T.S: Eliot bullshitter

Eliot et Lady Ottoline 1920

Tous ceux qui admirent The love song of Alfred J. Prufock et son fameux incipit avec six lignes de
 Dante,Inferno, XVII, 61-66:

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo
 

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo

se sont  demandé qui étaient ces dames qui parlent de Michel Ange.Et on a parlé de Prufock
comme d' un individu qui a du mal à aimer les dames.

Il y aussi des dames dans un poème moins connu de la même période, 1910, où, selon l' OED , Eliot
introduit pour la première fois en langue littéraire le terme"bullshit"

the Triumph of Bullshit

Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward insipid and horribly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attentuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotions that turn out isiculous,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out “this stuff is too stiff for us” —
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannons fumiferous
Engines vaporous — all this will pass;
Quite innocent — “he only wants to make shiver us.”
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
And when thyself with silver foot shalt pass
Among the Theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ’s sake stick them us your ass.

– T. S. Eliot


au début, il semble que Eliot ait désigné les critiques par un autre terme "ladies", mais en 1916 il  s'adresse à des dames. Qui sont ces dames? Les mêmes que dans  le laforguien  Prufock ?
L'article fut refusé


Eliot, T.S. (1997). Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917. Harcourt.