Re-shaking Time and Reshuffling Memory in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”

Abstract

One of T. S. Eliot’s difficult early poems, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” is famous for its enigmatic obscurity. The main images of the poem are associated with the past experience by employing such words as “twisted,” “smell,” and “memory.” The poem represents how a solitary walker wanders through urban streets in a windy midnight. From twelve o’clock to four o’clock, the walker experiences memories reshuffled by street lamps and moonlight. By scrutinizing a complex relationship between the street lamps and moonlight, this essay explores how the street lamps can affect the memory and why the poet seeks the mnemonic reconciliation of the moonlight with the street lamp. In terms of memory, the poet is highly indebted to Henri Bergson since the past seems to be twisted in the present. By re-shaking and reshuffling the twisted past, the poet directs the present to be redeemed out of a windy night’s capacity. Several hours after the midnight, from twelve o’clock to four o’clock, are not just actual time, but the virtual time which is relevant to duration because the virtual hour is not a separable span but a separable cluster of memories. In this sense, the rhapsody takes place not “in a windy night,” but “on a windy night.” This essay also highlights why the midnight can be the appropriate spot of spatio-temporal reconciliation between time and memory.