The author of this article was Daniel T. McGee. At the beginning he explained that nobody should be able to read it easy, just like Ian Hamilton, who said "Eliot wanted the poem to be difficult and no doubt conceived its difficulty as an important aspect of it's total meaning. Where the New Critics had admired such high-modernist obscurity, Hamilton criticized the difficulty of the poem's wealth of cultural allusion for its aristocratic aloofness, a determination to keep up the barriers of class."
But as you keep going through the text you realize that the poem isn't just a difference between class, but also of racial issues. If you look back at the time when the poem was written many of today's laws, and culture are not the same. There was a big differences in the way African American people were treated, and the way European Americans or whites were treated.
And a possible reason for using all the different languages could be because T.S. Eliot wanted us to see the cultural differences very easily. McGee explained the purpose when he said "The poem produces foreign languages in order to dramatize their collapse into one, universal language, thereby replacing cultural differences between languages with the metaphysical difference between language and its absence."
Lines 347 through 359 seemed to be important. McGee highlighted this section of the poem out because he said this was the part where Eliot announces his own failure, and inability to make water or the sound of water. This helps explain the way Eliot revolts against traditional styles, and the way it splits away from everything else around it.
Religion and music seemed to be laced throughout the understanding of his article. Some of those places when confusing, but was important to understand the entire poem. But this poem shows places where senses such as depression, and waste took control of the movement. The society was post World War I time period, where most cultures, and societies were rebuilding. A society that destroys its own self, and one that lies in its own waste.
The poem could possibly have been split off into five different sections to show the separation of other voices, or it could have been a way to create a sense of decaying of the cultures. But even with all the negative and dark images the ending still has a uplifting and hope. The words at the end help with that, and the words are Datta
McGee, Daniel T. "Dada Da Da: Sounding the Jew in Modernism. English Literary History. 68.2 (Summer 2001): 501-527. Project MUSE 2 March 2009
I liked your post and the accompanying source that you used. I found it all very insightful and useful in my understanding of the giant complex maze of a poem that is The Wasteland. Tying together the multiple languages, the downfall of Europe, and the allusions to the many different societies in the Wasteland was something that I was having a pretty rough time attempting to accomplish and your post completely fixed that situation for me. Finally I liked your last paragraph talking about how the poem being split into 5 different parts to create a sense of decaying of cultures because I can see that through the common elements found in each section, but they are all slightly different and/or skewed.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
I have to be honest...I wanted to post on this entry because it was the shortest. Geez you write long entries. But I like the way you believe the different languages and images used are supposed to help people realize that they are all part of one, at least I think thats what you were going for. But I read in another entry that you said Eliot locked the door, but there is nothing inside the door once it is opened. I think thats funny because when I was doing my research I saw that Eliot admitted to not knowing much about the tarot cards mentioned in the poem, that he just used them to fit his tone and message. And I also found that it some places his notes seemed to be irrelevant, and have little meaning to the poem. Which poses the question, why make a note of it when it won't help people to understand? That maybe the notes are supposed to be look at as being a little humorous and I wonder why he chose to note on some things and not others? Surely a person can't gain full understand by just reading the notes...sometimes they just confuse the reader more...and I forgot what I was trying to write about so I guess I will stop.
ReplyDeleteI also think it's great that you touched not only on the religious themes present in the poem, but the musical structures too. I have an mp3 of T.S. Eliot reading "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," which is admittedly a MUCH less complicated poem about a guy who's afraid to live his life. Instead he just sits around, watching women pass by and imagining himself as secondary characters in major literary works, and things like that. I'd be really curious to hear Eliot reading "The Waste Land," simply to hear how HE meant those chants and bird calls and noises to sound, and how they're meant to mix with the rest of the poem.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of the poem being musical, too. All of the repeated sounds we read in the poem do sound like music, or infer that the characters in the poem are listening to music. Music dwells on repetition, and so does this poem. There are constantly parts that are rewritten throughout the poem and ways verses are rewritten to mean different things. The poem itself has a very music aspect to it. It's lyrical, its beautiful, it could be set t oa rythm, although I can't imagine it would be a widely popular hit song.
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