Archival Evidence

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 (Moore 35). 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?” (Moore 35). 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” (Eliot 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 (Moore 35). 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?” (Moore 35). 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” (Eliot 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.

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.

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.