The theme assigned to me for analysis of T.S Eliot’s epic poem The Wasteland concerned romance, sterility, and the virtuous futility of human relationships. I was able to find many examples supporting this concept, especially in the immediate beginning sections of the poem, The Burial of the Dead and A Game of Chess. Eliot illustrates his opinion of love stories and relationships by using examples of famous, magnanimous romances and showing the true futility and fruitless nature of even the supposed greatest love stories. Antony and Cleopatra, Dido and Aeneus, Tristan and Isolde make appearances right off the bat in The Wasteland, and I feel that their fruitless and sterile relationships mirror Eliot’s perception of the world post World War I. A barren Europe, grand effort, and timeless infamy that left the western world salted and barren are exemplified in the infamous, and often bloody romances Eliot chooses to draw from.
Immediately Eliot begins his critique of the futility of human relations, pulled directly from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Lines 31-42, highlighting Tristan’s lament for Isolde lost to the sea, show Eliot’s immense remorse and longing for the world pre-war.
“Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo Weilest Du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
-Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth
Garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das meer.(l.31-43)”
The German portions of this section are plucked directly from Wagner’s play, though it appears the additions in English are made by Eliot himself. Directly after this section, Eliot begins A Game of Chess, section two, named for Thomas Middleton’s 1624 satire, Women Beware Women. Much like the plot of Middleton’s play, in which a game of chess distracts a mother-in-law from the ongoing seduction of her daughter-in-law, the tale of Antony and Cleopatra begins to emerge. Again, Eliot uses timeless stories of love, often violent and tragic, to show his feelings toward the world - remorseful, fruitless, and void of hope. In the lines 75 through 95, Eliot makes so many references layered atop one another that it can be difficult to perceive what he is truly trying to say. Notes to Dido of Carthage, Paradise Lost, Philomela and Tereus of Thrace, and Antony and Cleopatra paint a scene heavy on sensory imagery. The prolonged language during this set of lines relies heavily on the presence of scent, smoke, and perfume - a use I feel is a direct nod to the chemical warfare that reared its head during World War I.
Eliot’s own footnotes are helpful when drawing such conclusions, though he admittedly does not express why he chose such inspirations, but knowing why a specific type of ceiling or candelabra appears in the way it does in The Wasteland can contribute to my ideas about Eliot’s connections to and feelings about the war. I feel that by painting his poem in the likeness of timeless love stories, which ended in violence or tragedy, show Eliot’s concern toward a blackened Europe.
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