The Three Voices of Poetry in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

The Three Voices of Poetry in The Waste Land

The Three Voices of Poetry

in T. S. Eliot's The I7Vaste Land

Sachiko Hashiuchi

In his critical essaY trThe Three Voices of Poetry" (1953), T. S. Eliot proposes to us a very significant aspect of his creative and critical view as to what sort of poetry should be used in verse drama. Of the three voices of poetry, he says:

The first voice is the voice of the poet talking to himself-or to

body, The second is the voice of the poet addressing an audience, whether large or small. The third is the voice of the poet when he attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse; when he is saying, not what he would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character. i

The poetic sensibility of Eliot can explain clearly about the first voice of poetry Cdirectly expressing the poet's own thoughts and sentiments.' As to the second voice, it is oftqn heard in the dramatic monologue, and all poetry that is not of the theatre and tpreaches or points a moral, or satire which is a form of preaching.' Additionally, Eliot could hear the third, dramatic voice for the first time when he had to create "the characters in conflict, misunderstanding, or attempt to understand each other.' The purpose of this essay is to classify the lines of The Waste Land(1922) into these three voices and to examine their relationship with the other elements, especially with the themes.

The seeking process of spiritual rebirth in the modern waste land in this poem

reveals itself in a thematic chaos full of mythological, religioqs, and literary allusion and association, together with contrast and juxtaposition of the present with the past. AIthough many kinds of criticism about the themes of Tlae Waste Land have been done, the classification made by Gordon Kay Grigsby seems to be the most convincing. He

presents the three important themes :

A. Sterility (t{dead land, disintegrating city, death in life") B. Sexual Love (ttlust, impo'tence, indifference") C. Rebirth (ttfertility gods, grail quest, religious voices"). ,

Each section of this poem is coloured with one of these themes, and its sequence is

as follows: •

1. ttThe Burial of the Dead" -••••••••-•• A

2. ttA Game of Chess" "'••••'"'' B

3. "The Fire Sermon" •••••-•••••• Bi

4. "Death by Water" ••+•----C

5. ttWhat the Thunder said" ••••••••-•-• Ci-A 3

It is, however, worth noting that these themes are. shown with repetition and

com-plexity of certain dominant images (e. g. , water, fire, rock) which have various mean-ings and connotations in each section.

I. (tThe Burial of the Dead"

The first voice of the poet appears in four parts in this section (11. 1-7, 11. 19-30, 11. 43-46, 11. 60-69). The sterility theme is told with his descriptive•and narrative voice from the beginning. "April is the cruellest month' in this waste land. It breeds (/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing /Memory and derire, stirring /Dull roots with spring rain,' whereas (/Winter kept us warm, covering /Earth in forgetful snow' (11. 1-7). The poet will show tfear in a handful of dust' to the readers who know only C/A heap of broken images' in the dead land Cwhere the sun beats, /And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relieC /And the dry stone no sound of water' (11. 19-30). After introduction of Madame Sosostris (11. 43-46), his eyes are turned both towards tUnreal City' of London t/Under the brown fog of a winter dawn' and towards a crowd of

people like ghosts in Dante's Inferno(11. 60-69).

The second voice of this part consists of the narrative voice of Marie (11. 8-18), a short song of a sailor (11. 31-34), and the ominous voice of Madame Sosostris (11.

46-59). Marie tells us of the little life with her partner in Germany, and the German song by the sailor who is singing about his sweetheart he has left behind him suggests the failure of love in the following lines. Much the more significant part of the second

voices is that of Madame Sosostris. As she reads <your' fortune t/With a wicked pack of cards,' she introduces the main figures who embody the symbols of the three themes in the following sections. The tdrowned Phoenician Sailor' and tthe Hanged Man', the type of the fertility god, symbolize death and rebirth•in ttDeath by Water". tBelladonna', {the Lady of the Rocks', and (the Wheel' 'are associated with the Fates and fortune of a classical legend. The <man with three staves' is the Fisher King in

f!The Fire Sermon" and ttWhat t'he Thunder said". The tone-eyed merchant', one of

the Syrian merchants, transmits the Grail legend.

Additional details, it seems, are needed to define the third voice in The Waste Ltznd, as follows:

1. the part of the third voice is written in spoken language; and

2. a quotation mark is used, or there is some kind of reaction and conflict between the speakers even if the answers have no quotation marks

nor relevant meanings. '

The Three Voices of Poetry in The VVaste Land

response from Stetson who was twith me in the ships at Mylae' (and now a ghost) can not be heard, the curious dramatic tension works through the part (11. 35-42, 11. 70-76). Failure of love and death in life are represented in the response of the speaker. A hyacinth symbolizes the resurrected god of the fertility rites. But after they tcame back, late, from the hyacinth garden,' he `could not /Speak,' his teyes failed,' and he Cwas neither /Living nor dead.' The latter part of the last stanza in this section ex-presses the weird rebirth theme. The "corpse' that Stetson Cplanted Iast year in' his garden, has begun to sprout and it will bloom this year. Moreover these lines(11. 71-75) from the circularity of the themes by suggesting the echo of the beginning lines (breeding /Lilacs out of the dead land).

II. "A Game of Chess"

Throughout the descriptive and conversational narrative in "tA Game of Chess", we can hear the narrative first voice, the strangely strained second voice, and the highly dramatized third voice. The first voice of the poet (11. 77-110) lays out the elegant but artificial atmosphere of the present decay with the several associations of the past and literary motifs. The society lady who is waiting for her lover sits in the chair tlike a burnished throne' of Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and CleoPatra. The word tlaquearia' evokes the scene of the banquet by Dido, Queen of Carthage, for Aeneas who was her lover but deserted her, in Virgil's Aeneid. In addition to the association of failure of love, the image of sexual violence appears in the pictured scene of the change of Philomel, raped by King Tereus of Thrace, into a nightingale in the Greek myth.

The lack of understanding and communication is the characteristic pattern of the third voice in this poem. The extreme netvous excitement of this lady's speech full of questions and imperatives meets only the speaker's quiet but completely irrelevant

answer (11. 111-138).

rMy nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

SpeaJcTllaotrllse'yolliYl}yhindkoiigouofn?.everwshpaetakti.kiSnpge?ak'what?

I never know what you are thinking. Think.' I think we are in rats' alley

Where the dead men lost their bones. tWhat is that noise ?'

The wind under the door.

{What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?' Nothing again nothing.

tDO

You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

tNothing?'

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?',

The horror of nothingness and boredom accelerates the hysterical madness of the lady, because she has to spend time in playing ta game of chess, /Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.'

Again, the themes of sexual love and sterility pervade in the narrative second voice of the Cockney woman who tells Lil's marital history. The Cockney woman makes remarks about Lil's need to make herself ta bit smart,' before her husband will corne back from the war. But Lil's effort on her abortion makes her a symbol of sterility. Moreover the important literary connotation related with the other main

motifs is shown in the last line, t/Good night, ladies, good night, sweet Iadies, good night,

good night.' The mad Ophelia's words remind us of the fact that the absurdity of tthe waste land' caused her madness and her suicide by drowning, tdeath by water.'

III. ttThe Fire Sermon"

The basic tone and atmosphere of this section flows out of the poet's first voice. The desolation and exhaustion of the present industrial civilization is revealed by his word portrait of the dirty things on the surface of the water of the Thames where the Spenserian nymphs can no longer live. tThe river's tent is broken' and the Thames tbears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, /Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, ciga-rette ends, /Or other testimony of summer nights' whose expression suggests the barren sexual love. The macabre images of this paragraph reach their climax with the "rattle of the bones', and mocking sound of tchuckle spread from ear to ear' (11. 173-186).

The voices of the rest part(except 11. 208-214) of t"The Fire Sermon" are the second voices of Tiresias, the three Thames-daughters, and St.Augustine. Tiresias'

narration is roughly divided into three parts: his description of the setting around him and of his meditations; his observation of the barren love affair of a young couple; the conveyance of the music to the three Thames-daughters. The first part of his narration develops the central image of water. Tiresias is tfishing in the dull canal' behind the gashouse on a winter evening, meditating on his father's wreck (death by water) and on white bodies {naked on the low damp ground (a rite of the god's res-urrection).' Mrs. Porter and her daughters wash their feet in soda water, which has a legendary connotation of the lifting of the curse frQm the waste larid in the Grail legend

(II. 187-206).

The Three Voices of Poetry in The VVaste Land

Tiresias' observation of the negative version of a love affair in the City. tAt the violet hour' of the winter evening, the blind Tiresias, {/Old man with wrinkled famale breasts,' can perceive with his prophetic power the scene and result of the affair of a typist with a young man carbuncular. Strong ironic undertone in his voice is directed

to depict the vicious cycle of sensuai passion, namely egotism and indifference. The young man's sensuality and 'vanity requires no response, /And makes a welcome of indifference.' After she is relieved to know it was over, she Csmooths her hair with automatic hand, /And put a record on the gramophone.' The music from it Ccreeps

by' Tiresias, together with the tone of death of fruitful love and of the sterility of modern passions, and mingles with the songs of the three Thames-daughters (11. 215-265). The main image of the water and the River Thames sung in the songs also

sym-bolizes the curse on the waste land by the violation as is told in the Grail Iegend. tThe river sweats /Oil and tar,' and it conveys down towards leeward the fruitless passion and love play of Elizabeth and Leicester, with the lament of the Rhine-maidens. Hor-rible boredom and bleak resignation pervades the second voices of the Thames-daughters. Their apathetic feeling to the sexual violation adds nothingness to the scene: the first

supine; the second unresenting; the third "can connect /Nothing with nothing'(11.

266-306).

The last part of the section (11. 307-311) plays a purgatory part. Eliot uses the words of the two representatives of eastern and western ascetics, Buddha and St. Augustine, as the culmination of this part of the poem. St. Augustine came to Carthage, a past version of the waste land of sexual love, twhere a cauldron of unholy love sang all about mine ears,'s but Lord had plucked him out of the outer scene mixed with beauty and squalor. The repetition of the word tburning' crystalizes the two visions

of fire: the fire of lust, hatred, and infatuation that consumes hurnan mind and heart, in the Fire Sermon by Buddha; the fire in which those who have committed the Deadly Sin of Lechery should be wrapt for the time of purgation, in Dante's jPurgatono.

Iv. ttDeath by Water"

The brief dramatization of Phlebas' death by water is lyrically narrated by the poet's voice. The first movement (11. 312-314) suggests oblivion, one of the general human conditions brought by death. Phlebas forget the beautiful nature such as tthe cry of gulls' and (the deep sea swell.' The water of sea washed the stain of living, tthe profit and loss' of secular passions, away from his brain.

The second movement (11. 315-318) lets us see Eliot's deliberate use of the mytho-logical frame of the ancient vegetation cults. The watery death of Phlebas suggests the myth of the drowned gods who were thought to be worshipped as a symboi of the

fertility of the land. (A current under sea /Picked his bones in whispers,' and his

life-less body entered into the whiripool to be w•ashed ashore. This mythological and legendary meaning is also vibrated in the word tthe wheel', though the last stanza (11.

319-321) changes the tone of all mankind, to prepare for

sectlon.

the former narrative style into the more universal the statement filled with the visions and insights in

appeal to the next

v. t'What the Thunder said"

The whole vision of C{What the Thunder said" is supported by the five dominant

themes if scrutinized. As Eliot indicates in his notes, the first five paragraphs of this part show the narrative interplay of the three themes : thejourney to Emmaus in which Christ appeared to the two disciples on the day of his resurrection; the approach to the Chapel Perilous in the Grail quest; the present decay of Eastern Europe. The

sterility theme exudes throughout the part, but the rebirth theme reaches its climax in

the sixth paragraph where the words of the Thunder, 'Datta, Dayadhvam, DamyataC

resound powerfully. These subjects of vision are told by the poet's first voice and the second vojce of Tiresias.

The very beginning three lines which are sung with trochaic rhythm determines

the serious tone of the narrator's meditative heaviness.

r rt rr

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

rlr t

After the frosty silence in the gardens

rt ft

After the agony in stony places 6

Here (11. 322-330) the death theme meets the sterility theme in the arrest and death of Christ. Christ, t/He who was living is now dead' had to suffer from Cthe frosty silence' in the garden of Gethsemane and (the agony in stony places' full of human cruelty and idiocy,

before his death. And now, men, t/We who were living are now dying,' without hope.

This death in Iife, spiritual death bears its reflection over the surrounded atmosphere

of the cursed waste land with tno water but only rock.' In the "mountains of rock

without water,' tdry sterile thunder' flashes without rain, and red {sullen faces sneer and snarl' from tdoors of mudcracked houses.' This image of the dead land coincides with that of the decay of Eastern Europe: the unreal cities, Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, and Vienna crack, reform, and burst in the air of violet(the colour of mourning in

terms of Christian symbolism) ; towers are falling (11. 331-358, 366-376).

Between these nightmarish visions, the poet applies the story of the two disciples about the resurrection of Christ on their way to Emmaus as a symbolic event of rebirth and salvation of all mankind (11. 359-365). But the salvation Ltheme :remains only shadow and omen. The image of Christ is not discernible, but recognized as tthe third who walks always beside you.' The interwoven motif of the illusion of nothingness in the salvation therne continues untjl the Knight of the Grail legend reaches to the Chapel Perilous (11. 376-394). The Knight is tested by the gtotesque images and inverted vision:

The Three Voices of Poetry in The MP(,zste Land

light; and {upside down in air were towers /Tolling reminiscent bells.' In the last two phrases the curse on the dry waste land begins to be lifted;t/In .a flash of

light-ning. /Then a damp gust /Bringing rain.'

The water imagery and rebirth theme are introduced with the dactylic rhythm at rthe beginning of the next paragraph, the most powerful part of vision (11. 395-422).

While the water imagery moves from the river image of the sacred Indian River Ganges to the vaster image of sea, the three Sanskrit words of the Thunder echo throughout this poetic universe ; Datta(give), Dayadhvam(sympathize), and Damyata(control). These words vibrate into the poet's meditative reaction and response.

Datta: what have we given? 7

He now realizes that his excessive prudence has prevented him from surrendering him-self either to sexual love or religious faith.

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison s

Each man in this world has been a prisoner confined in his own solitary and subjective room of dream where we cannot understand nor communicate with each other.

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands g

As the boat responded to the expert hands with sail and oar, so our heart would have responded gaily, beating obedient t/To controlling hands' of God. However, the slight difference of tense, between past and past subjunctive mood, should be noted. Though the water imagery expands into vaster space of nature, water as a fertility symbol has not been absorbed into tyour heart' yet.

The last stanza of The I?t77aste Land(11. 423-433) displays the overwhelming sym-phony of the several pictures of imagery and various sounds of languages to reach to the thematic integration. The water imagery and the sterility theme are conveyed by the second voice of Tiresias; he Csat upon the shore /Fishing, with the arid plain behind' him. Hope of rebirth occurs in his'mind by setting his lands in order. The fire im-agery of purgation, again, is repeated in the words of Arnaut Daniel in Dante's Purgaton'o. The pathetic voice of desire for rebirth and resurrection is heard through CQzcando fum

uti chelidon,' because we are now ta la toerr abolie.' Tiresias decides to follow the dis-cipline of the Thunder, and the poem ends with the Thunder's words and three repetitive

use of the Sanskrit word, 'Shantih'.

Envoi

The distribution of these three voices of poetry shows the delicate' and powerful movement of this poem and the significant roles of each voices.

numberof

thesecond

linesof . . -

sum

volce volce volce

t{

TheBurialoftheDead"

AGameofChess"

TheFireSermon"

DeathbyWater"

WhattheThundersaid"

sum

;5: 5: 1

As the list shows, both in "rThe Burial of the Dead" and .in ttA Game of Chess", the distribution of the three voices is well balanced. There are many lyrical first voices, the second voices of the several characters, and some dramatic tention by the third voices. On the other hand, in the most part of CtThe Fire Sermon", the second voice of Tiresias and the Fisher King addresses the extraordinary events to the readers, and moreover, the first voice penetrates Eliot's vision of universal salvation in ttWhat the Thunder said".

What does this movement of the voices signify? Though this poem has been con-sidered a profound expression for alienation and meani•nglessness of the modern world after the Great War, it was written after Eliot's personal crises which had exhaustion, depression, and a short period of psychotherapy. His illness was characterized tas a transitory narcissistic regression with partial fragmentation and loss of ego dominance.'io Therefore, to him, this poem twas only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.'ii As a critic, he had already proposed the concept of {historical sense' and (objective correlative' in his critical

essays, The Sacred UZood(1920). These concepts are used as his stratagem of poetry: "historical sense' was needed to gather and arrange many borrowings and citations;the idea of "objective correlative' helped Eliot to conceal his naked feeling based on his personal disastrous life at that time, both in the second voices of some characters, and in the dramatic tension by the third voices. The first voice of poetry, on the other hand, is used to express the poet's world of visions extracted from his personal expe-riences, because tthe first voice is the voice of the poet talking to himself.' To Eliot,

the poem was a form

The Three'Voices of Poetry in The VVaste Land

of exor'cism of a demon. Because a poet,

a burden which he must bring to birth in order to obtain change the figure of speech, he is haunted by a demon, a

which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation

no name, nothing;and the words, the poem he makes, are of exorcism of this demon.

(ttThe Three Voices of Poetry") m

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Notes

T. S, Eliot, On Poeby and Poets(London: Faber & Faber, 1957), p.96.

See Thomas R. Rees, The Techniqzte of T. S, Eliot: A Study of the Orchestrats-on of Meaning in

Eliot's Poetry(Hague : Mouton, 1974), p. 168.

Loc. cit.

T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962(London : Faber & Faber, 1963), p. 67.

B, C. Southam, A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot(London: Faber & Faber,

1968), p. 88.

Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962, p.76.

Jbid., p.79.

Loc. cit. Loc. cit.

Harry Trosman, t{T. S. Eliot and The Vl)raste Land," Arch Gen Psychint7y Vol. 30, 1974, p. 709.

See Valerie Eliot(ed.), T. S. Eliot: The WaTste Land: A Facsimile and Transcn'pt of the Ong' inal DraLtZs Including the Annolations of E2ra Pound(London: Faber & Faber, 1971), p. 1.