Part one of this post is the poem, Waste Land Regained. Because the poem includes quite a few obscure references, I have followed the poem with a second part where I offer brief explanatory comments about some of the references included in the poem. You may want to read the explanatory comments before reading the poem.
Prologue: The Cumaean Sibyl
Part One:
Waste Land Regained: A Reaction to T.S. Eliot's Waste Land
by Nancy Castille
I. Prologue: The Cumaean Sibyl
Withered sibyl,
What do you want?
Ti theleis, Sibyllam?
Ti theleis?
I only wish for death, says she.
Apothanein thelo.
Apothanein.
Eternal spirit caged in wrinkled shell.
Sibyl,
Your curse is life.
Darkness and Ignorance,
Persistent and unrelenting,
Surround you.
And your only wish
Is for the silence of death.
Only a vengeful god could have caused such a thing,
Condemned to live forever,
Body aging ceaselessly.
While inside, the spirit still glows with yearning.
So dependent on these short-lived bodies
The Holy Ghost fights its losing battle.
The flower blooms and dies.
Forgotten.
In the distance,
Like stevedores tied to wagons,
Grim shades haul heavy loads,
laden with the magma
Of burning souls
All slouching towards Bethlehem.
When I first saw the Nobodaddy,
Dark puppeteer
He smiled at me out of the darkness,
I did not die,
Nor was I alive.
La ilaha illa Allah.
Nothing but God,
The disease and the cure,
The kind and the wicked,
Sunshine and darkness.
There is nothing but God
There is nothing.
Learn to not want.
For in death there is nothing
To want.
Nothing to want.
As if
Nothing
Existed.
It does not.
If not now, when?
Drowning in the emptiness of the infinite,
A hollow now ripples and radiates,
Pushing the past to the outer edge of time.
Way back then
Back when at least we had love
And desire,
We held the present close.
We do not have that anymore
We only have the empty shell of a ceaseless tomorrow.
II. The Burial of the Dead
This disappointing mound of rotting tubers
Feeding a little life through the winter
And back into spring again
April is the cruelest month
Tubers of longing and desire
Erupting in the damp loam
They would be better off frozen
Desire safer in hibernation
Than exposed to this concupiscent spring.
Chatter of spring
Sprouting cotyledons push their heads up.
Tired souls awaken from wintry sleep,
Feed on a few mouldering tubers,
Trudge onward into wet spring.
Many deaths precede us --
Bones of a mastodon
Stuck in a peat bog,
Right before the lava started to flow.
Gneiss and schist stratify ancient layers.
Poor old mastodon,
He gave it his all.
Terrible lizard,
You lost your last vicious battle,
Your bones now preserved for eternity
In layers of rock
And infinite lifelessness.
This unbearable light
Brings with it
The horror the horror.
Sere dessicated landscape
Where the only place to find shelter
Is in the shadow of a rock.
Walking into the sun all day
The sun is not at your back
It burns bright on your reddened face
Baked like a brick in a fiery furnace
Cracked and hard.
This light that brings warmth
Also brings blindness.
Shriveled sibyl
Walking towards the sun.
Shriveled and desiccated
Sand dripping through the hourglass of infinity,
Onto a beach where the waves do not return
Hot burning sand
where only the spectres of lizards walk.
The sun cauterizes the wounds
Life gashes
Open wounds that do not heal
Skeletons pretend to drink
from empty cups.
At the end of our burning journey
No metaphor arises
to save us
From this heap of broken images
The grasshopper drags itself along
And desire fails
Mourners left behind
While you fade into the dark tunnel of time
And dust returns to the earth
like it used to be.
No use pretending anymore.
III. Ezekiel's Vision
The clouds spin a grey web across the sky.
Grim archetypes dot the starry dome above.
Skull and crossbones
Ixion strung out on a wheel,
Horns of a bull,
Double-headed axe
Thunderhead
Lightning bolt
Ezekiel dreams in the dark night.
Did you see a wheel, Ezekiel?
Way up
In the middle of the air?
Did you see El Shaddai
Rolling up in his spinning chariot?
Way in the middle of the air?
Spherical god
Chariot wheels spinning in every direction,
Whirling spinning sphere
Covered with wings
And eyes
Darting and glaring from the surface
Spinning so fast it is become like stillness.
Four faces shine from the sphere:
Cherub,
Old woman,
Lion,
Eagle.
And what did he say, Ezekiel,
What did you ask fiery Nobodaddy?
When he came a’ridin’?
“I asked him,
‘What do you want of me?’
Then a spirit entered me
And I heard a grim voice thunder.
“Stand up when I speak to you, Son of Man.
Stand on your feet,
See me at the gleaming altar.
I am talking to you.
Come closer
That I may address you directly.
Son of man,
Lurking shades surround you,
Slump-shouldered bunch
Trudge trudge in the crud swamp
Slush squish stomp.
They pay the price
For ignorant consumption
Slovenly discipline
Let themselves be stupid
And mean,
Drive cars drunk,
Take what is not theirs,
Choose anger over compassion,
Think only of themselves,
Small-minded and lazy,
Succumbing to base desires,
Lovers of violence.
Swampdung
Suffocating foul sewer stench.
Son of Man,
There is no way out but in.
Dig a hole
dig a hole.”
And he rides away into the night.
Leaving a dry white earth in his wake.
Skeletons All dressed in white linen
Jangle and trudge
Through a valley of bones
Dem bones dem dry bones
Wind blows everything dry
Dem bones dem bones
Dem dry bones.
IV. A Game of Chess
Empty love weighs on our souls,
We who never find love.
Who find only disappointment,
Denial, betrayal, dead dreams.
Spend our sad time in dull routines,
Hebetudinous pedestrian lives
Lived In dark despair.
You never talk to me
You never talk.
Two scarecrows haunting a dead relationship
Go bump in the night.
Frumpy hausfrau in a dirty apron.
How unlike Cleopatra she is,
Queen of nothing
Plump and pathetic.
Aeneas will leave you Dido.
And you will be left alone
With an asp at your throat,
Surrounded by vials of poison,
Or weeping on the beach at Naxos.
Sing nightingale, sad broken deathsong
Sing nightingale sing
Sing dark earth poem.
G’nite ladies
After this we die
After this we die
Hurry up please, it’s time.
Only the wind is left
The wind that leaves only a whisper.
V. The Fire Sermon
Everything that exists burns in fire,
What we see is on fire
What we hear is on fire
Ashes build around us.
Love created by wanting
By fire
Love burning hope,
Leaving only a thin residue of disappointment.
All of Valhalla burns
The Rhein daughters
No longer submit to empty entreaties
But still foolishly hope that someday true love will arrive.
The nymphs sing, the river overflows with gold.
Rhein daughters
Singing sweet painful strains of yearning
And the desire to be loved
And understood.
O Lord, thou pluckest me out
Despite my burning heart
Thou pluckest me out.
To Carthage I came
Burning, burning.
I am stranded on Montgomery Street
People step over me as I lie on the sidewalk.
I expect nothing from these people.
Shades streaming in the Unreal City.
In the end, it will burn.
The whole damn thing will burn.
Skyscrapers create a wind tunnel.
A spirit blows away in the wind.
Unreal city shuffling shades
Trudge onward in a spiraling circle
Trudge trudge tereu
Chug chug tereu
The Rhein daughters sing
La illaha illa allah
Sirens, Sibyls,
Oracle scream
Trismegistus
Dead three times
Sacred Head now wounded
Poor sad Orpheus
Poor silly little divine man.
Tiresias, aged seer,
Half man, half woman
Dugs drooping though they never gave milk
Old man with dry dugs
Love locked in dry breasts
It is unfair
Unfair
That a suffering man should bear children
Jug jug empty dugs chug chug tereu
Wounded warrior
Wounded bleeding man
Did you kill someone wounded man
Oh yes you did
Gaping wound still bleeding.
Patroclus is dead
Enkidu is dead
The dead cling to our pant legs,
Begging to return
Hope festers
Helplessly hoping.
Eternal recurrence
You live this sad life
over and over again,
Do you want to be born again,
Orpheus Trismegistus?
Do you really want to come back?
Here in Hades, where the dark sun rises,
Odysseus speaks with old Tiresias
Who tells him he has no choice.
Another journey,
Accompanied by this silent icy companion.
Go, wanderer, into the next dark journey.
Go now.
There is a sad man still singing
In the boat rocking in red twilight
Fishermen go broke
And sing sad dry songs
Weilala weilala laia
Walalla la weileala
VI. What the Thunder Said
Da
Damyata
Datta
Dayadhvam
Give
Control yourself
Be compassionate
That is all.
Have you even understood the question yet?
Da da da
Give
Give
Give
Ask “Where are you hurting?
What can I do?”
I only ask for peace,
Replies the wounded queen.
Dayadhvam
Damyata
Mercy
Love
Compassionate love.
You watched your father
Disappear into death’s dungeon.
He still peers at you out of stony darkness;
Glassy nacreous eyes,
Vigilantly watching from the dark stillness.
Desire still burning from beyond the grave
Desire burning in his sad dark face.
Just this once
Give him what he wants.
Shantih
Shantih
Shantih
Peace I give
Dayadhvam
Datta Damyata
Datta Dayadhvam
Part Two: Explanatory Comments
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T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland was published in 1922, not long after the end of WWI and is one of the most famous but hard to understand poems in the English language.
The name is a reference to the Legend of the Holy Grail, the wounded Fisher King and the Wasteland resulting from his wounds - after a long-fought struggle, there is finally redemption of the kingdom
Also a reference to Milton’s Paradise Regained, in which a lonely and long-suffering Christ, after much strife, conflict, and isolation finally overcomes evil
I wrote my work as a way to absorb, integrate, and be one with the very important poem, Eliot’s Wasteland, to bring it forward into our own age and into my own life
Is there a way to make this important poem accessible in our day?
Myths matter. Symbols matter. Powerful images matter.
Question: Is there a way to fully recognize suffering but also rise above it?
Poetic Immersion – responding to the stimulus of the symbols - How can one use a poem as a stimulus for one’s own creativity? – touch it feel it understand it let it live in you
In the dark and stormy winter of 2022 and 2023, after 3 years of the strife and conflict in the world, Covid isolation, environmental disasters, wildfires, rainstorms, floods, disease, aging, political discord, war -- I just felt like I wanted to just let myself drop into the depths and explore the darkness I was feeling. I thought re-reading Eliot’s poem, the Wasteland would be a worthy endeavor, given my mood, and I would try to integrate the lessons therein into a work of my own.
The term “Wasteland” seemed an appropriate reference for the mood I was in and what I wanted to accomplish in reaction to all the troubles and strife in the world and in my life.
The Wasteland is a poem about despair. But there is a whisper of hope in the end. But this hope is not treacly, not formulaic or overdone. Like Eliot, my poem offers no anodyne or panacea, no easy answer, no healing balm. It is an immersion, a letting go, a surrender to the darkness. So in a sense, this is a way of holding the darkness closely, recognizing and accepting it.
P.S. I am not a depressed person. Just so you know. I’m just not afraid of the dark.
Eliot’s masterful and important poem is hard to understand. Dense in complex references. The challenge is how to share this with others.
This is not a reinterpretation or explanation of Eliot’s Wasteland (although I do think it would help others to understand it better). It is a structured reaction.
My poem, too, like Eliot’s, is perhaps a bit hard to understand. So I want to say a few words before I start to help people better understand it. Offer an entry, a way in, into the world of symbols, archetypes and images that I used.
Researched every allusion or reference so that I could read it through and fully understand its meaning
Chose only some images and references to include in my poem. Some images struck me harder than others. I soaked in each image, rolled around in it, let it loose in my consciousness, recorded my reactions and impressions in my poetry notebook
After deep dive into every image and line of the poem, I turned it into a poem and then edited and structured the piece.
One of the most important poets of the 20th century
Want to avoid psychologizing his poem. Tom specifically didn’t want his biography to be done. He had an intentionally impersonal style. It is a work of art, which should stand in its own right, apart from psychoanalysis. However, here’s a few important things about his life.
The arc of his life bends from despair towards healing and reconciliation. This was published in 1922, shortly after the end of WWI, a major and violent human cataclysm, so the Wasteland is from a time of his life when he was experiencing deep despair. He was also often ill and had a tortured and unhappy relationship with a woman he married impetuously.
From a wealthy St. Louis family, Harvard and Oxford educated, Francophile, studied philosophy, banker in international trade, poetry magazine editor, essayist and literary critic, won the Nobel prize in literature in 1948
He was fastidious, formal, guarded and mannerly but did have a playful and boyish side.
Propensity for classical mythology – becoming increasingly popular and studied at that time
Cubism – Henri Bergson – studies of comparative religion - Durkheim
He paved the way for Modernism – freed up the rhythm and conventions of poetic language – symbolist poetry – Baudelaire/Laforgue
Many voices – cacophony of voices – was going to call it “He Do the Police in Different Voices” (?!!)
The Original poem has Five Books plus Epigraph
Epigraph
The Burial of the Dead
A Game of Chess
The Fire Sermon
Death by Water
What the Thunder Said
My poem has six separate parts as well, roughly corresponding to the sections of Eliot’s poem
The Sibyl is a mythical prophetess known throughout the ancient world
She had been condemned to live a long life while her body withered away – powerful image of youth and age colliding– young spirits in old bodies – eternal spirits in mortal bodies
Sibyl, what do you wish? Ti theleis sibyllam? I wish to die, apothanein thelo.
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Sibyl lived a thousand years.
Apollo granted her a wish if she would sleep with him; she took handful of sand - asked to live as many years as grains of sand she held
Later, after she refused the god’s advances, he let her body wither away – because she failed to ask for eternal youth along with a long life
Body grew smaller with age - eventually kept in a jar until only her voice was left.
Sibyl Psychopomp – nekyia
Guide to the underworld, liminal, decrepit figure reduced from glory to impotence
The most famous story is in Virgil’s Aeneid wherein the Cumaean Sibyl accompanies Aeneas into the underworld to consult with his dead father
Nobodaddy
In which I take a cynical stand about God in the face of all this negativity
Reference to an unhelpful god – theodicy – how could a good God allow evil to exist
Reference to William Blake’s figure “Nobodaddy” – mythical god figure in Blake’s poetic mythology who relishes war and slaughter, a god that hides himself in darkness and obscurity
La illaha illa allah
Famous phrase from Islamic faith
No, there is nothing but god – a play on words
is god nothing or is god everything?
Eliot’s poem starts with the famous line “April is the cruellest month”
Gosh, don’t April showers bring May flowers?
Irony in referring to springtime with agitation and regret
Prefers the hibernation and stillness of winter - avoid the trials that accompany the burgeoning life
What I admire is the grim intractable cynicism and negativity of Eliot’s work and the references he chooses. References to Ecclesiastes, Job, Isaiah
Gives us access to the images found in important books of the Hebrew Bible
Beautiful passages describing desperate scenarios
Introduces despairing images, images of dryness and dessication
For example, “Where the only place you can find shelter is in the shadow of a rock.”
Ecclesiastes 12:5 - “when men are old and declining into darkness, fears shall be in the way, and desire shall fail, because man goes to his long home and the mourners go about in the streets”
Isaiah 32:2 – “And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
Eliot’s poem is rich with symbols and archetypes
Eliot was concerned about the loss of meaning in modern life – the loss of contact with powerful and effective symbols
Eliot says: “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images….”
One story that sucked me in was The story of Ezekiel, referenced in Burial of the Dead
I got lost in it and gave it its own section –This describes a dreamlike and visionary experience – the power of imagination and archetypes – symbols that arrive but are unclear in their meaning – oneiric knowledge – dreaming is one of the important functions of the brain
Ezekiel the prophet was also brought to deliver god’s condemnation and judgment
Vision of a visit from God – A stormy wind came out of the north and a great cloud with brightness around it, fire flashing forth. And in the midst of it came four weird living creatures, each with wings and four faces
And beside these creatures, Ezekiel saw wheels around each one – a wheel within a wheel. And when they went they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went. And their rims were tall and awesome and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around.
And above their heads appeared the likeness of a throne bathed in fire. There was the appearance of brightness all around
What does this god say to Ezekiel? Son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak to you.
I send you to nations of rebels who have rebelled against me. They are impudent and stubborn. You must go to them and tell them and warn them of their misdeeds.
Dig a Hole by Woody Guthrie
Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow, Dig a hole in the cold cold ground; Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow, We’re gonna lay you fascists down.
A man clothed in linen appears and rises up into the creatures and wheels – god commands him to take fire from between the whirling wheels
The lyrics are inspired by Ezekiel 37:1–14, in which the prophet Ezekiel visits the Valley of Dry Bones – Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones
Streets of Laredo - I spied a young cowboy dressed in white linen, Dressed in white linen and cold as the clay. – There was something strange about that cowboy.
In response to this complicated chapter of Eliot’s work, I chose to focus on the aspect of empty love and loneliness that is presented
Living a shallow life is like living in a wasteland
Being bitter and disappointed in relationships is another sort of wasteland
Reference to a line repeated in this section “Hurry up please it’s time.”
About the importance of discipline and sacrifice to Eliot
In Eliot’s poems, important images are those of Buddha’s Fire Sermon, Tiresias, St. Augustine and the Rhein daughters
These stories warn against physical urges that prevent one from achieving freedom and a higher life. These stories advocate discipline. Not a romantic word, but a very powerful word.
Burning burning burning burning is an allusion to the Buddhist “ Fire Sermon,”
Buddha preaches about abandoning the fire of lust and other passions that destroy people
Buddha coaxes resisting the things of the body and cultivating detachment from the world
All things are on fire – the fire of passion, the fire of hatred, the fire of infatuation, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery grief and despair
Reference to Augustine’s Confessions Book X in which he renounces his past
To Carthage I came
“To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God.”
“O lord thou pluckest me out.”
Though I am tempted by the material things, I am chosen by god to a higher calling
“And I, though I speak and see this, entangle my steps with these outward beauties; but Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes. For I am taken miserably, and Thou pluckest me out mercifully.”
The Rhein daughters and the image of Valhalla burning
Wagner’s Götterdämerung – nymphs guard a lump of gold in the river – when someone tries to steal it, they warn that only someone who has overcome the lusts of the flesh can hope to possess the gold – the gold is stolen but the Rhein daughters sing with joy of the day it will be returned. Eventually, Siegfried refuses to return the gold and he is murdered. The funeral pyre set by his wife causes a conflagration that destroys all of Valhalla. The Rhein overflows its banks and the Rhein daughters take back their gold.
Weilala weilala laia is the song of the Rhein daughters
Dead clinging to our pant legs is a reference to Dante’s inferno
Patroclus – killed in the Trojan War causing the hero Achilles infinite heartbreak
Enkidu – the wild companion of Gilgamesh who caused great but life-transforming sadness to Gilgamesh when he died
From Thebes – mythological figure assoc. w/ underworld - paradigm blind prophet / psychopomp
Lived an extraordinarily long life – often depicted with staff
Understanding all sides of human condition / androgyny, experience being man and woman
Before blinded, transformed into a woman for many years then was converted back
Tiresias came across two snakes intertwined and copulating, and struck the female snake in anger. On so doing, Tiresias was turned into a woman by the goddess Hera as punishment.
Tiresias spent seven years as a woman and a priestess to Hera, during which time she married, had children, and worked as a prostitute.
At the end of these seven years, Tiresias once again came across the snakes copulating. This time, she struck the male snake and Hera turned her back into a man.
Blinded by Athena because he saw her bathing
Tiresias’ mother, one of Athena’s attendants, begged the goddess to restore the boy’s sight. Athena said she could not do so; however, she did give Tiresias the valuable gift of prophecy and a large staff as compensation for his lost eyesight.
Accompanies Odysseus into the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid and also serves as his adviser in The Odyssey
What do we do in the face of all this despair and emptiness?
There are no easy answers but there is a whisper of hope
Give them peace
Give them peace, those who suffer
Make a gift of peace. Be generous and compassionate. Exercise self control.
The Sanskrit words are taken from chapter five of the Brihadaranyak Upanishad.
Da - Gift
Damyata – to be compassionate
Datta – to give in charity
Dayadhvam – self-control
Eliot was a scholar of Sanskrit and this was a time when there was increased interest in “orientalism”, studying Eastern religions. And expanding the discipline of religious studies – James Frazer, Jane Ellen Harrison, Hilda Doolittle, etc.