The Waste Land Part III Notes PDF

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Summary

This is a filled data sheet pointing out and explaining each of the metaphors per line/word used in the third part of the epic poem "The Waste Land"....

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The Waste Land Part III: The Fire Sermon III. THE FIRE SERMON

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The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

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Fire Sermon: sermon given by Buddha- encourages people to stay away from earthly passion, free themselves from the fire of lust Introduces themes of sex and lust throughout the part Continuous mention of water throughout the poem- themes of rebirth and fertility and sexuality ○ Broken: suggests infertility (maybe???) Deiphobe, Sibyl of Cumae, wrote messages on leaves and then scattered them Idea of clutching to bank = struggling for life, drowning, death by water

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

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Brown land- continuation of barren, desolate wasteland image Nymphs- nature divinity in form of beautiful young women “Prothalamion” by Edmund Spenser- nymphs gathering flowers in baskets ○ Flowers represent happy relationship between husband and wife ○ Nymphs departed- happiness in marriage is gone ○ Nymphs referred to as “daughters of the flood”- death by water??

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

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Thames River runs through London- repeated references to London Line from “Prothalamion” by Spenser- real line uses archaic spelling

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

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Rivers associated with fertility and sexuality- scene of sexual rendezvous Testimony- evidence of a sexual rendezvous Testimony- root word comes from Roman custom of men holding testes when swearing oath Silk handkerchief- possible contraceptive barrier? ○ Silk = sex Nymphs departed- again loss of happiness and love and passion

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And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors, Departed, have left no address.

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● By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept,

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[A rat crept softly through the

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Financial and business center in london called the City, directors are bank executives and business managers ○ Mention of London ○ Eliot worked in London bank while writing TWL Tie into themes of mercantilism from part I- Odin, III of wands, etc Lac Leman = name by which Lake Geneva is known in Lausanne, Switzerland, where Eliot finished draft of TWL while undergoing psychiatric treatment for case of the nerves Leman- archaic English word used for lover or paramour ○ Used by James Frazer in The Golden Bough in chapters about Adonis, Attis, and Osiris ■ Adonis- life-death-rebirth deity ■ Attis- castrated, crucified, and then resurrected ■ Osiris- god of afterlife Psalm 137:1-6- “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion” ○ Praying to remember G-d and Jerusalem The Tempest by Shakespeare- Act I scene 2- Ferdinand says “sitting on a bank, weeping again the king my father’s wreck” Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau- Book 4- wrote of a walk along Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) where he would remember his first love Ms. Vulson and sit down and weep Rat=TSE=humanity=decay, isolation, and that rats' alley part ○ Refers to self/humans as rat in The Hollow Men

vegetation Dragging its slimy belly on

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the bank

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While I was fishing in the dull

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canal

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On a winter evening round

○ Many references to rats throughout poem vegetation=The Golden Bough by James Frazier, which was an important inspiration for TWL 2nd line: 1) in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the Congo River=a snake, and also, 2) Anti-Semitism somehow? I don't think so, TSE never expressed any anti-Semitism, but it's possible Thames=river referenced earlier, =London is decaying, which goes along with the whole irrational hatred of London from part 1 TSE and the fisher king can't move ○ From Ritual to Romance by Weston ○ Wagner wrote an opera about the Fisher King called "Parsifal" - it was his last opera; it premiered July 26, 1882, but he gave a private performance for King Ludwig in 1880 ○ Verlaine wrote a poem called "Parsifal" (????) dull canal is a reference to infertility because it is a negative view of water and water is a symbol of fertility ○ references how Europe was a wasteland after WWI. "I" is referring to Tiresias’s voice speaking (probably because later in the poem, it says "I Tiresias", the man/woman/prophet from The Odyssey, and remember the man/woman thing alludes to infertility

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gas is a WWI thing making gas is from Ulysses by James Joyce, the Hades episode ○ Mr. Bloom is talking and a rat interrupts a funeral (rat=TSE=humanity, so maybe humanity is interrupting the world's funeral, meaning humanity is just an interruption in the ongoing death/funeral/BURIAL OF THE DEAD of the world)

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Jean Verdenal, TSE's friend, died in WWI in 1915 []= Tempest Act 1 scene 2- magician summons storm to wreck his brother's ship- Ariel's song to Ferdinand happened in this scene too

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TSE's dad died in 1919 relates to the Tempest thing above

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corpses in no man's land were stripped by other soldiers in WWI Matthew 23:27- whitewashed tombs this refers to the people that Prospero killed (in the Tempest) Buddhism-extinguished sexual passions-infertility. Not that Buddhists are infertile, of course. Argh this poem.

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attic watchtower rats' alley line, WWI trenches

year to year.

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But at my back from time to

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"male interlocutor's response" Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress" lines 21-22- "But at my back I always hear” and also line 185 of TWL Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;"- but this is about industrial machines and stuff in contrast Actaeon finds Diana naked when she was bathing, so she turned him into a stag and his own hunting party killed him Metamorphoses by John Day ○ “Parliament of Bees”- satirical, allegorical play with a court/Parliament of bees, and each bee represents a type of person- Polyprogmus="plush bee"=materialistic

behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother's wreck

And on the king my father's death before him.]

White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat's foot only ,

time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring

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Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the

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spring. O the moon shone bright on

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Mrs. Porter And on her daughter

They wash their feet in soda water

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mentions the story of Acteon and Diana; Acteon, a hunter, saw Diana bathing; the goddess turned him into a stag and he was killed by his own hunting dogs; horns = hunting

Sweeney=TSE poem character who is weird, brutish, and sexually crazy- also refers to Philomel's predicament- also is apparently some sort of negative Irish stereotype Mrs. Porter owned a brothel in Cairo which was well-known among Australian troops - wrote a song about her called "Redwing" ○ frequented by Australian (Stetson hats, Anzac, Galipoli, friend Verdenal) troops Modified version of “Redwing” where soldiers use “feet” as polite wording for something else cheap parody of Luke 7:37-38, when a sinner woman washed Jesus' feet with her hair and tears Grail Legend where children sing while Knight Parsifal is washing his feet

Et, O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole

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French for: “And, o those children's voices, singing in the dome!” this the last line of “Parsifal” (a poem) by Paul Verlaine. Parsifal (knight at the roundtable in Arthurian legend) is the hero of Wagner's opera (July 26, 1882) who returns to the site of the holy grail (he's the only one able to see the holy grail because of his innocence, which is in contrast to the brothel references in the previous lines) and he is distracted by kids singing ○ Parsifal mentioned in JL Weston’s From Ritual to Romance

Twit twit twit

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Talked about in part II: Twits, jugs and tereus are the sounds of the nightingale's songs and John Lyly used a combination of these sounds in Trico's song in his play Campaspe. O rudely forc’d- Talked about in part II: story of Procne and Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses who was raped by King Tereus, turned into nightingale, took revenge- Procne turned into swallow (twit) and Philomela turned into nightingale (jug) and Tereu refers to King Tereus who turned into hawk

Jug jug jug jug jug jug o rudely forc’d.

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Tereu

Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants

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Refers back to line 60 in part 1 of TWL-refers to Charles Baudelaire's poem Les Sept Viellards (The Seven Old Men) "Swarming city, city full of dreams / Where the spector in full daylight accosts the passerby" ● The city is also referring to London with its heavy fog ● Winter noon-relates to line 61 “under the brown fog of a winter dawn” (morning), this line talks about noon, line 220 “at the violet hour, the evening hour that strives” (evening)- all lines relate chronologically/shows passage of time t/o poem ● Also a reference to The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock also by Eliot ● Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant- refers to line 46 of TWL where in his note, Eliot talks about the Phoenician Sailor ● Smyrna was a trading city in Turkey ● Smyrna considered the second Church on Revelation (2nd church to receive a Letter from John) ● ●

Eliot worked in a bank and he said that a merchant came to him with currants in his pocket and asked him to lunch The currants possibly allude to Walt Whitman's poem "These I Singing

C.i.f. London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French

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To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

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Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

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● At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

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Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

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in Spring" from Leaves of Grass in the Calamus section which deals with homosexual love Currants = seedless berries (infertile); have two sexes (1 vine = male, 1 vine = female) Eliot believed C.i.f. meant "carriage and insurance free", but it actually means "cost insurance for freight" - we don’t know if Eliot was mistaken or used it incorrectly on purpose Demotic-slang/vulgar/colloquial Cannon Street Hotel-Next to the London train station in the financial district Metropole-A luxury hotel in Brighton, England. An invitation to stay at the hotel often had sexual implications -the rich often went here for affairs Mr. Eugenides may be suggesting a homosexual affair with the speaker Violet hour- refers to Nighttime/dusk and again, shows passage of time t/o poem TSE at Lloyd's bank, looking up at the clock to see when he can go home Allusion to Purgatorio canto 8: 1-6

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

1. I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

1. Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in

1. Tiresius is most important character -Ovid's The Transformation of Tiresias from Metamorphoses, Book III. lines 316-338 -came upon two snakes copulating one day; when he struck them, he was turned into a woman. Seven years later, he struck two snakes copulating again and was turned back into a man -When Zeus and Hera were arguing about whether men or women received greater pleasure out of sex, Tiresias, having been both woman and man, said that women enjoyed it more. In some versions of the story, Hera was angered by his answer (as she lost the argument with Zeus) and struck him blind. As compensation, Zeus gave him the gift of prophecy and the lifespan of seven men. - Ovid'sThe Story of Pentheus from Metamorphoses book 3 -Odysses went to Hades - Tiresias, who retained his reasoning, gave him advice -Oedipus Rex - King of Thebes - killed his father and married his mother, unknowingly fulfilling a prophesy; gouged his eyes out when he found out -throbbing between two lives: going back between male and female - Robert Louis Stevenson's poem Requiem verses 6-8 which has the lines: Home is sailor, home from the sea And the Hunter home from the hill. -Also an allusion to the Greek poet Sappho who lived on the island of Lesbos and wrote about female-female love -Sappho wrote You Are the Herdsman of the Evening which is about Hespreus, the evening star and how stars guide you home -Women coming home at tea time and for chores; daily routine of human life in london preparing for a male guest

tins. Out of the window Perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the suns last rays, On the divan are piled (at night

-combinations=long underwear -divan=a long low sofa without a back or arms, typically placed against a wall. -dugs=mammary glands=breasts -this relates to when T. told Oedipus about the prophecy

her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest-

I too awaited the expected

No allusions

guest.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire

-In the draft there were fiive stanzas that described the young man carbuncular. He was "a youth of twentyone", a common loiterer, a name dropper, and unambitious. His hair was thick with grease and he flicked his cigarette ashes onto the young lady's floor as he tilted back in his chair. • A man who is carbuncular has sores all over his body, and from these sores pus oozes (caused by cyphillis) • "One bold stare" refers to Odin, the Narse god of all gods who sacrificed his eye for wisdom (from Part I)

• Bradford is a booming industrial/manufacturing city located in Yorkshire, England. It had many nouveaux riche (newly rich - became rich quickly) businessmen who became wealthy during WWI • Silk hats refer to silk-covered top hats - fashion of the wealthy • Titus Salt - helped facilitate booming of the town; he was a humanitarian and set up factories

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence;

• Embedded Shakespearean sonnet (1st line) • Ironic because sonnets are usually about love and this is about a loveless sexual encounter

• Describing a loveless sexual encounter • Ezra Pound edited part of it to make it less vulgar • Snippets of industrialization throughout it -this is in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, but ss's are usually about love and stuff and this one is sort of completely not -propitious=favorable -obviously, this is a loveless sexual encounter-infertility? -Tiresias died in Thebes -walked among the lowest of the dead=from when T was giving advice to O in Hades (the Odyssey) "and walked among the lowest of the dead" (246), which may be an allusion to the Odyssey or the Inferno- Tiresias talks to Odesseus or Dante -EP fixed the last lines to make them less vulgar (it used to say "And at the corner where the table is/Delays only to urinate and spit")

His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit. . .

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.

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Draft originally read “Across her brain one half-formed thought may pass”- corrected by Pound, who circled the word “may” and wrote make up yr. mind you Tiresias if you know know damn well or else you Dont. Line 253: chapter 24 of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield

When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, is-to die.

'This music crept by me

The Tempest, Act 1, scene 2, just before Ariel's song

upon the waters' And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street

O City city, I can sometimes hear

-Strand means "main road" -there's Elizabeth Street, and Queen Victoria Market (or something like that), but no QVS; Eliz's rule was known for how idyllic (think pretty, peaceful nature) it was and Victoria's rule was known for imperialism and industrialization; TSE is combining the two to emphasize the contrast- idyllic vs. modern is a motif in this part of TWL -this somehow relates to the financial district where TSE worked (remember that bank across from St. Mary Woolnoth or whatever) -Wordsworth's poem "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" (1802) -"London" by William Blake

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street. The pleasant whining of a

Vivian gave TSE a mandolin in 1921 and he liked to play it

mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at

-fisher king- wounded king charged with guarding the holy grail; his wound makes him infertile (INFERTILITY) and he's not really that good at his job -Fishmonger's hall- a place where fishmongers hang out

noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold

-MM=church designed by Sir Christopher Wren (architect who rebuilt London after the fire; Wren is bird -> Philomela)- TSE was a rector for this church before it became Catholic -TSE wrote a play, "Choruses From the Rock", to raise money for the church -TSE said that the interior of this church was the best of all CW's churches -it was once proposed to knock the church down to make room for industrialization- the church represents idyllic-ness, so this is another idyllic vs. modern) -it's on Lower Thames Street, and TSE loves talking about the Thames-rivers are supposed to be all pretty and nice, and the Thames is filthy from all the industrialization, so Thames references could also be idyllic vs. modern references)

Inexplicable splendour of

-this is the interior of the Magnus Martyr (specifically explaining the altar) -"The Rock" by Eliot = play to raise money for the Church of England

Ionian white and gold. The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails Wide

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Oil and tar - Thames polluted - biologically dead at one point The barges drift - funeral pyre built for Siegfried? Red sails - parallel the clusters of canvas in the opening of Heart of Darkness - "The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails...