The Burial of the Dead is the first section of The Waste Land, written by T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land is a complex, erudite and cryptic poem which consists of five sections:
- The Burial of the Dead
- A Game of Chess
- The Fire Sermon
- Death by Water
- What the thunder Said.
The sections are all accompanied by T. S. Eliot's own "Notes" which explain his many varied and multicultural allusions, quotations and half - quotations.
The Waste Land begins with an excerpt from Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon, in Latin and Greek and the quotation is followed by a dedication to Ezra Pound, Eliot's colleague and friend, who played a major role in shaping the final version of the poem. So, Eliot's opening quotation sets the tone for the poem as a whole. Sibyl is a mythological figure who asked Apollo "for as many years of life as there are grains in a handful of sand" (North, 3). Unfortunately, she did not think to ask for everlasting youth. As a result, she is doomed to decay for years and years, and preserves herself within a jar. Having asked for something akin to eternal life, she finds that what she most wants is death. Death alone offers escape; death alone promises the end, and therefore a new beginning.
The title, The Burial of the Dead, is taken from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. He has been careful to lay out his central theme before the first stanza has even begun: death and life are easily blurred; from death can spring life, and life in turn necessitates death.
The poem is composed of fourth stanzas. The first one begins with a description of the seasons. April emerges as the "cruellest" month, passing over a desolate land to which winter is far kinder. Eliot shifts from this vague invocation of time and nature to what seem to be more specific memories: a rain shower by the Starnbergersee; a lake outside Munich; coffee in that city's Hofgarten; sledding with a cousin in the days of childhood. The lovely image of lilacs in the spring is here associated with "the dead land." Winter was better; then, at least, the suffering was obvious, and the "forgetful snow" covered over any memories. In spring, "memory and desire" mix; the poet becomes acutely aware of what he is missing, of what he has lost, of what has passed him by. Therefore, it emerges Eliot's vision of modern life, which is rooted in a conception of the lost ideal.
The sentence ,"Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch", which means "I'm not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, a true German", is nonsensical. The poet mentions three distinct regions of Europe, though Lithuania arguably has far more to do with Russia than with Germany. The sentence itself depends on a non sequitur, anticipating by almost a century Europe's current crisis of identity, with individual nations slowly losing ground to a collective union.
The second stanza returns to the tone of the opening lines, describing a land of "stony rubbish" - arid, sterile, devoid of life, quite simply the "waste land" of the poem's title. Eliot quotes Ezekiel 2.1 and Ecclesiastes 12.5, using biblical language to construct a sort of dialogue between the narrator -- the "son of man" -- and a higher power. The former is desperately searching for some sign of life -- "roots that clutch," branches that grow -- but all he can find are dry stones, dead trees, and "a heap of broken images."
Then, Eliot switches to German, quoting directly from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. In Wagner's opera, Isolde, on her way to Ireland, overhears a sailor singing this song, which brings with it ruminations of love promised and of a future of possibilities. This girl, perhaps one of the narrator's (or Eliot's) early loves, alludes to a time a year ago when the narrator presented her with hyacinths. In addition there is another quotation, which is taken by Tristan und Isolde. The line belongs to a watchman, who tells the dying Tristan that Isolde's ship is nowhere to be seen on the horizon.
In the third stanza the poet introduces Madame Sosostris, a "famous clairvoyante" alluded to in Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow. This fortune-teller is known across Europe for her skills with Tarot cards. The narrator remembers meeting her when she had "a bad cold." At that meeting she displayed to him the card of the drowned Phoenician Sailor: "Here, said she, is your card." Next comes "Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks," and then "the man with three staves," "the Wheel," and "the one-eyed merchant." It should be noted that only the man with three staves and the wheel are actual Tarot cards; Belladonna is often associated with da Vinci's "Madonna of the Rocks," and the one-eyed merchant is, as far as we can tell, an invention of Eliot's.
Finally, Sosostris encounters a blank card representing something the one-eyed merchant is carrying on his back - something she is apparently "forbidden to see." She is likewise unable to find the Hanged Man among the cards she displays; from this she concludes that the narrator should "fear death by water." Sosostris also sees a vision of a mass of people "walking round in a ring." Her meeting with the narrator concludes with a hasty bit of business: she asks him to tell Mrs. Equitone, if he sees her, that Sosostris will bring the horoscope herself.
Sosostris's vision of "crowds of people, walking round in a ring" is the key image in The Waste Land. They walk and walk, but go nowhere. Likewise, the inhabitants of modern London keep their eyes fixed to their feet; their destination matters little to them and they flow as an unthinking mass, decorating the metropolis in apathy.
The final stanza of this first section of The Waste Land begins with the image of an "Unreal City" echoing Baudelaire's "fourmillante cite," in which a crowd of people -- perhaps the same crowd Sosostris witnessed -- flows over London Bridge while a "brown fog" hangs like a wintry cloud over the proceedings. Eliot twice quotes Dante in describing this phantasmagoric scene: "I had not thought death had undone so many" (from Canto 3 of the Inferno); "Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled" (from Canto 4). The first quote refers to the area just inside the Gates of Hell; the second refers to Limbo, the first circle of Hell. In conclusion, the narrator sees a man he recognizes named Stetson. He cries out to him, and it appears that the two men fought together in a war. Logic would suggest World War I, but the narrator refers to Mylae, a battle that took place during the First Punic War.
So, World War I is replaced by the Punic War; therefore, Eliot seems to be arguing that all wars are the same, just as he suggests that all men are the same in the stanza's final line: "You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frère!": "Hypocrite reader! - my likeness, - my brother!" We are all Stetson; Eliot is speaking directly to us. Individual faces blur into the ill-defined mass of humanity as the burial procession inexorably proceeds.