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.

Structure

The poem is preceded by a Latin and Greek epigraph from The Satyricon of Petronius.

Related Topics:
Latin - Greek - Epigraph - Satyricon - Petronius

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In English, it reads: "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in her cage,

Related Topics:
English - Sibyl - Cumae

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and when the boys said, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied I want to die."

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(Petronius cast the question and answer in Greek).

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Following the epigraph is a dedication (added in a 1925 republication) that reads

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"For Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro" (the better craftsman).

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The sections of The Waste Land are:

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• The Burial of the Dead
• A Game of Chess
• The Fire Sermon
• Death by Water
• What the Thunder Said

The first four sections of the poem correspond to the Greek classical elements of Earth (burial), Air (voices—the draft title for this section was "In the Cage", an image of hanging in air), Fire (passion), and Water (the draft of the poem had additional water imagery in a fishing voyage.)

Related Topics:
Greek - Classical element - Earth - Air - Fire - Water - Fishing

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The text of the poem is followed by several pages of notes associated with individual lines or sections of the text, purporting to explain his s, references, and allusions. Some of these notes are helpful in interpreting the poem, but some are arguably even more puzzling, and many of the most opaque passages are left unremarked-on. It is known that the notes were added after Eliot's publisher requested something longer to justify printing "The Waste Land" in a separate book, and many scholars think the notes are peppered with red herrings.

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