�1T. S. Eliot 1888-1965 American poet who lived in England and got the British citizenship in 1927 , and became an Anglo-American modern poet. "He published The Waste Land motivated by several reasons: 1. WWI, the poem is a reflection of the situation in Europe in the aftermath of WWI. 2. the changes of the modern world: materialism. 3. the spiritual vacuity, moral deterioration, fragmentation, division, isolation,

alienation, and estrangement. 4. the choice of modern man to separate himself from the past: tradition. And in Eliot’s

essay “tradition and the individual talent” he criticised this breaking away from the rules whether related to creation or spiritual values.

The Waste Land paved the way for the Theatre of the Absurd: • Failure of language • lack of knowledge and understanding • failure of memory: repeating questions • meaninglessness and nothingness " Due to the theory suggested by the “formalists” or the neo-critics of modern time and the theory of objectivism, many readings of The Waste Land were avoiding to touch on the personal life of Eliot or to use the psychoanalytical approach. Except in the late 20th century. That’s because of Eliot’s objective approach and denial of the relation between the life of the poet and the text made critics avoid relating any details from his life to his text. However, if we apply a psychoanalytical reading on the Waste Land we’ll find that he used his experiences and the knowledge he had through contact with friends and wife. For example, Eliot’s nervous breakdown condition which he was sent to a clinic in Lausanne in Switzerland to be under supervision. The place “Lausanne” is mentioned in the poem for the same reason, to get some relaxation to the troubled mind. Also, when he spoke about his marriage he said that he couldn’t find any kind of happiness in it. He said “I was brought to a state of mind that produced The Waste Land.” Furthermore, his wife was mentally ill and he faced a lot of trouble trying to treat her. Therefore, the unhappiness, the troubled mind, the hysterical women in the poem are identified by the critics as part of his real life. But that doesn’t mean that the poem is totally personal. He just made use of personal experiences to reflect on what’s going on at his time because it was part of what results everywhere around him. " The poem was received with hostility by critics and reviewers, because it was shocking and surprising to everyone. Because of it’s form + and content. The form was surprisingly different than any other poem at that time. Shockingly different coming from T. S. Eliot, the tradition defender. But Eliot knew the time very well and knew that traditional structure will not be suitable to the content that he was going to speak about. And his choice was a successful one as proved by later critics who started to appreciate the lack of coherence of the text and believing that this lack of coherence and fragmentation are part of the meaning of the poem. " The poem is considered as an open-ended poem. That it has no conclusion or resolution. Some critics say that this poem end where it started, with the same pessimism, with the same note of anger and disappointment, and nothing changes. However, the answer is that it’s an inaccurate comment because if you dig deep in the text you’ll find that there’s a development , maybe incomplete, but it’s a development. It doesn’t reach a clear conclusion but this—as post modern critics point out— is the proper clever poem that

�2leaves it up to the mind of the read to choose the conclusion of the text. Besides, realistically, Eliot was documenting a period of time where he saw deterioration, corruption, and chaos. And nothing at that time went back to order so he cannot suggest uniformity after chaos since it didn’t take place. All what he did, in the development of the text, is showing the key to a resolution and change. So the solution is suggested but it doesn’t actually take place. And this is only normal because the poem isn’t offering something that doesn’t exist at his time. {Dante’s "Divine Comedy”} "The Waste Land was Published in 1922 "Waste: sterile, dry, poor land. The title is indicative of the content. "(Why the poem did not loose its glamour?) "Both The Waste Land and the Second Coming reflect on the world after WWI. Both Yeats and Eliot are contemporary and they criticise the modern world with all its deterioration and changes to the worse. "The inhabitants: are described as ghosts, bodies moving in the streets of London. For they lost their identity, intellectual powers, and spiritual values. They became nothing. Shades moving in the streets of London aimlessly, with different voices and languages. Gothic element. [Gothic element: origin + definition + stylistics features] "He’s describing this fragmented, divided, and chaotic society, anarchy, deterioration, alienation, astrangment, intellectual and physical failure, dryness, sterility. All these features have to presented in a suitable way. A form that is suitable to the content. Therefore, The Waste Land is presented in what APPEARS to be fragmented structure. However, if you dig deep in the poem you’ll find that the details of the text relate. It’s not a fragmented text, rather it’s a fragmented technique. This structure is also called the cinematic technique and the stream of consciousness. [kaleidoscopic structure with different layers of meanings and themes] "How does fragmentation work in the poem? and why is it essential to Eliot? 1. it’s suitable to the conditions in which he writes the poem. That is broken society,

broken relationships, broken knowledge that he’s discussing in the text. 2. it’s deconstructing the reader’s familiar context. He wants to shock them with a new

structure that’s surprising and this is the gothic effect. 3. it’s deconstructing the old images, believes and philosophy as some of the allusions

do. 4. All good poets have the aim to trigger the reader’s mind to think, to seek meaning,

to reevaluate, and to raise their sense of wonder and surprise by the use of paradoxical language, juxtaposition, and saying the common in an uncommon way. And fragmentation helps--through the stream of consciousness, flashbacks, the cinematic montage—to bring back memories from past stories or plays or songs to present. And showing that memory fails.

5. it reflects the fragmented minds of the inhabitants. The failure to think, to speak, to hold a conversation. All what you hear in the poem are hallow talks because they’re a result of a fragmented mind that’s incapable of thinking nor linking details together. Memory fails > therefore language fails, it’s a situation of absurdity. #Meaninglessness nothing makes sense.

�3 6. the poem is a quest for rebirth, regeneration, and identity. There’s a fractured sense

of identity prevailed after WWI. In the dialogue, the linguistic structure reveals the fragmented mind by showing how they fail to communicate. Broken physically and mentally. Broken relations. Broken society. {"a heap of broken images #22” link this line to the ending “these fragments I have shored against my ruins #431"} "Why did Eliot take snapshots from all over the world and combined them together? He believes as a critic, a poet and an artist that a text is the result commutation of ideas, knowledge, and information. Moreover, that is why he’s interested in tradition; because the information and knowledge come from the past, what has been written before. He believes that evaluating or appreciating an artist comes by comparing him/her to others. To determine whether s/he’s a contributor or innovative not imitator, you have to compare and contrast with other artists.[a poet cannot stint alone, he’s to be appreciated amongst others and the best of his poetry is when the dead poets appear—through allusions or cross-references--] comparing is the key for criticism. "Allusions are very important, the whole text is built on allusion. Cross-references are necessary because (a) good poetry is a cumulation of knowledge and experience. They should be used in a clear and unique manner to give new meanings and to juxtapose the situation. (b) Allusions help to juxtapose the situation of what used to be and what is. Past and present. It helps clarify this change taking place. And to (c) deconstruct ideas that’s already accepted and (d) to reconstruct new ideas that are criticising the present conditions and (e) to make people more aware of what’s going on. When he chose the structure he was choosing with full of these allusions to suit the time when knowledge isn’t giving its due importance, when the the intellectual powers are failing, where people stopped reading history and learning tradition. This attitude wasn’t found only on social and political levels, but also on literary levels. Literary tradition is very important as a background of the poem. And Eliot defended tradition because he knew that there’re group of writers who refuse to return to the past, and think that focusing on the present is enough. They thought going to the past is an escape from the present which is absolutely wrong in Eliot’s opinion. Eliot is a defender of classicism and his poem is a clear proof of documenting the past. All allusions are to works that speak of evil and death. "The MAIN sources of the poem: 1. the poem is influenced by Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” which is divided into three

sections (1) inferno=hell (2) purgatorio= purgation or purification of the soul (3) paradisio=paradise. These stages are build on religion and the soul of man and how he purify himself from sins until it reaches the final level of paradise. These stages are mentioned in The Waste Land and found in its development but not all of them. Eliot spoke of stage (1) the destruction of the soul, stage (2) is mentioned twice as assign of progress, stage (3), however, is never reached because of the situation of modern man and his spiritual vacuity. Therefore, The Waste Land is described as having a religious message, that we should return to God. Also, some figures of Christ appear in the poem with the rain and thunder in the final section. Eliot was interested in religious teaching and this is another dimension as to why to relate the poem to a religious message and religious readings. And he wrote several plays where he spoke of the loss of religious values.

�4 2. “The Golden Bough,” a religious book that speaks about the fertility of the land and

how to regained or revive the land after getting rid of the sins of the dominating figures.

3. “The Grail Legend” a book with religion implication. It speaks of mythology and Christian rituals and Christian civilisation. The whole book is a quest for grain to save his land from sterility.

Why did Eliot use heteroglossia = multi languages? Eliot is presenting a text that’s a Polyphonic and multilingual and heteroglossic. Because the poem includes different voices, different sound and languages. It isn’t simply an exercise of knowledge by Eliot for he knew six languages including French, German, Greek, Italian, Celtic, and Latin. He enjoyed learning different languages; but he used Plurilingualism because: 1. it’s adding a lot of richness to the text. 2. giving the text and his message and himself as a poet a universality. 3. he insists on a mature poet that extends in the whole world, crossing the

boundaries. “The serious writer of verse must be prepared to cross himself with the best verse of other languages.”

4. he believed that poetry is accumulation of power and knowledge from different resources.

5. he was influenced by Dante and followed his footsteps. [Divine Comedy includes plurilingualism]

6. the revival of decaying cultures, the past, the old details by referring to them. This agrees to his attitude as a critic.

7. to trigger the reader’s mind. Fragmentation make the reader think and relate different elements and images. It makes them curious to know the meaning behind these lines and trace it back. He puts the translation in the footnote but they’ll raise the “why” in the reader’s head. The “why” will raise other questions and increase their knowledge.

8. it’s part of the loss of identity 9. it’s a gothic element. It causes discomfort, worry, and restlessness. 10. The date of the poem, in the aftermath of WWI. After damaging many countries all

over the world. It has to be spoken by different voices and languages because of its huge reflect.

Polyphonic text: the use of various voices is part of the gothic element. The different sound pronunciation of different languages come from ghostly figures. We don’t have real characters in The Waste Land, we don’t know where they come from. They appear without a reason and disappear without a reason. Also, strange sounds are part of estrangement. Juxtaposition is major tool used by Eliot in this poem. ... it juxtaposes the past to the present by bringing back memories, and showing that memory fails. The inhabitants don’t want to remember and that’s why they’re separated from their past and roots. QUOTE Eliot was asked whether he wrote The Waste Land as a criticism of modern world? and he answered “no, it’s grumbling on life, it’s an expression of a personal disappointment in life.” However, it’s a criticism as critics pointed. FORM The poem is written without regular rhyme or rhythm which is the traditional way of writing a poem. Though there’s some end rhymes, they’re not regular throughout the poem. Still

�5has some musicality that links the lines very smoothly. Besides the alliteration that create the internal music in the text. It’s NOT written in free verse. Eliot doesn’t like to use the term free verse because if a poem is totally free from sound effect then it’s not poem. Robert Frost has a famous statement saying that writing a poem without a form is like playing tennis without a net. "———————————————————————————————————————— "The Waste Land: Part one ""THE POEM "There poem is divided into five movements: Movement number one is considered as an epilogue to the rest of the poem because it sums up different themes and has recurring characters throughout the poem. This shows how the text is linked. The first movements is divided into four episodes. The first episode he’s speaking about a desire of death and a desire of being frozen in time and place , static, unmovable, and lifelessness. The second episode is about modern failure to judge, the triviality of the matter, and how they cannot link with their past, with tradition, and with earlier religious teachings. The third episode shows how there’s a poor judgment and understanding, and that people depend upon trivial characters which is Madame Sesostris and her sayings and suggestions. She tells fortunes which exposes how superficial the modern minds are to believe and truss such a woman and to describe her as “the wisest woman in Europe.” The froth episode focuses on the key themes of unreality of life, the absurdity of life. It starts with “Unreal city.” It suggests that the environment is polluted, unhealthy, sterile, corrupted, dry, and therefore, unreal. And people have no aim. It intensifies the sense of loss and horror. ""The Epigraph written in Latin and Greek. the epigraph sums up the major idea of the poem. The Translation: "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”” These lines presents Sibyl who, in classical mythology, was a prophetess in service to Apollo and a great beauty. Apollo wished to take her as his lover and offered her anything she desired. She asked to live for as many years as there were grains in a handful of dust. Apollo granted her wish, but still she refused to become his lover. In time, Sibyl came to regret her boon as she grew old but did not die. She lived for hundreds of years, each year becoming smaller and frailer, Apollo having given her long life but not eternal youth. When Trimalchio speaks of her in the Satyricon, she is little more than a tourist attraction, tiny, ancient, confined, and longing to die. This sums up the poem in which Sibyl is a symbol that represents the mental failure of the inhabitants of The Waste Land. Her request is naive and immature because she wasn’t wise enough that living forever alone will make her reach that situation which she is facing here. This is the result of a mind that’s short sighted and naive and doesn’t consider the consequences which is the condition of modern man. The reason of deterioration, chaos, forgetfulness, is irrationality. The second part, which is the imprisonment of Sibyl in that bottle, has different suggestions: (1) being imprisoned in one static condition, in a deadly routine, no progress,

�6with no future like the modern man. (2) they’re imprisoned and enslaved to their physical and material desires. (3) women, since they’re recurring characters in the poem, imprisoned in an oppressed situation. Physically alive but spiritually dead. They suffer mental failure. They also aren’t described as beautiful which is similar to Sibyl’s situation. ""Episode ONE In the opening lines of the text there are juxtaposition of a natural phenomena in which he gave some seasons [spring and winter] unusual functions. The inhabitants want to live in forgetfulness “forgetful snow.” They’re frozen in time by the snow. But what will April do with its spring showers? it’ll revive the Earth. That’s why it’s cruel. Eliot isn’t interested in the natural scene, he’s describing the land as a projection of the condition of the people themselves. So when he say the lans is dry, he means the people are dry. The inhabitants enjoy forgetfulness and want to live in a state of unawareness because they don’t want to face reality, don’t want to remember, and don’t want to know the truth. Because if you remind someone that he used to be clever, it mean that now he’s a failure. Making people face the truth is cruel, and the season of spring by reviving memory and desire is being very cruel. Everything in The Waste Land is functioning in an abnormal manner. And any normal function of weather is shocking. The land is described as dead, sterile, and dry. Starnbergersee is a name of a lake in Germany. So he’s giving realistic details to give a kind of identity to the speaker. First female figure: Line #12 a German girl “Marie Larisch: tourist" denying that she’s Russian. It’s a suggestion of the loss of identity. The girl is going to different places and trying to recollect some details of the past, and this past is prior to WWI. She’s a nostalgic memory to the times when she was happy and young, and enjoying her freedom. The memory is recorded in a stream of consciousness technique. The memory is fragmented and the details aren’t directly linked together. These lines are significant because they’re a reminder of a political situation which Eliot was pointing to that left an effect upon him. Eliot had met Countess Marie Larisch and talked with her and got information about her life and times, and the remarks in lines 8-18 are hers. She was driven outside the country to be replaced by another ruler. Force, violence, attacks, loss of power and control are suggested by the figure of Marie. Lack of focus and concentration that Marie speaks with is the mental failure that Eliot is projecting through the figure of Marie. Fear also is suggested “#15 I was frightened.” A feeling of loneliness, silence, and isolation. "Episode TWO shift to the roots of the past. The word roots is a keyword in The Waste Land. It connote many meanings: spiritually, historically, politically, literary tradition. Roots give solidity, they’re the foundation of the present. (roots, dried roots, dull roots, dead tubers) are all figurative and symbolic to describe the situation of modern man. Knowing that people choose to separate themselves from the past, Eliot realises that they become nothing and empty. They suffer intellectual and spiritual failure. #20 rhetorical question. He uses a natural detail to symbolise the condition of man. Son of man is a biblical reference from Ezekiel II where God is addressing Ezekiel “Son of man stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.” Ezekiel was standing in a valley of dry bones, dead people, and God asked him “do you think they can live?” Ezekiel replied “you’re the only one who knows, God. I don’t know.” Eliot referred to this story to draw his readers’ attention to return to religion and to the Bible.

�7By quoting the Bible, he’s reviving the reader’s memory and trying to connect them back to the biblical stories. And he’s juxtaposing the situation: in the past people used to go to the Bible and read those stories and learn from them, at the present people don’t read and don’t understand. Ezekiel’s answer is very wise, he knows his knowledge is limited. This answer isn’t available at the present time because people don’t think and don’t know how to construct their answer to any question. The condition of modern man is described here as failure of knowledge. Separation from the past information and their roots. The result is a heap of broken images. Total suffering and restlessness is suggested. The basic reason for this dilemma and suffering and confusion is the separation from God and religion. The description in #22-#23 projects the spiritual failure. #23 is another allusion to the Bible. In the same story there’s a sense of fear suggested. #25 “red rock” is a biblical reference. The red rock could also be an allusion to the Grail Legend of the Fisher King. (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) an invitation placed between brackets that interrupts the flow of the lines. It’s by Eliot to the reader: let’s go back to religion and God which is the purgatorial stage. The lines in German are taken from Tristan und Isolde which is an 1865 opera by Richard Wagner about the ill-fated affair between the knight Tristan and the lady Isolde. The opera is based on a medieval romance that was absorbed into the Arthurian tradition. The quoted scene occurs near the beginning of the opera, with Tristan escorting the captured Isolde by ship to Cornwall. The Translation:Fresh blows the wind/For home;/My Irish child,/Where do you tarry? The significance of this allusion is to juxtapose a situation of love and to bring in an example of failure that’s typical in The Waste Land. The marriage of Tristan and Isolde ailed because it was a planned marriage. The juxtaposition suggested in the song itself, in the past this lover is still trying to sing to his beloved and her arrival. Whether she likes him or not, this is something different. He’s still welcoming her. Which doesn’t happen in modern times. #40-#41 the words nothing and silence. The silence here is hurting and suggesting nothingness. #42 In act 3 of Tristan ind Isolde, Tristan lies dying. He’s waiting for Isolde to come to him from Cornwall, but a shepherd, appointed to watch for her sail, can report only, “Waste and empty is the sea.” Therefore, it was a futile relationship. The protagonist is disappointed and

frustrated "I could not/Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither/Living nor dead,” Physical and mental failure. Isolde is the second girls in the poem and her situation sums up the situation of women who suffer physical and mental failure. The shades in The Waste Land are neither living nor dead. And They know nothing. "Episode THREE Madame Sesostris is an allusion to a fortune teller and he borrows the name from an Egyptian character. The way he introduced her is ironic and sarcastic "known to be the wisest woman in Europe.” He’s criticising modern man for trusting a fortune teller. In the classical Egyptian story, that woman is supposed to be speaking to them about the time of the flooding of the Nile and the time of fertility, and so on. The pack of cards symbolise different figures that will reappear in the poem [we’re still in the epilogue]. They are “the Phoenician Sailor,Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,the one-eyed merchant, the man with three staves, and The Hanged Man." The Phoenician Sailor is an ancient merchant

�8who used to travel in the Mediterranean sea, he’ll reappear in part or movement number four. He speaks of materialistic desires. the figure is symbolic of materialism and wealth and that’s why he’s presented in the part about death by water. Imprisoned within his desire for wealth and money. #48 “Look!” an invitation to look at a dead body in the bottom of the sea, drowned by water and pearl eyes staring at you. A horrifying image, the “black” of the eyes is gone, there’s only the white ball. [first Gothic detail, apart from the description of the natural scene at the beginning] There’s an allusion to Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the idea of drowning and that figure. Eliot chose The Tempest because in it there’re people who are ready to kill one another for the sake of money. It brings to mind the cruelty of brother to each other and that there’s no familial feelings between them. There’s a suggestion of destruction of human values by the examples of the wise woman and the greedy people. Belladonna is the lady of situations. Belladonna is an Italian word for “a lovely lady.” Eliot is referring to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Madonna of the Rocks.” A picture of Virgin Mary. Another religious figure and Eliot is referring to the lady of situation.IT is juxtaposition because modern women have nothing to do with Virgin Mary. The situation is totally the opposite. The one-eyed merchant is an image of the physical deformity and imperfection which modern man suffer from. Anybody who has a mental disorder or abnormality, is also physically suffering some abnormality. The deformity extends from the outside to the inside or vice versa. And this imperfection is both inside and outside in man and in nature. "Episode FOUR The unreality of the situation alludes to Baudelaire’s “The Seven Old Men” The allusion gives the key theme in this episode. Baudelaire was speaking about a crowded city and in that city we have ghostly figures moving. Therefore, alluding to this sitting is to suggest that this is the same atmosphere he’s describing here. He emphasises this by putting “unreal city” in a separate line. Eliot stresses the unreality of the situation because he, the man in exile, aware of the fact that his reader will not totally comprehend and accept this text the way he wishes to happen. Therefore, he creates a dreamy atmosphere so that people will accept the poem as part of imagination and poetic creation of the mind. He’s avoiding the idea of mimeticism. He doesn’t want to say things in a direct manner. The best poetry is always indirect. “The Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge influenced Eliot. And it was built on Dante’s "Divine Comedy.” And it has a strong religious background, talking about sins and redemption. T. S. Eliot is doing the same in The Waste Land. The journey in “The Ancient Mariner” is similar to the one here. The objective correlative related to the theory of depersonalisation by Eliot which is a major core of Eliot’s theory as a critic is borrowed from Coleridge. Coleridge also used dreams to make the reader accept the development of the poem. #62 Eliot is condemning the unreligious attitude of modern man. All the previous images of the sitting agree with "the brown fog of the winter.” It’s the season of death and nothingness. It’s a winter dawn that’s so fogy. The inhabitants are living in that atmosphere and they’re part of it. They don’t see clearly, there’s always a blurred vision. Also, it’s a frozen situation, there’s no change. They’re leading a very routine-like life and routine kills. The crowd “flows” because they’re like a bulk together. They got no identity, they’re moving automatically and aimlessly. “so many” is a sublime quality given to the crowed which creates a sense of fear. London Bridge is a real place and it’ll be echoed at the end of the poem. #63 allusion to Dante’s inferno. The stress here is that these people aren’t actually living. They’re leading a death in life.

�9#64 “sighs” example of polyphony. This line is also an allusion to Dante’s inferno. #65 “looking before his feet” implies that they fail intellectually to think and plan. They live in the current moment, and in limited area, with a limited vision. They have no strategy because they’ve nothing to look forward to. If they have no past and they don’t remember the past then they have no future to think about (Like Marie, the German girl) . This is the conclusion of line #62, flawing aimlessly. The intellectual power fails so they flow aimlessly. King William St. is a real place. #66 they’re flowing “up” and “down” but with no direction. They’re not aware of these places. #67 Saint Mary Woolnoth church is a real place. He mentions the church for two reasons: firstly, the church is at the end of the road but they’re not aware of its existence and they’re not aiming at it. Secondly, he said about the church that it “kept the hours” meaning that it has a clock. But the striking sound of the clock isn’t heard by them. It’s "a dead sound” to suggest that they don’t value time. Time is life, They’re wasting time and therefore their lives. The church is in a famous area known as a financial zone. Referring to this zone and the crowds that don’t value life but they’re still materialistic. Materialism is what keeps them move. #69 a suggested dialogue between two people who meet after a long time. “Stetson” is a figure presumably representing the average businessman. Through this figure, the reader reminded of war because these two people met at the battle of Mylae. A naval battle that toke place between Rome and Carthage. So mentioned this battle to remind the reader that he’s talking about a post-war situation. We don’t know the speaker but he fought at Mylae with Stetson. This war and WWI are meaningless for Eliot. They only brought mental and physical destruction. #72 "Has it begun to sprout?” a very ironic tone. Sense of loss and horror are intensified by the images here: the blooming and sprouting corpse. Ugliness. #74 allusion to Webster’s "White Devil" a Dog digging up the corpse from the ground. The allusion is taken tom a line sung by a woman to one of her sons who was killed by his brother. An image of death and the story reminds us of evil and murder. Anubis is a Dog headed Egyptian god and here he juxtapose that in the past, people had rituals of burying the dead. In modern time it’s spoken of in a sarcastic tone and a light manner. It’s no longer seen as punishment or evil. He concludes with a french allusion because the episode started with a french allusion. Eliot structured the poem intentionally to create a kind of frame for the text. It alludes to Baudelaire’s “The Flowers of Evil.” In that text Baudelaire was speaking of people being flattery and hypocrite. Translation: You! Hypocrite reader!—my fellow,—my brother! It creates a kind of intimacy but he emphasis hypocrisy as a main illness of modern society. ""

�10"MOVEMENT TWO "II. A Game of Chess: the title takes us to another example of the theme of failure of love. The title itself is an allusion to Thomas Middleton’s two plays: A Game at Chess and Women Beware Women. In the latter, there is a scene in which a mother-in-law is distracted by a game of chess while her daughter-in-law is seduced: every move in the chess game represents a move in the seduction. There is suggestion of corruption, failure, and violence in the reference because Eliot wants to show the state of modern women. They’re careless and unaware of what is going on.

The double meaning: breaking rules causes destruction and deterioration, but at the same time, those who think they’ve broke the rules are imprisoned within this situation of selfishness, isolation, and depression, and so on.

Eliot chose this title in this section to introduce a number of women characters. The title relates to the situation of women who are oppressed and have no rights. They fail to carry out a healthy relationship with family and children.

The game of chess suggests cleverness. It takes a very intelligent person to know how to master the game. The game has strict rules and limitations. The pieces must be moved in specific directions. The squares on the chessboard are like cells. The chessboard is usually black&white. In modern times, we don’t have all this. Nobody abides by the rules or limitations set by society’s tradition. Though they think they’re doing what they want, and that they have the freedom to break the rules; they are imprisoned—like the chess pieces— in materialism, selfishness, exile and estrangement in their society. They are separated from God and other people.

A punctuation at the end of the poem lines is not common. There are a lot of run-on lines. Eliot is trying to make people feel this breathless situation. That takes the breath away making you exited, worried, confused and afraid at the same time. He is creating an effect reflecting the harsh modern life.

This movement starts with a juxtaposition. It takes us back to Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.

“burnished, glowed, candle, light, flames, glitter,” but the whole scene is a synthetic scene. All artificial, unnatural, cold, and dead like the satin cases, marble, glass, and the ivory. It is a rich setting with throne in it, in various colours and lights, with the Cupidon the mythological symbol of love on the wall. But without the feeling, emotion, and warmth. It is a death-like picture because it is so cold and lifeless. Eliot juxtaposes this situation with that of Antony and Cleopatra , we know that because the description in the introductory lines is similar to Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra’s throne. We are not introduced to Cleopatra the character, only the setting. However, a rich woman is going to appear. She lives in a luxurious place, like Cleopatra, but she is not enjoying love like her and Antony.

The woman figure reminds us of the Belladonna (49) mentioned by Madame Sosostris. We have to link these women figures together because the critics point out that they all share similar qualities and at the end we will meet one woman figure with all these qualities. There are different examples exposing different situations, especially the situation of women in the 20th century.

�11Lines 86-93: the setting is borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid. Virgil is describing the banquet given by Dido, queen of Carthage, for Aeneas, with whom she fell in love. Eliot refers to Dido as a mythological figure that is used by Virgil to contrast how that woman is preparing a banquet with food and perfume and all for the arrival of her lover; to contrast that with disappointment and frustration of love in modern times.

Lines 97-99: Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140. Milton's poem Paradise Lost retells the story of the Fall. Eliot refers to the scene where Satan comes in view of Eden. Eliot is still brining evil images of paradise being lost. The situation is horrific for living in hellish condition. "Line 99: V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela. The story of Philomela is given by Ovid in Book VI of Metamorphoses. The beautiful Philomela is kidnapped, raped, and imprisoned by her sister Procne's husband, King Tereus. To prevent Philomela from revealing what he has done, Tereus then cuts out her tongue. Imprisoned, isolated, and unable to speak, Philomela weaves a tapestry depicting her suffering at Tereus' hands and sends it to Procne. Procne, enraged, frees her sister. The sisters then take their revenge on Tereus, murdering his and Procne's son and feeding the boy's body to the king. When the sisters reveal what they've done, Tereus charges them in fury. Before he can reach them, however, all three are transformed into birds. This reference represents violence, cruelty, brutality and oppression of women in modern life. It shows failure and sterility of relations because this love relation fails and ends with nothing. Philomela changed into a nightingale, so the beautiful bird is echoing the story of violence. “”yet [Eliot wrote], there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice.” In the past, people used to listen to the nightingale and remember the story of Philomela, and to learn the lesson, and to understand that there is a crime and punishment. The present situation, however, is different. In the past, “still she cried and still the world pursues”. But today, the world is listening to the nightingale as if it is “jug jug to dirty ears.” Ugliness instead of the beautiful twittering of this beautiful bird. [Polyphony] “jug jug” means nothing and represents nothing. It is rather meaningless, harsh, loud, disturbing noise. The ears do not function in the normal way, failure as other organs of the body. They listen to the nightingale but do not understand the story behind it.

Images from this story recur throughout the poem. In his note for line 100, Eliot directs us to an echo of the Philomela story in Part III. The swallow appears again at the end of the poem.

Lines 100-103: So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, “Jug Jug” to dirty ears. "

Eliot's Note:100. Cf. Part III, l. 204. Referenced Lines 203-206:

Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd. Tereu

Context: For the story of Philomela, see the note to line 99. Representations of birdsong recur throughout the poem and are usually linked with images of water. Additional examples include:

�12Line 313:

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell Lines 356-358:

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pines trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water

Lines 391-394: Only a cock stood on the rooftree Co co rico co co rico In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust Bringing rain "

Lines 104-110: stillness, quietness, hushes, are stressed in the place that is dare of life. It is a cold, marble life with no emotions. Degradation in belief in sadness. In modern time we do not see life after death, instead we see death-in-life. We see loss of the power of appreciation. The nervous lady in that boudoir, appealing to the man accompanying her—who is supposedly the husband—is again an example of failure in relationship. Failure in communication between a husband and a wife. Men-women relationship is destroyed in modern society. She is very nervous, restless, hysterical, bored woman which is typical of the psychological disturbance in modern time. She is asking her husband to talk to her. Lines 112-115: The words think and speak are repeated five times because the whole poem is dealing with intellectual failure and the lack of communication. The repetition also means that she lacks the knowledge to rephrase her questions. To communicate, you need to think and have knowledge and information, this links to the idea of failure of knowledge, man you know nothing but a heap of broken images [part 1]. “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?” She hesitates, even the word ‘thinking’ seems meaningless to her. Eliot is not blaming neither the wife nor the husband, they both cannot communicate with each other. Both fail to construct a healthy relationship. Her answer “I think we are in rats' alley/Where the dead men lost their bones.” is shocking. It incases the horrific situation of their lack of communication. Rats live in deserted, ugly places, like the waste land. Ugliness, vacuity, ruin, sterility, dryness, and hollowness. “Dead men lost their bones,” total annihilation. Total non-existence, nothing exists, not even the bones. A pessimistic point of view suggested by the speaker because the bones are annihilated then there is no revival. The inhabitants are not even looking for a life after death. Deterioration spread all over, he is projecting the situation of rich women here, but the following example is from the common class, Lil. It is an absurd situation and meaningless questions. [Eliot’s effect on Samuel Beckett]. Language fails, therefore, communication fails. Eliot's Note: 115. Cf. Part III, l. 195. Referenced Lines 193-195:

White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret, Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.

Eliot was familiar with the psychological studies made by Freud and Jung in the beginning of the century. In the Waste Land, there are examples that are very brief as the situation is. They are not character that develop in the poem; they are flat, simple presentation of a scene, one situation. Lines 118-119: Cf. Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?” Reference: The Devil's Law Case by John Webster where a physician asks this question on finding that a victim of a murderous attack is still breathing, meaning “is her still alive?” The situation stresses more mental failure and the destruction of family ties.

�13Line 120: “Nothing again nothing.” Is a Shakespearian reference to king Lear’s dialogue with his youngest daughter Ophelia. She said “I have nothing to say” when he asked how much she loved him. She wanted him to feel her love not to talk about it. He was very disappointed and punished her by denying her any inheritance from him. But then he was proven wrong and his other two daughters were hypocrites and kicked him out. He lost his eyesight symbolically, that he could not see the difference between the children. This is an example of mental failure and the irrationality of the inhabitants of The Waste Land. It is similar to the idea in the epigraph. It also suggests the ingratitude behaviour of children to their parents. And the relationships are built on a materialistic interest. Additionally, The Waste Land does not have a similar character to Ophelia who is loving, sincere, and honest. Line 122: “know, see, remember” failure in all these aspects. Line 125 is from The Tempest and an echo of line 48. Shakespeare's The Tempest tells of the sorcerer Prospero, who along with his daughter has been exiled on a remote island for many years. Prospero engineers a shipwreck to reclaim his usurped position as the Duke of Milan. Among the shipwrecked is Ferdinand, prince of Naples and soon-to-be suitor to Proper's daughter, Miranda. The lines quoted by Eliot are part of song by the spirit Ariel, servant to Prospero, telling Ferdinand that his father died in the shipwreck. Unbeknownst to Ferdinand, the spirit is lying. Later, in the note to line 218, Eliot links Ferdinand to both the Phoenician sailor and Fisher King. He returns to this passage throughout The Waste Land: 124-125, 191-192, 257. Lines 128-130: lyrics of an American popular song in Eliot’s time. It stresses on freedom from limitations and restrictions. This is what the song discusses, people are enclosed and leading a very monotonous life. The song is mocking this kind of life. Lines 131-134: these lines are quite important because they are indicative of the situation as a whole. The wasted life. The speaker here is the rich woman in her boudoir, the woman of situation, the belladonna of the poem, who lost her identity. She is nameless. She appears and disappears in the poem as a ghostly figure. The man, also, is unidentified whether he is the husband or a lover. They are in the room together and bored all the time. There is lack of communication and interaction. “Speak” is repeated several times, and “nothing” is repeated in the conclusion as they have nothing to share and to think. To sum up all this now, “What shall I do now? What shall we ever do?” All the previous details definitely lead to this state. Such people, who have nothing on their minds, have no plan, no future. This is the boring monotonous life. They keep on repeating themselves. These people are now the physical shapes in the city, empty inside and it kills them. “What shall I do?” And all she can think of is walking the street and letting her hair down. Eliot is emphasising the immorality of that society which is the result of all the mentioned failures. They lead to nothing but more immorality and more deterioration in the society. Line 137: a game of chess, the same as in the title. It emphasises the wasted lives. Line 138: “a knock upon the door.” reminds us of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. This poem has paved the way for the rise of the absurd theatre. It talks about the meaninglessness of life at this time which is the concern of the theatre of the absurd. And “pressing lidless eyes,” is part of the physical deterioration and the horrific images that agree with the rats ally and annihilation of the bones. This physical destruction is connected to the inner—spiritual and mental—destruction. They are connected like man and nature. The outside is nothing but a reflection of the inside. If you have a physical deformity, it is a result of an inner deformity. The word “waiting” is the waste. Keeping on waiting is the point Eliot is highly criticising. People are wasting their lives doing nothing. This is what causes agony; nothing will change unless people work to change things. Line 139: the introduction of Lil which is the fifth woman in the poem. She is a commoner and wed to a soldier. The mentioning of a soldier and army is a reminder of WWI. The

�14poem is written to record the aftermath and the deterioration of WWI. All these distractions are the result of war, bloodshed, and materialism. Eliot puts in more details about the destruction of families as a result of war. The husband is travelling for long time, so women lose interest. Lil does not look at all her age. She is only 31 but looks very old. The ugliness of her picture support the distorted background of the text. Her fiend is advising her to put on some nice set and fix her teeth. The friend says if the husband comes back and finds her in this situation, her will look somewhere else for a better looking woman. "This scene is very important because it introduces different problems and different details in society which he is disapproving of. First, the troubles of people who join the army and leave their families behind. Second, the problem of women taking pills “apportion” which was discussed thoroughly at that time. There was a division in society between those who are religious enough to object on them. And those who do not mind. Eliot as a religious poet is against the pills. And he is projecting the damage of it here. That Lil is physically weak and unhealthy. As she say “Then I'll know who to thank…It's them pills I took.” Third problem is why do people get married if they do not want children. Fourth, the problem of time. “Hurry up please its time” is actually a call made by bartenders in closing time. It is repeated five times for emphasis. It links with the idea in PART ONE that people are moving on the bridge and they do not listen to the hour. People in The Waste Land are unaware of the importance and passage of time. Which is a mental failure. The names Lil and Albert are mentioned here as a typical English couple. Line 172: “goodnight,” repeated which is an allusion to Hamlet’s Ophelia. Eliot alludes to her to juxtapose past to present. Eliot is talking about the irrationality of modern man. Ophelia went crazy after knowing that her lover killed her father. The two men she loved most. This kind of sincerity and devotion in love is the reason of her madness. This is not the case with modern love. Lil does not care about her husband and her friend is telling her that he will go to someone else. The two love situations are contrasted. They both fail, but in the past they fail because of love not because of the lack of love. Eliot starts with the famous love story of Antony and Cleopatra and concludes with Ophelia. The young, innocent, and pure girl who could not bear the shock. So he ends with a tragedy because the situation in The Waste Land is a tragedy. """"""

�15T. S. Eliot’s Attitude Towards the English Culture "

The Waste Land discusses different cultures and introduces different cultural backgrounds. Eliot is supportive of the fact the a poem should cross boundaries. That a poem is a work of art, when speaking of art, ideas, thoughts should bridge between cultures and languages. However, if we are speaking of the specific native culture, does the intercultural action mean that Eliot does not want or support a native culture? The answer is no. He does not negate this idea at all. On the contrary, Eliot is supportive of a native culture. Therefore, his attitude towards the English culture is that they should go back to their past and roots in order to redefine their own Englishness. Eliot was sure that literature and literary writers at his time were not devoted enough to this idea. So he together with Virginia Wolf and E. M. Forster were participants in the revival of the idea of Englishness. The native culture of England. And the poem [TWL] that stresses the return to the roots, and the relation with God, bears the same meaning. The poem is basically focusing on the cosmopolitan city, the city of London. So it mainly describes the situation in London, but it moves to generalise to show that such a situation is recurrent elsewhere. One of the major aims is to revive the concept of culture that is native emphasising the class-bound notion of Englishness that invokes traditional details. Eliot, therefore, as a modernist, was anticipating in his writings the worldwide retreat of the British imperialism. Because he is actually showing that in order to remake the English culture, they have to retreat this idea of imperialism. Because imperialism is what created a hybrid culture. They started to lose their native culture and Eliot was against this. The idea gives him two sources of power. First, that he is anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and anti-hybrid cultures. There is a difference between a hybrid origin and the multiplicity of cultural societies. In the latter, the native culture is preserved. So modernist literature role as Eliot saw it, was to revive the cultural map of Europe and English through returning to the past. Eliot’s returning to the past has several implications. One of the main ones is the revival of what he thought was misunderstood or left away, especially the idea of a Christian society. And he has a treatise with a title “The Idea of a Christian Society.” It was published 17 years after The Waste Land, but he was criticising in it what he felt when he was writing The Waste Land. That is the different institutes and the different interests in different countries all over the world, which the imperialist English were practicing, destroyed the original roots and tradition of the English Christian society. Eliot was calling the English to attend to their own languishing traditions. Especially the rituals of the native Christianity. So he called them to return to their origin, their roots, their rituals as a native Christian society. He traced back the changes since the Roman conquest. Returning to primitive life does not imply an escape from the present. On the contrary, the suggestion is that they recover their relation to nature, recover their relation to God, recover their religious rituals, and they recognise that the most primitive feelings of caring, sharing, interacting, and loving are part of the heritage. That they need it most in the present time with all the scientific developments and discoveries. This is what he stated in his essay and what he practised in the poem. The poem is definitely calling for a return to the past in order to have a solid ground to learn and connect. Also to return to the spiritual values. All this is a revival based on a revolution in attitude. The poem is revolutionary in its presentation, in its kaleidoscopic structure, and in its stream of consciousness technique. It is revolutionary, also, in calling for a struggle to revive the examples of the past. He wanted to reach an idealised picture. His purpose is to reach an organisation or a city where you can combine between the church and the state, between art and faith, between town and country. It is his concern with country and destruction of nature that made him start with an allusion to nature in the poem. Of course he was talking symbolically and figuratively when describing nature behave in an abnormal way. But there is a deeper meaning pointed out by critics, it is not only an allusion to Chaucer and the inhabitants living in forgetfulness. It is the

�16destruction of nature. Because throughout the destruction of nature man is destroyed because he is part of it. Eliot believes in this. Throughout the poem he mentions many images of dryness, annihilation, pollution, all those symbolically suggest the pollution of the environment. The pollution of the environment means and leads to all what is in the poem like the mental pollution, the spiritual pollution, and the emotional pollution. That is eventually the destruction of the human being. He believes in the importance of the natural environment and that is why he wants a link between the life in the town and in the country. The countryside is very important. To know agriculture is to know nearly everything else about life. Therefore, he believes that the urbanisation of the country, the destruction of the greenery, is the destruction of the human beings. Urbanising the minds of people turn them to sterile minds. Therefore, Eliot was writing about this relation between culture, and the land, and the economy. Language, too, is part of the culture and that is why he includes the languages in the poem. The use of plurilingalism was for several reasons, one of them is to project the picture of modern Europe. That is the colonisation definitely introduced many languages in the society which results in the loss of identity. That is why “Marie” in the beginning of the poem says I am not Russian, I am German of Lithuanian roots. It is indicative of what has been going on in Europe. In Eliot’s time, England was retreating from the colonised countries, it is a the stage pre to the postcolonial stage. They were loosing their Englishness. He is saying that art should cross the cultural boundaries but without loosing the identity of the speaker. He was criticising what was going on in Europe of the multiplicity of languages because it is uprooting people from their cultures. And it is even ruining the original languages. He is interested in these languages, he knows about them and their cultures, but it does not come at the expense of loosing his identity. Eliot praises W. B. Yeats for supporting and reconstructing the Irish culture and reaching universality through his native culture. He was telling the English writers to learn from Yeats. To speak about the issues that really concern the human beings in your country, will automatically become universal. Because those human beings have shared the problems with others. The deeper you go into your roots the more universal you become. He wanted the English to realise this, because this hybrid culture started to invade them. They are loosing their own Englishness. Some critics call the effort of reviving the English culture: the Anglocentric revivalism. Eliot was aware that this imperialism does not only affect the English society. The effect of the cross-cultural interactions was on both sides, the colonised and the coloniser. That is why he is universalising his message. He is also aware that imperialism eroded the traditional life across the globe. This destruction of traditional life worried him and he wrote about it. Son of man you know nothing but a heap of broken images. The critic McLaughlin said in 2000 that The Waste Land is a world poem. He says it is unprecedented attempt by any poet except Dante in his Divine Comedy. So he places the attempt made by Eliot on equal footing with Dante. They bridge cultures and languages and try to reconcile all this in a very unique original form. And this relate to Eliot’s theory that a text should use intertextuality. """"""