T.S. Eliot's "La Figlia che Piange"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2020

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

T.S. Eliot, in full Thomas Stearns Eliot, (born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died January 4, 1965, London, England), American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, a leader of the Modernistmovement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones. The publication of Four Quartets led to his recognition as the greatest living English poet and man of letters, and in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. -- Bio from Brittanica.com

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to The Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern, and today is Friday, September 18th.
0:08.2	Today I'm going to read for you a poem by T.S. Eliot, considered one of the 20th century's major modernist poets.
0:16.7	Elliot wrote the love song of J. Alfred Poofrock, the Wasteland, Ash Wednesday, four quartets.
0:24.9	He was also an essayist, a publisher, a playwright, a literary critic, an editor, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
0:35.1	And the poem I'm going to read for you today is the last poem in his collection,
0:38.4	Proofrock. It was published in 1917, and it's called La Filia Ke Pionge. This is how it goes.
0:46.9	O quam, te memoram-wirgo. Stand on the highest pavement of the stair, lean on a golden urn. Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
0:58.0	Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise.
1:01.0	Fling them to the ground and turn with a fugitive resentment in your eyes.
1:06.0	But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
1:09.0	So I would have had him leave. So I would have had her stand and
1:14.1	grieve. So he would have left as the soul leaves the body torn and bruised, as the mind deserts the
1:21.4	body it has used. I should find some way incomparably light and deft, some way we both should understand,
1:30.1	simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
1:34.3	She turned away, but with the autumn weather, compelled my imagination many days,
1:39.7	many days and many hours, her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. And I would wonder how
1:46.8	they should have been together. I should have lost a gesture and a pose. Sometimes these cogitations
1:53.2	still amaze the troubled midnight in the noon's repose. I chose this poem to read today for a couple of reasons. One is it's one of my favorite
2:04.0	poems. It's definitely in my top 20, maybe even my top 10 poems captured my imagination when I read it
2:11.3	in my early 20s for the first time. I'm a big fan of Elliott and generally might be my favorite poet. So that's one reason.
2:20.4	And then I also am just fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by the multiple potential meanings of this
2:26.4	poem, which I'll talk about in a second. And so I wanted to share it and give you a chance to
	...

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