Just the reading of this poem is enough to amaze you. The way T.S. Eliot uses sensual devices, different languages, and imagery to propel the reader through the poem is amazing. When we read it in class I noticed that some knew how to speak Latin, but Latin wasn't the only language in the poem; there was different languages other than English and Latin, I believe there was also German and French. The stanza would shift from one language to the other with no middle ground. Some people didn't know how to approach it, while some would trip up others passed it over and read the footnotes. Not reading the footnotes was a hard thing for me not to do mainly because I wanted to know what the hell i was reading. Plus the used book I own was marked up with stupid comments from somebody who didn't understand it either, and pointed out things that were very easy to pick up. That person didn't need to mark that stuff so i had to travel through the fields of their mess too.
Anyways I believe one person said the wrong word when he was reading, he used the word "person" instead of the correct word "prison." What is so interesting is not that he said the wrong word but why exactly did he say the incorrect version. Perhaps he unconsciously saw that word, I don't know but I do feel it was important. I am sure somebody else did the same thing but that is one that i noticed.
The imagery Eliot uses just makes you feel it. He puts you on a blank canvas and as your breathing he paints around you; he is amazing. I enjoy reading lyrical poems, it is the same style I write, or so I am told. It is like you see an image and you par it with something else so different and create this world of imagination that some get and some don't. He used repetition in the poem, along with rhyme. What i found interesting was the changes in form throughout, I don't know exactly why he did it but i thought it seemed important. He used images, and ideas from historical cultures, for example the Greek culture when he said "Tiresias." Most of the poets of that time did the same thing, so that just kept along with the style and timeline.
I wonder if he was speaking toward an audience or is this some kind of journal entry. The usage of footnotes would say otherwise, because he would know what he was saying, but it speaks about his life it seems. With parts of it depressing and others having a jingle to it. Either way I want to say that it carries the reader to different locations, possibly different atmospheres of understanding the life and death of a person. Was this a way for him to understand his own personal death and life?
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We talked in class about how Tiresias experienced life both as a man and a woman. I think that kind of blurred distinction between genders plays a subtle, but repeated, role in the poem. Didn't we also say in class that Madame Sosostris, the clairvoyant, was in reality a cross-dresser? So it's possible that Eliot was playing into the tradition of poets referencing Greek myths, but also weaving those stories into something more personal and talking about a more specific theme he wanted to address. Now, what he was trying to say about gender roles, who knows?
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