The Waste Land

The Waste Land is a highly influential 433-line poem by T. S. Eliot. The title is often mistakenly written as The Wasteland.

Composition history

Writing

(To be added)

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Editing

When Eliot first wrote the poem, he called it He Do the Police in Different Voices. This is a reference to Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, in which a widow Betty Higden, says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy: "You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices." Early manuscripts of the poem were uncovered in 1968 and reveal that it originally contained almost twice as much material as the final published version. This is in part due to the fact that Eliot allowed his friend and contemporary Ezra Pound to edit the poem, although Eliot himself is responsible for striking large sections of it.

Related Topics:
Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend - 1968

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For example, there was a lengthy imitation of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock at the beginning of the Fire Sermon section. It described one lady Fresca (who appeared in the earlier poem "Gerontion"). As Richard Ellmann describes it, "Instead of making her toilet like Pope's Belinda, Fresca is going to it, like Joyce's Bloom. The lines read:

Related Topics:
Alexander Pope - Richard Ellmann

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:Leaving the bubbling beverage to cool,

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:Fresca slips softly to the needful stool,

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:Where the pathetic tale of Richardson

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:Eases her labour till the deed is done . . ."

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Ellman notes "Pound warned Eliot that since Pope had done the couplets better, and Joyce the defecation, there was no point in another round."

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Pound also excised some shorter poems that Eliot wanted to insert between the five sections, such as this one:

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:Full fathom five your Bleistein lies

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:Under the flatfish and the squids.

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:Graves' Disease in a dead jew's eyes!

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:Where the crabs have eat the lids . . .

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:That is lace that was his nose

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:Roll him gently side to side,

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:See the lips unfold unfold

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:From the teeth, gold in gold....

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At the request of Eliot's wife, a line in the A Game of Chess section was removed from the poem: "And we shall play a game of chess;/ The ivory men make company between us/ Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door". This section is apparently based on their marital life, and she may have felt these lines too revealing. The "ivory men" line must have meant something to Eliot though; in 1960, after his wife's death, he inserted the line in a fair copy made for sale to aid the London Library.

Related Topics:
Chess - Ivory - 1960 - London Library

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Pound wrote a bawdy poem in a letter to Eliot to celebrate the "birth" of the poem:

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:E. P. hopeless and unhelped

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:Enthroned in the marmorean skies

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:His verse omits realities,

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:Angelic hands with mother of pearl

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:Retouch the strapping servant girl,

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???.

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:Balls and balls and balls again

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:Can not touch his fellow men.

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:His foaming and abundant cream

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:Has coated his world. The coat of a dream;

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:Or say that the upjut of sperm

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:Has rendered his sense pachyderm.

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