‘Each in his Prison’: The Waste Land

Abstract

The Waste Land is Eliot’s Hamlet. It is endlessly puzzling and endlessly fascinating; and by Eliot’s own criterion it lacks an objective correlative. It is filled with a sense of horror and loathing which seems, on the face of it, out of proportion to the situation presented. Especially if that situation is primarily a myth of regeneration. Because it refuses to remain boxed in to any formula, even the formula seemingly presented by Eliot’s own notes, it is still a subject of intense interest and controversy, and this is not confined to the facsimile edition but applies to the poem as originally published. Whether or not The Waste Land contains any individual or cultural rebirth, the poem itself never ceases to be resurrected. Commenting on this, A. D. Moody suggests a shift in our view of the poem:

Proof of its vitality is its outliving the established ways of reading it. While the poem compels, the received criticism ceases to convince. That it is a poem about a crisis or breakdown of European Culture, and that it seriously invokes primitive fertility myths—such accounts, for so long found persuasive, now seem out of touch with the actual experience.¹