MCorte - T.S.Eliot's Output and Metaphysical Poetry - The Burial of the Dead

 The Burial of the Dead is the first section of The Wasteland by T.S.Eliot. It opens with a quotation from Petronio'Satyricon and a dedication to Ezra Pound, Eliot's friend: he is called as "il miglior fabbro", another quotation from Dante's Purgatorio(in fact Dante is very loved by Eliot).
The title of this sequence refers to the ritual of funeral and it represents the main theme of the section, that is the presence of Death, in nature and humanity.
This section is divided in four stanzas. The first one is opened by the phrase "April is the cruelest month", a quotation from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. This is ironic because in the stanza Eliot describes rebirth of nature. Moreover Eliot uses lilacs as symbols to indicate memory and the past and also they are connected to renaissance of nature in spring. This stanza makes contrast with the following ones where instead there will be images of death and loneliness.
In fact in the second stanza Eliot refers to elements of a lonely and dead landscape. In this way it emerges idea of Death in nature. In this scenes there are the themes of desolation and loneliness, so the poet makes reference to feeling to be lost. For this Eliot inserts a quotation from Tristano and Isotta, representing the hopeless love of these lovers. In this case it becomes symbol of loss.
The third stanza refers to a necromancer called Madame Sosostris. She is described as a wise woman. Necromancy is a tecyhnique used since antique times, but in the Modernism it has the meaning of representing decay of the Modern culture( a necromancy is the wisest of the people) but also unsecurity of Modernist people and intellectuals. In this way it takes idea of loneliness from previous stanza and brings it from Nature to the humanity.
The last stanza refers to the city of London, called as unreal city. It means London represents the place where dead walking. This is a condemn to the end of human life, or the end of sense of life. In that city people are imprisoned and sad, so they have no sense to live. Eliot described Death in nature, but these people are apparently living, instead they are as dead. The final verses are another quotation, from Les Fleurs de Mal.
Eliot uses a language full of symbols and quotation. In this way he expresses his attention to the symbolical meaning and also his interest for the past. In fact using quotations, he tries to establish a connection between past and present: in fact Eliot makes particular references to the Middle Age, where man was sure and unique; moreover in the Middle Age there are the origins of English literature(Chaucer). Eliot refers also the Elizabethian Age that is the age where the tention of works keeped together and the individual didn't live in his own. Eliot's language is not easy to understand for these reasons because the reader can be disorientated by using symbols and quotations. For this it needs the reader has to know the quotations to understand meaning of the Burial of the Dead.