Teiresias in Wonderland

T.S. Eliot is strictly known as the bow-tied poet who crafted
Modernist Poetry. Poetry before Eliot was romantic, lyrical, demonic,
and airy; after Eliot, poetry has the shelves of allusive meanings, the
cynical tone of a seasoned academic, and substantial cadences which
echo medieval cherical prouncements.


Of all of T.S. Eliot's poems, it's the Wasteland that
pinpoints the Modernist tendency in poetry. It's thick with allusive
brushstrokes of meaning. In all five parts of the Wasteland, Mr. Eliot
refers back to narrative and religious texts. The title itself refers
to the legend of the Holy Grail. King Arthur's England is a wasteland
because of the affair that his wife, Guinevere, has had with Sir
Lancelot. Persifal, along with the other knights, go on a quest for the
Holy Grail so that King Arthur's England may once again enjoy the
spiritual fertility it possessed before Guinevere's deadly affair. Part
III refers to Buddha's Fire Sermon in which the Buddha warns his
audience about the burning of the senses: everything is on fire,
perception is a fire started by the sticks of two perceptions being
rubbed together. Part V refers to the Voice of God which turns
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon into a terrible beast with an eagle's
feathers and a bird's claws. All these allusions build up the theme of
cultures who had enjoyed nonpareil health until a sinister crime was
perpetrated, namely a lack of respect for the local deity who had
brought about this fertility.


Along with his allusions to themes of other texts in the
Western and Eastern canon, Mr. Eliot weaves his own personality into
the fabric of the poem. His own note on Part III. THE FIRE SERMON
states: "Teiresias?is?the most important personage in the poem, uniting
all the rest." A playful exploration of the name "Thomas Sterns Eliot"
unlocks the mystery of the character of Teiresias within the WASTELAND.
The reader of the poem can spot all the letters in the name "Teiresias"
within the letters in the name "Thomas Sterns Eliot" except for the
second "i." He continues his note on Teiresias: "Just as the one-eyed
merchant? melts into the Phoenician Sailor?" Here Mr. Eliot gives the
reader a definitive clue as to who the narrator of this bizarre poem
is. It is T.S. Eliot as Teiresias or, to be more precise, the one
"i"-ed Teiresias who appears in Part III of the poem as himself, as
observer, as a lonely chorus member? So, Teiresias is both within the
poem as a character and outside of the text of the poem as narrator.
Mr. Eliot's note on Part III continues: "?all the women are one, and
the two sexes meet in Teiresias." This denotes that the sex of the
narrator of the poem can switch from male to female, but that the
gender of the character of Teiresias within the poem is
"male-female."


Mr. Eliot, in HAMLET AND HIS PROBLEM, warns against this sort
of identification with a literary character. James Joyce, in ULYSSES,
identifies a literary projection of his younger self (Stephen Dedalus)
with Telemachus. This series of identifications creates: James Joyce
(Author) = Stephen Dedalus (Joyce in his 20's) = Telemachus, and in the
WASTELAND: T.S. Eliot (Author) = Teiresias (Eliot in his fifties) =
Persifal. Despite his own warning, he falls over the same banana peel.
Instead of constructing an "objective correlative" as a work of art, he
ends of using Joyce's ULYSSES as a subtext or rather, a
meta-text.


To get back to the poem, the first stanza of Part I. THE
BURIAL OF THE DEAD is clearly narrated by an old aristocratic woman
named Marie (Teiresias as Marie). She speaks of April (Early Spring),
Winter, and Summer. Technically, she should progress from Spring to
Summer to Fall to Winter but she doesn't. She delves into memories of
Winter after a descriptions of Summer: "And when we were children?/ ?
he took me out on a sled." These lines capture the age of the female
narrator perfectly. The minds of older women often shift from one topic
to another without any reference points. An older woman may speak about
Summer and then recall memories of Winter without giving a warning.
Younger people's minds also do this but on a more direct, less allusive
manner. The last sentence of the first stanza also makes little sense:
"I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter." In Summer, I
don't think she would have read much of the night. I suppose in the
Fall, she may have read much of the night, especially if her
environment was especially cold. She may have thought of going south in
the Winter to keep warm, especially if she is well-to-do. After all,
her cousin is none other than the archduke.


In the 2nd stanza of Part I, is the narrator of the poem male
or female? The tone of the narrator's voice is angry and beaten. She or
he addresses Jesus ("Son of Man") almost condescedingly: "You cannot
say, or guess, for you know only/ a heap of broken images?" Is this
Persifal (Teiresias as Persifal) addressing Jesus Christ who holds the
secret of the Grail within the Grail Castle of Heaven? The bitterness
in the voice does remind the reader of the voice of the disillusioned
Persifal. What is even more absurd is the entire idea of knights going
on a quest to cure the King of his incest curse and of sins for which
they are not responsible in any sense of the word! Later in the stanza,
bits of conversation enter the poem: "You gave me hyancinths first a
year ago;/ 'They called me the hyacinth girl." Only a woman would speak
such words unless it was a tranvestite man which is certainly a
possibility in Genet's world but in Eliot's? Is Persifal then
remembering words a woman said to him in his mind or is this the voice
of the woman who identifies herself with an old prophetess who asked
for immortal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth (the first
textual insertion after the title of the poem)?


When I speak of the narrator of this poem being T.S. Eliot, I
speak of a narrator whose form transmutes as to be congruent with the
character being portrayed. Only Teiresias with the magical caduseus of
Hermes is able to perform such a feat. Mr. Eliot, to add, seems to be
portraying Teiresias as a literary totality, as a sum total of the
representations of Teiresias by all writers and poets throughout
Western literature. Euripides' representation of Teiresias in his
BACCHAE, however, seems to have had a sharp impact on Mr. Eliot's
understanding of Teiresias. Teiresias, being able to see with both
feminine and masculine eyes, is able to see that Pentheus is in a
catch-22 situation. If Pentheus allows the BACCHAE to perform their
rites and to spread the religion of Dionysius, his "polis" will
dissolve into a state of nature. If he refuses, he himself will be
ritually slain. In THE WASTELAND, the narrator confronts a similar
crisis. For she or he sees the Eastern religions of Buddhism and
Hinduism as natural, Dionysian religions. On the flip side of the coin,
he or she sees how Greco-Christian civilization has brought about a
hell on earth through its demonization of natural forces which are
beyond good and evil. Such paradigms of conflict are also present in
motion pictures like the Matrix. The hero must choose either to save
her or himself or to save the entire world by sacrificing her or
himself.


In the 3rd stanza of Part I, the narrator expresses
ambivalence toward the lesser relgions of the Western World, namely,
Astrology and Satanism. Part II. GAME OF CHESS analyzes the nihilistic
secular life of London. The atmosphere is clinical, and the allusions
are heavily ironic. There is a sense that in the face of all the
artistic, cultural, political, economic grandeurs of the past, modern
life is very, very insignificant. A smart, artistic character takes
over, most-likely female. Her eye for detail is brilliant: "Under the
firelight, under the brush, her hair/ Spread out in fiery points/
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still." The mythical
allusions are only meaningful as objectifiable decor; the conversations
are either bits of skeleton-humour or dead serious torture-dramas. The
fourth stanza is either an interior monolgue or a dramatic soliloquoy.
This stanza ends appropriately with "burning." Part IV is a poetic
newspaper account of the death of the "Phoenician Sailor" in Part I of
the poem. Part V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID is the voice of God speaking
through the Upanishads. How can a Christian God speak through the
Upanishads? God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. So T.S.
Eliot opts for Christianity (Anglicanism to be more precise) since it
is the best choice of all religions and secular philosophies. The Bible
is a text written from the perspective of many authors but each author
has the imprint of God's logos upon his soul. Other religions, whether
they are in the Western or Eastern traditions, are incorporated into
the texts within the Bible which sound like echoes of other religions.
T.S. Eliot's atheistic phase is over.


If T.S. Eliot had written the WASTELAND without any
precedents, he would really be a genius. The WASTELAND was finished in
1922. Four years earlier, James Joyce wrote ULYSSES which employed the
use of multiple perspectives, continual allusions (formal and
contextual), and the use of religions and myths as supports for
humanity in the flaoting, vast limitless REALITY of the universe.