THE WASTE LAND: The Burial of the Dead T.S. Eliot

 Notes and Analysis

1st part - Translation:

Aprile è il più mese più crudele, genera

Lillà dalla terra morta, mescolando

Ricordo e desiderio, sollecitando

Le radici soffocate dalla pioggia di primavera.

L'inverno ci tiene al caldo, ha coperto La terra con neve che tutto copre, alimentando

Una vita misera con secchi tuberi.

L'estate ci sorprese, giunse sullo Starnbergersee

Con uno scroscio di pioggia: noi ci fermammo sotto il colonnato,

E continuammo alla luce del sole, nel Hofgarten,

E bevemmo caffè, e parlammo per un’ora.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

E quando eravamo bambini e stavamo presso l'arciduca,

Mio cugino mi portò sulla slitta,

Ed io ero spaventata. Mi disse, Marie,

Marie, tieniti forte. E andammo giù.

Tra le montagne, là ci si sente liberi.

La maggior parte della notte leggo, d'inverno vado al sud.

Quali radici si afferrano, quali rami crescono

Da queste macerie di pietra? Figlio dell'uomo,

Tu non puoi dire, o immaginare, perché conosci soltanto

Un cumulo di immagini infrante, dove batte il sole,

E l'albero morto non offre riparo, lo stridere del grillo nessun conforto,

L'arida pietra nessun suono d'acqua. C’è soltanto

Ombra sotto questa roccia rossa.

After the opening scene and after the epigraph to Sybilla, T. S. Eliot provides the reader with a desolate vision of nature. The image of the LAKE is important: in 1886 the king Ludwig II had drowned and so the lake (Starnbergersee) became the symbolical image of what goes under the name of “death by water”. The idea is also connected to a quotation from Tristan und Isonde that the reader will come across in lines 31-34 and 42 where the text hints at the figure of a king who is like the fisher king of the Graal legend: sterility.

There is an atmosphere of death wich is also clearly introduced by the title of the 1st section of the work (The Burial of the Dead). It is the name of a religious servicewhich is celebrated when somebody dies.

The intelligent reader understands right from the start that the dramatic monologue works on the opposition of sterility and fertility, death and life, and takes into consideration the possibility of a regeneration.

Line 8 displays the verb “surprised us”.

The second scene is set in summer and it is a record of the memory: the speaking voice remembers they took sheltered under the colonnade and they had some coffee and talked.

Dramatic monologue --> the speaking voice is not the poet.

Through dramatic monologue poetry draws out consciousness. Memory of childhood: when the speaking voice together with her cousin were staying at archduke’s house. The scene: they went on a sleigh.

Juxtaposition of scenes: memories, events. The scenes are kept together by a general atmosphere that seems not to alterate, it reveals to be the same. The next scene is again a scene of dryness (sterility).

The idea of nature is recalled by the image of roots and branches. The lines also hints at the Bible (“son of man”). In the Bible Eliot finds a very fertile contain of symbols and images appearing in all his literary work. Correlative object: ground (ROCK) and WATER