Shoring Up Fragments Against Our Ruin: Quotations and Allusions

From the beginning, Eliot utilizes the mythic method in order to inscribe meaning to, and to make sense of, the chaotic post-war world of Europe, as well as to his own endeavors as an artist.  The dedication, for example, reads “For Ezra Pound.  Il miglior fabbro,” which directly quotes Dante Alighieri’s dedication to the Provencal poet, Arnault Daniel, thus equating Eliot’s endeavors to Alighieri’s, and Daniel’s prowess to Pound.  By looking at the elements of the preserved past, specifically in its cultural, literary and historical figures, Eliot intends to “shore up” the world against the ruin assured by the psychological trauma and disillusionment of the post-war period.  The breakdown of meaning belies the underlying solidity of a unified “mythology” of a shared European culture and cultural identity.   

The epigraph to “The Waste Land” presents an excellent example of Eliot’s use of a single cultural unit, with varied and highly colored meanings, to proscribe many meanings to the structure of the poem as a whole.  The quotation, about the Cumaean Sibyl, is heresay—a retelling of a telling of a myth—which adds to the conversational, unstable feeling of the poem.  A character of Petronius’ Satyricon recounts the tale, probably as a way of showcasing his knowledge of Greek, since he seems to be foppish pedant, as evidenced by his prior conflation of Hercules with Ulysses.  Operating under this interpretation, the epigraph acts as a humorous concession to readers who might thing Eliot’s work pedantic, considering its sizable inclusion of foreign language and regurgitated rhetoric.  

However, by looking at the legacy of the Cumaean Sibyl, “The Waste Land” also becomes a poetic prophecy, with divine implications, and Eliot becomes a selfless prophet-poet.  The Cumaean Sibyl wrote all of her prophecies in Greek hexameter verse and left them outside of her cave to be collected or discarded to the elements.  Likewise, Eliot seems to be offering his work, regardless of his possible reception, with the same fervor and depth of meaning.  Further, Christians often cited the Cumaean Sibyl as foretelling the coming of Christ, so by comparing himself to Sibyl, in a time of crisis, he also seems to indicate that he might have knowledge that could lead to social salvation, if not to a messiah figure.

Finally, very simply put, the Cumaean Sibyl underscores the recurring themes of the poem in a subtle way, drawing upon Sibyl as the symbol of social deterioration.  When Apollo, representing refinement and culture, asks Sibyl to give up her virginity (authenticity or originality?) for a wish, she wishes for a longevity matching the number of grains of sand one can hold in your hand.  Like sand in an hour glass, however, Sibyl’s time slowly slides away, as she feels to wish for eternal youth, which might here be associated with continuing relevancy or regeneration.  Faced with long decay, Sibyl wishes for death.  The deterioration of fertile beauty applies both to the myth, and to the culture in Eliot’s metaphor, and the obsession fertility, infertility, rituals involving transactions with gods, salvation, prophecy, and many more themes continue throughout the poem as a whole.

The section [["A Game of Chess" Annotations|A Game of Chess]] can be seen as a commentary on the inevitable downfall of man. Eliot’s use of tragic mythologies and literature proves that this section of the poem deals with mankind’s fall. The biggest notice is the face he places in his poem lines based on John Milton’s Paradise loss. It is a commentary on the scene where Satan first views Eden. Satan is the cause of Eden falling, the paradise for humankind. This can be found in lines 97 and down. The war was a tragedy.

Furthering the downfall of man are the mythologies of the Aneid, Cleopatra and Antony, and Philomel. Each story ends in tragedy of man and woman’s downfall from their former selves. This is shown via Dido succumbing to her frenzied love, Cleopatra and Antony falling for their ‘love’, and Philomel for being brutally raped. Each is an image of destruction toward a being, showing the end of themselves in the poem. At the same time it’s a vindictive glorification of these destructions like the begging about Cleopatra sitting in a beautiful throne. Yet all this beauty is to waste as the war is something not beautiful but terrible. It is a reoccurring theme that can be found throughout the poem.  

A Game of Chess concludes with a conversation by a woman talking about a man coming home and the wife needing to look her best and do a lot for the man when he returns; otherwise the man will be stolen. It shows how people have succumbed to their own darkness while WW1 begins to cover the world. Showing that man even outside of the war is not outside of the downfall that war brings. Humanity in general began to crumble as WW1 came around, and so A Game of Chess reflects that through the literature Europeans are most familiar with.  

Eliot taps into Buddhist sermons to relate past teachings about passion to the modern state of despair.