Notes on the Edition
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Notes on the Poem
Eliot's The Waste Land, has become the poem of the twentieth century. Although published in 1922, it still has not lost any of its power to inspire, to intrigue, to puzzle and even to infuriate readers. There is no doubting the difficulty of the poem, yet it repays continual rereading and research. For what the poem offers is little short of an epochal insight into the modern world, the waste land of the poem's title, a world in which older certainties have disappeared, a world of urban blight, of death and destruction, of meaningless relationships, and of a profound absence of spiritual, cultural and social assurances. In the poem's passage through this waste land we are shown various snapshots of a "dead" world, yet we are also offered tantalising glimpses of both the "life before", and of the possibility of restoring the world of the waste land once more to wholeness and fertility.
The poem's difficulties and obscurities are intentional. To read it for the first time is to be presented with a series of allusions, fragments of texts and documents, and we struggle in vain for a "key" which will enable us to see the poem as a whole, to make sense of the total picture. This was part of Eliot's vision of the modern waste land. In the contemporary world we are left only with cultural fragments, rubble and artefacts - imagine the scene of the aftermath of a bombed library or museum. We are unable to reassemble the pieces together to recreate a whole culture, and to see the rich and vital relationship between culture and experience. Eliot wants us to experience that sense of fragmentation for ourselves, and this is why the poem uses a kind of collage technique - assembling chunks of texts together in what seems a random and arbitrary way - to recreate this sense of cultural rubble. Reading through the poem you find references to many of the key writers in the Western cultural heritage - Shakespeare, Dante, Spenser, Wagner, the Bible - coupled with occasional references to contemporary popular culture - the 'Shakespherian Rag', or the 'Mrs. Porter' song in Section III. There seems little to unify these pieces of textual rubble - all appears arbitrary, random, disconnected.
However, despite the sense of fragmentation, there are ways in which the poem is in no sense garbled or chaotic, there are glimpses of a sense of underlying order and unity. There is, most importantly, Eliot's use of the 'Grail legend' and the story of the 'Fisher King'. In the 'Notes' to the poem, ('Notes' which at times tend to obfuscate rather than clarify), Eliot makes much of this, suggesting that the poem draws upon the powerful myth of the wounded king who must be restored to health before his lands can be returned to wholeness and fertility once more. In drawing upon this myth Eliot is suggesting that, deep within the cultural unconscious of our modern waste land, there are underlying patterns and, furthermore, a sense of continuity with what has gone before. This is perhaps why the poem, in its references to previous empires and cultures - Rome, Alexandria, Vienna - suggests continuities between the contemporary "decline of the west" and the histories and destinies of previous civilisations. Furthermore, in its use of myth, the poem suggests that there are still grounds for belief and hope: in the modern waste land there are no religious or spiritual certainties, but there is still the possibility of sustaining kinds of religious or spiritual faith. And ultimately Eliot's concern is spiritual and religious: in the modern world of the waste land there seems to be little hope of recovering that sense of deeply rooted faith and belief, yet there are grounds for hope.
The poem, then, oscillates between despair and hope, and its final tone is uncertain: we cannot be sure if the journey across the wasteland has been in vain, or if we have been shown something profound and inspiring by the end. The poem's final references to 'shantih', the "Peace which passeth understanding" does suggest a basis for hope, but to get to this we have had to pass through much which is bleak, despairing, fragmented and apparently without meaning.
It is easy to understand, therefore, why the poem became so important
in the 1920s and 30s: it reproduced, for this generation, a sense
of a shell-shocked culture struggling to rebuild itself
after the 1914-18 War, a "Brave New World" which
had seen the emergence of communism in Russia and China, and the
creation of a new urban landscape, a world of anonymity and alienation.
Inter-War literature is packed with references to Eliot's
poem, whether in the literal rubble-strew waste land of
The Great Gatsby, or the mysterious 'ou-boum', the
echoes of nothingness, which haunt the Marabar Caves in Forster's
A Passage to India. And, whilst it was profoundly influential
for writers of the 20s and 30s, its influence continues right
up to the present. In terms of its modernist technique it set
an agenda which subsequent poets have had to accept, whether willingly
or not. For contemporary readers also there is much to find in
the poem, and it has retained its hold on the cultural imagination.
In Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, for example, perceptive viewers
might well have noticed the blue van, its sides adorned with a
version of the poem.
The Waste Land was eventually published in October, 1922. As presented it has five distinct sections or movements. It is important to note, however, that the poem as originally conceived was two to three times longer, and its was through the collaboration with the American poet Ezra Pound, between January and October of 1922, that Eliot revised and reconstituted the final poem. An examination of the facsimile edition of the poem is extremely enlightening, because it reveals how much of a "scissors and paste" exercise went into the final work, and also just how much of an influence Pound had on the final publication: a number of satirical and comic passages were excised, and the organisation much more tightly controlled than had been the case in the original drafts. It is fitting, therefore, that the poem is dedicated to Pound.
When first published the poem did not have the infuriating end
notes which now accompany published editions of the work: these
were added at the request of the American publisher, and Eliot
was ambivalent about how useful they would be to readers, suspecting
that they might distract readers from the poem itself. Eliot decided,
on balance, that they should remain with the published poem, and
it is to these that most readers first turn when looking for elusive
"clues" to the poem's meaning. What the notes do show,
however, is the extent to which it draws upon a wealth of literary
and cultural references: these are included in the hypertext windows
of this electronic version of the poem.
A Game of Chess
The Fire Sermon
Death By Water
What the Thunder Said
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laqueria,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; 'yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears'.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms,
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'
I think we are in rats' alley .
Where the dead men lost their bones.
'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing.
'Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
0 0 0 0 that Shakespeherian Rag-
It's so elegant
So intelligent
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
What shall we ever do?
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the
door.
When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said-
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself, 140
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't 1, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot -
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good
night.
The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors,
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept ...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
0 the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et 0 ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out, food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
T'he meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit ...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
0 City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold,
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
Waliala leialala
'Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'
'My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised "a new start.
I made no comment. What should I resent?
'On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.'
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
0 Lord Thou pluckest me out
0 Lord Thou pluckest
burning
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of guns, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring 350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only 370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
'To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the and plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - 0 swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then lle fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih