311.5. ACT FOUR: This is the water section, the fourth of five sections of The Waste Land that adopt the themes of the classical elements of earth, air, fire, water and wind (see note 0.5). Eliot foreshadowed the title and theme of this section pages earlier when Madame Sosostris generally warned her patron to “Fear death by water” (line 55). Like the previous sections, this shorter section is full of allusions, but the primary source of the text is now Eliot’s own voice, loosely translated from a poem he first wrote in French. See notes 312-321.
“YOU” THE READER are in this poem. One might argue that the poet could just as easily have been talking to himself (see line 17) or addressing a particular audience (see the Son of Man at lines 20-30 or the “hypocrite lecteur” at 69-76), or setting up a conversation between characters (see the hyacinth girl and her companion at lines 35-42; Madame Sosostris and her patron at lines 43-59; or the nervous companion at lines 113-126) or playing a single character’s part (see Hieronymo at line 432).
But the passage in this fourth part seems to be spoken through a crack in the fourth wall, directed more to the “you” of the moment: you, whether transient audience or fellow pilgrim, Gentile or Jew (line 319), who would seek answers through the figurative reading of the cards and the various surrounding elements. At line 320 it is you who turns the wheel of the seasons, and also you who would turn with the poet towards the wind, that fifth classical element about to be introduced in Part V.
Maybe, Gentile or Jew, it has been you in the poem all along, at every instance.
DECONSTRUCTION comes first, however. Before moving windward, consider at lines 312-321 what the water has done, and compare this to how each of the classical elements is deconstructed in turn, beginning at the end of Part I, when the reader is asked to consider what happens to a body planted in the earth (see lines 69-76); then near the end of Part II, when the poet asks, in response to the “you” of lines 113-126, what “we” can ever do in the empty air (see lines 131-138); and finally at the end of Part III, amidst the consumption of fire, when you are turned through the poet’s prodding (see note 308) to the Sermon on the Mount, addressed very much to “you.” See Matthew* 6:23:
“If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
TRANSLATIONS: For a final take on the identity of “you,” consider the multiple languages used throughout Eliot’s poem and notes, with at least 27 passages that Eliot deliberately left untranslated, including Greek (line 0.3), Italian (lines 0.4 and 428 and notes 64, 293 and 428), German (lines 12, 31-34 and 42 and note 367), French (lines 76 and 202 and note 60), Nymphic (lines 77-278, 290-291 and 306), Birdsong (lines 103, 203-206, 358 and 393), Old Occitan (line 428 and note 428), Latin (line 429 and notes 92 and 218), Old English (line 432) and Sanskrit (433-434; Sanskrit also appears with translation at lines 402, 412 and 419 and note 434). This use of many voices, like the children’s voices singing in the dome (see line 202 ad note 202), may suggest an appeal to a universal audience, with you being all who have ears (see Matthew* 11:14: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”). Yet it is in this Part IV that Eliot departs from this aloofness by translating Dans Le Restaurant, one of his own earlier poems (see note 321) that had previously been published only in French. He is still addressing a universal audience by appealing ecumenically to Gentile or Jew (line 319), but even in doing this he is addressing a singular reader: you, having not only ears but a part in the action (line 320) and striking similarities to the victim (line 321).
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* see note 0.1
