Eliot in his poem,
“The Wasteland “, uses many allusions from different sources. His uses of
quotation from a large number of European writers give profundity and intensity
to his poetry. The myriad sources of allusions from literature, the Bible and
myth effectively mirror the thematic aspect of the poem such as the confusion
and decay of modern civilization.
The epigraph of the
Wasteland is from Satyrican. It means ‘’I want to die’’. The boring
mechanical routine, sex perversity and commercial instinct of the modern man
are responsive for what the psychologists call the death wish.
In the Wasteland
there are several allusions to Dante’s Divine Comedy, including specific
references to the canto iii of Inferno. For example, the first of these
allusions occurs in the opening section of the poem, entitled, “The Burial of
the Dead”. He says,
“Unreal
city
.
. .
A
crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many
I
had not thought death had undone so many”
The crowds moving
over London Bridge are the spiritually dead citizens of the Wasteland going
their daily routine. They reminds us of the similar crowd in Dante’s Inferno where
Dante says,
“I
should never have believed death had undone so many”
The
phrase Unreal city is borrowed from Charles Baudelaire’s poem
entitled ‘Les septs veillards’. Baudelaire Calls Paris the unreal city and
Eliot calls London the unreal city.
Another line from
the Burial of the Dead, ‘’ sighs, short and infrequent were exhaled ‘’-
comes from canto iv of the Inferno in which Dante encounters the pagan souls of
Limbo who ‘’did not have baptimism”. In this canto, Dante says-
‘’Here,
there was to be heard no sound of lamentation, only sighs which disturb the
eternal air’’the
sighs refers to the sounds made by the pagan who could not have entered into
God’s grace anyway.
Eliot’s use of
allusion to canto IV and earlier allusion to canto iii show that in the waste
land, he is trying to draw attention to two particular kinds of sinners
depicted in Dante’s Inferno. Eliot’s London crowds are ambivalent, like the
sinners of canto iii and live in longing like those of canto IV.
Eliot regards April
is the cruelest month because the new sweet shower of April offer no glad
welcome to them. Here he contrasts to the description of the spring as
reflected in Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canter bury Tales:
“When
that April with its sweet shower
…
And
made it burgeon forth in flower”
Though April is the
happy month but for the modern waste lands April appears as the cruelest month
because they are spiritually dead.
A Game of Chess
The title of the
section "A Game of Chess" is taken from the play "Women Beware
Women" by Thomas Middleton. While the duke is seducing a girl in the
gallery in view of the audience, his confederate is distracting her mother in
law's attention with a game of chess. Here the game of chess is symbol of
fruitless activity and an occasion from some excitement to relieve the monotony
of modern life. The lines :‘’the chair she sat in, like a burnished
throne/An empty, rich woman is sitting at her dressing table.” Is the
reference to Antony and Cleopatra, in which Enobarbus describe Cleopatra at her
first meeting with Anthony:
“The
barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
…
The
winds were love-sick with them
The allusion to Antony and Cleopatra
contrasts voluptuous femininity and romantic love, and the artificial and
sterile personal relationships in the waste land..
At the last portion of this section: "Good night,
Ladies, good night, sweet / ladies, good night, good night."- has been
quoted from the speech of Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ophelia imagines
that she has been deserted by Hamlet and goes mad as she loaves the royal room.
These are the last words of mad Ophelia before her death by drowing. It
suggests that poor Lil is so much frustrated that she is also on the verge of
death.
The Fire Sermon
The title of The Fire Sermon is taken from the famous sermon
of Buddha, popularly known as the fire sermon. The allusion Buddha's Fire
sermon has a close reference to the fire lust with which the modern world is
burning
"But
at my back, in a cold blast I hear /The rattled of the bones, and chuckle
spread from ear to ear" is an ironic contrast to the lines of
Andrew Marvell in his poem, To His Coy Mistress:
"But
at my back I always hear
Times
winged chariot hurrying near."
Marvell heard the
sound of time's fleeting riding on his winged chariot behind him. But in
"The Waste Land", Tiresias seems to hear the noise of the Londoners
ratting about like dry bones.
"The
sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney
to Mrs porter in the Spring."
Another line -
"When lovely
woman stoops to folly” means, when lovely woman allows herself to be reduced.
The line is taken from Olivia's song in Oliver Goldsmith's novel "The
Vicar of Wakefield".
"When
a lovely woman stoops to folly
.
. .
To
hide her shame from every eye
.
. . is to die.’’
In these lines
exposes Olivia’s pathetic situation. She felt terribly guilty and repentant and
wanted to die. In contrast to Olivia the modern girl does not mind the loss of
her chastity rather she ‘’paces about her room’’
Prof. Prem raj Pushpakaran writes -- 2022 marks the centenary year of T.S. Eliot first published his long poem, The Waste Land and let us celebrate the occasion!!!
ReplyDeletehttps://worldarchitecture.org/profiles/gfhvm/prof-prem-raj-pushpakaran-profile-page.html