The Waste Land (1922)

[Corpsey]

For hewers and axemen like myself, looking at Pound's manuscript with editorial suggestions is endlessly fascinating.

It's fascinating both what Pound successfully changed, and what changes Eliot resisted.

Gardner writes that it seems Eliot originally wanted to do what Joyce had done in Ulysses (in the Oxen of the Sun episode particularly) and parody various forms of poetry. But Pound basically was of the opinion that Eliot stank as a parodist. There was a parody of The Rape of Locke and Pound said there's no point doing what Pope has done better already. (But I believe this remains partly intact in the clerk/typist scene.)

It seems one of the main things Pound did was to hack away at the verse wherever it was too regular.

 

[luka]

For hewers and axemen like myself, looking at Pound's manuscript with editorial suggestions is endlessly fascinating.

Craner always shuns these literature threads. I asked him why once and he goes to me

"I've got a masters in English literature. What could I possibly have to discuss with you people.?"

 

[woops]

Does anyone prefer anything else of his to The Waste Land?

i'll say 4 quartets just to be different. it's got better lines & is heavier

 

[luka]

I had no customers at work today so I wrote some notes on the wasteland instead but I can't be fucked typing them out/making sense of them.

 

[craner]

Craner always shuns these literature threads. I asked him why once and he goes to me

"I've got a masters in English literature. What could I possibly have to discuss with you people.?"

This is fiction.

 

[luka]

It was a judo move to try and get him more involved.

 

[Simon silverdollarcircle]

How do people react to the ending of the wasteland? The shantih, shantih bit?

It always makes me feel somehow cleansed. The world again resplendent.

I guess what I'm asking is - does it have a sad ending or a happy ending for you?

 

[Simon silverdollarcircle]

At the most basic level

 

[catalog]

Happy for me, cos Shanti happens to be the name of my father. And the triple saying of it, thats a good prayer likesay

 

[Corpsey]

DMT dealer at Burning Man:

Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

 

[luka]

'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae.'

This idea of multiple, stacked identities is in Ulysses too, sort of. It's also in the anamnesis of Phillip K Dick, when he sees the ichthys round the woman's neck.

 

[catalog]

I tell you one thing I did like about it was how he used the phrase "brown fog" twice bad didn't tart it up to black or golden or anything. Brown is the right choice of word.

 

[catalog]

'and' not 'bad' frigging autocorrect

 

[luka]

I tell you one thing I did like about it was how he used the phrase "brown fog" twice bad didn't tart it up to black or golden or anything. Brown is the right choice of word.

London is often brown. Do any of the London lads remember Thursday? That was an Unreal City day. Stratus opacus. Brown sky. Sun locked out. Nothing solid.

 

[luka]

An idea I picked up from another modernist epic, the anathemata, is that ritual collapses time and identity in this way too.

That every celebrant of the ritual is the same person.

This later became the idea that there is only one Writer and only one Reader.

 

[catalog]

Brown is the colour of the ground. There is no such thing as brown light. It is physical material only. It is what you get (instead of white) when you mix all the other colours together. It is also the colour of all people ie whitest white person is brown, blackest black person is brown.

 

[luka]

Friday sorry, not Thursday

 

[catalog]

Regarding Tarot in poetry, T.S Eliot's The Wasteland is probably the most famous.

did not know this

 

[william kent]

axemen like myself,

I didn't know Craner played guitar.

 

[borzoi]

i'm reading the cantos really slowly and just noticed

Palace in smoky light,
Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary stones,

and

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience