Waste Land
A Poem
James Matthew Wilson’s essay on T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, on this, the 100 anniversary of its publication, is both very readable and thought provoking.
Wilson writes, “When I first read this poem, I did not understand a word of it.” I remember that same moment more than 50 years ago. But like Wilson I “thought it was the greatest poem I ever read.”
A hundred years ago Western civilization turned on itself. In those critical years between the first world war and the second, a cultural optimism with respect to old values—honor, justice, faith seemed to crumble. Even the illusory reformation of “a new world” after WWII, the plastic social constructions of the 1950s, did little to hold together, to bring into focus, a rebuild of our traditional values and hopes. With the Cold War, they seemed to make such a reconstruction more difficult.
Read Wilson’s essay, “The Waste Land at 100,” The Russell Kirk Center. And then reflect. Where do we stand now, part way into the 21st century, one hundred years after that singularity. Time cannot be rewound. All our serious efforts seem to have gone to finding, gathering, cataloging and hoarding the ancient treasures, the heap of broken images, where the sun beats, … and the dry stone no sound of water…
If there were the sound of water only…But there is no water.
These fragments I have shored against my ruin
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
One hundred years is a long time to gather without sowing. We have “shored against” our ruin. A salvage operation. Were we in a passage between childhood and maturity that of necessity existed and now must be left behind? In so many of the areas of growth and discovery that matter, we have stumbled and fallen. Yes, we have advanced the frontiers of science. Brilliantly, I believe. But in the art of government, nurture and living?
It is time, 100 years has past, the waste land is behind us, and we have placed the fragments behind glass, in museum casings.
And a new land emerges that we cannot afford to lay waste. May those who stand ready to lead be pioneers, guardians and caregivers. Can we form new purpose, follow new stars?