The Hollow Men: Epitaph for the 20th Century

2000

Special Collections PS3509 L43 H6 2000

London: Fulcrum Press

In contrast to Dante’s wailing hordes, Eliot’s hollow men are quiet and paralysed. Created in the aftermath of WWI, they mirror modern society: people damaged by war and alienated from God; a culture crumbling and fragmented. The poem is interpreted in this work by Patricia Heidenheimer. On a card included in the slipcase, she writes, ‘The Hollow Men eerily foreshadows the genocide, war, and spiritual emptiness of the twentieth century.’ Heidenheimer’s images are printed from collagraph plates and were ‘conceived as an epitaph for the twentieth century.’