At this moment, there is no decision to be [made;
The decision will be made by powers beyond [us
Which now and then emerge. You and I, [Mary,
Are only watchers and waiters: not the [easiest rôle.
(T. S. Eliot – Plays – The Family Reunion)
1 – Introduction
In one of his most famous articles, called The Perfect Critic, T. S. Eliot contests the romantic notion of art as a sequence of powerful feelings recollected in a moment of tranquility[1]. In opposition to the view of literature as a reflection of the artist’s personal sensations, Eliot argues that every poetic experience results “in the production of a new object which is no longer purely personal” (Wood 07). In fact, the author understands that there is not such a thing as an isolated writer, since literature (or any artistic creation) can only be produced through a system of connections established between tradition and the individual talent[2]. According to Eliot’s perception, literature demands a scientific treatment, and it can only be conceived after great labor. In this sense, the whole idea of authorship is no longer the same, for Eliot recognizes the many necessary outer interventions in order for what he calls “good literature” to exist.
Interestingly, The Waste Land, the object of this study, seems to work precisely within this alternative view of authorship, in the sense that the poem suffered a rigorous revision process, which involved the direct participation of other writers as well. For instance, the poem was originally entitled He Do the Police in Different Voices, in reference to Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. It was only after Ezra Pound’s revision that the poem was provided with its well-known title: The Waste Land. In addition, before Pound’s inspection, the poem was much longer, almost twice as long as the published version. Of course, as Williamson observes, “Eliot did not feel that violence had been done to the essential form of the poem; certainly not that it was maimed” (120). Actually, Eliot thanked Pound for shaping and cutting the unnecessary verses of The Waste Land, and that is why he dedicates the poem to Pound – il miglior fabbro.
But it is not only the question of its authorship that makes The Waste Land a singular poem. Eliot’s allusive technique, which again reinforces the role tradition plays in any literary writing, places the reader into a poetic network that sometimes confuses the boundaries between past and present, that is, the limits between ancient and modern times. Bloom points out that “through many literary references, especially to Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Restoration drama, Eliot appropriates a historical tradition toward reformulating the materials in a contemporary way” (40). Still, the poem does not indicate the moments when other works are being referred to. The author really mixes his own words with what had been said in the past, and this makes it difficult for the reader to track down the references being used. This fact leads us to the Notes on The Waste Land – a number of observations Eliot added to the poem with the purpose of clarifying his sources.
The notes on The Waste Land are a very controversial topic, given the discussion whether their publication had been an editorial request only or Eliot’s own decision. Anyway, the point is that these notes have influenced greatly how the poem has been read as a whole. For instance, in the first note Eliot mentions that The Waste Land is deeply based on two main books: Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance and James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Both books deal with vegetation myths and fertilization rites, which undoubtedly are important themes represented in The Waste Land. Many critics have turned their attention to the way Eliot articulates these ceremonies with the fragmentary nature of the modern world. Is it possible to combine ancient rites that searched for a communication between gods and their people with the spread hopelessness of the post-war world? Is there any hope for the “waste land” to be rescued?
These questions surely have to do with the lack of a center for the modern world. Eliot shows that it is a difficult task to recollect what was left after the end of the First World War. As an example, the image of the soldiers who did not have a proper burial ceremony, as is shown in the second section of the poem[3], is a recurrent image in Eliot’s poetic production. However, among the Notes on The Waste Land, there is a particular observation related to Tiresias, the Theban seer. In the author’s view, Tiresias is the central “image” of the poem, uniting all the other characters:
Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a ‘character’, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem (Poems 82).
In the Greek Mythology, Tiresias was a famous clairvoyant, who could foretell the future in spite of being blind. His character is constantly associated with the possibility of transcending the traditional perception of “vision” – Tiresias’ blindness allowed him to overcome the world of appearances, without paying much attention to the external aspects. It is the substance itself that must attract his actions – the truth that is hidden behind superficial looks. In addition, Tiresias can also be understood as a set of different personas stored within the same self, since he had experiences toward both sexes, as described in the Greek myth. But how is it that an “old man with wrinkled dugs” (l. 228) achieves the position of being the only personal identification in The Waste Land? And more than that, what justifies Eliot’s statement in relation to Tiresias and his central role in the poem?
Literary criticism has analyzed Tiresias in The Waste Landthrough different perspectives. Many critics agree with Eliot in his assertion concerning the participation of Tiresias in the poem. Ellmann, for instance, affirms that as “a visionary, he foresees what he has already foresuffered, mixing memory and desire, self and other, man and woman, pollution and catharsis” (264). Williamson, as another example, states that the seer “is the supreme metamorphosis that brings together all the metaphoric transformations and thus is qualified to summarize their experience” (142).
On the other hand, there are those who question even the importance of the discussion about Tiresias unifying or not all the other voices in the poem. Belonging to this group, Graham Hough argues that the attempt to place Tiresias as the central character of The Waste Land “is probably to give the note more weight than it can bear, and in any case, it does little to the purpose” (66). In this sense, since Tiresias is, to a certain extent, a mythological “catch-all,” he would not be an effective center to the poem, for he would only spread new possibilities; different paths for understanding these many varied voices.
Better than just trying to answer whether Tiresias is or not the main character of The Waste Land, this study intends to discuss the implications of having the Theban seer transposed into the modern context. The image of Tiresias in the poem has not been fully exhausted, and it remains an interesting subject for study, due not only to his importance to the poem, but also in relation to the understanding we make out of Eliot’s concept of literary tradition. Moreover, those who consider Tiresias and his participation in The Waste Land are almost always concerned only with questioning Eliot’s note on the clairvoyant. Therefore, there is still room for treating the topic as the main concern of the research.
2 – The Waste Land: “a heap of broken images”
Published in 1922, four years after the end of the First World War, The Waste Land is still considered a landmark for literary studies. Working basically with the European canon, the poem modified the whole conception of poetry as a series of ordered and sequential verses. In Eliot’s own words, poetry can be seen as a “heap of broken images,” that is to say, several fragmented images (dis)organized with the purpose of portraying the typical sensations that represent the post-war world. Fragmentation is more than just a poetic device: it is the subject turned into a formal structure of reproduction, functioning like a mirror. Thoughts that cannot be easily communicated are frequently shown in the poem through the difficulty of establishing contact with the other:
‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay [with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? [Speak. ‘
What are you thinking of? What thinking? [What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. [Think.’ (ll. 111 – 114)
Nevertheless, The Waste Land is not only hopelessness and despair. Throughout the five sections that compose the poem[4], Eliot offers the reader possibilities for renewing the barren land, most of them indicated by the vegetation ceremonies. Together with fragmentary aspects, Eliot presents what we could call a “counterbalance” – expectations for organizing the many dispersive paths of the “waste land.” Opposites are frequently confronted in the poem, and this is why Davidson mentions that The Waste Land can be seen as a mixture of conflicting desires.
According to Davidson, “desire is both caused by the lack of absolutes in human life, the inevitable finitude and change, and causes change in its restless search for something to relieve this lack” (126). In other words, as an attempt to interrupt the despair of a life that does not clarify its guidance, the people of the waste land are led to look for experiences that may allow them to transform this sensation of being paralyzed. This is precisely the idea carried within the epigraph[5]: the Sibyl can no longer endure being condemned to live eternally with a decaying body, and that is why she longs to die. The Burial of the Dead, as death itself, could be seen as a way of renewing the dead land.
However, this desire for absolutes does not solve the question of being part of this fragmented world. In fact, the many possibilities for dealing with this state of confusion end up only “disrupting clarity and stability in favor of change and movement,” since “the desire for stasis brings about change” (Davidson 126). In addition to the great variety of alternatives, which provokes dispersion, the reader is dragged into a world full of conflicting voices that accentuate the fragmentary nature of the poem. From the beginning, the reader finds many voices participating in the events, and that makes it even more difficult to understand Tiresias as the center (if we do agree with Eliot) or the unifying idea in the poem.
Davidson goes on declaring that the experiences in search for clear boundaries described in The Waste Land could be basically divided into two types: the proper and the improper desire. By “proper” and “improper,” the author means the limits between tradition (represented by characters such as Tiresias himself) and modernity (modern London, for example), that is, the way the poem presents the different antithetical images that take part in the narration. Davidson makes it clear that “proper” means not only respectable or correct, but it refers also to “property and the jealous guarding of boundaries” (122). The term “improper” applies to inadequate desires, such as temptation or “improper” sexual desires, which are constantly addressed by Eliot.
Therefore, if fragmentation is the concept that best represents the modern world with its dispersive possibilities (the proper and the improper desire), Tiresias is certainly justified for appearing as he does in The Waste Land. Before moving on with the discussion, it is necessary to reenact the origin of Tiresias’ divinatory powers and his other abilities, as narrated in the Greek mythology and in the book Metamorphosis, by Ovid.
3 – The Blinding of Tiresias: “throbbing between two lives”
As mentioned earlier, Tiresias was a famous Theban seer, who was capable of unfolding the fortune of the land. There are several accounts of Tiresias’ interference over kingdoms and their kings’ business. For instance, inOedipus the King, by Sophocles, Tiresias was the one to tell the origin of all the evil that harmed Thebes and its people. He challenged Oedipus by saying that he was to be blamed for the situation under which the Thebans were living. The king had “accidentally” killed his father and married his own mother, and the only way for redeeming Thebes from Oedipus’ crimes was to ban him from that place. Replacing the decaying king was the only way out for restoring the vitality of the dead land.
There are two main explanations in relation to how Tiresias acquired his final constitution. The first version, which is less common, defends the idea that Tiresias, still in his youth, had seen Athena naked while bathing. Profoundly irritated, acting as if her privacy had been invaded, Athena decided to punish Tiresias, depriving him of his vision. Tiresias had gone beyond the limits of any human being, and when he saw Athena naked, he also deconstructed the hierarchy that exists between men and gods, and this justified his punishment. Yet, later on, after calming down, the goddess managed to make up for his blindness, providing him with the ability to foretell the future.
The second and most spread account of Tiresias’ myth is pretty much connected to his actions while still a young man. This time, Tiresias took notice of two snakes copulating, and just to entertain himself he decided to strike the female snake. After doing so, Tiresias was immediately transformed into a woman. Seven years later, once again Tiresias perceived two snakes copulating, but this time he chose to hit the male snake. After repeating the previous intervention, Tiresias recovered his masculine traits, which allowed him to store relevant experiences associated to both sexes. Some versions of the myth say that Tiresias kept changing his sex back and forth for several years.
By interfering in nature, the man suffers some restrictions. Tiresias is wounded by the division he imposes. The sectioner is sectioned. Tiresias becomes a wise man, learning to live with pain, impotence, and death. Wisdom is the result of moving hopefully amidst gains and losses. Wisdom is cultivated next to patience, waiting for the opportune moment; the calculated delight (Schuler 47; my translation).
In any case, Tiresias became very famous due to his sexual knowledge, being able to answer questions that not even gods dared to think of. In fact, once Zeus and his wife Hera were discussing some issues related to the pleasures of love, and Tiresias was invited to talk of his perception on the matter. The doubt was about who had more pleasure in sex, the man or the woman. Naively, Tiresias said that if the pleasures of sex could be divided into ten parts, the woman would certainly have nine of its parts. In this view, the man would be the effective cause of the woman’s sexual pleasure. Hera got very irritated with Tiresias’ argument, since this was precisely Zeus’ view on the matter too. Hera blinded Tiresias for him to know his lower position. However, Zeus gave Tiresias the gift of prophesying about future events, besides allowing him to live during seven human generations.
Just like in the Christian tradition, knowledge and wisdom are sources of irreconcilable conflicts, representative of a certain attempt to triumph over the human condition. As Schuler affirms, “nobody can advance the territory of the gods without taking any risks. Excessive light blinds. Tiresias, by revealing the secrets of the gods, suffers the consequences of his insolence” (50; my translation). Still, his deficiency concedes him, at the same time, the competence to apprehend the human secrets. His gaze goes beyond the human scope. The entire myth is surrounded by symbolic figures, which remind us of Tiresias’ special skills combined with his corporal peculiarities.
In The Waste Land, Tiresias puts into practice his prior familiarity with sexual desires. By now, it is important to be aware of Eliot’s treatment of the vegetation rites in the poem. To think of the poem as a mixture of proper and improper desires is also to consider a possible salvation for all the waste that composes the modern city. The terms proper and improper presuppose the existence of a possibility for reorganizing the fragments of The Waste Land.
4 – Vegetation Myths/ Fertilization Rites
The first of the Notes on The Waste Land reads as follows:
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance. Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston’s book will elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do. … To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough. … Anyone who is acquainted with these works will recognize in the poem references to vegetation ceremonies (Poems 80).
In other words, Eliot exposes that two important sources he used to write The Waste Land (a modern poem) were precisely books that dealt with ancient fertilization ceremonies. Without rejecting the fragments the author used to write the poem (“these fragments I have shored against my ruins” – l. 430), it is useful to think of The Waste Land as if these rites were signaling an available alternative for purifying the improper desires, for instance. Similarly, since many of the ceremonies analyzed in these two books show that redemption can only be achieved after a redeeming quest, The Waste Land could be read as some sort of reparation for our “sins.” Tiresias is now skilled to “perceive the scene, and foretell the rest” (l. 229) because in the past he had already paid the price of his “crimes.”
Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, probably Eliot’s main reference for The Waste Land, deals with the several elements implicated in the Grail legend, from the “Hero’s Quest” to the secrets attributed to the Holy Grail itself. Bearing in mind the intimate relation between Weston’s book and the figures that reappear in The Waste Land as part of a cinematographic view across the wreckage of contemporary society, it is necessary to examine some of the ritualistic experiences presented in the poem. Eliot reports that there is a certain pattern being repeated, and the transposition of the Grail Quest to the post-war world seems to announce this repeating pattern. The image of Tiresias can be considered in these terms as well:
The characters in The Waste Land, however, are nameless, faceless, isolated, and have no clear idea of themselves. All they have is a sense of loss and a neutral itch, a restless, inchoate desire to recover what has been lost. But in this very minimum of restless aliveness, they repeat the pattern of the Quest. And it is the archetypal Quest pattern, exemplified in the Grail legend, that gives whatever there is to the protagonist’s movement through the poem (Langbaum 231).
The title The Waste Land was suggested, as Eliot explains, by Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, in particular from the beliefs concerning the Fisher King and his influence over the land and its people. Weston observes that the Fisher King is connected to the ritual for preserving the fertility of the land, in which the prosperity of the kingdom is directly associated to the king’s physical strength. Being the human representation of the gods, the king is supposed to be highly strong, otherwise he would be just functioning as an indicator of the weakness that surrounds the reign under his command. Curious is that, according to Weston’s comments, the Fisher King never appears as an intense and healthy character: “… But I would draw attention to the significant fact that in no case is the Fisher King a youthful character; that distinction is reserved for his Healer, and successor” (Weston 112).
The presence of the Fisher King, symbol of decadence followed by the need for replacement, comes together with the possibility for healing the arid land. The sickened king would be replaced by a young knight, responsible for transforming the situation of the decaying kingdom. In The Waste Land, Eliot links the image of the Fisher King to the search for redemption: the necessary substitution for life to be recovered. As he appears in the “waste land,” the Fisher King evokes the transition that has not taken place yet:
Here is the man with three staves,[6] and here [the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this [card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his [back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. (ll. 51 – 55)
In the poem, the arrival of the Fisher King is notified by the Tarot pack of cards, which, according to Jessie Weston’s notes, is also related to the fertilization rites. The author mentions that in the past these cards were emblematic of fertile periods, as a consequence of the alteration of the waters. In fact, The Freeing of the Waters[7] was the only alternative for the soil to be productive again. In The Waste Land, there is a great drought that disturbs the city. The contemporary world needs to release the “waters”, for salvation lies in them – the cure that would finally allow us to cultivate the land.
The Golden Bough, by James Frazer, also talks about the ritualistic experiences described in From Ritual to Romance, as in the case of The Magical Control of Rain[8], which would guarantee the arrival of the waters through a “magic” process. Frazer’s book confirms that in many ancient tribes people used to believe in a certain subjective influence that would anticipate the rain. As an example, the author reminds us of the “rain-makers” – specialists in the art of freeing the waters and putting an end to the drought. Many communities used to resort to the services of the “rain-makers:”
If rain was needed, the wizards danced with pipes full of water in their mouths. The pipes were perforated like the nozzle of a watering-can, and through the holes the rain-maker blew the water towards than part of the sky where clouds hung heaviest. If fine weather was wanted, he mounted the roof of his hut, and with extended arms, blowing with all his might, he beckoned to the clouds to pass by (Frazer 63).
As we can see, by inserting these rituals in the middle of all the struggle portrayed in The Waste Land, Eliot illustrates that the poem cannot be reduced to its “improper side.” The modern city is much more complex than what many critics of The Waste Land have made of it. It is a conflicting territory, “rich with possibility as well as confusion, with salvation as well as loss” (Davidson 131). Here we begin to understand the importance of having the image of Tiresias in the poem. His body actually shows the complexity of Eliot’s perception of the modern city.
5 – Antithetical Images/ Tiresias’ Body
If The Waste Land is neither its proper nor its improper aspects only, but the two concepts combined, a great confusion takes place in the poem. For instance, The Burial of the Dead opens with the reversal of the vegetation myths. While April is described as the “cruellest month of the year, breeding/ lilacs out of the dead land,” winter is the period that “keeps us warm” (ll. 01 – 05). Williamson calls attention to this different use of the vegetation myths in Eliot’s poem: “… the people of the Waste Land are not made happy by the return of spring, of fruitfulness to the soil; they prefer the barrenness of winter or the dead season” (125). This inversion already discloses some of the antithetical images likely to be found in the poem.
In addition, this section also shows death as a possibility. As Southam mentions, the dust reminds man of his mortality (“I will show you fear in a handful of dust” – l. 30), “his beginning and end in matter” (144). Nevertheless, the people of the “waste land” cannot just die, and this fact points to the epigraph selected by Eliot. The Sybil asked Apollo to be capable of living as many years as the number of grains of sand she held in her hands. The problem was that she forgot to ask for eternal youth, so she lived long but with a degraded body. Therefore, the epigraph (taken from Satyricon, by Petronius) draws attention to the desire for dying, as if those who are living were cursed to experience the dryness of the land. The inhabitants are neither living nor dead, but only deadened.
All these paradoxes (the desire for dying together with eternal life; the inversion of the vegetation rites) are definitely well-represented by the image of Tiresias in The Waste Land. First of all, since his understanding reaches both sexes, Tiresias acts as the knowledgeable spectator. He realizes that sex has been reduced to a mechanism for satisfying physical needs only – lust without love. The opening lines of A Game of Chess portray a suffocating atmosphere, in which a perfumed woman is preparing (decorating) the room. As a matter of fact, it is easy to notice the confrontation between sacred (represented by elements such as the candelabra) and profane (jewels, synthetic perfumes) in the poem:
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic [perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid–troubled, [confused
And drowned the sense in odors; stirred by [the air
That freshened from the window, these [ascended
In flattening the prolonged candle flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. (ll. 87 – 92)
From this highly absorbing environment, the second section suddenly shifts to the image of the working class. Two women talking about how another woman should have fixed her bad teeth to please her husband, who had just been released from the army. During their conversation, abortion is mentioned, so the reader can infer that the woman had been with other men while her husband was not present. As Bloom affirms, human relations reduced to “matters of bad teeth, abortion, alcohol and adultery” (43). Although Tiresias is not mentioned in A Game of Chess, this is precisely the improper behavior that he captures. Sex has lost its sacred meaning: people have sexual intercourse and then they just disconnect.
As Ellmann points out, in the third section of The Waste Land “the seer turns into a peeping Tom, the most ambiguous of spectators” (264). Tiresias too “awaited the expected guest” in the past (l. 230), and now he describes the scene being aware that there is a programmatic schedule that for ages lovers have been following. His androgyny allows him to “see” that the couple’s encounter is completely mechanical, guided by steps that he can previously announce. Tiresias too “enacted on this same divan or bed” (l. 244), so even being blind he can grasp the purpose of the whole movement. After having sex with her partner, the woman indifferently puts a record on the gramophone, as if both things were just part of the same meaningless game:
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done, and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone. (ll. 249 – 256)
The same stick Tiresias used in the past to separate the two snakes now functions as a symbol for his knowledge. As an old man and a shaman, Tiresias’ stick now represents his guidance – a support for his standing straight. The blind man who “sees” is the only one to say “I” in the poem. The old man who had also been a woman and who lived for seven human generations seems by this time to hold the perception that the modern world utterly lacks.
6 – The Modern Experience
If we read “parody” as “any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical imitation of another cultural production or practice” (Dentith 9), The Waste Land can be studied as a series of parodic responses to traditional literature. Obviously, in Eliot’s case the term “parody” does not imply any ironic connotation, since the author does not necessarily reject what had been written in the past. In fact, his appropriation of canonical literature is directed to criticize some of the modern values. From considering previous experiences, Eliot points to the idea that “good texts” can be produced through investigating and adapting old literary practices. It is still worth analyzing classic literature, and “reloading” canonical books can be a quite productive experiment. Besides confronting past and present, it also declares what may be a repeating sensation. Therefore, it would be important for modern literature to work with recurrent texts and themes that were part of other literary movements.
According to Walter Benjamin, the crowd certainly was the greatest theme of nineteenth century literature (46). Starting with Poe’s The Man of the Crowd, Benjamin’s analysis provides a panoramic view on how some authors treated the question of walking among an endless mass of people, which culminates in Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. As the author observes, while in Poe the crowd affected greatly the main character’s obsessive behavior (who acts like a maniac), in Baudelaire the urban area has already managed to domesticate the passers-by. Even knowing of its effects, Baudelaire’s characters cannot avoid being attracted to the crowd. This leads to the image of the flaneur – the one who walks around aimlessly.
The crowd is again broached in The Waste Land – this time a twentieth century poem. The final verses of Eliot’s The Burial of the Dead show a crowd of people “flowing over” the London Bridge, and their movement could be easily compared to that of automatons, since they all seem to be paralyzed, waiting for the day to end. In this section, there are two references to Baudelaire’s poems. First, Eliot draws attention to the expression “Unreal city,” from Baudelaire’s The Seven Old Men. Then, as the final line of The Burial of the Dead, the author recalls Baudelaire’s famous line that served as epigraph for Flowers of Evil. Eliot could not address the theme of the crowd without quoting he who dealt so well with the “same” issue:
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet,
Flowed up the hill and down King William [Street
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. (ll. 60 – 69)
(…)
You! hypocrite lecteur!–mon semblable!–[mon frère!” (l. 76)
In The Waste Land, it is a quite difficult task to distinguish who the speaker is throughout the poem. It could even be argued that the speaker changes many times, and that there is not really a central character for the poem. Yet, if Tiresias is taken as the unifying voice of the poem, or its speaker, it is useful to understand his “personage” among the urban images of the “waste land.” As mentioned before, Tiresias is the very spectator, the one who observes and describes what he sees. However, different from the flaneur, the Theban clairvoyant is not satisfied by just being part of the crowd – he has to announce its proper and improper sides. He is transferred to the modern city, but he cannot be passive towards what he perceives. His experience does not let him:
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between [two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that [strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from [sea, (ll. 218 – 221)
7 – What the Thunder Said
In his note in relation to the first part of What the Thunder Said, Eliot observes that there are three topics being described at this point: the decadence of modern eastern Europe; the final events of the passion of the Christ; and, finally, the last stage of the Grail Quest – the arrival to the “Perilous Chapel.” The dangers would serve the purpose of testing the courage of those who dared to enter the chapel. According to Jessie Weston, some versions of the Grail legend narrate that after surpassing the obstacles of the “Perilous Chapel,” the knight would leave the place to find a calm and clean night.
The version of the Grail legend presented in Eliot’s poem seems to follow this direction. The horrors that surround the “Perilous Chapel”, as the example of the “bats with baby faces” (l. 379), anticipate the moment of ease, in which even the cock sings, announcing that a new day is to come. The terrible drought that disturbs the “waste land” ends after the knight leaves the “Perilous Chapel,” giving place to the rain that at last comes. Salvation is seen as a result of a purifying challenge. The knight’s quest in search of the Holy Grail restores the fertility of the land:
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s [home.
It has no windows, and the door swings
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightening. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain (ll. 386 – 394)
The Waste Land closes in a very prophetic tone. The title of the last section refers us to the voice of God, manifested in the form of “The Thunder.” “The Thunder” speaks to gods, men and demons, and even having said exactly the same thing for the three groups, each of the groups understands his line differently. While men thought they should “give alms” (l. 401), demons and gods did not get his reply this way: “be compassionate” (l. 411) and “control yourselves” (l. 418), respectively. As Williamson shows, all these commands had been ignored in the “waste land” (151). A new future could only be considered after solving the corruptions of the present.
8 – Conclusion
T. S. Eliot’s literary production has many times been considered as a sort of “stairway to heaven,” that is, a sequence of works that would be gradually moving towards “paradise.” Many critics argue that, from the early poems to his last writings, Eliot assumed a religious (Christian) tone, as if afterwards he started working on a more transcendental ground. The idea would be to follow Dante’s same trilogy in search of redemption, this time with the aim of representing the modern situation. The Waste Land, dated 1922, would be part of Eliot’s attempt to describe the Inferno, if we agree with this line of reasoning. The representation of a fragmented world that results in a decadent society, full of improper desires that can no longer be controlled.
There is no doubt that Eliot’s works are guided by a progressive movement which leads to a purifying closure (his last writings). However, it would be a simplistic approach to examine The Waste Land as a group of hellish images only, part of the Inferno in the strict sense. As stated before, the “waste land” is a conflicting area, with many antithetical suggestions. Eliot would not simply move from one stage to another (from the Inferno to the Paradise, for instance) without treating their true complexity. Hell is too an appealing place, and maybe that is why the poem presents so many desires (proper and improper) that people need to fulfill.
Since the post-war world is a complex territory, The Waste Land needs complex characters to represent the many possibilities portrayed throughout the five sections of the poem. The “hyacinth girl,” Madame Sosostris, the Phoenician Sailor, Ferdinand Prince of Naples, are all examples of characters trapped into a set of varied directions, from which they cannot escape. In fact, these different directions that the poem presents are also perceived in relation to the way Eliot articulates past and present; tradition and his individual talent. At the same time that the modern London Bridge and its crowd of people are shown, the poem turns attention to Tereus and Philomel – the Greek mythology.
Anyway, what differs Tiresias from the other characters? The clairvoyant could be seen, at least, as an appearance that stores many contradictory notions, achieving an important position in The Waste Land. He is a representative, for instance, of Eliot’s very notion of tradition, for he was taken from his original context and replaced into the modern world, another situation for him to decode. In this sense, Tiresias confirms that the poem, now represented by his own image, is made up of conflicting concepts, and its “improper” elements are always in opposition to “orthodox” symbols – the awaited rain as source of purification, for instance:
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink (ll. 331 – 335)
Every version of the Greek myth concerning Tiresias narrates that his abilities were always the result of his interference over gods’ affairs. After being punished, Tiresias would be provided with some special capacity, as a way of making up for his suffering. This could also be read as a sort of redeeming trajectory: after facing his “corruption,” Tiresias would certainly be guaranteed some special skill. The same idea applies to The Waste Land too, if we observe that the Sanskrit word Shantih repeated in the end of the poem means “peace.” Knowledge may lead to understanding, but it can only be achieved after a purifying quest:
… And his anti-romanticism consisted in putting romantic beliefs into practice. The oppression of the alien world, the withdrawal into the wilderness, the ecstasy of love sharpening the grief of loss: these were afflictions to be cultivated, once they were to be not the opposites of perfect peace, but the very way to attain it (Moody 244).
References
Benjamin, Walter. A modernidade e os seus modernos. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro, 1975.
Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Major Poets – T. S. Eliot. Chelsea: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.
Davidson, Harriet. “Improper desire: reading The Waste Land.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 121 – 31.
Dentith, Simon. Parody. London: Routledge, 2000.
Eliot, T. S. Collected plays. London: Faber and Faber, 1962.
____________. Collected poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1963.
____________. The sacred wood: essays on poetry and criticism. London: Barnes & Noble, 1960.
Ellmann, Maud. “A Sphinx without a Secret.” The Waste Land – T. S. Eliot. Ed. Michael North. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 258 – 274.
Frazer, J. G. The golden bough. New York: Dover, 2002.
Hough, Graham. “Comments and reaction.” T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: a casebook. Ed. Cox, C. B. & Arnold P. Hinchliffe. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 1975. 64 – 68.
Langbaum, Robert. “The walking dead.” The Waste Land: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Michael North. New York: Norton, 2001. 230 – 235.
Moody, David. “A cure for a crisis of civilization?” The Waste Land: reconsiderations and new readings. Ed. Michael North. New York: Norton 2001. 240 – 246.
Schuler, Donaldo. Narciso errante. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1994.
Southam, B. C. A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot. 6th ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1996.
Weston, J. L. From ritual to romance. New York: Dover, 1997.
Williamson, George. A reader’s guide to T. S. Eliot; a poem-by-poem analysis. London: Syracuse, 1998.
[1] Thesis defended by William Wordsworth in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.
[2] Eliot’s article Tradition and the Individual Talent, from his book called The Sacred Wood.
[3] “I think we are in rat’s alley/ Where dead men lost their bones” (ll. 115 – 116).
[4] The Burial of the Dead; A Game of Chess; The Fire Sermon; Death by Water and What the Thunder Said.
[5] The epigraph refers to the Sybil’s desire for dying, given her decaying body.
[6] Eliot associates “the man with three staves” with the Fisher King.
[7] Third section of Weston’s From Ritual to Romance.
[8] Second section of the fifth chapter of Frazer’s The Golden Bough.