In "The Facsimile" (pp. 125-126) we see that Eliot claimed to have met Marie, Countess Larisch (see Miscellanea page for line 15 ) As this historical Marie was born into the Wittelsbach royal house of Bavaria, far from Lithuania, it doesn't appear to me that this line is an actual quote from a conversation with Marie and may have come from somewhere else. Southam suggests that this quote may have been derived from the novel Tarr by Wyndham Lewis, a friend of Eliot's. In the novel, Fralien Vasek states that she is "a Russian, I'm thoroughly Russian."
Eliot reviewed Lewis' Tarr in the September 1918 issue of The Egoist.
External Links (shown in AUXILARY window):
Hints for using external links are available in the either the
DEFINTIONS frame or this frame.
Topics: