I have always revealed an uncanny propensity for verse. I choose to think of it as “uncanny” because no one in my family, as far back as I can trace, showed such a preference. One poem that I have read and had to re-read often to assimilate and appreciate is T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Every interface with the work is a surprise ------ allusions, references, symbols unfold a profound picture of a human plight that was and is.
The greatest appeal of the poem lies in its topicality. When Eliot wrote the poem he wrote of a “wasteland” as it was then (1900s), but what he wrote is true of even today. Recent years have been characterized by profound changes – financial upheavals, political shifts, personal tragedies and massive losses of life to disease and violence. ‘’April” now, more than ever before, is the “cruelest month” and man, as never before, well epitomizes “fear in a handful of dust.” With every reading of this prophetic masterpiece, readers like me toast the creator.
T.S. Eliot creates no utopia. On the contrary he shatters one. By analyzing the state of “our” lives he draws the bleakest of pictures in which there are only two outcomes – death, or worse than that, living death. Through the five “sections” of the poem Eliot moves on sketching with precision the disintegration of man and his value systems and building the grime to a crescendo by drawing on vivid imagery and reference to different symbols (“Hyacinth”, “Madame Sosostris”) and by resorting to very unconventional interpretations of myth, religion and tradition.
The refrain of the poem is the ‘death’ of a culture. The several speakers, all of them lost souls and each engaged in a soliloquy, unaware of one another, symbolically convey a decaying social body, too disjointed and fractured to convey and effect the strength of a meaningful entity. The poet, however, identifies the different plights and emerges as the central figure. At the end he speaks audaciously of his own inability to love and becomes a metaphor for the sickness of the world.
The most dramatic and appealing aspect of the poem is the element of hope T.S. Eliot ends on. Very realistically, spirituality is offered as the only succor, the only panacea for redemption.All else, retaliation, revenge, anger, despair and helplessness are futile solutions. The answer is spirituality – be it in the form of a God, a faith or just inner goodness.
The Wasteland ends with a prayer for rain and for the ability to love.
Shantih. Shantih. Shantih !!!!!!
The greatest appeal of the poem lies in its topicality. When Eliot wrote the poem he wrote of a “wasteland” as it was then (1900s), but what he wrote is true of even today. Recent years have been characterized by profound changes – financial upheavals, political shifts, personal tragedies and massive losses of life to disease and violence. ‘’April” now, more than ever before, is the “cruelest month” and man, as never before, well epitomizes “fear in a handful of dust.” With every reading of this prophetic masterpiece, readers like me toast the creator.
T.S. Eliot creates no utopia. On the contrary he shatters one. By analyzing the state of “our” lives he draws the bleakest of pictures in which there are only two outcomes – death, or worse than that, living death. Through the five “sections” of the poem Eliot moves on sketching with precision the disintegration of man and his value systems and building the grime to a crescendo by drawing on vivid imagery and reference to different symbols (“Hyacinth”, “Madame Sosostris”) and by resorting to very unconventional interpretations of myth, religion and tradition.
The refrain of the poem is the ‘death’ of a culture. The several speakers, all of them lost souls and each engaged in a soliloquy, unaware of one another, symbolically convey a decaying social body, too disjointed and fractured to convey and effect the strength of a meaningful entity. The poet, however, identifies the different plights and emerges as the central figure. At the end he speaks audaciously of his own inability to love and becomes a metaphor for the sickness of the world.
The most dramatic and appealing aspect of the poem is the element of hope T.S. Eliot ends on. Very realistically, spirituality is offered as the only succor, the only panacea for redemption.All else, retaliation, revenge, anger, despair and helplessness are futile solutions. The answer is spirituality – be it in the form of a God, a faith or just inner goodness.
The Wasteland ends with a prayer for rain and for the ability to love.
Shantih. Shantih. Shantih !!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment