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Article: A Shakespearean source for T.S. Eliot's "dolphin": The Waste Land 2, line 96.
- Article from:
- ANQ
- Article date:
- January 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Robert Schwarz carefully points many of Eliot's sources for The Waste Land in his recent book Broken Images: A Study of The Waste Land (1988). However, the precise provenance of certain images continues to elude identification. One such crux occurs in the following lines from "A Game of Chess":
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam. (94-96)
Schwarz traces the source for "a carved dolphin" to John Donne's "The Progress of the Soule," saying that the image voices Eliot's "`grouse'--against the world, contemplated with more loathing than gloating the ...