"The Burial of the Dead" Annotations
From The Waste Land Wiki
(→Title: "The Burial of the Dead") |
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:::: That we in turn may feed her with our death" | :::: That we in turn may feed her with our death" | ||
| − | ===Lines 8-11=== | + | ===Lines 8-11, Germany=== |
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And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. | And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. | ||
| − | ===Line 12=== | + | "Starnbergersee," also known as Lake Starnberger, is approximately nine miles from Munich, which Eliot visited in 1911. |
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| + | The "Hofgarten" is the court garden, the heart of Munich, and the ruling house of Bavaria--a center of royal European activity. | ||
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| + | ===Line 12, === | ||
''Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.'' | ''Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.'' | ||
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| + | Translation: "I am not a Russian, I come from Lithuania, a real German." | ||
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| + | This alludes to the beginnings of a national, and perhaps racial, identity for Europeans, which possibly also includes the loss of a greater, perhaps more valuable, cohesive European quality. | ||
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And I was frightened. He said, Marie, | And I was frightened. He said, Marie, | ||
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. | Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. | ||
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| + | The speaker, Countess Marie Larisch, was the illegitimate daughter of Ludwig Wilhelm, heir to the throne of Bavaria, and a common woman. She may represent the "degradation" of European high culture that concerns Eliot, especially considering that her father Wilhelm renounced the throne in order to marry her mother. | ||
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| + | This makes her cousin the Archduke Rudolf, whom she helped to conceal his affair. This draws in issues of fertility, legitimacy, betrayal, and deception. | ||
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| + | Valerie Eliot maintained that this excerpt of Larisch's speech came not from her biography, ''My Past'', as many supposed, but actually came directly from a conversation that T.S. Eliot had with Larisch. | ||
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===Lines 17-18=== | ===Lines 17-18=== | ||
