The Waste Land (03) – outline plan

I’m spending the next 6 months reading The Waste Land and exploring it, its meaning, its references, its context and its place in (modern?) culture.

After outlining my reflections from a first read – summarised into themes and dimensions – now is the time to plan on how to approach the rest of the project.

As I noted before, I would feel most comfortable getting into the dimensions of The Waste Land: considerations such as structure, rhyme, languages, perspectives etc. But form follows function, and it feels like I’d be taking the more straightforward route if I focused on these (relatively) easier dimensions rather than grapple with Eliot’s meaning. I must, therefore, start with meaning and themes and then seek to understand how the rest magnifies these.

Before this, though, there are some basics to cover. There are lines in foreign languages (the epigraph is in Latin, the dedication in Greek, passages in French and German, and a smattering of Sanskrit) to be translated. There are characters to understand (at least in the first instance; for example, who are Belladonna, Tiresias, Phlebas the Phoenician, Philomel, Cupidon) and what does Eliot mean by invoking them? And there are locations to place (Starnbergersee, the London locations, Carthage, Margate).

Some time should first be spent, therefore, building this basic knowledge.

From there, it feels most natural to work through Eliot’s own notes to further elucidate his meanings. This will particularly require reading “From Ritual to Romance” by Jessie L. Weston (cited by Eliot as the inspiration for the title, plan and much of the symbolism of The Waste Land), as well as “The Golden Bough” (a book I’ve heard of, at least, if not read or know much about).

I think we’ll be getting somewhere if we do these things, and will also generate a better idea of what to pursue in light of the results. Off we go!

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