The "divine voice" of the thunder, as described in The Brihadaranyaka * is continuous in its voicing of the "DA" in sets of 3. Each "DA" in Brihadaranyaka is the root of a command: to "be self controlled (dama),""to [give] (dana)," to be "compassionate (daya)." Similarly, These last few stanzas in Eliot's "What the Thunder Said" are broken up by lines of "DA" witch the Dayadhvam presenting a unique response at the begninng of each. There is semblance between Eliot's Dayadhvan's inquires on to "[give]," "[hear]," and "[respond]" and the three commands of the compassionate Dayadhvan's in The Brihadaranyaka .* Is the voice of the Dayadhvan also the voice of the "divine thunder"? Or is Eliot portraying two seperate entities/calls to action here?

Here, Eliot seems to be referencing Dracula with the mention of "hooded hordes" who I presume to be vampires. In the preceding line, the "murmur[s] of maternal lamentation," signal some mourning of life and yet there simultaneously appears to be some struggle in dealing with expressing this lost. The two words, "murmur" and "[lament]" seem inherently antithetical to one another. "Murmur[s]" silence while "lamentation" is a passionate expression of grief, one that is consuming. This consumption of grief is similar to that consumption of blood, or more generally, life that is the act of being a vampire. The name "Dracula," means son of Dracul, which in Romanian translates to the devil." These "hooded hordes," if truly akin images to vampires, and more accurately, Dracula, are the sons of the devil. There "swarming" presence consumes the air. Thus, the true passionate "high" cries of this "maternal lamentation" are consumed in the presence of "hooded hordes" who's very being is a state of devilish nature and evil.

Similar to Boris, I also saw this section of What the Thunder Said as a commentary on religion, specifically that of Christianity. The transcendence between the living and the dead here immediately made me think of Jesus Christ as a resurrected and reborn body. Boris quotes Jesus from the Book of Revelations stating:

'I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death

While Jesus "[lives] for evermore," those who "were living are now dying." I took particular notice of Eliot's use of the state of living in the past tense of "were." The "we" he references here do not appear to yet be fully dead and yet, Eliot references their existence in the past tense, as if they're caught between two worlds or states of being. Boris saw this first line of "He who was living is now dead" as a reference to Jesus's reincarnation, but in the reverse. A Jesus who never transcended that barrier between that stage between life to death and then to rebirth back to the living. Following this interpretation, the following two lines "We who were living are now dying/With a little patience" can be seen as a drawing out of the mortal life or even the more uncertain stage that exists in the interim of life and death (some form of purgatory?). The "little patience" that plagues those who lived but are still actively "dying" could be a result of the lack of Jesus ever being reborn. In the absence of Jesus returning to life, the dead must remain and the living must continue to live, terminating that cycle we've Eliot emphasize throughout TWL. While I, personally, am not fully committed to this interpretation, I do find it to be an interesting take on Eliot challenging the conventions of religion and how its viewed in the modern world.

This line mirrors that of the first line of Corinthians 10 [1] in which "[all] passed through the sea." The "pass[ing]" occurring in these lines is a kin to that of the passing on or away from life to death. Death by water, or in more succinct words, drowning, is, as Sophie mentioned, a slow process, one that most occur in stages. Here, Eliot writes of "pass[ing" through the stages of "age and youth," potentially implying an inverse of the usual progression of life to death. In starting at an "age[d]" stage and then later graduating to youth. In reading this my mind conjured a parallel image of drowning to then baptism, working backwards or in reverse of the cyclical water-like flow of life. The subsequent line in Corinthians [2] manifests this image of baptism in stating, "and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea." Here, the act of a "[baptism]" seems to be serving as a vessel to heaven as opposed to a vessel for being reborn or purified in the present life. My takeaway here is that Eliot seems to be suggesting that a "death by water" is actually more of a baptism than that of a drowning. Is water, then, the thing that carries us through life to death, or the inverse death to life? Is our youth the true final stage we must "pass" through?

In the Ādittapariyāya Sutta (Pali, "Fire Sermon Discourse”), fire acts as a vessel between the conscious and subconscious minds, fueling human emotion. Here, Eliot is alluding to the Buddha's request to relinquish earthly passion and pursue freedom from earthly things. Here, the narrator appears to be pleading to the lord to "pluck [him] out" while simultaneously following the semblance of musicality seen throughout this section of the poem. As Celina noted, the Buddha invalidates the presence the senses and one’s desire for pleasurable things, deeming them to be the causes of all human suffering. The act of "burning" is a kin to that of destruction. This parallel suggests that in order for new life to be created or saved as implied by the plea here to be "pluck[ed] out," there must be some definitive "decimation of all previous life forms," as noted by Celina. Thus in many ways, fire or more accurately, "burning" is a form of cleansing and rebirth. This is true within the context of Buddhism, but Christianity paints a very different image of the role fire serves. Fire is equated with Hell, rather than that of rebirth. It is interesting to see Eliot play with the two antithetical depictions of the role of fire (at least in a religious sense) and use the dual meanings and interpretations as two sides of human consciousness.

The sexual behavior in this excerpt, though intense, is entirely unfruitful. The women (presumingly?) in this highlighted line, has completely disassociated or even disconnected herself from the "patronising kiss[es],""grop[ing]," that she just endured, taking gratitude "that's done." Furthermore, the lack of awareness of her departed lover suggests that something (or someone) else is occupying her mind. Physically, she is there, but mentally she is couldn't be farther away from this moment. This mental absence parallels the description of the spiders' sexual cannibalistic amours in Gourmont's The Natural Philosophy of Love. In the excerpt, "[the female spider] also is awaiting the male, but her attention is distraught between the coming of the caller and the coming of prey." The dual role of prey and partner here alludes to the ambiguity that is sex as a natural phenomena. Similarly, the blurred lines throughout Eliot's The Fire Sermon make the distinctions between man/woman, lover/predator, conscious/subconsious equally refelctive of that obscure nature.

The River Thames is an infamous setting that's been glorified and admired throughout much of English poetry and literature. However here, in the world of TWL, it appears that the immortalized "Sweet Thames" is being mourned by Eliot. In the preceding line, Eliot mentions "the nymphs [whom have] departed," which is a reference to Edmund Spencer's "Prothalamion." Their departure implies a similar perish of the idyllic spirit of nature outlined by Spencer in "Prothalamion." Furthermore, the line: "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song," feels almost as if it is a plea from Eliot for the river to carry on the spirit of nuptial prosperity and beauty that graced Elizabeth and Katherine. Variations of this line are repeated throughout "The Fire Sermon" as if going from a plea to later begging with desperation in the face of more dismal conditions with "rat[s]," "empty bottles" and "sandwhich papers." In the aftermath of the war and other consequences of the modern world, Eliot's Thames is left in disarray, littered with pollution and truly taking on its name of "The Waste Land"

Patience, as a virtue, and chess go hand in hand. This phrase in TWL stood out to me for a few reasons. It is repeated several times throughout "A Game of Chess," almost as if it is some interjection of the subconscious voice throughout the discourse between Lil and the narrator. The form of this section of TWL is quite evolutional, starting as cohesive stanzas and then breaking apart into into a more irregular pattern and ending in dialogue. The way in which Eliot captures this dialogue is obscure. The placement and all caps of "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME" makes it read as if it's a stage direction or some 3rd voice breaking into the conversation between the two women. Furthermore, this conversation, though occurring between two women, feels like the voice of a man. Much of what they're discussing is rooted in the desires of Albert, emphasizing what "he wants," and what Lil should do before he returns. The anticipation of his return and predicting what he desires I think is semblance to the anticipation within the game of chess. In Hamlet, Ophelia also states, "We must be patient: but i cannot choose but to weep" as if the very act of patience goes against her nature as a womam.

Chess is a game in which you aim to calculate the moves of your oppenent thinking ahead. And yet there is no rush for these. For Lil, some sense of urgency for her to act and change for him is projected: "ITS TIME." The interruptive and repetitive form this line takes on creates the image of a ticking clock in this game of chess.

Lauren similarly noted the shift in senses between "The Burial of the Dead" and "A Game of Chess" going from an emphasis on vision to an emphasis of smell. She noted: "the 'strange synthetic perfumes' permeating the air and 'drown[ing] the sense in odours.' Here, Eliot literally moves from water (drowning) to smell (odors) While perfume typically has a good aroma, "odour" connotes something pungent, as if the unknown "she" that is acting in this stanza is concocting something that releases powerful scents." Similarly, Baudelaire's "A Martyred Women" has an equally sensual experience. The opening images of his poem seem to be dominated by the "perfume" which parallels to the "synthetic perfume" and "odours" in TWL. What connects these to aromatic images is the presence of power. The "burnished throne" is a kin to some positition of superiority or reason for praise when is a central theme in Baudelaire's "A Martyred Women." The difference lies in the fact that in TWL the dominance/presence of this power is "drown[ing]" the sense in odours" as if there is an excess of power. In Baudelaire's focus on dead woman, Eliot's allusion to his work seems to be suggesting that there is an overbearing/whelming stench or. "odour" (in both a literal and metaphorical sense) of death.

In "From Ritual to Romance," Weston references the ancient idea of "the origin of all Life [coming] from Water." This juxtaposition between water as a beholder of life (Weston) and death (Eliot) brought to mind the dual sided nature of tarot cards. Two sides of the same card can each hold unique fates: one akin to death vs one akin to life. The act of tarot reading has an acute association with the divine. Thus, one can not help but to think of the other divine or deity oriented presences we've seen Eliot reference in the larger cyclical message that is The Burial of the Dead . Furthermore, the term horoscope comes from the Greek hōroskopos (hōra ‘time’ + skopos ‘observer’), and is often born out of the energy shifts observed with the shifts in time throughout the year. Weston highlights the connection between the rise and fall of water and it's alignment with the calendar that the practice of tarot reading and horoscope is born out of. Weston writes, "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." All of these connections and references seem to further emphasize Eliot's overarching message of the interconnected nature between life (fertility) vs death, with this cyclical pattern being seemingly carried by the imagery of water.

Similar to Amelie, I also picked up on the distinct parallel imagery between this line in TWL and the 5th Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament: "Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail." But rather the reference in this footnot complementing what Eliot writes in The Burial of the Dead, I think that these two images are quite antithetical to one another. While in TWL, there are "dead trees [giving] no shelter", in the Ecclesiastes the almond trees "flourish." Both are images within the the natural world but there are two very different conditions or states of beings in each respective enviornment. I think that the lack of "shelter" or reprieve that plagues the tree in TWL is a product of lack of fear within a "waste land" environment. The lack of a presence of that higher power seen in Ecclesiastes contributes to why natural like (the cricket) gets "no relief" within the realm of TWL. As Amelie said, Eliot might be suggesting that, "the meaning in human life is predetermined by higher power, and we must be grateful for the life that is laid out in front of us."

This epigraph from Satyricon is an excerpt in which Sibyl of Cumae, an immortal prophet, states. "I want to die." Her desire for death suggests that there is some beautiful gratitude in the finite nature of mortality. Sybil, as an immortal being, has lived for centuries, carrying with her the burden of the knowledge and waste of the age of the world. Thus, death would bring her peace. TWL as a whole captures the essence of this beauty, but The Burial of the Dead specifically highlights this in the comfort that is seen to be found with the changing seasons. Thus, just as Sybil prophesied the future in Satyricon, her quote in the epigraph signifying the beauty that is mortality and decay, foreshadows themes that are to come in the rest of Eliot's poem. Furthermore, this final version of the opening to TWL (and much of the entire poem as a whole) maintains shifts between classical and modern languages, including the Latin and Greek here. In the original opening titled, He Do the Police in Different Voices, the opening quote is from Conrad's Heart of Darkness:“ Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge?" I think that much of the agony and horror that is captured within this quote is reflective of Sybil's lived experience. The greatest consequence of immortality is how superfluous knowledge becomes. What is left for us once we've reached that moment of "complete knowledge"? At that moment you're no longer living but rather just left to "live [life] again". Death is the only that can provide freedom from that purgatory.

As mentioned by Grace, the opening image of Eliot's "The Waste Land" are quite antithetical to what is implied by The Burial of the Dead. Eliot opens the work with the pairing April to "the cruellest month" and then depicting the transitory nature of the coming seasons. In The Golden Bough, the mortal struggle of trying to conceptualize these "changes of the season" is reconciled in acknowledging how "intimately [his own] life is bound up with the life of nature." Thus, the change in season from life to death, desolation to vegetation, mourning to rejoice, opulence to waste, are all mediated by nature. And at the core of life's natural cycle is death. Much of this cyclical pattern that is concurrently emphasized in Eliot's work originates in the ceremonial nature of the recycling and revival of the energy of the life and death of Gods inThe Golden Bough. Thus, the influence Eliot garnered from there prefactory works is directly reflected in the title of his work as it is in many ways a reference to a spiritual decay or cyclical death/revival of the modern world in a post war "waste land"