The Waste Land: a critical view
The waste Land
T.S.Eliot complcted ‘The Waste Land’ in the autumn of 1921, and with the constructive suggestions of Ezra Pound about the structure of the poem ,the present draft of the poem , which was published in 1922, has become a classic. It is also, more importantly, the symbol of a whole age, signifying a new kind of poetry and a poetic revolution in modern English Literature and culture. The poem is a masterpiece of innovative poetic design and embodies an entirely new and original poetic technique. Eliot’s view that every generation should make a poem in its own image is not merely an aesthetically satisfying ‘raison d’etre’ for the composition of ‘The Waste Land’, but [it] is also a way of recognising and valicitatin different interpretations of this great poem by succeeding generations who observe in its varying images their own predicament.
F.R.Leavis has called it a poem –‘about the disillusionment of a generation’, and ‘a vision of dissolution and spiritual drought . I.R.Richard has called ‘The Waste Land’- ‘A music of ideas’ that – ‘the ideas like musician’s phrases are arranged not that they may tell us something but that their effects on us may combine into a coherent whole of feeling and attitude.’ There are critics like Wyndham Lewis who finds ‘The Waste Land’- ‘a cross-word puzzle of synthetic literary chronology’ and ‘a spurious verbal algebra.’
It is difficult to trace accurately the sources of ‘The Waste Land’ to specific writing or works of Literature apart from well known origins such as Jessiv Weston’s – ‘From Ritual to Romance 1920 and James Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ 1922. These two books have been identified by Eliot himself, along with a number of vegetation and fertility myths and rituals, especially those connected with ‘Attis, Adonis and Osiris‘. However, we do read the echoes of Ovid’s – ‘Metamorphoses’, St. Augustine’s ‘Confession’, Dante’s- ‘Inferno’ and ‘Pargatorio’, baudelaire’s ‘Paris La Forgue’s ‘City’ ,Wanger’s opera-
T.S.Eliot complcted ‘The Waste Land’ in the autumn of 1921, and with the constructive suggestions of Ezra Pound about the structure of the poem ,the present draft of the poem , which was published in 1922, has become a classic. It is also, more importantly, the symbol of a whole age, signifying a new kind of poetry and a poetic revolution in modern English Literature and culture. The poem is a masterpiece of innovative poetic design and embodies an entirely new and original poetic technique. Eliot’s view that every generation should make a poem in its own image is not merely an aesthetically satisfying ‘raison d’etre’ for the composition of ‘The Waste Land’, but [it] is also a way of recognising and valicitatin different interpretations of this great poem by succeeding generations who observe in its varying images their own predicament.
F.R.Leavis has called it a poem –‘about the disillusionment of a generation’, and ‘a vision of dissolution and spiritual drought . I.R.Richard has called ‘The Waste Land’- ‘A music of ideas’ that – ‘the ideas like musician’s phrases are arranged not that they may tell us something but that their effects on us may combine into a coherent whole of feeling and attitude.’ There are critics like Wyndham Lewis who finds ‘The Waste Land’- ‘a cross-word puzzle of synthetic literary chronology’ and ‘a spurious verbal algebra.’
It is difficult to trace accurately the sources of ‘The Waste Land’ to specific writing or works of Literature apart from well known origins such as Jessiv Weston’s – ‘From Ritual to Romance 1920 and James Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ 1922. These two books have been identified by Eliot himself, along with a number of vegetation and fertility myths and rituals, especially those connected with ‘Attis, Adonis and Osiris‘. However, we do read the echoes of Ovid’s – ‘Metamorphoses’, St. Augustine’s ‘Confession’, Dante’s- ‘Inferno’ and ‘Pargatorio’, baudelaire’s ‘Paris La Forgue’s ‘City’ ,Wanger’s opera-