T.S. ELIOT, The Waste Land (1920)

The adjective "waste" in the title makes the reader think about desolation, and its connection with the noun "land" create a death image: a land with a water's lack, a perfectly picture carried on for the whole extract by the two objective correlatives, the water and the rocks. In particular the water is the purification symbol according to the Church, a field  from which are taken the most text's references, such as the Epigraph and the quotation from Petronio's Satyricon, the first section's title The Burial of the Dead (taken from the religious opera Dante's Purgatory)the two Biblical expressions "Son of man" (line 20) and  "dead tree gives no shelter" (line 23) and finally the Tristan and Isolde quotation (lines: 30-34, written in German). But more than the others the girl's name: Marie, like the Virgin Marie. Of course the link between the opening quotations with the Church sounds strange. But, you have to think the Sybil connection with the dead's world and the funeral's image: a Christian concept. Then, according to Eliot's culture idea, maybe he made this comparison to emphasize the Christianity's pagan components. And in addition, the quotation engages one of the most important Christian concepts: the death as a way of regeneration and rebirth, like Jesus' one. Last but not least, the Sybil is she who perfectly knows past, present and future, like God or a human God (Jesus).  And it is linked to Eliot's idea of tradition, like Chaucer's quotation: Madame Sosostris is a clairvoyante quoted in line 43 in order to say that even that days the Sybil were alive in these persons' works.

Moving on to the Ezra Pound dedication, it characterizes him like "the better craftsman" with reference to his work on The Waste Land: he cut the extra narrative parts which were too much.

The effective poem starts defining April "the cruelest month". This is a reference to Chaucer, the first English poet who use English as a literary language, like Eliot wants to go back till the origins. But, there's a difference because for him April was the sweetest month, according to Spring and flowers' rebirth. Instead Eliot associates it to the lilacs' rebirth: flowers in the death color, violet. And it's for this  difference itself that Eliot appears innovative: maintaining the dead one's alive in the verses, but with some changes.  Secondly, he indirectly quotes Joyce too: the same approach in the previous texts, their upside-down's use.

The next image which comes out is the inability. Eliot creates the king's inability of fertilizing the loved woman: the roots are dull because they seem to sleep and the tubers won't grow up because of their infertility. This is a microcosm of the land, the waste one which is not fertilized by water.

Furthermore there's Eliot idea of Winter: it's warm because of its cold, that is people attitude to stay at home, the most protective place.  And not so much understand this characteristic, like the group of guys in line 8, who tries to avoid the rain.

In line 12 there's a German sentence, like a Nazism's  one, that is Eliot had already understand the future, like a Sybil. This, underlined by lines 31-34, makes the reader conscious of Eliot's pessimism. This doesn't mean he was a nihilistic person, but just an awarded one.

Then there's Milazzo's battle reference. This was a great battle of 206 B.C. between Romans and Carthage. And two years later Roman's religion became an occident worship. This is an expedient to connect the temporal and the time, like the quotations at the beginning.

The handful of dust in line 30 is Evelyn Waugh novel's title, and it remains to the funeral ritual too: the priest is used to say that we were dust and we'll become dust again. An image linked to the hyacinthus' one in the next verses, that is the flowers of death put in the graveyards. In addition it could refer to Joyce's Evelyn: the character's realism emphasized by this image. This could be possible for the author name Evelyn but even for the Irish Girl named in the next lines.

From line 43 to 55 perfectly comes out the Impersonality technique, both in content than in language. Indeed there's a series of vague images of the cards, incomprehensible for they who don't know anything about them. Secondly the Wheel, the symbol of faith and continuous movement, of suddenly changes and instability.

Then, like in the whole poem, the water and rocks images: dying with water when it is necessary to live for the land. This is another vague expression, that is the water is an instrument to live or to die?

Moreover, the unreal City: unreal for the fog which makes boarders difficult to be seen. But even this is vague: if the City were the City of London as it seems, why should it be unreal? And then, is there are people like us who are moving there tiring because it's early and they have to go to work, why should it be unreal?

All these points and questions with a unique answer given in line 54: "I don't find".