The Waste Land (1922)

kid charlemagne

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
if there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

This is the best part...... What the Thunder said is a poignant end to the Wasteland, it is the Wasteland, our world is the Wasteland, when this was written it was, and when i am reading the world is still the Wasteland..... Our roads to nowhere weaving through mountains of rocks with no water.... weaving through a life that is incresingly tech fueled and a life where the rise of artificial and computerized advancement is where any real advancement in human thought, meaning, and connection is dropped off a cliff.... a world, wasteland, where we are constantly plagued by our empire's past failings is not one where we can sit and stop to drink the true body of christ, and the holy water of life.... we cant even taste our sweat, or hydrate from what we excrete..... amongst the rock, the digital is the only thing that keeps our blinkers on...... we dont stand or lie or sit, not by choice anymore, just by program...... where is my solitude in my little box at the top of the stairs? a poem that beckons back to pocahontas and the natives, before america finally drew blood... its like what burroughs said (im glad i saw someone mentioned him in this thread) "America is not a young land, it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the indians. evil is there waiting"
 
hmg

hmg

Victory lap
kid charlemagne said:
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
if there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
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Turns out HMG was right! said:
That was the only part of The Wasteland that Ezra Pound did not alter at all, I've just learned.
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sus

sus

Moderator
kid charlemagne said:
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
if there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses

This is the best part...... What the Thunder said is a poignant end to the Wasteland, it is the Wasteland, our world is the Wasteland, when this was written it was, and when i am reading the world is still the Wasteland..... Our roads to nowhere weaving through mountains of rocks with no water.... weaving through a life that is incresingly tech fueled and a life where the rise of artificial and computerized advancement is where any real advancement in human thought, meaning, and connection is dropped off a cliff.... a world, wasteland, where we are constantly plagued by our empire's past failings is not one where we can sit and stop to drink the true body of christ, and the holy water of life.... we cant even taste our sweat, or hydrate from what we excrete..... amongst the rock, the digital is the only thing that keeps our blinkers on...... we dont stand or lie or sit, not by choice anymore, just by program...... where is my solitude in my little box at the top of the stairs? a poem that beckons back to pocahontas and the natives, before america finally drew blood... its like what burroughs said (im glad i saw someone mentioned him in this thread) "America is not a young land, it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the indians. evil is there waiting"
Click to expand...
Turn this into a poem! There are some good shoots and branches. Now prune it into shape and give it fertilizer
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I've been reading the waste land again over this weekend, paying more attention to the notes and allusions. It's remarkable how re-readable it is, you get something new out of it each time.

This time the Death By Water section really struck me as especially beautiful, calm and measured, the image of the body "as he rose and fell" in the deep sea. And the last lines are worthy of the Greek anthology:
"O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
consider Phlebas, who was once as handsome and tall as you."

And this reading made me think the difference between the waste land and four quartets isn't all that great as I once thought. The biblical references are really the centre of the poem - son of man, the third who walks beside you, and above all the purifying fire that you also get in 4 quartets - his Christian view is already dominant before his actual conversion a few years later.
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
Benny Bunter said:
Any good?

I ordered it last night on a whim, then i read that he wasn't allowed to actually quote any of the poetry, so I'm wondering how he's gonna get around that and still produce a good book.
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i didn't know that or notice it
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
woops said:
I'm good at ploughing through a boring biography. they all have the same ending
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I don't really read biographies, but I just read the Ellman one of Yeats and enjoyed it, it did enhance my understanding of the poetry itself, which is what I wanted out of it above all.
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
Benny Bunter said:
Any good?

I ordered it last night on a whim, then i read that he wasn't allowed to actually quote any of the poetry, so I'm wondering how he's gonna get around that and still produce a good book.
Click to expand...
It’s good enough if you want to get the main points - line you say no verse quoted which makes it awkward when actually discussing his work and ideas. It’s Ackroyd before he becomes a parody of himself. I like his Blake much more but found his Dickens too fanciful in places - including actual fantasy/dream moments between Ackroyd and Dickens if I remember correctly
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Benny Bunter said:
@luka where can I read vegetable empire?
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my famous book, VEGETABLE EMPIRE, describes the waves of convergence and divergence, porosity and impermeability, 0 and 1, horizontal and vertical.
(audio book version)

you can see it at work in scenes, where eventually different tendencies formalise themselves and split off, you can see it with protestant church splitting from Rome and then fracturing into a thousand pieces, you can see it with politics (peoples front of judea etc)

imagine a repeat of the acid house summer of love :) with stabbing gangs standing in for football hooligans. love ya mate yeah love ya mate. ))))))):love:(((((((

t.s eliot's The Wasteland is divergence and separation. "I can connect nothing with nothing."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

Vegetable Empire is the cure. (rustic rites of regeneration) the reentry of magic into the circuit. everything connects. and history starts moving again.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Reading Guy Davenport last night on "The Symbol of the Archaic", he points out that Eliot is alluding to the ancient city of when he writes "
Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock)".
The eighteenth century taught us to look at ruins with a particular frisson, to thrill to the depths of years in which we can stand. Volney at Persepolis and Palmyra, Gibbon in the Colosseum, Champollion at Thebes, Schliemann at Hissarlik and Mycenae were as symbolic of the attention of their age as Command Pilot Neil Armstrong on the moon of ours. The discovery of the physical past generated a deep awe and Romantic melancholy, positing a new vocabulary of images for poetry. Petra, carved in red Nabataean stone, became an image resonant with meaning. Without its name, and with a sharper Angst than Romantic wonder, it can still move us in Eliot’s evocation in The Waste Land: . . . 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 water. Only There is shadow under this red rock (Come in under the shadow of this red rock). . .

Davenport, Guy. The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays (Nonpareil Books Book 10) (pp. 38-39). (Function). Kindle Edition.
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As a confirmed thicko I had always imagined A RED ROCK, a vaguely sinister image—rather than an image of a man-made shelter and civilisation in the middle of the desert, one city in a line that extends to the "falling towers" of Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal
 
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