The Waste Land

T. S. Eliot

By: Amal Akram Murtaja

“Eliot was in full agreement with

the current discoveries of the Anthropologists and the psychologists that the old myths were the repository of human wisdom…”

Eliot and Myths

Ezekiel

“And he said unto me, Son of man,

stand upon thy feet, and I shall speak unto thee. And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me. And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day”

Prophecy 2.

“The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of

man, set your face against the mountains of Israel; prophesy against them and say: ‘O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Sovereign Lord. This is what the Sovereign Lord says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys: I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. Your altars shall be demolished and your incense altars will be waste; and I will slay your people in front of ”your idols.

Judgment against Israel’s Mountains

Warning:

“your altars shall be desolate and you images shall be broken”

“and the almond tree shall florish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden and desire shall fail”

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief.

The Fisher King, Grail Legend

King Arthur’s Round Table

Weston..

Fertility Myth

Oedipus king, Tiresias

“Tiresias although a mere spectator and

not indeed a character, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand, prince of Naples, so all the women are one women, and two sexes meet in Tiresias”

Eliot on Tiresias

“I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two

livesOld man with wrinkled female breasts, can see”

“I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest - I too awaited the expected guest.”

“And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed”

The Fire Sermon

“I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in the jar, and when the boys asked her “What do you want?” She answered, “I want to die.”

The Waste Land: Epigraph

“Lead me from death unto

immortality”

Indian prayer:

For Ezra Pound,

il miglior fabbro. -The better craftsman.

The waste land dedication

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a

winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London

Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had

undone so many.Sighs, short and infrequent,

were exhaled

The Divine Comedy & The Waste Land

1.“something like the modern

epic.”2. I. A. Richards categorized the

waste land as an epic in defending its density of literary allusions

3.“The Waste Land is equivalent in content to an epic.”

The Waste Land -Epic?

THE END

By: Amal Akram Murtaja