Monday, December 9, 2013
The Hollow Men
Amongst Colonel Kurtz's reading material was T.S. Eliot's 1925 poem, "The Hollow Men." It is believed that the title was inspired by Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness who is
referred to as a "hollow sham" and "hollow at the core". The epigraph to the poem of "Mistah Kurtz – he
dead", is an allusion to Conrad's
character.
Some critics read the poem as told from three perspectives,
each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death's kingdoms
("death's dream kingdom", "death's twilight kingdom", and
"death's other kingdom"). Eliot describes how we, the living, will be
seen by "Those who have crossed/With direct eyes [...] not as lost/Violent
souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men."
First stanza:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
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