Status
Available
Genres
Publication
New York : W.W. Norton, c2001.
Description
Prints the first American edition (Boni & Liveright) of Eliot's most important work, accompanied by the editor's detailed annotations. Eliot's own notoriously inscrutable notes, placed at the end, are also annotated. The abundant explanatory material includes background on the poem's sources, composition, and publication history as well as 25 critical reviews and essays.
User reviews
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
The best thing about this edition isn't the historical information (blah), the initial reception (much fun) or the later criticism (you've seen it all before). It's . . . okay, the best thing is the poem itself, obviously. So wonderful to see bleak modernism that's this rich and bloody, as opposed
But what I was actually referring to was the painstaking inclusion of original texts, from the central (Tiresias) to the very peripheral (the Goldsmith poem that is adapted for a couple of lines). They widen and deepen the poem before your eyes like a fourth dimension, an undiscovered dialogic country. I know that's what critical editions are meant to do, but The Waste Land is particularly well suited for it - it goes from an epic grumble to something approaching novelized poetry, in the Bakhtinian sense of "novel;" a knot of intersubjectivities. It's also wonderful.
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to Beckett's bleak modernism, say, which is so gratingly, scrapingly anti-life.But what I was actually referring to was the painstaking inclusion of original texts, from the central (Tiresias) to the very peripheral (the Goldsmith poem that is adapted for a couple of lines). They widen and deepen the poem before your eyes like a fourth dimension, an undiscovered dialogic country. I know that's what critical editions are meant to do, but The Waste Land is particularly well suited for it - it goes from an epic grumble to something approaching novelized poetry, in the Bakhtinian sense of "novel;" a knot of intersubjectivities. It's also wonderful.
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LibraryThing member the_terrible_trivium
Words fail me, but they in no way failed Eliot. As good as words get.
LibraryThing member Niecierpek
Some dazzling and unusual imagery, which makes for an interesting and unforgettable read, but I don't like the fact that one has to sit with an encyclopedia on one's lap to be able to get all the references.
LibraryThing member tinkettleinn
The Waste Land is the meaningless “modern situation” (Langbaum) people of post-World War I Europe find themselves in. The people who inhabit the waste land are the living dead. Langbaum’s essay describes these characters as being “nameless, faceless, [and] isolated” with“no clear idea
The poem references Dante’s Inferno to emphasize that this modern waste land represents death-in-life, that none of its inhabitants are really living. In “The Burial of the Dead,” the “narrating consciousness” first refers to this world as an “unreal city,” suggesting it has a nightmarish quality. It can also be suggesting that the waste land’s inhabitants do not accept or live in reality, but reject it. These people are living in a kind of hell. The two references to Dante in lines 62-65, describe the two kinds of people waiting in hell. One group is those who are without blame or praise, and the other is those who have never been baptized and are, therefore, hopeless. Brooks’ analysis states that the categories of the waste land’s inhabitants are secularized people, and people with no knowledge of faith, which means that “their life is in reality a death” (190). The people who are secularized are those who do not do good or evil; they do nothing, which Eliot says is even worse than doing evil. Those who have no knowledge of faith were never baptized and are hopeless from the start of their lives. The inhabitants of the waste land are dead because they do nothing. It is only through action that humans exist.
The reference to the Battle of Mylae in line 70 and the title of the second part of the poem, “A Game of Chess,” seem to suggest that war is universal and all wars are the same. The Battle at Mylae was fought in the ancient Punic Wars, and it is used here to suggest a connection between the recent Great War, and the Punic Wars fought between Rome and Carthage. The idea that all war is the same fits Eliot’s conception of how the present and future cannot exist individually from the past. Nothing is separate from what comes before it except the waste land, which is a living hell because none of its inhabitants have any conception of the past that shaped it. The footnote for “A Game of Chess” says that the title is derived from a satirical play that “allegorized English conflict with Spain as a chess match.” I wonder if this is meant to suggest the same of the Great War. It would also be another way of connecting a past conflict with a more present one.
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of themselves.” It is the voice of the narrator, according to Langbaum, that enables readers to understand these characters in terms of past figures, such as symbols on Tarot cards and mythological heroes. In Eliot’s essay on tradition and individual talent, he suggests that time is not a linear progression, but, rather, it is circular. Eliot does not believe there is a difference from one generation to the next or that future generations will really know better than present or past ones, because ancient practices and meanings are acted out within every generation. Poetry exists because humans are conscious of the past. Eliot builds his poem upon mythology, religion, and Shakespeare, even though the waste land is a world trying to bury the past to make room for the new. It is a world without hope of rebirth or fertility, because it has buried God. It is also a world without poetry. The poem references Dante’s Inferno to emphasize that this modern waste land represents death-in-life, that none of its inhabitants are really living. In “The Burial of the Dead,” the “narrating consciousness” first refers to this world as an “unreal city,” suggesting it has a nightmarish quality. It can also be suggesting that the waste land’s inhabitants do not accept or live in reality, but reject it. These people are living in a kind of hell. The two references to Dante in lines 62-65, describe the two kinds of people waiting in hell. One group is those who are without blame or praise, and the other is those who have never been baptized and are, therefore, hopeless. Brooks’ analysis states that the categories of the waste land’s inhabitants are secularized people, and people with no knowledge of faith, which means that “their life is in reality a death” (190). The people who are secularized are those who do not do good or evil; they do nothing, which Eliot says is even worse than doing evil. Those who have no knowledge of faith were never baptized and are hopeless from the start of their lives. The inhabitants of the waste land are dead because they do nothing. It is only through action that humans exist.
The reference to the Battle of Mylae in line 70 and the title of the second part of the poem, “A Game of Chess,” seem to suggest that war is universal and all wars are the same. The Battle at Mylae was fought in the ancient Punic Wars, and it is used here to suggest a connection between the recent Great War, and the Punic Wars fought between Rome and Carthage. The idea that all war is the same fits Eliot’s conception of how the present and future cannot exist individually from the past. Nothing is separate from what comes before it except the waste land, which is a living hell because none of its inhabitants have any conception of the past that shaped it. The footnote for “A Game of Chess” says that the title is derived from a satirical play that “allegorized English conflict with Spain as a chess match.” I wonder if this is meant to suggest the same of the Great War. It would also be another way of connecting a past conflict with a more present one.
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LibraryThing member aulsmith
This critical edition is great. The two stars are for the poem. This book finally provided me with enough information to realize that it's not my lack of understanding that makes this poem incomprehensible. Virginia Woolf, on first hearing the poem read by Eliot, said in her diary "It has great
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beauty & force of phrase; symmetry; & tensity. What connects it together, I'm not so sure." I concur. You can read all the background material and bring all that knowledge to the poem, but there's still nothing in the poem itself connecting these disparate elements. There's lots of emotion, but not much meaning. Show Less
LibraryThing member AlCracka
Great poem and great edition. As always, Norton is excellent at providing contextual materials and shitty at making covers that aren't ugly.
LibraryThing member JuliaBoechat
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.
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.
LibraryThing member nobodhi
the facsimile edition (published around 1969) of the original draft, with valerie eliot & ezra pound's mark-ups, indispensable : you get an impression of how much of the final was pound's edit ... fascinating study.
LibraryThing member stillatim
This isn't a review of the poem. If you've read anything written since, say, 1938, and liked it, then you like The Waste Land. You might not know it, but there it is. Even if what you like was written by a hater of this poem, it wouldn't have existed without it. Giving it stars is like giving stars
But I am reviewing this Norton Critical Edition, which includes the poem; 'Sources' ranging from Buddha's Fire-Sermon and the relevant Upanishad down to Frazer Weston and Baudelaire; some relevant statements by Eliot; reviews and criticism.
Sources: Useful, but really, why bother putting in the KJV while not putting in the Verlaine and Nerval which Eliot quotes? That's an odd choice. The KJV is available wherever bytes are being consumed; the poems are substantially harder to track down and more obviously important for this poem.
Eliot's writings: nice to have all in one place, but there's nothing more annoying than skipping paragraphs out of essays, or printing one paragraph from an essay. Could this book not have been 15 pages longer? Then we could have had all of 'Tradition...' at least.
Reviews and First Reactions: A good sampling of how people read it at the time it was released, although not particularly valuable as readings of the poem. Malcolm Cowley's piece was especially interesting: "we were excited by the adventure of living in the present... we were entering a new world of art that did not impress us as being a spiritual desert," and so his generation rejected The Waste Land. Too bad they were wrong, eh Mal? Turns out post-war was pretty shitty.
Criticism: two halves. First, essays grouped under 'The New Criticism.' Those which are appreciative generally take an optimistic view of the poem as solving some problem, or making possible salvation. The more recent criticism is predictably eye-rolling. Moody's 'A Cure for a Crisis...' is good; Bush gives us some sub-Freudian dubieties (Tiresias is in the Oedipus myth! Therefore...!!!) Ellmann gives us scads of those same dubieties mingled with the conflations of which recent criticism can't rid itself: "emasculation corresponds to other injuries, particularly to the mutilation of the voice: as if the phallus were complicit with the Logos. Lacking both, language has become a 'waste of breath', a barren dissemination." Of course it has. Because, y'know, daddy = the signified = the phallus = Jesus = the abject = self-consumign artifacts = Eliot. And Armstrong gives us such gems as "sieving is a process applied to sewage" rather than, say, the making of flour or panning for gold. Apparently the most important bits of The Waste Land are the bits Pound and Eliot cut out of the drafts, and Pound welled "phallicly and creatively" for John Quinn, which would probably have been news to Quinn, who just thought he was being asked for money (again) rather than a blow job.
The editors have done a good job, there's no doubt about it. They couldn't have shown better the fatuity of contemporary criticism if they'd tried. If the study of literature persists into this century, I hope we move past what is clearly the anal phase of scholarly culture. Leave the poop alone, people.
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to Homer, or Dante, or Goethe, or Shakespeare. You've already decided if you like it or not before you start reading it. Are you a rebellious teenager with a leftist bent? You already hate it. Are you a snob who believes in nothing so much as the inevitable decline of culture? You'll love it. And so on. But I am reviewing this Norton Critical Edition, which includes the poem; 'Sources' ranging from Buddha's Fire-Sermon and the relevant Upanishad down to Frazer Weston and Baudelaire; some relevant statements by Eliot; reviews and criticism.
Sources: Useful, but really, why bother putting in the KJV while not putting in the Verlaine and Nerval which Eliot quotes? That's an odd choice. The KJV is available wherever bytes are being consumed; the poems are substantially harder to track down and more obviously important for this poem.
Eliot's writings: nice to have all in one place, but there's nothing more annoying than skipping paragraphs out of essays, or printing one paragraph from an essay. Could this book not have been 15 pages longer? Then we could have had all of 'Tradition...' at least.
Reviews and First Reactions: A good sampling of how people read it at the time it was released, although not particularly valuable as readings of the poem. Malcolm Cowley's piece was especially interesting: "we were excited by the adventure of living in the present... we were entering a new world of art that did not impress us as being a spiritual desert," and so his generation rejected The Waste Land. Too bad they were wrong, eh Mal? Turns out post-war was pretty shitty.
Criticism: two halves. First, essays grouped under 'The New Criticism.' Those which are appreciative generally take an optimistic view of the poem as solving some problem, or making possible salvation. The more recent criticism is predictably eye-rolling. Moody's 'A Cure for a Crisis...' is good; Bush gives us some sub-Freudian dubieties (Tiresias is in the Oedipus myth! Therefore...!!!) Ellmann gives us scads of those same dubieties mingled with the conflations of which recent criticism can't rid itself: "emasculation corresponds to other injuries, particularly to the mutilation of the voice: as if the phallus were complicit with the Logos. Lacking both, language has become a 'waste of breath', a barren dissemination." Of course it has. Because, y'know, daddy = the signified = the phallus = Jesus = the abject = self-consumign artifacts = Eliot. And Armstrong gives us such gems as "sieving is a process applied to sewage" rather than, say, the making of flour or panning for gold. Apparently the most important bits of The Waste Land are the bits Pound and Eliot cut out of the drafts, and Pound welled "phallicly and creatively" for John Quinn, which would probably have been news to Quinn, who just thought he was being asked for money (again) rather than a blow job.
The editors have done a good job, there's no doubt about it. They couldn't have shown better the fatuity of contemporary criticism if they'd tried. If the study of literature persists into this century, I hope we move past what is clearly the anal phase of scholarly culture. Leave the poop alone, people.
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LibraryThing member judithrs
The Waste Land. T.S. Eliot. A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Michael North. 2001. We read this poem along with “Lepanto” for our book club, Dipso. I was more impatient reading it this time as some of my blind adoration of modern poetry has faded as I aged. It is just a difficult to read now
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as it was in the 60s and 70s, I do prefer Eliot’s other works. If you want to stumble through it again, this edition has great essays and tons of notes. Does it have memorable lines? Is it a just and apt description of our present civilization? Will I re-read it agin? Yes, Yes, and no, probably not. Show Less