Simultaneity of Tradition in Eliot’s “The Wasteland”

Simultaneity of Tradition in Eliot’s “The Wasteland”

In “Tradition and Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot suggests that it is important for poets to recognize themselves as part of a long literary tradition and to develop a consciousness of the past. This “historical sense” is for Eliot a “feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe… has a simultaneous existence” (Eliot, 115). While Eliot stresses that a work of art changes all the art that precedes it, this simultaneity of tradition also suggests that all these works of art can be present in one work. In “The Wasteland,” and in particular Book III, “The Fire Sermon,” we see a simultaneity of traditions that allows Eliot to comment on modern life through reference to the past.

Eliot suggests that for the poet it is not enough just to study the past. Tradition is another element that, along with emotions, feelings, impressions, and experiences, can “combine in peculiar and unexpected ways” (Eliot, 118). In “The Wasteland,” Eliot combines tradition with experience through a large number of references to various literary traditions. He is Just as likely to quote from the Bible or Shakespeare as paraphrase his fellow poet Baudelaire or the Buddha’s Fire Sermon. Eliot himself might argue that his radically new poem remains entrenched in the established tradition precisely in drawing so freely from it.

But what is the effect of this literary mash-up, where lines from different times and places are combined in even the same stanza? For some perhaps it is a labyrinthine mess of time, though as Eliot points out, “History has cunning passages, contrived corridors/ And issues” (Rainey, 89). It is precisely this maze of traditions that allows works of art to influence each other. By juxtaposing Augustine and the Buddha in the lines, “To Catharge then I came/ Burning burning burning burning” (Eliot, 15), Eliot is able to illuminate similarities between Eastern and Western traditions that the individual quotes could not have done on their own.

This technique of combining divergent references does not just apply to the past. The situating of ancient mythologies in and against modern settings and actions is the particular genius of “The Wasteland.” Sweeny approaches Mrs. Porter on the dirty Thames and bustling London streets, but they are enacting the classical roles of Actaeon and Diana. Ancient Teresias watches and comments on a pair of modern lovers as he once did for Jove and Juno. And lest we forget that the relationships in Eliot’s unreal cities are doomed to failure, there is the almost nonsensical insertion of, “Jug jug jug jug jug jug/ So rudely forc’d./ Tereu” (Eliot, 12), which keeps Tereus’s rape of Philomela clear in the educated reader’s mind.

So what ultimately does “The Wasteland” say about the age in which it was composed? The answer probably depends on the interpretation of all the other experiences and feelings combined in the poem with the more academically accessible literary references. Eliot’s use of the simultaneity of traditions might at the least suggest that all of these historical and mythological occurrences still exist within the modern age. The inhabitants of London or any Twentieth Century city have the potential of reenacting the tragedy of Tereus and Philomela or the passions of Augustine and the Buddha. The message of “The Wasteland” is perhaps that it is not just poets who need to develop Eliot’s “historical sense.” Unless we learn to recognize the influence of the past and present on each other, we may too be condemned to repeating all the cruel and cunning passages of history.