Well, dear friends, such is the time when we must part ways with T.S. Eliot and The Waste Land. Although the text is confusing as hell, it is safe to say that Eliot's verses and allusions moved the reader and provided an excellent insight into emotion and pain.
Enough of that sentiment! Below is a bibliography of all of the works used in this blog.
Goodbye, and thanks for reading!
-Taylor
Carr, Mary. “How To Read ‘The Waste Land’ So It Alters Your Soul.” Chronicle of Higher Education 47.24 (2001): B7-B12. EBSCOhost. Web.
Levenson, Michael H. “Does the Waste Land Have a Politics?” Modernism/Modernity 29.4 (2006): 194-200. Project Muse. Web. 14 October 2009.
North, Michael, ed. The Waste Land: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001.Print.
Pericles, Lewis. “The Waste Land.” modernism.research.yale.edu. Yale University. 12 December 2007. Web. 12 October 2009.
Ransom, John Crowe. “Waste Lands.” The Waste Land: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Michael North. New York: Norton, 2001. 167-70. Print.
Wylie, Elinor. “Mr. Eliot’s Slug-Horn.” The Waste Land: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Michael North. New York: Norton, 2001. 145-48. Print.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Seventh Post
In my studies of The Waste Land, I have been assigned the task of drawing upon the resources of online articles and periodicals, texts similar to the previously studied "How To Ready the Waste Land So It Changes Your Life". Although the actual search will not be shown here (you have already seen how it went the first time), I will comment that the actual selection process was about as smooth and well as any search could possibly go, and on the very first search on my second selection, I found a wonderful article by the name of "Does the Waste Land Have a Politics?" (odd name) by Michael Levenson, published in Modernism/Modernity. As you can imagine, the article deals with the political and economic issues that Eliot (allegedly) discussed in him poem, using many textual examples as well as a few from Eliot's letters in England.
The beginning of the article is about as run-of-the-mill and habitual as any other; with a brief overview of T.S. Eliot's biography (something that we have never seen before!). This history, however, is more focused on his famous exodus to England. Levenson explains how difficult it was, and maybe still is, for an American to rise to respectable stature in Britain. For Eliot, this certainly applied, but was made considerable easier due to his commercial success. Still, Eliot sought out the elite through his many letters, and "[b]y 1919 Eliot can boast that he has 'more influence on English letters than any other American has ever had, unless it be Henry James.'" By the end of his time in England, he was one of the most respected literary figures in England, as well as the world.
Moving along, the article breaks into a post-war view of his poem, integrating what he saw and experienced in London when he moved in. Levenson provides interesting insight into this:
Written so soon after the carnage of the war, the poem has naturally been understood as an engagement with the civilization of violence. But a burden of this argument is that The Waste Land needs to be located within the immediate surround of the postwar city, the city cursed not by military violence, but by hectic peace. It's the city of the dead, as we have always known, but these are peculiar corpses: they twitch so spasmodically.
This particular view, I find, is extremely interesting, especially seeing the context of the statement. Not being particularly privy to post-World War 1 history, the fact that London was a "hectic" city starting in 1919 was new to me, but makes much sense. Restless youth returning from Europe, as I understand, was the ignition for the Roaring 20's in the United States, so something of a similar effect must have occured in Britian. From what Levenson describes, however, the youth are portrayed more as "peculiar corpses", stricken with disgust and guilt from the atrocities of war and yet restless from going back. This seems to be a large faction in The Waste Land's overall mood and tone, such as with the "Unreal City":
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
The rest of the article skirts around social implications in the post-war era and how it impacts Eliot's work.
The beginning of the article is about as run-of-the-mill and habitual as any other; with a brief overview of T.S. Eliot's biography (something that we have never seen before!). This history, however, is more focused on his famous exodus to England. Levenson explains how difficult it was, and maybe still is, for an American to rise to respectable stature in Britain. For Eliot, this certainly applied, but was made considerable easier due to his commercial success. Still, Eliot sought out the elite through his many letters, and "[b]y 1919 Eliot can boast that he has 'more influence on English letters than any other American has ever had, unless it be Henry James.'" By the end of his time in England, he was one of the most respected literary figures in England, as well as the world.
Moving along, the article breaks into a post-war view of his poem, integrating what he saw and experienced in London when he moved in. Levenson provides interesting insight into this:
Written so soon after the carnage of the war, the poem has naturally been understood as an engagement with the civilization of violence. But a burden of this argument is that The Waste Land needs to be located within the immediate surround of the postwar city, the city cursed not by military violence, but by hectic peace. It's the city of the dead, as we have always known, but these are peculiar corpses: they twitch so spasmodically.
This particular view, I find, is extremely interesting, especially seeing the context of the statement. Not being particularly privy to post-World War 1 history, the fact that London was a "hectic" city starting in 1919 was new to me, but makes much sense. Restless youth returning from Europe, as I understand, was the ignition for the Roaring 20's in the United States, so something of a similar effect must have occured in Britian. From what Levenson describes, however, the youth are portrayed more as "peculiar corpses", stricken with disgust and guilt from the atrocities of war and yet restless from going back. This seems to be a large faction in The Waste Land's overall mood and tone, such as with the "Unreal City":
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
The rest of the article skirts around social implications in the post-war era and how it impacts Eliot's work.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Fifth Response (Post-Madness Recovery)
Upon its publication in 1922, The Waste Land has produced an understandably varied range of reactions, most of these ranging from extreme praise, extreme hatred, and to some of just confused positivity, only giving the intimidating poem merits to disparage their own integrity. For the two articles that I examined for this entry, I chose very opposing reviews of The Waste Land, the first being an article assigned to the class to read, "How To Read the Waste Land So It Alters Your Soul" by Mary Carr (you can see which way that leans), and the other being a particularly scathing review by a Mr. John Crowe Ransom, "Waste Lands". Both provide valuable insights into Eliot's poem, but I will state that "How To Read" is much more progressive than "Waste Lands", or at least in my mind. Ransom's anger is, in my eyes, warranted, but still a common reaction to the reader who reads it for the first time and cannot understand it. My bias, in this sense, will lean with Carr's essay, but this is not a problem seeing that the assignment is a comparison of the essays. In a sense, I suppose that I have already started...
"Waste Lands" vs. "How To Read the Waste Land So It Alters Your Soul"
Directly after the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, a fleet of reviews on the poem were published, many of them critical of the author, T.S. Eliot. Such was the case with "Waste Lands." Published in The New York Evening Post Literary Review in July of 1923, this particular article is representative of the negative views surrounding Eliot's book. Ransom's first criticism of the book is its particular form, which is undisputed with any scholar:
...Mr. Eliot's performance is the apotheosis (or "epitome" for those, like me, who believe that "apotheosis" was left behind in the 19th century) of modernity, and seeems to bring to a head all the specifically modern errors, and to cry for critic's ink of a volume quite disproportionate to its merits as a poem.
It is no secret to the reader that Eliot was arguably the father of modernist poetry, and while we commend him for such creativity, critics of the era were less than amused with all of the irregularities in the modern poetry form, most of which were defined in The Waste Land. Ransom had a particular problem with the "extreme disconnection", claiming that beginnings and ends of sections are almost impossible to discern and gives off the impression of perhaps fifty or more parts. He also argues that breaking down the poem into smaller parts and dissecting those as opposed to writing for the meaning of the whole disrupts the flow and puts values on the individual pieces. Finding meaning in the individual sections, as he explains, takes away from what the poem itself is trying to convey. Much of this article is spent trying to make sense of the discontinuities in ideas and structure.
The second section of Ransom's argument pertains to another modernistic tool: "Borrowing" (as I shall say) from past works. Two small points are trying to be made in this:
1) That the context of the section of his poem where he inserts the borrowed lines matches with the actual meaning of those lines, and
2) That, in trying to fabricate a new form, he is only naively borrowing from ideaologies long past.
His summation is an accurate representation of the overall review:
'The Waste Land' is one of the most insubordinate pomes in the language, and perhaps it is the most unequal. ...The genius of our language is notoriously given to feats of hospitality: but it seems to me it will be hard pressed to find accommodations at the same time for two such incompatibles as Mr. Wordsworth and the present Mr. Eliot; and any realist must admit that what happens to be the prior tenure of the mansion in this case is likely to be stubbornly defended.
Mary Carr's article, however, is extremely praising and optimistic. With everything that our cynic, Mr. Ransom, implies, she refutes, though not directly. Every sentence, every word, every reference, in Carr's eye, is placed there perfectly, an undisputable brush or stroke from a proclaimed genius. She feels that modern society does not embrace the poem as much as they should and argues this in the first part of her essay. She also explains the bitter irony of explaining to a student whose paper she is editing that non-linear jumps are hazy and disruptive, despite the fact that her own hero employs them in her favorite work. Still, with Eliot, his supposed discontinuities are results of his insertions of classic literature, a homage to the foundations of his own knowledge and a treat to his readers. Carr goes on to discuss other parts of Eliot's work, such as his footnotes, and sifts through them in a very smooth meander as she presents this stream of thought that opposes that of Ransom's
Some middle ground is to be found, mind you. Both Carr and Ransom acknowledge that Eliot is undisputedly an academic. His allusions are powerful, his poetry masterful, and although Carr does not directly admit, The Waste Land is a very well-written poem.
"Waste Lands" vs. "How To Read the Waste Land So It Alters Your Soul"
Directly after the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, a fleet of reviews on the poem were published, many of them critical of the author, T.S. Eliot. Such was the case with "Waste Lands." Published in The New York Evening Post Literary Review in July of 1923, this particular article is representative of the negative views surrounding Eliot's book. Ransom's first criticism of the book is its particular form, which is undisputed with any scholar:
...Mr. Eliot's performance is the apotheosis (or "epitome" for those, like me, who believe that "apotheosis" was left behind in the 19th century) of modernity, and seeems to bring to a head all the specifically modern errors, and to cry for critic's ink of a volume quite disproportionate to its merits as a poem.
It is no secret to the reader that Eliot was arguably the father of modernist poetry, and while we commend him for such creativity, critics of the era were less than amused with all of the irregularities in the modern poetry form, most of which were defined in The Waste Land. Ransom had a particular problem with the "extreme disconnection", claiming that beginnings and ends of sections are almost impossible to discern and gives off the impression of perhaps fifty or more parts. He also argues that breaking down the poem into smaller parts and dissecting those as opposed to writing for the meaning of the whole disrupts the flow and puts values on the individual pieces. Finding meaning in the individual sections, as he explains, takes away from what the poem itself is trying to convey. Much of this article is spent trying to make sense of the discontinuities in ideas and structure.
The second section of Ransom's argument pertains to another modernistic tool: "Borrowing" (as I shall say) from past works. Two small points are trying to be made in this:
1) That the context of the section of his poem where he inserts the borrowed lines matches with the actual meaning of those lines, and
2) That, in trying to fabricate a new form, he is only naively borrowing from ideaologies long past.
His summation is an accurate representation of the overall review:
'The Waste Land' is one of the most insubordinate pomes in the language, and perhaps it is the most unequal. ...The genius of our language is notoriously given to feats of hospitality: but it seems to me it will be hard pressed to find accommodations at the same time for two such incompatibles as Mr. Wordsworth and the present Mr. Eliot; and any realist must admit that what happens to be the prior tenure of the mansion in this case is likely to be stubbornly defended.
Mary Carr's article, however, is extremely praising and optimistic. With everything that our cynic, Mr. Ransom, implies, she refutes, though not directly. Every sentence, every word, every reference, in Carr's eye, is placed there perfectly, an undisputable brush or stroke from a proclaimed genius. She feels that modern society does not embrace the poem as much as they should and argues this in the first part of her essay. She also explains the bitter irony of explaining to a student whose paper she is editing that non-linear jumps are hazy and disruptive, despite the fact that her own hero employs them in her favorite work. Still, with Eliot, his supposed discontinuities are results of his insertions of classic literature, a homage to the foundations of his own knowledge and a treat to his readers. Carr goes on to discuss other parts of Eliot's work, such as his footnotes, and sifts through them in a very smooth meander as she presents this stream of thought that opposes that of Ransom's
Some middle ground is to be found, mind you. Both Carr and Ransom acknowledge that Eliot is undisputedly an academic. His allusions are powerful, his poetry masterful, and although Carr does not directly admit, The Waste Land is a very well-written poem.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
About that last post...
Yeah...
First, I want to apologize for the madness. Warning heeded, most of you were able to withstand the sheer power and emotion emanating from my powerful words. It is suffice to say that children can be allowed back in the room.
From here on in, the shenanigans will be (mostly) moderated.
Thanks, and, again, sorry.
-Taylor
First, I want to apologize for the madness. Warning heeded, most of you were able to withstand the sheer power and emotion emanating from my powerful words. It is suffice to say that children can be allowed back in the room.
From here on in, the shenanigans will be (mostly) moderated.
Thanks, and, again, sorry.
-Taylor
Monday, October 12, 2009
Fourth Post aka Finding Understanding in Online Sources
For this entry, the readers of The Waste Land are entreated to search for helpful sources on the web in lieu of just reading the text and grabbing for understanding in the dark or with the footnotes given by the editor. For your own safety, I must warn you that my online searches can become a bit silly...
Anyways, here it is.
Search #1: "the waste land"
The search produces 24.8 million results. Goodness gracious.
Did you mean: the wasteland? Hell no! There is a space between "waste" and "land", Computer, so stop asking me such petty questions!
Wait, wait, wait Why is there a spa—
Shut up and keep going, Taylor! Alright, alright...
The first listing is for The Waste Land as a hyper text. It looks promising, so I click on it; turns out to be the very website that we use to read it in class. Using this would be cheating and redundant, so I reluctantly moved on.
Wikipedia's listing shows next. Historical and biographical information is redundant and uninformative. Moving on...
Scrolling down the page, I see Answer.com's listing. Looks promising. Turns out to be a full transcript of the poem, so I become discouraged. Before I leave, however, I scroll down to the bottom of the page and find an article posted by Yale under the "Annotated versions" category. Decided to try my luck.
Eureka! A modernist take on Waste Land is found on the page. Skipping the biographical information on Eliot (which seems to be on EVERY site I visit), I look on to the first investigative section on the web page.
Interesting Fact: T.S. Eliot was high conscious of his touch with traditional literature. I can see all of your surprised faces, so let me get to the point: He wrote an essay on modernist poetry, entitled "Tradition and the Individual Talent", in which he basically states that poets of the form, in their most original states, are engaging in dialogue with tradition. What this says to me, basically, is that The Waste Land is, in its entirety, an amalgamation of old literature and their ideas. I was under the impression that Eliot had only crafted about half of his poem in this style, but after reading his essay, I can see that the text is comparable to a puzzle being pieced together with small bits from many texts to produce a larger, clearer image, even if it may only exist in the author's own mind. Perhaps you have already figured this out, but I still feel quite good about this epiphany...
Another interesting tidbit about The Waste Land is that the original name was intended to be "He do the Police in Different Voices", a nod to Dickens's Our Mutual Friend in which one of the characters reads police reports in the newspaper in varying voices. The article suggests that the entire poem is a focus on the different voices that appear throughout the text, something that I, as a reader, have certainly taken to notice. More important in focus is the second section of the poem, namely with the dialogue between the irate female and the apathetic male. In the article, Lewis (the author), provides this interesting insight:
The use of so many voices in this kind of collage allows the poet to distance himself from any single statement. As the critic Louis Menand has put it, “nothing in [the poem] can be said to point to the poet, since none of its stylistic features is continuous, and it has no phrases or images that cannot be suspected of—where they are not in fact identified as—belonging to someone else….. Eliot appears nowhere, but his fingerprints are on everything.”
He later goes on to recount that, "[a]lthough The Waste Land is, by Eliot’s own admission, a highly personal document, it also aspires to a certain kind of impersonality." This accusation of "impersonality" is, to me, helpful since it brings to focus Eliot's dodgery, much like a patient skirts his own personal issues when being interviewed by a psychologist.
A very last interesting fact that I happened upon was that Eliot did not believe in such a thing as "free verse" and even claimed (with Ezra Pound) that he was experimening with tedious rythyms and meters found in everyday speech. Interesting.
After a while, I decided to move on to another source and see what I can find.
Search #2: "understanding the waste land"
The search only yeilds a disappointing 4.73 million hits. Geez.
Also try: understanding the wasteland. What is it with this computer?
The first couple of listings are for a website with free school essays, so these prove to be no help, although I was looking for a paper to turn into my Logic class. (Joke.)
I scroll down some more and find more links. Nothing of significance catches my attention. After a couple of minutes, I become frustrated and take a shower.
Twenty minutes later: Frustrated still, I decided that I needed some Cookout (spicy chicken tray, anyone?)
Thirty-three minutes later: Refreshed and objective, I return to the computer, but Oh Dear! the room is awful messy! I vow to not to return to my school work until after this putrid mess is obliterated, despite my (non-existant) inner strife.
Thirty seconds later: Dear Goodness, are those all dirty clothes? They must be washed!
Anyways, here it is.
Search #1: "the waste land"
The search produces 24.8 million results. Goodness gracious.
Did you mean: the wasteland? Hell no! There is a space between "waste" and "land", Computer, so stop asking me such petty questions!
Wait, wait, wait Why is there a spa—
Shut up and keep going, Taylor! Alright, alright...
The first listing is for The Waste Land as a hyper text. It looks promising, so I click on it; turns out to be the very website that we use to read it in class. Using this would be cheating and redundant, so I reluctantly moved on.
Wikipedia's listing shows next. Historical and biographical information is redundant and uninformative. Moving on...
Scrolling down the page, I see Answer.com's listing. Looks promising. Turns out to be a full transcript of the poem, so I become discouraged. Before I leave, however, I scroll down to the bottom of the page and find an article posted by Yale under the "Annotated versions" category. Decided to try my luck.
Eureka! A modernist take on Waste Land is found on the page. Skipping the biographical information on Eliot (which seems to be on EVERY site I visit), I look on to the first investigative section on the web page.
Interesting Fact: T.S. Eliot was high conscious of his touch with traditional literature. I can see all of your surprised faces, so let me get to the point: He wrote an essay on modernist poetry, entitled "Tradition and the Individual Talent", in which he basically states that poets of the form, in their most original states, are engaging in dialogue with tradition. What this says to me, basically, is that The Waste Land is, in its entirety, an amalgamation of old literature and their ideas. I was under the impression that Eliot had only crafted about half of his poem in this style, but after reading his essay, I can see that the text is comparable to a puzzle being pieced together with small bits from many texts to produce a larger, clearer image, even if it may only exist in the author's own mind. Perhaps you have already figured this out, but I still feel quite good about this epiphany...
Another interesting tidbit about The Waste Land is that the original name was intended to be "He do the Police in Different Voices", a nod to Dickens's Our Mutual Friend in which one of the characters reads police reports in the newspaper in varying voices. The article suggests that the entire poem is a focus on the different voices that appear throughout the text, something that I, as a reader, have certainly taken to notice. More important in focus is the second section of the poem, namely with the dialogue between the irate female and the apathetic male. In the article, Lewis (the author), provides this interesting insight:
The use of so many voices in this kind of collage allows the poet to distance himself from any single statement. As the critic Louis Menand has put it, “nothing in [the poem] can be said to point to the poet, since none of its stylistic features is continuous, and it has no phrases or images that cannot be suspected of—where they are not in fact identified as—belonging to someone else….. Eliot appears nowhere, but his fingerprints are on everything.”
He later goes on to recount that, "[a]lthough The Waste Land is, by Eliot’s own admission, a highly personal document, it also aspires to a certain kind of impersonality." This accusation of "impersonality" is, to me, helpful since it brings to focus Eliot's dodgery, much like a patient skirts his own personal issues when being interviewed by a psychologist.
A very last interesting fact that I happened upon was that Eliot did not believe in such a thing as "free verse" and even claimed (with Ezra Pound) that he was experimening with tedious rythyms and meters found in everyday speech. Interesting.
After a while, I decided to move on to another source and see what I can find.
Search #2: "understanding the waste land"
The search only yeilds a disappointing 4.73 million hits. Geez.
Also try: understanding the wasteland. What is it with this computer?
The first couple of listings are for a website with free school essays, so these prove to be no help, although I was looking for a paper to turn into my Logic class. (Joke.)
I scroll down some more and find more links. Nothing of significance catches my attention. After a couple of minutes, I become frustrated and take a shower.
Twenty minutes later: Frustrated still, I decided that I needed some Cookout (spicy chicken tray, anyone?)
Thirty-three minutes later: Refreshed and objective, I return to the computer, but Oh Dear! the room is awful messy! I vow to not to return to my school work until after this putrid mess is obliterated, despite my (non-existant) inner strife.
Thirty seconds later: Dear Goodness, are those all dirty clothes? They must be washed!
***
To spare you the details, I did not get back to searching for outside resources on the internet. I hope that you are not too disappointed with this outcome.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Part Three(ish)
As most of you have guessed by now, this blog has mostly dedicated itself to following my reading of The Waste Land in all of its splendor and glory. This post, however, is different; with this I will be discussing a literary review of the book written by the poet Elinor Wylie, written in 1923 in the New York Evening Post Literary Review (quite a mouth-full, huh?). An analysis of"Mr. Eliot's Slug-Horn", the name of this particular review, is not only a part of the assignment for class, but it is also conducive to the reader's understanding of how the author's feelings correlate with the poem that he writes. Views like this are Biographical-Historical Criticisms, the predominant criticism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and though they is technically obsolete, the Biographical-Historical Criticisms were relevant then and helped reviewers like Wylie understand the difficult poem that we are studying today.
Studying T.S. Eliot, as Elinor Wylie explains in "Mr. Eliot's Slug-Horn", must be done objectively and in a closed manner with no assumptions outside of what the author gives us. Otherwise, examining what Eliot is not will interrupt our vision of what Eliot is. Previous authors have compared his work to the likes of Ezra Pound and Dante, being that his form is modernist, and others claim that he is "no more cryptic than Donne and Yeats", and some state that his work is not as "genius" as James Joyces, but Wylie dismisses all of these as close-minded and unnecessary.
Throwing aside all of the comparisons and arguable fallacies, Wylie examines The Waste Land as an emotional piece, one that, in each word, lies his very soul and being.
The most important conduit of emotion that an author can provide in any text is a channel to his very soul, something that must be offered to the crowd and examined for his sake. Wylie admires this and praises him for his openness:
He is a cadaver, dissecting himself in our sight; he is the god Atthis who was buried in Stetson's garden and who now arises to give us the benefit of an anatomy lesson.
Along these lines, as though he were giving us an "anatomy lesson" about his past, Wylie goes on to prove the validity of Eliot using his own experiences in this book:
I think that Mr. Eliot conceived 'The Waste Land' out of an extremely tragic emotion and expresssed it in his own voice and in the voices of other unhappen men not carefully and elaborately trained in close harmony, but coming as a confused and frightening and beautiful murmur out of the bowels of the earth.
Wylie goes on to explain that the lines the author produced were painful to him and that this can be seen in the words chosen, and even if these emotions were fabricated, the piece would still be wonderful, much like a choir sings their song or a stain-glassed window, as Wylie put it.
The next issue that was visited was the notion that Eliot was an intellectual snob of sorts, one that feels no depth of emotion or pain. This, of course, was refuted.
As for the frequently reiterated statement that Mr. Eliot is a dry intellectual, without dept or sincerity of feeling, it is difficult for me to refute an idea which i am totally at a loss to understand; to me he seems almost inexcusable sensitive and sympathetic and quite inexcusable poignant, since he forces me to employ this horrid word to describe certain qualities which perhaps deserve a nobler tag in mingling pity with terror. That he expresses the emotion of an intellectual is perfectly true, but of the intensity of that emotion there is, no my mind, no question, nor do I recognize any reason for such a question.
Many critics have concluded, though unfounded, that The Waste Land is nothing more than a display of "intellectual arrogance", but Wylie concludes the opposite and expresses much sympathy for Eliot's splay of emotion and hurt.
Overall, Elinor Wylie stamps The Waste Land with her utmost approval and refutes other less-enthusiastic authors, citing her claims that Eliot not only used his own painful experiences, but also gave himself up for our emotional entertainment. Wylie's argument is successful and also provides excellent insight to the author himself: T.S. Eliot.
More to come soon, including some examinations of the second section of the poem, so don't lose interest yet!
Studying T.S. Eliot, as Elinor Wylie explains in "Mr. Eliot's Slug-Horn", must be done objectively and in a closed manner with no assumptions outside of what the author gives us. Otherwise, examining what Eliot is not will interrupt our vision of what Eliot is. Previous authors have compared his work to the likes of Ezra Pound and Dante, being that his form is modernist, and others claim that he is "no more cryptic than Donne and Yeats", and some state that his work is not as "genius" as James Joyces, but Wylie dismisses all of these as close-minded and unnecessary.
Throwing aside all of the comparisons and arguable fallacies, Wylie examines The Waste Land as an emotional piece, one that, in each word, lies his very soul and being.
The most important conduit of emotion that an author can provide in any text is a channel to his very soul, something that must be offered to the crowd and examined for his sake. Wylie admires this and praises him for his openness:
He is a cadaver, dissecting himself in our sight; he is the god Atthis who was buried in Stetson's garden and who now arises to give us the benefit of an anatomy lesson.
Along these lines, as though he were giving us an "anatomy lesson" about his past, Wylie goes on to prove the validity of Eliot using his own experiences in this book:
I think that Mr. Eliot conceived 'The Waste Land' out of an extremely tragic emotion and expresssed it in his own voice and in the voices of other unhappen men not carefully and elaborately trained in close harmony, but coming as a confused and frightening and beautiful murmur out of the bowels of the earth.
Wylie goes on to explain that the lines the author produced were painful to him and that this can be seen in the words chosen, and even if these emotions were fabricated, the piece would still be wonderful, much like a choir sings their song or a stain-glassed window, as Wylie put it.
The next issue that was visited was the notion that Eliot was an intellectual snob of sorts, one that feels no depth of emotion or pain. This, of course, was refuted.
As for the frequently reiterated statement that Mr. Eliot is a dry intellectual, without dept or sincerity of feeling, it is difficult for me to refute an idea which i am totally at a loss to understand; to me he seems almost inexcusable sensitive and sympathetic and quite inexcusable poignant, since he forces me to employ this horrid word to describe certain qualities which perhaps deserve a nobler tag in mingling pity with terror. That he expresses the emotion of an intellectual is perfectly true, but of the intensity of that emotion there is, no my mind, no question, nor do I recognize any reason for such a question.
Many critics have concluded, though unfounded, that The Waste Land is nothing more than a display of "intellectual arrogance", but Wylie concludes the opposite and expresses much sympathy for Eliot's splay of emotion and hurt.
Overall, Elinor Wylie stamps The Waste Land with her utmost approval and refutes other less-enthusiastic authors, citing her claims that Eliot not only used his own painful experiences, but also gave himself up for our emotional entertainment. Wylie's argument is successful and also provides excellent insight to the author himself: T.S. Eliot.
More to come soon, including some examinations of the second section of the poem, so don't lose interest yet!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Second Entry
After looking over my last entry, I have decided that it would be easier to tackle this monster by not going line-by-line and examining it that way. Most of what I will do in this post is look at particular sections and not the lines themselves, and by doing this I will hopefully get a better glimpse at the bigger meaning rather than probe smaller pieces of the picture. This is what we did in class, and this is (hopefully) how Eliot would have wanted the readers to take his poem, that is, if he really meant for anybody to understand it at all.
Reading through the next paragraph in the first section (or at least the first couple of lines), obvious allusions to the Bible are made in lines 19-30, and the footnotes confirm this, citing the books of Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes. What the footnotes do not indicate, however, is if this particular paragraph is an allusion to a more specific part of the Bible, say, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, something that I am gathering from my readings. The first clue to this starts at the most obvious reference to Jesus, the “Son of Man.” The next one (“And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,”) is a likely reference to the Cross and the Crucifixion, seeing that the “dead tree” is the Cross of stripped limbs with no branches for shade. The initial descriptions of a “stony rubbish” are also indicative of Jesus’ death, painting an accurate description of what many believe Golgotha (the site of the crucifixion) was like. We could even explore the landscape of what historians believe to be Golgotha and see that rubble and stone dominate the surface, certainly a site where “dry stone” exists. The last part of the paragraph is unclear to me (although the book’s footnotes indicate a quote from “The Death of St. Narcissus”) but could be loosely interpreted as Jesus’ resurrection. The only clear lines to show this would be about finding shade in the “red rock” since Jesus was inserted into a tomb cut into the side of a hill and sealed by a rolling rock.
Beginning with a German quote from the famous opera Tristan und Isolde, the next theme of the poem is about love, or so we can assume knowing the theme of the opera, running from lines 31-42. The speaker goes into a spiel about hyacinths, a flower named by the Greeks in reference to a story in which Apollo kills his lover, who is a young man. It is not made clear to the reader who the speaker is referring to, but if Eliot was a complete stickler for mythological analogies (and you bet he was!), then this could have been about a homosexual relationship. Even though the speaker would, hypothetically, take on a feminine role (e.g. “They called me the hyacinth girl.”), the assumption is plausible. Of course, with T.S. Eliot, any assumption is possible since nobody can understand his poetry. With the end of the paragraph being another German quote, the inference suggests that the speaker is still waiting to hear about this love, much like Tristan does with Isolde.
Speaking of Eliot’s unintelligible poetry, the next paragraph, the one about Madame Sosostris and Tarot, is unclear and almost placed haphazardly. If I knew anything about Tarot cards (which I can guarantee you that I do not), then I would take this space to try to decipher the meaning of the particular cards, like the drowned Phoenician Sailor and Belladonna; but, alas, I cannot. The only thing I can get out of this passage is that Eliot does have a bit of humor and pokes some fun at “dear Mrs. Equitone”. One certainly MUST be careful these days...
The last paragraph of Section I is a portrait of the London Bridge on a typical work day. Eliot describes the crowd as a sort of colorless mob, people that are both to blame and yet not to blame, something that is described with his quote from Dante’s Inferno. The passage goes on to describe the scene more, using King William Street and Saint Mary Woolnoth, and also engages in a bit of dialogue with a man who was apparently alive in 206 B.C. This is hazy, but I will say that “You! — hypocrite lecteur! — mon semblable, — mon frere!” is a very cool quote.
More fun to come later.
Reading through the next paragraph in the first section (or at least the first couple of lines), obvious allusions to the Bible are made in lines 19-30, and the footnotes confirm this, citing the books of Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes. What the footnotes do not indicate, however, is if this particular paragraph is an allusion to a more specific part of the Bible, say, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, something that I am gathering from my readings. The first clue to this starts at the most obvious reference to Jesus, the “Son of Man.” The next one (“And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,”) is a likely reference to the Cross and the Crucifixion, seeing that the “dead tree” is the Cross of stripped limbs with no branches for shade. The initial descriptions of a “stony rubbish” are also indicative of Jesus’ death, painting an accurate description of what many believe Golgotha (the site of the crucifixion) was like. We could even explore the landscape of what historians believe to be Golgotha and see that rubble and stone dominate the surface, certainly a site where “dry stone” exists. The last part of the paragraph is unclear to me (although the book’s footnotes indicate a quote from “The Death of St. Narcissus”) but could be loosely interpreted as Jesus’ resurrection. The only clear lines to show this would be about finding shade in the “red rock” since Jesus was inserted into a tomb cut into the side of a hill and sealed by a rolling rock.
Beginning with a German quote from the famous opera Tristan und Isolde, the next theme of the poem is about love, or so we can assume knowing the theme of the opera, running from lines 31-42. The speaker goes into a spiel about hyacinths, a flower named by the Greeks in reference to a story in which Apollo kills his lover, who is a young man. It is not made clear to the reader who the speaker is referring to, but if Eliot was a complete stickler for mythological analogies (and you bet he was!), then this could have been about a homosexual relationship. Even though the speaker would, hypothetically, take on a feminine role (e.g. “They called me the hyacinth girl.”), the assumption is plausible. Of course, with T.S. Eliot, any assumption is possible since nobody can understand his poetry. With the end of the paragraph being another German quote, the inference suggests that the speaker is still waiting to hear about this love, much like Tristan does with Isolde.
Speaking of Eliot’s unintelligible poetry, the next paragraph, the one about Madame Sosostris and Tarot, is unclear and almost placed haphazardly. If I knew anything about Tarot cards (which I can guarantee you that I do not), then I would take this space to try to decipher the meaning of the particular cards, like the drowned Phoenician Sailor and Belladonna; but, alas, I cannot. The only thing I can get out of this passage is that Eliot does have a bit of humor and pokes some fun at “dear Mrs. Equitone”. One certainly MUST be careful these days...
The last paragraph of Section I is a portrait of the London Bridge on a typical work day. Eliot describes the crowd as a sort of colorless mob, people that are both to blame and yet not to blame, something that is described with his quote from Dante’s Inferno. The passage goes on to describe the scene more, using King William Street and Saint Mary Woolnoth, and also engages in a bit of dialogue with a man who was apparently alive in 206 B.C. This is hazy, but I will say that “You! — hypocrite lecteur! — mon semblable, — mon frere!” is a very cool quote.
More fun to come later.
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