The Wasteland Thoughts

“The Wasteland” was definitely one of the more difficult poems read so far in this class. One thing that would have helped me out a great deal would have been knowing that the explanatory notes on this poem were not only directly following the poem, but also in an entirely different section near the end of the book. What I found so confusing while reading was the fact that Eliot would mix his writings with different languages, and I would have no idea what they meant because the interpretations were not in the notes following the poem. There were actually three sections of notes. The first titled, “Notes on the Wasteland”, the second, “Textual Notes”, and the third, “Explanatory Notes”. I’m not sure if it easier for the reader to actually flip through all three sections to find exactly what he or she is looking for than to fit all the notes for a certain piece of writing directly after it.

Now that my complaints on how the book was structured is over with, I can say that the only section of “The Wasteland” that I even faintly understood was the shortest of all the sections consisting of three stanzas.

However, going through them together in class was incredibly helpful to me, not only because of the converging of interpretations among all of the students and the guidance from the instructor but because I found out about the explanatory notes.

Now on more of a serious note, away from the fact that I couldn’t find the notes, one thing that I found interesting about Eliot’s style of writing was how he used so many references to other “things”. As you can see my vocabulary is lacking incredibly, but what I mean by this, more specifically, is how he alludes to other pieces of literature and authors including but not limited to Shakespeare and Dante. This adds to the difficulty of his poems because without an in depth knowledge of all these other writings you would not understand to what Eliot was referring to.

Moreover I noticed that there is a lot of shifts in his poetry even in his references. In one line he may bring up a Shakespearean allusion, but in the line immediately following it, he may add one from Dante.

Also, in comparison to a lot of the other poems we read so far in class I feel as though his writing is dissimilar in many aspects. First of all, it is not as “spiritual” because a lot of the other poems we read seem to have a very spiritual theme talking about religion and its aspects such as giving glory to God. However, though having a sort of dark mood in his poems does not mean it is not “spiritual”, I definitely notice that there is a theme of sexuality and death.

I’m not quite sure how I should finish this blog post other than to say that I feel Eliot was a very intelligent man, and that I would probably never be able to interpret his poems if it were not for this class.