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[Ecurb]

T.S.Eliot's modernist classic "The Wasteland" was published in 1922, and celebrates its centenary this year. That same year the Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach in Paris.

Both are tricky, allusive, and sometimes incomprehensible. Both are also masterpieces. We all know the famous opening of The Wasteland:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

The poem adumbrates the great crisis of our own era, as our beloved Earth turns into a wasteland due to climate change. We live in a world, "where the sun beats / And the dead trees give no shelter." There is "dry sterile thunder without rain."

Whatever one may think of the difficulty inherent in reading The Wasteland, nobody with a taste for poetry can deny the resonance of these lines.

The poem is divided into five sections: The Burial of the Dead; A Game of Chess; The Fire Sermon; Death by 'Water; and What the Thunder Said.

What did the thunder say? Feast your eyes and ears on this brilliant stanza:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In addition to being one of the greatest 20th century poets, Eliot was a seminal critic, and wrote lengthy explanations and notes about "The Wasteland". I confess that I've never read them. I have read the poem,and reread it again today in honor of its Centenary. Here's a link to the entire poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... waste-land

Modernism seemed to reject the heroic and epic. It also rejected the realist novels of the 19th century. Or did it? Didn't Ulysses transform the heroic and supernatural Odyssey into the mundane? But didn't Joyce also point out the heroic that resides in the mundane. In the words of Joyce's Penelope figure Molly Bloom, "yes I said yes I will Yes."

[JackDaydream]

T.S.Eliot's modernist classic "The Wasteland" was published in 1922, and celebrates its centenary this year. That same year the Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach in Paris.

Both are tricky, allusive, and sometimes incomprehensible. Both are also masterpieces. We all know the famous opening of The Wasteland:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

The poem adumbrates the great crisis of our own era, as our beloved Earth turns into a wasteland due to climate change. We live in a world, "where the sun beats / And the dead trees give no shelter." There is "dry sterile thunder without rain."

Whatever one may think of the difficulty inherent in reading The Wasteland, nobody with a taste for poetry can deny the resonance of these lines.

The poem is divided into five sections: The Burial of the Dead; A Game of Chess; The Fire Sermon; Death by 'Water; and What the Thunder Said.

What did the thunder say? Feast your eyes and ears on this brilliant stanza:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In addition to being one of the greatest 20th century poets, Eliot was a seminal critic, and wrote lengthy explanations and notes about "The Wasteland". I confess that I've never read them. I have read the poem,and reread it again today in honor of its Centenary. Here's a link to the entire poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... waste-land

Modernism seemed to reject the heroic and epic. It also rejected the realist novels of the 19th century. Or did it? Didn't Ulysses transform the heroic and supernatural Odyssey into the mundane? But didn't Joyce also point out the heroic that resides in the mundane. In the words of Joyce's Penelope figure Molly Bloom, "yes I said yes I will Yes."

'The Wasteland' is such an important classic and shows so much about the void of the unknown into which humanity was going. It is a great work of literature but has cultural and philosophical implications. It does give rise to the tension between modernism and postmodernism.

I have read Joyce's writings too and 'The Artist as a Young Man' and 'Ulysses' both show many of the anxieties of modernism, especially in relation to the breakdown of religious thinking and values. The other important aspect of Joyce's writings is the idea of 'the stream of consciousness', which also goes back to the ideas of William James. I did read 'Finnegan's Wake' as well, but found it extremely difficult and I wonder if it was significant as a precursor to postmodern deconstruction.

The dialogue between modernism and postmodernism in the arts and philosophy may be significant in the understanding of human meaning. The idea of the mundane is one aspect although the search for ways of escaping or transcending it may be also important in the philosophy quest.

[GE Morton]

Modernism seemed to reject the heroic and epic. It also rejected the realist novels of the 19th century. Or did it? Didn't Ulysses transform the heroic and supernatural Odyssey into the mundane? But didn't Joyce also point out the heroic that resides in the mundane. In the words of Joyce's Penelope figure Molly Bloom, "yes I said yes I will Yes."

Reminded me of Ferlinghetti's poem, #29 from Coney Island of the Mind:

https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/cone ... nd-29-2730

[Ecurb]

Reminded me of Ferlinghetti's poem, #29 from Coney Island of the Mind:

https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/cone ... nd-29-2730

Very nice, GE. Ferlinghetti died last year at age 101. Here's a short Ferlinghetti favorite of mine:

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.”

The days, perhaps, are less fine since his death.

[Gertie]

T.S.Eliot's modernist classic "The Wasteland" was published in 1922, and celebrates its centenary this year. That same year the Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach in Paris.

Both are tricky, allusive, and sometimes incomprehensible. Both are also masterpieces. We all know the famous opening of The Wasteland:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

The poem adumbrates the great crisis of our own era, as our beloved Earth turns into a wasteland due to climate change. We live in a world, "where the sun beats / And the dead trees give no shelter." There is "dry sterile thunder without rain."

Whatever one may think of the difficulty inherent in reading The Wasteland, nobody with a taste for poetry can deny the resonance of these lines.

The poem is divided into five sections: The Burial of the Dead; A Game of Chess; The Fire Sermon; Death by 'Water; and What the Thunder Said.

What did the thunder say? Feast your eyes and ears on this brilliant stanza:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In addition to being one of the greatest 20th century poets, Eliot was a seminal critic, and wrote lengthy explanations and notes about "The Wasteland". I confess that I've never read them. I have read the poem,and reread it again today in honor of its Centenary. Here's a link to the entire poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... waste-land

Modernism seemed to reject the heroic and epic. It also rejected the realist novels of the 19th century. Or did it? Didn't Ulysses transform the heroic and supernatural Odyssey into the mundane? But didn't Joyce also point out the heroic that resides in the mundane. In the words of Joyce's Penelope figure Molly Bloom, "yes I said yes I will Yes."

I like Eliot much more than Joyce personally, but that's just a matter of stylistic taste.  Both are trying to get to sometthing elusive, difficult to articulate, about what it's like to be a person in the world, where meaning lies.  Eliot's very self-consciously  'literary', his erudition is on full display and demands you put the work in to unravel the threads he weaves in. (It's funny that he wrote a bunch of notes for The Wasteland, I didn't know that!). But as your quotes show, he can give us smack-in-the-face emotional bang for the buck too, where the particulars and allusions aren't as important as the hard to pin down emotional resonance.


But still, the finding profundity in the mundane, sacred in the profane, cuts deeper with me. It's just that Joyce's  stream of consciousness style demands the reader jump in, immerse  and let go of the reins.  It's not my cuppa, like most people I find reading Joyce a chore, while admiring it. Music  art and poetry are more natural media for that approach for me. Art which can give the sort of vibe some people get from spirituality.