The Waste Land (1922)

T. S. Eliot
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
 The title of this, the longest section of The Waste Land, is taken from a
sermon given by Buddha in which he encourages his followers to give up
earthly passion (symbolized by fire) and seek freedom from earthly things.
 A turn away from the earthly things does indeed take place in this section, as
a series of increasingly debased sexual encounters concludes with a river-
song and a religious invocation.
 The section opens with a desolate riverside scene: Rats and garbage
surround the speaker, who is fishing and “musing on the king my brother’s
wreck.”
 The river-song begins in this section, with the refrain from Spenser’s
Prothalamion: “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.”
 An extract from a vulgar soldier’s ballad follows, then a reference back to
Philomela.
 The speaker is then propositioned by Mr. Eugenides, the one-eyed merchant
of Madame Sosostris’s tarot pack. Eugenides invites the speaker to go with
him to a hotel known as a meeting place for homosexual dates.
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
The speaker then proclaims himself to be Tiresias, a figure from classical
mythology who has both male and female features (“Old man with wrinkled
female breasts”) and is blind but can “see” into the future.
Tiresias/the speaker observes a young typist, at home for tea, who awaits her
lover, a dull and slightly arrogant clerk. The woman allows the clerk to have his
way with her, and he leaves victorious. Tiresias, who has “foresuffered all,”
watches the whole thing. After her lover’s departure, the typist thinks only that
she’s glad the encounter is done and over.
A brief interlude begins the river-song in earnest. First, a fisherman’s bar is
described, then a beautiful church interior, then the Thames itself. These are
among the few moments of tranquility in the poem, and they seem to represent
some sort of simpler alternative. The Thames-daughters, borrowed from Spenser’s
poem, chime in with a nonsense chorus (“Weialala leia / Wallala leialala”).
The scene shifts again, to Queen Elizabeth I in an amorous encounter with the
Earl of Leicester. The queen seems unmoved by her lover’s declarations, and she
thinks only of her “people humble people who expect / Nothing.” The section then
comes to an abrupt end with a few lines from St. Augustine’s Confessions and a
vague reference to the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (“burning”).
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Form
This section of The Waste Land is notable for its inclusion of popular
poetic forms, particularly musical ones.
The more plot-driven sections are in Eliot’s usual assortment of
various line lengths, rhymed at random.
“The Fire Sermon,” however, also includes bits of many musical
pieces, including Spenser’s wedding song (which becomes the song of
the Thames-daughters), a soldier’s ballad, a nightingale’s chirps, a song
from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, and a mandolin tune
(which has no words but is echoed in “a clatter and a chatter from
within”).
The use of such “low” forms cuts both ways here: In one sense, it
provides a critical commentary on the episodes described, the cheap
sexual encounters shaped by popular culture (the gramophone, the men’s
hotel). But Eliot also uses these bits and pieces to create high art, and
some of the fragments he uses (the lines from Spenser in particular) are
themselves taken from more exalted forms.
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Form
Another such reference, generating both ironic distance and
proximate parallels, is the inclusion of Elizabeth I: The liaison
between Elizabeth and Leicester is traditionally romanticized, and,
thus, the reference seems to clash with the otherwise sordid nature
of this section.
However, Eliot depicts Elizabeth—and Spenser, for that matter
—as a mere fragment, stripped of noble connotations and made to
represent just one more piece of cultural rubbish.
Again, this is not meant to be a democratizing move but a
nihilistic one: Romance is dead.
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Analysis
The opening two stanzas of this section describe the ultimate “Waste Land”
as Eliot sees it. The wasteland is cold, dry, and barren, covered in garbage.
Unlike the desert, which at least burns with heat, this place is static, save for a
few scurrying rats.
Even the river, normally a symbol of renewal, has been reduced to a “dull
canal.” The ugliness stands in implicit contrast to the “Sweet Thames” of
Spenser’s time.
The most significant image in these lines, though, is the rat. Rats are
scavengers, taking what they can from the refuse of higher-order creatures. The
rat could be said to provide a model for Eliot’s poetic process: Like the rat,
Eliot takes what he can from earlier, grander generations and uses the bits and
pieces to sustain (poetic) life.
Somehow this is preferable to the more coherent but vulgar existence of the
contemporary world, here represented by the sound of horns and motors in the
distance, intimating a sexual liaison.
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Analysis
The actual sexual encounters that take place in this section of the poem
are infinitely unfruitful. Eugenides proposes a homosexual date, which
by its very nature thwarts fertility.
The impossibility of regeneration by such means is symbolized by the
currants in his pocket—the desiccated, deadened version of what were
once plump, fertile fruits.
The typist and her lover are equally barren in their way, even though
reproduction is at least theoretically possible for the two. Living in so
impoverished a manner that she does not even own a bed, the typist is
certainly not interested in a family.
Elizabeth and Leicester are perhaps the most interesting of the three
couples, however. For political reasons, Elizabeth was required to
represent herself as constantly available for marriage (to royalty from
countries with whom England may have wanted an alliance); out of this
need came the myth of the “Virgin Queen.”
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Analysis
This can be read as the opposite of the Fisher King legend.
To protect the vitality of the land, Elizabeth had to compromise
her own sexuality; whereas in the Fisher King story, the renewal
of the land comes with the renewal of the Fisher King’s sexual
potency.
Her tryst with Leicester, therefore, is a consummation that is
simultaneously denied, an event that never happened.
The twisted logic underlying Elizabeth’s public sexuality, or
lack thereof, mirrors and distorts the Fisher King plot and further
questions the possibility for renewal, especially through sexuality,
in the modern world.
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Analysis
Tiresias, thus, becomes an important model for modern
existence. Neither man nor woman, and blind yet able to see with
ultimate clarity, he is an individual who does not hope or act.
Tiresias is held motionless by ennui and pragmatism. He is not
quite able to escape earthly things, though, for he is forced to sit
and watch the sordid deeds of mortals; like the Sibyl in the poem’s
epigraph, he would like to die but cannot.
The brief interlude following the typist’s tryst may offer an
alternative to escape, by describing a warm, everyday scene of
work and companionship; however, the interlude is brief, and Eliot
once again tosses us into a world of sex and strife.
 Section III: “The Fire Sermon”
Analysis
Tiresias disappears, to be replaced by St. Augustine at the end of the section.
Eliot claims in his footnote to have deliberately conflated Augustine and the
Buddha, as the representatives of Eastern and Western asceticism.
Both seem, in the lines Eliot quotes, to be unable to transcend the world on
their own.
Augustine must call on God to “pluck [him] out,” while Buddha can only
repeat the word “burning,” unable to break free of its monotonous fascination.
The poem’s next section, which will relate the story of a death without
resurrection, exposes the absurdity of these two figures’ faith in external higher
powers.
That this section ends with only the single word “burning,” isolated on the
page, reveals the futility of all of man’s struggles.