The waste land

Question 1

T.s Eliot: Ulysses, order and myth quotes

Answer 1

• “manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporary and antiquity”
• a way “of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history”
• gives binary perspective. mythical allusion amongst chaos of modern world.
• way of “making the modern world possible for art”

Question 2

Tiresius

Answer 2

“i tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, / old now with wrinkled female breasts, can see”

“what tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem”

Question 3

“unreal city”

Answer 3

“a crowd flowed over london bridge, so many, // i had not thought death had undone so many”

like the “worthless mob” in dante, they are “under a brown fog”

Question 4

cosmetics

Answer 4

“urgent, powdered, or liquid - troubled confused // and drowned the sense in odours”

Question 5

philomel

Answer 5

the change of philomel, by the barbarous king // so rudely forced… and still she cries, and still the world pursues, // “jug jug” to dirty ears

Question 6

Love decayed

Answer 6

“speak to me. why do you never speak?
“the chair she sat in, like a burnished throne”
albert “wants a good time, and if you don’t give it him, there’s others will.
“its them pills i took, to bring it off, she said // (she’s had five already, and nearly died of young george)” she has “never been the same”
“goodnight, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, goodnight”
“sweet themes run softly till i end my song // the river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers…”
“endeavours to engage her with caresses // which still are unreproved, if undesired // flushed and decided, he assaults at once” - she is “glad its over”

Question 7

eliot on emotion in art

Answer 7

“no artist produces great art by a deliberate attempt to express his personality”