The Wasteland

 

The wasteland

The wasteland is written by T.S.Eliot. This is considered Eliot's best work.

Writer Introduction

Thomas Stearn Eliot

(26 September 1888- 4 January 1965 )

 T.S. Eliot was an American-English poet, Essayist, Publisher, playwright, literary critic, and editor. He is best known as a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry and as the author of such works as The Waste Land and Four Quartets.

Major works of Eliot 

The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock(1915)

The wasteland (1922)

Four Quarters (1943)

Murder in the Cathedral(1935)

Among all these works by Eliot let us discuss The Wasteland. 

The Wasteland is published in 1922 and is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and the central work of Modernist poetry.

What is The Wasteland? 

1: barren or uncultivated land a desert wasteland. 

2: an ugly often devastated or barely inhabitable place or area.

3:something that is spiritually and emotionally arid and unsatisfying.

The originality of The Waste Land, and its importance for most poetry in English since 1922, lies in Eliot's ability to meld a deep awareness of literary tradition with the experimentalism of free verse, to fuse private and public meanings, and to combine moments of lyric intensity into a poem of epic scope.

The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations, in which vignettes of several characters address those themes experientially. "The Fire Sermon", the third section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition influenced by Augustine of Hippo and eastern religions. After a fourth section, "Death by Water", which includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", concludes with an image of judgment.

What is the Significance of Tiresias in The Wasteland? 

Tiresias is both of the past and present, and so a suitable connecting link between the wastelands of Oedipus and King Fisher, as well as between the past and present. Tiresias is a blind prophet who appears in Greek literature, including the works of Homer and Sophocles. In The Waste Land, his world-weary, cynical voice connects the sordid present with the distant past.

Symbols of The Wasteland 

water 

Birth 

Death

Resurrection

I find that The poem is based on the major theme of " Sexual Perversion and spiritual degradation." Eliot's wasteland resembles myths to show how in modern wasteland even this kind of sin is committed by the people, and how people have lost faith in spirituality.

1) What are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land'? Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzsche's views? or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mytho-historical answers to the contemporary malaise?

Friedrich Nietzsche is progressive and forward-looking whereas T. S. Eliot seems regressive because both have totally different sights and beliefs. Friedrich has the idea of 'Superman' who believes in faith and Self only. Superman has a quality that he only believes in this life rather than after the death of life. This means he has no belief in any mysticism. Superhuman is the creator of their own life and values. He has his own motifs and willpower. He thinks that the self is more important than anything else and there is nothing beyond the self.