The Waste Land And Other Poems (1955) - Plot & Excerpts
Thomas Stearns Eliot. A lot is hidden between those three words. A whole world perhaps. A depth measured by many oceans, a mystery viewed from bewitching lenses, a song marrying numerous notes, a candle thriving on inexhaustible wax.During his writing season, that spanned over three decades, T S Eliot penned many evocative and luscious poems, with his pen always leaving a signature cryptic mark over his dotted sheets. Often a source of delusion to an enthusiastic poetic heart, his labyrinthine lyricism was like a lashing downpour on a parched heartland: one surrendered to the torrent at the risk of bearing undecipherable strokes on one’s soul. I belong to this clan. In this volume, his celebrated and most popular poems rub shoulders with their relatively lesser known but still dense cousins. And while my soul may curse my mind for being picky about Eliot’s poems, I might go asunder for a while and share with you three gems, whose themes, narratives, cadence and wholeness can be adorned by adjectives from the ‘superlative’ family alone. THE WASTE LANDIn his most celebrated poem, his thoughts, meandering through five reverberating alleys of melancholy and despair, purport to create an image that oscillates between our meretricious values and late realizations. It begins with The Burial of the Dead where a collage of pictures bearing subdued trees, stony lands, dried showers and insipid sun leaves a young girl with a heavy heart who is further introduced to the throbbing futility of it all. And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Leading us to the next alleys, Eliot plays A Game of Chess, issues A Fire Sermon, condemns us to a Death by Water and lets us hear What The Thunder Said. All through this trail, we are trembling; more with remorse or excitement, is something we can’t guess without ambiguity. Touching the themes of vengeance, repentance, nostalgia, penance and decay, he halts at ”Datta, Dayadhvan and Damyata” as the final rousing call. This mantra in Sanskrit translates to “Give, Sacrifice and Control” respectively. This trinity, capable of resurrecting our being in a more dignified and buoyant fabric, is left for the reader to comprehend and validate. Datta: what have we given?My friend, blood shaking my heartThe awful daring of a moment’s surrenderWhich an age of prudence can never retractBy this, and this only, we have existedWhich is not to be found in our obituariesOr in memories draped by the beneficent spiderOr under seals broken by the lean solicitorIn our empty rooms ------------ GERONTION Thou hast nor youth nor ageBut as it were an after dinner sleepDreaming of both. Thus starts this splendid poem, which is a mighty paean to a person’s journey from youth to mellow. And as always detected by a fatigued eye, this journey is laden with discolored beliefs and stung steps. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities. Think nowShe gives when our attention is distractedAnd what she gives, gives with such supple confusionsThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too lateWhat’s not believed in, or is still believed,In memory only, reconsidered passion. ----------- ASH WEDNESDAYWe are always in a vicious circle of creation and destruction. This engaging activity provides momentum to our lives and reinforces our core strength. I rejoice that things are as they are andI renounce the blessed faceAnd renounce the voiceBecause I cannot hope to turn againConsequently I rejoice, having to construct somethingUpon which to rejoice. A pity, then, that we can’t always control this rigmarole. What if, dotting the circle, we reach a point from where a deviation threatens to derail our movement, propelling our faith engine to go kaput? The tumultuous fall, then becomes impossible to confine in words, for it pervades everything: our skin, our bones, our heart. Should we be foolish enough to expect a hand to pull us out of this ditch, at this hour, when all we have done till now, in our sturdy capacity, is overlook meek yet expectant eyes? Is hope of such benevolence, an absurdity? Well, there is someone, indeed, to whom we can always look upto. Will the veiled sister prayFor children at the gateWho will not go away and cannot pray:Pray for those who chose and oppose. ----------"Shantih Shantih Shantih - The Peace that passeth understanding."These poems are like pearls; the metaphorical oyster may pose a formidable guard but caress it with patience and stimulate it aloud and it will open up to a mesmerizing world of mellifluous prose and inspiring gist.
I stood in the bookstore wondering which edition of this book I should buy - this, the cheaper one made to profit a chain book store, and loaded with extra material (hey, when you're trying to read 52 books in 52 weeks, all extra pages count,) or, the more expensive one, put out by a small press, with no extra materials.I am glad I purchased this one (despite it's support of a major press, and major bookstore.) Randy Malamud is clearly very knowledgeable about T.S. Eliot. I didn't know much about this collection, beyond the fact that it is considered one of the most important poetic works of the 20th century, and what it says on the back cover of the book. Malamud's introduction helped me observe the tone shifts in the three collections within this book, and gave advice on how to tackle Eliot's poetry, which is not known for its accessibility. He also grounded the book in Eliot's life (although Eliot was very against this type of analysis.) I was very intrigued by Eliot's first wife and would have loved to know more. While Malamud address Eliot's sexism and anti-Semitic views with empathy, I could not understand if he was making excuses or not.Let's start my commentary on Eliot's work here - this collection is so full of woman-hatred. A note - while I am a feminist, I find problematic literature (and other artwork) is the most realistic. Life isn't perfect and probably shouldn't be portrayed like it is. It is when we encounter realistic situations in these safe spaces that we can learn to grow. However, there is a line beyond literature that portrays realistic, sexist situations, to literature that is used as a thin veil to rant about how women are awful. I would say that this collection is of the later.In this book, women are depicted in a lot of demeaning ways - judgmental, shallow, oblivious, sex objects, worthless. In Part II of "Waste Land," a woman is told she needs to replace her teeth, otherwise her husband will cheat on her; and, if he cheats, it will be her fault. She explains that she thinks both her teeth and herself have been off since having an abortion, and the speaker responds with such a lack of empathy that it really disgusted me. In a similar vein, Eliot also proceeds to demean Jewish and American people (and, I am assuming people of all three social groupings.)Eliot's superiority complex isn't limited to his being a white male - as Malamud explains in the introduction, Eliot's writing is very detached/high-and-mighty. He litters his poetry throughout with extensive, and at times, obscure references; he writes sections of his poetry in French. All of this, to distance himself/make his poetry more difficult for the average person to read. These stylistic choices would be one thing, but you could feel Eliot's ego dripping off of every page. Most of his poetry, especially in the first two sections, was about making fun of/satirizing something/someone - women, the church. Most of this poetry is about distancing himself from the subject and the reader because apparently T.S. Eliot was above it all. As far as the writing itself, there were very few/no "bad poems" here (if you ignored the obnoxious tone and sexism.) Not many of these poems blew me away, though. I really disliked Eliot's lack of punctuation - ten, twenty lines could go by without a period (especially at the beginnings of his poems) or other punctuation, and that was difficult. I didn't like some of the ways he expressed his satire, like inventing twenty characters with stupid names per poem. There were moments were Eliot's wordplay was brilliant. But, besides these two negative facts, some of this poetry is good. "Cousin Nancy," "Hysteria," "The Hippopotamus." Interestingly, Eliot stated that the "Water Song" or a section from the fifth part of the "Waste Land" was the best part of the poem; and I would have to agree. It's clever, and the rhythm/word choice is amazing. I also enjoyed the fact that Malamud created end notes and that Eliot's originals were included, they added a lot to my reading. I was a little intimidated by reading this because it is a "classic," but the introduction and the notes helped - it also isn't too difficult a read (but perhaps I am not ~high and mighty~ enough to understand.) This collection also included commentary from Eliot's peers, and some from the following decades, on the book - both in a brief essay about the poems' impact, and direct quotes itself. I thought this section was an awesome addition, and if it is included in all books of this series I plan on reading many of them in the future. I would have to agree with some of the commentators in that end section - this book wasn't for me.
What do You think about The Waste Land And Other Poems (1955)?
Having read this more times than I remember, it is time to write a quick review. I started using this in the classes that I teach when, somehow or other, I noticed or heard or read about how this work is connected to The Great Gatsby (another work I "teach"). While, biographically, there may be some less than savory things to say about T.S. Eliot, and perhaps even his approach to literary criticism, neither shows up in this work. You should read it if you haven't and read it again if you only read it once because you were forced to at university.If you are overwhelmed by the "stuff you aren't getting" use this website as a companion:http://world.std.com/~raparker/explor...
—Christopher Klein
I decided to read this today, after seeing numerous references to The Waste Land in the The Waste Landsthird book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.I think we are in rats’ alleytWhere the dead men lost their bones.Incredibly visual, and the poems painted vivid pictures inside my mind. It is much easier to appreciate Eliot now, after having read Stephen King. But, I wish it had been the other way round, and I'd have seen more clearly where King drew his inspiration from.Nevertheless, I'm surely going to keep coming back to Prufrock and The Waste Land repeatedly, in moments when all seems dull and drab around, and admire T.S. Eliot's lovely words.
—Sumit Singla
I think "The Waste Land" and the other poems in this collection ("Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and "Gerontion," "Portrait of a Lady" and "Four Quartets") are brilliant. That said, I have to sort of hold T.S. Eliot responsible for everything I hate about modern poetry. Obviously T. Stearns isn't wholly to blame, and I think he has a genius of his own, but I think that his influence on many of his poetic successors has mostly led to a disgusting pretension in poetry, which superficially veils emotions, quotes Latin, and ranks obscurity and abstruseness above art. Yea, I'm staking the claim: T.S. Eliot is the father of the hipster movement I mean, what could be more hipster than saying that Coriolanus is the greater tragedy to Hamlet? ...Right. "Oh yes, of course Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" was great and all, but have you heard their earlier demos, with Stevie singing in iambs, accompanying herself on the tambourine, and Lidnsay Buckingham on the zithern? Oh you haven't? It's sublime"For a American expat working as a bank clerk in London, Eliot was perhaps the first visionary of the caffeinated Brooklyn counterculture-turned-mainstream-turned-counter-counter-culture-ad-infinitum: Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question ...Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"Yea, T. Stearns, let's traipse around Bensonhurst late at night when all the bars stop selling PBRs and take the dusty mixed-nut bowls off the counter, let's wipe the dust off of our hemp-sewn socks, and knock the much off our patent leather high-top shoes, and walk alone and look at the citylights and meditate on what it all means to be alive, and why rents are so high, and what is a good synonym for boredom (boredom - snoredom - apathy - lassitude - yawn - pococurantism (oooh that's a good one) - disinterest - l'ennui (ooh, nice use of freshman year French, man, high-five)), and why the sea is boiling hot and weather pigs have wings, etc. etc. One thing Eliot does master is capturing a rhythm without necessarily having a strict structure. Unlike many ofhis successors, Eliot's po--etry has a meter and rhythm of itsown,maybe inconsistent, but lyriccal in its ownway:not just sentences withstrange linebreaks.Je ne peux pas mentir. Placet rithimorum.He is also a master of allusion, which spans all of time, and does not belong to a signular era. He borrows from Shakespeare, from Homer, Henry James, all sorts of authors and thinkers and tinkerers, and blends them with the lowbrow culture which was pervasive in his day, and has a bold rhythm which is counter to its highbrow literary past. However, despite the highbrow-lowbrow contrast, the varied allusions form a beautiful fugue of meaning, which says something about society as a whole in a realistic way. Dovetailing off of Eliot's convergence of the high and low brow cultures in poetry, there is a kind of split between the ultra-obscurism of Wallace Stevens (whom I adore) and Hart Crane, and the self-indulgent colloquiality of Auden, Berryman, etc. While I think these are talented poets, I think they fall short of the kind of musicality of Eliot's poetry. However, I think poetry these days (which isn't to say all of it, or necessarily much of it, but rather the sort of stock-persona of poetry) is highly self-indulgent and pretentious. In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.In Williamsburg the hipsters come and goTalking of Michel Foucault.
—David
