A description of April as the cruelest month which breeds lilacs out of the dead land. The dead land is a land of corruption, nepotism and all manner of vices. The dead land is profound anguish for the poet, a land numb and paralyzed by the stiffness of the capitalist machine which subdues and captures individuality akin to Camus myth of the Sisyphus.
Winter has kept is warm covering the earth in forgetful snow feeding a little life with dried tubers. Winter points out to harsh and narcissistic society caught up in the cauldron of self-pity and self-love. The hulk of capitalism is examined as a disparaging dynamic metaphor.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow, out of this stony rubbish? This is highlighting the void of individual subjectivity and freedom. Capitalism is a mammoth beast the subjugates individual freedom and there is a lament for searching the existential elixir of life.
A heap of broken images where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter and the crickets no relief. The imagery used is a powerful metaphor to point out the utter decadence of human values and human dignity. Man has gone away from nature and is living meaningless and purposeless life. There is stagnation and anomie, ruin and destruction.
When we came back from the hyacinth garden, I could not speak, my eyes failed, and I was neither living nor dead. Is the poet urging to pay remission to the collective conscience of humankind? Is it an exorcism of Freudian Phallic symbolism? The collective conscience is betrayed by the incessant gurgling of capitalist montage. Is there an overweening hubris in writing this verse?
Madam Sosotris is a famous clairvoyant and she is reading the tarot. The cards which she picks are, the drowned Phoenician sailor, the hanged man, and the one-eyed merchant. Is the discourse on the tarot showing what is unfertile, decadent and unfulfilled? The roots of existential life are compromised with savage adherence to the occult and divination. Is the reading of the cards an illusion for the living of the existential self? Is it a dismissal of the fact that man cannot bear the responsibilities of the existential self? Is it a perpetration of the violence of the other? Commercialism and vulgar materialism have wounded the entity of being civilized.
In the brown fog of winter, a crowd is floating on London Bridge. Note, the imagery used as floating resembles in clash of symbols. The themes of loneliness and alienation clash with the violence of egotism and self-love.
The corpse you have planted in the garden has begun to sprout. The usage of the metaphor as a corpse is an incitement of violence and carnality and it seems to be a protuberance of vanity and woundedness. Is what is sprouting a sign of death? Is it the beauty of a faded flower? Does the poet become a cadaver of narcissism?
I think we are in rat’s alley where the dead men lost their bones. Is it a fetish of uncompromising narcissism? Does the meaning of life end with death? Does the soul of the poet clamor for an existential nirvana? Is the poet overburdened with the cares of the world? Is it a figurative imagery that is epileptic in narcissism?
Oh, that Shakespearean rag it is so elegant; it so intelligent; Does the poet wanting to return to a fecund land of idealism? Is it an idiosyncratic gesture of the death of human values? Does the poet feast his eyes on an age of literary glory? Is intelligence a departure from nature to an arrival in culture?
The river’s tent is broken, the last fingers of leaf clutch sink into the wet bank. The wind crosses the brown land unheard. All the nymphs have departed? Is the tent a sign of cultural tabernacle that surviving doom and decay? Is it an expression of a social and cultural nihilism? The silence of the wind betrays a plague festering in the human mind? The nymphs can be attributed to whores who have departed with their clients. Is the poet portraying the pilferage of human values and human idealism?
The sound of horns and motors shall bring Sweeny to Ms. Porter. Who is the mystic Sweeny and why is he adulterated with the filth of an extramarital relationship? Does the poet point out to the breaking down of chastity and moral values? Is the age a plethora of self-indulging narcissism?
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits like a taxi throbbing. Is the violet hour the period of the setting sun? Human engine is a metaphor for the body and it is pulsating with life for a secretive night of doing poetry on the bed.
Source by Bose Anand
#Analysis #Tropes #Eliots #Waste #Land speaking tree
