The Waste Land Overview

hello would this video is meant to give you a quick overview of the wasteland when I say quick overview I mean I'm not going over the text line by line but eventually I plan to do that in another video the wasteland is the most monumental work of modernism and it is TS Eliot's prestigious work published in 1922 Eliot had written the work at a massive scale it was a collection of many different poems and it was cut down to the present size by his friend Ezra Pound to whom Eliot has given tribute as the better craftsman or real miglior fabric in the dedication of the wasteland the original drafts were published by Eliot's Widow in 1971 the original drafts that Eliot wrote and that Ezra Pound edited it was published by Faber and Faber and this technique of a work build up from a number of separate poems that is the technique that he has followed in other poems later such as the Hollow Men and Ash Wednesday as well and this gives the poem the semblance of a heap of broken images but there is a very surprising unity that is there in the poem as well the fragmentation of the poem as everybody might know shows a fragmented vision of a fragmented modern world but the techniques used in the poem the narrator the style of writing such as the cinematographic technique the use of myth etc have given the poem a kind of unity and homogeneity through it's very heterogeneity so that is the wastelands published in 1922 let me just delve into the socio-cultural background of this man the poem first and foremost the wasteland was written during a period of increasing urbanization and industrialization at the beginning of the 20th century it was a very tumultuous period because it had just suffered from the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath the world war was just over the first world war was also just over technology had completely changed the world by then and cities had come into being metropolises had come into being urbanization and industrialization were changing the landscape and culture in significant ways and during this time Europe was devastated by Boer War that was at the turn of the century just as the 20th century came into being the Boer War with the dutch settlers of South Africa the British waged war with the Dutch settlers of South Africa that devastated Europe and the First World War as well as many other bloody revolutions of this period life was unsettled in Europe and migratory people were moving to other places in search of a better living condition and it was very traumatic in many parts of Europe people were undergoing a state of unsettling trauma at this time the only criterion of value was money it was a materialistic society both Shaw materialism had reached its peak and people were the the thinkers and the writers were revolting against the materialism and the ideal of progress and money was ruling the roost nevertheless capitalism was becoming more and more powerful colonialism was also in its height so it was a very confused period then life had become struggle for survival the upper classes and the lower classes were divided there were also some socialist ideas lowly coming into being and all the changes and rapid devastating effects of the socio-political changes on life made it a struggle for survival and there was the loosening of sex taboos morality was increasingly questioned family life also changed the very foundations of the family was bro over shaken and there was a loosening of sex taboos which is why there is a lot of physicality of sex that you can see in Eliot's poems such as The Waste Land and a lament at the loss of the valuable relationships of intimacy of mental connection all these are lost in this time and sex has become degraded into just a meaningless physical act so this is a very important theme in the wasteland now continuing with the socio-political background individuals became islands to themselves individuals are like Islands they are isolated from one another there is this is a world where people do not understand one another when you heard about when we discussed Ulysses in another video I talked about how these characters are all wandering in Dublin like Islands they are unable to connect our belong so this is the condition of the modern man individuals are unable to connect and belong they are the fliers in the metropolises in the cities they have just Wanderers who are wandering aimlessly unable to find meaning or identity there is also the loss of spiritual values and the loss of old moral and ethical values that happened in the late 19th century itself in forms of therapy aids for example we can see a lament of the loss of all moral and ethical values in this sense and in poems like sailing to Byzantium for example and because of this there is a hollowness there is an emptiness in Western civilization in modernist society so that is what you see in the wasteland life became mechanical and fragmented life became empty and Hollow and life became like a wasteland so that is what you see here the wasteland is a metaphor for all these developments hysteria and paranoia our contemporary experiences many characters in the wasteland when they speak they are hysterical they are desperate they are on the verge of a nervous breakdown or collapse so hysteria and paranoia because of desperation because of frustration they are contemporary experiences because of lack of connection so all these experiences and traumas of the modernist to society are depicted in the form of the text itself the text is not a usual linear narrative there is no single narrator there is no power point a single point of view there is no plot or story that you can follow through and many times we do not do not understand what is happening there is a mixing up of voices there is a mixing up of past and present so it is in this desire way that the poem is narrated to show the lack of moorings of the modernist society the poem was composed during Eliot's convalescence in Margate after a nervous breakdown so the whole of Europe has like undergone a nervous breakdown in this period and Eliot personally also had undergone a nervous breakdown and the original draft in nineteen pages had more than four a 1000 lines now the poem has only like 400 plus lines so more than half of it was reduced by Ezra Pound the original draft of the poem was very long 1000 lines long it was edited and revised by Ezra Pound and now it is 433 lines at first Elliot considered the title he do the palace in different voices it is a very absurd statement that you find in Charles Dickens as our mutual friends in our mutual friend Betty Higden is saying this about her stupid adopted son sloppy and he's reading the newspaper aloud and Betty Higden is very proudly saying about her adopted son he do the police and different voices that was what Elliot wanted to be the title at the beginning but then he changed it to the wasteland which is a title taken from Jessie westerns from ritual to romance the wasteland was first published in the United Kingdom in The Criterion in the first issue of The Criterion in October 1922 which was edited by Diaz Elliot himself until the end of its publication until the journal sees the publication TS Eliot was the editor of The Criterion it was first published in the u.s. in the famous journal the dial with the very next month in November 1922 and this poem uses very many different techniques that techniques that are very different from the conventional romantic techniques of the 19th century the the poem as I told you is a heap of broken images that recede without much logic and the unifying factor one of the unifying forces in the poem is the use of myth the poem is put together many different perspectives and stories and you know fragments of text are all put together with the mythical framework of the Fisher King as well as the mythical stove the the image of the wasteland itself and as well as the narrator tiresias and this poem Progress is therefore not in a very rational manner but think of let us say the logic of music or the logic of kailash in art we're in music for example it is not a plot that you get it is not a story but a message is given to you or a mood is conveyed to you by the use of repetition and variation of motifs in collages different on disparate pieces of images fragments of images are put together on a canvas and the juxtaposition of these will create some new meanings this is also the technique used in film we're two very different scenes can be put together to create a third meaning in what is called montage in film there are also so many other ways in which meanings are created such as variations in point of view the technique of dissolving panning zooming close-up etc so the wasteland also explores these techniques and the most important of these techniques is especially the use of myths in the review of James Joyce's Ulysses which was also published in the same year TS Eliot praised Joyce's use of the mythic method in Joyce's Ulysses you know Joyce is using the myth of the Odysseus journey back home to Ithaca and this is what Eliot says I have courted this elsewhere also in this video later I will be quoting this I mean in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him so TS Eliot is saying that the method of Joyce should be considered a model by the others what is that method it is simply a way of controlling of ordering of giving shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history this is a very famous statement that he has made so myth this what is the myth it should be used by the modern writers myth is a technique that should be used by the modernist writers myth is a simply a way of controlling of ordering of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history contemporary history is futile it is no use it is meaningless it is anarchy anarchic and how do you deal with such a contemporary history however with the present time by giving it some sort of shape and order how do you do that by using mythology thus the mythic method is the solution that he is giving for the modernist malady of fragmentation the mythic method is the solution to the malady or disease or trouble that modernists are suffering from what is that trouble fragmentation Eliot himself has presented this fragmentation elsewhere as the disassociation of sensibility when the head and the heart become separated when there is no unity between thoughts and emotions that is when fragmentation occurs he has said in the context of the metaphysical poet's coming back to the use of myth Eliot uses fragments of various myths in the wasteland the wasteland is a massive poem which employs a collection of mythologies and lots of fragments of different different myths are used in the wasteland we have the myth of the Fisher King very centrally to the wasteland I also mentioned in the myth of the wasteland itself the myth of Tiresias is as the narrator then we have a number of other myths like the myth of fellowmen you know the stories of the great heroes from homer onwards down to Dante and LaForge the modern the French symbolist LaForge so many writers how they have rewritten these past stories Eliot has imbibed you know from it energy from it meanings from it that is how he has returned wastelands and also meet myths from east and west from India from Jewish culture from Christianity everywhere Greek classicism now Eliot's use of symbol of perfection sought by the knights of the round table in Arthurian legends that is why he is using mythology Eliot used the this is how he is using myths Eliot used as a symbol of perfection sought by the knights of the round table in Arthurian legends what is it the quest for the Holy Grail the quest motive the belief that in our theory and mythology the belief that if you know the knights of the round table went in search of the cup from which Jesus Christ drank that is the Holy Grail and bring it to their kingdom there will be fertility in their kingdom so this is the fertility myth and also the quest motif and he used myths to express his lack of faith in society to rebuild itself remember modernism later gave way to myth criticism many early 20th century writers that is the pre Second World War writers turned to myth in different ways to make sense of the chaos and disorder of modernist period of Europe in the early 20th century we can see this in the myth critics like Northrop Frye later we can see this earlier the use of myth in Sigmund Freud and now in the modernist writers also so myth is a way to purge to purify and to be reborn you know you have to overcome the troubles of this existence of the present time you have to purge the negativity the evil the you know the the rottenness and you have to pure if and be reborn that is viable Elliott is using fertility myths also in this poem and the land is in need of regeneration and rebirth the land is urgently in need of regeneration and rebirth because there is a deadness in this land as you might know Elliott talks about depth in life States everybody is alive in the wasteland but they are all spiritually dead so death in life that is a condition that is this that is the living condition of the people of the wasteland is death in life and such a land where people and everything is dead in living is in need of regeneration or rebirth and purification but the search for these is as futile as life itself life is futile and it looks like there is no solution to your problems there is no Savior coming so the search for solutions and regeneration rebirth etcetera seems to be as futile as life itself then the use of myth borders on the central myth in the wasteland that is the quest for the Holy Grail the quest for the Holy Grail is taken from Jesse L Weston's book from ritual to romance that was published just a couple of years ago in 1920 and before that mythology and anthropology were discussed by another major writer James Frazer like Jesse L westerns rich from ritual to romance James Fraser's Golden Bough is also a source of the wasteland and it is a central inspiration for Eliot's wasteland and Jesse L Weston's book published in 1920 presents the Holy Grail myth and Eliot has used it as the object of correlative of the poem all the different diverse elements of the poem The Waste Land are all conveyed by one image an objective correlative that is the Holy Grail I have just put one ancient cup here we don't know nobody has ever seen the Holy Grail we don't know what is where is the Holy Grail either I have just put it here as a symbol and the quest for the Holy Grail in Arthurian legends is undertaken by sir Percival sir Percival search for the Holy Grail which was used by Christ to drink and later to collect his blood after crucifixion that divine cup Percival searches for and Percival reaches Fisher Kings country which had been turned into a wasteland after curse so these are all believes in the early medieval period and people were searching for the Holy Grail actually in the early medieval period and Percival reached the Fisher Kings country and saw that Fisher Kings country has had been turned into a wasteland and the only solution for this is bringing the Holy Grail and he also searches for the Holy Grail in Chapel perilous all that is alluded to in this poem by TS Eliot now the wasteland uses fertility myths and vegetation myths taken from James Fraser's Golden Bough I mentioned this book before it was written some 300 sorry 30 years before Jesse Weston's book and it was a classic James Frey says Golden Bough was a classic and Elliot took allusions from anthropology and culture ancient culture from this book it presents myths of adonis artists and oscars they are all very important Greek figures and discusses the sacrificial killing of Kings the these are part of fertility myths the dying God the scapegoat etc the the the book by Frazer discusses all these ideas and it analyzes the primitive minds the primordial human mind how it worked it analyzes because it was an anthropological treatise the title The Waste Land alludes to the wasteland in the eerie basement that the title actually is taken from Jesse L Weston and it was it was first used by Thomas Malory in morte d'Arthur and as Elliot himself has pointed out in his notes but the most prominent use of the wasteland which occurs several times in ancient writings is the Oedipus myth where you possess land turned into a wasteland because of sin and here in our modern wasteland also Elliot presents sin and lack of spirituality as the reasons for the land turning into wasteland the biblical wasteland in as a kill is also alluded to there is this biblical wasteland in Ezequiel and also the wasteland in the Holy Grail legend as I already told you so all these are alluded to in all these cases the wasteland is the result of the misuse of sex it is when sex becomes mere physical and meaningless and loveless it becomes materialistic that is when the these countries these places turned into wastelands so we need to go back to this is a very Christian idea because with the eating of the forbidden fruit or the original sin man lost his innocence regarding sex and now the wasteland wants to go back to the time before the original sin we have to revive the real meaning of relationships the protagonist of the wasteland is not very clear but TS Eliot himself has pointed out that the Thebans prophet Tiresias who appears in many ancient plays Greek plays like Oedipus Rex or Oedipus tyrannous Tiresias is the protagonist of the poem however what is interesting is that he doesn't appear at the beginning of the poem and stay in the poem like Hamlet or any great hero Tiresias does not even really appear in the poem very just a glimpse of tyranny as we get in section 3 and in the first two sections we don't even know who is the protagonist but tie races is an appropriate metaphoric protagonist because he leads a liminal existence in between existence neither dead nor living and Tiresias is symptom symbolic of all the characters in the wasteland you can also say that all characters in the wasteland are Tiresias every character is like a manifestation of Tiresias Tiresias has both male and female figures he's an old man with a wrinkled female breast this character was taken originally from Ovid's metamorphoses and also the tragedians before that a diverse character he is with diverse possibilities because he is blind he is neither blind nor sighted because he has inner sight in sight powerful inner vision is there he is immortal neither dead nor living and he is prophetic all that becomes important in the wasteland and also he is bisexual he is neither man nor woman he is bisexual so in a very conservative point of view this means degeneration of great spiritual love bisexuality or homosexuality was looked down upon in the beginning of the 20th century and that is regarded as a degeneration of spirituality in this case tie race he has lived both in this world and the other world that is another way he strides two boats you know he is liminal Elliot says tiresias is an all-inclusive consciousness what he sees is the substance of the form Tiresias does not appear as a character here who undergoes experiences and who has a store no not like that rather Tyrese's is a consciousness all-inclusive consciousness his consciousness encompasses every character's consciousness and what he sees is the substance of the poem Tiresias and the symbol of cue may symbolize perpetual old age that is also very significant the epigraph of the poem refers to Sybil of cue may and that reminds us that Sybil of cue may who has immortality it is act it is not a boon actually it is a curse of immortality because she doesn't have the boon of youth she becomes older and older and older and she hangs inside a cage and she wishes to die Tiresias also is a symbol of Perpetual old age and this perpetual old age is a signifier for the condition of the wasteland where all youthfulness and all meaning has disappeared here is a picture of Tiresias appearing to Odysseus painting by the famous artist John Henry Fuseli now the major themes of the wasteland before we go into the text the wasteland is about the decline of Western civilization because of its own doings because of materialism because of physicality because of loss of spirituality and the because of the degeneration of love and sex love and sex or physical relationship law have lost their real meaning and they have been degenerated into just meaningless activities a culture which is not able to expel the unwanted tendencies and thus becomes a wasteland that is what it shows the impossibility of recovering meaning in life you are unable to find any meaning in life you are unable to have an identity you are unable to have a direction in life condition of existence is what is characterized in the wasteland spiritual degeneration of contemporary culture as a result of all the the reasons that I have told you already as a result of the coming of materialism spiritual degeneration because of the erosion of religion in the Victorian period you know there was the Victorian dilemma and religion was proved wrong and religion became propagandist and began to be used for political benefits so politics took over at this time spiritual spiritual degeneration happened in contemporary culture as well as a mechanization of life because of the discovery of Science and Technology because of Technology there is the mechanization of life now the epigraph of the wasteland the epigraph is taken from the Roman writer Petronius who wrote Satyricon Satyricon was written in the first century AD and an extract from Satyricon is the epigraph it tells the story of the Sibyl of qat in two lines it is narrated by Troy my keeo to amuse his drunken company in Satyricon the story of the Sibyl of Q may and her suffering is narrated in a very hilarious manner and made fun off by Trimark you and his drunken companions the Sibyl of Q may is unable to die she has the curse of immortality and she is old and not youthful so she's hanging from a bottle she has become so small that she's hanging from a bottle and when the boys said to her Sibyl what do you want she replied I want to die that is what time IQ is saying with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl of Q Mae hanging from a cage in the story cage or bottle both are there the children asking her possible what do you want and she replied I want to die that is the condition of the wastelanders also the wasteland does also want to die they just can't go on living like this because life is more painful than death itself the pathetic plight of the Sibyl suggests or anticipates the images of decay and decomposition in the main text the epigraph begins the poem by talking about the desire for death and the poem gives us so many symbols of death and decay throughout and how the wastelanders are all living biological mean actually you know scientifically speaking they of living biologically speaking but they are dead inside spiritually dead and Sibyl is a symbol of a culture afflicted with all spiritual maladies with the spiritual problems and she craves for dead so she actually symbolizes a very disease the culture spiritually disease the culture in the pre-publication version of the poem the epigraph was the horror of the horror before this Sybil's story was told before this the poem was called the horror sorry the epigraph was the horror the horror taken from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness these are the last words that Marlowe heard could speak after that we don't know if could said anything the horror of the horror he looked at something in front of him some apparition it seemed and he said the horror the horror and it says it means the horror of what not only the Europeans are doing to the Africans but also the horror of how Europeans are corrupted by the darkness of Africa so this was the first epigraph it was changed on pounds suggestion and after the epigraph you see a dedication the poems dedicate II is Ezra Pound Ezra Pound the editors the dedicate a of the poem and as I told you before Eliot refers to him as ill miglior fabric ill miglior fabro or the better craftsman and this is a phrase taken from Dante's Purgatorio el McClure Fabro is a Latin phrase taken from Dante's Purgatorio and it was Dante's attribute sorry tribute to the poet are no Daniel I forgot to mention one thing the epigraph of the poem is in both Greek and Latin two languages are there in the epigraph when I said Latin I remember and it was dontist to beYOU to the poet Arnaud Daniel his contemporary the sections of the wasteland are as you might know there are five sections the burial of the dead a game of chess the fire sermon death by water and what the tanda said these are the five sections of the poem these sections were made by Ezra Pound and the first section shows devastating pictures of death and decay and the second section shows two episodes of women in loveless relationships the fire sermon shows a Lord of style love affairs love affairs that are meaningless and out of which nothing comes and at the end he talks about Buddha and st. Augustine justifying the title the fire summons death by water is a very short section where a prophecy made in the first section by madam so sorceress is fulfilled she had said fear death by water and here in the fold section finis fleebus the finish in dice now why does he die and what is this all about see in the wasteland the people are sinners and they are suffering they have no spirituality and the river that should give life rain also that should give life are all polluted and betray away there is no rain it's a desert the river is polluted etc that is what you see in the beginning and then you see that it's all because of lack of spirituality in relation physicality of life is the reason and in death by water the suggestion is that you have to die and be reborn you know like it happens in the fertility meds during Ganesh puja for example we submerge images of the beginning of Ganesh during Durga Puja we submerge images of Durga and that the God will be reborn again like that death by water suggests a ritualistic drowning and rebirth which will lead to rebirth what the condor said this indeed taking us to the it is showing us very bizarre pictures of Eastern Europe and such a you know suggesting journeys in search of the Holy Grail and journey to Chapel perilous and then it is taking us to the banks of the Ganges in India the Westerners should turn to the east for some meaning and they should learn some lessons from the east remember when Elliott is writing it was not even 10 years after ribbon not a girl had got his Nobel Prize and the bid not a goal was very famous at this time in the West the Westerners loved his poetry Gitanjali and Macmillan had published it in English and everybody must have read it at that time and Eastern culture and Indo in dalla ji Indian studies etc were becoming very trendy in those days a lot of Westerners engaged in studies of the East and because of all this TS Eliot also says we should learn from the East because there is no spirituality in the West and he goes to the banks of the Ganges and he talks about the Thunder it is a upanishadic thunder mentioned in opening shots the Thunder is rolling and it is saying da the DA of the Thunder is that diadem and the meta or give sympathize and control so this is the solution to our wasteland problems we have to ritualistically die and be reborn and we have to burn in fire in the fire summon and then we have to die drown in water and then will rain down do you understand so we have to give surrender give means it's kind of surrender surrender sympathize control these are the ways in which the Thunder gives these solutions these are the ways in which you can overcome the malady of the wasteland that is in a nutshell the first four sections of the poem correspond to the Greek classical elements of earth air water and sorry fire and water earth is the real of the Dead burial earth a game of chess is air fire sermon and then death by water so and then drain it is last one thunder and rain so that is in a nutshell now we are going into the poem but we are not leading from the poem here it is only an overview I will do a line-by-line analysis of this poem in udemy because it is prescribed in universities and for exams okay so I'll just give you a brief overly overview of the sections now I'm not going into the text proper the wasteland was published in the first number of the criterion in 1922 as you know and the first section is called the burial of the dead as you might know it begins April is the cruelest month breeding lilacs out of the dead land mixing memory and desire stirring dull roots with spring rain and then it is April and there is nostalgia about winter winter kept us warm covering earth in forgetful snow so this burial of the dead begins by talking about April the title the burial of the dead refers to the Anglican burial service of the Church of England or the burial of the FEG of the fertility god so both Church of England and pagan religions are in the title the Anglican burial service of the Church of England is evoked as well as the burial of the FEG there will be an idol or FEG that is buried of the fertility God and rituals associated with adonis attius and authoress this is also alluded to in the title there are five episodes in the section burial of the dead the first episode is what we just saw April is arriving and the poet is associating April with agony because it makes demands of them that they cannot fulfill and also April reminds them of past and future mixing memory with desire they remember that race so the first episode starts with a parody of the first line of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales remember Chaucer's Canterbury Tales talks about praising April April is spring and summer is dawning and it is wonderful season says Chaucer when everybody wants to go on pilgrimage but this is a reversal of that glorification of April and he's describing the dull life of the inhabitants of the wasteland here the main imagery of the first section I mean not the first section the first episode in the first section is vegetable life breathing mixing stirring covering feeding lack of emotion without emotion just mechanically people engaged in these activities and this is the time remember when the European continent was reeling under the effects of the First World War and the traditional aristocratic patterns of life and national boundaries were all breaking up the old world order had fallen apart and then in the beginning itself Elliott talks about it talks about his body and she is Russian she's not a Russian actually and he is actually referring to the Communist revolution of Russia here mari is not a Russian he says there in the poem and that means she does not want to be associated with Russia because of its revolution she wants to be associated with more decent people of the rest of Europe so there is a rootlessness none belonging a nervous anxiety about identity that is you know revealed in this section at the beginning itself in the case of Mari and this is continuing in the rest of the poem in Part two of The Waste Land especially now this is the first episode therefore in the first episode we talk about April and also one girl one woman countess mari in the second episode also there are like two parts this second episode begins with the striking change of language he suddenly speaks in the language of the Old Testament like the Prophet because we are reminded of the Prophet sa kill of the wasteland and here he is taken to the valley of the wasteland or the valley stoned with bones and as the son of man can these bones live so he's seeing the wasteland so this second episode is addressed to the son of man that is actually in the Old Testament as a kill and it was sends a vision of the geography of the wasteland and this geography of the wasteland is just strewn with corpses and rats etcetera shows that we are spiritually dead and we can envisage we can see we can foresee no possibilities for the fruitful end of a journey where is this journey leading us what is going to happen to us there is no you know surety there is no certainty this anxiety is there in the section in the episode and it looks like we are journeying into the desert of art life or desert the future and the ever presence of death and meaninglessness and helplessness is there starting from the epigraph remember from the epigraph till now we have been talking about death and helplessness and then the third episode suddenly gives us a piece of poetry it is from Wagner's opera Richard Wagner's opera and then after this piece of poetry there is suddenly the story of a hyacinth girl told in fragments and then again a quotation from Wagner's opera so the third section is about a hyacinth girl and it begins and ends with codes from Richard Wagner's opera opera is Tristan and Isolde there are two opera's of Richard Wagner that are sources of the wasteland one is Tristan and his old the other is Gotterdammerung and here in this third episode of the first section you are hearing about a hyacinth girl and all this describes the degeneration of love because in Wagner's opera a sailor is longing for his love and this love this longing is not going to be fulfilled he will be disappointed and finally they die Tristan and Isolde die interest in dice so anticipation of love and disappointment is the theme of the Opera that is quoting from and it it is omit it metaphorically suggests that degeneration of love which is what led the wasteland to be the wasteland now the fourth episode in the first section introduces the dramatis personae of the poem the characters who will come later like the Marini emerge and etcetera are all presented as tarot cards possessed by madame say sorceress a famous clairvoyant Madame sorceress is a character drawn from Aldous Huxley's chrome yellow that was his first novel Huxley's cover chrome yellow and she has a bad cold it seems and this madam so sorceress who is telling cards telling the future through cards tarot cards is an ironic inversion of the prophetic figure after races you know she is a very bad you know still fortune teller she is not a real fortune teller she's a cheap imitation of the Prophet she's a bogus fortune teller so this is an inversion ironic inversion of the prophetic figure and paradoxically she is described as the wisest woman in Europe with a wicked pack of cards and she begins to foretell the future even though she has no idea what she's saying what is again ironic is that many things that she says turn out to be true there is only one piece of advice that Madam's the sorceress gives fear death by water that actually happens in the fourth section and characters like the belladona hanged man as my Knights miranium urchin etcetera appear and then we move on to the fifth episode in this section so she selected a card for the Naruto which is the picture of her drowned if any she and sailor and wants him fear death by water this warning is given to that Naruto now we come to the fifth episode hey wait before that she showed the naruto cards of bela do another one I'd merchants the man with the staves there is a blank card the wheel and she searched over the heart of the hanged man all these people are introduced characters are introduced the rest of the poem is not going to be the story of these characters or anything but the characters whom we meet in the rest of the poem are in some ways representatives of these mythic characters the last episode in the first section begins and ends with references to bodily and unreal city that is the beginning of the last episode beginning unreel City from Basel era tests the unreel City is the metropoliz the metropoliz was an important late in modernist poetry the MA metropolises a metaphor in modernist poetry a symbol in modernist poetry for rootlessness and belonging for people being directionless and Eliot is using a composite or a mix up of BA the layers spirals Dante's hell and also the London of William Blake and he's creating a horrifying picture of the metropolis here but dull daily life happens in the metropolis there is only dull daily life and people are logged in a mindless routine in self-destructive mindless routine and remember you may not know I will tell you Dante in Inferno describes the spiritual emptiness of the souls sorry who are condemned in Inferno the the people who are condemned to be punished in Inferno are people with spiritual emptiness and when Dante describes them in Inferno he signals to one man he isolates one person out of it and he was the Pope he was one Pope and why is he signaled out he identified and picked out because he was a man of guilty of cowardice he was a covered and he allowed a bad Pope to govern the church did you understand so this Pope is reappearing here in the form of Stetson in the last episode our narrative refers to a fellow that he knew an acquaintance called Stetson Stetson is also the name of her hat that many ordinary people wore at that time so it is just somebody somebody that is the meaning the figure of Stetson is reminiscent of that character from Dante and he's referring to Dante's medieval Hell as a representation of this city this metropolis is like a hell what you see here is a surreal picture the speaker is walking through London populated by ghosts of the dead and confronts a figure called Stetson and he says he fought with Stetson in the mail a battle he's talking about battles and remember the the book is also written immediately after one of the most horrifying battles of the 20th century the First World War and when he refers to maile and Dante etc he's also referring to the 19th century because here as well as later in the poem we understand that it does not just any one city he is talking about he's talking about 19th century cities like that you see in Dickens he is talking about all kinds of cities even in the past also so he is talking about this decay of rottenness or deadness as a malady of humankind's whenever they lived did you understand even in the past it was there it is not just the problem with the presence so that brings us to the end of the first section is it tedious and boring if you want you can pause the video and take a break but I am continuing in section 2 which is titled a game of chess the allusion is to Thomas Middleton's play a game at chess in a game at chess chess is a symbolic symbolically employed as a game that shows the relationships of political relationships of the people in the play there is another play women beware women by Milton himself where each move in the game of chess is matched with stages in the seduction of the protagonist Bianca Bianca is being seduced inside the room by the prince meanwhile outside the room without knowing what is happening inside her mother-in-law is playing chess with another woman so that is a story of lust and manipulation and deceit and all that is alluded to in this title the title denotes stages in a seduction and it is allusion to another play by Milton women beware women now in this play a game of chess is played between Livia who's acting on behalf of the Duke of Florence and the other partner in chesses mother of Leoncio Leoncio is the husband of Bianca and Bianca is being said used inside the room while Livia is playing chess with Leon shows mother the game is only a ruse to distract the mother whose daughter law is meanwhile being seduced by the Duke on the balcony about not room balcony above okay now following this there are two sections here two episodes here two scenes here depicting two women first we see a rich woman second we see her not we see we see two women talking about their friend another poor woman so first we see a rich woman second we see she is waiting she is elaborately getting dressed and waiting for her lover and when her lover comes there is no love he quickly finishes the job and wants to leave and he is long she is longing for physical serene emotional connection which he cannot give her she is like hysterical and neurotic the second episode is about two women in a bar talking about their friend lil and lil has engaged Lily's in a very loveless relationship Lil's husband whenever he comes from war gets her pregnant gets little pregnant and lil has had many child births and miscarriages which has made her very broken in the body now the husband might even leave her because she is no longer good-looking this is the story of Lil so we see two sad pictures of loveless relationships here one rich and the other two are let us go into the details the first scene depicts the match monocle life of an aristocratic lady the first scene depicts the mechanical life of an aristocratic rich lady and she is this is a mock heroic setting she is in her dressing room and elaborately she's getting dressed reminiscent of Cleopatra and the whole decoration all the decorations and the whole scene has an accessory artificial quality it is not very real and meaningful either and then there are allusions to Phil Oh Mel here because Phil Oh Mel was raved and then her tongue was cut out so that she won't talk about it and gods made her a nightingale she gave the voice of the nightingale so that illusion is there and this woman is meeting her lover so after she has you know in a parody of you know Barbara's depiction of description of Cleopatra how she got dressed is parodied like that the chair she sat in like a burnished throne burned on the marble that is an inversion of inner Barbara's line The Bard is she sat in like a burnished throne burnt on the water describing Cleopatra famous lines so after that we have seeing that there is a love love encounter between the lady and her lover the male companion or lover is resigned and playful and he does not respond to her frantic questions he just leaves because he knows that replies are also probably useless so there is no communication happening between them there is no connection there is no love that is the meaning and then after this the second scene happens it is set in a pub where in a cockney area in London where some low-class women are chatting and gossiping it is late night and they are talking about Lille and her husband Albert there is no love between them she has been bearing children after children and all this has taken a heavy toll on Lil's death and her teeth are also very bad now her appearance is deteriorating and when her husband comes next time if she doesn't look good he is going to dump her because her husband Alfred is irresponsible and unsympathetic that is what you see in this section so they are gossiping about lil the broken woman in a loveless marriage this section ends when the bartender has to close the bar the pub so he is asking everybody to leave and thus the the farewells that the people leaving the pub give is intermingled with Afilias farewell which is sadly sweet of course o filius sad farewell in Hamlet is intermingled with the farewells of them people leaving the pub so good night ladies good night good night good night like that is repeated several times and this accentuates the tragedy of these episodes that we just witnessed in this section by selecting doomed female characters from history and mythology as well as contemporary society the writer creates an epitome of degeneration these lovers are like pawns in a game of chess and all that they have is decay and death there is no blooming of love in their place now the third section is fire summon that is the longest section we don't know why it is called a fire sermon until the end of that section and at the end of the section he refers to Buddha and Saint Augustine that is when we know why this is called fire sermon in this long section the title alludes to Buddha sermon on the fires of anger malice and lusts these are fires that will consume you that is why it in the next section you should die section contains a series of increasingly debased sexual encounters you see a lot of sexual encounters out of which nothing really comes where they are mechanical or violent and there is no respect happening you know that there is a lot of reference to history also here Elizabeth at least the homosexual relationship of the the small Nia merchant the rape of Philomela Sweeney and mrs. Porter like there is prostitution there is love less extramarital affairs there is the pretension of love between Elizabeth and least there is homosexual love none of this actually leads to any joyous culmination so he's referring to the typist and the carbuncle our young man also here and like in the previous section they are like mechanical in their love relationship they are bored and tired in their relationship and there is no pleasure in their sexual act it is in this section that we see a desolate Riverside scene and we realized that Tiresias is sitting there the speaker introducer suddenly as tiresias and this is a crucial moment in the poem the music cut by me upon the waters that is a really famous line and then he refers to Ariel's song in the tempests the polluted river stands for spiritual degeneration in the fire sermon that is the last part that last scene when we see degeneration but after this from death by water the regeneration has to begin the final lines in part 3 offers some hope because they turn to Buddha and Saint understood so now a structure of the stands I have given here the first beginning the structure of the section I've given here the beginning of the section presents a horrid till now I was talking about the weight this is game of chess that is over next we are talking about fire sermon in this section I gave this slide I already showed you in this slide I just gave you an overview of the section this is an overview of the section in the next slide I am going to talk about the section in little more detail the first stanza presents a horrid picture of the River Thames and it's Bank deserted by people during winter it is a very contrasting image contrasting with proto Lamia in spencer's Protheroe means temps is beautiful and the thames daughters are singing their song but here that Spencerian line is repeated like a refrain with a great sadness sweet Thames run softly till I end my song that line is repeated in the third section of the wasteland to evoke sadness because the reality of the Thames is very different here and the first direct reference to the name of the protagonist Tiresias is made here in this section it describes the experiences the typist and the mechanical sexual encounter with her young carbon collage lover you know his face is not so good-looking it has problems and he's a house agents clerk there is absolutely no enjoyment or love in their relationship next we hear the song of the thames daughters the thames daughters are singing now and their daughter sari their singing is taking us to the song of ariel also that i mentioned then we come to the end of the section that is where we talk about why the thames daughters are singing is because there is a lot of difference between the earlier depictions of thames the renaissance depictions of themes and now now there is violation and confusion that is the story they are telling us the film's daughters are telling us a story of violation and confusion and disaster and madness and all the disasters that we heard about in the section are coming to a close in the reference to Buddha and Saint Augustine both Buddha in saying that this teen came to an understanding of their problems in philosophy and spirituality and they saw a way forward so there is hope so at the end of the fire sermon the disastrous picture of Europe is coming to a climax and giving us some hope the next section is death by water it is as I already told you before this shortest section of the wasteland death by water reminds us of madam so sorceresses warning what did she say whatever serve warning fear death by water and if fleebus the finishing is dead and that dead sailor somehow reminds us of Cola is in chin Mariner and in both these cases both these sailors have had a disastrous end the poem also connects with sorry the section also connects with Ulysses voyage as imagined by Dante and Tennyson in Dante's Inferno and in Tennyson's poem Ulysses you can see references to this and what is expressed in this section is the extreme opposite of what Buddha in st. Augustine expressed here there is frustration and it actually refers to a poem I it refers it gives us a very bleak picture I will come to that but first I have to explain that this section is actually a verbatim translation of a French poem that Eliot had earlier written called dance lake restaurant in the restaurant that is the poem that Eliot himself had written earlier in French and what is that poem about in that poem a dirty old waiter is telling a customer how at the age of seven he had been on the point of having sex with a young girl and he was not able to have sex because a dog came and he big dog came and he was scared and he ran away the following lines in the section sorry the the lines in this section death by water where the the lines described the death of fleebus the Phoenicians who has died by drowning and has forgotten worldly cares that is actually from that French poem in the French poem also Eliot had said this said this flavors the finish in a fortnight round forgot the cries of gulls and profit and loss and he forgot everything the casts the sea currents the sea the currents in the seat carried him away and took him back through the stages of his former life that is how it is said I it is the implication is that fleebus is a man who sought only physical pleasures and not spiritual wisdom fleebus came to such an end because he was a sinner and he saw truly physical pleasures and he had no spiritual wisdom so the narrator is warning the reader consider fleebus the finishing recall your own mortality remember you will dying and mend your ways that is the warning that he is giving us so that is the small section that Bywater now there is another big section that is what the Thunder said this section begins in a bleak desert landscape and eventually we come to rain on the banks of the Ganges also the title wat that is why thunder this title and the Thunder is actually an illusion to berhad our Anita open assured of the many Upanishads in India but bruja darania o Benicia has talked about this thunder and immediately after this section begins by turning from the water that drowns to the water that saves now in this section it is not what are that drowns like before it is water that saves and there is the a vocation of Jesus he talks directly about Jesus Christ attempts to achieve peace under the shadow of religion that is what it is Jesus was believed to be a God by his followers but Jesus died that is mentioned in the beginning of this section so we have to revive the spirit of Jesus the quest for salvation and inner peace is expressed through objective correlative there are three objective correlative through which he is expressing the quest for salvation everybody wants salvation to you salvation might be in the form of passing natraj era for getting college professors job or something like that for some other people salvation will mean a lot of money uni you see all these physical material things we are stuck with what is actually salvation what does the spirit want that he is metaphorically showing here through three objective core interests what are they the journey to Emmaus the approach to captain and sorry chapt Chapel perilous and the present decay of Eastern Europe Eastern Europe especially because that is the place corrupted by communism Eliot was against communism and Eliot was against these devastating changes in Eastern Europe now so what Eliot is doing is describing a journey here and it is a metaphoric journey through the wasteland and he is also talking about a desert that is very frightening and there is no water there it in the desert you get horrifying delusions and these this journey and this suffering refers to the journey to Emmaus and the decay of Eastern Europe manifested by the communist revolution in Russia and the approach to Chapel perilous reality and hallucination are mixed up in these you know images that are presented here he alludes to Jesus again Jesus died on the cross the disciples were so stunned by death that when resurrected Jesus came Jesus resurrected and came back they could not accept him they did not recognise him and that is how the wastelanders are they do not recognize their Savior and Jesus had warned of a time of Anarchy when prophets will be put to suffering and Eliot things that what Jesus meant was this communist revolution the time of Anarchy event profit because the Communists also prosecuted the Christians and there is also the message of hope because the journey to Emmaus and captain sorry chap chapel perilous are ultimately linked to the finding of the Holy Grail and hope now there is the ancient India that Elliott is suggesting as the refuge we should turn to the east we should turn to ancient India as I told you in the beginning of the 20th century ancient India was like a very great haven for the Westerners and he is turning to braja Danika Upanishad as you know yeah as I told you the first to Christ the next census described the last part of the journey of the question the desire for water is intensified remember he was journeying through the desert without water now he wants more more and more thirsty he is he wants water and that is when the Harnish sorry hermit thrush sings in the pine trees and the song goes drip drop drip drop there is no water but the song of the bird reminds us of water and eventually it will rain because there will be thunder the next stand that describes the journey of two disciples of Christ at the land of Emmaus I told you the journey of Emmaus it is undertaken by the disciples of Christ and when they took that journey in the desert there had a hallucination that a third figure was following them in the desert because of the strange light you do get hallucinations like that you see things in the desert and the third character who was walking with them was Christ they saw Christ this idea is inspired by an account of such a hallucination experienced by the first Antarctic expedition team in Elliott's time it was very famous that a team went to Antarctica to explore the South Pole and they also felt like this as if they felt hallucinations they felt as if they were seeing things so that is alluded to here the following stands us after this recall the experiences of the questio in Chapel perilous the chapel where he expected to find the Holy Grail is actually empty only the wind is home only the wind is there nothing else is there he hears the crowing you know in the wasteland the crowing is also mentioned and then spoke the Thunder da-da-dah thrice each star represents a word or a message data diadem and the Mita da da da alludes to in the Upanishad prajapati's three-fold advice to God's demons and men everybody Prajapati Prajapati is the ultimate god he advised everybody to self that come in self-control that means don't just think you are above everything you are not supreme surrender control yourself the me diagram means sympathize or mercy have mercy for others da Matta means control control means be controlled by Prajapati be controlled by God Elliot presents three confessions three little episodes or confessions illustrating these three advices pieces of advice and the poem ends with the blessing shanthi shanthi shanthi so another quick look at the themes of the wasteland the spiritual degeneration of contemporary culture the wasteland is about the spiritual degeneration of contemporary culture the mechanization of life how mechanical life has become the decline of civilized modern civilization and the impossibility of recovering meaning in life now a quick look at the structure of the wasteland it is an ironic cell social commentary by an impersonal viewer the commentaries on the society Tiresias who brings unification of sensibility is a central figure and the poem uses classical symbols and imagination Eliot links the present situation of the modern wasteland with fast in future the presence of the protagonist Tiresias and the myths of the holy grail and fertility cults these myths are all presented in the form throughout the poem they connect the episodes in the poem they are the connecting links in that poem and the sections are also connected by these threads there is also the cinematographic technique I mentioned this already dissolving panning montage themes fading and dissolving like in film is the the wasteland is a highly sought auric poem he sought Erik means it is written in a language that only experts can understand you cannot understand the wasteland without a glossary so it is highly penetrating and richly elusive there is no clear-cut character or normal plot development like in traditional poems the modern world is presented as spiritually distemper'd and Fay fails to find solace in religion sex and ideologies there is no solace to the world and it is full of broken images the modern world is full of broken images like the poem also is full of broken images ambiguity and confusion are an integral part of modern life Eliot presents modern life as without any fixed meanings or easy meanings there is always ambiguity and confusion the very structure of the poem is a metaphor the structure of the poem as five disconnected parts somehow connected together full of episodes and heap of broken images that structure itself is a metaphor for the condition of modernity the main suggestions in the poem are love betrayed fertility betrayed and rebirth thus offered love and fertility have betrayed but however finally there is rebirth but rebirth demands from us sacrifice and suffering therefore rebirth is not easy and not acceptable to that contemporary words you come to me I want the past net what do I do I say you have done a lot of mistakes in the past you did not study properly you did not do this do that you did not read ok I will give you rebirth but you have to undergo a very strict regimen regimen you have to completely devote yourself to reading and studying and this and that that rebirth is not easy it doesn't come easy you want shortcuts but I'm telling you the wasteland is also telling you there are no shortcuts rebirth demands sacrifice and suffering that the means give yourself over to me give yourself up do not stick to your personal pressures and you know past habits give you give yourself over to me completely data bedroom means sympathize with the characters and understand from a deep perspective you know you should have a deeply empathetic mind sympathetic minds and lastly self-control control yourself you should transcend yourself in order to be a good student actually in order to pass an exam you should try and send yourself see I am sitting here and making videos at 3 a.m. 2 a.m. in the death of the night studying throughout the day because I'm transcending myself if I remain Kalyani and I I have my pleasures and I have you know things to do then I won't be a successful professional I have to completely give myself up I have to give my family life and health and pleasures and everything first priority should be my profession my studying which is endless like that when we do there is rebirth rebirth demands sacrifice and suffering it is not easy and therefore it is not acceptable to everyone to the contemporary world but we should do it otherwise there is no survival what are the modernist elements in the wasteland more with the wasteland presents pictures of a disintegrated words that is typically modernist modernism is not about a coherent story it is not about fixed points of view it is about shifting points of view and heaps of broken images there is pessimism and frustration use of allusions symbols mythical elements surrealism as well as imagism very cryptic condense the kind of writing but finally there is also a ray of hope that is offered art will provide unity that is lost in the modern world the hope is that art will somehow provide unity that is lost in the modern worlds so there is a turning to the philosophy of the East to achieve this now the mythical method you already know this is actually a repeated slide I don't want to read it out III you already know that myth is a way of controlling of giving shape to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy that is contemporary history and he Eliot used myth to purge purify and be reborn now sources of myth in the poem that is why I had to give you that slide once again the Bible he has drawn myths from the Bible from Dante's Inferno from Virgil's Aeneid from Ovitz metamorphosis from Milton's Paradise Lost from JCL westerns ritual to romance he has also taken from Jesse westerns from ritual to romance James Fraser's Golden Bough a study in magic and religion that is the subtitle in his notes to the poem Eliot refers to various catalogues of myths he refers to various collections of myths what are they such as Adonis and actors and Asura Smith they are the corn gods of fertility the title of the poem is drawn from the myth of the Fisher King and the fertility myths which tells of a Kingdom becoming Baron or wasteland because of an injury to the king that made him important the Fisher King does not have fertility he's impotent because of that the kingdom has become sterile or barren in order for the kingdom to become fertile again a number of tasks or trials must be completed by one hero now this poem was not all appreciated as we might think there were many charges against the poem one charge that was that it is totally fragmented and doesn't make sense it's a heap of broken images and a collection of five separate parts but today we have learned to accept it and this is literary carpentry a scholarly joiners work people have said that a mistake of quotations and there is another charge against the poem is that there is ambiguity in the poem the most ambiguous and difficult form in the 20th century definitely the wasteland is Louis anta mayor has said it's a pompous parade of erudition the fallen codes the codes from foreign languages that is form the abracadabra of the poem it is like a magic word you know suddenly were me you know these words and things that you don't understand bring meaning like that what game is Eliot trying to play with his readers so that brings us to the end of this video I am rounding it off with the picture of a mushroom cloud another picture of devastation that war brought that modernity brought thank you very much

Channel: Dr. Kalyani Vallath

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Id: OzimjGjjgk0

Length: 86min 22sec (5182 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020