(1925) is a major poem by T. S. Eliot, a Nobel Prize winning modernist poet. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognized to be concerned with: post-War Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised--compare 'Gerontion'); the difficulty of hope and religious conversion; and, as some critics argue, Eliot's failed marriage (Vivienne had been having an affair with Bertrand Russell).
The two epigraph to the poem, "Mistah Kurtz - he dead" and "A penny for the Old Guy", are allusions to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and to Guy Fawkes, attempted arsonist of the English house of Parliament, and his straw-man effigy that is burned each year in the United Kingdom on Bonfire Night.
Some critics read the poem as told from five perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death's kingdoms ("death's dream kingdom", "death's twilight kingdom", and "death's other kingdom"), Eliot describes how we, the...
full article at wikipedia
