T.S Eliot

[E.A Rumfield]

I read a lot of poetry and I simply read a lot. I read The Waste Land. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I must say I honestly did not understand it and I very much doubt that there are many people who can. I strongly believe that poetry art and literature should be understandable if not why produce it. I'm sure he was extremely talented but for me that particular poem (and that is all I can speak of) seems to me more like prancing than writing. Reminds me of something James Joyce said of Ulysses-"I put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant," which would earn the novel "immortality". Maybe it's just me but I cannot respect that sort of thing. Are there any better more unknown poems by Eliot?

[Lykren]

Prufrock doesn't have the allusions The Waste Land has. Four Quartets is very complex philosophically, but ultimately coherent. Try out those and let us know what you think.

[E.A Rumfield]

The Love Song Of J.Alfred Prufrock
I enjoyed it. It was certainly more down to earth.

[E.A Rumfield]

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

This makes it easier to see why Eliot is so well renowned but that's a really long poem. I felt power in the words that I didn't feel in The Wasteland and Prufrock. Still I don't know. Someone said "Genius is the ability to say something difficult simply."

I don't find it so complex. There is no beginning, there is no end. The beginning is the end is the present. Everything is right now the past the future. Furthermore there is no life? There is no death? We are already dead? We were never alive?

[YesNo]

I read a lot of poetry and I simply read a lot. I read The Waste Land. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I must say I honestly did not understand it and I very much doubt that there are many people who can.
I read it long ago as part of an undergraduate freshman or sophomore required reading list. I didn't understand it, and I remember feeling pretty stupid because it didn't make any sense to me. I was young.

Today, I carelessly stop about 4 to 8 lines into any poem that doesn't make sense especially the ones some professor might put on a required reading list, but I don't recommend doing that until you have your degree.

[Lykren]

E.A. -
I'm glad you liked Prufrock, although I wouldn't call it down to earth! Although I guess it is in comparison to The Waste Land.

I think Four Quartets becomes complex when you try to extend the central themes (of time, aging, and fate) through to the many images he uses to convey them and expound on his ideas. I suppose the philosophy behind all the language isn't too complex though, although it seems to me to be a complex sort of emotional state he is invoking. I think that's more what I meant, now that I'm looking through the poem more carefully. And yes, it is a long poem (though not really so long if you say epics like Paradise Lost are poems!)

Anyway, forgot to mention The Hollow Men. It's a short popular one.

EDIT: Oh, and yesno, why 'especially the ones some professor might put on a required reading list'?

[E.A Rumfield]

I read it long ago as part of an undergraduate freshman or sophomore required reading list. I didn't understand it, and I remember feeling pretty stupid because it didn't make any sense to me. I was young.

Today, I carelessly stop about 4 to 8 lines into any poem that doesn't make sense especially the ones some professor might put on a required reading list, but I don't recommend doing that until you have your degree.

I'm not interested in any of that. I graduated high school in 2010. I didn't like school I always cut and I got by the skin of my teeth. I always liked reading but the summer after I graduated I was profoundly depressed. I felt like the people around me didn't respect me and I didn't know or respect myself. I started reading and for pretty much three months after that I didn't live my house. I started getting these ideas. I became a different person. I meet these authors that spoke to me and seemed to be speaking of what I was going through. I was inspired. I made the decision that I wanted to be a writer, if I could only inspire one person the way I had been inspired I would be happy. I started writing little diatribes mainly about how I hated everything and everyone blah blah blah. But then I started writing poetry and stories and I haven't stopped since. I don't have much of a care for academia. I'm not from Oxford. I wasn't accepted into Harvard. I was educated by the New York Public Library. My favorite poet is Bukowski.

[YesNo]

I started writing little diatribes mainly about how I hated everything and everyone blah blah blah. But then I started writing poetry and stories and I haven't stopped since. I don't have much of a care for academia. I'm not from Oxford. I wasn't accepted into Harvard. I was educated by the New York Public Library. My favorite poet is Bukowski.

I've read most of Bukowski's poetry while on vacation in the Smokey Mountains. I just checked everything he wrote out of the library and took it with me. He was quite entertaining.

I'm not an academic either. Perhaps we are equally envious of academia.

[E.A Rumfield]

You should read Jeffers. He is one of the most powerful poets.

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assasin and poisoner.

The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man's forhead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.

Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this
thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine. I know what death is,
I have sometimes
Longed for it. But cruelty and slavery and degredation,
pestilence, filth, the pitifulness
Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were
only
Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,
With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish
For many ages to come. You are the one that tortures himself to
discover himself: I am
One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little
parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful
Intolerable God.
The sword: that is:
I have two sons whom I love. They are twins, they were born
in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year
Of a great war, and they are now of the age
That war prefers. The first-born is like his mother, he is so
beautiful
That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to
speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips
for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins
Make him seem clothed. The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements,
blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys
Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.

[Lykren]

Ha, I can one up both of
you. I never graduated from high school.

As long as we're going completely off topic, anyone like Gary Snyder? I love the cut down feel of his poems. Reminds me of William Carlos Williams, who is also great.

Last Words of My English Grandmother

There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed—

Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,

Gimme something to eat—
They're starving me—
I'm all right I won't go
to the hospital. No, no, no

Give me something to eat
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well

you can do as you please.
She smiled, Yes
you do what you please first
then I can do what I please—

Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher—
Is this what you call

making me comfortable?
By now her mind was clear—
Oh you think you're smart
you young people,

she said, but I'll tell you
you don't know anything.
Then we started.
On the way

we passed a long row
of elms. She looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,

What are all those
fuzzy-looking things out there?
Trees? Well, I'm tired
of them and rolled her head away.

[cacian]

You should read Jeffers. He is one of the most powerful poets.

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assasin and poisoner.

The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man's forhead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.

Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this
thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine. I know what death is,
I have sometimes
Longed for it. But cruelty and slavery and degredation,
pestilence, filth, the pitifulness
Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were
only
Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,
With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish
For many ages to come. You are the one that tortures himself to
discover himself: I am
One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little
parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful
Intolerable God.
The sword: that is:
I have two sons whom I love. They are twins, they were born
in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year
Of a great war, and they are now of the age
That war prefers. The first-born is like his mother, he is so
beautiful
That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to
speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips
for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins
Make him seem clothed. The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements,
blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys
Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.I think there comes a point in poetry when one decides it is long enough for to become a short story.
I find long dense ongoing poetry tiresome. ;)
Poetry must be light airy and to the point for someone to appreciate its fully.
Good poetry is the one with words that resonnate with us when in different situations.

[Lokasenna]

I must admit to loving The Wasteland - I don't understand it, but then I suspect that Eliot didn't understand it either. The role of the academic, particularly in the Arts, is not to 'understand' a work so much as it is to 'interpret' it.

I suppose what I'm saying is don't be put off appreciating one of the greatest masterpieces of 20th century literature just because it's obscure and enigmatic.

[Lykren]

I must admit to loving The Wasteland - I don't understand it, but then I suspect that Eliot didn't understand it either. The role of the academic, particularly in the Arts, is not to 'understand' a work so much as it is to 'interpret' it.

I suppose what I'm saying is don't be put off appreciating one of the greatest masterpieces of 20th century literature just because it's obscure and enigmatic.

Do you really think Eliot didn't understand his own work? At the least, he understood the allusions he put in there, and if you read the notes he wrote to go along with the poem, it seems like there was a general plan at least

[Charles Darnay]

Aside from the allusions, the one thing that turns people off of "The Waste Land" is that they try to understand it as one long poem: it's not. Sure there are connections, but it is really a series of slightly shorter poems - a series that loosely mimics the seasons.

The poem covers many of the themes you find in Eliot's other work: the desolate land of "The Hollow Man" - the disdain for "civilized society" in "Prufrock" - death in (well take your pick)

It definitely demands more than one reading, and maybe you spend a few days on one section and then move on: this helped me understand it. As for the allusions, some you have to understand, others you can gloss over; such is the nature of allusions.

[Lokasenna]

Do you really think Eliot didn't understand his own work? At the least, he understood the allusions he put in there, and if you read the notes he wrote to go along with the poem, it seems like there was a general plan at least

I really don't think Eliot understood his own work - the deluge of notes don't really help that much. In many cases, they obscure more than they help. It was, furthermore, Ezra Pound's careful but fairly brutal editing of the poem that made it even remotely readable - the original, as Eliot composed it, is all over the place.

So, I don't think Eliot understood it. But then, I think many great artists don't understand their own work. It's by no means a criticism. If they did, what be the point of academics continually reassessing the works and pulling new meanings out of them?

[E.A Rumfield]

So, I don't think Eliot understood it. But then, I think many great artists don't understand their own work. It's by no means a criticism. If they did, what be the point of academics continually reassessing the works and pulling new meanings out of them?

Yea those poor guys would be out of pointless jobs. The Wasteland Eliot said was inspired by two books on anthropology, which I think is one of the biggest frauds in our time. It's white people explaining why the rest of the world is not as civilized and why.

[stlukesguild]

Lokasenna- I must admit to loving The Wasteland - I don't understand it, but then I suspect that Eliot didn't understand it either. The role of the academic, particularly in the Arts, is not to 'understand' a work so much as it is to 'interpret' it.

I suppose what I'm saying is don't be put off appreciating one of the greatest masterpieces of 20th century literature just because it's obscure and enigmatic.

I really don't think Eliot understood his own work...

But then, I think many great artists don't understand their own work....

I largely agree. Personally I don't find The Wasteland to have been all that difficult... but then I don't look to art seeking to "get it"... to wholly understand its "meaning" as some simplistic dictionary definition. Indeed, I would suggest that any work of literature that can be wholly understood with ease is not really worth reading.

But as I have stated on any number of occasions, I don't look to art for the "meaning" but for the experience. I don't find Proust or Tolstoy "boring" in spite of the great length of their novels, because the experience of reading them is so pleasurable. Certainly one could communicate all that they have to say far more succinctly... but that's not the point of art. I don't believe the point of art is "getting it"... rushing forth to the end where all will be understood, anymore than the point of life is to rush forth to some "meaning". The point is the experience of art/life itself and the pleasure it brings.

In all honesty, I think it is rather easy to get a grasp of The Wasteland. One must start by recognizing that the intention is not to convey some linear narrative. The Wasteland is essentially an elegy... an elegy for the "lost generation"... all that was lost in "the Great War" (WWI) including the millions of lost souls. But it is also an elegy for what Eliot saw as the collapse and fragmentation of the collective culture of the West.

From at least the Renaissance onward, the artist could rest assured that his audience had a shared culture that he could build upon. This audience was largely comprised of a social "elite": high-ranking clergy, aristocracy, the very wealthy, and the scholars. Almost all shared an experience and understanding of the Bible, the Greco-Roman myths/philosophies/history, and certain key works of classical literature.

With the collapse of this old order (and World war I was clearly seen as an indictment of this old order) and the increasingly democratic nature of culture and literacy, the artist/writer could no longer rely upon the idea the audience having a grasp of such a shared culture.

Eliot creates an elegy that is essentially constructed of fragments... shards... broken images. It is not to be read as a linear narrative... but rather as one might "read" a collage... a montage... a mélange... or patchwork quilt.

Personally, I find that the form of The Wasteland is perfectly suited to the writer's intentions...

I think many great artists don't understand their own work. It's by no means a criticism. If they did, what be the point of academics continually reassessing the works and pulling new meanings out of them?

E.A Rumfield- Yea those poor guys would be out of pointless jobs.

I certainly recognize that there are elements of snobbish elitism and overwrought pretension that exists in the arts. I am always reminded of a quote from the great comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes:

"People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world."

On the other hand, "Elitism" or perhaps we might suggest the term "meritocracy" isn't the only form of snobbery. There is an equally off-putting snobbery of anti-intellectualism, in which the individual smugly sneers at anything he or she doesn't understand... anything which demands a great deal of intellectual effort, or attains a high intellectual standard.

The Wasteland Eliot said was inspired by two books on anthropology...

The Wasteland was inspired by many things: Dante's Comedia, Wagner, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Tarot Cards, WWI, etc...

...which I think is one of the biggest frauds in our time. It's white people explaining why the rest of the world is not as civilized and why.

And of course there's no racism inherent in that comment, eh?

[Anymodal]

The Wasteland Eliot said was inspired by two books on anthropology, which I think is one of the biggest frauds in our time. It's white people explaining why the rest of the world is not as civilized and why.



The Wasteland Eliot said was inspired by two books on anthropology...

The Wasteland was inspired by many things: Dante's Comedia, Wagner, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Tarot Cards, WWI, etc...


E.A. Rumfield is right in that. Of course many books were very influential, but especially the two books 'The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion' by Sir James George Frazer and 'From Ritual to Romance' by J.L. Weston

[JCamilo]

The thing, poetry itself, is not a simple way to say anything. Prose is much simpler, so all the "complexity for nothing" is part of what is poetry.

There goes, Paulo Coelho claimed Ulysses was an overated piece of work and could be resumed to a twitter. Nice, people missed the point, this is normal. The title of works is often a resume of this work and smaller than a twitter. You can say "God and Hebrews still dont get along" to twit the entire bible.

No, it is absolutelly, fundamenthal to not forget a genius is someone who says something simple with style. Not just something simple. And some genius say something simple with complexity, just like we spend the entire life walking. But some of us stop once or while to dance and that can make all difference.

Art do great elites, but since there is as much kind of arts as there ants in this world, we would end in multiple universe of elites. A guy who is an elite about books, can be in the botton for music. A street artists can be part of an elite for oral storytelling and know nothing about movies. People should just love elites and stop thinking only the negative socio-politic elites.

[E.A Rumfield]

I certainly recognize that there are elements of snobbish elitism and overwrought pretension that exists in the arts. I am always reminded of a quote from the great comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes:

"People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world."

On the other hand, "Elitism" or perhaps we might suggest the term "meritocracy" isn't the only form of snobbery. There is an equally off-putting snobbery of anti-intellectualism, in which the individual smugly sneers at anything he or she doesn't understand... anything which demands a great deal of intellectual effort, or attains a high intellectual standard.[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1166252]

See I like Tolstoy a lot probably more than Dostevsky. What is a high intellectual standard. There are two ways art can convey a message. In a way that you completely understand and can explain or a feeling something you understand but can't explain. I don't feel moved in anyway reading Eliot. What is to be gained from sitting down and reading this poem 20 times before you understand it. Some people like Faulkner I think he says a bunch of nothing in a long winded way. I like simple, precise writing.

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1166252]

And of course there's no racism inherent in that comment, eh?

I am a white person, are you suggesting I hate myself?

Anthropologists, like other researchers (especially historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism.[64][65]

Some commentators have contended:

That the discipline grew out of colonialism, perhaps was in league with it, and derived some of its key notions from it, consciously or not. (See, for example, Gough, Pels and Salemink, but cf. Lewis 2004).[66]
That ethnographic work was often ahistorical, writing about people as if they were "out of time" in an "ethnographic present" (Johannes Fabian, Time and Its Other).

Anthropologists' involvement with the U.S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline. Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation in World War I, and after the war he published a brief expose and condemnation of the participation of several American archaeologists in espionage in Mexico under their cover as scientists.

And the social sciences as a way to manipulate people.

[stlukesguild]

There are two ways art can convey a message.

There are far more than two ways that art may convey a message. There is no "either/or" dichotomy.

In a way that you completely understand and can explain or a feeling something you understand but can't explain.

It would seem that the problem then is "you" and not the writer. You suggest that The Wasteland is not something that "you" can understand... but I and many others have not had this difficulty.

I don't feel moved in anyway reading Eliot. What is to be gained from sitting down and reading this poem 20 times before you understand it.

That is a question every member of the audience must decide for themselves. We must all deem whether the effort demanded by a given work of art is worth the pleasure it is likely to afford. I have read The Wasteland several dozen times... because it afforded such a degree of pleasure... because each time I read it I made further connections.

Some people like Faulkner I think he says a bunch of nothing in a long winded way. I like simple, precise writing.

And that is fine... but what you are speaking of are your preferences. To suggest that "I don't like T.S. Eliot. I like simple, precise writing" is not inherently the same thing as "T.S. Eliot and complex writing are no good."

[stlukesguild]

I am a white person, are you suggesting I hate myself?

I am suggesting that throwing out such statements such as "It's white people explaining why the rest of the world is not as civilized and why," comes off like sophomoric parroting of the sort of politically correct crap professors who imagine their role is to indoctrinate students into the "proper" way of thinking as opposed to teaching them to think for themselves have spewed out for more than a generation. I often suspect it is the backlash against this sort of indoctrination that has led to our current militant Neo-Cons. And yes... sweeping statements about a given race are racist. Ask yourself just how that same sentence would come off if it read, "It's just black people doing XYZ."

Anthropologists, like other researchers (especially historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism...

Is this something we don't know? Seriously, what field of endeavor hasn't been abused by those in power at one time or another?

How does that effect Eliot's poem? Have you come upon passages that you find overtly racist? And do you measure the aesthetic merits of a work of art based upon moral or ethical values?

[JCamilo]

In fact, if you open the newspapers, you will find 101003 people who can write in a more simple and precise way than Tolstoy. He was quite stylized for the good abuse of statistic.

[E.A Rumfield]

I am a white person, are you suggesting I hate myself?

I am suggesting that throwing out such statements such as "It's white people explaining why the rest of the world is not as civilized and why," comes off like sophomoric parroting of the sort of politically correct crap professors who imagine their role is to indoctrinate students into the "proper" way of thinking as opposed to teaching them to think for themselves have spewed out for more than a generation. I often suspect it is the backlash against this sort of indoctrination that has led to our current militant Neo-Cons. And yes... sweeping statements about a given race are racist. Ask yourself just how that same sentence would come off if it read, "It's just black people doing XYZ."

Anthropologists, like other researchers (especially historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism...

Is this something we don't know? Seriously, what field of endeavor hasn't been abused by those in power at one time or another?

How does that effect Eliot's poem? Have you come upon passages that you find overtly racist? And do you measure the aesthetic merits of a work of art based upon moral or ethical values?

Literature is not painting it matters very much what the writer thinks morally and ethically. As a writer I write because I have something to say about this world and my place in it. You seem to think that form is all that matters but it is content that is the key. Also didn't Eliot write a bunch of anti-Semitic rhetoric?

I read "complex writings" Eliot was even accused by renowned critics of being "willfully difficult" or vague. My point is not that something cannot display virtuosity. Let's think of music for a second here. I like John Coltrane. Coltrane was a genius, Musically he was natural and astounding. He showed amazing proficiency and feeling for the music. Name some metal guitarist who is remarkably proficient at his instrument but displays no feeling or childlike joy or playfulness. Eliot's poetry shows no childlike joy. It shows no playfulness maybe showoffishness. You seem to want to make this personal it's not the poet it's me. It's my fault that I can read other poets with no less mastery of the language but can't stand Eliot. If you understand The Wasteland and find it so rewarding please take car to explain it to me.

[JCamilo]

As if painters do not represent their moral perspective also. Just travel by the medieval portrait of religious scenes to see perfect representation of medieval morality.

[E.A Rumfield]

As if painters do not represent their moral perspective also. Just travel by the medieval portrait of religious scenes to see perfect representation of medieval morality.

I can really like a Blake painting but I would not read anything he wrote. Visually it is very pleasing but I could not sit with a book and digest all that he felt he was inspired to say.

[JCamilo]

And? What is the point. I prefer reading Blake than looking at his portraits. So? He used to say you had to see his paintings and writings together for a full understanding of both.

In fact, the problem is that you think you must understand every text. But the problem is that not every text is writen for you. Treat them like paintings (they also have several levels of understanding, they also convey moral messages, etc. Just like a text) and you will have no problem.

[E.A Rumfield]

And? What is the point. I prefer reading Blake than looking at his portraits. So? He used to say you had to see his paintings and writings together for a full understanding of both.

In fact, the problem is that you think you must understand every text. But the problem is that not every text is writen for you. Treat them like paintings (they also have several levels of understanding, they also convey moral messages, etc. Just like a text) and you will have no problem.

Blake wrote some beautiful things about how human being aren't responsible for great works of art or great things God is. He said something like-When I am moved to write I see the room fill with words swirling around like music.

That's beautiful and partly true I think inspiration is a funny thing but I think philosophically he was wrong to however beautifully cut people so short.

Lets just agree to disagree about this whole thing because it is pointless.

[JCamilo]

Again, and?

[E.A Rumfield]

Again, and?

Besides the fact that I felt I had nothing to gain from reading his writing. Most people don't dislike a writer because they are bad at writing. Very few writers are bad most people dismiss a writer because they dislike what they have to write about. I can respect his views and his conclusions but I do not share them. I read Blake once and that did it for me. Same with Neitszche.

[JCamilo]

Good for you.

How this relate to the claims of Literature being different from Paiting because it matters more how the artist thinks morally or ethically?

And how this relate the whole argument for simplicity or understanding as validation of a text?

[namenlose]

Literature is not painting it matters very much what the writer thinks morally and ethically.

If all the readers of Dante had the same religious and moral perspectives as him, they would not be many, if any at all. The same could be said about a great number of other literary masters, including Tolstoy. How many readers of Tolstoy preach castity? How many who read Rimbaud would do the same things he did in life? And how about the misogyny displayed by many philosophers whose thoughts are of great relevance today?


Eliot's poetry shows no childlike joy. It shows no playfulness maybe showoffishness. You seem to want to make this personal it's not the poet it's me. It's my fault that I can read other poets with no less mastery of the language but can't stand Eliot. If you understand The Wasteland and find it so rewarding please take car to explain it to me.

And what are your basis to say he did not achieve his own mode of aesthetic eminece in The Wasteland, when you even affirm you have not understood what was his point? When Saint Lukes wrote about the suitability of the fragmented form of the text to the poem's poetic vision, as well as its relation to what was seen as a decline of culture with the arrival of WWI, I think he was trying to explain the pleasure he found in reading it.

Moreover, I don't think anyone here wants to make it personal. The only problem which was pointed in your perspectives was your dismissal of Eliot's quality based only in your lack of understanding of his work. If you don't like or don't understand him, it does not make you any worse than anyone here, but it does not mean he was writing without artistic beauty either.

[E.A Rumfield]

How about we substitute the word simplicity for directness. The Way of the Samurai says even when something is difficult it is no use to think about going forward in a roundabout way. The best approach is always head on. I prefer directness. Instead of hiding behind metaphors and allusions, I think poetry is best stripped down. It's all subjective but I prefer it.

Isn't writing different from painting? Isn't painting different from music? Music is a language of it's own and a skilled musician can reach perspectives a writer can't. Music can describe things words can't do justice to. A writer can reach perspectives a musician can't. And words can describe something music can't. A symphony or opera by Wagner holds nothing but the music. Some have accused Wagner of being anti-semitic but it cannot possibly carry over into the music. Writing is with words and written ideas it certainly matters more what a writer thinks.

[JBI]

Four Quartets is even harder than the Wasteland in many ways. This coming from someone who has read it over 100 times.

Ad for The Waste Land, you need a good teacher or good edition to get into it, though it never relents. It is its scope and complexity that makes it this wasteland.

Still parts canbe understood if you parse them. First, you should cut the forms out - five legs, the third the most meaty, the fourth the most lyrical.

Then there are the voices of the wasteland. Treat the allusions like additional voices and they will make more sense - the poetry is drawing and showing voices trapped within its destructive bankruptcy.

Then the images and symbols. Mark reoccurrences and elements to add clarity. Madame sosastris (sp) feeds the poem with a sort of divination on the imagery.

Then just try to break off chunks. If you have not seen wagner than maybe you have read Dante.

[JBI]

E.A. Rumfield is right in that. Of course many books were very influential, but especially the two books 'The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion' by Sir James George Frazer and 'From Ritual to Romance' by J.L. Weston

The first of which I believe Eliot didn't even read if I recall.

[JBI]

Blake wrote some beautiful things about how human being aren't responsible for great works of art or great things God is. He said something like-When I am moved to write I see the room fill with words swirling around like music.

That's beautiful and partly true I think inspiration is a funny thing but I think philosophically he was wrong to however beautifully cut people so short.

Lets just agree to disagree about this whole thing because it is pointless.

A shallow reading of Blake if there ever was one. He has as many quotes affirming his belief in the imagination as this force to fill a room. As it is he was a very anti-god poet, and seen in his work from the French Revolution onward. He has many choice things to say to deists and naturalists.

[E.A Rumfield]

If all the readers of Dante had the same religious and moral perspectives as him, they would not be many, if any at all. The same could be said about a great number of other literary masters, including Tolstoy. How many readers of Tolstoy preach castity? How many who read Rimbaud would do the same things he did in life? And how about the misogyny displayed by many philosophers whose thoughts are of great relevance today?



And what are your basis to say he did not achieve his own mode of aesthetic eminece in The Wasteland, when you even affirm you have not understood what was his point? When Saint Lukes wrote about the suitability of the fragmented form of the text to the poem's poetic vision, as well as its relation to what was seen as a decline of culture with the arrival of WWI, I think he was trying to explain the pleasure he found in reading it.

Moreover, I don't think anyone here wants to make it personal. The only problem which was pointed in your perspectives was your dismissal of Eliot's quality based only in your lack of understanding of his work. If you don't like or don't understand him, it does not make you any worse than anyone here, but it does not mean he was writing without artistic beauty either.

I can relate to Rimbaud. Desperate man. And I never read Tolstoy's later work but didn't he have 20 kids or something like that. Also I dislike the Greeks if those were the philosophers you were mentioning. Right now I'm reading Dos Passos so I can understand the way Eliot must have felt about the world at that time. Like I said before this is pointless. I admit that I don't understand Eliot right now at this point. Doesn't mean he's any less of a writer. Just not for me.

[JCamilo]

How about we substitute the word simplicity for directness. The Way of the Samurai says even when something is difficult it is no use to think about going forward in a roundabout way. The best approach is always head on. I prefer directness. Instead of hiding behind metaphors and allusions, I think poetry is best stripped down. It's all subjective but I prefer it.

You prefer directness. Then read the dictionary, wikipedia, a journal. Poetry or Tolstoy are not certainly direct to anything. And even a master of "direct" text like Flaubert would tell you it is an illusion. He had to get a very tortuous path ot achive that directness. Hence, why the pen is more powerful than the sword. They can cut where those feeble samurais (a irrelevant minority) cannot.

You prefer anything you want. You however is making universal claims about what is best or what something is based on the limitations of your experience. This is different from what works for you.


Isn't writing different from painting? Isn't painting different from music? Music is a language of it's own and a skilled musician can reach perspectives a writer can't. Music can describe things words can't do justice to. A writer can reach perspectives a musician can't. And words can describe something music can't. A symphony or opera by Wagner holds nothing but the music. Some have accused Wagner of being anti-semitic but it cannot possibly carry over into the music. Writing is with words and written ideas it certainly matters more what a writer thinks.


Painting is different, but the claim are not they are equals. The claim is that they are not difference due the importance of what an artist think. This is ignoring how painting predates literature, how, until the majority of the population of population could read , something quite recent, the graphic representation was a formidable ally for an artist to make his "message" to a wider audience, it is ignoring that a painter just do not got putting random imagens on a screen, but combining symbols which best represent what he thinks. It is ignoring how those ideas are used until today in other visual representations like movies, comic books or photographies, or how you ignore that, just like there is literature critics who spend their drinking time discussing what Eliot said, there is art critics discussing Da Vinci, which portrait Mona Lisa has probally generate more interpretations and discussions than Eliott and Joyce put together.

Yuo are letting your lack of sensibility and knowledge to a given medium to guide your claims. I am sure Stlukes can give his traditional serie of painting images to show several examples of portraits that convey extremely complex messages.

[E.A Rumfield]

A shallow reading of Blake if there ever was one. He has as many quotes affirming his belief in the imagination as this force to fill a room. As it is he was a very anti-god poet, and seen in his work from the French Revolution onward. He has many choice things to say to deists and naturalists.

I don't think it was shallow. How about this. Blake modestly and humbly gave his genius up to the power of God. Neitszche and Blake both believed passionately believed in the power of the human imagination. Neitszche believed anything could be accomplished through determination and training. While Blake believed something greater was at play, that all the great people were somehow tools of God. Reality is likely somewhere in between.

[JBI]

Quotes please.

[Alexander III]

I am a white person, are you suggesting I hate myself?

Anthropologists, like other researchers (especially historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism.[64][65]

Some commentators have contended:

That the discipline grew out of colonialism, perhaps was in league with it, and derived some of its key notions from it, consciously or not. (See, for example, Gough, Pels and Salemink, but cf. Lewis 2004).[66]
That ethnographic work was often ahistorical, writing about people as if they were "out of time" in an "ethnographic present" (Johannes Fabian, Time and Its Other).

Anthropologists' involvement with the U.S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline. Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation in World War I, and after the war he published a brief expose and condemnation of the participation of several American archaeologists in espionage in Mexico under their cover as scientists.

And the social sciences as a way to manipulate people.


Are you implying then that other races were to stupid to use their literature as a tool in their expansionist policies, or as a motivator to defend themselves?

Or are you implying that other races literature was too weak to be used in such a manner?

Here let me propose something radical, what if it has nothing to do with race. What if every civilization since the dawn of time uses it own literature and art to help further it's geo-political conquests. What if this is simply a human thing rather than a white thing. And what if we mostly notice it amongst the white civilizations, because they were the only ones who actually ever fvucking conquered the entire world. And thus had a larger platform to do what every other civilization, regardless of race, had been doing.

I had a professor do the whole "white rant" one time, it is rather ridiculous and outdated in the 21st century, and it is an easy way to ignore actual ugly problems with no nice solution by glossing them over with a black and white (literally in some cases) argument which makes the person feel better about themselves because they defended those poor non-white people who need big white professors in oak chairs to defend their little selves, as they are otherwise defenseless. " Don't worry poor little black man, I the oxbridge league man am here to save you from the evil white oppressors!" ...P.s vote for my party in the elections, k thnx bye.

[E.A Rumfield]

Are you implying then that other races were to stupid to use their literature as a tool in their expansionist policies, or as a motivator to defend themselves?

Or are you implying that other races literature was too weak to be used in such a manner?


That's a really stupid conclusion.

[stlukesguild]

Literature is not painting it matters very much what the writer thinks morally and ethically. As a writer I write because I have something to say about this world and my place in it. You seem to think that form is all that matters but it is content that is the key.

And so who decides what art is or is not "moral" or "ethical"? For years that decision was imposed by the Church and the Aristocracy. The rebellion of art pour l'art or "art for art's sake" did not do away with political or religious or moral content... but rather it suggested that art should be judged solely as art... and not upon such non-art concerns. I recognize that I can disagree with the message of a work of art and still admire... even embrace it as a work of art. For example, the Counter-Reformation message of Michelangelo's Last Judgment:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8437/7924588578_803fdfc138_n.jpg (http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8437/7924588578_803fdfc138_b.jpg)

suggests, through the form of the souls being hoisted to Heaven by Rosary Beads that it was only through the grace of the Holy Catholic Church that one might be "saved"... and that all others are damned. Now most, myself included, would seemingly disagree with this message... and yet I am still able to appreciate... revere the Last Judgment as a brilliant work of art.

The same applies to literature. I found myself in extreme disagreement with almost everything Plato had to convey in The Republic... and yet I recognize it as a masterpiece of literature and philosophy that should be read.

Also didn't Eliot write a bunch of anti-Semitic rhetoric?

So what? Richard Wagner was perhaps even more vocal in his antisemitic rants... and yet I recognize him as one of the greatest composers ever. Caravaggio had a rap sheet a mile long... including pandering homoerotic images of young boys to high-ranking clergy with similar tastes, and even murder... and yet he is also clearly one of the greatest painters ever:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_caravaggio_death.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=caravaggio_death.jpg)

Carlo Gesualdo was perhaps the most innovative composer of the Renaissance... pushing traditional tonality to an extreme that won't be heard again until Wagner, Scriabin, Debussy... and Schoenberg.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I

And he was also more than a bit morally and ethically challenged:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Gesualdo

I read "complex writings" Eliot was even accused by renowned critics of being "willfully difficult" or vague.

Again, what's the point? No writer is beloved by all. Tolstoy infamously dismissed Shakespeare, Plato questioned Homer, and Vladimir Nabokov disliked Dostoevsky.

My point is not that something cannot display virtuosity. Let's think of music for a second here. I like John Coltrane. Coltrane was a genius, Musically he was natural and astounding. He showed amazing proficiency and feeling for the music. Name some metal guitarist who is remarkably proficient at his instrument but displays no feeling or childlike joy or playfulness. Eliot's poetry shows no childlike joy.

Neither does Wagner nor Michelangelo nor Dante. Not all artists have the same intentions... nor the same strengths.

You seem to want to make this personal it's not the poet it's me. It's my fault that I can read other poets with no less mastery of the language but can't stand Eliot.

By saying that "It's not the poet, it's you" I am not suggesting that you lack the ability to fathom complex art. I have no interest in Chinese opera... or most of the Chinese music in general that I have heard, I'm not all that fond of Schoenberg, and I would much rather read Proust or Kafka than Joyce... but I recognize that just because I dislike something, doesn't mean that it is necessarily "bad"... and considering the opinions of many who do admire Joyce and Schoenberg and Chinese opera, there most likely is something of real merit there... I have simply made the decision that for me the probable beauty and pleasure that exists there is not worth the effort needed... and that I could rather put forth such effort elsewhere... where I am more assured of such pleasure.

If you understand The Wasteland and find it so rewarding please take care to explain it to me.

I gave you a basic overview... and I doubt that breaking the poem down and analyzing it line by line will be any more likely to lead you to change your opinion, than would such an analysis of Lima Beans or Liver and Onions will lead me to enjoy eating them.

[stlukesguild]

I read Blake once and that did it for me.

And that is your loss. I cannot imagine how many masterworks of art I would be losing out on if I stuck with my initial response. As a teenager I thought the whole of poetry was lame. Forced to read Romeo and Juliet in high-school, I would have told you that "Shakespeare sucks!" My first experiences with Kafka, J.L. Borges, Velazquez, William Blake, Monet, Richard Wagner, etc... left me less than impressed. I can say that (at least for the time being) I have given up on ever liking Arnold Schoenberg... but I have listened to at least some 15 discs of his music... and over many years.

[stlukesguild]

How many who read Rimbaud would do the same things he did in life?

Yeah... you gotta love Rimbaud... and Verlaine... the little perverts... and attempted murders... gun smugglers...

But such poets!

[stlukesguild]

Blake modestly and humbly gave his genius up to the power of God.

Blake was certainly never modest nor humble... and he certainly would not have surrendered his genius... his imagination or creativity to God... and definitely not the God of the Hebrew/Christian tradition.

[YesNo]

I read The Waste Land. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I must say I honestly did not understand it and I very much doubt that there are many people who can. I strongly believe that poetry art and literature should be understandable if not why produce it.
To bring this thread back to the OP, I agree with you that poetry, art and literature should be understandable, although I would much prefer that it be entertaining. I did not find the experience of reading Eliot entertaining and that is the main reason why I reject his writing as a waste of my time.

Although there is much in Eliot's writing that I can't even make sense out of, what I do pick up is a view of reality that I find suspicious and potentially inaccurate. Just take the title, "The Waste Land", as an example. What is he referring to with this negative adjective, "waste"? Is he referring to Britain in the early 20th century? Or, is he metaphorically referring to the universe, promoting a metaphysical view of it as somehow "bad" where he is some enlightened visionary who thinks he can see the truth?

What I can say for sure is that 21st century science has discredited his early 20th century assumptions about how the universe works and what it is made of. So on what can I expect Eliot, this self-promoting visionary, to enlighten me, if not entertain me, even if he decided long ago to have the courtesy to respect his audience?

[YesNo]

I tried to find Eliot's poetry on YouTube and there are many links where he is reading it himself.

Here's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (8:22): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAO3QTU4PzY

Here is The Waste Land (28:33) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixX32WKN5Y&feature=related There is a brief introduction.

Here is the Four Quartets (55:39) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8tQrG4ZSw&feature=related

Here is The Hollow Men (4:16) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fu8awT5Jzs&feature=related

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm glad that there's a lot of literature out there that isn't understandable (and 99.9% of it is, you just have to, God forbid, work at it) or that has no discernible point. It'd be quite boring if everything was easy. I guess some people want that, though (along with their big bag of pot, of course).

[E.A Rumfield]

I'm glad that there's a lot of literature out there that isn't understandable (and 99.9% of it is, you just have to, God forbid, work at it) or that has no discernible point. It'd be quite boring if everything was easy. I guess some people want that, though (along with their big bag of pot, of course).

So you don't get laid and it's my fault? Passive aggressive internet guy.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

How'd you get me not being laid out of any of that? :lol: Weren't you the one complaining about baseless asspumptions a few posts ago in another thread? Lay off the 40 bag, guy.

[E.A Rumfield]

A back handed comment like that makes me think you are insecure.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

As opposed to your back-handed comment?

[Lokasenna]

I tried to find Eliot's poetry on YouTube and there are many links where he is reading it himself.

Here's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (8:22): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAO3QTU4PzY

Here is The Waste Land (28:33) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixX32WKN5Y&feature=related There is a brief introduction.

Here is the Four Quartets (55:39) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8tQrG4ZSw&feature=related

Here is The Hollow Men (4:16) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fu8awT5Jzs&feature=related

Eliot might have been one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, but I can't listen to his readings of them. His voice is ridiculous - I burst into giggles every time I hear it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

^ Why is that? He sounds about as humorous as any English person does to my ears.

[YesNo]

Eliot might have been one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, but I can't listen to his readings of them. His voice is ridiculous - I burst into giggles every time I hear it.
He sounds older than I suspect he was when he recorded these, but I don't know when that was.

Generally, if I don't understand something when I read it, I try to listen to it. Eliot still doesn't make sense. I do like the rhythm, alliteration and rhyme he often uses, but it seems like he is talking nonsense. Now if I thought this was intended to be comedy, that would be OK.

[Lokasenna]

^ Why is that? He sounds about as humorous as any English person does to my ears.

Hmm... well, even by English standards he sounds quite nasal and squeaky. Or maybe it's just me. I just can't keep a straight face when I hear him.

[Anton Hermes]

Eliot and Pound were amazing poets with cinematic imaginations. The Waste Land is serious stuff, admittedly, but fascinating.

[YesNo]

Eliot and Pound were amazing poets with cinematic imaginations. The Waste Land is serious stuff, admittedly, but fascinating.
If Eliot is serious, what is he saying?

[Anton Hermes]

If Eliot is serious, what is he saying?

It seems to me he's describing the spiritual and cultural barrenness of modern society.

What do you think he's saying?

[stlukesguild]

Again... this is not so hard. Look up any number of on-line analyses of the poem. I already gave you some concept of what Eliot's intentions were with regard to his use of fragments as opposed to a linear narrative.

So let's look at the first section:

The Wasteland

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω."

For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro.

Someone here (JCamilo?) suggested the possibility that not all art is for everybody. This is something we may do well to recognize. Eliot obviously has an audience in mind that is very well-read... who will "get" the literary allusions.

He begins the poems with an excerpt from Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon, in Latin and Greek, which translates as: “For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered, ‘I want to die.’” The poet who sees with the eyes of the visionary... and recognizes the horror... wishes to die.

The short dedication to Ezra Pound, instrumental in editing The Wasteland is a quote from Dante's Purgatorio... a scene in which Dante comes upon Arnaut Daniel, the Occitan troubadour poet who was one of the key figures in the development of European lyrical poetry. Dante refers to him as "my better maker" or the better craftsman than I, and thus Eliot makes the similar nod to Pound.

The poem proper begins:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

On one level, Eliot is alluding to... bitterly... Chaucer's opening of the Canterbury Tales:

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages...

To Chaucer, April denotes Spring and warm showers that nourish the land. To Eliot... after the horrors of WWI and his sense of the collapse of all that he holds sacred... April and Spring are a bitter mockery. Who hasn't felt this... after a lost love or the death of someone we knew and were close to... the sense that laughter and joy and the sunny day only served to highlight one's own loss? Winter, Eliot suggests, was far kinder. The return of Spring only mocks all that was lost.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar kine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Here we have a sudden jump... a sudden cut or scene change... something that had only just been developed in film through the use of editing a few years prior. Eliot shifts from the vague elegiac invocation of time and nature and loss, to a suggestion of specific memories: a rain shower by the Starnbergersee; a lake outside Munich; coffee in that city’s Hofgarten; sledding with a cousin in the days of innocent childhood.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

And then the poem returns to the tone of the opening lines... in one of the most powerful passages of the poem as a whole. It describes the land of “stony rubbish” – arid, sterile, devoid of life, the “waste land” of the poem’s title. This should be read both literally... as in the burned and charred fields strewn with dead bodies and the ruins of the war. It should also be read symbolically... alluding to the spiritual and cultural wasteland. One might do well to recognize that the First World War was a greater psychic shock than the Second World War.

Eliot quotes Ezekiel 2.1 and Ecclesiastes 12.5, using biblical language to construct a sort of dialogue between the narrator –- the “son of man” -– and a higher power. The former is desperately searching for some sign of life -– “roots that clutch,” branches that grow -- but all we have here is a forsaken and wasted landscape that offers no relief from the beating sun, and no trace of water... all he can find are dry stones, dead trees, and “a heap of broken images.” Again this is both literal and metaphoric. All the sculpture, and tombstones and paintings and cathedrals destroyed by the war amount to a "heap of broken images"... but that is also all these great images denote to modern man that has lost touch with the faith behind these images. They are broken in that they no longer work their magic... to evoke a belief in God. Rather they are nothing but art.

Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

(The wind blows fresh
To the Homeland
My Irish Girl
Where are you lingering?)

The poem again jumps... another scene change... and we are presented with a verse in German... taken from Richard Wagner's opera, Tristan und Isolde. These lines from the opera take place aboard a ship sailing from Ireland to Cornwall carrying Isolde, who is being taken by Tristan as bride for his uncle, King Marke. A young sailor aboard the ship sings a song about true love and the Irish woman he left behind. Isolde is outraged and anguished as she observes Tristan, standing on the deck. By delivering her to his uncle, he shows no regard for her feelings.

"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
–Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.

The scene jumps again and we are witness to a dialog between a woman and her lover. The scene offers a contrast between what has seemingly become a loveless sexual relationship... with a man who shows no regard for her feelings (?) as she recalls her shock as they returned from their roll in the wet grass... and the overwhelmingly intense passion... and love beyond death that is Wagner's masterpiece. The final line returns again to Wagner, “Desolate and empty is the sea.”

The poem as a whole must be seen as a series of cinematic scenes as opposed to a linear narrative. The poet pushes the reader to make connections and contrasts between scenes. These scenes of vignettes build up into constructing an elegy for the psychological, spiritual, cultural... and physical landscape or Wasteland.

[YesNo]

It seems to me he's describing the spiritual and cultural barrenness of modern society.

What do you think he's saying?
The "spiritual and cultural barrenness of modern society" is too vague to have much meaning. Also, I don't think modern society is spiritually and culturally barren. Far from it. Perhaps London, post WW I, was a cultural or spiritual mess, but I doubt it.

As far as what I think Eliot was saying, I think he was talking gibberish. I suspect he thought he was saying something significant, but upon examination, I don't see anything of value in his writing. That is why I am asking someone who values him as a poet. Maybe I'm missing something.

Now I do think Eliot's poetry has nice alliteration, rhyme and some rhythm. All that is fine, but I need more than that to claim the poet is worth remembering long after he has died.

[Anton Hermes]

The "spiritual and cultural barrenness of modern society" is too vague to have much meaning. Also, I don't think modern society is spiritually and culturally barren. Far from it. Perhaps London, post WW I, was a cultural or spiritual mess, but I doubt it.

I'm trying to figure out what you're taking issue with here, my brief description of Eliot's theme? Eliot's theme itself? Or the fact that Eliot's theme wasn't specific enough for your liking?

Sorry to have to point out that engaging with literature (or art in general) isn't all about you. If you don't want to work any harder to appreciate The Waste Land than to dismiss it as "gibberish," that's up to you. But that's a reflection on you, not Eliot. This controversial and influential work of poetry deserves informed opinion and open-minded analysis. If all you can provide is snark, you've made it obvious that your opinion won't add much to the discussion.


As far as what I think Eliot was saying, I think he was talking gibberish. I suspect he thought he was saying something significant, but upon examination, I don't see anything of value in his writing. That is why I am asking someone who values him as a poet. Maybe I'm missing something.
Yeah, maybe so.

[JCamilo]

I guess we will have to wait Eliot die and people discuss him or not after it, to satisfy you.

[Nicole82190]

During the period between the wars, (WWI and WWII) there was a great sense of alienation and fragmentation in society. The shock of irrational death, injury and sickness stripped people of traditional values such as family and religion. Eliot attempts to capture the essence of this time; the fragmentation of his poem is meant to mirror the fragmented sense of reality these damaged Americans felt. This poem is extremely complex and contains many allusions, so I understand why it wouldn't be appreciated at first reading. I took a course in college that totally changed my perception of this work. I would encourage reading scholarly papers on The Wasteland, you would have a hard time finding a poem written with more genius.

[YesNo]

The poet who sees with the eyes of the visionary... and recognizes the horror... wishes to die.

The use of specific poetic techniques, such as rhyme or the lack of rhyme, alliteration or refusing to use it, the use of allusions or parallel development to other poetry, is not enough to make the poem worth remembering. So while it is nice to see all these techniques pointed out, they are side issues.

What you mention about "horror" makes me think that Eliot fundamentally got it wrong assuming that is what he was actually talking about. If that was his message, his vision was faulty. For all the horrors of the 20th century, can you think of a century in human history with more positive change in it? I can't.

However, I don't think Eliot was complaining about anything in particular. He was presenting a smug condescension that he felt would make him look knowledgeable to his audience at the time. He took enough pains to be vague so he could not be pinned down to anything in particular.

There is one line in one of the poems that I linked to where Eliot writes: "That's not what I meant at all." I can't remember which one it was anymore, but I think it should be a warning to anyone who tries to interpret him.

[stlukesguild]

The "spiritual and cultural barrenness of modern society" is too vague to have much meaning. Also, I don't think modern society is spiritually and culturally barren. Far from it. Perhaps London, post WW I, was a cultural or spiritual mess, but I doubt it.

It would seem to me to be quite obvious that you are not the least bit interested in what Eliot's poem has to offer, or in approaching it with an open mind. That, it would seem, is wholly irrelevant to you. You repeatedly dismiss the work as gibberish and even question the poet's intentions as if you believe that sole the purpose of art is to reinforce your own beliefs/values/standards/biases as opposed to honestly expressing the artist's beliefs/values/standards/biases... even if they come into conflict with your own.

As for not believing that there was an immense sense of shock, anger, alienation, and fragmentation following the First World War (and the subsequent Spanish Influenza)... a feeling that the world had come unhinged or was a cultural/spiritual "wasteland"... well all I can say is that you need to brush up on your history.

Perhaps you may have heard of the term "the Lost Generation." I suggest you examine the artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit, Dada, German Expressionism... Alban Berg's Wozzeck, literature such as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Bertolt Brecht's plays, etc....

WWI was an incredible psychic shock to the whole of the West. It helped to undermine the belief in science, technology, progress, God, the morality of the entire social structure and humanity itself. Many responded to the experience with expressions of horror, grief, bitterness, biting satire, and outrage over the fact that the supposed "civilized" and educated people of Europe and America could have unleashed such horrors upon the world. Many others employed a strategy of avoidance and denial and turned to older, traditional, Neo-Classical forms. Either way, the "Great War" left an indelible and profound mark upon the whole of Western culture.

[stlukesguild]

What you mention about "horror" makes me think that Eliot fundamentally got it wrong assuming that is what he was actually talking about. If that was his message, his vision was faulty. For all the horrors of the 20th century, can you think of a century in human history with more positive change in it? I can't.

I guess that having just witnessed the moral collapse of the great Western cultures and the 37 million deaths of WWI followed by the 50- 130 Million deaths of the Spanish Influenza... wrought by the war in the trenches and spread by returning soldiers made Eliot a bit blind to the splendors of "better living through technology."

[Alexander III]

The use of specific poetic techniques, such as rhyme or the lack of rhyme, alliteration or refusing to use it, the use of allusions or parallel development to other poetry, is not enough to make the poem worth remembering. So while it is nice to see all these techniques pointed out, they are side issues.

What you mention about "horror" makes me think that Eliot fundamentally got it wrong assuming that is what he was actually talking about. If that was his message, his vision was faulty. For all the horrors of the 20th century, can you think of a century in human history with more positive change in it? I can't.

However, I don't think Eliot was complaining about anything in particular. He was presenting a smug condescension that he felt would make him look knowledgeable to his audience at the time. He took enough pains to be vague so he could not be pinned down to anything in particular.

There is one line in one of the poems that I linked to where Eliot writes: "That's not what I meant at all." I can't remember which one it was anymore, but I think it should be a warning to anyone who tries to interpret him.

Where were you when the first world war happened? You lived in the second half of the 20th century which was peaceful and fruitful, yet you impose your cultural and historical context upon Elliot who clearly belonged to a different time. This is what I mean When I say subjectivity is the ruin of aesthetics. I don't want to single you out but you are the perfect example of someone who seems to be unable to look beyond their own times and understand that the world as you know it is not necessarily the world as others knew it. How can you blame elliot for his despair, Millions upon Millions of innocent young boys died merely because technology was too far advanced, you speak of the benefits of technology, but once again where were you when the mothers of europe lost their children and husbands simply because technology was too advanced? I really detest this mentality of "I can't understand, nor will I put the effort into understanding, instead I shall simply judge like the men who put socrates to death because it is easier to be ignorant than it is to think.

[E.A Rumfield]

You're all full of enough wind to permanently fly a hot air balloon.
Bukowski already said all that need be said.

[E.A Rumfield]

hello Bill Abbott:
I appreciate your passing around my books in
jail there, my poems and stories.
if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with
my books, fine.
but literature, you know, is difficult for the
average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);
I don't like most poetry, for example,
so I write mine the way I like to read it.

poetry does seem to be getting better, more
human,
the clearing up of the language has something to
do with it (w. c. williams came along and asked
everybody to clear up the language)
then
I came along.

but writing's one thing, life's
another, we
seem to have improved the writing a bit
but life (ours and theirs)
doesn't seem to be improving very
much.

maybe if we write well enough
and live a little better
life will improve a bit
just out of shame.
maybe the artist haven't been powerful
enough,
maybe the politicians, the generals, the judges, the
priests, the police, the pimps, the businessmen have been too
strong? I don't
like that thought
but when I look at our pale and precious artists,
past and present, it does seem
possible.

(people don't like it when I talk this way.
Chinaski, get off it, they say,
you're not that great.
but
hell, I'm not talking about being
great.)

what I'm saying is
that art hasn't improved life like it
should, maybe because it has been too
private? and despite the fact that the old poets
and the new poets and myself
all seem to have had the same or similar troubles
with:
women
government
God
love
hate
penury
slavery
insomnia
transportation
weather
wives, and so
forth.

you write me now
that the man in the cell next to yours
didn't like my punctuation
the placement of my commas (especially)
and also the way I digress
in order to say something precisely.
ah, he doesn't realize the intent
which is
to loosen up, humanize, relax
and still make as real as possible
the word on the page. the word should be like
butter or avocados or
steak or hot biscuits, or onion rings or
whatever is really
needed. it should be almost
as if you could pick up the words and
eat them.

(there is some wise-*** somewhere
out there
who will say
if he ever reads this:
"Chinaski, if I want dinner I'll go out and
order it!")

however
an artist can wander and still maintain
essential form. Dostoevsky did it. he
usually told 3 or 4 stories on the side
while telling the one in the
center (in his novels, that is).
Bach taught us how to lay one melody down on
top of another and another melody on top of
that and
Mahler wandered more than anybody I know
and I find great meaning
in his so-called formlessness.
don't let the form-and-rule boys
like that guy in the cell next to you
put one over on you. just
hand him a copy of Time or Newsweek
and he'll be
happy.

but I'm not defending my work (to you or to him)
I'm defending my right to do it in the way
that makes me feel best.
I always figure if a writer is bored with his work
the reader is going to be
bored too.

and I don't believe in
perfection, I believe in keeping the
bowels loose
so I've got to agree with my critics
when they say I write a lot of ****.

you're doing 19 and 1/2 years
I've been writing about 40.
we all go on with our things.
we all go on with our lives.
we all write badly at times
or live badly at times.
we all have bad days
and nights.

I ought to send the guy in the cell next to yours
The Collected Works of Robert Browning for Christmas,
that'd give him the form he's looking for
but I need the money for the track,
Santa Anita is opening on the
26th, so give him a copy of Newsweek
(the dead have no future, no past, no present,
they just worry about commas)
and have I placed the commas here
properly,
Abbott?
,
, , ,
, , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , , ,
, , ,
, , ,

[Pierre Menard]

The use of specific poetic techniques, such as rhyme or the lack of rhyme, alliteration or refusing to use it, the use of allusions or parallel development to other poetry, is not enough to make the poem worth remembering. So while it is nice to see all these techniques pointed out, they are side issues.

The structure and style of a poem are not 'side issues'. They are integral to the way the poem feels and sounds and can help bring out the larger themes at play.



What you mention about "horror" makes me think that Eliot fundamentally got it wrong assuming that is what he was actually talking about. If that was his message, his vision was faulty. For all the horrors of the 20th century, can you think of a century in human history with more positive change in it? I can't.

Putting aside the question of whether the 20th century was the best century or not, because it's a conversation that deserves more intense scrutiny, Eliot wasn't around for the whole of it. He wrote the poem in the 20's, not long after an atrocity that changed the face of the world. At the time, there was nothing to suggest we lived in the most positive century of all time. You're inflicting your own personal hindsight on to his work, a dangerous thing to do, just as it would be dangerous of me to apply my 21st century mind to judge the social mores of a Shakespeare play. Furthermore, as StLukes said, an artist isn't necessarily there to reinforce how you feel about the world; personally, I'd rather an author be true to their own personal themes, whether I agree with them or not.



However, I don't think Eliot was complaining about anything in particular. He was presenting a smug condescension that he felt would make him look knowledgeable to his audience at the time. He took enough pains to be vague so he could not be pinned down to anything in particular.

...Or maybe he was writing a poem in an inventive style to help mirror his themes or how he felt about the world at the time. You seem incredibly ignorant of post-WW1 literature and history and the way it changed how people viewed the world. I mean, it'd be like me saying to a post-holocaust writer like W.G. Sebald that his books about the atrocity of the holocaust have a poor vision because they don't pander to the positive side of the 20th century. Ludicrous.



There is one line in one of the poems that I linked to where Eliot writes: "That's not what I meant at all." I can't remember which one it was anymore, but I think it should be a warning to anyone who tries to interpret him.

Then why are you trying to interpret and judge him?

[YesNo]

You repeatedly dismiss the work as gibberish and even question the poet's intentions as if you believe that sole the purpose of art is to reinforce your own beliefs/values/standards/biases as opposed to honestly expressing the artist's beliefs/values/standards/biases... even if they come into conflict with your own.

Do you know what the poet's intentions were? Do you know what Eliot's beliefs, values, standards or biases were? I doubt it.

But you are welcome to enlighten me. What were they?

[YesNo]

The structure and style of a poem are not 'side issues'. They are integral to the way the poem feels and sounds and can help bring out the larger themes at play.

What were those larger themes? I maintain there weren't any.

Eliot's writing is so shallow, it is easy to inspire sentimentality. That is, it is easy to project whatever close reading you want onto his poetry and do that in a self-righteous manner. I don't think Eliot cared about WW I. He was playing an elite audience and they fell for it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I love the everyone-was-fooled-but-me mentality. Not that I haven't felt it; it's always amusing seeing it from the other side, though.

[YesNo]

Where were you when the first world war happened? You lived in the second half of the 20th century which was peaceful and fruitful, yet you impose your cultural and historical context upon Elliot who clearly belonged to a different time. This is what I mean When I say subjectivity is the ruin of aesthetics. I don't want to single you out but you are the perfect example of someone who seems to be unable to look beyond their own times and understand that the world as you know it is not necessarily the world as others knew it. How can you blame elliot for his despair, Millions upon Millions of innocent young boys died merely because technology was too far advanced, you speak of the benefits of technology, but once again where were you when the mothers of europe lost their children and husbands simply because technology was too advanced? I really detest this mentality of "I can't understand, nor will I put the effort into understanding, instead I shall simply judge like the men who put socrates to death because it is easier to be ignorant than it is to think.

How will my parroting an inane position about Eliot's worth help the mothers of Europe who lost their children and husbands in WW I?

Honestly, I don't think Eliot felt any despair unless it had something to do with his relationship to Mrs. Eliot. At least that's how I read the following quote from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot


In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."

[JCamilo]

So, Stlukes cannot tell Eliot's intention, but you and Wikipedia can tell his feelings?

Wait, i forget, you are actually arguing there is no motives to remember Eliot's poetry after his death, albeit there is 57 years he died and we are doing exactly what you seems to deny.

Go, NoYes.

[stlukesguild]

Eliot's writing is so shallow, it is easy to inspire sentimentality.

No. It's your criticism that is "shallow". Others... some who have more than a considerable amount of experience in reading poetry and Modernist literature... have taken the time... clearly wasted... to offer some insight into various interpretations of The Wasteland. Your response is to repeatedly make sweeping statements that essentially add up to "I don't understand and thus I don't like The Wasteland (and besides... I disagree with Eliot's philosophy) and so it must be shallow and poorly written and all those who do claim to "get" it are full of hot air."

He was playing an elite audience and they fell for it.

Here you are closer to the truth than you know. Like most artists, Eliot created/wrote for an audience he imagined as being not unlike himself: highly educated and very-well read... and not adverse to literature that is challenging... or even difficult. Clearly, his work resonated... and continues to resonate with a good many of that audience. Now you can assume that you do not qualify as one of the audience for whom Eliot wrote... or you can assume that all those who claim to understand and enjoy his poetry are lying (in order to impress a stranger they have never met?)... or are but fools who have been duped in some great literary scam. Obviously the latter choice allows you to deny the possibility that you might be wrong, and that what you dislike or fail to understand is not inherently "bad".

[Pierre Menard]

Bukowski already said all that need be said.

Cool. Shame he didn't focus on writing half-decent poetry instead.

[Alexander III]

How will my parroting an inane position about Eliot's worth help the mothers of Europe who lost their children and husbands in WW I?


Well, I accuse you of being unable to look beyond your historical context and understand that there is indeed a world beyond that which you know; and you reply by forcing another context within your own, and forcing yourself upon a different context; as if you are truly unable to look beyond the mirror, and would rather distort your face than look at an others.

That is just a special level of specialness.

[YesNo]

No. It's your criticism that is "shallow". Others... some who have more than a considerable amount of experience in reading poetry and Modernist literature... have taken the time... clearly wasted... to offer some insight into various interpretations of The Wasteland. Your response is to repeatedly make sweeping statements that essentially add up to "I don't understand and thus I don't like The Wasteland (and besides... I disagree with Eliot's philosophy) and so it must be shallow and poorly written and all those who do claim to "get" it are full of hot air."


Just what was Eliot's philosophy?

You are right about one thing. I do consider those who think they know full of hot air. Whatever pains they might have taken to read into his poetry their interpretations of whatever was a waste of their time. Maybe that was Eliot's intent? Make The Waste Land a patch of quicksand that his readers thought was solid.

[Anton Hermes]

I love the everyone-was-fooled-but-me mentality. Not that I haven't felt it; it's always amusing seeing it from the other side, though.
I have a lot more sympathy for revisionism when it's done by people who know what they're talking about, and not just anonymous nasty kids hell bent on taking some-famous-artist down a notch.

Of course, if people online were only allowed to discuss matters they had any familiarity with, think of the bandwidth glut that would ensue.

[YesNo]

Well, I accuse you of being unable to look beyond your historical context and understand that there is indeed a world beyond that which you know; and you reply by forcing another context within your own, and forcing yourself upon a different context; as if you are truly unable to look beyond the mirror, and would rather distort your face than look at an others.

That is just a special level of specialness.

I don't understand what you're saying regarding "context" or a "special level of specialness".

Sometimes people think and sometimes they just parrot. It is hard to tell when who is doing what. That is why it is important to be as clear as one can be. I don't think Eliot's writing was very clear. Furthermore, I think he was being deliberately vague since he had nothing of value to say and this lead later poets to get away with imitating this bad behavior.

[JBI]

How will my parroting an inane position about Eliot's worth help the mothers of Europe who lost their children and husbands in WW I?

Honestly, I don't think Eliot felt any despair unless it had something to do with his relationship to Mrs. Eliot. At least that's how I read the following quote from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot


In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."

See Tradition and the Individual Talent. This quote is out of context in part, and in another misunderstood. This says nothing of the contents of the poem, only demonstrates a mentality of someone who gave himself up to something destructive.

There is nothing here to say that the poem is not about World War I, the quote just says it experiences the events in Britain during the time as seen through the lens of one experiencing a failing marriage - the objective correlative for the bankruptcy of cultural institution - echoed of course in the poem with the couple fighting, and parodying Shakespeare by mixing in bankrupt pop tunes. I can be depressed and therefore write a poem about the American economy faltering - that does not mean the poem is automatically about my depression. The same way I can write a poem celebrating gay love while enjoying a loving relationship with a woman. Not all art is self-centered.


As for whether the poem is about WWI or not, well, I do not think it is exactly, I just think the war put Eliot in a place where he could understand the emptiness of European culture. You are looking at a scholar of Indian texts, as well as an already compromised individual based on his relations with his wife - the collapse of order echoes the waste land, where it isn't that people are destroyed, it is that they are in the place worse than inferno - the in between, hence his quoting of Dante's description of Limbo for the Unreal City. It is the aftermath that is unsettling, the lack of meaning and sense.

The opening discussion then, after the parody of the prologue can be taken as the demonstration of wandering aristocrats, as they drift - you forget that 3 empires were ruined, and 2 more virtually bankrupted during the war - every bellboy in every hotel in France we are told was a Russian aristocrat - the order just collapsed, and the lucky ones just drift aimlessly.

As for the poem itself being unclear, it isn't half as hard as some others I have read. Read Sima Xiangru's Rhapsody on High Park then complain Eliot is difficult - this is a piece of cake, and is made easier by the extensive footnotes editors have added over the years. As for getting the allusions, you do not need to get them all, just hold them in your mind.

OF course, for the bunch of people who read things only once, this poem will make no sense. Spend 2 weeks with a poem, reading it once a day, and then it will make more sense. The Waste Land was called by Pound the longest poem yet written - it is dense and hard to wrestle, but that is just an imbedded metaphor - who can make sense of the waste land, especially with but a few scattered images.

As for allusion, the power of the device in the poem is he doesn't just borrow, he adapts, to the point where you cannot revisit the original without seeing it changed for you. He, in a sense, changes Wagner for you, he changes Spenser for you. That is the power of the poem really.

[Pantagruel]

I don't understand what you're saying regarding "context" or a "special level of specialness".


I don't want to put words in Alexander's mouth, but it seems to me that he is pointing out that Eliot tried to encapsulate the zeitgeist of his era. An era of overwhelming death, destruction and misery on a then unprecedented scale.

You are a 21st century American, your own experiences are completely different and therefore the way that you think and respond to things is different. In order for you to understand Eliot's poem you must try to empathize with the people who lived through that particular era.

It's easy to say something like this:


What you mention about "horror" makes me think that Eliot fundamentally got it wrong assuming that is what he was actually talking about. If that was his message, his vision was faulty. For all the horrors of the 20th century, can you think of a century in human history with more positive change in it? I can't.

from our emotionally detached position. We have the benefit of hindsight and the work of historians to teach us about that period. The Wasteland was published in 1922, four years after the end of WWI. A time when people were struggling to understand the horrors of the world around them. I think Eliot's poem reflects this confusion quite well.

[E.A Rumfield]

Cool. Shame he didn't focus on writing half-decent poetry instead.

You're a fool. FOOL

[E.A Rumfield]

That's is the most important difference between me and you. I am alive and you are dead. Bukowski was alive and Eliot was dead. His writing is dead without soul or meaning. You have to read a book to understand a poem. Something that can be simple and beautiful and that makes you a fool and just another lifeless body cursing this already over populated Earth. So next time you see a vibrant sunset read a book explaining why the colors are as they are.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

What?

[Alexander III]

That's is the most important difference between me and you. I am alive and you are dead. Bukowski was alive and Eliot was dead. His writing is dead without soul or meaning. You have to read a book to understand a poem. Something that can be simple and beautiful and that makes you a fool and just another lifeless body cursing this already over populated Earth. So next time you see a vibrant sunset read a book explaining why the colors are as they are.

Clint Eastwood? Is that you ranting and yelling at an empty chair, full of imaginary things only you can see?

[stlukesguild]

You are right about one thing. I do consider those who think they know full of hot air. Whatever pains they might have taken to read into his poetry their interpretations of whatever was a waste of their time. Maybe that was Eliot's intent? Make The Waste Land a patch of quicksand that his readers thought was solid.

There is nothing wrong in recognizing that you are not part of the intended audience for a given body of art. I have largely decided that Chinese opera, the music of Arnold Schoenberg... and to a great extent, the works of James Joyce, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Jean Genet are not for me. I don't inherently assume, however, that my dislike... or my lack of interest... or the fact that these works fail to give me the level of aesthetic pleasure that I seek is proof that these works are aesthetic failures. When I consider the great many well-informed and educated readers/listeners who find great pleasure in these works, I must accept that the problem lies with me.

You, on the other hand, have taken the position that because you dislike something... or fail to understand it... it must be bad... no matter how well-recognized and esteemed it is by others... many of whom are better read and more experienced in the realm of poetry and literary Modernism than yourself. There is a great difference between suggesting that regardless of how well-esteemed a work of art is, you don't like it personally... and suggesting that because you don't like something personally, it must be bad... no matter how well-esteemed.

But even this was not enough for you. You needed to take the dispute to the level of suggesting that anyone who did claim to understand and enjoy Eliot's poem was clearly lying or a fool. The result of this is that you have attempted to suggest that your own personal opinion holds more weight on the subject than that of anyone here... or elsewhere... who has disagreed with your position. The result of this, however, is that you have only succeeded in wholly undermining any value your opinions might have held and painting yourself as the ignorant fool who cannot admit that he might not be right about everything.

[JBI]

As a general rule, people usually dislike what they are either not good at, or what they do not understand. If Bukowski is the be-all-and-end-all for you, I recommend just giving up entirely. You'll never like Modernism, and you will never understand it.

[E.A Rumfield]

That's not true cause I like Dos Passos. You write ****ty poetry about Peter Pan so maybe you should give up. I like Robinson Jeffers, Paublo Neruda, Locra, Ceasar Vallejo. Like Bukowski says I don't like most poets so I write what I want to read. And you'll never understand Bukowski. And you'll never create anything original so continue writing Peter Pan poetry.

[stlukesguild]

JBI... You write Peter Pan poetry? I never would have guessed.:p

[YesNo]

The Wasteland was published in 1922, four years after the end of WWI. A time when people were struggling to understand the horrors of the world around them. I think Eliot's poem reflects this confusion quite well.

I agree with you, if I understand you correctly. Eliot was not a visionary. He got it wrong. Of course, I am checking on any supposed visionary ability from the future looking back. That is how you check a visionary from the past.

However, I don't think Eliot was trying to be a visionary nor was he worried about WW I.

[Anymodal]

I tried to find Eliot's poetry on YouTube and there are many links where he is reading it himself.

Here's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (8:22): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAO3QTU4PzY

Here is The Waste Land (28:33) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tixX32WKN5Y&feature=related There is a brief introduction.

Here is the Four Quartets (55:39) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8tQrG4ZSw&feature=related

Here is The Hollow Men (4:16) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fu8awT5Jzs&feature=related

I hate how he reads The Waste Land. It's funny because he created that poem but when I read it I do it with a different rythm than him and to me it sounds much better.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Clint Eastwood? Is that you ranting and yelling at an empty chair, full of imaginary things only you can see?
:lol:

That's not true cause I like Dos Passos. You write ****ty poetry about Peter Pan so maybe you should give up. I like Robinson Jeffers, Paublo Neruda, Locra, Ceasar Vallejo. Like Bukowski says I don't like most poets so I write what I want to read. And you'll never understand Bukowski. And you'll never create anything original so continue writing Peter Pan poetry.

Seriously, dude, lay off the weed.

[YesNo]

I hate how he reads The Waste Land. It's funny because he created that poem but when I read it I do it with a different rythm than him and to me it sounds much better.

I think someone else could have read these better. Some of the links do have other readers for parts of the poems.

The reason it is useful to hear Eliot read them is because part of the arguments of this thread is over what Eliot intended, if anything significant, in these poems. Listening to him read them might provide some clues.

[JBI]

JBI... You write Peter Pan poetry? I never would have guessed.:p

Me neither. I write poetic Criticism and history, but I am yet to read Peter Pan, let alone write subsequent adaptive poetry.

People have a knack of misunderstanding. I wasn't trying to be offensive, but let's face it, the above poster is not content with disliking a poet's work, he is preoccupied with trying to convince others that his critical assessment is above all correct and perhaps the only correct one. The word for that generally is fanatic, but rather than feed it, we should just continue discussing the poem itself and ignore the tedious comments focused on affirming one opinion without any evidence or experience to back it.

Let us return perhaps to the question, what is the function of allusion in the text, and perhaps secondly what is the function of footnotes (the ones by the poem's two poets) in this process. How can we see it as perhaps something other than obstructification.

[JBI]

I hate how he reads The Waste Land. It's funny because he created that poem but when I read it I do it with a different rythm than him and to me it sounds much better.

According to someone who heard him speak, an audience member asked him the meaning of a line and he agreed with their interpretation. The next questioner proposed a different interpretation and he also agreed. The point being that there is no Eliot, according to the poet, only the poem, which is open to non-authoritative interpretation. In a sense the interpretation you like best is the best.

As for performance, Eliot would probably encourage you to like yours over his, or would deny the authority of his reading over yours. He was deliberately absent from his work until 4 quartets, and to this day there still isn't an authorized biography of the poet.

[mortalterror]

JBI... You write Peter Pan poetry? I never would have guessed.:p

I've actually seen him write a sonnet that wasn't half bad, and about three years ago I think he mentioned he was working on a post-modern epic. Of course, his interests have moved on a bit since then and he's probably given it up. Still, I think if he wrote something it would be good, even if it is a poem about Peter Pan. There are a lot of really deep angles you could take with that source material.

[Lykren]

According to someone who heard him speak, an audience member asked him the meaning of a line and he agreed with their interpretation. The next questioner proposed a different interpretation and he also agreed. The point being that there is no Eliot, according to the poet, only the poem, which is open to non-authoritative interpretation. In a sense the interpretation you like best is the best.

As for performance, Eliot would probably encourage you to like yours over his, or would deny the authority of his reading over yours. He was deliberately absent from his work until 4 quartets, and to this day there still isn't an authorized biography of the poet.

What do you mean when you say he was absent from his work until four quartets?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Personally, I've yet to read The Wasteland. I was supposed to in a college course, but that was a while ago and I saw the footnotes and said **** it. I have the Norton Critical Wdition waiting to be ordered, though.

[Anymodal]

According to someone who heard him speak, an audience member asked him the meaning of a line and he agreed with their interpretation. The next questioner proposed a different interpretation and he also agreed. The point being that there is no Eliot, according to the poet, only the poem, which is open to non-authoritative interpretation. In a sense the interpretation you like best is the best.

As for performance, Eliot would probably encourage you to like yours over his, or would deny the authority of his reading over yours. He was deliberately absent from his work until 4 quartets, and to this day there still isn't an authorized biography of the poet.
Yes. And I think that is the best philosophy to read literature. Or at the very least, modern literature. What would the point of filling the work with enigmatic fragments if not to allow many interpretations? The Waste Land is like a methaphor in the sense that it burst into many posible meanings or interpretations.


Returning to something mentioned before, I also think The Waste Land requires more than one reading. I read it three times in a row.
Long time ago I heard about The Waste Land for the first time. Because I had the idea that it was a very difficult text I decided to buy a good edition so that it would lead me through the text. It's a bilingual 330 pages edition, with a vast introduction, with huge foot notes(some pages there are two lines of poem an the rest of notes) and with 11 related short poems (such as the song of Ariel in The Tempest, etc). So first I read the introduction and the poem in spanish reading carefully all the notes so that I could understand the references and read it fluently and enjoying it later. Then I read it in english, looking up every word I didn't knew. And finally I read it in one sit very fluidly, apreciating the rythm and everything. And I really enjoyed it. Actually I think is the best poem I have read. Also I do feel I understand it, or at least I do have a good idea.

[JBI]

I've actually seen him write a sonnet that wasn't half bad, and about three years ago I think he mentioned he was working on a post-modern epic. Of course, his interests have moved on a bit since then and he's probably given it up. Still, I think if he wrote something it would be good, even if it is a poem about Peter Pan. There are a lot of really deep angles you could take with that source material.

I forgot about that Peter Pan sonnet I wrote as a joke based on someone else's work for their homework assignment or something. It's fun to see someone knows me better than I know myself. Lets just say I haven't thought about penning a poem in at least 2 years. As for the epic, I no longer believe in Post-Modernism, let alone a capacity for an epic, but am currently experimenting with genre work, which will probably take the form of a wide-sweeping critical work in some years.

As for writing good poetry, well, I haven't penned a single good poem in my life, and doubt I ever would - my language is too acidic and prosaic, and I lack the fire within, if you will.

As for Peter Pan itself, well it has about one strong conceit, the Jungian presence of Peter himself, which is creative. The rest is meh.

[JBI]

What do you mean when you say he was absent from his work until four quartets?

He as a speaker and character and personality is absent from the poems, in the sense that if they were anonymous, you could still read them the same way - there is no I in his voice, though some stipulate the couple fighting in The Waste Land is he and his wife. Four Quartets however introduces a more personal poetry, which is very different in that it is about the poet, and directly follows a tradition of Romantic poetry (see section 5 of The Dry Salvages, for instance).

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I forgot about that Peter Pan sonnet I wrote as a joke based on someone else's work for their homework assignment or something. It's fun to see someone knows me better than I know myself.

I find it odd that a member who's only been here since May and has only 128 posts remembers a poem posted so long ago that not even the poster recalls it. Hmmmm, I wonder if E.A. is a returning banned member, maybe?

[stlukesguild]

Me neither. I write poetic Criticism and history, but I am yet to read Peter Pan, let alone write subsequent adaptive poetry.

I forgot about that Peter Pan sonnet I wrote as a joke based on someone else's work for their homework assignment or something. It's fun to see someone knows me better than I know myself.

I find it odd that a member who's only been here since May and has only 128 posts remembers a poem posted so long ago that not even the poster recalls it. Hmmmm, I wonder if E.A. is a returning banned member, maybe?

Well I knew he couldn't have been talking about me... 'cos I haven't written a poem since shortly after high-school... which was more than a few years ago. On the other hand... I can see the potential for a Peter Pan painting...

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_peter_pan__s_wendy_by_j_scott_campbell-d2yr8a1.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=peter_pan__s_wendy_by_j_scott_campbell-d2yr8a1.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_dp-pinup-4.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=dp-pinup-4.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_tinkerbell_and_captain_hook_by_j_scott_campbell-d2z2nlg.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=tinkerbell_and_captain_hook_by_j_scott_cam pbell-d2z2nlg.jpg)

:blush::devil::brow::lol:

[JBI]

Humbert Humbert!

[stlukesguild]

Indeed!:lol:

[E.A Rumfield]

I find it odd that a member who's only been here since May and has only 128 posts remembers a poem posted so long ago that not even the poster recalls it. Hmmmm, I wonder if E.A. is a returning banned member, maybe?

Or maybe I looked at the threads he posted. And as for the guy that says he writes poetic criticism, there are a lot better things to do than sit around writing poetry but for some people it is necessary so there are certainly more important things to do than sit around criticizing poetry.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Or maybe I looked at the threads he posted.
You must have done so for hours to stumble on to that one post, which was probably made years ago.

[E.A Rumfield]

You must have done so for hours to stumble on to that one post, which was probably made years ago.

It was actually right there on the first page. I also saw the intellectually stimulating material you post. A classic like "Socks What Length?" I must say was certainly my favorite.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Do you know what satire is?

And you must be a better searcher than me, 'cause I can't find it.

[Logos]

off topic. closed.