Eliot's Notes to "The Waste Land" // 2.92

Lines 87-93:

In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshed from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Eliot's Note:

92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I, 726:

dependent lychni laquearibus incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt

Citation and context:

In Book I of the Aeneid, Virgil describes the Trojans' arrival at Carthage and Venus' plot to entangle Dido and Aeneas. The passage cited by Eliot describes the feast hall where Aeneas recounts the story of the fall of Troy and the voyages of the exiled Trojans to his Carthaginian hosts.

From Robert Fagles' translation of the Aeneid:

...They light the lamps,
hung from the coffered ceilings sheathed in gilt,
and blazing torches burn the night away.


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