Primi versi di “The Waste Land” di T.S. Eliot.

T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" demonstrates a religious sentiment about the increasing lack of restraint in human sexuality.

The first lines of the text refer to the prospect of sex in a negative light: "April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land mixing/ Memory and desire."

Spring, traditionally the time of rejuvenation and rebirth, in this case is compared to the  "dead land." The act of breeding is much less harmonious than tradition would state.

April in the cycle of seasons is the spring, when everything blooms. Eliot considers it the cruellest month, and starts talking about the "burial of the dead." He took the verses from the beginning of Chaucer ‘s Canterbury Tales, because he is the first writer to have used the English language for poetical purposes. But if Chaucer had a positive vision, Eliot has a psychological view and he marks the presence of a regeneration that cannot happen.