"A Song for Simeon" is a 37-line poem written in 1928 by the American-English poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). It is one of five poems that Eliot contributed to the Ariel Poems series of 38 pamphlets by several authors published by Faber and Gwyer. "A Song for Simeon" was the sixteenth in the series and included an illustration by avant garde artist Edward McKnight Kauffer.Eliot, T. S. "A Song for Simeon" in Ariel 16. (London: Faber and Faber, 1928). The poems, including "A Song for Simeon", were later published in both the 1936 and 1963 editions of Eliot's collected poems.Eliot, T. S. "A Song for Simeon" in Collected Poems: 1909–1935. (London: Faber and Faber; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936); and Collected Poems: 1909–1962. (London: Faber and Faber; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963).
In 1927, Eliot had converted to Anglo-Catholicism and his poetry, starting with the Ariel Poems (1927–31) and Ash Wednesday (1930), took on a decidedly religious character.Timmerman, John H. T. S. Eliot's Ariel Poems: The Poetics of Recovery. (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1994), 117–123. "A Song for Simeon" is seen by many critics and scholars as a discussion of the conversion experience. In the poem, Eliot retells the story of Simeon from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, a just and devout Jew who encounters Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus entering the Temple of Jerusalem. Promised by the Holy Ghost that he would not die until he had seen the Saviour, Simeon sees in the infant Jesus the Messiah promised by the Lord and asks God to permit him to "depart in peace" ().
The poem's narrative echoes the text of the , a liturgical prayer for Compline from the Gospel passage. Eliot introduces literary allusions to earlier writers Lancelot Andrewes, Dante Alighieri and St. John of the Cross. Critics have debated whether Eliot's depiction of Simeon is a negative portrayal of a Jewish figure and evidence of antisemitism on Eliot's part.
Writing and publication
In 1925, Eliot became a poetry editor at the London publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer, Ltd.,Murphy, Russell Elliott. Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. (New York: Facts on File/InfoBase Publishing, 2007). after a career in banking, and subsequent to the success of his earlier poems, including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), "Gerontion" (1920) and "The Waste Land" (1922).Rainey, Lawrence S. (editor) The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 9ff. In these years, Eliot gravitated away from his Unitarian upbringing and began to embrace the Church of England. He was baptised into the Anglican faith on 29 June 1927 at Finstock, in Oxfordshire, and was confirmed the following day in the private chapel of Thomas Banks Strong, Bishop of Oxford.Gordon, Lyndell. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. (London: Vintage, 1998). Eliot converted in private, but subsequently declared in his 1927 preface to a collection of essays titled For Lancelot Andrewes that he considered himself a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion.Eliot, T. S. Preface to For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order. (London: Faber and Faber, 1929). The specific quote is: "The general point of view [of the essays] may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."Staff. Books: Royalist, Classicist, Anglo-Catholic (a review of 1936 Harcourt, Brace edition of Eliot's Collected Poems: 1909–1935) in Time (25 May 1936). Retrieved 24 October 2013. When his conversion became known, it was "an understandable choice to those around him" given his intellectual convictions, and that "he could not have done anything less than seek what he regarded as the most ancient, most sacramental, and highest expression of the Christian faith that forms the indisputable basis for the culture and civilization of modern Europe". Eliot's conversion and his adherence to Anglo-Catholicism informed and influenced his later poetry.
Critical reviews of Eliot's poems shifted as well, with some critics asserting that Eliot's work suffered with the addition of Christian themes.Kirk, Russell. Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century. (Wilmington: Isi Books, 2008), 240. Kirk, in his discussion, mentions the critique of George Orwell as one of the more prominent positions on Eliot's development. Orwell said: "It is clear that something has departed, some kind of current has been switched off, the later verse does not contain the earlier, even if it is claimed as an improvement upon it ... He does not really feel his faith, but merely assents to it for complex reasons. It does not in itself give him any fresh literary impulse." One critic, Morton Zabel said that this "deprives his art of its once incomparable distinction in style and tone". Other critics thought Eliot's exploration of Christian themes was a positive development in his poetry, including Gordon Symes, who recognised it as "an evaluation of old age, an elucidation of its special grace, and an appreciation of its special function in the progress of the soul".Symes, Gordon. "T. S. Eliot and Old Age", in Fortnightly 169(3) (March 1951): 186–93.Stead, Christian. The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot, (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1969), passim.
In 1927, Eliot was asked by his employer, Geoffrey Faber, to write one poem each year for a series of illustrated pamphlets with holiday themes to be sent to the firm's clients and business acquaintances as Christmas greetings. This series, called the "Ariel Series", consisted of 38 pamphlets published between 1927 and 1931 featuring poems and brief prose from a selection of English writers and poets. The first poem that Eliot wrote, "The Journey of the Magi", was printed as the eighth in the series in August 1927.Eliot, T. S. "The Journey of the Magi" (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1927). For the second, "A Song for Simeon", Eliot turned to an event at the end of Nativity narrative in the Gospel of Luke. The printing of the poem, the sixteenth in the series, was completed on 24 September 1928.Moody, A. David. Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 114.Gallup, Donald. T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969). "A11. A Song for Simeon" is listed as "A.11" Eliot would follow these with three more poems: "Animula" in October 1929, "Marina" in September 1930, and "Triumphal March" in October 1931. Four of Eliot's five Ariel poems, including "A Song for Simeon", were accompanied by illustrations by American-born avant garde artist, E. McKnight Kauffer.
Faber and Gwyer printed "A Song for Simeon" in an 8½-inch × 5½-inch Demy Octavo (8vo) pamphlet in blue paper wraps with title in black ink.Phillips, Robin. "Notes on Ariel Poems" in Oliver Simon at the Curwen Press: a bibliographic handlist of their book production from 1919 to 1955. (Plaistow: Curwen Press, 1963). Retrieved 12 November 2013.Phillips, Robin. 1928 Jzf16 large-paper edition in Oliver Simon at the Curwen Press: a bibliographic handlist of their book production from 1919 to 1955. (Plaistow: Curwen Press, 1963). Retrieved 12 November 2013. The poem was printed on two pages, accompanied by a colour image by Kauffer, and included one page of advertisements. Faber and Gwyer contracted with the Curwen Press in Plaistow to print 3,500 copies. The font of the cover and poem text was Walbaum, created by J. E. Walbaum of Goslar and Weimar in Germany in 1836.Simon, Oliver. Printer and playground: An Autobiography. (London: Faber and Faber, 1956), 44, 46, 84. According to Gilmour, the edition was printed "in batches of eight".Gilmour, Pat. Artists at Curwen: A Celebration of the Gift of Artists' Prints from the Curwen Studio. (London: Tate Gallery, 1977), 47.
In 1936, Faber and Faber, the successor firm to Faber and Gwyer, collected "A Song for Simeon" and three of the other poems under the heading "Ariel Poems" for an edition of Eliot's collected poems. ("Triumphal March" appears as Section 1 of "Coriolan" in the "Unfinished Poems" section.) When Faber released another series in 1954, Eliot included a sixth poem, "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees", which was added to Faber's 1963 edition of his collected poems. Both editions of collected poems were published in the United States by Harcourt, Brace & Company.
All six poems were published together as a separate publication for the first time by Faber & Faber in 2014. This publication included the original illustrations.
Analysis "A Song for Simeon" is a 37-line poem written in free verse. The poem does not have a consistent pattern of meter. The lines range in length from three syllables to fifteen syllables. Eliot uses end rhyme sporadically in 21 lines of the poem, specifically: and, hand, stand, and land (in lines 1, 3, 5, 7) poor and door (lines 10 and 12) sorrow and to-morrow (lines 20 and 24) derision and vision (lines 27 and 30) stair and prayer (lines 28 and 29) heart and depart (lines 32 and 36)
Eliot's use of lamentation, desolation and consolation—a repetition of the two-syllable -ation ending—is an example of syllable rhyme. Eliot employs forced rhyme (also called "oblique rhyme") on peace and ease (lines 8 and 11), and eye rhyme on home and come (lines 14 and 15).
"A Song for Simeon" is structured as a first-person dramatic monologue spoken by Simeon.Julius, Anthony. T. S. Eliot: Anti-semitism and Literary Form. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).q.v. Abrams, M. H. (editor), "Dramatic Monologue", in A Glossary of Literary Terms (8th edition – Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005), 70-71, writes that a dramatic monologue features "a single person, who is patently not the poet, utter(ing) the speech that makes up the whole of the poem". Eliot's style of monologue used in the poem (and in many of his works) draws heavily from the influence of English Victorian poet Robert Browning (1812–1889).Oser, Lee. T. S. Eliot and American Poetry. (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1998). Literary scholar Martin Scofield directly identifies Simeon's recitation as "the voice of the Browningesque dramatic monologue" and characterises Eliot's use of Simeon as a speaker as a "mask that half hides and half reveals the poet".Scofield, Martin. T. S. Eliot: The Poems. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Themes and interpretation
Gospel narrative and the Nunc dimittis
Most scholars and critics addressing the poem focus on the Gospel narrative for a source of interpretation as Eliot's poem quotes several lines verbatim from the passage in Luke, from the . Scofield says that the poem is "characterized by deliberately Biblical language, interwoven with actual phrases from the Gospels".Pinion, F. B. A T. S. Eliot Companion. (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 173.