THE WASTE LAND, WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

Comprehension

     In the first lines, images refer to the days after Christ's death, before his and Resurrection

Gardens, agony, the shouting, the crying, prison and palace and reverberation, he who was living is now dead hint at Christ's imprisonment and his Crucifixion

We who were living are now dying suggests the hopelessness of humanity and adds to the crisis of values and human decay.

The second section is dedicated to the disciples' difficult journey after Christ's death. Images are based on the opposition between rock and water, the objective correlatives adopted by Eliot to convey the contrast between sterility and life:

No water, only rock/ mountains (frequent repetitions) connote the physical and ardours journey

The images of someone behind disciples, Who is the third who walks always beside you?/There is always another one walking beside you/But who is that on the other side of you?, hint at the theme of Resurrection and to human inability to believe in spiritual power

In addition the following scene suggests  the beginning of the cultural decay with particular reference to the end of civilization

What is that sound high in the air

Over endless plains, cracked earth, flat horizon

Falling towers, ..., unreal

References to the Holy Grail legend are provided

in the faint moonlight, the tumbled graves, the chapel, the empty chapel, cry bones

At the end, the contemporary decay of European culture is presented through  the reported speech between men and the Thunder, representing God, according to the Hindu fable (Datta, Dayadhvam, Damayata).

Hope inspiring fragments are mixed to prophecies of death and destruction.

 Images associated to sterility:

• He who was living is now dead/We who were living are now dying
• Here is no water but only rock/Rock and no water
• Mountains of rock without water
• Sweat is dry
•  Dead mountains mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
• Dry sterile thunder without rain
•  Mudcracked houses
•  Dry grass

Interpretation

The Thunder's message is:

not to be egoistic, the impossibility to give to other is terribly accused as inhumanity

be compassionate, sharing sufferance with others

be self-controlled in the suffering

"These fragments" hints at a fragmented, cracking and disordered idea of the world, so the expression is a connotation of the human condition in the present. In particular, the fragments are pieces of supportive information, cultural examples of knowledge that can guide humanity

The hope for renewal comes to surface in the last lines. The end of the journey corresponds to the end of a fundamental experience to grow up.

Rebirth is presented just as hope. Indeed, the use of Sanskrit may recall an ideal, global peace to be reached. The final repetition of the world "shanith" is representative of the need for universal communication, conveying the idea of order an unity.

In the texts some of Eliot's ideas, expressed in his essays, are present:

•-          the need of unity and communication in view of a universal order

•-          the myth as an ordering principle to try to give meaning to human existence

•-          culture as a value to unveil human nature

•-          religion as a possibility to be regenerated in peace

I am fascinated by Eliot's ability to use language to convey meanings. His  experimental poetry perfectly fits to content. Indeed, Eliot shows to be an individual talent since he experiments new forms of poetry, based of free verse, juxtaposition of scenes and resorting to the mythical method and referring to past culture.

Eliot's poetry may seem obscure because of:

•-          the juxtaposition of scenes from different contexts

•-          evocative use of the language

•-          various cultural references and quotations

•-          presence of a connective thread behind surface

Virginia Woolf underlines the apparent fragmentation of Eliot's writing. She also confesses her difficulty in reading his poetry owing to the thread behind images and scenes juxtaposed.

T.S. Eliot, V. Woolf and J. Joyce are similar in experimenting new techniques of writing to better represent the human contemporary condition and the quest for the meaning in human existence.