I remember when I first learned of the reading assignment on The Waste Land. My initial reaction was somewhere in the vicinity of, "We gotta read that entire book by Wednesday!"
This shock only lasted for a few short moments, thankfully, as it was pointed out to me that The Waste Land is in fact only a mere fifteen pages long. This number was quite misleading, as I thought this assignment to be a simple, quick read that I could nail down in matter of minutes. But that wasn't the case. No, I was not the case at all.
Upon first reading The Waste Land, the poem had little meaning to me. I mean, other than a few simple observations of the references to death and sexuality, I had no understanding of the poems. They were just a collection of oddly compiled poems; I couldn't draw any relations between the sections.
As I thought about what I had just read, I went as far to recognize the recurring use of the word "unreal" always in direct reference to a city. This brought to attention, a correlation between the five sections of the work, but one that I couldn't quite put together. It got my mind to thinking, however, which was a start.
Getting into our discussion, I learned of several aspects that I hadn't even begun to realize before. The bulk of the discussion was about the first section, "Burial of the Dead."
While reading, I recall noticing how several different perspectives were being packed into the poem. During discussion, this was compared to an almost dreamlike state of narration, where all these different thoughts and points of view were being streamlined through a single outlet. I couldn't come to a conclusion, whether or not this writing style was intentional in order to get a particular point across, or merely characteristic of T. S. Eliot's time in the insane asylum (most likely the former, now that I think about: genius over insanity.)
The most eye-opening interpretations were those describing the first eight lines. I found it particularly intriguing in seeing it as a lilac field fertilized by the corpses of the dead, especially as the year 1922 was in the era of World War I. In addition, the arguement for "memory and desire" grounded ideas for me as well, as the month of April usually is clear of snow and ripe with vegetation. The desire for greenery clashes with the desire to forget the memory of the dead, who fertilize these healthy fields.
And here is where the genius (or insanity perhaps) comes into play. As this first stanza could be a credible introduction to a post WWI-era narrative, Eliot jumps to another narrator and subject, again, and again, and again...
But that's as far as my understanding goes for now. Yeah.. Not very far.
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3 comments:
The numerous narrator shifts in such quick succession really threw me for a while. I can see the WWI thing.. and that's again always based in an element of personal interpretation. Personally, I see the narrator shifts as an indicator of human transience. I am starting to think that Eliot uses the time-frame and spatial shifts, the quickness of narrator transitions, and the lack of conclusive endings to the arguments voiced by each speaker to illustrate both that individual humans have myriad viewpoints on death and that the ephemeral nature of human existence makes any human discourse on the permanence of death utterly laughable.
"The Waste Land" is really throwing me in a loop as well. I've reread it a few times now, and while I'm gaining more and more insight with each read, I'm still not able to really bring it all together and connect everything. I'm still trying to find that one "meaning" or "point" of the poem as a whole so I can start making sense of the abstract, individual parts of it.
I like thinking about poems because after enough rereads you get these light bulb moments and all the pieces kind of fall into place. Alas, I'm still waiting for that moment with Waste Land.
I agree with what you said about The Waste Land. I was also thinking about World War 1 when we read the poem in class because of all the underlining theme of death in the first section. Furthermore, I personally feel like Elliot was a lunatic. But then that poses the question, "what is a lunatic?" I mean who are we to say someone is a lunatic.
Then like Elliot, I switch and say that he is a genius who used various and pretty random subjects and complied it into a mere fifteen paged poem. And while it might be little, it is filled with very deep thoughts that I think most of our class has not been able to grasp (I would be in the front of that line).
However, as we keep discussing more and more in class, I think it will get better.
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