Name :- Sejal N. Solanki
Course & Year :- M.A. Sem 3(2019-2021)
Roll No. :- 25
Enrollment No. :- 2069108420200037
Paper :- The Modernist Literature
Topic :- The Waste Land
Email :- sejal.solanki3107@gmail.com
Submitted :- Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir
:- Department of English
:- M.K.B. University.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T.S.Eliot (1888- 1956) was an essayist, poet, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic. He belonged to an old Yankee family. He was born in St.Louis, Missoure. Later on in 1914 at the age of 25 he left USA and since 1927 he was a British citizen. He was a modernist writer. He brought Greek Chorus in modern poetry that start with striking title-----
“Nam sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis Meis
Vidi in ampulla pendere, ET cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat ill: apothanein thelo.”
His works:
Some of his well-known poems are:
ü The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock 1915 ( this poem is seen as his masterpiece in modern literature)
The Waste Land 1922
The Hollow Men 1925
Ash Wednesday 1930
Four quartets 1945
He also wrote plays:
Sweeney Agonistes
Murder in the Cathedra
The Rock
The Family Reunion
The confidential Clerk
The Elder statesman
He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 and Order of Merit 1948
The Waste Land:
This poem is widely regarded as “one of the most important poems of the 20th century” and central texts in Modernist poetry. It was published in 1922. It contains 434 lines. It was first seen in the UK in the October issue of The Criterion. In the U.S. it was issued in ‘The Dial’. It contains famous phrases like
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
The Wasteland follows the legend of the ‘Holy Grail’ and ‘The Fisher King’. Many literary and cultural allusions are found in the poem. Some of the allusions of Western canon Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads are delineated. Some critics regard the poem as obscure.
“The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time and conjuring of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literature.
What is a Myth?
“A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events” (oxford dictionaries)
An exaggerated or idealized conception of a person or thing: ‘the book is a scholarly study of the Churchill myth’.
A fictitious or imaginary person or thing: ‘nobody had ever heard of Simon’s mysterious friend – Anna said he was a myth’. (oxford dictionaries)
There are many myths which can be observed in this poem. T.S Eliot’s The waste land is an important landmark in the history of English poetry and one of the most talked poems of the same Age. Here T.S Eliot described the mythical background in his poem. This mythical technique can be elaborated as given below.
· The Grail Legend
· The King Fishers
· Myth of Tiresias
The grail Legend:
The Myth about this vessel was that at have acquired medicinal and miraculous properties so the result is that it became an object for purity or one kind of devotion and worship. The lance used to pierce the sides of Christ and kept with it. But a time the original Grail was mysterious disappeared and many of the bold Knights staked their lives and then search for this vessel. It was generally believed that the grail was sometimes couldn't be found in the sky as the floating saucer but it could only the seen by those, Knight's who were virginal beauty.
Themes of the poem:
“The Waste Land” possesses many theme and all these themes have been very well elaborated by T.S Eliot, who conveys these all themes through symbolism and of course with the help of various mythical technique, here in this poem “The Waste land”, T.S Eliot indicates his ideas so it is very much difficult to understand this poem at a first reading but an individual has to read twice or thrice then and then he/she can grasp the central idea of the poem.
Here are several themes, which can be observed
· Death
· Rebirth
· Love
· Lust
· Water
· Spiritual degradation
So now let’s discussed these themes in detail.
The waste land is one of the most popular poems of the 20th century. It is written by T.S. Eliot. It has been saluted as Eliot’s masterpiece the supreme power of the poetic art in modern times. It is a poem written in the epic mold. It presents messages for our turbulent times. His use of complex symbols and imagery adds richness and variety to the texture of the poem. It is full with allusions to myth, ritual, religion, history-both past and present. These things make the poem itself a virtual “waste land”. We can see a wide range of socio-cultural, religious and secular experiences common to both an individual life and the collective life of western society. It is a truly remarkable poem that broke new ground in English poetry. There are so many themes in this poem so I would like to discuss them one by one. The themes are like death, rebirth, the seasons, love, lust, water, history etc.
Death: -
There are four sections and the two, of them “The burial of the Dead” and “Death by Water” refer specifically to this theme ‘Death’. There is complicate matter like death can mean life as in other words by dying a human being can pave the way for new lives. The poet asks his friend: “and the same way Christ, redeemed humanity and there by gave new life. The doubtful part of the poem is between life and death allusions to Dante, and especially in the limbo-like vision of the men flowing across London Bridge and through the modern city.
Life-in-death: -
The theme of the poem is the spiritual and emotional barrenness of the modern world. This theme is like the living death of the modern Waste Landers. Man has lost of vitality of spiritual and vitality of emotional. The life in modern waste land is a life-in-death, a living death. According to Eliot’s philosophy, Human being must act do either evil as good and it is better to do evil than do nothing. Modern man has lost his sense of good and evil, and this keeps him from being alive. In the modern land the people are dead. They merely exist like dead things. They work as machine. They are to be compared to such dead things as a stick, a gutter, a pipe. A life of complete inactivity is listlessness and apathy. That is way winter is welcome to them and April is the crudest of months.
Rebirth: -
We can see some images of the Christ along with the many other religious metaphors, rebirth and resurrection as central themes. The waste land lays fallow and the fisher king is powerless. The new beginning is that they needed something. Here we can take help of water, for one water can bring about that rebirth but it can also destroy. The poet turns the waste land in heaven with the climatic exchange with the skies: “Datta, Dayadhvam, and Damyata.” The poet’s sight is essentially of a world that is neither dying nor living. Hence the strength of grail can restore life and wipe the slate clean Eliot refers frequently to baptisms and to rivers in either spiritual or physical ways.
The seasons: -
The poem opens with an invocation of the month ‘April’, “April is the cruelest month.” The season spring is depicted as cruel is a curious choice on Eliot’s part. As a paradox it informs the rest of the poem to a great degree. The life brings also death. It brings the seasons fluctuate from one state to another. They maintain some sort of stat is nothing everything changes like history. In there end of Eliot’s world hangs in a perpetual limbo, Waiting the dawn of a new season. We can see some aspects of seasons in the life-in-death, a life of complete inactivity, listlessness and apathy. That is why winter is welcome to them and April is the cruelest of months. It reminds them of the stirring of life and , they're dislikes to roused from their death-in-life. In this poem 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 is await their renewal each spring. Easter Sunday commemorates Jesus’ resurrection, fall's in April. The poet ironically comments here that April is the “cruelest month” and also he comments that April as the stirring of natural life and the spiritual resurrection symbolized in Easter fill humans. Today is not with hope but fear and apprehension. There are some phrases suggested the same things, like “dead land”, “dull roots ”, “dried tubers and “forgetful snow”, these four phrases suggest the barrenness of earth and vacuity of life.
Lust: -
There is the most famous episode in the poem” the waste land”. It involves a female typist’s sexual relation with a “carbuncular” man. In this poem Eliot represents the scene as something similar to a rape. This chance sexual encounter carries with it mythological luggage the violated Philomela, the blind man Tiresias who lived for a time as a woman. There is sexuality goes throughout the poem “the waste land”. It takes the center stage as a cause of calamity in the part “the fire sermon”. Here in this poem the poet acts as a lawyer “a moment’s surrender” as a part of existence in “what the thunder said”. There are seven deadly sins in Christianity and lust may be a sin. Sex may be too easy and two flourishing in Eliot’s London. There is action is still is sex that produces life, that restores-sex. In needed is sex that is not sterile. Spiritual sterility is the central motif of all these myths of the past. Besides this there is an emphasis the sanctity of sex. There is decay and spiritual degeneracy whenever the sexual function is perverted. The purpose of the sexual function is procreation and it is sanctified only in marriage. When the sexual act is separated from procreation, there is spiritual degeneracy. In modern society there is perversion of sex and hence its degeneracy. Sex has been separated from love, marriage and procreation. The sex-act has become beastly or mere animal copulation and thus there is decay and spiritual degeneracy. Hence in Eliot’s poetry man is often linked to animals. Sexual sins, perversion of sex, have always led to degeneration and decay. The sexual sins of the king fisher and his soldiers laid waste his kingdom, and ancient Thebes was laid waste because its king was guilty of the sin of incest. Sexual violence has always been there. Philomela was raped and her tongue was severed so that she may not reveal the crime. Reference to Elizabeth and Leicester in the song of the daughters of the Thames shows that sex relationship in the past also has been equally futile and meaningless.
Love: -
There are some references regarding the theme love in this poem. The first part of the poem “the burial of the dead”, in this part we can see some reference to Tristan und Isolde. The second part of the poem is “The Game of chess”. In this part there is a reference to Cleopatra and to the story of Tereus and Philomela suggest that love in the poem “the waste land”. It is often destructive. The characters Tristan and Cleopatra die while Tereus rapes Philomela and even the love for the hyacinth girl leads the poet to see and know “nothing”. The correlative love of life is found in this poem. When the poet writes regarding “hyacinth girl” and being so in love that he did not know if he was alive as dead. He was speechless. He was silence. This is an intense love that I interpret this to be more for the love of life than for love of the girl. The interest in the girl simply allows him to see the beauty of life. Joe even tries to commit suicide at one point, but he still seems to lack a real fear of death. However, Joe is the only one who begins to love his life. Joe finds his love for life through his lover, his freedom, and his that Joe comes to the realization that he has purposely ruined the life of one of his “brothers”. During the time of T.S. Eliot the people too young to come to terms with any real fear of death those people living during this time they did fear and thus their love for life was enriched. “Brothers three” never really found that fear of death they never found that true correlating love of life either.
Conclusion:-
In short the waste land at every angle reflected as a modern poem. Poem is feather on the hat of modern literature and also of modern people. But the poem has its own pros and cons. Pros in the sense it is gave the direction to the people. And cons in the sense that poems first announced as a depersonalizing of the poet but later on the secret was revealed that's poem was totally depends on the poet’s own experiences. Poet and his personal life fully reflected in the poem. Though it’s not the life of only T.S.Eliot instead of that it is reflected all the life of modern people.
There are many themes. They are very helpful to understand the whole poem very easily. There are some important aspects remain in themes so themes can be important to study any other texts.
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