Wastleland-1-Notes and Study Questions
Wastleland-1-Notes and Study Questions
Wastleland-1-Notes and Study Questions
Eliot (1888-1965)
The Waste Land (1)
Modernist poetry
“Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and
complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex
results. The poet must become more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in
order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning” (T.S. Eliot, “The
metaphysical Poets”, 1921) – what clues does Eliot give us about his method?, what
kind of poetry shall we expect from such a poet?
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
American from St. Louis, Missouri (the city identified with blues, jazz, and ragtime);
Eliot came to England (when? why?) and rewrote English literary history
Truly remarkably educated (Greek, and Latin, Greek and Roman history, French,
German, English literature)
Friend with Ezra Pound: how important was Pound’s influence on the creation of The
Waste Land, what did he learn from him? How does he refer to Pound in The Waste
Land?
Student of literature and philosophy in Germany and France
Director of the highly influential publishing firm Faber and Faber in London (what
poetry did Eliot promote? )
British subject and a member of the Church of England since 1927
One of the most influential critics
T. S. Eliot’s Poetry
Absorbing languages from elsewhere into English (a dialectic of the vernacular and
the cosmopolitan); mingling of the formal and the conversational, neologisms,
technical terms; difficult play of tones
Introducing citational intertextuality: works referred to are not all necessarily central
in the Western literary tradition, besides Dante and Shakespeare there are pre-Socratic
philosophers, voices of poets and dramatists of the 17th c, citations from works of
anthropology, history, and philosophy. Eliot builds his own body of references,
Paratactic poetics: identify the meaning of “parataxis”, find two striking examples in
The Waste Land
Novelty: deliberate elimination of all connective and transitional passages (The Waste
Land is a “heap of broken images”); juxtaposition of images without overt
explanation, absence of the voice telling us where we are and what’s going on;
analogies and allusions (explain the term “juxtaposition”; how is it used in visual
arts?)
Impersonality: giving up the presence to unique self-representation for the sake of
being a medium for the voices of tradition, some all-embracing tradition, rather than to
some interior quality of a poet – hence absence in the poem of one voice (Eliot says:
“no poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone”); poetry is an “escape
from personality”
Objective correlative:
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective
correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the
formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in
sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” (T.S. "Hamlet and His
Problems")
What Eliot means here is that the job of the artist is to find a fictional equivalent to the
emotion he wishes to explore, something adequate to the complexity of the feeling which is at
issue--the images must be adequate to the emotions, the source of our understanding of them,
so that our response arises inevitably out of them, and not from being told directly by the poet
what is at stake
Can you describe how and to what extent the objective correlative is applied in The Waste
Land?
Influences
From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston.
o An academic examination of the roots of the King Author legends. In this
study connections are made between early pagan elements and the later
Christian influences.
o "Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of
the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book." Miss Weston
states: ”with certainty that the fish is a Life symbol of immemorial antiquity,
and that the title of the Fisher has, from the earliest ages, been associated with
the Deities who were held to be specially connected with the origin and
preservation of Life”
Golden Bough by James Frazer
o This work discusses the history of folklore and religion.
Style
Irregular verse, at time free.
Complex scholarly annotations (footnotes) to explain the many quotations and obscure
references.
Fragmented language – reflecting the fragmentary nature of postwar reality,
fragmentation of human faith, human consciousness. Commentary on problem of
modern society as lacking a sense of community and spiritual axis.
Multiple narrative voices, different linguistic styles, different languages
Language – Eliot tried to create a new poetic language which would order the world
and reality. This is reminiscent of symbolists’ dissatisfaction with language but also
with the influence of the French Symbolists’ use of image: an image could be both
absolutely precise in its reference and at the same time absolutely suggestive in the
meaning it set up because of its relationship to other images. Find such an image in the
poem.
Themes
The present as paralysed, desolate and unredeemable by the contagion of the past
WWI and its aftermath. Find allusions; compare with Woolf’s approaches.
Alternative orders: The remoteness of the civilization celebrated in The Waste Land
from the natural rhythms is brought out by the anthropological theme. Vegetation
cults, fertility ritual, with their sympathetic magic, represent a harmony of human
culture with the natural environment and express an extreme sense of the unity of life
– all lost to moderns.
Imagery
Images of desolation, sterility, dryness, waste (as a byproduct of utilitarian attitudes
and capitalistic and mercantile forms of production and exchange); image of a society
that feeds upon itself and also lies mired in its own waste.
Ancient and medieval legends (e.g. Holy Grail, classical mythology); symbolic
representation of cycles of life and death; theme of sick "Fisher King" and loss of
fertility which produces a corresponding drought; replenishment of land and healing of
Fisher King by re-discovery of truth encoded in the images of ancient myths and
rituals.
The speaker is retelling the first meeting she had with her lover. How is the depiction
of the past contrasted with the imagery of the present?
The second stanza is told from a soldier’s point of view. Note in Eliot’s poem,
speakers changes from stanza to stanza; from one part to the other. It’s very difficult to
determine who the speaker really is because it sounds like all men use one voice and
the man can be someone from the ancient time (Phoenician sailor) or a modern man
(Mr. Eugenides).
The soldier is passing through the destroyed city buildings and churches, “A heap of
broken images, where the sun beats,- And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no
relief,- And the dry stone no sound of water.” What is this image meant to symbolize?
The land is a land of death and debris after the war. Any a handful of dust may contain
human remains which he is fearful to touch, "I will show you fear in a handful of
dust".
What is the overall mood of the second stanza? How is this mood achieved?
The speaker of the third stanza is a soldier’s wife. She has come to Madame Sosostris,
a famous clairvoyant, to find out what might have happened to her loved one in the
war. What kind of clairvoyant is Madame Sosostris? Do the cards tell the future?
The fourth stanza starts off by describing London, the "Unreal City". The voice of this
stanza could be Marie or any wife of a soldier. How is London represented? The
“unreal city” – how does the poet achieve the effect of unreality of London? What
texts and images does he draw on?
Allusions to the buried corpse (buried God) account for the ironical tone of the poem.
The bodies from the previous wars are here treated as seeds which might sprout. Yet,
this is the miracle of resurrection, whether Christian or Pagan mythologies.
We are presented with two scenes: from high-class and rich setting and from a low-
class London pub.
First scene – frustrated sensuality inside a luxurious but claustrophobic salon. Richly
described. The two cupids describe the two possible approaches to the scene. Explain.
Second scene - Two cockney women talking about rape in a pub—a straightforward,
melodramatic narrative about the sexual tribulations of a woman who has had five
children and an abortion.
These scenes are contrasted only superficially, because they share a common theme.
What is this theme and how is it presented?
How can rape (lust) be understood in the context of the overarching theme of
secularization?
Questions to consider:
1. The method – why is the poem a construction of citations and paraphrases? Analyze
particular examples of multi-layered quotations, text upon text, and say how they
determine the meaning of the poem. Does the poet try to build an edifice of
civilization, quoting to represent the culture’s many layers, or does he aim at an
impression of “a heap of broken images”, a disintegration of a once structured whole
that was culture?
2. Modern sterility – what is its underlying cause? Look for the motives and images of
waning emotion, lack of emotion or spiritual engagement, and the consequences of it –
blurred knowledge of good and evil.