Anti-Pastoral and Counter-Pastoral in Modernist Poetry

DS Page 1 of 21

“To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, and transformation of ourselves and the world—and, at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have.” Thus did the American philosopher and Marxist humanist writer Marshall Berman, write about the Modernist age, in his book All That is Solid Melts into Air (Berman 15)1. ‘Modernism’ refers to a period which turned from the feudalistic or agrarian age, to an age of ‘Capitalism’,

‘Secularisation,’ and ‘Industrialisation’. The ‘Industrial Revolution,’ which was a part of the modernisation process, took place from the mid-eighteenth to the beginning of nineteenth century. In the social context, ‘Industrialisation’ transformed the agrarian society into an industrial one because of the mass migration of the rural population into the cities. Rather than being a mere reflection of modernity, Modernism consolidated the idea of responding to the outputs and processes of modernity.

Berman’s vision encapsulated the state of the new society which was an infant born out of the Modernist womb, and was thrown into the realm of sublimation. Urban life, though it was successful, registered the nostalgia that infected the memories of the immediate past. Modernist poetry, through different experimentations, tried to regain what the new-born society missed out. As a result, the pastoral, like other literary genres underwent numerous changes. Pastoral in its simplest form was the genre

1 The author of All That is Solid Melts into Air, Marshall Berman, is an American Marxist and Humanist writer. The book discusses everything that pertains to the 20 th century culture, with the purpose being to “explore and chart the adventures and horrors, the ambiguities and ironies of modern life.” Developing the basic insights that characterizes the 20th century according to Marx and Nietzsche, Berman shows how two attitudes move separately from each other, from the first decades onwards, and how these ideas can be vaguely designated as Marxian and Nietzschean. Berman’s points focus on the revitalization of our social life, comprehending that there is a more central vision of what modernism meant as a hope for universal exaltation, from the alienation marked by modernism. DS Page 2 of 21 which chose nature as its setting and defined the life of a shepherd, preferably a good pastor2.

Taking birth among the upland meadows of Sicily, the pastoral tradition first assumed its conventional grab in imperial Rome, and thus it retained among learned writers after its rejuvenation in the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. Urbanisation and

Industrialisation gradually provided comforts for the city dwellers; the urban pastoral of the modern poets started criticizing the imaginary Arcadia that never gave them as much comfort as city life. This gives rise to a new genre called the ‘anti-pastoral.’

Pastoral before urbanisation was not at first sight much like what was called Pastoral after the nineteenth century. Later on, the movement, rather than being described as a rejection of tradition, became a tendency to face problems from a fresh perspective based on current ideas and techniques. Thus, parallel to the anti-pastoral, there bloomed another literary genre called the ‘counter-pastoral.’ Counter-pastoral lauded the city life and created an imaginary Arcadia within urban life, and lamented the loss of the rural pastoral. Thus the changes in pastoral tradition vary according to the historical circumstances. The pastoral poets of the Golden Age idealised the unexploited shepherds, whereas the Renaissance poets believed in the nostalgic view of a feudal past. For the modern poets, pastoral existed in altered forms, pining for the past.

2 In the third century BC, Theocritus wrote the first pastoral text for the Greek court in Alexandria about the shepherds he remembered from his youth in Sicily, he idealised the country for his urban audience. The book was called Idylls. Two centuries later, Virgil set his Latin pastorals in Arcadia, a real part of Greece which has come to represent the idealised location of pastoral literature—for Shakespeare, ‘Bohemia’ and the ‘Forest of Arden’. In the Idylls, Theocritus was looking back to his childhood in Sicily. The nostalgic look back at the past is one of the features of the pastoral. Virgil’s literary representation of Arcadia as a haven from wars and land disputes has come to be known as ‘Arcadian’. In Biblical terms, the first Arcadia was the Garden of Eden. The pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas. A pastoral work of literature idealises the pastoral life, typically for urban audiences. Fig.1 is an illustration of the pastoral life. DS Page 3 of 21

Fig.1.Fisher, Alvan. Pastoral Landscape. 1854. Oil on Canvas. The White House

Historical Association. Washington.

Among the modern poets, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and

T.S. Eliot are the prominent poets of the urban-pastoralism—they condemn the idealised version of the pastoral. On the other hand, Robert Frost, through his bleakness in landscape poetry, uses nature as his scene just like any rural-pastoralists do. The counter-pastoral glorifies city life, whereas the anti-pastoral goes against the naturalism and innocence of bucolic life. In this paper, I would like to focus on the DS Page 4 of 21 rural and urban-pastoral poems of these four poets in order to find out how they shape anti-pastoral and counter-pastoral themes in their poetry.

Stevens’s craftsmanship in beading anti-pastoral and counter-pastoral elements in one thread is one of the significant aspects of his poems. Stevens’s

“Sunday Morning” begins with the picture of a lady who longs for leisure, caught in between the dilemma of whether to embrace her own divinity or be a mirror of nature.

It is quite easy to understand that Sunday morning is probably the time off for the city dwellers from their urban-industrial work. In the pastoral tradition, ‘pleasure’ and

‘leisure’ are terms equally attributed to the country life that makes the life “complex to simple” (Empson 22)3. Thus we overhear the lady, who is self-satisfied in being in and around nature, and imagines the “green winged bird” while enjoying the taste of

“coffee” and “pungent oranges.” But as the poem progresses, some traces of counter- pastoral are evident that makes her morning even more comfortable and charming than any other days. The beginning of the poem portrays her inner emotions during a

Sunday morning, when everyone goes to church for their prayer, while she stays at home idling away the time:

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice. (Stevens 66)

The self-satisfaction derived out of wearing a loose garment shows her external freedom, which is exactly like the “green freedom of a cockatoo.” The colour “green”

3 In his book “Some Versions of Pastoral”, William Empson writes about the social function of the pastoral in shaping the society. He speaks of the ideal of simplicity as being embedded in a complex web of contradictions that can only be resolved through the conventions of pastoral. The pastoral past saves a man from the turbulence and the complexities of the present and the future. DS Page 5 of 21 indicates prosperity, the prosperity of freedom. A similar freedom is experienced when Eliot depicts the “sparrows” in “Preludes.” The “sparrows in the gutters” denotes the adversity of the whole world. The urban culture of having “late coffee” and “oranges” on an off-day, envisages the chance to look at city life as delightful.

The image of ‘coffee’ in Modernist poetry is an evidence to showcase the life they enjoyed and lamented at the same time. If coffee is a pleasure drink for Stevens, it seems to be a seducing one for Eliot in the urban context as in the poem “Preludes”:

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades

That time resumes [. . .]. (Eliot 22)

“Coffee-stand” is one of the images which functions as part and parcel of the urban culture. “Early coffee-stands” in the streets are strong images that explain how the city acts as a hive for the busy bees, the city dwellers. Most ‘elite’ poets of the time, like TS Eliot, who harboured a pessimistic outlook towards modern life, found pleasure in being addicted to coffee and smoking. The number of cups of coffee they had determines the time they spend isolated, gazing at the dead life of human beings4.

Thus dealing with the same theme of urban pastoralism, we see how each poet differs in the way they use themes to present counter-pastoralist and anti-urban views. The excerpt from Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” is an example of his counter-pastoral view:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grieving in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

4 Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” expresses disillusionment with the modernist age when he says “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” It suggests that his life is pointless and deadly boring. The small coffee spoons also indicate his tedious effort to measure the life using those spoons. DS Page 6 of 21

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch

These are the measures destined for her soul. (Stevens 67)

“Passions of rain” encompass the pleasure she derives. The pleasure is important to her because of the contrast the poem evinces through words such as “falling snow,”

“loneliness,” “forest blooms,” etc. The signification of ‘autumn’ season and the mood swing she experiences, open the door for us to compare the similarities in the word play of the poem. ‘Fall’ represents both the season and the poet’s mind. Fall, results in the shedding of leaves, and makes the mother stem seem abandoned. The image is similar to Eliot’s ‘withered leaves’ in “Preludes”. The woman also feels deserted in a kind of unfavourable, haughty climate. But the presence of ‘rain’ and strong wind at nights reinvigorate her mind. “All pleasure and all pains” confirms that the poet goes through a phase of mixed emotions, a pathway that offers her both a rose-bed and thorns. The measures are fixed in order to treasure-trove beauty even in adversities.

She forcefully does become the soul of the poem just like “the gusty emotions on wet roads.” All these emotional swings point to the pastoral formation in the poet’s mind.

Thus, the urban pastoralism often spells the necessity of being well-versed in city life.

The same state of necessity is a common theme in many urban poems. Stevens’s “In the Carolinas” exemplifies this:

The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.

Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.

Already the new-born children interpret love

In the voices of mothers. (Stevens 4) DS Page 7 of 21

Geographically, ‘Carolina’ refers collectively to the state of North Carolina and

South Carolina in the United States. The place is significant because Stevens’s love for the city life helps him to derive beauty even in an urban setting. Indirectly, it figures out the necessity to look upon the city life, just to say ‘so much depends upon a city’. The counter-pastoral theme works here in such a way that the poet deliberately cast a city rather than focussing on a village; this grooms an urban-pastoral sense of the poet. Starting from the destructive phase, the tone of the poem suddenly shifts to the fructification of new hope. To show the destructive phase, the poet intelligently singles out the flower “lilacs.” Lilacs grow in plenty in South Carolinas, obviously rare in North. This indicates the poet’s visit to North Carolinas, and his temptation to looks at the things which cannot survive in their dry, humid climate. Lilacs symbolise poet’s life where he finds his surroundings unfavourable. Just like the “lilacs wither,” the poet also withers in his world. ‘Withering’, comes again as a symbol of death or destruction in Stevens’ poem, as in Sunday Morning, which is closely related to the urban ideas of Eliot, in the “Preludes”. But the “fluttering of butterflies” makes the life productive once again. “Butterflies” stands for the happiness one must enjoy even in the terrible plight. This insists us to live as if we die tomorrow. “The new-born children” stand for the birth of a new world in the modern age that “interprets love”.

Stevens is able to find out the presence of love in the new era, where some desperately complain about the destructive face of modernism. The dominant meaning of counter-pastoralism works in the poem in such a way that the first glance reading raises the question of the necessity of urbanity in the poem. Urbanity is prima facie in counter pastoral-poems.

William Carlos Williams admires and comments on the modern technology while most of the poets of that time feel devastated in the loss of pastoral life in the DS Page 8 of 21 immediate past. Williams chose Pennsylvania Station5as the setting of the poem

“Overture to a Dance of Locomotives". Penn Station was the modern wonder of

America during the 1900’s.

Men with picked voices chant the names

of cities in a huge gallery: promises

that pull through descending stairways

to a deep rumbling.

The rubbing feet

of those coming to be carried quicken a

grey pavement into soft light that rocks

to and fro, under the domed ceiling,

across and across from pale

earthcolored walls of bare limestone. (Williams, Sour Grapes 24)

Instead of representing the hustle and bustle of the people, porters, and the passenger trains in the station as chaos, Williams portrays the landscape as an artistic creation, which turns the station into a museum. The “men with picked voices”, can be a synecdoche for the whole travellers and working class men at the station. The ‘chant’ in a positive sense refers crowd’s habitual action in a public place. ‘Chant’ also reminds us of the savage’s ‘chant’ in ‘Sunday Morning’ by Stevens. “Their chant shall be a chant of paradise” indicates the pastoral simplicity of Eden—the garden with seeds of its own destruction, of civilisation, and the fruit of the Tree of

Knowledge. Thoreau opines in his work Walden that the ‘chant’ is an experience of more elevated living of contact with nature which carries with it the responsibility to

5 Pennsylvania station, usually known as Penn Station, is the largest building ever erected for rail travel. The station’s architectural credit goes to McKim, Mead and White, stood between 31st and 33rd streets and 7th and 8th avenues—over eight acres. Being a temple of transporatation, Penn Station stands as a modern wonder. Fig.2 is the picture of Penn Station in 1911. DS Page 9 of 21 communicate it upon the return to ordinary, better life. The chant or song delivers the insights learned from the retreat .The image of nature as Paradise continues to haunt the modern poets, results in the recreation of the pastoral in urban poems. This is what both Williams and Stevens do in their poetry. Williams signifies the ‘rush of modern age’ as society’s motion towards the future benefits. The “rubbing feet” of the crowd is an adumbration which stamps the vitality of the modern age:

discordant hands straining out from a center.

Inevitable postures infinitely

Repeated [. . .]. (Williams, SG 24)

The repeated movements of the hands of the clock are parallel to the movements of the trains which go to a destination and come back in a definite interval of time. This parallelism refers to the infinity of the modern world and shows the poet’s affinity to the Futurists who believe in the infinite possibilities of the machines.

My analyses so far show, how the counter-pastoral theme works in an urban pastoral. Even in rural-pastoral, the theme is used to raise the issue of ownership.

Robert Frost, in his poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”, exemplifies

‘rural pastoral’, which deals with the life and eccentricity of the countryside. The beginning excites the readers to identify the anti-bucolic nature of the poem that discusses the problems and frustrations of the sub-urban culture:

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though [. . .]. (Frost 607)

“Woods” insinuates the pastoral scene. But the incapability of the poet to find out the owner of the “woods” raises the issue of ownership. Agrarian life always faces the threat of ownership, as they do not know on whose fields they work and earn their livelihood. Their lives depend on farming. They do not bother about the source of DS Page 10 of 21 their income; which is a demerit of an idyllic life. “Woods” also stands for the forest which has a pathway for the common people to walk. ‘Woods’ is mysterious as it is filled with snow. The idea stands here as a clue to the rural setting used in the poem. It is different from the “passageways”, described in the “Preludes” by Eliot. The

“passage ways” in the “Preludes” that filled with the “smell of steaks” clearly shows that it is an artificial one only meant for human beings. Thus it is clearly urban. In

Frost’s poem, ‘the snow’, which covers the forest, indicates the vagueness and the unclear ideas that support the doubts of the poet to find out the owner. The vagueness also indicates the narrow passage ways, which is not used as a public path and also common for both human beings and animals. The instance makes clear that the poet, who is an outsider, just immerses in a deep thought to find out the real owner, never has the humiliation or agony that the rural people have to suffer. In that case, the issue of ownership turn our thoughts to the broad, diverse chances in the urbanity that glorifies modernity. Thus counter-pastoralism in bucolic poetry results in a way of looking at the advantages of a city life, with a bird’s eye view.

“The Farmer” by Williams evokes for me, the spirit of the peasant life, in which their stress and strain about the future and the upcoming harvest play a very prominent role. The moment we think about the rural pastoral, the images that flash in our mind is that of the innocent faces of the peasants and their life and the meditative life they share with the nature. Nature, for peasants is God who provides all the pleasure and beauty they perceive in the idyllic life. But Williams’s poem focuses more on the strenuous situation and the mere hope of a good harvest, which is the only thing a farmer has to wait for. In this sense, as the poem reveals Williams’s idea of bucolic life is unworthy to be praised. The given lines from the poem “The Farmer” show how Williams’s idea of the pastoral works: DS Page 11 of 21

The farmer is in deep thought

is pacing through the rain

among his blank fields, with

hands in his pockets,

in his head

a harvest already planted. (Williams, Spring 186)

Starting with visual imagery, Williams is able to portray the look of a farmer who cogitates and walks in the rain. His to and fro, mad walk indicates that the farmer has a lot to do and he has a busy schedule; everything depends upon his planning. ‘His hands in the pocket’ imply that the pocket do not have any money. The attire also gives the idea that the poem is urban. The poverty-stricken life would indulge him to think about the harvest, so that he can make more money during that time. But as the poem proceeds, it never turns out to be a positive response to the farmer’s future and this is evident when William says:

A cold wind ruffles the water

among the browned weeds.

On all sides

The world rolls coldly away [. . .]. (Williams, Spring 186)

The “cold wind” represents nature’s diminution of interest in providing a favourable climate for the harvest thereby gives the idea that something is going wrong. The colour ‘black’ chosen for natural objects, like ‘black orchard’ and the ‘darkened

March clouds’, also depicts nature as extirpating, and nature is nowhere represented as divine or something supernatural. This is something rural pastoralism deals with.

Frost’s “Mending wall” exemplifies the notion. Both Williams and Frost give a contrasting picture of how an urban farmer and the farmer of countryside behave. The DS Page 12 of 21

Yankee’s response to the doubt of the poet, by saying that he prefers good fences, gives us the idea that the thick-lipped farmers are more comfortable in being isolated and remote, which makes them parochial. They are used to that isolation. They never love the welfare of others. They are not at all bothered about the life of others because of the tiresome life they have. This anti-pastoral view often arises in the poem, which in turn makes the poet confusing in the countryside. The unfavourable contrast between the Yankee and the poet also gives rise to the issue of rural and urban culture. This contrast is evident when the poet says:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. (Frost 609)

The “pine” is useful to build, make and burn. Thus the Yankee here stands for the usefulness of working men. The apple orchard can be taken as the product that the city dwellers enjoy, as the poet is also a representative of them. He tastes and enjoys the fruit cultivated by the peasants. Thus the poet renounces the bucolic life. The pine in Steven’s urban poem depicts the anti-pastoral elements. In the poem “In the

Carolinas”, Stevens writes:

“The pine tree sweetens my body

The white iris beautifies me” [. . .]. (Stevens 5)

The ‘sweetening pine tree’ and the ‘white iris’ discloses the union of man and nature.

The sweetness of the pine tree is transferred to the poet’s body. Nature seduces the poet, and it no longer gives the image of an ideal mother to the poet. Frost’s anti- pastoral symbols sometimes become anti-romantic. In his poem “Mending Wall”,

Frost comments against the local inhabitants of the rural countryside. The following lines portray this idea:

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees DS Page 13 of 21

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well [. . .]. (Frost 60)

The poet moves back through time in these lines. He no longer questions the need of repairing the apparently useless boundaries, recognising the fact that the wall is not a material thing; it is in the mind of the people. His neighbour starts moving in the darkness, which suggests his plight through ignorance. For the poet, his neighbour, the countryman is like a savage; like an ‘old-stone savage armed’. The poet believes that the peasants in the rural countryside, however radically attenuated they are, still work like savages. They are never free from the tie-ups. Their parochialism never turns their life to be away from the emotional boundaries. We tend to see a clever farmer in Williams’s “The Farmer”. He plans for the next harvest, as he knows that without it he is not going to be successful. His ‘pacing’ does not look like this is new to him. Williams’s farmer is a victim of the revolution, who falls in the realm of urbanity and finds it hard to survive without knowing how to plan his future. But the

Yankee’s who belong to the pastoral setting never believe in planning. He builds a fence along his neighbour’s land and lives in the realm of ignorance as savages for the whole life. The farmers in both the poems seem to be defining the anti-pastoral view of the poets, and suggest the lack of social structure in pastoral life. The word

‘antagonist’ used by Williams and the ‘fences’ used by Frost, denote the resistance for the farmers to live. If the resistance is natural in “The farmer”, then it is an artificially made barrier in “Mending Wall”.

Empson highlights the functions of pastoral in his book Some Versions of

Pastoral. He opines that “[the] realistic sort of pastoral (the sort touched by mock- pastoral) also gives a natural expression for a sense of social injustice.”(Empson 16).

Written in 1934-35, “To a Poor Old Woman” begins as a poem of casual observation DS Page 14 of 21 with far-fetched images of social injustice. The poem depicts the urban-pastoralism through the portrayal of an ‘old woman’. The poet watches the woman as she eats plum from a paper bag:

munching a plum on

the street a paper bag

of them in her hand [. . .]. ( Williams, William 1)

“[M]unching” suggests the way she eats. She eats in such a way that it is steadfast and noisy. This refers to the old woman’s hunger or the pleasure derives from eating that plum. It also refers to an old generation’s ignorance of showing public manners.

They do not worry about what others think about them. Plums are usually not expensive. But a poor woman like her would think it as a pleasure to spend on a bag of plums on which she splurged. The irregularity in the sentence structure bespeaks the pleasure she relishes at the moment. The fountain of pleasure in an irregular flow cannot be expounded other than in a way that shows an irregularity created by fragmentation:

They taste good to her

They taste good

to her. They taste

good to her… ( Williams,William 1)

The line break in the second stanza is a virtuosic instrument used in the poem that seems to be a scientific experiment. “They taste good to her” without any line break suggests that the plums are good; rather than bad. The second sentence with an enjambment indicates that the “plum” is no longer tasty unless others are also poor.

Her hunger made it tastier. The third implication is equivocal that the break after taste can be predicted as bad. Thus it means that the plums may be bad for us. But it tastes DS Page 15 of 21 good to her. “To a Poor Woman” is a poem of appreciation—for the taste of the

“plum” as the “old women” seems to find it, for her power to enjoy life despite her poverty, and to find “solace” where she can.

The poem, which is in free verse, in its third and fourth stanzas, explores the chances in the usage of sound patterns which in turn get connected with the tone of the first line:

You can see it by

the way she gives herself

to the one half

sucked out in her hand

Comforted

a solace of ripe plums

seeming to fill the air

They taste good to her… (Williams,William 1)

“Herself—half,” “air—to her,” the “o” and “u” in “comforted” and “[plum]s” respectively show that the sounds savour the poem as the women savours the “plum.”

The word “comforted” revises the positive idea of relief in tasting the “ripe plums”.

Plums usually symbolise the newly married woman. The “ripe plums” indicate the old woman, who sweetens herself in finding out a way for bliss even in her excruciating life. The last line “They taste good to her” suggests her unconcealed hunger. “Her” indicates a group of suffering commoners rather than indicating an individual.

William tries to focus on the contentment of such people, who live in the urban area, in their agonized situation. Williams finds pleasure in all the five senses and finally the savour of plums in the air. Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” also incorporates the image of plums in the fifth stanza: DS Page 16 of 21

For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze

Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.

She causes boys to pile new plums and pears

On disregarded plate. The maidens taste

And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.( Stevens 69)

What we see in these lines is the poet’s inward journey in her loneliness to forget her agony by creating an imaginary Arcadia that no longer exists on the earth. The following lines implicate the love relationship between the young man and woman, which is one of the yardsticks of the pastoral. “She causes boys to pile new plums” should be the significance of the gifts and presents and the loneliness caused by the breakup of that relationship. Plums from time immemorial are used to festoon the female gender. The sexual overtone garnishes the lines when the poet says “to pile new plums”. The exotic countryside often makes the man hedonist, just like what

Frost feels in an insinuated ‘woods’.

The portrayal of the poor is one of the ways by which urban pastoral works.

Williams’s technique is mild and optimistic in “The Poor Old Woman”, whereas

Eliot’s “The Morning at the Window” is a harsh representation of the city slums. Eliot presents their life as no more winsome. They always confront a troublesome life without having an identity, dignity or meaningful life:

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates. (Eliot 26)

The poem presents some objective images of the poor people, rather than expressing the feelings and emotions of the poet. This is one of the ways in which the poem DS Page 17 of 21 becomes modern. “Rattling breakfast plates” refer to the hastiness of the lower working class people who are supposed to go for work early. The true visions of these people who set out early from home and wait at the city gates portray the tiresome life of such people, who may come from villages to earn their living. They do not have a permanent job. They are born poor, live poor, and die poor. Thus the poet somehow finds out the disadvantages of the slums. However, the “housemaids” who work on a daily basis is a common sight in city life. They point at the freedom of modern women. The primitive bucolic world never lavishes upon them the kind of freedom they taste in the present age of liberation. The word “sprouting” features the extension of opportunities for women in the city. ‘The trampled edges of the street’ reminds us of the corner of the street in the “Preludes”. This reveals Eliot’s interest in underdeveloped areas of the city that gives the spark to his writings. His anti-

Romantic notion is a counter to the writings of that time which hails glorious modern age:

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

And vanishes along the level of the roofs [. . .]. (Eliot 26)

The “tear” in the eyes of the passer-by and her “muddy skirts”, the man with an

“aimless smile”; all are the images of the poor people’s plight. ‘Muddy skirts’ can be related to the ‘muddy feet’ in “Preludes”. Both suggest the anti-urban bias in the poems of Eliot. They work throughout the day without receiving the remuneration.

They are the people who are far away from technology and modern life, who never received the fruit of their labour. Once they are born in the family of labourers, they are bound to do menial jobs, and they have no right to get rid of that chain. When

Williams tries to find out optimism in the behaviour of the poor old lady, Eliot tries to DS Page 18 of 21 enunciate the helplessness of the poor people in the city slums. Thus a comparison of both these poems reveals the idea that how the picture of the poor works as a theme for representing both counter-pastoral and anti-urban poems.

“The Industrial Revolution not only transformed both city and country; it was based on a highly developed agrarian capitalism, with a very early disappearance of the traditional peasantry” (Williams, the Country 2). As the Modernism pushed traditional inhabitants out of their home—the countryside, just as the machinery has priced the human beings out of their jobs, the pastoral became a lifeless form, of service only to decorate the shelves of tasteful cottages, ‘modernised to a high standard.’ The impassable gulf between rural and urban culture is recycled and reused, following the proper amalgamation of ideas to form pastorals and its different sub-genres. The use of the anti-pastoral and the counter-pastoral in urban poems register the use of the past, which is used as a stick to beat the present—the Modernist age. The nineteenth century industrial grime on the grit, the current economic predicament of the struggling hill farmer, and the urbanisation of the roads by the series of road signs warning of lamps, bends, walkers, parking restrictions, etc reserve their position in the writing of the anti-pastoralists. Thus the nostalgic memories of the past haunt each and every individual who live in a place strange and new for them.

This is what Raymond William opines. “Nostalgia [is] universal and persistent [. . .].”

(Williams, the Country 2). Stevens’s and Williams’s nostalgia follow the pattern of rearranging idyllic concepts and criticise the pastoral mode through their urban- pastoral poems. Eliot’s tactic is moreover anti-romantic and anti-pastoral. His urbanity neatly emphasises the need to look at rustic lives within the city. Readers who think of Frost as a sketcher of pleasant landscapes might be astonished to know about the gulf he draws between man and nature in bold outline. All these four poets DS Page 19 of 21 never forget to counterfeit man’s search for signs of love in pastures. Their poems make us sit and read so as to make us dream about an imaginary Arcadia around us— hence the need for being versed in city things.

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