The Waste Land

The Waste Land - Thinking Activity

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani. Writing this blog as thinking activity for 'The Waste Land'. Here we have to discuss first the general idea of the poem and some points related to themes, critic's views and some important questions which are asked in the Teacher's blog. (click here to get look there).  

‘The Waste Land’ is a long poem which is written by T.S.Eliot in 20th century. And as well as the famous one of Eliot. The poem has captured the ugly but real image of society on transparent paper. It has 434 lines. It is having the ideas of more than one religions like Christian, Hinduism, Greek etc. one may can not understand it at first sight.

About the poem:

“The Waste Land” is divided into five parts. Let’s see what are those parts!

· The Burial of the Dead.

· A Game of Chess.

· The Fire Sermon.

· Death by Water.

· What the Thunder Said

Now we will see the each images one by one.

The Burial of the Dead

The poem has generally pessimistic voice or the tone. It starts with this image where “April is the cruellest month”, here we can see the poet is having somewhere pessimism in the on going flow. This image has the description of , A woman Marie, madam Sosostris, then the crowd of people over the London bridge which is moving like zombies.

A Game of Chess

This image has the myth of Philomel. which is the Greek idea of myth. At last of this image there is the two women were talking.

The Fire Sermon

This image is important for readers as from here we come to know the specker of the poem who is Tiresias, he is blind prophet and taken from the myth. Another tone of the image is the tension of the dryness of the world.

Death by Water

Here in this image we are introduced a character of Phlebas. And the tone is about the moral values of lives.

What the Thunder Said

This is the last image of poem and the first outcome of it is, there are two men were going and they feel that there is someone as third person and here we can see the reference of Christ. Further, in a sudden the thunder appear said : the three “Da” for accordingly God, Human and Devil. At last it ends with Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.

The central theme of the poem:

The basic theme of The Waste Land is the disillusionment of the post-war generation and sterility of the modern man. The critics have commented on the theme in different words: "vision of desolation and spiritual drought" (F. R. Leavis)

And also we can say “The Sexual Perversion and Spiritual Drought”. Poet might wanted to portray the 20^th century’s flow towards it. Whenever the flow leads towards spiritual drought in automatic way the sexual perversion may come into way of flow. 

1) What are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land'? Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzsche's views? or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mytho-historical answer to the contemporary malaise?

Nietsche has an opinion as “Progressive and forward looking” though T.S.Eliot is having an opinion as “Regressive and backward looking”. So, when we look into opinions we can come to know that one is standing for the new values of one’s life and it seems like ‘death of god’, by giving idea of ‘Ubermensch’. Here the idea specks that one should not rely on others, but have the faith in own self. 

Other side the idea talks about the connection of past to present. It insist that one should have backward looking to get the solutions of anything. Like Eliot has taken the references of Upanishad, Buddhism, and Christianity.

2) Prior to the speech, Gustaf Hellström of the Swedish Academy made these remarks:

What are your views regarding these comments? Is it true that giving free vent to the repressed 'primitive instinct' lead us to happy and satisfied life? or do you agree with Eliot's view that 'salvation of man lies in the preservation of the cultural tradition'?

As we know that Freud and Nietsche, both are somehow believing in individualism in a focused way. Freud talks about ‘Primitive Instinct’. He also give a study of psychoanalysis where he mentioned the Id, Ego and Superego theory. He insist the progressiveness and on the other side T.S.Eliot insist the regressive ness. He believes that there is nothing wrong to become regressive because human learn from the past. Paradoxically, Freud says that whatever humans repression, it will come out in a chain of mantle illness. 

3) Write about allusions to the Indian thoughts in 'The Waste Land'. (Where, How and Why are the Indian thoughts referred?)

In the poem, poet has used the Indian thoughts at various place. In the image of 'The Fire Sermon' and 'What the Thunder Said'. Let's have a look for it in detail.

“Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon — O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih”

The Waste Land appeared in 1922. The poem, which won Eliot the Nobel Prize in 1948, follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. He employs literary and cultural allusions from the western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, time and conjuring a vast range of cultures and literatures.

4) Is it possible to read 'The Waste Land' as a Pandemic Poem?

The epic of the modernism ‘The Waste Land’. When it came out there was a time of Spanish flu, between the time of WW1 and WW2. Even when we want to look at this kind of sight we should know the author’s biography surely. During that time people were writing the letters and by those letters we can find their physical and mental states. 

By the letters of Eliot we can find that Eliot and his wife caught the virus in Dec 1918 in the second wave of the pandemic. Also many members of family died in the influenza of the pandemic. Now we can say that it was too much effect to Eliot’s state of mind and mantle condition while writing this “long epidemic of domestic influenza”. He had not good relationship with his wife because sort of personal sexual interrupting and wife’s relations with other men even. we can see by his own letters. It influenced Eliot’s mind even he was suffered from physical problem. “I have simply had a sort of collapse; I slept almost continuously for two days….I feel very weak and exhausted.” In Letter to Henry from Eliot. This statement is showing his health condition very clearly. “A new form of influenza… which leaves extreme dryness and a bitter taste in the mouth” …“hot rainless sprint” – Loddon Letter in The Dial (july1921). There were symptoms of the flu like people were becoming tasteless and frightened, fever in the body. He suffered from nervous breakdown in 1921. We can find this kind of imaginaries in the poem. Critics have studied this poem by many various aspects or the dimensions but one of them ‘Viral Context’ they did not seen. In the whole poem we can not find the direct reference of war and pandemic as well as. Might, the reason can be that whenever writer write or they paint the words, there is must ongoing journey of unconscious thought process. By the driving flow of all the aspects they write, which are unconscious or subconscious. Many critics are dealing with the idea of the war fragments though we may say that, in the part of the poem Eliot has portrayed the same thing by post-pandemic consciousness, according to Elizabeth Outka.

We can observe influenza of The Waste Land by vivid terms. To prove the roots of pandemic in the poem. ‘A delirium logic’, when we see the poem we can find that there are many images in that collage and those are not to connected easily to each other. We have to connect to get sense of the whole idea of the poem. As well as there are many speckers who have mentioned something in weird tones. By this term we can understand that if we have fever then in our dream there is total frightened way or the disturbed flow of images. 

‘The miasmic residue of the pandemic experience’, in the beginning lines we can find the this kind of negative atmosphere like all the bodies are suffering from the acute illnesses. ‘Feverish hallucination’ specks about the symptoms of the feverish body. “ Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest burning” these lines may showing the bodily pain of one’s own.

‘Fragmentary language’ by this term, we should look to the original line of the poem in the image of ‘A Game of Chess’. Here he might experienced the isolation on own self as he portrayed the broken language. Then he went towards spiritual crisis by the thirst of water. He uses like ‘If there were water and no rock’ it is symbolically well designed thought of draught of spiritual sense of living. It throws light towards pandemic delirium rather than war. The poem’s form and content both are equally dealing with the spiritual, psychological, physical and mental aspects of poet through pandemic lens.

‘Water and Wind’, by using this term we can say that in the pandemic time everywhere there is virus as we see the line like “Under the brown fog, the wind under the door, what is the wind doing, the wind crosses the brown land, only the wind’s home” “Fear death by water; the drowned Phoenician sailor , death by water”. ‘Tolling of Bells’, this symbolizing the constant deaths of people who lives in the domestic streets and they are dying by the pandemic. It’s not talk about the battle field cause bells tolling was not happening for whose they are died in the battel fields.

In the current pandemic we all are fighting very individually rather than it belongs to the our social decorum though it is more social. Somewhere we are not able to read even very clear glasses with transparency. Even we were not aware about the vocab of pandemic before it happened. 

Furtherly, there is the mentioned of “Death and Bones”. How people were living deadly-enervated living. To get the clear idea of the death we should jump to the image of pervasive death and bones echo images and accounts from the era. Elizabeth Outka referred the painting of A Grim Reaper by Australian artist Alfred Kubin to justify the image of influenza. ‘Viral Resurrection’, in this by influenza not only effect to the people’s body but the landscapes, cities, minds, vegetation world, language etc infected by virus. We can feel in parts of the poem. ‘ Silence, forgetting, after life’, poems talks about war somehow but contently a representation of the silence that surrounded the pandemic. 

As we seen above that, It's difficult way to capture the quality of pandemic in the particular way of writing and more difficult to read any produced text by the using the pandemic lens. 

THANK YOU !