This is part 2 of the four part series on the T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. You can read the entire poem here. The first part dealt with my version of the section "The Burial Of The Dead". This part will try to interpret (mine) the section "A Game Of Chess".
The first part dealt with the sterility of the land and love where love has lost the power to redeem and invigorate the times. This part builds on the same theme but is not as extensive as the first part. From what I could grasp, there are two broad stanzas with different context and narrator all reinforcing the theme of lust, breakdown and drudgery in marriage .
The first stanza opens with opulent setting where a wealthy lady sits on a high chair in a room stocked with all the paraphernalia of the rich society. The room is filled with big paintings on the walls, perfumes that pervades the room, ivory vials of exotic scents that fill the satin cases. The lady herself is covered with glitter from all the jewels she is wearing. The setting though luxuriant looks artificial and of decay and decadence. The spirits are all confused and troubled by the fresh air coming from the open window (metaphor on state of disarray inside due to the incoming fear of the unknown). The whiff of air flatten the candles that burn and smoke fills the grand room. The setting shows the lives of the high society who though are free from the grinding of the daily struggle still face the emotional and sexual collapse due to self absorption. The painting of Philomela, a character out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is hung on the wall. Philomela is raped by her brother-in-law Tereus, who then cuts her tongue out to keep her quiet. She manages to tell her sister, who helps her avenge herself by murdering the king’s son and feeding him to the king. The sisters are then changed into birds, Philomela into a nightingale. The story of Philomela brings the lust and cruelty into the foreground. The woman here in the poem is like Philomela (unable to speak) sitting alone on a high pedestal unable to reconcile to her luxurious environs chirping meaningless verses (like a nightingale). Lust (using Philomela story) is one setting here that showed love not only failed to invigorate but instead broke down into a vicious circle of cruelty and revenge. The wealthy woman is also neurotic (maybe by self destructing occupation with the self and materialism) and pleads her lover to stay with her and talk to her, while the lover is obsessed with nihilistic ideas and thoughts of drowning. Occasionally we see a hint of absolute terror in his speech. This lack of communication and emotional attachment negates any chances of love and alleviating the sterility of their lives. What ever little communication happens is a cacophony of mindless babble of the neurotic and frantic couple incapable of shared sentiment. In the last lines, the woman plans for what she is going to do the next day (an outing, a game of chess) which appears to be a meaningless rote. It signifies the diversion and distraction that typically masks the routine married life where love has been pushed to the boundary.
The second stanza is a conversation that happens between two women in a crowded bar that is about to close. The women are talking about a certain Lil whose husband is about to be demobilized from the army and would be returning home. Their talk shows that they all belong to the working class unlike the high society in the first stanza. The women talk about how they chided Lil to mend herself up (get a new set of false teeth) so that when Albert returns he finds her pleasing. The women gossip telling her that Albert would leave her for some other attractive woman if she does not improve her appearance. Lil replies that she is on certain pills that is making her sick (could be pills for abortion). She has already got five times pregnant, all at the age of 31 and was near dying due to the last pregnancy. She does not want more, but Albert won't leave her alone. All this conversation happens in the midst of the frequent calls by the bar owner about "it's time to close". The two women greet each other and leave. The stanza shows the rushed existence of the working class made evident by the many calls of the bar owner. The poor have no culture, but only gossip and trivialities and the drudgery of marriage.The poet juxtaposes the high society experiences with the lives of the working class and retorts that ultimately it is in the same state. In working class, the love and sexual lives have become demeaning and the vitality is missing due to the premature aging brought frequent abortions and promiscuity. In the richer classes, it has become materialistic and sometimes neurotic. So in both there is no life enhancing sense of joy, no live giving fertility. Neither high nor working class sexuality is generative. The Fisher King will have to wait more. Nowhere is the sense of redemption and potency. Everything is sterile. A Waste Land.
Showing posts with label eliot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eliot. Show all posts
TS Eliot : The Waste Land - The Burial Of The Dead (Summary)
I have just spent two full weeks of my seemingly very busy life on T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land". I won't say I am satisfied with what I could grasp. It is such vast expanse of construct and ideas that the poet has spun. I will still present my thoughts about the poem however unqualified I am to understand this compelling work of modernist literature. This is first of the 5 part series on the poem focusing on the part "The Burial Of The Dead". You can read the complete poem here.
First a little introduction into the times when the poem was conceptualized. The Great War (WW I) has just ended and it has literally shaken the core of Europe and the modern man's faith that continued advancement (primarily science driven) would improve the society and rid of it's all ills. But the confusion (moral & political) before the onset of war coupled with incoherence of voices (in favor of race/nation/class) lead to an individual crisis of identity amplified by the world gone wrong. It was as we can call it "The Collapse of the Certainties", that tomorrow will be better then today. This crisis, loss of faith and sterility (diseased) of the times gave rise to canvas that this poem fills. The poem has references and metaphors to the various sources (historical & contemporary) and follows a non linear method where the speaker, the context, location and time changes abruptly. Also it makes use of a myth to connect unconnected ideas into a single narrative.
The first part begins with the narrator(possibly an older woman) bemoaning that the April is the cruelest month because it's onset is making the narrator remember the things that were buried by the forgetful snow and the gloomy cold winter. It awakens all those desires and memories that were hidden. There is a mourning of life itself. As if i don't want this choice. I want to stay dead rather than enliven in Spring. The narrator recalls how in childhood they used to wander in the country drinking coffee and sledging with cousins. In the same narration, the poet juxtaposes such innocent frolic with the ugly nationalistic rhetoric that was prevalent in the pre-war Europe. The innocence is being lost and was being replaced by new consciousness about race and the nation state. The narrator remarks about her lifeless existence where is reads much of the night and has become a recluse and misses the winters.
The tone and the narrator changes in the second stanza where the canvas changes to a stony desert where there is no hope that roots can clutch to and no spirit where branches can grow. The land is barren and sterile and nothing grows. The language is prophetic and biblical. The heat causes mirages to form (heap of broken images) leading to incoherence and confusing signs. It's a stony rubbish, there is no life giver or the song of life. Instead we see fear of the unknown (shadows in the dark). It could also point to the ancient times after the Christ was crucified and the Jews had to flee to the barren desert as a punishment for killing the 'Son of Man'. From the morning to the evening, the sun would be relentless and your shadow will be your only companion (not even God) and there will be no life-giving rain on the parched land (and soul). A sense of horror accompanies those lines. The poem abruptly breaks to Wagner's Tristan & Isolde's lines where Tristan is taking Isolde her back to Ireland so that she can marry his uncle. It may mean her love that was unrequited and chances of future possibilities wasted. The spirits will still remain unloved and restless. The narrator again breaks off, with writing about his small affair with a girl (mentioned here as the hyacinth girl) that could not lead to fruition and consummation. She was in his arms, ready to be loved but that hope lead to nothing. The impotence(physical or emotional) comes across and in its failure the narrator becomes more withdrawn. He saw nothing and knew nothing when he saw into his heart. There was only a long drawn silence. The modern love has no power to redeem. The last line of the stanza goes back to Wagner's opera where we see Tristan dying and waiting for Isolde's ship on the horizon. The love has failed. The chances of making fertile this sterile wasteland have all been but lost.
The third stanza starts with the narrator seeking the help of a famous oracle Madame Sosostris to seek redemption. But here also the attempt to see enlightenment are ultimately fooled by a stagecraft of obscure prophecy. The oracle picks up a series of tarot cards (drowned phoenician sailor,a versatile belladonna, man with 3 staves, one eyed merchant, a missing hanged man) and ultimately in the end says that narrator should 'fear death by water'. She also has a vision of a mass of people “walking round in a ring.” Even though the oracle is a fraud, she help sustain a tone of fear and unease with the images.
The forth and last stanza moves to a surreal description of a modern city (London) that is decaying. The brown fog pervades over it like an evil spirit. A crowd of people move around the street in mindless synchronization not thinking anything, not going anywhere but just living. Dante's Inferno is quoted here for these people are spiritually dead and blinded by the occupied city life. They lives seemed like a mechanical clockwork each only able to see nothing beyond there feet and constantly engaged with the hustle-bustle of the modern city life. Life it seemed had moved to the background and with it the human warmth and self-invigorating vitality of love. Even the sound of the church bell becomes the sound of the dead. The narrator in this stir sees a old friend(Stetson) that was with him in the Punic Wars. He asks him what happened to the corpse that he planted in his garden and has it begin to sprout. Probably the sterile wasteland could only sprout the dead. In the end, the poet says that the reader must share his sins as well. All cities are same like London (they are dying) and all wars are same and all men are same. All the individual faces blur into Stetson. An undefined and formless humanity as the burial procession moved across a London bridge. We all will be dead into this infertile dust and will not give life.
First a little introduction into the times when the poem was conceptualized. The Great War (WW I) has just ended and it has literally shaken the core of Europe and the modern man's faith that continued advancement (primarily science driven) would improve the society and rid of it's all ills. But the confusion (moral & political) before the onset of war coupled with incoherence of voices (in favor of race/nation/class) lead to an individual crisis of identity amplified by the world gone wrong. It was as we can call it "The Collapse of the Certainties", that tomorrow will be better then today. This crisis, loss of faith and sterility (diseased) of the times gave rise to canvas that this poem fills. The poem has references and metaphors to the various sources (historical & contemporary) and follows a non linear method where the speaker, the context, location and time changes abruptly. Also it makes use of a myth to connect unconnected ideas into a single narrative.
The first part begins with the narrator(possibly an older woman) bemoaning that the April is the cruelest month because it's onset is making the narrator remember the things that were buried by the forgetful snow and the gloomy cold winter. It awakens all those desires and memories that were hidden. There is a mourning of life itself. As if i don't want this choice. I want to stay dead rather than enliven in Spring. The narrator recalls how in childhood they used to wander in the country drinking coffee and sledging with cousins. In the same narration, the poet juxtaposes such innocent frolic with the ugly nationalistic rhetoric that was prevalent in the pre-war Europe. The innocence is being lost and was being replaced by new consciousness about race and the nation state. The narrator remarks about her lifeless existence where is reads much of the night and has become a recluse and misses the winters.
The tone and the narrator changes in the second stanza where the canvas changes to a stony desert where there is no hope that roots can clutch to and no spirit where branches can grow. The land is barren and sterile and nothing grows. The language is prophetic and biblical. The heat causes mirages to form (heap of broken images) leading to incoherence and confusing signs. It's a stony rubbish, there is no life giver or the song of life. Instead we see fear of the unknown (shadows in the dark). It could also point to the ancient times after the Christ was crucified and the Jews had to flee to the barren desert as a punishment for killing the 'Son of Man'. From the morning to the evening, the sun would be relentless and your shadow will be your only companion (not even God) and there will be no life-giving rain on the parched land (and soul). A sense of horror accompanies those lines. The poem abruptly breaks to Wagner's Tristan & Isolde's lines where Tristan is taking Isolde her back to Ireland so that she can marry his uncle. It may mean her love that was unrequited and chances of future possibilities wasted. The spirits will still remain unloved and restless. The narrator again breaks off, with writing about his small affair with a girl (mentioned here as the hyacinth girl) that could not lead to fruition and consummation. She was in his arms, ready to be loved but that hope lead to nothing. The impotence(physical or emotional) comes across and in its failure the narrator becomes more withdrawn. He saw nothing and knew nothing when he saw into his heart. There was only a long drawn silence. The modern love has no power to redeem. The last line of the stanza goes back to Wagner's opera where we see Tristan dying and waiting for Isolde's ship on the horizon. The love has failed. The chances of making fertile this sterile wasteland have all been but lost.
The third stanza starts with the narrator seeking the help of a famous oracle Madame Sosostris to seek redemption. But here also the attempt to see enlightenment are ultimately fooled by a stagecraft of obscure prophecy. The oracle picks up a series of tarot cards (drowned phoenician sailor,a versatile belladonna, man with 3 staves, one eyed merchant, a missing hanged man) and ultimately in the end says that narrator should 'fear death by water'. She also has a vision of a mass of people “walking round in a ring.” Even though the oracle is a fraud, she help sustain a tone of fear and unease with the images.
The forth and last stanza moves to a surreal description of a modern city (London) that is decaying. The brown fog pervades over it like an evil spirit. A crowd of people move around the street in mindless synchronization not thinking anything, not going anywhere but just living. Dante's Inferno is quoted here for these people are spiritually dead and blinded by the occupied city life. They lives seemed like a mechanical clockwork each only able to see nothing beyond there feet and constantly engaged with the hustle-bustle of the modern city life. Life it seemed had moved to the background and with it the human warmth and self-invigorating vitality of love. Even the sound of the church bell becomes the sound of the dead. The narrator in this stir sees a old friend(Stetson) that was with him in the Punic Wars. He asks him what happened to the corpse that he planted in his garden and has it begin to sprout. Probably the sterile wasteland could only sprout the dead. In the end, the poet says that the reader must share his sins as well. All cities are same like London (they are dying) and all wars are same and all men are same. All the individual faces blur into Stetson. An undefined and formless humanity as the burial procession moved across a London bridge. We all will be dead into this infertile dust and will not give life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)