Research Paper : The reading of The Waste Land and The Second Coming through pandemic lens

The reading of The Waste Land and The Second Coming through pandemic lens

Emisha Ravani 

MA Semester 2 

Department of English, MKBU, 

emisharavani3459@gmail.com

Abstract: Why literary texts are correlative to the pandemic? As we are suffering from the pandemic to all aspects of society. How they are written by the poets to study through that lens? This study is dealing with the two poems The Waste Land and The Second Coming, poets like T.S.Eliot and W.B.Yeats, who were in the time of the pandemic are also studied by their biographical notes which are reflected in their works. It is the outlook to the poems through pandemic lens and try to justify the various views for that.

Key words: Pandemic, Elizabeth Outka, The Waste Land, The Second Coming

 Introduction :

When we look at bygone ages or it’s literature, We find that all literature has shown the war literature, But very few literary figures could thrown light on pandemics in the literature. Or we can say it is somewhere hidden. This section argues for a change in our reading practices, For how to read for what is hidden. We are trained in modernism to see the trauma of war but not the trauma of the pandemic.

Eliot’s death-haunted cityscapes to Yeat’s visions of a second coming. These records of literature will allow us to see the pandemic’s fragmented traces in the literature. Usually we think that wars can be more horrible for human’s death. According to sources many people recognized that the flu was more devasting that the war. The pandemic affect people by both the physical and psychological suffering. It makes our life completely changed. As well as it dragged our all sort of attentions. 

‘The Waste Land’ through pandemic lens

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. 

‘The Second Coming’ by pandemic lens 

When Elizabeth Outka says that the pandemic was not ‘forgotten’- it just went underground. When we interpret a text we always go to the showing readings we very rarely go to the hidden readings in the text. The hidden reading can be done by the author’s biographical graph. T.S.Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats, these are the writers who were affected by the flu that we can find in their works. 

Further, Elizabeth jumps to the ‘Contagion Guilt’. Here we take it as the ‘Social Contagion’, which means that automatic adoption of an emotional state of another person or group. So it is more socially rather than individually. Though disease are more individual. As we know that any pandemic happen, the social decorum very firstly will affected more. We can find the numbers of dead bodies or the all kinds of social loss during the pandemic but if we have record it by the literature then only afterwards we can find the information.

The poem starts like “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer”. It seems like there was the gyre of fluish war while 1919 when poem got published. Also it is showing the political violence in Ireland. When we look at his biography then, his wife, George, who was pregnant and caught virus, almost near to death. At that time around seventy percent pregnant women were died. One can see this incident and can say that only at that time Yeat’s wrote this poem. Because it is 5 more hallucinated when one looses loved one, and then he or she writing the emotions and feelings that one may feel by their works. If we are able to find the pessimism of pandemic in those texts. Generally, it is hard to see. 

“blood-dimmed tide”, Here we can imagine that this is the most infected imaginary of the poem to prove the pandemic reading. Just floods of blood, in the flu was bleeding from the nose, mouth, ears. Such a horrible visionary one can get by this line. “Ceremony of innocence being drowned”, when it’s his wife and unborn baby who were in the process of drowning like that. “ things are falling apart; the center cannot hold” talks about the situation of emergency in the time of pandemic or the flu.

If we want to make another reading of the poem we can do through the apocalypse vision. It leads towards the ‘ultimate destruction’ as main theme in the poem.

In both the works one cannot find easily the tone of the pandemics. In The Waste Land, there are so many images portrayed by Thomas Stearns Eliot which can be studied by another perspectives rather than the pandemic one. Like myths, allusions, real images, religion centric elements. Though it could happen in the way we have seen.

In The Second Coming , which is written by William Butler Yeats. There is also we could find the light of pandemic which has thrown by the poet’s own mind. So these are the symbols of the pandemic to look into both the poems through pandemic lens. 

Conclusion : 

So, by this observation we can have point that whichever situation we are facing in the present, if we have recorded as history of the past. We can easily interpret those texts by our times perspective which is needed there. We interpret texts by what is going on consciously in our minds. As we know that in current scenario of the pandemic, Here the pandemic interpretations are presented.

Works Cited : 

 Eliot, T. S. (n.d.). The waste land by T. S. eliot. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land 

 Onion, R. (2020, May 3). The 1918 flu pandemic killed millions. so why does its cultural memory feel so faint? Slate Magazine. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/1918-pandemic-cultural-memoryliterature-outka.html 

 Outka, E. (2020). Viral modernism: The influenza pandemic and interwar literature. Columbia University Press.

 Yeats, W. B. (n.d.). The second coming by William Butler yeats. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming