I came upon this poem just yesterday evening, in reference to some interesting lyrics from the early-period of the 70’s prog rock band Genesis (Tiresias appears in a track on the Selling England by the Pound LP.)
Upon the first couple reads, I must say this is an absolutely amazing poem, like few I have ever read. It covers such a broad spectrum in style, captures these little glimpses into private life, and the language of the poem is just so…interesting! I lack the words to put it any other way. How I managed to live this much of my life without encountering it is a mystery.
But I have hit a bit of a snag in putting it all together. It’s not the length, I happen to think “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the greatest thing ever put to pen by man. But there isn’t a coherent narrative here that I can identify in Eliot’s poem. It makes me think there’s something grand going on, and I feel cheated that I can’t pull it out from between the lines instinctually. If I had more training in literature perhaps I could, and that process would be its own reward, but I want to have at least some context for this before I look at it further.
What are the generally accepted interpretations of this work? I have found some sites from Google-ing that will help me with references and such, but is there anything you all can tell me, give me a framework for my further readings of this poem?
First off, Everything2 has the poem, a discussion of one major theme in the poem, and a dissection of Eliot’s end notes. The Norton Anthology of Poetry (mine are 6th and 7th Editions, but I can’t imagine they left it out of any others) contains a well-annotated version as well. The dedication, il migglior fabbro, means (roughly) “the greater craftsman.”
All of these notes should put you on the path to understanding more about the poem, but remember that at its best, a poem is a recording of emotion as well as a written communication, and it’s difficult to interpret both halves for someone else. You already “get” the emotional half of its meaning to an extent. Understanding the poem’s literal meaning can make you more receptive to the emotional meaning. I assert that nobody can reliably interpret the emotional content of a poem for someone else.
If you want an amazingly well-written guide to taking poems apart on your own, I recommend you start with Sound and Sense (I have the 3d and 4th editions), which teaches you to find meaning in the sound (how to begin to understand the emotions the words are conveying) and the sense (how to understand the words themselves). It’s awesome, and dissects some pretty famous poems, although I don’t think either of my paper editions takes apart “The Waste Land”.
You’ve picked a really challenging poem (but one of the greats). Enjoy!
Eliot intentionally “packed” the poem with a vast array of allusions, references, and similar bits of wordplay – to have it invoke, emotionally and intellectually, the material from which they were taken. “The Waste Land” is perhaps the greatest of many poems he wrote using this allusive style. Stylistically he used a poetic parallel to what’s known in music as “sonata form” – another element of this “packing.” Review what the five “movements” of a sonata are supposed to do relative to the whole, and read the poem again observing how the five sections in which it is written work in the same way.
Personally what touches me the most are the four “sonata form” poems from his later work published as Four Quartets, and in particular “East Coker.”
It’s been a while since I’ve studied the poem, but I do recall that the “money/teeth” part in section 2 is pretty widely accepted to be about abortion. But I think that’s pretty obvious if you reread it with that in mind.
According to my copy of The Waste Land and Other Poems (Signet Classics edition), Eliot was in a Swiss sanitarium recovering from a nervous breakdown when he “put [the poem] together” (their wording - I’m not sure if they mean he composed it there or if he assembled it there). I’ve read it a few times now, and the impression I’ve gotten from it was not that there was supposed to be an overarching narrative, but that it was more a flow of impressions. There’s that line in the last stanza - “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” To me, it’s as though he’s trying to put his life together into some sort of shape again.
I don’t know. That’s my theory of it. I could be way off.
Incidentally, if you’ve just started reading Eliot, you really should read “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It’s an amazing poem.
I actually find it really illuminates The Waste Land if you go back and have a re-read (or read for the first time) The Great Gatsby. Obviously Gatsby doesn’t tell you anything about the poem itself, having been written by someone else entirely, but it gives you a sense of the mindset of the disillusioned American (Eliot was an expat, as I’m sure you know) writers of the Jazz Age. If you read Eliot with Fitzgerald’s world of empty parties, alcohol, and loveless affairs in mind (especially think of the big ugly billboard with the eyes on it that they keep passing in the car), it helps you see or get a feel for what The Waste Land’s language is getting at.
The version I have has Eliot’s own notes to The Waste Land included - does yours? Which has always made me think, if the author himself has explained it, why do we need any more literary criticism?
Superb piece of work, by the way, and unutterably haunting. I recommend reading all his other work as a precursor to The Waste Land. I have nothing more to add, other than that during the war he lived round the corner from my grandfather, except my granddad was at sea, so never met him!
