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From "Variations sur le Carnaval de Venice," a poem from Théophile Gautier's collection Emaux et Camées (English title Enamels and Cameos, 1852). "Tra-la-la-la-la-lair" is the motif of the Carnaval de Venise that Gautier (1811-73) appreciated in a rendering of Paganini's "Variations" and which Eliot uses to evoke the romantic aspects of literary Venice. See also the discussion of the quatrain form.

linguistic analysis

The line, which is the first line of the second section, looks slightly different from what we find in Eliot's poem: "Tra la, tra la, la, la, la laire!" rather than "tra-la-la-la-la-lair" in "Burbank" Eliot translated the French into something more English sounding, but has also reduced the number of constituents to seven. This suggests that the number seven was on purpose and that "tra-la-la-la-la-lair" and "nil nisi divinum stabile est" were meant to prolong the paralellism initiated in the title.

textual/poetical analysis

Gautier's poem consists of four parts which each contain eight stanzas - quatrains like Eliot's - but with rhyme in both first and third, and second and fourth lines of each quatrain.

Detail from "Marriage at Cana", Paolo Veronese

The first part is called "Dans la Rue" and by describing the musicians that play the theme of Venice, as Paganini rendered it. At least part of the description of the musicians seems to be suggested by Paolo Veronese's painting "Marriage at Cana", on which famous Venetian painters, Jacopo Bassano, Tintoretto, Titian and Verenose himself are depicted playing instruments at a wedding. There may be other such sources as well.

The second, from which Eliot's has borrowed, is called "Sur les Lagunes," and describes how the theme of Venice calls up a visual image of the city as seen by a tourist in a gondola. The shapes of the domes remind him of woman - Gautier describes the city in terms of the feminine, like James does after him in the Italian Hours.

The third part, "Carnaval", describes the actual carnaval, where various characters are described who dress themselves up and then the actual carnaval begins. At the end of the third part, the poet recognises a woman behind a mask:

The fourth part, called "Clair de Lune Sentimental," he sees again his "viel amour de l'an passé." By then the merry tone of the poem has changed from "jovial" to "mélancolique," as the poet remembers the pain that the old love has caused him.

contextual analysis

Since Gautier's quatrain poems had been chosen as a model even before the poetry had been written, the implication is that Eliot looked for subject matter that suited the quatrain form as Gautier had used it. How was that? In Poetry, XI, 5 (Feb. 1918), Pound introduced the terms "hardness" and "softness" in poetry. Stating that this division was suggested to him by Gautier's Emaux and Camees, he wrote that Gautier adviced the poet to cut his poem, metaphorically, out of hard rock. The quality that Pound accordingly ascribes to Gautier is that by being "intent on conveying a certain verity of feeling", he is able to end up being truly poetic. We can see how this process is at work in Le Carnaval de Venise. First Gautier picks up the theme, which he then conveys upon the reader through a compact number of direct visual images and allusions, taking the reader on an associative tour of cultural Venice on the cue of Paganini's Variations.

Many of Pound's touchstones of good poetry can be retraced in Gautier's poem. As we see, Gautier's poem itself is not devoid of allusion. We saw the reference to Canaletto and to Paolo Veronese's painting, not to mention Paganini, who has "ramassé le thème antique / Du bout de son divin archet." As the annotated edition of the poem tells us, "Variations" was inspired by an interpretation of Paganini's musical piece Variations, performed by one of his students, Sivori, together with Teresa Milanello, and attended by the much-impressed Gautier. And it is this 'thème antique" that Eliot presents to us - as the second part of the poem tells us, "L'air du carnaval de Venise." - the air of the Venetian carnaval. This air, "Tendre et gai, moquer et plaintif," runs through all of Gautier's poem, and, as Gautier says, "Tout Venise vit dans cet air".

All these examples are, what Pound calls, logopoeia, which he defines as follows:

"the dance of the intellect among words", that is to say, it employs words not only for their direct meaning, but it takes count in a special way of habits of usage, of the context we expect to find the word, its usual concomitants, of its known acceptances, and of ironical play. It holds the aesthetic content which is peculiarly the domain of verbal manifestation, and cannot possibly be contained in plastics or music. (Selected Essays, 1954, p. 25)

However, the strongest example is the "tra la, tra la, la, la, la, laire" which Eliot uses in turn to call up all of Venice and its associated moods when he cites it in his epigram. As Pound says, it cannot be translated, but:

the attitude of mind it expresses may pass through a paraphrase. Or one might say, you can not translate it 'locally', but having determined the original author's state of mind, you may or may not be able to find a derivative or an equivalent.

Which is exactly what Eliot has done with "Tra-la-la-la-la-lair", which looks for instance a lot like the same thing in Rostand's Cyrano, also a translation, and carries the same effect. However, by linking it to Gautier's poem about Venice, Eliot considerably enhances the logopoeic effect when he uses it himself to call up something about Venice.

see also:
Eliot the Imagist

Important to notice is that this city of Canaletto is, 'comme autrefois', as always, joyful and free. the associations end up on a painful note, an awareness of a past hurt brought up by a glimpse of a woman with whom the poet has been in love with last year. There are small hints that prefigure this sad ending - "tendre et gai, moquer et plaintif:" in a sense describes how the poem will run and various details in the poems' descriptions hint at a female presence.

The association of Canaletto with a city that is "as always joyful and free" is important, because what Bleistein suggests, along with the St. Sebastian, is that this is a misrepresentation - Canaletto paints Venice more beautiful than it really is. As Pound says, somewhat cryptically, "The force that leads a poet to leave out a moral reflection may lead a painter to leave out representation. The resultant poem may not suggest the resultant painting." (Selected Essays, 1954, p. 400) To make this statement more clear, we can compare it with the very different Mantegna. The 'moral reflection' is not so obvious in Gautier, but his frequent hints at Paganini's revival of past glory, and the reminder of an old, but past, love, indicate that Gautier's observation is that Venice is no longer what she was. As Gautier wrote extensively about Italy, including Venice, this was without a doubt wholly intentional.

The moral reflection is much more clearly present in Eliot's poem, almost literally in Burbank's meditating and thinking in that stanza.

For more details, see also:
Mantegna vs Canaletto
Moral Reflection

critical overview

Southam: Tra .... laire: this is a version of 'Tra la, tra la, la, la, la, la laire', representing the call of the gondolier, the opening line of the poem 'Sur les lagunes' ('On the Lagoons') from a group of poems entitled Variations sure le Carnaval de Venise (Variations on the Carnival of Venice) by Theophile Gautier (1811-72). 'The Carnaval of Venice' is a popular traditional tune; it reminds Gautier, at the close of his poem, of 'La ville de Canaletto!' (The city of Canaletto), a detail to which Eliot may be alluding in line 19.