Myths_in_T.S_Eliot's_the_Wasteland

Submitted by- Yamini Sinha Submitted to- Dr. Praggya M. Singh MAE 301 21st October 2013 Myths in T.S Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ T S Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’ has diverse sources, which he is brings together in a unified form.’ The Wasteland’, which was written as a reaction to World War I is a poem not merely of despair, but of hope and regeneration. It is a call for renewal, for revival of the modern world. The war was a shock to the world; Eliot feared of it becoming barren and thoughtless. That bareness could mean the loss of myth, the loss of unifying theme. While going through this poem we are able to understand Eliot’s use of myths as a device to unite modern society with the ancient world. He wanted to find a literary method which may show the relationship of the present with the past. The problems of mankind are the same, though spaced by time. The solutions tried in the past and which have been proved successful could be tried in the present because the crisis is the same. Eliot, therefore, chose the mythical methods to establish a parallel between the ancient world and the modern world. The comparison and contrast between the myths in the past and the solutions in the modern world bring out the poem’s meaning. Eliot gives his comments on the present on modern world through myths. Eliot was influenced by two important books which threw light on ancient and the modern world, these were Jessie Weston’s ‘From Ritual to Romance’ and James Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’. Eliot alludes to these and many other sources in attempt to suggest the mode of salvation for a war-torn society, a society which may have lost its faith in the myths of earlier days.   Each of the poem’s four sections deal with a separate topic, a separate theme, but the one section perhaps most crucial to acquainting the reader with Eliot’s intentions and perspective is the first, ‘The Burial of the Dead’.  The phrase ‘The Burial of the Dead’ brings to the mind several different associations. Eliot here depicts the stirring of life in the land with the coming of spring. However, in the contemporary waste land of western civilization, we see only a "dead land" filled with "stony rubbish". Here, "the sun beats" mercilessly down, while "the dead tree gives no shelter ... and the dry stone no sound of water." these lines have a reference to the land of Emmaus mentioned in the Bible. The land became barren and dry on account of the idolatry of the dwellers. Prophet Ezekiel told them to worship God and to give up idol worship so that the waste land becomes fertile again. It also recalls various other fertility myths of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece and Western Asia, such as myths of Osiris, Adonis, Tammuz and Attis. ‘The Burial of the Dead’ can also possibly refer to the agricultural practice of planting the dried or dead seed just before spring, so that the seed may germinate and sprout in summer. The title also recalls the Christian burial service in the Church of England’s ‘The Book of Common Prayer’ and hence suggests death. The full title of the funeral service in this Anglican prayer book is ‘The Order for the Burial of the Dead’. It ends with the Priest and mourners throwing a handful of dust into the grave a symbolic reminder of the Church’s control, "Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return." Later in Line 30, we hear an echo of this rite in Tiresias’ utterance: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Tiresias although a mere spectator and not indeed a character is yet the most important personage in the poem. What tiresias sees in fact is the substance of the poem. The story of Tiresias is given by Ovid in Metamorphoses. He lived in the time of King Oedipus in Thebes. Tiresias was cursed and transformed into a woman. He had experiences of life both as a woman and a man. Later on, he was questioned by Zeus and his wife Hera, as to whether man is more passionate than a woman. He declared that woman was more passionate than a man. The goddess Hera cursed him with blindness. Tiresias became blind and prayed to Zeus for mercy, Zeus, however, granted him a vision of prophet and such that could predict things. We see the story of Oedipus, the King of Thebes, who killed his father and married his mother here. For this crime, the god cursed him and his land with virulent epidemic and famine. Tiresias revealed the reason of the epidemic and famine and told that the king was responsible for the great calamity. So the king was advised to offer penance for his inner purification and the removal of the curse from the land. Tiresias belongs to the past and the present. He is a link between the waste land of King Oedipus and the wasteland of modern civilization. The title "Burial of the dead" relates to the poems underlying mythological structure. It recalls the burial of the various fertility gods of different ancient cultures referred to by Jessie Weston and James Frazer in their works. These include the god Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in Greece and Cyprus, Tammuz and Altis in West Asia. Each year the peoples of these regions celebrated the annual cycle of nature’s decay (in autumn and winter) by ritually burying or dismembering a god who they felt personified the fertility of vegetable life. They believed this god died annually and rose again from the dead, as James Frazer describes in The Golden Bough. The ancient Egyptians respected Osiris, as fertility God. He was brutally murdered by his brother Set, but his sister- wife; Isis gathered the bits of his mangled corpse and buried it. Each spring, the ancient Egyptians held that Osiris rose again to life through the kindly action of Osiris’ son, Horus, the sun, and renewed natural life on earth after the long winter months. So did the ancient Cypriots and Greeks honored Adonis, the handsome son of Cinyras, King of Cyprus. Loved by Aphrodite, whom he rejected, Adonis was killed by a wild animal while hunting. From his blood sprang the rose. His untimely death led to the fertility cult of Adonis spreading from Cyprus to Greece in the 5th century BC. His followers believed this God-like youth died every year in winter and returned to life each spring, thus letting new crops grow. This growth of new crops indicated re birth of the vegetation god. In some places the vegetation God was immersed in the river, this reference is made in the section entitled ‘Death by Water’. The pattern of death and birth is continued in the Christian myth the crucification of Christ and his resurrection. A spiritual death is the result of sin and a spiritual regeneration comes through penance and suffering. Eliot connects the story of the Holy Grail with the Fisher King in Section 5 of the poem titled ‘What the Thunder Said ’. According to him the grail was in possession of Fisher king, he was very sensual and sinful and therefore he became sick and his kingdom suffered from drought and famine. According to other legends, the soldiers of the king raped the nuns attached to the chapel of the Holy Grail. As a result of the sin, his kingdom suffered from famine. The king hoped that one day a knight would go to the Chapel Perilous and thereafter he would get well and his land would get fertile. Sir Persifal, the virtuous knight visited the chapel and thereby the curse on the King and on his land was removed. ‘‘The Wasteland’’ of the Fisher King stands for the waste land of the modern world. The sick king stands for the sick humanity and just as the sickness of the king was due to sexual urges in the same way the sickness of the modern men is due to their sexual perversities. Sex has been degraded to an animal passion and not as means of the expression of true love. The modern sick world can be restored to help through penance and recreation of virtue. Thorough the mythical method, the poet connects the modern wasteland with the other waste lands of the ancient times namely the waste land of King Oedipus of Thebes, the waste land of the Fisher King and the Biblical wasteland. The idea behind this pattern is that it is possible to restore the waste land to fertility through the remedies followed by the past, namely repentance and penance. Eliot describes a similar remedy for the modern wasteland through the remedies of St. Augustine and the eastern philosophy of Buddhism and Hinduism. The salvation of the modern world lies in the words uttered “Da Da Da” by ‘The Thunder. Bibliography Bhagawati,Dipshikha,‘Myths in The Wasteland’ [ISSN: 2231-4946] http://www.caesjournals.org/spluploads/IJCAES-BASS-2012-184.pdf Brooks, Cleanth. ‘The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth’. Web: http://ecmd.nju.edu.cn/UploadFile/26/12517/wasteland.doc, Eliot, T.S. ‘The Wasteland’. May, 1998 [Etext #1321]