User:Toby Decker

T.S. Eliot's poem, "[http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html The Waste Land]," has become an essential part of the English canon.  Nearly a century of Eliot scholarship has been contributed to readers' understanding of the poem, and throughout this time, various editors have sewn up the pages of the original poem with scholars' research to market these findings to students and bibliophiles of western literature. Although readers may interpret the content of "The Waste Land" as individuals or in conjunction with a noted school of influence, there remain enduring questions regarding the inferred experience of the reader.

[[Image:220px-NirvanaNevermindalbumcover.jpg‎|left]]Not unlike literature, music is similarly subjected to variable forms of information visualization.  Although the "information" conveyed by music provides ample possibilities for visualization--since the imagery and nuance of a song conveys probabilities for visualization in the mind of the listener--it is not uncommon for the content of a work to be framed for the purpose of consumption by the album's cover.  The significance of an album's cover can not be understated.  For example, a simple google image search of the word "[http://www.nirvana.com/default.aspx#!tweets Nirvana]" does not recover images of the literal lyrics of the songs produced by the 90's American grunge band, but rather, the top image to surface is of the famous cover of Nirvana's album, "Nevermind."  Certainly, the band Nirvana is acknowledged the world over for its cultural and musical contributions to rock music, but the previously mentioned internet search indicates how very essential Nirvana's iconography is to the band's celebrité.   

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.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.<br/>

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.   

[[File:Thetriumphofdeath.jpg|right]]In contrast to the Cubist/Modernist approach, which renders truth from varying yet stark perspectives, the cover image of Penguin Classic's [http://www.amazon.com/Waste-Other-Poems-Penguin-Classics/dp/014243731X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355188736&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wasteland+and+other+poems+2003 reprinting of "The Waste Land"] incorporates Pieter Bruegel's "The Triumph of Death" on its book cover.  The differences between Delaunay's and Bruegel's paintings are remarkable, though Bruegel's work does not inherently controvert textual content.  The editor's choice to use Bruegel's painting to market "The Waste Land" is obviously influenced by themes consistent with the poem.  However, when comparing the work of Delaunay and Bruegel it becomes apparent that the editorial choice concerning which image to use reflects strongly on the editor's perception of the poem.  For instance, though Delaunay's work is not "true to life," it does maintain sufficient pragmatism to assure a level of certainty for the viewer.  In "The Triumph of Death" the image is so absurd, filled with ambiguous yet disturbing symbology, that the viewer is left disoriented and perhaps disenchanted before he or she has considered the text within.   

Penguin's choice to use Bruegel's painting for its ''Waste Land'' cover reveals an editorial perception that death and iconography are perhaps the most essential aspects of the poem.  Bruegel's painting depicts a battle in which death, personified as a militia of skeletons, overwhelms a force of men. The Triumph of Death was painted more than three hundred years before Eliot wrote The Waste Land, well before the introduction of abstraction in the field of visual art.  Whereas Delaunay paints a single image from a variety of different perspectives, Bruegel paints a single scene; nevertheless, Bruegel also challenge the viewer's experience by creating several different scenes within his single panel. The viewer is challenged to consider several different images, or "perspectives" at once.   

Unreal<br/>

Nirvana. ''Nevermind''. Gefen, 1991. CD.