the waste land 1
TRANSCRIPT
1apr 622.19
2apr 67.49
The Waste Land
http://quarterlyconversation.com/thewastelandandotherpoemsbyjohnbeer
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3apr 68.44
What are the roots that clutch, what branches growOut of this stony rubbish? Son of man,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,And the dry stone no sound of water.
– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Picture from blog on the New Orleans Flood
4apr 621.51
Against the backdrop of a devastated Europe with the portentous rise of nationalism, social fragmentation and growing economic turmoil, The Waste Land was written in an atmosphere of uncertainty and creative experimentation. Europe had seen the unparalleled horror of the First World War with death on an unimaginable scale and the seeds of fascism were firmly planted in the ruins. In Britain, two million were unemployed after economic collapse, and the traditional social order was falling apart. This was a period of economic turmoil, hardship and desperation yet paradoxically it was also a time of unparalleled wealth and technological advance.
http://timebase.blogspot.com/p/wasteland.html
5apr 618.37
What the poem offers is little short of an epochal insight into the modern world, the waste land of the poem's title, a world in which older certainties have disappeared, a world of urban blight, of death and destruction, of meaningless relationships, and of a profound absence of spiritual, cultural and social assurances. In the poem's passage through this waste land we are shown various snapshots of a "dead" world, yet we are also offered tantalising glimpses of both the "life before", and of the possibility of restoring the world of the waste land once more to wholeness and fertility.
From an anonimously annoted text: http://www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/eliot/waste.htm
Sense of lost civilisation
http://timebase.blogspot.com/p/wasteland.html
6apr 619.03
The poem's difficulties and obscurities are intentional. To read it for the first time is to be presented with a series of allusions, fragments of texts and documents, and struggle in vain for a "key" to see the poem as a whole, to make sense of the total picture. This was part of Eliot's vision of the modern waste land. In the contemporary world we are left only with cultural fragments, rubble and artefacts imagine the scene of the aftermath of a bombed library or museum. We are unable to reassemble the pieces together to recreate a whole culture, and to see the rich and vital relationship between culture and experience. Eliot wants us to experience that sense of fragmentation for ourselves, and this is why the poem uses a kind of collage technique assembling chunks of texts together in what seems a random and arbitrary way to recreate this sense of cultural rubble. Reading through the poem you find references to many of the key writers in the Western cultural heritage Shakespeare, Dante, Spenser, Wagner, the Bible coupled with occasional references to contemporary popular culture the 'Shakespherian Rag', or the 'Mrs. Porter' song in Section III. There seems little to unify these pieces of textual rubble all appears arbitrary, random, disconnected. From an anonimously annoted text: http://www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/eliot/waste.htm
Intentional fragmentation
http://timebase.blogspot.com/p/wasteland.html
7apr 619.05
The poem draws upon the powerful myth of the wounded king who must be restored to health before his lands can be returned to wholeness and fertility once more. In drawing upon this myth Eliot is suggesting that, deep within the cultural unconscious of our modern waste land, there are underlying patterns and, furthermore, a sense of continuity with what has gone before. This is perhaps why the poem, in its references to previous empires and cultures Rome, Alexandria, Vienna suggests continuities between the contemporary "decline of the west" and the histories and destinies of previous civilisations. Furthermore, in its use of myth, the poem suggests that there are still grounds for belief and hope: in the modern waste land there are no religious or spiritual certainties, but there is still the possibility of sustaining kinds of religious or spiritual faith. And ultimately Eliot's concern is spiritual and religious: in the modern world of the waste land there seems to be little hope of recovering that sense of deeply rooted faith and belief, yet there are grounds for hope.
From an anonimously annoted text: http://www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/eliot/waste.htm
Glimpses of a sense of underlying order and unity
8apr 620.07
Weston's book is an academic examination of the roots of the King Arthur legends and seeks to make connections between the early pagan elements and the later Christian influences. The book's main focus is on the Holy Grail tradition and its influence, particularly the Wasteland motif. The origins of Weston's book are in James George Frazer's seminal work on folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough.
Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_ritual_to_romance
The Golden Bough attempts to define the shared elements of religious belief. Its thesis is that old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship of, and periodic sacrifice of, a sacred king. This king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the Earth, who died at the harvest, and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend is central to almost all of the world's mythologies. The Judgment of Paris an Etruscan bronzehandled mirror of the fourth or third century BC that relates the often misunderstood myth as interpreted by Frazer, showing the three goddesses giving their apple or pomegranate to the new king who must kill the old king.
Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough
9apr 619.07
The poem oscillates between despair and hope, and its final tone is uncertain: we cannot be sure if the journey across the wasteland has been in vain, or if we have been shown something profound and inspiring by the end. The poem's final references to 'shantih', the "Peace which passeth understanding" does suggest a basis for hope, but to get to this we have had to pass through much which is bleak, despairing, fragmented and apparently without meaning.
From an anonimously annoted text: http://www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/eliot/waste.htm
Despair and/or Hope
10apr 619.09
It is easy to understand why the poem became so important in the 1920s and 30s: it reproduced, for this generation, a sense of a shellshocked culture struggling to rebuild itself after the 191418 War, a "Brave New World" which had seen the emergence of communism in Russia and China, and the creation of a new urban landscape, a world of anonymity and alienation.
From an anonimously annoted text: http://www.newi.ac.uk/rdover/eliot/waste.htm
Cultural landmark
11apr 68.55
Tristan and Isolde
Character Setting Content Themes Form
Marie Russian exiled aristocrat
Emotional wastland nature
Autobiographical fragments from the childhood of an aristocratic woman with meditations on the seasons and her present state.
Fertility ritesDeath and RebirthDamaged human psycheIneffectual sexualityPainful memory an life cycle
Modified dramatic monologue
partial rhyme schemes short bursts of structure
inclusion of fragments in foreign languages
Frequent use of allitteration and assonance
Man speakerHyacinth Girl
Mythicalreligious wasteland desert
Speaker's invitation to a desert journey plus childhood memories about a hyacinth girl.
Religious experienceFragmentationAridityIneffectual sexualityNothingness
Madame Sosostris Famous clayrvoyante the wisest woman in Europe
Mysthic prophetic wastland parlour
Madame Sosostris famous clairvoyante reads her tarots.
Blurred distinction between high and low cultureTransformation
Wandering man speaker/former soldierStestson
Modern city real wasteland LondonUnreal City
Speaker's walk through a London populated by living dead.
AlienationEnd of a civilisationDevastating consequences of war Death and Rebirth
The Burial of the Dead Memory and desireReference to the book of Common prayers Anglican burial Service
12apr 621.15
Vignette 1 Vignette 2 Vignette 3 Vignette 4
Plants lilacs(desire, romantic promise, rejuvenation )
dull rootsdry tubers
hyacinths(growth and fertility resurrection )
dead trees dead trees planted dead body
Animals cricket dog
Seasons SpringWinter
Winter SummerWinter
Spring Winter?(bad cold)
Winter Spring
Weather RainSnow
RainSnow
sun beatsdry
gentle rain fog sudden frost
Places Dad land StarnbergerseeHofgartenmauntain slope
desert hyacinth garden sea
parlour London BridgeKing Wiliam streetSt Mary Woolnoth
garden
Time April an hour talknight
morningevening
late afternoon? dawnthe final stroke of nine
People we Marieher male friendarchduke
speakerson of manyou
speakerTristanhyacinth girl
Madam Sosostrisunknown consultantMrs Equitone
phoenician sailorbelladonnaoneeyed manman with 3 stavesmen wlking in a ring
speakercountless crowd
Stetsonhypocrite lecteur
The Burial of the Dead Memory and desire
13apr 621.26
Vignette 1 Vignette 2 Vignette 3 Vignette 4
Myth fertility rites arthurian cycle death and rebirth death and rebirthOsiris
Religion Easter Jesus in the Desert
sorry state of faith and belief in the modern world
death and resurrection
Inconclusive Sex
men are not there,if they are to no avail
men are not there,if they are to no avail
Ineffective menDead or otherwise busy
Men dead or otherwise busy
Literature Canerbury tales BibleWagner's Tristan an Isolde
TarotsShakespeare The Tempest
Fleur du MalInferno Canto IIIInferno Canto VFleur du Mal opening sonnet
Social status Exiled aristocrat
unspecified lower class fortunetellerhigh class clients
communting lower middle class clerks
History Belle EpoqueSoviet Revolution
Unspecified unspecified raging twentiesworld war 1Battle of Milae
Section I
14apr 68.55
Character Content Themes Setting Form
vignette 1 Detailed description of room luxury furnishing
Philomela's mythviolent sexhorrible revenge
luxury private boudoir
unrhymed iambic pentameter lines, or blank verse
lines increasingly irregular in length and meter, giving the feeling of disintegration, of things falling apart.
Nuerotic questions/speechPlan for an excursion and game of chess
Too little or no sex availableImpossibility to communicateToo few words
vignette 3 Lil's friend and her friendLil and AlberrtBartenderPub goers
Too much or no sex wanted Too many wordsRampant fecundity associated plus lack of culture and rapid aging
London pub at closing time
Dialogue interrupted by the barman’s refrainLoose series of phrases connected by “I said”/“she said”
A Game of Chess stages of seduction or the two sides of human sexuality no regeneration through sex
15apr 68.56
The Fire Sermon
Character Content Setting References Themes
16apr 68.56
Death by Water
Character Content Setting References Themes
17apr 68.56
Character Content Setting Reference Theme
What the Thunder said
18apr 67.58
The Burial of dead
A game of chess
The fire sermon
Death by water ‐ What the thunder said
The Waste Land (TS Eliot) ‐ Desert Experience
The Waste Land: Burial of the Dead (T.S. Eliot)
Fiona Shaw ‐ T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
F. Moretti: From the Wasteland to artificial paradise
Annotated text
Links
19apr 620.55
20apr 68.50