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<center>'"Our conceptual knowledge of an object in the external visible world...rests on the basis of a store of 'snapshots' of it which we have accumulated in our memory over the passage of time."
'' - ''David Tomlinson in ''Twentieth Century Literature''</center>
== '''The Waste Land: A Cover'''==

T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Waste Land," has become an essential part of the English canon.  Nearly a century of Eliot scholarship has been contributed to readers' understanding of the poem, and throughout this time, various editors have sewn up the pages of the original poem with scholars' research to market the respectable findings to students and bibliophiles of western literature. Although readers may interpret the content of "The Waste Land" as individuals or in conjunction with some noted schools of influence, there remain enduring questions regarding the inferred experience of the reader.

This "experience of the reader" refers to the information that inherently influences one's perception of a text.  There are numerous factors that may fall into this sphere of influence: what is the medium of the text (book, magazine, pamphlet, etc.)?  How is information formatted on the page? Are there supplementary illustrations or depictions, and do they add information or aim to interpret textual information?

[[Image:220px-NirvanaNevermindalbumcover.jpg‎|left]]Not unlike literature, music is similarly subjected to variable forms of information visualization.  Although the "information" conveyed by music provides ample possibilities for visualization--since the imagery and nuance of a song conveys probabilities for visualization in the mind of the listener--it is not uncommon for the content of a work to be framed for the purpose of consumption by the album's cover.  The significance of an album's cover can not be understated.  For example, a simple google image search of the word "Nirvana" does not recover images of the literal lyrics of the songs produced by the 90's American grunge band, but rather, the top image to surface is of the famous cover of Nirvana's album, "Nevermind."  Certainly, the band Nirvana is acknowledged the world over for its cultural and musical contributions to rock music, but the previously mentioned internet search indicates how very essential Nirvana's iconography is to the band's celebrité.  

The cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind" is important to the band's success because it visually epitomizes the messages intrinsic of the album's content.  The memorable depiction is of a naked, swimming infant, grasping for a single dollar bill in an underwater expanse; of course, the dollar bill appears to be a lure that is attached to a fishhook.  Though odd, this representation accounts for the themes that are riddled throughout the album: isolation, beauty, innocence, deception, and disillusionment.  For instance, though the album's song, "Territorial Pissings" includes the lines, "Everybody get together / try to love one another right now," the song "Breed" professes repeatedly the lines "I don't care," "I don't mind," and "I'm afraid."  Thus, Nirvana explores a range of emotions that are not altogether misanthropic nor naive; the tone succinctly corresponds with the album cover to produce an integral piece of art.


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http://emuseum2.guggenheim.org/media/full/41.462_ph_web.jpg

When "The Waste Land" first appeared in the November 1922 issue of the American periodical, ''The Dial'', it was preceded by Robert Delaunay's painting entitled, "Saint Severin No. 3."  There is no information to suggest whether the juxtaposition of the two works was ever approved of by Eliot, but neither is there information to indicate whether Eliot opposed the placement of Delaunay's painting at the opening of Eliot's masterful poem.  The two pieces are interesting in contrast, especially since the works were created nearly ten years apart. Perhaps Delaunay's piece was selected for publication because it demonstrated the painter's divergence from what he had previously produced--just as Eliot's "Waste Land" deviated from foregoing precedent.

Saint-Séverin No. 3, now housed in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, marks a time for Delaunay that he described himself as "a period of transition from Cézanne to Cubism." This is apparent in the heavily emphasized geometry of the piece.  According to the Guggenheim's website, "Robert Delaunay chose the view into the ambulatory of the Parisian Gothic church Saint-Séverin...in which he charted the modulations of light streaming through the stained-glass windows and the resulting perceptual distortion of the architecture." Although colors play an important part in distinguishing the lines and shapes expressed in the painting, readers of the Dial would not have been afforded the opportunity to reference the nuance added to the painting's patina by the varying shades of brown, red, blue and green.  Because the Dial was printed in black and white, the reader would have been delivered into the world of Delaunay's piece from a distorted perspective of distortion--though this is somewhat unfortunate, it seems to be somewhat fitting considering the layers of decay and blanch reality employed by Eliot in creating "The Waste Land." 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Thetriumphofdeath.jpg/500px-Thetriumphofdeath.jpg

In contrast to the cubist/modernist approach, which renders truth from varying yet stark perspectives, the cover image of Penguin Classic's reprinting of "The Waste Land" incorporates Pieter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death" on its book cover.  The differences between Delaunay's and Bruegel's paintings are remarkably different, though Bruegel's work does not inherently controvert textual content.  The editor's choice to use Bruegel's painting to market "The Waste Land" is obviously influenced by themes consistent with the poem.  However, when comparing the work of Delaunay and Bruegel it becomes apparent that the editorial choice concerning which image to use reflects strongly on the editor's perception of the poem.  For instance, though Delaunay's work is not "true to life," it does maintain sufficient pragmatism to assure a level of certainty for the viewer regarding the painting's content.  In "The Triumph of Death" the image is so absurd, filled with ambiguous yet disturbing symbology, as to disorient and perhaps disenchant the viewer before he or she has considered the text within.  


Delaunay himself remarked that St. Severin noted “a period of transition from Cézanne to Cubism.”http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Cubism&page=1&f=Movement&cr=7

Ezra Pound compared his editing of magazines as “a simple-hearted anthropologist putting specimens into different large boxes--merely for present convenience tumbling things apparently similar into the same large box until a more scientific and accurate and mature arrangement is feasible.”http://courses.utulsa.edu/modmag/files/userfiles/file/scholes-wulfman-rethinking.pdf

“Robert Delaunay chose the view into the ambulatory of the Parisian Gothic church Saint-Séverin as the subject of his first series of paintings, in which he charted the modulations of light streaming through the stained-glass windows and the resulting perceptual distortion of the architecture.” Link within

“Relatively few of them [visualizations] are there to offer the reader the open possibilities of interpretive insight”
http://courses.utulsa.edu/modmag/files/userfiles/file/ramsay-praise-pattern.pdf

“suggestive pattern”http://courses.utulsa.edu/modmag/files/userfiles/file/ramsay-praise-pattern.pdf

“This diagnosis of German ‘evil’--a policy of imperialism, ruthless force, and materialism orchestrated by a Prussian elite of little mean, aggressive statesmen and professors--is reiterated in one form or another in nearly every patriotic article, poem, and poster produced during the first year of war.”http://courses.utulsa.edu/modmag/files/userfiles/file/peppis-multitude-other-blasts.pdf

Eliot's poem similarly circles round its subject, seeing it from many angles which are then intercut without transitions, the fragments being welded into a new conceptual unity in a complicated system of echoes, contrasts, parallels, and allusions. (64)

"Our conceptual knowledge of an object in the external visible world, for instance, rests on the basis of a store of 'snapshots' of it which we have accumulated in our memory over the passage of time." (68)

"Instead of presenting an illusory perspective, the cubists depict a cognitive map of the object such as accumulates in the memory from a variety of experiences of it."

http://0-www.jstor.org.library.utulsa.edu/stable/441241?seq=1

"...the work of literary art exists in more than one place at the same time.  That means that any particular version that we study of a text is always already a construction, one of many possible in a world of constructions." (5)

"...indeed, the literary work might be said to exist not in any one version, but in all the versions put together. In reading a particular page we would want to know of the other versions of that page and the first step in reading would then be to discover what page exist with claims on our attention." (6) http://courses.utulsa.edu/modmag/files/userfiles/file/bornstein-ch1-how-to-read.pdf

<html><a target="iframe" href="http://0-library.artstor.org.library.utulsa.edu/library/secure/ViewImages?id=8DdSZjUkITI%2BICo%2BdSUURXorXX4peFhzcQ%3D%3D&amp;userId=hTRAcg%3D%3D&amp;zoomparams="><img src="http://md2.artstor.net/thumb/imgstor/size0/gernsheim/d0001/gugg_perm_41.462_ph_as_8b_srgb.jpg" alt="Saint-Séverin No. 3" title="Saint-Séverin No. 3"></a><iframe name="iframe" width="1" height="1" src="" frameborder="0" scrolling="yes"></iframe></html>