The part of Eliot plausibly quoting Byron. The quote itself reminds me of a fact I not certain is well-known, viz. the Hebrew bible has no spaces to delineate the words, reputably to enable myriad interpretations. Scott Reynolds -----Original Message----- From: W. Freind <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thursday, March 11, 1999 2:45 PM Subject: Re: that centaur ant >On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Yakob Leib ha Kohain [Jacob Leib Cohen, Ph.D.] wrote: > >> I once attended a reading by TSE at the University of Chicago in the >> mid-1950's. During the Q & A at the end, someone asked him what some >> line or other meant, to which he replied (and here I quote from memory, >> but the gist is accurate), "A poet, including myself, often writes from >> inspiration and has no more idea what a poem may mean than its reader." > >Eliot has a slew of lines like that. He observes somewhere that if (!) he >ever republished "Ash Wednesday" he might include an epigraph from Byron's >_Don Juan_: > > Some have accused me of a strange design > Against the creed and morals of the land > And trace it in this poem, every line. > I don't pretend I quite understand > My own meaning when I would be *very* fine; > But the fact is I have nothing planned > Except perhaps to be a moment merry... > >He also has a line about meaning serving as the bone to distract the >watchdog while the poem burgles the house. Both of those offer a pretty >interesting commentary on the crossword puzzle approach many (most?) >critics and readers have brought to _The Waste Land_. > >Bill Freind