A Companion to T. S. Eliot by Chinitz David E

Author:Chinitz, David E.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2011-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

Away we go!

And we all say: OH!

Well I never!

Was there ever

A Cat so clever

As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees! (CPP 161)

Here Eliot lengthens the third line to create the impression of movement, only to lock the subsequent lines into a steady two-stress rhythm. The progressive shifting of the opening lines to the right echoes the thrilling takeoff of the magic act (“Away we go!”), while the clipped lines stacked on top of each other imply multiple simultaneous voices in a moment of shared experience and wonder. At the conclusion of these lines, the poem resumes its longer-lined pattern and accelerates into a dactylic meter, gathering momentum until the final exclamation mark. Eliot repeats this particular technique of metrical variation to convey shifts in the speaking voices within the diegesis of other poems – in “Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer,” in “Old Deuteronomy,” in “Of the Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles,” and, in the final transition from the narrator’s voice to that of the cat himself, in “Gus: The Theatre Cat”:

“But there’s nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,

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