“The waste land” is the most revolution poem of the modernist period. It was written in 1922, it is a crucial date in the development for all world literature and for British literature in particular. Right from the analysis of the title one should ask to himself why the title is “The waste land”. The poem starts with a quotation from Petronio’s  “Satyricon” where somebody asks to the Sybil what she wants. She answers that she wants to die. There is a dedication for Ezra Pound, an images poet, a poet who greatly invalidated the role of the poem in literature. Eliot considers Ezra Pound  a very good artesian. “The waste land” consists of 5 sections. The first one is called “the burial of the dead”, the second  “a game of chess”, the third “the fire sermon” , the fourth “death by water” and the fifth “what the thunder said”. The title sets the atmosphere of the all poem. When T.S. Eliot publics his lines the critics ask him to explain the meaning of his lines adding some notes to the poem. Eliot did this but the notes didn’t explain nothing. It is a poem that adopts intertestuality as his device. He was the first using juxtaposition in quotation. He represents a revolution because before “the waste land” nobody has written in this way. The dramatic monologue was first used by Robert Browning, a Victorian poet and it was also used by Alfred Tennyson. it convey the typical cosmopolite attitude of modernist poem.

The first question that the intelligent reader should ask to himself is why April is the cruelest month. The speaking voice says that April is the cruelest month because it breads lilacs out of the dead land. It doesn’t products fruits or flowers. April mixes memory and desire; memory refers to something you have already done and desire refers to something you expects from the future. April stires dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot is reeling on the semantic level of the poem. In romantic poem you have observation of the nature. He describes spring but the atmosphere is sad, dull, mysterious. He speaks about a land that is dead (lilacs are flowers generally used for funerals).

The atmosphere of the death is set right from the start in the poem, the title is “The burial of the dead”. He speaks about April but it seems winter.The first lines are taken from Chaucer’s “Canterbury tales” and they are upside down (“April is the sweetest month”). Chaucer is the first poet that uses English in literature. The poem has got an innovative idea of time. Memory and desire exist only in the present. Present is the results of the past’s experiences and of the future’s expectation, time is made of moments. The poet is not interested in lauding the country, but he’s interested in returning existence’s atmosphere. The lines of “The burial of the dead” is made to convey a feeling, a mood. Right from the start there is an atmosphere. The first section sets a sad, negative atmosphere about a spring landscape. The land of spring sound more a land of winter. it is a land where memory and desire meet each other. The poem is the results of the juxtaposition of scenes, there isn’t a story. The link between the different scene s is given by the atmosphere.

The second scene is about a moment when it was raining, it is a memory. The speaking voice remembers this. There are no proves that the speaking voice of the first scene is the same of the second scene. The speaking voice tells about memory.