All the complexity and significance of the modernistic idea of style seems to be summed up in T.S. Eliot’s famous poem. This poem deals directly with the decline of civilization and the resulting impossibility of recovering meaning in life. In this poem, Eliot alludes to and quotes from various classic works and myths such as Greek mythology, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare and so on. These allusions to various classical works are referred in a seemingly fragmentary form that lends significance to the meaning of the poem as it is in this fragmentary approach that Eliot is able to make a comment on the nature of modern society in general.
Rather than focusing on the words of the poem itself, Leavis sees the significance of “The Wasteland” as residing principally in the disorganization of the poem (1932: 90). By definition, a wasteland denotes an area that has been devastated spiritually, emotionally, physically and culturally. In short, Eliot attempted to reveal the complication involved in the lapse of attention given to mentality and culture in the modern capitalist society.
Moreover, Leavis phrases the modern predicament as a breach of continuity and an uprooting of life as is expected in a wasteland. He insists that a major cause of this uprooting lies in the incessant rapid change that characterizes the Machine Age (Leavis, 1932). An important point brought out regarding Eliot’s poem is its strange disconnection with nature, a statement that could be made of modern society as it made its transition from a mostly agrarian society to an urban society, from the old ways of life to the new. This can be seen in Eliot’s poem through the disjointed, confused accumulation of traditional stories and myths.
Additionally, it can be said that Eliot, in this poem, intends not only to depict the chaotic situation of the modern civilization but also to urge us to reaffirm the significance of cultural tradition in the modern society. His idea of succession of tradition does not mean to recognize classic and old works as heritages, which are cut off from the present, nor to protect them from extinction. It is defined in his essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ as follows:
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artist. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.
I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. (Eliot, 1919: 15)
Although this citation is quite long, it illustrates adequately the interrelation between the present and the past, and the fluidity of tradition. Eliot exhorts that a poet has to be aware of tradition when writing a poem. According to his writings, he felt a tradition is not acquired unconsciously but is like an image which is emerged in artificial perspective. In other words:
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.) (Eliot, 1963: 235-246)
It can be said that Tiresias personifies Eliot’s dilemma between his attempt of a unification of the modern and traditional world as a solution to social fragmentation. This attempt to unification of the world can be shown from Eliot’s note on the character. Eliot explains it as follows; Tiresias as an observer instead of as a character is “the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias.
What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem” (Eliot, 1963: 82). As is indicated in this quote, it is in the body of this character alone that the reader is able to see modern commentary on social aspects of life in the figure of a traditional character who both reminds us that social ills are not new concepts as well as provides hope for a revival of moral outrage sufficient to bring about societal change (Weiskel, 2003: 69). This disjointed, cerebral approach to poetry represented a fundamental shift away from the traditional methods that was suited to the new era.
On the other hand, such experimental introduction of new technique and form brought the fact that a work of art of modernism, in particular poetry, is not created for the public but rather for the elite. Through this motion, Modernist art became identified as high art. As Leaves points out, the erudition and the richness of literary citations and allusions limited the range of readers (Leavis, 1932: 90). As Modernism continued to grow out of the dislocation and destruction of the war years, the works produced continued to pull together fragments of bygone eras in an attempt to create a new life of the fragments (Persoon , 1999: 92).
However, by pulling piecemeal from these previous texts, the reader was required to have a full knowledge of the original version to fully appreciate the effect of the fragmented parts. In addition, the advent of mass production had the effect of creating a throw away society in which consumers began expecting all things to be presented to them clearly, succinctly and without effort on their part, something Modern Art worked directly against.
In making the transition into the modern period, authors and artists took on a new political agenda as well as a new voice and direction. Although the art of the past had dedicated itself somewhat to the societal and political concerns of their day, they did so in a more abstract, suggestive manner. The new voice of the Modernists directly focused on these ideas, working to illustrate the chaos they saw occurring around them in both arenas.
Yet, even in this time period, the function of poetry remained a much discussed and debated topic. Eliot himself wrote on the subject: “One might take up the various kinds of poetry, one after another, and discuss the social function of each kind in turn without reaching the general question of what is the function of poetry as poetry” (Eliot, 1943: 4).
In discussing the various roles poetry plays in society, Eliot condenses its purpose down to pleasure first, “communication of some new experience, or some fresh understanding of the familiar, or the expression of something we have experienced but have no words for” (Eliot, 1943: 7) which must necessarily be unique to each society in order to convey the depth of meaning intended. Through this single poem, then, it becomes obvious that a change in voice and style for poetry was necessary as the world emerged from World War I into the almost fully mechanized world of the Industrial society and new understandings became necessary.
Works Cited
Eliot, Thomas. Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1963.
Eliot, T.S. On Poetry and Poets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1943.
Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and Individual Talent.” Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber, 1951 (1919).
Leavis, F.R. New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary Situation. London: Chatto & Windus, 1932.
Persoon, James. Modern British Poetry: 1900-1939. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999.
Weiskel, Portia Williams. “On the Writings of T.S. Eliot.” Bloom’s BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.