Legitimacy of The Wasteland

In considering the legitimacy of a theme in a work of poetry, it is important to take into account the personality of the poet, as well as look for consistency in previous works that would enable one to verify whether or not the poet actually means what they are saying. After reading The Wasteland by T.S. Elliot, my first observations were marked by the dreary, depressing and melodramatic tone and mood put forth by Elliot. The poem as it stands, without annotations, is very confusing and difficult to comprehend. However, with the presence of the annotations, the poem’s rich meaning and thematic developments are easier to comprehend.

It wasn’t until today in class discussion that I began to consider the idea of Elliot creating an immensely complex and depressing poem to beguile his readers. When that notion was brought up, I sought connections that would support the idea. And the annotations were what stuck out first. It is understandable that some writers reference past heroes or insert religious allusions into their work to support what they are saying, or for intellectual credibility. But in my opinion, in order for a work to stand-alone and actually mean something to me, the writer’s ideas alone should be able to get the message across.

In the 434 lines the poem encompasses, there are almost one hundred different annotations. Even the titles of each section are allusions to some other idea, but mainly they are present to support what Elliot is trying to say. And they do, but if you need an annotation every four lines, are you making yourself very credible from an artistic standpoint? It would seem a likely explanation was that Elliot did this intentionally. To once more acknowledge the opposition, there is no reason Elliot should make a mockery of the people by writing such intentionally depressing and dense poetry to spite them or their lack of intellectual capacities, not to mention resources. Would readers of his time pick up on all the allusions? Or are most readings similar, with the person walking away not more knowledgeable, but more cynical?

Another idea that I had regarding the idea of Elliot writing this as a joke was to portray academic dominance for egotistical reasons, or because he hoped that people would increase their literacy so they could understand what he really meant. It could be a sort of reverse psychological motivation on his behalf, that is, to create such a complex poem that people are forced to read other literature to actually take away anything from the Wasteland, other than dark and dreary imagery. Sort of how there is the idea of “anti-intellectualism” in a culture, Elliot could potentially be a catalyst for the opposite end of the spectrum, or in other words writing for someone in academia.

In light of Elliot’s tactics, I have intentionally not referenced the poem within my article to show that meaning can be portrayed without excess ideas or words from someone else to create clarity and understanding for the reader. If Elliot’s Wasteland is sincere, then the poem makes me think he was suicidal. Or he is simply incredibly talented if it was all a joke. There are many factors regarding the legitimacy, but unfortunately, we will never know either way. With that said, the poem as it stands does powerfully call the reader or society as a whole to attention to the reality they were living in in the wake of WW1, in hopes of creating a better future. But as the Wasteland ends drearily, I would have to assume Elliot believed there was no hope. Or did he? Maybe Elliot’s goal was just to confuse people.

Darkness & Death in The Waste Land

     While reading The Waste Land (which was, for me, incredibly difficult to get through as there seemed to be no continuous story/plot to it), I happened upon the recurrence of a darkness of some sort, which I read as hinting to death.

• Section 1:
• Line 18 - "I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter."
• Both night and winter are typically representative of death. Sunset represents the end of life, while night is the death that occurs, the end of the light of life. Winter represents death as during winter, most everything is cold and appears dead; life is difficult to both sustain and find during this season.
• Lines 25-29 - "There is shadow under this red rock, / (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), / And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;"
• These lines almost seem to say, "Accept your death that is inevitable." At the beginning of your life, your sunrise, your shadow, or death, is often behind you, unseen and not thought of. At the end of your life, your sunset, your shadow is in front of you, very much seen and seeming to get closer with each step. It is very much thought of because it is "rising to meet you."
• Line 49 - "Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,"
• This line contains a footnote that describes that it is likely in reference to "the poisonous plant deadly nightshade." So, this line, which ties into lines 25 & 26 ("Shadow under this red rock"), contains both direct references to night and death.
• Line 68 - "With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine."
• If one looks at this line as 9PM, then the clock would be signalling the end of evening and the beginning of night. The "dead sound" then, could be a reference to the end of day, and therefore, end of life.
• Section 2:
• Line 100 - "So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale"
• The lark signals the beginning of the day, but the nightingale signals the END of day, the end of light, the end of life.
• Line 111 - "My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me."
• Here, the word "night" is used again, but to tie in with that, later in this set of stanzas someone asks, "Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?" Not only are these stanzas taking place at night, but they also discuss death and the person speaking begs someone, likely the narrator, to stay with them, something that is frequently said to someone as they are dying.
• Line 138 - "Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door."
• A knock upon the door seems reminiscent of Revelation 3:20: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." The next verse in the bible goes on to say that anyone who opens the door for Jesus, will be offered a seat next to Jesus' throne, which is in heaven. Lidless eyes reminded me of a decaying corpse, whose eyelids and eyes have long been eaten away.
• Lines 141, 152, 168, 169 - "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME"
• The footnote for these lines is that this was something called out by bartenders to announce that they were closing up shop, a last call, which comes at night. Also in this stanza is the repetition of the word "goodnight." It is repeated ten times within 4 lines."
• Section 3:
• Line 199 - "O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter"
• The moon may sometimes  be out during daylight, but it doesn't really glow or shine bright unless there is no daylight left.
• Line 220 - "At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives"
• Another hint to the end of day, beginning of night, twilight.
• Line 250 - "Hardly aware of her departed lover;"
• While this line makes no reference to darkness directly, it is in reference to a few lines from the previous stanza, in which her lover goes off to bed, taking the darkened stairs. It is in reference to darkness and night from the previous stanza, connecting the two.
• Section 4:
• Line 312 - "Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,"
• While this line, and stanza, does not make any direct references to night, as a fortnight simply means "two weeks," it does make use of the word night, a recurring word in the poem, and is also succeeded by the word "dead." Immediately after this line, it also talks about "the deep sea swell" making use of the darkness of the sea and ties in the title of the section "Death by Water."
• Section 5:
• Lines 331-356 - The word "rock" repeats here several times, likely in reference to the earlier line containing "the Lady of the Rocks" and the lines before that mentioning the shadow beneath the rock.
• Line 364 - "Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded"
• A hooded face is typically cast in shadow. The one described here as being "hooded" is unseen as they walk along side the two and could be representative of death. "I do not know whether a man or a woman..." This could suggest that, like death, it is shadowed and dark and can take many forms. (The word "hooded" is repeated later in line 369.)
• Line 387 & 388 - "I the faint moonlight, the grass is singing / Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel"
• The moonlight is fading, making the darkness even darker in a place of death.
• Line 416 - "Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours"
• Two things in this line stood out as significant to this theme of darkness and death: 1) nightfall, & 2) aetherial (ghosts, spirits, etc.).
• Line 426 - "Shall I set my lands in order?"
• While this line makes no direct mention of darkness, it does have a very interesting footnote that ties in very well with the darkness/death theme that I have been pointing out: "Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live."

Barren Land; Barren King

Despite several distinctive interconnected themes and readings of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, the most apparently clear is the allusive connections to the the Arthurian Holy Grail legends and quest. In the foreword, Eliot directly mentions this relationship when citing Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, a book about the Holy Grail and Fisher King legends. Eliot continues stating the book may “elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than [his] notes can do,” (1317). Furthermore, the theme clearly reveals itself through several allusions and motifs throughout the poem.

To understand the parallels between the tale of the Fisher King and The Waste Land a basic understanding of the tale is necessary. The Fisher King legends stems from the Holy Grail tales in Arthurian literature. The Holy Grail was a magical cup or dish that granted eternal youth, healing, and happiness in the Arthurian literature stemming a connection to Jesus Christ. The Fisher King is searching for the Grail after a stabbing left him paralyzed and impotent. As he was now barren and unable to produce an heir for his kingdom, the land began to deteriorate as well. The water dried, the crops failed, food and resources were scarce creating the wasteland that Eliot titled his poem after. In search for the healing power of the chalice, the king sends a knight to search for it. When the knight cannot locate the Grail, the Fisher King ends the legend unhealed, barren fishing, as his name indicated.

In the opening passage, titled the “Burial of the Dead”, Eliot describes the wasteland that occurred in the legend. “A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water,” (line 22-24). Eliot describes the desolate land of the kingdom clearly in this passage. This barrenness is an elongated metaphor that continues when Eliot writes of the women facing reproductive issues as well as the lack of clean water throughout the poem such as the absence of the water (line 331).

In addition, the Grail quest is referenced several times more. In footnote 1, Eliot explains the evident parallel to the Chapel Perilous that appears in Weston’s novels as an obstacle the knight must face on his journey to find the Grail (1326). In Eliot’s Chapel Perilous however, there is no “questing” knight preparing to fight horrors within (1326). By not including the knight which aids the king in his search, Eliot depicts the king as helpless without any help in healing himself and the land.

This foreshadowing conclusion is cemented in the last stanza of the poem as the Fisher King sits, “upon the shore, Fishing, with the arid plain behind [him]” (line 424-425). It is clear this is mimicking the ending of the Arthurian legend in footnote 9 when Eliot explains the tale ended with the king fishing in his deteriorating wasteland, hence the name the Fisher King.

            Due to correlating footnotes by Eliot, distinct allusions, and enduring motifs, as well as direct mentioning in the foreword, it is clear TS Eliot utilized Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance as reference and inspiration in The Waste Land. This theme of the Holy Grail quest and the Fisher King is the most repetitive and clear reading of the poem.

Romance & Reflections of Post-War Europe

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.

Water: The Missing/Polluted Source in the Wasteland

 

T.S Eliot refers to water as absent or polluted several times throughout "The Waste Land." A few examples of Eliot's references include "no sound of water" (line 25),  "dull canal" (line 189), "the river sweats oil and tar" (line 266-267), and repeated references of no water or even the sound of water (lines 331, 334, 353, 359). The themes discussed in class groups included cultural fragmentation, sterile human relationships, and a lack of spiritual direction and connection. I believe "The Waste Land" discusses the loss and stagnation resulting from loss of human trust, whether in cultural progression, human intimacy, or spiritual/religious advancement. Each section of the poem depicted barren landscapes, barren relationships (whether in fertility or emotional contentment), and barren spiritual hope. The cause for the barren circumstances revolves around water, either a lack of it, or the pollution of it. World War I created new extremes in the human experience, including loss of human life, methods of agonizing death, economic hardship, and a lack of trust in government, God, and humanity. Images of broken landscape (lines 19-24), broken relationships (lines 158-164, 234-242), and broken hope (lines 388-389, 426-427) all reflect a lack or pollution of trust. Eliot's borrowing from Dante's Inferno, "I had not thought death had undone so many" (line 63) reveals the reach of the wasteland following the war. His fragmented form and content also reflect the upheaval and chaos resulting from the war. In this poem, water is symbolic of the trust that needs to be purified and/or restored in order for human existence to once again sustain, create, and thrive. Otherwise, it remains a wasteland. 

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is definitely the most painfully confusing pieces of poetry I’ve ever had to read. The fragmented structure and my dislike for most Modernist pieces does not set me up well for an easy reading experience. Luckily, I was placed in the group that required me even before I read it to regard it as a retelling of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail Quest. After reading the poem a couple of times and discussing its features in class, I believe this lensed view best fits the poem even though the other explanations are clearly interrelated.

In Eliot’s very first footnote, he outright says the poem was inspired by the classic tale; the Fisher King is injured in a way that makes him sterile, which is mimicked to his land as well as it becomes a barren wasteland so the search for the Holy Grail of Christ begins to bring back fertility to both land and king. Eliot tells his readers that he used Jessie L. Weston’s book From Ritual to Romance that is based of the Grail quest and recommends the readers use that book if they wish to “elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my [his] notes can do,” (1317). The authors frank acknowledgement that much of the poem is based of this old legend makes it difficult to not read the poem with this theme in mind. From the beginning of the poem to the end, much of Eliot’s symbolism can be traced back to the Fisher King and the Grail quest.

Throughout the poem Eliot clearly illustrates a barren, desolate land, as this is what happens to the Fisher King’s land once his health deteriorates. The depressing setting is described with earnest in many of the sections. Section one lines 19-30 really hit home as to how dry and dead the land with phrases like “the dead tree gives no shelter,” “dry stone no sound of water,” “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” (1318). There are other references to the dying land in other sections but not as emphasized as it is in the first and last sections. A major part of the last section is about the lack of water in second and third stanzas, which means little to no life for the land nor a chance for it to regenerate (1325). The infertility of the dry land is referenced as well in many places. The most distinct example is in the first section where the speaker asks his friend, Stetson, if “the corpse you planted last year in your garden,” has sprouted (1319). We assume it has not been a fertile planting because the speaker offers gardening tips on how to get it to grow. This and other instances show that the land is not entering fertile and is dying off just as the legend of the Grail states, but the land’s infertility is not the only support for this theme’s prominence in the poem.

In the first section in stanza three, a fortuneteller does a Tarot card reading. This reading mentions a “man of three staves” and the “Hanged Man” during this stanza (1319). Two of footnotes are very crucial to this section and create a direct link to the Quest. In footnote 11, Eliot admits he is not an expert in Tarot cards but associates the “Man of Three Staves with the Fisher King himself” (1318-1319). I took the lines 54-55 “I do not find/ The hanged Man,” to be a reference to the missing knight of the Quest, as no one (even though the Fisher King waits for someone) comes to complete the Quest to find the Grail that would heal him and the land (1319).

We know no one has come to seek the Grail in the last section of the poem. Lines 386 through 395 describe the “Chapel Perilous” that is disturbed by no one. This chapel is from Weston’s book and is described in the first footnote as part of terrifying obstacles that would test the “knights courage” as he completed his quest, but as the Eliot’s poem describes no one is there and no one comes to aid the Fisher King (1326). Part of the legend also states that the Fisher king stays by the river and fishes while he waits for the Grail, which is exactly what is described in the poem. Lines 424 and 425 state, “I sat upon the shore/ Fishing, with the arid plain behind me” (1326). The speaker here is clearly the Fisher King doing what legend says—fishing in his dying land according to Weston’s book as Eliot references in his footnote 9 (1326).

In the direct mention to the Fisher King’s role in the poem, the constant portrayal of a dying, infertile land, and many references to the story of the Fisher King and The Holy Grail Quest there is no room for argument that The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot has this quest as a vital theme to understanding the poem.

Smith's Canadian Gazetteer

Reading this section of Britain, Empire, and a Wider World was especially intriguing and even memorable for me. I used to live very close to Canada for eight years (I lived in North Dakota, 20 miles south of Manitoba) and my family and I would take frequent trips into Manitoba, to towns like Deloraine, Boissevain, and Dauphin. I remember that we almost moved to Deloraine when I was about 10 years old, as my parents were searching for employment there. Alas, it never happened, but someday, I want to visit Canada again and possibly move there if I get the opportunity. I noticed that much of what is noted in the excerpt is true even today, and so I thought that in this post I would take the opportunity to compare my personal experience with what is being described here.

A lot of what this excerpt is describing is true in Canada, even today. It is mentioned that it's "great natural advantages should still be so little known" (1003). Most of America and most of the world knows little about Canada, but with the press coverage Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been getting recently, people are starting to become more aware of our neighbor to the north. The excerpt also mentions how Canada's laws and regulations are modeled after England's and that it's citizens "might be taken for English emigrants" (1003). This is because Canada was colonized by both the English and the French, with the English descendants settling in the western part of Canada (Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, etc.) and the French descendants settling in Quebec. When answering the question of who would be fit to live here, the excerpt states "those who are obliged to do so" (1004), and then it goes to describe that Canada would be a good place to live for those looking to improve their lives. This is true, and you can do the very same thing here in the United States as well, but immigrations laws in both Canada and the United States have drastically changed since this excerpt was written. Canada accepts immigrants normally through a point system, where you are awarded points for your education, job status, ability to speak another language (Canada is a bilingual English-French nation, so you can earn more points if you can speak French fluently), and so on. The excerpt goes on to describe that there is plenty of work in Canada, but it mentions doctors having to travel many miles to see a patient (1005). This is true for most areas of Canada, as Canada is more of a "rural" country, and many people live in small towns. However, there are big cities there, such as Toronto, Vancouver, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, and so on. The excerpt even mentions Canada's "fine and healthy" climate (1004), but it does alternate between very cold and very hot (I've experienced temperatures up to -60 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer). One thing I miss is going up there with my family in the wintertime and seeing the snow, and seeing the endless fields of grain, sunflowers, and purple flax seed flowers in the spring and summer that dotted the prairie. Of course, I could see these things in my own backyard in North Dakota, but knowing that I was in another country made it all the more a special experience for me. I hope to go back someday and get another taste of that special experience.

Although this is only an excerpt, it covers a great deal about Canada, and a lot of it is true, even today. Canada is truly a special and wonderful place to live (in my opinion), and there is so much more I could cover (if the excerpt was a full article), but I invite you to do your own research and see for yourself what Canada is like. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised, much like I was 14 years ago when I went to Manitoba for the first time. Longue vie au Canada!