T.S. Eliot: Christian Martyrdom

I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not do the same
How should they know what I do?¹

In T.S. Eliot’s later poetry and “Murder in the Cathedral” there is a tendency for the poet to focus on the human condition, especially as it relates to Christianity.  This discussion will begin with the themes of life, death and Christianity in “Murder in the Cathedral” and then the later poems of “Ash Wednesday,” “Burnt Norton” and the “Ariel Poems.  Other, more cynical works, such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” “The Waste Land” and the satires will also be addressed, but with less emphasis on these themes.

“Murder in the Cathedral”  is a play about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket.  Becket returns from France to England after seven years of exile and is confronted by four Tempters.  The temptations take the form of alternatives from which Becket is obligated to choose.  In confronting Becket, the First Tempter tells Becket to recover his favors with King Henry to restore the situation that existed before Becket’s disloyalty.  The Second Tempter tells Becket to regain the Office of Chancellor and use its power for his own glory.  Becket is asked by the Third Tempter to join forces with the barons to overthrow the King for the benefit of both the Church and the barons.  The Fourth Tempter is the most important because he tells us,

“I am only here, Thomas, to tell you what you know.²

The Fourth Tempter tells the reader what is going on in Becket’s mind.  His advice to Becket is to

Fare forward to the end.³

Becket listens to this Tempter because it is his own thoughts that confront him.  The Tempter tells him,

But think, Thomas, think of glory after death.⁴

Becket’s reaction is negative,

I well know that these temptations
Mean present vanity and future torment.⁵

and decides,

The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.⁶

Becket decides that he must not let the possibility  of receiving glory after his martyrdom affect his receiving that martyrdom.  He must “no longer act or suffer”⁷ but lose “his will in the Will of God.”⁸ Destiny will take its course.  This echoes the Chorus of Women at the beginning of the play:

Destiny waits in the hand of God, shaping the still unshapen…⁹

Becket, faced with the temptation and his own certain death, does the only thing he can do.  He awaits destiny, the Will of God, his certain death, neither acting or suffering.  It is a death with no thoughts of glory, for that would mean damnation.  In his acceptance of death, Becket is free.  It is his submission to the Will of God that sets him free.

A major theme begins when the Fourth Tempter tells Becket:

You hold the skein:  wind, Thomas, wind
The thread of eternal life and death…”¹⁰

This theme is developed into a kind of paradox through which Becket defines his destiny – his martyrdom.  Becket links the Christmas / Birth and Passion / Death together to express the full meaning of martyrdom.  Eliot implies a great deal with the term “martyrdom,” most likely his own view of Christianity, when he has Becket say:

A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the Will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God.  The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.¹¹

Martyrdom becomes a metaphor for Christianity in the play, or how a Christian should respond to God.  Mr. Eliot is defining Christianity.

This martyrdom / Christianity, death / birth, Passion / Christmas theme is consistent in Eliot’s poetry after “The Wasteland.”  It is stressed in the Ariel poems.  In “Journey of the Magi,” the Magi looks upon Jesus’ birth, questioning the significance.  Was it Birth, only?  The Magi had seen birth and death before but had “thought them different.”¹² When he sees the birth of Jesus, he is also aware of Jesus’ Death and that brings forth his awareness of his own death.  His own “martyrdom” is made in his awareness of his death.  When the Magi goes back to his kingdom, his life has changed – he is

…no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.¹³

The “old dispensation” echoes “Murder in the Cathedral.”  The “old dispensation,” this “alien people” are the people Becket preaches about in the “Interlude” of “Murder in the Cathedral.”  This “alien people” is the world which “cannot understand.”¹⁴

In “A Song for Simeon” this death / birth imagery is again prevalent:

Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.¹⁵

Simeon is a very important embodiment of this death / birth  imagery since he is the one who

…would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.¹⁶

Thus at one and the same time Simeon dies when he sees Jesus and lives through his acceptance of Jesus.  He asks Jesus to “Grant me my peace.”¹⁷ “Peace” echoes in “Murder in the Cathedral” when Becket comments,

[Jesus] gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.”¹⁸

Again the “old dispensation” of the world is echoed.  Simeon gains peace through his martyrdom.  In the Bible Simeon refers to Jesus as his Master.  “A Song for Simeon reads,

Let thy servant depart,
having seen thy salvation.¹⁹

This is from “Animula:”

The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
…
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the “Encyclopaedia Brittanica.”
…
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,…²⁰

The innocent child is perched perilously close to the corrupt history of the world, the “Encyclopaedia Brittanica (“…the world that is wholly foul.”²¹)

Eliot ends “Animula,”

Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.²²

The actual form of this prayer is

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

and can be found in this form in “Ash Wednesday.”²³ The prayer of death is turned into the prayer of birth.  Birth becomes something to fear.  Eliot emphasizes the increasing influence of the world upon the child in “Animula.”  The child is slowly, but surely, being thrust into the history and reality of man.  The world will adversely affect the child.

Between birth and death is life – it is the unreal realm of time, the

…limitation
Between un-being and being²⁴

found in “Burnt Norton.”  Life in the later poetry of Eliot is much like the stagnated existence of J. Alfred Prufrock.  Life is

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
…
This is the time of tension between dying and birth…²⁵

Life is defined by time.  Time is a human invention used to avoid the “still point” – the awareness of the moment.  Consciousness is avoided through time.  Eliot tries to do away with the concept of time in “Burnt Norton.”  Endings precede beginnings.  Contradictions exist side-by-side.  Life becomes “a world of speculation.”²⁶ Eliot sees man as trapped on earth in time:

In the small circle of pain within the skull
You still shall tramp and tread one endless round
Of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
Which never is belief:  this is your fate on earth….²⁷

Eliot sees life flowing through man’s mind through time.  But time produces unreality.

To be conscious is not to be in time….²⁸

Escape time, the wheel that constantly turns around and around, continuously returning to the same place, and you escape unreality.

To escape time, you must escape the turning wheel to the “still point.”  The still point is not-time.  It is a moment of consciousness that cannot be defined temporally.

I can only say, there we have been; but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.²⁹

Eliot’s image of the still-point is directly related to Christianity.  Eliot’s image for time is the wheel.  At the axle of this wheel is the still point – a point which is still and does not move through space.  An analogy can be drawn between this still point and Christianity.  Time is measured BC and AD – in relationship to Jesus Christ.  The still point of time is Jesus’ birth.  However, Eliot refers to the cross of Jesus’ Passion as the “axle-tree.³⁰”  Eliot combines the Birth / Christmas and Death / Passion together into the still point.  Out of this Birth and Death comes Jesus’ martyrdom – and the beginning of Christianity.  Eliot’s still point is Christianity.

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.³¹

Time is an avoidance of reality.  Only by reaching for the still point can a person become conscious.

Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.³²

Man cannot avoid the present by looking into the past or future, for the past and future are inventions of man – the concept of time.  The wheel is turning and constantly repeating, but the still point is stable.

Man is trapped in time:

Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate,  Primrose and Ludgate.  Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.³³

Near the end of Murder in the Cathedral the knights rationalize their reasons for killing the archbishop.  The Second Knight says that they were totally disinterested  in the murder, that they had nothing to gain by it.  The Third Knight says that the state killed him, that everyone in the audience is partly responsible for his death.  And the Fourth Knight maintains that the archbishop committed “Suicide while of Unsound Mind.”  Eliot is using irony by having the Knights explain away the murder absurdly – they are “alien people” who “cannot understand.”  This is their lives, full of dreams, untruths and absurd rationalizations.  Becket’s comments to his Priest’s would fit the Knights just as well:

You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.³⁴

Eliot also describes Hell in “Murder in the Cathedral:”

The white flat face of Death, God’s silent servant,
And behind the face of Death the Judgement
And behind the Judgement, the Void, more horrid than active shapes of hell;
Emptiness, absence, separation from God;
The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land
Which is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void,
Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind
To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretense,
Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no tones,
No colours, no forms to distract, to divert the soul
From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing,
Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death,
We fear, we fear.³⁵

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” perhaps depicts Eliot and his cynicism towards life without Christ.  It is a depressingly dreary existence – one that would have been of more worth had it been the life of a crab crawling along the ocean floor.  Time past is present as history in “Gerontion.”  The “cunning passages” of history deceive man.  History is nothing more that a record of man’s corruptions, his multitudinous falls and sins.  Only the past is corrupt in “Gerontion.”  In “Burnt Norton” all time, because it inhibits consciousness of the still point, is corrupt.  Eliot’s dismay at the “True Church” from “The Hippopotamus” still exists in his later poetry.  The “True Church” is the “old dispensation” of Eliot’s later verse.  Even though Eliot is a Christian in his later poetry, he is by no means an ordinary Christian.  He still separates himself  from the “True Church” – his beliefs are unadulturated.

With “The Waste Land” comes what can be said to be Eliot’s martyrdom – his death, his total disgust for time and life.  With “Ash Wednesday” Eliot is born again; he

…constructs something
Upon which to rejoice.”³⁶

Cocteau’s Myth and the Role of the Poet

Jean Cocteau’s dramatic canon is characterized by an obsessive attention towards the myth and the role of the poet.  Even in the plays and films where these themes are not explicit, such as “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Eternal Return,” implicitly they are there.  Perhaps the most widely known work by Cocteau is his film, “Blood of a Poet.”  This is Cocteau’s first film work, its main focus being the relationship of the poet to his art, to his life and to his death.  Indeed, it is Cocteau’s statement of his “poetic self.”  In this way it is a kind of introduction, a prologue to his entire canon.  It is also a lesson in how Cocteau uses myth.  Our examination of the film will highlight some of the recurring themes in Cocteau’s work.

There  are five sections to “Blood of a Poet:”

1. Prologue – “Every poem is a coat of arms.  It must be deciphered.”¹  The protagonist enters, a doorknob is tried and a chimney begins its collapse.
2. First Episode:  “The wounded hand, or the scars of the poet.”² The protagonist is revealed to represent Cocteau, symbolized by the five pointed star.  Important aspects of this scene include the costumes and the wound, with its narcissistic eroticism.
3. Second Episode – “Do the walls have ears?”³  The wound is transferred to the sculpture which brings it to life.  The poet enters into the world of the mirror, in which he peers into the four rooms.  He is then prompted to commit suicide.  With the resuscitation of life the poet struggles down the hotel corridor through the mirror and  back into the studio.  The episode ends with the poet demolishing the statue.  Important aspects of this episode include the transference of the wound, the descent into the mirror, the four rooms and the destruction of the statue.
4. Third Episode – “The snowball fight.”⁴ A simple and realistic scene.  School children are participating in a snowball fight.  One of the children is killed by a blow from one of the snowballs.  Important aspects of this scene include the snow-statue of the poet (the snow is comparable to marble), the attitude of the children towards the statue of the poet and their destruction of it and the murder of the child.
5. The Fourth Episode – “The profanation of the host.”⁵ The murdered child is met by his guardian angel.  A card game is played between the poet and the statue with an audience looking on.  The scene ends with the suicide of the poet.  Important aspects of this episode include the audience reactions, the ace-of-hearts, costuming, the interaction between the poet and the statue and the suicide.
6. The Metaphorical Climax – With the suicide of the poet, the statue leaves.  The resulting deluge of symbols becomes a statement of Cocteau’s “poetic self.”  Important aspects of this scene include the bull, the disjointed map of Europe, the globe, the busts of Diderot, the lyre and the statue in its reclining fragmented form.
7. Completion of the chimney collapse.

In the prologue to ‘The Blood of a Poet,” we see the masked protagonist, his arms draped by a cloth, holding a plaster hand.  A door is then shown, someone on the opposite side attempting to open it.  A struggle to “open up” or “get inside” is thus suggested by the image.  Afterwards, the film formally begins.  Even with it’s “sickening slowness,”⁶ the body of “The Blood of a Poet” is an instantaneous event, taking place between the initial destruction of a chimney and its imminent collapse.  Thus the films occurs on two levels – during the actual realistic duration of the film or during the instant the chimney collapses.  Cocteau wishes to reveal the impressions of the timeless relationships of the poet’s psyche.  The dichotomy which is drawn between the two worlds is described by Cocteau in his notes to “Orpheus:”

…time is a purely human notion and, in fact, does not exist at all.⁷

We leave the world of reality and plunge into the world of the poet.  The timeless aspect of the world we enter means that everything we see is co-existent, showing the interweaving relationships of the poet’s mind.

The first episode, entitled “The scars of the poet,” reveals Cocteau to be the identity of the protagonist (the actor wears the star of Cocteau).  The poet, in Louis XV wig, draws a picture (in Cocteau’s own style) in which the mouth animates itself.  The animation of the art work startles the poet and he finds it necessary to “quieten” the drawing.  Possibly the art work reveals more than the poet intended or makes him aware of a painful memory.  This is strengthened by two other references in Cocteau’s work, one from Cegestius in “The Testament of Orpheus:”

One doesn’t always revive what one likes.⁸

The other reference comes from Cocteau.  On “The Blood of a Poet” Cocteau says,

Exegesis, which is a Muse, is still examining it, and the psychoanalyst is discovering what the shadow part of me unknowingly expressed long ago.⁹

The pain of revelation through art, through the dredging up of past pain, is the wound that the poet must bear.  Note that the wound is a mouth and is located on the hand, two tools of the poet.

After the wound is transferred to the poet’s hand, the man dressed in Louis XV garb visits him.  On seeing the wounded hand (which bears the essence of the poet’s sensibility, his attitudes toward conventions) the visitor is shocked and retreats.  The meaning is clear.  The artist, especially Cocteau, plays a unique role in society.  The artist’s  role causes him to reject some old and some new conventions, while accepting others.  While Cocteau is “…very much a nineteenth century romantic…,”¹⁰ the visitor is nonetheless repulsed by what he sees.  (Indeed, a Romantic audience would be at a loss viewing “Blood of a Poet.”)  While accepting some of the conventions of the Romantic period, Cocteau must nonetheless reject most of their attitudes and conventions.  The poet thus casts off his own Louis XV wig (expressing the artistic need for originality).  This iconoclastic role of the poet works in reverse, also.  By accepting some Romantic traditions, Cocteau is rejecting modern artistic attitudes.  Thus the themes of iconoclasm and timelessness are repeated in the timeless persona of the poet, accepting neither old or new.

If I can’t please everybody / I might as well not please nobody at all.*

When the poet washes his hand, the mouth / wound gasps for air.  The poet complies with its gasps by putting his hand out the window.  The mouth / wound responds by caressing the poet and providing sexual stimulation (purgative relief).  The interaction between the mouth / wound and the poet can be compared to the poet and his reflection in a mirror.  Indeed, the whole scene is grounded in the myth of Narcissus, the god who fell in love with himself.

[Seeing] his own image in the water…[Narcissus] brought his lips near to take a kiss….  Because the image was not to be had, all he could do was stare, constantly admire the reflected image….  He cherished the flame that consumed him, so that by degrees he lost his colour, his vigor, and the beauty….  He pined away and died; and when his shade passed the Stygian river, it leaned over the boat to catch a look of itself in the waters.¹¹

For Cocteau, the mirror represents the entrance into the Realms of Death and Mind.  The superficial qualities of mirrors are expressed by Heurtebise in “Orpheus,”

“Beside, spend your life looking at yourself in a mirror, and you’ll see Death at work like a swarm of bees storing up honey in a hive of glass.¹²

Cocteau himself has made the assertion that mirrors

…show us growing older and bring us closer to death.¹³

Orpheus enters into the Realm of Death through a mirror.  On the other hand, the mirror acts as an entrance into the poet’s mind.  In “Blood of a Poet” the poet enters into the mirror and proceeds to peer into four rooms.  These rooms each represent an important aspect of Cocteau’s psyche.  These two Realms of Death and Mind are equivalent.**  This is an old concept, Socratic in origin (to live within the Mind being the ultimate good).  This combination of Mind and Death is the source of Cocteau’s obsession, both with the poetic role and the desire to possess the inner world of the mind.

The second episode being after the poet transfers the mouth to the statue.  Entitled “Do the walls have ears?” it begins with the statue speaking,

Do you think it’s that simple to get rid of a wound, to close the mouth of a wound?¹⁴

The poet has created his art in this scene and the manner in which he does it suggests the myth of Pygmalion.

[Pygmalion] was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near….  Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last fell in love with the counterfeit creation…. He caressed it, and give it presents such as young girls love…. He laid her on a couch…and called her his wife….¹⁵

Venus later instilled life into the sculpture for Pygmalion.  Pygmalion’s falling in love with the statue parallels Narcissus’s falling in love with his own reflection.  This enhances the art-as-mirror theme.  After the statue speaks, the poet gropes along the now windowless walls and comes to a mirror which has replaced the door.  He tells the statue, “Open it for me,”¹⁶ to which the statue replies,

There is only one way left.  You must go into the mirror and walk through.¹⁷

Again the theme of “trying to open the door” is repeated.  Entering into the mirror is equivalent to the poet entering deeper into the mind.  The poet enters into a deeper level of poetic reality.  (This distinction between the two levels is apparent in the soundtrack.  When the poet enters into the mirror, the music changes.  When the poet exits, the mirror, the previous music picks up where it left off, once again indicating the timeless nature of these worlds.)

The four doors through which the artist peers each contain an aspect of Cocteau’s psyche.  The first door shows the repeated execution of an Hispanic figure and the repeated destruction of a statue of the Virgin Mary.  The execution suggests the political execution of Emperor Maximillian.¹⁸ However, the repetitive destruction of these two icons suggests the separation of the poet from political and religious affairs.  The constant repetition perhaps suggests the nature of art itself, ritualizing the mundane.  Individual art works remain constant through time, repeating the same aesthetic qualities each time the art is experienced.  The best examples of repetitive art are drama, music and film.  The second door shows the shadows of an opium smoker preparing his opium and smoking it.  What occurs behind this door refers to Cocteau’s own experimentation with the drug.  The third door with its “Flying Lessons” focuses on the relationship between the teacher and pupil in the learning process.  Cocteau looks upon this relationship with distaste.  The child does not wish to participate in the lesson but is forced to do so by the beating which the teacher administers.  This positive attitude towards childhood was an aspect of the avant-garde movement prior to and during the time of Cocteau:

…these traits grew out of the cult of childhood established by the romantics.  Wordsworth and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Blake and Nerval reasserted the virtue and happiness of childhood as something inevitably stifled by education and society….After romanticism, and starting long before Freud, a mood developed which re-examined a child’s candor our most basic values:  beauty, morality, reason, learning, religion, law.¹⁹

Cocteau’s reverent attitude toward childhood is repeated later in the film in “The Snowball Fight” episode in which the pupils are burdened with the weight of their school books.  Cocteau’s attitude towards youth and adolescence are further expounded upon in the “Infernal Machine” and “Bacchus.”

Behind the fourth door is the hermaphrodite and alludes to Cocteau’s sexual ambivalence.  (Cocteau was gay.)  Along with this sexual ambivalence the scene also expresses the confusions that exist between art and reality, the fragmentation between art and the artist.  The parts which make up the hermaphrodite are human, sculpted and drawn.  Female breasts are drawn on a slate, while real, masculine legs and sculpted arms adorn the body.  A masked face peers through the slate to form the head of the female trunk.  The figure suggests the “art as a mirror of the artist” theme as well as the obvious sexual manifestation.  The artist is revealing himself to his public, and the artist’s sensibility is exposed.  Male and female garments are strewn about the couch.  A sign appears which reads, “Danger of Death.”

After peering past the threshold of the final door, the artist is given a gun and prompted to commit suicide.  The suicide is fake and the artist quickly revives.  The suicide once again alludes to Cocteau’s obsession with death – the actual death of the poet comes later.  Cocteau sees death as an entrance into the world of the poet within the Realm of the Mind.  After the suicide the poet rushes back down the hotel corridor and is ejected back into the studio through the mirror.  Entering the studio the poet goes to the statue and destroys it.  We hear as narration,

By breaking statues one risks turning into one oneself.²⁰

The film cuts to an exterior shot of a statue of the poet.  The masochistic destruction of the statue once again echoes the theme of iconoclasm.

“Episode Three – The Snowball Fight” begins with the children throwing snowballs at the statue and each other.  In “Two Screenplays” Cocteau describes the children in the scene,

Their moleskin satchels full of books weigh them down, deform them, giving them an almost crippled air.²¹

Again the theme of childhood happiness destroyed by education is stressed.  The children take the snow from the statue and use it to destroy the statue of the poet.  Cocteau describes the snow as having the qualities of marble.  This childhood disregard for the important things of the “grown-up” world (education, iconography, poetry) suggests a parallel to the poet’s own iconoclasm.

The students bombard the statue and destroy it.  One of them jumps up onto the pedestal and grabs the head.²²

Iconoclasm now develops into a dominant theme.  This theme began with the collapse of the chimney, perhaps suggesting a pervasive presence of destruction.  However, the temporal halting of this destruction indicates an even more powerful and overarching iconoclasm – the destruction of the human notion of time – a truly filmic destruction of this dimension.***  This iconoclasm, the disrespect of the poet towards existing convention, is constantly repeated throughout the film.  It is present in the suppression of the drawing, in the execution of the Hispanic political figure, in the shattering of the statue of the Virgin Mary and in the “Flying Lessons” sequence.  It is present in the poet’s suicide, in the destruction of the talking statue and in the destruction of the statue of the poet.  It will also be present in the upcoming torn map of Europe.  All of this iconoclastic activity leads to a fragmentary assimilation of images in the end, in a fashion very similar to the depiction of the hermaphrodite.  The art work becomes a pastiche of poet, art, reality and death as it takes on its own existence.  This attitude represents the nature of the poet, his need to destroy and re-create.  This ultimate creation, this pastiche, cannot fully manifest itself until the poet himself is destroyed – until the poet dies.

The murder of the child is based on an event from Cocteau’s childhood,

A story from my childhood still haunts me….  A young boy wounded by a snowball.  In “Les Enfants Terribles” the child does not die….  The bleeding child, in reality, had a nose-bleed and bled very little….  I didn’t want to film a realistic scene, but the distorted memory of the scene….²³

When the child is murdered, a poem is recited which reveals Cocteau’s childhood reaction to the incident.  The poem expresses a loss of innocence,

That blow of marble was a snowball,
And it shattered his heart,
And it shattered the conqueror’s tunic,
Shattered the black conqueror whom nothing protects.

He stood there, stunned
In the watch-tower of loneliness,
Naked legs under the mistletoe, the golden berries, the holly,
Shattered like a classroom backboard.

This is often how these blows
Leave school, making blood flow,
These hard snowball blows
That a fleeting beauty gives to the heart.²⁴

The “Fourth Episode:  The Profanation of the Host” involves a card game between the statue and the poet, an elucidation of an earlier encounter between the two in the first episode.  This interaction once again echoes the mirror scenes.  As before, the artwork, like a mirror, reveals the essence of the poet and, in turn, his death.  The statue in the scene stares at the poet.  During these interactions between the statue, the poet and the dead child, the audience is noticeably bored.  During the card game the poet takes the ace-of-hearts from the child and uses it.  The child’s guardian angel comes forward, a black and shiny being, and “absorbs” the child.  Before the angel leaves she removes the ace-of-hearts from the artist’s hand.  The statue speaks,

If you don’t have the ace-of-hearts my dear, you’re a lost man.²⁵

Cocteau elucidates on the scene,

…when he plays the card game with his Glory, with his Destiny, he cheats by drawing from his childhood instead of from within himself.²⁶

The statue then bears down on the poet,

She fixes her eyes on him.  He turns away, no longer able to stand her gaze….  The poet, under the gaze of the motionless woman, puts his hand in his pocket.  He brings out a revolver, puts it to his right temple and shoots.²⁷

Thus the poet dies.  Under the pressure of his own created image, his confrontation with death, he relinquishes his life.  This is the real death of the poet.  At the sight of his death the audience applauds,

Poets, in order to live must often die, and shed not only the red blood of their hearts, but the white blood of their soul, that flows and leaves traces which can be followed.  That is the price of applause.  Poets must give their all in order to obtain the slightest approval….  The poet’s work detests and devours him.  There isn’t room for both the poet and his work.  The work profits from the poet.  Only after his death can the poet profit from the work.  And anyway, the public prefer dead poets and they are right.  A poet who isn’t dead is an anachronism.²⁸

Death frees both the poet and his work.  The poet is allowed to live in the poetic realm of the mind and his art is allowed to achieve its own separate existence.  Death validates poetic work.  The poet martyrs himself for his art.

After the death of the poet, the artwork begins is own existence.  The statue gets up from the card table and leaves.  She wears the cape that once belonged to the Louis XV friend.  She exits through the previously locked golden door.  As the statue comes through the doors, she passes two busts of Diderot, a French encyclopedist, representing the acceptance of the artist into the intelligentsia.  A bull comes into view with a “torn, dismembered map of Europe”²⁹ pasted to its side with cow dung.  Representing the “age of anxiety,” and the decadence and factionalism of the modern world.  The bull’s horns are transformed into a lyre, the classical instrument which accompanied songs and recitations – the words of poets.  The final scene brings together many of the symbols used previously, the hermaphroditic mingling of the statue and the human aspects of the artist, the lyre and the globe.  The death of the artist has released his art to its own existence.  The art is therefore a pastiche of all the thoughts and activities of the poet while he was alive.

With the final visual and metaphorical definition of the poet complete, “reality” re-enters with the completion of the chimney collapse.  “The Blood of a Poet” has happened in an instant, a statement about the pain of the creative experience and the blood that must be shed in order to become an artist.

_______________________________

* Quote by Bob Dylan, a modern poet much in the style of the Romantic poet Arthur Rimbaud.

** Possibly the best literal translation of this concept is in “Murder in the Cathedral” by T. S. Eliot,

The white flat face of Death, God’s silent servant,
And behind the face of Death the Judgement
And behind the Judgement the Void, more horrid than active shapes of hell;
Emptiness, absence, separation from God;
The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land
Which is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void,
Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind
To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretense,
Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects, no tones,
No colours, no forms to distract, to divert the soul
From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing,
Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death,
We fear, we fear.

*** This opening sequence is comparable to the opening sequence of “An Andalusian Dog,” in which Luis Bunuel slices open the eyeball.  Bunuel wishes to destroy our old manner of seeing and replace it with a new one, the manner of seeing represented in the film.

Footnotes

¹Jean Cocteau, “Two Screenplays:  ‘The Blood of the Poet’ and ‘The Testament of Orpheus,'” translated by Carol Martin-Sperry  (Baltimore:  Penguin Books, 1969), p. 8.

²“Two Screenplays,” p. 9.

³“Two Screenplays,” p. 18.

⁴“Two Screenplays,” p. 39.

⁵“Two Screenplays,” p. 46.

⁶“Two Screenplays,”, p. 4.

⁷Jean Cocteau, “Three Screenplays:  ‘L’eternal Retour,’ ‘Orphee,’ ‘La Belle et la Bete,'” translated by Carol Martin-Sperry  (New York:  Grossman Publishers, 1972), p. 191.

⁸“Two Screenplays,” p. 95.

⁹“Two Screenplays,” p. 73.

¹⁰“Two Screenplays,” frontispiece.

¹¹Thomas Bulfinch, “The Age of Fable”  (New York:  Heritage Press, 1942), pp. 101-102.

¹²Jean Cocteau, “‘The Infernal Machine’ and Other Plays, various translators  (New York:  New Directions, 1967), p. 128.

¹³“Three Screenplays,” p. 191.

¹⁴“Two Screenplays,” p. 18

¹⁵“The Age of Fable,” p. 64.

¹⁶“Two Screenplays,” p. 18.

¹⁷“Two Screenplays,” p. 18.

¹⁸Lincoln F. Johnson, “Film:  Space, Time, Light and Sound” (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), p. 275.

¹⁹Roger Shattuck, “The Banquet Years (New York:  Vintage Books, 1968), p. 31.

²⁰“Two Screenplays,” pp. 36, 39.

²¹“Two Screenplays,” p. 39.

²²“Two Screenplays,” p. 40.

²³“Two Screenplays,” p. 66.

²⁴“Two Screenplays,” pp. 45  – 46.

²⁵“Two Screenplays,” p. 52.

²⁶“Two Screenplays,” p. 65.

²⁷“Two Screenplays,” p. 52.

²⁸“Two Screenplays,” pp. 66 – 67.

²⁹“Two Screenplays,” p. 56.