Eliot - The Waste Land

[DirtyMartini]

Listening to this on Radio 4 just now. Enjoying it, sort of, but troubled in ways I can't quite articulate.

I feel a creeping sense of inadequacy in that, despite being quite bright, I just don't understand how to begin understanding something like this.

What I'm hearing intrigues me, moves me, occasionally makes me scoff a bit. But I feel - despite knowing this feeling is probably silly - that I don't have a right to judge it in any way because it's so revered and so widely analysed by people who must know better than me. I think it is packed with classical allusions I don't recognise, which is a bad starting point.

And yet, surely it's fair to say that everyone's reaction to poetry is valid, so ... I dunno. Maybe all that it takes to appreciate it is just to read/listen and react honestly? I truly don't know. I would like to "get" it but I feel so baffled by it.

I remember reading the 1st part at school. I like it, it's got energy and balls. I don't understand it all but I don't think it really has to be understood.

I went through a stage of being absolutely OBSESSED with Eliot as a teenager. I felt that I understood them more than anyone else ever could have, that they understood me...

I was reading them in a vacuum I suppose, and with that strange teenaged intensity.

I was devastated when we studied him in my first year at uni and I found out what a fascist pillock he was. Felt betrayed. Got over it when my adorable tutor pointed out that perhaps it was unreasonable to expect poets to be our moral guides etc...

I still love The Waste Land. It just has so much in it. And although packed with classical refs I think it's also important that there are very real voices, working class, women etc in that poem. It speaks to you so directly, you don't have to 'get' all the multilayered allusions to have a strong (and perfectly valid) response.

And yes, alright, I was a fucking weird teenager...

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins" - my favourite line; when I studied it I had the most amazing teacher who prsented an iterprettion of it which was based around that line beng the fundamental key to it; if only I could remember why or how

Obviously I was so excited to remember this I forgot how to type

YANBU. I had to study it at University, in depth, with all the academic support and peer discussion you would expect... and it made no sense whatsoever to me.

The visceral reaction was shrug.

But Prufrock is a good 'un if I remember correctly, "I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled".

I studied Eliot for my Lit degree. Some days loved it (Prufrock, for example); some days thought "Ugh, is it worth it?" :)

I wish I'd heard this on the radio though. Wonder if it's available online...

rainydaze try here

poetry archive

I LOVE The Wasteland and lots of Eliot stuff, especially The Four Quartets, but he is tough. You can buy great copies of The Wasteland with notes explaining the classical references. The Wasteland is fragmented and jam packed with loads of different themes that you can unpack. But, without knowing the background and understanding the allusions, you can still have an emotional response to the poem on the basis that the language and imagery is absolutely gorgeous.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land . . . "

I could read it for hours. Takes me back to undergrad days. Love it.

Thanks very much, ZeroZeroOne!