Exploring The Waste Land
A draft page linked from The Waste Land, Part III, line 251

In the draft of The Waste Land

In the draft:

Across her brain one half-formed thought may pass:

In the final version:

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

Pound's annotation to the draft of this line is amusing. He corrects Eliot for a mistake likely to be made by many a lesser writer. In the edited drafts you can see where Pound scratched out the word may, circled it and drew a line from there to his note where he wrote:

make up yr. mind
you Tiresias
if you know
know damn well
or
else you
dont.

Citation:  "The Facsimile"   pp. 46-47


Exploring The Waste Land
File name: dq251.html
File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002
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