T.S.Eliot (1888-1965)
The Waste Land
Achievement
T. S. Eliot was the most dominant
literary figure between the two
world wars. Poet William Carlos
Williams describes the effect of
The Waste Land as that of an atom
bomb. As an influential literary
critic,
Eliot
describes
his
aesthetics in the famous essay
“Tradition and the Individual
Talent." He conceives a poem as
an object, an organic thing in
itself, demanding a fusion and
concentration
of
intellect,
feeling, and experience. He
suggests that, through cultural
memory, a poet unconsciously
continues the tradition of his
culture. His poetry presents
difficulties
of
numerous
allusions,
use
of
foreign
language, use of metaphysical
conceit, and an absence of
obvious narrative structure. The
Waste Land, considered to be a
remarkable and extraordinary
achievement, deals with the
failure of Western civilization as
shown by World War I.
Primary Works
Prufrock and Other Observations,
1917; The Sacred Wood, 1920;
The Waste Land, 1922; Four
Quartets, 1936-43; Murder in the
Cathedral, 1935; The Family
Reunion, 1939; The Cocktail Party,
1950; The Confidential Clerk, 《机
要 秘 书 》1954;
The
Elder
Statesman, 《政界长老》1958.
1. In "The Love Song ...," how does
Prufrock deal with the world around
him? What does he mean when he
asks, "Do I dare / Disturb the
universe?" and "How should I begin?"
Discuss the recurrent phrase,
"decisions and revisions", in relation
to Prufrock's nature?
2. How is the city portrayed in "The
Love Song ...,"? Does this sense of the
city bear any relation to Prufrock's
character and his dilemma? What is
the picture of modern life given in the
poem?
3. "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock" is an interior, dramatic
monologue. Is it a love song in any
traditional sense? In any modern
sense? Also comment on the use of
"we" in the last three lines. Do they
suggest an attempt by Eliot to
demonstrate the universal quality of
Prufrock's existence, to suggest that
all live lives without meaning and
confront death without dignity?
4.What words or phrases can
immediately evoke feelings of
desperation in the first canto of The
Waste Land?
5. What images does the first canto
show us?
6. What are two repeated allusions in
The Waste Land ?
7. How do you know explain the
theme of “death without rebirth” in
The Waste Land?
8. Is there any hope to save the
waste land and the people on it?
9. How does the poet indicate what
he calls the “disassociation of
sensibilities” in The Waste Land?
10.What is the modern city like to
Eliot?
11. What are the lives of Eliot’s city
dwellers?
Information about The Waste Land:
1.Writing background: (1)Eliot was ill and
feared psychological collapse in 1921.
(2)Unstable situation: chaos in Western
politics, economy and cultures,
unemployment and poverty facing the
soldiers retired from World War I;
government incompetent worsen the
chaos. (3)In May, 1921 visiting a
churchyard reminded him of Thomas
Grey’s “Elegy written in a Country
Churchyard”; (4) Perusal of “Ulysses” by
Joyce—completely new artistic method:
construction or integration of fragments
with allusions, quotations and imitation,
producing a ironic and dramatic structure;
conscious of the disintegration of the
traditional myths, legends and rituals;
attempt to re-build the spiritual home of
the modern man. (5)In the summer of
1921, Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du
printemps ( “Sacrificial Rites for Spring” ),
exciting, confirmed the ideal in poetry or
art Eliot attempted to reach—to infuse or
merge the chaotic , confused,
complicated and disintegrated existence
of the modern society into a organic unity
and order. The artistic effect of vision
produced by primitive music makes
everything reveal its inherent significance.
2. Ezra Pound revised and deleted the draft.
(Imagism: “To use the language of
common speech … to employ always the
exact word. … To create new rhythms…. To
present an image… poetry should render
particulars exactly and not deal in vague
generalities…. To produce poetry that is
hard and clear….concentration is of the
very essence of poetry”.
3. Urban setting. In the poetry of the 19th
century the commonest source of imagery
had been nature. 20th, two liabilities:
(1)The imagery of nature isolated poetry
from the the contemporary urban milieu
and therefore made it seem escapist. (2)
because nature was felt to be refreshing,
consoling, or beautiful, it imposed these
qualities upon poetry, and thus limited the
range of emotion poetry could express.
4. The sights and sounds of the modern
city—honking automobiles, barges on the
polluted river, a crowd of people crossing
London Bridge on their way to work–
were far from unprecedented but still
very unusual in English or American
poetry.
5.Eliot presents the urban milieu with
imaginative power–- and to use it to
express a vision of life, resembling
documentary film as it cuts from one
shot of the city to another—
phantasmagoric (unreal,dreamlike and
changeable) and inexpressibly doleful
(mournful;dismal).
6. The lives of Eliot’s city dwellers are
sordid, empty, incoherent, and
meaningless.
7. The poem interfuses allusions to the
historical past and to the literature, art,
and myths of many languages and culture
–6 language, 35 writers and 56 pieces of
works with lots of footnotes by the author.
8. The allusions present parallels and
contrasts to the contemporary material.
The effect of the allusions is to place the
present moment within a vast temporal
perspective, extending to ancient India
and the prehistoric world. The poem
invokes or call upon the vegetation
myths in the prehistoric world for help.
The panoramic effect of the allusions is
powerful.
9. Many of these allusions are brief
quotations, often in the original
language.
10. One strand of allusions refers to
primitive vegetation myths, which
explained the annual withering of nature
in the fall and its revival in spring as the
death and rebirth of a god or gods.
Following sources he indicated in his
footnotes, Eliot conflated these myths
with the medieval legends of the quest
for the Holy Grail. According to the
composite myth invoked in the poem,
the land is waste ( a desert) because its
king is ill or dead. If he can be restored,
the rain will return to the land and it will
again be fertile. The myth of the dead
and resurrected king also alludes to
Christ.
11. Both the imagery of being in a
desert and that of the modern city
express the psychological and spiritual
state that is the poem’s subject. But
the symbolism of the desert
additionally suggests at least the
possibility of relief from this condition.
Relief would be obtained through
finding a spring of water or by the
12. Eliot’s style in the Waste Land was
deliberately impersonal, concrete,
fragmentary, and discontinuous. (1)
Impersonality means that an author
does not express his own experience and
emotion. At least, he does not voice it as
his own, but describes things, invents,
characters, or creates dramatic scenes,
and thus embodies emotion objectively in
the particulars he renders. (2) These
particulars are concrete in the sense
that they render sensations and actions
as opposed to general ideas. (3) But in
the Waste Land such concrete
particulars are only fragments. The
poem does not give complete
descriptions, quotations, conversations,
or actions, but only bits and pieces of
them. The words of Marie, for example,
at the start of the poem are clearly part
of a longer conversation, but we cannot
know the context of this conversation or
anything else about Marie. (4)Such
fragments are juxtaposed in
unpredictable ways, and since each
presents a different voice, action,
emotion, and style, their sequence is at
first disorienting (confusing). Gradually
one finds interrelations within this
discontinuity, but the interrelation is
by leimotifs (主旋律）. This term,which
is borrowed from the musical theories of
Richard Wagner, refers to the use in
separate passages of a poem of the
same or similar images, allusions, or
themes. Because we associate the
different contexts in which a leitmotif
appears, a web of leitmotifs throughout
a work helps us to sense that it is an
interconnected whole. In The Waste
Land the images of water and of a
desert are leitmotifs. Among the many
more particular ones are the several
allusions to Shakespeare’s the Tempest.
In the course of the poem a leitmotif
acquires a dense cluster of associations
and becomes a symbol.
Land I saw
Epigraph: “ For with The
my Waste
own eyes
the Sibyl hanging in a jar at Cumae, and
"NAM
Cuimis
whenSibyl,
the boys
saidsibyllam
to
her,quidem
“Sibyl,
Whategō
The
a famous
prophetess,
had
ipse
meis“I
vidi
in ampulla
do you
want?”immoral
Sheoculis
relied,
want
to
been
granted
life
by
the
god
pendere，et
cum illi
dicerent:
die”” The
quotation
from
thepueri
Apollo.
But
she
had is
forgotten
to ask
for
Σιβνλλατιθελειζ;
repondebat
Satyricon
of Retronius
century illa:
immortal youth;
hence(first
she aged
εινθελ
ω." was
A.D.). 诗歌卷首的引语源于公元1世纪古罗马
perpetually
and her áπóθαν
shriveled
form
佩特罗尼乌斯的小说《萨蒂利孔》。
kept
in a jar in the temple of Hercules
at Cumae. The Epigraph sets the
（“是的，我自己亲眼看见古
keynote for the whole poem and implies
米的西比尔吊在一个笼子里。孩
Sibyl’s living 子们在
state is问她：西比尔，你要什么
similar to that of
the contemporary
man.
的时候，她回答说，我要死。”）
The For
firstEzra
of many
Poundreferences to flowers
一、死者葬礼
throughout
this fabbro.
section, and the poem as
il miglior
a whole. Lilacs (and later on in the
四月是最残忍的一个月，荒地上
（献给埃兹拉·庞德
section,
hyacinths)
are
associated
with
I.
THE
BURIAL
OF
THE
DEAD
Dedication:
Ezra Pound helped
长着丁香，把回忆和欲望
最卓越的匠人）
desire, romantic
promise, and
Eliot参合在一起，又让春雨
revise The Waste Land. The
The
reference
in the
titlehow,
of this
first
rejuvenation.
Note
also
in these
APRIL
is
the
cruellest
month,
breeding
phrase
in Italian means “the
催促那些迟钝的根芽。
section
of
the poem
isa to
the Anglican
opening
lines,
this
is
mixture
of
Lilacs
out冬天使我们温暖，大地
ofcraftsman”
the dead land,and
mixing
better
is a
service
the dead.with
It isdeath
highlyand that
imageryfor
associated
quotation
from
Dante’s Purgatorio,
Memory
and
desire,
stirring
给助人遗忘的雪覆盖着，又叫
appropriate
allusion
both in
itsdespair.
associated with
life, hope
and
XXXVI.
Dante
meets
the
poet
枯干的球根提供少许生命。
Dull
with spring
rain.
encapsulation
(cover)
of the for
theme
This,roots
in turn,
sets
the terms
the of
poem
Guido Guinizelli, who tells Dante
death
which
pervades
this section
Winter
kept
usand
warm,
5 (and
as
a whole
itscovering
ultimately
inconclusive
that the Provencal（法：普罗旺斯）
the
poem
as asnow,
whole)
andofalso
the
（缺乏决定性的）
promise
the for
possibility
Earthpoet
in forgetful
feeding
Arnaut Daniel was a better
intimation(implication暗示）
of salvation
of
regeneration
and
the
fulfilment
of
A little
life
with
dried
tubers.
craftsman than himself.
and
the resurrection.
1
romantic
promise.
Eliot probably is conscious of the parallels with the
opening of Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,
(Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote / ... Than
longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.") and the beginning
of the season of Easter and pilgrimage and, therefore,
spiritual optimism. There are also, of course, the
traditional associations of April as the season of Spring
and Rebirth. Here, however, April is not a time for a
"new start", but rather a savage re-initiation of the cycle
of life-from-death. In the Notes to the poem Eliot
comments on his indebted to the tradition of vegetation
and fertility myths, and this would bring additional
significance to the importance of the underlying notions
of the seasonal cycles of Birth and Death.
I. The Burial of the Dead: the title
Structure: five juxtaposed tableaus
Theme: Life from death and decay
Erroneous argument (perversion):
spring—death; winter—life. This
perversion shows the sense or state of
living dead in the waste land,
corresponding to the state or sense of
Sibyl, becoming the central symbol of
the canto.
The reference in the title of this first
section of the poem is to the Anglican
service for the dead. It is highly
appropriate allusion both in its
encapsulation (cover) of the theme of
death which pervades this section (and
the poem as a whole) and also for the
intimation of salvation and the
resurrection.
1.Starnbergersee—talk with Marie( Russia, Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Lithuania) --homeless
2.the description of the waste land (modern world after
World War I)) –barren, stony land,scorching sun, dead
tree, no water, implying people living in a vanity,
unseay, vular and filthy world—valueless , without
anything to wish for or depend on; hopeless,
meaningless, lifeless but only desperation.
3. The futile love with hyacinth girl.(Germany)
desperate or hopeless love—emotional desperation.
4. Madame Sosostris tells fortune (France).
5. Unreal city (England). 26
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With
a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
夏天来得出人意外，在下阵雨的时候
Starnbergersee:
a resort
lake near Munich,
And
went
on
in
sunlight,
into
the
Hofgarten,
来到了斯丹卜基西；我们在柱廊下躲避， 10
incoffee,
southern
Germany.
And
drank
and
talked
for
an
hour.
等太阳出来又进了霍夫加登，
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt eutsch.
Hofgarten:
coourt
garden
(German).
A
喝咖啡，闲谈了一个小时。
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
palace
formerly
byfrom
King Ludwig
我不是俄国人，我是立陶宛来的，是地道的德国人。
My cousin's,
heI’m
took
outoccupied
on aI sled,
Bin…deutsch:
notme
Russian,
come
II ofGerman”(German)
Bavaria
on the Starnbergersee.
而且我们小时候住在大公那里
And
I was true
frightened.
Hestands
said, Marie,
15
Lithuania,
ofwe
central
Marie,
hold onArch-duke:
tight. And title
down
went.European
我表兄家，他带着我出去滑雪橇，
In
the mountains,
thereEliot
you said
feel free.
nobility.
the voice speaking
我很害怕。他说，玛丽，
I玛丽，牢牢揪住。我们就往下冲。
read, much of
theisnight,
go south
thebeen
winter.
here
that aand
woman
who in
had
a
countess in the Austro-Hungarian
在山上，那里你觉得自由。
empire, which collapsed at the end of
大半个晚上我看书，冬天我到南方。
the First World War.
2
什么树根在抓紧，什么树根在从
What
are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
这堆乱石块里长出？人子啊，
Out
of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
20
你说不出，也猜不到，因为你只知道
You
cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A一堆破烂的偶像，承受着太阳的鞭打
heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
枯死的树没有遮荫。蟋蟀的声音也不使人放心，
And
the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
焦石间没有流水的声音。只有
And
the dry stone no sound of water. Only
这块红石下有影子，
There
is shadow under this red rock,
25
（请走进这块红石下的影子）
(Come
in under the shadow of this red rock),
我要指点你一件事，它既不像
And
I will show you something different from either
你早起的影子，在你后面迈步；
Your
shadow at morning striding behind you
Or也不像傍晚的，站起身来迎着你；
your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
我要给你看恐惧在一把尘土里。
I will
show you fear in a handful of dust.
30
风吹得很轻快，
Frisch weht
der
Wind
吹送我回家去，
Der Heimat
zu.
爱尔兰的小孩，
Mein Irisch
Kind,
你在哪里逗留？
Wo
weilest
du?
“一年前你先给我的是风信子；
'You gave
me hyacinths first a year ago;
35
他们叫我做风信子的女郎”，
'They——可是等我们回来，晚了，从风信子的园
called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet里来，
when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth
garden,你的臂膊抱满，你的头发湿漉，我说不出
Your arms
full,
and
your
hair
wet,
I
could
not
话，眼睛看不见，我既不是
Speak, 活的，也未曾死，我什么都不知道，
and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living 望着光亮的中心看时，是一片寂静。
nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking
into the heart of light, the silence.
荒凉而空虚是那大海。
Od' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
马丹梭梭屈里士，著名的女相士，
患了重感冒，可仍然是
欧罗巴知名的最有智慧的女人，
带着一副恶毒的纸牌，这里，她说
是你的一张，那淹死了的腓尼基水
手，
(这些珍珠就是他的眼睛，看！）
这是贝洛多纳，岩石的女主人
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
一个善于应变的女人。
The lady of situations. 50
这人带着三根杖，这是“转轮”，
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
这是那独眼商人，这张牌上面
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
一无所有，是他背在背上的一种东西。
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
是不准我看见的。我没有找到
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
“那被绞死的人”。怕水里的死亡。
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. 55
我看见成群的人，在绕着圈子走。
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
谢谢你。你看见亲爱的爱奎尔太太的时候
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
就说我自己把天宫图给她带去，
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
这年头人得小心啊。
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal
City,
60
并无实体的城，
在冬日破晓的黄雾下，
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
一群人鱼贯地流过伦敦桥，人数是那么多，
A我没想到死亡毁坏了这许多人。
crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I 叹息，短促而稀少，吐了出来，
had not thought death had undone so many.
人人的眼睛都盯住在自己的脚前。
Sighs,
short and infrequent, were exhaled,
流上山，流下威廉王大街，
直到圣马利吴尔诺斯教堂，那里报时的钟声
And
each man fixed his eyes before his feet. 65
敲着最后的第九下，阴沉的一声。
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying
'Stetson!
在那里我看见一个熟人，拦住他叫道：“斯代真！”
你从前在迈里的船上是和我在一起的！
'You
who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 70
去年你种在你花园里的尸首，
'That
corpse you planted last year in your garden,
它发芽了吗？今年会开花吗？
还是忽来严霜捣坏了它的花床？
'Has
it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
叫这狗熊星走远吧，它是人们的朋友，
'Or不然它会用它的爪子再把它挖掘出来！
has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh你！虚伪的读者！——我的同类——我的兄弟！
keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
75
'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'