The final lines of Keats’ poem “What the Thrush Said” –“He who saddens/At thought of idleness cannot be idle,/And he's awake who thinks himself asleep” touches on, like many other past sources, a human concern with the senses. In my annotation on the “Fire Sermon Discourse" and Augustine’s confessions, I said that “to unite humanity, we must relinquish that which makes us so, embracing divinity and the word of our gods, though they may present differently across cultures.” taking the common thread between the two schools of thought as a divergence from our human-ness. Unlike these sources, however, Keats almost celebrates one's connection with their senses. Rather than an enforcing of separation (through fire sermons and such), where true spirituality can only be reached by purging oneself of all things that tie them to their humanity, Keats equates one's sense of purpose with emotions, with the lines “He who saddens/At thought of idleness cannot be idle,” suggesting that by existing, by living through one's emotions, that is proof enough of life and connection. Furthermore, he celebrates human knowledge in the lines “O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,/And yet the Evening listens.” In this line Keats finds himself celebrating that which makes us human. Though the speaker “I” doesn’t have all-encompassing knowledge and has not sacrificed themself to the divine, “the Evening listens.” The dual powerlessness and power held by humanity in this moment showcases the human’s place in existence. In a poem harkening the arrival of spring, after “the Winter's wind,” Keats doesn’t ask anything of humanity besides existence, allowing the world to revive itself while we sit and let the seasons change. Instead, taking direct inspiration from Keats in his own “What the Thunder Said,” Eliot places humanity back into a dead waste land, where there “is no water but only rock.” While humanity is passive, though they lack knowledge, they are celebrated with the arrival of spring in Keats’ work. Eliot’s world has no hope of spring, with not a drop of water in sight. Human agency is revoked, and they “can neither stand nor lie nor sit.” This “can” added in this line seems to be at odds with the “He who saddens/At thought of idleness cannot be idle,” of Keats. Though in both cases, there is the sense of inability to be idle. (with the definition of idle being dually “without purpose or effect; pointless” and “avoiding work; lazy). While in Keats’ case, he suggests that, by having emotion, even if lamenting on laziness, one can never truly be “pointless,” Eliot’s humans can never be idle, though perhaps lacking purpose, because they can never avoid the work of escaping or exploring the waste land.

The story of Pheblas in “Death by Water” mirrors that of Ulysses in Tennyson’s poem under the same name. In both stories, the men are drawn to the water, to a life of adventure despite their old age. Ulysses, through all of his experiences is “a part of all that [he has] met,” existing as all prior parts of himself. Furthermore, as he lives his last days, thinking about how little of him there is left, he sees salvation in the “eternal silence” and seeks to follow this like a “sinking star.” The idea of a “sinking star” inverts the typical shooting star – a symbol of hope and wishes. The “sinking star” then becomes a symbol of inevitability. Additionally, in a story connected to the sea in all ways, the “sinking” also acts as a reference to drowning – sinking and dying in the exact place Ulysses yearns to return to. Similarly, in “Death by Water” “Phlebas the Phoenician” (which is a direct reference back to Madame Sosostris’s “drowned Phoenician Sailor”) dies in the water. The lines “As he rose and fell/He passed the stages of his age and youth/Entering the whirlpool” showcase a similar phenomenon to Ulysses, passing through all previous versions to himself. Even his rising and falling harks back to Ulysses’ sinking. The parallel between the two men, who were both once young and handsome, sacrificed to the water that once sustained them is an interesting image.

In these stanzas, Eliot combines the burning of the “Fire Sermon Discourse" with Augustine’s confessions: effectively combining Christianity and Buddhism, and more largely eastern and western thought. “Burning” is a reference to the overwhelming nature of “passion, aversion, delusion, and suffering. The goal of the Buddha is freedom from “attachement” and deliverance of “depravities” (all tied to the humanness of the five senses and the mind), thus freeing them from the state of a “burning” mind, reaching “arahantship.” The repetition of the word “burning,” in this context compiles the preceding stanzas and references, begging for a rest from the overwhelming overextension of information – begging God or the readers for a second of mercy, for a respite from the polluted hellish landscape that defines “The Waste Land.” The lines “O Lord Thou pluckest me out/O Lord Thou pluckest” are a direct quote from Augustine’s confession 10.34.53, where he discusses the temptation of pride, even though God is the one true way. He says that “O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes” to showcase how vision and humanity are products of The Lord’s work, and, thus, humanity owes their creations and beauties to the Lord. In this line, by saying “Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes,” Augustine devalues the visual, instead suggesting that the only things that he must see and follow are the words of God. Similarly, The Blessed One in the Fire Sermon says that “‘The eye, O priests, is on fire…eye-conciousness is on fire,” also giving the sense that our senses (particularly the visual) are unimportant, and the only way to reach true spirituality is to forgo them. These details about vision, or the lack thereof, inexplicably tie these lines all the way back to the speaker of The Waste Land, “Tiresias,” who was blind and had been both male and female, giving him the power of the prophecy. Just like Tiresias, who lived between two ( seen as opposing) sexes, these two ideologies from eastern and western thought differ in ideology. However, the solace from the division is the opposite of our humanity and our vision. To unite humanity, we must relinquish that which makes us so, embracing divinity and the word of our gods, though they may present differently across cultures.

The lines “Unreal City/Under the brown fog of a winter noon” echo the line “Unreal City,/Under the brown fog of a winter dawn” from “The Burial of the Dead.” In the first case, the “Unreal City” is a reference to Baudelaire’s “Swarming City,” contrasting the light and hope of Baudelaire’s Paris and the infested, hopelessness of Eliot’s London. The repetition in these lines in “The Fire Sermon” serves a similar purpose in showcasing the warped, animalistic nature of the overpopulated city. Nestled in between the descriptions of a “rat” and its “slimy belly” along the riverbank and “Mr. Eugenides…luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel,” this description pulls together the elites and the under “belly” of London’s social classes. While some are creeping “through the vegetation,” others are spending “a weekend at the Metropole.” In addition, the only changes made in the second version are the absence of a comma after the “Unreal City” and Eliot changes the “dawn” into “noon,” suggesting a sense of time within the poem – a linear movement between, oftentimes, seemingly unrelated vignettes. The retraction of the comma is also an interesting choice. In removing it, the line “Under the brown fog of a winter dawn” is no longer set off in between commas as a piece of non-essential information. Instead, “Under the brown fog of a winter noon” has been upgraded to an essential description, though it messes with the grammar of the phrase. Without the delineating commas, the lines together become jumbled, without clarity on what exactly is “under the brown fog of a winter noon”

The city of London was founded around the river Thames. Even still, the river runs through the heart of the city, first providing water and nutrients to citizens, and then adapting with the changing industries to allow nautical traffic, making London a major port city, connecting the city to surrounding cities and countries. That being said, in a poem devoted to a “Waste Land” that has overtaken the city – a result of pollution, industrialization, and bombings from The Great War – it would make sense that the central river would be a central character. In “Prothalamion,” Spenser provides a blissful image of the river, showcasing its centrality and a harmonic balance between humans and the natural world (the river itself and the swans). He writes, “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song,” hoping for the moment of serenity to last a little bit longer, though “the bridal day…is not long.” This line is then repeated as the last line of each stanza, describing the weddings and the love between Leda and Jove. Furthermore, Spenser describes the feathers of Jove as “Did never whiter shew,” and that together, “So purely white they were.” Describing Jove as “purely white” interested me, as it defies the tainted nature of his true tale – raping Leda. With this secondary storyline covered up by the glamour of ornate writing and adjectives, I find it interesting that Eliot copies this line exactly in “The Fire Sermon.” At first glance, this repetition suggests a hope for an extended moment of peace – a strangely “sweet” moment in the midst of pollution and an infected riverbed. However, the hidden violence in love between man and woman follows Eliot's pattern to a tee. Furthermore, Eliot makes reference to purity and whiteness in the line “white bodies naked on the low damp ground.” In this case, the subjects described as “white” aren’t inherently sinful, yet their pure nature contrasts starkly with the “low damp” river bed. To this end, Eliot plays with the nature of purity vs. sin and love vs. lust with the ebbing and flowing of the Thames.

When I read the line “Those are pearls that were his eyes” in tonight’s reading, I was shocked. I was immediately taken back to our conversation about Ariel’s character in The Tempest, and the identical line in “The Burial of the Dead,” Furthermore, the difference between the uses of “Those are pearls that were his eyes,” interested me a lot. In “The Burial of the Dead” the line is a parenthetical line in reference to the “drowned Phonecian Sailor” in the tarot card reading by “Madame Sosostris.” Furthermore the full line reads “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!” This is a direct reference to when Ariel sings to Ferdinand, whom they have shipwrecked on Prospero’s island. They sing: “Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that were his eyes: / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange,” lying to Ferdinand that his father died in the shipwreck, leaving him, as the heir to the throne, the new King. This line, full of rhymes and interesting imagery, acts as a spell, with Ariel using his magical rhetoric to convince Ferdinand of an untruth. Thus, the line’s use in “The Burial of the Dead” can be seen as a diversion, with the “Look!” making that all the more convincing. In “A Game of Chess,” the line reads “I remember/Those are pearls that were his eyes.” To which the (a?) speaker responds, “‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’” The reintroduction of this line in this context, perhaps suggests the memory of humanity’s connection to nature, a time when beautiful and rare pearls equated to the beauty and importance of one’s vision. The response, “‘Are you alive, or not?’” confused me, especially after the preceding line, but maybe that will be parsed through during our discussion, or in a further source. Additionally, the placement of this line, in response to the questions “Do/you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember/’Nothing?’” felt really intentional to me. It seemed as if it was testing the reader’s memory; in some way, this quoted speaker is Eliot, reaching out to the audience, asking us if we remember the first use of the line.

The lines “In the midst of perfume flasks, of sequined fabrics / And voluptuous furniture, / Of marble statues, pictures, and perfumed dresses…A headless cadaver pours out, like a river, / On the saturated pillow / Red, living blood, that the linen drinks up / As greedily as a meadow” stuck out to me when reading the references tonight. The inspiration taken from this source, “A Martyred Woman” in Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire, lies not in a central theme, character, or a famous line, but instead the image of an ornate room. “A Martyred Woman” dances around an extravagant room, with “voluptuous furniture” and “marble statues,” finally setting onto the subject, a nude, headless cadaver, posed on the bed: the product of an “unwholesome love.”

The inspired lines of “A Game of Chess” – “glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,/From satin cases poured in rich profusion./In vials of ivory and coloured glass/Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes” etc. – are clearly harking back to the image of luxury provided in “A Martyred Woman.” The difference, however, lies in the subject, or lack thereof: the nude cadaver. Her presence and neck oozing “red, living blood,” is central to the themes of the poem, yet the possessives “her” and “she,” which are continually referenced in the stanza, are undefined. This gives us only one half of the story provided by Baudelaire. We, the readers, know, from reading “A Martyred Woman,” that the ornate room holds secrets and murder, yet, in “A Game of Chess,” we live and read about it with utter ignorance.

Furthermore, the lines “fatal beauty/That nature had bestowed on her” from “A Martyred Woman” also really stood out to me. In a tale of a woman, brutally murdered, but worshiped by a love sick lover, the idea of "nature" “bestow[ing]” this “fatal[ity]” is really interesting.. This idea of “nature” “bestow[ing]” is twofold: it is, as if, instead of her death being the fault of her murderer, it is her “nature”, her existence, that allowed it; or her murder was a “natur[al],” primitive reaction on the part of her obsessed killer. This image of luxury and wealth shrouding blood, obsession, and unhealthy love is really interesting.

The images of the “Unreal City” in "The Waste Land” and the “SWARMING City” and “city full of dreams” in Baudelaire’s “The Seven Old Men” interested me greatly when reading the sources tonight. In Baudelaire’s poem, though the city is “swarming,” it is full of hope and “dreams.” This introduction to the poem provides a sense of beauty within the industrial cityscape. Conversely, perhaps, the “Unreal City,/Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,” shows an image of mundanity; a place which could be a hopeful metropolis, perhaps a new “dawn”, but is stunted under a hazy, suffocating fog. This introduction, rather than filling readers with the sense of wonder attributed to innovation, flips the script, instead showcasing the world in its polluted, barren state.<br /> In the English translation, the word “fourmillante” is translated to mean “swarming,” while it can also mean to be crawling/infested with or pullulate (which is like to breed/sprout rapidly). While these terms are similar in their definition, the word “swarming” is attributed to insects and density; a rather positive and communal way of making reference to newfound overpopulation. To have instead attributed this word to an infestation, would have suggested a sickness or impurity onto the city, juxtaposing the “dreams” that define the city. Interestingly, Eliot’s poem identifies its city more closely to this second, hypothetical translation, stating that “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many/ I had not thought death had undone so many.” This image of “A crowd flow[ing] over London Bridge,” brought back to life suggests an infestation of the undead, a people living on borrowed time, doomed to a smokey, smothered fate. In The Waste Land, Eliot spends his exposition-ing? lines (and title) creating a world of sickness and injury, a polluted world that breeds polluted people (and vice versa).

In this section, I was interested in Eliot’s portrayal of fate, according to the practice of tarot, in conjunction with femininity. He first introduces the practice of tarot as a vessel for one to see their future through the character “Madame Sosostris.” She is known to be the “wisest woman in Europe” as a result of her clairvoyance and fortune telling. However, in the next line, the speaker refers to her practice as with a “wicked pack of cards,” conflicting with, or perhaps evolving, her reputation of wisdom. Through defining her practice, foreseeing the future as “wicked,” the narrator asks a question of his audience: Is it Madame Sosostris or the future that is so “wicked?” Is Madame Sosostris solely a vessel through whom the “wicked” future flows, or is her role as the fortune teller “wicked” for sharing fate?

Interestingly, in Weston’s chapter on symbols, she provides a different story of the use of tarot. She says that “the original use of the 'Tarot' would seem to have been, not to foretell the Future in general, but to predict the rise and fall of the waters which brought fertility to the land.” The notion of bringing “fertility to the land” harks back to the Grail Legend and the fate of the Fisher King, where the health of the king corresponded directly to the health of his land and people. Weston also suggests a conflicting perspective on the female role in the tarot practice. She equates the symbol of “the Cup, or Vase” to “Female, reproductive energy” through Pagan and Christian/Arthurian history and tales. This “female, reproductive energy” is then tied directly to “fertility,” which, in this case, refers to both the people and the land.

Loy further emphasizes this notion in her poem “AT THE DOOR OF THE HOUSE,” in the lines “And the nude woman/Stands for the world.” “The world” provided here is given a double meaning. Firstly referring to the World card in the tarot deck, which in the upright position suggests an end to a cycle, perhaps the life cycle, and new beginnings. Conversely, when placed upside down, The World means a state of incompletion and disconnection. Additionally, “the world” is also in reference to humanity; one’s life does not exist without the nude woman, both in intercourse and in birth. Thus, the presence of “the nude woman” standing in for “the world” provides reference to the cyclical nature of life and a woman’s “fertility.”

Eliot’s connection between femininity and the practice of tarot/fate suggests a conflicting view within the world of The Waste Land, where women are both celebrated for their wisdom and fertility and condemned for their “wicked[ness]” (at least from the speaker). Furthermore, the duality of the woman’s role in fate, as the purveyor (Madame Sosostris)and the creator (fertility/birth), may factor into the representation of women throughout Eliot’s poem, and I want to track how that changes/evolves.

The Greek Orthodox “Burial of the Dead” asks, in the service of the death of an Orthodox member of the laity, “What delight of life continueth unmixed with sorrow?” (pg. 19). In titling the first part of “The Waste Land” the same, Eliot ties his work to demise: whether that be of the land (turning into a Waste Land), the demise of one’s life, or more largely, to the demise of fighting soldiers and innocents in The Great War (also referencing The “Burial of the Dead” on Armistice Day). In Tone 4 of the Greek Orthodox death service, as the Priest lays the dead Christian to rest, he asks “Where is the yearning for the world? Where is the pomp of things temporal? Where the gold and the silver? Where the tumult and rush of servers? All is dust, all is ashes, a shadow” (pg. 21). In death, as suggested by the “modern Christian book of funeral rites” , humans lose the “yearning for the world,” ending finally the cycles between day and night, and the disorderly “tumult” of everyday life. We lose the quintessential chaos and the anguish of pain and heartbreak. At the end of one’s life, they lose “the gold and the silver,” leaving the world with only “a shadow” of their impact on the lives that surrounded them. Eliot’s lines: “Your shadow at morning striding behind you/Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you,” ties the soul and the body to the “shadow” that is left behind (ln, 28-9). The “shadow behind you” acts as a nod to “your” soul and eventual death lagging behind you, in the early days/”morning” of your life. Further, with the shadow behind you, “striding,” the sun’s position is straight ahead, suggesting movement towards enlightenment. Conversely, “the shadow at evening rising to meet you” is the acceptance and joining of soul and body in death, whether or not you are ready. This idea of regret is further explored in the line “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” (ln 30). The “dust” represents all that is left, a world or an existence after (or in the absence of) life. The fear exists two-fold: a singular fear of a life left behind or forgotten, or a larger fear of a world in the wake of destruction (like the war), where all signs of life and civilization turn to dust.

I found Eliot’s choice to change his opening quote from that of Conrad to the story of the Sybil of Cumae to be quite interesting. The first thing that intrigued me was the change in language: going from English, not just to one other language, to multiple languages including Latin and Greek. Immediately, this action inhibits the reader’s understanding of the quote, thus leaving them unprepared and confused for the poem that follows. In his choice of language, Eliot challenges the reader’s dedication to the poem from the very beginning, daring them to carefully translate his prose or admit defeat. Furthermore, the content of each quote varies greatly, changing one’s leading impression of “The Waste Land.” Though many interpretations of the title: “The Waste Land” may suggest a glimmer of hope and revival from a dark and barren time, the quote from the Satyricon does anything but. The story of the Sybil of Cumae’s curse is unthinkable: sitting immortality in a bottle wanting only to die. What is left are her prophecies, tying her directly to the fates and gods, leaving her bones and fragmented soul in between living and death, not ever truly human. Conversely, Conrad’s quote of Mr. Kurtz’s death dedicates itself to the human condition, highlighting how his last moments encapsulated “every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender,” showcasing the failings of a squandered life. Thus completing the cycle of life. Kurtz’s words were “the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper” showing the power of belief within humanity, rather than from the all powerful and all knowing gods. Thus, Eliot’s addition of the quote from the Satyricon is not meant to highlight connection or humanity, but perhaps instead to warn against alienation, and expose the divisions within peoples and individuals that he will discuss in the coming stanzas.

A curse falls upon the adjoining lands of King Labor and King Hurlame when a magic sword delivers a fatal blow. Their lands, which once prospered, became a “waste land,”where “neither corn, nor grass, nor well-nigh no fruit” could grow; a punishment “for that dolorous stroke.” Despite the inciting war between the two kings, “men call it the lands of the two marches,” showing that in death and struggle the “two” sides have been joined into a singular unit “it.” The “Waste Land” doesn’t differentiate between state lines, instead wreaking havoc and death across all sides of “it[s]” plane. Thus, the “waste land,” as it appears in Le Morte D’Arthur, not only represents sterile, post-war destruction, but also a wrong to make right: a unification through strife and suffering. Then unfolds the quest for the Holy Grail, where the hero (in this case Galahad, but also in the stories of Gawain or Perceval) sets out to find an antidote for the suffering of his king, either from sickness, old age, or wounds. The health of the king is tied to the “waste[d]” state of the land, either because of a drought or warfare. Thus, on his journey to “restore” his king, Galahad, or Gawain or Percival, “the task of the hero is that of restoration” of the land as well. With this in mind, Eliot’s poem, titled “The Waste Land” provides a hint of what is to come: a picture of a barren world in the wake of warfare and destruction. What would seem to create distance between ideologies, peoples, and countries, however, levels the playing field, joining the people in what they lack. It is through the story that starts in the state of “The Waste Land” that the layers of destruction and subsequent “restoration” are peeled back and reconfigured, bolstering unification in the real, postwar world. So, does it fall upon the readers, or perhaps the speaker Tiresias, or does Eliot take it upon himself to “resurrect” the “Waste Land”, to unify the individuals into a semblance of community?