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0.0 Preface: A Beautiful Reader
THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT wrote The Waste Land, whatever else we might say of the writer or however far we read into the lines of the poem. Much can, and will, be said here about Eliot at the time he wrote this: his age, his residence, his marital status, his friendships, his accomplishments, his beliefs, his struggles and the influences of the world around him, but we will try to go only where the lines lead us, with less said about where Eliot went after the poem was written, beyond a few of his own words (0.4) and the implication of his ongoing quest towards the final “peace” he strove for (434).
The WORKING TITLE for The Waste Land offers a good starting point to studying the poem as it is written. According to early manuscripts (0.4), Eliot first called several sections of his work “He Do The Police In Different Voices,” a phrase borrowed from Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend 16 (1865):
“‘Yes sure!’ said she, when the business was opened, ‘Mrs Milvey had the kindness to write to me, ma’am, and I got Sloppy to read it. It was a pretty letter. ...I aint, you must know,” said Betty, “much of a hand at reading writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn’t think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”
VOICES appear throughout The Waste Land. The word itself is used three times explicitly (101, 202, 385), and even more in the poem’s allusions and the discussions they spur (0.1, 0.6, 27, 41, 44, 99, 111, 128, 202, 209, 253, 307, 311.5, 321.5, 356, 364, 385, 388, 389, 400, 419). The voices themselves are diverse and wide ranging, although some are heard more prominently than others (130).
Resources: Eliot’s Main Library
0.1. DANTE ALIGHIERI is particularly resonant, generally (130) and through each of the three books of The Divine Comedy (ca. 1321; tr. Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, 1867): Inferno (0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 12, 34, 49, 61, 63, 64, 68, 126, 131, 246, 321.5, 343, 412, 430); Purgatorio (0.6, 182, 221, 293, 428, 429); and Paradiso (41).
VIRGIL who guided Dante through his own poetry (0.4), is also Eliot’s guide through Aeneid (19 BCE, tr. John Dryden 1697) ( 0.4, 8, 12, 26, 34, 70, 80, 92, 231, 276, 293, 307 and 388).
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE is heard through Hamlet (1605) Hamlet (1605) (notes 0.4, 0.6, 4, 8, 42, 74, 76.5, 92, 112, 123, 126, 128, 130, 131, 172, 172.5, 214, 231, 266, 380, 393, 417, 432, 433); The Tempest (1611) (7, 12, 15, 26, 39, 48, 76.5, 111, 125, 138, 167, 172.5, 182, 185, 186, 191, 257, 266, 276, 291, 312, 321.5, 393); Anthony & Cleopatra (1623) (8, 34, 42, 77, 80, 111, 198, 227, 280, 293); Cymbeline (1623) (8, 77, 80, 197); MacBeth (1623) (141, 308, 318, 321.5); and Coriolanus (1608) (417).)
THE BIBLE speaks to us broadly (130) and specifically through the books of Genesis (374), Job (22, 321.5), Psalms (182, 311), Ecclesiastes (13, 23, 141), Isaiah (0.3, 25, 145, 182, 266, 276, 425), Jeremiah (27, 247, 385), Ezekiel (20, 22, 186), Daniel (360), Matthew (182, 308, 311, 311.5, 322, 324, 393), Luke (68, 322, 366, 380), John (0.7, 182, 201, 219, 298, 306, 321.5, 322), Romans (307, 318), 1 Corinthians (71), Philippians (434) and Revelation (209, 247, 250, 321.5). With one notable exception from Isaiah (0.3, and see 145), all passages use the King James Version (1611) translation.
OVID, Metamorphoses (8 CE; tr. John Dryden, Samuel Garth, Alexander Pope et al, 1717) is the source of the epigraph (0.5) and of the background stories of the Sibyl (0.5, 55, 63, 76.5, 111, 253) the Lethe River (4, 214, 266), the rape of Philomela (8, 99, 198, 202, 209, 242, 253, 280, 429), the Hyacinth prince (36, 39, 42, 71, 74, 76.5, 111, 125, 138, 176, 214, 227, 311, 311.5, 323, 378, 429), Actaeon and Diana (8, 10, 77, 197, 198, 247, 276), Tiresias (218, 244, 246, 248) and the Phoenix (312). See also Tristia (276).
JOSEPH CONRAD appears a number of times, primarily through Heart of Darkness (1902) (0.5, 41, 76.5, 123, 266, 272, 298) but also by one reference to An Outcast of the Islands (1896) (395).
WALT WHITMAN is heard here through two of his poems in Leaves of Grass (1855): Memories of President Lincoln (2, 8, 61, 186, 202, 214, 291, 322, 356, 380, 384 and 403) and These, I, Singing In Spring (214).
RICHARD WAGNER speaks to us through three of his operas: Tristan und Isolde (1859, tr. Richard le Gallienne 1909) (0.3, 34, 42, 92 and 137); Götterdammerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1876, tr. Frederick Jameson, ca. 1916) (76.5, 266); and Parsifal (1882, tr. Henry Edward Krehbiel, 1920) (201). See also the Wagnerian murals on King Ludwig’s walls (8).
JAMES JOYCE, one of Eliot’s contemporaries, is noted generally (308, 376) and more directly from Dubliners, The Dead (1914) (170). He is also heard, or would seem to be by another reflection of the working title (0.0), through Ulysses, Circe 555 (1922):
“VOICES
Police!
DISTANT VOICES
Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!”
OTHER VOICES will be heard and identified throughout these annotations and are more fully listed in an index at the back of the book. We begin, however, as we should, with Eliot’s own voice, introducing two more key sources in his opening note.
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