"The Waste Land" by T S Eliot: Explanations or RTC

Some explanations from Eliot’s The Waste Land with reference to context

 

I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from the last section of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

The excerpt reminds is of the speaker persona’s fishing experience in a nasty canal in lines 189 – 192 of the same poem. We are reminded of the Fisher King in the Grail Legends and the Arthurian Romances. The speaker is surrounded by an ‘arid plain’ or a ‘waste land’ where there is no symptom of rebirth and regeneration.

The European civilisation, in the wake of World War I, became as ‘arid’ and shattered as a wasteland where there is no question of life and hope. Everything is shallow and numb. The utmost crisis led to nothingness, disillusionment etc. the speaker wonders and questions himself whether he will ever be able to “set” his “lands in order”.

Here the poet has used the poetic device of Enjambment or run-on lines. The poet’s mood of frustrations and gloominess is also reflected.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then He fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from the last section of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

In these lines, the poet throws light upon the decaying European civilisation in the wake of the First World War. He gives a solution to the dying culture in the last couple of lines.

Modern civilisation is nothing but a gamut of fragments. The poet here, as per himself, has collected the fragmentary images to give it a shape of a compact whole.

Our world is full of ‘ruins’ that are made to ‘fit’ forcefully. “Hieronymo’s mad againe” is an allusion used in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; the subtitle of the play is “Hieronymo’s mad againe”.

In the last two lines, in Sanskrit, the poet has expressed that all of us must give (“Datta”), sympathise (“Dayadvam”) and control (“Damyata”) to all people. At last, he utters the word ‘Shantih’ thrice just as Hindu priests worship. Moreover, each Upanishad ends with the word Shantih.

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Liliacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from the first section of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

Here ‘April is the cruellest month’ firstly because Christ was crucified in this month. Secondly, in April or spring, the season of love, a modern man or a usually lonely person might be disheartened, because when he sees ‘breeding’ of liliacs “out of the dead land”, when he sees lovemaking somewhere, he cannot satisfy his ‘Memory  and desire’. As a result, dull roots are stirred in his melancholy heart, and the ‘spring rain’ will add insult to his injury or disappoint him even more.

Here the poet has used the poetic device of Enjambment or run-on lines.

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from the first section of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

Here the speaker persona, while speaking of “Unreal City”, probably refers to London. Moreover, it has a reference to Charles Baudelaire, a nineteenth-century French poet.

He expresses that this phony city is covered in “brown fog of winter dawn”. We know “brown” is negative colour and “winter” is the season of gloom.

Actually, the European civilisation, in the wake of World War I, got demoralised, degenerated and decayed. This line reflects the poet’s gloomy mood amid such darkness, drabness, despair and all that.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from the first section of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

Here the speaker persona, while describing the ‘crowd flowed over London Bridge’, recalls Dante’s Inferno (in The Divine Comedy). The modern civilisation, in the wake of World War I, is nothing but a hellish one. We are living in a hell in a state of Limbo.

My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. These lines occur in the second section of the poem, that is, ‘A Game of Chess’ reminding us of one of Thomas Middleton’s play.

Modern civilisation, in the wake of World War I, had become shallow and selfish.

Here a lady, a neurotic patient, tells her partner to “stay with” her, because her “nerves are bad tonight”. This reflects fear, eroticism etc.

These lines are written in Iambic metre predominantly.

What is that noise now?

What is the wind doing?

Nothing again nothing.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. These lines occur in the second section of the poem, that is, ‘A Game of Chess’ reminding us of one of Thomas Middleton’s play.

Here the speaker persona, a modern man, expresses fear and anxiety to hear a certain ‘noise’. Moreover, the ‘wind’ too feels scary. “The wind” alludes to The Devil’s Law Case.

The speaker tries to relate “nothing” with “nothing”. Actually, the modern civilisation, after the First World War, has become full of nothingness.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. These lines occur in the third section of the poem, that is, ‘The Fire Sermon’.

Here the poet reminds is of Andrew Marvell’s metaphysical poem named To His Coy Mistress where the following lines occur – “But at my back always hear/ Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”. However, here in this poem, the speaker fears the “cold blast” of World War I. As a result, “The rattle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.” Time can ruin; it does not wait for man. Man cannot overtake time at all.

Modern civilisation is one of warmongering and loss of lives. It is shallow, narrow and selfish.

Here the poet has used Enjambment or run-on lines.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

After the First World War, the civilisation became shallow, narrow and selfish. Here the speaker persona says that he “can connect” nothingness with nothingness, because our civilisation is standing upon nothingness, a heap of broken images or fragments like “the broken fingernails of a dirty hand”.

Just as the fingernails when broken are shattered into bits and pieces, the modern world is, thus, fragmented into a heap of broken images or into nothingness.

Burning burning burning burning

 O Lord Thou pluckest me out

Burning.

Answer: This excerpt is taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.

These lines allude to William Blake’s poem The Tyger, the theme poem of Blake’s Songs of Experience. Moreover, these lines remind us of Lord Buddha’s ‘Fire Sermon’. It describes burning of passion, attachment and suffering. This is a picture if fierceness, death and decay on earth.

Thereafter, lines 2 and 3 in the excerpt allude to Augustine’s Confessions.

Here Eliot suddenly shifts from Buddhism to Christianity.

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. These lines occur in the last section of the poem, that is, “What the Thunder Said”.

Here “He” refers to Jesus Christ. He is the One being spoken about in the first line of the excerpt.

We are living in a half-dead state, because, in the wake of World War I, our civilisation has turned hollow, shallow and narrow.

Herein lies the difference between the ‘living’ Christ who is ‘dead’ and we, the half-dead, mentally broken people.

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel.

Answer: This excerpt has been taken from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. These lines occur in the last section of the poem, that is, “What the Thunder Said”.

After the First World War, the world and its civilisation have become narrow, hollow, shallow and selfish. The world is ‘decayed’. However, here the ‘hole among the mountains’ refers to a valley where the ‘faint moonlight’ pours her beams and ‘the grass is singing/ Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel’. It reminds us of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “woman wailing for her demon-lover” in his poem Kubla Khan.

These lines have been written in a poetic device by Eliot, and that is Enjambment.