The wasteland notes. Notes on "The Wasteland" 2022-10-04
The wasteland notes
Rating:
6,8/10
1996
reviews
The Wasteland, written by T.S. Eliot in 1922, is a long and complex poem that serves as a commentary on the state of society and culture in the aftermath of World War I. The poem is named after the wasteland, a metaphor for the barren and desolate landscape that Eliot saw as a result of the war and the societal and cultural decay that had occurred.
The poem is divided into five sections, each of which explores a different theme or idea. The first section, "The Burial of the Dead," introduces the theme of death and rebirth, as the speaker laments the loss of life during the war and the resulting emptiness and despair. The second section, "A Game of Chess," explores the theme of sexual desire and the ways in which it can be both destructive and fulfilling. The third section, "The Fire Sermon," discusses the destructive power of desire and the ways in which it can lead to spiritual and emotional decay. The fourth section, "Death by Water," is a meditation on the futility of human endeavors and the ultimate demise of all things. The final section, "What the Thunder Said," concludes the poem with a vision of a new, rejuvenated society rising from the ashes of the wasteland.
Throughout the poem, Eliot employs a range of literary devices and techniques, including allusions to classical literature, myth, and religion, as well as the use of imagery, symbolism, and stream-of-consciousness narration. He also makes extensive use of poetic structure, including the use of rhyme, meter, and repetition, to create a sense of cohesion and unity in the poem.
One of the most striking features of The Wasteland is its fragmented and disjointed structure, which reflects the chaotic and chaotic nature of the wasteland itself. The poem is composed of a series of short, disconnected sections, each of which seems to stand alone and is separated by ellipses. This fragmentation is meant to convey the sense of disunity and lack of meaning that characterizes the wasteland, and to suggest that the only way forward is through the creation of new, cohesive structures and meaning.
Overall, The Wasteland is a powerful and thought-provoking poem that offers a nuanced and complex exploration of the themes of death, rebirth, desire, and the search for meaning in a world that has been shattered by war and societal decay. It is a testament to Eliot's talent as a poet and his ability to create a work that is both deeply personal and universal in its themes and implications.
Notes on "The Wasteland"
O City City, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit There is not even silence in the mountains But dry sterile thunder without rain There is not even solitude in the mountains But red sullen faces sneer and snarl From doors of mud-cracked houses If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water The apocalyptic imagery continues in the following section of the stanza. Or is this Eliot trying to suggest coherence and unity to a very fragmented poem, after the fact? You can see there that's a totally different voice than Marie. The hooded figure can be seen as some sort of guardian, an allusion to the Biblical passage where Jesus joins two disciples in walking to the tomb in Sepulchre, and a guide through the chaotic mess of the world that is left behind. Believing this style best represented the fragmentation of the modern world, Eliot focused on the sterility of modern culture and its lack of tradition and ritual. And then you have that 'HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME,' which is the bartender coming in and he's talking. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights.
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The Waste Land E
This in turn leads directly to the desert waste of the present. It plays out as a seemingly straightforward, lackluster seduction scene in a crappy apartment, which might be a little too familiar for some of us. The vision consists only of nothingness—a handful of dust—which is so profound as to be frightening; yet truth also resides here: No longer a religious phenomenon achieved through Christ, truth is represented by a mere void. It's one of the more representative works of literary Modernism. He said, Marie, 16Marie, hold on tight.
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A Summary and Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism in Translation Harvard Oriental Series. The wind 175Crosses the brown land, unheard. After the event He wept. The final section, which builds on the ideas of death and sterility, also offers some hope that the "waste land" may be overcome. As this was written at the height of spiritualism, one could imagine that it is trying to draw an allusion to those grief-maddened mothers and mistresses and lovers who contacted spiritualists and mediums to try and come into contact with their loved ones. Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. The lack of purpose, lack of guidance, can be considered to be one of the causes of madness, and the further descent into fragmentation in the poem.
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Wasteland notes
Here, Eliot uses it in much the same effect: a nightmarish landscape that is not quote Paris, and is not quite London, but is meant to stand in for several places at once. Spring brings "memory and desire," and so the narrator's memory drifts back to times in Munich, to childhood sled rides, and to a possible romance with a "hyacinth girl. Death by Water 1. Known as "The Lost Generation," they often created art and culture that questioned these expectations and sought to build something new from the ashes. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. Once more, the poem returns to its description of the rock: the barren, desolate waste land of life that calls back to the cultural waste land that Eliot is so scornful of, the lack of life that corroborates to a lack of human faith.
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T.S. Eliot
Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5—8 42. This reference to violence is juxtaposed by the hysterical plea of the woman to her lover in the next stanza. In this, you really get distinct people that we meet and who talk to us. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. And 'These fragments I have shored against my ruins' is basically collecting all of these allusions, all of these fragments of other texts, and doing that in some way to stave off ruin.
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The Wasteland childhealthpolicy.vumc.org
Here, the water once more represents a loss of life — although there is the sign of human living, there are no humans around. Eliot Biography 1 Eliot was born September 26, 1888, in St. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy 433. . Along the way, in ll.
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The Waste Land Study Guide
How can we analyse The Waste Land and discover its true meaning? He's watching this modern seduction scene and he's saying that he has 'foresuffered all. His famous opening lines of the poem are: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Through his use of voice, juxtaposition, and allusion, Eliot creates a unique contribution to the Modernism movement. There are no quotation marks or anything that's going to tell you. Somebody like Baudelaire found poetry in the everyday world of the city-dweller. The Tempest, as above.
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The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
The third episode in this section describes an imaginative tarot reading, in which some of the cards Eliot includes in the reading are not part of an actual tarot deck. Beginning with a reference to April in this way, he's meaning this as a shout out to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If this were all it were, it would be an interesting scene that's kind of well done. For years the battles in the trenches held at a virtual stalemate, and the body count rose as each side added reinforcements to maintain the trenches. And not only that she's not into it, but that this has been happening forever.
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Eliot’s Poetry The Waste Land Section I: “The Burial of the Dead” Summary & Analysis
The conversation details one woman's attempting to convince the other to fix herself up for her husband returning from the war, including a new set of teeth. What should I resent? Who Wrote The Waste Land? For example, Madame Sosostris, a fortune teller, and Phlebas the Phoenician, literally an ancient sailor who's in this poem and drowning. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fits my purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part V. Because we've seen the Chaucer, the literary tradition is linked to this remixing, regenerating, breeding. Do you see nothing? If you feel intimidated, that's fine.
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The Wasteland
. In the modern world, winter, the time of forgetfulness and numbness, is indeed preferable. One of his first plays, The Rock: A Pageant Play 1934 , was commissioned by the church and was overtly religious in its themes. The final episode of the first section allows Eliot finally to establish the true wasteland of the poem, the modern city. There is no reason given, ultimately, for the wreckage of the Waste Land; however, following the idea of the Fisher King, we can assume this — that as the narrator suffers, so too does the world.
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