The Waste Land (1922)

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The Waste Land (1922)

• T. S. Eliot

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Purpose of The Waste Land

• To convey the souls and civilizations sense of
  emptiness, confusion, and aimlessness after WWI
• To provide a means of regeneration for the soul
  and civilization
• To revitalize poetry

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Objective Correlative

• The only way of expressing emotion in the
  form of art is by finding the objective
  correlative, in other words, a set of objects, a
  situation, a chain of events which shall be the
  formula of that particular emotion such that
  when the external facts, which must terminate in
  sensory experience, are given, the emotion is
  immediately evoked.

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The Objective Correlative

• The waste land is the situation that signifies
  human despair and fear of death

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Premise of The Waste Land

• We need to accept that all wars are one war, all
  battles are one battle, all journeys one journey,
  all rivers one river, all rooms one room, all
  loves one love, and ultimately, all people one
  person.
• All of the specific examples of these things in
  the poem are in every case representative of
  their kind.

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The Meaning of The Waste Land

• convey the state of post-war civilization and the
  soul through the heap of broken images
• transcend the ego by identifying with the
  continuity of significant tradition, of the
  inherited wisdom of the human race

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External Sources

• Biographical and historical background
• The collective vision

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The Waste Land Biographical and Historical
ContextsModern Aimlessness
T. S. Eliot
Post-war society
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Biographical Context

• met Ezra Pound, who introduced him to several
  modernist poets
• married Vivien Haigh-Wood
• worked at Lloyds Bank
• had a nervous breakdown recuperated in Margate
  and Lausanne, Switzerland

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Historical Context WWI

• had laid the battlefields to waste
• had spiritually scarred soldiers and the
  population at large
• had physically weakened populations, enabling the
  Spanish flu to kill over 50 million people

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The Waste Land Regeneration
The Golden Bough

• Carl Jung

From Ritual to Romance
The Tarot
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Carl Jungs Collective Unconscious

• the unconscious inherited wisdom of the race
• contains all of the images, archetypes, that have
  ever given rise to myths
• archetypes, to be of value, must be recreated in
  collaboration with the conscious intelligence
  into a process of ordered growth, of
  transformation

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Jungs Archetypes of Transformation

• refers to the integration of the personality
• occurs with the detachment from the world of
  objective reality as the center of experience and
  the finding of a new dimension in which to live
• involves the death of an old pattern of life and
  the birth of a new

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Jungs Archetypes of Transformation

• During the process of transformation, certain
  archetypical images occur, forming a continuity
  and an interaction of symbols expressing the
  disintegration and death of the old pattern and
  the gradual emergence of the new.
• After the transformation, the center of the
  personality shifts from the ego to a point of
  equilibrium between the individual consciousness
  and the collective psyche.

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Jessie L. Weston From Ritual to Romance (1920)

• an attempt to explain the roots of the legend of
  the Holy Grail
• enumerates the seemingly inexplicable elements of
  the quest--The Fisher King, The Wasteland, the
  Chapel Perilous, and the Grail Cup itself
• ties them to the symbols and initiatory rites of
  the ancient mystery religions whose common source
  were the vegetation rituals and fertility rites

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The Legend The Curse

• concerns a land which has been blighted by a
  curse so that it is arid and waterless, rendering
  it infertile
• linked with the plight of a ruler, the Fisher
  King, who as a result of an illness or a wound
  has become sexually impotent

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The Legend The Curse

• removed when a Knight appears who must ask the
  question as to the meaning of the Lance and the
  Grail
• the lance which pierced Christs side at the
  Crucifixion
• The cup from which Christ and the disciples drank
  at the Last Supper

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The Legend Other Versions of the Curse

• removed when Knight asks why this curse has taken
  place
• removed when the Knight undertakes various
  ordeals, culminating in that of the Chapel or
  Cemetery Perilous

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James Frazer The Golden Bough A Study of
Magic and Religion (1890-1915)

• reads a bit like a novel that touches on almost
  anything
• explores the roots of mythology, folklore,
  magic, and religion from the far East, the near
  East, Africa, Europe, America and more
• shows the parallels between these and Christianity

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Significance of The Golden Bough

• Its thesis is that ancient religions were
  fertility cults that centered around the worship
  of, and periodic sacrifice of, a sacred king, the
  incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar
  deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a
  goddess of the earth, and who died at the harvest
  and who was reincarnated in the spring.
• It claimed that this legend was central to almost
  all of the world's mythologies.

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Significance

• The golden bough is a reference to a mystical
  tree in a Greco-Roman myth.
• In the ancient tale the hero Aeneas consults the
  prophetess who is one of the Sybil at Cumae.
• The Sybil tells Aeneas to break a branch from a
  certain tree that is sacred to Juno Inferno.
• Then Aeneas is led to the entrance of the
  Underworld that he descends.
• Aeneas approaches the Stygian lake that Charon
  will not ferry him across because he is not dead.
  
• The Sybil who accompanies Aeneas then produces a
  golden bough that allows Aeneas entrance into the
  Underworld.

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The Tarot

• Based on similarities of the imagery and
  numbering, some associate the Tarot with ancient
  Egypt.
• The pack of cards was used to forecast the rising
  and falling of the waters of the Nile.
• Cards were used to control the sources of life.

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The Form of The Waste Land

• fragments of human experience of the present
  moment
• allusions to the significant tradition of the
  past

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The Form
The Mythical Method
Alchemy
The Kaleidoscope
The Labyrinth
Film
Collage
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The Mythical Method

• The presentation of experience in symbolic form
• The creation of a pattern that brings human
  beings into significant relationship with
  mysterious forces outside the actualities of
  daily life

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The Mythical Method

• means of perceiving inner realities through their
  reflection in concrete images
• means of manipulating a continuous parallel
  between contemporaneity and antiquity
• means of structuring experience, of projecting
  emotional material by definition fragmented
• means of expressing revelation rather than
  explanation

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Alchemy

• an early protoscientific practice combining
  elements of chemistry, physics, astrology, art,
  semiotics, metallurgy, medicine, and mysticism
• most well-known goal was the transmutation of any
  metal into either gold or silver
• the mythical substance, the Philosophers
  Stone, believed to be an essential ingredient
  in this goal
• goal of alchemy was really a metaphor for a
  spiritual transformation of the self
• when reading a book on alchemy, the reader must
  read "over" the words to figure out the way to
  follow decoding the secret text to discover its
  true meaning

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Labyrinths

• still being used throughout the world as
  meditative and healing tools
• suggest going on a pilgrimage to discover
  something about ourselves and God
• implies losing ones way and having to start from
  the beginning all over again

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Labyrinths

• Release of distracting cares as you move toward
  the center and let your mind gradually quiet
• Receptivity to whatever illumination you receive
  as you pause in the center for prayer or
  meditation
• Rejoining the world with your renewed vision or
  refreshed spirit as you follow the path outward
  again.

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Kaleidoscope

• The kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors containing
  loose colored fragments.
• The viewer looks in one end and light enters the
  other end, reflecting off the mirrors.
• Typically there are two rectangular lengthways
  mirrors. Setting of the mirrors at 45 degrees
  creates eight duplicate images of the objects,
  six at 60 degrees, and four at 90 degrees.
• As the tube is rotated, the tumbling of the
  fragments presents the viewer with varying colors
  and patterns.
• Any arbitrary pattern of objects shows up as a
  beautiful symmetric pattern because of the
  reflections in the mirrors.
• A two-mirror model yields a pattern or patterns
  isolated against a solid black background, while
  a three-mirror (closed triangle) model yields a
  pattern that fills the entire field.

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Film

• made up of images that are spliced (edited)
  together to create an emotional reaction from the
  viewer
• can be used to document reality
• captures the dynamism and chaos of the modern age

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Collage

• A work composed of bringing together two or more
  disparate realities
• A new relationship is enacted between low
  culture (mass culture) and high culture.
• This relationship is felt to be inappropriate,
  jarring, or wrongyet interestingly so.
• The end result is indecency, paradox, and enigma.
  

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The Mythical Method

• For Eliot, the mythical method was the means of
  revitalizing poetry.
• According to Eliot, poetry had become in its
  present state too beholden to description,
  narrative, discussion, to reflection, to
  decoration.

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Meaning The Mythical Method

• For Eliot, the mythical method was the means of
  revitalizing poetry.
• According to Eliot, poetry had become in its
  present state too beholden to description,
  narrative, discussion, to reflection, to
  decoration.

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Form Modern Music and Jazz

• imitates the jazz-like syncopation--and, like
  1920s jazz, essentially iconoclastic
• captures the dissonance and urban rhythms of
  modern life
• parallels The Rite of Spring which transforms
  the rhythm of the steppes into the scream of the
  motor horn, the rattle of the machinery, the
  grind of the wheels, the beating of iron and
  steel, the roar of the underground railway, and
  the other barbaric cries of modern life and to
  transform these despairing noises into music