CORINNENOTES
T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land .
These are just my slightly incoherent ramblings on the poem. Some may be helpful. Some may not!
Summary:
I’m somewhat reluctant to give a general summary since the poem is designed to be “a heap of broken images” (The Burial of the Dead) but here are the moods/basic themes of each section.
I. “The Burial of the Dead”.
Starts with a revision of “The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” and then presents us with a series of characters who, apparently, bare no relation to each other and are in a totally random order. Basically these characters are the “dead” of the title. By the time you finish this section you’re supposed to be suitably scared/bored.
II. “A Game of Chess”.
In this section Tommy (I’m sure Eliot wouldn’t mind me using his first name) has a look at how empty and worthless society is – first at its “highest” and then at its “lowest”. By this point you’re supposed to be suicidal.
III. “The Fire Sermon”.
Starts with water and ends with fire. Fantastic central section about a “carbuncular clerk”. Basically all about sexual desire and how it condemns us to the waste land. Also important as it introduces us to Tiresias (who is one of the only two myths I know!) who some (ie. my last English teacher) people see as the narrator of the entire poem.
IV. “Death by Water”.
And still there is no release from the depression. Actual death and decomposition here, which leads us to infer the futility of the Phlebas’s (and subsequently our own) life. Important links to “The Tempest”.
V. “What the Thunder Said”.
Starts with the death of Jesus and then, finally, Tommy decides what we need to do to redeem the waste land – datta, dayadhvam and damyata (otherwise known as give, sympathise and control). Whether you consider this to be a positive ending depends, as always, on whether you see the glass as being half empty or half full.
A slightly more detailed (and less flippant) look at allusions/ important “bits” in the poem:
Title:
Probably from “Morte d’Arthur” by Malory but also a double allusion to Book II of the Confessions of St Augustine. (Let me know if you want more details of this, as I do have the lines which it comes from, but I’m not that interested in this bit, other than as an extra).
Epigraph:
Translation:
“For once I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage and when the boys said to her “Sibyl what do you want?” she answered “I want to die”.
From Satyricon (I’ve no idea how you pronounce that!) written by Petronius in 1st Century AD.
The best explanation that I’ve found is in A Student’s Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S.Eliot by B.C.Southam. (Faber,1981) (page 84):
“In Greek mythology the Sibyls were women of prophetic powers, that of Cumae the most famous. She was granted long life by Apollo, at her own wish…but carelessly she forgot to ask for eternal youth”.
Thus, as are so many people in the poem, the Sibyl is trapped – she cannot even be redeemed through death.
This links to Tony’s situation at the end of A Handful of Dust. He too is trapped, and resigned to his fate. Only through death will he be released.
Dedication (just out of interest):
Translation:
The better craftsman.
(Pound majorly altered the orginal draft of the poem, and, if you happen to be so inclined, it’s very interesting to see the differences between the original and the one we have to study).
I. “The Burial of the Dead”.
Title: From the Anglican Burial Service (see the final lines of this section).
The opening lines are a re-working of the opening lines to Chaucer’s Prologue:
“When that Aprille with his shoures sote/ The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote”. For Chaucer Spring is positive, a chance for rebirth. For Eliot it is negative as it suggests a painful reawakening and realisation of the emptiness of life in the waste land. Also links to Plath’s “Spinster” where fertility and rebirth is portrayed negatively by the Spinster of the title as they are beyond human control and open up the possibility of being hurt.
Translation: “I am not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, pure German stock”.
The second section represents the deserts of the Old Testament – our first hint that the waste land is not confined to the 20th century (also contains Waugh’s allusion, which again is biblical as man starts off as dust, and returns to dust after death).
Translation: “The wind blows fresh towards the homeland; my Irish child, where are you waiting?”. From Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde (“one of the world’s great love stories”). Basically Tristan waits for Isolde to arrive from Ireland (which takes a long time) and when she finally arrives it is all too much for poor (insert stupid) Tristan who promptly dies. This section is about anticipation of love, and bewilderment when it does not correspond to your ideals and therefore the rejection of this possible salvation from the waste land.
Notice “heart of light” in relation to Conrad’s “heart of darkness”.
Translation: “Waste and empty is the sea”. Again from T and I. Water becomes very important later on in the poem.
The fortune teller section represents the feeble attempt to gain spiritual enlightenment. Madame Sosostris is clearly a fraud and links with her counterpart in A Handful of Dust. Also contains the first of several allusions to The Tempest (line 48).
The final section is Eliot’s equivalent of Dante’s hell in Inferno (he even takes a direct translation of the line “Ch’i’non averei creduto/ che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta”). With the mention of Stetson the reason for the title of this section becomes apparent. The final line is taken from the opening line of Baudelaire’s introductory poem, “To the Reader” in Flowers of Evil. We are all part of this living dead.
II. “A Game of Chess”.
Title: An allusion to Middleton’s Women Beware Women where the seduction of Bianca corresponds to each move of the game of chess her mother is playing. (Incidentally Middleton is a v. good playwright and I would particularly recommend The Changeling even though it has absolutely nothing to do with this!).
The opening of this section is a parody of Enobarbus’s speech in Act 2 Scene 2 of Anthony and Cleopatra (it’s worthwhile looking at this scene as there are some subtle, and important, differences). Again a comparison can be made between this and A Handful of Dust, specifically that of Brenda and Tony/ John. (This section can also be compared to Anita Brookner’s Hotel Du Lac and/or Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby –though this is American literature, rather than British).
It also alludes to the rape of Philomel, a Greek myth. Philomel was raped by King Tereus, and then had her tongue cut off to prevent her from telling her sister. As a result of this she was turned into the nightingale – the bird who is the symbol of love and beauty (as in Shakespeare in Love (!) and, slightly more importantly, Romeo and Juliet).
The man in this section also thinks of images of drowning in The Tempest and line 48 is repeated, this time with more depressing implications.
The East End Pub section demonstrates the same sterility and impotence as does Joyce in Dubliners.
The final line is from Hamlet and comes just before Ophelia drowns herself.
III. “The Fire Sermon”.
Title: Links to the Buddha and St Augustine.
Ophelia’s drowning leads to the arid banks of the Thames. Water represents cleansing and rebirth and therefore can redeem the waste land. In this section it has no such positive connections though.
The second section is about Eliot’s Fisher King (who he links to Ferdinand in The Tempest), who is King of the waste land and fisher in the polluted stream.
Translation: “And O those children’s voices singing in the dome” (links religion –the washing of choirboys feet – with that practiced by the prostitutes).
The third section is an echo of the rape of Philomel.
Eugenides means “well born” and Eliot linked him to the “one eyed merchant” in the tarot cards and Phlebas in IV. The sexual implications of the weekend in Brighton continue the degradation of this section. It also links with Tony and Milly’s weekend at the seaside in A Handful of Dust.
I the next section Eliot introduces Tiresias, and subsequently wrote in his “Notes to The Waste Land”: “Tiresias…is the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest”. In Greek mythology Tiresias has lived as both a man and a woman, before being blinded by Juno. His age and the fact he is the most famous of the classical prophets link him to the Sybil. As Eliot elaborates all the men in the poem are ultimately one man, the women all one woman and these are joined in Tiresias. By this section we can also elaborate that all places are indeed one place and that time, in a linear sense, does not exist. (You should have this in its entirety in your copy, if not tell me and I’ll give you one as it really is worthwhile reading, especially as it gives you a fuller version of the myth).
Again Eliot scrutinises a lower class relationship, and this links back to “A Game of Chess” as yet another relationship is portrayed as squalid and pathetic.
The return to the river suggests both a positive aspect of water (it has a purpose) and an over riding sense that it is ultimately superficial. This section also echoes the opening of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, with its ultimately bleak view of the capabilities of humanity.
Elizabeth and Leicester are the only male/female relationship which is not sexual in this section. However despite the splendour which is evoked the relationship is ultimately unfulfilled. An escape from the waste land is rejected. The next section confirms this – it again is a tale of violation and confusion.
The final section links to the Buddha and St Augustine, and suggests a possible, if not actual, redemption – that we can, like the phoenix, rise from the flames of our former incarnation.
IV. “Death by Water”.
This section is the most important of the links with The Tempest – though it is in stark contrast to the play where drowning leads to resurrection and rebirth. Here drowning cause nothing other than the gulls to pick at the bones of Phlebas.
This section also connects with the ceremony of the drowning of Adonis, the God of fertility. Each year the “corpse” of Adonis would be drowned in order to restore fertility to the land. Again Phlebas’s death fails to provide this.
Water fills a hell of a lot of space in 20th century literature. Rivers are highly important in Heart of Darkness and “In Search of a City” in A Handful of Dust. Fitzgerald’s Gatsby is separated from his dream by water and eventually dies in his pool. Woolf has a fixation with water, in particular, the sea (it is surely not a coincidence that her chosen method of suicide was drowning). In particular Plath seems to have a similar view of drowning to Eliot. In “Full Fathom Five” (the title of which is also an allusion to The Tempest) death by drowning is seen to be positive. “Suicide off Egg Rock” is Plath’s more stark and contentious view of drowning, but the final line suggests relief and the possibility of positive drowning. In The Bell Jar Esther first intends to kill herself in the bath and then attempts to kill herself in the sea twice more.
V. “What the Thunder Said”.
Title: A biblical allusion in as much as God often “talks” through thunder.
Here we return to the deserts first shown in “The Burial of the Dead”. In the second section Eliot describes his journey through the waste land, his own search for the Holy Grail. It is filled with delusions and ultimately man must face and recognise his impotence.
Section 3 and 4 evoke the decay of Communist Russia. Eliot despairs at the atheism which he believes condemns people to the waste land (something which Tommy and I don’t agree on). However Russia post 1917 is not isolated – we have already learnt to judge the fact that everything is ultimately the same thing – the waste land is eternal and all pervasive. The nameless person is Jesus but man is so deluded that he fails to recognise him, even when He walks beside him.
The next section echoes the room in the first part of “A Game of Chess” – now, however, Eliot presents it in a surrealist manner, it is simply a horrific vision. Finally, lightning strikes and the longed for rain materialises.
The rain heralds the three pieces of advice which are missing from the waste land – give, sympathise and control. Only through these can man be redeemed.
The poem concludes with a series of fragments. The Fisher King has crossed the waste land and arrived at the sea. We are then greeted with the rubble of London.
Translation: “And so I pray you, by that virtue which guides you to the top of the stair, remember later on my pain”, from Dante’s Purgatory. Unlike the nursery rhyme extract which precedes it this quote suggests a more positive ending as suffering is equated with redemption.
Translation: “When shall I be like the swallow?”, from The Vigil of Venus. This is another positive indication as the poem it is taken from heralds the arrival of spring and Venus.
Translation: “The Prince of Aquitaine in the ruined tower”, from “The Disinherited” by Gerard de Nerval. This however links to London Bridge, a much more negative impression. This line always reminds me of Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”.
Whether you interpret this to be positive or negative outcome to the poem, the final line would suggest that the poem is being concluded in the manner of a prayer – there is hope but redemption is not guaranteed.