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Cody AnthonyEN 369

Professor Mielke12/08/10

T.S. Eliot’s Mythic Vision: Sweeney Todd Is Still Alive

Myth is a concept that has been, and still continues to be, difficult to properly

define. Part of the challenge lies in the many differing uses of the term in today’s society.

The term “myth” is used to refer to a highly unlikely story set in modern time with

everyday characters (an urban myth), a story set in the primordial past with superhuman

characters, a story of fantastic creatures whose existence is still rumored, or any story that

is deemed unlikely to have actually taken place.

Stefan Stenudd, a respected scholar of creation myths, reflects in his creation

myth dissertation “The Logics of Myth: Basic Patterns of Creation Myths” that “Oddly,

determining what is a myth is much easier than to define what a myth is. There have been

numerous attempts of the latter, differing considerably both in substance and success. It

might be very well that one will have to settle by stating it with exclusion- what is not a

myth.” (1). Stenudd proposes six mythic traits which all stories must have to belong to

the mythical category. First, a myth must be a narrative story. Second, the story must be

set in a distant past, from which no witness report can be given. Third, the story must

have some out of the ordinary significance, where events in them have importance in the

way life is lived thereafter, or the events are so spectacular in nature that the memories of

them should be kept and cherished forever. Fourth, the story must have a claim of taken

place in actual life. Fifth, the story must show a strong sense of unlikeliness in all

cultures, except for the culture from which the story stems from. Sixth, there is no known

author regarded as being the first to present the story (2-3). If a story contains all of these

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traits, it is regarded as myth. If it lacks any one these traits, however, the story is not a

myth and falls underneath a different classification.

To some extent, Stenudd recognizes that part of the problem of defining myth lies

in the fact that many speakers who use the term “myth” have only a vague understanding

of what the mythical concept actually refers to. For this reason, definition by exclusion

appears to be the more effective tool to use. For example, an urban myth (as previously

mentioned) is not truly a myth at all, but rather a modern folklore because it lacks

Stenudd’s second mythic trait. Myth is always set in the distant past. Likewise, just

because a story is unlikely does not make it a myth, as many would believe. The story

must contain all the other traits as well in order to fit the mythic category.

Now that we have a clear understanding of the mythic category and its contents,

let us focus our attention towards the literary work of T.S. Eliot, a poet well-known for

using myth within his poetry, and analyze the mythical relevance within his poetry using

Stenudd’s six traits of myth. T.S. Eliot uses a method of mythic layering within many of

his poems, drawing on allusions to mythical stories to enrich his poems and add more

dimensions. In T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect,” we notice this mythical layering with

reference to several ancient Greek characters that would easily pass all six of Stenudd’s

mythic traits.

Display me Aelous aboveReviewing the insurgent galesWhich tangle Ariadne’s hairAnd swell with haste the perjured sails.

Morning stirs the feet and hands (Nausicaa and Polypheme) (5-10).

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Aelous, Ariadne, Nausicaa, and Polyphemus are all characters of ancient Greek stories

that were handed down orally over many generations, until they first became recorded by

Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The stories surrounding these characters are set in

the distant past, and once held great religious significance for the ancient Greek culture.

Many in ancient Greece believed these stories to have been historically accurate, but now

they seem rather ill founded and highly unlikely in today’s modern society. Having

passed all six of Stenudd’s mythic traits, these Greek characters easily fit into the mythic

category.

There is one other character in this poem, however, that requires closer analysis to

determine whether it truly fits into the mythic category. In line 21, the character Sweeney

appears before us in Eliot’s poetry for the first time. Who is Sweeney? T.S. Eliot leaves

subtle hints for his readers to decipher.

Sweeney addressed full length to shaveBroadbottomed, pink from nape to base,Knows the female temperamentAnd wipes the suds around his face (21-24).

The vivid imagery of the straight razor and Sweeney shaving his face gives specific

reference to a popular story widely circulated in London, known as the story of Sweeney

Todd. According to Jaqueline Simpson’s “Seeking the Lore of the Land,” the story

originated in London around the 1850’s (138). The story claims that Sweeney Todd was a

murderous Irish barber that set up shop on London’s Fleet Street. Sweeney had an

alliance with local pie maker Ms. Lovett at Bell Yard, and agreed to help her business by

delivering her his murdered clients. Sweeney would dump his victims through a trap door

in his barber shop to the London catacombs down below, where Ms. Lovett had easy

access to them through a secret corridor in her basement. Upon arrival, the flesh of the

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bodies was cleaned off by Ms. Lovett and baked into pies for her waiting customers. This

story is one that T.S. Eliot would have easily come in contact with, having lived in

London himself when “Sweeney Erect” was written and published in 1920.

Sweeney Todd was an important story to the English culture that T.S. Eliot lived

in during the 1920’s, but we still have yet to prove whether this story is of mythical

significance. Many supporters of the Sweeney Todd story object to the claim that the

story is fictional and argue in favor of its historical accuracy, despite the lack of any

evidence. These Sweeney Todd enthusiasts claim that he was tried at Old Bailey Court in

1802, where he was also hanged (Simpson, 138). This means the story contains Stenudd’s

fourth mythic trait, because it claims to be true. However, the mythic relevance falls apart

on further inspection. The story is not set in the distant past, but rather in contemporary

London. Also, the story has a known source from which many scholars believe the story

to have originated. Simpson tells us that the account of Sweeney Todd first appears in

1843 in an anonymous serial titled “The String of Pearls”. The story was most likely

written by professional writer Thomas Peckett Prest, who was well known for taking

local crimes from the newspaper and embellishing them into engrossing horror tales

(138). Therefore, the evidence shows that the story is rather an urban legend, or modern

folklore, than mythology.

After studying the mythical relevance of the various characters represented in T.S.

Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect”, we can now see that Sweeney is in fact a legendary character,

and does not fit at all into Eliot’s method of mythic layering within the poem. However,

as readers of T.S. Eliot, we still have an important problem that must be solved. What is

the purpose of the mythical method in T.S. Eliot’s poetry, and what is Sweeney Todd’s

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purpose, if he does not fit into this mythical method? Sweeney Todd must be of some

great significance within Eliot’s poetry because not only is he the title in “Sweeney

Erect”, but also a recurring motif in other poems later listed in the collection, such as

“Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” and “Sweeney Among the Nightingales”.

If we now turn to T.S. Eliot’s essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, we

soon discover the purpose of the mythical method in Eliot’s own words.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead (101).

From this quote, we see that the aim of T.S. Eliot’s mythical method has been to

demonstrate a past tradition, developed through mythical means, and set that tradition up

for both comparison and contrast against the present condition. The legend of Sweeney

Todd is a story without tradition, being a recent local manifestation in English culture.

My belief is that legendary Sweeney Todd is a metaphor for the present human condition

in 1920, and is used as juxtaposition of the mythic tradition in order to expose a common

fear he had that modern society had become lost, losing its traditional cultural values.

Sweeney Todd serves as the perfect image to manifest T.S. Eliot’s fear, because the

legend inspired so much fear in T.S. Eliot’s local audience. To prove my point, I wish to

first analyze the meaning of the mythical context in T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect”, and

then show the shift in poetic meanings once legendary Sweeney is juxtaposed.

To begin our search for Eliot’s vision of modern society lost, we turn back once

again to Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect”, the first of Eliot’s Sweeney poems. Within the opening

lines we already discover the poem’s mythical context.

Paint me a cavernous shore

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Cast in the unstilled Cyclades (1-2)

The Cyclades are a chain of islands found near the southern tip of Greece. This image

sets the stage for Homer’s Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic poem narrating the adventures

of Greek hero Odysseus. Odysseus sails lost among the islands of the Cyclades, battling

gods and beasts in his journey to return home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. From the

opening lines of Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect” we also notice, however, that Odysseus is not

the primary focus in Eliot’s mythical context, as he is in Homer’s Odyssey. Rather, the

islands themselves are the primary focus, and we are to watch for what the changes

surrounding the shores of the “unstilled Cyclades” are meant to represent within the

poem.

In the next two stanzas, we find meaning for the changes that take place among

the island’s “cavernous shores”. We notice that the poem’s imagery shifts away from the

island’s shores slightly, drawing reference towards the various mythic characters that

inhabited the island’s shores.

Display me Aeolus aboveReviewing the insurgent galesWhich tangle Ariadne’s hairAnd swell with haste the perjured sails.

Morning stirs the feet and hands(Nausicaa and Polypheme) (5-10).

All of the characters represented in these lines are connected with the islands of the

Cyclades, having lived on them for a number of years. After arriving to the islands, each

of these characters developed unique stories of their own, enriching the historical

tradition of the islands themselves and forever impacting their shores. Aeolus, the Greek

god of winds, gave Odysseus a bag of winds to sail him home to Ithaca in Book 10 of the

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The Odyssey (20-28). In Book 11, Ariadne sailed from Crete with her lover Theseus, but

was killed on the island of Naxos for having commited adultery against her husband

Dionysius (399-404). Nausicaa cared for Odysseus in Book 6 after encountering him

naked on her island’s shores (115-210), and in Book 9 Polyphemus captured Odysseus

and his men on the isle of Cyclopes (240-317). T.S. Eliot, by representing these stories in

his mythic characters, is showing his readers the richness of the past. In essence, the

mythical context is glorifying the cultural and historical traditions of ancient Greece,

which set the foundations for modern Western culture. We also see that the imagery in

this mythical context sets the poem up for the juxtaposition that happens once legendary

Sweeney Todd is later introduced.

Sweeney Todd is juxtaposed in the second half of “Sweeney Erect” against the

rich history of the past represented in the mythical context, catalyzing a drastic change in

the poem’s central meaning. Sweeney appears as a man who has forgotten the cultural

and historical traditions of his ancestors, and lacks any sort of base to establish traditional

moral values. The height of this juxtaposition occurs in the seventh stanza as Sweeney is

shaving.

(The lengthened shadow of a manIs history, said EmersonWho had not seen the silhouetteOf Sweeney straddled in the sun) (25-28).

This passage suggests that had Emerson lived to see Sweeney Todd in person, he would

not have been able to connect him to the man that lived during Emerson’s own age.

Emerson would have doubted his own statement that the “shadow of a man is history”,

because Sweeney Todd is a degraded form of man with no connections to his past. We

apparently see now from this passage that Sweeney Todd, through use of metaphor, does

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in fact represents T.S. Eliot’s vision of the present human condition in 1920. From T.S.

Eliot’s perspective, modern society had lost all connection with the historical and cultural

traditions of the past generations, leaving depraved society void of any inherent cultural

values.

If we take our analysis one step further, we also find strong evidence that

Sweeney Todd is being juxtaposed against another aspect of rich historical tradition

represented in the poem’s mythical context. Looking back at the mythic characters

represented in the poem, we notice that all of them (with the exception of Ariadne) are

directly connected with the Greek hero Odysseus, having aided or hindered his journey in

some way. Yet not once is Odysseus mentioned within the context of the poem itself. The

reason for this is that Odysseus, the mythic ancient hero, is being implicitly used in the

poem as a parallel for Sweeney Todd, the legendary modern hero, both for comparison

and juxtaposition. Odysseus is a lost hero, just like Sweeney Todd. So lost in fact, we can

only see him in the poem at all through whispers of the poem’s written mythic characters.

The difference we find between Odysseus and Sweeney Todd is that readers know

already Odysseus holds a future. After searching and struggling for ten years, he will find

his way back home to Ithaca. For Sweeney Todd, the future is much less certain. He may

never find his place back home again, among the cultural traditions that were left behind.

Kinley Roby perfectly captures the essence of Sweeney when he describes him in

Critical Essays on T.S. Eliot: The Sweeney Motif as the “decayed version of the classic

hero, the modern world’s disgraceful entry in the lists of mythical heroes” (1). How can

modern man have any hope of a future when he’s lost his past, the traditions of the

culture that raised him?

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Once again, we’ve uncovered evidence showing T.S. Eliot’s poetic vision of

modern society being lost, lacking the traditional cultural values of previous generations.

By studying the intertextuality of myth and legend in T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Erect”, we

have been able to find clear evidence supporting this interpretation of the poem that may

have been difficult to find otherwise. However, despite this intense intertextual study

many readers may still wonder, was T.S. Eliot’s vision of modern society being lost a

commonly shared belief, and reflective of an ideology held by many during the 1920’s?

This is a far more complicated question, and one I could not fully answer within the

scope of this essay. Many scholars believe this to be the case though with at least a small

portion of 1920’s culture, specifically with young American literary expatriates. T.S.

Eliot was a member of this group. The phrase commonly coined for this group of

American writers was the “Lost Generation writers”, deriving from a famous quote made

by Gertrude Stein, a member of the literary expatriate gang herself. Her famous line first

appears in writing as an epigraph in American writer Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun

Also Rises, in which Ms. Stein repeats “You are all a generation perdue.” (1). As we can

see from this statement, the belief that culture was dying out in modern society was a real

fear among others in the 1920’s, not only T.S. Eliot.

Many more readers of this intertextual study may also ask greater questions such

as, is T.S. Eliot’s perspective of modern society being lost, without culture, an accurate

interpretation of how society really was? Or perhaps they may ask, what in history

caused T.S. Eliot and other American literary expatriates to react so negatively to their

own society, believing it to be lost? For the first of these questions, it is also impossible

for me to answer. The only way anyone could possibly know for certain whether society

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in the 1920’s was truly lost would be to have lived during T.S. Eliot’s time, and

functioned within the society itself. Without that knowledge, one can only speculate as to

how life really was in the 1920’s, based on the evidence we have in front of us. The

evidence I’ve presented in this essay only gives us one small, clear piece of the rich

tapestry that is 1920’s society.

As for the second question, I do have a real answer. If we trace back into history,

we discover a likely cause for the grim outlook on society that T.S. Eliot and others

shared. In 1918, the First World War ended. The world rejoiced of course, but the end of

the world’s most devastating war did not end the war’s devastating effects. World War I

was a major cataclysmic event that struck nearly every society participating in the war on

a global scale. In 1920, society as a whole was still shell-shocked from the war’s

aftermath, and was trying to gather again its pieces that the war had scattered everywhere.

In light of this, we can easily see how T.S. Eliot and many people living in 1920 may

have viewed modern society for the worse, and wondered if modern man had failed

mankind by causing such a widespread global disaster.

As readers, how have we benefited from viewing T.S. Eliot’s poetic vision in

“Sweeney Erect” through an intertextual approach? The most obvious benefit is that

we’ve discovered new connections and found new meaning from myths and legends that

may not have been apparent to us in the poem otherwise. In using this approach, we are

able to take a unique sneak peek inside the thoughts of a particular time and culture, such

as T.S. Eliot’s vision of lost society in 1920, and grasp a fuller understanding of what life

was like back then. On the other hand, only through using the intertextual approach do

we find its shortcomings. The intertextual approach narrows our focus towards a specific

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text and the author’s intention within the work, placing further analysis beyond the text

outside the essay’s scope. Because of this aspect within the intertextual perspective, we

found ourselves unable to fully address issues related to T.S. Eliot’s poetic vision of lost

society, such as other people’s societal views and the main causes for Eliot’s pessimistic

societal outlook. This may discourage some readers, but I will point out that the benefits

for such an approach far outweigh the drawbacks. In using the intertextual approach, we

are not only deepening our understanding of a literary piece, but also enriching our

knowledge of the literary canon as a whole. We are listening to the echoes of the past and

capturing their voices, still alive in the page of today’s modern writers.

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Works Cited

Eliot, T. S., The Waste Land and Other Writings. New York: Modern Library, 2002.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner, 1996

Homer, and Robert Fagles. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Roby, Kinley E. "Introduction." Critical Essays on T.S. Eliot: the Sweeney Motif. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1985. 1-29.

Simpson, Jacqueline. "Seeking the Lore of the Land." Folklore 119.2 (2008): 131-41.

Stenudd, Stefan. The Logics of Myth: Basic Patterns of Creation Myths. Diss. Lund University, 1999. Aikido, Art, Myth, Fiction, and More – by Stefan Stenudd. Web. 5 Nov. 2010. <http://www.stenudd.com>.

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