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.The mental image of such a fog undoubtedly erences and overtones of the poetry of The Hip-colors the reader s response not only to the scene popotamus, for just one example, ought to putthat the poem is setting but to the tone and mood the reader instantly on guard.At this time Eliotthat it thus evokes, creating an atmosphere of the was still producing a poetry that was liable to mixlurid and the sickly that both works against and the ridiculous with the sublime in doses and atcomplements the characterization both of Prufrock a pace sufficient to deflect his reader s attentionand of his life and social milieu that is emerging from one to the other in so swiftly and bewilder-through the poetry.Furthermore, the yellow fog ingly detached a manner that it becomes well nighis rendered finally in the aspect of a feral animal, impossible for even the most attentive reader toreminding the reader, perhaps, of details from the separate mockery from cleverness and playfulnessopening stanza, where the evening sky is personi- from a somewhat slanted but nevertheless genuinefied in a surprising and disturbing way as an ether- sincerity of thematic intention.ized patient and where the tawdry and lurid are To call the poetry of The Hippopotamus satiri-suggested by references to sleazy hotels and low- cal would stretch the definition as much as to call itclass dining establishments.contemplative.It is, rather, provocative, and it pro-This accumulation of details that are unsettling vokes the reader into thought and into feeling inin their potential for revealing a seamy sordidness good French symbolist fashion.The question mustjust underlying and certainly thereby enveloping be, nevertheless, whether the payoff is worth thePrufrock s otherwise stately but stale world, both in effort that the reader must expend to achieve it.its physical realities and in its psychological impact So, then, The Hippopotamus moves from itson him, is embodied in the yellow fog, which strikes legitimately ponderous title to an epigraph citingjust the right note to summarize the emotions that an equally ponderous passage from a letter of St. Hippopotamus, The 249Ignatius warning against those whose faith in the Church, which, as the saying goes, is in the worldauthority of the church, like the Laodiceans, is but not of it, is what in fact is weighted down, andlukewarm and lackadaisical (an epigraph other- weighed down, by the ponderousness of its dogmawise unidentified, in typical Eliot fashion).It nev- and doctrine and admonitions on same.ertheless can only be said tongue in cheek, of The result, as Eliot plays the figurative offcourse, that the poem s title is as ponderous as against the literal, is that religion, which shouldIgnatius s weighty words, since the former names a lighten the freight of humans mortal condition, islarge, heavy animal.But is it only tongue in cheek instead made burdensome and has become miredin fact? Indeed, it would be remiss on the reader s in a miasmal mist, in other words, swamp water,part not to ask what a hippopotamus could have another sharp contrast to the buoyant river whereinto do with Ignatius s admonition, which is itself the hippo abides.Meanwhile, the hippo, having byquite ponderous but in an entirely different con- poem s end won heaven by virtue of staying true totext and sense, being ponderous in content but his kind and to his nature, enjoys a blissful releasenot bulk.from the burden of his earthly bulk/baggage, oneIn summary, Eliot plays with possibilities as to which the true church, fixated on and fixed hereexactly what his poem s ponderous subject may be.below, will never realize.In its literal but somewhat whimsical sense, by vir- The contrasts multiply.The hippo has acceptedtue of a contrast with the comical nature of the its limits; it will never taste the mango.And thebulk of the hippo, the poem s subject is weighty, hippo, even if its love song is not lovely, loves
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