Wash leaf on the wind5/31/2023 Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do and I recommend it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the poem worth the trouble. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan). Although originally written in ink, later versions of the poem included the dedication to Pound as a part of the poem’s publication.Įliot also included the following quote, headed underneath ‘Notes’: “Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. However, il miglior fabbro can also be considered to be an allusion to Dante’s Purgatorio (‘the best smith of the mother tongue’, writes Dante, about troubadour Arnaut Daniel), as well as Pound’s own The Spirit of Romance, a book of literary criticism where the second chapter is ‘Il Miglior Fabbro’, translated as ‘the better craftsman’. Originally, The Waste Land was supposed to be twice as long as it was – Pound took it and edited it down to the version that was later published. The meaninglessness of the oracle of Sibyl’s life is a testimony and an allusion to the meaninglessness of culture, according to Eliot by putting that particular quotation from ‘The Satyricon’ at the start, he encapsulates the very sense of The Waste Land: culture has become meaningless, and dragged on for nothing.įollowing that quote, there is a dedication to Ezra Pound, il miglior fabbro. Not a cheery way to start the poem: the oracle Sibyl is granted immortality by Apollo, but not eternal youth or health, and so she grows older and older, and frailer, and never dies. The phrase reads, in English, ‘I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to hear, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die’.’ It is split up into five sections, each of which has a different theme at the centre of its writing, as well as addendums to the poem itself which were published largely at the behest of the publisher himself, who wanted some reason to justify printing The Waste Land as a separate poem in its own book.Īlthough not a part of the poem quoted below, the allusions start before that: the poem was originally preceded by a Latin epigraphy from The Satyricon, a comedic manuscript written by Gaius Petronius, about a narrator, Encolpius, and his hapless and unfaithful lover. Alfred Prufrock – makes the poem a daunting one to analyse. However, the fragmented writing that Eliot was infamous for – see also The Love Story of J. It serves as a living testimony to the enmeshed pattern of human spirit and human culture. However, ‘ The Waste Land‘s merit stems from the fact that it embodies so much knowledge within the poem itself. Eliot wrote it as a eulogy to the culture that he considered to be dead at a time when dancing, music, jazz, and other forms of popular culture took the place of literature and classics, it must have felt, to Eliot, as though he was shouting into the wind. Ultimately, the poem itself is about culture: the celebration of culture, the death of culture, the misery of being learned in a world that has largely forgotten its roots. It is difficult to tie one meaning to The Waste Land. Some of the mythology used within The Waste Land was, at the time, considered obscure – bits from the Hindu Upanishads, from Buddhist lore, and the lesser-known legends of the Arthuriana are woven throughout the narrative, bringing forth several different voices, experiences, and cultures within the poem. The Waste Land signified the movement from Imagism – optimistic, bright-willed to modernism, itself a far darker, disillusioned way of writing. Long poems were unusual in modernist poetry, however, post the 1930s, longer poetry took over from the shorter sequences and sound poetry of the 1920s. Modernist poetry, itself a calling-back to older ways of writing, and developing, in part, as a response to overwrought Victorian poetry, started in the early years of the 20th century, with the intent of bringing poetry to the layman – similar to Wordworth’s attempt over a hundred years before. Drawing allusions from everything from the Fisher King to Buddhism, The Waste Land was published in 1922 and remains one of the most important Modernist texts to date. Early on in his life, due to a congenital illness, he found his refuge in books and stories, and this is where the classics-studded poem The Waste Land stems from. Eliot was no stranger to classical literature.
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