User:Michelle Scheuter

“The Waste Land” is a very interesting, yet complicated poem written by T. S. Eliot. The poem can be split and looked at in many different ways. The two maps for “The Waste Land” are from the first section “Burial of the Dead”. The first map is a literal translation, mapping the poem from Austria to Germany, the four invasions of World War I and London to Italy. The second map is the more complicated translation. The second map translates the depths of the poem, for instance line 20: "Son of man, you cannot say, or guess for you know only a heap of broken images”. This line derives from Ezekiel 2:7. By comparing the maps they bring up many similarities between the two. The main topic of this poem seems to talk about the war. The lines all intertwine with each other.

 

The next pinpoint is the assassination of the arch-duke Franz Ferdinand. He was assassinated in Sarajevo and he is the relative that Marie visited as a child. It is believed that the assassination of the arch-duke was the final straw and what initiated the start of WWI. As the poem continues with what I believe to be the most significant part of “The Burial of the Dead” it goes into a section of strictly war and death. The line “Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images” refers to a verse in the Bible. The verse is from Ezekiel 2:7, which reads “You shall speak my words to them whether they hear or refuse, for they are rebellious”. This verse takes place in Babylon where Ezekiel was sent to warn the people of the destruction of Jerusalem. This relates very closely to the destruction created from WWI. The poem continues on with another reference to the Bible with “Where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water”. The verse that this line refers to Ecclesiastes 12:5 “When men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets: when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets”. In this verse King David is talking to the people. He is referring to a war of his time which closely relates to the war of Marie’s time. The lines of the poem are about WWI and all of the death and destruction. After the war is over people are mourning the dead and trying to move past the darkness.

As the poem continues the lines are taken from the play “Tristan and Isolde”. “Frisch weht der wind der heimat zu mein Irisch kind wo weilest du?“ This translates to: the wind blows fresh to the homeland my Irish girl where are you lingering? These lines are actually a song that is being sung by a sailor on a ship traveling from Ireland to Cornwall. Tristan is escorting Isolde to marry a king. In the next lines it describes the love created between Tristan and Isolde that cannot go any further because she is betrothed to another. This betrayal of love is followed by “Oed’ und leer das meer”, desolate and the empty sea. Tristan was wounded in act II returning home to Brittany and he awaits Isolde to come heal him. Tristan asks a shepherd to look for her and he returns saying the sea is empty.

The poem continues with Madame Sosostris and her reading of the tarot cards. “Here, she said, is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!” The first card is the drowned Phoenician Sailor which reads, past hope of life or rebirth. This card symbolizes that there was once hope of life and rebirth, but the war has changed that and people no longer have much hope for the future. With the line “pearls that were his eyes” Eliot has given a different perspective to this tarot card. This part of the line is from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. “Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange”. Eliot uses this line to indicate that there is hope for change and that London can come up from the ashes to be whole one again. London will never be the same, but it can still be alive. “Here is Belladonna, The Lady of the rocks, The Lady of situations”. The second card is the Belladonna. This card indicates queen of cups, by using this card it indicates that there is a gift of renewal, but the sea and rocks or the tragedy of the war is preventing the future from progressing. “Here is the man with three staves”, the third card Eliot indicated was the Fisher King. The card shows a man looking out into a waste land waiting to see it come back to life, but it cannot come back on its own. “And here the Wheel”, the fourth tarot card is the wheel of fortune. There are different meanings derived from this card, but the meaning that fits the best is the possibility of chance and change. This card shows that there is room for new possibilities and growth. “And here is the one-eyed merchant”, the next card is the merchant with six pentacles. The merchant is holding a scale and handing out coins. This illustration shows compassion and bringing balance back to society, allowing the world to move on and go back to what was once considered normal, back to everyday life of working and earning.  

The last two cards are a blank card and The Hanged Man. “and this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see. I do not find The Hanged Man. Fear death by water”. The Hanged Man is associated with the God of Frazer, the fertility God who may be sacrificed to bring fertility back to the land and the people. Madame Sosostris indicates that she does not see The Hanged Man which reveals that there is no fertility coming, no rebirth. The past is lost and with it the traditions, all that is left are the ruins and destruction from the war. Madame Sosostris goes on in the poem to say, “I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, tell her I bring the horoscope myself: one must be so careful these days”. This stanza ends with the observation that the people are walking around in misery and fear with no idea on how to move forward. They are stuck in a moment of shock, how they move on after what the war has done.

 

The next stanza of the poem is strictly about London and the people of London. The poem describes the after effects of the war and what reaction the people are expressing. “Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many”. This line is both an observation on Marie’s part, but also a reference to Dante’s “Inferno”. “Si lunga tratta, di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta”. This line translates to: so long a train of people, that I should never have believed death had undone so many. Marie is observing the people of London and cannot fathom what the war has done to them. The next line was also taken from Dante’s “Inferno”. “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled”, is from iv 25-27: “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri, che l’aura eterna facevan tremare”. This line translates to here there is no lamentations that could be heard except of sighs which caused the eternal air to tremble. This indicates the sighs and mourning of the people, those who have no hope and have nowhere to look for it. This section of the poem continues to repeat the same message; death, sadness, loss, fear and it is all related to the war and what the war has done to the people. As the stanza continues it adds another reference associated with death and rebirth. “To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine”, this line is repeated in the Bible; Luke 23:44, “And it was the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour”. This line is just before Jesus’s last words during his crucifixion. Jesus died, but was reborn and London is in a state of death, but eventually will be reborn as well.

 

By comparing these two mapped versions for “The Burial of the Dead” there are many similarities. Some of those are more obvious than others. The main ideas through this section of the poem are memory, death and life. This section is about the war, what happened before it and what has come because of it. T.S. Eliot has pulled from different references that all say the same thing that he is saying in his poem. Where there was once death there will be life again.