Talk:The Waste Land

Reception and criticism?

Should there be a section on the poem's reception by the public and critics? And its impact and legacy? TuckerResearch (talk) 15:33, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes. And something should be said about interpretation. This is why I'm downgrading this from "B" class to "C". A lot more could be written, & some of what is currently here could be condensed. -- llywrch (talk) 23:42, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Interpretation

First, the idea that "Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King" needs at least to be sourced. More importantly, this is only one (very old and contested) interpretation of the poem. I.e. I suggest "the Fisher King" stuff be deleted. There should be a section a la "critical reception" to represent the variety of interpretations etc. and various assertions about its relevance/importance to literary modernism. ProfHanley (talk) 17:52, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello ProfHanley, your comment is from 2019. Are you still interested in more accurately situating Weston's From Ritual to Romance in the context of the poem and 1920s? Not as a grail legend analysis, but as a work of comparative religion like Frazer's The Golden Bough, Jane Harrison's Ancient Art and Ritual, and Edward Tylor's Primitive Culture (all essential reading, according to Eliot). In the book, Weston explicitly advises against a focus on the grail in isolation from e.g. the lance, candelabra and associated cult objects. That is reinforced by Eliot, who stated he regretted sending people 'on a wild goose chase' regarding the grail. What Weston does is connect the Fisher King legend to very ancient eastern origins in the Attis myth and early-Semitic (Babylonian, Phoenician etc.) fish symbolism. In her view, the imagery of the Fisher King originates in those ancient sources, travelling west and north across time and space to other mythos such as Celtic paganism, later to be merged with Christian fish symbolism (Ichthys) travelling the same path from the same ancient sources. WKBrannigan (talk) 12:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Hey WKBrannigan, thanks for your recent additions to the article. Profhanley has not edited in nearly a year, so it's unlikely they will be able to discuss this with you now. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the heads up on that. A pity, he is correct in what he says. WKBrannigan (talk) 20:51, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Is Marie a real person?

I was curious about whether the Marie in the very first stanza of the poem was based on a real person, so I went on Google and searched up "marie cousin of arch duke germany" (based on the information in that first stanza). The first result was Maria Anna of Bavaria (1574-1616), who married her first cousin, Ferdinand, the Arch-Duke of Inner Austria. It seems to me like her marriage could explain why her memories are so bitter (why April is the cruellest month for mixing memory and desire and for melting away the forgetful snow). I know Wikipedia doesn't like original research, so I'm wondering if there's any general consensus on this topic? Gridzbispudvetch (talk) 03:48, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

The poem seems to say she comes from Lithuanian, but I think it is valid to ask who Eliot is referring to.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:24, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I paid ten dollars for an annotated copy of this poem from amazon and it just answers the question right there. It's apparently Countess Marie Larisch, whom Eliot met in person under unknown circumstances. The description of the sledding is taken verbatim from a conversation the two had together. I feel kind of cheated out of my discovery, but it's kinda nice to know I think. --Gridzbispudvetch (talk) 05:10, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

I think that would be worth adding that under "Sources". One of his sources was conversations with real people like Marie Larisch.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:35, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

The second great German Eliot translator (after Ernst Curtius), the late Eva Hesse, has something on this in the first chapter of a 1973 book of hers on "T.S. Eliot und das Wüste Land" (Suhrkamp Verlag) - sadly no longer in my possession. I think I also like to point out that the short introduction to the here mentioned Annotated edition of the Waste Land has a very good introduction on Eliot by Lawrence Rainey. PS.: The Annotated edition gives the basic facts/ interpretation of Eva Hesse concerning the Countess Marie Larisch, I think. --Ralfdetlef (talk) 20:16, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Please add it, even if you don't have a page number.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:37, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Citation maintenance notice regarding short footnotes

In order to maintain consistency in articles using a particular short footnote style, a notice was placed at the beginning of this talk page which appears to fit the style being used for this article. The intention is to be an aid to contributors and citation maintenance editors in upgrading citations to the highest wikipedia standards. It is often unclear what the rationale is for sfn and harvnb use due to the mixture with inline ref citations which inevitably occurs due to contributors being unfamiliar with short footnotes. However I may have incorrectly guessed the style for this article, and that the rule is different. For example- that primary and secondary sources always are placed in the primary and secondary sections regardless if they have different pages referenced or not. If that is the case, please add a note here and I will place the correct notice here. J JMesserly (talk) 22:24, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Waste Land/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 15:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments! I'll tackle them over the next few days and edit your original "Comments" section with any questions or replies if that's okay with you. Ligaturama (talk) 15:37, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Comments

Great to see a major work here, after a lot of editing, from a new editor too. It certainly covers "the major points": comprehensiveness is not required at GAN (GAR is something else...), but it seems to do quite a good job at what is a large and complex subject.

• Missing is a brief 'Context' section to tell the reader that Eliot was British and (in the years before publishing the poem) worked in London as a banker. A brief mention of how Emily Hale and Vivienne Haigh-Wood fit into his early life would also seem necessary.
  • Y Revision 4 This turned out to be less brief than I was expecting; I've tried to keep it as relevant to the poem as possible. I've skipped labelling him as British (or American) as it's a bit complex, especially regarding his influences and style at this point in his career. There's been a lot of discussion on it at Talk:T. S. Eliot but I'd rather swerve the whole thing.
    • Yes, rather a lot! I've formatted the image as |upright and dabbed Quinn for you. By the way you should use surnames, e.g. "Haigh-Wood" not "Vivienne" (throughout).
      • Thank you! The reason I've referred to her as Vivienne is because she actually took Eliot's surname when they married. The Wikipedia article calls her Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot but actually she was just Vivienne Eliot at the time (well she called herself Vivien but that's a whole other thing). So I felt calling her Haigh-Wood was incorrect, and calling her Eliot would obviously be confusing.
        • Hm, I think you'd better add a footnote using {{efn|Vivienne...}} ... == Notes == ... {{notelist}} to explain that, as otherwise it'll get lost and then challenged.
          • Y Revision 5

• Latin and Greek epigraph: I'm actually not sure that having the (very yellow) image of the epigraph adds much – it just feels like needless repetition – and it messes up the side-by-side text-and-translation format at quite a range of page widths, too.
  • Y Revision 1

• This may be unanswerable but Heart of Darkness (please wikilink) is of course on racism: is there any specific reason why Eliot would have chosen this theme here?
  • I only found one source which speculated on this; it fits in with an interpretation I find very alluring, but which I didn't have enough variety in sources to flesh out (plus I did get a little burnt out doing the Interpretations section, I hope that doesn't show). Everyone else just says it was his original choice.

• "The five parts of The Waste Land are entitled: ..." – well, yes, that's the large-scale, formal structure, but it does come across as a bit of a throwaway line – "right, that's got the description of the poem out of the way, now let's get on with the critics". There are plentiful materials – embarras de richesse indeed – that analyse the poem's structure and the contents of the five parts, so I'd suggest we have a short paragraph on each part, and a snippet of one of them in a box on the right (maybe beside 'Style') to illustrate how Eliot combines his own words with allusions and quotations. Perhaps that means a subsection named 'Outline' or something of that sort.
  • Y Revision 11

• "subsequently included in future editions." -> "included in later editions."
  • Y Revision 1

• "purporting to explain his own metaphors, references, and allusions. These notes are considered to be of limited use to the reader,": what is missing here is any discussion of what those extraordinary notes might be for. What is behind the word "purporting"? Was Eliot mocking academic criticism with its detailed paratexts, perhaps? And was the discussion of the bird's "jug jug jug" (etc.) mocking natural history texts? There is as usual an extensive literature discussing Eliot's reasons for providing the notes: we don't need a comprehensive essay on the question, but at least a few pointers are needed here. (I wonder, by the way, whether the lengthy quote from Eliot 1956 at the head of 'Themes and interpretations' doesn't belong here; it doesn't exactly answer the question, unless we choose to believe that Eliot really was just filling in the blank pages (oh yeah), but it has some bearing on it. Or perhaps the analysis should be down there.)
  • Y Revision 10 Good call about the blockquote, I was originally going to write more around it down there but I've removed it. I've written a little more on the notes.

• "strongly resemble Whitman's 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'": it does? How? It doesn't feel like it, with Eliot's "breeding ... mixing ... stirring" not paralleled by anything in Whitman's lines, and Whitman's repetition "mourn'd, and yet shall mourn", or the alliteration (maybe assonance too) of "lilacs last" and "dooryard ... drooped", and his metre in the face of Eliot's blank verse, ... I think the reader deserves some sort of discussion in support of what is on the face of it a non-obvious claim (beyond the word "lilacs"). Perhaps precis what Bloom and Lewis had to say on the matter.
  • ? Revision 8 This is why it's so useful to have these comments, I've spent so long reading about this poem so I knew what they were getting at but it needs spelling out if it's going to be in there. Neither of them go into massive detail so that's as much as I can put on the topic I think, let me know if you reckon it passes muster.
    • Yes, that's great.

• "That Shakespearian Rag" seems to be by Dave Stamper as well as Buck? It would be nice to link to a page with the lyrics, too.
  • Y Revision 3

• The word "also" recurs quite a few times, without adding much. Maybe lose a few of 'em.
  • Y Revision 2

• Quite a few terms need to be wikilinked, like iambic pentameter and free verse to name just a few of the more critically important ones.
  • Y Revision 1

• Works like Ulysses and publications like The Dial need to be wikilinked at first mention in the article body, even if they were in the lead section. There are numerous others so please check through the text.
  • Y Revision 1 I didn't want to fall foul of OVERlinking so clearly I've gone too far in the other direction. I've followed the principle of only duplicating links that are in the lead or for captions (e.g. Heart of Darkness) which means ones like Pound or Dante that are scattered all over are only linked in the body of the article once each. MOS:REPEATLINK says I could repeat them in each section if it would help, but I also don't want a MOS:SEAOFBLUE. Let me know if I've got the balance wrong.

• "Sage Homme" is French, so "{{lang|fr|Sage Homme}}" might be the best formatting choice. You could use the lang thingy for "il miglior fabbro" too.
  • Y Revision 2

• "visual arts ... collage ... Braque and Picasso": suggest you include an image of one of these collages here, the text and citation certainly justify a Non-Free Use Rationale image. I see that anything by Braque published outside the USA before 1929 is actually Public Domain and can be uploaded freely to Wikipedia, but oddly not to Commons. You read it here first. An image like this collage by Braque and Picasso, 1912 might serve neatly to make the point. I can upload it if you like.
  • Y Revision 6 Happily someone had already uploaded it to Wikipedia. It currently runs over to the next section, I don't know if that's a big deal. I might end up removing the Whitman bit anyway, stay tuned. (That won't make a difference anyway as it's above)

• 'Fertility, death and regeneration' is rather long and wandering. I wonder if Fertility wouldn't make a good section, with another on Death and regeneration?
  • ? Revision 7 I've just separated off a paragraph here because the rest of it is related to the Fisher King. I think part of the problem I had was trying to condense the exposition of the myth and go over its key points; I kept it to plot elements that were relevant to the analysis and any supporting stuff to make the narrative make sense, but I appreciate that it is a lot.

• Similarly, 'Religion' covers first Christianity, an obvious subsection, followed by Buddhim/Hinduism. You've said how Eliot came into contact with Sanskrit, but what about Buddhism? St Augustine needs to be wikilinked. You assume that readers will instantly spot that Sanskrit (please wikilink) implies Hinduism – this does need to be spelt out. The Sanskrit words need to be in italics (use the lang thingy again). You suddenly switch to the style "Bhatta (2018)" which hasn't been used up to now, let's avoid it. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad needs to be wikilinked and glossed as an ancient Hindu scripture. Wikilink Old Testament, New Testament, River Thames, card of the Hanged Man.
  • Y Revision 9 Wikilinks are covered in Revision 1. I've assumed when you say "glossed as an ancient Hindu scripture" you don't mean anything more specific than mentioning in passing that that's what it is.

• "subsequent modernist poets": well he wasn't going to influence earlier ones, so let's ditch the "subsequent", and wikilink modernist poets. I'd suggest you insert a further link at the top of the section, {{further|Literary modernism}}, too.
  • Y Revision 1

• We're generally not keen on linking inside quotations, but the poets' names in the long Wheeler quote do rather need linking, or they'll go over the heads of many new-to-the-subject readers.
  • Y Revision 1

• It'd be helpful to add a citation to Lovecraft's "Waste Paper" with a link to the text.
  • Y Revision 1

Images

• All are on Commons, and the copyright status of all of them seems to have been resolved satisfactorily.

Sources

• Spot checks are fine. The offline refs are AGF.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton talk 16:38, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that The Waste Land, considered one of the most important poems of the 20th century, was described as "waste paper" when first published? Source: [1] ""The Waste Land is one of the most important poems of the 20th century and the survival of the Victorian shelter in which TS Eliot wrote part of it is a minor miracle," argues [former poet laureate Andrew] Motion.";
  [2] "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."
  • Reviewed:

Improved to Good Article status by Ligaturama (talk). Self-nominated at 09:59, 1 February 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/The Waste Land; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Fresh GA and no issues with the article that I could find. Short, interesting hook supported in the article and sources. First DYK nomination, so QPQ is not needed. Good work! Ffranc (talk) 10:23, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Background section is disjointed

I am dizzy after reading this section. It goes from relevant background on the author's mental state to the wage, in GBP, said author received at their bank job.

This is not a biography. I suggest that the section be rewritten with a focus on what factors in Elliot's life impacted The Waste Land. Otter Hunter (talk) 02:33, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Recent additions on the Church of St Magnus the Martyr

@WKBrannigan: moving this conversation here as it's about the article contents.

Unfortunately per WP:NOTRELIABLE your own book doesn't count as a reliable source, given that it's self-published. I suggest citing the sources you used for your book instead, as and when they're directly relevant to the contents you've added.

Additionally, please be very careful about WP:OR and especially WP:SYNTH, which is a very easy trap to fall into. Lots of the things you've written in the section don't appear to be directly supported by sources. For example, the paragraph:

In The Waste Land, the First Temple aspect of the altarpiece serves as a cultural portal to other Semitic cultures of the ancient Near East in the poem. These include "Phlebas the Phoenician" [line 312] and Queen Dido, suggested by the "laquearia" [line 92] of her palace. As is clear from the Bible, Phoenician master-builders built the Temple of Solomon (1 Kings 9). "The plan of the building, the chisel-dressed masonry, and the various decorative motifs are all clearly of Phoenician inspiration, as we now know."

seems to be your own interpretation, with a single source on archaeology and religion in ancient Israel. The whole section really needs one or more reliable sources linking the poem to the church, as the rest is just on the church itself or refers to the facsimile of the poem drafts. Ligaturama (talk) 11:28, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Ligaturama,

Many thanks for your observations and guidance. In the first instance I've addressed this query - "one or more reliable sources linking the poem to the church". Barry Spurr's book is acknowledged as one of the most authoritative on the importance of the church to the poem (and other such churches in the City of London, and the Anglo-Catholic creed). I can further bolster this with quotes from Jewel Spears Brooker and other Eliot experts if you wish, but I suggest that Spurr be considered weighty enough.

I'm contemplating the rest of your commentary. I'm confident it can be addressed but it needs thought, so back to you on that soon. I will address another aspect - my books and my claim to be an expert - later today.

Thanks

WKB WKBrannigan (talk) 11:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Ligaturama,

Regarding your comment on "a single source on archaeology and religion in ancient Israel."

I have now included an other supporting comment from preeminent contemporary archeologists who specialise in this area.

regards

WKB WKBrannigan (talk) 12:43, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Ligaturama,

I've read the links you sent regarding the various wrong paths in editing, with thanks. Two aspects are addressed here, my qualification as an expert and my books.

For at least 15 years I have concentrated only on The Waste Land as an independent researcher. Obviously I've read around it in modernism including Joyce's Ulysses (which took a year) and a great majority of the critical writings on Eliot. I completed an MAR (Master by Research) on the poem at a UK university noted for it's Eliot studies in 2020, titled 'Anarchy and the Violet Hour: Eve, Adam, and the Cult of the Individual in the Waste Land' (62,000 words). An MAR is a relatively rare masters without set modules, instead allowing fully independent research on a chosen subject. The thesis was examined by the overseeing professor, a second independent professor within the university, and an external professor from another university. I'll let that commentary speak for me in those parts directly related to the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, which I hope allows me to claim that I am an expert on the poem, and in the relationship of the church to the poem.

"The examiners were greatly impressed by the erudition of the thesis, and by its patient, intelligent explication of the many images and allusions connecting the work of T. S. Eliot to the Church of St Magnus the Martyr. In particular, the examiners felt that the thesis opened up new ways of thinking about The Waste Land, of understanding its mythical structure, and of placing the poem in relation to other major literary and artistic works of the modernist period." (Joint Report)

"This very scholarly thesis is inspired by the reredos of the Church of St Magnus the Martyr in Lower Thames Street, London and its complex, multivalent associations with T. S. Eliot and The Waste Land (the church appears in Part 3 of The Waste Land, ‘The Fire Sermon’, ll. 263-65). In many ways, the Church of St Magnus the Martyr is seen as the meeting place for the powerful constellation of ideas informing Eliot’s 1922 modernist composition, with the nearby London Bridge (also mentioned in the poem) serving as a point of entry into Eliot’s imaginative world, as well as a locus of transition between the different historical, theological, and political realms that are represented in the poem. Just as the individual features of the altarpiece provide the foundation for an intensive study of Eliot’s cultural and poetic ideals, so too the lines in which Eliot alludes to ‘Magnus Martyr’ (immediately preceded by the meeting of ‘the typist’ and ‘the young man carbuncular’) provide the starting point for what proves to be a surprisingly comprehensive and revealing study of Eliot’s work ... The thesis makes significant gains in terms of advancing new ideas and developing existing scholarship on Eliot. It offers an exceptionally thorough exploration of images and allusions that have sometimes baffled readers of The Waste Land." (Internal examining professor)

"In addition to the good work undertaken here in situating The Waste Land within a continuum of ideas and debates, the thesis also undertakes a kind of critical detective work that compellingly and convincingly illuminates key aspects of the poem through an investigation of the role and influence of the reredos of the Church of St Magnus the Martyr. One of the most admirable features of this thesis is the manner in which it weaves a very meticulous and perceptive reading of the physical space of the church into the analysis of key touchstones in the poetry ... This is an excellent piece of scholarship: lively, subtle, illuminating and rigorous." (External examining professor).

Apologies for posting this material here, I would not choose to do so. But I do believe that those who love the poem will very much want to see what this aspect means, and so I'm defending its necessary presence on Wikipedia. Please note that, while the thesis is said to make significant gains, it is also "developing existing scholarship on Eliot." In that, I would put myself forward as what Wikipedia describes as a subject-matter expert (SME). "A person with a master's degree in electronic engineering could be considered a subject-matter expert in electronics." Subject-matter expert - Wikipedia.

My books continue and develop the thesis and as such the books are not themselves original research, the thesis is - and the thesis has been rigorously reviewed. The books are printed by Alep Press (which I own) and use the same book printer as large publishing houses. Alep Press will publish other books by independent authors not related to Eliot or modernism. The publication of the books has been announced on the T.S. Eliot society website. They have have been rigorously edited, and e.g. A Modern Eve has 392 endnotes referring to other academic works of literature, archeology and theology, as well as the works of Eliot.

I've not included original research from the books, such as the battle with Nietzsche's overman waged through the young man carbuncular, as that could be controversial. But the architectural language of the church is not, as you can see from e.g. the work of Barry Spurr etc. Always happy to address any part you consider under-supported with additional arms-length scholarly comment.

With apologies again for the length,

regards

WKB WKBrannigan (talk) 16:04, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. It's really not a question of your own expertise, but reliability and verifiability of sources. All information needs to be backed up by publicly-available reliable sources; we can't just rely on your own interpretation based on expertise, and self-published books are not considered reliable as they don't have the same amount of scrutiny as those published by unaffiliated houses.

You have added more citations to the passage I quoted as an example, but it still demonstrates WP:SYNTH. The individual statements are sourced, but the assertion that "In The Waste Land, the First Temple aspect of the altarpiece serves as a cultural portal to other Semitic cultures of the ancient Near East" is entirely your own: it's you who links Phlebas to Phoenicians building the Temple of Solomon, archaeological findings and 1 Kings, not a cited source. It's the same elsewhere in the section: sources need to back up the exact things you're saying, otherwise it's original research and synthesis. Ligaturama (talk) 07:54, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Let me first strip out any WP:SYNTH in the paragraph in question. WKBrannigan (talk) 16:21, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Ligaturama, I've now stripped out any SYNTH in the paragraph. WKBrannigan (talk) 15:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I've gone through the section again and tagged the issues I see. The synthesis issue is still present: a link between the Temple of Solomon and the poem is unsupported by a reliable source. There isn't even a reliable source stating that "The London temple at the centre of the poem is the Anglo-Catholic Church of St. Magnus the Martyr in the City of London": if Spurr explicitly states this then he should be cited. The section also goes into a lot of detail that is not relevant to the poem. Ligaturama (talk) 09:56, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello Ligaturama, I've addressed the matters you flagged down to the white and gold, I'll address the rest when I have time, perhaps tomorrow. You make very assured statements here on this work of high modernism, such as 'a lot of detail not relevant to the poem'. I've been open about my status in addressing the poem here, may I ask are you an academic? Best, B. WKBrannigan (talk) 18:00, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps that wasn't the right phrasing - what I really meant was that you need to clearly demonstrate how your passages are relevant to the poem. The digressions into the Temple of Solomon don't do that, and the newly expanded part on the colours of white and gold looks like synthesis again.

I'm not an academic, but as previously discussed, personal credentials are of no use for verifiability. Ligaturama (talk) 10:02, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for that and I appreciate your commentary here, an education in itself.

On a macro level regarding the church interior and its importance, the Notes on the Waste Land [264] press the reader to look at that interior - Eliot uses that word twice. May I ask that you go to the sections above - Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism. All emphasize the confluence or synergy of other religions with Judeo-Christianity in the poem. See the statement "The Bible has been described as "probably the single most pervasive influence on the poem"." An omission is the last note [433] that equates the repeated "Shantih" of the Upanishads with the "Peace which passeth understanding" of St. Paul (Philippians 4:7). And, "New Testament symbols include the card of the Hanged Man, which represents Jesus" is an inaccuracy, since there is no such card in the New Testament. It is a Tarot card that Eliot links to the dying god Attis [Note 46] linked in turn by Frazer in The Golden Bough to Jesus. So, Eliot's newly minted literary symbol transposes a Tarot symbol into Christ imagery (if I recall correctly, Weston argues that Tarot symbolism, like the Fisher King, is also rooted in very ancient Mesopotamian myth, both linked to the ancient versions of the yearly dying god). All these acutely written religious sections in this wiki article direct the reader to the spiritual confluence between the religions of the world and Christianity. In doing that, they all contain a form of synth, since it is not explicit in the poem. There are also some very definite statements made, such as "the voice of prophecy". Not disagreeing with any of it, it's very much in the small c catholic (universal) spirit of the poem.

More concerning is the section on post-war disillusionment. Here there is a marked difference between the well supported material I have put up, which is completely in tune with the preceding sections on religion in the article, and an extended section forcing a disillusionment reading on the poem which Eliot himself described as nonsense. Again, this is a form of synth: if enough people are shown to have said it, a reading can be synthesized and imposed on the poem even if the author emphatically called it nonsense. In essence, it is synthesizing a claim that Eliot is not in control of his poetry, doesn't know what he is doing, and that these more intelligent critics know better.

Please review the white and gold "list" again. I say list because I've included the span of meanings in 1922 of those colours in theology, literature, ancient history and the history of the church. All supported by arms-length references, and done precisely to avoid synth by offering a spectrum of meaning all of which (this can be said here, but not in that article) are undoubtedly contained in Eliot's reference to white and gold. In 1918 Eliot wrote of James Joyce, author of the work of literature that most inspired him to write The Waste Land using the mythic method, 'James Joyce, another very learned literary artist, uses allusions suddenly and with great speed, part of the effect being the extent of the vista opened to the imagination with the lightest touch’. Best, B. WKBrannigan (talk) 12:41, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I've also eliminated references to my own work, to ensure impartiality is not in question WKBrannigan (talk) 14:00, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know why you keep referring to Eliot's own interpretation as if it's the "correct" one - unless academic consensus has changed in recent years, I was under the impression that we still live in the age of the death of the author, where Eliot's views are not privileged. If you have reliable secondary sources disputing anything in the article then by all means include their point of view, bearing in mind that they should not be given undue weight if they are minority viewpoints.

The interpretations in the other sections of the article are backed up by reliable sources which make them explicitly. As I've explained above, WP:SYNTH/WP:OR is about the article itself making the connections that are otherwise not present in the sources. Taking just the first paragraph of "White and Gold":

In theology, the "white and gold" colours of that church in the poem are the "liturgical colours of Easter,"

- supported with a relevant reference

described by Lord Harries, Bishop of Oxford, as "white or gold, anticipating the resurrection, a shaft of sunlight in the darkness."

- is there anything in this source which links this to the poem?

In the work of literature that most inspired Eliot during the time of writing his poem, white and gold are the colours of the opening episode of James Joyce's Ulysses (with 'theology' named as its art theme).

- is there anything in this source which links this to the poem?

- the statement that Ulysses is "the work of literature that most inspired Eliot" while he was writing the poem needs a reference

In ancient history, according to Flavius Josephus, white and gold were the colours of the First Temple, also called the Temple of Solomon.

- Nothing to connect this to the poem

In the history of the church, Thomas Allen reports that the altarpiece of Magnus Martyr was white and gold in the 1800s.

- The implicit assumption here is that it was white and gold when Eliot saw it, and that influenced the poem, which is not supported by the source.

Ligaturama (talk) 09:07, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm grateful to be directed to Barthes' famous assertion as it is a good retrospective lens. I'd argue for significant caution in deploying Barthes Death of the Author unreservedly. An aspect of the pseudo-anarchic fragmented layer of Eliot's poem is a 1920s representation of the babel that will arise from Nietzsche's there-is-no-truth perspectivism and associated ideas, reflecting his thinking of the early 1900s. In an address to the Harvard Philosophical Club in 1914, Eliot said "what Nietzsche has done is to have built another creed. And I think that perhaps Nietzsche is the most vicious intellectualist of any of us." Nietzsche's Death of God underwrites Barthes essay. "Thus literature (it would be better, henceforth, to say writing), by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a "secret:' that is, an ultimate meaning, liberates an activity which we might call counter-theological, properly revolutionary, for to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law." (It's something of an irony that Barthes, Foucault and Derrida have become the capital A Authors within that school of there-is-no-truth literary criticism). The anti-Enlightenment antipathy to "reason, science, the law" arises from Romanticism, which proposed something in humanity that exceeded reason, later expressed in Nietzsche's satyr as an expression of the primal drives of his overman. In Eliot's thinking, that valorizes chaos. During the public argument with Middleton Murray on Romanticism V Classicism in the 1920s, Eliot wrote, "With Mr. Murry’s formulation of Classicism and Romanticism I cannot agree; the difference seems to me rather the difference between the complete and the fragmentary, the adult and the immature, the orderly and the chaotic." A 2nd comment of the 1920s also addresses cohesion. "‘One of the surest tests is the way in which a poet borrows … The bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion." Each of these comments on its own should make it clear that Eliot would not write a purely fragmented (anarchic) poem. A person who decides to read Joyce's Ulysses without any assistance and declares it to be only an account of an anarchic pub crawl in Dublin (devoid of a unifying mythic layer) is entitled to their opinion, but these are the Dunning-Kruger opinions encouraged at the outer edges of Barthes Death of the Author, delivering the undifferentiated babel of competing voices you here in The Waste Land. Underneath, the poem is as deep a work, and as controlled, disciplined and unified, as Ulysses.

I will hopefully address your concerns in specific instances in the article as soon as I get the time. Meanwhile, to answer one, here is Eliot on Ulysses and the mythic method in 1923.

Best, B. WKBrannigan (talk) 13:59, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent, further investigations. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. It is a method already adumbrated by Mr. Yeats, and of the need for which I believe Mr. Yeats to have been the first contemporary to be conscious. It is a method for which the horoscope is auspicious. Psychology (such as it is, and whether our reaction to it be comic or serious), ethnology, and The Golden Bough have concurred to make possible what was impossible even a few years ago. Instead of narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for art, toward that order and form which Mr. Aldington so earnestly desires. And only those who have won their own discipline in secret and without aid, in a world which offers very little assistance to that end, can be of any use in furthering this advance.

(Eliot Ulysses, Order, and Myth, 1923) WKBrannigan (talk) 14:01, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Maintenance Box regarding material related to topic, and amount of detail

Addressing relevance of material, added commentary from Robert Crawford, a foremost Eliot scholar, makes clear Eliot's central interest in the anthropological foundations of modern religion. In addition, the 2 books explicitly named by Eliot in the Notes on the Waste Land permanently attached to the poem from the outset are books of Comparative Religion. Both books examine in detail (and are focused entirely on) the roots of much of the symbolism, rituals and imagery of Christianity that arise from earlier religions. [As an aside purely for interest, the church is likely to have been built on or very near to the Temple of Isis of Roman Londinium].

Addressing amount of material, it is the very minimum considering Magnus Martyr is the London temple at the center of the poem and as such is at the center of any analysis of the poem that looks at its spiritual and anthropological aspects. There is voluminous material on it in Eliot studies. WKBrannigan (talk) 16:35, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

The books Eliot names in the notes are The Golden Bough by James Frazer (which traces the dying god to Mesopotamian roots) and From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston. Contrary to erroneous characterizations of it in this wiki article, Weston's book is not a grail legend book and she explicitly advises against reading it that way, as does Eliot. She develops on the work of Frazer by tracing the roots of the Fisher King legend (later absorbed into pagan and then Christianised Arthurian literature) back to the dying gods Attis (see Notes on the Waste Land) and Tammuz, and other very ancient roots in Mesopotamian fish symbolism. WKBrannigan (talk) 16:44, 3 November 2024 (UTC)