Let's talk about these lines and how best to interpret them as they reflect the larger (much larger) poem:
"The Wasteland"
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing Memory and desire,
stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
"The Wasteland"
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing Memory and desire,
stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding | Eliot begins his poem by claiming that April, a month usually associated with the beginning of Spring and new life, is the cruellest of months. Specifically, it "breeds." The question is, why is this cruel? Well, consider that the nature of Spring is to reawaken the world. Eliot's diction is specific to resurrection which is important--his imagery often alludes to the religious (specifically Christian) concepts the Western world would be familiar with. "Dead land" creates an image of a barren, you guessed it, waste land. We're picturing deserts or brown earth. The contrast of the Lilacs, purple and fresh, seems bizzarre in such a landscape. Perhaps it even seems impossible. Eliot goes on further to say that this is "mixing Memory and desire" which stirs "Dull roots with spring rain." Ideally, this would seem like the thing to do--except that all of Eliot's words point to the near impossibility of such actions. They also give the reader the sense that the land, for better or worse, was still. This newness and rebirth actually disturbs things quite a bit. So what's wrong with Memory and desire resurfacing? It's not so much what is wrong, is it? Indeed, Eliot says that winter acted as a kind of protection against such actions, allowing stillness and forgetfullness. The seemingly paradox of cold snow keeping the speaker warm suggests something like hypothermia. At some point in the process of freezing/dying, people suffering from hypothermia begin to feel warm. They are comforted into sleeping by that warmth, and, ultimately, into dying. So the gradual nudging back to life of the spring is, indeed, painful for the speaker. In remembering good things and, possibly, hope, the speaker is now suffering more than if he were to slowly and quietly be silence. |
Ultimately, this is a very small piece of a much larger dialogue that Eliot is engaging with about the changes in the world. Where once there may have been growth in the world, Eliot (and many of the Modernists) see death. The continual nature of existence, then, like the cyclical regrowth of things in the spring, is painful. At least for the speaker.
Knowing what you know, now, what might you interpret these lines to mean (keep in mind that much of this is in a foreign language)?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih 433
433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “The Peace which passeth understanding” is a feeble translation of the content of this word.
Knowing what you know, now, what might you interpret these lines to mean (keep in mind that much of this is in a foreign language)?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih 433
433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. “The Peace which passeth understanding” is a feeble translation of the content of this word.