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Post by Roshan on Oct 21, 2020 21:51:24 GMT -5
Also why not NiFe jumper, voidberry ... he's definitely definitely not Te PolR, note the doc and comments after it on that thread.
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anthony
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Post by anthony on Oct 22, 2020 5:32:50 GMT -5
Overall, this poem seems thematically similar to the four quartets that we covered earlier. From what I COULD tell and understand throughout it, Eliot is making a lot of in depth, layered allusions and references to various writers and aspects of culture around the world during this time. As you said Roshan , the poem was written in between the Great War and the Great Depression, the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Eliot seems to be using this time period to further elucidate how the more spiritually fulfilling, less evanescent parts of our world/universe have been forgotten and disregarded by us, in this case due to the essentially 'dead' state of the world post the Great War, and like the last poem, advancements in the illusory, spiritually unfulfilling material aspects of our world. What strikes me as the MOST indicative of anything throughout this poem is the sheer knowledge, and depth of it, required to write something like this - the allusions/references to various cultures and even allusions/references from within those cultures themselves. Ultimately it does seem like Eliot constructed a holistic, concretized 'theory of everything' designed to explain why the world is deadened now, because we've moved too far away from what's really important, necessary, or fulfilling.(Ti and Si). I agree that he seems to be so/SP 5w4(6w5). The poem presents a kafkaesque, nightmarish 'wasteland' where our actions are ultimately shortsighted and fruitless. He wrote the poem in such a holistic and simultaneously fractured way that puts heavy emphasis death/loss and spiritual privation, combining the 'frustration of the gnostic observer' with the lamentation coming from the 4 space.
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anthony
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Post by anthony on Oct 22, 2020 8:33:11 GMT -5
His voice is so archetypically so/SP
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Post by Roshan on Oct 23, 2020 20:00:37 GMT -5
Soooo I was thinking...
I'd really only asked people to read the first stanza (not even section) and find out about the sources/inspirations Eliot talks about in the intro to the end notes. But everyone is going at their own pace with reading the poem, and fine; you'll be reading it more than once, many times, I'm sure. And it gets easier and breezier the more you read it but you have to be able to understand certain references. And more than references, the foundational mythology it's based in. So if you want to move ahead with the poem go ahead but don't do it at the expense of keeping up with the rest of what I put here. Also, there are many free guides to reading The Waste Land, under searches such as guide to, how to, reading the...I thought instead of my recommending one you can find one that you like (or none).
I won't be able to comment more until tomorrow.
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Post by vincent on Oct 24, 2020 4:50:46 GMT -5
In French, we call this period "les années folles". The crazy years.
And there is indeed something quite "schizophrenic" about them.
The Great War had just ended.
Paul Valery had just wrote the famous line "we, civilizations, now knows ourselves mortal". The great positivist dream of the 19th century had turned into a nightmare, ultimately bringing out savagery in industrial form.
Memorials and mausoleum where growing everywhere like mushrooms in every villages. Every french family was in grief. Every german family was in grief AND in debt.
Everybody was saying "Never again" but the Treaty of Versailles had already planted the seeds of the next World War... France and Great Britain were tightening their grasps on their colonial empires, and they didn't realize yet that their time as global superpowers was over. Power had already shifted from Europe to America and Russia.
The League of Nations was a 2 year old baby at the time. And a sick one already.
On the other hand, the economy was booming and bubbling.
Freedom was in the air.
Radios now played Jazz on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Atlantic was now crossed faster than ever before, by boats and planes. Sky and Sea both busy.
Dada was moving from New York to Paris.
And while lots of people were "roaring" with the Zeitgeist, Wittgenstein was writing his tractatus logico-philosophicus. And Eliot was writing the Wasteland.
It would take Freud a few more years to write "Civilization and its discontents".
tbcd
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Post by Roshan on Oct 24, 2020 17:07:42 GMT -5
In French, we call this period "les années folles". The crazy years.
And there is indeed something quite "schizophrenic" about them.
The Great War had just ended.
.... The great positivist dream of the 19th century had turned into a nightmare, ultimately bringing out savagery in industrial form...
Yes, civilization had just collapsed under its own technology but already it was "The Jazz Age"
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Post by Roshan on Oct 24, 2020 17:31:02 GMT -5
Overall, this poem seems thematically similar to the four quartets that we covered earlier. From what I COULD tell and understand throughout it, Eliot is making a lot of in depth, layered allusions and references to various writers and aspects of culture around the world during this time. His references are from the very beginnings of Western civilization to the (his) present, they are copious and a compendium; they do go beyond it to Eastern religion and to esoterica like tarot, but above all it's a for a poem incredibly "Si" heavy cultural quasi-encyclopedia of Western civilization. The civilization that has just destroyed itself. But all this stands on the mythology introduced in the intro to the end notes.As you said Roshan , the poem was written in between the Great War and the Great Depression, the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Eliot seems to be using this time period to further elucidate how the more spiritually fulfilling, less evanescent parts of our world/universe have been forgotten and disregarded by us, in this case due to the essentially 'dead' state of the world post the Great War, and like the last poem, advancements in the illusory, spiritually unfulfilling material aspects of our world. Yes, and we have to understand the deeper layers of this transcendent spiritual center of the West he is trying to lead us through because it's specific.What strikes me as the MOST indicative of anything throughout this poem is the sheer knowledge, and depth of it, required to write something like this - the allusions/references to various cultures and even allusions/references from within those cultures themselves. Ultimately it does seem like Eliot constructed a holistic, concretized 'theory of everything' designed to explain why the world is deadened now, because we've moved too far away from what's really important, necessary, or fulfilling.(Ti and Si). Yeah, his Ti isn't in your face upfront here as it is in The Dry Salvages but his Si sure is, far and away beyond it. At the end of the day, between the two of 'em, there's virtually no way they're not both upper slot and absolute value (meaning first and third).I agree that he seems to be so/SP 5w4(6w5). The poem presents a kafkaesque, nightmarish 'wasteland' where our actions are ultimately shortsighted and fruitless. hmmm...that fruitlessness would be in direct contrast to the place of action in The Dry Salvages, where the immortal attempt at right action is the only thing that matters, it is incarnation itself, a sacred duty. But this poem is...well..1922.He wrote the poem in such a holistic and simultaneously fractured way that puts heavy emphasis death/loss and spiritual privation, combining the 'frustration of the gnostic observer' with the lamentation coming from the 4 space. Well, getting toward the end we find that the narrator is actually "I Teresias of the dugs". So in a way this really is Bardo; it exists in the mind and visions of an eternal Seer. It is between worlds, everywhere and nowhere, all times and no times. Limbo.
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Post by Admin on Oct 28, 2020 11:43:59 GMT -5
I did start making that historical/cultural time line for "the West" a few days ago, but although it's simple and very boiled down it took longer than I thought it would. Then with new member and whatnot...it'll be up soon.
In the meanwhile just keep perusing the poem and the whole topic (which is vast oc) and feel free to give input on some of the questions and comments here, or whatever else strikes you, as it strikes you. Especially don't let the Arthurian legends and the Frazer (Golden Bough) mythology that is the foundation of the poem, and for Eliot the foundational myth of 'the West', fall by the wayside in your perusings and perambulations.
Thanks
--Roshan
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anthony
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Post by anthony on Nov 12, 2020 1:23:57 GMT -5
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_(mythology)"The Wasteland is a Celtic motif that ties the barrenness of a land with a curse that must be lifted by a hero. It occurs in Irish mythology and French Grail romances, and hints of it may be found in the Welsh Mabinogion." Despite the contextual differences, between The Four Quartets and The Wasteland, Eliot seemed most absorbed with the idea that society and culture around him had been reduced to, well, a barren wasteland. The living and the inanimate had been left with a spiritual wound after a nightmarish series events, namely war, along with apparently sensationalist and competitively motivated technological advancement. From the first stanza: What most clearly stuck out to me was the dualistic, once oxymoronic("the winter kept us warm") idea. I immediately noted how 'neatly' this fits into what vincent wrote: power had shifted from Europe to America and Russia, French and German families were in grief, and yet the economy was booming. "The Crazy Years" with a schizophrenic overtone, to me, almost indicates that Eliot had been feeling the effect of a sort of international liminality - "was Schrödinger's cat dead or alive? We'll have to wait until the box is opened to find out." "Hofgarten" and "Starnbergersee," mean "court garden - Residenz of a noble family" and "A lake SW of Munich, Germany" respectively. And over this, comes a shower of rain, where later, coffee was consumed and chit-chat was had... Here, Eliot seems to be touching upon a sort of debauchery - post-WWI Europe, although perhaps imagistically luxurious and indulgent, was stale("coffee and chit-chat") and ultimately "not the same as it was before." "Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch." translates to "I am not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, I am a real German." This is supposed to be countess Marie Larisch von Moennich. I almost wonder if Eliot switched to German, holding in mind that he knew the readers knew it was him, to emphasize the analog nature between two different upbringings(and thus the present). Or, if Eliot meant to emphasize post-war sentiment through the POV of the countess. Either way, Eliot was conveying a felt separation from the POV of the countess who came from a different place than which she stayed. Somehow, the effect of the war is sensed much more clearly with this line.
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Post by Roshan on Nov 12, 2020 10:24:18 GMT -5
"Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch." translates to "I am not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, I am a real German." This is supposed to be countess Marie Larisch von Moennich. mmm....yes and no. For instance, it seems she wasn't Lithuanian, she was Bavarian, and had little to do with Russia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countess_Marie_Larisch_von_MoennichWhat do you make of this?
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anthony
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Post by anthony on Nov 12, 2020 13:35:08 GMT -5
Hmmmmm. I'm not quite sure what to make of that. I looked up the literal translation, which reads "I am not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, really German." The last "Ich" or "I" was left out, or perhaps not even meant to be there...
It does seem like Eliot was trying to evoke a feeling of "distance" between nations, and also seems to be playing with identity a little bit. Right after this, he goes into recounting Marie's experience...so, I can't think of anything other than Eliot was trying to create a feeling of dislocation to emphasize that post war schizophrenic, disjointed overtone, especially with Marie reverting back to her "roots" right after, and the fact that most of the readers do not speak German.
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Post by Admin on Nov 12, 2020 15:39:40 GMT -5
he goes into recounting Marie's experience...Marie reverting back to her "roots" right after... But whose roots? Of what tree's? (cf ending of Dry Sauvages). Who is the narrator of the Waste Land "really"? Where does "I Teresias of the dugs?" 'fit in' to all this? Is the speaker at the opening really 'supposed to be' ultimately a specific historical Marie? --Roshan
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anthony
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Post by anthony on Nov 12, 2020 16:14:56 GMT -5
At the ending of Dry Salvages, he references the yew-tree, or the tree of the death, to suggest that we need to remember our history and our death. I suppose the roots are simply "ours." Post-WWI, loosely put, a liminal space following a time of "action," created a Wasteland. Teresias was a blind, clairvoyant prophet. Eliot seems to use to him to illustrate and reemphasize these "life cycles" in tandem with the frustration that others' are not reverting back to the roots of the yew-tree/history, similar to the Dry Salvages. The narrator of the wasteland was...'being,' the eyes which are over, around, and inside all of us.
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Post by Admin on Nov 12, 2020 17:35:19 GMT -5
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Post by Admin on Nov 12, 2020 17:43:17 GMT -5
Are 'most of us' ultimately not reverting to these roots, anthony? And what about Marie? Is Marie 'supposed to be' a specific person?
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