Resumo de The Waste Land

ABSTRACT ELIOT, T. S. ? THE WASTE LAND 1922 Faber & Faber Books One of the most ambiguous and for many, notoriously unfathomable poems of the early twentieth century. The Waste Land is n early and classic example of Free Verse, in that it doesn?t rhyme, or maintain a regular rhythm, or verse format. Its style changes constantly, and its meaning is often cryptic and deliberately frustrating. The poem is divided into five distinct chapters. In the forth chapter, Consider Phlebas, the corpse of a drowned Phoenician mariner is picked clean by the sea, and we are told to expect a similar extinction. The theme of fallen empires, and how all men and places come to an end permeates the poem. There are even scraps of nursery rhymes like London Bridge Is Falling Down to remind us that all will perish. The poem?s most controversial feature is its closing notes, as few other poems would ever require explanation. In Fact, Eliot?s notes merely add to the mysterious despair of the Desolate Waste Land imagery. The poem is about a loss of meaning and sense, and the oblivion that comes to all, so in itself it cannot make for easy meaning. Te notes at least give some allusion to Eliot?s literary references, such as Shakespeare, and Sanskrit scripture. This is a poem of post World War One despair; all means nothing in a Buddhist sense of the word. The dust seen by his tarot reader (based on Madam Blavatsky)) show that death is the one certainty awaiting us. The Waste Land is the rubble left in our wake as our civilisations crumble. The opening line about the cruelty of April attests to the time of crucifixion for Jesus comes at the time of spring and expected renewal. For Eliot at this time, there was no resurrection (though he late converted to Christianity). At times the imagery is apocalyptic, and at others personal and inane. A soldier returning from the war is about to find out that his wife squandered the money he gave her to buy new teeth for herself, some gossiping neighbours say. The sense of decay and ageing, and loss of beauty is brought down to a personal level in a poem that tells us that London will fall just as surely as Rome and Carthage before her. This is bleak desolate but compelling reading, with irreverence for the rules of poetry not matched until the 1960?s and the age of Ginsberg and Kerouak.

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