Archival Evidence
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===''St. Severin'' Painting and Orphism=== | ===''St. Severin'' Painting and Orphism=== | ||
| − | Debuting as the first substantive literary text in the November 1922 issue of ''The Dial,'' ''The Waste Land'' is presented beginning on the right-hand page, directly across from a disorienting and somewhat abstract painting of St. Severin's Cathedral in Paris, France (Delaunay 472). Painted by Robert Delaunay, a French | + | Debuting as the first substantive literary text in the November 1922 issue of ''The Dial,'' ''The Waste Land'' is presented beginning on the right-hand page, directly across from a disorienting and somewhat abstract painting of St. Severin's Cathedral in Paris, France (Delaunay 472). Painted by Robert Delaunay, a French Cubist and pioneer of the "Orphism" style, the selection by editors to include his art within ''The Dial'' is in keeping with the culture of curiosity demonstrated by the New York readership. Delaunay's modern-gothic painting represents a sense of disjointedness present in post-WWI Europe through his fragmented and sharply disjointed painting of the ambulatory of St. Severin. This fragmentation is echoed in the page opposite Delaunay's painting, wherein lies Eliot's ''The Waste Land.'' The call to national identity in addition to a sense of brokenness within society draws parallels from the painting to the poem. |
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| + | Delaunay's painting was over ten years old at the publication of ''The Dial'', having been first completed in 1909. Delaunay was drawn to light and open spaces in his artwork; he uses lighting within the cathedral's ambulatory to create a sense of disjointedness; emphasis on sensory experiences in order to create a sensation of space and warped perspective. Delaunay described this painting as marking “a period of transition from Cézanne to Cubism”; his main influence moving from that of Cézanne’s style to that of cubists such as Georges Braques. | ||
| + | Delaunay’s paintings very heavily tied in with French identity | ||
Within the painting, which was already [http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/1017 more than ten years old] at the publishing of ''The Waste Land'' in ''The Dial,'' the church's walls and floor twist and turn in a cubist-based depiction. This fractured portrayal of a sacred space calls to mind lines 20-21 of ''The Waste Land'' - "you know only a heap of broken images" - which itself was an allusion to the biblical book Ezekiel (specifically [http://usccb.org/bible/ezekiel/6/6 chapter 6]). | Within the painting, which was already [http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/1017 more than ten years old] at the publishing of ''The Waste Land'' in ''The Dial,'' the church's walls and floor twist and turn in a cubist-based depiction. This fractured portrayal of a sacred space calls to mind lines 20-21 of ''The Waste Land'' - "you know only a heap of broken images" - which itself was an allusion to the biblical book Ezekiel (specifically [http://usccb.org/bible/ezekiel/6/6 chapter 6]). | ||
