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The Archetypal Imagery of T. S. Eliot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Genevieve W. Foster
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Extract

“Dichten 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 ascertained except by experience.” This theory is not peculiar to Jung, being in fact rather prevalent in our time. “I began certain studies and experiences,” 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.” Jung, however, has given the idea its scientific formulation. For these ideas a priori of the collective unconscious, Jung employs the term “primordial image,” borrowed from Jacob Burckhardt, or “archetype” as used by St. Augustine. 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 depend 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 onesidedness 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.” In 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 contemporary mental atmosphere had most need. The artist as educator of his time—much could be said about that today.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , June 1945 , pp. 567 - 585
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945

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References

Note 1 in page 567 Contributions to 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 Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart (Zürich, 1931).

Note 2 in page 567 Contributions, p. 246.

Note 3 in page 567 Autobiography (N. Y., 1938), p. 160.

Note 4 in page 567 For a fuller definition, see Jung's Psychological Types, translated by E. Godwin Baynes (N. Y., 1926), pp. 554–560.

Note 5 in page 568 Contributions, p. 248.

Note 6 in page 568 Ibid., pp. 248–249.

Note 7 in page 568 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 Achievement 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 indebted to her particularly for the interpretation of a crucial passage in The Hollow Men.

Note 8 in page 569 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).

Note 9 in page 569 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.

Note 10 in page 569 Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, translated by H. G. and Cary F. Baynes (N. Y. 1928), p. 87.

Note 11 in page 570 Cambridge, 1920.

Note 12 in page 570 A discussion of this principle,aswell as of the themes of sacrifice and rebirth (mentioned below), may be found in the last four chapters of Jung's Psychology of the Unconscious, translated by Beatrice M. Hinkle (N. Y., 1916).

Note 13 in page 571 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.

Note 14 in page 571 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.

Note 15 in page 572 “If the repressed tendencies, the shadow as I call them, were decidedly evil, there 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.‘” (Psychology and Religion [New Haven, 1938], p. 94b.)

Note 16 in page 575 “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 almost 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.)

Note 17 in page 576 Leavis (p. 84) points out that Gerontion is an earlier presentation of the same theme.

Note 18 in page 577 A psychological discussion of the cult of the Magna Mater may be found in Dr. Harding's book, cited above. She discusses Eliot's Waste Land as a modern myth having the same significance as those connected with the Great Mother. She does not mention The Hollow Men, but I am indebted to her for an interpretation, made in conversation some years ago, of the lines on the eyes, the rose, and the star. In Chapters ix and x of the book are collected a number of reproductions of ancient emblems of the Magna Mater. The “eyes of Horus” are to be found on p. 207. The “roses of Isis,” which figured in the ceremony to that goddess, are discussed on p. 287. The star appears with the moon in illustrations on pp. 175, 177, and 196. (The most important of the ancient symbols, the moon, is not used by Eliot.) The star seems one of the least important of the ancient symbols, but one of the most important today. (Cf. for instance the fallacious but extremely interesting use of the “morning star” in D. H. Lawrence's Plumed Serpent.) Robert Briffault's study of the cult of the Magna Mater in his anthropological work The Mothers (N. Y 1927), Chap, xxiv, should also be mentioned here.

Note 19 in page 578 See 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 betaken as σημ∊îα or as allegories, and exhaustively 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.)

Note 20 in page 578 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.”

Note 21 in page 578 “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 accomplished, 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 Unconscious, 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 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.

Note 22 in page 579 Psychological Types, p. 235.

Note 23 in page 579 “Since the middle position, as a function of mediation between the opposites, possesses 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 understand. 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 attainable through a conscious attitude.” (Psychological Types, p. 241 f.)

Note 24 in page 579 “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.” (Psychological Types, p. 328.)

Note 25 in page 580 Integration of the Personality, p. 76. See also Psychological Types, pp. 588–599; Two Essays, Part ii, Chapter ii.

Note 26 in page 580 “For a man, a woman is best fitted to be the bearer of his soul-image, by virtue of the womanly quality of his soul; similarly a man, in the case of a woman. Wherever an unconditional, or almost magical, relation exists between the sexes, it is always a question of projection of the soul-image. Since such relations are common, just as frequently must the soul be unconscious, i.e. great numbers of men must be unaware of how they are related to the inner psychic processes.” (Psychological Types, p. 597.)

Note 27 in page 581 “If the coming to terms with the shadow is the companion-piece to the individual's development, then that with the anima is the masterpiece. For the relation with the anima is again a test of courage and—more than that—a test by fire of all a man's spiritual and moral forces.” (Integration of the Personality, pp. 78–79.)

Note 28 in page 581 “With the archetype of the anima we enter the realm of the gods or of metaphysics, for everything in which the anima appears takes on the quality of the numen—that is, becomes unconditional, dangerous, taboo, magical…. For life in itself is not something good; it is more than that, it is also evil. In that the anima wishes life it wishes good and bad.” (Integration of the Personality, p. 77.)

Note 29 in page 582 This line refers, I believe, not to Marina herself, but to the hidden, laughing children who appear in Burnt Norton—a different though related image. The reader interested in a closer interpretation of this particular bit of imagery may find a relevant passage in Mrs. Wickes' book, pp. 119–120.

Note 30 in page 583 Compare the visual impression recounted in Integration of the Personality, p. 189.

Note 31 in page 583 For the sake of simplifying the discussion, I have omitted “Difficulties of a Statesman,” which, with “Triumphal March” makes up the unfinished Coriolan. It seems to me that this second poem rests on a misapprehension on the author's part of the significance of the first. It is written in the first person, and the author seems more or less to identify himself with the hero (the same figure, presumably, as the hero of “Triumphal March”); in other words, the impersonal values of the Self are taken (temporarily) as attributes of the conscious ego—something that can happen all too readily. The allusion to Coriolanus, whose overweening pridewas his downfall, supports this conjecture. The last line is, significantly enough, “RESIGN, RESIGN, RESIGN.”

Note 32 in page 585 “Consciousness and the unconscious do not make a whole when either is suppressed or damaged by the other. If they must contend, let it be a fair fight with equal right on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Let consciousness defend its reason and its self-protective ways, and let the chaotic life of the unconscious be given a fair chance to have its own way, as much of it as we can stand. This means at once open conflict and open collaboration. Yet, paradoxically, this is presumably what human life should be. It is the old play of hammer and anvil: the suffering iron between them will in the end be shaped into an unbreakable whole, the individual.” (Integration of the Personality, p. 27.)