Page 419 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes 10. “Demobbed” means:
(a) “killed” (b) “lynched”
(c) “awarded with a medal of honor” (d) “released from the army”
11. What battle did Stetson supposedly participate in?
(a) the Battle of Britain (b) the Battle of the Bulge
(c) Mylae (d) Waterloo
12. Which of the following cities is mentioned in “The Waste Land”?
(a) Vienna (b) Marseilles
(c) Novgorod (d) Timbuktu
13. The opening section of “The Waste Land” is entitled:
(a) “The Burial of the Dead” (b) “Death by Water”
(c) “The Fire Sermon” (d) “Shantih”
14. Who visits the typist?
(a) Mrs. Porter (b) Prufrock
(c) The young man carbuncular (d) A fradford Millionaire
15. Who witnesses the visit?
(a) Ezra Pound (b) Madame Sosostris
(c) Tiresias (d) Vivienne
“Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe” is a reference to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish
Tragedie, a late sixteenth-century text in which Hieronymo lapses into insanity after his son is
murdered. The brutality and violence of man come to mind. What became of control, sympathy,
and generosity? As if to answer the question, Eliot repeats the Eastern dictum: “Datta. Dayadvham.
Damyata.” Against the ills of the modern (and pre-modern) world, those three words still hold out
the promise of salvation. “Shantih shantih shantih” is an acknowledgment of that salvation; it may
be interpreted as a blessing of sorts, putting to rest the sins, faults, trials and tribulations that have
preceded it. Redemption remains a possibility. Interpretations of “The Waste Land” as unrelentingly
pessimistic do little justice to the hopefulness, however faltering, of these last lines. Rain has come,
and with it a call from the heavens. The poem ends on a note of grace, allying Eastern and Western
religious traditions to posit a more universal worldview. Eliot calls what he has assembled
“fragments,” and indeed they are; but together they add up to a vision that is not only European but
global, a vision of the world as wasteland, awaiting the arrival of the Grail that will cure it of its ills.
The end of the poem seems to suggest that that Grail is still within reach.

31.5 Summary

• Edward James Hughes OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998), more commonly known as
Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children’s writer.
• In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on their list of “The 50 greatest British writerssince
1945”.
• Hughes’ earlier poetic work is rooted in nature and, in particular, the innocent savagery of
animals, and an interest from an early age.
• In Hughes’s view, modern man has discarded his world of feelings, imagination and pure
instincts which is true to nature.
• “Death by Water” is by far the shortest of the poem’s five sections, describing in eight lines
“Phlebas the Phoenician” lying dead in the sea.

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