The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Chronicles #26 ｜ The Waste Land

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this episode of Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about

00:00:18.460 The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. I was just quite conscious of the fact that for all of the

00:00:30.000 poem, we've obviously had epic poetry like the Nibelungenlied and like Beowulf, but in terms of

00:00:37.000 just a pure good old bit of verse, not so much. And so I just wanted to focus in on The Wasteland.

00:00:44.300 Now, The Wasteland is obviously one of the most famous poems of the 20th century, even amongst,

00:00:51.380 you know, against some of Eliot's later work, like The Four Quartets. The Wasteland is still

00:00:57.600 considered by some to be his absolute masterpiece. And it's very, very easy to see why, even though

00:01:04.280 it is admittedly a very difficult piece of work. But hopefully we can unknot it today as we go through

00:01:12.940 it all bit by bit. It's probably worth just saying a few things about the circumstances that arose to

00:01:19.260 create this poem in the first place as well. Because The Wasteland, as I'm sure it won't surprise you to

00:01:26.020 hear, was written by Eliot at a time when he was really living through a personal low in his life.

00:01:34.540 He was immensely overworked at his job at Lloyd's Bank and took three months off. He also was dealing

00:01:42.160 with a great amount of stress and dysfunction within his marriage with his wife Vivian. And even though

00:01:50.180 she helped him somewhat with this poem and in working on it, he's quoted as saying that basically

00:01:57.960 their marriage is what rose to his state of mind that gave birth to The Wasteland. So it's a very,

00:02:05.900 very personal poem of his. It's very, very emotive. But also, what's more as well, it's not simply

00:02:12.100 an allegory for Eliot's own life. There's a great amount that it has to say about modernity,

00:02:18.540 about individuality, about the lost generation, and about Western civilization. It makes for very, 0.92

00:02:26.440 very rich reading. And it's a poem that in particular, you really profit from reading over

00:02:33.480 it again and again, because it's packed with intertextuality and just references to just so

00:02:40.620 many other works by famous writers from the Western canon, all the way from classical antiquity

00:02:47.300 to contemporaries of Eliot's own time. And I'll go on to explain more what I think Eliot was trying to

00:02:54.400 achieve with that later on when we talk about the analysis. It's also just worth adding that if it

00:03:00.420 weren't for the contributions of Ezra Pound, The Wasteland wouldn't exist in its current form. Ezra Pound

00:03:08.480 was also a fellow American and moved to England, much like Eliot. And he was responsible for

00:03:15.080 cutting the poem down to less than half of its original size from over a thousand lines to about

00:03:23.760 434, as the poem finds itself in its own complete version now. So keeping at the forefront of our

00:03:32.080 minds the conditions of isolation and insomnia and mental instability that Eliot was writing under,

00:03:40.960 we can begin to explore The Wasteland and all of the references and philosophy behind the work.

00:03:49.120 April is the cruelest month. Breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull

00:04:03.720 roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with

00:04:13.080 dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the star in Burgessie with a shower of rain. We stopped in

00:04:21.960 the colonnade and went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten and drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

00:04:29.880 Binge kein Russen, Stamm aus Litten Echt Deutsch. And when we were children staying at the Archdukes, 0.51

00:04:39.000 my cousins, he took me out on the sled. And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight.

00:04:48.120 And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read much of the night, and go south in the

00:04:57.320 winter. What are the roots that clutch? What branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot

00:05:06.840 say, say, or guess. For you know only a heap of broken images. Where the sun beats, and the dead tree

00:05:15.560 gives no shelter. The cricket, no relief. And the dry stone, no sound of water. Only there is shadow

00:05:24.920 under this red rock. Come in under the shadow of this red rock. And I will show you something

00:05:31.960 different from either. Your shadow at morning striding behind you. Or your shadow at evening

00:05:39.720 rising to meet you. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

00:05:45.400 You gave me hyacinths first a year ago. They called me the hyacinth girl. Yet when we came back,

00:05:59.640 late from the hyacinth garden, your arms full and your hair wet, I could not speak and my eyes failed.

00:06:07.480 I was neither living nor dead. And I knew nothing. Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

00:06:15.960 Old Andrea das Meer.

00:06:24.040 Madame Sesostris, famous clairvoyant, had a bad cold. Nevertheless, is known to be the wisest woman in 0.98

00:06:31.640 Europe with a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, is your card. The drowned Phoenician sailor. 1.00

00:06:39.960 Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look. Here is Belladonna. The lady of the rocks. The lady of

00:06:48.520 situations. Here is a man with three staves. And here the wheel. And here is a one-eyed merchant. And this

00:06:57.640 card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see. I do not

00:07:06.520 find the hanged man. Fear death by water. I see crowds of people walking round in a ring. Thank you.

00:07:16.680 If you see, dear Mrs. Eckertone, tell her I bring the horoscope myself. One must be so careful these days.

00:07:24.680 Unreal city. Under the brown fog of a winter dawn. A crowd flowed over London Bridge. So many. I had not

00:07:37.320 thought death had undone. So many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, and each man fixed his

00:07:45.880 eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, to where St. Mary Woolnoth kept

00:07:54.280 the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying,

00:08:03.640 Stetson, you who were with me in the ships at Miley. That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

00:08:10.840 as it began to sprout. Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

00:08:19.000 Oh, keep the dog far hence. That's friend to men. Or, with his nails, he'll dig it up again.

00:08:24.280 You. Hypocrite. Rector. Mon Saint-Bonbrère. Mon frère. 1.00

00:08:29.560 The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble where the glass, held up by

00:08:43.960 standards wrought with fruited vines, from which a golden Cupidon peeped out. Another hid his eyes

00:08:51.080 behind his wing, doubled the flames of seven-branched candelabra, reflecting light upon the table as the

00:08:58.520 glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, from satin cases poured in rich profusion. In vials of ivory

00:09:06.360 and coloured glass, unstopped, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unduant, powdered, or liquid.

00:09:15.000 Troubled, confused, and drowned the sense in odours, stirred by the air that freshened from the window.

00:09:22.280 These ascended in fattening the prolonged candle flames, flung their smoke into the aquaria, stirring

00:09:29.720 the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper, burned green and orange, framed by

00:09:38.040 the coloured stone, in which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantle was displayed,

00:09:46.360 as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene, the change of Philomel, by the barbarous king so rudely

00:09:53.960 forced, yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice. And still she cried,

00:10:02.200 and still the world pursues, jug, jug, to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time were told upon the

00:10:11.080 walls. Staring forms leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

00:10:20.360 Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair spread out in fiery points, glowed into words, then would be savagely still. 0.77

00:10:29.720 My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.

00:10:42.360 What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think!

00:10:49.240 I think we are in Rat's Alley, where the dead men lost their bones.

00:10:54.600 What is that noise? The wind under the door. What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?

00:11:02.600 Nothing. Again, nothing. Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?

00:11:11.080 I remember those are pearls that were his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?

00:11:18.440 Oh, oh, oh, oh, that Shakespearean rag. It's so elegant, so intelligent. What shall I do now?

00:11:27.480 What shall I do? I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street with my hair down so.

00:11:34.040 What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten, and if it rains,

00:11:40.280 a closed car at four, and we shall play a game of chess, pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock

00:11:48.120 upon the door. When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said, I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,

00:11:55.720 hurry up please, it's time. Now that's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.

00:12:00.440 He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth.

00:12:04.680 He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, he said, I swear,

00:12:09.160 I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert.

00:12:13.880 He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time, and if you don't give it him,

00:12:17.880 there's others will, I said. I was there, she said. Something of that, I said.

00:12:22.520 Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and gave me a straight look. Hurry up please, it's time.

00:12:28.280 If you don't like it, you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can't,

00:12:33.000 but if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed,

00:12:36.840 I said, to look so antique. And here only thirty-one. I can't help it, she said,

00:12:41.400 pulling a long face. It's them pills I took to bring it off, she said. She's had five already,

00:12:46.840 and nearly died a young George. The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.

00:12:52.120 You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said. 0.99

00:12:57.480 What you get married for if you don't want children? Hurry up please, it's time.

00:13:01.720 Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,

00:13:05.000 and they asked me in to dinner to get the beauty of it up.

00:13:07.960 Hurry up please, it's time. Hurry up please, it's time.

00:13:11.720 Good night, Bill. Good night, Lou. Good night, May. Good night. Ta-da.

00:13:15.560 Good night. Good night. Good night.

00:13:17.640 Good night, ladies. Good night. Sweet ladies. Good night.

00:13:24.120 Good night.

00:13:31.720 The river's tent is broken. The last fingers of leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank.

00:13:42.840 The wind crosses a brown land unheard. The nymphs are departed.

00:13:47.880 Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

00:13:57.240 silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends, or other testimony of summer nights.

00:14:04.760 The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors, departed, have left no addresses.

00:14:14.280 By the waters of Lehman, I sat down and wept. Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song.

00:14:21.080 Sweet Thames run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in the cold blast I hear,

00:14:30.120 the rattle of the bones and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

00:14:34.920 A rat crept softly through the vegetation, dragging its slimy belly on the bank. While I was fishing in

00:14:43.400 the dull canal on a winter evening round behind the gas house, musing upon the king my brother's wreck,

00:14:50.840 and on the king my father's death before him, white bodies naked on the low damp ground, and bones cast in a

00:15:00.440 little low dry garret, rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. But at my back from time to time,

00:15:09.080 I hear the sound of horns and motors which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

00:15:16.040 Oh, the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter, and on her daughter. They wash their feet in soda water.

00:15:24.440 Et on se va, d'enfants. Chantons dans la capelle.

00:15:29.560 Twit, twit, twit. Chug, chug, chug. Chug, chug, chug. So rudely forced, Teru. Unreal city. Under the brown

00:15:40.760 fog of a winter noon. Mr. Eugenides, a Cyména merchant, unshaven with a pocket full of currants.

00:15:49.240 C.I.F. London. Documents at sight. Asked me in demotic French to luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel,

00:15:58.440 followed by a weekend at the Metropole. I, Teresius. At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

00:16:07.800 turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits, I could taxi, throbbing, waiting. I, Teresius,

00:16:16.520 though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, 0.84

00:16:23.480 can see at the violet hour, The evening hour that strives homewards,

00:16:29.080 And brings the sailor home from sea. The typist home at tea-time,

00:16:34.440 Clears her breakfast, lights her stove, And lays out food in tins.

00:16:39.960 Out of the window perilously spread, Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays.

00:16:46.760 On the divinar piled, at night her bed, Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

00:16:52.920 I, Teresius, old man with wrinkled dugs, Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest.

00:17:01.880 I, too, awaited the expected guest. He, the young man, Carbuncula, arrives,

00:17:08.440 A small house agent's clerks with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurances sit,

00:17:15.640 As a silk hat on the Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious,

00:17:21.080 As he guesses the meal is ended, She is bored and tired,

00:17:25.880 Endeavours to engage her caresses, Which still are unreproved if undesired.

00:17:32.200 Flushed and desired, he assaults at once, Exploring hands encounter no defence,

00:17:38.680 His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference.

00:17:43.400 And I, Teresius, have foresuffered, All enacted on this same divinar bed.

00:17:51.000 I, who have sat by Thebes below the wall, And walked among the lowest of the dead,

00:17:57.000 Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit.

00:18:04.280 She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover,

00:18:09.640 Her brain allows only half-formed thought to pass.

00:18:13.960 Well, now that's done. And I'm glad it's over.

00:18:18.440 One lovely woman stoops to folly, And paces about her room again, alone.

00:18:23.480 She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

00:18:28.840 This music crept by me upon the waters, And along the strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

00:18:34.440 Oh, city, city, I can sometimes hear, Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

00:18:41.480 The pleasant whining of a mandolin, And a clatter and a chatter from within,

00:18:46.760 Where fishermen lounge at noon, Where the walls of Magnus Martyr hold,

00:18:51.640 Inescapable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

00:18:55.320 The river sweats oil and tar, The barges drift with the turning tide,

00:19:00.680 Red sails wide, To leeward swing on the heavy spar,

00:19:04.840 The barges wash drifting logs, Down Greenwich reach,

00:19:09.320 Past the Isle of Dogs.

00:19:11.000 Wawarara Leir, wawarara Leirer Leirer,

00:19:17.560 Elizabeth and Lester, beating oars, The stern was formed,

00:19:21.960 A gilded shell, red and gold. The brisk swell,

00:19:26.160 Rippled both shores, Southwest wind carried downstream The Peel of Bell's white towers.

00:19:34.280 Wawarara Leir. Wawarara Leirer.

00:19:38.600 trains and dusty trees highbury bore me richmond and kew undid me by richmond i raised my knees

00:19:48.080 supine on the floor of a narrow canoe my feet are at morgate and my heart under my feet after the

00:19:56.100 event he wept he promised a new start i made no comment what should i resent on morgate sands i

00:20:04.580 can connect nothing with nothing the broken fingernails of dirty hands my people humble

00:20:13.040 people who expect nothing to carthage then i came burning burning burning burning

00:20:27.420 oh lord thou pluckest me out oh lord thou pluckest burning 0.74

00:20:34.160 phoebus the phoenician a fortnight dead forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell

00:20:49.960 and the profit and loss a current under sea picked his bones in whispers as he rose and fell

00:20:58.080 he passed the stages of his age and youth entering the whirlpool gentile or jew oh you who turn the 0.94

00:21:07.580 wheel and look to windward consider phoebus who was once handsome and tall as you

00:21:13.340 after the torchlight red on sweaty faces after the frosty silence in the gardens after the agony

00:21:29.460 in stony places the shouting and the crying prison and palace and reverberation of thunder of spring

00:21:39.000 over distant mountains he who was living is now dead we who were living are now dying

00:21:46.660 with a little patience here is no water but only rock rock and no water and the sandy road the road

00:21:56.260 winding above among the mountains which are mountains of rock without water if there were water we could

00:22:03.500 stop and drink among the rock one cannot stop or think sweat is dry and feet are in the sand if there

00:22:11.160 were only water amongst the rock dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit here one can neither 0.66

00:22:19.060 stand nor lie nor sit there is not even silence in the mountains but dry sterile thunder without rain

00:22:28.440 there is not even solitude in the mountains but red sullen faces sneer and snarl from doors of mud-cracked

00:22:37.700 houses if there were water and no rock if there were rock and also water and water a spring a pool among

00:22:47.600 the rock if there was a sound of water only not the cicada and dry grass singing but sound of water over a rock

00:22:56.720 where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees drip drop drip drop drop drop drop but there is no water

00:23:06.260 who is the third who walks always beside you when i count there is only you and i together but when i look

00:23:14.680 ahead up the white road there is always another one walking beside you gliding wrapped in a brown mantle

00:23:22.620 hooded i do not know whether a man or a woman but who is that on the other side of you what is that

00:23:30.160 sound high in the air murmur of maternal lamentation who are those hooded hordes swarming over endless

00:23:39.140 plains stumbling in cracked earth ringed by the flat horizon only what is the city over the mountains

00:23:48.500 cracks and reforms and bursts of violent air falling towers jerusalem athens alexandria vienna

00:23:59.760 london unreal a woman drew her long black hair out tight and fiddled whisper music on those strings 1.00

00:24:10.160 and bats with babies faces in the violet light whistled and beat their wings and crawled head downward down the

00:24:18.860 blackened wall and upside down in air were towers tolling reminiscent bells that kept the hours and voices

00:24:27.300 singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells in this decayed hole among the mountains and the faint moonlight

00:24:35.500 the grass is singing over the tumbling graves about the chapel there is the empty chapel only the wind's home

00:24:44.000 it has no windows and the doors swing dry bones can harm no one only a cock stood on the roof tree

00:24:52.960 co-coo recall co-coo recall in a flash of lightning then the damp gust bringing rain

00:25:02.560 ganger was sunken and the limp leaves waited for rain while the black clouds gathered far distant

00:25:10.260 over himavant the jungle crouched humped in silence then stood the thunder

00:25:17.020 da data what have we given my friend blood shaking my heart the awful daring of a moment's surrender

00:25:27.820 which an age of prudence can never retract by this and this only we have existed which is not to be

00:25:35.780 found in our obituaries or in memories draped by the beneficent spider or under seals broken by the

00:25:43.340 lean solicitor in our empty rooms da diadvan i have heard the key turn in the door once and turn only once

00:25:56.260 we think of the key each in his prison thinking of the key each confirms a prison only at nightfall

00:26:04.840 ethereal rumors revive for a moment a broken coriolanus da damyata the boat responded gaily to the hand

00:26:15.560 expert with sail and oar the sea was calm your heart would have responded gaily when invited beating obedient

00:26:24.320 to controlling hands i sat upon the shore fishing with the arid plane behind me shall i at least set my

00:26:34.160 lands in order london bridge is falling down falling down falling down

00:26:38.900 down falling down

00:26:41.120 pois cos cos cosi nel foco cicria fina

00:26:44.320 quando fiem uti chiedon 0.56

00:26:47.480 oh swallow swallow

00:26:49.480 le prance d'acatain arator apile

00:26:52.560 these fragments i have shorn against my ruins why then i'll fit you

00:26:57.940 hieronymos mad again

00:27:00.480 datta dayadvam damyata shanti shanti shanti shanti

00:27:10.320 let's just start by talking about the title itself the wasteland what is the wasteland why is this a

00:27:19.600 title what did elliot mean by all of this now beyond its very obvious literal presence within the text as a

00:27:28.320 very very arid climate chiefly one that has been totally deprived of water which we'll get back to

00:27:35.080 to say nothing of the psychological wasteland that the malaise of modernity had laid on europe at that time

00:27:44.260 but also what's more as well the fragmentation and numbing of the european mind as it seeks to forget

00:27:52.660 and numb itself to the huge psychological trauma that the first world war had inflicted upon it

00:28:01.200 what the title the wasteland is really alluding to and this will be the first of many other literary references

00:28:09.980 that we're going to talk about as we discuss this is the fact that the wasteland is a reference to

00:28:17.480 the anthropological study by jesse weston who was a contemporary of elliot's in the book from ritual to

00:28:26.600 romance which is a book studying how the old fertility rituals of the ancient past basically gave birth to

00:28:37.200 the grail myth of arthurian legend so what we're looking at here through elliot's poem is much like how

00:28:45.460 the arthurian knights of camelot had to go on the crest to recover the grail because the land had become

00:28:53.100 a wasteland it had become dead it had become barren we're also looking with elliot as well at exploring

00:29:00.440 through poetry how we might metaphorically recover the grail and rejuvenate a sick and dying continent

00:29:10.160 to borrow directly from jesse weston's book she says here the hero sets out on his journey with no

00:29:18.340 clear idea of the task before him he is taking the place of a knight mysteriously slain in his company

00:29:25.260 but whether he rides and why he does not know only that the business is important and pressing

00:29:31.800 from the records of his partial success we gather that he ought to have inquired concerning the nature of

00:29:37.920 the grail and that this inquiry would have resulted in the restoration to fruitfulness of a wasteland

00:29:44.000 the desolation of which is in some manner not clearly explained nor connected with the death of

00:29:50.400 a knight whose name and identity are never disclosed great is the loss that ye lie thus tis even the

00:29:57.820 destruction of kingdoms god grant that ye be avenged so that the folk be once more joyful and the land

00:30:04.940 re-peopled which by ye and this sword are wasted and made void and i think that much as jesse explains

00:30:13.700 it there as well that feeling of directionless that feeling of just muddling through and not entirely

00:30:20.920 knowing how to move forward not knowing how to obtain the goal but simply orientating your mind towards

00:30:27.920 it is the right thing to do anyway and in doing this in looking at the grail in looking towards the

00:30:36.360 wider collective restoration of a people of a continent of a civilization and away from atomized

00:30:44.300 individualism you will eventually in a spiritual sense live a more fulfilling life than what modernity

00:30:52.140 in elliott's time was currently having to offer if you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the lotus eaters

00:30:58.220 head to our website where you can find more

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 13, 2025

PREVIEW： Chronicles #26 ｜ The Waste Land

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