weialala leia!

[ontology]

So, I've realised an interesting fact about myself. Most of you will probably not be surprised.

When I enter a new fandom, or am rediscovering an old one, I attempt to connect it to Eliot somehow. Um, yes. While I was waiting to get sleepy last night, I paged through my Complete Eliot and decided that Angel (so far the most likely candidate for Elioting) might find certain passages of Ash-Wednesday and The Hollow Men rather apt. A bit of Rhapsody on a Windy Night, too. Um, yes. I have a feeling it is too late; therapy cannot do me any good now. (But just look at them, will you? I mean really.) And hey,

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

-- reminds me of Simon Tam rather a lot. Oh dear. I haven't really found anyone in any fandom who suits The Waste Land, although I can see River quoting:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight     
And fiddled whisper music on those strings     
And bats with baby faces in the violet light     
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall     
And upside down in air were towers     
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours     
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

And most of you lot know that T.S. Eliot is Remus Lupin's favourite poet. (Shut up. He is. Look at Preludes! And Prufrock! They were practically written about him! And, um, I actually possess about half a draft of an entire Remus-fic based on Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Yes.) And that Four Quartets was written after Mr Eliot took a spin in the TARDIS (definitely post-Time War, because there are references all over the place). And ressie_noldo and I decided once that the Weialala Leia are an alien race, but that's beside the point.

So, this is Banui's brain on, er, madness. Yes. Going away now.

(Stuff about Life later, maybe. I've been having a few days half-out of the world, which is nice, but I also feel about three times as absent-minded as usual, and I've always been terrifically absent-minded.)

Comments

[burningstarsxe.livejournal.com]

He's very interesting. It's odd - I'll read a stanza or two that are utterly beautiful and I love, but then the next stanza will be kind of gruesome and rather unlikeable. He's very good, inasmuch as he creates pictures in my mind so easily.

[faeriemaiden.livejournal.com]

That was pretty much my first impression of Eliot. ^-^ (Not counting having read Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats since I was really little -- I don't even remember being introduced to it, only that it was there, and a distinct part of my consciousness. And then after a few months of Seriouser Eliot I connected the two and went "...really?") I think it was "Prufrock" and "Ash-Wednesday" that I was first introduced to by this bloke on the Sonlight forums who for one reason or another posted Eliot several times, and I didn't entirely like them, but there were parts that thrilled me. Then they began to grow on me, and my mother found an ancient dime-store paperback anthology of my dad's, and, well, then I turned into the mad Eliot babbler I am today. :p

The thing I find most fascinating about Eliot is that he'll write a phrase or a stanza that seems utterly incomprehensible, and then one day you read it again and you understand it, only you can't always explain how. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", for example -- I know what that means, but I could never explain it.