The Waste Land

The Burial of the Dead [lines 35-76]

While hyacinths are symbol of death, in the scene of the “hyacinths girl” the atmosphere seems to be changed: arms are full of flowers and hair are wet recalling the contraposition between objective correlatives (water and rock). But, suddenly the speaking voice displays the true essence of life: all certainties are crumbled (“I was neither living nor dead”), there is nothing to believe in (“I knew nothing…the silence”). The following intertextual quotation (“Oed’ und leer das Meer”) is taken from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde once again and is aimed at reinforcing the sense of emptiness and desolation of the world through the image of the sea.

The following scene focuses on Madame Sosostris, a “famous clairvoyante”; the clairvoyant symbolizes the research of new points of reference (the Modernist quest) in an historical period influenced by Darwin’s theory. Madame Sosostris predicts the future through cards that are taken from past works of art: for instance “the drowned Phoenician Sailor (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)” recalls Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “The Lady of the Rocks” may be referred to da Vinci’s Monna Lisa. It is important to notice that predictions seem to be right as shown by the prophetic words “Fear death by water” where Death by Water is the title of the fourth section.

The last scene takes place in the “Unreal City”, the industrialized London of the early 20^th century. The definition “Unreal City” is taken from Baudelaire’s description of Paris. The city seems to be populated by ghosts and everyone cares only about himself (“and each man fixed his eyes before his feet”). In addition London seems to be compared to Dante’s Inferno where the London Bridge may represent Acheron crossed by sinners. The figure of Stetson ends the first section. Stetson represents Modernist’s view of Time: he is at the same time one of the ghosts who cares only about himself in London and a soldier who died in Mylae. In addition theme of fertility returns in the last lines, where the speaking voice asks Stetson about his garden. Nevertheless, questions seem to display that reblossom comes from death (Stetson planted a corpse in his garden). Questions create a link between the beginning and the end of the section that seems to be constructed in a circular way. The scene ends with a quotation from the preface of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal that accuses the reader to sharing poet’s stupidity, sin, evil and suffering from boredom.