The Waste Land (1922)

1. The Waste Land (1922) T. S. Eliot

2. Simulating a nervous breakdown, the poem The Waste Land is a dramatic mythical journey into the recesses of the unconscious as well as through 1920s London for the purpose of attaining a higher spiritual awareness and harmony.

3. In more simple psychological terms, this is an epic poem that depicts many of the clinical symptoms associated with depression and suggests that in order to experience reality holistically and begin to heal, human beings need to identify with others to develop a sense of compassion.

4. Contents • Overview • The Myth • The Content of the Poem • The Form of the Poem • Analysis of the Poem

5. Overview

6. From Chaos to Harmony • What are human beings to do when they are in despair, and religion offers no hope, especially after the senseless deaths caused by World War I and the Spanish flu? • Catastrophic events suggest that we are quite alone in a universe in which chaos is the natural order of things. • Feeling fragmented and disconnected from the self, society, and nature, human beings believe that life is futile. • Eliot’s purpose is to rehabilitate a discredited system of beliefs to help us cope with life’s contingencies. • To accomplish this goal, Eliot takes us on a journey of the soul. • But this journey is not a free ride, for Eliot expects the reader to participate in this quest of discovery—an initiation—which will reveal meaning, truth, virtue, and the good life.

7. From Chaos to Harmony • However, the poem is very difficult to read because its content and form mirror the apparent anarchy and meaninglessness of life. • Filled with cryptic, chaotic networks of references, including the incongruent voices of ancient prophets and modern poets as well as obscure historical allusions, the poem is an attempt to provide mankind with the way back to the Garden—the place of unity, of non-duality between male and female, good and evil, and God and man. • It is the reader’s task to decipher this incomprehensible, puzzle-like poem by reflecting on the connections that exist between all of these jumbled, obscure references. • The reader can only discover these connections—unscramble “the code”—by transcending the temporal (the here and now) and embracing the spiritual (the eternal). • In the end, this poem is meant to provide optimism and transform human consciousness by presenting a series of enduring spiritual truths whose aim is to encourage the flowering of our humanity through the letting go of the ego.

8. T. S. Eliot’s Objective Correlative The experience that conveys the message

9. The Waste Land as the Objective Correlative The waste land is the situation that signifies human despair and fear of death “. . . A sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives and living that has settled upon us, and that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities, or even our physical courage—until, of course, it gets us into one of its inhuman wars.” (Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth)

10. Objective Correlative: The Symbolic Structure “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding the ‘objective correlative’, in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

11. The Myth

12. The Journey: The Mythic InitiationThe Waste Land as a Modern Hell • Is associated with the impulse to search, discover, and seek change for the sake of self-knowledge and of sharing the experience with others • Implies the awareness of human duality—mortal and immortal, death and life, good and evil, male and female—and the struggle to integrate these antagonistic elements into a new whole: an authentic identity • Suggests an inward return to the divine source of life for the sake of living in harmony with the self as well as with nature and society • Affirms that heaven and hell are within us and that we need to find a way of life which will permit us to experience the divine, spiritual presence

13. The Place to be Traversed: The Waste Land • Refers to the manifestation of a chaotic, meaningless place within as well as outside of the self • A barren land, London, that can only be made fertile again through a ritual sacrifice • A place within the self that can be humanized through patience, self-denial, and compassion

14. The Hero: The Protagonist/Tiresias • Shares with us his psychological experiences and insights: • A participator as well as a spectator • A commentator on the past, present, and future • A synthesis of all the characters that appear in the poem—Marie, the Fisher King, Madame Sosostris, the hyacinth girl, the young man carbuncular, Ferdinand— at once the wounded god, the sage woman, as well as the quester, the initiate, and the resurrected god • Purveys truths and how to live life in an authentic manner • Suggests that we need to detach ourselves from our egos • Affirms that once you die to your flesh, you are born to your spirit • Implies that true reality is based on your identity and unity with all life • Teaches us how to penetrate through the labyrinth of life so that spiritual values come through

15. The Reader • Is invited to participate in this panoramic journey through the waste land • Is limited by a single perspective at any given moment, therefore constantly feeling lost • Perceives the poem and life not as a whole but as a series of constantly shifting series of patterns and perspectives • Reality appears to be fragmented and disordered • Is challenged to unify all of the appearing and disappearing images into a new transcendent whole

16. The Content of the Poem

17. Purpose of The Waste Land • To convey the soul’s and civilization’s sense of emptiness, confusion, and aimlessness after WWI • To provide a means of regeneration for the soul and civilization • To revitalize poetry

18. The Meaning of The Waste Land • Convey the state of post-war civilization and the soul through “the heap of broken images” • Transcend the ego by identifying with the continuity of significant tradition, of the inherited wisdom of the human race • Escape chronological time to experience the truth of eternity

19. Premise of The Waste Land: Unity • The waste land is an ever-present dimension of civilization. • We need to accept that all wars are one war, all battles are one battle, all journeys one journey, all rivers one river, all rooms one room, all loves one love, and ultimately, all people one person. • All of the specific examples of these things in the poem are in every case representative of their kind. • Through universalizing the context of the poem, the poem transcends time and place. • Chronological time takes on a cosmic as well as psychological dimension.

20. Difficulties in Reading The Waste Land:The Shifting Levels of Reality • An extremely complex structure to be understood through free-associations • Numerous interruptions in the narrative level • chronological level: a single day in the real world • stream of consciousness: the internal monologues in the minds of the speaker • Piled up contrasting references, many not in English • mingles past, present, and future • intermingles a multiplicity of interrelated of historical, religious, and artistic sources

21. Biographical, Historical, and Intellectual Contexts

22. External Sources • Biographical and historical background • The collective vision

23. The Waste Land: Biographical and Historical Contexts—Modern Aimlessness T. S. Eliot Post-war society

24. Biographical Context • Met Ezra Pound, who introduced him to several modernist poets • Married Vivien Haigh-Wood • Worked at Lloyd’s Bank • Had a nervous breakdown; recuperated in Margate and Lausanne, Switzerland

25. Historical Context: WWI • Laid the battlefields to waste • Filled trenches with corpses • Had spiritually scarred soldiers and the population at large • Had physically weakened populations, enabling the Spanish flu to kill over 50 million people

26. Carl Jung The Waste Land: Regeneration The Golden Bough From Ritual to Romance The Tarot

27. Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious • The unconscious inherited wisdom of the race • Contains all of the images, archetypes, that have ever given rise to myths • Archetypes, to be of value, must be recreated in collaboration with the conscious intelligence into a process of ordered growth, of transformation

28. Jung’s “Archetypes of Transformation” • Refer to the integration of the personality • Occur with the detachment from the world of objective reality as the center of experience and the finding of a new dimension in which to live • Involve the death of an old pattern of life and the birth of a new

29. Jung’s “Archetypes of Transformation” • During the process of transformation, certain archetypical images occur, forming a continuity and an interaction of symbols expressing the disintegration and death of the old pattern and the gradual emergence of the new. • After the transformation, the center of the personality shifts from the ego to a point of equilibrium between the individual consciousness and the collective psyche.

30. Jessie L. Weston: From Ritual toRomance (1920) • An attempt to explain the roots of the legend of the Holy Grail • Enumerates the seemingly inexplicable elements of the quest--The Fisher King, The Wasteland, the Chapel Perilous, and the Grail Cup itself • Ties them to the symbols and initiatory rites of the ancient mystery religions whose common source were the vegetation rituals and fertility rites

31. The Legend: The Curse • Concerns a land which has been blighted by a curse so that it is arid and waterless, rendering it infertile • Are linked with the plight of a ruler, the Fisher King, who as a result of an illness or a wound, has become sexually impotent

32. The Legend: The Curse • Will be removed when a Knight appears who must ask the question as to the meaning of the Lance and the Grail • the lance which pierced Christ’s side at the Crucifixion • the cup from which Christ and the disciples drank at the Last Supper

33. The Legend: Other Versions of the Curse • Will be removed when Knight asks why this curse has taken place • Will be removed when the Knight undertakes various ordeals, culminating in that of the Chapel or Cemetery Perilous

34. James Frazer: The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion (1890-1915) • Reads a bit like a novel that touches on almost anything • Explores the roots of mythology, folklore, magic, and religion from the far East, the near East, Africa, Europe, America and more • Shows the parallels between these and Christianity

35. Significance of The Golden Bough • Its thesis is that ancient religions were fertility cults that centered around the worship of, and periodic sacrifice of, a sacred king, the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the earth, and who died at the harvest and who was reincarnated in the spring. • It claimed that this legend was central to almost all of the world's mythologies.

36. Significance of the Golden Bough • The golden bough is a reference to a mystical tree in a Greco-Roman myth. • In the ancient tale the hero Aeneas consults the prophetess who is one of the Sybil at Cumae. • The Sybil tells Aeneas to break a branch from a certain tree that is sacred to Juno Inferno. • Then Aeneas is led to the entrance of the Underworld that he descends. • Aeneas approaches the Stygian lake that Charon will not ferry him across because he is not dead. • The Sybil who accompanies Aeneas then produces a golden bough that allows Aeneas entrance into the Underworld.

37. Relationship between Fertility Figures and Jesus Christ • Fertility figures such as Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysius are evoked by Eliot to show the resurrection of the godhead as an experience and a hope common to all of mankind. • These various fertility myths are brought together and given concrete form in the personality of Jesus, the common, universal symbol of all the risen dead.

38. The Tarot • Based on similarities of the imagery and numbering, some associate the Tarot with ancient Egypt. • The pack of cards was used to forecast the rising and falling of the waters of the Nile. • Cards were used to control the sources of life.

39. The Form of the Poem

40. The Form of The Waste Land • Syncopated rhythms of modern life • Multiple meanings suggest transformation: from fragmentation to re-integration • Organizational networks

41. Fragmentation and Re-integration • A collection of fragments connected through a network of echoes, contrasts, parallels, and allusions • Each fragment presented as incomplete until perceived in the context of the whole poem • Fragments then coalesce into a new unity more meaningful than the former “broken image”

42. Method of Fragmentation and Re-integration: Cubism • Time reconstituted in much the same way as cubism reconstitutes space—a jumble of multiple layers on top of an occluded background presence: the history of mankind • Characters and situations seen from multiple points of view

43. Method of Fragmentation and Re-integration: Collage • The past and present; the mythic and the real; high and popular culture; many different languages • The real and the imagined co-exist in the poem erasing the boundaries between them • The real and the imagined support one another • The real creating a sense of authenticity • The imagined control the significance of the real by interpreting them

44. Method of Fragmentation and Re-integration: Surrealism • Grotesque images remembered from a dream • Elusive • Eerie • Enigmatic • Images welded together of unrelated, contradictory elements • Banal modern life/significant traditions • Double image • Every episode, character, and symbol transformed under pressure of its context into something else • Achieved through ambiguous symbols, allusions, the exploitation of physical resemblances, and quotations to fit new applications

45. Formal Networks The Mythical Method Alchemy The Kaleidoscope The Labyrinth Film Collage

46. The Mythical Method • Presents experience in symbolic form • Harmonizes the mind, the body, and the way of life in accord with the way that nature dictates • Links the individual to a social group • Creates a pattern that brings human beings into significant relationship with mysterious forces outside the actualities of daily life

47. The Mythical Method • Means of perceiving inner realities through their reflection in concrete images • Means of manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity • Means of structuring experience, of projecting emotional material by definition fragmented • Means of expressing revelation rather than explanation

48. Alchemy • An early protoscientific practice combining elements of chemistry, physics, astrology, art, semiotics, metallurgy, medicine, and mysticism • Most well-known goal: the transmutation of any metal into either gold or silver • A metaphor for a spiritual transformation of the self • Books on alchemy written to be decoded in order to discover their true meaning

49. Labyrinth • Still being used throughout the world as a meditative and healing tool to penetrate the chaos of life • Suggest going on a pilgrimage to discover something about ourselves and God • Implies losing one’s way and having to start from the beginning all over again • Blocks yet sets one on the path to eternal life

50. Labyrinth • Release of distracting cares as you move toward the center and let your mind gradually quiet • Receptivity to whatever illumination you receive as you pause in the center for prayer or meditation • Rejoining the world with your renewed vision or refreshed spirit as you follow the path outward again.