The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions)

The Waste Land, Eliot’s masterpiece, is a poem filled with allusions and references to everything from Shakespeare to Buddha, and one that cannot be quickly read nor easily understood. It is considered one of the most important of the modernist poems, and rightfully so.

Written in 1922, in the aftermath of World War I, Eliot explores both the loss of life, its meaning, and the resultant changes in society and values. There is cynicism throughout the poem, and ultimately hope expressed in the final section–a looking back and a reaching forward.

Eliot shows us detailed examples of people lost and leading empty, meaningless lives. There is a lack of morality, a turning against the natural order, a lack of faith in the future and a show more discarding of the lessons of the past. The masses walk through their days with hedonistic fervor and no feeling. The Waste Land is complete, and the waste is personal.

The conclusion seems to me to say there is a way to overcome, not only endure, but thrive, however that way requires something of each individual. It requires, per Eliot, “giving” “sympathizing” and “control.” And, it seems to me Eliot tells us that it also requires faith; a faith in something larger than self. The result of such a faith being “inner peace”.

This is the third time I have studied this poem, and each time I feel I have grasped a tiny bit more. I would imagine that I could read this a dozen more times and not have digested it all. It took Eliot three years to write it, so it deserves the time and effort, but to know it in all its complexity, you need to read another dozen works, Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible among them. This edition contains Eliot's notes, criticisms by other prominent authors, and reference materials from Eliot's bibliography.

I believe Eliot wanted us to work for his meaning, because I think he wanted us to understand what had been lost and that it would not be an easy thing to recover. show less

The best thing about this edition isn't the historical information (blah), the initial reception (much fun) or the later criticism (you've seen it all before). It's . . . okay, the best thing is the poem itself, obviously. So wonderful to see bleak modernism that's this rich and bloody, as opposed to Beckett's bleak modernism, say, which is so gratingly, scrapingly anti-life.

But what I was actually referring to was the painstaking inclusion of original texts, from the central (Tiresias) to the very peripheral (the Goldsmith poem that is adapted for a couple of lines). They widen and deepen the poem before your eyes like a fourth dimension, an undiscovered dialogic country. I know that's what critical editions are meant to do, but The show more Waste Land is particularly well suited for it - it goes from an epic grumble to something approaching novelized poetry, in the Bakhtinian sense of "novel;" a knot of intersubjectivities. It's also wonderful. show less

This isn't a review of the poem. If you've read anything written since, say, 1938, and liked it, then you like The Waste Land. You might not know it, but there it is. Even if what you like was written by a hater of this poem, it wouldn't have existed without it. Giving it stars is like giving stars to Homer, or Dante, or Goethe, or Shakespeare. You've already decided if you like it or not before you start reading it. Are you a rebellious teenager with a leftist bent? You already hate it. Are you a snob who believes in nothing so much as the inevitable decline of culture? You'll love it. And so on.

But I am reviewing this Norton Critical Edition, which includes the poem; 'Sources' ranging from Buddha's Fire-Sermon and the relevant show more Upanishad down to Frazer Weston and Baudelaire; some relevant statements by Eliot; reviews and criticism.

Sources: Useful, but really, why bother putting in the KJV while not putting in the Verlaine and Nerval which Eliot quotes? That's an odd choice. The KJV is available wherever bytes are being consumed; the poems are substantially harder to track down and more obviously important for this poem.

Eliot's writings: nice to have all in one place, but there's nothing more annoying than skipping paragraphs out of essays, or printing one paragraph from an essay. Could this book not have been 15 pages longer? Then we could have had all of 'Tradition...' at least.

Reviews and First Reactions: A good sampling of how people read it at the time it was released, although not particularly valuable as readings of the poem. Malcolm Cowley's piece was especially interesting: "we were excited by the adventure of living in the present... we were entering a new world of art that did not impress us as being a spiritual desert," and so his generation rejected The Waste Land. Too bad they were wrong, eh Mal? Turns out post-war was pretty shitty.

Criticism: two halves. First, essays grouped under 'The New Criticism.' Those which are appreciative generally take an optimistic view of the poem as solving some problem, or making possible salvation. The more recent criticism is predictably eye-rolling. Moody's 'A Cure for a Crisis...' is good; Bush gives us some sub-Freudian dubieties (Tiresias is in the Oedipus myth! Therefore...!!!) Ellmann gives us scads of those same dubieties mingled with the conflations of which recent criticism can't rid itself: "emasculation corresponds to other injuries, particularly to the mutilation of the voice: as if the phallus were complicit with the Logos. Lacking both, language has become a 'waste of breath', a barren dissemination." Of course it has. Because, y'know, daddy = the signified = the phallus = Jesus = the abject = self-consumign artifacts = Eliot. And Armstrong gives us such gems as "sieving is a process applied to sewage" rather than, say, the making of flour or panning for gold. Apparently the most important bits of The Waste Land are the bits Pound and Eliot cut out of the drafts, and Pound welled "phallicly and creatively" for John Quinn, which would probably have been news to Quinn, who just thought he was being asked for money (again) rather than a blow job.

The editors have done a good job, there's no doubt about it. They couldn't have shown better the fatuity of contemporary criticism if they'd tried. If the study of literature persists into this century, I hope we move past what is clearly the anal phase of scholarly culture. Leave the poop alone, people. show less

This critical edition is great. The two stars are for the poem. This book finally provided me with enough information to realize that it's not my lack of understanding that makes this poem incomprehensible. Virginia Woolf, on first hearing the poem read by Eliot, said in her diary "It has great beauty & force of phrase; symmetry; & tensity. What connects it together, I'm not so sure." I concur. You can read all the background material and bring all that knowledge to the poem, but there's still nothing in the poem itself connecting these disparate elements. There's lots of emotion, but not much meaning.

The Waste Land. T.S. Eliot. A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Michael North. 2001. We read this poem along with “Lepanto” for our book club, Dipso. I was more impatient reading it this time as some of my blind adoration of modern poetry has faded as I aged. It is just a difficult to read now as it was in the 60s and 70s, I do prefer Eliot’s other works. If you want to stumble through it again, this edition has great essays and tons of notes. Does it have memorable lines? Is it a just and apt description of our present civilization? Will I re-read it agin? Yes, Yes, and no, probably not.

Some dazzling and unusual imagery, which makes for an interesting and unforgettable read, but I don't like the fact that one has to sit with an encyclopedia on one's lap to be able to get all the references.

Great poem and great edition. As always, Norton is excellent at providing contextual materials and shitty at making covers that aren't ugly.