'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923) | Hacker News Reader

'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)

theguardian.com

35 pointsdrjohnson12 comments

It helps immensely to hear poetry read, particularly if it's read well. I didn't understand how important the sound is until I started listening - it changed the way I view poetry. If I can't find a recording of a poem, I'll even try reciting it myself.

Years ago I started sticking a cassette (!) of Eliot reading "The Waste Land" in my Walkman (I did say "years ago") before walking to work. It was around 20 minutes each way. I could expect to hear "Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead ..." as I was walking in the front door of the math building. I'd get to the end of the poem around halfway on my way home. Eliot is (to my ears) a good reader, and after months of doing this I'd memorized large chunks of the poem. There are also recordings of him reading "Prufrock" and "Four Quartets" which are very good.

One drawback to this is that I can't multitask while listening to poetry (though now, even music is a problem). So it has to wait till I'm doing something which doesn't require too much attention (which may not be a good thing).

Other good readers of their own poetry - Yeats (though the recordings are very old), Dylan Thomas. Professional readers can sometimes do a good job - I have a recording of Michael Sheen doing "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which is completely over the top. Best to listen to a sample before you buy.

Ted Hughes recitation of Eliot’s Four Quartets is amazing!

Isn't this how a lot of people who read "The Waste Land" for the first time react to it? I'm reading Exile's Return by Malcolm Cowley at the moment, and he writes about the reaction of the generation of younger writers watching Eliot's progress as a potential way forward for them, and being disappointed that with this poem he zigged when they hoped he would zag, so to speak. Doesn't matter to me, I really like it. It's dense and allusive, but a lot of poetry is hard to read without seeming to have much to back it up. This one, I never put down, because it feels like even the parts I don't get have a reason for being that way.

"For the rest one can only say that if Mr Eliot had been pleased to write in demotic English The Waste Land might not have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists and literati, so much waste paper."

Perhaps so, and that's essentially what many of my fellow students and I thought of the poem when we studied it at high school along with Eliot's other epic The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock — although the latter was better tolerated.

We spent months poring over The Wasteland line by line until we understood every nuance in every line (or I should say were supposed to know every nuance but I didn't). For some kids like me who were more interested in mathematics and science it was heavy going and boring.

If asked now whether I'm glad I studied studied it I'd have to answer yes for all those reasons that come with age and experience but at the time it would have been a definite no. Still, I question whether all that time would not have been better spent on what would have been more fruitful schooling. It seems to me that the work is just too erudite and mature—with all its obscure references—for all but the best students doing English at high school (of which I was not one). Shakespeare's works were much easier and I liked studying them.

With that background, I'd say that Guardian review perplexes me as it seems rather shallow and ill informed for a paper of its stature—for reasons that Eliot's The Wasteland is a pillar in the canon of 20th Century poetry and widely recognized as such (I would have thought the reviewer would have been more knowledgeable about Eliot's works). Whilst I know that for a fact, it surprises me that I even know why—given my reservations about the work (seems some of that classwork must have stuck).

Incidentally, when I was learning about Eliot's works in the 1960s he was still alive and our teacher (and syllabus) stressed that he was an important modern contemporary poet and that it was essential for us to study his works.

I first read The Waste Land in high school without understanding much of it, but it left a big impression. It felt like the end of an era, one in which education was still rooted in the classical tradition (could someone today so casually quote Ovid in a footnote in the original latin, without even attempting a translation?)

Anyone who likes The Waste Land should try and read Four Quartets, and his plays, especially Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party, The Family Reunion and The Elder Statetsman. They are all unique in their own way and reflect Eliot’s mind and ideas at least as well as WL.

Wasn't this a typical reaction of traditionally educated readership to the Modernist literature? Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's La Recherche had a similar reception at first, didn't they? How did the public acquire a taste for this kind of literature?

I suspect that the public liked it before the pundits.

Yes, I read a book in university (can't remember the exact name) about how high-brow modernism often mingled with 'low-brow' popular press. Extracts of experimental literary fiction appearing in cheap magazines next to ads, that kind of thing.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/pop...

Edit: the book I was thinking of is this. Great read. https://www.routledge.com/Re-Covering-Modernism-Pulps-Paperb...

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

These two lines are referenced in the Culture series of novels by Iain M Banks. In fact, two book titles are from these two lines!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

I’m torn because “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock“ is perhaps my favorite poem. And it is already difficult enough to understand. I find “The waste land“ to be a much harder slog yet still seductively well written.

FWIW his earlier Sweeney poems[1], [2] are more traditionally crafted, with rhyme and meter and everything, and I feel they are masterpieces. Much easier to approach than his latter works.

[1] https://www.bartleby.com/199/24.html

[2] https://www.bartleby.com/199/15.html

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