Allusiveness in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, though it has been called one of the major minor poems of the language, is undoubtedly a great landmark in English poetry. Apart from being the most representative document of the modern poetry, it is a severe indictment on modern mechanization. There is also a general disillusionment, characteristic of the post-war cynicism. But the poem is something more than the expression of the slough of despondency of the post-war generation. This poem, as Elizabeth Drew points out, is “in many ways the most influential of this century.”

Obscurity is a common charge on the poem and unintelligibility is, more often than not, its stark and bitter reality. This poem of only 433 lines, as the American critic Edmund Wilson reveals, includes “quotations from, allusions to, or imitations of at least 35 different writers...as well as several popular songs and introduced in six foreign languages, including Sanskrit.” The poem in turn becomes a repository of references and it is suffused with the aura of allusiveness from the inception. At the beginning of the poem itself we have an epigraph in Latin, which is a quotation from a well-known Latin prose work Satyricon by Petronius. For a long time Petronius was a forbidden reading as he was considered an impolite writer. But he is undoubtedly one of the great Latin prose masters. Therefore that Eliot quotes from Petronius as an epigraph is itself peculiar and noteworthy. Certainly it will be a ruthless commentary on the contemporary society and it gives us, in the phrase of Hardy, a “full look at the worst.” Eliot seems to portray the monster of the modern rotten society, after closely observing the monster. Edwardians and Georgians also tried to describe the real life, but they had not adequate technical skill. Since the Latin epigraph relates to Sibyl, we can possibly expect that the poem may lead us to some prophetic utterance. Poetry and prophecy had gone together in the past. So Eliot may try to play the role of a prophetic poet with a little difference. Here Sibyl is caged and this caged Sibyl refuses to prophecy. She reveals her death-wish. The urge to die, which is the outcome of despair, dominates throughout the poem.

The poem ultimately becomes a network of allusions and in the poet’s own phrase, the poem is in one sense “a heap of broken images.” There are a number of direct allusions and oblique references. The poem as a whole becomes an amazing amalgam of odd quotations and heterogeneous fragments. That is why, at times his style becomes cryptic and he achieves tremendous economy in the use of words. Mr. Hugh Rose Williamson describes the poem as “a Cryptogram” and it becomes unintelligible to the ordinary reader. The obscurity seems to Robert Lynd not due to the difficulty of the materials, but due “to the fact that he is not sufficiently a master of his medium, words.”

Eliot also uses anthropology and psychology, He himself hints that “not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie Weston’s book on the grail legend, From Ritual to Romance.” He also says that he is indebted to another anthropological work–frazer’s The Golden Bough-in which material on Adonis, Attis and Osiris is used by him. Elizabeth Drew gives a psychological interpretation of the poem. She interprets it in terms of Jungian psychology. Eliot confesses that he does not know much about psychology. But a limited knowledge of psychology and anthropology is in­dispensable to understand the poem. They become one with the poetic process of the poem. The anthropological ground plays an obvious part, as F. R. Leavis observes, “in evoking that particular sense of the unity of life which is essential to the poem” and it helps “to establish the level of experience at which the poem works.”

The title of the opening section, “The Burial of the Dead”, is archly a mystifying heading. There is some kind of deliberate fooling of the reader. Yet we shall not dare to call Eliot as a deliberate poser. Eliot employs some of the tricks of Byron. The speaker of the poem is not clearly specified. It is not the poet speaking in person, nor a single character. The identity of the speaker is deliberately left in doubt. More often than not, the identity changes and this kind of melting of identity further thickens the texture of obscurity. We see the stream of consciousness flowing from one end to the other. Melchiori points out that The Waste Land owes a debt to Ulysses “not only from the point of view of general method followed by Eliot, but also on the level of imagery, symbolism and vocabulary.”

The addition to the allusions, the poet makes an adroit use of parallels, contrasts and paradoxes. The opening line – “April is the cruelest month” – comes as a shocking surprise. Generally April suggests spring, the best of seasons, the kindest and pleasantest of seasons for the Europeans, As such the word even dares to convey a distant suggestion that the poem may turn into a happy love-poetry in which lovers will experience the pangs of love. But the words which come later fall like a bolt from the blue on our expectations. Chaucer, in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describes that April is the merriest month that welcomes the spring, the sweetest of the seasons. Shelley in a tone of enthusiasm utters – “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” Spring symbolizes regeneration and rebirth. But the opening line in The Waste Land is a deliberate contrast. It falls with incredible force on our mind, like Cyclop’s hammer stroke.

The next few lines make it clear that the term The Waste Land suggests an image. The modern world with its sterility and squalor is the waste land or the dead land. It suggests the life of a modern man – a futile amalgum of memory and desire which cannot blossom into action. Memory leads him to the past, desire to the future; evidently he does not exist in the present. Modern life is a lifeless and rootless state of existence and hence Eliot stresses the need for roots or valid tradition.

He deliberately chooses the modern urban mechanized way of life as the central target of his poetic assaults, and so it is the modern megapolis or metropolis, which becomes the waste land. The condition of the modern man in the devitalized society full of sterility and barrenness is embodied in The Waste Land. In his emphasis on the need for deep roots, he pleads for tradition with vengeance.

We find that Eliot’s use of tags or allusions is always double-edged. The opening passage of “A Game of Chess” presents the renaissance splendour and glory of Cleopatra and at the same time it is a contrast to the meaningless rootless modern megapolitan society. Moreover the pictorial description of the lady’s accumulation of perfumes and jewels with “a dazzled luxury” as expressed by Empson, recalls, perhaps unintentionally, as Maxwell remarks, “the parallel scene in Pope’s The Rape of The Lock”. As a matter of fact even the sub-title “A Game of Chess” is carefully chosen by Eliot from Middleton’s plays Women Beware Women and A Game at Chess. These are the Jacobean plays of intrigue, seduction and crime. In Women Beware Women, the Duke tries to seduce the wife of a citizen. The husband himself acts as a cuck old. Levia is a procuress and she engages the mother-in-law of Bianca in the game of chess. This game of chess is introduced as a cover for seduction. While the game takes place, seduction takes place. A Game at Chess is more a political intrigue. In either drama, the game of chess is introduced as a cloak for intrigue.

“The Fine Sermon” introduces Tiresias, the blind sooth-sayer of Thebes. Just as The Ancient Mariner embodies all sorts of fragments from Coleridge’s wide multifarious knowledge, so the references which make the complex fabric of the poem, are as G. S. Fraser says, “a record of Eliot’s adventurously ranging reading and taste.” The main speaker can be all along taken as Tiresias. The general psychological view that man has something of a woman and woman has something of a man in her, is expressed in Tiresias, who can be taken as a prototype. The two sexes unite in him and he becomes the bisexual point. He is so important a personage in the poem that Eliot himself says in his note, “What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.” The statement is profoundly paradoxical and there is a possibility for the reader to suspect that he is being fooled by the poet. If the literary meaning is taken, Tiresias the blind man cannot see anything and if what he sees is the poem, then there is nothing in the poem. Such a sweeping inference will be not only negative but disastrous. What Tiresias sees through his spiritual or intuitive eyes matters most. He introduces the theme of the typist girl, who is seduced. Tiresias points out that the meeting of the typist girl and the carbuncular young man is a matter of dull routine and this kind of seduction leading to a lifeless indifference has been going on ever since the creation. The poetical outburst of vitality in the passage is a contrast to the total lack of vitality in the modern life. Later Eliot describes the aftereffects of this experience, where there is a reference to a song in Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield. In the seduction there is nothing like an intelligent and fruitful recreation. The incongruous combination of that act and the mechanical music on her gramophone record exposes the, meaningless search for sheer sensationalism.

The idea of sacrificial death leading to rebirth is the basis of the poem. This is the central myth which in Maud Bodkin’s phrase, becomes “rebirth archetype.” This archetypal idea is the organic life centre of the poem. All the various myths are different versions of a single unified myth. The basic idea, in Joseph Campbell’s phrase, is called mono-myth. The unconscious expresses itself inevitably and most naturally in this one pattern. The pattern is one of, as Maud Bodkin says, “primordial image,” a term used at first by Burckhardt. The poem develops the idea, as though the poem itself recreates and re-enacts the idea. This was the view behind the Egyptian myth of Osiris. The death of Osiris is considered as a sacrificial death, so that it would lead to regeneration, i.e., fertility of the land. The fertility cults have the same pattern. Frazer, the famous of the anthropologists, shows that this idea is the basis of various cultures. Moreover Eliot is able to link up the basically Christian idea of original sin with the mono-myth, or the archetypal idea.

The idea of dying into life is in the very heart and centre of Christian religion itself. Crucifixion of Christ is the sacrificial death. What Eliot does is, he transforms religious belief into myth. The basic idea is to achieve the effect of religion without invoking religion. It is the idea that matters. It is a case of mythicization rather than secularization. What he employs is poetic exploitation of myths and scriptural references. He uses a number of scriptural references to build his archetypal central myth. He handles Christian references very gingerly.

The section “Death by Water” is interesting by itself for its theme of mutability. “Drowned” in this case does not suggest any rebirth. The reason is obvious. There is sinfulness in man and a remote hint at the original sin is given. Instead of resurrection by drowning here is a man experiencing only death. Sosotris’ prediction “Fear death by water” is already suggested. Even the dead body is not free from the cycle of change. Thus regeneration is suggested by negation. The possibility of resurrection is suggested by the water. Once a consciousness of sinfulness is made easy, the rest will be comparatively easier. The ways and means of the possibility of achieving this regeneration are suggested in the last section.

The last section “What the Thunder said” is packed with many themes–the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (based on Miss Weston’s book) and the present decay of modern Europe. Now for the first time after the consciousness of sinfulness we have a direct reference to the feverish longing of water. This is an improvement over the previous state. The state of waste land now becomes a state of nightmarish existence.

The passage starting with the line–”Who is the third who walks always beside you?” –is stimulated by an account of one of the Antarctic expeditions. It was related that the party of Antarctic explorers were under the constant illusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted. Really it refers to an episode in the Bible. After the crucifixion of Christ, the disciples of Chirst walk to Emmaus, a village near Jerusalem. As they walk, they discuss the miracles of Christ and his resurrection. It so happens that a third man comes, joins and asks them to explain. They laugh at hint. When they take their meal in the village, the third man reveals that he is the resurrected Christ. So this is ultimately an oblique reference to the resurrected Christ Inevitably the basic archetypal idea of death leading to rebirth is metaphorically described.

The ending lines of the poem are spun around the Sanskrit word Da which is elaborated into–“Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata.” Eliot takes the tags front the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. He could handle these tags front Hindu Upanishads as though they are secular. Eliot’s handling of Christian quotations is wary, cautious, dexterous and oblique, whereas he directly quotes from the Hindu scriptures with a spirit of detachment and a fascination for the outlandish. The basic story, in spite of its simplicity, is subtle and significant. Gods, men and demons–all the three went to Prajapathi or Brahma, the Creator, and requested him to give a message. Brahma in the same oblique state of Eliot, just said–Da. The three groups understood it in three different ways. Gods took it as Damyata, i.e., to have self-control. Men understood it as Datta, i.e., give. Demons took it as Dayadhvam, i.e., sympathize. Their replies suggest that each group is conscious of the lack of that particular virtue. Hindu gods, like Greek gods, badly lack self-control, and so they understood Daas a command to cultivate self-control. Brahma uses the cryptic term with far greater economy than Eliot.

The closing line of the poem – “Shantih shantih shantih” – is profoundly paradoxical. The poem ends in an obvious note of peace which is evidently absent in the wily world. It is ironical to see that the poem closes with the Sanskrit word “Shantih”, while the opposite of “Shantih”, i.e., “Ashantih,” prevails in the cunning and corrupt world. Eliot may think it fit to end the poem in a note of hope or at least with a suggestion of hope in future. It is quite surprising to see such a stormy and turbulent poem closing in terms of peace, which is sadly and badly missing in the modern world.

Eliot, by his adroit handling of the profound Hindu tags, achieves compression which is otherwise unattainable. Compression is a pre-requisite to his aim and to his concept of poetry. By loading his poem with allusions, he achieves a double purpose. He makes his ideas clear and comprehensible. Simultaneously he achieves compression, so that by using a myth or an image, many ideas and experiences can associate in the reader’s mind. Eliot possesses like the Metaphysicals “a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience.” Conscious exploitation of tags from other poets is a kind of experience valuable to him. Hence his favourite device of incorporating references and quotations into the texture of his own poem.

Lionel Trilling observes that Eliot makes use of the symbol of sexual impotence to represent the deprived condition of modern culture. Sexual as well as spiritual sterility is the lamentable truth of modern culture. In a way The Waste Land, as Lawrence Durvell points out, “is his spiritual autobiography” and a desperate search for spiritual heritage. For Yeats the sexual power is the index of force and grace of life. In the poem the Fisher King is impotent. The Fisher King of the Grail legend is a symbol of sterility. When in his own castle some of the maidens who used to go to the shrine were raped in and their golden cups taken from them, the curse fell on the land and the land became the waste land. The repeated references to the Fisher King makes us constantly conscious of the spiritual vacuum of our age. Similarly the Philomela passage has great significance. The picture of “the change of Philomela by the barbarous king” serves as a commentary on the poem. It tells us how the land became a waste land, besides repeating the themeof death which is a prelude to life. Philomela, who is raped, is transformed through her suffering into the nightingale. The result of the violation is the “inviolable voice,” filling the desert which is the modern life. Cleanth Brooks considers Philomela to be “one of the major symbols of the poem.”

Hugh Kenner comments that “The Waste Land is suffused with a functional obscurity”, because of its miscellaneous fragments and also because it is built out of the remains of the older poems. Difficulty arises from an unusual use of metaphor and as Michael Roberts says, due to Eliot’s “deliberately fantastic use of words.” But the threatening cloud of obscurity will be easily dispelled when a sincere attempt to understand the poem is made.

The compressed matter of the poem lends magnitude to the poem and as I. A. Richards says The Waste Land “is the equivalent in content to an epic.” The poem is filled with numerous allusions, oblique as well as direct, and most of the tags represent various cultures. His insistence on the role of tradition is displayed in his quotations from various sources and it is only to provide a ground of tradition, which is completely lacking in the modern times. His way of handling it is mostly to arrive at cultural internationalism. The superabundance of allusions is to suggest the force of and need for tradition. David Daiches would say, “here is a tradition with vengeance.” A sort of cultural remedy is suggested. Modern city, Eliot’s unreal city, is the central symbol of moral ugliness, squalor, cultural collapse, lack of fertility and absence of communion. “London bridge falling down” marks the end of culture and civilization on its last legs. Against this cultural collapse only tradition can salvage the situation.

Thus “The Waste Land” which is undoubtedly a great poetic achievement besides being “a tremendous compression of human history,” embodies mainly because of its complex allusiveness, in the words of Matthiessen, “several different planes of experience.” The end is not despair but there is no final resolution. In spite of the dense cloud of difficulty that envelops the poem, the poem has become a literary symbol of social, cultural, spiritual and psychological disintegration of our life, which is in spirit a death-in-life.