View source for Imperialism in The Waste Land

<blockquote>''listed under [[Walking the Waste Land]]''</blockquote>

'''Imperialism in the Waste Land'''

Imperialism has an overbearing ring and an even harsher connotation in our day and age.  We treasure diversity, and even more importantly, we take very seriously our responsibility to speak for the abuses, the oppressions, and the offenses of our ancestors.  Where imperialism was once seen as a divine appointment, a sovereign duty for an advanced, powerful nation to spread its civilization, its culture, and its laws, today it has become a byword and an insult.  An imperialist is labeled intolerant, bigoted, arrogant.  And why shouldn't he be?  He advocates his own beliefs, invades the spaces of others in order to impose his own systems.  Imperialism, in this sense, for the most part deserves its reputation.

However, The Waste Land seems to introduce and even advocate an odd sort of imperialism, in that Eliot finds himself pacing through the deadened landscapes of his own London, the throne rooms and ruins of Europe and the Mediterranean, and finds himself eventually seeking a land even further away, on the outskirts of the British Empire, in order to coax forth a new meaning and a new life for the blasted landscape he is faced with.   Rather than trample over civilizations and institute his own, however, he draws in the culture, the words, certain fragments of this distant land in order to supplement and revitalize his own—spoken quite clearly: "these fragments I have shored against my ruins."  Eliot takes his place among visionaries by his distinct consciousness of the flaws of his own society and his keen interest in finding what can be learned and gained from strangers, focusing on how to change rather than what must be changed.

Perhaps intentionally, perhaps only as a result of the extremely geographical nature of the poem's context, The Waste Land exhibits a peculiar spacial awareness.   The scope of the map and the distances is impressive, but that it actually makes a sort of correlative sense is even more so.  While a good deal of The Waste Land takes place in a fairly concentrated area of London, the poem reaches into northern Africa, all over Europe, and into the western skirts of Asia.  Most interestingly of all, though, is the fact that the final stanzas of the poem take place far removed from the rest of the points, in India.  Dealing with a poem about sterility and a dead generation nested among corpses, the shift towards a sort of eastern religious or philosophical serenity seems very much like a reinfusion of life, a breath of fresh air, a revival.  

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As far as locations are concerned, The Waste Land starts off, oddly enough, in an idyllic landscape not of England but of Germany, which is of course instantly noteworthy given Germany's role in producing the barren landscape that superimposes the childhood memories of Lake Starnberg and the Munich Hofgarten.  One might say that Eliot starts at the initial wound, bleeding out from that point until he spans the ravaged nations in every direction.  Over the next few sections we spread out across Europe, lingering often among the streets and sights of England but also touching on locations as far south as northern Africa and as far east as the Middle East, spanning the breadth of the British empire in the Old World minus the Far East.  Mylae is drawn into the picture, the site where Sicily fell to Rome and bloody seeds were planted which cannot have grown, if they are still in danger of being dug up—"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, / Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!"  The barrenness reaches much further back than the recent World War I, as far back as the roots of classical civilization.  Temporally, as well as spacially, Eliot is merciless in his examination of the great nations of the world, both the ancient civilizations that have long since fallen—mirrored in the plight of women such as Cleopatra and Philomel—as well as the European powers with their Unreal cities.  

The second half of "A Game of Chess," namely, "My nerves are bad tonight," stands out in that it does not contain any notable geographical tagging.  While the tone is very English, suggesting a specifically English setting, it nevertheless affords a sort of openness and universality, intimating that this sort of scene is not unique to the British Isles, that it infects the whole of the familiar  world.  The dusty sexual encounter in "The Fire Sermon" is much the same—clearly English, yet clearly universal.  By this correlation between England and Europe as a whole, even the lingering attention to Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, with its echoes of the Jack the Ripper murders and sensationalism long since dead and buried, is superimposed over the rest of the European wasteland.  

"The Fire Sermon" lingers bitterly in the sterile ruins of beloved England, mourning not only nature in the form of nymphs, but the detritus of city life as well, emphasizing the fact that this is not just a judgment of the city versus the country, but of the deadness of both.  London produces rats that wander its barren streets.  Yet despite all this, there is no doubt about Eliot's fondness for the city, especially in the lines "O City city, I can sometimes hear / Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant whining of a mandolin / And a clatter and a chatter from within…"  This is key—while there is a definite anxiety about this wasteland, there is also a loyalty, an affection, and a putting down of roots.  Eliot is searching for a cure, but what would be the use of this without an understanding of what he was looking to cure?  In this way, he prepares a foundation for whatever knowledge he hopes to gain for his dried-out nation.

Up to this point, a great deal of the poem has been quite classical, culturally traditional, from its examinations of Egypt and Greece to the conversational style in its vignettes to the invocation of Latin, German, French.  However, something different emerges in "What the Thunder Said."  The imagery, the mythology—all this begins to take on a very Eastern edge.  

As the section starts off, Biblical references are present, but they are less recognizable as western Christianity than as the early, pre-Catholic church.   The cathedrals, the papacy, the familiar institutions of the ordered, liturgical church have yet to be seen at this point in time.  While not Jewish, the depictions here are distinctly Middle Eastern in flavour.  Instead of stained glass and sacraments, we see raw spirituality in "the torchlight red on sweaty faces," the "thunder of spring over distant mountains," the "living now dying" clearly reminiscent of the resurrection of Christ.  The poem looks to Christianity with an almost feverish passion, but finds it dry rock, still evocative and full of passion but nevertheless sucked to a husk in the end.  Jerusalem, then, is condemned along with the classics—"Jerusalem Athens Alexandria / Vienna London / Unreal."  The world is still cracked and dry, crying out for water.  

Interestingly enough, when Eliot looks further east, drawing India into the picture, he depicts the Ganges in drought.  The same waiting game hangs in the air here which also torments the rest of the world.  Here, the promise of rain is on the horizon, lingering above the mountains, as though expecting something.  Here, ethnic words begin to be incorporated into texts drawn Shakespeare and Dante, not as something rough, uncouth, foreign, or dangerous, but as in a repetitive manner comparable to a singsong or a lullaby.  Datta, give, Dayadhvam, be compassionate, Damyata, control yourselves.  

The image brought from the east is not one of perfection or of enlightenment, but of growth, and of a structure for that growth.   In it, the giving and the compassion take precedence over the controlling.  In light of the network of treaties and alliances that escalated the initially minor conflicts that led to World War I, this simple order is paramount.  Do not focus on being in control, on having insurance against all possible threats, but rather be one against whom threats would not be made.  Go unto the world and make disciples, says the Christian Messiah, seeking to teach and restore.  Give and be compassionate, says the thunder, seeking to spread in a positive way.  In both cases, the idea of expansion revolves around the sharing of good things, a sort of gentle imperialism that is, perhaps, healthy.  Where political leaders have sought to be able at any time to demand service and favours, Eliot focuses on the ability to bestow the same.  Where this is the priority, Damyata, a sort of control, follows naturally, in that one seeks self control and then expects others to do the same. 
This, of course, leads ultimately to shantih, shantih, shantih—a sort of ultimatum of peace.

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It is extremely important to realize that, while the mantra Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata is brought in from the east, the materials which make up the stanza are European in origin.  The source of strength must, of course, come from the homeland, for the point is not to efface the current world with a new one, but to draw strength so that strength may be imparted in return.  The poem takes a journey into the east, but Europe does not simply abandon the wasteland and demand sustenance from a new location; rather, it takes guidance but works on its own strength, its cultural foundations, the good things that exist among the bad.  When Eliot says "These fragments I have shored against my ruins," he does not refer to pieces stolen from a foreign land, but to fragments of his own cultural tradition, those things worth saving, such as the England he has preserved with such affection.