The Waste Land

 

Epigraph

•       Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.

•       [I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her “What do you want?” She answered, “I want to die.”]

•       —Petronius, Satyricon

Myths and Historical Comments

•       Cumaean Sibyl was the most famous of the Sibyls, the prophetic old women of Greek mythology; she guided Aeneas through Hades in the Aeneid. She had been granted immortality by Apollo, but because she forgot to ask for perpetual youth, she shrank into withered old age and her authority declined.]

Burial of the Dead

 

 

 

 

Epigraph, The Sybil of Cumae

•         Who is the narrator of the epigraph?

Encolpious, He quotes

Trimalchios boast

•         Who had become the shrunken insect?

Trimalchios, Cumaean Sibyl

•         What did she delivered from the cave?

Aenied (The gate keeper of the hell) and Oracles.

•         Trimalchios or Old woman Sybil is hanged upside down and can’t see the reality.

•         She symbolizes death in life.

Beginning of the Poem

•       begins with an excerpt from Petronius

Arbiter’s Satyricon, in Latin and Greek, which translates as: “For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered, ‘I want to die.’”

Explanation

•        Eliot’s opening quotation sets the tone for the poem as a whole. Sibyl is a mythological figure who asked Apollo “for as many years of life as there are grains in a handful of sand” (North, 3). Unfortunately, she did not think to ask for everlasting youth. As a result, she is doomed to decay for years and years, and preserves herself within a jar. Having asked for something akin to eternal life, she finds that what she most wants is death. Death alone offers escape; death alone promises the end, and therefore a new beginning.

•        Thus does Eliot begin his magisterial poem, labeling his first section “The Burial of the Dead,” a title pulled from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Burrial of the Dead

•         Text of the Poem

•         FOR EZRA POUND

IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

Ø       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.

Ø  Regeneration   , Forgetfulness

Ø  Memory,             Spiritual Death

Ø  Memory and desire give pain,     Life in Death

Explanation

•       Ezra Pound was a leading figure in modernist poetry and Eliot’s good friend. He often helped Eliot in editing his poems, including “The Waste Land.”

•       Translated from vernacular Italian, the phrase Il miglior fabbro means “the greater

craftsman” and expresses Eliot’s humility and recognition of Pound’s artistry as a poet.

April, Kept us Warm, Memory and

Desire, Forgetful Snow

•         The poem begins with an unidentified speaker contrasting spring and winter. The contrast is ironic—a paradox: the speaker describes April, the month associated with the return of spring, warmth, and the renewal of life, as causing the greatest pain, whereas winter snow’s covering the earth “kept us warm” is a phrase that suggests comfort and security. April is cruel, according to the speaker, because it evokes “memory and desire”; the “forgetful snow” of winter does not. The idea that remembering the past and feeling desire are now painful experiences to be avoided foreshadows a major theme in the poem: that World War I and the post-war era, the setting of the poem, resulted in a deadening of the human spirit. The theme is also suggested by the title of this section of the poem, “The Burial of the Dead.”

Myth of Egyptian god of Fertility and

Death

•        Osiris murdered by his brother, disposed in water

•        Entangled in the tree roots in the Lebanese port of Babylose, Pillar of the Palace.

•        Married to his sister Isis, She buried him properly and hacked into 14 pieces, scattered all over Egypt, and her sister buried them wherever they found.

•        Introduces the fear of death, parallel between the life sequences of plants and man.

•        Suggests that death is required for new life, you die to your flesh and are born to your spirit.

•        Fallen garden is Waste Land, Original garden where there is no longer fear and desire only peace.

Text of the poem

•        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 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 he went. In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Marie

•       Spiritual Degradation

•       Sexual Desire

•       From World of Innocence to World of Experience

•       Nostalgia

Historical and Mythical Comment

•        The Starnbergersee, or Lake Starnberg, is a large body of water south of Munich in Germany. The speaker now recalls life in Germany before the war and begins to describe a pleasant summer afternoon.

•        The Hofgarten, German for “court garden,” is a popular and historic public garden located in Munich. It is noted for the colonnade in the garden. (A colonnade is a row of columns holding up a roof that are separated from each other by an equal distance.) Whiling away the time in conversation on a sunny summer day in Germany must be a painful memory for the speaker after the destruction of the war and perhaps explains her description of spring at the beginning of the poem.

Historical and Mythical Comments

•        Translated from German, the sentence reads “I’m

not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, a true German.” It is unclear who is speaking at this point, because speakers change throughout the poem, often with no notice. The statement could be part of a conversation overheard in the

Hofgarten. Eliot’s inclusion of foreign languages in

the poem often serves to capture the atmosphere of a particular setting. In this case, it emphasizes the geographical and political elements present in Europe before World War I.

Historical and Mythical Comment

•         The allusion to the arch-duke likely refers to Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolph, who was also an archduke and a first cousin to Marie, Countess Larisch, who appears to be identified here as the speaker. Eliot met Countess Larisch in Munich either in the summer of 1911 or possibly in 1914 before World War I began. This passage, as well as others in the text, seem to reflect conversations Eliot had had with various people in his life.

•         The passage marks the conclusion of Marie’s two happy memories

of life before the war and indicates her present emotional state.

Reading “much of the night” suggests isolation and withdrawal from human relationships, and choosing to “go south in the winter,” instead of going to the mountains where “you feel free,” suggests no longer feeling or seeking to feel joy or fulfillment. Marie’s

emotional state further develops the poem’s themes of disillusionment and the deadening of the human spirit in the post- war era.

Explanation

•        Summer came all of a sudden, crossing Lake Starnbergersee in the rain. We sat in the sunny park, drinking coffee and talking. "I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, a real German." When we were children, I stayed with my cousin the archduke, and he took me sledding, and I was scared. He said to me, "Marie, hold on tight," and down the hill we went. You feel a sense of freedom up there in the mountains. I read all night long, and I travel south when winter comes

Text

•         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.

Historical Comments

•       Reference to Bible, Spoken by Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes in Old Testament.

•       Description of Waste land symbolizes spiritual death and spiritual dryness.

•       Red rock means faith in God, only hope to bring spirituality is faith in God.

Text

•                        Frisch weht der Wind

Der-Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du?

•        “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.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Myth and Historical Commets

•        “Son of man” is a biblical allusion to Jesus Christ, who often referred to himself in the New Testament as the Son of Man, thus clarifying that he was human as well as divine. In context, “Son of man” can be interpreted as a new unidentified speaker’s alluding to human beings in general.

•        These German lines may be translated as follows:

“Fresh blows the Wind / towards home / My Irish Child

/ where are you now?” Eliot’s notes identify the passage as lines 5–8 of act 1 of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Tristan and Isolde’s enduring love for each other contrasts with the end of the

relationship between the “hyacinth girl” and her lover

Explanation

•        described in the following section of the poem. Translated as “empty and desolate is the sea,” the passage is an allusion to the scene in Tristan und Isolde when a dying Tristan waits for Isolde to return to him. Pairing the classic love story of Tristan and Isolde with a modern story of the “hyacinth girl,” whose lover is now incapable of feeling anything at all, supports the poem’s theme of spiritual death—the idea that even love cannot survive in the emotional sterility of modern post-war society.

Explanation

•         Can any roots or branches grow out of this stony, barren soil? As a human being, you cannot tell me, or even guess, because all you know are the broken symbols of modern life: a waste land where the sun is harsh and dead trees offer no shade, crickets no longer sing, and water does not run. But there is shade under this red rock (come stand in the shade under this red rock), and I will show you something other than your shadow cast behind you in the morning, or in front of you in the evening; I will show you how to fear the shadow of death. Fresh blows the wind to the homeland; my Irish child, where are you waiting? "You first expressed your love with a bouquet of hyacinths a year ago; people called me the hyacinth girl." And yet when we returned late from the garden, your arms full of flowers and your hair wet, I was speechless, I could hardly look at you, I felt empty, neither alive nor dead. I looked into your good heart and saw only silence. Desolate and empty is the sea.

Text

•       Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations.

Text

•        Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: One must be so careful these days.

Historical and Mythical Comments

•        The passage introduces the speaker in this section of the poem, Madame Sosostris, a clairvoyant(e) or psychic who supposedly can see the future. Madame Sosostris’s name is an allusion to a character in Aldous Huxley's

novel Crome Yellow, in which a man disguises

himself as an old woman and pretends to be a fortune teller. The fortunes he tells are dark and disturbing, and some of them are similar in

theme to themes in “The Waste Land.”

Associating Madame Sosostris with the charlatan

in Huxley’s novel implies that she, too, is a fraud

Historical and Mythical Comment

•       Madame Sosostris’s being known as “the wisest woman in Europe” suggests a major theme in “The Waste Land”: the dissolution of traditional philosophies and the absence of shared religious beliefs in post-World War I Europe has created a rudderless society. Her tarot cards are “wicked” because they lead people away from the truth in their search for some security and meaning in their empty lives.

Historical and Mythical Comment

•       T. S. Eliot's speaker seems to be illustrating the kinds of superstitions that would revive following the dissolution of traditional religion. In the absence of shared religious beliefs, mankind might revert to ancient beliefs in such things as fortune telling, astrology, numerology, palm reading, and spiritualism (communing with the

dead). Madame Sosostris represents a figure who offers these rituals.

Historical and Mythical Comment

•       This line is taken from a song sung by Ariel, a spirit, in act 1, scene 2 of Shakespeare’s The Tempest; through the song, she lies to Ferdinand, telling him that his father died in the shipwreck that Ferdinand survived. The inclusion of the line with its subtle allusion to Ariel’s lie implies once again that Madame Sosostris is a deceitful fraud.

Historical and Mythical Comment

•       A horoscope predicts someone’s future based on astrology, the study of the positions of celestial bodies and their influence on human affairs. Astrology and other pseudo-sciences, like numerology and palm reading, became increasingly popular in the 1920s, reflecting the diminishing influence of traditional religion, a continuing theme in the poem.

Symbols on Tarot Cards

•       The drowned Phoenician sailor: Hope for life and rebirth, purification by water.

•          Belladonna: Beautiful lady, the lady of rocks, Lady of situation, Renewal of life by holy grail, or a seductive woman.

•       The man with three staves: Three staves of DA, to give , to sympathize, to control, Signifies the fisher king, Search for spiritual truth and compassion for others.

Historical and Mythical Comments

•       The wheel: The wheel of fortune, of seasons, of ups and downs of life, the wheel turns round and round like the crowd of people walking in a ring, It is symbol of change.

•       One eyed merchant: Mr Eugenide from Syria who brings merchandise, myths and religion, Hope of change by compassion and religion, lost eye can be read as lost of religion

Historical comments and myths

•       The hanged man: Sacrifice of the Christ, Madame Sosostris says that she doesn’t find the hanged man. He indicates that there is no renewal for us, that the tradition and religion of the past have been lost.

Explanation

•         Madame Sosostris, the famous fortune-teller, has a bad cold like any ordinary person, but is somehow still known as the wisest woman in Europe with her evil deck of tarot cards. "Here is your card," she said, "The drowned Phoenician Sailor, with his dead eyes like pearls, look!" She carried on, "Here is Belladonna, the beautiful and poisonous lady, the Madonna of the Rocks, that complex

lady. Here is the man with three staffs, and here is the Wheel of

Fortune, and here is the merchant looking sideways at us, and this blank card represents the burdens the merchant carries, which I am not allowed to see. I cannot find The Hanged Man card. You should be afraid of death by water. I see crowds of people in your future, walking aimlessly in circles. Thank you, the reading is over. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, let her know I'll come by with her horoscope myself; you can never be too careful these days."

Text

•              Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Text

•        There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

“O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

“You! Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,— mon frère!”

Theme

•        Death in life

•        Aimless wandering

•        Painful routine

•        Soulless living of modern life.

•        Reference of great naval battle of 260 BC between Rome and Carthage.

•        Stetson represents humanity of all time.

•        Dog symbolizes spiritual awareness and conscience.

•        Keeping it away suggests that modern man doesn’t want to

live with spirituality and morality.

•        Last line suggests that for this spiritual degradation you, me and all are responsible.

Historical Comments and Myths

•        Beginning with Marie’s memories of Munich before World War I, the poem’s setting shifts to London after the war, evidenced by the following allusions to London Bridge, King William Street, and Saint Mary Woolnoth, a centuries-old Anglican church located on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street in the City of London. The change in setting emphasizes that the disastrous effects of the war are not confined to the European continent.

Historical Comments and Myths

•       This is a direct quotation from Canto III of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In The Inferno, Dante remarks "I had not thought death had undone so many" after entering the gates of Dis, the subterranean city of the dead. Thus, Eliot's allusion equates London to hell and the throngs of Londoners to the countless dead. The comparison is metaphorical, for the Londoners are not literally dead, but perhaps spiritually so.

Historical Comments and Myths

•        The auditory imagery in these lines comes

directly from Eliot’s experience; in his notes, he observes that that the sound is “a phenomenon which I have often noticed.” The church bell’s “final stroke of nine” can also be interpreted as a biblical allusion to the time of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, recounted in the Gospel of Mark 15:33. The allusion and the connotations of “dead” in describing the sound of the bell contribute to the sense of hopelessness and resignation in this section of the poem, as foreshadowed by its title.

Historical Comments and Myths

•        Mylae, an ancient Mediterranean port in northeast Sicily, was the site of a fierce naval battle in 260 BCE between Carthage, a city state, and the Roman Republic; the Roman forces won, conquering Carthage. Since the speaker and Stetson, his unidentified acquaintance, obviously didn’t fight in the ancient battle, the statement serves no literal purpose; instead, it perhaps suggests the idea that wars are as old as humankind and are a repeating cycle throughout history. In that regard, World War I—“the war to end all wars”—will have accomplished nothing except to precede the wars to come.

Historical Comments and Myths

•        The passage is an allusion to John Webster's poem "Funeral Dirge for Marcello," from his play The White Devil (1612), which describes the “friendless bodies of unburied men” being

interred in “shady groves” as they are “covered

with leaves and flowers.” In Webster’s poem, a wolf “that’s foe to men” must be kept away from the graves. In Eliot’s amended version, a dog “that’s friend to men” is equally destructive, perhaps implying that neither friends nor foes respect the dead, a claim illustrated by

humankind’s history of relentless warfare.

Historical Comments and Myths

•        This is an allusion to John Webster's poem "Funeral Dirge for Marcello." With its darkly comic meditation on death, Webster's poem matches the gloomy mood of Eliot's. The poem is as follows:

•        Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,

And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm; But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,

For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

Historical Comments and Myths

•       The final line in “The Burial of the Dead” alludes to the final line in Charles Baudelaire's poem, "To the Reader." Translated from the French, it means “Hypocrite reader,—my fellow,—my brother!” Baudelaire’s poem

develops themes that relate to those in “The Waste Land,” primarily the idea that withdrawing from life through inaction, boredom, fear, pessimism, or acceptance of defeat is worse than death itself.

Historical Comments and Myths

•        This is an allusion to Charles Baudelaire's 1857 poem "Au Lecteur." Eliot repurposes Baudelaire's shocking address to his "Hypocrite reader." Baudelaire's poem ends with the following stanza:

•        C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire, II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.

Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,

—     Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

•        One of many English translations of these lines is:

•        He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears, He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe. You know him reader, that refined monster,

—     Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother!

Explanation

•         In this unreal city, covered by the brown fog of winter mornings, a crowd of people streamed across the London Bridge. There were so many people; I did not realize just how many people were isolated, alienated, beyond reach. They sighed every now and then, and every man walked with his eyes cast down at his feet. They walked up the hill and down King William Street, to where the church bells at Saint Mary Woolnoth kept time, striking nine o'clock with a heavy sound. That's where I spotted someone I knew, and stopped him, calling out, "Stetson! You and I fought together at the battle of Mylae! That dead body you planted last year in your garden, is it growing yet? Will it bloom this year? Or did the sudden frost get to it? Keep out the dog, man's best friend, or he'll dig it right back

up! You!—yes, you, hypocritical reader—my likeness, my twin—my

brother!"

Game of Chess Introduction

•        According to Eliot’s notes, the title of the poem’s second section alludes to the game of chess played in act 2, scene 2 of Women Beware Women, a play by Thomas Middleton (circa 1621). Middleton employs the game of chess device again in A Game at Chess (1624). In both works, playing chess is associated with the deception, betrayal, rape, and sexual seduction of women. The allusion indicates that this section of the poem will address these themes in some way.

A Game of Chess: Text

•                      II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Doubled the flames of seven branched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion.

Comments and Historical myths

•       The section begins with an allusion to a passage in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. In act 2, scene 2, Enobarbus, Antony’s loyal supporter, describes Cleopatra’s barge as it bears her toward meeting Antony. The passage is rich in imagery that emphasizes the wealth, beauty, and sensuality of the Egyptian queen. Through the allusion, the woman about to be described is associated with these qualities.

Comments and Historical Myths

•        This line is borrowed from Shakespeare's 1607 play Antony and Cleopatra. In act II, scene II,

Enobarbus describes the arrival of Cleopatra to greet Mark Antony as follows:

•        The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes.

Comments and Historical Myths

•       Translated from French, “Cupidon” means Cupid, the god of desire and erotic love in classical mythology. The description of the woman’s ornate dressing table, adorned with golden figures of Cupid suggests wealth, beauty, and sensuality.

Comments and Historical Myths

•        The visual imagery of light in the first two lines is further developed in this passage: the mirror of the dressing table reflects and thus doubles the flames of candles lighting the room and reflects the “glitter” of jewels on the marble table top. The alliteration in “poured in rich profusion” draws attention to the phrase and creates a dynamic image of many jewels cascading from the satin cases that hold them. The imagery contributes to the atmosphere of wealth, beauty, and privilege in which the woman lives.

Text

•        In vials of ivory and coloured glass Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled,

confused

And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air

That freshened from the window, these ascended

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,

Comments and Explanations

•        The mood and atmosphere change suddenly with the description of the woman’s “strange synthetic perfumes.” Being synthetic, they are artificial, implying that they are not authentic or naturally pleasing to the senses. Her perfumes are

personified; they “lurked” and are “troubled” and

“confused” as they overwhelm the sense of smell in “odours,” a word like the others with unpleasant connotations. The disturbing change in mood and atmosphere suggest that all is not as it appears to be in the woman’s life.

Text

•        Flung their smoke into the laquearia, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.

Above the antique mantel was displayed

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

Comments and Historical Myths

•       A "laquearia" is an elaborate ceiling made of recessed panels that often depict a scene of some sort. The ceiling in the room is ornate, like the rest of the woman’s bedroom. However, the light that illuminates the figure of a dolphin carved into one of the panels is “sad,” not glowing or glittering, which

underscores the negative change in mood and atmosphere in Eliot’s description of the environment in which the woman lives.

Comments and Historical Myths

•        The passage alludes to the story of Philomela in book 6 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Kidnapped and raped by her sister’s husband, King Tereus, Philomela is imprisoned and her tongue is cut out to prevent her from telling anyone what the king has done. The gods take pity on Philomela and make her a nightingale, the “change of Philomel” referenced in the passage. Besides contributing to the darkening mood and atmosphere in this section of the text, the allusion underscores the notion of sexual violence, which is introduced through implication in the title of the section, “A Game of Chess.”

Comments and Historical Myths

•       Placing “Jug Jug” in quotation marks suggests that it represents the sound of Philomela’s voice as the nightingale, making it an example of onomatopoeia. Birds and their songs appear in various places in the text, contrasting the natural world of the past with the mechanized industrial society of the modern world, a new age void of morality and compassion.

Text

•       And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

Comments and Historical Myths

•        The description of the setting ends with this line, marking a turning point in the text. The auditory imagery indicates that someone is coming to her room; the following lines imply that the visitor is her lover. The connotations of “shuffled” in regard to the sound of his footsteps suggest a lack of joy or enthusiasm; even sexual relationships, it seems, are devoid of emotional fulfillment or satisfaction. The idea supports a

major theme in “The Waste Land”: that modern

life has deadened the spirit and robbed life of meaning.

Comments and Historical Myths

•       The lines possibly allude to trench warfare during World War I. Long, deep trenches were dug by both the Allied forces and the Germans to provide shelter as combat raged on the Western Front. The allusion suggests that the woman’s lover is a soldier returned from the war and anticipates the introduction of Lil and her husband, Albert, in the second half of section II.

Text

•             “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

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

"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

"I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

•              I think we are in rats’ alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

Text

•        “What is that noise?”

The wind under the door.

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”

Nothing again nothing.

“Do You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

“Nothing?”

•                      I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”

Text

•                                                                                                                                                                                                        But

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant

So intelligent

•        “What shall I do now? What shall I do?

I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street With my hair down, so. What shall we

do tomorrow?

What shall we ever do?”

Text

•                                                                                                                                        The hot water at ten.

And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess,

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

•             When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said— I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you

To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.

Comments and Myths

•       Eliot employs repetition in the passage, repeating two allusions that appear in the first section of the poem, “The Burial of the Dead,” lines 37–41 and lines 46–48. Repeating the allusions during the conversation between the woman and her lover emphasizes the implied meanings of the allusions and suggests that they relate to society at large.

Comments and Myths

•       “Demobbed” means discharged from military service. This line introduces the second half of section II in which an unidentified speaker relates a conversation with a woman named Lil, whose husband is coming home from the war.

Comments and Myths

•       The line, which is repeated throughout this portion of the text, refers to the last call at closing time in a bar, the setting for the conversation that occurred between the speaker and Lil. The setting contrasts with the opulence of the woman’s bedroom in the previous scene and suggests a marked difference in social class between her and Lil that becomes evident in the lines that follow.

Comments and Myths

•       In context, “smart” means attractive and

stylish. The speaker’s admonition implies that Lil is neither, again differentiating her from the woman in the first half of this section.

Text

•        You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you. And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,

He’s been in the army four years, he wants a

good time,

And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will,

I said.

Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said. Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.

Text

•        HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can’t.

But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack

of telling.

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.

(And her only thirty-one.)

I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,

It’s them pills I took, to bring if off, she said. (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George).

Comments and Myths

•       This line refers to Lil’s having taken pills to induce an abortion. The reasons for having taken them and the subsequent consequences are made clear in the following two lines.

Text

•         The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the

same.

You are a proper fool, I said.

Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said, What you get married for if you don’t want children? HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot— HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good

night.

Comments and Myths

•        Gammon is ham that has been cured or smoked

like bacon. The passage, which ends the speaker’s discussion of Lil, suggests that with Albert’s return, Lil’s life proceeded, her misery unabated, as she resumed her duties as his wife. Like the woman in the first half of this section of the poem, sexuality for Lil is not a means of expressing love, and despite the great disparity between their social classes and lifestyles, both are trapped and isolated in lives with little meaning.

Comments and Historical Myths

•       The closing line is a repetition of Ophelia’s words in act 4, scene 5 of Hamlet as she leaves Gertrude and Claudius; in a disturbed mental state, Ophelia drowns shortly thereafter. The allusion underscores the “death by water” motif in “The Waste Land.” It also exemplifies Eliot’s inclusion of allusions to and excerpts from classical works of literature, placing “The Waste Land,” a modernist poem, in the wider context of Western literature.

 

 

 

 

 

•         The Waste Land Summary and Analysis of Section II: "A Game of

Chess"

•         The second section of "The Waste Land" begins with a description of a woman sitting on a beautiful chair that looks “like a burnished throne” -– a nod to Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra. She occupies a splendid drawing room, replete with coffered ceilings

and lavish decorations. The setting is a decidedly grandiose one. We are not sure who the woman is: perhaps Eliot’s wife Vivienne, perhaps a stand-in for all members of the upper crust, perhaps simply an unnamed personage whiling away the hours in a candlelit kingdom. Eliot writes of “satin cases poured forth in profusion,”

“vials of ivory and coloured glass,” an “antique mantel” and “the

glitter of […] jewels.” Both the woman and the room are

magnificently attired, perhaps to the point of excess.

•         One of the paintings in the room depicts the rape of Philomela, a scene pulled from

 

 

 

 

 

•         Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the original story, King Tereus’s wife bids him to bring her sister Philomela to her. Upon meeting Philomela, Tereus falls instantly and hopelessly in love; nothing must get in the way of his conquest. Racked with lust, he steals away with her and rapes her in the woods –- the "sylvan scene” Eliot mentions. He then ties her up and cuts off her tongue so that she may not tell others of what has happened. He returns to his wife, but Philomela is able to weave on a loom what has befallen her; she gives the loom to her sister, who, upon discovering the truth, retrieves Philomela, slays Tereus’s son, and feeds his carcass to the king. When he finds out that he has been served his son for dinner, Tereus flies into a rage, chasing both Philomela and his wife out of the palace, and all three of them transform into birds. The speechless Philomela becomes a nightingale.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Snatches of dialogue follow. It seems plausible that the woman in the room is addressing the narrator. She complains that her nerves are bad, and requests that he stay with her. When she asks him what he is

thinking, the narrator retorts, “I think we are in rats’

alley / Where the dead men lost their bones.” Still more harried questions follow; the woman demands to find out whether the narrator knows “nothing,” then asks what she should do now, what they should do tomorrow. The narrator answers with a rote itinerary: “The hot water at ten. / And if it rains, a closed car at four. / And we shall play a game of chess, / Pressing

lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.”

 

 

 

 

 

•        The last stanza of the section depicts two Cockney women talking in a pub at closing time – hence the repeated

dictum: “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME.” The subject of conversation is a certain Lil, whose husband Albert was recently released from the army after the war. He gave Lil money to get a new set of teeth, but she has hesitated: “You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique [...] I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face." Lil is apparently on pills, unhappy in her marriage, and mother to none. The dialogue grows more fractured and the closing time announcements become more frequent, and finally the stanza devolves into a quotation from Hamlet: Ophelia’s final words to Claudius and Gertrude, “Good night ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.”

 

 

 

 

 

•        Analysis

•        This section once again ushers in the issue of biographical interpretation. It is tempting to read the woman on the “burnished throne” as Eliot’s wife, Vivienne; the passage then becomes a dissection of an estranged relationship. Some of the details point to failed romance or failed marriage: the “golden Cupidon” who must hide “his eyes behind his wing,” the depiction of Philomela’s rape –- an example of love cascading into brutality and violence -– and even the woman’s “strange synthetic perfumes” drowning “the sense in odours.”

 

 

 

 

 

•        Again the word “drowned” appears, and with it comes the specter of death by water. In this case, the thick perfumes seem to blot out authentic sensations, just as the splendid decorations of the room appear at times more menacing than beautiful. The trappings of a wealthy modern life come at a price. The carving of a dolphin is cast in a “sad

light.” The grandiose portraits and paintings on the wall are

but “withered stumps of time.” By the end of this first stanza, the room seems almost haunted: “staring forms / Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.” The woman, for her part, is a glittering apparition, seated upon her Chair (Eliot capitalizes the word as if it were a kingdom) like a queen, recalling Cleopatra -– and thus yet another failed love affair.

 

 

 

 

 

•          First Tristan and Isolde, now Cleopatra: twice now Eliot has alluded to tragic romances, filtered from antiquity through more modern sensibilities -– first that of Wagner, the great modernizer of opera, and then that of Shakespeare, perhaps the first “modern” dramatist. Quotation and allusion is of course a quintessential component of Eliot’s style, particularly in "The Waste Land"; the poem is sometimes criticized for being too heavily bedecked in references, and too

dependent on previous works and canons. The poet’s trick is to plumb the old in order to find the new. It may seem at first ironic that he relies so much on Ovid, the Bible, Dante, and other older works of literature to describe the modern age, but Eliot’s method is an essentially universalist one. Just as the Punic War is interchangeable with World War I -– the truly “modern” war of Eliot’s time -– so can past generations of writers and thinkers shed light on contemporary life. Eliot’s greatest model in this vein was probably Ulysses, in which James Joyce used Homer’s epic as a launching pad for a dissection of modern Dublin. In contrast to modernist poets such as Cendrars and Appollinaire, who used the choot-choot of trains, the spinning of wheels, and the billowing of fumes to evoke their era, or philosophers such as Kracauer and Benjamin, who dove into the sports shows and the arcade halls in search of a lexicon of the modern that is itself modern, Eliot is content to tease modernity out of the old.

 

 

 

 

 

•        This is not to say that "The Waste Land" is free of the specifics of 1920s life, but rather that every such specific comes weighted with an antiquarian reference. When Eliot evokes dance-hall numbers and popular ditties, he does so through the “Shakespeherian Rag.” When he imitates the Cockney talk of women in a pub, he finishes the dialogue with a quotation from Hamlet, so that the rhythms of lower-class London speech give way to the words of the mad Ophelia.

 

 

 

 

 

•         That said, “A Game of Chess” is considerably less riddled with allusion and quotes than “The Burial of the Dead.” The name itself comes from Thomas Middleton’s seventeenth-century play A Game of Chess, which posited the said game as an allegory to describe historical machinations –- specifically the brewing conflict between England and Spain. What might the game allegorize for Eliot? He offers it up as one of several activities, when the woman demands: “What shall we ever do?” Simply a slot in a strict

numerical ordering of the day, chess recalls “lidless eyes,” as its players

bide the time and wait “for a knock upon the door.” We are not far removed from the masses crowding London Bridge, their eyes fixed on their feet. Modern city-dwellers who float along in a fog are neither dead nor living; their world is an echo of Dante’s Limbo. Chess belongs therefore to this lifeless life; it is the quintessential game of the wasteland, dependent on numbers and cold strategies, devoid of feeling or human contact. Interaction is reduced to a set of movements on a checkered board.

The Fire Sermon

Text

 

 

 

 

•          The river’s tent is broken; the last

fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The

wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes,

cigarette ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;

Departed, have left no addresses.

•         नदी का तम्बू टू ट गया है; पत्ती की आखिरी उं गलियां चिपक जाती हैं और गीिे ककनारे में डू ब जाती हैं। हवा भूरे रंग की भूलम को पार करती है, अनसुना। अप्सराएँ ववदा हो गईं। प्यारी टेम्स, जब तक मैं अपना गाना ख़त्म नहीं कर िेता, धीरे-धीरे दौडो। नदी में कोई िािी बोतिें, सडववि पेपर, रेशमी रूमाि, गत्ते के     बक्से, लसगरेट के लसरे या गमी की रातों का कोई अन्य प्रमाण नहीं है। अप्सराएँ

ववदा हो गईं। और उनके  दोस्त,

शहर ननदेशकों के  आवारा वाररस;

ििा गया, कोई पता नहीं छोडा।

Allusions and Quotations

•       The title of section III alludes to a sermon by the Buddha in which he urges his listeners to turn away from physical passion (lust) and the love of worldly pleasures. Through the allusion, Eliot indicates the content of this section of the poem.

 

 

 

 

 

•       “The river’s tent” is an implied metaphor that describes the leafy branches of trees along the riverbank. The image suggests that they extend over the water. The tent is “broken” because the leaves, which are personified as having “fingers” that “clutch” the branches, have fallen. The imagery establishes the setting—a place beside a river during late autumn, and a bleak—depressing atmosphere.

 

 

 

 

 

•        The river mentioned previously is now identified as the Thames, which runs through London and southern England. The line is a refrain in Edmund Spenser’s poem “Prothalamion”; Spenser’s subject is a lovely double wedding on a summer day by the Thames, and the poem is filled with images of happiness and natural beauty. The

allusion is ironic, considering Eliot’s previous

description of the Thames and the silent “brown land” nearby, and it anticipates other ironic contrasts that are developed throughout section III.

 

 

 

 

 

•        In classical mythology, nymphs are minor spirits represented as beautiful maidens who live in nature. “The nymphs are departed,” a repetition of line 3 above, is another allusion to “Prothalamion.” In Spenser’s poem, nymphs gather flowers to adorn the brides-to-be. In the context of this passage, “nymphs” likely refers to prostitutes who had sexual encounters during the summer with the idle sons of prominent men in London. The allusion reflects the condemnation of lust suggested by the title of section III. It also contrasts the beauty of the Thames as described in Spenser’s poem (1592) with the ugliness and degradation of the river’s present condition. The contrast supports Eliot’s theme of spiritual emptiness in modern society.

 

 

 

 

 

•        In these lines, Eliot vividly paints a picture of someone sitting on the bank of the famous Thames River in London. Leaves have fallen and have "s[u]nk into the wet bank" (174). That's what he's referring to the river's tent's being broken. There are no longer any leaves overhead, acting as a canopy.

•        The overall tone, as you might expect, continues to be pretty dreary. But there's a lot of wetness in this scene, compared to the dryness and drought-like quality of earlier sections with all those shadows and red rock.

 

 

 

 

 

•        The most significant part of these lines comes with the phrase, "The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed" (175). The nymphs he's talking about are probably the Naiads, or nymphs of the river, according to Greek mythology. This line tells us that the magic is now gone from what used to be a very magical place, a place that inspired poets to write about love and beauty.

•        Now, you've just got an empty wind in an empty place.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Allusion alert. The line "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song" is a line from a poem called "Prothalamion" by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) that celebrates marriage along the Thames.

•        Eliot is suggesting to us, though, that Spenser's Thames was very different than the one of Eliot's time, which is polluted with "empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends" (177-178).

•        Yeah, we know: Eliot says, "the river bears no [litter]" (emphasis added), but that's actually a sarcastic remark, meaning that all the litter is there now, but wasn't in Spenser's time. That Eliot's a confusing guy.

 

 

 

 

 

•        But he's not so confusing that he's writing a poem called "The Waste Land" about a river that's...clean.

•        The people who've left this stuff behind aren't just the riff-raff, either, but are probably the "heirs of city directors" (180), meaning that even people of privilege have turned to slobs in the 20th century.

•        And along with the litter replacing the scenic riverbank, the nymphs have been replaced by these city directors, who sound way less awesome, seeing as how they make the river all polluted and gross.

•        Welcome to the Modern World, everyone. Wear close- toed shoes, please.

Text

 

 

•         By the waters of Leman I sat

down and wept…

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear

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

•         िेमन के      पानी के     पास मैं बैठ गया और रोने िगा... स्वीट टेम्स, जब तक मैं अपना गाना ित्म नहीं कर

िेता, धीरे-धीरे दौडो, स्वीट टेम्स, धीरे-धीरे दौडो, क्योंकक मैं जोर से या िबे समय तक नहीं बोिता। िेककन मेरी पीठ पर एक ठं डे

धमाके    में मझे हड्डडयों की

िडिडाहट  और  कानों  से

कानों तक फै िती हंसी

सनाई देती है।

 

 

 

 

•       “Leman” is the French name for Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Eliot wrote much of “The Waste Land” while convalescing in Lausanne by the lake. The line is also an allusion to Psalm 137, which describes the Israelites

being exiled to Babylon: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” The allusion support the poem’s themes of loss and despair following World War I.

 

 

 

 

 

•         Eliot's speaker claims, "By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…" (182), which might hint at the weeping that the Hebrews did when they stopped by the rivers of Babylon and remembered

Zion, the homeland they were exiled from. Check out Psalm 137 for more.

•         But Lac Léman, or Lake Geneva, is also a very important lake western Switzerland, so Eliot could be alluding to that as well, although we don't know what anyone in Switzerland has to weep about. They've got great chocolate.

•         If you want to go the more general route, this line could also just be the speaker of this poem being really depressed about the world. The use of ellipsis (…) at the end of this line also contributes to the overall lack of closure that you get throughout. The speaker is trailing off, unsure of where he's going.

 

 

 

 

 

•        After this, you get the line from the Spenser poem repeated twice, followed by a sudden mention of "But at my back in a cold blast I hear / The rattle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear" (185-186).

•        There's something super creepy about these lines, as though some violent person is standing right behind the speaker, ready to do something awful, and enjoy it. Yikes.

•        And there's also something eerily familiar…but

we'll get to that in just a bit.

Text

 

 

•        A rat crept softly through the vegetation

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

While I was fishing in the dull canal

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother's wreck

And on the king my

•        एक िूहा धीरे-धीरे वनस्पनत के बीि से रेंगता हुआ अपने पतिे पेट को ककनारे पर घसीटता हुआ

ििा गया, जब मैं सुस्त

नहर में मछिी पकड रहा था, एक सर्दियों की शाम को गैसहाउस के पीछे घूम रहा था और राजा के                    बारे में सोि रहा था कक मेरे भाई की बबािदी और राजा

के सामने मेरे वपता की

father's death before him.

मत्यु हो गई

 

 

 

 

•       The passage alludes to Ferdinand’s speech prior to Ariel’s song in act 1, scene 2 in The Tempest and to the Fisher King. In legends of the Holy Grail, the Fisher King is the last in a long line of characters charged with keeping and protecting the Holy Grail; he is always depicted as being wounded. Characters in “The Waste Land” often merge one into

another, as with Ferdinand and the Fisher King merging in this passage.

 

 

 

 

 

•       A disgusting, slimy rat crawls into the Thames while the speaker is fishing and thinking about "the king my brother's wreck" (191).

•       While the rat provides the pitch-perfect image for the decay that's going on in society in Eliot's time, we're more interested in this wreck.

 

 

 

 

 

•        It turns out that this line refers to an early scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which the magician Prospero summons an insane storm to wreck his brother's ship. Prospero takes revenge because his jealous brother marooned him on an island twelve years earlier so that he (the brother) could be king.

•        This reference conveys the sense of being stranded, just as Eliot feels stranded and without hope in the modern world.

Text

 

 

•        White bodies naked on the low damp ground And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.

•        ननििी नम ज़मीन पर नग्न सफे द शरीर और थोडी नीिी सूिी गेरेट में ढिी हड्डडयाँ, केवि

िूहे के  पैर से, साि-दर- साि र्हिती रहती हैं।

 

 

 

 

 

•       The "White bodies naked on the low damp ground" (193) could refer to the people killed by Prospero's storm, or actual dead bodies lying along the bank of the Thames.

•       Then you hear about the bones that are scattered in a "low, dry garret" somewhere, a garret being a little attic.

 

 

 

 

 

•       These bones mostly just gather dust, and are disturbed by "the rat's foot only, year to year"

(195). So in case you haven't gotten the point yet, Eliot really wants you to know that the Thames and London is no longer the awesome beautiful place that some poets have made it out to be. Now it's got litter and dead bodies. Lovely.

Text

 

 

•        But at my back from time to time I hear

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs Porter in the spring.

O the moon shone bright

on Mrs Porter

And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

•        िेककन समय-समय पर मुझे अपनी पीठ पर हॉनि और मोटरों की आवाज़ सुनाई देती है, जो वसंत ऋतु में स्स्वनी को श्रीमती पोटिर के   पास िे आएगी। हे िंद्रमा श्रीमती पोटिर पर और उनकी बेटी पर उज्जज्जवि िमक गया, उन्होंने सोडा पानी में

अपने पैर धोए   "और

उन बच्िों की आवाज़, गंुबद में गाते हुए!"

 

 

 

 

 

•       The speaker’s reverie is interrupted by the sounds of traffic along the Thames. This interruption brings the text back to the subject of prostitution through the reference of Sweeney’s returning to Mrs. Porter and her daughter in the spring. The last three lines in the passage originated in an old Australian drinking song.

 

 

 

 

 

•        This line is taken from the end of Paul Verlaine’s poem “Parsifal” and translates as “And O those children’s voices, singing in the cupola!” The allusion once more references the legend of the Fisher King; in Verlaine’s poem, Percival, a knight who has remained physically and spiritually pure in order to drink from the Holy Grail, heals the wounded Fisher King. The allusion’s ironic juxtaposition with the preceding lines emphasizes the loss of innocence and nobility of character in modern times. Also, Percival’s turning away from lust and physical passions is consistent with the message of Buddha’s Fire Sermon, referenced in the title of this section.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Allusions abound! Let's break 'em down.

•        The speaker says that sometimes, he hears the sound of horns and motors, which will bring someone named Sweeney to someone named Mrs. Porter in the spring.

•        These lines pretty directly allude to a play called Parliament of Bees by John Day. The lines in the play describe Actaeon stumbling upon Diana bathing in the woods, drawn there by a noise of horns and hunting. Only here, Sweeney is figured as a modern-day Actaeon, and instead of Diana, we get Mrs Porter, who's bathing in soda water, rather than, you know, a lovely river.

 

 

 

 

 

•        But the phrasing here is also a nod to a very famous poem, "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell, which has a line in it that goes, "But at my back I always hear / Time's wingèd chariot hurrying hear." Plus, it's an echo of line 195.

•        Sweeney is a not-so-likeable character from an earlier Eliot poem called "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," and Mrs. Porter is from a popular song that was sung by Australian troops during World War I.

•        Lines 199-201 are taken from this song, and once again they show a sort of mediocre stupidity that keeps ruining or drowning out the things in the world that are truly great.

 

 

 

 

 

•        More than any other section of the poem, "The Fire Sermon" includes bits of popular songs to showcase how low culture has sunken, just like leaves into the filthy banks of the Thames.

•        Line 202 is written in French, and translates as "And O those children's voices singing in the dome!" This comes from a work by French poet Paul Verlaine about a knight named Parsifal, who has to resist all sorts of sexual temptations so he can drink from the Holy Grail. This line might ironically symbolize the fact that modern people always give in to temptation; they have no resistance or dignity, and this is one of the reasons the world's been ruined.

 

 

•        Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd

Tereu

Text

•            ट्ववट ट्ववट ट्ववट जग जग जग जग जग जग  इतनी बेरहमी से टेरेउ को मजबूर ककया

 

 

 

 

 

•       This passage is a repetition of the allusion to the story of Philomela that appears in section II "A Game of Chess." It supports the major theme in this section, the spiritual debasement in modern life, driven by lust and selfish desires.

 

 

 

 

 

•        These lines go back to the story of Philomela, which Eliot alluded to way back in lines 99-103.

•        That brings us back to the idea of sex as something horrible and violent, as you can see with the repetition of "so rudely forced" (205).

•        And Philomela's nightingale song continues as well, with a few new notes, too—"twit." To be fair, the "twit" sounds might also refer to the moronic twits who populate the modern world. Or maybe that's just Shmoop's take.

 

 

 

 

 

•        In any case, it's clear that the modern world, with its crappy, polluted rivers, is no place for a beautiful song. So instead of the high notes, we get ugly the ugly onomatopoeias of "twit" and "jug."

•        Formally, this sudden fragment also has the effect of refrain, because it's a phrase that Eliot returns to so he can remind us of the fact that beauty might still be around us, but we're unable to see or hear it (i.e., just as we don't realize that the nightingale's song is actually Philomela trying to be heard).

 

 

•         Unreal City

Text

•         सर्दियों की दोपहर के  भर

Under the brown fog of a

winter noon

Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a weekend at

the Metropole.

कोहरे के नीिे अवास्तववक शहर श्री यूजीनाइड्स, स्स्मनाि व्यापारी अनशेवेन, करंट से भरी जेब के              साथ सी.आई.एफ. िदन: दस्तावेज़ नज़र में, मझसे राक्षसी फ़्रें ि में कै नन स्रीट होटि में दोपहर के   भोजन के  लिए पूछा गया, इसके बाद मेरोपोि में सप्ताहांत बबताने के                लिए कहा गया।

 

 

 

 

•        Another unidentified narrator describes an encounter with a foreign merchant trading in fruit in London.

•        Eliot’s notes indicate that “C.i.f. London” refers to the price of currants (dried fruit) being quoted as “carriage and insurance free to London”; “documents” refers to bills of lading presented to buyers upon receipt of goods. The passage indicates that Mr. Eugenides perhaps has money to spend.

 

 

 

 

 

•        In context, “demotic” means common, colloquial, or slangy. The merchant’s speaking in “demotic French” implies that he is not educated or refined, as does his being “unshaven.”

•        Cannon Street, which runs approximately parallel with the Thames, is the historic center of London and the

city’s financial district. Numerous hotels are located on Cannon Street. The Metropole is a London hotel noted for its many amenities. The invitation suggests that Mr. Eugenides seeks a casual sexual encounter with the speaker, supporting the theme of licentious behavior developed in this section.

 

 

 

 

 

•        We return to the idea of the phony, superficial "Unreal city," which is covered by a filthy "brown fog of a winter noon" (208).

•        We hear a story about some merchant (remember the merchant from the tarot deck?) from Smyrna (a port city in modern-day Turkey, now known as Izmir) who is "Unshaven" and keeps a bunch of dried fruit in his pockets. Guess he's a snacker.

•        This man asks the speaker in terrible "demotic French" if the speaker would like to join him for lunch at the Cannon Street Hotel / Followed by a weekend at the Metropole" (213-214).

 

 

 

 

 

•        These two places were notorious in Eliot's time for being secret meeting places where men would hook up with one another sexually. In all likelihood, the puritan Eliot found this kind of sex request disgusting, and is using it here as yet one more sign of how awful Western culture has gotten. There's also a strong hint of racism in the representation of this guy from Turkey.

•        Needless to say, we're not meant to look too kindly on this guy.

Text

 

 

•        At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

•        बगनी घंटे में, जब आि और पीठ डस्क से ऊपर की ओर मुडती हैं, जब मानव इंजन इंतजार कर रहा होता है, जसे कोई टैक्सी इंतजार कर रही हो,

 

 

 

 

•       “The violet hour” is a metaphor for day’s end; it evokes the image of a purple sky created by the setting sun. The metaphor is soon repeated in a following passage, underscoring the difference between conventional human behavior during a work day and what it

becomes after dark. The “human engine” is described with a simile as being “like a taxi throbbing waiting.” The simile suggests human passions waiting to be released.

 

 

 

 

 

•        These lines set up the coming scene with the blind prophet Tiresias by talking about the hour when people look up from their desks and are just "throbbing" to get home from work.

•        In this instance, you really get a sense of what beautiful poetry Eliot can write. He uses cadence here to help this image flow off the page, rather than relying on more obvious tactics like alliteration or meter.

Text

 

 

•        I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

•        मैं टायलसयस, अंधा होते हुए भी, दो स्जदचगयों क बीि धडक रहा हूं, झुरीदार मर्हिा स्तनों वािा बूढा आदमी,

बगनी घंटे में देि

सकता हूं, शाम का समय जो घर की ओर प्रयास करता है, और नाववक को समुद्र से घर

िाता  है,

 

 

 

 

 

•       In Greek mythology, Tiresias is a prophet of the god Apollo; despite his blindness, Tiresias can see the future. In one of the Greek myths, Tiresias offends Hera, the wife of Zeus; she turns him into a woman who serves as her priestess for seven years before being turned back into a man. In his capacity as a seer, Tiresias narrates the remainder of section III.

 

 

 

 

 

•         Enter Tiresias, a prophet from Greek myth whom Eliot calls in his notes "the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest."

•         As the story (which you can find in Ovid's Metamorphoses) goes, Tiresias was walking along one day, and after he saw two snakes having sex in his path, he hit them with a big stick, which turned out to be a huge oh-no-no. The goddess Hera didn't like that so much, so she transformed him into a woman for seven years. Awkward.

•         After Tiresias changed back, Hera made a bet with Zeus about who enjoyed sex more, women or men. Tiresias said that women did, and Hera totally freaked out and struck him blind. Zeus felt bad about this, but his hands were tied, so he tried to make up for it by giving Tiresias the power of prophecy.

 

 

 

 

 

•         Weird story, right? So why did Eliot pick this dude as the most important personage in the poem? It's probably best to hear it from the horse's mouth, so here's what Eliot had to say about his inclusion of Tiresias in "The Waste Land": "Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees in fact, is the substance of the poem."

•         So Eliot uses Tiresias in this poem as a sort of removed observer who can see visions from all over the world and see how awful the world really is. He's a universal kind of guy. In fact, it's totally possible that the speaker of this entire poem is actually Tiresias, but that's just one going theory.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Tiresias is "throbbing between two lives" because Eliot portrays him in this poem as a hermaphrodite, a person who is male and female at the same time. This is what makes him an "Old man with wrinkled female breasts" (219).

•        Of course that "throbbing" at the "violet hour" is a call back to lines 215-217, allying Tiresias with these average Joes at their office desks (it's also the hour that Sappho writes about in her poem "Hesperus, you bring back again," to which Eliot alludes here). He's really the everyman of the poem.

•        And he can see something. What, we're not sure, so we'll have to keep right on reading.

Text

 

 

•         The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

•         िाय के समय टाइवपस्ट घर आती है, अपना नाश्ता साफ करती है, अपना स्टोव जिाती है, और भोजन को डडब्बों में रिती है। खिडकी के     बाहर ितरनाक ढंग से फै िा हुआ उसका सिता

हुआ सयोजन, सरज की

आखिरी ककरणों से छु आ हुआ, दीवान पर (रात में उसक बबस्तर पर)

स्टॉककग्स, िप्पि, कैलमसोि

और सामान का ढेर िगा

हुआ है।

 

 

 

 

•        Tiresias offers us one of his/her visions, and talks about a young woman being home from work at teatime and "Lay[ing] out her food in tins" (223), while her laundry dries out the window.

•        Seems like an everyday image—woman, home, and doing chores. But there's something oddly depressing about it.

•        For one thing, she's alone. And for another, she's a bit of a slob (she left her breakfast out? and her underwear is lying around?).

Text

•         I Tiresias, old man with                •   मैं टायलसय

स, झररियों वािे

wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

I too awaited the expected guest.

He, the young man

carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

As a silk hat on a Bradford

millionaire.

थन वािा बूढा आदमी, दृश्य को समझ गया, और बाकी की भववष्यवाणी कर दी- मैं भी अपेक्षक्षत अनतचथ की

प्रतीक्षा कर रहा था। वह, काबुनकु िर युवक, आता है, एक छोटे से घर के     एजेंट का क्िकि , एक ननभीक घूरकर, उन ननम्न िोगों में से एक स्जस पर आश्वासन बैठता है, ब्रैडफोडि करोडपनत पर रेशम की टोपी के        रूप में।

 

 

 

 

 

•       “Carbuncular” is used as an adjective to indicate that the man visiting the typist, a young woman who works in an office, has a carbuncle, which is a collection of pus-filled boils under the skin. His being so physically unappealing suggests that his sexual encounter with the typist, which is about to be described, will be sordid

 

 

 

 

 

•        Just to up the uncomfortable ante, Tiresias makes sure to mention his wrinkly old breasts again before telling us that he already knows what's about to happen in this young woman's apartment. This might be because he's a prophet (thanks, Zeus!) or because the scene is painfully predictable.

•        Strutting through the front door, "the young man carbuncular arrives" (231). Carbuncular is a fancy word for really pimply, which means this guy's probably not all that much to look at. He doesn't have a very high- paying job, but he's got a "bold stare" (232) and is way more self-assured than he's got reason to be.

 

 

 

 

 

•        This seems to be another pet peeve of Eliot's: people with no real achievements in life thinking they're totally awesome. For realsies, thank goodness this man did not live to see the days of reality TV.

•        At this point in the poem, you also find a pretty strong return of rhyming in Eliot's poem. This might be because Eliot is satirizing the scene as an example of "modern romance," and using a traditional sense of rhyme to show how pathetic and gross the scene actually is.

 

 

 

 

 

•       It certainly isn't rhyme-worthy, that's for sure. The idea here is that the young man carbuncular fancies himself a classic sexual conqueror (and is as self-assured as a millionaire, even though he's basically a secretary), but he's just a pimply-faced kid with a pathetic job and a boring girlfriend.

 

 

•        The time is now

propitious, as he

Text

•            अब समय अनुकू ि है, जसा कक उसने अनुमान

guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

िगाया, भोजन समाप्त हो गया है, वह ऊब गई है और थक गई है, उसे दिार में संिग्न करने का प्रयास ककया गया है जो अभी भी अप्राप्य है, यर्द अवांनछत है।

 

 

 

 

•        The ugly young man decides that it's time to make his move on the girl, since she's probably tired and sluggish after eating her meal. Yeah, super romantic.

•        Moving in, he "Endeavours to engage her in caresses"

(237). The girl doesn't really want to have sex with him, but she basically says "meh" and doesn't really put up a fight.

•        As you can probably tell, Eliot doesn't think much of modern romance. It's all just a bunch of poor, uneducated people having their ugly sex. Hey, he said it, not Shmoop.

Text

 

 

•        Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

•        घबराकर ननणय लिया, वह तुरंत हमिा करता है; िोजबीन करते हाथों को कोई बिाव नहीं लमिता; उसका घमंड ककसी प्रनतकिया की

मांग नहीं करता, और उदासीनता का स्वागत करता है।

 

 

 

 

•        The guy goes ahead and "assaults at once" (239), loving the fact that the girl doesn't care one way or the other, as long as he gets what he wants.

•        The rhyming of the lines is as consistent as anywhere in the poem, allowing Eliot to really satirize the fantasy of heroic masculinity that the young man has made for himself.

•        Clearly this guy thinks he's the cat's meow, and since this typist lady couldn't care less, there's no one around to tell him any different. So Eliot makes it clear that this guy's actually a schlub with his ironic use of end-rhymes.

Text

•        (And I Tiresias have                •  (और मैं टायलसय

स ने

foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronizing kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit …

इसी दीवान या बबस्तर पर सभी कृ त्यों का पूवािभास ककया है; मैं जो दीवार के नीिे थेब्स के        पास बैठा था और मतकों में सबसे नीिे ििा गया था।) एक अंनतम संरक्षण िंुबन देता है, और अपना रास्ता टटोिता है, सीर्ढयों को अस्पष्ट पाता है ...

 

 

 

 

•        The gist here is that Tiresias wishes that he didn't have to watch this sex scene as it plays out, but his "gift" of visions isn't something he can turn on and off.

•        Tough break, buddy.

•        He talks about how in the days of ancient Thebes, he used to prophesize by the marketplace's wall and "and walked among the lowest of the dead" (246), which may be an allusion to the Odyssey or the Inferno, in both of which Tiresias shows up in the underworld to help a brother (both Odysseus and Dante in turn) out. And did we mention that Tiresias was also given seven lives by Zeus?

 

 

 

 

 

•        At this point, he gives us one last look at the pimply young man and his roll in the hay with the typist. Now that the young man is finished with his business, he gives the girl a meaningless "patronizing kiss" (247), and just like the blind prophet, "gropes his way" down the stairs because the light is out.

•        Tiresias is able to see what's going on anywhere in the world, and as Eliot shows us, this is mostly what it is: bad sex between bad people. A little harsh, don't you think? Well, Eliot didn't seem to think so.

 

 

•        She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her

departed lover;

Text

•        वह मुडती है और एक पि के  लिए शीशे में देिती है, उसे शायद ही अपने र्दवंगत प्रेमी का एहसास

Her brain allows one half- formed thought to pass: "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."

होता है; उसका मस्स्तष्क एक आधे-अधूरे वविार को पाररत होने की अनुमनत देता है: "ठीक है, अब यह हो गया है: और मुझे

िुशी है कक यह ित्म हो

गया है।"

 

 

 

 

•       Aw, did you think Eliot was done? No way, he's just getting started.

•       Now that the pimply dude has left, the girl "turns and looks a moment" in her mirror, "hardly aware of her departed lover" (249- 250). Calling the guy a "lover" in this scene is Eliot's way of sarcastically demolishing the idea of modern love, which in his mind is disgusting.

 

 

 

 

 

•        The girl is not all that bright, and her brain only "allows one half-formed thought to pass," which is " 'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over'"

(252). Gee, how romantic.

•        Eliot is trying to tell us that this girl has no deep thoughts of any kind, and she doesn't even have enough intelligence to resist sex that she doesn't want. She's completely passive in every way, blowing through life like a shopping bag in the wind.

 

 

 

 

 

•        When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

•        जब प्यारी मर्हिा मूिता की ओर झुकती है और अपने कमरे में कफर से अके िी घूमती है, तो वह स्विालित

हाथ से अपने बािों को चिकना करती है, और ग्रामोफोन पर एक

ररकॉडि डािती है।

 

 

 

 

•        In line 253 Eliot quotes from Oliver Goldsmith's novel The Vicar of Wakefield by quoting a song in which the main character sings of being seduced and then ditched. Turns out it's a bit of a bummer.

•        And that corresponds pretty well to our typist's situation. Now that she's alone again, the woman just sort of walks around the room without thinking, "smoothes her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramophone" (255-256).

 

 

 

 

 

•       The gramophone (or record player) hints at the idea that popular culture is part of what makes the girl's life so passive and superficial.

•       If Eliot wrote this poem today, he'd probably have the girl throw on an episode of Chopped: All Stars.

Text

 

 

•           "This music crept by me upon the

waters"

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

The pleasant whining of a

mandolin

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

•         "यह संगीत मुझे पानी में सुनाई र्दया" और स्रैंड के      साथ, क्वीन ववक्टोररया स्रीट तक। ओ लसटी शहर, मैं कभी-कभी िोअर टेम्स स्रीट में एक सावजननक बार क बगि में, मडोलिन की सुिद ध्वनन और भीतर से एक

िडिडाहट और एक बकबक सुन सकता हूं जहां मछु आरे दोपहर में आराम करते हैं: जहां मैग्नस शहीद की दीवारें आयोननयन सफे द रंग की अवणनीय शोभा रिती हैं और सोना।

 

 

 

 

•        This line alludes to a song, a “melancholy air,” sung by Olivia Primrose in Oliver Goldsmith’s novel, The Vicar of Wakefield. Seduced and then betrayed, Olivia sings that to conceal “her guilt” and “hide her shame,” a woman’s only recourse in these circumstances “is to die.” In context, the allusion ironically underscores Eliot’s themes in this section regarding sex in the modern world: that it has become casual and meaningless. The allusion also underscores the idea that modern society has become unmoored from a sense of moral decency.

 

 

 

 

 

•        “Magnus Martyr” is an allusion to the St. Magnus the Martyr church, located in Lower Thames Street near the original site of London Bridge. “Splendor” means a magnificent, glorious appearance, and “Ionian” refers to columns designed in the style of classical Greek architecture. Rebuilt following the Great Fire of London in 1666, the church is considered architect Sir Christopher Wren’s most beautiful work. The imagery of the church, its beauty held within its walls, suggests a solemn silence, in contrast to the mandolin music and the “clatter” and “chatter” within the bar nearby. Through the allusion, Eliot again negatively contrasts the values of modern life with those of times long gone.

 

 

 

 

 

•        The Tempest strikes again. Finally finished with the young man and woman, Tiresias quotes another line from Shakespeare's play, which is from a scene of mourning (this whole poem is sort of about mourning for Eliot—mourning for a better time, now lost).

•        Tiresias goes on to talk about how he often hears music coming out of bars and "the pleasant whining of a mandolin" (261), which comes with the "clatter and chatter from within" the bar.

 

 

 

 

 

•        It seems here that Eliot is giving us a vision of the better time in history he often hints at. In this world, the fishermen enjoy their music within a world held together by religious belief, as Eliot goes on to talk about Magnus Martyr, which is a church with "Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold" (265).

•        The ornament of this church is a testament to classic beauty, and Eliot suggests here that even uneducated people are perfectly capable of participating in this kind of world, as long as they are humble and god- fearing, not full of themselves like the young man carbuncular.

 

 

•         The river sweats

Oil and tar

The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails

Wide

To leeward, swing on the

heavy spar.

The barges wash Drifting logs

Down Greenwich reach

Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

Text

•              नदी पसीना बहाती है         तेि और टार                नौकाओं बहता है     ज्जवार के    पिटने के साथ       िाि पाि              िौडा             ‍ हवा की ओर, भारी जहाज़ का मस्तूिपर झूिते हैं।          नौका धोते हैं         बहते हुए

िट्ठे  नीिे  ग्रीनववि

पहुंिते हैं     आइि ऑफ डॉग्स के

पीछे ।                                   वे

यािािा

िेइया

वाििा  िेइयािा

 

 

 

 

•        In these lines, Eliot takes a song from Götterdämmerung, the last opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle and replaces all the German references with English ones.

•        Here's the deal:

•        The song is about women by a river, and in the Wagner version the river is the Rhine, and the song is all about beauty.

•        In Eliot's version, though, you're back to talking about the Thames, and how "The river sweats / Oil and tar" (266-267), which is not so beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Yep, the motif of pollution that Eliot constantly uses to talk about the moral and spiritual pollution of the modern world has reared its ugly head.

•        And before you go thinking our speaker has gone totally around the bend with lines 277-278, we should tell you that the "Weialala leia" part is from Wagner's original.

•        It's also worth noting that the form has taken a sharp turn for the short—line, that is. We'll see that trend continue for quite a while, so you might want to think about the effect of that change.

 

 

 

 

 

•       These lines allude to the Rhinemaidens’ song in Wagner’s opera Ring Cycle; they are repeated as a refrain following the next section of text and appear in a most abbreviated form near the end of section III. The allusion is ironic in the context of Eliot’s descriptions of the modern, so-called maidens in "The Fire Sermon."

 

 

 

 

 

•       Carthage is an ancient city in North Africa. This line alludes to St. Augustine’s Confessions and his description of what he encountered in the city: “a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.” The allusion, suggestive of passion and worldly desires, anticipates the conclusion of section III in the lines that follow.

 

 

•         Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars

The stern was formed A gilded shell

Red and gold The brisk swell

Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towersWeialala

leiaWallala leialala

Text

•              एलिजाबेथ  और

िीसेस्टर     पीटते हुए पतवार    जियान का वपछिा भाग का ननमािण

हुआ             एक सोने का पानी

िढा हुआ िोि                             िाि और सोना                           तेज

िहरें     दोनों ककनारों पर

िहरें उठीं     दक्षक्षण- पस्श्िम हवा        धारा के

साथ बह गई             घंर्टयों

की गडगडाहट            सफे द मीनारेंवेइिािा   िीआवाििा

िीआिा

 

 

 

 

 

•       These lines talk about a scene from the life of Queen Elizabeth I and her "lover," Lord Robert, the Earl of Leicester. The scare quotes around "lover" are necessary because it's well- known among historians that this was a bit of a go-nowhere relationship for the Queen, just as the young typist's relationship with the pimply guy is going nowhere.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Eliot got this scene from a famous biography of the queen, The Reign of Elizabeth. The book, written by a famous British historian named James Anthony Froude, recounts a moment between Elizabeth and Lord Robert on a barge on the Thames in which they discuss a potential (but obviously impossible) marriage.

•        And we all know what Wagner has to say about that: "Weialala," that's what.

Text

 

 

•           "Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me.

Richmond and Kew

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe."

•        "राम और धूि भरे पेड। हाईबरी ने मुझे बोर कर र्दया। ररिमंड और क्यू ने मुझे परेशान कर र्दया। ररिमंड तक मनैं अपने घुटने ऊपर उठा लिए थे। एक संकरी

डोंगी के फशि पर पीठ के   बि िेट गया।"

 

 

 

 

 

•       In these lines, Eliot parodies part of Dante's Purgatorio, and gives us a few images of the speaker acting lazy and lying down in a canoe as he floats through ritzy parts of London.

•       The lines in Dante describe a figure named Pia Tolomei, who describes where she's from and how she was killed (on the orders of her husband, no less).

 

 

 

 

 

•       But in Eliot's poem, the speaker is unidentified, floating, relaxed in a canoe.

•       Whoever the speaker is, their tour of London sounds pretty awful. The raised knees on the floor of a narrow canoe, and the word "undid" seems to indicate that this tour was a sexual one, resulting in unsatisfying encounters with strangers all over modern London.

 

 

•        "My feet are at

Moorgate, and my

heart

Text

•            "मेरे पैर मूरगेट पर हैं, और मेरा र्दि मेरे पैरों के नीिे है। घटना के

Under my feet. After the event

He wept. He promised 'a new start.'

I made no comment.

What should I resent?"

बाद वह रोया। उसने 'एक नई शुरुआत' का वादा ककया। मने कोई र्टप्पणी नहीं की। मुझ ककस बात पर नाराज़ होना  िार्हए?"

 

 

 

 

•        Our speaker—could it be Queen Elizabeth, transported to modern times?—continues her jaunt through London, although now she's at a modern subway station called Moorgate (it's also the name of a street). Whether she's on a street or in a tube station, her heart is under her feet, indicating that it's underground, trampled on, or maybe even in (gasp) Hell.

•        She mentions some "event" (possibly sex) that happened and made someone else, maybe the Lord Robert, the Earl of Leicester, weep.

 

 

 

 

 

•        Whoever this someone else is, he promises the speaker "a new start," but she just sits there silently (299). It's possible that Eliot is referring here to the discussion of marriage that supposedly happened between Elizabeth and Leicester way back on that barge ride they took together—according to Mr. Foude, of course.

•        Yep, sounds like this romance is just as doomed as the one between the typist and the young man carbuncular.

•        For Eliot, the idea of a "new start" was probably a cliché he'd heard enough of, since he believed that the modern world had very little interest in making a fresh start of anything.

Text

•           "On Margate Sands.              •  "मागटे   सड्

स पर।         म

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing"

la la

 

To Carthage then I came

कु छ भी नहीं को कु छ भी नहीं से जोड सकता

हूं।         गंदे हाथों के टू टे हुए नािून।            मेरे िोग ववनम्र िोग हैं जो कु छ भी उम्मीद नहीं करते

हैं"

िा

िा        कफर मैं

काथेज आया

 

 

 

 

 

•       Carthage is an ancient city in North Africa. This line alludes to St. Augustine’s Confessions and his description of what he encountered in the city: “a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.” The allusion, suggestive of passion and worldly desires, anticipates the conclusion of section III in the lines that follow.

 

 

 

 

 

•         Another speaker talks about hanging out on a rich-people's beach near the mouth of the Thames (Margate sands), and says that when he's there he can "connect / Nothing with nothing" (301-302). Sounds like an existential crisis to Shmoop—kind of like the one the world is undergoing in Eliot's eyes.

•         According to him, people have no ability to "synthesize" ideas anymore, or to think big. All you're left with is bits and pieces of thought, which are like "The broken fingernails of dirty hands" (303).

•         This speaker then takes a moment to say that he comes from humble people and expects nothing. By this point, you might have noticed that the word "nothing" is repeated a lot in this poem. Which is fitting because that's exactly what Eliot though modern life had going for it—nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

•        After another, almost unrecognizable snippet from Wagner, Eliot tosses another allusion our way: line 307, which reads "To Carthage then I came," is taken from the Confessions of St. Augustine.

•        In the original passage, the saint talks about how much he lusted for sex when he was young. That's why he went to Carthage (an ancient city in modern-day Tunisia), which Augustine describes as a "cauldron of unholy loves" (Book III).

•        In this line, Eliot talks about how the modern man, however humble, is tempted to an almost insane degree by the modern world, which throws sex in your face at just about every opportunity. Ever seen a rap video?

 

 

•           Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord thou pluckest burning

Text

•             जिता हुआ जिता हुआ जिता हुआ जिता

हुआ      हे प्रभु तू मुझे

उिाड िे    हे प्रभु तू

मुझे उिाड िे जिता हुआ

 

 

 

 

•        Eliot alludes to the Buddha's "Fire Sermon," which describes the burning of passion, attachment, and suffering.

•        Then he takes a sharp left straight into Christianity, with an allusion to Augustine's Confessions. "Oh Lord Though pluckest me out" is taken straight from Book V, and they talk about the pain of hellfire that the saint sometimes feels doomed by.

•        But why shift suddenly from Buddhism to Christianity? The answer might lie in Eliot's notes, which tell us that he thinks of the "Fire Sermon" as the equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount. Eliot's bringing in Eastern traditions, too, to illustrate the decline of Western civilization in the modern world.

 

 

 

 

 

•        In Eliot's words, "The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident." To put that more simply: squishing together Eastern beliefs on detachment and Western beliefs on the same was intentional. It means something to Eliot. Any theories?

•        And with that, you've got the end of The Fire Sermon. Now that we've got that part covered, it's time to talk about water

 

 

 

 

 

•       The passage brings section III full circle, back to the title, "The Fire Sermon." In the Buddha’s sermon, fire symbolizes the suffering and depravity that result from lust and the love of worldly pleasures; to end suffering and depravity, they must be forsaken. The message in the Buddha’s sermon is the major theme in this section of “The Waste Land.”

Death by Water

•            फ़्िेबास  फोनीलशयन,

•            Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.

एक पिवाडे तक मतृ , भूि गया सीगि का रोना, और गहरे समुद्र

की िहरें और िाभ और

हानन।

 

 

•               A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose

and fell

Text

•            समुद्र के नीिे एक धारा ने फु सफु साते हुए उसकी हड्डडयाँ िुन िीं। जैसे- जसे वह उठता और

He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool.

चगरता, वह अपनी उम्र और जवानी के                        िरणों को पार करता हुआ भँवर में प्रवेश करता।

 

 

•            Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to

windward,

Text

•            अन्यजानत या यहूदी, हे पर्हया घुमाने वािे और हवा की ओर देिने

वािे, फ़्िेबास पर वविार

Consider Phlebas, who

करें, जो कभी आपक

was once handsome and tall as you.

जसै था।

ा संुदर और िंबा

 

 

 

 

•            introduction:

•                              In this section-Death by Water, Eliot shows the significance of water as a means of purification and re-birth. There are two associations-one from Shakespeare's The Tempest and the other from the ancient Egyptian myth of the god of fertility. The death of Phlebas, the Greek sailor, is an example of people who devote themselves to worldly pursuits. Their youth and strength ultimately will be consumed by death.

Explanation

•           The poet tells the story of Phlebas, a young and handsome sailor who was drowned after leading a boring business career. He was caught in a whirlpool and passed through various stages. There is no chance of re-birth for the sailor who represents the modern man, because there is no desire to follow spiritual values. The rejection of higher values is the cause of the inevitable decay of modern civilization

 

 

 

 

 

•            Phlebas, the Phoenician who died a fortnight back, forgot the cry of sea gulls and the tide of deep sea and profit-and-loss account of his business. The under- current of the sea picked up his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell among the waves, he passed the stages of old age and youth till he was swallowed by the whirlpool of death. Jew or non-Jew, whoever you are, who turn the wheel and look for the wind on your voyage, remember the fate of Phlebas, the worldly merchant who was as hand-some and tall as you and who died without any hope of rebirth or resurrection.

 

 

 

 

 

•                  Phlebas the ... and tall as you (line. 312-321): Eliot gives the story of Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor who took to business and ultimately died on the sea. The moral is that all men are travelers subject to the lure of change, decay and death. The sailor has forgotten the cry of sea-gull, the roaring of the rough waves and his business affairs. His body rose and fell in the waves and ultimately he was sucked by the whirlpool of death.

•  

 

 

 

 

 

•            The first reference is to the song of Ariel sung to Prince Ferdinand about his father's death - "Full fathom five thy father lies." The drowned body has suffered "a sea- change into something rich and strange." The second reference, according to Miss Weston, is to the ancient ritual in Egypt, where an effigy of the fertility god was thrown into sea at Alexandria to indicate his death. The head was carried by the waves and was followed towards Byblos where it was salvaged and worshipped as the god re-born. There is a contrast between the drowning of the effigy and the drowning of Phlebas.

 

 

 

 

 

•            There is no re-birth in the case of the above sailor because he has wasted his life in worldly pursuits. Salvation is possible for those who pursue the things of the spirit and have faith in God. This is a warning to the modern man that he must bear in mind the death of a drowned sailor, and take a lesson from him to devote his life to higher values. The last line sum up the morale of the section - 'Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you." Beware, perhaps your fate may be similar to his.

 

 

 

 

 

•                     Death By Water is a symbol of purification and rebirth. In The Waste Land, water has become a source of death, because a man leads a life of the senses and in pursuit of wealth. Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor is an example of the modern businessman, caught in the whirlpool of activity and accounting, he meets his death. There is no re-birth for him because his life has no element of moral values.

What the Thunder Said

Text

•              Lines 322-330

•              After the torchlight red on

sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places The shouting and the crying Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was now living is now

dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

•              टािि की रोशनी के     बाद पसीने से िथपथ िेहरों पर िालिमा छा गई बगीिों में ठं ढे सन्नाटे के      बाद पथरीिे स्थानों में पीडा के     बाद चिल्िाना और रोना जेि और महि और प्रनतध्वनन दर पहाडों पर वसंत की गडगडाहट की जो अभी जीववत था वह अब मर िुका है हम जो जी रहे थे अब मर रहे हैं थोडा धैयि के    साथ