Poetic puzzle
DID THE POET TS Eliot ever visit a sugar mill in this province? It's an odd question, I know, but the TS Eliot Society have written to Illovo Sugar asking it. Illovo can find no record of any such visit to a mill and ask if this newspaper's remarkably knowledgeable readers can shed any light.
Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888 but became a naturalised British citizen in 1927. His major poems included The Waste Land and Four Quartets. He also wrote the play, Murder in the Cathedral. In 1948 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Wendy Vinneal, of Illovo, has established that Eliot made regular trips to the Cape in the 1940s and early 1950s to escape the British winter.
"At the end of 1953 he came once more to South Africa for a 10-week holiday, sailing to Durban and then proceeding in a leisurely fashion to Cape Town.
"When in Durban he is believed to have stayed at the Marine Hotel and attended church at least once. Nothing else of significance is known about the Natal visit nor is there any mention of a sugar factory. However, perhaps your remarkably knowledgeable readers may remember something that could shed light on this poetic puzzle."
Right place
WENDY, you've come to the right place. I'm able to tell you that The Waste Land was inspired by an Illovo office party where TS Eliot got absolutely wasted.
Only kidding. It was written as The Waist Land, based on the weight he put on from the sumptuous fare of the Marine Hotel. A typo by the publishers gave the poem its present title.
Four Quartets refers to the quarts of Lion Ale he used to hoist every lunchtime in the J Alfred Prufrock bar in the Marine, while Murder in the Cathedral was inspired by his visit to St Paul's, where he found the sermon so boring he wanted to throttle the priest.
All kidding aside, can anyone help?
Range of writing
TS ELIOT, of course, wrote poems that ranged from amusing stuff about his cats - which inspired the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Cats – to the most disturbing metaphysics and prophecy. The well-known closing lines of The Hollow Men could have been about pollution, global warming, social decay, or the international financial collapse.
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.
Those statues
READER Andrew Dale believes he has a solution to the extraordinary dispute over the Warwick Junction elephant statues.
"In the United States the Democrats and Republicans have the donkey and the elephant respectively as their emblems. I suggest that the current problem about the Warwick Junction elephant statues could be easily and comparatively cheaply solved by asking the sculptor to add a large statue of a donkey.
"Knowledge of generally recognised characteristics of the two animals will not only lead to immediate identification of the political parties presently at loggerheads but may well also draw donations from visiting Americans."
Crazygate
THAT absurd suffix "gate" has entered the British general election.
Back in the seventies, American President Richard Nixon was forced from office after burglars broke into the Democratic Party's offices in the Watergate Hotel, Washington, and it emerged that they were acting on behalf of his Republican Party.
This came to be known as the Watergate scandal. Fair enough. But since then every public scandal, anywhere in the world, has had "gate" added to it. People called our Information scandal – which brought down John Vorster and his heir apparent Connie Mulder – "Infogate". Why? It's totally gormless.
In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown had a walkabout chat with a pawky Lancastrian granny who raised the question of immigration from Eastern Europe.
In his car later, he described her to his aides as a "bigot", forgetting he still had a microphone in his lapel. His words were transmitted to a TV channel.
Highly embarrassing. Yes, you've guessed. This is "Bigotgate".
Tailpiece
COWS Daisy and Dolly are in a field.
Daisy: "I got artificially inseminated this morning"
Dolly: "I don't believe you."
Daisy: "It's true. No bull!"
Last word
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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