Source: https://cclitmag.wordpress.com/2009/06/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 19:15:03+00:00

Document:
O Willie Belle Pruitt, who buries your dead?
But day by night, and night by day, oppressed?
When sparkling stars twire not, thou gild’st the even.
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these works will immediately recognise in the poem certain references to vegetation ceremonies.
I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the “crowds of people,” and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, with the Fisher King himself.
Cf. William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act 1, scene 2.
Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.
V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 140.
Cf. Part III, l. 204.
Cf. Part III, l. 195.
Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.
Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.
Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.
Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.
I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.
The currants were quoted at a price “cost, insurance and freight to London”; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.
This may not appear as exact as Sappho’s lines, but I had in mind the “longshore” or “dory” fisherman, who returns at nightfall.
V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.
V. The Tempest, as above.
The interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren’s interiors. See The Proposed Demolition of Nineteen City Churches (P. S. King & Son, Ltd.).
The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line 292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn. V. Götterdämmerung, III. i: the Rhine-daughters.
The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. . . . Its notes are not remarkable for variety or volume, but in purity and sweetness of tone and exquisite modulation they are unequalled.” Its “water-dripping song” is justly celebrated.
The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.
“Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.
V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher King.
V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is a feeble translation of the content of this word.
we broke hyssop and bramble.
and knotted roots and acorn-cups.
we parted green from green.
and the forest after it.

References: V. 

V. 

V. 

V. 
 V. 

V. 

V.