The definition for free verse is poetry
without standard or regular rhyme, meter or structure. Although ‘The Waste Land’ conforms to the description of
free verse, or vers libre, Eliot himself did not believe that any verse could be free, and when looked at closely, the poem
also contains many elements of other poetic categories. These include narrative, dramatic, descriptive and meditative types
of poem. I am going to look at the ways in which these types of poetry appear in ‘The Waste Land’, and also at
how Eliot uses various languages, Shakespearean influences, dialogue and Biblical influences to make it a successful poem.
The two sections I have chosen to look at are in ‘What The Thunder Said’, from “After the torchlight…”
to “If there were water”, at the beginning of this section, and at the end from “Datta: what have we given?…”
to “…á la tour abolie”.
A commonly accepted theory is that Eliot used the film method of montage, the
editing together of a large number of shots with no intention of creating a continuous reality. This can be seen clearly in
‘The Waste Land’ as throughout the poem Eliot quickly switches from place to place, and most of the time everything
changes, scenery, characters, but there is always an underlying tone of what The Waste Land means, such as the struggle to
find truth and meaning, the modern world as spoiled and corrupt, love and sex as bad, empty and selfish gestures, the breakdown
of communication and birth and death.
In the first section I have chosen, Eliot uses a reference to when Jesus was betrayed by Judas, leading to his crucifixion.
“After the torchlight red on sweaty faces” relates to the guards coming to take him away,
“The agony in stony places” refers to the fact that Jesus knew he was being betrayed. Even though Eliot is
making a Biblical reference here, he never mentions that it is about Jesus, which means that the reader must be educated to
understand the poem, and this is the same with several other references that he makes throughout The Waste Land, such as Anthony
and Cleopatra and Madame Sosostiris. There are many things that lead us to believe Eliot is talking of Jesus, though;
“He who was living is now dead”, which refers to death;
“We who were living are now dying With little patience”, which refers to the feeling of the modern world being
corrupt and spoilt. The whole stanza’s reference to Jesus’ betrayal puts emphasis on the theme of the struggle
to seek truth and meaning, and the loss of communication, and the short sentences and no punctuation in this section of the
poem make it seem even more bleak and desperate, as if Eliot has no energy to put punctuation in and make sentences complex
as the future holds no hope.
The biblical orientation continues into the next stanza where Eliot makes water a main characteristic of his writing, but
the style changes - he is no longer writing about a person and a scene happening, he writes of a landscape that is completely
baron, and there is a lot of repetition throughout about the lack of water and the mass of dry rock. The form in which Eliot
writes in this part of the poem makes it descriptive, another type of poem that makes landscape, architecture or still life
as the central point of the poem. Water has a spiritual meaning, as it is used for baptisms in religion, and baptisms represent
purity and new life. The emphasis on the lack of water therefore puts an emphasis on the lack of purity and new life.
“Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water”, not only has Eliot repeated the lack of water, he has almost repeated the actual sentence, and
this extreme repetition of describing a dry, baron land without any water carries on throughout the rest of the stanza;
“…mountains of rock without water”
“If there were water we should stop and drink”
“If there were only water amongst the rock”. The amount of times that Eliot repeats the lack of water puts
a huge prominence on the lack of purity, sterility and new life - almost hope altogether.
Eliot uses the ancient language of Sanskrit in the second section I have chosen, and the meanings that he chooses relates
to the end line and the title. “What the thunder said” is taken from the Hindu fables, the Upanishads. The Sanskrit
he uses - “Datta:”, “Dayadhvam:” and “Damyata:” - mean “to give”, “to
sympathise” and “to be in control”. These meanings relate to the last line “Shantih shantih shantih”,
which is the traditional ending to an Upanishad, and according to the Upanishads, the thunder “gives”, “sympathises”
and “controls”. The last line, “Shantih shantih shantih” is set on its own, which relates to how it
was used in the Upanishads - to make a definite end the fable. Eliot uses italics on the Sanskrit language, which makes them
almost like a title for the following stanza, which contains things to do with what the thunder said in Sanskrit. For example,
the second stanza with the Sanskrit “Dayadhvam” meaning ‘to sympathise’, contains the line “Revive
for a moment a broken Coriolanus”, which is almost asking the reader to think of this character and sympathise for him.
Another foreign language is used in the second section I have chosen, in the line “Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie”, which is a famous line from Gerard de Nerval’s sonnet ‘El Desdichado’.
It means ‘the Prince Aquitaine to the abolished tower, in French. Eliot uses the line from this sonnet, and also uses
some of the sonnet characteristics in a different way, for example the rhyming schemes being a b a b, he uses this technique
but for the lines being in English and then foreign language in this stanza. Lines a are all written in a foreign language
(“Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina” “Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la
tour abolie”), and lines b are not (“O swallow swallow”, “These fragments I have shored against my
ruins”). The use of the characteristics of a sonnet shows the lyrical form in which The Waste Land takes, another type
of poem.
Eliot makes several references to Shakespeare throughout The Waste Land, such as Anthony and Cleopatra in ‘A Game
of Chess’, and he makes one in ‘What the Thunder Said’ when he writes;
“Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus”, as Coriolanus is a roman general who played the central character
in Shakespeare’s play, ‘Coriolanus’. This reference to a different text again makes the poem difficult to
understand to people who haven’t read or do not know of the original texts. This however makes the poem more effective
when the reader is aware of the many literary references, and it is therefore easier to see why Eliot wrote in the method
of montage - it allows him to write in all the ways that communicate the way he feels about things (the undertones of the
poem), for example through different languages, through other characters in other texts, from other texts themselves, characters
he has created, and in different types of poetry.
All of the references to different languages, texts and types of poem show how well educated Eliot was, especially for
the era that the poem was written in as not many people would have read so much, or travelled so much of the world and learnt
so many languages. I think that the use of montage, though it is not really a literary device works especially well in this
poem, conveying the underlying themes of ‘The Waste Land‘, without having to make a continuous reality. The use
of different types of poetry keeps the poem interesting, even though it is so long because you have to concentrate as it changes
so much. I think that Eliot is right about free verse in his poem, because he chose the order in which he put it and why,
and when the reader fully understands all of the references in ‘The Waste Land’, it is easy to see why the poem
is so successful.
