T.S. Eliot Video Response

 

Abigail Andrews

 

In the video, the experts explained that “The Wasteland” demonstrated T.S. Eliot’s way of embracing the modernist movement. Eliot wished to take traditions from the past, and in a sense, “make them new,” just as Ezra Pound advised.   In writing this renowned example of modernist poetry, he managed to incorporate the voices of many traditional poets and writers from various eras in history. Although he adapted their works to suit his particular needs, Eliot still drew on their ideas and words to help him create his own narrative voice. For instance, in section II, “A Game of Chess,” the first line comes from Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.” Eliot took the idea from the scene of the play when Cleopatra is sitting in a barge “like a burnished throne.” However, he adapts the barge to a chair in an ornate room that appears to resemble a temple. Then, Eliot further complicates the scene by questioning the sanity of the woman who sits in this particular chair. Even though a possible basis of Eliot’s idea was not his own, it seems that only a modernist would be able to quote from Shakespeare and still adapt the words to make it his own in a radically different manner. This section of the video reminded me of “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” where Eliot wrote that “[n]o poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists” (1426). In the case of “The Wasteland,” T. S. Eliot shows that his poem would have no meaning without depending upon the words and works of other famous authors from the generations before his. 

 

 

Back to TS Eliot Makeup

 

responding to abigail's response (Kimberly Habyk):

 

I too fond that this was interesting that Elliot knew that the classics were needed to create new art. I think often times when people think of the "modern age" they picture a place where there is complete orginality, but honestly what orginality is left in the world? What is to be done that hasn't been done before? I feel that Elliot saw this and even though he molded the classics into a modern genre of poetry, he still found that they were useful. I agree with Elliot that we would be nothing without the writers before us.

 

Response  (Amy Smith)

    I agree.  The entire time they were talking about this in the movie I was thinking how much it reminded me of "Tradition and the Individual Talent." It seems that "The Waste Land" is actually a perfect manifestation of every point Eliot tries to make in that essay.  He incorporates many voices and traditions of the past, considering them all parts of history's works of art.  However, he manages to masterfully change and manipulate them in such ways that they serve his own purposes in his new, unique work, which in turn will be added to history's art itself.