Blog #11

Whispers of Immortality is another poem by T.S. Eliot that exemplifies how Eliot aims to create a theme of the purpose of spirituality in his works. This poem, however, differs from his others because rather than talking about the mortality of human beings and the importance of a pure spirit, it focuses on the immortality of different characters and how they each reached death. The structure of the poem, though, is similar to his others in the sense that it is broken into stanzas, but they can be grouped together because of similar ideas and topics. There are three different characters present with the first two stanzas dedicated to “Webster.” He describes this character as “possessed by death” and making him appear as a creature from the underworld. Like other T.S. Eliot poems, this is also an allusion to John Webster, a famous poet who probably influenced Eliot though his ideas of death. The second character is Donne, who “found no substitute for sense, to seize and clutch and penetrate; Expert beyond experience.” This is clearly another allusion to John Donne, one of the great metaphysical poets that influenced Eliot because of the idea of not only the spirit’s purpose, but the purpose of being human on a physical level. It is after these two characters are introduced that Eliot then changes the tense from past to present when introducing the third character. He also points out that although these two poets did not actually reach immortality, their poetry did as it lived through time and how their purposes are still meaningful despite the passing of time. The third character introduced, Grishkin, is not only female, but symbolizes the passion and purpose that compels both sexual and emotional desires within the narrator, all of those which  keep him immortal. Her exotic and “subtle effluence of a cat” represent that distant and unreachable state of being immortal. This idea of immortality makes this poem stand out as one that does not fit Eliot’s typical topics. However, after decoding the purpose of each character introduced, this poem does in fact describe how immortality is unattainable, therefore stressing the importance of making a purposeful mortal life in which its lasting memories and effects may become immortal.