Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Visual and Verbal Quotation in Flaubert and Eliot
- 2 Figuring the Saint: Physical and Intellectual Representations of Asceticism
- 3 The Empty Stage: Landscape and the Dramatic in La Tentation de Saint Antoine and The Waste Land
- 4 The Ascetic Text of La Tentation de Saint Antoine and The Waste Land
- 5 ‘Caught in the Circle of Desire’: The Vortex as Ascetic Metaphor
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
5 - ‘Caught in the Circle of Desire’: The Vortex as Ascetic Metaphor
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Visual and Verbal Quotation in Flaubert and Eliot
- 2 Figuring the Saint: Physical and Intellectual Representations of Asceticism
- 3 The Empty Stage: Landscape and the Dramatic in La Tentation de Saint Antoine and The Waste Land
- 4 The Ascetic Text of La Tentation de Saint Antoine and The Waste Land
- 5 ‘Caught in the Circle of Desire’: The Vortex as Ascetic Metaphor
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
The Waste Land (ll. 312–18)Ah! comme tu vas te perdre sous mes cheveux, humer ma
poitrine, t'èbalier de mes membres, et brûlè par mes prunelles,
entre mes bras, dans un tourbillion.
La Tentation de Saint AntoineIn this final chapter I extend the presentation of the vortex from Chapter 4, where I nominated it as the presiding structural metaphor of both the Tentation and The Waste Land, to refer to its more comprehensive function as a metaphor for ascetic experience. To provide a sense of continuity with the preceding discussion, I begin by defining the geometrical properties of the vortex that affirm its suitability for the role it performs in relation to my two principal texts, before embarking on a more general overview of its presence and character within Eliot's work. Discussion then turns to the vortex's emblematic status elsewhere in modernism, focusing particularly on the formulations of Yeats and Pound, who – although their applications are highly idiosyncratic – share common influences for the employment of such a symbol.
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- Information
- Ascetic Modernism in the Work of T S Eliot and Gustave Flaubert , pp. 135 - 160Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014