Archival Evidence
From The Waste Land Wiki
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A thorough investigation of every bit of content in either ''The Criterion'' or ''The Dial'', let alone in both, would be an overwhelming task. Therefore, this particular project is most interested in finding obvious similarities in thematic content that can be gathered from brief exposure to each of the included pieces. The most apparent and most frequent shared themes include death, the First World War, fertility and sterility, and a kind of distrust in authority and Western culture. Often, it is difficult to separate one thematic element from another; they are tied together intertextually and intratextually between and in most of the pieces as much as they are in “The Waste Land.” It is worth noting that by October 1922, the war had been over for nearly four years. However, it is clear from this thematic overlap in the rest of the magazines’ content that Eliot was not the only individual still interested in the war’s aftermath and long-term effects on society. | A thorough investigation of every bit of content in either ''The Criterion'' or ''The Dial'', let alone in both, would be an overwhelming task. Therefore, this particular project is most interested in finding obvious similarities in thematic content that can be gathered from brief exposure to each of the included pieces. The most apparent and most frequent shared themes include death, the First World War, fertility and sterility, and a kind of distrust in authority and Western culture. Often, it is difficult to separate one thematic element from another; they are tied together intertextually and intratextually between and in most of the pieces as much as they are in “The Waste Land.” It is worth noting that by October 1922, the war had been over for nearly four years. However, it is clear from this thematic overlap in the rest of the magazines’ content that Eliot was not the only individual still interested in the war’s aftermath and long-term effects on society. | ||
| − | In ''The Dial'', there is an installment of the novel ''Doctor Graesler'' by Arthur Schnitzler, in which much of the conflict is driven by sexual jealousy and the fear of adultery. Likewise, in ''The Criterion'', part of May Sinclair’s "The Victim" is included. In this story, which is set during the War, | + | In ''The Dial'', there is an installment of the novel ''Doctor Graesler'' by Arthur Schnitzler, in which much of the conflict is driven by sexual jealousy and the fear of adultery. Likewise, in ''The Criterion'', part of May Sinclair’s "The Victim" is included. In this story, which is set during the War, the main character, Steven, is in love with a woman whom his master persuades to leave forever. Because of this, Steven is ultimately driven to murder his master. The men in these stories are left alone by women, or in other words, they are left sterile, because they no longer have a partner to allow for the manifestation of their potential fertility, so they act out on this feeing of abandoment. This resonates with the pub scene of “The Waste Land” (lines 140-172) when the speaker indicates that she took the pleasure of Lil’s husband’s sexuality since Lil had rejected her own fertility with an attempted abortion of his child. “What you get married for if you don’t want children?” must have been on the minds of many who felt the loss of a considerable portion of men at the reproductive stage of life from their society. Still, it is interesting that Schnitzler and Sinclair present men rather than women as their forcedly sterile characters. |
T. Sturge Moore, who wrote an essay about “The Story of Tristram and Isolt in Modern Poetry” for the same edition of ''The Criterion'', brings some middle ground to this question. He acknowledges that Tristram’s and Isolt’s situation “forced illegal passion on” both of them. That is to say, both sexes suffer when they are deprived of an outlet for their passions. Still he asks, “Is adultery ever to be condoned?” The tension Moore recognizes between people’s need to be fertile and the question of its inherent “rightness” is relevant to what Eliot is exploring in “The Waste Land.” Humanity’s distrust in or even “divorce” from nature and natural law that Eliot depicts as a result of the war must include a questioning of the previously accepted paradigm of right and wrong. One image from “The Waste Land”—“a heap of broken images” (line 22)—can be applied as a description to what the poem itself is, what society looks like after the war, and what people’s current perception of the former order is. | T. Sturge Moore, who wrote an essay about “The Story of Tristram and Isolt in Modern Poetry” for the same edition of ''The Criterion'', brings some middle ground to this question. He acknowledges that Tristram’s and Isolt’s situation “forced illegal passion on” both of them. That is to say, both sexes suffer when they are deprived of an outlet for their passions. Still he asks, “Is adultery ever to be condoned?” The tension Moore recognizes between people’s need to be fertile and the question of its inherent “rightness” is relevant to what Eliot is exploring in “The Waste Land.” Humanity’s distrust in or even “divorce” from nature and natural law that Eliot depicts as a result of the war must include a questioning of the previously accepted paradigm of right and wrong. One image from “The Waste Land”—“a heap of broken images” (line 22)—can be applied as a description to what the poem itself is, what society looks like after the war, and what people’s current perception of the former order is. | ||
