The Theme of The Waste Land

What is the theme (or themes) of The Waste land? The theme of the poem encompasses simultaneously several levels of experience arising out of various waste lands: the waste land of religion in which there are rocks but no water; the waste land of the spirit from which all moral and spiritual springs have evaporated; and the waste land of the instinct for fertility where sex has become merely a mechanical means of animal satisfaction rather than a potent, life-giving source of regeneration. It appears to many readers that Eliot has here endeavoured to give poetic expression to his feelings of futility and anarchy in the face of contemporary civilization. F. O. Matthiessen writes:

It may be that the large task which Eliot set himself in The Waste Land "of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy" of contemporary history, caused some of the experiments which he made to gain that end to appear too deliberate. Certainly some of his analogies with musical structure, in particular the summation of the themes in the broken ending of the final part, have always seemed to me somewhat forced and over-theoretical. But this is very different from saying that he is a too conscious artist.8 Matthiessen's view suggests thai Eliot's method as a poet deprives his poem of sheer spontaneity. Even if this is admitted as a partial truth, it is far from being the whole truth. A feature of the poem's importance is precisely that, despite a conscious design, many of its verses are strikingly 'spontaneous' utterances.

Eliot himself disclaimed any intention of expressing in the poem the 'disillusionment of a generation'. More particularly, he didn't like the use of the word 'generation'. He might have equally disapproved (had he known it) the view that The Waste Land attempts to project the modern man's 'illusion of being disillusioned'. Eliot said to Theodore Spencer:

Various critics have done me the honour to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life. It is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.

Whatever may be the poet's view, it seems that in his poem he is dealing with the themes of futility, frustration and the spiritual and physical barrenness of twentieth-century western civilization.

The Waste Land is primarily concerned with the theme of barrenness, and symbolically this is related to the myth of the waste land, as shown by (c-ssio Weston in her book From Ritual to Romance (1920). Weston deals with legends about the quest lor the Holy Grail (the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper) which depict a region as having been blighted by a cruel curse. Consequently, nothing can grow on.this land; crops and animals cannot continue their reproductive functions and the land 11,is lost its fertility. The plight of this waste land is also connected with the plight of the region's lord, the Fisher King. The Fisher King has been robbed of his

power to procreate; he is rendered impotent either through physical sickness or maiming. How is this curse, which has blighted the land and its Lord, to be removed? This is to be done by a questing knight who asks the meanings of various symbols which are presented to him in the course of his visit to a castle. In the original legend the sterility is primarily physical, whereas in Eliot's poem it is primarily spiritual. It re-enacts the religious drama of the visit of the knight to the Chapel Perilous, where the Grail is supposed to have been kept.

In another context, the theme of The Waste Land seems to be death'Death by Water' is only one facet of it. Death is continually contrasted with life and vice versa. In fact, according to Cleanth Brooks the poem deals with 'two kinds of life and two kinds of death' and with the contrast that this fact offers. In one context life which becomes devoid of meaning is equivalent to death, while in another context sacrificial death is shown as life-giving, as almost a means of securing the renewal of life. The Waste Land is at one level concerned with this paradox and with variations implicit in this self-contradictory movement.

Another important thematic aspect of The Waste Land, as pointed out by Ian Hamilton, is that it projects the 'superb trinity of culture, sex and religion' both as the primary goal of humanity and as something responsible for the deplorable state of western civilization where these impulses work in mutual isolation. Eliot's poem reveals facets of these three fundamental features of human life in their spiritual and

social contexts, and attempts to project his vision of life as well as his evaluation of the condition of barrenness which afflicts modern western civilization.

A discussion of the theme of The Waste Land is likely to'be unending, because there are thematic wheels within conceptual wheels in the structure of the poem, and no statement of the therne(s) is likely to be satisfactorily exhaustive. Various subtle thematic strands of The Waste Land will, however, be expounded during the discussion of the other Aspects of the poem. A Game of Chess The transition from The Burial of the Dead' to 'A Game of Chess' is marked by an intensification of the theme of sterility and violence in sexual relationships, and concreteness in the mode of communication through symbols, allusions and images. This section opens with a grandiose description of a lady's luxurious mode of living and her chair reminds the reader of Cleopatra's 'burnished throne' (as described by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra) as well as the royal apartment of Dido. Philomela's picture on the wall of the room reveals the background of her rape. This society lady is seductive, though ultimately she becomes a victim of man's desires. Philomela symbolizes the violence perpetrated, on innocent women's chastity, and also the precariousness of women's moral existence. The drawing rooms of Belladonna, the lady of situations, is described with all its artistic trappings and decorative designs. The whole piece is a mosaic of quotations in which Shakespeare, Virgil and Middleton intermingle. The main theme the relationship of love, sex and marriage between men and women is handled with ingenuity. Love fails to achieve its

high ideals and its elevated, profound and spiritual meanings are lost in the desert of man's lack of capacity for experiencing spiritual love.

'A Game of Chess', derived from Middleton's play Women Beware Women, unfolds also the theme of a woman's seduction. The game is used as a mode of distracting attention from the Duke's attempt at seducing the lady's daughter-in-law. In fact, the game and the seduction seem to progress simultaneously and the moves of the players on the chessboard are counter points of another game, the human drama of seducing the lady in the same house and at the same time. Sexual intrigue is thus shown as another dimension of the 'game of chess', which results in death and sorrow. Sex in The Waste Land is thus full of intrigue, falsehood and fraud. It is neither procreative nor spiritual, but rather deadening in its effect upon the souls of lovers. In fact, sexual failure in The Waste Land is the outer symptom of its inner malady, a spiritual failure.

In using the decor of the drawing room of The Lady of the Rocks, Belladonna, Eliot seems to be exploring an almost new field of poetic communication. No other English poet, including Pope, is perhaps quite as successful in connecting the setting and the principal theme. The decor is used to expose the nightmare of modern urban living, with its desiccated, soulless characters half men, half beasts. Despite her connections with the past, when the lady speaks

'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you neverspeak. Speak. 'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

we hear a modern woman's voice with a tremulous tone expressing her predicament. In fact, it is the twentieth-century woman's personal perplexities which hold our imagination, and we recognize the irony of her links with earlier heroines. The violence done to Belladonna by her lover probably arises out of his inability to communicate with her. Thus the failure of communication is subtly shown as a modern version of violence.

The Fire Sermon

The subtitle of this section is derived from Lord Buddha's sermon in which he calls upon his disciples and seekers after God to give up 'desire', the root of all evil. The fires of lust must be overcome. The spirit of the Buddha's sermon, with the ideals of resignation and self-abnegation as its key ideas, is also linked with the kindred feelings of St Augustine's ideas on unholy passion. A third shade of meaning in this network of allusion is provided by St Paul's view that marriage should be preferred to

the life of uncontrolled lust and carnal burning. Eliot attempts to bring together the two voices of eastern and western asceticism in this double allusion.

The section opens with the evocation of a nuptial song from Spenser's Prothalamion: 'The river's tent is broken'. Spenser's song celebrates the wedding of two noble ladies, Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset, the daughters of the Earl of Worcester. Spenser stresses the beauty of 'Sweet Thames', the purity of the river's water and the flowers on its bank which decorate the auspicious occasion. But in twentieth-century England and in Eliot's world the Thames has been contaminated by orgies of lust by the holidaying crowd of merry-makers. The river's banks are corrupted by their love-making, empty bottles, cigarette-ends, handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes and other 'testimony of summer nights'. The Spenserian nymphs have departed; the modern nymphs are perhaps girls in the service of city directors, who 'have left no addresses'. Eliot, in very fine poetic phrases, then draws a picture of the permissiveness and sexual sterility of modern western society. This theme is later connected with Sweeney, Mrs Porter and her daughter, and then with the typist girl and the estate clerk.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .' recalls the sorrow of the Jews during their exile in Babylon as they remember Zion. It also has a deep personal note of despair because Eliot composed a major part of The Waste Land near Lake Geneva, in Lausanne. This lake is called 'Lac Leman' by local people. Thus the allusion has a dual significance: it recalls the ordeal and pain of the Jews, as recorded in the Bible

(Psalms 137:1), and it also unfolds the intensely felt personal agony of the poet. It is in this context, which is primarily ironic, that the reference to Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' has to be understood. 'Time's winged chariot' in Marvell has become, in Eliot's world, the modern automobile.

While I was fishing in the dull canal' (line 189) is clearly an allusion to the myth of the Fisher King. In fact, the protagonist is essentially the Quester after the Holy Grail who goes to the Chapel Perilous to answer the riddles, to cure the maimed Fisher King ,i nd to restore fertility to the parched waste land; but in this passage (lines 189-95) he seems to be the I'is her King or, at least, he identifies himself with liiin. This shifting symbolism and the use of allu-nions make him also appear in the form of Prince I'Vrdinand of The Tempest. Ferdinand imagines that his father, King Alonso of Naples, is dead as he hears Ariel's song. This is also related to the Fisher King and to some Grail legends, in which the King's illness is linked with the sickness of his brother.

The scene of Sweeney's rendezvous with Mrs Porter is preceded by the grotesque images of rat's feet and 'bones cast in a little low dry garret'. This evokes the atmosphere of the fear of death which may be traced to Marvell. Sweeney is again invoked in the scene of the 'sound of horns and motors' which will 'bring Sweeney to Mrs Porter in the spring'. Marvell's context serves as an ironic reminder to present vulgar living. Eliot, then/quotes from Verlaine's 'Parsifal' (see Notes), thereby underscoring the gulf that divides the vulgar world of Mrs Porter from the pure world

of singing children. The song itself is patterned on music-hall rhythms associated with a group of soldiers singing in jovial mood. Similarly, the scene of Mrs Porter and her affair with Sweeney is contrasted with the lyrical, pastoral scene of the bathing goddess, Diana. Mrs Porter's daughter seems to embody the spirit of Philomel, who was also ravished.

Eliot, in these lines, uses the conventional metrical form, the iambic pentameter, rhymed alternately, to project the sexual encounter as a lifeless ritual. The use of an appropriate traditional verse form to depict something mechanical works well. So does the use of the words, 'Tereu', Twit twit twit' and 'Jug jug, jug jug jug jug'all of them smutty words and gestures not merely invoking the rape of Philomel, the nightingale's legendary story and its background, but also the sexuality of Mrs Porter and her daughter and the homosexual affair of Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant.

Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant, unshaven, with his pockets full of dry merchandise, arrives in the 'unreal city' covered by brown fog. He carries with him a bill of lading and all the necessary documents. He invites the protagonist to lunch, in vulgar French, and* later to a week-end homosexual escapade at the hotel Metropole in Brighton.

This sordid affair is linked with Jessie Weston's narration of the legend of ancient Smyrna merchants who were the main communicators and carriers of the

fertility cult in the Middle East and Europe. Commerce and religion were like their two eyes. They were the custodians of temples and counting houses at the same time. But in Eliot's poem Mr Eugenides, a modern incarnation, is a victim of stark immorality and unnatural sexuality, and entirely devoid of religion.

'At the violet hour'this provides suggestive colour to the goings-on of the typist girl and her affair with her transitory lover. It also connects this with the sexual proclivities of Mr Eugenides, the I wcntieth-century version of the one-eyed Smyrna merchant.

More importantly, the ambiguity implicit in the violet colour of dusk, neither bright nor dark, fits I In- ambivalent, bi-sexual role of Tiresias. Tiresias, I hough blind, can 'see' and comprehend the implications of this evening scene. He is an old man with wrinkled female breasts and has 'foresuffered all'.

Eliot's chief protagonist is Tiresias, whose image may be traced to at least three sources. 'I who sat by Thebes below the wall' is the image of Tiresias derived from Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. He had prophetic powers and therefore knew why pestilence, plague and death had fallen on that city, but could not disclose what he had known. The second image of Tiresias is derived from Homer's Odyssey, where he 'walked among the lowest of the dead', in Hades. Odysseus consulted him on how best to return to his home in Ithaca. Tiresias knew how Odysseus would die but didn't reveal it. As predicted by him, Odysseus did return to Ithaca and for a while was re-

united with Penelope. The third image of Tiresias is derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which the story of the change of his sex is narrated. This Theban was transformed for a while into a woman for killing the female of a pair of snakes. He answered the question referred to him by Jove and Juno (whether man or woman derives more pleasure from sexual experience) in favour of Jove's view, thereby provoking Juno's anger. Juno struck him with blindness whereas Jove gave him long life and the gift of prophecy.

Tiresias is blessed with the gift of prophecy but is not in a position to disclose what he knows. Here, in The Waste Land, he links the promiscuity of the past and the permissiveness of the present. Tiresias observes the violet hour that brings 'the typist home at tea time', just as in Sappho's world it brought the sailor home from the sea. The sense of futility, frustration and boredom implicit in love and sex in The Waste Land is skilfully exposed in the scene of the typist girl and her 'young man, carbuncular7. The machine images of the taxi and the gramophone provide an appropriate setting for the desiccated quality of the characters involved in this scene. Her laying out food in tins, like the mechanical quality of her life, is further suggestive of modern man's complete divorce from the natural, organic world.

The typist girl's affair alludes to, by making a variation on, Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar ofWakefield. In this work a passage runs: When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover And wring his bosomis to die.

Eliot's obvious intention is to underscore the contrast between Goldsmith's highly ethical and moral world of eighteenth-century England and the permissive and morally depraved society in twentieth-century England. The assault on chastity is no longer a violation of moral law. After the event, the i y [list girl 'paces about her room' again, alone, and She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

Her affair is no better than the coupling of animals (snakes) that Tiresias had observed. Tiresias is also the prime observer of this typist-clerk sexual affair, and his presence gives thematic unity to this section of the poem.

This music crept by me upon the waters' evokes the scene of Ferdinand hearing the cosmic music on Prospero's island, as well as Ariel's songs, which brings him to Miranda, the object of his love. The protagonist here, on the other hand, hears only the record put on the gramophone by the typist girl. He also hears the pleasant whining of a mandoline in a public bar on Lower Thames Street. Eliot creates a fusion between

the water imagery and the main musical motif in,the poem, earlier expressed in the syncopated rhythm of the 'Shakespeherian Rag' and the song of Mrs Porter. The society of fishermen associated with the church of Magnus Martyr is referred to, and the allusion is significant because this patron saint, in order to escape from persecution, had jumped into the sea. Thus, the reference to the fishermen lounging at noon affords the closest relationship with the myth of the Fisher King which is so central to the poem.

The scene now shifts to the song of the Thames daughters as depicted by Wagner in his opera Gotterd-ammerung (see Notes). The scene moves from the typist's apartment to the waterfront, and then to the Thames. The three Thamesdaughters together sing their song in the first two stanzas and then each of them sings separately. The theme of their song is a lament on the loss of virginity: The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide

The rhythms of these unpunctuated lines project the fluidity of the Thames. In Wagner's Gotterdam-merung the Rhine maidens lament the theft of the hidden treasure of gold because its loss means also the loss of the river's beauty, whereas the three Thames daughters lament the loss of their virginity and, in consequence, the river's loss of purity. It is filled with 'oil and tar'; it has been contaminated.

The second part of the Thames daughters' song recreates the romantic scene of the love-making between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This re-creation of the spirit of the Renaissance, along with the barge scene in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, serves as a contrast to the futile love of the typist girl and her sordid lover. However, beneath the elegance and refinement of the love affair of Elizabeth I, the futility and sterility of that relationship is also remembered. The Thames daughters' songs end (lines 266-91) on this note, and the unpunctuated lines suggest that it is a continuous flow, of one piece with regard to rhythm and meaning.

Soon after, the scene of 'Trams and dusty trees' opens out a new landscape, with punctuated lines. The punctuation marks in The Waste Land are important, and they appear to indicate a break, not merely syntactic and verbal, but in mood and in the conceptual unfolding of the theme. The rather indirect moral of these songs and the scenes of the recurring loss of virginity is that life cannot attain its supreme goals unless it is directed essentially by ascetic idealsa theme which is further stressed in 'What the Thunder Said'. The Thames daughters' song continues and the lament Trams and dusty trees Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew Undid me. is an exact repetition of the Weialala chant. This is also a repetitive variation of the lines in Dante's Purgatory (V.133, see Notes). 'My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart /

Under my feet' discloses another sexual experience which rankles in the speaker's heart. Her lover was perhaps repentant and promised 'a new start'. The Thames maiden (like the protagonist) is lost in a state of mental lethargy and psychic paralysis: 'On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

She has also lost all sense of connection between past and present. This section doses with what is probably an allusion to the words of Lord Buddha (see Notes), suggesting that the world is burning with fires of passion, hatred and sexual infatuation. This Buddhist vision is supported by the confessional mood of St Augustine. 'O Lord Thou pluckest me out' is an exact repetition of St Augustine's words as he refers to Joshua, a high priest, as a 'brand plucked out of the fire'. The allusions to two important religions seems intended by Eliot to focus the reader's attention on the confluence of eastern and western religions insofar as both uphold asceticism and self-denial. 'Death by Water' In the original manuscript this was a much longer piece, consisting of 92 lines, and dealt with the episode of Ulysses as described in Dante's Inferno (Canto 26). Pound suggested to Eliot that the entire Ulysses episode, comprising 82 lines, be dropped altogether. Eliot, then, felt like omitting the entire section, but Pound wrote to

Eliot: 'I do advise keeping Phlebas . . . Phlebas is an integral part of the poem. . . . And he is needed absolutely where he is. Must stay in.'19 The anthropological idea of death by water is part of the explication of fertility rites narrated by Jessie Weston in From Ritual to Romance. She refers to pagan deities (such as Adonis) and the custom of throwing their effigies into the sea at Alexandria. With the return of spring these effigies were reclaimed from the sea water at Byblos. 'Death by Water' is an obvious contrast to the preceding section, 'The Fire Sermon'. Dying here carries the suggestion of rebirth, and the possibility of resurrection is foreseen as a distinct outcome of death by water. The lines Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss... are an almost exact English translation of Eliot's poem in French entitled 'Dans le Restaurant' (see E. D. H. Greene's comments in his T.S. Eliot et la France). Death by water comes as a relief after the sterility and futility of the typist-girl and the Thames daughters episodes, but the return to mortality, or the feeling of being mortal, is not far in this section either: 'Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.' 'Death by Water' also introduces a variation on water symbolism: 'A current under sea / Picked his bones in whispers'. In The Waste Land water, like fire, becomes an instrument of destruction as well as rejuvenation.

Phlebas is linked with the Smyrna merchant and the profit and loss of traders. When, after death, his bones are caught by the waves, they seem to enact the circular movement of his life. Phlebas is also linked with Dante's Ulysses, passing 'the stages of his age and youth', an image derived from the Inferno. He is also associated with the picture on the Tarot pack of cards inscribed with the wheel of fortune and the dual possibilities of resurrection and mortality. The reader is tempted to associate Phlebas with Ferdinand in The Tempest (Those are pearls that were his eyes'). This relates to what Madame Sosostris said: Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician sailor (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Her warning of death by water is now remembered. This interlinking of characters by apparently random statements and images is an important aspect of Eliot's symbolist technique. It is his mode of giving archetypal identities to otherwise shadowy characters. The protagonist appears to identify himself with Phlebas transcends the and thus

limitations imposed upon him by Madame Sosostris or the Tarot

pack. His identification also implies a new variety of psychic experience. It is only by dying that man can hope to be re-born. In fact, this hope is essential at this stage for the protagonist to continue his quest (like that of the questing knight), and it surely paves the way to the revelation of 'What the Thunder Said'.

What the Thunder Said' This is probably the most complex section of The Waste Land. The title is derived from Prajapati's voice speaking through thunder (see Notes), an episode of revelation derived from the Brihadamnyaka Upanishad. The first part of the movement, as has been indicated by Eliot in his Notes, is marked by the use of three themes: the mythical journey of the knight through the parched land of the Fisher King to the Chapel Perilous; the journey to Emmaus in which Jesus appeared to two of his disciples on the third day after his crucifixion, and finally the aimless march of modern western civilization in the context of the decay of cultural values in a Europe which was once spiritually and culturally fertile. The opening lines describe the arrest of Jesus by the crowd headed by Judas. Torchlight red' suggests the march of officers and men, led by Judas, carrying lanterns, torches and weapons, and red is symbolic of terror and horror. The Garden of Gethsemane was the scene of Christ's arrest and the 'frosty silence in the gardens' describes the deathlike quiet which descended on it after Jesus' arrest. The 'agony in stony places' speaks of the sufferings and pains of Jesus. The thunder's reverberation recalls the filial moment of agony on the cross. Thus, the first six lines sum up the great events in the life of Christthe betrayal, the arrest, the trial and crucifixion. However, whereas the crucifixion leads within the Christian scheme to a resurrection (recalling the pagan fertilty cults in this context), in The Waste Land it merely denoteswith deliberate ironydeath and spiritual sterility. Modern civilization gives no indication to the poet of having been saved by Christ's effort.

In another sense, the transition from section iv to section v, marked by a shift in scene from the Hyacinth garden to the Garden of Gethsemane, is not merely scenic but endowed with new, positive values. Similarly, the transformation of the missing 'Hanged Man' inscribed on the Tarot cards into the 'hooded' figurethe vision of the risen Jesusis also an extraordinary event since it shows that the poet is transcending the merely pagan archetypes derived from Weston and Frazer, and trying to reach Christian, and later Hindu and Buddhist, perceptions of salvation. The lines Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road and the subsequent passages describe a nightmarish journey through dry, sandy and stony desertonly rock and no water as the poet offers vignettes of the spiritual and mythological past. Water is the source of sustenance and Weston speaks of fertility cults which are based on the idea of 'the freeing of the waters'. One also recalls the Biblical passage describing how Moses touched rock and caused water to gush forth. However, in the The Waste Land water symbolism is complex: in some places a lifegiving quality and in others a destructive power. The sea, in Tristan's view of the world, seems a kind of waste associated with the death of Isolde, while 'Death by Water' also seems to be a step in the direction of new life, a rebirth. This journey through the waste land continues and we are told that 'there is not even silence in the mountains'. However, 'dry sterile thunder without rain' provides a prelude to what the thunder speaks. The mountains now become the scene of the journey to Emmaus. This scene of the vision of the risen Christ on the road to

Emmaus ultimately leads to another where we are offered a vision of the destruction of major civilizations, the vision of the ruin of Jersusalem. 'Murmur of maternal lamentation' recalls the scene of the daughters of Jerusalem. The 'hooded hordes', perpetrators of destruction, offer a contrast to the 'hooded' figure of Christ 'gliding wrapt in a brown mantle', whose presence now, as then, is not easily recognized. Spiritual decline is connected with the decay of Mediterranean civilization: thus the ruins of ancient and modern civilizationsJerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna and Londonall become part of the pervasive nightmare. 'Here is no water but only rock' projects the scene of the mythical journey of Percival and his knights to the Chapel Perilous. They encounter the difficulties of travel in a dry land, as if this were a purgatoryto purify their souls. Hope rises when the poet visualizes the hermit-thrush singing in the pine trees 'But there is no water'. Eliot, then, endeavours to portray another journey of uprooted mankind in the modern waste land. He derives some of his ideas from Hermann Hesse's Blick ins Chaos (The Brink of Chaos) in which the German thinker declares: Already half of Europe, at least half of Eastern Europe, is on the way to Chaos, travelling drunken in holy illusion, along the edge of an abyss, and as she goes, sings drunken hymns----Over these songs the outraged bourgeois laughs scornfully, the saint and seer hears them with tears. The nightmarish scene of the hooded hordes swarming over endless plains, the bursts and cracks and the falling towers, depict the ruin of eastern Europe in the twentieth century.

The image of the woman drawing 'her long black hair out tight', based on a macabre painting by a Dutch artist (see Notes) provides yet another image of modern civilization at the violet hour. The physical setting of dark walls showing bats with baby faces bending their heads downwards provides a symbolic background to the scenes of the destruction of Jerusalem and modern eastern Europe. The Church itself reflects this decay of civilization, and therefore its bells signify only formal prayers and conventional hymns devoid of the spirit of an indwelling God. The Church has come to represent only the voices of godless men 'singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells'. The mythical journey to the Chapel Perilous is alluded to with 'In this decayed hole among the mountains' leading to the 'empty chapel'. The knight and his companions have reached the Chapel, only to find that the house of God is in a state of decay and that it is 'only the wind's home'. Its doors and windows have been removed, the graves in the yard are in disarray. However, the clarion call of the cock is suddenly heard in a flash of lightning, heralding the morn, welcoming the

'damp gust' bringing 7rain. The cock is associated with the betrayal of Christ by Peter, but what is perhaps more significant in this context is that possibilities are opened up for the coming of rain, the rejuvenation of the maimed Fisher King and, indirectly, of the rebirth of spiritual values. But this is only a possibility, a hope which may be belied by an uncertain future. The message of the thunder gives concerete form to this hope, to the transformation of the waste land into a fertile land. Eliot uses 'Ganga', the" pure Sanskrit word, for the great holy river, and not Ganges, the anglicized form, as he

looks towards the east. 'Himavant', too, is a pure Sanskrit word evoking the mythical and rich heritage of Indian culture. The story of Ganga is one of the major myths of India's cultural past, associated with the lives of King Sagar and King Bhagirath. Mytholgy has it that the holy river flowed in paradise in the mountain range of Himavant. Sagar, the King of Ayodhya, wished to perform ashwamedh-yagna (the horse sacrifice), but was dismayed to find his children dead. There was no water for the ritual washing of the dead and he, therefore, wished to bring Ganga from Himavant to the earth. His descendant, King Bhagirath, succeeded in this attempt. The Ganga flowed on the earth through Siva's hair in mighty torrents. Eliot describes Ganga as 'sunken' because it suggests the debased state of civilization, the shrivelled quality of man's existence. The black clouds over Himavant hold out a promise of rain and the possibility of salvation. The induction of four Sanskrit words derived from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and the way Eliot has adapted them to the needs of the poetic structure and philosophical meaning of the poem, deserves detailed consideration. The Waste Land projects Tiresias as the protagonist for he represents the principal point of view and the two sexes meet in him. Similarly, in Indian mythology, the two sexes synthesize in Prajapati, a great seer and prophet. 'DA' is the noise of thunder and embodies, in a parable, its message for mankind. The offspring of Prajapati, on completing their education, ask their father for a final message or moral revelation. Prajapati, according to the Upanishad, uttered the syllable DA to the three kinds of his disciples and children: the devds (gods), manishyas (men) and mums (evil spirits). Prajapati gave them the same message: DA. He later asked the devas what DA meant to them and

they answered: 'Damyata' (control yourself). Then Prajapati asked the men and they answered: 'Datta' (Give). The asuras answered 'Dayadhvam' (Be compassionate). The most signficant aspect of this Prajapati episode is that the word DA communicates different meanings to different individuals. It may mean either selfcontrol or charity or compassion. Eliot therefore seems to erm hasize that the individual must.eek his own salvo'ion. Elit-t also changes thr order of the Upanishadic words, which is Damyaia, Datta and Dayadhvam. The Upanishad stresses self-control whereas Eliot seems to gives precedence to charity and compassion, which lead to s'elf-control. The word 'Datta' suggests a surrender, a giving in which will bring about rebirth. This surrender of the inner spirit of man to a higher cause is a great event, though it will not appear in obituary notices, nor in statements of wealth, nor in wills unsealed by solicitors in empty rooms. The allusion to Webster's The White Devil in the 'beneficent spider' image shows that in the modern waste land giving has degenerated into mere sexual surrender, as has indeed been shown earlier in the poem. With 'Dayadhvam' man is asked to be merciful, since compassion is the true hallmark of a spiritual life, whereas modern man has become so self-centred that each one seems to create, and live in, his own prison-house. Count Ugolino's words in Dante's Inferno (T have heard the key / Turn in the door') are adroitly fitted into the diagnosis of modern values. The words 'broken Coriolanus' refer to the Roman general of Shakespeare's play who, though once successful, was later banished by his countrymen and spiritually broken. He was broken also by his divided self, between his duty to the outer world and loyalty to his inner voices. He had at one time a

glimpse of this 'inner reality'. Coriolanus's city, too, seemed to have been under a curse, as much as the parched land of the Fisher King, and in this way he is related to the main myth of the poem. 'Damyata' suggests that man must learn to control his heart and passions and subject them to a strict moral disciplane. The heart is likened to a gay boat gliding freely on the waters, subjecting itself to expert hands, the 'controlling hands' of moral values. With the lines I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me The protagonist merges himself with the image of the mythical Fisher King and both of them seem to speak through the poet. The protagonist, as Robert Langbaum says, thus 'becomes both Quester and Fisher King', and in this way the 'vision of the disorder', the central theme of The Waste Land, is recreated. The concluding stanza in the poem is of great thematic and symbolic significance. It is a crescendo in which all the earlier imagistic waves seem to rise to a great height. The water imagery, so basic to the structure of the poem, is recreated with great force, indirectly raising an important thematic question. Shall I at least set my lands in order? The mental state of the Fisher King is evoked, as is the sense of uncertainty in Ferdinand about whether his father drowned; these are related to the Fisher King's goal of removing the curse from the stricken land and seeking spiritual salvation. And

this scene is related to Isaiah's prophetic words: 'Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, not live' (see Notes). 'A heap of broken images' contributes to this stanzathe refrain of an English nursery rhyme about London Bridge; the quotation from Dante's Purgatario sta'ting the words of Arnaut Daniel; a scrap from the Latin poem 'Pervigilium Veneris' about the swallow, underscoring the assault on Philomela; the image of the French patriot who sacrificed himself in a ruined tower, derived from the French poet Gerard de Nerval's sonnet. This is a conspectus of fragments of European myths and legends. They all denote purgation; or, alternatively, they speak the language of asceticism, as shown in Arnaut's self-mortification; or, even more persuasively, they express syllables of salvation. Eliot appears here to underscore the positive value of these fragments of tradition: this is what is left to him to build a new order and make his own contribution to the revitalizing of broken tradition. Hieronymo, Kyd's protagonist in The Spanish Tragedy, says: Each one of us Must act his part in unknown languages That it may breed the more variety. He speaks in Latin and Greek, Italian and French. Similarly, Eliot speaks in the languages of Europe and adds Sanskrit to the European lore in The Waste Land. But the aim of both the poets is clear: to tap all the elements of European culture and build them into a new order of art. The protagonist, in part Tiresias and in part Eliot himself, evokes the sensations and values of Europe's broken heritage. This must be regarded

as the creative processthe process by which the poet, or the quester, seeks his identity, and also a personal and cultural order through exploring and articulating what may be described as, essentially, a myth of disorder. It may also be that these fragments are stored in the memory of Tiresias, for he has indeed 'shored' them against his 'ruins', yet is uncertain whether these will lead him to the final goal of salvation. Tiresias would, then, seem to be in a state of suspended animation, moving uncertainly between the two opposite poles of hope and despair. This approach confirms the view of F.R. Leavis that The Waste Land 'exhibits no progression' and 'ends where it began'. However, while critics like Elizabeth Drew seem unable to feel the peace in the concluding line, and to whom therefore the ending of the poem seems purely 'formal', there are others to whom the end appears almost a poetic benediction. 'Shantih' signifies absolute peace, the peace that transcends understanding and fragmented life. Pound, for one, approved of this aesthetically satisfying ending. Finally, The Waste Land projects poetically many of mankind's predicaments which emerged from the disturbing situation of the modern world after World War I. It is primarily due to The Waste Land mat Eliot, like Yeats, has come to be identified with v/the consciousness of our age.

CHAPTER III CONCLUSION Two of the poem's sections -- "The Burial of the Dead" and "Death by Water" refer specifically to this theme. What complicates matters is that death can mean life; in other words, by dying, a being can pave the way for new lives. Eliot asks his friend Stetson: "That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?" Similarly, Christ, by "dying," redeemed humanity and thereby gave new life. The ambiguous passage between life and death finds an echo in the frequent allusions to Dante, particularly in the Limbo-like vision of the men flowing across London Bridge and through the modern city.

The Christ images in the poem, along with the many other religious metaphors, posit rebirth and resurrection as central themes. The Waste Land lies fallow and the Fisher King is impotent; what is needed is a new beginning. Water, for one, can bring about that rebirth, but it can also destroy. What the poet must finally turn to is Heaven, in the climactic exchange with the skies: "Datta. Dayadhvani. Damyata." Eliot's vision is essentially of a world that is neither dying nor living; to break the spell, a profound change, perhaps an ineffable one, is required. Hence the prevalence of Grail imagery in the poem; that holy chalice can restore life and wipe the slate clean; likewise, Eliot refers frequently to baptisms and to rivers - both "life-givers," in either spiritual or physical ways.

"The Waste Land" opens with an invocation of April, "the cruellest month." That spring be depicted as cruel is a curious choice on Eliot's part, but as a paradox it informs the rest of the poem to a great degree. What brings life brings also death; the seasons fluctuate, spinning from one state to another, but, like history, they maintain some sort of stasis; not everything changes. In the end, Eliot's "waste land" is almost seasonless: devoid of rain, of propagation, of real change. The world hangs in a perpetual limbo, awaiting the dawn of a new season. Perhaps the most famous episode in "The Waste Land" involves a female typist's liaison with a "carbuncular" man. Eliot depicts the scene as something akin to a rape. This chance sexual encounter carries with it mythological baggage - the violated Philomela, the blind Tiresias who lived for a time as a woman. Sexuality runs through "The Waste Land," taking center stage as a cause of calamity in "The Fire Sermon." Nonetheless, Eliot defends "a moment's surrender" as a part of existence in "What the Thunder Said." Lust may be a sin, and sex may be too easy and too rampant in Eliot's London, but action is still preferable to inaction. What is needed is sex that produces life, that rejuvenates, that restores - sex, in other words, that is not "sterile." The references to Tristan und Isolde in "The Burial of the Dead," to Cleopatra in "A Game of Chess," and to the story of Tereus and Philomela suggest that love, in "The Waste Land," is often destructive. Tristan and Cleopatra die, while Tereus rapes Philomela, and even the love for the hyacinth girl leads the poet to see and know "nothing." "The Waste Land" lacks water; water promises rebirth. At the same time, however, water can bring about death. Eliot sees the card of the drowned Phoenician

sailor and later titles the fourth section of his poem after Madame Sosostris' mandate that he fear "death by water." When the rain finally arrives at the close of the poem, it does suggest the cleansing of sins, the washing away of misdeeds, and the start of a new future; however, with it comes thunder, and therefore perhaps lightning. The latter may portend fire; thus, "The Fire Sermon" and "What the Thunder Said" are not so far removed in imagery, linked by the potentially harmful forces of nature. History, Eliot suggests, is a repeating cycle. When he calls to Stetson, the Punic War stands in for World War I; this substitution is crucial because it is shocking. At the time Eliot wrote "The Waste Land," the First World War was definitively a first the "Great War" for those who had witnessed it. There had been none to compare with it in history. The predominant sensibility was one of profound change; the world had been turned upside down and now, with the rapid progress of technology, the movements of societies, and the radical upheavals in the arts, sciences, and philosophy, the history of mankind had reached a turning point. Eliot revises this thesis, arguing that the more things change the more they stay the same. He links a sordid affair between a typist and a young man to Sophocles via the figure of Tiresias; he replaces a line from Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" with "the sound of horns and motors"; he invokes Dante upon the modern-day London Bridge, bustling with commuter traffic; he notices the Ionian columns of a bar on Lower Thames Street teeming with fishermen. The ancient nestles against the medieval, rubs shoulders with the Renaissance, and crosses paths with the centuries to follow. History becomes a blur. Eliot's poem is like a street in Rome or Athens; one layer of history upon another upon another.