Allusions in The Waste Land

Mehedee Hasan M.A (2009-10) Department of English Islamic University, Kushtia mehedee2084@gmail.com

T. S. Eliots The Waste Land, though it has been called one of the major minor poems of the language, is undoubtedly a great landmark in English poetry. Apart from being the most representative document of the modern poetry, it is a severe indictment on modern mechanization. There is also a general disillusionment, characteristic of the post-war cynicism. But the poem is something more than the expression of the slough of despondency of the post-war generation. This poem, as Elizabeth Drew points out, is in many ways the most influential of this century. Obscurity is a common charge on the poem and unintelligibility is, more often than not, its stark and bitter reality. This poem of only 433 lines, as the American critic Edmund Wilson reveals, includes quotations from, allusions to, or imitations of at least 35 different writers as well as several popular songs and introduced in six foreign languages, including Sanskrit. The poem in turn becomes a repository of references and it is suffused with the aura of allusiveness from the inception. At the beginning of the poem itself we have an epigraph in Latin, which is a quotation from a well-known Latin prose work Satyricon by Petronius. Eliot seems to portray the monster of the modern rotten society, after closely observing the monster. Since the Latin epigraph relates to Sibyl, we can possibly expect that the poem may lead us to some prophetic utterance. Here Sibyl is caged and this caged Sibyl refuses to prophecy. She reveals her death-wish. The urge to die, which is the outcome of despair, dominates throughout the poem. The poem ultimately becomes a network of allusions and in the poets own phrase, the poem is in one sense a heap of broken images. There are a number of direct allusions and oblique references. The poem as a whole becomes an amazing amalgam of odd quotations and heterogeneous fragments. That is why, at times his style becomes cryptic and he achieves tremendous economy in the use of words. The title of the opening section, The Burial of the Dead, is archly a mystifying heading. Eliot employs some of the tricks of Byron. The speaker of the poem is not clearly specified. It is not the poet speaking in person, nor a single character. We see the stream of consciousness flowing from one end to the other. Melchiori points out that The Waste Land owes a debt to Ulysses not only from the point of view of general method followed by Eliot, but also on the level of imagery, symbolism and vocabulary. The addition to the allusions, the poet makes an adroit use of parallels, contrasts and paradoxes. The opening line April is the cruelest month comes as a shocking surprise. Generally April suggests spring, the best of seasons, the kindest and pleasantest of seasons for the Europeans. Chaucer, in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describes that April is the merriest month that welcomes the spring, the sweetest of the seasons. Shelley in a tone of enthusiasm utters If winter comes, can spring be far behind? Spring symbolizes regeneration and rebirth. But the opening line in The Waste Land is a deliberate contrast. It falls with incredible force on our mind, like Cyclops hammer stroke. We find that Eliots use of tags or allusions is always double-edged. The opening passage of A Game of Chess presents the renaissance splendour and glory of Cleopatra and at the same time it is a contrast to the meaningless rootless modern megapolitan society. Moreover the pictorial description of the ladys accumulation of perfumes and jewels with a dazzled luxury recalls the parallel scene in Popes The Rape of The Lock. As a matter of fact even the sub-title A Game of Chess is carefully chosen by Eliot from Middletons plays Women Beware Women and A Game at Chess. These are the Jacobean plays of intrigue, seduction and crime. The Fine Sermon introduces Tiresias, the blind sooth-sayer of Thebes. Just as The Ancient Mariner embodies all sorts of fragments from Coleridges wide multifarious knowledge, so the references of the Waste land are a record of Eliots adventurously ranging reading and taste. The main speaker can be all along taken as Tiresias. If the literary meaning is taken, Tiresias the blind man cannot see anything and if what he sees is the poem, then there is nothing in the poem. Such a sweeping inference will be not only negative but disastrous. What Tiresias sees through his spiritual or intuitive eyes matters most. The idea of sacrificial death leading to rebirth is the basis of the poem. The death of Osiris is considered as a sacrificial death, so that it would lead to regeneration, i.e., fertility of the land. Eliot is able to link up the basically Christian idea of original sin with the archetypal idea. The idea of dying into life is in the very heart and centre of Christian religion itself. Crucifixion of Christ is the sacrificial death. What Eliot does is, he transforms religious belief into myth. The basic idea is to achieve the effect of religion without invoking religion. What he employs is poetic exploitation of myths and scriptural references. The section Death by Water is interesting by itself for its theme of mutability. Drowned in this case does not suggest any rebirth. The reason is obvious. There is sinfulness in man and a remote hint at the original sin is given. Instead of resurrection by drowning here is a man experiencing only death. Sosotris prediction Fear death by water is already suggested. Even the dead body is not free from the cycle of change. The possibility of resurrection is suggested by the water. The ways and means of the possibility of achieving this regeneration are suggested in the last section. The last section What the Thunder said is packed with many themesthe journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous and the present decay of modern Europe. Now for the first time after the

consciousness of sinfulness we have a direct reference to the feverish longing of water. This is an improvement over the previous state. The ending lines of the poem are spun around the Sanskrit word Da which is elaborated into Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata. Eliot takes the tags front the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. He could handle these tags front Hindu Upanishads as though they are secular. Eliots handling of Christian quotations is wary, cautious, dexterous and oblique, whereas he directly quotes from the Hindu scriptures with a spirit of detachment and a fascination for the outlandish. The basic story, in spite of its simplicity, is subtle and significant. The closing line of the poem Shantih shantih shantih is profoundly paradoxical. The poem ends in an obvious note of peace which is evidently absent in the wily world. It is ironical to see that the poem closes with the Sanskrit word Shantih, while the opposite of Shantih, i.e., Ashantih, prevails in the cunning and corrupt world. Eliot may think it fit to end the poem in a note of hope or at least with a suggestion of hope in future. It is quite surprising to see such a stormy and turbulent poem closing in terms of peace, which is sadly and badly missing in the modern world. By loading his poem with allusions, he achieves a double purpose. He makes his ideas clear and comprehensible. Simultaneously he achieves compression, so that by using a myth or an image, many ideas and experiences can associate in the readers mind. Eliot possesses like the Metaphysicals a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. Conscious exploitation of tags from other poets is a kind of experience valuable to him. Incorporating references and quotations into the texture of his own poem is a unique gift of Eliot. Thus The Waste Land which is undoubtedly a great poetic achievement besides being a tremendous compression of human history, embodies mainly because of its complex allusiveness. The end is not despair but there is no final resolution. In spite of the dense cloud of difficulty that envelops the poem, the poem has become a literary symbol of social, cultural, spiritual and psychological disintegration of our life, which is in spirit a death-in-life.