Hope Mirrlees- 'Paris'

When the Wasteland was published (1922) its reviews greeted it deeming it disconnected and confused, using a fragmented form and a bricolage of other poets work, liberally appropriating others work as its own. Everybody agreed on the major shift in poetic form, its fragmented nature obscuring an underlying, or hidden form.

'Paris' (1919), by Hope Mirrlees, Eliots friend, received no such welcome, despite its arguable similarities in structure. The poem exists as strikingly avant-garde, though it has never been deemed as as a major work of the time. Bruce Bailey noted in the T.S. Eliot newsletter that it was 'a slighter work than Eliot's'. Using juxtaposition teemed with ironic contrasts, there is an emotional awareness present, drawing in the works of women writers as Eliot has done. Considering the time of writing, the influence of Mirrlees upon Eliot is probable, if we breakdown the poem it is clear.

• 600 line poem
• devoted to one day in a modern metropolis
• this is extended through narrative techniques which enhances it through memory, dream and trance
• reminiscent of collage or pastiche
• it alludes to both high and low culture/ literary and historical texts (even music at one point)
• visually it uses white space, to show pattern and to make meaning without language.
• quasi mythic journey through a city on a single day
• shows the zig zag journey across town of a central consciousness
• ordering form- Pounds concept of 'paideuma' he defines as 'the tangle or complex of the inrooted ideas of any period' (57).

The visual form is reminiscent of Mallarmes poetry, whose use of space and form enhances the life and discourse of the lexis used.

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