Transcription
[Music] Hello, everyone. Welcome to a video on an amazing writer that everyone of us knows a lot about: the pioneer of modernism, T.S. Eliot.
T.S. Eliot was born in America in 1888. Then he emigrated to England, became an English citizen; that was in 1927. He also converted from Unitarianism to Anglicanism and became the greatest writer of the 20th century, perhaps, with the poem *The Waste Land*. So T.S. Eliot was a great poet, but he was also a very major critic and also playwright. I'm sure these are all common knowledge; everybody knows a lot of things about T.S. Eliot, isn't it?
T.S. Eliot was a pioneering writer because he encouraged a lot of other writers. He worked at Faber and Faber, and he edited *The Criterion*, where *The Waste Land* was published. He established the traditions of modernism, thereby inspiring a lot of writers to follow that tradition. Eliot was born in Saint Louis, in Missouri, and he was from a New England family; from the 17th century, ancestors had come to New England from England—to New England in America—and Eliot belonged to that ancestry. It's very important because he has written about his ancestors in books like *Four Quartets*.
Eliot was a student of Harvard University, where he studied philosophy. He was inspired by New Humanists like Irving Babbitt, and he wanted to bring in the entire Western tradition into his writing because this was a time when society was degenerate, when literature was fragmented, as you can see in *The Waste Land*. The New Humanists went back to a Renaissance ideal of a complete gentleman. There were also the New Critics at this time, of which T.S. Eliot was a part. New Criticism—T.S. Eliot was a part of it. New Criticism upheld the values of, uh, tradition, as you know, F.R. Leavis wrote *The Great Tradition*, and the New Critics had a very formalist approach to literature. T.S. Eliot also upheld the same approach. Eliot showed that the focus should be not on the poet, not on the artist, but on poetry. He showed that impersonality is what we need in poetry and criticism, as you might know. He discussed this in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," and his foundations in philosophy gave him a very unique approach to literature, life, and tradition.
It was at the beginning of the First World War, in the year 1914, that he left America and settled in Britain, and eventually, after a decade, he became a British citizen. At this time, he had a troubled marriage; his, uh, wife Vivienne also eventually had psychological problems, and she was put in an asylum under treatment. Later, after her death, Eliot remarried a colleague who worked with him at Faber and Faber; her name was Valerie. For some time, Eliot was editor of *The Egoist*, which was a very major periodical of this time, as you might know, and then he became editor of *The Criterion*. This is the time when he had written a very fragmented, long poem which eventually became *The Waste Land*. Originally, the title of *The Waste Land* was "He do the police in different voices." I will talk about all this in detail; this is just by way of introduction. *The Waste Land* was edited by Ezra Pound, and he published it in the first edition of *The Criterion* in 1922. So this is a pioneering moment. At this time, as I told you, Eliot was working with Faber and Faber, which enabled him to encourage a lot of younger writers. But he was not only a publisher working at Faber and Faber; he was a banker, and he loved his banking job also. Interestingly, Eliot was definitely influenced by Ezra Pound, and I told you he was influenced by the New Humanists. There were many philosophers at Harvard, like George Santayana, who also influenced T.S. Eliot. Now, at this time in France, there was Symbolism, which was an avant-garde movement that laid the foundations of modernism. Symbolists like Charles Baudelaire, Jules Laforgue, etc., were major influences on Eliot, and these writers are also featured in *The Waste Land*. The Symbolist movement had been introduced into England at this time by Arthur Symons's book *The Symbolist Movement in Literature*. This book influenced not only Eliot but many other modernists as well as earlier writers like W.B. Yeats. T.S. Eliot worked in close connection with the New Critics, especially F.R. Leavis. It was F.R. Leavis, so to say, who discovered the genius of T.S. Eliot. So this is the man who laid the foundations of modernism. Now you must be interested in knowing more about his works. Let me tell you about his early poems first.
All of you might know one of his earliest poems was *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock*. This is a poem when he was—he wrote it when he was still a student at Harvard. *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock* is like a symbol or a metaphor for the modernist condition: the modern man who is lonely and disoriented, who is directionless; that kind of a man is Alfred Prufrock. It appeared in the American magazine *Poetry*, and then it was printed in *Prufrock and Other Observations*, that was an early collection that came in 1917, while the First World War was still happening. And, uh, this poem is about a man, Alfred Prufrock. He is going to meet, probably, a girlfriend, a fiancée, or female friend, and it looks like he usually meets her, has coffee with her, but nothing much comes out of that relationship; they don't have a very deep relationship. He doesn't get to propose to her or proceed with the relationship; that is the feeling that we get. He is a little neurotic, and he's talking in a fragmented manner. It is not a story that he tells us; it is not a very clear mind that we see reflected in this poem. It is a fragmentary, disoriented man's mind talking about various impressions of life and of himself. We know he is a failure; he is, um, not able to be in control of his own life. This is reflected in the language of the poem itself. The poem begins very famously with a conceit: "Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky"—so far is good—but then the conceit comes: "like a patient etherised upon a table." That is not what we expect; we expect a very romantic description of the evening, but he goes on to say that it is like a patient anesthetized on the operation table—the evening. This gives us an impression of redness, probably of blood, probably of stasis and inaction. This is a very dramatic beginning: "Let us go then, you and I." It is a conversational beginning; the poet, the speaker, is talking to us or to somebody, and eventually, we realize that we don't make sense of—we don't make head and tail of this story. What is happening here? Nothing much is happening, like in James Joyce's *Dubliners*. It is a paralytic state; it is a stasis of modern life that you see here. Now, uh, as we know, this is a conversational poem, and then we realize it's a dramatic monologue in a, like, a stream of consciousness manner. The mind of Prufrock is being revealed, and I told you the fragmentary condition of his mind is reflected in the breakdown of language itself. Language itself is breaking down here. So many different kinds of poetic forms, uh, are brought together in this poem. Some lines are repeated without meaning, and also there are absurd rhymes that he's using to create a comic effect, to evoke the absurdity of the situation of Prufrock. And there are very important quotes that you might want to know—you might already know—"In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michelangelo." Why Michelangelo of all people? It is actually an absurd rhyme: "In the room the women come and go, Talking of Michelangelo." And we know women talking about Michelangelo doesn't make really any sense, and it's not that women should not talk about Michelangelo, but it is unexpected; it is atypical, and it is probably meaningless. And he says, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." Sometimes we just meet people, spend time with them, discuss things, and nothing gets done; nothing ever gets done because meetings after meetings after meetings go on, and action doesn't take place. So look at it in a very classical way—but, uh, sorry—look at it in a very classical way; T.S. Eliot is actually critiquing the inaction of modern society. Remember, in Classicism, action is very important; action is very important. Why do I keep saying Classicism? Remember, T.S. Eliot is a Classicist in literature, a conservative in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion. He himself said that. And Modernism is a classical approach in the sense: Modernism warns order; Modernism warns meaning; Modernism is lamenting the breakdown of order and meaning. So this is a poem that longs for order and meaning, but a loss—there is no order, no meaning in modern life. Okay, so that is an early, uh, poem that is very famous, prescribed in universities. It is very, very important that you read these poems. *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock* is a short poem; you can read it; please do it.
Then, uh, another, uh, very important poem is *Gerontion*, uh, in this early period. He brought out a collection of poems; it was in 1919, the same year as "Tradition and the Individual Talent" came; that is when he brought out a collection of poems, and *Gerontion* is one of the poems in that collection. *Gerontion* is also a dramatic monologue or an interior monologue; it is also a short poem. Now, both *Love Song* and *Gerontion* have, um, epigraphs. The epigraph of *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock* is taken from Dante's *Inferno*, where a character from Dante's *Inferno* is talking to Dante, the narrator, and telling him, "I will tell you my sins because I know you will not go back to the world and tell them about it." That means Dante—the friend of Dante who is in hell—is saying, "Dante, I will tell you my sins because I'm sure you will not go back and tell the world about my sins." What does that mean? It means Dante is trapped; he cannot go back; he is trapped in hell. Like that, Prufrock is telling us, reader, in the epigraph, that is the meaning of the epigraph; it is like telling the reader, "Reader, I will tell you my sins; I will tell you about my life because you are also part of this wasteland; you are also a Prufrock." So it is the decadence of modern life that, uh, is represented in these poems. *Gerontion* also is a poem of decadence and stasis, as I told you. It is a dramatic monologue spoken by an old man to a young boy. The young boy is reading out to him. The old man is, uh, disabled; he is not part of larger social life, probably not disabled in the sense, uh, because he's old; he is not, uh, in the prime of his life anymore, uh, and I don't mean he is disabled physically; I mean that he is not part of social life anymore, and he is reflecting on the life around him, the society around him. The opening is an epigraph from *Measure for Measure*: "Thou hast no youth nor age," that is the opening epigraph; it is about *Gerontion*, of course. Incidentally, like *The Waste Land*, like *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock*, like the later poem *The Hollow Men*, *Gerontion* also talks about a decay, breakdown of modern life and society. So these poems are called the *Waste Land* cycle of poems; the *Waste Land* cycle of poems includes *Gerontion*, *The Waste Land*, *The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock*, and *The Hollow Men*. Now, in *Gerontion*, you see the man speaking, and like in *Love Song*, you see the fragmentary nature of his mind; it is a discordant collage, like a poem where everything is not, you know, uh, ordered, and nothing, uh, you know, gives meaning. Now, *Gerontion* is talking about his own personal life; he's also talking about so many authors and alluding to their works, such as Chapman, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Bible, etc. There are so many intertextual connections, and he's talking also about Christ and comparing Christ to a tiger, as in Blake, etc. So this is a poem that is like a prelude to *The Waste Land* because it gives us a very good background of the modern society, the fragmented life in modern society, the meaninglessness of existence in modern society. And *Gerontion*, the poem, is an early poem, uh, and it came in 1919 in a poems collection.
Then there is *The Waste Land*. *The Waste Land* is a poem from 1922, as you know; it is one of the greatest poems in the 20th century, in 20th-century literature. You know, at this time, there was vast, major, profound changes in modern society. From the Victorian period, there was increasing commercialization and urbanization; cities were being formed; life had become like wandering; people came to the city and wandered without roots; they did not belong to the city; there they were leading a mechanized life. At this time, there were many political upheavals; there were bloody revolutions from the 19th century itself, and then there was the First World War; before that, the Boer War, the Crimean War; it was a time of great unsettlement; people were migrating from one place to the other, as I told you. And the bourgeois society, the materialistic society, was ruling; money determined everything; the age-old values of humanism had all disappeared; families were breaking down; society was breaking down; there was a loosening of, uh, morality and sex taboos. And in this world, like you see in the, uh, stories, in the films of Charlie Chaplin—the films of Charlie Chaplin, haven't you seen?—*Working*, *Modern Times*, struggling to make a living, struggling to exist, uh, struggling to survive; you know, that was the typical modern condition. Charlie Chaplin's movies are, uh, representations of the modern predicament. This is the same predicament that is reflected in *The Waste Land*. So this is a world where all morality, spirituality, has all, um, eroded; it is a world where meanings of the humanistic period have all been replaced by mechanization and fragmentation, paranoia, hysteria. And in *The Waste Land*, we see such kind of characters. These characters do not belong; they are alienated from their backgrounds; they do not have supporting families; they are living in a death-in-life condition; they are all alive, but they are so alienated and so, um, hollow men that it is like they are living like death-in-life existence. And this death-in-life existence, this in-between existence, is represented by the so-called protagonist of *The Waste Land*, who is Tiresias. Tiresias does not appear in *The Waste Land* from beginning to end, like a hero in a mainstream movie. Tiresias is not like Hamlet in the play *Hamlet*; he doesn't even appear properly; we don't see him in the first two sections; in the second section, just a glimpse of Tiresias. As we see, we know that Tiresias is the protagonist because Eliot himself said it; otherwise, we wouldn't know. Tiresias is a mythical prophet who lived an in-between existence; he was neither man nor woman because he was a man with female breasts; he was partly female, and he was neither dead nor alive; he lived a long, long, long life. We don't know whether he was a zombie or not; he was neither blind nor sighted because he was blind, but, uh, he couldn't—he—he had an insight into things; he had a far sight into things. So he lived an in-between existence, liminal existence. Tiresias is the objective correlative in *The Waste Land* for all the characters in *The Waste Land*. Tiresias is a symbol, a metaphor; every character is like Tiresias, and Tiresias is one of the mythical elements in *The Waste Land*. *The Waste Land* is completely a mythical poem; it uses the mythical method, as T.S. Eliot himself has talked about. Now, what are the other myths in *The Waste Land*? Let us see. *The Waste Land* is replete with—full of—mythical references, as all of you might know. The most important of these is the myth of the Fisher King, the myth of the quest for the Holy Grail, etc., as you again might already know. *The Waste Land* draws from at least two major books—at least, because there are so many intertextual connections that you can find in *The Waste Land*—but mainly it draws from Jessie Weston's *From Ritual to Romance*, that came in 1920, and even before that, there was another book that was inspiring for *The Waste Land*; it is James Frazer's *The Golden Bough*. Both these are anthropological texts talking about mythology and anthropology, bringing together magic and religion and beliefs. And in these books, we have the myth of the wasteland, the myth of the Fisher King, etc. The Fisher King is a very important figure from ancient mythology. You can see the Fisher King as a symbol of infertility of the land that is brought by sin. In *The Waste Land*, sin is equated with sexual perversion, uh, misuse of sexuality; lack of spiritual, uh, connection in sexual relationships is what leads to moral degeneracy, and metaphorically, it leads to infertility. The Fisher King represents an infidel land, land, and the search for fertility. This connects with the myth of the Holy Grail because it is the Holy Grail, or the cup from which Jesus is supposed to have drunk. If you bring that cup, if you search and find it and bring that Holy Grail to your land, then you can revive fertility; that is the myth you see in Arthurian legends and medieval legends—the quest for the Holy Grail. Percival is the knight in Arthurian legends who goes in search of the Holy Grail. And this theme of fertility also automatically relates to ancient primitive myths and also Greco-Roman myths. Perverse sexuality is a very important concept and theme in Greek mythology also; rape of, uh, women, like Proserpina, and lustful relationships, etc., abound in Greek mythology. So using these expressions and objective correlatives of sinfulness, Eliot is trying to show that what the modern life needs is purity; it is purgation; you have to purge your sins and become pure; you have to be reborn; that is the central theme of *The Waste Land*, which he brings about, which he affects through the use of the mythical method. From the beginning of *The Waste Land*, you can see a series of symbols of debasement and infertility and sinfulness presented through objective correlatives, like the corrupted or polluted River Thames, people who are wandering in the metropolis directionless, etc. And then he moves on to show how bad the condition of the wasteland is; from the Burial of the Dead to A Game of Chess, he shows this through a series of fragmentary experiences of the people who are all representations of Tiresias in a way or the other. All the characters in *The Waste Land* are, in a way or the other, like Tiresias; that is why Tiresias is the protagonist. And then, in the third section, "The Fire Sermon," he suggests solutions: you have to burn in fire; you have to purge. That meaning is introduced there through the sermons of Buddha and Saint Augustine. And then, in the fourth section of *The Waste Land*, he suggests death by drowning. You know that in ancient fertility cults, drowning of the idol is a very important—in Ganesh Chaturthi in India, for example, the submerging of the idol in the water is a metaphoric drowning after which the society is reborn; the deity is reborn, and the society is also reborn. So, uh, in the fourth section, he suggests ritualistic drowning. And in the last section, you see a complete change from the water that is polluted, from the water that drowns you, to the water that brings life. He takes us to the banks of the Ganges in India, where the thunder says—that means "Give, sympathize, and control"—means "Give." So what is the solution for the Wastelanders? How do you get back a normal life? By giving, sharing, giving, by sympathizing with others, by understanding other people, and by controlling yourself; you need self-control also. So Eliot is providing a solution to a very materialistic, uh, debased modern society by evoking Eastern spirituality. He talks about Buddha; he talks about Eastern Upanishads; he also talked about primitive Christian cultures; he talked about Arthurian legends; he talked about Greek paganism. So modernity has its solutions in all these other cultures; he is trying to, uh, show us the solution for the fragmentation of modernity. This is not one poem that Eliot wrote in one go. Okay, let me write about the condition of modernity, and he wrote *The Waste Land*. It was not like that; he wrote this poem over many years; it had come to, uh, over one thousand lines, uh, then it was edited, edited, edited by Ezra Pound; the images, all the unnecessary descriptive passages were deleted, and it became a very concentrated, uh, form of modernist poetry with so many voices speaking from all directions, so many perspectives, ultimately all united cinematographically into one narrative of fragmentation, meaninglessness, disunity, and its solutions. So these—all these fragmented voices that you hear in *The Waste Land*, these fragmented perspectives—are all suggested by the early title of *The Waste Land*: "He do the police in different voices." This phrase is an absurd phrase taken from Charles Dickens's *Our Mutual Friend*. The absurdity of the human condition, the incomprehensibility of human nature; that is what is suggested by this title. Now, the publication of *The Waste Land* was in *The Criterion*; that was in October 1922. Immediately after that, the next month, it was published in *The Dial* in 1922 itself. *The Dial* is an American magazine, as you know. So this is a poem which is like an ironic commentary given by a detached observer; he is talking about so many people's experiences, all unified somehow by the presence of Tiresias.
This is a very difficult poem, as you know. You need to read a summary and analysis in order to understand it. You need to study it. It is a very, very early text. It is very esoteric, which is a typical style of high modernism. It has been criticized by many people because of its esoteric nature, and the very structure of the poem is like an objective correlative. This—the poem—is an objective correlative for modernist society. So here we talk about so many, uh, aspects of the disintegrated world of modernism.
There is a lot of frustration and pessimism of the modernist society that is represented here through surrealistic images. At the end, however, there is a ray of hope. Because if we give sympathy and control, and if we resort to the beauty of art, the unity of art, then probably we can resolve our problems. That is the suggestion. And this poem is a great expression of the values of modernism and new criticism, such as irony, paradox, ambiguity. And it is a heap of broken images and a mosaic of quotations, like Roland Barthes would later say—it is a tissue of textualities.
So that is, in a nutshell, about The Waste Land. I hope you enjoyed this brief overview, and I hope you will read it on your own. We have a very detailed explanation in our encyclopedia of British literature, as you might know; you might possess a copy of it. Please read it. And in the next video, I will talk to you about the other later works of T.S. Eliot—other poems, his criticism, and poetic place. So happy reading until the next video. Bye-bye. You.