Assistant PhD
Eliana Ionoaia
Rusu Margareta Georgiana, IIA
English-German, group 1
Seminar of Modernism and Postmodernism
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot The Picture of a Decaying Society
Modernism in literature appeared at the end of the 19th century, and the beginning of the 20th
one. It was a counter move against traditionalism in poetry, and modernist writers experimented
with the poems style. New methods were introduced, such as fragmenting the poem, languageblending, use of allusions, and of the free verse.
One of the greatest writers of the period is Thomas Sterns Eliot. Some of his greatest poems
include The Waste Land, The Hallow Men, and Four Quartets. T. S. Eliot was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
The Waste Land was published in 1922, and is thought to be one of the most
representatives works of modernist literature. The poem incorporates many elements of the said
current. T. S. Eliot renounces traditionalist methods and creates a fragmented work that is filled
with unrelated references to mythology, history and religion, with many languages blending
together.
In this essay I will comment on some of the references he has made in the first canto The
Burial of the Dead and explain how they represent the society of that time.
The epigraph lies in Petronius' Satyricon. He mentions the sibyl, an Ancient Greek oracle
who was granted immortality by Apollo. In this quote, Sibyl desires to die because she has seen the
terrifying future; the same future and collapse of civilization that Eliot describes in his work.
In the beginning of the poem, we find a reference to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. While
for Chaucer, April was a time of hope and spiritual renewal, Eliot describes it as the cruellest
month (line 1). Also, what is interesting about his choice in the first words of the opening line is
that April comes from the Latin term aperire which means to open.
Line 12, Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch(loosely translated i am
not Russian, I come from Lithuania, I am a true German), suggests that, after World War I, people
have lost their sense of national identity. Also, the war has many many casualties that can never
return home - Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so
many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many. (lines 61-63)
The first part of the first canto is made up of a recall of a personal past but Eliot has
criticized the lost way in which modern society has driven away from its past. He is trying to
preserve the cultural memory. The drift mentioned above is one of the reasons for the decline
society has fallen in.
The second part fixates on the idea of religion. In the old times, religion had a big influence
on people and answered all of man's questions. The decline in power of religion leads to the decline
of the world, eventually turning it into a wasteland. He describes this using the relationship between
the speaker and a woman. In the memories mentioned, the world is filled with life, while now, when
the relationship has ended, the world is the exact opposite, a world of decay.
The Tarot cards in the third part are representative for all that is wrong in the world. Even if
Madame Sosostris is presented in a comic manner, - Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,/ Had
a bad cold, nevertheless/ Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,/ With a wicked pack of cards.
(lines 43-46) the card she draws serve Eliot's purposes.
In the fourth and last part of the first canto, Eliot makes references to Baudelaire, Dickens
and Dante. This is where he presents the real decay of the world. Crowd made of the ones that dies
in World War I wonder aimlessly over London Bridge unable to ever return home.
In the poem, T.S. Eliot manages to capture the decline in which society has fallen and using
a series of symbols and references he manages to portrait this horrific image.
Bibliography
The Waste Land Section I: The Burial of the Dead, Spark Notes,
https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section2.rhtml. Accessed on: 11.03.2014
Vianu, Lidia. Course Package. University of Bucharest, 2014
T.S. Eliot, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot. Accessed on: 11.03.2014
