Preliminaries to The Waste Land

Abstract

About the time that ‘Sweeney Erect’ made its first appearance, in the summer of 1919, Eliot completed ‘Gerontion’, an interior monologue like ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ but in far more concentrated dramatic verse, without rhyme. With special reference to the Treaty of Versailles which brought the First World War to its official conclusion, the poem turns analytically to the persistence of human fallibility in history, and the failure of man to learn from history until it is too late (aspects of both being strikingly illustrated in The History of Henry Adams, which Eliot had just reviewed). War and heroism produce crime and political follies; history deceives; what can be done to be saved? Until dissuaded by Ezra Pound, Eliot had intended the poem as an introduction to The Waste Land.