The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (Poetic Devices)

 

The Waste Land

by T.S. Eliot

(Poetic Devices) 

The Waste Land can be considered as Eliot’s literary workshop where all the tools of his craft are on display. The first of these devices is the underlying symbolism of the poem.

Eliot has developed a satiric dryness of witty statement in which ‘facts’ were left to evoke emotion with a minimum of explicit correlation. Necessarily, the mood is too complex for initial statement but is the implied resultant of the whole poem and is often not formulated until the close. Hence, the final emergence of harmony out of heterogeneity is entirely dependent upon a clear concatenation of image.

Eliot’s use of imagery in ‘The Waste Land’ sets up obstacles. It is chiefly because he inherited from the Metaphysicals the style of involving poetry with far-fetched erudition. His love of new words, strange instances and subtle allusions find expression in most of his poems.

The success of question is contingent on two factors: the intrinsic value of the quotation in its new context quite apart from any recognition of its original source; and the density of colour resulting from the recognition of the original source and its relation to the new context. Given intrinsic value even the average reader will find an adequate significance in the most recondite allusions and many of Eliot’s quotations make this possible. But the frequent use of unattributed allusions demanding a close knowledge of even the accepted classics very often strains the reader’s attention. Poetry comes to depend on scholarship. In ‘The Waste Land’ it presents serious difficulties to the ordinary reader. At the same time, it serves to convey to the reader an idea of a complex civilization compounded of a thousand different strands. The very chaos of allusions which recall memories from Dante, Jacobean drama, Buddhism, mythology, anthropology, “The Golden Bough,’ ‘From Ritual to Romance’ and the ‘Upanishads,’ very effectively convey even to the uninitiated reader, the sense of the barrenness and decay of a chaotic civilization. One is struck by the vigour and beauty of much of the details, the ironic pictures of modern manners, the superb mingling of satiric vulgarity and sensuous delicacy, prophetic earnestness, variety of imagery and rhythm.

The poem can also be considered as an allegorical application of the Grail legend to modern society and religion. Our civilization is ‘The Waste Land’; we can obtain youth and life-giving rain only by journeying far, questioning our condition and learning a bard lesson. To enforce this, Eliot uses symbols drawn from kindred myths and religions. The difficulties of this anthropological background are increased by the methods of thought which are natural to Eliot. There are five parts in the poem each containing sections, bound variously, by superficial association of ideas, by contrast, or by no link save the underlying message.

Repetition of images is another of the devices used in the poem and is the means of carrying on the symbolism from section to section. The image of the rocky desert, of water, the crowds of people, all these recur with varying emotional tones in the different sections. The whole poem gains its unity from the interweaving of such thematic material. The music of ideas repeated according to a set of patterns, makes the poem in effect the literary counterpart of the symphony to which the symbolists aspired.

Words are but an imperfect medium to communicate the complexity of the civilization that Eliot is trying to portray. Eliot tried to create new concepts assisted by echoes of tradition, the feeling for syllable and rhythm or what he called the auditory imagination. But with all these devices, Eliot’s poetry fails to convey fully his meaning. In fact, in his poetry, Eliot is like his own ‘Prufrock,’ making an abortive attempt at self-expression. The state of mind evoked by his poetry is the state of isolation, of the ineffable and inarticulate.