User:Toby Decker

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 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.