The Fire Sermon
The title of the third section is taken from one of the Buddha’s famous sermons in which he
warns a crowd of monks that all reality is on fire with suffering and the one seeking
enlightenment must learn to develop an aversion for the experience of the senses. The speech
delivered teaches how to give up earthly passion symbolized by fire. Purification is reached
only by the mortification of body in order to give power to the spirit. The body is the modern
evil, plague.
The essence of this section is that lust burns up life. One can conquer lust by suffering and
pain by passing through fire. This is opposed to modern idea: That sex should be enjoyed
without any regulation. This section is full of debased and unfruitful love affairs: an image of
prostitution, a reminder of the raped Philomela, a proposition by Mr. Eugenides, the clerk and
typist intercourse, Earl Leicester’s flirting with the queen Elizabeth, St. Augustine’s sad
admission of a sexually active youth.
In this section, we discover that the central speaker of the poem has been the blind seer
Tiresias, who having been once female as well as male, can experience the lives of others.
Speakers are neither named nor distinguished from one another and quotation marks are not a
sure way to discern borders but Tiresias identifies himself clearly. His story is that of a man
whose body was wrenched, without warning into a completely different form. His story
displays the horror of metamorphosis.
Stanza 1 describes winter on the Thames, after the summer picnickers have all gone, both the
girls (the nymphs) and their boyfriends who work in the financial district. The speaker sits by
the water in winter near Leman Street Station and knows that the rattle of wintery death is at
his back. The river in fertility myths is tied to the source of life; or, in Spenser’s poetry
(among others) the river is tied to poetic inspiration. Now, without our connection to the past,
the river is just polluted – the nymphs are departed. Then the poet calls London the unreal city
because unbelievable things happen in this town. Rape, lust and cheating prevail without any
hindrance.
The landscape of The Waste Land – a land full of waste, a land without a purpose where life
has gone to waste – illustrates London's pursuit of technological development, excessive
financial aspirations and pollution. From line 60 onwards there is a scene describing
commuters “flo[wing] over London Bridge” towards the city's economic centre and stopping
to have arbitrary conversations with acquaintances. Behind them the clock of a church they
are strategically written to be walking away from strikes “a dead sound on the final stroke of
nine” –the nine-to-five workday is a death sentence.
Stanza 2 begins by recalling more of the horror of WWI, the figure recalling the rats and dead
bodies of the trenches full of water. Eliot ties this together with an allusion to The Tempest
where the young prince believes his father has died in the shipwreck. The speaker then thinks
about the present and Sweeney and a mother-daughter prostitute team.
Stanza 3 recalls the imagery of the nightingale and the rude euphemism of jugging. “Tereu” is
the song the nightingale makes in memory of Tereus, the one who raped Philomela.
Stanza 4 is a speaker remembering a proposition from a Mr. Eugenides (“Well-born”) of
possibly a political and/or sexual nature. C.i.f. means “Carriage, insurance, freight.” (Eliot
recalls it incorrectly in the note.)
Stanzas 5-6 is for many interpreters the key clue to The Waste Land. Tiresias can see a
planned encounter between a clerk and a young woman, which turns out badly, and that the
woman is soon glad it’s over. Sex has become no more than the mating of animals devoid of
emotional significance. Eliot describes an encounter between “the typist” and a carbuncular
youth where the woman is bored and unengaged, but unresisting and the man simply
opportunistic. This scene contradicts to the seduced girl in Goldsmith’s The Vicar Wakefield
who is full of shame and repentance. In the past, the loss of chastity was considered worse
than death for a girl. But in the modern age it is a mechanical routine as done by the typist
girl.
Stanza 7 is likely spoken by Tiresias, though it could be another that the seer hears. The
speaker thinks about the clash (or at least tension) between the loud sounds of the city and the
beauty and peace inside the Church of Magnus Martyr.
The Song of the River Daughters (according to Eliot lines 266-305) represents the three songs
of the river daughters who reflect on the state of the Thames. Song 1 (lines 266-278) sings of
the oil and tar and barges. Song 2 (lines 279-291) sings of two women (like Elizabeth I and
Lady Dudley) who are rowing down the river. Song 3 (lines 292-305) recalls a series of
violent murders along the river. Margate Sands is a low-class sea resort.
Trams and dusty trees
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe:
The last scene of “Fire Sermon” shows some sexual violation experienced by three daughters
of Thames. The first daughter was born at Highbury which is full of trams and dusty trees.
She visited Richmond and Kew, which are picnic sports on the bank of the river. At
Richmond she was criminally assaulted by a man while she was lying on her back on the floor
of a small boat.
The second daughter was ravished at Moorgate:
My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet after the event
He wept. He promised “a new start”
I made no comment what should I resent?”
(lines 296-299: The Waste Land)
The girl was raped by a young man. After the act, the man felt repentant and wept. He
promised to reform himself. For the girl there is nothing to regret because rape is a common
experience of the poor girl’s life.
The third daughter was ravished on the Margate sands:
On Margate sands
I can connect
Nothing with nothing
The broken fingernails of dirty hands
My people humble people who expect
Nothing
(lines 300-305: The Waste Land)
The girl does not remember anything. She compares herself to the broken fingernails of dirty
hands which are useless. Poor people could not do anything against such violation. They just
accept it as a common experience of life.
Final Stanza recalls Augustine’s words at Carthage in his Confessions in which he reflects
how God pulled him out of a cauldron of illicit loves.
“And their friends, loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed have left no address”:
After a wild party, rich businessmen left no address to their sex partners. For businessman sex
is the same as any other commodity. It could be bought and enjoyed without any sense of
moral.
Discussion Questions
Why would Eliot use the Thames to organize this section? What role does the seer
play throughout?
Everything that Tiresias envisions is either about death or about erotically empty
relationships. Why would these be what marks the life of post-WWI London?
What does the song of the three river daughters add to the poem?
What does the final quotation from Augustine suggest?
