He was Man of Infinite Varieties
In the Craft of Words with Masques:
A High Priest of Poetry of Delphi,
A Prefect of the Ancient Knowledge,
A Thespian of Comedy and Tragedy,
A Hercules whose Might was Pen,
An Odysseus in Search of Truth,
A Pretorian of Classical Precepts
With the elevated Heart of Passion
And the exalted satisfaction of Reason
Whose Brilliance of Star Outlasts
The Celebrity of Instant Comets.
She saw the hungry oceans
Rushing toward the kingdom
Of the shore with full force
In the scarlet rays of the sun
Pouring on the parched land
And turned her ship again
Toward the unpathed waters
Alone, all alone, evermore.
She walks into the gray maze
Of endless corners serpentine
In the prosperousness of the haze
Under a moonbeam travertine
Beguiling her into remote hopes
Cycle and epicycle, amaranthine.
A sky maiden sprinkles stars
Across the celestial vault
With a moon mirror she hangs
As the earth below sleeps
And dances in the night light.
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by Eliot T. S. (Thomas Stearns)
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It was like being transported to Hayao Miyazaki’s beautiful, fanciful animated world to discover that T.S. Eliot wrote this delightfully whimsical book because, to quote himself, he was of “a Catholic cast of mind, a Puritanical temperament, and a Calvinist heritage.” To me, Eliot was always a grim, grave intellectual who would not deign to regale himself with anthropomorphic cats. It was part of curiosity about the writer himself and my interest in anything about cats because of my first cat at home. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is a compact collection of amusingly scintillating and elegantly profound poems about why cats behave the way they do and who they are really.
And the more I read, the more I enjoyed it because it was full of wittily whimsical rhythms and brilliantly capricious expressions like a pleasant medley of amiable Dickensian characters. The psychology of the indomitable, the incredible cats through his amiably keen observation of feline behaviors in everyday life is conveyed through the live practical cats:
According to nominative determinism principles, Eliot gives the inscrutably and ineffably particular names to the cats that befit their characteristics and personalities. The names become the cats, and the cats become the peculiar existence.
The poetry was the inspiration of the mega Broadway musical hit “The Cats.” However, to go against the grain, I think that rather than the famed musical version, Hiroyuki Morita’s animated version of “Whisper of the Heart” about a good-hearted high school girl traveling to the land of talking biped clothed cats because of her kindness to cats, is close to Eliot’s idea of practical cats. The anthropomorphic cats in animation are free in all expression that human actors cannot perform with theatrical effects, which forces the audience to believe that what they see are cats. It is impossible to disassociate the visual fact from visceral imagery. The humans in makeup imitating cats render the feline characters fatuous and clownish. Ben Jonson, the great Elizabethan English playwright, would have adopted Eliot’s practical cats with his superb masks and sans the ludicrously exaggerated makeup and costumes.
In conclusion, with wits and simplicity, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is a hidden gem of Eliot’s works that is enjoyable by general readers, even if they do not have cats at home. Indeed, Eliot himself was a cat lover, and this adorable collection of poems might have been the whimsical scribbling of his cats at home from his daily lives with them. But what a way of tribute to his lovely creatures it is! Upon reading this book, you might want to write like him about your cats or other pets you have at home. I should think so, for I want to and am doing.
The Romp Pomp Bunter is a Little Kitten living on Kenmore Avenue
Whose natural curiosity becomes day by day Curiouser and Curiouser.
From the windows, he watches the World below and the Sky above
Day and night, till the Doves on the roof fly away higher and farther.
Left in the silence of loneliness that becomes the sound of sadness,
The Little Cat, friendless always, goes to a Fish called Hope, as always
In the vain hope of friendship, for he is also alone, or so it seems,
And knocks on the door of the aquarium and waves at him with his paws.
Alas, Poor Little Cat! I know him! Hope wants no friendship with the Cat!
He hides in the pineapple castle in his watery kingdom, safe and sound
For his loneliness is submerged in water and dissolves into watery mote,
Leaving the Little Cat in the silence of friendlessness round and around.
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