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The Review - FEATURE
 

TS Eliot


A medieval Grail-lore image depicting the tale of Percival. It is the first to mention a Holy Grail, per se, as the object of a quest. One of the other unique elements of the Percival story is the origin of the character of the Fisher King. All were source material for The Waste Land


Roger Lloyd Pack
Haunting verse which holds us spellbound

TS Eliot's ground-breaking poem The Waste Land is as relevant today as when it was published just after World War I, says Roger Lloyd Pack

POETRY brings you nearer and nearer to that crystal of light of an untold number of facets reflecting everything. You can feel the heat of it. And of course animals live right there! We have fallen, but not that far! Poetry pulls us back where we belong, brushing out the appearance of the world to leave its essence”.

So writes Jehane West, the remarkable poet adventurer of the Greek isles.
I first came across The Waste Land as an A’Level student more than 40 years ago and, although a lot of it passed over my head at the time, and some of it is still obscure to me even now, it has haunted me for years.
So when poet John Rety asked me to read something to raise funds to help pay the rent imposed by Camden Council on the Torriano Meeting House, a valuable resource for established and potential poets, I thought this might be an opportunity to have a look at it once more.
It is hard to explain precisely the poem’s enduring influence and its effect on a modern reader. It is certainly one of the great pieces of 20th-century literature and continues to exercise a hold over us today, even though a complete understanding of it depends on a knowledge of Dante, ancient mythology, Christian and Hindu religion, English, German and French literature, and various other esoteric references that pop up every now and again.
The bulk of the poem is, of course, accessible in its many different aspects, particularly its images of London. For instance the seedy sexual encounters in drab bedsits:

‘The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired...’

And the use of song and comic, colloquial and almost music-hall passages in which he invokes the voices of Londoners.
But even in its more obscure passages it seems to exercise a kind of visceral influence, so that even if one doesn’t fully understand the precise meaning of the words, the images they convey nevertheless resonate in a way that takes the listener into another realm of being.
For years I have been obsessed with the opening line ‘April is the cruellest month breeding lilacs out of the dead land’, understanding some truth of it, and yet not understanding it either, because April is a month of hope and promise. But after reading Jessie Weston’s ‘From Ritual to Romance’ (source material for much of ‘The Waste Land’) it occurred to me that to people who are depressed, people who are living in a waste land, it would be a cruel month precisely because of the suggestion of fruitfulness to come.
The grey, cold skies of winter are easier to cope with, in that they reflect the people’s mood.
The Waste Land for Eliot, seems to be a land barren of spirituality and love, and this land is represented for him, it would appear, by western Europe.
It is an aspect of the poem that makes it particularly relevant for today, when we are engaged in a global conflict between two great religions.
The other main themes of the poem, connected to this, also seem to have a particular relevance for us today, living in the beginning of the 21st century, when we are threatened with an absence of rainwater, and flooding from the sea.
The Waste Land is shot through with images of water, and the lack of it, water to slake your thirst with and water to drown in:

“Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road.....
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock and also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock...
But there is no water”

Eliot draws on ancient pre-Christian fertility rites to illustrate the poem. The theme of water is tied up with the myth of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail, another subject that seems to be popular at the moment, with The Da Vinci Code, and now a new prize-winning book by author Kate Mosse on the subject.
When the Fisher King, the leader of his country, is maimed and wounded, then the country disintegrates and becomes barren. The Fisher King is unable to procreate, and no children will be born and nothing will grow on the land until he dies and is either reborn or replaced by the questing knight who is searching for the Holy Grail.
You could say that we now live in a world whose leaders are wounded and inept and that the land will not recover until they can be replaced by others who are prepared to act in its defence.

• Roger Lloyd Pack is an actor with numerous stage and screen roles to his name. He is best known for his work in Only Fools and Horses as Trigger. He will read The Waste Land by TS Eliot at the Rustique Literary Cafe, 142 Fortess Road, NW5, on Tuesday April 11 at 7.30pm. Call 020 7692 5590. Tickets £10.

The Waste Land, published in 1922, is a landmark in English literature. It was one of first Modernist works to gain widespread critical acclaim and changed the direction of poetry – although it initially divided critics. It is renowned for its difficulty, obscure sources – which range from ancient religions and myths to music hall – and ‘sampling’ of other texts such as Shakespeare.
Written shortly after World War I it is often interpreted as a comment on the spiritual and cultural emptiness of 20th-century life. Its many fans find it a haunting and elegaic masterpiece.
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