London - Tesina

Introduzione Si prova amore per le persone, per le proprie cose

e, allo stesso modo, si può provare amore per un

posto, per una città. A me è toccata Londra, ne sono

incondizionatamente innamorata.

Sono sicura che per ognuno di noi c’è quel determinato

posto nel mondo che riesce a farti sentire come io

mi sono sentita l’estate scorsa e come mi risentirò tra

poco. Il vuoto che mi ha lasciato andare via da là è

incolmabile, e si accentua sempre più con lo scorrere

dei giorni.

Non so cosa mi riserverà il futuro, ma almeno so di

avere un posto da definire casa, perché, come diceva

Samuel Johnson:

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who

is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is

tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in

London all that life can afford”.

Ore e ore spese, alla fine di quei mesi, in metro.

L’underground. The Tube. Dal suo odore inconfondibile

e dal frastuono che emana.

E’ proprio da qui che parte la mio elaborato: il viaggio

in metro.

La struttura del racconto

Il filo conduttore del mio elaborato è strutturato secondo un reale viaggio in metro

che ho fatto un giorno in cui entravo a lavoro alle cinque di pomeriggio: partendo

da casa, a Canada Water, sulla Jubilee Line, ho deciso di andare a London Bridge

per incamminarmi verso quel famoso pratino del quale parlavo nell’introduzione. A

quel punto dopo essere stata un po’ là a contemplare quella magnifica vista sul River

Thames, ho deciso, dopo un veloce giro al mercato di Brick Lane, di avvicinarmi al

luogo in cui lavoravo andando a South Kensington per visitare il Museo della Scienza,

da dove avrei raggiunto Knightsbridge a piedi per andare a lavoro.

Partendo da questa giornata realmente vissuta, ho deciso di collegare le varie materie

che possono coincidere con questo itinerario: uno dei tanti viaggi in metro fatti; uno dei

tanti viaggi che mi ha consentito di vedere cose uniche al mondo.

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6 CAPITOLO 1

VIAGGIO SULLA JUBILEE LINE

da CANADA WATER a LONDON BRIDGE

Bank Holborn

Canada Water

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Canada Water

Era mattina. Il sole filtrava i suoi raggi dalla finestra

priva di serrande, un sole caldo ed avvolgente, non

molto tipico dell’estate londinese, a quanto avevo

sentito dire. Avevo avuto la fortuna di trovarmi

a Londra in una delle estati più calde che la città

avesse mai vantato da molti anni, con un luglio

soleggiato come quello italiano.

Il sorriso che avevo stampato sulla faccia ogni

singolo giorno, ogni singola mattina appena sveglia,

mi faceva subito capire di trovarmi in un posto dove

finalmente, dopo tanto tempo, ero felice di stare.

Amo profondamente la mia famiglia, i miei amici, ma

non ho mai sopportato di essere nata in una zona di

provincia che non rispecchia per niente il mio modo

di essere. La città, caotica ed immensa, rispecchia

più il mio modo di essere, anche se la mancanza

delle persone più care si faceva comunque sentire,

nonostante fosse compensata, in parte, dall’avere

tutto ciò che volevo attorno a me.

Uscii di casa. Mi trovavo benissimo con i miei

coinquilini, ma non sopportavo l’idea di perdere

troppo tempo dentro quelle quattro mura della mia

twin room quando fuori dalla porta c’era un mondo

da scoprire.

Presi la metro, la Jubilee, arrivai a London Bridge.

Bank Holborn

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London Bridge Unreal City,  60

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. 65

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!  70

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! 75

You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

That’s a short part of The Waste Land of Eliot in which

the author is speaking about London by seeing a

crowd of people who are going to work crossing

London Bridge. That’s a passage taken by the first

section of the book, that’s called The Burial of the

Dead.

By seeing this scene, the poet starts to think the

capitalism is the reason why these clerks are

behaving in this way: in fact they are compared with

the damned people in the Inferno of Dante because

they are blocked in their terrible daily routine and

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then to the souls that have to stay in the Limbo: they

would like to change their condition and they would

do everything in order to succeed in doing it, but

they can’t.

In Eliot’s opinion, all these problems are represented

by this crowd over London Bridge because this bridge

is in the City of London, that’s the economic part of

the town and it’s liked with the idea of capitalism.

At the end of the passage there’s a reference to the

First Punic War, in order to give a sort of universality

to this attitude of humans: staying in a repetitive and

tedious daily routine, that’s not limited to Londoners

but is also spread to the humanity of the past, of the

future and of the present.

At the end we can notice a reference to the Preface

of Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” with which Eliot

wants to underline the fact that the man is swallowed

in his stupidity and he’s sinful, whether is the place in

which he is.

The London Bridge, as I’m going to tell better later

by taking under exam a line of the last section of

The Waste Land, becomes a very important symbol

of this Eliot’s work and it’s a set very relevant to the

poet because he has worked as a clerk in the City

of London in a particular moment in his life; a period

in which he used to cross this bridge everyday as

well. Canada Water Bank Holborn

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Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210

C. i. f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic French

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.

  At the violet hour, when the eyes and back 215

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays, 225

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

I too awaited the expected guest. 230

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 235

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,

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Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 245

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronizing kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…

  She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover; 250

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, 255

And puts a record on the gramophone.

  “This music crept by me upon the waters”

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City City, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260

The pleasant whining of a mandolin

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

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After some lines, Eliot keeps on telling us about a

scene that remand to London and the style of life of

a typical worker in the city, in the third section of the

book that’s called The Fire Sermon.

Line 211 remand to the economic world, that’s an

important topic in Eliot’s poetry (as we can see in the

previous passage, at the moment in which he’s telling

us about the crowd of workers that are crossing

London Bridge); in fact, also for the real experiences

in the poet’s life, the topics of economy and of money

have a huge importance.

In fact, Eliot wants to tell us the daily routine of a

worker in order to let us understand the negativity

there’s behind it.

The figure of Tiresias appears here as a woman

who have a sexual relationship with a man: it’s very

interesting the way in which she’s described. Tiresias

is one of the key figure of the poem and the one

who gives unity to a work as The Waste Land, that’s

typically characterized by a fragmentary structure.

Tiresias is the Theban prophet punished with

blindness because he had seen Athena, the goddess

of knowledge, bathing naked. He will be punished

of living seven years in a male body and seven years

in a female one.

Tiresias embodies a female employer who has

worked since nine o’clock in the morning till five p.m..

For this reason, when she comes back home she has

to clean all the dishes she has used in the morning

to have breakfast, because she hurried up before

going to work in order not to be late.

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After Eliot describes us an awful sexual relationship

between this carbuncular young man and Tiresias:

as we can read in line 252 “Well now that’s done:

and I’m glad it’s over.”, there’s no pleasure in this act,

and it’s another important element in order to let

the reader understand the terrible world and the

terrible conditions in which mankind is living in this

period, a period in which the capitalism has deeply

influenced humans’ lives.

In the last part of The Waste Land, that’s called

“What the thunder said”, we can notice a line, almost

at the end of the whole work, that’s

”London bridge is falling down, falling down

falling down”

This is an Eliot’s reference to a short song very

famous in Britain. Under these words there are a lot

of concepts that are typical of the poet’s state of

mind. In fact, Eliot wants to spread his message about

the awfulness in which the man is living, especially

for the fact that London Bridge represents a very

important point in the City and a crowded way that

are crossed everyday by hundreds and hundreds

of clerks, that are the first ones who are submitted

by the capitalism and by the huge importance of

economy in Modern Age’s life. For this reason, the

bridge is going to fall down: because it represents

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big part of the shame and of the awfulness in which

the man have to live in the present.

The area of the River Thames has been source of

inspiration for a lot of authors; among them, there’s

also Wordsworth, who gives us a harmonic and

beautiful vision of London, in contrast with Eliot that

used to think it was a town full of awfulness and

that showed all the shame linked to the spread

of capitalism. In fact Wordsworth, in the poem