The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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“The Hollow Men” reflects the despair, apathy, and spiritual emptiness of a post-World War I society. Eliot uses imagery of decay and lifelessness to portray the hollow existence of these individuals, who lack purpose, emotion, and connection.
Compared to Eliot’s earlier work, such as “The Waste Land,” the poem is more fragmented and pessimistic. The shifting perspectives and disjointed language mirror the fragmentation and disillusionment of the post-war world.
“The Hollow Men” resonates with the modernist era, capturing the sense of alienation and existential angst prevailing in society. It reflects a loss of faith, both in traditional values and in the ability of humanity to find meaning and purpose in life.
Behold the mental and moral exhaustion of those who struggle to survive, the thousand yard stare of the dead or nearly dead, the semiconscious realization of the loss of ones humanity distilled into pragmatic word pictures of emotionless despair…terrible and beautiful at the same time in it’s purity. “The Hollow Men” embraced the suck…
Odd but just had finished reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness slowly and surely.
They don’t write like that nowadays.
Thanks, just scanned a bit and can see this will be enjoyable to read.
Thanks, and WOW! So relevant to the here and now.
I can remember working with a Vietnam vet and his telling of how the Vietnamese children loved American candy. ‘Our boys’ would throw the candy between the rolling wheels of their convoys of military vehicles for the purpose of running over the kids as they wrestled with one another in a mad dash to get to the prize.
I remember the uneasiness, with silence and blank stares that came over all of us listening.
My sick cousin used to brag about throwing candy in concertina wire and when the kids would crawl in to get it the candy, they would shoot near them causing them to be badly cut trying to get out….but the military made him a ” man” and a hero. Thank him for his service.
Anyone who would do that is sick beyond just plain mental illness.
Yeah, I can’t explain it. It appears that in a war setting, the very worst comes out from the human psyche. I know a guy from work that was seeing a shrink because of all the atrocities he personally committed in Iraq. He and others would snipe innocent civilians just for the fun of it. He, himself, supposedly ‘murdered’ 24 people.
Hey , I’m a believer in a meaning and intent behind the whole shitshow, but I needn’t even go there to find the upshot in it all . Quite simply all the death and decay is the fertile seedbed for something fresh and new to spout out of and the cycle to begin a new ( spring ) . Of course I guess that requires the individual to realize its not all about him or her in order to be comforted by it .
Yes, the JWO will be so wonderful.
that would correspond to the compost-pile-rotting stage of putrefaction
I spoke with a man today whose father was a WW1 vet. It sounds like he has spent his life healing from his experience with that man. The cycle of broken people trying to raise children continues through every war and calamity. That’s why I don’t think we can rely on the teaching of men, but only the Word of God.
Amen
Fuck it. Give them a BANG and not a whimper. An old soldier recalled D Day and said ” we all knew we were dead anyway , so guys were yelling to others , COME UP HERE AND DIE WITH US !! ” and inch by inch , they advanced.
Come up here and sacrifice your life for Clown World lies….you’re dead anyway, so help us send more good men to hell, along with ourselves…that’s about the stupidest shit I’ve had the agony of reading in a long while…and you believe this jingoist bullshit , too, don’t you?
The massive allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 was not necessary for the military defeat of Germany. The German Army had already been destroyed on the eastern front, and the German war industry was being devastated by the combined bombing offensive. According to Trumbull Higgins,
The Normandy invasion was simply too late to be of meaningful assistance to the Russians. In fact, Stalin had conceded that is was no longer necessary
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/NoOverlord/index.html
The Greatest Generation
https://www.murdoch-murdoch.net/html/mm/the-greatest-generation.html
OK , Karen.
Where’s the lie, Biffy?
Well said, flash.
Many people think they can rewrite history.
They died in vain when you look at the sh*t that is going on now.
I like it.
They call it Reformation, but in effect it was a money lender psyop which turned all humanity into debt subjugated slaves, who not only embrace their usury driven slavery as muh capitalism, but treat it as their new religion as well.
I know EvangiBoomerRaptureTardFags hate Catholics, but the Church really was the only thing standing between the people and total debt slavery. Welcome to Protestant hell.
Philip II: (1527-1598)
William Thomas Walsh
“It did not occur to the kings that if the money-lenders ever got
power enough, if they ever got from under the public-spirited
repression of the Church, they would destroy their own masters.
Kings were not generally as far-sighted as money-changers, and
much less so than priests. This is not to deny that clerics sometimes
condoned usury and profited by it, or that some kings repressed it.
Human affairs are never so simple as that. But there was a line of
cleavage: the Church on one side hostile to usury, the kings
compelled to make use of it on the other.
As the moral influence of the Church was weakened in the
political and economic spheres, in consequence of a series of
calamities for which she was not to blame—the Black Death, the
papal exile at Avignon, the Great Schism, the return of paganism
with the Renaissance—usury began to accumulate wealth and to
organize its influence. With canny insight it threw its influence, by
and large, against the power of Church and State, supporting now
one, now the other, until, by a see-saw process, it succeeded in
weakening both.
It early identified itself with the forces of heresy in religion and
liberalism in politics, until Protestantism at last gave money-lending a certificate of respectability, until a Lord Bacon could write a serious defense of it, and Harrison (in Holinshed) must chronicle the capitulation of the new Protestant England to “usury, a trade brought in by the Jews, but now perfectly practised almost by every
Christian, and so commonly that he is accompted but for a fool that
doth lend his money for nothing.”5 ”
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=1889B28539B7506D637C3D5605BFD2A0
“globalism is not only the metastasis of all modern errors, it is the latest iteration of the Dream of Babel. And each and every concept and ideology that serves globalism, from democracy, equality, and free trade to transgenderism, thought policing, and usury, are rooted in the same satanic inspiration.”
Vox Day
Why would You think that?
Think what…that EvangiBoomerRaptureTards hate Catholics ?
Have you not heard the incessant cacophony of Evangitards calling Catholics evil, Satanic, anti-Christians, child molesting, idol worshipers and doomed to hell…if this is love, i must be missing something?
Do you even TBP?
I think the image problem with the Catholic Church is the Jesuit Poop…and the fact that the modern theology has elevated the veneration of Mary to the point it seems to have supplanted the worship of Christ.
The word church is Gr. ekklesia. And if you really research ekklesia it in no way resembles church; or a circus.
“In spite of the attempts to prove otherwise, the word church comes from the Latin word for circle, and it is from this that we get our English word circus. So today when we see the pretentious parades and the religious extravaganzas that are put on display for all to see, we are convinced that the word circus fits it to quite a degree of exactitude. If I were any part of this great three-ring American religious circus, I would hang my head in shame. But, thank God, from all this I have been delivered and separated. I consider all of this highly successful religious activity to be little more than men putting on the “form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof,” as Paul said would characterize men in the concluding days of this dispensation of grace (2 Tim. 3:5).
Otis Q. Sellers
church-circle etymology was rejected in the 1800s
The bigger point is that Yeshua built of Himself an ekklesia and NOT church. There is no such thing as church in the Bible. Nor are there immortal souls. The ‘Bible teaches’ there are living souls and dead souls. Hell is not a proper translation of the Heb. Sheol or Gk. Hades and God would NEVER send a man into such “eternal torment.”
You can disagree with me, but I’m just stating what the Bible says.
I was taught all of this garbage too. I changed my mind when I decided to read the Bible with my own eyes rather than trusting and accepting the creeds of religion and mere ignorant men.
I am still shocked that Protestants do not consider Romans as Christians. Sure Rome is full of errors, but so are the Protestants. Have they not read the Apostolic epistles?
Ez to see. Whore of Babylon.
However, Plenty of decent, misguided, congregants.
No Rapture.
Don’t worship the Synagogue of Satan , demand a third temple with animal sacrifice, or preach the heresy of two gospels, either, so there’s three more strikes against them…hate ‘dem whores…..reeee
Who’s more misguided, EnvangiBoomerTwoGospelThirdTempleRedHeiferBurningChurchianZionistRaptureTards or a “Congregant” of the universal church?
https://youtube.com/@scriptureandtraditionfrjm?si=NK-nKUCRcN_wNI-m
Not sure, doesn’t matter, Sola Scriptura KJV
One of those morons, too .
He’s right, evil Catholicism protected the true church, allowed the gospel to survive along with the few elect scattered through history like cathars, huguenots, “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.”
The Reformation was necessary for the Church, but the piggy backers that became Protestants not so much.
…and we orthodox have been here all along waiting for both the latins and the protestants to come to their senses, we’ll welcome both back.
From Lutheran circles I follow, a lot of Christians are discovering the East, but not as many are converting. I think all the small o orthodox have something to offer each other, but I am happy being confessional Lutheran.
Outside in the madness,
Trees dance in the wind,
Waiting to discover what is,
After the end
It’s all around us. The thing that annoys me most is being around people who will not live a life. It’s just basic survival for them without any risk.
Ain’t no place for masculine men — or even masculine boys — in our Woke-Feminist nations.
New Amerika has sown the wind, and she will reap the whirlwind.
Even before “woke-feminist nations” there were problems in not properly directing alpha males in accordance with national stability. Alpha males haves to be meticulously cultivated or they go rogue. How many alpha males impregnated women and did not marry and, or provide for them and the women then had to go on government assistance? Most likely a preponderance of these men were not beta or other than alpha males. Most alphas probably comprise a majority of the drug addicts, alcoholics, and derelict husbands.
It seems you are confusing ‘alpha males’ with guys who leave behind fatherless children …
Not even close …
The alpha archetype is by definition very rare and elite in terms of vagina tingles. The Alpha-Beta dichotomy is misused by the rubes. Female instincts are not the end-all and be-all, or we would not be able to communicate online like this.
I thought Western Rifle Shooters was gone… Thank you for the new link to it… I missed it…
The little at a time view is typical of anglo views on all aspects of life, however, this is never how it occurs and it is why ‘science’ forecasts are nearly always only portrayed linearly with no dynamics and why the forecasts are always wrong.
This thinking has been ingrained in humans interpretation of events as ‘gradual’.
The ‘small movements’ are always due to pressure and force. It doesn’t matter if it is in behavior of humans or if it is in natural events. Force against something already in place can only produce small movements … until it doesn’t and the whole foundation gives way.
You can look through every single change in government system, financial system, or industrial system … it is always a sudden and climatic change relative to the amount of time the slow ‘gradual’ force has been applied.
Which snowflake causes the avalanche to finally start?
That’s an excellent and concise analysis.
Those who are disconnected from the Natural world have no ability to understand it’s mechanics. And if one lives in a world of manifest realities, like a bureaucracy or academia, then any manifest solution seems plausible.
TS Elliot, what a depressing and pathetic faithless man.
Such is the fate of all who turn away from their Creator, the God of the Bible.
How was T.S. Elliott inspired to write the “The Journey of the Magi”? Matthew 12:40 delves deep into the cognizant who were, or are, unsatisfied with worldly hubris.
This is why I enjoy this site. Thanks for posting as had never read it before.
Can be found here:
https://poets.org/poem/journey-magi
Well when you put it that way of course it sounds bad………
The national flat effect is spot on. I’m noticing it more every day. People are emotionally and spiritually dead. The life force is gone from their eyes. Everyone looks like nervous rabbits.
Zombies even.
Those aren’t the ones you need to be wary of. It’s the ones celebrating all this shit that you need to keep a very close eye on.
All right folks,enuff with the end of the world nonsense,have a serious issue and could use your help(hence Get Serious cat).
I am working on the truck and doing some electrolysis on some old tools,I know,all seems well but feel I have become a “racist”.
I know,you are all saying your just doing electrolysis/doesn’t make one a racist but hear me out.
You have a piece with negative lead from battery charger that attaches to tool being derusted and the positive to a anode rod(i.e. rebar),i.e. the sacrifidial piece that over time fades away,but,useful short term.
I have taken to calling the anode rod the “diversity rod”,hence the “racism”,sigh…..,I hope I can in time be a better person but the future looks grim!
Yep,just a little baking soda goes a long way.
I after tool cleaned as can be rub in clean motor oil all over,wait a half hour,rub off excess and bake at 150 about a hour to “season” the tool,has really worked out well(excepting for the diversity rod that tis!).
The oil bake really seems to protect to a large degree from rust,but,I take care of me tools and only a few years,time will tell.
Sigh,while watching uboob vid saw a major fail,guy when had derusted enuff did not remove set screw for knurled adjuster,then you do each part electrolysis (including spring inside knurled adjuster on top side,oil individually and then assemble/bake!
I couldn’t tell you how many times I got smacked upside the head for putting dirty tools away… I’m a slow learner but It did sink in…
5 gallon bucket/sand/used motor oil,will keep your garden tools in nice shape!Store in bucket(s)till needed,of course,still have to sharpen edges occasionally/amazing how much better shovel works with sharpened edge(OK…..,and lots of coffee!).
The first time I saw part of the T. S. Eliot poem was on the TV miniseries based on Stephen King’s book ‘The Stand’.
The comments made on that 4-chan post were depressing but, unfortunately quite true.
WATCH: Zombies Fester in the Rot of California’s Streets In Newsom’s “National Model” for Homelessness of California (GRAPHIC VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jordan Conradson