The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih".Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 359 et seq.
Eliot's note: Stimulated by Shackleton's Antarctic expedition where the explorers at the extremity of their strength believed there was another who walked with them across South Georgia!
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
The final lines of the poem.
The Waste Land (1922)
Source: The Waste Land and Other Poems
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Variant: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Source: The Waste Land (1922)
“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land
“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow”
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 25 et seq.
Context: There is shadow under this red rock
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
“He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.”
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 60 et seq.
This is a reference to Dante's Inferno, Canto III, lines 55-57
“O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent”
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 128 et seq.
“I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”
T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land
Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 39 et seq.
