Any poem hailed by most of the really important critics of this country and of England as “the most significant of the generation” would naturally compel our attention. “The Waste Land” does not cease to do that even after constant re-reading. Although we are eventually convinced of the opinion just quoted, our peculiar conception of its significance may vary a great deal. It would seem to me it lies in its relation to the future of poetry. Mr. Eliot has led poetry to the cross-roads and offered her a choice. She must either follow him along the path which he has demonstrated with eloquent conviction is disfigured beyond hope by the tracks of many centuries or else branch off to a new untravelled road. The poem is enormous and epochal by virtue of its aesthetic implications. It is pathetically foolish to find justification for its vast incongruities and obscurities in its broad design or in isolated passages of beauty. Those who are doing the latter give it an interpretation which its author manifestly did not intend. If his purpose had been to create simple lyricism there would be little sense in drowning it in a maelstrom of references to over thirty books, written in several languages, and ranging from Sanskrit maxims to American “rags”.
There can be no denial, however, that there is a definite and organized pattern in the crazy-quilt. Even such lines as,
“When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand
And puts a record on the gramophone.”
are an integral part of the general plan. Superficially, that plan has to do with the sterility of emotion in modern life and the futility of human aspirations in all ages. But his most subtle proof of the latter is to be found in the very form of the poem itself with its concrete negation of all the most cherished ideals of aesthetics. Eliot has shown us in this, as in his other work, that he is capable of writing perfect verse in any number of conventional modes. In “The Waste Land” he gives us a sample of each with the implication that there is not one of them but is as worn-out and vulgarized as the London desert.
This is my reason for believing the most profound significance of the poem consists in the threat it throws in the face of poetry. Will she continue to adorn herself in motley made up of the battered fabrics of past triumphs? Or, on the other hand, will some one come offering her what she most needs to survive, something beautiful in its very freshness? Perhaps we should be thankful for “The Waste Land”, as we are always thankful for a warning signal. But we have no need to desire another.
W. T.