Allusions in T.S Eliot's The Wasteland

 

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’’