The Waste Land – by T. S. Eliot

Analysis based on class notes  

TITLE: considering the title, the possible questions the intelligent reader can make are:

What kind of land the author refers to? The author refers to a waste land.

How do you imagine a waste land? I imagine a sterile and an uninhabited land. 

Why the land is waste? 

QUOTATION: first, after the title, there is a quotation in both Greek and Latin language. The Latin one refers to Sibilla Cumana, the priestess of Apollo and a prophet. So, Eliot is referring to mythological figures and to the religious code. Since the quotation is in Latin and Greek, Eliot assumes that the ideal reader is a person who can understand English, Latin and Greek and therefore the ideal reader must be a well-read person.

DEDICATION: “For Ezra Pound, il miglior fabbro” (the best kind of artisan)

An artisan transforms nature in art crafts and Ezra Pound is the founder of the Imagist Poets, who give nature visual images.

FIRST SECTION: The Burial of The Dead 

The title suggests a melancholic, sad, disquieting and mysterious tone and refers to the religious code.

TEXT: April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.

Analysis:

• April is the cruellest month is a contradiction because April is generally associated to the beginning of spring, when nature reborn. April is also quoted at the beginning of Joffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which represent the origins of English Literature and therefore, it implies Eliot reefers to the start of English Literature. But there is a difference: Chaucer says April is the sweetest month. Therefore, he refers to April according to the traditional idea of it. On the other side, Eliot says it is the cruelest month and after that, he puts a coma which implies a pause in the reading when the reader is expected to think about what he/she has just read. 
• Lilacs are flowers generally associated to the death because you usually find it at funerals. This explains a connection with the title of the section.
• mixing Memory and desire: the words underlines the typical Modernist feature of a simultaneous view of time. The author is speaking at the present which is the time of the consciousness and through it you can relive the past. But memories and expectations does not allow you to live the present to the fullest and the idea of not living refers, in a way or another, to the idea of dying. Therefore, there is another connection with the title of the section.
• Eliot uses the classic stereotype of taking into consideration the nature, but he presented it as a sterile land. It follows that it does not produce anything, only lilacs which refer to death.