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The themes of “cultural and spiritual crisis" "fragmentation" by T.S Eliot
Modernism is a critical topic that has not only engulfed the contemporary literary discussion, but has attracted interest in the field of poetry. It therefore explains the critical relationship among modernism, culture and spiritual desires of the society. One of such attraction has not spared the contribution by Eliot. The poem by Eliot is characterized by a lot of themes that define and demonstrate elements of modernism. The nature of the art that was produced immediately following the First World War portrayed a lot of emotional aspect of crisis, a sense of hopeless, anger, fragmented society and chaos. From these facets of the period, Eliot chose to use it as a tool of constructing art working reflecting on modernism. One of the critical elements depicted in the poems by Eliot is cultural and spiritual crisis. Throughout the poems, we are in a position to embrace the fact that there is a close nature between culture and spirituality.
The subtitle in the poem refers to the Anglican burial service, “I- The Burial of the Dead”. This is an additional factor of gloomy atmosphere in the poem which is associated with grief.
Similarly, Eliot starts his poetry work by christening the month of April as “the cruelest month” (1). This is because the month creates an atmosphere that is composed of both the living and the dead. This is seen when Lilacs are compelled to rise out of the dead.
Harwood explores the intersubjectivity between the individual and the Other throughout ‘At Mornington’ through the use of inclusive pronouns, such as “we”. The line from stanza two, “by your parents’ grave in silence” expresses the potency of the individual’s empathy. The silence represents the acknowledgement of the Other, through nonverbally inhabiting the same space. This representation of the comfort of another being, conveys the extent of the acknowledgement, and contends the notions of existential nihilism through the implicit values of “dasein”. The last stanza of the poem contains the line “the peace of this day will shine”, this line reflects on the consequences of death. “We have one day, only one” the epanaleptic repetition of “one” emphasises the finite nature of our life and suggests an assertive tone to the statement. The motif of the day represents the lifetime of the individual; the metaphor of the day represents the cyclic nature of life and alludes to the biblical notion of death and resurrection. The cyclical representation of life and death symbolises the transition from loss to consolation, through the acknowledgement of the other, and through the developed acceptance of the individual’s
By looking through a critical lens at T Stearns Eliot’s poetry in light of his 20th century, modernist context, much is revealed about his personal and the rapidly evolving societal beliefs of that era. Through his repeating motif of time and fragmentation throughout his poems, Eliot reveals the prevalent feelings of isolation while in society along with the need to hide one’s feelings and emotions in this degrading society. His exploration of the use of ambiguity and stream of consciousness by Eliot, which is a characteristic of modernist artists, allows his work to resound over decades while being interpreted and differently understood by every audience that encounters them.
Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.
To begin, the speaker of the poem “Thou famished grave” presents a resentful and aggressive attitude towards death. The poem, addressed to a “ famished grave” (1), personifies a grave as a starving beast that can “roar” (2), “gnaw” (3), and has “dismal jaws” (7). This represents death in a negative way because the description of the beast make it seem unpleasant and to be feared. Furthermore, the poem includes words and phrases when addressing the grave that follow the theme of starvation, such as, “famished grave” (1), “Gnaw thine own sides, fast on” (3), and “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey” which emphasizes that the beast of death is starving to take someone’s life. This animal-like aggressiveness adds to the already negative image of the beast. This imagery also shows how the speakers thinks of death since it comes from her words which shows that she sees death in a very negative way. Due to this, the speaker is angry and does not want to give death what it wants, which is to take someone’s life. Additionally, although death is something normally feared, the speaker shows that she is not fearful by saying “I have no fear / of thy dark project” (3-4) when speaking to the grave. She expresses that she does not want to die and her “heart is set / On living” (4-5), which explains her resentfulness towards death. She also understands that death is inevitable as she says, “I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey / And thou shalt have me; but I dare defend / That I can stave thee off” (6-8). This shows that even though she knows that she will one day die, she still doesn’t want to give death what it wants and will fight as long as she can
Funeral Rites’ tri-partite structure is reminiscent of the structure of North. North is separated into three sections, with each representing Heaney’s altering attitudes towards death. The first section contains two poems in dedication - clearly personal to Heaney. By introducing North with two personal poems, Heaney situates the reader in a ‘world of warmth, solidarity and almost
The end of The Hollow Men can only be the beginning of a deep and long reflection for thoughtful readers. T.S. Eliot, who always believed that in his end is his beginning, died and left his verse full of hidden messages to be understood, and codes to be deciphered. It is this complexity, which is at the heart of modernism as a literary movement, that makes of Eliot’s poetry very typically modernist. As Ezra Pound once famously stated, Eliot truly did “modernize himself”. Although his poetry was subject to important transformations over the course of his
T.S. Eliot in the twentieth-century wrote what is today widely-regarded as one of the most important text of modernist poems, “The Waste Land.” This poem evaluates many aspects of ancient and contemporary culture and customs, and how the contemporary culture has degraded into a wasteland. In “The Waste Land,” Eliot conjures, through allusions to multiple religions and works of literature in five separate sections, a fragmented and seemingly disjointed poem. Eliot repeatedly alludes to western and eastern cultural foundation blocks to illustrate the cultural degradation prevalent in the modern era of England. One specific eastern example is brought up in the third section of the poem, which T.S. Eliot names “Fire Sermon,” an allusion to
In part one 'The Burial of the dead', Eliot opens with a scene of isolation and desolation. 'April is the cruellest month…'which is an inversion of what spring represents, this being new life and hope. It is seen here as cruel because, for Marie, it stirs memories, which are no longer there and have led nowhere. He follows this image of isolation with an image of togetherness, 'Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow…' She recalls being free in the mountains, but freedom involves taking risks and she hesitates and goes 'south in the winter'. Marie's memories portray the shallowness of the aristocracy and in many ways we are reminded of the ladies in Prufrock who 'come and go talking of Michael Angelo'. There talking leads nowhere and so by implication their lives are meaningless and dead, as dead as the wasteland.
In this discussion of Eliot’s poem I will examine the content through the optic of eco-poetics. Eco- poetics is a literary theory which favours the rhizomatic over the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will provide the overarching structure for this essay. Firstly rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of significant motifs in ‘The Waste Land.’ Secondly they grow and spread, via experimentation within a context. This will be reflected in the study of the voice and the language with which the poem opens. Thirdly rhizomes grow and spread regardless of breakage. This will allow for an
Starting off his poem with an excerpt from “Urn Burial” by Sir Thomas Browne (a treatise on the funeral rites of ancient nations), Walcott immediately conveys to the reader a sense of death, misery and destruction. The extinguishing of the light in the excerpt acts as a visual metaphor to death. Just like an urn holds the remains of a person, what is left of the “Great House” holds the ruins and atrocities of British colonialism.
Death is the subject of this poem, and becomes clear when Auden says, “Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come, ”. This poem’s topic has to do with someone close to the narrator dyeing possibly a lover. Auden uses a great deal of imagery in this poem; such as, “Tie crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, ” where he is talking about making the doves suitable for a funeral. The tone of this poem, the attitude the writer speaks in, is very depressing and gloomy. “For nothing now can ever come to any good, ”. He is obviously upset about the one that he has lost and is in mourning. The diction of this poem is Modern English with many allusions. “He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; ” this quote shows how close the narrator was to his lover, and how the narrator was deeply in love with him. “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; ”. At the end of this poem, Audin personifies the sun, moon, ocean, and woods; he does not see any point in there beauty
Eliot’s use of symbolism can be very disorienting. It has been proposed that this choppy medley is actually furthering his point by representing the “ruins” of a culture. An article
Elliot, another characteristic of this poetry is the “Unified Sensibility”. It implies the interrelationship or a combination of human thoughts and feelings. It delineates itself to some poetry works in which the beauty of poetry only lies in the reason and judgment of the writer rather than the person's feelings. That in the age of Pope, poets creates their work purely with the use of their intellect and not with their emotions and feelings. With this the “Unification of Sensibility” became the imperative feature of metaphysical poetry. And since the metaphysical poets did not disassociated feelings and reason from one another, it indicated a more “spiritual and physical”, “ethereal and earthly” “abstract and concrete” ideas and
Modernism refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities evident in the art and literature of the early 20th century, approximately between 1890 and 1860. Modernism marks a distinctive breakthrough from Victorian morality. Modernism stemmed from depression that had resulted from the tragic outcomes of World War 1. Moreover, modernists made language central to artistic exploration and focused on the individual and his alienation and confusion. Stream of consciousness is a postmodernist device that is the written equivalent of the character’s thought process. It is characterized by leaps in thought or the lack of some or all punctuation (“Modernism and English Literature”, 0:50:2:50-4:31:5:31). On the other hand, there is no fixed definition for Postmodernism, but it is considered a critique of modernism. Postmodernism argues that there is no absolute truth and that the basic structures on which we have built our whole society are just social constructs. Furthermore, intertextuality is a postmodernist device that draws upon the concept, rhetoric, or ideology, from other writings to be merged into the text. In the opinion of Kristeva, intertextual elements significantly contribute to construct the meaning (UnboringLearning, 2012). Altogether, Modernist and Postmodernist technique allow us deeper understanding of Prufrock in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
This epigraph may serve as a way to connect with a certain group of scholars, as not many people speak the language it is written in, however, when it is read in its original context it may mean that Eliot does not foresee a very bright future, which would be in tune with the rest of the poem, furthermore this reference strongly hints at the use of tarot cards and the notion of randomness in the rest of the poem. The fact that this epigraph is in a foreign language greatly contributes to the theme of the poem and is therefore discussed in the next section of this paper. Followed by the epigraph is a quotation from the Anglican burial service, which serves as the subtitle of the first part of the poem: “1. The Burial of the Dead”. This leads us to additional intertextuality,