Page 417 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes What follows is an allusion to Luke 24, as well as to a passage in Sir Ernest Shackleton’s South; two
travelers walk upon a road, and seem to be accompanied by a third, unnamed wanderer. Does this
“third” exist, or is he merely an illusion? Shackleton’s passage involves three men imagining a
fourth by their side; in the Biblical scene, two travelers are joined by the resurrected Christ, but do
not at first recognize that it is Him.
Eliot then moves from the individual to the collective, casting his gaze over all Europe and Asia,
seeing “endless plains” and “hooded hordes.” It is a nearly apocalyptic vision; the great ancient
cities of the Mediterranean (“Jerusalem Athens Alexandria”) and Europe (“Vienna London”) all
seem “unreal,” as if they were already phantoms. Eliot refers to the “violet air,” echoing the “violet
hour” of “The Fire Sermon,” but also suggesting the twilight not just of a day, but of all Western
civilization. “Violet” is one of the liturgical colors associated with baptism; Eliot might be alluding
to the Perilous Chapel in Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, through which the knight
must pass in order to obtain the Grail and which represents a sort of liminal passage or baptism.
Certainly the next stanza, with “voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells” and
“bats with baby faces,” suggests the Perilous Chapel –- a nightmarish place that tests the knight’s
gall and instills dread. Eliot describes towers that are upside down, and a woman who plays music
with her hair, recalling the rich woman in “A Game of Chess” whose “hair / Spread out in fiery
points / Glowed into words,” and “tumbled graves.” (In some versions of the Grail legend there is
likewise a perilous graveyard.)
Finally, a “damp gust” brings rain. Immediately Eliot invokes the Ganges, India’s sacred river
(“Ganga” in the poem), and thunder, once sterile, now speaks: “Datta,” “dayadhvam,” and
“damyata.” The words the thunder offers belong to the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and describe
the three dictums God delivers to his disciples: “to give,” “to control,” and “to sympathize.” This
profoundly spiritual moment of communication between men and God, of a dialogue between the
earth and the Heavens, seems to promise a new beginning. Civilization is crumbling—“London
bridge is falling down falling down falling down”—yet the poem ends with a benediction: “Shantih
shantih shantih.”

Analysis

The final stanzas of “The Waste Land” once again link Western and Eastern traditions, transporting
the reader to the Ganges and the Himalayas, and then returning to the Thames and London Bridge.
Eliot’s tactic throughout his poem has been that of eclecticism, of mixing and matching and of diversity,
and here this strain reaches a culmination. The relevant Upanishad passage, which Eliot quotes,
describes God delivering three groups of followers—men, demons, and the gods—the sound “Da.”
The challenge is to pull some meaning out of this apparently meaningless syllable. For men, “Da”
becomes “Datta,” meaning to give; this order is meant to curb man’s greed. For demons, “dayadhvam”
is the dictum: these cruel and sadistic beings must show compassion and empathy for others. Finally,
the gods must learn control–“damyata”–for they are wild and rebellious. Together, these three orders
add up to a consistent moral perspective, composure, generosity, and empathy lying at the core.
Recalling his earlier allusion to Buddha’s Fire Sermon, Eliot links “Datta” with a description of lust,
of the dangers of “a moment’s surrender / Which an age of prudence can never retract.” This, it
would seem, is the primary sin of man. Crucially, however, Eliot notes that “By this, and this only,
we have existed”—reminding the reader of his work on Baudelaire, and his argument that an evil
action, because it signifies existence, is better than inaction, which signifies nothing. Man’s lustful
deeds are “not to be found in our obituaries”; they remain intangible to some degree, not to be
committed to paper or memory. But they linger on nonetheless, haunting the doers but also imbuing
them with a sense of self; for once, Eliot almost seems to suggest the value of “a moment’s surrender,”

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