Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
T.S. Eliot – The Burial of the Death
T. S. Eliot is the most representative poet of Modernism. He wrote The Waste Land in 1922. The test starts with a quotation in Latin from the Satyricon of Petronius. The character of the quotation is the Cumaean Sybil, who had asked to Apollo to become immortal and now says that she wants to die. The same theme of death is underlined by the title of the first section: The Burial of the Death, because of the words “burial” and “death”.
The poem is organised in five sections. The Burial of the Dead is the first one. The atmosphere the title and subtitle suggest is one of death, sterility, this means no regeneration and rebirth. As a matter of fact the extract we read have, of course, a negative atmosphere. The extract, which speaks of April, provides the image of the waste land. Eliot thinks April is the cruellest month quoting Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but turning its meaning upside down. April is the sweetest month, because it’s a Spring’s month, generally associated to regeneration after Winter and rebirth of the land and nature. The death atmosphere is conveyed by the immage of April as the worst month and of the land, which is dead. In addiction to this it breeds Lilacs, that are flowers generally not collected to April, because they are used in funerals. It also mixes the memory of the past, of the Winter and the desire of the future, of the Summer, and probably it may be so cruel because it makes promises, it won’t satisfy. "Mixing memory and desire" represents the Modernist conception of time which considers present as a mixture of past (memory) and future (desire). So, there’s a simultaneous concept of time as it happened in Modernism. In addiction to this, April generates dull roots instead of flowers. The expression "Winter kept us warm" is an apparent paradox, which can be explain thinking that people generally stay at home in Winter, near the fire protected from the cold and also from the other people. As a matter of fact they also stay inside themselves.
Also the snow has a particular meaning in this context. It makes people forget everything. Because it covers and hide everything.
The intelligent reader can find two semantic fields: life (roots, breeding, stirring, spring, feeding, summer and warm) and death (cruellest, dead, dried and burial). In the poem everything seems to be turn upside down. As a matter of fact April is not a month of birth. The scene is unusual, strange, it’s atypical, new.
The poem is organised by the juxtaposition of scenes, which create a dramatic effect. The atmosphere is one of anxiety, not understanding, displacement.