User:Michelle Scheuter
From The Waste Land Wiki
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The next stanza of the poem is strictly about London and the people of London. The poem describes the after effects of the war and what reaction the people are expressing. “Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many”. This line is both an observation on Marie’s part, but also a reference to Dante’s “Inferno”. “Si lunga tratta, di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta”. This line translates to: so long a train of people, that I should never have believed death had undone so many. Marie is observing the people of London and cannot fathom what the war has done to them. The next line was also taken from Dante’s “Inferno”. “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled”, is from iv 25-27: “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri, che l’aura eterna facevan tremare”. This line translates to here there is no lamentations that could be heard except of sighs which caused the eternal air to tremble. This indicates the sighs and mourning of the people, those who have no hope and have nowhere to look for it. This section of the poem continues to repeat the same message; death, sadness, loss, fear and it is all related to the war and what the war has done to the people. As the stanza continues it adds another reference associated with death and rebirth. “To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine”, this line is repeated in the Bible; Luke 23:44, “And it was the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour”. This line is just before Jesus’s last words during his crucifixion. Jesus died, but was reborn and London is in a state of death, but eventually will be reborn as well. | The next stanza of the poem is strictly about London and the people of London. The poem describes the after effects of the war and what reaction the people are expressing. “Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many”. This line is both an observation on Marie’s part, but also a reference to Dante’s “Inferno”. “Si lunga tratta, di gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta”. This line translates to: so long a train of people, that I should never have believed death had undone so many. Marie is observing the people of London and cannot fathom what the war has done to them. The next line was also taken from Dante’s “Inferno”. “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled”, is from iv 25-27: “Quivi, secondo che per ascoltare, non avea pianto, ma’ che di sospiri, che l’aura eterna facevan tremare”. This line translates to here there is no lamentations that could be heard except of sighs which caused the eternal air to tremble. This indicates the sighs and mourning of the people, those who have no hope and have nowhere to look for it. This section of the poem continues to repeat the same message; death, sadness, loss, fear and it is all related to the war and what the war has done to the people. As the stanza continues it adds another reference associated with death and rebirth. “To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine”, this line is repeated in the Bible; Luke 23:44, “And it was the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour”. This line is just before Jesus’s last words during his crucifixion. Jesus died, but was reborn and London is in a state of death, but eventually will be reborn as well. | ||
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| + | The last lines of the poem are a conversation between Marie and a person spotted on the street. “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?” This conversation discusses a past and an attempt to move on into the future. The buried corpse could be a friend and the garden a memoir and a way to move on. Did the person in question move on or did things get in the way that prevented closure? “O keep the dog far hence, that’s friend to men, or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!” Keep those memories at bay or the terror of the past will be reopened. “You! Hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, - mon frère!” You, hypocrite reader, my fellow, my brother; this line is also the last line in “To the Reader” from Charles Baudelair’s “Fleurs du mal” or flowers of evil. This last line can have several different meanings. One of those is the fellow and brother is the people themselves. They mourn and live in self-pity of what the war as brought and done to the community yet they do not do anything to change the situation. They do not pick themselves back up from this chaos and destruction and bring new life to the world around them. They continue to live in the past and hold fear for the future. Another meaning could be directed to the reader of the past. The reader sees what is going on around them and does nothing to change it. | ||
| + | By comparing these two mapped versions for “The Burial of the Dead” there are many similarities. Some of those are more obvious than others. The main ideas through this section of the poem are memory, death and life. This section is about the war, what happened before it and what has come because of it. T.S. Eliot has pulled from different references that all say the same thing that he is saying in his poem. Where there was once death there will be life again. | ||
