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The Waste Land

The Waste Land. October 1922 published in “The Criterion ” in England November 1922 published in “The Dial ” in the USA December 1922 published in book in the USA with the inclusion of notes by Eliot Sept 1923: first English edition in book form by The Hogarth Press.

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The Waste Land

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  1. The WasteLand • October 1922 published in “The Criterion” in England • November 1922 published in “The Dial” in the USA • December 1922 published in book in the USA with the inclusionof notes by Eliot • Sept 1923: first English edition in book formby The Hogarth Press

  2. The WasteLand - Structure • The Burial of the Dead (1-76). The section opens with the coming of spring as ‘a cruel thing’. The fundamental contrast - aridity-fertility is - thus established right from the beginning, in a series of images and scenes which describe a sterile world and culminate in the London crowd crossing London Bridge on a foggy winter morning, looking like the souls of the damned in Dante’s Inferno • A Game of Chess (77-172) Here the contrast is expressed in two main scenes: the first is one of opulence and decadence, in a richly decorated interior, showing a woman whose state of frustration and sexual repression is expressed in a monologue; the second repeats the same ideas on a popular level, being set in a London pub • The Fire Sermon (173-211) this opens with the river Thames shown in the modern state of squalor and filth, to which is contrasted the mythical Thames of Elizabeth I (allusion to Spenser’s poems). The central episode of this section is the seduction of a London typist by a City clerk, typical of a modern sex without love or passion. The central figure in this section is that of Tiresias, the blind seer of Greek myth who embodies both sexes. He moves through the waste land seeing everything. In this central section there are allusions to mystical experiences: Saint Augustine and Buddha (‘the fire sermon’ is a sermon preached by Buddha against fires of lust.) Fire seems thus to have a double meaning: it is the fire of lust but also of regeneration. • Death by Water (212-321). Opposing the fire of the previous section, images of drowning introduce the idea of purification by water which is present in the last section. Death by Water is also linked to the first part by the character of Phlebus, the Phoenician Sailor drowned in the sea. The imagery of the sea is inspired by Shakespeare‘s The Tempest, a play whose main theme is regeneration through water and forgiveness. • What the Thunder Said (322-433). All the themes and motifs of the poem are united here. At the beginning the thunder claps without bringing rain, which the land is waiting for, and the men of the Waste Land are also waiting. There are clear allusions to the death of Christ, but the god (the poem is centred on the pagan god of the ancient fertility rites) is not yet resurrected to bring a new spring to his land. In this part references and quotations range from Dante to St Luke’s Gospel to the medieval romances of the Grail Quest (the legend of Parsifal), and they all point to the breakdown of civilization: London Bridge is falling, and so are Jerusalem’s towers, Athens, and Vienna. On these ruins, the poet says, he must support himself. The poem ends with the words of an Upanishad, a poetic commentary on the Hindu scriptures. • (trattoda A. Cattaneo, A Short History of English Literature. From the Victorians to the Present. MondadoriUniversità, 2011)

  3. The WasteLand • JessieWeston, FromRitualto Romance, 1920 • James Frazer, The Golden Bough(12 vols), 1890-1915

  4. Medievalromances • Chrétien de Troyes (Perceval or Conte du Graal); Robert de Boron (Le roman del’histoire du Graal, Merlin, Perceval); Wolfram von Eschenbach (Parzival)

  5. FromRitualto Romance • In these romances we see a waste land whose ruler, the Fisher King, has brought sterility to the land because of his impotence or death – depending on which of the different versions of the myth we are reading. Nothing in the waste land can reproduce itself and life cannot continue until a knight (Galaad, Parsifal or Gawain) appears who goes to the Chapel Perilous in the waste land and correctly asks a set of ritualistic questions about the HOLY GRAIL (a grail is a cup: the Holy Grail is the cup in which, according to tradition, Joseph of Arimathea collected Christ’s blood during his Passion) and the HOLY LANCE. Weston connects them back to ancient symbols of female and male sexuality. When the questions are asked, the Fisher King is cured or restored to life, and the waste land becomes a fertile country again. • (trattoda A. Cattaneo, A Short History of English Literature. From the Victorians to the Present. MondadoriUniversità, 2011)

  6. The WasteLand • “NamSibyllamquidemCumis ego ipseoculismeis vidi ampulia pendere, etcumillipueridicerent:Σίβυλλατίθέλεις; respondebatilla: αποθανεĩνθέλω”, Petronius, Satyricon • Del resto la Sibilla, a Cuma, l’ho vista anch’io dondolarsi rinchiusa in un’ampolla, e quando i fanciulli le chiedevano: “Sibilla, cosa vuoi?”, quella rispondeva: “Voglio morire”.

  7. The WasteLand • ForEzraPound, il miglior fabbro • Guinizelli, speakingto Dante: “ ‘O frate’ disse ‘questi ch’io ti cerno/ col dito’, e additò uno spirto innanzi,/ ‘fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno’”, Purgatorio, XXVI, vv. 115-117. • Herefersto the Provençal poet Arnaut Daniel

  8. The WasteLand • L. 1 “Aprilis the cruellestmonth…” • “WhanthatAprillewithhisshouressoote/The droughteof March hathpercedto the roote/And bathedeveryveyne in swichlicour/Ofwhichvertuengendredis the flour…” • “Quando Aprile con i suoi fragranti rovesci/ha penetrato la siccità di Marzo fino alla radice/e bagnato ogni vena in dolce liquore/dalla quale virtù è generato il fiore…” • G. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

  9. Songelisabettiano anonimo • Spring, the year’s spring, is the year’s pleasant king; / Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring; / Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, / Cuckoo, Jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo. • La primavera, la primavera dell’anno, è dell’annol’amabile re;/allorafiorisceognicosa, allora le fanciulledanzano in cerchio…/ilfreddo non punge, cantano i graziosiuccelli,/cu-cu, giaggiag, pu-ui, tu-uitta-wu…

  10. The WasteLand • l. 20 “Son of Man” seeEzechiel, II, I • l. 22 “A heapofbrokenimages” seeEzechiel, VI, 6 • l. 23 “….the cricket ofrelief”, seeEcclesiastes, XII, 5

  11. EzekielII, I • And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. • 2 And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me. • 3 And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me

  12. EzekielVI, 6 • In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.

  13. EcclesiastesXII, 5 • Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along,and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.

  14. The WasteLand • L. 48 “those are pearls …” • Shakespeare, The Tempest, I, 2, 399-405 • Full fadomfive thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: • (Ariel singing to Ferdinand who believes that is father, Alonso, king of Naples, is dead. The song reassures the grieving son, telling him to think of his father not as dead, but as having undergone “a sea change/into something rich and strange”. )

  15. The WasteLand • L. 74 J. Webster, The White Devil, V, 4 “Butkeepe the wolfe far thence, that’s foetomen/ Forwithhisnaileshee’l digthemagen” (ma tieni lontano di lì il lupo che è nemico degli uomini/perché con le sue unghie li dissotterrerà)

  16. The WasteLand • L. 60 “Unreal City” • C. Baudelaire “LesSeptVieillards”/ “I sette vecchioni” • «Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,/Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant!» • «Cittàbrulicante, piena di sogni, dove/ in pieno giorno glispettriadescano i passanti!» • “Swarming city, city full of dreams,/ Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks!”

  17. The WasteLand • L. 62-63 “e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta/di gente, ch’io non avrei creduto/ che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta” Dante, Inferno, III, 55-57 (Behinditcame so long a file of people/that I couldnotbelieve/deathhadundone so many) • L. 63 “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare,/ non avea pianto mai che di sospiri, /che l’aura etternafacevan tremare” (Here, as far as I couldtellby, listening,/ was no lamentationotherthan the sighs/thatkept the air forevertrembling) Dante, Inferno IV, 25-27

  18. MythicalMethod • In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent, further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. It is a method already adumbrated by Mr. Yeats, and of the need for which I believe Mr. Yeats to have been the first contemporary to be conscious. It is a method for which the horoscope is auspicious. Psychology (such as it is, and whether our reaction to it be comic or serious), ethnology, and The Golden Bough have concurred to make possible what was impossible even a few years ago. Instead of narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for art, toward that order and form which Mr. Aldington so earnestly desires. And only those who have won their own discipline in secret and without aid, in a world which offers very little assistance to that end, can be of any use in furthering this advance. T. S. Eliot, Ulysses, Order and Myth

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