What have we given?
Each of the thunder's commands is followed by a commentary. For datta, Eliot defines giving as not simply an act of charity or generosity, but of total surrender of the self - to another person, to a cause, or to a belief:
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract.
It is the opposite of the Ennui which Baudelaire warned against, and which Eliot would return to in The Hollow Men: the apathy and failure to act that afflicted both Prufrock and the speaker in the "Hyacinth Girl" section of the present poem.
Eliot goes on to say what giving (and living) is not: it is not in written reports (our obituaries), nor in what goods or money we leave to others (under seals). He alludes once again to The White Devil:
...ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
In other words, we will soon be forgotten after death: only our moment's surrender has any real significance in the scheme of things.
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract.
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| Banksy, Girl with Balloon |
It is the opposite of the Ennui which Baudelaire warned against, and which Eliot would return to in The Hollow Men: the apathy and failure to act that afflicted both Prufrock and the speaker in the "Hyacinth Girl" section of the present poem.
Eliot goes on to say what giving (and living) is not: it is not in written reports (our obituaries), nor in what goods or money we leave to others (under seals). He alludes once again to The White Devil:
...ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
In other words, we will soon be forgotten after death: only our moment's surrender has any real significance in the scheme of things.
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