Sampling from Eliot's The Waste Land (1922)

I THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

April is the cruelest month, breeding   [Chaucer]
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  "Whan that April with his showres soote"
Memory and desire, stirring           The Droughte of March hath perced to the
Dull roots with spring rain.           roote"   Prologue to _Canterbury Tales_
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
         ****
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyance,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest women in Europe,    [appeal to the ancient religions]
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,     
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)     [Shaekspeare's _The Tempest_]
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the rocks,                              [Mary]
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, ["man with three staves",
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and the card,         "the one-eyed merchant
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,    and the "Hanged Man"   
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find              are Tarot Cards.]
The Hanged Man. Fear Death by water.                  
        ****
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many. (1)
     *****


III THE FIRE SERMON

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. (2)
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.    [recall Prufrock, last stanza]
      ****
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon     [compare with Prufrock's "yellow fog"]
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currents
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,      
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
      ******

IV DEATH BY WATER

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,    [note how this man keeps returning]
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swells
And the profit and loss   [note the theme of drowning. Contrast with next verse]
    ****

V WHAT THE THUNDER SAID

Here is no water but only rock 
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop and think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie or sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But read sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
     If there were water
And no rock                    ["Upon this rock, I will build my church", Jesus]
If there were rock
and also water                                            [note water"=rebirth"]
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water.                         [but look what actually still is]
   *****
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing.
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA                        (4)
Datta: What is given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful darling of a moments's surrender
Which and age of prudence can never react
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA                             [note appeal to The old Hindu/Sanskrit religion] 
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus                       [Shakespeare Play]
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
     I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel fpco che gli affina 
Quando fiam uti chelidon -- O swallow (5)
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie    [The Prince A. is in the ruined twoer]
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.    [Kid's _Spanish Tragedy_, 1594]
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.                                            [Sanskrit]
 Shanith shantih shantih. (6)

------------------------------------------------

               NOTES

In looking at this work, you will not the elements of fire,
water, earth and wind reappear over and over again. You will also
note that a number of images from "Prufrock" reappear (fog, death
by drowning, visions of women, isolation etc.) Note also the
"broken images", the snapshots and movements back and forth and
across time.


(1) From Dante's Inferno III 55-57 (per Eliot's note)
(2) From V. Spencer, Prothalamion (per Eliot's note)
(3) C.i.f. cost of insurance and freight (per Eliot's note)
(4) Datta-give Dayadhvam-sympathize Damyata-control (Sanskrit)
      (per Eliot's note)   from the Upanishads
(5) "Now I pray you, by that virture that guides you to the summit of the
     stairway " Quote from Dante's _Purgatorio_ (from Elliot's note)
    "He hid himself in the fire which refines them 
     When shall I be as the swallow"
(6) Shanith -peace. Ending from the "Upanishads". (per Eliot's    
     note)

Some other references:
   To the Fisher King : The barren king
   Various people from literature / other literary works especially the classics
   Various different languages, especially the classic langauges: Latin/Sanskrit

___________________________________________________________________________


Notes  on Modernism from _Language in Modern Literature_, Jacob
Korg

Modernism (1917-29)
     blends anthropology, history and psychology - workings of the 
     unconscious mind; stream of consciousness (see Joyce); myth
     discontinuity; disjunctive images; subject matter not glorified;
     experimentation with language; symbolizing emotional states -
     objective correlative; transformation of the common man into
     everyman ("Unknown Citizen", "City Dwellers"); collage of images;
     self doubt; reflection (Eliot); use of history(Eliot, Yeats, Brecht);
     (In some ways, images are a lot like music videos -rv) 
__________

  Some sub genres: (see pictures)
     
Imagism- relation of word to thing; precision, accuracy and
         concreteness

Cubism- (picasso) an image of reality open to the mind; what the  
        writer/painter feels

Futurists- heroic vision of man; put in touch with fundamental
           sources of energy; enthusiasm for science and technology;
           machines superior to man; verbs should have neither person or
           tense; first person dropped; few adjectives; favor compound
           nouns; H. G. Wells _Time Machine_, _War of the Worlds_

Dada- use fragmented/incoherent forms in order to regain
      innocence of world; spontaneity; contradiction-language with no
      fixed meaning; rejection of form. See "Heat Death of the
      Universe"

Surrealist-(Dali)complete freedom of form; phycological condition
           in which all contradictions are reconciled

Formalist-aesthetic fact rather than content (Russian)

Expressionism- Brecht and the German movement between the wars.

---------------------

Some writers:

James Joyce: _Ulysses_ (see sample) Dublin June 16, 1904; _Dubliners_
Virginia Wolf - "Shakespeare's Sister"
Ezra Pound - Cantos
W. B. Yeats- Irish Romantic - see examples in text
D. H. Lawrence - working class writing; see "City Dwellers"
Beckett - see  _Krapp's Last Tape_  Theatre of the Absurd
Hemingway - see text (U.S. born; lived in Europe)
Eliot - see text /handouts (born in U.S. moved to London)
Auden - see text; Marxist in the 30's reaction to Depression
Brecht - German; fled Nazis moved to U.S.; see text 
Anais Nin (f)  and Henry Miller-exploration of sex; _Tropic of Cancer_
Gertude Stein / Lillian Helman (born in U.S. lived in Europe)
--------------------------------------------------------------

This is the same time period that in America that gave rise
to the Harlem Renaissance. Works such as Jean Toomer's _Cane_
are very similiar in structure to works such as Joyce's _Dubliners_.
In "Fern" (from _Cane_, see text), Toomer uses a lot of images to build his
story. We will be dealing with this period later in the semester. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Social Darwinism: "Survival of the fittest" applied to the poor as a 
    way of justifying having them "die off". A way for the rich to deal
    with their "guilt". Outgrowth of Darwin's theory applied to society.
    
Naturalism - "characterized by a refusal to idealize experience and by the
             persuasion that human life is strictly subject to natural laws."
             Ex. Ibsen, Zola (_Oxford Companion to English Literature_)