E.C.301 Modernist Literature

                                    

                                                                                      

Assignment Paper:-E.C 301 Modernist Literature

Topic:-The two parts of ‘The Waste Land’

Name: - Saiyad Nargis I.

Roll No:-14

URL: - http://saiyadnargis14201112.blogspot.com/

Semester: - 1

Batch:-2011-12

                                         Submitted to,

                                                   Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                   Dept. of English

                                                   Bhavnagar

                                                                 Poet- T. S. Eliot

                                     Poem-‘The Waste Land’

                                     Period of life- 1905-1065

                                     Age-modernist age

About Poet-

                           T.S.Eliot is a famous modernist poet whose full name is Thomas Stearns Eliot. He was a poet, critic and a playwright, too. He was born in America. The poem that made him famous is “The Love Song of J.Alfrad Prufrock”. He is known for his seven plays. He has got the Nobel prize in literature in 1948. He has also got an award ‘Order of Merit’.

Parts of ‘The Waste Land’-

                        This poem is taken from ‘The Criterion’. It is divided into five parts:

1.    ‘The Burial of the Dead’,

2.    ‘A Game of Chess’,

3.    ‘The Fire Sermon’,

4.    ‘Death by Water’,

5.    ‘What the Thunder Said’.

                       We shall see the first two parts.

Beginning-

          “Nam Sibyllam quidem Cum is ego ipse oculis meis vidi in       ampulla pendere, et cum illi puem dicerent: Sibylla ti            theleis; apothalaneine thelo.”

                                                                                  -Latin quotation

                          On the first part of the poem, there is an epigraph. It is taken from ‘Satyrican’.In ‘Satyrican’, there is Sibyle who looks at the future and says that she wants to die. This reminds us Eliot’s thoughts:

‘He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminds of its former glory’.

                         This epigraph also reminds us his two other texts which were read by him and they are

1)   Jessie Weston’s ‘From Ritual to Romance’,

2)   Sir James Frazier’s ‘The Golden Bough’

                        Both focus on Fisher king who was wounded and whose lack of potency made his country ‘waste land’. From ancient Egypt to Arthurian England, this myth tells about healing the king to regain its fertility but here there is not Fisher king at all. He takes ‘waste land’ for his subject and in the beginning, by citing this epigraph, he gives the hint for his theme of the poem.

‘The Burial of the Dead’-

                  The title refers to the burial service by the Anglican Church and it also refers to fertility of God.

                     “April is the cruellest month, breeding

                       Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

                       Memory and desire, stirring

                       Dull roots with spring rain”.

                     This is a begging of the first part in which the poet says that April is the cruellest month though after a long winter, April becomes the month of regeneration. Here, he has also given the reference of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’. Regeneration is painful, too and it reminds both happy and sad past. In the modern world, winter has become passive one. After a war, Marie remembers her childhood which was around her cousins, coffee-making and drinking and sledding which turned into sadness of life. Her memory is very important in this poem. The device of juxtaposition is used here. She reads a better past which can help in making literary work. Here, we can see April which we generally think as the symbol of re-birth conveys another meaning here and summer is the best time, memory reminds of spiritual death. Here, German words are used. Stanbergersee is a lake of Germany. Hofgarten is a name of public park in unique. The woman also says that she is not Russian but she is a German. Perhaps she says so because she might be a member of Austrian imperial family which was recently defeated.

                  

                   In the second section, the poet talks about ‘nothingness’ of life by giving the images of desert and sea. This is a prophetic episode. Here he describes true stony, deserted waste land. He says about memory that man can see only broken pieces of memory but they encourage a man to response to images. True thing can be seen in useless things. The speaker remembers his past in which he was involved in a romance with one female. In remembering all these, his memory is full of water which is in contrast with a desert. His happy memory inspires him to tell this to the readers. This is also an example of juxtaposition and coherence, too. It also tells about failure of sexuality. No one can give appropriate response to the past memory. This deserted present is the real waste land. After desert, the poet talks about the sea. The sea itself is the symbol of nothingness. It is not the thing of fear of nothingness or the thought processor thing. In this section also the poet gives the reference of operra ‘Tristan and Isolde’ an Arthurian tale. Both were lovers. Tristan waited his lover to come and heal and she was going to come by ship but she couldn’t. The sea is shown as empty even if the possibility of healing. Here, the shadow is the symbol of death. Here for shadow, it is written that in the morning, our shadow stride behind us and in the evening, it rises to meet!!! Evelyn Waugh has taken title from some lines for his novels.

                     Again there comes a quotation of Richard written in Germany.

                      The third section tells about transformation. Madam Sosotris is a famous clairvoyant and she was called the wisest woman in Europe. Some cards are not part of a real tartor deck here. Madam Sosotris tells about the possibility of something by reading tarot card. The symbols of these cards are vague to predict. The poet has used some phrases which are symbolic.

For example,

o   Man with three slaves - symbol of Fisher king,

o   Wheel                          - symbol of fortune, changing nature,              blind to knowledge, homosexuality                                                                     

o   The hanged man          - Christ

                  

                      Here Belladonna a beautiful lady is also introduced. Through these all, the poet wants to tell about the illegal activity prevailed at that time. By the line,

                                 “The lady of situation”

                      he wants to say that all women are same. Mrs.Equitone is a new client of Madam Sosotris.The reference of the drowned Phoenician sailor reminds ‘The Tempest’ of Shakespeare, there is also magic in the novel

                 “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!”

                     This line is taken from Arial’s songs. Transformation and magic are associated with illegal activities, vulgarity. Perhaps madam Sosotris may be right in her predication but these all things go against religious beliefs and religion, also. ‘Death by Water’ was done in Philistan at that time.

                     In the last episode, Eliot describes the London city. This is a most significant episode of the first second. He has used the   line,

                                          “Unreal city”

                  for the London city. The brown colour has a negative connotation here. It is shown,

                   “Under the brown fog of a winter dawn”

                   Charles Dickens has given the reference of one of the streets of London ‘King William Street’ and he also talks about London city. Before Christ, there was a fight between Carthage and Rome.

               “With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine”

                   In this presented line, ‘nine’ refers to the time in which Christ was crucified. The poet has put the reference of John Webster’s play ‘The White Devil’ in which dog’s reference is described. It is seen in this line,

           “O keep the dog far hence. that’s friend to men”

                In this section, poet also remembers Saint Mary Woolnath. In the poem, speaker walks on London streets, the city is the city of ghosts. He meets one man Stetson who was one soldier of the First World War. The poet asks him about the corpse which was planted in his garden, he asks if it has begun to srout. Stetson fails to answer and others answer to his questions.

               The description of London reminds us Dante’s ‘Inferno’’s line,

                         “the flowing crowd of the dead”.

                   This episode tells about our activity which we do without consideration. It also tells about our activity which we do without hesitation and it draws our attention to the burden in our life, in our thinking power. The war gives us only hatred, moral degradation, spiritual death.

Structure of this part-

               This is an epic poem. This is a modernist poem. The style and the treatment of the topic are totally different from the traditional epic style. In traditional style, prince or king becomes a hero and the story starts to spread by him but common man is focused now. The introduction of the hero comes in the middle. In this section, too common people are in the middle.

             The poet uses best phrases like,

                             “April is the cruellest month,”

                   There is only partial rhyming scheme in the poem. There are many lines of German or Latin language besides English it shows the world of 20^th century Europe. The cosmopolitan nature is conveyed through the fragments. The Biblical references are used here like ‘The Tower of Babel’.

                   In this section of the poem, seasons are introduced like ‘April’, ‘summer’, ‘winter’. Many characters are introduced like Marie, Madame Sosostris, Mrs. Equitone, Saint Mary Woolnath, Stetson etc…The real places like Starnbergersee, Hofgurten, Russia, Europe, London city etc…The poet has used the device of alliteration in the world like ‘lilacs’ and ‘land’, ‘root’ and ‘rain’, ‘winter’ and ‘warm’, ‘forgetful’ and ‘feeding’, ‘little’ and ‘life’, ‘summer’ , ‘surprise’ and ‘Starnbergersee’, ‘shower’ and ‘stopped’, ‘and’ and ‘an’, ‘when’ , ‘we’ and ‘were’, ‘feel’ and ‘free’, ‘stony’ and ‘son’, ‘broken’ and ‘beats’, ‘stone’ and ‘sound’, ‘red’ and ‘rock’, ‘shadow’ and ‘striding’, ‘your’ and ‘you’, ‘you’ and ‘year’, ‘nor’ and ‘nothing’, ‘looking’ and ‘light’, ‘wisest’ and ‘woman’, ‘said’ and ‘she’, ‘he’ and ‘his’, ‘forbidden’ and ‘find’, ‘round’ and ‘ring’, ‘her’ and ‘horoscope’, ‘sighs’ and ‘short’, ‘sound’ and ‘stroke’, ‘year’ and ‘your’ etc…

A Game of Chess-

              

                 The title of this section is taken from Middleton’s play ‘Women, Beware Women’. It is connected with the idea of sexuality. There are two types of sexuality here. One is inseparable which goes on rapidly aging. The first woman is associated with two queens of myth; they are Cleopetra and the queen of Carthage Dido. Keats’s ‘Lamia’ is also connected with the first woman. This woman is waiting for her lover. She is very emotional. She becomes frantic in the absence of her lover.

                   We can look at her as a counterpart to the title character of ‘Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’.

                  Cleopetra and Dido both suicided and it shows this woman’s mentality. We feel pity to her. She still wishes that her lover should come and tell her all his life’s experiences and his thought. The lover reminds us ‘The Tempest’ of Shakespeare.

                   This woman is compared with Philomela. She is Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’’s character. Philomela is raped by her own brother-in-law who was a king. He then cuts her tongue so that she can’t tell the reality to anyone but somehow she succeeds in conveying the truth to her sister. Her sister helps her and both of them kill the king’s son and feed it to him. Thus, they take revenge. However at the end of the ‘Metamorphoses’, both the sister become birds. Philomela is turned into nightingale.

                  The inner world of the lady is full of disturbances. She can’t express her interior self to anyone. Her surrounding is pleasant but she is in pathetic situation now. She is a lady of high class people. She is wealthy, rich surrounded by furnishing but she perhaps is a poor person in the matter of getting love from her lover.

 

                 In this part another important scene is of London barroom. In this scene, two women are sitting in the bar and talking about a third woman. One is talking about the third woman Lil whose husband was in army and he was discharged from the army and was coming to home. In the talking, the bartender again and again tells them,

                        “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME.”

                 It was the time to close the bar. The woman tells Lil that he has perhaps lost his interest in her. She has lost her charm, beauty. Lil gives the reason that she looks like this because of the medication which she took to induce an abortion. She was likely to on the delivery of her fifth child. Now she doesn’t want any more children but her husband doesn’t believe her. The women tell her to make her beauty again otherwise her husband might start to take interest in the company of other woman. So, she should be aware of this. She says my husband won’t leave me. At last, they wish “good night” to each other and go away. The last three lines of this part show that reference,

“Good night Bill, Good night Lou. Good night May. Good night.

Ta ta. Good night. Good night.

Good night. ladies. Good night. sweet ladies. Good night, good night.”

                 This “good night”, reminds Ophelia’s farewell speech in ‘Hamlet’. This scene shows the possibility of sex regeneration cultural or personal. Eliot has used a British vernacular as he had gone to England from America. He became a confirmed Anglophile, now.

                 We can see how beautifully the poet has made the poetry from the rough speech of the two women. He shows the cruelty done by towards the women by the male-dominated society. Lil is married, has children but yet she is punished by her body. The last speech reminds Hamlet which links Lil to the woman of the first section. That woman was compared with the suiciders Cleopetra and Dido. This comparison shows the equality but Eliot is meant to suggest that regeneration of sex is not possible to any woman, in any form.

Structure of this part-

                The title of this part reminds Thomas Middleton’s two plays which were written in early 17^th century. In one play ‘Women, Beware Women’, the game of chess suggests the stages of seduction.

                The first scene of this section is unrhymed or in blank verse. The lines become more and more irregular in length and in meter, also. The woman’s thoughts, voice, dialogue, a snippet from a nonsense are given here. This becomes a part of conversational poem. The last four lines of first section are irregular, unrhymed, and metreless but returns to stability.

                In the second half of the first section, conversation takes a part. The conversation is many a time interrupted by barman’s instruction to go on quickly because it was the time to close the shop. This section also includes irregular lines, unrhymed lines. The poet treats this part differently. This is a most poetically experimental section of this poem. Meter suggests English speech patters. “I said” comes frequently in this section. The repeated use of this phrase makes an interest in spite of the lady’s rough phrasing and coarse story of her life. The poet writes in a lower class vernacular here.

                 The poet has used many interrogative sentences like,

                               “What is that noise?”

        “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”

       “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?”

               “What shall I do now? What shall I do?”

                    and many more like this. The poet has used the device of repetition by using the words like, ‘she’, ‘goodnight’, ‘ladies’, ‘nothing’, ‘I’, ‘what’, ‘do’, ‘you’, ‘jug’, ‘the’, ‘speak’, ‘think’, ‘thinking’, ‘ta’, ‘Albert’, ‘he’, ‘now’, ‘noise’, ‘we’ etc…The poet has also used the device of alliteration. The words like ‘strange’ and ‘synthetic’, ‘sense’ and ‘stirred’, ‘her’ and ‘hair’, ‘that’ and ‘the’, ‘what’ and ‘with’, ‘she’ and ‘straight’, ‘ashamed’ and ‘antique’ alliterate each other. The poet uses the line,

                     “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME”

                    five times in this section. We can call this poem an epic and a dramatic monologue also. ‘Prufrock’ is the best example of a dramatic monologue.

Conclusion-

                 ‘The Waste Land’ is considered to be the masterpiece of Eliot. It explores the struggle of a soul in despair and loneliness. There is no connection between any two episodes. There is a crowd of characters. There are many references of Bible, Christianity. In modern times, in 20^th century how the fertility of human mind prevails in the world is shown here. He wants to draw our attention to the reality of this confusing world by writing in such a way that reader might be confused while writing.

                For Eliot’s style and way of writing, we can quote a quotation,

“The most important thing for the poet to do is to write as little as possible”

                 This is reflected in ‘The Waste Land’.