The Waste Land
By T.S. Eliot

epigraph_This is a quote from the first-century Roman prose work Satyricon (c.54-68) believed to be by Gaius Petronius (27-66CE). Eliot translated the epigraph as follows: "I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she answered: 'I want to die.'"

_ChaucerThe first line of The Waste Land alludes to the General Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which opens with a "description of Spring characteristic of dream visions of secular love" (Harvard). Chaucer's poem begins, in modern English, as follows: When April with its sweet-smelling showers THas pierced the drought of March to the root, And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid By which power the flower is created; When the West Wind also with its sweet breath In every wood and field has breathed life into The tender new leaves, and the young sun Has run half its course in Aries, And small fowls make melody, Those that sleep all the night with open eyes (So Nature incites them in their hearts), Then folk long to go on pilgrimages, And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores, To distant shrines, known in various lands.... (General Prologue, 1-14) You might consider how Eliot's version compares to this source text.

_identity In this passage, the female speaker's statement, "I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, really German," introduces the theme of fragmentation and displacement that permeates the poem. The speaker's identity is shaped by multiple cultural influences, resulting in a fragmented sense of self. She does not fully identify as Russian, Lithuanian, or German, but as a hybrid of all three. This complex identity further highlights the themes of displacement and cultural conflict throughout the work.

Wagner_These lines are quoted from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1865), a German opera based on a 12th century chivalric tragic poem Tristan and Iseult. There are multiple different versions of the story, but at root, it is a Celtic legend about tragic love; the knight Tristan has been tasked with accompanying the Irish maiden Iseult to be married to his uncle, the King of Cornwall. On the way, Tristan and Iseult fall deeply in love, which causes many tempestuous problems. The story became very popular in the ninteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially among the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of artists and writers influenced by Romanticism who sought inspiration in Italian Renaissance art and medieval courtly themes. The image included here, by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse, is Tristan and Isolde with the Potion (1916), via Wikimedia Commons. Tristan and Iseult are on the ship heading for Cornwall and Iseult's marriage; they are drinking a love potion. The lines are from the first act of Tristan und Isolde, and are sung by an anonymous sailor about his lover, left behind in Ireland. Translated, the lines read "Fresh blows the wind / homeward: / my Irish maid, / where do you linger?" A later line (42, below) from the same opera, "Empty and desolate is the sea," sandwiches Eliot's description of the first meeting between the "hyacinth girl" (36) and her lover, who remembers being struck by her and feeling "neither / Living nor dead" (39-40). (

_clairvoyant This noun comes from the word "clairvoyance", which in the French means clear-sighted. A clairvoyant is what we would now call a psychic, someone who can see things that are not physically there. Madame Sosostris is a fortune teller who has a reputation as "the wisest woman in Europe." The -e is added to the word clairvoyant to make it feminine in the French (OED).

cards_A character in Eliot's poem visits a famous fortune teller, and the following lines describe the tarot cards she received at a reading. According to Elizabeth DeBold of the Folger Shakespeare Library, tarot originated in 14th-century Egypt, and traveled to Europe during the Renaissance.

_water Water is a prevalent motif throughout The Waste Land. Water is often associated with regeneration/rebirth, but here and elsewhere, it is associated with death.

woolnoth_Saint Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in London, first built in the 12th century, then rebuilt on several occasions. The photograph included here, from about 1900, originally from the Library of Congress, shows the church in its modern form, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoore and opened in 1727. This is likely very close to what Eliot would have seen. It is possible that the site had been a place of worship for 2000 years (Wikipedia).

mylae_The Battle of Mylae, a naval battle won in 260BCE by Roman naval forces.

baudelaire_This is an allusion to the last line of Charles Baudelaire's introductory poem "Au Lecteur [To the Reader]" from his collection Fleurs du mal [Flowers of Evil (1857-1868). The line reads, "Hypocritical reader, --my twin, --my brother!" You can read Baudelaire's poems online.

_cupidon The scene described by the speaker features banners adorned with fruit-bearing vines and a standard depicting a golden "Cupidon," an alternate name for the Roman god of love, Cupid. The use of Cupidon in this context evokes themes of desire, fertility, and the pursuit of romantic love. The image of Cupidon peeking out from behind the banner may also imply a sense of voyeurism or hidden desire, contributing to an undercurrent of sexual tension in the scene. This lush, sensual imagery is suggestive of the speaker's heightened sensibility, and highlights the poem's themes of passion and desire. The image included here, via Wikipedia, shows a Roman copy of an original Greek sculpture of Eros Stringing His Bow.

philomel_An allusion to the ancient Greek story of Philomela, which was recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses 6.412-674. In the story, Tereus, King of Thrace, marries the Athenian Procne. Procne asks her husband to bring her sister, Philomela, to visit her in Thrace. Tereus rapes Philomela, and to keep her from telling her sister of the assault, he cuts out her tongue. Philomela communicates her story to Procne by weaving a tapestry showing the events. The two sisters avenge the abuse by killing Itys, Procne and Tereus' son, and baking him into a pie which Tereus eats. The women flee, pursued by Tereus; the gods transform the three into birds--Philomela becomes the sweet-singing nightingale.

pearls_Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot refers to Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is an allusion to I.ii.394-398, when Ariel sings about a drowned man undergoing "a sea-change / Into something rich and strange." The words suggest the fate of Ferdinand's father, whom he believes lost at sea.

rag_Though Eliot has made changes to the language, That Shakespearian Rag is a ragtime tune from 1912 (Parker, "Songs in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land"). Ragtime was a projenitor of jazz, the rhythms of which influenced Eliot's style.

demobbed_Colloquial British expression for "demobilized," specifically, released from military service. Lil's husband likely served in World War I (1914-1918).

hurry_The barkeep is informing the patrons of closing time.

pills_The speaker is referring to medication that induces abortion.

spenser_An allusion to Edmund Spenser's poem "Prothalamion" (1596), which celebrates the marriage of two "nymphs." Nymphs are female water spirits of classical myth, but the word also suggests young women in general. A prothalamion is a type of poem that celebrates a coming marriage.

_Verlaine In this line, the speaker directly alludes to the last line of the French poet Paul Verlaine’s sonnet "Parsifal": "And, O those children's voices singing in the dome!" The sonnet is a meditation on art and the power of music; it reflects the poet's response to hearing Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal, which is a major intertext to Eliot's poem. The use of this allusion adds an extra layer of meaning to the poem. The inclusion of French in the midst of an English poem could also suggest a sense of cultural dislocation or separation. Additionally, the image of children's voices singing in a dome may represent a symbol of purity and innocence that contrasts with the themes of corruption and decay present elsewhere in the poem. To learn more about Verlaine, see the Poetry Foundation. To learn more about Wagner's role in "The Waste Land," see this scholarly essay by Philip Waldron, "The Music of Poetry: Wagner in The Waste Land.". You can read Verlaine's poem in the original French and in English translation here.

_tiresiasIn Greek mythology, Tiresias is a blind prophet who also lived as both a man and a woman. He was instrumental in the action of Sophocles' Oedipus plays, and he also appeared in Homer's Odyssey.

_carbuncular Used here as an adjective, "carbuncular" comes from the word "carbuncle," which is an lesion on the skin that is irritated and filled with pus, and overall is unpleasant to look at (OED n3).

_Moorgate Dating back to the Medieval period, Moorgate was the last of the old gates to be built in the Roman defense wall that surrounded the fort of Londinium, now London. The original Roman walls were built 100-400 CE, but Moorgate was originally a secondary gate that was expanded in 1415. It led to the marshy Moorfields area in the north of London. It was demolished in 1762. To learn more about the London Wall, see Wikipedia. The image here, also via Wikipedia, shows an 18th-century engraving depicting Moorgate before it was demolished.

_Carthage This is a reference to the ancient city of Carthage, which was located in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was a major center of trade and civilization in the ancient Mediterranean world, but it was destroyed by the Romans in the Punic Wars in the 2nd century BCE. The use of Carthage in the poem may suggest themes of destruction, decay, and the decline of civilization. The city of Carthage has been interpreted as a symbol of the failure and fall of human civilizations, which can serve as a warning for modern society. The image included in this annotation, via Wikimedia Commons, shows a representation of the ancient city from the Carthage National Museum in Tunisia.