dealing with two major images. The first is
represented in The Waste Land by the Grail, in The Hollow Men by the
eyes, the rose, and the star, and in the later poems by the anima image in
all its variety. Interpreted individually, this seems to represent the un-
conscious part of the psyche, with which the conscious ego must make
and maintain contact if psychological wholeness is to be achieved. Taken
socially, it represents those lost qualities of feeling and intuition so much
needed in our civilization. The second image, that of the redeemer or
hero, seems to represent the principle of integration ("at the still point
of the turning world"), the force that can mediate conscious and un-
 GenevieveW. Foster 585

conscious, masculine and feminine, and all polar opposites. These images
are not ideas, but representations of human experience. Their develop-
ment throughout the poems displays that struggle for completeness of
personality with which other artists and thinkers have been concerned
and which, in its completer phases, Jung has called the "individuation
process."32The primordial image offered by Eliot's poetry as answer to
the "insufficiency and one-sidedness of the spirit of the age" is thus the
principle of individuation.
GENEVIEVE W. FOSTER

32 "Consciousnessand the unconsciousdo not make a whole when eitheris suppressed

or damagedby the other. If they must contend,let it be a fair fight with equalright on
both sides.Both are aspectsof life. Let consciousnessdefendits reasonand its self-protec-
tive ways, and let the chaotic life of the unconsciousbe given a fair chance to have its
ownway, as muchof it as we can stand. This meansat once openconflictandopencollab-
oration. Yet, paradoxically,this is presumablywhat humanlife shouldbe. It is the old
play of hammerand anvil: the sufferingironbetweenthem will in the end be shapedinto
an unbreakablewhole,the individual."(Integrationof thePersonality,p. 27.)