Usurping the Classics: Citation and Storytelling in 'The Waste Land'

T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' is a very hard piece of poetry to enter as a student of poetry. The many citations and references are a daunting prospect to attempt to decipher and create a coherent story from. It would require a “small library” to actually recreate the scope of reference that Eliot draws upon to create his fragmentary and dystopian 'Waste Land' (North in Eliot x). I would argue that it is not necessary to trace all of the references to their original sources, since other measures are used to tell the actual story of 'The Waste Land' and that these are completely in the vein of conventional storytelling and poetic discourse, so while the poem might require or allows for an individual interpretation of the internal story, it exists strictly inside the confines of tradition while, apparently, breaking away from it. I intend to show how it follows a classical schema for storytelling and how the different elements are arranged in a manner that actually aids the open-minded reader into a stronger understanding, while still retaining the text as the centre of attention.

Building a Narrative

The first line of 'The Waste Land' attempts to alienate the reader and the obvious reference to Chaucer's opening in 'The Canterbury Tales' are already a massive distortion. April is not bringing its shoures soote (Chaucer ll.1) in any positive manner here, but rather bringing Lilacs back from the wonderful dead land that was kept warm by Winter (Eliot ll. 1-7). From the very beginning, the reader is lead into Eliot's 'Waste Land' and the speaker does not grant any reprieve from the disheartening accounts or the repurposed quotes from a myriad of sources. The flirtation that we find between the 'Hyacinth girl' and the speaker in lines 35-41 dies off almost immediately and shows that the state of the world is truly undead and not living or dead (Eliot). Madame Sosostris is then introduced to give us a glimpse of Phlebas who will be central to the story further on in the poem (Eliot ll. 43-49). In this way, we are given a magical foreshadowing that we do not yet know how to understand, except as an emblem of water. Phlebas purpose is to give the reader an introduction in how the world is perceived by the speaker in the poem and give credence to an interpretation that water is not a bringer of life. In this part of the poem, we are introduced to the major characters of the poem and this serves as a quite conventional introduction, where the action is revealed, but we have only encountered the insurmountable obstacle that the protagonist must face.

Water Is Unlife

The imagery of 'The Waste Land' is at once confusing and coherent. The paradox seems to be a natural response, when something so bleak and sterile as the antebellum London needs to be described. The flirtation that we find between the 'Hyacinth girl' and the speaker in lines 35-41 dies off almost immediately and shows that the state of the world is, truly, undead. Water is almost omnipresent in the poem and the citation from Tristan and Isolde in line 42 where the ocean is empty and desolate makes us understand the sea as part of the waste land that is everywhere. The revelation that the waste land is all-encompassing makes for a very dark reading of the poem as the connecting element in the poem is water. If water is not a symbol of life, as it, so very clearly, is not in 'A Game of Chess', then what does it represent? I would argue that water functions as a perversion of life and is a representation of death. In 'Death by Water', we are introduced to Phlebas the drowned sailor. He has been dead for a fortnight and is not coming back. His bones have been picked clean and he has no recollection of either 'gulls, and the deep sea' (Eliot ll. 313). He was already introduced in the tarot deck but his significance was not clear then. Phlebas dies of drowning but Eliot does not let Phlebas stay dead. Instead, he passes 'the stages of his age and youth' (ll. 317) in a mockery of death and the sterility and aridness of the landscape is mirrored in the sea, since it is still 'Oed und leer' (ll. 42). This passage is part of the Grail myth and functions as a means of resurrecting the land and to bring prosperity and fertility back to the “kingdom”. The middle parts of the poem deepen and explain the plot and we can find a glimmer of hope that will set things right.

What the Thunder Actually Says

The overt images of Arthurian legend are strewn liberally across the pages with the mentions of the Fisher King and Tristan and Isolde. The reason that the Grail myth is so important in 'The Waste Land' is that it is a way out of the suffering and gives hope of redemption. I do not find that Eliot actually intends to give absolution to the society that he describes and it all boils down to a few select references given at dispersed intervals in the final lines of the poem. The normal reading of 'The Waste Land' is that the poem ends on a positive note, and there is hope for civilization even though it is doomed if we continue with Western religion and culture. The hope is found in the Upanishad or Eastern mysticism as the thunder brings the rain. However, as stated earlier I do not find that the rain is a bringer of life. In line 393-394, 'a damp gust/ Bringing rain' comes to the waste land, but the process is not one that suddenly turns the barren land into a living, breathing organism (Eliot). On the contrary, the very next line says that the 'Ganga was sunken' and that we are still waiting for the rain. Most of the other river references have been to the Thames and it is significant that Eliot turns to the Ganges instead. This shift marks the turning away from Western philology. We find a boat mentioned by the thunder in lines 418-422 and it is sailed by an expert (Eliot). The sea is described as calm, but the thunder is coming and although the sailor is proficient he is most likely entering a storm. Could this sailor be Phlebas in a period before drowning? If so, the bleakness found in 'Death by Water' is even darker than we first assumed. The very next line, the speaker is sitting on the shore and is fishing (Eliot 424). We have still not have any confirmation that life has returned and the drowned sailor is still echoing through the pages. 'Shall I at least set my lands in order?' functions as a focal point for the poem in the final lines of it, yet they also state that everything has not been set right (Eliot 425). The question mark is of utmost importance, since it only heightens the perception that the speaker has a choice in the matter, and he is capable of turning his back on civilization. The final citation that I will introduce is found in line 430, where the speaker states that 'These fragments I have shored against my ruins' (Eliot). If Eliot had intended to end the poem on an upbeat note, then it seems odd that this line is present in the poem. There is no apparent solution to the speakers situation and the very quotes from the multitude of sources have ended their life in the speaker's wasted mind and world. The implications to the storytelling are not reminiscent of tragedy or comedy, since the unfulfilled nature of my reading, leaves the speaker in his waste land, but I will argue that this very ending can be read into the fragmented nature of the poem.

Ending Civilization

Eliot follows a set schema for the storytelling in 'The Waste Land' and while it is extraordinary, it is still bound within this schema to provide a coherent story. I have attempted to highlight that 'The Burial of the Dead' works as an introduction, where the themes are presented, as well as the characters that have importance. We do not find out who the drowned Phonecian is in this part, but we recognise him, when he is reintroduced in 'Death by Water' and Phlebas serves as a reminder of how water has been perverted from our normal perception of it, as life-giving. Then, I continued with this view of how water's symbolism has been changed and showed that the thunder in 'What the Thunder Said' can be understood as an impotent hero, where the speaker is the final arbiter in how the world can be restored. I will grant that this reading does not fully account for all of the readings, where Eastern spirituality can replace Western religions, but the final quote serves to remind us that water can be fatal to a mortal and the fragments that have shored on the speaker's ruins offer little respite for the reader or the speaker.

References

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Internet Medieval Source Book. 1996.

Eliot, T.S. The Wasteland. Ed: Michael North. London: Norton, 2001. Print

Breaking Away from Tradition: Metrical Subversion in 'The Raven'

On the internet, there are a lot of student help pages concerning poetry and how to read it and we are often introduced to familiar concepts such as internal rhyme, metre and a wide variety of other poetic terms. When we regard the “cheatsheets” for Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven' most of these pages stress the structure of it, but end up accepting the fact that it is a trochaic octameter, without delving into the specifics of what that actually suggests for the reading. My reading of this poem is troubled by this acceptance, as the form and style of the poem attempts to subvert the metrics and rhythm of itself. I will present two different lines that stand in contrast with the highly stylised lines of trochaic octameter, to show how the poem's rhythm is constantly broken by the metrics of the poem.

'The Raven' can easily be described as rhythmically arranged, since it is possible to boil it down to a four-beat structure. Since 'The Raven' has become a cornerstone in almost any anthology concerning American poetry, there have been a movement towards a unified reading of the poem and the fact that it is probably the most famous poem composed in trochaic octameter, it is held as a shining beacon of this particular metre. The first line of the poem holds itself completely to this form, but already in the second line we find it straining against the confines of the chosen metre. Wikipedia has a scansion of the first stanza that I would argue is faulty for reasons that will be explained after introducing the scansion of the second line:

                                          | /  .   | /   .   .  | /           .  | /   . .    | /    .    | /    .  | /    .   | / | (Wikipedia)

                                          Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore (Poe ll. 2)

The heavy use of dactyls are not particularly problematic as many foot substitutions are allowed in different metres and I do not have a complete list of allowed substitutions in trochaic octameter, if such a list even exists. My main argument against this scansion is the manner in which of is analysed. It is almost unheard of to stress a function word and in this scansion, it seems as a particular interference with the reading. The rhythm of the reading does indeed give us the impression that of should be stressed, but the line would scan more easily if volume was a spondee and of for- would be a pyrrhic. In this way, there would not have to be stress on a function word.

The substitutions introduced in the second line are not a definite proof that the poem does not use trochaic octameter throughout, but we find that several lines have similar struggles with staying inside the metrical arrangement of the metre. I would argue that these lines are not a breach of metrics, but rather the poet remaining unrestrained by tradition and form. Instead, he is highlighting how metre can be subverted to serve a purpose of highlighting certain facts in a poem. The most obvious line to use for this is the opening line of stanza nine:

                                     | /        .   | /    .           .  | .    /   .    | /      .  | /      /   | /         .   | / . |

                                     Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

The line is extremely convoluted and the addition of a dactyl in the second foot and then the extremely rare amphibrach in the third. The stresses of the line highlight the words ungainly and fowl. These words hold semantic context to the complicated elements found in the metrics and, therefore, the metre gives an increased value to our understanding of the poem. The line is, of course, still acceptable in terms of metre, but it is an extreme example of how to use any sort of metrical line and it would most likely have been seen as a breach of “decorum” to use a line like this in most earlier poetry. The internal rhyme of the line is also off-centre as, ungainly and plainly are the rhyming constituents, but ungainly is the third foot and the rhyme should have been fowl with plainly. This non-rhyme is a pun on 'fowl-foul' and denotes that something has gone awry for our speaker. These subtle elements are what sets 'The Raven' apart from other poems of its age and these parcels of information that can be gleaned from paying attentive detail to the construction of the poem accentuate more diversity and poignancy in his poetic framing.

I have not shown that 'The Raven' is unmetrical, but I have attempted to highlight how subversive the use of metre has become by this point in time and I do believe that there is something uniquely rebellious and American in Poe's poetry. Poe adherence to metrics seems to be founded in something other than tradition, as we can find inventiveness in his attempt to break it away from a simple reading. His command of metrical poetry is not used to solidify form but rather to blur the meaning and the strict adherence in most of the lines of this poem suggests the very eeriness that the poet intended.

References

Poe, Edgar Allan. 'The Raven'. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York:

Barnes and Noble. 2006.

'Trochaic Octameter'. Wikipedia.

Why Is Poetry Important? Part Three

What It's like to Be Human

I wanted to say that poetry needs to be understood in order to have any sort of function in the modern world, but along the way I found that I'm not in complete agreement over this point. Instead, poetry needs to touch emotions of its readers.My main point with this is that I've found literature where I have no clue what is being said (James Joyce comes to mind for some peculiar reason), but it still strikes me as absolutely brilliant. I don't need to understand every single line or even half of the words that are used to recognise a good story or a brilliant usage of sound (The Waste Land comes to mind here). I might not even agree that it's any good when looking at the theme or tropes used, but the sound alone can strike me as particularly beautiful. I vividly remember a night at the university where there was a symposium on Arabic and Persian poetry and not understanding a single word of the poems, but I was completely enthralled by the sound of them. I was mostly trying to beg a free sandwich off of the guy outside the room, but it actually turned out that I stayed for the poor guy's reading from some of the works they where discussing. So to sum things up, I am in love with poetry and how it affects me.

My love for poetry is not the only thing that I think is important though. I may like the notion of poetic beauty and the aspiration to create something to marvel at, but the point of poetry should also be to engage the reader's mind and provoke thoughts. The central element of this style of poetry is to engage me and make me wonder about my present condition. I could possibly become someone else (If I hadn't been so damn lazy), but do I aspire to be anything other than a good person in my own eyes?
I'd say no and hopefully I'll continue thinking this sort of thing, but I also need to develop as a person in order to retain my sanity. This is where provoking known symbols becomes important and why the poetic voice is usually perverting, subverting or rebelling against the "known". I've mentioned Joyce and Eliot and how on earth these people made it through with their stuff is quite remarkable. It sure took some battles with authorities to get their works published and it's incredible that they are not viewed with horror today.

By addressing our emotions and engaging our sensibilities, poetry retains its relevance and as a consequence, poetry needs to be constantly reinvented to engage the reader, but it's constantly balancing between respecting or breaking away from tradition.

Short Rant on Politics in Danish

TL:DR-version: Rige mennesker er nogle svin og nu prøver de at smide gylleartikler ud, som skal fjerne fokus fra de vigtige begivenheder. 

Det er pudsigt, hvordan vi kan se en række artikler (her og her), der skal fungere som røgslør for den egentlige historie, i denne uge. Blandt andet Nordea, har været medvirkende til en af de mest grundlæggende problematiske sager, som vi kan være vidner til. Hvis man ikke forstår, at disse to indlæg i "samfundsdebatten" er et forsøg på at forvirre og distrahere opmærksomheden fra hvor skævt samfundet er indrettet, så skal man formentlig undersøges af en professionel. 

Jeg mener, at enhver, der har været medvirkende til at sende penge uden om systemet, skal straffes efter terrorlovgivningen. Det er et bevidst forsøg på at undergrave danske værdier og det samfund, som vi prøver at skabe og vedligeholde. Jeg gider ikke engang bruge tid på at forklare, hvorfor de to artikler er fejlagtige og bunder i en misforstået anvendelse af biologi eller en utilsløret tilsvining af den næststørste religion i verdenen, og de er ikke værd at bruge kræfter på at dementere. 

Vi skal derimod huske at holde vores øjne rettet mod de mennesker, der systematisk prøver at bekæmpe frihed og demokrati, ved at skrabe mere og mere til sig. Endelig har vi et fornuftigt mål, som vi kan stå sammen om at nedkæmpe, og den samme vilje, som drev mig til at blive soldat og være medvirkende til at blive udsendt, for at bevare mit eget samfunds værdier og støtte andre i deres ønsker om at få sin egen stat, der understøtter deres frihed, driver mig nu til at ønske en mulighed for at bekæmpe griske kapitalister, som ønsker at vægte mulighederne i deres favør.

Jeg er ikke igang med at argumentere for, at vi skal slå dem ihjel, men min retfærdighedssans er helt sikkert indstillet på hævn, og der bør være en så massiv straf af de implicerede, at de aldrig kommer på fode igen. Dette er ikke et mord på et andet menneske, det er derimod ondsindet tilraning af magt, som har haft vidtrækkende konsekvenser for ufattelig mange mennesker. Jeg er villig til at skyde skylden for alle de, der er døde af fattidomsrelaterede sygdomme på deres kappe. Nu bør der starte en heksejagt for at finde ud af, hvem der har en aktie i Mossack Fonsecas suspekte handlinger.

Der findes brodne kar i denne verden, og jeg er også opmærksom på, at vi umulig kan få fat i dem alle, men der bør være adskillige mennesker, som kan sættes i fængsel for skatteunddragelse, som bør anses for den mest undergravende virksomhed, man er i stand til at udøve i et demokrati. Derfor nævnte jeg terrorlovene som en indgangsvinkel til straf. Om ikke andet, så har jeg da fået mig en undskyldning for at rase lidt ud.

Why Is Poetry Important? Part Two

Experiments

Creativity is often used as a basis for the justification of art. I don't particularly prescribe to any notion of creativity, since I think it often stems from knowledge. Knowledge is hard to acquire and it takes patience and reflection to actually learn something. The process where we understand new stuff is limited to our experiences and knowledge is used here as a catch-all phrase that is the sum of all our experiences. Poetry exists inside a framework that is pretty well-established and that framework is a useful tool to create a basis for understanding the world, but by recklessly accepting tradition we are also accepting our current understanding of the world as a truth.

Poetry is, by its very nature, experimental, for it seeks to provoke thought and it creates this effect through a variety of means. Recently, I have re-read some of Edgar Allan Poe's poems and I am inclined to see a provocative and sarcastic tone that permeates all of the macabre and perverted narratives in the poems. I find no evidence that his poems are satirical but at the same time Poe is mocking the "stupid commoner" who is searching for a scheme to become a successful writer in his "How to Write a Blackwood Article" that is still funny reading in this day and age. The experiment in poetry is not necessarily to be found in structure and style, although these are a quite sophisticated manner of showing the skill of the poet, but also in the subject matter and, for me, it must be a goal to actually have something to say. In this regard, I find Poe rather lacking, since most of his poems are too deliberately "showy" and seek to be provocative by going for something that polite society would frown upon, while also sating that need for base grotesquerie that taboos, such as, necrophilia, death and incest had become in the mid-19th century. In other words, he is far too vulgar, but this vulgarity is also a huge part of his appeal, since it seems that there is nothing that he won't do for money, even writing "base" literature.

In more modern times and with the victory of free verse over metric poetry, I believe that the process of distinguishing good poetry from bad poetry is a lot easier than earlier. Accentual-syllabic poetry has some qualities to it that I find intriguing but, at some point, we're just rehashing old ideas. I believe that the work of the modernists and the post-modern branches of poetry are creating a fascinating and original way of engaging the reader. I just think that a thorough understanding of what these forms of poetry are rebelling against is very important.

So, when I write experiments are vital to poetry, I do so with a conservative approach that I hope to lose somewhere in the process of becoming older and, hopefully, wiser.

If you're looking for a reading suggestion with experimental poetry, just visit a local poetry slam event. These things are wildly popular and for a good reason. It's poetry without all of the elitist and stuck-up opinions of online bloggers. Another personal favourite of mine has got to be Caroline Bergvall and how she treats language in a very musical manner, yet refuses to be constrained by something as trivial as rhyme and metre.

What on Earth Do I Want to Say With All of This?

Hi anyone who might stumble on to this site from wherever.

I've wanted to create a blog for some time that would be my outlet, so I could discuss whatever I felt like and whenever I felt like it. As can be seen from the name of the blog, I have some things I find more important than others and what better way to get it done than to publish it on the internet. No other place seems as suitable for cringing one's heart out than the internet and I've made the choice that I won't stay anonymous, so I hope this blog can give me the opportunity to stand up for what I like, dislike and find interesting.

I'm a 32 year-old man who lives with my wife in an apartment in Copenhagen. I have been studying English literature and language for the past 3½ years and recently got my bachelor's degree. For all of this time and since 2005, I've been employed by the Danish army. I'm a staff sergeant with a specialization in logistics and have been stationed in Afghanistan and Kosovo. I've always been proud of being a soldier, even though I might not have agreed on the mission I was performing, but after 7 years in the army, I started to become restless because of a lack of "personal development". I couldn't stand the fact that I might end up spending the next forty years as a soldier with limited opportunity for becoming a better person that could have a positive impact on my surroundings.

As can be seen from the paragraph above, I am extremely narcisistic. It's always me, me, me, but by sharing my thoughts with what I guess will be a very limited crowd (mostly me), I can perhaps change my self-perception into something that might be positive for other people and by extension, me.

I want to apologise for how the blog presents itself, but I have no intention of becoming proficient in using a computer for anything that is not strictly needed. I'm a user of the internet, not a profiteer and I will never use this blog for any commercial interests whatsoever.

My interest in politics is purely based on an amateurish interest in how we govern ourselves. In a distant past, I studied history at university and although I found the quantitative studies incredibly important, I couldn't stomach the effort that went into making them. The dull and mind-numbing repetitive task of gathering data is not one of my favourite pastimes, but the ideas that are provoked by historians interest me quite a lot. I don't subscribe to any particular political creed, but I sympathise mostly with socialist humanist ideals. My objection to capitalist society stems from the fact that we (people living in a capitalist world) are unwillingly participating in a culture, where we exploit and reduce humans to a commodity. This objectification of humanity is, in my opinion, the very real problem that the world faces.

Poetry is another of my main interests and that interest was awakened by my studies. I've always liked poetry and the way it presented difficult issues in a symbolic manner. I guess that I never fully realised how important it was to own the discourse to address issues in society and the most convoluted manner of saying stuff gives us a way to present the problems in a very human mode of expression. The inaccessibility of poetry is precisely the thing that makes poetry a necessary outlet for many people and the power of poetry lies in the obfuscation of meaning, which creates a paradox by being the most straightforward expression of thoughts. It's not an object to hide the emotion to create poetry. Poetry stems from emotion and is possibly the least manipulative mode of expression that humans have ever invented. It is constricted by massive amounts of tradition and every once in a while these traditions stymie the creativity and very emotions that the poet seeks to share with whoever is listening. I want to express myself as clearly as possible but in doing so, I often end up hiding my emotions, since I tend to value rationality and reason above an emotive response and while I think it's important to use reason to govern our emotions most of the time, I also believe that we must use our emotions to guide our reason. For this reason, emotion becomes the most important facet of being human.

My other insignificants are mainly given to say that I do not presently have an agenda that I want to push, but I get outraged at certain events in my society and I have a need to vent these emotions, so every once in a while, I will probably share something that is not related to poetry or politics, although I will have a hard time staying on topic for these things.

Thank you for reading this and I hope that you end up enjoying what I want to be my shared personal space on the internet.

Sincerely yours
Jonas.