Every time I save the poem it throws off the stanza form though the form is fine before I save it. Well, I have the feeling I have quoted the poem before and maybe even discussed it. In any case here we go again. Perhaps! Ah, I believe that I have fixed the format problem.
Got it this time. I love this poem. I copied a (somewhat typical?) critical analysis from the poetry website and then way down below added my own (more brilliant—ha) critical thoughts.
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS
by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
THE broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo's feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.
The 'potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree;But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo's voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus's day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way--
The Church can sleep and feed at once.
I saw the 'potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr'd virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
"The Hippopotamus" is reprinted from Poems. T.S. Eliot. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.
A SAMPLE of critical comment; my comments follow Dr. Tearle’s comments, probably:
“The ‘quatrain’ poems which make up all but one of the English poems in Poems (the volume also contains a few poems written in French) were inspired by the French example of Théophile Gautier (1811-72), whose volume Émaux et Camées Eliot had been encouraged to read by Ezra Pound. The hard, sculptured feel to these quatrain poems was the result of Pound’s influence: this precise and controlled kind of poetic form was something which Pound thought Eliot could work with to good effect.
“In summary, the poem is an extended comparison between the hippopotamus and the Christian church, both ‘weighty’ things, albeit in very different ways, one literal and the other theological. This argument, presented in polished quatrains rhyming abab, is offered in plain terms but we must not take it at face value. For, whilst the majority of the poem weighs up the hippo and the Church, with the church coming out on top, ultimately it is the hippo that ascends to heaven – despite its considerable bulk – while the Church remains on earth, apparently unworthy of a place in heaven after all.
“Why? Because the Church is corrupt and out for its own ends, while the hippopotamus is innocent of such corruption. The hippo may be associated with laziness, lying in the mud all day; but it has a simple existence, trying to feed itself when it isn’t asleep. By contrast, Eliot tells us, the Church can sleep and feed itself at the same time. This is offered, on the face of it, as a virtue, but it is ironic – because others donate food and wealth to the Church, the implication is that the Church has done nothing to deserve such donations, and gives nothing back. The hippopotamus cannot reach the mango up on the mango-tree, but the Church can dine on exotic fruits from overseas because of its vast imperial power and its colonisation of other lands. This is presented as an argument in favour of the awesome might of the Church, but it leaves us feeling sorry for the hippo, and viewing the Church as rather greedy and exploitative.
“Every one of T. S. Eliot’s polished quatrains has the same double-edged meaning, which is reminiscent of the speech from Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which ostensibly praises Brutus as an ‘honourable man’, but subtly and cleverly undermines this by drawing attention to the fact that the things Brutus has done, which the Roman people perceive as honourable, are actually anything but. Eliot’s ‘argument’ in ‘The Hippopotamus’, similarly, is deliberately offered to us as specious and flawed: the hippopotamus may be ‘merely’ flesh and blood, in contrast with the Church which was ‘based upon a rock’, but this line itself reveals the speciousness of the argument being offered. It’s an allusion to Jesus’ words from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’ (16:18). The ‘rock’ on which the Church was founded was, in fact, a pun on the name of Peter – very much a man of flesh and blood.
“At the end of the poem, the hippopotamus ascends to heaven while the Church remains here on earth – engulfed by the very same ‘miasmal mist’ that the hippo formerly sat beneath. Yet Eliot’s excessively comical images – of the hippo playing the harp, for instance – render the conceit ridiculous, bordering on the surreal. Any analysis of this poem must address this comicality: does it render Eliot’s ‘argument’ frivolous? Or does it underscore the extent to which the heavy, cumbersome hippo is still nevertheless more likely to be lifted up to heaven than the corrupt, grasping church?”
The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.
STARTZMAN’S COMMENTS: it seems to me that Dr. Tearle almost gets the clues to the meaning of the poem, “the excessively comical images,” etc., but that he is caught between looking at the poem rather than looking from the poem, that is from the perspective of the narrator himself—not necessarily “Eliot.” Eliot is dead; the narrator lives before us in the poem, and I would argue that the real meaning (sigh, I know) of the poem is about the narrator and his flawed perspective, I am almost tempted to say his blindness.
The first six lines of the poem are the narrator’s attempt to define the hippopotamus, with the emphasis on “flesh and blood,” an image which also calls to mind our own humanity, as well as perhaps distantly suggesting the Eucharist. The phrase “flesh and blood” though specifically calls to mind that the hippo is not the only flesh and blood creature; so is humanity, I.e. man.
Just as the narrator uses “flesh and blood “ twice, he also uses the phrase “the True Church” twice in the beginning though it is clear that the narrator sees the Church as corrupt and much like a nasty parasite on flesh and blood or human life. It seems as though the narrator labors his comparisons and/or contrasts to make the Church deliberately look bad; his perspective is essentially satirical; the narrator is a secularist who apparently has no real use for the “corrupt grasping” Church—Anglican or Catholic, his “True Church.”
Dr. Tearle notices the comic nature of the final series of images regarding the hippopotamus; the question is how the narrator intends them and what is the effect of that intention? The narrator says “I saw the ‘potamus take wing/Ascending from the damp savannas.” Here, I believe, we see the narrator betray the poor, ungainly hippopotamus. The hippo sprouts wings? Imagine it! And flies upwards to be met by “quiring angels.” Something is wrong with the narrator’s imagination as he has labored his contrasts throughout the verse and now literally sends or puts the flesh and blood creature in Heaven where he is totally out of place.
If real art involves transformation, the transformation here is in the realization that the narrator has totally failed to see the real possibility inherent in his metaphors and language. Flesh and blood has no place in Heaven unless it has been transformed into the Body of Christ. The real agent of transformation on earth is the Church. On earth the hippopotamus/human self is shown by the narrator to be struggling and unsuccessful, while the Church as institution is quite successful. That one could criticize the Church is certainly true, but what the narrator does not see is that the Church as agent of transformation is exactly where it should be to be successful. And a flesh and blood hippopotamus with its huge foot would find it impossible to play on a harp of gold or any other substance. The essential ridiculousness or silliness thus reflects back on the narrator who has simply put the hippo where he doesn’t really belong as such. The real problem here then, once more, is in the narrator’s mind and imagination who has become the real ridiculous figure and worthy of our laughter. The narrator is the one truly transformed in this delightful work of art.
Image: A submerged hippo at Memphis Zoo, c. 2009, by Alexdi; via Wikimedia Commons.
