THE WASTE LAND

“The Waste Land” is a modernist poem written by T.S. Eliot. It was published in 1922 and it is considered one of the most famous work because of the new kind of poetry: intertextuality and mythical method. In fact there are a lot of quotations, references and allusions in different languages to ancient myths and traditions.

The waste land is Eliot’s representation of a journey from the modern world in all its decay and sterility. The journey is a quest, a search for the Holy Grail which represent a solution for the problems of man.

The poem is organized into 5 sections:

§  The Burial of The Dead (insisting on the basic opposition between sterility and fertility)

§  A Game of Chess (the same desolating feeling of lack of love is present in different place)

§  Death by Water (where mysticism provides suggestions for a regeneration)

§  The Fire Sermont (which reinforces the idea of spiritual shipwreck)

§  What the Thunder Said (the thunder reveals God’s speech

Starting from the title, the intelligent reader doesn’t expect something positive; in fact it means “La terra desolata”. The title conveys the idea that life in the waste land is not guaranteed and it is a sort of living death and it may refer to the world devastated by the First World War (external meaning) or it may refer to the devastation of the spirit of the modern man (internal meaning). Besides the title is connected to the legend of The Fisher King. The legend tells about a king who was sterile: for this reason all the land around becomes sterile.

Eliot opens the poem inserting an epigraph from Petronio’s Satyricon and a dedication to Ezra Pound. The epigraph is written in Latin and Greek language and it deals with the Cumana’s Sybil who was a prophetess because she was able to see the past, the present and the future. Apollo gave to her eternal life but her body grew old. In the epigraph there is the scene when some young people ask her what she wants and she answers that she wants to die. The Sybil says this terrible words because she feels frustrated for her condition.

Eliot dedicated the poem to Ezra Pound because she suggested that Eliot should cut the narrative parts of his poem so that left its place to myth narration because was important the juxtaposition of scenes which made the effect dramatic. The result is a poem in which the principal structure is made of the myth and the atmosphere which render the juxtaposition of scenes. He adds a phrase “il miglior fabbro” which is a quotation from Dante’s Purgatorio and it is written in Italian language.

Now I’m going to analyze the first section: “The Burial Of The Dead”

The Burial Of The Dead means “La sepoltura dei morti” and deals with the cycle of birth and death, connected to the nature and the opposition between fertility and sterility. It comes from a ritual of the Anglican church.

The section is organized in different scenes.

The first scene is about the cycle of seasons and right from the start the reader meet words that create an atmosphere of life in death. The first line sets the atmosphere: “April is the cruelest month”: frustrate desire of regeneration. This line is very important because it is an allusion to Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”; but while in Chaucer's work April has positive value, here acquires a very negative connotation. April is cruel because it promises a regeneration that will not come and it generates flowers used in funerals. On the other hand, “winter kept us warm” means that winter has got a positive value: people stay at home to find warm and protection. People need protection because they fell alone. Then the poet said “summer surprised us”: it underlines that people are surprised in front of the arrival of summer because they were still waiting for a regeneration.

The second scene is about the memory of childhood. The place is Starnbergersee (a lake near Munich). A woman remembers her childhood when she stayed at the arch-duke's and was on a sled with her cousin. They were in the mountains and she remembered that only in the mountains she felt free (memory and desire). Eliot wants to underline that people need freedom and that they do not stop to go in search of it. The scenes are kept together by a general atmosphere that seems to be the same.

The third scene is linked to the nature and it is presented by a question which creates the atmosphere: "what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?". Then there is a quotation taken from Ezekiel’s pace in the Bible; he, adopts the content to the dramatic monologue, speaks to “the son of man” and said “you can not say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images”. The following words convey a dramatic image of nature which seems to be dead. There are only stones without water but he says to the modern man that “I will show you fear in a handful of dust". (after death all becomes dust).

The fourth scene starts with a quotation taken from “Tristan and Isolda” by Wagner. There is a sing of sailor in German language that is addressed to his girlfriend. She replays saying “I could not speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing... the silence". She is unable to speak and she is unable to understand if she is lives or not.

The fifth scene recalls a famous clairvoyante Madame Sosostris.

Eliot wants to underline the difference between the fortune tellers of the past and the fortune tellers of the present. More important were the first one because they knew everything and because people went to them to ask something important. On the other hand, now, people go to fortune tellers to know about life, fortune and love: insignificant things.

Madame Sosostris shows some cards: the drowned Phoenician Sailor, Belladonna, The Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations, the man with three staves, the Wheel, The one-eyed merchant, The blank card and the Hanged Man.