This Blog is response of thinking Activity given by Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here I discuss about The Waste Land.
The Waste Land
About the poem
The Waste Land, a long poem by the American writer T S Eliot, is one of the most famous works of literary modernism.The waste Land , widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. This poem is divided in five parts , that are :
Across the poem’s five sections – ‘The Burial of the Dead’, ‘A Game of Chess’, ‘The Fire Sermon’, ‘Death by Water’ and ‘What the Thunder Said’ – Eliot presents a bleak picture of the landscape of the contemporary world and its history; ‘the most important personage’, as he put it, is ‘the old man with wrinkled dugs’ Tiresias, a hermaphroditic character from Greek mythology who is blind, but can see into the future.
Eliot had the idea for the poem in 1914, but a breakdown brought on by his father’s death in 1919 precipitated its completion, and it has largely been read as a comment on the bleakness of post-war European history. The pervasive metaphor of dryness is generally read as expressive of spiritual emptiness.
The Waste Land was first published in 1922 in Criterion, a magazine edited by Eliot, then a few days later in the magazine The Dial, and later that year, as a book by Boni & Liveright in New York. This latter edition included ‘Notes’ explaining some of the vast range of references contained in the poem, and its particular basis on the legend of the Holy Grail, and the vegetation ceremonies in The Golden Bough (1890; expanded 1906–1915), a comparative study of world mythology by J G Frazer. However, in ‘The Frontiers of Criticism’, in 1956, Eliot described these notes as ‘a remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship’, which he had only written to make the text long enough for book publication.
About the poet
IT IS HARD to conceive of any poet, ancient or modern, who encompasses both the literary genius and metaphysical vision of Thomas Stearns Eliot (26th September 1888–4th January 1965); indeed, rare it is to encounter anyone who is able to combine a poetic sensibility with a philosophical discipline, thus creating a body of work far more beautiful and profound than its component parts.
By the end of his life, Eliot had produced such an impressive portfolio of artistic output, including poetry, plays, essays and literary criticism, it made him one of the most important English-language writers of the twentieth century, earning him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
Themes of the poem
Fragmentation and decay
Enacted through the poem’s use of free verse (especially in ‘What the Thunder Said’) and its references to ‘fragments’ and ‘broken images’.
Sex and relationships
Seen in the conversation in the London pub at the end of ‘A Game of Chess’, the section describing the typist and ‘young man carbuncular’ in ‘The Fire Sermon’, and the Earl of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth I (the ‘Virgin Queen’), among others.
War
See the poem’s references to an ‘archduke’ (suggesting Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination caused the outbreak of WWI), rats, dead men and their bones, demobbed soldiers, and possible shell-shock victims (the man in the middle section of ‘A Game of Chess’)
Here I geve answer to the questions
1, What are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land'? Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzche's views? or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mytho-historical answer to the contemporary malaise?
Ans, I disagree that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzsche’s view. Eliot goes into the past but he is very much in present also. He uses many references from the past, different myths, religions etc. Eliot stands for Regressive, backward looking as it tries to find answers of contemporary malaise in Upanishad, Buddhism and Christianity let's discuss it.
Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist and cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on western philosophy and intellectual history.
The Waste Land is composed of five parts (I. “The Burial of the Dead”; II. “A Game of Chess”; III. “The Fire Sermon”; IV. “Death by Water”; and V. “What the Thunder Said”) complete with a set of notes, which are arguably more abstruse than the poem itself.
Whereas Prufrock is one man’s lamentation against the world, The Waste Land (1922), Eliot’s next important piece, effectively becomes a requiem for humankind in its presentation of the hollowness of living; both the saints and heroes of the past rub shoulders with the typists and clerks of the present in their subjugation to “memory and desire” and the perennial problem of the nature of human suffering. Interestingly, the original epitaph of the poem included Joseph Conrad’s infamous declaration, taken from Heart of Darkness alluding to the pervading feeling of angst prevalent in early twentieth-century Europe: “The horror! The horror!”
Akin to much metaphysical poetry, The Waste Land is effectively a mimesis of the mind as it withdraws from outward perception into a meditative trance, whereby seemingly random and disconnected thoughts arise and pass by, with no apparent underlying significance—drinking coffee in the Hofgarten, a famous clairvoyant playing cards, a cockerel crying atop a treetop, “co co rico co co rico”; a surrealistic landscape, populated with anaesthetized people, and comprising the stuff of apocalyptic dreams:
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.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Burial of the Dead”, ll. 60–3
Despite the overt bleakness of Eliot’s poem,
written at a time when Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead” was undoubtedly ringing in the reader’s ear, its inherent message is one of attempting to come to terms with the wretchedness of life.Nietzsche introduces the concept of Ubermensch in contrast to his understanding of the other worldliness of Christianity. So we can conclude that it is also right that problems of contemporary crisis' solution is in faith and self but, the level of faith and understanding of self must be necessary.
2,Prior to the speech, Gustaf Hellström of the Swedish Academy made these remarks:
What are your views regarding these comments? Is it true that giving free vent to the repressed 'primitive instinct' lead us to happy and satisfied life? or do you agree with Eliot's view that 'salvation of man lies in the preservation of the cultural tradition'
Ans, I do not agree with Freud's idea. Because liberating a repressed primitive instinct will automatically lead to chaos. We should not create chaos in the society for the transition of happiness. This can lead to many problems and disturbances in our lives. And according to Eliot, if all adhere to such cultures, traditions and beliefs in such lifestyles and morals, human beings can live in peacefully a life of understanding. And that is why I agree with Eliot.
3, Write about allusions to the Indian thoughts in 'The Waste Land'. (Where, How and Why are the Indian thoughts referred?
Ans, There are many Indian thoughts in waste land. Eliot uses many Indian thoughts in The Waste Land. Let's discuss it
The Fire sermon:
The fire and sermon is name of sermon given by Buddha. Gayasisa is the place where buddha preaches the fire sermon about achieving liberation from suffering through detachment from the five senses and mind, by that Eliot also wants to convey a message tp stay detached from all body and sense's desire.
River Ganga and Himalaya
"Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant".
Eliot refers to Wisdom of India for spiritual salvation of modern humanity. Holly river Ganga is known for its purity and also for purification , and Himalaya is known for spirituality and peace.
Three Da's
Datta: Human
Damayata: God
Dayadhvam: Demon
👉Datta give Greedy control(Human beings)
👉Damayata give self control(Godly beings)
👉Dayadhvam give Demonic control( Demons)
Shantih Mantra:
Eliot uses this mantra in the context of : after all the understanding peace will be there and this peace comes after the agony which takes us towards the new hope.
Every man needs peace in life. So life is surrounded by satires. In which man cannot get peace all the time. Peace mantra is mentioned in Indian culture.
4, Is it possible to read 'The Waste Land' as a Pandemic Poem?
Ans, Reading T.S. Eliot’s THE WASTE LAND in the Throes of the CORONAVIRUS.
The Waste Land is a complex poem: employing a variety of voices, literary forms, and allusions to reflect the sterility of modern life. Eliot offers this tableau not as a unified image, but more as light and fog echoing off pieces of shattered glass. No single reading of the piece is possible, nor was that Eliot’s intent. It is as if the reader delves into a world with sights and sounds all its own, with fragile textures and arid imagery.
Eliot’s Waste Land is a dark, hypnogogic landscape. Littered with contradictory images — dust and rain, impotence and promiscuity, the occult and the biblical — it leaves the reader, in search of redemption, between “[a] heap of broken images” and a Hindu benediction, feeling as if this apocalyptic tribulation is not only inescapable, but, in the end, is as hopeless as what may lie beyond the poem’s 434 lines.
Eliot’s pièce de résistance retains its relevancy — its themes woven into the hearts of a generation facing a virus with a potential not seen since the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.”Black-and-white photographs of this crisis show parts of the world as a virtual wasteland, with casualties being two-and-a-half times what they were in the First World War. It is hard not to connect the Spanish Flu and the Great War: the former beginning eleven months before the latter and lasting for two years post armistice. Eliot’s Waste Land emerged from the debris of this milieu.
War is still with us, though we have not faced a global conflict for three quarters of a century. However, we are facing an international pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t faced in a century. Notwithstanding what the naysayers proclaim — e.g. more people contract and die from the regular flu each year — the Coronavirus is different. It is highly contagious, and we have no medicinal way to combat it.
That said, the Ides of March brought heightened anxiety across the United States. Looking at what occurred in China and Italy over the past few months, people see a tide washing across our shores, bringing with it an infection that may be more devastating emotionally and economically if not physically. There are questions. There is confusion. There are images, almost prophetic, that find a counterpart in one of the first poems of the modern literary movement.
In less than two weeks we will enter April, “the cruelest month.” It will breed lilacs from a dead land. This image, funereal in itself, suggests somnolence: lilacs being an alternative, herbal therapy to help people sleep. The Waste Land is filled with people who are both awake and asleep at the same time: be they images that arise from the Tarot deck, or the drowned Phlebas adrift in suspended animation, or the crowd flowing over London Bridge (which, by the end of the poem, is falling down), or the woman who submits to the lifeless sexual advances of “the young man carbuncular” (a bacterial infection that emits puss), or the “lidless eyes” playing a game of chess while “waiting for a knock upon the door.”
Because of its spasmodic structure, The Waste Land takes us on a journey that transcends time and place. It’s overarching thesis (if it has one) comes in its fourth to last line: “These fragments I have shore against my ruins.” This line enables us to look at the poem in retrospect to gain some semblance of where we have been and what we have experienced. We have been through a world of fragments and have seen that the world is fragmented. The Waste Land shows us that the surreal is a more accurate depiction of reality than what we assume.
5, Give link of the goggle sheet with Tabular information on myths, Allusions, Language, animal/birds, colours etc.
Ans,Click here
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