1. Islamic Azad University_Arak
A Study of Imagism in The Waste Land
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Master of Arts in English Literature
By:
Ehsun Mohammadi
Supervisor:
Dr. Saeed Yazdani
Advisor:
Dr. Mostafa Mirzaee
Department of M.A English Literature
Islamic Azad University_Arak
December, 2009
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2. Dedication
There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil through which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed -- and then no more of Thee and Me.
( Omar Khayyam / Translated by Edward FitzGerald )
This thesis is dedicated to my parents
for their love, endless support
and encouragement.
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3. Acknowledgement
It is a pleasure to express my gratitude wholeheartedly to my supervisor Dr. Saeed
Yazdani whose encouragement, guidance and support from the initial to the final
level enabled me to develop this study.
I would also like to acknowledge the enormous debt of gratitude I owe to Dr.
Mostafa Mirzaee for his guidance, perpetual energy, and sound advices in this
study.
I should like to thank Dr. Shahram Afrooghe and Dr. Fatemeh Aziz Mohammadi
for their constant support and encouragement during the writing of this thesis.
I would like to take the opportunity to express my profound gratitude to my
beloved teacher Dr. Maryam Jahanmardi for broadening my horizons when skies
were gray.
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4. Table of Contents
Dedication ................................................................................................................II
Acknowledgements.................................................................................................III
Abstract..................................................................................................................VII
Chapter One: Introduction
1.1. Introduction to Imagism....................................................................................8
1.2. A Short Look on T.S. Eliot‘s Life and Career.................................................11
1.3. Introduction to The Waste Land.......................................................................14
1.4. Statement of the Problem.................................................................................19
1.5. Research Questions...........................................................................................20
1.6. Significance of Study........................................................................................20
1.7. Materials and Methodology..............................................................................22
1.8. The Thesis Structure.........................................................................................22
1.9. Definition of the Key Terms.............................................................................24
Chapter Two: Literature Review
2.1. Imagism, the Definitions from Past to Present
2.1.1. The Origins of Imagism......................................................................26
2.1.2. Imagism as a Movement.....................................................................30
2.2. Theoretical and Methodological Considerations
2.2.1. Indian Thought.................................................................................37
2.2.2. The Metaphysical Poets..................................................................40
2.2.3. Symbolist Poets............................................................................46
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5. 2.2.4. F.H. Bradley..................................................................................48
2.2.5. T.E. Hulme...................................................................................51
2.2.6. Haiku (A Threshold for Objective Correlative).......................................55
2.2.7. Cubism (A New Cognitive Order)......................................................61
Chapter Three: Structure and Strategy in The Waste Land
3.1. Structure of the Poem
3.1.1. The Epigraph and Dedication......................................................67
3.1.2. The Burial of the Dead.................................................................67
3.1.3. A Game of Chess..........................................................................69
3.1.4. The Fire Sermon...........................................................................71
3.1.5. Death by Water.............................................................................74
3.1.6. What the Thunder Said.................................................................75
3.2. Objective Correlative in The Waste Land..................................................79
3.3. Via Negative in The Waste Land...............................................................84
3.4. Impact of Imagism, Haiku, and Cubism in The Waste Land
3.4.1. Impact of Imagism in The Waste Land.........................................85
3.4.2. Impact of Haiku in The Waste Land.............................................88
3.4.3. Impact of Cubism in The Waste Land...........................................89
Chapter Four: Analysis of Some Images in The Waste Land
4.1 The Epigraph....................................................................................................93
4.2. The Burial of the Dead.....................................................................................94
4.3. A Game of Chess..............................................................................................96
4.4. The Fire Sermon...............................................................................................99
4.5. Death by Water...............................................................................................100
4.6. What the Thunder Said...................................................................................101
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6. Chapter Five: Conclusion
5.1. Conclusion..............................................................................................105
5.2. Limitations and Delimitations.................................................................106
5.3. Suggestions for Further Research...........................................................107
Bibliography............................................................................................109
Persian Abstract.................................................................................................117
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7. Abstract
This study is a significant endeavor in promoting relationship between images in
The Waste Land and the way that it conveys the meaning and structure of the
poem. The goal is to determine how a collection of images in The Waste Land can
add up anything more than simply a list of images. In fact, it is going to unify a
style in the poem that assembles a series of haiku like fragments. As Ezra Pound
proclaimed that ―the image is itself the speech‖ (Vorticism, 1914), Eliot also uses
clear, objective, precise, and concentrated images in The Waste Land. It does not
matter how discrete these images may appear. They are expressions of a single
personality ,Tiresias.There are multiplicity of voices in a variety of languages and
styles. In this regard, this study is helpful to convey the relationship between
imagism as a movement in realm of literature and cubism as an avant-garde
movement in realm of painting in the 20th century. As Imagist poets have
influenced by Haiku, there are also footsteps of this traditional poetic form in The
Waste Land. There are also comparisons between elements, structure, and essence
of Haiku and imagist poems and also analysis of some haiku like lines in The
Waste Land. This study is beneficial to gain a better understanding of the poem‘s
structure and meaning through different vistas. Most of researches on The Waste
Land has dedicated to the more significant aspects of poem such as it‘s symbolism,
it‘s metaphysics, it‘s mythological and technical aspects. The Waste Land may
seems like a prism. It has the potentiality for heterogeneous or homogeneous
interpretations. In this study, the most significant concern is upon solving the
structure of these abstruse images and finding the proper way to analyse its
enigmatic arrangements.
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8. CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In the present study T.S. Eliot‘s novelty in juxtaposition of a set of disordered
images in a series of haiku-like fragments lines in the most important poem of the
20th century, The Waste Land, is argued. This thesis provides documentary
evidences in support of the existence of Imagist credo in The Waste Land. At the
very beginning, a general overview of the Imagist Movement and The Waste Land
is presented. Literature Review is followed by Definitions, Theoretical and
Methodological Considerations, and The Significance of the Study. Next,
Structure, Strategy, and impacts of Imagism, Haiku, and Cubism on the poem are
taken in to consideration. Finally, the accuracy of Imagism is examined through
the poem. Moreover, the scope of the study and its delimitations are established.
1.1. Introduction to Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early years of the 20th- century of Anglo-American
poetry. It was a revolt against the sentimentalism and discursiveness of much
Romantic and Victorian poetry and as Joseph Frank claims, Imagism ‖opened the
way for later developments by it‘s clean break with sentimental Victorian
verbiage―(Toward a Cognitive Rhetoric of Imagism, 2004, p. 1). Imagism aims to
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9. bring modern speech into poetry due to the abandoning conventional poetic
materials and versification and free will to choose any subject to create its own
rhymes. Imagism uses common speech and presents an image or vivid sensory
description which is hard, clear, and concentrated.
Imagism focuses on the thing as thing .This characteristic mirrors contemporary
developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism. Although imagism isolates
objects through the use of what Ezra Pound (1885_ 1972) called luminous details,
Pound‘s Ideogrammic Method of juxtaposing concrete instances to express an
abstraction is similar to Cubism‘s manner of synthesizing, multiple perspectives
into a single image.
Imagist writers believed that Romantic art was over-subjective and argued for a
renewed emphasis on the object-like nature of the art work. In fact, Imagism was a
reaction against what Ezra Pound called the ―rather blurry, messy...
sentimentalistic mannerish‖ (A Glossary of Literary Terms, 1999, p.122) poetry at
the turn of the century. It was a return to what were seen as more classical values,
such as directness of presentation and economy of language, as well as a
willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms. As Imagism succeeds
symbolism and also precedes surrealism, it is situated at the dawn of Classical
literary Modernism.
Most of the poets who were involved in imagism were based in London between
1912 and 1918.Three British poets (Richard Aldington, F.S. Flint, and D.H.
Lawrence) and four American poets (Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (who had started
signing her work H.D), Amy Lowell, and John Gould Fletcher) were more or less
core group members.
T.E. Hulme, a British writer who died in 1917 in World War1, was an influential
figure for the Imagists before 1914. He was a student of Mathematics and
Philosophy. He had been involved in the setting up of the Poet’s Club in 1908 .In
1908 he presented his paper A Lecture on Modern Poetry that was first published
in 1938. He established the theoretical core for imagism. Hulme left the Poet‘s
Club In 1909 and started meeting Flint and other poets in a new group which
Hulme referred to as the Secession Club .They met at the Eiffel tower restaurant in
London‘s Soho to discuss plans to reform contemporary poetry through free verse
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10. and the haiku (Traditional Japanese poetic form) and the removal of all
unnecessary poetic verbiage from poems.
The word Imagist used publicly for the first time in 1912, when Pound wrote
HD, Imagiste at the bottom of Hermes of the Ways before sending H.D.‘s poem to
Harriet Monroe at Poetry in Chicago. In 1915 F.S Flint also claimed that Hulme
had actually used the term first at his Poet’s Club meeting before 1912. He claimed
that the origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems entitled, Autumn and A
City Sunset by T.E. Hulme. These two poems were published in January 1909 by
the Poet‘s Club in London in a booklet called For Christmas MDCCCCVIII. So,
the origin of the term remains in dispute.
Four Imagist anthologies were published between 1914 and 1918. Pound
published an anthology under the title of Des Imagistes. It was published in 1914
in London and soon became one of the most important and influential English
language collections. It was included thirty-seven poems. The other three
anthologies were edited by American Imagist Amy Lowell in April 1915, May
1916, and April 1917, respectively.
There is also another anthology that was published by Aldington in 1930 under
the title of Imagist Anthology. It was including all the contributors to the four
earlier anthologies with the exception of Lowell, Cannell, and Pound. It was
followed by critical debates about the place of the Imagists in the history of 20th-
century poetry.
The famous principles of imagism in which were illustrated by Pound in 1913,
were the following:
_ Direct treatment of ―thing‖, whether subjective of objective (The use of concrete
imagery).
_ To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation (A rigorous
economy of language).
_ As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the
sequence of the metronome (The use of vers libre).
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11. These principles my seem like rules to follow writing an Imagist poem , but
many imagist poems in fact violate at least one principle or more. Therefore, as
many Imagist poems do not follow all the rules, an Imagist poem can not be
defined simply according to adherence to every principle.
Despite the short life of movement, Imagism would deeply influence the course
of modernist poetry in the 20th-century, and as John Fuller mentioned, although
―Imagism seems absurdly provincial, it‘s aims were at the centre of the whole
Modernist programme in poetry‖ (Toward a Cognitive Rhetoric of Imagism, 2004, p. 1).
1.2. A Short Look at T.S. Eliot’s Life and Career
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 Sept. 1888 _ 4 Jan.1965), poet, critic, and editor, was
born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was the seventh and youngest child of a
distinguished family of New England origin. He was son of Henry Ware Eliot,
president of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, and Charlotte Champe Stearns, a
former teacher and an amateur poet with a taste for Emerson. Both his parents‘
families had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century.
His paternal grandfather William Greenleaf Eliot had moved to St. Louis in the
1830‘s where he became a Unitarian Minister.
As a young boy Eliot attended Miss Locke‘s primary school and Smith Academy
Record. He graduated high school in 1905.In late September 1906 he began to
study at Harvard University. He took classes from professors such as Paul Elmer
More, Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. They would later become Eliot‘s main
influence in his reform mindedness.
He attained a B.A at Harvard in 1909.He also stayed to earn a Master‘s Degree in
English literature. In the beginning of the fall in 1910, he went off to Paris to spend
a year taking courses at the Sorbonne. When he returned to America, he also
returned to Harvard and continued on to take graduate courses in philosophy and
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12. also served as a teaching assistant. He deepened his reading in anthropology and
religion and took almost many courses in Sanskrit and Hindu literature as well as
philosophy.
In the academic year of 1914_1915, Eliot was awarded a traveling fellowship. He
chose to study in Germany, but the out break of First World War in August 1914
caused him to leave Germany. He then went to London, where he would spend the
remaining years of his life. Through a classmate of his from Harvard, Eliot met
Ezra Pound on September 22, 1914. This acquaintance was a transition in Eliot‘s
work and literary career.
Via his old Harvard friend, Scofield Thayer, Eliot was introduced to Vivien
Haigh Wood, a dancer and a friend of Thayer‘s sister. She was the polar opposite
to everything he had grown and used to be in his life. After only two months, he
married Vivien on Jun 26, 1915.Eliot‘s parents were shocked. The marriage caused
a family break, but it also marked the beginning of Eliot‘s English life. To please
his parents, he finished his doctoral dissertation, ―Experience and the Object of
Knowledge in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley ―. In 1915 Eliot published his poem
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in the June issue of the Chicago Magazine
Poetry. This was Eliot‘s first major publication. The love song of J. Alfred
Prufrock became the central piece of Prufrock and other Observations (1917), a
collection that only contained twelve poems. He finished his dissertation in April
1916, but did not receive his degree because he was reluctant to take a trip to
America during the War. He then became assistant editor of the avant-garde
magazine the Egoist. In spring 1917 he found steady employment in the foreign
section of Lloyds Bank.
Eliot founded The Criterion, a journal where he would write and publish essays
and volumes of literary and social criticism , in 1922.He would not achieve
financial security until he joined the publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer (later to
be Faber and Faber ) in 1925.Eliot‘s years of literary maturation were
accompanied by increasing family tensions. His father died in January 1919. At the
same time Vivien‘s emotional and physical health became worse. These tensions
led to a nervous break down in 1921. On his physician‘s advice, he recuperated in
a sanitarium in Lausanne, Switzerland. During his stay he finished writing of The
Waste Land. The drafts of the poem reveal that the poem originally contained
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13. almost twice as much material as the final published version. The significant cuts
are in part due to Ezra Pound‘s suggestions, although Eliot himself was also
responsible for removing sections. Eliot would later dedicate the poem to Ezra
Pound, il maglior fabbro.
He returned from Lausanne in early January 1922.In June 1927 Eliot became a
British citizen and a member of the Church of England. In 1928 he collected a
group of politically conservative essays under title of For Lancelot Andrews. It was
prefaced with a declaration that Eliot considered himself a ―Classicist in literature,
Royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion‖. From this point onwards,
religious themes became a vital part of Eliot‘s poetry, going from Journey of The
Magi (1927), to Ash Wednesday (1930) and Murder in the Cathedral (1939). His
last major work of non-dramatic poetry was Four Quartets (1943), which were
four previously published poems in which gathered into one volume.
Eliot‘s earlier writings were mostly influenced by his inspiration from Dante, but
his later poetry was mainly influenced by the Church of England and his dedication
in Christianity. In 1948 Eliot received the Noble Prize for literature. By 1950 his
authority had reached a level that seemed comparable to figures like Samuel
Johnson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Vivien died in January 1947.In January of 195, Eliot surprised every one who
knew him, when he married Valeria Fletcher, his secretary at Faber and Faber.
Eliot enjoyed his second marriage in the last years of his life. He gained the
physical closeness with Valeria that he never had with his first wife. Due to his
ailing health, his happiness was short lived. After fighting emphysema for several
years, he died in his home in London on January 4, 1965, just six days before his
eighth wedding anniversary.
According to his own instructions, his ashes were interred in the Church of St.
Michael‘s in East Coker. A commemorative plaque on the church wall bears his
chosen epitaph lines chosen from Four Quartets: In my beginning is my end. In my
end is my beginning (East Coker, No. 2 of ‗Four Quartets‘, 1943).
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14. 1.3. Introduction to The Waste Land
The Waste Land (1922) is a highly influential 434-line poem by Thomas Stearns
Eliot (1888-1965). Eliot worked on The Waste Land for several years preceding
its first publication in 1922.The poem was first published in England , without
Eliot‘s notes , in the first issue (October 1922) of The Criterion ( a literary
magazine started and edited by Eliot himself ). Although there are several signs of
similar adjustments made by Eliot, the most significant editorial input is made by
Ezra Pound.
The original title for The Waste Land was ―He do the police in different voices‖.
The line, comes from Charles Dickens‘ novel Our Mutual Friend (1864-65). It is
also describe that widow Betty Higden, says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy
‖You might not think it , but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the
police in different voices.‖
As The Waste Land is composed of many voices, this would help us to
understand that, while there are many different voices in the poem, there is one
central consciousness. The poem is preceded by a Latin epigraph from The
Satyricon of Petronius. It is a dedication for Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro (the
better crafts man).
The Waste Land is consists of five parts:
1) The Burial of the Dead
2) A Game of Chess
3) The Fire Sermon
4) Death by Water
5) What the Thunder Said
The first four sections of the poem are corresponded to the Greek classical
elements of Earth (Burial), Air (title for this section was ―In the Cage‖. An image
of hanging in air and element of Air also comes to the mind), Fire (Passion), and
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15. Water. The title of the fifth section could be a reference to the fifth element of
Aether (As we have in line 416_ ―only at night fall aetherial rumours ―).
The text of the poem is also followed by several pages of notes, purporting to
explain his metaphors, references, and allusions. The first three parts cover
different aspects of modern life which present a barren land. In the last two parts
Eliot essays out the possibility of the rebirth of this waste land through the
cultivation of true spiritual values.
The Waste Land is a poem about spiritual dryness, about the kind of existence in
which no regenerating belief gives significance. It is describing a mood of
disillusionment as consequences of experiences of the First World War and also
from Eliot‘s personal life. It has embodiment of barrenness of a post _ war world
in which human sexuality diverge from its normal course and the natural world
become infertile. This is a new industrialized society in which suffers from lack of
traditional structures of authority and belief in a barren land. This modern waste
land is fulfilled with sense of destruction of the sensitive individual by the sordid
surrounding and by the perversion of ancient values.
The Waste Land has structured on five motifs: the nightmare journey, the Chapel
, the Quester, the Grail Legend , and the Fisher King. Eliot himself gives one of
the main clues to the theme and structure of the poem in a note:
Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem
were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to
Romance (Macmillan). Indeed, so deeply am I indebted, Miss Weston's book will
elucidate the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do; and I recommend
it (apart from the great interest of the book itself) to any who think such elucidation of the
poem worth the trouble. To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one
which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used
especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris. Anyone who is acquainted with these
works will immediately recognize in the poem certain references to vegetation
ceremonies (Eliot‘s note).
Weston‘s study traced the relationship of these myths and rituals to Christianity
and most especially to the legend of the Holy Grail. She found an archetypal
fertility myth in the story of the Fisher king.
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16. He further acknowledged a general indebtedness to Sir James Frazer‘s The
Golden Bough (12 volumes, 1890-1975), in which Frazer deals with ancient
vegetation myths and fertility ceremonies. The Waste Land springs from an old
Celtic belief in which the fertility of the land depend on the potency and virility of
the king. In The Golden Bough, James Fraser (1854 _ 1941) identifies a similar
ritual in various cultures round the world.
The King‘s life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the prosperity of the
whole country. The King‘s death, infirmity, or impotence will bring drought and
desolation to the land. It is also led to failure of the power to give birth to both
humans and beasts. The disasters of the land are the direct result of sickness of the
Fisher King. When his power wanes, the land plagued with barrenness and
sterility.
In From Ritual to Romance (1920), Jessie Weston mentioned that:
In the Grail king we have a romantic literary version of that strange mysterious figure
whose presence hovers in the shadowy background of the history of our Aryan race; the
figure of a divine or semi-divine ruler, at once god and king, upon whose life, and
unimpaired vitality, the existence of his land and people directly depends (From Ritual to
Romance, 1920, p.58).
This barren land can be revived only if a ―questing Grail Knight‖ goes to the
chapel perilous, and there asks certain ritual questions about the Grail and the
Lance, symbolically, female and male fertility symbols. The proper asking of these
questions revives the King and restores fertility to the land. The relation of this
original Grail myth to fertility cults and rituals are found in many different
civilizations. It is also represented by stories of a dying god who is later
resurrected. It shows their common origin in a response to the cyclical movement
of the seasons, with vegetation dying in winter to be resurrected again in the spring
(That corpse you planted last year in your garden / Has it began to sprout? Will it
bloom this year? / Or has the sudden frost disturbed it‘s bed?, lines 71_ 73).
The Fisher king is related to the use of the fish symbol in early Christianity.
Weston states that ― with certainty that the Fish is a life symbol of immemorial
antiquity , and that the title of Fisher has , from the earliest ages , been associated
with the Deities who were held to be specially connected with the origin and
preservation of life ‖ ( From Ritual to Romance , 1920 , p.90 ). Eliot also followed
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17. Weston and used a great variety of mythological and religious material, both
Occidental and Oriental. Eliot has painted a symbolic picture of the modern waste
land and show the need for regeneration.
The critic I.A. Richards (1893 _ 1979) influentially praised Eliot for describing
the shared post-war sense of desolation, of uncertainty, of futility, of the
groundlessness of aspirations and of the vanity of endeavors. This need for
regeneration and presentation of European society‘s rebirth after the world war can
also symbolizes the renewal of poetic tradition in modernism. Eliot‘s use of
complex symbols and intricate imagery adds richness and variety to the texture of
the poem. It is replete with luxuriant allusions to myths, rituals, religions, and
history of past and present.
One of The Waste Land‘s outstanding characteristic is it‘s role in rejection of
traditional meter, rhyme, and stanza form. Eliot makes use of a wide range of
metrical patterns and rhyme schemes, as well as use of different techniques for
structuring his free verses. Seems chaotic, The Waste Land has fulfilled Pound‘s
dictum that ―Rhythm must have meaning―.
The Waste Land made use of allusion, quotation in different languages, a collage
of poetic fragments to create the sense of speaking and variety of verse forms for a
culture in crisis. Allusions in The Waste Land disperse clear meaning into other
contexts, undermine the notion of authentic speaking, and blur boundaries between
texts.
The Waste Land is an amalgam of quotations and of collection of fragments. At
the opening there are the snatches of conversations. Then the poem goes on with
the addition of fragment to fragment, until all the broken images are assembled in
to the heap which is the poem itself. There is a concern with the possibility of a
new kind of thinking in images, a logic of images that is multi-dimensioned in The
Waste Land. The method of assembling ―fragments‖ or ―broken images‖ from the
past in to a sort of mosaic allows Eliot to suggest parallels between contemporary
problems and earlier historical situations. It has aimed to turn the reading process
in to a model of modern, urban bewilderment. This method parallels the Cubist use
of collage.
There are constant echoes in The Waste Land of sorts of traditional forms of
discourse like Biblical utterance, blank verse, and formal lyric grace. But these
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18. echoes can never sustain themselves in the face of the radical anxieties and
fractured outer world of the modern age. So, for instance, the apparently formal
presentation of the lady (deliberately reminiscent of Shakespeare's description of
Cleopatra) in the second part of poem, A Game of Chess ―The Chair she sat in, like
a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble―(77_79), cannot sustain emotional
stability and later breaks into the neurotic conversation of an anxious pair fighting
off images of rats eating up the dead:
"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
"I never know what you are thinking. Think."
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones. (lines 111 _ 116)
The personality is by no means unified in the poem. We have a multiplicity of
voices, male and female, young and old, in a variety of languages and styles. The
shifts are unannounced, so that often we do not even know who is speaking. But
the unity of the poem emerges from the fact that these all merge into a single
personality, something we might call the voice of the modern consciousness. The
fact that this modern consciousness cannot settle into a fixed perception of things
or even into a consistent language helps to convey sense of the strain of modern
living. In fact, what emerges from the poem as a principal concern is the inability
of the modern consciousness either to see unity in the world outside or to bring to a
disordered world any sense of inner integrity. Part of this sense of the totality of the
modern self adding up to a fractured variety emerges, not just from the shifting
sense of the images and the speaking voice, but also from the variety in the verse
style. It's as if in the modern age, there cannot be a single authoritative way of
expressing how one feels. There is not enough confidence in the forms of language
itself. Just as the traditional community has become the unreal city, a vision of a
modern inferno. So, the traditional language of the community in the modern
personality has become a multiplicity of contrasting styles in the poem. The poem
also contains both lyric and epic elements. Eliot once described The Waste Land
as ―the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life... just a
piece of rhythmical grumbling‖ (Community, religion, and literature: essays, 1995, p.98).
Eliot has also defined the lyric as ―the voice of the poet talking to himself, or to
nobody‖ (The Three Voices of Poetry, 1954). If we accept his description of The Waste
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19. Land as a ―piece of rhythmical grumbling‖, we can say that it belongs to the
lyrical tradition. On the other hand Pound defined epic as a ―poem including
history‖. The Waste Land also contains history. It has contained both
contemporary history and the history of the world in mythological terms.
The Waste Land is a poem about the proper and the improper. It‘s respect for
tradition, order in social propriety, and also jealous guarding of boundaries, are
what we call the proper side of the poem. The poem also returns to improper
sexual desire, temptations, use of quick juxtapositions, blurring boundaries
between things, and confusingly different characters and voices are also what we
might call improper side of poem. In fact, much of incidents of poem come from
interweaving of sterile propriety and fertile impropriety.
1.4. Statement of the Problem
The aim of this thesis is to consider the multiplicity of dissolving images in The
Waste Land and its relationship in enrichment of content and meaning in the poem.
While Eliot juxtaposed so many perspectives in seemingly set of disjointed images,
there is ―painful task of unifying .., jarring and incompatible perspectives― in The
Waste Land. Although The Waste Land may be the most analyzed poem of the
20th century, certain passages and scenes remain elusive. The Waste Land is
worked in the pattern of a collage as Eliot mentioned in his own phrase "a heap of
broken images "(line 22). These set of "broken images" added up to the sum total
of the ruinous waste land, which is the most conspicuous meaning in The Waste
Land. Eliot forces multiperspectivism upon his readers. He juxtaposes so many
images and object by so many characters and multiplicity of narration. It let us to
be aware of the limits of every perspective and of the desirability of moving from
one perspective to another. Like a Cubist painting, it let us to comprehend the
multiple perspectives at once. Eliot‘s real novelty was his deliberate elimination of
all merely connective and transitional passages and building up of the total pattern
of meaning through the immediate juxtaposition of images without overt
explanation of what they are doing, together with his use of oblique references to
19

20. other works of literature. There is a kind of variety of narration in unity through the
poem. The usage of different languages and narrations in the poem helps to convey
sense of the strain of modern living in modern waste land.
1.5. Research Questions
_ How can a collection of images add up to anything more than simply a list of
images in The Waste Land ?
_ What is going to unify a style which assembles a series of haiku-like fragments
in The Waste Land ?
_ There are multiplicity of voices and narrations in The Waste Land. What is the
accumulation point for unifying of the voices, narrations, and images in The Waste
Land ?
1.6. Significance of the Study
This study is a significant endeavor in promoting relationship between images in
The Waste Land and the way that it conveys the meaning and structure of the
poem. The goal is to determine how a collection of images in The Waste Land can
add up anything more than simply a list of images. In fact, it is going to unify a
style in the poem that assembles a series of haiku like fragments.
As Ezra Pound proclaimed that ―the image is itself the speech‖ (Vorticism, 1914),
Eliot also uses clear, objective, precise, and concentrated images in The Waste
20

21. Land. It does not matter how discrete these images may appear. They are
expressions of a single personality and as Eliot mentioned ‖Tiresias, although a
mere spectator and not indeed a character, is yet the most important personage in
the poem, uniting all the rest‖ (Eliot’s note).
There are multiplicity of voices in a variety of languages and styles. In this
regard, this study is helpful to convey the relationship between imagism as a
movement in realm of literature and cubism as an avant-garde movement in realm
of painting in the 20th century. In cubist art works, objects are broken up and then
reassembled in an abstracted form. The outcome represents itself in multitude of
view points. In this respect, the poem will be conveyed to find proper comparison
between imagism‘s ideogrammic method of juxtaposed images and cubism‘s
manner of synthesizing multiple perspectives through a single image. These brand
new techniques in imagism are equiponderant in essence with these contemporary
developments in cubism.
As Imagist poets have influenced by Haiku, there are also footsteps of this
traditional poetic form in The Waste Land. There are also comparisons between
elements, structure, and essence of Haiku and imagist poem and also analysis of
some haiku like lines in The Waste Land.
This is beneficial to gain a better understanding of the poem‘s structure and
meaning through different vistas. Most of researches on The Waste Land has
dedicated to the more significant aspects of poem such as it‘s symbolism, it‘s
metaphysics, it‘s mythological and technical aspects. The Waste Land may seems
like a prism. It has the potentiality for heterogeneous or homogeneous
interpretations. In this study, the most significant concern is upon solving the
structure of these abstruse images and finding the proper way to analyze its
enigmatic arrangements.
21

22. 1.7. Materials and Methodology
Primary sources for information and data are taken from published books and
articles. Due to the shortage and inaccessibility of these sources, hard copies of
some of articles and journals available via internet are used. Also literary websites
and collection of limited and full view eBooks in the internet have been used as the
secondary sources. The books that are translated in to the Persian are also referred
due to the inaccessibility of the original text.
As there are several layers of meaning in the poem, multiple sources in realm of
literature, visual arts, and painting have been used to confirm our hypothesis. One
of the most useful tips could be given to this study is its reliance on the multiplicity
of sources in confirmation of Imagism in the poem. To show the affirmation of
Imagism in the poem, the structure of imagist poems is analyzed and then to find
some of these structures in The Waste Land is tried out. Some lines of the poem are
compared to the haiku and cubist painting to find some resemblance in these
seemingly distinct compasses. Eliot‘s own theories and definitions are used for
confirmation of hypothesis. Arguments and purposes are clear through precise
trace of these elements in scenes of The Waste Land.
1.8. The Thesis Structure
The outline of this study consist of five chapters , including an Introduction
(chapter 1) , Literature Review (chapter 2), Structure and Strategy of The Waste
Land (chapter 3), Analysis of some Images of The Waste Land (chapter 4), and
Conclusion (chapter 5). It is also followed by the References and Bibliography.
22

23. 1. Introduction
This is a general introduction to what the study is all about. The Imagist
Movement, Eliot’s Life and Career, and The Waste Land are briefly
summarized. Some of the reasons and overviews of main results are also
mentioned. It is followed by Statement of Problem, Research Questions,
Significance of Study, Materials and Methodology, the Thesis Structure, and
Definition of the Key Terms of the study.
2. Literature Review
It is subdivided into two sections. In the first section The Origins of Imagism
and the Imagism as a Movement are discussed. In the second section formative
influences on Eliot in compilation of form, content, and structure of The Waste
Land are explained as below:
_ Indian Thought
_ The Metaphysical Poets
_ Symbolist Poets
_ F.H. Bradley
_ T.E. Hulme
_ Haiku
_ Cubism
3. Structure and Strategy in The Waste Land
It is divided into three parts. In first part style and structure of the poem are
explained. In the second part Eliot‘s own theory, objective correlative, in The
Waste Land and via negative in the poem are discussed. The last part dedicated
to impact of imagism, haiku, and cubism in the poem respectively.
23

24. 4. Analysis of some Images of The Waste Land
In this part some lines of the poem from imagist retrospect are analyzed and
principles of Imagism in these lines are observed.
5. Conclusion
It is contained of conclusions and it also regards limitations and delimitations of
study and gives some suggestions for further researches. This part also followed
by Bibliography and References.
1.9. Definition of the Key Terms
Imagism: Name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and
represented by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and others, aiming at clarity of
expression through the use of precise and concrete visual images and suggestion
rather than complete statement. In the early period often written in the French form
Imagisme.
Cubism: A nonobjective school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in
the early 20th century, characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural
forms into abstract, often geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete
planes.
24

25. Haiku: Unrhymed Japanese poetic form. It consists of 17 syllables arranged in
three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively. The form expresses much and
suggests more in the fewest possible words and encapsulates a single impression of
a natural object or scene, within a particular season. The haiku convention whereby
feelings are suggested by natural images rather than directly stated has appealed to
many Western imitators since c.1905, notably the Imagists.
Objective Correlative: Something (as a situation or chain of events) that
symbolizes or objectifies a particular emotion and that may be used in creative
writing to evoke a desired emotional response in the reader.
Via Negativa: Is a theology that attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by
negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect
goodness that is God. It is an attempt to achieve unity with the Divine Good
through discernment, gaining knowledge of what God is not, rather than by
describing what God is.
25

26. CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Imagism; Definitions from Past to Present
2.1.1. The Origins of Imagism
A search for the origins of imagism leads us far back into literature, as far as the
beginning of poetry. Imagism, like other movements in literature, was a reaction
against the poetry of the immediate past in England and America. Chronologically,
its sources consist of two sorts: Ancient and Modern. The sources of ancient
literatures were: Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chinese and Japanese. The modern source
was French.
The platform on which the imagists inaugurated their movement was not as
diverse as its origins. Its fundamental elements were basic and universal: Hardness
of outline, clarity of images, brevity, suggestiveness, and freedom from metrical
laws. These and other imagist ideals could be drawn from Greek, Hebrew and
Chinese.
The modern French influence was of special importance. It reinforced the
imagist‘s belief in their neoclassicism. It offered them examples of organized
poetry movements. It clarified their ideals and gave them a method of propaganda.
26

27. The principal forerunner of imagism was Symbolism. In 1860‘s, a group of French
poets declared war on romanticism. These poets who took arms against the
Romantics called themselves Parnassians. During the decade 1866_1876 they
published three anthologies of poetry under the title of Le Parnasse Contemporain.
Their ideals were orderliness and objectivity. Guided by a materialistic philosophy,
they tended to present the phenomena of the external world and to suppress undue
personal emotion. There were those among the Parnassians who could not satisfy
themselves with objective realism. They developed more spiritual lines in which
became the inspiration for Symbolism.
The two Parnassians mainly responsible for Symbolism were Paul Verlaine
(1844_1896) and Stephane Mallarme (1842_1898). Both of them were disciples of
an earlier Parnassian, Charles Baudelaire (1821_1867), who is therefore
considered as the ―Father of Symbolism―.
Their influence was also equaled by individualist, Arthur Rimbaud (1854_1891).
In the early 1870‘s, he conceived a kind of poetry that was as an inspiration to
many of symbolists. In 1885 the word symbolism was first used as a rallying point
for poets of the new order. The leader and the inventor of the name was Jean
Moreas (1856_1910).The purpose of the symbolists was to combat the realistic
materialism of the typical Parnassians and also to free French poetry from
conventional forms. They did not reject the objective method of presentation, but
tried to give their images of externality a spiritual and symbolic value. They also
favored individuality with its emphasis upon egoistic emotions.
From 1885 until 1900 Symbolism was the dominant force in French Poetry.
Although there were parallel movements, all these movements overlapped with and
also were submerged by Symbolism. Symbolism had general doctrine. So, there
were varied characteristics of its adherents. As there were extremely vague
significance of the term, restatement of principles was inevitable. It was also
impossible to unite all the symbolists under one banner. But the first official
regrouping occurred in 1891 by Ecole Romane. They dedicated their efforts to the
recovery of the formality and restraint of Greek and Roman master. Their
propaganda was so effective and many symbolists modified their style. The more
radical changes was on the way and there was also emergence of one ―ism― after
the other. They were always toward greater freedom of form and novelty of
27

28. content. There have been the Cubism, the Fantasism, the Unanimism, the Dadaism
and the Surrealism. With the exception of the last two, which appeared after the
war, all these groups may be considered as forerunners of the Imagism. A majority
of the imagists drew direct inspiration from the symbolists.
Recently, an attempt has been made by a French critic to determine the
connection between symbolism and imagism. M.Rene Taupin, in a study entitled
L’ Influence du Symbolism Francais sur La Poesie Americaine: (de 1910 a 1920),
traced the rise of imagism:
T.E. Hulme, an aestheic philosopher may quite reasonably called the ―Father of
Imagism―. During the years 1908_1912 Hulme was the center of a group of writers,
painters, sculptors, architects, and philosophers. In 1908 he founded the Poet‘s Club.
Although none of the poets who became officially the imagists were members of this
group. It was at this meetings that the first experimental imagist poems were read and
discussed. In 1909 Hulme made the acquaintance of F.S. Flint. A dining and talking
society developed out of this acquaintance. They held regular meeting on Thursday
evenings at a restaurant in Soho, the Latin Quarter of London. In an article entitled ―The
History of Imagism ― , which appeared in the Egoist for may 1 , 1915 , Flint tells of the
activities of the group , and throws light on the origins of the imagist ideals :
―I think that what brought the real nucleus of this group together was a dissatisfaction
with English poetry as it was then (and is still, alas!) being written. We proposed at
various times to replace it by pure vers libre ; by the Japanese tanka and haikai ; We all
wrote dozens of the latter as an amusement ; by poems in a Sacred Hebrew form ; ..... by
rimeless poems like Hulme‘s ―Autumn― and so on. In all this Hulme was ringleader. He
insisted too on absolutely accurate presentation and no verbiage ...There was also a lot of
talk and practice among us, storer leading it chiefly, of what we called the image. We
were very much influenced by modern French symbolist poetry ―(L‘ Influence du
Symbolism Francais sur La Poesie Americaine: (de 1910 a 1920), 1975).
He then goes on to recall that:
The group died a lingering death at the end of its second winter. But its discussions had a
sequel. In 1912 Ezra Pound published at the end of his book , Ripostes , the complete
poetical work of T.E. Hulme, five poems , thirty _ three lines , with a preface in which
these words occur: ―As for the future ,Les Imagistes, the descendants of the school of
1909 ( previously referred to as the school of Images ) have that in their keeping. (L‘
Influence du Symbolism Francais sur La Poesie Americaine: (de 1910 a 1920), 1975).
28

29. In that year Ezra Pound had become interested in modern French Poetry; He had
broken away from his old manner; and he invented the term Imagisme to designate
the aesthetic of Les Imagistes.
Most of Hulme‘s writing was in the form of brief notes in which intended solely
for his own reference. In two instances his notes were expanded into complete
essays after his death, Speculations (1924) and Notes on Language and Style (1917
(post. 1924)).
A considerable portion of Speculations is taken up with a discussion of
humanism. In fact, the subtitle of the volume is Essays on Humanism and the
Philosophy of Art. The basic contention is that we have reached the end of a
humanistic period (which begun with the Renaissance). Hulme regards humanism
as a disease. He believed that romanticism and the exaltation of the individual are
the inevitable result of humanism:
We introduce into human beings the perfection that properly belongs only to the divine,
and thus confuse both human and divine things by not clearly separating them
(Speculations, 1924).
He gives an exposition of Egyptian, Greek, and Byzantine art. Greek art and
nineteenth century art are natural; ―The lines are soft and vital ―.
So, they are enjoyable. Geometrical lines of Egyptian and Byzantine art are
reappeared in twentieth-century art. The age of humanism is over, and personality
subordinated to law again. The new art will not resemble the art of previous
classical periods. It will be the product of its own age and not a mere imitation.
Hulme mentioned that it ―Will culminate, not so much in the mere complicated
ones associated in our minds with the idea of machinery ―(Speculations, 1924).
The similarity between the new and the old will be a tendency toward
abstraction. He makes significant comments on romantic and classic aspects of
poetry. He says: ―What I mean by classical in verse, then, is this. That even in the
most imaginative flights there is always a holding back, a reservation. The classical
poet never forgets this finiteness, this limit of man. He remembers that he is mixed
29

30. up with earth. He may jump, but always returns back; he never flies away into the
circumambient gas‖ (Speculations, 1924).
He feels that we are at the end of a period of romanticism. The nineteenth
century saw its climax. He says: ―We shall not get new efflorescence of verse until
we get a new technique, a new convention, to turn ourselves loose in―. He goes on
that ―for every kind of verse there is a corresponding receptive attitude‖
(Speculations, 1924).
He also distinguished between imagination and fancy. He limits imagination to
the realm of the emotions and fancy to the realm of finite things. He thinks that it is
fancy which must be the weapon of the modern poet. By means of fancy one is
enabled to create the physical image which is the basis of poetic expression. He
says ―Visual meaning can only be transferred by the new bowl of metaphors; prose
is an old pot that lets them leak out. Fancy is not mere decoration added on to plain
speech. Plain speech is essentially inaccurate. It is only by new metaphors, that is,
by fancy, that it can be made precise―. He concludes that ―a period of dry, hard,
classical verse is coming.― He says ―a literature of wonder must have an end as
inevitably as a strange land loses its strangeness when one lives in it. Wonder can
only be the attitude of a man passing from one stage to another, it can never be a
permanently fixed thing―(Speculations, 1924).
These hints and excerpts from his Speculations illustrate Hulme‘s power of
expressions, and also to furnish his audience with the fundamental statements of
the imagist point of view.
2.1.2. Imagism as a Movement
To make Imagism anything more than a set of theories, there was a need for a
literary man to use these theories in concrete form. In 1909, Ezra Pound joined
Hulme‘s group in London. In 1922, on the other hand, Hilda Doolittle, a young
30

31. American poet, arrived in Europe and settled in London. She was known to Pound
in Pennsylvania. Soon she made the acquaintance with Richard Aldington. They
were fascinated by Greek poetry. They also began writing poetry chiefly on Greek
themes, in vers libre. They brought to life rhythms and images which reflected the
beauty of an older age but also expressed something very modern. They shared an
interest in Greek poetry, especially the surviving fragment of the Lesbian poetess
Sappho. A directness which they felt had no equal in contemporary modes of
writing in English.
In 1911 Miss Harriet Monroe, an art critic of Chicago Tribune, also returned to
America from a visit to China. She set about raising five thousand dollars to
subsidize a magazine of which she was to be the editor. She asked subscriptions of
fifty dollars each from a hundred businessmen. In October 1912, she prepared the
first issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Pound was it‘s foreign representative
and correspondent. He sent the first six imagist poems to the magazine, three by
Aldington and three by H.D.
One of the poems that first published in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse and later in
the first Imagist anthology was H.D‘s Epigram. The poem is an adaptation of a
Greek epigram of unknown authorship:
―The Golden one is gone from the banquets;
She, beloved of Atimetus,
The swallow, the bright Homonoea;
Gone the dear chatterer.‖ (Modernism: a short introduction, 2004, p.4)
H.D.‘s method can understand better with reference to the original form. This is
an epitaph which appears in the Greek Anthology, and which can be found as
epigram no. XLVI in the Epitaphs section of J.W. Mackail‘s selected Epigrams
from the Greek Anthology (1907).
This tiny volume , which does not include translations , is itself almost a model
for the Imagist anthologies , presenting the most gracefully concise writing to be
found in ancient Greek literature. The original occupies six lines, and can be found
in translation in this form:
31

32. On Claudia Homonoea
Author unknown
I Homonoea, who was far clearer-voiced than the Sirens, I who was more golden than the
Cyprian herself at revellings and feasts, I the chattering bright swallow lie here , leaving
tears to Atimetus, to whom I was dear from girlhood ; but unforeseen fate scattered all
that great affection.
H.D.‘s version is more economical, more oblique, and more neutral in tone than
the translation. She is not simply rendering the Greek epigram, but transforming it
into an idiom which is, if possible, even more epigrammatic. The content of the
original is certainly simplified and reduced , and this is done with a view to
removing its overt emotion .The translation exploits the pathos of the dead
speaking her own epitaph , but H.D.‘s version , in which the first person has
disappeared , is in this respect closer to the original.
To the issue for January 1913 Pound contributed, in addition to H.D.‘s three
poems, some literary notes, in which he mentioned the imagists as a group. To the
issue of March 1913, Pound set down the principles of Imagism. These principles
were printed over the signature of F.S. Flint in what purported to be an interview
with an imagist. As a matter of fact it was a statement by Pound. In the same
number A few Don’ts by an Imagiste appeared, signed by Pound himself.
In the Interview the four principles of imagism were as:
_―Direct treatment of the ―thing‖, whether subjective or objective.‖
_―To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.‖
_―As regards rhythm, to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a
metronome.‖
_ ―To conform to the ―doctrine of the image‖_ which the author says has not been defined for
publication, as it does not concern the public and would provoke useless discussion.‖
There was the problem of an organ of imagist expression in England. In 1909
Ford Maxom Hueffer (now Ford Madox Ford) founded the English Review. One of
his purposes was to publish the work of interesting new writers. After a year and a
half a new editor was installed. As Hueffer was sympathetic toward the new
32

33. poetry, it was a great blow to modern English poetry. In the meantime they found
an outlet for their works in the ―poetry Review‖, a monthly magazine, and also in
its successor, Poetry and Drama a quarterly. These magazines were published by
Harold Monro. He had a bookshop. It was opened in January 1912 and created a
center of poetic interest in London. From this center periodical and volumes of
poetry in which the imagists have had a considerable share were issued.
Poetry and Drama suspended publication at the end of 1914. Five years later, its
place was taken by The chapbook: A Monthly Miscellany. It was also suspended
after four years of publication.
There was a need for something to be able to secure the publication of a certain
number of poems and critical articles. In June 1913 a fortnightly paper, The New
Freewoman: An Individualist Review was published. It‘s founders were Miss
Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876_1961) and Miss Dora Marsden (1882 _1960). Pound
convinced them that what they needed for their publication was as up to date
literary department. An agreement was reached and the name of the paper was
changed to the Egoist. The subtitle, An Individualist Review was retained. The first
number of the Egoist appeared in January 1914. In January 1915 it became a
monthly, and remained such until December 1919, when it was suspended from
publication.
In the summer of 1916, H.D and Aldington were both installed as assistant
editors. In June 1917 their names were omitted (Aldington having gone to the war).
T.S. Eliot took their place and continued as assistant editor until publication
ceased. The Egoist was composed of short articles on modern poetry, painting,
sculpture, music, and so on. It was also contained original poems by the imagists
and their contemporaries. Many of the critical articles were pure propaganda for
imagism or at least advertising for the imagists. It had small circulation and almost
none outside of England.
Meanwhile, Pound was working at the publication of a volume of the new
poetry. He selected ten poems by Aldington and seven by H.D. He used these
poems as a nucleus and also invited a number of contemporaries to contribute to it.
He chose six of his own poems, took five from F.S. Flint, and took one from
Cannell, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Ford Madox
33

34. Hueffer, Allen Upward, and John Cournos. It was not a homogeneous collection,
but at least it had a spirit of revolt. It was completed late in 1913, and was
published in March 1914 under the title of Des Imagistes: An Anthology.
In England it was generally scorned. A few insulted readers returned their copies
to the poetry bookshop. In America, as Amy Lowell said, ―It was much, but very
ignorantly, reviewed‖. The title was cryptic and the poems were based on new
techniques. There was also no preface to explain the technique or to indicate the
ideals of the poets.
Ezra Pound‘s interest in the movement began to wane. He deserted the imagist
movement. His interest swung to Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Wyndhan Lewis.
Brzeska was a young French Sculptor living in London and Lewis was a brilliant
English painter, novelist, and critic. Pound evolved a new ―ism‖ more startling
than imagism. This was Vorticism. New manifestoes were prepared and published
in a pamphlet called Blast on June 20, 1914. However, only one more issue ever
published on July 1915.
Early in the summer of 1914, Miss Amy Lowell, the large, affluent, blue-
blooded, energetic, and well-educated poet of New England, arrived in London
from Boston. She had met some of imagist poets before, on her previous visit to
London in the summer of 1913.She had also contributed one poem to Des
Imagistes. Until her 1913 visit to London, her poetry had been entirely of the
conventional rime-and-meter sort. The poem In a Garden (Pound used this poem
in Des Imagistes) was her first attempt at vers libre. When she arrived in London,
she was whole heartedly in favor of technical experimentation and innovation. She
envisaged herself in a triple role: First, as one of the principal poets of the group;
second, as business agent for the others; third, as critical interpreter of the new
poetry in America.
In July 17, 1914, a dinner was given by Amy Lowell at the Dieu Donnes
Restaurant. Apart from Lowell, Richard Aldington, H.D, John Coarnos, John
Gould Fletcher, F.S. Flint, F.M. Hueffer, Ezra Pound, and Allen Upward, were
those who attended the dinner. Miss Lowell‘s contention was that the group must
stick together for a period of at least three years. They must not desert the camp
until the battle had been won. Some she could not get on with (a man like Ezra
34

35. Pound). Eventually six poets who became the official imagist (F.S. Flint, Richard
Aldington, H.D, John Gould Fletcher, D.H. Lawrence, and Amy Lowell) were
determined. Miss Lowell signed a contract with Messrs Houghton, Mifflin and
company for the publication of three anthologies of imagist poetry, to be issued
separately at yearly intervals. This contract was fulfilled, and the anthologies
appeared in 1915, 1916, and 1917.
Ezra Pound, as acquired a new and to him more vital interests, refused to be in
the circle of Imagist any longer. He labeled the movement as Amygism when Miss
Amy Lowell became its leader. Later Pound said that ―Imagism was a point on the
curve of my development. Some people remained at that point. I moved
on―(Hughes, 1972, p.38).
The six imagist poets also struck a national balance: H.D, Fletcher and Lowell
were Americans. Aldington, Flint, and Lawrence were English men. This is why
the movement is referred to as Anglo American. Miss Lowell preferred that the
contents of anthologies be selected by all the poets represented. This plan was
adopted. In most cases the poet‘s own selection from his work was accepted. To
the 1915 anthology a preface was attached. It was purporting to express the
principles of the group. It was written by Aldington. It explains that the six poets
do not ―represent a clique― but they ―are united by certain common principles ,
arrived at independently. These principles are not new; they have fallen into
desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry, indeed of all great literature―.
These principles are:
_ To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly
exact, nor the merely decorative word.
_ To create new rhythms _ as the expression of new moods _ and not to copy old rhythms, which
merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon ―free verse‖ as the only method of writing poetry.
We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believed that the individuality of a poet may often
be better expressed in free verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a
new idea.
35

36. _ To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly about
aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past. We believe
passionately in the artistic value of modern life, but we wish to paint out that there is nothing so
uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911.
_ To present an image (hence the name, imagist).We are not a school of painters, but we believe
that poetry should render particulars exactly and not ideal in vague generalities, however
magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us
to shirk the real difficulties of his art.
_ To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
_ Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.
These credos were summary of the fundamental propositions of Hulme and
Pound. The enormous amount of discussion which followed the publication of the
1915 anthology led to the inclusion of another preface in the volume for 1916.It
was written by Miss Lowell and was made to clear up the misunderstandings
which had arisen and also to explain the principle of verse libre.
In her Tendencies in modern American Poetry (1917), Miss Lowell gave a short
account of the movement:
There will be no more volumes of ― Some Imagist Poets ―.The collection has done its
work .These three little books are the germ , the nucleus , of the school; its spreading out ,
its amplification , must be sought in the published work of the individual members of the
group.(Tendencies in modern American Poetry, 1917, p.255)
In 1930, after the decline of the movements and its fellas, Aldington published an
anthology entitled Imagist Anthology. It was not a propaganda and its purpose was
to present a juxtaposition of recent works by various poets who marched under the
imagist banner.
36

37. We can say that although imagism as an idea goes back to 1908 in England, as a
movement it dates back to the publication of Pound‘s article in poetry for March
1913. Although certain of the imagist poets have continued to write in the imagist
manner, imagism as a movement ended with the publication of the fourth
anthology in April 1917.
2.2. Theoretical and Methodological Considerations
2.2.1. Indian Thought
Eliot's interest in Indian thought came largely through the influence of his teachers
at Harvard, most notably Irving Babbitt, Charles Lanman, and James Woods. The
most important influence in Eliot's Harvard days seems to have been Irving
Babbitt. Babbitt‘s system of thought was based upon the study of the Pali
manuscripts, the earliest authentic Buddhist documents. Eliot later commented that
in Babbitt he found not merely a tutor, "but a man who directed my interests, at a
particular moment, in such a way that the marks of that direction are still evident"
(Criterion, October 1933).
After studying for one year in Paris which was a center for Sanskrit studies, he
came back at Harvard in September 1911, studied ancient Hindu literature and
scriptures for two years under the guidance of Charles Lanman and also applied
himself to the reading of Patanjali's Yoga-Sutras under the supervision of James
Woods. After the spring of 1913, Eliot ceased to study the documents from the
East which, nevertheless, made a lasting impression on him.
In his Page-Borbour lectures which he gave at the University of Virginia in 1933
he made these comments about his courtship with the East:
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38. Two years spent in the study of Sanskrit under Charles Lanman, and a year in the mazes
of Patanjali's metaphysics under the guidance of James Woods, left me in a state of
enlightened mystification. A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian
philosophers were after--and their subtleties make most of the great European
philosophers look like schoolboys--lay in trying to erase from my mind all the categories
and kinds of distinction common to European philosophy from the time of the Greeks.
My previous and concomitant study of European philosophy was hardly better than an
obstacle. And I came to the conclusion--seeing also that the influence of Brahmin and
Buddhist thought upon Europe, as in Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Deussen, had largely
been through romantic misunderstanding--that my only hope of really penetrating to the
heart of that mystery would lie in forgetting how to think and feel as an American or a
European: which, for practical as well as sentimental reasons I did not wish to do (T. S.
Eliot, After Strange Gods, pp. 40-41).
This comment clearly shows the relationship of Eliot with Indian thought and
religion. A reading of Eliot's poetry reflects the contribution and influence of the
ideas and wisdom of ancient India. In his poetry, references may be found to the
Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, Patanjali's Yoga-Sutras, and Buddhist
literature. One of the most famous examples of Indian thought in Eliot's poetry is
found in The Waste Land. In The Waste Land there are two well-known examples
of Hindu influence both coming at the end of the poem in the section entitled What
the Thunder Said. At the end we find the triple use of the word "Shantih" which is
both Vedic in origin and Upanishadic in content:
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih (lines 431_434)
In his notes on The Waste Land, Eliot himself offers this explanation of the word:
Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad.
' The Peace which passeth understanding ' is our equivalent to this word ( Eliot‘s note ).
There is also the threefold message of the thunder—Da Da Da which Eliot drew
from the Brihadaran-yaka Upanishad. These three words stand for Datta,
Dayadhvam, Damyata, respectively meaning "Give, Sympathize, Control." In the
Upanishadic context, the meaning is symbolic. The terms sum up Prajapati's
teaching to three kinds of his disciples, gods, men and demons. After their formal
education, they ask him what kind of virtues they should obtain to lead a
meaningful life and Prajapati responds with the same word, Da, three times each
38

39. with a different meaning. To the gods it means Damyata -control yourself; to the
men in conveys Datta -give in; and to the demons is suggests Dayadhvam -be
compassionate. These words at the end of the poem, along with shantih, have
elicited numerous interpretations.
In this regard Amar Nath Dwivedi suggests that:
The clear-cut hint of Eliot in using this highly symbolically event from the Upanishad is
at the prevailing sterility in ― The Waste Land ― , which can hardly be turned into an
oasis unless the virtues exhorted by Prajapati are earnestly practised by mankind. It
shows also that Eliot wanted the poetic fragments of the Hindu Scriptures incorporated in
― The Waste Land ― to be read and understood in a way alien to Western habit of thought
(T. S. Eliot: A Critical Study , 2OO2 , P.86 ).
It seems that "Shantih, shantih, shantih" (line 434) is the hope drawn from the
wisdom of the great Indian cultural tradition. In other words, Eliot's concern in The
Waste Land was universal and he expresses his concern for world peace as the
remedy to the inferno of modern life in Hindu terms to convey his global outlook.
Dwivedi also has mentioned about Indian interpretation of The Waste Land:
It appears from the bulk of The Waste Land that the poet was terribly moved by the
chaotic world-order created by the World War I, the result of 'modern millions live
alone'. To escape from this lamentable situation, he turns to the wisdom of India. Further,
the poet of The Waste Land "speculates on human destiny" which concerns the entire
globe, and which transcends the man-made barriers of caste and creed, of colour and sex,
of nationality and religion. The inclusion of Hindu religion and thought in The Waste
Land constitutes a part of the poet's international outlook (T. S. Eliot: A Critical Study,
2OO2, P.79).
Indic texts acted not only as a repository of images and local allusion for Eliot,
but often as a deliberately evoked catalyst for fundamental changes in his thought
and style. In the major classics of Hindu and Buddhist traditions Eliot found
perspectives that intersected at crucial points with his own growing religious
convictions, his work in philosophy, and his interest in techniques of meditation
and their relation to writing. In general, however, these classics offered not simply
points of confirmation of previously held ideas but valuable challenges to
established points of view. Eliot learned to appreciate the multiple perspectives
involved in his Indic and Western studies. The juxtaposition of these different
concepts and of the different cultural contexts from which they came, gave
39

40. dimensions to Eliot‘s work. These works were subtle and pervasive and affected
the form as well as the matter of his poetry.
2.2.2. The Metaphysical Poets
Eliot regarded the Metaphysical poets as representatives of his ideologies
concerning poetry. He had praised the metaphysical poets to a great extent. In his
essay, The Metaphysical Poets (1921), he has highlighted the appreciative features
of metaphysical poets according to his own perception. In the essay, The
Metaphysical Poets, Eliot praises the metaphysical poets on the basis of their
subject matter and their poetry. The Metaphysical Poets investigate the world by
rational discussion based on its phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism.
By his essay, he draws people‘s interest towards metaphysical poets.
The Metaphysical Poets was first published as a review of J.G. Grierson‘s edition
of Metaphysical lyrics and poems of the 17th century. It is one of the most
significant critical documents of the modern age. It has brought about a revaluation
and reassessment of interest in these poets who had been neglected for a
considerable time. Eliot has thrown new light on the metaphysical poets, and
shown that they are neither quaint nor fantastic, but great and mature poets. They
do not represent a digression from the mainstream of English poetry, but rather a
continuation of it. Eliot examines the characteristics which are generally
considered metaphysical: First, there is the elaboration of a simile to the farthest
possible extent, to be met with frequently in the poetry of Donne and Cowley.
Secondly, there is the device of the development of an image by rapid association
of thought requiring considerable agility on the part of the reader that is a
technique of compression. Thirdly, the Metaphysical poets produce their effects by
sudden contrasts.
Such telescoping of images and contrasts of associations are not a characteristic
of the poetry of Donne alone. It also characterizes Elizabethan dramatists like
Shakespeare, Webster, Tourneour and Middleton. This suggests that Donne,
40

41. Cowley and others belong to the Elizabethan tradition and not to any school. The
dominant characteristics of Donne‘s poetry are also the characteristics of the great
Elizabethans.
Eliot then takes up Dr. Johnson‘s (1709 _ 1784) famous definition of
Metaphysical Poetry, in which he has tried to define this poetry by its faults. Dr.
Johnson in his Life of Cowley (published in 3 volumes between 1779 and 1781)
points that in Metaphysical Poetry ―the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
violence together‖. But Eliot says that to bring together heterogeneous ideas and
compelling them into unity by the operation of the poet‘s mind is universal in
poetry. Such unity is present even in the poetry of Johnson himself, The Vanity of
Human Wishes (1749). The force of Dr. Johnson‘s remark lies in the fact that in his
view the Metaphysical poets could only ―yoke― by violence dissimilar ideas. They
could not unite them or fuse them into a single whole, however this is not a fact. A
number of poets of this school have succeeded in uniting heterogeneous ideas.
Eliot quotes from Herbert, Cowley, Bishop King and other poets to support his
contention. Therefore, he concludes that Metaphysical poetry cannot be
differentiated from other poetry by Dr. Johnson‘s definition. The fault, which Dr.
Johnson points out, is not there, and the unity of heterogeneous ideas is common to
all poetry.
Eliot shows that Donne and the other poets of the 17th century, ―were the direct
and normal development of the precedent age‖ (The Metaphysical Poets, 1921), and
that their characteristic virtue was something valuable which subsequently
disappeared. Dr. Johnson has rightly pointed out that these poets were ―analytic―;
they were devoted to too much analysis and dissection of particular emotional
situations. But Dr. Johnson has failed to see that they could also unite into new
wholes the concepts they had analyzed. Eliot shows that their special virtue was
the fusion of heterogeneous material into a new unity after dissociation. In other
words, metaphysical poetry is distinguished from other poetry by unification of
sensibility.
He mentioned that the great Elizabethans and early Jacobians had a developed
unified sensibility which is expressed in their poetry. By ―sensibility― Eliot does
not merely mean feeling or the capacity to receive sense impressions. By
―sensibility― he means a synthetic faculty, a faculty which can amalgamate and
41

42. unite thought and feeling , which can fuse into the varied and disparate, opposite
and contradictory, experiences. The Elizabethans had such a sensibility. Eliot gives
concrete illustration to show that such unification of sensibility, such fusion of
thought and feeling, is to be found in the poetry of Donne and other Metaphysical
poets, but it is lacking in the poetry of Tennyson, Browning and the Romantic
Poets.
He says that after Donne and Herbert, a change came over English poetry. The
poets lost the capacity of uniting thought and feeling. The ―unification of
sensibility― was lost, and ―dissociation of sensibility― set in. After that the poets
can either think or they can feel; there are either intellectual poets who can only
think, or there are poets who can only feel. The poets of the 18th century were
intellectuals. They thought but did not feel. The romantics of the 19th century felt
but did not think. They can merely reflect or ruminate and meditate poetically on
their experience, but cannot express it poetically. Eliot says:
Tennyson and Browning are poets and they think; but they do not feel their thought as
immediately as the odor of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his
sensibility. When a poet‘s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly
amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man‘s experience is chaotic, irregular,
and fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza and these two experiences have
nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking;
in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes (The
Metaphysical Poets, 1921).
In other words, the metaphysical poets had a unified sensibility which enabled
them to assimilate and fuse into new wholes with most disparate and
heterogeneous experiences. They could feel their thoughts as intensely as the odor
of a rose, that is to say they could express their thoughts through sensuous
imagery. In his poems, Donne expresses his thoughts and ideas by embodying
them in sensuous imagery and it is mainly through the imagery that the unification
of sensibility finds its appropriate expression. He added that:
The poets of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth,
possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. They
are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors were; no less nor more
than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino. In the seventeenth century a
42

43. dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered (The Metaphysical
Poets, 1921).
Eliot then proceeds to examine the close similarity between the age of Donne and
the modern age, and the consequent similarity between the sensibility of the
Metaphysicals and the modern poets. The Metaphysicals are difficult and the poet
in the modern age is also bound to be difficult. Hence the modern poet also uses
conceits and methods very much similar to those of the Metaphysicals who also
lived in complex and rapidly changing times. Like them the modern poet also
transmutes ideas into sensations, and transforms feelings into thought or states of
mind:
Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and
complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results.
The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in
order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning. (A brilliant and
extreme statement of this view, with which it is not requisite to associate oneself, is that
of M. Jean Epstein, La Poesie d'aujourd-hui.) Hence we get something which looks very
much like the conceit - we get , in fact , a method curiously similar to that of the ―
metaphysical poets ― , similar also in its use of obscure words and of simple phrasing
(The Metaphysical Poets , 1921).
Eliot attempted to value the Metaphysical poets and Jacobean playwrights over
the Victorians. As a great touchstone era, there are some references and
adaptations, in which he directly used in The Waste Land, to poems and plays of
Metaphysical poets and Jacobean playwrights.
Here are some examples in the text of the poem in which show that Eliot has
influenced by poets of metaphysical time:
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again! (lines 74_75)
Cited from the dirge in Webster‘s White Devil ( Eliot‘s note ).In the play by John
Webster ( 1580 _ 1634 ) , the dirge , sung by Cornelia , has the lines: ― But keep
the wolf far thence , that‘s foe to men , for with his nail he‘ll dig them up again.‖
Eliot makes the Wolf into Dog, which is not a foe but a friend to man.
43

44. A GAME OF CHESS
The title of second part of the poem suggests two plays by Thomas Middleton
(1580 _ 1627): A Game at Chess, and, Women Beware Women.
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble (lines 77_78)
Cited from Shakespeare‘s Antony and Cleopatra .In the play , Enobarbus‘s
famous description of the first meeting of Antony and Cleopatra begins : ― The
barge she sat in , like a burnish‘d throne , Burn‘d on the water ... ―.
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene (line 98)
Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv.140.(Eliot‘s note).
The phrase is part of the first description of Eden, which we see through Satan‘s
eyes.
Jug jug jug jug jug jug (line 204)
It is a conventional representation of nightingale‘s song in Elizabethan poetry.
― What is that noise? ―
The wind under the door. (lines 117_118)
Cf. Webster: "Is the wind in that door still?" (Eliot‘s note).The line cited in the
note is from John Webster‘s The Devil’s Law Case.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. (line 172)
Cf. the mad Ophelia‘s departing words (Hamlet 4.5.72).
44

45. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song. (line 176)
―V. Spenser, Prothalamion―(Eliot‘s note).Eliot‘s line is the refrain from
Spenser‘s marriage song, which is also set by the Thames in London, but a very
different Thames from the modern littered river.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. (lines 185_186)
It is an ironic distortion of Andrew Marvell‘s (1621 – 1678) To His Coy
Mistress:
―But at my back I always hear / Time‘s winged chariot hurrying near―.
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck (line 191)
―Cf. The Tempest, 1.2 ―(Eliot‘s note).
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors (lines 196_197)
Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress (Eliot's note).
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu (lines 203_206)
―Tereu― is a reference to Tereus, who ―rudely forc‘d― Philomela; it was also one
of the conventional words for a nightingale‘s song in Elizabethan poetry. Cf. the
song from John Lyly‘s Alexander and Campaspe: ―Oh, ‗tis the ravished
nightingale./Jug , jug , jug , jug , tereu! She cries, ―.
45

46. Co co rico co co rico (line 393)
Cited from Hamlet, the crowing of the cock signals the departure of ghosts and
evil spirits.
2.2.3. Symbolist Poets
Eliot owed a great deal to the French Symbolists and through Eliot the whole
course of English poetry was influenced by them. The Symbolists wished to
liberate poetry from its expository functions and its formalized oratory in order to
describe instead the fleeting, immediate sensations of man‘s inner life and
experience. They attempted to evoke the ineffable intuitions and sense impressions
of man‘s inner life and to communicate the underlying mystery of existence
through a free and highly personal use of metaphors and images that, though
lacking in precise meaning, would nevertheless convey the state of the poet‘s mind
and hint at the dark and confused unity of an inexpressible reality. They
concentrated on the suggestive power of word music and on suggestion by means
of association of ideas. Their whole method was indirect.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 – 1898), a major French symbolist poet, said ―my aim
is to evoke an object in deliberate shadow without even actually mentioning it, by
allusive words, never, direct words―. Eliot has acknowledged his debt to the French
symbolists in these words:
I myself owe Mr.Symons a great debt. But for having read his book I should not, in the
year 1908, have heard of La Forgue and Rimbaud; I should probably not have begun to
read Verlaine, and but for reading Verlaine I should not have heard of Corbiere. So the
Symons‘s book is one of those that have affected the course of my life (The Achievement
of T. S. Eliot: An Essay on the Nature of Poetry, 1947).
46

47. Eliot here referred to Arthur William Symons (1865 –1945) and his book ―The
Symbolist Movement in Literature―(1899).Eliot had found this book in the Library
of the Harvard Union in 1908.
So much did he appreciate the poems of Tristan Corbière (1845– 1875) and Jules
Laforgue (1860 – 1887) that certain of his early poems show a close
correspondence with some of theirs in tone, metre and even theme .In Corbiere, he
found the combination of romance and mockery. In both, tones were in irony and
pathos and the style were mingled by slang and the poetic diction. Laforgue was
also his master in conversational rhythm.
While the details of Eliot‘s style show the mark of his responsive mastery of the
later symbolists, the impressions of William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) upon his
spirit has been more profound. Eliot was affected and deeply influenced both by
Yeats‘s sense of what it is to be a poet and by the example of the poet in which
Yeats provided in his life and his work. Further more Eliot influenced to the degree
that he not only wrote one of his finest critical pieces as the Yeats memorial lecture
of 1940, but also allowed phrases, ideas, and attitudes of the Yeats to enter his own
poetry.
Eliot writes that it was not Yeats‘s ideas or his attitudes and not even his style
that was so important but rather it was ―the work, and the man himself as poet that
have been of the greatest significance‖, ―but the influence of which I speak is due
to the figure of the poet himself, to the integrity of his passion for his art and his
craft‖ (The Cambridge companion to T.S. Eliot, 1994, P.5 ).
Most extra ordinary in Yeats was the ―continual development‖ that exhibited in
his works. Behind that continual development, Eliot says that was the character of
the artist as artist. This characteristic is discernable in every work of the poet, and
it produces, according to Eliot, a superior impersonality in the work.
In this impersonality, Eliot says ‖the poet who , out of intense and personal
experience, is able to express a general truth ; retaining all the particularity of his
experience , to make of it a general symbol‖ (On Poetry and Poets , 1957).
47

48. In reading Yeats backwards from the point of final development to the earliest
beginning , Eliot is following a Yeatsian principle of poetic structuring , a poetic
structure in which called by Yeats , in the different context of ―A Vision‖ , ‖The
Dreaming Back‖.
2.2.4. F.H. Bradley
Eliot settled on the philosophy of F.H. Bradley (1846 –1924) as the topic of his
doctoral research. Eliot‘s thesis originally titled Knowledge and Experience in the
Philosophy of F. H. Bradley. It was completed and sent to Harvard by April
1916.The thesis was enthusiastically received by the Harvard faculty. Eliot‘s
failure to return for his oral defense (wartime conditions made it difficult and risky
to cross the Atlantic Ocean) prevented him from being awarded his doctorate in
philosophy. Since Eliot‘s critical career so closely follows his intense study of
Bradley and since he himself recognized an influence of Bradley in his own prose
style and poetry, many have insisted that Bradley‘s Philosophy is the key to
understanding Eliot‘s practice and theory of criticism.
Ann Bolgan who wrote her dissertation on Eliot‘s involvement with Bradleyian
metaphysics states the following in the introduction to her thesis:
It is the specific objective of this dissertation to assert that every major critical
concept which appears in Mr. Eliot's literary criticism—many of which initiated
such stubborn controversies—emerges from his radical absorption in and
criticism of Bradley's philosophy, and the content of my dissertation is but a
demonstration of the way in which these notions and concepts originate in
Bradley, are digested and recorded by Eliot as he writes his own Ph. D.
dissertation between 1914 and 1916 and reappear beginning a year or two later,
now in new, full, literary dress in Mr. Eliot's reviews and essays (What the Thunder Said:
Mr. Eliot's Philosophical Writings ,1960, p. 44).
48

49. Kristian Smidt considered Bradley's influence on Eliot and writes:
We are not surprised to find that the philosophy which seems to have exercised the
strongest influence on Eliot's poetry is that which he studied with the greatest application,
namely that of Francis Herbert Bradley, particularly Bradley's theory
of knowledge. His entire poetical output may be regarded, if one chooses, as a
quest for knowledge-not necessarily of a rational kind-and one frequently
recognizes in it Bradley's ideas in poetic costume. They are often
indistinguishable from those of Royce and other Idealists, but , recognizing the
importance of Bradley to Eliot, we may let his name stand for them all where they
are in general agreement (The Intellectual and Religious Development of T. S. Eliot ,
2003 , p.7).
Best of all are Eliot's own words to the effect of Bradley on his work. In To
Criticize the Critic (1965) Eliot wrote:
But I am certain of one thing: that I have written best about writers who have influenced
my own poetry. And I say 'writers' and not 'poets,' because I include F. H. Bradley, whose
works-I might say whose personality as manifest in his works-affected me profoundly
(To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings, 1991, p.20).
Interesting connections can be drawn between Bradley and Eliot‘s criticism,
apart from their shared style of urbane skeptical critique. As we have mentioned,
Eliot‘s dissertation is focused on Bradley‘s epistemology. Bradley divided
cognition into three stages. The first exists prior to (and beneath) consciousness of
consciousness, the second consists of consciousness of consciousness, and the third
involves a transcendence of consciousness of consciousness. The movement from
the immediate experience of the first level to the intellectual experience of the
second is accompanied by the intrusion of language, by the rise of objects, and by
the fragmentation of reality. The movement from the second to the third level
involves a transcendence of brokenness and a return on a higher level to the unity
of the first level. Both in his dissertation and in his literary criticism, Eliot often
refers to the first level as feeling, the second as thought, and the third as a
unification of the first two.
Perhaps the most important is Bradley‘s Hegelian holism .It is an organicism
where the meaning of any thing is never autonomously given but always a function
of its place and interrelations with other things in a wider whole. This is congenial
to Eliot‘s theory of tradition, where the meaning of a poet or a work of art depends
on its relations with all the other elements in the tradition. The theory of tradition is
49

50. also supported by the pragmatic idealism of Eliot‘s Bradleyan thesis. It argues that
the existence of our common world relies on our sharing a stable consensus about
what we mean and think. Our world is only one world because there is only one
world intended. This cooperative consensus is motivated by our shared pragmatic
aim of coping with experience. The existence of any common object depended
upon our recognition of its community of meaning and this community of meaning
is ultimately practical. Thus, in Eliot‘s thesis, the enduring consensus of tradition
is essential not merely for literature but for all thought and indeed reality.
Eliot‘s early criticism differs radically from the Bradleyan philosophy of his
thesis. Bradley‘s whole philosophy was essentially motivated by a radical
repudiation of empiricist thought. This involved both denying the existence of a
plurality of facts and rejecting the method of analysis.
Facts were condemned as mere abstractions, while analysis was decried as a
mutilating alteration of reality, which is essentially one indivisible whole. Such an
attitude is alien to Eliot‘s early criticism with its insistent advocacy of precisely
these two notions _fact and analysis _ and with its empiricist outlook, where ―all
knowledge is in perception, and critical intelligence is the analysis of sensation to
the point of principle and definition‖ (The Sacred Wood, 1928, pp.60, 96, 124).
With its Bradleyan rejection of fact, Eliot thesis affirms that all truth is ―only an
interpretation‖ and hence there is necessary value in the ―sort of interpretation
done by the historian, the literary critic and the metaphysician‖. Eliot‘s early
criticism contradicts this by boldly claiming that ―the work of art can not be
interpreted; there is nothing to interpret―. Now ―interpretation is only legitimate
when it is not interpretation at all, but merely putting the reader in possession of
facts‖ (The Cambridge companion to T.S. Eliot,1994,P.34).
With this striking reversal of the valencies of fact and interpretation, there is a
similar reversal of the valencies of the private, the subjective, and the internal
versus the public, objective, and external. While Eliot‘s thesis awkwardly
combines the rejection of any substantial ― distinction between inner and outer ―
subjective and objective with a firm assertion that ―all significant truths are private
truths‖, his early criticism contrastingly insists on strongly distinguishing
50