T. S. Eliot, Animula

William Baker (Northern Illinois University); Katie Wales (University of Nottingham)

Ed. by Chris Baldick, Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication Oct 1929

Places

England (Publication/ performance; Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem

Resources

Animula (October 1929) is the third of Eliot’s shorter verse pieces that he gathered under the title of “Ariel Poems” in his Collected Poems (1936) and subsequent collections. Its title, meaning “little soul”, derives from a short Latin poem by the Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE), translated by Lord Byron as “Adrian’s Address to His Soul When Dying”, with the opening line “Animula vagula, blandula” (“Little soul, wandering, pleasant”). This indicates that Eliot’s poem is a philosophical one concerning the journey of the soul. The opening line of the poem with its dramatic verb-subject inversion “Issues from the hand of God the …

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2140 words

Citation: Baker, William, Katie Wales. "Animula". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 April 2021 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40473, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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