The First Eighteen Lines of the Waste Land (1989)(yalereview.org)
yalereview.org
The First Eighteen Lines of the Waste Land (1989)
https://yalereview.org/article/hecht-eliot-waste-land
41 comments
The Waste Land has been one of my favourite pieces of writing for decades now; hearing it brought to life like this is incredible. Thank you.
Have you ever listened to Eliot reading it? Just the worst. "Apreel is the crewellest month..."
My thing here though is: this is awesome, Shaw's reading, but is it right? I feel like she's trying to make a coherent character reading at times out of passages deliberately written not to have a clear narrator.
(I write this in the spirit of every thread needing a certain titration of not knowing what the hell they're talking about, as an invitation to those who do, and that inviting cluelessness is the purpose I serve here.)
My thing here though is: this is awesome, Shaw's reading, but is it right? I feel like she's trying to make a coherent character reading at times out of passages deliberately written not to have a clear narrator.
(I write this in the spirit of every thread needing a certain titration of not knowing what the hell they're talking about, as an invitation to those who do, and that inviting cluelessness is the purpose I serve here.)
One of the most annoying things I ever learned about T S Eliot is that he was born in Missouri and didn't move to the UK until his late 20s and just entirely made up that accent.
Some ai assisted takes here
https://www.quora.com/Did-T-S-Eliot-retain-his-American-acce...
He's from a Boston Brahmin family so I doubt he had a real missouri accent to begin with
Edit
These are apparently from 1930s https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eliot.php
Where some Midwestern features are still present ?
Especially here, after the 2m32s mark
https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Eliot/Eliot-TS...
https://www.quora.com/Did-T-S-Eliot-retain-his-American-acce...
He's from a Boston Brahmin family so I doubt he had a real missouri accent to begin with
Edit
These are apparently from 1930s https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eliot.php
Where some Midwestern features are still present ?
Especially here, after the 2m32s mark
https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Eliot/Eliot-TS...
Stipulating that he did change accents, "just entirely made up" is a strong accusation, considering that linguistic accommodation is a thing. Compare Calpurnia's theory of code switching from ch.12 of "...Mockingbird": https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.12863/page/n134...
> “That doesn’t mean you hafta talk [AAVE] when you know better,” said Jem.
> Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed her hat down carefully over her ears. “It’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks’ talk at home—it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses.”
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7J7vXCf5w
> “That doesn’t mean you hafta talk [AAVE] when you know better,” said Jem.
> Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed her hat down carefully over her ears. “It’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks’ talk at home—it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses.”
Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj7J7vXCf5w
"Are those shy Eurasian footwear, cowboy chaps, or jolly earthmoving headgear?"
「色は匂えど 散りぬるを…」
l: http://jbr.me.uk/shevek.html
l: http://jbr.me.uk/shevek.html
L: https://youtu.be/sP5ElraFHHE
(2003)
(2003)
Somehow I went looking for MLE but wound up with Glaswegian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jd7kHjsYNU
Assuming aeb-kun has ever done an unfeigned Glaswegian in the face of RP. He might beat PH's 10% enby!!
Or, even a fully enby gen Z HK-bred nurse working in London ("pinker than pink"?)
https://old.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/1hrsue7/is_mle_be...
At trolling the roadman chiv (of any multiculture at all), that is
Belated hidden fortress explication
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/watch-the-hidden-...
1958 was a glourious anniversary
Or, even a fully enby gen Z HK-bred nurse working in London ("pinker than pink"?)
https://old.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/1hrsue7/is_mle_be...
At trolling the roadman chiv (of any multiculture at all), that is
Belated hidden fortress explication
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/watch-the-hidden-...
1958 was a glourious anniversary
Trolling*-wise, I wonder if there's a cousin of the "Almost Politically Correct Redneck", an "Accidentally Woke Reactionary" perhaps?
(No, I don't get any memes via RSS. It'd be grand, though. Imgur post-acquisition [and for all I know, even pre? I had devtools turned on one day when I visited, and never went back...] is a tracking hellhole)
lagniappe: https://i.chzbgr.com/full/5718194432/h98546CBC/furred-world-...
* one way I can tell that I was born and bred in US of A: I'm the only person nervously laughing at the did-they-really-just-say-that during a VO Tarantino film in the local theatre...
(No, I don't get any memes via RSS. It'd be grand, though. Imgur post-acquisition [and for all I know, even pre? I had devtools turned on one day when I visited, and never went back...] is a tracking hellhole)
lagniappe: https://i.chzbgr.com/full/5718194432/h98546CBC/furred-world-...
* one way I can tell that I was born and bred in US of A: I'm the only person nervously laughing at the did-they-really-just-say-that during a VO Tarantino film in the local theatre...
<formal-vibing | vibe-formalizing>
It looks like you concluded they were being confrontational when they were only being expressive? Whereas the rest of the audience thought the movie was only being expressive? To what extent did that expose your erstwhile localization (to FR) while the old country had shifted in place? Do I miss anything else?
</formal-vibing | vibe-formalizing>
Meme merge
https://youtube.com/shorts/o-ZSHFeo5H4
It looks like you concluded they were being confrontational when they were only being expressive? Whereas the rest of the audience thought the movie was only being expressive? To what extent did that expose your erstwhile localization (to FR) while the old country had shifted in place? Do I miss anything else?
</formal-vibing | vibe-formalizing>
Meme merge
https://youtube.com/shorts/o-ZSHFeo5H4
I'm pretty sure Tarantino (sharing the culture in which I was steeped) meant to be confrontational, but probably the rest of the audience, being blissfully unaware of things "everyone knows" you're not supposed to actually say, thought expressive more than transgressive.
FWIW it was "Hateful 8" (2015), so I don't think the old country has shifted out from under me — unless it's either all been in the last decade, or younger audiences there are also not nervously laughing? Guess I'll have to make some inquiries...
Nervous laughter, as in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_Not_Funny,_That%27s_S...
FWIW it was "Hateful 8" (2015), so I don't think the old country has shifted out from under me — unless it's either all been in the last decade, or younger audiences there are also not nervously laughing? Guess I'll have to make some inquiries...
Nervous laughter, as in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_Not_Funny,_That%27s_S...
He's a delightfully arch character, really. His penchant for camouflage is why Pound nicknamed him Old Possum.
I can't recommend Hugh Kenner enough on the modernists. Eliot is one of the main characters of The Pound Era, and the star of The Invisible Poet.
This is from The Pound Era:
But Eliot was a great joker. After jugged hare at the Club ("Now there is jugged hare. That is a very English dish. Do you want to be English; or do you want to be safe?"); after the jugged hare and the evasions, he addressed his mind to the next theme. "Now; will you have a sweet; or ... cheese?" Even one not conversant with his letter to the Times on the declining estate of Stilton [Nov. 29, 1935, p. 15] would have understood that the countersign was cheese. "Why, cheese," said his guest; too lightly; one does not crash in upon the mysteries. There was a touch of reproof in his solicitude: "Are you sure? You can have ice cream, you know." (At the Garrick!)
No, cheese. To which, "Very well. I fancy ... a fine Stilton." And as the waiter left for the Stilton, Eliot imparted the day's most momentous confidence: "Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first ... examined it."
The Stilton stood encumbered with a swaddling band, girded about with a cincture, scooped out on top like a crater of the moon. It was placed in front of the Critic. (" Analysis and comparison," he had written some 40 years earlier, "Analysis and comparison, methodically, with sensitiveness, intelligence, curiosity, intensity of passion and infinite knowledge: all these are necessary to the great critic.") With the side of his knife blade he commenced tapping the circumference of the cheese, rotating it, his head cocked in a listening posture. It is not possible to swear that he was listening. He then tapped the inner walls of the crater. He then dug about with the point of his knife amid the fragments contained by the crater. He then said, "Rather past its prime. I am afraid I cannot recommend it."
He was not always so. That was one of his Garrick personae. An acquaintance reports that at dinner in Eliot's home "an ordinary Cheddar" was "served without ceremony." The Stilton vanished. After awing silence the cheese board arrived, an assortment of some half-dozen, a few of them identifiably cheeses only in context. One resembled sponge cake spattered with chocolate sauce. Another, a pockmarked toadstool-yellow, exuded green flecks. Analysis and comparison: he took up again his knife, and each of these candidates he tapped, he prodded, he sounded. At length he segregated a ruddy specimen. "That is a rather fine Red Cheshire ... which you might enjoy." It was accepted; the decision was not enquired into, nor the intonation of you assessed. His attention was now bent on the toadstool-yellow specimen. This he tapped. This he prodded. This he poked. This he scraped. He then summoned the waiter. "What is that?"
Apologetic ignorance of the waiter.
"Could we find out?"
Disappearance of the waiter. Two other waiters appear.
"?"
"--------."
He assumed, at this silence, a mask of Holmesian exaltation:
"Aha! An Anonymous Cheese!"
He then took the Anonymous Cheese beneath his left hand, and the knife in his right hand, the thumb along the back of the blade as though to pare an apple. He then achieved with aplomb the impossible feat of peeling off a long slice. He ate this, attentively. He then transferred the Anonymous Cheese to the plate before him, and with no further memorable words proceeded without assistance to consume the entire Anonymous Cheese.
That was November 19, 1956. Joyce was dead, Lewis blind, Pound imprisoned; the author of The Waste Land not really changed, unless in the intensity of his preference for the anonymous.
I can't recommend Hugh Kenner enough on the modernists. Eliot is one of the main characters of The Pound Era, and the star of The Invisible Poet.
This is from The Pound Era:
But Eliot was a great joker. After jugged hare at the Club ("Now there is jugged hare. That is a very English dish. Do you want to be English; or do you want to be safe?"); after the jugged hare and the evasions, he addressed his mind to the next theme. "Now; will you have a sweet; or ... cheese?" Even one not conversant with his letter to the Times on the declining estate of Stilton [Nov. 29, 1935, p. 15] would have understood that the countersign was cheese. "Why, cheese," said his guest; too lightly; one does not crash in upon the mysteries. There was a touch of reproof in his solicitude: "Are you sure? You can have ice cream, you know." (At the Garrick!)
No, cheese. To which, "Very well. I fancy ... a fine Stilton." And as the waiter left for the Stilton, Eliot imparted the day's most momentous confidence: "Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first ... examined it."
The Stilton stood encumbered with a swaddling band, girded about with a cincture, scooped out on top like a crater of the moon. It was placed in front of the Critic. (" Analysis and comparison," he had written some 40 years earlier, "Analysis and comparison, methodically, with sensitiveness, intelligence, curiosity, intensity of passion and infinite knowledge: all these are necessary to the great critic.") With the side of his knife blade he commenced tapping the circumference of the cheese, rotating it, his head cocked in a listening posture. It is not possible to swear that he was listening. He then tapped the inner walls of the crater. He then dug about with the point of his knife amid the fragments contained by the crater. He then said, "Rather past its prime. I am afraid I cannot recommend it."
He was not always so. That was one of his Garrick personae. An acquaintance reports that at dinner in Eliot's home "an ordinary Cheddar" was "served without ceremony." The Stilton vanished. After awing silence the cheese board arrived, an assortment of some half-dozen, a few of them identifiably cheeses only in context. One resembled sponge cake spattered with chocolate sauce. Another, a pockmarked toadstool-yellow, exuded green flecks. Analysis and comparison: he took up again his knife, and each of these candidates he tapped, he prodded, he sounded. At length he segregated a ruddy specimen. "That is a rather fine Red Cheshire ... which you might enjoy." It was accepted; the decision was not enquired into, nor the intonation of you assessed. His attention was now bent on the toadstool-yellow specimen. This he tapped. This he prodded. This he poked. This he scraped. He then summoned the waiter. "What is that?"
Apologetic ignorance of the waiter.
"Could we find out?"
Disappearance of the waiter. Two other waiters appear.
"?"
"--------."
He assumed, at this silence, a mask of Holmesian exaltation:
"Aha! An Anonymous Cheese!"
He then took the Anonymous Cheese beneath his left hand, and the knife in his right hand, the thumb along the back of the blade as though to pare an apple. He then achieved with aplomb the impossible feat of peeling off a long slice. He ate this, attentively. He then transferred the Anonymous Cheese to the plate before him, and with no further memorable words proceeded without assistance to consume the entire Anonymous Cheese.
That was November 19, 1956. Joyce was dead, Lewis blind, Pound imprisoned; the author of The Waste Land not really changed, unless in the intensity of his preference for the anonymous.
Hugh Kenner is good on a surprisingly wide range of things. This is a publisher's description of a book called The Counterfeiters, first published around 1968:
"Wide-ranging enough to encompass Buster Keaton, Charles Babbage, horses, and a man riding a bicycle while wearing a gas mask, The Counterfeiters is one of Hugh Kenner's greatest achievements. In this fascinating work of literary and cultural criticism, Kenner seeks the causes and outcomes of man's ability to simulate himself (a computer that can calculate quicker than we can) and his world (a mechanical duck that acts the same as a living one)."
Kenner also co-authored a relatively early text generator, called Travesty, that would analyze a source text in terms of n-grams (e.g., 4-letter combinations) and then generate something new to match it. This was published in Byte magazine in 1984.
"Wide-ranging enough to encompass Buster Keaton, Charles Babbage, horses, and a man riding a bicycle while wearing a gas mask, The Counterfeiters is one of Hugh Kenner's greatest achievements. In this fascinating work of literary and cultural criticism, Kenner seeks the causes and outcomes of man's ability to simulate himself (a computer that can calculate quicker than we can) and his world (a mechanical duck that acts the same as a living one)."
Kenner also co-authored a relatively early text generator, called Travesty, that would analyze a source text in terms of n-grams (e.g., 4-letter combinations) and then generate something new to match it. This was published in Byte magazine in 1984.
The Counterfeiters is great!
"A Travesty Generator for Micros" doesn't ring a bell, so thanks for the pointer. If it wasn't collected in Mazes or Historical Fictions it'll be one of the few things of his I haven't read yet.
"A Travesty Generator for Micros" doesn't ring a bell, so thanks for the pointer. If it wasn't collected in Mazes or Historical Fictions it'll be one of the few things of his I haven't read yet.
Well, he had style. The Boston Brahmins cultivated that.
Eliot's reading is fascinatingly horrible. I had the same traumatic experience hearing William Gibson reading Neuromancer, which comes across as a kind of parody.
As for "is it right?" — well, it's obviously one person's interpretation, and I would say Eliot's own performance should count as Exhibit 1 in the age-old debate about whether the author is the best interpreter of their own work!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0
As for "is it right?" — well, it's obviously one person's interpretation, and I would say Eliot's own performance should count as Exhibit 1 in the age-old debate about whether the author is the best interpreter of their own work!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DFSvbkQaD0
I don't know what I'm talking about either, but I'll also point to some scholars approaching TSE from the Econs angle
https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2024/gundermantseli...
I'd say, though it's certainly a debatable point, that it's precisely because the passages are deliberately written not to have a clear narrator that there is no "right" reading, but rather a multitude of interpretations of which Shaw's is as valid as many others. That's the attitude I'd bring to it, anyway.
I've been fascinated with The Waste Land ever since junior year of high school, when my creative writing teacher saw a copy of it on my desk and said "why do you have that, you'll never understand it". (I mean, fair enough.)
This is interesting backstory! My perception of the poem is that it's sort of a fractal of backstory and that everywhere you look you find 2000-word articles on its historical antecedents, from Eliot's life, from the history of Europe, from friends of his lost in the war, &c.
There's a whole book on this that's very similar to the article:
https://www.amazon.com/Waste-Land-Biography-Poem/dp/03932402...
If you're bored, you can also kick back and bounce sections of it off Claude or GPT5 (or both and have them argue with each other).
I wonder how directly you can connect Ludwig to the Fisher King.
This is interesting backstory! My perception of the poem is that it's sort of a fractal of backstory and that everywhere you look you find 2000-word articles on its historical antecedents, from Eliot's life, from the history of Europe, from friends of his lost in the war, &c.
There's a whole book on this that's very similar to the article:
https://www.amazon.com/Waste-Land-Biography-Poem/dp/03932402...
If you're bored, you can also kick back and bounce sections of it off Claude or GPT5 (or both and have them argue with each other).
I wonder how directly you can connect Ludwig to the Fisher King.
Paraphrasing Coase: If you torture the poem long enough, it'll confess to anything.
The most insightful book on The Waste Land, I've found, is the early drafts and revisions of The Waste Land (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156948702).
The most insightful book on The Waste Land, I've found, is the early drafts and revisions of The Waste Land (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156948702).
> I've been fascinated with The Waste Land ever since junior year of high school, when my creative writing teacher saw a copy of it on my desk and said "why do you have that, you'll never understand it”.
Was Teach’ really that crude or do you figure they were just trying to light a fire up under ye.
Was Teach’ really that crude or do you figure they were just trying to light a fire up under ye.
Ludwig -> Wagner -> Parzifal -> Fisher King
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parzival#:~:text=Perhaps%20the...
(aiui Wagner merged FK into the German fork)
(aiui Wagner merged FK into the German fork)
Very interesting assertion that these would be the most familiar opening lines of any poem in the 20th century.
Even if one only read English poems, as the author did, how about
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
Even if one only read English poems, as the author did, how about
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
Or Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landside / No escape from reality
I agree. In fact they are not even the most familiar opening lines by this poet:
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”
How about Howl for the over 18 crowd though?
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, [. . .]
Or is that not a well known poem, because I think it is.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, [. . .]
Or is that not a well known poem, because I think it is.
How about Dylan Thomas:
"Do not gentle into that good night"
or
"To begin at the beginning
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat- bobbing sea"
"Do not gentle into that good night"
or
"To begin at the beginning
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat- bobbing sea"
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow ... Between the crosses, row on row."
> I will show you fear in a handful of dust
this gets quoted often as well. Always a fan of TS Eliot. The musical Cats didn't do his book justice, but still
this gets quoted often as well. Always a fan of TS Eliot. The musical Cats didn't do his book justice, but still
This is a lot of print on the question of why a specific lake was chosen as a location in a poem, and it happened primarily because of the prominence of the poem in question. I imagine that there are many poems deemed less important that could also stand such scrutiny.
That article is fantastically well written. What a trip.
Checkout BOOMTOWN game of you liked wasteland. It's a hidden complex game.
Anyone else play wasteland on the apple II? Would have been around '88. Not sure what the link is about.
It's about the poem by T.S. Eliot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land
Give it up. They can't read.
You can find recordings by many fine actor such as John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, and many others, and they tend to be dull, monotonous affairs. Shaw is very different. She's is an incredible actress, and since the 1990s she's been perfecting the poem as a kind of one-woman show where she reads it as the voices of many characters, which is what the poem (as I understand it) is.
[1] https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk