An Untitled Attempt at Understanding Eliot's Land

Again, I find myself searching for Eliot’s meaning. I do not think that I will find a parallel that works as smoothly as Emily Hale did for his “La Figlia che Piange.” I initially misinterpreted the meaning in that poem. I am certain I will do the same here, but I am going to try.

During my last two years of my undergraduate career, I found my way through Shakespeare's works, Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and a variety of other Renaissance related pieces. This is what I bring to the literary table when reading Eliot. As such, I can only attempt to relate to T.S. Eliot through what I have come to learn and somewhat understand. I am certainly not a Latin scholar and am not versed in an assortment of other languages. I am not the erudite reader; I confess. In turn, I read and re-read T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” to find meaning. I further tried to find connections of Eliot through biographical links, but I found, in order to make these connections, one must weed through his great work of erudition. As I attempted to plow my way through Eliot’s plaguing masterpiece, I could not help but think that this scholar conveyed layers upon layers of meaning and could be playing with his readers as they attempted to unearth meaning beneath the literary strata—specifically his learned critics who would analyze his cryptic piece. Was he trying to dupe his fellow scholars by making them scrutinize not only his work but all the other works he placed within the lines of his own? Once again, I found myself turning to Lyndall Gordon’s biography of Eliot to answer this and other questions:

It was fashionable for long stretches of the twentieth century to read the poem as an intellectual game for scholars who could identify allusions. Lesser readers were to have access to it only through their guidebooks. Many erudite readers of Eliot’s century actually had no idea what the poem was about, while readers with any sort of religious background knew at once: they saw through the crust of erudition to the residue of timeless forms—sermon, soul history, confession—almost drowned out by the motor horns, pub talk, and the beguiling patter of a bogus medium, all that noise of wasted lives” (148-9).

Gordon’s assessment of past scholars made my thoughts validated, at least. Yet, I found comfort in knowing that Eliot’s elegy was not a game and held more value than to simply play with all of the concepts—literary and biographical—that he had come to know in his life. I, unfortunately, still find myself in need of a “guidebook” to find my way through Eliot’s 433 lines of searching through this poet’s land of life and death. I turn to both Philip R. Headings excerpt and, again, Gordon, to clarify any connection I might possibly make.

I turn to the second section of this piece, “A Game of Chess,” because of its seemingly biographical linking. I realize that there is a more allegorical thread to follow, and I will take the word of the more learned critics on this level. For now, however, (and as I am reading this poem for the first time) I will stick to a more biographical reading. Headings notes, “‘A Game of Chess,’ depicts the stunting effects of improperly directed love or of lust mistaken for love. In this section we see the pawns moving about in two games that end not in checkmate but in stalemate” (61). This section could seemingly portray the stale relationship that existed (and, eventually, ended) between Eliot and Vivien. “For a year and a half after Eliot’s marriage he felt as if he had dried up” (Gordon 157). It is further explained by Gordon that “Eliot’s most confessional fragments have to do with a mismatched couple…the wife is playing a scene in a love-drama while the husband is absorbed in a quite different, more sinister plot of life and death” (158). We hear the disenchanted discourse between a man and woman/husband and wife in lines 111-125 within this section of Eliot’s work. There is a further connection with the inability to have children in reference to line 164 when the question is posited: “What you get married for if you don’t want children” (10). Seemingly, this line could suggest that there is not a lack of desire for children but an inability to procreate—just as there is an inability to refresh the notion of (mismatched/mistaken) love between the man and woman viewed earlier within this section. It is also interesting to note, when examining the Gliederung as it refers to this section, that it begins with the upper class, finds its way into the middle class, and ends with the lower class—a digression and downward spiral of sorts.

This is solely my novice attempt to find meaning in Eliot’s fragmented journey through time and place, which seemingly discovers an answer and supersedes secular realities. Maybe I will find clarity in class and/or through other blog postings. I can only hope.