Hysteria (by T.S. Eliot)
T.S. Eliot
Hysteria
[from Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917]
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
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O, I love this, John *grin* Thank you for posting it.
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You're welcome, Michelle!
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Like this.... feels like I've been dropped right in the middle of a story...
Makes me want to know what happened before... and after...
Thanks....
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One has to have a great deal of imagination to realize the story behind most poems. And usually we are wrong.
The poetic mind is mysterious and often inscrutable and the words can have many many meanings. But they are only in the mind of the poet and often cannot be descifered. Punny isn't it??
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Why don't we have spell check on this?
DECIPHERED NOT DESCIFERED. English spelling stinks. Inscrutable isn't even in my dictionary. I guess I am unscrewed this morning. Spanish spelling is much easier. lol Maybe I should just stop commenting since this may be unintelligible and indescribable.
LMAO and this ain't in the dictionary either.
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I don't know. It sounds like a blind date gone bad to me. Look at the title of the piece and think of what hysteria would have meant to a man of Eliot's time period--a woman's mental illness for which she could be locked away in an asylum, for laughing too loud and long in public.
He's embarrassed by her, attracted but repulsed, and just wants to get through it.
But who hasn't gone on a laughing jag like that where you can't seem to stop even though you know you're making a total ass of yourself? Laughing so hard you can't catch your breath and are crying from it and your nose running. Hysteria, indeed.
(Or maybe she was just a giddy débutante without 2 brain cells...)
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Now maybe that isn't what Eliot meant, but it's what I read so it's good enough for me.
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Pinky, I think I'm becoming hysterical this morning after reading this poem and my own comments that nobody could possibly understand. Check hyster.. in the dictionary. It refers to the womb and we all know what a hysterectomy is.
(or do we?) I think Freud would love this poem.
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Interesting note in my compact Oxford English Dictionary: hysteria was once "thought to be caused by a disorder of the womb." But they neglected to mention it's also the title of a compact disc by Def Leppard.
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Hysteria was a psychological condition that is now consider one of a number of personality disorder... Not exclusive to women of course... Freud was such a sexist.... :-)
It I think was something people generally "in the day" referred to now as PMS.... men have never dealt well with women's moods or hormonal changes.... passing them off generally as "hysteria"...
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Maybe I was thinking along the lines of hysteria and the English lunacy laws because I had just finished a novel where a son had tried to have his perfectly sane mother committed to an asylum simply because she didn't observe the traditional mourning period for his father--and she was menopausal! Surely she must have been hysterical!! And it was all perfectly legal because men had that much control over a woman's life. He could have put her away for the rest of her life and no one could have done a thing about it.
Having realized that I am also at that point--menopausal--or am suffering a really bad case of PMDD--get off my ass about the definition of hysteria already! I know where it comes from, I have access to the college's OED Online if I want the full citation--and there is a spell check on here. Look down and to the right.
(Sorry, JC, but maybe I should just go away for awhile...)
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pinky, don't let helen's baiting keep you from posting comments here. i enjoy reading your thoughts very much, even though i don't always comment on them.
you rock, my dear :)
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Don't go away!
While we're on the subject of accuracy in language, I think "nobody could possibly understand" is an all-inclusive statement that suggests even the person who uttered it could not possibly understand. Of course I know that's not what Elena meant, but... lol.
Not sure why, but I've got Bob Marley playing in my head:
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Oh.....
. I certainly hope you didn't think I was being critical in anyway... Pinky P... because I wasn't.. I agree with all your comments and find them all thoughtful and interesting.. If my sharing what little I did about what I knew offended anyone then I'm very sorry . That was not my intent at all.. I just wanted to add something to the discussion. .. nothing more.
Maybe it should be that I should be the one to not comment here anymore...
I'm sorry if I hurt anyone...:-(
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The same goes for you. Don't go!
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I'll just make my self scarce is all... no need for me to comment anyway. I usually don't have anything intelligent to say because I know so little about classical literature..
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I actually though everyones comments were really interesting because it shows me that people interpret poetry differently because it is written often to be subjective. I think in this particular instance especially.
Eliot, I think, deliberately wrote it this way for a reason. So it could be open to interpretation. You have to guess what lead up to it.. and what might have happened afterwards..
When I look at what he wrote and the comments people have shared it reminds me of one of those old TV murder dramas where you have a group of witnesses to a crime and as they are interviewed each tells what the saw and know and it is so different one to another.
This poem seems to have evoked a similar response from people and I find that interesting. It tells you as much about the people reading the poem as the author who wrote it.
Anyway.. those are my further thoughts on it..
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Sorry for all the typos. I've been on the computer writing most of the day... finishing a paper and my eyes are very tired... I've proofread but obviously not well enough.
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