Record Number: 32113

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Reading Experience:

Evidence:

'... I took up a volume with the uncompromising title My Past by a Countess Marie Larisch... T. S. Eliot was certainly one who read it, and before he wrote The Waste Land... Anyone familiar with Eliot's poem does not read very far before coming upon a similarity of names and places that can be hardly be fortuitous. We have seen that the Wittelbachs – which included the Empress and their cousin, the “mad king” Ludwig – occupied various castles around the Bavarian lake. “The archduke was my cousin” (lines 13-14 of the poem)... The Waste Land decor, moreover, bears kinship to certain passages in Countess Larisch's book. The opening lines of Part IV echo an account of the Empress' dressing-room, with its notable combination of magnificence and ennui. And the "Chapel Perilous" of Part V curiously resembles the tumbledown chapter-house at Heiligenkreuz, to which the uncles of Maria Vetsera carried her mangled remains.'

Century:

1900-1945

Date:

Between 1916 and 1922

Country:

n/a

Time

n/a

Place:

n/a

Type of Experience
(Reader):
 

silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Type of Experience
(Listener):
 

solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

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Reader / Listener / Reading Group:

Reader:

T. S. Eliot

Age:

Adult (18-100+)

Gender:

n/a

Date of Birth:

26 Sep 1888

Socio-Economic Group:

Professional / academic / merchant / farmer

Occupation:

Poet and critic

Religion:

Unitarianism, later Anglicanism

Country of Origin:

USA

Country of Experience:

n/a

Listeners present if any:
e.g family, servants, friends

n/a

Additional Comments:

n/a

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Text Being Read:

Author:

Marie Larisch

Title:

My Past

Genre:

Biography

Form of Text:

Print: Book

Publication Details

n/a

Provenance

unknown

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Source Information:

Record ID:

32113

Source:

Print

Author:

George L. K. Morris

Editor:

n/a

Title:

Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight

Place of Publication:

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Date of Publication:

1962

Vol:

n/a

Page:

p.86-7

Additional Comments:

Taken from the collection, 'T. S. Eliot: Collection of Critical Essays', edited by Hugh Kenner.

Citation:

George L. K. Morris, Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight, (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1962), p. p.86-7, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=32113, accessed: 14 May 2024

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Additional Comments:

None