'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
theguardian.com
'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#2Isn't this how a lot of people who read "The Waste Land" for the first time react to it? I'm reading Exile's Return by Malcolm Cowley at the moment, and he writes about the reaction of the generation of younger writers watching Eliot's progress as a potential way forward for them, and being disappointed that with this poem he zigged when they hoped he would zag, so to speak. Doesn't matter to me, I really like it. It's dense and allusive, but a lot of poetry is hard to read without seeming to have much to back it up. This one, I never put down, because it feels like even the parts I don't get have a reason for being that way.
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
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Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#4Isn't this how a lot of people who read "The Waste Land" for the first time react to it? I'm reading Exile's Return by Malcolm Cowley at the moment, and he writes about the reaction of the generation of younger writers watching Eliot's progress as a potential way forward for them, and being disappointed that with this poem he zigged when they hoped he would zag, so to speak. Doesn't matter to me, I really like it. It…
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Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#5I’m torn because “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock“ is perhaps my favorite poem. And it is already difficult enough to understand. I find “The waste land“ to be a much harder slog yet still seductively well written.
FWIW his earlier Sweeney poems[1], [2] are more traditionally crafted, with rhyme and meter and everything, and I feel they are masterpieces. Much easier to approach than his latter works.
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#6Anyone who likes The Waste Land should try and read Four Quartets, and his plays, especially Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party, The Family Reunion and The Elder Statetsman. They are all unique in their own way and reflect Eliot’s mind and ideas at least as well as WL.
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#7Wasn't this a typical reaction of traditionally educated readership to the Modernist literature? Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's La Recherche had a similar reception at first, didn't they? How did the public acquire a taste for this kind of literature?
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#8Wasn't this a typical reaction of traditionally educated readership to the Modernist literature? Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's La Recherche had a similar reception at first, didn't they? How did the public acquire a taste for this kind of literature?
I suspect that the public liked it before the pundits.
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#9Wasn't this a typical reaction of traditionally educated readership to the Modernist literature? Joyce's Ulysses and Proust's La Recherche had a similar reception at first, didn't they? How did the public acquire a taste for this kind of literature?
I suspect that the public liked it before the pundits.
Yes, I read a book in university (can't remember the exact name) about how high-brow modernism often mingled with 'low-brow' popular press. Extracts of experimental literary fiction appearing in cheap magazines next to ads, that kind of thing.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/pop...
Edit: the book I was thinking of is this. Great read. https://www.routledge.com/Re-Covering-Modernism-Pulps-Paperb...
Re: 'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)
#10"For the rest one can only say that if Mr Eliot had been pleased to write in demotic English The Waste Land might not have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists and literati, so much waste paper."
Perhaps so, and that's essentially what many of my fellow students and I thought of the poem when we studied it at high school along with Eliot's other epic The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock — although the latter was better tolerated.
We spent months poring over The Wasteland line by line until we understood every nuance in every line (or I should say were supposed to know every nuance but I didn't). For some kids like me who were more interested in mathematics and science it was heavy going and boring.
If asked now whether I'm glad I studied studied it I'd have to answer yes for all those reasons that come with age and experience but at the time it would have been a definite no. Still, I question whether all that time would not have been better spent on what would have been more fruitful schooling. It seems to me that the work is just too erudite and mature—with all its obscure references—for all but the best students doing English at high school (of which I was not one). Shakespeare's works were much easier and I liked studying them.
With that background, I'd say that Guardian review perplexes me as it seems rather shallow and ill informed for a paper of its stature—for reasons that Eliot's The Wasteland is a pillar in the canon of 20th Century poetry and widely recognized as such (I would have thought the reviewer would have been more knowledgeable about Eliot's works). Whilst I know that for a fact, it surprises me that I even know why—given my reservations about the work (seems some of that classwork must have stuck).
Incidentally, when I was learning about Eliot's works in the 1960s he was still alive and our teacher (and syllabus) stressed that he was an important modern contemporary poet and that it was essential for us to study his works.