The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (Critical Analysis)

 

The Waste Land

by T.S. Eliot

(Critical Analysis) 

The Waste Land is the most important and the greatest achievement of T. S. Eliot. It symbolizes the modern civilisation which is compared to a Waste Land. Referring to this poem Bullough has observed in The Trend of Modern Poetry: “The Waste Land goes beyond a mere diagnosis of the spiritual distempers of the age; it is a lament over man’s fallen nature, a prophecy, and promise.”

Our civilization is the waste land; we can obtain youth and life-giving rain only by journeying far, questioning our condition, and learning a hard lesson. To enforce this, Eliot uses symbols drawn from kindred myths and religions. The relationship between these must be known before the poem can be understood. And the difficulties of this anthropological background are increased by the methods of thought which we have seen are natural to him. There are five parts, each containing sections bound variously by superficial association of ideas, by contrast or by no link save the underlying message. To the uninitiated reader the poem may seem chaotic. Only those with some knowledge of Dante, Jacobean drama, Buddhism, mythology and the works of Sir James Frazer, as well as of From Ritual to Romance, can appreciate its movement, even with help from the poet’s notes. Yet no one could fail to be struck by the vigour and beauty of much of the detail. What ironic pictures of modern manners, what a superb mingling of satiric vulgarity and sensuous delicacy, what prophetic earnestness, what variety of imagery and rhythm!

“The best way to begin reading the poem is to regard it as a phantasmagoria of futility, a series of trains of thought in the mind of a social observer. Eliot indeed introduces such an observer (in a not very effective attempt at suggesting comprehensiveness and impersonality) in the persons of Tiresias, the seer, who having been both man and woman, suggests the characteristics of all humanity.

“Part I, called The Burial of the Dead, to emphasise the inevitable dissolution which must precede new life, begins with a lament over the loss of fertility in what should be spring season, and illustrates this by reproducing typical chatter of cosmopolitan idlers, passing thence to symbols of our barrenness:

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.....

“The decay of love in the modern world is then suggested by a quotation from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (romantic idolatry), with which is compared an instance of amorous sentimentality. That secret wisdom, too, has fallen on evil days is shown by the introduction of the Tarot pack of cards, used formerly for divination, now for fortunetelling. He ends with a vision of London as an Unreal City, in a nightmare of memories:

That corpse you planted last year in your garden

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

The connection with the fertility cult is thus emphasised.

“In Para 2, called A Game of Chess, to recall the dramatic of Middleton’s Bianca and the fatal power of woman, be cleverly draws two types of modern woman in contrasted literary styles. After a picture of a luxurious boudoir which rivals Keats, he gives the petulant conversation of its tenant, and her eternal question:

What shall we do tomorrow ?

What shall we ever do ? .........

The man replies:-

The hot water at ten.

And if it rains, a close car at four.

And we shall play a game of chess,

Then answering the words knock, the scene changes to a public house at closing time, and the garrulous mean talk of another woman.

“In part 3, the tone of disgust deepens. It is called ‘The Fire Sermon’ to suggest the initiated the sermon of the Buddha in which he spoke of mankind as burning in the flames of lust, hatred and infatuation. Here we are shown the sordidness of urban pleasures. Just as he introduced into the boudoir touches of Cleopatra and Dido, so now he recalls the river of Spenser’s Prothalamion, and with equally devastating irony goes on to parody Goldsmith’s ‘When lovely Woman,’ in order to contrast the cynicism of the modern girl with the eighteenth century sentimental ideal. Similarly, he uses Wagner’s Rheingold melodies, and a picture of Queen Elizabeth flirting with Leicester in her barge, to emphasize the permanence of human sensuality and the degradation to which it has now fallen. With agony of soul he finally alludes to the repentance of Saint Augustine and to the teaching of the Buddha.

“After a short fourth part, translated from one of his earlier experiments in French and emphasizing the brevity of sensual life, the several themes are recapitulated in part 5, and the way of escape suggested. Our sterility is again asserted:

Here is not 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...

In this desert we suffer illusions; where two walk there goes a shadowy third. There are murmurs and lamentations. When we reach the Chapel Perilous, it seems empty; but as we doubt (betraying Christ) and the cock crows twice, God gives a sign, by thunder bringing rain. And the message of the thunder is threefold: Da, Dayadhvam, Damyata — self-surrender, sympathy, self-control These three are the ways to salvation.

“The technique of the poem is that of ‘the music of ideas’ already attempted on a small scale in Gerontion. Here it is organized with great skill and elaboration in five sections are movements, the first of which introduces the main themes, which are developed with variations in the second and third, while the fourth is short, grave and slow, a kind of pause before an impressive culmination of the fifth.

The themes of this symphonic poem are a series of scenes rather like film shots fading and dissolving into each other, seen from the viewpoint of an impersonal observer, the protagonist of the poem, who is identified with the impotent Fisher King and also with Tiresias, the blind prophet of Greek legend. In one of his notes, Eliot writes that Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a character, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest ....What Tiresias sees, in fact, ‘is the substance of the poem.’ Tiresias like the Spirit of the years in The Dynasts, is an embodiment of the modern mind, the keen observer who is ‘Powerless to act.’