ENG140Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Shanti Mantras, White Privilege, Leonard Woolf
Document Summary
Illusions that occur more than once: reoccurring illusions. Main purpose: suggest old stories in fragments beneath present. The wasteland is a lament of loss of stories. Or loss of ability to hold culture together. Or might be suggesting persistence of old stories in presence. Core of poem: love story/sexual encounter between bank clerk and typist told to us by tiresias. Typist became a popular figure in fiction. First instance of typist in poetry: the wasteland. Taking something modern, making it poetic by putting in a poem. Despite being known as the modern poet, eliot perhaps thought old stories were better. Wrote final section in a trance, as told to virginia woolf. Poems ends w/ 3 different interpretations, then decays into babble of 3 translations in 3 languages. Equivalent of christian peace that passes understanding or buddhist nirvana. Ways out of wasteland: dull senses (like w/ liquor) or escape sense (like w faith)
