by Eliot · Cluster: Martyrdom · Martyr Saint · Cross
Abstract
Visionary free-verse poem of a self-absorbed ascetic who, transformed through tree, fish and girl, becomes a dancer before God and dies pierced by burning arrows; self-love, martyrdom, mortification of the flesh, and the gray rock of The Waste Land.
Connections
Archetypes: Martyr Saint Motifs: Blood, White and Red, Sea Themes & Concepts: Martyrdom, Pride, Self-Knowledge, Faith, Waste Land (Sterility), Terror and Horror Forms & Genres: Free Verse Historical References: Christianity Characters: Christ
Testo integrale / Full text
The Death of Saint Narcissus
Come under the shadow of this gray rock —
Come in under the shadow of this gray rock,
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow sprawling over the sand at daybreak, or
Your shadow leaping behind the fire against the red rock:
I will show you his bloody cloth and limbs
And the gray shadow on his lips.
He walked once between the sea and the high cliffs
When the wind made him aware of his limbs smoothly passing each other
And of his arms crossed over his breast.
When he walked over the meadows
He was stifled and soothed by his own rhythm.
By the river
His eyes were aware of the pointed corners of his eyes
And his hands aware of the pointed tips of his fingers.
Struck down by such knowledge
He could not live men’s ways, but became a dancer before God
If he walked in city streets
He seemed to tread on faces, convulsive thighs and knees.
So he came out under the rock.
First he was sure that he had been a tree,
Twisting its branches among each other
And tangling its roots among each other.
Then he knew that he had been a fish
With slippery white belly held tight in his own fingers,
Writhing in his own clutch, his ancient beauty
Caught fast in the pink tips of his new beauty.
Then he had been a young girl
Caught in the woods by a drunken old man
Knowing at the end the taste of his own whiteness
The horror of his own smoothness,
And he felt drunken and old.
So he became a dancer to God.
Because his flesh was in love with the burning arrows
He danced on the hot sand
Until the arrows came.
As he embraced them his white skin surrendered itself to the redness of blood, and satisfied him.
Now he is green, dry and stained
With the shadow in his mouth.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES OF POEMS
‘A cold coming we had of it 1
A man’s destination is his own village 1
Among a crowd of tenuous dreams, unknown 1
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon 1
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees 1
April is the cruellest month, breeding 1
Around her fountain which flows 1