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Below, we introduce and gloss some of the most important quotations from The Waste Land, an endlessly quotable poem. This article is by Dr Oliver Tearle, author of The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem (Bloomsbury). ‘April is the cruellest month’. Let’s begin with perhaps the best-known line from Eliot’s best-known ...
- T. S. Eliot
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Hollow...
- T. S. Eliot
- T. S. Eliot
- 1922
- “April is the cruelest month, breeding. lilacs out of the dead land, mixing. memory and desire, stirring. dull roots with spring rain.” ― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
- “A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only. There is shadow under this red rock,
- “And I will show you something different from either. Your shadow at morning striding behind you. Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you. I will show you fear in a handful of dust”
- “For you know only a heap of broken images” ― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
Famous Quotes Explained. 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. These lines constitute the famous opening of The Waste Land.
Death in life/living death. From the poem’s epigraph onwards, the idea of a living death is established as one of the key themes of The Waste Land. The epigraph is from Petronius’ scurrilous Roman novel, Satyricon. The speaker sees the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage or bottle, and when he asks her what she wants, the Sibyl replies, ‘I ...
Jul 4, 2020 · Mr. Eliot uses the Waste Land as the concrete image of a spiritual drouth. His poem takes place half in the real world—the world of contemporary London, and half in a haunted wilderness— the Waste Land of mediaeval legend; but the Waste Land is only the hero’s arid soul and the intolerable world about him.
Oct 24, 2022 · In honor of the 100th anniversary of the publication of “The Waste Land,” we invited four writers and academics—Beci Carver, Jahan Ramazani, Robert Crawford, and David Barnes—to discuss the importance, context, artistry, and legacy of the poem. Can you tell us a bit about your personal experience of reading the poem.
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The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is arguably the most important poem of the whole twentieth century. It remains a timely poem, even though its origins were very specifically the post-war Europe of 1918-22. Written by T. S. Eliot, who was then beginning to make a name for himself following the publication (and modest success) of his ...