New T.S.Eliot Publication

An  interesting item  to appear recently on the  official T. S. Eliot website (tseliot.com) is the online publication of Noctes Binanianae (1939), a rare collection of light verse that has until now been available only in a tiny edition of 25 copies.

The book brings together Eliot, Frank Morley, Geoffrey Faber and John Hayward in a sequence of humorous poems, mock insults and literary banter. Writing many years later, Eliot described it as a collection in which the four friends "exercised our gifts of reciprocal insult in humorous verse". The title comes from Bina Gardens in Kensington, where they regularly met.

What makes this publication valuable is that it allows the collection to be read as it was intended: not as a handful of isolated Eliot poems, but as an ongoing conversation between friends. As editor John Haffenden notes, each poem answers the last and is then outdone by the next.

Eliot contributed eight of the twenty pieces, including the well-known "How to Pick a Possum", but the real interest lies in seeing the whole sequence unfold. It offers a glimpse of a side of Eliot that can easily be forgotten: witty, playful, sociable, and enjoying himself among close literary companions.

Of course, like most I think, I  associate Eliot with The Waste Land or Four Quartets, and all those other collected poems,  this collection is a refreshing reminder that even the most serious poets sometimes wrote simply for amusement.

The publication has been prepared under the auspices of the official Eliot website and features an introduction by John Haffenden, who is closely associated with Eliot scholarship and also has longstanding links with the UK Society. Useful therefore, not to conflate the two organisations.

The online edition may be found  at T S Eliot.com/Noctes 

The website of the T S Eliot Society UK is here >>

 

Friends in the Peak District 2011

So, in a few minutes of unstructured time, I thought I'd take a look at an old YouTube video from a while back.

In those days, it was not possible to summarise such a video at the click of a mouse.....

But I did that, and here's the video, and a summary.

The music is by Bruce Hornsby and the Range - 'That's The Way It Is'

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This video, titled Peak District 2011, captures a casual weekend trip with friends to the scenic Peak District in England. The footage showcases the group's outdoor activities and the beautiful rural landscapes.

Key highlights include:

Picturesque Scenery: The video features rolling hills, quiet country lanes, stone walls, and local livestock, including sheep and cattle (0:15-0:21, 1:42-1:44).

Exploration: The friends are shown walking through wooded areas, near streams, and exploring rocky, cave-like formations and landmarks (0:39-0:47, 1:00-1:06, 2:57-3:00).

Relaxed Atmosphere: Interspersed with their walks are scenes of the friends sitting at a table together outdoors (2:29-2:32, 3:52-3:57) and driving through the countryside surrounded by cows (4:17-4:20).

Local Culture: The video highlights visits to local spots, including a classic red telephone box (0:26) and a shop selling Bakewell tarts (3:36-3:38).

The Tympanum at St. Peter's Church, Charney Bassett

 

Not sure why, but I thought today about a visit I made to the village of Charney Bassett. It was February 2023, and I wanted to visit the grave  of relatives. My aunt and uncle, long term residents of the village, took care of me during a summer in the 1950s. I haven't forgotten those days.

I took a look around the church. A building I visited often. Here's a highlight I always return to. Here's a review of this fascinating carving.

The survival of this tympanum inside St. Peter's, is a mystery. At first glance it appears to be just another fragment of Norman stonework. Yet the more we look at its history, the more puzzling it seems. Even specialists have disagreed about both its date and its meaning.

Tympanum in Charney Bassett church, Oxfordshire 

Many Mansions, One Voice

 Just occasionally, parallel ideas come to mind, and seem to strike a chord worth listening to. Today for some reason, I found myself  thinking about those words in the New Testament , in John's Gospel 14:2 - 'In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you'.

The full verse in Greek is:

ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου μοναὶ πολλαί εἰσιν· εἰ δὲ μή, εἶπον ἂν ὑμῖν· ὅτι πορεύομαι ἑτοιμάσαι τόπον ὑμῖν.

A fairly literal translation would be:

"In my Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you, because I am going to prepare a place for you."

So, should I wonder again, about what heaven might look like and again,  about what becomes of the individual soul?  As we are drawn into our destiny in the hereafter, do we become less ourselves or more ourselves? The words of Jesus, "In my Father's house are many mansions", have always suggested to me a unity that  makes room for difference. The Greek, meantime, explains better the idea of  'mansions', which seems to me to be a peculiar word to use for the interior of a house...

In any case, Jesus is looking beyond a description of  the physical reality of heaven in John 14:2. Mansions, dwelling places, houses...all these are images for the time-bound understanding of timeless ideas. He using the image of his Father's household to express the deeper spiritual reality of belonging to, and abiding in, God.

Recently, while looking again at the closing section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, I was reminded of the passage which has parallels to those musings.

In What the Thunder Said, Eliot draws on an ancient story from the Upanishads. The creator, Prajāpati, speaks a single syllable, "Da", to three groups of his children. Yet each group hears something different. The gods, humans and demons each understand the sound according to their own nature.

What interested me this time was not the moral teaching usually drawn from the story. [ Give / Sympathise/ Control : see Booth, below].  It was the image, the idea  itself: one voice, many hearings.

For me, Christian thought has always held together two ideas that can seem difficult to reconcile. God is one, yet human beings are infinitely varied. We are all made in the image of God, yet no two persons are alike. If heaven means union with God, does individuality disappear, or is it somehow completed?

So today, I thought maybe the phrase "many mansions" hints at an answer. God, the Creator's  house is one house, but within it are many dwelling places. Thus unity does not require sameness. On the contrary, the richness of creation lies precisely in its diversity.

Seen like this, Eliot's story takes on an interesting resonance. The Creator utters a single sound, but each hearer receives it differently.

Perhaps the life to come is something like that? We do not lose ourselves in an undifferentiated oneness. Instead, each soul encounters the same divine reality from its own unique standpoint. The glory is shared, but the experience is personal.

I do not know whether Eliot would have recognised this interpretation. Yet the image remains compelling. A single voice speaks. Different hearers listen. And perhaps the mystery of the Creator/Father's house is that it contains room for every authentic response. The voice is one, but the hearing is many.

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Here is the story: 

1. The threefold offspring of Praj āpati—gods, men, and devils ( asura)— dwelt with their father Praj āpati as students of sacred knowledge ( brahmacarya).
 
 Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: “Speak to us, sir.” To them then he spoke this syllable, “ Da.”“Did you understand?” 

“We did understand,” said they. “You said to us, ‘Restrain yourselves ( damyata).’” “Yes ( Om)!” said he. “You did understand.”
 
2. So then the men said to him: ‘Speak to us, sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, “ Da.” “Did you understand?” 

“We did understand,” said they. “You said to us, ‘Give ( datta).’” “Yes ( Om)!” said he. “You did understand.”
 
3. So then the devils said to him: “Speak to us, sir.” To them then he
spoke this syllable, “ Da.” “Did you understand?” “We did understand,” said they. “You said to us, ‘Be compassionate ( dayadhvam).’”

“Yes ( Om)!” said he. “You did understand.”
 
This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, compassion. ( Thirteen Principal Upanishads , B ṛihad- Āra ṇyaka Upanishad 5.2.1–3)

Eliot incorporates pairs of words from this story at in The Waste Land: “DA / Datta . . . . DA / Dayadhvam . . . DA / Damyata” (The Waste Land 401–02, 411–12, 418–19). In other words, he gives us not only what the thunder said, but also what his students understood his words to mean.

Acknowledging:

Booth, A. (2015). “Datta: what have we given?”: The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. In: Reading The Waste Land from the Bottom Up. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482846_45