The Waste Land (1922)

[jenks]

I remember that I really enjoyed 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year by Nick Rennison which was almost a weekly account of what a weird year it was. Top and tailed by two of the great works of modernist literature.

 

[version]

There's something about introducing the concrete into a poem that is very potent I think.

Mary Woolnoth. Cannon st hotel. Lower Thames street. Greenwich reach.

What you get in the waste land (& ulylesses) is what you get in Phillip k dick. So for instance, this notion that the empire never ended. That we are still playing out the events of the early Christian years. That our lives have this submerged mythic-historic dimension. This is all fundamental to the major monuments of literary modernism.

This is why Mark fisher talked about 'pulp modernism'

It's the concepts of modernism with a pulp engine. Burroughs and Dick. Mark E Smith.

I can hear Mark E. Smith's voice in my head reading Difficulties of a Statesman -

Arthur Edward Cyril Parker is appointed telephone operator
At a salary of one pound ten a week rising by annual increments of five shillings

 

[version]

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

Four Quartets - 4 Little Gidding

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. An accurate online text.

www.davidgorman.com

 

[Benny Bunter]

I like Four Quartets even more than the Waste Land these days, dig it out every couple of months for a reread.

 

[version]

'Gerontion' and 'Choruses from The Rock' are my favourites at the moment.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I lost my book that had Gerontion in it unfortunately, but I remember liking that one a lot. It was originally supposed to be part of the waste land I think but Pound chopped it out.

 

[Benny Bunter]

What I love about Four quartets is how it achieves poetry while on the verge of being prose, that biblical clarity and heaviness.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Love this one

Marina
By T.S. Eliot

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death

Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.

 

[Corpsey]

I just listened to the whole Alec Guinness reading - what's beginning to dawn on me that I didn't spot before, and couldn't believe in, is the poignancy of the poem.

This was only 5 years ago and I have no memory of it whatsoever

Mind you I'm surprised it was 5 fucking years ago too

February's the cruellest month

 

[Benny Bunter]

Fuck this shit, everyone's read the wasteland, it's been done to death. Get yourself over to the prynne thread and read my groundbreaking analysis of this wonderful poem

FIG

to care not ignore or yet illustrate
punish for produce supported
more finite, grant fragrant or
seed core roll endure meant to
figure out right, dutiful if
gifted aware in share alight

 

[luka]

im so pissed benny

 

[luka]

just finished my wine bar gig but i will admire this at the appropriate time

 

[luka]

i dont care a fig... no i do. i really do. i give several figs

 

[luka]

fig roll!!! lol whaat a joker!!!! did you get that one?

 

[Benny Bunter]

fig roll!!! lol whaat a joker!!!! did you get that one?

Yep. I think its quite a serious and deep poem but he just couldn't resist that one the daft old get

 

[luka]

he cant resist a shit joke

 

[sufi]

to care not ignore or yet illustrate
punish for produce supported
more finite, grant fragrant or
seed core roll endure meant to
figure out right, dutiful if
gifted aware in share alight

 

[kid charlemagne]

i came away more impressed with the poems that werent the wasteland

 

[kid charlemagne]

Endevours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference

 

[kid charlemagne]

i like how the river sweats and the taxi is throbbing