T.S. Eliot The Waste Land (1) LIT 3023 Modernism T.S. Eliot The Waste Land (1)

Overview Structure Themes Technique

Eliot Reads

Structure Five part structure – recalls Aristotle’s unities But structure heavily altered by Pound – e.g. Death by Water reduced by 90% So…?

One approach to structure I. The Burial of the Dead (asking the question; starting the journey; crossing the threshold) II. A Game of Chess (the first incomplete, unsatisfactory answer: sex without love in marriage; the road of trials) III. The Fire Sermon (a second unsatisfactory answer: sex without love outside marriage; various temptations) IV. Death by Water (the nadir, sparagmos, symbolic death) V. What the Thunder Said (the final hopeful, or at least on-going answer; reconciliation with parental figures, the return ) Elisa Kay Sparks Source: http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/dial/t&vseminar/wlglied.htm Sparagmos: Sparagmos (Ancient Greek: σπαραγμός) refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from the body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the Dionysian Mysteries.

…or more simply I Earth II Air III Fire IV Water V All elements

More structure Not linear Spatial Unified by symbol, not narrative Works on allusions and echoes Mosaic Cinematic

Themes “Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now attributed the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing certain magical rites they could aid the god, who was the principle of life, in his struggle with the opposing principle of death.” Frazer, The Golden Bough [abridged version] (London: Macmillan, 1922) p.324

Themes The quest or journey – Grail legend Jessie Weston identified three stages of development in the medieval Grail romances. In the first of them, the hero was Gawain and the land had been wasted as a consequence of the mysterious death of an unnamed knight. “This wasting of the land is found in three Gawain Grail stories…Thus, briefly, the object of the Rites is the restoration of Vegetation, connected with the revival of the god; the object of the Quest is the same, but connected with the restoration to health of the King.” (The Grail and the Rites of Adonis) Source: The Grail and the Rites of Adonis by J L Weston in Sources of the Grail, edited by John Matthews (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1996) p.438

Fisher King Jessie Weston: the Fisher King is derived from pagan fertility rituals, and beneath the surface of the numerous legends can be discerned the rites of primitive cults. Heinzel: the Fisher King can be reduced, instead, to his archetypal status as the keeper of the Holy Grail, a position which entrenches him firmly within the iconography of esoteric Christianity. (Heinzel: Die Alt-Französische Gral Romanen 1891). Source- paraphrased at http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/arthurian_legend/grail/fisher/

Themes Loomis: …there were not only two main themes which tended to combine in bewildering associations, but several subordinate disharmonies contributed to the mystification of both the authors and their readers. There was a wounded King for the hero to cure; there was a slain King for him to avenge. Yet they seemed to bear somewhat the same name. The King's infirmity or death caused his land to be sterile and waste; yet, strange to say, he possessed a talisman of inexhaustible abundance. R.S.Loomis, The Grail: from Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) p.95

How does this fit 1922? Post war Personal crisis for Eliot Sense of impending catastrophe Destruction of “old” civilisation Debasement of personal relationships Crisis of faith

Technique Collage – deliberate juxtaposition of precursor texts and images Effect – contrast past and present; urban vs. pastoral; idyllic past vs sordid present E.g. opening of The Fire Sermon

Technique Fragmentation – of text, of syntax, of meaning. Why? E.g. final section of poem – Babel? Quotation – submerged, mangled, defamiliarised… Why? E.g. “April is the cruellest month…” “But at my back I always hear…”

Technique Still traditional elements though: Opening passage Sonnet in the typist scene Unreal City

Conclusion Very complex account of spiritual and moral decay Sense of nostalgic longing for lost golden age Self –disgust, self-pity Breakdown, figured in the language.