For centuries, societies have celebrated the safe return of their soldiers through victory parades and other demonstrations of appreciation. That tradition has expanded to include commemorations of military accomplishments in other contexts; many towns still host parades honoring their veterans and their country’s military history even in times of peace. A widely supportive audience typically attends these celebrations, their presence taken as a sign of approval for both the troops and the war efforts themselves. In contemporary times, protests demonstrating citizens’ unrest and opposition to their country’s military tactics often accompany these commendatory celebrations, underscoring that approval is always accompanied by dissent. T.S. Eliot’s “Triumphal March” calls on these military traditions, recounting the story of a Roman victory parade passing through a city to its temple. A curious crowd watches the procession, catching glimpses and sharing details with one another.Written in 1931, Eliot’s “Triumphal March” is not a straightforward tale of these Roman celebrations, but rather it uses these events as a vessel for the exploration of unrest in contemporary war and politics. Eliot questions the intention and sincerity behind the complaisance demonstrated by the audience at military celebrations, drawing on characterization, tone, and anachronisms to highlight the human costs of war and create a powerful allegory of existential awareness and unease amidst a shifting political climate.
From the start of “Triumphal March,” Eliot characterizes his narrator as assenting yet skeptical. The opening lines of the poem settle the reader into a soothing monotony – the cadence of “Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels / Over the paving” mimics the sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestone streets, both when read aloud and visualized on the page (234). Eliot uses this monosyllabic repetition to position us as a captive and unquestioning audience celebrating our general and supporting our returning troops. Yet he immediately betrays that complaisance with the next two lines; the abrupt punctuation and fragmented sentences disrupt the palliative sense of the previous lines and suggest the narrator recognizes a certain ridiculousness and spectacle in the overabundance of flags, trumpets, and eagles as the procession begins. This early portrayal of the narrator’s perception as subtly disconnected from the unquestioning excitement around him is our first hint of an existential awareness interspersed throughout the poem. Although the narrator is present and docile, still engaged with the excitement of the crowd around him, he simultaneously “hardly [knows himself] that day” (Eliot 234).
Eliot underscores the narrator’s apprehensive compliance as the poem continues. The tone of “Triumphal March” is alert, enlivened, and inquisitive as the poem begins. The lines flow in a stream-of-consciousness manner, a mix of statements and questions, creating a palpable excitement. In the midst of that excitement, the tone unexpectedly vacillates toward unease for a single line as we are greeted with the next hint of the narrator’s underlying existential awareness. The deeper musing that “The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving” feels out of place among the trivial discussions of the ostentatious elements of the march and suggests the narrator understands that the grandeur is intended to inflate the ego of the general who led the troops to triumph while distracting from the darker aspects of victory (Eliot 234). The narrator perceives a dissonance between his own lived experience and that of the general, highlighting a disconnect between the general’s expectations of a celebratory crowd and the actual skepticism experienced among the crowd themselves.
If we view Eliot’s skeptical characterization of his narrator as a representation of himself, we gain insight to his personal perspective on contemporary politics. Influenced by Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus, a tragedy depicting the titular Roman general, “Triumphal March” was written as the first poem in an unfinished series titled Coriolan, in which Eliot explored the Fascist principles gaining strength in Europe through the lens of his idealized version of Roman politics. Early 1930s Europe was witnessing the rise of Fascism[1] in Italy and Germany. Eliot had long held an “apolitical understanding of the individual in society,” but he also recognized a “strength offered by belief in totalitarian politics” that “threaten[ed]” that understanding (Matthews 46). The skepticism Eliot imbues in his Roman narrator mirrors his own skepticism of Fascism and its focus on nationalism over the individual, suggesting that the poem represents Eliot’s personal struggles to reconcile his existing political beliefs with the rise of these new ideals.
Eliot further relates the poem’s Roman narrative to contemporary politics by presenting a precise, detailed, statistical breakdown of the artillery parading by:
5,800,000 rifles and carbines
102,000 machine guns,
28,000 trench mortars,
53,000 field and heavy guns (Eliot 234)
The artillery inventoried is clearly not of Roman origin, but rather an exaggeration of the restrictions placed on contemporary German weapons outlined in the Treaty of Versailles following World War I (Matthews 54). Their anachronistic and technical language has a sobering and intimidating effect, which breaks the enlivened tone that begins the poem. This lengthy interjection dramatically shifts the reader’s perspective from the frivolous spectacle of eagles and flags, and focuses it instead on the sheer power of this army. We are forced to contemplate the prolific destruction as a shadow obscured by this victory. Eliot’s juxtaposition of such a somber depiction of contemporary warfare amidst his celebratory Roman narrative makes a powerful statement on the ubiquitous destruction of war, destruction that is often forgiven and even condoned by the victor once the battle is won.
Eliot only briefly lingers on this sobering thought, and with subtle comedic effect, he lulls us back into complaisance by quickly brushing past the multitude of weaponry and refocusing on the pageantry as we enter the second stanza. Nearly halfway through the poem, the narrator seems less invested in the spectacle the longer it takes to reach its crescendo, but his tone quiets in anticipation as the general finally appears. The general is “watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent,” appearing aloof despite expecting this celebration and glorification for his actions on the battlefield (Eliot 235). Eliot harkens back to the narrator’s existential awareness by echoing the word “perceiving” – the narrator’s perceiving of the Ego referenced earlier carries forward to directly relate to the perceiving general, confirming that it is his ego we are meant to inflate through this march. Despite the Roman context, the general seems timeless; it is easy to imagine this impersonal, poised man as the Roman general Coriolanus, or as the leader of any contemporary European army. Steven Matthews similarly characterizes the general as“a modern dictator as much as he is a Shakespearian tragic character flawed by pride,” supporting Eliot’s analogizing Roman politics to contemporary Fascism (Matthews 55).
The narrator’s (and Eliot’s) building existential awareness reaches its apex in stanza three as the triumphal march reaches the temple. This stanza is significantly shorter than the first two, suggesting the narrator is rendered speechless. The reader is briefly transfixed by the echoing of “Dust / Dust / Dust of dust” as the general makes the sacrifice to the gods, which forces us to once again contemplate the darker aspect of this victory – this time, in the form of the human bodies reduced to dust (Eliot 235). The narrator’s echoing feels hollow and shocked, as if the thought is almost too much to bear, but before he takes that thought deeper, the repetition of the poem’s opening lines lulls him back into complaisance: “Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels” pacify that existential awareness and bring us back into the present moment (235).
Eliot neutralizes the weight and importance of the third stanza, again with comedic effect, at the start of the fourth stanza. The narrator quickly redirects the subject, beginning to wrap up the story and move toward the conclusion. Yet despite the benign language and feigned excitement the narrator expresses, the cadence of the stanza feels scattered and distracted, devolving into a hollow echoing in “Give us a light? / Light / Light” that mirrors stanza three (235). Our narrator seems shaken by the events of the third stanza, perhaps resigned to and wearied by the thought that war always brings death. The idle talk of Easter Day church and revisiting the spectacle of the march does not sufficiently distract from this thought, and the poem’s final line devolves into an outburst of anger: “Et les soldats faisaient la haie? ILS LA FAISAIENT” (235).[2] This aggressive, powerful statement concluding the poem contrasts the gentle, soothing opening lines, implying that the narrator’s early skepticism has now taken the form of anger boiling over and exploding at the finale. This anger is directed specifically at the military whom we are supposed to celebrate in this triumphal march, and it also represents the narrator’s rejection of keeping hidden those dark aspects of victory Eliot alludes to throughout the poem. Despite the celebrations, spectacle, and false sense of complacency, war still takes its toll on the minds and hearts of communities experiencing it, a sentiment further substantiated by Eliot’s positioning of the narrator directly within the crowd of spectators.
An alternate reading of “Triumphal March” might consider the narrator of this poem as a member of a conquered city, watching the victorious enemy march to their temple. Eliot’s statement that “We hardly knew ourselves that day, or knew the City,” is a double entendre (234). Taken in the context outlined above, we envision a bustling, excited crowd caught up in a significant moment and losing track of all else. In a darker context, we imagine a defeated villager taking stock of their unrecognizable city, now occupied by a foreign army after a presumably brutal battle where their loved ones lost their lives. Their sense of identity is shaken as they “wait with [their] stools and [their] sausages” and watch the artillery that conquered their army roll through their city (234). They witness a “watchful. . . indifferent” general survey his new subjects and desecrate their temple with a sacrifice to his gods (235). They try to make the best of this inescapable new reality with idle chatter and the mundane tasks of daily life, but their anger at “les soldats faisaient la haie” is concealed below the surface, suppressed as they are oppressed, instilling the same weariness on these conquered civilians as felt by the tired civilians in the victor’s city examined above (235). While this reading holds merit, it feels less relevant when examined in Eliot’s historical context of the 1930s. Europe was between wars, so Eliot was likely not contemplating the experiences of his country’s conquered enemies as he wrote “Triumphal March.” Instead, he and his contemporaries were grappling with monumental political and psychological shifts that commanded thorough evaluation, and “Triumphal March” serves as a compelling analysis of those shifts.
Eliot’s “Triumphal March” is a sharp social commentary on the less visible tolls of war, both past and present. Eliot transcends time with his criticisms, holding a mirror to what society allows itself to become during times of war and drawing our attention to the more important, often hidden, costs. The subtle shifts in tone, intentional juxtapositions, and slow, deliberate building and exploding of the narrator’s frustrations throughout the poem creates a multilayered analysis of the unspoken emotional impacts of war. Eliot leaves his reader feeling somber as they stand among the crowd, contemplating their own complaisance in the wars of their time.
[1] The Oxford English Dictionary defines Fascism as “an authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organization which emerged after the end of the First World War in 1918, and became a prominent force in European politics during the 1920s and 1930s. . .These parties typically opposed socialism and liberalism (as well as communism) and advocated ultranationalistic policies, usually espousing ethnocentric ideas of racial superiority. . . Where such parties came to power. . .they characteristically formed totalitarian dictatorships, giving special status to a charismatic leader. . .and often pursuing an aggressively militaristic foreign policy” (“Fascism,” def. 1.b).
[2] Written in French; English translation: “And the soldiers make a wall [like in military formation]? THEY DID IT” (“Lot 17”).
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. “Triumphal March.” The New Oxford Book of War Poetry, edited by John Stallworthy, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 234-235.
“Fascism, N. (1.b).” Oxford English Dictionary, https://www-oed-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/view/Entry/68376?redirectedFrom=fascism. Accessed 28 Feb 2022.
“Lot 17: T.S. Eliot TLS Regarding His 1931 Poem ‘Triumphal March,’ An Anti-War Successor to ‘The Waste Land.” University Archives, https://auction.universityarchives.com/auction-lot/t.s.-eliot-tls-regarding-his-1931-poem-triumphal_1874AA0B71. Accessed 14 Feb 2022.
Matthews, Steven. “’You can see some eagles. And hear the trumpets’: The Literary and Political Hinterland of T.S. Eliot’s Coriolan.” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 36, No. 2, Aesthetic Politics—Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary (Winter 2013), pp. 44-60, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.36.2.44.
Originally written March 2022.
Art with an Opinion 