The Waste Land (1922)
T. S. Eliot
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
Objective Correlative
“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.”
The Objective Correlative
The waste land is the situation that
signifies human despair and fear of
death
Premise of The Waste Land
• 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.
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
External Sources
• Biographical and historical background
• The collective vision
The Waste Land: Biographical and Historical
Contexts—Modern Aimlessness
T. S. Eliot
Post-war society
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
Historical Context: WWI
• had laid the battlefields to waste
• had spiritually scarred soldiers and the
population at large
• had physically weakened populations,
enabling the Spanish flu to kill over 50
million people
The Waste Land: Regeneration
The Golden Bough
Carl Jung
From Ritual to Romance
The Tarot
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
Jung’s “Archetypes of
Transformation”
• refers to the integration of the personality
• occurs 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
• involves the death of an old pattern of life
and the birth of a new
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.
Jessie L. Weston: From Ritual to
Romance (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
The Legend: The Curse
• concerns a land which has been blighted by
a curse so that it is arid and waterless,
rendering it infertile
• linked with the plight of a ruler, the Fisher
King, who as a result of an illness or a
wound has become sexually impotent
The Legend: The Curse
• 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
The Legend: Other Versions of the
Curse
• removed when Knight asks why this curse
has taken place
• removed when the Knight undertakes
various ordeals, culminating in that of the
Chapel or Cemetery Perilous
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
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.
Significance
• 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.
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.
The Form of The Waste Land
• fragments of human experience of the
present moment
• allusions to the significant tradition of the
past
The Form
The Mythical Method
Alchemy
The Kaleidoscope
The Labyrinth
Film
Collage
The Mythical Method
• The presentation of experience in symbolic
form
• The creation of a pattern that brings human
beings into significant relationship with
mysterious forces outside the actualities of
daily life
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
Alchemy
• an early protoscientific practice combining elements of
chemistry, physics, astrology, art, semiotics, metallurgy,
medicine, and mysticism
• most well-known goal was the transmutation of any metal
into either gold or silver
• the mythical substance, “the Philosopher’s Stone,”
believed to be an essential ingredient in this goal
• goal of alchemy was really a metaphor for a spiritual
transformation of the self
• when reading a book on alchemy, the reader must read
"over" the words to figure out the way to follow —
decoding the secret text to discover its true meaning
Labyrinths
• still being used throughout the world as
meditative and healing tools
• 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
Labyrinths
• 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.
Kaleidoscope
• The kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors containing loose colored
fragments.
• The viewer looks in one end and light enters the other end, reflecting
off the mirrors.
• Typically there are two rectangular lengthways mirrors. Setting of the
mirrors at 45 degrees creates eight duplicate images of the objects, six
at 60 degrees, and four at 90 degrees.
• As the tube is rotated, the tumbling of the fragments presents the
viewer with varying colors and patterns.
• Any arbitrary pattern of objects shows up as a beautiful symmetric
pattern because of the reflections in the mirrors.
• A two-mirror model yields a pattern or patterns isolated against a solid
black background, while a three-mirror (closed triangle) model yields a
pattern that fills the entire field.
Film
• made up of images that are spliced (edited)
together to create an emotional reaction
from the viewer
• can be used to document reality
• captures the dynamism and chaos of the
modern age
Collage
• A work composed of bringing together two or
more disparate realities
• A new relationship is enacted between “low”
culture (mass culture) and “high” culture.
• This relationship is felt to be inappropriate,
jarring, or wrong—yet interestingly so.
• The end result is indecency, paradox, and enigma.
The Mythical Method
• For Eliot, the mythical method was the
means of revitalizing poetry.
• According to Eliot, poetry had become in its
present state too beholden to description,
narrative, discussion, to reflection, to
decoration.
Meaning: The Mythical Method
• For Eliot, the mythical method was the
means of revitalizing poetry.
• According to Eliot, poetry had become in its
present state too beholden to description,
narrative, discussion, to reflection, to
decoration.
Form: Modern Music and Jazz
• imitates the jazz-like syncopation--and, like 1920s
jazz, essentially iconoclastic
• captures the dissonance and urban rhythms of
modern life
• parallels The Rite of Spring which “transforms the
rhythm of the steppes into the scream of the motor
horn, the rattle of the machinery, the grind of the
wheels, the beating of iron and steel, the roar of
the underground railway, and the other barbaric
cries of modern life; and to transform these
despairing noises into music”