PREVIEW： Chronicles #26 ｜ The Waste Land
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
130.78668
Summary
In this episode of Chronicles, we take a deep dive into one of T.S. Eliot's most famous poems, The Wasteland. We explore the circumstances that led Eliot to create it, and the ideas and references that go into it.
Transcript
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,
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,
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.
00:06:24.040
Madame Sesostris, famous clairvoyant, had a bad cold. Nevertheless, is known to be the wisest woman in
00:06:31.640
Europe with a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, is your card. The drowned Phoenician sailor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
00:13:17.640
Good night, ladies. Good night. Sweet ladies. 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,
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.
00:18:18.440
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,
00:19:17.560
Elizabeth and Lester, beating oars, The stern was formed,
00:19:26.160
Rippled both shores, Southwest wind carried downstream The Peel of Bell's white towers.
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
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
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
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
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
00:26:52.560
these fragments i have shorn against my ruins why then i'll fit you
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