THE WASTE LAND - The Burial Of The Dead (Analysis)

The Burial Of The Dead is the first section of The Waste Land. The poem starts with a quotation from Satyricon by Petronius. It is about Cuma Sybil, a classical figure who was able to know the future. After the quotation there is a dedication to Ezra Pound ("For Ezra Pound Il miglior fabbro"). Ezra Pound was an imagist poet who suggested Eliot to remove some of narrative parts from the poem.
In the first stanza Eliot describes some periods of the year (April, winter and summer) and they are associated to some memories.
In the first line Eliot subverts a quotation by Geoffrey Chaucer "April is the cruellest month". The narrator subverts the quotation because the ideal order and the absolute reality are subverted. April is the cruellest month because it promises something that can't happen. The use of quotations may represent Eliot's intention to create a link between present and past or the intention to find in the past a solution to modern problems.
The second stanza presents many images of dead and sterile nature (lilacs, flowers used in funeral, dead trees, arid rocks).
The third stanza is a German quotation from Tristan und Isolde and the fourth introduces the clairvoyant Madame Sosotris.
The final stanza is a description of London as a city of dead, as "unreal city".
Eliot represents the decline of Western society showing images of dead (lilacs, dead trees, arid rocks). The decline of the society is also underlined by the idea that a clairvoyant is the most intelligent people ("the wisest woman in Europe"), while traditionally she is considered a liar.