"impersonality of modern love"


Magritte, "The Lovers", 1928



Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed)Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—I too awaited the expected guest. He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire, The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit. . .
She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone,She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

From "the Waste Land", by Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1922