The Wasteland

 "The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink"

                                                                                    - T.S.Eliot

Introduction:

                    T. S. ELIOT WAS BORN IN ST LOUIS, MISSOURI, on 26 September 1888. He died in London aged seventy-seven. By then, he was the 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the recipient of the Order of Merit, England's most distinguished honour, in the personal gift of the reigning monarch. He was the most influential and authoritative literary arbiter of the twentieth century and a publisher of great distinction at Faber and Faber, where he published W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender. As the editor of the influential magazine The Criterion, from 1922 until 1939, he published Proust, Gide and Thomas Mann-an indication of his cultural pan- Europeanism as well as his access to the literary firmament. He was a world figure. Late in his career, he was a surprisingly successful poetic dramatist. He was the century's most famous poet- oddly because his prestige was founded on poetry notorious for its difficulty. In 6 March 1950, he was on the cover of Time magazine. On 30 April 1956, Eliot lectured to fourteen thousand people at the baseball stadium in Minneapolis on "The Frontiers of Criticism'. In Raymond Chandler's novel The Long Goodbye (1953), when Amos, the African-American chauffeur of Mrs. Loring, refuses a dollar tip, Philip Marlowe mildly twits his fastidiousness by offering to buy him the poems of T. S. Eliot; 'He said he already had them.' A hundred pages on, Marlowe and Amos have a plausible discussion-Amos is a graduate of Howard University-about "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. (They agree 'that the guy didn't know very much about women'.)

                Eliot's detractors often insinuate that this eminence was achieved by feline caution, literary politicking, calculation, a shrewd assessment of the literary marketplace, a quiet but inexorable campaign of ruthless self-advancement. I think it is a matter of literary merit rather than manipulation of opinion. In fact, Imagination of the Heart, Theresa Whistler's biography of Walter de la Mare, demonstrates that 1922, the agreed date for the conclusive advent of modernism-with the publication of Joyce's Ulysses, Flint's The Waste Land and Wallace Stevene's Harmeonium seemed much less conclusive to de la Mare, J. C. Squire, and other tenacious neo-Georgians, 'also-rans' who had their own platforms including The London Mercury and the Weekly Westminster, to which the young Graham Greene contributed. It wasn't a question of capturing the sole radio station. The strategic battles were still being 'fought' in the 1950s. Walter de la Mare thought the selection of Eliot as the only twentieth-century English poet at the Festival of Britain in 1953 was invidious and wrote to Eliot asking him to withdraw.

                Despite this latter-day celebrity, for much of his life, Eliot's fame was restricted to literature. He was a private person. In his newspaper paper column, Gilbert Harding, a once-famous, now forgotten, British broadcasting celebrity, recounted his embarrassment at being pointed out on the London underground while Eliot, 'the greatest poet of the century', was ignored, unrecognised in the corner of the same compartment.

                Eliot's life, like the lives of many writers who spend their time at their desks, was apparently uneventful compared to, say, Ernest Hemingway's blood-bolstered, flashbulb-tormented exploits. In 'To Criticise the Critic' (1961), he described himself as 'the mild-mannered man safely entrenched behind his typewriter'. And it is a theme of this study that the Buried Life, the idea of a life not fully lived, is the central, animating idea of Eliot's poetry.

                However, Eliot's own life is full of quiet drama, even of recklessness. On the one hand, there is the assiduous man of letters, indefatigably reviewing, editing, and giving lectures. On the other hand, there is the poet who renounced a promising career as a philosopher in American academe for an uncertain literary life in a foreign country, the poet who married, within weeks of meeting her, Vivien Haigh-Wood. Though initially Vivien was a valued, even essential literary confrere and a loved wife-'I have felt happier, these few days, than ever in my life', Eliot writes to Bertrand Russell on 14 January 1916-the marriage was not a success. On 10 Janu- ary 1916, Eliot writes to Conrad Aiken that financial worries and concern over Vivien's poor health had stopped him writing: Yet, 'I am having a wonderful time nevertheless. I have lived through material for a score of long poems in the last six months. An en- tirely different life from that I looked forward to two years ago. Cambridge [Mass.] seems to me a dull nightmare now...'. Vivien committed adultery with Bertrand Russell, Eliot's ex-teacher and mentor. Eliot was legally separated from her in 1933. Gradually, she went mad and in 1938 was committed by her brother Maurice. She died in a private mental hospital in Finsbury Park, London, on 23 January 1947.

            In June 1927, Eliot was received into the Church of England, and in November became a naturalised British citizen. Virginia Woolf writes of Eliot 'in his four piece suit-repressed, reserved, buttoned-up. If we concentrate too much on the Lloyds banker in his pin-striped trousers, the London publisher with his bowler hat and rolled umbrella, and Eliot's own ironic self-portrait as the circumspect pedant-Restricted to What Precisely / And If and Perhaps and But'-we are likely to overlook the man whose religious conversion first announced itself in the Vatican when Eliot fell to his knees in front of Michelangelo's Pietà to the amazement of his brother Henry Ware Eliot. Eliot isn't the dry stick of his self-caricature. This is Robert Lowell describing Eliot dancing with Valerie, his new bride and second wife, forty years younger than himself, and married in secret at the age of sixty-nine: 'they danced so dashingly at the Charles River boatclub brawl that he was called "Elbows Eliot".

               Given that the main events of Eliot's life are so sensational, even lurid, it may seem odd that the central focus of his oeuvre should concentrate on the life not fully lived, 'buried', avoided, side- stepped. It is conceivable, though, that these dramatic decisions in Eliot's life were provoked by the very fear of not living fully-of opting for insurance rather than risk. The theme itself comes from literature, not 'life'-from Henry James in the first instance, but fed by the main current of nineteenth-century literature. We writers frequently inherit our themes from our most admired predecessors.It is they who set the agenda. It is we who continue it, who develop it. It is important to realize that, for writers, the fully lived life also means the interior life, the mental life. Grey matter acting on reading matter is a matter of passion, too.

                This contradiction between the risks Eliot took in his own life and his dominant theme of debilitating caution makes it difficult to equate biographical events with the poetry. Unlike Sylvia Plath-whose poetry cannot be understood without the prior knowledge that her marriage to Ted Hughes failed and that she was a suicide risk-Eliot's poetry is committed to impersonality. The life hardly helps us at all as readers. In 'The Frontiers of Criticism' (1961), Eliot lays out this position:

"For myself, I can only say that a knowledge of the springs that released a poem is not necessarily a help towards understanding the poem: too much information about the origins of the poem may even break my contact with it. I feel no need for any light upon [Wordsworth's] Lucy poems beyond the radiance shed by the poems themselves"

The Waste Land :

'The Waste Land', a Modern epic, written by Thomas Eliot. It was published in 1922. It can be read in 5 parts. such as:

1] The Burial Of the Dead

2] A Game Of Chess

3] The Fire Sermon

4] Death By Water 

5] What The Thunder Said.

Poem starts with these lines:-

            This means, "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a jar / cage, and when the boys said to her, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied "I want to die." So, as we can see, the poem started with the Myth of Sibyl. Mainly the poem deals with the theme of 'Spiritual Degradation' and 'Sexual Perversion' through these different themes and major events throughout the poem, poem becomes more intresting and makes sense. 

1) What are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land'? Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzche's views? or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mytho-historical answer to the contemporary malaise?

From my point of view, I won't consider Eliot as regressive at all. Infect he insipred people to not to repeat same mistakes which has done by their forefathers, with theuse of mythical and historical contexts. If we compare Eliot to Nietzsche then we have to understand what both of the thinkers say.

Nietzsche denied the fundamental rationality of the universe and called Christian morality, ‘the slave morality’. said that "God is dead", thus he believed in "Will to Power", that the stronger people will rule. He gave his theory of 'Ubermensch' (Overhuman/ Superhuman or Superman) , an upgraded version of man who will be man but more than man. That was only theory and his somewhat futuristic imagery.

In contrast Eliot speaks about past mistakes in order to achieve better results in present and in future. He is not regressive but he seeks progress with knowledge of past and present understanding. He looks backward in Upanishads, Buddhism and in Christianity only to go forward. He wants to point out past mistakes that have repeatedly happened throughout history and by identifying it he does not want to repeat it. As the saying goes,

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

2) Prior to the speech, Gustaf Hellström of the Swedish Academy made these remarks:

What are your views regarding these comments? Is it true that giving free vent to the repressed 'primitive instinct' lead us to happy and satisfied life? or do you agree with Eliot's view that 'salvation of man lies in the preservation of the cultural tradition'?

            Personally, I don't think that giving free vent to the repressed 'primitive instinct' leads us to a happy and satisfied life as everyone has their own way of living life and that can be harmful at Grand level. everyone ha sdifferent standards and definitation of happiness. but it depends on morality. one thing that is making one happy, it may affect someone differently.

                                                    

At some points of life one can well observe the tradition, and relegious books and whole religion itself flexible, the way it changes definitions as per timings. We don't have to cling into our tradition and culture but from time to time also have to modify and make changes that can be helpful and appropriate to time and future.

3) Write about allusions to the Indian thoughts in 'The Waste Land'. (Where, How and Why are the Indian thoughts referred?)

Poem 'The Wasteland' contains various images of Mythological and Literary allusions from various countries and languages. Throughout the four parts of the poem Eliot describes the themes of Sexual perversion and Spiritual degradation and the malaise of modern world, to seek redemption and answers he comes to the Knowledge of 'Upanishad' in the fifth part of the poem 'What the Thunder Said'.

“Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder”

In this part poem refers to the divine message of Brahma the Prajapati, the father of all three beings men, demons and gods.

Da- the message from the sky and it's interpretation in three Varieties

Datta : to give, not only charity but giving oneself for some noble cause. It's not mere mechanical activity but to devote oneself for noble deeds and for that he has given an example of Karna, Bhamasha.

Dayadhvam: Sympathy, empathise yourself with the

sorrows and suffering of others, come out of your isolation and live into others.

Damyatah : Self Control, control over one’s passions and

desires.

Poem ends with the line,

“Shantih shantih shantih"

The poem ends with the three repetition of the word "Shantih" that comes from Upanishad' and suggests the meaning 'the peace which passeth understanding' through this line poet wants to achieve and share the peace to all mankind.

4) Is it possible to read 'The Waste Land' as a Pandemic Poem?

            Because of the great influence of world war 1 and 2 historians used to read every literature of those days with the glasses of World War but, huge thanks to Elizabeth Outka we got to see the hidden side of the poem that reflects the Influenza Flu Pandemic as the poem is Collage of many images. The Spanish Flu that was acquired in the same era of time in 1918 can also be part of the reading of the poem 'The Wasteland'.

The poet was also caught by the Flu in its second wave in 1918, the autobiography elements are also seen in the poem, one wasteland of pandemic is also seems to be created in the poem.