A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is one of the most outstanding
poems of the 20th century. It has been hailed as Eliot’s masterpiece - the
supreme triumph of the poetic art in modern times. Yet some critics have railed
against it as an abstract, ambiguous and highly over-rated poem. This
controversy does not, however, distract from the overall merits of the poem and
the aura of "greatness" that still surrounds it.
It is a poem written in the epic mold of such classic works
as Dante’s Divine Comedy, especially the first part i.e. Hell/ Inferno. Eliot’s
poem, though, has a fragmentary quality about it. This is symbolic of the
aridity and decadence of modern western civilization as well as the poet’s own
inner despair at the desolate prospect of the post-World War I era, its chaos
and frustration.
This startling poem presents a veritable labyrinth of
meanings and messages for our turbulent times. Eliot’s use of complex symbols
and intricate imagery adds richness and variety to the texture of the poem. It
is replete with luxuriant allusions to myth, ritual, religion, history - both
past and present. This makes the poem itself a virtual "waste land"
or quagmire through which any aspiring reader must cautiously wade if s/he
wishes to absorb the essence of its meaning or significance.
Eliot uses a novel poetic technique in this complex
poem. He presents a quick succession of brilliant images in almost cinematic or
kaleidoscopic fashion. These eclectic flashes are drawn from both past and
present life. They include a wide range of socio-cultural, religious and
secular experiences common to both an individual life and the collective life
of Western society from ancient times right down to the present. These
electrifying images dazzle not just the reader’s eye but also his/her mind.
In brief, then, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is
a truly remarkable poem that broke new ground in English poetry when it was
first published and continues to engage our amazement.
Eliot’s extraordinary poem The Waste Land projects
a terrifying vision of our chaotic times and troubled lives. The waste land
scenario he portrays throughout the poem is one that reflects the social
anarchy and spiritual vacuity of modern urban life that drives the individual
to the deep crises of emotional and intellectual despair. Eliot’s poetic
masterpiece attempts to depict the total disarray and near collapse of Western
civilization in the early 1920s. During the years, immediately following the
monumental upheavals of World War I, European life-styles, social mores and
moral values were all changed drastically.
It is this cataclysmic change in human life patterns and standards
that Eliot pictures in his poem. Thus, on one level, the poem presents a
detailed portrait of the gloom and desolation that pervaded post World War I
western society. It projects a view of the spiritual malaise, the moral decay
and the intellectual desiccation permeating the social fabric of post-war
Europe, in particular, and the modern 20th century world, in general.
This effect of a devastated waste land scenario is achieved
through the imaginative power of the poet’s genius. Eliot masterfully blends
his elaborate borrowings from various ancient myths and legends into a
composite, even if somewhat disjointed, picture of the fragmentation of life in
the modern World. He tries to convey a sense of the vague and impalpable
apprehensions felt by the vast array of figures - mythic or real, which flit
through the contrasting episodic scenes of this five- part symphonic poem.
The Waste Land also contains a record of the
poet’s personal melancholy at a crucial point in his life - his first marriage
to Vivien Haight Wood was almost "on the rocks," and Eliot himself
was on the verge of a psychological break down. Thus, the structure of the poem
incorporates a multi-layered setting based on levels that range from the
personal to the societal, giving it an almost universal significance and a
timeless relevance.
If one views the setting of the poem in purely literal terms - i.e. in
terms of geographic locale or historical location, it moves across a vast
canvas of diverse places and regions. The reader is taken back in time to
ancient Egypt and Greece through covert references to the legend of the maimed
Fisher King, the Sibyl of Cumae and, of course through Tiresias, the blind
prophet of Thebes. In Part I of the poem, the reader shuttles back and forth
across time and traverse vast spaces scattered over the globe. Mainly though,
the reader is given a view of the "Unreal City" of London and other
similar urban centers in modern Europe, where he or she meets such characters
like Countess Marie and Madam Sosostris.
Part II also is chiefly located in modern-day London with the two
sketches of the Rich Lady at her boudoir and the cockney women in the East-side
pub. However, there are brief references to Queen Cleopatra riding her golden
barge down the River Nile at the start of Part II. The close of this section
takes us to the court of King Claudius in Denmark with the crazed Ophelia’s
famous lines: "Good night ladies... good night, sweet ladies etc. There is
also a reference to the rape of Philomela by King Tereus, which takes us back
momentarily to the land of Thrace in ancient Greece. In the conversations of the
two cockney women, there are indirect references to the war-front from which
Albert is about to return home to his wife Lil.
Part III has almost continuous shifts of scene from Buddha’s fine sermon
set in ancient India or St. Augustine’s words in his "confessions"
which recall the heady days of his youthful lusts in Carthage and ancient Rome.
There are references also to Elizabethan London, to the Jews bewailing their
exile in Babylon, to the song of the Rhine Maidens in Wagner’s famous opera
cycle: Die Götterdammerung (or "The Twilight of the Gods"). There are
also some sordid scenes of sexual encounters in Mrs. Porter’s bawdy-house in
Cairo, or in a London flat between the bank clerk and steno typist and in the
Metropole Hotel as suggested by Mr. Eugenides in his snide remarks.
Part IV speaks of the death of water of Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor,
and bears a subtle allusion to the pagan ritual of drowning the fertility god,
such as Adonis, in the sea at Alexandria. Part V has the whole backdrop of
Christ’s last moments of life from the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to his
crucifixion on the hill of Golgotha and his later appearance to some of his
disciples on the road to Emmaus. There are also references to the Chapel
Perilous of the Holy Grail legend (both here and in Part III) and to the empty
cistern in which John, the Baptist, was held captive by King Herod prior to his
decapitation at Herodia’s behest. In the concluding lines, Eliot moves the
setting to the river Ganges originating in the Himalayan mountain ranges
Thus, the settings of The Waste Land are as complex as the ancient
Labyrinth. However, the key image that Eliot seeks to present through these
diverse locales is a bleak scene of utter sterility. Throughout the poem there
are recurrent symbols of drought and dryness, decay and disintegration. The
reader sees, in Eliot’s own words, "a heap of broken images" made up
of dusty streets, dead trees, desert rocks, dry bones, rats scurrying in
sewers, empty cisterns and exhausted wells. Eliot skillfully evokes the picture
of a wasted world where universal symbols of life - such as earth, air, fire
and water - prove both sustaining and destructive.
Eliot seeks thereby to recreate in his poem a truly compelling portrait
of the drab life we lead in our dreary modern cities. People work and live
their whole lives in a mechanical, almost robot-like fashion today. This is
emphasized all through the poem. Besides, Eliot constantly links the present
with the past, showing as how much more futile our existence is today. With the
modern world being almost rendered a total waste - by human greed and
materialism, by industrial pollution and ecological over exploitation. Eliot’s
poem today gathers newer meanings far beyond the poet’s original intentions.
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Major Character
Tiresias
The only one major character in Eliot’s epic poem. The chief protagonist
of The Waste Land is Tiresias, the blind prophet who figures prominently in
Greek legend. The plot of The Waste Land, such as it is, is narrated by the
"voices" of this hermaphroditic seer with his dual consciousness -
masculine and feminine. Tiresias attempts to guide us through Eliot’s poem,
reminds us of the spirit of Virgil who leads Dante into the depths of hell in
Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Tiresias is not so much a character in The Waste Land, but rather a
spectator to its episodes. He rarely participates in any action in the poem,
while he comments on its events, places and personalities. Yet he is the most
important personage in the poem uniting all the other characters who appear in
cameo roles, what Tiresias "sees" and comments on, in fact,
constitutes the substance of the poem, as Eliot himself remarked in his famous
"Notes" appended to this poem.
This blind "visionary" synthesizes the complex thread of
recollections and memories that haunt the consciousness of a wide gamut of
disparate characters. Tiresias, as the ever present, all seeing commentator
moves across time and space. He provides an insight into the dramatic
experiences of all the other characters in the poem. Thus, he depicts for us
the failure of human interaction and the tragic loss of most values - personal
and societal, aesthetic and spiritual - in our modern world.
Minor Characters (in order of appearance/reference)
Part One
The Sibyl of Cumae
An old prophetess in Greek mythology - perhaps the most famous of all
the ancient sibyls - She was granted immortality by Apollo without the benefit
of perpetual youth and so she withered away into old age. She appears in the
epigraph to the poem and longs only for death.
Countess Marie Larisch (lines 08-18)
A near relative of the mentally unstable king Ludwig of Austria. She was
also confidante and niece of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. She wrote her
famous autobiographyMy Past (in 1913). Eliot seems to have met
her in his travels through Europe before World War I broke out.
The Sailor Lad (lines 31-34 and line 42)
The reader hears him singing at four-line stanza about lost love from
Act I of Wagner’s famed opera: Tristanund Isolde. A few lines
later this sailor sings a line from Act III of the same opera, the dying as
Tristan desperately awaits the arrival of his beloved Isolde.
Hyacinthus and his lover (lines 35 - 41)
A figure reminiscent of Hyacinthus, the handsome Spartan youth, beloved
of the Gods. When he was accidentally killed by a wanton act of the Gods, the
hyacinth flower grew from his blood. Eliot here seems to portray a couple of
lovers whose passion for each other was earlier associated with an exchange of
Hyacinths, but their love has now died out.
Madame Sosostris (lines 43-59)
An imaginary character created by Eliot. She is presented as a famous
fortune-teller in contemporary London. She utters her fake predictions using
the mystical deck of Tarot cards, so as to impress her gullible superstitious
clientele who place undue faith in such questionable activity as reading the
future.
The London Crowd (lines 60-69)
They belong to any modern urban metropolis, which Eliot refers to as the
"Unreal City." They appear to be a set of London office workers going
to work at morning in rather mechanical fashion.
Stetson (lines 69-76)
Sometimes taken to be a warrior in the famous battles between the Romans
and the citizens of Carthage or else to be a soldier in the battle of Mylae in
the First Punic Wars. Some critics also read him as a persona or mask for Ezra
Pound whom, along with Eliot, read widely into the ancient classics and the
stirring accounts of historic wars.
Minor Characters (in order of appearance/reference)
Part One
The Sibyl of Cumae
An old prophetess in Greek mythology - perhaps the most famous of all
the ancient sibyls - She was granted immortality by Apollo without the benefit
of perpetual youth and so she withered away into old age. She appears in the
epigraph to the poem and longs only for death.
Countess Marie Larisch (lines 08-18)
A near relative of the mentally unstable king Ludwig of Austria. She was
also confidante and niece of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. She wrote her
famous autobiographyMy Past (in 1913). Eliot seems to have met
her in his travels through Europe before World War I broke out.
The Sailor Lad (lines 31-34 and line 42)
The reader hears him singing at four-line stanza about lost love from
Act I of Wagner’s famed opera: Tristanund Isolde. A few lines
later this sailor sings a line from Act III of the same opera, the dying as
Tristan desperately awaits the arrival of his beloved Isolde.
Hyacinthus and his lover (lines 35 - 41)
A figure reminiscent of Hyacinthus, the handsome Spartan youth, beloved
of the Gods. When he was accidentally killed by a wanton act of the Gods, the
hyacinth flower grew from his blood. Eliot here seems to portray a couple of
lovers whose passion for each other was earlier associated with an exchange of
Hyacinths, but their love has now died out.
Madame Sosostris (lines 43-59)
An imaginary character created by Eliot. She is presented as a famous
fortune-teller in contemporary London. She utters her fake predictions using
the mystical deck of Tarot cards, so as to impress her gullible superstitious
clientele who place undue faith in such questionable activity as reading the
future.
The London Crowd (lines 60-69)
They belong to any modern urban metropolis, which Eliot refers to as the
"Unreal City." They appear to be a set of London office workers going
to work at morning in rather mechanical fashion.
Stetson (lines 69-76)
Sometimes taken to be a warrior in the famous battles between the Romans
and the citizens of Carthage or else to be a soldier in the battle of Mylae in
the First Punic Wars. Some critics also read him as a persona or mask for Ezra
Pound whom, along with Eliot, read widely into the ancient classics and the
stirring accounts of historic wars.
Part Two
The Rich Lady of Situations (lines 77-138)
Appears at her boudoir and is compared indirectly to Cleopatra,
the famed Queen of ancient Egypt. Although she is extremely rich and has all
the material comforts of life, she is nervous and high strung as she is
apparently living in a sterile emotional waste land and seems alienated from her
husband. In the long section devoted to her, there are also references to the
cruel King Tereus of Thrace, his rape of his wife’s sister, Philomela, and
subsequent murder of both his victim and her sister Procne.
The Cockney Women (lines 139-170)
These two women appear in a London pub almost at closing time.
They gossip loudly about a third woman, Lil, whose husband Albert is die home
from the war and has saddled her with a number of kids. They appear lively and
vibrant compared to the jaded and bored Lady of Situations in the preceding
portrait.
The Bartender (lines 141, 152, 165, 168 and 169)
He repeatedly utters the refrain "Hurry up please its
time" as the two cockney women go on chatting in the bar. He seems to be
reminding them that it is almost the legal closing time for pubs in Britain.
Ophelia (lines 172)
The line: "Good night, Ladies ... " recalls the last
words of the mad Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act IV, Scene 5 - line 72) as she
leaves the Danish court of Claudius and Queen Gertrude for her impending
suicide.
art Three
The Fisher King (lines 189-192)
A mythical figure of North European origin that Eliot drew from the
famous work by Ms. Jessie L. Weston: FromRitual to Romance (1920).
According to Weston, the Fisher King ruled a land that fell under the blight of
an evil spell, which rendered the king impotent too. Only the purity and
courage of a chaste Quester Knight could save him and his land. The concept of
the Fisher King is central to Eliot’s rendering of The Waste Land.
Mrs. Porter and her daughter (lines 198-201)
They are characters enshrined in a rather coarse army song popular among
World War I soldiers fighting in the North African campaign. These women
maintained a bawdy house in Cairo as a "comfort" station for soldiers
posted in North Africa or passing through the Suez Canal to other theaters of
the War in South East Asia and the Far East.
"Apeneck" Sweeney (line 198)
A character created by Eliot himself in two of his well-known poems: Sweeney Erect and Sweeney Amongthe Nightingales.
He is a type of vulgar, sensual man quite the opposite of the refined, rather
pompous and perhaps sterile figure of the aging young man created in his famous poem: The Love Song of J. AlfredPrufrock.
Mr. Eugenides (lines 208-214)
A merchant from Smyrna in Western Turkey. He makes a rather crude
suggestion to the protagonist (perhaps to Eliot himself) that they spend a
weekend together at a sea-side hotel, the Metropole, in Brighton.
The typist (lines 222-256)
She works in a London office and stays in a rather shabby and cramped
flat. In her lack-luster life, visit from the carbuncular clerk can bring a bit
of a "romance."
The young man carbuncular (lines 231-248)
He visits the typists apartment one evening and has a sordid and
loveless sexual encounter with her. He hardly leaves any impression on her of
true passion or romance.
Elizabeth and Leicester (lines 279-289)
This is a reference to England’s famous Queen, Elizabeth I who ruled
from 1556 to 1602. She was often referred to as "the Virgin Queen" as
she never married although she has many admirers. One of them was Robert
Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and the other was the Earl of Essex who led an
ill-fated rebellion against her in 1601 and was beheaded.
The Thames-daughters (lines 176, and 183-84) and the Rhine Maidens
(Lines 277-78 and 290-305)
At the start and close of Part III are present the three Thames-
daughters or Rhine Maidens, who are depicted as a composite picture. In the
early segment, they recite the refrain from Edmund Spenser’s Prothalamion
"Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song" and in the famous chant
from Richard Wagner’s opera: The Ring of the Nibelungs: "Weialala
Leia." Then, they speak in turn, about their loss of love.
Buddha and St. Augustine (lines 307-311)
Here, Eliot recalls both the famous "Fire sermon" that Lord
Buddha gave to his disciples in ancient India and to the words of St. Augustine
in The Confessions on the lusts of the flesh. Both these holy men speak of fire
as both a symbol of an all- consuming passion and an agent of purification.
Part Four
Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor
He is first mentioned in Part one by Madame Sosostris as she reads the
Tarot cards for her fortune seeking client. Here, her fatal prediction:
"Fear death by Water" comes ironically true for Phlebas.
Part Five
Christ
At several points in Part Five of the poem, Eliot brings in
the Christ figure. In lines 322-330, he describes Christ’s agony in the garden,
his betrayal by Judas, his trial before Caiphas, the High Priest, and Pirate,
the Roman governor of Jerusalem; as well as the mocking crowd that followed him
to his crucifixion.
In lines 359-365, "Who is the third who always walks
beside you?," there is an obvious reference to the risen Christ’s
appearance to two of his disciplines on the road to Emmaus. Again, in lines
377-379, there is a covert reference to Christ’s conversion of Mary Magdaline
from a life of sensual pleasure to one of spiritual devotion.
Moses (lines 331-358)
In this famous sequence about drought in dusty deserts and
water dripping out of rocks, Eliot recalls Moses famous miracle of
"divining" water from arid rocks. When he touched it with his rod, it
brought relief to the Israelites in their wanderings through the Sinai desert
after their escape from Egypt, as described in The Old Testament (Book of
Exodus).
John, the Baptist (lines 379-84)
A brief reference to the prophet, John, who paved the way
for Christ’s divine mission and baptized Christ in the river Jordan. John was
arrested by King Herod and imprisoned in an empty cistern, from which he was
taken and executed later as a result of Herod’s wife Herodia’s evil wishes.
Grail Maiden and Questor Knight (lines 285-294)
After several earlier references (Part III, line 202
"Et O ces voix des enfants ... "), Eliot once more refers to the
Chapel Perilous where the sacred Grail of Christ was secretly preserved by the
Grail Maiden. The questing knight has to endure many perils or tests before he
can reach the Chapel and obtain a glimpse of the Holy Grail.
Prajapati, Devas, Asuras and Manusyas (lines 395-422)
The Waste Land closes with a reference to the Hindu pantheon
of ancient Vedic times in India. Prajapati, the father of all, dwelt in the
Himalayan ranges along with Gods (Devas), Men (Manusyas), and Evil spirits
(Asuras) who were all his students or brahamacharis. Prajapati taught them to
subdue, to give and to be merciful. This reference proclaims the final message
of the poem: "Shantih ... " (the peace that surpasses all
understanding).
STRUCTURE OF THE POEM
The Waste Land is a highly complex poem organized on the principle
of a five part symphony. It opens with a compelling epigraph, which serves as a
"leitmotif" to the whole poem. This epigraph introduces the ancient
prophetess, the Sibyl of Cumae, and her fatal utterance of a death wish. This prophecy
sets the tone for The Waste Land as a poem that focuses
sharply on the deadness and utter sterility of modern civilization post-World
War I Europe, Eliot felt, was on the verge of total. Collapse, due to its
spiritual, intellectual, and psychological exhaustion. This central theme links
up the various parts of the poem.
The entire poem is worked in the pattern of a collage, an art form
popular in the 1920’s quote Eliot’s own phrase in Part I, the poem presents
"a heap of broken images." However, the poet is careful to ensure
that these "broken images" add up to the sum total of the desolate
waste land scenario, which is the dominant symbol of the poem. This waste land
is projected in different ways - as a physical, natural desert as well as a
socio-cultural, intellectual, and moral waste land.
Thus, in Part I, there are recurrent images of a dry, sterile landscape
- a "dead land" with barren rocks, dead trees, "stony
rubbish," "dry tubers," "dull roots" and "roots
that clutch." These images are scattered over the two opening segments of
Tiresias’ commentary. Elsewhere, in Parts I, III, and V there is the image of
the "Unreal City" which runs intermittently through the poem. In Part
III, the undoing of the Thames Maidens by "the loitering heirs of city directors"
is reinforced by the equally sordid pictures of Sweeney patronizing Mrs.
Porter’s bawdy-house, or the encounter between the typist and clerk in a seedy
London flat. There are several other instances of recurrent imagery that
reinforces the structure of The Waste Land making it
an artistically composite piece.
Besides, the unifying sensibility of Tiresias, the
protagonist of the poem, helps the reader to put the whole poem into proper
perspective. Despite being blind, he "sees" and knows all. Through
his all-inclusive consciousness, Tiresias blends together disparate scenes,
events and personalities ancient and modern, religious and secular, mythical
and real. His perceptions cut across the boundaries of historical time,
geographical location and gender biases. Eliot uses this blind prophet-narrator
as a strategic device to hold the poem together structurally.
Another unifying principle underlying the poem is Eliot’s elaborate use
of the grail legend and the fertility myths of ancient Egypt Asia Minor,
Greece, and even oriental regions like India. This is a very subtle, structural
device woven inextricably into the fabric of the poem to give it a fine unity.
Here, Eliot was indebted to the works of two famous anthropologists of his
time: Ms. Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance (1920)
and Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1915).
Right through the five parts of the poem, there are also references to
the maimed Fisher King of North European myths whose land is rendered waste, as
its king suffers a fatal wound or disease. His kingdom and people can be saved
only if a virtuous and courageous knight goes in guest of a sacred object, like
Christ’s Holy-Grail (the cup used at Christ’s last supper). In the
pre-Christian vegetation myths also sacrificing a young warrior to God by
drowning, decapitation or burning could only restore the fertility of the land.
Such legends abound in ancient Egypt and Asia Minor about sacrificial victims
of fertility cults such as Adonis, Attis and Osiris.
Ironically, The Waste Land is also a pastiche
of literary quotes and erudite references. The poem is liberally sprinkled with
secular and religious figures drawn from history, literature, the Bible, or the
sacred Hindu scriptures. Their sole purpose is to reinforce either the
projection of the waste land scenario, or to bring in the theme of redemption
through a spiritual quest. These rather disjointed and seemingly disparate
allusions are skillfully blended into the texture of the poem to provide a
not-so-easily- discernible artistic unity. Yet, it is certainly there and a
tribute to Eliot’s skill in constructing his poem. Every discerning reader must
marvel at the way Eliot controls and masters such seemingly intractable
materials drawn from so many diverse sources.
Thus, the structure of The Waste Land is
vastly different from conventional, discursive poetry. It is written with a
kind of cinematic technique of flashbacks, freeze-shots and stills. It
also employs the Joyce an "stream of consciousness" mode used in
Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1920). Besides, The Waste Land owes
much to the Symbolist and Imagist techniques of contemporary Anglo-European
poets such as Charles Baudelaire Jules Laforgue, and Ezra pound. A combination
of these myriad factors gives to the structure of The Waste Landits
"unity in diversity."
SYNOPSIS OF THE POEM (and its 5 parts)
The Waste Land is not a narrative poem and hence it is not
fair to the nature of the poem to try and summarize it. In fact, the poem
resists any attempt at synopsis. However, it may be possible to give the gist
or essence of this contemporary epic by examining the general organization of
the poem and its 5 parts. In fact, its 5 part structure has led some critics to
view it as a symphonic poem, just as his later work The Four Quartets (1936-42)
was seen as having a form analogous to a Beethoven Sonata or four- part string
quartet. Some have even visualized The Waste Land as a five-part dramatic
monologue or as a long and "interesting piece of grumbling," Tiresias
with as chief protagonist or commentator on all the events, scenes and
personalities of the poem.
In Part I, "The Burial of the Dead," Eliot first
depicts the stirring of life in the land with the coming of spring. However, in
the contemporary waste land of western civilization, we see only a "dead
land" filled with "stony rubbish". Here, "the sun
beats" mercilessly down, while "the dead tree gives no shelter ...
and the dry stone no sound of water."
Besides, these opening sections also convey a sense of vague
dread and apprehension in several characters depicted in different emotionally
sterile situations. These include the exiled Lithuanian aristocrat, Countess
Marie, as well as the Hyacinth girl and her last lover. A charlatan
fortune-teller, Madam Sosostris, further adds to this lack of comprehension and
human understanding. Her rather enigmatic and incomprehensible predictions seem
to make some sense only much later in the poem (Parts IV to V).
Part I concludes with a grim picture of an "Unreal
City" such as modern-day London. It is a dreary place where people lead a
purely mechanical and monotonous existence. There does not seem to be any way
out for them from this sterile urban landscape, where materialism, hypocrisy
and total unconcern have made the city populace part of the "living
dead."
Part II is entitled: "A Game of Chess" and
presents two contrasting scenes that expose the essential emptiness and
loneliness of people’s lives in big cities like London. It opens with the
splendors of a palatial bedroom and its boudoir meant for a fashionable lady of
high society.
This Rich lady of Situations is compared to Cleopatra, but
she suffers the characteristic "ennui" and boredom of the modern
"idle rich class." She seems caught in a loveless marriage with a
rather cold and distant plutocratic husband. Her constant fears and inane
questions show her neurotic state of anxiety. The second scene of Part II is
set in a pub or bar where two working women of the poorer cockney class in East
London discuss the plight of a mutual friend, Lil. Her husband, Albert, is
about to come home from the war front. He has already saddled her with five
kids and may now give her a sixth unwanted child. The over-fecund Lil dreads
the idea of having more children as her earlier pregnancies have left her
physically drained out and emotionally exhausted. Thus, there is uneasiness and
despair even in the life of the poor overworked Lil.
Part III, "The Fire Sermon," explores the theme of
sexual indulgence and the consequent dissipation or dissatisfaction when jaded
lovers burn in the fires of lust. It conjures up a dreary picture of the
ugliness of modern cities, the mechanization of modern life and the palling of
human emotions. Eliot travels in time from Lord Buddha’s fire sermon and St.
Augustine’s "Confessions" about his heady, youthful passions, and
then down to the present day. Here the poet exposes human brings and their so
called noble aspirations for a better life of the spirit as being constantly
negated by their own weakness that permits them to indulge in selfish pleasures
and purely sensual appetites.
Part IV is the shortest of the five parts. "Death by Water"
describes how the body of the drowned Phoenician merchant sailor slowly
decomposes after he is drowned at sea. He seems to have been concerned only
with material prosperity in life - "the profit and the loss." At the
end of his life, he has apparently achieved nothing. This brief lyric suggests
ironically that water can be a destructive force as it brings death by
drowning. This suggestion is extended into the next part of the poem where the
absence of the life-giving force of water causes man to suffer both physical
dehydration and a spiritual drought.
The final part, " What the
thunder Said," talks of the decay and emptiness of modern life, which is
utterly lacking in spirituality. Part V begins with a graphic account of
Christ’s betrayal, trial and death on the cross, his journey to Emmaus after
his resurrection and his redemption of the fallen woman, Mary Magdalene. The
character of Moses, the water diviner and Old Testament prophet is presented
wandering across the realms of a bleak and barren modern waste land. There is
also a description of the Quester Knight’s grueling journey to the empty Chapel
(where once the Holy Grail was secretly enshrined). In the closing lines of the
poem, the arrival of the redemptive rain is heard in the thunderous voice of
Prajapati, the supreme God of the Hindu pantheon. His words of advice to his
disciples the Devas (gods), the Asuras (Evil spirits) and the Manusyas (humans)
are to give, sympathize and control (respectively). In the end, Eliot proclaims
a message of : "Shantih! Shantih, Shantih!" i.e. the divine peace
that surpasses all human understanding.
THEMES
Major Theme
The Waste Land is primarily regarded as a poem that epitomizes the
chaotic life of both individuals and society in the twentieth century.
Thematically, it reflects the disillusionment and despair of the post World War
I generation. The World that Eliot portrays in his poem is one in which faith
in divinely ordered events and a rationally organized universe has been totally
lost. There is sterility and waste every where that has replaced traditional
order and fertility. Thus, the central subject of The Waste Land is
really a religious one.
The poem is not just a reflection of individual hopelessness and
despair, but a panoramic view of the total spiritual exhaustion that has
overtaken the modern world. The sterile, modern-day human society waits in dire
distress for a revival or regeneration that may never come. Both the vegetation
myths and the Grail Romances that are frequently referred to in the poem serves
to underscore Eliot’s main theme - the quest for spiritual salvation or moral
regeneration. The poem in its central theme recalls Coleridge’s concerns in The Rime ofthe Ancient Mariner i.e.
the need for redemption through prayer, penance and self-abnegation after a
life of sin.
Allied/Minor Themes
Closely allied to the central spiritual or religious theme ofThe Waste Land is
Eliot’s concern with the socio-cultural scenario of post-war Europe. The 20s
generation attempted to destroy the last vestiges of pre-war western
civilization through their iconoclastic attacks on the prudery and Puritanism
of Victorian times, their uninhibited displays of vulgarity, cheap
sensationalism and their desire to shock by extreme forms of eccentric
behavior. Western society had exhausted its spiritual and cultural legacy. So
people now sought replacements in magic, science, other cults and a life of
quick sensations through indulgence in drug taking, sex and cheap thrills. The
majority felt that despair was the only honest response to their chaotic post -
war universe.
All this and much more of the socio-cultural malaise that affected
Western Society in the 1920’s is very effectively projected by Eliot in his
poem The Waste Land. In its epic sweep, it captures the
near collapse of 2000 years of Western civilization. This forms the secondary
theme of The Waste Land, if not indeed at least a subject
closely allied to the central religious theme.
Other minor Themes are related to Eliot’s perspective on time as
telescopic or continuous i.e. the past, present and future are inextricably
linked in one "continuum." Hence the poem constantly shifts its perspectives
from the present to the past and vice versa. The ancient myths, classical
legends, allusions to old literary masterpieces, landmarks in World history are
all frequently juxtaposed in the context of contemporary events and
personalities, shedding a fresh and illuminating light on both the past and the
present. An understanding of Eliot’s time concept is crucial to over
understanding of the poem itself.
Finally, another allied Themes of Eliot’s The Waste Land is
its notions of the purposes of art and the structure of the artistic
personality as evident in its technique. Much of the poem brings us face to
face with the modern artist’s dilemma of how to find an adequate poetic form
and expression to convey his/her inner experience. It shows us that the modern
poet is acutely aware of the conflicts and contradictions the complexities and
fragmentation of his society so that he/she can no longer use traditional
methods of writing poetry. Hence the artist today is forced to recreate his/her
own esoteric myths and symbols, and draw upon his/her own vast and unique range
of reading for references and allusions to adequately express his/her meaning
or experience. This, of course, leads to the charge that Eliot’s poetry,
especially in The Waste Land is often abstruse and
suffers from extreme ambiguity. Thus, the disintegration of modern art and
poetry itself into the realms of obscurity, and elitism becomes a crucial issue
in Eliot’s poem.
MOOD
The mood of The Waste Land is predominantly
somber as befits a poem that focuses on society’s devastation and desolation.
But it is not necessarily a picture of unrelieved gloom. There are a few
brighter moments that bring a redeeming flash of irony or even humor which some
may say borders on the grotesque. Part I has a predominant note of sterility
with Tiresias sketching for us the barren waste land scenario in the first 7
lines, then in lines 19- 30("what are the roots that clutch? ...) and in
the closing lines (60-77) that describes the "Unreal City" of London
and its living dead. But in the countess Marie, sailor lad and Hyacinth girl
sequences (lines 8-18, 31-34 and 35-41), the mood is one of "failed
love" and the reminiscences of the past. Here the emotionally sterile
waste land is highlighted, while the Madam Sosostris’ section (lines 43-59)
brings in the mystical aura of a pseudo spiritual seance with a note of doom in
most of her predictions, especially the fatal pronouncement: "Fear death
by water."
Part II has two clear-cut shifts in tempo and mood. In the first half
(lines 77-138) our senses are almost "drowned" in the stiflingly
sensuous atmosphere of the Rich Lady’s boudoir. But our initial impression of
awe at the grandeur of her bedroom and its surrounding gives way to despair and
anxiety when we witness the neurotic ravings of this lonely woman. A feeling of
deadness overwhelms one as one comprehends the fact that despite all her wealth
and luxury she leads an empty, vacuous existence. The second segment a part II
(lines 139-171) is relieved by the vibrant dialogues of the first cockney woman
even if she indulges in mere trivialities and gossip about her friend Lil and
her husband, Albert. One glimpses here spark of vitality in the breathless
chatter of the women in the bar, but there is also the underlying tone of
"deadness" as one gathers the details of Lil’s over-fecund life.
Part III has overtones of
dissipated sexual indulgence in the references to Mr. Eugenides, Sweeney, Mrs.
Porter and her daughter or the description of the London typist’s encounter
with the carbuncular clerk. Again in the holiday trysts of the Thames or Rhine
Maidens with "the loitering heirs of city directions," who have
departed and "left no addresses." Eliot stresses on the lack of real
loyalty and commitment in modern-day lovers who have no qualms about casual
sexual encounters: "well now that’s done ... I’m glad its over," says
the steno soon after her lover has left. A religious note is also struck in
Part III, through the references to the Buddha’s fire sermon, St. Augustine’s
confessions" and the innocent voices of the children singing in the choir
- loft of a Chapel: "Et O ces vain d’ enfants chartant dans la
couple." Part IV strikes the fatal note of doom in the brief elegiac
lyrics to Phlebas, the drowned Phoenician sailor. Part V is predominantly
religious in tone and mood, recalling moments of Christ’s life, death and
resurrection, and Moses praying for water in the desert as he leads the
Israelites from the clutches of the cruel Pharaoh to the Promised Land.
Finally, there is the moment of eternal splendor as Prajapati intones his
divine advice to give, sympathize and control. After all the ravings and
ranting’s of the frenetic modern waste land world. Eliot finally creates a mood
of supreme peace and tranquillity in the last words of the poem "Shantih,
Shantih, Shantih!" (i.e. "Peace!")
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Author Information
Ancestry
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, at St. Louis,
Missouri, an industrial city in the United States. His paternal ancestor,
Andrew Eliot, migrated from East Coker (the name of one of T.S. Eliot’s FourQuartets)
in Somerset, England, in 1667 to settle down in Boston, USA. His maternal
ancestor, Isaac Stern, was one of the early settlers in the Massachusetts
colony in 1630. The Poet’s grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, left New
England for St. Louis in 1860 and established a Unitarian church there. He also
established a University in St. Louis and wrote a number of religious tracts.
The poet’s father, Henry Ware Eliot, did not enter the church but took to the
brick-trade at St. Louis and was quite successful. Our poet was the seventh and
last child of Henry Eliot and Charlotte (Nee Stearns) who came directly from
Boston before her marriage, she was actively involved in social work and was a
writer of some caliber.
Schooling and College
Thus, from his mother and paternal grandfather, Eliot derived his
interest in writing, academics and religion. He derived his business acumen
from his father, which led him to work in a bank and later made him the
successful head of a British publishing firm. He spent the first seventeen
years of his life in St. Louis with occasional holidays on the Massachusetts
coast where he developed his love for sailing. After his early schooling in St.
Louis, he entered, Harvard in 1906. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees
in English literature by 1910, then spent a year (1910-11) at Sorbonne
University, Paris and returned to Harvard to work for his doctoral degree on
the philosophy of Francis Herbert Bradley.
His Interests
Shy by nature, Eliot even took boxing lessons at Harvard to overcome his
introversion. As a student he had wide-ranging interests in comparative studies
in language and literatures like Greek and Latin, German, French, English and
even Sanskrit. He was also influenced by two of his teachers: Irving Babbilt
and George Santayana. From them, he developed his strong sense of tradition.
Around 1908, he read Arthur Symons influential work: TheSymbolist Movement in Literature (1899).
This stimulated his interest in the poetry of the French symbolists, especially
Charles Baudelaire and Jules Laforque. Between 1911 and 1914, Eliot traveled
intermittently in France, Germany and England, studying for some time in
Marburg, Germany and at Merton College, oxford, before submitting his doctoral
thesis.
Early Poetry
With the outbreak of World War I, Eliot left Germany and decided to stay
in England after his meeting with Ezra pound on Sept. 22, 1914. In July, 1915,
Eliot married Vivien Haigh-wood, daughter of the painter Charles Haigh-wood.
Pound introduced Eliot into London’s lively literary circles and helped him
publish TheLove song of J. Alfred Prufrock in Poetry (June
1915). Soon after his marriage, Eliot took up school teaching briefly and then
joined the Lloyd’s Bank in London on March 19, 1917, working there for 8 years.
Though he had been writing poetry since his schooldays, Eliot achieved a
major breakthrough with his first volume: Prufrock and other Observations in
1917. This book of poems ushered in the era of modern poetry through its ironic
vision, deliberate incongruities and conversational style. His second volume Poems(1920)
contained such remarkable pieces as Gerontion and the Sweeney poems.
In August 1920, Eliot went on holiday to France, along with Wyndham Lewis. Here
he met James Joyce and read parts of the great Irish writer’s monumental novel Ulysses.
Break-Down
His health began to steadily deteriorate in October 1921, and with
Vivien, he first went to Margate, a seaside resort in Kent. A further change of
scene was recommended and he went to Lausanne, Switzerland. A major part of The Waste Land was
composed here. On his return from Lausanne in January 1922, he spent a short
time in Paris where he gave Ezra pound the early drafts of The Waste Land for
editing and comments. The poem was published in October 1922 in The Criterion and
a month later in The Dial (New York, Nov. 1922). This
publication attracted wide interest and the poem soon became very influential
for its startling "modernist" techniques.
Critical Work & Journalism
In 1920, Eliot also published a collection of critical essays The Sacred Wood.
Then as founder and editor ofThe Criterion (1922-39), he soon
became a well-respected critic. His literary journal had a galaxy of distinguished contributors such
as: Marcel Proust, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, VirginiaWoolf and Eliot himself. Eliot left
Lloyds in 1925 and joined the publishing firm of Faber and Faber, soon becoming
its Director a post he held till the end of his life. Some of Eliot’s major
critical collections includeThe use of Poetry and the use of Criticism (1933), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), Towards aDefinition of Culture (1948), Selected Essays (3rd
Ed, 1951), On Poetry and poets (1957) and ToCriticize the Critic (1965).
Later Poetry
After 1922, Eliot wrote several major poems such as TheHollow Men (1925)
and a series of Christian religious poems: Journey of the Magi (1927), Song for Sinieon(1928), Marina (1929)
and Ash Wednesday (1930). His explicitly Christian
commitment in this period stems perhaps from his conversion to the church of
England in 1927. His finest meditations on the eternal, moral and spiritual
values of life can be found in Burnt Norton(1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941),
and Little Gidding (1942). These were collectively
published in 1943 as The Four Quartets.
Around 1935, Eliot turned his interest to the revival of poetic drama.
His verse plays stretch from The Rock(1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
and The Family Reunion (1939) to the later works: The CocktailParty (1950), The Confidential Clerk (1954)
and The Elder Statesman (1959). While the earlier
plays are purely Christian drama, with medieval settings, the later dramas also
have a religious theme but a more contemporary and social setting. In 1948,
Eliot was the recipient of the order of Merit, Britain’s highest civilian honor.
The same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
End of Life
In 1947, Eliot’s first wife died after a long period of illness. He
remarried in 1957, choosing his long time secretary, Valerie Fletcher as his second wife. She
remained his devoted companion to the end of his days. He died on January 4,
1965, and his ashes were buried in the little village Chapel in East Coker,
Somerset. With his formidable scholarship, his complex many side personality
and deeply original writings, Eliot is still regarded by most critics as the
greatest poet of the twentieth century.
Literary Information
Eliot’s The Waste Land is a key or canonical
text of modernist literature. It reflects in theme, tone and technique most of
the principal facets of literary modernism. The hey-day of Modernism began in
November 1918, after 52 slaughterous months that changed the world forever.
When the World War started in 1914, the Modernist Revolution was well under
way. But the sordid experiences and realities of this horrendous war propelled
that revolution forward in a way that was both violent and totally
unprecedented. Poetry and literature would never be the same again, as writers
could never forget the particular horrors of the monstrous sufferings and mass
scale slaughter unleashed by the Great War.
Ezra Pound in his seminal post-war poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920)
speaks of these horrors as "Wastage as never before" and calls them
"disillusions ... hysteria, trench confessions, laughter out of dead
bellies." Pound’s poem inaugurates this decade and sums up the Modernist
poet’s sense of "a botched civilization." Eliot too shared Pound’s
belief in the traumatic failures of modern life in the post-war era and voiced
the anxieties and fears about the age in his classic poem The Waste Land.
At Harvard, both Eliot and Pound were trained to value the writings of
earlier cultural periods. Both imitated or emulated classical, medieval,
Italian, Provençal French and even Chinese poems. This trait is quite evident
in Pound’s Cantos (1917-69) where he organizes his selections from world
history into a vast poetic panorama that provides moral, political and
aesthetic education for readers of the post-war 20th century generations.
Eliot, two, does something quite similar in The Waste Land which
is akin to a socio-cultural and spiritual encyclopedia of human civilization.
Pound was also one of the leaders of the new
Imagist Movement in poetry. The Imagists felt that English poetry in the early
20th century had become stale, tired, repetitive and convention-bound. They
advocated greater freedom of subject matter, concentration of poetic statement,
originality of imagery and a verse technique free of the rigid rules of rhyme
and meter. Though Eliot was not strictly a member of the Imagist group, he
shared most of their aims and enshrined them in his Waste Land,
especially in his use of free verse, concentrated expression and original
poetic images. Like the Imagists, Eliot also rebelled against the uncontrolled
expression of romantic emotion in stale or clicked language. He preferred a
laconic and somewhat understated style of writing, which characterizes most of
his poetry.
The symbolist movement in French poetry also influenced Eliot. The
symbolists did not care for the Realists mode of more direct forms of
representing reality, their rather restrained use of imagination and their
reformist zeal to change the abuses and evils of society. Instead, the
symbolist mode was indirect, allusive and often obscure. They concentrated more
on evoking individual moods and elusive states of mind through a complex of
words, images and symbols with diverse psychological associations. Thus,
readers of symbolist poetry must constantly explore the endless maze it
presents. All these features of symbolist writing are amply evident in Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Charles Baudelaire and Jules Laforgue were the two symbolists who
wielded the deepest influence on Eliot. They reveal a wry sense of humor, a
mocking self-awareness that helps to balance their inner melancholy. Baudelaire
made his readers aware of the city in all its ugliness, squalor and excitement,
its crowds, its variety, its violence and the alienation it gives rise to in
sensitive souls. These facts are abundantly found in Eliot’s TheWaste Land too.
Eliot read Arthur Symons' influential work The Symbolist Movement in Literature in
1908. Though he often rejected more recent poetic models (like Walt Whitman and
E. A. Poe) Eliot turned to Robert Browning for his skilled handling of the
dramatic monologue and use of colloquial language. Many of Eliot’s poems have
features of an extended dramatic monologue in which we encounter a character
revealing his or her thoughts and inner personality in a given situation e.g. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gerontion and
evenThe Waste Land.
Another poet who profoundly influenced Eliot was Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321), the Italian poet, whoseDivine Comedy Eliot
studied closely at Harvard. Eliot admired the frankness and economy of Dante’s
language and the vast gamut of emotional experience he depicts in the 3 parts
of his epic in Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Eliot admired Dante’s restraint and
self- effacement. Eliot, too, self distances himself in his verse throughout. The Waste Land he
is possibly present in the guise of Tiresias, but is never obtrusive.
Eliot was deeply stirred by Joyce’s Ulysses, whose early
manuscript (prior to publication) Eliot read in Paris in 1918. In Ulysses a
single day in the life of its protagonist, Leopold Bloom, is depicted in detail
against the framework of Ulysses’ wanderings as depicted Homer’s Odyssey.
This gives the novel a richness of associations and cross-references. Eliot
drew upon Joyce’s method in his The Waste Land, using the
consciousness of Tiresias to make cross-references through history and myth. He
also tried to manipulate traditional myths and drew parallels or contrasts
between contemporary life and ancient times. Thereby, Eliot hoped to give
definite shape and meaning to "the intense panorama of futility and
anarchy which is contemporary history," (T.S. Eliot in his Preface to
James Joyce’s Ulysses 1922).
A close
examination of Eliot’s poetry reveals that several contemporary strands of
English verse are subtly interwoven into his masterpiece. The Waste Landembodies the mood of
exhausted bitterness of war poetry, the "hard and dry" surfaces of
Imagist verse, the expansive use of mythical and literary allusions of Pound,
Joyce or Yeats, the dislocations and grotesque hallucinations of James Joyce
and Edith Sitwell. These, he blended subtly into the cohesive artistic unity of The Waste Land such a complex and
composite mode alone, Eliot felt, could meet the challenge of theme and
technique for modernist poetry in a post world war world. Historical Information
By 1900, there were noticeable signs in the intellectual life of Western
Europe that a kind of physical, psychological and spiritual paralysis was
setting in. Henry James, the American novelist who lived most of his literary
life in Europe and England, remarked in 1896 that he felt a premonition of
disaster and saw future life as "ferocious and sinister." It was only
natural then that the central theme of modern literature would soon be the
alienation of individuals in general (and artists, in particular) and the
futile quest for meaningful relationships in a decadent moral and a chaotic
social order.
At the start of the century, urbanization and industrialization of
England (and many West European countries) was complete. Yet for all the spread
of urban squalor and industrial misery, the Edwardian Age, in the years just
before the Great War, retained the last vestiges of elegant opulence. But this
age of contrasting splendor in the aristocracy and squalor, amid the working
classes, crashed to its inglorious end with World War I. In fact, pre-War
England would appear almost to be a pre-lapsarian Eden against the amalgam of
cynicism, amorality, despair and frivolity that pervaded England in the decade
after the War.
It was only natural, then, that in the early decades of the 20th
century, psycho analysts like Sigmund Freud and C. J. Jung should probe the
individual and collective human psyche to uncover the unconscious dreams and
fears of humans or the primitive impulses of man. About four decades earlier,
Charles Darwin’s theories of natural evolution (and survival of the fittest)
first challenged traditional religious views of human origins and development
Karl Mark’s theory of "dialectic" social change and his view of
history as secular and materialistic was also in direct conflict with past
religious beliefs. Besides, Frederick Nietzsche shockingly proclaimed "God
is Dead!" in his Also Sprach
Zarathustra.
All these novel ideas only reflect the fact that the dilemma of western
civilization in the early 20th century was one of upholding traditional beliefs
against the constant challenge of modern modes of thought and behavior.
Increasingly, orthodox Christian belief and rigid class structure came under
severe threat with the rampant advance of "mass" culture by the close
of World War I, conventional social systems and traditional Christian or
Puritanical moral codes fell apart with an abrupt and traumatic finality. In
the Western World after 1918, moral codes, the unfair privileges of class or
birth, the roles of the sexes all were challenged and shattered by newer modes
of uninhibited vulgarity, cheap sensation seeking and iconoclastic behavior
patterns.
Other events of these times are also reflected in The Waste Land.
Eliot"s experiments with modernist verse and search for worthy models to
create newer literary patterns, is part of the wider American and European
movement called literary Modernism. Just as literary movements like Dadaism,
surrealism etc. sought to overthrow all artistic conventions, exponents of
modernist music, painting and architecture also challenged the very basis of
conventional art. Pablo Picasso"s style of cubism used a form of abstract collage-angular
shapes; harsh colors and geometric distortions - to convey the struggle between
order and disorder that characterizes the present times. His controversial
painting Les Demoiselles d"Avignon (1908) shows
grotesquely distorted female nudes wearing what seems to be tribal masks
suggesting that linked to the present is the mythic of primitive past.
Eliot had seen this style of Cubist painting and also witnessed the
performance of Igor Stvavinskys path-breaking ballet: The Rites of Spring (1913).
The music was harsh, strident and dissonant, often sounding even barbaric or
jungle like. He was deeply moved also by Richard Wagner"s soul-stirring
Operas such asDie Götterdamerung (The Twilight of the Gods), Dev Ring des Nibelungen (The
Ring of the Nibelung) andTristan und Isolde based on
ancient Germanic myths and legends. In all these artistic experiments he
recognized there was no real conflict between ancient myths or rituals and
modern life but a sense of abiding continuity in man’s relentless search for
life’s inner significance. Reared in a rather tradition-bound American family,
his new interests and experiences in the Old World changed Eliot"s outlook
drastically and made him search for novel modes of artistic expression, which
he crystallized in The Waste Land.
SUMMARY and Notes
The Title
The title of the poem consists of the central waste land symbol and a
significant date 1922. For the title of his poem, Eliot chose the central
symbol of a devastated land. The title evokes all the associations of a barren
landscape blighted by drought and Famine, leading on to wide-scale human
starvation, misery and death. At another level, this symbolic title recalls the
ancient vegetation or fertility myths and primitive folklore associated with
the sterility of a land affected by the impotence of its ruler. Both the land
and its people could be saved by a virtuous and daring youth whose life was
ritually sacrificed so as to renew the earth.
The Waste Land, as a title and symbol has a profound and subtle significance. Eliot
uses it to refer to the post-war devastation of Western civilization as a
modern counterpart to the mythological waste land. Significantly, Eliot affixed
the date "1922" to the title, suggesting thereby that his "waste
land" pertains to the contemporary scenario of woe and waste following the
carnage of World War I. For the most part, Eliot relates the waste land symbol
of the title to the "Unreal City" such as London, Athens, Alexandria,
Vienna or Jerusalem (all centers of human civilization destroyed in past or
recent human history).
The Epigraph
Eliot uses for epigraph a chance remark in the Roman poem The Satyricon by
Patronius. Literally, this passage in Latin and Greek reads as follows:
"I myself once saw, with my own eyes, the sibyl of Cumae hanging in
a cage; and when the boys asked her: "What wouldst thou prophesy, Sibyl?
She replied: "I want to die."
The 19th century English poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in his verse
translation of The Satyricon renders it thus:
"I saw the Sibyl at Cumae
He said, with mine own eye;
She hung in a cage and read her rune
To all the passers by
Said the boys: "Sibyl what wouldn’t thou prophesy?"
She answered: "I would die"
Notes
Eliot had first chosen a line from Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness (1899)
as the epigraph to his poem. It was the famous dying words of the central
figure, Kurtz, as reported by Marlow, the narrator: "The horror! The
horror!" when Pound edited Eliot"s manuscript of The Waste Land,
he objected to the original epigraph on the grounds that Conrads novel was not
weighty enough for the purpose Eliot had in mind. So the words were removed and
substituted by a quote from The Satyricon by the 1st
century AD Roman poet, Petronius Arbiter. The drunken Trimalchio at an
ostentatious feast hosted by him speaks to them.
The Sibyl of Cumae is one of the oldest and most famous prophetesses
known to the ancient Graeco-Roman world. She was the guardian spirit of a
sacred cave at Cumae, the earliest Greek settlement in Italy. (Her cave may
still be seen on the Italian coast a little north of the Bay of Naples). Her
Sibylline prophecies (in nine volumes) were entrusted to Rome's last king,
Tarquinus Superbus. She was also regarded as the gate-keeper of the underworld,
and in the sixth eclogue of Virgil’s Aeneid, she conducts Aeneas
through Hades (or the underworld). Once the God Apollo offered her immortality
if she would be his lover. The Sibyl accepted but failed to ask for perpetual
youth and hence, withered into old age. Thus, her death wish is linked to her
desire to be rid of her antiquated life, just as the walking dead of the modern
"Unreal City" have nothing to look forward to in life but death.
Eliot, perhaps, suggests that we are about to be led into a kind of Dantean
descent into the "hell" of a modern waste land just as the Sibyl
guided Aeneas through Hades.
The Dedicatory Lines
For Ezra Pound " Il miglior fabbro"
Eliot addressed this poem to his friend and compatriot, Ezra Pound, who
helped him edit and publish TheWaste Land. The second
line is in the Italian vernacular used by Dante in his Divine Comedy and
translates thus: "For Ezra Pound - the greater craftsman."
Notes
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an American expatriate poet living in London,
where Eliot met him in September 1914. The two became life long friends. Pound
was one of the leading Imagist poets and a key figure in the modernist movement
in Anglo- American poetry. He helped Eliot publish his early poems like theLove Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915).
He also carried out extensive revisions on the early drafts of TheWaste Land.
As a token of his appreciation, Eliot dedicated the poem to "the greater
craftsman" - Pound. Pound reduced Eliot"s long sprawling poem from
its original thousand or so lines to just 434 in the final version - but he did
not excise any lines from Parts IV and V. Eliot utilized some of the segments
omitted by Pound in such later poems as Gerontion and Four Quartets.
"Il miglior Fabbro": This Italian phrase is
quoted from Dante’s Purgatorio (Canto XXVI, Line.117). Dante
used it to great the troubadour poet, Arnaut Daniel - an aristocratic minstrel
from Provençe in Southern France, whom he meets in "purgatory."
T.S. Eliot remarked that he used
Dante"s words to honor E. Pound for "the technical mastery and
critical ability" manifest in Pounds work of edition Eliot"s The WasteLand from
a jumble of good and bad passages into a poem. In the first published edition
of the poem, Eliot did not print this dedication. However, he inscribed the
words in a copy of the poem that he presented to Pound. In later editions, the
dedication was included.
THE POEM IS DIVIDED INTO FIVE SECTIONS. EACH SECTION HAS ITS OWN TITLE.
Part I
The Burial of the Dead
The phrase "The Burial of the Dead" calls to mind several
different associations. It recalls the various fertility myths of ancient
civilizations in Egypt, Greece and Western Asia, such as myths of Osiris,
Adonis, Tammuz and Attis. The "burial of the dead" can also possibly
refer to the agricultural practice of planting the dried or dead seed just
before spring, so that the seed may germinate and sprout in summer. The title
also recalls the Christian burial service in the Church of England’s The Book of Common Prayer and
hence suggests death. The full title of the funeral service in this Anglican
prayer book is The Order for the Burial of the Dead.
It ends with the Priest and mourners throwing a handful of dust into the grave
a symbolic reminder of the Biblical injunction, "Dust thou art and to dust
thou shalt return." Later in Line 30, we hear an echo of this rite in
Tiresias’ utterance: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
Notes
The title "Burial of the dead" relates to the poems underlying
mythological structure. It recalls the burial of the various fertility gods of
different ancient cultures referred to by Jessie Weston and James Frazer in
their anthropological works. These include the god Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in
Greece and Cyprus, Tammuz and Altis in West Asia. Each year the peoples of
these regions celebrated the annual cycle of nature’s decay (in autumn and
winter) by ritually burying or dismembering a god who they felt personified the
fertility of vegetable life. They believed this god died annually and rose
again from the dead, as James Frazer describes in The Golden Bough.
The ancient Egyptians revered the pharaoh, Osiris, as fertility God. He
was brutally murdered by his brother Set, but his sister- wife; Isis gathered
the bits of his mangled corpse and buried it. Each spring, the ancient
Egyptians held that Osiris rose again to life through the kindly action of
Osiris’ son, Horus, the sun, and renewed natural life on earth after the long
winter months. So did the ancient Cypriots and Greeks honored Adonis, the
handsome son of Cinyras, King of Cyprus. Loved by Aphrodite, whom he rejected, Adonis
was killed by a wild boar while hunting. From his blood sprang the rose. His
untimely death led to the fertility cult of Adonis spreading from Cyprus to
Greece in the 5th century BC. His followers believed this God-like youth died
every year in winter and returned to life each spring, thus letting new crops
grow.
Lines 1-7 Summary
"April is the cruelest month ... with dried tubers." The first
seven lines of the poem are uttered by the prophet narrator, Tiresias, who was
a hermaphroditic "seer" attached to king Oedipus court. He gives us a
graphic picture of what is apparently a natural waste land scenario, which
focuses on the deadness of nature. However, at a deeper level, this picture of
a desert landscape also refers to a mental and spiritual waste land, which
brings only sterile desires and futile memories.
Eliot, in these opening lines strikes an ironic contrast between the
modern waste land and that in remote and primitive civilizations. Ancient
societies celebrated the return of spring through the practices of their
vegetation cults with their fertility rites and sympathetic magic. These
rituals demonstrate the unique harmony that then existed between human cultures
and the natural environment. But in the 20th century waste land, April is not
the kindest but "the cruelest month," as it merely breeds
"Lilacs out of the dead land." It stirs "memory and desire to no
fruitful purpose, apparently. There is no quickening of the human spirit. Sex
here becomes sterile, breeding not fulfillment in life but mere disgust and
vague apprehensions.
Notes
Line 1, "April ... month" is a fine poetic echo of the opening
lines in Chaucer"s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (1400): "Whanne
that Aprille with his shoures soote". There Chaucer celebrates the return
of the joyous season of spring and its refreshing rains that instill vigorous
life into the roots of plants and engenders the birth of a new cycle of
nature’s fecundity. But in Eliot’s "waste land," there seems little
hope of renewed life as the early spring rains manage to stir only "a little
life" in the "dull roofs" and "dried tubers" that
await their renewal each spring.
Lines 2-8, "Dead land ... dull roots ... dried tubers ... forgetful
show": Usually, Easter Sunday, which commemorates Christ’s resurrection,
falls in April. But Eliot ironically comments here that April is the
"cruelest month" as the stirring of natural life and the spiritual
resurrection symbolized in Easter fill humans today not with hope but fear and
apprehension, if not despair. This is clearly suggested in the phrases "dead
land," "dull roots," "dried tubers" and the bleak
picture of earth covered in "forgetful snow."
These four phrases suggest the bareness of earth and vacuity of life
today. In ancient fertility cults, spring was celebrated as the propitious
season, which brought back potency to the Fisher King and fertility to his
land.
Line 2, "Breeding lilacs...": According to traditional
vegetation myths, Lilacs symbolized fertility. But Eliot links up the lilacs
referred to here to the "hyacinths" of line 35. Both these flowers have
poetic associations of meanings with death - the lilac for its purple color of
mourning and exquisite beauty were perhaps celebrated by Whitman in his elegy
for Lincoln "When Lilacs last in the Doovyard Bloom’ed" (See note on
Hyacinths Line 35)
Lines 8-18 Summary
"Summer surprised us ... go south in winter.":
There is a dramatic change of tone and tempo here. These lines mark an
abrupt transition from the slow pace and solemn mood of the opening lines,
which Tiresias - the narrator seems to intone as a sort of interior monologue
or soliloquy. In the 11 lines, the speaker seems to have changed and we,
apparently, hear the narration of countess Marie Larisch about her childhood
memories and present life. This passage of her reminiscences throws light upon
her early emotional experiences, her wanderings through Europe as a political
refugee from her native Lithuania and her own loss of identity resulting from
her life as an ex - royal exile. This section creates a picture of an emotional
waste land in the lives of aristocratic women like countess Marie who suffered
great physical hardships and psychological dislocations as a result of the
political turmoil in Europe immediately before during and soon after World War
I.
Notes
Line 8, "Starnbergersee" is a popular lake resort near Munich
in the Bavarian district of West Germany. Eliot visited this area in August
1911, when he perhaps met countess Marie the interlocutor of these lines. It
was a fashionable European holiday resort famed for the SchlossBerg castle on its shores. It was built
by the Bavarian arch - Duke Ludwig who drowned in the Lake while trying to
escape imprisonment in his own castle at the turn of the century.
Line 10, "Hofgarten" is a German word for an open-air cafe
located on a sidewalk or pavement. There is a famous Hofgarten attached to the
public park and Zoological gardens in Munich.
Line 12, "Bin gar Keine Russin ... echt Deutsche": This is
often regarded as a verbatim transcript of a remark made in German by the
Countess to Eliot when they met briefly in Munich. In translation, it reads
"I am not Russian at all; I am from Lithuania, a pure German"
Line 13-14, "The arch-duke, ... my cousin": Marie had several
archdukes for cousins including Archduke Ferdinand whose assassination in
Sarajevo (August 1914) sparked off World War I. Another cousin was the
"mad king" Ludwig of Schlossberg fame, and the Archduke Rudolph who
committed suicide at Mayerling. Marie had arranged the marriage between Rudolph
and Maria Vestera, and after their double suicide in the Mayerling tragedy, she
left Vienna and returned for good to the Alpine mountains of Bavaria where, she
often remarked, she felt free (Line.17).
Line 15-16, "Marie, Marie": An obvious reference to Countess
Marie Larisch, whose exiled family stayed on the Starnbergersee. She was a
niece and confidante of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. Eliot presumably met
her during one of his visits to Germany (either in 1911 or later in 1914). Some
critics assume, however, that Eliot never met Countess Marie, but that he
obtained details for his poem from her rather popular autobiography My past (1916).
George L. K. Morris writing in the Partisan Review, Vol. XXI
(March-April 1954) draws attention to the many similarities between parts of The Waste Land and
the countess’ autobiography. But we have it on the authority of Valerie Eliot (who edited The Waste Land Facsimilepp.125-26)
that the description of the sledding incident was taken verbatim from Eliot’s
conversation with Countess Marie.
The Countess was famous for her glamorous good looks and her unfortunate
neurasthenia. She was a believer in for tune telling by cards. Countess Marie
Larisch was assassinated at Lake Leman in 1917.
Lines 19-30 Summary
In this segment one can hear again the voice of Tiresias, who depicts a
sort of spiritual waste land. The tone here is reminiscent of old biblical
prophets littering their somber prophecies. It portrays an agonized world
filled with "stony rubbish," where "the sun beats"
mercilessly down so that "the dead trees give no shelter" and the
shrill cry of the cricket brings "no relief." In this desolate
scenario "the dry stone" gives "no sound of water." (Unlike
in biblical times, when Moses could procure water from rocks using his "divining"
rod and thus bring relief to the thirsty Israelites wandering the desert).
Notes
Line 19, "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow":
These are apparently rhetorical questions with self-evident answers. There are
no roots that can take hold in the rocky soil, nor can any branches grow on
dead trees in this waste land.
Line 20, "Son of Man": Eliot’s Notes to The Waste Landtells
us that the phrase is drawn from The Old Testament,Book of Ezekiel (2:1)
perhaps "Son of man" refers to fallen man, son of the weak willed
Adam in contrast to "Son of God" i.e., Jesus Christ.
Line 22, "Broken images": Another phrase drawn fromEzekiel (6:6)
(according to Eliot"s Notes) This biblical passage describes how
"cities shall be laid waste and high places shall be thrown down and
destroyed." Here, God warns the idol-worshipping Israelites of severe
punishment. Eliot suggests that the modern day "son of man" only
knows a heap of broken images" and has lost his connection to God, his
creator.
Lines 25-29, "There is shadow under this red rock ... handful of
dust": These lines are a close parallel to the opening of Eliot"s own
early poem The Death of St. Narcissus (1911
- 12), which runs thus:
"Come under the shadow of this gray rock,
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow sprawling over the sand at day break, or
Your shadow leaping behind the fire against the red rock."
Eliot feels free to draw on lines, from his earlier poem, for The Waste Land.
It is rare for a poet to quote his own poem.
Line 30, "A handful of dust" is a phrase perhaps drawn from
one of John Donne’s famous Meditations: "What becomes of man ... when
himself shrinks, consumes himself to a handful of dust." The line also
brings to mind the Christian injunction to man of his bodily mortality:
"Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shall return."
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