MARTINEZ, Shaira Denise G.

May 27, 2016

English 143 WFU
Professor: Dr. M.R.G. Ancheta
Final Paper
Mixing Memory and Desire: History and Fragmentation in The Waste Land

Modernism made its mark in art and literature as a movement that welcomed all forms of
experimentation and innovation, particularly having come off of a period of rapid change,
especially in ideologies. The movement is typically marked to have begun at the end of the First
World War, and is said to be exemplary of the shift in mindset that occurred due to the
experience of the atrocities of said war. This manifested in art and literature in all forms of
experimentation and revivals in order to explain away what seemed to be a new world order of
isolation and alienation, and if there had to be one definitive text of the period, it would arguably
be T.S. Eliots The Waste Land. The text is one that is known as a central text of the modernist
movement particularly for its ambiguity that lends itself to a multiplicity of readings that make it
difficult to pinpoint anything within the text. The text is a series of patchwork narratives, a
hodgepodge of allusions and references further confused by Eliots own footnotes. While The
Waste Land is seen as a depiction of the state of decay in Europe following the war, the
reading can be extended to Eliots homeland of America, making the text a reflection and
iteration of the American temperament in the early twentieth century. Eliot employs experimental
techniques in The Waste Land which speak of the fragmented and dissociated sensibility that
pervaded the American state of consciousness following the First World War.
The text is described by Jo Ellen Green Kaiser as a ready-made academic poem (83),
precisely because it has invited any number of readings from critics since its publication in 1922.
There seems to be a never-ending line of traffic between text and context, helped along by the
level of intertextuality Eliot employs with his allusions and footnotes. The use of the footnotes

can be seen as another experimental technique, one which contributes to the overall meaning (if
there can be said to be one) of the text. For one, the footnotes are necessary when one
considers the number of references, highbrow and lowbrow, that are made in the work.
Necessary as they are, because of the way Eliot uses them, they can also serve to
confuse or disorient the reader. In terms of form itself, the use of footnotes distracts the reader
from the body of the poem, forcing them to go back and forth between annotation and text. On
another level, one has to ask which exactly of the references are accounted for and which are
left unchecked. For example, on some counts, Eliot points out the more well-known references,
such as those to the Bible, or Dantes Inferno, or even to Shakespeare, but makes no note of
the more obscure ones such as those of Madame Sosostris and Belladonna. The tone Eliot
takes in the notes are of import as well: they do not stand as typical annotations which tell the
reader to refer to other texts. Some of them are conversational in manner, and it is these which
are particularly confusing. One of these notes says, This may not appear as exact as Sapphos
lines, but I had in mind the longshore or dory fisherman, who returns at nightfall (The Waste
Land 1350 note 8), and another, I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot pack
of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience (1345 note 4). Both
of these footnotes do nothing to assist in the way an annotation is supposed to: instead the
reader is left confused and must return to the poem without having their question answered. The
note for Tiresias in particular is jarring, as it calls for the reader to go back and rethink the entire
poem.
Certain annotations call for the reader to refer to earlier parts of the text, though referring
to the lines mentioned in said notes do nothing to explain the annotated line or the link between
the two aside from obvious wording (e.g. rats alley). One way to look at Eliots notes, and
these self-referential ones in particular, is to see them as a technique in order to entangle the
reader in its web of intertextuality. Peter Howarth describes each of the characters in the poem
as isolated and homogenized, stating that each exists as a function of their environment, time
and place, and each is unique (65). The reader can be said to exist under the same principle,

with the annotations contributing to the reader-personas environment. Howarth adds that the
poem begins to reflect onto the mental constructions you are trying to make in order to
understand it, so that the perspective you want to take on it can be already found in some
aspect of the poem (70), further absorbing the reader into the poem. Eliot himself stated that he
wanted nothing to be able to stand definitively outside [the text] (73), by encouraging traffic
between text and context (73), which includes the readers. The disorientation, for example,
brought about by constantly looking back and forth from the text to the notes is part of The
Waste Land experience, so to speak. Eliots instructions in the notes are also meant to bring
about the same disorienting sense, and John Xiros Cooper attributes this to the fact that poem
was born in a chaotic time (64), integrating the experience of fragmentation and disorder into
its very texture (64).
While the idea of traffic between text and context (Howarth 73) is linked to the inclusion
and subsequent alienation of the reader, this can also be applied to the idea of the text in
relation to history. The Burial of the Dead, the first part of the poem, opens with the lines:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. (The Waste Land 1345 1-4)
The idea of the mixing of memory and desire here can be read to be exactly what the
text is concerned with, especially when one considers its context. The Waste Land then
becomes an attempt at reconciling the barren present with a fertile past. This can be used to
explain the numerous references Eliot makes, particularly when one considers this idea in
relation to his essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliots essay discussed the
hypocritical standing of English tradition on the progress of art, looking particularly at how
society believed that art only progressed when it deviated from tradition, but more often than not
praised works that conformed to it. Eliot considers the idea of tradition, stating:
It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in
the first place, the historical senseand the historical sense involves a perception, not
only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man

to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole
of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own
country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This
historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the
timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the
same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his
contemporaneity. (italics mine)
This then explains the number of literary and historical references Eliot makes in The
Waste Land. It is through this that he exercises what he believed to be the true incorporation of
tradition, standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak, but still following Ezra Pounds famed
Make it new. Eliot says in the essay, we shall often find that not only the best, but the most
individual parts of [the poets] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert
their immortality most vigorously, and this is precisely the case with Eliots references, in which
Eliot completely transforms the texts he borrows from by setting them in this wasteland.
Eliot mentions in Tradition that the poem must involve a sense of timelessness and yet
of temporality as well, that it must be the representative of an entire countrys literature, coexist
with this entire body of literature and create a simultaneous order. It is the consideration of this
last element that makes The Waste Land difficult, as the reader is hard-pressed to find a
sense of order. The incorporation of a number of literary and historical references is only the tip
of the iceberg in exploring the theme of fragmentation looking at the form of the poem. While it
is clearly divided into five parts, the relationships between each of the parts are difficult to pin
down exactly, despite the aforementioned notes that would have you make associations
between them. Due to the publication history of the text, it has even been questioned whether
they were meant to stand as five separate poems instead of five parts of a whole. This division,
along with the repetition of certain lines and images or characters (such as Unreal City and the
Phoenician Sailor) and the intricate web of allusions and footnotes, creates the illusion of a

structure which seduces the reader into searching for a singular narrative, the progression of a
conventional plot. Clare R. Kinney discusses this seduction, stating:
The reader of The Waste Land is in this fashion alternately encouraged and rebuffed as
he tries to construct its plot (or plots). The poem seems to be what Roland Barthes
would call a "writerly" text, so limitlessly polysemous that the reader can and must quite
literally create it for himself. (275)
Kinney adds that the poem offers "fragmentary, half-buried glimpses of a goal-directed
plot," while simultaneously offering a "progress that partakes less of linearity than of restatement
and complication" (275). The text implies, for example, a sort of quest or a sense of journeying,
but to plot its progression is a difficult process, considering time itself is a blurred concept in the
poem. This distorted sense of time can be linked to the two aspects of the poem discussed
previously: the use of allusions and the idea of a simultaneous existence. The allusions, of
course, draw from the past, the poem creates a perceived present, and in its Sibylline nature
creates prophecies of the future. With the idea of a simultaneous existence of literature of all
times fulfilled, one would naturally go on to consider Eliots idea of a simultaneous order which,
as already established, is difficult to pinpoint.
It seems, however, that the text does make attempts to find a certain order. For example,
the Thames daughters at the end of The Fire Sermon have three stanzas of speech. The first
two are quatrains with the rhyme scheme ABAB. Although their rhythm is somewhat irregular, it
still possesses a recognizable pattern. The third stanza, however, comes in the form of six
irregular lines. The first and fourth and the second and fifth lines are rhymed lines, while the
third and sixth lines both end with nothing, making it a rime riche (Kinney 276).

Kinney

suggests that the stanza couldve easily been written with the same pattern as the first two, and
that it was not was purposeful, symbolic of a very real fragmentation or lack of order in the
twentieth century experience.
Denis Donoghue states that the text is not formless, but holds a passion for form,
largely unfulfilled (qtd. in Kinney 278). The same idea can be applied to that of twentieth
century America, particularly following the First World War. The very seduction of searching for a

singular narrative in The Waste Land is reminiscent of the post-war mindset, where the
American had to reconcile his idea of self-fashioning, individualism, and freedom of man with
the atrocities of war. World War I was essentially the dividing line of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries in America, and probably all over the world, as the war was a catastrophe the world up
until 1914 had never experienced. It destroyed or called for the working of all beliefs of
structure, leadership, hope, and chivalry. The war left in its aftermath a loss of faith in belief
systems, institutions, the individual, and in history even. As Henry Luce puts it, this century of
ours has been a profound and tragic disappointment. No other century has been so big with
promise for human progress and happiness, and in no one century have so many men and
women and children suffered such pain, anguish and bitter death.
Eliot does confront the war a bit more directly in certain points of the poem. In The
Burial of the Dead, one section discusses the Unreal City from the eyes of an unknown
persona, sometimes thought to be the all-seeing Tiresias. In this passage, the persona watches
the procession of a crowd over London Bridge and thinks, I had not thought death had undone
so many (The Waste Land 1346 63). The persona then recognizes a man named Stetson and
calls out to him, distinguishing him as one who was with him at the battle of Mylae, as the
annotation notes. He asks powerfully:
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, thats friend to men,
Or with his nails hell dig it up again. (1346 71-75)
This is perhaps the most direct confrontation of the war in the poem, where the persona
asks of Stetson what the point of all the death of the war was. The idea of the planting of the
corpse is reminiscent of the eras propaganda regarding the war, portraying it as a patriotic duty
that was for the better of the country, that it would, in the end, be profitable to them in some
manner. The persona asks Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? regarding this idea,
waiting for that profit to come about from the carnage. The next line suggests that the land is
now barren and cannot and will not reward them for their atrocities. The Dog in the next line is

representative of the bestial nature of man, reminiscent of the idea that man was dehumanized
due to the necessitated violence of the war. That said, the image of the Dog digging up the
corpse suggests that man is likely to repeat his mistake in taking part in a war, believing it for
the good of the country. This truly turned out to be a prophetic line, considering the coming of
the Second World War.
The poem also tackles other aspects of the war in its other parts. The pub episode with
Lil, for example, shows a varied experience of the war. Lil experiences the war through the
absence of her husband, and thus the conversation at the pub is a lighthearted one about sex
and marriage, and the war is mentioned only briefly and casually. The Fire Sermon features
the typist episode, in which Tiresias watches as the typist passively allows the clerk to have his
with way with her. The passivity with which the typist takes the rape, and the fact that Tiresias is
there to observe it, speaks of a desensitization to force and violence. Tiresias own identity, like
the form of the poem itself, speaks of a fragmentation as well, as Tiresias possesses both
features of a male and a female. Tiresias takes no role in the poem but to observe all, but as
Eliot states in one of the poems annotations, What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of
the poem (1350 note 7). Tiresias, according to Eliot, is the uniting factor of the poem, but he
sits in silence and merely observes. What Tiresias sees is a world that clings to order yet finds
none: a wasteland.
What the Thunder Said stands as an interesting ending piece to the text. As Kinney
puts it, the final lines of the part constitute a polyglot heaping together of references to urban
collapse, uncompleted purgation, metamorphosis, rape and madness (283), which in summary
are a shorthand compendium of the themes the poem has so compulsively reiterated,
appropriated from other texts and other tongues (283). The fifth and final part of the poem
repeats a mantra of Datta, dayadhvam, damyata (1356 433) which Eliot translates as Give,
sympathize, control (1355 3). These are read as the three duties of humans in order to improve
themselves, and alongside the coming of the thunder with promise of rain, they present a sort of
hope for rebirth.

This feeble promise of hope presented in What the Thunder Said, however, ends with
the following lines:
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi sascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidonO swallow swallow
Le Prince dAquitaine la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymos mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
The image of London Bridge falling down is hardly a hopeful one, particularly
considering that one of the later lines of the rhyme, as stated in an annotation in The Norton
Anthology of Poetry, is Take the key and lock her up, my fair lady (1356 note 9). This is then
followed by whats noted by Eliot in relation to a quote from Purgatorio that translates to 'And
so I pray you, by that Virtue which guides you to the top of the stair, be reminded in time of my
pain.' Then he hid himself in the fire that purifies them" (1356 note 1) This is followed by
Philomelas question which asks When shall I become like the swallow? and the anthology
notes that this line is followed in Latin by that I may cease to be silent. This, in relation to the
Take the key and lock her up line suggests that Philomela has no hope of being freed. The line
regarding the Prince of Aquitane comes from a somewhat obscure French poem, though it
keeps with the idea of la tour abolie or the ruined tower. The reference to Thomas Kyds The
Spanish Tragedy, though, implies great death, considering how Hieronymos madness lead to
the murder of his sons murderers, his sons lover, the Duke, and himself. With that line, the call
for the three duties and the chant of peace, Shantih shantih shantih, becomes weak and
feeble, almost desperate in the attempt to establish peace and order.
The persona declares here as well These fragments I have shored against my ruins,
but it is the readers duty to work these fragments together in attempt to create order, much like
the post-war mindset where man had to work with a new belief of fragmented experience
following the war, desperately trying to make sense of the atrocity and bloodshed. Eliot employs

a number of allusions to carry out the mixing of memory, that is history, and the desire to find an
order in a world that was proving itself to be ruptured, fragmented, and incapable of
comprehensible order.
I value intellectual integrity and the highest standards of academic conduct. I am committed to an ethical learning environment that
promotes a high standard of honor in scholastic work. Academic dishonesty undermines institutional integrity and threatens the
academic fabric of the University of the Philippines. And because I believe that dishonesty is not an acceptable avenue to success, I
affix my signature to this work to affirm that it is original and free of cheating and plagiarism, and does not knowingly furnish false
information.

_____________________________
MARTINEZ, Shaira Denise G.

Works Cited

Cooper, John Xiros. The Cambridge Introduction to T.S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Eliot, T.S. "The Waste Land." The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. M. Ferguson, M.J. Salter and
J. Stallworthy. 5th Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005. 1344-1356.
. "Tradition and the Individual Talent." July 1996.

Bartleby.com. 20 May 2016

<http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html>.
Howarth, Peter. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012.
Kaiser, Jo Ellen Green. "Disciplining "The Waste Land," or How to Lead Critics into Temptation."
Twentieth Century Literature 1988: 82-99.

Kinney, C.R. "Fragmentary Excess, Copious Dearth: "The Waste Land" as Anti-Narrative." The
Journal of Narrative Technique 1987: 273-285.