Dear Pier,

I like your suggestion a lot. I would be glad to hear more about it along the lines you proposed.

Best,

Ferenc

It's well known about the Upanishad ending. Needless to say[?], World War I had deep effects on this ensuing period of literature and this poetry, even for those who were not active participants. The 'waste land' was in need of spiritual, as well as material and political, restoration.

The whole field of Literary Criticism is based on the unverified and probably false assumption that literary works must necessarily have deep meanings, whether conscious or unconscious.  This is analogous to the idea that dreams must have a meaning, as Freud and others presume.   Whilst it is possible to analyse and possibly explain the content of dreams, it does not follow that there is an overarching meaning to them, as opposed to the simpler explanation that thery are a fairly random rerun of stored images or experiences.

So, what is the evidence for the assumption that any literary work has a valid meaning other than that explicitly intended by the author?   I will believe this when some literary critic can, for example, come up with any literary criticism or deep structure in say early Bob Dylan songs that BD will agree with!  Are authors grateful for critics?

I wish to thank Margaret Wart for the comment. Of course WW! had an impact in the creation of the poem, but I am looking for a kind of "close reading" of it, trying to revitalize the Yale, now out of fashion approach, applying it to Eliot himself, who has been at the root of the movement. In this perspective even the happening of WW1 becomes (or shoulf become) rather immaterial for such close reading of the poem.

 I wish to thank also Anthony Gordon for his criticisms. Without plunging into a discussion of meaning and meaning production in this specific case of the Waste Land we are rather freed from the Author's intention by the Author himself !

Eliot gave an interview where he stated that he was rather unaware of what he was meaning when writing the poem!

Besides, he himself adding especially the first footnote to the poem is deferring its meaning toward a reading of Weston and Frazer. He is producing meaning through deferment. And so we need to follow him and his peculiar conception of poetry.

Anyway, I think that when an author starts to state the meaning of her work, she ends to be an author and becomes a reader herself. So her reading cannot be privileged over other made possible by the text.

And finally.... without this whole literary criticism based on presumably false assumptions, life....what a cauchmare....

I have to confess, Pier, that my reflections on the subject were coloured by a high school head of department who took over from a wonderful teacher who had become very ill. The senior teacher took the subject of T S Eliot's poetry through to A-level [= age 17/18] without ever referring to the personal aspect of the poetry - or indeed WWI and its effects. This was decades ago, and at the time, I felt insufficient attention had been given to the effects of the war. We made our own way through to the exams. Surprisingly, perhaps, we all passed at a high level at A-level, and the poetry stayed with me forever.

The meaning was lost when Ezra Pound mercilessly slashed it. The abridged version is the foundation of 'deep fragmentation' a quality of Modernism in poetry. The three interpretation of Da in last stanza itself shows that every reader would make his own interpretation of the poem. It cannot be denied that there is a universally accepted meaning of poetry despite excessive connotation.

http://vipinbeharigoyal.blogspot.in/2015/11/dilemma-of-modern-man-expounded-by.html

This is a myth, and myths are not theology. Many critics and anthropologists who have written on Western and non-Western mythology, agree on characterizing myth as a sort of literary detritus of what once was a living religion (Ovid and Apollodorus are good examples of this). Modern poetry rarely deals with theology and rather uses myth to build allegories that will in turn be read not as contemporary proposals but as ancient wisdom brought into the present. As Michel de Certeau has said more than once, in order to say something new we either start telling the new until we are understood (which may take quite a while) or we resort to some old or ancient story that is no longer held as truth but is still culturally familiar and thus useful as a carrier of the new-dressed-as-the-old. I believe that is what Eliot has done in The Waste Land: he has used a story that resembles a creditable ancient myth in order to channel a new insight on political power. I believe The Waste Land is an allegory (See Angus Fetcher's book on the subject, see Walter Benjamin's definition of allegory, recently commented in extenso by Giorgio Agamben ) of power, entitlement, and the future of community. This is about politics, not about existentialism of theology. Good question!

Many thanks to Lilliana. I do believe also that the central issue is political, and I share Benjamin's opinion that allegory is not a mere rhetorical figure but an "ontological" experience - if I may trivialize it in this way.

For what is about myths: certainly Eliot is using for his own purposes the myth of the Fisher King and the other myths on the gods who die and return as described in Frazer: Adonis, etc. and these are not theology strictu sensu.

But what theology is? From a concrete historical sense, in the West, it has been the application of Greek philosophy to the understanding of the Christian revelation. In this way, we cannot say that there is a theology in Judaism, for instance. In a larger sense quite all scholars admit that Greek theology was expressed through myth elaboration.

So shall we adopt a strict or larger definition of theology?

But my reference was more directly to "Political Theology", in the sense of Schmitt. A sense that certainly Agamben has contributed to revitalize. In this manner it is intended as the excess of legitimacy: that remain of political legitimacy that cannot be captured in words but that is operating in practice. A hidden device of power in its own transcendent dimension.

The connection between Eliot and Schmitt, though normally unnoticed, is worth studying, because Schmitt wrote a book on "Hamlet oder Ekouba", which starts with a direct quotation from Eliot's negative judgement on Shakespeare expressed in his "Hamlet and his problems".

Anyway, the most important point for me is to see to what extent law and politics can form the substance of the most important Anglo-American poem of the XX century: to flag that they are at the core of the modernist Western canon, more than expected.

And I would insist on the "legal" aspect as well as on the political one, as long as "legitimacy" lies in a threshold between the two spheres.

So thank you so much for your remark.

Many thanks to Lilliana. I do believe also that the central issue is political, and I share Benjamin's opinion that allegory is not a mere rhetorical figure but an "ontological" experience - if I may trivialize it in this way.

For what is about myths: certainly Eliot is using for his own purposes the myth of the Fisher King and the other myths on the gods who die and return as described in Frazer: Adonis, etc. and these are not theology strictu sensu.

But what theology is? From a concrete historical sense, in the West, it has been the application of Greek philosophy to the understanding of the Christian revelation. In this way, we cannot say that there is a theology in Judaism, for instance. In a larger sense quite all scholars admit that Greek theology was expressed through myth elaboration.

So shall we adopt a strict or larger definition of theology?

But my reference was more directly to "Political Theology", in the sense of Schmitt. A sense that certainly Agamben has contributed to revitalize. In this manner it is intended as the excess of legitimacy: that remain of political legitimacy that cannot be captured in words but that is operating in practice. A hidden device of power in its own transcendent dimension.

The connection between Eliot and Schmitt, though normally unnoticed, is worth studying, because Schmitt wrote a book on "Hamlet oder Ekouba", which starts with a direct quotation from Eliot's negative judgement on Shakespeare expressed in his "Hamlet and his problems".

Anyway, the most important point for me is to see to what extent law and politics can form the substance of the most important Anglo-American poem of the XX century: to flag that they are at the core of the modernist Western canon, more than expected.

And I would insist on the "legal" aspect as well as on the political one, as long as "legitimacy" lies in a threshold between the two spheres.

So thank you so much for your remark.

I wish to thank also Vipin for his important comment.

Well, I read, of course, the manuscript with Pound's handwritten corrections and abridgements, and I must confess that I do not agree with the today in fashion attitude of considering his interventions generally negatively.

For what is about "fragmentation" certainly the line

These fragments I shore against my ruins

was original, and was expressing Eliot consciousness of writing by fragments, and the same importance of fragments for modernist poetry, and maybe for political reconstruction.

So I do not think that fragmentation is mainly due to Pound.

There is one major point which must be considered: the epigraph.

As I said previously Eliot's poem is bracketed between an epigraph and the footnotes, so that its meaning is necessarily deferred by the former and the latter.

Now the original epigraph by Eliot was:

The Horror, The Horror

With direct reference to Kurtz and Conrad. Pound thought that Conrad was not deserving such an important role in the poem. Eliot replied saying that this epigraph was the best possible one to explain the meaning of the poem, but then he acquiesced.

So this point is certainly relevant just to search the author's intention. And the matter is why and how Eliot thought that the actual epigraph "Nam sybillam quidem Cumis....." could be a second best choice and a substitute for Kurtz's culminating words!

On this point certainly Pound contributed to altering, forever, the reading of the poem. But we could reach a good point if we could understand why for Eliot the passage from Petronius was a good substitute for the passage from Conrad!

To the best of my knowledge no good theory has been proposed on this point.

I wish to thank also Vipin for his important comment.

Well, I read, of course, the manuscript with Pound's handwritten corrections and abridgements, and I must confess that I do not agree with the today in fashion attitude of considering his interventions generally negatively.

For what is about "fragmentation" certainly the line

These fragments I shore against my ruins

was original, and was expressing Eliot consciousness of writing by fragments, and the same importance of fragments for modernist poetry, and maybe for political reconstruction.

So I do not think that fragmentation is mainly due to Pound.

There is one major point which must be considered: the epigraph.

As I said previously Eliot's poem is bracketed between an epigraph and the footnotes, so that its meaning is necessarily deferred by the former and the latter.

Now the original epigraph by Eliot was:

The Horror, The Horror

With direct reference to Kurtz and Conrad. Pound thought that Conrad was not deserving such an important role in the poem. Eliot replied saying that this epigraph was the best possible one to explain the meaning of the poem, but then he acquiesced.

So this point is certainly relevant just to search the author's intention. And the matter is why and how Eliot thought that the actual epigraph "Nam sybillam quidem Cumis....." could be a second best choice and a substitute for Kurtz's culminating words!

On this point certainly Pound contributed to altering, forever, the reading of the poem. But we could reach a good point if we could understand why for Eliot the passage from Petronius was a good substitute for the passage from Conrad!

To the best of my knowledge, no good theory has been proposed on this point.

Anthony Gordon mentions explications of Bob Dylan's lyrics. There is, of course, Don McLean's 'American Pie' on which many thousands of words have been expended....

 "There is, of course, Don McLean's 'American Pie' on which many thousands of words have been expended...."

Which is why DM is "Crying."

Dear Pier Giuseppe, in such short questions and comments as we can place here it is almost impossible to guess the references to concepts and definitions behind a question. It is easy to say "My references are not your references" when no references are mentioned, reason why I try to at least make a vague alussion to the context from which I write my answer. I think The Waste Land is great not because Eliot "used" this or that author as a "basis" for a work, but because it can stand on its own without the general reader being aware of the probable erudition behind it. My best example is Dante's Commedia: laden with sometimes aracane references, it has been the delight of readers of all kinds who usually do without the burdensome footnotes. I usually start reading a work trying to obviate any other context —I especially postpone the biographical context—, and then start to build from there. I am not aware of Eliot's having a specific concept of theology, or of the "legal", but he was certainly aware of how allegory and myth work in literature because he was extremely well-read and a conscious writer, and traces of myth are to be found in so many loci of his works —Four Quartets, for example. There are many authors who can be called to aid in the interpretation of The Waste Land, but I think that once Eliot made reference to an author or to a text, whatever those ideas were he transformed them into something else, even if he agreed. Any change of context brings about changes of meaning and intent, even if slight. Ideas like "the political" or "the legal" change a lot with time, as we know, and that does not mean that Eliot was purposefully aware that he "belonged" to this or that school of political though. Eliot should not be reduced to his references. I'd rather ask what he did with them. I do not agree with you, Pier Giuseppe, because of the way you read. But I find it very generous of you to invite us all to think together about this masterwork. Best regards!

Emerson's using the Kata-Upanishad in his poem "Brahma"? There is a sort of "mock-transcendentalism" in The Waste Land... The negative view of the city as in Emerson's essay "Nature"? The Emersonian enclosed, mystical, self-sufficient "nature" vs. Eliot's almost pagan (nymphs, etc.), dry and hard "stony rubbish"? Probably The Waste Land is encyclopedic, tightly pressed, minimalist. It's a pity to water in down... but what a temptation!!!

Dear Lilliana and Wolfgang,

I can't but thank you so much for your references and wonderful remarks.

First of all, I completely agree on the point that Eliot didn't simply "used" others' texts and transformed them entirely !!!

No author can be reduced to her sources !!!

But sources have been used anyway.

I think that just in Eliot a strong Eliot's effect is in production (with reference to Tradition and Individual Talent)

I mean that Eliot changed our understanding of Conrad (especially after Ash Wednesday), as well as maybe Coppola, in Apocalypse now, changed our understanding of Eliot and Conrad. And certainly Pound and Eliot changed our comprehension of the Tuscans, and of Donne.

Secondly, about the way I read, I am simply reading clicking on the links in the text, to use this allegory of reading derived by our daily experience of passing the day on the web.

(Willingly I inserted in the previous phrase a disturbing indirect link to Paul the Man, in a way which I presume to be consistent exactly with modernism, at least in the version of it that was, at that time, cultivated by both Eliot and Pound.)

But now I think that I must make more explicit my viewpoint (here used as a poor English translation of the German Vorverstaendnis, pre-comprehension to be made explicit for hermeneutical enterprises).

My standpoint is eminently legal-political: it is a common experience that we are living in a time of dissolution of sovereignty in its classical forms. This has been expressed by Santner in his recent "The people's two bodies" (with reference to Kantorowicz, The King's two bodies", and) expressing the idea that we're living in the "tumescence" of the King's flesh as a remain still haunting our political discourse.

Now this tumescence of the flesh has a patent parallel with the whole myth of the Fisher King who's suffering in his flesh because of his famous wound. The political matter of this myth is around the necessity of restoring the King's flesh to put the land in order again. Ordering, Ordnung, is precisely a major feature of the law.

So, beyond the fact that the Waste Land is in my heart, and beyond any pure aesthetic appreciation of it, my main interest lies in the consideration of how the entirety of our Western political discourse is swaddled with metaphors. From the same term "gubernum" on. 

So what I feel is the necessity of an appraisal of Western political ideas through the instrument of the literary discourse and of literary devices. 

This is why, beyond my personal appreciation for WL, I try to plunge into its dark places to find how political ideas could coalesce in that text, being maybe the most important poem of XX century, in order to understand more the "sublime character" of political discourse, than any other thing, and so the way this sublime aspect can become articulated in poetry and literature.

By the expression "Political Sublime", I mean that part of the political discourse which is constantly defeating all attempts to capture it in plain words. And that, of course, has to do at the same time with attraction and "Horror". (Think of the Leviathan, transformed from the ancient serpent to the Symbol of the King as a Saviour....).

Behold my Vorverstaendnis revealed.

And now I shall have a lot of fine time in going across Wolfgang's reading assignments!

Really thanks for you fantastic contributions.

There is a je ne sais quoi about this string: the idea that there are two poems, and not a "draft" and a "published poem" which makes that two states of a single poem. The idea of intent comes back, or maybe I missed something?

Dear Wolfgang, I also follow Eco's brilliant essay, especially as to "overinterpretation". I meant the critic's intent. We will never know the poet's... I  hope we can fathom that from the poet's text. I already said it: the poem (or the poet) should not be reduced to its (or his) references. We as readers might take those references wrong, or might never get them simply because how the poet used them: maybe he opposes those references, or finds them banal or imperfect, funny or bizarre, or a mere passing excuse to make a point. References do not guarantee that the poet agrees with his source. Even what is probably a random quote might have come not from a "May-The-Source-be-With-You" type of source, but from something more like a literary "fortune cookie" coming out of nowhere. We tend to cast our private archive over everything we read. There is this poem by Gottfried Benn that I love very much that says something like "Drink and all your shadows will bring their lip to the glass", an idea that tells us a lot about how much we bring to our act of reading and how richly ambiguous is a work of art, how relentless is its abstraction,  how endlessly morphing thanks to the fact that language does not keep still, as Jorge Luis Borges proposes in his "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote"... In this sense, I take sides with Peirce's idea of the work of art producing an infinite semiosis. Therefore, there is no end to interpretation. At least, not in sight. I'm sorry for my naiveté. I teach history and theory of architecture, been away from the study of literature for quite a long time.

Wolfgang! Thank you for this present! I will re-read it right away. I have the book! (this is weird...). Arturo Echavarría and Luce López Baralt —two other contributors to this volume—have been my teachers and are longtime colleagues and friends, and there are other friends in the the volume's editorial board, like Eduardo Forastieri Braschi... all from San Juan, Puerto Rico. What a small word. When this volume came out, Arturo called me and gave me a copy. I read your article immediately because of Escher. Like we say in Spanish, "El mundo es un pañuelo", or "The world is as small as a handkerchief"... :-)

Is Vorverstaendnis better translated as 'preconception' than 'pre-comprehension', Pier - or is the latter being used in a very specific sense in relation to hermeneutical enterprises? The English written by ResearchGaters using it as a second, third, or seventh language is so incredibly good that it is often better than that used by us native English-speakers and I find that I, for one, learn much from you linguistically about 'my' language.

Yes...we are getting too far ...

Anyhow...the key point in which Gadamer is using Heidegger's terminology of Vorverstaendnis (WM, part 2nd, II, a, alpha) is rendered by Gianni Vattimo in Italian as follows:

La scopertaheideggeriana della precomprensione

The English translators (Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, Continuum, New York, 1997 edition) adopted:

Heidegger's disclosure of the Fore-Structure of Understanding

Well, no doubt - I think - that their choice is excellent.

Especially disclosure is certainly better than the scoperta in Vattimo (lit. discovery).

However, the expression Fore-Structure of Understanding is a bit too long, particularly in conversations.

Then, pre-Understanding seems to me the best solution.

I adopted pre-comprehension, after the Italian template of Vattimo, just  because it maintains a bit alien flavor in English, avoiding the trap of assimilation, of thinking that other cultures can be completely familiarized to our own (See Lawrence Venuti, and his theories on translation).

Moreover "preconception" sounds to me slightly pejorative, but this is something that Margaret can feel better than me.

Yes, too far from your question - but yes, 'preconception' has a slightly pejorative connotation, whether on not it should have. And that was my point. 'Your' English is sometimes better than ours. Seeing the subtle nuances understood by non-native English speakers on ResearchGate takes my breath away.

Dear Pier Monateri, 

=================================================

                                             Ref : Your Post

T.S .Eliot's The Waste Land is ending in the form of an Upanishad: Shantih Shantih Shantih. The Upanishad are not only a religious book, but also a legal code. So the final formula could concern the Law.

Besides, the whole poem is about a wounded King whose body is to be restored in order to put again his lands in order: to overpass the state of exception restoring the wounded flesh of the sovereign.

===================================================

01.The Waste Land ends with the invocation of Peace ( Santih) uttered thrice. This mantra is uttered thrice always as we have three kinds of sufferings - adhibhautika ( from the animal world), adhidaivika ( acts of God - flood, storms, earthquakes and the like) and adhyatmik ( diseases).  Adhyatmik actually means 'spiritual', but here it refers to physical ailments which have an impact on the mind too. In all Hindu rites, this Upanishadic mantra is thrice uttered.

02. There are 116 Upanishads. Among them only eight are often studied. The Upanishads are also combinedly called Vedanta as they are the conclusive chapters of the Vedas which number four - Rik, Sam, Yajur and Atharva. They deal with the eternal and universal question - where we come from and where go after the end our life on earth. The Upanishads propound that our source of origin and the realm we ( our souls) pass into are the same - Brahman or the Self. Brahman or the Self ( distinct from individual self) is a timeless entity that has neither any beginning (anadi) nor any end ( ananta).  None of ancient Indian scriptures have any legal or social code except Manu Samhita - the codes of Manu, a sage. But Manu Samhita is not a Upanishad nor it is copiously read. 

03. The second paragraph of your post is hard to welcome. There is no such reference in The Waste Land. 

All the best,

Sibaprasad

Dear Sibaprasad, as I said before in this same string, in view of the subject matter of The Waste Land, the Upanishad theme may probably come from  the poem "Brahma" (1856) by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and, maybe, his quite famous essay "Nature". Maybe Eliot feels he is not the first to pose the subject in American literature. Emerson came before. And though Eliot is not copying Emerson but rather converses with him and introduces other elements that have nothing to do with Emerson, the relationship is there. Eventually, American "nature" literature after Eliot has been quite interested in posing the spiritual side of nature, having lost that background when it almost lost its own "native" community, now segregated into "reservations", even though "native Americans" are now US citizens.  

Hi Lilliana, 

I am sorry to say that you have gone astray from the topic. The issue is not the role of 'spiritual Nature' in the The Waste Land, but Eliot's use of symbols in the great poem. 

Again, Brahma and Brahman are different entities. Brahma is the mythological god in the Hindu scriptures (Purana) whose role is to create. While he creates, Vishnu sustains and Shiva destroys. They all are mythological gods governing the cosmos in their own and exclusive ways. 

Brahman is the ultimate Reality, according to Vedanta consisting of the Upanishads. The jnanis > ganis ( Seekers of Truth through Knowledge) call Brahman the ultimate Truth. The Yogins ( Seekers of Truth through Meditation or Contemplation) call the entity 'Self.' The Bhaktas (Devout Persons : Seekers of Truth through Devotion) worship personal God. All the three paths lead to the same goal - Realization of the Ultimate Reality. Brahman or Self or God by whatever name the entity is called is infinite and timeless. It has neither any bounds nor has it any beginning or end. This is the entity where the creation issues from and where the creation mingles into.

If you are really interested in this matter, please read my book  - The Gita: Rendition in Rhymed English Verse with Sanskrit Text which is priced low and is available on Amazon. 

Good luck all the way.

Sibaprasad 

Yes> Definitely. it is a multilateral piece. it refers to social peace and prosperity in all possible terms. 

Dear Professor Muhammad Nurul Islam, 

It is not that much. The Waste Land (1922) does not refer to social peace and prosperity. It depicts the desolateness of the world which came about as the aftermath of World War I. Eliot searches for a way out, and he finds the way in the teachings of the Upanishads which seek the remedy of the three dimensional afflictions of the human race by invoking Peace - Shantih! Shanti! Shanti!

 01.The Waste Land ends with the invocation of Peace ( Santih) uttered thrice. This mantra is uttered thrice always as we have three kinds of sufferings - adhibhautika ( from the animal world), adhidaivika ( acts of God - flood, storms, earthquakes and the like) and adhyatmik ( diseases).  Adhyatmik actually means 'spiritual', but here it refers to physical ailments which have an impact on the mind too. In all Hindu rites, this Upanishadic mantra is thrice uttered not only for the sake of the Hindus but for the sake of the whole human race.

All the very best,

Sibaprasad

Email: [email protected]

Dear Professor Muhammad Nurul Islam, 

It is not that much. The Waste Land (1922) does not refer to social peace and prosperity. It depicts the desolateness of the world which came about as the aftermath of World War I. Eliot searches for a way out, and he finds the way in the teachings of the Upanishads which seek the remedy of the three dimensional afflictions of the human race by invoking Peace - Shantih! Shanti! Shanti!

 01.The Waste Land ends with the invocation of Peace ( Santih) uttered thrice. This mantra is uttered thrice always as we have three kinds of sufferings - adhibhautika ( from the animal world), adhidaivika ( acts of God - flood, storms, earthquakes and the like) and adhyatmik ( diseases).  Adhyatmik actually means 'spiritual', but here it refers to physical ailments which have an impact on the mind too. In all Hindu rites, this Upanishadic mantra is thrice uttered not only for the sake of the Hindus but for the sake of the whole human race.

All the very best,

Sibaprasad

Email: [email protected]

Dear Professor Muhammad Nurul Islam, 

It is not that much. The Waste Land (1922) does not refer to social peace and prosperity. It depicts the desolateness of the world which came about as the aftermath of World War I. Eliot searches for a way out, and he finds the way in the teachings of the Upanishads which seek the remedy of the three dimensional afflictions of the human race by invoking Peace - Shantih! Shanti! Shanti!

 01.The Waste Land ends with the invocation of Peace ( Santih) uttered thrice. This mantra is uttered thrice always as we have three kinds of sufferings - adhibhautika ( from the animal world), adhidaivika ( acts of God - flood, storms, earthquakes and the like) and adhyatmik ( diseases).  Adhyatmik actually means 'spiritual', but here it refers to physical ailments which have an impact on the mind too. In all Hindu rites, this Upanishadic mantra is thrice uttered not only for the sake of the Hindus but for the sake of the whole human race.

All the very best,

Sibaprasad

Email: [email protected]

Dear Sibaprasad, The Waste Land is a multifacetical piece. Nobody "goes astray" when reading a complex literary text, and conversations like this serve the purpose of making literature richer in possible meanings. On the other hand  I am sure that Eliot was not as familiar with or versed in Eastern texts and thought as you suggest, much less a scholar, as to accommodate your own interpretations in their scope and depth. Besides, what is wrong with conversing with one's own tradition? Emerson was the incipit of many ideas and postures in US literature and thought, and the Transcendentalist movement he helped promote had quite an impact on how American writers viewed the country-city theme. That movement expressly included Indian thought in their premises and outlook on life: both Emerson and Thoreau (Walden) were quite outspoken about integrating Eastern texts from India in their view of society's relation with its surroundings. Eliot was quite familiar with Emerson, who brought the Upanishad into the orbit of American literature precisely because of the spirituality the transcendentalists wanted to bring into their view of nature. I thank you for your contribution, Sibaprasad. I have learned a lot, way beyond Eliot's text. Thanks to you I went back to the Upanishad, a Spanish scholarly edition: Consuelo Martín, ed. Upanisad con los comentarios advaita de ´Sankara. Madrid: Editorial Trotta (2009). My best, Lilliana

I would really thank Sibaprasad Dutta for his absolutely necessary and clarifying remarks and Liliana for the really important references to Emerson and the American literature, so needed in coping with an author born in St. Louis, Missouri.

Anyhow, I agree with her on the point that nobody "goes astray" when reading such a multifaceted text as WL, not to mention Prufrock or Gerontion, etc.

For what concerns the Law, it is perfectly true that there is never a direct reference to this word in WL, but what is the Law about?

Isn't it about kingship and sovereignty? Isn't it about "putting lands in order"? Isn't it about the proserity of the land? Isn't it about mutilations? 

The connection between the Law and the Land is cultivated from Roman times, to, e.g. the American Constitution, self-defining herself as the "Supreme Law of the Land".

Moreover, the crisis of post-WW1 has been also a legal crisis. Internal orders were put into question (Bolshevik revolution, the risk of it in Germany, the strong Labor movement in UK, Le Front Populaire in France, the trembling of Italian and German legal order under rising Fascism, etc....) but also International Law came to a deep crisis because of the war: from the Guilt-clause inserted in the Versailles Treaty, which totally changed the perception of the Jus ad Bellum of nation States, as well as it changed the same concept of the Political and of Sovereignty, up to the refusal of offensive war in the Hoare-Laval agreement, all through the birth of an unprecedented League of Nations.

Patently we can reduce the law to a technical matter of consumer protection, corporate governance or contracts. But there is in the Law a much deeper dimension and the promise of a salvation: that the world can be ruled not by men or commands but by the Law.

This is of peculiar importance especially from a Christian and theological standpoint. Part of the reconstruction of Jesus in theological terms was based on the theory that he was a "Nomos empsuchos", a living Law on the earth, and certainly he was deemed to have the authority to change the Law, to abolish it, and to re-establish and enact a newer Law. The figure of the King in medieval Europe has been built to a large degree as a Christic figure. The Kings of France even cultivated the pretension of being the real representatives of Christ on earth at the expense of the Pope, and of having the capacity to perform miracles, since they were "ointed" at Reims. A claim which was later shared also by the English Crown.

Now the whole of the matter of the Fisher King is that he is a Christic figure, and was meant to be,

So:

1. the argument of the crisis following the 1st War does not exclude the Law, because the Law, as a promise of salvation, was put into question, and what many experienced as a "social crisis" was, in legal terms, the rising reality of the "state of exception" as a norm.

2. Christian theology as reflected in European political history, as well as in the myth of the Fisher King, has a lot to do with the Law and its development, and this legal dimension cannot, henceforth, be excluded from the "implicit symbolism" of WL.

I add just two footnotes:

a. Many theological terms of the Christian religion are directly due to lawyers: the same terminology of the Holy Trinity and the use of the Roman legal term "Person", is due to Tertullian, who was a lawyer,....etc..

b. About all the possible and different meanings that the Law may possess see that wonderful poem of Auden's which is "Law like Love".

(sorry for misprints and for having sometimes used Law and sometimes law, it does not reflect any conscious deliberation).

Pier Giuseppe, thank you for an excellent clarification as to the textual use of the word "law". Allusions to "law" in The Waste Land are evident and paramount. After all, literature is seldom literal. Metaphor, as Paul Ricoeur has famously shown in his wonderful and inexhaustible The Living Metaphor, is what distinguishes literature from other endeavors... 

Your clarification as to the merger of Christian and Eastern figures and thought in The Waste Land  is also important. It was typical of Transcendentalist texts, specially in Thoreau's Walden.

In the beginning of the poem we find a statis as it arrests mind while talking about something grave and constant in human suffering. April is the cruelest month.Middle of the poem is kinetic as it is suffused with moral or immoral. The end is didactic which again does not serve the aesthetic end of the poem.It is neither close to Truth nor to Beauty.(Aquinas).Many parts of the poem are as good as whole,that is why impact of the poem is greater than sum of the whole.

I find that you lead me up many side-alleys away from the central issue, Pier.... I now find myself thinking of the aspect of the Trinity which is the Paraclete. There is little more legalistic than that?

Dear Vipin, 

Your post is fine. However, I think you have used incorrectly the word 'statis' in place of 'stasis'.

Take care.

Sibaprasad

Dear Vipin, 

Your post is fine. However, I think you have used incorrectly the word 'statis' in place of 'stasis'.

Take care.

Sibaprasad

Dear Vipin, 

Your post is fine. However, I think you have used incorrectly the word 'statis' in place of 'stasis'.

Take care.

Sibaprasad

Dear Vipin, 

Your post is fine. However, I think you have used incorrectly the word 'statis' in place of 'stasis'.

Take care.

Sibaprasad

Thanks for the correction, Sir