April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying a the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Der Heimat zu
Mein irisch Kind,
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994.
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The phrase is from the burial service of the Anglican Church.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
A lake near Munich. Lines 8-16 echo passages in Countess Marie Larisch's My Past (1913).
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
A Munich public park with cafes, formerly the grounds of a palace.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
"I am no Russian, I come from Lithuania, a real German."
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, X, Hyacinth is a young boy slain by a rival for Apollo's love.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
Teri's Links are Red also include all links to the internet.
Amy's Links are Green.
Mary's Links are Purple.
It also should be noted that the material of the links at times coincide while at other times seem to be in disagreement. All the same, scholarly analysis is occurring.
A Commentary on The Waste Land
by Mary Russell
In "The Burial of the Dead" Eliot presents an arid, lifeless desert. He uses references to the Bible which ultimately provide hope. In "The Burial of the Dead," the desert will soon be replaced by something better, perhaps the Promised Land. However, Eliot immediately follows this passage with a depiction of a garden with the hyacinth girl. This garden represents not a Promised Land but a lifeless love. The protagonist feels nothing when he should have felt the most love.
A Commentary on The Waste Land
by Amy Nichols
In "The Burial of the Dead," Eliot refers to passages from the Bible. These biblical references should give hope in The Waste Land which is otherwise dominated by the theme of alienation.
The biblical references are juxtaposed to Eliot's actual text. The biblical references tend to bring the reader closer to an understanding and comfort in the text, but Eliot pushes the reader into further alienation by confusing the true meaning of the biblical passages with his own disillusionment. Eliot assumes that God has abandoned us and left us to dwell in a world where comfort cannot be found. The aspect that makes this idea horrible is that Eliot acknowledges that God exists or existed, but God wants nothing to do with The Waste Land. Therefore, the sufferers in "The Burial of the Dead" are searching or trying to sustain life without help or much luck. The struggles involve looking for an answer that will bring a renewal to life, but these answers are not found.
In "The Burial of the Dead," the alienated are the existing factors. The fact that hope has not been given up is a positive force in The Waste Land although the failure to find answers through God is discouraging. Eliot insinuates that alienation is more powerful than God.
Tristan und Isolde: Act I, verses 5-8 in Wagner's opera, the lines are sung by a sailor aboard Tristan's ship, thinking of his beloved in Ireland: "Fresh blows the wind homeward; my Irish child, where are you waiting?"
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994.
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Eliot, T(homas) S(tearns) (1888-1965), American-born English poet, literary critic, dramatist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, who is best known for his poem The Waste Land, one of the most widely discussed literary works of the early 20th century. His plays, which rely on a colloquial use of unrhymed verse, attempted to revive poetic drama for the contemporary audience. Eliot's methods of literary analysis have been a major influence on English and American critical writing.
Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, into a distinguished New England family, the son of a businessman and a poet. He was educated at Harvard University, the Sorbonne, and the University of Oxford. He became a resident of London in 1915 and a naturalized British citizen in 1927. Between 1915 and 1919 Eliot held various positions, including those of teacher, bank clerk, and assistant editor of the literary magazine Egoist.
Eliot's first important poem was "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). In his first volume of verse, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), he uses the imagery of urban life in a context of poetic intensity. The poems have no fixed verse form or regular pattern, and rhyme is used only occasionally. During the 1920s Eliot developed pronounced views on literary, religious, and social subjects. His long poem in five parts, The Waste Land (1922), is an erudite work that expresses vividly his conception of the sterility of modern society in contrast with societies of the past. In essays on such subjects as the Elizabethan dramatists, the English metaphysical poets, and Italian poet Dante, Eliot profoundly influenced the tenets of literary criticism. He contended, in the collection of The Sacred Wood (1920), that the critic must develop a strong historical sense in order to judge literature from a proper perspective, and that the poet must be impersonal in the creative exercise of the craft. As founder and editor of The Criterion from 1922 to 1939, he provided a literary forum for many prominent contemporary writers. In the collection of essays For Lancelot Andrewes (1928), he describes his position as that of a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion.
Beginning in the 1930s the qualities of serenity and religious humility became paramount in Eliot's poetry, notably in Ash Wednesday (1930), The Rock (1934), and his long verse play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), based on the 12th-century martyrdom of Saint Thomas à Becket. Four Quartets (1943), considered by many critics his finest work, expresses in moving verse a transcendental sense of time. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
Eliot's fame as a playwright dates from the successful production of The Cocktail Party (1949), which explored the theme of salvation in a context of modern drawing-room comedy. Other dramatic presentations of religious and moral themes are The Confidential Clerk (1954) and The Elder Statesman (1958). Among his other works are Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) a book of verse for children, which was adapted for the musical theater stage and began running in 1981; the plays Sweeney Agonistes (1932) and The Family Reunion (1939); and the prose works The Idea of a Christian Society (1940) and Notes Toward a Definition of Culture (1948).
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Wagner, (Wilhelm) Richard (1813-83), German composer and musical theorist, one of the most influential figures of 19th-century Europe.
Born May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Wagner studied at the University of Leipzig. Between 1833 and 1839 he worked at provincial opera houses in Würzburg, Magdeburg, Königsberg, and Riga. During these years he wrote the operas Die Feen (The Fairies, 1833) and Das Liebesverbot (The Forbidden Love, 1836) and several orchestral works. In 1836, while at Königsberg, Wagner married the actor Minna Planer. At Riga he completed the libretto and the first two acts of his first important opera, Rienzi.
In 1839 Wagner sailed to London. During the tempestuous voyage across the North Sea, he conceived the idea for his second major opera, Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman, completed in 1841). After eight days in London, he traveled to France, settling eventually in Paris, where he became acquainted with the music of Hector Berlioz. He remained in Paris until April 1842, at times reduced to the direst poverty. On October 20, 1842, Rienzi was produced at the Court Theater at Dresden, Germany. Its success led to the production of Der fliegende Holländer at Dresden on January 2, 1843. In the same month Wagner moved to Dresden, where he became one of the conductors at the Court Theater.
Innovative Art
Wagner's romantic opera Tannhäuser was produced at Dresden on October 19, 1845. This work, with innovations in structure and technique, perplexed audiences accustomed to the conventional opera of the day and elicited a storm of adverse criticism. Nevertheless, Tannhäuser was produced at Weimar, Germany, three years later by the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who afterward became an enthusiastic proponent of Wagnerian music drama (see below). The meeting of Liszt and Wagner in 1848 resulted in a lifelong friendship. In the same year the romantic opera Lohengrin was completed, but the management of the Court Theater at Dresden, apprehensive of public and critical reaction to another work by the composer of Tannhäuser, declined to produce it. Liszt once more came to the rescue and produced Lohengrin at Weimar on August 28, 1850.
A Political Radical
Wagner was an extreme radical in politics. He participated in the abortive Revolution of 1848 in Germany and, in consequence, was obliged to flee from his homeland, first to Paris, and then to Zürich. There he amplified the sketches, previously begun, for his famous tetralogy of music dramas, known collectively as Der Ring des Nibelungen, and based on the 12th-century Middle High German epic poem of the Nibelungenlied. The texts of the Nibelung dramas were written in reverse order. Finding that certain narrative episodes in Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods), the final work of the tetralogy, required elaboration and dramatic exposition to make the story altogether comprehensible, Wagner wrote the third part, Siegfried. Still not satisfied, however, he wrote Die Walküre and, as a further explanatory prelude, Das Rheingold. Wagner began work on the score of Das Rheingold in November 1853, completing it in May of the following year. By the end of December 1856, the score of Die Walküre was finished.
Meanwhile, in 1852, Wagner had made the acquaintance of the wealthy merchant Otto Wesendonck and his wife Mathilde. The former placed at the disposal of Wagner and Minna a small cottage, the Asyl (German, "Asylum"), on the Wesendonck estate near Zürich; this situation furnished the composer with the inspiration for some of his finest music. Close association between Wagner and Mathilde soon developed into love, which they were forced to renounce. Their romance eventually found expression, however, in Wagner's passionate score of Tristan und Isolde (1857-59), which is one of the longest and the most difficult to produce of all the Wagnerian music dramas. Its first performance was on June 10, 1865, at Munich, under the auspices of Louis II, king of Bavaria, who had become Wagner's patron. From this period also are the Wesendonck Lieder, settings for voice and orchestra or piano (1857-58) of five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck.
In 1861 the political ban against Wagner was lifted. Upon his return to Prussia the composer settled in Biebrich, where he began work on his only comic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, completed in 1867. The work was produced on June 21, 1868, at Munich, where in 1869 and 1870 Das Rheingold and Die Walküre also were given by command of the king.
Immediately after the production of Die Meistersinger Wagner resumed work on the score of Siegfried, completing it in February 1871. At the same time he began the composition of Götterdämmerung. Meanwhile, on August 25, 1870, the composer, who had been separated from his first wife for nine years, married Cosima von Bülow, the divorced wife of the pianist and conductor Hans Guido von Bülow and the daughter of Liszt. Wagner's orchestral work Siegfried Idyll (1870) was written for Cosima. In the summer of 1872, Wagner composed the last part of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and by November 1874, orchestration of Götterdämmerung had been completed. On August 13-17, 1876, the premiere performance of the whole tetralogy took place at the Festspielhaus, a theater in Bayreuth designed and constructed especially for the presentation of Wagnerian music dramas. In 1877 Wagner began work on Parsifal, based on legends of the Holy Grail. The last of the Wagnerian music dramas, Parsifal was produced for the first time on July 26, 1882.
In 1882 the composer's health began to fail. Thinking he might benefit from a change of climate, Wagner rented the Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal in Venice; he died there suddenly on February 13 of the following year. Five days later his body was interred in the mausoleum of his Bayreuth villa.
Theoretical Works
Wagner highly influenced late 19th-century thought, not only in the arts, but also in political issues such as nationalism and social idealism. In Oper und Drama (1850-51) he set forth his vision of a revolutionary kind of stage work, integrating dramatic, visual, and musical elements into a wholly unified work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk. His other theoretical writings include Über deutsches Musikwesen (On German Music, 1840), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Art Work of the Future, 1849), Religion und Kunst (Religion and Art, 1880), Über das Dirigieren (On Conducting, 1869), Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama (On the Application of Music to the Drama, 1879), and Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to My Friends, 1851). Wagner also wrote an autobiography, My Life (1865-80; trans. 1911).
Criticism
Wagner's reputation is based on his musical creations, which represent the highest expression of romanticism in European music, and also on the revolution he effected in both the theory and practice of operatic composition. He began his career as a composer of opera in the conventional manner, but by the time he started work on Der Ring des Nibelungen he was creating an entirely new musico-dramatic form. The true line of development of the Wagnerian music drama is from Greek drama (on which Wagner deliberately modeled his texts) through the dramas of Shakespeare and the German poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. On the purely musical side, because of its architectural structures, its lineal evolution is from Johann Sebastian Bach through Ludwig van Beethoven. In his treatment of harmony, Wagner pushed the traditional system of tonality to its limits, breaking down the conventions that gave keys and chord relationships their identity, and leading inevitably to 20th-century atonality.
Pre-Wagnerian opera had become little more than a succession of stereotyped arias, recitatives, duets, interludes, and finales. A fundamental principle of the music drama is the subservience of all the arts involved, including music, to the dramatic needs of the story. By means of the leitmotiv, or leading motive, a continuous thematic development is achieved. The complex evolutions of each leitmotiv and its intertwinings with others underline the emotional meaning of the drama. The increased dramatic unity of post-Wagnerian opera was one consequence of the tremendous influence of his art on every form of music.
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Tristan, a valiant Cornish knight, is bringing Isolde, princess of Ireland, over as a bride for his uncle, King Mark. He is himself in love with her, but owing to a blood feud between them, forces himself to conceal his passion. Isolde, in anger at his seeming unkindness, attempts to poison herself and him, but her attendant, Brangena, changes the draft for a love potion, which enflames their passion beyond power of restraint.
Act II
Isolde has been wedded to King Mark, but holds stolen interviews with Tristan, during one of which they are surprised, for Tristan has been betrayed by a jealous friend, Melot. Touched by King Mark's bitter reproaches, Tristan provokes Melot to fight and suffers himself to be mortally wounded.
Act III
Tristan's faithful servant, Kurvenal, has carried his wounded master to his native home in Brittany, where he is carefully tended. Isolde has also been sent for, as being skilled above all others in the healing art. The excitement of her approach only hastens Tristan's death, and he breathes his last sigh in her arms. Mark has followed Isolde: he has had matters explained, and is prepared to reunite the lovers, but it is too late. Isolde utters her lament over the body of her lover, and her heart breaks: in death alone are they united.
Wagner, Richard. The Authentic Librettos of the Wagner Operas. New York: Crown Publisher, 1938.
[A pavilion erected on the deck of a ship, richly hung with tapestry, quite closed in at back at first. A narrow hatchway at one side leads below into the cabin]
Scene I
[Isolde on a couch, her face buried in the cushions. Brangena holding open a curtain, looks over the side of the vessel. The voice of a young sailor (from above as if at the mast-head)}
Tristan: westward surges slip, East-ward speeds the ship. The wind so wild blows home-ward now; my I-rish child, where waitest thou? Say, must our sails be weighted, Fill'd by thy sighs un-bat-ed? Waft us, wind strong and wild! Woe, ah, woe for my child!. . . O I-rish maid!. . . my win-some mar-vel-lous maid!
Wagner, Richard. The Authentic Librettos of the Wagner Operas. New York: Crown Publishers, 1938.
1670: Andrew Eliot, T. S. Eliot's ancestor, emigrated from East Coker, Somerset, to settle in Massachusetts.
1834: Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot (Unitarian), T. S. Eliot's grandfather, settled in St. Louis, Missouri.
1888: Thomas Stearns Eliot born September 26, in St. Louis. Youngest of seven children born to Henry Ware Eliot and Charlotte Eliot.
1906-10: Undergraduate at Harvard. Discovered the Symbolists and Laforgue. An editor of the Harvard Advocate, a literary magazine.
1910-12: Studied in Paris at the Sorbonne. Visited Germany. Wrote "Preludes," "Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," and "La Figlia che Piange."
1911-14: Graduate student in philosophy at Harvard. Began dissertation on the philosophy of F. H. Bradley.
1914: Study at the University of Marburg, Germany, cut off by war. Residence at Merton College, Oxford. Met Ezra Pound.
1915-16: "Prufrock" published in Poetry, in Chicago, and in Blast, in England, 1915. Teaching and reviewing in London. Completed Bradley thesis. Married to Vivien Haigh-Wood,
1917-19: Employee of Lloyd's Bank. Assistant Editor of The Egoist. Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917. "Tradition and the Individual Talent," 1919.
1920: Poems and The Sacred Wood. Began The Waste Land.
1922: Became editor of The Criterion, a position he held until it folded in 1939. Dial Award for The Waste Land.
1924: "Four Elizabethan Dramatists."
1925: "The Hollow Men" and Poems, 1909-25. Joined Faber & Bwyer, later Faber & Faber, publishers.
1926: Two "Fragments" (of Sweeney Agonistes).
1927-31: Became a member of the Church of England and a British citizen, 1927. Ariel Poems, 1927-31. For Lancelot Andrewes, 1928. "Ash-Wednesday," 1930. Coriolan, 1931. Thoughts after Lambeth, 1931.
1932-33: First visit to America since 1914. Delivered Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard (published as The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 1933), and the Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia (published as After Strange Gods-A primer of Modern Heresy, 1934). Selected Essays. Break-up of first marriage.
1934: The Rock.
1935-36: Murder in the Cathedral. Collected Poems, 1909-35, including "Burnt Norton," 1936.
1939: Delivered the Cambridge Lectures, published as The Idea of a Christian Society. The Family Reunion.
1940-44: Four Quartets, 1943. Part time fire-watcher, 1940-41. "What Is a Classic?," 1944.
1946: Lectured in Washington. Visited Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths Hospital. Moved into apartment in London he was to share with John Hayward until 1957.
1947: Honorary degree from Harvard. Death of first wife, after long illness.
1948: Awarded the Order of Merit and the Novel Prize for Literature. Notes Towards a Definition of Culture.
1950: The Cocktail Party.
1951: Suffered a mild heart attack. In poor health thereafter.
1954-55: Awarded the Hanseatic Goethe Prize, 1954. The Confidential Clerk.
1956: Lectured in Minneapolis on "The Frontiers of Criticism."
1957: On poetry and Poets. Married Valerie Fletcher, his personal secretary.
1959: The Elder Statesman.
1961: Lectured at Leeds, published as "To Criticize the Critic."
1962-63: Seriously ill in London. Visited New York with Valerie Eliot, 1963.
1965: Died in London, January 4.
Bloom, Harold ed. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
An allusion to the opening lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The Droughte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendered is the flour.
Kenner, Hugh. "The Death of Europe." T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986,
To Commentary on Allusion to Chaucer
April is cruel to the dead or to those who are like the dead, for April is the month of rebirth and regeneration. In other words, this is the time or month in which vegetation rituals were performed. In addition, Easter falls in April which evokes the time of passion and redemption of Christ. These aspects have a cruel and a regenerating aspect.
Knust, Herbert. Wagner, the King, and The Waste Land. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967.
From Act III, Scene I of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. This line is sung by the watchman who scans the sea for the approach of Isolde's ship who has been sent for to heal the dying Tristan. "Oed' und leer das Meer" can be translated as "Wide and empty the sea."
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
To Commentary on Wagner in The Waste Land
A Castle-Garden
[At one side high castellated buildings, on the other a low breastwork interrupted by a watch tower; at back the castle-gate. The situation is supposed to be on rocky cliffs; through openings the view extends over a wide sea horizon. The whole gives an impression of being deserted by the owner, badly kept, an here and there dilapidated and overgrown.]
Scene I
[In the foreground, in the garden, lies Tristan sleeping on a couch under the shade of a great lime-tree, stretched out as if lifeless. At his head sit Kurvenal, bending over him in grief and anxiously listening to his breathing. From without comes the mournful sound of a shepherd's pipe.
Shepherd: Kurvenal, ho!-
Say, Kurvenal,-
tell me, friend!
Does he still sleep?
Kurvenal (turning a little towards him and shaking his head sadly):
If he awoke
it would be but for even more to leave us,
unless we find
the lady-leech;
alone can she give help.-
See'st thou nought?
No ship yet on the sea?
Shepherd: Quite another ditty
then would I play
as merry as ever I may.
But tell me truly,
trust friend, why languishes our lord?
Kurvenal: Do not ask me;-
for I can give no answer.
Watch the sea,
if sails come in sight
a sprightly melody play.
Shepherd (turns round and scans the horizon, shading his eyes with his hand): Blank appears the sea!
Wagner, Richard. The Authentic Librettos of the Wagner Operas. New York: Crown Publishers, 1938.
Brooks, Kenneth. "The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth." Ed. Jay Martin. A Collection of Critical Essays on The Waste Land." Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1968.
In line 30, Eliot is assuming everything is dead and turned to dust. This line refers to Ecclesiastes 12 where dust will be the earth and "the spirit shall return unto God." In The Waste Land, the dust exists on the dead earth, but instead of the spirits joining God, they linger with the dead. The "fear" Eliot speaks of is that God has abandoned life. Eliot is saying we have not and will not be saved at the end of life.
Reference to Ecclesiastes 12: "Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them."
Brooks, Kenneth. "The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth." Ed. Jay Martin. A Collection of Critical Essays on The Waste Land." Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1968.
When Eliot makes a reference to a childhood past there is a sense of comfort in The Waste Land. The reference to Ecclesiastes 12 shows that Eliot is turning to God to "Remember now thy creator." But the biblical reference also refers to the present time of The Waste Land when "the evil days come." Eliot "has no pleasure in them." The past gives comfort but the existing present does not.
Reference to Isaiah 32:2: "A man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
Gardener, Helen. Studies in The Waste Land. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1971.
Line 26 is a message of hopefulness. The reference is to Isaiah 32:2 where it was prophesied that the Messiah would come through a "shadow of a great rock." Eliot is suggesting that comfort might be found in the shadow. But ironically, where a positive answer should be found, there is only dust. Thus alienation takes the place of comfort.
"One may also see this line to the be the command of Tiresias to come in under the shadow of this red rock. In addition, the line may be seen as a command which converts desert into garden and garden into desert. The protagonist, or the "he" or "you" wandering in the waste land, will obey before the poem is over. What does the command mean? It means for the protagonist to cease to think of his life 'as an isolated ruin' and to begin to see it as part of a 'huge disaster'--to see it as involved in the doom on the world."
Thompson, Eric. T. S. Eliot: The Metaphysical Perspective. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963.
"The Protagonist, we might say, sees a new meaning in The Waste Land; it becomes the desert between Egypt and the Promised Land. That land becomes an emblem of the reality of things hoped for. . . "
Thompson, Eric. T. S. Eliot: The Metaphysical Perspective. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963.
The origin of the roots are found in the hyacinth garden of line 37. The roots represent fear.
Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T. S. Eliot. London: Thames and Hudson, 1955.
Eliot describes the desperate attempt of life in "the roots that clutch.' Whatever life exists is struggling to sustain itself. The roots are a reference to the hyacinth garden of line 37. At first, the hyacinth garden is presented as a positive element but it becomes a place where total alienation occurs.
Reference to Ezekiel 2: "And he said unto me, Son of Man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak unto thee."
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
The biblical reference is juxtaposed to Eliot's actual text. In line 20, Eliot refers to "Son of Man" from Ezekiel 2. In Ezekiel 2, a revelation is about to be given. Eliot's revelation is of "A heap of broken images." This deepens the alienation in The Waste Land where nothing can exist.
Providing Hope in a Land of Indifference
by Teri Thompson
The Waste Land, a poem by T. S. Eliot, first appears as the opening number for The Criterion in October of 1922 (Leavis 98). Shortly after, readers as well as critics of The Waste Land began to search for the meaning or significance among the collage of fragmented bits and pieces. And during this search, many have focused upon the various types of allusions used by Eliot to not only paint a portrait of culture, past and present, but also evoke particular emotions via certain cultural images. Among the numerous ingredients present within The Waste Land, musical allusions to Richard Wagner's famed Tristan and Isolde offer a positive counteragent of romantic, absolute love to other fragments of the poem, namely the allusion to Countess Marie Larisch and the passage involving the hyacinth girl.
Although abounding in its uncertainties, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land clearly contains a wealth of diverse fragmented allusions. Likening the makeup of Eliot's poem to the makeup of a city, Hugh Kenner states, "Cities are built out of ruins of previous cities, as The Waste Land is built out of the remains of older poems" (160). As T. S. Eliot's controversial poem centers on his use of allusions, many critics have found his methods to be lacking. Although not the only critic who has negatively commented upon Eliot's poem, F. L. Lucas professes in the New Statesman that his "parodies are cheap and imitations inferior" (Maxwell 99). More than likely in response to such degrading criticism, Eliot defends a poet's use of literary allusions:
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from which it was torn. (Bush 58)
In actuality, however, what purpose do the allusions serve? In response to this, many have found his allusions to be nuggets of the cultural reality which ultimately build a symbolic structure commenting upon reality as a whole (Waldron 206). By alluding to images of the past and present, Eliot is showing how the contemporary scene can be defined by voices from other times and places (Knust 256). Eliot comments upon the importance of utilizing historical elements from the past as he defines "historical sense" in "Tradition and the Individual Talent":
a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence: the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and comprises a simultaneous order. (Traversi 20)
Some have even ventured so far to believe that Eliot's allusions carry out Matthew Arnold's injunction to know and propagate "the best that has been known and thought in the world" (Schneider 63). But whether or not Eliot is presenting the best of the turning world, he is presenting an awareness of what is left to the modern reader.
On a more abstract level, Eliot's allusions serve as tools which arouse emotions. Elaborating upon the way in which one should arouse a particular emotion, Eliot speaks of the "objective correlative":
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative,' in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given the emotion is immediately evoked. (Traversi 16)
As for where Eliot finds such "objective correlatives," many have asserted that they stem from his own personal feelings and thoughts. Thus, the "objective correlatives" are actually constructions based on the forms of his own perception (Traversi 14). After analyzing his experiences and objectives, he then magnifies such images into a larger vision of the world as can be seen in The Waste Land.
Focusing upon a specific "objective correlative" which indeed stems from the personal experience of Eliot, his allusions to Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde are incorporated into The Waste Land in order to heighten the reader's sense of emotional awareness (Brady 31). In general, Wagner's operas are great epics dealing with such themes as hope versus hopelessness, victory versus defeat, pity versus courage, and absolute love versus death (Wagner 307). As his grandly scaled operas serve as a high point for Nineteenth Century taste, Wagner's dangerous yet soul-stirring music is spoken of by one of the characters in "Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry": "I have also heard you railing at Wagner as 'pernicious.' But you would not willingly resign your experience of Wagner either" (Blisset 72). In fact, one of Eliot's companions recalls the impact which Tristan and Isolde had on Eliot:
We managed to talk that afternoon, nevertheless, and though I hardly recall the topic, I remember that Wagner was one; Eliot's Wagner nostalgia was apparent and I think that Tristan must have been one of the most passionate experiences in his life. (Waldron 423).
Seeing as Wagner's Tristan and Isolde must have been a profound experience in Eliot's life, one can understand Eliot's desire to use Wagner's opera as an "objective correlative" within The Waste Land in order to arouse particular emotions which also had been aroused within himself.
Before looking at how Wagner's Tristan and Isolde interacts with T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, one should become familiarized with the opera's plot which focuses on the passionate love between Tristan and Isolde. Within Act I of Tristan and Isolde, Tristan, a valiant Cornish knight, is bringing Isolde, princess of Ireland, over as a bride for his uncle, King Mark. Not willing to cause a feud with his uncle, he forces himself to conceal his love for Isolde. Mistaking Tristan's attempt to conceal his love for her as unkindness, Isolde attempts to poison both herself and Tristan. But her faithful attendant, Brangena, switches the poison for a love potion. In Act II, Isolde secretly meets with Tristan while still on the boat although she is betrothed to his uncle, King Mark. But due to the betrayal of Tristan's jealous friend, Melot, Tristan and Isolde's love for one another is found out by King Mark. Angered by his friend's treacherous behavior, Tristan begins to battle with Melot and Tristan suffers a mortal wound from Melot. In the final act, Act III, Kurvenal, Tristan's servant, has carried Tristan to his home in Brittany where his wound is treated. Being skilled above all others in the art of healing, Isolde has been sent for. Isolde at last reaches Tristan who is awaiting her arrival upon the cliffs which overlook the sea but finds him to be in the grips of death as she wraps her arms around her lover as he takes his last breath. And although it's too late, King Mark has followed Isolde and has intended to reunite the lovers after learning of their situation. Upon Isolde seeing Tristan die in her arms, her heart breaks. And although the lovers' union upon earth ceases, they are joined forever in the afterlife as death has transcended them unto a higher level (Wagner 309). Although many may interpret their deaths as tragic, optimism can be found in their deaths as their passion surpasses earthly boundaries and gains immortality.
Eliot's first musical allusion to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde can be found within "The Burial of the Dead":
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du? (31-34)
These lines can be translated as "Fresh blows the wind homeward; my Irish child, where are you waiting?" and serve as the opening lines of Act I in which Isolde is sitting on a couch with her face buried in the cushions due to her frustration at Tristan's seemingly standoffish behavior which in actuality stems from Tristan's attempt to conceal his love for Isolde. Her attendant, holding the curtain of the ship open, looks over the side of the vessel. The voice of a young sailor, Tristan, is then heard singing a tune describing a sailor who longs for his love who is far away:
Westward surges slip, Eastward speeds the ship. The wind so wild blows homeward now; my Irish child, where waitest thou? Say, must our sails be weighted, Fill'd by thy sighs un'bated? Waft us, wind strong and wild! Woe, ah, woe for my child! O Irish maid! My win-some, marvelous maid! (Wagner 310)
Likening this song to Tristan's own situation, both illustrate the intense passion and desire which a lover experiences as he yearns for another. And whether circumstances such as Isolde's betrothal to King Mark or the sea separate the man from expressing his passion for his lover, the optimistic potentiality for fulfillment in the future exists for both Tristan as well as the sailor mentioned in Tristan's song shedding hope onto both scenarios.
As for the second musical allusion to Wagner's opera, Eliot cites "Oed' und leer das Meer" which can be translated as "Wide and empty the sea." This line, taken from Act III of Tristan and Isolde, is sung by the watchman, sometimes called the shepherd, who looks across the empty sea in response to the dying Tristan who is awaiting the ship bringing Isolde (Waldron 429). Although it might seem that the second allusion signals despair rather than hope as the two impassioned lovers, Tristan and Isolde, are separated by the wide and empty sea, it is instead reinforcing the theme of romantic, idyllic love which ultimately triumphs in the afterlife as the two lovers reunite despite their separation in the earthly arena. In other words, the sea at first serves as the earthly obstacle which inhibits the reunion of the lovers but eventually serves as the tool which enables Isolde's ship to reach Tristan who awaits her on the shore for a heavenly reunion which surpasses an earthly reunion.
Concerning the water imagery, vital to Eliot's The Waste Land, it further reinforces the theme of romantic, absolute love which is experienced by the lovers Tristan and Isolde. Within the first allusion, the sea serves as the background for Tristan's song of passion and longing providing hope for a possible union between Tristan and his love, Isolde. Within the second Wagnerian allusion, the sea seems at first to act as a boundary separating the lovers during their earthly life, but more importantly the sea serves on a higher level as it aids in Isolde's journey upon her ship to Tristan's home in Brittany which becomes the reunion site of the lovers as they die in one another's arms, forever bound in death.
Amongst the fragments within The Waste Land which hint at the indifferent nature of modern culture, the Wagnerian allusions seem to act as optimistic counteragents. Specifically within "The Burial of the Dead," there seems to be such a connection between the lines taken from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and Eliot's allusions to Countess Marie Larisch's My Past and probably most importantly Ovid's Metamorphoses from which he takes the episode involving the hyacinth girl.
But before looking at how the Wagnerian allusions serve as optimistic counteragents against the fragments of indifferent modernity within "The Burial of the Dead," it's necessary to notice Eliot's biblical references which serve a similar purpose:
Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock, (20-25)
The line which states, "And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief" refers to Ecclesiastes XII in which the preacher points to old age when "the grasshopper shall be a burden and desire shall fail." The other line, "Only/ There is a shadow under this red rock," refers to Isaiah 32:1-2 in which Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah returns it "shall be. . . as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Clearly one can see that both biblical references conjure up negative images in relation to old age and the time before Christ returns to save mankind. And just as the Wagnerian allusions serve as positive counteragents to the indifference which dominates modern culture, the returning of the Messiah acts as a positive counteragent to the desolate and dry earth which characterizes the present state of modern society. As for the first biblical reference which speaks of old age when desire shall fail, both the romantic story between Tristan and Isolde which exemplifies the power of love to remain passionate even in death and the coming of the Messiah which shall rejuvenate passion as all are made youthful in eternal life offer positive counteragents to the failed desire of old age. Concerning the second biblical reference in which Isaiah professes that the land will be "dry" and without water before the return of the Messiah, the Wagnerian allusion offers the revitalizing water of the sea which acts as the background for the passionate love affair between Tristan and Isolde and the coming of the Messiah puts an end to "weary" life and instead offers eternal life to humankind.
As for the specific role of the Wagnerian allusions in relation to the "The Burial of the Dead," they first interact with lines 8-16 which echo passages from Countess Marie Larisch's My Past.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
Just as the first Wagnerian allusion concerning the sailor's song moves from the water scenery of the sea into the intimate garden scene involving the hyacinth girl, so too Eliot's allusion to Countess Marie Larisch's My Past moves from the water scenery of the Starnbergersee, a lake near Munich, into the intimate scene between Marie and another man as he tells her to "hold on tight" as they take a sled ride. But although they share similar organizational strategies, there seems to be a striking dissimilarity between the allusion to Countess Marie Larisch and the Wagnerian allusions. In particular, the Wagnerian allusions symbolize passionate and idyllic love which fear nothing in relation to intimacy, including death, as Tristan and Isolde's love for one another passes on into the afterlife, whereas the relationship between Countess Marie Larisch and her cousin is not idyllic as she feels fear when becoming intimate with her cousin. In response to such negative aspects such as the fear of intimacy which are common to life in the modern era, the Wagnerian allusions present the passionate and intimate love experienced between Tristan and Isolde.
Acting as a frame for the hyacinth girl's episode within the garden, Eliot's allusions to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde carry out their most profound purpose as they ultimately redeem the paralyzed and indifferent love illustrated within the hyacinth passage by portraying the perfect, absolute love of Tristan and Isolde (Moody 80).
But before looking at the relationship between the two passages, it is important to note the significance of the hyacinth episode in itself. Between the two Wagnerian allusions, Eliot has inserted an episode involving two seemingly indifferent lovers:
You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.
-Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence. (35-41).
This Intense moment, one in which love is remembered, contains both potential for their relationship as well as frustrated desire (Traversi 27). The theme of love which is obviously raised in the hyacinth passage can lead to two possible conclusions: life and fulfillment or death and disappointment. If the conclusion is life and fulfillment, then the emotional self becomes validated. On the other hand, if the conclusion is death and disappointment, then love is illusory, there is a distinct separation between potential and actual love, and one is trapped forever in an emotional waste land (Bush 65).
Acting as a victim of love, the hyacinth girl speaks with urgent hurt in a child-like voice to her lover. The man to whom she is speaking, however, is unable to communicate to her in return and speaks to himself only. Certain uncertainties which add to the overall tone of indifference which abounds in The Waste Land are raised by the male speaker's comments. Does his inability to speak connote transcendence to a higher level which is above the humanly art of speech or does is connote his failure to fulfill the moment? Does his inability to see suggest that he is able to see a glory beyond his vision or does it suggest that vision has blocked him from seeing the vision which he sought? Does his inability to know anything mean that worldly knowledge has fallen away or does it mean that he is unable to know anything of the ultimate truth? In order to answer such questions which stem from frustration due to the seeming indifference between the lovers and ultimately within Eliot's The Waste Land, one might turn to the answers presented in the Wagnerian allusions which frame the hyacinth episode.
After exploring the significance of the hyacinth girl passage in itself, it's necessary to seek out its relationship to the Tristan and Isolde allusions. First looking at the similarities, the sailor suggests a lost love remembered as he sings his tune, whereas the hyacinth girl also remembers the luminous moment when love renamed her and she became part of the spring: "They called me the hyacinth girl" (Bush 64). Furthermore, just as Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is framed on one side by Tristan's song which is the first lines in Act I and on the other side by the watchman who declares that the sea is wide and empty as the ship carrying Isolde to Tristan is not in sight which is found in the last Act, Act III, the hyacinth episode is also framed on one side by Tristan's song and on the other by the watchman who declares that the sea is wide and empty. But even though there are apparent similarities between the Wagnerian allusions and the hyacinth girl episode, the dissimilarities are more important in that the love portrayed in the hyacinth episode is unemotional and unresponsive as both lovers are paralyzed to engage in the passion for which they long as the male lover is "neither/ Living nor dead," whereas the love portrayed in the Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is highly passionate thus serving as a counteracting force of romantic, idyllic love in opposition to the indifferent love illustrated in the hyacinth passage.
Providing hope in a land where hope seems to be void, the Wagnerian allusions serve as counteragents of romantic, absolute love against such negative images presented in other segments of the poem, particularly the allusion to Countess Marie Larisch and the passage involving the hyacinth girl. Perhaps, as it has been suggested earlier that Eliot created The Waste Land by magnifying his own personal vision of the world, he himself might have viewed the overwhelming passion which accompanies Tristan and Isolde's idyllic love as the ultimate remedy to the indifferent state of modernity illustrated in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
Works Cited
Blisset, William. "Wagner in The Waste Land." The Practical Vision: Essays in English Literature in Honor of Flora Roy. Ed. Jane Campbell and James Doyle. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1978.
Brady, Ann P. Lyricism in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1978.
Bush, Ronald. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994.
Kenner, Hugh. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. New York: McDowell, Obolensky Inc., 1959.
Knust, Herbert. Wagner, the King, and The Waste Land. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967.
Leavis, F. R. "The Waste Land." T. S. Eliot: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Hugh Kenner. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962.
Maxwell, D. E. S. The Poetry of T. S. Eliot. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1952.
Moody, A. David. Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Schneider, Elisabeth. T. S. Eliot: The Pattern in the Carpet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Traversi, Derek. T. S. Eliot: The Longer Poems. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1976.
Wagner, Richard. The Authentic Librettos of the Wagner Operas. New York: Crown Publishers, 1938.
Waldron, Philip. "The Music of Poetry: Wagner in The Waste Land." Journal of Modern Literature 18, no. 4 (1994): 421-434.
"Eliot's literal desert is Ezekiel's and only symbolically his own, his rose grew rather in tradition than on a bush; and others of his images are universalized and probably not always anchored in experience. For many people (and I presume, for poets) nature may be something the eye takes in while the mind is elsewhere."
Schneider, Elezabeth W. T. S. Eliot: The Pattern in the Carpet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
The end of Tristan's song, or the sailor's song, is followed by the willowy and fragile romantic moment of failed hope in the hyacinth garden.
Schneider, Elezabeth W. T. S. Eliot: The Pattern in the Carpet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
This line is from Isaiah 32:1-2 and prophesies that when the Messiah comes it "shall be. . .as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Lexington: D. C. Heath & Company, 1994
Here I think Eliot is talking about life or our life as a human being possessing a shadow. Tiresias or that authoritative voice is saying that he'll show the "protagonist" something different--death, or the opposite of life with a shadow.