The Waste Land and Other Writings

by Eliot, T.S.; Karr, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780375759345
• ISBN10: 0375759344
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-08
• Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE

Summary

First published in 1922, "The Waste Land" is T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, and is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot's poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a rich new poetic language, breaking decisively with Romantic and Victorian poetic traditions. Kenneth Rexroth was not alone in calling Eliot "the representative poet of the time, for the same reason that Shakespeare and Pope were of theirs. He articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression." As influential as his verse, T.S. Eliot's criticism also exerted a transformative effect on twentieth-century letter, and this new edition ofThe Waste Land and Other Writingsincludes a selection of Eliot's most important essays. In her new Introduction, Mary Karr dispels some of the myths of the great poem's inaccessibility and sheds fresh light on the ways in which "The Waste Land" illuminates contemporary experience.

Author Biography

<b>Mary Karr</b> is an award-winning poet, essayist, and memoirist. She is the author of three books of poetry, <i>Abacus, The Devil’s Tour</i>, and <i>Viper Rum</i>, and two memoirs, <i>The Liar’s Club</i> and, most recently, <i>Cherry</i>. She lives in Syracuse, New York.

Table of Contents

How to Read ``The Waste Land'' So It Alters Your Soul Rather Than Just Addling Your Head	ix
Mary Karr
The Waste Land and Other Poems
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)	3	(19)
The Love Song of F. Alfred Prufrock	3	(5)
Portrait of a Lady	8	(4)
Preludes	12	(2)
Rhapsody on a Windy Night	14	(2)
Morning at the Window	16	(1)
The Boston Evening Transcript	16	(1)
Aunt Helen	17	(1)
Cousin Nancy	17	(1)
Mr. Apollinax	18	(1)
Hysteria	19	(1)
Conversation Galante	19	(1)
La Figlia Che Piange	20	(2)
Poems (1920)	22	(16)
Gerontion	22	(3)
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar	25	(1)
Sweeney Erect	26	(2)
A Cooking Egg	28	(1)
Le Directeur	29	(1)
Melange Adultere de Tout	30	(1)
Lune de Miel	30	(1)
The Hippopotamus	31	(1)
Dans le Restaurant	32	(1)
Whispers of Immortality	33	(2)
Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service	35	(1)
Sweeney Among the Nightingales	36	(2)
The Waste Land	38	(21)
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
Introduction	59	(5)
The Perfect Critic	64	(12)
Imperfect Critics	76	(23)
Tradition and the Individual Talent	99	(10)
The Possibility of a Poetic Drama	109	(8)
Euripides and Professor Murray	117	(6)
``Rhetoric'' and Poetic Drama	123	(6)
Some Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe	129	(8)
Hamlet and His Problems	137	(7)
Ben Jonson	144	(14)
Philip Massinger	158	(16)
Swinburne as Poet	174	(6)
Blake	180	(6)
Dante	186	(11)
Andrew Marvell	197	(15)
John Dryden	212	(12)
The Metaphysical Poets	224

Excerpts

Portrait of a Lady

Thou hast committed
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
The Jew of Malta.

I
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself as it will seem to do
With I have saved this afternoon for you;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.

So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.

And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it . . . you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you

Without these friendships life, what cauchemar!
Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite false note.

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

---

Excerpted from The Waste Land and Other Writings by T. S. Eliot
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.