“Mistah Kurtz – he dead” is the opening line of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” (1925) our poem of the week. Then entire poem can be read here.
The opening line is itself a quote from Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899). A few months ago, on a whim, I purchased a new copy of Conrad’s book and reread it for the first time in decades. Conrad’s mastery of the English language is astounding, especially considering that he was of Polish ethnicity (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) and English was his third language, after Polish and French.
In my copy, the “Mistah Kurtz” quote appears on page 99 of 108 in Conrad’s book, which recounts in fictional form his 1890 journey up the Congo River as the captain of a Belgian steamship.
But I digress.
The American-born English poet Thomas Stearns Elliot was the recipient of the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature.
“The Hollow Men” concludes with two lines so famous they are now a cliche,
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
The poem is yet another example of post-World War 1 apocalyptic writing, a developing theme here at Poem of the Week.
The poem’s second line,
A penny for the Old Guy
is an apparent reference to the ferryman of the River Styx and also Guy Fawkes, according to AI.
The poem is, for me, a rare example of where repetition adds to the desired effect.
I’ll close with another two favorite lines of mine,
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion
