The Influence of the contemporaries on T.S Eliot’s The

Waste Land

Introduction :

The Waste Land offers the reader T.S Eliot’s vision about

poetry, art, tradition, 20th society and its need for redemption.

Indeed, this poem thematically introduces the reader to the

trauma and disillusionment of the modern era. The ironic

allusions, the madness of the characters in the poem, and the

difficulties the narrator encounters in his journey illustrates

the climax of 20th century Europe after the First World War and

the difficulty to reach redemption. The Waste Land is also

considered as a sustain of Eliot’s essay “Tradition and The Individual

Talents”. Eliot in his essay asserts that the contemporary poet

contributes to the continuity of a pre-established tradition1.

He asserts that the contemporary poet is understood and evaluated

in contrast with the dead poets: “No poet, no artist of any art,

1T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the individual talents, Selected Essays 1917-1932( New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932) p.05.

has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his

appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead

poets and artists.”2 Accordingly, Eliot explicitly accepts the

influence of the literary tradition in his poetry. This strong

established relation with the literary tradition can be

illustrated from The Waste Land since it clearly makes reference

to the past literary tradition by alluding and quoting to such

figures like: Dante, Chaucer, Wagner, Shakespeare, Spenser,

Andrew Marvel and others. Obviously, Eliot admits that there are

a handful of influences on his most formative period as a poet.

For this main reason, The Waste Land has been the subject study

of numerous research projects that study the relationships

between Eliot and his predecessors. Eliot’s recurrent allusions

and references to the literary tradition are significant in terms

of providing excellent ground opportunities to study the

different influences his writing displays.

Yet, while some of Eliot’s allusions and literary writing

techniques do evoke the influence of the literary tradition, some

other significant passages, rather show the presence of a

2Ibid.p.04

contemporary influence on him. Indeed, Eliot explicitly

acknowledges the influence of some of those contemporaries, like

Baudelaire, who he singles out as the poet who taught him to

write in his: “…own language, of the more sordid aspects of the

modern metropolis”3, or that of the Imagists who he describes as:

“the point de repère usually and conventionally taken, as the

starting-point of modern poetry”4. The 20TH century visual arts

represent another noticeable contemporary influence on Eliot. One

may cite Jewel Spears Brooker who links the fragmentation of

Eliot’s poetry to the Cubist perspectivism :“The proliferation

of perspectives obvious in Cubism is also basic in Eliot’s

poetry. As in “preludes”, Eliot simply juxtaposes slices or

fragments of city life”5.Martin Scofield on his part,

pointes to the influence of Imagism on Eliot’s poetry

stating that: 3 T.S Eliot, “What Dante means to me”, To Criticize the Critic, and Other Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965) p.126.

4 Atif Faddul , A Comparative Study of the Poetics of T.S. Eliot and Adunis (Ann Arbor: U Microfilms International, 1997) p.20

5 Jewel Spears, and Joseph Bentley, Reading The Waste Land Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation (Amherst: U of Massachusetts, 1990)p.31.

something of the Imagist clarity andconcentration can be seen in Eliot’s first twovolumes and in the Waste Land ( accentuated byPound’s revisions).In the 1917 volume singleconcentrated images stay in the mind (‘I havemeasured out my life with coffee spoons’ ), andthe description .

This thesis focuses on the interactions between Eliot’s poem

The Waste land and his contemporaries, as it tries to prove that,

though Eliot is influenced from some of his contemporaries, his

borrowing does not represent a merely slavish imitation, but

rather stands as a creative process of transformation and an

efficient way to prove Eliot’s originality. Thus, this

dissertation tries to prove that, despite the established

similarities between Eliot’s poetry and that of his

contemporaries, Eliot asserts his originality by departing in

many ways from his contemporary influences and proves to be an

original non slavish imitator.

Theoretically, this work is backed up by the implementation

of New Criticism approach and Harold Bloom’s theory of poetic

influence. New Criticism will guide us to analyze the text of The

Waste Land with no regards to neither historical nor biographical

concerns. Via the use of close reading, our main concern will be

the text and its different established connections between its

formal aspects. Thus, New criticism will bring us with an

adequate perspective to analyze the textual elements of The Waste

Land objectively, in order to detect devices and techniques that

illustrate the influence of the movements studied in this work as

well as Eliot’s originality. Harold Bloom’s theory of influence

will provide us with the required theoretical framework that

explains the concept of influence, since it shows the different

possibilities by which a poet can be influenced by another poet

without losing his originality. In his book The anxiety of

influence , Bloom explains the concept of influence in terms of

anxiety and misprision. Bloom argues that poets are in a

constant struggle against the influence of their predecessors

who exercise upon them anxiety and misprision. According to

Bloom, only strong poets are able to escape from total misprision

and anxiety of their predecessors. Bloom introduces in his theory

six different ratios by which a poet is able to assert his

originality. In this present work, we will make use of those

different ratios to explain Eliot’s reaction to some of the

contemporary influences and to show how he is able to free

himself from their misprision.

This study exemplifies Eliot’s contemporary literary epoch

via three artistic and literary movements, mainly: French

Symbolism, Imagism, and Cubism. The choice of those artistic and

literary movements is based on the above cited review of

literature which already proves the influence of those three

schools on Eliot’s poetry. Thus, this thesis confirms the

influence of the contemporaries, yet, it concentrates on Eliot’s

originality.

This dissertation is divided into three chapters. Each

chapter is devoted to the study of one movement in relation to

Eliot’s The Waste land. The first chapter establishes the

relationship between Eliot’s poetry and the French Symbolist

movement, as represented by Charles Baudelaire. While both poets

react against the attitude of the Romantics in idealizing nature,

Eliot, as much as Baudelaire, presents nature as evil and

attempts to create beauty from the ugliness and the chaos of the

city. Despite existing similarities between the two poets,

asserting a contemporary influence on Eliot, this chapter

attempts to highlight some differences to bring evidence to

Eliot’s originality.

The second chapter explores the presence of the Imagists

tenets in The Waste Land and Eliot deliberate departure from

some of their principles. By a close analysis of selected

passages from The Waste Land, shows the poet’s individual

talent , despite his borrowing from the movement under study.

The last chapter of this work concentrates on the study of

Eliot’s The Waste Land, in relation to Cubism. In contrast to

other Cubist writers who show a structural organization in

introducing perspectives in their text, Eliot’s scattered and

simultaneous apparition of voices and perspectives and his use of

papier collé of Synthetic Cubism maybe regarded as Eliot’s trait

of originality.

Chapter one

French Symbolism

This chapter aims at studying the influence of French

Symbolism on Eliot’s poetry, by exploring the relationship

between Eliot’s The Waste Land and Charles Baudelaire’s The

Flowers of Evil. The choice of Baudelaire as a vintage poet to

seek after symbolist’s literary qualities can be justified by

three main reasons. The first is linked to the fact that literary

history considers Baudelaire as the main pioneer of French

Symbolism for the significant qualities his poetry holds. The

second justification is based on the fact that significant

passages in The Waste Land, directly quote extracts from

Baudelaire’s poems. The last, but not least reason mainly lies in

Eliot’s explicit acknowledgment to Baudelaire, as the poet who

taught him to write in his: “…own language, of the more sordid

aspects of the modern metropolis, of the possibility of fusion

between the sordidly realistic and the phantasmagoric”6. While

Baudelaire’s influence on Eliot is explicitly acknowledged in

6 T.S. Eliot, “What Dante Means To Me”, To criticize the Critic and Other Writings (New York: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.) p.126.

“What Dante Means To Me,” in this chapter, an attempt is made to

indebt this claim by referring to significant relationship

between Eliot‘s The Waste Land and Baudelaire’s The Flowers of

Evil. The important element which will be taken into

consideration in this work, is that both writers reject the

Romantic representation of nature as an ideal. Eliot clearly

asserts that he learned from Baudelaire how to reject nature as

an element of beauty, and to accept the city with its sordidness

and ugliness as a major interest in his poetry. This chapter sets

then to examine unfertile nature and the poetry of the city in

The Waste Land , as traits of Baudelaire’s influence on Eliot,

besides being elements which show Eliot’s rejection of

Romanticism. This does not mean that Eliot is a blind imitator.

Indeed, Eliot’s departure from Baudelaire can be noticed from his

religious sensibility. In his search for relief, Eliot suggests

redemption throughout religion, while Baudelaire adopts nihilism

through death and blasphemy. At this point of our study, this

chapter attempts to highlight Eliot’s originality and to depict

him as a non slavish imitator applying to Harold Bloom’s theory

of influence.

I.The representation of nature:

1. The Romantic Idealization of Nature :

Romanticism saw a shift from faith in reason to faith in

senses, feelings, and imagination. This shift knew a great

interest in the rural and the natural world. Overall, romantics

quite exhibited an obvious tendency to be attracted by nature,

and this is relevant in the very typical traits of their poetry.

Among many other romantics, Wordsworth considers nature as an

ideal. A close reading of the following passage from “Tintern

Abbey” best illustrates this claim:

Five years have past; fivesummers, with the length Of five long winters! and again Ihear These waters, rolling from theirmountain-springs With a sweet inland murmur.—Onceagain Do I behold these steep and loftycliffs, Which on a wild secluded sceneimpress Thoughts of more deep seclusion;and connect The landscape with the quiet ofthe sky. The day is come when I again

repose Here, under this dark sycamore,and view These plots of cottage-ground,these orchard-tufts, Which, at this season, with theirunripe fruits,

7

This passage exemplifies the romantic harmony between man

and nature. Indeed, the speaker presents nature as an element of

elevation and serenity. He declares that after five years of

waiting, he is able to hear again the sweet murmuring waters of

the river. The “steep and lofty cliffs” impress upon him as he

7 William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abey,” Favorite Poems (New York: Dover Publications, 1992) p.21.

describes them to connect all the setting to the sky. The speaker

takes a serene rest under a tree which fruit are still unripe.

Further in the poem, the speaker describes how these “beauteous

forms” have worked upon him when he was alone, or in crowded

cities, proving him with “sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood,

and felt along the heart.” The description as a whole, evokes a

strong positive connection and harmony between man and nature.

2. Baudelaire’s Representation of Nature as Evil:

Unlike the Romantics, Baudelaire’s relation to nature is one

of antagonism and rejection. While the Romantics idealize nature,

Baudelaire sees it as a source of pain and evil:

We can see at once that natures teaches nothingor nearly nothing; inOther words, it compels man to sleep, drink, eatand to protect himself as best he can against theinclemencies of the weather. It is nature toothat drives man to kill his fellow-man, to eathim, to imprison and torture him… we see thatnature can do nothing but counsel crime.8

Unlike the romantics, Baudelaire neither views nature as an

ideal of beauty, nor of

8 Charles Baudelaire, “In Praise of Make-Up", The Painter of Modern Life. Trans. P. E. Charvet. (London : Penguin Books, 2010) p.35.

goodness. For him, nature rather expresses the horror of

reality .Accordingly, nature in Baudelaire’s poetry only appears

as a mere reflection of depression, despair, or spleen. To better

understand Baudelaire’s representation of nature, it is necessary

to consider the way he makes use of elements of nature, such as,

the sun and the sea to suggest the individual unhappy conditions

of life.

In "The harmony of Evening,” the sun is associated to blood,

standing as an image of death: " The sun is drowning in its dark,

congealing blood”9. In “De Profundis Clamavi," the image of the

sun reappears as a source of darkness, bringing no warmth, but

only icy coldness:

For six months stands a sun with heatless beams,The other months are spent in total night;It is a polar land to human sight—No greenery, no trees, no running streams!But there is not a horror to surpassThe cruelty of that blank sun’s cold glass,And that long night, that Chaos come again!;

(Baudelaire 83)

In “AutumnSong,” winter’s natural landscape is mingled with

the idea of death, hate and horror, while the sun is once more

associated to icy coldness:9Charles Baudelaire, "The harmony of Evening ,”The Flowers of Evil. Trans. James McGowan ( New York : Oxford University Press, 1998) p.103.

All winter comes into my being: wrath,Hate, chills and horror, forced and plodding

work,And like the sun in polar undergroundMy heart will be a red and frozen block.

(Baudelaire 116)

The other principal element of nature in Baudelaire’s poetry

is the sea. “Moesta et Errabunda" contrasts the “filthy sea" of

the city with “some other sea, where “splendour might/ Burst blue

and clear,"(Baudelaire 124). “The Cracked Bell” gives us the

image of a wounded man “Beside a bloody pool, stacked with the

dead,"(Baudelaire 133), and "The Fountain of Blood" describes the

blood of the poet's heart flowing in waves “As if it were a

fountain’s pulsing sobs”(Baudelaire 201), coloring nature red :

“staining nature its flamboyant red.” (Baudelaire 201). When

nature is not covered with ice, it is covered with blood.

After a close reading of different passages from The Flowers

of Evil, we may state that nature in Baudelaire’s poetry stands

for death, despair and evil.

3. Eliot’s Representation of Nature as Evil:

Like in Baudelaire’s poems, Eliot’s representation of nature

is chaotic, ugly and dirty. The close reading of different passages from

The Waste Land illustrates this claim. Indeed, the very first

lines of the poem evoke infertile images of “dull roots”,

“forgetful snow” and “dried tubers” that convey a chaotic natural

landscape. Further down in the poem, the reader is exposed to

“stony rubbish,” “dead trees,” and “dry land”:

What are the roots that clutch, what branchesgrow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket

no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water10

The sun, in the above passage is used to convey a dry

chaotic natural setting where “dead tree” is unable to grow. The

speaker ironically questions the kind of branches that may grow

“out of this stony rubbish”. The description of a dry stone which

brings no sound of water reinforces the idea of a dry setting

under the beating of the sun. In presenting the natural chaotic

landscape, Eliot makes use of the sun as an element of dryness

10T.S Eliot, The Waste land , Collected poems 1909-1962 (London: Faber Paperbacks, 1963) p.63.

and infertility to show his rejection of nature as an ideal.

Like Baudelaire, Eliot makes use of the sun to convey the idea

that nature is evil.

If the sun brings no life, the river in Eliot’s poetry is

dirty. Eliot makes use of a same image of dirty water as

Baudelaire does in his poems. While Baudelaire evokes “"filthy

sea”11in “Moesta et Errabunda", Eliot depicts the Thames River as

follows: “The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf/Clutch and sink into the

wet bank. The wind /Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.” (Eliot

70). In this passage, the image of leaf into the wet bank evokes the idea of polluted

water, dead nature and infertility. The land is as filthy as water, since it looks brown

according to the speaker’s words. The speaker describes the Thames River as littered

with “empty bottles, sandwich papers,/Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette

ends/”Or other testimony of summer night.” (Eliot 70). In further verses, when the

speaker is fishing in the canal, he describes the setting focusing on: “White bodies

naked on the low damp ground/And bones cast in a little low dry garret, /Rattled by

the rat's foot only, year to year.”(Eliot 70). Here, the image conveyed about the

canal is not only polluted but gore like. While the Romantics consider nature as a

11 Charles Baudelaire, “ Moesta et Errabunda ", The painter of modern. Trans. P. E. Charvet (London : Penguin Books, 2010) p.124

source of inspiration and serenity, the image of the canal in Eliot’s poem is mere

decomposition and degradation. The Thames River as well as its land are polluted. Eliot

makes use of the same elements as Baudelaire, to convey his rejection of nature as an

ideal, and these are, sun and filthy water.

II.The Representation of the city

1. The Romantic Idealization of the City:

If the Romantics perceive nature as an ideal, they may also

depict the city as a harmonious element with the natural

landscape. A close reading of Wordsworth poem “Composed Upon

Westminster Bridge” best illustrates this claim. The speaker’s

description of the city as part of a natural landscape fully

expresses a sense of exaltation:

This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.12

This poem also describes the city as if it were a person,

since we are told that it is wearing the beauty of the morning.

12 William Wordsworth, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”, Favorite Poems (New York : Dover Publications,1992) p.39.

The speaker suggests that his quiet state of mind is inspired by

the quietness of the city state, which evokes a complete harmony

with nature:

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!13

2. Baudelaire’s Representation of the City:

The anti-romantic attitude of Baudelaire is not only felt

when he depicts the evil side of nature, but is also relevant

through the spleen of the city. Like nature, the city is a source

of evil and disappointment. In “Dusk", the City twilight is

presented as the criminal’s friend, as it provides man with

complicity to commit crime, while human beings undergo changes

to get transformed into wild beasts : " Sweet evening comes,

friend of the criminal, / Like an accomplice with a light

footfall; /…/ And man turns beast within his restless room. "

(Baudelaire 554).  The negative image of the city is also conveyed

through the way prostitution invites itself in the streets:  “Old

Prostitution blazes in the streets;/She opens out her nest-of-

13William Wordsworth, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”, Favorite Poems (New York : Dover Publications,1992) p.39.

ants retreat;/Everywhere she clears the secret

routes,”(Baudelaire 554).

The city is also a place of strangeness and alienation. In

"The Swan”, the speaker laments the destruction of the old

Paris : " As I was walking through the modern Carrousel./The old

Paris is gone(the form a city takes/More quickly shifts, alas,

than does the mortal heart)”(Baudelaire 154) . All Baudelaire

sees is the chaos of the city's rebuilding. Feelings of

alienation and strangeness are expressed since the image of the

swan out of captivity is comparable to the situation of the

speaker who does not recognize Paris : “ I think of my great

swan, his gestures pained and mad, /Like other exiles, both

ridiculous and sublime,”(Baudelaire 154) . Like the swan, Paris

has become a strange place to the narrator. From dirt, crime and

loneliness, Baudelaire is able to create beautiful poetry.

3. Eliot’s Representation of the City:

Like Baudelaire, Eliot paints the city life in his poetry to

describe the hostile condition man in the modern world. In his

essay “What Dante Means To Me”, Eliot explains that Baudelaire

taught him that sordid landscape of the city could be the

material for poetry.14In “The Burial of The Dead”, Eliot clearly

alludes to Baudelaire’s “Les Sept Vielliards” when he depicts

London:

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. (

Eliot 65)

The line “unreal city” refers back to the opening lines of

Charles Baudelaire’s poem “The Seven Old Men”. In this poem,

Baudelaire describes the city as a “City of swarming, city full

of dreams/ Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller’s

sleeve!”(Baudelaire 154). Just like Baudelaire, Eliot describes

an “unreal city” to evoke strangeness and alienation. Eliot’s

city is associated to Dante’s inferno. While in Dante’s

“Inferno”, crowds of people are described in circles of hell, in

The waste land, people are flowing over London Bridge and are

compared to ghosts, since the speaker wonders how: “death had

14 T.S.Eliot, “What Dante Means To Me”, To criticize the Critic and Other Writings (New York: University of Nebraska Press, 1992) p.126.

undone so many” (Eliot 65).The resulting effect is a nightmare

where London is haunted by people in a state of in-betweens.

The strange and unreal aspect of the city is further

accentuated by Eliot’s incorporation of the name of real places

to his unreal city. By mixing imagination and reality, Eliot

reinforces the atmosphere of strangeness in London. Indeed, when

the speaker mentions the name of King William Street, He notices

how a church bell from St Mary Woolnoth church lets out a “dead

sound on the final stroke of nine”(Eliot 65) . A sordid

atmosphere of strangeness and unreality is evoked by associating

St Mary Woolnoth Church to death. Thus, like Baudelaire’s Paris,

Eliot’s London is described as a sordid unreal place filled with

strangeness and alienation. Another example that shows Eliot’s

presentation of the city as a hostile strange place is the way he

compares London to ancient cities, like Jerusalem or Athens:

What is the city over the mountainsCracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal (Eliot 77)

In this passage, Eliot describes falling towers and

associates London to Jerusalem, Athens Alexandria, and Vienna to

create a similar feeling of alienation invading the city of

London. Like Athens and Alexandria, London becomes a strange

place to the narrator. The last line “unreal”, which once more

alludes to Baudelaire’s poem, highlights the common shared point

between all the mentioned cities, and fills the reader with a

sense of despair.

The close reading of the selected passages from The Waste

Land shows Eliot’s borrowing from Baudelaire’s Parisian scenes

for his depiction of London as an unreal strange place. Like

Baudelaire, Eliot uses the material of the city to create

evocative poetry.

III.Baudelaire’s Nihilism VS Eliot’s Religious Possibility for

Redemption

1. Baudelaire’s Nihilism:

Since nature in Baudelaire’s poetry is a source of evil, and

the city a place for spleen, Baudelaire turns to wine, death and

blasphemy to relieve his suffering. In his “Revolts poems,” from

his collection The Flowers of Evil, Baudelaire blames God for

the curses of life, and invokes Satan as a friend. In " St

Peter’s Denial”, the speaker questions God’s existence and

suggests that God is asleep for the job, under the effect of our

blasphemy : “What, then, has God to say of cursing

heresies,/Which rise up like a flood at precious angels’ feet?

/…/ He sleeps to soothing sounds of monstrous

blasphemies.”(Baudelaire 212).The speaker goes even further so

as to suggest that God may have laughed at Jesus' suffering:

“Jesus, do you recall the grove of olive trees/…/ To Him who sat

and heard the noise the nailing made / In your live flesh, as

villains did their awful deed,”( Baudelaire 212).According to him,

Jesus was full of promise and hope but he was ultimately let down

by God. Consequently, Jesus must have regret on his own death:

When with your heart so full of hope and far fromfear,

You lashed with all your might that money-changing lot,

And were at last the master? O, and then did notChagrin strike through your side more keenly thanthe spear? (Baudelaire212)

Since no source of relief appears to be possible, Baudelaire

turns to alcohol as an anesthesia to the pain experienced in

life. His wine’s poetry may best illustrate this claim .In “The

Solitary’s Wine”, Baudelaire lists several possibilities that can

make man feel better about the pain of life: “A handsome woman’s

tantalizing gaze/Gliding our way as softly as the beam/The

sinuous moon sends out in silver sheen”(Baudelaire 184). Yet, the

speaker suggests that best of all, is a bottle of wine as it

inspires hope, youth, life and pride into its consumer:

Great jug, all these together are not worthThe penetrating balms within your girthSaved for the pious poet’s thirsting soul;You pour out for him youth, and life, and hope—And pride, the treasure of the beggar folk,Which makes us like the Gods, triumphant, whole!

(Baudelaire 184)

Baudelaire is obviously seeking a way to escape the

sordidness of reality in wine. All his wine poetry, namely “The

Ragman’s Wine,” “The Murderer’s Wine,” and “The Lovers’ Wine,”

is based on the belief that wine can make life more surmountable.

Like wine, death in Baudelaire’s poetry represents

liberation from this life of chaos. Baudelaire dedicates

different poems to the theme of death, mainly: “The Death of

Lovers”, “The Death of the Poor”, and “The Death of Artists”. In

those poems, death is seen as a source of relief and liberation.

In “ The Death of Lovers”, the speaker suggests death as a

peaceful evening : “ One evening made of rose and mystic blue/We

will flare out, in an epiphany/Like a long sob, charged with our

last adieus.”(Baudelaire 220). “ The Death of the Poor” proposes

death as the only and ultimate solution to liberate oneself from

the pain and sorrow caused by life on earth: “ It is death that

consoles and allows us to live./Alas! that life’s end should be

all of our hope;”(Baudelaire 221).

2. Eliot’s Religious Possibility forRedemption

Since Baudelaire explicitly considers that life and the

divine are originally bad, his vision of life does not imply any

possible religious redemption. Yet, his poems about death

consider the afterlife as an opportunity to flee earthly pains.

On the opposite , Eliot recognizes on his part the existence of

the afterlife, yet, he explains that liberation and happiness are

not to be taken for granted. “Death by water” evokes the

consuming body of Phlebas, the Phoenician sailor who died drowned since

fortnight. In the poem, while water evokes a source of redemption, Phlebas is

described as passing: “ the stages of his age and youth/Entering the whirlpool.”(Eliot

75), which suggests a painful death, instead of liberation. The passage ends with a

warning to remind us the death of Phelbas who was “once handsome and tall as you”

before his death :

A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool.   Gentileor Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. (Eliot 75)

The call to consider Phlebas in his youth age suggests that Eliot’s theme of death,

unlike that of Baudelaire, is not a systematic liberation, but can easily be a continuation

of pain and chaos. Yet, the poem does not leave the reader with eternal suffering.

Instead, it suggests a possibility for redemption. While Baudelaire concludes that death

should be the solution for earthly pain, Eliot claims that liberation and redemption have

to be gained for the afterlife . Thus faith should be the leading way toward liberation

and redemption. In “What the Thunder Said,” after a long journey toward redemption,

the speaker gets finally to the chapel. There, instead of getting the grail cup, the

speaker gets three key words pronounced by the thunder: “Datta,” “dayadhvam,”

“ damyata” . In the footnotes, Eliot explains the meaning of

those key words as follows: “ dayadhvam, damyata' (Give,

sympathize, control)” (Eliot 85). By replacing the content of the

grail cup by the thunder’s words, Eliot suggests that redemption

for 20th people is not physical but rather spiritual. The

disposition of those keywords within the poem explicitly shows

the way toward redemption in The Waste Land:

Then spoke the thunderDADatta: what have we given?

…

By this, and this only, we have existed (Eliot 79)

At this point, the speaker tackles the first possible

meaning of what the thunder said, and asks the reader to reflect

on what we have given in our lives—"what have we given?" (Eliot

79). The poem goes on to say that "By this, and this only, we

have existed" (Eliot 79), meaning that redemption is possible

only through charity. The second time the thunder speaks, it says

“Dayadhvam”, a word standing for compassion : “DA /Dayadhvam: I

have heard the key”(Eliot 79). Those lines show that the speaker is given the symbolic

keys toward compassion, which is considered as the second advice to reach

redemption.

DADamyata: The boat respondedGaily, to the hand expert with sail and oarThe sea was calm, your heart would have respondedGaily, when invited, beating obedientTo controlling hands (Eliot 79)

At this level, the thunder speaks for the last time and pronounces “Damyata”

which means to have self-control. Here, Eliot suggests that the

modern man is controlled by temptation. He calls the reader to

resist temptation, and to have self control in order to be purged

and prepared for the liberation for the afterlife. The line which

follows describes the speaker at sail on a calm sea and a heart

responding "Gaily" to an invitation. The word obedient emphasizes

the existence of a higher power that will lead us to liberation

from earthly suffering and redemption in the afterlife.

Both Baudelaire and Eliot depict death as a way of

liberating the soul. Yet, In Eliot’s poetry salvation after death

is not a systematic fact. Indeed, the possibility for religious

redemption in The Waste Land, implies some sacrifice. In other

words, one should sympathize and control temptation so as to gain

salvation after death. By introducing a possibility for religious

redemption, Eliot stands different from Baudelaire.

This study shows similarities and divergences between Eliot

and Baudelaire. Eliot obviously borrows from Baudelaire in his

depiction of nature as chaotic dead and in his description of the

city as a sordid strange place. Yet, While Baudelaire shows a

nihilistic attitude regarding the chaos described in his poetry,

Eliot rather suggests a religious possibility for redemption.

This last point represents Eliot’s departure from Baudelaire.

According to Harold Bloom’s theory of influence, Eliot is able to

free a space for himself and avoid a verbatim imitation by

“swerving away” from the precursor :

…poetic misreading or misprision proper…A poetswerves away from his precursor, by so readinghis precursor’s poem as to execute a clinamen inrelation to it. This appears as a correctivemovement in his own poem, which implies that theprecursor poem went accurately up to a certainpoint, but then should have swerved, precisely inthe direction that the new poem moves.15

15Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) p.14.

Thus, Eliot borrowing represents a “Clineman”. Indeed, while

Eliot shows the same interests in the depiction of chaotic nature

and sordid city, he actually swerves away from Baudelaire

Nihilism and proposes a solution which recognizes the existence

of the divine and man’s ability to reach redemption.

Eliot and Baudelaire show different attitudes in their

conception of the world. By depicting nature and the city as evil

elements and denying any kind of redemption, Baudelaire’s world

is and remains chaotic. On his part, Eliot rather sees the world

as being full of sins. Yet, instead of accusing God, Eliot

accuses the modern man for losing his faith. While Baudelaire

sees death as liberation and hope, Eliot brings salvation on

earth by suggesting faith, charity, compassion and self-control.

Thus, while Baudelaire’s symbolism tends to be secular, Eliot’s

symbolism tends to be Christian. In short, Eliot shows much of

Baudelaire’s influences on his poem The Waste Land, as he borrows

from him to depict nature as unfertile and dry and London as an

unreal city. At the same time, Eliot is able to free a space for

him to avoid a total misprision, thus asserting his originality.

Chapter two

Imagism

This chapter focuses on the study of the influence of the

Imagist School on Eliot and his deliberate departure from some of

its principles. To fit this purpose, a short overview of the

Imagist tenets, as presented in Ezra Pound’s essays and poetry

will be covered, followed by a short review of literature to show

the previously established connections between Eliot’s poetry and

the Imagist movement. While previous analyses have already

studied Eliot’s poetry from an imagist perspective, this present

work sets to analyze passages from The Waste Land with an attempt

to depict Eliot’s departure from this movement. While Eliot

clearly shows the use of concrete images, he actually departs

from the imagists by mixing visual images with abstract ones.

Eliot’s originality is also noticeable in the way he uses verbs

of action with negation in association with visual imagery. This

chapter will also consider Eliot’s use of memory in presenting

visual images, a technique which asserts even more his

demarcation from the Imagists. Eliot’s association of visual to

non visual imagery will be highlighted to prove his individual

talent, despite his borrowing from the movement. From a

theoretical perspective, Harold Bloom’s theory of influence will

provide us with the necessary framework to achieve our objective

as it provides the means to understand the different ways by

which a poet may be influenced and how it is possible for a

strong poet like Eliot, to avoid a verbatim imitation.

I.The Imagist School

The Imagist movement began in 1908, when T.E. Hulme formed a

group of poets, who came to be known as the “School of Images”.

Being involved as a poet member, Pound soon assumed the control

of the group, preferring the term Imagist. 16In his Literary

Essay “A Retrospect," Pound cites the requirements applying to

Imagist poetry. The first tenet that Pound introduced is the

“Direct treatment of the 'thing,”'17 to give the reader the

ability to visualize the perception objectivity without the16Glenn Hughes, ,Imagism & the Imagists: A Study in Modern Poetry (New York:Stanford University Press, 1931.) p.10-12.17 Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect”, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (London : Faberand Faber, 1974.) p.03.

intrusion of the poet or the speaker. Secondly, Pound favoured

the economy of language, so as: “To use absolutely no word which

does not contribute to the presentation.”18 In his essay “a few

don’ts”, Pound further explains this tenet as follow:

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, whichdoes not reveal something. Don’t use such anexpression as “dim lands of peace.” It dullsthe image. It mixes an abstraction with theconcrete. It comes from the writer’s notrealizing that the natural object is alwaysthe adequate symbol. 19

In other words, Imagist poetry succeeds in conveying the

poet’s idea through objective and precise visual images. Thus,

through his writing, the poet seeks to create an image via the

use of concrete words, avoiding extra comments and the overflow

of adjectives for the sake of clarity, brevity, and preciseness.

Pound's poem, "In a Station of the Metro," could be seen as

a poetical manifesto of Imagism. In the poem, the reader is

introduced to “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals

on a wet, black bough.”20 The brevity of the poem can be noticed

not only from its length but from its contents as well. The poem

18 Ibid19 Ibid. p.04.20 Ezra Pound,”In a Station of the Metro”, Selected poems of Ezra Pound (NewYork: New Directions paper book, 1957.) p.35.

makes no argumentative statements, nor does it tell a story, or

create links with the poet’s feelings. It simply, clearly and

directly associates “faces in the crowd “with “Petals, on a wet,

black bough.” Pound includes no reference regarding the setting

but the title itself. Without the title, the reader would never

know the place where such perception takes place. What is

important to mention is that, the image is generated "in an

instant of time," as Pound cautions it in his essay "A Few

Don'ts."

II.Eliot’s relation to the Imagist School

In his theory of poetry, Eliot reacts against the

Romantics. He clearly asserts that poetry is not an expression of

personality, but rather an escape from personality21. In his

essay “Hamlet and his problems,” Eliot explains that the best way

of expressing emotions is through the use of objective

correlatives. In other words, a set of objects and situations

which has to be the formula of that specific emotion.22 By the

21 T.S Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, The Sacred Wood (NewYork: Alfred A.knopf, 1921.) p.53.22 T.S Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems”, The Sacred Wood (New York: AlfredA.knopf, 1921.) p.100.

objective correlative, Eliot shows the same interest as the

Imagists in avoiding the use of superfluous words, and words

which do not contribute to the presentation. In this perspective,

Haruo Shirane links Eliot’s objective correlative to the

imagist’s use of "a single, usually visual image"23 or " a

succession of related images"24 in order to" communicate emotion

without articulating it " 25or " without the poet stating it”26.

Many other critics have discussed Eliot’s relation to the

imagist movement. Dwivedi considers that "Imagism became a

convenient point of references for those poets who were anti

traditional_ Eliot, Pound, even D.H Lawrence."27 On his part,

Surabhi A. Bhapal has studied how Eliot learned from the Imagist

school a method to avoid the romantic direct way of expressing

feelings and emotions. He assumes that though "Eliot was not

strictly a member of the Imagist group he shared most of their

aims and enshrined them in The Wasteland,"28 One of these aims is23HaruoShirane , Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetryof Bashō (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) 42.24 Ibid.25 Ibid.26 Ibid.27 Amar Nath Dwivedi, T. S. Eliot: A Critical Study (New Delhi: AtlanticPublishing and Distributing) p.26.28Surabhi A. Bhopal, "The Wasteland- A social Critic" Ed JaydipsinhDodiya andNidhiTiwari, Critical Perspectives On T.S. Eliot's Poetry (New Delhi: Sarup,

the way Eliot "rebelled against the uncontrolled expression of

Romantic emotion in stale or clicked language."29

The concern of the rest of this chapter is to investigate

Eliot’s implementation of imagery through close analysis of

selected passages from The Waste Land. While implementing the use

of concrete images, Eliot actually deviates from some of the

Imagist’s tenets, using abstract words, the indirect way and non

visual imagery.

III.Eliot’s Reaction to the Imagist School

1. Eliot’s Mixing Concrete and Abstract Images

One of Pound’s main Imagist’s principles is the use of

concrete images. In The Waste Land, Eliot makes use of such

concrete images, yet he mingles and modifies them by using

abstract adjectives as it is the case in the following verses:

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain.Winter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow, feedingA little life with dried tubers. (Eliot 63)

2005) P.107.29 Ibid

In the passage above, Eliot presents a rich array of

concrete visual images. We are introduced to a visual perception

of a natural setting in April spring time. Yet, even if he makes

use of concrete images drawn from nature such as “land,” “roots,”

rains,” “earth,” “snow,” and “tubers,” they are at the same

time associated to abstract adjectives like “dead” ,”dull” ,

“spring” , “forgetful” ,”dried”. Instead of introducing the

setting by the exclusive use of concrete images, as it is the

case in Pound’s poem, Eliot combines concrete images with

abstract adjectives, to come to such phrases as: “dead land”

“dull roots” “spring rain” “forgetful snow” “dried tubers”.

This combination of concrete images with abstract adjectives

enables the poet to convey meaning which goes beyond the

perceived setting. The first line “April is the cruellest month”

is actually an allusion to Chaucer’s poem “The Canterbury Tales”,

which depicts Spring as a season of rebirth:“When in April the

sweet showers fall/That pierce March’s drought to the

root…”30 .The opening of The Waste Land inverses Chaucer’s poem

with an invocation of Spring as a fearful time to evoke the

30 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1987.) p.01.

difficulty of redemption and rebirth. Eliot’s combination of

concrete images suggesting fertility, with abstract adjectives

conveying sterility and death, contributes to reinforce the

difficulty of the quest toward redemption. While the image of

land is positive as it symbolizes vegetation, it is at the same

time associated to the adjective “dead”. While the concrete image

of “snow”, may have a positive connotation, as it may bring water

to the soil, it is preceded by the abstract adjective of

forgetfulness, forming the phrase: “covering earth with forgetful

snow”. The positive image of “roots” as a vital part of the tree

to drain water is associated to “dull”, an adjective which

alludes to the dryness of the soil. Eliot’s use of progressive

verbs such as: “breeding”, mixing”, stirring”, “covering”, and

“feeding” accentuate the difficulty of redemption as it

emphasizes a very long and hard process of erudition.

By using concrete visual images in association to abstract

adjectives, Eliot tends to modify meaning, and via this

technique, he gives the passage a meaning which goes beyond the

perceived setting. While Imagist’s concern is to focus on

perception, Eliot uses concrete images and abstract adjectives to

go beyond perception and to reach a higher level of thematic

awareness. This particular point represents a move from the

Imagist’s School principles and highlights the fact that, though

Eliot borrows from Imagism, he undoubtedly asserts his individual

talent. In order to flee total poetic misprision, the ephebe here

is borrowing from the precursor, but he is at the same time using

devices which the precursor avoids to use. Thus, we may say that

Eliot s able to escape total “misprision” according to the first

ratio named “Clinamen”. According to Bloom, Clinamen is:

poetic misreading or misprision proper…A poetswerves away from his precursor, by so readinghis precursor’s poem as to execute a clinamen inrelation to it. This appears as a correctivemovement in his own poem, which implies that theprecursor poem went accurately up to a certainpoint, but then should have swerved, precisely inthe direction that the new poem moves. 31

To sum up, we may say that Eliot’s corrective movement

consists of combining abstract adjectives with concrete visual

images.

2. Eliot’s use of Verbs of Action and Negative Words

31Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) p.14.

The passage of the typist woman from “The Fire Sermon” can

also be considered as a good illustration of Eliot’s original use

of the Imagist’s tenets. In this passage, Eliot makes use of

concrete images to focus the reader’s attention on industrial

objects which refer to the superficiality and impurity of modern

time:

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast,lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.Out of the window perilously spreadHer drying combinations touched by the sun's last

rays,On the divan are piled (at night her bed)Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

(Eliot 71)

In this passage, the reader is introduced to a female

character, who is clearing her breakfast and lighting her stove

at tea time. The description of the room is achieved through

concrete images which allude to industrial superficial modern

life. The phrase “laying out food in tins,” (Eliot 71) highlights

the superficial aspect of the woman. Food which is a crucial

necessity for life is presented in tins or in superficial

attractiveness or glamour. The description of the setting ends

with a visual image of a divan where is piled “Stockings,

slippers, camisoles, and stays.”(Eliot 71).

However, the concrete images in the passage are not

evocative enough to convey the woman’s victimization. Those

visual images are later replaced by verbs of action and abstract

words in the negative to describe a scene which almost depicts a

rape. Indeed, the passage conveys a: “Flushed and decided,”

clerk, who “assaults at once/Exploring hands encounter no

defence”. Their love is reduced to physical desire where the man

is the predator and the female the victim:

Endeavours to engage her in caressesWhich are still unreproved, if undesired.Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;Exploring hands encounter no defence;His vanity requires no response,And makes a welcome of indifference.(Eliot 72)

While the presentation of the woman in her room is

achieved via concrete imagery to convey industrialization and

superficiality, the development of the passage conveys the same

themes of sterility and sordidness which are expressed by the use

of verbs of movements and negation. The combination of the two

passages suggests the debasement between man and fertility.

Eliot’s use of verbs of action and negation represents another

departure from the Imagist school. In this context, Eliot is

working against the precursor since he uses devices which the

imagists avoid to use. Thus, Eliot flees from total poetic

misprision by working against the ephebe principles and this

according to the first ratio of poetic influence named Clinamen.

At the same time, the reason why such devices are used lies

in Eliot’s desire to go beyond perception. While Pound’s imagery

remains at the level of perception, Eliot’s Imagism starts with

perception to reach another level of understanding that explains

the sordid nature of relationships between people in the modern

world. In other words, Eliot’s imagery continually seeks for the

meaning which lies behind perception .From this specific point of

view, we may also consider the second ratio entitled Tessera.

According to Bloom ,Tessera is: “completion and antithesis…A poet

antithetically “completes” his precursor, by so reading the

parent-poem as to retain its term but to mean them in another

sense, as though the precursor had failed to go far enough”32.

Thus, instead of remaining at the level of visual perception,

32 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)p.14.

Eliot offers to go beyond so as to reach a higher level of

thematic awareness.

3. Eliot’s use of memory to present imagery :

One of the main tenets of the Imagist School is the direct

treatment of the thing whether subjective or objective. Even if

Eliot’s poetry displays a rich variety of visual images, some of

them are not directly transmitted, but rather conveyed via

memory. For example, the scene that describes the typist woman

and the clerk is presented through the memory of the Tiresias,

the blind seer from Ovid’s Metaphores. Even if that passage

conveys meaning via concrete images, action verbs and words in

the negative, the qualities of Tiresias as a seer, add allusive

meaning that cannot be conveyed through imagery. Firstly, as a

bisexual who is “throbbing between two lives” (Eliot 71),

Tiresias can transcends the limits of female male relationship of

modern times, as he is able to relate to both the clerk and the

typist woman in the scene. Secondly, as an “Old man”, who “sat by

Thebes below the wall,” (Eliot 71) Tiresias has the ability to

transcend time and to juxtapose the chaotic present with the

traditions of the past. Furthermore, as a blind seer who “can see

at the violet hour, the evening hour that strives,” (Eliot 71)

Tiresias may suggest a vision to transcend sordidness of life in

modern times. By the use of the memory of Tiresias to present

imagery, Eliot adds allusive meaning and suggests a vintage point

of perceiving the sordidness of the scene. In this concern, Eliot

insists on the importance of Tiresias, as the only character who

is able to perceive the substance of the poem. Eliot’s use of the

indirect way to present images represents a departure from the

Imagists. While the Imagists concentrate on a direct treatment of

the thing, Eliot presents images from the perspective of Tiresias

to extend the visual perception to a broader area of meaning.

“The Burial of The Dead” may also illustrate Eliot’s use

of memory to present imagery:

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt

deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the arch-

duke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. (Eliot 63)

In this passage, Eliot makes use of a great array of visual

images. The image of the “Starnbergersee” lake associated to the

image of a rain shower evokes a source of water and thus, a

possibility for redemption. The visual image of the sunlight

combined with the image of the Hofgarten garden, evoke vegetation

and a source of life. While the opening lines of the poem evoke

difficulty for redemption, this passage presents images of life

and rebirth. Yet, Eliot makes use of the past simple. We know in

the lines which follow that the passage reminds of happy past

memories of the narrator named Marie. After evoking images of

rain, “stranbergeresse” lake, and the “Hofgarten” garden, She

remembers her childhood, when her cousin took her “out on a

sled”. She ends up by informing us that “In the mountains, there

you feel free.”(Eliot 63)

Eliot makes use of a great array of visual images to evoke

happiness. Yet, those images are transmitted via Marie’s memory

of childhood. Eliot makes use of the indirect way of presenting

imagery on purpose. While the preceding passage presents the

reader to the initial chaotic situation of modern life, this

passage evokes happy past memories to evoke the happy days before

the World War. We may then come to conclude that by making use of

memory devices, Eliot deviates from Pound’s Imagery principles

and succeeds in providing his images a broader area of meaning.

Consequently, Eliot avoids total misprision thanks to the use of

the first ratio named clinamen, Which according to bloom is A

"swerve" away from the precursor , or a corrective movement in

the later poem, with all the implication that the precursor was

correct up to a point, but that he, the ephebe, has made the

right turn in his new poem.33 While the precursor prefers a

direct treatment of the thing, the ephebe’s uses the memory

device as a corrective movement in his new poem.

4. Eliot’s Mixing of Visual and non Visual Imagery

Eliot also departs from the Imagist movement by mixing

visual and non visual imagery. While the imagists mainly focus on

the use of visual images, Eliot mixes visual images with others

appealing to senses such as smell and sound.

33Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) p.14.

a. Visual and smell images:

This passage has been selected from “Game of Chess” and it

describes the room where the neurotic woman is sitting, waiting

for her lover:

In vials of ivory and coloured glassUnstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic

perfumes,Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confusedAnd drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the

airThat freshened from the window, these ascendedIn fattening the prolonged candle-flames,Flung their smoke into the laquearia, 92Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

(Eliot 66)

Along with the use of hard and clear images, which show a

concentration on objects, Eliot uses non visual imagery. After

introducing the setting by describing the objects that surround

the room, Eliot smoothly moves to another level of description

involving perfumes, odours, air and smoke. “her strange synthetic

perfumes” which are hidden by “vials of ivory and colored glass”

are described as “ unguent , powdered , or liquid – troubled”

that confuse the sense of smell in the room and the odor of the

fresh air entering from the window. Eliot conveys the superficial

and the unnatural by the use of non visual images of odour and

smell. The image of synthetic perfume, mixed with fresh air

coming from the window, is mingled with the image of candle-

flames smoke thrown on “laquearia.” The non visual image of

perfume is meant to suggest superficial love. At this point,

perfume which is a synthetic liquid, replaces water the speaker

seeks in the poem.

In this part of the poem, the fusion of visual and non

visual images is meant to intensify meaning. To highlight the

superficiality of the scene, the use of visual imagery focuses on

physical objects and gives little regards to the woman’s

presence, while the use of non visual images of “synthetic

perfumes” are meant to further accentuate that surrounding

feeling of superficiality in that scene. In this perspective,

Eliot offers a new dimension to present imagery in poetry. While

the Imagists’ concern is to concentrate on visual perception,

Eliot’s concern is to afford the reader the possibility to

experience visual images mixed with a broader range of smell

devices.

b. Visual and Acoustic Images :

The use of acoustic devices can also demonstrate Eliot’suse f non visual imagery. In this passage, while the speaker isin search for water, he actually asks himself :

If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada

   And dry grass singing    But sound of water over a rock    Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

   Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop    But there is no water (Eliot 77)

 

 

 

 

Eliot extends here the visual image of water to its acoustic

dimension. Instead of “the sound of water,” the narrator tells us

that he is presented to the singing of the cicada and dry grass ,

which both evoke lack of water and desert . The visual images of”

water,” “grass,” “hermit- thrush,” and “pine trees,” are mixed

with images that appeal to the sense of sound. Indeed, the line

“Drip drop drip drop dropdropdrop” evokes the singing sound of the

hermit-thrush, a bird which lives in the desert which suggests

the absence of water. In the general context of the poem, the

absence of water suggests the difficulty for redemption. Eliot

uses here an acoustic image to intensify meaning.

By giving an acoustic flavor to the visual images, Eliot

creates a new dimension to express imagery. This feature in

Eliot’s imagery does not represent a departure from the Imagists,

as it represents a plus to the movement under study. According to

Bloom’s theory of influence, Eliot is able to free space for

himself to flee total misprision, and this, according to the

second ratio named: Tessera. While the Imagists concentrate on

the visual aspect of imagery, Eliot offers the reader a broader

range of perception a new dimension to imagery.

While Eliot clearly proves to be influenced by the Imagist

school through his skillful use of visual images, he actually

shows personnel traits of originality which enables him to avoid

verbatim imitation from the precursor poet. Eliot’s consideration

of the image as an objective correlative provides Eliot the

ability to open new doors to the function of the image in poetry.

Eliot’s technique of Imagery goes beyond perception to suggest

thematic awareness.

Chapter three

Cubism

Our concern in this chapter is to study the influence of

Cubism on Eliot’s The Waste Land. A short review of relativist

thinking in history will be first introduced because of its major

contribution to the apparition of Cubism. Next, a brief survey of

the evolution of Cubist painting will present us to the two

techniques used by this school, mainly: Perspectivism of

Analytical Cubism, and Collage of Synthetic Cubism. The analysis

of some Braques’s and Picasso’s works will help us to better

understand the application of Perspectivism and Collage. An

illustration of how those two techniques are incorporated into

prose novel will follow. At this level of study, we will try to

demonstrate how Cubist techniques can be possibly applied to

prose novel. Throughout a close reading of The Waste Land, we

will try to demonstrate the influence of Cubism on Eliot and the

way he possibly incorporates its techniques into poetry. In this

concern, Eliot’s use of multiple voices in The Waste Land will be

regarded as a way to depict different existing themes from a

multiplicity of perspectives. While the prophets’ voices aim at

depicting a lack of vision and fake prophecy in the poem, the

women’ voices help to depict superficiality and absence of love.

Therefore, the use of multiple voices as multiple perspectives

will be interpreted as a Cubist technique of Perspectivism.

Furthermore, Eliot’s use of different quotes, allusions, and

objective correlatives will be contrasted with the Cubist

Collage. Instead of using papier collé, Eliot uses different

literary material to convey meaning. Thus, the use of objective

correlatives in some specific passages from The Waste Land will

help us to bring evidence of the influence of the Collage

technique on Eliot. Since this chapter deals with the formal

aspects of the poem, and the way they transmit meaning, this

study will focus on a close reading method of analysis. Indeed,

New Criticism will enable us to analyze the text and its formal

aspects objectively regardless of its historical context. Thus,

close reading method will help us to concentrate on the

relationship and the interconnections within the text that show

an incorporation of the techniques under study.

I. Context:

One of the features that characterize modernism is its

relation to relativist thinking. This comes as an intellectual

reaction to the traditional philosophy of Enlightenment that

recognizes truth as universal and objective. The backwards of

science and religion in the 20th century, led Modernists to be

skeptical about the existence of an absolute truth and led

scientists and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, William

James and Albert Einstein to think that truth is non absolute.

In his work On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Friedrich

Nietzsche discusses the topic and defines truth as a kind of

human relations which are arbitrarily defined as true. He

asserts:

What then is truth? A movable host ofmetaphors, metonymies, andanthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of humanrelations which have been poetically andrhetorically intensified, transferred, andembellished, and which, after long usage,seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, andbinding.34

Nietzsche adopts a view of knowledge that is referred to as

Perspectivism .In a passage from his work On the Genealogy of

Morals, Nietzsche sets the stage for twentieth-century thought

and rejects the possibility of an absolute, objective truth:

“There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective

“knowing,” and the more affects we allow to speak about one

thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one

thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing, our

“objectivity” be.” 35Nietzsche argues that there is no such thing

34Bernd Magnus and M.Higgins, Katheleen, The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1996) p.29-30.35Richard Schacht,Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals (London: University of California press,1994) p.343.

as absolute knowledge that is independent from our perspective as

humans. According to him, we are not only limited by human

senses, but also by our different perspectives which are

determined by language, culture and history.

In psychology, William James in his work Pragmatism rejects

the idea of an absolute truth. He characterizes truth in terms of

usefulness and acceptance. He states that: “. . . the ultimate

test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or

inspires.”36 He believes that individuals construct truth in the

process of successful living in the world. Thus, truth is not

absolute.

36William James, Pragmatism (Harvard University Press, 1975) p.259.

In physics, one may cite Albert Einstein and his Theory of

Relativity. Walter Isaacs wrote: “Einstein's theory of relativity

not only upended physics, it also jangled the underpinnings of

society...Now came a view of the universe in which space and time

were all relative. Indirectly, relativity paved the way for a new

relativism in morality, arts, and politics.”37Einstein’s theory

of relativity opened new modes of perception. This theory also

conveyed the necessity for multiple viewpoints in order to have a

full picture of reality.

II. Perspectivism and Cubism:

Many of the twentieth century’s major artistic styles can be

linked in their technical application to the relativistic

thought. A survey of the different stages of Cubism may help to

better understand the technical application of relativism in

Arts. Initially, Cubism knew a development through two different

stages namely, Analytical Cubism, and Synthetic Cubism.

1. Analytical Cubism:

37Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009) p.221-222.

In 1907, Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in

which he fragmented the forms into small cubes. It was the task

of the viewer “to put this puzzle of various spatial views

together into a whole”38. That painting marks the beginning of

Cubism, a kind of painting which presents more than one view of

the subject.39 Picasso seems to renounce to the traditional

technique of evoking three-dimensional forms which reproduces the

way light plays across the object. He therefore returns to

fragment the object from three dimensional

representations.40Picasso and Barque no longer painted an object

from one perspective, but rather “layered views from many angles

in order to capture the subject from all sides.”41 They analyzed

the object and presented it as a fragmented picture.

Picasso’s Still Life on a Piano represents a good example of

Analytical cubism. The aim of this painting is actually to

dismantle the object .The piano is progressively losing its

38Guillaume Apollinaire, and Dorothea Eimert, “What is Cubism”, Cubism (New York Parkstone International, 2010)P.29.39Erika Gonzalez Ehrlich ,“Analytical and Synthetic Cubism: Picasso and Barque”(School of Doctoral Studies of the European Union) p.163.40Ibid41Guillaume Apollinaire, and Dorothea Eimert, “What is Cubism”, Cubism (New York :Parkstone International, 2010)P.29.

overall outlines and is shown under its multiple aspects thanks

to the artist’s fragmentation of the object into different facets

and perspectives. Proceeding in such a way, Picasso is able to

display on the painting different parts of the instrument and

different sides of it simultaneously, which we would otherwise be

unable to do in the same while with our eyes. 42

The AmbroiseVollard portrait from Picasso is also an

interesting example to study. The composition as a whole clearly

represents the outline, structure and features of a human head.

Picasso's painting fulfills the main requirements of a portrait

as it represents the outer appearance of a certain individual.

Yet, the lines are continued in a randomly like way, no longer

restricted to define an available form. In this portrait, the

subject is dissected. We understand that the tenet used in

Analytical Cubism consists in the representation of the object

from different perspectives. The object is dissected and

reassembled into a new multidimensional form.

2. Synthetic Cubism:

42Erika Gonzalez Ehrlich, “Analytical and Synthetic Cubism: Picasso and Barque”(School of Doctoral Studies of the European Union) p.164.

Since 1912, Braque and Picasso have reversed the process of

fragmentation typical to the Analytical Cubist painting. Now, the

process consists of the reconstruction of the object in a phase

called Synthetic Cubism.43 In this process, Braque and Picasso

aimed at returning to the internal cohesion of the object, to its

very origin. While Analytical Cubism consists in the observation

and analysis of the object, Synthetic Cubism goes through

invention and creation with a view to an original

reconstruction of the constituents of the represented Object44.

In other words, the new process is no longer about dismantling

the objects apart, but rather about creating new objects with new

materials. During this phase, Picasso used new materials and

techniques like the use of papier collée . Guitars out of

Cardboard may stand as an interesting example of that technique.

The instrument is crudely but recognizably made: the brown

cardboard looks like natural wood, in texture and colour , making

the visual aspect of the Guitars nearly look authentic to the

viewer. Inappropriate materials are used in this painting process

43Erika Gonzalez Ehrlich,“Analytical and Synthetic Cubism: Picasso and Barque”(School of Doctoral Studies of the European Union). p.16444Ibid.

type to present the object with “its spaces, its surfaces, and

its contours”.45

"Still Life with Chair Caning” is another painting which

shows the technique of collage. In it, Picasso incorporates a

piece of oilcloth printed with an illusionistic chair. The three

letters above the scrap of cloth, "JOU," are interpreted as the

beginning of the word "JOURNAL," alluding to the customary

newspaper lying across the café table, and as the French verb

meaning "to play." 46Thus, the use of papier collé opened new

doors for interpretation.

III. Perspectivism and Cubism in literature:

The technical application of Perspectivism to Cubist painting

greatly inspired the sphere of literature. This made a number of

writers infuse the multiple perspective technique into their

works and abandon the traditional view points of narration. As a

45Ibid. p.165.46 Richard Lewis, The Power of Art . 2.nd ed. (Boston, Mass.: Cengage Learning, 2009.) p.401 .

matter of fact, William Faulkner’s novel The Sound And the Fury

can be considered as an example which typically illustrates the

application of Analytical Cubist technique of perspectives to

prose.

The story of the novel turns around Caddy, the sister of

three other brothers who commits sin and becomes pregnant. The

novel narrates the events of the story in four different ways

through four different chapters. In each chapter, a different

narrator tells the same story from his own point of view. By

establishing different voices that tell one same story from

different perspectives, Faulkner gives his novel a Cubist multi-

perspective quality:

In the simplest terms, then, the cubistnovel is one in which a linear narrativestyle is broken so that the structure orarrangement of its parts itself forms alevel of meaning. In The Sound and the Fury,for example, meaning results as much fromthe patterning of the four sections as fromthe “story” of the decline of the Compsonfamily.47

47Doreen Fowler, A cosmos of my own: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981) p.58.

Like Faulkner’s novel, Eliot’s The waste Land, uses a non

linear narrative style. The reader is introduced to many

different voices which depict the common themes of the poem from

different perspectives. Echoing the explanation in the quote

above, one may agree on the fact that Eliot’s poem exhibits its

meaning through the Analytical Cubist technique of

representation. Furthermore, other significant passages of the

same poem, juxtapose objective correlatives, ironical allusions

and quotes, which altogether, coexist and contrast to create

meaning, exactly like a Cubist Collage portrait.

IV. Cubism in The Waste Land

1. Multiple voices as multiple perspectives :

The poem as a whole catalogues the journey of the narrator

toward the search for redemption. During his journey, the

narrator is introduced to different voices which formulate a

multiplicity of perspectives that converge together to depict the

common themes of the poem. Thus, Even if those voices are

dispatched and multiple, they can be classified according to two

different categories. Thus we may distinctly recognize women

voices and prophet’s voices. The close reading of the different

voices occurring in the poem will show that Eliot’s use of a

multiplicity of voices corresponds to Cubist’s perspectivism.

a. Prophet’s voices:

During his journey, the narrator encounters different

prophets, seers and fortunetellers. If we closely analyze those

voices, we will notice that they share the same inability to tell

the future. Put into a whole, they work altogether within the

text to convey the theme of uncertainty and lack of vision. They

take the shape of different seers in the poem and are namely:

Cumale Sybil in the epigraph, the fortune teller Madame Sosotris

and Tiresias.

The poem starts with an epigraph, including the image of

Sybil hanging in cage and asking for death. This epigraph is

taken from “Satyricon” of Petronius which Eliot translates as

follows : “For on one occasion I myself saw, with my own eyes,

the Cumaean Sibyl hanging in a cage, and when some boys said to

her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she replied, ‘I want to die.’48

The Sibyl of Cumae is the prophetic old women of Greek mythology

who was granted eternal life by Apollo. Yet, since the Sibyl did

not request eternal youth:“ she will continue to age and decay.

Her body eventually withers to a fetal state and must be kept in

a jar hanging within her cave.”49In The Waste Land, Sybil is just

seeking death. She is withered to a point that she is unable to

provide the reader any relevant prophecy. Sibyl in the poem

evokes the stagnating situation of society in modern times that

is uncertain and hopless about its future and unable to find the

way toward redemption. Sybil, in her apparition at the opening

lines, helps to set the tone of the poem and to convey the theme

of lack of vision and uncertainty to foresee the future.

Another seer’s voice is that of the blind Tiresias. In his

comments, Eliot emphasizes the importance of Tiresias :

Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a “character,” is yet the most

48 Lawrence Rainey, The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose: Second Edition (Pennsylvania: Yale University Press, 2006) p.75.49Jessica Record, The Cumaean Sibyl as Depicted in History, Literature and Artp.06.

important personage in the poem, uniting allthe rest…all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem. (Eliot 82)

In this quote, Eliot explicitly focuses on the importance of

Tiresias and on his role in uniting all the characters.

According to Ovid's Metamorphoses , after separating two serpents

mating in the woods , Tiresias was cursed by the gods, and he was

turned into a woman. Seven years later, Tiresias found himself in

a similar situation, and he was transformed back into a man. 

Thus, “…he should know/ What love [is] like, from either point of

view.” 50. Since Tiresias sided Jove in his dispute with Juno

about the gender that best experienced love, Juno punished

Tiresias by making him blind: “He took the side of Jove. And

Juno/ was a bad loser, and she said that umpires/ were always

blind, and made him so forever.”51 As a counterpart, Jove gave

Tiresias the gift of prophecy as a compensation: “But the

Almighty Father, out of pity,/ In compensation, gave Tiresias

power/ To know the future, so there was some honor”52 .Thus ,

50Ovid, Metamorphoses, (Bloomington (U.S.A): Indiana University press, 1960).p.67. 51Ibid.52Ibid.

according to the Tiresias’ myth, we come to understand that he

is effectively the character who can embody both male and female

perspectives in the poem in addition to his ability to see the

future.

As a seer, Tiresias is then supposed to provide the reader

with predictions. Yet, Tiresias’ vision in The Waste Land does

not afford us with any information about the future. His vision

catalogues an episode of rape which evokes the sordidness of

modern life. While Tiresias is able to predict the future and

give Odysseus advice in his journey to the Odyssey: “There, the

ghost of Tiresias appears…he cautions Odysseus about the many

dangers that he must still face on his journey.”53 In The Waste

Land , Tiresias does not bring the narrator with any relevant

prophecy regarding his journey. Confronted to the moral

sordidness that characterizes the modern life in the urban city,

Tiresias seeks refuge in the past:

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered aEnacted on this same divan or bed;I who have sat by 'Thebes below the wall

53A. Nicholas Fargnoli , and Michael Patrick Gillespie, James Joyce A to Z: TheEssential Reference to the Life and Work (New York : Oxford University Press,1996) p.98.

And walked among the lowest of the dead.) (Eliot

72)

The above cited lines “draw on other classical references to

the story of Tiresias,”54. Thus, What Tierasias is able to see is

nothing but visions of his past along with the sordidness of the

scene described .In addition, the lines which follow inform us

that Tiresias wishes not to watch the scene. Yet, because he is

unable to have control on his gift, he is forced to deal with it

(lines 243-248). Thus, as much as Sibyl, Tiresias suffers from

the gift he has been given by the gods and is unable to predict

any vision about the future.

Another seer’s voice is that of Madame Sosostris, who like

Sybil and Tiresias, holds the role of a predicting teller. Like

Tiresias, she suffers from the lack of vision the unablity to

predict any concrete future. Madame Sosostris appears as a

“famous clairvoyante […] known to be the wisest woman in

Europe”(Eliot 64). The description of the “greatness” of

Sosostris , along with her suffering from a “bad cold” builds up

to evoke an ironic picture about her power to tell the future.54 Michael North, The Waste Land: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism(NewYork: W.W. Norton, 2001) P.13.

Indeed, her reading of the cards appears quite vague. She seems

to be just drawing them without making any predictions: “here is

your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor […] Here is the man with

three staves, and here the Wheel, / And here is the one-eyed

merchant” (Eliot 64). Furthermore, despite her vague invocation

of cards without clear predictions, she proves to suffer from a

lack of vision as she is forbidden to see what the man in the

card holds on his back “something he carries on his back, / Which

I am forbidden to see”(Eliot 64). As she carries on her reading,

she declares that she does not find the “Hanged Man”. Even if her

“drowned Phoenician sailor” concretely predicts Section IV of the

poem, she finally comes to a close by telling the reader to fear

“death by water”. Instead of believing in a “death by water”

which may bring renewal, fertility, and redemption in the

afterlife, she presents it as something to avoid or to fear off.

Thus, like Sybil and Tiresias, Sosostris represents the predictor

who is unable to predict and on her turn symbolizes the lack of

vision.

The thunder is another voice which plays the role of a fake

seer. According to Eliot’s notes, the narrator’s journey, which

is a journey toward redemption, is borrowed from the grail legend

: “In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the

journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss

Weston's book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.”(Eliot

84) The legend tells the story of a knight who like the narrator

of the poem, is in his journey toward redemption. The knight of

the grail legend brings the grail cup from the perilous chapel to

bring fertility and redemption back to the king and his kingdom.

In The Waste Land, after his long journey which evokes all its

difficulty, the narrator finally enters the chapel. Yet, the

chapel is empty: “There is the empty chapel, only the wind's

home.'/It has no windows, and the door swings,/Dry bones can harm

no one.” (Eliot78). Instead, the narrator is introduced to the

thunder’s advice: “Then spoke the thunder/DA/Datta: what have we

given?”(Eliot 78). The reader and the narrator are both

introduced to the thunder’s voice which stands for the voice of

God:

AS Eliot reveals in his notes, this part of thepoem is based on a section of theBrihadiiranyakaUpallishadin which God presents threesets of disciples with the enigmatic syllableDA,challenging each group to understand it. Eachgroup is supposed to understand the syllableas

the root of a different imperative: "damyata"(control) for the gods, who are natmallyunruly;"datta" (give) to men, who are avaricious;"dayadhvam" (compassion) to the demons, who arecruel. 55

According to the quote, the voice of the thunder is

associated to the voice of God. Yet, even if the thunder brings

three pieces of advices, it does not accomplish its role as a

predictor. Instead of bringing radical redemption, the thunder

only pronounces three pieces of advice. The lines which follow

the passage highlight the incapacity of the thunder to bring any

redemption as they express uncertainty and describe London Bridge

as falling down:

I sat upon the shoreFishing, with the arid plain behind meShall I at least set my lands in order?London Bridge is falling down falling down

falling down (Eliot 79)

While the thunder sets by itself the rules for possible

religious redemption to The Waste Land, it neither brings water

nor redemption. From this perspective, we understand that the

thunder’s voice, like other prophets’ voices we studied earlier,

55Michael North,  The Waste Land: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism(New York: W.W. Norton, 2001)p.18.

represents another perspective conveying the idea of lack of

vision and redemption. Like in an Analytical Cubist painting,

Eliot uses multiple perspectives that work together to achieve

meaning. Each of Sybil, Tiresias ,Sosostris and the thunder

represent voices in the text and present the reader with

different perspectives perceiving the theme of lack of vision.

Even if the voices are multiple, they are meant converge to the

same thematic end.

b. Women’s voices:

While the first set of voices can be characterized as a

group of fake seers, the second group of voices can be identified

as women. Like seers, women in The Waste Land take the shape of

different voices. Though they are multiple, they convey the same

sense of victimization. Therefore, we may deduce that like the

prophets’ voices, women’s voices work altogether to converge to

the same theme of victimization.

The two first women’s voices introduced in the poem are

Marie and The Hyacinth girl. Both Mary and The Hyacinth girl are

experiencing a chaotic present, where they fail to find comfort

in their love relationship. To compensate for their absence of

love, they recall their happy past memories. Mary recalls her

happy times when she walked, had coffee, and talked to her cousin

the archduke. The lines carry on with bringing back her childhood

memories (Eliot63). Those past happy memories show contrast with

the initial chaotic scene presented in the first lines of the

poem, which tell us that April, the month of rebirth is actually

the cruelest month of the year. The hyacinth girl recalls a time

when she was young and when someone gave her nice hyacinth

flowers. She then remembers that her lover disappeared. At this

point, she felt she "was neither / Living nor dead, and [she]

knew nothing”(Eliot 64). Like Mary, this character is recalling a

happy past and is witnessing a chaotic present. Both characters

are suffering from their fellow lovers. From a Cubist’s point of

view, each character represents a different perspective to depict

one same reality, that of suffering and absence of love.

The women’s voices introduced in “Game of Chess,” further

accentuate the suffering and the victimization of women in the

present time. The poem introduces us to the neurotic woman and

Lil , two different women belonging to two different social

classes. Both women share the same evocative situation which

conveys the absence of spiritual love and women’s victimization

in the modern epoch. The neurotic woman belongs to an upper

class, she tries to communicate with her fellow lover but she

fails:”My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me./Speak

to me. Why do you never speak Speak.”(Eliot66).The passivity of

her lover as she keeps talking to him accentuates her

victimization in their relationship: ‘What is that noise?’/The

wind under the door./‘What is that noise now? What is the wind

doing?’/Nothing again nothing.”(Eliot 67). While the woman is

seeking comfort, the male character seems to give little interest

and evokes nothingness every time he speaks. The presentation of

the setting which involves heavy description of objects and

little regard to the woman along with the nothingness, by which

the passage ends, highlights a physical consideration to the

woman evoking the theme of superficiality and the absence of

spiritual love.

On her part, Lil is sitting in a pub, a setting which

informs the reader that she belongs to a lower social class. Yet,

like the neurotic woman, Lil’s voice expresses the same degree of

suffering and discomfort in modern times. The conversation Lil

entertains with her friends turns around her and her husband.

From her discussion, We are informed that Lil’s husband is away

for the service in the army, and her friends suggest that she is

expected to make herself “a bit smart” in appearance because her

husband “want to know what you done with that money he gave you

to get yourself some teeth”(Eliot68). If Lil decides not to

accommodate, Albert may leave her, predicts Lil’s friend. This

extract shows a concentration on physical love and a total

absence of spiritual love. Lil’s use of piles further illustrates

her superficial union with her husband. From Lil’s conversation,

we may deduce that her marriage with Albert seems ultimately

centered upon physical desire. As much as the neurotic woman,

Lil’s voice evokes superficiality and the absence of love.

Considered together into a whole, the women illustrate

Eliot’s use of cubist perspectivism in his poem. Indeed, while

The Hyacinth girl and Mary, evoke happy past love and chaotic

present, Lil and the neurotic woman, stand as voices that

display mental suffering of women in the modern epoch. Those

women’s voices work together to mainly depict victimization of

women in The Waste Land . Though scattered and multiple, they

converge together to depict the same meaning.

Like Faulkner’s novel The Sound and The Fury, Eliot’s poem The

waste Land uses a non linear narrative method and shows the use

of a Cubist multi-perspectivist technique of representation. Yet,

as a fragmented modernist poem, Eliot’s work introduces his

perspectives in a scattered and simultaneous way. Without any

warning, “The Burial of The Dead” jumps from Sybil’s voice to

Marie’s voice and from the voice of the narrator to the voice of

Mamdame Sosostris and that of the hyacinth girl. Thus, in

contrast with other contemporary Cubist writings where, the

change in perspective is rather organized, The waste Land’s

“continuous instability”56 aims at reproducing the

simultaniousity felt in front of a cubist painting where “the

56Jewel Spears Brooker , Reading "The Waste Land": Modernism and the Limits ofInterpretation (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) p.31

relation between subject and object goes from fixity to

fluidity”57 . By jumping from a voice to another, from a setting

to an other in one same passage, Eliot’s use of perspectivism

does not represent a verbatim imitation but rather shows an

original challenging transposition of that technique in poetry.

2. Objective correlatives as collage:

Eliot challenges the Romantic subjectivity and defines in

his essay the objective correlative as a way of expressing

emotions objectively:The only way of expressing emotion in theform of art is by finding an 'objectivecorrelative'; in other words, a set ofobjects, a situation, a chain of eventswhich shall be the formula of thatparticular emotion; such that when theexternal facts, which must terminate insensory experience, are given, the emotionis immediately evoked.58

While painters in their phase entitled Synthetic Cubism used

papier collé , and objects to proceed in collage , Eliot’s

concern is to use a “set of objects” and situations which

constitute the formula of a certain emotion and meaning.

57 Ibid.58.T.S Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, The Sacred Wood (New York: Alfred A.knopf, 1921. )P.53.

The description of the lavish room featured in the first

part of “Game of Chess” is a good illustration of Eliot’s

adoption of the Cubist technique of Collage. In this passage,

Eliot makes use of different literary sources from the past to

convey victimization of women in modern time. Indeed, the passage

is fully evocative as it refers back to different literary

sources, stories, and myths that converge together to construct

the image of the woman presented in the passage. The first

allusion is conveyed through the titles "A Game of Chess” which

derives from a scene of Thomas Middleton's play, Women Beware

Women, in which a game of chess is described as a game of sex.

Thus, the title works as an objective correlative that prepares

the reader to the unfolding thematic of the passage which resumes

itself in loss of love and victimization of women.

The passage opens on with the scene of the woman sitting in

the room. She is associated by allusions to Cleopatra, and Dido

queen of Carthage “The Chair she sat in, like a burnished

throne,/ …/Flung their smoke into the laquearia,”(Eliot 66) . In

the notes, we learn that the key word Laquearia evokes the

banquet given by Dido, queen of Carthage, for Aeneas, with whom

she fell in love. The allusive association to Dido and Cleopatra,

two women who committed suicide out of frustrated love, suggests

the sentimental suffering of the woman presented in the setting.

Another literary allusion introduced in the passage is the

personage of Philomela, a character from Ovid’s Metamorphoses,

who is raped by her brother-in-law the king, who then cuts her

tongue out to keep her quiet:

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingaleFilled all the desert with inviolable voiceAnd still she cried, and still the world pursues,"Jug Jug" to dirty ears. (Eliot 66)

Despite alluding to different women figures from myths and

literature, Eliot evokes in line 81 the figure of “Cupidon :

“From which a golden Cupidon peeped out,”(Eliot 66) who

symbolizes love in ancient Roman culture . In this specific

context, Cupidon suggests a sense of irony to the kind of love

relationship established between the couple featured in the

passage. Within the same passage, we are introduced to Cleopatra,

Dido, Eve, and Philomela, who each makes reference to a personal

story of victimization by male characters. Considered altogether

into a whole, those allusions contribute to present psychological

suffering caused by love failure of the woman presented in the

scene.

A second example which shows Eliot’s use of Collage is

featured in the opening lines of “The fire Sermon”. The speaker

associates the actual River Thames to different literary

allusions borrowed from the past so as to convey modern decay,

pollution and sterility. The first lines of the passage describe

the Thames River as a polluted landscape:

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are

departed. ( Eliot 70) 

 

This passage describes The River Thames with an image of

death and pollution. The leaves have fallen from the trees and

lie on the wet river bank. The land is polluted as it is

described as brown. The line “The nymphs are departed” is

actually an allusion to Edmund Spenser’s poem "Prothalamion". In

this poem, Spenser evokes the nymphs as a symbol of harmony in

the Thames River and describes them as scattering flowers along

the river: “There, in a meadow, by the river's side, /A flock of

nymphs I chanced to espy,…/ In which they gathered flowers to

fill their flasket,”59 Instead of nymphs and flowers, the speaker

now describes the River as being littered with "empty bottles,

sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette

ends" (Eliot 70). The line: “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.”

(Eliot 70) is another allusion to Spenser’s poem which celebrates happy wedding along

the Thames. This allusion is ironical, since it juxtaposes with another allusion from

Andrew Marvel’s poem To His Coy Mistress: “But at my back in a cold blast

I hear.”In Marvel's poem, the narrator entreats a woman he

desires and tells her, how he would praise her if he had eternity

to do so: “Had we but world enough and time, /This coyness, lady,

were no crime.”60 Because time is short, they should put their

youthful bodies to use before they wither and die: “ But at my

back I always hear /Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; /…/Now

let us sport us while we may,”61. Instead of associating The

59 Edmund Spenser, "Prothalamion" , The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser : [in Five Volumes] . Vol. 5 (London: Bell and Daldy, 1866.)p.126.

60 Andrew Marvel, The Poems of Andrew Marvell , “To His Coy Mistress” , The Poems of Andrew Marvell ( London: Pearson Longman, 2003) p.75

61 Ibid.

Tahmes to happy marriage ceremonies, Eliot’s depiction of the

River conveys the idea of unfertile sexual intercourses as

described in Marvel’s poem. The passage as a whole, suggests that

the actual Thames is different from the River, which Spenser

describes in his poem, as it neither symbolizes fertility nor

nature. This passage clearly shows Eliot’s use of the Cubist

Collage technique, as he associates different past literary

sources to his own depiction of the Thames, to converge to the

unfolding theme he seeks. Like a Synthetic Cubist portrait, the

passage reveals contrast and relationship between its different

parts to convey meaning.

The passages analyzed in this chapter clearly show the

Cubist’s influence on Eliot. Eliot’s modeling of different

sources, images, and situations, to unfold meaning, definitely

brings evidence of Eliot’s use of Collage technique in his

poetry. Regarding Analytical Cubism, Eliot like the Cubists makes

use of different perspectives to convey meaning in a

multidimensional way. Accordingly, Eliot converts, transforms,

and adapts the techniques used in visual Arts to his own art.

Yet, unlike some Cubist writers who adapt the technique in a

systematic way, Eliot is able to transform the technique so as to

adapt it to his own poetry, by jumping in the same passage, from

a setting to another, and from a voice to another, like a Cubist

painting that best captures the simultaneousity of the

perspectives. To close this chapter, we may consider that Eliot’s

borrowing from the Cubist movement is original and definitely

sets him apart from other Cubist writers.

Conclusion

The result of this research study shows common points as

well as dissimilarities between Eliot and his contemporaries.

Indeed, while Eliot borrows from the contemporary movements of

his epoch, he simultaneously transforms, modifies, and even

rejects some of their principles. The analysis of different

passages from The Waste Land, definitely shows the influence of

the contemporaries on Eliot, as well as it reveals his

originality and his talent at transforming and adapting the

contemporary techniques of his time to his poetry. Subsequently,

Eliot’s attitude proves to be a deliberate creative process of

borrowing, instead of being a verbatim imitation. We may suggest

further studies to better understand Eliot’s relationship to the

literary and artistic movements of his epoch. From this

perspective, one may consider Eliot’s relationship to other

Symbolist writers such as, Stéphane Mallarmé,  Paul Verlaine,

and Arthur Rimbaud. Other Imagist poets like T.E. Hulme may also

be the concern of a comparative study between Eliot and their

poetry. We may as well suggest to further explore probable

relationship between Eliot’s poetry and expressionism. Even if

Eliot’s poetry obviously illustrates his philosophy of

impersonality, some of his literary qualities may reveal some

expressionistic tendency as represented by some James Joyce or

Dostoyevsky writings. Last but not least, we would suggest to

carry out a comparative study between Eliot’s Imagism and the

contemporary Russian movement of Imagism “Acmeism”.

Bibliography

I.Primary Sources

T.S Eliot, Collected poems 1909-1962 . London: Faber

Paperbacks, 1963.

II- Secondary Sources

1. Literary essays of T.S Eliot

T. S. Eliot. Selected Essays 1917-1932 . New York: Harcourt

Brace, 1932

T.S Eliot. The Sacred Wood. New York: Alfred A.knopf, 1921.

T.S. Eliot. To criticize the Critic and Other Writings. New

York: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

2. Poetry Sources

Baudelaire, Charles. The Flowers of Evil. Trans. James

McGowan. New York : Oxford University Press, 1998.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. Trans. P.

E. Charvet. London : Penguin Books, 2010.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales.Oxford : Oxford

University press, 1987.

Marvel, Andrew. The Poems of Andrew Marvell . London: Pearson Longman, 2003 .

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Bloomington (U.S.A): Indiana

University press, 1960.

Pound,Ezra. Selected poems of Ezra Pound. New York :New

Directions paper book, 1957.

Spenser, Edmund. The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser : [in Five

Volumes] . Vol. 5. London: Bell and Daldy, 1866.

Wordsworth ,William. Favorite Poems. New York : Dover

Publications,1992.

University Press, 1931.

3- Literary History and Criticism

Apollinaire, Guillaume, and Dorothea Eimert. Cubism. New

York: Parkstone International, 2010.

Fargnoli , A. Nicholas and Michael Patrick Gillespie . James

Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

Fowler, Doreen. A cosmos of my own: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha .

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1981.

Hughes , Glenn. Imagism & the Imagists: A Study in Modern

Poetry. New York: Stanford University Press, 1931.

Isaacson, Walter. American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative

Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane. New York: Simon and

Schuster, 2009.

James, William. Pragmatism. Harvard University Press, 1975.

Lewis, Richard . The Power of Art . 2.nd ed. Boston, Mass.:

Cengage Learning, 2009.

Magnus, Bernd and M.Higgins, Katheleen. The Cambridge

Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University press,

1996.

Pound ,Ezra and T.S Eliot. Literary Essays of Ezra

Pound.London : Faber and Faber, 1974.

Schacht,Richard.Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on

Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. London: University of California

press,1994.

Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural

Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō .Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1998.

4- Literary Theory.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A theory of

Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

5- Criticism of T.S Eliot’s poetry

Jaydipsinh ,Dodiya and  NidhiTiwari. Critical Perspectives

On T.S. Eliot's Poetry . New Delhi: Sarup , 2005.

Nath Dwivedi ,Amar. T. S. Eliot: A Critical Study . New

Delhi: Atlantic Publishing and Distributing. 2002

North , Michael.  The Waste Land: Authoritative Text,

Contexts, Criticism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001)

Rainey, Lawrence. The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's

Contemporary Prose: Second Edition. Pennsylvania :Yale University

Press, 2006.

Scofield ,Martin. T.S. Eliot: The Poems (Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1988)

Spears, Jewel and Joseph Bentley. Reading The Waste Land

Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation . Amherst: U of

Massachusetts, 1990.

T.S Eliot. Critical Companion to T.S. Eliot: A Literary

Reference to His Life and Work . New York: Facts On File, 2007.

6. Academic theses:

Faddul ,Atif . “A Comparative Study of the Poetics of T.S.

Eliot and Adunis” . Ann Arbor: U Microfilms International, 1997.

Gonzalez, Erika Ehrlich. “Analytical and Synthetic Cubism:

Picasso and Barque.” School of Doctoral Studies of the European

Union, 2012.

Record ,Jessica. The Cumaean Sibyl as Depicted in History,

Literature and Art