The Vanity of Human Wishes

Abstract

Reading is always the issue in confronting T.S. Eliot’s difficult poetry, The Waste Land being a prime example. The matter may resolve itself into a question of the movement of the poet’s imagination. In this regard, assisted by both statements in his essays and the example of his poetic practice, we may not locate a road map to his intentions, but likely to help is a focus attentive to verbal details, engaging in active comparison of words, images, and passages, and leading to prolonged “meditation.” Shown here to be a satire, Eliot’s most famous and probably most influential poem itself connects with several of his essays written around the same time in seeking to “associate” the separated, to “amalgamate disparate experience,” and to make such connections as the wastelanders are unable to or will not make.