Some (Rather Frustrated) Thoughts on Lady Brett Ashley

Every time I read The Sun Also Rises, I am struck by how much of a nonperson Lady Brett Ashley is.  We know from Jake's rather unflattering portrayal of her at the beginning of the novel that she has been married multiple times, and that she served as a V.A.D. nurse.  He also tends to avoid describing her infeminine terms, except for when he describes parts of her body and even that is qualified by a lack of femininity (specifically when he describes her legs with no tights or stockings on them).  Later readers learn through observing her behavior that she has a tendency towards promiscuity that is bolstered by the constant amount of alcohol that she consumes.  Additionally, any time she speaks she essentially says the same five-ish phrases over and over again.  As much as this is a tale of adults in arrested development following their involvement in the War, it still appears to me that Brett is a character denied the same sorts of agency that Jake, Bill, Robert, and Michael have access to, whether they exercise it or no.

 

The closing of the novel is especially problematic as Brett struggles against being perceived as a "bitch".  It would make more sense to me if she just owned the fact taht she's a 34 year old woman that doesn't always dress how others think she should, nor behave as such.  However, since we have not had access to this vulnerable side of Brett, it just comes across as apologist dribble following another one of her benders.  Taken alongside some of the other racist and anti-Semitic sentiments that other characters can't help but sharing when describing characters different from themseles, I found myself disappointed that someone as central to the narrative as Brett is not given as much depth.

Machinery In The Waste Land

Something that strikes me every time I read The Waste Land is the repeated interjections of mechanical sounds or imagery. The inturrputions of "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" at the tail end of part II recall announcements blaring over a train station PA System, as if the mechanical aspects of the world refuse to be ignored and demand attention. Part III frequently evokes mechanical sounds, with the inclusion of "twit twit twit/jug jug jug jug jug jug," almost serving as a juxtaposition between bird chips and the chuging of a motor, with the motorized sound persisting longer and sounding harsher to the ear. However the most interesting invokation of machinery, in my opinion, comes after the harshly hollow sexual encounter between the man and the woman. The woman "paces about her room again, alone,/ she smooths her hair with automatic hand,/ and puts a record on the gramophone." I find it immesely interesting that, after finding little to no solace in one of the most intimately human acts in existence, the woman returns to the automatic action of pacing, and chooses to find solace in a mass produced, mechanical reproduction of music. Much like how Vera Brittain said she could only survive the war by becoming as an automaton, this woman exists in a series of "automatic" motions, more willing to spend time thusly than with real humans. In conjunction with the term "Unreal City," it seems like the war has reduced everyone residing within to automatons, drowning out nature and inturrupting anything remotely natural.

The Wasteland: Disjointed and Multilayered

From the excerpt of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland we had already read in class, "IV. Death by Water," I had some kind of assumption of what the rest of it was going to be. And I was completely wrong. With more traditional poems, one section does not differ so entirely from the rest, so the disjointed nature of the different parts of the poem was particularly striking. While part IV is somewhat traditional and self-contained, with a predictable structure and lyrical quality, other parts are far more unexpected and experimental. Examples include the use of words and sentences in all caps like the repeated line "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" in part II and word repetition like "Twit twit twit / Jug jug jug jug jug jug" in part III. The poem does not easily give up its meaning. The reader must dig and consult other sources. She must familiarize herself with phrases in other languages, such as to decipher the phrase "Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!" in part III. According to online sources, this translates to “And O those children's voices singing in the dome!” and is a reference to the poem "Parsifal" by Paul Verlaine. This demonstrates not only how layered the poem is in form and style, but also in references to other works. Other modernist poems we have read in class lend themselves more to casual reading, and we can use our general knowledge about the time period and of poetry to help guide us. The Wasteland requires much more from us as readers, an investment of time and resources to sift through these references to make sense of it. This dedication lends itself to an entirely different experience that Eliot must have intended.

Intertextuality in Eliot's The Waste Land

The intertextuality within The Waste Land struck me when reading. Most of the references I caught were when trying to translate the different parts of the poem that are in different languages, and I then realized they were references to other stories; Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner, Bauldelaire poems, Parsifal by Verlaine, the story of Philomela, the Oedipus Rex plays, and The Baghavad Gita. I found all of these, and I’m sure there are more. This hearkening back to old stories and understandings is something that Brittain does in Testament of Youth, but Eliot seems to be doing something a bit different here. While Brittain is looking for comfort in literature while also wondering how art can continue to be created in a time like this, Eliot seems to be taking the old to attempt to explain or bring a different light to the new. Put another way, Eliot seems to be testing whether the old traditions of writing still hold up to explain what is happening during the war. By doing this, Eliot is literally making the old new, which is one of the big tenants of Modernism. In attempting to describe the current with the past, Eliot creates an intertextuality that readers must define and analyze to attempt to understand how the war affected those that experienced it. 

Tradition, Trauma, and Innovation

I was reminded of our conversation last week about poets attempting to find different ways to express the trauma of modernity. Specifically, after reading ​The Waste Land ​I thought about the difference between the avant garde and the more traditional soldier poetry. I bring this up because it seemed to me that Eliot was trying to bridge the gap between these two approaches. By this I mean, there are certainly avant garde elements to the poem, most notably the lack of a traditional rhyme scheme in several instances. However, the poem seems to be also constantly trying to situate itself within the past and the poetic tradition. If we look at section V. I think we can see this interplay most clearly. 

Notably, Eliot focuses on traditional, natural phenomenon here, however they seem to be pretty clear references to the war. The thunder which is the professed focus of the section, could easily be read as a reference to artillery. However, the speaker sees in the sound echoes of classical and biblical trauma, by creating parallels between Babel, Jerusalem and Alexandria (which are all famous for being destroyer, damaged or lost) with Vienna and London. It seems to me that Eliot is essentially trying to look for historical or mythic prescidents for the trauma of the war, while at the same time striving for poetic innovation. It's as if Eliot is trying to connect with past while at the same time struggling to account for tradition's inability to express the specific trauma of his generation. 

Tiresias, the Prophet of Trauma

The Wasteland is a poem fraught with violent and unregenerate sexual events. In Part II, “A Game of Chess,” the reader is confronted with both a high-class and low-class scene suggesting such sexuality. A painting of Philomel, a Greek goddess, details her rape “by the barbarous king / So rudely forced,” in the gaudy high-class home. Conversely, the next section contains a conversation between Lil and her unfortunate friend. The friend thinks it very important to remind Lil that her only value is as a sex toy for Albert, a value that the friend is more than willing to take on as her own. Throughout this section a line resounds, “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.” My first reading of this led me to believe it read “it’s” and not “its.” Now I must ask, whose time? Who is the it whose time has suddenly come to bear? The repetition of this line leads me into a discussion on Tiresias, the true prophet to whom no one listens, as opposed to Madame Sosostris. Tiresias, “throbbing between two lives,” is forced to view another scene of unregenerate sexuality. The prophet watches a female typist who is “assault[ed]” by a man who “makes a welcome of indifference,” and rapes her. Though Tiresias is blind, the prophet is forced to “perceive” this rape. Tiresias has “foresuffered all / Enacted on this same divan or bed,” repeatedly, just as the reminder to hurry is repeated throughout the latter section of part 2. In this way, Tiresias has already suffered for this scene, and all the other unregenerate sexual acts which the prophet has been forced to witness. This is the definition of trauma, the inability to separate past from present, the inability to stop reliving the traumatic events of the past in the present. The line “HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME” is a representation of Lil’s own trauma circulating throughout the poem. The typist, as if in response to Lil’s own trauma-induced repetition, simply says after her own rape “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” But it begs the question, will it ever really be over for her?

T.S. Eliot and the Cruelty of Time

I found “The Waste Land” to be an incredibly mournful reading experience, even whilst I was often lost amid T.S. Eliot’s constant barrage of opaque references.  At least he is helpful enough to provide some background information, for which I was quite grateful.  I am sure none of us could help but notice that Eliot’s quotations are drawn from all over (from Dante’s Inferno to Plato’s Philebus, apparently), but the allusions I was most struck by were chiefly those medieval in origin.  The first four lines, for instance, reflect quite obviously those of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which reads, “Whan that aprill with his shoures soote / The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, / And bathed every veyne in swich licour / Of which vertu engendred is the flour” (l. 1-4).  However, where in Chaucer these lines express a beautiful ardor for the coming of springtime, Eliot’s reimagining of these lines takes quite a different tone, for he notes that “April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain” (l. 1-4).  What I find fascinating about this comparison is not that Chaucer and Eliot view the springtime so very differently, but how their accounts are remarkably similar in particulars, and yet extremely distant from one another in feeling.  This is because, although both remark upon the new growth and life, for Eliot, the new growth of spring appears to be unwelcome, as the reemergence of warmth and growth is cruelly “mixing / Memory and desire” (2-3).  This sentiment is confirmed in the very next lines, for “Winter kept us warm, covering /Earth in forgetful snow” (5-6).  From these lines, and my own knowledge of the time in which they were written (1922), my impression is that winter was welcome and brought “warmth” of a sort for its numbing ability, while the bright lilacs, springing forth so callously from the land in which thousands of men lie dead at the end of WWI, inspires in the speaker an impression of the “cruelty” of April.  This sentiment reminds me very much of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, when she is indignant and even horrified that the seasons carry on, and flowers still bloom, and the sun breaking through the clouds continues to be just as beautiful as it ever was, even though all of her most beloved companions have died.

Further, T.S. Eliot very openly incorporates elements of the Arthurian tale of the Fisher King often found within the Grail legend into the poem—“While I was fishing in the dull canal” (l. 189), “  I sat upon the shore / Fishing, with the arid plain behind me” (l. 424) —even to the point of likely taking his title from Malory’s account in Le Morte d'Arthur.  In the Arthurian tradition, the Fisher King has been afflicted by a grievous wound that never heals, and his ailment also often passes to his kingdom, which becomes a verifiable wasteland (whether this is because the kingdom has been simultaneously cursed, or simply because it falls into disrepair because their king is unable to perform his sovereign duties varies from tale to tale).  It is up to one of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, Perceval, to uncover the mystery of his ailment and heal both king and kingdom.  According to his own note, Eliot has taken most of his inspiration from the discussion of the Grail legend in Jessie Weston’s book, From Ritual to Romance, which focuses upon the pagan influences of a legend which apparently, at times, ends in Perceval healing the Fisher King and restoring the kingdom to its former health and glory.  This may be a somewhat hopeful undercurrent amidst Eliot’s bleak tone, if so, but I cannot help but think of that version of the legend I myself was first introduced to: the unfinished Romance of Chrétien de Troyes: "Perceval, the story of the Grail."  In this account Perceval, having failed to offer the proper courtesy to the Fisher King by asking after his wound and the marvel of the Grail he has seen, wakes up alone, the king and his court vanished, and the tale soon after breaks off, incomplete.  I can’t help but feel that this version of the tale—in which all is not quite lost, but certainly much has gone awry, contrary to every hope and expectation—is very suited to the tone of Eliot’s poem, written very close to the end of WWI.  I wonder, now, if I was most astonished by these allusions to medieval writers because they seem to my mind furthest from the brutality of the war.  And yet, after all, surely the chivalric romances of Chrétien de Troyes captivated and even motivated the hearts of many a young soldier, just as they have my own.  Even residing here in a tumultuous present I have always had the available retreat of the chivalric tales of old.  I honestly cannot imagine living through a moment in which my own ideals concerning what is beautiful and worthwhile were so utterly desecrated.

Communication in "The Waste Land"

Communication in "The Waste Land" has broken down. There is a difference between dropping a German name for a sea, like "Starnbergersee," and randomly lapsing into a foreign language. Eliot starts with English, but his use of German in lines "Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch," and "Frisch weht der Wind / Der Heimat zu / Mein Irisch Kind, / Wo weilest du?" or "Oed’ und leer das Meer" isn't explained or translated. The reader isn't even given context clues. If you do not know German, and you have no access to a German dictionary, then you're out of luck here. Eliot probably has no problem with that, but Eliot being fine with a failure of communication between speaker and reader doesn't excuse it.

Then, consider the conversation in section 2. White space and awkward quotation marks are used to completely break the conversation into disparate chunks. The words themselves make sense, but the conversation itself is so disjointed that you'd be forgiven to worry that the characters aren't actually speaking to each other. This is capped at the end of the section, when the speaker screams "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" a few times and takes quite a few attempts to say good night properly. "Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. / Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. / Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night."

 

This is a common element that Eliot sets up in the first few pages and continues through the whole poem. It is a neat way to show a breakdown of communication that, when piled with the breakdown of Nature into a Blakeian nightmare, shows that both humanity and nature have been rendered useless/ineffective. 

"Those are pearls that were his eyes": Allusions to Shakespeare in Eliot's The Waste Land

As Kelsey has already pointed out, The Waste Land is full of interesting references that are easy to get lost in.  For a first time reader, the amount of glossing this poem needs is a bit daunting, especially considering how short it it as an actual poem.  However, having read Ulysses which as published during the same year (1922) I cannot say I was surprised that this work also contains so many allusions to classic works.  From what I understand, the poem was originally published without Eliot's notes, but were later added to justify publishing the poem in book form.  Much like having Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated handy, I was thanful to have some annotations to the poem that elucidated more fully Eliot's own notes.  In regards to the classical allusions, the one that stood out to me, primarily because it is the most familiar, was the constant references to Shakespeare's The Tempest.  More than once, Eliot draws on the famous line spoken by the magical Ariel that "[t]hose are pearls that were his eyes."  It is a choice line for Eliot's poem, as in Shakespeare's play Ferdinand it tricked into believing that his father is dead from a shipwreck and his body now lies far underneath the water.  The image of having pearls for eyes is then meant to connote the glassy stare of a dead body.  Following the first stanza in "A Game of Chess", there is a dialogue in which nerves, noise, and knowing nothing all converge around this Shakespearean line and the question "Are you alive, or not?" which is never fully answered (126).  This specific section of the poem brought me back to the many conversations we have had in class around soldiers' experiences in the trench.  As readers, we do not know where this conversation is happening as it is separated from the stanza proceeding it.  When I first read it, I imagined the voices as disembodied and the conversationg taking place in a sort of blackness.  Considering the title of the poem, I think this section is meant to invoke the trenches, an actual waste land, with its references to rats, alleys, and spooky noises.  Tossing in The Tempest lends this section of the poem an added layer of tragi-comedy in a way that I am not sure I can fully articulate but that I thought was at least worth pointing out.

Eliot's modernism in The Waste Land

In attempting to understand some context around “The Waste Land,” I read one review of the poem that explained how its obscurity is a demonstration of Eliot’s modernist approach. The shifts in narration, location, legends and mythology references and characters are a whirlwind of emotions, memories and predictions all connected to the death and despair created by World War I. Eliot’s style not only made this poem famous, but also contributed to society’s intrigue of a lost generation after the war. To learn that “The Waste Land” was such a popular poem makes me wonder if survivors of the Great War understood how they were living in history and how the significance of this poem would reverberate their generation a century later. It would be interesting to discuss in class what demonstrates modernism in this poem.

Lines 43-55 about Madame Sosostris and her “wicked pack of cards” (46) remind me of class discussions from earlier in the semester about family seeking mediums to talk to dead soldiers. In this case, the spiritual source is looking forward into the future instead of backward into the past. The blank card, one-eyed merchant and absence of the hanged man are foreboding and suggest to the narrator that he should “fear death by water” (55), but I’m curious as to how that is possible when so much of the poem is about the dry earth and desolation. The line about crowds of people walking around in a ring leaves me with questions, but then again so much of “The Waste Land” is difficult for this novice to understand.

I can see how the indifferent love scene featuring the typist and the clerk in “The Fire Sermon” section represents the lifeless personalities of those who remained following the war. She is “bored and tired” (236) with his sexual intentions, and after he leaves she barely notices he’s gone. The woman turns to music from her gramophone to fill the void after their meeting — an encounter she is glad is over. There’s no spark or desire to feel lust or love — just the eerie background music grinding from the gramophone. The woman is merely going through the motions to keep on living. The generation expected to rebuild after World War I experienced much the same situation. How were survivors supposed to find energy and light in life when surrounded by war’s wasteland? This reality is reinforced with the narrator’s declaration of how he can “connect nothing with nothing” (301-02). In a barren world where April, known as one of the most thriving times of the year, is perceived as the cruelest month for growing flowers from dry land — where spring is hated for producing life — its easy to see how and where Eliot got his inspiration to write about the defeated human spirit after the Great War.

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