Imperialism in The Waste Land

Imperialism has an overbearing ring and an even harsher connotation in our day and age.  We treasure diversity, and even more importantly, we take very seriously our responsibility to speak for the abuses, the oppressions, and the offenses of our ancestors.  Where imperialism was once seen as a divine appointment, a sovereign duty for an advanced, powerful nation to spread its civilization, its culture, and its laws, today it has become a byword and an insult.  An imperialist is labeled intolerant, bigoted, arrogant.  And why shouldn't he be?  He advocates his own beliefs, invades the spaces of others in order to impose his own systems.  Imperialism, in this sense, for the most part deserves its reputation.

As far as locations are concerned, ''The Waste Land'' starts off, oddly enough, in an idyllic landscape not of England but of Germany, which is of course instantly noteworthy given Germany's role in producing the barren landscape that superimposes the childhood memories of Lake Starnberg and the Munich Hofgarten.  One might say that Eliot starts at the initial wound, bleeding out from that point until he spans the ravaged nations in every direction.  Over the next few sections we spread out across Europe, lingering often among the streets and sights of England but also touching on locations as far south as northern Africa and as far east as the Middle East, spanning the breadth of the British empire in the Old World minus the Far East.  Mylae is drawn into the picture, the site where Sicily fell to Rome and bloody seeds were planted which cannot have grown, if they are still in danger of being dug up—"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, / Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!"  The barrenness reaches much further back than the recent World War I, as far back as the roots of classical civilization.  Temporally, as well as spacially, Eliot is merciless in his examination of the great nations of the world, both the ancient civilizations that have long since fallen—mirrored in the plight of women such as Cleopatra and Philomel—as well as the European powers with their Unreal cities.   

The second half of "A Game of Chess," namely, "My nerves are bad tonight," stands out in that it does not contain any notable geographical tagging.  While the tone is very English, suggesting a specifically English setting, it nevertheless affords a sort of openness and universality, intimating that this sort of scene is not unique to the British Isles, that it infects the whole of the familiar  world.  The dusty sexual encounter in "The Fire Sermon" is much the same—clearly English, yet clearly universal.  By this correlation between England and Europe as a whole, even the lingering attention to Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, with its echoes of the Jack the Ripper murders and sensationalism long since dead and buried, is superimposed over the rest of the European wasteland.   

"The Fire Sermon" lingers bitterly in the sterile ruins of beloved England, mourning not only nature in the form of nymphs, but the detritus of city life as well, emphasizing the fact that this is not just a judgment of the city versus the country, but of the deadness of both.  London produces rats that wander its barren streets.  Yet despite all this, there is no doubt about Eliot's fondness for the city, especially in the lines "O City city, I can sometimes hear / Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant whining of a mandolin / And a clatter and a chatter from within…"  This is key—while there is a definite anxiety about this wasteland, there is also a loyalty, an affection, and a putting down of roots.  Eliot is searching for a cure, but what would be the use of this without an understanding of what he was looking to cure?  In this way, he prepares a foundation for whatever knowledge he hopes to gain for his dried-out nation.

As the section starts off, Biblical references are present, but they are less recognizable as western Christianity than as the early, pre-Catholic church.  The cathedrals, the papacy, the familiar institutions of the ordered, liturgical church have yet to be seen at this point in time.  While not Jewish, the depictions here are distinctly Middle Eastern in flavour.  Instead of stained glass and sacraments, we see raw spirituality in "the torchlight red on sweaty faces," the "thunder of spring over distant mountains," the "living now dying" clearly reminiscent of the resurrection of Christ.  The poem looks to Christianity with an almost feverish passion, but finds it dry rock, still evocative and full of passion but nevertheless sucked to a husk in the end.  Jerusalem, then, is condemned along with the classics—"Jerusalem Athens Alexandria / Vienna London / Unreal."  The world is still cracked and dry, crying out for water.   

Interestingly enough, when Eliot looks further east, drawing India into the picture, he depicts the Ganges in drought.  The same waiting game hangs in the air here which also torments the rest of the world.  Here, the promise of rain is on the horizon, lingering above the mountains, as though expecting something.  Here, ethnic words begin to be incorporated into texts drawn Shakespeare and Dante, not as something rough, uncouth, foreign, or dangerous, but as in a repetitive manner comparable to a singsong or a lullaby.  Datta, give, Dayadhvam, be compassionate, Damyata, control yourselves.