Withered Stumps of Time

8/8/2019 Withered Stumps of Time

1/9

The Waste Land and Mythic Disillusion by R.V. Young

24 THEINTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEWSpring/Summer 2003

Withered Stumps of Time:

The Waste Landand Mythic Disillusion

R.V. Young

R.V. Young is Professor of English at North Carolina

State University and the author, most recently ofA

Students Guide to Literature(ISI Books, 2000) and

Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry

(2000). This essay was originally delivered as a lecture

at a summer colloquium of the ISI Honors Program.

In the first chapter of Evelyn WaughsBrideshead Revisited (1945), Anthony

Blancheaesthete, epicure, and homo-sexual dandystands on the balcony ofSebastian Flytes rooms in Christ ChurchCollege reading The Waste Land (1922)through a megaphone to passing students.At the time the action of Waughs novelbegins, the early 1920s, T.S. Eliots poemwas already a succs de scandale, andBlanches affected, stammering recitationwas calculated to elicit much the same re-sponse as a heavy metal band in the club-house of a gated retirement community.

The few lines of the poem that appear in thenovel are there to mark Blanche as a studentof extraordinarily avant-gardeknowledgeand precociously decadent taste. For uponits first appearance, The Waste Landstruckmost readers as a defiant, outrassault by amodish cynic on all the decencies of Englishliterature and society.

Evelyn Waugh, of course, knew better:one of his first novels after his conversion toCatholicism, A Handful of Dust (1934),takes its title and its epigraph from The

Waste Land, which is evoked to add gravityand insight to Waughs macabre satire.What Waugh perceived was that Eliot wasmore conservativemore deeply commit-ted to the religious and cultural values ofthe Western worldthan many of his mostsevere critics. Although the poem seemed

to be an attack upon respectable Christiansociety, it was in reality a lament, and a cry

of alarm, over the deliquescence of the civi-lization of the West: falling into a comfort-able materialism, devoid of all authenticChristianity, and with only a sterile re-spectability left behind. When The WasteLandwas first published, Eliots own con-version was still several years in the future,and the poem does not assume an explicitlyChristian perspective. Despite its mod-ernist techniques, however, the poem im-plies a prophetic denunciation of the secu-larism, rationalism, and materialism char-

acteristic of the modern era. The WasteLand is thus the most notable instance ofradically innovative, modernist art inthe service of tradition.

It is the flexibility and ambivalence of po-etic style that allow an innovative tech-nique to serve a traditional vision. Whilethe surface texture ofThe Waste Landsug-gests irony and disillusionment, its under-lying structure is mythic; that is, it orga-nizes experience in terms of grand, epic

narratives. What at first seems nothing


2/9


THEINTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEWSpring/Summer 2003 25

more than a sly accumulation of the shardsand slivers of Western civilizationa heapof broken images (l. 22)1emerges assomething like the ruins of a monument,still noble and still radiating significance.The disillusionment of modern man is

juxtaposed with the foundational myths ofWestern, and occasionally Eastern, civili-zation. The shallow, fashionable cynicismof the flapper generation, of the bright

young things, is truly disabused of theillusions engendered by its pride, lust, andsloth.

To be sure, Eliot handles myththat is,plot or storyvery curiously in The

Waste Land. The poems stories are not somuch told as suggested. Much as a jazzmusician takes a well-known song andworks bits of it into a series of variations andchanges without ever playing the entiremelody straight through, so the poet ofTheWaste Landevokes shadowy images of manyof the great works of world literature with-out ever actually narrating a complete ver-sion of any story. This feat is managed bycombining a novel and relentless deploy-ment of the old device of allusion with a

stream-of-consciousness point of view.Evocations of the literary monuments ofthe Western tradition provide points ofreference in the welter of experience repre-sented through the thoughts and emotionsof the shadowy characters who peoplethe fragmentary scenes of the poem. Eliotsvision of the modern cultural waste landemerges out of these oblique, stream-of-consciousness dramas anchored in the pat-tern of allusions.

The first section, The Burial of the Dead,provides a good example of how meaning isgenerated out of allusions that should berecognizable, or at least recoverable, by analert reader combined with other materialthat has simply been appropriated by thepoet from his own random experiences and

associations. The title of the section is therubric of the Anglican funeral service fromthe Book of Common Prayer, which rein-forces the theme of death evoked by theepigraph, but also puts it in a Christianframework. This first part of the poem worksby juxtaposing a series of scenes of modernlife, characterized by frivolity, distraction,and despair, with stern admonitions fromthe Judaeo-Christian Scriptures. The firstenigmatic line, April is the cruelestmonth, begins to unfold if we will onlyremember the great medieval poem thatbegins with April in the first line, The Can-terbury Tales:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures sooteThe droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne I swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour...Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages....2

Chaucers characters are pilgrims on theirway to the shrine of a saint, and if many ofthem have something besides holiness ontheir minds, their sexual sinning is at leastvigorous and earthy.

Eliots characters prefer the subterra-

nean warmth of winter; the stirring ofspring seems threatening, an end to dullcomfort. Eliot apparently put together thefirst of these characters, the first distinctconsciousness that swims into view, out ofthe reminiscences of Countess MarieLarisch, a relative and confidante of theAustrian imperial family, in her book, MyPast(1916).3 We are in the world of a deca-dent central European aristocracy in the

years just before World War I. These arebored, distracted men and women who,

unlike Chaucers pilgrims on the road toCanterbury, are going nowhere in particu-lar. Instead, they wander aimlessly in pur-suit of pleasure, comfort, or excitement:

And when we were children, staying at the arch-dukes,

My cousins, he took me out on a sled,


3/9



And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the

winter. (13-18)

The recollection of a thrilling, if fearful,childhood experience is mixing / Memoryand desire (2-3): an older but not wiserMarie flees the freedom of the mountainsfor a warm winter in the South.

Maries disjointed, self-absorbed remi-niscences and reflections are immediatelyfollowed by a series of allusions to some ofthe gravest prophetic writings in the Bible.The poets own notes cite Ezekiel2.1 and

Ecclesiastes12.5, but it is hard not to see alsoa reference to the valley of the dry bones inEzekiel37. The consciousness at this pointin The Waste Land, presumably Tiresias,sees a similarly catastrophic, lifeless land-scape:

What are the roots that clutch, what branchesgrow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,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 norelief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. (19-24)

The phrase roots that clutch recalls thedull roots in the opening lines and joinsthe two sections of the poem. It is as if thepresiding consciousness of the poem haspeeled back the faade of Maries world ofempty wandering and revealed its spiritualinterior. The dead tree and cricket comedirectly out ofEcclesiastes: and the almondtree shall flourish, and the grasshoppershall be a burden, and desire shall fail

(12.5). The failure of desire is not explicitlymentioned here, but it becomes a centraltheme, and it is linked to the notion thatrelentless pursuit of pleasure destroys thecapacity for it.

The dry stone is a final note of despair,but it opens on to a passage that simulta-

neously hints at hope and fear:

Only

There is shadow under this red rock,(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from

eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (24-30)

Although it is not cited in Eliots own notes,commentators generally recognize an allu-sion to a Messianic passage in Isaiah: Anda man shall be like an hiding place from thewind, and a covert from the tempest; likerivers of water in a dry place, like the shadow

of a great rock in a weary land (32.2). Thespeaking voice proffers fear in a handful ofdust, because both the burial service (TheBurial of the Dead) and the Ash Wednes-day service in the Book of Common prayerremind us that we are made of dust and shallreturn to dust in death. Adams name ofcourse means red earth or red dust.Christ is the second Adam, however, andalso a rock or stone; hence the red rocksuggests Christ as the bringer of salvation,but of a salvation fearful to those who pre-

fer winter to April.4Immediately following the handful of

dust is a lyrical reminiscence of youthfullove, framed by two passages from Tristanund Isolde, Richard Wagners music dramaof doomed, illicit passion. The final linequoted from Wagner, Oed und leer dasMeer(Empty and blank the sea), suggestsa watery counterpart to the drought-stricken waste where the sun beats, / Andthe dead tree gives no shelter. In the twofollowing passages that close out The

Burial of the Dead, we are reminded thatthe waste land is the spiritual terrain ofurban dwellers, as well as the literal wilder-ness suggested by the imagery. Modern menand women who fear the red rock are drawninstead to the slick superstitions of a for-tune-teller with a wicked pack of cards.


4/9



Superstition recurs in a rationalist age,Chesterton quips, because it rests on some-thing which, if not identical with rational-ism, is not unconnected with scepticism.5

Of course the Tarot cards have significancesof which Madame Sosostris is unaware. Shedoes not find The Hanged Man, becauseChrist, who was hanged on a tree (Acts5.30, 10.39) is invisible to her venality andunbelief. In the final passage of this section,the streets of London are assimilated to theantechamber of Dantes Inferno, wherethose who were neither good nor evil spendeternity going around in a futile circle.6 LikeMadame Sosostris and her client, the crowd

that flowed over London Bridge is alien-ated both from the grace of God, repre-sented by the Messianic scriptural refer-ences, and even from the intense if sinfulpassion embodied by Tristan and Isolde.Like the Unreal City, the dwellers in themodern spiritual waste land are shroudedin a brown fog that blinds the sight andstifles the lungs. Almost twenty years laterEliot himself provided what may be re-garded as a retrospective comment on thiscrowd in Notes Toward a Christian Society

(1940): Britain has been highly industrial-ized longer than any other country. Andthe tendency of unlimited industrialism isto create bodies of men and women of allclasses detached from tradition, alien-ated from religion and susceptible to masssuggestion: in other words, a mob. And amob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, wellhoused, and well disciplined.7

This opening section ofThe Waste Landprovides a fair sample of how the poem as

a whole works. Scenes of ordinary modernlife, marked by banality, vulgarity, andoverall emptiness are juxtaposed with allu-sions to important works, literary and re-ligious, of Western civilization. This is notto say that the past is simply better than thepresent. The allusions suggest ideals that

the past failed to attain, but which thepresent has simply abandoned. Tristan undIsolde, for example, represent an immoralpassion that ends in violence and death, butthe young man whose memory is bracketedbetween the Tristanreferences cannot speakor see; he is neither / Living nor dead.Madame Sosostris sees crowds of people,walking around in a ring (56), and theyreappear a few lines further in the brownfog on London Bridge. Like the crowds, sheis aimless, only careful about her horo-scope.

Like J. Alfred Prufrock, most of the char-acters in The Waste Land are beset by a

withering self-consciousness. After suchknowledge, what forgiveness? the speakerofGerontion asks; and The Waste Landis insome ways an elaboration of this terriblequestion. The allusions are both menacingand hopeful. The scriptural passages aresternly threatening, but they mysteriouslyproffer a veiled salvation. Still, it must beseized with courage.

Or consider the parenthetic commenton the drowned Phoenician Sailor,(Those are pearls that were his eyes.

Look!). This is the first of several allusionsto The Tempest, a magical play of loss andrestoration, injury and forgiveness. In theimmediate context, Ariels song toFerdinand, confirming the death of his fa-ther, Alonso, the line is forbidding. But ifthe larger context of the play is invoked, thereference proffers redemption. The diffi-culty is in deciding whether to take thisallusion as negative irony or a promise.And this is precisely the difficulty faced bythe characters in the poem as well as the

reader. The estrangement of modern manboth from nature and traditional sourcesof wisdom leaves him in perpetual uncer-tainty.

In the preface to Notes Towards the Defi-nition of Culture(1949), Eliot mentions hisdebt to Christopher Dawson. Reflecting on


5/9



cultural decadence in an essay publishedtwo years after The Waste Land, Dawsonmakes an observation that could serve as acommentary on the poem:

The rawness and ugliness of modern European

life is the sign of biological inferiority, of an

insufficient or false relation to environment,

which produces strain, wasted effort, revolt or

failure. Just as a mechanical industrial civiliza-

tion will seek to eliminate all waste movements

in work, so as to make the operative the perfect

complement of his machine, so a vital civiliza-

tion will cause every function and every act to

partake of vital grace and beauty. To a great

extent this is entirely instinc-

tive, as in the grace of the old

agricultural operations,

ploughing, sowing and reap-ing, but it is also the goal of

conscious effort in the great

Oriental culturesas in the

calligraphy of the Moslem

scribe, and the elaboration

of Oriental social etiquette.

Why is a stockbroker less

beautiful than a Homeric

warrior or an Egyptian priest?

Because he is less incorpo-

rated with life, he is not in-

evitable, but accidental, al-

most parasitic.8

What The Waste Landdoes is to confront stock-brokers with Homericwarriors and Egyptianpriests through thestream of consciousness of Tiresias. Onemay say that the allusionsare the antidoteto the illusionsof a society trapped in itsown narrow span of time and estrangedfrom the sources of its cultural vitality.

Perhaps the most intense and intricate

deployment of The Waste Lands charac-teristic techniques comes in the central thirdsection, The Fire Sermon, which takes itstitle from a discourse of the Buddha, butwhose presiding genius turns out to be SaintAugustine. (His pre-eminence results fromEliots devising a subtle allusion to

Augustines own allusive treatment of Virgil,so that section III refers back to section II.)The opening scene in section II contains anobvious allusion to Enobarbus famousdescription of Cleopatra on her Nile bargein Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra(II.ii.190ff.), but Eliots own note calls ourattention to an unusual word, laquearia,taken from the first book of the Aeneid.There is in this slide from Shakespeare toVirgil a significant resonance, sinceShakespeares Antony is a Roman hero whofails to live up to the standard set by Romes

founder; that is, Antonydoes not relinquish the

North African temptresswho distracts him fromthe duties of Empire, asAeneas had abandonedDido in order fulfill hisdestiny. What Eliot bor-rows from Virgil at thispoint is the very atmo-sphere and texture oftemptation from the ac-count of the luxurianceof the setting of the heros

first meeting with theCarthaginian queen:

Postquam prima quies epulis

mensaeque remotae,

crateras magnos statuunt etvina coronant.

fit strepitus tectis vocemque per ampla volutantatria; dependent lychni laquearibus aureis

incensi et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.9

[After the first pause in the feast and the tables

are taken away, they set out great goblets and

crown the wine. A great din reaches the roof andvoices roll through the broad halls; the kindled

lamps hang down from the gold-paneled ceiling

and torches vanquish the night with their flames.]

Here, then, is the corresponding passagefrom The Waste Land:

T. S. Eliot


6/9



In vials of ivory and coloured glass

Unstoppered, lurked her strange syntheticperfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid troubled,

confusedAnd drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the

airThat freshened from the window, these ascended

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,Flung their smoke into the laquearia,

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. (86-

93)

From a few hints in the language of theAeneidabove all, that wonderful wordlaqueariaEliot has turned a banquetingscene into a scene in a boudoir. And where

Virgil depicts a woman afflicted with a de-structive passion through the wiles of Cu-pid and Venus, Eliot shows us a neuroticwoman and an unresponsive man with alldesire drained from their relationship. Thepoint of course is the contrast, once more,between an heroic, if destructive passionleading to death, and the numbness of thefailure of love, which is death in itself.

It is when Carthage and desire return tothe poem at the end of The Fire Sermonthat everything in betweenthat is, from

the beginning of A Game of Chess throughthe end of section IIIreceives its full sig-nificance. This third section famously closes,

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me outO Lord Thou pluckest

Burning (307-311)

Here, Augustine meets the Buddha. Thecollocation of these two representatives of

eastern and western asceticism, as the cul-mination of this part of poem, Eliot says inhis own note, is not an accident. Thereason, social constructivists to the con-trary notwithstanding, is that human na-ture is fundamentally the same in East andWest, in the ancient world and the modern.

Augustine dominates, however, because ofthe prominent recurrence of Carthage. Thefirst of these lines translates the opening ofBook III of the Confessions: VeniCarthaginem, et circumstrepebat meundique sartago flagitiosorum amorum10

[I came to Carthage, and everywhere afrying pan of shameful loves was clamoringall around me]. This allusion is generallyrecognized, but what generally goes unno-ticed is the immediately preceding sentenceat the end of Book II of the Confessions:Defluxi abs te ego et erravi, Deus meus,nimis devius ab stabilitate tua inadulescentia et factus sum mihi regio

egestatis11

[I slid away from you, my God,and wandered far out of the way of yourfirmness in my youth and became to myselfa region of destitution or waste; that is, Ibecame to myself a waste land.] The modelfor his own wandering he has alreadylearned as part of his education: I wascompelled to memorize I know not whatwanderings (errors) of Aeneas, oblivious tomy own wanderings (errorum meorum),and to weep the death of Dido, because shekilled herself for love, although in the mean-

time I myself was dying away from you,God, my life, and bore it most miserablywith dry eyes.12

Saint Augustine moralizes the myth ofDido and Aeneas; Eliot works both themyth and Augustines treatment of it intothe flowing stream of consciousness that isthe poems argument or substance. Thus,the greatest of the Latin Church Fathersmediates between Virgil and Eliot and theworlds they envision. The saints under-standing of the human condition lies at the

heart of The Waste Lands mythic struc-ture, and in his view the ultimate waste landis the human soul estranged from God.Dudley Fitts once observed that Eliot delib-erately spelt his title as two words becausethe poet is describing not a natural desert,but a land that has been laid waste. The


7/9



human soul in its created state is a paradise,but it has been devastated by sin. (The soulsaved by grace, of which the most eminentis the Blessed Virgin, is a garden enclosed.)Virgil tells an epic tale of great deedswrought by sacrifice and suffering in theservice of imperial destiny. For Augustinethis is an epic delusion, which may explainthe melancholy pervasive in the Aeneidandindeed throughout the Virgilian canon.

By restaging the confrontation betweenVirgils mournful mythic heroism on be-half of imperial glory with AugustinesChristian vision of humility in the service ofGods glory, Eliot dramatizes his myth of

modern disillusionment. All the scenes orstories in The Fire Sermon make sensewhen considered in the light of Augustinesexplanation of lust as a turning away of thesoul from God. Fecisti nos ad te etinquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescatin te,13 Augustine writes: You made us for

your self and our heart is restless until it restin you. Parts I and II of Eliots poem, AGame of Chess and especially The FireSermon, dramatize a series of restless orunquiet hearts.

The insufficiency of what Augustine callscreated beauties, when pursued heedlesslywith no consideration of their Creator, isfigured in Eliots mingling of the lyric andsatiric in the opening lines of The FireSermon. The language hovers on the edgeof pastoral loveliness, but is continuallymarred by the ugly and uncouth:

The rivers tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The windCrosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs

are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich

papers,Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette

ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. Thenymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of City

directors;

Departed, have left no addresses. (173-81)

The quotation from Spensers solemn wed-ding hymn, the Prothalamion, and the evo-cation of departing nymphs, a standardfeature of elegiac Renaissance pastoral,merge with the depiction of the trash leftbehind by idle revelers engaged in debauch-ery. The sandwich papers and cigarette endsbecome a synecdoche for the entire realm ofmirthless pleasure and sterile sexuality. Thenymphs become girls fornicating by theriver, White bodies naked on the low dampground (193), the same ground where the

rat may be found Dragging its slimy bellyon the bank (188). These lines and the briefdramatic stories that follow are all foldedinto the Augustinian vision of depravedsexuality: Mr. Eugenides, who offers a ho-mosexual tryst at the Metropole; the seduc-tion of the typist by the small house agentsclerk; and the three Thames-daughters,who displace Wagners Rhine Maidens. TheThames-daughters lose not their gold buttheir virginity and, above all, their humandignity. With the mention of Elizabeth and

Leicester it may be recalled that Elizabeth(who retained her virginity?) entertained awhole series of adventurersDrake, Ra-leigh, Essexwho were avidly stealing goldfrom the Spaniards, who had stolen it fromthe New World. If lust is the principal focusof The Fire Sermon, lust is often the resultof love corrupted by avarice.

Although Tristan und Isoldeis quoted inThe Burial of the Dead and the RhineMaidens and their song turn up in the thirdsection of The Waste Land, it is the final

section, What the Thunder Said, that isthe most Wagnerian, offering a miniatureGtterdmmerung. The landscape in thispart of the poem could be the set of a pro-duction of the last installment of the Ring,with its barren crags, dry thunder, andoppressive darkness pierced by unearthly


8/9



flashes of lightning. Most striking, how-ever, is the sense of terror, of a desperatestruggle against overwhelming odds, ofwhat is noble and dignified betrayed anddefeated by what is brutal and crass. WhileWagner dramatizes inevitable tragic catas-trophe, however, Eliot introduces an ele-ment of hope. Indeed, insofar as he invokesthe search for the Chapel Perilous, he seemsto be glancing at Wagners last opera,Parsifal. Moreover, What the ThunderSaid begins with an unmistakable refer-ence to Christs Passion, starting with Hisarrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, andEliots own note explicitly mentions the

journey to Emmaus. His twilight of thegods thus allows the possibility of Godincarnate as manoverthrowing the pow-ers of darkness and rising again.

It would be an error, nevertheless, to seemore than a shred of hope in The WasteLand itself. The depiction of the Passion,which in a fashion typical of Eliots poeticprocedure rests on suggestive synecdoches,is exceedingly grim and offers no hint ofresurrection:

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardensAfter the agony in stony places

The shouting and the cryingPrison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now deadWe who were living are now dying

With a little patience (322-30)

Similarly, the passage that suggests themeeting of two disciples with the risen Christon the road to Emmaus breaks off withoutrevealing the identity of the mysterious

third person:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman

But who is that on the other side of you? (360-

66)

Finally, the affirmations at the end of thepoem are uttered in Sanskrit: Datta,Dayadhvam, Damyata(Give Sympathize,Control); Shantih, Shantih, Shantih (ThePeace that passeth all understanding). Theinvocation of a foreign language and reli-gious tradition at this point leaves the re-sult in doubt. Is there a Grail in the chapel,or is it the empty chapel, only the windshome (389), surrounded by tumbledgraves (388)?

In this poem Eliot does not answer the

question. Poems, in any case, usually askmore questions than they answer. TheWagnerian description of apocalyptic de-struction, however, can be taken as a Chris-tian critique of an avaricious society preoc-cupied with power and possessions:

What is that sound high in the airMurmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarmingOver the endless plains, stumbling in cracked

earth

Ringed by the flat horizon onlyWhat is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet airFalling towers

Jerusalem Athens AlexandriaVienna London

Unreal (367-77)

These lines may bring to mind any num-ber of minatory passages from the pro-phetic books of the Old Testament, fromChrists discourses on the Last Things, orfrom the Book of Revelation; but they alsoseem to anticipate by means of imageryEliots somber assessment of the impiety of

modern culture in The Idea of a ChristianSociety:

I would not have it thought that I condemn a

society because of its material ruin, for that

would be to make its material success a suffi-

cient test of its excellence; I mean only that a

wrong attitude towards nature implies, some-


9/9



where, a wrong attitude toward God, and that

the consequence is an inevitable doom. For a

long enough time we have believed in nothing

but the values arising in a mechanised,

commercialised, urbanised way of life: it wouldbe as well for us to face the permanent condi-

tions upon which God allows us to live on this

planet.14

Insofar as there is a poetic answer to thequestion posed byThe Waste Land, it comesseveral years afterwards in The Journey ofthe Magi. It is not aimless wandering, noteven a journey to the Chapel Perilous Inthis decayed hole among the mountains(386) that finds renewal of life and purpose.

It is rather following a star to an infant lyingin a manger in the inauspicious village ofBethlehem. But the reminiscence of the agedastrologer is not sentimental or nostalgic,and it suggests that Eliot, in accepting theChristian Gospel as the only way out of themodern desert of the spirit still acknowl-edged that life may often only be found byway of death:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set downThis set down

This: were we led all that way forBirth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth

and death,But had thought they were different; this Birth

wasHard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our

death.We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensa-

tion,With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Even if one finds the baby in the manger, thegrail in the chapel, one still lives on in thewaste land, only no longer at ease. Toescape the waste land means learning howto live in it without being its subject orcitizen: it is to shed ones illusions in themyth of the City of Man and human self-

sufficiency. The radical poetic techniquesofThe Waste Landare an integral part of itssignificance. The dislocations of stream-of-consciousness narrative and the ironic jux-tapositions of multiple allusions embodyEliots vision of the human condition inwhich we enjoy only brief, fragmentaryglimpses of beauty and meaning among thewithered stumps of time.

1. All quotations from Eliots poetry are taken from

T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950

(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1971). Linenumbers are given in parentheses for The Waste Land.

2. The Canterbury Tales I.A.1-4, 12, The Works of

Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson, (2nd ed., Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

3. This connection was first made by George L. K.

Morris (Partisan Review1954).

4. See Romans 9.33: Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling-

stone and a rock of scandal; and whosoever believethin him shall not be confounded; and Corinthians

10.4: And they drank of the spiritual rock that

followed them; and the rock was Christ.

5. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York:

Dodd, Mead & Company, 1925), 130.

6. See the Inferno III. 34-69.

7. Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt,

Brace & World, 1949), 17.

8. Christopher Dawson, Progress and Decay in An-cient and Modern Civilizations, Dynamics of WorldHistory, ed. John J. Mulloy (LaSalle, IL: SherwoodSugden & Co., 1976), 66. For Eliots acknowledgment

of his debt to Dawson, see Christianity and Culture, 83.

9. Virgil, AeneidI. 723-27, ed. R.D. Williams, 2 vols.(London: MacMillan, 1972).

10. ConfessionsIII.1, Patrologia Latina32.683.

11. Ibid. II.10, Patrologia Latina32.682.

12. Ibid. I.13, Patrologia Latina32.670: illae quibustenere cogebar ne nescio cujus errores, oblitus

errorum meorum; et plorare Didonem mortuam, quiase occidit ob amorem, cum interea meipsum in his a

te morientem, Deus vita mea, siccis oculis ferrem

miserrimus.

13. ConfessionsI.1, Patrologia Latina32.661.

14. Christianity and Culture, 49.

Withered Stumps of Time

Documents

Transcript of Withered Stumps of Time