The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely

regarded as one of the most important English
language poems of the 20th century and a
central work of modernist poetry. Published in
1922, the 434-line[A] poem first appeared in the
United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's
magazine The Criterion and in the United
States in the November issue of The Dial.
Among its famous phrases are "April is the
cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a
handful of dust", and "These fragments I have
shored against my ruins".[6]
The Waste Land does
The Waste Land
not follow a single
by T. S. Eliot
narrative or feature a
consistent style or
structure. The poem
shifts between voices of
satire and prophecy, and
features abrupt and
unannounced changes
Title page of the first
of narrator, location and
book edition
time, conjuring a vast
(December 1922)
and dissonant range of
First The
cultures and literatures.
published Criterion (U
It employs many
in The Dial (U
allusions to the Western
Country United
canon: Ovid's
Kingdom
Metamorphoses, the
Publication 16 Octob
legend of the Fisher
date c. 20 Oct
King, Dante's Divine
Comedy, Chaucer's Lines 434[A]
Canterbury Tales, and Full text
even a contemporary
The Waste Land at
popular song, "That Wikisource
Shakespearian Rag".

The poem is divided into five sections. The

first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the
diverse themes of disillusionment and despair.
The second, "A Game of Chess", employs
alternating narrations in which vignettes of
several characters display the fundamental
emptiness of their lives. "The Fire Sermon"
offers a philosophical meditation in relation to
self-denial and sexual dissatisfaction; "Death
by Water" is a brief description of a drowned
merchant; and "What the Thunder Said" is a
culmination of the poem's previously
exposited themes explored through a
description of a desert journey.[7]

Upon its initial publication The Waste Land

received a mixed response, with some critics
finding it wilfully obscure while others praised
its originality. Subsequent years saw the poem
become established as a central work in the
modernist canon, and it proved to become one
of the most influential works of the century.

History

Background

While at Harvard College Eliot met Emily Hale,

the daughter of a minister at Harvard Divinity
School, through family friends. He declared his
love for her before leaving to live in Europe in
1914, but he did not believe his feelings to be
reciprocated.[8][9] Her influence is felt in The
Waste Land, and he would renew his
correspondence with her in 1927.[10][11]

Vivienne Eliot[B] in 1921

Eliot married his first wife Vivienne Haigh-

Wood[B] in 1915, having been introduced to her
earlier that year by Scofield Thayer.[13] She had
a history of mental illness, and it is not clear to
what extent Eliot knew about this before the
wedding.[14] The marriage had a shaky start:
Eliot appears to have had certain neuroses
concerning sex and sexuality, perhaps evinced
by the women featured in his poetry, and there
is speculation that the two were not sexually
compatible.[15] In late 1915 Vivienne began to
suffer from "nerves" or "acute neuralgia", an
illness which undoubtedly bore a mental
component. Their friend Bertrand Russell took
her to the seaside town of Torquay to
recuperate; Eliot took Russell's place after a
week, and the couple walked the shore, which
Eliot found tranquil.[16] Once back in London,
Vivienne was left bored and unoccupied while
Eliot worked fourteen or fifteen hours a day,
and in 1918 had a brief affair with Russell; it is
not known if Eliot was aware of this.[17] Eliot
himself, under strain from his heavy workload,
concern about his father's health, and the
stress of the ongoing war, was also suffering
from poor health, to the extent that his doctor
had ordered him not to write prose for six
months.[18] In the succeeding years both
experienced periods of depression, with Eliot
being constantly exhausted and Vivienne
experiencing migraines.[19] 1921 saw Eliot be
diagnosed with a nervous disorder and
prescribed three months of rest, a period
which precipitated the writing of The Waste
Land.[20]

Eliot had worked as a schoolteacher from

1915–1916, resigning in the hope of making a
living from lecturing and literary reviews.[21] He
was obliged, however, to take a job at Lloyds
Bank in March 1917, earning a salary of £270
in 1918 for a role interpreting the balance
sheets of foreign banks. He would work at the
bank for the next nine years.[22] He began to
work as an assistant editor of literary
magazine The Egoist on the side, his salary of
£9 per quarter partly financed by John Quinn,
Ezra Pound's patron.[23] Eliot also began to
write on a freelance basis for The Athenaeum
and The Times Literary Supplement in 1919,
which built his reputation as a respected critic
and journalist.[24]

While living in London Eliot became

acquainted with literary figures, most notably
Pound in 1914, who would help publish Eliot's
work and edit The Waste Land.[25] Eliot also
met Aldous Huxley and Katherine Mansfield,
as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group,
in London in 1916, although he did not meet
Leonard and Virginia Woolf until two years
later.[26]

Eliot's first collection, Prufrock and Other

Observations, was published in 1917 thanks to
the efforts of Pound. Publishers were not
confident in its success, and it was published
by Harriet Shaw Weaver of The Egoist only
with funding provided by Pound's wife Dorothy,
although Eliot was unaware of this
arrangement. It generated very little interest
until after the publication of The Waste Land,
and did not sell its initial run of 500 copies
until 1922.[27] Poems was published in 1919 by
the Woolfs' Hogarth Press, again having been
turned down by several other publishers.[28] By
1920 Eliot had established himself as a
reputed critic, and the publication of Ara Vos
Prec and the US publication of Poems
generated notable press coverage.[29] His
1920 collection of essays, The Sacred Wood,
met with mixed reviews, and Eliot felt it should
have been revised further.[30]
Writing

Eliot in 1923

Eliot probably worked on the text that became

The Waste Land for several years preceding its
first publication in 1922. In 1919 he referred to
"a long poem I have had on my mind for a long
time" in a letter to his mother.[31] In a May
1921 letter to New York lawyer and art patron
John Quinn, Eliot wrote that he had "a long
poem in mind and partly on paper which I am
wishful to finish".[32]

Richard Aldington, in his memoirs, relates that

"a year or so" before Eliot read him the
manuscript draft of The Waste Land in London,
Eliot visited him in the country.[33] While
walking through a graveyard, they discussed
Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard. Aldington writes: "I was surprised
to find that Eliot admired something so
popular, and then went on to say that if a
contemporary poet, conscious of his
limitations as Gray evidently was, would
concentrate all his gifts on one such poem he
might achieve a similar success."[33]

In the autumn of 1921 Eliot and Vivienne

travelled to the coastal resort of Margate.[34]
Eliot had been recommended rest following a
diagnosis of some form of nervous disorder,
and had been granted three months' leave
from the bank where he was employed, so the
trip was intended as a period of
convalescence. Eliot worked on what would
become The Waste Land while sitting in the
Nayland Rock shelter on Margate Sands,
producing "some 50 lines", and the area is
referenced directly in "The Fire Sermon" ("On
Margate Sands / I can connect / Nothing with
nothing.")[35][36] The couple travelled to Paris in
November, where Eliot showed an early
version of the poem to Pound.[37] Pound had
become acquainted with Eliot seven years
previously, and had helped get some of Eliot's
previous work published.[38] Eliot was
travelling on to Lausanne for treatment by Dr
Roger Vittoz, who had been recommended to
him by Ottoline Morrell;[35][39] Vivienne was to
stay at a sanatorium just outside Paris.[37]
While under Vittoz's care, Eliot completed the
first draft of The Waste Land.[40]
Editing

Ezra Pound, a major

editor of the work

Eliot returned from Switzerland to Paris in

early January 1922 with the 19-page draft
version of the poem; his treatment with Dr
Vittoz proved to have been very successful, at
least in the short term.[41][42] Eliot and Pound
proceeded to edit the poem further, continuing
after Eliot returned to London.[43][44] The
editing process removed a large amount of
content. Eliot allowed Pound a high degree of
control over the shape and contents of the
final version, deferring to his judgement on
matters such as using Eliot's previous poem
"Gerontion" as a prelude, or using an excerpt
from the death of Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of
Darkness as the epigraph (Pound rejected both
of these ideas).[45] Biographer Peter Ackroyd
considers Pound's focus to have been on "the
underlying rhythm of the poem ... Pound heard
the music, and cut away what was for him the
extraneous material which was attached to
it."[46] By removing much of Eliot's material,
Pound allowed for readers to more freely
interpret it as a less structured and didactic
work, and his edits are generally considered to
have been beneficial.[47][48]

Vivienne also reviewed drafts of The Waste

Land.[49] The section "A Game of Chess" partly
depicts scenes from the Eliots' marriage,[49]
although at her request a specific line was
removed – "The ivory men make company
between us" – perhaps because she found the
depiction of their unhappy marriage too
painful.[50][51] In 1960, thirteen years after
Vivienne's death, Eliot inserted the line from
memory into a fair copy made for sale to aid
the London Library.[52]

In a late December 1921 letter to Eliot to

celebrate the "birth" of the poem, Pound wrote
a bawdy poem of 48 lines entitled "Sage
Homme" in which he identified Eliot as the
mother of the poem but compared himself to
the midwife.[53] The first lines are:

These are the poems of Eliot

By the Uranian Muse begot;
A Man their Mother was,
A Muse their Sire.
 How did the printed Infancies result
From Nuptials thus doubly
difficult?
If you must needs enquire
Know diligent Reader
That on each Occasion
Ezra performed the Caesarean
Operation.

Publication

Negotiations over the publication of The Waste

Land started in January 1922 and lasted until
the late summer.[54] Horace Liveright, of the
New York publishing firm of Boni & Liveright,
had a number of meetings with Pound while in
Paris, and at a dinner on 3 January 1922, with
Pound, Eliot and James Joyce, he made offers
for The Waste Land, Ulysses, and works by
Pound.[55] Eliot was to receive a royalty of 15%
for a book version of the poem planned for
autumn publication,[56] although Liveright was
concerned that the work was too short.[57]
Eliot was still under contract with his previous
publisher Alfred Knopf, which gave Knopf the
rights to Eliot's next two books, but in April
Eliot managed to secure a release from that
agreement.[54]

Eliot also sought a deal with magazines. He

had become friends with Scofield Thayer,
editor of literary magazine The Dial, while at
Milton Academy and Harvard College, and
Eliot had offered the poem to Thayer for
publication shortly after returning from
Lausanne in January.[58] Even though The Dial
offered $150 (approx. £30–35) for the poem,
25% more than its standard rate, Eliot was
offended that a year's work would be valued
so low, especially since he knew that George
Moore had been paid £100 for a short story.[59]
The deal with The Dial almost fell through
(other magazines considered were The Little
Review and Vanity Fair),[60] but with Quinn's
efforts eventually an agreement was reached
where, in addition to the $150, Eliot would be
awarded The Dial 's second annual prize for
outstanding service to letters, which carried an
award of $2,000.[61][62]

In New York, in late summer, Boni & Liveright

made an agreement with The Dial allowing the
magazine to be the first to publish the poem in
the US, on the condition that they purchase
350 copies of the book at discount (increasing
the cost to The Dial by $315).[63] Eliot
suggested that the "possibility of the book's
getting the prize" might allow Boni & Liveright
to use the publicity increase their initial
sales.[64]

The poem was first published in the UK in the

first issue (16 October 1922) of Eliot's
magazine The Criterion and in the US in the
November issue of The Dial (actually
published around 20 October).[65] Eliot had
initially suggested spreading the poem over
four issues of The Dial, having doubts about
its coherence as a single piece, and had
considered publishing it across two issues of
The Criterion in order to improve sales, but
Pound objected.[66] In December the Boni &
Liveright book edition was published in the US,
with an initial run of 1,000 copies and, very
soon afterwards, a second edition, also of
1,000 copies.[66] The first book edition was the
first publication to print Eliot's accompanying
notes, which he had added to pad the piece
out and thereby address Liveright's concerns
about its length.[65][67] In September 1923, the
Hogarth Press, a private press run by Eliot's
friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf, published
the first UK book edition of The Waste Land in
a run of approximately 460 copies.[68] Eliot,
whose 1922 annual salary at Lloyds Bank was
£500 ($2,215),[69] made approximately £630
($2,800) with The Dial, Boni & Liveright, and
Hogarth Press publications.[70]

Eliot sent the original manuscript drafts of the

poem as a gift to John Quinn, believing it to be
worthwhile to preserve the effects of Pound's
editing; they arrived in New York in January
1923.[71] Upon Quinn's death in 1924 they were
inherited by his sister Julia Anderson, and for
many years they were believed lost. In the
early 1950s Mrs Anderson's daughter Mary
Conroy found the documents in storage. In
1958 she sold them privately to the New York
Public Library. It was not until April 1968, three
years after Eliot's death, that the existence and
whereabouts of the manuscript drafts were
made known to Valerie Eliot, his second
wife.[72] In 1971 a facsimile of the original
drafts was published, containing Pound's
annotations, edited and annotated by Valerie
Eliot.[73]

Initial reception

The initial reviews of the poem were mixed.[74]

Some critics disparaged its disjointed
structure, and suggested that its extensive use
of quotations gave it a sense of
unoriginality.[75] F. L. Lucas wrote a particularly
negative review in the New Statesman, stating
that "Eliot has shown that he can at moments
write real blank verse; but that is all";[76] The
Guardian published a review calling it "waste
paper",[77] and the London Mercury considered
it incomprehensible.[78] William Carlos
Williams considered it to have had a negative
influence on American literature, writing that it
had "set [him] back twenty years".[78]

Gilbert Seldes, who first published the poem in

the US, and Pound, its editor, both defended it,
as did Conrad Aiken, who described it in a
1923 review as "one of the most moving and
original poems of our time",[79] although he
found the form incoherent.[80] Seldes
commissioned a review from Edmund Wilson,
which was positive, and other admirers
included E. M. Forster and Cyril Connolly.[75][81]
Contemporary poets and young writers
responded to the poem's modern style and
content, a mini-phenomenon later described
as "a cult of 'The Waste Landers' ".[81]

Subsequent reviews and criticism debated the

value of some of Eliot's innovations. His notes
and quotations were one source of
disagreement: they were considered either
"distracting or confusing if not pedantic and
unpoetic", or "the very basis of a new and
significant poetic technique".[82] Similarly, the
structure of the poem, or lack thereof,
continued to generate debate, as did
interpretations of the themes themselves.[82] I.
A. Richards praised Eliot on these points in his
1926 book Principles of Literary Criticism,[83]
describing his imagery technique as "a 'music
of ideas'",[84] and in the 1930s Richards'
commentary was taken further by F. R. Leavis,
F. O. Matthiessen and Cleanth Brooks, who
believed that, despite its apparent
disjointedness, the poem contains an
underlying unity of form—for Leavis
represented by the figure of Tiresias, and for
Matthiessen and Brooks by the Grail
mythology.[85] This view became dominant for
the next three decades.[86]

Contents

The Waste Land

Title
25:21

Eliot originally
Problems playing
considered entitling the this file? See
media help.
poem He Do the Police
in Different Voices,[87] and in the original
manuscripts the first two sections of the
poem appear under this title.[88] This phrase is
taken from Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual
Friend, in which the widow Betty Higden says
of her adopted foundling son Sloppy "You
mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful
reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in
different voices."[87] In the end, the title Eliot
chose was The Waste Land. In his first note to
the poem he attributes the title to Jessie
Weston's book on the Grail legend, From Ritual
to Romance.[89]
Structure

Epigraph and dedication

The poem is preceded by

Did he live his
a Latin and Ancient Greek
life again in
epigraph (without
every detail of
translation) from chapter
desire,
48 of the Satyricon of
temptation, and
Petronius:
surrender
during that
Nam Sibyllam supreme
quidem Cumis ego moment of
ipse oculis meis complete
vidi in ampulla knowledge? He
pendere, et cum illi cried in a
pueri dicerent: whisper at
Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; some image, at
some vision, –
 respondebat illa: he cried out
άποθανεῖν θέλω. twice, a cry that
was no more
than a breath–
With my own eyes
I saw the Sibyl at "'The horror! the

Cumae hanging in horror!'"

a bottle and, when Joseph Conrad,

the attendants Heart of
asked her what Darkness
she wanted, she Eliot's original
replied, "I want to choice of
die."[91] epigraph.[90]

Eliot originally intended

the epigraph to be a small section of Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness describing the
death of the character Kurtz. Pound suggested
it be changed as he felt Conrad was not
"weighty" enough, although it is unclear if he
was referring to the author or the quotation
itself.[90]

Following the epigraph is a dedication (added

in a 1925 republication) that reads "For Ezra
Pound: il miglior fabbro" ("the better
craftsman"). Here Eliot is quoting both Canto
XXVI of Dante's Purgatorio, where Dante pays
troubadour Arnaut Daniel the same
compliment, and Pound's The Spirit of
Romance (1910), which contains a chapter
with that title and which quotes that section of
Purgatorio.[92][93] This dedication was originally
handwritten by Eliot in the 1922 Boni &
Liveright edition of the poem presented to
Pound; it was included in later editions.[92]
I. The Burial of the Dead

The section title comes from the Anglican

burial service. It opens with a description of
spring as something to be dreaded, with the
comforting static nature of winter giving way
to the forcible activity of spring. Eliot moves to
the more specific location of Central Europe
around the period of the First World War, and
adopts a prophetic tone describing a sterile
desert. Quotations from the operatic love story
Tristan und Isolde bookend a memory of the
"hyacinth girl", with the narrator trapped in a
static existence between life and death,
unable to profess his love. The scene then
moves to the fortune-teller Madame Sosostris,
who is described in ironically down-to-earth
terms, and the Tarot cards she draws foretell
events in the rest of the poem. The final part
of "The Burial of the Dead" is a description of
London as Dante's hell, with inhabitants
trapped in a death-like state following a
meaningless routine.[94]

II. A Game of Chess

This section centres around women and

seduction, with the title a reference to the
Jacobean play Women Beware Women in
which the character Bianca is seduced while
her mother-in-law is distracted by a game of
chess. Its first scene describes an elaborately
decorated room recalling Classical lovers such
as Mark Antony and Cleopatra or Dido and
Aeneas. The narrative moves to more
disturbing references, such as to Philomela
who was raped and turned into a nightingale,
and the poem depicts her as still suffering at
the hands of an uncaring world. This moves to
a conversation between an anxious woman
and the thoughts of her husband, who does
not reply—his thoughts are preoccupied with
loss and death. The second part of the section
is set in an East End pub and features a
conversation between working-class Cockney
women. They discuss childbearing, infidelity
and abortion in a matter-of-fact manner, and
appear to be trapped in loveless superficial
relationships. The end of the section sees Eliot
interleave the words of the barman calling last
orders ("Hurry up please its [sic] time") and the
last words of Ophelia in Hamlet before her
suicide by drowning, signifying the inevitability
of ageing and death.[95]
III. The Fire Sermon

A reference to Edmund Spenser's poem

Prothalamion, which describes an elegant
aristocratic summer wedding by the River
Thames, contrasts with the decaying and
polluted modern state of the setting. Similarly
the beautiful nymphs of the past have been
replaced by prostitutes, and the washing of
their feet in soda water is ironically contrasted
with the washing of feet performed by choir
boys in some tellings of the Fisher King
legend. This is followed by a brief description
of a dirty London and Mr Eugenides, the one-
eyed Smyrna merchant foreseen by Madame
Sosostris. The narrative then moves to a
description of a loveless tryst between a typist
and a "young man carbuncular", both acting
mechanically, their automatic motions
underscored by Eliot's use of rhyme. They are
observed by the figure of Tiresias, a character
taken from classical myth who lived as a
woman for seven years and then was blinded
and given the gift of prophecy. Unlike the
previous allusions to times past, Tiresias
indicates that love has always been this
dispassionate and squalid. The poem moves
back to the Thames, again using allusions to
the past to highlight its current state of decay
and sterility, but the section ends on a possibly
hopeful note with the words of St Augustine
and the Buddha, both of whom lived lives of
extravagance before adopting asceticism. It is
only at this point that the reason for the
section title is clear, "The Fire Sermon" being a
teaching delivered by the Buddha.[96]
IV. Death by Water

This is the shortest section of the poem,

describing the aftermath of the drowning of
Phoenician sailor Phlebas, an event
forewarned by Madame Sosostris. His corpse
is still trapped in a whirlpool that serves as a
metaphor for the cycle of life and death, and
serves as a warning to pursue a meaningful
life.[97]

V. What the Thunder Said

The poem returns to the arid desert scene

visited in Part I. Rain has not arrived, despite
the promise from thunder and the approaching
spring. A description of a journey across the
desert are interspersed with references to the
death and resurrection of Jesus, implying that
the journey has a spiritual element. The
journey ends at a chapel, but it is ruined. Rain
finally arrives with the thunder, and its noise is
linked with text from the Hindu
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, joining Eastern
religion with Western. The thunder implores
the narrator to "give", but the associated
imagery suggests he may already be dead; to
"sympathise", but he contends that every
person is trapped in their own self-centred
prison; and to "control", which is explored with
the metaphor of a sailor co-operating with
wind and water. The narrator ends up fishing
at the sea shore, having travelled across the
desert. He considers taking some form of
action in his final question "Shall I at least set
my lands in order?" but does not resolve to do
anything. The poem ends with fragmentary
quotations perhaps suggesting the possibility
of new life, and finally the line "Shantih shantih
shantih" ("Peace peace peace"), the formal
ending to an Upanishad.[98]

Notes

The text of the poem is followed by several

pages of notes by Eliot, purporting to explain
his own metaphors, references, and allusions.
These were included in order to lengthen the
work so that it could be published as a book,
as well as to pre-empt accusations of
plagiarism which his earlier work had been
charged with.[67][99] Pound later observed that
the notes served to pique the interest of
reviewers and academic critics.[99] However
they are considered to be of limited use for
interpreting the poem, and Eliot's own
interpretations changed over the succeeding
decades.[100][101][102] Eliot later expressed
some regret at including the notes at all,
saying in 1956 that they had prompted "the
remarkable exposition of bogus
scholarship".[4][103]

Style

The style of the poem is

marked by the many "What is that
intertextual allusions noise?"
and quotations that Eliot The wind
included, and their under the
juxtaposition.[105][106] In door.
addition to the many "What is that
"highbrow" references noise
and quotations from now?
poets such as What is
Baudelaire, Dante, Ovid,
and Homer, he included the wind
several references to doing?"
"lowbrow" genres, such Nothing
as an allusion to the again
1912 popular song "That nothing.
Shakespearian Rag" by
Gene Buck, Herman "Do
Ruby and Dave "You know
Stamper.[107][108] The nothing?
poem contrasts such Do you
elements throughout: see
"Ornate vocabulary gives nothing?
way to colloquial Do you
dialogue, lyrical remembe
moments are interrupted r
by sordid intrusions, the "Nothing?"
comic and the macabre I remember
coexist with the solemn Those are pearls
words of religious that were
instruction, one his eyes.
language is supplanted "Are you alive, or
by another, until in the not? Is
final lines of the poem there
the fragments are nothing in
collected together."[106] your
head?"
The Waste Land is
notable for its seemingly
disjointed structure,
But
employing a wide variety
O O O O that
of voices which are
Shakespe
presented sometimes in
herian
monologue, dialogue, or
Rag—
with more than two
It's so elegant
characters speaking.[109]
So intelligent
The poem jumps from
"A Game of
one voice or image to
Chess", lines
another without clearly
delineating these shifts 117–130[104]
for the reader, creating
the paradoxical effect of
a poem which contains deeply personal
subject matter being simultaneously an
impersonal collage.[110] As Eliot explained in
his 1919 essay "Tradition and the Individual
Talent", he saw the ideal poet as a conduit
who creates a piece of art that reflects culture
and society, as well as their own perspective
and experiences, in an impersonal and
craftsmanlike way.[111]

The poem plays with traditional forms of

metre and rhyme, often implying blank verse
without strictly committing to it (especially
through quotations of works that are
themselves written in such a metre). Lines are
often fragmented, and verses are generally of
unequal length, although there are instances
of regularity—for example, the first two verses
of "The Fire Sermon" are formed like
Petrarchan sonnets.[112][113] During the editing
process, Pound would highlight lines that were
"too penty" (i.e. too close to iambic
pentameter), prompting them to be changed
to less regular rhythms.[114] Eliot disliked the
term "free verse", however, believing it
impossible to write verse that is truly
"free".[115]

Sources and influences

Sources which Eliot quotes or alludes to

include the works of classical figures
Sophocles, Petronius, Virgil, and Ovid; 14th-
century writers Dante and Geoffrey Chaucer;
Elizabethan and Jacobean writers Edmund
Spenser, Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare,
Thomas Middleton, and John Webster; 19th-
century figures Gérard de Nerval, Paul
Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, Alfred Tennyson,
and Richard Wagner; and more contemporary
writers Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Frank
Chapman and F. H. Bradley.[116] Additionally
Eliot makes extensive use of religious writings,
including the Christian Bible and Book of
Common Prayer, the Hindu Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad, and the Buddha's Fire Sermon; and
of cultural and anthropological studies such
as James Frazer's The Golden Bough and
Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance.[116]

As well as drawing from myth and fiction, Eliot

included people he knew as figures in the
poem. "The Burial of the Dead" contains the
character Marie, who is based on Marie
Larisch,[52] and the "hyacinth girl" represents
Emily Hale, with whom Eliot had fallen in love
several years previously.[10] "A Game of Chess"
features a representation of Vivienne;[117] and
its conversations are taken from those
overheard by the couple while in a local
pub.[118]

Scholars have identified more contemporary

artistic influences on Eliot, contrary to the
poet's own focus on older and foreign-
language influences.[119] Eliot had read early
drafts of parts of Ulysses and corresponded
with Joyce about them, and its influence is
seen in the symbolist use of cross-references
and stylistic variety in The Waste Land,[120][121]
as well as the mythic parallels between the
characters of Ulysses and those of the
Odyssey, writing that this "mythical method"
had "the importance of a scientific
discovery".[122] Eliot would later express the
opinion that, compared to The Waste Land,
Ulysses was a superior example of such
literary developments, and the novel has been
described as "the most important model for
the poem".[123] Unlike its use in Ulysses,
however, Eliot saw the mythical method as a
way to write poetry without relying on
conventional narration—he uses his mythical
sources for their ritualistic structures, rather
than as a counterpoint to the poem's
"story".[124]

Eliot was resistant to ascribing any influence

to Walt Whitman, instead expressing a
preference for Jules Laforgue (who was
himself a Whitman translator and
admirer).[125] Nevertheless, scholars have
noted strong similarities in the two poets' use
of free verse. The first lines of The Waste Land,
which are an inversion of Chaucer's opening to
The Canterbury Tales, strongly resemble
Whitman's imagery at the beginning of "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd":[126][127]

April is the cruellest month,

breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

— T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land,

lines 1–4[104]
When lilacs last in the dooryard
bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd
in the western sky in the
night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn
with ever-returning
spring.

— Walt Whitman, "When

Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloom'd", lines 1–3[128]

Whan that Aprille with his

shoures sote
 The droghte of Marche hath
perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich
licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the
flour;
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The
Canterbury Tales (Prologue),
lines 1–4[129]

As well as the motif of lilacs growing in the

spring, Whitman treats the inevitable return of
spring as "an occasion for mourning the death
that allows for rebirth", a similar perspective
being put forward by Eliot and completely
contrary to Chaucer, who celebrates the
"sweet showers" of April bringing forth spring
flowers.[125][126] Scholar Pericles Lewis further
argues that Whitman's speech-like rhythms
anticipate the even more free style of The
Waste Land, adhering to Pound's dictum that
verse should "[depart] in no way from speech
save by a heightened intensity (i.e.
simplicity)".[130] Critic Harold Bloom goes on
to identify further similarities between the two
poems, with Eliot's "third who always walks
beside you" as Whitman's "knowledge of
death", and the poems themselves as "an
elegy for the poet's own genius, rather than a
lament for Western civilization".[131]

Pablo Picasso, Bowl with Fruit, Violin,

and Wineglass (1912)
The Waste Land was also informed by
developments in the visual arts. Its style and
content reflect the methods of Cubism and
Futurism to take apart and reassemble their
subjects in different forms, and the interest of
Surrealism in the unconscious mind and its
influence on culture—similar themes to what
interested Eliot about The Golden Bough.[132]
Scholar Jacob Korg identifies similarities with
the collage techniques of Braque and Picasso,
wherein the artists' increasingly non-
representational works would include a small
piece of "realistic" detail. In the same sense,
The Waste Land directly includes "reality", such
as the pub conversation and the phrase
"London Bridge is falling down", alongside its
"imagined" content, to achieve a similar
effect.[133]
Themes and interpretations

Interpretations of The Waste Land in the first

few decades after its publication had been
closely linked to Romance, due to Eliot's
prominent acknowledgement of Jessie
Weston's 1920 book From Ritual to Romance in
his notes.[86][134] Eliot's 1956 disavowal of this
line of enquiry with his comment that they
invited "bogus scholarship", however,
prompted reinterpretations of the poem—less
as a work which incorporates previous
Romantic ideals and the "magic of the grail
legend", and more as a poem describing
"alienation, fragmentation, despair and
disenchantment" in the post-war period, which
are considered typical features of modernist
literature.[135]
Fertility and the Fisher King myth

Perceval arrives at the Grail Castle to be greeted by the

Fisher King in an illustration for a 1330 manuscript of
Perceval, the Story of the Grail.

In his notes, Eliot credits Weston's analysis of

the Grail legend in From Ritual to Romance
with inspiring "the plan and a good deal of the
incidental symbolism of the poem".[89] Weston
concentrates on the story of the Fisher King,
part of the Holy Grail mythos which has its
origins in Perceval, the Story of the Grail,
written by Chrétien de Troyes in the 1180s.[136]
In the story, Perceval is a young man who
meets a group of knights one day in the forest
and leaves with them to be trained in knightly
ways at King Arthur's court. The key lesson he
is taught is not to speak too much. While out
riding one day, Perceval meets two men
fishing in a river; they offer him hospitality in a
nearby castle. In the castle hall, he meets the
Fisher King, who is gravely wounded.
Supernatural events begin to occur: a boy
brings a white lance into the hall, and a drop of
blood falls from its tip. Two more boys holding
candlesticks appear, and then a girl holding a
gold grail set with precious stones and
radiating light. The grail, in this telling a kind of
platter, provides food for the guests in the hall.
Remembering his training, Perceval asks no
questions about these strange happenings,
and when he awakens the next day he finds
the hall empty: his apparent lack of curiosity
has been taken as indifference. Perceval
returns to Camelot, and while at the Round
Table a "loathsome damsel" appears to
denounce him, saying that various calamities
will occur because the Fisher King cannot
defend his lands, still being in his injured state.
As a result, Perceval loses his religious faith.
Five years later, Perceval seeks help from his
uncle, a hermit. His uncle instructs him in
knightly ways, and Perceval receives
communion.[137]

At this point Chrétien's story ends. It was

continued in several different versions by
various authors. Robert de Boron introduces
an explicit link between the grail and Jesus'
crucifixion, and in this version Perceval returns
to the castle, asks the correct (secret)
question of the Fisher King, and becomes
keeper of the grail himself.[138] Another
continuation was by Wolfram von Eschenbach,
who made the Fisher King's injury a sterilising
groin injury, and the question Perceval asks
"What aileth thee, mine uncle?" (in Weston's
translation).[139][140] The asking of the
question, an act of compassion, is ultimately
what heals the king and restores the land.[141]

Weston interprets the story of the Fisher King

as a continuation of pagan fertility rites. She
focuses on the idea of a "waste land"
surrounding the Fisher King's castle, which will
be restored along with the king's health, only
after the correct question is asked. In this
sense it is a story of death and rebirth, as well
as an allegory for reproduction, with the lance
representing male genitalia and the grail
female.[142] Weston considers the fish symbol
as an analogy for fertility, a connection later
lost in readings of the Grail legend.[143]
The Waste Land can be interpreted as being, at
least in part, narrated by a Fisher King
character, living in a modern industrial "wasted
land".[144] Eliot's notes indicate that he
associated the Fisher King with one of the
tarot cards drawn in "The Burial of the Dead"
(the man with three staves); "The Fire Sermon"
contains a figure fruitlessly fishing in a
polluted canal in winter as a direct parallel of
the men Perceval encountered fishing in a
stream; and the final verse of "What the
Thunder Said" describes a Fisher King
character fishing in the sea, considering the
question "Shall I at least set my lands in
order?"[5][145]

The mythic themes of fertility take on a more

concrete role in the middle parts of the poem,
which deal with scenes of sexuality. "A Game
of Chess" includes a scene of a married
couple playing chess in an opulent setting
which contrasts with two sexless dialogues
"illustrating two aspects of the terrible
emotional barrenness of the modern
world".[146] The section continues to a matter-
of-fact conversation between two women
about infidelity and abortion, blending into the
last words of Ophelia in Hamlet before she
committed suicide by drowning – an end to
life, rather than a baptismal rebirth.[147] "The
Fire Sermon" describes a dispassionate affair,
perhaps a parody of Frazer's "sanctified
harlotry" ritual in which "in order to promote
fertility, a girl consorted with a stranger before
marriage, the act being accompanied by a
ritual feast and music."[148]
Death and regeneration

Themes of death and regeneration more

generally occur throughout The Waste Land,
especially in "The Burial of the Dead". Unlike in
fertility myths such as that of the Fisher King,
however, "death is never redeemed by any
clear salvation, and barrenness is relieved only
by a chaotic multiplicity, which is not only an
ironic kind of fertility, but is also the distinctly
urban chaos that the young Eliot appreciated
as conducive to his work."[149] The poem
opens with a resistance to growth after a
winter that represents a "living death", and a
yearning for stasis which contrasts with the
Sibyl of the epigraph, who longs for a death
that means escape from a static
existence.[150][151] "The Burial of the Dead" also
describes a dry and lifeless desert scene
which, despite the prospect of shade and
therefore respite, promises only a vision of
death – to "show you fear in a handful of
dust".[152] Madame Sosostris draws the
drowned Phoenician sailor, but he is later a
symbol of Adonis, representing the promise of
spring and thus renewal, and his drowning can
be read as an allegory for baptism, a spiritual
rebirth.[153] The living death of The Waste Land
sees people bury corpses and expect them to
sprout, in a deliberate reference to the rituals
of Osiris as described by Frazer, when priests
would bury effigies of the god to ensure a
good harvest.[154]

Post-war disillusionment

The Waste Land can be read as an expression

of post-war disillusionment and anxieties
about Western
I dislike the word
culture.[156] Critic Burton
"generation",
Rascoe wrote that the
which has been a
poem "gives voice to the
talisman for the
universal despair or
last ten years;
resignation arising from
when I wrote a
the spiritual and
poem called The
economic
Waste Land
consequences of the
some of the more
war, the cross purposes
approving critics
of modern civilization,
said that I had
the cul-de-sac into which
expressed the
both science and
"disillusionment
philosophy seem to
of a generation",
have got themselves
which is
and the breakdown of all
nonsense. I may
great directive purposes
have expressed
which give joy and zest
for them their
to the business of living.
It is an erudite own illusion of
despair."[157] Eliot being
disliked being described disillusioned, but
as a poet who had that did not form
"expressed 'the part of my
disillusionment of a intention.
generation'", but this was T. S. Eliot,
a reading common even Thoughts After
in the early days after
Lambeth
the poem's
(1931)[155]
publication.[158] The
poem describes a barren
modern waste land after the largest war ever
fought, without the traditional common
cultural touchstones of religion, aristocracy,
and nationhood.[159][160] Being unable to grow
anything new, the poet has only "a heap of
broken images" from ages past to assemble,
and The Waste Land represents an attempt to
create something new out of these.[159]

One way in which the poem expresses this

disillusionment is in the contrast between its
quotations and allusions to older texts and
representations of the modern day. "A Game
of Chess" contrasts a modern woman with an
elaborate description of Queen Cleopatra and
Belinda from The Rape of the Lock in an ornate
setting; it also juxtaposes the working class
women's conversation with Ophelia's last
words in Hamlet. In this way, an idealised past
is presented as an unrealistically prelapsarian
place, and "modern civilisation does nothing
but spoil what was once gracious, lovely,
ceremonious and natural."[161]
Scholars observe Eliot's depiction of modern
London as being an example of these themes
as well. The distasteful description of the
River Thames in "The Fire Sermon" invites
comparison with its beauty in Spenser's
day,[162] and the beautiful Rhinemaidens of
Wagner's Ring cycle, who guard gold at the
bottom of the Rhine, are ironically placed in
the polluted Thames.[163] The poem's final
verse contains the titular line of the nursery
rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down",
showing that even with the optimism of
potential rebirth the city is destined for
ruin.[164] The sounds of the city accompany
the passionless affair of the typist in "The Fire
Sermon", linking it to sterility,[148] and its
inhabitants cannot rely on a shared sense of
community—they live in a version of Dante's
Limbo, a static lifeless realm neither life nor
death.[165][166] Eliot makes a direct reference to
Inferno in the line "I had not thought death had
undone so many", and indicates that the
people living in this city have chosen, through
cowardice, not to die (and possibly be reborn)
but to stay in this state living death.[166]

Religion

Christianity

Christianity infuses the Fisher King legend,

and questions of death and rebirth are central
concerns of all religions.[167] The Bible has
been described as "probably the single most
pervasive influence on the poem".[168] Eliot
adopts a deliberately prophetic Old Testament
tone of voice in "The Burial of the Dead",
referencing Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes.[168][169]
The Ezekiel source describes the prophet's
mission in a secular world, and the book is
relevant again in the depiction of a dry desert-
like waste land.[169] Ezekiel prophesied the
Babylonian captivity, which is alluded to in the
description of the Thames as the "waters of
Leman" in "The Fire Sermon".[169] The
Ecclesiastes section referenced contains a
description of a waste land, and "What the
Thunder Said" refers to it again in its "doors of
mudcracked houses" and "empty cisterns".[170]
New Testament symbols include the card of
the Hanged Man, which represents Jesus, and
"What the Thunder Said" references the Road
to Emmaus appearance, in which the
resurrected Christ is not recognised by his
disciples.[171]
Buddhism

The Waste Land also contains allusions to

Buddhism and Hinduism, both of which Eliot
came into contact with while studying as a
postgraduate in the Department of Philosophy
at Harvard in 1911–1914.[172] The title of "The
Fire Sermon" takes its name from the Buddhist
discourse of the same name, which uses the
metaphor of fire to mean both the inherent
pain of physical existence and the process of
purification to transcend that pain.[173] Eliot
juxtaposes the Buddha with St Augustine, both
representing historical figures who turned
away from worldly pleasures to follow a life of
asceticism.[174] Their combined voices blend
into the poem's narrator at the end of the
section ("Thou pluckest me out"), becoming
the voice of prophecy, and the section tails off
in a meditative fashion, losing the narrator
"me", then "Lord", leaving only
"burning".[175][176]

Hinduism

Sanskrit quotations from the Hindu

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, part of the
collection of texts known as the Vedas, occur
throughout the final section, "What the
Thunder Said". The three words "datta",
"dayadhvam" and "damyata" are an instruction
to observe charity, compassion and self-
control, and the poem's final line is the same
as that of every Upanishad: "Shantih shantih
shantih" ("peace peace peace").[177] This gives
the impression of a desire for the readers to
end their post-war suffering on the physical,
natural and spiritual planes by following these
virtues.[177] The poem contains other allusions
to Hindu scripture, such as the appearance of
the sacred river Ganges called by its
traditional name in the line "Ganga was
sunken", and it can be read as an allegory
similar to themes found in the Vedas where
drought or sterility is caused by an evil force.
In this reading the poet takes the role of a
priest, whose role is to purify the land and
release its potential fertility.[178]

Influence

The Waste Land is considered to be one of the

most important and influential poems of the
20th century.[34][179][180] The poem has been
praised for its aesthetic value, and its
originality influenced modernist poets: "While
we have become accustomed to such poetic
techniques as allusion, ironic juxtaposition,
and sudden shifts in imagery and style, Eliot's
use of them seemed strikingly new in
1922".[181] Lewis (2007) comments that "Later
poetic practice was largely shaped by Pound's
advocacy of free verse and Eliot's example",
and Pound later took Eliot's example of using
different languages even further, including
Chinese characters in his Cantos which would
have been completely unintelligible to a large
majority of his readers.[182]

The poem has influenced several prose works.

George Orwell used allusive techniques in a
manner influenced by Eliot, most clearly in the
popular song references of Keep the Aspidistra
Flying and the epigraphs of Down and Out in
London and Paris and Coming Up For Air.[183]
Similarly, The Sound and the Fury by William
Faulkner displays structural parallels to The
Waste Land in its juxstapositions of different
times, and its use of intratextual association
and repetition.[184] Raymond Chandler makes
more clear-cut references to the poem in The
Long Goodbye, both within the text with
characters who read Eliot, and thematically,
such as in the novel's chess game.[185]
Anthony Burgess employs similar stylistic
elements in The Malayan Trilogy, with his
characters reading the poem, and thematic
elements such as Victor Crabbe fearing death
by water.[186] The Great Gatsby by F. Scott
Fitzgerald contains similarities to The Waste
Land in its setting ("Central to the novel's total
effect, as in Eliot's poem, are symbols and
images of waste, desolation, and futility") and
characterisation ("'What do people plan?'
[Daisy] asks, and the sentence is symbolic of
her emptiness; she is like Eliot's lady in The
Waste Land who cries out, 'What shall we do
tomorrow? What shall we ever do?'").[187] The
poem also gives Evelyn Waugh's novel A
Handful of Dust not just its title, but a number
of key themes.[188]

Lesley Wheeler argues that despite Eliot's

large influence on 20th-century poetry, largely
due to the success of The Waste Land, his
impact on poets this century is much
diminished:

As editor, critic, and builder of

poetic landmarks from recycled
materials, the man overshadowed
Anglo-American poetry for
generations. For William Carlos
Williams, the atomic blast of The
Waste Land knocked American
poetry out of its groove. For poets
born in the thirties and forties –
Craig Raine, Wendy Cope, Derek
Walcott, Seamus Heaney – Eliot is
monumental, although those
writers have different responses to
his looming edifice. Poets born
since, though, metabolized Eliot
differently. It's not that modernism
is less relevant. Younger writers
claim certain modernist poets over
and over: Williams, W.B. Yeats,
Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein,
Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes,
H.D., Robert Hayden, Gwendolyn
 Brooks. Eliot just isn't on their
public lists quite so often.[189]

Wheeler attributes this change to a number of

causes, such as Eliot's lower prominence on
school curricula, biographies highlighting his
antisemitism, and his "misogynistic and
homoerotic correspondence with Ezra
Pound".[189] She posits that perhaps the poem
is perhaps a victim of its own obscurity,
demanding interpretation over providing an
engaging reading experience.[190]

Parodies

Parodies of this poem have also been written.

One is by Eliot's contemporary H. P. Lovecraft,
entitled "Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound
Insignificance". Written in 1922 or 1923, it is
regarded by scholar S. T. Joshi to be one of
Lovecraft's best satires.[191][192] Wendy Cope
published a parody of The Waste Land,
condensing the poem into five limericks,
Waste Land Limericks, in her 1986 collection
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis.[193] John Beer
published a modern take on The Waste Land in
2010 which is part satire and part
homage.[194][195]

See also

1922 in poetry
Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual
Talent"
References

Notes

A. There is a discrepancy between the line

numbers in the first edition and some
subsequent editions. The first edition gives a
total of 433 lines, which is often cited as the
poem's length,[1][2] but other sources give a
length of 434 lines.[3][4][5] 434-line editions count
"From doors of mudcracked houses / If there
were water" as lines 345–346, whereas 433-line
editions count it as a single dropped line; this is
possibly simply a counting error.[4] cf. Eliot
1961, p. 54; Eliot 1922, p. 42

B. Haigh-Wood abbreviated her first name to

Vivien, and after marriage she took Eliot's
surname, becoming Vivien Eliot.[12] This article
refers to her as Vivienne Haigh-Wood before
marriage. After marriage it refers to her as
 Vivienne Eliot, or simply Vivienne, to avoid
confusion, following the example of Rainey
1991 and Mayer 1991.

Citations

1. Cox & Hinchliffe 1970, p. 29.

2. Macrae 1980, p. 63.
3. Eliot 1961, p. 64.
4. Kenner 1959, p. 37.
5. Frey 2022.
6. Tearle 2021.
7. Macrae 1980, p. 15.
8. Gordon 1991, pp. 9–10.
9. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 7:05.
10. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 16:45.
11. Gordon 1991, p. 13.
12. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 7, 61.
13. Ackroyd 1984, p. 61.
14. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 62, 64–65.
15. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 65–66.
16. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 67–68.
17. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 83–84.
18. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 86–87, 90.
19. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 94–95, 104.
20. Ackroyd 1984, p. 113.
21. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 67, 77.
22. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 77, 78.
23. Ackroyd 1984, p. 82.
24. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 96–99.
25. Ackroyd 1984, p. 55.
26. Ackroyd 1984, p. 73.
27. Ackroyd 1984, p. 79.
28. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 91–92.
29. Ackroyd 1984, p. 99.
30. Ackroyd 1984, p. 107.
31. Gish 1988, p. 24.
32. Eliot 1988, pp. 273, 451.
33. Aldington 1941, p. 261.
34. Bennett 2009.
35. McAloon 2018.
36. British Library 2023.
37. Ackroyd 1984, p. 115.
38. Lewis 2007, pp. 119–120.
39. Harris 2006, p. 44.
40. Gold 2000, p. 519.
41. Rainey 1991, pp. 95–96, 125.
42. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 57:00.
43. Eliot 1994, p. xxii.
44. Ackroyd 1984, p. 117.
45. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 117, 120–121.
46. Ackroyd 1984, p. 119.
47. Ackroyd 1984, p. 120.
48. Wilhelm 1990, pp. 308–309.
49. Parker 2023.
50. Eliot 1994, pp. 13, 126.
51. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 41:00.
52. Eliot 1994, p. 126.
53. Eliot 1988, p. 498.
54. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 125–126.
55. Rainey 1991, pp. 95–96.
56. Rainey 2005, p. 77.
57. Rainey 1991, p. 97.
58. Ackroyd 1984, pp. 61, 111, 121.
59. Rainey 1991, pp. 98–99.
60. Rainey 1991, pp. 92–93.
61. Rainey 1991, pp. 103, 120.
62. Eliot 1994, p. xxiv.
63. Rainey 2005, p. 86.
64. Rainey 1991, p. 105.
65. Rainey 1991, p. 92.
66. Ackroyd 1984, p. 126.
67. In Our Time 2009, 32:40.
68. Rainey 1991, p. 115.
69. Gordon 2000, p. 165.
70. Rainey 2005, p. 100.
71. Gish 1988, pp. 22–23.
72. Eliot 1994, p. xxix.
73. Gish 1988, p. 23.
74. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 1:16:40.
75. Gish 1988, p. 10.
76. Lucas 1923, p. 38.
77. Powell 2022.
78. Ackroyd 1984, p. 127.
79. Aiken 1923, p. 99.
80. Gish 1988, pp. 10–11.
81. Ackroyd 1984, p. 128.
82. Gish 1988, p. 11.
83. Gish 1988, pp. 11–12.
84. Richards 1926, p. 53.
85. Gish 1988, pp. 12–13.
86. Gish 1988, p. 13.
87. Emery-Peck 2008, p. 331.
88. Eliot 1994, pp. 4–21.
89. Eliot 1961, p. 58.
90. Davidson 1994, p. 121.
91. Richardson, Jr. 2002, p. 77.
92. Wilhelm 1990, p. 309.
93. Pound 1910, pp. 14–15.
94. Macrae 1980, pp. 18–25.
95. Macrae 1980, pp. 25–28.
96. Macrae 1980, pp. 28–38.
97. Macrae 1980, pp. 38–39.
98. Macrae 1980, pp. 39–48.
 99. Ackroyd 1987, p. 127.
100. McVey 2016, p. 173.
101. Kenner 1959, p. 36.
102. Macrae 1980, p. 58.
103. Gish 1988, p. x.
104. Eliot 1922.
105. Radulović 2021, p. 126.
106. Macrae 1980, pp. 57–58.
107. McElderry, Jr. 1957, p. 30.
108. North 2001, p. 51.
109. MacCabe 2006.
110. Lewis 2007, pp. 137–138.
111. Lewis 2007, p. 138.
112. Lewis 2007, pp. 140–141.
113. Litz 1991, p. 142.
114. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 1:04:20.
115. Lewis 2007, p. 140.
116. Weirick 1971.
117. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 36:45, 38:45.
118. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 31:15.
119. Bloom 2002, p. 371.
120. Lewis 2007, p. 136.
121. Macrae 1980, pp. 13–14.
122. Lewis 2007, p. 146.
123. Lewis 2007, pp. 136, 146.
124. Litz 1972, pp. 457–458.
125. Bloom 2002, p. 372.
126. Lewis 2007, pp. 132, 142.
127. Bloom 2002, pp. 334, 371.
128. Whitman 1882.
129. Chaucer 1900.
130. Lewis 2007, p. 142.
131. Bloom 2002, p. 373.
132. Korg 1960, pp. 88–89, 93.
133. Korg 1960, pp. 91–92.
134. Owens-Murphy 2011, p. 48.
135. Owens-Murphy 2011, pp. 48–49.
136. Holland & Sandbrook 2023, 11:10.
137. Holland & Sandbrook 2023, 12:30–20:30.
138. Holland & Sandbrook 2023, 21:50.
139. Holland & Sandbrook 2023, 23:30.
140. Kearns 1987, p. 198.
141. Kearns 1987, pp. 198–199.
142. Holland & Sandbrook 2023, 5:45–7:20.
143. Brooks, Jr. 1937, p. 196.
144. Langbaum 1937, p. 234.
145. Macrae 1980, pp. 29, 47.
146. Drew 1949, p. 76.
147. Drew 1949, p. 78.
148. Drew 1949, pp. 80–81.
149. Davidson 1994, p. 125.
150. Davidson 1994, pp. 125–126.
151. Drew 1949, p. 74.
152. Drew 1949, p. 70.
153. Drew 1949, pp. 71, 82–83.
154. Drew 1949, pp. 73–74.
155. Eliot 1931.
156. Lewis 2007, p. 129.
157. Gay 2009, pp. 225–226.
158. Lewis 2007, p. 130.
159. Lewis 2007, p. 132.
160. Macrae 1980, p. 19.
161. Craig 1960, pp. 204–205.
162. Craig 1960, pp. 201–204.
163. Drew 1949, pp. 81–82.
164. Drew 1949, pp. 87–88, 90.
165. Thormählen 1978, p. 237.
166. Drew 1949, pp. 72–73.
167. Macrae 1980, pp. 18, 52–53.
168. Macrae 1980, pp. 52–53.
169. Brooks 1939, p. 62.
170. Brooks 1939, pp. 62, 78.
171. Macrae 1980, p. 53.
172. Kearns 1987, pp. 22, 25.
173. Kearns 1987, pp. 75–76.
174. Macrae 1980, pp. 28–29, 38.
175. Mayer 1991, pp. 85–86.
176. Kearns 1987, p. 76.
177. Bhatta 2018, p. 103.
178. Kearns 1987, pp. 26, 32–34.
179. In Our Time 2009, 00:12.
180. Into 'The Waste Land' 2022, 3:20.
181. Gish 1988, pp. 7–8.
182. Lewis 2007, p. 144.
183. Hopley 1984, p. 61.
184. McGann 1976, pp. 14–15.
185. Eburne 2003, pp. 369, 379–80.
186. Pritchard 1966, p. 528.
187. Bicknell 1954, pp. 557, 559.
188. Firchow 1971.
189. Wheeler 2014, p. 468.
190. Wheeler 2014, p. 474.
191. Marshall 2018.
192. Lovecraft c. 1922.
193. BBC Poetry 2014.
194. Donnelly 2010.
195. Beer 2010.

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Further reading

Bedient, Calvin (1986). He Do the Police in

Different Voices. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04141-7.
Brooker, Jewel; Bentley, Joseph (1990).
Reading the Waste Land: Modernism and the
Limits of Interpretation. Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-803-
5.
Claes, Paul (2012). A Commentary on T.S.
Eliot's Poem The Waste Land: The Infertility
Theme and the Poet's Unhappy Marriage.
Lewiston: Edwin Mellen.
Lane, Anthony (26 September 2022). "The
Shocks and Aftershocks of "The Waste
Land" " (https://www.newyorker.com/magaz
 ine/2022/10/03/the-shock-and-aftershocks-
of-the-waste-land) . The New Yorker.
Miller, James (1977). T. S. Eliot's Personal
Waste Land. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01237-4.
Reeves, Gareth (1994). T. S. Eliot's The
Waste Land. New York: Harvester
Wheatsheaf. ISBN 0-7450-0738-4.
Southam, B. C. (1996). A Guide to the
Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. San Diego:
Harcourt Brace. ISBN 0-15-600261-2.
OL 967559M (https://openlibrary.org/book
s/OL967559M) .

External links

Poem itself Wikisource

has
original
text
 An omnibus collection of T. related to
this article:
S. Eliot's poetry (https://sta The
ndardebooks.org/ebooks/t Waste
Land
-s-eliot/poetry) at
Standard Ebooks

(https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1321) The
Waste Land (https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/
1321) at Project Gutenberg
The Waste Land published in The Criterion
(October 1922) at Internet Archive

Annotated versions

Exploring The Waste Land (https://world.std.

com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/exp
lore.html)
Hypertext version (https://eliotswasteland.tr
ipod.com/) of The Waste Land with sources
 The Waste Land: Original manuscript
facsimile with Eliot's and Pound's
annotations

Recordings

Audio of T.S. Eliot reading the poem (https://

web.archive.org/web/20040610201304/htt
p://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/Harpe
rAudio/011894_harp_ITH.html)
The Waste Land (https://librivox.org/searc
h?title=The+Waste+Land&author=ELIOT&re
ader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&p
roject_type=either&recorded_language=&sor
t_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&sear
ch_form=advanced) public domain
audiobook at LibriVox

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