Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Cruellest Month
With temperatures reaching 45 degrees Celsius up north, Facebook updates have begun quoting the opening line of T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land: April is the cruellest month.
In the poem, the line is meant ironically. It is spoken from the point of view of those who feel threatened by the awakening of spring, who prefer winter's 'forgetful snow'.
APRIL is the cruellest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Eliot plays off the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with its evocation of the sweetness of spring that inspires people to leave their homes for pilgrimages. Here are the opening lines of the Prologue (in somewhat modernised spelling, with difficult words explained in brackets):
When that April with his showers soote (sweet)
The drought of March hath pierced to the root
And bathed every vein (rootlet) in such liquor (liquid)
Of which virtúe engendered is the flower;
When Zephyrus (West Wind) eke (also) with his sweete breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heath (grove & field)
The tender croppes, and the younge sun (spring sun)
Hath in the Ram (Aries) his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles maken melody
That sleepen (who sleep) all the night with open eye
[So pricketh them Natúre in their couráges], (spurs / spirits)
Then longen folk to go on pilgrimáges,
All this is a far cry from the oven-like plains of North India. Another misunderstood phrase frequently used in these months is 'Indian Summer'. An Indian Summer has nothing to do with India. It refers to a sudden warming of weather that is occasionally witnessed in parts of North America in October, confounding the expectations of those who assume temperatures will keep dropping through autumn. The Indians in question are Native Americans, not desis.