User:Toby Decker

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-Séverin No. 3." There is no information to suggest whether the juxtaposition of the two works was approved by Eliot, but neither does information exist to indicate whether Eliot opposed the placement of Delaunay's painting at the opening of his 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 [http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Saint-S%C3%A9verin%20No.%203&page=&f=Title&object=41.462 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 had 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 fitting, especially considering that Eliot's ''Waste Land'' included layers of content about such themes as decay and disenchantment.

This excerpt from Part I of ''The Waste Land'', entitled, "The Living of the Dead" introduces the the reader to an unromantic landscape that is hostile to other forms of life.  The speaker reports that  his environment offers very little in the way of relief; the only place in which the speaker may find any semblance of "shelter" is under the "shadow of this red rock."  The speaker also considers the role of abstraction, claiming that he has something to reveal which can not be viewed by the differing shadows of the morning or evening.  Delaunay's untraditional rendering of a traditional scene  similarly explores an ominous locale that many would consider to be connotative of a "sanctuary" or "shelter."  Delaunay positions himself to view his scene from varying standpoints, thus exploring principles of abstraction; as David Tomlinson observes in his article entitled ''[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/441241?uid=3739848&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101431253633 T.S. Eliot and the Cubists]'', the "cubists depict a cognitive map of the object such as accumulates in the memory from a variety of experiences of it."

Delaunay's work, which is juxtaposed with Part I of Eliot's Waste Land works in conjunction with the language to give the reader the feeling that he or she is entering into a "waste land."  The shadows cast by the church's ambulatory offer a foreboding and disorienting introduction to Eliot's poetry, but like Eliot, Delaunay references this disorientation within an image that is not too abstract as to discourage the reader from crossing the threshold from reality into a modernist's perception of reality.