The Role Of Modernism In The Wasteland

“Eliot’s Waste Land is I think the justification of the ‘movement,’ of our modern experiment, since 1900.” (Pound, 1950). Just as human action is an output of hidden motives, the opulent type of poetry contains concealed meanings. This undoubtedly is the most conspicuous way to characterize modernism for a novice reader. Modernism was a metaphysical and cultural movement that emanated from an immense transformation in Western society in the late ninetieth and early twenty centuries, and it is accepted that T.S Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ was the dawn of Modernist poetry and literature. Modernism was a contemporary approach of thinking, a regeneration of the psyche, an advanced –ism that was the result of urbanisation, technological and economic

Instead, it is more advantageous to audit the entire context of the poem, highlighting some of the specific references and key images and themes as examples. Connotations of religion and worship are found throughout the poem even starting with the opening. ‘The Burial of the Dead’, which is all about regeneration, regrowth and doctrine. This title is taken from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and reiterates the ritualistic manner of the poem. However, God himself is not present in the poem, except in corrupted forms like the Hanged Man in the Tarot pack (reference here to the Hanged God of Frazer) or the drowned Phoenician Sailor, who recovers as “Phlebas the Phoenician” in the fourth section, “Death by Water.” A visualization of ‘The Waste Land’ as a pilgrimage, a quest for the Holy Grail, or an eloquent elegy to a fallen technological Europe can be seen. Eliot references both the arcane and the renowned, thereby teaching his readers as he writes. Eliot analyses the critical role played by religious symbols and motifs. He portrays the ancient fertility rituals, in which the adequecy of the land was associated to the health of the Fisher King, a damaged figure who could be alleviated through the sacrifice of an icon. The Fisher King is therefore connected to the Holy Grail folklore, in which the only object capable of healing the land is the grail. Ultimately, ritual struggles as the tool for curing the wasteland; even as Eliot presents surrogate religious commitments, mantras and rites of passage. It is clear that ‘The poet lives in a modern waste land, in the aftermath of a great war, in an industrialized society that lacks traditional structures of authority and belief, in soil that may not be conducive to new growth.’ (Lewis, 2007) The regrowth can represent the restoration of European society after the war and