Misattributed Quote Retrospectives 4
"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." -American sports legend, Charles Barkley
A new quote, a new deepdive.
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot is a central work of modernist poetry published in 1922.
The Waste Land is inconsistent in its narrative, style and structure. The poem shifts between satire and prophecy, and features abrupt and unannounced changes of narrator, location, and time. It actually alludes to alot of works considered classics in the west such as: Ovid's Metamorphoses, the legend of the Fisher King, Dante's Divine Comedy, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and even a contemporary song, "That Shakespearian Rag".
The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations in which several characters display the fundamental emptiness of their lives. "The Fire Sermon" offers a philosophical meditation in relation to self-denial and sexual dissatisfaction; "Death by Water" is a brief description of a drowned merchant; and "What the Thunder Said" is a culmination of the poem's previous themes explored through a description of a desert journey.
Before the poem starts we get an epigraph, which is a quote, phrase or poem, that serves different purposes. These can be a preface, summary, counter-example or link to another work. Its in Latin and Ancient Greek from chapter 48 of the Satyricon of Petronius.
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεῖν θέλω.
The original is untranslated however we do have the translation as follows:
With my own eyes I saw the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a bottle and, when the attendants asked her what she wanted, she replied, "I want to die."
The quote we have is one of the more famous phrases and is the start of the poem and a part of "The Burial of the Dead". It describes spring as something to be dreaded, with the comforting static nature of winter giving way to the forcible activity of spring. I wont post the whole poem but I will post the first section of "The Burial of the Dead" so you can get a feel for the poem.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
Eliot later regretted leaving notes for how his poem was supposed to interpret certain metaphors and allusions. This allowed broader interpretations- less as a work which incorporates previous Romantic ideals and more as a poem describing "alienation, fragmentation, despair and disenchantment" in the post-war period, which are considered typical features of modernist literature.
Reading this its obvious that, taking place in April, this story is going to go places we will not expect and will not be enjoyable (for the characters at least). Many things will occur that push them to change beyomd the comfort and stagnation of Winter. We have already seen echoes of T. S. Eliots disjointed style with Wandering Vagabonds pages literally being seperated from the main narrative. There may end up being others who will do the same.
