Archival Evidence
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===World War I=== | ===World War I=== | ||
| − | Unsurprisingly, WWI is a major theme in both ''The Dial'' and ''The Criterion''. | + | Unsurprisingly, WWI is a major theme in both ''The Dial'' and ''The Criterion''. Though the War had been over for four years by 1922, the world, especially Europe, was still in shock from the atrocities it had witnessed between 1914 and 1918. |
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| − | '' | + | ''The Criterion'' touches on WWI in a variety of its pieces. For example, Herman Hesse discusses the War in "Recent German Poetry," citing it as one of the main reasons that the youth of Germany are behaving and writing in such a juvenile manner. Because of the War, he believes that "Europe is seen by the youth of to-day as a very sick neurotic, who can be helped only by shattering the self-created complexes in which he is suffering" (90-91). |
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| + | Furthermore, Hermann Hesse eloquently sums up the reason these three themes tend to be so connected in the post-war environment. In his essay “Recent German Poetry” from ''The Criterion'', he explains that the experience of the Great War entailed “the collapse of all the old forms and the breakdown of moral codes and cultures hitherto valid” (Hesse 90). Because of this, the new generation must create its own “codes” that will work differently since something as awful as a World War is a conceivable reality. He goes on to enumerate “the two central interests of youth”: “rebellion against authority and against the culture of that authority in process of downfall; and eroticism” (Hesse 90). Hesse, too, sees a relationship between fertility issues, distrust in society/authority, and the War. From all the thematic overlap in these two magazines with the content of “The Waste Land,” it only makes sense to admit that Eliot’s poem is not a thing to be read in isolation from its context. Since the other literary pieces treat some of the same subjects, it is fair to assume that those subjects were primary concerns of the scholarly class in both America and Europe. Familiarizing oneself with these contextual similarities allows a reader of “The Waste Land” to focus in on what would have been most important to Eliot’s contemporary audience, and perhaps to understand more successfully what meaning Eliot wants to transmit through the poem. | ||
===Sexuality and Fertility=== | ===Sexuality and Fertility=== | ||
