Images of Wetness, Dryness, and Death by Water
By section in The Waste Land
One cannot read The Waste Land without noticing the repeated interplay of the motifs of wetness and dryness. However
before one looks for a pattern one has to deal with the very strange Section IV of the poem: “Death by Water.” It appears
strange because it is only 8 lines long, and doesn’t seem to fit with the first three sections, which focus on the loss of
spirituality in London, or the last section, which seems to occur in a foreign waste land.
In Eliot’s original composition of the “Death by Water” section was much longer, but Ezra Pound, who helped Eliot by
commenting on parts to the poem, suggested cutting everything except the eight lines about the drowning of Phlebas, the
Phoenician sailor. Eliot responded by suggesting Phlebas be dropped too, but Pound insisted it be retained because of it is “an
integral part of the poem”1 Eliot, who by no means always accepted Pounds advice, did accept it this time and so the section
remained as we read it today.
It is also strange because Eliot apparently wrote it (in French) several years before he started The Waste Land and “Death by
Water” is a translation of the ending of that earlier poem.
In Section I, The Burial of the Dead, Madame Sosostris the Tarot Card fortune teller’s main advice is “Fear death by water,”
(line 55).
So, instead of just classifying images of wetness and dryness, I’ve chosen to identify as well images of Death by Water, which
may be a transitional state.
1
North (ed.), The Waste Land, footnote page 18.
This document simply lists the images of wetness, death by water, and dryness, as they occur in order in The Waste Land, and
thus shows how they are distributed by section in the poem. A clear pattern emerges. The Waste Land starts, with the section
“Burial of the Dead”, with three contrasting paragraphs,2 which I think serve as an introduction to the entire poem. The first is
clearly an image of wetness, in which Eliot depicts remembering and desiring an innocence that is now past. The second
image is of dryness, which foreshadows the last section “The Fire Sermon”. The third image, from the 3rd paragraph, is one of
“Death by Water”; it is the first occurrence of that motif.
After these three paragraphs, the “introduction,” the poem describes London, apparently as Eliot saw it, starting with Madam
Sosostris a fortune teller. This description of London continues through the rest of “Burial of the Dead”, “The Game of Chess”,
and “The Fire Sermon”, with a series of eight images that can best be classified as Death by Water. They depict the spiritual
deadness of London. The section “The Fire Sermon” ends with a dry image, which serves as a condemnation of this spiritual
deadness and gives “The Fire Sermon” its name.
Then there is the important section titled “Death by Water,” which marks the transition from a description of London to a
description of the waste land of the Grail Legend.
The poem ends with the section What the Thunder Said. It starts with stark dry images and ends with images of wetness that
convey the hope Eliot gives us through the words the thunder says, which are a message from the Upanishads on how to live a
spiritual life.
I think this pattern of images clearly shows that Eliot gives us The Waste Land with a clear structure and theme.
I use the work “paragraphs” for the lines of the poem that are bounded by blank lines. This is what they are called in prose; if
there is a proper name for them in poetry I don’t know it.
2
I. The Burial of the Dead
Wetness
April is the cruelest month, breeding3
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain (3,4)
Death by Water
Dryness
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow (5,6)
Summer surprised us, coming over the
Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain (8,9)
You cannot say, or guess, for you know
only
A heap of broken images, where the sun
beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the
cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water (2024)4
Lines 2 and 3 of the Waste Land include the phrase “mixing memory and desire” and I think that is exactly what this
paragraph of the poem concerns.
4 Similarly the startling dry images of the second “paragraph” of the introduction presage Section IV, What The Thunder Said.
3
Wetness
Death by Water
Dryness
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago5
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
- Yet when we came back late, from the
Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I
could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing
(35-41)
Here, said she6
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician
Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes7.
Look!) (46-47)
…Fear death by water. (55)8
This is the last of the introductory “paragraphs” introducing the theme of death by water. It starts with the line “you gave me
hyacinths first a year ago,” a romantic image said by a young girl, but ends with her lover in a state between “living and dead”
(line 40).
6 This is said by Madam Sosostris a fortune teller who is the first character from London in the poem.
7 From Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” This is part of Ariel’s song to Prospero telling him that his daughter’s suitor was just
drowned in a shipwreck.
8 A clear statement of the motif of death by water, which is the title of Section IV, “The Fire Sermon”.
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II. A Game of Chess
Wetness
Death by Water
Dryness
The river’s tent in broken9: the last
finger’s of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank.
(173-4)
III. The Fire Sermon
Wetness
Death by Water
…The wind10
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The
nymphs are departed (174-5)
Dryness
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my
song.
The river bears no empty bottles,
sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes,
cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights.
The nymphs are departed,
And their friends, the loitering heirs of
city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses. (176186)
This introduces the river Thames, which plays a central role in the poem. Leaves, which were a tent over the river, have
fallen and lie dead on the banks. Progressively through the poem the Thames becomes dirtier and more polluted.
10 This and the next two images seem to depict a state where London is deserted. Nymphs and city directors have departed
leaving bones behind.
9
Wetness
Death by Water
By the waters of Leman I sat down and
wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my
song,
Sweet Thames run softly, for I speak not
loud or long,
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of bones, and the chuckle
spread from ear to ear. (182-6)
Dryness
The river sweats 11
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs. (266-76)
Burning, burning, burning, burning12
Oh Lord Thou pluckest me out
Oh Lord Thou pluckest
Burning (308-311)
This image was harder to classify. I put it under “Death by Water” because the Thames is polluted, and the barges reminded
me of the barges on the Ganges, which carry bodies of the dead, and are set afire to float down the river. Also The Isle of Dogs
(a real place) is another image of the people having departed.
12 This and the next image are an appropriate ending for the section “The First Sermon”. Eliot cites the Buddha’s sermon by
the same name in his notes. We can regard them as a condemnation of London in its state of spiritual death.
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IV Death by Water13
Wetness
Death by Water
Dryness
Phlebas, the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering a whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. (312-321)
I have given this section its own color (blue for water) because of its important role marking the transition from the setting
of the poem in the spiritually dead London, to the waste land of the Grail Legend. This is the entire section.
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V. What the Thunder Said
Wetness
Death by Water
Dryness
Here is no water but only rock14
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without
water
If there were water we should stop and
drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or
think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water among the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth
that cannot spit (331-339)
…dry sterile thunder without rain (342)
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the
pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water (346-358)
The first three images of What the Thunder Said are the driest and the bleakest in the poem. I think they describe the waste
land of the Grail Legend. Many of the references to the Grail Legend are effectively hidden from the reader because they come
from the texts that Eliot cites in his footnotes. Eliot I think can be accused of being intentionally obscure in this way.
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Wetness
Only a cock stood on the rooftree15
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lighting. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain. (391-394)
Da17
Damtata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the had expert with sail and oar
The sea was wide and calm, your heart
would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands (418-422)
Death by Water
Dryness
Ganga was sunken16, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
(395-397)
This image of wetness may seem out of place in “What the Thunder Said”. But it comes just before the line “Then spoke the
thunder (399) and, when speaking, the thunder gives us a message of hope in the passages from the Upanishads in Sanskrit.
16 The Ganges rises and falls in response to the monsoon rain. This image indicates the Ganges has diminished in size and
depth due to the dryness when the monsoons are not present. I don’t understand why Eliot places an image of Death by Water
just after and before images of water as a means of restoration.
17 This is the third of the message of the thunder, which depicts a priest speaking to students. The messages tell us how to live
a more spiritual life, we must: give, have compassion, and have the self-control to live in a spiritual way.
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