READING T. S. ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND

         The Waste Land is complex poem, written by T. S. Eliot in 1922.

It is structured into five different sections (“The Burial Of The Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”, “What the Thunder said”), apparently detached  but substantially connected by intertextual references to Western and Eastern culture and myth.

The use of the language recalling the one of  Europe's ancestors, the organisation of themes is modern and new techniques, such as free verse, are experimented by the poet so that The Waste Land provides a good example of what a “great work of art” should be like. Indeed, it conforms and coheres to traditional works, being innovative and creates a new order among literary texts. In addition it is a “cultural document” with a high level of meaning since it includes various elements of cultures. The Waste Land alludes to pagan traditions such as the legend of the Holy Grail, the ancient vegetation myths and fertility ceremonies, as well as to the Christian themes of Christ’s death and resurrection and to different mythological and religious material and characters such as the Greek Sybil or Buddha.

The title of the poem suggests the idea of desolation, suffering and destruction and creates an atmosphere of death, in which surviving sounds heroic. It can both allude to human condition in an anthropological dimension and to cultural degradation from  the timeless and the temporal point of view.

The poem opens with a quotation from Petronio’s Satyricon, also a complex text providing a variety of generes and writing techniques and portraying an ignorant, superficial and degraded society. In has the function of an epigram, recalling Greek origins of Western culture and its own end. Actually, since the Sybil, who is symbol of the future, cannot predict anything but death, a tragic atmosphere is suggested.

It follows the dedication for Ezra Pound, an American, imagist poet, who moved to London. Since Eliot asked him to read his work, and Pound suggested him to cut out the narrative sequences in the poem, the dedication says “For Ezra Pound/il miglior fabbro”. Eliot accepted the suggestion signing an important passage from the narrative method to the mythical method in poetry, as well it happened in J. Joyce’s fiction.

Therefore, in Eliot’s writing the technique of juxtaposition of scenes dues to the choice of the myth as a structural principle.

         The first section of the poem is called The Burial of the Dead and alludes to the religious ritual of funeral. As a result, death is the beginning of any rebirth.

The section bases on the juxtaposition of scenes, which alludes to the fragmentary nature of contemporary life and creates a dramatic effect.  

To begin with, an unusual idea of Spring is presented in verses 1-7. April is said to be the cruellest month, winter is paradoxically linked to heat (winter kept as warm) and life suffers from the cruelty of Nature.

Sounds, repetitions of –r, -d, –n, -g convey the idea of sterility as well as images (the dead land, dull roots, dried tubers) refers to the semantic field of dry, arid Nature. Therefore Nature does not generate life but it kills it with a destructive strength.

In the scene, Eliot reworks the theme of Spring so that he traditional symbol of the power of life from Lucretius to A. Botticelli and G. Chaucer becomes paradigm of sufferance and struggle between life and death. Indeed, the land is without water, so it is impure, sterilized and also flowers chosen mention the action of death on life. As a result the text opens with the opposition between aridity and fertility, between rock and water.

In verses 8-18 the scene has changed: a group of children are kept by rain, stop and go on in sunlight. Then, the poet refers to the aristocratic habit to spend winters in south. Last but not least, the poet’s passion for reading is revealed. It may be considered an alternative and a possible hope for future in the contemporary destruction.

It follows another scene containing images of sterile Nature (roots that clutch, dead tree, the dry stone no sound of water), in which Christ is present as Son of man. In addition the image of a red rock, suggesting dryness, becomes a metaphor for lack of hope, spiritual dryness and meaningless of modern life. In particular, verse 30 (I will show you fear in a handful of dust) clearly refers to life as a non-sense condition.

The following scene has also changed presenting a young, paralyzed girl, called the hyacinth girl. Another idea of woman is presented with Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, ironically said to be the wisest woman in Europe. Actually, she becomes a symbol of vulgarity in the world. She can be associated to “women talking of Michelangelo” in The Love song of John Alfred Prufrok: they convey the idea of degradation of culture and vulgarity. In addition cards alludes to superstition of men, lack of improvement for the future and unfaith in rationality.

From verse 60 the scene moves to an unreal city: the City in London is presented as a surreal place, where alienated people walk in a foggy morning (under the brown fog of a winter dawn). They are like the souls of the damned in Dante’s Inferno (a crowd, so many x2, sight, short and infrequent) and fog alludes to confusion and ignorance too. The scene conveys the idea of an alienated, meaningless human condition. The scene reminds me to E. Munch’s Sera nel corso Karl Johann because the same atmosphere of isolation, alienation and meaningless is evocated.

The poem ends with the poet’s speaking voice calling E. Pound (crying: Stetson!), as if they had been friends at Mylae. Eliot recalls the significant battle between Romans and Carthaginians in 260 BC, which signed the supremacy of Western culture and the beginning of the inclusion of oriental elements in Latin tradition. Finally, the poet presents a symbolical image: a buried, dead body may bloom, so the dog digging up should stay away. It reveals the deep meaning of the section: re-generation and re-birth go after death. As a result, it is linked to the ritual of funeral, which adds to meaning to The Burial of The Dead.

         All in all, the poem is an anthropological quest, investigating the significance of culture in a degraded world.