Archival Evidence

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.” Because of this, obviously the new generation must crete its own “codes” that are going to work in a different way now that 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, 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 the 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.” Because of this, obviously the new generation must crete its own “codes” that are going to work in a different way now that 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, 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 the 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.